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HIS FRIENDSHIP PROVED.
By Margaret A. Richard.
His friendship he’s proved,
Though I knew not he loved
Me better than other folks do;
I never yet heard
From him a wee word
Proclaiming that he was thus true.
His friendship he’s proved —
True, staunch, and unmoved —
By me both unguessed and unsought:
When I brought out a book,
“By hook or by crook,”
A copy he actually bought!
*
CHAT.
-The question proposed to the Household today by
our new correspondent, who is yet an old Sunny
South friend, will, I hope, interest our readers suf
ficiently to induce them to suggest some lines of
work that might help to lift the deserted girl out
of the despondency due to the treachery of her
lover. In me case of a girl so constituted, it will
not do to say to her, “Be too proud to grieve about
such a rascally sweetheart. Let him go. You are
better without him. Call up your common sense and
independence.” The wound is so soft, the heart is too
deep for such shallow salving. To the sense of
loss and injury is added that of having been de
ceived, of having one’s faith in love and friendship
cruelly crushed. The reaction comes slowly in such
cases, and sometimes the sensitive heart only hides
its hurt more deeply when rebuked by unsympathetic
friends and the repression entails loss of health and
spirits. “Girls should not be so sentimental. Senti
mentalism is the bane of Southern girls,” you say.
I grant this is partly true of Southern girls, par
ticularly those brought up in the country and kept
from contact with the hard, disillusioning phases of
twentieth century life. Such girls often feed their
unsophisticated minds on dreams and fancies, on
the false sentiment of some modern stories, and the
romance of old novels. Mothers who study the
nature of their daughters should check the ten
dency to sickly sentimentalism, which is quite differ
ent from the sweet, w T holesome sentiment that keeps
the heart fresh and pure.
I had many things I wished to say to the House
holders today, but I find that our space is quite
filled with interesting letters, and will defer further
.chat until next time. You will enjoy Dr. Nat’s lively
account of Elam's latest adventure and try to guess
which of our lovely Household girls that irrepressible
lover of the sex is now seeking to make the queen
of his beautiful South Carolina home.
With ®ur Correspondents
STUDIES FROM SHAKESPEARE.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
Macbeth and his wife are leading characters in one
of Shakespeare’s three greatest plays (“Macbeth,”
“King Lear,” and Hamlet ), but also they are per
sonages in Scottish history. Let us analyze the na
tures of each and see how they act on one another.
Ambition is a quality common to both, of them
The man is ambitious for himself, the woman for
her husband. The man is deficient in will power;
he can not carry out the crime he has planned and
cherished. The vroman has a will of iron; she is
strong to dare and to do. Macbeth yields readily to
the suggestion of the witches, his secret desire
prompting him to interpret their vague advice to be
“bold and bloody,” the saving clause that “none of
woman born shall harm Macbeth” strengthening his
timidity of purpose. Lady Macbeth needs no prompt
ings from the witches. She knows that her husband
desires the death of King Duncan that he, himself
may reign, and she goes straight toward accom
plishing the crime, though she shrinks from stabbing
Duncan with her own hand, saying, with a touch of
womanly softness, “Had he not resembled my father
as he slept, I would have done it myself.”
Macbeth’s lack of will power to carry out his bloody
design is shown conspicuously in his failure to “screw
his courage to the sticking point” on the night of
Duncan’s murder. The woman sees his hesitation
and goads him into carrying out his horrible pur
pose. She is not more wicked than he, but she has
THE HOUSEHOLD
A Department of Expression For Those Who Feel and Thinks
The Golden Age for May 28, 1908,
greater strength of will. Again, at the banquet, Mac
beth strongly desires to act sanely, but he has not
sufficient self-control, not enough grip on his will to
serve his purpose, and his trembling terror, at the
illusion of Banquo’s ghost in his own seat at the
feast, has to be quieted by his wife, who seeks with
consummate grace and diplomacy to explain her
lord’s strange conduct to his guests and smooth over
the disturbing episode.
In the beginning Lady Macbeth shows herself the
bolder and stronger spirit, but she has braced herself
with wine—strong drink, tnat helper of the devil.
She says, when she has pressed the wine cup on
her doomed royal guest and his attendants so win
ningly that they have drunk deep and are in the
profound sleep of intoxication —
“That which has made them drunk has made me
bold;
That which has quenched them has given me fire.”
All her energies are wrought up to give strength
and calmness to her husband, whose fear of detection
and death makes him see visions and quake in terror.
When he dwells on the horror of the murder he has
just done, she says, “You do unbend your noble
strength to think so brainsickly of things. Go wash
this filthy witness from your hands.”
When he shrinks shudderingly from returning to
the chamber of crime to put the bloody daggers
beside the drunken and drugged guards that it may
appear that they committed the crime, she exclaims:
“Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The
sleeping and the dead are but as pictures; ’tis the eye
of childhood that fears a painted devil.”
Yet when the strong stimulant has died out in her
veins, she swoons on hearing the murder of the king
told of, and later remorse consumes her by day and
banishes rest by night, defying the physicians’ skill
and filling her attendants with awe and horror as in
her sleep she tries to wash trom her hands the blood
she had spoken of so lightly, moaning out ih agony:
“Here’s the smell of the olood Still. All the per
fumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little hands.”
The woman’s remorse was deep and terrible, be
cause by nature she was fine and strong. She had
listened to the tempter through her love for her hus
band and her sympathy in his ambitions. His own
remorse was more superstitious terror and fear of
consequences. He could go into action, into the heat
of battle and throw off the goadings of conscience,
but she remained at home and brooded over her sin
until her reason was probably dethroned. The re
pentance, which she had disclaimed as weak and
brainsickly, possessed her soul with agonizing firasp,
and thus, though she escaped punishment by man,
she felt its awful power through the hand of Him
who has said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”
CHEROKEE.
*
A QUESTION FOR THE HOUSEHOLD.
I would like to have tne Household tell me how I
may comfort a girl, whose affianced lover has proven
false to her. They were engaged and were to be
married in June. He had been a very ardent suitor,
but during the year of engagement, his ardor cooled
gradually until he at length made a pretext for
breaking off with the girl whose sweet, almost too
sweet, temper had borne with all his coldness and
crossness, hoping that he would return to his old
affectionate ways. She is almost prostrated by his
heartless desertion, and takes no interest in any
thing. Her pride seems to be entirely crushed, and
there is nothing to keep her up, as she has no need
to work, having a strong, capable step-mother who
has a servant to help her. She is one of the clinging
kind of girls, whom I always pity, as the support
they cling to is ever liable to be withdrawn. The
parents of such girls should teach them independence
and strength of character. Such qualities can be
developed in youth if properly cultivated. I think
every mother, and father, too, should study the
nature of the child they are bringing up and find
out in what qualities their character is deficient,
then let teaching and training all tend to develop
ing these traits. Usually the features and the head
formation of a child will give parents a clew to his
character and temperament. For instance, a small
receding chin denotes lack of firmness, then this
quality is the one to be brought out by assiduous
cultivation. Everything should be done to strength
en the will power of the child. Another child is too
timid and sensitive, while the sister or brother of
the same child may be too bold and forward. The
wise mother will give such children the kind of
training that will tend to draw out backward traits
and check such as are in excess. Let us hear from
you in this matter, dear Household friends. I am a
mother of young children. I realize that my greatest
duty is to train them rightly and that this is very .
difficult, as they are unlike in disposition. Don’t
forget to give me your ideas as to the best way to
advise the dear, sweet girl who has been deserted
by her lover. She ought to engage in some kind of
business to divert her mind, but nothing offers itself
in this small town, and she is not a girl fitted to go
to a city among strangers and find employment.
ERMINIE S.
North Carolina.
*
THE LATEST ABOUT ELAM.
Dr. Nat’s Rep&rt,
In reply to the inquiries of Elam’s ahxious friends
as to his health, I must say that when he came to me
from Brownsville his condition Was deplorable. He
was hatless, umbrellalees, his hair, as Matt Clark
said, was full of hay-seed and chicken feathers. His
face wore the national colors of red, white and blue,
and was as streaked as the map of Mississippi.
It was the doings of that gun, he explained. The
old blunderbuss had cracks in the barrel and tne
tacks and powder it Was loaded with had spoiled hiS
beauty for a while. I took him in hand, applied anti
septic Washes and ointment, and gave him a tablet
that quieted him and caused him to drop off into a
restoring sleep. When he had waked and had
partaken of coffee and beef soup (he wouldn’t look at
chicken broth; said he never wanted to see another
chicken), he seemed all right, and began to tell me
of his troubles, when he suddenly broke down and
began to cry. “Why, Elam!” I remonstrated, “That
will never do. A big, fine, broad shouldered fellow
crying like a baby!”
“Oh, Doc!” he groaned. “I wish I was a baby, a gal
baby; I do. I don’t seem to have a bit of success
with any of them. I was sure Annice cared for me,
but she says I can’t write poetry, and my cake is all
dough.” He fell back on the pillow and moaned.
“Are you in pain, Elam?” I asked. “There’s a big
ache right here, doc,” he answered, spreading his
hand over a space on his left side just over the fifth
rib. “What makes it? Do you know?” “Yes, I think
I know,” I replied, “and I’ll tell you after you take a
nap. I gave him another tablet and while he was
asleep I sat and thought over his case and concluded
that what Meb suggested—the “expulsive power of a
new affection” —would be the best remedy for his
malady. When he awoke I proposed that he should
go to see another of the Household girls and try his
luck. “There’s S. T. P.” I suggested. “You remem
ber her fine looking picture in the Sunny South, and
she writes excellently.” “She doesn’n write poetry,”
he demurred. “But I know a girl who does and-who is
lovely in the bargain.” “How soon will Ibe present
able, Doc?” “In just a little while,” I told him, and
I promised him I would go with him on his first visit
to whatever young lady of the Household he decided
to call upon.
In a few days Elam was his old good looking self and,
as is characteristic with him, he was all impatience
to try the new affection. Dobbs, his faithful valet,
who had been telephoned for, arrived with Elam’s au
tomobile and we started out, bright and early, to pay
the initial visit to Well, no; I won’t tell the
well known name of the gifted young lady of the
Household whom Elam had decided to court. It
may transpire in the future, but for the present I’ll
keep my patient’s counsel.
All went well until we came within a mile or two
of Annice’s home, when my companion became rest
less, and finally said: “Doc, I’m obliged to go to the
house to get my hat and umbrella. The hat is a
brand new dove-colored derby, and the umbrella had
just been covered over.” “Send Dobbs in to get
them,” I advised. But he thought that would not do.
It was plain he wanted another sight of his last love.
We rolled along the smooth, gravel avenue to the
front of the fine old ancestral house and went in.
Annice was in her pretty sitting room, making fancy
work, seated by the window with her big, silk lined
work basket at one side of the chair, and in the
basket, inside up, lay Elam’s derby, and within it sat
the tiniest of snow-white bantam hens, one of An
nice’s special pets, who had evidently made a nest
of the hat and was now laying an egg. On the other
