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ALL FLESH IS GRASS.
“All flesh is grass.” Men boast and build
Their temples towering to the sky,
And dream their dreams and do their deeds
Until it comes their time to die.
Like passing shadows cn a stream.
From the uncertain world they pass,
And none their destiny foreknow.
But it is written: Flesh is grass.
Life's golden vanities at best
Are tinkling cymbals, sounding brass;
And all the past are fading dreams,
For heaven ordains that flesh is grass.
The rich, the poor, the old, the fair
Shall stand upon one equal plane,
Part of one family who share
Brief heritage of joy and pain.
Whose human purposes and plans
Are brittle as the frailest glass;
Which Time, the great iconoclast,
Will shatter soon —since flesh is grass.
Soon shall we quit the things we know,
And from this stage of action pass
And those who follow us discern,
From urn or shaft, that flesh is grass.
ARTHUR GOODENOUGH.
Brattleboro, Vermont.
•J
| CHAT.
Thanks, dear Ellys, for that glimpse of beautiful
San Marcos and the flashlight picture of dark
eyed Lomacita, whose letters in the Sunny South
Household made her personality so radiantly vivid
to the readers. We have several newcomers to the
Household today, whom we welcome with out
stretched hands. I hope more of The Golden Age
readers will tell us what they are doing and think
ing these long, dry, dog days. It isn’t the most fav
orable time in which to do or to think certainly.
One feels as though swinging in a hammock and
slowly swaying a palm leaf fan were sufficient exer
cise on days when the thermometer is rampaging
up among the nineties.
Yet the world's work goes on —its ceaseless toil
and endeavor, its scheming, pushing, maneuvering,
and its play, often as wearisome as its work. While
women are preserving or designing seaside costumes
men are planning startling moves on the big chess
board of politics. Strenuous, indeed, has been the
political game this season, and it bids fair to be
still more turbulent, with a quartette of presidential
cand ; dates in the field. My, what hot campaigning
is ahead of us! Listen, aren't you glad you are
not in it? How on earth would you manage to put
up gallons of preserves and jellies, look after the
out-of-school small fry and the baby, devise and cook
three meals a day for the ever hungry John, have
yourself fresh and dainty so as not to offend the
masculine eye, and at the same time keep up with
the political motor car, read all the scandalous
things the candidates say about each other and the
fine things they say about themselves, and make up
your mind which one of the running bunch you will
cast your vote for?
Well, I am glad we don’t have to do it, though
I know, as does every woman of ordinary sense, that
we have a right to full suffrage when it comes to
justice and fair dealing. We have no business being
taxed to support a government in which we have no
voige, being rated in state affairs lower than the
most ignorant darky. All the same, I am glad we
are out of it. I do not want to see our women dip
their dainty digits in the motley political pie—not
directly, you understand —but a woman can, if she
will, greatly influence the trend of legislation. She
can let her voice be heard in approval of measures
she believes will be for the general good and she can
disapprove in no half-hearted way of movements that
though specious and disguised, are unjust to the
people or to a class. Therefore, it is the duty of
women to keep up with the more important public
their dainty digits in the motley political pie—not
easy to do this and also attend to home and children
and to religious and social duties. How then, did
our loremothers manage to do so much? When
one thinks of their spinning, weaving, hand-sewing,
quilt making, knitting, meat curing, all day visiting,
camp meetings and open-house hospitality, it seems
incredible they could have had only one pair of
THE HOUSEHOLD
A Department of Expression Tor Those Who Teel and Think.
The Golden Age for August 6, 1908.
hands. And there were no labor-saving contrivances
in these days.
Well, I suppose they just kept at it. They utilized
all the little scraps of time as they used up the bits
of cloth in their quilts. When they visited, they
look their knitting or sewing; when they entertained
company, they kept on churning, or mending, or
candle dipping. There is a story of a young widow r
(perhaps she was the original “Merry Widow”) who
rocked the baby’s cradle by means of a string
attached to her chair, made a shirt, baked a goose,
and received and accepted a marriage proposal all
at the same time. Is there a modern widow who
could do as much?
With ©ur Correspondents
MATTIE HOWARD’S GOOD WORK.
Your question in the last Golden Age Household
about my kindergarten must be answered, as I do
not wish to have it said I have established a school
of this kind in my town. Such has been my desire
and for a while was my purpose, but adverse cir
cumstances prevented my plans. However, I studied
kindergarten methods and invite small children to
my home to entertain and instruct them. It gives
me pleasure and recreation in seeing them pleased.
I became deeply interested in the primary work of
our Sunday school and after I could not carry our
my day school plans, I determined to establish an
“up-to-date” primary department in . our Sunday
school. With a beginning of three small tots, I
persevered till I enrolled forty names on my book.
Other teachers joined me and the entire school
became interested. Nice rooms have now been fitted
up and we have a real kindergarten department.
It affords me great pleasure to see the tots march
out into the auditorium on occasions and entertain
an audience of interested visitors. Being very much
attached to an interesting class of girls, some of
whom I had instructed from babies and had grad
uated from the primary room, I now retain them,
intending to make teachers of them.
I think the kindergarten will be an established
school in this place in a few years. Really I had
my eye on our grape arbor this spring, but a pair
of brown thrushes got ahead of me, built their nest
and hatched their young, so I could not let the
children interrupt them. Perhaps when these hot
days are over I may call the children in and have
some songs and recitations, ice cream and figs under
the shady, vine-clad arbor.
I was so glad to read again from Tom Lockhart’s
pen; am pleased to know he can attend church. I
hope he may yet be able to do great things like
“Earnest Willie.” There is great power in faith in
the blessed Jesus and in working for Him. I often
think our weakness is sent to us to develop our faith
and help us the better to declare to the world the
power of Christianity.
A handshake for “Knight of the Grip” and a call
for Mizpah's return.
MATTIE HOWARD.
*
A GIRL’S VIEW ABOUT NOVELS.
And so Mr. Walter Neale thinks the old books are
mossbacks and should be left to dust and spiders!
Then he would pity me, for I have never read a truly
modern novel. All these I have read were published
thirty years ago. Once upon a time my father had
a fine library. Then our house was burned one
stormy autumn night when I was a baby. All the
new part of the house, in which the parlor, library,
dining room and guest room were, was destroyed.
The only part unburned was four rooms at the back,
the old part—a kind of ell. In this was the sitting
room, cool and sweet and restful, with old-fashioned
furniture and comfortable roomy chairs and an
antiquated book case, with green baize doors, filled
with well thumbed books in worn bindings that were
not thought nice looking enough to have a place in
the library. But what a treasure they are to us
now. 1 have read them and re-read them. I have
never read a really modern novel, but I don’t see how
they can be better than Charles Reade’s and Jane
Austen’s, George Eliot’s and Mrs. Oliphant’s. I was
re-reading (for the third time) Miss Austen’s “Mans
field Park” this morning while I was churning in the
backyard under the deep shade of the old oak, and
got so interested in the doings of Mary Crawford and
Fanny Price that I forgot the churn dasher until
mother called out from the piazza, “Myra, has the
butter come? I see you have stopped churning.”
Charles Reade’s novels are brimful of incident and
action and Anthony Trollope’s are delightful pictures
of life. Miss Yonge’s stories have a high purpose
and give us grand men and lovable women, but for
perfectly charming love-making Anthony Trollope
takes the lead. Dear me, why do not some of our
young men talk love and make straightforward,
manly proposals like the heroes in Mr. Trollope’s
novels?
All the dear old shabbily bound books in our col
lection are wholesome and pure in tone. I have never
read a novel that “left a bad taste in the mouth.”
These books are entertaining and informing, they
give you ideas as to how different classes of people
live, think, and act, and they set high standards of
honor and virtue. I have heard that many of the
latter day novels are not so careful in their teach
ings. A girl friend told me the story of “The House
of Mirth.” I did not see anything fine in it. It was
a sad, dreary story of a weak, foolish girl; but my
friend said the charm was in the telling and that
Edith Wharton stood at the head of American fiction
writers. We have two of Mr. Neale's books —not
novels, but biographies of war heroes —Morgan and
Stuart. They are splendid. My father is a veteran,
66 years old. He went into the Confederate service
when he was 18, at the beginning of the war, and
was wounded five times; he was left once for dead
on the battlefield in Virginia. He was so battered
up, he said, that he determined never to marry, but
when he was forty he met my sweet mother and
changed his mind. He and mother educated brother
and myself entirely. We have never been to school.
We live in the country, on a large, old farm, and
we are healthy and contented. We have good neigh
bors and we take much delight in our flowers and
fine chickens. I ride horseback, but I can’t bring
myself to ride astride, though I know that this is
the present fashion and that it is safer and more
sensible. Maybe I shall make me a divided skirt
some day and try it. MYRA.
Mississippi.
*
LOVE WILL FIND YOU.
(Inscribed to our Householder, F. L. Orton.)
Love will find you, doubting brother,
Ere your journey’s at an end.
Though you think you’ll never need him —
On yourself you can depend.
Love will find you on life’s highway,
A beggar poor and cold,
Although clad in costly raiment,
And with ample store of gold.
Yet gold can not make happiness,
Or the home you crave for so;
For home is where the heart is
And the heart you would forego.
But Love will lay his fingers
Upon your blinded eyes,
And you will see the world as new—
A scene of glad surprise.
He will tune your soul to music,
A song of joy and hope.
He will gild with magic sunlight,
Your future horoscope.
You will take up his sweet carol;
Life will seem a joyous thing,
And ere you know it, you’ll begin
His tender song to sing.
Milan, Tennessee. EUGENIA.
*
SEEING “LOMACITA.”
(Beautiful San Marcos.)
Since so many of the members of the passed-away
but ever dear Sunny South Household belong to
the Household circle of The Golden Age, I feel sure
that a bi ief account of San Marcos, the beautiful
south Texas home of “Lomacita,” will be of interest
to the many who may recall that Lomacita was
among the most gifted as well as beloved writers who
composed the brilliant circle that gathered around
our mater —Mrs. Bryan—in the palmy days of the
Sunny South.
Greatly needing rest and recreation after a busy
summer, I went to visit my mother, who lives in
