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"THE LADY FROM ALABAMA”
"By Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne, Authors of "Psyche”, "Limit of the Line”, "/fission Girl”, Etc.
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HE SUNSET broke in shining shafts of
light on the plate-glass fronts of the
tall, many-storied marble buildings on
the main street of the great city; it
shimmered in golden pools of light on
the sidewalks and sparkled and radi
ated, with rainbow effects, in the big
windows and on the nickel-plated rails
of the trolley and motor cars; on the
burnished harness of swiftly moving carriages and
other vehicles —until'the commonplace drama of the
street, with its moving throngs of gaily-dressed
women and men, more soberly attired, was trans
formed, as with a Merlin wand, into a great, colorful
panorama of enthralling attractiveness.
Schiller watched the scene from the editorial
sanctum, though her glance lingered longest on a
floral display in a window on the opposite side of
the street. Great brass jardiniers of pink carnations
burned like an altar flame around a vestal group of
Calla lilies, interspersed with mist-ferns, the whole
being environed with a border of lichen-gray stones
and Southern smilax. It was a delightful picture,
a color-call across the busy currents of trade, and it
set the fibers of the young girl’s soul to vibrating.
“Look at that window,” she mused in the silence.
“How the colors blend, like noble words set to
music, until they rise to the message of the lilies,
which the Master commanded us to consider, be
cause, though they neither toiled nor spun, yet Sol
omon, in all his glory, was not so gorgeously ar
rayed! Consider how exquisitely lovely they are,
and how entirely they leave their growth and devel
opment to the Wisdom that guides the stars in their
courses.
“Stevenson said,” Schiller continued, “that we
swallowed the universe at one gulp, like a pill; but
it is so gloriously variegated and interesting that I
am sure we ought to take the lessons of life more
leisurely. Even from my atom point of view, that
of the unsuccessful, non-scheduled young woman, I
know that the beauty of things is not revealed in a
moment. Some of us are in such a hurry that we
fail to recognize Opportunity. We forget that. Des
tiny may speak to us in the smell of a buttercup
or the music of the commonest air.’ ”
When the electrics were turned on Schiller and
Mrs. Howell stood on the sidewalk, under the storied
massiveness of a great building, waiting for the car
which was to convey them to the home of the asso
ciate editor, in the suburbs.
In the sunny atmosphere of the office during the
day the lurking shadows of despair had vanished
from the girl’s eyes, and as she stood, calm and self
poised, with a great bunch of violets, the gift of the
lady in gray, pinned on her brown jacket, she might
easily have been mistaken for a fortunate girl. The
charm of high idealism, the thinking of profound
and impersonal thoughts, gives a unique distinction
to the faces of those who indulge in it.
Nature scores with an impartial scalpel.
And whether you are climbing upward to the
stars or slipping downward to the brute plane, she
etches your psychologic status with unerring fidel
ity, so that he who runs may read.
“Patience,” Mrs. Howell said, as she laid a light
hand on her young companion’s arm; “patience is a
cardinal virtue, Schiller. I hope that yours will not
be utterly exhausted before we reach ‘Overlook.’
That is the name of my home at Hayden Park. It
is on the slope of a hill and overlooks the park and
the lake, and, pardon me, my neighbors’ houses.
“But,” she added, with a light laugh “I don’t have
time to see the things I ought not because I am such
a busy woman. When you are pledged to entertain
.50,000 readers a month, frivolous espionage of your
neighbors is out of the question.
“Listen,” she continued, with a merry gleam in
her sky-blue eyes, “1 heard a jest today that is so
perfectly comical, dear, that I am going to run the
risk of shocking you by its repetition. A young
teacher —Miss Marie Carewe —is responsible for the
jest. She declared it was a personal experience,
but I have some doubts about it, because Marie
CHAPTER VIII.
affects the one-act comedy all the time, because she
is ambitious to be considered brilliant, and, besides,
she likes to entertain her friends.
“It seems that Miss Carewe wrote to the mother
of one of her little pupils that she would be greatly
obliged if she would bathe her small son oftener.
The lady replied:
“‘Bill ain’t a rose; don’t smell him; learn him.’”
Schiller laughed merrily, much to her own sur
prise, and, as the car for which they were waiting
halted just then at the corner, they both got aboard
with that rushing celerity that characterizes the den
izens of a great city.
“Your heart, Schiller, isn’t broken yet,” Mrs.
Howell observed, after they were in their seats. "I
am glad to discover. You have learned the bitter
lesson which Burwood Morris set you with some
degree of philosophy and religion at least. Clearly,
you are far from being annihilated. And do you
know, little girl,” she went on, in a meditative tone,
“that the ability to come back at life after you have
been, metaphorically, knocked down and out, is one
of the fundamental essentials of a grand character?
If you will not surrender, either mentally, morally
or physically; for the battle, whatever it is about,
always involves the whole personality, then the
power to conquer is developed within you. And you
come, after a while, to take your place, rightfully,
as one of the winners in life’s race.”
“I can appreciate the ethics of your philosophy,”
Schiller replied, thoughtfully, "but all the same, my
dear Mrs. Howell, some of the grandest people 1
ever knew were not conquerors, on material lines.”
"Well, perhaps they might have been, “Mrs.
Howell suggested, “if they had applied their spirit
ual ethics to things temporal.”
The car stopped after a time, in obedience to Mrs.
Howell’s ring, and Schiller stepped to the asphalt,
with a feeling of irrepressible girlish gladness.
She was no longer adrift on the Sea of Life; she
held, at least, the white spar of one woman’s true
friendship between her and destruction.
Mrs. Howell’s home was on the opposite side of
the park from the Churchill residence. It was a
modern house, painted gray, with a white-columned
veranda on three sides of it. The lot was divided
by a crescent-shaped lawn, with a tiled walk of
Oriental mosaics circling around it. In the center
of the lawn was a group of tropical shrubs, which
were duplicated here and there about the angles of
the verandas, with artistic effectiveness. A row
of cannas swung their red and golden cups along
the elm-bordered driveway, lending color splashes
of ocher and crimson to the chaste landscape.
The richly carved mahogany door Mrs. Howell
opened with her latch-key, that she slipped from the
pocket of her gray coat; and as they crossed the
threshold and under the lintel stone into the recep
tion hall, carpeted with soft-toned Turkish rugs, she
exclaimed, mischievously:
“Please be good enough to ‘overlook’ all defects,
Schiller, because, don’t you know I haven’t a super
abundance of time to devote to the personal super
vision of my house. Make yourself at home, child,
for you are more than welcome. There is the hat
tree. It is a couple of hours yet,” with a glance at
the heavy bronze clock on the mahogany mantel,
“before supper time, and consequently, Schiller, we
can discuss at leisure some of the situations that I
have discovered by telephone this afternoon for
you.”
“Oh, how good of you!” Schiller returned, as she
sank down in a low, luxurious rocker before the
open grate. “It seems to me so marvelous that
there really are situations in the world which I can
fill. I have tried so often and vainly, to find work,
that even the possibility of a job,” with a little, un
conscious grimace, “seems too good to be true.”
“Don’t get too enthusiastic little girl,” her friend
warned; “I haven’t found anything yet that I am
perfectly satisfied for you to do. But, as you have
not had a business training, I suppose any sort of
office work, which would mean a living, might be
acceptable. Carrol Hall, owner of the cotton mills,
needs a clerk and assistant bookkeeper, his man-
The Golden Age for March 10, 1910.
ager informed me. I gathered from what he said
over the phone that you would have to file the busi
ness letters, so as to get them at a moment’s notice,
and that you would have to help, additionally, in
the mail department. Now, as to the bookkeeping:
You haven't any experience in keeping books, have
you?”
“No,” replied Schiller, truthfully; “but when I was
in college my father had me take a six months’
course in that department.”
“Ah! That sounds hopeful. We will go out to
the mills, Schiller, Monday. You are to stay with
me until you get a position, you know, and we will
see, dear, whether the place will answer your needs
and my ideas or not.”
® * * * * *
“'And the will, therein lieth, which dieth not’.’”
“Do you understand, Von Bulow, that Joseph
Glanvill, chaplain to Charles 11., meant to imply that
the human will does not die in the grave?”
"Excuse me, father, from a discussion of a de
tached metaphysical sentence, which can have little
bearing on the definite chemical combustion of my
after-dinner cigar.”
Father and son were pacing the long, artistically
columned front gallery of the Churchill mansion.
Below glimmered the fairy lights of the park, and
above swung the silver censers of the Palladian
stars.
Their after-dinner cigars made twin blurs of crim
son in the vivid ebony shadows as they turned into
the wing galleries. Through the patches of elec
tric light gray whirls and serpentine wreaths of
gray smoke undulated and wavered in figures, ghost
ly, fantastic.
“You are utterly without imagination, Von Bulow,”
Mr. Churchill complained. “The will therein lieth,
which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of
the will, with its vigor? Man doth not yield himself
to death utterly, save only through the weakness of
his feeble will.”
“Is the quotation entirely out of your system, gov
ernor?” asked Von Bulow, with a slight, quick smile.
“It is.”
“Well, then, pater, finish your cigar.”
Mr. Churchill knocked the gray ash from the long,
black Havana upon the bronze ear of a sinewy
tiger guarding the blue marble steps.
“Does the human will die in the grave, Von Bu
low?”
“I don’t know, governor. I was never, pardon me,
in the grave; and you must excuse me from giving
an exact account of the metaphysical phenomena.
Orthodoxy hopes that it does not die in the grave,
but allow me to remind you that Hope is merely a
mental faculty.”
“According to Joseph Glanvill, Von Bulow, the
human will survives, eh? Is that the case?”
“I don’t care a continental rap, governor, about
the metaphysical phenomena, the physiological
changes, the psychic evolutions, of the grave; but if
I can draw something helpful for life from your
learned quotation, I should feel a glow of scientific
pleasure. Therefore, Man doth not yield himself to
life utterly, save through the weakness of his feeble
will.”
“What do you mean by that, Von Bulow?”
“I can not explain all that I mean, pater; but the
simplest thing that I can draw from what I have
just said is this: Man should not yield himself to
herd-opinions. Russel Sage, for one, determined his
own course of conduct. For instance, he ate two
apples for luncheon. And what is far better, he
stuck to his mental position and formed a Circle of
Two-Apples-for-Luncheon! And, in the present stace
of Zulu prices for food, the wise-hearted may learn
a valuable lesson from Uncle Russel, and join the
Circle of Russel Sage for luncheon, the menu of
which is simplicity itself, namely, two APPLES!”
“Well, I can afford more than two Baldwins,”
laughed Mr. Churchill, “for my luncheon, Von Bu
low.”
“Yes, I dare say. But your menu for luncheon
will never go on record. It is not universally ap
(Continued on Page 14.)
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