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"THE LATH FROM ALABAMA”
‘By Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne, Authors of "Psyche”, "Limit of the Line”, "Mission Girl”, Pte.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHILLER found that her life in the old
red-brick Settlement Home, had some
inspirational elements, which vitalized
it in a noble and far-reaching sense. In
other words, the reflex action of her
work as a teacher in the Night School
proved marvelously helpful to her.
The vivid interest which she found
herself taking in the boys and girls in
Il m» .«
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her classes made it easier for her to ignore the hard
conditions of her own lot. She discovered, in an in
timate way, that many of the things which she had
supposed were the inalienable right of the majority
of human beings had scarcely been heard of in some
of the homes on the Mill Compound.
Her own bitter experiences, after her expulsion
from the little cottage at Hampton Place, had broad
ened her horizon materially, and intensified,. corre
spondingly, her sympathies with the unfortunate.
She was no longer shelved above them in the nar
row calm of a shielded life, but she was one of them,
though better equipped on account of blood, training
and culture.
Schiller tried to interest, in many original ways,
her scholars. They were so tired, they were so dif
ficult to interest at intervals; but she did the divin
est thing possible, both for herself and them, when
she endeavored to see only the better side of her
pupils. For, after all, your own life lowers or lifts
to the level of the discoveries you make in the peo
ple with whom you come in daily contact.
If you shut the eyes of your inner mind resolutely
to their imperfections, striving constantly to climb to
the perfect height of thinking no evil while you give
yourself to them, after awhile this high point of
view will work out for you and them, inestimable
values.
The children in the mills were, principally, from
families who had drifted down from the mountains
and the blue ridges of the State, with the hope of
bettering their financial condition. They had not
had any adequate home training, except in some of
the simplest fundamentals of life. They were, of
course, uneducated, but that they were willing to
study at all, after a day of hard toil in the mills,
showed, at least, a degree of susceptibility to higher
influences which was manifestly encouraging.
One night Schiller took an apple blossom from
the rough coat of a young boy in one of her classes
and proceeded to give the class a happy little im
promptu talk upon the ministry of flowers.
She told them that a smile, a bright word, a cheer
ful point of view, stoutly maintained under hard
conditions, were the flowers of the spiritual king
dom, which anybody, however poor in material re
sources, was privileged to offer to those with whom
they happened to come in contact.
The lesson from the apple blossom finished, Schil
ler mechanically folded her hands in the lap of her
simple white dress and, with her young head, with
its shining coils of hair turned, waited for another
volley of questions from the bright-eyed host before
her; but instead the unexpected happened.
A rich voice, with a merry inflection in it, ex
claimed behind her chair:
“Bravo!”
Schiller turned in sudden shock, to see Carrol Hall
and Miss Lowell standing, in smiling approval, near
her.
“Miss Wilkins,” the young mill owner averred, “I
would like to join your class myself if you will
promise to extemporize as marvelously every even
ing. Miss Lowell and I,” he added, with a radiant
smile, “have been spell-bound listeners for five min
utes.”
“Oh, I am so sorry!” Schiller returned, with a
blush, but with a glance of vivid charm from out
the grey depths of her eyes. “I have, unfortunately,
an unrestrained imagination, which is always plung
ing me into some sort of word-painting. But, Miss
Lowell,” she continued, with a merry intonation in
her voice, “if you will be so good as not to ask for
The doiden Age for April 14, 1916.
my resignation tonight I’ll promise to reform —
cross my hands on my heart, I will —and "keep, here
after, strictly to the letter of the lesson.’’
Miss Lowell’s blue eyes gleamed indulgently.
“I do not object to your methods of teaching very
seriously, Miss Wilkins, and if you can coerce Carrol
Hall into joining your classes, I’ll promise to ab
solve you utterly. Only I reserve the privilege of
instructing you as to what you shall teach him.”
Both young people turned faces of excited inquiry
toward the secretary of the Settlement Home.
“The first book I would recommend,” Miss Lowell
observed, “for the distinguished pupil to study would
be on ‘How to Furnish a Mill Library;’ the second
book would be on equally practical lines, such as
‘How to Equip a Gymnasium for a Settlement
Home.’ ”
Carrol Hall bowed to the stately figure in grey
linen, who had thrown the gauntlet down at his feet
without a moment’s hesitation, but he wondered, all
the same, in hi£ inmost soul, why Miss Lowell had
never thought it worth while to appeal to him be
fore.
“I’ll promise to take the studies,” he answered,
smiling, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, “under
consideration, Miss Lowell, on your compliance with
two conditions.”
“What are they?’’ the secretary queried, eagerly.
“First, that you chaperone two of your teachers
on a ride in my motor car tonight, Miss Wilkins be
ing the guest of honor and your humble servant the
chauffeur.”
“I accept the first condition gladly,” Miss Lowell
replied, “but what about the second? I am too old
and experienced, Mr. Hall, to wish to leap blindly in
the dark, even for the benefit of my much beloved
Settlement Home.”
“Ah, but you will have to trust me, Miss Lowell,”
he said, with the shadow of a thoughtful reserve on
his handsome face, “for I assuredly am not going to
reveal the second condition now.”
The school was dismissed soon afterwards, and
Miss Lowell and Schiller repaired to their rooms to
get ready for the ride, while Carrol Hall was left to
the mercy of Miss Dillard, the kindergarten teacher,
and the dwarfed orange trees of the reception room.
The moonlight was breaking, in silver drifts, on
the grimy pavements in front of the Settlement
Home when the young people and their chaperone
reached the side of the large red motor car.
Carrol Hall helped Miss Lowell and her compan
ion in quietly and then turned to Schiller to assist
her to the front seat, with the rare charm of manner
which distinguishes the man of the world when he
is allowed by the gods, happily, to have his own
way.
‘What about the river, Miss Lowell?” Cano in
quired, as the car swept on through the brightly
illuminated streets, residences, shops and grounds,
passing, in a swift blur, before the eyes of the occu
pants of the luxurious machine.
“All right —the river!” Miss Lowell called. “Sc
that you bring us back, Mr. Hall, at a respectable
hour, to the Settlement Home.”
When they had reached the suburbs on the other
side of the city and were moving at a slower rate
of speed, Schiller turned and asked a question, with
a dreamy intonation, which showed that the myste
rious spell of the springtime night had touched her.
“What made you name your auto, Mr. Hall, the
Coeur de Leon?”
“Because Richard the Lion-hearted,” he answered,
“was one of the heroes of my youth. I didn’t have
many,” he confessed, with a light laugh, “but I did
burn up a good deal of incense at his shrine. I
haven’t tried to incarnate his virtues, more’s the
pity,” he added in a thoughtful tone, “but, instead,
I took the easier way of commemoration —I named
a $14,000 car after this one-time deity of my boy
hood.”
Schiller thought of Mr. Mason’s confidential dis
closures about the young mill owner with a con
scientious thrill.
“But, Mr. Hall, you do not always take the prim-
rose path, do you?” she inquired, in an interested
tone.
“No, not always,” he replied, suppressing a sigh,
“though my friends have kindly given me that sort
of a reputation. But I am capable of better things,
Miss Wilkins —if I had the right sort of inspiration.
I am classed, and I suppose rightly, as a society
idler; but if I could ever want anything bad enough
to be willing to fight it, there would be a different
story to tell.”
“Let us hope,” Schiller returned, in a meditative
tone, “that Fate has something in reserve for you,
out of reach, that will arouse you to strenuous en
deavor to get possession of, or, better yet, that she
will place something forever out of your grasp, so as
to develop the immortal side of your manhood.”
“Suppose,” he said, in a rich, tender voice, “I were
to tell you that the only thing I am conscious of de
siring in the universe just at present is the friend
ship of a young girl I have never seen but twice in
my life; would you believe me?”
“Not easily,” she replied.
"And yet,” he affirmed, as he gave the steering
wheel a steady turn, “you know the girl.”
Schiller drew herself up with a sudden stateliness
as his meaning grew cleai; to her, and then she
laughed the musical laugh of the well-bred girl, who
is too proud to take the incense of a moonlight hour
seriously.
"Mr. Hall,” she said, “I have had some society
training in one of the best social centers of the
South, and, in consequence, I forbid you to waste
the charm of this perfect ride in such crudities.”
Carrol Hall’s fine eyes flashed under his grey
skull-cap.
‘ I dare you to disbelieve me,” he said. “And, be
sides, the word I used was entirely correct —friend-
ship. Listen! If you arouse me, Miss Wilkins, you
might regret it.”
“I might,” Schiller returned, with a slow, rare
smile, “and then again I might not. I recall dis
tinctly that I enjoyed, in the days of a brief social
success accorded me once upon a time, a foeman
worthy of my steel.”
And it came to pass that spring was enthroned
among the lawns, the fields and the foothills of “Sol
itude.” Rose Churchill had never seen the old ante
bellum estate more lovely.
The red oaks waved their deep green banners in
the soft April air, while the white oaks answered
the gentle challenge, like a wave-offering to Pan,
with silver, gossamer gonfalons outflung in a blur
of opal leaves. The high evergreen pines, like alert
advance scouts, kept sharp watch over the scene.
And the Shepherd of Solitude was content: for God
had kept His covenant with man once more, though
man, in the aggregate, had broken most of his vows
to his long-suffering Creator, who had little scientific
grounds to recall even that the two-footed, law-break
ing son of Adam still breathed.
Rose noted, as she sat by the window of her up
stairs studio, that, in the broad, sunny apple or
chards the snow-white blooms were falling in grey
silver showers, covering the fallow land and soften
ing the grim, upright, blackish materialism of the
weeds in the fence corners, “the unloved flower that
must be trained to learn its high estate.” And, as
her lips murmured the lines, she thought of the
man’s face in her conception of “Tbe Pit and the
Pendulum” and of Aunt Fan's surmise that it was
her father’s grocery man, “Marse Burwood Morris.”
“A weed is but an unloved flower.
Go, dig and prune and guide
Until it learns its high estate
And glorifies some bower.
A weed is but an unloved flower!
“All sin is virtue unevolved.
Release the angel from the clod;
Go, love thy brother up to God.
Behold each problem solved:
All sin is virtue unevolved.”
(Continued on Page 6.)
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