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• With a Whisper and a Kiss
April came, then May,
And after these came June,
With a morning crimson clouded
And a golden afternoon;
And she called the waiting lilies
Into being, into bliss,
And woke the sleeping roses
With a whisper and a kiss.
Oh! the green was on the leaf
And the leaf was on the bough,
And the purple vapors hung
Round the mountain’s granite brow,
And the robin’s swelling music
Told the w’orld his boundless bliss,
When June awoke the roses
With a whisper and a kiss.
Fair April came, then May,
And joyous June came next,
With a smile upon her features
And a warm and glowing breast,
CHAT.
I WONDER if there are not some of
my Household family who have not
had time or opportunity to read
about what was said and discussed by
the delegates from the great army of
Federated Women’s Clubs, when they
met recently at Cincinnati. A num
ber of knotty problems and important
questions figured in the discussions,
which were entered into by men as
well as women, in some instances,
notably concerning universal peace.
Os course, equal suffrage came up,
and both sides were cleverly talked
over. I think the simplest and most
comprehensive view was that ex
pressed by a Southern woman, Miss
Elizabeth Gordon, of New Orleans.
She said it seemed strange that such
a to-do was being made about wo
men’s casting a vote on State ques
tions. The vote is nothing more than
the registry of an opinion. No one
questions the right of women to have
an opinion, when their possessions are
taxed and their family interests are
involved. The country does not want
a world made up of the opinions of
men alone, but of men and women to
gether.
Mrs. Rudolph Blankenburg, of Phil
adelphia, believed there should be re
strictions to the voting privilege with
both men and women. The ignorant
voter should be disfranchised.
I was more interested in what was
said concerning the disarmament of
nations with a view to the extinction
of war. Mrs. Lucia Mead, of Boston,
who is the director of the American
Peace Society, spoke in reply to
Lieutenant Mayer, of the United
States army, who had spoken in favor
of keeping up a large army and naval
equipment. She deplored the useless
expense tax-burdened nation of
keeping up a costly navy. She said: “We
have no large merchant marine like
Great Britain, that requires the pro
tection of battleships.” She pointed
to the Hague pact, by which each na
tion bound itself not to attack an un
fortified point. She said: “The peace
party has been looked upon as vision
ary; on the contrary, it is based on
precedent and logic, and deals only
with reasoning probabilities. The big
navy party, ignoring the psychology
of internationalism, deals in visionary
fashion with hypothetical dangers.
We let our natural resources go to
waste; we neglect our internal inter-
THE HOUSEHOLD
A Department of Expression For Those Who Feel and Think.
Arthur Goodenough.
And she brings a borrowed brightness
From another world to this,
And she woke the blushing roses
With a whisper and a kiss.
The bluebirds were her heralds,
They sang her happy name,
And though we d.d not see her,
We blest her when she came.
We did not note her coming,
We did not see her pass,
But we saw her magic mantle
Lying green against the grass.
Oh, the heart of Nature trembled
With a thrill divinely sweet,
At the rapture of her presence,
At the echoes of her feet;
And the face of Fate seemed softened
And the Future’s black abyss,
When June awoke the roses
With a whisper and a kiss.
ests; we house our laboring class in
unwholesome tenements; w T e under
pay our school teachers and kill hun
dreds of miners and other workers
through lack of proper protection
from danger, while we bu.ld costly
ships of war, keep up expensive naval
yards and academies and pay salaries
to a large idle force, with the idea of
keeping off the attacks of hypothetical
enemies. With illiteracy, reckless
waste and preventable disease, acci
dent and crime in our midst calling
for national remedy, we are spending
our chief thought on possible enemies
and expending more than two-thirds
of our government revenue on past
wars and preparation for future con
flicts. Thus we have only thirty-two
cents on every dollar left to spend
on all national necessities and con
structive work.”
It is undoubtedly true that our pres
ent system of commercialism is a bet
ter and more efficient safeguard
against war than any number of bat
tleships. All that is necessary, should
a foreign country threaten us, is to
forbid our food products being ex
ported to that country. Lieutenant
Mayes put much emphasis on the
declaration that it would be necessary
that all nations should disarm at
once; but why should not our own
country become the leader in this
great movement, surely the greatest
that can be made, being a movement
which would advance Christianity,
promote brotherly love, lessen taxes
and give us means to carry forward
many noble and useful enterprises?
We have some interesting letters to
day. Magnolia responds to my re
quest with some good stories of the
stay-at-homes in the civil war time.
Muda Hetmur talks interestingly
about her garden and her flowers.
Margaret Vincent tells how she man
aged to cheat time and get a day of
rest. Mizpah asks if we believe in
astrology. I don’t think I have any
faith in the influence of the stars on
our destiny, though it really seems
that the moon —that dead fragment of
a world —does have an effect upon the
earth, the weather, the ocean and the
human mind and body. I have made
insanity a study, and have noted,
month after month, how the changes
of the moon, particularly the full
moon change, affects the mental con
dition of the deranged. I think the
old Scripture belief concerning the in-
The Golden Age for June 16, 1910.
sane —that they are possessed by evil
or malicious spirits—is surely true.
Generally, those evil spirits are
wholly unlike their victims in charac
ter, and the observer notes with awe
and infinite sadness how a sweet,
pure, gentle nature becomes coarse,
cruel and brutal in the twinkling of
an eye. Expression, voice, manner,
all change. The poor victim to ob
session leads more completely a
double life than the Dr. Hyde and Mr.
Jekyl of Stevenson’s story.
Here is a great field for scientific
research. There has never been any
national or scientific treatment of the
insane—never any intelligent under
standing of what insanity is. It has
always been the greatest, saddest
mystery of humanity. Now the atten
tion of scientists and thinkers is being
earnestly directed to it, and there is
an effort being made to find an anti
toxin that may build up the broken
wall in the brain at which the evil
spirits enter.
It seems incongruous to talk or
think about evil spirits this lovely
weather —these soft, showery, balmy
days. Arthur Goodenough, our gifted
poet, s'ngs today in praise of this
loveliest of the months, June, the
ripe beauty, the elder sister of the
three spring months.
With ©nr Correspondents
DO THE PLANETS INFLUENCE
OUR DESTINY?
Dear Household Friends: Have any
of you studied astrology, the science
that treats of the influence which
stars and planets have upon human
beings? The wise men of Greece,
Egypt and Palestine believed in plan
etary influences, and in the position
that certain planets determine the
fate of mortals on this globe. Astrol
ogy was the astronomy of the an
cients. When one was born under a
certain planet, it was believed that
the supposed character of the planet
determined the temperament and
character that made destiny for him.
All nations fear the unknown and
mysterious. The advent of Hal
ley’s comet produced great suspense
and apprehension, and yet persons
who believed in the baleful influence
of the comet, or in its character as an
omen foreshadowing dread events will
smile in contempt at the idea that
the planets influence our destiny, or,
by their position in regard to each
other, warn us of evil to come.
The little planet Neptune, which
the comet passed around in its rapid
flight, was believed by some to have
caused the disaster on the water,
Neptune, the planet’s namesake, being
the god of the ocean.
The comet did not monkey with the
war-1 ke planet Mars, consequently
we will have no big fighting at home
or with foreign nations. But, as it
flirted considerably with the sun and
little Neptune, it is supposed that we
shall have excessive heat and many
disasters on the water and accidents
to those whose date of birth is coin
cident with the ascendancy of Nep
tune.
Os course, it is inexplainable, this
relation of human destiny to the
stars, but how many other things are
there that can not be explained?
Mystery surrounds us on evu’y hand.
But if astrology is not true, then
there are certainly some remarkable
coincidences. Note the date of some
of the great battles, and the date of
the birth of the generals in command,
then note how the sun and the plan
ets stood on those dates in relation to
the earth, and what were their posi
tions at the time of the battle, and
you will see that the stars foretold a
bloody event and predicted failure to
the leader who lost the day.
It was said that Napoleon’s star of
destiny was the great planet Jupiter,
and that its position relative to him
on the eve of disastrous Waterloo
filled him with such apprehension
that he wished to wait. Had he
waited, the fate of nations might have
been affected, the map of the world
might have needed to be altered. At
Gettysburg Mars, that had favored the
Confederates, was not in the ascen
dancy. Had the battle occurred a few
days later, the result might have been
widely different. Yet, strange and un
accountable as it seems, the planets
and the moon seem to exert an • in
fluence on the affairs of the earth.
The moon has a well recognized ef
fect on the mind and on vegetation
which can not be accounted for. No
one has been able to tell why the
ocean tides are the slaves of the
moon. People who are deranged are
very sensitive to the different phases
of the moon. This was noted in early
ages, hence the term lunacy and luna
tic, luna being the latin name for the
moon. MIZPAH.
Nashville, Tenn.
DICKISON AND HIS MEN.
Dear Household Friends: Mrs. Bry
an has asked concerning the flag
which Mrs. J. J. Dickison contributed
to Captain Martin’s company at Ocaia
in the early sixties.
Yes, it is as Mrs. Bryan said. The
beautiful shawl, one of the beautiful
pieces of Mrs. Dickison’s trousseau;
also the superb silver comb worn by
her on her wedding night, were given
by that noble woman for the cause that
has now become the Lost Cause to so
many noble hearts. The book, filled
with memories of those hard-fought
days, “Dickison and His Men,” is well
worth reading, and I think, in this
day, when we hear the cry from many
that we should forget that time and
not let our children’s minds dwell on
those times through our stories of
those days and struggles, that we who
are of the South should remain true to
the South and all its heroes and tradi
tions. In the book as written by Mrs.
Dickison she tells us how the noble
women at Orange Springs, Fla., the
encampment for women during the
war, gave at the close of the war, all
trinkets of silver? spoons and treas
ured heirlooms, ail of solid silver, to
be made into a beautiful pair of silver
spurs.
One dear old man, too old to take
his stand in the front of battle, used
his time and talent in making those
spurs, and when General Dickison ‘re
ceived them, how his heart was filled
with tenderness! And, in a gallant,
touching letter, he poured out his
thanks, saying that never in the olden
times had a knight worn spurs pre
sented by truer hearts, and he hoped,
as “Knight of the Silver Spurs,” he
would always be able to keep the re
spect and love he had won from these
sacrificing friends.
I think that we who know good,
true stories of any of our dear sol
diers in gray should tell them, keep
them fresh and green, so that the ris
ing generations of the South will not
forget, but remain true to the heroes
of the sixties. MAGNOLIA.
