The Forerunner Part 51

"Yes," said she, "Go on," and he went on, 'Ill.u.s.trated by A. N. Other.'"

"It's a splendid novel," she said seriously. "Real work--great work. I always knew you'd do it, Allen. I'm so proud of you!" And she held out her hand in the sincere intelligent appreciation of a fellow craftsman.

He took it, still bewildered.

"Thank you," he said. "I value your opinion--honestly I do! And--with a sudden sweep of recognition. "And yours is great work! Superb! Why you've put more into that story than I knew was there! You make the thing live and breathe! You've put a shadow of remorse in that lonely ruffian there that I was too proud to admit! And you've shown the--unconvincingness of that Other Girl; marvellously. But see here--no more fooling!"

He took her face between his hands, hands that quivered strongly, and forced her to look at him. "Tell me about that last picture! Is it--true?"

Her eyes met his, with the look he longed for. "It is true," she said.

After some time, really it was a long time, but they had not noticed it, he suddenly burst forth. "But how did you _know_?"

She lifted a flushed and smiling face: and pointed to the t.i.tle page again.

"'A. Gage.'--You threw it down."

"And you--" He threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "You threw down A-N-Other! O you witch! You immeasurably clever darling! How well our work fits. By Jove! What good times we'll have!"

And they did.

THE MINOR BIRDS

Shall no bird sing except the nightingale?

Must all the lesser voices cease?

Lark, thrush and blackbird hold their peace?

The woods wait dumb Until he come?

Must we forego the voices of the field?

The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing, All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing, Where each reveals What joy he feels?

Should we know how to praise the nightingale, Master of music, ecstacy and pain, If he alone sang in the springtime rain?

If no one heard A minor bird?

PARLOR-MINDEDNESS

"Won't you step in?"

You step in.

"She will be down in a moment. Won't you sit down?"

You sit down. You wait. You are in the parlor.

What is this room? What is it for?

It is not to sleep in, the first need of the home. Not to eat in, the second. Not to shelter young in, the third. Not to cook and wash in, to sew and mend in, to nurse and tend in; not for any of the trades which we still practice in the home.

It is a place for social intercourse. If the family is sufficiently intelligent they use it for this purpose, gathering there in peace and decorum, for rest and pleasure. Whether the family is of that order or not, they use the parlor, if they have one, for the entertainment of visitors. Our ancient Webster gives first: "The apartment in monastery or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with each other, or with visitors and friends from without," and second, "A room in a house which the family usually occupy for society and conversation; the reception room for visitors." It is, as the derivation declares, "a talking room."

While you wait in the parlor you study it.

It is the best room. It has the best carpet, the best furniture, the pictures and decorations considered most worthy. It is adorned as a shrine for the service of what we feel rather than think to be a n.o.ble purpose--to promote social intercourse.

In the interchange of thought and feeling that form so large and essential a part of human life, these parlors are the vehicles provided.

Are they all the vehicles provided? Is it in parlors that the sea of human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new lights in science? the moving thoughts of the world?

If you could hide in a thousand parlors and listen to the talk therein what would you hear? When "she" has come down, greeted her friend with effusion or her caller with ample cordiality, and the talk begins, the interchange of thought, what does the parlor bring forth?

Alas and alas! It brings forth the kitchen, the nursery, and the dressmaker's shop. It furnishes shop-talk mostly, gossip of the daily concerns of the speakers.

Are there no men then in the parlors? Yes, frequently. The man of the house is there with his family in the evening; other men call with their wives; young men call on young women to court them; but in all these cases the men, talking to the women, must needs confine the conversation to their lines of work and thought. When men talk with men it is not in parlors. The women may be ignorant, knowing only household affairs; or they may be "cultivated," more highly educated than the men, talking glibly of books they have read, lectures they have heard, plays they have seen; while the men can talk well only of the work they have done.

When men wish to talk with men of world-business of any sort, they do not seek the parlor. The street, the barroom, the postoffice, some public place they want where they may meet freely on broader ground.

For the parlor is the women's meeting ground--has been for long their only meeting ground except the church steps.

Its limits are sharp and clear. Only suitable persons may enter the parlor; only one's acquaintances and friends. Thus the social intercourse of women, for long years has been rigidly confined to parlor limits; they have conversed only with their own cla.s.s and kind, forever rediscussing the same topics, the threadbare theme of their common trade; and the men who come to their parlor, talk politely to them there within prescribed lines.

It is interesting and pathetic to see the woman, when means allow, enlarge the size of her parlor, the number of her guests, seeking continually for that social intercourse for which the soul hungers, and which the parlor so meagerly provides. As we see the fakir;

"Eating with famished patience grain by grain, A thousand grains of millet-seed a day,"--

So the woman talks incessantly with as many as she can--neither giving nor getting what is needed.

When we find an inst.i.tution so common as the parlor, exerting a constant influence upon us from childhood up, carrying with it a code of manners, a system of conduct, a scheme of decoration, a steady prohibitive pressure upon progressive thought, we shall be wise to study that inst.i.tution and in especial its effect upon the mind.

First, we may observe as in the kitchen the dominant note of personality.

In the parlor more than elsewhere are to be found the "traces of a woman's hand." It is her room, the Lady of the House and other Ladies of other Houses, having each their own to exhibit, all politely praise one another's display.

When a knowledge of art, a sense of beauty, grows in the world, and slowly affects the decorators and furnishers, then does it through the blandishments of the merchants filter slowly into a thousand parlors.

But as easily when there is neither art nor beauty in such furnis.h.i.+ngs, are they foisted upon the purchasing housewife. Such as it is, provided through the limitations of the housewife's mind and the husband's purse, this "best room" becomes a canon of taste to the growing child.

"The parlor set" he must needs see held up as beautiful; the "reception chairs," the carefully shadowed carpet,--these and the "best dress" to go with them and the "company manners" added, are unescapable aesthetic influences.

Few children like the parlor, few children are wanted or allowed in the parlor, yet it has a steady influence as a sort of social shrine.

Most rigidly it teaches the child exclusiveness, the narrow limits of one's "social acquaintances." As rigidly and most evilly it teaches him falsehood. Scarcely a child but hears the mother's fretful protest against the visitor, followed by the lightning change to cordial greeting. The white lie, the smiling fib, the steady concealment of the undesirable topic, the mutual steering off from all but a set allowance of themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable repet.i.tion--all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed to stay if quiet, hears and remembers. See the little girl's "playing house." See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and servants,--these they have well learned are proper subjects for parlor talk.

The foolish and false ideas of beauty held up to them as "best," they seek to perpetuate. The arbitrary "best dress" system, develops into a vast convention, a wearing of apparel not for beauty, and not for use, not for warmth, protection nor modesty (often quite the opposite of all these), but as a conventional symbol of respectability.