644

The Ineffable Compliment.

delicate-natured woman would ever let any man living know she had a gentle thought of him until he gave the sign. And I had said in my inmost spirit, not in so many words, but by just such a vow, "You heartless old tyrant of custom, since you have dared thus basely to decree, hazarding the holiest interests of two lives on the perceptions of the one less finely organized, you shall have full measure of obedience," and no actor, no detective, no alias ever schooled himself more sedulously to carry out his part, than I did to be utterly impassive, to treat all men alike, with universal calm, with casual good-will, and that alone.

And have men dared, when all these stern defenses were set in array, to speak their potent word to one like me? Yes, but under such conditions it "stands to reason" that most of the messages received must have been perfunctory, the queries coming by letter and being answered by my secretaries with the official statement that I had no time for other than business correspondence. But so high has always been my admiration and respect for any good and true man that never, when I could avoid it, did I permit one of them to pay me the ineffable compliment of an expressed personal preference, unless my heart felt the potentiality, at least, of a response. My mother strictly taught her daughters to do by other women's brothers as they would have them do by theirs, i. e., never through look or word to lead any young man to an avowal of regard that was not mutual. The ingenuities by which our handsome Mary "moved the previous question," that the impending one might be avoided, were far beyond what her plainer sister ever needed to employ, and proved the generosity of Mary's heart-for what tribute to a woman's charms and goodness equals that of the true man who says to. her, "It would be the highest happiness this world could yield if I might spend my life with you"? Only the noblest, best instructed natures among women are willing to forego the music of such words.

Per contra, the man who permits himself even the most delicate approach in deeds unaccompanied by the honest, self-committing words that honest women always expect to hear in such connection, is not the soul of honor, and his familiarity, however small, should be resented on the instant. "Hands off" is the golden maxim for every genuine girl and for each true gentleman.

Life's Most Intricate Equation.

645

All this I say out of a heart that suffered once and to help those as yet untried.

A gifted man (who has made two women happy since) once wrote me on this wise: "Dear friend, methinks your heart deceives you, for when we meet, though you speak kindly, you hardly look at me, and I take this as a token." I replied: "Dear Brother: This is the explanation. I had a clear and direct gaze until much study weakened my eyes, and I protect them now by studying the carpet."

Another, true and loyal, had heard through a near friend of mine that I was supposed to have a special admiration for him, whereupon he wrote a frank letter implying the truth of that hypothesis. My answer was, "Dear Friend: You have had the misfortune to begin at the wrong end of life's most intricate equation; you have assumed the value of the unknown quantity-a sin that hath not forgiveness in this life; no, nor in that which is to come." He sent me back a royal letter, saying he "would never have dared write what he did, but for the encouragement of my friend's words, and he would like to know why I of all women might not help a man out of such a fearful quandary;" indeed, he went farther, and declared that there was no reason in nature, grace or anything but sin, why a woman must stifle her heart, and a man wear his upon his sleeve." But the sphinx that I have always been had spoken once, and there the drama ended and the curtain fell.

In 1861-62, for three-quarters of a year I wore a ring and acknowledged an allegiance based on the supposition that an intellectual comradeship was sure to deepen into unity of heart. How grieved I was over the discovery of my mistake the journals of that epoch could reveal. Of the real romance of my life, unguessed save by a trio of close friends, these pages may not tell. When I have passed from sight I would be glad to have it known, for I believe it might contribute to a better understanding between good men and women. For the rest, I have been blessed with friendships rich, rare, and varied, all lying within the temperate zone of a great heart's geography, which has been called "cold" simply because no Stanley had explored its tropic climate, and set down as "wholly inland" because no adventurous Balboa had viewed its wide Pacific Sea.

I wonder if we really know ourselves in respect of discount as well as we do in respect of advantage? It seems equally important that we should, else our undertakings will be out of all proportion to our powers, and failure a foregone conclusion. I have always believed that in a nobler state of society we should help each other by frank and kindly criticism, coupled with equally frank praise, and have held, in the face of steady contradiction from my friends, that Christian people ought thus to help each other here and now.

Probably the most haunting disability of my youth was a hot temper. If, as a child, I stubbed my toe, it was instinctive with me to turn back and administer a vigorous stroke to the object, animate or inanimate, that had caused the accident. A blow for a blow was my invariable rule, but my temper was a swift electric flash, not the slow burning anthracite of sullenness. Indeed, the sulks and blues are both foreign to my natural habitudes. My sister, though vastly more amiable than her older brother and sister, was somewhat inclined to brood, or "mump," as we graceless young ones called it.

I well remember the last time that I ever "struck out," and am ashamed to say it occurred in the first years of my student life at Evanston. My father had a queer way of buying the dresses, bonnets, indeed, almost the entire outfit of his daughters, and continued it until we were well nigh grown up. One winter he brought me home a red worsted hood that I declared I hated with "a hatred and a half," but all the same I had to wear it. We two sisters were wont to dress alike, and while the bright color set off Mary's dark blue eyes and ruddy cheeks, it simply extinguished what little "looks" I had, and some of my school-mates made fun of my appearance. One, in particular, a handsome girl belonging to a family that was well at the front socially, hectored me unmercifully. I gave her fair warning that "if she did not stop she would be sorry," but this only added zest to her attack. We were all at the entrance to the chapel, school was out, and no teacher left in sight. I began putting on the hated hood and the "hectoring" also began. My anger burned so fiercely against my handsome tormentor that, though she was much taller than I, the

vigor of my attack was such that she was flung in a crumpled heap between the benches, face foremost on the floor. Nobody spoke the deed was so sudden that it took their breath away; I finished tying on that red hood and walked home. The handsome girl never retaliated, never referred to the subject again, and we have been the best of friends from that day to this.

Dear mother says she does not know when in well-nigh thirty years she has seen me angry, and beyond a momentary flash that I am glad to see and say grows more infrequent every year, that inborn energy is slain. I have only written of it here because I want the picture truthful, and hope my failings may help others, handicapped as I have been, to "rise on the stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things."

A tendency to exaggeration is the next enemy that I have tried to fight. When traveling in Europe, my friend, Kate Jackson, would see the same landscape or city, picture or celebrity, and in the midst of my enthusiastic efforts to describe them she would often interrupt with the words, "Why, Frank, you don't mean to say that we saw all that?" While I would break in on her efforts at description, with the words, "You didn't half tell it." Neither had meant to give a wrong impression, but the personal equation needed in both cases to be taken into the account. "You see double, has been said of me when I had delineated a friend whom I admired, but if so it was with one real and one idealizing eye. It comforts me to know that in the habit of accurate recital I have gained greatly with the years, and to know also that I have n't a near friend who does not deem me fairly accurate and scrupulously truthful so far as my intention goes.

As to money, a five-cent silver coin sewed into each tiny toe of a pair of stockings knit by the tireless hands of my father's mother and sent to the far West when I was about ten years old, was the first (except my "butter pennies") of my financial possessions. Money was something far off, unnecessary, except for the convenience of those who dwelt in cities. On the farm, having formed an alliance with generous old Dame Nature, we were abundantly able to take care of ourselves without it. This was about the view I held in childhood.

When in Milwaukee, at seventeen, attending school, good

Irish Mike, one of our farm hands, sent fifty cents apiece to Mary and to me, all the spending money we had for three whole months. After a careful consultation with my wise aunt Sarah, I invested mine in a ticket to the menagerie (not the present circus, by a long moral distance), a blank book for my historical and other charts, and five cents' worth of peppermint candy. When away at school in Evanston, we had no spending money either; it was never named or thought of as necessary. My father furnished us with all needful stationery and postage, and paid all bills. "What would you more?" he used to ask. But I wrote an article for the Prairie Farmer, and received two dollars for it at two different times; whereupon I invited my friends to a feast, also treated my favorite Maggie to a buggy ride, and for the first time looked upon myself as a moneyed proprietor. From that day to this I have been, by pen and voice, an earner of money. My first solid possession was a little gold stud for my sister and myself, then a pair of sleeve buttons, then an engraving of Longfellow's "Evangeline," then a handsome gilt-edged book for my sister's journal and a photograph album for each of us, then the photographs of mother, Mary and myself, but for which we should have had no picture of the dearest girl that ever died. In all those earlier years I kept accounts, but was careless about adding them up; and as for a "balance sheet," I have never even seen an object so distasteful. When tottering out uncertainly into the world of bread-winners (for while I lived near home my father generally clothed me, and my own small earnings went for "extras"), I was, for a brief period, somewhat given to borrowing in a small way; but the concurrent testimony of all who know me best is that the money has been scrupulously returned. am one who, while she never lays up money, keeps the finances in a snug, thrifty way, and is careful to meet all obligations of a financial sort.

For this good reputation the chief credit should be given to those good women who, ever since the unspeakable loneliness of my sister's going from me, have been what she was to me, "guide, philosopher and friend." A thousand times they hear my "don't forget," whether it is to pay the insurance or to return a borrowed slate pencil, and with punctilious care they see it done. This