Pittston Gazette

              r tablWhed 1880.) TOL. L No. 19 f Oldest Newspaper In the Wvomine Vallev PITTSTON, LUZERNE COUNTY, PA., FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1899. A Weekly Local and Family Journal. J SI.00 a Y«ar ; In AdTioM. *v •*, "pE 'STORY a „ § m am ()} oijvb i A SCKEETNT3B- *£ HDU1FARM | a *.* A TALE OF LIFE IN THE 3 ★ BOER REPUBLIC |j We yearn for a token from the inex orably silent One. If ever In our tearful. Joyful ecstasy the poor sleepy, half dead devil should raise his head, we laugh at him. It is not his hour now. ways iriumpn over reaiuy, me uesire Dver truth. We must have been awakened. If it was done a little sharply, what matter? It was done thoroughly, and it had to be done. es of rainbow tinted crystals nan fused together, there bands of smooth gray ana red methodically overlying each other. This rock here Is covered with a delicate silver tracery, In some mineral resembling leaves and branches. There on the flat stone, on which we so often have sat to weep and pray, we look down and see It covered with the fossil footprints of great birds and the beautiful Bkeleton of a fish. We have often tried to picture In our mind what the fosslled remains of creatures must be like, and all the while we sat on them. We have been 60 blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the world. such dark blue eyes. And, Waldo, I was so ashamed! I was Just looking back to see, you know, and he happened Just to be looking back, too, and we looked right Into each other's face, and he got red, and I got so red. I believe he Is the new man." uncles with their wives walk about here In the red sand with the very fleshly legs with which they went to sleep? Then why say, 'He sleeps forever?" You believe he will stand up again?" of Lies—lovely and beautiful, but still lies. Truth knows them not.' "And the hunter cried out In bitterness:We turn the book, put our finger down on a page and bend to read by the moonlight. It is God's answer. We tremble: "If there should be & hell, after all!" he mutters. "If your God should be cruel! If there should be no God! If you should find out It Is all imagination! If"— " 'And mnst I, then, sit still, to bb devoured of this great burning?" "Then 14 years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus with me also." Tir. "Do you?" asked the boy, lifting for an instant his heavy eyes to the stranger's face. "And the old man said: " 'Listen, and in that you have suffered much and wept much I will tell you what 1 know. Qe who sets out Cb search for Truth must leave thes« valleys of superstition forever, taking with him not one shred that has belonged to them. Alone he must wander down Into the Land of Absolute Negation and Denial. He must abide there. He must resist temptation When the light breaks, he must arisb and follow it into the country of dry sunshine. The mountains of stecn reality will rise before him. He must climb them. Beyond them lies Truth * " 'And he will hold her fast! He will bold her in his hands!' the hunter cried. "Wisdom shook his head. And a new life begins for us, a new time, a life as cold as that of a man who sits on the pinnacle of an iceberg imd sees the glittering crystals all about him. The old looks indeed like 1 long, hot delirium, peopled with |Dhantasies. The new Is colli enough. Now we have no Gad. \ve have had two—the old God that our fathers handed down to us, that we hated and never liked; the new One that we made for ourselves, that we loved. But now he has fiJtted away from us, and we see what he was made of—the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and throned. Now we have no God. "Yes," said Waldo. For an instant our Imagination seizes It. We are twisting, twirling, trying to make an allegory. The 14 years are 14 months; we are Paul, and the devil is Barnabas; Titus Is— Then a sudden loathing comes to us. We are liars and hypocrites. We are trying to deceive -ourselves. What is Paul to us— and Jerusalem? Who are Barnabas and Titus? We know not the men. Before we know we seize the book, swing it round our bead and fling it with all our might to the farther end of the room. We put down our head again and weep. Youth and ignorance —is there anything else that can weep so? It Is as though the tears were drops of blood congealed beneath the eyelids. Nothing else is like those tears. After a long time we are weak with crytng and lie silent, and by Chance we knock against the wood that stops the broken pane. It falls. Upon our hot, stiff face a sweet breath of wind blows. We raise our head and with our swollen eyes look out at the beautiful still world, and the sweet night wind blows in upon us, holy and gentle, like a loving breath from the lips of God. Over us a deep peace comes, a calm, still joy. The tears now flow readily and softly. Oh, the unutterable gladness! At last, at last, we have found It! "The peace with God," "The sense of sins forgiven." All doubt vanished, God's voice in the soul, the Holy Spirit filling us! We feel him, we feel him! O Jesus Christ, through you. through you, this Joy! We press our hands upon our breast and look upward with adoring gladness. Soft waves of bliss break through us. "The peace with God," "The sense of sins forgiven." Methodists and revivalists say the words, and the mocking world shoots out its lip and walks by smiling—"Hypocrite!" We laugh at him. When a man sits in the warm sunshine, do you nsk him for proof of It? He feels; that Is all. And we feel; that Is all. We want no proof of our God. We feel, we feel! "I must go now. Perhaps he has brought us letters from the post from Lyndall. You know, she can't stay at school much longer. She must come back soon. And the new man will have to stay with us till his house Is built I must get his room ready. Goodby!" Half taken aback, the stranger laughed. It was as though a curious little tadpole which he held under his glass should suddenly lift its tall and begin to question him. We do not believe In our God because the Bible tells us of him. We believe in the Bible because he tells us of It. We feel him, we feel him, we feel; that Is all. And the poor half swamped devil mutters: "I? No." He laughed his short, thick laugh. "I am a man who believes nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing. I am beyond the pale of humanity, no criterion of what you should be who live here among your ostriches and bushes." She tripped off again, and Waldo carved on at his post. Doss lay with his nose close to the covered saucer and smelled that some one had made nice little fat cakes that afternoon. Both were so Intent on their occupation that not till a horse's hoofs beat beside them In the sand did they look up to see a rider drawing In his steed. case, we save our money ana ouy threepence of tobacco for the Hottentot maid who calls us names. We are exotlcally virtuous. At night we are profoundly religious. Even the ticking watch says, "Eternity, eternity, hell, hell hell!" and the silence talks of God and the things that ahall be. The flat plain has been to us a reach of monotonous red. We look at It, and every handful of sand starts Into life. That wonderful people, the ants, we learn to know; see them make war and peace, play and work, and build their huge palaces. And that smaller people we make acquaintance with who live In the flowers. The bitto flower has been for us a mere blur of yellow. We find Its heart composed of a hundred perfect flowers, the homes of the tiny black people with red stripes, who move in and out in that little yellow city. Every bluebell has its inhabitant. Every day -the "karroo" shows us a new wonder sleeping in Its teeming bosom. On our way to work we pause and stand to see the ground spider make its trap, bury Itself In the sand and then wait for the falling In of its enemy. Farther on walks a horned beetle, and near him starts open the door of a spider, who peeps out carefully and quickly pulls It down again. On a "karroo" bush a green fly is laying her silver eggs. We carry them bome and see the shells pierced, the spotted grub come out, turn to a green fly and flit away. CHAPTER XIV. TlXn AND SEASONS. Waldo lay on his stomach on the sand. Since he prayed and howled to hia God In the fuel house three years had passed. "But If the day should come when you do not feel?" And we laugh and cry him down. The next moment the stranger was surprised by a sudden movement on the part of the fellow, which brought him close to the stranger's feet. Soon after he raised his carving and laid it across the man's knee. "It will never come—never!" And the poor devil slinks to sleep again with his tall between his legs. Fierce assertion many times repeated is hard to stand iigalnst. Only time separates the truth from the lie. So we dream on. "The fool hath said In hli heart. There Is no God." It may be so. Most things said or written have been the work of fools. They aay that in the world to come time is not measured out by months and years. Neither is it here. The sonl's life has seasons of its own, periods not found In any calendar, times that years and months will not scan, but which are as deftly and sharply cot off from one another as the smoothly arranged years which the earth's motion yields us. Occasionally also unpleasantly shrewd questions begin to be asked by Bome one, we know not whom, who sits somewhere behind our shoulder. We get to know him better afterward Now we carry the questions to the grown up people, and they give us answers. We are more or less satisfied for the time. The grown up people are very wise, and they say it was kind of God to make hell and very loving of him to send men there, and, besides, he couldn't help himself, and they are very wise, we think, so we believe them, more or less. He was certainly not the stranger whom Em had described, a dark, somewhat French looking little man of eight and twenty, rather stout, with heavy, cloudy eyes and pointed mustaches. His horse was a fiery creature, well caparisoned. A highly finished saddlebag hung from the saddle. The man's bands were gloved, and he presented the appearance—an appearance rare on that farm—of a well dressed gentleman. " 'He will never see her, never hotd her. The time Is not yet.' This thing is certain—he Is a fool who says, "No man hath said In his heart. There is no God." "Yes, I will tell you," he muttered; "I will tell you all about It" " Then there is no hope?' cried the One dar we go with our father to town, to church. The townspeople rustle in their Bilks and the men In their sleek cloth and settle themselves In their pews, and the light shines In through the windows on the artificial flowers in the women's bonnets. We have the same miserable feeling that we have in a shop where all the clerks are very smart. We wish our father hadn't brought us to town and we were out on the "karroo." Then the man in the pulpit begins to preach. His text is, "He that belleveth not shall be damned." He put his finger on the grotesque little manikin at the bottom (ah, that man who believed nothing, hoped nothing, felt nothing—how he loved him!), and with eager finger the fellow moved upward, explaining over fantastic figures and mountains, to the crowning bird from whose wing dropped a feather. At the end he spoke with broken breath—short words, like one who utters things of mighty import " 'There Is this,' said Wisdom. 'Some men have climbed on those mountains —circle above circle of bare rock they have scaled—and, wandering there fja those high regions, some have chanced to pick up on the ground one white, sliver feather dropped from the wing of Truth. And It shall come to pass,' said the old man, raising himself prophetically and pointing with his flager to the sky—'It shall come to pass, when enough of those silver feather* shall have been gathered by the hands of men and shall have been woven late a cord, and the cord Into a net that in that net Truth may be captured. Nothing but Truth can hold Truth.' hunter. It has been said many thousand times in hearts with profound bitterness of earnest faith. We do not cry and weep. We sit down with cold eyes and look at the world. We are not miserable. Why should we be? We eat and drink and sleep all night, but the dead are not colder. To stranger eyes these divisions are not evident, but each, looking back at the little track his consciousness illuminates, sees It cut into distinct portions, whose boundaries are the termination of mental states. In an uncommonly melodious voice he Inquired whether he might be allowed to remain there for an hour. Waldo directed him to the farmhouse, but the stranger declined. He would merely rest under the trees and give his horse water. He removed the saddle, and Waldo led the animal away to the dam. When he returned, the stranger had settled himself under the trees, with his back against the saddle. The boy offered him of the cakes. He declined, but took a draft from the Jug, and Waldo lay down not far off and fell to work again. It mastered nothing if cold eyes saw It It was not his sheep shearing machine. With material loves, as with human, we go mad once, love out and have done. We never get up the true enthusiasm a second time. This was but a thing he had made, labored over, loved and liked, nothing more—not bis machine. And we say It slowly, but without sighing: "Yes; we see It now. There is no God." As man differs from man, so differ these souls' years. The most material life is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And it may chance that some, looking back, see the past cut out after this fashion: The stranger watched more the face than the carving, and there was now and then a show of white teeth beneath the mustaches as he listened. And, we add, growing a little colder yet: "There 1b no Justice. The ox dies in the yoke beneath its master's whip. It turns its anguish filled eyes on the sunlight, but there Is no sign of recompense to be made it The black man Is shot like a dog, and It goes well with the shooter. The Innocent are accused, and the accuser triumphs. If you will take the trouble to scratch the surface anywhere, you will see under the skin a sentient being writhing in Impotent anguish." Then a new time comes, of which the leading feature is that the shrewd questions are asked louder. We carry them to the grown up people. They answer us, aad we are not satisfied. The day before the magistrate's clerk, who was an atheist, has died in the street struck by lightning. "I think," be said blandly when the boy had done, "that I partly understand yon. It is something after this fashion, Is It not?" He smiled. "In Pflrtfttn th&ro was a hnntor." He touched the grotesque little figure at the bottom. "Day by day he went to hunt for wild fowl in the woods, and it chanced that once he stood on the shores of a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming of the birds a great shadow fell on him, and In the water he saw a rejection. He looked up to the sky, but v.he thing was gone. Then a burning desire came over him to see once again that reflection In the water, and all day he watched and waited, but night came, and it had not returned. Then he went home with his empty bag, moody and silent His comrades came questioning about him to know the reason, but he answered them nothing. He sat alone and brooded. Then his friend came to him, and to him he spoke. And qow between us and the dear old world of the senses the spirit world begins to peep in and wholly clouds it over. What are the flowers to ns? They are fuel waiting for the great burning. We look at the walls of the farmhouse and the matter of fact sheep kraals, with the merry sunshine playing over all, and do not see it. But we see a great white throne and him that sits on it. Around him stand a great multitude that no man can number, harpers harping with their harps, a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands. How white are their robes, washed in the blood of the Lamb! And the music rises higher and rends the vault of heaven with its unutterable sweetness. And we, as we listen, ever and anon, as it sinks on the sweetest, lowest note, hear a groan of the damned from below. We shudder in the sunlight The man in the pulpit mentions no name, but he talks of "the hand of God made visible among us." He tells us how, when the white stroke fell, quivering and naked, the soul fled, robbed of his earthly filament, and lay at the footstool of God; how over Its bead has been poured out the wrath of the Mighty One, whose existence it has denied, and, quivering and terrified, it has fled to the everlasting shade. We are not satisfied with what Nature shows us and will see something for ourselves. Under the white ben we put a dozen eggs and break one dally to see the white spot wax into the chicken. We are not excited or enthusiastic about it But a man is not to lay his throat open. He must think of something. So we plant seeds in rows on our dam wall and pull one up daily to see bow It goes with them. Alladeen buried her wonderful stone, and a golden palace sprang up at her feet. We do far more. We put a brown seed in the earth, and a living thing starts out—starts upward—why, no more than Alladeen can we saystarts upward, and does not desist till It Is higher than our ' Is, sparkling with dew In the eariy u.»ruing, glittering with yellow t lossoms, shaking browu seeds with little embryo souls on to the ground. We look at it solemnly from the time it consists of two leaves peeping above the ground and a soft white root till we have to raise our faces to look at it, but we find no reason for that upward starting. "The hunter arose. 'I will go,' h* aald. *• The year of Infancy, where from the shadowy background of forgetful 11 ess start out pictures of startling clear- "Bat Wisdom detained him. " 'Mark yon well—who leaves thesk ▼alleys never returns to them. Though he should weep tears of blood sevea days and nights upon the confines, hm can put his foot across them. Left, they are left forever. Upon the road which you would travel there la no reward offered. Who goes, go? freely, for the great love that Is him. The work Is his reward.' ness, disconnected, but brightly colored and Indelibly printed In the mind. Much that follows fades, but the colors of those baby pictures are permanent There rises, perhaps, a warm summer's evening. We are seated on the doorstep; we have yet the taste of the bread and milk in our mouth, and the red sunset is reflected in our basin. And, we say further, and our heart is as the heart of the dead for coldness: "There is no order. All things are driven about by a blind chance." There are more fools and fewer hypocrites than the wise world dreams of. The hypocrite Is rare as Icebergs in the tropics, the fool common as buttercups beside a water furrow. Whether you go this way or that you tread on him. You dare not look at your own reflection in the water, but you see one. There is no cant phrase, rotten with «"» hut It. wu the C*romi nf a living body, none but at heart it signifies a real bodily or fnental condition which some have passed through. I We, as we listen, half start up. Every drop of blood In our body has rushed to our head. He lies, he lies, he lies! That man in the pulpit lies! Will no one stop hlift? Have none of them heard, do none of them know, that when the poor dark soul shut Its eyes on earth If opened them in the still light of heaven; that there is no wrath where God's face is; that if one could once creep to the footstool of God there Is everlasting peace there, like the fresh stillness of the early morning? While the atheist lay wondering and afraid God bent down and said: "My child, here I am—I, whom you have not known; I, whom you have not believed in. I am here. I sent my messenger, the white sheet lightning, to call you home. I am here." I What a soul drinks in with its mother's milk will not leave It In a day. From our earliest hour we have been taught that the thought of the heart the shaping of the ralncloud, the amount of wool that grows on a sheep's back, the length of a draft aud the growing of the corn depend on nothing that moves immutable, at the heart of all tblugs; but on the changeable will of a changeable being whom our prayers can alter. To us, from the beginning, nature has been but a poor, plastic thing, to be toyed with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not to go to church or not to say his prayers right or not to travel on a Sunday or not Was it possible for us In an Instant to see nature as she Is—the flowing vestment of an unchanging reality? When a soul breaks free from the arms of a superstition, bits of the claws and talons break themselves off In him. It is not the work of a day to squeeze them out " *1 go,' said the hunter, "but i the mountains, tell me, which shall I take?" Then there is a dark night where, waking with a fear that there is some great being in the room, we ran from our own bed to another, creep cloee to some large figure and are comforted. Then there is remembrance of the The stranger forced himself lower down in the saddle and yawned. It was a drowsy afternoon, and he objected to travel In these out of the world parts. He liked better civilized life, where at every hour of the day a man may look for his glass of wine and his easy chair and paper; where at night he may lock himself into his room with his books and a bottle of brandy and taste joys mental and physical. The world said to him—the all knowing, omnipotent world, whom no locks can bar, who has the catlike propensity of seeing best in the dark—the world said that better than the books be loved the brandy and better than books or brandy that which it had been better had he loved less. But for the world he cared nothing. He smiled blandly In its treth. AH life Is a dream. If wine and philosophy and women keep the dream from becoming a nightmare so much the better. It Is all they are fit for, all they can be used for. There was another side to his life and thought but of that the world knew nothing and said nothing, as the way of the wise world is. " 1 am the child of the Acc Knowledge of Ages,' said the can walk only where many 1 trodden. On those mountains have passed. Each man stri path for himself. He goes ai peril. My voice he hears no may follow after him, but I C before him.' pride when, on some one's shoulder, with oar arms around their bead, we ride to see the little pigs, the new little pigs with their curled tails and tiny snoots. Where do they come from? Remembrance of delight In the feel and smell of the first orange we ever Me; of sorrow which makes us put up our lip and cry bard when one morning we run out to try to catch the dewdrops and tbey melt and wet our little fingers; of almighty and despairing sorrow when we are lost behind the kraals and cannot see the house anywhere.And then one picture starts out more vividly than any. There haa been a thunderstorm. The ground as far as the eye can reach is covered with white halL Tbe clouds are gone, and overhead a deep blue sky is showing. Par off a gmr rainbow rests on tbe white earth. We, standing in a window to look, feel the cool, unspeakably sweet wind blowing in on us,' and a feeling of longing After hours and nigbtB of frenaled fear of tbe supernatural desire to appease tbe power above, a fierce quivering excitement In every Inch of nerve and blood vessel, there comes a time when nature cannot endure longer, and tbe spring long bent recoils. We sink down emasculated. Up creeps tbe deadly delicious calm: "The torment," says Jeremy Taylor, whose sermons our father reads aloud In the evening, "comprises as many torments as the body of man has Joints, sinews, arteries, etc., being caused by that penetrating and real fire of which this temporal fire Is but a painted fire. What comparison will there be between burning for a hundred years' space and to be burning " 'I have seen today,' he said, that which I never saw before—a vast white bird, with silver wings outstretched, sailing in the everlasting blue. And now It is as though a greaj fire burned within my breast It was but a sheen, a shimmer, a reflection in the water, but now I desire nothing more on earth than to hold her.' "His friend laughed. " 'It was but a beam playing on the water or the shadow of your own head. Tomorrow you will forget her,' he said. "But tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow the hunter walked alone. He sought In the forest and in the woods, by the lakes and among the rushes, but he could not find her. He shot no more wild fowL What were they to him? I "And the banter turned. He v his cage and with his hands down the bars, and the Jagged b his flesh. It Is sometimes ei build than to break. "One by one he took his plnm and let them fly. But when be his dark plumed bird he hel looked Into Its beautiful eyes bird uttered Its low, deep cry ullty!' We look into the dead ducks and lambs. In the evening we carry them home, spread newspapers on the floor and lie working with them till mid* night With a startled feeling near akin to ecstasy we open the lump of flesh called a heart and find little doors and strings Inside. We feel them and put the heart away, but every now and then return to look and to feel them again. Why we like them so we can hardly telL "I have blotted out as a cloud thy sins and as a thick cloud thy trespasses and will remember them no more forever." Then the poor soul turned to the light Its weakness and pain were gone forever.is God?" as long as God We remember tbe sermon there in the sunlight One comes and asks why we sit there nodding so moodily. Ah, they do not see what we see! We weep with soft transporting Joy. A few experience this. Many Imagine they experience It One here and there lies about it In tbe main "tbe peace with God, a sense of sins forgiven," stands for a certain mental and "physical reaction. Its reality those know who have felt it Have they not known, have they not heard, who it is rules? "For a little moment have I bidden my face from thee, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee, saitb tbe Lord thy Redeemer." We mutter on to ourselves till some one pulls us violently by tbe arm to re .mind us we are in church. We see nothing but our own ideas. "And he Bald quickly: 'I cannot  with it It is not heavy. It eats no food. I will hide It In my breast I will take It with me.' And he buried it there and covered It over wltETili" cloak. "Bnt the thing he bad hidden grew heavier, heavier, heavier, till it lay on hlB breast like lead. He could not move it He could not leave those valleys with it Then again he took It out and looked at it " 'Oh, my beautiful, my heart's own!' he cried. 'May I not keep you? And so, for us, the humanlike driver and guide being gone, all existence, as we look, out at it with ourehllled, wondering eyes, is an aimless rise and swell of shifting waters. In all that weltering chaos we can see no spot so large as a man's hand on which we may plant our foot A moment'* time, • narrow space, Divide dm from that bea*enljr place A gander drowns Itself In our dam. We take It out and open it on the bank and kneel, looking at It Above are the organs divided by delicate tissues; below are the Intestines artistically curved In spiral form and each tier covered by a delicate network of blood vessels standing out red against the faint blue background. Each branch of the blood vessels Is comprised of a trunk, bifurcating and reblfurcating into the most delicate halrllke threads, symmetrically arranged. We are struck with Its singular beauty. And, moreover (and here we drop from our kneeling Into a sitting posture), this also we remark—of that same exact shape and outline Is our thorn tree seen against the sky In midwinter; of that shape also is delicate metallic tracery between our rocks; in that exact path does our water flow when without a furrow we lead It from the dam; so shaped are the antlers of the horned beetle. How are these things related that such deep union should exist between them all? Is It chance, or are not all the fine branches of one truA, whose sap flows through us all? That would explain it We nod over the gander's inside. Or afcatj me np in hell. So says Wesley's hymn, which we sing evening by evening. What matter sunshine and walls, men and sheep? "The things which are seen are temporal, but tbe things which are not seen are eternal." They are real. And we on that moonlight night put down our head on tbe window. "O God, we are happy, happy, thy child forever! t)h, thank you, God!" And we drop asleep. The stranger looked from beneath his sleepy eyelids at the brown earth that stretched away, beautiful In spite of itself, in that June sunshine; looked at the graves, the gables of the farmhouse showing over the stone walls of the cnmps, at the clownish fellow at his feet and yawned. "But he had drunk of the hind's tea and must say something. " 'What alls him?' said his comrades. " 'He Is mad,' said one. Presently every one turns to pray. There are 600 souls lifting themselves to the Everlasting Light. " 'No; bat he Is worse,' said another. 'He would see that which none of us have seen and make himself a wonder.' comes over us, unutterable longing, we cannot tell for what We are so small our bead only reaches as high as the first three panes. We look at the white earth and the rainbow i md the blue sky; and. oh, we want it, we* want, we do not know what We cry as though our heart was broken. When one lifts our little body from the window, we cannot tell what ails us. We run away to play. Whether a man believes in a humanlike God or no is a small thing. Whether he looks into the mental and physical world and sees no relation between cause and effect, no order but a blind chance sporting, this is the mightiest fact that can be recorded in any spiritual existence. It were almost a mercy to cut his throat, if indeed he does not do it for himself. Next morning the Bible we kiss. We are God's forever. We go out to work, and It goes happily all day, happily all night, but hardly so happily, not happily at all, the next day, and the next night the devil asks us, "Where Is your Holy Spirit?" The Bible we bear always In our breast. Its pages are our food. We learn to repeat It We weep much, for In sunshine and in shade, in the early morning or late evening. In the field or In the bouse, the devil walks with us. He comes to us a real person, copper colored face, head a little on one side, forehead knit asking questions. Believe me, It were better to be followed by three deadly diseases than by him. He is never silenced-Without mercy. Though the drops of blood stand out on your heart he will put his question. Softly he comes up (we are only a wee bit child): "Is it good of God to make hell? Was It kind of him to let one be forgiven unless Jesus Christ died?" Behind us sit two pretty ladles. One hands her scent bottle softly to the other, and a mother pulls down her little girl's frock. One lady drops her handkerchief. A gentleman picks it up. She blusbes. The women In the choir turn softly the leaves of their tunebooks to be ready when the praying is done. It Is as though they thought more of the singing than the Everlasting Father. Oh, would it not be more worship of him to sit alone In the "karroo" and kiss one little purple flower that he had made? Is it not mockery? Then the thought comes, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" We who Judge— what are we better than they? I lather worse. Is It any excuse to say, "I am but a child and must come?" Does God allow any soul to step in between the spirit he made and himself? What do we there In that place where all the words are lies against the All Father? Filled with horror, we turn and flee out of the place. On the pavement we smite our foot and swear In our child's soul never again to enter those places where men come to sing and pray. We are questioned afterward. Why was It we went out of the church? " 'Come, let us forswear his company,' said all. "So the hunter walked alone. "One night, as he wandered In the shade, very heartsore and weeping, an old man stood before him, grander and taller than the sons of men. "He opened bis hands sadly. " 'Go,' he said. 'It may happen thai In Troth's song one note is like to yoars, bat I shall never hear it' "Sadly be opened his hand, and the bird flew from him forever. "Then from the shuttle of Imaglnaion he took the thread of his Wishes "Your father's place, I presume?" he inqnired sleepily. We cannot tell. So month by month, summer and winter, the old life goes on—reading, praying, weeping, praying. They tell us we become utterly stupid. We know it Even the multiplication table we learned with so much care we forget. The physical world recedes farther and farther from us. Truly we love not the world, neither the things that are In it Across the bounds of sleep our grief follows us. When we wake In the night, we are sitting up In bed weeping bitterly or find ourself outside In the moonlight dressed and walking up and down air.d wringing our hands, and we cannot tell how we came there. So pass two years as men reckon them. We, however, do not cut our throats. To do so would imply some desire and feeling, and we have no desire and no feeling. We are onlyrojd. We do not wish to live, and we Cte" tfot wish to die. One day a snake curWitself round the waist of a Kaffir woman. We take it in our hand, swing it round and round and fling it on the ground—dead. Every one looks at us with eyes of admiration. We almost laugh. Is it wonderful to risk that for which we care nothing? "No; I am only a servant." "Dutch people?" 'i , " "Who are you T asked the hunter. So looks the first year. "Yes." " 'I am Wisdom,' answered the old man, 'but some men called me Knowledge. All my life I have grown In these valleys, but no man sees me till he has sorrowed much. The eyes must be washed with tears that are to behold me, and, according as a man baa suffered, I speak.' "And you like the life?" The boy hesitated. "On days like these."" "And why on these?" D The boy waited. ind threw It on the ground, and the ;mpty shuttle he put Into his breast, .'or the thread was made in those val.eys, but the shuttle came from an unknown country. He turned to go, but now the people came about him, howling.Now the pictures become continuous and connected. Material things still rule, but the spiritual and Intellectual take their places. "They are very beautiful." In the dark night when we are afraid Wo pray and shut our eyes. We press oar fingers very hard upon the lids and •ee dark spots moving round and round, and we know tbey are heads and wings of angels sent to take care CH us, seen dimly in the dark aa tbey move round our bed. It Is very consolingThe stranger looked at him. It seemed that as the fellow's dark eyes looked across the brown earth they kindled with an Intense satisfaction. Then they looked back at the carving. "And the hunter cried: " 'Oh, you who have lived here bo long, tell me, what la that great wild bird I have seen sailing in the blue? They would have me believe she Is a dream, the shadow of my own head.' Then he goes off and leaves us writhing. Presently be comes back. " 'Pool, hound, demented lunatic r they cried. 'How dared you break your cage and let the birds fly? "Do you love him?" Walts a little. "Do you love him? You will be lost If you don't" In truth, nothing matters. This dirty little world full of confusion, and the blue rag stretched overhead for a sky is so low we could touch it with our hand. What had that creature, so coarse clad and«clownlsh, to do with the subtle Joys of the weather? Himself, white handed and delicate, he might hear the music which shimmering sunshine and solitude play on the finely strung chords of nature, but that fellow! Was not the ear in that great body too gross for such delicate mutterings?"The hunter spoke, but they would not hear him. "The old man smiled. We say we try to. This thin? we call existence Is it not a something which has its roots far down below In the dark and its branches stretching out into the immensity above which we among the branches cannot see? Not a chance Jumble, a living thing, a One. The thought gives us Intense satisfaction. We cannot tell why. " 'Her name is Truth. He who has once seen her never rests again. Till death he desires her.' "And the hunter cried: " 'Oh, tell me where 1 may find herr "But the man said: " Truth! Who Is she? Can you eat her? Can you drink her? Who has ever seen her? Your birds were real. All could hear them sing. Oh, fool! Ylle reptile! Atheist!' they cried. Too pollute the alrl* In the day we learn our letters and are troubled because we cannot see why k-n-o-w should be know and p-s-a-l-m psalm. Tbey tell us it Is so because it is so. We are not satisfied. We hate to learn. We like better to build little stone bouses. We can build them as we please and know the reason for them. "But do you?" Then he goes off. It Is nothing to him If we go quite mad with fear at our own wickedness. He asks on, the questioning devil. He cares nothing what he says. We long to tell some one, that they may share our pain. We do not yet know that the cup of affliction is made with such a narrow mouth that only one lip can drink at a time and that each man's cup is made to match bis lip. Existence Is a great pot, and the old fate who stirs It round cares nothing what rises to the top and what goes down and laughs when the bubbles burst. And we do not care. Let It boil about Why should we trouble ourselves? Nevertheless the physical sensations are real. Hunger hurts, and thirst; therefore we eat and drink. Inaction pains us; therefore we work like galley slaves. No one demands It, but we set ourselves to build a great dam In red sand beyond the graves. Then a new time. Before us there were three courses possible—to go mad, to die, to sleep. We take the last course, or nature takes it for us. " 'You have not suffered enough,' and went. "'Come; let us take up Btones and stone him!' cried some. How can we explain? We stand silent. Then we are pressed further, and we try to tell. Then a head is shaken solemnly at us. No one can think It wrong to go to the house of the Lord. It Is the Idle excuse of a wicked boy. When will we think seriously of our souls and love going to church? We are wicked, very wicked. And we —we slink away and go alone to cry. WlH It be always so? Whether we hate and doubt or whether we believe and love, to our dearest are we to seem always wicked? "'What affair Is It of ours?' said others. 'Let the idiot go,' and went away. But the rest gathered up stones and mud and threw at him. At last, when he was bruised and cut, the hunter crept away Into the .woods, an*, it was evening about him." We nod over the gander, then stavt up suddenly, look Into the blue sky, throw the dead gander and the refuse Into the dam and go to work again. Presently he said "May I see what you work at?" "Then the hunter took from his breast the shuttle of Imagination and wound on it the thread of his Wishes, and all night he sat and wove a net All things take rest in sleep. The beasts, birds, the very flowers, close their eyes, and the streams are still in wlnten All things take rest. Then why not the human reason also? So the questioning devil In 41s drops asleep, and In that sleep a beautiful dream rises for us. Though you hear all the dreams of men, you will hardly find a prettier one than ours. It ran so: The fellow handed his wooden post It was by no means lovely. The men and birds were almost grotesque In their labored resemblance to nature and bore signs of patient thought The stranger turned the thing over on his knee. Other Joys, too, we have Incomparably greater than even tbe building of ■tone houses. One day we try to tell some one. Then a grave bead is shaken solemnly at us. We are wicked, very wicked, they say. We ought not to have such thoughts. God Is good, very good. We are wicked, very wicked. That is the comfort we get Wicked? O Lord, do we not know It? Is It not the sense of our own exceeding wickedness that Is drying up our young heart, filling It with sand, making all life a dust bin for us? "In the morning be spread the golden net open on the ground, and into it he threw a few grains of credulity, which his father had left him and which he kept In his breast pocket They were like white puffballs, and when you trod on them a brown dust flew out Then he sat by to see what would happen. The first that came Into the net was a snow white bird, with dove's eyes, and he sang a beautiful song. 'A human God, a human God, a human God!" it sang. The second that came was black and mystical, with dark, lovely eyes, that looked into the depths of your soul, and he sang only this—'Immortality!'We are run through with a shudder •f delight when in the red sand we come on one of those white wax flowers that lie between their two green leaved flat on the sand. We hardly dare pick them, but we feel compelled to do so; and we smell and smell till the delight becomes almost pain. Afterward we pull the green leaves softly Into pieces to see tbe silk threads run across. And so it comes to pass in time that the earth for us to be a weltering chaos. We walk In the great hall of life, looking up and round reverentially. Nothing is despicable; all is meaning full. Nothing Is small; all Is part of a whole whose beginning and end we know not The life that throbs In us Is a pulsation from it too mighty for our comprehension, not too small. At every word the stranger spoke tl*» fellow's eyes flashed back on him— yes, and yes, and yes! The stranger smiled. It was almost worth the trouble of exerting oneself, even on a lazy afternoon, to win those passionate flashes, more thirsty and desiring than the love glances of a woman. "He wandered on and on," said the stranger, "and the shade grew deeper. He was on the borders now of the land where It Is always night Then he stepped into It, and there was no light there. With his hands he groped, but each branch as he touched it broke off, and the earth was covered with cinders. At every step his foot sank In, and a fine cloud of impalpable ashes flew up into his face, and it was dark. So he sat down upon a stone and burled his face in his hands to wait tn that Land of Negation and Denial till the light came. In the gray dawn before the sheep are let out we work at It All day, while the young ostriches, we tend feed about us, we work on through the fiercest heat. The people wonder what new spirit has seized us now. They do not know we are working for life. We bear the greatest stones and feel a satisfaction when we stagger under them and are hurt by a pang that shoots through our chest. While we eat our dinner we carry on baskets full of earth, as though the devil drove us. The Kaffir servants have a story that at night a witch and two white oxen come to help us. No wall, they say, could grow so quickly under one man's hands. "Where did you learn this work?" "I taught myself." "And these zigzag lines represent"— "A mountain." The stranger looked. "It has some meaning, has it not?" The boy muttered confusedly: "Only things." In tbe center of all things Is a Mighty Heart, which, having begotten all things, loves them, and, having born them Into life, beats with groat throbs of love toward them. No death for his dear Insects, no hell for his dear men, no burning up for his dear world, his own, own world that he has made. In the end all will be beautiful. Do not ask us how we make our dream tally with facts. The glory of a dream is this—that It despises facts and makes its own. Our dream saves us from going mad. That is enough. We do not yet know that In the soul's search for trdth the bitterness lies here —the striving cannot always hide itself among the thoughts. Sooner or later It will clothe Itself In outward action. Then It steps In and divides between the soul and what it loves. All things on earth have their price, and for truth we pay the dearest. We barter It for love and sympathy. The road to honor Is paved with thorns, but on the path to truth, at every step you set your foot down on your own heart And so it comes to pass at last that whereas the sky was at first a small blue rag stretched out over us and so low that our hands might touch it, pressing down on us. It raises Itself Into an Immeasurable blue arch over our heads, and we begin to live again. Wicked? We know itl Too vile to live, too vile to die, too vile to creep over this (God's) earth and move among his believing men. Hell Is the one place for him who bates bis master, and there we do not want to go. This Is the comfort we get from the old. Beyond the "kopje" grow some pale green hairy leaved bushes. We are so small they meet over our bead, and we sit among them and kiss them, and they love us back. It seems as though they were alive. The questioner looked down at him— the huge, unwieldy figure, in size a man's, in right of its childlike features and curling hair a child's—and it hurt him. It attracted him, and It hurt him. It was something between pity and sympathy. "And the hunter took them both In his arms, for he said: One day we sit there and look up at the blue sky and down at our fat little knees, and suddenly it strikes us: Who are we? This I—what is it? We try to look In upon ourself, and ourself beats back upon ourself. Then we get up In great fear and run home as hard as we can. We can't tell any ooe what frightened us. We never quite lose that feeling of self again. CHAPTER XV. WALDO'S STRANOEB. " 'They are surely of the beautiful family of Truth.' And once again we try to seek for comfort This time great eyes look at us wondering, and lovely little lips say: Waldo lay on his stomach on the red Band. The small ostriches he herded wandered about him, pecking at the food he had cut or at pebbles and dry slicks. On his right lay the graves, on his left the dam. In his hand was a large wooden post covered with carvings, at which he worked. Doss lay before him basking In the winter sunshine and now and again casting an expectant glance at the corner of the nearest ostrich camp. The scrubby thorn trees under which they lay yielded no shade, but none was needed In that glorious June weather, when In the hottest part of the afternoon the sun was but pleasantly warm. And the boy carved on, not looking up, yet conscious of the brown serene earth about him and the Intensely blue sky above. "How long have you worked at this?" Its peculiar point of sweetness lay here. When the Mighty Heart's yearning of love became too great for other expression it shaped Itself into the sweet Rose of heaven, the beloved Man god. At night, alone in our cabin, we sit no more brooding over the Are. What should we think of now? All Is emptiness. So we take the old arithmetic, and the multiplication table, which with so much pains wev learned "long ago and forgot directly, we learn now In a few hours and never forget again. We take a strange satisfaction In working arithmetical problems. We pause in our building to cover the stones with figures and calculations. We save money lor a Latin grammar and an algebra and carry them about In our pockets, poring over them as over our Bible of old. We have thought we were utterly stupid, Incapable of remembering anything, of learning anything. Now we find that all is easy. Has a new soul crept Into this old body, that even our intellectual faculties are changed? We marvel, not perceiving that what a man ex pends In prayer and ecstasy he cannoi have over for acquiring knowledge. You never shed a tear or create a t£autiful image or quiver with emotion but you pay for it at the practical, calculating end of your nature. Yon have Just so much force. When the one channel runs over, the other runs dry. "Nine months." "Then came another, green and gold, who sang in a shrill voice, like one crying in the market place, 'Reward after death, reward after death? "If It makes rou so unhappy to think of these things, why do you not think of something else and forget?" From his pocket the stranger drew his pocketbook and took something from it. He could fasten the post to his horse In some way and throw It away In the sand when at a safe distance.Then at last a new time—the time of waking, short, sharp and not pleasant, as wakings often are. "And he said "And it was night In his heart also. "Then from the marshes to his right and left cold mists arose and closed about him. A fine. Imperceptible rain fell In the dark, and great drops gathered on his hair and clothes. His heart beat slowly, and a numbness crept through all his limbs. Then, looking, Continued on page four. Forget! We turn away and shrink into ourself. Forget and think of other things! O Clod, do they not understand that the material world Is but a film, through every pore of which God's awful spirit world is shining through on us? We keep as far from others as we can. " 'You are not bo fair, but you are fair, too,' and he took it Jesus, you Jesus of our dream, how we loved you! No Bible tells of you as we knew you. Your sweet hands held ours fast. Your sweet voice said al ways "I am here, my loved one, not far off. Put your arms about me and hold fast." Sleep and dreams exist on this condition—that no one wake the dreamer. "And others came, brightly colored, singing pleasant songs till all the grains were finished, and the hunter gathered all his birds together and built a strong iron cage, called a new creed, and put all his birds in It m. -And then a new time rises. We are 7 years old. We can read now, read the Best of all, we like the story of Elijah In his cave at Horeb and the still small voice. One day, a notable one, we read on "Will you take this for your carving?"And now life takes us up between her finger and thumb, shakes us furiously till our poor nodding bead Is well nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she sets us down a little hardly on the bare earth, bruised and sore, but preteraaturally wide awake. The boy glanccd at the £5 note and shook his head. One night, a rare, clear moonlight night, we kneel in the window. Every one else Is asleep, but we kneel reading by the moonlight It Is a chapter In the prophets telling bow the chosen people of God shall be carried on the gentiles' shoulders. Surely the devil might leave us alone. There Is not much handle for him there. But presently he comes. "You think It Is worth more?" asked the stranger, with a little sneer. He pointed with his thumb to a grave. "No; I cannot." "Then the people came about dancing and singing. We find him In everything In those days. When the little weary lamb we drive home drags Its feet, we seize on It and carry It with Its head against our face. His little lamb! We feel we have got him. mm n Excellent for '! F INFLUENZA, 1 'Rheumatism, Neuralgia, etc. 1 ... I PAIN EXPELLER. I ** What one physician out of many tcatifieai ■ as N«w\brkArU 25t£.1699L •e I have found Dr. Richfer's rj I le "ANCHOI* BMN EXPELLER TEEF II RjBaS^a^Al - a liniment » required. . especially for Infl uenza.Colds.efc. j ■ 1 ——Z/ C7 u» WIVlNtTON Sf.M 25c. and 50c. at all drngxiatt or tbroagn ■ .L v. Ad. HekUr ACCl, fit Pearl 81, Hew leifcfl ™ ML M HMHEST MHBDS. j| of We have said In our days of dreaming: "Injustice and wrong are a seeming. Pain is a shadow. Our God, he Is real, be who made all things, and he only Is love." " 'Oh, happy hunter!' they cried. 'G wonderful manl Ob, delightful blrdb Oh, lovely songs!' lithe "kopje" and discover the fifth chapiter of Mf tthew and read it all through. It is a neV gold mine. Then we tuck the Bible under our arm «nd rush home. TheD didn't know it was wicked to take y«.ur things again if some one took them, wicked to go to law, wicked to— We are quite breathless when we g*.t to the bouse. We tell them that *e have discovered "And who is there?" asked the stranger."My father." "No; it is for him." "No oue asked where the birds hi come from nor how they had bet caught, but they danced and sang before them. And the hunter, too, was glad, for he said: When the drunken Kaffir lies by the road In the sun, we draw bis blanket over his head and put green branches of milk bush on it. His Kaffir—why should the sun hurt him ? Now life takes us by the neck and shows us a few other things -newmade craves with the red sand flying about them, eyes that we love with the worms eating them, evil men walking, sleek and fat. the whole terrible hurly burly of the thing called life—and she says, "What do you think of these?" We dare not say "Nothing." We feel them. They are very real. But we try to lay our hands about and feel that other thing we felt before. In the dark night In the fuel room we cry to our beautiful dream god: "Oh, let us come near you and lay our head against your feet. Now in our hour of need be near us." But he Is not there, tie Is gone away, 'i'lie uui questioning tlevll Is there. Presently, at the corner of the camp, Em appeared, bearing a covered saucer In one hand and In the other a jug with a cup on the top. She was grown into a premature little old woman of 10, ridiculously fat The Jug and saucer she put down on the ground before the dog and his master and dropped down beside them herself, panting and out of breath. The man silently returned the note to his pocketbook and gave the carving to the boy and, drawing his hat over his eyes, composed himself to sleep. Not being able to do so, after awhile he glanced over the fellow's shoulder to watch him work. The boy carved letters Into the back. '♦Is it right there should be a chosen people? To him who Is Father to all should not all be dear?" " 'Surely Truth la among them, time she will molt her feathers, and shall see her snow white form.' In the evening, when the clouds lift themselves like gates and the red lights shine through them, we cry; for In such glory. he will come, and the hands that ache to touch him will hold him, and we shall see the beautiful hair and eyes of our God. "Lift up your heads, ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and our King of glory shall come in!" a chapter they never beard. We tell them what it says. The old wise people tell us they know akl about It Our discovery Is a mare's nest to them, How can we answer him? We were feeling so good till be came. We put our head down on the Bible and blister it with tears. Then we fold our hands over our head and pray till our teeth grind together. Oh, that from that spirit world, so real and yet so silent, that surrounds us one word would come to guide us! We are left alone with this devil, and God does not whisper to us. Suddenly we seize the Bible, turning it round and round, and say hurriedly: "But the time passed, and the peop sang and danced, but the hunter" heart grew heavy. He crept alone. but to us it is very real. The Ten Commandments anrl the old "Thou shalt" we have Ik Dird about long enough and "If," said the stranger, with his melodious voice, rich with a sweetness that never showed Itself in the clouded eyes, for sweetness will linger on in the voice after it has died out In the eyes—"if for such a purpose, why write that upon It?" of old, to weep. The terrible desi had awakened again in his breast. C day, as he sat alone weeping, It chai ed that Wisdom met him. He told tL old man what he had done. "WaWo, aa_I came up the camps 1 met some one on horseback, and I do believe It must be the new man that is coming." don't care about it, but this new law sets us on fire. We will deny ourself. Our little wagon that we bare made we give to the little Kaffirs. We keep Quiet when they throw aand at us, feeltog. oh, so happy. We conscientiously And now we turn to Nature. All these years we have lived beside her. and we have never seen her. Now we open our eyes and look at her. The purple flowers, the little purple flowers, are his eyes, looking at us. We kiss them and kneel alone on the flat, rejoicing over them. And the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for him. and the desert shall re- "And Wisdom smiled sadly. The new man was an Englishman to whom the Boer woman had hired half the farm. The boy glanced at him, but made no answer. He had almost forgotten his presence. " 'Many men,' he said, 'have sprea that net for Truth, but they have net found her. On the grains of credul she will not feed; In the net of wis] her feet cannot be held; In the air The rocks have been to us a blur of brown. We bend over them, and the disorganised masses dissolve Into a many colored, many shaped, carefully ajraaged furm of existence, here maaa "Huml" said Waldo. nt will be God's voice speaking to We rnaBt have been awakened sooner The imagination cannot at "He la quite young," said Em, holding her side, "and he has brown hair and fetanl carting elow to tUa fee* and "You surely believe," said the stranger, "that some day, sooner or later, them aravaa will aim and those Boer these talleys she will not breathe. The bled* *ou h&ve caosht u* ottte * " ij |f