Toward the glory gate; a story of soul growth

Contents

CHAP. PAGE.

I. A Commonplace Girl 5

II. This Is the Way 23

Chapter I. A Commonplace Girl

“ O’erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth’s ample round Can match in wealth.”

Eight ladies were gathered on the Eastern verandah of Mount Merion Cottage. Before them lay the summer fields, the green slopes of the hills, the bird-filled groves, the broad valley, the gilded river sweeping toward the sunset ; beyond- the mountain ranges lifting, lifting to the line where snows lay late. The earth seemed filled with beauty, as a cup is filled to the brim. The eight were resting, enjoying, or, in a leisurely way, working. Near the verandah, between two maples, swung a hammock. Ann Bradford lay in the hammock ; she was supposed to be asleep : the eight therefore made no account of her. A quiet, rather shy girl, Ann had gone to Mount Merion Cottage for rest : she was tired out after graduating, and there had been some hint of nervous prostration.

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" I am so dull,” Ann had said one morning to Dr. Helen Train, “ I feel like sleeping all the time.”

“ Sleep then all the time,” said Dr. Helen. “ Nature is offering you her sweetest remedy : also this is her gentlest revenge, taken for the years when you have not slept half enough. The account will be squared after a while, then you will wake up.” Therefore, Ann was generally supposed to be sleeping. She was awake now, lying quietly, her shade-hat pulled down over her face ; from under the rim she could see all the group on the verandah, and she passed them in mental review. There was nothing of envy or acrimony in her reviewing : Ann had a genuine admiration for all that was admirable.

Grace Dare sat with her block of Whatman’s paper on her lap ; she was sketching in bits of landscapes, heads, trailing vines, branches, draperies. These would all work in as background, foregrounds, what not, in future illustrations, for Grace Dare was already of some note among illustrators, making for herself an ample livelihood among the sweet surprises of art.

“ Bright, cheerful, popular, lovely as her own pictures,” said Ann to herself, “ Grace Dare must find it worth while living. And there is Dr. Helen Train, what a grand life hers is ! Thirty, and already distinguished in her profession : full of enthusiasm, each day marked by some good done. What a blessing she is among the poor : how many mothers she has saved from wreck : how many little children on the verge of growing up crooked, half blind, chronically afflicted, she has set on the road to vigorous health. She meets the suffering as Christ did ; she fears no contagion ; need is to her sufficient prayer. She can say, as did the apostles, ‘ Silver and gold have I none ; but such as I have give I thee.’ For her, surely, life is at the Beautiful gate of the temple. And there, by Dr. Train, is Dorothy Camp. They say she is twenty-six, and has been out of college three years. Her magazine articles are already talked of. Her short stories are full of genius ; people are expecting great things of her and no doubt she expects great things of herself. That must be fine, to face your future, feeling sure that some day you will wake up to find that you have made yourself famous. Expecting great things of yourself ! That would be to live as if one wound along some pleasant upward way, knowing that some turn, — which, or how soon, you could not exactly tell, but surely at some one, — would open upon you the landscape of splendid beauty, crowning the climb up with all you had striven so far to see ! There, on that canvas reclining-chair, resting that she may work, is Sara Fordyce. She graduated this year, leading the University, had at once a Professorship of Literature offered her, and is called already a well-reputed scholar. When one has such brains as hers how well it pays to study ! ”

Next to Miss Fordyce was a low rocker in which swung gently to and fro the eldest of the group, a woman past middle life. A calm, strong face, hair untouched with gray along its chestnut folds, eyes bent in tranquil satisfaction upon a beautiful child which slept, his shower of golden curls falling back over her arm. As she softly rocked the dimpled sleeper, it seemed from her satisfied smile, that a busy and fruitful life had found its beautiful culmination in this little grandson. Said the watching Ann, “ Is it better to have attained, or to feel sure that we shall attain ? Mrs. Baron has made fortune and reputation. Wherever she goes her name is an open sesame to hearts. In any gathering, if she should take the trouble to think about it, which I feel sure she does not, she would find herself one of the most distinguished.”

Ann’s half-closed eyes smiled as they fell on the youngest of the group, a girl sitting on the steps, and swinging her hat by its ribbons — “ Pretty Clotilde Arblay — wherever she goes she is known as the beauty ! Not the highest style of renown, or badge of distinction, yet it seems that it must be delightful to know that you are always good to look at, always followed with admiration, always as daintily charming as a new-blown rose. And there is Mrs. Baron, Junior, making a blouse for her sleeping golden-hair. She is one of the women who always know exactly what to do, to say, to be, to wear. Always absolutely au fait , always gracious, always perfectly dressed, in the most artistic sense, one born to be a social queen, and make life move pleasantly wherever she goes.”

A book fell and drew Ann’s attention toward the last of the eight ladies she was privately comment-

A COMMONPLACE GIRL.

ing upon, Mrs. Baron’s daughter, — Mrs. Waldeck. Said Ann — “ There is another who, at thirty-one, has attained more than such an one as I can hope to reach in a long life. People say Mrs. Waldeck has one of the most brilliant minds of the day, and that few women of the country are so splendidly educated as she. She is an authority on many points in social economy and philanthropy, a leader in many great movements. One must fancy she was born great, for it hardly seems possible that so few years could have harvested so much. Born great, achieve greatness, have greatness thrust upon them : for me, I am out of the whole category — was there ever any one so hopelessly commonplace as I ? ” Ann gave a little smothered sigh and proceeded to pass herself in review.

“ No one ever wanted an education more than I did : how indefatigably I have pegged away at it ! Learning don’t come easy to me. 1 don’t absorb knowledge, I work for it. By dint of years of tireless work, I have graduated, neither booby nor prize man : neither head nor foot, just along in the middle of my class, a fair, average, commonplace, deadly commonplace ! Study was not all I did in those years. What making and remaking of gowns, trimming of hats, cleaning of gloves, washing and mending of lace, have I had to do, to keep myself neatly and properly dressed on my small means. I succeeded in being always neat, if never fine ; not observable for shabbiness nor for elegance, just so garbed that I was not noticed ; commonplace, terri-

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bly commonplace ! As for looks, no one ever turned to look after me because I was either strikingly hideous, or handsome; just a plain girl, with a face healthy and fairly intelligent, and sympathetic ; neither dazzling nor repelling, merely unnoticeably commonplace ! It is the same with me in social position ; neither from the depths nor the heights. I have had grandfathers, but they did not head the roll of famo; they were just as I am, average, commonplace. In friendships, like record : all think me well enough : no quarrels, no enemies, no long list of followers, no enthusiastic admirers and quoters, just commonplace. There’s my record : my outlook is of the same sort. I could enter the crowded ranks of teachers, and be a steady, hard-working, unenthusiastic, commonplace instructor. I could marry, and be a quiet every-day, ordinary house-mistress ; though why I should marry just to keep a moderate house in moderate fashion, I cannot see. I never met a man that I cared for a whit above a cool friendship : I never met one who cared in warmer fashion for me.

“ Missions open a wide field for some women, and it seems strange that, as I have informed myself well about missions, and am unincumbered I have felt no stronger drawings to such splendid work. Dealing honestly with myself, I cannot say I ever had any divine call to that work ; rather I feel as if across that path must stand some angel with an impalpable but impassable sword, as before Baalam. I have no eloquence for the bar : no nerve for medicine or

A COMMONPLACE GIRL.

ii nursing, no enterprise for business ! What am I to do ? I feel sinking in this commonplace, of myself and my environment, as Christian in the Slough of Despond. I must do something; conscience will not allow me to idle. What shall I do ? No one loves the grand, noble, beautiful, aesthetic, heroic, sublime more than I do, and no one knows more exhaustively her incapacity to attain to any one of them. No one realizes more fully than I do her. own dull level of the commonplace. ‘ Help me, Cassius, or I sink ! ’ — in the commonplace ! ”

Suddenly Dorothy Camp spoke. “ Dr. Train, did you know that Kate Shaw had given up her place at the Sanitarium ? How many good positions she has had, and not held one over six months ! I cannot understand it.”

“ Kate,” said Dr. Helen Train, “ is an instance of an intense desire and dogged pursuit of something for which one is entirely unfit. Great ambition and industry are not always tokens of capacity, or earnest of success. Kate was determined upon a professional life, without any native fitness for such life. She resolved to be educated abroad, to get the best start possible. She spent nine years of hard labor, on a five-years’ course. At last she reached her degree, and came home. The degree, and report of nine years’ study, secured her, one after another, valuable positions, which she proved entirely incompetent to fill. Slowly as she had acquired knowledge, she was yet more slow in applying or distributing it. It is a pity when people do not know, to

TOWARD THE GLORY GATE.

begin with, their own limitations. It is worth something to know what we cannot do.”

“ Oho,” cried Dorothy Camp, “ we often want so much, indeed most of all, to do what we cannot do. What would I not give to be able to make such pictures as Grace makes.”

“ Let me see your block, Grace. That is exquisite. ”

“ I,” said Grace, handing over the block of paper, “ do so often long to be able to express myself as you do ; ah, if I could but write one of your stories ! I think of lovely things, and cannot tell them.”

“ Except with pencil and brush,” said Mrs. Baron, Junior.

“ How many girls,” said Mrs. Waldeck, “ have I seen pounding away at music, year after year, in indefatigable efforts to become good performers, and yet they cannot learn to give any musical expression. How many girls spend from two to six years in an art school, when they have really no artistic instincts; form and color elude them.”

“ Browning notices that trait — as he does most others,” said Sara Fordyce. “ He says in one of his poems —

‘ Does he paint ? He fain would write a poem.

Does he write ? He fain would paint a picture.’ ”

“ It is very common,” observed Mrs. Baron, “ to set our desires on doing what we cannot do ; undervaluing the gift we have, and craving the gift of some other. One of the finest teachers I ever knew told me he had been consumed with a life-

A COMMONPLACE GIRL.

long yearning for the power of oratory. He felt that if he could but once by eloquence sway and bend an audience to his will, he could die content. Yet in the successes of his pupils, and their continued influence, he gained an audience greater than any one voice could reach. One of the best pastors and noblest sermonizers I ever met longed to be a poet. He wrote little verses which he fondly called poems. These were printed in newspapers and copied, because the man himself was loved for his goodness, and admired for his greatness as preacher and pastor. With the most innocent satisfaction he would dwell on these verses, fondly as a mother gazes on her child, fondly as I do on this little golden-haired sleeper ! If this man could have been called a poet, he would have believed himself really great, yet none of the earth’s poets have builded for eternity as he. It is well indeed if God marks out a plain path for our feet, and makes our gifts and calling so clear that he who runs may read. Then, single-minded, we can go our way, not grasping after the crowns of others.”

“ I think we are so shown our way,” said Mrs. Waldeck. “ The trouble is that we are not applying attention to the indications, or do not want to see what is plain enough. We want to see something else. Like Naaman we are expecting some miraculous manifestations for our calling, but God does not throw away miracles, nor cater to spiritual pride.”

There was a little silence. A carriage rolled by the gate.

TOWARD THE GLORY GATE.

“ There goes Mrs. Nelson ! ” said Clotilde, as a handkerchief waved. “ Always cheerful,” “ Always busy and useful,” “ Such a friend,” these were some of the encomiums passed on Mrs. Nelson.

“ I want Mrs. Nelson to be to you all a high lesson,” said Mrs. Baron, looking at her younger friends. “ She is a shining example of a person lifted out of the entirely commonplace by the power of religion. By nature Mrs. Nelson is intensely commonplace, narrow in views, limited in her ideals, inclined to that most commonplace of all things — gossip. A thoroughly Christian upbringing, a true personal work of grace, have developed in Mrs. Nelson a strong deep type of piety. Her horizon is enlarged, her views and opinions sweetened, her ideals elevated. Religion has made of her a faithful friend, a useful member of the community, a most tender and' judicious mother, an unusually good and helpful wife, a vigorous church-worker, in fact, a pattern woman.”

“And you lay all that to religion?” demanded Clotilde.

“ Most emphatically I do. There is nothing which so lifts one out of the commonplace as earnest piety, as a truly active, energizing, religious life.”

“Why-y-y, I cannot understand that,” said Clotilde. “ It seems to me that religion itself is very common ; almost every one that I know is religious ! ”

“ There is a vast difference,” said Mrs. Waldeck,

A COMMONPLACE GIRL.

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“ between true religion and mere formal religiousness. If every one were truly religious, we should speedily be enjoying the millennium.”

“ Carlyle remarked,” said Sara Fordyce, “ that in the British Islands were a certain number of millions of people, mostly fools. He also suggested that the British Isles were a fair sample of the world in general. One might, with much more of truth say, that in Christian lands, in this late age of the Christian Era, are a great many people addicted to religiousness and much fewer people truly religious. Also one might say, with no fear of contradiction, that the population of the world is a certain number of billions of people, most of them commonplace. Now if real religion, that scarce article, is a cure for the commonplace, there is plenty of material for it to work upon, and a wonderful change to effect.”

“ The fact is,” said Dr. Train, “ that a high style of piety is so very unusual that no one possessing it can be commonplace.”

“ Isn’t it easily attained ? ” asked Clotilde, “ I thought it came from heaven, as a free gift, something just put into us.”

“ Something, rather,” suggested Dorothy Camp, “ to be earnestly desired, the desire being heavendescended ; something to be sought for, striven after also ; ‘ so agonize that ye may obtain.’ ”

“ Put it easier,” said Mrs. Baron. “ Ask and ye shall receive. He giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not. See if I will not pour you out a blessing, till there be not room to receive it.”

11 But how is it that religion cures Qne of being commonplace?” insisted Clotilde, in her artless way. “ I want to hear. Do you know that I am afraid that as soon as a few thief-years have stolen away my inherited good looks, I shall be dismally commonplace ; for I have no wit, wisdom, energy, experiences — nothing but good looks, fleeting looks.”

There was a general laugh at this, and Mrs. Baron, Junior, said, “Clotilde, you are not commonplace, you are that uncommon instance, a beauty without vanity.”

“ My child,” said Mrs. Baron, “ why should not true religion lift us out of the commonplace ? The follower after real piety has for exemplar and companion the Christ of Nazareth, the one uplifting, spotless, magnificent, monumental character known to the ages, the pattern human, and the vivifying upholding God. We are known by the company we keep, and we grow like those with whom we associate. In Christ’s divine society we cannot fail to be changed from glory unto glory, toward the image of God. True religion severs us from self, sets us into service, it has the nobleness of self-sacrifice, the beauty of altruism. The rule of the Christian being is Christlike becoming. The law of religion is in that book of which there are more copies than of all other books put together, yet which is never commonplace, unless you can call commonplace the very quintessence of the beautiful, the simple, the venerable, the immortal, the strong. With such a Friend and Master, and such a chart and rule, is

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there not imposed upon us a loftiness and helpfulness of living, which has in it nothing' of the commonplace ? ‘ We are lifted out of life’s sloughs,

and set upon a rock.’ ”

Ann Bradford, supposed to be asleep, had heard.

“ Do you mean,” asked Grace Dare, “ that without religion, all people must be commonplace ? ”

“ Certainly not,” said Mrs. Waldeck, “ all history contradicts that.”

“ There are many who seem born to greatness, to heroism,” said Madame Baron. “ We all meet people whom nothing could make commonplace. There is Mrs. Ware ; see what a life of courage and good deeds hers has ' been. Left young and destitute, with five little sons, she has fought her way up for them and for herself ; five distinguished men surround her age, and revere the mother to whom they owe so much. To look at her, to hear her, is to feel that no softness of environment, no enticements of pleasure and indolence, could have betrayed the nobility of that nature. Without a shade or line of beauty, she stands grand, strong, sympathetic and attractive : and knowing her, we instinctively strive toward higher levels. Religion has intensified all in her nature that was fine and lofty. It is the key-note of her character, yet even without religion, she could never have been commonplace.”

Presently there was a general movement upon the verandah, and the group scattered. Ann Bradford sat up, shook out her dress, put her hat in its proper place on her head.

“ Sleepy still ? ” queried Dr. Helen, looking toward her with a smile.

“ No. I am awake. At last fully awake.”

“ Come up here and sit down by me,” said Mrs. Baron, pulling forward the chair which Mrs. Waldeck had vacated, and handing her waking grandson to his mother. “We have scarcely had any opportunity to become acquainted with you. You came here so tired, you have done well to rest.”

“ It was not weariness merely,” said Ann Bradford, dropping into the offered chair, “but, you are all so brilliant, so distinguished — people who have found something to do in the world, and are able to do it ; you all look so great to me, for I am so emphatically commonplace, that I have feared to intrude.”

“ We were speaking of the commonplace just now.”

“ I heard you. I was not really asleep, and your conversation made me fully awake. It also gave me some encouragement. I felt that I also had what the French call a raison d'etre, because, though I cannot be distinguished, I can be good. Saying that, I am 7iot bidding for you to quote ‘ Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.’ ”

“ I see,” said Mrs. Baron, “ that you can be pleasant company.

“ And,” said Ann, “ as I never met a young girl who could not be agreeable company, if she tried, that also is a very commonplace characteristic.”

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“ It is true,” said Mrs. Baron, with a tiny sigh, “ youth in its ingenuousness, impulsiveness, trust, vigor, hope, is always attractive.”

Ann caught the little sigh with her heart rather than with her ears. She said, “ Yes, that is to youth’s score, but after all, is it not better to have attained, to have reached the wisdom of many experiences, to be full of counsel and helpfulness, to know the end, and no longer have anything left to fear — to dwell in Beulah Land ? ”

“ With the Glory Gate rising in full view ? ” said Mrs. Baron, and looking carefully at Ann, added, “ Not all, indeed very few of the young, could feel that : not all, indeed very few, could so quickly catch that half-breathed sigh, which a woman gives to her buried youth. Already you must have had more experiences than most girls.”

“ I have lost both my parents,” said Ann ; “ as far as kin are concerned I am almost alone in the world. I have had myself in charge since I was sixteen. I have been forced regularly to make two dollars do the proper work of four. I am now just past twenty-three. Naturally I have seen somewhat of the graver, more thoughtful, side of life. I think that I have all my life been waiting for a message ; perhaps you have brought it to me to-day — that in religion heartily lived, I can find the real worth of living, and be lifted out of the dreariness of commonplaceness. If you had only added to your message, a word of what I ought to do with myself ; what direction should my life take ? ”

TO IV A RD THE GL OR V GA TE.

“ Evidently you have been put in training for something,” said Mrs. Baron, “ and when the hour strikes then the something will be clearly revealed, if your attitude is that of being truly willing to know. All, I can add to my message to you is — It is good to be led. Wait. God never leaves his own standing idle on the ways of life, — just at the right minute you will hear a voice, saying, ‘This is the way; walk ye in it,’ and you will feel the clasping of a hand.”

Ann walked beside Mrs. Baron upstairs, and turned to her own room. She sat down by her window. Of late her life had seemed to have the unvaried dreariness of the desert. Now it had blossomed with possibilities. She had been dwelling, as she admitted, on the gray side of life, now a new thought infused life with splendor, as the westward sky was shot through and through with glory by the sun. She had received no inspirations of romance or beauty, no afflatus of genius, but she had accepted the thought that her strong, sound body, and resolute, mediocre mind, could be used by the religion of the gospel as tools for useful and needed work. In soul-growth, she could reach a richness and fullness of being, otherwise unattainable. For seven years Ann had been a member of the church, and had been considered exemplary, but her religion, in point of fact, instead of being the ruling principle, hourly director, and constant measure of her life, had been relegated to Sabbath days and reserved for the hour and article of death, which always seems so far off from us all.

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“ Instead,” said Ann to herself, “ it seems that it must be an affair of every-day living : that gives one more breathing-room at once.”

She felt as if she had something in common with all these people from whom she had shrunk, and allowed herself to be drawn toward them. They met her bounteously.

“ Come walk up to the crest of the hill with me,” said Dorothy Camp, that evening. “ How I revel in this scenery ! It so surpasses what I have some summers ; for there are holidays which I spend with my aunts in Dillburg.”

“ Have you relatives in Dillburg ? I have a great aunt there, Mrs. Jane Fontaine — ”

“Is she your aunt? She lives just opposite my aunts ! ”

“ I visited her one summer, when I was sixteen. My parents had been kilted in a railroad disaster, and I went to Aunt Jane until my affairs were settled, and it was decided where I was to go to college,” said Ann.

“ I hope if I go there again, you will be there,” cried Dorothy.

“Thank you. It seems little likely. Aunt Fontaine has two other nieces living with her. She came to see me graduate, and spent three days with me at my boarding house — nearly three, — there was half a day she was out by herself, I do not know for what. She thought I needed rest, and asked me what I meant to do. I told her about coming hereand she thought it a good plan. She did not sug-

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gest that goingto Dillburg would be a better plan,” and Ann looked half grieved and pained at the thought of her aunt’s silence.

“ Well for you that she did not ! ” cried Dorothy. “ Dillburg is the most unattractive little place.”

“It seemed so to me, dull, unambitious, bereaved of beauty, as if neglected acres forgotten of God and men.”

“ I should say so ! Pigs roam the streets at will. Cows grazing on the waysides mingle the sound of their bells with the wheezing discords of cheap parlor organs and ancient melodeons. The church has lost all its paint, there is not a full block of good sidewalk ; only one store has plate glass windows ! The houses are all a worn, sad-colored paint ; no one keeps a handsome yard or lawn ; every one feels it due to thriftiness to feed a horse, colt, or calf in the front yard. There is no library, no reading-room, no hall for public entertainment : lectures and concerts pass Dillburg by on the other side of the way. The place lags seventy years behind the time 1

CHAPTER II. Explains all mysteries except her own

And so illuminates the path of life That fools discover it, and stray no more.”

Now that Arm Bradford allowed herself to meet readily the advances made to her by the other ladies at Mount Merion Cottage, she found them very delightful company. “ I had no idea,” she said, frankly, to Mrs. Baron, Junior, “ that you would be so friendly to me.”

“ That was because you did not permit us to be, was it not? I think that most people who are left alone — and feel lonely, and maybe slighted, may themselves be partly to blame because they are too shy or sensitive, and withdraw themselves. I have found it so in churches. I am one of the Deacon’s Aid and Visiting Committee in our church, and it is part of my duty to welcome strangers and to try to make them feel at home. I find some of them very hard to get at. They will not speak nor allow themselves to be spoken to if they can help it, merely because they are reticent, nervous folk. Once we

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succeed in making friends with them, they are very nice and often among our best helpers.”