Alabama -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction; Domestic fiction; War stories
"And then she raised her head, and upward cast
Wild looks from HOMELESS EYES, whose liquid light
Gleamed out between the folds of blue-black hair,
As gleam twin lakes between the purple peaks
Of deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon."
After a short silence, Sir Roger said:
"Miss Earl, I can find no triumph written on your features, and I doubt
whether you realize how very proud your friends are of your success."
"As yet, sir, it is not assured. My next book will determine my status
in literature; and I have too much to accomplish--I have achieved too
little, to pause and look back, and pat my own shoulder, and cry, Io
triumphe! I am not so indifferent as you seem to imagine. Praise
gratifies, and censure pains me; but I value both as mere gauges of my
work, indexing the amount of good I may or may not hope to effect. I
wish to be popular--that is natural, and, surely, pardonable; but I
desire it not as an end, but as a means to an end--usefulness to my
fellow-creatures;
'And whether crowned or crownless, when I fall,
It matters not, so as God's work is done.'
I love my race, I honor my race; I believe that human nature,
sublimated by Christianity, is capable of attaining nobler heights than
pagan philosophers and infidel seers ever dreamed of. And because my
heart yearns toward my fellow-creatures, I want to clasp one hand in
the warm throbbing palm of sinful humanity, and with the other hold up
the lamp that God gave me to carry through this world, and so struggle
onward, heavenward, with this generation of men and women. I claim no
clear Uriel vision, now and then I stumble and grope; but at least I
try to keep my little lamp trimmed, and I am not so blind as some, who
reel and stagger in the Maremme of crime and fashionable vice. As a
pilgrim toiling through a world of sinful temptation, and the night of
time where the stars are often shrouded, I cry to those beyond and
above me, 'Hold high your lights, that I may see my way!' and to those
behind and below me, 'Brothers! sisters! come on, come up!' Ah! these
steeps of human life are hard enough to climb when each shares his
light and divides his neighbor's grievous burden. God help us all to
help one another! Mecca pilgrims stop in the Valley of Muna to stone
the Devil; sometimes I fear that in the Muna of life we only stone each
other and martyr Stephen. Last week I read a lecture on architecture,
and since then I find myself repeating one of the passages: 'And
therefore, lastly and chiefly, you must love the creatures to whom you
minister, your fellow-men; for if you do not love them, not only will
you be little interested in the passing events of life, but in all your
gazing at humanity, you will be apt to be struck only by outside form,
and not by expression. It is only kindness and tenderness which will
ever enable you to see what beauty there is in the dark eyes that are
sunk with weeping, and in the paleness of those fixed faces which the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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