Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See https://archive.org/details/hivewill00comfiala THE HIVE * * * * * * BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT THE HIVE THE LAST DITCH CHILD AND COUNTRY LOT & COMPANY RED FLEECE MIDSTREAM DOWN AMONG MEN FATHERLAND NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY * * * * * * THE HIVE by WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT Author of "Midstream," "Child and Country," "The Last Ditch," "Down Among Men," etc. [Illustration] New York George H. Doran Company Copyright, 1918, By George H. Doran Company Printed in the United States of America TO MARY ... soft gold and deep fragrance and pomegranate red. FOREWORD There is much to say. Many have a part in this story of our days. Their work is on the table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real beginning. One must start a book this way--with a fresh sheet in the machine and tell what he is going to tell about.... First of all, it has to do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the Stonestudy work has been for that, but the brimming wonder of it all is that we have chiefly been employed unfolding ourselves. No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred story of life to a child without taking a stride nearer into the centre of things, and living it. That's what all telling is about--presently to stop talking and to catch up on conduct. The fairest culture of all is to become artists in life.... Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one thing, we have been lured out of the heaviness of work into the dimension of Play. We tell here about this particular passage. Also something about the story of Man and Woman, hinting at what is contained in pages of the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes of the children of the New Race--a beautiful story, be sure of that, but one that requires art in the telling. No one could bring this story to the lovers and the children of the New Race who had not found out that Beauty belongs to the divine trinity with Goodness and Truth. Many seers have not held that well in mind, many sages have forgotten it, many saints have not learned it adequately at all. We have to build our own heavens here before we can have them anywhere else. The more of an artist a man is, the more reverent he becomes about perfecting his thought-forms. Just a mention now--that we rejoice to make much of the Beauty side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be beautiful and bad; that Beauty is the next quest of the many, as they escape one by one from the bondage of Gold.