A String of Amber Beads | Page 6

pipes out a silver note
once in a dozen years, uncover your head when you hear it, for it is the
original angel within the mechanism, which nothing can kill!

XIII.
THE FIRST KATYDID.
The first katydid of the season has whipped out his bow and drawn the
preparatory note across the strings of his violin. He is alone at present
and he plays to an empty house, but it will not be long before the
orchestra fills up and the music is in full blast. The cricket is getting
ready to throw aside the green baize that has held his piccolo so long,
and before the middle of the month there will not be a tuft of grass nor
a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with the shrill,
complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lighted the
candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, and the
aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow laces upon
the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only six weeks
to frost! Only six weeks to the time for the unbottling of the year's
vintage and the exchange of tea for sparkling wine. Hasten forward,
then, oh, days of radiant life and sparkling weather! We are tired of
torrid waves and flies; of snakes, hornets and cyclones.

XIV.
A PLEA FOR MEN.
A more or less extended experience as a bread-winner has taught me a
noble charity for men. I used to think that all the head of a family was

good for was to accumulate riches and pay bills, but I am beginning to
think that there is many a martyr spirit hidden away beneath the
business man's suit of tweed. Wife and daughters stand ever before him,
like hoppers waiting for grist to grind. "Give! Give!" is their constant
cry, like the rattle of the upper and nether stones. This panegyric does
not apply to the man who frequents clubs and spends his money on
between-meal drinks and lottery tickets. It applies rather to the
unselfish, hardworking father of a family, who works early and late to
keep his daughters like lilies that have no need to toil, and to help
maintain the ostentation of vain display upon which depends the social
success of a worldly and frivolous wife. It would be far more to those
daughters' credit if they did something in the line of honest and
honorable toil to support themselves, rather than live on the heart's
blood of an unselfish and overworked father; and as for the wife who
exacts the income of a duchess to keep up the silly parade of Vanity
Fair, there may come a day for her, when, shorn of the generous and
loving support of a good husband, and forced to earn her own
livelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt men are sometimes
forced to do, she will appreciate, too late, the blessing that Heaven has
taken from her.

XV.
WHAT I'M TIRED OF.
I am tired of many things. I am tired of the miserable little god,
"worry," shrined in every home. I am tired of doing perpetual homage
to the same black-faced little wretch. I am tired of putting down pride
and curbing a righteous indignation. I am tired of keeping my hands off
human weeds. I am tired of crucifying my tastes, and cultivating the
nickel that springs perennial to meet my needs. I am tired of poverty
and all needful discipline. I am tired of seeing babies born to people
who don't know how to bring them up. I am tired of folks who smile
continuously. I am tired of amiable fools and the platitudes of
unintelligent saints. I am tired of mediocrity. I am tired of cats, both
human and feline. I am tired of being a soldier and marching with the

advance guard. I am tired of girls who giggle and of boys who swear. I
am tired of married women who think it charming to be a little giddy,
and of married men who ogle young girls and other men's wives. I am
tired of a world where love is like the blossom of the century plant,
unfolding only once in a hundred years. I am tired of men who are
worthless and decayed to the core, like blighted peaches. I am tired of
seeing such men in power. I am tired of being obliged to smile where I
long to smite. I am tired of vulgarity which glides forever through the
world like the snake through Eden. I am tired of women who bear the
hearts of tigers, and of men who roar like lions, yet show the valor of
mice. I am tired of living shoulder to shoulder