A String of Amber Beads | Page 7

with my pet antipathies.
I am tired of the everlasting inveighing against capital, when any idiot
knows that capital is the king-bolt that holds the world together. I am
tired of wearing shabby clothes, and meeting folks who judge of a
parcel by the quality of wrapping paper it is incased in. I am tired of
being well-behaved and decorous when I want to fling stones and make
faces. I am tired of smelling the game dinner of my neighbor and sitting
down at home to beans and bacon. I am tired of many more things, the
enumeration of which would take from now until the day after forever.

XVI.
NOTHING LIKE A GOOD LAUGH.
Do you know, my dear, that there is absolutely nothing that will help
you to bear the ills of life so well as a good laugh. Laugh all you can,
and the small imps in blue who love to preempt their quarters in a
human heart will scatter away like owls before the music of flutes.
There are few of the minor difficulties and annoyances that will not
dissipate at the charge of the nonsense brigade. If the clothes line
breaks, if the cat tips over the milk and the dog elopes with the roast, if
the children fall into the mud simultaneously with the advent of clean
aprons, if the new girl quits in the middle of housecleaning, and though
you search the earth with candles you find none to take her place, if the
neighbor in whom you have trusted goes back on you and decides to
keep chickens, if the chariot wheels of the uninvited guest draw near

when you are out of provender, and the gaping of your empty purse is
like the unfilled mouth of a young robin take courage if you have
enough sunshine in your heart, to keep a laugh on your lips. Before
good nature, half the cares of daily living will fly away like midges
before the wind; try it.

XVII.
HOLD! ENOUGH!!
The other evening it chanced that a combination of disastrous
circumstances wrought havoc with my temper. I lost my train; my head
hummed like a bumblebee with weary pain, and the elastic that held my
hat to its moorings broke, so that that capering compromise between
inanimate matter and demoniac possession blew half a block up street
on its own account, and was brought back to me by a youthful son of
Belial, who took my very last quarter as reward for the lively chase.
"There's no use!" said I to myself as I jogged along through the
gloaming; "blessed be the woman who knows enough to cry 'hold!'
against such odds!"
And just then I spied a wizened little mite of a woman trotting by,
carrying a gripsack bigger than herself. She grasped it, and held it
against her wan little stomach, as a Roman warrior might carry his
shield into battle--plucky to the last.
"Now," said I, "look here, Amber, have you a fifty pound sachel to tug
through the darkness? No! Then you might be worse off."
And I went on a little farther and I met the brave firemen going home
drenched and worn from the big fire. "You coward!" said I to myself,
"what if you were a fireman! Something to growl about then, I guess."
And I went a bit farther and I saw a little white coffin in a window.
"How about that?" said I. "If the darlings were gone to their long home
you might talk about trouble!"

And a few moments later I ran across an old man without any legs,
peddling papers. And then I said: "Do you call your life a grind, madam,
with two legs to walk upon, and a sufficient income to admit of an
occasional fling? What if you had wooden legs, and peddled papers?"
Now, I have told you this for a purpose. However dark your lot may be
there are worse all around you. You may be inclined to think that the
bloom and the brightness have gone out of your life, leaving nothing
behind them but what remains of the carnation when the frost finds it--a
withered stalk. But if you will take the trouble to watch, you will find
that there is always something harder to bear than your own trouble,
and, put to the test, you wouldn't change crosses with your neighbor.

XVIII.
RIPE OPPORTUNITIES.
What if a man went over the lake to St. Joe to visit the peach orchards
at the maturity of their delicious harvest! The consent of the owner of
the fairest plantation of the many has been gained, let us imagine, for
the plucking of the perfect fruit. And yet, in despite of opportunity and
privilege, what would