A String of Amber Beads | Page 9

challenges us with the opprobrious
epithet, "crank." Why, I believe there is hardly a man or woman to-day
who would have the courage to march up to a half-grown boy and
knock the cigarette out of his mouth, or tackle the omnipresent, from
everlasting to everlasting expectorator and buffet him into decency, or
drive the "nose-bag" and the "head-check" fiend at the point of an
umbrella from all future molestation of the noble horse he persecutes!
We all believe in the extermination of public nuisances, but we have
not the courage of our convictions to enable us to fight the fight of the
just to overthrow the rampancy of the evil doer.

XXII.
BLESSED BE BASHFULNESS.
Like the presence of a fresh clover in a meadow of sun-scorched
grasses, or the sound of a singing lark in a council of crows, is the sight
of a bashful child. In this age of juvenile precocity and pinafore
wisdom I would rather run across a downright timid boy or girl than
drink Arctic soda in dog days. Never be distressed, then, when
"johnnie" hangs his head and blushes like a girl, or when his little sister
stands on one foot and fairly writhes with embarrassment in the
presence of strangers. Count it rather the very crown of joy that you are
the parent of a fresh and innocent child, rather than the superfluous
attendant of a _blasé_ infant, who discounts a circus herald in "cheek"
and outdistances a drummer in politic address and unabashed effrontery.
If I had my way I would put half the little mannikins and pattern dolls
of our latter day nurseries into a big corn-popper and see if I couldn't
evolve something sweeter and more wholesome out of the hard, round,
compact little kernels of their present individuality. I would utterly do
away with children's parties and "butterfly balls" and kirmess
dissipations. There should be a new deal of bread and milk all around.
Every boy in the land should go to bed at sundown, and every girl
should wear a sunbonnet. There should be no carrying of canes, or
eating of candy, or wearing of jewelry, or talking of beaux, and I would
dig up from the grave of the long ago the quaint old custom of
courtesying to strangers, of keeping silent until spoken to, and of
universal respect for the aged. This world would brighten up like a rose
garden after a shower with the presence of so many modest little girls
and bashful boys of the good old-fashioned sort.

XXIII.
A BEWITCHED VIOLIN.
I went to the Auditorium the other night to hear somebody play on the

violin. But that was not a violin which the slender, dark eyed performer
used, and the music that so charmed me was not drawn from strings
and flashed forth by any ordinary bow. The heavenly notes to which I
listened were like those that young leaves give forth when May winds
find them, or that ripples make, drawn softly over pebbly beaches. And
when they died away and floated like a whisper through the hushed
house, it was no longer music; it was a great golden-jacketed bee
settling sleepily into the heart of a rose; it was the chime of a
vesper-bell broken in mellow cadences between vine-clad hills; it was a
something that had no form nor shape, nor semblance to any earthly
thing, yet floated midway between the earth and sky, light as the
frailest flower of snow the north wind ever cradled, substanceless as
smoke or wind-followed mist.

XXIV.
A HAT PIN PROBLEM.
I overheard the following conversation the other day in a popular
refectory:
"Do your children mind you?"
"I guess not; they never pay any more attention to me than if I was a
dummy. It takes their father to bring them to terms every time!"
"I am so glad to hear it. I like to know that somebody else besides me
has a hard time with their children. I declare the only way I can get
baby to mind already is to jab him with a hat-pin!"
I waited to hear no more. With sad precipitation I gathered up my
check and fled. Had I waited another minute I should have said to that
mother: "Madam, I will give you a problem to solve. If, at the age of
three, a child needs the impetus of one hat-pin to make him obey, how
many meat-axes will it require to keep him in order at the age of ten?
And if you are such a poor miserable failure as a mother and a woman
now, just at the commencement of an immortal destiny, what have the

eternities in store for you?"
Why, oh, why are children sent to people who have no more