Their Yesterdays

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Their Yesterdays

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Title: Their Yesterdays
Author: Harold Bell Wright
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6105] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on November 6, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THEIR YESTERDAYS ***

Etext prepared by Julie Barkley, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: In the glowing heart of the fire she saw her home warm with holy love.]
THEIR YESTERDAYS
By: HAROLD BELL WRIGHT
Author of "The Winning Of Barbara Worth" etc., etc.

With illustrations by F. GRAHAM COOTES

To Mrs. Elsbery W. Reynolds
In admiration of the splendid motherhood that, in her sons, has contributed such wealth of manhood to the race. And, in her daughter, has given to human-kind such riches of womanhood. With kindest regards, I inscribe this book.
H. B. W.
"Relay Heights" June 8, 1912

_Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite; Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age; Pleased with this bauble still, as that before; Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er._
"AN ESSAY ON MAN"--_Pope._

PROEM
There was a man.
And it happened--as such things often so happen--that this man went back into his days that were gone. Again and again and again he went back. Even as every man, even as you and I, so this man went back into his Yesterdays.
Then--why then there was a woman.
And it happened--as such things sometimes so happen--that this woman also went back into her days that were gone. Again and again and again she went back. Even as every woman, even as you and I, so this woman went back into her Yesterdays.
So it happened--as such things do happen--that the Yesterdays of this man and the Yesterdays of this woman became Their Yesterdays, and that they went back, then, no more alone but always together.
Even as one, they, forever after, went back.

What They Found in Their Yesterdays
And the man and the woman who went back into Their Yesterdays found there the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life. Just as they found these things in their grown up days, even unto the end, so they found them in Their Yesterdays.
Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life there are. No life can have less. No life can have more. All of life is in them. No life is without them all.
Dreams, Occupation, Knowledge, Ignorance, Religion, Tradition, Temptation, Life, Death, Failure, Success, Love, Memories: these are the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life--found by the man and the woman in their grown up days--found by them in Their Yesterdays--and they found no others.
It does not matter where this man and this woman lived, nor who they were, nor what they did. It does not matter when or how many times they went back into Their Yesterdays. These things are all that they found. And they found these things even as every man and woman finds them, even as you and I find them, in our days that are and in our days that were--in our grown up days and in our Yesterdays.
And it is so that in all of these Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life there is a man and there is a woman.

THE THIRTEEN TRULY GREAT THINGS OF LIFE
DREAMS
OCCUPATION
KNOWLEDGE
IGNORANCE
RELIGION
TRADITION
TEMPTATION
LIFE
DEATH
FAILURE
SUCCESS
LOVE
MEMORIES

THEIR YESTERDAYS

DREAMS
The man, for the first time, stood face to face with Life and, for the first time, knew that he was a man.
For a long time he had known that some day he would be a man. But he had always thought of his manhood as a matter of years. He had said to himself: "when I am twenty-one, I will be a man." He did not know, then, that twenty-one years--that indeed three times twenty-one years--cannot make a man. He did not