Jewel Weed

"Mrs. Lenox and I have been longer in the game than you, Dick," answered

his host whimsically. "We are getting dangerously near the equator; and

we do not find ourselves exhausted. On the contrary, I rather think the

scenery improves, in some respects, as we go along."

"You are hardly capable of measuring the common fate. You have had the

touchstone of success, and the world has opened up before you. But what

depress me and impress me are the sodden people whom I meet by the

hundred; and I can't help reading my fate in the light of theirs. There

are such millions of us, obscure and uncounted except on the census."

"If you will persist in talking serious things," said Ellery, "isn't

obscurity, after all, an internal and not an external quality? You've

got to believe that you are a creature that is worth while. There is no

bitterness in belonging to the myriads if the myriads are themselves

dignified by nature."

"But are they?" cried Dick, now rousing himself. "I look at every face I

pass on the street. I'm always on the search for some ideal quality; and

what do I see? Egotism and greed answer me from all their eyes. The

ninety and nine have gone astray."

"Then it belongs to you to be the hundredth who does not go astray; and

who gives a satisfactory answer to the same eternal questioning that

meets you in the eyes of other men. It's not given to any man to play a

neutral part in the world conflict. In all the magnificent interplay of

forces, I doubt if there is any force strong enough to keep one standing

still."

"Yes, my dear Ellery. And it is just that eternal motion that I am

complaining about. It is burdensome to the flesh and wearisome to the

imagination to look forward to a future of eternal rushing and striving.

I have a multitude of experiences every year, and I straightway forget

them; and that deepens the impression that all these little affairs of

ours, about which we make such an infernal racket at the time, are

matters of very small importance in the march of the centuries. The

march of the centuries may be majestic, but the waddle of this little

ant of a man is not. It's insignificant."

"That's a dangerous state of mind to be in, Dick," said Lenox.

"And after all, you can't help being a very important thing to

yourself," said Madeline. "And it must be of eternal significance to you

whether your soul is walking with the centuries or against them."

"My dear Madeline," answered Dick, "when I am with you and such as you

who live on a little remote mountain, eternity seems a very important

matter; but when I am with most people, next Wednesday, when taxes are

due, looms up and shuts out eternity. And you will permit me to think

that you women who are sheltered and who sit with the good things of

life heaped about you, don't know very much about practical conditions."