for him the scenes of bygone days, he once more ascended the six flights
of stairs of all the garrets in which his adventurous existence had been
spent, in which the Muse, his only love in those days, a faithful and
persevering sweetheart had always followed him, living happily with
poverty and never breaking off her song of hope. But, lo, in the midst
of this regular and tranquil life there suddenly appears a woman's face,
and seeing her enter the dwelling where she had been until then sole
queen and mistress, the poet's Muse rose sadly and gave place to the
new-comer in whom she had divined a rival. Rodolphe hesitated a moment
between the Muse to whom his look seemed to say, "Stay," whilst a
gesture addressed to the stranger said, "Come."

And how could he repulse her, this charming creature who came to him
armed with all the seductions of a beauty at its dawn? Tiny mouth and
rosy lips, speaking in bold and simple language, full of coaxing
promises. How refuse his hand to this little white one, delicately
veined with blue, that was held out to him full of caresses? How say,
"Get you gone," to these eighteen years, the presence of which already
filled the home with a perfume of youth and gaiety? And then with her
sweet voice, tenderly thrilling, she sang the cavatina of temptation so
well. With her bright and sparkling eyes she said so clearly, "I am
love," with her lips, where kisses nestled, "I am pleasure," with her
whole being, in short, "I am happiness," that Rodolphe let himself be
caught by them. And, besides, was not this young girl after all real and
living poetry, had he not owed her his freshest inspirations, had she
not often initiated him into enthusiasms which bore him so far afield in
the ether of reverie that he lost sight of all things of earth? If he
had suffered deeply on account of her, was not this suffering the
expiation of the immense joys she had bestowed upon him? Was it not the
ordinary vengeance of human fate which forbids absolute happiness as an
impiety? If the law of Christianity forgives those who have much loved,
it is because they have also much suffered, and terrestrial love never
became a divine passion save on condition of being purified by tears. As
one grows intoxicated by breathing the odor of faded roses, Rodolphe
again became so by reviving in recollection that past life in which
every day brought about a fresh elegy, a terrible drama, or a grotesque
comedy. He went through all the phases of his strange love from their
honeymoon to the domestic storms that had brought about their last
rupture, he recalled all the tricks of his ex-mistress, repeated all her
witty sayings. He saw her going to and fro about their little household,
humming her favorite song, and facing with the same careless gaiety good
or evil days.

And in the end he arrived at the conclusion that common sense was always
wrong in love affairs. What, indeed, had he gained by their rupture? At
the time when he was living with Mimi she deceived him, it was true, but
if he was aware of this it was his fault after all that he was so, and
because he gave himself infinite pains to become aware of it, because he
passed his time on the alert for proofs, and himself sharpened the
daggers which he plunged into his heart. Besides, was not Mimi clever
enough to prove to him at need that he was mistaken? And then for whose
sake was she false to him? It was generally a shawl or a bonnet--for the
sake of things and not men. That calm, that tranquillity which he had
hoped for on separating from his mistress, had he found them again
after her departure? Alas, no! There was only herself the less in the
house. Of old his grief could find vent, he could break into abuse, or
representations--he could show all he suffered and excite the pity of
her who caused his sufferings. But now his grief was solitary, his
jealousy had become madness, for formerly he could at any rate, when he
suspected anything, hinder Mimi from going out, keep her beside him in
his possession, and now he might meet her in the street on the arm of
her new lover, and must turn aside to let her pass, happy no doubt, and
bent upon pleasure.

This wretched life lasted three or four months. By degrees he recovered
his calmness. Marcel, who had undertaken a long journey to drive Musette
out of his mind, returned to Paris, and again came to live with
Rodolphe. They consoled one another.

One Sunday, crossing the Luxembourg Gardens, Rodolphe met Mimi
resplendently dressed. She was going to a public ball. She nodded to
him, to which he responded by a bow. This meeting gave him a great
shock, but his emotion was less painful than usual. He walked about for
a little while in the gardens, and then returned home. When Marcel came
in that evening he found him at work.

"What!" said Marcel, leaning over his shoulder. "You are
working--verses?"

"Yes," replied Rodolphe cheerfully, "I believe that the machine will
still work. During the last four hours I have once more found the go of
bygone time, I have seen Mimi."

"Ah!" said Marcel uneasily. "On what terms are you?"

"Do not be afraid," said Rodolphe, "we only bowed to one another. It
went no further than that."

"Really and truly?" asked Marcel.

"Really and truly. It is all over between us, I feel it; but if I can
get to work again I forgive her."

"If it is so completely finished," said Marcel, who had read through
Rodolphe's verses, "why do you write verses about her?"

"Alas!" replied the poet, "I take my poetry where I can find it."

For a week he worked at this little poem. When he had finished it he
read it to Marcel, who expressed himself satisfied with it, and who
encouraged Rodolphe to utilize in other ways the poetical vein that had
come back to him.

"For," remarked he, "it was not worth while leaving Mimi if you are
always to live under her shadow. After all, though," he continued,
smiling, "instead of lecturing others, I should do well to lecture
myself, for my heart is still full of Musette. Well, after all, perhaps
we shall not always be young fellows in love with such imps."

"Alas!" said Rodolphe, "there is no need to say in one's youth, 'Be off
with you.'"

"That is true," observed Marcel, "but there are days on which I feel I
should like to be a respectable old fellow, a member of the Institute,
decorated with several orders, and, having done with the Musettes of
this circle of society; the devil fly away with me if I would return to
it. And you," he continued, laughing, "would you like to be sixty?"

"Today," replied Rodolphe, "I would rather have sixty francs."

A few days later, Mademoiselle Mimi having gone into a cafe with young
Vicomte Paul, opened a magazine, in which the verses Rodolphe had
written on her were printed.

"Good," said she, laughing at first, "here is my friend Rodolphe saying
nasty things of me in the papers."

But when she finished the verses she remained intent and thoughtful.
Vicomte Paul guessing that she was thinking of Rodolphe, sought to
divert her attention.

"I will buy you a pair of earrings," said he.

"Ah!" said Mimi, "you have money, you have."

"And a Leghorn straw hat," continued the viscount.

"No," said Mimi. "If you want to please me, buy me this."

And she showed him the magazine in which she had just been reading
Rodolphe's poetry.

"Oh! As to that, no," said the viscount, vexed.

"Very well," said Mimi coldly. "I will buy it myself with money I will
earn. In point of fact, I would rather that it was not with yours."

And for two days Mimi went back to her old flower maker's workrooms,
where she earned enough to buy this number. She learned Rodolphe's
poetry by heart, and, to annoy Vicomte Paul, repeated it all day long to
her friends. The verses were as follows:

            WHEN I was seeking where to pledge my truth
            Chance brought me face to face with you one day;
            once I offered you my heart, my youth,
            "Do with them what you will," I dared to say.

            But "what you would," was cruel, dear; alas!
            The youth I trusted with you is no more:
            The heart is shattered like a fallen glass,
            And the wind sings a funeral mass
            On the deserted chamber floor,
            Where he who loved you ne'er may pass.

            Between us now, my dear, 'tis all UP,
            I am a spectre and a phantom you,
            Our love is dead and buried; if you agree,
            We'll sing around its tombstone dirges due.

            But let us take an air in a low key,
            Lest we should strain our voices, more or less;
            Some solemn minor, free from flourishes;
            I'll take the bass, sing you the melody.

            Mi, re, mi, do, re, la,--ah! not that song!
            Hearing the song that once you used to sing
            My heart would palpitate--though dead so long--
            And, at the _De Profundis_, upward spring.

            Do, mi, fa, sol, mi, do,--this other brings
            Back to the mind a valse of long ago,
            The fife's shrill laughter mocked the sounding strings
            That wept their notes of crystal to the bow.

            Sol, do, do, si, si, la,--ah! stay your hand!
            This is the air we sang last year in chorus,
            With Germans shouting for their fatherland
            In Meudon woods, while summer's moon stood o'er us.

            Well, well, we will not sing nor speculate,
            But--since we know they never more may be--
            On our lost loves, without a grudge or hate,
            Drop, while we smile, a final memory.

            What times we had up there; do you remember?
            When on your window panes the rain would stream,
            And, seated by the fire, in dark December,
            I felt your eyes inspire me many a dream.

            The live coal crackled, kindling with the heat,
            The kettle sang, melodious and sedate,
            A music for the visionary feet
            Of salamanders leaping in the grate:

            Languid and lazy, with an unread book,
            You scarcely tried to keep your lids apart,
            While to my youthful love new growth I took,
            Kissing your hands and yielding you my heart.

            In merely entering one night believe,
            One felt a scent of love and gaiety,
            Which filled our little room from morn to eve,
            For fortune loved our hospitality.

            And winter went: then, through the open sash,
            Spring flew, to say the year's long night was done;
            We heard the call, and ran with impulse rash
            In the green country side to meet the sun.

            It was the Friday of the Holy Week,
            The weather, for a wonder, mild and fair;
            From hill to valley, and from plain to peak,
            We wandered long, delighting in the air.

            At length, exhausted by the pilgrimage,
            We found a sort of natural divan,
            Whence we could view the landscape, or engage
            Our eyes in rapture on the heaven's wide span.

            Hand clasped in hand, shoulder on shoulder laid,
            With sense of something ventured, something missed,
            Our two lips parted, each; no word was said,
            And silently we kissed.

            Around us blue-bell and shy violet
            Their simple incense seemed to wave on high;
            Surely we saw, with glances heavenward set,
            God smiling from his azure balcony.

            "Love on!" he seemed to say, "I make more sweet
            The road of life you are to wander by,
            Spreading the velvet moss beneath your feet;
            Kiss, if you will; I shall not play the spy."

            Love on, love on! In murmurs of the breeze,
            In limpid stream, and in the woodland screen
            That burgeons fresh in the renovated green,
            In stars, in flowers, and music of the trees,

            Love on, love on! But if my golden sun,
            My spring, that comes once more to gladden earth,
            If these should move your breasts to grateful mirth,
            I ask no thanksgiving, your kiss is one.

            A month passed by; and, when the roses bloomed
            In beds that we had planted in the spring,
            When least of all I thought my love was doomed,
            You cast it from you like a noisome thing.

            Not that your scorn was all reserved for me,
            It flies about the world by fits and starts;
            Your changeful fancy fits impartially
            From knave of diamonds to knave of hearts.

            And now you are happy, with a brilliant suite
            Of bowing slaves and insincere gallants;
            Go where you will, you see them at your feet;
            A bed of perfumed posies round you flaunts:

            The Ball's your garden: an admiring globe
            Of lovers rolls about the lit saloon,
            And, at the rustling of your silken robe,
            The pack, in chorus, bay you like the moon.

            Shod in the softness of a supple boot
            Which Cinderella would have found too small,
            One scarcely sees your little pointed foot
            Flash in the flashing circle of the Ball.

            Shod in the softness of a supple boot
            Which Cinderella would have found too small,
            One scarcely sees your little pointed foot
            Flash in the flashing circle of the Ball.

            In the soft baths that indolence has brought
            Your once brown hands have got the ivory white,
            The pallor of the lily which has caught
            The silver moonbeam of a summer night:

            On your white arm half clouded, and half clear,
            Pearls shine in bracelets made of chiselled gold;
            On your trim waist a shawl of true Cashmere
            Aesthetically falls in waving fold:

            Honiton point and costly Mechlin lace,
            With gothic guipure of a creamy white--
            The matchless cobwebs of long vanished days--
            Combine to make your presence rich and bright.

            But I preferred a simpler guise than that,
            Your frock of muslin or plain calico,
            Simple adornments, with a veilless hat,
            Boots, black or grey, a collar white and low.

            The splendor your admirers now adore
            Will never bring me back my ancient heats;
            And you are dead and buried, all the more
            For the silk shroud where heart no longer beats.

            So when I worked at this funereal dirge,
            Where grief for a lost lifetime stands confessed,
            I wore a clerk's costume of sable serge,
            Though not gold eye glasses or pleated vest.

            My penholder was wrapped in mournful crape,
            The paper with black lines was bordered round
            On which I labored to provide escape
            For love's last memory hidden in the ground.

            And now, when all the heart that I can save
            Is used to furnish forth its epitaph.
            Gay as a sexton digging his own grave
            I burst into a wild and frantic laugh;

            A laugh engendered by a mocking vein;
            The pen I grasped was trembling as I wrote;
            And even while I laughed, a scalding rain
            Of tears turned all the writing to a blot.

It was the 24th of December, and that evening the Latin Quarter bore a
special aspect. Since four o'clock in the afternoon the pawnbroking
establishments and the shops of the second hand clothes dealers and
booksellers had been encumbered by a noisy crowd, who, later in the
evening, took the ham and beef shops, cook shops, and grocers by
assault. The shopmen, even if they had had a hundred arms, like
Briareus, would not have sufficed to serve the customers who struggled
with one another for provisions. At the baker's they formed a string as
in times of dearth. The wine shop keepers got rid of the produce of
three vintages, and a clever statistician would have found it difficult
to reckon up the number of knuckles of ham and of sausages which were
sold at the famous shop of Borel, in the Rue Dauphine. In this one
evening Daddy Cretaine, nicknamed Petit-Pain, exhausted eighteen
editions of his cakes. All night long sounds of rejoicing broke out from
the lodging houses, the windows of which were brilliantly lit up, and an
atmosphere of revelry filled the district.

The old festival of Christmas Eve was being celebrated.

That evening, towards ten o'clock, Marcel and Rodolphe were proceeding
homeward somewhat sadly. Passing up the Rue Dauphine they noticed a
great crowd in the shop of a provision dealer, and halted a moment
before the window. Tantalized by the sight of the toothsome gastronomic
products, the two Bohemians resembled, during this contemplation, that
person in a Spanish romance who caused hams to shrink only by looking at
them.

"That is called a truffled turkey," said Marcel, pointing to a splendid
bird, showing through its rosy and transparent skin the Perigordian
tubercles with which it was stuffed. "I have seen impious folk eat it
without first going down on their knees before it," added the painter,
casting upon the turkey looks capable of roasting it.

"And what do you think of that modest leg of salt marsh mutton?" asked
Rodolphe. "What fine coloring! One might think it was just unhooked from
that butcher's shop in one of Jordaen's pictures. Such a leg of mutton
is the favorite dish of the gods, and of my godmother Madame
Chandelier."

"Look at those fish!" resumed Marcel, pointing to some trout. "They are
the most expert swimmers of the aquatic race. Those little creatures,
without any appearance of pretension, could, however, make a fortune by
the exhibition of their skill; fancy, they can swim up a perpendicular
waterfall as easily as we should accept an invitation to supper. I have
almost had a chance of tasting them."

"And down there--those large golden fruit, the foliage of which
resembles a trophy of savage sabre blades! They are called pineapples,
and are the pippins of the tropics."

"That is a matter of indifference to me," said Marcel. "So far as fruits
are concerned, I prefer that piece of beef, that ham, or that simple
gammon of bacon, cuirassed with jelly as transparent as amber."

"You are right," replied Rodolphe. "Ham is the friend of man, when he
has one. However, I would not repulse that pheasant."

"I should think not; it is the dish of crowned heads."

And as, continuing on their way, they met joyful processions proceeding
homewards, to do honor to Momus, Bacchus, Comus, and all the other
divinities with names ending in "us," they asked themselves who was the
Gamacho whose wedding was being celebrated with such a profusion of
victuals.

Marcel was the first who recollected the date and its festival.

"It is Christmas Eve," said he.

"Do you remember last year's?" inquired Rodolphe.

"Yes," replied Marcel. "At Momus's. It was Barbemuche who stood treat. I
should never have thought that a delicate girl like Phemie could have
held so much sausage."

"What a pity that Momus has cut off our credit," said Rodolphe.

"Alas," said Marcel, "calendars succeed but do not resemble one
another."

"Would not you like to keep Christmas Eve?" asked Rodolphe.

"With whom and with what?" inquired the painter.

"With me."

"And the coin?"

"Wait a moment," said Rodolphe, "I will go into the cafe, where I know
some people who play high. I will borrow a few sesterces from some
favorite of fortune, and I will get something to wash down a sardine or
a pig's trotter."

"Go," said Marcel. "I am as hungry as a dog. I will wait for you here,"
Rodolphe went into the cafe where he knew several people. A gentleman
who had just won three hundred francs at cards made a regular treat of
lending the poet a forty sous piece, which he handed over with that ill
humor caused by the fever of play. At another time and elsewhere than
at a card-table, he would very likely have been good for forty francs.

"Well?" inquired Marcel, on seeing Rodolphe return.

"Here are the takings," said the poet, showing the money.

"A bite and a sup," said Marcel.

With this small sum they were however able to obtain bread, wine, cold
meat, tobacco, fire and light.

They returned home to the lodging-house in which each had a separate
room. Marcel's, which also served him as a studio, being the larger, was
chosen as the banquetting hall, and the two friends set about the
preparations for their feast there.

But to the little table at which they were seated, beside a fireplace in
which the damp logs burned away without flame or heat, came a melancholy
guest, the phantom of the vanished past.

They remained for an hour at least, silent, and thoughtful, but no doubt
preoccupied by the same idea and striving to hide it. It was Marcel who
first broke silence.

"Come," said he to Rodolphe, "this is not what we promised ourselves."

"What do you mean?" asked Rodolphe.

"Oh!" replied Marcel. "Do not try to pretend with me now. You are
thinking of that which should be forgotten and I too, by Jove, I do not
deny it."

"Well?"

"Well, it must be for the last time. To the devil with recollections
that make wine taste sour and render us miserable when everybody else
are amusing themselves," exclaimed Marcel, alluding to the joyful shouts
coming from the rooms adjoining theirs. "Come, let us think of something
else, and let this be the last time."

"That is what we always say and yet--," said Rodolphe, falling anew into
the reverie.

"And yet we are continually going back to it," resumed Marcel. "That is
because instead of frankly seeking to forget, we make the most trivial
things a pretext to recall remembrances, which is due above all to the
fact that we persist in living amidst the same surroundings in which the
beings who have so long been our torment lived. We are less the slaves
of passion than of habit. It is this captivity that must be escaped
from, or we shall wear ourselves out in a ridiculous and shameful
slavery. Well, the past is past, we must break the ties that still bind
us to it. The hour has come to go forward without looking backward; we
have had our share of youth, carelessness, and paradox. All these are
very fine--a very pretty novel could be written on them; but this comedy
of amourous follies, this loss of time, of days wasted with the
prodigality of people who believe they have an eternity to spend--all
this must have an end. It is no longer possible for us to continue to
live much longer on the outskirts of society--on the outskirts of life
almost--under the penalty of justifying the contempt felt for us, and of
despising ourselves. For, after all, is it a life we lead? And are not
the independence, the freedom of mannerism of which we boast so loudly,
very mediocre advantages? True liberty consists of being able to
dispense with the aid of others, and to exist by oneself, and have we
got to that? No, the first scoundrel, whose name we would not bear for
five minutes, avenges himself for our jests, and becomes our lord and
master the day on which we borrow from him five francs, which he lends
us after having made us dispense the worth of a hundred and fifty in
ruses or in humiliations. For my part, I have had enough of it. Poetry
does not alone exist in disorderly living, touch-and-go happiness, loves
that last as long as a bedroom candle, more or less eccentric revolts
against those prejudices which will eternally rule the world, for it is
easier to upset a dynasty than a custom, however ridiculous it may be.
It is not enough to wear a summer coat in December to have talent; one
can be a real poet or artist whilst going about well shod and eating
three meals a day. Whatever one may say, and whatever one may do, if one
wants to attain anything one must always take the commonplace way. This
speech may astonish you, friend Rodolphe; you may say that I am breaking
my idols, you will call me corrupted; and yet what I tell you is the
expression of my sincere wishes. Despite myself, a slow and salutary
metamorphosis has taken place within me; reason has entered my
mind--burglariously, if you like, and perhaps against my will, but it
has got in at last--and has proved to me that I was on a wrong track,
and that it would be at once ridiculous and dangerous to persevere in
it. Indeed, what will happen if we continue this monotonous and idle
vagabondage? We shall get to thirty, unknown, isolated, disgusted with
all things and with ourselves, full of envy towards all those whom we
see reach their goal, whatever it may be, and obliged, in order to live,
to have recourse to shameful parasitism. Do not imagine that this is a
fancy picture I have conjured up especially to frighten you. The future
does not systematically appear to be all black, but neither does it all
rose colored; I see it clearly as it is. Up till now the life we have
led has been forced upon us--we had the excuse of necessity. Now we are
no longer to be excused, and if we do not re-enter the world, it will be
voluntarily, for the obstacles against which we have had to struggle no
longer exist."

"I say," said Rodolphe, "what are you driving at? Why and wherefore this
lecture?"

"You thoroughly understand me," replied Marcel, in the same serious
tones. "Just now I saw you, like myself, assailed by recollections that
made you regret the past. You were thinking of Mimi and I was thinking
of Musette. Like me, you would have liked to have had your mistress
beside you. Well, I tell you that we ought neither of us to think of
these creatures; that we were not created and sent into the world solely
to sacrifice our existence to these commonplace Manon Lescaut's, and
that the Chevalier Desgrieux, who is so fine, so true, and so poetical,
is only saved from being ridiculous by his youth and the illusions he
cherishes. At twenty he can follow his mistress to America without
ceasing to be interesting, but at twenty-five he would have shown Manon
the door, and would have been right. It is all very well to talk; we are
old, my dear fellow; we have lived too fast, our hearts are cracked, and
no longer ring truly; one cannot be in love with a Musette or a Mimi
for three years with impunity. For me it is all over, and I wish to be
thoroughly divorced from her remembrance. I am now going to commit to
the flames some trifles that she has left me during her various stays,
and which oblige me to think of her when I come across them."

And Marcel, who had risen, went and took from a drawer a little
cardboard box in which were the souvenirs of Musette--a faded bouquet, a
sash, a bit of ribbon, and some letters.

"Come," said he to the poet, "follow my example, Rodolphe."

"Very well, then," said the latter, making an effort, "you are right. I
too will make an end of it with that girl with the white hands."

And, rising suddenly, he went and fetched a small packet containing
souvenirs of Mimi of much the same kind as those of which Marcel was
silently making an inventory.

"This comes in handy," murmured the painter. "This trumpery will help us
to rekindle the fire which is going out."

"Indeed," said Rodolphe, "it is cold enough here to hatch polar bears."

"Come," said Marcel, "let us burn in a duet. There goes Musette's prose;
it blazes like punch. She was very fond of punch. Come Rodolphe,
attention!"

And for some minutes they alternately emptied into the fire, which
blazed clear and noisily, the reliquaries of their past love.

"Poor Musette!" murmured Marcel to himself, looking at the last object
remaining in his hands.

It was a little faded bouquet of wildflowers.

"Poor Musette, she was very pretty though, and she loved me dearly, is
it not so, little bouquet? Her heart told you so the day she wore you at
her waist. Poor little bouquet, you seem to be pleading for mercy; well,
yes; but on one condition; it is that you will never speak to me of her
any more, never, never!"

And profiting by a moment when he thought himself unnoticed by Rodolphe,
he slipped the bouquet into his breast pocket.

"So much the worse, it is stronger than I am. I am cheating," thought
the painter.

And as he cast a furtive glance towards Rodolphe, he saw the poet, who
had come to the end of his auto-da-fe, putting quietly into his own
pocket, after having tenderly kissed it, a little night cap that had
belonged to Mimi.

"Come," muttered Marcel, "he is as great a coward as I am."

At the very moment that Rodolphe was about to return to his room to go
to bed, there were two little taps at Marcel's door.

"Who the deuce can it be at this time of night?" said the painter, going
to open it.

A cry of astonishment burst from him when he had done so.

It was Mimi.

As the room was very dark Rodolphe did not at first recognize his
mistress, and only distinguishing a woman, he thought that it was some
passing conquest of his friend's, and out of discretion prepared to
withdraw.

"I am disturbing you," said Mimi, who had remained on the threshold.

At her voice Rodolphe dropped on his chair as though thunderstruck.

"Good evening," said Mimi, coming up to him and shaking him by the hand
which he allowed her to take mechanically.

"What the deuce brings you here and at this time of night?" asked
Marcel.

"I was very cold," said Mimi shivering. "I saw a light in your room as
I was passing along the street, and although it was very late I came
up."

She was still shivering, her voice had a cristalline sonority that
pierced Rodolphe's heart like a funeral knell, and filled it with a
mournful alarm. He looked at her more attentively. It was no longer
Mimi, but her ghost.

Marcel made her sit down beside the fire.

Mimi smiled at the sight of the flame dancing merrily on the hearth.

"It is very nice," said she, holding out her poor hands blue with cold.
"By the way, Monsieur Marcel, you do not know why I have called on you?"

"No, indeed."

"Well," said Mimi, "I simply came to ask you whether you could get them
to let me a room here. I have just been turned out of my lodgings
because I owe a month's rent and I do not know where to go to."

"The deuce!" said Marcel, shaking his head, "we are not in very good
odor with our landlord and our recommendation would be a most
unfortunate one, my poor girl."

"What is to be done then?" said Mimi. "The fact is I have nowhere to
go."

"Ah!" said Marcel. "You are no longer a viscountess, then?"

"Good heavens, no! Not at all."

"But since when?"

"Two months ago, already."

"Have you been playing tricks on the viscount, then?"

"No," said she, glancing at Rodolphe, who had taken his place in the
darkest corner of the room, "the viscount kicked up a row with me on
account of some verses that were written about me. We quarrelled, and I
sent him about his business. He is a nice skin flint, I can tell you."

"But," said Marcel, "he had rigged you out very finely, judging by what
I saw the day I met you."

"Well," said Mimi, "would you believe it, that he took everything away
from me when I left him, and I have since heard that he raffled all my
clothes at a wretched table d'hote where he used to take me to dine. He
is wealthy enough, though, and yet with all his fortune he is as miserly
as a clay fireball and as stupid as an owl. He would not allow me to
drink wine without water, and made me fast on Fridays. Would you believe
it, he wanted me to wear black stockings, because they did not want
washing as often as white ones. You have no idea of it, he worried me
nicely I can tell you. I can well say that I did my share of purgatory
with him."

"And does he know your present situation?" asked Marcel.

"I have not seen him since and I do not want to," replied Mimi. "It
makes me sick when I think of him. I would rather die of hunger than ask
him for a sou."

"But," said Marcel, "since you left him you have not been living alone."

"Yes, I assure you, Monsieur Marcel," exclaimed Mimi quickly. "I have
been working to earn my living, only as artificial flower making was not
a very flourishing business I took up another. I sit to painters. If you
have any jobs to give me," she added gaily.

And having noticed a movement on the part of Rodolphe, whom she did not
take her eyes off whilst talking to his friend, Mimi went on:

"Ah, but I only sit for head and hands. I have plenty to do, and I am
owed money by two or three, I shall have some in a couple of days, it is
only for that interval that I want to find a lodging. When I get the
money I shall go back to my own. Ah!" said she, looking at the table,
which was still laden with the preparation for the modest feast which
the two friends had scarcely touched, "you were going to have supper?"

"No," said Marcel, "we are not hungry."

"You are very lucky," said Mimi simply.

At this remark Rodolphe felt a horrible pang in his heart, he made a
sign to Marcel, which the latter understood.

"By the way," said the artist, "since you are here Mimi, you must take
pot luck with us. We were going to keep Christmas Eve, and then--why--we
began to think of other things."

"Then I have come at the right moment," said Mimi, casting an almost
famished glance at the food on the table. "I have had no dinner," she
whispered to the artist, so as not to be heard by Rodolphe, who was
gnawing his handkerchief to keep him from bursting into sobs.

"Draw up, Rodolphe," said Marcel to his friend, "we will all three have
supper together."

"No," said the poet remaining in his corner.

"Are you angry, Rodolphe, that I have come here?" asked Mimi gently.
"Where could I go to?"

"No, Mimi," replied Rodolphe, "only I am grieved to see you like this."

"It is my own fault, Rodolphe, I do not complain, what is done is done,
so think no more about it than I do. Cannot you still be my friend,
because you have been something else? You can, can you not? Well then,
do not frown on me, and come and sit down at the table with us."

She rose to take him by the hand, but was so weak, that she could not
take a step, and sank back into her chair.

"The heat has dazed me," she said, "I cannot stand."

"Come," said Marcel to Rodolphe, "come and join us."

The poet drew up to the table, and began to eat with them. Mimi was very
lively.

"My dear girl, it is impossible for us to get you a room in the house."

"I must go away then," said she, trying to rise.

"No, no," said Marcel. "I have another way of arranging things, you can
stay in my room, and I will go and sleep with Rodolphe."

"It will put you out very much, I am afraid," said Mimi, "but it will
not be for long, only a couple of days."

"It will not put us out at all in that case," replied Marcel, "so it is
understood, you are at home here, and we are going to Rodolphe's room.
Good night, Mimi, sleep well."

"Thanks," said she, holding out her hand to Marcel and Rodolphe, who
moved away together.

"Do you want to lock yourself in?" asked Marcel as he got to the door.

"Why?" said Mimi, looking at Rodolphe, "I am not afraid."

When the two friends were alone in Rodolphe's room, which was on the
same floor, Marcel abruptly said to his friend, "Well, what are you
going to do now?"

"I do not know," stammered Rodolphe.

"Come, do not shilly-shally, go and join Mimi! If you do, I prophecy
that tomorrow you will be living together again."

"If it were Musette who had returned, what would you do?" inquired
Rodolphe of his friend.

"If it were Musette that was in the next room," replied Marcel, "well,
frankly, I believe that I should not have been in this one for a quarter
of an hour past."

"Well," said Rodolphe, "I will be more courageous than you, I shall
stay here."

"We shall see that," said Marcel, who had already got into bed. "Are you
coming to bed?"

"Certainly," replied Rodolphe.

But in the middle of the night, Marcel waking up, perceived that
Rodolphe had left him.

In the morning, he went and tapped discreetly at the door of the room in
which Mimi was.

"Come in," said she, and on seeing him, she made a sign to him to speak
low in order not to wake Rodolphe who was asleep. He was seated in an
arm chair, which he had drawn up to the side of the bed, his head
resting on a pillow beside that of Mimi.

"It is like that that you passed the night?" said Marcel in great
astonishment.

"Yes," replied the girl.

Rodolphe woke up all at once, and after kissing Mimi, held out his hand
to Marcel, who seemed greatly puzzled.

"I am going to find some money for breakfast," said he to the painter.
"You will keep Mimi company."

"Well," asked Marcel of the girl when they were alone together, "what
took place last night?"

"Very sad things," said Mimi. "Rodolphe still loves me."

"I know that very well."

"Yes, you wanted to separate him from me. I am not angry about it,
Marcel, you were quite right, I have done no good to the poor fellow."

"And you," asked Marcel, "do you still love him?"

"Do I love him?" said she, clasping her hands. "It is that that tortures
me. I am greatly changed, my friend, and it needed but little time for
that."

"Well, now he loves you, you love him and you cannot do without one
another, come together again and try and remain."

"It is impossible," said Mimi.

"Why?" inquired Marcel. "Certainly it would be more sensible for you to
separate, but as for your not meeting again, you would have to be a
thousand leagues from one another."

"In a little while I shall be further off than that."

"What do you mean?"

"Do not speak of it to Rodolphe, it would cause him too much pain, but I
am going away forever."

"But whither?"

"Look here, Marcel," said Mimi sobbing, "look."

And lifting up the sheet of the bed a little she showed the artist her
shoulders, neck and arms.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Marcel mournfully, "poor girl."

"Is it not true, my friend, that I do not deceive myself and that I am
soon going to die."

"But how did you get into such a state in so short a time?"

"Ah!" replied Mimi, "with the life I have been leading for the past two
months it is not astonishing; nights spent in tears, days passed in
posing in studios without any fire, poor living, grief, and then you do
not know all, I tried to poison myself with Eau de Javelle. I was saved
but not for long as you see. Besides I have never been very strong, in
short it is my fault, if I had remained quietly with Rodolphe I should
not be like this. Poor fellow, here I am again upon his hands, but it
will not be for long, the last dress he will give me will be all white,
Marcel, and I shall be buried in it. Ah! If you knew how I suffer
because I am going to die. Rodolphe knows that I am ill, he remained for
over an hour without speaking last night when he saw my arms and
shoulders so thin. He no longer recognized his Mimi. Alas! My very
looking glass does not know me. Ah! All the same I was pretty and he did
love me. Oh, God!" she exclaimed, burying her face in Marcel's hands. "I
am going to leave you and Rodolphe too, oh God!" and sobs choked her
voice.

"Come, Mimi," said Marcel, "never despair, you will get well, you only
want care and rest."

"Ah, no!" said Mimi. "It is all over, I feel it. I have no longer any
strength, and when I came here last night it took me over an hour to get
up the stairs. If I found a woman here I should have gone down by way of
the window. However, he was free since we were no longer together, but
you see, Marcel, I was sure he loved me still. It was on account of
that," she said, bursting into tears, "it is on account of that that I
do not want to die at once, but it is all over with me. He must be very
good, poor fellow, to take me back after all the pain I have given him.
Ah! God is not just, since he does not leave me only the time to make
Rodolphe forget the grief I caused him. He does not know the state in
which I am. I would not have him lie beside me, for I feel as if the
earthworms were already devouring my body. We passed the night in
weeping and talking of old times. Ah! How sad it is, my friend, to see
behind one the happiness one has formerly passed by without noticing it.
I feel as if I had fire in my chest, and when I move my limbs it seems
as if they were going to snap. Hand me my dress, I want to cut the cards
to see whether Rodolphe will bring in any money. I should like to have a
good breakfast with you, like we used to; that would not hurt me. God
cannot make me worse than I am. See," she added, showing Marcel the pack
of cards she had cut, "Spades--it is the color of death. Clubs," she
added more gaily, "yes we shall have some money."

Marcel did not know what to say in presence of the lucid delirium of
this poor creature, who already felt, as she said, the worms of the
grave.

In an hour's time Rodolphe was back. He was accompanied by Schaunard and
Gustave Colline. The musician wore a summer jacket. He had sold his
winter suit to lend money to Rodolphe on learning that Mimi was ill.
Colline on his side had gone and sold some books. If he could have got
anyone to buy one of his arms or legs he would have agreed to the
bargain rather than part with his cherished volumes. But Schaunard had
pointed out to him that nothing could be done with his arms or his
legs.

Mimi strove to recover her gaiety to greet her old friends.

"I am no longer naughty," said she to them, "and Rodolphe has forgiven
me. If he will keep me with him I will wear wooden shoes and a mob-cap,
it is all the same to me. Silk is certainly not good for my health," she
added with a frightful smile.

At Marcel's suggestion, Rodolphe had sent for one of his friends who had
just passed as a doctor. It was the same who had formerly attended
Francine. When he came they left him alone with Mimi.

Rodolphe, informed by Marcel, was already aware of the danger run by his
mistress. When the doctor had spoken to Mimi, he said to Rodolphe: "You
cannot keep her here. Save for a miracle she is doomed. You must send
her to the hospital. I will give you a letter for La Pitie. I know one
of the house surgeons there; she will be well looked after. If she
lasts till the spring we may perhaps pull her through, but if she stays
here she will be dead in a week."

"I shall never dare propose it to her," said Rodolphe.

"I spoke to her about it," replied the doctor, "and she agreed. Tomorrow
I will send you the order of admission to La Pitie."

"My dear," said Mimi to Rodolphe, "the doctor is right; you cannot nurse
me here. At the hospital they may perhaps cure me, you must send me
there. Ah! You see I do so long to live now, that I would be willing to
end my days with one hand in a raging fire and the other in yours.
Besides, you will come and see me. You must not grieve, I shall be well
taken care of: the doctor told me so. You get chicken at the hospital
and they have fires there. Whilst I am taking care of myself there, you
will work to earn money, and when I am cured I will come back and live
with you. I have plenty of hope now. I shall come back as pretty as I
used to be. I was very ill in the days before I knew you, and I was
cured. Yet I was not happy in those days, I might just as well have
died. Now that I have found you again and that we can be happy, they
will cure me again, for I shall fight hard against my illness. I will
drink all the nasty things they give me, and if death seizes on me it
will be by force. Give me the looking glass: it seems to me that I have
little color in my cheeks. Yes," said she, looking at herself in the
glass, "my color is coming back, and my hands, see, they are still
pretty; kiss me once more, it will not be the last time, my poor
darling," she added, clasping Rodolphe round the neck, and burying his
face in her loosened tresses.

Before leaving for the hospital, she wanted her friends the Bohemians to
stay and pass the evening with her.

"Make me laugh," said she, "cheerfulness is health to me. It is that wet
blanket of a viscount made me ill. Fancy, he wanted to make me learn
orthography; what the deuce should I have done with it? And his friends,
what a set! A regular poultry yard, of which the viscount was the
peacock. He marked his linen himself. If he ever marries I am sure that
it will be he who will suckle the children."

Nothing could be more heart breaking than the almost posthumous gaiety
of poor Mimi. All the Bohemians made painful efforts to hide their tears
and continue the conversation in the jesting tone started by the
unfortunate girl, for whom fate was so swiftly spinning the linen of her
last garment.

The next morning Rodolphe received the order of admission to the
hospital. Mimi could not walk, she had to be carried down to the cab.
During the journey she suffered horribly from the jolts of the vehicle.
Admist all her sufferings the last thing that dies in woman, coquetry,
still survived; two or three times she had the cab stopped before the
drapers' shops to look at the display in the windows.

On entering the ward indicated in the letter of admission Mimi felt a
terrible pang at her heart, something within her told her that it was
between these bare and leprous walls that her life was to end. She
exerted the whole of the will left her to hide the mournful impression
that had chilled her.

When she was put to bed she gave Rodolphe a final kiss and bid him
goodbye, bidding him come and see her the next Sunday which was a
visitors' day.

"It does not smell very nice here," said she to him, "bring me some
flowers, some violets, there are still some about."

"Yes," said Rodolphe, "goodbye till Sunday."

And he drew together the curtains of her bed. On hearing the departing
steps of her lover, Mimi was suddenly seized with an almost delirious
attack of fever. She suddenly opened the curtains, and leaning half out
of bed, cried in a voice broken with tears:

"Rodolphe, take me home, I want to go away."

The sister of charity hastened to her and tried to calm her.

"Oh!" said Mimi, "I am going to die here."

On Sunday morning, the day he was to go and see Mimi, Rodolphe
remembered that he had promised her some violets. With poetic and loving
superstition he went on foot in horrible weather to look for the flowers
his sweetheart had asked him for, in the woods of Aulnay and Fontenay,
where he had so often been with her. The country, so lively and joyful
in the sunshine of the bright days of June and July, he found chill and
dreary. For two hours he beat the snow covered thickets, lifting the
bushes with a stick, and ended by finding a few tiny blossoms, and as it
happened, in a part of the wood bordering the Le Plessis pool, which had
been their favorite spot when they came into the country.

Passing through the village of Chatillon to get back to Paris, Rodolphe
met in the square before the church a baptismal procession, in which he
recognized one of his friends who was the godfather, with a singer from
the opera.

"What the deuce are you doing here?" asked the friend, very much
surprised to see Rodolphe in those parts.

The poet told him what had happened.

The young fellow, who had known Mimi, was greatly saddened at this
story, and feeling in his pocket took out a bag of christening
sweetmeats and handed it to Rodolphe.

"Poor Mimi, give her this from me and tell her I will come and see
her."

"Come quickly, then, if you would come in time," said Rodolphe, as he
left him.

When Rodolphe got to the hospital, Mimi, who could not move, threw her
arms about him in a look.

"Ah, there are my flowers!" said she, with the smile of satisfied
desire.

Rodolphe related his pilgrimage into that part of the country that had
been the paradise of their loves.

"Dear flowers," said the poor girl, kissing the violets. The sweetmeats
greatly pleased her too. "I am not quite forgotten, then. The young
fellows are good. Ah! I love all your friends," said she to Rodolphe.

This interview was almost merry. Schaunard and Colline had rejoined
Rodolphe. The nurses had almost to turn them out, for they had
overstayed visiting time.

"Goodbye," said Mimi. "Thursday without fail, and come early."

The following day on coming home at night, Rodolphe received a letter
from a medical student, a dresser at the hospital, to whose care he had
recommended the invalid. The letter only contained these words:--

"My dear friend, I have very bad news for you. No. 8 is dead. This
morning on going through the ward I found her bed vacant."

Rodolphe dropped on to a chair and did not shed a tear. When Marcel came
in later he found his friend in the same stupefied attitude. With a
gesture the poet showed him the latter.

"Poor girl!" said Marcel.

"It is strange," said Rodolphe, putting his hand to his heart; "I feel
nothing here. Was my love killed on learning that Mimi was to die?"

"Who knows?" murmured the painter.

Mimi's death caused great mourning amongst the Bohemians.

A week later Rodolphe met in the street the dresser who had informed him
of his mistress's death.

"Ah, my dear Rodolphe!" said he, hastening up to the poet. "Forgive me
the pain I caused you by my heedlessness."

"What do you mean?" asked Rodolphe in astonishment.

"What," replied the dresser, "you do not know? You have not seen her
again?"

"Seen whom?" exclaimed Rodolphe.

"Her, Mimi."

"What?" said the poet, turning deadly pale.

"I made a mistake. When I wrote you that terrible news I was the victim
of an error. This is how it was. I had been away from the hospital for a
couple of days. When I returned, on going the rounds with the surgeons,
I found Mimi's bed empty. I asked the sister of charity what had become
of the patient, and she told me that she had died during the night. This
is what had happened. During my absence Mimi had been moved to another
ward. In No. 8 bed, which she left, they put another woman who died the
same day. That will explain the mistake into which I fell. The day after
that on which I wrote to you, I found Mimi in the next ward. Your
absence had put her in a terrible state; she gave me a letter for you
and I took it on to your place at once."

"Good God!" said Rodolphe. "Since I thought Mimi dead I have not dared
to go home. I have been sleeping here and there at friends' places. Mimi
alive! Good heavens! What must she think of my absence? Poor girl, poor
girl! How is she? When did you see her last?"

"The day before yesterday. She was neither better nor worse, but very
uneasy; she fancies you must be ill."

"Let us go to La Pitie at once," said Rodolphe, "that I may see her."

"Stop here for a moment," said the dresser, when they reached the
entrance to the hospital, "I will go and ask the house surgeon for
permission for you to enter."

Rodolphe waited in the hall for a quarter of an hour. When the dresser
returned he took him by the hand and said these words:

"My friend, suppose that the letter I wrote to you a week ago was true?"

"What!" exclaimed Rodolphe, leaning against a pillar, "Mimi--"

"This morning at four o'clock."

"Take me to the amphitheatre," said Rodolphe, "that I may see her."

"She is no longer there," said the dresser. And pointing out to the poet
a large van which was in the courtyard drawn up before a building above
which was inscribed, "Amphiteatre," he added, "she is there."

It was indeed the vehicle in which the corpses that are unclaimed are
taken to their pauper's grave.

"Goodbye," said Rodolphe to the dresser.

"Would you like me to come with you a bit?" suggested the latter.

"No," said Rodolphe, turning away, "I need to be alone."

CHAPTER XXIII

YOUTH IS FLEETING

A year after Mimi's death Rodolphe and Marcel, who had not quitted one
another, celebrated by a festival their entrance into the official
world. Marcel, who had at length secured admission to the annual
exhibition of pictures, had had two paintings hung, one of which had
been bought by a rich Englishman, formerly Musette's protector. With the
product of this sale, and also of a Government order, Marcel had partly
paid off his past debts. He had furnished decent rooms, and had a real
studio. Almost at the same time Schaunard and Rodolphe came before the
public who bestow fame and fortune--the one with an album of airs that
were sung at all the concerts, and which gave him the commencement of a
reputation; the other with a book that occupied the critics for a month.
As to Barbemuche he had long since given up Bohemianism. Gustave Colline
had inherited money and made a good marriage. He gave evening parties
with music and light refreshments.

One evening Rodolphe, seated in his own armchair with his feet on his
own rug, saw Marcel come in quite flurried.

"You do not know what has just happened to me," said he.

"No," replied the poet. "I know that I have been to your place, that you
were at home, and that you would not answer the door."

"Yes, I heard you. But guess who was with me."

"How do I know?"

"Musette, who burst upon me last evening like a bombshell, got up as a
_debardeur_."

"Musette! You have once more found Musette!" said Rodolphe, in a tone of
regret.

"Do not be alarmed. Hostilities were not resumed. Musette came to pass
with me her last night of Bohemianism."

"What?"

"She is going to be married."

"Bah!" said Rodolphe. "Who is the victim?"

"A postmaster who was her last lover's guardian; a queer sort of fellow,
it would seem. Musette said to him, 'My dear sir, before definitely
giving you my hand and going to the registrar's I want to drink my last
glass of Champagne, dance my last quadrille, and embrace for the last
time my lover, Marcel, who is now a gentleman, like everybody else is
seems.' And for a week the dear creature has been looking for me. Hence
it was that she burst upon me last evening, just at the moment I was
thinking of her. Ah, my friend! Altogether we had a sad night of it. It
was not at all the same thing it used to be, not at all. We were like
some wretched copy of a masterpiece? I have even written on the subject
of this last separation a little ballad which I will whine out to you if
you will allow me," and Marcel began to chant the following verses:--

        I saw a swallow yesterday,
        He brought Spring's promise to the air;
        "Remember her," he seemed to say,
        "Who loved you when she'd time to spare;"
        And all the day I sate before
        The almanac of yonder year,
        When I did nothing but adore,
        And you were pleased to hold me dear.

        But do not think my love is dead,
        Or to forget you I begin.

        If you sought entry to my shed
        My heart would leap to let you in:
        Since at your name it trembles still--
        Muse of oblivious fantasy!--
        Return and share, if share you will,
        Joy's consecrated bread with me.

        The decorations of the nest
        Which saw our mutual ardor burn,
        Already seem to wear their best
        At the mere hope of return.
        Come, see if you can recognize
        Things your departure reft of glee,
        The bed, the glass of extra size,
        In which you often drank for me.

        You shall resume the plain white gown
        You used to look so nice in, then;
        On Sunday we can still run down
        To wander in the woods again.
        Beneath the bower, at evening,
        Again we'll drink the liquid bright
        In which your song would dip its wing
        Before in air it took to flight.

        Musette, who has at last confessed
        The carnival of life was gone,
        Came back, one morning, to the nest
        Whence, like a wild bird, she had flown:
        But, while I kissed the fugitive,
        My heart no more emotion knew,
        For, she had ceased, for me, to live,
        And "You," she said, "no more are you."

        "Heart of my heart!" I answered, "Go!
        We cannot call the dead love back;
        Best let it lie, interred, below
        The tombstone of the almanac
        Perhaps a spirit that remembers
        The happy time it notes for me
        May find some day among its embers
        Of a lost Paradise the key."

"Well," said Marcel, when he had finished, "you may feel reassured now,
my love for Musette is dead and buried here," he added ironically,
indicating the manuscript of the poem.

"Poor lad," said Rodolphe, "your wit is fighting a duel with your
heart, take care it does not kill it."

"That is already lifeless," replied the painter, "we are done for, old
fellow, we are dead and buried. Youth is fleeting! Where are you going
to dine this evening?"

"If you like," said Rodolphe, "we will go and dine for twelve sous at
our old restaurant in the Rue du Four, where they have plates of huge
crockery, and where we used to feel so hungry when we had done dinner."

"No," replied Marcel, "I am quite willing to look back at that past, but
it must be through the medium of a bottle of good wine and sitting in a
comfortable armchair. What would you, I am corrupted. I only care for
what is good!"


little longer acquaintance with her, made the discovery, which was
at first surprising to me, that her confessions of evil came just as
much from conceit as if she had been standing at the mirror admiring
her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found quite as much in
mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy. Finally this
woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her contemplation of
her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to be positive
while her attitude against them is negative; she has actually nursed
them and been positive herself with their positiveness. Her attitude
against them was therefore more than ordinarily negative.

The more common way of being negative while we allow our various
forms of selfishness to positively govern us is, first in bewailing
a weakness seriously, but constantly looking at it and weeping over
it, and in that way suggesting it over and over to our brains so
that we are really hypnotizing ourselves with the fault and
enforcing its expression when we think we are in the effort to
conquer it. Such is our negative attitude.

Now if we are convinced that evil in ourselves has no power unless
we give it power, that is the first step toward making our efforts
positive and so negativing the evil. If we are convinced that evil
in ourselves has not only no power but no importance unless we give
it power, that is a step still farther in advance. The next step is
to refuse to submit to it and refuse to resist it. That means a
positive yielding away from it and a positive attention to doing our
work as well as we can do it, whatever that work may be.

There is one way in which people suffer intensely through being
negative and allowing their temptations to be positive, and that is
in the question of inherited evil. "How can I ever amount to
anything with such inheritances? If you could see my father and what
he is, and know that I am his daughter, you would easily appreciate
why I have no hope for myself," said a young woman, and she was
perfectly sincere in believing that because of her inherited
temptations her life must be worthless. It took time and gentle,
intelligent reasoning to convince her that not only are no inherited
forms of selfishness ours unless by indulging we make them ours, but
that, through knowing our inheritances, we are forewarned and
forearmed, and the strength we gain from positive effort to free
ourselves fully compensates us for what we have suffered in
oppression from them. Such is the loving kindness of our Creator.

This woman of whom I am writing awoke to the true meaning of the
story of the man who asked, before he went with the Lord Jesus
Christ, first to go back and bury his father. The Lord answered,
"Let the dead bury their dead, and come thou and follow me." When we
feel that we must be bound down by our inheritances, we are surely
not letting the dead bury their dead.

And so let us study the whole question more carefully and learn the
necessity of letting all that is sickness and all that is evil be
negative to us and our efforts to conquer it be positive; in that
way the illness and the evil become less than negative,--they
gradually are removed and disappear.

Why, in the mere matter of being tired, if we refuse to let the
impression of the fatigue be positive to us, and insist upon being
positive ourselves in giving attention to the fact that now we are
going to rest, we get rested in half the time,--in much less than
half the time. Some people carry chronic fatigue with them because
of their steady attention to fatigue.

"I am tired, yes, but _I am going to get rested!"_ That is the
sensible attitude of mind.

Nature tends toward health. As we realize that and give our
attention to it positively, we come to admire and love the healthy
working of the laws of nature, and to feel the vigor of interest in
trying to obey them intelligently. Nature's laws are God's laws, and
God's laws tend toward the health of the spirit in all matters of
the spirit as surely as they tend toward health of body in all
natural things. That is a truth that as we work to obey we grow to
see and to love with deepening reverence, and then indeed we find
that God's laws are all positive, and that the workings of self are
only negative.

CHAPTER XXVIII

_Human Dust_

WHEN we face the matter squarely and give it careful thought, it
seems to appear very plainly that the one thing most flagrantly in
the way of the people of to-day living according to plain common
sense--spiritual common sense as well as material--is the fact that
we are all living in a chronic state of excitement. It is easy to
prove this fact by seeing how soon most of us suffer from ennui when
"there is not anything going on." It seems now as if the average man
or woman whom we see would find it quite impossible to stop and do
nothing--for an hour or more. "But," some one will say, "why should
I stop and do nothing when I am as busy as I can be all day long,
and have my time very happily full?" Or some one else may say, "How
can I stop and do nothing when I am nearly crazy with work and must
feel that it is being accomplished?"

Now the answer to that is, "Certainly you should not stop and do
nothing when you are busy and happily busy;" or, "Although your
work will go better if you do not get 'crazy' about it, there is no
need of interrupting it or delaying it by stopping to do
nothing--but _you should be able to stop and do nothing,_ and to do
it quietly and contentedly at any time when it might be required of
you."

No man, woman, or child knows the power, the very great power, for
work and play--there is with one who has in the background always
the ability to stop and do nothing.

If we observe enough, carefully enough, and quietly enough, to get
sensitive to it, we can see how every one about us is living in
excitement. I have seen women with nothing important to do come down
to breakfast in excitement, give their orders for the day as if they
were about running for a fire; and the standard of all those about
them is so low that no one notices what a human dust is stirred up
by all this flutter over nothing.

A man told me not long ago that he got tired out for the day in
walking to his office with a friend, because they both talked so
intensely. And that is not an unusual experience. This chronic state
of strain and excitement in everyday matters makes a mental
atmosphere which is akin to what the material atmosphere would be if
we were persistently kicking up a dust in the road every step we
took. Every one seems to be stirring up his own especial and
peculiar dust and adding it to every one else's especial and
peculiar dust.

We are all mentally, morally and spiritually sneezing or choking
with our own dust and the dust of other people. How is it possible
for us to get any clear, all-round view of life so long as the dust
stirring habit is on us? So far from being able to enlarge our
horizon, we can get no horizon at all, and so no perspective until
this human dust is laid. And there is just this one thing about it,
that is a delight to think of: When we know how to live so that our
own dust is laid, that very habit of life keeps us clear from the
dust of other people. Not only that, but when we are free from dust
ourselves, the dust that the other men are stirring up about us does
not interfere with our view of them. We see the men through their
dust and we see how the dust with which they are surrounding
themselves befogs them and impedes their progress. From the place of
no dust you can distinguish dust and see through it. From the place
of dust you cannot distinguish anything clearly. Therefore, if one
wishes to learn the standards of living according to plain common
sense, for body, mind, and spirit, and to apply the principles of
such standards practically to their every-day life, the first
absolute necessity is to get quiet and to stay quiet long enough to
lay the dust.

You may know the laws of right eating, of right breathing, of
exercise, and rest--but in this dust of excitement in daily life
such knowledge helps one very little. You constantly forget, and
forget, and forget. Or, if in a moment of forced acknowledgment to
the need of better living, you make up your mind that you will live
according to sensible laws of hygiene, you go along pretty well for
a few weeks, perhaps even months, and then as you feel better
physically, you get whirled off into the excitement again, and
before you know it you are in the dust with the rest of the world,
and all because you had no background for your good resolutions. You
never had found and you did not understand quiet.

Did you ever see a wise mother come into a noisy nursery where
perhaps her own children were playing excitedly with several little
companions, who had been invited in to spend a rainy afternoon? The
mother sees all the children in a great state of excitement over
their play, and two or three of them disagreeing over some foolish
little matter, with their brains in such a state that the nursery is
thick with infantile human dust. What does the wise mother do? Add
dust of her own by scolding and fretting and fuming over the noise
that the children are making? No--no indeed. She first gets all the
children's attention in any happy way she can, one or two at a time,
and then when she has their individual attention to a small degree,
she gets their united attention by inviting their interest in being
so quiet that they "can hear a pin drop." The children get keenly
interested in listening. The first time they do not hear the pin
drop because Johnnie or Mollie moved a little. Mother talks with
interest of what a very delightful thing it is to be for a little
while so quiet that we can hear a pin drop. The second time
something interferes, and the third time the children have become so
well focused on listening that the little delicate sound is heard
distinctly, and they beg mother to try and see if they cannot hear
it again. By this time the dust is laid in the nursery, and by
changing the games a little, or telling them a story first, the
mother is able to leave a nursery full of quiet, happy children.

Now if we, who would like to live happily and keep well, according
to plain common sense, can put ourselves with intelligent humility
in the place of these little children and study to be quiet, we will
be working for that background which is never failing in its
possibilities of increasing light and warmth and the expanse of
outlook.

First with regard to a quiet body. Indigestion makes us unquiet,
therefore we must eat only wholesome food, and not too much of it,
and we must eat it quietly. Poor breathing and poor blood makes us
unquiet, therefore we should learn to expand our lungs to their full
extent in the fresh air and give the blood plenty of oxygen.
Breathing also has a direct effect on the circulation and the brain,
and when we breathe quietly and rhythmically, we are quieting the
movement of our blood as well as opening the channels so that it can
flow without interruption. We are also quieting our brain and so our
whole nervous system.

Lack of exercise makes us unquiet, because exercise supplies the
blood more fully with oxygen and prevents it from flowing
sluggishly, a sluggish circulation straining the nervous system. It
is therefore important to take regular exercise.

Want of rest especially makes us unquiet; therefore we should attend
to it that we get--as far as possible--what rest we need, and take
all the rest we get in the best way. We cannot expect to fulfill
these conditions all at once, but we can aim steadily to do so, and
by getting every day a stronger focus and a steadier aim we can gain
so greatly in fulfilling the standards of a healthy mind in a
healthy body, and so much of our individual dust will be laid, that
I may fairly promise a happy astonishment at the view of life which
will open before us, and the power for use and enjoyment that will
come.

Let us see now how we would begin practically, having made up our
minds to do all in our power to lay the dust and get a quiet
background. We must begin in what may seem a very small way. It
seems to be always the small beginnings that lead to large and
solidly lasting results. Not only that, but when we begin in the
small way and the right way to reach any goal, we can find no short
cuts and no seven-league boots.

We must take every step and take it decidedly in order to really get
there. We must place one brick and then another, exactly, and place
every brick--to make a house that will stand.

But now for our first step toward laying the dust. Let us take half
an hour every day and do nothing in it. For the first ten minutes we
will probably be wretched, for the next ten minutes we may be more
wretched, but for the last five minutes we will get a sense of quiet
and at first the dust, although not laid, will cease to whirl. And
then--an interesting fact--what seems to us quiet in the beginning
of our attempt, will seem like noise and whirlwinds, after we have
gone further along. Some one may easily say that it is absurd to
take half an hour a day to do nothing in. Or that "Nature abhors a
vacuum, and how is it possible to do nothing? Our minds will be
thinking of or working on something."

In answer to this, I might say with the Irishman, "Be aisy, but if
you can't be aisy, be as aisy as you can!" Do nothing as well as you
can. When you begin thinking of anything, drop it. When you feel
restless and as if you could not keep still another minute, relax
and make yourself keep still. I should take many days of this
insistence upon doing nothing and dropping everything from my mind
before taking the next step. For to drop everything from one's mind,
for half an hour is not by any means an easy matter. Our minds are
full of interests, full of resistances. With some of us, our minds
are full of resentment. And what we have to promise ourselves to do
is for that one-half hour a day to take nothing into consideration.
If something comes up that we are worrying about, refuse to consider
it. If some resentment to a person or a circumstance comes to mind,
refuse to consider it.

I know all this is easier to say than to do, but remember, please,
that it is only for half an hour every day-only half an hour. Refuse
to consider anything for half an hour. Having learned to sit still,
or lie still, and think of nothing with a moderate degree of
success, and with most people the success can only be moderate at
best, the next step is to think quietly of taking long, gentle, easy
breaths for half an hour. A long breath and then a rest, two long
breaths and then a rest. One can quiet and soothe oneself inside
quite wonderfully with the study of long gentle breaths. But it must
be a study. We must study to begin inhaling gently, to change to the
exhalation with equal delicacy, and to keep the same gentle,
delicate pressure throughout, each time trying to make the breath a
little longer.

After we have had many days of the gentle, long breaths at intervals
for half an hour, then we can breathe rhythmically (inhale counting
five or ten, exhale counting five or ten), steadily for half an
hour, trying all the time to have the breath more quiet, gentle and
steady, drawing it in and letting it out with always decreasing
effort. It is wonderful when we discover how little effort we really
need to take a full and vigorous breath. This half hour's breathing
exercise every day will help us to the habit of breathing
rhythmically all the time, and a steady rhythmic breath is a great
physical help toward a quiet mind.

We can mingle with the deep breathing simple exercises of lifting
each arm slowly and heavily from the shoulder, and then letting it
drop a dead weight, and pausing while we feel conscious of our arms
resting without tension in the lap or on the couch.

But all this has been with relation to the body, and it is the
mental and moral dust of which I am writing. The physical work for
quiet is only helpful as it makes the body a better instrument for
the mind and for the will. A quiet body is of no use if it contains
an unquiet mind which is going to pull it out of shape or start it
up in agitation at the least provocation. In such a case, the quiet
body in its passive state is only a more responsive instrument to
the mind that wants to raise a dust. One--and the most helpful way
of quieting the mind--is through a steady effort at concentration.
One can concentrate; on doing nothing--that is, on sitting quietly
in a chair or lying quietly on the bed or the floor. Be quiet, keep
quiet, be quiet, keep quiet. That is the form of concentration, that
is the way of learning to do nothing to advantage. Then we
concentrate on the quiet breathing, to have it gentle, steady, and
without strain. In the beginning we must take care to concentrate
without strain, and without emotion, use our minds quietly, as one
might watch a bird who was very near, to see what it will do next,
and with care not to frighten it away.

These are the great secrets of true strengthening concentration. The
first is dropping everything that interferes. The second is working
to concentrate easily without emotion. They are really one and the
same. If we work to drop everything that interferes, we are so
constantly relaxing in order to concentrate that the very process
drops strain bit by bit, little by little.

An unquiet mind, however, full of worries, anxieties, resistances,
resentments, and full of all varieties of agitation, going over and
over things to try to work out problems that are not in human hands,
or complaining and fretting and puzzling because help seems to be
out of human power, such a mind which is befogged and begrimed by
the agitation of its own dust is not a cause in itself--it is an
effect. The cause is the reaching and grasping, the unreasonable
insistence on its own way of kicking, dust-raising self-will at the
back of the mind.

A quiet will, a will that can remain quiet through all emergencies,
is not a self-will. It is the self that raises the dust--the self
that wants, and strains to get its own way, and turns and twists and
writhes if it does not get its own way.

God's will is quiet. We see it in the growth of the trees and the
flowers. We see it in the movement of the planets of the Universe.
We see God's mind in the wonderful laws of natural science. Most of
all we see and feel, when we get quiet ourselves, God's love in
every thing and every one.

If we want the dust laid, we must work to get our bodies quiet. We
must drop all that interferes with quiet in our minds, and we must
give up wanting our own way. We must believe that God's way is
immeasurably beyond us and that if we work quietly to obey Him, He
will reveal to us His way in so far as we need to know it, and will
prepare us for and guide us to His uses.

The most perfect example we have of a quiet mind in a quiet body,
guided by the Divine Will, is in the character of the Lord Jesus
Christ. As we study His words and His works, we realize the power
and the delicacy of His human life, and we realize--as far as we are
capable of realizing--the absolute clearness of the atmosphere about
Him. We see and feel that atmosphere to be full of quiet--Divine
Human Love.

There is no suffering, no temptation, that any man or woman ever had
or ever will have that He did not meet in Himself and conquer.
Therefore, if we mean to begin the work in ourselves of finding the
quiet which will lay our own dust from the very first, if we have
the end in our minds of truer obedience and loving trust, we can,
even in the simple beginning of learning to do nothing quietly, find
an essence of life which eventually we will learn always to
recognize and to love, and to know that it is not ourselves, but it
is from the Heavenly Father of ourselves.

Some of us cannot get that motive to begin with; some of us will, if
we begin at all, work only for relief, or because we recognize that
there is more power without dust than with it, but no one of us is
ever safe from clouds of dust unless at the back of all our work
there is the desire to give up all self-will for the sake of obeying
and of trusting the Divine Will more and more perfectly as time goes
on. If we are content to work thoroughly and to gain slowly, not to
be pulled down by mistakes or discouragements, but to learn from
them, we are sure to be grateful for the new light and warmth and
power for use that will come to us, increasing day by day.

CHAPTER XXIX

_Plain Every-day Common Sense_

PLAIN common sense! When we come to sift everything down which will
enable us to live wholesome, steady, every-day, interesting lives,
plain common sense seems to be the first and the simplest need. In
the working out of any problem, whether it be in science or in art
or in plain everyday living, we are told to go from the
circumference to the center, from the known to the unknown, from
simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem complex. And
whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether
it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most
permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain
every-day common sense.

When we stop and think a while, the lack of this important quality
is quite glaring, and every one who has his attention called to it
and recognizes that lack enough to be interested to supply it in his
own life, is doing more good toward bringing plain common sense into
the world at large than we can well appreciate. For instance, it is
only a fact of plain common sense that we should keep rested, and
yet how many of us do? How many readers of this article will smile
or sneer, or be irritated when they read the above, and say, "It is
all very well to talk of keeping rested. How is it possible with all
I have to do? or with all the care I have? or with all I have to
worry me?"

Now that is just the point--the answer to that question, "How is it
possible?" So very few of us know how to do it, and if "how to keep
rested though busy" were regularly taught in all schools in this
country, so far from making the children self-conscious and
over-careful of themselves, it would lay up in their brains ideas of
plain common sense which would be stocked safely there for use when,
as their lives grew more maturely busy, they would find the right
habits formed, enabling them to keep busy and at the same time to
keep quiet and rested. What a wonderful difference it would
eventually make in the wholesomeness of the manners and customs of
this entire nation. And that difference would come from giving the
children now a half hour's instruction in the plain common sense of
keeping well rested, and in seeing that such instruction was
entirely and only practical.

It has often seemed to me that the tendency of education in the
present day is more toward giving information than it is in
preparing the mind to receive and use interesting and useful
information of all kinds: that is, in helping the mind to attract
what it needs; to absorb what it attracts, and digest what it
absorbs as thoroughly as any good healthy stomach ever digested the
food it needed to supply the body with strength. The root of such
cultivation, it seems to me, is in teaching the practical use and
application of all that is studied. To be sure, there is much more
of that than there was fifty years ago, but you have only to put to
the test the minds of young graduates to see how much more of such
work is needed, and how much more intelligent the training of the
young mind may be, even now.

Take, for instance, the subject of ethics. How many boys and girls
go home and are more useful in their families, more thoughtful and
considerate for all about them, for their study of ethics in school?
And yet the study of ethics has no other use than this. If the mind
absorbed and digested the true principles of ethics, so that the
heart felt moved to use them, it might--it probably would--make a
great change in the lives of the boys and girls who studied it--a
change that would surprise and delight their parents and friends.

If the science of keeping rested were given in schools in the way
that, in most cases, the science of ethics seems to be given now,
the idea of rest would lie in an indigestible lump on the minds of
the students, and instead of being absorbed, digested and carried
out in their daily lives, would be evaporated little by little into
the air, or vomited off the mind in various jokes about it, and
other expressions that would prove the children knew nothing of what
they were being taught.

But again, I am glad to repeat--if instruction, _practical_
instruction, were given every day in the schools on how to form the
habit of keeping rested, it would have a wonderful effect upon the
whole country, not to mention where in many individual cases it
would actually prevent the breaking out of hereditary disease.

Nature always tends toward health; so strongly, so habitually does
nature tend toward health that it seems at times as if the working
of natural laws pushed some people into health in spite of chronic
antagonism they seem to have against health--one might even say in
spite of the wilful refusal of health.

When one's body is kept rested, nature is constantly throwing off
germs of disease, constantly working, and working most actively, to
protect the body from anything that would interfere with its perfect
health. When one's body is not rested, nature works just as hard,
but the tired body--through its various forms of tension that impede
the circulation, prevent the healthy absorption of food and oxygen,
and clog the way so that impurities cannot be carried
off--interferes with nature's work and thus makes it impossible for
her to keep the machine well oiled. When we are tired, the very fact
of being tired makes us more tired, unless we rest properly.

A great deal--it seems to me more than one-half--of the fatigue in
the world comes from the need of an intelligent understanding of how
to keep rested. The more that lack of intelligence is allowed to
grow, the worse it is going to be for the health of the nation. We
have less of that plain common sense than our grandfathers and
grandmothers. They had less than their fathers and mothers. We need
more than our ancestors, because life is more complicated now, than
it was then. We can get more if we will, because there is more real
understanding of the science of hygiene than our fathers and mothers
had before us. Our need now is to use _practically_ the information
which a few individuals are able to give us, and especially to teach
such practical use to our children.

Let us find out how we would actually go to work to keep rested, and
take the information of plain common sense and use it.

To keep rested we must not overwork our body inside or outside. We
must keep it in an equilibrium of action and rest.

We overwork our body inside when we eat the wrong food and when we
eat too much or not enough of the right food, for then the stomach
has more than its share of work to do, and as the effort to do it
well robs the brain and the whole nervous system, so, of course, the
rest of the body has not its rightful supply of energy and the
natural result is great fatigue.

We overwork our body inside when we do not give it its due amount of
fresh air. The blood needs the oxygen to supply itself and the
nerves and muscles with power to do their work. When the oxygen is
not supplied to the blood, the machinery of the body has to work
with so much less power than really belongs to it, that there is
great strain in the effort to do its work properly, and the effect
is, of course, fatigue.

In either of the above cases, both with an overworked stomach and an
overworked heart and lungs, the complaint is very apt to be, "Why am
I so tired when I have done nothing to get tired?" The answer is,
"No, you have done nothing outside with your muscles, but the heart
and lungs and the stomach are delicate and exquisite instruments.
You have overworked them all, and such overwork is the more
fatiguing in proportion to what is done than any other form, except
overwork of the brain." And the overtired stomach and heart and
lungs tire the brain, of course.

Of the work that is given to the brain itself to overtire it we must
speak later. So much now for that which prevents the body from
keeping rested inside, in the finer working of its machinery.

It is easy to find out what and how to eat. A very little careful
thought will show us that. It is only the plain common sense of
eating we need. It is easy to see that we must not eat on a tired
stomach, and if we have to do so, we must eat much less than we
ordinarily would, and eat it more slowly. So much good advice is
already given about what and how to eat, I need say nothing here,
and even without that advice, which in itself is so truly valuable,
most of us could have plain common sense about our own food if we
would use our minds intelligently about it, and eat only what we
know to be nourishing to us. That can be done without fussing.
Fussing about food contracts the stomach, and prevents free
digestion almost as much as eating indigestible food.

Then again, if we deny ourselves that which we want and know is bad
for us, and eat only that which we know to be nourishing, it
increases the delicacy of our relish. We do not lose relish by
refusing to eat too much candy. We gain it. Human pigs lose their
most delicate relish entirely, and they lose much--very much
more--than that.

Unfortunately with most people, there is not the relish for fresh
air that there is for food. Very few people want fresh air
selfishly; the selfish tendency of most people is to cut it off for
fear of taking cold. And yet the difference felt in health, in
keeping rested, in ease of mind, is as great between no fresh air
and plenty of fresh air as it is between the wrong kind of food and
enough (and not too much) of the right kind of food.

Why does not the comfort of the body appeal to us as strongly
through the supply of air given to the lungs as through that of food
given to the stomach? The right supply of fresh air has such
wonderful power to keep us rested!

Practical teaching to the children here would, among other things,
give them training which would open their lungs and enable them to
take in with every breath the full amount of oxygen needed toward
keeping them rested. There are so many cells in the lungs of most
people, made to receive oxygen, which never receive one bit of the
food they are hungry for.

There is much more, of course, very much more, to say about the
working of the machinery of the inside of the body and about the
plain common sense needed to keep it well and rested, but I have
said enough for now to start a thoughtful mind to work.

Now for keeping the body well rested from the outside. It is all so
well arranged for us--the night given us to sleep in, a good long
day of work and a long night of rest; so the time for rest and the
time for work are equalized and it is so happily arranged that out
of the twenty-four hours in the day, when we are well, we need only
eight hours' sleep. So well does nature work and so truly that she
can make up for us in eight hours' sleep what fuel we lose in
sixteen hours of activity.

Only one-third of the time do we need to sleep, and we have the
other two-thirds for work and play. This regular sleep is a strong
force in our aim to keep rested. Therefore, the plain common sense
of that is to find out how to go to sleep naturally, how to get all
the rest out of sleep that nature would give us, and so to wake
refreshed and ready for the day.

To go to sleep naturally we must learn how to drop all the tension
of the day and literally _drop_ to sleep like a baby. _Let go into
sleep_--there is a host of meaning in that expression. When we do
that, nature can revive and refresh and renew us. Renew our
vitality, bring us so much more brain power for the day, all that we
need for our work and our play; or almost all--for there are many
little rests during the day, little openings for rest that we need
to take, and that we can teach ourselves to take as a matter of
course. We can sit restfully at each one of our three meals. Eat
restfully and quietly, and so make each meal not only a means of
getting nourishment, but of getting rest as well. There is all the
difference of illness and health in taking a meal with strain and a
sense of rush and pressure of work, and in taking it as if to eat
that one meal were the only thing we had to do in the day. Better to
eat a little nourishing food and eat it quietly and at leisure than
a large meal of the same food with a sense of rush. This is a very
important factor in keeping rested.

Then there are the many expected and unexpected times in the day
when we can take rest and so _keep rested._ If we have to wait we
can sit quietly. Whatever we are doing we can make use of the
between times to rest. Each man can find his own "between times." If
we make real use of them, intelligent use, they not only help us to
keep rested, they help us to do our work better, if we will but
watch for them and use them.

Now the body is only a servant, and in all I have written above, I
have only written of the servant. How can a servant keep well and
rested if the master drives him to such an extent that he is brought
into a state, not where he won't go, but where he can't go, and must
therefore drop? It is the intelligent master, who is a true disciple
of plain common sense, who will train his servant, the body, in the
way of resting, eating and breathing, in order to fit it for the
maximum of work at the minimum of energy. But if you obey every
external law for the health and strength of the body, and obey it
implicitly, and to the letter, with all possible intelligence, you
cannot keep it healthy if the mind that owns the body is pulling it
and twisting it, and _twanging_ on its delicate machinery with a
flood of resentment and resistance; and the spirit behind the mind
is eager, wretched, and unhappy, because it does not get its own
way, or elated with an inflamed egoism because it is getting its own
way.

All plain common sense in the way of health for the body falls dead
unless followed up closely with plain common sense for the health of
the mind; and then again, although when there is "a healthy mind in
a healthy body," the health appears far more permanent than when a
mind full of personal resistance tries to keep its body healthy,
even that happy combination cannot be really permanent unless there
is found back of it a healthy spirit.

But of the plain common sense of the spirit there is more to be said
at another time.

With regard to the mind, let us look and see not only that it is not
sensible to allow it to remain full of resistance, but is it not
positively stupid?

What an important factor it should be in the education of children
to teach them the plain common sense needed to keep the mind
healthy--to teach them the uselessness of a mental resistance, and
the wholesomeness of a clean mind.

If a child worries about his lessons, he is resisting the
possibility of failing in his class; let him learn that the worry
_interferes_ with his getting his lesson. Teach him how to drop the
worry, and he will find not only that he gets the lesson in less
time, but his mind is clearer to remember it.

By following the same laws, children could be taught that a feeling
of rush and hurry only impedes their progress. The rushed feeling
sometimes comes from a nervous unquiet which is inherited, and
should be trained out of the child.

But alas! alas! how can a mother or a father train a child to live
common sensibly without useless resistance when neither the mother
nor the father can do that same themselves. It is not too late for
any mother or father to learn, and if each will have the humility to
confess to the child that they are learning and help the child to
learn with them, no child would or could take advantage of that and
as the children are trained rightly, what a start they can give
their own children when they grow up--and what a gain there might be
from one generation to another! Will it ever come? Surely we hope
so.

CHAPTER XXX

_A Summing Up_

GIVE up resentment, give up unhealthy resistance.

If circumstances, or persons, arouse either resentment or resistance
in us, let us ignore the circumstances or persons until we have
quieted ourselves. Freedom does not come from merely yielding out of
resentment or unhealthy resistance, it comes also from the strong
and steady focus on such yielding. _Concentration and relaxation are
just as necessary one to another to give stability to the nerves of
a man--as the centrifugal and centripetal forces are necessary to
give stability to the Earth._

As the habit of healthy concentration and relaxation grows within
us, our perception clears so that we see what is right to do, and
are given the power to do it. As our freedom from bondage to our
fellowmen becomes established, our relation to our fellowmen grows
happier, more penetrating and more full of life, and later we come
to understand that at root it is ourselves--our own resentment and
resistance--to which we have been in bondage,--circumstances or
other people have had _really_ nothing to do with it. When we have
made that discovery, and are steadily acting upon it, we are free
indeed, and with this new liberty there grows a clear sense and
conviction of a wise, loving Power which, while leaving us our own
free will, is always tenderly guiding us.

No one ever really believed anything without experiencing it. We may
think we believe all sorts of beautiful truths, but how can any
truth be really ours unless we have proved it by living? We do not
fully believe it until it runs in our blood--that is--we must see a
truth with our minds, love it with our hearts and live it over and
over again in our lives before it is ours.

If the reader will think over this little book--he will see that
every chapter has healthy yielding at the root of it. It is a
constant repetition of the same principle applied to the commonplace
circumstances of life, and if the reader will take this principle
into his mind, and work practically to live it in his life, he will
find the love for it growing in his heart, and with it a living
conviction that when truly applied, it always works.

Some one once described the difference between good breeding and bad
breeding as that between a man who works as a matter of course to
conquer his limitations--and a man to whom his limitations are
inevitable.

There is spiritual good breeding and natural good breeding. The
first comes from the achievement of personal character--the second
is born with us--to use or misuse as we prefer.

It is a happy thing to realize that our freedom from bondage to
circumstances, and our loving, intelligent freedom from other
people, is the true spiritual good breeding which gives vitality to
every action of our lives, and brings us into more real and closer
touch with our fellow-men. Courtesy is alive when it has genuine
love of all human nature at the root of it--it is dead when it is
merely a matter of good form.

In so far as I know, the habit of such freedom and good breeding
cannot be steadily sustained without an absolute, conscious
dependence upon the Lord God Almighty.

End of Project Gutenberg's Nerves and Common Sense, by Annie Payson Call