Read Ebook: The Little Review March 1914 (Vol. 1 No. 1) by Various Anderson Margaret C Editor

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Ebook has 568 lines and 50820 words, and 12 pages

ENGRAVINGS.

PAGE Jessie and Emily Sailing Boats in the Quarry. 50 Jessie and Carrie Enjoying a Slide. 102 Mrs. Moneypenny Reading Jack's Letter. 148 Walter Sliding With Carrie and Jessie. 220

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY.

Jessie Carlton, only daughter of a New York merchant residing at Glen Morris Cottage, Duncanville, a village near New York.

Emily and Charlie Morris, Jessie's two cousins, visiting at Glen Morris Cottage.

Carrie Sherwood, one of Jessie's companions.

Mrs. Moneypenny, a poor widow, and her son Jack.

JESSIE CARLTON

Jessie and the Wizard.

On a bright afternoon of a warm day in October, Jessie Carlton sat in the parlor of Glen Morris Cottage. Her elbows rested on the table, her face was held between her two plump little hands, and her eyes were feasting on some charming pictures which were spread out before her. A pretty little work-basket stood on a chair at her side. It contained several yards of rumpled patchwork, two pieces of broadcloth with figures partially worked on them as if they were intended for a pair of slippers, a watch-pocket half finished, and a small piece of silk composed of very little squares. On the table close to her left elbow was a cambric handkerchief with some embroidery just begun in one of its corners. A needle carelessly stuck into it showed that Jessie had been working on it when her eyes were attracted by the pictures she was now studying with such close attention.

After a few minutes the little girl moved her right arm for the purpose of looking at another picture, when her thimble dropped from her finger to the table with a loud ringing sound. She started to pick it up, and in so doing pushed her scissors to the floor. The noise they made in falling led Jessie to glance towards the sofa, and to say in a very soft whisper--

"Oh dear! I'm afraid those naughty scissors have waked Uncle Morris out of his nap!"

Jessie was right. The noise had started Uncle Morris from a cozy little nap into which he had fallen after dinner. It was not often that the active old gentleman indulged himself in this way; but a long walk in the morning had made him weary, and he had quietly roamed into dreamland as he sat reading. He now opened his eyes, looked round the room, and seeing his niece looking askance at him, said--

"What's the matter, Jessie? I heard something fall with a great crash, what was it?"

"There was no great crash, Uncle. Only my scissors fell from the table."

"Was that all? Why it sounded to me just like the crash of a tray full of crockery ware. That was because I was half asleep, I suppose. Well, never mind, I'm not the first old gentleman who has magnified a little noise into a great one in his sleep--but what are you so busy about this afternoon, little puss!"

As Uncle Morris put this question he arose, walked up to the table and began to look at Jessie's work, for by this time she had begun stitching on the cambric handkerchief again. Blushing deeply, she said--

"I am embroidering a pocket-handkerchief, Uncle."

"Indeed! how fond you little ladies are of finery!" said Uncle Morris, smiling and patting Jessie's head.

"I'm not doing it for myself, Uncle," replied the child.

"Not for yourself, eh? Is it for papa, then?"

"No, Sir."

"For your brother Guy, perhaps?"

"No, Sir. Not for Guy," and looking slyly at her uncle, she added. "I guess that you are not Yankee enough to guess whom it is for."

"For your brother Hugh, maybe?"

"You must guess again, Uncle."

"Well, maybe it is for your hero, Richard Duncan."

"O Uncle! Do you think I would embroider a handkerchief for a young gentleman!" and Jessie pursed up her lips as though she was going to be very angry.

"Don't be angry with your old uncle, my little puss," said Mr. Morris with an air of mock penitence, "I had an idea that young ladies did such things for young gentlemen sometimes. But who is it for? I give it up."

"You give it up! Why, I thought you belonged to the 'never give up company.' Oh, fy! Uncle Morris, I'll get you turned out of the try company if you don't mind. So you had better guess again," and Jessie held up her fat finger and looked so funnily at Mr. Morris that the old gentleman's heart warmed towards her, and giving her a kiss of fond affection, he said--

"Then I guess it is for your poor old uncle."

"Beans are hot!" cried Jessie, clapping her hands. "You've guessed it at last. But see my work, Uncle! Isn't it beautiful?"

"Very pretty, indeed, my dear," replied the old man, who now put on a comical look, and added, "but I'm afraid I shall not live until it is finished."

The reproof so pleasantly given in these quaint words found its way to Jessie's heart. Her face became sober, she bit her lips, a stray tear or two hung, like dew-drops in the web of a gossamer, on her long eyelashes, she sighed and after a few moments of silent thought rose, planted her right foot firmly on the floor, and said--

To prove her sincerity Jessie put the cambric handkerchief in the bottom of her work-basket. The other articles she placed, in the order in which she had begun them, above it, and then sat resolutely down to her patchwork quilt. As her bright little needle began to fly with the swiftness of a weaver's shuttle, she said to herself--

Uncle Morris had left the parlor, and Jessie had sewed steadily for at least fifteen minutes, when her brother Hugh bounded into the room, holding two letters in his hand, and said--

"Letters for Jessie Carlton and her mother. Postage one dollar, to be paid to the bearer on delivery. Give me your half-dollar, Miss Carlton, and I will give you your letter!"

"A letter for me!" cried Jessie, dropping her work and running to her brother, capsizing her work-basket as she ran. "Give it to me! Give it to me."

"Pay me the postage first," said Hugh, holding the letter over her head.

"There is no postage, you know there isn't, you naughty Hugh! Give me my letter," and Jessie pulled Hugh's arm in the vain attempt to bring the letter within her reach.

"No postage, indeed! Do you think Uncle Sam can afford to carry letters for all the Yankee girls who may choose to write to each other, without pay? Not he. Uncle Sam knows how to care for number one too well for that. So hand over your half-dollar, Miss Jessie, and I will give you your letter."

"Pretty little cry-baby! How beautiful you are, all melted into tears!" Then dropping the whine from his tone, he added, "Here, Jessie, take your letter!"

Jessie stretched out her arm to take the offered letter. Hugh drew it back again and said--

"Bah! Don't you wish you may get it!"

"You unamiable boy! is that the affection which is due from a brother to his sister? O Hugh! Hugh! I wish you had more love and less selfishness in that idle soul of yours."

My quite spontaneous tribute to Galsworthy's Mark Lennan--before I'd heard anyone discuss him--was that here was a man a woman would be glad to trust her soul to. And, in view of how silly it is for a woman to trust her soul to anyone but herself, I still insisted that one could do it with Mark Lennan: because he'd not take charge of anyone's soul!--his wife's least of all. Of course, to love a man of his sort would mean unhappiness; but women who face life with any show of bravery face unhappiness as part of the day's work. It remains to decide whether one will reach high and break a bone or two over something worth having, or play safe and take a pale joy in one's unscarred condition. With Mark Lennan a woman would have had--? la Browning--her perfect moment; and such things are rare enough to pay well for, if necessary.

In the second place--the great matter of style. Every page shows the very poetry of prose writing; there's an inevitability about its choice of beautiful and simple words that makes them seem a part of the nature they describe. For instance, to choose at random from a multitude of exquisite things: "... under the stars of this warm Southern night, burning its incense of trees and flowers"; or, "And he sat for a long time that evening under a large lime-tree on a knoll above the Serpentine. There was very little breeze, just enough to keep alive a kind of whispering. What if men and women, when they had lived their gusty lives, became trees! What if someone who had burned and ached were now spreading over him this leafy peace--this blue-black shadow against the stars? Or were the stars, perhaps, the souls of men and women escaped for ever from love and longing? ... If only for a moment he could desert his own heart, and rest with the trees and stars!" With a single clause like "for ever part of the stillness and the passion of a summer night" Galsworthy gets effects that some poets need three or four verses for. In one place he defines for all time a Chopin mazurka as "a little dancing dirge of summer"; in another gives you with one stroke an impression of his hero that it's impossible to forget: "He looks as if he were seeing sands and lions."

In the third place, Galsworthy's psychology is profound--impregnable. One simple characterization will serve to illustrate: he describes a man's face as having the candour of one at heart a child--"that simple candour of those who have never known how to seek adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of the body."

The Garden

My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own, Into thy garden; thine be happy hours Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers, From root to crowning petal thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers. But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.

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