Bab Bab 2 · The spirit of Jennie--who shall express it? This daughter of

poverty, who was now to fetch and carry the laundry of this

distinguished citizen of Columbus, was a creature of a mellowness of

temperament which words can but vaguely suggest. There are natures

born to the inheritance of flesh that come without understanding, and

that go again without seeming to have wondered why. Life, so long as

they endure it, is a true wonderland, a thing of infinite beauty,

which could they but wander into it wonderingly, would be heaven

enough. Opening their eyes, they see a conformable and perfect world.

Trees, flowers, the world of sound and the world of color. These are

the valued inheritance of their state. If no one said to them "Mine,"

they would wander radiantly forth, singing the song which all the

earth may some day hope to hear. It is the song of goodness.

Caged in the world of the material, however, such a nature is

almost invariably an anomaly. That other world of flesh into which has

been woven pride and greed looks askance at the idealist, the dreamer.

If one says it is sweet to look at the clouds, the answer is a warning

against idleness. If one seeks to give ear to the winds, it shall be

well with his soul, but they will seize upon his possessions. If all

the world of the so-called inanimate delay one, calling with

tenderness in sounds that seem to be too perfect to be less than

understanding, it shall be ill with the body. The hands of the actual

are forever reaching toward such as these--forever seizing

greedily upon them. It is of such that the bond servants are made.

In the world of the actual, Jennie was such a spirit. From her

earliest youth goodness and mercy had molded her every impulse. Did

Sebastian fall and injure himself, it was she who struggled with

straining anxiety, carried him safely to his mother. Did George

complain that he was hungry, she gave him all of her bread. Many were

the hours in which she had rocked her younger brothers and sisters to

sleep, singing whole-heartedly betimes and dreaming far dreams. Since

her earliest walking period she had been as the right hand of her

mother. What scrubbing, baking, errand-running, and nursing there had

been to do she did. No one had ever heard her rudely complain, though

she often thought of the hardness of her lot. She knew that there were

other girls whose lives were infinitely freer and fuller, but, it

never occurred to her to be meanly envious; her heart might be lonely,

but her lips continued to sing. When the days were fair she looked out

of her kitchen window and longed to go where the meadows were.

Nature's fine curves and shadows touched her as a song itself. There

were times when she had gone with George and the others, leading them

away to where a patch of hickory-trees flourished, because there were

open fields, with shade for comfort and a brook of living water. No

artist in the formulating of conceptions, her soul still responded to

these things, and every sound and every sigh were welcome to her

because of their beauty.

When the soft, low call or the wood-doves, those spirits of the

summer, came out of the distance, she would incline her head and

listen, the whole spiritual quality of it dropping like silver bubbles

into her own great heart.

Where the sunlight was warm and the shadows flecked with its

splendid radiance she delighted to wonder at the pattern of it, to

walk where it was most golden, and follow with instinctive

appreciation the holy corridors of the trees.

Color was not lost upon her. That wonderful radiance which fills

the western sky at evening touched and unburdened her heart.

"I wonder," she said once with girlish simplicity, "how it would

feel to float away off there among those clouds."

She had discovered a natural swing of a wild grape-vine, and was

sitting in it with Martha and George.

"Oh, wouldn't it be nice if you had a boat up there," said

George.

She was looking with uplifted face at a far-off cloud, a red island

in a sea of silver.

"Just supposing," she said, "people could live on an island like

that."

Her soul was already up there, and its elysian paths knew the

lightness of her feet.

"There goes a bee," said George, noting a bumbler winging by.

"Yes," she said, dreamily, "it's going home."

"Does everything have a home?" asked Martha.

"Nearly everything," she answered.

"Do the birds go home?" questioned George.

"Yes," she said, deeply feeling the poetry of it herself, "the

birds go home."

"Do the bees go home?" urged Martha.

"Yes, the bees go home."

"Do the dogs go home?" said George, who saw one traveling

lonesomely along the nearby road.

"Why, of course," she said, "you know that dogs go home."

"Do the gnats?" he persisted, seeing one of those curious spirals

of minute insects turning energetically in the waning light.

"Yes," she said, half believing her remark. "Listen!"

"Oho," exclaimed George, incredulously, "I wonder what kind of

houses they live in."

"Listen!" she gently persisted, putting out her hand to still

him.

It was that halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction

upon the waning day. Far off the notes were sounding gently, and

nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also. A

scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the grass

before her. A humming bee hummed, a cow-bell tinkled, while some

suspicious cracklings told of a secretly reconnoitering squirrel.

Keeping her pretty hand weighed in the air, she listened until the

long, soft notes spread and faded and her heart could hold no more.

Then she arose.

"Oh," she said, clenching her fingers in an agony of poetic

feeling. There were crystal tears overflowing in her eyes. The

wondrous sea of feeling in her had stormed its banks. Of such was the

spirit of Jennie.