CHAPTER XXII.
PENDULUM 'TWIXT SMILES AND TEARS.
In many particulars this year of our Lord, 1883, was a sad one for us all. The pecuniary loss, resultant upon the town-building disaster, was severe; but the revelation which came to me of the innate meanness of human nature in matters of money, was the more depressing by far.
It was amazing to hear wealthy people, who had bought of me a few hundred dollars' worth of stock, and who really felt the loss of it much less than they would suffer from a fly bite, whine as if this had reduced them to the direst poverty, and insinuate that I, who had lost manifold more than they, should refund, though the loss was entirely the result of their own stupidity in failing to send me the proxies I had asked for by mail.
We consoled ourselves, as usual, with the knowledge that we had acted honestly and conscientiously towards all, and that the miseries of this short life are "not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us in the near future of the life eternal."
The blue arch above us, ever changing like the sea, has always possessed a peculiar fascination for me, and I never let slip a convenient opportunity to feast my eyes upon it. I was pursuing this favorite occupation one day this year, when an unusually beautiful cloud attracted my attention, and as I watched its rapidly changing forms, there was slowly evolved from it the kindly loving face of my mother. It was no fancy, no distorted figment of a dream. The dear face smiled upon me with angelic sweetness, glanced upward, and was gone; then I knew that I had another guardian angel in heaven.
In a short time, news came from R—— that she who had gladly devoted her life to self-sacrifice for her children, had been relieved from the always weak and suffering body.
Dear, good mother! Her highest and only ambition was to do good; not a selfish thought ever even flitted across her horizon. Frank as the day, constant as the sun, pure as the dew; like our Lord himself, she sacrificed herself for the good of others. Her sons, Richard and Mark, welcomed her at the gates ajar, and she was at rest.
What is death but a journey home?
A perfect rest when the work is done,
A gentle sleep for earth-weary eyes,
And the soul ascends to the azure skies.
We in the earth life went on as best we could. My only brother Joshua sold the old homestead with its burdens, too heavy for him to bear alone, bought our former home for one-half it had cost us, which was much more than any other would pay for it; while we sold our castle and farm which had become a mountain on our shoulders, and went to live with my wife's parents in Boston, where I continued my work of introducing the school text-books which had been sold, and myself with them, to a New York publishing firm.
When the winter winds and snows began to blow, I longed for the balmy zephyrs of fair Florida, and like the summer birds, I once more journeyed southward; there, after a long search for the best throughout the land of flowers, journeying in steam yachts, row-boats, on horseback, and sometimes hand over hand on the branches of trees, over tracks inaccessible in any other manner, I formed another stock company consisting of several financiers who had spent all their lives in Florida, and secured many thousands of acres of excellent lands in the highlands of Marion County, hoping to do good and get good by inducing the surplus population of our cities to go back to the bosom of Mother Earth, where a moderate amount of labor will give them an independent livelihood free from the snow and cold which infest the wintry north, free from the heart-breaking demoralization of begging for work in our overcrowded cities where scores of the poverty-stricken are tumbling over each other in the frantic grabbing for every job of work and every crumb of charity.
Were a mere modicum of the vast sums now worse than wasted in pauperizing the unemployed; a tithe of the money squandered on building palaces for our numberless, ever-begging colleges, devoted to settling the poor upon the unimproved lands in Florida, the dangerous flood of ever-increasing crime, and physical and mental suffering which now threatens the very existence of our republic, would soon vanish from our cities, and thousands of the dangerous classes would become self-supporting, self-respecting, independent men and women.
Were a tithe of the vast sums lavished by our millionaires upon the pictured walls, gorgeously embellished ceilings, overcrowded book shelves of our numerous libraries, and upon the unchristlike towers of unfrequented cathedrals, be even loaned to those who would gladly cultivate the thousands of acres of untilled soil in fair Florida, all the suffering hangers-on for jobs would become successful agriculturists, owning their own farms, buying their own books, and sufficiently educating their own children.
If the money spent every winter in pauperizing the unemployed by giving them free soup, could be devoted to settling colonies upon our uncultivated lands, the vexing problems and contests between labor and capital would be easily solved and obliterated; the unskilled poor would be at once enabled to respond to the call of the poet—
"Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,
Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame!
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,
She calls you to feast from her beautiful lap.
Come out from your alleys, your courts and your lanes,
And breathe like your eagles, the air of our plains!
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives
Will declare it all nonsense insuring your lives."