"'Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!'"
"Yes," replied Roland, "I believe we were meant to aspire. 'Excelsior' seems the motto of the universe."
"And a good motto, too! But here we are." And stopping at his own door, he admitted Roland and himself with his latch-key.
CHAPTER V.
A FAMILY PARTY.
The light and warmth of Mr. Alden's hospitable home, with the rippling laughter of children's merry voices, seemed to Roland in delightful contrast with the raw, cold December evening without, as well as with the depressing influence of the miserable apartment they had just left. The father's return was greeted with joyous shouts from the little ones, and Roland was speedily included in the warm welcome. A bounteously spread tea-table, with its pretty pot of ferns in the centre, was awaiting Mr. Alden's arrival, and looked inviting enough to a young man who had been out in the chill air during most of the afternoon. The happy children's faces, the delicate and sweet-looking little mother, the freedom and unaffected gladness of the family life, strongly impressed Roland, and vividly recalled the associations of his own childhood. Grace, the helpful, eldest daughter, had, Roland thought, the sweetest, purest, sunniest face he had ever seen. The clear, frank eyes, with the light of a happy heart sparkling through their peaceful blue, the smile so sweet and sincere, the sunny, golden hair, and silvery, gleeful laugh, so childlike in its ring, fascinated him like a spell. No wonder, he thought, that the shadows cleared from Mr. Alden's thoughtful brow as soon as he crossed his own threshold. Yet, much of the family sunshine there was a reflection from Mr. Alden's own spirit. And, however the shadows of the world without might sometimes weigh on his own heart, he never allowed them to sadden his children, if he could help it. He was fond of exhorting his people to keep their children's childhood as happy as they could, without letting them grow selfish and heartless. And he would often quote Victor Hugo's expressive lines:
"Grief is a fruit God will not let grow
On boughs too feeble to sustain its weight."
"Cultivate sympathy in your children," he would say, "but not so as to burden them prematurely"; and what he preached he practised. Meal-times were, for the children's sake, always bright and cheerful. Mr. Alden had the precious gift of humor, and it served him in good stead to balance a nature acutely sensitive to the pain, the ills and the discords of human life. He seldom failed to catch and bring home some little quaint or amusing experience, which, told as he could tell it, would provoke the good-natured laughter in which he believed, as one of the safety-valves of our nature. Frank, his eldest boy, Roland's first acquaintance in the family, inherited his father's tendency to see the humorous side of things, without, as yet, his counterbalancing depth of feeling; and so it often happened that the father and son together would set the little ones in a small uproar of laughter, which Mrs. Alden's love of propriety would often constrain her to try to keep in some sort of check. But it was no wonder that these children enjoyed their father's presence at meals, and missed it when he was absent.
After tea, the whole party adjourned to the parlor, which was purposely kept not too fine for the frequent incursions of the children. The younger ones rapidly improved their acquaintance with Roland, gathering close about him, reciting to him some of their pet rhymes, and examining him as to his acquaintance with their favorite stories. Fortunately he had read Grimm and Hans Andersen, and knew most of the stories that they had heard, over and over, from their father and Grace, who had caught up his knack of telling a story so as to be an acceptable substitute when "father" was too busy. Roland and they were en rapport at once on the strength of his familiar acquaintance with "The Little Match Girl," "The Snow Maiden," "The Ugly Duckling," and "Prudent Elsie."