“Well, then, if you’ll remember that all I shall ask of you at our next meeting will be to look pretty and talk nonsense I’ll go.” Suiting the action to the word, he left the room.
“Elsie,” he called a moment later as he put his head in the open door, “may I send you a violet if it’s a very small and stingy one?”
Herbert dodged just in time to escape the pin-cushion Elsie threw at his head, but the supper-table that night was graced with a generous bouquet of Parmesan violets, and they nestled lovingly in Elsie’s dark locks, under her plump chin, and in the cincture of her slender waist.
CHAPTER XX.
For some weeks Gilbert had been perfecting a number of handsomely finished medicine cabinets (which were furnished with racks for bottles and drawers for boxes, sponges, and all the various healing paraphernalia which every well-regulated household keeps at hand for emergencies), and now that the question of subsistence was so seriously confronting them once more, he determined to canvass from house to house and endeavor to sell them. Knowing that the homes of the rich would be closed against him, he could only hope to gain access to those of the middle and poorer classes, among whom he meant to provoke what thought and inquiry he could regarding the establishment of a society of universal brotherhood. Beyond the five great principles enunciated by the eloquent clergyman, all ideas were as yet in a nebulous state. Having established the fact of a desire for the proposed reform, the three instigators—for Elsie was already heart and hand in the projected work—believed that wisdom would be given them for the rounding and perfecting of details. “There is one thing to be remembered,” said Margaret, “that to-day no less than yesterday a tree is known by its fruit, and love to God can only be reached in the minds of the oppressed through love to man. First prove to men that you love their souls because you love the God that created them, and you will then be able to convey to them some of the greater truths of a divine and spiritual love.”
“Is not that material doctrine?” asked Elsie.
“No, I do not think so. The world has been mystified too long. The plain and simple doctrine of a human, interested, generous love even a child can understand, and God does not despise the day of small things.”
“How otherwise can you reach a material nature than by material symbols?” asked Gilbert.
“Even as a child learns to rely upon love and gradually reaches back to the motive and inspiration of that love, so back of this earthly brotherhood men will come to see the radiance and truth of divinity overshadowing it.”
“Ah, if mankind can only be made to look at it in that light! But what are we going to do, Gilbert, in this new order with the besotted and brutish natures that live only for self?”