“That is nonsense, Mamma,” answered Lilly, I thought a little coldly. “Literary people do not meet to show their dresses. It is supposed at least, they meet to exchange great ideas. Your silk gown was bought and made in London, and you have some lovely English lace, what can you want more?” And then she salved the slight tone of reproof, by adding, “I am sure you look beautiful in them.”
Lilly’s opinions always satisfied me, and I found she was right, at least in one point. I was quite sufficiently dressed, but 404 somehow I did not find any exchange of great ideas. There was, however, a famous Japanese noble, and his two servants, most picturesquely dressed, made and handed around the tea. I never tasted tea before that night; I am never never apt to taste it again. Once afterwards, Mr. Matthieson, a neighbor, was in the Chinese tea fields, and he brought me home a present of a small chest of tea bought on the field where it was grown, and it came nearest to the tea I had at Mr. Stedman’s, the difference, I suppose, having been in the making of it. But no matter how full of great ideas the conversation at Mr. Stedman’s had been, I should have let all other memories slip away, and recollected only the ethereal delicacy, and far too fugitive aroma of that delicious tea. Surely such tea plants will grow for all of us in Paradise.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GODS SELL US ALL GOOD THINGS FOR LABOR
“All that is bitter, all that is sweet comes from God. It is our daily bread.”
“The mysterious conditions of our everyday life give a gravity to all our work, and all our pleasure.”
In this year 1887, I finished “The Border Shepherdess” and “The Master of His Fate” with my usual accompaniment of poems and articles for the papers. On April twenty-fourth I note that I copied “Cherry Ripe,” a poem for Harper’s Weekly, “A Strawberry Idyl” for the Illustrated Weekly, “The Romance of the Salad Bowl” for the Christian Union, and “The Two Talifers” for Leslie’s. These with Bonner’s usual poem were the papers on which I mainly relied and whose columns I felt must be kept open, no matter how interesting the novel on hand might be. But early in May my hands began to trouble me. I had the right thumb in a splint, and no finger I possessed could lift a pin. The tips of my fingers seemed to have lost feeling. I could not use pen and ink, but if the pencil was placed in my hand, I could write as long as the pencil would mark; but I could not pick it up, if I dropped it. I was very unhappy about this condition, and then the relief came from a source most unexpected.
I had met on my last voyage from England, a Professor McAfee and his wife. Mr. McAfee was a professor in a college at a place called Claverick I think. He was a most charming man, widely and well cultivated, and I formed a pleasant friendship with him and Mrs. McAfee. While my fingers were troubling me so much, they came to pay me a short visit, and he induced me to get a typewriter. I do not know how long they had been on the market, certainly not very long, for I had never seen 406 one in any of the newspaper offices I visited. Mine came the day before he left, and he showed me all its peculiarities. In less than a week I could use it very well; in a month I considered myself an expert.
The typewriter was an instant and immense relief; for the copying of all my work had doubled my labor, because it was not as interesting to copy, as to compose; and as it was necessary to write the press copy very clearly and particularly, the copying occupied more time than the composing. The kindly, clever professor who came to me in the hour of my need is dead. No. He could not die. What we call death was to him only emigration, and I care not where he now tarries. He is doing God’s will, and more alive than ever he was on earth.
Mrs. McAfee, just before Christmas, sent me a lovely oil painting of poppies and wheat, done for me by girls in the college. Then I wrote the following poem in memory of it, which was published in Harper’s Weekly and I hoped it pleased them.