Home Fires
TEMPERAMENTAL HOUSEKEEPING MAY HAVE ITS DISADVANTAGES, ESPECIALLY IN A TWO-FAMILY HOUSE
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
IT was a long way home, and a lonely way, along a road of frozen mud, bordered by empty fields and trees stripped bare in the autumn winds. The short November day was coming to a close, and the fields seemed vast in the gathering dusk. Only at the top of the hill lingered a streak of wild, unearthly yellow light, in a sky of flying clouds.
Bess climbed the hill steadily, her eyes fixed upon that transient glory; and she repeated to herself bits of poems she had learned in school:
“Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no worthy action done.”
A most characteristic sentiment! The frosty air had brought a fine color into her cheeks, and her hair, in the sunset light, shone like copper where the wind had blown it loose under her tam-o’-shanter. She was a solitary little figure in a desolate world, but invincibly gallant and earnest.
At an early age she had become enamored of Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life,” and her diary was prefaced by the quotation:
Life is real! Life is earnest!