One evening she stood in the doorway, watching the sunset. The highway was quite deserted, save for one lone traveller, off in the distance, who seemed vaguely familiar. As he approached, she recognized in him the one who had tarried at her dwelling almost five years before.
She went back into the house, to get the shadow from its secret hiding-place, to return it to him. But when she had opened the door of the little room where she kept it she suddenly realized that she did not want to give it up. She had kept it so long, and had grown so used to considering it hers, that she never realized how precious it had become until she had to part with it. She went to the door once more and looked out upon the highway. He was quite near now, and as she stared at him she saw with wonder what she had been blind to before—he was her prince!
She wanted to run out to meet him, with a great joy in her heart and a glad cry on her lips, but she was bound by convention. And she was filled with a great fear, lest he should pass by, merely thinking of her as a silly little girl who had hidden herself when he came the first time and let him go on alone. And she decided that, as she was not allowed to reveal herself to him, neither would she attempt to stop him and return the shadow which was rightly his, but would at least keep that, to help make the coming years less lonely.
And that is the end of this fairy-story. And after all, I am not sure that it is a REAL fairy-story, because most fairy-stories end—“And they lived happy ever after.”
Perhaps you, who are so much wiser than the silly little woman, can think of a better ending for it.
I thank you, dear unknown sender of this tale, for your pretty compliment. If in any way I might claim to be wiser than you, or than any one who feels destiny has cheated him, it is because I have ceased to seek the shrine of the Little Cheating God of Happy Endings, and visit rather the Great God of Day by Day.
THE ART OF HAPPY MEMORY
The most significant step a mind takes is that wherein it realizes that it can control its own operation; when it learns that it can command those things in itself commonly considered automatic.
And in nothing does this appear with such striking results to happiness as in the discovery of one’s power to manage his memory.
Most people think they remember what they remember, and that is all there is to it. But it is possible to make memory a servant, and restrain its mastery.