After the fourth day, it did not, for an instant, allow me to think that I was going to die. Never for an instant did it lose its cheer and confidence. It was there to say “Hello!” to me every morning, and there to say “Good-night” to me when the shadows grew deep—and all through the day it talked to me, and bobbed its little head in the whispers of the breezes, and I had the foolish sentiment, at times, that it was actually flirting with me. I do not think I realized how precious it had become to me until, one day, there came a terrific thunder-storm. I thought the first blast of the wind and beat of rain were going to destroy my comrade, and, almost in a panic, I dragged myself right and left, forgetful of pain, until I had built a protection about my flower.
That was the sixth day, and, from that day, the swelling and the pain began to leave my limb. On the tenth, I could move about a little on my feet. On the fifteenth, I was prepared to undertake my journey again. I felt a real grief in leaving that solitary flower. It had become a part of me, had encouraged me in my blackest hours, had cheered and comforted me even in the darkness of nights, because I knew it was there—my little comrade—waiting for the sun. For me, it had individualized itself from among all the other flowers in the forest. And now, when I was about to go, I saw that the flower itself had about lived the span of its life; in a very short time it would fade and die. On the morning I left, the petals were drooping, and its tiny face did not look up at the sun and at me as brightly as before, and I fancied that I could hear its little voice saying, “Please take me with you.” And I did. Call it foolish and trivial sentiment if you will, but the flower and I went together, and afterward I wrote a novel and called it “Flower of the North.”
I have often heard strong men say, “Oh, that is merely a matter of sentiment. Life is too hard and real for a thing like that.”
I agree with them to an extent. Sentiment does not play a large part in the world to-day. For sentiment, as that word is understood by the millions, is the heart and soul of all that is good and great. Without sentiment in the hearts of a man and a woman, there cannot be the fullness of real love between them, even though the law has made them man and wife. Without sentiment, no good act is ever done from the heart out. Without sentiment—a sentiment that warms the soul as a fire warms a cold room—there will never be a deep and comforting faith. I have seen this “co-operation of rational power and moral feeling” make plain faces beautiful, and I have seen the lack of it make others hard as rock. Selfishness, egoism, the desire to get everything possible out of life, no matter at what expense to others, is its antithesis.
As I write these last pages, I have at hand facts which seem to show that sentiment, and therefore faith, is as nearly dead as it has ever been. For science in all the great nations of the earth is planning and plotting frantically for the extermination of their fellow men, and this, in the hour when all the world is crying out for a faith, is what is being achieved:
Deadly gases that will make gunpowder and the rifles anachronisms, that in the next war will depopulate whole regions, men, women, and little children alike.
Perfection of the lethal ray, which will shrivel up and paralyze human beings over vast areas, irrespective of whether they are combatants or not.
Development of plans for “germ-warfare,” whereby whole nations will be infected by plagues.
And then consider the words of one great military scientist of the English-speaking race: “Germ-warfare was tried on a small scale in the late war, and its results have been promising. The method of its use was in the poisoning of water supplies with cholera and typhus germs, and the loosing of dogs inoculated with rabies and of women inoculated with syphilis into the enemy country. Here apparently is a promising beginning from which vast developments are to be hoped for.”