“Not so fast, my dear,” she said, forestalling me. “Pray don’t imagine that I am bereft of my senses, and propose to reform the slums by giving them free access to a gallery of casts from the antique. It would require a small army of policemen and scrubbing-women to preserve it in decent condition, if the rabble were admitted indiscriminately, and I do not propose to give people that form of beauty which they do not want and could not possibly appreciate.”
“But you blame all the rich, who, no matter how much they may give away, still reserve enough to buy steam yachts and build fine houses and indulge their æsthetic tastes to the extent of one thirtieth of their fortune,” I said pettishly.
“No,” said Mildred, slowly; “I do not blame them. I am not their judge. I cannot speak for others: it is right, more than that, it is necessary, that man should create beauty, for he cannot live by bread alone.
“But I cannot help feeling that the beauty should be for all; should be where all may see and enjoy it. The old Greeks were right about that, when the temples, the agora, the gymnasia were consecrated to beauty, and it was the glory of the rich to minister to the state and not spend lavish sums in collecting private treasures.
“No, dear. Once I thought to have all that was rich and fine, and that could delight the eye, around me in my own home. I felt that I had a right to it, provided that I thought of others first and most. But now I see things differently. I wonder that I ever could have been so selfish.
“Yes, Ruby,” she added, almost sternly, as she saw my look of protest, “it was selfishness. I meant, in spite of all my giving, to sacrifice nothing. But I have been trying these last few months,—yes, since that time last summer when my power to make life better for others seemed about to be forever taken from me,—I have been trying, and Ralph has helped me, oh, so much, to look at all this short life of ours in its beginning here on this little planet, as I shall look back upon it with the eyes of eternity, when it has all gone into the irrevocable past. How will it seem then, little sister, when all our foolish ambitions and traditions and false social standards have been swept away? Shall I be glad or sorry then, do you think, to remember that the one talent which was placed in my hands was used to its utmost, that nothing was withheld but what was needed to make me the better fitted for my work? Ah, when my naked soul shall stand before the judgment bar of its own conscience and the moral law, and hears the sentence, ‘This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone,’ what shall I plead in excuse?”
Mildred’s voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and her eyes were filled with unshed tears. We did not speak for a few moments. I felt a lump rising in my throat and could only choke it down while I stroked the dear head that lay warm against my arm. My foolish questionings were stilled. The clear insight of this simple, true-hearted woman had pierced through and through my flimsy protests, and I sat awed and abashed. Presently she went on in her natural, common-sense way to explain more definitely what she meant.
“I mean to make a little more beauty in this world, if I can,” she said, “and accomplish some more important things as well; but the art of all arts which I shall try to learn and teach is the one which we Americans most need to study, the art of simple living.
“I shall have the pictures and the books, the statues and the music that I love; but what matters it whether they are all in my own home or not, or whether or not I seek them in galleries open to all alike? Not until our glaring, stony streets are made less dreary by more trees and fountains and statues, not until there is a little beauty for every one, can I claim the moral right to spend a fortune on Meissoniers or ancient Satsuma, for my own private delight.
“For a long time I have been thinking of what could bring the greatest stimulus and joy into the lives of the wretched poor in our great city; the washerwomen and truckmen and foul-mouthed, dirty little street gamins whose highest bliss is reached with the attainment of a full stomach and the sight of a street fight or a circus procession. It would be folly to give them money outright; but here in amusements, just as I have found it in regard to tenement houses and everything else, coöperation is the key to success.