“It is a most unwholesome book,” said one. “Love and marriage are scarcely mentioned in it. Some twaddle that pretends to come from across the river of death is the only bait it has with which to angle for the reader’s interest, a theme in which healthy minds will find no attraction.”
Death waits for every one that breathes, yet any light thereon is “unwholesome and not attractive to healthy minds,” according to those who tell us what we ought to read. Strange doctrine, but prevalent!
Another said: “One more of those deplorable books that deal in the supernatural and aim to make readers take a morbid interest in death. Its author has no eyes for the thousand fresh themes of life, but must needs delve into the darksome hereafter for material with which to burden her absurd pages. Why should any one turn from the sweet theme of love to wander in paths so remote from taste and wholesome imagery as this?”
Some sneered at it, some ignored it and many abused it. Few had so much as a tolerant word for it. Yet verily a mystery guideth the fate of a book as well as the growing of a daisy, for “The Last Enemy” sold astonishingly fast, and was read and talked about far and wide. In a few months it was the best known book of the year, in spite of the critics, and brought fame and money to its author, though too late, her friends said.
Is anything too late? Come not all things at their appointed time, neither sooner nor later than they are due? In the divine drama of the universe the curtain never falls until the play is finished. In our short-sightedness we say our friend died too soon, or his good fortune came too late; but we are in error. Everything is part of the eternal plan, and to be out of time or place an impossibility.
Never to Cartice Doring had life appeared so well worth living, nor work so well worth doing. To Lilla Joy she said:
“I am just beginning to live. I am learning what life means, what we can make of it, and what I am. We are love.
“We love because we cannot help it. It is our expression, and the greater, wider and more all-inclusive our love, the fuller, larger, more perfect and more abundant is our life. How beautiful it all is! How orderly and harmonious! How glorious!
“Most of my life I have written down to the majority of readers. Now I shall bring them up to me. I shall follow my ideals, as I did in ‘The Last Enemy.’ Our ideals! What are they but our souls, trying to reveal themselves to other souls. Here in this noble poem by Katherine Lee Bates, the ideal speaks:
“At the innermost core of thy being, I am a burning fire
From thine own altar-flame kindled, in the hour when souls aspire:
For know that men’s prayers shall be answered, and guard thy spirit’s desire.
“That which thou wouldst be, thou must be; that which thou shalt be thou art;
As the oak, astir in the acorn, the dull earth rendeth apart,
Lo, thou, the seed of thy longing, that breaketh, and waketh, the heart.