Skipwith Cannéll
Once upon a time, in a certain secret city of the East, lived a woman who was a sorceress. And she awaited tidings of great joy or tidings of terrible sorrow.
All day long, from her housetop, she had peered across the desert, seeking the messenger who did not come. At nightfall her servants returned to her with rumors gathered in the market place. With rumors of sorrow they returned and stood in a row before her with averted faces.
When she had heard their fears, she thanked them, and going down from the housetop, she sought a hidden chamber where she could be alone and silent. When she had pondered for awhile, she piled rare herbs in a brazier, and wet them with strange liquors, and touched fire to them. The flames flickered and smoked, singing a soft happy little song all to themselves. But she could read no answer in the singing, and no meaning in the coils of smoke; and she was very sad. At last, with a despairing gesture, she took certain secret things from the chest whereof she alone had the key, and those things she laid upon the fire and watched until they were consumed.
As soon as the embers were cold and gray, she took from the carven chest a vial of jade and a jade cup. From the vial she poured out a pale green potion, and raising the cup in her hands, she drank it to the end. Then she lay down upon the marble couch. In a little while she slept.
A sweet, heavy vapor rose from the cup, filling the room with perfume. The dregs glowed with dull evil light, for the potion had been poison, and her sleep was death.
In the morning came a messenger, bearing tidings of great joy.
Longing
George Burman Foster
It was indeed a world-historical movement, that old reformation of the Sixteenth century, snapping as it did the fetters of a Church that arrogated to itself all power in heaven and on earth, and defiantly asserting supremacy over the papacy. But the reformation of our day is much more radical and universal. Ours ends what that began, destroys what that established. The critical spirit of our time, this nothing can withstand unless it is in a position to justify and verify itself to the moral and rational judgment of mankind. In our time of day, what is church, what is state, what are society and law and sanctified custom—things that the old reformation partly inherited, partly organized, and wholly bequeathed to us? At best, tones for the musician’s use, clay in the hands of the potter, or stuff for the sculptor’s shaping, materials all, ductile or refractory, to be kneaded into forms for the habitation of man’s free spirit, man’s soul, man’s life. This critical spirit of an all-inclusive reform of life, to which everything belonging to life is subject, for which science works and art as well, living and active in the heart of modern humanity in countless problems, like the woman problem, the labor problem, like national and international social problems, with all their subdivisions,—this critical spirit gives our time a prophetic character. It summons all progressive spirits to the great struggle against a common foe, against all those forces which have banded together for a standstill of life and have made a lucrative and social-climbing business out of retrogression.