"Tell me, what are you going to do?" he asked eagerly. He had almost said, "Tell me what to do."
"Well," she answered, "since I have been thinking it all over, things as they are have become empty. There is no joy in it, and I am weary of it all.... Yesterday I came to you. I wanted to ask you whether it was best or not to leave the old life. But I did not have to ask you.
I saw how it was when you told me what you had done. And O, how I thank you for straightening it all out for me. Besides," she added with hesitancy, "after I left you last night I telegraphed for the man in the little village out west."
When she had gone he gazed out of the window after her as she walked buoyant and happy through the night.
"Perhaps," softly said the Maker of Joys, "it is the memory of the old days that is sweetest after all."
VENITA SEIBERT
Miss Venita Seibert, whose charming stories of German-American child life have been widely read and appreciated, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, December 29, 1878. Miss Seibert was educated in the Louisville public schools, and almost at once entered upon a literary career. She contributed short stories and verse to the leading periodicals, her first big serial story being published in _The American Magazine_ during 1907 and 1908, entitled _The Different World_. This dealt with the life and imaginings of a little German-American girl, a dreamy, sensitive child, and showing the poetry of German home life and the originality of childhood. The story was highly praised by Miss Ida M. Tarbell and other able critics.
Under the title of _The Gossamer Thread_ (Boston, 1910), Miss Seibert brought these tales together in one volume. There "the chronicles of Velleda, who understood about 'the different world,'" may be read to the heart's desire. Miss Seibert, who resides at Louisville, Kentucky, promises big for the future, and her next book should bring her a wider public, as well as greater growth in literary power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _McClure's Magazine_ (September, 1903); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta, 1910, v. xv).
THE ORIGIN OF BABIES[94]
[From _The Gossamer Thread_ (Boston, 1910)]
Oh, it was a puzzling world. Not the least puzzling thing was babies.
Mrs. Katzman had come several times with a little brown satchel and brought one to Tante--a little, little thing that had to be fed catnip tea and rolled in a shawl and kept out of draughts. The advantage of having a new baby in the house was that it meant a glorious period of running wild, for of course one did not pretend to obey the girl who came to cook. Also, there was much company who brought nice things to eat for Tante, who naturally left the biggest part for the children.
Of course God sent the little babies, but how did he get them down to Mrs. Katzman? She averred that she got them out of the river, but this Velleda knew to be a fib, for of course they would drown in the river.
Tante said they fell down from Heaven, but of course such a fall would kill a little baby. Gros-mamma Wallenstein said a stork brought them, and for a time Velleda thought Mrs. Katzman must be a stork; but when she saw a picture of one she knew that it was only a bird. Then she decided that the stork carried the babies to Mrs. Katzman's and she divided them around; but Mrs. Katzman's little boy, questioned in the most searching manner, declared that he had never seen a sign of any stork about the premises.
Just after Baby Ernest's coming, Velleda and Freddy went all the way to Mrs. Katzman's house--and it was quite a long way, fully three blocks--to beg her to exchange him for a girl.
"We've only used him two days and he's just as good as new," stated Velleda, guiltily concealing the fact that he cried a great deal. But Mrs. Katzman said she really couldn't think of it, as God settled all those matters himself. It was on this occasion that Velleda had cross-examined Mrs. Katzman's little boy regarding the stork. There was no doubting the truth of Georgie's statements, for he told Velleda dolefully that he himself had long desired a brother or a sister, but never a baby had he seen in that house. Evidently Mrs. Katzman fetched them from somewhere else in the brown satchel.
"You might have had ours," said Velleda. "We didn't want him. We prayed for a girl."
"Oh, you'll soon find out _that_ don't do any good." Georgie kicked gloomily at a stone. "I used to pray, too, but God's awful stubborn when it comes to babies."
Velleda wondered at the strangeness of things. All the little girls and some of the little boys who had no baby brother or sister to take care of, thought it a great treat to be allowed to wheel the baby-buggy up and down the square, really a most irksome task, as Velleda could testify. At Velleda's house they believed with the poet that "Time's noblest offspring is the last," so the baby reigned king, which was not always pleasant for his smaller slaves. Therefore she wondered at Georgie's taste. However, since he evidently regarded his brotherless state as a deep misfortune, she was full of sympathy and would do what she could for him.
"You just pray a little harder," she advised; "and," struck by a brilliant thought, "look in the brown satchel every night! Maybe you'll find one left over."
She and Freddy went home feeling very sorry for Georgie. He was only another illustration of the old saying which Onkel often commented on--the shoemaker's children wear ragged shoes, the painter's own house is the last to receive a fresh coat, and the stork woman has no baby of her own.
Regarding this great question there was one point upon which everybody agreed. Velleda had her own system of deciding questions; she sifted the versions of her various informants, retained those points upon which all agreed, and upon this common ground proceeded to erect the structure of her own reasoning. Grown-ups, she knew, had a weakness for mild fibbing, which was not lying and not wrong at all, but was naturally very disconcerting when one burned to learn the real truth about a thing. The stork theory, the river theory, the falling from Heaven theory--all possessed one mutual starting point: God sent the little babies. There was of course no doubt in that regard, and Velleda finally decided that God placed them in the woods in a certain spot, marked where they were to go, and then vanished into Heaven (for of course no one had ever seen God), whereupon Mrs. Katzman approached with the brown satchel.
This was a most satisfactory theory, with no flaws in its logic, reasonable and probable, and conflicting with no known law. The question was shelved.
Velleda, going up to the third floor room of Nellie Johnson with a pitcher of milk which the dairywoman had asked her to deliver, found the girl huddled up before a small stove, looking so white and miserable that Velleda's heart ached for her, although she knew that Nellie was a very wicked person and nobody in the neighborhood spoke to her. Across her knees lay a white bundle. Velleda considered the matter.
"I guess God loves you anyway, Nellie," she concluded. "He has sent you a little baby."
The girl tossed the bundle upon the bed with a fierce gesture.
"God?" she said bitterly. "It ain't God sent that baby. The Devil sent him!"
Velleda fled down the stairs.
It is indeed a puzzling world.
FOOTNOTE:
[94] Copyright, 1910, by Small, Maynard and Company.
CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK
Charles Neville Buck, novelist and short-story writer, was born near Midway, Kentucky, April 15, 1879. He spent the first fifteen years of his life at his birthplace, save the four years he was in South America with his father, the Hon. C. W. Buck, who was United States Minister to Peru from 1885 to 1889, and the author of _Under the Sun_, a Peruvian romance. At the age of fifteen years, Charles Neville Buck went to Louisville to enter the high school; and, in 1898, he was graduated from the University of Louisville. He studied art and joined the staff of _The Evening Post_, of Louisville, as cartoonist, which position he held for a year, when he became an editorial writer on that paper. Mr. Buck studied law and was admitted to the bar, but he did not practice. In 1908 he quit journalism for prose fiction. His short-stories were accepted by American and English magazines, but he won his first real reputation with a novel of mental aberration, entitled _The Key to Yesterday_ (New York, 1910), the scenes of which were set against Kentucky, France, and South America. Mr. Buck's next novel, _The Lighted Match_ (New York, 1911), was an international love romance in which a rich young American falls in love with the princess, and about-to-be-queen, of a bit of a kingdom near Spain.
Benton, hero, has a rocky road to travel, but he, of course, demolishes every barrier and proves again that love finds a way. _The Lighted Match_ is a rattling good story, and it contains many purple patches between the hiss of the revolutionist's bomb and lovers'
sighs. Mr. Buck's latest novel, _The Portal of Dreams_ (New York, 1912), was a very clever story. His first Kentucky novel, and the finest thing he has done, he and his publisher think, is _The Strength of Samson_, which will appear in four parts in _The Cavalier_, a weekly magazine, for February, 1913, after which it will be almost immediately published in book form under the title of _The Call of the Cumberlands_. Mr. Buck's home is at Louisville, Kentucky, but he spends much of his time in New York, where he lives at the Hotel Earle, in Waverly Place, a stone's throw from the apartments of his friend, Thompson Buchanan, the Kentucky playwright.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Harper's Weekly_ (October 8, 1910); _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ (August, 1911); _Who's Who in America_ (1912-1913).
THE DOCTRINE ACCORDING TO JONESY[95]
[From _The Lighted Match_ (New York, 1911)]
Despite the raw edge on the air, the hardier guests at "Idle Times"
still clung to those outdoor sports which properly belonged to the summer. That afternoon a canoeing expedition was made up river to explore a cave which tradition had endowed with some legendary tale of pioneer days and Indian warfare.
Pagratide, having organized the expedition with that object in view, had made use of his prior knowledge to enlist Cara for the crew of his canoe, but Benton, covering a point that Pagratide had overlooked, pointed out that an engagement to go up the river in a canoe is entirely distinct from an engagement to come down the river in a canoe. He cited so many excellent authorities in support of his contention that the matter was decided in his favor for the return trip, and Mrs.
Porter-Woodleigh, all unconscious that her escort was a Crown Prince, found in him an introspective and altogether uninteresting young man.
Benton and the girl in one canoe, were soon a quarter of a mile in advance of the others, and lifting their paddles from the water they floated with the slow current. The singing voices of the party behind them came softly adrift along the water. All of the singers were young and the songs had to do with sentiment.
The girl buttoned her sweater closer about her throat. The man stuffed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and bent low to kindle it into a cheerful spot of light.
A belated lemon afterglow lingered at the edge of the sky ahead.
Against it the gaunt branches of a tall tree traced themselves starkly. Below was the silent blackness of the woods.
Suddenly Benton raised his head.
"I have a present for you," he announced.
"A present?" echoed the girl. "Be careful, Sir Gray Eyes. You played the magician once and gave me a rose. It was such a wonderful rose"--she spoke almost tenderly--"that it has spoiled me. No commonplace gifts will be tolerated after that."