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Tamoskaro-2 Directory 01
Page 04
To brood over the war, to spend our time in disentangling its intricate causes, seems to me a task for future historians. But a lover of peace, confronted by the hideousness of war, does best to try, if he can, to make plain what he means by peace and why he desires it. I do not mean by peace an indolent life, lost in gentle reveries. I mean hard daily work, and mutual understanding, and lavish help, and the effort to reassure and console and uplift. And I mean, too, a real conflict--not a conflict where we set the best and bravest of each nation to spill each other's blood--but a conflict against crime and disease and selfishness and greediness and cruelty. There is much fighting to be done; can we not combine to fight our common foes, instead of weakening each other against evil? We destroy in war our finest parental stock, we waste our labour, we lose our garnered store; we give every harsh passion a chance to grow; we live in the traditions of the past, and not in the hopes of the future.
Mrs. Chapman, remembering that such events did not occur every day, resolved not to be outdone by any of them. She was sure a little display would not be wasted; and had spent four hours "getting herself elegant." She had more than half a suspicion that there would be some New York people present, and it would not do to be outshone by them in magnificence of toilet. Nor must I forget Bowles, who appeared shortly after breakfast in his new livery, with a tall hat half covered with a band and buckle, white gloves, and bright new boots and breeches. Bowles was a figure of immense importance, and contemplated himself with an air of amusing gravity, as he moved up and down in front of the house, much to the amusement of the visitors at Bright's Inn. A bunch of flowers had been provided for his button hole; and he was to drive the happy couple to and from church, an honor he seemed to appreciate fully.
One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which was enforced that year on the Italian frontier. The local doctor had gone down that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange some details. "Then, perhaps, my dear," she said to her husband, "he is the quarantine." "No, my love," replied her husband. "The quarantine is not a person, it is a place where they put people"; but she would not be comforted, and suspected the quarantine as an enemy that might at any moment pounce out upon her and her parrots. So a lady told me once that she had been in like trouble about the anthem. She read in her prayer-book that in choirs and places where they sing "here followeth the anthem," yet the person with this most mysteriously sounding name never did follow. They had a choir, and no one could say the church was not a place where they sang, for they did sing--both chants and hymns. Why, then, this persistent slackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture should follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk? No doubt he would come some day, and then what would he be like? Fair or dark? Tall or short? Would he be bald and wear spectacles like papa, or would he be young and good-looking? Anyhow, there was something wrong, for it was announced that he would follow, and he never did follow; therefore there was no knowing what he might not do next.
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