>AN ETHEREAL EPISODE</h3>
<p>They that know nothing fear nothing.
Away back in 1886 my alert young friend,
Miss Anna Gordon, and my ingenious young
niece, Miss Katharine Willard, took to the
tricycle as naturally as ducks take to water.
The very first time they mounted they went
spinning down the long shady street, with its
pleasant elms, in front of Rest Cottage, where
for nearly a generation mother and I had had
our home. Even as the war-horse snuffeth
the battle from afar, I longed to go and do likewise.
Remembering my country bringing-up
and various exploits in running, climbing,
horseback-riding, to say nothing of my tame
heifer that I trained for a Bucephalus, I said
to myself, “If those girls can ride without
learning so can I!” Taking out my watch
I timed them as they, at my suggestion, set
out to make a record in going round the
square. Two and a half minutes was the result.
I then started with all my forces well
<SPAN name="png.076" id="png.076" href="#png.076"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>64<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>in hand, and flew around in two and a quarter
minutes. Not contented with this, but puffed
up with foolish vanity, I declared that I would
go around in two minutes; and, encouraged
by their cheers, away I went without a fear
till the third turning-post was reached, when
the left hand played me false, and turning at
an acute angle, away I went sidelong, machine
and all, into the gutter, falling on my
right elbow, which felt like a glassful of
chopped ice, and I knew that for the first
time in a life full of vicissitudes I had been
really hurt. Anna Gordon’s white face as
she ran toward me caused me to wave my
uninjured hand and call out, “Never mind!”
and with her help I rose and walked into the
house, wishing above all things to go straight
to my own room and lie on my own bed,
and thinking as I did so how pathetic is that
instinct that makes “the stricken deer go
weep,” the harmed hare seek the covert.</p>
<p>Two physicians were soon at my side, and
my mother, then over eighty years of age,
<SPAN name="png.077" id="png.077" href="#png.077"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>65<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>came in with much controlled agitation and
seated herself beside my bed, taking my hand
and saying, “O Frank! you were always too
adventurous.”</p>
<p>Our family physician was out of town, and
the two gentlemen were well-nigh strangers.
It was a kind face, that of the tall, thin man
who looked down upon me in my humiliation,
put his ear against my heart to see if
there would be any harm in administering
ether, handled my elbow with a woman’s
gentleness, and then said to his assistant,
“Now let us begin.” And to me who had
been always well, and knew nothing of such
unnatural proceedings, he remarked, “Breathe
into the funnel—full, natural breaths; that is
all you have to do.”</p>
<p>I set myself to my task, as has been my
wont always, and soon my mother and my
friend, Anna Gordon, who were fanning me
with big “palm-leaves,” became grotesque
and then ridiculous, and I remember saying
(or at least I remember that I once
<SPAN name="png.078" id="png.078" href="#png.078"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>66<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>remembered), “You are a couple of enormous crickets
standing on your hind legs, and you have
each a spear of dry grass, and you look as
if you were paralyzed; and you wave your
withered spears of grass, and you call that
fanning a poor woman who is suffocating
before your eyes.” I labored with them, entreated
them, and dealt with them in great
plainness—so much so that my mother could
not bear to hear me talk in such a foolish
fashion, and quietly withdrew to her own
room, closed the door, and sat down to possess
her soul in patience until the operation
should be over.</p>
<p>Then the scene changed, and as they put
on the splints pain was involved, and I heard
those about me laughing in the most unfeeling
manner while I murmured: “She always
believed in humanity—she always said she
did and would; and she has lived in this town
thirty years, and they are hurting her—they
are hurting her dreadfully; and if they keep
on she will lose her faith in human nature,
<SPAN name="png.079" id="png.079" href="#png.079"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>67<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>and if she should it will be the greatest calamity
that can happen to a human being.”</p>
<p>Now the scene changed once more—I was
in the starry heavens, and said to the young
friends who had come in and stood beside
me: “Here are stars as thick as apples on a
bough, and if you are good you shall each
have one. And, Anna, because you <em>are</em>
good, and always have been, you shall be
given a whole solar system to manage just as
you like. The Heavenly Father has no end
of them; He tosses them out of His hand as
a boy does marbles; He spins them like a
cocoon; He has just as many after He has
given them away as He had before He
began.”</p>
<p>Then there settled down upon me the
most vivid and pervading sense of the love
of God that I have ever known. I can give
no adequate conception of it, and what I said,
as my comrades repeated it to me, was something
after this order:</p>
<p>“We are like blood-drops floating through
<SPAN name="png.080" id="png.080" href="#png.080"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>68<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>the great heart of our Heavenly Father. We
are infinitely safe, and cared for as tenderly
as a baby in its mother’s arms. No harm
can come anywhere near us; what we call
harm will turn out to be the very best and
kindest way of leading us to be our best
selves. There is no terror in the universe,
for God is always at the center of everything.
He is love, as we read in the good book, and
He has but one wish—that we should love
one another; in Him we live, and move, and
have our being.”</p>
<p>Little by little, freeing my mind of all sorts
of queer notions, I came back out of the
only experience of the kind that I have ever
known; but I must say that had I not learned
the great evils that result from using anesthetics
I should have wished to try ether
again, just for the ethical and spiritual help
that came to me. It let me out into a new
world, greater, more mellow, more godlike,
and it did me no harm at all.</p>
<p>During the time my arm was in a sling I
<SPAN name="png.081" id="png.081" href="#png.081"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>69<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>“sat about”—something not easy to do for
one of active mind and life. I learned to
write with my left hand—for this was before
the happy days of the many stenographers—and
my hieroglyphics went out to all the
leading temperance women of this country.
One morning the bell, distant and musical,
tolled in the steeple of the university. We
knew it meant that General Grant was dead,
for the newspapers and despatches of the
previous evening had prepared us. Somehow
a deep chord in my soul vibrated to the
tone of the bell—a chord of patriotism—and I
went away to the vine-covered piazza, where
I was wont to sit, and in twenty minutes
(which fact is my apology for their limping
feet) wrote out my heart in the following lines.
They had at least the merit of sincere devotion,
and were telephoned to Chicago, eleven
miles away, by Anna Gordon, and appearing
in the daily <cite>Inter-Ocean</cite> were read at their
breakfast-tables by many other patriots next
morning. I do not know when anything has
<SPAN name="png.082" id="png.082" href="#png.082"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>70<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN>given me more real pleasure than to be told
that a stalwart soldier belonging to the Grand
Army of the Republic read my crude but
heartfelt lines aloud to his wife and daughter,
and at the close brushed away a manly tear.</p>
<h3>GRANT IS DEAD.</h3>
<div class="poetry-container" id="Grant">
<p><i>On Hearing the University Bell at Evanston, Ill., Toll for<br/>the Death of General Grant at Nine O’clock A.M.,<br/>July 23, 1885.</i></p>
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Toll, bells, from every steeple,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Tell the sorrow of the people;</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Moan, sullen guns, and sigh</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>For the greatest who could die.</div>
<div class="i4"><span class="ns"> </span>Grant is dead.</div>
<span class="ns"><br/></span></div>
<!-- stanza -->
<div class="stanza">
<div>Never so firm were set those moveless lips as now,</div>
<div>Never so dauntless shone that massive brow;</div>
<div>The silent man has passed into the silent tomb.</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Ring out our grief, sweet bell,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>The people’s sorrow tell</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>For the greatest who could die.</div>
<div class="i4"><span class="ns"> </span>Grant is dead.</div>
<span class="ns"><br/></span></div>
<!-- stanza --></div>
<div class="poetry"><!-- required to permit page breaking -->
<div class="stanza">
<div>“Let us have peace!” Great heart,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>That peace has come to thee;</div>
<div>Thy sword for freedom wrought,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>And now thy soul is free,</div>
<div>While a rescued nation stands</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Mourning its fallen chief—</div>
<div>The Southern with the Northern lands,<SPAN name="png.083" id="png.083" href="#png.083"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>71<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN></div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Akin in honest grief.</div>
<div>The hands of black and white</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Shall clasp above thy grave,</div>
<div>Children of the Republic all,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>No master and no slave.</div>
<div>Almost “all summer on this line”</div>
<div>Thou steadily didst “fight it out”;</div>
<div>But Death, the silent,</div>
<div>Matched at last our silent chief,</div>
<div>And put to rout his brave defense.</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Moan, sullen guns, and sigh</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>For the bravest who could die.</div>
<div class="i4"><span class="ns"> </span>Grant is dead.</div>
<span class="ns"><br/></span></div>
<!-- stanza --></div>
<div class="poetry"><!-- required to permit page breaking -->
<div class="stanza">
<div>The huge world holds to-day</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>No fame so great, so wide,</div>
<div>As his whose steady eyes grew dim</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>On Mount McGregor’s side</div>
<div>Only an hour ago, and yet</div>
<div>The whole great world has learned</div>
<div class="i4"><span class="ns"> </span>That Grant is dead.</div>
<span class="ns"><br/></span></div>
<!-- stanza -->
<div class="stanza">
<div>O heart of Christ! what joy</div>
<div>Brings earth’s new brotherhood!</div>
<div>All lands as one,</div>
<div>Buckner, Grant’s bed beside,</div>
<div>The priest and Protestant in converse kind;</div>
<div>Prayers from all hearts, and Grant</div>
<div>Praying “we all might meet in better worlds.”</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Toll, bells, from every steeple,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Tell the sorrow of the people;</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>So true in life, so calm and strong,</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Bravest of all, in death suffering so long</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>And without one complaint!<SPAN name="png.084" id="png.084" href="#png.084"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>72<span class="ns">]
</span></span></SPAN></div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Moan, sullen guns, and sigh</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>For the greatest who could die;</div>
<div class="i1"><span class="ns"> </span>Salute the nation’s head.</div>
<div class="i4"><span class="ns"> </span>Our Grant is dead.</div>
</div></div>
</div></div>
<div class="section">
<div class="illo">
<SPAN name="png.085" id="png.085" href="#png.085"><span class="pagenum"><span class="ns">[</span>72a<span class="ns">]<br/></span></span></SPAN><ANTIMG id="atlast" src="images/i085.jpg" alt="[Illustration: “AT LAST.”]" /><br/><span class="ns"> [Illustration: </span>“AT LAST.”<span class="ns">]</span></div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.