A Wayside Sketch.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9255, 3 December 1891, Page 4

A Wayside Sketch.

(Continued from yesterday) of Knowledge. It was easy work at first, and he was full of hope. But the higher he went the sterner frowned the heights above him. He got beyond the verdure and the flowers, and was forced to carve a stairway in the solid rock. The rarefied air was hard to breathe, and his fingernails oozed blood. Still he worked on, and, after years of toil, impenetrable masses of rock lay between him and the end of his labour. His hair was white with age, yet be had not found Truth. .... When he died, an old, old man, his life had been but the compassing of a few broken stairs at the foot of infinite heights. Before he died he saw tbe sunshine play upon tbe home of his youth, and he thought ho heard the singing of his beautiful wild birds. Tho vision passed, and upon his dying breast there fluttered down a single feather from the wing of Truth. The German boy had listened with a bursting heart. He looked at his carved post, from which the stranger had drawn tho fable. " How did you know it ?" h« whispered. "It is not written there." "It is suggested," said the stranger. " The attribute of all true art is that it says more than it says. It is a little door that opens into an infinite hall." When the stranger went away, Waldo fastened his wooden post to tbe strangers saddle. " All my life I have longed to see you," he said. Here is a fragment from a marvellous and complex study of the soul. Yet we aro compelled to think that the deep experiences of the boy, in which the very faith of the child-like disciples once predominated, ill-fitted him for the stranger's conclusion. "In the end, experience will inevitably teach us that the laws for a wise and noble life have a foundation deeper than the fiat ef any being, God or man. She will teach us ... that who lives to himself is dead, though the ground is not yet on him . . . that who sins in secret stands accused and condemned before the one Judge who deals Eternal justice — his own all-knowing self.'' Magnificent words, and yet singularly inefficacious, by the author's own showing, on the man who uttered them. His life rings tbe sharpest irony on 'his precepts. Poor Waldo ! must you cast away the beautiful singing birds because he tells you they are not fed of manna from heaven, but with the grains of credulity ? Is he nearer Truth than a little child whom tbe Holy One placed in the midst of many like-minded strangers, and said concerning the babe, 'Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven ' ? In "The Coming Eace" the author supposes that women will be an inch or two taller than men. We believe that their superior altitude is also the index of superior mental and moral excellence. AYe have known no woman more fitted for the coming race than Lyndall, the heroine of our African farm. This, notwithstanding the fact that she is smaller than the average woman, tiny in stature, and exquisitely small in hands and feet. At the same time, she has the heart of an angel, the wisdom of Minerva, and the beauty of the siren. Who can withstand such a woman 1 Few men. Beauty of itself, intellect of itself, and even the power of strong affection in itself, will not constitute an effectual charm. Beauty may be insipid, intellect may wear ,an ungainly form, affection may have an uncouth form of showing itself. But unite the three under the guise of youth and freshness, and you have an irresistible combination — you have Lyndall. She is perfectly transparent, because she is all-seeing. She knows quite aa well what is in fyour heart as what is in her own. She bides nothing, because she fears nothing. She shirks nothing, because she has gauged all things. She says all she has to say, knowing that you will not dare to misinterpret her. Hear her in regard to an important question of the day — the position of women :— " ' We are cursed, Waldo — born cursed. It is not what is done to us, but what is made of us that wrongs us .... To you it (the world) says — " Work,!' and to us it says—" Seem." To us it says " Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge nor labour." Look at this little chin of mine, Waldo, with the dimple iv it. It is but a small part of my person ; but, though I had' knowledge of all things under the sun, and the wisdom to use it, and the deep, loving heart of an angel, it would not stead me like this little chin. I can win money with it, I can win love, I can win power, I can win fame .... They bring weighty arguments against us when we ask for the perfect freedom of women, but when yon come to the objections, they are like pumpkin devils with handles inside, hollow and can't bite. They say women do not wish for tbe freedom and sphere we ask for them. If the bird docs like its cage, and does like its sugar, why keep the door so very carefully shut V ' But some women,' said Waldo,' some women have power.' ' Power ! Did you ever hear of men being asked whether other souls should have power or not ? It is born in them Power ! Yea, we have power, and since we are not to expend it on tunneling mountains, nor healing diseases, nor making luws, nor money ... we expend it on you. We buy you, we sell you, we make fools of you. . . . We are not to study law, nor science, nor art, so we study yiu. . . . We keep six of you dancing in the palm of owr little hand. There — we throw you away, and you sink to the devil. They say women have one great and noble work left them, and they do it ill. That is true ; they do it execrably. It is the work that demands the noblest culture, and they have not even the narrowest. The woman who does woman's work needs a many-sided, multiform cul- ! ture — the heights and depths of human life must not be beyond her vision. . . . There was never a great man who had not a great mother. They . say your highlycultured woman will not be lovable, will not love. Do they understand nothing? It is Tant' Sanmd who buries husbands, one after another — and looks for another. It is the hard-headed, deep thinker who, when the wife who has thought aiid worked with him goes, can find no rest, and lingers near her, till he finds sleep 1 beside her. A great soul draws and is drawn, with a more fierce intensity than any small one. By every inch we grow in intellectual height, our love strikes down its roots deeper, and sj^reads out its arms wider. It is for love's sake yot more than for utiy other that wo look for that now time.'" Wo should like to see Lyndall on one of our county councils. If wo'uen are iit to sit in Parliament, they have the opportunity of showing it now. Or it may be that in this home Parliament there may be found that sufficient scope for their govcriiimg energies which Lyndall would have desired. Y"cs, Lyndall would have deMiTcl— for she desires no more, uuless iv the sphere of the immortal soul now yearning becomes new joy. She has passed the dim portal, and her brilliant presence no more illumines tho earth. And what of her |ife 1 Could it bo aught but failure — deadly failure ? She who feds so iuetiuctively the ideal life will bo satisfied wit'u not less than the ideal love. The uew career of womon is wot yet open for Let; and the old career, the old passion of

{To be continued)