章节正文
embarrassment, but I agree that the matter would
better be kept private between us."
"You are a real fairy godmother!" exclaimed
Adam, shaking her hand warmly. "Would it be
less trouble for you to invite her room-mate too,--
the pink-and-white inseparable?"
"No, thank you, I prefer to have Rebecca all to
myself," said Miss Maxwell.
"I can understand that," replied Adam absent-
mindedly; "I mean, of course, that one child is less
trouble than two. There she is now."
Here Rebecca appeared in sight, walking down
the quiet street with a lad of sixteen. They were in
animated conversation, and were apparentlyreading
something aloud to each other, for the black head
and the curly brown one were both bent over a sheet
of letter paper. Rebecca kept glancing up at her
companion, her eyes sparkling with appreciation.
"Miss Maxwell," said Adam, "I am a trustee of
this institution, but upon my word I don't believe in
coeducation!"
"I have my own occasional hours of doubt," she
answered, "but surely its disadvantages are reduced
to a minimum with--children! That is a very im-
pressive sight which you are privileged to witness,
Mr. Ladd. The folk in Cambridge often gloated
on the spectacle of Longfellow and Lowell arm in
arm. The little school world of Wareham palpitates
with excitement when it sees the senior and
the junior editors of The Pilot walking together!"
XXV
ROSES OF JOY
The day before Rebecca started for the
South with Miss Maxwell she was in the
library with Emma Jane and Huldah,
consulting dictionaries and encyclopaedias. As they
were leaving they passed the locked cases containing
the library of fiction, open to the teachers and
townspeople, but forbidden to the students.
They looked longingly through the glass, getting
some little comfort from the titles of the volumes,
as hungry children imbibe emotional nourishment
from the pies and tarts inside a confectioner's window.
Rebecca's eyes fell upon a new book in the
corner, and she read the name aloud with delight:
"_The Rose of Joy_. Listen, girls; isn't that lovely?
_The Rose of Joy_. It looks beautiful, and it sounds
beautiful. What does it mean, I wonder?"
"I guess everybody has a different rose," said
Huldah shrewdly. "I know what mine would be,
and I'm not ashamed to own it. I'd like a year
in a city, with just as much money as I wanted
to spend, horses and splendid clothes and amusements
every minute of the day; and I'd like above
everything to live with people that wear low
necks." (Poor Huldah never took off her dress with-
out bewailing the fact that her lot was cast in
Riverboro, where her pretty white shoulders could
never be seen.)
"That would be fun, for a while anyway," Emma
Jane remarked. "But wouldn't that be pleasure
more than joy? Oh, I've got an idea!"
"Don't shriek so!" said the startled Huldah.
"I thought it was a mouse."
"I don't have them very often," apologized Emma
Jane,--"ideas, I mean; this one shook me like
a stroke of lightning. Rebecca, couldn't it be success?"
"That's good," mused Rebecca; "I can see that
success would be a joy, but it doesn't seem to me
like a rose, somehow. I was wondering if it could
be love?"
"I wish we could have a peep at the book! It
must be perfectly elergant!" said Emma Jane.
"But now you say it is love, I think that's the best
guess yet."
All day long the four words haunted and possessed
Rebecca; she said them over to herself continually.
Even the prosaic Emma Jane was affected
by them, for in the evening she said, "I don't
expect you to believe it, but I have another idea,--
that's two in one day; I had it while I was putting
cologne on your head. The rose of joy might be
helpfulness."
"If it is, then it is always blooming in your dear
little heart, you darlingest, kind Emmie, taking
such good care of your troublesome Becky!"
"Don't dare to call yourself troublesome! You're
--you're--you're my rose of joy, that's what you
are!" And the two girls hugged each other affectionately.
In the middle of the night Rebecca touched
Emma Jane on the shoulder softly. "Are you very
fast asleep, Emmie?" she whispered.
"Not so very," answered Emma Jane drowsily.
"I've thought of something new. If you sang or
painted or wrote,--not a little, but beautifully, you
know,--wouldn't the doing of it, just as much as
you wanted, give you the rose of joy?"
"It might if it was a real talent," answered Emma
Jane, "though I don't like it so well as love. If you
have another thought, Becky, keep it till morning."
"I did have one more inspiration," said Rebecca
when they were dressing next morning, "but I
didn't wake you. I wondered if the rose of joy
could be sacrifice? But I think sacrifice would be
a lily, not a rose; don't you?"
The journey southward, the first glimpse of the
ocean, the strange new scenes, the ease and delicious
freedom, the intimacy with Miss Maxwell,
almost intoxicated Rebecca. In three days she was
not only herself again, she was another self, thrilling
with delight, anticipation, and realization. She
had always had such eager hunger for knowledge,
such thirst for love, such passionatelonging for the
music, the beauty, the poetry of existence! She
had always been straining to make the outward
world conform to her inward dreams, and now life
had grown all at once rich and sweet, wide and full.
She was using all her natural, God-given outlets;
and Emily Maxwell marveled daily at the inexhaustible
way in which the girl poured out and gathered
in the treasures of thought and experience that
belonged to her. She was a lifegiver, altering the
whole scheme of any picture she made a part of,
by contributing new values. Have you never seen
the dull blues and greens of a room changed,
transfigured by a burst of sunshine? That seemed to
Miss Maxwell the effect of Rebecca on the groups of
people with whom they now and then mingled; but
they were commonly alone, reading to each other
and having quiet talks. The prize essay was very
much on Rebecca's mind. Secretly she thought
she could never be happy unless she won it. She
cared nothing for the value of it, and in this case
almost nothing for the honor; she wanted to please
Mr. Aladdin and justify his belief in her.
"If I ever succeed in choosing a subject, I must
ask if you think I can write well on it; and then
I suppose I must work in silence and secret, never
even reading the essay to you, nor talking about it."
Miss Maxwell and Rebecca were sitting by a little
brook on a sunny spring day. They had been in a
stretch of wood by the sea since breakfast, going
every now and then for a bask on the warm white
sand, and returning to their shady solitude when
tired of the sun's glare.
"The subject is very important," said Miss
Maxwell, "but I do not dare choose for you. Have you
decided on anything yet?"
"No," Rebecca answered; "I plan a new essay
every night. I've begun one on What is Failure?
and another on He and She. That would be a
dialogue between a boy and girl just as they were
leaving school, and would tell their ideals of life.
Then do you remember you said to me one day,
`Follow your Saint'? I'd love to write about that.
I didn't have a single thought in Wareham, and
now I have a new one every minute, so I must try
and write the essay here; think it out, at any rate,
while I am so happy and free and rested. Look at
the pebbles in the bottom of the pool, Miss Emily,
so round and smooth and shining."
"Yes, but where did they get that beautiful
polish, that satin skin, that lovely shape, Rebecca?
Not in the still pool lying on the sands. It was
never there that their angles were rubbed off and
their rough surfaces polished, but in the strife and
warfare of running waters. They have jostled
against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks,
and now we look at them and call them beautiful."
"If Fate had not made somebody a teacher,
She might have been, oh! such a splendid preacher!"
rhymed Rebecca. "Oh! if I could only think and
speak as you do!" she sighed. "I am so afraid I
shall never get education enough to make a good
writer."
"You could worry about plenty of other things
to better advantage," said Miss Maxwell, a little
scornfully. "Be afraid, for instance, that you won't
understand human nature; that you won't realize
the beauty of the outer world; that you may lack
sympathy, and thus never be able to read a heart;
that your faculty of expression may not keep pace
with your ideas,--a thousand things, every one of
them more important to the writer than the knowledge
that is found in books. AEsop was a Greek
slave who could not even write down his wonderful
fables; yet all the world reads them."
"I didn't know that," said Rebecca, with a half
sob. "I didn't know anything until I met you!"
"You will only have had a high school course, but
the most famous universities do not always succeed
in making men and women. When I long to go
abroad and study, I always remember that there
were three great schools in Athens and two in
Jerusalem, but the Teacher of all teachers came out of
Nazareth, a little village hidden away from the bigger,
busier world."
"Mr. Ladd says that you are almost wasted on
Wareham." said Rebecca thoughtfully.
"He is wrong; my talent is not a great one, but
no talent is wholly wasted unless its owner chooses
better be kept private between us."
"You are a real fairy godmother!" exclaimed
Adam, shaking her hand warmly. "Would it be
less trouble for you to invite her room-mate too,--
the pink-and-white inseparable?"
"No, thank you, I prefer to have Rebecca all to
myself," said Miss Maxwell.
"I can understand that," replied Adam absent-
mindedly; "I mean, of course, that one child is less
trouble than two. There she is now."
Here Rebecca appeared in sight, walking down
the quiet street with a lad of sixteen. They were in
animated conversation, and were apparentlyreading
something aloud to each other, for the black head
and the curly brown one were both bent over a sheet
of letter paper. Rebecca kept glancing up at her
companion, her eyes sparkling with appreciation.
"Miss Maxwell," said Adam, "I am a trustee of
this institution, but upon my word I don't believe in
coeducation!"
"I have my own occasional hours of doubt," she
answered, "but surely its disadvantages are reduced
to a minimum with--children! That is a very im-
pressive sight which you are privileged to witness,
Mr. Ladd. The folk in Cambridge often gloated
on the spectacle of Longfellow and Lowell arm in
arm. The little school world of Wareham palpitates
with excitement when it sees the senior and
the junior editors of The Pilot walking together!"
XXV
ROSES OF JOY
The day before Rebecca started for the
South with Miss Maxwell she was in the
library with Emma Jane and Huldah,
consulting dictionaries and encyclopaedias. As they
were leaving they passed the locked cases containing
the library of fiction, open to the teachers and
townspeople, but forbidden to the students.
They looked longingly through the glass, getting
some little comfort from the titles of the volumes,
as hungry children imbibe emotional nourishment
from the pies and tarts inside a confectioner's window.
Rebecca's eyes fell upon a new book in the
corner, and she read the name aloud with delight:
"_The Rose of Joy_. Listen, girls; isn't that lovely?
_The Rose of Joy_. It looks beautiful, and it sounds
beautiful. What does it mean, I wonder?"
"I guess everybody has a different rose," said
Huldah shrewdly. "I know what mine would be,
and I'm not ashamed to own it. I'd like a year
in a city, with just as much money as I wanted
to spend, horses and splendid clothes and amusements
every minute of the day; and I'd like above
everything to live with people that wear low
necks." (Poor Huldah never took off her dress with-
out bewailing the fact that her lot was cast in
Riverboro, where her pretty white shoulders could
never be seen.)
"That would be fun, for a while anyway," Emma
Jane remarked. "But wouldn't that be pleasure
more than joy? Oh, I've got an idea!"
"Don't shriek so!" said the startled Huldah.
"I thought it was a mouse."
"I don't have them very often," apologized Emma
Jane,--"ideas, I mean; this one shook me like
a stroke of lightning. Rebecca, couldn't it be success?"
"That's good," mused Rebecca; "I can see that
success would be a joy, but it doesn't seem to me
like a rose, somehow. I was wondering if it could
be love?"
"I wish we could have a peep at the book! It
must be perfectly elergant!" said Emma Jane.
"But now you say it is love, I think that's the best
guess yet."
All day long the four words haunted and possessed
Rebecca; she said them over to herself continually.
Even the prosaic Emma Jane was affected
by them, for in the evening she said, "I don't
expect you to believe it, but I have another idea,--
that's two in one day; I had it while I was putting
cologne on your head. The rose of joy might be
helpfulness."
"If it is, then it is always blooming in your dear
little heart, you darlingest, kind Emmie, taking
such good care of your troublesome Becky!"
"Don't dare to call yourself troublesome! You're
--you're--you're my rose of joy, that's what you
are!" And the two girls hugged each other affectionately.
In the middle of the night Rebecca touched
Emma Jane on the shoulder softly. "Are you very
fast asleep, Emmie?" she whispered.
"Not so very," answered Emma Jane drowsily.
"I've thought of something new. If you sang or
painted or wrote,--not a little, but beautifully, you
know,--wouldn't the doing of it, just as much as
you wanted, give you the rose of joy?"
"It might if it was a real talent," answered Emma
Jane, "though I don't like it so well as love. If you
have another thought, Becky, keep it till morning."
"I did have one more inspiration," said Rebecca
when they were dressing next morning, "but I
didn't wake you. I wondered if the rose of joy
could be sacrifice? But I think sacrifice would be
a lily, not a rose; don't you?"
The journey southward, the first glimpse of the
ocean, the strange new scenes, the ease and delicious
freedom, the intimacy with Miss Maxwell,
almost intoxicated Rebecca. In three days she was
not only herself again, she was another self, thrilling
with delight, anticipation, and realization. She
had always had such eager hunger for knowledge,
such thirst for love, such passionatelonging for the
music, the beauty, the poetry of existence! She
had always been straining to make the outward
world conform to her inward dreams, and now life
had grown all at once rich and sweet, wide and full.
She was using all her natural, God-given outlets;
and Emily Maxwell marveled daily at the inexhaustible
way in which the girl poured out and gathered
in the treasures of thought and experience that
belonged to her. She was a lifegiver, altering the
whole scheme of any picture she made a part of,
by contributing new values. Have you never seen
the dull blues and greens of a room changed,
transfigured by a burst of sunshine? That seemed to
Miss Maxwell the effect of Rebecca on the groups of
people with whom they now and then mingled; but
they were commonly alone, reading to each other
and having quiet talks. The prize essay was very
much on Rebecca's mind. Secretly she thought
she could never be happy unless she won it. She
cared nothing for the value of it, and in this case
almost nothing for the honor; she wanted to please
Mr. Aladdin and justify his belief in her.
"If I ever succeed in choosing a subject, I must
ask if you think I can write well on it; and then
I suppose I must work in silence and secret, never
even reading the essay to you, nor talking about it."
Miss Maxwell and Rebecca were sitting by a little
brook on a sunny spring day. They had been in a
stretch of wood by the sea since breakfast, going
every now and then for a bask on the warm white
sand, and returning to their shady solitude when
tired of the sun's glare.
"The subject is very important," said Miss
Maxwell, "but I do not dare choose for you. Have you
decided on anything yet?"
"No," Rebecca answered; "I plan a new essay
every night. I've begun one on What is Failure?
and another on He and She. That would be a
dialogue between a boy and girl just as they were
leaving school, and would tell their ideals of life.
Then do you remember you said to me one day,
`Follow your Saint'? I'd love to write about that.
I didn't have a single thought in Wareham, and
now I have a new one every minute, so I must try
and write the essay here; think it out, at any rate,
while I am so happy and free and rested. Look at
the pebbles in the bottom of the pool, Miss Emily,
so round and smooth and shining."
"Yes, but where did they get that beautiful
polish, that satin skin, that lovely shape, Rebecca?
Not in the still pool lying on the sands. It was
never there that their angles were rubbed off and
their rough surfaces polished, but in the strife and
warfare of running waters. They have jostled
against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks,
and now we look at them and call them beautiful."
"If Fate had not made somebody a teacher,
She might have been, oh! such a splendid preacher!"
rhymed Rebecca. "Oh! if I could only think and
speak as you do!" she sighed. "I am so afraid I
shall never get education enough to make a good
writer."
"You could worry about plenty of other things
to better advantage," said Miss Maxwell, a little
scornfully. "Be afraid, for instance, that you won't
understand human nature; that you won't realize
the beauty of the outer world; that you may lack
sympathy, and thus never be able to read a heart;
that your faculty of expression may not keep pace
with your ideas,--a thousand things, every one of
them more important to the writer than the knowledge
that is found in books. AEsop was a Greek
slave who could not even write down his wonderful
fables; yet all the world reads them."
"I didn't know that," said Rebecca, with a half
sob. "I didn't know anything until I met you!"
"You will only have had a high school course, but
the most famous universities do not always succeed
in making men and women. When I long to go
abroad and study, I always remember that there
were three great schools in Athens and two in
Jerusalem, but the Teacher of all teachers came out of
Nazareth, a little village hidden away from the bigger,
busier world."
"Mr. Ladd says that you are almost wasted on
Wareham." said Rebecca thoughtfully.
"He is wrong; my talent is not a great one, but
no talent is wholly wasted unless its owner chooses
- institution [,insti´tju:ʃən]
n.建立；制定；制度 (初中英语单词) - occasional [ə´keiʒənəl] a.偶然的；临时的 (初中英语单词)
- spectacle [´spektəkəl] n.展览；表演；景象 (初中英语单词)
- excitement [ik´saitmənt] n.兴奋；骚动；煽动 (初中英语单词)
- junior [´dʒu:niə] a.年少的 n.年少者 (初中英语单词)
- emotional [i´məuʃənəl] a.易动感情的；情感的 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- shriek [ʃri:k] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
- haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- glimpse [glimps] n.&v.瞥见 (初中英语单词)
- realization [,riəlai´zeiʃən] n.实现；认识 (初中英语单词)
- hunger [´hʌŋgə] n.饥饿；渴望 (初中英语单词)
- thirst [θə:st] n.渴，口渴；渴望 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- scheme [ski:m] n.计划；阴谋，诡计 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- belief [bi´li:f] n.相信；信仰，信条 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- faculty [´fækəlti] n.才干；天赋；院，系 (初中英语单词)
- writer [´raitə] n.作者；作家 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- talent [´tælənt] n.天才；才干；天资 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- minimum [´miniməm] n.最小量 a.最小的 (高中英语单词)
- cambridge [´keimbridʒ] n.剑桥 (高中英语单词)
- senior [´si:niə] a.年长的 n.前辈 (高中英语单词)
- fiction [´fikʃən] n.小说；虚构；谎言 (高中英语单词)
- forbidden [fə´bidn] forbid的过去分词 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- southward [´sauθwəd] a.&n.向南方向(的) (高中英语单词)
- passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
- longing [´lɔŋiŋ] n.&a.渴望(的) (高中英语单词)
- inward [´inwəd] a.向内的；心灵上的 (高中英语单词)
- commonly [´kɔmənli] ad.一般地；通常 (高中英语单词)
- secretly [´si:kritli] ad.秘密地；隐蔽地 (高中英语单词)
- solitude [´sɔlitju:d] n.孤独；寂寞；荒凉 (高中英语单词)
- strife [straif] n.竞争；吵架；冲突 (高中英语单词)
- athens [´æθinz] n.雅典 (高中英语单词)
- embarrassment [im´bærəsmənt] n.窘迫；困惑；为难 (英语四级单词)
- trustee [trʌs´ti:] n.托管人；保管人 (英语四级单词)
- blooming [´blu:miŋ] a.正开花的；妙龄的 (英语四级单词)
- beautifully [´bju:tifəli] ad.美丽地；优美地 (英语四级单词)
- intimacy [´intiməsi] n.亲密；熟悉；秘密 (英语四级单词)
- anticipation [æn,tisi´peiʃən] n.预期；预料；期望 (英语四级单词)
- conform [kən´fɔ:m] v.(使)一致；(使)符合 (英语四级单词)
- privileged [´privilidʒd] a.有特权的；特许的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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