Page:Postface to 114 Songs.djvu/10

POSTFACE of their life, he will look up over the mountains and see his visions in their reality, will hear the transcendental strains of the day's symphony resounding in their many choirs, and in all their perfection, through the west wind and the tree tops!

It was not Mark Twain but the "Danbury News Man" who became convinced that a man never knows his vices and virtues until that great and solemn event, that first sunny day in spring when he wants to go fishing, but stays home and helps his wife clean house. As he lies on his back under the bed—under all the beds—with nothing beneath him but tacks and his past life, with his soul (to say nothing of his vision) full of that glorious dust of mortals and carpets, with his fingertips rosy with the caresses of his mother-in-law's hammer (her annual argument)—as he lies there taking orders from the hired girl, a sudden and tremendous vocabulary comes to him. Its power is omnipotent, it consumes everything—but the rubbish heap. Before it his virtues quail, hesitate, and crawl carefully out of the cellar window; his vices—even they go back on him, even they can't stand this—he sees them march with stately grace (and others) out of the front door. At this moment there comes a whisper, the still small voice of a "parent on his father's side"—"Vices and Virtues! Vices and Virtues! they ain't no sech things—but there's a tarnal lot of 'em." Wedged in between the sewing machine and the future, he examines himself, as every man in his position should do: "What has brought me to this? Where am I? Why do I do this" "These are natural inquiries. They have assailed thousands before our day; they will afflict thousands in years to come. And probably there is no form of interrogation so loaded with subtle torture—unless it is to he asked for a light in a strange depot by a man you've just selected out of