The Day of His Youth

								

underfed. But be of good cheer. Only women ache all their lives long,
every day of every year. They are an unintelligent lot, not to have
learned self-protection. They wear their souls outside; and not being
in the least original, they have not yet invented a thoroughly
satisfactory coat of mail. For you, belonging to the lords of the
earth, there will, after a time, be immunity. You will break your
heart. (O, how infinitely wearisome to reflect that you have determined
to break it about me!) Then you will waken to a vapid interest in work,
discover your own nice talent for manipulating words, put all your past
woes into verse, and by the time your reputation is made, you won't
despise a good cigar and a club dinner. Nature has provided you as she
has the lobster. Never fear; your claws will grow, though they may be
often nipped. It is plain that you are to suffer, but I don't very much
pity you. Unless you take to drink or any other unhygienic habit, you
are sure to get something out of life. If you riddle your nerves, I
won't answer for you. But, at the present moment, one thing must be
done. Your letters must simply cease to be drenched with the night-dew
of flimsy sentiment. Wring it out, and send them dry. Otherwise you get
no answers. Do you hear, you gentle barbarian?
And I don't like your style overmuch. It isn't improving as I hoped.
You don't want to drag out long, saccharine sentences, dripping with
sugar as they crawl. Tell something! Let it be real,--or let it not be
at all.
[Sidenote: Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose]
O the irony stamped on those four little letters! Real! And my whole
heart in it, a man's whole heart. That means something. But I obey you.
Last night I dreamed all night long, one picture after another. First
came this: I stood upon a dusty way, and multitudes of people were
passing. They looked like you and like my father, but they were sad.
They were bowed down, and many of them carried great brown bundles on
their backs, bundles of wood, it seemed to me, or withered grass. Then
I, too, grew very sad and heavy because every one else seemed so; but
suddenly my eye fell on a great light, and I wondered that I had not
seen it before, and that none of them saw it. There, in the midst, by
the roadside, stood the Apollo, warm, rosy, afire with life. His mantle
was purple touched with rose: such color as we see in the east before
the sun comes, and in the west after he is gone. His hair was long, and
ran down his back in a great tawny river,--darker than yours,--and he
stretched out his arm fearlessly holding the bow. Yet no one saw him
but me. I fancied, even in my dream, that the arrow he would shoot
might teach them a happier way to travel; but no one even knew he was
there, or heard the twanging of the string or saw the cleaving of the
arrow's flight. Then I sank down into darkness like a gulf, and only
rose again to the splendor of another dream. The world seemed very