Violets and Other Tales

								

we indebted for the hideous realism of his external aspect. Matho is a
dusky son of Libya,--fierce, passionate, resentful, unbridled in his
speech and action, swept by the hot breath of furious love as his native
sands are swept by the burning simoon. Salammbo, cold and strange
delving deep in the mysticism of the Carthaginian gods, living apart
from human passions in her intense love for the goddess, Tanit;
Salammbo, in the earnest excess of her religious fervor, eagerly
accepting the mission given her by the puzzled Saracharabim; Salammbo,
twining the gloomy folds of the python about her perfumed limbs;
Salammbo, resisting, then yielding to the fierce love of Matho;
Salammbo, dying when her erstwhile lover expires; Salammbo, in all her
many phases reminds us of some early Christian martyr or saint, though
the sweet spirit of the Great Teacher is hidden in the punctual devotion
to the mysterious rites of Tanit. She is an inexplicable mixture of the
tropical exotic and the frigid snow-flower,--a rich and rare growth that
attracts and repulses, that interests and absorbs, that we
admire--without loving, detest--without hating.

LEGEND OF THE NEWSPAPER.

  Poets sing and fables tell us,
Or old folk lore whispers low,
Of the origin of all things,
Of the spring from whence they came,
Kalevala, old and hoary,
Æneid, Iliad, Æsop, too,
All are filled with strange quaint legends,
All replete with ancient tales,--


How love came, and how old earth,
Freed from chaos, grew for us,
To a green and wondrous spheroid,
To a home for things alive;
How fierce fire and iron cold,
How the snow and how the frost,--
All these things the old rhymes ring,
All these things the old tales tell.


Yet they ne'er sang of the beginning,
Of that great unbreathing angel,
Of that soul without a haven,
Of that gracious Lady Bountiful,
Yet they ne'er told how it came here;
Ne'er said why we read it daily,
Nor did they even let us guess why
We were left to tell the tale.


Came one day into the wood-land,
Muckintosh, the great and mighty,
Muckintosh, the famous thinker,
He whose brain was all his weapons,
As against his rival's soarings,
High unto the vaulted heavens,
Low adown the swarded earth,
Rolled he round his gaze all steely,
And his voice like music prayed:
"Oh, Creator, wondrous Spirit,
Thou who hast for us descended
In the guise of knowledge mighty,
And our brains with truth o'er-flooded;
In the greatness of thy wisdom,
Knowest not our limitations?
Wondrous thoughts have we, thy servants,
Wondrous things we see each day,
Yet we cannot tell our brethren,
Yet we cannot let them know,
Of our doings and our happenings,
Should they parted be from us?
Help us, oh, Thou Wise Creator,
From the fulness of thy wisdom,
Show us how to spread our knowledge,
And disseminate our actions,
Such as we find worthy, truly."