Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1900-01-04

he could not have seen her-the mist
of death was in his eyes.
"'NIy soul hears their glad step COM
ing in,' he said, .and they shall mount,
| they shall mount!' He raised his shriv-
eled hand to his eyes.
"Then slowly, from the white sky
above, through the still air, came
something falling, falling falling.
Softly it fluttered down and dropped
on to the breast of the dying man. He
felt it with his hands. 1t was featl-
er. He died holding it."
The boy had shaded his eyes with
his hand. On the wood of the carving
great drops fell. The stranger must
have laughed at him or remained si-#
lent. He did so.
How did you know it?" the boy
whispered at last t'It is not written
there, not on that wood. How did
you know it?"
Certainly" said his stranger, fsthe
whole Of the story is not written here,
but it is suggested. And the attribute
of all true art, the highest and the low
est, is this-that it says more than it
says and takes you away from itself. 1t
is little door that opens into an inf
mite hall where you may find what you
please. Men, thinking to detract. say,
People read more in this or that work
of genius than was ever written in it,
not perceiving that they pay the high
est compliment. If we pick up the fin-
al
cipher whole story-could almost re-
construct the creature again from head
to foot. But half the body of Mum
boo-jumbow idol leaves us utterly in
the dark as to what the rest was like.
We see what we see, but nothing more.
There is nothing SO universally intelli-
bic as truth. 1t has thousand mean
! ings and suggests thousand more''
He turned over the wooden thing
Though a man should carve it into
matter with the least possible manipu-
lative skill, it will yet find Interpreters.
1t is the soul that looks out with burn
| ing eyes through the most gross tleshly
| tilament. Whosoever should portray
truly the life and death of little
f1ower-its birth, sucking in Of nourish-
ment, reproduction of its kind. wither.
ing and vanishing would have shaped
a symbol of all existence AL true
facts of nature or the mind are related.
Your little carving represents some
mental facts as they really are. there.
| fore 80 different true stories might be
read from it. What your work wants
is not truth, but beauty of external
form, the other halfofl art
He leaned almost gently toward the
boy. Skill may come in time but you
4 will have to work hard. The love or
beauty and the desire for it must be
born in a man. The skill to reproduce
lit he must make. He must work
hard"
"All my life l have longed to see
| you,'' the boy said.
| The stranger broke off the end OF his
cigar and lighted it. The boy lifted
the heavy wood from the strangers
knee and drew yet nearer him. In the
doglike manner of his drawing near
there was something superbly ri6ieu-s
lous, unless one CHANGED to view it in
another light. Presently the stranger
said, whiting. do something for me-"
The boy started up.
| No; stay where you are. l don't
want you to go anywhere. | want you
to talk to me. Tell me what you have
been doing all your life"
The boy SUNK down again. Would
that the man had asked him to root
| up bushes with his hands for hif horse
| to feed on. or to run to the far end
of the plain for the fossils that lay
there, or to gather the flowers that
grew OIL the hills at the edge of the
plain. He would have run and been
back quickly-but now.
Il have never done anything" he
said.
"Then tell me of that nothing.
| like to know what other. folks lave
been doing whose word can believe.
1t is interesting. What was the first
thing you ever; wanted very much?"
The boy waited to remember. then
began hesitatingly.. but soon the words
flowed, In the smallest past we find
an inexhaustihlc mine when once we
| begin to die at it.
(To be continually