Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-18

80 f.' n,ns.@
WHITTIER Why this rush? What mat
wv tered this day-by-day struggle for the
creature things il in their attainment one had
not time for the beautiful leisure for thought
and communion? What was it they were
struggling for, scratching for. throttling for?
What availed a roof over the head. if beneath
that roof there were neither leisure wisdom
contentment, beauty?
1t was impossible for Edna Oliver to rush
about the city, hither thitIler: here. there; up.
down; in under; and not feel herself tormeuted
by sense of futility. Life on the surface was SD
evaSive; life beneath the surface in the quiet.
Somber, profound reaches OF the soul, had
taught her that.
The world which had taken her back so
eagerly, no longer satisfied Edna Oliver Her
heart and mind were filed with pity toward It.
Her one desire was to find a way to inStill into
these hurried harried comrades of hers some
OF her new strange VISIONS of the deeper
values of life
And yet of course you did not mount soap
box and query: Listen. folks! Where are you
hurryng? What do you do with the seconds
and minutes so frantically saved? OF what
significance is this vast strange. beautiful world
in which you find yourselves. If you have
neither the peace, the leisure nor the wisdom
to enjoy it?
where is this leisure for which you are
rushing? see it nowhere. Where do you keep
1t? In pot Of gold at the END Of a rainbow?
Why, you cannot even see the rainboWS for the
cuttered, noisy horizon.
when do you think. people, you, out there,
In the maelstrom? What do you think? Do you
think at all? Have you ever Withdrawn into the
convent of your own souls and learned some OF
the strange VISIONS that Turk in contempla-
tion?" No one certainly did not give ones
self away by preaching that sort Of gospel to
a busy needless world.
There must be more subtle ways to dissent
nate some of her secrets. 1t was the sort of
wisdom you had to dole out to an unsuspecting
world in sugar pills. The men and women who
milled about her in her daily work would have
tapped their broWs over her, had they suspected
the vast, strange doubts that her return to the
maelstrOm was awakening i'll Edna She did not
propose to have them tap their browS over her.
But slowly and surely was borne i'll upon her
the need to save herself The need to find her
way back into the peaceful meadows of soul and
spirit where she had rested during the long
years of her slow and painful convaIesCence.
1t might offhand seem ungrateful to win back
her world only 10 surrender it again, but more
and more poignantly it was borne in upon Edna
that she had not won back her world; she had
lost her world. The one back there in the calm.
clustered reaches of the mind and spirit which
her bed of pain had created for her.
1t was inevitable that the new Edna should
find her way back to the cOmpanionshp of the
stricken ones in the hospital: TO those whose
baptism of fire had made them wiser more toll
Grant, more chaStened 1t was further inevitable
that the new Edna should ultimately drift into
the companionship of marriage with her erst-
while physician, DR.. Edward Alonysious, who
also had looked into the vale of the resurrected
in spirit, and had there found the wisdom and
the beauty.
Copyright 1922