What do we know of life, Two Storks By Charlotte Perkins Gilman (America's foremost woman Sociologist. Author of numerous books, and editor, owner and publisher of "The Forerunner, a magazine of advanced thought on the woman question. The following is from "The Forerunner."') Two storks were nesting. He was a young stork-and narrow minded. Before he married he had consorted mainly with striplings of his own kind, and had given no thought to the ladies, either maid or matron. After he married his attention was concentrated on his all-satisfying wife, upon that triumph of art, labor and love-their nest, and upon those special creations-their children. Deeply was he moved by the marvelous instincts and processes of motherhood. Love, reverence, intense admiration, rose in his heart for her of the well-built nest; her of the gleaming treasure of smooth eggs; her of the patient brooding breast, the warming wings, the downy, widemouthed group of little ones. Assiduously he labored to help her build the nest, to help her feed the young; proud of his impassioned activity in her and their behalf; devoutly he performed his share of the brooding, while she hunted in her turn. When he was a-wing he thought continually of her as one with the brood-his brood. When he was on the nest he thought all the more of her, who sat there so long, so lovingly, to such noble ends. The happy days flew by, fair spring-sweet summer-gentle autumn. The young ones grew larger and larger; it was more and more work to keep their lengthening, widening beaks shut in contentment. Both parents flew far afield to feed them. Then the days grew shorter, the sky grayer, the wind colder; there was large hunting and small success. In his dreams he began to see sunshine, broad, burning sunshine, day after day; skies of limitless blue; dark, deep, yet full of fire; stretches of bright water, shallow, warm-fringed with tall reeds and rushes, teeming with fat frogs. They were in her dreams, too, but he did not know that. He stretched his wings and flew farther every day; but his wings were not satisfied. In his dreams came a sense of vast heights and boundless spaces of the earth streaming away beneath him; black water and white land; gray water and brown land, blue water and green land, all flowing backward from day to day, while the cold lessened and the warmth grew. He felt the empty sparkling nights, stars far above, quivering, burning; stars far below quivering more in the dark water; and felt his great wings wide, strong, all-sufficient, carrying him on and on! that. This was in her dreams, too, but he did not know "It is time to go," coming! It is upon us! he cried one day. "They are Yes, I must go! Goodbye, -I my wife! Goodbye, my children!" For the passion of wings was upon him. She, too, was stirred to the heart. "Yes, it is time to go!" she cried. "I am ready! Come!" He was shocked, grieved, astonished. "Why, my dear!" he said, "How preposterous! You cannot go on the great flight! Your wings are for brooding tender little ones! Your body is for the wonder of the gleaming treasure.-Not for days' and nights' ceaseless soaring! You cannot go!" She did not heed him. She spread her wide wings and swept and circled far and high above,―as, in truth, she had been doing for many days, though he had not noticed it. She dropped to the ridge pole beside him, where he was still muttering objections. "Is it not glorious?" she cried. "Come! They are nearly ready!" "You unnatural mother!" he burst forth. "You have forgotten the order of nature! You have forgotten your children! Your lovely, precious, tender, helpless little ones!" And he wept, for his highest ideals were shattered. But the precious little ones stood there on the ridge pole and flapped their strong young wings in high derision. They were as big as he was, nearly; for as a matter of fact, he was but a young stork himself. Then the air was beaten white with a thousand wings; it was like snow and silver and sea-foam; there was a flash, a whirlwind, a hurricane of wild joy and then the army of the sky spread wide in due array and streamed southward. Full of remembered joy and more joyous hope, finding the sunlight better than her dreams, she swept away to the far summerland; and her children, mad with the happiness of the first flight, swept beside her. "But you are a mother!" he panted, as he caught up with them. "Yes," she cried, joyously, "but I was a stork before was a mother! and afterward!—and all the time!" And the storks were flying. Three doomed men in the death house write A word like a torch from their night to my night. Through the fading black of the night, a fate I said "You must die." They will die at dawn. But before they go Three doomed men in Sing Sing write A word like a torch from their night to my night. And this is the word: "Are you justified? It is thus they plead, the three doomed menThey three never will plead again. They must die at dawn. As a brave man faces The death he fears, they will take their places. They will smile, perhaps, they will maybe jest. They will be dust then. Perhaps that's best; But even so, what good am I To say to three other men, "You must die?" Three doomed men in the death house pray Forgiveness. And I, do I ever pray? Three doomed men confess their sin and I A free man, walk down the street. Why, why? Did I scorn them? Well, we are brothers now, I and the three, or will be soon. When day blots out this fading moon, I shall have killed, no matter how, Then, murderers all, take heed of me! When my deed is done, My hands will be stained with the blood of three! They sit and write, the three doomed men, But I still shall hear, with fear and dread, What the three doomed men in Sing Sing said. |