Jennie Gerhardt. Theodore Dreiser

      The spirit of Jennie—who shall express it? This daughter of poverty, who was now to fetch and carry the laundry of this distinguished citizen of Columbus, was a creature of a mellowness of temperament which words can but vaguely suggest. There are natures born to the inheritance of flesh that come without understanding, and that go again without seeming to have wondered why. Life, so long as they endure it, is a true wonderland, a thing of infinite beauty, which could they but wander into it wonderingly, would be heaven enough. Opening their eyes, they see a conformable and perfect world. Trees, flowers, the world of sound and the world of color. These are the valued inheritance of their state. If no one said to them "Mine," they would wander radiantly forth, singing the song which all the earth may some day hope to hear. It is the song of goodness.

      Caged in the world of the material, however, such a nature is almost invariably an anomaly. That other world of flesh into which has been woven pride and greed looks askance at the idealist, the dreamer. If one says it is sweet to look at the clouds, the answer is a warning against idleness. If one seeks to give ear to the winds, it shall be well with his soul, but they will seize upon his possessions. If all the world of the so-called inanimate delay one, calling with tenderness in sounds that seem to be too perfect to be less than understanding, it shall be ill with the body. The hands of the actual are forever reaching toward such as these—forever seizing greedily upon them. It is of such that the bond servants are made.

      In the world of the actual, Jennie was such a spirit. From her earliest youth goodness and mercy had molded her every impulse. Did Sebastian fall and injure himself, it was she who struggled with straining anxiety, carried him safely to his mother. Did George complain that he was hungry, she gave him all of her bread. Many were the hours in which she had rocked her younger brothers and sisters to sleep, singing whole-heartedly betimes and dreaming far dreams. Since her earliest walking period she had been as the right hand of her mother. What scrubbing, baking, errand-running, and nursing there had been to do she did. No one had ever heard her rudely complain, though she often thought of the hardness of her lot. She knew that there were other girls whose lives were infinitely freer and fuller, but, it never occurred to her to be meanly envious; her heart might be lonely, but her lips continued to sing. When the days were fair she looked out of her kitchen window and longed to go where the meadows were. Nature's fine curves and shadows touched her as a song itself. There were times when she had gone with George and the others, leading them away to where a patch of hickory-trees flourished, because there were open fields, with shade for comfort and a brook of living water. No artist in the formulating of conceptions, her soul still responded to these things, and every sound and every sigh were welcome to her because of their beauty.

      When the soft, low call or the wood-doves, those spirits of the summer, came out of the distance, she would incline her head and listen, the whole spiritual quality of it dropping like silver bubbles into her own great heart.

      Where the sunlight was warm and the shadows flecked with its splendid radiance she delighted to wonder at the pattern of it, to walk where it was most golden, and follow with instinctive appreciation the holy corridors of the trees.

      Color was not lost upon her. That wonderful radiance which fills the western sky at evening touched and unburdened her heart.

      "I wonder," she said once with girlish simplicity, "how it would feel to float away off there among those clouds."

      She had discovered a natural swing of a wild grape-vine, and was sitting in it with Martha and George.

      "Oh, wouldn't it be nice if you had a boat up there," said George.

      She was looking with uplifted face at a far-off cloud, a red island in a sea of silver.

      "Just supposing," she said, "people could live on an island like that."

      Her soul was already up there, and its elysian paths knew the lightness of her feet.

      "There goes a bee," said George, noting a bumbler winging by.

      "Yes," she said, dreamily, "it's going home."

      "Does everything have a home?" asked Martha.

      "Nearly everything," she answered.

      "Do the birds go home?" questioned George.

      "Yes," she said, deeply feeling the poetry of it herself, "the birds go home."

      "Do the bees go home?" urged Martha.

      "Yes, the bees go home."

      "Do the dogs go home?" said George, who saw one traveling lonesomely along the nearby road.

      "Why, of course," she said, "you know that dogs go home."

      "Do the gnats?" he persisted, seeing one of those curious spirals of minute insects turning energetically in the waning light.

      "Yes," she said, half believing her remark. "Listen!"

      "Oho," exclaimed George, incredulously, "I wonder what kind of houses they live in."

      "Listen!" she gently persisted, putting out her hand to still him.

      It was that halcyon hour when the Angelus falls like a benediction upon the waning day. Far off the notes were sounding gently, and nature, now that she listened, seemed to have paused also. A scarlet-breasted robin was hopping in short spaces upon the grass before her. A humming bee hummed, a cow-bell tinkled, while some suspicious cracklings told of a secretly reconnoitering squirrel. Keeping her pretty hand weighed in the air, she listened until the long, soft notes spread and faded and her heart could hold no more. Then she arose.

      "Oh," she said, clenching her fingers in an agony of poetic feeling. There were crystal tears overflowing in her eyes. The wondrous sea of feeling in her had stormed its banks. Of such was the spirit of Jennie.