Atalanta in the South. Maud Howe Elliott
the earth, and brings forth from its bosom strange and beautiful forms, it parches the lake cruelly, and the prisoner pines and shrinks, and grows less and less, while the eager land presses greedily about it, and follows its retreat step by step; and at every step which the land gains there is a mark of its victory, a mark that shall endure while the land exists. But the bitterness of the sea cannot be conquered; and when the victory is complete, and the last lapse of water has dried and died beneath the sun, the land bears in its bosom a great basin of sea-salt, which testifies to those who shall come thereafter that the sea once held dominion here. But all is not peaceful yet with the conquering land. Stormy passions shake her being, and in one of these outbursts of volcanic fury the great salt basin is torn from its bed and tossed upon its side, and so lies edgewise; for the earth cannot expel, though she may distort, the legacy of the sea. And now the land covers that which she cannot cast out with clean, soft soil, and a wondrous thick carpet of green, from which spring giant trees and fair flowers, making the land full of beauty to him who has come at last to enjoy all that has been so long preparing for him. Man comes, and with him human labor; and the soil is tilled, and cane is planted, and bears sugar for the master of the land. But the hidden salt is still there, and the roots of the cane reach far down into the earth. And when the cane is gathered, and the stubble stands through the long winter, a strange, white bloom is seen upon its broken stumps, which when tasted proves to be, not sweet, but salt. The black laborer learns this fact without question. By the simpler types of man all the wonders of nature are thus accepted, one seeming not more mysterious than another. And the land still keeps her secret.
"A well is needed, and a shaft is sunk. Water comes bubbling to the surface, bringing with it a strange testimony of the forgotten sea; the spring is salt. Time passes; the golden age of peaceful agriculture comes and goes, and Acadia knows the iron age of war. War and want frown down upon the strong young country. The great storehouses of the world are closed, and men are thrown back upon the resources of their own land. There is a salt famine; and a man who thinks more than his neighbors brings the great kettles from his sugar-house and boils the water of the salt spring, and thus secures a small supply of salt. This is while the latest of the centuries is in its youth and the youngest of the nations in its childhood. Peace again! And commerce comes back, bringing its supplies from other countries, and saving men the toil of seeking at home that which it is easier to bring from abroad. The salt spring is forgotten, and half a century passes before the red war-cloud darkens above Arcadia. War again, the cruellest of all wars, in which the lusty sons have turned their weapons each against his brother; there is no other strong enough to cope with them. Then the dwellers in the island remember the tradition of the boiling of the salt water, and the old kettles are set up again, and a meagre residuum of salt is gained, while the great basin lies unsuspected ten feet beneath the surface of the ground. The spring fails one day, and a new well is sunk. The laborers strike, in digging it, a rock which they cannot dislodge.
"'Dig around it,' says the overseer. Dig around it! Dig around the great salt basin whose upper edge it takes a hundred and a half acres of soil to cover! The task is soon seen to be a difficult one, and the obstinate ledge of rock, which cannot be dug around, is examined. At last, after cycles have passed, you are avenged, O sea! and the land is found to be but a setting to the great treasure she holds embedded in her jealous breast. Pure and priceless in its worth is the great salt-bed, and the island which was never heard of before a hundred miles beyond its shores is now one of the wonders of the New World.
"A light breaks upon my eyes, which have forgotten the darkness in the great panorama which has been spread before my mind. I struggle to my feet, and in a moment am surrounded by my friends, who have not had time even to notice my absence. It was but for a half-hour, after all, that I was lost in the salt-mine."
After this preliminary visit followed days of earnest work, during which the studio door yielded not to the touch of friend or admirer, Margaret's father even being for the first time excluded from her counsels. Hitherto she had labored mainly to please him, and had worked under his direction, carrying out his ideas. She had been, in very fact, little more than the fine tool he had fashioned for himself. All was now changed. Her individuality must play its part; she would be held responsible for her work, and her brain alone must direct her hand. For the first time in her life she felt the creative force in herself. The clay seemed a living substance, which moulded itself beneath her hands as if as much interested as she in the process of its transformation. When her model was complete, Margaret and her father disappeared from the city, accompanied by a kindred spirit, whom Margaret had discovered in the person of one Antonio, a master stonecutter famous for his tasteful mantelpieces and mortuary monuments. No warning was given of their intended departure, and their friends were at a loss to account for it. Gradually the secret leaked out, and a conspiracy was formed to follow the fugitives to the very bowels of the earth.
Mrs. Harden was the prime leader of the enterprise, and the party included Philip Rondelet. Feuardent was not invited. Meanwhile Margaret, quite unconscious of the plot for her pursuit, was working steadily. The days flew by as only working days do, when each hour sees something accomplished, each day a step hewn out of the mountain road at whose summit Fame sits. To some men it is an easy ascent; they reach the top without suspecting it. It is told of Rossini (whose early operas had been hissed from the stage) that on the night when that masterpiece, "The Barber of Seville," was first produced, he dared not go to the theatre, but sat at home shivering in his poor room. Presently he heard the sound of a great throng of people in the street below—on the stair—at his very door. "They have come to mob me!" cried the great composer; and as no other escape was possible, he beat a hasty retreat up the chimney. They came and bade him stand forth to receive the homage of the whole city assembled to do him honor.
I knew a man once, a famous writer to-day, whose fears of public ridicule it was my task to strive to allay while his first book was in press. Three months after, his name was known wherever the English language is read. There are men who walk steadily down the scale of excellence, as unconscious of their descent as this other was of his upward progress. There are those again, in the band of mountaineers striving to reach the Alpine summit, who through their own temerity lose foot-hold and slip head long into some abyss. To such a one it often happens that his more fortunate companions lower ropes to him and strive in every way to extricate him from the pit into which he has fallen. If they succeed in bringing him to the surface, they try to shoulder him along with themselves. That is a pleasant phase, and one that I like to see; never mind if the rescued man should slip into the next crevasse, his friends will be all the better able to go on their way for having given him another chance. The cautious man, who sits down on the safe ground of his first successful step and dares go no farther lest the crust should give way beneath his feet, is, alas! a common type, and perhaps the saddest one to see. We expected so much of him! His first book struck so fine a note, ringing out clear and bold, penetrating the busy ears dulled by constant world-rumble. We cry, "Bravo! Go on! Give us the second note in the chord!" But the second note is the first! Like Toto's kingly singer, he can go no farther than Do! He can roar it louder and louder, do! do! DO! but he cannot sing re! though he should split his throat.
We can make no symphony of praise for him; he gave the key-note, others must make the harmony. It is painful of ascent at best, this hill, even where ambition is the staff, and the heels are winged with genius. It is too rough a road for a woman to tread, and let us hope that our young heroine will not attempt it. Better for her the smooth country by-road, with fruitful fields on either hand, than the rugged mountain path. And yet "Mr. Toil" is the only spouse who is never unfaithful; and when friend, sweetheart, husband, break troth with a woman, let her open her arms and fold the grim old fellow to her deserted breast. If she be true to him, he will not forsake her in the darkest hour. The more homage she laid at the feet of the mortal lover, the colder he grew, perchance; but with "Mr. Toil" every sacrifice is richly rewarded, the closer the embrace in which she folds him, the stronger the support he returns.
None of these thoughts troubled Margaret Ruysdale, one may be sure, as she sat high up on her scaffolding in the dark gallery of the salt-mine. They are thoughts which do not vex children, and the young girl was, as her friend Sara Harden often said, still a child in most respects. The work was finished. That very night the scaffolding was to be knocked away. Her fingers lingered lovingly over the surface which