Tribulation's Story

As a subject appropriate to the season, I want to tell you about a New Year's breakfast which I had when I was a little girl. What do you think it was? A slice of dry bread and an apple. This is how it happened, and it is a true story, every word. As we came down to breakfast that morning, with very shiny faces and spandy clean aprons, we found father alone in the dining-room. "Happy New Year, papa! Where is mother?" we cried. "A little boy came begging and said they were starving at home, so your mother went to see and--ah, here she is." As papa spoke, in came mamma, looking very cold, rather sad, and very much excited. "Children, don't begin till you hear what I have to say," she cried; and we sat staring at her, with the breakfast untouched before us. "Not far away from here, lies a poor woman with a little new-born baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there; and the oldest boy came here to tell me they were starving this bitter cold day. My little girls, will you give them your breakfast, as a New Year's gift?"

Huron

Walled

Skyline

Lyon

Adams

Dakota

 

 

The Belt of Makkaera

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Makkaera