Authors' Loves BY CLARA E. LAUGHLIN WITH FORTY-FIVE PHOTOGRAVURE AND PORTRAITS AND VIEWS VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY MCMII wrote that we wish them to bear witness, but because they were human. wayfarers like ourselves, and we want to know what befell them on the world's thoroughfare. There are two matters which are of supreme importance to us all,-the Life that is to come, which is Love Everlasting, and that touchstone of this present life which shall enable us to know its gold from base alloy. Concerning that which is Beyond the journey's end, none may return to tell us; in vain have we worn out our sad hearts in wistfulness that some voice that is stilled might speak, just once again, to say that all is well; that some vanished hand might beckon to us out of the shadows at the cross-roads, showing us which is the way that leads to Peace. But touching all that is to be, there is only silence; and by the roadside are gaunt sign-posts pointing, "This way to wealth," "This way to fame," but nothing tells the bewildered traveller on which road lies Happiness. Then, as one lost in the woods tries to remember fragments of woodcraft he has heard from the lips of those who knew,-tries, desperately, to recollect whether it is on the north side of treetrunks that one always finds moss or that one never finds it,—so we rack our brains, ofttimes, as we approach a fork in the highway, and try to recall the travellers' tales we've heard,-of one who took the road to Fame and found along it naught but Dead Sea fruit, and of one who followed a path marked Sacrifice and came to a gate marked Paradise. Nor is the way all, our recollection bids us know, for on all roads some have met disaster, and by all roads some have come to their hearts' desire. It is the touchstone that counts! If gold always lay in shining nuggets, if iron pyrites were not yellow and lus |