【英文原著类】a story of to-day(今天的故事).pdf

A STORY OF TO-DAY
MARGRET HOWTH.
A STORY OF TO-DAY
"My matter hath no voice to alien ears."
TO MY MOTHER.
1
A STORY OF TO-DAY
CHAPTER I.
Let me tell you a story of To-Day,--very homely and narrow in its
scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of
humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead.
We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the
nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Day to
speak. I write from the border of the battlefield, and I find in it no theme
for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen
on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass
down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in
the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning, `Would God it were
even!' and in the evening, `Would God it were morning!'" Neither I nor
you have the prophet's vision to see the age as its meaning stands written
before God. Those who shall live when we are dead may tell their
children, perhaps, how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world
seldom has borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the
true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's blood for the
Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant of men, or the blood-
thirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of
content and right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if
God lives, it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have
deafened down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour,
renews the quiet promise of ing in simple, humble things. Let us
go down and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly vaunt
and madden ourselves over our self-seen rights, whatever they may be,
forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal truths in that calm
where He sits and with His quiet hand controls