So sped April and so sped May. Life had its
battles,--oh yes, because it was life. But they were not
the pettiest of battles. They were not the battles of
prisoners shut up, to keep out the weather, in cells
fifteen feet square. They fought, if they fought, with
God's air in their veins, and God's warm sunshine around
them, and God's blue sky above them. So they did what
they could, as they wrote and read and drew and painted,
as they walked and ran and swam and rode and drove, as
they encouraged this peon boy and taught that peon girl,
smoothed this old woman's pillow and listened to that old
man's story, as they analyzed these wonderful flowers, as
they tasted these wonderful fruits, as they climbed these
wonderful mountains, or, at night, as they pointed the
telescope through this cloudless and stainless sky.
With all their might they lived. And they were so
many, and there were so many round them to whom their
coming was a new life, that they lived in love, and every
day drank in of the infinite elixir.
But June came. The mules are sent for again. Again
they walked a quarter of a mile. And here in the little
whitewashed cottage, with only a selection from the books
below, with two guitars and a flute in place of the
piano,--here they made ready for three weeks of June.
Only three weeks; for on the 29th was the
Commencement at Antioch, and Jane and Walter and Florence
were to take their degrees.
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