Barriers Burned Away quotes

As the storm had increased, a terrible dread had chilled her very soul. Every louder blast than usual had caused her an internal shiver, while for her husband’s sake she had controlled herself outwardly.

Like a shipwrecked man who is clinging to a rock, that he fears the tide will submerge, she had watched the snow rise from one rail to another along the fence.

When darkness set in it was halfway up to the top rail, and she knew it was drifting.

Hour after hour passed. The storm was dying away, and at times, through broken rifts in the clouds, stars would gleam out.

Instead of the continued roar and rush, the wind blew in gusts at longer intervals, and nature seemed like a passionate child that had cried itself to sleep.

The fitful blasts were the involuntary sobs that heave the breast, till at last quiet and peace take the place of stormy anger.

For the first time in his life Dennis felt a strong temptation to drink for the sake of the effects.

When was a man ever weak that the devil did not charge down upon him?

But the evil and ruin wrought in one case proved another’s safeguard, for the door opened and a miserable wreck of a man entered.

Dennis was almost speechless from indignation. Conscious of strength, his strong impulse for a moment was to spring at the throat of the barkeeper and vent his rage on him.

There is a latent tiger in every man.

But a hand seemed to hold him back, and a sober second thought came over him. What!

“You will find plenty harder.”

“None harder for one believing as I do. I will starve before I will do this work.”

The man stared at him for a moment, and then coolly replied, “Starve then!” and turned on his heel and walked away.

“None harder for one believing as I do. I will starve before I will do this work.”

The man stared at him for a moment, and then coolly replied, “Starve then!” and turned on his heel and walked away.

Dennis also rushed from the place, followed by the coarse, jeering laugh of those who witnessed the scene. In his morbid, suffering state their voices seemed those of mocking demons.

This then was the verdict of the world—“Starve!” This was the only prospect it offered—that same brave world which had so smilingly beckoned him on to great achievements and unbounded success but a few days since—“Starve!”

Every blast that swept around the corners howled in his ears, “Starve!”

Every warmly clad person hurrying unheedingly by seemed to say by his indifference, “Starve! who cares? there is no place for you, nothing for you to do.”

Come, now, take a good swig of old rye, and see how things will mellow up.”

Our good Samaritan in this case was a very profane and disreputable one, as many are in this medley world.

He had a great, kindly nature, that was crawling and grovelling in all sorts of low, unseemly places, instead of growing straight up toward heaven.

and with it he had drunk a cup of good coffee, that nectar of the gods, whose subtle, delicate influence is felt in body and brain, in every fibre of the nature not deadened and blunted by stronger and coarser stimulants.

He who leaves out physical causes in accounting for mental and moral states, will usually come wide of the mark.

But while giving the influences above referred to their due force, so far from ignoring, we would acknowledge with emphasis, the chief cause of man’s ability to receive and appreciate all the highest phases of truth and good, namely, God’s help asked for and given.

Then, as the thought grew upon him, he exclaimed, joyously,

“Take heart, Dennis Fleet: God is on your side in the struggle for an honest success in this life as truly as in your fight against sin and the devil.”

It was long before he slept that night, but a truth had been revealed that rested and strengthened him more than the heavy slumbers after the weary days that had preceded.

“Then I will earn my breakfast before I eat it, if you will lend me a shovel.”

“I dought you vas a shentlemans,” said the German, staring at him.

“So I am; just the shentlemans that will clean off your sidewalk for zwei shillen, if you will let him.”

“Didn’t you ever know of a gentleman who came from Germany to this country and was glad to do anything for an honest living?”

“Often and often I haf. You see von here,” said the man, with a grin.

“Well, I am just that kind of a gentleman. Now if you will lend me a shovel I will clean off your sidewalk for two shillings, and be a great deal more thankful than if you had given me the money for nothing.”

In Mr. Schwartz’s slow, plodding soul the fire of enthusiasm had never burned. He was eminently conservative, and looked with wary suspicion on anything that appeared like earnestness.

In the midst of a driving, bustling Western city, he stuck in the mud of his German phlegm, like a snag in the swift current of the Mississippi.

Yet Mr. Ludolph found him a most valuable assistant. He kept things straight. Under his minute supervision everything had to be right on Saturday night as well as on Monday morning, on the 31st of December as well as on the 1st of January.

He saw that Mr. Ludolph was annoyed by the same defect. One bright day, when everything stood out with glaring distinctness, he seemed provoked beyond measure by this inartistic rigidity, and stormed through the store at a great rate.

“This art building and everybody and everything in it look as if they had swallowed a ramrod,” snarled he.

“Mr. Schwartz, can’t you teach the young men to throw a little ease and grace into the arrangement of the articles under their charge?”

So powerful was this impression upon his sensitive nature that he caught himself saying, as of a living being,

“Oh, that I could give to that face the expression God meant it to have!”

And then he laughed at his own folly. His watchfulness caused him to oversleep the next morning, and he was later than usual in getting through the routine duties of the store.

In marked contrast we have seen the character of Dennis Fleet, drawing its inspiration from such different sources.

Could two human beings be more widely separated⁠—separated in that which divides more surely than continents and seas?

Could Dennis have seen her warped, deformed moral nature, as clearly as her beautiful face and form, he would have shrunk from her;

There was ever a vague sense of unrest and dissatisfaction at heart. She saw that her father was proud and ambitious in regard to her, but she instinctively felt that he neither loved nor trusted her to any great extent.

She seemed to be living in a palace of ice, and at times felt that she was turning into ice herself; but her very humanity and womanhood, deadened and warped though they were, cried out against the cold of a life without God or love.

In the depths of her soul she felt that something was wrong, but what, she could not understand. It seemed that she had everything that heart could wish, and that she ought to be satisfied.

He was very different from what she had as a matter of course supposed him to be, and had just done in a quiet, manly way a thing most pleasing to her, so she said with a smile that seemed perfectly heavenly to him,

“You are above blacking boots, sir.”

“You are expecting great reward, in some sort of Paradise, for your mission work, etc.?”

“Nothing done for God is forgotten or unrewarded.”

“Believing that, it seems to me that you are looking after self-interest as much as the rest of us,” said his employer, with a shrewd smile.

In the same manner, while I do not lose sight of the rich rewards God promises and daily gives for the little I can do for Him, I am certain that I can do much out of simple gratitude and love, and ask no reward.”

“Ignorance is certainly bliss in your case, young man. Stick to your harmless superstition as long as you can.”

And he walked away, muttering: “Delusion, delusion! I have not said a word or done a thing for him in which I had not in view my interests only, and yet the poor young fool sees in the main disinterested kindness.

Thus Mr. Ludolph’s soliloquy proved that his own pride and selfishness had destroyed the faculty by which he could see God. The blind are not more oblivious to color than he was to those divine qualities which are designed to win and enchain the heart.

A man may sadly mutilate his own soul.

At a dainty dinner-table Mr. Ludolph and his daughter discussed the events of the day.

At last Dennis drew a long breath, turned and gave his hand to the man, saying with hearty emphasis,

“Mr. Bruder, you are an artist.”

The poor man lifted his face to heaven with the same expression of joy and gratitude that had rested on it long, long years ago, when his first real work of merit had received similar praise.

His wife saw and remembered it, and, with an ecstatic cry that thrilled Dennis’s soul, exclaimed,

“Ah! mine Gott be praised! mine Gott be praised! his artist-soul come back!”

and she threw herself on her husband’s neck, and clung to him with hysteric energy. The man melted completely, and bowed his head upon his wife’s shoulder, while his whole frame shook with sobs.

“Do you really mean him?” he gasped.

“Do you really vant to be drunken old Berthold Bruder’s friend?”

“God is my witness, I do,” said Dennis, still holding out his hand.

The poor fellow drew a few short, heavy breaths, and then grasped Dennis’s hand, and clung to it with the force of a drowning man. “Oh!” said he, after a few moments of deep emotion,

“I feel dot I haf a plank under me now.”

“God grant that yon may soon feel that you are on the Rock Christ Jesus,” said Dennis, solemnly.

The afternoon mail brought Dennis his mother’s letter, and he wondered that her prediction should be fulfilled even before it reached him, and thus again his faith was strengthened. He smiled and said to himself,

“Mother lives so near the heavenly land that she seems to get the news thence before anyone else.”

During the day a lady who was talking to Mr. Ludolph turned and said to Dennis: “How prettily you have arranged this table! Let me see; I think I will take that little group of bronzes. They make a very nice effect together.”

Miss Winthrop was a little embarrassed at finding her supposed case a real one, for it might involve some practical action on her part.

Many an ardent advocate of the people in theory gives them practically the cold shoulder, and is content to stay on the summit of Mt. Olympus.

She was a girl of good impulses and strong convictions of abstract right, but rarely had either the courage or the opportunity to carry them out.

“What do you believe in, then?” asked Miss Winthrop.

“Art, music, fame, power.”

She announced her creed so coolly and decidedly that Dennis lifted a startled face to hers. She saw his grieved, astonished expression, and it amused her very much. Henceforth she spoke as much for his benefit as for theirs.

To his joy he found that the programme would soon give him the coveted opportunity.

Christine went on with a voice as smooth and musical as the flow of a stream over a glacier.

“I have read the Bible several times, and that is more than all of you can say, I think. It is a wonderful book, and has been the inspiration of some of our best art.

… the strains were plaintive, and his deep and unconscious feeling for his fair companion in song gave to his voice a depth, and at times a pathos, that both thrilled and touched the heart, and there were not a few wet eyes in the audience.

Unconsciously to himself and all around, he was singing his love;

and even Christine, though much preoccupied with her part, wondered at the effect upon herself, and recognized the deep impression made upon the audience.

nor did he, either, in truth. His old manner returned, and he busied himself in rapidly packing up everything that he had brought. Mr. Ludolph, who had received a brief explanation from Christine, came and said, kindly, “Why, Fleet, you have blossomed out strongly today.”

“Indeed, sir, I think I have never had a more rigorous pruning,” was the reply.

When the story had been told Mr. Ludolph in full, he understood the remark.

What could he do for her? She seemed so far off, so high and distant, that he could not reach her. If he ventured to send anything, prudence whispered that she would regard it as an impertinence.

But love can climb every steep place, and prudence is not its grand-vizier.

Going by a fruit-store in the afternoon he saw some fine strawberries, the first in from the South.

But he learned more fully than ever that Christine was not perfect, and that her faultless beauty and taste were but the fair mask of a deformed spirit. But he dwelt in hope on the feeling she had shown at Ernst’s story.

“She seemed to have two hearts,” said the boy⁠—“a good, kind one way inside the cold, hard outside one.”

“That is about the truth,” thought Dennis. “Good night, Ernst. I don’t blame you, my boy, for you did the best you could.”

What he feared would take him one or two years to accomplish he had gained in a day. Hope whispered that perhaps it was through her influence in some degree that he had obtained this advance. Could she have seen and read his ardent glances?

Lovers’ hopes will grow like Jonah’s gourd, and die down as quickly.

Words could not express his longing to see her again, but for several days she did not come to the store.

Dennis bowed and continued: “It is the work of one in whom the imitative power is wonderfully developed; but one having never felt—or unable to feel—the emotions here presented cannot portray them.

This picture is but the beautiful corpse of that one.

While line for line, and feature for feature, and even leaf for leaf on the trees is faithfully exact, yet the soul, the deep, sorrowful tenderness that you feel in that picture rather than see, is wanting in this.

Dennis, like many another, thought he saw God’s plan clearly from a mere glimpse of a part of it. He at once reached this miserable conclusion, and suffered as greatly as if it had been God’s will, instead of his own imagination.

To wait and trust is often the latest lesson we learn in life.

Mr. Ludolph’s guests, absorbed in the pictures, at first scarcely noticed the departure of the others.

But she had a lesson to learn as well as he, for as we have intimated, unrecognized as yet, there was a process going on in her mind that in time would make strange havoc in her cold philosophy.

Her heart’s long winter was slowly breaking up; her girlish passion, intense as it was foolish, proved that she had a heart.

Everything had been against her. Everything in her experience and education, and especially in her father’s strong character and prejudices, had combined to deaden and to chill her;

But before I go, you, in your pride and luxury, shall hear the truth for once. Not only have you been false, but you have been what no true woman ever can be—cruel as death.

Your pencil has been a stiletto with which you have slowly felt for my heart.

You have dipped your brush in human suffering as if it were common paint. Giotto stabbed a man and mercifully took him off by a few quick pangs, that he might paint his dying look. You, more cruel, accomplish your purpose by slow, remorseless torture.

But pride and anger were now her controlling impulses, and with the strong grasp of her resolute will she crushed back her gentler and better feelings, and became more icy and hard than ever.

By such choice and action, men and women commit moral suicide.

With a cold, white face, and a burnished gleam in her eyes, she went to the easel and commenced painting out the ominous black stain.

But Dennis might have worked even in his intense way for months and years without serious harm, had not a fair white hand kept him on the rack of uncertainty and fear.

Not work, but worry, makes havoc of health.

In the gray dawn Ethel Fleet, summoned from her rest, received her son, weak, unconscious, muttering in delirium, and not recognizing even her familiar face.

“Strange dot him should be so.”

“Der Shermans haf hearts.”

Christine flushed deeply, but Mrs. Bruder without a word put her husband’s letter into her hand, and Christine read eagerly what, translated, is as follows:

but she was to learn, in common with the great host of the sinning and suffering, how little change of place has to do with change of feeling.

We take memory and character with us from land to land, from youth to age, from this world to the other, from time through eternity.

Sad, then, is the lot of those who ever carry the elements of their own torture with them.

Was he who gave those blissful assurances also exerting a subtle, unrecognized power over her? Certainly within the last few weeks she had been subject to strange moods and reveries.

But the first dawning of a woman’s love is like the aurora, with its strange, fitful flashes.

The phenomena have never been satisfactorily explained.

“I am not so sure about that. I know many eminent saints in the church who will eat lobster salad for supper, and then send for the doctor and minister before morning. There is a precious twaddle about ‘mysterious Providence.’

Providence isn’t half so mysterious as people make out.

The doctor is expected to look serious and sympathetic, and call their law-breaking and its penalty by some outlandish Latin name that no one can understand. I give ’em the square truth, and tell ’em they’ve been breaking the commandments.”

“

Truth in the end is ever more merciful than falsehood,

” she answered, gently.

Suddenly she drops her burning face into her hands, and hides a vision one would gladly look longer upon. But see, even her little ears have become as red as coral.

The bleakest landscape in the world brightens into something like beauty when the sun shines upon it.

So love, the richer, sweeter light of the soul, make the plainest face almost beautiful; but when it changed Christine Ludolph’s faultless, yet too cold and classical, features into those of a loving woman’s, it suggested a beauty scarcely human.

“

Let them be on their guard then. Everyone is for himself in this world.

That can be plainly seen through the thin disguises that some try to assume. After all, half the people we meet are little better than summer weeds.”

“

Prayer is mighty, my son.

”

“Your faith is stronger than mine,” he answered, in deep despondency.

“God’s time is not always ours,” she answered, gently.

But an angry fire lurked in Dennis’s eyes, and he muttered to himself as he went to his room: “She has snapped the last slender cord that bound me to her.

“That does not prevent the truth from existing.

That some are blind is no proof that color does not exist.

”

“

I do not see the heat that scorches us, but I feel it, and know it exists.

”

The laborer sat on the sand with his family, side by side with the millionaire and his household. The poor debauched woman of the town moaned and shivered in her scant clothing, at a slight remove from the most refined Christian lady.

In the unparalleled disaster, all social distinctions were lost, levelled like the beach on which the fugitives cowered.

From some groups was heard the voice of prayer; from others, bitter wailings and passionate cries for lost members of the family; others had saved quantities of vile whiskey, if nothing else, and made the scene more ghastly by orgies that seemed not of earth.

So you see that neither on the one hand does God gather us up like driftwood nor does He on the other drag us at His chariot wheels, unwilling captives, as did those who, at various times, have sought to overrun the world by force.

God seeks to conquer the world by the might of the truth, by the might of love.

”

“

That which can vanish in a night in flame and smoke cannot belong to us, is not a part of us.

All that has come out of the crucible of this fire is my character, myself. It is the same with Mr. Fleet; but comparing his character with mine, how much richer he is!

It was one of those painful things that must be buried, even as the grave closes over the frail, perishing body.

Let those who are tempted to a wicked, dishonorable deed remember that, even after they are gone, the knowledge of it may come to those who loved them, like an incurable wound.

Dennis’s resolution not to speak till Christine should be no longer dependent on him was fast melting away, as he learned that she had not been so callous and forgetful as she had seemed.

“

I said you were a gentleman; I now say you are a man, and that to me means a great deal more,

” said the energetic stranger. “You shall have two dollars a day with the rest.”