Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and PG Distributed Proofreaders
By Joseph Hergesheimer
1918
It is only the path of pure simplicity which guards and preserves thespirit. CHWANG-TZE
from Dorothy and Joseph Hergesheimer
Very late indeed in May, but early in the morning, Laurel Ammidon lay inbed considering two widely different aspects of chairs. The day beforeshe had been eleven, and the comparative maturity of that age had filledher with a moving disdain for certain fanciful thoughts which had givenher extreme youth a decidedly novel if not an actually adventuroussetting. Until yesterday, almost, she had regarded the various chairs ofthe house as beings endowed with life and character; she had heldconversations with some, and, with a careless exterior not warranted byan inner dread, avoided others in gloomy dusks. All this, now, shecontemptuously discarded. Chairs were—chairs, things to sit on, wood andstuffed cushions.
Yet she was slightly melancholy at losing such a satisfactory lot ofreliable familiars: unlike older people, victims of the mostdisconcerting moods and mysterious changes, chairs could always becounted on to remain secure in their individual peculiarities.
She could see by her fireplace the elaborately carved teakwood chairthat her grandfather had brought home from China, which had never variedfrom the state of a brown and rather benevolent dragon; its claws werealways claws, the grinning fretted mouth was perpetually fixed for acloud of smoke and a mild rumble of complaint. The severe waxed hickorybeyond with the broad arm for writing, a source of special pride, hadbeen an accommodating and precise old gentleman. The spindling goldchairs in the drawingroom were supercilious creatures at a king's ball;the graceful impressive formality of the Heppelwhites in the dining roombelonged to the loveliest of Boston ladies. Those with difficulthaircloth seats in the parlor were deacons; others in the breakfast roomtalkative and unpretentious; while the deep easy-chair before the libraryfire was a ship. There were mahogany stools, dwarfs of dark tricks; angryhigh-backed things in the hall below; and a terrifying shape of gleamingred that, without question, stirred hatefully and reached out curved anddripping hands.
Anyhow, such they had all seemed. But lately she had felt a growingsecrecy about it, an increasing dread of being laughed at; and now,definitely eleven, she recognized the necessity of dropping such pretenseeven with herself. They were just chairs, she rerepeated; there was anend of that.
The tall clock with the brass face outside her door, after apremonitory whirring, loudly and firmly struck seven, and Laurelwondered whether her sisters, in the room open from hers, were awake.She listened attentively but there was no sound of movement. She made anoise in her throat, that might at once have appeared accidental andbeen successful in its purpose of arousing them; but there was noresponse. She would have gone in and frankly waked Janet, who was notyet thirteen and reasonable; but experience had shown her that Camilla,reposing in the eminence and security of two years more, would permit nosuch light freedom with her slumbers.
Sidsall, who had been given a big room for herself on the other side oftheir parents, would greet anyone cheerfully no matter how tightly shemight have