The Project Gutenberg EBook of Margret Howth, A Story of To-day, by
Rebecca Harding Davis

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Title: Margret Howth, A Story of To-day

Author: Rebecca Harding Davis

Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #515]
Release Date: May, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MARGRET HOWTH.

A STORY OF TO-DAY

by

Rebecca Harding Davis

"My matter hath no voice to alien ears."

TO MY MOTHER.

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 its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go down
and lo