LXIII.

TAKING INVENTORY.

How poor the most of us prove to be when we take inventory of the
soul's stock! We have lots of bonnets, and plenty of dresses, and no
end of lingerie, we women, but how are we off for the things that count
when the dry goods and the furbelows shall be forgotten? How about
love, of the right kind, the love that ennobles rather than degrades,
and how about loyalty, and patience, and truth? If one of Chicago's
big firms should close its doors to take inventory of stock in January
and find it had nothing but the labels on empty bales to account for,
its poverty would be as nothing to the poverty of the soul we are going
to schedule shortly behind the closed door of the grave. What slaves
we are to passion; how we hate one another for fancied or even actual
slights, when we have such a little moment of time in which to indulge
the evil tempers! How we bicker, and lie, and betray, the while the
messenger stands already at the door to bid us begone from the scene of
our petty conflicts. For my part, the interest we take in things that
pertain to this perishable life, when we are so soon going where these
are not to be; the choice we make of ranks and reputations, shams and
seemings, dinners and wines, jewels and fabrics; the importance we
attach to bubbles that break before we reach them; the allurements that
draw us far from the ideals we started out to gain; the way we content
ourselves with the environments of evil and forego forever the voice
that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and
honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of
the surf might startle one who sojourned by an unseen sea.