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It has to be played by a hurdy-gurdy on a guillotine." He let his words wander gropingly over the water until a silence entered him. Thus life wandered away. The sea beat time to the passing of ships, changing ships. But always the same beat. It was the constancy of the stars that saddened him. September stars. The stars were yesterdays.
Times change so suddenly and inexplicably. The hours seem to be at strife with each other. We live in the midst of a perpetual conflict between our yesterdays and our to-days. There is no simple, obvious sequence in the message of experience. The days will not dovetail into each other. Life is compact of much that is impossible of true adjustment at the hands of any time-born philosophy.
But the boy in his Yesterdays carried home no fish from that little brook; though he spent many hours in the hot summer sun watching eagerly for a bite. He knew there must be fish there great big fellows there were such lovely places for them under the grassy banks if only they would come out but they never did. Not until he was older did the boy understand the real reason of this failure.
Her three older sisters, in gowns that spoke of yesterdays, were walking moodily down the path, when a crowd of ruffians burst by the sentries, tore through the doors, and dashed into the yard in the direction of the startled girls.... Taking in the situation quickly, I raised my voice and began swearing like a demon, and prancing around like a skberny madman.... Then rushing up to Tatiana I TORE FROM HER EARS the jewels that had descended from her early ancestors and howled: 'Aha! you'll wear those cursed things, will you, when your betters are starving in the gutters!
Blind moral instinct, if not safer, is more comfortable! Not the deed alone, but the revelation it brought, preyed on the young man's peace. If he were a criminal to-day, then was the whole argument of his past life criminal likewise. Yesterday's deed was the logical outcome of a course of thought extending over many yesterdays.
Only children are privileged to play with the fact of Death. Only in the Yesterdays are funerals events of merely passing interest. Only in the Yesterdays does Death go always past the door. And that year, also, went to join the years of the Yesterdays. It is as though Life, bringing to man every twelve months a new year, bids him try again. Always, it is necessary for man to try again.
But still still the woman could see that he was, after all, the same old "Slim" and she fancied, with another smile, that he often, still, whittled toys when the teacher's back was turned. Then came the fat boy "Stuffy." He, too, had another name which does not matter. Always in the Yesterdays, as in the to-days, there is a "Stuffy."
She answered him very earnestly: "I miss the splendid music of the siege, the stir of arms, the bustle of giving order, the alertness of expectation. I did not think a woman's life could be tuned to so high a diapason. Just think of it! Yesterday, and for many yesterdays, I was a leaguered lady, a priestess of battles; I stood for the King; existence was one fierce ecstasy.
"No; they were only five shillings. Oh, perhaps they lumped the two things; if seven and five are twelve, then that is just what they did. Now here's two and six on the 13th. That was yesterday, and I can always remember yesterdays; they are my strong point. I didn't spend a penny yesterday; oh yes!
Even God, I say again, cannot give us back the yesterdays. Once they are gone we can only say: "That which is written is written." Many of you have practically the best of your chances before you, but every day takes some part of them out of your hands, and gives it to an irrecoverable past. Be jealous about your own self-respect, and do only the things that command it.
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