THE YELLOW PANES: BYRON DEFENBACH, P.G.M., IDAHO.  

THE AMERICAN FREEMASON, NOVEMBER, 1912

THERE comes to my mind a fairy-story of Germany, told me by my mother,
many, many years ago.  Like most tales of the Fatherland it does not bear
translation well, and I cannot give to it the charm with which the German
tongue invests it.

Once upon a time, long, long ago before the age of Cinderella and the
Beanstalk and Sinbad and the Giant-Killer, when there were no electric
lights, aviation contests, dime novels, laundry bills or patent medicines,
there nestled upon the banks of the Rhine a little village.  Had you been a
traveler through this village you might perhaps have discovered a small
shop; it was not hard to find.  I do not recall the exact directions, but my
mother said you should just go the hill over and turn the corner around and
suddenly before you the little shop would stand.

The owner was a man yet young, whose childhood thoughts had been like
unto those of other children.  The young have a fine comradeship.  They
quarrel easily, but they forgive quickly and thoroughly.  I see a group daily
playing under the apple trees beneath my window, and often I envy them
the pleasure they find in each other's companionship, fighting out quickly
their disagreements and then forgetting them forever.

Now, this young German merchant, as he grew older, began to find a
certain pleasure in looking for what was bad in his neighbours.  We are
complex; we contain the same ingredients, although in varying proportions. 
He who seeks in men's hearts is duly rewarded, - he finds that for which he
is looking.  Also a law of reflection steps in, and decrees that the looker
shall come to resemble that upon which he most gazes. "By beholding we
become changed." The moral nature resembles the sensitive plate of the
camera.

So this merchant readily found faults enough in his neighbours to obscure
the good, and his own heart began to mirror back the things upon which
his eyes so insistently rested. He became mean, miserly and small of soul.
The young looked upon him with fear, the old with aversion; the beggar
went hungry from his door.  His hand went not out in friendship to his
fellows; he lived within himself, looking with contempt upon the
associations which men form to promote brotherly affection and advance
the general happiness and good.  He would not join the Masons.

One summer's day the little door of the little shop was darkened and a
stranger entered to buy of the merchant's ware.  The quality was poor and
the weight short, yet the stranger made no protest.  He laid upon the
counter a coin of those old days, known as "two bits," and went upon his
way.  As he went he marvelled greatly to himself at the close glances of the
merchant, not knowing that his every word and look had been weighed in
the effort to find something meriting criticism and hate and scorn.

So intent had the merchant been upon his task that he had not looked
closely at the stranger's coin, and not until the traveler had passed from
sight did the merchant discover that the apparent silver was naught but
lead, worthless, base and bogus.  The shock of this discovery was too
much for the merchant; in angry disappointment he fell upon his own
counter in a horrid fit.  "That," said my mother, "made in one day two
counter-fits."

As he lay there amidst his writhing and frothing the door was again
darkened, and he arose to confront an old, old woman, clad in the
habiliments of beggary.  Her apparel was a mass of fluttering rags, her
disheveled hair fell like a grizzled frame-work about a countenance wan
with want and woe, the wrinkled hand stretched forth for alms trembled with
age and weariness.  The merchant's thought was clever; he laid in the
palsied palm the leaden coin, following it with cruel eyes.

Back he started in amazement.  The lustreless lead turned to glittering gold,
while at the same moment the figure before him became a fairy of
resplendent beauty.  Her unkempt locks became tresses as brightly golden
as the coin itself, her dim eyes took on the azure light of youth and life and
love, her faded countenance radiated with the bloom of the peach and tint
of the damask rose.  Her raiment, too, assumed a glorious gorgeousness,
as was the fashion of the fairies of old Germany.  She spoke, and the notes
of her voice rose and fell like the melodic murmurings of the babbling
brooks in the great Black Forest, like the tinkling of tiny bells, like the
moon-beams' whisperings at a summer midnight.

"Kind sir," she said, "your generosity shall not fail of its just reward.  Wish
whatever it be in my power to grant, and the wish shall have fulfillment."
 
The merchant pondered.  At last he said, "Sweet fairy, I have long desired
a pair of spectacles with which I can look into the hearts of my fellowmen
and see every thought and emotion that is hidden there."

But at this, my mother told me, the fairy shook her golden head.  "Such
glasses exist not in the natural or the supernatural," she replied.  "Here are
glasses of surest crystal, with which you can see all that is good and pure
and true in the hearts of your fellows; or here are yellow panes with which
you can discover all that is corrupt and base." He chose the yellow
unhesitatingly, not wishing to depart from his accustomed habits.

Placing them upon his nose, not too close to the eyes, he said, "How well
they fit." He looked over the glasses, up at the beaming heavens; the sky
was bright the sun shone, the fleecy clouds floated dreamily along as
before.  He looked over the glasses at her, the aureate hair and alabaster
brow, the azure eyes and peachy cheeks, the cherry lips and pearly teeth,
the shell-like ears and dimpled chin, were still there, all there.

Then he slowly raised his face that he might look through the glasses into
her heart, but with a quick smile and a snap of her fairy fingers, she
vanished.  Not only did she vanish, but also she disappeared.  In other
words, as my mother put it, "she had went," and in her place there was
nothing, nothing.  Nothing except a peek-a-boo waist and a hobble skirt,
a quantity of white goods, two high-heeled shoes, a double set of store
teeth, a bushel of up-to-date millinery, a barrette, a couple of rats, a dash
of perfume and a little peroxide; as I said before, the girl was gone. 
"There," said the merchant in purest German, "now I've went and did it."
Then he began his hateful quest.

First he stepped into a neighbouring cafe, where they set before him a dish
of wiener-wurst.  Not only this dish, but also rye bread and sweitzer cheese
and sauerkraut and pretzels, but these other dishes the glasses hid from
his eyes.  He could see nothing but the wurst.  When he had finished he
bought a cigar, and so low had he already sunk that it was a nickel cigar,
and as he looked into that cigar he saw not the little trace of tobacco which
it really contained; no, no, he saw nothing but bad.  A sprig of cabbage, a
strand of hempen rope, some German germs, a rag, a bone and a hank of
hair.  He sighed, placed the cigar in his waistcoat pocket, and departed.

He came upon a convict who, with his companions, was toiling on the
stony streets, and as he looked down into that imprisoned heart he saw
nothing but crime.  He perceived not, my mother said, the aspirations of
this poor fellow toward better things; the yellow glasses hid from the
merchant's sight the plans evolving in the prisoner's heart for reformation
when he should again be free, and rendered invisible the patience and
fortitude and high resolve which struggled for the mastery amid the clank
of chains and under the driver's lash.  No, no, he saw nothing but crime,
and as he turned away in disgust and contempt the close observer might
have noticed that the wonderful glasses settled a little closer, just a little
closer, to the eyes they served.

Next he chanced upon a man enwrapped in the awful folds of the serpent
Drink, and looking into that infatuated heart he saw nothing but the vice. He
saw not that this man's life had been a long fight with inherited appetite for
wine.  He saw not the struggle of the years to get out and say out of the
gutter, nor could he discern the magnitude of the efforts that were being
put forth by the inebriate to regain and retain his manhood; no, no, he
beheld only the vice and the weakness, and again the glasses crept a little
closer to the eyes behind them.

So on and on the merchant went, seeing always less and less of the good
of the world over the glasses and more and more of its evil through the
glasses as the yellow panes crept ever closer and closer to his eyes, and
as he lifted up his voice in praise that the world was so much worse than
he himself he met a woman with a past.  In that broken heart he saw
naught but the evil of the past.  There came to him no vision of the
innocent girl leaving her mother's knee to mingle in a world of wolves, there
beamed into his yellow-shaded eyes no ray of the Divine light of merciful
judgement.  Nor, as my mother related it, did he see the shining of the
tears which she had shed in her struggles to find again an honoured place
in society; no, no, he saw only the blackness and the disgrace and the
shame of the sorrowful past.

He turned away with a sneer, the spectacles now close to the eyes,
obscuring and discolouring all the world; in a revulsion of feeling he
reached up to remove the horrid glasses, but, to his alarm, they would not
come off.

He sat down by the roadside to smoke over this problem.  Pulling aside the
lapel of his coat he looked down upon the cigar; he chanced to look
beyond it, beyond the pocket and the sight transfixed him where he stood. 
No chamber of horrors into which he had thus far looked had seemed so
full of evil as the heart into which he was now gazing.  It was a whirling
cauldron of hatred and envy, jealousy and criticism, selfishness, slander
and malice.  Slowly he raised his eyes, and through the yellow panes even
the Heavens seemed dark and forbidding.  The remnant of faith and
humility in his heart revived feebly; he said "Pitying God, look down in
mercy upon me, a miserable sinner, and make me half as good as the
worst of the others." At that the glasses fell unhindered from his eyes and
were dashed in fragments at his feet.

He rose from the counter upon which he had fallen in his fit.  Staring
bewildered at the familiar objects of his shop, his wandering glances
reached the outer door.  There stood the beggar-woman with disheveled
hair and tattered raiment, her trembling hand still pleadingly outstretched.

He smiled upon her in kindness, and the smile was reflected a
thousandfold into his own consciousness.  He took her gently by the hand
as a brother might, feeling through the grasp the unfailing thrill of a good
action.  "Sit you down," he said "while I go to find friends to care for you. 
I may be delayed; I must get an application blank to the Masonic lodge
before I come back."

Here the story ended, my mother said.  But the lesson it teaches, old as the
ages, is yet ever, ever new.

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