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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37758-0.txt b/37758-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..33c58d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/37758-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6979 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Classics, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Atlantic Classics + +Author: Various + +Release Date: October 14, 2011 [EBook #37758] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + +ATLANTIC +CLASSICS + +The Atlantic Monthly Company +Boston + +COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY + + TO + + The Pleasantest of Companions, + Most Constant of Friends, + Who Seeks not Flattery but Counsel, + Provoked on Occasion only + And never Vexing beyond Endurance, + Wise with Ancient Wisdom, + And Fresh from the Fountain of Youth-- + + THE + ATLANTIC CONTRIBUTOR + + + + +Preface + + +This volume, composed of essays which on their appearance in the +_Atlantic_ have met with especial favor and which from their character +seem to deserve a longer life than the paper covers of a magazine +permit, is published out of deference to a multitude of requests. Many +readers have asked that this essay or that be preserved in permanent +form, while many teachers both in college and high school have written +us that the usefulness of the _Atlantic_ in the classroom would be +enhanced by the appearance of an edition which, selecting from the +selection already made from month to month, should constitute a kind of +_Atlantic Anthology_, preserving the magazine's flavor and character and +offering, as it were, a sample of what it aims to be. + +To give to this collection that variety which is the spice of a +magazine's life, the editor has selected a single contribution from each +of sixteen characteristic _Atlantic_ authors, making his choice from +material not greatly affected by the interests of the moment. In two or +three instances appears an essay which has already been published in +some collection of an author's work, and the _Atlantic_ wishes to +acknowledge with thanks permission from Houghton Mifflin Company to +print once again Professor Sharp's delightful "Turtle Eggs for Agassiz," +which has been included in his volume "The Face of the Fields," and Mr. +Nicholson's agreeable delineation of the "Provincial American"; while it +gratefully adds its acknowledgment to Henry Holt and Company for the +reappearance of Mr. Strunsky's "The Street," already published in his +inimitable little volume, "Belshazzar Court." + +Our chief thanks, now and always, are due to the _Atlantic's_ +contributors, to whom we owe all we have or hope for. Were not our +design limited, we should gladly enrich this collection with much +material from our file, which is quite as worthy to represent the +magazine, but which, for one reason or another, we judge less suitable +for the purposes of the present volume. + +THE EDITOR. + + + + +Contents + + +FIDDLERS ERRANT _Robert Haven Schauffler_ 1 + +TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ _Dallas Lore Sharp_ 23 + +A FATHER TO HIS FRESHMAN SON _Edward Sanford Martin_ 45 + +INTENSIVE LIVING _Cornelia A. P. Comer_ 59 + +REMINISCENCE WITH POSTSCRIPT _Owen Wister_ 87 + +THE OTHER SIDE _Margaret Sherwood_ 110 + +ON AUTHORS _Margaret Preston Montague_ 124 + +THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN _Meredith Nicholson_ 130 + +OUR LADY POVERTY _Agnes Repplier_ 153 + +ENTERTAINING THE CANDIDATE _Katharine Baker_ 173 + +THE STREET _Simeon Strunsky_ 181 + +FASHIONS IN MEN _Katharine Fullerton Gerould_ 201 + +A CONFESSION IN PROSE _Walter Prichard Eaton_ 225 + +IN THE CHAIR _Ralph Bergengren_ 243 + +THE PASSING OF INDOORS _Zephine Humphrey_ 252 + +THE CONTENTED HEART _Lucy Elliot Keeler_ 265 + + + + +Fiddlers Errant + +By Robert Haven Schauffler + +I + + +MUSICAL adventures largely depend on your instrument. Go traveling with +a bassoon or clarionet packed in your trunk, and romance will pass you +by. But far otherwise will events shape themselves if you set forth with +a fiddle. + +The moment I turned my back upon the humdrum flute and embraced the +'cello, that instrument of romance, things began happening thick and +fast in a hitherto uneventful life. I found that to sally forth with +your 'cello couchant under your arm, like a lance of the days of +chivalry, was to invite adventure. You tempted Providence to make things +interesting for you, up to the moment when you returned home and stood +your fat, melodious friend in the corner on his one leg--like the stork, +that other purveyor of joyful surprises. + +One reason why the 'cellist is particularly liable to meet with musical +adventures is because the nature of his talent is so plainly visible. +The parcel under his arm labels him FIDDLER in larger scare-caps than +Mr. Hearst ever invented for headlines. It is seen of all men. There is +no concealment possible. For it would, indeed, be less practicable to +hide your 'cello under a bushel than to hide a bushel under your 'cello. + +The non-reducible obesity of this instrument is apt to bring you +adventures of all sorts: wrathful sometimes, when urchins recognize it +as a heaven-sent target for snowballs; or when adults audibly quote Dean +Swift's asinine remark, 'He was a fiddler and therefore a rogue.' +Absurd, sometimes, as when the ticket-chopper in the subway bars your +path under the misapprehension that you are carrying a double-bass; and +when the small boys at the exit offer you a _Saturday Evening Post_ in +return for 'a tune on that there banjo.' But more often the episodes are +pleasant, as when your bulky trademark enables some kindred spirit to +recognize you as his predestined companion on impromptu adventures in +music. + +I was at first almost painfully aware of my 'cello's conspicuousness +because I had abandoned for it an instrument so retiring by nature that +you might carry it till death in your side pocket, yet never have it +contribute an unusual episode to your career. But from the moment when I +discovered the exaggerated old fiddle in the attic, slumbering in its +black coffin, and wondered what it was all about, and brought it +resurrection and life,--events began. I have never known exactly what +was the magic inherent in the dull, guttural, discouraged protests of +the strings which I experimentally plucked that day. But their +songs-without-words-or-music seemed to me pregnant with promises of +beauty and romance far beyond the ken of the forthright flute. So then +and there I decided to embark upon the delicate and dangerous enterprise +of learning another instrument. + +It was indeed delicate and dangerous because it had to be prosecuted as +secretly as sketching hostile fortifications. Father must not suspect. I +feared that if he heard the demonic groans of a G string in pain, or the +ghoulish whimperings of a manhandled A, he would mount to the attic, +throw back his head, look down upon me through those lower crescents of +his spectacles which always made him look a trifle unsympathetic, and +pronounce that baleful formula: 'My son, come into my study!' For I knew +he labored under the delusion that I already 'blew in' too much time on +the flute, away from the companionship of All Gaul, _enteuthen +exelaunei_, and Q.E.D. As for any additional instrument, I feared that +he would reduce it to a pulp at sight, and me too. + +My first secret step was to secure a long strip of paper to be pasted on +the finger-board under the strings. It was all pockmarked with black +dots and letters, so that if the music told you to play the note G, all +you had to do was to contort your neck properly and remove your left +hand from the path of vision, then gaze cross-eyed and upside down at +the finger-board until you discovered the particular dot labeled G. The +next move was to clap your fingertip upon that dot and straighten out +your neck and eyes and apply the bow. Then out would come a triumphant +G,--that is, provided your fingers had not already rubbed G's +characteristically undershot lip so much as to erase away the letter's +individuality. In that case, to be sure, all your striving for G might +result only in C after all. + +It was fascinating work, though. And every afternoon as the hour of +four, and father's 'constitutional,' approached, I would 'get set' like +a sprinter on my mark in the upper hall. The moment the front door +closed definitely behind my parent I would dash for the attic and +commence my cervical and ocular contortions. It was dangerous, too. For +it was so hard to stop betimes that one evening father made my blood run +cold by inquiring, 'What were you moaning about upstairs before dinner?' +I fear that I attributed these sounds to travail in Latin scholarship, +and an alleged sympathy for the struggles of the dying Gaul. + +The paper finger-board was so efficacious that in a week I felt ready to +taste the first fruits of toil. So I insinuated a pair of musical +friends into the house one afternoon, to try an easy trio. They were a +brother and sister who played violin and piano. Things went so +brilliantly that we resolved on a public performance within a few days, +at the South High School. Alas, if I had only taken the supposed +rapidity of my progress with a grain of attic salt! But my only +solicitude was over the problem how to smuggle the too conspicuous +instrument to school, on the morning of the concert, without the +knowledge of a vigilant father. We decided at last that any such attempt +would be suicidal rashness. So I borrowed another boy's father's 'cello, +and, in default of the printed strip, I penciled under the strings notes +of the whereabouts of G, C, and so forth, making G shoot out the lip +with extra decision. + +Our public performance was a _succès fou_,--that is, it was a _succès_ +up to a certain point, and _fou_ beyond it, when one disaster followed +another. My fingers played so hard as to rub out G's lower lip. They +quite obliterated A, turned E into F, and B into a fair imitation of D. +These involuntary revisions led me to introduce the very boldest modern +harmonies into one of the most naïvely traditional strains of Cornelius +Gurlitt. Now, in the practice of the art of music one never with +impunity pours new harmonic wine into old bottles. The thing is simply +not done. + +Perhaps, though, we might have muddled through somehow, had not my +violinist friend, during a rest, poked me cruelly in the ribs with his +bow and remarked in a coarse stage whisper, 'Look who's there!' + +I looked, and gave a gasp. It might have passed for an excellent +rehearsal of my last gasp. In the very front row sat--father! He +appeared sardonic and businesslike. The fatal formula seemed already to +be trembling upon his lips. The remnants of B, C, D, and so forth +suddenly blurred before my crossed eyes. With the most dismal report our +old bottle of chamber music blew up, and I fled from the scene. + +'My son, come into my study.' + +In an ague I had waited half the evening for those hated words; and with +laggard step and miserable forebodings I followed across the hall. But +the day was destined to end in still another surprise. When father +finally faced me in that awful sanctum, he was actually smiling in the +jolliest manner, and I divined that the rod was going to be spared. + +'What's all this?' he inquired. 'Thought you'd surprise your old dad, +eh? Come, tell me about it.' + +So I told him about it; and he was so sympathetic that I found courage +for the great request. + +'Pa,' I stammered, 'sometimes I think p'raps I don't hold the bow just +right. It scratches so. Please might I take just four lessons from a +regular teacher so I could learn all about how to play the 'cello?' + +Father choked a little. But he looked jollier than ever as he replied, +'Yes, my son, on condition that you promise to lay the flute entirely +aside until you have learned _all_ about how to play the 'cello.' + +I promised. + +I have faithfully kept that promise. + + +II + +Fiddlers errant are apt to rush in and occupy the centre of the stage +where angels in good and regular practice fear even to tune up. One of +the errant's pet vagaries is to volunteer his services in orchestras too +good for him. Not long after discovering that I would need more than +four lessons to learn quite all there was to know about the 'cello,--in +fact, just nine months after discovering the coffin in the attic,--I +'rushed in.' Hearing that _The Messiah_ was to be given at Christmas, I +approached the conductor and magniloquently informed him that I was a +'cellist and that, seeing he was he, I would contribute my services +without money and without price to the coming performance. + +With a rather dubious air my terms were accepted. That same evening at +rehearsal I found that the entire bass section of the orchestra +consisted of three 'cellos. These were presided over by an inaudible, +and therefore negligible, little girl, a hoary sage who always arrived +very late and left very early, and myself. I shall never forget my +sensations when the sage, at a crucial point, suddenly packed up and +left me, an undeveloped musical Atlas, to bear the entire weight of the +orchestra on one pair of puny shoulders. Under these conditions it was a +memorable ordeal to read at sight 'The Trumpet Shall Sound.' The trumpet +sounded, indeed. That was more than the 'cello did in certain passages! +As for the dead being raised, however, that happened according to +programme. + +After this high-tension episode, I pulled myself together, only to fall +into a cruel and unusual pit which the treacherous Händel dug for +'cellists by writing one single passage in that unfamiliar alto clef +which looks so much like the usual tenor clef that before the least +suspicion of impending disaster dawns, you are down in the pit, +hopelessly floundering. + +I emerged from this rehearsal barely alive; but I had really enjoyed +myself so much more than I had suffered, or made others suffer, that my +initial impulse to rush at sight into strange orchestras now became +stereotyped into a habit. Since then what delightful evenings I have +spent in the old Café Martin and in the old Café Boulevarde where my +'cellist friends in the orchestras were ever ready to resign their +instruments into my hands for a course or two, and the leader always let +me pick out the music! + +But one afternoon in upper Broadway I met with the sort of adventure +that figures in the fondest dreams of fiddlers errant. I had strolled +into the nearest hotel to use the telephone. As I passed through the +restaurant, my attention was caught by a vaguely familiar strain from +the musicians' gallery. Surely this was unusual spiritual provender to +offer a crowd of typical New York diners! More and more absorbed in +trying to recognize the music, I sank into an armchair in the lobby, the +telephone quite forgotten. The instruments were working themselves up to +some magnificent climax, and working me up at the same time. It began to +sound more and more like the greatest of all music,--the musician's very +holiest of holies. Surely I must be dreaming! My fingers crooked +themselves for a pinch. But just then the unseen instruments swung back +into the opening theme of the Brahms piano quartette in A major. +Merciful heavens! A Brahms quartette in Broadway? Pan in Wall Street? +Silence. With three jumps I was up in the little gallery, wringing the +hands of those performers and calling down blessings upon their +quixotism as musical missionaries. 'Missionaries?' echoed the leader in +amusement. 'Ah, no. We could never hope to convert those down there.' He +waved a scornful hand at the consumers of lobster below. 'Now and then +we play Brahms just in order that we may save our own souls.' The +'cellist rose, saluted, and extended his bow in my direction, like some +proud commander surrendering his sword. 'Will it please you,' he +inquired, 'to play the next movement?' It pleased me. + + +III + +Fiddlers errant find that traveling with a 'cello is almost as good--and +almost as bad--as traveling with a child. It helps you, for example, in +cultivating friendly relations with fellow passengers. Suppose there is +a broken wheel, or the engineer is waiting for Number 26 to pass, or you +are stalled for three days in a blizzard,--what more jolly than to +undress your 'cello and play each of those present the tune he would +most like to hear, and lead the congregational singing of 'Dixie,' +'Tipperary,' 'Drink to me only,' and 'Home, Sweet Home'? A fiddle may +even make tenable one of those railway junctions which Stevenson cursed +as the nadir of intrinsic uninterestingness, and which Mr. Clayton +Hamilton praised with such _brio_. + +But this is only the bright side. In some ways traveling with a 'cello +is as uncomfortable as traveling, not only with a baby, but with a +donkey. Unless indeed you have an instrument with a convenient hinged +door in the back so that you may pack it full of pyjamas, collars, +brushes, MSS, and so forth, thus dispensing with a bag; or unless you +can calk up its _f_ holes and use the instrument as a canoe on occasion, +a 'cello is about as inconvenient a traveling companion as the corpse in +R.L.S.'s tale, which would insist on getting into the wrong box. + +Some idea of the awkwardness of taking the 'cello along in a sleeping +car may be gathered from its nicknames. It is called the 'bull-fiddle.' +It is called the 'dog-house.' But, unlike either bulls or kennels, it +cannot safely be forwarded by freight or express. The formula for +Pullman travel with a 'cello is as follows: First ascertain whether the +conductor will let you aboard with the instrument. If not, try the next +train. When successful, fee the porter heavily at sight, thus softening +his heart so that he will assign the only spare upper birth to your +baby. And warn him in impressive tones that the instrument is priceless, +and on no account to touch it. You need not fear thieves. Sooner than +steal a 'cello, the light-fingered would button his coat over a baby +white elephant and let it tusk his vitals. + +I have cause to remember my first and only holiday trip with the +Princeton Glee, Mandolin, and Banjo Clubs. My function being to play +solos and to assist the Mandolin Club, I demanded for the 'cello an +upper berth in the special car. But I was overwhelmed with howls of +derision and assurances that I was a very fresh soph indeed. The first +night, my instrument reposed in some mysterious recess under a leaky +cooler, where all too much water flowed under its bridge before the +dawn. The second night it was compressed into a strait and narrow closet +with brushes and brooms, whence it emerged with a hollow chest, a stoop, +a consumptive quality of voice, and the malady known as _compressio +pontis_. Thereafter it occupied the same upper with me. Twice I overlaid +it, with well-nigh fatal consequences. + +Short-distance travel with a 'cello is not much more agreeable. In +trolleys you have to hold it more delicately than any babe, and be ready +to give a straight-arm to any one who lurches in your direction, and to +raise it from the floor every time you jolt over cross-tracks or run +over pedestrians, for fear of jarring the delicate adjustment of the +sound-post. As for a holiday crush down town, the best way to negotiate +it with a 'cello is to fix the sharp end-pin in place, and then, holding +the instrument at charge like a bayonet, impale those who seem most +likely to break its ribs. + +After my full share of such experiences, I learned that if you are a +fiddler errant it is better to leave your instrument at home and live on +the country, as it were, trusting to the fact that you can beg, borrow, +or rent some kind of fiddle and of chamber music almost anywhere, if you +know how to go about it. + + +IV + +Only don't try it in Sicily! + +For several months I had buried the fiddler in the errant pure and +simple, when, one sunset, across a gorge in Monte Venere, my first +strain of Sicilian music floated, to reawaken in me all the primeval +instincts of the musical adventurer. The melody came from the reed pipe +of a goat-herd as he drove his flock down into Taormina. Such a pipe was +perhaps to Theocritus what the fiddles of Stradivarius are to us. It was +pleasant to imagine that this goat-herd's music might possibly be the +same that used to inspire the tenderest of Sicilian poets twenty-three +hundred years ago. + +Piercingly sweet, indescribably pathetic, the melody recalled the Largo +in Dvořák's New World Symphony. Yet, there on the mountain-side, with +Ætna rosy on the right, and the purple Mediterranean shimmering far +below, the voice of the reed sounded more divine than any English horn +or Boehm flute I had ever heard singing in the depths of a modern +orchestra. And I began to doubt whether music was so completely a +product of the last three centuries as it purported to be. + +But that evening, when the goat-herd, ensnared by American gold, turned +himself into a modern chamber musician in our hotel room, I regained +poise. Removed from its properly romantic setting, like seaweed from the +sea, the pastoral stop of Theocritus became unmistakably a penny +whistle, with an intonation of the whistle's conventional purity. Our +captured Comatas seemed to realize that the environment was against him +and that things were going 'contrairy'; for he refused to venture on any +of the soft Lydian airs of Monte Venere, and confined himself strictly +to tarantellas, native dances, which he played with a magnificent +feeling for rhythm (if not for in-tuneness) while, with a pencil, I +caught--or muffed--them on the fly. One was to this effect:-- + +[Illustration: musical notation] + +While this was going on, a chance hotel acquaintance dropped into the +room and revealed himself as a professor by explaining that the +tarantella was named for its birthplace, the old Greek city of Taranto +over yonder in the heel of the Italian boot; that dancing it was once +considered the only cure for the maddening bite of the spider known as +the Lycosa Tarantula; and that some of the melodies our goat-herd was +playing might possibly be ancient Greek tunes, handed down traditionally +in Taranto, and later dispersed over Calabria and Sicily. + +This all sounded rather academic. But his next words sent the little +professor soaring in our estimation. He disclosed himself as a fiddler +errant by wistfully remarking that all this made him long for two +things: his violin, and a chance to play trios. Right heartily did we +introduce ourselves as pianist and 'cellist errant at his service. And +he and I decided to visit Catania next day to scout for fiddles and +music. We thought we would look for the music first. + +Next day, accordingly, we invaded the largest music store in Catania. +Did they have trios for violin, violoncello, and piano? 'Certainly!' We +were shown a derangement of La Somnambula for violin and piano, and +another for 'cello and piano. If we omitted one of the piano parts, we +were assured, a very beautiful trio would result, as surely as one from +four makes three. + +Finding us hard to please, the storekeeper referred us to the conductor +of the Opera, who offered to rent us all the standard works of chamber +music. The 'trios' he offered us turned out to be elementary pieces +labeled 'For Piano and Violin or 'Cello.' But nothing we could say was +able to persuade our conductor that 'or' did not mean 'and.' To this day +I feel sure that he is ready to defend his interpretation of this word +against all comers. + +We turned three more music stores upside down and had already abandoned +the hunt in despair when we discovered a fourth in a narrow side street. +There were only five minutes in which to catch the train; but in thirty +seconds we had unearthed a genuine piece of chamber music. Hallelujah! +it was the finale of the first Beethoven trio! + +Suddenly the oil of joy curdled to mourning. The thing was an +arrangement for piano solo! We left hurriedly when the proprietor began +assuring us that the original effect would be secured if the piano was +doubled in the treble by the violin and in the bass by the 'cello. + +This piano solo was the nearest approach to chamber music that a +thorough search and research revealed in the island of Trinacria. But +afterwards, recollecting the misadventure in tranquility, we concluded +that it was as absurd to look for chamber music in Sicily as to look for +'Die Wacht am Rhein' among the idylls of Theocritus. + + +V + +SCENE: a city composed of one department store and three houses, on the +forbidding shores of Newfoundland. + +TIME: one of those times when a fellow needs a friend,--when he's in a +stern, strange land on pleasure bent--and has to have a check cashed. I +don't know why it is that one always runs out of ready money in +Newfoundland. Perhaps because salmon flies are such fleeting creatures +of a day that you must send many postal orders to St. Johns for more. +Perhaps because the customs officials at Port au Basques make you +deposit so much duty on your fishing tackle. At any rate, there I was +penniless, with the burly storekeeper scowling in a savage manner at my +check and not knowing at all whether to take a chance on it. Finally he +thought he wouldn't, but conceded that I might spend a night under his +roof, as there was really nowhere else to go. + +At this pass something made me think of music. Perhaps it was the parlor +piano which, when new, back in the stone age, had probably been in tune. +I inquired whether there were any other instruments. The wreckage of a +violin was produced. With two pieces of string and a table fork I set up +the prostrate sound-post. I glued together the bridge and put it in +position. The technique of the angler proved helpful in splicing +together some strange-looking strings. The A was eked out with a piece +of salmon leader, while an old mandolin yielded a wire E. + +When all was at last ready, a fresh difficulty occurred to me. The +violin was an instrument which I had never learned to play! But +necessity is the mother of pretension. I thought of that check. And +placing the small fiddle carefully between my knees, I pretended that it +was a 'cello. + +So the daughter of the house seated herself at the relic of the stone +age, and we had a concert. Newfoundland appeared not to be over-finicky +in the matter of pitch and tone-quality. And how it did enjoy music! As +the audience was of Scotch-English-Irish descent, we rendered equal +parts of 'Comin' Through the Rye,' 'God Save the King,' and 'Kathleen +Mavourneen.' Then the proprietor requested the Sextette from _Lucia_. +While it was forthcoming he toyed furtively with his bandana. When it +ceased he encored it with all his might. Then he slipped out storewards +and presently returned with the fattest, blackest, most +formidable-looking cigar I ever saw, which he gravely proffered me. + +'We like' he remarked in his quaint idiom, 'to hear music at scattered +times.' He was trying to affect indifference. But his gruff voice shook, +and I knew then that music hath charms to cash the savage check. + + +VI + +This essay has rambled on an unconscionable while. The shades of +editorial night are already descending; and still I have not yet +described one of those unexpected and perfect orgies of chamber +music,--one of those little earthly paradises full of + + Soul-satisfying strains--alas! too few,-- + +which true fiddlers errant hope to find in each new place they visit, +but which usually keep well in advance of them, like the foot of the +rainbow. + +One such adventure came to me not long ago in a California city, while I +was gathering material for a book of travel. On my first evening there I +was taken to dine with a well-known writer in his beautiful home, which +he had built with his own two hands in the Spanish mission style during +fourteen years of joyous labor. This gentleman had no idea that I was to +be thrust upon him. But his hospitality went so far as to insist, before +the evening was over, that I must stay a week. He would not take no for +an answer. And for my part I had no desire to say no, because he was a +delightful person, his home with its leaf-filled patio was most +alluring, and I had discovered promising possibilities for fiddlers +errant in the splendid music-room and the collection of phonograph +records of Indian music which mine host had himself made in Arizona and +New Mexico. Then too there were rumors of skillful musical vagabonds in +the vicinity. + +Such an environment fairly cried aloud for impromptu fiddling. So, armed +with a note to the best violinist in that part of California, I set +forth next morning on the trail of the ideal orgy. At the address given +I was told that my man had moved and his address was not known. That was +a setback, indeed! But determined fiddlers errant usually land on their +feet. On the way back I chanced to hear some masterly strains of +Bach-on-the-violin issuing from a brown bungalow. And ringing at a +venture I was confronted by the very man I sought. + +Blocking the doorway, he read the note, looking as bored as +professionals usually do when asked to play with amateurs. But just as +he began to tell me how busy he was and how impossible, and so forth, he +happened to glance again at the envelope, and a very slight gleam came +into his eye. + +'You're not by any chance the fellow who wrote that thing about fiddlers +in the _Atlantic_, are you?' he inquired. At my nod he very flatteringly +unblocked the doorway and dragged me inside, pumping my hand up and down +in a painful manner, shouting for his wife, and making various kind +representations, all at the same time. And his talk gradually simmered +down into an argument that of course the only thing to do was to fiddle +together that very night. + +I asked who had the best 'cello in town. He told me the man's name, but +looked dubious. 'The trouble is, he loves that big Amati as if it were +twins. I doubt if he could bring himself to lend it to any one. Anyway, +let's try.' + +He scribbled a card to his 'cellist friend and promised, if I were +successful, to bring along a good pianist and play trios in the evening. +So I set forth on the trail of the Amati. Its owner had just finished +his noonday stint in a hotel orchestra and looked somewhat tired and +cross. He glanced at the card and then assumed a most conservative +expression and tried to fob off on me a cheap 'cello belonging to one of +his pupils, which sounded very much as a three-cent cigar tastes. At +this point I gave him the secret thumb-position grip and whispered into +his ear one of those magic pass words of the craft which in a trice +convinced him that I was in a position to dandle a 'cello with as tender +solicitude as any man alive. On my promising, moreover, to taxicab it +both ways with the sacred burden, he passed the Amati over, and the orgy +of fiddlers errant was assured. + +And that night how those beautiful Spanish walls did resound to +Beethoven and Dvořák and Brahms, most originally interspersed with the +voice of the Mexican servant's guitar, with strange, lovely songs of the +aboriginal West and South,--and with the bottled sunshine of Californian +hill-slopes; while El Alcalde Maiore, the lone gnarled tree-giant that +filled the patio, looked in through the open windows and contributed, by +way of accompaniment, leafy arpeggios _sotto voce_. And sometimes, +during rests, I remembered to be thankful that I had once snapped my +fingers at the howling wolf, and at fat pot-boilers, while I scribbled +for the _Atlantic_ that little essay on fiddlers which had gained me +this priceless evening. + + + + +Turtle Eggs for Agassiz + +By Dallas Lore Sharp + + +It is one of the wonders of the world that so few books are written. +With every human being a possible book, and with many a human being +capable of becoming more books than the world could contain, is it not +amazing that the books of men are so few? and so stupid! + +I took down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the +four volumes of Agassiz's _Contributions to the Natural History of the +United States_. I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster, +had touched those volumes for twenty-five years. They are an excessively +learned, a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit of vast and +heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the +United States, and their embryology. The work was published more than +half a century ago (by subscription); but it looked old beyond its +years--massive, heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks. It was +difficult to feel that Agassiz could have written it--could have built +it, grown it, for the laminated pile had required for its growth, the +patience and painstaking care of a process of nature, as if it were a +kind of printed coral reef. Agassiz do this? The big, human, magnetic +man at work upon these pages of capital letters, Roman figures, +brackets, and parentheses in explanation of the pages of diagrams and +plates! I turned away with a sigh from the weary learning, to read the +preface. + +When a great man writes a great book he usually flings a preface after +it, and thereby saves it, sometimes, from oblivion. Whether so or not, +the best things in most books are their prefaces. It was not, however, +the quality of the preface to these great volumes that interested me, +but rather the wicked waste of durable book-material that went to its +making. Reading down through the catalogue of human names and of thanks +for help received, I came to a sentence beginning:-- + +'In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also +received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of +Burlington; ... from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord; ... and from Mr. +J. W. P. Jenks of Middleboro'.' And then it hastens on with the thanks +in order to get to the turtles, as if turtles were the one and only +thing of real importance in all the world. + +Turtles no doubt are important, extremely important, embryologically, as +part of our genealogical tree; but they are away down among the roots +of the tree as compared with the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington. +I happen to know nothing about the Rev. Zadoc, but to me he looks very +interesting. Indeed any reverend gentleman of his name and day who would +catch turtles for Agassiz must have been interesting. And as for Henry +Thoreau, we know he was interesting. The rarest wood-turtle in the +United States was not so rare a specimen as this gentleman of Walden +Woods and Concord. We are glad even for this line in the preface about +him; glad to know that he tried, in this untranscendental way, to serve +his day and generation. If Agassiz had only put a chapter in his turtle +book about it! But this is the material he wasted, this and more of the +same human sort, for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro' (at the end of the +quotation) was, years later, an old college professor of mine, who told +me some of the particulars of his turtle contributions, particulars +which Agassiz should have found a place for in his big book. The preface +says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the +thousands--brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing +this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle +_eggs_ to Cambridge--_brought_ them, I should say; and all there is to +show for it, so far as I could discover, is a sectional drawing of a bit +of the mesoblastic layer of one of the eggs! + +Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that mesoblastic drawing, or some +other equally important drawing, and had to have the fresh turtle egg to +draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he +wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he +gets someone else to get it. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad +and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell about the +getting of it, and so made merely a learned turtle book of what might +have been an exceedingly interesting human book. + +It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or +interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them. Nothing +at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find +them. So with anything else,--good copper stock, for instance, if you +should chance to want it, and should chance to be along when they chance +to be giving it away. But if you want copper stock, say of C & H +quality, _when_ you want it, and are bound to have it, then you must +command more than a college professor's salary. And likewise, precisely, +when it is turtle eggs that you are bound to have. + +Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them--not a minute over +three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem +exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hen eggs only three +hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private +turtle-coop in Harvard Yard; and provided he could have made his +turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-scraps and +the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud +turtle's nest in the back yard to the table in the laboratory; but to +get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were +laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this, in +the days of Darius Green, might have called for nice and discriminating +work--as it did. + +Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his _Contributions_. He +had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished +but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried +the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single +exception of one--the very earliest--that stage of first cleavages, when +the cell begins to segment, immediately upon its being laid. That +beginning stage had brought the _Contributions_ to a halt. To get eggs +that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been +impossible. + +There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded: he might have +got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some +pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the +reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of +that--as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this +was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing--asked Mr. +Jenks of Middleboro' to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz +knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating +thing is, that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, +at least in the preface to his monumental work. + +It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college +professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz. + +'I was principal of an academy, during my younger years,' he began, 'and +was busy one day with my classes, when a large man suddenly filled the +door-way of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called +out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz. + +'Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to +me across the room. + +'Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I +get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? +Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only +once. + +'When I promised Agassiz those eggs I knew where I was going to get +them. I had got turtle eggs there before--at a particular patch of sandy +shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy. + +'Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was +thirty-five miles; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or +four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty +miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and +got the trip down to two hours,--record time:--driving from the pond to +the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by +cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays. + +'Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we +didn't figure on was the turtle.' And he paused abruptly. + +'Young man,' he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding +the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, 'young man, +when _you_ go after turtle eggs, take into account the turtle. No! no! +that's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle--and youth seldom +ought to. Only old age does that; and old age would never have got those +turtle eggs to Agassiz. + +'It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long +before there was any likelihood of the turtles laying. But I was eager +for the quest, and so fearful of failure, that I started out to watch at +the pond, fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be +expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May 14. + +'A little before dawn--along near three o'clock--I would drive over to +the pond, hitch my horse near by, settle myself quietly among some +thick cedars close to the sandy shore, and there I would wait, my kettle +of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the +cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to +open the academy for the morning session. + +'And so the watch began. + +'I soon came to know individually the dozen or more turtles that kept to +my side of the pond. Shortly after the cold mist would lift and melt +away, they would stick up their heads through the quiet water; and as +the sun slanted down over the ragged rim of tree-tops, the slow things +would float into the warm, lighted spots, or crawl out and doze +comfortably on the hummocks and snags. + +'What fragrant mornings those were! How fresh and new and unbreathed! +The pond odors, the woods odors, the odors of the ploughed fields--of +water-lily, and wild grape, and the dew-laid soil! I can taste them yet, +and hear them yet--the still, large sounds of the waking day--the +pickerel breaking the quiet with his swirl; the kingfisher dropping +anchor; the stir of feet and wings among the trees. And then the thought +of the great book being held up for me! Those were rare mornings! + +'But there began to be a good many of them, for the turtles showed no +desire to lay. They sprawled in the sun, and never one came out upon the +sand as if she intended to help on the great professor's book. The +embryology of her eggs was of small concern to her; her contribution to +the Natural History of the United States could wait. + +'And it did wait. I began my watch on the 14th of May; June first found +me still among the cedars, still waiting, as I had waited every morning, +Sundays and rainy days alike. June first was a perfect morning, but +every turtle slid out upon her log, as if egg-laying might be a matter +strictly of next year. + +'I began to grow uneasy,--not impatient yet, for a naturalist learns his +lesson of patience early, and for all his years; but I began to fear +lest, by some subtile sense, my presence might somehow be known to the +creatures; that they might have gone to some other place to lay, while I +was away at the school-room. + +'I watched on to the end of the first week, on to the end of the second +week in June, seeing the mists rise and vanish every morning, and along +with them vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morning vigil. +Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell together in the same clump of +cedars, and I had begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning mists +wrapping me around had at last soaked through to my bones. But Agassiz +was waiting, and the world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I +would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no use bringing a china +nest-egg to a turtle; she is not open to any such delicate suggestion. + +'Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with dawn breaking a little after +three: a warm, wide-awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the +level surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had seen it any +morning before. + +'This was the day: I knew it. I have heard persons say that they can +hear the grass grow; that they know by some extra sense when danger is +nigh. That we have these extra senses I fully believe, and I believe +they can be sharpened by cultivation. For a month I had been watching, +brooding over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring of the pulse +of things that the cold-hearted turtles could no more escape than could +the clods and I. + +'Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, understood, I slipped +eagerly into my covert for a look at the pond. As I did so, a large +pickerel ploughed a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his +wake rose the head of an enormous turtle. Swinging slowly around, the +creature headed straight for the shore, and without a pause, scrambled +out on the sand. + +'She was about the size of a big scoop-shovel; but that was not what +excited me, so much as her manner, and the gait at which she moved; for +there was method in it and fixed purpose. On she came, shuffling over +the sand toward the higher open fields, with a hurried, determined +see-saw that was taking her somewhere in particular, and that was bound +to get her there on time. + +'I held my breath. Had she been a dinosaurian making Mesozoic +footprints, I could not have been more fearful. For footprints in the +Mesozoic mud, or in the sands of time, were as nothing to me when +compared with fresh turtle eggs in the sands of this pond. + +'But over the strip of sand, without a stop, she paddled, and up a +narrow cow-path into the high grass along a fence. Then up the narrow +cow-path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into +the high, wet grass along the fence. + +'I kept well within sound of her, for she moved recklessly, leaving a +trail of flattened grass a foot and a half wide. I wanted to stand +up,--and I don't believe I could have turned her back with a rail,--but +I was afraid if she saw me that she might return indefinitely to the +pond; so on I went, flat to the ground, squeezing through the lower +rails of the fence, as if the field beyond were a melon-patch. It was +nothing of the kind, only a wild, uncomfortable pasture, full of +dewberry vines, and very discouraging. They were excessively wet vines +and briery. I pulled my coat-sleeves as far over my fists as I could get +them, and with the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to +avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, on after the turtle. + +'She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this +dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to, +warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me, at a clip +that was thrilling. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down +across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on +to a fence along a field of young corn. + +'I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before, +wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a +large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle +stop, and begin to paw about in the loose, soft soil. She was going to +lay! + +'I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried this place, and that +place, and the other place--the eternally feminine!--But _the_ place, +evidently, was hard to find. What could a female turtle do with a whole +field of possible nests to choose from? Then at last she found it, and +whirling about, she backed quickly at it, and, tail first, began to bury +herself before my staring eyes. + +'Those were not the supreme moments of my life; perhaps those moments +came later that day; but those certainly were among the slowest, most +dreadfully mixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours +long. There she was, her shell just showing, like some old hulk in the +sand alongshore. And how long would she stay there? and how should I +know if she had laid an egg? + +'I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over the freshly awakened +fields, floated four mellow strokes from the distant town clock. + +'Four o'clock! Why, there was no train until seven! No train for three +hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this +was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o'clock train,--none +till after nine. + +'I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun +crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were +the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! And I cleared the fence, and +the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge, at a single jump. He +should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven +o'clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any +horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and upsetting the +astonished turtle, I scooped out her round, white eggs. + +'On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care +my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so +with another layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand, +I ran back for my horse. + +'That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he +was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He turned out of that field into the +road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling +me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between +my knees. + +'I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to +Cambridge! or even half way there; and I would have time to finish the +trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, the +pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the +bang on them, as we pounded down the wood road, was terrific. But +nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned +over in the sand before they came to Agassiz. + +'In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away +from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and +were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of +me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick sharp whistle of a +locomotive. + +'What did it mean? Then followed the _puff_, _puff_, _puff_, of a +starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet +for a longer view, I pulled into a side road, that paralleled the track, +and headed hard for the station. + +'We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind +the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It +was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and topping +a little hill I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring +from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its +swift run down the rails. + +'My horse was on the gallop, going with the track, and straight toward +the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me--the bare thought +of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half--a quarter +of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced +field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine. + +'With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the +field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should +carry me and my eggs to Boston! + +'The engineer pulled the rope. He saw me standing up in the rig, saw my +hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, +and he jerked out a succession of sharp halts! But it was he who should +halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the +carriage on top of the track. + +'The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a +standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down +the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard +the cab. + +'They offered no resistance; they hadn't had time. Nor did they have the +disposition, for I looked strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, +dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby +or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand. + +"'_Crazy_," the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue. + +'I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now. + +'"Throw her wide open," I commanded. "Wide open! These are fresh turtle +eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before +breakfast." + +'Then they knew I was crazy, and evidently thinking it best to humor me, +threw the throttle wide open, and away we went. + +'I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field, +and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold +myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled +through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, +while the other kept his hand upon a big, ugly wrench. Neither of them +spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of +their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head +of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as +perhaps the easiest way of disposing of me. + +'I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that +station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next; +when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should +have passed in the night, and was making up lost time. + +'Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands +with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I +was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my +diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the +engineer, with a look that said, "See the lunatic grin; he likes it!" + +'He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails! +How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the +fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just +ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of +the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by +the mile! + +'I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of +Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,--luck,--luck,--until the +multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming "luck! +luck! luck!" They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless +wheels was doing its very best to get the eggs to Agassiz! + +'We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun +from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the +cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the +engineer watching me narrowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in +Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and +forced it to carry me to Boston. + +'Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men +should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I +would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to +Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left, in +which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my +captors. But it was too late. Nothing could avail against my actions, my +appearance, and my little pail of sand. + +'I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes +caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my +full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all +night with a tiny, tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the +decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning! + +'I began to feel like a hunted criminal. The situation was serious, or +might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way +have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply. + +'Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freightyard, the train slowed +down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but I had no chance. They +had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch +again. What time we had made! It was only six o'clock, with a whole +hour to get to Cambridge. + +'But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes--ten--went by. + +"'Gentlemen," I began, but was cut short by an express train coming +past. We were moving again, on--into a siding; on--on to the main track; +and on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the +length of the train; on at a turtle's pace, but on,--when the fireman, +quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, +and--the chance had come! + +'I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of +the track, and made a line for the yard fence. + +'There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were +after me. Evidently their hands were full, and they didn't know I had +gone. + +'But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when +it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my +pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over--a very wise +thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open +square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club--looking +for me. + +'I flattened for a moment, when some one in the yard yelled at me. I +preferred the policeman, and grabbing my pail I slid over to the +street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of +sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab! + +'Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, +and squared away. I waved a paper dollar at him, but he only stared the +more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar. +I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab, +calling, "Cambridge!" + +'He would have taken me straight to the police station, had I not said, +"Harvard College. Professor Agassiz's house! I've got eggs for Agassiz"; +and pushed another dollar up at him through the hole. + +'It was nearly half-past six. + +'"Let him go!" I ordered. "Here's another dollar if you make Agassiz's +house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!" + +'He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on +a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down +the wood roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and +crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we +took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in +Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons. + +'Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, +and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the +jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not +daring to let go even to look at my watch. + +'But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to +seven o'clock it might be. The sweat was dropping from my nose, so close +was I running to the limit of my time. + +'Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dove forward, ramming my head into +the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the +small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs +helter-skelter over the floor. + +'We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house; and without taking time to +pick up the scattered eggs, I tumbled out, and pounded at the door. + +'No one was astir in the house. But I would stir them. And I did. Right +in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid. + +'"Agassiz," I gasped, "I want Professor Agassiz, quick!" And I pushed by +her into the hall. + +'"Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go +'way, sir!" + +'"Call him--Agassiz--instantly, or I'll call him myself." + +'But I didn't; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great, +white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick, loud +voice called excitedly,-- + +'"Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!" + +'And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic +gown, came sailing down the stairs. + +'The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with +both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a +swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my +trembling hands ticked its way to seven--as if nothing unusual were +happening to the history of the world.' + + * * * * * + +'You were in time then?' I said. + +'To the tick. There stands my copy of the great book. I am proud of the +humble part I had in it.' + + + + +A Father to his Freshman Son + +By Edward Sanford Martin + + +No doubt, my son, you have got out of me already what there was to help +or mar you. You are eighteen years old and have been getting it, more or +less and off and on, for at least seventeen of those years. I regret the +imperfections of the source. No doubt you have recognized them. To have +a father who is attentive to the world, indulgent to the flesh, and with +a sort of kindness for the Devil--dear son, it is a good deal of a +handicap! Be sure I make allowances for you because of it. _Ex eo +fonte--fons_, masculine, as I remember; _fons_ and _mons_ and _pons_, +and one other. Should the pronoun be _illo?_ As you know, I never was an +accurate scholar, and I suppose you're not--_Ex eo fonte_ the stream is +bound to run not quite clear. + +My advice to you is quite likely to be bad, partly from the imperfection +of its source, partly because I am not you, and partly because of my +imperfect acquaintance with the conditions you are about to meet. When I +came to college my father gave me no advice. He gave me his love and +some necessary money, which did not come, I fear, as easy as the love. +His venerable uncle who lived with us--my great uncle--gave me his +blessing and told me, I remember, that so far as book-learning went, I +could learn as much without going to college. Still he did not +discourage my going. He was quite right. I could have got more +book-learning out of college than I did get in college, and I suppose +that you, too, might get, out, more than you will get, in. Of course, +that's not the whole story; neither is it true of all people. For me, +college abounded in distractions, and I suppose it will for you. And I +was incorrigibly sociable and ready to spend time to get acquainted, and +more, to stay acquainted, and if you have that propensity you needn't +think it was left on the doorstep. You come by it lawfully. Getting +acquainted is, for most of us, one of the important branches. But it's +only one of them, and to devote one's whole time to it is a mistake, and +one that the dean will help you avoid if necessary, which probably, if I +know you at all, it won't be. + +It is important to know people, but it is more important to be worth +knowing. College offers you at least two valuable details of +opportunity: a large variety of people to know, and a large variety of +means to make yourself better worth knowing. I hope, my son, that you +will avail yourself of both these details. + +This is a mechanical age, and the most obtrusive of the current +mechanisms is the automobile. It has valves and cylinders and those +things that give it power and speed, and rubber tires that it runs on, +and a wheel and steering-gear and handles and treadles by which it is +directed. Your body, especially your stomach, is the rubber tires; your +brains are the cylinders and valves; and your will and the spiritual +part of you are the chauffeur and his wheel. + +I beg you to be kind to your stomach, as heretofore. It needs no alcohol +at your time of life--if ever--and the less you find occasion to feed +into it, the more prosperous both your physical and mental conditions +are likely to be. I am aware that life, and college life in particular, +has its convivial intervals; but you might as well understand (and I +have been remiss, or have wasted time, if you do not understand it +already) that alcohol is one of the chief man-traps, abounding in +mischiefs if you play with it too hard. Be wary, always wary, with it, +my son, and especially with hard liquor. + +Your mind, like your body, is a thing whereof the powers are developed +by effort. That is a principal use, as I see it, of hard work in +studies. Unless you train your body you can't be an athlete, and unless +you train your mind you can't be much of a scholar. The four miles an +oarsman covers at top speed is in itself nothing to the good, but the +physical capacity to hold out over the course is thought to be of some +worth. So a good part of what you learn by hard study may not be +permanently retained, and may not seem to be of much final value, but +your mind is a better and more powerful instrument because you have +learned it. 'Knowledge is power,' but still more the faculty of +acquiring and using knowledge is power. If you have a trained and +powerful mind, you are bound to have stored it with something, but its +value is more in what it can do, what it can grasp and use, than in what +it contains; and if it were possible, as it is not, to come out of +college with a trained and disciplined mind and nothing useful in it, +you would still be ahead, and still, in a manner, educated. Think of +your mind as a muscle to be developed; think of it as a searchlight that +is to reveal the truth to you, and don't cheat it or neglect it. + +As to competitive scholarship, to my mind it is like competitive +athletics,--good for those who have the powers and like the game. Tests +are useful; they stimulate one's ambition, and so do competitions. But a +success in competitive scholarship, like a success in competitive +athletics, may, of course, be too dearly bought. Not by you, though, I +surmise, my son. If you were more urgent, either as a scholar or as an +athlete, I might think it needful to warn you not to wear your tires out +scorching too early in life. As things are, I say to you, as I often say +to myself: Don't dawdle; don't scramble. When you work, work; when you +play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the time. + +When you get hold of an instructor who is worth attention, give him +attention. That is one way of getting the best that a college has to +offer. A great deal you may get from books, but some of the most +valuable things are passed from mind to mind, and can only be had from +some one who has them, or else from the great Source of all truth. I +suspect that the subtle development we call 'culture' is one of those +things, and the great spiritual valuables are apt to come that way. + +You know you are still growing, both in mind and body, and will continue +so to be for years to come,--I hope, always. One of the valuable things +about college is that it gives you time to grow. You won't have to earn +any money and will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself +and others, as well as with some of the wisdom that is spread upon the +records. You would be so engaged, more or less, in these years, wherever +you might be. But in college, where you are so much your own man, and +are freed from the demands and solicitudes of your parents, the +conditions for it are exceptionally favorable. I suppose that is one +thing that continues the colleges in business, since I read so often +that at present they are entirely misdirected and teach the wrong things +in the wrong way. + +But nobody denies that they give the young a breathing spell. Breathe, +my son; breathe freely. Remember that the aim of all these prospective +processes is to bring out the man there is in you, and arm him more or +less for the jousts ahead. It is not to make you over into somebody +else: that can't be done,--not in three or four years, anyhow; but only +to bring out, and train as much as possible of you. There's plenty in +most of us if we can only get it out; more, very much more, than we ever +do get out. So will you please think of college as a nursery in which +you are to grow a while,--and mind you do grow,--and then, presently, to +be transplanted. It is not as if college was the chief arena of human +effort. Nevertheless, for your effort, while you are there, it is the +chief arena, and I am far from giving you the counsel to put off trying +until you leave. + +I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how +important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of +scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall +still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are +more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment. +They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and +chances the clubs involve; so bad it may be to be in this one; so bad to +be out of that; so much choice there is between them, and so much +choice exercised within them, by which any mother's hopeful may be +excluded. + +There is a democratic ideal of a great college without any clubs, where +the lion and the lamb shall escort one another about with tails +entwined, and every student shall be like every other student, and have +similar habits and associates. This ideal is a good deal discussed and a +good deal applauded in the public press. Whether it will ever come true +I can't tell, but there has been some form or other of clubs in our +older colleges, I suppose, for one or two centuries, and they are there +now and will at least last out your time; so it may be you will have to +take thought about them in due time. + +Not much, however, until they take thought of you. + +You see, clubs seem to be a sort of natural provision, just as tails +were, maybe, before humanity outgrew them. I guess there is a propensity +of nature toward groups, and the natural basis of grouping seems to be +likeness in feathers and habits. The propensity works to include the +like and, incidentally but necessarily, to exclude the unlike. Whether +it is the Knights of the Round Table or the Knights of the Garter or the +Phi Beta Kappa, you see these principles working. The measure of success +in a club is its ability to make people want to join it, and that seems +to be best demonstrated and preserved by keeping most of them out. + +Now the advantages of the clubs are considerable. To have a place +always open where you can hang up your hat, and where a hospitable +welcome always awaits you, and where there is enough of a crowd and not +too much, and where you can in your later years inspect at all times a +family of selected undergraduates,--all that is valuable and good, and +pleasant besides, and this continuity of interest that the clubs foster +among their members helps to keep up in those members a lively and +helpful interest in their college. The drawback to the clubs is their +essential selfishness, and their disposition to take you out of a large +family and limit you to a small one, and one that is not yours by birth, +or entirely by choice, but is selected for you largely by other persons. + +In any club you yield a certain amount of freedom and individuality, the +amount being determined by the degree in which the club absorbs you. +Don't yield too much! Don't take the mould of any club! A college is +always bigger than its clubs, and the biggest thing in a college is +always a man. The object of being in college is to develop as a man. If +clubs help in that development,--and I think they do help some +men,--they are a gain; but, of course, if they dwarf you down to the +dimensions of a club-man, they are a loss. Some men take their club +shape, such as it is, and find a sufficient satisfaction in it. Others +react on their clubs, take what they have to give, add to it what is to +be had elsewhere, and turn out rather more valuable people than if they +had had no club experience. + +At all events, don't take this matter of the clubs too hard. For those +youths, comparatively few, who by luck and circumstances find themselves +eligible to them, they are an interesting form of discipline or +indulgence, and I will not say that they are unimportant. Neither would +I have you keep out of them because of their drawbacks. If you begin by +keeping out of all things that have drawbacks, your progress in this +world will involve constant hesitations. Alcohol has numerous drawbacks, +but I don't advise you to be a teetotaller. Tobacco has drawbacks, but I +believe you smoke it. Money has drawbacks, and so has advertisement. +But, bless you, we have to take things as they come and deal with them +as we can. The trick is to get the kernel and eliminate the shuck. A +large proportion of people do the opposite. If you can manage that way +with the clubs,--provided you ever get a chance,--you will be amused to +observe in due time how large a proportion of your brethren value these +organizations chiefly for their shuck, and grasp most eagerly at that. +For the shuck, as I see it, is exclusiveness, which is not valuable +except to persons justly doubtful of their own merits. Whereas the +kernel is the fellowship of like minds which has always been treasured +by the wise. + +The clubs, my son, some more than others, are recruited considerably +from what is known as the leisure class. To be sure, I don't see any +very definite or important leisure class about in our land. Everybody +who amounts to anything works, and always did and must, for you can't +amount to anything otherwise; but the people who have money laid up +ahead for them, are apt to work somewhat less strenuously than the rest +of us, and not so much for money. Don't get it into your head that you +want to tie up to the leisure class, or that the condition of not having +to work is desirable. Have it in mind that you are to work just about as +hard as the quality of your tires and cylinders will warrant. Plan to +get into the game if you have to go on your hands and knees. Plan to +earn your living somehow. Don't aim to go through life spoon-fed; don't +aim to get a soft seat. If you do, you won't have your fair share of +fun. There is no real fun in ease, except as you need it because you +have worked hard. + +I say, plan to earn your living! Whether you actually earn the money you +live on, makes no great difference, though in your case I guess you'll +have to if you are going to live at all well. But if you get money +without earning it, it leaves you in debt to society. Somebody has to +earn the money you spend. In mine, factory, railroad, or office, +somebody works for the money that supports you. No matter where the +money comes from, that is true: somebody has to earn it. If you get it +without due labor of your own, you owe for it. Recognize that debt and +qualify yourself to discharge it. Study to put back into the world +somewhat more than you take out of it. Study to be somewhat more than +merely worth your keep. Study to shoulder the biggest load your strength +can carry. That is life. That is the great sport that brings the great +compensations to the soul. Getting regular meals and nice clothes, and +acceptable shelter and transportation, and agreeable acquaintances, is +only a means to an end, and if you accept the means and shirk the end, +the means will pall on you. + +I said 'agreeable acquaintances.' A very large proportion of the +acquaintances you can make will be agreeable if you can bring enough +knowledge and a sufficiently hospitable spirit to your relations with +them. I don't counsel you to cultivate the arts of popularity, for they +are apt not to wash,--apt, that is, to conflict with inside qualities +that are vastly more valuable than they are. But keep, in so far as you +can, an open heart. There is no one to whom you are not related if only +you can find the relation; there is no one but you owe him a benefit if +you can see one you can do him. + +Don't be too nice. It is such an impediment to usefulness as stuttering +is to speech,--a sort of spiritual indigestion; a hesitation in your +carbureter. By all means, be a gentleman, in manners and spirit, in so +far as you know how, but be one from the inside out. + +If you had come as far as you have in life without acquiring manners, +you might well blush for your parents and teachers. I don't think you +have, but I beg you hold on to all the good manners you have, and get +more. Good manners seem to me a good deal to seek among present-day +youth, but I suppose they have always been fairly scarce, and the more +appreciated for their scarcity. Tobacco manners are uncommonly free and +bad in this generation; more so, I think, than they were in mine. Since +cigarettes came in, especially, youths seem to feel licensed to smoke +them in all places and company. And the boys are prone to too much ease +of attitude, and lounge and loll appallingly in company, and I see them +in parlors with their legs crossed in such a fashion that their feet +might almost as well be in the ladies' laps. + +Have a care for these matters of deportment. Be strict with yourself and +your postures. Keep your legs and feet where they belong; they were not +meant for parlor ornaments. Show respect for people! Lord bless me! the +things I see done by males with a claim to be gentlemen: tobacco-smoke +puffed in women's faces; men who ought to know better, smoking as they +drive out with ladies; men who put their feet on the table and expect +you to talk over them! Show respect for people; for all kinds of people, +including yourself, for self-respect is at the bottom of all good +manners. They are the expression of discipline, of good-will, of respect +for other people's rights and comfort and feelings. I suppose good +manners are unselfish, but the most selfish people might well cultivate +them, they are so remunerative. In the details of life, in the public +vehicles, in crowds, and in all situations where the demand presses hard +on supply, what you get by hogging is incomparably less than what you +get by courtesy. The things you must scramble and elbow for are not +worth having; not one of them. They are the swill of life, my son; leave +them to swine. + +You will have to think more or less about yourself, because that belongs +to your time of life, provided you are the sort that thinks at all. But +don't overdo it. You won't, because you will find it, as all healthy +people do, a subject in which over-indulgence tends rapidly to nausea. +To have one's self always on one's mind is to lodge a kill-joy; to act +always from calculation is a sure path to blunders. + +Most of these specific counsels I set down more for your entertainment +than truly to guide you. You don't live by maxims any more than you +speak by rules of grammar. You will speak by ear (improving, I hope, in +your college environment), and you will live by whatever light there is +in you, getting more, I hope, as you go along. + +Grow in grace, my son! If your spirit is right, the details of life +will take care of their own adjustment. Go to church; if not invariably, +then variably. They don't require it any more in college, but you can't +afford not to; for the churches reflect and recall--very imperfectly to +be sure--the religion and the spirit of Christ; and on that the whole of +our civilization rests. Get understanding of that. It is by far the most +important knowledge in the whole book, the great fountain of sanity, +tolerance, and political and social wisdom, a gateway to all kinds of +truth, a rectifying and consoling current through all of life. + + + + +Intensive Living + +By Cornelia A. P. Comer + + +Said Honoria casually,-- + +'When I was in town yesterday, I went to see Adelaide in her new house.' + +The others looked up alertly, Martha from her darning, Grace from her +Irish crochet. + +'Oh, really? And how did you like the house?' + +Honoria hesitated, looking to the wide view for clarification. The three +sat on a cottage veranda in the foothills of Southern California, one +February day. In front of them the landscape ran, laughing, down-hill to +the sea. Spread beneath them like a map were thirty miles of town and +country: orange orchards brave with fruit; eucalyptus groves appealing +to the sky; friendly roofs inclosed in deep-sheltering trees; great open +spaces where the wind moved free; round-topped hills, green near at hand +(for the rains had come and gone thus early), changing to a dusky blue +out yonder where the bright Pacific flashed at the end of the long, +delightful view. For love of this prospect Martha had lately left steep, +sturdy hills, brown brooks, elm-shaded streets and old friends, girding +at herself as she did so. Honoria had lived here many years, while Grace +was but a winter's guest in Honoria's home, whose hospitable brown +gables, low and wide-spreading, were visible beyond the cypress hedge +encircling Martha's cottage. + +'It is a good-looking mansion. She had a capable architect. The building +is Tudor,--consistent, graceful, well proportioned. For two people it is +a very large house indeed, but it is a good house, and I see perfectly +how Adelaide means it to express the idea of dignified, comfortable +living. The decorator was not bad of his kind, either.' + +'All this sounds like praise,' said Grace, 'yet I feel that you are +keeping something back. What is the matter with Adelaide's house?' + +Again Honoria hesitated. + +'It seems ungracious to find fault with such a perfectly worthy +performance, yet I came away chilled and uncomfortable, almost unhappy, +indeed. Thinking about the matter on the way home, it became clear to me +at last that the house is too large for Adelaide's personality. You know +how perfectly she pervaded that old house of hers. Old-fashioned, in +some respects inconvenient, with far less perfect fittings, it still was +thoroughly delightful, for where the rugs failed or the draperies +faltered, Adelaide's personality somehow stepped in and eked out all +insufficiencies, corrected all errors. It was hers entirely. In this +blameless achievement of architect and decorator, there are no +insufficiencies to be eked out, and so Adelaide's personality seems to +slip and slide helplessly upon a kind of glacial surface which it cannot +penetrate and make its own. I may be expressing myself very poorly, but +I know I have hold of something real. Adelaide's new house, good-looking +as it is, is not interesting,--that is what I mean,--and even the dear +woman herself seems less interesting, and less herself now that she is +enfolded in it.' + +'Did you know,' interposed Martha, 'that the first winter in a new house +the heating actually requires more coal than is ever needed again?' + +'No, I didn't know that--but I can well believe it. Why shouldn't it +take more coal to warm it when it evidently takes more vitality to cheer +it? It's a serious business, this breaking in of a large house to one's +self late in life, as so many Americans do. The draughts upon their +vital forces are more taxing than the coal bills.' + +'We all ought to live in inherited homesteads,' suggested Grace,'where +the humanizing of the bricks and mortar has been done for us by our own +people.' + +'Honoria,' Martha demanded, ignoring this unpractical suggestion, 'tell +me the truth! If you were in Adelaide's place and had _carte blanche_ to +incarnate your idea of a house for yourself and your family, wouldn't +you over-build and over-decorate too? I should enjoy doing it! The +furniture in my bungalow is altogether too sketchy at present, and I am +tired of eking it out with personality. You would feel differently if +you hadn't brought your old mahogany when you came West!' + +Honoria set a few stitches, and looked at her friends with eyes in which +conviction flamed. + +'I don't over-dress, and I don't over-eat, though I have abundant +opportunity,' she said, 'but it may be that I would over-build and +over-decorate, or at least that I would have done so until yesterday. I +don't think I would do it to-day--now that I know what ails Adelaide's +house. As for your bungalow, Martha, it is comfortable and it is alive. +There isn't a picture on the wall nor an ornament on the mantel that +hasn't a reason for being exactly where it is. That is triumph, and you +know it. I don't believe you would really exchange your house for +Adelaide's.' + +'Try me and see! I would like just for once to ignore beauty and +suitability, and go in for size and sheer, luxurious comfort.' + +'You would go distracted in two weeks in a place that was "sheer, +luxurious comfort" and nothing else,' returned Honoria decidedly. 'You +would hate it as you hate everything smug and fat and complacent. I have +known you too long, Martha, not to know the ways of you with a house. To +satisfy you, a domicile has to be livable. If you consider all the +houses, little and big, of your friends, you will see that there are +fixed limits to the amount of space in them that is truly and pleasantly +habitable. You can't get the lovable "lived-in look" in rooms where you +do not actually live, and you can't live all over a house that is bigger +than your needs. Why! life isn't long enough, especially if you seldom +stay at home! Think how dreary are most of the great houses we know. +Consider Mrs. King's new marble palace with its commanding site and its +ninety rooms. There isn't a single spot in it except her own bed-room +and sitting-room that wouldn't give your spirit a congestive chill if +you sat there for an hour. I know a woman in Colorado who so loathed her +big new house as it left the hands of a New York decorator, that she +would have moved back into the old one if she hadn't been afraid of her +friends' laughter. And, Grace, even inherited homesteads are sometimes +as difficult as uncongenial kin. Old houses have ways and wills of their +own.' + +'Houses _are_ curious things,' said Grace. 'We take a morsel of +illimitable space and wall it in and roof it over. Suddenly it ceases to +be part of God's out-of-doors and becomes an entity with an atmosphere +of its own. We warm it with our fires, we animate it with our +affections, we furnish it with such things as seem good in our eyes. We +do this to get shelter for our bodies, but we acquire as well an +instrument for our spirits that reacts on us in its turn.' + +'In other words,' returned Honoria, warming to her subject, 'as we live +our way into a house, adapting it to our need, the bricks and mortar, +the paint and plaster, cease to be inert matter and become alive. +Superficial sociologists have taunted woman with being "more anabolic or +plant-like" than man, but I count it her second glory. The plant is an +organism that "slowly turns lifeless into living matter," and this is +the thing that woman has done from the beginning with her shelter! In +our houses we achieve almost an organic extension of our very selves. +That is part of what I was trying to say. But, obviously, there should +exist some reasonable ratio between the self and its extensions. I take +it, the modern multitude of overgrown mansions, like the Kings' or the +Clays' or even Adelaide's smaller dwelling,--all these places whose +owners never find out why they are not at home in them,--are symptoms of +our modern disease of materialism. The essence of that disease is the +desire to grasp more matter than the spirit can fully animate. That the +infection can lay hold on Adelaide shows how all-pervading it is, +gripping the just as well as the unjust. When I saw her tired and +dissatisfied; when I felt the lack of charm and quality in the house, +and remembered how full of both her old house and garden had been, I +tried to think it out. It all works around to just this: you can't have +quality, you can't have charm in your material environment unless you +put them into it yourself. It is a plain question of your ability to +choose, arrange and vitalize things. And the latter requisite is by far +the most important of the three. For I have really seen, with these +eyes, poor, mean rooms where absolutely nothing was beautiful or +noteworthy, so charged with a gracious and comforting personality that +you forgot their shabbiness and said, "What a home-like place!" Please +note that that is the adjective we always use of places that draw us by +their personality--as if personality and nothing else were the essence +of home. + +'Now Adelaide's old house had personality; it was completely vitalized. +It was all under her hand, and as high as her heart. But Adelaide's big +new house is as yet barren and chilly, for it is not vitalized at all. +Of course I know that after she has lived in it longer, it is bound to +improve, because it is her nature to humanize and modify all her +surroundings. But the crucial question is--_how big a house can she +humanize?_ Something bigger than a cottage probably--but certainly +something much smaller than a hotel. The longer I looked at this +question, the more it seemed to me that unconsciously I had put my +finger on the vital query that, in the ideal state, should underlie all +property, all education, all privilege. + +'I have been talking about houses,--they are the most intimate, the +most organic of a woman's possessions,--but the argument applies to all +we own. It is the mark of our era to want more of everything than we can +use, yet when we get the Too-Much we demand, we are crushed by it, as +Tarpeia was crushed by the shields.' + +'I have often thought' said Grace, 'that the sheer, brute mass of +life--of people to know, of books to read, of plays to hear, of pictures +to see, of things to do, buy, learn, enjoy--within reach of the +well-to-do person in the modern world, far outruns the capacity of any +human being to take it in and make of it the sane whole that a life +should be.' + +'Yes--yet we go crazily on, trying to expand to illimitable +possibilities, thinking we shall be happier so soon as we have discarded +all our present belongings and opportunities for bigger, newer, richer +ones. How many people do you know who have not met a substantial +increase of income with a corresponding enlargement of their whole scale +of living, a senseless expansion sometimes out-running their increased +ability to provide for it? There is no future but chaos for a society +with such ambitions. They are centrifugal and can only lead to +disintegration. + +'The truth is, we have no notion of the value and necessity of a +doctrine of limitations. Just as an illustration--not once in all the +mass of matter printed in the last twenty years about the gyro-car, the +aeroplane or other inventions capable of enormous swiftness, have I +seen the faintest intimation that human beings could not intelligently +direct a speed of two hundred miles an hour--yet the railroads are now +tardily discovering that the capacity of engineers is seriously taxed by +sixty miles! + +'Don't mistake my meaning. I am not preaching the moral value of +poverty. I am no convert to asceticism. That method of ridding one's +self of the overweight of the material life is too extreme to the +correct solution. I am simply calling attention with all my might to the +æsthetic and vital value of Not-Too-Much. I am not afraid of Enough. I +am greatly afraid of Too-Much. And the reason I am afraid is this:-- + +'Just as the capacity of the human stomach is limited to a certain +quantity of food, so also is limited the capacity of the human spirit +for appropriating and assimilating property in its different forms. +Beyond a certain somewhat variable point, material possessions _do the +holder no more good_. The common saying, "All you get in this world is +your board and clothes," is the popular acknowledgment of this +restricted capacity. The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds +good as regards the property of the mind--education, cultivation, +æsthetic satisfactions--just as it does of material goods. There is a +definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. Beyond that +limit, possession is a detriment.' + +'The direct result of helping ourselves to too much of anything is to +coarsen and degrade. We can see this clearly as regards the primal +necessity of food. Nature promptly writes it, in large letters, all over +the man or woman of gross appetites.' + +'It is as plainly printed, if in smaller type, on the faces of those who +want too much of other things,--houses, notoriety, money, power,--what +you will. The porcine brand is there, however disguised. Personally, I +fear the Mark of the Pig as I fear nothing else on earth. Shaler says +that certain lines of evolution terminate in such grotesque effects that +one almost believes the guiding thought behind the process was humorous. +I never see a stye with its squealing, shouldering inhabitants, without +thinking how tremendously satiric it is--a master-caricature of human +greed, not over-drawn! And I say, "Brother Pig, Heaven grant that I keep +my voracities better concealed than thou."' + +Her companions regarded Honoria, in type thin, nervous, ardent, with a +keen and vivid face. The comparison was certainly not apparent--but the +heart knoweth its own gluttonies. + +'You are doing fairly well at it thus far,' said Martha dryly. 'What's +the next step in your argument, Honoria?' + +'Since our capacity is limited, and since to glut ourselves beyond it +burdens and degrades, clearly the thing for each individual with +intelligence to do is to find out where, for him, lies the golden point +beyond which riches turns to the poverty of burden. When even the wise +and earnest Adelaides get their houses too big and don't know what is +the matter, it is time to formulate the principles of First Aid to the +Prosperous. I believe the point from which the women of the comfortable +classes should attack the problem of a saner living is this doctrine of +limitation and selection, and that we should attack it first of all in +our homes. + +'Now, we human beings really do something to our immediate material +surroundings which I can best describe as charging them with our +personality. With the revolution of the days, personality accumulates in +the things we handle and love and live with, much as electricity gathers +upon the accumulator of a static machine with the revolution of the +plates. This idea has always been popular with the poets and artists, +but people who advance it in everyday life always do so apologetically, +with the air of saying, "I know this is slightly fantastic, but doesn't +it seem true?" Yet most housekeepers know its utter truth. I never +doubted from the time I consciously began to care for old furniture, old +rugs, old china--all the beautiful cast-offs of vanished lives--that a +vast part of their charm was atmosphere, something imparted to them by +the affection of those forgotten ones and now inhering, for the +perceptive vision, in their very substance. The craftsman of those elder +days is not the only creator of the beauty that has come down to us. +Whoever has loved another's work has thereby added something to it. Is +it not so? And I, in my turn, ought to be beautifying my belongings for +those who come after me.' + +Grace and Martha nodded readily enough, for this doctrine needs no long +expounding to any woman who has lived her way into her material +possessions, and distilled atmosphere from them for the comfort of her +household. She knows what she has done, and knows, though she says +little about it, that this business of turning lifeless into living +things is one of her important natural functions. + +'When I studied physics,' Honoria went on, 'I learned that science had +been compelled to posit ether, an all-pervading, absolutely elastic, +wave-bearing substance, to explain the commonest facts of our physical +experience. Later yet, I learned that the passage of thought-waves +through ether had found defenders among men of the exact sciences. +Naturally I said to myself, "Ah, the scientists are growing 'warm.' +Next, they will be demonstrating some of the things women have always +known. They will show how we send out vibrations that get caught and +entangled in our intimate belongings, never to be wholly freed again. +The thing will be worked out and demonstrated like a problem in +geometry. Doubtless they will be measuring everybody's wave-lengths and +teaching children in the Eighth Grade easy ways of charging their +belongings with their personality so unmistakably that stealing will +have to become a lost art." Well! They haven't done it yet. In fact, +they don't seem so near doing it as they once did. The mechanism of the +process by which I take a chair fresh from Grand Rapids and in the +course of years make it _my_ chair and no other woman's, is a secret +still, but I don't have to argue with anybody who ever had a favorite +chair that the thing is as I have stated it. Neither do I have to argue +that I could not so appropriate and make my own the output of an entire +factory. It must be equally obvious that the dignified, proper +environment for me and my family contains what we can thus make our own, +and not much more.' + +'Of course there are people,' said Martha reflectively, 'the routine of +whose living demands large and formal apartments, impossible to do +anything with from your point of view.' + +'Assuredly there are such people,' Honoria admitted, 'just as there are +people whose entertaining must be in the line of banquets rather than +little dinners. I am not predicating a world full of model cottages, +even though I think it might prove the happiest world. Still, outside of +official circles, the need of state drawing-rooms is certainly not +general, and it is of the very gist of my argument--my argument isn't +all developed yet, Martha, don't think it!--that for the sake of +developing a finer and more individual quality in our possessions, we +should cut off some superfluous ones. Please listen patiently while I +carry the idea to its logical limit, even though that limit lies beyond +the bounds of practicability. + +'Economists profess that, in an ideal distribution of goods, each man +would have as much as he could consume without waste. But this takes no +account of the differing needs of men, developed through ages of the +upward struggle, nor of their different capabilities of turning goods to +account. If you are going to dabble at all in theories of ideal +distribution, why not have one that is genuinely ideal--that is, +non-material? _The true distribution would require that each man should +possess what goods he could animate and vitalize._ Even so, how vastly +would possessions differ in amount and quality! + +'If life could be adjusted on this basis, it would automatically become +simplified, charged with beauty and with character. We should slough off +ugly and useless possessions, or, if we retained through affection +things ugly in themselves, that very affection would impart to them a +certain importance and distinction. We should then, at least, live in a +world in which everything had significance. Think of the infinite +satisfaction of that!' + +'What do you mean when you say, "if life could be adjusted on this +basis," Honoria?' Grace inquired. 'Are you implying some kind of a final +socialistic state which calls for an omniscient Distributor of Goods who +shall know how much each man can vitalize?' + +'Really, Grace, I am not a fool, even when I am evolving a reformed +society!' returned Honoria promptly. 'Most conceptions of an improved +state demand God for their Chief Executive and an enormous force of +government officials with the fine honor which, thus far, has only been +developed in human nature by conditions entirely different from those +the visionaries are forecasting. Unquestionably we have fallen into the +habit of thinking that if we only pass a law, any wrong at which we aim +is regulated. In fact, however, so long as that law only expresses the +practice of a minority, its enforcement will be evaded. Legislation +without character is as helpless as a motor without fuel,--and my little +reform, like every other effective change, must proceed from within +outward. + +'So I believe that if I wish to live in a world where nobody has more +food, clothes, houses, wealth, power, than he can make significant and +vital use of, it is up to me to remake my own life on that basis first. +I am, if not the only woman whom I can reform, at least the most +suitable subject for my experimentation. And I admit that I have too +many possessions. Sometimes I am ridden to exhaustion by the care of my +"things," modest as they are when compared to the goods of my +neighbors. I know that if thousands of people did not feel as I do, the +"simple life" slogan would never have acquired the popularity it had +some years ago. We no longer hear much of the simple life, but we need +it increasingly. Personally, I am persuaded that the method I am trying +to set forth is workable. + +'Why shouldn't a human being, seeking to get the most out of life, take +lessons from the husbandman seeking to get the richest returns from the +soil? It used to be thought that to cultivate many acres superficially +was the way to feed the world and enrich the farmer. But the study of +the soil as a science has taught us that we must resort, instead, to the +intensive farming which gives greater returns from reduced acreage. What +is true of the returns earth makes to our granaries, is true of the +returns life makes to our spirits. We need a science of intensive living +that we may get the larger crop from the smaller field. It will be +worked out by women, and it must begin in their domain, which still is, +in spite of the sociologists, the home.' + +'The Norwegian maid who cared for my rooms at the hotel last winter had +figured out something of the sort for herself,' said Grace. 'After I had +put a few bits of things about, she said to me, "I like dis room. It +looks like Norway. Dere iss more moneys in America, but in Norway t'ings +iss more pretty. Even de kitchen iss good to see. Dere iss shelves an' +copper cooking-dishes all shiny, all so happy-looking. I like dem way +best. It iss better not so much moneys to haf, but to be more happy wit' +one's t'ings!"' + +'That is the doctrine in a nutshell! In its poorer, more restricted +days, the world learned that secret of the art of living, and it still +lingers in corners that our blatant, crashing "civilization" passes +by--so that a Norwegian peasant's daughter may know far more than an +American girl "who has always had everything" about the priceless secret +of being "happy wit' one's t'ings." It is the richest knowledge a woman +can possess.' + +'What is the real rock-bottom reason why people go on piling up money +after they have enough?' Martha demanded. + +'I imagine,' said Honoria, 'that excessive accumulation is a form of +egotism. Now, if public opinion, the race-ideal, or what you please, +once demanded that we vitalize all our possessions; if it were once +admitted to be unspeakably gross to demand more property than we can +animate, as gross as it now is to over-eat, then the stress upon +possession would be transferred at once from "How much" to "How," and +large possessions would really become what some of the undistinguished +rich now fondly imagine them to be--a direct and sensitive register of +the finer qualities.' + +Martha suddenly and irresistibly chuckled. + +'I have a story for you, Honoria,' she said. 'A lot of ranchers over +there,' she vaguely gestured toward the southwest across the hills, +'have grown suddenly rich, raising sugar beets, and have bought +motor-cars and other paraphernalia proper to their improved condition. +One of them was heard to say, "I b'lieve these college graduates that +teach school 'round here really think they're as good as us rich folks." +That is the real attitude of your "undistinguished rich" toward the +gifts of culture and the finer qualities!' + +'Honoria,' said Grace, 'haven't the sages always said, "Give me neither +poverty nor riches"? Why should your propaganda succeed where Job and +Socrates have failed? Job lived a long while ago! If the race were going +to be converted to his view, the process ought to be more advanced. You +will need very strong arguments for your doctrine of limitations.' + +'Arguments are to be had for the picking up,' returned Honoria. 'What +kind will you have? Reasonable limitation on the material side always +brings some amazing flowering of mind or spirit like the blossoming of a +root-bound plant. If you want a racial argument, consider the Irish--the +poorest people in Europe and _therefore_ the richest in spirit. Poverty +forced them to concentrate their attention upon their neighbors; there +resulted an astonishing increase in sympathy, wit, and general +humanness.--If you want an argument from Art, consider the Middle Ages. +Peering out of a narrow world, hemmed in by ignorance and squalor, the +mediæval artist caught sight of beauty and immediately loved it with +such fervent, personal passion that everything he made in its image was +vital and wonderful. As his world broadened in the Renaissance, much of +his art grew florid and meaningless, lacking that marvelous, intimate +quality of the earlier, restricted day.--If you want an argument from +literary material, there's the _Picciola_ of Saintine. You can make an +imperishable literary masterpiece out of a convict's love for a tiny +plant struggling up between two stones in a prison-yard, but you cannot +make men listen to tales of great possessions. The interest in Monte +Cristo centres upon the process of _acquirement_, and it is the same in +any successful money-romance. Midas is only fit to point a moral, never +to adorn a tale.--If you want an argument from philology, consider that +the diminutives in every language show the lesser thing to be the dearer +thing, always. Remember Marie Antoinette and the Little Trianon! +Consider the increasing specialization in science--science which always +falls on its feet! I know a thousand arguments! The thing I am in need +of is converts!' + +'If you could get them,' said Martha, 'there might really be a Woman's +Reformation, only it would begin at home instead of at the polls.' + +'What other permanent thing is there in life but the hearthstone? +Nations rise and fall, laws and institutions come and go--but that +remains, the one fixed point in human society. I take it, therefore, it +is the one point from which the lever can successfully be brought to +bear on human society. If anything is to be moved or altered, the force +must be applied there.' + +'But human society _has_ changed, Honoria,' urged Grace. 'Look at all +our new powers and possessions! Steam and electricity have remade the +world, and we are not yet adjusted to the alteration. No generation ever +lived under our conditions; thus we have no traditions for handling our +new environment. No heritage of ancestral wisdom tells us what of the +hundreds of new opportunities to accept, what to reject. Save in so far +as we are thinking beings--and that is not very far--we are as much at +the mercy of our desires as babies in a toy-shop, grabbing now this and +now that, heaping up a lapful of futilities and calling it a life.' + +'Yes. But why should we make steam and electricity serve our greed only? +Why use them chiefly to darken the world and make life a horror? Dare +you affirm that we women and our demands are not at the very centre of +the tragic tangle of modern living? Isn't all this horrible speeding-up +of business largely an outgrowth of our exactions? What do men do +business for, anyhow, except to get us what we want! Homes are to other +material possessions what souls are to the bodies--the centre from which +the life moves outward. If there is no greed in the home, is there not +bound to be less greed in the offices?' + +'I'm not so sure, Honoria,' Grace returned. 'No amount of intensiveness +in the home would eliminate man's love of power for its own sake.' + +'Perhaps. Yet isn't the lust for power a secondary development? We begin +by being greedy because we want things; we keep on after we have more +things than we know what to do with, because greed has created the +power-lust. It is the aftermath from that ugly root. If the pressure the +home puts on the man for money were suddenly slackened all along the +line, above the point of poverty, might not the matter of unseemly +accumulations correct itself? If we women of the more favored classes +avowedly undertook to give quality to our belongings, instead of +demanding belongings which we hope will confer quality upon us, there +would surely be both a lessening in the stress of life and an +improvement in its texture. I can think of nothing else but the Golden +Rule that would help to solve so many menacing problems, such as the +high cost of living, the commercialization of life, and the divorce +problem. Oh, it would be very far-reaching, that attitude, if we could +only achieve it!' + +'Why wouldn't plain Christianity do all your reforming, and do it +better?' demanded Martha abruptly. + +'Assuredly it would--if Christianity were more generally a condition +instead of a theory among us. I wouldn't undertake to say off-hand why +the sanctions of common sense seem more precious to the present +generation than the sanctions of religion, when in so many points they +are identical, but I must conform my theorizings to the fact. Yet with +all our neglect of religion the traditions of the spirit have not +changed! They are the same from everlasting to everlasting. And one of +the things the nineteenth century most wonderfully made clear was that +the evolution of the spirit is the thing Nature has been seeking for +hundreds of millions of years. I don't suppose that age-long process +with the tremendous impetus of all creation behind it is really going to +be upset by the turmoil of one materialistic generation. But I do +believe that if we go with the current of materialism, we and all our +works shall be tossed aside as refuse, thrown into Nature's garbage-can. +I tell you, I can't bear the disgrace of it.' + +'Honoria, you almost persuade me to be intensive,' said Grace, 'but I am +not reconciled to the doctrine at one point--the question of beauty. I +admit that one cannot vitalize a lot of senseless luxury. I admit, too, +that comfort and a certain amount of beauty can always be successfully +domesticated and charged with personality, as you phrase it, and that +the result is completely satisfying. But is one never to indulge one's +self in _all the beauty money will buy_, never to have everything of an +absolute perfection? You are against great houses, but there is Mountly +House, at home. It is big, but so beautiful that you are at home in it +all over. What of it, and others like it?' + +'Big and beautiful it is, but it is on my side of the argument, none the +less. If you remember, the architect was also the decorator. It is the +triumph of his imagination. He designed it as a background for a woman +of opulent beauty and domestic tastes. He ransacked Europe for the +furnishings, tapestries, all sorts of exquisite, ancient things. He was +a great artist and he created a work of art. The family fit into the +picture more or less awkwardly. It is his house, not theirs at all. And +I truly believe that the ultimate purpose of our houses excludes our +going up and down another's stairs. + +'Yet I believe in all the beauty one can vitalize. It is essentially +wholesome. It does not lend itself to morbid demands. The collector's +passion looks like greed, and doubtless for a time it is greed. But, +sooner or later, Too-Much sickens them. Their adorable possessions teach +them there is profanation in having more wonderful things than they can +enter into personal relation with. Therefore the inevitable end of all +overgrown collections is the museum or the auction-room. I have seen it +too often not to know it is true!--If you want a perfect illustration of +this in literature read Mrs. Wharton's _The Daunt Diana_. It cuts down +like a knife to the essential fact that our relations with beauty must +be limited enough to have the personal quality. And--don't you +see?--this automatic destruction of greed that beauty finally teaches to +the collector, is the same automatic destruction of it that I dare think +intensive living in our homes might bring to all greed. It is a proof of +the theory on another plane.' + +'I think one might own a Mountly House without greed,' persisted Grace +wistfully. 'Having no house at all, I naturally refuse to think of +myself as ending my days in any less perfect domicile. What do you mean +by the "ultimate purpose" of our houses?' + +'Ah! that,' said Honoria, with a quick indrawing of her breath, 'is the +very core of all my thought, and I don't know how to make you see it!' + +She rose abruptly and walked to the end of the veranda. She stood there +a while, looking across at the spreading gables of her own brown +bungalow, with the yearning on her face that only house-mothers know. +Yonder was her home. Set on a mighty shoulder of the earth, facing the +sunset and the sea, it clung to the soil as the brown rocks cling. +Behind it were the mighty Sierras with their crests of snow; before it, +the sweetest land God ever smiled upon; within it, all the treasures of +her eyes, her mind, her heart. Just as it stood there in the February +sun, it was an abode compact of love, of aspiration, of desire. The +ancient love of man for his shelter had gone into it, and the love of +woman for the place of her appointed suffering. Desire for beauty and +hope of peace were in its making. Its walls had heard the birth-cries; +her children had played about its doors; out from it had been borne her +dead. Inconsiderable speck on the vast hill-shoulder that it was, it +could defy time and the elements, even as she defied them, for she had +given it of her own immortality. + +'I have not yet said it all,' she said a little thickly. 'It is hard to +say, even to you. I have found an attitude of mind, a path, a way of +life I call intensive, for lack of a better name, and I believe in it, +not only because it increases my sane satisfaction in living, but also +because it finally leads _out_--out of all this tangle of our material +lives, into the eternal spaces. + +'I see the world of men's business activities chiefly as a place of +wrath and greed, and yet even the most grasping must be blindly seeking +through their greed an ultimate satisfaction--not more houses or more +automobiles, or railroads, or mines, or even power, but something dimly +apprehended as beyond all these and more than they--something that is +good and that _endures_. For we all want the Enduring Thing. One man +sees it here, another there. As for me, I see it in my house. I tell +you, the Greeks and Romans did not make a religion of the hearthstone; +they merely recognized the religion that the hearthstone _is_. Under +that quiet roof I have learned that it is a woman's business to take +stones and make them bread. Only she can make our surroundings live and +nourish us. + +'Beyond the need for bread, a woman's needs are two; deeper than all +cravings save the mother's passion, firm-rooted in our endless past, is +the heart-hunger. The trees that sweep my chimney have their roots at +the world's core! The flowers in my dooryard have grown there for a +thousand years! What millenniums have done, shall decades undo? We are +not so shallow, so plastic as that! We will go into the mills, the +shops, the offices, if we must, but we know we are off the track of +life. Neither our desire nor our power is there. + +'I have talked glibly enough about restricting superfluous possessions +for the sake of developing a finer quality in those we have; I have said +only personality gives that quality to our surroundings--but I have not +said the final thing. It is this: I believe that in the humble business +of loving the material things that are given to us to own and love, in +shaping our homes around them, in making them vital and therefore +beautiful, so that they serve our spirits in their turn, we are not only +making the most of our resources in this life, but are doing more than +that. Somehow, I cannot tell you how, I know that we are _getting them +across_--into the timeless places! In making them vital we are making +them enduring. + +'Christ tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What did +that mean to you when you were young? I thought it meant a procession of +self-denials and charities, more or less lifeless because the offering +was made slightly against the grain! I had no idea that when I loved +somebody very much or pitied somebody very much, when I shared my heart +or shared my roof eagerly, that I was doing the commanded thing. Still +less did I realize, when I worked hard to make my home more comfortable +or more beautiful, that I was sending vibrations from my everyday world +right into the eternal one--every deed an actual hammer stroke on my +house not made with hands. But so sure as that our mortal shall put on +immortality, I now hold it that what we first find in the eternal world +will be the things into which we have unstintingly flung our vitality, +our _feeling_, while we are briefly here. + +'_Here we have no continuing city_. But when I am making my house live, +I and no other, putting into it as I best may something of the serenity +of Athens and the sacredness of Jerusalem and the beauty of Siena, then +it is taking its place beside my greater loves. Then I am creating a +home, not only in this world, but in the next. I have put something over +into the eternal world that fire cannot burn, nor floods destroy, nor +moth and rust corrupt. It is safe, even from myself, forever! No Heaven +can be holy to me if I have not made this spot holy. I shall not ask, +even from the mercy of the Merciful, a heavenly mansion if I have failed +to make this earthly dwelling live. Eternity begins beside my hearth, +shaped by my will. A woman knows!' + + + + +Reminiscence with Postscript + +By Owen Wister + + +I + +Not alone because of their good meat and drink are three meals shrined +at the heart of these following impressions. Singly, each one did +delightfully engage the palate, but the three together speak appealingly +to sentiment. It is of a great house, a little inn, and of the fair +region round about them that I shall mainly discourse--and whether I do +or don't give a final _x_ to the name of the house, there are people and +documents to say I have spelt it wrong: which comes very near to saying +that both ways are right. The _x_ shall remain, the majority seems to +favor it, and I at once beg that you share my relish of these posturing +Renaissance lines, written by royal command in honor of Chenonceaux:-- + + Au saint bal des dryades, + A PhÅ“bus, ce grand dieu, + Aux humides nayades + J'ai consacré ce lieu. + +This highly plaster-cast lyric was recited during the 'triomphe' held at +Chenonceaux to celebrate the arrival there of François II and Mary +Stuart. The hostess was as distinguished as her visitors; and never, +before I went to Chenonceaux, did I associate naiads and dryads and +poems of welcome with Catherine de'Medici. But we must allow this +monstrous personage an eye for good houses. She preferred Chenonceaux to +all her dwellings--she preferred it so much, indeed, that she made +another lady get out of it, exchanging for it the decidedly inferior +residence of Chaumont. And we have Catherine to thank (I fear) for the +strangely felicitous fancy that placed upon the arches built from the +rear of the house to the farther side of the river by her rejected +predecessor, Diane de Poitiers, that enchanting hall or gallery, which +rises three stories high, if you count the nine windows in the steeply +and gracefully pitched slate roof. + + Basti si magnifiquement + Il est debout, comme un géant, + Dedans le lit de la rivière, + C'est-a-dire dessus un pont + Qui porte cent toises de long. + +These verses bump down heavily upon the bridge, and, despite their +scrupulous statistics as to its length, they scarcely measure the +excellence of Chenonceaux, but rather the gap between French verse and +French architecture in the sixteenth century. Villon could have come +nearer the mark; but Villon was long gone before the ancient mill on the +river Cher was transfigured by its purchaser into the château he did not +live to complete. 'S'il vient à point' said Thomas Bohier, and he graved +it in many ornamental places of his edifice, 'me souviendra.' + +And here am I writing his name and thinking about him, three hundred and +ninety-two years after his death. What a pleasant reason for being +remembered! What a quietly illustrious introduction to posterity: the +originator of the mansion whose sheer beauty brought a succession of +kings and queens and other great people to sojourn in it, whose walls +have listened to the blandishments of François I, the sallies of +Fontenelle and Voltaire, the sentimentalities of Rousseau. Do their +ghosts walk here upon these terraces? Do they meet in the long gallery +over the Cher? If they don't, they are less wise in the next world than +they were in this. Almost might one envy some figure in a well-preserved +piece of tapestry, hanging in any hall or chamber here and commanding a +view out of any window that looked up or down the placid river. +Embroidered thus for ever, amid high company, ladies and gentlemen of +importance with hawks and feathers and armor and steeds richly +caparisoned, ministered to by esquires and serfs, one would exist +admired, valued, and carefully dusted. Daily sight-seers from all lands +would be conducted into one's presence (Sundays included, 10-11 A.M., +2-6 P.M.), thus animating one's feudal leisure with sufficient variety. +There one would be, an acknowledged masterpiece, for ever aloof from the +unstable present, nevermore driven to enlist against the restless evils +of the world. The trouble is, somebody from Pittsburg might buy one. Now +I could no more brook living as tapestry in America than I could live as +an American in Europe, expatriated and trivially evaporating amid +beauties and comforts that were none of my native heritage. + +Do you know the country where Chenonceaux stands? Do you know the river? +Have you ever gone there from Tours, or come there the opposite way, +from Bourges through Vierzon and Montrichard? + +The region shares a secret with certain rare people, whom all of us are +glad to count among our acquaintance. Certain men and women, immediately +on our first meeting them, make us desire to meet them again; not +because they have uttered remarkable thoughts or reminded us of Venus or +Apollo: perhaps they have said nothing that you and I couldn't say, and +we may know people much better looking. But they radiate--what is it +that they radiate? We feel it, we bask in it, it flows over us. It isn't +sunlight or moonlight, but a fairy-light of their own. When these +shining creatures come into the room, happiness enters with them. How do +they do it? It gets us nowhere to say that there is 'something' in the +tone of their voice, or 'something' in the look of their eyes: what is +the something? I'm glad I don't know; mystery is growing so scarce, that +I am thankful for anything which cannot be explained. + +Now this rare quality (and don't flatter yourself that you understand it +because you happen to know its name) is possessed not only by men and +women, but also by places; and, no more than with people, has it +anything to do with their being remarkable or beautiful. The White +Mountains in New Hampshire haven't a trace of it; it fills the mountains +of North Carolina; there is almost none along our Atlantic seaboard, but +it hangs over and haunts nearly every foot of our Pacific Coast. + +Whenever one of these happy spots has been long known to man, man has +invariably cherished it in word and deed. His chronicles celebrate it; +he sets it lovingly like a jewel in his romances, dramas, verse, prose, +song; he graces it with his best in architecture; his roads and gardens +bring it alike into his hours of work and of ease; in fine, he garlands +it with his imagination, weaves it into his life century after century, +until it comes to smile upon him from the heart of his History and +Literature, as well as upon his daily present. That is what mankind has +done beneath the spell of a place which has charm. + +Thus Touraine to the Frenchman,--_beau pays de Touraine_, as the page in +Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_ sings of it in that opera's second act, which +takes place at Chenonceaux. I suppose--indeed I remember--that rain +falls in that country; yet, when I think about it, sunshine invariably +sparkles through the picture--not the kind that glares and burns, but +the kind that plays gently among leaves and shores and shadows; sunshine +upon the twinkling, feathered silver of the poplars, the grapes in +sloping vineyards, the green islands and tawny bluffs of the Loire, the +quiet waters of the Indre and the Cher; a jocund harmony seems to play +about the very names,--Beaulieu, Montrésor, Saint-Symphorien,--but were +I to begin upon the music in the names of France, I should run far +beyond the limits of Touraine and of your patience. Say to yourself +aloud, properly, Amboise, Châteaurenault, La Chapelle-Blanche, +Saint-Martin-le-Beau, and then say Naugatuck, Saugatuck, Pawtucket, +Woonsocket, Manayunk, Manunkachunk, and you will catch my drift. +Stevenson's joy in our names was at bottom purely that of the collector. + +But have you ever seen the Loire and its tributary realm? I have already +owned myself (together with all other men) as unable to explain the +mystery of charm. No Niagara is hereabouts, nor Matterhorn, nor anything +you could call sublime; nothing so lustrously beautiful as Bar Harbor, +or the Berkshire Hills. Wildness is wholly absent, but so is tameness +too. It is somehow through its very moderation that the glamour of this +land is wrought. But we must nicely distinguish between the poetry and +the prose of moderation: Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is perfectly +moderate, and is also the type and pattern of hundreds of thousands of +square, comfortable, unoffending miles in the United States which you +would never wish to see again--indeed which you would never wish to see +once; whereas, even as I write, I am homesick for Touraine, though it +isn't my home. + +Once again I must draw the parallel between human qualities and the ways +of our mother earth. We place at the top of our esteem those people who +take chivalrously the heavy blows of life, who are not brave merely, but +gallant. We draw scant inspiration from the sight of somebody who is all +too obviously and dutifully bearing something; who goes, day after day, +with a set and sombre expression that says as plainly as words: 'Just +watch me carrying my Cross. Just wait till you have one.' We prefer +those whose gayety so conceals the fact that they're behaving well, that +we should never suspect it, did we not know what they have passed, and +are passing, through. Thus also does Touraine conceal the tears and the +blood she has known. Louis the Eleventh, Catherine de' Medici, the +gibbet balcony of the Salle des Armes at Amboise, the iron cage and the +black dungeons of Loches,--Touraine, with her smiling, high-bred +elegance, keeps all this to herself, and gives you a bright welcome. +Often as she has been the scene of Tragedy, often as the glaive and not +the lute has been the instrument of her drama, she might well look in +her glass and exclaim with Richard the Second,-- + + Hath sorrow struck + So many blows upon this face of mine, + And made no deeper wounds? + +Wearing no crape, betraying no scars, hinting naught of its dark +experience of life, this realm, this _beau pays_, more than any in +Europe, to my thinking, lies in the true key of high comedy, of masque +and pastoral. If, here and there above its trees or upon its hills, the +brooding frown of some tower, the gaunt stare of some donjon in ruins, +fierce with memories, brings one up short, so that in joy's mid-current +some smack of the bitter wells up--this is not Nature's doing. Look away +from these works of man to the feathered poplars, the vineyards, the +gentle waters, and see the earth's countenance, smiling and serene. +Decorous it is always; only the irregularities of the Loire and its +channel seem to bear any reference to the conduct of those beautiful +historic ladies who dispersed their reputations in the vicinity. Even +man did not always build a Langeais or a Loches. Urbane and gracious +amid their parks or on their bluffs rise those dwellings planned when +France's architectural genius was in its happiest mood--though not its +loftiest. They look like the good society which once assembled in them; +their mere aspect suggests the wits, the brilliant talkers and listeners +of a day when conversation was a living art still, the day which +furnishes us even now with those letters and memoirs which are the +dainty wainscotting and mantelpieces, the interior decorations of +Literature. You may wander almost anywhere among the poplars and the +chestnuts in the valleys of the Loire's quiet tributaries; you can +hardly go wrong; if the turrets of Ussé against their rising woodland do +not regale your eye, it will be Azay-le-Rideau, or something less +famous, or, best of all, Chenonceaux, to which I now return. + + +II + +I saw it first upon an afternoon when no air was stirring, even in the +poplars, when the green of Touraine was changing to gold: golden fruit, +pears, and apples, where summer's fruit had been; golden leaves +flickering down from high branches, or raked into golden heaps; while +the faint, sweet smoke of burning twigs hovered in the autumn day. It +was the moment and scene of the year when, just because other things +have ceased to grow, memories blossom in the mind; and on every golden +heap of leaves retrospect seemed to be sitting. We visitors were three. +I can recall the first sight of the château's yellow façade, framed by +the distant end of the high, formal avenue into which we turned to +approach it. All sorts of feet had stepped where we were walking: +almost four centuries of distinguished feet had gone in and out of that +beautiful front door; but over its appealing associations the still more +appealing aspect of the wonderful house triumphed. If I knew about _Le +Devin du Village_ then, the scene of its first performance interested me +much more because that long and many-windowed gallery was built right +over the water, right across the Cher, upon arches that the glassy +surface of the stream reflected symmetrically. I was captured then and +for ever by the beauty and the originality of this residence. Our best +country houses take earth and air into partnership, but this abode of +grace possessed, embraced, a little river. To go in at your front door +on one green margin and come out of your back door on the other; to +dwell in a masterpiece that was house and bridge in one--I can still +recover my first sensations of delight at this triumph of French art. +Only--the concierge didn't let us go out of the back door; and my +disappointment was cherished through long years, until its sequel, which +I shall presently reach. This first afternoon became a chapter in the +most delightful of guide-books, from which I quote the following:-- + +'We took our way back to the Grand Monarque, and waited in the little +inn parlor for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had +an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were +still content to sit a while and exchange remarks upon the superior +civilization of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have +fared so well?... At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_ was not +only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by +mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the +elder lady, as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.' + +On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hôtel +de l'Univers in Tours, the château of Amboise was described to us by an +English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere +then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned +spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments. +She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't +respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be +with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about +Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious +she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it +invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.' + +In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and +graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and +whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door +on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had +so dropped out of my thoughts that it fairly burst upon my sight. +Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained +edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our +party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came +into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of +the château, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration, +that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!' + +Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular +and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors +have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though +never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January, +1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses. +But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the +other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its +secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress, +Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's +success with François Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the +Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on +the day Diane was married.--But I resist the temptation to dwell upon +Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all +accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of +four made, this spring day. + +Touraine was now all delicate in green; as lovely, as gracious, as +discreet in its budding leaves as when the leaves had flickered down, +spangling the air and grass and garden-walks with their gold. We had met +at the little inn the same welcome, the same excellent _cuisine_, the +same agreeable Vouvray mousseux. Mademoiselle was not there, but mamma +was. Her premises and herself showed no ill effect from the prosperity +brought to her through the guide-book I have already quoted. No +guide-book in its author's plan, it was now become established as one, +and he, petitioned in a letter from mamma, had corrected a certain +error. In the first edition, page 60, you may read that we took our way +back to the Grand Monarque; in later editions it is the Hôtel du +Bon-Laboureur. The confusion to travelers, the injury to her custom, +ensuing from the wrong name, madame had represented to the author; and +now all was well. The inn wasn't any larger, but more and more each +season were pilgrims with expectant appetites led to her door. + +'Tenez, monsieur,' she said to me eagerly, when I narrated to her how I +had been present at the germination of her renown, 'tenez. Voilà !' She +showed me the precious guide-book. She treasured it, though she couldn't +read it, because it was in English. And I came in for her smiles and +cordiality, which really belonged to the author. + +You will have perceived, our party this time took their _déjeuner_, not +their dinner, at the Bon-Laboureur. The good omelette and cheese and +fruit and wine, mamma's prosperity and her well-preserved state,--for +now she was really an elderly woman,--all this had brought us in +peaceful and pleased spirits to the château. When we had seen the rooms +downstairs and the concierge was conducting the other sightseers--some +ten or twelve--to the second story, our party under my guidance stole +away to the back door. + +'Back door' implies no dishonorable passage through pantry and kitchen; +we simply didn't go up the staircase in the wake of the concierge, but +independently along the hall instead, and thus across the Cher through +Catherine's celebrated gallery. _Le Devin du Village_ came into my mind, +and I wondered which figure was the more diverting, Jean-Jacques +Rousseau composing opera, or Richard Wagner dabbling in philosophy. + +The door was open. I emerged, the happy leader of my party, upon stone +steps, crossed a little draw-bridge, and our triumphant feet trod the +grass beneath the trees which shaded the river's bank. I had my wish; +and as my obedient band followed me, I fear my complacent back and +Anabasis manner expressed some sentiment like this: 'Only observe how it +pays to see France with a person who knows the ropes!' We sauntered, we +expatiated, we paused before what I'll call by metonymy the tocsin--a +great bell and chain suspended from strong framework; from this point +the château, with its fine, detached, cylindrical donjon tower of the +fifteenth century, looked, in the afternoon light, particularly well: +those poor sheep with the concierge weren't getting this view. We must +have lingered by the tocsin a quarter of an hour, enjoying ourselves, +before returning to the back door. + +It was shut. It was locked. Rattling made no impression upon it, nor +shaking, nor kicking. We knocked then, fancying this to be an accident. +Next we called, or rather, I, the party's personal conductor and +competent guide, began to call. Nothing happened. I augmented my +efforts. Catherine's gallery, famous scene of the first performance of +Rousseau's _Devin du Village_, responded with cavernous echoes. Between +these reigned silence, and a gentle breeze rustled the young leaves of +the chestnuts. We abandoned the door and went a few steps down the river +to where our gesticulations could be seen from the windows of +Chenonceaux. We made these gesticulations with our four umbrellas, +whilst I shouted continually. Not a window blinked. It might have been a +sorcerer's palace, and we his four new victims, presently to be roasted, +boiled, or changed into cats. We looked down the river--no escape; up +the river half-a-mile was a bridge; but what impediment mightn't lie +between? And even if the way were clear, to go round by the bridge would +lose us our train to Tours. One of us, in her deep voice, said that she +hoped the robin-red-breasts would find her body and cover it with +leaves. Again we flourished our four umbrellas, during vociferations +from me, at the imperturbable château. Then, quite suddenly, something +did happen. Out of a window in the donjon tower of the fifteenth century +was thrust a head, and from across the river it wagged at us +malevolently. + +It was the concierge. The shock of discovering he had locked us out +purposely in punishment of our independent excursion, threw me into +extreme rage. My Anabasis manner had already dropped from me; but +Xenophon got his party successfully back, and this same task was now +searchingly, compellingly, 'up to me.' More malevolent wagging from the +tower was all that resulted from my next demonstrations. In these I was +now alone; my party, at the apparition of the concierge, had become +abruptly quiet, thinking doubtless that loud calls and wavings would +diminish my dignity less than theirs, whose years and discretion were +more than mine. Therefore my companions brandished their umbrellas no +more, but stood upon the banks of the Cher decorously, in a reserved +attitude, patient yet stately, as if awaiting the tumbril; I, meanwhile, +hurled international threats across the river. These wrought no change. +In repose my French halts, but when roused it acquires both speed and +point; yet none of my idioms disturbed the concierge at his window. And +now I was visited by inspiration. I seized the chain and rang the +tocsin. It sounded as if Attila were coming at once. Somebody would have +come, undoubtedly,--the whole _arrondissement_ I should think,--but +after a few moments of that din, the head disappeared; in a few more the +door was unlocked, and my companions preceded me with restraint yet with +celerity across Catherine's gallery and out of Chenonceaux's front door +and away, down the avenue to the railway, whilst I delivered some final +idioms to the concierge. I am happy to record that these made him livid, +and in the presence of a highly attentive audience. But--we had in truth +small idea with whom we were dealing. Some time later we got final news +of him. He had committed a murder, been caught, tried, convicted, +sentenced, and executed. + +You will remember the British lady at the Hôtel de l'Univers in Tours, +who, in her description of Amboise, pronounced curious to rhyme with +glorious. Her kind was still pervading the quieter hotels of the +continent (the Hôtel de l'Univers was still quiet) while her more +muscular sister was still climbing all the Alps in valiant weeds. This +time, another of the identical type sat next me at the table d'hôte, and +from the corner of my eye I perceived her to be making endless and +surreptitious dives with her head at my bottle of Vouvray mousseux. +Becoming sure that this was neither St. Vitus's dance nor kleptomania, +but a desire to learn the name of my wine, I made her a slight bow, +turning my bottle so that she could more easily read its label; at which +she squeaked skittishly, 'I-didn't-think-you'd-see-me!' + + +III + +The mid-Victorian spinster was gone, the automobile was come, the much +expanded Hôtel de l'Univers was quiet no more and had abandoned the +table d'hôte for small tables when next I saw Chenonceaux. Eager as I +had been to return to it, still more did I desire to enjoy that +particular pleasure which one takes in introducing a scene one delights +in to a friend. We were, this time, as we had been the first time, a +party of three, and the day was July 4, 1914; but in the Cathedral of +Bourges that morning, and at Montrichard and along the Cher that +forenoon, firecrackers seemed remote. Later, the Hôtel de l'Univers had +illuminations and national melodies for the benefit of its American +patrons--these having now swelled to the lucrative proportions of +invasion. + +But Chenonceaux hadn't changed, Chenonceaux looked just as young as +ever. Its bright, serene aspect showed no confusion at changing masters +so often. To my friends it more than fulfilled my promises for it, while +for me it was even fairer than my memory. The concierge, a woman this +time, told her band of sightseers enough, but much less than she knew. +She had acquired (one somehow divined and discerned) a certain scorn +for her sightseers. She had found (one saw) the affluent automobile to +be the chariot of well-informed stomachs, but seldom of intelligences +which had ever heard, or would ever care to hear, about Madame Dupin and +her many distinguished guests. They knew their Michelin, where to buy +_pétrol_ along the road, which roads to avoid; and the road they had +particularly avoided was the one conducting to civilization. Some of +them were present on this occasion with their goggles, their magenta +veils, and their brass voices. To these the concierge imparted what she +deemed them able to digest. She didn't mention the _Devin du +Village_--but I did! This brought an immediate _rapprochement_, as we +lingered with her behind the departing goggles. She knew and loved her +Chenonceaux; her scorn fell from her; but she told us nothing so +interesting as the fact that during the last twelvemonth _twenty +thousand_ visitors had given each their required franc to see the place. +The château, at this rate, will pay its way down the ages. + +But what of the Bon-Laboureur? If the mid-Victorian spinster and the +table d'hôte hadn't survived the pace of the new century, what had the +automobile done to the innocent village inn? I hope you will be glad to +learn that it hadn't--as yet--done much. I have now reached the third of +those meals which I mentioned at the outset. The Bon-Laboureur seemed a +little larger,--people were lunching in two rooms instead of one, and +out behind, kitchenward, there was a hint of bustle and of chauffeurs, +and perhaps the personal note of welcome was fainter. But it wasn't +quite absent; and still the food was excellent, still the service was +courteous, a pleasant young woman waiting; and I felt that here was a +good, small tradition still somewhat holding out against the +beleaguering pressure of the wholesale. So I spoke to the pleasant young +woman and inquired if the old _patronne_ were still living. + +'Mais si, monsieur!' I was, to my astonishment, answered. 'A deux pas +d'ici.' + +The personal note of welcome warmed up on learning that I was an old +visitor here; the patronne would value a call from one who remembered +her good cooking; she was now very old; she had sold the business and +the good-will; she lived very quietly; would I not go to see her? And +her house was pointed out to me. + +Along the street of the little white village I went, slowly, in the +midsummer warmth. The grape-leaves, trailing and basking on the walls, +the full-leaved trees, the light and laziness of earth and sky, conveyed +the same hush of repose that had exhaled from the golden autumn and the +delicate spring I remembered so well; in this July sunshine, also, the +pleasant land lay dreamy and unvexed. At a door standing slightly open, +I knocked. Though a pause followed, I felt I had been heard; then I was +bidden to enter, by a very old voice. Two rooms were accessible from the +tiny hall, but I entered the right one, and there by the window sat the +patronne. I had remembered her as moving alertly round her table, quiet +and vigorous, above average height. All of this was gone; and as her +dark, feeble eyes looked at me, I felt in them a certain apprehension, +and found myself unpremeditatedly saying,-- + +'Madame, I trust you will not think ill of an intruder when you learn +why it is that he has ventured to knock at your door. They assured me +you would like my visit. Here is my little story: One Sunday afternoon +in September, 1882, three travelers came to the Bon-Laboureur. I was one +of them; and never forgetting your excellent meal and service, I +returned at my first opportunity, in April, 1896. Meanwhile that good +meal of yours, and you its hostess, had been mentioned in a book by +another of those three guests; and you told me of the prosperity this +had brought you. Since that visit, thirty-two years ago, I have become a +writer of books too. Of me you will not have heard, but you cannot have +forgotten Mr. Henry James, whose praise brought so many guests to the +Bon-Laboureur.' + +Her eyes, during my speech, had awakened, and now she stood up. + +'My servant is absent,' she said, 'or you would not have had to come in +so. But my son lives close by in that large place. He will like very +much to see you. I will call him.' + +She would have gone for him on her trembling feet, but this I begged she +would not do; I had but five minutes; friends were waiting for me. + +'I am ninety years old,' she said. 'Ah, monsieur, il est bien triste de +vieillir. One has nothing any more.' She became suddenly moved, and +tears fell from her. + +I need not recall the little talk we had then. Strangers though we were, +we did not speak as strangers; the memories that rose in each of us, so +separate, so different, flowed together in some way, united beneath our +spoken words, and made them sacred. But I may record that she got out +her old books to show me, her registry-books of the Bon-Laboureur, +little, old, modest volumes, where in many handwritings through many +years the names of her guests had been inscribed. They had come from +almost everywhere in the world. No longer strong enough, she had parted +with the business and the good-will; but from these tokens of her past +she could not part. She clung to the inanimate survivals of her good +days and her renown. And on a blank page of the last volume which she +placed before me, putting a pen in my hand, I wrote briefly for her of +my three pilgrimages to her _petit pays_. Of the international +distinction of her son she was touchingly and justly proud: famous +peonies have spread his name wide as their cultivator and producer. For +this, too, was the Bon-Laboureur in its way responsible. + +Perhaps I may not see it again, or its grand neighbor, the château, that +secular shrine of a vivacious and select Past. But I shall need no +Michelin, or Baedeker, or Joanne, to guide my memories thither. They are +with me, every moment and breath of them, for my perpetual delight, a +safe possession, unweakened and undimmed; and to conjure them before me +it needs no more than the haunting syllables of Chenonceaux and the +quaint, cherished volumes of the patronne. + + IN CHENONCEAUX + + My noiseless thoughts, if changed to their just sound + Amid these courts of silence once so gay + With love and wit, that here full pleasure found + Where Kings put off their crownèd cares to play, + Would shake in laughter at some jest unheard; + Would sing like viols in a saraband; + Would whisper kisses--but express no word + That would not be too dim to understand. + + Like to a child, who far from ocean's flood + Against his ear a shell doth fondly hold + To hear the murmur that is his own blood, + And half believes the fairy-tale he's told, + So I within this shell mistake my sea + Of musing for the tide of History. + + + + +The Other Side + +By Margaret Sherwood + + +Like every other attentive reader of our periodical literature, I am +increasingly aware of our persistent exposure of sin and wrong-doing in +high places and in low; like many another attentive reader, I am growing +a bit rebellious against this constant demand and supply in the matter +of information regarding recent evil. Have we not grown over-alert in +the search for this special kind of news? We take vice with our +breakfast porridge; perjury with our after-dinner coffee; our essayists +vie with one another in seeing who can write up the most startling story +of crimes; and it is a bankrupt family nowadays that cannot produce one +member to expose civic or political corruption. Undoubtedly much genuine +ethical impulse lies back of all this; undoubtedly, too, much of the +picturesque and spectacular treatment springs from a desire to startle, +and ministers, in many a reader who would scorn paper-covered fiction, +to a love of the sensational. Surely it must seem to the people of other +countries that we take pride in the immensity of our sins, as we take +pride in Niagara, in the length of the Mississippi, in the extent of our +western plains. + +Many may be, and must be, the good effects of throwing the searchlight +upon dark places, but the constant glare of the searchlight bids fair to +rob us of our normal vision of life. My poor mind has become a +storehouse of misdeeds not my own. I am sick with iniquity; I walk +abroad under the shadow of infamy, and I sup with horrors. I shrink from +meeting my friends,--not that they are not the best people in the world, +but I dread lest they pour into my ears some newly acquired knowledge of +wrong-doing. For me, as for others, the sun of noonday is clouded by +graft, bribery, treachery, and corruption; and I fear to close my eyes +in the dark because of the pictured crimes that crowd before them. +Suppose poor Christian had had to drag after him not only his own bag of +transgressions, but those of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Facing-both-ways, +and all the denizens of Vanity Fair, what chance would he ever have had +of getting out of the Slough of Despond? + +It is not that I wish to shirk; I am not afraid of facing anything that +I ought to know, and I have not the slightest doubt that we are all, in +great measure, responsible for our neighbors' sins. But I am not sure +that we are taking the wisest way to mend them. It seems to me +incontestable that, with the large issues of individual and of national +well-being in mind, we are over-doing the exposure, and slighting the +incentives to right action; emphasizing the negative at the expense of +the positive; and that, with our weakening convictions regarding the +things that are right, it is dangerous to go on loudly proclaiming the +things that are wrong. We are much in the position of a village +improvement society which has pulled down a bridge because it is +rotting, and is impotent to build another and a better. We have invested +our national all in wrecking machinery, and have nothing left for +constructive tools. It is said that in our explosive setting forth of +civic and national wrong-doing, we are all too prone to stop with the +explosion, as if mere knowledge of these things would set them right. +Mere knowledge never yet set anything right; only the ceaselessly +active, creative will can fashion a world of law out of chaos. + +Of the criticism often made that exposure of wrong should be followed, +more closely than is done here, by constructive action, if anything is +to be really effected, it is not my task to speak. The aspect of the +matter which interests me especially concerns the youth of the land; it +is the educational aspect. Not through loud wailing over evil can a +nation be built, but through resolute dwelling with high ideals. In +certain ugly tendencies of recent years among the young, as, for +instance, the unabashed sensuality of much of the modern dancing, may we +not detect, perhaps, a cynical assumption that life is at basis +corrupt,--a natural result of continued harping on evil things, and of +failure to keep before them images of moral beauty? Our magazine writers +would be far better employed, if, instead of making our ears constantly +resound with reports of civic iniquities, they were, part of the time at +least, studying Plato's _Republic_, and filling mind and soul with the +hope of the perfect state. Wrong things we dare hope are of small and +fleeting consequence as compared with the right; it is not the sin of +Judas Iscariot, but the righteousness of his Master, that has brought +the human race a gleam of hope and possible redemption. When I was told, +not long ago, of a student in one of our great universities who had +elected 'Criminology 16,' I could not help reflecting that he might far +better have taken Idealistic Philosophy I. + +Whether or not our study of evil should be lessened, our study of the +good needs to be vastly strengthened. We are losing the vision! 'Your +old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,' said the +prophet, in promising wonders in the heavens and in the earth, after his +account of fasting, weeping, mourning, and beating the breast. There is +a time for beating the breast and for tearing the hair, and of this we +have had our day, but perpetual sitting upon the ash-heap and howling +will not raise the walls of state. Sitting there may, in time, even +become a luxury; can it be that we are doing so much of it partly +because it is easier, and because the heaven-sent task of building up +and shaping is too hard for us? + +Take away from youth the power of seeing visions, of dreaming dreams, +and you take away the future. It would behoove us to remember, perhaps, +that the eras of great deeds have not been eras of analysis, but eras +when the creative imagination was at work. Yet our modern mental habit +is overwhelmingly a habit of analysis, for which science, in teaching us +to pick the world to bits, is partly, though not wholly, responsible. It +has brought us an immense amount of interesting information; it has +brought also a danger whose gravity we can hardly estimate, in the +constant lessening of the synthetic power. The power to image, to +fashion high ideals, and to create along the line of the imagining, is +weakening, instead of growing more strong. In the glorious days of Queen +Elizabeth, in the unparalleled days of Periclean Athens, great ideals +formed themselves before men's eyes and great achievements followed; +emotion, hope, vision, shaped human nature to great issues. I wonder +what influence those perfect marble representations of perfect form had +upon the very bodies of the youths and the maidens of Athens, what +creative force they exercised,--the imaginative grasp of the perfect +reaching forward toward perfectness in the human being. I wonder what +influence the character of Sir Philip Sidney alone, with 'high-erected +thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy,' has had upon succeeding +generations of English youth. 'A man to be greatly good,' said Shelley, +'must imagine intensely and comprehensively.' + +Here my quarrel with our present intellectual trend and our present +system of education becomes more acute. We are not only losing the habit +of mind that fosters idealism, but we are more and more breaking with +the past. The door of that storehouse of noble thought and noble example +is being slowly but firmly closed, and there is little in modern +teaching that can meet the inroads made by the devastating knowledge of +evil of which we have been speaking; little that can build up where this +tears down. Study of Greek life, with its incomparable power of shaping +existence toward the beautiful, is all but cast aside; most +unfortunately now, when, with the rush of ignorant peoples to our +shores, it might have a far-reaching potency never attained before. The +ignorance of contemporary youth regarding that other and finer +loveliness of 'Gospel books' is amazing. More and more we are stripped +of the humanities; the incredulity of science in contemplating +philosophy, art, literature, as part of the educational curriculum, is +full of menace. There has never been, I think, in the history of the +civilized world, a time when people were so anxious to cast off the +past. In our eager Marathon race of material and physical progress we +want to go as lightly equipped as possible. The æroplane carries small +luggage; our light modern mind is ever ready to throw overboard even its +precious heritage, in its eagerness for swift flight. As earlier days +have reverenced the old, we reverence the new, and are all too +insistently contemporaneous. + +We need, as we never needed before, a broader and deeper study of +history, of philosophy, of literature; for most of our young, a +knowledge of the mental and spiritual past of the race is of far greater +importance than a knowledge of the physical past, at the amÅ“ba stage, +or any other. Science, much as it can do for us, can never meet our +deepest need; the world of imaginative beauty and the world of ethical +endeavor are apart from its domain. It has no spring to touch the will, +yet that which has, the magnificent inheritance of our literature, is +more and more neglected for the latest machinery that applied science +has devised, or the most recent treatise on insect, bird, or worm. It is +well to study insect, bird, and worm, for they are endlessly +interesting, but I maintain that neither the full sum of knowledge +concerning them, nor even the ultimate fact about the ultimate star, can +be a substitute for knowledge of the idealism of Thomas Carlyle, of the +categorical imperative of Kant,--for that study of the humanities which +means preserving, for the upbuilding of youth, that which was best and +finest in the past, as we go on toward the future. + +If the swift retort should come, from those who think the present the +only era of attainment and the physical world the only source of wisdom, +that the past is full of villainies, of lapses from high standards, one +can but say that for ethical purposes our study should be frankly a +selective study, emphasizing the fine and high, subordinating the evil. +There is no hypocrisy in such selection; there is deliberate choice of +the higher upon which to dwell, as a formative power, quickening feeling +and imagination. I have heard it said that a woman, by resolute dwelling +on things noble and pure, may shape the inner nature of her unborn +child, and I have faith to believe it. Even so should the nation yet to +be be shaped by resolute dwelling on the good. It was not all cowardice, +as many a present writer thinks, that led the mothers of earlier days to +say little to their sons and daughters regarding evil things, and much +regarding right things. Doubtless greater frankness would have been +better, yet I doubt if our protracted dwelling on the evil will produce +better results. + +Should any one object that this emphasis on the good means suppression +of the truth, we can but reply that, for the rational soul, the truth is +not necessarily the mechanically worked-out sum of all the facts. That +we have forgotten the distinction between fact--that which has indeed +come to pass, but which may be momentary--and truth, which endures, is +one of the many signs of what William Sharp calls the 'spiritual +degradation' of our time. Much of our modern thinking and teaching, much +of our realistic fiction, rests upon a failure to make the distinction; +much that is indisputable in individual instances of wrong-doing may be, +thank God! false in the long run. + +'That is not true, scientifically true,' we hear often in regard to some +fine hope or aspiration of the race; but in the real import of the term +there is no such thing as scientific truth. It is a pity that a word of +such profound and distinctive meaning should come to be more and more +exclusively identified with the observation of physical phenomena, and +the formulation of physical laws, whereas the very root-meaning of the +word true, from Anglo-Saxon _treowe_, signifying faithful, gives +justification for the idealist's belief that vital truth is partly a +matter of the will, not of mere perception and of intellectual +deductions drawn therefrom. We have need of deeper truth than that of +mere fact; and the truth that shall set us free is a truth of choice, of +selection; it embraces that part of human thought and human experience +which is worth keeping. + +Faithfulness to the best and finest in the past and in the present, +rather than horrified gaping at the present's worst, is the attitude +that means continued and bettered life, for we become what we will. What +are we offering, in the way of concrete examples, or of finely expressed +thought about virtue, to the young, to the ignorant nations who are +pouring in upon us, that will help them form their vision of the +perfect? With our narrowing knowledge of the greater past, our choice of +heroes becomes more and more local and national, yet our hierarchy of +sacred dead is too small to afford that variety of heroic action and +heroic choice that should always be kept before the minds of youth. We +teach them that George Washington never told a lie; we teach them +something--and there could be nothing better--of Lincoln; but those two +figures are lonely upon Olympus, and the great tragic story of the way +in which Lincoln faced the greatest crisis in our history will not alone +suffice to help the everyday citizen shape his thought and action toward +constructive idealism. The lesser heroes of our young republic have +acquitted themselves nobly in this struggle and in that, but the +struggles have been too closely akin in nature to give the embryo hero +that breadth and depth of nurture that he requires. We need an enlarged +vision of history, and the sight of great men of all ages faithful to +small tasks as to great; we need the companionship of heroes of other +times and of other nations, and not of military heroes alone. Saint +Francis with his unceasing tenderness to man and beast, Father Damien at +work among the lepers, might far better occupy the pages of our +magazines, than the pictured deeds of criminals and the achievements of +contemporary multimillionaires. + +If we need a wider range of concrete examples of the good, we need +still more a wider range of nobly expressed ideals. Our thought grows +narrow; we smother for lack of breathing space. Benjamin Franklin's +philosophy was far from grasping the best of life, yet we remember him +better than we do our Emerson, whose plea for spiritual values as the +only real ones is lost in the louder and louder groaning of the wheels +of our machinery. The idealism that is taught the young in Sunday +schools is too often inextricably bound up with unnecessary theology; +and many and many a pupil, in discarding the latter, discards the other +also. The ideal of success upheld in much journalistic admonition is +often rather mean and low; the young of this country need no printed +incentives to urge them into commercialism and the victories of trade. +The best influences that are being brought to bear upon them are those +which concern social responsibilities and the needs of the poor. Yet all +this thought and endeavor should supplement and not supersede, as it is +doing, a deep concern with the things of the spirit; and no admonition +regarding hygiene for one's self or others is a substitute for-- + + A sense sublime + Of something far more deeply interfused, + Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, + And the round ocean, and the living air, + And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; + A motion and a spirit, that impels + All thinking things, all objects of all thought + And rolls through all things. + +The great things of the past in all nations, history can teach us; the +possible, both literature and philosophy can teach us. We must forego no +noble expression of idealistic faith, lest we impoverish our own souls, +and beggar those who come after us. The pure intellectual passion of +Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, the noble stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, the spiritual vision of Plato, of Spenser, the heroic strain +of Wordsworth's 'Liberty Sonnets' and his 'Happy Warrior,' Shelley's +ardent and generous sympathy, Browning's dynamic spiritual force, should +make up part of our life and thought, checking our insistent impulse +toward mechanical things, and correcting the evil within and without. +More than anything else, we need a revival of interest in great poetry. + +'Now therein of all sciences,' said Sir Philip Sidney, 'is our poet the +monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a +prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter it.... He cometh +to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, +or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, +forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from +play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and, pretending no more, doth +intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue.' + +The poet's 'perfect picture' of the good, the great image, causes noble +passion, wakes us out of our 'habitual calm,' and stirs us almost +beyond our possibilities. The imagination is the miracle-working power +in human nature; through it alone can the human soul come to its own. +Only that which is fine and high can feed it aright, while baseness can +make of it a destructive tool of terrible power. As I think back to +childhood, I can remember the devastating effect that one tale of +cruelty had upon my mind, haunting me by day in vivid pictures, turning +my dreams to horror, and making me, while the obsession lasted, believe +that the world of grown folk must be all alike cruel. So, too, the +compelling vision of the good came through concrete instances; and the +people, both the living and the dead, in whom I passionately believed, +shaped all my faith. + +The imagination of youth,--there is no power like it, no machine that +can equal it in dynamic force, nothing so full of power, so full of +danger. We become that which we look upon, contemplate, remember; it is +for this that I dread the ultimate effect of the long, imaginative +picturing of our neighbor's sins now presented in our periodicals. +Images of evil can hardly help dimming and tarnishing the bright ideals +of youth; is there no way--with all our modern wisdom can we find no +way--of limiting our exposure of crime to the people who can be of +service in helping check it, and keeping it from those who cannot help, +but can only be silently hurt? A moment, an hour of some fresh vision, +and a child's destiny is perhaps decided for good or for ill. One +afternoon's reading of Spenser made the boy Keats a poet; who, knowing +the potency of brief experience in the flush of youth, can doubt the +lasting wrong wrought again and again by the sudden shock of contact +with things evil? + +Many images of wrong must of necessity come to the young; let them not +be multiplied in our feverish and morbid fashion of to-day. Above all, +let them be crowded out by constant suggestion of noble images and noble +thought, which will work both consciously and subconsciously, shaping +the dream when the dreamer is least aware. To hold up before the ardent +and impressionable young that which they may become in strength, in +purity, would surely be better than placing before them this perpetual +moving-picture show of our civic and national transgressions. I can but +believe, as I read article after article of exposure, that this +continued presentation to youth of the unholy side of life, with our +increasing tendency to make education a mere matter of the intellect and +of the eye, is bound to lessen the moral energy of the race. Would it +not be better if we were more diligent in searching history, philosophy, +literature, for 'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are +lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,' and in bidding the young +think on these things? + + + + +On Authors + +By Margaret Preston Montague + + +I write myself; therefore I feel free to say what I please about +authors; but if you, sir, or madam, who read, but do not write, were to +give voice to the reflections that are even now beginning to distill +from my pencil, I should doubtless resent them. And here, indeed, I am +faced by the sudden reflection that much of what I say myself I might +resent in the mouths of others. This leads to a whole new train of +thought, which, however, I refuse to take, and board instead the one I +set out for,--The Authors' Unlimited. There are many things to be +remarked about authors, but in so short a paper it is possible to touch +upon only a very few. One of the first facts that strikes the +investigator in this field is that members of my profession do not +always appear to endear themselves to those with whom they have +dealings. + +'What do you think of authors?' I once asked an editor. + +'I hate 'em!' he answered without a moment's hesitation. + +Another editor assured me, with a weary sigh, that authors were 'kittle +cattle.' This affords a writer a little leap of amusement. So editors +suffer from authors, even as authors from editors! Well, yes, we _are_ +kittle cattle! But some of this is due, no doubt, to what people expect +of us. I was presented once to a lady who immediately fixed me with an +eager eye. + +'I am making a study of the habits of authors,' she announced. (Here a +dreadful sinking of the heart assailed me.) 'Kindly tell me at what hour +you retire.' + +'Usually at half-past ten,' I answered wretchedly. + +At that, as I had expected, her eyebrows went up. 'The author of _When +All Was Dark_,' she informed me, 'sits up all night. She says she cannot +sleep until she has savored the dawn.' However, she was kind enough to +give me another chance. 'What do you eat?' she asked. + +'Three hearty meals a day,' I answered. + +'Not _breakfast_!' she pleaded. 'Why, St. George Dreamer _never_ takes +more than three drops of brandy on a lump of sugar in the morning. Just +the sight of a coffee cup will upset his work for a week.' + +And then she left me, sure, I have no doubt, that no real author could +confess to such distressingly normal habits as mine. + +Doubtless she is an eager reader of all those little paragraphs +informing us how authors write. How this one has to have his black mammy +rub his head for an hour before he can even think of work; and that one +confesses that to write a love scene she must have the odor of decayed +bananas in the room. Well, the world would be a sadder place without +these little paragraphs. Would that I had something of a like nature to +offer! But alas! I have no black mammy, and the smell of over-ripe fruit +leaves my hero cold. Also, to give forth such gems of information one +must be able to observe a certain rule. It is, Don't laugh or you might +wake up. This rule is always sacredly in force at literary gatherings. +The fact of being an author, and of being at an authors' meeting, +induces, it appears, an intense seriousness. In my younger days I did +not realize this, and once at a gathering of this nature, I asked a +carefree question. 'Do you think,' I inquired of the author next me, +'that it is possible for an unmusical person to write verse?' + +I confess now that I put the question somewhat in the spirit of the +Irishman, who, asking after his friend's health, added, 'Not that I care +a damn, but it makes conversation.' Heaven defend me from ever again +making so much conversation! A gleam shot up in my author's eye. 'Let us +go over and ask Professor ---- ' he cried. 'He wrote _What Poets Cannot +Do_. He's just the man to tell us!' And before I could escape, he +dragged me through the press of authors, and flung me before the +professor, with the tag, 'Unmusical, but aspires to write verse,--is +this possible?' + +I know now how the beetle feels beneath the microscope. Seeing the +little group we made, two young authors 'hurried up, and more, and more, +and more.' They surrounded me to listen, to inspect, to comment; they +asked one another eager questions about me, they compared notes, they +appealed to the author of _What Poets Cannot Do_, and always their +dreadful eyes were fixed upon me. Never, never again will I dare the +dreadful seriousness of an authors' meeting with an idle question! + +I have also learned another lesson. It is how to converse with authors. +I shudder now to think of my early and crude attempts in this matter. +The remembrance of one particular occasion stands out with dreadful +vividness. I had been introduced to a distinguished writer. She raised +her eyes to mine for a wan instant, a pale flicker of recognition passed +over her face, and then--silence. Readers,--nay, let me call you friends +while I make this terrible confession,--_I broke that silence!_ I was +young; I did not understand. I do now. I have never been able since to +read 'The Ancient Mariner'--I know too well the awfulness of having shot +an albatross. 'The lady,' I said to my inexperienced self, 'does not +care to converse; she expects you to do so.' Accordingly, I broke into +light and cheerful talk, something in conversation corresponding, I +fear, to what in dry goods the clerk recommends as 'a nice line of +spring styles.' I realize that only a series of illustrations can make +the situation clear. Imagine then, if you please, a tinkling cymbal +serenading a smouldering volcano; a puppy trying to woo the Sphinx to a +game of tag; sunlit waves breaking upon a 'stern and rock-bound coast,' +and you may get a faint idea of the situation. I began almost +immediately to experience that far-from-home sensation of which +Humpty-Dumpty speaks with so much feeling. As I beheld one after another +of my little remarks dash itself to nothingness against that stern and +rock-bound coast, only the time and the place kept me from bursting into +tears. Fortunately it did not last too long. In another minute one or +the other of us would have shattered into the maniac's wild laughter. +And I have every reason to fear that I should have been that one. +Others, however, realizing the awful thing I was doing, rushed up and +separated us. Sympathetic hands were stretched to her; low words were +murmured, and she was drawn into a secluded corner where her silence +might be preserved from any further onslaughts of a like sacrilegious +nature. But no one stretched a hand to _me_; no sympathetic words were +murmured in _my_ ear! + +I now know that in conversations with authors there should be long +pauses. This is because every remark, after being received by the ear, +must be submitted to a strict brain analysis, and then given a soul-bath +before it is proper to venture a reply. I have found, also, that in +answering too quickly, I myself lose caste. I now make it a point never +to respond to a question addressed to me by an author until I have +counted twenty. If the author is very distinguished, I make it fifty for +good measure. + +Much more remains to be said about authors. I realize that I have, as it +were, merely scraped the surface of the subject. Space, however, allows +me only room to add one last anecdote. But this one may indeed prove +more illuminating than all that has gone before. Once, then, in a +certain city where I was visiting, I was invited to attend a meeting of +its authors' club. 'Now at this meeting,' I instructed myself before +going, 'you will probably encounter the most serious species of author +native to this climate.' Accordingly I set forth with a light and +expectant heart. As I entered the hall I was aware of another person +entering from an opposite door,--a serious, awkward person, with just +that peculiar, vague, and almost feeble-minded expression that I have +come to associate with writers in general. 'Behold, my child, the +SERIOUS AUTHOR,' I commented happily to myself. I looked again, and saw +it was _myself in a mirror_! + + + + +The Provincial American + +By Meredith Nicholson + + _Viola._ What country, friends, is this? + + _Captain._ Illyria, lady. + + _Viola._ And what should I do in Illyria? + My brother he is in Elysium. + + _--Twelfth Night._ + + +I am a provincial American. My forbears were farmers or country-town +folk. They followed the long trail over the mountains out of Virginia +and North Carolina, with brief sojourns in Western Pennsylvania and +Kentucky. My parents were born, the one in Kentucky, the other in +Indiana, within two and four hours of the spot where I pen these +reflections, and I was a grown man and had voted before I saw the sea or +any Eastern city. + +In attempting to illustrate the provincial point of view out of my own +experiences I am moved by no wish to celebrate either the Hoosier +commonwealth--which has not lacked nobler advertisement--or myself; but +by the hope that I may cheer many who, flung by fate upon the world's +byways, shuffle and shrink under the reproach of their metropolitan +brethren. + +Mr. George Ade has said, speaking of our freshwater colleges, that +Purdue University, his own alma mater, offers everything that Harvard +provides except the sound of _a_ as in father. I have been told that I +speak our _lingua rustica_ only slightly corrupted by urban contacts. +Anywhere east of Buffalo I should be known as a Westerner; I could not +disguise myself if I would. I find that I am most comfortable in a town +whose population does not exceed a fifth of a million,--the kind of +place that enjoys street-car transfers, a woman's club, and a post +office with carrier delivery. + + +I + +Across a hill-slope that knew my childhood, a bugle's grieving melody +used to float often through the summer twilight. A highway lay hidden in +the little vale below, and beyond it the unknown musician was quite +concealed, and was never visible to the world I knew. Those trumpetings +have lingered always in my memory, and color my recollection of all that +was near and dear in those days. Men who had left camp and field for the +soberer routine of civil life were not yet fully domesticated. My bugler +was merely solacing himself for lost joys by recurring to the vocabulary +of the trumpet. I am confident that he enjoyed himself; and I am equally +sure that his trumpetings peopled the dusk for me with great captains +and mighty armies, and touched with a certain militancy all my youthful +dreaming. + +No American boy born during or immediately after the Civil War can have +escaped in those years the vivid impressions derived from the sight and +speech of men who had fought its battles, or women who had known its +terror and grief. Chief among my playthings on that peaceful hillside +was the sword my father had borne at Shiloh and on to the sea; and I +remember, too, his uniform coat and sash and epaulets and the tattered +guidon of his battery, that, falling to my lot as toys, yet imparted to +my childish consciousness a sense of what war had been. The young +imagination was kindled in those days by many and great names. Lincoln, +Grant, and Sherman were among the first lispings of Northern children of +my generation; and in the little town where I was born, lived men who +had spoken with them face to face. I did not know, until I sought them +later for myself, the fairy tales that are every child's birthright; and +I imagine that children of my generation heard less of + + old, unhappy, far-off things + And battles long ago, + +and more of the men and incidents of contemporaneous history. Great +spirits still on earth were sojourning. I saw several times, in his last +years, the iron-willed Hoosier War Governor, Oliver P. Morton. By the +time I was ten, a broader field of observation opening through my +parents' removal to the state capital, I had myself beheld Grant and +Sherman; and every day I passed in the street men who had been partners +with them in the great, heroic, sad, splendid struggle. These things I +set down as a background for the observations that follow,--less as text +than as point of departure; yet I believe that bugler, sounding charge +and retreat and taps in the dusk, and those trappings of war beneath +whose weight I strutted upon that hillside, did much toward establishing +in me a certain habit of mind. From that hillside I have since +ineluctably viewed my country and my countrymen and the larger world. + +Emerson records Thoreau's belief that 'the flora of Massachusetts +embraced almost all the important plants of America,--most of the oaks, +most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the +nuts. He returned Kane's arctic voyage to a friend of whom he had +borrowed it, with the remark, that most of the phenomena noted might be +observed in Concord.' + +The complacency of the provincial mind is due less, I believe, to +stupidity and ignorance, than to the fact that every American county is +in a sense complete, a political and social unit, in which the sovereign +rights of a free people are expressed by the courthouse and town hall, +spiritual freedom by the village church-spire, and hope and aspiration +in the school-house. Every reader of American fiction, particularly in +the realm of the short story, must have observed the great variety of +quaint and racy characters disclosed. These are the _dramatis personæ_ +of that great American novel which some one has said is being written in +installments. Writers of fiction hear constantly of characters who would +be well worth their study. In reading two recent novels that penetrate +to the heart of provincial life, Mr. White's _A Certain Rich Man_ and +Mrs. Watts's _Nathan Burke_, I felt that the characters depicted might, +with unimportant exceptions, have been found almost anywhere in those +American states that shared the common history of Kansas and Ohio. Mr. +Winston Churchill, in his admirable novels of New England, has shown how +closely the purely local is allied to the universal. 'Woodchuck +sessions' have been held by many American legislatures. + +When _David Harum_ appeared, characters similar to the hero of that +novel were reported in every part of the country. I rarely visit a town +that has not its cracker-barrel philosopher, or a poet who would shine +but for the callous heart of the magazine editor, or an artist of +supreme though unrecognized talent, or a forensic orator of wonderful +powers, or a mechanical genius whose inventions are bound to +revolutionize the industrial world. In Maine, in the back room of a shop +whose windows looked down upon a tidal river, I have listened to tariff +discussions in the dialect of Hosea Biglow; and a few weeks later have +heard farmers along the un-salt Wabash debating the same questions from +a point of view that revealed no masted ships or pine woods, with a new +sense of the fine tolerance and sanity and reasonableness of our +American people. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, one of the shrewdest students +of provincial character, introduced me one day to a friend of his in a +village near Indianapolis who bore a striking resemblance to Abraham +Lincoln, and who had something of Lincoln's gift of humorous narration. +This man kept a country store, and his attitude toward his customers, +and 'trade' in general, was delicious in its drollery. Men said to be +'like Lincoln' have not been rare in the Mississippi Valley, and +politicians have been known to encourage belief in the resemblance. + +Colonel Higginson has said that in the Cambridge of his youth any member +of the Harvard faculty could answer any question within the range of +human knowledge; whereas in these days of specialization some man can +answer the question, but it may take a week's investigation to find him. +In 'our town'--a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine +own!--I dare say it was possible in that _post bellum_ era to find men +competent to deal with almost any problem. These were mainly men of +humble beginnings and all essentially the product of our American +provinces. I should like to set down briefly the ineffaceable impression +some of these characters left upon me. I am precluded by a variety of +considerations from extending this recital. The rich field of education +I ignore altogether; and I may mention only those who have gone. As it +is beside my purpose to prove that mine own people are other than +typical of those of most American communities, I check my exuberance. +Sad indeed the offending if I should protest too much! + + +II + +In the days when the bugle still mourned across the vale, Lew Wallace +was a citizen of my native town of Crawfordsville. There he had amused +himself in the years immediately before the civil conflict, in drilling +a company of 'Algerian Zouaves' known as the Montgomery Guards, of which +my father was a member, and this was the nucleus of the Eleventh Indiana +Regiment which Wallace commanded in the early months of the war. It is +not, however, of Wallace's military services that I wish to speak now, +nor of his writings, but of the man himself as I knew him later at the +capital, at a time when, in the neighborhood of the federal building at +Indianapolis, any boy might satisfy his longing for heroes with a sight +of many of our Hoosier Olympians. He was of medium height, erect, dark +to swarthiness, with finely chiseled features and keen, black eyes, with +manners the most courtly, and a voice unusually musical and haunting. +His appearance, his tastes, his manner, were strikingly Oriental. + +He had a strong theatric instinct, and his life was filled with +drama--with melodrama, even. His curiosity led him into the study of +many subjects, most of them remote from the affairs of his day. He was +both dreamer and man of action; he could be 'idler than the idlest +flowers,' yet he was always busy about something. He was an aristocrat +and a democrat; he was wise and temperate, whimsical and injudicious in +a breath. As a youth he had seen visions, and as an old man he dreamed +dreams. The mysticism in him was deep-planted, and he was always a +little aloof, a man apart. His capacity for detachment was like that of +Sir Richard Burton, who, at a great company given in his honor, was +found alone poring over a puzzling Arabic manuscript in an obscure +corner of the house. Wallace, like Burton, would have reached Mecca, if +chance had led him to that adventure. + +Wallace dabbled in politics without ever being a politician; and I might +add that he practiced law without ever being, by any high standard, a +lawyer. He once spoke of the law as 'that most detestable of human +occupations.' First and last he tried his hand at all the arts. He +painted a little; he moulded a little in clay; he knew something of +music and played the violin; he made three essays in romance. As boy and +man he went soldiering; he was a civil governor, and later a minister to +Turkey. In view of his sympathetic interest in Eastern life and +character, nothing could have been more appropriate than his appointment +to Constantinople. The Sultan Abdul Hamid, harassed and anxious, used +to send for him at odd hours of the night to come and talk to him, and +offered him on his retirement a number of positions in the Turkish +government. + +With all this rich experience of the larger world, he remained the +simplest of natures. He was as interested in a new fishing-tackle as in +a new book, and carried both to his houseboat on the Kankakee, where, at +odd moments, he retouched a manuscript for the press, and discussed +politics with the natives. Here was a man who could talk of the _Song of +Roland_ as zestfully as though it had just been reported from the +telegraph office. + +I frankly confess that I never met him without a thrill, even in his +last years and when the ardor of my youthful hero worship may be said to +have passed. He was an exotic, our Hoosier Arab, our story-teller of the +bazaars. When I saw him in his last illness, it was as though I looked +upon a gray sheik about to fare forth unawed toward unmapped oases. + +No lesson of the Civil War was more striking than that taught by the +swift transitions of our citizen soldiery from civil to military life, +and back again. This impressed me as a boy, and I used to wonder, as I +passed my heroes on their peaceful errands in the street, why they had +put down the sword when there must still be work somewhere for fighting +men to do. The judge of the federal court at this time was Walter Q. +Gresham, brevetted brigadier-general, who was destined later to adorn +the cabinets of presidents of two political parties. He was cordial and +magnetic; his were the handsomest and friendliest of brown eyes, and a +noble gravity spoke in them. Among the lawyers who practiced before him +were Benjamin Harrison and Thomas A. Hendricks, who became respectively +President and Vice-President. + +Those Hoosiers who admired Gresham ardently were often less devotedly +attached to Harrison, who lacked Gresham's warmth and charm. General +Harrison was akin to the Covenanters who bore both Bible and sword into +battle. His eminence in the law was due to his deep learning in its +history and philosophy. Short of stature, and without grace of +person,--with a voice pitched rather high,--he was a remarkably +interesting and persuasive speaker. If I may so put it, his political +speeches were addressed as to a trial judge rather than to a jury, his +appeal being to reason and not to passion or prejudice. He could, in +rapid flights of campaigning, speak to many audiences in a day without +repeating himself. He was measured and urbane; his discourses abounded +in apt illustration; he was never dull. He never stooped to pietistic +clap-trap, or chanted the jaunty chauvinism that has so often caused the +Hoosier stars to blink. + +Among the Democratic leaders of that period, Hendricks was one of the +ablest, and a man of many attractive qualities. His dignity was always +impressive, and his appearance suggested the statesman of an earlier +time. It is one of immortality's harsh ironies that a man who was a +gentleman, and who stood moreover pretty squarely for the policies that +it pleased him to defend, should be published to the world in a bronze +effigy in his own city as a bandy-legged and tottering tramp, in a frock +coat that never was on sea or land. + +Joseph E. McDonald, a Senator in Congress, was held in affectionate +regard by a wide constituency. He was an independent and vigorous +character who never lost a certain raciness and tang. On my first timid +venture into the fabled East I rode with him in a day-coach from +Washington to New York on a slow train. At some point he saw a peddler +of fried oysters on a station platform, alighted to make a purchase, and +ate his luncheon quite democratically from the paper parcel in his car +seat. He convoyed me across the ferry, asked where I expected to stop, +and explained that he did not like the European plan; he liked, he said, +to have 'full swing at a bill of fare.' + +I used often to look upon the towering form of Daniel W. Voorhees, whom +Sulgrove, an Indiana journalist with a gift for translating Macaulay +into Hoosierese, had named 'The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash.' In a +crowded hotel lobby I can still see him, cloaked and silk-hatted, the +centre of the throng, and my strict upbringing in the antagonistic +political faith did not diminish my admiration for his eloquence. + +Such were some of the characters who came and went in the streets of our +provincial capital in those days. + + +III + +In discussions under captions similar to mine it is often maintained +that railways, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers are knitting us +together, so that soon we shall all be keyed to a metropolitan pitch. +The proof adduced in support of this is of the most trivial, but it +strikes me as wholly undesirable that we should all be ironed out and +conventionalized. In the matter of dress, for example, the women of our +town used to take their fashions from _Godey's_ and _Peterson's via_ +Cincinnati; but now that we are only eighteen hours from New York, with +a well-traveled path from the Wabash to Paris, my counselors among the +elders declare that the tone of our society--if I may use so perilous a +word--has changed little from our good old black alpaca days. The hobble +skirt receives prompt consideration in the 'Main' street of any town, +and is viewed with frank curiosity, but it is only a one day's wonder. A +lively runaway or the barbaric yawp of a new street fakir may dethrone +it at any time. + +New York and Boston tailors solicit custom among us biennially, but +nothing is so stubborn as our provincial distrust of fine raiment. I +looked with awe, in my boyhood, upon a pair of mammoth blue-jeans +trousers that were flung high from a flagstaff in the centre of +Indianapolis, in derision of a Democratic candidate for governor, James +D. Williams, who was addicted to the wearing of jeans. The Democrats +sagaciously accepted the challenge, made 'honest blue jeans' the +battle-cry, and defeated Benjamin Harrison, the 'kid-glove' candidate of +the Republicans. Harmless demagoguery this or bad judgment on the part +of the Republicans; and yet I dare say that if the sartorial issue +should again become acute in our politics the banner of bifurcated jeans +would triumph now as then. A Hoosier statesman who to-day occupies high +office once explained to me his refusal of sugar for his coffee by +remarking that he didn't like to waste sugar that way; he wanted to keep +it for his lettuce. I do not urge sugared lettuce as symbolizing our +higher provincialism, but mayonnaise may be poison to men who are +nevertheless competent to construe and administer law. + +It is much more significant that we are all thinking about the same +things at the same time, than that Farnam Street, Omaha, and Fifth +Avenue, New York, should vibrate to the same shade of necktie. The +distribution of periodicals is so managed that California and Maine cut +the leaves of their magazines on the same day. Rural free delivery has +hitched the farmer's wagon to the telegraph office, and you can't buy +his wife's butter now until he has scanned the produce market in his +newspaper. This immediacy of contact does not alter the provincial point +of view. New York and Texas, Oregon and Florida, will continue to see +things at different angles, and it is for the good of all of us that +this is so. We have no national political, social, or intellectual +centre. There is no 'season' in New York, as in London, during which all +persons distinguished in any of these particulars meet on common ground. +Washington is our nearest approach to such a meeting-place, but it +offers only short vistas. We of the country visit Boston for the +symphony, or New York for the opera, or Washington to view the +government machine at work, but nowhere do interesting people +representative of all our ninety millions ever assemble under one roof. +All our capitals are, as Lowell put it, 'fractional,' and we shall +hardly have a centre while our country is so nearly a continent. + +Nothing in our political system could be wiser than our dispersion into +provinces. Sweep from the map the lines that divide the states and we +should huddle like sheep suddenly deprived of the protection of known +walls and flung upon the open prairie. State lines and local pride are +in themselves a pledge of stability. The elasticity of our system makes +possible a variety of governmental experiments by which the whole +country profits. We should all rejoice that the parochial mind is so +open, so eager, so earnest, so tolerant. Even the most buckramed +conservative on the Eastern coastline, scornful of the political +follies of our far-lying provinces, must view with some interest the +dallyings of Oregon with the Referendum, and of Des Moines with the +Commission System. If Milwaukee wishes to try Socialism, the rest of us +need not complain. Democracy will cease to be democracy when all its +problems are solved and everybody votes the same ticket. + +States that produce the most cranks are prodigal of the corn that pays +the dividends on the railroads the cranks despise. Indiana's amiable +feeling toward New York is not altered by her sister's rejection or +acceptance of the direct primary, a benevolent device of noblest +intention, under which, not long ago, in my own commonwealth, my fellow +citizens expressed their distrust of me with unmistakable emphasis. It +is no great matter, but in open convention also I have perished by the +sword. Nothing can thwart the chastening hand of a righteous people. + +All passes; humor alone is the touchstone of democracy. I search the +newspapers daily for tidings of Kansas, and in the ways of Oklahoma I +find delight. The Emporia _Gazette_ is quite as patriotic as the +Springfield _Republican_ or the New York _Post_, and to my own taste, +far less depressing. I subscribed for a year to the Charleston _News and +Courier_, and was saddened by the tameness of its sentiments; for I +remember (it must have been in 1884) the shrinking horror with which I +saw daily in the Indiana Republican organ a quotation from Wade Hampton +to the effect that 'these are the same principles for which Lee and +Jackson fought four years on Virginia's soil.' Most of us are +entertained when Colonel Watterson rises to speak for Kentucky and +invokes the star-eyed goddess. When we call the roll of the states, if +Malvolio answer for any, let us suffer him in tolerance and rejoice in +his yellow stockings. 'God give them wisdom that have it; and those that +are fools, let them use their talents.' + +Every community has its dissenters, protestants, kickers, cranks, the +more the merrier. I early formed a high resolve to strive for membership +in this execrated company. George W. Julian,--one of the noblest of +Hoosiers,--who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice-President in +1852, a delegate to the first Republican convention, five times a member +of Congress, a supporter of Greeley's candidacy, and a Democrat in the +consulship of Cleveland, was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 I +was dusting law-books in an office where mugwumpery flourished, and +where the iniquities of the tariff, Matthew Arnold's theological +opinions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley were discussed +at intervals in the day's business. + + +IV + +It is constantly complained that we Americans give too much time to +politics, but there could be no safer way of utilizing that extra drop +of vital fluid which Matthew Arnold found in us. Epithets of opprobrium +pinned to a Nebraskan in 1896 were riveted upon a citizen of New York in +1910, and who, then, was the gentleman? No doubt many voices will cry in +the wilderness before we reach the promised land. A people which has +been fed on the Bible is bound to hear the rumble of Pharaoh's chariots. +It is in the blood to feel the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's +contumely. The winter evenings are long on the prairies, and we must +always be fashioning a crown for Cæsar or rehearsing his funeral rites. +No great danger can ever seriously menace the nation so long as the +remotest citizen clings to his faith that he is a part of the +governmental mechanism and can at any time throw it out of adjustment if +it doesn't run to suit him. He can go into the court-house and see the +men he helped to place in office; or if they were chosen in spite of +him, he pays his taxes just the same and waits for another chance to +turn the rascals out. + +Mr. Bryce wrote: 'This tendency to acquiescence and submission; this +sense of the insignificance of individual effort, this belief that the +affairs of men are swayed by large forces whose movement may be studied +but cannot be turned, I have ventured to call the Fatalism of the +Multitude.' It is, I should say, one of the most encouraging phenomena +of the score of years that have elapsed since Mr. Bryce's _American +Commonwealth_ appeared, that we have grown much less conscious of the +crushing weight of the mass. It has been with something of a child's +surprise in his ultimate successful manipulation of a toy whose +mechanism has baffled him that we have begun to realize that, after all, +the individual counts. The pressure of the mass will yet be felt, but in +spite of its persistence there are abundant signs that the individual is +asserting himself more and more, and even the undeniable acceptance of +collectivist ideas in many quarters helps to prove it. With all our +faults and defaults of understanding,--populism, free silver, Coxey's +army, and the rest of it,--we of the West have not done so badly. Be not +impatient with the young man Absalom; the mule knows his way to the oak +tree! + +Blaine lost Indiana in 1884; Bryan failed thrice to carry it. The +campaign of 1910 in Indiana was remarkable for the stubbornness of +'silent' voters, who listened respectfully to the orators but left the +managers of both parties in the air as to their intentions. In the +Indiana Democratic State Convention of 1910 a gentleman was furiously +hissed for ten minutes amid a scene of wildest tumult; but the cause he +advocated won, and the ticket nominated in that memorable convention +succeeded in November. Within fifty years Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois +have sent to Washington seven presidents, elected for ten terms. Without +discussing the value of their public services it may be said that it has +been an important demonstration to our Mid-Western people of the +closeness of their ties with the nation, that so many men of their own +soil have been chosen to the seat of the presidents; and it is +creditable to Maine and California that they have cheerfully acquiesced. +In Lincoln the provincial American most nobly asserted himself, and any +discussion of the value of provincial life and character in our politics +may well begin and end in him. We have seen verily that + + Fishers and choppers and ploughmen + Shall constitute a state. + +Whitman, addressing Grant on his return from his world's tour, declared +that it was not that the hero had walked 'with kings with even pace the +round world's promenade'; + + But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, + Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, + Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the + front, + Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round + world's promenade, + Were all so justified. + +What we miss and what we lack who live in the provinces seem to me of +little weight in the scale against our compensations. We slouch,--we are +deficient in the graces, we are prone to boast, and we lack in those +fine reticences that mark the cultivated citizen of the metropolis. We +like to talk, and we talk our problems out to a finish. Our +commonwealths rose in the ashes of the hunter's campfires, and we are +all a great neighborhood, united in a common understanding of what +democracy is, and animated by ideals of what we want it to be. That +saving humor which is a philosophy of life flourishes amid the tall +corn. We are old enough now--we of the West--to have built up in +ourselves a species of wisdom, founded upon experience, which is a part +of the continuing unwritten law of democracy. We are less likely these +days to 'wobble right' than we are to stand fast or march forward like +an army with banners. + +We provincials are immensely curious. Art, music, literature, +politics--nothing that is of contemporaneous human interest is alien to +us. If these things don't come to us we go to them. We are more truly +representative of the American ideal than our metropolitan cousins, +because (here I lay my head upon the block) we know more about, oh, so +many things! We know vastly more about the United States, for one thing. +We know what New York is thinking before New York herself knows it, +because we visit the metropolis to find out. Sleeping-cars have no +terrors for us, and a man who has never been west of Philadelphia seems +to us a singularly benighted being. Those of our Western school-teachers +who don't see Europe for three hundred dollars every summer get at least +as far east as Concord, to be photographed by the rude bridge that +arched the flood. + +That fine austerity, which the voluble Westerner finds so smothering on +the Boston and New York express, is lost utterly at Pittsburg. From +gentlemen cruising in day-coaches--rude wights who advertise their +personal sanitation and literacy by the toothbrush and fountain-pen +planted sturdily in their upper left-hand waistcoat pockets--one may +learn the most prodigious facts and the philosophy thereof. 'Sit over, +brother; there's hell to pay in the Balkans,' remarks the gentleman who +boarded the inter-urban at Peru or Connersville, and who would just as +lief discuss the papacy or child-labor, if revolutions are not to your +liking. + +In Boston a lady once expressed her surprise that I should be hastening +home for Thanksgiving Day. This, she thought, was a New England +festival. More recently I was asked by a Bostonian if I had ever heard +of Paul Revere. Nothing is more delightful in us, I think, than our +meekness before instruction. We strive to please; all we ask is 'to be +shown.' + +Our greatest gain is in leisure and the opportunity to ponder and brood. +In all these thousands of country towns live alert and shrewd students +of affairs. Where your New Yorker scans headlines as he 'commutes' +homeward, the villager reaches his own fireside without being shot +through a tube, and sits down and reads his newspaper thoroughly. When +he repairs to the drug-store to abuse or praise the powers that be, his +wife reads the paper, too. A United States Senator from a Middle +Western State, making a campaign for renomination preliminary to the +primaries, warned the people in rural communities against the newspaper +and periodical press with its scandals and heresies. 'Wait quietly by +your firesides, undisturbed by these false teachings,' he said in +effect; 'then go to your primaries and vote as you have always voted.' +His opponent won by thirty thousand,--the amiable answer of the little +red schoolhouse. + + +V + +A few days ago I visited again my native town. On the slope where I +played as a child I listened in vain for the mourning bugle; but on the +college campus a bronze tablet commemorative of those sons of Wabash who +had fought in the mighty war quickened the old impressions. The college +buildings wear a look of age in the gathering dusk. + + Coldly, sadly descends + The autumn evening. The field + Strewn with its dank yellow drifts + Of withered leaves, and the elms, + Fade into dimness apace, + Silent; hardly a shout + From a few boys late at their play! + +Brave airs of cityhood are apparent in the town, with its paved streets, +fine hall and library; and everywhere are wholesome life, comfort, and +peace. The train is soon hurrying through gray fields and dark +woodlands. Farmhouses are disclosed by glowing panes; lanterns flash +fitfully where farmers are making all fast for the night. The city is +reached as great factories are discharging their laborers, and I pass +from the station into a hurrying throng homeward bound. Against the sky +looms the dome of the capitol; the tall shaft of the soldiers' monument +rises ahead of me down the long street and vanishes starward. Here where +forests stood seventy-five years ago, in a state that has not yet +attained its centenary, is realized much that man has sought through all +the ages,--order, justice, and mercy, kindliness and good cheer. What we +lack we seek, and what we strive for we shall gain. And of such is the +kingdom of democracy. + + + + +Our Lady Poverty + +By Agnes Repplier + + +I + +The last people to read the literature of poverty are the poor, and this +fact may be cited as one of the ameliorations of their lot. If they were +assured day after day that they were degraded and enslaved, it would be +a trifle hard for them to cherish their respectability, and enjoy their +freedom. If their misery were dinned into their ears, they would +naturally cease being cheerful. If they were convinced that tears are +their portion, they would no longer have the temerity to laugh. Indeed +their mirth is frankly repellent to the dolorous writers of to-day. + + A burst of hollow laughter from a hopeless heart + +is permitted as seemly and in character; even the poet of the slums +grants this outlet for emotion; but the rude sounds which denote +hilarity disturb the sympathetic soul. One agitated lady describes with +shrinking horror the merriment of the scrub-women going to their labor. +All the dignity, all the sacredness of womanhood are defiled by these +poor old creatures tramping through the chill dawn; and yet, and +yet,--oh, mockery of nobler aspirations!--'The scrub-women were going to +work, and they went laughing!' + +The dismalness of serious writers, especially if humanity be their +theme, is steeping us in gloom. The obsession of sorrow seems the most +reasonable of all obsessions, because facts can be crowded upon facts +(to the general exclusion of truth) by way of argument and illustration. +And should facts fail, there are bitter generalizations which shroud us +like a pall. + + Behind all music we can hear + The insistent note of hunger-fear; + Beyond all beauty we can see + The land's defenseless misery. + +Mr. Percy MacKaye in his preface to that treatise on eugenics which he +has christened _To-Morrow_, and humorously designated as a play, makes +this inspiriting statement: 'Our world is hideously unhappy, and the +insufferable sense of that unhappiness is the consecration of modern +leaders in art. Realism is splendidly their incentive.' + +This opens up a cheering vista for the public. If the dramatists of the +near future are to have no finer consecration than an insufferable sense +of unhappiness, we must turn for amusement to lectures and organ +recitals. If novelists and poets are to be hallowed by grief, there will +be nothing left for light-hearted readers save the study of political +economy, erstwhile called the dismal science, but now, by comparison, +gay. No artist yet was ever born of an insufferable sense of +unhappiness. No leader and helper of men was ever bedewed with tears. +The world is old, and the world is wide. Of what use are we in its +tumultuous life, if we do not know its joys, its griefs, its high +emotions, its call to courage, and the echo of the laughter of the ages? + +Perhaps the only literature of poverty (I use the word 'literature' in a +purely courteous sense) which was ever written for the poor is that +amazing issue of tracts, _Village Politics_, _Tales for the Common +People_, and scores of similar productions, which a hundred years ago +were let loose upon rural England. The moral in all of them is the same, +and is expressed with engaging simplicity: 'Don't give trouble to people +better off than yourself.' The fact that many of these tracts had a +prodigious sale points to their distribution--by the rich--in quarters +where it was thought that they would do most good. They were probably +read in the same spirit as that in which a Sunday-school library was +read by two small and unregenerate boys of my acquaintance, who worked +through whole shelves at a fixed rate, ten cents for a short book, +twenty-five cents for a long one,--the money paid by a pious +grandmother, and a point of honor not to skip. + +The smug complacency of Hannah More and her sisterhood was rudely +disturbed by Ebenezer Elliott, who published his _Corn-Law Rhymer_, +with its profound pity and its somewhat impotent wrath, in 1831. England +woke up to the disturbing conviction that men and women were +starving,--always a disagreeable thing to contemplate,--and the Corn +Laws were repealed; but the 'Rhymes' were probably as little known to +the laborer of 1831 as was _Piers Plowman_ to the laborer of 1392. +Langland--to whom partial critics have for five hundred years ascribed +this great poem of discontent--was keenly alive to the value of +husbandry as a theme; and his ploughman came in time to be recognized as +the people's suffering representative; but the poet, after the fashion +of poets, wrote for 'lettered clerks,' of which class he was a shining +example, his praiseworthy purpose in life being to avoid 'common men's +work.' In the last century, _Les Misérables_ was called the 'Epic of the +Poor'; but its readers were, for the most part, as comfortably remote +from poverty as Victor Hugo himself, and as alive to the advantages of +wealth. + +In this age of print, the literature of poverty has swollen to an +enormous bulk. Statistical books, explicit and contradictory. Hopeful +books by social workers who see salvation in girls' clubs and refined +dancing. Hopeless books by other social workers who believe--or, at +least, who say--that the employed are enslaved by the employer, and that +women and children are the prey of men. Highly colored books by +adventurous young journalists who have masqueraded (for copy's sake) as +mill and factory hands. Gray books by casual observers who are paralyzed +by the mere sight of a slum. Furious books by rabid socialists who hold +that the poor will never be uplifted while there is left in the world a +man rich enough to pay them wages. Imaginative books by poets and +novelists who deal in realism to the exclusion of reality. All this +profusion and confusion of matter is thrust upon us month after month, +while the working-man reads his newspaper, and the working-girl reads _A +Coronet of Shame_, or _Lost in Fate's Fearful Abyss_. + +It was Mr. George Gissing who, in his studies of the poor, first made +popular the invective style; who hurled at London such epithets as +'pest-stricken,' 'city of the damned,' 'intimacies of abomination,' +'utmost limits of dread,'--phrases which have been faithfully copied by +shuddering defamers of New York and Chicago. Mr. John Burns, for +example, after a brief visit to the United States, said that Chicago was +a pocket edition of hell; and subsequently, without, we hope, any +personal experience to back him, said that hell was a pocket edition of +Chicago. + +Americans have borrowed these flowers of speech from England, and have +invaded her territory. Was it because he could find no poverty at home +worthy of his strenuous pen, that Mr. Jack London crossed the sea to +write up the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, already so +abundantly exploited by English authors? Was there anything _he_ could +add to the dark pictures of Mr. Gissing, or to the more convincing +studies of Mr. Arthur Morrison, who has lit up the gloom with a grim +humor, not very mirthful, but acutely and unimpeachably human? Mr. +Gissing's poor have money for nothing but beer (it would be a bold +writer who denied his starvelings beer); but Mr. Morrison sees his way +occasionally to bacon, and tea, and tinned beef, and even, at rare +intervals, to a pompous funeral, provided that the money for mutes can +be saved from the sick man's diet. He is the legitimate successor of +Dickens, and Dickens knew his field from experience rather than from +observation. The lighthouse-keeper sees the storm, but the cabin boy +feels it. + +In the annals of poverty there are few pages more poignant than the one +which describes the sick child, Charles Dickens, taken home from work by +a kind-hearted lad, and his shame lest this boy should learn that 'home' +for him meant the debtors' prison. In vain he tried to get rid of his +conductor, Bob Fagin by name, protesting that he was well enough to walk +alone. Bob knew he was not, and stuck to his side. Together they pushed +along until little Charles was fainting with weakness and fatigue. Then +in desperation he pretended that he lived in a decent house near +Southwark bridge, and darted up the steps with a joyous air of being at +last in haven, only to creep down again when Bob's back was turned, and +drag his slow steps to the Marshalsea. + +Out of this dismal and precocious experience sprang two results,--a +passionate resolve _not_ to be what circumstances were conspiring to +make him, and an insight into the uncalculating habits which deepen and +soften poverty. Dickens--once free of institutions--wrote of the poor, +even of the London poor, with amazing geniality; but it cannot be denied +that his infallible recipe for brightening up the scene is the timely +introduction of a pot of porter, or a pitcher of steaming flip. If we +try to think of him writing in a prohibition state, we shall realize +that he owed as much to beer and punch as ever Horace did to wine. +Imagination fails to grasp either of them in the rôle of a +water-drinker. The poor of Dickens are a sturdy lot, but they are jovial +only in their cups. His wholesome hatred of institutions would have been +intensified could he have lived to hear the Camberwell Board of +Guardians decide--at the instigation, alas! of a woman member--that the +single mug of beer which for years had solaced the inmates of Camberwell +Workhouse on Christmas Day, should hereafter be abolished as an immoral +indulgence. The generous ghost of Dickens must have groaned in Heaven +over that melancholy and mean reform. + + +II + +'To achieve what man may, to bear what man must,'--since the struggle +for life began, this has been the purpose and the pride of humanity. We +Americans were trained from childhood to believe that while, in the +final issue, each of us must answer for himself, the country--our +country--gave to all scope for effort, and chance of victory. + +This was not mere Fourth of July oratory, nor the fervent utterances of +presidential campaigns. It was a serious and a sober faith, based upon +some knowledge of the Constitution, some inheritance of experience, some +element of democracy which flavored our early lives. The mere sense of +space carried with it a profound and eager hopefulness. Those of us +whose fathers or whose grandfathers had crossed the sea to escape from +more cramping conditions, felt this atmosphere of independence keenly +and consciously. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers brought +up their families in an alien land with decent industry and thrift, were +aware, even in childhood, that the Republic had fostered our growth. +Therefore am I pardonably bewildered when I hear American workmen called +'slaves' and 'prisoners of starvation,' and American employers called +'base oppressors,' and 'despots on their thrones.' This fantastic +nomenclature seems immeasurably removed from the temperate language in +which were formulated the temperate convictions of my youth. + +The assumption that the American laborer to-day stands where the French +laborer stood before the Revolution, where the English laborer stood +before the passing of the first Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn +Laws, shows a lack of historical perspective. The assumption that all +strikes represent an agonized protest against tyranny, an agonized +appeal from injustice, is a perversion of truth. The assumption that +child-labor in the United States is the blot upon civilization that it +was in England seventy years ago, denies the duty of comparison. If the +people who write verses about 'Labor Crucified' would make a table of +the wages paid to skilled and unskilled workmen, from the Chicago +carpenter to the Philadelphia street-cleaner, they might sing in a more +cheerful strain. If the people who to-day echo the bitterest lines of +Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' would ascertain and bear in mind +the proportion of little boys and girls who are going to school in the +United States, how many years they average, and how much the country +pays for their education, they might spare us some violent invectives. +Even Mr. Robert Hunter permits himself the use of the word 'cannibalism' +when speaking of child-workers, and this in the face of legislation +which every year extends its area, and grows more stringently +protective. + +There is a great deal of loose writing on this important theme, and it +stands in the way of amendment. It is assumed that parents are seldom or +never to blame for sending their children to work. The mill-owner +snatches them from their mothers' arms. It is assumed that the child who +works would--if there were no employment for him--be at school, or at +play, happy, healthy, and well-nourished. No one even alludes to the +cruel poverty of the South, which, for generations before the cotton +mills were built, stunted the growth and sapped the strength of Southern +children. They lived, we are told, a 'wholesome rural life,' and the +greed of the capitalist is alone responsible for the blighting of their +pastoral paradise. + +There is no need to write like this. The question at issue is a grave +and simple one. It makes its appeal to the conscience and the sense of +the nation, and every year sees some measure of reform. If a baby girl +in an American city, a child of three or five, is forced to toil all +day, winding artificial daisy stems at a penny a hundred, let the name +of her employer and the place of her employment be made public. The +Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children can deal peremptorily +with such a case. It is not even the privilege of parents to work a +little child so relentlessly. If the pathetic story is not supported by +facts, or is not in accord with facts, it is neither wise nor well to +publish it. Why should a sober periodical, like the _Child-Labor +Bulletin_, devoted to a good cause, print a poem called 'A Song of the +Factory,' in which happy children are portrayed as sporting in beautiful +meadows, + + Idling among the feathery blooms, + +until a sort of ogre comes along, builds a factory, drives the poor +innocents into it, and compels them to + + Crouch all day by the spindles, wizened, and wan, and old, + +earning 'his bread.' Apparently--and this is the gist of the +matter--they have no need to earn bread for themselves. The accompanying +illustrations show us on one page a prettily dressed little girl sitting +daisy-crowned in the fields, and, on the other page, a ragged and +tattered little girl with a shawl over her head going to the work which +has but too plainly impoverished her. Hansel and Gretel are not more +distinctly within the boundaries of fairyland than are these entrapped +children. The witch is not more distinctly a child-eating hobgoblin than +is the capitalist of such fervid song. + +The sickly and unreasoning tone which pervades the literature of poverty +is demoralizing. There is nothing helpful in the assumption that effort +is vain, resistance hopeless, and the world monstrously cruel. The +dominating element of such prose and verse is a bleak despair, unmanly, +unwomanly, inhuman. Out of the abundance of material before me, I quote +a single poem, published in the New York _Call_, reprinted in the +_Survey_, and christened mockingly,-- + + THE STRAIGHT ROAD + + They got y', kid, they got y', just like I said they would; + You tried to walk the narrow path, + You tried, and got an awful laugh; + And laughs are all y' did get, kid, they got y' good! + + They never saw the little kid,--the kid I used to know, + The little bare-legged girl back home, + The little girl that played alone, + They don't know half the things I know, kid; ain't it so? + + They got y', kid, they got y',--you know they got y' right; + They waited till they saw y' limp, + Then introduced y' to the pimp, + Ah, you were down then, kid, and couldn't fight. + + I guess you know what some don't know, and others know damn well, + That sweatshops don't grow angel's wings, + That working girls is easy things, + And poverty's the straightest road to hell. + +And this is what our Lady Poverty, bride of Saint Francis, friend of all +holiness, counsel of all perfection, has come to mean in these years of +grace! She who was once the surest guide to Heaven now leads her chosen +ones to Hell. She who was once beloved by the devout and honored by the +just, is now a scandal and a shame, the friend of harlotry, the +instigator of crime. Even a true poet like Francis Thompson laments that +the poverty exalted by Christ should have been cast down from her high +caste. + + All men did admire + Her modest looks, her ragged, sweet attire + In which the ribboned shoe could not compete + With her clear simple feet. + But Satan, envying Thee thy one ewe-lamb, + With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity + Was not content, till last unthought-of she + Was his to damn. + Thine ingrate, ignorant lamb + He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her + This thing which qualms the air, + Vile, terrible, old, + Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold. + +These are the words of one to whom the London gutters were for years a +home, and whose strengthless manhood lay inert under a burden of pain he +had no courage to lift. Yet never was sufferer more shone upon by +kindness than was Francis Thompson; never was man better fitted to +testify to the goodness of a bad world. And he did bear such brave +testimony again and yet again, so that the bulk of his verse is alien to +pessimism,--'every stanza an act of faith, and a declaration of good +will.' + +The demoralizing quality of such stuff as 'The Straight Road,' which is +forced upon us with increasing pertinacity, is its denial of kindness, +its evading of obligation. Temptation is not only the occasion, but the +justifier of sin,--a point of view which plays havoc with our common +standard of morality. When a vicious young millionaire like Harry Thaw +runs amuck through his crude and evil environment, we sigh and say, 'His +money ruined him.' When a poor young woman abandons her weary +frugalities for the questionable pleasures of prostitution, we sigh and +say, 'Her poverty drove her to it.' Where then does goodness dwell? What +part does honor play? The Sieur de Joinville, in his memoirs of Saint +Louis, tells us that a certain man, sore beset by the pressure of +temptation, sought counsel from the Bishop of Paris, 'whose Christian +name was William.' And this wise William of Paris said to him: 'The +castle of Montl'héry stands in the safe heart of France, and no invading +hosts assail it. But the castle of La Rochelle in Poitou stands on the +line of battle. Day and night it must be guarded from assault, and it +has suffered grievously. Which gentleman, think you, the King holds high +in favor, the governor of Montl'héry, or the governor of La Rochelle? +The post of danger is the post of glory, and he who is sorely wounded in +the combat is honored by God and man.' + + +III + +There are those whose ardor for humanity finds a congenial vent in the +denouncement of all they see about them,--all the institutions of their +country, all the laborious processes of civilization. Sociologists of +this type speak and write of an ordinary American city in terms which +Dante might have envied. Nobody, it would seem, is ever cured in its +hospitals; they only lie on 'cots of pain.' Nobody is ever reformed in +its reformatories. Nobody is reared to decency in its asylums. Nobody +is--apparently--educated in its schools. Its industries are ravenous +beasts, sucking the blood of workers; its poor are 'shackled slaves'; +its humble homes are 'dens.' I have heard a philanthropic lecturer talk +to the poor upon the housing of the poor. She threw on a screen enlarged +photographs of narrow streets and tenement rooms which looked to me +unspeakably dreary, but which the working-women around me gazed at in +mild perplexity, seeing nothing amiss, and wondering that their +residences should be held up to this unseemly scorn. They did not do as +did the angry Italians of a New Jersey town,--smash the invidious +pictures which shamed their homes; they sat in stolid silence and +discomfiture, dimly conscious of an unresented insult. + +It is hard to grasp a point of view immeasurably remote from our own; +but what can we understand of other lives unless we do this difficult +thing? Old women in the out-wards of an almshouse (of all earthly abodes +the saddest) have boasted to me that their floors were scrubbed every +other day, and their sheets changed once a week; and this braggart humor +stunned my senses until I called to mind the floor and the bed of one of +them (an extraordinarily dirty old woman) whom I had known in other +years. Last winter the workers in a settlement house were called upon at +midnight to succor a woman who had been kicked and beaten into +unconsciousness by a drunken husband. The poor creature was all one +bleeding bruise. When she was revived, her dim eyes traveled over the +horrified faces about her. 'It's pretty bad,' she gasped, 'it's mighty +bad'; and then, with another look at the group of protecting, pitying +spinsters, 'but it must be something fierce to be an old maid.' + +The city is a good friend to the poor. It gives them day nurseries for +their babies, kindergartens for their little children, schools for their +boys and girls, playgrounds, swimming-pools, recreation piers, +reading-rooms, libraries, churches, clubs, hospitals, cheap amusements, +open-air concerts, employment agencies, the companionship of their kind, +and the chance of a friend at need. In return, the poor love the city, +and cling to it with reasonable but somewhat stifling affection. They +know that the hardest thing in life is to be isolated,--'unrelated,' to +use Carlyle's apt word; and they escape this fate by eschewing the +much-lauded fields and farms. They know also that in the country they +must stand or fall by their own unaided efforts, they must learn the +hard lesson of self-reliance. Many of them propose to live, as did the +astute author of _Piers Plowman_, 'in the town, and on the town as +well.' Moreover, pleasure means as much to them as it does to the rest +of us. We hardly needed Mr. Chesterton to tell us that a visit to a +corner saloon may be just as exciting an event to a tenement-house +dweller, as a dinner at a gold-and-marble hotel is to the average +middle-class citizen; and that the tenement-house dweller may be just as +moderate in his potations:-- + + Merrily taking twopenny rum, and cheese with a pocket knife. + +Poverty, we are assured, is an 'error,' like ill-health and crime. It is +an anachronism in civilization, a stain upon a wisely governed land. But +into our country which, after a human fashion, is both wise and foolish, +pours the poverty of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with +but a few dollars between them and want; with scant equipment, physical +or mental, for the struggle of life; with an inheritance of feebleness +from ill-nourished generations before them,--this is the problem which +the United States faces courageously, and solves as best she can. What +she cannot do is miraculously to convert poverty into plenty,--certainly +not before the next year doubles, and the third year trebles the +miracle-seeking multitude. She cannot properly house or profitably +employ a million of immigrants before the next million is clamoring at +her doors. Nor is she even given a fair chance to accomplish her giant +task. The demagogues who are employed in the congenial sport of railroad +baiting, and who are enjoying beyond measure the fun of chivying +business interests into dusty corners, are the ones to lift up their +voices in shrill appeal for the army of the unemployed. They refuse to +connect one phenomenon with the other. The notion that crippling +industries will benefit the industrious is not so new as it seems. Æsop +must have had a clear insight into its workings when he wrote the fable +of the goose that laid the golden egg. + +The City of New York expends, according to a recent report of the +Hospital Investigating Committee, more than a million of dollars a year +for the care of sick, defective, and otherwise helpless aliens. It +expended in 1913 nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the care of +aliens who had been in this country less than five years. This is the +record of our greatest city, the one in which the astute immigrant takes +up his abode. The education she gives her little foreign-born children +comprises for the most part manual and vocational training, clinics for +the defective, schools for the incorrigible, free or cost-price lunches, +doctoring, dentistry, the care of trained nurses, and a score of similar +attentions unknown to an earlier generation, undreamed of in the +countries whence these children come. In return for such fostering care, +New York is held up to execration because she has the money to pay the +taxes which are expended in this fashion, because she lays the golden +egg which benefits the poor of twenty nations. Her unemployed +(reinforced hugely from less favored communities) riot in her streets +and churches, and agitators curse her for a thing of evil, a city of +palaces and slums, corroded with the + + Shame of lives that lie + Couched in ease, while down the streets + Pain and want go by. + +The only people who take short views of life are the poor, the poor +whose daily wage is spent on their daily needs. Clerks and bookkeepers +and small tradesmen (toilers upon whose struggle for decency and +independence nobody ever wastes a word of sympathy) may fret over the +uncertainty of their future, the narrow margin which lies between them +and want. But the workman and his family have a courage of their own, +the courage of the soldier who does not spend the night before battle +calculating his chances of a gun-shot wound, or of a legless future. It +is exasperating to hear a teamster's wife cheerfully announce the coming +of her tenth baby; but the calmness with which she faces the situation +has in it something human and elemental. It is exasperating to see the +teamster risk illness and loss of work (he might at least pull off his +wet clothes when he gets home); but he tells you he has not gone to his +grave with a cold _yet_, and this careless confidence saves him as much +as it costs. I read recently an economist's sorrowful complaint that +families, in need of the necessities of life, go to moving-picture +shows; that women, with their husbands' scanty earnings in their hands, +take their children to these blithesome entertainments instead of buying +the Sunday dinner. It sounds like the citizens who buy motor cars +instead of paying off the mortgages on their homes, and it is an error +of judgment which the working man is little likely to condone; but that +the pleasure-seeking impulse--which social workers assign exclusively to +the spirit of youth--should mutiny in a matron's bones suggests +survivals of cheerfulness, high lights amid the gloom. + +The deprecation of earthly anxiety taught by the Gospels, the precedence +given to the poor by the New Testament, the value placed upon voluntary +poverty by the Christian Church,--these things have for nineteen hundred +years helped in the moulding of men. There still remain some leaven of +courage, some savor of philosophy, some echoes of ancient wisdom (heard +oftenest from uneducated men), some laughter loud and careless as the +laughter of the Middle Ages, some slow sense of justice, not easy to +pervert. These qualities are perhaps as helpful as the 'divine +discontent' fostered by enthusiasts for sorrow, the cowardice bred by +insistence upon trouble and anxiety, the rancor engendered by invectives +against earth and heaven. No lot is bettered by having its hardships +emphasized. No man is helped by the drowning of his courage, the +destruction of his good-will, the paralyzing grip of + + Envy with squinting eyes, + Sick of a strange disease, his neighbor's health. + + + + +Entertaining the Candidate + +By Katharine Baker + + +Bag in hand, brother stops in for fifteen minutes, from campaigning, to +get some clean shirts. He says the candidate will be in town day after +to-morrow. Do we want him to come here, or shall he go to a hotel? + +We want him, of course. But we deprecate the brevity of this notice. +Also the cook and chambermaid are new, and remarkably inexpert. Brother, +however, declines to feel any concern. His confidence in our power to +cope with emergencies is flattering if exasperating. + +There is nothing in the markets at this time of year. Guests have a +malignant facility in choosing such times. We scour the country for +forty miles in search of green vegetables. We confide in the fishmonger, +who grieves sympathetically over the 'phone, because all crabs are now +cold-storage, and he'd be deceiving us if he said otherwise. + +Still we are determined to have luncheon prepared in the house. Last +time the august judge dined with us we summoned a caterer from a hundred +miles away, and though the caterer's food was good, it was late. We +love promptness, and we are going to have it. Ladies knew all about +efficiency long before Mr. Frederick Taylor. Only they couldn't teach it +to servants, and he would find he couldn't either. But every mistress of +a house knows how to make short cuts, and is expert at 'record +production' in emergencies. + +The casual brother says there will be one or two dozen people at +luncheon. He will telephone us fifteen minutes before they arrive. Yes, +really, that's the best he can do. + +So we prepare for one or two dozen people, and they must sit down to +luncheon because men hate a buffet meal. We struggle with the problem, +how many chickens are required for twelve or twenty-four people? The +answer, however, is really obvious. Enough for twenty-four will be +enough for twelve. + +Day after to-morrow arrives. The gardener comes in to lay hearth-fires +and carry tables. We get out china and silver. We make salad and rolls, +fruit-cup and cake. We guide the cook's faltering steps over the +critical moments of soup and chicken. We do the oysters in our own +particular way, which we fancy inimitable. We arrange bushels of flowers +in bowls, vases, and baskets, and set them on mantels, tables, +book-cases, everywhere that a flower can find a footing. The chauffeur +comes in proudly with the flower-holder from the limousine, and we fill +it in honor of the distinguished guest. + +Then we go outside to see that the approach to the house is +satisfactory. The bland old gardener points to the ivy-covered wall, and +says with innocent joy, '---- it, ain't that ivory the prettiest thing +you ever saw in your life?' And we can't deny that the lawn looks well, +with ivy, and cosmos, and innumerable chrysanthemums. + +The cook and chambermaid will have to help wait on the table. The +chambermaid, who is what the butler contemptuously calls 'an educated +nigger,' and so knows nothing useful, announces that she has no white +uniform. All she has is a cold in her head. We give her a blouse and +skirt, wondering why Providence doesn't eliminate the unfit. + +We run upstairs to put on our costliest shoes and stockings, and our +most perishable gown. The leisurely brother gets us on the wire to say +that there will be twenty guests in ten minutes. + +Descending, we reset the tables to seat twenty guests, light the +wood-fires, toss together twenty mint-juleps, and a few over for luck, +repeat our clear instructions to the goggling chambermaid, desperately +implore the butler to see that she keeps on the job, drop a last touch +of flavoring in the soup, and are sitting by the fire with an air of +childish gayety and carelessness when the train of motor-cars draws up +to the door. + +Here is the judge, courteous and authoritative. Here is his assiduous +suite. The room fills with faces well known in every country that an +illustrated newspaper can penetrate. From the Golden Gate and the Rio +Grande, from New York and Alabama, these men have come together, intent +on wresting to themselves the control of the Western Hemisphere. Now +they are a sort of highly respectable guerillas. To-morrow, very likely, +they will be awe-inspiring magnates. + +Theoretically we are impressed. Actually they have mannerisms, and some +of them wear spectacles. We reflect that the triumvirs very likely had +mannerisms, too, and Antony himself might have been glad to own +spectacles. We try to feel reverence for the high calling of these men. +We hope they'll like our luncheon. + +The butler brings in the juleps and we maintain a detached look, as +though those juleps were just a happy thought of the butler himself, and +we were as much surprised as anybody. The judge won't have one, but most +everybody else will. The newspaper men look love and gratitude at the +butler. + +That earnest youth is the judge's secretary. The huge, iron-gray man +expects to be a governor after November fifth, if dreams come true. The +amiable old gentleman who never leaves the judge's side, has come two +thousand miles out of pure political enthusiasm, to protect the +candidate from assassins. He can do it, too, we conclude, when we look +past his smiling mouth into his steely eyes. + +Here is the campaign manager, business man and man-of-the-world. + +This pretty little newspaper-woman from Utah implores us to get an +utterance on suffrage from the judge. Just a word. It will save him +thousands of votes. Well, she's a dear little thing, but we can't take +advantage of our guest. + +Luncheon is announced. Brother, slightly apologetic, murmurs that there +are twenty-three. Entirely unforeseen. He babbles incoherently. + +But it's all right. We women won't come to the table. Voting and eating +and things like that are better left to the men anyway. Why should women +want to do either, when they have fathers and brothers to do it for +them? We can sit in the gallery and watch. It's very nice for us. And +exclusive. Nothing promiscuous. Yes, go on. We'll wait. + +Whoever is listening to our conversation professes heartbreak at our +decision, and edges toward the rapidly filling dining-room. + +We sit down to play lady of leisure, in various affected attitudes. We +are not going near the kitchen again. The luncheon is simple. Everything +is perfectly arranged. The servants can do it all. It's mere machine +work. + +From afar we observe the soup vanishing. Then one by one we +stammer,--'The mayonnaise--'--'I wonder if the rolls are hot--'--'Cook's +coffee is impossible,'--fade silently up the front stair, and scurry +down the kitchen-way. + +We cover the perishable gown with a huge white apron, we send up a +fervent prayer for the costly shoes, and go where we are needed most. + +We save the day for good coffee. With the precision of a juggler we +rescue plates from the chambermaid, who is overcome by this introduction +to the great world and dawdles contemplatively through the pantry door. +Charmed with our proficiency, she stands by our side, and watches us +clear a shelf of china in the twinkling of an eye. If she could find a +stool, she would sit at our feet, making motion studies. But she +couldn't find it if it were already there. She couldn't find anything. +We order her back to the dining-room, where she takes up a strategic +position by the window, from which she can idly survey the mob outside, +and the hungry men within. + +The last coffee-cup has passed through the doorway. Cigars and matches +are circulating in the butler's capable hands. No more need for us. + +We shed the enveloping aprons, disappear from the kitchen, and +materialize again, elegantly useless, in the drawing-room. Nobody can +say that luncheon wasn't hot and promptly served. + +Chairs begin to clatter. They are rising from the table. A brass band +outside bursts into being. + +Brother had foretold that band to us, and we had expressed vivid +doubts. He said it would cost eighty dollars. Now eighty dollars in +itself is a respectable sum, a sum capable even of exerting some mild +fascination, but eighty dollars viewed in relation to a band becomes +merely ludicrous. + +We said an eighty-dollar band was a thing innately impossible, like +free-trade, or a dachshund. Brother attested that the next best grade of +band would demand eight hundred. We justly caviled at eight hundred. We +inquired, Why any band? Brother claimed that it would make a cheerful +noise, and we yielded. + +So at this moment the band begins to make a noise. We perceive at once +that the price was accurately gauged. It is unquestionably an +eighty-dollar band. We begin to believe in dachshunds. + +To these supposedly cheerful strains the gentlemen stream into the +drawing-room. They beam repletely. They tell us what a fine luncheon it +was. They are eloquent about it. All the conditions of their +entertainment were ideal, they would have us believe. They imply that we +are mighty lucky, in that our men can provide us with such a luxurious +existence. They smile with majestic benignity at these fair, but +frivolous pensioners on masculine bounty. American women are petted, +helpless dolls, anyway. Foreigners have said so. They clasp our useless +hands in fervent farewells. They proceed in state to the waiting cars. +They hope we will follow them to the meeting. Oh, yes, we will come, +though incapable of apprehending the high problems of government. + +Led by the honest band, surrounded by flags, followed by cheers, they +disappear in magnificent procession. Now we may straggle to the +dining-room and eat cold though matchless oysters, tepid chicken, and in +general whatever there is any left of. + +The chambermaid has broken a lovely old Minton plate. We are glad we +didn't use the coffee-cups that were made in France for Dolly Madison. +She would have enjoyed wrecking those. + +We hurry, because we don't want to miss the meeting altogether. We think +enviously of the men. In our secret souls, we'd like to campaign. We +love to talk better than anything else in the world, and we could make +nice speeches, too. But we must do the oysters and the odd jobs, and +keep the hearth-fires going, like responsible vestal virgins. It's +woman's sphere. Man gave it to her because he didn't want it himself. + + + + +The Street + +By Simeon Strunsky + + +It is two short blocks from my office near Park Row to the Subway +station where I take the express for Belshazzar Court. Eight months in +the year it is my endeavor to traverse this distance as quickly as I +can. This is done by cutting diagonally across the street traffic. By +virtue of the law governing right-angled triangles I thus save as much +as fifty feet and one fifth of a minute of time. In the course of a year +this saving amounts to sixty minutes, which may be profitably spent over +a two-reel presentation of 'The Moonshiner's Bride,' supplemented by an +intimate picture of Lumbering in Saskatchewan. But with the coming of +warm weather my habits change. It grows more difficult to plunge into +the murk of the Subway. + +A foretaste of the languor of June is in the air. The turnstile +storm-doors in our office building, which have been put aside for brief +periods during the first deceptive approaches of spring, only to come +back triumphant from Elba, have been definitively removed. The +steel-workers pace their girders twenty floors high almost in +mid-season form, and their pneumatic hammers scold and chatter through +the sultry hours. The soda-fountains are bright with new compounds whose +names ingeniously reflect the world's progress from day to day in +politics, science, and the arts. From my window I can see the long black +steamships pushing down to the sea, and they raise vague speculations in +my mind about the cost of living in the vicinity of Sorrento and +Fontainebleau. On such a day I am reminded of my physician's orders, +issued last December, to walk a mile every afternoon on leaving my +office. So I stroll up Broadway with the intention of taking my train +farther up-town, at Fourteenth Street. + +The doctor did not say stroll. He said a brisk walk with head erect, +chest thrown out, diaphragm well contracted, and a general aspect of +money in the bank. But here enters human perversity. The only place +where I am in the mood to walk after the prescribed military fashion is +in the open country. Just where by all accounts I ought to be sauntering +without heed to time, studying the lovely texts which Nature has set +down in the modest type-forms selected from her inexhaustible fonts,--in +the minion of ripening berries, in the nonpareil of crawling insect +life, the agate of tendril and filament, and the 12-point diamond of the +dust,--there I stride along and see little. + +And in the city, where I should swing along briskly, I lounge. What is +there on Broadway to linger over? On Broadway, Nature has used her +biggest, fattest type-forms. Tall, flat, building fronts, brazen with +many windows and ribbed with commercial gilt lettering six feet high; +shrieking proclamations of auction sales written in letters of fire on +vast canvasses; railway posters in scarlet and blue and green; rotatory +barber-poles striving at the national colors and producing vertigo; +banners, escutcheons, crests, in all the primary colors--surely none of +these things needs poring over. And I know them with my eyes closed. I +know the windows where lithe youths in gymnasium dress demonstrate the +virtue of home exercises; the windows where other young men do nothing +but put on and take off patent reversible near-linen collars; where +young women deftly roll cigarettes; where other young women whittle at +sticks with miraculously stropped razors. I know these things by heart, +yet I linger over them in flagrantly unhygienic attitudes, my shoulders +bent forward and my chest and diaphragm in a position precisely the +reverse of that prescribed by the doctor. + +Perhaps the thing that makes me linger before these familiar sights is +the odd circumstance that in Broadway's shop-windows Nature is almost +never herself, but is either supernatural or artificial. Nature, for +instance, never intended that razors should cut wood and remain sharp; +that linen collars should keep on getting cleaner the longer they are +worn; that glass should not break; that ink should not stain; that +gauze should not tear; that an object worth five dollars should sell for +$1.39; but all these things happen in Broadway windows. Williams, whom I +meet now and then, who sometimes turns and walks up with me to +Fourteenth Street, pointed out to me the other day how strange a thing +it was that the one street which has become a synonym for 'real life' to +all good suburban Americans is not real at all, but is crowded either +with miracles or with imitations. + +The windows on Broadway glow with wax fruits and with flowers of muslin +and taffeta drawn by bounteous Nature from her storehouses in Parisian +garret workshops. Broadway's ostrich feathers have been plucked in East +Side tenements. The huge cigars in the tobacconist's windows are of +wood. The enormous bottles of champagne in the saloons are of cardboard, +and empty. The tall scaffoldings of proprietary medicine bottles in the +drug shops are of paper. 'Why,' said Williams, 'even the jewelry sold in +the Japanese auction stores is not genuine, and the sellers are not +Japanese.' + +This bustling mart of commerce, as the generation after the Civil War +used to say, is only a world of illusion. Artificial flowers, artificial +fruits, artificial limbs, tobacco, rubber, silks, woolens, straws, gold, +silver. The young men and women who manipulate razors and elastic cords +are real, but not always. Williams and I once stood for a long while +and gazed at a young woman posing in a drug-shop window, and argued +whether she was alive. Ultimately she winked and Williams gloated over +me. But how do I know her wink was real? At any rate the great mass of +human life in the windows is artificial. The ladies who smile out of +charming morning costumes are obviously of lining and plaster. Their +smug Herculean husbands in pajamas preserve their equanimity in the +severest winter weather only because of their wire-and-plaster +constitution. The baby reposing in its beribboned crib is china and +excelsior. Illusion everywhere. + +But the Broadway crowd is real. You only have to buffet it for five +minutes to feel, in eyes and arms and shoulders, how real it is. When I +was a boy and was taken to the circus it was always an amazing thing to +me that there should be so many people in the street moving in a +direction away from the circus. Something of this sensation still besets +me whenever we go down in the Subway from Belshazzar Court to hear +Caruso. The presence of all the other people on our train is simple +enough. They are all on their way to hear Caruso. But what of the crowds +in the trains that flash by in the opposite direction? It is not a +question of feeling sorry for them. I try to understand and I fail. But +on Broadway on a late summer afternoon the obverse is true. The natural +thing is that the living tide as it presses south shall beat me back, +halt me, eddy around me. I know that there are people moving north with +me, but I am not acutely aware of them. This onrush of faces converges +on me alone. It is I against half the world. + +And then suddenly out of the surge of faces one leaps out at me. It is +Williams, whose doctor has told him that the surest way of fighting down +the lust for tobacco is to walk down from his office to the ferry every +afternoon. Williams and I salute each other after the fashion of +Broadway, which is to exchange greetings backward over the shoulder. +This is the first step in an elaborate minuet. Because we have passed +each other before recognition came, our hands fly out backward. Now we +whirl half around, so that I who have been moving north face the west, +while Williams, who has been traveling south, now looks east. Our +clasped hands strain at each other as we stand there poised for flight +after the first greeting. A quarter of a minute perhaps, and we have +said good-bye. + +But if the critical quarter of a minute passes, there ensues a change of +geographical position which corresponds to a change of soul within us. I +suddenly say to myself that there are plenty of trains to be had at +Fourteenth Street. Williams recalls that another boat will leave Battery +Place shortly after the one he is bound for. So the tension of our +outstretched arms relaxes. I, who have been facing west, complete the +half circle and swing south. Williams veers due north, and we two men +stand face to face. The beat and clamor of the crowd fall away from us +like a well-trained stage mob. We are in Broadway, but not of it. + +'Well, what's the good word?' says Williams. + +When two men meet on Broadway the spirit of optimism strikes fire. We +begin by asking each other what the good word is. We take it for granted +that neither of us has anything but a chronicle of victory and courage +to relate. What other word but the good word is tolerable in the lexicon +of living, upstanding men? Failure is only for the dead. Surrender is +for the man with yellow in his nature. So Williams and I pay our +acknowledgments to this best of possible worlds. I give Williams the +good word. I make no allusion to the fact that I have spent a miserable +night in communion with neuralgia; how can that possibly concern him? +Another manuscript came back this morning from an editor who regretted +that his is the most unintelligent body of readers in the country. The +third cook in three weeks left us last night after making vigorous +reflections on my wife's good nature and my own appearance. Only an hour +ago, as I was watching the long, black steamers bound for Sorrento and +Fontainebleau, the monotony of one's treadmill work, the flat +unprofitableness of scribbling endlessly on sheets of paper, had become +almost a nausea. But Williams will know nothing of this from me. Why +should he? He may have been sitting up all night with a sick child. At +this very moment the thought of the little parched lips, the moan, the +unseeing eyes, may be tearing at his entrails; but he in turn gives me +the good word, and many others after that, and we pass on. + +But sometimes I doubt. This splendid optimism of people on Broadway, in +the Subway and in the shops and offices--is it really a sign of high +spiritual courage, or is it just lack of sensibility? Do we find it easy +to keep a stiff upper lip, to buck up, to never say die, because we are +brave men, or simply because we lack the sensitiveness and the +imagination to react to pain? It may be even worse than that. It may be +part of our commercial gift for window-dressing, for putting up a good +front. + +Sometimes I feel that Williams has no right to be walking down Broadway +on business when there is a stricken child at home. The world cannot +possibly need him at that moment as much as his own flesh and blood +does. It is not courage; it is brutish indifference. At such times I am +tempted to dismiss as mythical all this fine talk about feelings that +run deep beneath the surface, and bruised hearts that ache under the +smile. If a man really suffers he will show it. If a man cultivates the +habit of not showing emotion he will end by having none to show. How +much of Broadway's optimism is--But here I am paraphrasing William +James's _Principles of Psychology_, which the reader can just as well +consult for himself in the latest revised edition of 1907. + +Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely Williams's children are all in +perfect health, and my envelope from the editor has brought a check +instead of a rejection slip. It is on such occasions that Williams and +I, after shaking hands the way a locomotive takes on water on the run, +wheel around, halt, and proceed to buy something at the rate of two for +a quarter. If any one is ever inclined to doubt the spirit of American +fraternity, it is only necessary to recall the number of commodities for +men that sell two for twenty-five cents. In theory, the two cigars which +Williams and I buy for twenty-five cents are worth fifteen cents apiece. +As a matter of fact they are probably ten-cent cigars. But the +shopkeeper is welcome to his extra nickel. It is a small price to pay +for the seal of comradeship that stamps his pair of cigars selling for a +single quarter. Two men who have concluded a business deal in which each +has commendably tried to get the better of the other may call for +twenty-five cent perfectos or for half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I understand +there are such. But friends sitting down together will always demand +cigars that go for a round sum, two for a quarter or three for fifty (if +the editor's check is what it ought to be). + +When people speak of the want of real comradeship among women, I +sometimes wonder if one of the reasons may not be that the prices which +women are accustomed to pay are individualistic instead of fraternal. +The soda fountains and the street cars do not dispense goods at the rate +of two items for a single coin. It is infinitely worse in the department +stores. Treating a friend to something that costs $2.79 is +inconceivable. But I have really wandered from my point. + +'Well, be good,' says Williams, and rushes off to catch his boat. + +The point I wish to make is that on Broadway people pay tribute to the +principle of goodness that rules this world, both in the way they greet +and in the way they part. We salute by asking each other what the good +word is. When we say good-bye we enjoin each other to be good. The +humorous assumption is that gay devils like Williams and me need to be +constantly warned against straying off into the primrose paths that run +out of Broadway. + +Simple, humorous, average American man! You have left your suburban +couch in time to walk half a mile to the station and catch the 7.59 for +the city. You have read your morning paper; discussed the weather, the +tariff, and the prospects for lettuce with your neighbor; and made the +office only a minute late. You have been fastened to your desk from nine +o'clock to five, with half an hour for lunch, which you have eaten in a +clamorous, overheated restaurant while you watched your hat and coat. At +odd moments during the day the thought of doctor's bills, rent bills, +school bills, has insisted on receiving attention. At the end of the +day, laden with parcels from the market, from the hardware store, from +the seedman, you are bound for the ferry to catch the 5.43, when you +meet Smith, who, having passed the good word, sends you on your way with +the injunction to be good--not to play roulette, not to open wine, not +to turkey-trot, not to joy-ride, not to haunt the stage door. Be good, O +simple, humorous, average suburban American! + +I take back that word suburban. The Sunday Supplement has given it a +meaning which is not mine. I am speaking only of the suburban in spirit, +of a simplicity, a meekness which is of the soul only. Outwardly there +is nothing suburban about the crowd on lower Broadway. The man in the +street is not at all the diminutive, apologetic creature with side +whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought forth and named Common People, who +begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the Rent-Payer and the Ultimate +Consumer. The crowd on lower Broadway is alert and well set up. Yes, +though one hates to do it, I must say 'clean-cut.' The men on the +sidewalk are young, limber, sharp-faced, almost insolent young men. +There are not very many old men in the crowd, though I see any number of +gray-haired young men. Seldom do you detect the traditional signs of +age, the sagging lines of the face, the relaxed abdominal contour, the +tamed spirit. The young, the young-old, the old-young, but rarely quite +the old. + +I am speaking only of externals. Clean-cut, eager faces are very +frequently disappointing. A very ordinary mind may be working behind +that clear sweep of brow and nose and chin. I have known the shock of +young men who look like kings of Wall Street and speak like shoe clerks. +They are shoe clerks. But the appearance is there, that athletic +carriage which is helped out by our triumphant, ready-made clothing. I +suppose I ought to detest the tailor's tricks which iron out all ages +and all stations into a uniformity of padded shoulders and trim +waist-lines and hips. I imagine I ought to despise our habit of wearing +elegant shoddy where the European chooses honest, clumsy woolens. But I +am concerned only with externals, and in outward appearances a Broadway +crowd beats the world. Æsthetically we simply are in a class by +ourselves when compared with the Englishman and the Teuton in their +skimpy, ill-cut garments. Let the British and German ambassadors at +Washington do their worst. This is my firm belief and I will maintain it +against the world. The truth must out. _Ruat cÅ“lum. Ich kann nicht +anders. J'y suis, j'y reste._ + +Williams laughs at my lyrical outbursts. But I am not yet through. I +still have to speak of the women in the crowd. What an infinitely finer +thing is a woman than a man of her class! To see this for yourself you +have only to walk up Broadway until the southward-bearing stream breaks +off and the tide begins to run from west to east. You have passed out of +the commercial district into the region of factories. It is well on +toward dark, and the barracks that go by the unlovely name of loft +buildings, are pouring out their battalions of needle-workers. The crowd +has become a mass. The nervous pace of lower Broadway slackens to the +steady, patient tramp of a host. It is an army of women, with here and +there a flying detachment of the male. + +On the faces of the men the day's toil has written its record even as on +the women, but in a much coarser hand. Fatigue has beaten down the soul +of these men into brutish indifference, but in the women it has drawn +fine the flesh only to make it more eloquent of the soul. Instead of +listlessness, there is wistfulness. Instead of vacuity you read mystery. +Innate grace rises above the vulgarity of the dress. Cheap, tawdry +blouse and imitation willow-plume walk shoulder to shoulder with the +shoddy coat of the male, copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may attain +to five dollars. But the men's shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman +transfigures and subtilizes the cheap material. The spirit of grace +which is the birthright of her sex cannot be killed--not even by the +presence of her best young man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by the +heritage of her sex, and America has accentuated her title. This +America which drains her youthful vigor with overwork, which takes from +her cheeks the color she has brought from her Slavic or Italian peasant +home, makes restitution by remoulding her in more delicate, more +alluring lines, gives her the high privilege of charm--and neurosis. + +Williams and I pause at the Subway entrances and watch the earth suck in +the crowd. It lets itself be swallowed up with meek good-nature. Our +amazing good-nature! Political philosophers have deplored the fact. They +have urged us to be quicker-tempered, more resentful of being stepped +upon, more inclined to write letters to the editor. I agree that only in +that way can we be rid of political bosses, of brutal policemen, of +ticket-speculators, of taxi-cab extortioners, of insolent waiters, of +janitors, of indecent congestion in travel, of unheated cars in the +winter and barred-up windows in summer. I am at heart with the social +philosophers. But then I am not typical of the crowd. When my neighbor's +elbow injects itself into the small of my back, I twist around and +glower at him. I forget that his elbow is the innocent mechanical result +of a whole series of elbows and backs extending the length of the car, +to where the first cause operates in the form of a station-guard's +shoulder ramming the human cattle into their stalls. In the faces about +me there is no resentment. Instead of smashing windows, instead of +raising barricades in the Subway and hanging the train-guards with +their own lanterns about their necks, the crowd sways and bends to the +lurching of the train, and young voices call out cheerfully, 'Plenty of +room ahead.' + +Horribly good-natured! We have taken a phrase which is the badge of our +shame and turned it into a jest. Plenty of room ahead! If this were a +squat, ill-formed proletarian race obviously predestined to subjection, +one might understand. But that a crowd of trim, well-cut, self-reliant +Americans, sharp-featured, alert, insolent as I have called them, that +they should submit is a puzzle. Perhaps it is because of the fierce +democracy of it all. The crush, the enforced intimacies of physical +contact, the feeling that a man's natural condition is to push and be +pushed, to shove ahead when the opportunity offers and to take it like a +man when no chance presents itself--that is equality. A seat in the +Subway is like the prizes of life for which men have fought in these +United States. You struggle, you win or lose. If the other man wins +there is no envy; admiration rather, provided he has not shouldered and +elbowed out of reason. That god-like freedom from envy is passing +to-day, and perhaps the good-nature of the crowd in the Subway will +pass. I see signs of the approaching change. People do not call out, +'Plenty of room ahead,' so frequently as they used to. + +Good-natured when dangling from the strap in the Subway, good-natured +in front of baseball bulletins on Park Row, good-natured in the face of +so much oppression and injustice, where is the supposed cruelty of the +'mob'? I am ready to affirm on oath that the mob is not vindictive, that +it is not cruel. It may be a bit sharp-tongued, fickle, a bit +mischievous, but in the heart of the crowd there is no evil passion. The +evil comes from the leaders, the demagogues, the professional distorters +of right thinking and right feeling. The crowd in the bleachers is not +the clamorous, brute mob of tradition. I have watched faces in the +bleachers and in the grand-stand and seen little of that fury which is +supposed to animate the fan. For the most part he sits there with folded +arms, thin-lipped, eager, but after all conscious that there are other +things in life besides baseball. No, it is the leaders, the baseball +editors, the cartoonists, the humorists, the professional stimulators of +'local pride,' with their exaggerated gloatings over a game won, their +poisonous attacks upon a losing team, who are responsible. It is these +demagogues who drill the crowd in the gospel of loving only a +winner--but if I keep on I shall be in politics before I know it. + +If you see in the homeward crowd in the Subway a face over which the +pall of depression has settled, that face very likely is bent over the +comic pictures in the evening paper. I cannot recall seeing any one +smile over these long serials of humorous adventure which run from day +to day and from year to year. I have seen readers turn mechanically to +these lurid comics and pore over them, foreheads puckered into a frown, +lips unconsciously spelling out the long legends which issue in the form +of little balloons and lozenges from that amazing portrait gallery of +dwarfs, giants, shrilling viragos and their diminutive husbands, +devil-children, quadrupeds, insects,--an entire zoölogy. If any stimulus +rises from these pages to the puzzled brain, the effect is not visible. +I imagine that by dint of repetition through the years these grotesque +creations have become a reality to millions of readers. It is no longer +a question of humor, it is a vice. The Desperate Desmonds, the +Newly-weds, and the Dingbats, have acquired a horrible fascination. +Otherwise I cannot see why readers of the funny page should appear to be +memorizing pages from Euclid. + +This by way of anticipation. What the doctor has said of exercise being +a habit which grows easy with time is true. It is the first five minutes +of walking that are wearisome. I find myself strolling past Fourteenth +Street, where I was to take my train for Belshazzar Court. Never mind, +Forty-Second Street will do as well. I am now on a different Broadway. +The crowd is no longer north and south, but flows in every direction. It +is churned up at every corner and spreads itself across the squares and +open places. Its appearance has changed. It is no longer a factory +population. Women still predominate, but they are the women of the +professions and trades which centre about Madison Square--business women +of independent standing, women from the magazine offices, the publishing +houses, the insurance offices. You detect the bachelor girl in the +current which sets in toward the home quarters of the undomesticated, +the little Bohemias, the foreign eating-places whose fixed _table +d'hôte_ prices flash out in illumined signs from the side streets. Still +farther north and the crowd becomes tinged with the current of that +Broadway which the outside world knows best. The idlers begin to mingle +with the workers, men in English clothes with canes, women with plumes +and jeweled reticules. You catch the first heart-beat of Little Old New +York. + +The first stirrings of this gayer Broadway die down as quickly almost as +they manifested themselves. The idlers and those who minister to them +have heard the call of the dinner hour and have vanished, into hotel +doors, into shabbier quarters by no means in keeping with the cut of +their garments and their apparent indifference to useful employment. +Soon the street is almost empty. It is not a beautiful Broadway in this +garish interval between the last of the matinée and shopping crowd and +the vanguard of the night crowd. The monster electric sign-boards have +not begun to gleam and flash and revolve and confound the eye and the +senses. At night the electric Niagara hides the squalid fronts of ugly +brick, the dark doorways, the clutter of fire-escapes, the rickety +wooden hoardings. Not an imperial street this Broadway at 6.30 of a +summer's afternoon. Cheap jewelry shops, cheap tobacconist's shops, +cheap haberdasheries, cheap restaurants, grimy little newspaper agencies +and ticket-offices, and 'demonstration' stores for patent foods, patent +waters, patent razors. + +O Gay White Way, you are far from gay in the fast-fading light, before +the magic hand of Edison wipes the wrinkles from your face and +galvanizes you into hectic vitality; far from alluring with your tinsel +shop windows, with your puffy-faced, unshaven men leaning against +door-posts and chewing pessimistic toothpicks, your sharp-eyed newsboys +wise with the wisdom of the Tenderloin, and your itinerant women whose +eyes wander from side to side. It is not in this guise that you draw the +hearts of millions to yourself, O dingy, Gay White Way, O Via Lobsteria +Dolorosa! + +Well, when a man begins to moralize it is time to go home. I have walked +farther than I intended, and I am soft from lack of exercise, and tired. +The romance of the crowd has disappeared. Romance cannot survive that +short passage of Longacre Square, where the art of the theatre and of +the picture-postcard flourish in an atmosphere impregnated with +gasolene. As I glance into the windows of the automobile salesrooms and +catch my own reflection in the enamel of Babylonian limousines I find +myself thinking all at once of the children at home. They expand and +fill up the horizon. Broadway disappears. I smile into the face of a +painted promenader, but how is she to know that it is not at her I smile +but at the sudden recollection of what the baby said at the +breakfast-table that morning? Like all good New Yorkers when they enter +the Subway, I proceed to choke up all my senses against contact with the +external world, and thus resolving myself into a state of coma, I dip +down into the bowels of the earth, whence in due time I am spewed out +two short blocks from Belshazzar Court. + + + + +Fashions in Men + +By Katharine Fullerton Gerould + + +Never, I fancy, has it been more true than it is to-day, that fiction +reflects life. The best fiction has always given us a kind of +precipitate of human nature--_Don Quixote_ and _Tom Jones_ are equally +'true' and true, in a sense, for all time; but our modern books give us +every quirk and turn of the popular ideal, and fifty years hence, if +read at all, may be too 'quaint' for words. And to any one who has been +reading fiction for the last twenty years, it is cryingly obvious that +fashions in human nature have changed. + +My first novel was _Jane Eyre_; and at the age of eight, I fell +desperately in love with Fairfax Rochester. No instance could serve +better to point the distance we have come. I was not an extraordinary +little girl (except that, perhaps, I was extraordinarily fortunate in +being permitted to encounter the classics in infancy), and I dare say +that if I had not met Mr. Rochester, I should have succumbed to some +imaginary gentleman of a quite different stamp. It may be that I should +have fallen in love--had time and chance permitted--with 'V. V.' or The +Beloved Vagabond. But I doubt it. In the first place, novels no longer +assume that it is the prime business of the female heart (at whatever +age) to surrender itself completely to some man. Consequently, the men +in the novels of to-day are not calculated, as they once were, to hit +the fluttering mark. The emotions are the last redoubt to be taken, as +modern tactics direct the assault. + +People are always telling us that fashions in women have changed: what +seems to me almost more interesting is that fashions in men (the stable +sex) have changed to match. The new woman (by which I mean the very +newest) would not fall in love with Mr. Rochester. It is therefore 'up +to' the novelists to create heroes whom the modern heroine will fall in +love with. This, to the popular satisfaction, they have done. And not +only in fiction have the men changed; in life, too, the men of to-day +are quite different. I know, because my friends marry them. + +It is immensely interesting, this difference. One by one, the man has +sloughed off his most masculine (as we knew them) characteristics. Gone +are Mr. Rochester, who fought the duel with the vicomte at dawn, and +Burgo Fitzgerald (the only love of that incomparable woman, Lady +Glencora Palliser), who breakfasted on curaçao and pâté de foie gras. No +longer does Blanche Ingram declare, 'An English hero of the road would +be the next best thing to an Italian bandit, and that could only be +surpassed by a Levantine pirate.' Blanche Ingram wants--and gets--the +Humanitarian Hero; some one who has particular respect for convicts and +fallen women, and whose favorite author is Tolstoï. He must qualify for +the possession of her hand by long, voluntary residence in the slums; he +may inherit ancestral acres only if he has, concerning them, socialistic +intentions. He must be too altruistic to kill grouse, and if he is to be +wholly up-to-date, he must refuse to eat them. He must never order +'pistols and coffee': his only permitted weapon is benevolent +legislation. + +I do not mean that he is to be a milk-sop--'muscular Christianity' has +at least taught us that it is well for the hero to be in the pink of +condition, as he may any day have a street fight on his hands. And he +should have the tongue of men and of angels. Gone is the inarticulate +Guardsman--gone forever. The modern hero has read books that Burgo +Fitzgerald and Guy Livingstone and Mr. Rochester never heard of. He is +ready to address any gathering, and to argue with any antagonist, until +dawn. He is, preferably, personally unconscious of sex until the heroine +arrives; but he is by no means effeminate. He is a very complicated and +interesting creature. Some mediæval traits are discernible in him; but +the eighteenth century would not have known him for human. + +What has he lost, this hero, and what has he gained? How did it all +begin? In life, doubtless, it began with a feminine change of taste. +Brilliant plumage has ceased to allure; and, I suspect, the peacock's +tail, as much as the anthropoid ape's, is destined to elimination. We +women of to-day are distrustful of the peacock's tail. We are mortally +afraid of being misled by it, and of discovering, too late, that the +peacock's soul is not quite the thing. Never has there been among the +feminine young more scientific talk about sex, and never among the +feminine young such a scientific distrust of it. Before a young woman +suspects that she wants to marry a young man, she has probably discussed +with him, exhaustively, the penal code, white slavery, eugenics, and +race-suicide. The miracle--the everlasting miracle of Nature--is that +she should want, in these circumstances, to marry him at all. She +probably does not, unless his views have been wholly to her +satisfaction. And with those views, what has the perpetual glory of the +peacock's tail to do? + +So much for life. In our English fiction, I am inclined to believe that +George Eliot began it with Daniel Deronda. But, in our own day, Meredith +did more. Up to the time of Meredith, the dominant male was the +fashionable hero. Tom Jones, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Fairfax +Rochester, and 'Stunning' Warrington are as different as possible; but +all of them, in their several ways, keep up one male tradition in +fiction. It is within our own day that that tradition has entirely +changed. Have you ever noticed how inveterately, in Meredith's novels, +the schoolmaster or his spiritual kinsman comes out on top? Lord Ormont +cannot stand against Matey Weyburn, Lord Fleetwood against Owain Wythan, +Sir Willoughby Patterne against Vernon Whitford. The little girl who +fell in love with Mr. Rochester would have preferred any one of these +gentlemen (yes, even Sir Willoughby!) to his rival; but I dare say the +event would have proved her wrong. Certainly the wisdom of the ladies' +choice was never doubtful to Meredith himself. The soldier and the +aristocrat cannot endure the test they are put to by the sympathetic +male with a penchant for the enfranchised woman. Vain for Lord Ormont to +accede to Aminta's taste for publicity; vain for Lord Fleetwood to +become the humble wooer of Carinthia Jane: each has previously been +convicted of pride. + +Now, in an earlier day, no woman would have looked at a man who was not +proud--who was not, even, a little too proud. Pride, by which Lucifer +fell, was the chief hall-mark of the gentleman. Moreover, in that +earlier day, women did not expect their heroes to explain everything to +them: a certain amount of reticence, a measure of silence, was also one +of the hallmarks of the gentleman. If a bit of mystery could be thrown +in, so much the better. It gave her something to exercise her +imagination on. Think of the Byronic males--Conrad, Lara, and the rest! +If they had told all, where would they have been? Think of Lovelace and +Heathcote and Darcy and Brian de Bois Guilbert! + +Heroes, once, were always disdaining to speak, and spurning their foes. +Nowadays, no hero disdains to speak, and no hero ventures to spurn +anyone--least of all, his foes. He is humble of heart and very +loquacious. Mrs. Humphry Ward has inherited from George Eliot; and the +latest heroes of Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Hewlett, for example, are the +children of Vernon Whitford, Matey Weyburn, and Owain Wythan (of whom it +is not explicitly written that they had any others). They are +humanitarian and democratic; they are ignorant of hatred; they are +inclined to think the ill-born necessarily better than the well-born; +and they are quite sure that women are superior to men. True, Mr. +Galsworthy always seems to be looking backward; he never forgets the +ancient tradition that he is combating. His young aristocrats who eschew +the ways of aristocracy are unhappy, and virtue in their case is 'its +only reward.' Perhaps that is why his novels always leave us with the +medicinal taste of inconclusion in our mouths. But take a handful of +heroes elsewhere: the Reverend John Hodder, the ex-convict,'Daniel +Smith,' 'V. V.', or even Coryston, the Socialist peer. Where, in the lot +of them do you find either pride or reticence in the old sense? Where, +in any one of them, do you find the Satanic charm? Which one would +Harriet Byron, or Jane Eyre, or Catherine Earnshaw, or Elizabeth +Bennett, have looked at with eyes of love? + +The 'Satanic charm.' The phrase is out. Milton, I suspect, is +responsible for the tradition that has lasted so long, and is now being +broken utterly to pieces. Milton made Satan delightful, and our good +Protestant novelists for a long time followed his lead, in that they +gave their delightful men some of the Satanic traits. Proud they were +and scornfully silent, as we have recalled; and conventional to the last +degree. 'Conventional,' that is, in the stricter sense; by which it is +not meant that as portraits they were unconvincing, or that, as men, +they never offended Mrs. Grundy. They were conventional in that they +followed a convention; in that they were, to a large extent, predicable. +They were jealous of their honor, and believed it vindicable by the +duel; they had no doubt that good women were better than bad, and that +pedigree in human beings was as important as pedigree in animals; and +though they might be quixotic on occasion, they were not democratic +_pour deux sous_. The barmaid was not their sister, nor the stevedore +their brother. (The Satan of _Paradise Lost_, as we all remember, was a +splendid snob.) + +Moreover, they were sophisticated--and not merely out of books. The +Faust idea, having prevailed for many centuries, has at last been +abandoned--and perhaps, our sober sense may tell us, rightly; but not so +long ago there was still something more repellent to the female +imagination about the man who chose not to know than about the man who +chose not to abstain. I do not mean that we were supposed always to be +looking for a Tom Jones or a Roderick Random--we might be looking for a +Sir Charles Grandison, no less; but at least, when we found our hero, we +expected to find him wiser than we. Nowadays, a girl rather likes to +give a man points--and often (in fiction, at least) has to. Meredith +railed against the 'veiled virginal doll' as heroine. Well: our heroines +now are never veiled virginal dolls; but sometimes our heroes are. +Lancelot has gone out, and Galahad has come in. I suspect that there is +a literary law of compensation, and that, Ibsen and Strindberg to the +contrary notwithstanding, there has to be a veiled virginal doll +somewhere in a really taking romance. Perhaps it is fair that the +sterner sex should have its turn at guarding ideals by the hearthstone, +while women make the grand tour. + +Let me not be misunderstood. I am not referring particularly to that +knowledge which any man is better without, but to the Odyssean +experience which, in their respective measures, heroes were wont to have +behind them:-- + + And saw the cities, and the counsels knew + . . . . . . . . + Of many men, and many a time at sea + Within his heart he bore calamity. + +They had at least seen the towns and the minds of men, and their morals +were the less likely to be upset by a conventional assault upon them. +Does any one chance to remember, I wonder, Theron Ware, led to his +'damnation' by his first experience of a Chopin nocturne? It would have +taken more than a Chopin nocturne to make any of our seasoned heroes do +something that he did not wish to. They knew something of society, and +_ergo_ of women; they had experienced, directly or vicariously, human +romance; and they had read history. Nowadays, they are apt to know +little or nothing--to begin with--of society, women, or romance, except +what may be got from brand-new books on sociology; and they pride +themselves on knowing no history. History, with its eternal stresses and +selections, is nothing if not aristocratic, and our heroes nowadays must +be democratic or they die. It is an age of complete faith in the +superiority of the lower classes--the swing of the pendulum, no doubt, +from the other extreme of thinking the lower classes morally and +æsthetically negligible. 'Privilege' is as detestable now in matters of +intellect and breeding as in matters of finance and politics. The man +with the muck-rake has got past the office into the drawing-room. If +your hero has the bad luck not to have been born in the slums, he must +at least have the wit to take up his habitation there as soon as he +comes of age. We have learned that riches are corrupting, but (except in +the special sense of vice-commission reports) we have not yet learned +that poverty is rather more corrupting than wealth. + +Sophistication, whether social, intellectual, or æsthetic, is now the +deadly sin. If we are sophisticated, we may not be good enough for Ellis +Island. And there goes another of the hallmarks of the gentleman as he +was once known to fiction. Our hero in old days might not have +condescended to the glittering assemblies of fashion, but there was +never any doubt that, if he had, he would, in spite of himself, have +been king of his company as soon as he entered the room. He might have +been hard up, but his necktie would not have been 'a black sea holding +for life a school of fat white fish.' He might have been lonely or +gloomy, but he would not have been diffident, and he would never, never, +_never_ have 'blinked' at the heroine. 'My godlike friend had carelessly +put his hair-brush into the butter' says Asticot, at the outset, of the +Beloved Vagabond. Now in picaresque novels, we were always meeting +people who did that sort of thing; but they were not gentlemen. Whereas, +the Beloved Vagabond is of noble birth, and despite his ten years' +abeyance, finds the countess quite ready to marry him. She does not +marry him in the end, to be sure, but we are permitted to feel that +there was something lacking in her because Paragot's manners at tea did +not please her. + +The hero of old had what used to be called 'a sense of fitness,' and a +saving sense of humor, which combined to prevent his entering a ballroom +as John the Baptist. The same lucky combination would have prevented +him--in literature, at least--from wooing the millionaire's child with +dusty commonplaces of the Higher Criticism or jeremiads against the +daughters of Heth. But perhaps millionaires' children to-day take that +sort of thing for manners. To the argument that a performance of the +kind takes courage, one can only reply that, judging from the enthusiasm +with which the preaching hero is received by the heroine, it apparently +does not. And in any case, the hero is too sublimely ignorant of what +socially constitutes courage to deserve any credit for it. + +Sometimes, of course, like Mr. Galsworthy's men, he perceives, with some +inherited sense, that his kind of thing is not likely to be welcomed; +and then he goes sadly and sternly away, leaving the girl to accept a +wooer with more technique. But usually he cuts out everybody. For the +chief hall-mark of a gentleman, now, is the desire to reform his own +class out of all recognition. + +Women, as we know, have long wanted to be talked to as if they were men; +and the result is that heroines now let themselves be lectured at in a +way that very few men would endure. Alison Parr marries the Rev. John +Hodder, and Carlisle Heth would have married V. V. if he had lived. +Well: Clara Middleton married Vernon Whitford, and Carinthia Jane +married Owain Wythan, and Aminta married Matey Weyburn. + +I may have seemed to be speaking cynically. That, I can give my word of +honor, I am not. It is well that we have come to realize that there are +some adventures which, in themselves, add no lustre to a man's name. It +is well that we take thought for the lower strata of humanity--though +our actual reforms, I fancy, show their authors as taking thought not +for to-morrow but for to-day. Certainly brutality, or the indifference +which is negative brutality, is not a beautiful or a moral thing; and +certainly we do not particularly sympathize with Thackeray shedding +tears as he went away from his publishers because they had obliged him +to save Pendennis's chastity. That dreadful person, Arthur Pendennis, +would surely not have been made any less dreadful by being permitted to +seduce Fanny Bolton. + +It is right to think of the poor; it is right to bend our energies, as +citizens, to the economic bettering of their lot. No one could sanely +regret our doing so. But there is always danger in saying the thing +which is not, and in pretending that because some virtues have hitherto +not been recognized, the virtues that have been recognized are no good. +One sympathizes with Towneley (in that incomparable novel _The Way of +All Flesh_) when Ernest asks him,-- + +'"Don't you like poor people very much yourself?" + +'Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw and said +quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, no, no," and escaped. + +'Of course, some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but +as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one +was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes +there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable barrier.' + +It is a great pity that Samuel Butler did not live longer and write more +novels. But in regretting him, we shall do well to remember that though +publication was delayed until some time after the author's death, the +bulk of _The Way of All Flesh_ was written in the '70's. _The Way of All +Flesh_ is not sympathetic to the contemporary mood; it is one of those +books so much ahead of its time (except perhaps in ecclesiastical +matters) that the time has not yet caught up with it. It was doomed +inevitably to an interval of oblivion. The case reminds one of _Richard +Feverel_. + +Only in one way is _The Way of All Flesh_ quite contemporary. The hero +thinks so well of the prostitute that he marries her. On the other hand, +to be sure, he bitterly regrets it, which is not contemporary. I do not +mean that the hero's marrying her is especially in the literary +fashion, but his thinking well of her is. You will notice that in our +moral fever we do not leave the prostitute out of our novels--no, +indeed: she must be there to give spice, as of old. Only now, instead of +being entangled with her, the young gentleman preaches to her; and she +loves him for it. Perhaps this is what happens nowadays in real life. I +do not pretend to know; but I suspect it is true, for I fancy the only +kind of person who could invent the contemporary plot is the kind who +would live it. The wildest imaginings of the people who are made +differently would hardly stretch to it. And not only does the hero find +himself immensely touched by the tragedy of the disreputable +woman,--which is, after all, in certain cases plausible enough,--he +burns to introduce his fiancée to her. Now that, again, may be +life,--Mr. Winston Churchill, for example, should know better than +I,--but it is certainly a world with the sense of values gone wrong. And +when we have lost our sense of values, we shall presently lose the +values as well. The girl herself is often to blame: did not the fiancée +of Simon de Gex go of her own initiative to see the animal-tamer, and +come away to renounce him, convinced that the animal-tamer was the +nobler woman? Which, emphatically, she was not. But then, as we know +from long experience of Mr. Locke, he cannot keep his head with +circus-people about; and sawdust is incense to him. Let Mr. Locke have +his little foibles by all means; but even Mr. Locke should not have +made the spoiled darling of society marry the animal-tamer (one side of +her face having been nearly clawed off) and _then_ go with her into city +missionary work. Yet I do not believe it is really Mr. Locke's fault. +The public at present loves as a sister the woman with a past; and loves +city missionary work, if possible, more. + +The fact is that with all our imitation of Meredith--and every one who +is not imitating Tolstoï is imitating Meredith--he has failed to save +us. We have taken all his prescriptions blindly--except one. We have +emancipated our women and emasculated our men; we have cast down the +mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree; we have learned +all the Radical shibboleths and say them for our morning prayers; and we +have faced the fact of sex so squarely that we can hardly see anything +else. But we have not learned his saving hatred of the sentimentalist. +Miss May Sinclair has admirably pointed out in her study of the _Three +Brontës_ that Charlotte Brontë was exceedingly modern in her detestation +of sentimentality. Modern she may have been--with Meredith; but not +modern with the present novelists, for they are almost too sentimental +to be endured. And there is the whole trouble. We think Thackeray an old +fool for being sentimental over Amelia Sedley; but how does it better +the case to be sentimental, instead, over the heroine of _The Promised +Land_? Amelia Sedley was all in all a much nicer person, if not half so +clever. She may have sniveled a good deal, but she was capable of loving +some one else better than herself. + +Of course, I have cited only a few instances--those that happened to +come most easily to mind. But let any reader of fiction run over +mentally a group of contemporary heroes, and see if the substitutions I +have named have not pretty generally taken place. Has not pride given +way to humility, reticence to glibness, class-consciousness to a wild +democracy, the code of manners to an uncouth unworldliness, and honor in +the old sense to a burning passion for reform--'any old' reform? Do not +these men lead us into the heterogeneous company of the unclassed of +both sexes--and ask us to look upon them as saints in motley? Has not +the world of fiction changed in the last twenty years? The hero in old +days sometimes fell foul of the law by getting into debt. But we were +not supposed, therefore, to be on his side against the law. Now, the +hero does not, perhaps, get into legal difficulties himself, but he is +always passionately on the side of the people whom laws were devised to +protect the respectable from. The scientific tendency to consider that +aristocracy consists merely in freedom from certain physical taints has +permeated fiction. 'Is not one man as good as another?' asked the +demagogue. 'Of course he is, and a great deal better!' replied the +excited Irishman in the crowd. We are in the thick of a popular mania +for thinking all the undesirables 'a good deal better.' The modern hero +is, to my mind, in intention, if not in execution, an admirable figure; +and though one rather expects him any day to give his whole fortune for +a gross of green spectacles, one will not, for that, find him any less +likable. Some day he will rediscover the Dantesque hierarchy of souls +implicit in humanity. And then, perhaps, he will get back his charm. + +Some one is probably bursting to observe that we have a school of +realists at hand; and that no one can accuse Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett +of sentimentality--also that we have Mr. Shaw and Mr. Granville Barker +and Mr. Masefield as mounted auxiliaries in the field. I grant Mr. +Bennett; I am not so sure about Mr. Wells. But certainly Mr. Wells is +not sentimental as Mr. William de Morgan, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. +Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Theodore Dreiser, Mr. H. S. Harrison, and Miss +Ellen Glasgow are sentimental. If he is sentimental at all, it is rather +over ideas than people. (Mr. Masefield, I am inclined to think, is +simply catering to the special audience that Thomas Hardy, by his +silence, has left gaping and empty.) Let us look into the matter a +little. 'Sentimental' is one of the most difficult catchwords in the +world to define; and you can get a roomful of intelligent people +quarreling over it any time. Perhaps, for our purposes, it will serve +merely to say that the sentimentalist is always, in one way or another, +disloyal to facts. He cannot be trusted to give a straight account, +because his own sense of things is more valuable to him than the truth. +He has come in on the top of the pragmatic wave, and the sands of +Anglo-Saxondom are strewn thick with him. He serves, in Kipling's +phrase, the God of Things as They Ought to Be (according to his private +feeling). His own perversion may be æsthetic, or intellectual, or moral, +or sociological, but he is always recognizable by his tampering with +truth. + +Now, Mr. Wells does tamper with truth. He did it, for example, in the +case of Ann Veronica. He wanted Ann Veronica to be a nice girl under +twenty, and he wanted her, even more, to be unduly awakened to certain +physical aspects of sex. It was sentimentality that made him draw her as +he did: determination to prove that the girl who loved as he wanted her +to love was just as conventional as any one else. You cannot have your +cake and eat it too; but the sentimentalist blindly refuses to accept +that. Accordingly, we get the unconvincing creature that Mr. Wells +wanted to believe existed. Mr. Wells's heroes may not seem to bear out +my argument so well as Mr. Galsworthy's. To be sure, Mr. Wells is not so +sentimental as Mr. Galsworthy, and he has not, like the author of _The +Man of Property_, and _Fraternity_, and _Justice_, one--just one--fixed +idea. Mr. Galsworthy always deals with a man who is in love with some +other man's wife; and his world is thereby narrowed. Mr. Wells is +interested in a good many things, and his politics are not purely +philanthropic as most of our novelists' politics are. But Mr. Wells's +heroes, even when they are fairly fortunate, are preoccupied with their +own notions of sociological duty, even more than they are preoccupied +with passion, though their passion is 'special' enough when it comes. +Would any one except a Wells hero take a trip to India and come away +having seen nothing but the sweat-shops of Bombay? Always the author's +sympathy is with the under dog; whether it is Kipps or Mr. Polly living +out his long foredoomed existence, or George Ponderevo analyzing +Bladesover with diabolic keenness and aching contempt. 'I'm a spiritual +guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses,' says Ponderevo in a +burst of frankness. There you have the Wells hero to the life. And Mr. +Bennett's people are only spiritual guttersnipes who are _not_ in love +with unimaginable goddesses. + +The point is that the guttersnipe is having his turn in fiction: if our +American heroes are not guttersnipes themselves, it is their sign of +grace to be supremely interested in guttersnipes. In one way or the +other, the guttersnipe must have his proper prominence. Of course, there +are differences and degrees: a few heroes get no nearer the lower +classes than a passionate desire for reform tickets and municipal +sanitation. But ordinarily they must go through Ernest Pontifex's state +of believing that poor people are not only more important, but in every +way nicer than rich people; and few of them go back utterly on that +belief, as Ernest did. Perhaps that, more than anything else, marks the +change of fashion in men. For gentlemen were always, in their way, +benevolent; but formerly they had not achieved the paradox that the +object of benevolence is _ex officio_ more interesting than the +bestower. + +Books have been written before now in the interest of reform. They tell +us that _Justice_ set the Home Secretary to thinking. Well: Marcus +Clarke actually caused the reform of the Australian penal settlements by +his now forgotten novel, _For the Term of His Natural Life_. The hero of +Marcus Clarke's book was innocent and unjustly condemned; the hero of +_Justice_ is guilty. Wanton cruelty is wicked whether the victim be a +bad man or a good one; but the difference between these two heroes is +not so purely accidental as, at first blush, it may seem. The author of +_His Natural Life_ starting out to capture sympathy, showed the brutal +system wreaking itself on an innocent man, of good family, condemned for +another's guilt. Mr. Galsworthy, equally eager to capture sympathy, +makes his protagonist guilty of the theft, having tried in vain to +incriminate an innocent person. Each writer depended, doubtless, on +public sentiment for his effect. In Marcus Clarke's time, public +sentiment--however unfortunate the fact may be--simply could not have +been aroused to such a pitch by the sufferings of a liar and a thief as +by the sufferings of an innocent man who is consciously paying another +person's penalty. The Humanitarian Hero had not come into fashion--nor +yet the guttersnipe. But Marcus Clarke's book did its work--proof that +even in the '50's we were not so callous as we seemed. + +I said earlier that in life, as well as in literature, men had changed. +One's instances, obviously, must be from books, and not from one's +acquaintance; but I spoke truth. Philanthropy is the latest social +ladder, but it would not be so if the people on the top rung were not +interested in philanthropy. There has been, for whatever reason, a +tremendous spurt of interest in sociological questions. Our hard-headed +young men, of high ideals, find themselves fighting, of necessity, on a +different battlefield from any that strategists would have chosen thirty +years ago. Moreover, philanthropy being woman's way into politics, women +have been giving their calm, or hysterical, attention to problems which, +thirty years since, did not, as problems, exist for them. I said that +the change of taste in women would probably account for much of the +change of fashion in men. A schoolmate of mine, writing me some years +since of her engagement, said (in nearly these words), 'He is +tremendously interested in city missionary work; it wouldn't have been +quite perfect if we hadn't had that in common.' Both were spoiled +darlings of fortune, but the statement was quite sincere. Undoubtedly, +without that, it would not have been 'quite perfect' in the eyes of +either. + +The mere conversation of the marriageable young has changed past belief. +'Social service' has usurped so many subjects! Have many people stopped +to realize, I wonder, how completely the psychological novel and the +'problem' play (in the old sense) have gone out of date? The psychology +of hero and heroine, their emotional attitudes to each other, are +largely worked out now in terms of their attitudes to impersonal +questions, their religious or their sociological 'principles.' The +individual personal reaction counts less and less. If they agree on the +same panacea for the social evils, the author can usually patch up a +passion sufficient for them to marry on. Gone, for the most part, are +the pages of intimate analysis. No intimate analysis is needed any +longer. As for the 'problem play,' we have it still with us, but in +another form. _The Doll's House_ and _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ are +both antiquated: we do not call a drama a problem play now unless it +preaches a new kind of legislation. And as for sex,--in its finer +aspects it no longer interests us. + +There was a great deal more sex, in its subtler manifestations, in the +old novels and plays, than in the new ones. Not so long ago, a novel was +a love story; and it was of supreme importance to a hero whether or not +he could make the heroine care for him. It was also of supreme +importance to the heroine. The romance was all founded on sex; and yet +sex was hardly mentioned. Our heroes and heroines still marry; but when +they consider sex at all, they are apt to consider it biologically, not +romantically. We, as a public, are more frankly interested in sex than +ever; but we think of it objectively, and a little brutally, in terms of +demand and supply. And so we get often the pathetic spectacle of the +hero and heroine having no time to make love to each other in the good +old-fashioned way, because they are so busy suppressing the red-light +district and compiling statistics of disease. Much of the frankness, +doubtless, is a good thing; but beyond a doubt, it has cheapened +passion. For passion among civilized people is a subtle thing: it is +wrapped about with dreams and imaginings; and can bring human beings to +salvation as well as to perdition. But when it is shown to us as the +mere province of courtesans, small wonder that we turn from it to the +hero who will have difficulty in feeling or inspiring it. Especially +since we are told, at the same time, that even the courtesan plies her +trade only from direst necessity. + +After all, the only safe person to fall in love with nowadays _is_ a +reformer: socially, financially, and sentimentally. And most women, at +least, could (if they would) say with the Princesse Mathilde, 'Je n'aime +que les romans dont je voudrais être l'héroïne.' Certainly, unless for +some special reason, no novel of which one would not like to be the +heroine--in love with the hero--will reach the hundred thousand mark. If +there are any of us left who regret the gentlemen of old--who still +prefer our Darcy or even our Plantagenet Palliser--we must write our own +novels, and divine our own heroes under the protective coloring of their +conventional breeding. For they are not being 'featured,' at present, +either in life or in literature. + + + + +A Confession in Prose + +By Walter Prichard Eaton + + +Unlike M. Jourdain, who had been speaking prose all his life without +knowing it, I have been writing it nearly all of mine, quite +consciously, and earning my living thereby since I was twenty-one years +old. I am now thirty-four. I have been a professional writer of prose, +then, for thirteen years--or shall I say a writer of professional prose? +Much of this writing has been done for various American magazines; still +more has been done to fill the ravenous columns of American newspapers; +some, even, has been immured between covers. I have tried never to write +sloppily, though I have of necessity often written hastily. I can +honestly say, too, that I have tried at times to write beautifully, by +which I mean rhythmically, with a conscious adjustment of sound and +melody to the sense, with the charm of word-chiming further to heighten +heightened thought. But I can also as honestly say that in this latter +effort I have never been encouraged by a newspaper editor, and I have +been not infrequently discouraged by magazine editors. Not all +magazines compel you to chop up your prose into a maximum paragraph +length of ten lines, as does a certain one of large circulation. Not all +newspapers compel you to be 'smart,' as did one for which I worked +compel us all. But the impression among editors is prevalent, none the +less, that a conversational downrightness and sentence and paragraph +brevity are the be-all and end-all of prose style, or at least of so +much of prose style as can be grasped by the populace who read their +publications; and that beautiful writing must be 'fine writing,' and +therefore never too much to be avoided. So I started out from the +classroom of Professor Lewis E. Gates, one of the keenest and most +inspiring analysts of prose beauties this country has produced, to be a +professional writer of prose, and dreamed, as youth will, of wrapping my +singing robes about me and ravishing the world. I was soon enough told +to doff my singing robes for the overalls of journalism, and I have +become a writer of professional prose instead. + +These remarks have been inspired by a long and wistful evening just +spent in perusing Professor Saintsbury's new book, called _The History +of English Prose Rhythm_. I shall hold no brief for the good professor's +method of scansion. It matters little to me, indeed, how he chooses to +scan prose. What does matter to me is that he has chosen to scan it at +all, that he has brought forward the finest examples in the stately +procession of English literature, and demonstrated with all the weight +of his learning, his authority, his fine enthusiasm, that this prose is +no less consciously wrought to pleasing numbers than is verse. We who +studied under Professor Gates knew much of this before, if not in so +detailed and would-be methodical a fashion. Charles Lamb knew it when he +wrote, 'Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best +measured cadences (prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm +of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors"; or the wild sweep of +winds at midnight.' Sir Thomas Browne was not exactly unaware of it as +he prepared his _Urn Burial_ for the printer; nor the authors of the +King James Version of the Bible when they translated--or if you prefer, +paraphrased--the rhapsodic chapters of Isaiah. But it is pleasant, and +not unimportant, to be once more reminded, in a generation when written +speech has sunk to the conversational level of the man in the street, +that 'prose has her cadences'; and to me, at least, it is melancholy, +also. For I would strive to write such prose, in my stumbling fashion, +were I permitted. + +Writing about a fine art, as I am so often called upon to do, I would +endeavor with what might lay in me to write about it finely. Suppose +that art chances to be the drama. Why, when some compact, weighty, and +worthily performed example comes to our stage, should I be expected to +toss off a description of it in a style less compact and weighty and +worthily conducted? On the rare occasions when a new play chances to be +poetic, am I not justified in writing of it in poetic prose? How else, +indeed, can I truly render back to my readers the subtler aspects of its +charm? But for such writing there is little room in our hurrying and +'conversational' press, though now and then a despised dramatic editor +is found who understands. Even the drama itself strives to be +'conversational' at all costs, under the banner of 'realism,' and +profanity flourishes on our stage in what we must infer to be a most +life-like manner, while we have almost forgotten that the spoken word +can be melodious or imaginative. Criticism cries at its heels, and helps +with flippant jest and broken syntax and cacophonous combinations of our +poorest vernacular, in the general debasement. Do not tell me that men +do not exist who could write differently of the stage, as men exist who +can, and do, write differently for it. Every worthy dramatist can be +paralleled by at least one worthy critic, and more probably by three or +four, since the true creative instinct in drama is perhaps the rarest of +human attributes, save only charity. But the editors appear to have +determined that the public does not want such critics--and perhaps the +editors are right. At least, the public does not often get them. + +We are speaking now of prose, not of opinions, and we may safely +introduce the name of a living critic, William Winter. For nearly half a +century Mr. Winter has written prose about the theatre, and although +that prose was produced for a morning newspaper it was carefully and +consistently balanced and welded, and, when the subject demanded it, +rose, according to its creator's ideas of beauty, into the heightened +eloquence of sentence rhythm and syllabic harmony. Leisure may improve, +but haste cannot prevent the rhythm of prose, provided the instinct for +it resides in the writer, and the opportunity exists for practice and +expression. Two examples of Mr. Winter's use of rhythm come to my +memory, and I quote only phrases, not whole sentences, merely because I +am sure of no more. Writing one morning of a new and very 'modern' play, +presented the previous evening by a well-known actress, he said: 'Sarah +Bernhardt at least made her sexual monsters interesting, wielding the +lethal hatpin or the deadly hatchet with Gallic grace and sweet +celerity.' Again, in reviewing Pinero's _Iris_, he took up two of Henry +Arthur Jones's phrases, recently made current in a lecture, and played +with them, ending with mellifluous scorn, 'Such are "the great realities +of modern life," flowers of disease and blight that fringe the charnel +house of the "serious drama."' + +These are certainly examples of rhythmic, or cadenced prose, and they +are examples taken from journalistic reviews. They admirably express the +writer's point of view toward his subject matter, but they also reveal +his care for the manner of expression, they satisfy the ear; and +therefore to one at all sensitive to literature they are doubly +satisfying. The arrow of irony is ever more delightful when it sings on +its flight. The trick, then, can be done. Mr. Winter, too often perhaps +for modern ears, performed it by recourse to the Johnsonian balance of +period and almost uniform, swelling roll. But that is neither here nor +there. The point is that he performed it--and that it is no longer +performed by the new generation, either in newspaper columns, or, we +will add at once, anywhere else. Rhythmic prose, prose cadenced to charm +the ear and by its melodies and harmonies properly adjusted to heighten, +as with an under-song, the emotional appeal of the ideas expressed, is +no longer written. It appears to be no longer wanted. We are fallen upon +harsh and colloquial times. + +No one with any ear at all would deny Emerson a style, even if his +rhythms are often broken into the cross-chop of Carlyle. No one would +deny Irving a style, or Poe,--certainly Poe at his best,--or, indeed, to +hark far back, Cotton Mather in many passages of the _Magnalia_, where +to a quaint iambic simplicity he added a Biblical fervor which redeems +and melodizes the monotony. Mather suggests Milton, Irving suggests +Addison, Emerson suggests Carlyle, Poe, shall we say, is often the too +conscious workman typified by De Quincey. But thereafter, in this +country, we descend rapidly into second-hand imitations, into rhythm +become, in truth, mere 'fine writing,' until its death within recent +memory. Yet we do not find even to-day the true cadenced prose either +uninteresting or out of date. Emerson is as modern as the morning paper. +Newman's description of the ideal site for a university, in the clear +air of Attica beside the blue Ægean, charms us still with its perfect +blend of sound and sense, its clear intellectual idea borne on a +cadenced undersong, as of distant surf upon the shore; and the exquisite +epilogue to the _Apologia_, with its chime of proper names, still brings +a moisture to our eyes. The triumphant tramp of Gibbon, the headlong +imagery and Biblical fervor of Ruskin, the languid music of Walter +Pater, each holds its separate charm, and the charm is not archaic. + +Is such prose impossible any more? Certainly it is not. The heritage of +the language is still ours, the birthright of our noble English tongue. +Simply, we do not dare to let ourselves go. We seem tortured with the +modern blight of self-consciousness; and while the cheaper magazines are +almost blatant in their unblushing self-puffery, they are none the less +cravenly submissive to what they deem popular demand, and turn their +backs on literature, on style, as something abhorrent to a race which +has been fed on the English Bible for three hundred years. Their ideal +of a prose style now seems to consist of a series of staccato yips. It +really cannot be described in any other way. The 'triumphantly +intricate' sentence celebrated by Walter Pater would give many a modern +editor a shiver of terror. He would visualize it as mowing down the +circulation of the magazine like a machine gun. Rhythm and beauty of +style can hardly be achieved by staccato yips. The modern magazine +writer, trying to be rhetorically effective, trying to rise to the +demands of heightened thought or emotional appeal, reminds one of that +enthusiastic German tympanist who wrote an entire symphonic poem for +kettle-drums. + +I read one of the autumn crop of new novels the other day. Curiously +enough, it was written by a music critic who, in his reviews of music, +is constantly insisting on the primal importance of melody and harmony, +who is an arch foe of the modern programme school and the whole-tone +scale of Debussy. But the prose of his novel was utterly devoid of these +prized elements, melody and harmony. A heavy, or sometimes turgid, +journalistic commonplaceness sat upon it. I will not be unfair and tear +an illustration from some passage of rightly simple narration. I will +take the closing sentences from one of the climactic chapters, when the +mood had supposedly risen to intensity, and, if ever, the prose would +have been justified in rising to reinforce the emotion. + +The house was aroused to extravagant demonstrations. Across the +footlights it looked like a brilliantly realistic piece of acting, and +the audience was astonished at the vigor of the hitherto cold Americano. + +'But Nagy was not deceived. Crushed, dishevelled, breathless, she knew +that her dominion over him was gone forever. She had tried to show him +his soul and he had begun to see the light.' + +Now, an ear attuned to the melodies of English prose must surely find +this commonplace, and the closing sentence of all actually as harsh as +the tonalities of Strauss or Debussy seem to the writer. Let us, even if +a little unfairly, set it beside a passage from _Henry Esmond_, again a +climactic passage, but one where the style is climactic, also, rising to +the mood. + +'"You will please, sir, to remember," he continued, "that our family +hath ruined itself by fidelity to yours: that my grandfather spent his +estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service; that my +dear lord's grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right and title +too) died for the same cause; that my poor kinswoman, my father's second +wife, after giving away her honor to your wicked perjured race, sent all +her wealth to the King; and got in return that precious title that lies +in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue ribbon. I lay this at your +feet and stamp upon it; I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; +and had you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have +driven it through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father +pardoned Monmouth. Frank will do the same, won't you, cousin?"' + +This justly famous passage, be it noted, is dialogue. To-day we +especially do not dare to rise above a conversational level in dialogue. +We should be accused of being 'unnatural.' Does no one speak beautifully +any more, then, even in real life? Are the nerve-centres so shattered in +the modern anatomy that no connection is established between emotions +and the musical sense? Does an exquisite mood no longer reflect itself +in our voice, in our vocabulary? Does no lover rise to eloquence in the +presence of his Adored? If that is the case, surely we now speak +unnaturally, and it should be the duty of literature to restore our +health! Nor need such speech in fiction float clear away from solid +ground. Notice how Thackeray in his closing sentence--'Frank will do the +same, won't you, cousin?'--anchors his rhetoric to the earth. + +We are, let it be said again, in the grasp of realism, and realism but +imperfectly understood. Just as our drama aims to reproduce exactly a +'solid' room upon the stage, and to set actors to talking therein the +exact speech of every day, so our oratory, so-called, is the +reproduction of a one-sided conversation, and our novels (when they are +worthy of consideration) are reproductions of patiently accumulated +details, set forth in impatiently assembled sentences. But all this does +not of necessity constitute realism, because its effect is not of +necessity the creation of illusion, however truthful the artist's +purpose. Of what avail, in the drama, for example, are solid rooms and +conversational vernacular if the characters do not come to life in our +imaginations, so that we share their joys and sorrows? Of what effect +are the realistic details of a novel, whether of incident or language, +if we do not re-live its story as we read? Surely, the answer is plain, +and therefore any literary devices which heighten the mood for us are +perfectly justifiable weapons of the realist, even as they are of the +romanticist. One of these devices is consciously wrought prose. For the +present we plead for its employment on no higher ground than this of +practical expediency. + +But how, you may ask,--no, not you, dear reader, who understand, but +some other chap, a poor dog of an author, perhaps,--can consciously +wrought prose aid in the creation of illusion? How can it be more than +pretty? + +Let us turn for answer to Sir Thomas Browne, to 'The Garden of Cyrus,' +to the closing numbers:-- + +'Besides, Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the oneirocritical +masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is +little encouragement to dream of paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest +delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep, wherein the dulness of +that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of +Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.' + +That is archaic, perhaps, and not without a certain taint of quaintness +to modern ears. But how drowsy it is, how minor its harmonies, how +subtly soothing its languid melody! It tells, surely, in what manner +consciously wrought prose may aid in the creation of illusion. The mood +of sleep was here to be evoked, and lo! it comes from the very music of +the sentences, from the drowsy lullaby of selected syllables. + +We might choose a quite different example, from a seemingly most +unlikely source, from the plays of George Bernard Shaw. One hardly +thinks of Mr. Shaw with a style, but rather with a stiletto. His +prefaces have been too disputative, his plays too epigrammatic, for the +cultivation of prose rhythms. Yet his prose is almost never without a +certain crisp accuracy of conversational cadence; his ear almost never +betrays him into sloppiness; and when the occasion demands, his style +can rise to meet it. The truth is, Mr. Shaw is seldom emotional, so that +his crisp accuracy of speech is most often the fitting garment for his +thought. But in _John Bull's Other Island_ his emotions are stirred, and +when Larry Doyle breaks out into an impassioned description of Ireland +the effect on the imagination of the heightened prose, when a good actor +speaks it, is almost startling. + +'No, no; the climate is different. Here, if the life is dull, you can +be dull too, and no great harm done. (_Going off into a passionate +dream._) But your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those +white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those +hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colors in +the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. +Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, +never-satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! (_Savagely._) +No debauchery that ever coarsened and brutalized an Englishman can take +the worth and usefulness out of him like that dreaming. An Irishman's +imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies +him; but it makes him so that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor +handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and +(_bitterly, at Broadbent_) be "agreeable to strangers," like a +good-for-nothing woman on the streets.' + +This, to be sure, is prose to be spoken, not prose to be read. Different +laws prevail, for different effects are sought. But the principle of +cadence calculated to fit the mood, and by its melodic, or, as here, its +percussive character to heighten the emotional appeal, remains the same. + +But beyond the argument for cadenced prose as an aid to illusion, +employed in the proper places,--that is, where intensity of imagery or +feeling can benefit by it,--is the higher plea for sheer lingual beauty +for its own sake. Shall realism preclude all other effects of artistic +creation? Because the men on our streets, the women in our homes, talk +sloppily, shall all our books be written in their idiom, all our stage +characters reproduce their commonplaceness, nearly all our magazines and +newspapers give no attention to the graces of style? I am pleading for +no Newman of the news story, nor am I seeking to arm our muck-rakers +with the pen of Sir Thomas Browne. I would not send Walter Pater to +report a football game (though Stevenson could doubtless improve on most +of the 'sporting editors'), nor ask that Emerson write our editorials. +But there is a poor way, and there is a fine way, to write everything, +and inevitably the man who has an ear for the rhythms of prose, who has +been trained and encouraged to write his very best, will fit his style +appropriately to his subject. He will not seek to cadence his sentences +in bald narration or in exposition, but he will, nevertheless, keep them +capable of natural and pleasant phrasing, he will avoid monotony, +jarring syllables, false stress, and ugly or tripping terminations which +throw the voice as one's feet are thrown by an unseen obstacle in the +path. His paragraphs, too, will group naturally, as falls his thought. +But when the subject he has in hand rises to invective, to exhortation, +to the dignity of any passion or the sweep of any vision, then if his +ear be tuned and his courage does not fail him he must inevitably write +in cadenced periods, the effectiveness of his work depending on the +adjustment of these cadences to the mood of the moment, on his skill as +an artist in prose. + +And just now the courage of our young men fails. The unrestrained +abandonment of all art to realism, of every sort of printed page to bald +colloquialism, has dulled the natural ear in all of us for comely prose, +and made us deaf to more stately measures. The complete democratizing of +literature has put the fear of plebeian ridicule in our hearts, and the +wider a magazine's circulation, it would seem, the more harm it does to +English prose, because in direct ratio to its sale are its pages given +over to the Philistines, and the dignity and refinement of thought which +could stimulate dignity and refinement of expression are unknown to its +contributors, or kept carefully undisclosed. + +I have often fancied, in penitential moments, a day of judgment for us +who write, when we shall stand in flushed array before the Ultimate +Critic and answer the awful question, 'What have you done with your +language?' There shall be searchings of soul that morning, and +searchings of forgotten pages of magazines and 'best sellers' and books +of every sort, for the cadence that may bring salvation. But many shall +seek and few shall find, and the goats shall be sorted out in droves, +condemned to an eternity of torture, none other than the everlasting +task of listening to their own prose read aloud. + +'What have you done with your language?' It is a solemn question for all +of us, for you who speak as well as for us who write. Our language is a +priceless heritage. It has been the ladder of life up which we climbed; +with it we have bridged the sundering flood that forever rolls between +man and man; through its aid have come to us the treasures of the past, +the world's store of experience; by means of it our poets have wrought +their measures, our philosophers their dreams. Bit by bit, precious +mosaic after precious mosaic, the great body of English literature has +been built up, in verse and prose, the crown of that division of +language we call our own. Consciously finding itself three centuries +ago, our English prose blossomed at once into the solemn splendors of +the King James Bible and then into the long-drawn, ornate magnificence +of Sir Thomas Browne, never again till our day to lose consciousness of +its power, to forget its high and holy task, the task of maintaining our +language at full tide and ministering to style and beauty. There were +fluxes in the fashions, naturally; little of Browne's music being found +in the almost conversational fluency (but not laxness) of Addison, even +as the suave Mr. Addison himself has vanished in the tempestuous +torrents of Carlyle. But there always was an Addison, a Carlyle, a +Newman, a Walter Pater, whose work loomed large in popular regard, whose +influence was mighty in shaping a taste for prose style. Who now, we may +ask, looking around us in America, looms large in popular regard as a +writer of ample vision, amply and beautifully clothed in speech, and +whose influence is mighty in shaping a taste for prose style? It is not +enough to have the worthies of the past upon our shelves. Each age must +have its own inspiration. Again we hear the solemn question, 'What have +you done with your language?' Only Ireland may answer, 'We have our +George Moore, and we had our Synge not long ago--but we stoned his +plays.' + +We have stifled our language, we have debased it, we have been afraid of +it. But some day it will reassert itself, for it is stronger than we, +alike our overlord and avatar. Deep in the soul of man dwells the lyric +impulse, and when his song cannot be the song of the poet it will shape +itself in rhythmic prose, that it may still be cadenced and modulated to +change with the changing thought and sound an obligato to the moods of +the author's spirit. How wonderful has been our prose,--grave and +chastely rich when Hooker wrote it, striding triumphant over the pages +of Gibbon on tireless feet, ringing like a trumpet from Emerson's white +house in Concord, modulated like soft organ-music heard afar in Newman's +lyric moods, clanging and clamorous in Carlyle, in Walter Pater but as +the soft fall of water in a marble fountain while exquisite odors flood +the Roman twilight and late bees are murmurous, a little of all, +perhaps, in Stevenson! We, too, we little fellows of to-day, could +write as they wrote, consciously, rhythmically, if we only cared, if we +only dared. We ask for the opportunity, the encouragement. Alas! that +also means a more liberal choice of graver subjects, and a more +extensive employment of the essay form. Milton could hardly have been +Miltonic on a lesser theme than the Fall of the Angels, and Walter Pater +wrote of the Mona Lisa, not Lizzie Smith of Davenport, Iowa. It is +doubtless of interest to learn about Lizzie, but she hardly inspires us +to rhythmic prose. + + + + +In the Chair + +By Ralph Bergengren + + +About once in so often a man must go to the barber for what, with +contemptuous brevity, is called a haircut. He must sit in a big chair, a +voluminous bib (prettily decorated with polka dots) tucked in round his +neck, and let another human being cut his hair for him. His head, with +all its internal mystery and wealth of thought, becomes for the time +being a mere poll, worth two dollars a year to the tax-assessor: an +irregularly shaped object, between a summer squash and a canteloupe, +with too much hair on it, as very likely several friends and +acquaintances have advised him. His identity vanishes. + +As a rule the less he now says or thinks about his head, the better: he +has given it to the barber, and the barber will do as he pleases with +it. It is only when the man is little and is brought in by his mother, +that the job will be done according to instructions; and this is because +the man's mother is in a position to see the back of his head. Also +because the weakest woman under such circumstances has strong +convictions. When the man is older the barber will sometimes allow him +to see the haircut, cleverly reflected in two mirrors; but not one man +in a thousand--nay, in ten thousand--would dare express himself as +dissatisfied. After all, what does he know of haircuts, he who is no +barber? Women feel differently; and I know of one man, returning home +with a new haircut, who was compelled to turn round again and take what +his wife called his 'poor' head to another barber by whom the haircut +was more happily finished. But that was exceptional. And it happened to +that man but once. + +The very word 'haircut' is objectionable. It snips like the scissors. +Yet it describes the operation more honestly than the substitute 'trim,' +a euphemism indicating a jaunty habit of dropping in frequently at the +barber's, and so keeping the hair perpetually at just the length that is +most becoming. For most men, although the knowledge must be gathered by +keen, patient observation and never by honest confession, there is a +period, lasting about a week, when the length of their hair is +admirable. But it comes between haircuts. The haircut itself is never +satisfactory. If his hair was too long before (and on this point he has +the evidence of unprejudiced witnesses), it is too short now. It must +grow steadily--count on it for that!--until for a brief period it is +'just right,' æsthetically suited to the contour of his face and the cut +of his features, and beginning already imperceptibly to grow too long +again. + +Soon this growth becomes visible, and the man begins to worry. 'I must +go to the barber,' he says in a harassed way. 'I must get a haircut.' +But the days pass. It is always to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. +When he goes, he goes suddenly. + +There is something within us, probably our immortal soul, that postpones +a haircut; and yet in the end our immortal souls have little to do with +the actual process. It is impossible to conceive of one immortal soul +cutting another immortal soul's hair. My own soul, I am sure, has never +entered a barber's shop. It stops and waits for me at the portal. +Probably it converses on subjects remote from our bodily consciousness +with the immortal souls of barbers, patiently waiting until the barbers +finish their morning's work and come out to lunch. + +Even during the haircut our hair is still growing, never stopping, never +at rest, never in a hurry: it grows while we sleep, as was proved by Rip +Van Winkle. And yet perhaps sometimes it is in a hurry; perhaps that is +why it falls out. In rare cases the contagion of speed spreads; the last +hair hurries after all the others; the man is emancipated from +dependence on barbers. I know a barber who is in this independent +condition himself (for the barber can no more cut his own hair than the +rest of us) and yet sells his customers a preparation warranted to keep +them from attaining it, a seeming anomaly which can be explained only on +the ground that business is business. To escape the haircut one must be +quite without hair that one cannot see and reach; and herein possibly is +the reason for a fashion which has often perplexed students of the +Norman Conquest. The Norman soldiery wore no hair on the backs of their +heads; and each brave fellow could sit down in front of his polished +shield and cut his own hair without much trouble. But the scheme had a +weakness. The back of the head had to be shaven, and the fashion +doubtless went out because, after all, nothing was gained by it. One +simply turned over on one's face in the barber's chair instead of +sitting up straight. + +Fortunately we begin having a haircut when we are too young to think, +and when also the process is sugar-coated by the knowledge that we are +losing our curls. Then habit accustoms us to it. Yet it is significant +that men of refinement seek the barber in secluded places, basements of +hotels for choice, where they can be seen only by barbers and by other +refined men having or about to have haircuts; and that men of less +refinement submit to the operation where every passer-by can stare in +and see them, bibs round their necks and their shorn locks lying in +pathetic little heaps on the floor. There is a barber's shop of this +kind in Boston where one of the barbers, having no head to play with, +plays on a cornet, doubtless to the further distress of his immortal +soul peeping in through the window. But this is unusual even in the city +that is known far and wide as the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. + +I remember a barber--he was the only one available in a small town--who +cut my left ear. The deed distressed him, and he told me a story. It was +a pretty little cut, he said--filling it with alum--and reminded him of +another gentleman whose left ear he had nipped in identically the same +place. He had done his best with alum and apology, as he was now doing. +Two months later the gentleman came in again. 'And by golly!' said the +barber, with a kind of wonder at his own cleverness, 'if I didn't nip +him again in just the same place!' + +A man can shave himself. The Armless Wonder does it in the Dime Museum. +Byron did it, and composed poetry during the operation, although, as I +have recently seen scientifically explained, the facility of composition +was not due to the act of shaving but to the normal activity of the +human mind at that time in the morning. Here therefore a man can refuse +the offices of the barber. If he wishes to make one of a half-dozen +apparently inanimate figures, their faces covered with soap, and their +noses used as convenient handles to turn first one cheek and then the +other--that is his own lookout. But human ingenuity has yet to invent a +'safety barber's shears.' It has tried. A near genius once made an +apparatus--a kind of helmet with multitudinous little scissors inside +it--which he hopefully believed would solve the problem; but what became +of him and his invention I have not heard. Perhaps he tried it himself +and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed +suicide, for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found +a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't would be thrown +into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded +in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' where nobody +could see him but the hardened attendants, by his sensitive family. The +important fact is that the invention never got on the market. Until some +other investigator succeeds to more practical purpose, the rest of us +must go periodically to the barber. We must put on the bib-- + +Here, however, there is at least an opportunity of selection. There are +bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of +satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the +newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still +intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons +of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to +be deeply interested in the _Illustrated London News_. The patrons of +the barber's shop where I lost part of my ear--I cannot see the place, +but those whom I take into my confidence tell me that it has long since +grown again--had no sleeves to their bibs, but nevertheless managed +awkwardly to hold the _Police Gazette_. And this opportunity to hold the +_Police Gazette_ without attracting attention becomes a pleasant feature +of this type of barber's shop: I, for example, found it easier--until my +ear was cut--to forget my position in the examination of this journal +than in the examination of the _Illustrated London News_. The pictures, +strictly speaking, are not so good, either artistically or morally, but +there is a tang about them, an I-do-not-know-what. And it is always +wisest to focus attention on some such extraneous interest. Otherwise +you may get to looking in the mirror. + +Do not do that. + +For one thing, there is the impulse to cry out 'Stop! Stop! Don't cut it +all off! + + 'Oh, barber, spare that hair! + Leave some upon my brow! + For months it's sheltered me! + And I'll protect it now! + +'Oh, please! P-l-e-a-s-e!--' These exclamations annoy a barber, rouse a +demon of fury in him. He reaches for a machine called 'clippers.' Tell +him how to cut hair, will you! A little more and he'll shave your +head--and not only half-way either, like the Norman soldiery at the time +of the Conquest! Even if you are able to restrain this impulse, +clenching your bib in your hands and perhaps dropping or tearing the +_Illustrated London News_, the mirror gives you strange, morbid +reflections. You recognize your face, but your head seems somehow +separate, balanced on a kind of polka-dotted mountain with two hands +holding the _Illustrated London News_. You are afraid momentarily that +the barber will lift it off and go away with it. Then is the time to +read furiously the weekly contribution of G. K. Chesterton. But your +mind reverts to a story you have been reading about how the Tulululu +Islanders, a savage but ingenious people, preserve the heads of their +enemies so that the faces are much smaller but otherwise quite +recognizable. You find yourself looking keenly at the barber to discover +any possible trace of Tulululu ancestry. And what is he going to get +now? A krees? No, a paint-brush. Is he going to paint you? And if +so--what color? The question of color becomes strangely important, as if +it made any real difference. Green? Red? Purple? Blue? No, he uses the +brush dry, tickling your forehead, tickling your ears, tickling your +nose, tickling you under the chin and down the back of your neck. After +the serious business of the haircut, a barber must have some relaxation. + +There is one point on which you are independent: you will not have the +bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which +nevertheless has some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors +you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his sense of business +economy. + +He takes off your bib. + +From a row of chairs a man leaps to his feet, anxious to give _his_ head +to the barber. A boy hastily sweeps up the hair that was yours--already +as remote from you as if it had belonged to the man who is always +waiting, and whose name is Next. Oh, it is +horrible--horrible--horrible! + + + + +The Passing of Indoors + +By Zephine Humphrey + + +Indoors is going. We may just as well make up our minds on this +revolutionary point, and accept it with such degree of hardy rejoicing +or shivering regret as our natures prompt in us. + +The movement has been long under way, gradually working the perfect +ejection which seems now at hand. We might have recognized the +dislodging process long ago, had we been far-sighted enough. It +began--who shall say when it did begin? Surely not in the shaggy breasts +of those rude ancestors of ours whom we hold in such veneration, and to +whose ways we seem to ourselves to be so wisely returning. They dragged +their venison into the depths of a cave darker and closer than any +house, and devoured it in great seclusion. Perhaps it began in the San +Marco Piazza at Venice, with the little open-air tables under the +colonnades. "So delightful! So charming!" Thus the tourists, as they +sipped their coffee and dallied with their ices. They were right; it was +delightful and charming, and so it is to this day, but it was perhaps +the thin edge of the wedge which is turning us all out now. + +Supper was the first regular meal to follow the open-air suggestion, +country supper on the piazza in the warm summer evening. That also was +delightful, of course, and not at all alarming. All nations and ages +have practiced the sport of occasional festive repasts out of doors when +the weather has permitted. But breakfast was not long in following suit; +and when dinner, that most conservative, conventional of meals, +succumbed to the outward pressure and spread its congealing gravies in +the chilly air, we were in for the thing in good earnest, the new custom +was on. No longer a matter of times and seasons, the weather had nothing +to do with it now; and in really zealous families the regular summer +dining-room was out of doors. Summer dining-room--that sounds well; +since summer and warmth go together traditionally. But not always +actually in New England, where bleak rains overtake the world now and +then, and clearing north-west winds come racing keenly. It was soon +essential to introduce a new fashion in dinner garments: overcoats, +sweaters, and heavy shawls, felt hats and mufflers. + +'Excuse me while I run upstairs to get a pair of mittens?' + +'Finish your soup first, dear; it will be quite cold if you leave it.' + +The adherents of the new doctrine are very conscientious and faithful, +as was only to be expected. We are a valiant race in the matter of our +enthusiasms and can be trusted to follow them sturdily, buckling on +armor or overcoats or whatever other special equipment the occasion +demands. Conscientiousness is a good trait, but there is perhaps more of +the joy of life in some other qualities. + +Sleeping outdoors was the next great phase in the open-air movement. +That also began casually enough and altogether charmingly. One lingered +in the hammock, watching the stars, musing in the still summer night, +until, lo! there was the dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A +wonderful experience. Not much sleeping about it truly,--there is +commonly not much sleeping about great experiences,--but so beautiful +that the heart said, 'Go to! why not have this always? Why not sleep +outdoors every night?' Which is of course exactly the way in which human +nature works; very reasonable, very sane and convincing, but +unfortunately never quite so successful as it should be. That which has +blessed us once must be secured in perpetuity for our souls to feast on +continually; revelation must fold its wings and abide with us. So we +soberly go to work and strip all the poetry of divine chance, all the +delight of the unexpected, from our great occasions by laying plans for +their systematic recurrence. + + He who bends to himself a joy, + Does the winged life destroy; + But he who kisses a joy as it flies, + Lives in eternity's sunrise. + +It is a pity that William Blake could not teach us that once for all. As +a matter of fact, of course, great occasions care nothing at all for our +urging; and a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. The +stars and the dawn do not condescend to such paraphernalia for waylaying +them as sleeping-bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito +netting, with a stout club close at hand in case of tramps or a skunk. + +One experience of my own recurs to my memory poignantly here, and I +think I cannot do better than set it forth. I had passed an +unforgettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by the evening +almost insensibly into 'solemn midnight's tingling silences,' and thence +into the austere dawn. It was an episode such as should have sealed my +lips forever; but I profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion of +interest spread through the little village. + +'What fun! Did you have your rubbers on? Did you sit in a chair? I +should think you would have sat in a chair--so much more comfortable! +Well, I tell you what, let's do it together,--a lot of us, so we won't +be afraid,--and let's climb a mountain. The sunset and dawn will be +beautiful from a mountain.' + +We did it; I blush to confess that some twenty-five of us did it. It +was an excursion planned and discussed for a matter of two weeks (a full +moon being part of the programme), and there was no accident unforeseen, +no event unprovided for. The procession that wended its way, toiling and +puffing, up the ascent of Haystack,--the favored mountain selected for +the high pedestal of our rapture,--on the auspicious night, was about as +sad, and withal as funny, an affront as the secrecy of beauty ever +received. Blankets, steamer-rugs, pillows, shawls, hammocks, +whiskey-flasks--how we groaned beneath the burden of all these things. +We lost the way, of course, and had to beat the woods in every +direction; we were tired and hot and--cross? Perhaps. But we knew what +our rôle was, and when we reached the top of the mountain, we all of us +stood very solemnly in a row and said, 'How beautiful!' + +It was beautiful; that was just the fineness of the night's triumph over +us--over me at least; I cannot speak for the other twenty-four. To this +day, be it said in parentheses, whenever we mention that night on +Haystack we lift our eyes in ecstasy, and no one of us has ever +confessed any sense of lack. But honestly, honestly at the last (dear +stalwart relief of honesty!), that experiment was a failure--so +beautiful that the spirit should have been lifted out of the body, and +would have been, had it stood alone, had it not already exhausted itself +in plans and expectations. Beneath us, a far-spreading sea of misty, +rolling hills, all vague and blended in the light of the soaring moon; +above us, such a sweep of sky as only mountain-tops command; around us, +silence, silence. Yet the unstrenuous orchard at home, with its tranquil +acceptance of such degree of sunset light as was granted to it, and of +the moon's presence when she rose above the apple trees, would have +conveyed the night's message a thousand times more clearly. + +It is seldom worth while to describe any failure of the spirit very +minutely, and tragedy is not the tone this paper would assume; but one +slight episode of the dawn following that fatal night must be related. +We were gathered on the eastern edge of our mountain top, a tousled, +gray, disheveled lot, heavy-eyed and weary. Does the reader understand +the significance of the term 'to prevent the dawn'? He does if he has +stood and waited for the sun to rise--or the moon or any of the +constellations, for that matter. All heavenly bodies retard their +progress through the influence of being waited for. 'Surely now!' a +dozen times we warned one another there, with our faces toward the +quickening east; yet no glittering, lambent rim slid up to greet our +eyes. + +At last a decent comely cloud came to the rescue of the sun, halting and +embarrassed, and settled snugly all about the mountain of the +day-spring. Into this the sun was born, so obscurely that it rode high +above the mountain's edge, shorn and dull, a rubber ball, before we +discovered it. 'Why--why--' some one began, stammering; and then there +was a dramatic pause. Brave and determined though we were in our pursuit +of ecstasy, we could not burst forth into song like Memnon statues at +the sight of that belated orange, 'Lo, the Lord Sun!' Not at all. It was +the merest varlet. In this dilemma of our hearts, a funny little wailing +cry came from the cliff's edge: 'I want my money back! I want my money +back!' It was a perfect commentary on the whole situation, as fine and +humorous and true an utterance as could be asked on the foiled occasion. +We laughed at it, and all the air was straightway clearer for us. Then +down the mountain-side we trooped, and went home to bed. + +Of course I am not unaware of the impatience of some readers, if they +have taken pains to scan so far this earnest exposition. The outdoor +movement is not one primarily of sentiment, but of health and happiness; +and the story just related is aside from the point. That may be true. I +certainly stand in respect of the great claims of the physical side of +the subject, and would not deal with them. By all means, let all people +be as well as possible. But it is still the other side, the side of +sentiment and rapture, which is most pleadingly often brought home to +me. + +It is pitiful how helpless we are against the invasions of a new +enthusiasm like this--we sober, conservative folk. I still sleep in my +bed, in my room, but the satisfaction I used to take in the innocent +practice is broken of late by haunting fears that I may not be able to +keep it up. My friends will not let me alone. + +'Of all things! why don't you sleep out here, on this little upper +piazza? Precisely the place! I can't understand how you can ignore such +an opportunity.' + +'Well, you see,'--my answer was glib at first,--'the piazza overhangs +the road, and the milk-wagons go by very early. I don't want to get up +at four o'clock every morning.' + +'They couldn't see much of you, I should think,'--with a thoughtful +measuring glance,--'not more than your toes and the tip of your nose.' + +'Oh, thank you, that's quite enough!' + +'Well, you might saw off the legs of a cot, to bring it below the +railing. Or just a mattress spread on the floor would do very well.' + +Just a mattress spread on the floor! That closes the argument. I have no +spirit left to prefer any other objections to these dauntless souls, +such as the rain (the piazza has no roof). But what would a cold bath be +if not distinctly so much to the good in view of the toilet operations +of the following morning? There is no course left me but that final +one,--which should in honesty have come first,--of damning myself by the +hopeless assertion, 'I don't want to sleep out of doors.' This locks the +argument, and the barrier stands complete, shutting me off in a world by +myself, interrupting the genial flow of sympathetic friendship. But I +love my friends. Therefore it follows that I tremble for my further +repose in my bed. I fear I shall yet utter midnight sighs on that piazza +floor. + +Indoors, dear indoors! I would I might plead its cause a little here. +Does no one ever pause to reflect that there was never any outdoors at +all until indoors was created? The two had a simultaneous birth, but it +was an appurtenance of the latter that marked the distinction and gave +the names. A little humiliating that might have seemed to any creatures +less generous than woods and mountains--to have been here really from +the beginning, ages and ages in glorious life, and then to take their +first generic name, find their first classification, all of them in a +lump together (what a lump!) as the other side of a fragile barrier to a +mushroom construction. One wonders that those who exalt the outdoors as +everything nowadays, do not find some better title for it than its +dooryard term. But those who love the indoors too, though they may smile +at the calm presumption of its dubbing the universe, accept the +conclusion without any question. Man is after all the creature of +creatures, and his life is of first importance. We do not hear that the +woodchuck speaks of _out-hole_, or the bird of _out-tree_. + +Such life of man is an inner thing, intensely inner; its essence lies in +its inwardness. It can hardly know itself 'all abroad'; it must needs +have devised for itself a shelter as soon as it came to +self-consciousness, a refuge, not only from storm and cold but from the +distracting variety of the extensive world. Indoors is really an august +symbol, a very grave and reverend thing, if we apprehend it rightly. It +stands for the separate life of man, apart from (though still a part of, +too) the rest of the universe. Take any one room inhabited daily by a +person of strong individuality,--how alive it is! How brisk and alert in +the very attitudes of the chairs and the pictures on the walls! Or, more +happily, how serene and reposeful! Or how matter-of-fact! Morbid and +passionate, flippant, austere, boisterous, decorous,--anything, +everything a room may be which a human creature may be; and that range, +as most of us know, is almost unlimited. + +It is hard to understand how any person can fail to respond to the warm +appeal of his own abode. Say one has been abroad all day (another term +that assumes the house as a starting-point), climbing the mountains, +exploring the woods, ravishing eyes and heart with the beauty of the +excellent world. Night comes at last, and weariness droops upon the +flesh. Enough! Even the spirit's cry finds a pause. Enough, enough! The +wide world suddenly spreads so vast that it overwhelms and frightens; +there is something pitiless in the reach of the unbounded sky. Then, as +fast as they can, the lagging feet make for a point on the hillside +where the eyes can command the valley, and swiftly, eagerly flies the +glance to one dear accustomed goal. A white house nestled among the +trees,--that is all, yet it thrills the heart with a potent summons +which mountain-peaks and sunsets do not know. Home! Ah, hurry, then! + +Down the hill, across the pasture, in at the white gate, and up the two +marble steps. The front door stands open unconcernedly. The house makes +no stir at receiving its inmate back,--its inmate whose life it has held +and brooded during his absence, waiting to reinvest him with it when he +wants it again,--but there is a quiet sense of welcome, a content of +returning, which is among the sweetest and most establishing of human +experiences. The clock ticks steadily in the hall, its hands approaching +the genial hour of supper-time. Within the open library door, the books +dream on the shelves. Little sounds of a tranquil preparation come from +the dining-room; the tea-kettle sings, the black kitten purrs. Blessed +indoors! It draws a veil gently over the tired head, bewildered with +much marveling, lays a cool hand over the eyes, says, 'Now rest, rest.' +Indoors is like the Guardian Angel in Browning's poem. + +After supper, one sits by the lamp and reads peacefully. Aunt Susan +reads, too, on the other side of the big table, and Cousin Jane sews. +The books and the pictures look on benignly, and even the furniture is +instinct with a mute eloquence of companionship. The song of the night +insects throbs without, and millers hurl themselves with soft thuds +against the windows; an owl mutters to himself in the maple tree. But +not for anything would one go out, not for anything would one leave this +glowing, brooding, protecting indoors which one has regained. After a +while, one goes upstairs and lays one's self in the safe white bed in +one's own room. The windows are open to the night, but solid walls are +all round about; and, before the sleepily closing eyes, gleam one's own +peculiar cherished belongings in the creeping moonlight. Into the very +heart of one's life one has returned at the close of the day, and there +one goes to sleep. 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in +quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.' + +And we will not? Is the discouraged clause, promptly succeeding to that +most beautiful verse of Isaiah, true, then, of us? Are we going to +despoil ourselves of all the poetry, the intimate meaning of our indoor +life? + +'A place in which to dress and undress--that is all I want of a house,' +an energetic young woman said. + +A bath-house would suit her perfectly. Perhaps that is what we are +coming to--rows of bath-houses, with sleeping-bags stored up in them +against the night. Alas for the pictures! Alas for the music! Alas for +the books! + +The books! There is a happy suggestion. I believe the books will save +us. There is certainty nothing that objects with greater decision and +emphasis to sleeping out of doors than a book--yes, even a volume of +Walt Whitman. Books are obstinate in their way; they know their own +minds, and there are some things which they will not do. The effect of +leaving one in the orchard inadvertently over night has a final +melancholy about it which most book-lovers understand poignantly. Could +books be printed on india rubber and bound in water-proof cloth? +Perhaps; but the method does not sound attractive enough to be feasible +even in these practical days. No, I believe the books will save us. They +are a great army and they have power; a steady conservative hold is +theirs on their restless owners. Other threatening situations, they have +saved and are constantly saving. + +'I sometimes think I'd give up housekeeping, and not have a home any +more,' one woman said, 'if it weren't for my books. But I can't part +with them, nor yet can I get them all into one room; so here I stay.' + +'Buy books?' exclaimed a New York man. 'No; it hurts them too much to +move them.' + +Which innocent implication has caused me many a thoughtful smile. + +Essentially human,--with the humanity of the ages, not of a few +decades,--books understand what man really wants, and what he must have, +better than he does himself. In the serene and gracious indoors, they +took up their places long ago, and there they remain, and there they +will always make shift to abide. Perhaps, if we sit down close at their +feet, we, too, may abide. + + + + +The Contented Heart + +By Lucy Elliot Keeler + + +_CÅ“ur Content, grand Talent_, runs the motto of one of my friends; +which early led me to dub her, Contented Heart. Is it not human nature, +such easy assumption of an interesting aspiration as a fact to be +posted? As logical as to expect Mr. Short to check his stature at five +feet two; as humanly contrary as for the Blacks to name their girls +Lily, Blanche, and Pearl. They usually do. I remember a Bermudian +rector, leaning down to inquire the name of the black baby to be +christened, suddenly quickened into audibility by the mother's reply: +'Keren-Happuck, sir, yes, sir, one of the Miss Jobs, sir.' Now Job's +daughters were fairest among the daughters of men. + +Contented Heart has obsessed my mind of late. I like to take the other +side: everybody does. Does like to and does; and because the air to-day +is redolent of unrest and discontent, I put in the assertion that, +nevertheless, the great majority of my acquaintances possess that great +talent,--translate it knack, or translate it acquirement,--a contented +heart. I seldom talk intimately with anybody but I hear something like +this:-- + +'I have been visiting at the X's. What a superb place! but I do not envy +them. Think of the care and expense and the servant question. Simple as +my cot is, I honestly prefer it.' Or, 'What a fortune the H's appear to +have. It would be comfortable to get what one wants and go where one +wishes; not to worry at tax-paying time and new-suit time. Still I doubt +if they get half the enjoyment from their acquisitions that we do who +have to save and plan for ours.' Or, 'You do not use eye-glasses? How +fortunate! they are such a nuisance. But hush--such a boon. I should be +helpless without them. I am not sure but it is even a good thing to be +born with them on, so to speak. My contemporaries who are beginning to +use them are most unhappy, while glasses are just a part of my face.' +Or, 'It is a great affliction to be deaf in even one ear. The person on +that one side of you thinks you prefer the conversation of the person on +the other side. Yet, as my brother said when he saw me struggling to +make out a dull speaker's words, "Why abuse your natural advantage?" + +How do people with two good ears sleep? They cannot bury them both in +the pillow. Suppose our ears were so sensitive that we noticed every +footstep on the street! Being deaf is merely to enjoy some of the +advantages that the society to prevent unnecessary noises seeks to +confer on a normal public. We admire a beautiful face and then add, 'But +how she must hate to grow old; a tragedy of the mirror that we homely +souls are spared.' All my life I envied persons with straight noses till +I began to observe that with age the straight nose droops into a beak, +whereas the youthful tip-tilt and concavity kind straightens its end to +a fair classicism. Thus others than the Vicar of Wakefield draw upon +content for the deficiencies of fortune. + +Of course content is dilemma enough to have its two horns: the double +peaks of taking life too easily, and of taking it too hard. In his +statue of Christ, Thorvaldsen expressed his conviction that he had +reached his culminating point,--since he had never been so satisfied +with any work before,--and was 'alarmed that I _am_ satisfied.' That +'the people ask nothing better' is the slogan of the grafter. No reform +comes without its preceding period of discontent; dissatisfaction is the +price to be paid for better things; a revolutionary attitude must be +maintained. Stevenson knew a Welsh blacksmith who at twenty-five could +neither read nor write, at which time he heard a chapter of _Robinson +Crusoe_ read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat +content, huddled in his ignorance; but he left the kitchen another man. +There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine day-dreams, written and +printed and bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at pleasure. +Down he sat that day, painfully learned to read Welsh, and returned to +borrow the book. It had been lost, nor could he find another copy, only +one in English. Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length +with entire delight read _Robinson_. + +As there is a noble way of being discontented, so there is an ignoble +content. The Contented Heart is not a phrase to soothe us, but a power +to work results. It must constantly emerge upon a higher plane, or it +will fall. Few of us would be willing to retain just the personal habits +that we have now. Sir Gilbert Elliot drove his sister out of her +literary inertia when he bet gloves to ribbons that she could not write +a modern ballad on the _Flowers of the Forest_. The result is one of the +most popular songs of Scotland. There is also a sham content whose +practitioners often get their 'cumuppances' as effectively as did Thomas +Raikes. The Duchess of York led him about her garden, where was a +menagerie crowded with eagles and some favorite macaws. A herd of +kangaroos and ostriches appeared and a troop of monkeys. Next morning a +kangaroo and a macaw strolled into Raikes's bedroom. He was too much of +a courtier to tell his terror. At breakfast he said, 'If I like one +creature more than another it is a kangaroo, while there is nothing so +good for a bedroom sentinel as a strong-legged macaw.' The good Duchess +smiled pleasantly and put Raikes down in her will for two macaws. + +A certain kind of content enlivens us with the bliss of others' +ignorance. Tacitus was one of the first historians in our modern sense, +yet he described a motionless frozen sea in the north from which a hiss +is heard as the sun plunges down into it at night; and Pliny noted that +the reflection of mirrors is due to the percussion of the air thrown +back upon the eyes. Kipling laughed slyly at the traveler in India who +spent his time gazing at the names of the railway stations in Baedeker. +When the train rushed through a station he would draw a line through the +name and say, 'I've done that.' Satisfaction with our learning is +confined to no age or nation. Two Frenchmen in a restaurant showing off +their English opined, 'It deed rain to-morrow.' 'Yes, it was.' +Satisfaction with virtue was rebuked by Francis de Sales when he told +the nuns, who asked to go barefoot, to keep their shoes and change their +brains. Satisfaction with our importance recalls Harlequin, who when +asked what he was doing on his paper throne replied that he was +reigning. Satisfaction with our future is the satisfaction of the eighth +square of the chessboard where we shall all be queens together, and it's +all feasting and fun. + +I would not, as advocate of the Contented Heart, go so far as Walt +Whitman when he said that whoever was without his volume of poems should +be assassinated; but his remark suggests that extreme measures are +frequently curative. Stanislaus of Poland did not hesitate to recall to +his daughter the bad days they had undergone. 'See, Marie, how +Providence cares for good people: you had not even a chemise in 1725, +and now you are Queen of France.' To take up Dante and read about devils +boiled in pitch must by comparison cheer morbid humans. The spectacle of +tragedy in the lives of kings and favorites of the gods such as the +Greek stage presented was believed to be wholesome because beholders +thereby faced a scale of misfortune so much exceeding anything in their +own lives that their mishaps appeared of slight importance in +comparison. I know that after seeing _Å’dipus Rex_ given by the three +Salvinis and others in the old amphitheatre in Fiesole, I went off +murmuring, 'What does it matter if my trunk is lost!' a state of mind to +which no slighter argument had sufficed to bring me. Surely life is too +interesting to spend it all knocking off its pretty scallops by aimless +exaggeration of small troubles, or hanging out our large ones to flap +the passer-by. Besides which, we get no more sympathy from the passer-by +than did Giant Despair who sometimes, in sunshiny weather, fell into +fits. + +Captivating as a 'born,' a fortuitous, untrained content may be, trained +content is of a finer type. One is quantity content, the other quality +content. Not to smash things up and make them over just as we want them, +which we should like to do but cannot; not to waste our time fighting +against conditions, but to take up those conditions, that environment, +and out of them forge the _Å“s triplex_ of a contented heart--that, I +take it, is to be an adept in the fine art of living, and I for one am +votary. + +That the most restless heart can train itself to find content in simple, +commonplace things, like work, nature, health, books, meditation, and +friends,--illustrations are bewilderingly abundant. Burne-Jones said he +would like to stay right in his own house for numberless years, the hope +of getting on with his painting was happiness enough. Macaulay would +'rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who +did not love reading'; and King James said that if he were not a king he +would be a university man, and if it were so that he must be a prisoner +he would desire no other durance than to be chained in the Bodleian +Library with so many noble authors. Carlyle's chief luxury was 'to think +and smoke tobacco, with a new clay pipe every day, put on the doorstep +at night for any poor brother-smoker or souvenir-hunter to carry away.' + +All Diogenes wanted was that Alexander and his men should stand from +between him and the sun. Goethe found content in Nature and earnest +activity; and the happy Turk told Candide that he had twenty acres of +land which he cultivated with his children, work which put them far from +great evils: ennui, vice, and need,--'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.' +Diocletian, one of the cleverest of the Roman emperors, reigned +twenty-two years and then retired to private life in Dalmatia, building, +planting, and gardening. Solicited by Maximian to resume the imperial +purple, he replied that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he +had planted with his own hands he would no longer be urged to relinquish +his enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power. Fanny Kemble lived +all summer in the Alps, the guides describing her exquisitely as the +lady who goes singing over the mountains. Pedaretus, being left out of +the election of the three hundred, went home merry, saying that it did +him good to find there were three hundred better than himself in the +city. St. Augustine on his thirty-third birthday gave his friends a +moderate feast followed by a three days' discussion of the Happy Life. +Bunyan wrote _The Pilgrim's Progress_ not to please his neighbors, but +his own self to satisfy; in prison, too. + +Catherine of Siena, whatever her sufferings, was always jocund, 'ever +laughing in the Lord.' The blind Madame du Deffand rejoiced that her +affliction was not rheumatism; Spurgeon's receipt for contentment was +never to chew pills, but to swallow the disagreeable and have done with +it; Darwin's comfort was that he had never consciously done anything to +gain applause; and Jefferson never ceased affirming his belief in the +satisfying power of common daylight, common pleasures, and all the +common relations of life. Essipoff, when commiserated on the smallness +of her hands, insisted that longer ones would be cumbersome. Robert +Schauffler's specific for a blue Monday is to whistle all the Brahms +tunes he can remember. Dr. Cuyler, when very ill, replied to a +relative's suggestion of the glorious company waiting him above, 'I've +got all eternity to visit with those old fellows; I am in no hurry to +go'; and old Aunt Mandy, when asked why she was so constantly cheerful, +replied, 'Lor', chile, I jes' wear this world like a loose garment.' + +Acts, all these, the flinging out of hand or tongue against adverse +fortune. The brain can do it, too. One of the most remarkable statements +I ever heard is Mary Antin's that she never had a dull hour in her life. +Now, outside things, doings, could not so have thrilled her days. Her +spirit kept dullness distant. On the rafters of Montaigne's tower-room +was written in Greek, 'It is not so much things that torment man as the +opinion that he has of things.' Our opinions then make the contented or +the discontented heart. Coleridge affirmed the shaping power of +imagination to be so vitally human that the joy of life consists in it. +Haydon's chief pleasure was 'feeding on his own thoughts.' 'Make for +yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts,' Ruskin urged. 'Whether God gave +the Venetians St. Mark's bones does not matter,' he says elsewhere, 'but +he gave them real joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we +have in our real ones.' Lord Rosebery urges people to garden in winter +in the imagination. Stevenson writes of the ease and pleasure of travels +in the calendar and a voyage in the atlas; and Keats thought that a man +might pass a very pleasant life by reading certain pages of poetry and +wandering with them and musing and dreaming upon them. + +It is the mood that makes the contented heart, just as the eye makes the +horizon, and we ourselves make the light that we see things by. Clothes +warm us only by keeping our own heat in. 'Everyone is well or ill at +ease,' says Epictetus, 'according as he finds himself; not he whom the +world believes but himself believes to be so is content.' To be +concrete, take riches. 'Greedy fools,' sings the modern poet, + + 'Measure themselves by poor men never; + Their standard being still richer men + Makes them poor ever.' + +The rich man is merely one who has something to spare; and the really +poor one he who has nothing over. If you can give anything you are rich. +Try it. An old man tells me how Mark Hopkins used to examine the boys in +the Westminster Catechism: 'What is the chief end of man?' 'To glorify +God and enjoy him forever.' 'Well,' he burst forth, 'why don't you do it +then?' It is not conceit, but hygiene of the soul, to 'enjoy one's +self,' taking the conventional phrase literally. The trick of happiness, +says Walt Whitman, is to tone down your wants and tastes low enough; +and Stevenson puts in his say that the true measure of success is +appreciation: 'I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment +with life than of knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue.' What would the +possession of a thousand a year avail, asks Thackeray, to one who was +allowed to enjoy it only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a +couple of nails in it? + +Take knowledge, not to be confounded with wisdom,--'I have none,' sang +Keats's thrush, 'and yet the evening listens.' It did not hurt Horace + + if others be + More rich or better read than me, + Each has his place. + +Montaigne would rather be more content and less knowing; and there is +Lessing's great confession of faith: that if God in his right hand held +all truth, and in his left the striving for truth, 'if he should say to +me, "Choose," I would say, "Father, give me this striving, pure truth is +for thee alone."' + +Take work. Do you complain of it? Try doing more, of a productive sort. +An engine-builder received complaint that his engine burned too much +coal. 'How many cars on the train?' was the telegraphed query, with the +reply, 'Four.' 'Try twelve,' went the prescription, and the train drew +twelve with economy of fuel. 'Your brain tired?' William James echoed a +student. 'Never mind, work straight on and your brain will get its +second wind.' I myself do not know of any anodyne surer and quicker +than that found in the garden. When all the world is askew, dibbling in +seedlings in straight rows is a wonderful solace. Why do so many women +treat domesticity as drudgery? Its infinite variety, so unlike the +monotonous tasks of men, often wearies the mind, but like Chesterton I +do not see how it can narrow it. And socialism, with its cry of +armchairs for workingmen! Armchairs, as Creighton nobly says, will bring +no lasting happiness; but to quicken a human being, even one's self, +into a sense of the meaning of his life and destiny, that is a real +happiness. + +Take sorrow. Is it not infinitely better to have loved and lost than +never to have loved at all? Are there not many good moments in life +which outweigh its greatest sorrows? + +Take overpressure. Luther advised Melanchthon to stop managing the +universe and let the Almighty do it; and Dr. Trumbull preached 'the duty +of refusing to do good.' + +Take the grief caused by others. One of the bravest women I know used in +times of anxiety to gather her little children about her and say gayly, +'Now I will make some graham gems, and open some marmalade, and we will +take a little comfort.' Solomon or Aristotle could have done no more. + +Take, for a smile's sake, the weather. It may be bad, but as we cannot +change it, the thing is our attitude toward it; and as dark enshrouds +us, 'The sun is set,' said Mr. Inglesant, cheerfully; 'but it will rise +again. Let us go home.' + +In such ways as these the right-minded person will meet his discontents +face to face, and one by one eliminate them. He will also take stock of +his assets. St. Teresa said that by thinking of heaven for a quarter of +an hour every day one might hope to deserve it. Why do we not +deliberately devote some minutes each day to saying to ourselves, 'I am +tolerably well; I have food and shelter; everybody so far as I know +respects me, and a few persons love me truly. I have books and a garden, +the stars and the sea. I enjoy this and that, and before long the other. +The thing so long dreaded has never come to pass. I will embark at any +rate for the land of the Contented Heart.' Would not such a conscious +recapitulation be an actual force building up this thing of which we +talk? + +Can content be conveyed? Can it be passed from one who has it to one who +has it not--as one lamp lights another nor grows less? I wonder what +would be the effect of a group of young women, lately conning over in +college class-- + + With what I most enjoy contented least-- + +if they should resolve to stop all that, and, undeterred by others' +estimate of values, be trustees of their own content, not suffering it +to be contingent upon the manners and conduct of others? I believe that +it would act like the magnet, which not only attracts the needle but +infuses it with the power of drawing others. Great-heart so inspired the +travelers that Christiana seized her viol and Mercy her lute, and, as +they made sweet music, Ready-to-Halt took Despondency's daughter, Mrs. +Much-Afraid, by the hand and together they went dancing down the road. + +Which is apropos of my contention that the Contented Heart is not so +rare! + + +THE END + +The Riverside Press + +CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS + +U. S. A. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Classics, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + +***** This file should be named 37758-0.txt or 37758-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/7/5/37758/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/37758-0.zip b/37758-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e69c394 --- /dev/null +++ b/37758-0.zip diff --git a/37758-8.txt b/37758-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..69a96b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/37758-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6979 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Classics, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Atlantic Classics + +Author: Various + +Release Date: October 14, 2011 [EBook #37758] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + +ATLANTIC +CLASSICS + +The Atlantic Monthly Company +Boston + +COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY + + TO + + The Pleasantest of Companions, + Most Constant of Friends, + Who Seeks not Flattery but Counsel, + Provoked on Occasion only + And never Vexing beyond Endurance, + Wise with Ancient Wisdom, + And Fresh from the Fountain of Youth-- + + THE + ATLANTIC CONTRIBUTOR + + + + +Preface + + +This volume, composed of essays which on their appearance in the +_Atlantic_ have met with especial favor and which from their character +seem to deserve a longer life than the paper covers of a magazine +permit, is published out of deference to a multitude of requests. Many +readers have asked that this essay or that be preserved in permanent +form, while many teachers both in college and high school have written +us that the usefulness of the _Atlantic_ in the classroom would be +enhanced by the appearance of an edition which, selecting from the +selection already made from month to month, should constitute a kind of +_Atlantic Anthology_, preserving the magazine's flavor and character and +offering, as it were, a sample of what it aims to be. + +To give to this collection that variety which is the spice of a +magazine's life, the editor has selected a single contribution from each +of sixteen characteristic _Atlantic_ authors, making his choice from +material not greatly affected by the interests of the moment. In two or +three instances appears an essay which has already been published in +some collection of an author's work, and the _Atlantic_ wishes to +acknowledge with thanks permission from Houghton Mifflin Company to +print once again Professor Sharp's delightful "Turtle Eggs for Agassiz," +which has been included in his volume "The Face of the Fields," and Mr. +Nicholson's agreeable delineation of the "Provincial American"; while it +gratefully adds its acknowledgment to Henry Holt and Company for the +reappearance of Mr. Strunsky's "The Street," already published in his +inimitable little volume, "Belshazzar Court." + +Our chief thanks, now and always, are due to the _Atlantic's_ +contributors, to whom we owe all we have or hope for. Were not our +design limited, we should gladly enrich this collection with much +material from our file, which is quite as worthy to represent the +magazine, but which, for one reason or another, we judge less suitable +for the purposes of the present volume. + +THE EDITOR. + + + + +Contents + + +FIDDLERS ERRANT _Robert Haven Schauffler_ 1 + +TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ _Dallas Lore Sharp_ 23 + +A FATHER TO HIS FRESHMAN SON _Edward Sanford Martin_ 45 + +INTENSIVE LIVING _Cornelia A. P. Comer_ 59 + +REMINISCENCE WITH POSTSCRIPT _Owen Wister_ 87 + +THE OTHER SIDE _Margaret Sherwood_ 110 + +ON AUTHORS _Margaret Preston Montague_ 124 + +THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN _Meredith Nicholson_ 130 + +OUR LADY POVERTY _Agnes Repplier_ 153 + +ENTERTAINING THE CANDIDATE _Katharine Baker_ 173 + +THE STREET _Simeon Strunsky_ 181 + +FASHIONS IN MEN _Katharine Fullerton Gerould_ 201 + +A CONFESSION IN PROSE _Walter Prichard Eaton_ 225 + +IN THE CHAIR _Ralph Bergengren_ 243 + +THE PASSING OF INDOORS _Zephine Humphrey_ 252 + +THE CONTENTED HEART _Lucy Elliot Keeler_ 265 + + + + +Fiddlers Errant + +By Robert Haven Schauffler + +I + + +MUSICAL adventures largely depend on your instrument. Go traveling with +a bassoon or clarionet packed in your trunk, and romance will pass you +by. But far otherwise will events shape themselves if you set forth with +a fiddle. + +The moment I turned my back upon the humdrum flute and embraced the +'cello, that instrument of romance, things began happening thick and +fast in a hitherto uneventful life. I found that to sally forth with +your 'cello couchant under your arm, like a lance of the days of +chivalry, was to invite adventure. You tempted Providence to make things +interesting for you, up to the moment when you returned home and stood +your fat, melodious friend in the corner on his one leg--like the stork, +that other purveyor of joyful surprises. + +One reason why the 'cellist is particularly liable to meet with musical +adventures is because the nature of his talent is so plainly visible. +The parcel under his arm labels him FIDDLER in larger scare-caps than +Mr. Hearst ever invented for headlines. It is seen of all men. There is +no concealment possible. For it would, indeed, be less practicable to +hide your 'cello under a bushel than to hide a bushel under your 'cello. + +The non-reducible obesity of this instrument is apt to bring you +adventures of all sorts: wrathful sometimes, when urchins recognize it +as a heaven-sent target for snowballs; or when adults audibly quote Dean +Swift's asinine remark, 'He was a fiddler and therefore a rogue.' +Absurd, sometimes, as when the ticket-chopper in the subway bars your +path under the misapprehension that you are carrying a double-bass; and +when the small boys at the exit offer you a _Saturday Evening Post_ in +return for 'a tune on that there banjo.' But more often the episodes are +pleasant, as when your bulky trademark enables some kindred spirit to +recognize you as his predestined companion on impromptu adventures in +music. + +I was at first almost painfully aware of my 'cello's conspicuousness +because I had abandoned for it an instrument so retiring by nature that +you might carry it till death in your side pocket, yet never have it +contribute an unusual episode to your career. But from the moment when I +discovered the exaggerated old fiddle in the attic, slumbering in its +black coffin, and wondered what it was all about, and brought it +resurrection and life,--events began. I have never known exactly what +was the magic inherent in the dull, guttural, discouraged protests of +the strings which I experimentally plucked that day. But their +songs-without-words-or-music seemed to me pregnant with promises of +beauty and romance far beyond the ken of the forthright flute. So then +and there I decided to embark upon the delicate and dangerous enterprise +of learning another instrument. + +It was indeed delicate and dangerous because it had to be prosecuted as +secretly as sketching hostile fortifications. Father must not suspect. I +feared that if he heard the demonic groans of a G string in pain, or the +ghoulish whimperings of a manhandled A, he would mount to the attic, +throw back his head, look down upon me through those lower crescents of +his spectacles which always made him look a trifle unsympathetic, and +pronounce that baleful formula: 'My son, come into my study!' For I knew +he labored under the delusion that I already 'blew in' too much time on +the flute, away from the companionship of All Gaul, _enteuthen +exelaunei_, and Q.E.D. As for any additional instrument, I feared that +he would reduce it to a pulp at sight, and me too. + +My first secret step was to secure a long strip of paper to be pasted on +the finger-board under the strings. It was all pockmarked with black +dots and letters, so that if the music told you to play the note G, all +you had to do was to contort your neck properly and remove your left +hand from the path of vision, then gaze cross-eyed and upside down at +the finger-board until you discovered the particular dot labeled G. The +next move was to clap your fingertip upon that dot and straighten out +your neck and eyes and apply the bow. Then out would come a triumphant +G,--that is, provided your fingers had not already rubbed G's +characteristically undershot lip so much as to erase away the letter's +individuality. In that case, to be sure, all your striving for G might +result only in C after all. + +It was fascinating work, though. And every afternoon as the hour of +four, and father's 'constitutional,' approached, I would 'get set' like +a sprinter on my mark in the upper hall. The moment the front door +closed definitely behind my parent I would dash for the attic and +commence my cervical and ocular contortions. It was dangerous, too. For +it was so hard to stop betimes that one evening father made my blood run +cold by inquiring, 'What were you moaning about upstairs before dinner?' +I fear that I attributed these sounds to travail in Latin scholarship, +and an alleged sympathy for the struggles of the dying Gaul. + +The paper finger-board was so efficacious that in a week I felt ready to +taste the first fruits of toil. So I insinuated a pair of musical +friends into the house one afternoon, to try an easy trio. They were a +brother and sister who played violin and piano. Things went so +brilliantly that we resolved on a public performance within a few days, +at the South High School. Alas, if I had only taken the supposed +rapidity of my progress with a grain of attic salt! But my only +solicitude was over the problem how to smuggle the too conspicuous +instrument to school, on the morning of the concert, without the +knowledge of a vigilant father. We decided at last that any such attempt +would be suicidal rashness. So I borrowed another boy's father's 'cello, +and, in default of the printed strip, I penciled under the strings notes +of the whereabouts of G, C, and so forth, making G shoot out the lip +with extra decision. + +Our public performance was a _succès fou_,--that is, it was a _succès_ +up to a certain point, and _fou_ beyond it, when one disaster followed +another. My fingers played so hard as to rub out G's lower lip. They +quite obliterated A, turned E into F, and B into a fair imitation of D. +These involuntary revisions led me to introduce the very boldest modern +harmonies into one of the most naïvely traditional strains of Cornelius +Gurlitt. Now, in the practice of the art of music one never with +impunity pours new harmonic wine into old bottles. The thing is simply +not done. + +Perhaps, though, we might have muddled through somehow, had not my +violinist friend, during a rest, poked me cruelly in the ribs with his +bow and remarked in a coarse stage whisper, 'Look who's there!' + +I looked, and gave a gasp. It might have passed for an excellent +rehearsal of my last gasp. In the very front row sat--father! He +appeared sardonic and businesslike. The fatal formula seemed already to +be trembling upon his lips. The remnants of B, C, D, and so forth +suddenly blurred before my crossed eyes. With the most dismal report our +old bottle of chamber music blew up, and I fled from the scene. + +'My son, come into my study.' + +In an ague I had waited half the evening for those hated words; and with +laggard step and miserable forebodings I followed across the hall. But +the day was destined to end in still another surprise. When father +finally faced me in that awful sanctum, he was actually smiling in the +jolliest manner, and I divined that the rod was going to be spared. + +'What's all this?' he inquired. 'Thought you'd surprise your old dad, +eh? Come, tell me about it.' + +So I told him about it; and he was so sympathetic that I found courage +for the great request. + +'Pa,' I stammered, 'sometimes I think p'raps I don't hold the bow just +right. It scratches so. Please might I take just four lessons from a +regular teacher so I could learn all about how to play the 'cello?' + +Father choked a little. But he looked jollier than ever as he replied, +'Yes, my son, on condition that you promise to lay the flute entirely +aside until you have learned _all_ about how to play the 'cello.' + +I promised. + +I have faithfully kept that promise. + + +II + +Fiddlers errant are apt to rush in and occupy the centre of the stage +where angels in good and regular practice fear even to tune up. One of +the errant's pet vagaries is to volunteer his services in orchestras too +good for him. Not long after discovering that I would need more than +four lessons to learn quite all there was to know about the 'cello,--in +fact, just nine months after discovering the coffin in the attic,--I +'rushed in.' Hearing that _The Messiah_ was to be given at Christmas, I +approached the conductor and magniloquently informed him that I was a +'cellist and that, seeing he was he, I would contribute my services +without money and without price to the coming performance. + +With a rather dubious air my terms were accepted. That same evening at +rehearsal I found that the entire bass section of the orchestra +consisted of three 'cellos. These were presided over by an inaudible, +and therefore negligible, little girl, a hoary sage who always arrived +very late and left very early, and myself. I shall never forget my +sensations when the sage, at a crucial point, suddenly packed up and +left me, an undeveloped musical Atlas, to bear the entire weight of the +orchestra on one pair of puny shoulders. Under these conditions it was a +memorable ordeal to read at sight 'The Trumpet Shall Sound.' The trumpet +sounded, indeed. That was more than the 'cello did in certain passages! +As for the dead being raised, however, that happened according to +programme. + +After this high-tension episode, I pulled myself together, only to fall +into a cruel and unusual pit which the treacherous Händel dug for +'cellists by writing one single passage in that unfamiliar alto clef +which looks so much like the usual tenor clef that before the least +suspicion of impending disaster dawns, you are down in the pit, +hopelessly floundering. + +I emerged from this rehearsal barely alive; but I had really enjoyed +myself so much more than I had suffered, or made others suffer, that my +initial impulse to rush at sight into strange orchestras now became +stereotyped into a habit. Since then what delightful evenings I have +spent in the old Café Martin and in the old Café Boulevarde where my +'cellist friends in the orchestras were ever ready to resign their +instruments into my hands for a course or two, and the leader always let +me pick out the music! + +But one afternoon in upper Broadway I met with the sort of adventure +that figures in the fondest dreams of fiddlers errant. I had strolled +into the nearest hotel to use the telephone. As I passed through the +restaurant, my attention was caught by a vaguely familiar strain from +the musicians' gallery. Surely this was unusual spiritual provender to +offer a crowd of typical New York diners! More and more absorbed in +trying to recognize the music, I sank into an armchair in the lobby, the +telephone quite forgotten. The instruments were working themselves up to +some magnificent climax, and working me up at the same time. It began to +sound more and more like the greatest of all music,--the musician's very +holiest of holies. Surely I must be dreaming! My fingers crooked +themselves for a pinch. But just then the unseen instruments swung back +into the opening theme of the Brahms piano quartette in A major. +Merciful heavens! A Brahms quartette in Broadway? Pan in Wall Street? +Silence. With three jumps I was up in the little gallery, wringing the +hands of those performers and calling down blessings upon their +quixotism as musical missionaries. 'Missionaries?' echoed the leader in +amusement. 'Ah, no. We could never hope to convert those down there.' He +waved a scornful hand at the consumers of lobster below. 'Now and then +we play Brahms just in order that we may save our own souls.' The +'cellist rose, saluted, and extended his bow in my direction, like some +proud commander surrendering his sword. 'Will it please you,' he +inquired, 'to play the next movement?' It pleased me. + + +III + +Fiddlers errant find that traveling with a 'cello is almost as good--and +almost as bad--as traveling with a child. It helps you, for example, in +cultivating friendly relations with fellow passengers. Suppose there is +a broken wheel, or the engineer is waiting for Number 26 to pass, or you +are stalled for three days in a blizzard,--what more jolly than to +undress your 'cello and play each of those present the tune he would +most like to hear, and lead the congregational singing of 'Dixie,' +'Tipperary,' 'Drink to me only,' and 'Home, Sweet Home'? A fiddle may +even make tenable one of those railway junctions which Stevenson cursed +as the nadir of intrinsic uninterestingness, and which Mr. Clayton +Hamilton praised with such _brio_. + +But this is only the bright side. In some ways traveling with a 'cello +is as uncomfortable as traveling, not only with a baby, but with a +donkey. Unless indeed you have an instrument with a convenient hinged +door in the back so that you may pack it full of pyjamas, collars, +brushes, MSS, and so forth, thus dispensing with a bag; or unless you +can calk up its _f_ holes and use the instrument as a canoe on occasion, +a 'cello is about as inconvenient a traveling companion as the corpse in +R.L.S.'s tale, which would insist on getting into the wrong box. + +Some idea of the awkwardness of taking the 'cello along in a sleeping +car may be gathered from its nicknames. It is called the 'bull-fiddle.' +It is called the 'dog-house.' But, unlike either bulls or kennels, it +cannot safely be forwarded by freight or express. The formula for +Pullman travel with a 'cello is as follows: First ascertain whether the +conductor will let you aboard with the instrument. If not, try the next +train. When successful, fee the porter heavily at sight, thus softening +his heart so that he will assign the only spare upper birth to your +baby. And warn him in impressive tones that the instrument is priceless, +and on no account to touch it. You need not fear thieves. Sooner than +steal a 'cello, the light-fingered would button his coat over a baby +white elephant and let it tusk his vitals. + +I have cause to remember my first and only holiday trip with the +Princeton Glee, Mandolin, and Banjo Clubs. My function being to play +solos and to assist the Mandolin Club, I demanded for the 'cello an +upper berth in the special car. But I was overwhelmed with howls of +derision and assurances that I was a very fresh soph indeed. The first +night, my instrument reposed in some mysterious recess under a leaky +cooler, where all too much water flowed under its bridge before the +dawn. The second night it was compressed into a strait and narrow closet +with brushes and brooms, whence it emerged with a hollow chest, a stoop, +a consumptive quality of voice, and the malady known as _compressio +pontis_. Thereafter it occupied the same upper with me. Twice I overlaid +it, with well-nigh fatal consequences. + +Short-distance travel with a 'cello is not much more agreeable. In +trolleys you have to hold it more delicately than any babe, and be ready +to give a straight-arm to any one who lurches in your direction, and to +raise it from the floor every time you jolt over cross-tracks or run +over pedestrians, for fear of jarring the delicate adjustment of the +sound-post. As for a holiday crush down town, the best way to negotiate +it with a 'cello is to fix the sharp end-pin in place, and then, holding +the instrument at charge like a bayonet, impale those who seem most +likely to break its ribs. + +After my full share of such experiences, I learned that if you are a +fiddler errant it is better to leave your instrument at home and live on +the country, as it were, trusting to the fact that you can beg, borrow, +or rent some kind of fiddle and of chamber music almost anywhere, if you +know how to go about it. + + +IV + +Only don't try it in Sicily! + +For several months I had buried the fiddler in the errant pure and +simple, when, one sunset, across a gorge in Monte Venere, my first +strain of Sicilian music floated, to reawaken in me all the primeval +instincts of the musical adventurer. The melody came from the reed pipe +of a goat-herd as he drove his flock down into Taormina. Such a pipe was +perhaps to Theocritus what the fiddles of Stradivarius are to us. It was +pleasant to imagine that this goat-herd's music might possibly be the +same that used to inspire the tenderest of Sicilian poets twenty-three +hundred years ago. + +Piercingly sweet, indescribably pathetic, the melody recalled the Largo +in Dvorák's New World Symphony. Yet, there on the mountain-side, with +Ætna rosy on the right, and the purple Mediterranean shimmering far +below, the voice of the reed sounded more divine than any English horn +or Boehm flute I had ever heard singing in the depths of a modern +orchestra. And I began to doubt whether music was so completely a +product of the last three centuries as it purported to be. + +But that evening, when the goat-herd, ensnared by American gold, turned +himself into a modern chamber musician in our hotel room, I regained +poise. Removed from its properly romantic setting, like seaweed from the +sea, the pastoral stop of Theocritus became unmistakably a penny +whistle, with an intonation of the whistle's conventional purity. Our +captured Comatas seemed to realize that the environment was against him +and that things were going 'contrairy'; for he refused to venture on any +of the soft Lydian airs of Monte Venere, and confined himself strictly +to tarantellas, native dances, which he played with a magnificent +feeling for rhythm (if not for in-tuneness) while, with a pencil, I +caught--or muffed--them on the fly. One was to this effect:-- + +[Illustration: musical notation] + +While this was going on, a chance hotel acquaintance dropped into the +room and revealed himself as a professor by explaining that the +tarantella was named for its birthplace, the old Greek city of Taranto +over yonder in the heel of the Italian boot; that dancing it was once +considered the only cure for the maddening bite of the spider known as +the Lycosa Tarantula; and that some of the melodies our goat-herd was +playing might possibly be ancient Greek tunes, handed down traditionally +in Taranto, and later dispersed over Calabria and Sicily. + +This all sounded rather academic. But his next words sent the little +professor soaring in our estimation. He disclosed himself as a fiddler +errant by wistfully remarking that all this made him long for two +things: his violin, and a chance to play trios. Right heartily did we +introduce ourselves as pianist and 'cellist errant at his service. And +he and I decided to visit Catania next day to scout for fiddles and +music. We thought we would look for the music first. + +Next day, accordingly, we invaded the largest music store in Catania. +Did they have trios for violin, violoncello, and piano? 'Certainly!' We +were shown a derangement of La Somnambula for violin and piano, and +another for 'cello and piano. If we omitted one of the piano parts, we +were assured, a very beautiful trio would result, as surely as one from +four makes three. + +Finding us hard to please, the storekeeper referred us to the conductor +of the Opera, who offered to rent us all the standard works of chamber +music. The 'trios' he offered us turned out to be elementary pieces +labeled 'For Piano and Violin or 'Cello.' But nothing we could say was +able to persuade our conductor that 'or' did not mean 'and.' To this day +I feel sure that he is ready to defend his interpretation of this word +against all comers. + +We turned three more music stores upside down and had already abandoned +the hunt in despair when we discovered a fourth in a narrow side street. +There were only five minutes in which to catch the train; but in thirty +seconds we had unearthed a genuine piece of chamber music. Hallelujah! +it was the finale of the first Beethoven trio! + +Suddenly the oil of joy curdled to mourning. The thing was an +arrangement for piano solo! We left hurriedly when the proprietor began +assuring us that the original effect would be secured if the piano was +doubled in the treble by the violin and in the bass by the 'cello. + +This piano solo was the nearest approach to chamber music that a +thorough search and research revealed in the island of Trinacria. But +afterwards, recollecting the misadventure in tranquility, we concluded +that it was as absurd to look for chamber music in Sicily as to look for +'Die Wacht am Rhein' among the idylls of Theocritus. + + +V + +SCENE: a city composed of one department store and three houses, on the +forbidding shores of Newfoundland. + +TIME: one of those times when a fellow needs a friend,--when he's in a +stern, strange land on pleasure bent--and has to have a check cashed. I +don't know why it is that one always runs out of ready money in +Newfoundland. Perhaps because salmon flies are such fleeting creatures +of a day that you must send many postal orders to St. Johns for more. +Perhaps because the customs officials at Port au Basques make you +deposit so much duty on your fishing tackle. At any rate, there I was +penniless, with the burly storekeeper scowling in a savage manner at my +check and not knowing at all whether to take a chance on it. Finally he +thought he wouldn't, but conceded that I might spend a night under his +roof, as there was really nowhere else to go. + +At this pass something made me think of music. Perhaps it was the parlor +piano which, when new, back in the stone age, had probably been in tune. +I inquired whether there were any other instruments. The wreckage of a +violin was produced. With two pieces of string and a table fork I set up +the prostrate sound-post. I glued together the bridge and put it in +position. The technique of the angler proved helpful in splicing +together some strange-looking strings. The A was eked out with a piece +of salmon leader, while an old mandolin yielded a wire E. + +When all was at last ready, a fresh difficulty occurred to me. The +violin was an instrument which I had never learned to play! But +necessity is the mother of pretension. I thought of that check. And +placing the small fiddle carefully between my knees, I pretended that it +was a 'cello. + +So the daughter of the house seated herself at the relic of the stone +age, and we had a concert. Newfoundland appeared not to be over-finicky +in the matter of pitch and tone-quality. And how it did enjoy music! As +the audience was of Scotch-English-Irish descent, we rendered equal +parts of 'Comin' Through the Rye,' 'God Save the King,' and 'Kathleen +Mavourneen.' Then the proprietor requested the Sextette from _Lucia_. +While it was forthcoming he toyed furtively with his bandana. When it +ceased he encored it with all his might. Then he slipped out storewards +and presently returned with the fattest, blackest, most +formidable-looking cigar I ever saw, which he gravely proffered me. + +'We like' he remarked in his quaint idiom, 'to hear music at scattered +times.' He was trying to affect indifference. But his gruff voice shook, +and I knew then that music hath charms to cash the savage check. + + +VI + +This essay has rambled on an unconscionable while. The shades of +editorial night are already descending; and still I have not yet +described one of those unexpected and perfect orgies of chamber +music,--one of those little earthly paradises full of + + Soul-satisfying strains--alas! too few,-- + +which true fiddlers errant hope to find in each new place they visit, +but which usually keep well in advance of them, like the foot of the +rainbow. + +One such adventure came to me not long ago in a California city, while I +was gathering material for a book of travel. On my first evening there I +was taken to dine with a well-known writer in his beautiful home, which +he had built with his own two hands in the Spanish mission style during +fourteen years of joyous labor. This gentleman had no idea that I was to +be thrust upon him. But his hospitality went so far as to insist, before +the evening was over, that I must stay a week. He would not take no for +an answer. And for my part I had no desire to say no, because he was a +delightful person, his home with its leaf-filled patio was most +alluring, and I had discovered promising possibilities for fiddlers +errant in the splendid music-room and the collection of phonograph +records of Indian music which mine host had himself made in Arizona and +New Mexico. Then too there were rumors of skillful musical vagabonds in +the vicinity. + +Such an environment fairly cried aloud for impromptu fiddling. So, armed +with a note to the best violinist in that part of California, I set +forth next morning on the trail of the ideal orgy. At the address given +I was told that my man had moved and his address was not known. That was +a setback, indeed! But determined fiddlers errant usually land on their +feet. On the way back I chanced to hear some masterly strains of +Bach-on-the-violin issuing from a brown bungalow. And ringing at a +venture I was confronted by the very man I sought. + +Blocking the doorway, he read the note, looking as bored as +professionals usually do when asked to play with amateurs. But just as +he began to tell me how busy he was and how impossible, and so forth, he +happened to glance again at the envelope, and a very slight gleam came +into his eye. + +'You're not by any chance the fellow who wrote that thing about fiddlers +in the _Atlantic_, are you?' he inquired. At my nod he very flatteringly +unblocked the doorway and dragged me inside, pumping my hand up and down +in a painful manner, shouting for his wife, and making various kind +representations, all at the same time. And his talk gradually simmered +down into an argument that of course the only thing to do was to fiddle +together that very night. + +I asked who had the best 'cello in town. He told me the man's name, but +looked dubious. 'The trouble is, he loves that big Amati as if it were +twins. I doubt if he could bring himself to lend it to any one. Anyway, +let's try.' + +He scribbled a card to his 'cellist friend and promised, if I were +successful, to bring along a good pianist and play trios in the evening. +So I set forth on the trail of the Amati. Its owner had just finished +his noonday stint in a hotel orchestra and looked somewhat tired and +cross. He glanced at the card and then assumed a most conservative +expression and tried to fob off on me a cheap 'cello belonging to one of +his pupils, which sounded very much as a three-cent cigar tastes. At +this point I gave him the secret thumb-position grip and whispered into +his ear one of those magic pass words of the craft which in a trice +convinced him that I was in a position to dandle a 'cello with as tender +solicitude as any man alive. On my promising, moreover, to taxicab it +both ways with the sacred burden, he passed the Amati over, and the orgy +of fiddlers errant was assured. + +And that night how those beautiful Spanish walls did resound to +Beethoven and Dvorák and Brahms, most originally interspersed with the +voice of the Mexican servant's guitar, with strange, lovely songs of the +aboriginal West and South,--and with the bottled sunshine of Californian +hill-slopes; while El Alcalde Maiore, the lone gnarled tree-giant that +filled the patio, looked in through the open windows and contributed, by +way of accompaniment, leafy arpeggios _sotto voce_. And sometimes, +during rests, I remembered to be thankful that I had once snapped my +fingers at the howling wolf, and at fat pot-boilers, while I scribbled +for the _Atlantic_ that little essay on fiddlers which had gained me +this priceless evening. + + + + +Turtle Eggs for Agassiz + +By Dallas Lore Sharp + + +It is one of the wonders of the world that so few books are written. +With every human being a possible book, and with many a human being +capable of becoming more books than the world could contain, is it not +amazing that the books of men are so few? and so stupid! + +I took down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the +four volumes of Agassiz's _Contributions to the Natural History of the +United States_. I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster, +had touched those volumes for twenty-five years. They are an excessively +learned, a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit of vast and +heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the +United States, and their embryology. The work was published more than +half a century ago (by subscription); but it looked old beyond its +years--massive, heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks. It was +difficult to feel that Agassiz could have written it--could have built +it, grown it, for the laminated pile had required for its growth, the +patience and painstaking care of a process of nature, as if it were a +kind of printed coral reef. Agassiz do this? The big, human, magnetic +man at work upon these pages of capital letters, Roman figures, +brackets, and parentheses in explanation of the pages of diagrams and +plates! I turned away with a sigh from the weary learning, to read the +preface. + +When a great man writes a great book he usually flings a preface after +it, and thereby saves it, sometimes, from oblivion. Whether so or not, +the best things in most books are their prefaces. It was not, however, +the quality of the preface to these great volumes that interested me, +but rather the wicked waste of durable book-material that went to its +making. Reading down through the catalogue of human names and of thanks +for help received, I came to a sentence beginning:-- + +'In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also +received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of +Burlington; ... from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord; ... and from Mr. +J. W. P. Jenks of Middleboro'.' And then it hastens on with the thanks +in order to get to the turtles, as if turtles were the one and only +thing of real importance in all the world. + +Turtles no doubt are important, extremely important, embryologically, as +part of our genealogical tree; but they are away down among the roots +of the tree as compared with the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington. +I happen to know nothing about the Rev. Zadoc, but to me he looks very +interesting. Indeed any reverend gentleman of his name and day who would +catch turtles for Agassiz must have been interesting. And as for Henry +Thoreau, we know he was interesting. The rarest wood-turtle in the +United States was not so rare a specimen as this gentleman of Walden +Woods and Concord. We are glad even for this line in the preface about +him; glad to know that he tried, in this untranscendental way, to serve +his day and generation. If Agassiz had only put a chapter in his turtle +book about it! But this is the material he wasted, this and more of the +same human sort, for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro' (at the end of the +quotation) was, years later, an old college professor of mine, who told +me some of the particulars of his turtle contributions, particulars +which Agassiz should have found a place for in his big book. The preface +says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the +thousands--brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing +this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle +_eggs_ to Cambridge--_brought_ them, I should say; and all there is to +show for it, so far as I could discover, is a sectional drawing of a bit +of the mesoblastic layer of one of the eggs! + +Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that mesoblastic drawing, or some +other equally important drawing, and had to have the fresh turtle egg to +draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he +wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he +gets someone else to get it. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad +and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell about the +getting of it, and so made merely a learned turtle book of what might +have been an exceedingly interesting human book. + +It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or +interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them. Nothing +at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find +them. So with anything else,--good copper stock, for instance, if you +should chance to want it, and should chance to be along when they chance +to be giving it away. But if you want copper stock, say of C & H +quality, _when_ you want it, and are bound to have it, then you must +command more than a college professor's salary. And likewise, precisely, +when it is turtle eggs that you are bound to have. + +Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them--not a minute over +three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem +exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hen eggs only three +hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private +turtle-coop in Harvard Yard; and provided he could have made his +turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-scraps and +the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud +turtle's nest in the back yard to the table in the laboratory; but to +get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were +laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this, in +the days of Darius Green, might have called for nice and discriminating +work--as it did. + +Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his _Contributions_. He +had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished +but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried +the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single +exception of one--the very earliest--that stage of first cleavages, when +the cell begins to segment, immediately upon its being laid. That +beginning stage had brought the _Contributions_ to a halt. To get eggs +that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been +impossible. + +There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded: he might have +got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some +pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the +reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of +that--as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this +was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing--asked Mr. +Jenks of Middleboro' to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz +knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating +thing is, that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, +at least in the preface to his monumental work. + +It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college +professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz. + +'I was principal of an academy, during my younger years,' he began, 'and +was busy one day with my classes, when a large man suddenly filled the +door-way of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called +out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz. + +'Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to +me across the room. + +'Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I +get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? +Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only +once. + +'When I promised Agassiz those eggs I knew where I was going to get +them. I had got turtle eggs there before--at a particular patch of sandy +shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy. + +'Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was +thirty-five miles; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or +four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty +miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and +got the trip down to two hours,--record time:--driving from the pond to +the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by +cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays. + +'Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we +didn't figure on was the turtle.' And he paused abruptly. + +'Young man,' he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding +the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, 'young man, +when _you_ go after turtle eggs, take into account the turtle. No! no! +that's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle--and youth seldom +ought to. Only old age does that; and old age would never have got those +turtle eggs to Agassiz. + +'It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long +before there was any likelihood of the turtles laying. But I was eager +for the quest, and so fearful of failure, that I started out to watch at +the pond, fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be +expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May 14. + +'A little before dawn--along near three o'clock--I would drive over to +the pond, hitch my horse near by, settle myself quietly among some +thick cedars close to the sandy shore, and there I would wait, my kettle +of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the +cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to +open the academy for the morning session. + +'And so the watch began. + +'I soon came to know individually the dozen or more turtles that kept to +my side of the pond. Shortly after the cold mist would lift and melt +away, they would stick up their heads through the quiet water; and as +the sun slanted down over the ragged rim of tree-tops, the slow things +would float into the warm, lighted spots, or crawl out and doze +comfortably on the hummocks and snags. + +'What fragrant mornings those were! How fresh and new and unbreathed! +The pond odors, the woods odors, the odors of the ploughed fields--of +water-lily, and wild grape, and the dew-laid soil! I can taste them yet, +and hear them yet--the still, large sounds of the waking day--the +pickerel breaking the quiet with his swirl; the kingfisher dropping +anchor; the stir of feet and wings among the trees. And then the thought +of the great book being held up for me! Those were rare mornings! + +'But there began to be a good many of them, for the turtles showed no +desire to lay. They sprawled in the sun, and never one came out upon the +sand as if she intended to help on the great professor's book. The +embryology of her eggs was of small concern to her; her contribution to +the Natural History of the United States could wait. + +'And it did wait. I began my watch on the 14th of May; June first found +me still among the cedars, still waiting, as I had waited every morning, +Sundays and rainy days alike. June first was a perfect morning, but +every turtle slid out upon her log, as if egg-laying might be a matter +strictly of next year. + +'I began to grow uneasy,--not impatient yet, for a naturalist learns his +lesson of patience early, and for all his years; but I began to fear +lest, by some subtile sense, my presence might somehow be known to the +creatures; that they might have gone to some other place to lay, while I +was away at the school-room. + +'I watched on to the end of the first week, on to the end of the second +week in June, seeing the mists rise and vanish every morning, and along +with them vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morning vigil. +Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell together in the same clump of +cedars, and I had begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning mists +wrapping me around had at last soaked through to my bones. But Agassiz +was waiting, and the world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I +would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no use bringing a china +nest-egg to a turtle; she is not open to any such delicate suggestion. + +'Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with dawn breaking a little after +three: a warm, wide-awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the +level surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had seen it any +morning before. + +'This was the day: I knew it. I have heard persons say that they can +hear the grass grow; that they know by some extra sense when danger is +nigh. That we have these extra senses I fully believe, and I believe +they can be sharpened by cultivation. For a month I had been watching, +brooding over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring of the pulse +of things that the cold-hearted turtles could no more escape than could +the clods and I. + +'Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, understood, I slipped +eagerly into my covert for a look at the pond. As I did so, a large +pickerel ploughed a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his +wake rose the head of an enormous turtle. Swinging slowly around, the +creature headed straight for the shore, and without a pause, scrambled +out on the sand. + +'She was about the size of a big scoop-shovel; but that was not what +excited me, so much as her manner, and the gait at which she moved; for +there was method in it and fixed purpose. On she came, shuffling over +the sand toward the higher open fields, with a hurried, determined +see-saw that was taking her somewhere in particular, and that was bound +to get her there on time. + +'I held my breath. Had she been a dinosaurian making Mesozoic +footprints, I could not have been more fearful. For footprints in the +Mesozoic mud, or in the sands of time, were as nothing to me when +compared with fresh turtle eggs in the sands of this pond. + +'But over the strip of sand, without a stop, she paddled, and up a +narrow cow-path into the high grass along a fence. Then up the narrow +cow-path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into +the high, wet grass along the fence. + +'I kept well within sound of her, for she moved recklessly, leaving a +trail of flattened grass a foot and a half wide. I wanted to stand +up,--and I don't believe I could have turned her back with a rail,--but +I was afraid if she saw me that she might return indefinitely to the +pond; so on I went, flat to the ground, squeezing through the lower +rails of the fence, as if the field beyond were a melon-patch. It was +nothing of the kind, only a wild, uncomfortable pasture, full of +dewberry vines, and very discouraging. They were excessively wet vines +and briery. I pulled my coat-sleeves as far over my fists as I could get +them, and with the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to +avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, on after the turtle. + +'She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this +dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to, +warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me, at a clip +that was thrilling. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down +across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on +to a fence along a field of young corn. + +'I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before, +wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a +large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle +stop, and begin to paw about in the loose, soft soil. She was going to +lay! + +'I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried this place, and that +place, and the other place--the eternally feminine!--But _the_ place, +evidently, was hard to find. What could a female turtle do with a whole +field of possible nests to choose from? Then at last she found it, and +whirling about, she backed quickly at it, and, tail first, began to bury +herself before my staring eyes. + +'Those were not the supreme moments of my life; perhaps those moments +came later that day; but those certainly were among the slowest, most +dreadfully mixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours +long. There she was, her shell just showing, like some old hulk in the +sand alongshore. And how long would she stay there? and how should I +know if she had laid an egg? + +'I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over the freshly awakened +fields, floated four mellow strokes from the distant town clock. + +'Four o'clock! Why, there was no train until seven! No train for three +hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this +was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o'clock train,--none +till after nine. + +'I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun +crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were +the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! And I cleared the fence, and +the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge, at a single jump. He +should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven +o'clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any +horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and upsetting the +astonished turtle, I scooped out her round, white eggs. + +'On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care +my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so +with another layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand, +I ran back for my horse. + +'That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he +was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He turned out of that field into the +road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling +me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between +my knees. + +'I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to +Cambridge! or even half way there; and I would have time to finish the +trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, the +pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the +bang on them, as we pounded down the wood road, was terrific. But +nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned +over in the sand before they came to Agassiz. + +'In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away +from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and +were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of +me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick sharp whistle of a +locomotive. + +'What did it mean? Then followed the _puff_, _puff_, _puff_, of a +starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet +for a longer view, I pulled into a side road, that paralleled the track, +and headed hard for the station. + +'We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind +the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It +was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and topping +a little hill I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring +from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its +swift run down the rails. + +'My horse was on the gallop, going with the track, and straight toward +the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me--the bare thought +of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half--a quarter +of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced +field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine. + +'With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the +field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should +carry me and my eggs to Boston! + +'The engineer pulled the rope. He saw me standing up in the rig, saw my +hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, +and he jerked out a succession of sharp halts! But it was he who should +halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the +carriage on top of the track. + +'The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a +standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down +the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard +the cab. + +'They offered no resistance; they hadn't had time. Nor did they have the +disposition, for I looked strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, +dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby +or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand. + +"'_Crazy_," the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue. + +'I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now. + +'"Throw her wide open," I commanded. "Wide open! These are fresh turtle +eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before +breakfast." + +'Then they knew I was crazy, and evidently thinking it best to humor me, +threw the throttle wide open, and away we went. + +'I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field, +and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold +myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled +through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, +while the other kept his hand upon a big, ugly wrench. Neither of them +spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of +their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head +of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as +perhaps the easiest way of disposing of me. + +'I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that +station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next; +when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should +have passed in the night, and was making up lost time. + +'Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands +with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I +was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my +diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the +engineer, with a look that said, "See the lunatic grin; he likes it!" + +'He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails! +How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the +fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just +ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of +the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by +the mile! + +'I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of +Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,--luck,--luck,--until the +multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming "luck! +luck! luck!" They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless +wheels was doing its very best to get the eggs to Agassiz! + +'We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun +from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the +cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the +engineer watching me narrowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in +Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and +forced it to carry me to Boston. + +'Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men +should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I +would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to +Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left, in +which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my +captors. But it was too late. Nothing could avail against my actions, my +appearance, and my little pail of sand. + +'I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes +caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my +full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all +night with a tiny, tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the +decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning! + +'I began to feel like a hunted criminal. The situation was serious, or +might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way +have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply. + +'Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freightyard, the train slowed +down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but I had no chance. They +had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch +again. What time we had made! It was only six o'clock, with a whole +hour to get to Cambridge. + +'But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes--ten--went by. + +"'Gentlemen," I began, but was cut short by an express train coming +past. We were moving again, on--into a siding; on--on to the main track; +and on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the +length of the train; on at a turtle's pace, but on,--when the fireman, +quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, +and--the chance had come! + +'I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of +the track, and made a line for the yard fence. + +'There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were +after me. Evidently their hands were full, and they didn't know I had +gone. + +'But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when +it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my +pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over--a very wise +thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open +square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club--looking +for me. + +'I flattened for a moment, when some one in the yard yelled at me. I +preferred the policeman, and grabbing my pail I slid over to the +street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of +sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab! + +'Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, +and squared away. I waved a paper dollar at him, but he only stared the +more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar. +I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab, +calling, "Cambridge!" + +'He would have taken me straight to the police station, had I not said, +"Harvard College. Professor Agassiz's house! I've got eggs for Agassiz"; +and pushed another dollar up at him through the hole. + +'It was nearly half-past six. + +'"Let him go!" I ordered. "Here's another dollar if you make Agassiz's +house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!" + +'He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on +a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down +the wood roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and +crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we +took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in +Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons. + +'Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, +and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the +jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not +daring to let go even to look at my watch. + +'But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to +seven o'clock it might be. The sweat was dropping from my nose, so close +was I running to the limit of my time. + +'Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dove forward, ramming my head into +the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the +small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs +helter-skelter over the floor. + +'We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house; and without taking time to +pick up the scattered eggs, I tumbled out, and pounded at the door. + +'No one was astir in the house. But I would stir them. And I did. Right +in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid. + +'"Agassiz," I gasped, "I want Professor Agassiz, quick!" And I pushed by +her into the hall. + +'"Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go +'way, sir!" + +'"Call him--Agassiz--instantly, or I'll call him myself." + +'But I didn't; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great, +white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick, loud +voice called excitedly,-- + +'"Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!" + +'And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic +gown, came sailing down the stairs. + +'The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with +both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a +swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my +trembling hands ticked its way to seven--as if nothing unusual were +happening to the history of the world.' + + * * * * * + +'You were in time then?' I said. + +'To the tick. There stands my copy of the great book. I am proud of the +humble part I had in it.' + + + + +A Father to his Freshman Son + +By Edward Sanford Martin + + +No doubt, my son, you have got out of me already what there was to help +or mar you. You are eighteen years old and have been getting it, more or +less and off and on, for at least seventeen of those years. I regret the +imperfections of the source. No doubt you have recognized them. To have +a father who is attentive to the world, indulgent to the flesh, and with +a sort of kindness for the Devil--dear son, it is a good deal of a +handicap! Be sure I make allowances for you because of it. _Ex eo +fonte--fons_, masculine, as I remember; _fons_ and _mons_ and _pons_, +and one other. Should the pronoun be _illo?_ As you know, I never was an +accurate scholar, and I suppose you're not--_Ex eo fonte_ the stream is +bound to run not quite clear. + +My advice to you is quite likely to be bad, partly from the imperfection +of its source, partly because I am not you, and partly because of my +imperfect acquaintance with the conditions you are about to meet. When I +came to college my father gave me no advice. He gave me his love and +some necessary money, which did not come, I fear, as easy as the love. +His venerable uncle who lived with us--my great uncle--gave me his +blessing and told me, I remember, that so far as book-learning went, I +could learn as much without going to college. Still he did not +discourage my going. He was quite right. I could have got more +book-learning out of college than I did get in college, and I suppose +that you, too, might get, out, more than you will get, in. Of course, +that's not the whole story; neither is it true of all people. For me, +college abounded in distractions, and I suppose it will for you. And I +was incorrigibly sociable and ready to spend time to get acquainted, and +more, to stay acquainted, and if you have that propensity you needn't +think it was left on the doorstep. You come by it lawfully. Getting +acquainted is, for most of us, one of the important branches. But it's +only one of them, and to devote one's whole time to it is a mistake, and +one that the dean will help you avoid if necessary, which probably, if I +know you at all, it won't be. + +It is important to know people, but it is more important to be worth +knowing. College offers you at least two valuable details of +opportunity: a large variety of people to know, and a large variety of +means to make yourself better worth knowing. I hope, my son, that you +will avail yourself of both these details. + +This is a mechanical age, and the most obtrusive of the current +mechanisms is the automobile. It has valves and cylinders and those +things that give it power and speed, and rubber tires that it runs on, +and a wheel and steering-gear and handles and treadles by which it is +directed. Your body, especially your stomach, is the rubber tires; your +brains are the cylinders and valves; and your will and the spiritual +part of you are the chauffeur and his wheel. + +I beg you to be kind to your stomach, as heretofore. It needs no alcohol +at your time of life--if ever--and the less you find occasion to feed +into it, the more prosperous both your physical and mental conditions +are likely to be. I am aware that life, and college life in particular, +has its convivial intervals; but you might as well understand (and I +have been remiss, or have wasted time, if you do not understand it +already) that alcohol is one of the chief man-traps, abounding in +mischiefs if you play with it too hard. Be wary, always wary, with it, +my son, and especially with hard liquor. + +Your mind, like your body, is a thing whereof the powers are developed +by effort. That is a principal use, as I see it, of hard work in +studies. Unless you train your body you can't be an athlete, and unless +you train your mind you can't be much of a scholar. The four miles an +oarsman covers at top speed is in itself nothing to the good, but the +physical capacity to hold out over the course is thought to be of some +worth. So a good part of what you learn by hard study may not be +permanently retained, and may not seem to be of much final value, but +your mind is a better and more powerful instrument because you have +learned it. 'Knowledge is power,' but still more the faculty of +acquiring and using knowledge is power. If you have a trained and +powerful mind, you are bound to have stored it with something, but its +value is more in what it can do, what it can grasp and use, than in what +it contains; and if it were possible, as it is not, to come out of +college with a trained and disciplined mind and nothing useful in it, +you would still be ahead, and still, in a manner, educated. Think of +your mind as a muscle to be developed; think of it as a searchlight that +is to reveal the truth to you, and don't cheat it or neglect it. + +As to competitive scholarship, to my mind it is like competitive +athletics,--good for those who have the powers and like the game. Tests +are useful; they stimulate one's ambition, and so do competitions. But a +success in competitive scholarship, like a success in competitive +athletics, may, of course, be too dearly bought. Not by you, though, I +surmise, my son. If you were more urgent, either as a scholar or as an +athlete, I might think it needful to warn you not to wear your tires out +scorching too early in life. As things are, I say to you, as I often say +to myself: Don't dawdle; don't scramble. When you work, work; when you +play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the time. + +When you get hold of an instructor who is worth attention, give him +attention. That is one way of getting the best that a college has to +offer. A great deal you may get from books, but some of the most +valuable things are passed from mind to mind, and can only be had from +some one who has them, or else from the great Source of all truth. I +suspect that the subtle development we call 'culture' is one of those +things, and the great spiritual valuables are apt to come that way. + +You know you are still growing, both in mind and body, and will continue +so to be for years to come,--I hope, always. One of the valuable things +about college is that it gives you time to grow. You won't have to earn +any money and will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself +and others, as well as with some of the wisdom that is spread upon the +records. You would be so engaged, more or less, in these years, wherever +you might be. But in college, where you are so much your own man, and +are freed from the demands and solicitudes of your parents, the +conditions for it are exceptionally favorable. I suppose that is one +thing that continues the colleges in business, since I read so often +that at present they are entirely misdirected and teach the wrong things +in the wrong way. + +But nobody denies that they give the young a breathing spell. Breathe, +my son; breathe freely. Remember that the aim of all these prospective +processes is to bring out the man there is in you, and arm him more or +less for the jousts ahead. It is not to make you over into somebody +else: that can't be done,--not in three or four years, anyhow; but only +to bring out, and train as much as possible of you. There's plenty in +most of us if we can only get it out; more, very much more, than we ever +do get out. So will you please think of college as a nursery in which +you are to grow a while,--and mind you do grow,--and then, presently, to +be transplanted. It is not as if college was the chief arena of human +effort. Nevertheless, for your effort, while you are there, it is the +chief arena, and I am far from giving you the counsel to put off trying +until you leave. + +I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how +important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of +scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall +still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are +more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment. +They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and +chances the clubs involve; so bad it may be to be in this one; so bad to +be out of that; so much choice there is between them, and so much +choice exercised within them, by which any mother's hopeful may be +excluded. + +There is a democratic ideal of a great college without any clubs, where +the lion and the lamb shall escort one another about with tails +entwined, and every student shall be like every other student, and have +similar habits and associates. This ideal is a good deal discussed and a +good deal applauded in the public press. Whether it will ever come true +I can't tell, but there has been some form or other of clubs in our +older colleges, I suppose, for one or two centuries, and they are there +now and will at least last out your time; so it may be you will have to +take thought about them in due time. + +Not much, however, until they take thought of you. + +You see, clubs seem to be a sort of natural provision, just as tails +were, maybe, before humanity outgrew them. I guess there is a propensity +of nature toward groups, and the natural basis of grouping seems to be +likeness in feathers and habits. The propensity works to include the +like and, incidentally but necessarily, to exclude the unlike. Whether +it is the Knights of the Round Table or the Knights of the Garter or the +Phi Beta Kappa, you see these principles working. The measure of success +in a club is its ability to make people want to join it, and that seems +to be best demonstrated and preserved by keeping most of them out. + +Now the advantages of the clubs are considerable. To have a place +always open where you can hang up your hat, and where a hospitable +welcome always awaits you, and where there is enough of a crowd and not +too much, and where you can in your later years inspect at all times a +family of selected undergraduates,--all that is valuable and good, and +pleasant besides, and this continuity of interest that the clubs foster +among their members helps to keep up in those members a lively and +helpful interest in their college. The drawback to the clubs is their +essential selfishness, and their disposition to take you out of a large +family and limit you to a small one, and one that is not yours by birth, +or entirely by choice, but is selected for you largely by other persons. + +In any club you yield a certain amount of freedom and individuality, the +amount being determined by the degree in which the club absorbs you. +Don't yield too much! Don't take the mould of any club! A college is +always bigger than its clubs, and the biggest thing in a college is +always a man. The object of being in college is to develop as a man. If +clubs help in that development,--and I think they do help some +men,--they are a gain; but, of course, if they dwarf you down to the +dimensions of a club-man, they are a loss. Some men take their club +shape, such as it is, and find a sufficient satisfaction in it. Others +react on their clubs, take what they have to give, add to it what is to +be had elsewhere, and turn out rather more valuable people than if they +had had no club experience. + +At all events, don't take this matter of the clubs too hard. For those +youths, comparatively few, who by luck and circumstances find themselves +eligible to them, they are an interesting form of discipline or +indulgence, and I will not say that they are unimportant. Neither would +I have you keep out of them because of their drawbacks. If you begin by +keeping out of all things that have drawbacks, your progress in this +world will involve constant hesitations. Alcohol has numerous drawbacks, +but I don't advise you to be a teetotaller. Tobacco has drawbacks, but I +believe you smoke it. Money has drawbacks, and so has advertisement. +But, bless you, we have to take things as they come and deal with them +as we can. The trick is to get the kernel and eliminate the shuck. A +large proportion of people do the opposite. If you can manage that way +with the clubs,--provided you ever get a chance,--you will be amused to +observe in due time how large a proportion of your brethren value these +organizations chiefly for their shuck, and grasp most eagerly at that. +For the shuck, as I see it, is exclusiveness, which is not valuable +except to persons justly doubtful of their own merits. Whereas the +kernel is the fellowship of like minds which has always been treasured +by the wise. + +The clubs, my son, some more than others, are recruited considerably +from what is known as the leisure class. To be sure, I don't see any +very definite or important leisure class about in our land. Everybody +who amounts to anything works, and always did and must, for you can't +amount to anything otherwise; but the people who have money laid up +ahead for them, are apt to work somewhat less strenuously than the rest +of us, and not so much for money. Don't get it into your head that you +want to tie up to the leisure class, or that the condition of not having +to work is desirable. Have it in mind that you are to work just about as +hard as the quality of your tires and cylinders will warrant. Plan to +get into the game if you have to go on your hands and knees. Plan to +earn your living somehow. Don't aim to go through life spoon-fed; don't +aim to get a soft seat. If you do, you won't have your fair share of +fun. There is no real fun in ease, except as you need it because you +have worked hard. + +I say, plan to earn your living! Whether you actually earn the money you +live on, makes no great difference, though in your case I guess you'll +have to if you are going to live at all well. But if you get money +without earning it, it leaves you in debt to society. Somebody has to +earn the money you spend. In mine, factory, railroad, or office, +somebody works for the money that supports you. No matter where the +money comes from, that is true: somebody has to earn it. If you get it +without due labor of your own, you owe for it. Recognize that debt and +qualify yourself to discharge it. Study to put back into the world +somewhat more than you take out of it. Study to be somewhat more than +merely worth your keep. Study to shoulder the biggest load your strength +can carry. That is life. That is the great sport that brings the great +compensations to the soul. Getting regular meals and nice clothes, and +acceptable shelter and transportation, and agreeable acquaintances, is +only a means to an end, and if you accept the means and shirk the end, +the means will pall on you. + +I said 'agreeable acquaintances.' A very large proportion of the +acquaintances you can make will be agreeable if you can bring enough +knowledge and a sufficiently hospitable spirit to your relations with +them. I don't counsel you to cultivate the arts of popularity, for they +are apt not to wash,--apt, that is, to conflict with inside qualities +that are vastly more valuable than they are. But keep, in so far as you +can, an open heart. There is no one to whom you are not related if only +you can find the relation; there is no one but you owe him a benefit if +you can see one you can do him. + +Don't be too nice. It is such an impediment to usefulness as stuttering +is to speech,--a sort of spiritual indigestion; a hesitation in your +carbureter. By all means, be a gentleman, in manners and spirit, in so +far as you know how, but be one from the inside out. + +If you had come as far as you have in life without acquiring manners, +you might well blush for your parents and teachers. I don't think you +have, but I beg you hold on to all the good manners you have, and get +more. Good manners seem to me a good deal to seek among present-day +youth, but I suppose they have always been fairly scarce, and the more +appreciated for their scarcity. Tobacco manners are uncommonly free and +bad in this generation; more so, I think, than they were in mine. Since +cigarettes came in, especially, youths seem to feel licensed to smoke +them in all places and company. And the boys are prone to too much ease +of attitude, and lounge and loll appallingly in company, and I see them +in parlors with their legs crossed in such a fashion that their feet +might almost as well be in the ladies' laps. + +Have a care for these matters of deportment. Be strict with yourself and +your postures. Keep your legs and feet where they belong; they were not +meant for parlor ornaments. Show respect for people! Lord bless me! the +things I see done by males with a claim to be gentlemen: tobacco-smoke +puffed in women's faces; men who ought to know better, smoking as they +drive out with ladies; men who put their feet on the table and expect +you to talk over them! Show respect for people; for all kinds of people, +including yourself, for self-respect is at the bottom of all good +manners. They are the expression of discipline, of good-will, of respect +for other people's rights and comfort and feelings. I suppose good +manners are unselfish, but the most selfish people might well cultivate +them, they are so remunerative. In the details of life, in the public +vehicles, in crowds, and in all situations where the demand presses hard +on supply, what you get by hogging is incomparably less than what you +get by courtesy. The things you must scramble and elbow for are not +worth having; not one of them. They are the swill of life, my son; leave +them to swine. + +You will have to think more or less about yourself, because that belongs +to your time of life, provided you are the sort that thinks at all. But +don't overdo it. You won't, because you will find it, as all healthy +people do, a subject in which over-indulgence tends rapidly to nausea. +To have one's self always on one's mind is to lodge a kill-joy; to act +always from calculation is a sure path to blunders. + +Most of these specific counsels I set down more for your entertainment +than truly to guide you. You don't live by maxims any more than you +speak by rules of grammar. You will speak by ear (improving, I hope, in +your college environment), and you will live by whatever light there is +in you, getting more, I hope, as you go along. + +Grow in grace, my son! If your spirit is right, the details of life +will take care of their own adjustment. Go to church; if not invariably, +then variably. They don't require it any more in college, but you can't +afford not to; for the churches reflect and recall--very imperfectly to +be sure--the religion and the spirit of Christ; and on that the whole of +our civilization rests. Get understanding of that. It is by far the most +important knowledge in the whole book, the great fountain of sanity, +tolerance, and political and social wisdom, a gateway to all kinds of +truth, a rectifying and consoling current through all of life. + + + + +Intensive Living + +By Cornelia A. P. Comer + + +Said Honoria casually,-- + +'When I was in town yesterday, I went to see Adelaide in her new house.' + +The others looked up alertly, Martha from her darning, Grace from her +Irish crochet. + +'Oh, really? And how did you like the house?' + +Honoria hesitated, looking to the wide view for clarification. The three +sat on a cottage veranda in the foothills of Southern California, one +February day. In front of them the landscape ran, laughing, down-hill to +the sea. Spread beneath them like a map were thirty miles of town and +country: orange orchards brave with fruit; eucalyptus groves appealing +to the sky; friendly roofs inclosed in deep-sheltering trees; great open +spaces where the wind moved free; round-topped hills, green near at hand +(for the rains had come and gone thus early), changing to a dusky blue +out yonder where the bright Pacific flashed at the end of the long, +delightful view. For love of this prospect Martha had lately left steep, +sturdy hills, brown brooks, elm-shaded streets and old friends, girding +at herself as she did so. Honoria had lived here many years, while Grace +was but a winter's guest in Honoria's home, whose hospitable brown +gables, low and wide-spreading, were visible beyond the cypress hedge +encircling Martha's cottage. + +'It is a good-looking mansion. She had a capable architect. The building +is Tudor,--consistent, graceful, well proportioned. For two people it is +a very large house indeed, but it is a good house, and I see perfectly +how Adelaide means it to express the idea of dignified, comfortable +living. The decorator was not bad of his kind, either.' + +'All this sounds like praise,' said Grace, 'yet I feel that you are +keeping something back. What is the matter with Adelaide's house?' + +Again Honoria hesitated. + +'It seems ungracious to find fault with such a perfectly worthy +performance, yet I came away chilled and uncomfortable, almost unhappy, +indeed. Thinking about the matter on the way home, it became clear to me +at last that the house is too large for Adelaide's personality. You know +how perfectly she pervaded that old house of hers. Old-fashioned, in +some respects inconvenient, with far less perfect fittings, it still was +thoroughly delightful, for where the rugs failed or the draperies +faltered, Adelaide's personality somehow stepped in and eked out all +insufficiencies, corrected all errors. It was hers entirely. In this +blameless achievement of architect and decorator, there are no +insufficiencies to be eked out, and so Adelaide's personality seems to +slip and slide helplessly upon a kind of glacial surface which it cannot +penetrate and make its own. I may be expressing myself very poorly, but +I know I have hold of something real. Adelaide's new house, good-looking +as it is, is not interesting,--that is what I mean,--and even the dear +woman herself seems less interesting, and less herself now that she is +enfolded in it.' + +'Did you know,' interposed Martha, 'that the first winter in a new house +the heating actually requires more coal than is ever needed again?' + +'No, I didn't know that--but I can well believe it. Why shouldn't it +take more coal to warm it when it evidently takes more vitality to cheer +it? It's a serious business, this breaking in of a large house to one's +self late in life, as so many Americans do. The draughts upon their +vital forces are more taxing than the coal bills.' + +'We all ought to live in inherited homesteads,' suggested Grace,'where +the humanizing of the bricks and mortar has been done for us by our own +people.' + +'Honoria,' Martha demanded, ignoring this unpractical suggestion, 'tell +me the truth! If you were in Adelaide's place and had _carte blanche_ to +incarnate your idea of a house for yourself and your family, wouldn't +you over-build and over-decorate too? I should enjoy doing it! The +furniture in my bungalow is altogether too sketchy at present, and I am +tired of eking it out with personality. You would feel differently if +you hadn't brought your old mahogany when you came West!' + +Honoria set a few stitches, and looked at her friends with eyes in which +conviction flamed. + +'I don't over-dress, and I don't over-eat, though I have abundant +opportunity,' she said, 'but it may be that I would over-build and +over-decorate, or at least that I would have done so until yesterday. I +don't think I would do it to-day--now that I know what ails Adelaide's +house. As for your bungalow, Martha, it is comfortable and it is alive. +There isn't a picture on the wall nor an ornament on the mantel that +hasn't a reason for being exactly where it is. That is triumph, and you +know it. I don't believe you would really exchange your house for +Adelaide's.' + +'Try me and see! I would like just for once to ignore beauty and +suitability, and go in for size and sheer, luxurious comfort.' + +'You would go distracted in two weeks in a place that was "sheer, +luxurious comfort" and nothing else,' returned Honoria decidedly. 'You +would hate it as you hate everything smug and fat and complacent. I have +known you too long, Martha, not to know the ways of you with a house. To +satisfy you, a domicile has to be livable. If you consider all the +houses, little and big, of your friends, you will see that there are +fixed limits to the amount of space in them that is truly and pleasantly +habitable. You can't get the lovable "lived-in look" in rooms where you +do not actually live, and you can't live all over a house that is bigger +than your needs. Why! life isn't long enough, especially if you seldom +stay at home! Think how dreary are most of the great houses we know. +Consider Mrs. King's new marble palace with its commanding site and its +ninety rooms. There isn't a single spot in it except her own bed-room +and sitting-room that wouldn't give your spirit a congestive chill if +you sat there for an hour. I know a woman in Colorado who so loathed her +big new house as it left the hands of a New York decorator, that she +would have moved back into the old one if she hadn't been afraid of her +friends' laughter. And, Grace, even inherited homesteads are sometimes +as difficult as uncongenial kin. Old houses have ways and wills of their +own.' + +'Houses _are_ curious things,' said Grace. 'We take a morsel of +illimitable space and wall it in and roof it over. Suddenly it ceases to +be part of God's out-of-doors and becomes an entity with an atmosphere +of its own. We warm it with our fires, we animate it with our +affections, we furnish it with such things as seem good in our eyes. We +do this to get shelter for our bodies, but we acquire as well an +instrument for our spirits that reacts on us in its turn.' + +'In other words,' returned Honoria, warming to her subject, 'as we live +our way into a house, adapting it to our need, the bricks and mortar, +the paint and plaster, cease to be inert matter and become alive. +Superficial sociologists have taunted woman with being "more anabolic or +plant-like" than man, but I count it her second glory. The plant is an +organism that "slowly turns lifeless into living matter," and this is +the thing that woman has done from the beginning with her shelter! In +our houses we achieve almost an organic extension of our very selves. +That is part of what I was trying to say. But, obviously, there should +exist some reasonable ratio between the self and its extensions. I take +it, the modern multitude of overgrown mansions, like the Kings' or the +Clays' or even Adelaide's smaller dwelling,--all these places whose +owners never find out why they are not at home in them,--are symptoms of +our modern disease of materialism. The essence of that disease is the +desire to grasp more matter than the spirit can fully animate. That the +infection can lay hold on Adelaide shows how all-pervading it is, +gripping the just as well as the unjust. When I saw her tired and +dissatisfied; when I felt the lack of charm and quality in the house, +and remembered how full of both her old house and garden had been, I +tried to think it out. It all works around to just this: you can't have +quality, you can't have charm in your material environment unless you +put them into it yourself. It is a plain question of your ability to +choose, arrange and vitalize things. And the latter requisite is by far +the most important of the three. For I have really seen, with these +eyes, poor, mean rooms where absolutely nothing was beautiful or +noteworthy, so charged with a gracious and comforting personality that +you forgot their shabbiness and said, "What a home-like place!" Please +note that that is the adjective we always use of places that draw us by +their personality--as if personality and nothing else were the essence +of home. + +'Now Adelaide's old house had personality; it was completely vitalized. +It was all under her hand, and as high as her heart. But Adelaide's big +new house is as yet barren and chilly, for it is not vitalized at all. +Of course I know that after she has lived in it longer, it is bound to +improve, because it is her nature to humanize and modify all her +surroundings. But the crucial question is--_how big a house can she +humanize?_ Something bigger than a cottage probably--but certainly +something much smaller than a hotel. The longer I looked at this +question, the more it seemed to me that unconsciously I had put my +finger on the vital query that, in the ideal state, should underlie all +property, all education, all privilege. + +'I have been talking about houses,--they are the most intimate, the +most organic of a woman's possessions,--but the argument applies to all +we own. It is the mark of our era to want more of everything than we can +use, yet when we get the Too-Much we demand, we are crushed by it, as +Tarpeia was crushed by the shields.' + +'I have often thought' said Grace, 'that the sheer, brute mass of +life--of people to know, of books to read, of plays to hear, of pictures +to see, of things to do, buy, learn, enjoy--within reach of the +well-to-do person in the modern world, far outruns the capacity of any +human being to take it in and make of it the sane whole that a life +should be.' + +'Yes--yet we go crazily on, trying to expand to illimitable +possibilities, thinking we shall be happier so soon as we have discarded +all our present belongings and opportunities for bigger, newer, richer +ones. How many people do you know who have not met a substantial +increase of income with a corresponding enlargement of their whole scale +of living, a senseless expansion sometimes out-running their increased +ability to provide for it? There is no future but chaos for a society +with such ambitions. They are centrifugal and can only lead to +disintegration. + +'The truth is, we have no notion of the value and necessity of a +doctrine of limitations. Just as an illustration--not once in all the +mass of matter printed in the last twenty years about the gyro-car, the +aeroplane or other inventions capable of enormous swiftness, have I +seen the faintest intimation that human beings could not intelligently +direct a speed of two hundred miles an hour--yet the railroads are now +tardily discovering that the capacity of engineers is seriously taxed by +sixty miles! + +'Don't mistake my meaning. I am not preaching the moral value of +poverty. I am no convert to asceticism. That method of ridding one's +self of the overweight of the material life is too extreme to the +correct solution. I am simply calling attention with all my might to the +æsthetic and vital value of Not-Too-Much. I am not afraid of Enough. I +am greatly afraid of Too-Much. And the reason I am afraid is this:-- + +'Just as the capacity of the human stomach is limited to a certain +quantity of food, so also is limited the capacity of the human spirit +for appropriating and assimilating property in its different forms. +Beyond a certain somewhat variable point, material possessions _do the +holder no more good_. The common saying, "All you get in this world is +your board and clothes," is the popular acknowledgment of this +restricted capacity. The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds +good as regards the property of the mind--education, cultivation, +æsthetic satisfactions--just as it does of material goods. There is a +definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. Beyond that +limit, possession is a detriment.' + +'The direct result of helping ourselves to too much of anything is to +coarsen and degrade. We can see this clearly as regards the primal +necessity of food. Nature promptly writes it, in large letters, all over +the man or woman of gross appetites.' + +'It is as plainly printed, if in smaller type, on the faces of those who +want too much of other things,--houses, notoriety, money, power,--what +you will. The porcine brand is there, however disguised. Personally, I +fear the Mark of the Pig as I fear nothing else on earth. Shaler says +that certain lines of evolution terminate in such grotesque effects that +one almost believes the guiding thought behind the process was humorous. +I never see a stye with its squealing, shouldering inhabitants, without +thinking how tremendously satiric it is--a master-caricature of human +greed, not over-drawn! And I say, "Brother Pig, Heaven grant that I keep +my voracities better concealed than thou."' + +Her companions regarded Honoria, in type thin, nervous, ardent, with a +keen and vivid face. The comparison was certainly not apparent--but the +heart knoweth its own gluttonies. + +'You are doing fairly well at it thus far,' said Martha dryly. 'What's +the next step in your argument, Honoria?' + +'Since our capacity is limited, and since to glut ourselves beyond it +burdens and degrades, clearly the thing for each individual with +intelligence to do is to find out where, for him, lies the golden point +beyond which riches turns to the poverty of burden. When even the wise +and earnest Adelaides get their houses too big and don't know what is +the matter, it is time to formulate the principles of First Aid to the +Prosperous. I believe the point from which the women of the comfortable +classes should attack the problem of a saner living is this doctrine of +limitation and selection, and that we should attack it first of all in +our homes. + +'Now, we human beings really do something to our immediate material +surroundings which I can best describe as charging them with our +personality. With the revolution of the days, personality accumulates in +the things we handle and love and live with, much as electricity gathers +upon the accumulator of a static machine with the revolution of the +plates. This idea has always been popular with the poets and artists, +but people who advance it in everyday life always do so apologetically, +with the air of saying, "I know this is slightly fantastic, but doesn't +it seem true?" Yet most housekeepers know its utter truth. I never +doubted from the time I consciously began to care for old furniture, old +rugs, old china--all the beautiful cast-offs of vanished lives--that a +vast part of their charm was atmosphere, something imparted to them by +the affection of those forgotten ones and now inhering, for the +perceptive vision, in their very substance. The craftsman of those elder +days is not the only creator of the beauty that has come down to us. +Whoever has loved another's work has thereby added something to it. Is +it not so? And I, in my turn, ought to be beautifying my belongings for +those who come after me.' + +Grace and Martha nodded readily enough, for this doctrine needs no long +expounding to any woman who has lived her way into her material +possessions, and distilled atmosphere from them for the comfort of her +household. She knows what she has done, and knows, though she says +little about it, that this business of turning lifeless into living +things is one of her important natural functions. + +'When I studied physics,' Honoria went on, 'I learned that science had +been compelled to posit ether, an all-pervading, absolutely elastic, +wave-bearing substance, to explain the commonest facts of our physical +experience. Later yet, I learned that the passage of thought-waves +through ether had found defenders among men of the exact sciences. +Naturally I said to myself, "Ah, the scientists are growing 'warm.' +Next, they will be demonstrating some of the things women have always +known. They will show how we send out vibrations that get caught and +entangled in our intimate belongings, never to be wholly freed again. +The thing will be worked out and demonstrated like a problem in +geometry. Doubtless they will be measuring everybody's wave-lengths and +teaching children in the Eighth Grade easy ways of charging their +belongings with their personality so unmistakably that stealing will +have to become a lost art." Well! They haven't done it yet. In fact, +they don't seem so near doing it as they once did. The mechanism of the +process by which I take a chair fresh from Grand Rapids and in the +course of years make it _my_ chair and no other woman's, is a secret +still, but I don't have to argue with anybody who ever had a favorite +chair that the thing is as I have stated it. Neither do I have to argue +that I could not so appropriate and make my own the output of an entire +factory. It must be equally obvious that the dignified, proper +environment for me and my family contains what we can thus make our own, +and not much more.' + +'Of course there are people,' said Martha reflectively, 'the routine of +whose living demands large and formal apartments, impossible to do +anything with from your point of view.' + +'Assuredly there are such people,' Honoria admitted, 'just as there are +people whose entertaining must be in the line of banquets rather than +little dinners. I am not predicating a world full of model cottages, +even though I think it might prove the happiest world. Still, outside of +official circles, the need of state drawing-rooms is certainly not +general, and it is of the very gist of my argument--my argument isn't +all developed yet, Martha, don't think it!--that for the sake of +developing a finer and more individual quality in our possessions, we +should cut off some superfluous ones. Please listen patiently while I +carry the idea to its logical limit, even though that limit lies beyond +the bounds of practicability. + +'Economists profess that, in an ideal distribution of goods, each man +would have as much as he could consume without waste. But this takes no +account of the differing needs of men, developed through ages of the +upward struggle, nor of their different capabilities of turning goods to +account. If you are going to dabble at all in theories of ideal +distribution, why not have one that is genuinely ideal--that is, +non-material? _The true distribution would require that each man should +possess what goods he could animate and vitalize._ Even so, how vastly +would possessions differ in amount and quality! + +'If life could be adjusted on this basis, it would automatically become +simplified, charged with beauty and with character. We should slough off +ugly and useless possessions, or, if we retained through affection +things ugly in themselves, that very affection would impart to them a +certain importance and distinction. We should then, at least, live in a +world in which everything had significance. Think of the infinite +satisfaction of that!' + +'What do you mean when you say, "if life could be adjusted on this +basis," Honoria?' Grace inquired. 'Are you implying some kind of a final +socialistic state which calls for an omniscient Distributor of Goods who +shall know how much each man can vitalize?' + +'Really, Grace, I am not a fool, even when I am evolving a reformed +society!' returned Honoria promptly. 'Most conceptions of an improved +state demand God for their Chief Executive and an enormous force of +government officials with the fine honor which, thus far, has only been +developed in human nature by conditions entirely different from those +the visionaries are forecasting. Unquestionably we have fallen into the +habit of thinking that if we only pass a law, any wrong at which we aim +is regulated. In fact, however, so long as that law only expresses the +practice of a minority, its enforcement will be evaded. Legislation +without character is as helpless as a motor without fuel,--and my little +reform, like every other effective change, must proceed from within +outward. + +'So I believe that if I wish to live in a world where nobody has more +food, clothes, houses, wealth, power, than he can make significant and +vital use of, it is up to me to remake my own life on that basis first. +I am, if not the only woman whom I can reform, at least the most +suitable subject for my experimentation. And I admit that I have too +many possessions. Sometimes I am ridden to exhaustion by the care of my +"things," modest as they are when compared to the goods of my +neighbors. I know that if thousands of people did not feel as I do, the +"simple life" slogan would never have acquired the popularity it had +some years ago. We no longer hear much of the simple life, but we need +it increasingly. Personally, I am persuaded that the method I am trying +to set forth is workable. + +'Why shouldn't a human being, seeking to get the most out of life, take +lessons from the husbandman seeking to get the richest returns from the +soil? It used to be thought that to cultivate many acres superficially +was the way to feed the world and enrich the farmer. But the study of +the soil as a science has taught us that we must resort, instead, to the +intensive farming which gives greater returns from reduced acreage. What +is true of the returns earth makes to our granaries, is true of the +returns life makes to our spirits. We need a science of intensive living +that we may get the larger crop from the smaller field. It will be +worked out by women, and it must begin in their domain, which still is, +in spite of the sociologists, the home.' + +'The Norwegian maid who cared for my rooms at the hotel last winter had +figured out something of the sort for herself,' said Grace. 'After I had +put a few bits of things about, she said to me, "I like dis room. It +looks like Norway. Dere iss more moneys in America, but in Norway t'ings +iss more pretty. Even de kitchen iss good to see. Dere iss shelves an' +copper cooking-dishes all shiny, all so happy-looking. I like dem way +best. It iss better not so much moneys to haf, but to be more happy wit' +one's t'ings!"' + +'That is the doctrine in a nutshell! In its poorer, more restricted +days, the world learned that secret of the art of living, and it still +lingers in corners that our blatant, crashing "civilization" passes +by--so that a Norwegian peasant's daughter may know far more than an +American girl "who has always had everything" about the priceless secret +of being "happy wit' one's t'ings." It is the richest knowledge a woman +can possess.' + +'What is the real rock-bottom reason why people go on piling up money +after they have enough?' Martha demanded. + +'I imagine,' said Honoria, 'that excessive accumulation is a form of +egotism. Now, if public opinion, the race-ideal, or what you please, +once demanded that we vitalize all our possessions; if it were once +admitted to be unspeakably gross to demand more property than we can +animate, as gross as it now is to over-eat, then the stress upon +possession would be transferred at once from "How much" to "How," and +large possessions would really become what some of the undistinguished +rich now fondly imagine them to be--a direct and sensitive register of +the finer qualities.' + +Martha suddenly and irresistibly chuckled. + +'I have a story for you, Honoria,' she said. 'A lot of ranchers over +there,' she vaguely gestured toward the southwest across the hills, +'have grown suddenly rich, raising sugar beets, and have bought +motor-cars and other paraphernalia proper to their improved condition. +One of them was heard to say, "I b'lieve these college graduates that +teach school 'round here really think they're as good as us rich folks." +That is the real attitude of your "undistinguished rich" toward the +gifts of culture and the finer qualities!' + +'Honoria,' said Grace, 'haven't the sages always said, "Give me neither +poverty nor riches"? Why should your propaganda succeed where Job and +Socrates have failed? Job lived a long while ago! If the race were going +to be converted to his view, the process ought to be more advanced. You +will need very strong arguments for your doctrine of limitations.' + +'Arguments are to be had for the picking up,' returned Honoria. 'What +kind will you have? Reasonable limitation on the material side always +brings some amazing flowering of mind or spirit like the blossoming of a +root-bound plant. If you want a racial argument, consider the Irish--the +poorest people in Europe and _therefore_ the richest in spirit. Poverty +forced them to concentrate their attention upon their neighbors; there +resulted an astonishing increase in sympathy, wit, and general +humanness.--If you want an argument from Art, consider the Middle Ages. +Peering out of a narrow world, hemmed in by ignorance and squalor, the +mediæval artist caught sight of beauty and immediately loved it with +such fervent, personal passion that everything he made in its image was +vital and wonderful. As his world broadened in the Renaissance, much of +his art grew florid and meaningless, lacking that marvelous, intimate +quality of the earlier, restricted day.--If you want an argument from +literary material, there's the _Picciola_ of Saintine. You can make an +imperishable literary masterpiece out of a convict's love for a tiny +plant struggling up between two stones in a prison-yard, but you cannot +make men listen to tales of great possessions. The interest in Monte +Cristo centres upon the process of _acquirement_, and it is the same in +any successful money-romance. Midas is only fit to point a moral, never +to adorn a tale.--If you want an argument from philology, consider that +the diminutives in every language show the lesser thing to be the dearer +thing, always. Remember Marie Antoinette and the Little Trianon! +Consider the increasing specialization in science--science which always +falls on its feet! I know a thousand arguments! The thing I am in need +of is converts!' + +'If you could get them,' said Martha, 'there might really be a Woman's +Reformation, only it would begin at home instead of at the polls.' + +'What other permanent thing is there in life but the hearthstone? +Nations rise and fall, laws and institutions come and go--but that +remains, the one fixed point in human society. I take it, therefore, it +is the one point from which the lever can successfully be brought to +bear on human society. If anything is to be moved or altered, the force +must be applied there.' + +'But human society _has_ changed, Honoria,' urged Grace. 'Look at all +our new powers and possessions! Steam and electricity have remade the +world, and we are not yet adjusted to the alteration. No generation ever +lived under our conditions; thus we have no traditions for handling our +new environment. No heritage of ancestral wisdom tells us what of the +hundreds of new opportunities to accept, what to reject. Save in so far +as we are thinking beings--and that is not very far--we are as much at +the mercy of our desires as babies in a toy-shop, grabbing now this and +now that, heaping up a lapful of futilities and calling it a life.' + +'Yes. But why should we make steam and electricity serve our greed only? +Why use them chiefly to darken the world and make life a horror? Dare +you affirm that we women and our demands are not at the very centre of +the tragic tangle of modern living? Isn't all this horrible speeding-up +of business largely an outgrowth of our exactions? What do men do +business for, anyhow, except to get us what we want! Homes are to other +material possessions what souls are to the bodies--the centre from which +the life moves outward. If there is no greed in the home, is there not +bound to be less greed in the offices?' + +'I'm not so sure, Honoria,' Grace returned. 'No amount of intensiveness +in the home would eliminate man's love of power for its own sake.' + +'Perhaps. Yet isn't the lust for power a secondary development? We begin +by being greedy because we want things; we keep on after we have more +things than we know what to do with, because greed has created the +power-lust. It is the aftermath from that ugly root. If the pressure the +home puts on the man for money were suddenly slackened all along the +line, above the point of poverty, might not the matter of unseemly +accumulations correct itself? If we women of the more favored classes +avowedly undertook to give quality to our belongings, instead of +demanding belongings which we hope will confer quality upon us, there +would surely be both a lessening in the stress of life and an +improvement in its texture. I can think of nothing else but the Golden +Rule that would help to solve so many menacing problems, such as the +high cost of living, the commercialization of life, and the divorce +problem. Oh, it would be very far-reaching, that attitude, if we could +only achieve it!' + +'Why wouldn't plain Christianity do all your reforming, and do it +better?' demanded Martha abruptly. + +'Assuredly it would--if Christianity were more generally a condition +instead of a theory among us. I wouldn't undertake to say off-hand why +the sanctions of common sense seem more precious to the present +generation than the sanctions of religion, when in so many points they +are identical, but I must conform my theorizings to the fact. Yet with +all our neglect of religion the traditions of the spirit have not +changed! They are the same from everlasting to everlasting. And one of +the things the nineteenth century most wonderfully made clear was that +the evolution of the spirit is the thing Nature has been seeking for +hundreds of millions of years. I don't suppose that age-long process +with the tremendous impetus of all creation behind it is really going to +be upset by the turmoil of one materialistic generation. But I do +believe that if we go with the current of materialism, we and all our +works shall be tossed aside as refuse, thrown into Nature's garbage-can. +I tell you, I can't bear the disgrace of it.' + +'Honoria, you almost persuade me to be intensive,' said Grace, 'but I am +not reconciled to the doctrine at one point--the question of beauty. I +admit that one cannot vitalize a lot of senseless luxury. I admit, too, +that comfort and a certain amount of beauty can always be successfully +domesticated and charged with personality, as you phrase it, and that +the result is completely satisfying. But is one never to indulge one's +self in _all the beauty money will buy_, never to have everything of an +absolute perfection? You are against great houses, but there is Mountly +House, at home. It is big, but so beautiful that you are at home in it +all over. What of it, and others like it?' + +'Big and beautiful it is, but it is on my side of the argument, none the +less. If you remember, the architect was also the decorator. It is the +triumph of his imagination. He designed it as a background for a woman +of opulent beauty and domestic tastes. He ransacked Europe for the +furnishings, tapestries, all sorts of exquisite, ancient things. He was +a great artist and he created a work of art. The family fit into the +picture more or less awkwardly. It is his house, not theirs at all. And +I truly believe that the ultimate purpose of our houses excludes our +going up and down another's stairs. + +'Yet I believe in all the beauty one can vitalize. It is essentially +wholesome. It does not lend itself to morbid demands. The collector's +passion looks like greed, and doubtless for a time it is greed. But, +sooner or later, Too-Much sickens them. Their adorable possessions teach +them there is profanation in having more wonderful things than they can +enter into personal relation with. Therefore the inevitable end of all +overgrown collections is the museum or the auction-room. I have seen it +too often not to know it is true!--If you want a perfect illustration of +this in literature read Mrs. Wharton's _The Daunt Diana_. It cuts down +like a knife to the essential fact that our relations with beauty must +be limited enough to have the personal quality. And--don't you +see?--this automatic destruction of greed that beauty finally teaches to +the collector, is the same automatic destruction of it that I dare think +intensive living in our homes might bring to all greed. It is a proof of +the theory on another plane.' + +'I think one might own a Mountly House without greed,' persisted Grace +wistfully. 'Having no house at all, I naturally refuse to think of +myself as ending my days in any less perfect domicile. What do you mean +by the "ultimate purpose" of our houses?' + +'Ah! that,' said Honoria, with a quick indrawing of her breath, 'is the +very core of all my thought, and I don't know how to make you see it!' + +She rose abruptly and walked to the end of the veranda. She stood there +a while, looking across at the spreading gables of her own brown +bungalow, with the yearning on her face that only house-mothers know. +Yonder was her home. Set on a mighty shoulder of the earth, facing the +sunset and the sea, it clung to the soil as the brown rocks cling. +Behind it were the mighty Sierras with their crests of snow; before it, +the sweetest land God ever smiled upon; within it, all the treasures of +her eyes, her mind, her heart. Just as it stood there in the February +sun, it was an abode compact of love, of aspiration, of desire. The +ancient love of man for his shelter had gone into it, and the love of +woman for the place of her appointed suffering. Desire for beauty and +hope of peace were in its making. Its walls had heard the birth-cries; +her children had played about its doors; out from it had been borne her +dead. Inconsiderable speck on the vast hill-shoulder that it was, it +could defy time and the elements, even as she defied them, for she had +given it of her own immortality. + +'I have not yet said it all,' she said a little thickly. 'It is hard to +say, even to you. I have found an attitude of mind, a path, a way of +life I call intensive, for lack of a better name, and I believe in it, +not only because it increases my sane satisfaction in living, but also +because it finally leads _out_--out of all this tangle of our material +lives, into the eternal spaces. + +'I see the world of men's business activities chiefly as a place of +wrath and greed, and yet even the most grasping must be blindly seeking +through their greed an ultimate satisfaction--not more houses or more +automobiles, or railroads, or mines, or even power, but something dimly +apprehended as beyond all these and more than they--something that is +good and that _endures_. For we all want the Enduring Thing. One man +sees it here, another there. As for me, I see it in my house. I tell +you, the Greeks and Romans did not make a religion of the hearthstone; +they merely recognized the religion that the hearthstone _is_. Under +that quiet roof I have learned that it is a woman's business to take +stones and make them bread. Only she can make our surroundings live and +nourish us. + +'Beyond the need for bread, a woman's needs are two; deeper than all +cravings save the mother's passion, firm-rooted in our endless past, is +the heart-hunger. The trees that sweep my chimney have their roots at +the world's core! The flowers in my dooryard have grown there for a +thousand years! What millenniums have done, shall decades undo? We are +not so shallow, so plastic as that! We will go into the mills, the +shops, the offices, if we must, but we know we are off the track of +life. Neither our desire nor our power is there. + +'I have talked glibly enough about restricting superfluous possessions +for the sake of developing a finer quality in those we have; I have said +only personality gives that quality to our surroundings--but I have not +said the final thing. It is this: I believe that in the humble business +of loving the material things that are given to us to own and love, in +shaping our homes around them, in making them vital and therefore +beautiful, so that they serve our spirits in their turn, we are not only +making the most of our resources in this life, but are doing more than +that. Somehow, I cannot tell you how, I know that we are _getting them +across_--into the timeless places! In making them vital we are making +them enduring. + +'Christ tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What did +that mean to you when you were young? I thought it meant a procession of +self-denials and charities, more or less lifeless because the offering +was made slightly against the grain! I had no idea that when I loved +somebody very much or pitied somebody very much, when I shared my heart +or shared my roof eagerly, that I was doing the commanded thing. Still +less did I realize, when I worked hard to make my home more comfortable +or more beautiful, that I was sending vibrations from my everyday world +right into the eternal one--every deed an actual hammer stroke on my +house not made with hands. But so sure as that our mortal shall put on +immortality, I now hold it that what we first find in the eternal world +will be the things into which we have unstintingly flung our vitality, +our _feeling_, while we are briefly here. + +'_Here we have no continuing city_. But when I am making my house live, +I and no other, putting into it as I best may something of the serenity +of Athens and the sacredness of Jerusalem and the beauty of Siena, then +it is taking its place beside my greater loves. Then I am creating a +home, not only in this world, but in the next. I have put something over +into the eternal world that fire cannot burn, nor floods destroy, nor +moth and rust corrupt. It is safe, even from myself, forever! No Heaven +can be holy to me if I have not made this spot holy. I shall not ask, +even from the mercy of the Merciful, a heavenly mansion if I have failed +to make this earthly dwelling live. Eternity begins beside my hearth, +shaped by my will. A woman knows!' + + + + +Reminiscence with Postscript + +By Owen Wister + + +I + +Not alone because of their good meat and drink are three meals shrined +at the heart of these following impressions. Singly, each one did +delightfully engage the palate, but the three together speak appealingly +to sentiment. It is of a great house, a little inn, and of the fair +region round about them that I shall mainly discourse--and whether I do +or don't give a final _x_ to the name of the house, there are people and +documents to say I have spelt it wrong: which comes very near to saying +that both ways are right. The _x_ shall remain, the majority seems to +favor it, and I at once beg that you share my relish of these posturing +Renaissance lines, written by royal command in honor of Chenonceaux:-- + + Au saint bal des dryades, + A Phoebus, ce grand dieu, + Aux humides nayades + J'ai consacré ce lieu. + +This highly plaster-cast lyric was recited during the 'triomphe' held at +Chenonceaux to celebrate the arrival there of François II and Mary +Stuart. The hostess was as distinguished as her visitors; and never, +before I went to Chenonceaux, did I associate naiads and dryads and +poems of welcome with Catherine de'Medici. But we must allow this +monstrous personage an eye for good houses. She preferred Chenonceaux to +all her dwellings--she preferred it so much, indeed, that she made +another lady get out of it, exchanging for it the decidedly inferior +residence of Chaumont. And we have Catherine to thank (I fear) for the +strangely felicitous fancy that placed upon the arches built from the +rear of the house to the farther side of the river by her rejected +predecessor, Diane de Poitiers, that enchanting hall or gallery, which +rises three stories high, if you count the nine windows in the steeply +and gracefully pitched slate roof. + + Basti si magnifiquement + Il est debout, comme un géant, + Dedans le lit de la rivière, + C'est-a-dire dessus un pont + Qui porte cent toises de long. + +These verses bump down heavily upon the bridge, and, despite their +scrupulous statistics as to its length, they scarcely measure the +excellence of Chenonceaux, but rather the gap between French verse and +French architecture in the sixteenth century. Villon could have come +nearer the mark; but Villon was long gone before the ancient mill on the +river Cher was transfigured by its purchaser into the château he did not +live to complete. 'S'il vient à point' said Thomas Bohier, and he graved +it in many ornamental places of his edifice, 'me souviendra.' + +And here am I writing his name and thinking about him, three hundred and +ninety-two years after his death. What a pleasant reason for being +remembered! What a quietly illustrious introduction to posterity: the +originator of the mansion whose sheer beauty brought a succession of +kings and queens and other great people to sojourn in it, whose walls +have listened to the blandishments of François I, the sallies of +Fontenelle and Voltaire, the sentimentalities of Rousseau. Do their +ghosts walk here upon these terraces? Do they meet in the long gallery +over the Cher? If they don't, they are less wise in the next world than +they were in this. Almost might one envy some figure in a well-preserved +piece of tapestry, hanging in any hall or chamber here and commanding a +view out of any window that looked up or down the placid river. +Embroidered thus for ever, amid high company, ladies and gentlemen of +importance with hawks and feathers and armor and steeds richly +caparisoned, ministered to by esquires and serfs, one would exist +admired, valued, and carefully dusted. Daily sight-seers from all lands +would be conducted into one's presence (Sundays included, 10-11 A.M., +2-6 P.M.), thus animating one's feudal leisure with sufficient variety. +There one would be, an acknowledged masterpiece, for ever aloof from the +unstable present, nevermore driven to enlist against the restless evils +of the world. The trouble is, somebody from Pittsburg might buy one. Now +I could no more brook living as tapestry in America than I could live as +an American in Europe, expatriated and trivially evaporating amid +beauties and comforts that were none of my native heritage. + +Do you know the country where Chenonceaux stands? Do you know the river? +Have you ever gone there from Tours, or come there the opposite way, +from Bourges through Vierzon and Montrichard? + +The region shares a secret with certain rare people, whom all of us are +glad to count among our acquaintance. Certain men and women, immediately +on our first meeting them, make us desire to meet them again; not +because they have uttered remarkable thoughts or reminded us of Venus or +Apollo: perhaps they have said nothing that you and I couldn't say, and +we may know people much better looking. But they radiate--what is it +that they radiate? We feel it, we bask in it, it flows over us. It isn't +sunlight or moonlight, but a fairy-light of their own. When these +shining creatures come into the room, happiness enters with them. How do +they do it? It gets us nowhere to say that there is 'something' in the +tone of their voice, or 'something' in the look of their eyes: what is +the something? I'm glad I don't know; mystery is growing so scarce, that +I am thankful for anything which cannot be explained. + +Now this rare quality (and don't flatter yourself that you understand it +because you happen to know its name) is possessed not only by men and +women, but also by places; and, no more than with people, has it +anything to do with their being remarkable or beautiful. The White +Mountains in New Hampshire haven't a trace of it; it fills the mountains +of North Carolina; there is almost none along our Atlantic seaboard, but +it hangs over and haunts nearly every foot of our Pacific Coast. + +Whenever one of these happy spots has been long known to man, man has +invariably cherished it in word and deed. His chronicles celebrate it; +he sets it lovingly like a jewel in his romances, dramas, verse, prose, +song; he graces it with his best in architecture; his roads and gardens +bring it alike into his hours of work and of ease; in fine, he garlands +it with his imagination, weaves it into his life century after century, +until it comes to smile upon him from the heart of his History and +Literature, as well as upon his daily present. That is what mankind has +done beneath the spell of a place which has charm. + +Thus Touraine to the Frenchman,--_beau pays de Touraine_, as the page in +Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_ sings of it in that opera's second act, which +takes place at Chenonceaux. I suppose--indeed I remember--that rain +falls in that country; yet, when I think about it, sunshine invariably +sparkles through the picture--not the kind that glares and burns, but +the kind that plays gently among leaves and shores and shadows; sunshine +upon the twinkling, feathered silver of the poplars, the grapes in +sloping vineyards, the green islands and tawny bluffs of the Loire, the +quiet waters of the Indre and the Cher; a jocund harmony seems to play +about the very names,--Beaulieu, Montrésor, Saint-Symphorien,--but were +I to begin upon the music in the names of France, I should run far +beyond the limits of Touraine and of your patience. Say to yourself +aloud, properly, Amboise, Châteaurenault, La Chapelle-Blanche, +Saint-Martin-le-Beau, and then say Naugatuck, Saugatuck, Pawtucket, +Woonsocket, Manayunk, Manunkachunk, and you will catch my drift. +Stevenson's joy in our names was at bottom purely that of the collector. + +But have you ever seen the Loire and its tributary realm? I have already +owned myself (together with all other men) as unable to explain the +mystery of charm. No Niagara is hereabouts, nor Matterhorn, nor anything +you could call sublime; nothing so lustrously beautiful as Bar Harbor, +or the Berkshire Hills. Wildness is wholly absent, but so is tameness +too. It is somehow through its very moderation that the glamour of this +land is wrought. But we must nicely distinguish between the poetry and +the prose of moderation: Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is perfectly +moderate, and is also the type and pattern of hundreds of thousands of +square, comfortable, unoffending miles in the United States which you +would never wish to see again--indeed which you would never wish to see +once; whereas, even as I write, I am homesick for Touraine, though it +isn't my home. + +Once again I must draw the parallel between human qualities and the ways +of our mother earth. We place at the top of our esteem those people who +take chivalrously the heavy blows of life, who are not brave merely, but +gallant. We draw scant inspiration from the sight of somebody who is all +too obviously and dutifully bearing something; who goes, day after day, +with a set and sombre expression that says as plainly as words: 'Just +watch me carrying my Cross. Just wait till you have one.' We prefer +those whose gayety so conceals the fact that they're behaving well, that +we should never suspect it, did we not know what they have passed, and +are passing, through. Thus also does Touraine conceal the tears and the +blood she has known. Louis the Eleventh, Catherine de' Medici, the +gibbet balcony of the Salle des Armes at Amboise, the iron cage and the +black dungeons of Loches,--Touraine, with her smiling, high-bred +elegance, keeps all this to herself, and gives you a bright welcome. +Often as she has been the scene of Tragedy, often as the glaive and not +the lute has been the instrument of her drama, she might well look in +her glass and exclaim with Richard the Second,-- + + Hath sorrow struck + So many blows upon this face of mine, + And made no deeper wounds? + +Wearing no crape, betraying no scars, hinting naught of its dark +experience of life, this realm, this _beau pays_, more than any in +Europe, to my thinking, lies in the true key of high comedy, of masque +and pastoral. If, here and there above its trees or upon its hills, the +brooding frown of some tower, the gaunt stare of some donjon in ruins, +fierce with memories, brings one up short, so that in joy's mid-current +some smack of the bitter wells up--this is not Nature's doing. Look away +from these works of man to the feathered poplars, the vineyards, the +gentle waters, and see the earth's countenance, smiling and serene. +Decorous it is always; only the irregularities of the Loire and its +channel seem to bear any reference to the conduct of those beautiful +historic ladies who dispersed their reputations in the vicinity. Even +man did not always build a Langeais or a Loches. Urbane and gracious +amid their parks or on their bluffs rise those dwellings planned when +France's architectural genius was in its happiest mood--though not its +loftiest. They look like the good society which once assembled in them; +their mere aspect suggests the wits, the brilliant talkers and listeners +of a day when conversation was a living art still, the day which +furnishes us even now with those letters and memoirs which are the +dainty wainscotting and mantelpieces, the interior decorations of +Literature. You may wander almost anywhere among the poplars and the +chestnuts in the valleys of the Loire's quiet tributaries; you can +hardly go wrong; if the turrets of Ussé against their rising woodland do +not regale your eye, it will be Azay-le-Rideau, or something less +famous, or, best of all, Chenonceaux, to which I now return. + + +II + +I saw it first upon an afternoon when no air was stirring, even in the +poplars, when the green of Touraine was changing to gold: golden fruit, +pears, and apples, where summer's fruit had been; golden leaves +flickering down from high branches, or raked into golden heaps; while +the faint, sweet smoke of burning twigs hovered in the autumn day. It +was the moment and scene of the year when, just because other things +have ceased to grow, memories blossom in the mind; and on every golden +heap of leaves retrospect seemed to be sitting. We visitors were three. +I can recall the first sight of the château's yellow façade, framed by +the distant end of the high, formal avenue into which we turned to +approach it. All sorts of feet had stepped where we were walking: +almost four centuries of distinguished feet had gone in and out of that +beautiful front door; but over its appealing associations the still more +appealing aspect of the wonderful house triumphed. If I knew about _Le +Devin du Village_ then, the scene of its first performance interested me +much more because that long and many-windowed gallery was built right +over the water, right across the Cher, upon arches that the glassy +surface of the stream reflected symmetrically. I was captured then and +for ever by the beauty and the originality of this residence. Our best +country houses take earth and air into partnership, but this abode of +grace possessed, embraced, a little river. To go in at your front door +on one green margin and come out of your back door on the other; to +dwell in a masterpiece that was house and bridge in one--I can still +recover my first sensations of delight at this triumph of French art. +Only--the concierge didn't let us go out of the back door; and my +disappointment was cherished through long years, until its sequel, which +I shall presently reach. This first afternoon became a chapter in the +most delightful of guide-books, from which I quote the following:-- + +'We took our way back to the Grand Monarque, and waited in the little +inn parlor for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had +an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were +still content to sit a while and exchange remarks upon the superior +civilization of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have +fared so well?... At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_ was not +only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by +mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the +elder lady, as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.' + +On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hôtel +de l'Univers in Tours, the château of Amboise was described to us by an +English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere +then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned +spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments. +She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't +respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be +with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about +Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious +she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it +invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.' + +In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and +graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and +whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door +on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had +so dropped out of my thoughts that it fairly burst upon my sight. +Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained +edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our +party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came +into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of +the château, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration, +that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!' + +Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular +and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors +have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though +never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January, +1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses. +But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the +other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its +secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress, +Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's +success with François Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the +Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on +the day Diane was married.--But I resist the temptation to dwell upon +Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all +accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of +four made, this spring day. + +Touraine was now all delicate in green; as lovely, as gracious, as +discreet in its budding leaves as when the leaves had flickered down, +spangling the air and grass and garden-walks with their gold. We had met +at the little inn the same welcome, the same excellent _cuisine_, the +same agreeable Vouvray mousseux. Mademoiselle was not there, but mamma +was. Her premises and herself showed no ill effect from the prosperity +brought to her through the guide-book I have already quoted. No +guide-book in its author's plan, it was now become established as one, +and he, petitioned in a letter from mamma, had corrected a certain +error. In the first edition, page 60, you may read that we took our way +back to the Grand Monarque; in later editions it is the Hôtel du +Bon-Laboureur. The confusion to travelers, the injury to her custom, +ensuing from the wrong name, madame had represented to the author; and +now all was well. The inn wasn't any larger, but more and more each +season were pilgrims with expectant appetites led to her door. + +'Tenez, monsieur,' she said to me eagerly, when I narrated to her how I +had been present at the germination of her renown, 'tenez. Voilà!' She +showed me the precious guide-book. She treasured it, though she couldn't +read it, because it was in English. And I came in for her smiles and +cordiality, which really belonged to the author. + +You will have perceived, our party this time took their _déjeuner_, not +their dinner, at the Bon-Laboureur. The good omelette and cheese and +fruit and wine, mamma's prosperity and her well-preserved state,--for +now she was really an elderly woman,--all this had brought us in +peaceful and pleased spirits to the château. When we had seen the rooms +downstairs and the concierge was conducting the other sightseers--some +ten or twelve--to the second story, our party under my guidance stole +away to the back door. + +'Back door' implies no dishonorable passage through pantry and kitchen; +we simply didn't go up the staircase in the wake of the concierge, but +independently along the hall instead, and thus across the Cher through +Catherine's celebrated gallery. _Le Devin du Village_ came into my mind, +and I wondered which figure was the more diverting, Jean-Jacques +Rousseau composing opera, or Richard Wagner dabbling in philosophy. + +The door was open. I emerged, the happy leader of my party, upon stone +steps, crossed a little draw-bridge, and our triumphant feet trod the +grass beneath the trees which shaded the river's bank. I had my wish; +and as my obedient band followed me, I fear my complacent back and +Anabasis manner expressed some sentiment like this: 'Only observe how it +pays to see France with a person who knows the ropes!' We sauntered, we +expatiated, we paused before what I'll call by metonymy the tocsin--a +great bell and chain suspended from strong framework; from this point +the château, with its fine, detached, cylindrical donjon tower of the +fifteenth century, looked, in the afternoon light, particularly well: +those poor sheep with the concierge weren't getting this view. We must +have lingered by the tocsin a quarter of an hour, enjoying ourselves, +before returning to the back door. + +It was shut. It was locked. Rattling made no impression upon it, nor +shaking, nor kicking. We knocked then, fancying this to be an accident. +Next we called, or rather, I, the party's personal conductor and +competent guide, began to call. Nothing happened. I augmented my +efforts. Catherine's gallery, famous scene of the first performance of +Rousseau's _Devin du Village_, responded with cavernous echoes. Between +these reigned silence, and a gentle breeze rustled the young leaves of +the chestnuts. We abandoned the door and went a few steps down the river +to where our gesticulations could be seen from the windows of +Chenonceaux. We made these gesticulations with our four umbrellas, +whilst I shouted continually. Not a window blinked. It might have been a +sorcerer's palace, and we his four new victims, presently to be roasted, +boiled, or changed into cats. We looked down the river--no escape; up +the river half-a-mile was a bridge; but what impediment mightn't lie +between? And even if the way were clear, to go round by the bridge would +lose us our train to Tours. One of us, in her deep voice, said that she +hoped the robin-red-breasts would find her body and cover it with +leaves. Again we flourished our four umbrellas, during vociferations +from me, at the imperturbable château. Then, quite suddenly, something +did happen. Out of a window in the donjon tower of the fifteenth century +was thrust a head, and from across the river it wagged at us +malevolently. + +It was the concierge. The shock of discovering he had locked us out +purposely in punishment of our independent excursion, threw me into +extreme rage. My Anabasis manner had already dropped from me; but +Xenophon got his party successfully back, and this same task was now +searchingly, compellingly, 'up to me.' More malevolent wagging from the +tower was all that resulted from my next demonstrations. In these I was +now alone; my party, at the apparition of the concierge, had become +abruptly quiet, thinking doubtless that loud calls and wavings would +diminish my dignity less than theirs, whose years and discretion were +more than mine. Therefore my companions brandished their umbrellas no +more, but stood upon the banks of the Cher decorously, in a reserved +attitude, patient yet stately, as if awaiting the tumbril; I, meanwhile, +hurled international threats across the river. These wrought no change. +In repose my French halts, but when roused it acquires both speed and +point; yet none of my idioms disturbed the concierge at his window. And +now I was visited by inspiration. I seized the chain and rang the +tocsin. It sounded as if Attila were coming at once. Somebody would have +come, undoubtedly,--the whole _arrondissement_ I should think,--but +after a few moments of that din, the head disappeared; in a few more the +door was unlocked, and my companions preceded me with restraint yet with +celerity across Catherine's gallery and out of Chenonceaux's front door +and away, down the avenue to the railway, whilst I delivered some final +idioms to the concierge. I am happy to record that these made him livid, +and in the presence of a highly attentive audience. But--we had in truth +small idea with whom we were dealing. Some time later we got final news +of him. He had committed a murder, been caught, tried, convicted, +sentenced, and executed. + +You will remember the British lady at the Hôtel de l'Univers in Tours, +who, in her description of Amboise, pronounced curious to rhyme with +glorious. Her kind was still pervading the quieter hotels of the +continent (the Hôtel de l'Univers was still quiet) while her more +muscular sister was still climbing all the Alps in valiant weeds. This +time, another of the identical type sat next me at the table d'hôte, and +from the corner of my eye I perceived her to be making endless and +surreptitious dives with her head at my bottle of Vouvray mousseux. +Becoming sure that this was neither St. Vitus's dance nor kleptomania, +but a desire to learn the name of my wine, I made her a slight bow, +turning my bottle so that she could more easily read its label; at which +she squeaked skittishly, 'I-didn't-think-you'd-see-me!' + + +III + +The mid-Victorian spinster was gone, the automobile was come, the much +expanded Hôtel de l'Univers was quiet no more and had abandoned the +table d'hôte for small tables when next I saw Chenonceaux. Eager as I +had been to return to it, still more did I desire to enjoy that +particular pleasure which one takes in introducing a scene one delights +in to a friend. We were, this time, as we had been the first time, a +party of three, and the day was July 4, 1914; but in the Cathedral of +Bourges that morning, and at Montrichard and along the Cher that +forenoon, firecrackers seemed remote. Later, the Hôtel de l'Univers had +illuminations and national melodies for the benefit of its American +patrons--these having now swelled to the lucrative proportions of +invasion. + +But Chenonceaux hadn't changed, Chenonceaux looked just as young as +ever. Its bright, serene aspect showed no confusion at changing masters +so often. To my friends it more than fulfilled my promises for it, while +for me it was even fairer than my memory. The concierge, a woman this +time, told her band of sightseers enough, but much less than she knew. +She had acquired (one somehow divined and discerned) a certain scorn +for her sightseers. She had found (one saw) the affluent automobile to +be the chariot of well-informed stomachs, but seldom of intelligences +which had ever heard, or would ever care to hear, about Madame Dupin and +her many distinguished guests. They knew their Michelin, where to buy +_pétrol_ along the road, which roads to avoid; and the road they had +particularly avoided was the one conducting to civilization. Some of +them were present on this occasion with their goggles, their magenta +veils, and their brass voices. To these the concierge imparted what she +deemed them able to digest. She didn't mention the _Devin du +Village_--but I did! This brought an immediate _rapprochement_, as we +lingered with her behind the departing goggles. She knew and loved her +Chenonceaux; her scorn fell from her; but she told us nothing so +interesting as the fact that during the last twelvemonth _twenty +thousand_ visitors had given each their required franc to see the place. +The château, at this rate, will pay its way down the ages. + +But what of the Bon-Laboureur? If the mid-Victorian spinster and the +table d'hôte hadn't survived the pace of the new century, what had the +automobile done to the innocent village inn? I hope you will be glad to +learn that it hadn't--as yet--done much. I have now reached the third of +those meals which I mentioned at the outset. The Bon-Laboureur seemed a +little larger,--people were lunching in two rooms instead of one, and +out behind, kitchenward, there was a hint of bustle and of chauffeurs, +and perhaps the personal note of welcome was fainter. But it wasn't +quite absent; and still the food was excellent, still the service was +courteous, a pleasant young woman waiting; and I felt that here was a +good, small tradition still somewhat holding out against the +beleaguering pressure of the wholesale. So I spoke to the pleasant young +woman and inquired if the old _patronne_ were still living. + +'Mais si, monsieur!' I was, to my astonishment, answered. 'A deux pas +d'ici.' + +The personal note of welcome warmed up on learning that I was an old +visitor here; the patronne would value a call from one who remembered +her good cooking; she was now very old; she had sold the business and +the good-will; she lived very quietly; would I not go to see her? And +her house was pointed out to me. + +Along the street of the little white village I went, slowly, in the +midsummer warmth. The grape-leaves, trailing and basking on the walls, +the full-leaved trees, the light and laziness of earth and sky, conveyed +the same hush of repose that had exhaled from the golden autumn and the +delicate spring I remembered so well; in this July sunshine, also, the +pleasant land lay dreamy and unvexed. At a door standing slightly open, +I knocked. Though a pause followed, I felt I had been heard; then I was +bidden to enter, by a very old voice. Two rooms were accessible from the +tiny hall, but I entered the right one, and there by the window sat the +patronne. I had remembered her as moving alertly round her table, quiet +and vigorous, above average height. All of this was gone; and as her +dark, feeble eyes looked at me, I felt in them a certain apprehension, +and found myself unpremeditatedly saying,-- + +'Madame, I trust you will not think ill of an intruder when you learn +why it is that he has ventured to knock at your door. They assured me +you would like my visit. Here is my little story: One Sunday afternoon +in September, 1882, three travelers came to the Bon-Laboureur. I was one +of them; and never forgetting your excellent meal and service, I +returned at my first opportunity, in April, 1896. Meanwhile that good +meal of yours, and you its hostess, had been mentioned in a book by +another of those three guests; and you told me of the prosperity this +had brought you. Since that visit, thirty-two years ago, I have become a +writer of books too. Of me you will not have heard, but you cannot have +forgotten Mr. Henry James, whose praise brought so many guests to the +Bon-Laboureur.' + +Her eyes, during my speech, had awakened, and now she stood up. + +'My servant is absent,' she said, 'or you would not have had to come in +so. But my son lives close by in that large place. He will like very +much to see you. I will call him.' + +She would have gone for him on her trembling feet, but this I begged she +would not do; I had but five minutes; friends were waiting for me. + +'I am ninety years old,' she said. 'Ah, monsieur, il est bien triste de +vieillir. One has nothing any more.' She became suddenly moved, and +tears fell from her. + +I need not recall the little talk we had then. Strangers though we were, +we did not speak as strangers; the memories that rose in each of us, so +separate, so different, flowed together in some way, united beneath our +spoken words, and made them sacred. But I may record that she got out +her old books to show me, her registry-books of the Bon-Laboureur, +little, old, modest volumes, where in many handwritings through many +years the names of her guests had been inscribed. They had come from +almost everywhere in the world. No longer strong enough, she had parted +with the business and the good-will; but from these tokens of her past +she could not part. She clung to the inanimate survivals of her good +days and her renown. And on a blank page of the last volume which she +placed before me, putting a pen in my hand, I wrote briefly for her of +my three pilgrimages to her _petit pays_. Of the international +distinction of her son she was touchingly and justly proud: famous +peonies have spread his name wide as their cultivator and producer. For +this, too, was the Bon-Laboureur in its way responsible. + +Perhaps I may not see it again, or its grand neighbor, the château, that +secular shrine of a vivacious and select Past. But I shall need no +Michelin, or Baedeker, or Joanne, to guide my memories thither. They are +with me, every moment and breath of them, for my perpetual delight, a +safe possession, unweakened and undimmed; and to conjure them before me +it needs no more than the haunting syllables of Chenonceaux and the +quaint, cherished volumes of the patronne. + + IN CHENONCEAUX + + My noiseless thoughts, if changed to their just sound + Amid these courts of silence once so gay + With love and wit, that here full pleasure found + Where Kings put off their crownèd cares to play, + Would shake in laughter at some jest unheard; + Would sing like viols in a saraband; + Would whisper kisses--but express no word + That would not be too dim to understand. + + Like to a child, who far from ocean's flood + Against his ear a shell doth fondly hold + To hear the murmur that is his own blood, + And half believes the fairy-tale he's told, + So I within this shell mistake my sea + Of musing for the tide of History. + + + + +The Other Side + +By Margaret Sherwood + + +Like every other attentive reader of our periodical literature, I am +increasingly aware of our persistent exposure of sin and wrong-doing in +high places and in low; like many another attentive reader, I am growing +a bit rebellious against this constant demand and supply in the matter +of information regarding recent evil. Have we not grown over-alert in +the search for this special kind of news? We take vice with our +breakfast porridge; perjury with our after-dinner coffee; our essayists +vie with one another in seeing who can write up the most startling story +of crimes; and it is a bankrupt family nowadays that cannot produce one +member to expose civic or political corruption. Undoubtedly much genuine +ethical impulse lies back of all this; undoubtedly, too, much of the +picturesque and spectacular treatment springs from a desire to startle, +and ministers, in many a reader who would scorn paper-covered fiction, +to a love of the sensational. Surely it must seem to the people of other +countries that we take pride in the immensity of our sins, as we take +pride in Niagara, in the length of the Mississippi, in the extent of our +western plains. + +Many may be, and must be, the good effects of throwing the searchlight +upon dark places, but the constant glare of the searchlight bids fair to +rob us of our normal vision of life. My poor mind has become a +storehouse of misdeeds not my own. I am sick with iniquity; I walk +abroad under the shadow of infamy, and I sup with horrors. I shrink from +meeting my friends,--not that they are not the best people in the world, +but I dread lest they pour into my ears some newly acquired knowledge of +wrong-doing. For me, as for others, the sun of noonday is clouded by +graft, bribery, treachery, and corruption; and I fear to close my eyes +in the dark because of the pictured crimes that crowd before them. +Suppose poor Christian had had to drag after him not only his own bag of +transgressions, but those of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Facing-both-ways, +and all the denizens of Vanity Fair, what chance would he ever have had +of getting out of the Slough of Despond? + +It is not that I wish to shirk; I am not afraid of facing anything that +I ought to know, and I have not the slightest doubt that we are all, in +great measure, responsible for our neighbors' sins. But I am not sure +that we are taking the wisest way to mend them. It seems to me +incontestable that, with the large issues of individual and of national +well-being in mind, we are over-doing the exposure, and slighting the +incentives to right action; emphasizing the negative at the expense of +the positive; and that, with our weakening convictions regarding the +things that are right, it is dangerous to go on loudly proclaiming the +things that are wrong. We are much in the position of a village +improvement society which has pulled down a bridge because it is +rotting, and is impotent to build another and a better. We have invested +our national all in wrecking machinery, and have nothing left for +constructive tools. It is said that in our explosive setting forth of +civic and national wrong-doing, we are all too prone to stop with the +explosion, as if mere knowledge of these things would set them right. +Mere knowledge never yet set anything right; only the ceaselessly +active, creative will can fashion a world of law out of chaos. + +Of the criticism often made that exposure of wrong should be followed, +more closely than is done here, by constructive action, if anything is +to be really effected, it is not my task to speak. The aspect of the +matter which interests me especially concerns the youth of the land; it +is the educational aspect. Not through loud wailing over evil can a +nation be built, but through resolute dwelling with high ideals. In +certain ugly tendencies of recent years among the young, as, for +instance, the unabashed sensuality of much of the modern dancing, may we +not detect, perhaps, a cynical assumption that life is at basis +corrupt,--a natural result of continued harping on evil things, and of +failure to keep before them images of moral beauty? Our magazine writers +would be far better employed, if, instead of making our ears constantly +resound with reports of civic iniquities, they were, part of the time at +least, studying Plato's _Republic_, and filling mind and soul with the +hope of the perfect state. Wrong things we dare hope are of small and +fleeting consequence as compared with the right; it is not the sin of +Judas Iscariot, but the righteousness of his Master, that has brought +the human race a gleam of hope and possible redemption. When I was told, +not long ago, of a student in one of our great universities who had +elected 'Criminology 16,' I could not help reflecting that he might far +better have taken Idealistic Philosophy I. + +Whether or not our study of evil should be lessened, our study of the +good needs to be vastly strengthened. We are losing the vision! 'Your +old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,' said the +prophet, in promising wonders in the heavens and in the earth, after his +account of fasting, weeping, mourning, and beating the breast. There is +a time for beating the breast and for tearing the hair, and of this we +have had our day, but perpetual sitting upon the ash-heap and howling +will not raise the walls of state. Sitting there may, in time, even +become a luxury; can it be that we are doing so much of it partly +because it is easier, and because the heaven-sent task of building up +and shaping is too hard for us? + +Take away from youth the power of seeing visions, of dreaming dreams, +and you take away the future. It would behoove us to remember, perhaps, +that the eras of great deeds have not been eras of analysis, but eras +when the creative imagination was at work. Yet our modern mental habit +is overwhelmingly a habit of analysis, for which science, in teaching us +to pick the world to bits, is partly, though not wholly, responsible. It +has brought us an immense amount of interesting information; it has +brought also a danger whose gravity we can hardly estimate, in the +constant lessening of the synthetic power. The power to image, to +fashion high ideals, and to create along the line of the imagining, is +weakening, instead of growing more strong. In the glorious days of Queen +Elizabeth, in the unparalleled days of Periclean Athens, great ideals +formed themselves before men's eyes and great achievements followed; +emotion, hope, vision, shaped human nature to great issues. I wonder +what influence those perfect marble representations of perfect form had +upon the very bodies of the youths and the maidens of Athens, what +creative force they exercised,--the imaginative grasp of the perfect +reaching forward toward perfectness in the human being. I wonder what +influence the character of Sir Philip Sidney alone, with 'high-erected +thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy,' has had upon succeeding +generations of English youth. 'A man to be greatly good,' said Shelley, +'must imagine intensely and comprehensively.' + +Here my quarrel with our present intellectual trend and our present +system of education becomes more acute. We are not only losing the habit +of mind that fosters idealism, but we are more and more breaking with +the past. The door of that storehouse of noble thought and noble example +is being slowly but firmly closed, and there is little in modern +teaching that can meet the inroads made by the devastating knowledge of +evil of which we have been speaking; little that can build up where this +tears down. Study of Greek life, with its incomparable power of shaping +existence toward the beautiful, is all but cast aside; most +unfortunately now, when, with the rush of ignorant peoples to our +shores, it might have a far-reaching potency never attained before. The +ignorance of contemporary youth regarding that other and finer +loveliness of 'Gospel books' is amazing. More and more we are stripped +of the humanities; the incredulity of science in contemplating +philosophy, art, literature, as part of the educational curriculum, is +full of menace. There has never been, I think, in the history of the +civilized world, a time when people were so anxious to cast off the +past. In our eager Marathon race of material and physical progress we +want to go as lightly equipped as possible. The æroplane carries small +luggage; our light modern mind is ever ready to throw overboard even its +precious heritage, in its eagerness for swift flight. As earlier days +have reverenced the old, we reverence the new, and are all too +insistently contemporaneous. + +We need, as we never needed before, a broader and deeper study of +history, of philosophy, of literature; for most of our young, a +knowledge of the mental and spiritual past of the race is of far greater +importance than a knowledge of the physical past, at the amoeba stage, +or any other. Science, much as it can do for us, can never meet our +deepest need; the world of imaginative beauty and the world of ethical +endeavor are apart from its domain. It has no spring to touch the will, +yet that which has, the magnificent inheritance of our literature, is +more and more neglected for the latest machinery that applied science +has devised, or the most recent treatise on insect, bird, or worm. It is +well to study insect, bird, and worm, for they are endlessly +interesting, but I maintain that neither the full sum of knowledge +concerning them, nor even the ultimate fact about the ultimate star, can +be a substitute for knowledge of the idealism of Thomas Carlyle, of the +categorical imperative of Kant,--for that study of the humanities which +means preserving, for the upbuilding of youth, that which was best and +finest in the past, as we go on toward the future. + +If the swift retort should come, from those who think the present the +only era of attainment and the physical world the only source of wisdom, +that the past is full of villainies, of lapses from high standards, one +can but say that for ethical purposes our study should be frankly a +selective study, emphasizing the fine and high, subordinating the evil. +There is no hypocrisy in such selection; there is deliberate choice of +the higher upon which to dwell, as a formative power, quickening feeling +and imagination. I have heard it said that a woman, by resolute dwelling +on things noble and pure, may shape the inner nature of her unborn +child, and I have faith to believe it. Even so should the nation yet to +be be shaped by resolute dwelling on the good. It was not all cowardice, +as many a present writer thinks, that led the mothers of earlier days to +say little to their sons and daughters regarding evil things, and much +regarding right things. Doubtless greater frankness would have been +better, yet I doubt if our protracted dwelling on the evil will produce +better results. + +Should any one object that this emphasis on the good means suppression +of the truth, we can but reply that, for the rational soul, the truth is +not necessarily the mechanically worked-out sum of all the facts. That +we have forgotten the distinction between fact--that which has indeed +come to pass, but which may be momentary--and truth, which endures, is +one of the many signs of what William Sharp calls the 'spiritual +degradation' of our time. Much of our modern thinking and teaching, much +of our realistic fiction, rests upon a failure to make the distinction; +much that is indisputable in individual instances of wrong-doing may be, +thank God! false in the long run. + +'That is not true, scientifically true,' we hear often in regard to some +fine hope or aspiration of the race; but in the real import of the term +there is no such thing as scientific truth. It is a pity that a word of +such profound and distinctive meaning should come to be more and more +exclusively identified with the observation of physical phenomena, and +the formulation of physical laws, whereas the very root-meaning of the +word true, from Anglo-Saxon _treowe_, signifying faithful, gives +justification for the idealist's belief that vital truth is partly a +matter of the will, not of mere perception and of intellectual +deductions drawn therefrom. We have need of deeper truth than that of +mere fact; and the truth that shall set us free is a truth of choice, of +selection; it embraces that part of human thought and human experience +which is worth keeping. + +Faithfulness to the best and finest in the past and in the present, +rather than horrified gaping at the present's worst, is the attitude +that means continued and bettered life, for we become what we will. What +are we offering, in the way of concrete examples, or of finely expressed +thought about virtue, to the young, to the ignorant nations who are +pouring in upon us, that will help them form their vision of the +perfect? With our narrowing knowledge of the greater past, our choice of +heroes becomes more and more local and national, yet our hierarchy of +sacred dead is too small to afford that variety of heroic action and +heroic choice that should always be kept before the minds of youth. We +teach them that George Washington never told a lie; we teach them +something--and there could be nothing better--of Lincoln; but those two +figures are lonely upon Olympus, and the great tragic story of the way +in which Lincoln faced the greatest crisis in our history will not alone +suffice to help the everyday citizen shape his thought and action toward +constructive idealism. The lesser heroes of our young republic have +acquitted themselves nobly in this struggle and in that, but the +struggles have been too closely akin in nature to give the embryo hero +that breadth and depth of nurture that he requires. We need an enlarged +vision of history, and the sight of great men of all ages faithful to +small tasks as to great; we need the companionship of heroes of other +times and of other nations, and not of military heroes alone. Saint +Francis with his unceasing tenderness to man and beast, Father Damien at +work among the lepers, might far better occupy the pages of our +magazines, than the pictured deeds of criminals and the achievements of +contemporary multimillionaires. + +If we need a wider range of concrete examples of the good, we need +still more a wider range of nobly expressed ideals. Our thought grows +narrow; we smother for lack of breathing space. Benjamin Franklin's +philosophy was far from grasping the best of life, yet we remember him +better than we do our Emerson, whose plea for spiritual values as the +only real ones is lost in the louder and louder groaning of the wheels +of our machinery. The idealism that is taught the young in Sunday +schools is too often inextricably bound up with unnecessary theology; +and many and many a pupil, in discarding the latter, discards the other +also. The ideal of success upheld in much journalistic admonition is +often rather mean and low; the young of this country need no printed +incentives to urge them into commercialism and the victories of trade. +The best influences that are being brought to bear upon them are those +which concern social responsibilities and the needs of the poor. Yet all +this thought and endeavor should supplement and not supersede, as it is +doing, a deep concern with the things of the spirit; and no admonition +regarding hygiene for one's self or others is a substitute for-- + + A sense sublime + Of something far more deeply interfused, + Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, + And the round ocean, and the living air, + And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; + A motion and a spirit, that impels + All thinking things, all objects of all thought + And rolls through all things. + +The great things of the past in all nations, history can teach us; the +possible, both literature and philosophy can teach us. We must forego no +noble expression of idealistic faith, lest we impoverish our own souls, +and beggar those who come after us. The pure intellectual passion of +Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, the noble stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, the spiritual vision of Plato, of Spenser, the heroic strain +of Wordsworth's 'Liberty Sonnets' and his 'Happy Warrior,' Shelley's +ardent and generous sympathy, Browning's dynamic spiritual force, should +make up part of our life and thought, checking our insistent impulse +toward mechanical things, and correcting the evil within and without. +More than anything else, we need a revival of interest in great poetry. + +'Now therein of all sciences,' said Sir Philip Sidney, 'is our poet the +monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a +prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter it.... He cometh +to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, +or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, +forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from +play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and, pretending no more, doth +intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue.' + +The poet's 'perfect picture' of the good, the great image, causes noble +passion, wakes us out of our 'habitual calm,' and stirs us almost +beyond our possibilities. The imagination is the miracle-working power +in human nature; through it alone can the human soul come to its own. +Only that which is fine and high can feed it aright, while baseness can +make of it a destructive tool of terrible power. As I think back to +childhood, I can remember the devastating effect that one tale of +cruelty had upon my mind, haunting me by day in vivid pictures, turning +my dreams to horror, and making me, while the obsession lasted, believe +that the world of grown folk must be all alike cruel. So, too, the +compelling vision of the good came through concrete instances; and the +people, both the living and the dead, in whom I passionately believed, +shaped all my faith. + +The imagination of youth,--there is no power like it, no machine that +can equal it in dynamic force, nothing so full of power, so full of +danger. We become that which we look upon, contemplate, remember; it is +for this that I dread the ultimate effect of the long, imaginative +picturing of our neighbor's sins now presented in our periodicals. +Images of evil can hardly help dimming and tarnishing the bright ideals +of youth; is there no way--with all our modern wisdom can we find no +way--of limiting our exposure of crime to the people who can be of +service in helping check it, and keeping it from those who cannot help, +but can only be silently hurt? A moment, an hour of some fresh vision, +and a child's destiny is perhaps decided for good or for ill. One +afternoon's reading of Spenser made the boy Keats a poet; who, knowing +the potency of brief experience in the flush of youth, can doubt the +lasting wrong wrought again and again by the sudden shock of contact +with things evil? + +Many images of wrong must of necessity come to the young; let them not +be multiplied in our feverish and morbid fashion of to-day. Above all, +let them be crowded out by constant suggestion of noble images and noble +thought, which will work both consciously and subconsciously, shaping +the dream when the dreamer is least aware. To hold up before the ardent +and impressionable young that which they may become in strength, in +purity, would surely be better than placing before them this perpetual +moving-picture show of our civic and national transgressions. I can but +believe, as I read article after article of exposure, that this +continued presentation to youth of the unholy side of life, with our +increasing tendency to make education a mere matter of the intellect and +of the eye, is bound to lessen the moral energy of the race. Would it +not be better if we were more diligent in searching history, philosophy, +literature, for 'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are +lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,' and in bidding the young +think on these things? + + + + +On Authors + +By Margaret Preston Montague + + +I write myself; therefore I feel free to say what I please about +authors; but if you, sir, or madam, who read, but do not write, were to +give voice to the reflections that are even now beginning to distill +from my pencil, I should doubtless resent them. And here, indeed, I am +faced by the sudden reflection that much of what I say myself I might +resent in the mouths of others. This leads to a whole new train of +thought, which, however, I refuse to take, and board instead the one I +set out for,--The Authors' Unlimited. There are many things to be +remarked about authors, but in so short a paper it is possible to touch +upon only a very few. One of the first facts that strikes the +investigator in this field is that members of my profession do not +always appear to endear themselves to those with whom they have +dealings. + +'What do you think of authors?' I once asked an editor. + +'I hate 'em!' he answered without a moment's hesitation. + +Another editor assured me, with a weary sigh, that authors were 'kittle +cattle.' This affords a writer a little leap of amusement. So editors +suffer from authors, even as authors from editors! Well, yes, we _are_ +kittle cattle! But some of this is due, no doubt, to what people expect +of us. I was presented once to a lady who immediately fixed me with an +eager eye. + +'I am making a study of the habits of authors,' she announced. (Here a +dreadful sinking of the heart assailed me.) 'Kindly tell me at what hour +you retire.' + +'Usually at half-past ten,' I answered wretchedly. + +At that, as I had expected, her eyebrows went up. 'The author of _When +All Was Dark_,' she informed me, 'sits up all night. She says she cannot +sleep until she has savored the dawn.' However, she was kind enough to +give me another chance. 'What do you eat?' she asked. + +'Three hearty meals a day,' I answered. + +'Not _breakfast_!' she pleaded. 'Why, St. George Dreamer _never_ takes +more than three drops of brandy on a lump of sugar in the morning. Just +the sight of a coffee cup will upset his work for a week.' + +And then she left me, sure, I have no doubt, that no real author could +confess to such distressingly normal habits as mine. + +Doubtless she is an eager reader of all those little paragraphs +informing us how authors write. How this one has to have his black mammy +rub his head for an hour before he can even think of work; and that one +confesses that to write a love scene she must have the odor of decayed +bananas in the room. Well, the world would be a sadder place without +these little paragraphs. Would that I had something of a like nature to +offer! But alas! I have no black mammy, and the smell of over-ripe fruit +leaves my hero cold. Also, to give forth such gems of information one +must be able to observe a certain rule. It is, Don't laugh or you might +wake up. This rule is always sacredly in force at literary gatherings. +The fact of being an author, and of being at an authors' meeting, +induces, it appears, an intense seriousness. In my younger days I did +not realize this, and once at a gathering of this nature, I asked a +carefree question. 'Do you think,' I inquired of the author next me, +'that it is possible for an unmusical person to write verse?' + +I confess now that I put the question somewhat in the spirit of the +Irishman, who, asking after his friend's health, added, 'Not that I care +a damn, but it makes conversation.' Heaven defend me from ever again +making so much conversation! A gleam shot up in my author's eye. 'Let us +go over and ask Professor ---- ' he cried. 'He wrote _What Poets Cannot +Do_. He's just the man to tell us!' And before I could escape, he +dragged me through the press of authors, and flung me before the +professor, with the tag, 'Unmusical, but aspires to write verse,--is +this possible?' + +I know now how the beetle feels beneath the microscope. Seeing the +little group we made, two young authors 'hurried up, and more, and more, +and more.' They surrounded me to listen, to inspect, to comment; they +asked one another eager questions about me, they compared notes, they +appealed to the author of _What Poets Cannot Do_, and always their +dreadful eyes were fixed upon me. Never, never again will I dare the +dreadful seriousness of an authors' meeting with an idle question! + +I have also learned another lesson. It is how to converse with authors. +I shudder now to think of my early and crude attempts in this matter. +The remembrance of one particular occasion stands out with dreadful +vividness. I had been introduced to a distinguished writer. She raised +her eyes to mine for a wan instant, a pale flicker of recognition passed +over her face, and then--silence. Readers,--nay, let me call you friends +while I make this terrible confession,--_I broke that silence!_ I was +young; I did not understand. I do now. I have never been able since to +read 'The Ancient Mariner'--I know too well the awfulness of having shot +an albatross. 'The lady,' I said to my inexperienced self, 'does not +care to converse; she expects you to do so.' Accordingly, I broke into +light and cheerful talk, something in conversation corresponding, I +fear, to what in dry goods the clerk recommends as 'a nice line of +spring styles.' I realize that only a series of illustrations can make +the situation clear. Imagine then, if you please, a tinkling cymbal +serenading a smouldering volcano; a puppy trying to woo the Sphinx to a +game of tag; sunlit waves breaking upon a 'stern and rock-bound coast,' +and you may get a faint idea of the situation. I began almost +immediately to experience that far-from-home sensation of which +Humpty-Dumpty speaks with so much feeling. As I beheld one after another +of my little remarks dash itself to nothingness against that stern and +rock-bound coast, only the time and the place kept me from bursting into +tears. Fortunately it did not last too long. In another minute one or +the other of us would have shattered into the maniac's wild laughter. +And I have every reason to fear that I should have been that one. +Others, however, realizing the awful thing I was doing, rushed up and +separated us. Sympathetic hands were stretched to her; low words were +murmured, and she was drawn into a secluded corner where her silence +might be preserved from any further onslaughts of a like sacrilegious +nature. But no one stretched a hand to _me_; no sympathetic words were +murmured in _my_ ear! + +I now know that in conversations with authors there should be long +pauses. This is because every remark, after being received by the ear, +must be submitted to a strict brain analysis, and then given a soul-bath +before it is proper to venture a reply. I have found, also, that in +answering too quickly, I myself lose caste. I now make it a point never +to respond to a question addressed to me by an author until I have +counted twenty. If the author is very distinguished, I make it fifty for +good measure. + +Much more remains to be said about authors. I realize that I have, as it +were, merely scraped the surface of the subject. Space, however, allows +me only room to add one last anecdote. But this one may indeed prove +more illuminating than all that has gone before. Once, then, in a +certain city where I was visiting, I was invited to attend a meeting of +its authors' club. 'Now at this meeting,' I instructed myself before +going, 'you will probably encounter the most serious species of author +native to this climate.' Accordingly I set forth with a light and +expectant heart. As I entered the hall I was aware of another person +entering from an opposite door,--a serious, awkward person, with just +that peculiar, vague, and almost feeble-minded expression that I have +come to associate with writers in general. 'Behold, my child, the +SERIOUS AUTHOR,' I commented happily to myself. I looked again, and saw +it was _myself in a mirror_! + + + + +The Provincial American + +By Meredith Nicholson + + _Viola._ What country, friends, is this? + + _Captain._ Illyria, lady. + + _Viola._ And what should I do in Illyria? + My brother he is in Elysium. + + _--Twelfth Night._ + + +I am a provincial American. My forbears were farmers or country-town +folk. They followed the long trail over the mountains out of Virginia +and North Carolina, with brief sojourns in Western Pennsylvania and +Kentucky. My parents were born, the one in Kentucky, the other in +Indiana, within two and four hours of the spot where I pen these +reflections, and I was a grown man and had voted before I saw the sea or +any Eastern city. + +In attempting to illustrate the provincial point of view out of my own +experiences I am moved by no wish to celebrate either the Hoosier +commonwealth--which has not lacked nobler advertisement--or myself; but +by the hope that I may cheer many who, flung by fate upon the world's +byways, shuffle and shrink under the reproach of their metropolitan +brethren. + +Mr. George Ade has said, speaking of our freshwater colleges, that +Purdue University, his own alma mater, offers everything that Harvard +provides except the sound of _a_ as in father. I have been told that I +speak our _lingua rustica_ only slightly corrupted by urban contacts. +Anywhere east of Buffalo I should be known as a Westerner; I could not +disguise myself if I would. I find that I am most comfortable in a town +whose population does not exceed a fifth of a million,--the kind of +place that enjoys street-car transfers, a woman's club, and a post +office with carrier delivery. + + +I + +Across a hill-slope that knew my childhood, a bugle's grieving melody +used to float often through the summer twilight. A highway lay hidden in +the little vale below, and beyond it the unknown musician was quite +concealed, and was never visible to the world I knew. Those trumpetings +have lingered always in my memory, and color my recollection of all that +was near and dear in those days. Men who had left camp and field for the +soberer routine of civil life were not yet fully domesticated. My bugler +was merely solacing himself for lost joys by recurring to the vocabulary +of the trumpet. I am confident that he enjoyed himself; and I am equally +sure that his trumpetings peopled the dusk for me with great captains +and mighty armies, and touched with a certain militancy all my youthful +dreaming. + +No American boy born during or immediately after the Civil War can have +escaped in those years the vivid impressions derived from the sight and +speech of men who had fought its battles, or women who had known its +terror and grief. Chief among my playthings on that peaceful hillside +was the sword my father had borne at Shiloh and on to the sea; and I +remember, too, his uniform coat and sash and epaulets and the tattered +guidon of his battery, that, falling to my lot as toys, yet imparted to +my childish consciousness a sense of what war had been. The young +imagination was kindled in those days by many and great names. Lincoln, +Grant, and Sherman were among the first lispings of Northern children of +my generation; and in the little town where I was born, lived men who +had spoken with them face to face. I did not know, until I sought them +later for myself, the fairy tales that are every child's birthright; and +I imagine that children of my generation heard less of + + old, unhappy, far-off things + And battles long ago, + +and more of the men and incidents of contemporaneous history. Great +spirits still on earth were sojourning. I saw several times, in his last +years, the iron-willed Hoosier War Governor, Oliver P. Morton. By the +time I was ten, a broader field of observation opening through my +parents' removal to the state capital, I had myself beheld Grant and +Sherman; and every day I passed in the street men who had been partners +with them in the great, heroic, sad, splendid struggle. These things I +set down as a background for the observations that follow,--less as text +than as point of departure; yet I believe that bugler, sounding charge +and retreat and taps in the dusk, and those trappings of war beneath +whose weight I strutted upon that hillside, did much toward establishing +in me a certain habit of mind. From that hillside I have since +ineluctably viewed my country and my countrymen and the larger world. + +Emerson records Thoreau's belief that 'the flora of Massachusetts +embraced almost all the important plants of America,--most of the oaks, +most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the +nuts. He returned Kane's arctic voyage to a friend of whom he had +borrowed it, with the remark, that most of the phenomena noted might be +observed in Concord.' + +The complacency of the provincial mind is due less, I believe, to +stupidity and ignorance, than to the fact that every American county is +in a sense complete, a political and social unit, in which the sovereign +rights of a free people are expressed by the courthouse and town hall, +spiritual freedom by the village church-spire, and hope and aspiration +in the school-house. Every reader of American fiction, particularly in +the realm of the short story, must have observed the great variety of +quaint and racy characters disclosed. These are the _dramatis personæ_ +of that great American novel which some one has said is being written in +installments. Writers of fiction hear constantly of characters who would +be well worth their study. In reading two recent novels that penetrate +to the heart of provincial life, Mr. White's _A Certain Rich Man_ and +Mrs. Watts's _Nathan Burke_, I felt that the characters depicted might, +with unimportant exceptions, have been found almost anywhere in those +American states that shared the common history of Kansas and Ohio. Mr. +Winston Churchill, in his admirable novels of New England, has shown how +closely the purely local is allied to the universal. 'Woodchuck +sessions' have been held by many American legislatures. + +When _David Harum_ appeared, characters similar to the hero of that +novel were reported in every part of the country. I rarely visit a town +that has not its cracker-barrel philosopher, or a poet who would shine +but for the callous heart of the magazine editor, or an artist of +supreme though unrecognized talent, or a forensic orator of wonderful +powers, or a mechanical genius whose inventions are bound to +revolutionize the industrial world. In Maine, in the back room of a shop +whose windows looked down upon a tidal river, I have listened to tariff +discussions in the dialect of Hosea Biglow; and a few weeks later have +heard farmers along the un-salt Wabash debating the same questions from +a point of view that revealed no masted ships or pine woods, with a new +sense of the fine tolerance and sanity and reasonableness of our +American people. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, one of the shrewdest students +of provincial character, introduced me one day to a friend of his in a +village near Indianapolis who bore a striking resemblance to Abraham +Lincoln, and who had something of Lincoln's gift of humorous narration. +This man kept a country store, and his attitude toward his customers, +and 'trade' in general, was delicious in its drollery. Men said to be +'like Lincoln' have not been rare in the Mississippi Valley, and +politicians have been known to encourage belief in the resemblance. + +Colonel Higginson has said that in the Cambridge of his youth any member +of the Harvard faculty could answer any question within the range of +human knowledge; whereas in these days of specialization some man can +answer the question, but it may take a week's investigation to find him. +In 'our town'--a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine +own!--I dare say it was possible in that _post bellum_ era to find men +competent to deal with almost any problem. These were mainly men of +humble beginnings and all essentially the product of our American +provinces. I should like to set down briefly the ineffaceable impression +some of these characters left upon me. I am precluded by a variety of +considerations from extending this recital. The rich field of education +I ignore altogether; and I may mention only those who have gone. As it +is beside my purpose to prove that mine own people are other than +typical of those of most American communities, I check my exuberance. +Sad indeed the offending if I should protest too much! + + +II + +In the days when the bugle still mourned across the vale, Lew Wallace +was a citizen of my native town of Crawfordsville. There he had amused +himself in the years immediately before the civil conflict, in drilling +a company of 'Algerian Zouaves' known as the Montgomery Guards, of which +my father was a member, and this was the nucleus of the Eleventh Indiana +Regiment which Wallace commanded in the early months of the war. It is +not, however, of Wallace's military services that I wish to speak now, +nor of his writings, but of the man himself as I knew him later at the +capital, at a time when, in the neighborhood of the federal building at +Indianapolis, any boy might satisfy his longing for heroes with a sight +of many of our Hoosier Olympians. He was of medium height, erect, dark +to swarthiness, with finely chiseled features and keen, black eyes, with +manners the most courtly, and a voice unusually musical and haunting. +His appearance, his tastes, his manner, were strikingly Oriental. + +He had a strong theatric instinct, and his life was filled with +drama--with melodrama, even. His curiosity led him into the study of +many subjects, most of them remote from the affairs of his day. He was +both dreamer and man of action; he could be 'idler than the idlest +flowers,' yet he was always busy about something. He was an aristocrat +and a democrat; he was wise and temperate, whimsical and injudicious in +a breath. As a youth he had seen visions, and as an old man he dreamed +dreams. The mysticism in him was deep-planted, and he was always a +little aloof, a man apart. His capacity for detachment was like that of +Sir Richard Burton, who, at a great company given in his honor, was +found alone poring over a puzzling Arabic manuscript in an obscure +corner of the house. Wallace, like Burton, would have reached Mecca, if +chance had led him to that adventure. + +Wallace dabbled in politics without ever being a politician; and I might +add that he practiced law without ever being, by any high standard, a +lawyer. He once spoke of the law as 'that most detestable of human +occupations.' First and last he tried his hand at all the arts. He +painted a little; he moulded a little in clay; he knew something of +music and played the violin; he made three essays in romance. As boy and +man he went soldiering; he was a civil governor, and later a minister to +Turkey. In view of his sympathetic interest in Eastern life and +character, nothing could have been more appropriate than his appointment +to Constantinople. The Sultan Abdul Hamid, harassed and anxious, used +to send for him at odd hours of the night to come and talk to him, and +offered him on his retirement a number of positions in the Turkish +government. + +With all this rich experience of the larger world, he remained the +simplest of natures. He was as interested in a new fishing-tackle as in +a new book, and carried both to his houseboat on the Kankakee, where, at +odd moments, he retouched a manuscript for the press, and discussed +politics with the natives. Here was a man who could talk of the _Song of +Roland_ as zestfully as though it had just been reported from the +telegraph office. + +I frankly confess that I never met him without a thrill, even in his +last years and when the ardor of my youthful hero worship may be said to +have passed. He was an exotic, our Hoosier Arab, our story-teller of the +bazaars. When I saw him in his last illness, it was as though I looked +upon a gray sheik about to fare forth unawed toward unmapped oases. + +No lesson of the Civil War was more striking than that taught by the +swift transitions of our citizen soldiery from civil to military life, +and back again. This impressed me as a boy, and I used to wonder, as I +passed my heroes on their peaceful errands in the street, why they had +put down the sword when there must still be work somewhere for fighting +men to do. The judge of the federal court at this time was Walter Q. +Gresham, brevetted brigadier-general, who was destined later to adorn +the cabinets of presidents of two political parties. He was cordial and +magnetic; his were the handsomest and friendliest of brown eyes, and a +noble gravity spoke in them. Among the lawyers who practiced before him +were Benjamin Harrison and Thomas A. Hendricks, who became respectively +President and Vice-President. + +Those Hoosiers who admired Gresham ardently were often less devotedly +attached to Harrison, who lacked Gresham's warmth and charm. General +Harrison was akin to the Covenanters who bore both Bible and sword into +battle. His eminence in the law was due to his deep learning in its +history and philosophy. Short of stature, and without grace of +person,--with a voice pitched rather high,--he was a remarkably +interesting and persuasive speaker. If I may so put it, his political +speeches were addressed as to a trial judge rather than to a jury, his +appeal being to reason and not to passion or prejudice. He could, in +rapid flights of campaigning, speak to many audiences in a day without +repeating himself. He was measured and urbane; his discourses abounded +in apt illustration; he was never dull. He never stooped to pietistic +clap-trap, or chanted the jaunty chauvinism that has so often caused the +Hoosier stars to blink. + +Among the Democratic leaders of that period, Hendricks was one of the +ablest, and a man of many attractive qualities. His dignity was always +impressive, and his appearance suggested the statesman of an earlier +time. It is one of immortality's harsh ironies that a man who was a +gentleman, and who stood moreover pretty squarely for the policies that +it pleased him to defend, should be published to the world in a bronze +effigy in his own city as a bandy-legged and tottering tramp, in a frock +coat that never was on sea or land. + +Joseph E. McDonald, a Senator in Congress, was held in affectionate +regard by a wide constituency. He was an independent and vigorous +character who never lost a certain raciness and tang. On my first timid +venture into the fabled East I rode with him in a day-coach from +Washington to New York on a slow train. At some point he saw a peddler +of fried oysters on a station platform, alighted to make a purchase, and +ate his luncheon quite democratically from the paper parcel in his car +seat. He convoyed me across the ferry, asked where I expected to stop, +and explained that he did not like the European plan; he liked, he said, +to have 'full swing at a bill of fare.' + +I used often to look upon the towering form of Daniel W. Voorhees, whom +Sulgrove, an Indiana journalist with a gift for translating Macaulay +into Hoosierese, had named 'The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash.' In a +crowded hotel lobby I can still see him, cloaked and silk-hatted, the +centre of the throng, and my strict upbringing in the antagonistic +political faith did not diminish my admiration for his eloquence. + +Such were some of the characters who came and went in the streets of our +provincial capital in those days. + + +III + +In discussions under captions similar to mine it is often maintained +that railways, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers are knitting us +together, so that soon we shall all be keyed to a metropolitan pitch. +The proof adduced in support of this is of the most trivial, but it +strikes me as wholly undesirable that we should all be ironed out and +conventionalized. In the matter of dress, for example, the women of our +town used to take their fashions from _Godey's_ and _Peterson's via_ +Cincinnati; but now that we are only eighteen hours from New York, with +a well-traveled path from the Wabash to Paris, my counselors among the +elders declare that the tone of our society--if I may use so perilous a +word--has changed little from our good old black alpaca days. The hobble +skirt receives prompt consideration in the 'Main' street of any town, +and is viewed with frank curiosity, but it is only a one day's wonder. A +lively runaway or the barbaric yawp of a new street fakir may dethrone +it at any time. + +New York and Boston tailors solicit custom among us biennially, but +nothing is so stubborn as our provincial distrust of fine raiment. I +looked with awe, in my boyhood, upon a pair of mammoth blue-jeans +trousers that were flung high from a flagstaff in the centre of +Indianapolis, in derision of a Democratic candidate for governor, James +D. Williams, who was addicted to the wearing of jeans. The Democrats +sagaciously accepted the challenge, made 'honest blue jeans' the +battle-cry, and defeated Benjamin Harrison, the 'kid-glove' candidate of +the Republicans. Harmless demagoguery this or bad judgment on the part +of the Republicans; and yet I dare say that if the sartorial issue +should again become acute in our politics the banner of bifurcated jeans +would triumph now as then. A Hoosier statesman who to-day occupies high +office once explained to me his refusal of sugar for his coffee by +remarking that he didn't like to waste sugar that way; he wanted to keep +it for his lettuce. I do not urge sugared lettuce as symbolizing our +higher provincialism, but mayonnaise may be poison to men who are +nevertheless competent to construe and administer law. + +It is much more significant that we are all thinking about the same +things at the same time, than that Farnam Street, Omaha, and Fifth +Avenue, New York, should vibrate to the same shade of necktie. The +distribution of periodicals is so managed that California and Maine cut +the leaves of their magazines on the same day. Rural free delivery has +hitched the farmer's wagon to the telegraph office, and you can't buy +his wife's butter now until he has scanned the produce market in his +newspaper. This immediacy of contact does not alter the provincial point +of view. New York and Texas, Oregon and Florida, will continue to see +things at different angles, and it is for the good of all of us that +this is so. We have no national political, social, or intellectual +centre. There is no 'season' in New York, as in London, during which all +persons distinguished in any of these particulars meet on common ground. +Washington is our nearest approach to such a meeting-place, but it +offers only short vistas. We of the country visit Boston for the +symphony, or New York for the opera, or Washington to view the +government machine at work, but nowhere do interesting people +representative of all our ninety millions ever assemble under one roof. +All our capitals are, as Lowell put it, 'fractional,' and we shall +hardly have a centre while our country is so nearly a continent. + +Nothing in our political system could be wiser than our dispersion into +provinces. Sweep from the map the lines that divide the states and we +should huddle like sheep suddenly deprived of the protection of known +walls and flung upon the open prairie. State lines and local pride are +in themselves a pledge of stability. The elasticity of our system makes +possible a variety of governmental experiments by which the whole +country profits. We should all rejoice that the parochial mind is so +open, so eager, so earnest, so tolerant. Even the most buckramed +conservative on the Eastern coastline, scornful of the political +follies of our far-lying provinces, must view with some interest the +dallyings of Oregon with the Referendum, and of Des Moines with the +Commission System. If Milwaukee wishes to try Socialism, the rest of us +need not complain. Democracy will cease to be democracy when all its +problems are solved and everybody votes the same ticket. + +States that produce the most cranks are prodigal of the corn that pays +the dividends on the railroads the cranks despise. Indiana's amiable +feeling toward New York is not altered by her sister's rejection or +acceptance of the direct primary, a benevolent device of noblest +intention, under which, not long ago, in my own commonwealth, my fellow +citizens expressed their distrust of me with unmistakable emphasis. It +is no great matter, but in open convention also I have perished by the +sword. Nothing can thwart the chastening hand of a righteous people. + +All passes; humor alone is the touchstone of democracy. I search the +newspapers daily for tidings of Kansas, and in the ways of Oklahoma I +find delight. The Emporia _Gazette_ is quite as patriotic as the +Springfield _Republican_ or the New York _Post_, and to my own taste, +far less depressing. I subscribed for a year to the Charleston _News and +Courier_, and was saddened by the tameness of its sentiments; for I +remember (it must have been in 1884) the shrinking horror with which I +saw daily in the Indiana Republican organ a quotation from Wade Hampton +to the effect that 'these are the same principles for which Lee and +Jackson fought four years on Virginia's soil.' Most of us are +entertained when Colonel Watterson rises to speak for Kentucky and +invokes the star-eyed goddess. When we call the roll of the states, if +Malvolio answer for any, let us suffer him in tolerance and rejoice in +his yellow stockings. 'God give them wisdom that have it; and those that +are fools, let them use their talents.' + +Every community has its dissenters, protestants, kickers, cranks, the +more the merrier. I early formed a high resolve to strive for membership +in this execrated company. George W. Julian,--one of the noblest of +Hoosiers,--who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice-President in +1852, a delegate to the first Republican convention, five times a member +of Congress, a supporter of Greeley's candidacy, and a Democrat in the +consulship of Cleveland, was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 I +was dusting law-books in an office where mugwumpery flourished, and +where the iniquities of the tariff, Matthew Arnold's theological +opinions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley were discussed +at intervals in the day's business. + + +IV + +It is constantly complained that we Americans give too much time to +politics, but there could be no safer way of utilizing that extra drop +of vital fluid which Matthew Arnold found in us. Epithets of opprobrium +pinned to a Nebraskan in 1896 were riveted upon a citizen of New York in +1910, and who, then, was the gentleman? No doubt many voices will cry in +the wilderness before we reach the promised land. A people which has +been fed on the Bible is bound to hear the rumble of Pharaoh's chariots. +It is in the blood to feel the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's +contumely. The winter evenings are long on the prairies, and we must +always be fashioning a crown for Cæsar or rehearsing his funeral rites. +No great danger can ever seriously menace the nation so long as the +remotest citizen clings to his faith that he is a part of the +governmental mechanism and can at any time throw it out of adjustment if +it doesn't run to suit him. He can go into the court-house and see the +men he helped to place in office; or if they were chosen in spite of +him, he pays his taxes just the same and waits for another chance to +turn the rascals out. + +Mr. Bryce wrote: 'This tendency to acquiescence and submission; this +sense of the insignificance of individual effort, this belief that the +affairs of men are swayed by large forces whose movement may be studied +but cannot be turned, I have ventured to call the Fatalism of the +Multitude.' It is, I should say, one of the most encouraging phenomena +of the score of years that have elapsed since Mr. Bryce's _American +Commonwealth_ appeared, that we have grown much less conscious of the +crushing weight of the mass. It has been with something of a child's +surprise in his ultimate successful manipulation of a toy whose +mechanism has baffled him that we have begun to realize that, after all, +the individual counts. The pressure of the mass will yet be felt, but in +spite of its persistence there are abundant signs that the individual is +asserting himself more and more, and even the undeniable acceptance of +collectivist ideas in many quarters helps to prove it. With all our +faults and defaults of understanding,--populism, free silver, Coxey's +army, and the rest of it,--we of the West have not done so badly. Be not +impatient with the young man Absalom; the mule knows his way to the oak +tree! + +Blaine lost Indiana in 1884; Bryan failed thrice to carry it. The +campaign of 1910 in Indiana was remarkable for the stubbornness of +'silent' voters, who listened respectfully to the orators but left the +managers of both parties in the air as to their intentions. In the +Indiana Democratic State Convention of 1910 a gentleman was furiously +hissed for ten minutes amid a scene of wildest tumult; but the cause he +advocated won, and the ticket nominated in that memorable convention +succeeded in November. Within fifty years Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois +have sent to Washington seven presidents, elected for ten terms. Without +discussing the value of their public services it may be said that it has +been an important demonstration to our Mid-Western people of the +closeness of their ties with the nation, that so many men of their own +soil have been chosen to the seat of the presidents; and it is +creditable to Maine and California that they have cheerfully acquiesced. +In Lincoln the provincial American most nobly asserted himself, and any +discussion of the value of provincial life and character in our politics +may well begin and end in him. We have seen verily that + + Fishers and choppers and ploughmen + Shall constitute a state. + +Whitman, addressing Grant on his return from his world's tour, declared +that it was not that the hero had walked 'with kings with even pace the +round world's promenade'; + + But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, + Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, + Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the + front, + Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round + world's promenade, + Were all so justified. + +What we miss and what we lack who live in the provinces seem to me of +little weight in the scale against our compensations. We slouch,--we are +deficient in the graces, we are prone to boast, and we lack in those +fine reticences that mark the cultivated citizen of the metropolis. We +like to talk, and we talk our problems out to a finish. Our +commonwealths rose in the ashes of the hunter's campfires, and we are +all a great neighborhood, united in a common understanding of what +democracy is, and animated by ideals of what we want it to be. That +saving humor which is a philosophy of life flourishes amid the tall +corn. We are old enough now--we of the West--to have built up in +ourselves a species of wisdom, founded upon experience, which is a part +of the continuing unwritten law of democracy. We are less likely these +days to 'wobble right' than we are to stand fast or march forward like +an army with banners. + +We provincials are immensely curious. Art, music, literature, +politics--nothing that is of contemporaneous human interest is alien to +us. If these things don't come to us we go to them. We are more truly +representative of the American ideal than our metropolitan cousins, +because (here I lay my head upon the block) we know more about, oh, so +many things! We know vastly more about the United States, for one thing. +We know what New York is thinking before New York herself knows it, +because we visit the metropolis to find out. Sleeping-cars have no +terrors for us, and a man who has never been west of Philadelphia seems +to us a singularly benighted being. Those of our Western school-teachers +who don't see Europe for three hundred dollars every summer get at least +as far east as Concord, to be photographed by the rude bridge that +arched the flood. + +That fine austerity, which the voluble Westerner finds so smothering on +the Boston and New York express, is lost utterly at Pittsburg. From +gentlemen cruising in day-coaches--rude wights who advertise their +personal sanitation and literacy by the toothbrush and fountain-pen +planted sturdily in their upper left-hand waistcoat pockets--one may +learn the most prodigious facts and the philosophy thereof. 'Sit over, +brother; there's hell to pay in the Balkans,' remarks the gentleman who +boarded the inter-urban at Peru or Connersville, and who would just as +lief discuss the papacy or child-labor, if revolutions are not to your +liking. + +In Boston a lady once expressed her surprise that I should be hastening +home for Thanksgiving Day. This, she thought, was a New England +festival. More recently I was asked by a Bostonian if I had ever heard +of Paul Revere. Nothing is more delightful in us, I think, than our +meekness before instruction. We strive to please; all we ask is 'to be +shown.' + +Our greatest gain is in leisure and the opportunity to ponder and brood. +In all these thousands of country towns live alert and shrewd students +of affairs. Where your New Yorker scans headlines as he 'commutes' +homeward, the villager reaches his own fireside without being shot +through a tube, and sits down and reads his newspaper thoroughly. When +he repairs to the drug-store to abuse or praise the powers that be, his +wife reads the paper, too. A United States Senator from a Middle +Western State, making a campaign for renomination preliminary to the +primaries, warned the people in rural communities against the newspaper +and periodical press with its scandals and heresies. 'Wait quietly by +your firesides, undisturbed by these false teachings,' he said in +effect; 'then go to your primaries and vote as you have always voted.' +His opponent won by thirty thousand,--the amiable answer of the little +red schoolhouse. + + +V + +A few days ago I visited again my native town. On the slope where I +played as a child I listened in vain for the mourning bugle; but on the +college campus a bronze tablet commemorative of those sons of Wabash who +had fought in the mighty war quickened the old impressions. The college +buildings wear a look of age in the gathering dusk. + + Coldly, sadly descends + The autumn evening. The field + Strewn with its dank yellow drifts + Of withered leaves, and the elms, + Fade into dimness apace, + Silent; hardly a shout + From a few boys late at their play! + +Brave airs of cityhood are apparent in the town, with its paved streets, +fine hall and library; and everywhere are wholesome life, comfort, and +peace. The train is soon hurrying through gray fields and dark +woodlands. Farmhouses are disclosed by glowing panes; lanterns flash +fitfully where farmers are making all fast for the night. The city is +reached as great factories are discharging their laborers, and I pass +from the station into a hurrying throng homeward bound. Against the sky +looms the dome of the capitol; the tall shaft of the soldiers' monument +rises ahead of me down the long street and vanishes starward. Here where +forests stood seventy-five years ago, in a state that has not yet +attained its centenary, is realized much that man has sought through all +the ages,--order, justice, and mercy, kindliness and good cheer. What we +lack we seek, and what we strive for we shall gain. And of such is the +kingdom of democracy. + + + + +Our Lady Poverty + +By Agnes Repplier + + +I + +The last people to read the literature of poverty are the poor, and this +fact may be cited as one of the ameliorations of their lot. If they were +assured day after day that they were degraded and enslaved, it would be +a trifle hard for them to cherish their respectability, and enjoy their +freedom. If their misery were dinned into their ears, they would +naturally cease being cheerful. If they were convinced that tears are +their portion, they would no longer have the temerity to laugh. Indeed +their mirth is frankly repellent to the dolorous writers of to-day. + + A burst of hollow laughter from a hopeless heart + +is permitted as seemly and in character; even the poet of the slums +grants this outlet for emotion; but the rude sounds which denote +hilarity disturb the sympathetic soul. One agitated lady describes with +shrinking horror the merriment of the scrub-women going to their labor. +All the dignity, all the sacredness of womanhood are defiled by these +poor old creatures tramping through the chill dawn; and yet, and +yet,--oh, mockery of nobler aspirations!--'The scrub-women were going to +work, and they went laughing!' + +The dismalness of serious writers, especially if humanity be their +theme, is steeping us in gloom. The obsession of sorrow seems the most +reasonable of all obsessions, because facts can be crowded upon facts +(to the general exclusion of truth) by way of argument and illustration. +And should facts fail, there are bitter generalizations which shroud us +like a pall. + + Behind all music we can hear + The insistent note of hunger-fear; + Beyond all beauty we can see + The land's defenseless misery. + +Mr. Percy MacKaye in his preface to that treatise on eugenics which he +has christened _To-Morrow_, and humorously designated as a play, makes +this inspiriting statement: 'Our world is hideously unhappy, and the +insufferable sense of that unhappiness is the consecration of modern +leaders in art. Realism is splendidly their incentive.' + +This opens up a cheering vista for the public. If the dramatists of the +near future are to have no finer consecration than an insufferable sense +of unhappiness, we must turn for amusement to lectures and organ +recitals. If novelists and poets are to be hallowed by grief, there will +be nothing left for light-hearted readers save the study of political +economy, erstwhile called the dismal science, but now, by comparison, +gay. No artist yet was ever born of an insufferable sense of +unhappiness. No leader and helper of men was ever bedewed with tears. +The world is old, and the world is wide. Of what use are we in its +tumultuous life, if we do not know its joys, its griefs, its high +emotions, its call to courage, and the echo of the laughter of the ages? + +Perhaps the only literature of poverty (I use the word 'literature' in a +purely courteous sense) which was ever written for the poor is that +amazing issue of tracts, _Village Politics_, _Tales for the Common +People_, and scores of similar productions, which a hundred years ago +were let loose upon rural England. The moral in all of them is the same, +and is expressed with engaging simplicity: 'Don't give trouble to people +better off than yourself.' The fact that many of these tracts had a +prodigious sale points to their distribution--by the rich--in quarters +where it was thought that they would do most good. They were probably +read in the same spirit as that in which a Sunday-school library was +read by two small and unregenerate boys of my acquaintance, who worked +through whole shelves at a fixed rate, ten cents for a short book, +twenty-five cents for a long one,--the money paid by a pious +grandmother, and a point of honor not to skip. + +The smug complacency of Hannah More and her sisterhood was rudely +disturbed by Ebenezer Elliott, who published his _Corn-Law Rhymer_, +with its profound pity and its somewhat impotent wrath, in 1831. England +woke up to the disturbing conviction that men and women were +starving,--always a disagreeable thing to contemplate,--and the Corn +Laws were repealed; but the 'Rhymes' were probably as little known to +the laborer of 1831 as was _Piers Plowman_ to the laborer of 1392. +Langland--to whom partial critics have for five hundred years ascribed +this great poem of discontent--was keenly alive to the value of +husbandry as a theme; and his ploughman came in time to be recognized as +the people's suffering representative; but the poet, after the fashion +of poets, wrote for 'lettered clerks,' of which class he was a shining +example, his praiseworthy purpose in life being to avoid 'common men's +work.' In the last century, _Les Misérables_ was called the 'Epic of the +Poor'; but its readers were, for the most part, as comfortably remote +from poverty as Victor Hugo himself, and as alive to the advantages of +wealth. + +In this age of print, the literature of poverty has swollen to an +enormous bulk. Statistical books, explicit and contradictory. Hopeful +books by social workers who see salvation in girls' clubs and refined +dancing. Hopeless books by other social workers who believe--or, at +least, who say--that the employed are enslaved by the employer, and that +women and children are the prey of men. Highly colored books by +adventurous young journalists who have masqueraded (for copy's sake) as +mill and factory hands. Gray books by casual observers who are paralyzed +by the mere sight of a slum. Furious books by rabid socialists who hold +that the poor will never be uplifted while there is left in the world a +man rich enough to pay them wages. Imaginative books by poets and +novelists who deal in realism to the exclusion of reality. All this +profusion and confusion of matter is thrust upon us month after month, +while the working-man reads his newspaper, and the working-girl reads _A +Coronet of Shame_, or _Lost in Fate's Fearful Abyss_. + +It was Mr. George Gissing who, in his studies of the poor, first made +popular the invective style; who hurled at London such epithets as +'pest-stricken,' 'city of the damned,' 'intimacies of abomination,' +'utmost limits of dread,'--phrases which have been faithfully copied by +shuddering defamers of New York and Chicago. Mr. John Burns, for +example, after a brief visit to the United States, said that Chicago was +a pocket edition of hell; and subsequently, without, we hope, any +personal experience to back him, said that hell was a pocket edition of +Chicago. + +Americans have borrowed these flowers of speech from England, and have +invaded her territory. Was it because he could find no poverty at home +worthy of his strenuous pen, that Mr. Jack London crossed the sea to +write up the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, already so +abundantly exploited by English authors? Was there anything _he_ could +add to the dark pictures of Mr. Gissing, or to the more convincing +studies of Mr. Arthur Morrison, who has lit up the gloom with a grim +humor, not very mirthful, but acutely and unimpeachably human? Mr. +Gissing's poor have money for nothing but beer (it would be a bold +writer who denied his starvelings beer); but Mr. Morrison sees his way +occasionally to bacon, and tea, and tinned beef, and even, at rare +intervals, to a pompous funeral, provided that the money for mutes can +be saved from the sick man's diet. He is the legitimate successor of +Dickens, and Dickens knew his field from experience rather than from +observation. The lighthouse-keeper sees the storm, but the cabin boy +feels it. + +In the annals of poverty there are few pages more poignant than the one +which describes the sick child, Charles Dickens, taken home from work by +a kind-hearted lad, and his shame lest this boy should learn that 'home' +for him meant the debtors' prison. In vain he tried to get rid of his +conductor, Bob Fagin by name, protesting that he was well enough to walk +alone. Bob knew he was not, and stuck to his side. Together they pushed +along until little Charles was fainting with weakness and fatigue. Then +in desperation he pretended that he lived in a decent house near +Southwark bridge, and darted up the steps with a joyous air of being at +last in haven, only to creep down again when Bob's back was turned, and +drag his slow steps to the Marshalsea. + +Out of this dismal and precocious experience sprang two results,--a +passionate resolve _not_ to be what circumstances were conspiring to +make him, and an insight into the uncalculating habits which deepen and +soften poverty. Dickens--once free of institutions--wrote of the poor, +even of the London poor, with amazing geniality; but it cannot be denied +that his infallible recipe for brightening up the scene is the timely +introduction of a pot of porter, or a pitcher of steaming flip. If we +try to think of him writing in a prohibition state, we shall realize +that he owed as much to beer and punch as ever Horace did to wine. +Imagination fails to grasp either of them in the rôle of a +water-drinker. The poor of Dickens are a sturdy lot, but they are jovial +only in their cups. His wholesome hatred of institutions would have been +intensified could he have lived to hear the Camberwell Board of +Guardians decide--at the instigation, alas! of a woman member--that the +single mug of beer which for years had solaced the inmates of Camberwell +Workhouse on Christmas Day, should hereafter be abolished as an immoral +indulgence. The generous ghost of Dickens must have groaned in Heaven +over that melancholy and mean reform. + + +II + +'To achieve what man may, to bear what man must,'--since the struggle +for life began, this has been the purpose and the pride of humanity. We +Americans were trained from childhood to believe that while, in the +final issue, each of us must answer for himself, the country--our +country--gave to all scope for effort, and chance of victory. + +This was not mere Fourth of July oratory, nor the fervent utterances of +presidential campaigns. It was a serious and a sober faith, based upon +some knowledge of the Constitution, some inheritance of experience, some +element of democracy which flavored our early lives. The mere sense of +space carried with it a profound and eager hopefulness. Those of us +whose fathers or whose grandfathers had crossed the sea to escape from +more cramping conditions, felt this atmosphere of independence keenly +and consciously. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers brought +up their families in an alien land with decent industry and thrift, were +aware, even in childhood, that the Republic had fostered our growth. +Therefore am I pardonably bewildered when I hear American workmen called +'slaves' and 'prisoners of starvation,' and American employers called +'base oppressors,' and 'despots on their thrones.' This fantastic +nomenclature seems immeasurably removed from the temperate language in +which were formulated the temperate convictions of my youth. + +The assumption that the American laborer to-day stands where the French +laborer stood before the Revolution, where the English laborer stood +before the passing of the first Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn +Laws, shows a lack of historical perspective. The assumption that all +strikes represent an agonized protest against tyranny, an agonized +appeal from injustice, is a perversion of truth. The assumption that +child-labor in the United States is the blot upon civilization that it +was in England seventy years ago, denies the duty of comparison. If the +people who write verses about 'Labor Crucified' would make a table of +the wages paid to skilled and unskilled workmen, from the Chicago +carpenter to the Philadelphia street-cleaner, they might sing in a more +cheerful strain. If the people who to-day echo the bitterest lines of +Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' would ascertain and bear in mind +the proportion of little boys and girls who are going to school in the +United States, how many years they average, and how much the country +pays for their education, they might spare us some violent invectives. +Even Mr. Robert Hunter permits himself the use of the word 'cannibalism' +when speaking of child-workers, and this in the face of legislation +which every year extends its area, and grows more stringently +protective. + +There is a great deal of loose writing on this important theme, and it +stands in the way of amendment. It is assumed that parents are seldom or +never to blame for sending their children to work. The mill-owner +snatches them from their mothers' arms. It is assumed that the child who +works would--if there were no employment for him--be at school, or at +play, happy, healthy, and well-nourished. No one even alludes to the +cruel poverty of the South, which, for generations before the cotton +mills were built, stunted the growth and sapped the strength of Southern +children. They lived, we are told, a 'wholesome rural life,' and the +greed of the capitalist is alone responsible for the blighting of their +pastoral paradise. + +There is no need to write like this. The question at issue is a grave +and simple one. It makes its appeal to the conscience and the sense of +the nation, and every year sees some measure of reform. If a baby girl +in an American city, a child of three or five, is forced to toil all +day, winding artificial daisy stems at a penny a hundred, let the name +of her employer and the place of her employment be made public. The +Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children can deal peremptorily +with such a case. It is not even the privilege of parents to work a +little child so relentlessly. If the pathetic story is not supported by +facts, or is not in accord with facts, it is neither wise nor well to +publish it. Why should a sober periodical, like the _Child-Labor +Bulletin_, devoted to a good cause, print a poem called 'A Song of the +Factory,' in which happy children are portrayed as sporting in beautiful +meadows, + + Idling among the feathery blooms, + +until a sort of ogre comes along, builds a factory, drives the poor +innocents into it, and compels them to + + Crouch all day by the spindles, wizened, and wan, and old, + +earning 'his bread.' Apparently--and this is the gist of the +matter--they have no need to earn bread for themselves. The accompanying +illustrations show us on one page a prettily dressed little girl sitting +daisy-crowned in the fields, and, on the other page, a ragged and +tattered little girl with a shawl over her head going to the work which +has but too plainly impoverished her. Hansel and Gretel are not more +distinctly within the boundaries of fairyland than are these entrapped +children. The witch is not more distinctly a child-eating hobgoblin than +is the capitalist of such fervid song. + +The sickly and unreasoning tone which pervades the literature of poverty +is demoralizing. There is nothing helpful in the assumption that effort +is vain, resistance hopeless, and the world monstrously cruel. The +dominating element of such prose and verse is a bleak despair, unmanly, +unwomanly, inhuman. Out of the abundance of material before me, I quote +a single poem, published in the New York _Call_, reprinted in the +_Survey_, and christened mockingly,-- + + THE STRAIGHT ROAD + + They got y', kid, they got y', just like I said they would; + You tried to walk the narrow path, + You tried, and got an awful laugh; + And laughs are all y' did get, kid, they got y' good! + + They never saw the little kid,--the kid I used to know, + The little bare-legged girl back home, + The little girl that played alone, + They don't know half the things I know, kid; ain't it so? + + They got y', kid, they got y',--you know they got y' right; + They waited till they saw y' limp, + Then introduced y' to the pimp, + Ah, you were down then, kid, and couldn't fight. + + I guess you know what some don't know, and others know damn well, + That sweatshops don't grow angel's wings, + That working girls is easy things, + And poverty's the straightest road to hell. + +And this is what our Lady Poverty, bride of Saint Francis, friend of all +holiness, counsel of all perfection, has come to mean in these years of +grace! She who was once the surest guide to Heaven now leads her chosen +ones to Hell. She who was once beloved by the devout and honored by the +just, is now a scandal and a shame, the friend of harlotry, the +instigator of crime. Even a true poet like Francis Thompson laments that +the poverty exalted by Christ should have been cast down from her high +caste. + + All men did admire + Her modest looks, her ragged, sweet attire + In which the ribboned shoe could not compete + With her clear simple feet. + But Satan, envying Thee thy one ewe-lamb, + With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity + Was not content, till last unthought-of she + Was his to damn. + Thine ingrate, ignorant lamb + He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her + This thing which qualms the air, + Vile, terrible, old, + Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold. + +These are the words of one to whom the London gutters were for years a +home, and whose strengthless manhood lay inert under a burden of pain he +had no courage to lift. Yet never was sufferer more shone upon by +kindness than was Francis Thompson; never was man better fitted to +testify to the goodness of a bad world. And he did bear such brave +testimony again and yet again, so that the bulk of his verse is alien to +pessimism,--'every stanza an act of faith, and a declaration of good +will.' + +The demoralizing quality of such stuff as 'The Straight Road,' which is +forced upon us with increasing pertinacity, is its denial of kindness, +its evading of obligation. Temptation is not only the occasion, but the +justifier of sin,--a point of view which plays havoc with our common +standard of morality. When a vicious young millionaire like Harry Thaw +runs amuck through his crude and evil environment, we sigh and say, 'His +money ruined him.' When a poor young woman abandons her weary +frugalities for the questionable pleasures of prostitution, we sigh and +say, 'Her poverty drove her to it.' Where then does goodness dwell? What +part does honor play? The Sieur de Joinville, in his memoirs of Saint +Louis, tells us that a certain man, sore beset by the pressure of +temptation, sought counsel from the Bishop of Paris, 'whose Christian +name was William.' And this wise William of Paris said to him: 'The +castle of Montl'héry stands in the safe heart of France, and no invading +hosts assail it. But the castle of La Rochelle in Poitou stands on the +line of battle. Day and night it must be guarded from assault, and it +has suffered grievously. Which gentleman, think you, the King holds high +in favor, the governor of Montl'héry, or the governor of La Rochelle? +The post of danger is the post of glory, and he who is sorely wounded in +the combat is honored by God and man.' + + +III + +There are those whose ardor for humanity finds a congenial vent in the +denouncement of all they see about them,--all the institutions of their +country, all the laborious processes of civilization. Sociologists of +this type speak and write of an ordinary American city in terms which +Dante might have envied. Nobody, it would seem, is ever cured in its +hospitals; they only lie on 'cots of pain.' Nobody is ever reformed in +its reformatories. Nobody is reared to decency in its asylums. Nobody +is--apparently--educated in its schools. Its industries are ravenous +beasts, sucking the blood of workers; its poor are 'shackled slaves'; +its humble homes are 'dens.' I have heard a philanthropic lecturer talk +to the poor upon the housing of the poor. She threw on a screen enlarged +photographs of narrow streets and tenement rooms which looked to me +unspeakably dreary, but which the working-women around me gazed at in +mild perplexity, seeing nothing amiss, and wondering that their +residences should be held up to this unseemly scorn. They did not do as +did the angry Italians of a New Jersey town,--smash the invidious +pictures which shamed their homes; they sat in stolid silence and +discomfiture, dimly conscious of an unresented insult. + +It is hard to grasp a point of view immeasurably remote from our own; +but what can we understand of other lives unless we do this difficult +thing? Old women in the out-wards of an almshouse (of all earthly abodes +the saddest) have boasted to me that their floors were scrubbed every +other day, and their sheets changed once a week; and this braggart humor +stunned my senses until I called to mind the floor and the bed of one of +them (an extraordinarily dirty old woman) whom I had known in other +years. Last winter the workers in a settlement house were called upon at +midnight to succor a woman who had been kicked and beaten into +unconsciousness by a drunken husband. The poor creature was all one +bleeding bruise. When she was revived, her dim eyes traveled over the +horrified faces about her. 'It's pretty bad,' she gasped, 'it's mighty +bad'; and then, with another look at the group of protecting, pitying +spinsters, 'but it must be something fierce to be an old maid.' + +The city is a good friend to the poor. It gives them day nurseries for +their babies, kindergartens for their little children, schools for their +boys and girls, playgrounds, swimming-pools, recreation piers, +reading-rooms, libraries, churches, clubs, hospitals, cheap amusements, +open-air concerts, employment agencies, the companionship of their kind, +and the chance of a friend at need. In return, the poor love the city, +and cling to it with reasonable but somewhat stifling affection. They +know that the hardest thing in life is to be isolated,--'unrelated,' to +use Carlyle's apt word; and they escape this fate by eschewing the +much-lauded fields and farms. They know also that in the country they +must stand or fall by their own unaided efforts, they must learn the +hard lesson of self-reliance. Many of them propose to live, as did the +astute author of _Piers Plowman_, 'in the town, and on the town as +well.' Moreover, pleasure means as much to them as it does to the rest +of us. We hardly needed Mr. Chesterton to tell us that a visit to a +corner saloon may be just as exciting an event to a tenement-house +dweller, as a dinner at a gold-and-marble hotel is to the average +middle-class citizen; and that the tenement-house dweller may be just as +moderate in his potations:-- + + Merrily taking twopenny rum, and cheese with a pocket knife. + +Poverty, we are assured, is an 'error,' like ill-health and crime. It is +an anachronism in civilization, a stain upon a wisely governed land. But +into our country which, after a human fashion, is both wise and foolish, +pours the poverty of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with +but a few dollars between them and want; with scant equipment, physical +or mental, for the struggle of life; with an inheritance of feebleness +from ill-nourished generations before them,--this is the problem which +the United States faces courageously, and solves as best she can. What +she cannot do is miraculously to convert poverty into plenty,--certainly +not before the next year doubles, and the third year trebles the +miracle-seeking multitude. She cannot properly house or profitably +employ a million of immigrants before the next million is clamoring at +her doors. Nor is she even given a fair chance to accomplish her giant +task. The demagogues who are employed in the congenial sport of railroad +baiting, and who are enjoying beyond measure the fun of chivying +business interests into dusty corners, are the ones to lift up their +voices in shrill appeal for the army of the unemployed. They refuse to +connect one phenomenon with the other. The notion that crippling +industries will benefit the industrious is not so new as it seems. Æsop +must have had a clear insight into its workings when he wrote the fable +of the goose that laid the golden egg. + +The City of New York expends, according to a recent report of the +Hospital Investigating Committee, more than a million of dollars a year +for the care of sick, defective, and otherwise helpless aliens. It +expended in 1913 nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the care of +aliens who had been in this country less than five years. This is the +record of our greatest city, the one in which the astute immigrant takes +up his abode. The education she gives her little foreign-born children +comprises for the most part manual and vocational training, clinics for +the defective, schools for the incorrigible, free or cost-price lunches, +doctoring, dentistry, the care of trained nurses, and a score of similar +attentions unknown to an earlier generation, undreamed of in the +countries whence these children come. In return for such fostering care, +New York is held up to execration because she has the money to pay the +taxes which are expended in this fashion, because she lays the golden +egg which benefits the poor of twenty nations. Her unemployed +(reinforced hugely from less favored communities) riot in her streets +and churches, and agitators curse her for a thing of evil, a city of +palaces and slums, corroded with the + + Shame of lives that lie + Couched in ease, while down the streets + Pain and want go by. + +The only people who take short views of life are the poor, the poor +whose daily wage is spent on their daily needs. Clerks and bookkeepers +and small tradesmen (toilers upon whose struggle for decency and +independence nobody ever wastes a word of sympathy) may fret over the +uncertainty of their future, the narrow margin which lies between them +and want. But the workman and his family have a courage of their own, +the courage of the soldier who does not spend the night before battle +calculating his chances of a gun-shot wound, or of a legless future. It +is exasperating to hear a teamster's wife cheerfully announce the coming +of her tenth baby; but the calmness with which she faces the situation +has in it something human and elemental. It is exasperating to see the +teamster risk illness and loss of work (he might at least pull off his +wet clothes when he gets home); but he tells you he has not gone to his +grave with a cold _yet_, and this careless confidence saves him as much +as it costs. I read recently an economist's sorrowful complaint that +families, in need of the necessities of life, go to moving-picture +shows; that women, with their husbands' scanty earnings in their hands, +take their children to these blithesome entertainments instead of buying +the Sunday dinner. It sounds like the citizens who buy motor cars +instead of paying off the mortgages on their homes, and it is an error +of judgment which the working man is little likely to condone; but that +the pleasure-seeking impulse--which social workers assign exclusively to +the spirit of youth--should mutiny in a matron's bones suggests +survivals of cheerfulness, high lights amid the gloom. + +The deprecation of earthly anxiety taught by the Gospels, the precedence +given to the poor by the New Testament, the value placed upon voluntary +poverty by the Christian Church,--these things have for nineteen hundred +years helped in the moulding of men. There still remain some leaven of +courage, some savor of philosophy, some echoes of ancient wisdom (heard +oftenest from uneducated men), some laughter loud and careless as the +laughter of the Middle Ages, some slow sense of justice, not easy to +pervert. These qualities are perhaps as helpful as the 'divine +discontent' fostered by enthusiasts for sorrow, the cowardice bred by +insistence upon trouble and anxiety, the rancor engendered by invectives +against earth and heaven. No lot is bettered by having its hardships +emphasized. No man is helped by the drowning of his courage, the +destruction of his good-will, the paralyzing grip of + + Envy with squinting eyes, + Sick of a strange disease, his neighbor's health. + + + + +Entertaining the Candidate + +By Katharine Baker + + +Bag in hand, brother stops in for fifteen minutes, from campaigning, to +get some clean shirts. He says the candidate will be in town day after +to-morrow. Do we want him to come here, or shall he go to a hotel? + +We want him, of course. But we deprecate the brevity of this notice. +Also the cook and chambermaid are new, and remarkably inexpert. Brother, +however, declines to feel any concern. His confidence in our power to +cope with emergencies is flattering if exasperating. + +There is nothing in the markets at this time of year. Guests have a +malignant facility in choosing such times. We scour the country for +forty miles in search of green vegetables. We confide in the fishmonger, +who grieves sympathetically over the 'phone, because all crabs are now +cold-storage, and he'd be deceiving us if he said otherwise. + +Still we are determined to have luncheon prepared in the house. Last +time the august judge dined with us we summoned a caterer from a hundred +miles away, and though the caterer's food was good, it was late. We +love promptness, and we are going to have it. Ladies knew all about +efficiency long before Mr. Frederick Taylor. Only they couldn't teach it +to servants, and he would find he couldn't either. But every mistress of +a house knows how to make short cuts, and is expert at 'record +production' in emergencies. + +The casual brother says there will be one or two dozen people at +luncheon. He will telephone us fifteen minutes before they arrive. Yes, +really, that's the best he can do. + +So we prepare for one or two dozen people, and they must sit down to +luncheon because men hate a buffet meal. We struggle with the problem, +how many chickens are required for twelve or twenty-four people? The +answer, however, is really obvious. Enough for twenty-four will be +enough for twelve. + +Day after to-morrow arrives. The gardener comes in to lay hearth-fires +and carry tables. We get out china and silver. We make salad and rolls, +fruit-cup and cake. We guide the cook's faltering steps over the +critical moments of soup and chicken. We do the oysters in our own +particular way, which we fancy inimitable. We arrange bushels of flowers +in bowls, vases, and baskets, and set them on mantels, tables, +book-cases, everywhere that a flower can find a footing. The chauffeur +comes in proudly with the flower-holder from the limousine, and we fill +it in honor of the distinguished guest. + +Then we go outside to see that the approach to the house is +satisfactory. The bland old gardener points to the ivy-covered wall, and +says with innocent joy, '---- it, ain't that ivory the prettiest thing +you ever saw in your life?' And we can't deny that the lawn looks well, +with ivy, and cosmos, and innumerable chrysanthemums. + +The cook and chambermaid will have to help wait on the table. The +chambermaid, who is what the butler contemptuously calls 'an educated +nigger,' and so knows nothing useful, announces that she has no white +uniform. All she has is a cold in her head. We give her a blouse and +skirt, wondering why Providence doesn't eliminate the unfit. + +We run upstairs to put on our costliest shoes and stockings, and our +most perishable gown. The leisurely brother gets us on the wire to say +that there will be twenty guests in ten minutes. + +Descending, we reset the tables to seat twenty guests, light the +wood-fires, toss together twenty mint-juleps, and a few over for luck, +repeat our clear instructions to the goggling chambermaid, desperately +implore the butler to see that she keeps on the job, drop a last touch +of flavoring in the soup, and are sitting by the fire with an air of +childish gayety and carelessness when the train of motor-cars draws up +to the door. + +Here is the judge, courteous and authoritative. Here is his assiduous +suite. The room fills with faces well known in every country that an +illustrated newspaper can penetrate. From the Golden Gate and the Rio +Grande, from New York and Alabama, these men have come together, intent +on wresting to themselves the control of the Western Hemisphere. Now +they are a sort of highly respectable guerillas. To-morrow, very likely, +they will be awe-inspiring magnates. + +Theoretically we are impressed. Actually they have mannerisms, and some +of them wear spectacles. We reflect that the triumvirs very likely had +mannerisms, too, and Antony himself might have been glad to own +spectacles. We try to feel reverence for the high calling of these men. +We hope they'll like our luncheon. + +The butler brings in the juleps and we maintain a detached look, as +though those juleps were just a happy thought of the butler himself, and +we were as much surprised as anybody. The judge won't have one, but most +everybody else will. The newspaper men look love and gratitude at the +butler. + +That earnest youth is the judge's secretary. The huge, iron-gray man +expects to be a governor after November fifth, if dreams come true. The +amiable old gentleman who never leaves the judge's side, has come two +thousand miles out of pure political enthusiasm, to protect the +candidate from assassins. He can do it, too, we conclude, when we look +past his smiling mouth into his steely eyes. + +Here is the campaign manager, business man and man-of-the-world. + +This pretty little newspaper-woman from Utah implores us to get an +utterance on suffrage from the judge. Just a word. It will save him +thousands of votes. Well, she's a dear little thing, but we can't take +advantage of our guest. + +Luncheon is announced. Brother, slightly apologetic, murmurs that there +are twenty-three. Entirely unforeseen. He babbles incoherently. + +But it's all right. We women won't come to the table. Voting and eating +and things like that are better left to the men anyway. Why should women +want to do either, when they have fathers and brothers to do it for +them? We can sit in the gallery and watch. It's very nice for us. And +exclusive. Nothing promiscuous. Yes, go on. We'll wait. + +Whoever is listening to our conversation professes heartbreak at our +decision, and edges toward the rapidly filling dining-room. + +We sit down to play lady of leisure, in various affected attitudes. We +are not going near the kitchen again. The luncheon is simple. Everything +is perfectly arranged. The servants can do it all. It's mere machine +work. + +From afar we observe the soup vanishing. Then one by one we +stammer,--'The mayonnaise--'--'I wonder if the rolls are hot--'--'Cook's +coffee is impossible,'--fade silently up the front stair, and scurry +down the kitchen-way. + +We cover the perishable gown with a huge white apron, we send up a +fervent prayer for the costly shoes, and go where we are needed most. + +We save the day for good coffee. With the precision of a juggler we +rescue plates from the chambermaid, who is overcome by this introduction +to the great world and dawdles contemplatively through the pantry door. +Charmed with our proficiency, she stands by our side, and watches us +clear a shelf of china in the twinkling of an eye. If she could find a +stool, she would sit at our feet, making motion studies. But she +couldn't find it if it were already there. She couldn't find anything. +We order her back to the dining-room, where she takes up a strategic +position by the window, from which she can idly survey the mob outside, +and the hungry men within. + +The last coffee-cup has passed through the doorway. Cigars and matches +are circulating in the butler's capable hands. No more need for us. + +We shed the enveloping aprons, disappear from the kitchen, and +materialize again, elegantly useless, in the drawing-room. Nobody can +say that luncheon wasn't hot and promptly served. + +Chairs begin to clatter. They are rising from the table. A brass band +outside bursts into being. + +Brother had foretold that band to us, and we had expressed vivid +doubts. He said it would cost eighty dollars. Now eighty dollars in +itself is a respectable sum, a sum capable even of exerting some mild +fascination, but eighty dollars viewed in relation to a band becomes +merely ludicrous. + +We said an eighty-dollar band was a thing innately impossible, like +free-trade, or a dachshund. Brother attested that the next best grade of +band would demand eight hundred. We justly caviled at eight hundred. We +inquired, Why any band? Brother claimed that it would make a cheerful +noise, and we yielded. + +So at this moment the band begins to make a noise. We perceive at once +that the price was accurately gauged. It is unquestionably an +eighty-dollar band. We begin to believe in dachshunds. + +To these supposedly cheerful strains the gentlemen stream into the +drawing-room. They beam repletely. They tell us what a fine luncheon it +was. They are eloquent about it. All the conditions of their +entertainment were ideal, they would have us believe. They imply that we +are mighty lucky, in that our men can provide us with such a luxurious +existence. They smile with majestic benignity at these fair, but +frivolous pensioners on masculine bounty. American women are petted, +helpless dolls, anyway. Foreigners have said so. They clasp our useless +hands in fervent farewells. They proceed in state to the waiting cars. +They hope we will follow them to the meeting. Oh, yes, we will come, +though incapable of apprehending the high problems of government. + +Led by the honest band, surrounded by flags, followed by cheers, they +disappear in magnificent procession. Now we may straggle to the +dining-room and eat cold though matchless oysters, tepid chicken, and in +general whatever there is any left of. + +The chambermaid has broken a lovely old Minton plate. We are glad we +didn't use the coffee-cups that were made in France for Dolly Madison. +She would have enjoyed wrecking those. + +We hurry, because we don't want to miss the meeting altogether. We think +enviously of the men. In our secret souls, we'd like to campaign. We +love to talk better than anything else in the world, and we could make +nice speeches, too. But we must do the oysters and the odd jobs, and +keep the hearth-fires going, like responsible vestal virgins. It's +woman's sphere. Man gave it to her because he didn't want it himself. + + + + +The Street + +By Simeon Strunsky + + +It is two short blocks from my office near Park Row to the Subway +station where I take the express for Belshazzar Court. Eight months in +the year it is my endeavor to traverse this distance as quickly as I +can. This is done by cutting diagonally across the street traffic. By +virtue of the law governing right-angled triangles I thus save as much +as fifty feet and one fifth of a minute of time. In the course of a year +this saving amounts to sixty minutes, which may be profitably spent over +a two-reel presentation of 'The Moonshiner's Bride,' supplemented by an +intimate picture of Lumbering in Saskatchewan. But with the coming of +warm weather my habits change. It grows more difficult to plunge into +the murk of the Subway. + +A foretaste of the languor of June is in the air. The turnstile +storm-doors in our office building, which have been put aside for brief +periods during the first deceptive approaches of spring, only to come +back triumphant from Elba, have been definitively removed. The +steel-workers pace their girders twenty floors high almost in +mid-season form, and their pneumatic hammers scold and chatter through +the sultry hours. The soda-fountains are bright with new compounds whose +names ingeniously reflect the world's progress from day to day in +politics, science, and the arts. From my window I can see the long black +steamships pushing down to the sea, and they raise vague speculations in +my mind about the cost of living in the vicinity of Sorrento and +Fontainebleau. On such a day I am reminded of my physician's orders, +issued last December, to walk a mile every afternoon on leaving my +office. So I stroll up Broadway with the intention of taking my train +farther up-town, at Fourteenth Street. + +The doctor did not say stroll. He said a brisk walk with head erect, +chest thrown out, diaphragm well contracted, and a general aspect of +money in the bank. But here enters human perversity. The only place +where I am in the mood to walk after the prescribed military fashion is +in the open country. Just where by all accounts I ought to be sauntering +without heed to time, studying the lovely texts which Nature has set +down in the modest type-forms selected from her inexhaustible fonts,--in +the minion of ripening berries, in the nonpareil of crawling insect +life, the agate of tendril and filament, and the 12-point diamond of the +dust,--there I stride along and see little. + +And in the city, where I should swing along briskly, I lounge. What is +there on Broadway to linger over? On Broadway, Nature has used her +biggest, fattest type-forms. Tall, flat, building fronts, brazen with +many windows and ribbed with commercial gilt lettering six feet high; +shrieking proclamations of auction sales written in letters of fire on +vast canvasses; railway posters in scarlet and blue and green; rotatory +barber-poles striving at the national colors and producing vertigo; +banners, escutcheons, crests, in all the primary colors--surely none of +these things needs poring over. And I know them with my eyes closed. I +know the windows where lithe youths in gymnasium dress demonstrate the +virtue of home exercises; the windows where other young men do nothing +but put on and take off patent reversible near-linen collars; where +young women deftly roll cigarettes; where other young women whittle at +sticks with miraculously stropped razors. I know these things by heart, +yet I linger over them in flagrantly unhygienic attitudes, my shoulders +bent forward and my chest and diaphragm in a position precisely the +reverse of that prescribed by the doctor. + +Perhaps the thing that makes me linger before these familiar sights is +the odd circumstance that in Broadway's shop-windows Nature is almost +never herself, but is either supernatural or artificial. Nature, for +instance, never intended that razors should cut wood and remain sharp; +that linen collars should keep on getting cleaner the longer they are +worn; that glass should not break; that ink should not stain; that +gauze should not tear; that an object worth five dollars should sell for +$1.39; but all these things happen in Broadway windows. Williams, whom I +meet now and then, who sometimes turns and walks up with me to +Fourteenth Street, pointed out to me the other day how strange a thing +it was that the one street which has become a synonym for 'real life' to +all good suburban Americans is not real at all, but is crowded either +with miracles or with imitations. + +The windows on Broadway glow with wax fruits and with flowers of muslin +and taffeta drawn by bounteous Nature from her storehouses in Parisian +garret workshops. Broadway's ostrich feathers have been plucked in East +Side tenements. The huge cigars in the tobacconist's windows are of +wood. The enormous bottles of champagne in the saloons are of cardboard, +and empty. The tall scaffoldings of proprietary medicine bottles in the +drug shops are of paper. 'Why,' said Williams, 'even the jewelry sold in +the Japanese auction stores is not genuine, and the sellers are not +Japanese.' + +This bustling mart of commerce, as the generation after the Civil War +used to say, is only a world of illusion. Artificial flowers, artificial +fruits, artificial limbs, tobacco, rubber, silks, woolens, straws, gold, +silver. The young men and women who manipulate razors and elastic cords +are real, but not always. Williams and I once stood for a long while +and gazed at a young woman posing in a drug-shop window, and argued +whether she was alive. Ultimately she winked and Williams gloated over +me. But how do I know her wink was real? At any rate the great mass of +human life in the windows is artificial. The ladies who smile out of +charming morning costumes are obviously of lining and plaster. Their +smug Herculean husbands in pajamas preserve their equanimity in the +severest winter weather only because of their wire-and-plaster +constitution. The baby reposing in its beribboned crib is china and +excelsior. Illusion everywhere. + +But the Broadway crowd is real. You only have to buffet it for five +minutes to feel, in eyes and arms and shoulders, how real it is. When I +was a boy and was taken to the circus it was always an amazing thing to +me that there should be so many people in the street moving in a +direction away from the circus. Something of this sensation still besets +me whenever we go down in the Subway from Belshazzar Court to hear +Caruso. The presence of all the other people on our train is simple +enough. They are all on their way to hear Caruso. But what of the crowds +in the trains that flash by in the opposite direction? It is not a +question of feeling sorry for them. I try to understand and I fail. But +on Broadway on a late summer afternoon the obverse is true. The natural +thing is that the living tide as it presses south shall beat me back, +halt me, eddy around me. I know that there are people moving north with +me, but I am not acutely aware of them. This onrush of faces converges +on me alone. It is I against half the world. + +And then suddenly out of the surge of faces one leaps out at me. It is +Williams, whose doctor has told him that the surest way of fighting down +the lust for tobacco is to walk down from his office to the ferry every +afternoon. Williams and I salute each other after the fashion of +Broadway, which is to exchange greetings backward over the shoulder. +This is the first step in an elaborate minuet. Because we have passed +each other before recognition came, our hands fly out backward. Now we +whirl half around, so that I who have been moving north face the west, +while Williams, who has been traveling south, now looks east. Our +clasped hands strain at each other as we stand there poised for flight +after the first greeting. A quarter of a minute perhaps, and we have +said good-bye. + +But if the critical quarter of a minute passes, there ensues a change of +geographical position which corresponds to a change of soul within us. I +suddenly say to myself that there are plenty of trains to be had at +Fourteenth Street. Williams recalls that another boat will leave Battery +Place shortly after the one he is bound for. So the tension of our +outstretched arms relaxes. I, who have been facing west, complete the +half circle and swing south. Williams veers due north, and we two men +stand face to face. The beat and clamor of the crowd fall away from us +like a well-trained stage mob. We are in Broadway, but not of it. + +'Well, what's the good word?' says Williams. + +When two men meet on Broadway the spirit of optimism strikes fire. We +begin by asking each other what the good word is. We take it for granted +that neither of us has anything but a chronicle of victory and courage +to relate. What other word but the good word is tolerable in the lexicon +of living, upstanding men? Failure is only for the dead. Surrender is +for the man with yellow in his nature. So Williams and I pay our +acknowledgments to this best of possible worlds. I give Williams the +good word. I make no allusion to the fact that I have spent a miserable +night in communion with neuralgia; how can that possibly concern him? +Another manuscript came back this morning from an editor who regretted +that his is the most unintelligent body of readers in the country. The +third cook in three weeks left us last night after making vigorous +reflections on my wife's good nature and my own appearance. Only an hour +ago, as I was watching the long, black steamers bound for Sorrento and +Fontainebleau, the monotony of one's treadmill work, the flat +unprofitableness of scribbling endlessly on sheets of paper, had become +almost a nausea. But Williams will know nothing of this from me. Why +should he? He may have been sitting up all night with a sick child. At +this very moment the thought of the little parched lips, the moan, the +unseeing eyes, may be tearing at his entrails; but he in turn gives me +the good word, and many others after that, and we pass on. + +But sometimes I doubt. This splendid optimism of people on Broadway, in +the Subway and in the shops and offices--is it really a sign of high +spiritual courage, or is it just lack of sensibility? Do we find it easy +to keep a stiff upper lip, to buck up, to never say die, because we are +brave men, or simply because we lack the sensitiveness and the +imagination to react to pain? It may be even worse than that. It may be +part of our commercial gift for window-dressing, for putting up a good +front. + +Sometimes I feel that Williams has no right to be walking down Broadway +on business when there is a stricken child at home. The world cannot +possibly need him at that moment as much as his own flesh and blood +does. It is not courage; it is brutish indifference. At such times I am +tempted to dismiss as mythical all this fine talk about feelings that +run deep beneath the surface, and bruised hearts that ache under the +smile. If a man really suffers he will show it. If a man cultivates the +habit of not showing emotion he will end by having none to show. How +much of Broadway's optimism is--But here I am paraphrasing William +James's _Principles of Psychology_, which the reader can just as well +consult for himself in the latest revised edition of 1907. + +Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely Williams's children are all in +perfect health, and my envelope from the editor has brought a check +instead of a rejection slip. It is on such occasions that Williams and +I, after shaking hands the way a locomotive takes on water on the run, +wheel around, halt, and proceed to buy something at the rate of two for +a quarter. If any one is ever inclined to doubt the spirit of American +fraternity, it is only necessary to recall the number of commodities for +men that sell two for twenty-five cents. In theory, the two cigars which +Williams and I buy for twenty-five cents are worth fifteen cents apiece. +As a matter of fact they are probably ten-cent cigars. But the +shopkeeper is welcome to his extra nickel. It is a small price to pay +for the seal of comradeship that stamps his pair of cigars selling for a +single quarter. Two men who have concluded a business deal in which each +has commendably tried to get the better of the other may call for +twenty-five cent perfectos or for half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I understand +there are such. But friends sitting down together will always demand +cigars that go for a round sum, two for a quarter or three for fifty (if +the editor's check is what it ought to be). + +When people speak of the want of real comradeship among women, I +sometimes wonder if one of the reasons may not be that the prices which +women are accustomed to pay are individualistic instead of fraternal. +The soda fountains and the street cars do not dispense goods at the rate +of two items for a single coin. It is infinitely worse in the department +stores. Treating a friend to something that costs $2.79 is +inconceivable. But I have really wandered from my point. + +'Well, be good,' says Williams, and rushes off to catch his boat. + +The point I wish to make is that on Broadway people pay tribute to the +principle of goodness that rules this world, both in the way they greet +and in the way they part. We salute by asking each other what the good +word is. When we say good-bye we enjoin each other to be good. The +humorous assumption is that gay devils like Williams and me need to be +constantly warned against straying off into the primrose paths that run +out of Broadway. + +Simple, humorous, average American man! You have left your suburban +couch in time to walk half a mile to the station and catch the 7.59 for +the city. You have read your morning paper; discussed the weather, the +tariff, and the prospects for lettuce with your neighbor; and made the +office only a minute late. You have been fastened to your desk from nine +o'clock to five, with half an hour for lunch, which you have eaten in a +clamorous, overheated restaurant while you watched your hat and coat. At +odd moments during the day the thought of doctor's bills, rent bills, +school bills, has insisted on receiving attention. At the end of the +day, laden with parcels from the market, from the hardware store, from +the seedman, you are bound for the ferry to catch the 5.43, when you +meet Smith, who, having passed the good word, sends you on your way with +the injunction to be good--not to play roulette, not to open wine, not +to turkey-trot, not to joy-ride, not to haunt the stage door. Be good, O +simple, humorous, average suburban American! + +I take back that word suburban. The Sunday Supplement has given it a +meaning which is not mine. I am speaking only of the suburban in spirit, +of a simplicity, a meekness which is of the soul only. Outwardly there +is nothing suburban about the crowd on lower Broadway. The man in the +street is not at all the diminutive, apologetic creature with side +whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought forth and named Common People, who +begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the Rent-Payer and the Ultimate +Consumer. The crowd on lower Broadway is alert and well set up. Yes, +though one hates to do it, I must say 'clean-cut.' The men on the +sidewalk are young, limber, sharp-faced, almost insolent young men. +There are not very many old men in the crowd, though I see any number of +gray-haired young men. Seldom do you detect the traditional signs of +age, the sagging lines of the face, the relaxed abdominal contour, the +tamed spirit. The young, the young-old, the old-young, but rarely quite +the old. + +I am speaking only of externals. Clean-cut, eager faces are very +frequently disappointing. A very ordinary mind may be working behind +that clear sweep of brow and nose and chin. I have known the shock of +young men who look like kings of Wall Street and speak like shoe clerks. +They are shoe clerks. But the appearance is there, that athletic +carriage which is helped out by our triumphant, ready-made clothing. I +suppose I ought to detest the tailor's tricks which iron out all ages +and all stations into a uniformity of padded shoulders and trim +waist-lines and hips. I imagine I ought to despise our habit of wearing +elegant shoddy where the European chooses honest, clumsy woolens. But I +am concerned only with externals, and in outward appearances a Broadway +crowd beats the world. Æsthetically we simply are in a class by +ourselves when compared with the Englishman and the Teuton in their +skimpy, ill-cut garments. Let the British and German ambassadors at +Washington do their worst. This is my firm belief and I will maintain it +against the world. The truth must out. _Ruat coelum. Ich kann nicht +anders. J'y suis, j'y reste._ + +Williams laughs at my lyrical outbursts. But I am not yet through. I +still have to speak of the women in the crowd. What an infinitely finer +thing is a woman than a man of her class! To see this for yourself you +have only to walk up Broadway until the southward-bearing stream breaks +off and the tide begins to run from west to east. You have passed out of +the commercial district into the region of factories. It is well on +toward dark, and the barracks that go by the unlovely name of loft +buildings, are pouring out their battalions of needle-workers. The crowd +has become a mass. The nervous pace of lower Broadway slackens to the +steady, patient tramp of a host. It is an army of women, with here and +there a flying detachment of the male. + +On the faces of the men the day's toil has written its record even as on +the women, but in a much coarser hand. Fatigue has beaten down the soul +of these men into brutish indifference, but in the women it has drawn +fine the flesh only to make it more eloquent of the soul. Instead of +listlessness, there is wistfulness. Instead of vacuity you read mystery. +Innate grace rises above the vulgarity of the dress. Cheap, tawdry +blouse and imitation willow-plume walk shoulder to shoulder with the +shoddy coat of the male, copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may attain +to five dollars. But the men's shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman +transfigures and subtilizes the cheap material. The spirit of grace +which is the birthright of her sex cannot be killed--not even by the +presence of her best young man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by the +heritage of her sex, and America has accentuated her title. This +America which drains her youthful vigor with overwork, which takes from +her cheeks the color she has brought from her Slavic or Italian peasant +home, makes restitution by remoulding her in more delicate, more +alluring lines, gives her the high privilege of charm--and neurosis. + +Williams and I pause at the Subway entrances and watch the earth suck in +the crowd. It lets itself be swallowed up with meek good-nature. Our +amazing good-nature! Political philosophers have deplored the fact. They +have urged us to be quicker-tempered, more resentful of being stepped +upon, more inclined to write letters to the editor. I agree that only in +that way can we be rid of political bosses, of brutal policemen, of +ticket-speculators, of taxi-cab extortioners, of insolent waiters, of +janitors, of indecent congestion in travel, of unheated cars in the +winter and barred-up windows in summer. I am at heart with the social +philosophers. But then I am not typical of the crowd. When my neighbor's +elbow injects itself into the small of my back, I twist around and +glower at him. I forget that his elbow is the innocent mechanical result +of a whole series of elbows and backs extending the length of the car, +to where the first cause operates in the form of a station-guard's +shoulder ramming the human cattle into their stalls. In the faces about +me there is no resentment. Instead of smashing windows, instead of +raising barricades in the Subway and hanging the train-guards with +their own lanterns about their necks, the crowd sways and bends to the +lurching of the train, and young voices call out cheerfully, 'Plenty of +room ahead.' + +Horribly good-natured! We have taken a phrase which is the badge of our +shame and turned it into a jest. Plenty of room ahead! If this were a +squat, ill-formed proletarian race obviously predestined to subjection, +one might understand. But that a crowd of trim, well-cut, self-reliant +Americans, sharp-featured, alert, insolent as I have called them, that +they should submit is a puzzle. Perhaps it is because of the fierce +democracy of it all. The crush, the enforced intimacies of physical +contact, the feeling that a man's natural condition is to push and be +pushed, to shove ahead when the opportunity offers and to take it like a +man when no chance presents itself--that is equality. A seat in the +Subway is like the prizes of life for which men have fought in these +United States. You struggle, you win or lose. If the other man wins +there is no envy; admiration rather, provided he has not shouldered and +elbowed out of reason. That god-like freedom from envy is passing +to-day, and perhaps the good-nature of the crowd in the Subway will +pass. I see signs of the approaching change. People do not call out, +'Plenty of room ahead,' so frequently as they used to. + +Good-natured when dangling from the strap in the Subway, good-natured +in front of baseball bulletins on Park Row, good-natured in the face of +so much oppression and injustice, where is the supposed cruelty of the +'mob'? I am ready to affirm on oath that the mob is not vindictive, that +it is not cruel. It may be a bit sharp-tongued, fickle, a bit +mischievous, but in the heart of the crowd there is no evil passion. The +evil comes from the leaders, the demagogues, the professional distorters +of right thinking and right feeling. The crowd in the bleachers is not +the clamorous, brute mob of tradition. I have watched faces in the +bleachers and in the grand-stand and seen little of that fury which is +supposed to animate the fan. For the most part he sits there with folded +arms, thin-lipped, eager, but after all conscious that there are other +things in life besides baseball. No, it is the leaders, the baseball +editors, the cartoonists, the humorists, the professional stimulators of +'local pride,' with their exaggerated gloatings over a game won, their +poisonous attacks upon a losing team, who are responsible. It is these +demagogues who drill the crowd in the gospel of loving only a +winner--but if I keep on I shall be in politics before I know it. + +If you see in the homeward crowd in the Subway a face over which the +pall of depression has settled, that face very likely is bent over the +comic pictures in the evening paper. I cannot recall seeing any one +smile over these long serials of humorous adventure which run from day +to day and from year to year. I have seen readers turn mechanically to +these lurid comics and pore over them, foreheads puckered into a frown, +lips unconsciously spelling out the long legends which issue in the form +of little balloons and lozenges from that amazing portrait gallery of +dwarfs, giants, shrilling viragos and their diminutive husbands, +devil-children, quadrupeds, insects,--an entire zoölogy. If any stimulus +rises from these pages to the puzzled brain, the effect is not visible. +I imagine that by dint of repetition through the years these grotesque +creations have become a reality to millions of readers. It is no longer +a question of humor, it is a vice. The Desperate Desmonds, the +Newly-weds, and the Dingbats, have acquired a horrible fascination. +Otherwise I cannot see why readers of the funny page should appear to be +memorizing pages from Euclid. + +This by way of anticipation. What the doctor has said of exercise being +a habit which grows easy with time is true. It is the first five minutes +of walking that are wearisome. I find myself strolling past Fourteenth +Street, where I was to take my train for Belshazzar Court. Never mind, +Forty-Second Street will do as well. I am now on a different Broadway. +The crowd is no longer north and south, but flows in every direction. It +is churned up at every corner and spreads itself across the squares and +open places. Its appearance has changed. It is no longer a factory +population. Women still predominate, but they are the women of the +professions and trades which centre about Madison Square--business women +of independent standing, women from the magazine offices, the publishing +houses, the insurance offices. You detect the bachelor girl in the +current which sets in toward the home quarters of the undomesticated, +the little Bohemias, the foreign eating-places whose fixed _table +d'hôte_ prices flash out in illumined signs from the side streets. Still +farther north and the crowd becomes tinged with the current of that +Broadway which the outside world knows best. The idlers begin to mingle +with the workers, men in English clothes with canes, women with plumes +and jeweled reticules. You catch the first heart-beat of Little Old New +York. + +The first stirrings of this gayer Broadway die down as quickly almost as +they manifested themselves. The idlers and those who minister to them +have heard the call of the dinner hour and have vanished, into hotel +doors, into shabbier quarters by no means in keeping with the cut of +their garments and their apparent indifference to useful employment. +Soon the street is almost empty. It is not a beautiful Broadway in this +garish interval between the last of the matinée and shopping crowd and +the vanguard of the night crowd. The monster electric sign-boards have +not begun to gleam and flash and revolve and confound the eye and the +senses. At night the electric Niagara hides the squalid fronts of ugly +brick, the dark doorways, the clutter of fire-escapes, the rickety +wooden hoardings. Not an imperial street this Broadway at 6.30 of a +summer's afternoon. Cheap jewelry shops, cheap tobacconist's shops, +cheap haberdasheries, cheap restaurants, grimy little newspaper agencies +and ticket-offices, and 'demonstration' stores for patent foods, patent +waters, patent razors. + +O Gay White Way, you are far from gay in the fast-fading light, before +the magic hand of Edison wipes the wrinkles from your face and +galvanizes you into hectic vitality; far from alluring with your tinsel +shop windows, with your puffy-faced, unshaven men leaning against +door-posts and chewing pessimistic toothpicks, your sharp-eyed newsboys +wise with the wisdom of the Tenderloin, and your itinerant women whose +eyes wander from side to side. It is not in this guise that you draw the +hearts of millions to yourself, O dingy, Gay White Way, O Via Lobsteria +Dolorosa! + +Well, when a man begins to moralize it is time to go home. I have walked +farther than I intended, and I am soft from lack of exercise, and tired. +The romance of the crowd has disappeared. Romance cannot survive that +short passage of Longacre Square, where the art of the theatre and of +the picture-postcard flourish in an atmosphere impregnated with +gasolene. As I glance into the windows of the automobile salesrooms and +catch my own reflection in the enamel of Babylonian limousines I find +myself thinking all at once of the children at home. They expand and +fill up the horizon. Broadway disappears. I smile into the face of a +painted promenader, but how is she to know that it is not at her I smile +but at the sudden recollection of what the baby said at the +breakfast-table that morning? Like all good New Yorkers when they enter +the Subway, I proceed to choke up all my senses against contact with the +external world, and thus resolving myself into a state of coma, I dip +down into the bowels of the earth, whence in due time I am spewed out +two short blocks from Belshazzar Court. + + + + +Fashions in Men + +By Katharine Fullerton Gerould + + +Never, I fancy, has it been more true than it is to-day, that fiction +reflects life. The best fiction has always given us a kind of +precipitate of human nature--_Don Quixote_ and _Tom Jones_ are equally +'true' and true, in a sense, for all time; but our modern books give us +every quirk and turn of the popular ideal, and fifty years hence, if +read at all, may be too 'quaint' for words. And to any one who has been +reading fiction for the last twenty years, it is cryingly obvious that +fashions in human nature have changed. + +My first novel was _Jane Eyre_; and at the age of eight, I fell +desperately in love with Fairfax Rochester. No instance could serve +better to point the distance we have come. I was not an extraordinary +little girl (except that, perhaps, I was extraordinarily fortunate in +being permitted to encounter the classics in infancy), and I dare say +that if I had not met Mr. Rochester, I should have succumbed to some +imaginary gentleman of a quite different stamp. It may be that I should +have fallen in love--had time and chance permitted--with 'V. V.' or The +Beloved Vagabond. But I doubt it. In the first place, novels no longer +assume that it is the prime business of the female heart (at whatever +age) to surrender itself completely to some man. Consequently, the men +in the novels of to-day are not calculated, as they once were, to hit +the fluttering mark. The emotions are the last redoubt to be taken, as +modern tactics direct the assault. + +People are always telling us that fashions in women have changed: what +seems to me almost more interesting is that fashions in men (the stable +sex) have changed to match. The new woman (by which I mean the very +newest) would not fall in love with Mr. Rochester. It is therefore 'up +to' the novelists to create heroes whom the modern heroine will fall in +love with. This, to the popular satisfaction, they have done. And not +only in fiction have the men changed; in life, too, the men of to-day +are quite different. I know, because my friends marry them. + +It is immensely interesting, this difference. One by one, the man has +sloughed off his most masculine (as we knew them) characteristics. Gone +are Mr. Rochester, who fought the duel with the vicomte at dawn, and +Burgo Fitzgerald (the only love of that incomparable woman, Lady +Glencora Palliser), who breakfasted on curaçao and pâté de foie gras. No +longer does Blanche Ingram declare, 'An English hero of the road would +be the next best thing to an Italian bandit, and that could only be +surpassed by a Levantine pirate.' Blanche Ingram wants--and gets--the +Humanitarian Hero; some one who has particular respect for convicts and +fallen women, and whose favorite author is Tolstoï. He must qualify for +the possession of her hand by long, voluntary residence in the slums; he +may inherit ancestral acres only if he has, concerning them, socialistic +intentions. He must be too altruistic to kill grouse, and if he is to be +wholly up-to-date, he must refuse to eat them. He must never order +'pistols and coffee': his only permitted weapon is benevolent +legislation. + +I do not mean that he is to be a milk-sop--'muscular Christianity' has +at least taught us that it is well for the hero to be in the pink of +condition, as he may any day have a street fight on his hands. And he +should have the tongue of men and of angels. Gone is the inarticulate +Guardsman--gone forever. The modern hero has read books that Burgo +Fitzgerald and Guy Livingstone and Mr. Rochester never heard of. He is +ready to address any gathering, and to argue with any antagonist, until +dawn. He is, preferably, personally unconscious of sex until the heroine +arrives; but he is by no means effeminate. He is a very complicated and +interesting creature. Some mediæval traits are discernible in him; but +the eighteenth century would not have known him for human. + +What has he lost, this hero, and what has he gained? How did it all +begin? In life, doubtless, it began with a feminine change of taste. +Brilliant plumage has ceased to allure; and, I suspect, the peacock's +tail, as much as the anthropoid ape's, is destined to elimination. We +women of to-day are distrustful of the peacock's tail. We are mortally +afraid of being misled by it, and of discovering, too late, that the +peacock's soul is not quite the thing. Never has there been among the +feminine young more scientific talk about sex, and never among the +feminine young such a scientific distrust of it. Before a young woman +suspects that she wants to marry a young man, she has probably discussed +with him, exhaustively, the penal code, white slavery, eugenics, and +race-suicide. The miracle--the everlasting miracle of Nature--is that +she should want, in these circumstances, to marry him at all. She +probably does not, unless his views have been wholly to her +satisfaction. And with those views, what has the perpetual glory of the +peacock's tail to do? + +So much for life. In our English fiction, I am inclined to believe that +George Eliot began it with Daniel Deronda. But, in our own day, Meredith +did more. Up to the time of Meredith, the dominant male was the +fashionable hero. Tom Jones, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Fairfax +Rochester, and 'Stunning' Warrington are as different as possible; but +all of them, in their several ways, keep up one male tradition in +fiction. It is within our own day that that tradition has entirely +changed. Have you ever noticed how inveterately, in Meredith's novels, +the schoolmaster or his spiritual kinsman comes out on top? Lord Ormont +cannot stand against Matey Weyburn, Lord Fleetwood against Owain Wythan, +Sir Willoughby Patterne against Vernon Whitford. The little girl who +fell in love with Mr. Rochester would have preferred any one of these +gentlemen (yes, even Sir Willoughby!) to his rival; but I dare say the +event would have proved her wrong. Certainly the wisdom of the ladies' +choice was never doubtful to Meredith himself. The soldier and the +aristocrat cannot endure the test they are put to by the sympathetic +male with a penchant for the enfranchised woman. Vain for Lord Ormont to +accede to Aminta's taste for publicity; vain for Lord Fleetwood to +become the humble wooer of Carinthia Jane: each has previously been +convicted of pride. + +Now, in an earlier day, no woman would have looked at a man who was not +proud--who was not, even, a little too proud. Pride, by which Lucifer +fell, was the chief hall-mark of the gentleman. Moreover, in that +earlier day, women did not expect their heroes to explain everything to +them: a certain amount of reticence, a measure of silence, was also one +of the hallmarks of the gentleman. If a bit of mystery could be thrown +in, so much the better. It gave her something to exercise her +imagination on. Think of the Byronic males--Conrad, Lara, and the rest! +If they had told all, where would they have been? Think of Lovelace and +Heathcote and Darcy and Brian de Bois Guilbert! + +Heroes, once, were always disdaining to speak, and spurning their foes. +Nowadays, no hero disdains to speak, and no hero ventures to spurn +anyone--least of all, his foes. He is humble of heart and very +loquacious. Mrs. Humphry Ward has inherited from George Eliot; and the +latest heroes of Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Hewlett, for example, are the +children of Vernon Whitford, Matey Weyburn, and Owain Wythan (of whom it +is not explicitly written that they had any others). They are +humanitarian and democratic; they are ignorant of hatred; they are +inclined to think the ill-born necessarily better than the well-born; +and they are quite sure that women are superior to men. True, Mr. +Galsworthy always seems to be looking backward; he never forgets the +ancient tradition that he is combating. His young aristocrats who eschew +the ways of aristocracy are unhappy, and virtue in their case is 'its +only reward.' Perhaps that is why his novels always leave us with the +medicinal taste of inconclusion in our mouths. But take a handful of +heroes elsewhere: the Reverend John Hodder, the ex-convict,'Daniel +Smith,' 'V. V.', or even Coryston, the Socialist peer. Where, in the lot +of them do you find either pride or reticence in the old sense? Where, +in any one of them, do you find the Satanic charm? Which one would +Harriet Byron, or Jane Eyre, or Catherine Earnshaw, or Elizabeth +Bennett, have looked at with eyes of love? + +The 'Satanic charm.' The phrase is out. Milton, I suspect, is +responsible for the tradition that has lasted so long, and is now being +broken utterly to pieces. Milton made Satan delightful, and our good +Protestant novelists for a long time followed his lead, in that they +gave their delightful men some of the Satanic traits. Proud they were +and scornfully silent, as we have recalled; and conventional to the last +degree. 'Conventional,' that is, in the stricter sense; by which it is +not meant that as portraits they were unconvincing, or that, as men, +they never offended Mrs. Grundy. They were conventional in that they +followed a convention; in that they were, to a large extent, predicable. +They were jealous of their honor, and believed it vindicable by the +duel; they had no doubt that good women were better than bad, and that +pedigree in human beings was as important as pedigree in animals; and +though they might be quixotic on occasion, they were not democratic +_pour deux sous_. The barmaid was not their sister, nor the stevedore +their brother. (The Satan of _Paradise Lost_, as we all remember, was a +splendid snob.) + +Moreover, they were sophisticated--and not merely out of books. The +Faust idea, having prevailed for many centuries, has at last been +abandoned--and perhaps, our sober sense may tell us, rightly; but not so +long ago there was still something more repellent to the female +imagination about the man who chose not to know than about the man who +chose not to abstain. I do not mean that we were supposed always to be +looking for a Tom Jones or a Roderick Random--we might be looking for a +Sir Charles Grandison, no less; but at least, when we found our hero, we +expected to find him wiser than we. Nowadays, a girl rather likes to +give a man points--and often (in fiction, at least) has to. Meredith +railed against the 'veiled virginal doll' as heroine. Well: our heroines +now are never veiled virginal dolls; but sometimes our heroes are. +Lancelot has gone out, and Galahad has come in. I suspect that there is +a literary law of compensation, and that, Ibsen and Strindberg to the +contrary notwithstanding, there has to be a veiled virginal doll +somewhere in a really taking romance. Perhaps it is fair that the +sterner sex should have its turn at guarding ideals by the hearthstone, +while women make the grand tour. + +Let me not be misunderstood. I am not referring particularly to that +knowledge which any man is better without, but to the Odyssean +experience which, in their respective measures, heroes were wont to have +behind them:-- + + And saw the cities, and the counsels knew + . . . . . . . . + Of many men, and many a time at sea + Within his heart he bore calamity. + +They had at least seen the towns and the minds of men, and their morals +were the less likely to be upset by a conventional assault upon them. +Does any one chance to remember, I wonder, Theron Ware, led to his +'damnation' by his first experience of a Chopin nocturne? It would have +taken more than a Chopin nocturne to make any of our seasoned heroes do +something that he did not wish to. They knew something of society, and +_ergo_ of women; they had experienced, directly or vicariously, human +romance; and they had read history. Nowadays, they are apt to know +little or nothing--to begin with--of society, women, or romance, except +what may be got from brand-new books on sociology; and they pride +themselves on knowing no history. History, with its eternal stresses and +selections, is nothing if not aristocratic, and our heroes nowadays must +be democratic or they die. It is an age of complete faith in the +superiority of the lower classes--the swing of the pendulum, no doubt, +from the other extreme of thinking the lower classes morally and +æsthetically negligible. 'Privilege' is as detestable now in matters of +intellect and breeding as in matters of finance and politics. The man +with the muck-rake has got past the office into the drawing-room. If +your hero has the bad luck not to have been born in the slums, he must +at least have the wit to take up his habitation there as soon as he +comes of age. We have learned that riches are corrupting, but (except in +the special sense of vice-commission reports) we have not yet learned +that poverty is rather more corrupting than wealth. + +Sophistication, whether social, intellectual, or æsthetic, is now the +deadly sin. If we are sophisticated, we may not be good enough for Ellis +Island. And there goes another of the hallmarks of the gentleman as he +was once known to fiction. Our hero in old days might not have +condescended to the glittering assemblies of fashion, but there was +never any doubt that, if he had, he would, in spite of himself, have +been king of his company as soon as he entered the room. He might have +been hard up, but his necktie would not have been 'a black sea holding +for life a school of fat white fish.' He might have been lonely or +gloomy, but he would not have been diffident, and he would never, never, +_never_ have 'blinked' at the heroine. 'My godlike friend had carelessly +put his hair-brush into the butter' says Asticot, at the outset, of the +Beloved Vagabond. Now in picaresque novels, we were always meeting +people who did that sort of thing; but they were not gentlemen. Whereas, +the Beloved Vagabond is of noble birth, and despite his ten years' +abeyance, finds the countess quite ready to marry him. She does not +marry him in the end, to be sure, but we are permitted to feel that +there was something lacking in her because Paragot's manners at tea did +not please her. + +The hero of old had what used to be called 'a sense of fitness,' and a +saving sense of humor, which combined to prevent his entering a ballroom +as John the Baptist. The same lucky combination would have prevented +him--in literature, at least--from wooing the millionaire's child with +dusty commonplaces of the Higher Criticism or jeremiads against the +daughters of Heth. But perhaps millionaires' children to-day take that +sort of thing for manners. To the argument that a performance of the +kind takes courage, one can only reply that, judging from the enthusiasm +with which the preaching hero is received by the heroine, it apparently +does not. And in any case, the hero is too sublimely ignorant of what +socially constitutes courage to deserve any credit for it. + +Sometimes, of course, like Mr. Galsworthy's men, he perceives, with some +inherited sense, that his kind of thing is not likely to be welcomed; +and then he goes sadly and sternly away, leaving the girl to accept a +wooer with more technique. But usually he cuts out everybody. For the +chief hall-mark of a gentleman, now, is the desire to reform his own +class out of all recognition. + +Women, as we know, have long wanted to be talked to as if they were men; +and the result is that heroines now let themselves be lectured at in a +way that very few men would endure. Alison Parr marries the Rev. John +Hodder, and Carlisle Heth would have married V. V. if he had lived. +Well: Clara Middleton married Vernon Whitford, and Carinthia Jane +married Owain Wythan, and Aminta married Matey Weyburn. + +I may have seemed to be speaking cynically. That, I can give my word of +honor, I am not. It is well that we have come to realize that there are +some adventures which, in themselves, add no lustre to a man's name. It +is well that we take thought for the lower strata of humanity--though +our actual reforms, I fancy, show their authors as taking thought not +for to-morrow but for to-day. Certainly brutality, or the indifference +which is negative brutality, is not a beautiful or a moral thing; and +certainly we do not particularly sympathize with Thackeray shedding +tears as he went away from his publishers because they had obliged him +to save Pendennis's chastity. That dreadful person, Arthur Pendennis, +would surely not have been made any less dreadful by being permitted to +seduce Fanny Bolton. + +It is right to think of the poor; it is right to bend our energies, as +citizens, to the economic bettering of their lot. No one could sanely +regret our doing so. But there is always danger in saying the thing +which is not, and in pretending that because some virtues have hitherto +not been recognized, the virtues that have been recognized are no good. +One sympathizes with Towneley (in that incomparable novel _The Way of +All Flesh_) when Ernest asks him,-- + +'"Don't you like poor people very much yourself?" + +'Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw and said +quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, no, no," and escaped. + +'Of course, some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but +as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one +was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes +there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable barrier.' + +It is a great pity that Samuel Butler did not live longer and write more +novels. But in regretting him, we shall do well to remember that though +publication was delayed until some time after the author's death, the +bulk of _The Way of All Flesh_ was written in the '70's. _The Way of All +Flesh_ is not sympathetic to the contemporary mood; it is one of those +books so much ahead of its time (except perhaps in ecclesiastical +matters) that the time has not yet caught up with it. It was doomed +inevitably to an interval of oblivion. The case reminds one of _Richard +Feverel_. + +Only in one way is _The Way of All Flesh_ quite contemporary. The hero +thinks so well of the prostitute that he marries her. On the other hand, +to be sure, he bitterly regrets it, which is not contemporary. I do not +mean that the hero's marrying her is especially in the literary +fashion, but his thinking well of her is. You will notice that in our +moral fever we do not leave the prostitute out of our novels--no, +indeed: she must be there to give spice, as of old. Only now, instead of +being entangled with her, the young gentleman preaches to her; and she +loves him for it. Perhaps this is what happens nowadays in real life. I +do not pretend to know; but I suspect it is true, for I fancy the only +kind of person who could invent the contemporary plot is the kind who +would live it. The wildest imaginings of the people who are made +differently would hardly stretch to it. And not only does the hero find +himself immensely touched by the tragedy of the disreputable +woman,--which is, after all, in certain cases plausible enough,--he +burns to introduce his fiancée to her. Now that, again, may be +life,--Mr. Winston Churchill, for example, should know better than +I,--but it is certainly a world with the sense of values gone wrong. And +when we have lost our sense of values, we shall presently lose the +values as well. The girl herself is often to blame: did not the fiancée +of Simon de Gex go of her own initiative to see the animal-tamer, and +come away to renounce him, convinced that the animal-tamer was the +nobler woman? Which, emphatically, she was not. But then, as we know +from long experience of Mr. Locke, he cannot keep his head with +circus-people about; and sawdust is incense to him. Let Mr. Locke have +his little foibles by all means; but even Mr. Locke should not have +made the spoiled darling of society marry the animal-tamer (one side of +her face having been nearly clawed off) and _then_ go with her into city +missionary work. Yet I do not believe it is really Mr. Locke's fault. +The public at present loves as a sister the woman with a past; and loves +city missionary work, if possible, more. + +The fact is that with all our imitation of Meredith--and every one who +is not imitating Tolstoï is imitating Meredith--he has failed to save +us. We have taken all his prescriptions blindly--except one. We have +emancipated our women and emasculated our men; we have cast down the +mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree; we have learned +all the Radical shibboleths and say them for our morning prayers; and we +have faced the fact of sex so squarely that we can hardly see anything +else. But we have not learned his saving hatred of the sentimentalist. +Miss May Sinclair has admirably pointed out in her study of the _Three +Brontës_ that Charlotte Brontë was exceedingly modern in her detestation +of sentimentality. Modern she may have been--with Meredith; but not +modern with the present novelists, for they are almost too sentimental +to be endured. And there is the whole trouble. We think Thackeray an old +fool for being sentimental over Amelia Sedley; but how does it better +the case to be sentimental, instead, over the heroine of _The Promised +Land_? Amelia Sedley was all in all a much nicer person, if not half so +clever. She may have sniveled a good deal, but she was capable of loving +some one else better than herself. + +Of course, I have cited only a few instances--those that happened to +come most easily to mind. But let any reader of fiction run over +mentally a group of contemporary heroes, and see if the substitutions I +have named have not pretty generally taken place. Has not pride given +way to humility, reticence to glibness, class-consciousness to a wild +democracy, the code of manners to an uncouth unworldliness, and honor in +the old sense to a burning passion for reform--'any old' reform? Do not +these men lead us into the heterogeneous company of the unclassed of +both sexes--and ask us to look upon them as saints in motley? Has not +the world of fiction changed in the last twenty years? The hero in old +days sometimes fell foul of the law by getting into debt. But we were +not supposed, therefore, to be on his side against the law. Now, the +hero does not, perhaps, get into legal difficulties himself, but he is +always passionately on the side of the people whom laws were devised to +protect the respectable from. The scientific tendency to consider that +aristocracy consists merely in freedom from certain physical taints has +permeated fiction. 'Is not one man as good as another?' asked the +demagogue. 'Of course he is, and a great deal better!' replied the +excited Irishman in the crowd. We are in the thick of a popular mania +for thinking all the undesirables 'a good deal better.' The modern hero +is, to my mind, in intention, if not in execution, an admirable figure; +and though one rather expects him any day to give his whole fortune for +a gross of green spectacles, one will not, for that, find him any less +likable. Some day he will rediscover the Dantesque hierarchy of souls +implicit in humanity. And then, perhaps, he will get back his charm. + +Some one is probably bursting to observe that we have a school of +realists at hand; and that no one can accuse Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett +of sentimentality--also that we have Mr. Shaw and Mr. Granville Barker +and Mr. Masefield as mounted auxiliaries in the field. I grant Mr. +Bennett; I am not so sure about Mr. Wells. But certainly Mr. Wells is +not sentimental as Mr. William de Morgan, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. +Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Theodore Dreiser, Mr. H. S. Harrison, and Miss +Ellen Glasgow are sentimental. If he is sentimental at all, it is rather +over ideas than people. (Mr. Masefield, I am inclined to think, is +simply catering to the special audience that Thomas Hardy, by his +silence, has left gaping and empty.) Let us look into the matter a +little. 'Sentimental' is one of the most difficult catchwords in the +world to define; and you can get a roomful of intelligent people +quarreling over it any time. Perhaps, for our purposes, it will serve +merely to say that the sentimentalist is always, in one way or another, +disloyal to facts. He cannot be trusted to give a straight account, +because his own sense of things is more valuable to him than the truth. +He has come in on the top of the pragmatic wave, and the sands of +Anglo-Saxondom are strewn thick with him. He serves, in Kipling's +phrase, the God of Things as They Ought to Be (according to his private +feeling). His own perversion may be æsthetic, or intellectual, or moral, +or sociological, but he is always recognizable by his tampering with +truth. + +Now, Mr. Wells does tamper with truth. He did it, for example, in the +case of Ann Veronica. He wanted Ann Veronica to be a nice girl under +twenty, and he wanted her, even more, to be unduly awakened to certain +physical aspects of sex. It was sentimentality that made him draw her as +he did: determination to prove that the girl who loved as he wanted her +to love was just as conventional as any one else. You cannot have your +cake and eat it too; but the sentimentalist blindly refuses to accept +that. Accordingly, we get the unconvincing creature that Mr. Wells +wanted to believe existed. Mr. Wells's heroes may not seem to bear out +my argument so well as Mr. Galsworthy's. To be sure, Mr. Wells is not so +sentimental as Mr. Galsworthy, and he has not, like the author of _The +Man of Property_, and _Fraternity_, and _Justice_, one--just one--fixed +idea. Mr. Galsworthy always deals with a man who is in love with some +other man's wife; and his world is thereby narrowed. Mr. Wells is +interested in a good many things, and his politics are not purely +philanthropic as most of our novelists' politics are. But Mr. Wells's +heroes, even when they are fairly fortunate, are preoccupied with their +own notions of sociological duty, even more than they are preoccupied +with passion, though their passion is 'special' enough when it comes. +Would any one except a Wells hero take a trip to India and come away +having seen nothing but the sweat-shops of Bombay? Always the author's +sympathy is with the under dog; whether it is Kipps or Mr. Polly living +out his long foredoomed existence, or George Ponderevo analyzing +Bladesover with diabolic keenness and aching contempt. 'I'm a spiritual +guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses,' says Ponderevo in a +burst of frankness. There you have the Wells hero to the life. And Mr. +Bennett's people are only spiritual guttersnipes who are _not_ in love +with unimaginable goddesses. + +The point is that the guttersnipe is having his turn in fiction: if our +American heroes are not guttersnipes themselves, it is their sign of +grace to be supremely interested in guttersnipes. In one way or the +other, the guttersnipe must have his proper prominence. Of course, there +are differences and degrees: a few heroes get no nearer the lower +classes than a passionate desire for reform tickets and municipal +sanitation. But ordinarily they must go through Ernest Pontifex's state +of believing that poor people are not only more important, but in every +way nicer than rich people; and few of them go back utterly on that +belief, as Ernest did. Perhaps that, more than anything else, marks the +change of fashion in men. For gentlemen were always, in their way, +benevolent; but formerly they had not achieved the paradox that the +object of benevolence is _ex officio_ more interesting than the +bestower. + +Books have been written before now in the interest of reform. They tell +us that _Justice_ set the Home Secretary to thinking. Well: Marcus +Clarke actually caused the reform of the Australian penal settlements by +his now forgotten novel, _For the Term of His Natural Life_. The hero of +Marcus Clarke's book was innocent and unjustly condemned; the hero of +_Justice_ is guilty. Wanton cruelty is wicked whether the victim be a +bad man or a good one; but the difference between these two heroes is +not so purely accidental as, at first blush, it may seem. The author of +_His Natural Life_ starting out to capture sympathy, showed the brutal +system wreaking itself on an innocent man, of good family, condemned for +another's guilt. Mr. Galsworthy, equally eager to capture sympathy, +makes his protagonist guilty of the theft, having tried in vain to +incriminate an innocent person. Each writer depended, doubtless, on +public sentiment for his effect. In Marcus Clarke's time, public +sentiment--however unfortunate the fact may be--simply could not have +been aroused to such a pitch by the sufferings of a liar and a thief as +by the sufferings of an innocent man who is consciously paying another +person's penalty. The Humanitarian Hero had not come into fashion--nor +yet the guttersnipe. But Marcus Clarke's book did its work--proof that +even in the '50's we were not so callous as we seemed. + +I said earlier that in life, as well as in literature, men had changed. +One's instances, obviously, must be from books, and not from one's +acquaintance; but I spoke truth. Philanthropy is the latest social +ladder, but it would not be so if the people on the top rung were not +interested in philanthropy. There has been, for whatever reason, a +tremendous spurt of interest in sociological questions. Our hard-headed +young men, of high ideals, find themselves fighting, of necessity, on a +different battlefield from any that strategists would have chosen thirty +years ago. Moreover, philanthropy being woman's way into politics, women +have been giving their calm, or hysterical, attention to problems which, +thirty years since, did not, as problems, exist for them. I said that +the change of taste in women would probably account for much of the +change of fashion in men. A schoolmate of mine, writing me some years +since of her engagement, said (in nearly these words), 'He is +tremendously interested in city missionary work; it wouldn't have been +quite perfect if we hadn't had that in common.' Both were spoiled +darlings of fortune, but the statement was quite sincere. Undoubtedly, +without that, it would not have been 'quite perfect' in the eyes of +either. + +The mere conversation of the marriageable young has changed past belief. +'Social service' has usurped so many subjects! Have many people stopped +to realize, I wonder, how completely the psychological novel and the +'problem' play (in the old sense) have gone out of date? The psychology +of hero and heroine, their emotional attitudes to each other, are +largely worked out now in terms of their attitudes to impersonal +questions, their religious or their sociological 'principles.' The +individual personal reaction counts less and less. If they agree on the +same panacea for the social evils, the author can usually patch up a +passion sufficient for them to marry on. Gone, for the most part, are +the pages of intimate analysis. No intimate analysis is needed any +longer. As for the 'problem play,' we have it still with us, but in +another form. _The Doll's House_ and _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ are +both antiquated: we do not call a drama a problem play now unless it +preaches a new kind of legislation. And as for sex,--in its finer +aspects it no longer interests us. + +There was a great deal more sex, in its subtler manifestations, in the +old novels and plays, than in the new ones. Not so long ago, a novel was +a love story; and it was of supreme importance to a hero whether or not +he could make the heroine care for him. It was also of supreme +importance to the heroine. The romance was all founded on sex; and yet +sex was hardly mentioned. Our heroes and heroines still marry; but when +they consider sex at all, they are apt to consider it biologically, not +romantically. We, as a public, are more frankly interested in sex than +ever; but we think of it objectively, and a little brutally, in terms of +demand and supply. And so we get often the pathetic spectacle of the +hero and heroine having no time to make love to each other in the good +old-fashioned way, because they are so busy suppressing the red-light +district and compiling statistics of disease. Much of the frankness, +doubtless, is a good thing; but beyond a doubt, it has cheapened +passion. For passion among civilized people is a subtle thing: it is +wrapped about with dreams and imaginings; and can bring human beings to +salvation as well as to perdition. But when it is shown to us as the +mere province of courtesans, small wonder that we turn from it to the +hero who will have difficulty in feeling or inspiring it. Especially +since we are told, at the same time, that even the courtesan plies her +trade only from direst necessity. + +After all, the only safe person to fall in love with nowadays _is_ a +reformer: socially, financially, and sentimentally. And most women, at +least, could (if they would) say with the Princesse Mathilde, 'Je n'aime +que les romans dont je voudrais être l'héroïne.' Certainly, unless for +some special reason, no novel of which one would not like to be the +heroine--in love with the hero--will reach the hundred thousand mark. If +there are any of us left who regret the gentlemen of old--who still +prefer our Darcy or even our Plantagenet Palliser--we must write our own +novels, and divine our own heroes under the protective coloring of their +conventional breeding. For they are not being 'featured,' at present, +either in life or in literature. + + + + +A Confession in Prose + +By Walter Prichard Eaton + + +Unlike M. Jourdain, who had been speaking prose all his life without +knowing it, I have been writing it nearly all of mine, quite +consciously, and earning my living thereby since I was twenty-one years +old. I am now thirty-four. I have been a professional writer of prose, +then, for thirteen years--or shall I say a writer of professional prose? +Much of this writing has been done for various American magazines; still +more has been done to fill the ravenous columns of American newspapers; +some, even, has been immured between covers. I have tried never to write +sloppily, though I have of necessity often written hastily. I can +honestly say, too, that I have tried at times to write beautifully, by +which I mean rhythmically, with a conscious adjustment of sound and +melody to the sense, with the charm of word-chiming further to heighten +heightened thought. But I can also as honestly say that in this latter +effort I have never been encouraged by a newspaper editor, and I have +been not infrequently discouraged by magazine editors. Not all +magazines compel you to chop up your prose into a maximum paragraph +length of ten lines, as does a certain one of large circulation. Not all +newspapers compel you to be 'smart,' as did one for which I worked +compel us all. But the impression among editors is prevalent, none the +less, that a conversational downrightness and sentence and paragraph +brevity are the be-all and end-all of prose style, or at least of so +much of prose style as can be grasped by the populace who read their +publications; and that beautiful writing must be 'fine writing,' and +therefore never too much to be avoided. So I started out from the +classroom of Professor Lewis E. Gates, one of the keenest and most +inspiring analysts of prose beauties this country has produced, to be a +professional writer of prose, and dreamed, as youth will, of wrapping my +singing robes about me and ravishing the world. I was soon enough told +to doff my singing robes for the overalls of journalism, and I have +become a writer of professional prose instead. + +These remarks have been inspired by a long and wistful evening just +spent in perusing Professor Saintsbury's new book, called _The History +of English Prose Rhythm_. I shall hold no brief for the good professor's +method of scansion. It matters little to me, indeed, how he chooses to +scan prose. What does matter to me is that he has chosen to scan it at +all, that he has brought forward the finest examples in the stately +procession of English literature, and demonstrated with all the weight +of his learning, his authority, his fine enthusiasm, that this prose is +no less consciously wrought to pleasing numbers than is verse. We who +studied under Professor Gates knew much of this before, if not in so +detailed and would-be methodical a fashion. Charles Lamb knew it when he +wrote, 'Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best +measured cadences (prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm +of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors"; or the wild sweep of +winds at midnight.' Sir Thomas Browne was not exactly unaware of it as +he prepared his _Urn Burial_ for the printer; nor the authors of the +King James Version of the Bible when they translated--or if you prefer, +paraphrased--the rhapsodic chapters of Isaiah. But it is pleasant, and +not unimportant, to be once more reminded, in a generation when written +speech has sunk to the conversational level of the man in the street, +that 'prose has her cadences'; and to me, at least, it is melancholy, +also. For I would strive to write such prose, in my stumbling fashion, +were I permitted. + +Writing about a fine art, as I am so often called upon to do, I would +endeavor with what might lay in me to write about it finely. Suppose +that art chances to be the drama. Why, when some compact, weighty, and +worthily performed example comes to our stage, should I be expected to +toss off a description of it in a style less compact and weighty and +worthily conducted? On the rare occasions when a new play chances to be +poetic, am I not justified in writing of it in poetic prose? How else, +indeed, can I truly render back to my readers the subtler aspects of its +charm? But for such writing there is little room in our hurrying and +'conversational' press, though now and then a despised dramatic editor +is found who understands. Even the drama itself strives to be +'conversational' at all costs, under the banner of 'realism,' and +profanity flourishes on our stage in what we must infer to be a most +life-like manner, while we have almost forgotten that the spoken word +can be melodious or imaginative. Criticism cries at its heels, and helps +with flippant jest and broken syntax and cacophonous combinations of our +poorest vernacular, in the general debasement. Do not tell me that men +do not exist who could write differently of the stage, as men exist who +can, and do, write differently for it. Every worthy dramatist can be +paralleled by at least one worthy critic, and more probably by three or +four, since the true creative instinct in drama is perhaps the rarest of +human attributes, save only charity. But the editors appear to have +determined that the public does not want such critics--and perhaps the +editors are right. At least, the public does not often get them. + +We are speaking now of prose, not of opinions, and we may safely +introduce the name of a living critic, William Winter. For nearly half a +century Mr. Winter has written prose about the theatre, and although +that prose was produced for a morning newspaper it was carefully and +consistently balanced and welded, and, when the subject demanded it, +rose, according to its creator's ideas of beauty, into the heightened +eloquence of sentence rhythm and syllabic harmony. Leisure may improve, +but haste cannot prevent the rhythm of prose, provided the instinct for +it resides in the writer, and the opportunity exists for practice and +expression. Two examples of Mr. Winter's use of rhythm come to my +memory, and I quote only phrases, not whole sentences, merely because I +am sure of no more. Writing one morning of a new and very 'modern' play, +presented the previous evening by a well-known actress, he said: 'Sarah +Bernhardt at least made her sexual monsters interesting, wielding the +lethal hatpin or the deadly hatchet with Gallic grace and sweet +celerity.' Again, in reviewing Pinero's _Iris_, he took up two of Henry +Arthur Jones's phrases, recently made current in a lecture, and played +with them, ending with mellifluous scorn, 'Such are "the great realities +of modern life," flowers of disease and blight that fringe the charnel +house of the "serious drama."' + +These are certainly examples of rhythmic, or cadenced prose, and they +are examples taken from journalistic reviews. They admirably express the +writer's point of view toward his subject matter, but they also reveal +his care for the manner of expression, they satisfy the ear; and +therefore to one at all sensitive to literature they are doubly +satisfying. The arrow of irony is ever more delightful when it sings on +its flight. The trick, then, can be done. Mr. Winter, too often perhaps +for modern ears, performed it by recourse to the Johnsonian balance of +period and almost uniform, swelling roll. But that is neither here nor +there. The point is that he performed it--and that it is no longer +performed by the new generation, either in newspaper columns, or, we +will add at once, anywhere else. Rhythmic prose, prose cadenced to charm +the ear and by its melodies and harmonies properly adjusted to heighten, +as with an under-song, the emotional appeal of the ideas expressed, is +no longer written. It appears to be no longer wanted. We are fallen upon +harsh and colloquial times. + +No one with any ear at all would deny Emerson a style, even if his +rhythms are often broken into the cross-chop of Carlyle. No one would +deny Irving a style, or Poe,--certainly Poe at his best,--or, indeed, to +hark far back, Cotton Mather in many passages of the _Magnalia_, where +to a quaint iambic simplicity he added a Biblical fervor which redeems +and melodizes the monotony. Mather suggests Milton, Irving suggests +Addison, Emerson suggests Carlyle, Poe, shall we say, is often the too +conscious workman typified by De Quincey. But thereafter, in this +country, we descend rapidly into second-hand imitations, into rhythm +become, in truth, mere 'fine writing,' until its death within recent +memory. Yet we do not find even to-day the true cadenced prose either +uninteresting or out of date. Emerson is as modern as the morning paper. +Newman's description of the ideal site for a university, in the clear +air of Attica beside the blue Ægean, charms us still with its perfect +blend of sound and sense, its clear intellectual idea borne on a +cadenced undersong, as of distant surf upon the shore; and the exquisite +epilogue to the _Apologia_, with its chime of proper names, still brings +a moisture to our eyes. The triumphant tramp of Gibbon, the headlong +imagery and Biblical fervor of Ruskin, the languid music of Walter +Pater, each holds its separate charm, and the charm is not archaic. + +Is such prose impossible any more? Certainly it is not. The heritage of +the language is still ours, the birthright of our noble English tongue. +Simply, we do not dare to let ourselves go. We seem tortured with the +modern blight of self-consciousness; and while the cheaper magazines are +almost blatant in their unblushing self-puffery, they are none the less +cravenly submissive to what they deem popular demand, and turn their +backs on literature, on style, as something abhorrent to a race which +has been fed on the English Bible for three hundred years. Their ideal +of a prose style now seems to consist of a series of staccato yips. It +really cannot be described in any other way. The 'triumphantly +intricate' sentence celebrated by Walter Pater would give many a modern +editor a shiver of terror. He would visualize it as mowing down the +circulation of the magazine like a machine gun. Rhythm and beauty of +style can hardly be achieved by staccato yips. The modern magazine +writer, trying to be rhetorically effective, trying to rise to the +demands of heightened thought or emotional appeal, reminds one of that +enthusiastic German tympanist who wrote an entire symphonic poem for +kettle-drums. + +I read one of the autumn crop of new novels the other day. Curiously +enough, it was written by a music critic who, in his reviews of music, +is constantly insisting on the primal importance of melody and harmony, +who is an arch foe of the modern programme school and the whole-tone +scale of Debussy. But the prose of his novel was utterly devoid of these +prized elements, melody and harmony. A heavy, or sometimes turgid, +journalistic commonplaceness sat upon it. I will not be unfair and tear +an illustration from some passage of rightly simple narration. I will +take the closing sentences from one of the climactic chapters, when the +mood had supposedly risen to intensity, and, if ever, the prose would +have been justified in rising to reinforce the emotion. + +The house was aroused to extravagant demonstrations. Across the +footlights it looked like a brilliantly realistic piece of acting, and +the audience was astonished at the vigor of the hitherto cold Americano. + +'But Nagy was not deceived. Crushed, dishevelled, breathless, she knew +that her dominion over him was gone forever. She had tried to show him +his soul and he had begun to see the light.' + +Now, an ear attuned to the melodies of English prose must surely find +this commonplace, and the closing sentence of all actually as harsh as +the tonalities of Strauss or Debussy seem to the writer. Let us, even if +a little unfairly, set it beside a passage from _Henry Esmond_, again a +climactic passage, but one where the style is climactic, also, rising to +the mood. + +'"You will please, sir, to remember," he continued, "that our family +hath ruined itself by fidelity to yours: that my grandfather spent his +estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service; that my +dear lord's grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right and title +too) died for the same cause; that my poor kinswoman, my father's second +wife, after giving away her honor to your wicked perjured race, sent all +her wealth to the King; and got in return that precious title that lies +in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue ribbon. I lay this at your +feet and stamp upon it; I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; +and had you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have +driven it through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father +pardoned Monmouth. Frank will do the same, won't you, cousin?"' + +This justly famous passage, be it noted, is dialogue. To-day we +especially do not dare to rise above a conversational level in dialogue. +We should be accused of being 'unnatural.' Does no one speak beautifully +any more, then, even in real life? Are the nerve-centres so shattered in +the modern anatomy that no connection is established between emotions +and the musical sense? Does an exquisite mood no longer reflect itself +in our voice, in our vocabulary? Does no lover rise to eloquence in the +presence of his Adored? If that is the case, surely we now speak +unnaturally, and it should be the duty of literature to restore our +health! Nor need such speech in fiction float clear away from solid +ground. Notice how Thackeray in his closing sentence--'Frank will do the +same, won't you, cousin?'--anchors his rhetoric to the earth. + +We are, let it be said again, in the grasp of realism, and realism but +imperfectly understood. Just as our drama aims to reproduce exactly a +'solid' room upon the stage, and to set actors to talking therein the +exact speech of every day, so our oratory, so-called, is the +reproduction of a one-sided conversation, and our novels (when they are +worthy of consideration) are reproductions of patiently accumulated +details, set forth in impatiently assembled sentences. But all this does +not of necessity constitute realism, because its effect is not of +necessity the creation of illusion, however truthful the artist's +purpose. Of what avail, in the drama, for example, are solid rooms and +conversational vernacular if the characters do not come to life in our +imaginations, so that we share their joys and sorrows? Of what effect +are the realistic details of a novel, whether of incident or language, +if we do not re-live its story as we read? Surely, the answer is plain, +and therefore any literary devices which heighten the mood for us are +perfectly justifiable weapons of the realist, even as they are of the +romanticist. One of these devices is consciously wrought prose. For the +present we plead for its employment on no higher ground than this of +practical expediency. + +But how, you may ask,--no, not you, dear reader, who understand, but +some other chap, a poor dog of an author, perhaps,--can consciously +wrought prose aid in the creation of illusion? How can it be more than +pretty? + +Let us turn for answer to Sir Thomas Browne, to 'The Garden of Cyrus,' +to the closing numbers:-- + +'Besides, Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the oneirocritical +masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is +little encouragement to dream of paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest +delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep, wherein the dulness of +that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of +Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.' + +That is archaic, perhaps, and not without a certain taint of quaintness +to modern ears. But how drowsy it is, how minor its harmonies, how +subtly soothing its languid melody! It tells, surely, in what manner +consciously wrought prose may aid in the creation of illusion. The mood +of sleep was here to be evoked, and lo! it comes from the very music of +the sentences, from the drowsy lullaby of selected syllables. + +We might choose a quite different example, from a seemingly most +unlikely source, from the plays of George Bernard Shaw. One hardly +thinks of Mr. Shaw with a style, but rather with a stiletto. His +prefaces have been too disputative, his plays too epigrammatic, for the +cultivation of prose rhythms. Yet his prose is almost never without a +certain crisp accuracy of conversational cadence; his ear almost never +betrays him into sloppiness; and when the occasion demands, his style +can rise to meet it. The truth is, Mr. Shaw is seldom emotional, so that +his crisp accuracy of speech is most often the fitting garment for his +thought. But in _John Bull's Other Island_ his emotions are stirred, and +when Larry Doyle breaks out into an impassioned description of Ireland +the effect on the imagination of the heightened prose, when a good actor +speaks it, is almost startling. + +'No, no; the climate is different. Here, if the life is dull, you can +be dull too, and no great harm done. (_Going off into a passionate +dream._) But your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those +white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those +hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colors in +the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. +Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, +never-satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! (_Savagely._) +No debauchery that ever coarsened and brutalized an Englishman can take +the worth and usefulness out of him like that dreaming. An Irishman's +imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies +him; but it makes him so that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor +handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and +(_bitterly, at Broadbent_) be "agreeable to strangers," like a +good-for-nothing woman on the streets.' + +This, to be sure, is prose to be spoken, not prose to be read. Different +laws prevail, for different effects are sought. But the principle of +cadence calculated to fit the mood, and by its melodic, or, as here, its +percussive character to heighten the emotional appeal, remains the same. + +But beyond the argument for cadenced prose as an aid to illusion, +employed in the proper places,--that is, where intensity of imagery or +feeling can benefit by it,--is the higher plea for sheer lingual beauty +for its own sake. Shall realism preclude all other effects of artistic +creation? Because the men on our streets, the women in our homes, talk +sloppily, shall all our books be written in their idiom, all our stage +characters reproduce their commonplaceness, nearly all our magazines and +newspapers give no attention to the graces of style? I am pleading for +no Newman of the news story, nor am I seeking to arm our muck-rakers +with the pen of Sir Thomas Browne. I would not send Walter Pater to +report a football game (though Stevenson could doubtless improve on most +of the 'sporting editors'), nor ask that Emerson write our editorials. +But there is a poor way, and there is a fine way, to write everything, +and inevitably the man who has an ear for the rhythms of prose, who has +been trained and encouraged to write his very best, will fit his style +appropriately to his subject. He will not seek to cadence his sentences +in bald narration or in exposition, but he will, nevertheless, keep them +capable of natural and pleasant phrasing, he will avoid monotony, +jarring syllables, false stress, and ugly or tripping terminations which +throw the voice as one's feet are thrown by an unseen obstacle in the +path. His paragraphs, too, will group naturally, as falls his thought. +But when the subject he has in hand rises to invective, to exhortation, +to the dignity of any passion or the sweep of any vision, then if his +ear be tuned and his courage does not fail him he must inevitably write +in cadenced periods, the effectiveness of his work depending on the +adjustment of these cadences to the mood of the moment, on his skill as +an artist in prose. + +And just now the courage of our young men fails. The unrestrained +abandonment of all art to realism, of every sort of printed page to bald +colloquialism, has dulled the natural ear in all of us for comely prose, +and made us deaf to more stately measures. The complete democratizing of +literature has put the fear of plebeian ridicule in our hearts, and the +wider a magazine's circulation, it would seem, the more harm it does to +English prose, because in direct ratio to its sale are its pages given +over to the Philistines, and the dignity and refinement of thought which +could stimulate dignity and refinement of expression are unknown to its +contributors, or kept carefully undisclosed. + +I have often fancied, in penitential moments, a day of judgment for us +who write, when we shall stand in flushed array before the Ultimate +Critic and answer the awful question, 'What have you done with your +language?' There shall be searchings of soul that morning, and +searchings of forgotten pages of magazines and 'best sellers' and books +of every sort, for the cadence that may bring salvation. But many shall +seek and few shall find, and the goats shall be sorted out in droves, +condemned to an eternity of torture, none other than the everlasting +task of listening to their own prose read aloud. + +'What have you done with your language?' It is a solemn question for all +of us, for you who speak as well as for us who write. Our language is a +priceless heritage. It has been the ladder of life up which we climbed; +with it we have bridged the sundering flood that forever rolls between +man and man; through its aid have come to us the treasures of the past, +the world's store of experience; by means of it our poets have wrought +their measures, our philosophers their dreams. Bit by bit, precious +mosaic after precious mosaic, the great body of English literature has +been built up, in verse and prose, the crown of that division of +language we call our own. Consciously finding itself three centuries +ago, our English prose blossomed at once into the solemn splendors of +the King James Bible and then into the long-drawn, ornate magnificence +of Sir Thomas Browne, never again till our day to lose consciousness of +its power, to forget its high and holy task, the task of maintaining our +language at full tide and ministering to style and beauty. There were +fluxes in the fashions, naturally; little of Browne's music being found +in the almost conversational fluency (but not laxness) of Addison, even +as the suave Mr. Addison himself has vanished in the tempestuous +torrents of Carlyle. But there always was an Addison, a Carlyle, a +Newman, a Walter Pater, whose work loomed large in popular regard, whose +influence was mighty in shaping a taste for prose style. Who now, we may +ask, looking around us in America, looms large in popular regard as a +writer of ample vision, amply and beautifully clothed in speech, and +whose influence is mighty in shaping a taste for prose style? It is not +enough to have the worthies of the past upon our shelves. Each age must +have its own inspiration. Again we hear the solemn question, 'What have +you done with your language?' Only Ireland may answer, 'We have our +George Moore, and we had our Synge not long ago--but we stoned his +plays.' + +We have stifled our language, we have debased it, we have been afraid of +it. But some day it will reassert itself, for it is stronger than we, +alike our overlord and avatar. Deep in the soul of man dwells the lyric +impulse, and when his song cannot be the song of the poet it will shape +itself in rhythmic prose, that it may still be cadenced and modulated to +change with the changing thought and sound an obligato to the moods of +the author's spirit. How wonderful has been our prose,--grave and +chastely rich when Hooker wrote it, striding triumphant over the pages +of Gibbon on tireless feet, ringing like a trumpet from Emerson's white +house in Concord, modulated like soft organ-music heard afar in Newman's +lyric moods, clanging and clamorous in Carlyle, in Walter Pater but as +the soft fall of water in a marble fountain while exquisite odors flood +the Roman twilight and late bees are murmurous, a little of all, +perhaps, in Stevenson! We, too, we little fellows of to-day, could +write as they wrote, consciously, rhythmically, if we only cared, if we +only dared. We ask for the opportunity, the encouragement. Alas! that +also means a more liberal choice of graver subjects, and a more +extensive employment of the essay form. Milton could hardly have been +Miltonic on a lesser theme than the Fall of the Angels, and Walter Pater +wrote of the Mona Lisa, not Lizzie Smith of Davenport, Iowa. It is +doubtless of interest to learn about Lizzie, but she hardly inspires us +to rhythmic prose. + + + + +In the Chair + +By Ralph Bergengren + + +About once in so often a man must go to the barber for what, with +contemptuous brevity, is called a haircut. He must sit in a big chair, a +voluminous bib (prettily decorated with polka dots) tucked in round his +neck, and let another human being cut his hair for him. His head, with +all its internal mystery and wealth of thought, becomes for the time +being a mere poll, worth two dollars a year to the tax-assessor: an +irregularly shaped object, between a summer squash and a canteloupe, +with too much hair on it, as very likely several friends and +acquaintances have advised him. His identity vanishes. + +As a rule the less he now says or thinks about his head, the better: he +has given it to the barber, and the barber will do as he pleases with +it. It is only when the man is little and is brought in by his mother, +that the job will be done according to instructions; and this is because +the man's mother is in a position to see the back of his head. Also +because the weakest woman under such circumstances has strong +convictions. When the man is older the barber will sometimes allow him +to see the haircut, cleverly reflected in two mirrors; but not one man +in a thousand--nay, in ten thousand--would dare express himself as +dissatisfied. After all, what does he know of haircuts, he who is no +barber? Women feel differently; and I know of one man, returning home +with a new haircut, who was compelled to turn round again and take what +his wife called his 'poor' head to another barber by whom the haircut +was more happily finished. But that was exceptional. And it happened to +that man but once. + +The very word 'haircut' is objectionable. It snips like the scissors. +Yet it describes the operation more honestly than the substitute 'trim,' +a euphemism indicating a jaunty habit of dropping in frequently at the +barber's, and so keeping the hair perpetually at just the length that is +most becoming. For most men, although the knowledge must be gathered by +keen, patient observation and never by honest confession, there is a +period, lasting about a week, when the length of their hair is +admirable. But it comes between haircuts. The haircut itself is never +satisfactory. If his hair was too long before (and on this point he has +the evidence of unprejudiced witnesses), it is too short now. It must +grow steadily--count on it for that!--until for a brief period it is +'just right,' æsthetically suited to the contour of his face and the cut +of his features, and beginning already imperceptibly to grow too long +again. + +Soon this growth becomes visible, and the man begins to worry. 'I must +go to the barber,' he says in a harassed way. 'I must get a haircut.' +But the days pass. It is always to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. +When he goes, he goes suddenly. + +There is something within us, probably our immortal soul, that postpones +a haircut; and yet in the end our immortal souls have little to do with +the actual process. It is impossible to conceive of one immortal soul +cutting another immortal soul's hair. My own soul, I am sure, has never +entered a barber's shop. It stops and waits for me at the portal. +Probably it converses on subjects remote from our bodily consciousness +with the immortal souls of barbers, patiently waiting until the barbers +finish their morning's work and come out to lunch. + +Even during the haircut our hair is still growing, never stopping, never +at rest, never in a hurry: it grows while we sleep, as was proved by Rip +Van Winkle. And yet perhaps sometimes it is in a hurry; perhaps that is +why it falls out. In rare cases the contagion of speed spreads; the last +hair hurries after all the others; the man is emancipated from +dependence on barbers. I know a barber who is in this independent +condition himself (for the barber can no more cut his own hair than the +rest of us) and yet sells his customers a preparation warranted to keep +them from attaining it, a seeming anomaly which can be explained only on +the ground that business is business. To escape the haircut one must be +quite without hair that one cannot see and reach; and herein possibly is +the reason for a fashion which has often perplexed students of the +Norman Conquest. The Norman soldiery wore no hair on the backs of their +heads; and each brave fellow could sit down in front of his polished +shield and cut his own hair without much trouble. But the scheme had a +weakness. The back of the head had to be shaven, and the fashion +doubtless went out because, after all, nothing was gained by it. One +simply turned over on one's face in the barber's chair instead of +sitting up straight. + +Fortunately we begin having a haircut when we are too young to think, +and when also the process is sugar-coated by the knowledge that we are +losing our curls. Then habit accustoms us to it. Yet it is significant +that men of refinement seek the barber in secluded places, basements of +hotels for choice, where they can be seen only by barbers and by other +refined men having or about to have haircuts; and that men of less +refinement submit to the operation where every passer-by can stare in +and see them, bibs round their necks and their shorn locks lying in +pathetic little heaps on the floor. There is a barber's shop of this +kind in Boston where one of the barbers, having no head to play with, +plays on a cornet, doubtless to the further distress of his immortal +soul peeping in through the window. But this is unusual even in the city +that is known far and wide as the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. + +I remember a barber--he was the only one available in a small town--who +cut my left ear. The deed distressed him, and he told me a story. It was +a pretty little cut, he said--filling it with alum--and reminded him of +another gentleman whose left ear he had nipped in identically the same +place. He had done his best with alum and apology, as he was now doing. +Two months later the gentleman came in again. 'And by golly!' said the +barber, with a kind of wonder at his own cleverness, 'if I didn't nip +him again in just the same place!' + +A man can shave himself. The Armless Wonder does it in the Dime Museum. +Byron did it, and composed poetry during the operation, although, as I +have recently seen scientifically explained, the facility of composition +was not due to the act of shaving but to the normal activity of the +human mind at that time in the morning. Here therefore a man can refuse +the offices of the barber. If he wishes to make one of a half-dozen +apparently inanimate figures, their faces covered with soap, and their +noses used as convenient handles to turn first one cheek and then the +other--that is his own lookout. But human ingenuity has yet to invent a +'safety barber's shears.' It has tried. A near genius once made an +apparatus--a kind of helmet with multitudinous little scissors inside +it--which he hopefully believed would solve the problem; but what became +of him and his invention I have not heard. Perhaps he tried it himself +and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed +suicide, for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found +a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't would be thrown +into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded +in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' where nobody +could see him but the hardened attendants, by his sensitive family. The +important fact is that the invention never got on the market. Until some +other investigator succeeds to more practical purpose, the rest of us +must go periodically to the barber. We must put on the bib-- + +Here, however, there is at least an opportunity of selection. There are +bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of +satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the +newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still +intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons +of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to +be deeply interested in the _Illustrated London News_. The patrons of +the barber's shop where I lost part of my ear--I cannot see the place, +but those whom I take into my confidence tell me that it has long since +grown again--had no sleeves to their bibs, but nevertheless managed +awkwardly to hold the _Police Gazette_. And this opportunity to hold the +_Police Gazette_ without attracting attention becomes a pleasant feature +of this type of barber's shop: I, for example, found it easier--until my +ear was cut--to forget my position in the examination of this journal +than in the examination of the _Illustrated London News_. The pictures, +strictly speaking, are not so good, either artistically or morally, but +there is a tang about them, an I-do-not-know-what. And it is always +wisest to focus attention on some such extraneous interest. Otherwise +you may get to looking in the mirror. + +Do not do that. + +For one thing, there is the impulse to cry out 'Stop! Stop! Don't cut it +all off! + + 'Oh, barber, spare that hair! + Leave some upon my brow! + For months it's sheltered me! + And I'll protect it now! + +'Oh, please! P-l-e-a-s-e!--' These exclamations annoy a barber, rouse a +demon of fury in him. He reaches for a machine called 'clippers.' Tell +him how to cut hair, will you! A little more and he'll shave your +head--and not only half-way either, like the Norman soldiery at the time +of the Conquest! Even if you are able to restrain this impulse, +clenching your bib in your hands and perhaps dropping or tearing the +_Illustrated London News_, the mirror gives you strange, morbid +reflections. You recognize your face, but your head seems somehow +separate, balanced on a kind of polka-dotted mountain with two hands +holding the _Illustrated London News_. You are afraid momentarily that +the barber will lift it off and go away with it. Then is the time to +read furiously the weekly contribution of G. K. Chesterton. But your +mind reverts to a story you have been reading about how the Tulululu +Islanders, a savage but ingenious people, preserve the heads of their +enemies so that the faces are much smaller but otherwise quite +recognizable. You find yourself looking keenly at the barber to discover +any possible trace of Tulululu ancestry. And what is he going to get +now? A krees? No, a paint-brush. Is he going to paint you? And if +so--what color? The question of color becomes strangely important, as if +it made any real difference. Green? Red? Purple? Blue? No, he uses the +brush dry, tickling your forehead, tickling your ears, tickling your +nose, tickling you under the chin and down the back of your neck. After +the serious business of the haircut, a barber must have some relaxation. + +There is one point on which you are independent: you will not have the +bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which +nevertheless has some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors +you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his sense of business +economy. + +He takes off your bib. + +From a row of chairs a man leaps to his feet, anxious to give _his_ head +to the barber. A boy hastily sweeps up the hair that was yours--already +as remote from you as if it had belonged to the man who is always +waiting, and whose name is Next. Oh, it is +horrible--horrible--horrible! + + + + +The Passing of Indoors + +By Zephine Humphrey + + +Indoors is going. We may just as well make up our minds on this +revolutionary point, and accept it with such degree of hardy rejoicing +or shivering regret as our natures prompt in us. + +The movement has been long under way, gradually working the perfect +ejection which seems now at hand. We might have recognized the +dislodging process long ago, had we been far-sighted enough. It +began--who shall say when it did begin? Surely not in the shaggy breasts +of those rude ancestors of ours whom we hold in such veneration, and to +whose ways we seem to ourselves to be so wisely returning. They dragged +their venison into the depths of a cave darker and closer than any +house, and devoured it in great seclusion. Perhaps it began in the San +Marco Piazza at Venice, with the little open-air tables under the +colonnades. "So delightful! So charming!" Thus the tourists, as they +sipped their coffee and dallied with their ices. They were right; it was +delightful and charming, and so it is to this day, but it was perhaps +the thin edge of the wedge which is turning us all out now. + +Supper was the first regular meal to follow the open-air suggestion, +country supper on the piazza in the warm summer evening. That also was +delightful, of course, and not at all alarming. All nations and ages +have practiced the sport of occasional festive repasts out of doors when +the weather has permitted. But breakfast was not long in following suit; +and when dinner, that most conservative, conventional of meals, +succumbed to the outward pressure and spread its congealing gravies in +the chilly air, we were in for the thing in good earnest, the new custom +was on. No longer a matter of times and seasons, the weather had nothing +to do with it now; and in really zealous families the regular summer +dining-room was out of doors. Summer dining-room--that sounds well; +since summer and warmth go together traditionally. But not always +actually in New England, where bleak rains overtake the world now and +then, and clearing north-west winds come racing keenly. It was soon +essential to introduce a new fashion in dinner garments: overcoats, +sweaters, and heavy shawls, felt hats and mufflers. + +'Excuse me while I run upstairs to get a pair of mittens?' + +'Finish your soup first, dear; it will be quite cold if you leave it.' + +The adherents of the new doctrine are very conscientious and faithful, +as was only to be expected. We are a valiant race in the matter of our +enthusiasms and can be trusted to follow them sturdily, buckling on +armor or overcoats or whatever other special equipment the occasion +demands. Conscientiousness is a good trait, but there is perhaps more of +the joy of life in some other qualities. + +Sleeping outdoors was the next great phase in the open-air movement. +That also began casually enough and altogether charmingly. One lingered +in the hammock, watching the stars, musing in the still summer night, +until, lo! there was the dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A +wonderful experience. Not much sleeping about it truly,--there is +commonly not much sleeping about great experiences,--but so beautiful +that the heart said, 'Go to! why not have this always? Why not sleep +outdoors every night?' Which is of course exactly the way in which human +nature works; very reasonable, very sane and convincing, but +unfortunately never quite so successful as it should be. That which has +blessed us once must be secured in perpetuity for our souls to feast on +continually; revelation must fold its wings and abide with us. So we +soberly go to work and strip all the poetry of divine chance, all the +delight of the unexpected, from our great occasions by laying plans for +their systematic recurrence. + + He who bends to himself a joy, + Does the winged life destroy; + But he who kisses a joy as it flies, + Lives in eternity's sunrise. + +It is a pity that William Blake could not teach us that once for all. As +a matter of fact, of course, great occasions care nothing at all for our +urging; and a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. The +stars and the dawn do not condescend to such paraphernalia for waylaying +them as sleeping-bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito +netting, with a stout club close at hand in case of tramps or a skunk. + +One experience of my own recurs to my memory poignantly here, and I +think I cannot do better than set it forth. I had passed an +unforgettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by the evening +almost insensibly into 'solemn midnight's tingling silences,' and thence +into the austere dawn. It was an episode such as should have sealed my +lips forever; but I profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion of +interest spread through the little village. + +'What fun! Did you have your rubbers on? Did you sit in a chair? I +should think you would have sat in a chair--so much more comfortable! +Well, I tell you what, let's do it together,--a lot of us, so we won't +be afraid,--and let's climb a mountain. The sunset and dawn will be +beautiful from a mountain.' + +We did it; I blush to confess that some twenty-five of us did it. It +was an excursion planned and discussed for a matter of two weeks (a full +moon being part of the programme), and there was no accident unforeseen, +no event unprovided for. The procession that wended its way, toiling and +puffing, up the ascent of Haystack,--the favored mountain selected for +the high pedestal of our rapture,--on the auspicious night, was about as +sad, and withal as funny, an affront as the secrecy of beauty ever +received. Blankets, steamer-rugs, pillows, shawls, hammocks, +whiskey-flasks--how we groaned beneath the burden of all these things. +We lost the way, of course, and had to beat the woods in every +direction; we were tired and hot and--cross? Perhaps. But we knew what +our rôle was, and when we reached the top of the mountain, we all of us +stood very solemnly in a row and said, 'How beautiful!' + +It was beautiful; that was just the fineness of the night's triumph over +us--over me at least; I cannot speak for the other twenty-four. To this +day, be it said in parentheses, whenever we mention that night on +Haystack we lift our eyes in ecstasy, and no one of us has ever +confessed any sense of lack. But honestly, honestly at the last (dear +stalwart relief of honesty!), that experiment was a failure--so +beautiful that the spirit should have been lifted out of the body, and +would have been, had it stood alone, had it not already exhausted itself +in plans and expectations. Beneath us, a far-spreading sea of misty, +rolling hills, all vague and blended in the light of the soaring moon; +above us, such a sweep of sky as only mountain-tops command; around us, +silence, silence. Yet the unstrenuous orchard at home, with its tranquil +acceptance of such degree of sunset light as was granted to it, and of +the moon's presence when she rose above the apple trees, would have +conveyed the night's message a thousand times more clearly. + +It is seldom worth while to describe any failure of the spirit very +minutely, and tragedy is not the tone this paper would assume; but one +slight episode of the dawn following that fatal night must be related. +We were gathered on the eastern edge of our mountain top, a tousled, +gray, disheveled lot, heavy-eyed and weary. Does the reader understand +the significance of the term 'to prevent the dawn'? He does if he has +stood and waited for the sun to rise--or the moon or any of the +constellations, for that matter. All heavenly bodies retard their +progress through the influence of being waited for. 'Surely now!' a +dozen times we warned one another there, with our faces toward the +quickening east; yet no glittering, lambent rim slid up to greet our +eyes. + +At last a decent comely cloud came to the rescue of the sun, halting and +embarrassed, and settled snugly all about the mountain of the +day-spring. Into this the sun was born, so obscurely that it rode high +above the mountain's edge, shorn and dull, a rubber ball, before we +discovered it. 'Why--why--' some one began, stammering; and then there +was a dramatic pause. Brave and determined though we were in our pursuit +of ecstasy, we could not burst forth into song like Memnon statues at +the sight of that belated orange, 'Lo, the Lord Sun!' Not at all. It was +the merest varlet. In this dilemma of our hearts, a funny little wailing +cry came from the cliff's edge: 'I want my money back! I want my money +back!' It was a perfect commentary on the whole situation, as fine and +humorous and true an utterance as could be asked on the foiled occasion. +We laughed at it, and all the air was straightway clearer for us. Then +down the mountain-side we trooped, and went home to bed. + +Of course I am not unaware of the impatience of some readers, if they +have taken pains to scan so far this earnest exposition. The outdoor +movement is not one primarily of sentiment, but of health and happiness; +and the story just related is aside from the point. That may be true. I +certainly stand in respect of the great claims of the physical side of +the subject, and would not deal with them. By all means, let all people +be as well as possible. But it is still the other side, the side of +sentiment and rapture, which is most pleadingly often brought home to +me. + +It is pitiful how helpless we are against the invasions of a new +enthusiasm like this--we sober, conservative folk. I still sleep in my +bed, in my room, but the satisfaction I used to take in the innocent +practice is broken of late by haunting fears that I may not be able to +keep it up. My friends will not let me alone. + +'Of all things! why don't you sleep out here, on this little upper +piazza? Precisely the place! I can't understand how you can ignore such +an opportunity.' + +'Well, you see,'--my answer was glib at first,--'the piazza overhangs +the road, and the milk-wagons go by very early. I don't want to get up +at four o'clock every morning.' + +'They couldn't see much of you, I should think,'--with a thoughtful +measuring glance,--'not more than your toes and the tip of your nose.' + +'Oh, thank you, that's quite enough!' + +'Well, you might saw off the legs of a cot, to bring it below the +railing. Or just a mattress spread on the floor would do very well.' + +Just a mattress spread on the floor! That closes the argument. I have no +spirit left to prefer any other objections to these dauntless souls, +such as the rain (the piazza has no roof). But what would a cold bath be +if not distinctly so much to the good in view of the toilet operations +of the following morning? There is no course left me but that final +one,--which should in honesty have come first,--of damning myself by the +hopeless assertion, 'I don't want to sleep out of doors.' This locks the +argument, and the barrier stands complete, shutting me off in a world by +myself, interrupting the genial flow of sympathetic friendship. But I +love my friends. Therefore it follows that I tremble for my further +repose in my bed. I fear I shall yet utter midnight sighs on that piazza +floor. + +Indoors, dear indoors! I would I might plead its cause a little here. +Does no one ever pause to reflect that there was never any outdoors at +all until indoors was created? The two had a simultaneous birth, but it +was an appurtenance of the latter that marked the distinction and gave +the names. A little humiliating that might have seemed to any creatures +less generous than woods and mountains--to have been here really from +the beginning, ages and ages in glorious life, and then to take their +first generic name, find their first classification, all of them in a +lump together (what a lump!) as the other side of a fragile barrier to a +mushroom construction. One wonders that those who exalt the outdoors as +everything nowadays, do not find some better title for it than its +dooryard term. But those who love the indoors too, though they may smile +at the calm presumption of its dubbing the universe, accept the +conclusion without any question. Man is after all the creature of +creatures, and his life is of first importance. We do not hear that the +woodchuck speaks of _out-hole_, or the bird of _out-tree_. + +Such life of man is an inner thing, intensely inner; its essence lies in +its inwardness. It can hardly know itself 'all abroad'; it must needs +have devised for itself a shelter as soon as it came to +self-consciousness, a refuge, not only from storm and cold but from the +distracting variety of the extensive world. Indoors is really an august +symbol, a very grave and reverend thing, if we apprehend it rightly. It +stands for the separate life of man, apart from (though still a part of, +too) the rest of the universe. Take any one room inhabited daily by a +person of strong individuality,--how alive it is! How brisk and alert in +the very attitudes of the chairs and the pictures on the walls! Or, more +happily, how serene and reposeful! Or how matter-of-fact! Morbid and +passionate, flippant, austere, boisterous, decorous,--anything, +everything a room may be which a human creature may be; and that range, +as most of us know, is almost unlimited. + +It is hard to understand how any person can fail to respond to the warm +appeal of his own abode. Say one has been abroad all day (another term +that assumes the house as a starting-point), climbing the mountains, +exploring the woods, ravishing eyes and heart with the beauty of the +excellent world. Night comes at last, and weariness droops upon the +flesh. Enough! Even the spirit's cry finds a pause. Enough, enough! The +wide world suddenly spreads so vast that it overwhelms and frightens; +there is something pitiless in the reach of the unbounded sky. Then, as +fast as they can, the lagging feet make for a point on the hillside +where the eyes can command the valley, and swiftly, eagerly flies the +glance to one dear accustomed goal. A white house nestled among the +trees,--that is all, yet it thrills the heart with a potent summons +which mountain-peaks and sunsets do not know. Home! Ah, hurry, then! + +Down the hill, across the pasture, in at the white gate, and up the two +marble steps. The front door stands open unconcernedly. The house makes +no stir at receiving its inmate back,--its inmate whose life it has held +and brooded during his absence, waiting to reinvest him with it when he +wants it again,--but there is a quiet sense of welcome, a content of +returning, which is among the sweetest and most establishing of human +experiences. The clock ticks steadily in the hall, its hands approaching +the genial hour of supper-time. Within the open library door, the books +dream on the shelves. Little sounds of a tranquil preparation come from +the dining-room; the tea-kettle sings, the black kitten purrs. Blessed +indoors! It draws a veil gently over the tired head, bewildered with +much marveling, lays a cool hand over the eyes, says, 'Now rest, rest.' +Indoors is like the Guardian Angel in Browning's poem. + +After supper, one sits by the lamp and reads peacefully. Aunt Susan +reads, too, on the other side of the big table, and Cousin Jane sews. +The books and the pictures look on benignly, and even the furniture is +instinct with a mute eloquence of companionship. The song of the night +insects throbs without, and millers hurl themselves with soft thuds +against the windows; an owl mutters to himself in the maple tree. But +not for anything would one go out, not for anything would one leave this +glowing, brooding, protecting indoors which one has regained. After a +while, one goes upstairs and lays one's self in the safe white bed in +one's own room. The windows are open to the night, but solid walls are +all round about; and, before the sleepily closing eyes, gleam one's own +peculiar cherished belongings in the creeping moonlight. Into the very +heart of one's life one has returned at the close of the day, and there +one goes to sleep. 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in +quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.' + +And we will not? Is the discouraged clause, promptly succeeding to that +most beautiful verse of Isaiah, true, then, of us? Are we going to +despoil ourselves of all the poetry, the intimate meaning of our indoor +life? + +'A place in which to dress and undress--that is all I want of a house,' +an energetic young woman said. + +A bath-house would suit her perfectly. Perhaps that is what we are +coming to--rows of bath-houses, with sleeping-bags stored up in them +against the night. Alas for the pictures! Alas for the music! Alas for +the books! + +The books! There is a happy suggestion. I believe the books will save +us. There is certainty nothing that objects with greater decision and +emphasis to sleeping out of doors than a book--yes, even a volume of +Walt Whitman. Books are obstinate in their way; they know their own +minds, and there are some things which they will not do. The effect of +leaving one in the orchard inadvertently over night has a final +melancholy about it which most book-lovers understand poignantly. Could +books be printed on india rubber and bound in water-proof cloth? +Perhaps; but the method does not sound attractive enough to be feasible +even in these practical days. No, I believe the books will save us. They +are a great army and they have power; a steady conservative hold is +theirs on their restless owners. Other threatening situations, they have +saved and are constantly saving. + +'I sometimes think I'd give up housekeeping, and not have a home any +more,' one woman said, 'if it weren't for my books. But I can't part +with them, nor yet can I get them all into one room; so here I stay.' + +'Buy books?' exclaimed a New York man. 'No; it hurts them too much to +move them.' + +Which innocent implication has caused me many a thoughtful smile. + +Essentially human,--with the humanity of the ages, not of a few +decades,--books understand what man really wants, and what he must have, +better than he does himself. In the serene and gracious indoors, they +took up their places long ago, and there they remain, and there they +will always make shift to abide. Perhaps, if we sit down close at their +feet, we, too, may abide. + + + + +The Contented Heart + +By Lucy Elliot Keeler + + +_Coeur Content, grand Talent_, runs the motto of one of my friends; +which early led me to dub her, Contented Heart. Is it not human nature, +such easy assumption of an interesting aspiration as a fact to be +posted? As logical as to expect Mr. Short to check his stature at five +feet two; as humanly contrary as for the Blacks to name their girls +Lily, Blanche, and Pearl. They usually do. I remember a Bermudian +rector, leaning down to inquire the name of the black baby to be +christened, suddenly quickened into audibility by the mother's reply: +'Keren-Happuck, sir, yes, sir, one of the Miss Jobs, sir.' Now Job's +daughters were fairest among the daughters of men. + +Contented Heart has obsessed my mind of late. I like to take the other +side: everybody does. Does like to and does; and because the air to-day +is redolent of unrest and discontent, I put in the assertion that, +nevertheless, the great majority of my acquaintances possess that great +talent,--translate it knack, or translate it acquirement,--a contented +heart. I seldom talk intimately with anybody but I hear something like +this:-- + +'I have been visiting at the X's. What a superb place! but I do not envy +them. Think of the care and expense and the servant question. Simple as +my cot is, I honestly prefer it.' Or, 'What a fortune the H's appear to +have. It would be comfortable to get what one wants and go where one +wishes; not to worry at tax-paying time and new-suit time. Still I doubt +if they get half the enjoyment from their acquisitions that we do who +have to save and plan for ours.' Or, 'You do not use eye-glasses? How +fortunate! they are such a nuisance. But hush--such a boon. I should be +helpless without them. I am not sure but it is even a good thing to be +born with them on, so to speak. My contemporaries who are beginning to +use them are most unhappy, while glasses are just a part of my face.' +Or, 'It is a great affliction to be deaf in even one ear. The person on +that one side of you thinks you prefer the conversation of the person on +the other side. Yet, as my brother said when he saw me struggling to +make out a dull speaker's words, "Why abuse your natural advantage?" + +How do people with two good ears sleep? They cannot bury them both in +the pillow. Suppose our ears were so sensitive that we noticed every +footstep on the street! Being deaf is merely to enjoy some of the +advantages that the society to prevent unnecessary noises seeks to +confer on a normal public. We admire a beautiful face and then add, 'But +how she must hate to grow old; a tragedy of the mirror that we homely +souls are spared.' All my life I envied persons with straight noses till +I began to observe that with age the straight nose droops into a beak, +whereas the youthful tip-tilt and concavity kind straightens its end to +a fair classicism. Thus others than the Vicar of Wakefield draw upon +content for the deficiencies of fortune. + +Of course content is dilemma enough to have its two horns: the double +peaks of taking life too easily, and of taking it too hard. In his +statue of Christ, Thorvaldsen expressed his conviction that he had +reached his culminating point,--since he had never been so satisfied +with any work before,--and was 'alarmed that I _am_ satisfied.' That +'the people ask nothing better' is the slogan of the grafter. No reform +comes without its preceding period of discontent; dissatisfaction is the +price to be paid for better things; a revolutionary attitude must be +maintained. Stevenson knew a Welsh blacksmith who at twenty-five could +neither read nor write, at which time he heard a chapter of _Robinson +Crusoe_ read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat +content, huddled in his ignorance; but he left the kitchen another man. +There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine day-dreams, written and +printed and bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at pleasure. +Down he sat that day, painfully learned to read Welsh, and returned to +borrow the book. It had been lost, nor could he find another copy, only +one in English. Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length +with entire delight read _Robinson_. + +As there is a noble way of being discontented, so there is an ignoble +content. The Contented Heart is not a phrase to soothe us, but a power +to work results. It must constantly emerge upon a higher plane, or it +will fall. Few of us would be willing to retain just the personal habits +that we have now. Sir Gilbert Elliot drove his sister out of her +literary inertia when he bet gloves to ribbons that she could not write +a modern ballad on the _Flowers of the Forest_. The result is one of the +most popular songs of Scotland. There is also a sham content whose +practitioners often get their 'cumuppances' as effectively as did Thomas +Raikes. The Duchess of York led him about her garden, where was a +menagerie crowded with eagles and some favorite macaws. A herd of +kangaroos and ostriches appeared and a troop of monkeys. Next morning a +kangaroo and a macaw strolled into Raikes's bedroom. He was too much of +a courtier to tell his terror. At breakfast he said, 'If I like one +creature more than another it is a kangaroo, while there is nothing so +good for a bedroom sentinel as a strong-legged macaw.' The good Duchess +smiled pleasantly and put Raikes down in her will for two macaws. + +A certain kind of content enlivens us with the bliss of others' +ignorance. Tacitus was one of the first historians in our modern sense, +yet he described a motionless frozen sea in the north from which a hiss +is heard as the sun plunges down into it at night; and Pliny noted that +the reflection of mirrors is due to the percussion of the air thrown +back upon the eyes. Kipling laughed slyly at the traveler in India who +spent his time gazing at the names of the railway stations in Baedeker. +When the train rushed through a station he would draw a line through the +name and say, 'I've done that.' Satisfaction with our learning is +confined to no age or nation. Two Frenchmen in a restaurant showing off +their English opined, 'It deed rain to-morrow.' 'Yes, it was.' +Satisfaction with virtue was rebuked by Francis de Sales when he told +the nuns, who asked to go barefoot, to keep their shoes and change their +brains. Satisfaction with our importance recalls Harlequin, who when +asked what he was doing on his paper throne replied that he was +reigning. Satisfaction with our future is the satisfaction of the eighth +square of the chessboard where we shall all be queens together, and it's +all feasting and fun. + +I would not, as advocate of the Contented Heart, go so far as Walt +Whitman when he said that whoever was without his volume of poems should +be assassinated; but his remark suggests that extreme measures are +frequently curative. Stanislaus of Poland did not hesitate to recall to +his daughter the bad days they had undergone. 'See, Marie, how +Providence cares for good people: you had not even a chemise in 1725, +and now you are Queen of France.' To take up Dante and read about devils +boiled in pitch must by comparison cheer morbid humans. The spectacle of +tragedy in the lives of kings and favorites of the gods such as the +Greek stage presented was believed to be wholesome because beholders +thereby faced a scale of misfortune so much exceeding anything in their +own lives that their mishaps appeared of slight importance in +comparison. I know that after seeing _OEdipus Rex_ given by the three +Salvinis and others in the old amphitheatre in Fiesole, I went off +murmuring, 'What does it matter if my trunk is lost!' a state of mind to +which no slighter argument had sufficed to bring me. Surely life is too +interesting to spend it all knocking off its pretty scallops by aimless +exaggeration of small troubles, or hanging out our large ones to flap +the passer-by. Besides which, we get no more sympathy from the passer-by +than did Giant Despair who sometimes, in sunshiny weather, fell into +fits. + +Captivating as a 'born,' a fortuitous, untrained content may be, trained +content is of a finer type. One is quantity content, the other quality +content. Not to smash things up and make them over just as we want them, +which we should like to do but cannot; not to waste our time fighting +against conditions, but to take up those conditions, that environment, +and out of them forge the _oes triplex_ of a contented heart--that, I +take it, is to be an adept in the fine art of living, and I for one am +votary. + +That the most restless heart can train itself to find content in simple, +commonplace things, like work, nature, health, books, meditation, and +friends,--illustrations are bewilderingly abundant. Burne-Jones said he +would like to stay right in his own house for numberless years, the hope +of getting on with his painting was happiness enough. Macaulay would +'rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who +did not love reading'; and King James said that if he were not a king he +would be a university man, and if it were so that he must be a prisoner +he would desire no other durance than to be chained in the Bodleian +Library with so many noble authors. Carlyle's chief luxury was 'to think +and smoke tobacco, with a new clay pipe every day, put on the doorstep +at night for any poor brother-smoker or souvenir-hunter to carry away.' + +All Diogenes wanted was that Alexander and his men should stand from +between him and the sun. Goethe found content in Nature and earnest +activity; and the happy Turk told Candide that he had twenty acres of +land which he cultivated with his children, work which put them far from +great evils: ennui, vice, and need,--'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.' +Diocletian, one of the cleverest of the Roman emperors, reigned +twenty-two years and then retired to private life in Dalmatia, building, +planting, and gardening. Solicited by Maximian to resume the imperial +purple, he replied that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he +had planted with his own hands he would no longer be urged to relinquish +his enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power. Fanny Kemble lived +all summer in the Alps, the guides describing her exquisitely as the +lady who goes singing over the mountains. Pedaretus, being left out of +the election of the three hundred, went home merry, saying that it did +him good to find there were three hundred better than himself in the +city. St. Augustine on his thirty-third birthday gave his friends a +moderate feast followed by a three days' discussion of the Happy Life. +Bunyan wrote _The Pilgrim's Progress_ not to please his neighbors, but +his own self to satisfy; in prison, too. + +Catherine of Siena, whatever her sufferings, was always jocund, 'ever +laughing in the Lord.' The blind Madame du Deffand rejoiced that her +affliction was not rheumatism; Spurgeon's receipt for contentment was +never to chew pills, but to swallow the disagreeable and have done with +it; Darwin's comfort was that he had never consciously done anything to +gain applause; and Jefferson never ceased affirming his belief in the +satisfying power of common daylight, common pleasures, and all the +common relations of life. Essipoff, when commiserated on the smallness +of her hands, insisted that longer ones would be cumbersome. Robert +Schauffler's specific for a blue Monday is to whistle all the Brahms +tunes he can remember. Dr. Cuyler, when very ill, replied to a +relative's suggestion of the glorious company waiting him above, 'I've +got all eternity to visit with those old fellows; I am in no hurry to +go'; and old Aunt Mandy, when asked why she was so constantly cheerful, +replied, 'Lor', chile, I jes' wear this world like a loose garment.' + +Acts, all these, the flinging out of hand or tongue against adverse +fortune. The brain can do it, too. One of the most remarkable statements +I ever heard is Mary Antin's that she never had a dull hour in her life. +Now, outside things, doings, could not so have thrilled her days. Her +spirit kept dullness distant. On the rafters of Montaigne's tower-room +was written in Greek, 'It is not so much things that torment man as the +opinion that he has of things.' Our opinions then make the contented or +the discontented heart. Coleridge affirmed the shaping power of +imagination to be so vitally human that the joy of life consists in it. +Haydon's chief pleasure was 'feeding on his own thoughts.' 'Make for +yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts,' Ruskin urged. 'Whether God gave +the Venetians St. Mark's bones does not matter,' he says elsewhere, 'but +he gave them real joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we +have in our real ones.' Lord Rosebery urges people to garden in winter +in the imagination. Stevenson writes of the ease and pleasure of travels +in the calendar and a voyage in the atlas; and Keats thought that a man +might pass a very pleasant life by reading certain pages of poetry and +wandering with them and musing and dreaming upon them. + +It is the mood that makes the contented heart, just as the eye makes the +horizon, and we ourselves make the light that we see things by. Clothes +warm us only by keeping our own heat in. 'Everyone is well or ill at +ease,' says Epictetus, 'according as he finds himself; not he whom the +world believes but himself believes to be so is content.' To be +concrete, take riches. 'Greedy fools,' sings the modern poet, + + 'Measure themselves by poor men never; + Their standard being still richer men + Makes them poor ever.' + +The rich man is merely one who has something to spare; and the really +poor one he who has nothing over. If you can give anything you are rich. +Try it. An old man tells me how Mark Hopkins used to examine the boys in +the Westminster Catechism: 'What is the chief end of man?' 'To glorify +God and enjoy him forever.' 'Well,' he burst forth, 'why don't you do it +then?' It is not conceit, but hygiene of the soul, to 'enjoy one's +self,' taking the conventional phrase literally. The trick of happiness, +says Walt Whitman, is to tone down your wants and tastes low enough; +and Stevenson puts in his say that the true measure of success is +appreciation: 'I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment +with life than of knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue.' What would the +possession of a thousand a year avail, asks Thackeray, to one who was +allowed to enjoy it only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a +couple of nails in it? + +Take knowledge, not to be confounded with wisdom,--'I have none,' sang +Keats's thrush, 'and yet the evening listens.' It did not hurt Horace + + if others be + More rich or better read than me, + Each has his place. + +Montaigne would rather be more content and less knowing; and there is +Lessing's great confession of faith: that if God in his right hand held +all truth, and in his left the striving for truth, 'if he should say to +me, "Choose," I would say, "Father, give me this striving, pure truth is +for thee alone."' + +Take work. Do you complain of it? Try doing more, of a productive sort. +An engine-builder received complaint that his engine burned too much +coal. 'How many cars on the train?' was the telegraphed query, with the +reply, 'Four.' 'Try twelve,' went the prescription, and the train drew +twelve with economy of fuel. 'Your brain tired?' William James echoed a +student. 'Never mind, work straight on and your brain will get its +second wind.' I myself do not know of any anodyne surer and quicker +than that found in the garden. When all the world is askew, dibbling in +seedlings in straight rows is a wonderful solace. Why do so many women +treat domesticity as drudgery? Its infinite variety, so unlike the +monotonous tasks of men, often wearies the mind, but like Chesterton I +do not see how it can narrow it. And socialism, with its cry of +armchairs for workingmen! Armchairs, as Creighton nobly says, will bring +no lasting happiness; but to quicken a human being, even one's self, +into a sense of the meaning of his life and destiny, that is a real +happiness. + +Take sorrow. Is it not infinitely better to have loved and lost than +never to have loved at all? Are there not many good moments in life +which outweigh its greatest sorrows? + +Take overpressure. Luther advised Melanchthon to stop managing the +universe and let the Almighty do it; and Dr. Trumbull preached 'the duty +of refusing to do good.' + +Take the grief caused by others. One of the bravest women I know used in +times of anxiety to gather her little children about her and say gayly, +'Now I will make some graham gems, and open some marmalade, and we will +take a little comfort.' Solomon or Aristotle could have done no more. + +Take, for a smile's sake, the weather. It may be bad, but as we cannot +change it, the thing is our attitude toward it; and as dark enshrouds +us, 'The sun is set,' said Mr. Inglesant, cheerfully; 'but it will rise +again. Let us go home.' + +In such ways as these the right-minded person will meet his discontents +face to face, and one by one eliminate them. He will also take stock of +his assets. St. Teresa said that by thinking of heaven for a quarter of +an hour every day one might hope to deserve it. Why do we not +deliberately devote some minutes each day to saying to ourselves, 'I am +tolerably well; I have food and shelter; everybody so far as I know +respects me, and a few persons love me truly. I have books and a garden, +the stars and the sea. I enjoy this and that, and before long the other. +The thing so long dreaded has never come to pass. I will embark at any +rate for the land of the Contented Heart.' Would not such a conscious +recapitulation be an actual force building up this thing of which we +talk? + +Can content be conveyed? Can it be passed from one who has it to one who +has it not--as one lamp lights another nor grows less? I wonder what +would be the effect of a group of young women, lately conning over in +college class-- + + With what I most enjoy contented least-- + +if they should resolve to stop all that, and, undeterred by others' +estimate of values, be trustees of their own content, not suffering it +to be contingent upon the manners and conduct of others? I believe that +it would act like the magnet, which not only attracts the needle but +infuses it with the power of drawing others. Great-heart so inspired the +travelers that Christiana seized her viol and Mercy her lute, and, as +they made sweet music, Ready-to-Halt took Despondency's daughter, Mrs. +Much-Afraid, by the hand and together they went dancing down the road. + +Which is apropos of my contention that the Contented Heart is not so +rare! + + +THE END + +The Riverside Press + +CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS + +U. S. A. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Classics, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + +***** This file should be named 37758-8.txt or 37758-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/7/5/37758/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Atlantic Classics + +Author: Various + +Release Date: October 14, 2011 [EBook #37758] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +</pre> + +<hr class="full" /> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="347" height="550" alt="image of the book's cover" title="image of the book's cover" /></a> +</p> + +<h1>ATLANTIC<br /> +CLASSICS</h1> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/front_lg.jpg"> +<img src="images/front.jpg" width="307" height="550" alt="title page" title="title page" /></a> +</p> + +<p> +<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<p class="cb">The Atlantic Monthly Company +Boston +</p> + +<p> +<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<p class="c">COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY</p> + +<p> +<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<p class="c">TO<br /> + <br /> +The Pleasantest of Companions,<br /> +Most Constant of Friends,<br /> +Who Seeks not Flattery but Counsel,<br /> +Provoked on Occasion only<br /> +And never Vexing beyond Endurance,<br /> +Wise with Ancient Wisdom,<br /> +And Fresh from the Fountain of Youth—<br /> +THE<br /> +ATLANTIC CONTRIBUTOR</p> + +<p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Preface" id="Preface"></a>Preface</h2> + +<p class="nind">T<small>HIS</small> volume, composed of essays which on their appearance in the +<i>Atlantic</i> have met with especial favor and which from their character +seem to deserve a longer life than the paper covers of a magazine +permit, is published out of deference to a multitude of requests. Many +readers have asked that this essay or that be preserved in permanent +form, while many teachers both in college and high school have written +us that the usefulness of the <i>Atlantic</i> in the classroom would be +enhanced by the appearance of an edition which, selecting from the +selection already made from month to month, should constitute a kind of +<i>Atlantic Anthology</i>, preserving the magazine's flavor and character and +offering, as it were, a sample of what it aims to be.</p> + +<p>To give to this collection that variety which is the spice of a +magazine's life, the editor has selected a single contribution from each +of sixteen characteristic <i>Atlantic</i> authors, making his choice from +material not greatly affected by the interests of the moment. In two or +three instances appears an essay which has already been published in +some collection of an author's work, and the <i>Atlantic</i> wishes to +acknowledge with thanks permission from Houghton Mifflin Company to +print once again Professor Sharp's delightful "Turtle Eggs for Agassiz," +which has been included in his volume "The Face of the Fields," and Mr. +Nicholson's agreeable delineation of the "Provincial American"; while it +gratefully adds its acknowledgment to Henry Holt and Company for the +reappearance of Mr. Strunsky's "The Street," already published in his +inimitable little volume, "Belshazzar Court."</p> + +<p>Our chief thanks, now and always, are due to the <i>Atlantic's</i> +contributors, to whom we owe all we have or hope for. Were not our +design limited, we should gladly enrich this collection with much +material from our file, which is quite as worthy to represent the +magazine, but which, for one reason or another, we judge less suitable +for the purposes of the present volume.</p> + +<p class="r">T<small>HE</small> E<small>DITOR.</small></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS"> +<tr><th colspan="3" align="center"><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a><big>Contents</big></th></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3"> </td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Fiddlers_Errant">Fiddlers Errant</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Robert Haven Schauffler</i> </td><td align="right"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Turtle_Eggs_for_Agassiz">Turtle Eggs for Agassiz</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Dallas Lore Sharp</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_023">23</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_Father_to_his_Freshman_Son">A Father to his Freshman Son</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Edward Sanford Martin</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_045">45</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Intensive_Living">Intensive Living</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Cornelia A. P. Comer</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_059">59</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Reminiscence_with_Postscript">Reminiscence with Postscript</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Owen Wister</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_087">87</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#The_Other_Side">The Other Side</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Margaret Sherwood</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_110">110</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#On_Authors">On Authors</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Margaret Preston Montague</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_124">124</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#The_Provincial_American">The Provincial American</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Meredith Nicholson</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_130">130</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Our_Lady_Poverty">Our Lady Poverty</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Agnes Repplier</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_153">153</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Entertaining_the_Candidate">Entertaining the Candidate</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Katharine Baker</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_173">173</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#The_Street">The Street</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Simeon Strunsky</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_181">181</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#Fashions_in_Men">Fashions in Men</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Katharine Fullerton Gerould</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_201">201</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_Confession_in_Prose">A Confession in Prose</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Walter Prichard Eaton</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_225">225</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#In_the_Chair">In the Chair</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Ralph Bergengren</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_243">243</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#The_Passing_of_Indoors">The Passing of Indoors</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Zephine Humphrey</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_252">252</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#The_Contented_Heart">The Contented Heart</a></span></td><td align="right"><i>Lucy Elliot Keeler</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_265">265</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_001.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_001_sml.jpg" width="550" height="126" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Fiddlers_Errant" id="Fiddlers_Errant"></a>Fiddlers Errant<br /><br /> +<small>By Robert Haven Schauffler</small></h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p class="nind">M<small>USICAL</small> adventures largely depend on your instrument. Go traveling with +a bassoon or clarionet packed in your trunk, and romance will pass you +by. But far otherwise will events shape themselves if you set forth with +a fiddle.</p> + +<p>The moment I turned my back upon the humdrum flute and embraced the +'cello, that instrument of romance, things began happening thick and +fast in a hitherto uneventful life. I found that to sally forth with +your 'cello couchant under your arm, like a lance of the days of +chivalry, was to invite adventure. You tempted Providence to make things +interesting for you, up to the moment when you returned home and stood +your fat, melodious friend in the corner on his one leg—like the stork, +that other purveyor of joyful surprises.</p> + +<p>One reason why the 'cellist is particularly liable to meet with musical +adventures is because the nature<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> of his talent is so plainly visible. +The parcel under his arm labels him FIDDLER in larger scare-caps than +Mr. Hearst ever invented for headlines. It is seen of all men. There is +no concealment possible. For it would, indeed, be less practicable to +hide your 'cello under a bushel than to hide a bushel under your 'cello.</p> + +<p>The non-reducible obesity of this instrument is apt to bring you +adventures of all sorts: wrathful sometimes, when urchins recognize it +as a heaven-sent target for snowballs; or when adults audibly quote Dean +Swift's asinine remark, 'He was a fiddler and therefore a rogue.' +Absurd, sometimes, as when the ticket-chopper in the subway bars your +path under the misapprehension that you are carrying a double-bass; and +when the small boys at the exit offer you a <i>Saturday Evening Post</i> in +return for 'a tune on that there banjo.' But more often the episodes are +pleasant, as when your bulky trademark enables some kindred spirit to +recognize you as his predestined companion on impromptu adventures in +music.</p> + +<p>I was at first almost painfully aware of my 'cello's conspicuousness +because I had abandoned for it an instrument so retiring by nature that +you might carry it till death in your side pocket, yet never have it +contribute an unusual episode to your career. But from the moment when I +discovered the exaggerated old fiddle in the attic, slumbering in its +black coffin, and wondered what it was all about, and brought it<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a> +resurrection and life,—events began. I have never known exactly what +was the magic inherent in the dull, guttural, discouraged protests of +the strings which I experimentally plucked that day. But their +songs-without-words-or-music seemed to me pregnant with promises of +beauty and romance far beyond the ken of the forthright flute. So then +and there I decided to embark upon the delicate and dangerous enterprise +of learning another instrument.</p> + +<p>It was indeed delicate and dangerous because it had to be prosecuted as +secretly as sketching hostile fortifications. Father must not suspect. I +feared that if he heard the demonic groans of a G string in pain, or the +ghoulish whimperings of a manhandled A, he would mount to the attic, +throw back his head, look down upon me through those lower crescents of +his spectacles which always made him look a trifle unsympathetic, and +pronounce that baleful formula: 'My son, come into my study!' For I knew +he labored under the delusion that I already 'blew in' too much time on +the flute, away from the companionship of All Gaul, <i>enteuthen +exelaunei</i>, and Q.E.D. As for any additional instrument, I feared that +he would reduce it to a pulp at sight, and me too.</p> + +<p>My first secret step was to secure a long strip of paper to be pasted on +the finger-board under the strings. It was all pockmarked with black +dots and letters, so that if the music told you to play the note G,<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> all +you had to do was to contort your neck properly and remove your left +hand from the path of vision, then gaze cross-eyed and upside down at +the finger-board until you discovered the particular dot labeled G. The +next move was to clap your fingertip upon that dot and straighten out +your neck and eyes and apply the bow. Then out would come a triumphant +G,—that is, provided your fingers had not already rubbed G's +characteristically undershot lip so much as to erase away the letter's +individuality. In that case, to be sure, all your striving for G might +result only in C after all.</p> + +<p>It was fascinating work, though. And every afternoon as the hour of +four, and father's 'constitutional,' approached, I would 'get set' like +a sprinter on my mark in the upper hall. The moment the front door +closed definitely behind my parent I would dash for the attic and +commence my cervical and ocular contortions. It was dangerous, too. For +it was so hard to stop betimes that one evening father made my blood run +cold by inquiring, 'What were you moaning about upstairs before dinner?' +I fear that I attributed these sounds to travail in Latin scholarship, +and an alleged sympathy for the struggles of the dying Gaul.</p> + +<p>The paper finger-board was so efficacious that in a week I felt ready to +taste the first fruits of toil. So I insinuated a pair of musical +friends into the house<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> one afternoon, to try an easy trio. They were a +brother and sister who played violin and piano. Things went so +brilliantly that we resolved on a public performance within a few days, +at the South High School. Alas, if I had only taken the supposed +rapidity of my progress with a grain of attic salt! But my only +solicitude was over the problem how to smuggle the too conspicuous +instrument to school, on the morning of the concert, without the +knowledge of a vigilant father. We decided at last that any such attempt +would be suicidal rashness. So I borrowed another boy's father's 'cello, +and, in default of the printed strip, I penciled under the strings notes +of the whereabouts of G, C, and so forth, making G shoot out the lip +with extra decision.</p> + +<p>Our public performance was a <i>succès fou</i>,—that is, it was a <i>succès</i> +up to a certain point, and <i>fou</i> beyond it, when one disaster followed +another. My fingers played so hard as to rub out G's lower lip. They +quite obliterated A, turned E into F, and B into a fair imitation of D. +These involuntary revisions led me to introduce the very boldest modern +harmonies into one of the most naïvely traditional strains of Cornelius +Gurlitt. Now, in the practice of the art of music one never with +impunity pours new harmonic wine into old bottles. The thing is simply +not done.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, though, we might have muddled through somehow, had not my +violinist friend, during a rest,<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> poked me cruelly in the ribs with his +bow and remarked in a coarse stage whisper, 'Look who's there!'</p> + +<p>I looked, and gave a gasp. It might have passed for an excellent +rehearsal of my last gasp. In the very front row sat—father! He +appeared sardonic and businesslike. The fatal formula seemed already to +be trembling upon his lips. The remnants of B, C, D, and so forth +suddenly blurred before my crossed eyes. With the most dismal report our +old bottle of chamber music blew up, and I fled from the scene.</p> + +<p>'My son, come into my study.'</p> + +<p>In an ague I had waited half the evening for those hated words; and with +laggard step and miserable forebodings I followed across the hall. But +the day was destined to end in still another surprise. When father +finally faced me in that awful sanctum, he was actually smiling in the +jolliest manner, and I divined that the rod was going to be spared.</p> + +<p>'What's all this?' he inquired. 'Thought you'd surprise your old dad, +eh? Come, tell me about it.'</p> + +<p>So I told him about it; and he was so sympathetic that I found courage +for the great request.</p> + +<p>'Pa,' I stammered, 'sometimes I think p'raps I don't hold the bow just +right. It scratches so. Please might I take just four lessons from a +regular teacher so I could learn all about how to play the 'cello?'</p> + +<p>Father choked a little. But he looked jollier than ever as he replied, +'Yes, my son, on condition that<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> you promise to lay the flute entirely +aside until you have learned <i>all</i> about how to play the 'cello.'</p> + +<p>I promised.</p> + +<p>I have faithfully kept that promise.</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>Fiddlers errant are apt to rush in and occupy the centre of the stage +where angels in good and regular practice fear even to tune up. One of +the errant's pet vagaries is to volunteer his services in orchestras too +good for him. Not long after discovering that I would need more than +four lessons to learn quite all there was to know about the 'cello,—in +fact, just nine months after discovering the coffin in the attic,—I +'rushed in.' Hearing that <i>The Messiah</i> was to be given at Christmas, I +approached the conductor and magniloquently informed him that I was a +'cellist and that, seeing he was he, I would contribute my services +without money and without price to the coming performance.</p> + +<p>With a rather dubious air my terms were accepted. That same evening at +rehearsal I found that the entire bass section of the orchestra +consisted of three 'cellos. These were presided over by an inaudible, +and therefore negligible, little girl, a hoary sage who always arrived +very late and left very early, and myself. I shall never forget my +sensations when the sage, at a crucial point, suddenly packed up and +left me, an<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> undeveloped musical Atlas, to bear the entire weight of the +orchestra on one pair of puny shoulders. Under these conditions it was a +memorable ordeal to read at sight 'The Trumpet Shall Sound.' The trumpet +sounded, indeed. That was more than the 'cello did in certain passages! +As for the dead being raised, however, that happened according to +programme.</p> + +<p>After this high-tension episode, I pulled myself together, only to fall +into a cruel and unusual pit which the treacherous Händel dug for +'cellists by writing one single passage in that unfamiliar alto clef +which looks so much like the usual tenor clef that before the least +suspicion of impending disaster dawns, you are down in the pit, +hopelessly floundering.</p> + +<p>I emerged from this rehearsal barely alive; but I had really enjoyed +myself so much more than I had suffered, or made others suffer, that my +initial impulse to rush at sight into strange orchestras now became +stereotyped into a habit. Since then what delightful evenings I have +spent in the old Café Martin and in the old Café Boulevarde where my +'cellist friends in the orchestras were ever ready to resign their +instruments into my hands for a course or two, and the leader always let +me pick out the music!</p> + +<p>But one afternoon in upper Broadway I met with the sort of adventure +that figures in the fondest dreams of fiddlers errant. I had strolled +into the nearest hotel to use the telephone. As I passed through<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> the +restaurant, my attention was caught by a vaguely familiar strain from +the musicians' gallery. Surely this was unusual spiritual provender to +offer a crowd of typical New York diners! More and more absorbed in +trying to recognize the music, I sank into an armchair in the lobby, the +telephone quite forgotten. The instruments were working themselves up to +some magnificent climax, and working me up at the same time. It began to +sound more and more like the greatest of all music,—the musician's very +holiest of holies. Surely I must be dreaming! My fingers crooked +themselves for a pinch. But just then the unseen instruments swung back +into the opening theme of the Brahms piano quartette in A major. +Merciful heavens! A Brahms quartette in Broadway? Pan in Wall Street? +Silence. With three jumps I was up in the little gallery, wringing the +hands of those performers and calling down blessings upon their +quixotism as musical missionaries. 'Missionaries?' echoed the leader in +amusement. 'Ah, no. We could never hope to convert those down there.' He +waved a scornful hand at the consumers of lobster below. 'Now and then +we play Brahms just in order that we may save our own souls.' The +'cellist rose, saluted, and extended his bow in my direction, like some +proud commander surrendering his sword. 'Will it please you,' he +inquired, 'to play the next movement?' It pleased me.<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a></p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Fiddlers errant find that traveling with a 'cello is almost as good—and +almost as bad—as traveling with a child. It helps you, for example, in +cultivating friendly relations with fellow passengers. Suppose there is +a broken wheel, or the engineer is waiting for Number 26 to pass, or you +are stalled for three days in a blizzard,—what more jolly than to +undress your 'cello and play each of those present the tune he would +most like to hear, and lead the congregational singing of 'Dixie,' +'Tipperary,' 'Drink to me only,' and 'Home, Sweet Home'? A fiddle may +even make tenable one of those railway junctions which Stevenson cursed +as the nadir of intrinsic uninterestingness, and which Mr. Clayton +Hamilton praised with such <i>brio</i>.</p> + +<p>But this is only the bright side. In some ways traveling with a 'cello +is as uncomfortable as traveling, not only with a baby, but with a +donkey. Unless indeed you have an instrument with a convenient hinged +door in the back so that you may pack it full of pyjamas, collars, +brushes, MSS, and so forth, thus dispensing with a bag; or unless you +can calk up its <i>f</i> holes and use the instrument as a canoe on occasion, +a 'cello is about as inconvenient a traveling companion as the corpse in +R.L.S.'s tale, which would insist on getting into the wrong box.</p> + +<p>Some idea of the awkwardness of taking the 'cello<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> along in a sleeping +car may be gathered from its nicknames. It is called the 'bull-fiddle.' +It is called the 'dog-house.' But, unlike either bulls or kennels, it +cannot safely be forwarded by freight or express. The formula for +Pullman travel with a 'cello is as follows: First ascertain whether the +conductor will let you aboard with the instrument. If not, try the next +train. When successful, fee the porter heavily at sight, thus softening +his heart so that he will assign the only spare upper birth to your +baby. And warn him in impressive tones that the instrument is priceless, +and on no account to touch it. You need not fear thieves. Sooner than +steal a 'cello, the light-fingered would button his coat over a baby +white elephant and let it tusk his vitals.</p> + +<p>I have cause to remember my first and only holiday trip with the +Princeton Glee, Mandolin, and Banjo Clubs. My function being to play +solos and to assist the Mandolin Club, I demanded for the 'cello an +upper berth in the special car. But I was overwhelmed with howls of +derision and assurances that I was a very fresh soph indeed. The first +night, my instrument reposed in some mysterious recess under a leaky +cooler, where all too much water flowed under its bridge before the +dawn. The second night it was compressed into a strait and narrow closet +with brushes and brooms, whence it emerged with a hollow chest, a stoop, +a consumptive quality of voice, and the malady<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> known as <i>compressio +pontis</i>. Thereafter it occupied the same upper with me. Twice I overlaid +it, with well-nigh fatal consequences.</p> + +<p>Short-distance travel with a 'cello is not much more agreeable. In +trolleys you have to hold it more delicately than any babe, and be ready +to give a straight-arm to any one who lurches in your direction, and to +raise it from the floor every time you jolt over cross-tracks or run +over pedestrians, for fear of jarring the delicate adjustment of the +sound-post. As for a holiday crush down town, the best way to negotiate +it with a 'cello is to fix the sharp end-pin in place, and then, holding +the instrument at charge like a bayonet, impale those who seem most +likely to break its ribs.</p> + +<p>After my full share of such experiences, I learned that if you are a +fiddler errant it is better to leave your instrument at home and live on +the country, as it were, trusting to the fact that you can beg, borrow, +or rent some kind of fiddle and of chamber music almost anywhere, if you +know how to go about it.</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Only don't try it in Sicily!</p> + +<p>For several months I had buried the fiddler in the errant pure and +simple, when, one sunset, across a gorge in Monte Venere, my first +strain of Sicilian music floated, to reawaken in me all the primeval +instincts of the musical adventurer. The melody came from the<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> reed pipe +of a goat-herd as he drove his flock down into Taormina. Such a pipe was +perhaps to Theocritus what the fiddles of Stradivarius are to us. It was +pleasant to imagine that this goat-herd's music might possibly be the +same that used to inspire the tenderest of Sicilian poets twenty-three +hundred years ago.</p> + +<p>Piercingly sweet, indescribably pathetic, the melody recalled the Largo +in Dvořák's New World Symphony. Yet, there on the mountain-side, with +Ætna rosy on the right, and the purple Mediterranean shimmering far +below, the voice of the reed sounded more divine than any English horn +or Boehm flute I had ever heard singing in the depths of a modern +orchestra. And I began to doubt whether music was so completely a +product of the last three centuries as it purported to be.</p> + +<p>But that evening, when the goat-herd, ensnared by American gold, turned +himself into a modern chamber musician in our hotel room, I regained +poise. Removed from its properly romantic setting, like seaweed from the +sea, the pastoral stop of Theocritus became unmistakably a penny +whistle, with an intonation of the whistle's conventional purity. Our +captured Comatas seemed to realize that the environment was against him +and that things were going 'contrairy'; for he refused to venture on any +of the soft Lydian airs of Monte Venere, and confined himself<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> strictly +to tarantellas, native dances, which he played with a magnificent +feeling for rhythm (if not for in-tuneness) while, with a pencil, I +caught—or muffed—them on the fly. One was to this effect:—</p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_014.png"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_014_sml.png" width="550" height="619" alt="musical notation" title="musical notation" /></a> +</p> + +<p>While this was going on, a chance hotel acquaintance dropped into the +room and revealed himself as a<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> professor by explaining that the +tarantella was named for its birthplace, the old Greek city of Taranto +over yonder in the heel of the Italian boot; that dancing it was once +considered the only cure for the maddening bite of the spider known as +the Lycosa Tarantula; and that some of the melodies our goat-herd was +playing might possibly be ancient Greek tunes, handed down traditionally +in Taranto, and later dispersed over Calabria and Sicily.</p> + +<p>This all sounded rather academic. But his next words sent the little +professor soaring in our estimation. He disclosed himself as a fiddler +errant by wistfully remarking that all this made him long for two +things: his violin, and a chance to play trios. Right heartily did we +introduce ourselves as pianist and 'cellist errant at his service. And +he and I decided to visit Catania next day to scout for fiddles and +music. We thought we would look for the music first.</p> + +<p>Next day, accordingly, we invaded the largest music store in Catania. +Did they have trios for violin, violoncello, and piano? 'Certainly!' We +were shown a derangement of La Somnambula for violin and piano, and +another for 'cello and piano. If we omitted one of the piano parts, we +were assured, a very beautiful trio would result, as surely as one from +four makes three.</p> + +<p>Finding us hard to please, the storekeeper referred us to the conductor +of the Opera, who offered to rent<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> us all the standard works of chamber +music. The 'trios' he offered us turned out to be elementary pieces +labeled 'For Piano and Violin or 'Cello.' But nothing we could say was +able to persuade our conductor that 'or' did not mean 'and.' To this day +I feel sure that he is ready to defend his interpretation of this word +against all comers.</p> + +<p>We turned three more music stores upside down and had already abandoned +the hunt in despair when we discovered a fourth in a narrow side street. +There were only five minutes in which to catch the train; but in thirty +seconds we had unearthed a genuine piece of chamber music. Hallelujah! +it was the finale of the first Beethoven trio!</p> + +<p>Suddenly the oil of joy curdled to mourning. The thing was an +arrangement for piano solo! We left hurriedly when the proprietor began +assuring us that the original effect would be secured if the piano was +doubled in the treble by the violin and in the bass by the 'cello.</p> + +<p>This piano solo was the nearest approach to chamber music that a +thorough search and research revealed in the island of Trinacria. But +afterwards, recollecting the misadventure in tranquility, we concluded +that it was as absurd to look for chamber music in Sicily as to look for +'Die Wacht am Rhein' among the idylls of Theocritus.<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a></p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>S<small>CENE:</small> a city composed of one department store and three houses, on the +forbidding shores of Newfoundland.</p> + +<p>T<small>IME:</small> one of those times when a fellow needs a friend,—when he's in a +stern, strange land on pleasure bent—and has to have a check cashed. I +don't know why it is that one always runs out of ready money in +Newfoundland. Perhaps because salmon flies are such fleeting creatures +of a day that you must send many postal orders to St. Johns for more. +Perhaps because the customs officials at Port au Basques make you +deposit so much duty on your fishing tackle. At any rate, there I was +penniless, with the burly storekeeper scowling in a savage manner at my +check and not knowing at all whether to take a chance on it. Finally he +thought he wouldn't, but conceded that I might spend a night under his +roof, as there was really nowhere else to go.</p> + +<p>At this pass something made me think of music. Perhaps it was the parlor +piano which, when new, back in the stone age, had probably been in tune. +I inquired whether there were any other instruments. The wreckage of a +violin was produced. With two pieces of string and a table fork I set up +the prostrate sound-post. I glued together the bridge and put it in +position. The technique of the angler proved helpful<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> in splicing +together some strange-looking strings. The A was eked out with a piece +of salmon leader, while an old mandolin yielded a wire E.</p> + +<p>When all was at last ready, a fresh difficulty occurred to me. The +violin was an instrument which I had never learned to play! But +necessity is the mother of pretension. I thought of that check. And +placing the small fiddle carefully between my knees, I pretended that it +was a 'cello.</p> + +<p>So the daughter of the house seated herself at the relic of the stone +age, and we had a concert. Newfoundland appeared not to be over-finicky +in the matter of pitch and tone-quality. And how it did enjoy music! As +the audience was of Scotch-English-Irish descent, we rendered equal +parts of 'Comin' Through the Rye,' 'God Save the King,' and 'Kathleen +Mavourneen.' Then the proprietor requested the Sextette from <i>Lucia</i>. +While it was forthcoming he toyed furtively with his bandana. When it +ceased he encored it with all his might. Then he slipped out storewards +and presently returned with the fattest, blackest, most +formidable-looking cigar I ever saw, which he gravely proffered me.</p> + +<p>'We like' he remarked in his quaint idiom, 'to hear music at scattered +times.' He was trying to affect indifference. But his gruff voice shook, +and I knew then that music hath charms to cash the savage check.<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p> + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>This essay has rambled on an unconscionable while. The shades of +editorial night are already descending; and still I have not yet +described one of those unexpected and perfect orgies of chamber +music,—one of those little earthly paradises full of</p> + +<p class="c">Soul-satisfying strains—alas! too few,—</p> + +<p class="nind">which true fiddlers errant hope to find in each new place they visit, +but which usually keep well in advance of them, like the foot of the +rainbow.</p> + +<p>One such adventure came to me not long ago in a California city, while I +was gathering material for a book of travel. On my first evening there I +was taken to dine with a well-known writer in his beautiful home, which +he had built with his own two hands in the Spanish mission style during +fourteen years of joyous labor. This gentleman had no idea that I was to +be thrust upon him. But his hospitality went so far as to insist, before +the evening was over, that I must stay a week. He would not take no for +an answer. And for my part I had no desire to say no, because he was a +delightful person, his home with its leaf-filled patio was most +alluring, and I had discovered promising possibilities for fiddlers +errant in the splendid music-room and the collection of phonograph +records of Indian music which mine host had himself made in Arizona and +New Mexico. Then too<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> there were rumors of skillful musical vagabonds in +the vicinity.</p> + +<p>Such an environment fairly cried aloud for impromptu fiddling. So, armed +with a note to the best violinist in that part of California, I set +forth next morning on the trail of the ideal orgy. At the address given +I was told that my man had moved and his address was not known. That was +a setback, indeed! But determined fiddlers errant usually land on their +feet. On the way back I chanced to hear some masterly strains of +Bach-on-the-violin issuing from a brown bungalow. And ringing at a +venture I was confronted by the very man I sought.</p> + +<p>Blocking the doorway, he read the note, looking as bored as +professionals usually do when asked to play with amateurs. But just as +he began to tell me how busy he was and how impossible, and so forth, he +happened to glance again at the envelope, and a very slight gleam came +into his eye.</p> + +<p>'You're not by any chance the fellow who wrote that thing about fiddlers +in the <i>Atlantic</i>, are you?' he inquired. At my nod he very flatteringly +unblocked the doorway and dragged me inside, pumping my hand up and down +in a painful manner, shouting for his wife, and making various kind +representations, all at the same time. And his talk gradually simmered +down into an argument that of course the only thing to do was to fiddle +together that very night.<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a></p> + +<p>I asked who had the best 'cello in town. He told me the man's name, but +looked dubious. 'The trouble is, he loves that big Amati as if it were +twins. I doubt if he could bring himself to lend it to any one. Anyway, +let's try.'</p> + +<p>He scribbled a card to his 'cellist friend and promised, if I were +successful, to bring along a good pianist and play trios in the evening. +So I set forth on the trail of the Amati. Its owner had just finished +his noonday stint in a hotel orchestra and looked somewhat tired and +cross. He glanced at the card and then assumed a most conservative +expression and tried to fob off on me a cheap 'cello belonging to one of +his pupils, which sounded very much as a three-cent cigar tastes. At +this point I gave him the secret thumb-position grip and whispered into +his ear one of those magic pass words of the craft which in a trice +convinced him that I was in a position to dandle a 'cello with as tender +solicitude as any man alive. On my promising, moreover, to taxicab it +both ways with the sacred burden, he passed the Amati over, and the orgy +of fiddlers errant was assured.</p> + +<p>And that night how those beautiful Spanish walls did resound to +Beethoven and Dvořák and Brahms, most originally interspersed with the +voice of the Mexican servant's guitar, with strange, lovely songs of the +aboriginal West and South,—and with the bottled sunshine of Californian +hill-slopes; while El<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> Alcalde Maiore, the lone gnarled tree-giant that +filled the patio, looked in through the open windows and contributed, by +way of accompaniment, leafy arpeggios <i>sotto voce</i>. And sometimes, +during rests, I remembered to be thankful that I had once snapped my +fingers at the howling wolf, and at fat pot-boilers, while I scribbled +for the <i>Atlantic</i> that little essay on fiddlers which had gained me +this priceless evening.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_023.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_023_sml.jpg" width="550" height="117" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Turtle_Eggs_for_Agassiz" id="Turtle_Eggs_for_Agassiz"></a>Turtle Eggs for Agassiz<br /><br /> +<small>By Dallas Lore Sharp</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>T is one of the wonders of the world that so few books are written. +With every human being a possible book, and with many a human being +capable of becoming more books than the world could contain, is it not +amazing that the books of men are so few? and so stupid!</p> + +<p>I took down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the +four volumes of Agassiz's <i>Contributions to the Natural History of the +United States</i>. I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster, +had touched those volumes for twenty-five years. They are an excessively +learned, a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit of vast and +heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the +United States, and their embryology. The work was published more than +half a century ago (by subscription); but it looked old beyond its +years—massive, heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks. It was +difficult to feel that Agassiz could have written it—could have built +it, grown it, for the laminated pile<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> had required for its growth, the +patience and painstaking care of a process of nature, as if it were a +kind of printed coral reef. Agassiz do this? The big, human, magnetic +man at work upon these pages of capital letters, Roman figures, +brackets, and parentheses in explanation of the pages of diagrams and +plates! I turned away with a sigh from the weary learning, to read the +preface.</p> + +<p>When a great man writes a great book he usually flings a preface after +it, and thereby saves it, sometimes, from oblivion. Whether so or not, +the best things in most books are their prefaces. It was not, however, +the quality of the preface to these great volumes that interested me, +but rather the wicked waste of durable book-material that went to its +making. Reading down through the catalogue of human names and of thanks +for help received, I came to a sentence beginning:—</p> + +<p>'In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also +received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of +Burlington; ... from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord; ... and from Mr. +J. W. P. Jenks of Middleboro'.' And then it hastens on with the thanks +in order to get to the turtles, as if turtles were the one and only +thing of real importance in all the world.</p> + +<p>Turtles no doubt are important, extremely important, embryologically, as +part of our genealogical tree;<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> but they are away down among the roots +of the tree as compared with the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington. +I happen to know nothing about the Rev. Zadoc, but to me he looks very +interesting. Indeed any reverend gentleman of his name and day who would +catch turtles for Agassiz must have been interesting. And as for Henry +Thoreau, we know he was interesting. The rarest wood-turtle in the +United States was not so rare a specimen as this gentleman of Walden +Woods and Concord. We are glad even for this line in the preface about +him; glad to know that he tried, in this untranscendental way, to serve +his day and generation. If Agassiz had only put a chapter in his turtle +book about it! But this is the material he wasted, this and more of the +same human sort, for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro' (at the end of the +quotation) was, years later, an old college professor of mine, who told +me some of the particulars of his turtle contributions, particulars +which Agassiz should have found a place for in his big book. The preface +says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the +thousands—brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing +this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle +<i>eggs</i> to Cambridge—<i>brought</i> them, I should say; and all there is to +show for it, so far as I could discover, is a sectional drawing of a bit +of the mesoblastic layer of one of the eggs!</p> + +<p>Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that mesoblastic<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> drawing, or some +other equally important drawing, and had to have the fresh turtle egg to +draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he +wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he +gets someone else to get it. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad +and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell about the +getting of it, and so made merely a learned turtle book of what might +have been an exceedingly interesting human book.</p> + +<p>It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or +interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them. Nothing +at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find +them. So with anything else,—good copper stock, for instance, if you +should chance to want it, and should chance to be along when they chance +to be giving it away. But if you want copper stock, say of C & H +quality, <i>when</i> you want it, and are bound to have it, then you must +command more than a college professor's salary. And likewise, precisely, +when it is turtle eggs that you are bound to have.</p> + +<p>Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them—not a minute over +three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem +exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hen eggs only three +hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private +turtle-coop in Harvard Yard; and<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> provided he could have made his +turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-scraps and +the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud +turtle's nest in the back yard to the table in the laboratory; but to +get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were +laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this, in +the days of Darius Green, might have called for nice and discriminating +work—as it did.</p> + +<p>Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his <i>Contributions</i>. He +had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished +but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried +the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single +exception of one—the very earliest—that stage of first cleavages, when +the cell begins to segment, immediately upon its being laid. That +beginning stage had brought the <i>Contributions</i> to a halt. To get eggs +that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been +impossible.</p> + +<p>There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded: he might have +got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some +pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the +reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of +that—as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this +was quite out<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> of the question, he did the easiest thing—asked Mr. +Jenks of Middleboro' to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz +knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating +thing is, that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, +at least in the preface to his monumental work.</p> + +<p>It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college +professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz.</p> + +<p>'I was principal of an academy, during my younger years,' he began, 'and +was busy one day with my classes, when a large man suddenly filled the +door-way of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called +out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz.</p> + +<p>'Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to +me across the room.</p> + +<p>'Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I +get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? +Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only +once.</p> + +<p>'When I promised Agassiz those eggs I knew where I was going to get +them. I had got turtle eggs there before—at a particular patch of sandy +shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy.</p> + +<p>'Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was +thirty-five miles; from the pond to<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> the station was perhaps three or +four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty +miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and +got the trip down to two hours,—record time:—driving from the pond to +the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by +cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays.</p> + +<p>'Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we +didn't figure on was the turtle.' And he paused abruptly.</p> + +<p>'Young man,' he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding +the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, 'young man, +when <i>you</i> go after turtle eggs, take into account the turtle. No! no! +that's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle—and youth seldom +ought to. Only old age does that; and old age would never have got those +turtle eggs to Agassiz.</p> + +<p>'It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long +before there was any likelihood of the turtles laying. But I was eager +for the quest, and so fearful of failure, that I started out to watch at +the pond, fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be +expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May 14.</p> + +<p>'A little before dawn—along near three o'clock—I would drive over to +the pond, hitch my horse near<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> by, settle myself quietly among some +thick cedars close to the sandy shore, and there I would wait, my kettle +of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the +cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to +open the academy for the morning session.</p> + +<p>'And so the watch began.</p> + +<p>'I soon came to know individually the dozen or more turtles that kept to +my side of the pond. Shortly after the cold mist would lift and melt +away, they would stick up their heads through the quiet water; and as +the sun slanted down over the ragged rim of tree-tops, the slow things +would float into the warm, lighted spots, or crawl out and doze +comfortably on the hummocks and snags.</p> + +<p>'What fragrant mornings those were! How fresh and new and unbreathed! +The pond odors, the woods odors, the odors of the ploughed fields—of +water-lily, and wild grape, and the dew-laid soil! I can taste them yet, +and hear them yet—the still, large sounds of the waking day—the +pickerel breaking the quiet with his swirl; the kingfisher dropping +anchor; the stir of feet and wings among the trees. And then the thought +of the great book being held up for me! Those were rare mornings!</p> + +<p>'But there began to be a good many of them, for the turtles showed no +desire to lay. They sprawled in the sun, and never one came out upon the +sand as if<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> she intended to help on the great professor's book. The +embryology of her eggs was of small concern to her; her contribution to +the Natural History of the United States could wait.</p> + +<p>'And it did wait. I began my watch on the 14th of May; June first found +me still among the cedars, still waiting, as I had waited every morning, +Sundays and rainy days alike. June first was a perfect morning, but +every turtle slid out upon her log, as if egg-laying might be a matter +strictly of next year.</p> + +<p>'I began to grow uneasy,—not impatient yet, for a naturalist learns his +lesson of patience early, and for all his years; but I began to fear +lest, by some subtile sense, my presence might somehow be known to the +creatures; that they might have gone to some other place to lay, while I +was away at the school-room.</p> + +<p>'I watched on to the end of the first week, on to the end of the second +week in June, seeing the mists rise and vanish every morning, and along +with them vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morning vigil. +Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell together in the same clump of +cedars, and I had begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning mists +wrapping me around had at last soaked through to my bones. But Agassiz +was waiting, and the world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I +would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no use bringing a<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> china +nest-egg to a turtle; she is not open to any such delicate suggestion.</p> + +<p>'Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with dawn breaking a little after +three: a warm, wide-awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the +level surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had seen it any +morning before.</p> + +<p>'This was the day: I knew it. I have heard persons say that they can +hear the grass grow; that they know by some extra sense when danger is +nigh. That we have these extra senses I fully believe, and I believe +they can be sharpened by cultivation. For a month I had been watching, +brooding over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring of the pulse +of things that the cold-hearted turtles could no more escape than could +the clods and I.</p> + +<p>'Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, understood, I slipped +eagerly into my covert for a look at the pond. As I did so, a large +pickerel ploughed a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his +wake rose the head of an enormous turtle. Swinging slowly around, the +creature headed straight for the shore, and without a pause, scrambled +out on the sand.</p> + +<p>'She was about the size of a big scoop-shovel; but that was not what +excited me, so much as her manner, and the gait at which she moved; for +there was method in it and fixed purpose. On she came, shuffling over +the sand toward the higher open fields, with a hurried,<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> determined +see-saw that was taking her somewhere in particular, and that was bound +to get her there on time.</p> + +<p>'I held my breath. Had she been a dinosaurian making Mesozoic +footprints, I could not have been more fearful. For footprints in the +Mesozoic mud, or in the sands of time, were as nothing to me when +compared with fresh turtle eggs in the sands of this pond.</p> + +<p>'But over the strip of sand, without a stop, she paddled, and up a +narrow cow-path into the high grass along a fence. Then up the narrow +cow-path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into +the high, wet grass along the fence.</p> + +<p>'I kept well within sound of her, for she moved recklessly, leaving a +trail of flattened grass a foot and a half wide. I wanted to stand +up,—and I don't believe I could have turned her back with a rail,—but +I was afraid if she saw me that she might return indefinitely to the +pond; so on I went, flat to the ground, squeezing through the lower +rails of the fence, as if the field beyond were a melon-patch. It was +nothing of the kind, only a wild, uncomfortable pasture, full of +dewberry vines, and very discouraging. They were excessively wet vines +and briery. I pulled my coat-sleeves as far over my fists as I could get +them, and with the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to +avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, on after the turtle.<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a></p> + +<p>'She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this +dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to, +warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me, at a clip +that was thrilling. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down +across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on +to a fence along a field of young corn.</p> + +<p>'I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before, +wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a +large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle +stop, and begin to paw about in the loose, soft soil. She was going to +lay!</p> + +<p>'I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried this place, and that +place, and the other place—the eternally feminine!—But <i>the</i> place, +evidently, was hard to find. What could a female turtle do with a whole +field of possible nests to choose from? Then at last she found it, and +whirling about, she backed quickly at it, and, tail first, began to bury +herself before my staring eyes.</p> + +<p>'Those were not the supreme moments of my life; perhaps those moments +came later that day; but those certainly were among the slowest, most +dreadfully mixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours +long. There she was, her shell just showing, like some old hulk in the +sand alongshore. And<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> how long would she stay there? and how should I +know if she had laid an egg?</p> + +<p>'I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over the freshly awakened +fields, floated four mellow strokes from the distant town clock.</p> + +<p>'Four o'clock! Why, there was no train until seven! No train for three +hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this +was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o'clock train,—none +till after nine.</p> + +<p>'I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun +crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were +the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! And I cleared the fence, and +the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge, at a single jump. He +should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven +o'clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any +horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and upsetting the +astonished turtle, I scooped out her round, white eggs.</p> + +<p>'On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care +my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so +with another layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand, +I ran back for my horse.</p> + +<p>'That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he +was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> turned out of that field into the +road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling +me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between +my knees.</p> + +<p>'I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to +Cambridge! or even half way there; and I would have time to finish the +trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, the +pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the +bang on them, as we pounded down the wood road, was terrific. But +nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned +over in the sand before they came to Agassiz.</p> + +<p>'In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away +from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and +were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of +me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick sharp whistle of a +locomotive.</p> + +<p>'What did it mean? Then followed the <i>puff</i>, <i>puff</i>, <i>puff</i>, of a +starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet +for a longer view, I pulled into a side road, that paralleled the track, +and headed hard for the station.</p> + +<p>'We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind +the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It +was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> topping +a little hill I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring +from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its +swift run down the rails.</p> + +<p>'My horse was on the gallop, going with the track, and straight toward +the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me—the bare thought +of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half—a quarter +of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced +field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine.</p> + +<p>'With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the +field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should +carry me and my eggs to Boston!</p> + +<p>'The engineer pulled the rope. He saw me standing up in the rig, saw my +hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, +and he jerked out a succession of sharp halts! But it was he who should +halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the +carriage on top of the track.</p> + +<p>'The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a +standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down +the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard +the cab.</p> + +<p>'They offered no resistance; they hadn't had time. Nor did they have the +disposition, for I looked<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, +dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby +or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand.</p> + +<p>"'<i>Crazy</i>," the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue.</p> + +<p>'I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now.</p> + +<p>'"Throw her wide open," I commanded. "Wide open! These are fresh turtle +eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before +breakfast."</p> + +<p>'Then they knew I was crazy, and evidently thinking it best to humor me, +threw the throttle wide open, and away we went.</p> + +<p>'I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field, +and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold +myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled +through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, +while the other kept his hand upon a big, ugly wrench. Neither of them +spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of +their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head +of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as +perhaps the easiest way of disposing of me.</p> + +<p>'I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that +station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next; +when it came over me that this was the through freight, which<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> should +have passed in the night, and was making up lost time.</p> + +<p>'Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands +with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I +was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my +diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the +engineer, with a look that said, "See the lunatic grin; he likes it!"</p> + +<p>'He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails! +How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the +fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just +ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of +the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by +the mile!</p> + +<p>'I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of +Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,—luck,—luck,—until the +multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming "luck! +luck! luck!" They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless +wheels was doing its very best to get the eggs to Agassiz!</p> + +<p>'We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun +from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the +cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the +engineer watching me narrowly. I was not<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> in Boston yet, nor in +Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and +forced it to carry me to Boston.</p> + +<p>'Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men +should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I +would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to +Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left, in +which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my +captors. But it was too late. Nothing could avail against my actions, my +appearance, and my little pail of sand.</p> + +<p>'I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes +caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my +full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all +night with a tiny, tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the +decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning!</p> + +<p>'I began to feel like a hunted criminal. The situation was serious, or +might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way +have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply.</p> + +<p>'Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freightyard, the train slowed +down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but I had no chance. They +had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch +again. What time we had made! It was<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> only six o'clock, with a whole +hour to get to Cambridge.</p> + +<p>'But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes—ten—went by.</p> + +<p>"'Gentlemen," I began, but was cut short by an express train coming +past. We were moving again, on—into a siding; on—on to the main track; +and on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the +length of the train; on at a turtle's pace, but on,—when the fireman, +quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, +and—the chance had come!</p> + +<p>'I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of +the track, and made a line for the yard fence.</p> + +<p>'There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were +after me. Evidently their hands were full, and they didn't know I had +gone.</p> + +<p>'But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when +it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my +pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over—a very wise +thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open +square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club—looking +for me.</p> + +<p>'I flattened for a moment, when some one in the yard yelled at me. I +preferred the policeman, and<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> grabbing my pail I slid over to the +street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of +sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab!</p> + +<p>'Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, +and squared away. I waved a paper dollar at him, but he only stared the +more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar. +I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab, +calling, "Cambridge!"</p> + +<p>'He would have taken me straight to the police station, had I not said, +"Harvard College. Professor Agassiz's house! I've got eggs for Agassiz"; +and pushed another dollar up at him through the hole.</p> + +<p>'It was nearly half-past six.</p> + +<p>'"Let him go!" I ordered. "Here's another dollar if you make Agassiz's +house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!"</p> + +<p>'He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on +a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down +the wood roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and +crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we +took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in +Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons.</p> + +<p>'Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, +and on over the cobble-stones,<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> we went. Half standing, to lessen the +jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not +daring to let go even to look at my watch.</p> + +<p>'But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to +seven o'clock it might be. The sweat was dropping from my nose, so close +was I running to the limit of my time.</p> + +<p>'Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dove forward, ramming my head into +the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the +small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs +helter-skelter over the floor.</p> + +<p>'We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house; and without taking time to +pick up the scattered eggs, I tumbled out, and pounded at the door.</p> + +<p>'No one was astir in the house. But I would stir them. And I did. Right +in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid.</p> + +<p>'"Agassiz," I gasped, "I want Professor Agassiz, quick!" And I pushed by +her into the hall.</p> + +<p>'"Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go +'way, sir!"</p> + +<p>'"Call him—Agassiz—instantly, or I'll call him myself."</p> + +<p>'But I didn't; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great, +white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick, loud +voice called excitedly,—<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a></p> + +<p>'"Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!"</p> + +<p>'And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic +gown, came sailing down the stairs.</p> + +<p>'The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with +both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a +swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my +trembling hands ticked its way to seven—as if nothing unusual were +happening to the history of the world.'</p> + +<p> +<br /> +</p> + +<p>'You were in time then?' I said.</p> + +<p>'To the tick. There stands my copy of the great book. I am proud of the +humble part I had in it.'<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_045.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_045_sml.jpg" width="550" height="119" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="A_Father_to_his_Freshman_Son" id="A_Father_to_his_Freshman_Son"></a>A Father to his Freshman Son<br /><br /> +<small>By Edward Sanford Martin</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span>O doubt, my son, you have got out of me already what there was to help +or mar you. You are eighteen years old and have been getting it, more or +less and off and on, for at least seventeen of those years. I regret the +imperfections of the source. No doubt you have recognized them. To have +a father who is attentive to the world, indulgent to the flesh, and with +a sort of kindness for the Devil—dear son, it is a good deal of a +handicap! Be sure I make allowances for you because of it. <i>Ex eo +fonte—fons</i>, masculine, as I remember; <i>fons</i> and <i>mons</i> and <i>pons</i>, +and one other. Should the pronoun be <i>illo?</i> As you know, I never was an +accurate scholar, and I suppose you're not—<i>Ex eo fonte</i> the stream is +bound to run not quite clear.</p> + +<p>My advice to you is quite likely to be bad, partly from the imperfection +of its source, partly because I am not you, and partly because of my +imperfect acquaintance with the conditions you are about to meet. When I +came to college my father gave me no advice. He gave me his love and +some necessary money, which<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> did not come, I fear, as easy as the love. +His venerable uncle who lived with us—my great uncle—gave me his +blessing and told me, I remember, that so far as book-learning went, I +could learn as much without going to college. Still he did not +discourage my going. He was quite right. I could have got more +book-learning out of college than I did get in college, and I suppose +that you, too, might get, out, more than you will get, in. Of course, +that's not the whole story; neither is it true of all people. For me, +college abounded in distractions, and I suppose it will for you. And I +was incorrigibly sociable and ready to spend time to get acquainted, and +more, to stay acquainted, and if you have that propensity you needn't +think it was left on the doorstep. You come by it lawfully. Getting +acquainted is, for most of us, one of the important branches. But it's +only one of them, and to devote one's whole time to it is a mistake, and +one that the dean will help you avoid if necessary, which probably, if I +know you at all, it won't be.</p> + +<p>It is important to know people, but it is more important to be worth +knowing. College offers you at least two valuable details of +opportunity: a large variety of people to know, and a large variety of +means to make yourself better worth knowing. I hope, my son, that you +will avail yourself of both these details.</p> + +<p>This is a mechanical age, and the most obtrusive of<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> the current +mechanisms is the automobile. It has valves and cylinders and those +things that give it power and speed, and rubber tires that it runs on, +and a wheel and steering-gear and handles and treadles by which it is +directed. Your body, especially your stomach, is the rubber tires; your +brains are the cylinders and valves; and your will and the spiritual +part of you are the chauffeur and his wheel.</p> + +<p>I beg you to be kind to your stomach, as heretofore. It needs no alcohol +at your time of life—if ever—and the less you find occasion to feed +into it, the more prosperous both your physical and mental conditions +are likely to be. I am aware that life, and college life in particular, +has its convivial intervals; but you might as well understand (and I +have been remiss, or have wasted time, if you do not understand it +already) that alcohol is one of the chief man-traps, abounding in +mischiefs if you play with it too hard. Be wary, always wary, with it, +my son, and especially with hard liquor.</p> + +<p>Your mind, like your body, is a thing whereof the powers are developed +by effort. That is a principal use, as I see it, of hard work in +studies. Unless you train your body you can't be an athlete, and unless +you train your mind you can't be much of a scholar. The four miles an +oarsman covers at top speed is in itself nothing to the good, but the +physical capacity to hold out over the course is thought to be of some<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> +worth. So a good part of what you learn by hard study may not be +permanently retained, and may not seem to be of much final value, but +your mind is a better and more powerful instrument because you have +learned it. 'Knowledge is power,' but still more the faculty of +acquiring and using knowledge is power. If you have a trained and +powerful mind, you are bound to have stored it with something, but its +value is more in what it can do, what it can grasp and use, than in what +it contains; and if it were possible, as it is not, to come out of +college with a trained and disciplined mind and nothing useful in it, +you would still be ahead, and still, in a manner, educated. Think of +your mind as a muscle to be developed; think of it as a searchlight that +is to reveal the truth to you, and don't cheat it or neglect it.</p> + +<p>As to competitive scholarship, to my mind it is like competitive +athletics,—good for those who have the powers and like the game. Tests +are useful; they stimulate one's ambition, and so do competitions. But a +success in competitive scholarship, like a success in competitive +athletics, may, of course, be too dearly bought. Not by you, though, I +surmise, my son. If you were more urgent, either as a scholar or as an +athlete, I might think it needful to warn you not to wear your tires out +scorching too early in life. As things are, I say to you, as I often say +to myself: Don't dawdle; don't scramble. When you work, work;<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> when you +play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the time.</p> + +<p>When you get hold of an instructor who is worth attention, give him +attention. That is one way of getting the best that a college has to +offer. A great deal you may get from books, but some of the most +valuable things are passed from mind to mind, and can only be had from +some one who has them, or else from the great Source of all truth. I +suspect that the subtle development we call 'culture' is one of those +things, and the great spiritual valuables are apt to come that way.</p> + +<p>You know you are still growing, both in mind and body, and will continue +so to be for years to come,—I hope, always. One of the valuable things +about college is that it gives you time to grow. You won't have to earn +any money and will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself +and others, as well as with some of the wisdom that is spread upon the +records. You would be so engaged, more or less, in these years, wherever +you might be. But in college, where you are so much your own man, and +are freed from the demands and solicitudes of your parents, the +conditions for it are exceptionally favorable. I suppose that is one +thing that continues the colleges in business, since I read so often +that at present they are entirely misdirected and teach the wrong things +in the wrong way.<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a></p> + +<p>But nobody denies that they give the young a breathing spell. Breathe, +my son; breathe freely. Remember that the aim of all these prospective +processes is to bring out the man there is in you, and arm him more or +less for the jousts ahead. It is not to make you over into somebody +else: that can't be done,—not in three or four years, anyhow; but only +to bring out, and train as much as possible of you. There's plenty in +most of us if we can only get it out; more, very much more, than we ever +do get out. So will you please think of college as a nursery in which +you are to grow a while,—and mind you do grow,—and then, presently, to +be transplanted. It is not as if college was the chief arena of human +effort. Nevertheless, for your effort, while you are there, it is the +chief arena, and I am far from giving you the counsel to put off trying +until you leave.</p> + +<p>I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how +important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of +scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall +still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are +more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment. +They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and +chances the clubs involve; so bad it may be to be in this one; so bad to +be out of that; so much choice there is between them, and so much +choice<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> exercised within them, by which any mother's hopeful may be +excluded.</p> + +<p>There is a democratic ideal of a great college without any clubs, where +the lion and the lamb shall escort one another about with tails +entwined, and every student shall be like every other student, and have +similar habits and associates. This ideal is a good deal discussed and a +good deal applauded in the public press. Whether it will ever come true +I can't tell, but there has been some form or other of clubs in our +older colleges, I suppose, for one or two centuries, and they are there +now and will at least last out your time; so it may be you will have to +take thought about them in due time.</p> + +<p>Not much, however, until they take thought of you.</p> + +<p>You see, clubs seem to be a sort of natural provision, just as tails +were, maybe, before humanity outgrew them. I guess there is a propensity +of nature toward groups, and the natural basis of grouping seems to be +likeness in feathers and habits. The propensity works to include the +like and, incidentally but necessarily, to exclude the unlike. Whether +it is the Knights of the Round Table or the Knights of the Garter or the +Phi Beta Kappa, you see these principles working. The measure of success +in a club is its ability to make people want to join it, and that seems +to be best demonstrated and preserved by keeping most of them out.</p> + +<p>Now the advantages of the clubs are considerable.<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> To have a place +always open where you can hang up your hat, and where a hospitable +welcome always awaits you, and where there is enough of a crowd and not +too much, and where you can in your later years inspect at all times a +family of selected undergraduates,—all that is valuable and good, and +pleasant besides, and this continuity of interest that the clubs foster +among their members helps to keep up in those members a lively and +helpful interest in their college. The drawback to the clubs is their +essential selfishness, and their disposition to take you out of a large +family and limit you to a small one, and one that is not yours by birth, +or entirely by choice, but is selected for you largely by other persons.</p> + +<p>In any club you yield a certain amount of freedom and individuality, the +amount being determined by the degree in which the club absorbs you. +Don't yield too much! Don't take the mould of any club! A college is +always bigger than its clubs, and the biggest thing in a college is +always a man. The object of being in college is to develop as a man. If +clubs help in that development,—and I think they do help some +men,—they are a gain; but, of course, if they dwarf you down to the +dimensions of a club-man, they are a loss. Some men take their club +shape, such as it is, and find a sufficient satisfaction in it. Others +react on their clubs, take what they have to give, add to it what is to +be had elsewhere, and turn out rather more<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> valuable people than if they +had had no club experience.</p> + +<p>At all events, don't take this matter of the clubs too hard. For those +youths, comparatively few, who by luck and circumstances find themselves +eligible to them, they are an interesting form of discipline or +indulgence, and I will not say that they are unimportant. Neither would +I have you keep out of them because of their drawbacks. If you begin by +keeping out of all things that have drawbacks, your progress in this +world will involve constant hesitations. Alcohol has numerous drawbacks, +but I don't advise you to be a teetotaller. Tobacco has drawbacks, but I +believe you smoke it. Money has drawbacks, and so has advertisement. +But, bless you, we have to take things as they come and deal with them +as we can. The trick is to get the kernel and eliminate the shuck. A +large proportion of people do the opposite. If you can manage that way +with the clubs,—provided you ever get a chance,—you will be amused to +observe in due time how large a proportion of your brethren value these +organizations chiefly for their shuck, and grasp most eagerly at that. +For the shuck, as I see it, is exclusiveness, which is not valuable +except to persons justly doubtful of their own merits. Whereas the +kernel is the fellowship of like minds which has always been treasured +by the wise.</p> + +<p>The clubs, my son, some more than others, are recruited<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> considerably +from what is known as the leisure class. To be sure, I don't see any +very definite or important leisure class about in our land. Everybody +who amounts to anything works, and always did and must, for you can't +amount to anything otherwise; but the people who have money laid up +ahead for them, are apt to work somewhat less strenuously than the rest +of us, and not so much for money. Don't get it into your head that you +want to tie up to the leisure class, or that the condition of not having +to work is desirable. Have it in mind that you are to work just about as +hard as the quality of your tires and cylinders will warrant. Plan to +get into the game if you have to go on your hands and knees. Plan to +earn your living somehow. Don't aim to go through life spoon-fed; don't +aim to get a soft seat. If you do, you won't have your fair share of +fun. There is no real fun in ease, except as you need it because you +have worked hard.</p> + +<p>I say, plan to earn your living! Whether you actually earn the money you +live on, makes no great difference, though in your case I guess you'll +have to if you are going to live at all well. But if you get money +without earning it, it leaves you in debt to society. Somebody has to +earn the money you spend. In mine, factory, railroad, or office, +somebody works for the money that supports you. No matter where the +money comes from, that is true: somebody has to earn<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> it. If you get it +without due labor of your own, you owe for it. Recognize that debt and +qualify yourself to discharge it. Study to put back into the world +somewhat more than you take out of it. Study to be somewhat more than +merely worth your keep. Study to shoulder the biggest load your strength +can carry. That is life. That is the great sport that brings the great +compensations to the soul. Getting regular meals and nice clothes, and +acceptable shelter and transportation, and agreeable acquaintances, is +only a means to an end, and if you accept the means and shirk the end, +the means will pall on you.</p> + +<p>I said 'agreeable acquaintances.' A very large proportion of the +acquaintances you can make will be agreeable if you can bring enough +knowledge and a sufficiently hospitable spirit to your relations with +them. I don't counsel you to cultivate the arts of popularity, for they +are apt not to wash,—apt, that is, to conflict with inside qualities +that are vastly more valuable than they are. But keep, in so far as you +can, an open heart. There is no one to whom you are not related if only +you can find the relation; there is no one but you owe him a benefit if +you can see one you can do him.</p> + +<p>Don't be too nice. It is such an impediment to usefulness as stuttering +is to speech,—a sort of spiritual indigestion; a hesitation in your +carbureter. By all means, be a gentleman, in manners and spirit, in<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> so +far as you know how, but be one from the inside out.</p> + +<p>If you had come as far as you have in life without acquiring manners, +you might well blush for your parents and teachers. I don't think you +have, but I beg you hold on to all the good manners you have, and get +more. Good manners seem to me a good deal to seek among present-day +youth, but I suppose they have always been fairly scarce, and the more +appreciated for their scarcity. Tobacco manners are uncommonly free and +bad in this generation; more so, I think, than they were in mine. Since +cigarettes came in, especially, youths seem to feel licensed to smoke +them in all places and company. And the boys are prone to too much ease +of attitude, and lounge and loll appallingly in company, and I see them +in parlors with their legs crossed in such a fashion that their feet +might almost as well be in the ladies' laps.</p> + +<p>Have a care for these matters of deportment. Be strict with yourself and +your postures. Keep your legs and feet where they belong; they were not +meant for parlor ornaments. Show respect for people! Lord bless me! the +things I see done by males with a claim to be gentlemen: tobacco-smoke +puffed in women's faces; men who ought to know better, smoking as they +drive out with ladies; men who put their feet on the table and expect +you to talk over them! Show respect for people; for all kinds of people, +including yourself, for<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> self-respect is at the bottom of all good +manners. They are the expression of discipline, of good-will, of respect +for other people's rights and comfort and feelings. I suppose good +manners are unselfish, but the most selfish people might well cultivate +them, they are so remunerative. In the details of life, in the public +vehicles, in crowds, and in all situations where the demand presses hard +on supply, what you get by hogging is incomparably less than what you +get by courtesy. The things you must scramble and elbow for are not +worth having; not one of them. They are the swill of life, my son; leave +them to swine.</p> + +<p>You will have to think more or less about yourself, because that belongs +to your time of life, provided you are the sort that thinks at all. But +don't overdo it. You won't, because you will find it, as all healthy +people do, a subject in which over-indulgence tends rapidly to nausea. +To have one's self always on one's mind is to lodge a kill-joy; to act +always from calculation is a sure path to blunders.</p> + +<p>Most of these specific counsels I set down more for your entertainment +than truly to guide you. You don't live by maxims any more than you +speak by rules of grammar. You will speak by ear (improving, I hope, in +your college environment), and you will live by whatever light there is +in you, getting more, I hope, as you go along.</p> + +<p>Grow in grace, my son! If your spirit is right, the<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> details of life +will take care of their own adjustment. Go to church; if not invariably, +then variably. They don't require it any more in college, but you can't +afford not to; for the churches reflect and recall—very imperfectly to +be sure—the religion and the spirit of Christ; and on that the whole of +our civilization rests. Get understanding of that. It is by far the most +important knowledge in the whole book, the great fountain of sanity, +tolerance, and political and social wisdom, a gateway to all kinds of +truth, a rectifying and consoling current through all of life.<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_059.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_059_sml.jpg" width="550" height="132" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Intensive_Living" id="Intensive_Living"></a>Intensive Living<br /><br /> +<small>By Cornelia A. P. Comer</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span><small>AID</small> Honoria casually,—</p> + +<p>'When I was in town yesterday, I went to see Adelaide in her new house.'</p> + +<p>The others looked up alertly, Martha from her darning, Grace from her +Irish crochet.</p> + +<p>'Oh, really? And how did you like the house?'</p> + +<p>Honoria hesitated, looking to the wide view for clarification. The three +sat on a cottage veranda in the foothills of Southern California, one +February day. In front of them the landscape ran, laughing, down-hill to +the sea. Spread beneath them like a map were thirty miles of town and +country: orange orchards brave with fruit; eucalyptus groves appealing +to the sky; friendly roofs inclosed in deep-sheltering trees; great open +spaces where the wind moved free; round-topped hills, green near at hand +(for the rains had come and gone thus early), changing to a dusky blue +out yonder where the bright Pacific flashed at the end of the long, +delightful view. For love of this prospect Martha had lately left steep, +sturdy hills, brown<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> brooks, elm-shaded streets and old friends, girding +at herself as she did so. Honoria had lived here many years, while Grace +was but a winter's guest in Honoria's home, whose hospitable brown +gables, low and wide-spreading, were visible beyond the cypress hedge +encircling Martha's cottage.</p> + +<p>'It is a good-looking mansion. She had a capable architect. The building +is Tudor,—consistent, graceful, well proportioned. For two people it is +a very large house indeed, but it is a good house, and I see perfectly +how Adelaide means it to express the idea of dignified, comfortable +living. The decorator was not bad of his kind, either.'</p> + +<p>'All this sounds like praise,' said Grace, 'yet I feel that you are +keeping something back. What is the matter with Adelaide's house?'</p> + +<p>Again Honoria hesitated.</p> + +<p>'It seems ungracious to find fault with such a perfectly worthy +performance, yet I came away chilled and uncomfortable, almost unhappy, +indeed. Thinking about the matter on the way home, it became clear to me +at last that the house is too large for Adelaide's personality. You know +how perfectly she pervaded that old house of hers. Old-fashioned, in +some respects inconvenient, with far less perfect fittings, it still was +thoroughly delightful, for where the rugs failed or the draperies +faltered, Adelaide's personality somehow stepped in and eked out all +insufficiencies, corrected<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> all errors. It was hers entirely. In this +blameless achievement of architect and decorator, there are no +insufficiencies to be eked out, and so Adelaide's personality seems to +slip and slide helplessly upon a kind of glacial surface which it cannot +penetrate and make its own. I may be expressing myself very poorly, but +I know I have hold of something real. Adelaide's new house, good-looking +as it is, is not interesting,—that is what I mean,—and even the dear +woman herself seems less interesting, and less herself now that she is +enfolded in it.'</p> + +<p>'Did you know,' interposed Martha, 'that the first winter in a new house +the heating actually requires more coal than is ever needed again?'</p> + +<p>'No, I didn't know that—but I can well believe it. Why shouldn't it +take more coal to warm it when it evidently takes more vitality to cheer +it? It's a serious business, this breaking in of a large house to one's +self late in life, as so many Americans do. The draughts upon their +vital forces are more taxing than the coal bills.'</p> + +<p>'We all ought to live in inherited homesteads,' suggested Grace,'where +the humanizing of the bricks and mortar has been done for us by our own +people.'</p> + +<p>'Honoria,' Martha demanded, ignoring this unpractical suggestion, 'tell +me the truth! If you were in Adelaide's place and had <i>carte blanche</i> to +incarnate your idea of a house for yourself and your family,<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> wouldn't +you over-build and over-decorate too? I should enjoy doing it! The +furniture in my bungalow is altogether too sketchy at present, and I am +tired of eking it out with personality. You would feel differently if +you hadn't brought your old mahogany when you came West!'</p> + +<p>Honoria set a few stitches, and looked at her friends with eyes in which +conviction flamed.</p> + +<p>'I don't over-dress, and I don't over-eat, though I have abundant +opportunity,' she said, 'but it may be that I would over-build and +over-decorate, or at least that I would have done so until yesterday. I +don't think I would do it to-day—now that I know what ails Adelaide's +house. As for your bungalow, Martha, it is comfortable and it is alive. +There isn't a picture on the wall nor an ornament on the mantel that +hasn't a reason for being exactly where it is. That is triumph, and you +know it. I don't believe you would really exchange your house for +Adelaide's.'</p> + +<p>'Try me and see! I would like just for once to ignore beauty and +suitability, and go in for size and sheer, luxurious comfort.'</p> + +<p>'You would go distracted in two weeks in a place that was "sheer, +luxurious comfort" and nothing else,' returned Honoria decidedly. 'You +would hate it as you hate everything smug and fat and complacent. I have +known you too long, Martha, not to know the ways of you with a house. To +satisfy you, a domicile<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> has to be livable. If you consider all the +houses, little and big, of your friends, you will see that there are +fixed limits to the amount of space in them that is truly and pleasantly +habitable. You can't get the lovable "lived-in look" in rooms where you +do not actually live, and you can't live all over a house that is bigger +than your needs. Why! life isn't long enough, especially if you seldom +stay at home! Think how dreary are most of the great houses we know. +Consider Mrs. King's new marble palace with its commanding site and its +ninety rooms. There isn't a single spot in it except her own bed-room +and sitting-room that wouldn't give your spirit a congestive chill if +you sat there for an hour. I know a woman in Colorado who so loathed her +big new house as it left the hands of a New York decorator, that she +would have moved back into the old one if she hadn't been afraid of her +friends' laughter. And, Grace, even inherited homesteads are sometimes +as difficult as uncongenial kin. Old houses have ways and wills of their +own.'</p> + +<p>'Houses <i>are</i> curious things,' said Grace. 'We take a morsel of +illimitable space and wall it in and roof it over. Suddenly it ceases to +be part of God's out-of-doors and becomes an entity with an atmosphere +of its own. We warm it with our fires, we animate it with our +affections, we furnish it with such things as seem good in our eyes. We +do this to get shelter for our<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> bodies, but we acquire as well an +instrument for our spirits that reacts on us in its turn.'</p> + +<p>'In other words,' returned Honoria, warming to her subject, 'as we live +our way into a house, adapting it to our need, the bricks and mortar, +the paint and plaster, cease to be inert matter and become alive. +Superficial sociologists have taunted woman with being "more anabolic or +plant-like" than man, but I count it her second glory. The plant is an +organism that "slowly turns lifeless into living matter," and this is +the thing that woman has done from the beginning with her shelter! In +our houses we achieve almost an organic extension of our very selves. +That is part of what I was trying to say. But, obviously, there should +exist some reasonable ratio between the self and its extensions. I take +it, the modern multitude of overgrown mansions, like the Kings' or the +Clays' or even Adelaide's smaller dwelling,—all these places whose +owners never find out why they are not at home in them,—are symptoms of +our modern disease of materialism. The essence of that disease is the +desire to grasp more matter than the spirit can fully animate. That the +infection can lay hold on Adelaide shows how all-pervading it is, +gripping the just as well as the unjust. When I saw her tired and +dissatisfied; when I felt the lack of charm and quality in the house, +and remembered how full of both her old house and garden had been, I +tried to think it out. It all works around<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> to just this: you can't have +quality, you can't have charm in your material environment unless you +put them into it yourself. It is a plain question of your ability to +choose, arrange and vitalize things. And the latter requisite is by far +the most important of the three. For I have really seen, with these +eyes, poor, mean rooms where absolutely nothing was beautiful or +noteworthy, so charged with a gracious and comforting personality that +you forgot their shabbiness and said, "What a home-like place!" Please +note that that is the adjective we always use of places that draw us by +their personality—as if personality and nothing else were the essence +of home.</p> + +<p>'Now Adelaide's old house had personality; it was completely vitalized. +It was all under her hand, and as high as her heart. But Adelaide's big +new house is as yet barren and chilly, for it is not vitalized at all. +Of course I know that after she has lived in it longer, it is bound to +improve, because it is her nature to humanize and modify all her +surroundings. But the crucial question is—<i>how big a house can she +humanize?</i> Something bigger than a cottage probably—but certainly +something much smaller than a hotel. The longer I looked at this +question, the more it seemed to me that unconsciously I had put my +finger on the vital query that, in the ideal state, should underlie all +property, all education, all privilege.</p> + +<p>'I have been talking about houses,—they are the<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> most intimate, the +most organic of a woman's possessions,—but the argument applies to all +we own. It is the mark of our era to want more of everything than we can +use, yet when we get the Too-Much we demand, we are crushed by it, as +Tarpeia was crushed by the shields.'</p> + +<p>'I have often thought' said Grace, 'that the sheer, brute mass of +life—of people to know, of books to read, of plays to hear, of pictures +to see, of things to do, buy, learn, enjoy—within reach of the +well-to-do person in the modern world, far outruns the capacity of any +human being to take it in and make of it the sane whole that a life +should be.'</p> + +<p>'Yes—yet we go crazily on, trying to expand to illimitable +possibilities, thinking we shall be happier so soon as we have discarded +all our present belongings and opportunities for bigger, newer, richer +ones. How many people do you know who have not met a substantial +increase of income with a corresponding enlargement of their whole scale +of living, a senseless expansion sometimes out-running their increased +ability to provide for it? There is no future but chaos for a society +with such ambitions. They are centrifugal and can only lead to +disintegration.</p> + +<p>'The truth is, we have no notion of the value and necessity of a +doctrine of limitations. Just as an illustration—not once in all the +mass of matter printed in the last twenty years about the gyro-car, the +aeroplane<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> or other inventions capable of enormous swiftness, have I +seen the faintest intimation that human beings could not intelligently +direct a speed of two hundred miles an hour—yet the railroads are now +tardily discovering that the capacity of engineers is seriously taxed by +sixty miles!</p> + +<p>'Don't mistake my meaning. I am not preaching the moral value of +poverty. I am no convert to asceticism. That method of ridding one's +self of the overweight of the material life is too extreme to the +correct solution. I am simply calling attention with all my might to the +æsthetic and vital value of Not-Too-Much. I am not afraid of Enough. I +am greatly afraid of Too-Much. And the reason I am afraid is this:—</p> + +<p>'Just as the capacity of the human stomach is limited to a certain +quantity of food, so also is limited the capacity of the human spirit +for appropriating and assimilating property in its different forms. +Beyond a certain somewhat variable point, material possessions <i>do the +holder no more good</i>. The common saying, "All you get in this world is +your board and clothes," is the popular acknowledgment of this +restricted capacity. The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds +good as regards the property of the mind—education, cultivation, +æsthetic satisfactions—just as it does of material goods. There is a +definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. Beyond that +limit, possession is a detriment.'<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a></p> + +<p>'The direct result of helping ourselves to too much of anything is to +coarsen and degrade. We can see this clearly as regards the primal +necessity of food. Nature promptly writes it, in large letters, all over +the man or woman of gross appetites.'</p> + +<p>'It is as plainly printed, if in smaller type, on the faces of those who +want too much of other things,—houses, notoriety, money, power,—what +you will. The porcine brand is there, however disguised. Personally, I +fear the Mark of the Pig as I fear nothing else on earth. Shaler says +that certain lines of evolution terminate in such grotesque effects that +one almost believes the guiding thought behind the process was humorous. +I never see a stye with its squealing, shouldering inhabitants, without +thinking how tremendously satiric it is—a master-caricature of human +greed, not over-drawn! And I say, "Brother Pig, Heaven grant that I keep +my voracities better concealed than thou."'</p> + +<p>Her companions regarded Honoria, in type thin, nervous, ardent, with a +keen and vivid face. The comparison was certainly not apparent—but the +heart knoweth its own gluttonies.</p> + +<p>'You are doing fairly well at it thus far,' said Martha dryly. 'What's +the next step in your argument, Honoria?'</p> + +<p>'Since our capacity is limited, and since to glut ourselves beyond it +burdens and degrades, clearly the<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> thing for each individual with +intelligence to do is to find out where, for him, lies the golden point +beyond which riches turns to the poverty of burden. When even the wise +and earnest Adelaides get their houses too big and don't know what is +the matter, it is time to formulate the principles of First Aid to the +Prosperous. I believe the point from which the women of the comfortable +classes should attack the problem of a saner living is this doctrine of +limitation and selection, and that we should attack it first of all in +our homes.</p> + +<p>'Now, we human beings really do something to our immediate material +surroundings which I can best describe as charging them with our +personality. With the revolution of the days, personality accumulates in +the things we handle and love and live with, much as electricity gathers +upon the accumulator of a static machine with the revolution of the +plates. This idea has always been popular with the poets and artists, +but people who advance it in everyday life always do so apologetically, +with the air of saying, "I know this is slightly fantastic, but doesn't +it seem true?" Yet most housekeepers know its utter truth. I never +doubted from the time I consciously began to care for old furniture, old +rugs, old china—all the beautiful cast-offs of vanished lives—that a +vast part of their charm was atmosphere, something imparted to them by +the affection of those forgotten ones and now inhering,<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> for the +perceptive vision, in their very substance. The craftsman of those elder +days is not the only creator of the beauty that has come down to us. +Whoever has loved another's work has thereby added something to it. Is +it not so? And I, in my turn, ought to be beautifying my belongings for +those who come after me.'</p> + +<p>Grace and Martha nodded readily enough, for this doctrine needs no long +expounding to any woman who has lived her way into her material +possessions, and distilled atmosphere from them for the comfort of her +household. She knows what she has done, and knows, though she says +little about it, that this business of turning lifeless into living +things is one of her important natural functions.</p> + +<p>'When I studied physics,' Honoria went on, 'I learned that science had +been compelled to posit ether, an all-pervading, absolutely elastic, +wave-bearing substance, to explain the commonest facts of our physical +experience. Later yet, I learned that the passage of thought-waves +through ether had found defenders among men of the exact sciences. +Naturally I said to myself, "Ah, the scientists are growing 'warm.' +Next, they will be demonstrating some of the things women have always +known. They will show how we send out vibrations that get caught and +entangled in our intimate belongings, never to be wholly freed again. +The thing will be worked out and demonstrated like a<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> problem in +geometry. Doubtless they will be measuring everybody's wave-lengths and +teaching children in the Eighth Grade easy ways of charging their +belongings with their personality so unmistakably that stealing will +have to become a lost art." Well! They haven't done it yet. In fact, +they don't seem so near doing it as they once did. The mechanism of the +process by which I take a chair fresh from Grand Rapids and in the +course of years make it <i>my</i> chair and no other woman's, is a secret +still, but I don't have to argue with anybody who ever had a favorite +chair that the thing is as I have stated it. Neither do I have to argue +that I could not so appropriate and make my own the output of an entire +factory. It must be equally obvious that the dignified, proper +environment for me and my family contains what we can thus make our own, +and not much more.'</p> + +<p>'Of course there are people,' said Martha reflectively, 'the routine of +whose living demands large and formal apartments, impossible to do +anything with from your point of view.'</p> + +<p>'Assuredly there are such people,' Honoria admitted, 'just as there are +people whose entertaining must be in the line of banquets rather than +little dinners. I am not predicating a world full of model cottages, +even though I think it might prove the happiest world. Still, outside of +official circles, the need of state drawing-rooms is certainly not +general, and it is of the very<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> gist of my argument—my argument isn't +all developed yet, Martha, don't think it!—that for the sake of +developing a finer and more individual quality in our possessions, we +should cut off some superfluous ones. Please listen patiently while I +carry the idea to its logical limit, even though that limit lies beyond +the bounds of practicability.</p> + +<p>'Economists profess that, in an ideal distribution of goods, each man +would have as much as he could consume without waste. But this takes no +account of the differing needs of men, developed through ages of the +upward struggle, nor of their different capabilities of turning goods to +account. If you are going to dabble at all in theories of ideal +distribution, why not have one that is genuinely ideal—that is, +non-material? <i>The true distribution would require that each man should +possess what goods he could animate and vitalize.</i> Even so, how vastly +would possessions differ in amount and quality!</p> + +<p>'If life could be adjusted on this basis, it would automatically become +simplified, charged with beauty and with character. We should slough off +ugly and useless possessions, or, if we retained through affection +things ugly in themselves, that very affection would impart to them a +certain importance and distinction. We should then, at least, live in a +world in which everything had significance. Think of the infinite +satisfaction of that!'<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a></p> + +<p>'What do you mean when you say, "if life could be adjusted on this +basis," Honoria?' Grace inquired. 'Are you implying some kind of a final +socialistic state which calls for an omniscient Distributor of Goods who +shall know how much each man can vitalize?'</p> + +<p>'Really, Grace, I am not a fool, even when I am evolving a reformed +society!' returned Honoria promptly. 'Most conceptions of an improved +state demand God for their Chief Executive and an enormous force of +government officials with the fine honor which, thus far, has only been +developed in human nature by conditions entirely different from those +the visionaries are forecasting. Unquestionably we have fallen into the +habit of thinking that if we only pass a law, any wrong at which we aim +is regulated. In fact, however, so long as that law only expresses the +practice of a minority, its enforcement will be evaded. Legislation +without character is as helpless as a motor without fuel,—and my little +reform, like every other effective change, must proceed from within +outward.</p> + +<p>'So I believe that if I wish to live in a world where nobody has more +food, clothes, houses, wealth, power, than he can make significant and +vital use of, it is up to me to remake my own life on that basis first. +I am, if not the only woman whom I can reform, at least the most +suitable subject for my experimentation. And I admit that I have too +many possessions. Sometimes I am ridden to exhaustion by the care of my +"things,"<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> modest as they are when compared to the goods of my +neighbors. I know that if thousands of people did not feel as I do, the +"simple life" slogan would never have acquired the popularity it had +some years ago. We no longer hear much of the simple life, but we need +it increasingly. Personally, I am persuaded that the method I am trying +to set forth is workable.</p> + +<p>'Why shouldn't a human being, seeking to get the most out of life, take +lessons from the husbandman seeking to get the richest returns from the +soil? It used to be thought that to cultivate many acres superficially +was the way to feed the world and enrich the farmer. But the study of +the soil as a science has taught us that we must resort, instead, to the +intensive farming which gives greater returns from reduced acreage. What +is true of the returns earth makes to our granaries, is true of the +returns life makes to our spirits. We need a science of intensive living +that we may get the larger crop from the smaller field. It will be +worked out by women, and it must begin in their domain, which still is, +in spite of the sociologists, the home.'</p> + +<p>'The Norwegian maid who cared for my rooms at the hotel last winter had +figured out something of the sort for herself,' said Grace. 'After I had +put a few bits of things about, she said to me, "I like dis room. It +looks like Norway. Dere iss more moneys in America, but in Norway t'ings +iss more pretty. Even de<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> kitchen iss good to see. Dere iss shelves an' +copper cooking-dishes all shiny, all so happy-looking. I like dem way +best. It iss better not so much moneys to haf, but to be more happy wit' +one's t'ings!"'</p> + +<p>'That is the doctrine in a nutshell! In its poorer, more restricted +days, the world learned that secret of the art of living, and it still +lingers in corners that our blatant, crashing "civilization" passes +by—so that a Norwegian peasant's daughter may know far more than an +American girl "who has always had everything" about the priceless secret +of being "happy wit' one's t'ings." It is the richest knowledge a woman +can possess.'</p> + +<p>'What is the real rock-bottom reason why people go on piling up money +after they have enough?' Martha demanded.</p> + +<p>'I imagine,' said Honoria, 'that excessive accumulation is a form of +egotism. Now, if public opinion, the race-ideal, or what you please, +once demanded that we vitalize all our possessions; if it were once +admitted to be unspeakably gross to demand more property than we can +animate, as gross as it now is to over-eat, then the stress upon +possession would be transferred at once from "How much" to "How," and +large possessions would really become what some of the undistinguished +rich now fondly imagine them to be—a direct and sensitive register of +the finer qualities.'</p> + +<p>Martha suddenly and irresistibly chuckled.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a></p> + +<p>'I have a story for you, Honoria,' she said. 'A lot of ranchers over +there,' she vaguely gestured toward the southwest across the hills, +'have grown suddenly rich, raising sugar beets, and have bought +motor-cars and other paraphernalia proper to their improved condition. +One of them was heard to say, "I b'lieve these college graduates that +teach school 'round here really think they're as good as us rich folks." +That is the real attitude of your "undistinguished rich" toward the +gifts of culture and the finer qualities!'</p> + +<p>'Honoria,' said Grace, 'haven't the sages always said, "Give me neither +poverty nor riches"? Why should your propaganda succeed where Job and +Socrates have failed? Job lived a long while ago! If the race were going +to be converted to his view, the process ought to be more advanced. You +will need very strong arguments for your doctrine of limitations.'</p> + +<p>'Arguments are to be had for the picking up,' returned Honoria. 'What +kind will you have? Reasonable limitation on the material side always +brings some amazing flowering of mind or spirit like the blossoming of a +root-bound plant. If you want a racial argument, consider the Irish—the +poorest people in Europe and <i>therefore</i> the richest in spirit. Poverty +forced them to concentrate their attention upon their neighbors; there +resulted an astonishing increase in sympathy, wit, and general +humanness.—If you want an argument from Art, consider the Middle Ages. +Peering out of a narrow<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> world, hemmed in by ignorance and squalor, the +mediæval artist caught sight of beauty and immediately loved it with +such fervent, personal passion that everything he made in its image was +vital and wonderful. As his world broadened in the Renaissance, much of +his art grew florid and meaningless, lacking that marvelous, intimate +quality of the earlier, restricted day.—If you want an argument from +literary material, there's the <i>Picciola</i> of Saintine. You can make an +imperishable literary masterpiece out of a convict's love for a tiny +plant struggling up between two stones in a prison-yard, but you cannot +make men listen to tales of great possessions. The interest in Monte +Cristo centres upon the process of <i>acquirement</i>, and it is the same in +any successful money-romance. Midas is only fit to point a moral, never +to adorn a tale.—If you want an argument from philology, consider that +the diminutives in every language show the lesser thing to be the dearer +thing, always. Remember Marie Antoinette and the Little Trianon! +Consider the increasing specialization in science—science which always +falls on its feet! I know a thousand arguments! The thing I am in need +of is converts!'</p> + +<p>'If you could get them,' said Martha, 'there might really be a Woman's +Reformation, only it would begin at home instead of at the polls.'</p> + +<p>'What other permanent thing is there in life but the hearthstone? +Nations rise and fall, laws and institutions<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> come and go—but that +remains, the one fixed point in human society. I take it, therefore, it +is the one point from which the lever can successfully be brought to +bear on human society. If anything is to be moved or altered, the force +must be applied there.'</p> + +<p>'But human society <i>has</i> changed, Honoria,' urged Grace. 'Look at all +our new powers and possessions! Steam and electricity have remade the +world, and we are not yet adjusted to the alteration. No generation ever +lived under our conditions; thus we have no traditions for handling our +new environment. No heritage of ancestral wisdom tells us what of the +hundreds of new opportunities to accept, what to reject. Save in so far +as we are thinking beings—and that is not very far—we are as much at +the mercy of our desires as babies in a toy-shop, grabbing now this and +now that, heaping up a lapful of futilities and calling it a life.'</p> + +<p>'Yes. But why should we make steam and electricity serve our greed only? +Why use them chiefly to darken the world and make life a horror? Dare +you affirm that we women and our demands are not at the very centre of +the tragic tangle of modern living? Isn't all this horrible speeding-up +of business largely an outgrowth of our exactions? What do men do +business for, anyhow, except to get us what we want! Homes are to other +material possessions what souls are to the bodies—the centre from which +the life<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> moves outward. If there is no greed in the home, is there not +bound to be less greed in the offices?'</p> + +<p>'I'm not so sure, Honoria,' Grace returned. 'No amount of intensiveness +in the home would eliminate man's love of power for its own sake.'</p> + +<p>'Perhaps. Yet isn't the lust for power a secondary development? We begin +by being greedy because we want things; we keep on after we have more +things than we know what to do with, because greed has created the +power-lust. It is the aftermath from that ugly root. If the pressure the +home puts on the man for money were suddenly slackened all along the +line, above the point of poverty, might not the matter of unseemly +accumulations correct itself? If we women of the more favored classes +avowedly undertook to give quality to our belongings, instead of +demanding belongings which we hope will confer quality upon us, there +would surely be both a lessening in the stress of life and an +improvement in its texture. I can think of nothing else but the Golden +Rule that would help to solve so many menacing problems, such as the +high cost of living, the commercialization of life, and the divorce +problem. Oh, it would be very far-reaching, that attitude, if we could +only achieve it!'</p> + +<p>'Why wouldn't plain Christianity do all your reforming, and do it +better?' demanded Martha abruptly.</p> + +<p>'Assuredly it would—if Christianity were more<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> generally a condition +instead of a theory among us. I wouldn't undertake to say off-hand why +the sanctions of common sense seem more precious to the present +generation than the sanctions of religion, when in so many points they +are identical, but I must conform my theorizings to the fact. Yet with +all our neglect of religion the traditions of the spirit have not +changed! They are the same from everlasting to everlasting. And one of +the things the nineteenth century most wonderfully made clear was that +the evolution of the spirit is the thing Nature has been seeking for +hundreds of millions of years. I don't suppose that age-long process +with the tremendous impetus of all creation behind it is really going to +be upset by the turmoil of one materialistic generation. But I do +believe that if we go with the current of materialism, we and all our +works shall be tossed aside as refuse, thrown into Nature's garbage-can. +I tell you, I can't bear the disgrace of it.'</p> + +<p>'Honoria, you almost persuade me to be intensive,' said Grace, 'but I am +not reconciled to the doctrine at one point—the question of beauty. I +admit that one cannot vitalize a lot of senseless luxury. I admit, too, +that comfort and a certain amount of beauty can always be successfully +domesticated and charged with personality, as you phrase it, and that +the result is completely satisfying. But is one never to indulge one's +self in <i>all the beauty money will buy</i>, never to have<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> everything of an +absolute perfection? You are against great houses, but there is Mountly +House, at home. It is big, but so beautiful that you are at home in it +all over. What of it, and others like it?'</p> + +<p>'Big and beautiful it is, but it is on my side of the argument, none the +less. If you remember, the architect was also the decorator. It is the +triumph of his imagination. He designed it as a background for a woman +of opulent beauty and domestic tastes. He ransacked Europe for the +furnishings, tapestries, all sorts of exquisite, ancient things. He was +a great artist and he created a work of art. The family fit into the +picture more or less awkwardly. It is his house, not theirs at all. And +I truly believe that the ultimate purpose of our houses excludes our +going up and down another's stairs.</p> + +<p>'Yet I believe in all the beauty one can vitalize. It is essentially +wholesome. It does not lend itself to morbid demands. The collector's +passion looks like greed, and doubtless for a time it is greed. But, +sooner or later, Too-Much sickens them. Their adorable possessions teach +them there is profanation in having more wonderful things than they can +enter into personal relation with. Therefore the inevitable end of all +overgrown collections is the museum or the auction-room. I have seen it +too often not to know it is true!—If you want a perfect illustration of +this in literature read Mrs. Wharton's <i>The Daunt Diana</i>. It<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> cuts down +like a knife to the essential fact that our relations with beauty must +be limited enough to have the personal quality. And—don't you +see?—this automatic destruction of greed that beauty finally teaches to +the collector, is the same automatic destruction of it that I dare think +intensive living in our homes might bring to all greed. It is a proof of +the theory on another plane.'</p> + +<p>'I think one might own a Mountly House without greed,' persisted Grace +wistfully. 'Having no house at all, I naturally refuse to think of +myself as ending my days in any less perfect domicile. What do you mean +by the "ultimate purpose" of our houses?'</p> + +<p>'Ah! that,' said Honoria, with a quick indrawing of her breath, 'is the +very core of all my thought, and I don't know how to make you see it!'</p> + +<p>She rose abruptly and walked to the end of the veranda. She stood there +a while, looking across at the spreading gables of her own brown +bungalow, with the yearning on her face that only house-mothers know. +Yonder was her home. Set on a mighty shoulder of the earth, facing the +sunset and the sea, it clung to the soil as the brown rocks cling. +Behind it were the mighty Sierras with their crests of snow; before it, +the sweetest land God ever smiled upon; within it, all the treasures of +her eyes, her mind, her heart. Just as it stood there in the February +sun, it was an abode compact of love, of aspiration, of desire. The +ancient<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> love of man for his shelter had gone into it, and the love of +woman for the place of her appointed suffering. Desire for beauty and +hope of peace were in its making. Its walls had heard the birth-cries; +her children had played about its doors; out from it had been borne her +dead. Inconsiderable speck on the vast hill-shoulder that it was, it +could defy time and the elements, even as she defied them, for she had +given it of her own immortality.</p> + +<p>'I have not yet said it all,' she said a little thickly. 'It is hard to +say, even to you. I have found an attitude of mind, a path, a way of +life I call intensive, for lack of a better name, and I believe in it, +not only because it increases my sane satisfaction in living, but also +because it finally leads <i>out</i>—out of all this tangle of our material +lives, into the eternal spaces.</p> + +<p>'I see the world of men's business activities chiefly as a place of +wrath and greed, and yet even the most grasping must be blindly seeking +through their greed an ultimate satisfaction—not more houses or more +automobiles, or railroads, or mines, or even power, but something dimly +apprehended as beyond all these and more than they—something that is +good and that <i>endures</i>. For we all want the Enduring Thing. One man +sees it here, another there. As for me, I see it in my house. I tell +you, the Greeks and Romans did not make a religion of the hearthstone; +they merely recognized the religion that the hearthstone <i>is</i>. Under +that<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> quiet roof I have learned that it is a woman's business to take +stones and make them bread. Only she can make our surroundings live and +nourish us.</p> + +<p>'Beyond the need for bread, a woman's needs are two; deeper than all +cravings save the mother's passion, firm-rooted in our endless past, is +the heart-hunger. The trees that sweep my chimney have their roots at +the world's core! The flowers in my dooryard have grown there for a +thousand years! What millenniums have done, shall decades undo? We are +not so shallow, so plastic as that! We will go into the mills, the +shops, the offices, if we must, but we know we are off the track of +life. Neither our desire nor our power is there.</p> + +<p>'I have talked glibly enough about restricting superfluous possessions +for the sake of developing a finer quality in those we have; I have said +only personality gives that quality to our surroundings—but I have not +said the final thing. It is this: I believe that in the humble business +of loving the material things that are given to us to own and love, in +shaping our homes around them, in making them vital and therefore +beautiful, so that they serve our spirits in their turn, we are not only +making the most of our resources in this life, but are doing more than +that. Somehow, I cannot tell you how, I know that we are <i>getting them +across</i>—into the timeless places! In making them vital we are making +them enduring.<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a></p> + +<p>'Christ tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What did +that mean to you when you were young? I thought it meant a procession of +self-denials and charities, more or less lifeless because the offering +was made slightly against the grain! I had no idea that when I loved +somebody very much or pitied somebody very much, when I shared my heart +or shared my roof eagerly, that I was doing the commanded thing. Still +less did I realize, when I worked hard to make my home more comfortable +or more beautiful, that I was sending vibrations from my everyday world +right into the eternal one—every deed an actual hammer stroke on my +house not made with hands. But so sure as that our mortal shall put on +immortality, I now hold it that what we first find in the eternal world +will be the things into which we have unstintingly flung our vitality, +our <i>feeling</i>, while we are briefly here.</p> + +<p>'<i>Here we have no continuing city</i>. But when I am making my house live, +I and no other, putting into it as I best may something of the serenity +of Athens and the sacredness of Jerusalem and the beauty of Siena, then +it is taking its place beside my greater loves. Then I am creating a +home, not only in this world, but in the next. I have put something over +into the eternal world that fire cannot burn, nor floods destroy, nor +moth and rust corrupt. It is safe, even from myself, forever! No Heaven +can be holy to me if I have<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> not made this spot holy. I shall not ask, +even from the mercy of the Merciful, a heavenly mansion if I have failed +to make this earthly dwelling live. Eternity begins beside my hearth, +shaped by my will. A woman knows!'<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_087.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_087_sml.jpg" width="550" height="121" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Reminiscence_with_Postscript" id="Reminiscence_with_Postscript"></a>Reminiscence with Postscript<br /><br /> +<small>By Owen Wister</small></h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>OT</small> alone because of their good meat and drink are three meals shrined +at the heart of these following impressions. Singly, each one did +delightfully engage the palate, but the three together speak appealingly +to sentiment. It is of a great house, a little inn, and of the fair +region round about them that I shall mainly discourse—and whether I do +or don't give a final <i>x</i> to the name of the house, there are people and +documents to say I have spelt it wrong: which comes very near to saying +that both ways are right. The <i>x</i> shall remain, the majority seems to +favor it, and I at once beg that you share my relish of these posturing +Renaissance lines, written by royal command in honor of Chenonceaux:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">Au saint bal des dryades,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">A Phœbus, ce grand dieu,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Aux humides nayades</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">J'ai consacré ce lieu.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a></p> + +<p>This highly plaster-cast lyric was recited during the 'triomphe' held at +Chenonceaux to celebrate the arrival there of François II and Mary +Stuart. The hostess was as distinguished as her visitors; and never, +before I went to Chenonceaux, did I associate naiads and dryads and +poems of welcome with Catherine de'Medici. But we must allow this +monstrous personage an eye for good houses. She preferred Chenonceaux to +all her dwellings—she preferred it so much, indeed, that she made +another lady get out of it, exchanging for it the decidedly inferior +residence of Chaumont. And we have Catherine to thank (I fear) for the +strangely felicitous fancy that placed upon the arches built from the +rear of the house to the farther side of the river by her rejected +predecessor, Diane de Poitiers, that enchanting hall or gallery, which +rises three stories high, if you count the nine windows in the steeply +and gracefully pitched slate roof.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">Basti si magnifiquement</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Il est debout, comme un géant,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Dedans le lit de la rivière,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">C'est-a-dire dessus un pont</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Qui porte cent toises de long.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>These verses bump down heavily upon the bridge, and, despite their +scrupulous statistics as to its length, they scarcely measure the +excellence of Chenonceaux, but rather the gap between French verse and +French architecture in the sixteenth century. Villon could<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> have come +nearer the mark; but Villon was long gone before the ancient mill on the +river Cher was transfigured by its purchaser into the château he did not +live to complete. 'S'il vient à point' said Thomas Bohier, and he graved +it in many ornamental places of his edifice, 'me souviendra.'</p> + +<p>And here am I writing his name and thinking about him, three hundred and +ninety-two years after his death. What a pleasant reason for being +remembered! What a quietly illustrious introduction to posterity: the +originator of the mansion whose sheer beauty brought a succession of +kings and queens and other great people to sojourn in it, whose walls +have listened to the blandishments of François I, the sallies of +Fontenelle and Voltaire, the sentimentalities of Rousseau. Do their +ghosts walk here upon these terraces? Do they meet in the long gallery +over the Cher? If they don't, they are less wise in the next world than +they were in this. Almost might one envy some figure in a well-preserved +piece of tapestry, hanging in any hall or chamber here and commanding a +view out of any window that looked up or down the placid river. +Embroidered thus for ever, amid high company, ladies and gentlemen of +importance with hawks and feathers and armor and steeds richly +caparisoned, ministered to by esquires and serfs, one would exist +admired, valued, and carefully dusted. Daily sight-seers from all lands +would be conducted into one's presence (Sundays included,<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> 10-11 A.M., +2-6 P.M.), thus animating one's feudal leisure with sufficient variety. +There one would be, an acknowledged masterpiece, for ever aloof from the +unstable present, nevermore driven to enlist against the restless evils +of the world. The trouble is, somebody from Pittsburg might buy one. Now +I could no more brook living as tapestry in America than I could live as +an American in Europe, expatriated and trivially evaporating amid +beauties and comforts that were none of my native heritage.</p> + +<p>Do you know the country where Chenonceaux stands? Do you know the river? +Have you ever gone there from Tours, or come there the opposite way, +from Bourges through Vierzon and Montrichard?</p> + +<p>The region shares a secret with certain rare people, whom all of us are +glad to count among our acquaintance. Certain men and women, immediately +on our first meeting them, make us desire to meet them again; not +because they have uttered remarkable thoughts or reminded us of Venus or +Apollo: perhaps they have said nothing that you and I couldn't say, and +we may know people much better looking. But they radiate—what is it +that they radiate? We feel it, we bask in it, it flows over us. It isn't +sunlight or moonlight, but a fairy-light of their own. When these +shining creatures come into the room, happiness enters with them. How do +they do it? It gets us nowhere to say that there is 'something' in the +tone of their voice, or<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> 'something' in the look of their eyes: what is +the something? I'm glad I don't know; mystery is growing so scarce, that +I am thankful for anything which cannot be explained.</p> + +<p>Now this rare quality (and don't flatter yourself that you understand it +because you happen to know its name) is possessed not only by men and +women, but also by places; and, no more than with people, has it +anything to do with their being remarkable or beautiful. The White +Mountains in New Hampshire haven't a trace of it; it fills the mountains +of North Carolina; there is almost none along our Atlantic seaboard, but +it hangs over and haunts nearly every foot of our Pacific Coast.</p> + +<p>Whenever one of these happy spots has been long known to man, man has +invariably cherished it in word and deed. His chronicles celebrate it; +he sets it lovingly like a jewel in his romances, dramas, verse, prose, +song; he graces it with his best in architecture; his roads and gardens +bring it alike into his hours of work and of ease; in fine, he garlands +it with his imagination, weaves it into his life century after century, +until it comes to smile upon him from the heart of his History and +Literature, as well as upon his daily present. That is what mankind has +done beneath the spell of a place which has charm.</p> + +<p>Thus Touraine to the Frenchman,—<i>beau pays de Touraine</i>, as the page in +Meyerbeer's <i>Huguenots</i> sings<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> of it in that opera's second act, which +takes place at Chenonceaux. I suppose—indeed I remember—that rain +falls in that country; yet, when I think about it, sunshine invariably +sparkles through the picture—not the kind that glares and burns, but +the kind that plays gently among leaves and shores and shadows; sunshine +upon the twinkling, feathered silver of the poplars, the grapes in +sloping vineyards, the green islands and tawny bluffs of the Loire, the +quiet waters of the Indre and the Cher; a jocund harmony seems to play +about the very names,—Beaulieu, Montrésor, Saint-Symphorien,—but were +I to begin upon the music in the names of France, I should run far +beyond the limits of Touraine and of your patience. Say to yourself +aloud, properly, Amboise, Châteaurenault, La Chapelle-Blanche, +Saint-Martin-le-Beau, and then say Naugatuck, Saugatuck, Pawtucket, +Woonsocket, Manayunk, Manunkachunk, and you will catch my drift. +Stevenson's joy in our names was at bottom purely that of the collector.</p> + +<p>But have you ever seen the Loire and its tributary realm? I have already +owned myself (together with all other men) as unable to explain the +mystery of charm. No Niagara is hereabouts, nor Matterhorn, nor anything +you could call sublime; nothing so lustrously beautiful as Bar Harbor, +or the Berkshire Hills. Wildness is wholly absent, but so is tameness +too. It is somehow through its very moderation that<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> the glamour of this +land is wrought. But we must nicely distinguish between the poetry and +the prose of moderation: Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is perfectly +moderate, and is also the type and pattern of hundreds of thousands of +square, comfortable, unoffending miles in the United States which you +would never wish to see again—indeed which you would never wish to see +once; whereas, even as I write, I am homesick for Touraine, though it +isn't my home.</p> + +<p>Once again I must draw the parallel between human qualities and the ways +of our mother earth. We place at the top of our esteem those people who +take chivalrously the heavy blows of life, who are not brave merely, but +gallant. We draw scant inspiration from the sight of somebody who is all +too obviously and dutifully bearing something; who goes, day after day, +with a set and sombre expression that says as plainly as words: 'Just +watch me carrying my Cross. Just wait till you have one.' We prefer +those whose gayety so conceals the fact that they're behaving well, that +we should never suspect it, did we not know what they have passed, and +are passing, through. Thus also does Touraine conceal the tears and the +blood she has known. Louis the Eleventh, Catherine de' Medici, the +gibbet balcony of the Salle des Armes at Amboise, the iron cage and the +black dungeons of Loches,—Touraine, with her smiling, high-bred +elegance, keeps all this to herself, and gives you a bright welcome. +Often<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> as she has been the scene of Tragedy, often as the glaive and not +the lute has been the instrument of her drama, she might well look in +her glass and exclaim with Richard the Second,—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Hath sorrow struck</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">So many blows upon this face of mine,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And made no deeper wounds?</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Wearing no crape, betraying no scars, hinting naught of its dark +experience of life, this realm, this <i>beau pays</i>, more than any in +Europe, to my thinking, lies in the true key of high comedy, of masque +and pastoral. If, here and there above its trees or upon its hills, the +brooding frown of some tower, the gaunt stare of some donjon in ruins, +fierce with memories, brings one up short, so that in joy's mid-current +some smack of the bitter wells up—this is not Nature's doing. Look away +from these works of man to the feathered poplars, the vineyards, the +gentle waters, and see the earth's countenance, smiling and serene. +Decorous it is always; only the irregularities of the Loire and its +channel seem to bear any reference to the conduct of those beautiful +historic ladies who dispersed their reputations in the vicinity. Even +man did not always build a Langeais or a Loches. Urbane and gracious +amid their parks or on their bluffs rise those dwellings planned when +France's architectural genius was in its happiest mood—though not its +loftiest. They look like the good society which once assembled in them;<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> +their mere aspect suggests the wits, the brilliant talkers and listeners +of a day when conversation was a living art still, the day which +furnishes us even now with those letters and memoirs which are the +dainty wainscotting and mantelpieces, the interior decorations of +Literature. You may wander almost anywhere among the poplars and the +chestnuts in the valleys of the Loire's quiet tributaries; you can +hardly go wrong; if the turrets of Ussé against their rising woodland do +not regale your eye, it will be Azay-le-Rideau, or something less +famous, or, best of all, Chenonceaux, to which I now return.</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>I saw it first upon an afternoon when no air was stirring, even in the +poplars, when the green of Touraine was changing to gold: golden fruit, +pears, and apples, where summer's fruit had been; golden leaves +flickering down from high branches, or raked into golden heaps; while +the faint, sweet smoke of burning twigs hovered in the autumn day. It +was the moment and scene of the year when, just because other things +have ceased to grow, memories blossom in the mind; and on every golden +heap of leaves retrospect seemed to be sitting. We visitors were three. +I can recall the first sight of the château's yellow façade, framed by +the distant end of the high, formal avenue into which we turned to +approach it. All sorts of feet had stepped<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> where we were walking: +almost four centuries of distinguished feet had gone in and out of that +beautiful front door; but over its appealing associations the still more +appealing aspect of the wonderful house triumphed. If I knew about <i>Le +Devin du Village</i> then, the scene of its first performance interested me +much more because that long and many-windowed gallery was built right +over the water, right across the Cher, upon arches that the glassy +surface of the stream reflected symmetrically. I was captured then and +for ever by the beauty and the originality of this residence. Our best +country houses take earth and air into partnership, but this abode of +grace possessed, embraced, a little river. To go in at your front door +on one green margin and come out of your back door on the other; to +dwell in a masterpiece that was house and bridge in one—I can still +recover my first sensations of delight at this triumph of French art. +Only—the concierge didn't let us go out of the back door; and my +disappointment was cherished through long years, until its sequel, which +I shall presently reach. This first afternoon became a chapter in the +most delightful of guide-books, from which I quote the following:—</p> + +<p>'We took our way back to the Grand Monarque, and waited in the little +inn parlor for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had +an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were +still content to sit a while and exchange remarks<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> upon the superior +civilization of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have +fared so well?... At the little inn at Chenonceaux the <i>cuisine</i> was not +only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by +mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the +elder lady, as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.'</p> + +<p>On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hôtel +de l'Univers in Tours, the château of Amboise was described to us by an +English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere +then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned +spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments. +She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't +respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be +with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about +Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious +she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it +invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.'</p> + +<p>In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and +graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and +whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door +on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had +so dropped out of my thoughts<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> that it fairly burst upon my sight. +Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained +edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our +party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came +into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of +the château, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration, +that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!'</p> + +<p>Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular +and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors +have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though +never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January, +1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses. +But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the +other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its +secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress, +Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's +success with François Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the +Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on +the day Diane was married.—But I resist the temptation to dwell upon +Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all +accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of +four made, this spring day.<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a></p> + +<p>Touraine was now all delicate in green; as lovely, as gracious, as +discreet in its budding leaves as when the leaves had flickered down, +spangling the air and grass and garden-walks with their gold. We had met +at the little inn the same welcome, the same excellent <i>cuisine</i>, the +same agreeable Vouvray mousseux. Mademoiselle was not there, but mamma +was. Her premises and herself showed no ill effect from the prosperity +brought to her through the guide-book I have already quoted. No +guide-book in its author's plan, it was now become established as one, +and he, petitioned in a letter from mamma, had corrected a certain +error. In the first edition, page 60, you may read that we took our way +back to the Grand Monarque; in later editions it is the Hôtel du +Bon-Laboureur. The confusion to travelers, the injury to her custom, +ensuing from the wrong name, madame had represented to the author; and +now all was well. The inn wasn't any larger, but more and more each +season were pilgrims with expectant appetites led to her door.</p> + +<p>'Tenez, monsieur,' she said to me eagerly, when I narrated to her how I +had been present at the germination of her renown, 'tenez. Voilà!' She +showed me the precious guide-book. She treasured it, though she couldn't +read it, because it was in English. And I came in for her smiles and +cordiality, which really belonged to the author.</p> + +<p>You will have perceived, our party this time took<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> their <i>déjeuner</i>, not +their dinner, at the Bon-Laboureur. The good omelette and cheese and +fruit and wine, mamma's prosperity and her well-preserved state,—for +now she was really an elderly woman,—all this had brought us in +peaceful and pleased spirits to the château. When we had seen the rooms +downstairs and the concierge was conducting the other sightseers—some +ten or twelve—to the second story, our party under my guidance stole +away to the back door.</p> + +<p>'Back door' implies no dishonorable passage through pantry and kitchen; +we simply didn't go up the staircase in the wake of the concierge, but +independently along the hall instead, and thus across the Cher through +Catherine's celebrated gallery. <i>Le Devin du Village</i> came into my mind, +and I wondered which figure was the more diverting, Jean-Jacques +Rousseau composing opera, or Richard Wagner dabbling in philosophy.</p> + +<p>The door was open. I emerged, the happy leader of my party, upon stone +steps, crossed a little draw-bridge, and our triumphant feet trod the +grass beneath the trees which shaded the river's bank. I had my wish; +and as my obedient band followed me, I fear my complacent back and +Anabasis manner expressed some sentiment like this: 'Only observe how it +pays to see France with a person who knows the ropes!' We sauntered, we +expatiated, we paused before what I'll call by metonymy the tocsin—a +great bell and chain<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> suspended from strong framework; from this point +the château, with its fine, detached, cylindrical donjon tower of the +fifteenth century, looked, in the afternoon light, particularly well: +those poor sheep with the concierge weren't getting this view. We must +have lingered by the tocsin a quarter of an hour, enjoying ourselves, +before returning to the back door.</p> + +<p>It was shut. It was locked. Rattling made no impression upon it, nor +shaking, nor kicking. We knocked then, fancying this to be an accident. +Next we called, or rather, I, the party's personal conductor and +competent guide, began to call. Nothing happened. I augmented my +efforts. Catherine's gallery, famous scene of the first performance of +Rousseau's <i>Devin du Village</i>, responded with cavernous echoes. Between +these reigned silence, and a gentle breeze rustled the young leaves of +the chestnuts. We abandoned the door and went a few steps down the river +to where our gesticulations could be seen from the windows of +Chenonceaux. We made these gesticulations with our four umbrellas, +whilst I shouted continually. Not a window blinked. It might have been a +sorcerer's palace, and we his four new victims, presently to be roasted, +boiled, or changed into cats. We looked down the river—no escape; up +the river half-a-mile was a bridge; but what impediment mightn't lie +between? And even if the way were clear, to go round by the bridge would +lose us our train to Tours. One of us, in<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> her deep voice, said that she +hoped the robin-red-breasts would find her body and cover it with +leaves. Again we flourished our four umbrellas, during vociferations +from me, at the imperturbable château. Then, quite suddenly, something +did happen. Out of a window in the donjon tower of the fifteenth century +was thrust a head, and from across the river it wagged at us +malevolently.</p> + +<p>It was the concierge. The shock of discovering he had locked us out +purposely in punishment of our independent excursion, threw me into +extreme rage. My Anabasis manner had already dropped from me; but +Xenophon got his party successfully back, and this same task was now +searchingly, compellingly, 'up to me.' More malevolent wagging from the +tower was all that resulted from my next demonstrations. In these I was +now alone; my party, at the apparition of the concierge, had become +abruptly quiet, thinking doubtless that loud calls and wavings would +diminish my dignity less than theirs, whose years and discretion were +more than mine. Therefore my companions brandished their umbrellas no +more, but stood upon the banks of the Cher decorously, in a reserved +attitude, patient yet stately, as if awaiting the tumbril; I, meanwhile, +hurled international threats across the river. These wrought no change. +In repose my French halts, but when roused it acquires both speed and +point; yet none of my idioms disturbed the concierge at his<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> window. And +now I was visited by inspiration. I seized the chain and rang the +tocsin. It sounded as if Attila were coming at once. Somebody would have +come, undoubtedly,—the whole <i>arrondissement</i> I should think,—but +after a few moments of that din, the head disappeared; in a few more the +door was unlocked, and my companions preceded me with restraint yet with +celerity across Catherine's gallery and out of Chenonceaux's front door +and away, down the avenue to the railway, whilst I delivered some final +idioms to the concierge. I am happy to record that these made him livid, +and in the presence of a highly attentive audience. But—we had in truth +small idea with whom we were dealing. Some time later we got final news +of him. He had committed a murder, been caught, tried, convicted, +sentenced, and executed.</p> + +<p>You will remember the British lady at the Hôtel de l'Univers in Tours, +who, in her description of Amboise, pronounced curious to rhyme with +glorious. Her kind was still pervading the quieter hotels of the +continent (the Hôtel de l'Univers was still quiet) while her more +muscular sister was still climbing all the Alps in valiant weeds. This +time, another of the identical type sat next me at the table d'hôte, and +from the corner of my eye I perceived her to be making endless and +surreptitious dives with her head at my bottle of Vouvray mousseux. +Becoming sure that this was neither St. Vitus's dance nor kleptomania, +but a desire<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> to learn the name of my wine, I made her a slight bow, +turning my bottle so that she could more easily read its label; at which +she squeaked skittishly, 'I-didn't-think-you'd-see-me!'</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The mid-Victorian spinster was gone, the automobile was come, the much +expanded Hôtel de l'Univers was quiet no more and had abandoned the +table d'hôte for small tables when next I saw Chenonceaux. Eager as I +had been to return to it, still more did I desire to enjoy that +particular pleasure which one takes in introducing a scene one delights +in to a friend. We were, this time, as we had been the first time, a +party of three, and the day was July 4, 1914; but in the Cathedral of +Bourges that morning, and at Montrichard and along the Cher that +forenoon, firecrackers seemed remote. Later, the Hôtel de l'Univers had +illuminations and national melodies for the benefit of its American +patrons—these having now swelled to the lucrative proportions of +invasion.</p> + +<p>But Chenonceaux hadn't changed, Chenonceaux looked just as young as +ever. Its bright, serene aspect showed no confusion at changing masters +so often. To my friends it more than fulfilled my promises for it, while +for me it was even fairer than my memory. The concierge, a woman this +time, told her band of sightseers enough, but much less than she knew. +She<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> had acquired (one somehow divined and discerned) a certain scorn +for her sightseers. She had found (one saw) the affluent automobile to +be the chariot of well-informed stomachs, but seldom of intelligences +which had ever heard, or would ever care to hear, about Madame Dupin and +her many distinguished guests. They knew their Michelin, where to buy +<i>pétrol</i> along the road, which roads to avoid; and the road they had +particularly avoided was the one conducting to civilization. Some of +them were present on this occasion with their goggles, their magenta +veils, and their brass voices. To these the concierge imparted what she +deemed them able to digest. She didn't mention the <i>Devin du +Village</i>—but I did! This brought an immediate <i>rapprochement</i>, as we +lingered with her behind the departing goggles. She knew and loved her +Chenonceaux; her scorn fell from her; but she told us nothing so +interesting as the fact that during the last twelvemonth <i>twenty +thousand</i> visitors had given each their required franc to see the place. +The château, at this rate, will pay its way down the ages.</p> + +<p>But what of the Bon-Laboureur? If the mid-Victorian spinster and the +table d'hôte hadn't survived the pace of the new century, what had the +automobile done to the innocent village inn? I hope you will be glad to +learn that it hadn't—as yet—done much. I have now reached the third of +those meals which I mentioned at the outset. The Bon-Laboureur seemed<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> a +little larger,—people were lunching in two rooms instead of one, and +out behind, kitchenward, there was a hint of bustle and of chauffeurs, +and perhaps the personal note of welcome was fainter. But it wasn't +quite absent; and still the food was excellent, still the service was +courteous, a pleasant young woman waiting; and I felt that here was a +good, small tradition still somewhat holding out against the +beleaguering pressure of the wholesale. So I spoke to the pleasant young +woman and inquired if the old <i>patronne</i> were still living.</p> + +<p>'Mais si, monsieur!' I was, to my astonishment, answered. 'A deux pas +d'ici.'</p> + +<p>The personal note of welcome warmed up on learning that I was an old +visitor here; the patronne would value a call from one who remembered +her good cooking; she was now very old; she had sold the business and +the good-will; she lived very quietly; would I not go to see her? And +her house was pointed out to me.</p> + +<p>Along the street of the little white village I went, slowly, in the +midsummer warmth. The grape-leaves, trailing and basking on the walls, +the full-leaved trees, the light and laziness of earth and sky, conveyed +the same hush of repose that had exhaled from the golden autumn and the +delicate spring I remembered so well; in this July sunshine, also, the +pleasant land lay dreamy and unvexed. At a door standing slightly open, +I knocked. Though a pause followed, I felt I had been<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> heard; then I was +bidden to enter, by a very old voice. Two rooms were accessible from the +tiny hall, but I entered the right one, and there by the window sat the +patronne. I had remembered her as moving alertly round her table, quiet +and vigorous, above average height. All of this was gone; and as her +dark, feeble eyes looked at me, I felt in them a certain apprehension, +and found myself unpremeditatedly saying,—</p> + +<p>'Madame, I trust you will not think ill of an intruder when you learn +why it is that he has ventured to knock at your door. They assured me +you would like my visit. Here is my little story: One Sunday afternoon +in September, 1882, three travelers came to the Bon-Laboureur. I was one +of them; and never forgetting your excellent meal and service, I +returned at my first opportunity, in April, 1896. Meanwhile that good +meal of yours, and you its hostess, had been mentioned in a book by +another of those three guests; and you told me of the prosperity this +had brought you. Since that visit, thirty-two years ago, I have become a +writer of books too. Of me you will not have heard, but you cannot have +forgotten Mr. Henry James, whose praise brought so many guests to the +Bon-Laboureur.'</p> + +<p>Her eyes, during my speech, had awakened, and now she stood up.</p> + +<p>'My servant is absent,' she said, 'or you would not have had to come in +so. But my son lives close by in<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> that large place. He will like very +much to see you. I will call him.'</p> + +<p>She would have gone for him on her trembling feet, but this I begged she +would not do; I had but five minutes; friends were waiting for me.</p> + +<p>'I am ninety years old,' she said. 'Ah, monsieur, il est bien triste de +vieillir. One has nothing any more.' She became suddenly moved, and +tears fell from her.</p> + +<p>I need not recall the little talk we had then. Strangers though we were, +we did not speak as strangers; the memories that rose in each of us, so +separate, so different, flowed together in some way, united beneath our +spoken words, and made them sacred. But I may record that she got out +her old books to show me, her registry-books of the Bon-Laboureur, +little, old, modest volumes, where in many handwritings through many +years the names of her guests had been inscribed. They had come from +almost everywhere in the world. No longer strong enough, she had parted +with the business and the good-will; but from these tokens of her past +she could not part. She clung to the inanimate survivals of her good +days and her renown. And on a blank page of the last volume which she +placed before me, putting a pen in my hand, I wrote briefly for her of +my three pilgrimages to her <i>petit pays</i>. Of the international +distinction of her son she was touchingly and justly proud: famous +peonies have spread his name wide as their<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> cultivator and producer. For +this, too, was the Bon-Laboureur in its way responsible.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I may not see it again, or its grand neighbor, the château, that +secular shrine of a vivacious and select Past. But I shall need no +Michelin, or Baedeker, or Joanne, to guide my memories thither. They are +with me, every moment and breath of them, for my perpetual delight, a +safe possession, unweakened and undimmed; and to conjure them before me +it needs no more than the haunting syllables of Chenonceaux and the +quaint, cherished volumes of the patronne.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="center"><small>IN CHENONCEAUX</small></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">My noiseless thoughts, if changed to their just sound</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Amid these courts of silence once so gay</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">With love and wit, that here full pleasure found</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Where Kings put off their crownèd cares to play,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Would shake in laughter at some jest unheard;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Would sing like viols in a saraband;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Would whisper kisses—but express no word</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> That would not be too dim to understand.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Like to a child, who far from ocean's flood</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Against his ear a shell doth fondly hold</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">To hear the murmur that is his own blood,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> And half believes the fairy-tale he's told,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">So I within this shell mistake my sea</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Of musing for the tide of History.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_110.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_110_sml.jpg" width="550" height="132" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="The_Other_Side" id="The_Other_Side"></a>The Other Side<br /><br /> +<small>By Margaret Sherwood</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">L</span><small>IKE</small> every other attentive reader of our periodical literature, I am +increasingly aware of our persistent exposure of sin and wrong-doing in +high places and in low; like many another attentive reader, I am growing +a bit rebellious against this constant demand and supply in the matter +of information regarding recent evil. Have we not grown over-alert in +the search for this special kind of news? We take vice with our +breakfast porridge; perjury with our after-dinner coffee; our essayists +vie with one another in seeing who can write up the most startling story +of crimes; and it is a bankrupt family nowadays that cannot produce one +member to expose civic or political corruption. Undoubtedly much genuine +ethical impulse lies back of all this; undoubtedly, too, much of the +picturesque and spectacular treatment springs from a desire to startle, +and ministers, in many a reader who would scorn paper-covered fiction, +to a love of the sensational. Surely it must seem to the people of other +countries that we take pride in the immensity of our sins, as we<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> take +pride in Niagara, in the length of the Mississippi, in the extent of our +western plains.</p> + +<p>Many may be, and must be, the good effects of throwing the searchlight +upon dark places, but the constant glare of the searchlight bids fair to +rob us of our normal vision of life. My poor mind has become a +storehouse of misdeeds not my own. I am sick with iniquity; I walk +abroad under the shadow of infamy, and I sup with horrors. I shrink from +meeting my friends,—not that they are not the best people in the world, +but I dread lest they pour into my ears some newly acquired knowledge of +wrong-doing. For me, as for others, the sun of noonday is clouded by +graft, bribery, treachery, and corruption; and I fear to close my eyes +in the dark because of the pictured crimes that crowd before them. +Suppose poor Christian had had to drag after him not only his own bag of +transgressions, but those of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Facing-both-ways, +and all the denizens of Vanity Fair, what chance would he ever have had +of getting out of the Slough of Despond?</p> + +<p>It is not that I wish to shirk; I am not afraid of facing anything that +I ought to know, and I have not the slightest doubt that we are all, in +great measure, responsible for our neighbors' sins. But I am not sure +that we are taking the wisest way to mend them. It seems to me +incontestable that, with the large issues of individual and of national +well-being in mind, we<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> are over-doing the exposure, and slighting the +incentives to right action; emphasizing the negative at the expense of +the positive; and that, with our weakening convictions regarding the +things that are right, it is dangerous to go on loudly proclaiming the +things that are wrong. We are much in the position of a village +improvement society which has pulled down a bridge because it is +rotting, and is impotent to build another and a better. We have invested +our national all in wrecking machinery, and have nothing left for +constructive tools. It is said that in our explosive setting forth of +civic and national wrong-doing, we are all too prone to stop with the +explosion, as if mere knowledge of these things would set them right. +Mere knowledge never yet set anything right; only the ceaselessly +active, creative will can fashion a world of law out of chaos.</p> + +<p>Of the criticism often made that exposure of wrong should be followed, +more closely than is done here, by constructive action, if anything is +to be really effected, it is not my task to speak. The aspect of the +matter which interests me especially concerns the youth of the land; it +is the educational aspect. Not through loud wailing over evil can a +nation be built, but through resolute dwelling with high ideals. In +certain ugly tendencies of recent years among the young, as, for +instance, the unabashed sensuality of much of the modern dancing, may we +not detect, perhaps, a cynical<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> assumption that life is at basis +corrupt,—a natural result of continued harping on evil things, and of +failure to keep before them images of moral beauty? Our magazine writers +would be far better employed, if, instead of making our ears constantly +resound with reports of civic iniquities, they were, part of the time at +least, studying Plato's <i>Republic</i>, and filling mind and soul with the +hope of the perfect state. Wrong things we dare hope are of small and +fleeting consequence as compared with the right; it is not the sin of +Judas Iscariot, but the righteousness of his Master, that has brought +the human race a gleam of hope and possible redemption. When I was told, +not long ago, of a student in one of our great universities who had +elected 'Criminology 16,' I could not help reflecting that he might far +better have taken Idealistic Philosophy <small>I</small>.</p> + +<p>Whether or not our study of evil should be lessened, our study of the +good needs to be vastly strengthened. We are losing the vision! 'Your +old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,' said the +prophet, in promising wonders in the heavens and in the earth, after his +account of fasting, weeping, mourning, and beating the breast. There is +a time for beating the breast and for tearing the hair, and of this we +have had our day, but perpetual sitting upon the ash-heap and howling +will not raise the walls of state. Sitting there may, in time, even +become a luxury; can it be<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> that we are doing so much of it partly +because it is easier, and because the heaven-sent task of building up +and shaping is too hard for us?</p> + +<p>Take away from youth the power of seeing visions, of dreaming dreams, +and you take away the future. It would behoove us to remember, perhaps, +that the eras of great deeds have not been eras of analysis, but eras +when the creative imagination was at work. Yet our modern mental habit +is overwhelmingly a habit of analysis, for which science, in teaching us +to pick the world to bits, is partly, though not wholly, responsible. It +has brought us an immense amount of interesting information; it has +brought also a danger whose gravity we can hardly estimate, in the +constant lessening of the synthetic power. The power to image, to +fashion high ideals, and to create along the line of the imagining, is +weakening, instead of growing more strong. In the glorious days of Queen +Elizabeth, in the unparalleled days of Periclean Athens, great ideals +formed themselves before men's eyes and great achievements followed; +emotion, hope, vision, shaped human nature to great issues. I wonder +what influence those perfect marble representations of perfect form had +upon the very bodies of the youths and the maidens of Athens, what +creative force they exercised,—the imaginative grasp of the perfect +reaching forward toward perfectness in the human being. I wonder what +influence the character of Sir Philip Sidney alone, with 'high-erected<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> +thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy,' has had upon succeeding +generations of English youth. 'A man to be greatly good,' said Shelley, +'must imagine intensely and comprehensively.'</p> + +<p>Here my quarrel with our present intellectual trend and our present +system of education becomes more acute. We are not only losing the habit +of mind that fosters idealism, but we are more and more breaking with +the past. The door of that storehouse of noble thought and noble example +is being slowly but firmly closed, and there is little in modern +teaching that can meet the inroads made by the devastating knowledge of +evil of which we have been speaking; little that can build up where this +tears down. Study of Greek life, with its incomparable power of shaping +existence toward the beautiful, is all but cast aside; most +unfortunately now, when, with the rush of ignorant peoples to our +shores, it might have a far-reaching potency never attained before. The +ignorance of contemporary youth regarding that other and finer +loveliness of 'Gospel books' is amazing. More and more we are stripped +of the humanities; the incredulity of science in contemplating +philosophy, art, literature, as part of the educational curriculum, is +full of menace. There has never been, I think, in the history of the +civilized world, a time when people were so anxious to cast off the +past. In our eager Marathon race of material and physical progress we +want to go as lightly equipped<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> as possible. The æroplane carries small +luggage; our light modern mind is ever ready to throw overboard even its +precious heritage, in its eagerness for swift flight. As earlier days +have reverenced the old, we reverence the new, and are all too +insistently contemporaneous.</p> + +<p>We need, as we never needed before, a broader and deeper study of +history, of philosophy, of literature; for most of our young, a +knowledge of the mental and spiritual past of the race is of far greater +importance than a knowledge of the physical past, at the amœba stage, +or any other. Science, much as it can do for us, can never meet our +deepest need; the world of imaginative beauty and the world of ethical +endeavor are apart from its domain. It has no spring to touch the will, +yet that which has, the magnificent inheritance of our literature, is +more and more neglected for the latest machinery that applied science +has devised, or the most recent treatise on insect, bird, or worm. It is +well to study insect, bird, and worm, for they are endlessly +interesting, but I maintain that neither the full sum of knowledge +concerning them, nor even the ultimate fact about the ultimate star, can +be a substitute for knowledge of the idealism of Thomas Carlyle, of the +categorical imperative of Kant,—for that study of the humanities which +means preserving, for the upbuilding of youth, that which was best and +finest in the past, as we go on toward the future.<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a></p> + +<p>If the swift retort should come, from those who think the present the +only era of attainment and the physical world the only source of wisdom, +that the past is full of villainies, of lapses from high standards, one +can but say that for ethical purposes our study should be frankly a +selective study, emphasizing the fine and high, subordinating the evil. +There is no hypocrisy in such selection; there is deliberate choice of +the higher upon which to dwell, as a formative power, quickening feeling +and imagination. I have heard it said that a woman, by resolute dwelling +on things noble and pure, may shape the inner nature of her unborn +child, and I have faith to believe it. Even so should the nation yet to +be be shaped by resolute dwelling on the good. It was not all cowardice, +as many a present writer thinks, that led the mothers of earlier days to +say little to their sons and daughters regarding evil things, and much +regarding right things. Doubtless greater frankness would have been +better, yet I doubt if our protracted dwelling on the evil will produce +better results.</p> + +<p>Should any one object that this emphasis on the good means suppression +of the truth, we can but reply that, for the rational soul, the truth is +not necessarily the mechanically worked-out sum of all the facts. That +we have forgotten the distinction between fact—that which has indeed +come to pass, but which may be momentary—and truth, which endures, is +one of the<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> many signs of what William Sharp calls the 'spiritual +degradation' of our time. Much of our modern thinking and teaching, much +of our realistic fiction, rests upon a failure to make the distinction; +much that is indisputable in individual instances of wrong-doing may be, +thank God! false in the long run.</p> + +<p>'That is not true, scientifically true,' we hear often in regard to some +fine hope or aspiration of the race; but in the real import of the term +there is no such thing as scientific truth. It is a pity that a word of +such profound and distinctive meaning should come to be more and more +exclusively identified with the observation of physical phenomena, and +the formulation of physical laws, whereas the very root-meaning of the +word true, from Anglo-Saxon <i>treowe</i>, signifying faithful, gives +justification for the idealist's belief that vital truth is partly a +matter of the will, not of mere perception and of intellectual +deductions drawn therefrom. We have need of deeper truth than that of +mere fact; and the truth that shall set us free is a truth of choice, of +selection; it embraces that part of human thought and human experience +which is worth keeping.</p> + +<p>Faithfulness to the best and finest in the past and in the present, +rather than horrified gaping at the present's worst, is the attitude +that means continued and bettered life, for we become what we will. What +are we offering, in the way of concrete examples, or of finely expressed +thought about virtue, to the young, to the<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> ignorant nations who are +pouring in upon us, that will help them form their vision of the +perfect? With our narrowing knowledge of the greater past, our choice of +heroes becomes more and more local and national, yet our hierarchy of +sacred dead is too small to afford that variety of heroic action and +heroic choice that should always be kept before the minds of youth. We +teach them that George Washington never told a lie; we teach them +something—and there could be nothing better—of Lincoln; but those two +figures are lonely upon Olympus, and the great tragic story of the way +in which Lincoln faced the greatest crisis in our history will not alone +suffice to help the everyday citizen shape his thought and action toward +constructive idealism. The lesser heroes of our young republic have +acquitted themselves nobly in this struggle and in that, but the +struggles have been too closely akin in nature to give the embryo hero +that breadth and depth of nurture that he requires. We need an enlarged +vision of history, and the sight of great men of all ages faithful to +small tasks as to great; we need the companionship of heroes of other +times and of other nations, and not of military heroes alone. Saint +Francis with his unceasing tenderness to man and beast, Father Damien at +work among the lepers, might far better occupy the pages of our +magazines, than the pictured deeds of criminals and the achievements of +contemporary multimillionaires.</p> + +<p>If we need a wider range of concrete examples of the<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> good, we need +still more a wider range of nobly expressed ideals. Our thought grows +narrow; we smother for lack of breathing space. Benjamin Franklin's +philosophy was far from grasping the best of life, yet we remember him +better than we do our Emerson, whose plea for spiritual values as the +only real ones is lost in the louder and louder groaning of the wheels +of our machinery. The idealism that is taught the young in Sunday +schools is too often inextricably bound up with unnecessary theology; +and many and many a pupil, in discarding the latter, discards the other +also. The ideal of success upheld in much journalistic admonition is +often rather mean and low; the young of this country need no printed +incentives to urge them into commercialism and the victories of trade. +The best influences that are being brought to bear upon them are those +which concern social responsibilities and the needs of the poor. Yet all +this thought and endeavor should supplement and not supersede, as it is +doing, a deep concern with the things of the spirit; and no admonition +regarding hygiene for one's self or others is a substitute for—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="right">A sense sublime</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Of something far more deeply interfused,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And the round ocean, and the living air,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">A motion and a spirit, that impels</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">All thinking things, all objects of all thought</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And rolls through all things.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a></p> + +<p>The great things of the past in all nations, history can teach us; the +possible, both literature and philosophy can teach us. We must forego no +noble expression of idealistic faith, lest we impoverish our own souls, +and beggar those who come after us. The pure intellectual passion of +Bacon's <i>Advancement of Learning</i>, the noble stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, the spiritual vision of Plato, of Spenser, the heroic strain +of Wordsworth's 'Liberty Sonnets' and his 'Happy Warrior,' Shelley's +ardent and generous sympathy, Browning's dynamic spiritual force, should +make up part of our life and thought, checking our insistent impulse +toward mechanical things, and correcting the evil within and without. +More than anything else, we need a revival of interest in great poetry.</p> + +<p>'Now therein of all sciences,' said Sir Philip Sidney, 'is our poet the +monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a +prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter it.... He cometh +to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, +or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, +forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from +play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and, pretending no more, doth +intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue.'</p> + +<p>The poet's 'perfect picture' of the good, the great image, causes noble +passion, wakes us out of our 'habitual<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> calm,' and stirs us almost +beyond our possibilities. The imagination is the miracle-working power +in human nature; through it alone can the human soul come to its own. +Only that which is fine and high can feed it aright, while baseness can +make of it a destructive tool of terrible power. As I think back to +childhood, I can remember the devastating effect that one tale of +cruelty had upon my mind, haunting me by day in vivid pictures, turning +my dreams to horror, and making me, while the obsession lasted, believe +that the world of grown folk must be all alike cruel. So, too, the +compelling vision of the good came through concrete instances; and the +people, both the living and the dead, in whom I passionately believed, +shaped all my faith.</p> + +<p>The imagination of youth,—there is no power like it, no machine that +can equal it in dynamic force, nothing so full of power, so full of +danger. We become that which we look upon, contemplate, remember; it is +for this that I dread the ultimate effect of the long, imaginative +picturing of our neighbor's sins now presented in our periodicals. +Images of evil can hardly help dimming and tarnishing the bright ideals +of youth; is there no way—with all our modern wisdom can we find no +way—of limiting our exposure of crime to the people who can be of +service in helping check it, and keeping it from those who cannot help, +but can only be silently hurt? A moment, an hour of some fresh vision, +and a<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> child's destiny is perhaps decided for good or for ill. One +afternoon's reading of Spenser made the boy Keats a poet; who, knowing +the potency of brief experience in the flush of youth, can doubt the +lasting wrong wrought again and again by the sudden shock of contact +with things evil?</p> + +<p>Many images of wrong must of necessity come to the young; let them not +be multiplied in our feverish and morbid fashion of to-day. Above all, +let them be crowded out by constant suggestion of noble images and noble +thought, which will work both consciously and subconsciously, shaping +the dream when the dreamer is least aware. To hold up before the ardent +and impressionable young that which they may become in strength, in +purity, would surely be better than placing before them this perpetual +moving-picture show of our civic and national transgressions. I can but +believe, as I read article after article of exposure, that this +continued presentation to youth of the unholy side of life, with our +increasing tendency to make education a mere matter of the intellect and +of the eye, is bound to lessen the moral energy of the race. Would it +not be better if we were more diligent in searching history, philosophy, +literature, for 'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are +lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,' and in bidding the young +think on these things?<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_124.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_124_sml.jpg" width="550" height="121" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="On_Authors" id="On_Authors"></a>On Authors<br /><br /> +<small>By Margaret Preston Montague</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span> <small>WRITE</small> myself; therefore I feel free to say what I please about +authors; but if you, sir, or madam, who read, but do not write, were to +give voice to the reflections that are even now beginning to distill +from my pencil, I should doubtless resent them. And here, indeed, I am +faced by the sudden reflection that much of what I say myself I might +resent in the mouths of others. This leads to a whole new train of +thought, which, however, I refuse to take, and board instead the one I +set out for,—The Authors' Unlimited. There are many things to be +remarked about authors, but in so short a paper it is possible to touch +upon only a very few. One of the first facts that strikes the +investigator in this field is that members of my profession do not +always appear to endear themselves to those with whom they have +dealings.</p> + +<p>'What do you think of authors?' I once asked an editor.</p> + +<p>'I hate 'em!' he answered without a moment's hesitation.<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a></p> + +<p>Another editor assured me, with a weary sigh, that authors were 'kittle +cattle.' This affords a writer a little leap of amusement. So editors +suffer from authors, even as authors from editors! Well, yes, we <i>are</i> +kittle cattle! But some of this is due, no doubt, to what people expect +of us. I was presented once to a lady who immediately fixed me with an +eager eye.</p> + +<p>'I am making a study of the habits of authors,' she announced. (Here a +dreadful sinking of the heart assailed me.) 'Kindly tell me at what hour +you retire.'</p> + +<p>'Usually at half-past ten,' I answered wretchedly.</p> + +<p>At that, as I had expected, her eyebrows went up. 'The author of <i>When +All Was Dark</i>,' she informed me, 'sits up all night. She says she cannot +sleep until she has savored the dawn.' However, she was kind enough to +give me another chance. 'What do you eat?' she asked.</p> + +<p>'Three hearty meals a day,' I answered.</p> + +<p>'Not <i>breakfast</i>!' she pleaded. 'Why, St. George Dreamer <i>never</i> takes +more than three drops of brandy on a lump of sugar in the morning. Just +the sight of a coffee cup will upset his work for a week.'</p> + +<p>And then she left me, sure, I have no doubt, that no real author could +confess to such distressingly normal habits as mine.</p> + +<p>Doubtless she is an eager reader of all those little paragraphs +informing us how authors write. How this one has to have his black mammy +rub his head for an<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> hour before he can even think of work; and that one +confesses that to write a love scene she must have the odor of decayed +bananas in the room. Well, the world would be a sadder place without +these little paragraphs. Would that I had something of a like nature to +offer! But alas! I have no black mammy, and the smell of over-ripe fruit +leaves my hero cold. Also, to give forth such gems of information one +must be able to observe a certain rule. It is, Don't laugh or you might +wake up. This rule is always sacredly in force at literary gatherings. +The fact of being an author, and of being at an authors' meeting, +induces, it appears, an intense seriousness. In my younger days I did +not realize this, and once at a gathering of this nature, I asked a +carefree question. 'Do you think,' I inquired of the author next me, +'that it is possible for an unmusical person to write verse?'</p> + +<p>I confess now that I put the question somewhat in the spirit of the +Irishman, who, asking after his friend's health, added, 'Not that I care +a damn, but it makes conversation.' Heaven defend me from ever again +making so much conversation! A gleam shot up in my author's eye. 'Let us +go over and ask Professor —— ' he cried. 'He wrote <i>What Poets Cannot +Do</i>. He's just the man to tell us!' And before I could escape, he +dragged me through the press of authors, and flung me before the +professor, with the tag, 'Unmusical, but aspires to write verse,—is +this possible?'<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a></p> + +<p>I know now how the beetle feels beneath the microscope. Seeing the +little group we made, two young authors 'hurried up, and more, and more, +and more.' They surrounded me to listen, to inspect, to comment; they +asked one another eager questions about me, they compared notes, they +appealed to the author of <i>What Poets Cannot Do</i>, and always their +dreadful eyes were fixed upon me. Never, never again will I dare the +dreadful seriousness of an authors' meeting with an idle question!</p> + +<p>I have also learned another lesson. It is how to converse with authors. +I shudder now to think of my early and crude attempts in this matter. +The remembrance of one particular occasion stands out with dreadful +vividness. I had been introduced to a distinguished writer. She raised +her eyes to mine for a wan instant, a pale flicker of recognition passed +over her face, and then—silence. Readers,—nay, let me call you friends +while I make this terrible confession,—<i>I broke that silence!</i> I was +young; I did not understand. I do now. I have never been able since to +read 'The Ancient Mariner'—I know too well the awfulness of having shot +an albatross. 'The lady,' I said to my inexperienced self, 'does not +care to converse; she expects you to do so.' Accordingly, I broke into +light and cheerful talk, something in conversation corresponding, I +fear, to what in dry goods the clerk recommends as 'a nice line of +spring styles.' I realize that only a series of<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> illustrations can make +the situation clear. Imagine then, if you please, a tinkling cymbal +serenading a smouldering volcano; a puppy trying to woo the Sphinx to a +game of tag; sunlit waves breaking upon a 'stern and rock-bound coast,' +and you may get a faint idea of the situation. I began almost +immediately to experience that far-from-home sensation of which +Humpty-Dumpty speaks with so much feeling. As I beheld one after another +of my little remarks dash itself to nothingness against that stern and +rock-bound coast, only the time and the place kept me from bursting into +tears. Fortunately it did not last too long. In another minute one or +the other of us would have shattered into the maniac's wild laughter. +And I have every reason to fear that I should have been that one. +Others, however, realizing the awful thing I was doing, rushed up and +separated us. Sympathetic hands were stretched to her; low words were +murmured, and she was drawn into a secluded corner where her silence +might be preserved from any further onslaughts of a like sacrilegious +nature. But no one stretched a hand to <i>me</i>; no sympathetic words were +murmured in <i>my</i> ear!</p> + +<p>I now know that in conversations with authors there should be long +pauses. This is because every remark, after being received by the ear, +must be submitted to a strict brain analysis, and then given a soul-bath +before it is proper to venture a reply. I have found, also,<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> that in +answering too quickly, I myself lose caste. I now make it a point never +to respond to a question addressed to me by an author until I have +counted twenty. If the author is very distinguished, I make it fifty for +good measure.</p> + +<p>Much more remains to be said about authors. I realize that I have, as it +were, merely scraped the surface of the subject. Space, however, allows +me only room to add one last anecdote. But this one may indeed prove +more illuminating than all that has gone before. Once, then, in a +certain city where I was visiting, I was invited to attend a meeting of +its authors' club. 'Now at this meeting,' I instructed myself before +going, 'you will probably encounter the most serious species of author +native to this climate.' Accordingly I set forth with a light and +expectant heart. As I entered the hall I was aware of another person +entering from an opposite door,—a serious, awkward person, with just +that peculiar, vague, and almost feeble-minded expression that I have +come to associate with writers in general. 'Behold, my child, the +<span class="smcap">SERIOUS AUTHOR</span>,' I commented happily to myself. I looked again, and saw +it was <i>myself in a mirror</i>!<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_130.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_130_sml.jpg" width="550" height="123" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="The_Provincial_American" id="The_Provincial_American"></a>The Provincial American<br /><br /> +<small>By Meredith Nicholson</small></h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><i>Viola.</i></td><td align="left">What country, friends, is this?</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><i>Captain.</i></td><td align="right">Illyria, lady.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><i>Viola.</i></td><td align="left">And what should I do in Illyria?</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td><td align="left">My brother he is in Elysium.</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" align="right"><i>—Twelfth Night.</i></td></tr> +</table> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span> <small>AM</small> a provincial American. My forbears were farmers or country-town +folk. They followed the long trail over the mountains out of Virginia +and North Carolina, with brief sojourns in Western Pennsylvania and +Kentucky. My parents were born, the one in Kentucky, the other in +Indiana, within two and four hours of the spot where I pen these +reflections, and I was a grown man and had voted before I saw the sea or +any Eastern city.</p> + +<p>In attempting to illustrate the provincial point of view out of my own +experiences I am moved by no wish to celebrate either the Hoosier +commonwealth—which has not lacked nobler advertisement—or myself; but +by the hope that I may cheer many who, flung by fate upon the world's +byways, shuffle and shrink under the reproach of their metropolitan +brethren.<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p> + +<p>Mr. George Ade has said, speaking of our freshwater colleges, that +Purdue University, his own alma mater, offers everything that Harvard +provides except the sound of <i>a</i> as in father. I have been told that I +speak our <i>lingua rustica</i> only slightly corrupted by urban contacts. +Anywhere east of Buffalo I should be known as a Westerner; I could not +disguise myself if I would. I find that I am most comfortable in a town +whose population does not exceed a fifth of a million,—the kind of +place that enjoys street-car transfers, a woman's club, and a post +office with carrier delivery.</p> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>Across a hill-slope that knew my childhood, a bugle's grieving melody +used to float often through the summer twilight. A highway lay hidden in +the little vale below, and beyond it the unknown musician was quite +concealed, and was never visible to the world I knew. Those trumpetings +have lingered always in my memory, and color my recollection of all that +was near and dear in those days. Men who had left camp and field for the +soberer routine of civil life were not yet fully domesticated. My bugler +was merely solacing himself for lost joys by recurring to the vocabulary +of the trumpet. I am confident that he enjoyed himself; and I am equally +sure that his trumpetings peopled the dusk for me with great captains +and mighty armies, and touched with a certain militancy all my youthful +dreaming.<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a></p> + +<p>No American boy born during or immediately after the Civil War can have +escaped in those years the vivid impressions derived from the sight and +speech of men who had fought its battles, or women who had known its +terror and grief. Chief among my playthings on that peaceful hillside +was the sword my father had borne at Shiloh and on to the sea; and I +remember, too, his uniform coat and sash and epaulets and the tattered +guidon of his battery, that, falling to my lot as toys, yet imparted to +my childish consciousness a sense of what war had been. The young +imagination was kindled in those days by many and great names. Lincoln, +Grant, and Sherman were among the first lispings of Northern children of +my generation; and in the little town where I was born, lived men who +had spoken with them face to face. I did not know, until I sought them +later for myself, the fairy tales that are every child's birthright; and +I imagine that children of my generation heard less of</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"> old, unhappy, far-off things</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And battles long ago,</td></tr> +</table> + +<p class="nind">and more of the men and incidents of contemporaneous history. Great +spirits still on earth were sojourning. I saw several times, in his last +years, the iron-willed Hoosier War Governor, Oliver P. Morton. By the +time I was ten, a broader field of observation opening through my +parents' removal to the state capital, I had myself beheld Grant and +Sherman; and every day<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> I passed in the street men who had been partners +with them in the great, heroic, sad, splendid struggle. These things I +set down as a background for the observations that follow,—less as text +than as point of departure; yet I believe that bugler, sounding charge +and retreat and taps in the dusk, and those trappings of war beneath +whose weight I strutted upon that hillside, did much toward establishing +in me a certain habit of mind. From that hillside I have since +ineluctably viewed my country and my countrymen and the larger world.</p> + +<p>Emerson records Thoreau's belief that 'the flora of Massachusetts +embraced almost all the important plants of America,—most of the oaks, +most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the +nuts. He returned Kane's arctic voyage to a friend of whom he had +borrowed it, with the remark, that most of the phenomena noted might be +observed in Concord.'</p> + +<p>The complacency of the provincial mind is due less, I believe, to +stupidity and ignorance, than to the fact that every American county is +in a sense complete, a political and social unit, in which the sovereign +rights of a free people are expressed by the courthouse and town hall, +spiritual freedom by the village church-spire, and hope and aspiration +in the school-house. Every reader of American fiction, particularly in +the realm of the short story, must have observed the great variety<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> of +quaint and racy characters disclosed. These are the <i>dramatis personæ</i> +of that great American novel which some one has said is being written in +installments. Writers of fiction hear constantly of characters who would +be well worth their study. In reading two recent novels that penetrate +to the heart of provincial life, Mr. White's <i>A Certain Rich Man</i> and +Mrs. Watts's <i>Nathan Burke</i>, I felt that the characters depicted might, +with unimportant exceptions, have been found almost anywhere in those +American states that shared the common history of Kansas and Ohio. Mr. +Winston Churchill, in his admirable novels of New England, has shown how +closely the purely local is allied to the universal. 'Woodchuck +sessions' have been held by many American legislatures.</p> + +<p>When <i>David Harum</i> appeared, characters similar to the hero of that +novel were reported in every part of the country. I rarely visit a town +that has not its cracker-barrel philosopher, or a poet who would shine +but for the callous heart of the magazine editor, or an artist of +supreme though unrecognized talent, or a forensic orator of wonderful +powers, or a mechanical genius whose inventions are bound to +revolutionize the industrial world. In Maine, in the back room of a shop +whose windows looked down upon a tidal river, I have listened to tariff +discussions in the dialect of Hosea Biglow; and a few weeks later have +heard farmers along the un-salt Wabash debating the same questions<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> from +a point of view that revealed no masted ships or pine woods, with a new +sense of the fine tolerance and sanity and reasonableness of our +American people. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, one of the shrewdest students +of provincial character, introduced me one day to a friend of his in a +village near Indianapolis who bore a striking resemblance to Abraham +Lincoln, and who had something of Lincoln's gift of humorous narration. +This man kept a country store, and his attitude toward his customers, +and 'trade' in general, was delicious in its drollery. Men said to be +'like Lincoln' have not been rare in the Mississippi Valley, and +politicians have been known to encourage belief in the resemblance.</p> + +<p>Colonel Higginson has said that in the Cambridge of his youth any member +of the Harvard faculty could answer any question within the range of +human knowledge; whereas in these days of specialization some man can +answer the question, but it may take a week's investigation to find him. +In 'our town'—a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine +own!—I dare say it was possible in that <i>post bellum</i> era to find men +competent to deal with almost any problem. These were mainly men of +humble beginnings and all essentially the product of our American +provinces. I should like to set down briefly the ineffaceable impression +some of these characters left upon me. I am precluded by a variety of +considerations from extending<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> this recital. The rich field of education +I ignore altogether; and I may mention only those who have gone. As it +is beside my purpose to prove that mine own people are other than +typical of those of most American communities, I check my exuberance. +Sad indeed the offending if I should protest too much!</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>In the days when the bugle still mourned across the vale, Lew Wallace +was a citizen of my native town of Crawfordsville. There he had amused +himself in the years immediately before the civil conflict, in drilling +a company of 'Algerian Zouaves' known as the Montgomery Guards, of which +my father was a member, and this was the nucleus of the Eleventh Indiana +Regiment which Wallace commanded in the early months of the war. It is +not, however, of Wallace's military services that I wish to speak now, +nor of his writings, but of the man himself as I knew him later at the +capital, at a time when, in the neighborhood of the federal building at +Indianapolis, any boy might satisfy his longing for heroes with a sight +of many of our Hoosier Olympians. He was of medium height, erect, dark +to swarthiness, with finely chiseled features and keen, black eyes, with +manners the most courtly, and a voice unusually musical and haunting. +His appearance, his tastes, his manner, were strikingly Oriental.</p> + +<p>He had a strong theatric instinct, and his life was<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> filled with +drama—with melodrama, even. His curiosity led him into the study of +many subjects, most of them remote from the affairs of his day. He was +both dreamer and man of action; he could be 'idler than the idlest +flowers,' yet he was always busy about something. He was an aristocrat +and a democrat; he was wise and temperate, whimsical and injudicious in +a breath. As a youth he had seen visions, and as an old man he dreamed +dreams. The mysticism in him was deep-planted, and he was always a +little aloof, a man apart. His capacity for detachment was like that of +Sir Richard Burton, who, at a great company given in his honor, was +found alone poring over a puzzling Arabic manuscript in an obscure +corner of the house. Wallace, like Burton, would have reached Mecca, if +chance had led him to that adventure.</p> + +<p>Wallace dabbled in politics without ever being a politician; and I might +add that he practiced law without ever being, by any high standard, a +lawyer. He once spoke of the law as 'that most detestable of human +occupations.' First and last he tried his hand at all the arts. He +painted a little; he moulded a little in clay; he knew something of +music and played the violin; he made three essays in romance. As boy and +man he went soldiering; he was a civil governor, and later a minister to +Turkey. In view of his sympathetic interest in Eastern life and +character, nothing could have been more appropriate than his appointment +to<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> Constantinople. The Sultan Abdul Hamid, harassed and anxious, used +to send for him at odd hours of the night to come and talk to him, and +offered him on his retirement a number of positions in the Turkish +government.</p> + +<p>With all this rich experience of the larger world, he remained the +simplest of natures. He was as interested in a new fishing-tackle as in +a new book, and carried both to his houseboat on the Kankakee, where, at +odd moments, he retouched a manuscript for the press, and discussed +politics with the natives. Here was a man who could talk of the <i>Song of +Roland</i> as zestfully as though it had just been reported from the +telegraph office.</p> + +<p>I frankly confess that I never met him without a thrill, even in his +last years and when the ardor of my youthful hero worship may be said to +have passed. He was an exotic, our Hoosier Arab, our story-teller of the +bazaars. When I saw him in his last illness, it was as though I looked +upon a gray sheik about to fare forth unawed toward unmapped oases.</p> + +<p>No lesson of the Civil War was more striking than that taught by the +swift transitions of our citizen soldiery from civil to military life, +and back again. This impressed me as a boy, and I used to wonder, as I +passed my heroes on their peaceful errands in the street, why they had +put down the sword when there must still be work somewhere for fighting +men to do.<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> The judge of the federal court at this time was Walter Q. +Gresham, brevetted brigadier-general, who was destined later to adorn +the cabinets of presidents of two political parties. He was cordial and +magnetic; his were the handsomest and friendliest of brown eyes, and a +noble gravity spoke in them. Among the lawyers who practiced before him +were Benjamin Harrison and Thomas A. Hendricks, who became respectively +President and Vice-President.</p> + +<p>Those Hoosiers who admired Gresham ardently were often less devotedly +attached to Harrison, who lacked Gresham's warmth and charm. General +Harrison was akin to the Covenanters who bore both Bible and sword into +battle. His eminence in the law was due to his deep learning in its +history and philosophy. Short of stature, and without grace of +person,—with a voice pitched rather high,—he was a remarkably +interesting and persuasive speaker. If I may so put it, his political +speeches were addressed as to a trial judge rather than to a jury, his +appeal being to reason and not to passion or prejudice. He could, in +rapid flights of campaigning, speak to many audiences in a day without +repeating himself. He was measured and urbane; his discourses abounded +in apt illustration; he was never dull. He never stooped to pietistic +clap-trap, or chanted the jaunty chauvinism that has so often caused the +Hoosier stars to blink.</p> + +<p>Among the Democratic leaders of that period, Hendricks<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> was one of the +ablest, and a man of many attractive qualities. His dignity was always +impressive, and his appearance suggested the statesman of an earlier +time. It is one of immortality's harsh ironies that a man who was a +gentleman, and who stood moreover pretty squarely for the policies that +it pleased him to defend, should be published to the world in a bronze +effigy in his own city as a bandy-legged and tottering tramp, in a frock +coat that never was on sea or land.</p> + +<p>Joseph E. McDonald, a Senator in Congress, was held in affectionate +regard by a wide constituency. He was an independent and vigorous +character who never lost a certain raciness and tang. On my first timid +venture into the fabled East I rode with him in a day-coach from +Washington to New York on a slow train. At some point he saw a peddler +of fried oysters on a station platform, alighted to make a purchase, and +ate his luncheon quite democratically from the paper parcel in his car +seat. He convoyed me across the ferry, asked where I expected to stop, +and explained that he did not like the European plan; he liked, he said, +to have 'full swing at a bill of fare.'</p> + +<p>I used often to look upon the towering form of Daniel W. Voorhees, whom +Sulgrove, an Indiana journalist with a gift for translating Macaulay +into Hoosierese, had named 'The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash.' In a +crowded hotel lobby I can still see him, cloaked and silk-hatted, the +centre of the throng, and my strict<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> upbringing in the antagonistic +political faith did not diminish my admiration for his eloquence.</p> + +<p>Such were some of the characters who came and went in the streets of our +provincial capital in those days.</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>In discussions under captions similar to mine it is often maintained +that railways, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers are knitting us +together, so that soon we shall all be keyed to a metropolitan pitch. +The proof adduced in support of this is of the most trivial, but it +strikes me as wholly undesirable that we should all be ironed out and +conventionalized. In the matter of dress, for example, the women of our +town used to take their fashions from <i>Godey's</i> and <i>Peterson's via</i> +Cincinnati; but now that we are only eighteen hours from New York, with +a well-traveled path from the Wabash to Paris, my counselors among the +elders declare that the tone of our society—if I may use so perilous a +word—has changed little from our good old black alpaca days. The hobble +skirt receives prompt consideration in the 'Main' street of any town, +and is viewed with frank curiosity, but it is only a one day's wonder. A +lively runaway or the barbaric yawp of a new street fakir may dethrone +it at any time.</p> + +<p>New York and Boston tailors solicit custom among us biennially, but +nothing is so stubborn as our provincial distrust of fine raiment. I +looked with awe, in<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> my boyhood, upon a pair of mammoth blue-jeans +trousers that were flung high from a flagstaff in the centre of +Indianapolis, in derision of a Democratic candidate for governor, James +D. Williams, who was addicted to the wearing of jeans. The Democrats +sagaciously accepted the challenge, made 'honest blue jeans' the +battle-cry, and defeated Benjamin Harrison, the 'kid-glove' candidate of +the Republicans. Harmless demagoguery this or bad judgment on the part +of the Republicans; and yet I dare say that if the sartorial issue +should again become acute in our politics the banner of bifurcated jeans +would triumph now as then. A Hoosier statesman who to-day occupies high +office once explained to me his refusal of sugar for his coffee by +remarking that he didn't like to waste sugar that way; he wanted to keep +it for his lettuce. I do not urge sugared lettuce as symbolizing our +higher provincialism, but mayonnaise may be poison to men who are +nevertheless competent to construe and administer law.</p> + +<p>It is much more significant that we are all thinking about the same +things at the same time, than that Farnam Street, Omaha, and Fifth +Avenue, New York, should vibrate to the same shade of necktie. The +distribution of periodicals is so managed that California and Maine cut +the leaves of their magazines on the same day. Rural free delivery has +hitched the farmer's wagon to the telegraph office, and you can't buy +his wife's butter now until he has scanned the produce<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> market in his +newspaper. This immediacy of contact does not alter the provincial point +of view. New York and Texas, Oregon and Florida, will continue to see +things at different angles, and it is for the good of all of us that +this is so. We have no national political, social, or intellectual +centre. There is no 'season' in New York, as in London, during which all +persons distinguished in any of these particulars meet on common ground. +Washington is our nearest approach to such a meeting-place, but it +offers only short vistas. We of the country visit Boston for the +symphony, or New York for the opera, or Washington to view the +government machine at work, but nowhere do interesting people +representative of all our ninety millions ever assemble under one roof. +All our capitals are, as Lowell put it, 'fractional,' and we shall +hardly have a centre while our country is so nearly a continent.</p> + +<p>Nothing in our political system could be wiser than our dispersion into +provinces. Sweep from the map the lines that divide the states and we +should huddle like sheep suddenly deprived of the protection of known +walls and flung upon the open prairie. State lines and local pride are +in themselves a pledge of stability. The elasticity of our system makes +possible a variety of governmental experiments by which the whole +country profits. We should all rejoice that the parochial mind is so +open, so eager, so earnest, so tolerant. Even the most buckramed +conservative on the Eastern coastline,<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> scornful of the political +follies of our far-lying provinces, must view with some interest the +dallyings of Oregon with the Referendum, and of Des Moines with the +Commission System. If Milwaukee wishes to try Socialism, the rest of us +need not complain. Democracy will cease to be democracy when all its +problems are solved and everybody votes the same ticket.</p> + +<p>States that produce the most cranks are prodigal of the corn that pays +the dividends on the railroads the cranks despise. Indiana's amiable +feeling toward New York is not altered by her sister's rejection or +acceptance of the direct primary, a benevolent device of noblest +intention, under which, not long ago, in my own commonwealth, my fellow +citizens expressed their distrust of me with unmistakable emphasis. It +is no great matter, but in open convention also I have perished by the +sword. Nothing can thwart the chastening hand of a righteous people.</p> + +<p>All passes; humor alone is the touchstone of democracy. I search the +newspapers daily for tidings of Kansas, and in the ways of Oklahoma I +find delight. The Emporia <i>Gazette</i> is quite as patriotic as the +Springfield <i>Republican</i> or the New York <i>Post</i>, and to my own taste, +far less depressing. I subscribed for a year to the Charleston <i>News and +Courier</i>, and was saddened by the tameness of its sentiments; for I +remember (it must have been in 1884) the shrinking horror with<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> which I +saw daily in the Indiana Republican organ a quotation from Wade Hampton +to the effect that 'these are the same principles for which Lee and +Jackson fought four years on Virginia's soil.' Most of us are +entertained when Colonel Watterson rises to speak for Kentucky and +invokes the star-eyed goddess. When we call the roll of the states, if +Malvolio answer for any, let us suffer him in tolerance and rejoice in +his yellow stockings. 'God give them wisdom that have it; and those that +are fools, let them use their talents.'</p> + +<p>Every community has its dissenters, protestants, kickers, cranks, the +more the merrier. I early formed a high resolve to strive for membership +in this execrated company. George W. Julian,—one of the noblest of +Hoosiers,—who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice-President in +1852, a delegate to the first Republican convention, five times a member +of Congress, a supporter of Greeley's candidacy, and a Democrat in the +consulship of Cleveland, was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 I +was dusting law-books in an office where mugwumpery flourished, and +where the iniquities of the tariff, Matthew Arnold's theological +opinions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley were discussed +at intervals in the day's business.</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>It is constantly complained that we Americans give too much time to +politics, but there could be no safer<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> way of utilizing that extra drop +of vital fluid which Matthew Arnold found in us. Epithets of opprobrium +pinned to a Nebraskan in 1896 were riveted upon a citizen of New York in +1910, and who, then, was the gentleman? No doubt many voices will cry in +the wilderness before we reach the promised land. A people which has +been fed on the Bible is bound to hear the rumble of Pharaoh's chariots. +It is in the blood to feel the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's +contumely. The winter evenings are long on the prairies, and we must +always be fashioning a crown for Cæsar or rehearsing his funeral rites. +No great danger can ever seriously menace the nation so long as the +remotest citizen clings to his faith that he is a part of the +governmental mechanism and can at any time throw it out of adjustment if +it doesn't run to suit him. He can go into the court-house and see the +men he helped to place in office; or if they were chosen in spite of +him, he pays his taxes just the same and waits for another chance to +turn the rascals out.</p> + +<p>Mr. Bryce wrote: 'This tendency to acquiescence and submission; this +sense of the insignificance of individual effort, this belief that the +affairs of men are swayed by large forces whose movement may be studied +but cannot be turned, I have ventured to call the Fatalism of the +Multitude.' It is, I should say, one of the most encouraging phenomena +of the score of years that have elapsed since Mr. Bryce's <i>American +Commonwealth<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></i> appeared, that we have grown much less conscious of the +crushing weight of the mass. It has been with something of a child's +surprise in his ultimate successful manipulation of a toy whose +mechanism has baffled him that we have begun to realize that, after all, +the individual counts. The pressure of the mass will yet be felt, but in +spite of its persistence there are abundant signs that the individual is +asserting himself more and more, and even the undeniable acceptance of +collectivist ideas in many quarters helps to prove it. With all our +faults and defaults of understanding,—populism, free silver, Coxey's +army, and the rest of it,—we of the West have not done so badly. Be not +impatient with the young man Absalom; the mule knows his way to the oak +tree!</p> + +<p>Blaine lost Indiana in 1884; Bryan failed thrice to carry it. The +campaign of 1910 in Indiana was remarkable for the stubbornness of +'silent' voters, who listened respectfully to the orators but left the +managers of both parties in the air as to their intentions. In the +Indiana Democratic State Convention of 1910 a gentleman was furiously +hissed for ten minutes amid a scene of wildest tumult; but the cause he +advocated won, and the ticket nominated in that memorable convention +succeeded in November. Within fifty years Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois +have sent to Washington seven presidents, elected for ten terms. Without +discussing the value of their public services it may be said that it has +been an<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> important demonstration to our Mid-Western people of the +closeness of their ties with the nation, that so many men of their own +soil have been chosen to the seat of the presidents; and it is +creditable to Maine and California that they have cheerfully acquiesced. +In Lincoln the provincial American most nobly asserted himself, and any +discussion of the value of provincial life and character in our politics +may well begin and end in him. We have seen verily that</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">Fishers and choppers and ploughmen</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Shall constitute a state.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Whitman, addressing Grant on his return from his world's tour, declared +that it was not that the hero had walked 'with kings with even pace the +round world's promenade';</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round world's promenade,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Were all so justified.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>What we miss and what we lack who live in the provinces seem to me of +little weight in the scale against our compensations. We slouch,—we are +deficient in the graces, we are prone to boast, and we lack in those +fine reticences that mark the cultivated citizen of the metropolis. We +like to talk, and we talk our problems out to a finish. Our +commonwealths rose in the ashes<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> of the hunter's campfires, and we are +all a great neighborhood, united in a common understanding of what +democracy is, and animated by ideals of what we want it to be. That +saving humor which is a philosophy of life flourishes amid the tall +corn. We are old enough now—we of the West—to have built up in +ourselves a species of wisdom, founded upon experience, which is a part +of the continuing unwritten law of democracy. We are less likely these +days to 'wobble right' than we are to stand fast or march forward like +an army with banners.</p> + +<p>We provincials are immensely curious. Art, music, literature, +politics—nothing that is of contemporaneous human interest is alien to +us. If these things don't come to us we go to them. We are more truly +representative of the American ideal than our metropolitan cousins, +because (here I lay my head upon the block) we know more about, oh, so +many things! We know vastly more about the United States, for one thing. +We know what New York is thinking before New York herself knows it, +because we visit the metropolis to find out. Sleeping-cars have no +terrors for us, and a man who has never been west of Philadelphia seems +to us a singularly benighted being. Those of our Western school-teachers +who don't see Europe for three hundred dollars every summer get at least +as far east as Concord, to be photographed by the rude bridge that +arched the flood.<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a></p> + +<p>That fine austerity, which the voluble Westerner finds so smothering on +the Boston and New York express, is lost utterly at Pittsburg. From +gentlemen cruising in day-coaches—rude wights who advertise their +personal sanitation and literacy by the toothbrush and fountain-pen +planted sturdily in their upper left-hand waistcoat pockets—one may +learn the most prodigious facts and the philosophy thereof. 'Sit over, +brother; there's hell to pay in the Balkans,' remarks the gentleman who +boarded the inter-urban at Peru or Connersville, and who would just as +lief discuss the papacy or child-labor, if revolutions are not to your +liking.</p> + +<p>In Boston a lady once expressed her surprise that I should be hastening +home for Thanksgiving Day. This, she thought, was a New England +festival. More recently I was asked by a Bostonian if I had ever heard +of Paul Revere. Nothing is more delightful in us, I think, than our +meekness before instruction. We strive to please; all we ask is 'to be +shown.'</p> + +<p>Our greatest gain is in leisure and the opportunity to ponder and brood. +In all these thousands of country towns live alert and shrewd students +of affairs. Where your New Yorker scans headlines as he 'commutes' +homeward, the villager reaches his own fireside without being shot +through a tube, and sits down and reads his newspaper thoroughly. When +he repairs to the drug-store to abuse or praise the powers that be, his +wife<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> reads the paper, too. A United States Senator from a Middle +Western State, making a campaign for renomination preliminary to the +primaries, warned the people in rural communities against the newspaper +and periodical press with its scandals and heresies. 'Wait quietly by +your firesides, undisturbed by these false teachings,' he said in +effect; 'then go to your primaries and vote as you have always voted.' +His opponent won by thirty thousand,—the amiable answer of the little +red schoolhouse.</p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>A few days ago I visited again my native town. On the slope where I +played as a child I listened in vain for the mourning bugle; but on the +college campus a bronze tablet commemorative of those sons of Wabash who +had fought in the mighty war quickened the old impressions. The college +buildings wear a look of age in the gathering dusk.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">Coldly, sadly descends</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">The autumn evening. The field</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Strewn with its dank yellow drifts</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Of withered leaves, and the elms,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Fade into dimness apace,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Silent; hardly a shout</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">From a few boys late at their play!</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Brave airs of cityhood are apparent in the town, with its paved streets, +fine hall and library; and everywhere are wholesome life, comfort, and +peace. The<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> train is soon hurrying through gray fields and dark +woodlands. Farmhouses are disclosed by glowing panes; lanterns flash +fitfully where farmers are making all fast for the night. The city is +reached as great factories are discharging their laborers, and I pass +from the station into a hurrying throng homeward bound. Against the sky +looms the dome of the capitol; the tall shaft of the soldiers' monument +rises ahead of me down the long street and vanishes starward. Here where +forests stood seventy-five years ago, in a state that has not yet +attained its centenary, is realized much that man has sought through all +the ages,—order, justice, and mercy, kindliness and good cheer. What we +lack we seek, and what we strive for we shall gain. And of such is the +kingdom of democracy.<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_153.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_153_sml.jpg" width="550" height="125" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Our_Lady_Poverty" id="Our_Lady_Poverty"></a>Our Lady Poverty<br /><br /> +<small>By Agnes Repplier</small></h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><small>HE</small> last people to read the literature of poverty are the poor, and this +fact may be cited as one of the ameliorations of their lot. If they were +assured day after day that they were degraded and enslaved, it would be +a trifle hard for them to cherish their respectability, and enjoy their +freedom. If their misery were dinned into their ears, they would +naturally cease being cheerful. If they were convinced that tears are +their portion, they would no longer have the temerity to laugh. Indeed +their mirth is frankly repellent to the dolorous writers of to-day.</p> + +<p class="c">A burst of hollow laughter from a hopeless heart</p> + +<p class="nind">is permitted as seemly and in character; even the poet of the slums +grants this outlet for emotion; but the rude sounds which denote +hilarity disturb the sympathetic soul. One agitated lady describes with +shrinking horror the merriment of the scrub-women going to their labor. +All the dignity, all the sacredness of womanhood are defiled by these +poor old creatures tramping<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> through the chill dawn; and yet, and +yet,—oh, mockery of nobler aspirations!—'The scrub-women were going to +work, and they went laughing!'</p> + +<p>The dismalness of serious writers, especially if humanity be their +theme, is steeping us in gloom. The obsession of sorrow seems the most +reasonable of all obsessions, because facts can be crowded upon facts +(to the general exclusion of truth) by way of argument and illustration. +And should facts fail, there are bitter generalizations which shroud us +like a pall.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">Behind all music we can hear</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">The insistent note of hunger-fear;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Beyond all beauty we can see</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">The land's defenseless misery.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Mr. Percy MacKaye in his preface to that treatise on eugenics which he +has christened <i>To-Morrow</i>, and humorously designated as a play, makes +this inspiriting statement: 'Our world is hideously unhappy, and the +insufferable sense of that unhappiness is the consecration of modern +leaders in art. Realism is splendidly their incentive.'</p> + +<p>This opens up a cheering vista for the public. If the dramatists of the +near future are to have no finer consecration than an insufferable sense +of unhappiness, we must turn for amusement to lectures and organ +recitals. If novelists and poets are to be hallowed by grief, there will +be nothing left for light-hearted readers save the study of political +economy, erstwhile called the dismal<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> science, but now, by comparison, +gay. No artist yet was ever born of an insufferable sense of +unhappiness. No leader and helper of men was ever bedewed with tears. +The world is old, and the world is wide. Of what use are we in its +tumultuous life, if we do not know its joys, its griefs, its high +emotions, its call to courage, and the echo of the laughter of the ages?</p> + +<p>Perhaps the only literature of poverty (I use the word 'literature' in a +purely courteous sense) which was ever written for the poor is that +amazing issue of tracts, <i>Village Politics</i>, <i>Tales for the Common +People</i>, and scores of similar productions, which a hundred years ago +were let loose upon rural England. The moral in all of them is the same, +and is expressed with engaging simplicity: 'Don't give trouble to people +better off than yourself.' The fact that many of these tracts had a +prodigious sale points to their distribution—by the rich—in quarters +where it was thought that they would do most good. They were probably +read in the same spirit as that in which a Sunday-school library was +read by two small and unregenerate boys of my acquaintance, who worked +through whole shelves at a fixed rate, ten cents for a short book, +twenty-five cents for a long one,—the money paid by a pious +grandmother, and a point of honor not to skip.</p> + +<p>The smug complacency of Hannah More and her sisterhood was rudely +disturbed by Ebenezer Elliott, who<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> published his <i>Corn-Law Rhymer</i>, +with its profound pity and its somewhat impotent wrath, in 1831. England +woke up to the disturbing conviction that men and women were +starving,—always a disagreeable thing to contemplate,—and the Corn +Laws were repealed; but the 'Rhymes' were probably as little known to +the laborer of 1831 as was <i>Piers Plowman</i> to the laborer of 1392. +Langland—to whom partial critics have for five hundred years ascribed +this great poem of discontent—was keenly alive to the value of +husbandry as a theme; and his ploughman came in time to be recognized as +the people's suffering representative; but the poet, after the fashion +of poets, wrote for 'lettered clerks,' of which class he was a shining +example, his praiseworthy purpose in life being to avoid 'common men's +work.' In the last century, <i>Les Misérables</i> was called the 'Epic of the +Poor'; but its readers were, for the most part, as comfortably remote +from poverty as Victor Hugo himself, and as alive to the advantages of +wealth.</p> + +<p>In this age of print, the literature of poverty has swollen to an +enormous bulk. Statistical books, explicit and contradictory. Hopeful +books by social workers who see salvation in girls' clubs and refined +dancing. Hopeless books by other social workers who believe—or, at +least, who say—that the employed are enslaved by the employer, and that +women and children are the prey of men. Highly colored books by<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> +adventurous young journalists who have masqueraded (for copy's sake) as +mill and factory hands. Gray books by casual observers who are paralyzed +by the mere sight of a slum. Furious books by rabid socialists who hold +that the poor will never be uplifted while there is left in the world a +man rich enough to pay them wages. Imaginative books by poets and +novelists who deal in realism to the exclusion of reality. All this +profusion and confusion of matter is thrust upon us month after month, +while the working-man reads his newspaper, and the working-girl reads <i>A +Coronet of Shame</i>, or <i>Lost in Fate's Fearful Abyss</i>.</p> + +<p>It was Mr. George Gissing who, in his studies of the poor, first made +popular the invective style; who hurled at London such epithets as +'pest-stricken,' 'city of the damned,' 'intimacies of abomination,' +'utmost limits of dread,'—phrases which have been faithfully copied by +shuddering defamers of New York and Chicago. Mr. John Burns, for +example, after a brief visit to the United States, said that Chicago was +a pocket edition of hell; and subsequently, without, we hope, any +personal experience to back him, said that hell was a pocket edition of +Chicago.</p> + +<p>Americans have borrowed these flowers of speech from England, and have +invaded her territory. Was it because he could find no poverty at home +worthy of his strenuous pen, that Mr. Jack London crossed the sea to +write up the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields,<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> already so +abundantly exploited by English authors? Was there anything <i>he</i> could +add to the dark pictures of Mr. Gissing, or to the more convincing +studies of Mr. Arthur Morrison, who has lit up the gloom with a grim +humor, not very mirthful, but acutely and unimpeachably human? Mr. +Gissing's poor have money for nothing but beer (it would be a bold +writer who denied his starvelings beer); but Mr. Morrison sees his way +occasionally to bacon, and tea, and tinned beef, and even, at rare +intervals, to a pompous funeral, provided that the money for mutes can +be saved from the sick man's diet. He is the legitimate successor of +Dickens, and Dickens knew his field from experience rather than from +observation. The lighthouse-keeper sees the storm, but the cabin boy +feels it.</p> + +<p>In the annals of poverty there are few pages more poignant than the one +which describes the sick child, Charles Dickens, taken home from work by +a kind-hearted lad, and his shame lest this boy should learn that 'home' +for him meant the debtors' prison. In vain he tried to get rid of his +conductor, Bob Fagin by name, protesting that he was well enough to walk +alone. Bob knew he was not, and stuck to his side. Together they pushed +along until little Charles was fainting with weakness and fatigue. Then +in desperation he pretended that he lived in a decent house near +Southwark bridge, and darted up the steps with a joyous air of being at +last in haven, only to creep down again when<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> Bob's back was turned, and +drag his slow steps to the Marshalsea.</p> + +<p>Out of this dismal and precocious experience sprang two results,—a +passionate resolve <i>not</i> to be what circumstances were conspiring to +make him, and an insight into the uncalculating habits which deepen and +soften poverty. Dickens—once free of institutions—wrote of the poor, +even of the London poor, with amazing geniality; but it cannot be denied +that his infallible recipe for brightening up the scene is the timely +introduction of a pot of porter, or a pitcher of steaming flip. If we +try to think of him writing in a prohibition state, we shall realize +that he owed as much to beer and punch as ever Horace did to wine. +Imagination fails to grasp either of them in the rôle of a +water-drinker. The poor of Dickens are a sturdy lot, but they are jovial +only in their cups. His wholesome hatred of institutions would have been +intensified could he have lived to hear the Camberwell Board of +Guardians decide—at the instigation, alas! of a woman member—that the +single mug of beer which for years had solaced the inmates of Camberwell +Workhouse on Christmas Day, should hereafter be abolished as an immoral +indulgence. The generous ghost of Dickens must have groaned in Heaven +over that melancholy and mean reform.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a></p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>'To achieve what man may, to bear what man must,'—since the struggle +for life began, this has been the purpose and the pride of humanity. We +Americans were trained from childhood to believe that while, in the +final issue, each of us must answer for himself, the country—our +country—gave to all scope for effort, and chance of victory.</p> + +<p>This was not mere Fourth of July oratory, nor the fervent utterances of +presidential campaigns. It was a serious and a sober faith, based upon +some knowledge of the Constitution, some inheritance of experience, some +element of democracy which flavored our early lives. The mere sense of +space carried with it a profound and eager hopefulness. Those of us +whose fathers or whose grandfathers had crossed the sea to escape from +more cramping conditions, felt this atmosphere of independence keenly +and consciously. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers brought +up their families in an alien land with decent industry and thrift, were +aware, even in childhood, that the Republic had fostered our growth. +Therefore am I pardonably bewildered when I hear American workmen called +'slaves' and 'prisoners of starvation,' and American employers called +'base oppressors,' and 'despots on their thrones.' This fantastic +nomenclature seems immeasurably removed from the<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> temperate language in +which were formulated the temperate convictions of my youth.</p> + +<p>The assumption that the American laborer to-day stands where the French +laborer stood before the Revolution, where the English laborer stood +before the passing of the first Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn +Laws, shows a lack of historical perspective. The assumption that all +strikes represent an agonized protest against tyranny, an agonized +appeal from injustice, is a perversion of truth. The assumption that +child-labor in the United States is the blot upon civilization that it +was in England seventy years ago, denies the duty of comparison. If the +people who write verses about 'Labor Crucified' would make a table of +the wages paid to skilled and unskilled workmen, from the Chicago +carpenter to the Philadelphia street-cleaner, they might sing in a more +cheerful strain. If the people who to-day echo the bitterest lines of +Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' would ascertain and bear in mind +the proportion of little boys and girls who are going to school in the +United States, how many years they average, and how much the country +pays for their education, they might spare us some violent invectives. +Even Mr. Robert Hunter permits himself the use of the word 'cannibalism' +when speaking of child-workers, and this in the face of legislation +which every year extends its area, and grows more stringently +protective.<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a></p> + +<p>There is a great deal of loose writing on this important theme, and it +stands in the way of amendment. It is assumed that parents are seldom or +never to blame for sending their children to work. The mill-owner +snatches them from their mothers' arms. It is assumed that the child who +works would—if there were no employment for him—be at school, or at +play, happy, healthy, and well-nourished. No one even alludes to the +cruel poverty of the South, which, for generations before the cotton +mills were built, stunted the growth and sapped the strength of Southern +children. They lived, we are told, a 'wholesome rural life,' and the +greed of the capitalist is alone responsible for the blighting of their +pastoral paradise.</p> + +<p>There is no need to write like this. The question at issue is a grave +and simple one. It makes its appeal to the conscience and the sense of +the nation, and every year sees some measure of reform. If a baby girl +in an American city, a child of three or five, is forced to toil all +day, winding artificial daisy stems at a penny a hundred, let the name +of her employer and the place of her employment be made public. The +Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children can deal peremptorily +with such a case. It is not even the privilege of parents to work a +little child so relentlessly. If the pathetic story is not supported by +facts, or is not in accord with facts, it is neither wise nor well to +publish it. Why should a sober periodical, like the <i>Child-Labor +Bulletin</i>,<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> devoted to a good cause, print a poem called 'A Song of the +Factory,' in which happy children are portrayed as sporting in beautiful +meadows,</p> + +<p class="c">Idling among the feathery blooms,</p> + +<p class="nind">until a sort of ogre comes along, builds a factory, drives the poor +innocents into it, and compels them to</p> + +<p class="c">Crouch all day by the spindles, wizened, and wan, and old,</p> + +<p class="nind">earning 'his bread.' Apparently—and this is the gist of the +matter—they have no need to earn bread for themselves. The accompanying +illustrations show us on one page a prettily dressed little girl sitting +daisy-crowned in the fields, and, on the other page, a ragged and +tattered little girl with a shawl over her head going to the work which +has but too plainly impoverished her. Hansel and Gretel are not more +distinctly within the boundaries of fairyland than are these entrapped +children. The witch is not more distinctly a child-eating hobgoblin than +is the capitalist of such fervid song.</p> + +<p>The sickly and unreasoning tone which pervades the literature of poverty +is demoralizing. There is nothing helpful in the assumption that effort +is vain, resistance hopeless, and the world monstrously cruel. The +dominating element of such prose and verse is a bleak despair, unmanly, +unwomanly, inhuman. Out of the abundance of material before me, I quote +a single<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> poem, published in the New York <i>Call</i>, reprinted in the +<i>Survey</i>, and christened mockingly,—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="center"><small>THE STRAIGHT ROAD</small></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">They got y', kid, they got y', just like I said they would;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> You tried to walk the narrow path,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> You tried, and got an awful laugh;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And laughs are all y' did get, kid, they got y' good!</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">They never saw the little kid,—the kid I used to know,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> The little bare-legged girl back home,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> The little girl that played alone,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">They don't know half the things I know, kid; ain't it so?</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">They got y', kid, they got y',—you know they got y' right;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> They waited till they saw y' limp,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Then introduced y' to the pimp,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Ah, you were down then, kid, and couldn't fight.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">I guess you know what some don't know, and others know damn well,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> That sweatshops don't grow angel's wings,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> That working girls is easy things,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">And poverty's the straightest road to hell.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>And this is what our Lady Poverty, bride of Saint Francis, friend of all +holiness, counsel of all perfection, has come to mean in these years of +grace! She who was once the surest guide to Heaven now leads her chosen +ones to Hell. She who was once beloved by the devout and honored by the +just, is now a scandal and a shame, the friend of harlotry, the +instigator of crime. Even a true poet like Francis Thompson laments that +the poverty<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> exalted by Christ should have been cast down from her high +caste.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="center">All men did admire</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Her modest looks, her ragged, sweet attire</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">In which the ribboned shoe could not compete</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">With her clear simple feet.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">But Satan, envying Thee thy one ewe-lamb,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Was not content, till last unthought-of she</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Was his to damn.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Thine ingrate, ignorant lamb</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">This thing which qualms the air,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Vile, terrible, old,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>These are the words of one to whom the London gutters were for years a +home, and whose strengthless manhood lay inert under a burden of pain he +had no courage to lift. Yet never was sufferer more shone upon by +kindness than was Francis Thompson; never was man better fitted to +testify to the goodness of a bad world. And he did bear such brave +testimony again and yet again, so that the bulk of his verse is alien to +pessimism,—'every stanza an act of faith, and a declaration of good +will.'</p> + +<p>The demoralizing quality of such stuff as 'The Straight Road,' which is +forced upon us with increasing pertinacity, is its denial of kindness, +its evading of obligation. Temptation is not only the occasion, but the +justifier of sin,—a point of view which plays havoc<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> with our common +standard of morality. When a vicious young millionaire like Harry Thaw +runs amuck through his crude and evil environment, we sigh and say, 'His +money ruined him.' When a poor young woman abandons her weary +frugalities for the questionable pleasures of prostitution, we sigh and +say, 'Her poverty drove her to it.' Where then does goodness dwell? What +part does honor play? The Sieur de Joinville, in his memoirs of Saint +Louis, tells us that a certain man, sore beset by the pressure of +temptation, sought counsel from the Bishop of Paris, 'whose Christian +name was William.' And this wise William of Paris said to him: 'The +castle of Montl'héry stands in the safe heart of France, and no invading +hosts assail it. But the castle of La Rochelle in Poitou stands on the +line of battle. Day and night it must be guarded from assault, and it +has suffered grievously. Which gentleman, think you, the King holds high +in favor, the governor of Montl'héry, or the governor of La Rochelle? +The post of danger is the post of glory, and he who is sorely wounded in +the combat is honored by God and man.'</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>There are those whose ardor for humanity finds a congenial vent in the +denouncement of all they see about them,—all the institutions of their +country, all the laborious processes of civilization. Sociologists of +this type speak and write of an ordinary American city<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> in terms which +Dante might have envied. Nobody, it would seem, is ever cured in its +hospitals; they only lie on 'cots of pain.' Nobody is ever reformed in +its reformatories. Nobody is reared to decency in its asylums. Nobody +is—apparently—educated in its schools. Its industries are ravenous +beasts, sucking the blood of workers; its poor are 'shackled slaves'; +its humble homes are 'dens.' I have heard a philanthropic lecturer talk +to the poor upon the housing of the poor. She threw on a screen enlarged +photographs of narrow streets and tenement rooms which looked to me +unspeakably dreary, but which the working-women around me gazed at in +mild perplexity, seeing nothing amiss, and wondering that their +residences should be held up to this unseemly scorn. They did not do as +did the angry Italians of a New Jersey town,—smash the invidious +pictures which shamed their homes; they sat in stolid silence and +discomfiture, dimly conscious of an unresented insult.</p> + +<p>It is hard to grasp a point of view immeasurably remote from our own; +but what can we understand of other lives unless we do this difficult +thing? Old women in the out-wards of an almshouse (of all earthly abodes +the saddest) have boasted to me that their floors were scrubbed every +other day, and their sheets changed once a week; and this braggart humor +stunned my senses until I called to mind the floor and the bed of one of +them (an extraordinarily dirty old woman)<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> whom I had known in other +years. Last winter the workers in a settlement house were called upon at +midnight to succor a woman who had been kicked and beaten into +unconsciousness by a drunken husband. The poor creature was all one +bleeding bruise. When she was revived, her dim eyes traveled over the +horrified faces about her. 'It's pretty bad,' she gasped, 'it's mighty +bad'; and then, with another look at the group of protecting, pitying +spinsters, 'but it must be something fierce to be an old maid.'</p> + +<p>The city is a good friend to the poor. It gives them day nurseries for +their babies, kindergartens for their little children, schools for their +boys and girls, playgrounds, swimming-pools, recreation piers, +reading-rooms, libraries, churches, clubs, hospitals, cheap amusements, +open-air concerts, employment agencies, the companionship of their kind, +and the chance of a friend at need. In return, the poor love the city, +and cling to it with reasonable but somewhat stifling affection. They +know that the hardest thing in life is to be isolated,—'unrelated,' to +use Carlyle's apt word; and they escape this fate by eschewing the +much-lauded fields and farms. They know also that in the country they +must stand or fall by their own unaided efforts, they must learn the +hard lesson of self-reliance. Many of them propose to live, as did the +astute author of <i>Piers Plowman</i>, 'in the town, and on the town as +well.' Moreover, pleasure means as much to them as it does<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> to the rest +of us. We hardly needed Mr. Chesterton to tell us that a visit to a +corner saloon may be just as exciting an event to a tenement-house +dweller, as a dinner at a gold-and-marble hotel is to the average +middle-class citizen; and that the tenement-house dweller may be just as +moderate in his potations:—</p> + +<p class="c">Merrily taking twopenny rum, and cheese with a pocket knife.</p> + +<p>Poverty, we are assured, is an 'error,' like ill-health and crime. It is +an anachronism in civilization, a stain upon a wisely governed land. But +into our country which, after a human fashion, is both wise and foolish, +pours the poverty of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with +but a few dollars between them and want; with scant equipment, physical +or mental, for the struggle of life; with an inheritance of feebleness +from ill-nourished generations before them,—this is the problem which +the United States faces courageously, and solves as best she can. What +she cannot do is miraculously to convert poverty into plenty,—certainly +not before the next year doubles, and the third year trebles the +miracle-seeking multitude. She cannot properly house or profitably +employ a million of immigrants before the next million is clamoring at +her doors. Nor is she even given a fair chance to accomplish her giant +task. The demagogues who are employed in the congenial sport of railroad +baiting, and who are enjoying beyond measure the fun of chivying<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> +business interests into dusty corners, are the ones to lift up their +voices in shrill appeal for the army of the unemployed. They refuse to +connect one phenomenon with the other. The notion that crippling +industries will benefit the industrious is not so new as it seems. Æsop +must have had a clear insight into its workings when he wrote the fable +of the goose that laid the golden egg.</p> + +<p>The City of New York expends, according to a recent report of the +Hospital Investigating Committee, more than a million of dollars a year +for the care of sick, defective, and otherwise helpless aliens. It +expended in 1913 nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the care of +aliens who had been in this country less than five years. This is the +record of our greatest city, the one in which the astute immigrant takes +up his abode. The education she gives her little foreign-born children +comprises for the most part manual and vocational training, clinics for +the defective, schools for the incorrigible, free or cost-price lunches, +doctoring, dentistry, the care of trained nurses, and a score of similar +attentions unknown to an earlier generation, undreamed of in the +countries whence these children come. In return for such fostering care, +New York is held up to execration because she has the money to pay the +taxes which are expended in this fashion, because she lays the golden +egg which benefits the poor of twenty nations. Her unemployed +(reinforced hugely<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> from less favored communities) riot in her streets +and churches, and agitators curse her for a thing of evil, a city of +palaces and slums, corroded with the</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="center">Shame of lives that lie</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Couched in ease, while down the streets</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">Pain and want go by.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>The only people who take short views of life are the poor, the poor +whose daily wage is spent on their daily needs. Clerks and bookkeepers +and small tradesmen (toilers upon whose struggle for decency and +independence nobody ever wastes a word of sympathy) may fret over the +uncertainty of their future, the narrow margin which lies between them +and want. But the workman and his family have a courage of their own, +the courage of the soldier who does not spend the night before battle +calculating his chances of a gun-shot wound, or of a legless future. It +is exasperating to hear a teamster's wife cheerfully announce the coming +of her tenth baby; but the calmness with which she faces the situation +has in it something human and elemental. It is exasperating to see the +teamster risk illness and loss of work (he might at least pull off his +wet clothes when he gets home); but he tells you he has not gone to his +grave with a cold <i>yet</i>, and this careless confidence saves him as much +as it costs. I read recently an economist's sorrowful complaint that +families, in need of the necessities of life, go to moving-picture +shows; that women, with their husbands' scanty earnings in<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> their hands, +take their children to these blithesome entertainments instead of buying +the Sunday dinner. It sounds like the citizens who buy motor cars +instead of paying off the mortgages on their homes, and it is an error +of judgment which the working man is little likely to condone; but that +the pleasure-seeking impulse—which social workers assign exclusively to +the spirit of youth—should mutiny in a matron's bones suggests +survivals of cheerfulness, high lights amid the gloom.</p> + +<p>The deprecation of earthly anxiety taught by the Gospels, the precedence +given to the poor by the New Testament, the value placed upon voluntary +poverty by the Christian Church,—these things have for nineteen hundred +years helped in the moulding of men. There still remain some leaven of +courage, some savor of philosophy, some echoes of ancient wisdom (heard +oftenest from uneducated men), some laughter loud and careless as the +laughter of the Middle Ages, some slow sense of justice, not easy to +pervert. These qualities are perhaps as helpful as the 'divine +discontent' fostered by enthusiasts for sorrow, the cowardice bred by +insistence upon trouble and anxiety, the rancor engendered by invectives +against earth and heaven. No lot is bettered by having its hardships +emphasized. No man is helped by the drowning of his courage, the +destruction of his good-will, the paralyzing grip of</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">Envy with squinting eyes,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Sick of a strange disease, his neighbor's health.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_173.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_173_sml.jpg" width="550" height="122" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Entertaining_the_Candidate" id="Entertaining_the_Candidate"></a>Entertaining the Candidate<br /><br /> +<small>By Katharine Baker</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">B</span><small>AG</small> in hand, brother stops in for fifteen minutes, from campaigning, to +get some clean shirts. He says the candidate will be in town day after +to-morrow. Do we want him to come here, or shall he go to a hotel?</p> + +<p>We want him, of course. But we deprecate the brevity of this notice. +Also the cook and chambermaid are new, and remarkably inexpert. Brother, +however, declines to feel any concern. His confidence in our power to +cope with emergencies is flattering if exasperating.</p> + +<p>There is nothing in the markets at this time of year. Guests have a +malignant facility in choosing such times. We scour the country for +forty miles in search of green vegetables. We confide in the fishmonger, +who grieves sympathetically over the 'phone, because all crabs are now +cold-storage, and he'd be deceiving us if he said otherwise.</p> + +<p>Still we are determined to have luncheon prepared in the house. Last +time the august judge dined with us we summoned a caterer from a hundred +miles away, and though the caterer's food was good, it was late.<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> We +love promptness, and we are going to have it. Ladies knew all about +efficiency long before Mr. Frederick Taylor. Only they couldn't teach it +to servants, and he would find he couldn't either. But every mistress of +a house knows how to make short cuts, and is expert at 'record +production' in emergencies.</p> + +<p>The casual brother says there will be one or two dozen people at +luncheon. He will telephone us fifteen minutes before they arrive. Yes, +really, that's the best he can do.</p> + +<p>So we prepare for one or two dozen people, and they must sit down to +luncheon because men hate a buffet meal. We struggle with the problem, +how many chickens are required for twelve or twenty-four people? The +answer, however, is really obvious. Enough for twenty-four will be +enough for twelve.</p> + +<p>Day after to-morrow arrives. The gardener comes in to lay hearth-fires +and carry tables. We get out china and silver. We make salad and rolls, +fruit-cup and cake. We guide the cook's faltering steps over the +critical moments of soup and chicken. We do the oysters in our own +particular way, which we fancy inimitable. We arrange bushels of flowers +in bowls, vases, and baskets, and set them on mantels, tables, +book-cases, everywhere that a flower can find a footing. The chauffeur +comes in proudly with the flower-holder from the limousine, and we fill +it in honor of the distinguished guest.<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a></p> + +<p>Then we go outside to see that the approach to the house is +satisfactory. The bland old gardener points to the ivy-covered wall, and +says with innocent joy, '—— it, ain't that ivory the prettiest thing +you ever saw in your life?' And we can't deny that the lawn looks well, +with ivy, and cosmos, and innumerable chrysanthemums.</p> + +<p>The cook and chambermaid will have to help wait on the table. The +chambermaid, who is what the butler contemptuously calls 'an educated +nigger,' and so knows nothing useful, announces that she has no white +uniform. All she has is a cold in her head. We give her a blouse and +skirt, wondering why Providence doesn't eliminate the unfit.</p> + +<p>We run upstairs to put on our costliest shoes and stockings, and our +most perishable gown. The leisurely brother gets us on the wire to say +that there will be twenty guests in ten minutes.</p> + +<p>Descending, we reset the tables to seat twenty guests, light the +wood-fires, toss together twenty mint-juleps, and a few over for luck, +repeat our clear instructions to the goggling chambermaid, desperately +implore the butler to see that she keeps on the job, drop a last touch +of flavoring in the soup, and are sitting by the fire with an air of +childish gayety and carelessness when the train of motor-cars draws up +to the door.</p> + +<p>Here is the judge, courteous and authoritative. Here is his assiduous +suite. The room fills with faces<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> well known in every country that an +illustrated newspaper can penetrate. From the Golden Gate and the Rio +Grande, from New York and Alabama, these men have come together, intent +on wresting to themselves the control of the Western Hemisphere. Now +they are a sort of highly respectable guerillas. To-morrow, very likely, +they will be awe-inspiring magnates.</p> + +<p>Theoretically we are impressed. Actually they have mannerisms, and some +of them wear spectacles. We reflect that the triumvirs very likely had +mannerisms, too, and Antony himself might have been glad to own +spectacles. We try to feel reverence for the high calling of these men. +We hope they'll like our luncheon.</p> + +<p>The butler brings in the juleps and we maintain a detached look, as +though those juleps were just a happy thought of the butler himself, and +we were as much surprised as anybody. The judge won't have one, but most +everybody else will. The newspaper men look love and gratitude at the +butler.</p> + +<p>That earnest youth is the judge's secretary. The huge, iron-gray man +expects to be a governor after November fifth, if dreams come true. The +amiable old gentleman who never leaves the judge's side, has come two +thousand miles out of pure political enthusiasm, to protect the +candidate from assassins. He can do it, too, we conclude, when we look +past his smiling mouth into his steely eyes.<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a></p> + +<p>Here is the campaign manager, business man and man-of-the-world.</p> + +<p>This pretty little newspaper-woman from Utah implores us to get an +utterance on suffrage from the judge. Just a word. It will save him +thousands of votes. Well, she's a dear little thing, but we can't take +advantage of our guest.</p> + +<p>Luncheon is announced. Brother, slightly apologetic, murmurs that there +are twenty-three. Entirely unforeseen. He babbles incoherently.</p> + +<p>But it's all right. We women won't come to the table. Voting and eating +and things like that are better left to the men anyway. Why should women +want to do either, when they have fathers and brothers to do it for +them? We can sit in the gallery and watch. It's very nice for us. And +exclusive. Nothing promiscuous. Yes, go on. We'll wait.</p> + +<p>Whoever is listening to our conversation professes heartbreak at our +decision, and edges toward the rapidly filling dining-room.</p> + +<p>We sit down to play lady of leisure, in various affected attitudes. We +are not going near the kitchen again. The luncheon is simple. Everything +is perfectly arranged. The servants can do it all. It's mere machine +work.</p> + +<p>From afar we observe the soup vanishing. Then one by one we +stammer,—'The mayonnaise—'—'I wonder if the rolls are hot—'—'Cook's +coffee is impossible,'<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a>—fade silently up the front stair, and scurry +down the kitchen-way.</p> + +<p>We cover the perishable gown with a huge white apron, we send up a +fervent prayer for the costly shoes, and go where we are needed most.</p> + +<p>We save the day for good coffee. With the precision of a juggler we +rescue plates from the chambermaid, who is overcome by this introduction +to the great world and dawdles contemplatively through the pantry door. +Charmed with our proficiency, she stands by our side, and watches us +clear a shelf of china in the twinkling of an eye. If she could find a +stool, she would sit at our feet, making motion studies. But she +couldn't find it if it were already there. She couldn't find anything. +We order her back to the dining-room, where she takes up a strategic +position by the window, from which she can idly survey the mob outside, +and the hungry men within.</p> + +<p>The last coffee-cup has passed through the doorway. Cigars and matches +are circulating in the butler's capable hands. No more need for us.</p> + +<p>We shed the enveloping aprons, disappear from the kitchen, and +materialize again, elegantly useless, in the drawing-room. Nobody can +say that luncheon wasn't hot and promptly served.</p> + +<p>Chairs begin to clatter. They are rising from the table. A brass band +outside bursts into being.</p> + +<p>Brother had foretold that band to us, and we had<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> expressed vivid +doubts. He said it would cost eighty dollars. Now eighty dollars in +itself is a respectable sum, a sum capable even of exerting some mild +fascination, but eighty dollars viewed in relation to a band becomes +merely ludicrous.</p> + +<p>We said an eighty-dollar band was a thing innately impossible, like +free-trade, or a dachshund. Brother attested that the next best grade of +band would demand eight hundred. We justly caviled at eight hundred. We +inquired, Why any band? Brother claimed that it would make a cheerful +noise, and we yielded.</p> + +<p>So at this moment the band begins to make a noise. We perceive at once +that the price was accurately gauged. It is unquestionably an +eighty-dollar band. We begin to believe in dachshunds.</p> + +<p>To these supposedly cheerful strains the gentlemen stream into the +drawing-room. They beam repletely. They tell us what a fine luncheon it +was. They are eloquent about it. All the conditions of their +entertainment were ideal, they would have us believe. They imply that we +are mighty lucky, in that our men can provide us with such a luxurious +existence. They smile with majestic benignity at these fair, but +frivolous pensioners on masculine bounty. American women are petted, +helpless dolls, anyway. Foreigners have said so. They clasp our useless +hands in fervent farewells. They proceed in state to the waiting cars. +They hope we will follow them to the meeting. Oh, yes, we<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> will come, +though incapable of apprehending the high problems of government.</p> + +<p>Led by the honest band, surrounded by flags, followed by cheers, they +disappear in magnificent procession. Now we may straggle to the +dining-room and eat cold though matchless oysters, tepid chicken, and in +general whatever there is any left of.</p> + +<p>The chambermaid has broken a lovely old Minton plate. We are glad we +didn't use the coffee-cups that were made in France for Dolly Madison. +She would have enjoyed wrecking those.</p> + +<p>We hurry, because we don't want to miss the meeting altogether. We think +enviously of the men. In our secret souls, we'd like to campaign. We +love to talk better than anything else in the world, and we could make +nice speeches, too. But we must do the oysters and the odd jobs, and +keep the hearth-fires going, like responsible vestal virgins. It's +woman's sphere. Man gave it to her because he didn't want it himself.<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_181.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_181_sml.jpg" width="550" height="128" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="The_Street" id="The_Street"></a>The Street<br /><br /> +<small>By Simeon Strunsky</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>T</small> is two short blocks from my office near Park Row to the Subway +station where I take the express for Belshazzar Court. Eight months in +the year it is my endeavor to traverse this distance as quickly as I +can. This is done by cutting diagonally across the street traffic. By +virtue of the law governing right-angled triangles I thus save as much +as fifty feet and one fifth of a minute of time. In the course of a year +this saving amounts to sixty minutes, which may be profitably spent over +a two-reel presentation of 'The Moonshiner's Bride,' supplemented by an +intimate picture of Lumbering in Saskatchewan. But with the coming of +warm weather my habits change. It grows more difficult to plunge into +the murk of the Subway.</p> + +<p>A foretaste of the languor of June is in the air. The turnstile +storm-doors in our office building, which have been put aside for brief +periods during the first deceptive approaches of spring, only to come +back triumphant from Elba, have been definitively removed. The +steel-workers pace their girders twenty floors high almost<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> in +mid-season form, and their pneumatic hammers scold and chatter through +the sultry hours. The soda-fountains are bright with new compounds whose +names ingeniously reflect the world's progress from day to day in +politics, science, and the arts. From my window I can see the long black +steamships pushing down to the sea, and they raise vague speculations in +my mind about the cost of living in the vicinity of Sorrento and +Fontainebleau. On such a day I am reminded of my physician's orders, +issued last December, to walk a mile every afternoon on leaving my +office. So I stroll up Broadway with the intention of taking my train +farther up-town, at Fourteenth Street.</p> + +<p>The doctor did not say stroll. He said a brisk walk with head erect, +chest thrown out, diaphragm well contracted, and a general aspect of +money in the bank. But here enters human perversity. The only place +where I am in the mood to walk after the prescribed military fashion is +in the open country. Just where by all accounts I ought to be sauntering +without heed to time, studying the lovely texts which Nature has set +down in the modest type-forms selected from her inexhaustible fonts,—in +the minion of ripening berries, in the nonpareil of crawling insect +life, the agate of tendril and filament, and the 12-point diamond of the +dust,—there I stride along and see little.</p> + +<p>And in the city, where I should swing along briskly, I lounge. What is +there on Broadway to linger over?<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> On Broadway, Nature has used her +biggest, fattest type-forms. Tall, flat, building fronts, brazen with +many windows and ribbed with commercial gilt lettering six feet high; +shrieking proclamations of auction sales written in letters of fire on +vast canvasses; railway posters in scarlet and blue and green; rotatory +barber-poles striving at the national colors and producing vertigo; +banners, escutcheons, crests, in all the primary colors—surely none of +these things needs poring over. And I know them with my eyes closed. I +know the windows where lithe youths in gymnasium dress demonstrate the +virtue of home exercises; the windows where other young men do nothing +but put on and take off patent reversible near-linen collars; where +young women deftly roll cigarettes; where other young women whittle at +sticks with miraculously stropped razors. I know these things by heart, +yet I linger over them in flagrantly unhygienic attitudes, my shoulders +bent forward and my chest and diaphragm in a position precisely the +reverse of that prescribed by the doctor.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the thing that makes me linger before these familiar sights is +the odd circumstance that in Broadway's shop-windows Nature is almost +never herself, but is either supernatural or artificial. Nature, for +instance, never intended that razors should cut wood and remain sharp; +that linen collars should keep on getting cleaner the longer they are +worn; that glass<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> should not break; that ink should not stain; that +gauze should not tear; that an object worth five dollars should sell for +$1.39; but all these things happen in Broadway windows. Williams, whom I +meet now and then, who sometimes turns and walks up with me to +Fourteenth Street, pointed out to me the other day how strange a thing +it was that the one street which has become a synonym for 'real life' to +all good suburban Americans is not real at all, but is crowded either +with miracles or with imitations.</p> + +<p>The windows on Broadway glow with wax fruits and with flowers of muslin +and taffeta drawn by bounteous Nature from her storehouses in Parisian +garret workshops. Broadway's ostrich feathers have been plucked in East +Side tenements. The huge cigars in the tobacconist's windows are of +wood. The enormous bottles of champagne in the saloons are of cardboard, +and empty. The tall scaffoldings of proprietary medicine bottles in the +drug shops are of paper. 'Why,' said Williams, 'even the jewelry sold in +the Japanese auction stores is not genuine, and the sellers are not +Japanese.'</p> + +<p>This bustling mart of commerce, as the generation after the Civil War +used to say, is only a world of illusion. Artificial flowers, artificial +fruits, artificial limbs, tobacco, rubber, silks, woolens, straws, gold, +silver. The young men and women who manipulate razors and elastic cords +are real, but not always. Williams<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> and I once stood for a long while +and gazed at a young woman posing in a drug-shop window, and argued +whether she was alive. Ultimately she winked and Williams gloated over +me. But how do I know her wink was real? At any rate the great mass of +human life in the windows is artificial. The ladies who smile out of +charming morning costumes are obviously of lining and plaster. Their +smug Herculean husbands in pajamas preserve their equanimity in the +severest winter weather only because of their wire-and-plaster +constitution. The baby reposing in its beribboned crib is china and +excelsior. Illusion everywhere.</p> + +<p>But the Broadway crowd is real. You only have to buffet it for five +minutes to feel, in eyes and arms and shoulders, how real it is. When I +was a boy and was taken to the circus it was always an amazing thing to +me that there should be so many people in the street moving in a +direction away from the circus. Something of this sensation still besets +me whenever we go down in the Subway from Belshazzar Court to hear +Caruso. The presence of all the other people on our train is simple +enough. They are all on their way to hear Caruso. But what of the crowds +in the trains that flash by in the opposite direction? It is not a +question of feeling sorry for them. I try to understand and I fail. But +on Broadway on a late summer afternoon the obverse is true. The natural +thing is that the living tide as it presses south shall beat me back, +halt me, eddy<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> around me. I know that there are people moving north with +me, but I am not acutely aware of them. This onrush of faces converges +on me alone. It is I against half the world.</p> + +<p>And then suddenly out of the surge of faces one leaps out at me. It is +Williams, whose doctor has told him that the surest way of fighting down +the lust for tobacco is to walk down from his office to the ferry every +afternoon. Williams and I salute each other after the fashion of +Broadway, which is to exchange greetings backward over the shoulder. +This is the first step in an elaborate minuet. Because we have passed +each other before recognition came, our hands fly out backward. Now we +whirl half around, so that I who have been moving north face the west, +while Williams, who has been traveling south, now looks east. Our +clasped hands strain at each other as we stand there poised for flight +after the first greeting. A quarter of a minute perhaps, and we have +said good-bye.</p> + +<p>But if the critical quarter of a minute passes, there ensues a change of +geographical position which corresponds to a change of soul within us. I +suddenly say to myself that there are plenty of trains to be had at +Fourteenth Street. Williams recalls that another boat will leave Battery +Place shortly after the one he is bound for. So the tension of our +outstretched arms relaxes. I, who have been facing west, complete the +half circle and swing south. Williams veers due north,<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> and we two men +stand face to face. The beat and clamor of the crowd fall away from us +like a well-trained stage mob. We are in Broadway, but not of it.</p> + +<p>'Well, what's the good word?' says Williams.</p> + +<p>When two men meet on Broadway the spirit of optimism strikes fire. We +begin by asking each other what the good word is. We take it for granted +that neither of us has anything but a chronicle of victory and courage +to relate. What other word but the good word is tolerable in the lexicon +of living, upstanding men? Failure is only for the dead. Surrender is +for the man with yellow in his nature. So Williams and I pay our +acknowledgments to this best of possible worlds. I give Williams the +good word. I make no allusion to the fact that I have spent a miserable +night in communion with neuralgia; how can that possibly concern him? +Another manuscript came back this morning from an editor who regretted +that his is the most unintelligent body of readers in the country. The +third cook in three weeks left us last night after making vigorous +reflections on my wife's good nature and my own appearance. Only an hour +ago, as I was watching the long, black steamers bound for Sorrento and +Fontainebleau, the monotony of one's treadmill work, the flat +unprofitableness of scribbling endlessly on sheets of paper, had become +almost a nausea. But Williams will know nothing of this from me. Why +should he? He may have<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> been sitting up all night with a sick child. At +this very moment the thought of the little parched lips, the moan, the +unseeing eyes, may be tearing at his entrails; but he in turn gives me +the good word, and many others after that, and we pass on.</p> + +<p>But sometimes I doubt. This splendid optimism of people on Broadway, in +the Subway and in the shops and offices—is it really a sign of high +spiritual courage, or is it just lack of sensibility? Do we find it easy +to keep a stiff upper lip, to buck up, to never say die, because we are +brave men, or simply because we lack the sensitiveness and the +imagination to react to pain? It may be even worse than that. It may be +part of our commercial gift for window-dressing, for putting up a good +front.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I feel that Williams has no right to be walking down Broadway +on business when there is a stricken child at home. The world cannot +possibly need him at that moment as much as his own flesh and blood +does. It is not courage; it is brutish indifference. At such times I am +tempted to dismiss as mythical all this fine talk about feelings that +run deep beneath the surface, and bruised hearts that ache under the +smile. If a man really suffers he will show it. If a man cultivates the +habit of not showing emotion he will end by having none to show. How +much of Broadway's optimism is—But here I am paraphrasing William +James's <i>Principles of Psychology</i>, which the reader can<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> just as well +consult for himself in the latest revised edition of 1907.</p> + +<p>Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely Williams's children are all in +perfect health, and my envelope from the editor has brought a check +instead of a rejection slip. It is on such occasions that Williams and +I, after shaking hands the way a locomotive takes on water on the run, +wheel around, halt, and proceed to buy something at the rate of two for +a quarter. If any one is ever inclined to doubt the spirit of American +fraternity, it is only necessary to recall the number of commodities for +men that sell two for twenty-five cents. In theory, the two cigars which +Williams and I buy for twenty-five cents are worth fifteen cents apiece. +As a matter of fact they are probably ten-cent cigars. But the +shopkeeper is welcome to his extra nickel. It is a small price to pay +for the seal of comradeship that stamps his pair of cigars selling for a +single quarter. Two men who have concluded a business deal in which each +has commendably tried to get the better of the other may call for +twenty-five cent perfectos or for half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I understand +there are such. But friends sitting down together will always demand +cigars that go for a round sum, two for a quarter or three for fifty (if +the editor's check is what it ought to be).</p> + +<p>When people speak of the want of real comradeship among women, I +sometimes wonder if one of the reasons<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> may not be that the prices which +women are accustomed to pay are individualistic instead of fraternal. +The soda fountains and the street cars do not dispense goods at the rate +of two items for a single coin. It is infinitely worse in the department +stores. Treating a friend to something that costs $2.79 is +inconceivable. But I have really wandered from my point.</p> + +<p>'Well, be good,' says Williams, and rushes off to catch his boat.</p> + +<p>The point I wish to make is that on Broadway people pay tribute to the +principle of goodness that rules this world, both in the way they greet +and in the way they part. We salute by asking each other what the good +word is. When we say good-bye we enjoin each other to be good. The +humorous assumption is that gay devils like Williams and me need to be +constantly warned against straying off into the primrose paths that run +out of Broadway.</p> + +<p>Simple, humorous, average American man! You have left your suburban +couch in time to walk half a mile to the station and catch the 7.59 for +the city. You have read your morning paper; discussed the weather, the +tariff, and the prospects for lettuce with your neighbor; and made the +office only a minute late. You have been fastened to your desk from nine +o'clock to five, with half an hour for lunch, which you have eaten in a +clamorous, overheated restaurant while you watched your hat and coat. At +odd moments during<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> the day the thought of doctor's bills, rent bills, +school bills, has insisted on receiving attention. At the end of the +day, laden with parcels from the market, from the hardware store, from +the seedman, you are bound for the ferry to catch the 5.43, when you +meet Smith, who, having passed the good word, sends you on your way with +the injunction to be good—not to play roulette, not to open wine, not +to turkey-trot, not to joy-ride, not to haunt the stage door. Be good, O +simple, humorous, average suburban American!</p> + +<p>I take back that word suburban. The Sunday Supplement has given it a +meaning which is not mine. I am speaking only of the suburban in spirit, +of a simplicity, a meekness which is of the soul only. Outwardly there +is nothing suburban about the crowd on lower Broadway. The man in the +street is not at all the diminutive, apologetic creature with side +whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought forth and named Common People, who +begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the Rent-Payer and the Ultimate +Consumer. The crowd on lower Broadway is alert and well set up. Yes, +though one hates to do it, I must say 'clean-cut.' The men on the +sidewalk are young, limber, sharp-faced, almost insolent young men. +There are not very many old men in the crowd, though I see any number of +gray-haired young men. Seldom do you detect the traditional signs of +age, the sagging lines of the face, the relaxed abdominal contour, the +tamed spirit. The<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> young, the young-old, the old-young, but rarely quite +the old.</p> + +<p>I am speaking only of externals. Clean-cut, eager faces are very +frequently disappointing. A very ordinary mind may be working behind +that clear sweep of brow and nose and chin. I have known the shock of +young men who look like kings of Wall Street and speak like shoe clerks. +They are shoe clerks. But the appearance is there, that athletic +carriage which is helped out by our triumphant, ready-made clothing. I +suppose I ought to detest the tailor's tricks which iron out all ages +and all stations into a uniformity of padded shoulders and trim +waist-lines and hips. I imagine I ought to despise our habit of wearing +elegant shoddy where the European chooses honest, clumsy woolens. But I +am concerned only with externals, and in outward appearances a Broadway +crowd beats the world. Æsthetically we simply are in a class by +ourselves when compared with the Englishman and the Teuton in their +skimpy, ill-cut garments. Let the British and German ambassadors at +Washington do their worst. This is my firm belief and I will maintain it +against the world. The truth must out. <i>Ruat cœlum. Ich kann nicht +anders. J'y suis, j'y reste.</i></p> + +<p>Williams laughs at my lyrical outbursts. But I am not yet through. I +still have to speak of the women in the crowd. What an infinitely finer +thing is a woman than a man of her class! To see this for yourself you<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> +have only to walk up Broadway until the southward-bearing stream breaks +off and the tide begins to run from west to east. You have passed out of +the commercial district into the region of factories. It is well on +toward dark, and the barracks that go by the unlovely name of loft +buildings, are pouring out their battalions of needle-workers. The crowd +has become a mass. The nervous pace of lower Broadway slackens to the +steady, patient tramp of a host. It is an army of women, with here and +there a flying detachment of the male.</p> + +<p>On the faces of the men the day's toil has written its record even as on +the women, but in a much coarser hand. Fatigue has beaten down the soul +of these men into brutish indifference, but in the women it has drawn +fine the flesh only to make it more eloquent of the soul. Instead of +listlessness, there is wistfulness. Instead of vacuity you read mystery. +Innate grace rises above the vulgarity of the dress. Cheap, tawdry +blouse and imitation willow-plume walk shoulder to shoulder with the +shoddy coat of the male, copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may attain +to five dollars. But the men's shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman +transfigures and subtilizes the cheap material. The spirit of grace +which is the birthright of her sex cannot be killed—not even by the +presence of her best young man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by the +heritage of her sex, and America has accentuated her<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a> title. This +America which drains her youthful vigor with overwork, which takes from +her cheeks the color she has brought from her Slavic or Italian peasant +home, makes restitution by remoulding her in more delicate, more +alluring lines, gives her the high privilege of charm—and neurosis.</p> + +<p>Williams and I pause at the Subway entrances and watch the earth suck in +the crowd. It lets itself be swallowed up with meek good-nature. Our +amazing good-nature! Political philosophers have deplored the fact. They +have urged us to be quicker-tempered, more resentful of being stepped +upon, more inclined to write letters to the editor. I agree that only in +that way can we be rid of political bosses, of brutal policemen, of +ticket-speculators, of taxi-cab extortioners, of insolent waiters, of +janitors, of indecent congestion in travel, of unheated cars in the +winter and barred-up windows in summer. I am at heart with the social +philosophers. But then I am not typical of the crowd. When my neighbor's +elbow injects itself into the small of my back, I twist around and +glower at him. I forget that his elbow is the innocent mechanical result +of a whole series of elbows and backs extending the length of the car, +to where the first cause operates in the form of a station-guard's +shoulder ramming the human cattle into their stalls. In the faces about +me there is no resentment. Instead of smashing windows, instead of +raising barricades in the Subway and hanging the<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> train-guards with +their own lanterns about their necks, the crowd sways and bends to the +lurching of the train, and young voices call out cheerfully, 'Plenty of +room ahead.'</p> + +<p>Horribly good-natured! We have taken a phrase which is the badge of our +shame and turned it into a jest. Plenty of room ahead! If this were a +squat, ill-formed proletarian race obviously predestined to subjection, +one might understand. But that a crowd of trim, well-cut, self-reliant +Americans, sharp-featured, alert, insolent as I have called them, that +they should submit is a puzzle. Perhaps it is because of the fierce +democracy of it all. The crush, the enforced intimacies of physical +contact, the feeling that a man's natural condition is to push and be +pushed, to shove ahead when the opportunity offers and to take it like a +man when no chance presents itself—that is equality. A seat in the +Subway is like the prizes of life for which men have fought in these +United States. You struggle, you win or lose. If the other man wins +there is no envy; admiration rather, provided he has not shouldered and +elbowed out of reason. That god-like freedom from envy is passing +to-day, and perhaps the good-nature of the crowd in the Subway will +pass. I see signs of the approaching change. People do not call out, +'Plenty of room ahead,' so frequently as they used to.</p> + +<p>Good-natured when dangling from the strap in the<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> Subway, good-natured +in front of baseball bulletins on Park Row, good-natured in the face of +so much oppression and injustice, where is the supposed cruelty of the +'mob'? I am ready to affirm on oath that the mob is not vindictive, that +it is not cruel. It may be a bit sharp-tongued, fickle, a bit +mischievous, but in the heart of the crowd there is no evil passion. The +evil comes from the leaders, the demagogues, the professional distorters +of right thinking and right feeling. The crowd in the bleachers is not +the clamorous, brute mob of tradition. I have watched faces in the +bleachers and in the grand-stand and seen little of that fury which is +supposed to animate the fan. For the most part he sits there with folded +arms, thin-lipped, eager, but after all conscious that there are other +things in life besides baseball. No, it is the leaders, the baseball +editors, the cartoonists, the humorists, the professional stimulators of +'local pride,' with their exaggerated gloatings over a game won, their +poisonous attacks upon a losing team, who are responsible. It is these +demagogues who drill the crowd in the gospel of loving only a +winner—but if I keep on I shall be in politics before I know it.</p> + +<p>If you see in the homeward crowd in the Subway a face over which the +pall of depression has settled, that face very likely is bent over the +comic pictures in the evening paper. I cannot recall seeing any one +smile over these long serials of humorous adventure which<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> run from day +to day and from year to year. I have seen readers turn mechanically to +these lurid comics and pore over them, foreheads puckered into a frown, +lips unconsciously spelling out the long legends which issue in the form +of little balloons and lozenges from that amazing portrait gallery of +dwarfs, giants, shrilling viragos and their diminutive husbands, +devil-children, quadrupeds, insects,—an entire zoölogy. If any stimulus +rises from these pages to the puzzled brain, the effect is not visible. +I imagine that by dint of repetition through the years these grotesque +creations have become a reality to millions of readers. It is no longer +a question of humor, it is a vice. The Desperate Desmonds, the +Newly-weds, and the Dingbats, have acquired a horrible fascination. +Otherwise I cannot see why readers of the funny page should appear to be +memorizing pages from Euclid.</p> + +<p>This by way of anticipation. What the doctor has said of exercise being +a habit which grows easy with time is true. It is the first five minutes +of walking that are wearisome. I find myself strolling past Fourteenth +Street, where I was to take my train for Belshazzar Court. Never mind, +Forty-Second Street will do as well. I am now on a different Broadway. +The crowd is no longer north and south, but flows in every direction. It +is churned up at every corner and spreads itself across the squares and +open places. Its appearance has changed. It is no longer a factory +population. Women<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> still predominate, but they are the women of the +professions and trades which centre about Madison Square—business women +of independent standing, women from the magazine offices, the publishing +houses, the insurance offices. You detect the bachelor girl in the +current which sets in toward the home quarters of the undomesticated, +the little Bohemias, the foreign eating-places whose fixed <i>table +d'hôte</i> prices flash out in illumined signs from the side streets. Still +farther north and the crowd becomes tinged with the current of that +Broadway which the outside world knows best. The idlers begin to mingle +with the workers, men in English clothes with canes, women with plumes +and jeweled reticules. You catch the first heart-beat of Little Old New +York.</p> + +<p>The first stirrings of this gayer Broadway die down as quickly almost as +they manifested themselves. The idlers and those who minister to them +have heard the call of the dinner hour and have vanished, into hotel +doors, into shabbier quarters by no means in keeping with the cut of +their garments and their apparent indifference to useful employment. +Soon the street is almost empty. It is not a beautiful Broadway in this +garish interval between the last of the matinée and shopping crowd and +the vanguard of the night crowd. The monster electric sign-boards have +not begun to gleam and flash and revolve and confound the eye and the +senses. At night the electric Niagara hides the<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> squalid fronts of ugly +brick, the dark doorways, the clutter of fire-escapes, the rickety +wooden hoardings. Not an imperial street this Broadway at 6.30 of a +summer's afternoon. Cheap jewelry shops, cheap tobacconist's shops, +cheap haberdasheries, cheap restaurants, grimy little newspaper agencies +and ticket-offices, and 'demonstration' stores for patent foods, patent +waters, patent razors.</p> + +<p>O Gay White Way, you are far from gay in the fast-fading light, before +the magic hand of Edison wipes the wrinkles from your face and +galvanizes you into hectic vitality; far from alluring with your tinsel +shop windows, with your puffy-faced, unshaven men leaning against +door-posts and chewing pessimistic toothpicks, your sharp-eyed newsboys +wise with the wisdom of the Tenderloin, and your itinerant women whose +eyes wander from side to side. It is not in this guise that you draw the +hearts of millions to yourself, O dingy, Gay White Way, O Via Lobsteria +Dolorosa!</p> + +<p>Well, when a man begins to moralize it is time to go home. I have walked +farther than I intended, and I am soft from lack of exercise, and tired. +The romance of the crowd has disappeared. Romance cannot survive that +short passage of Longacre Square, where the art of the theatre and of +the picture-postcard flourish in an atmosphere impregnated with +gasolene. As I glance into the windows of the automobile salesrooms and +catch my own reflection in the enamel of Babylonian<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a> limousines I find +myself thinking all at once of the children at home. They expand and +fill up the horizon. Broadway disappears. I smile into the face of a +painted promenader, but how is she to know that it is not at her I smile +but at the sudden recollection of what the baby said at the +breakfast-table that morning? Like all good New Yorkers when they enter +the Subway, I proceed to choke up all my senses against contact with the +external world, and thus resolving myself into a state of coma, I dip +down into the bowels of the earth, whence in due time I am spewed out +two short blocks from Belshazzar Court.<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_023.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_023_sml.jpg" width="550" height="117" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="Fashions_in_Men" id="Fashions_in_Men"></a>Fashions in Men<br /><br /> +<small>By Katharine Fullerton Gerould</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">N</span><small>EVER</small>, I fancy, has it been more true than it is to-day, that fiction +reflects life. The best fiction has always given us a kind of +precipitate of human nature—<i>Don Quixote</i> and <i>Tom Jones</i> are equally +'true' and true, in a sense, for all time; but our modern books give us +every quirk and turn of the popular ideal, and fifty years hence, if +read at all, may be too 'quaint' for words. And to any one who has been +reading fiction for the last twenty years, it is cryingly obvious that +fashions in human nature have changed.</p> + +<p>My first novel was <i>Jane Eyre</i>; and at the age of eight, I fell +desperately in love with Fairfax Rochester. No instance could serve +better to point the distance we have come. I was not an extraordinary +little girl (except that, perhaps, I was extraordinarily fortunate in +being permitted to encounter the classics in infancy), and I dare say +that if I had not met Mr. Rochester, I should have succumbed to some +imaginary gentleman of a quite different stamp. It may be that I should +have fallen in love—had time and chance permitted<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a>—with 'V. V.' or The +Beloved Vagabond. But I doubt it. In the first place, novels no longer +assume that it is the prime business of the female heart (at whatever +age) to surrender itself completely to some man. Consequently, the men +in the novels of to-day are not calculated, as they once were, to hit +the fluttering mark. The emotions are the last redoubt to be taken, as +modern tactics direct the assault.</p> + +<p>People are always telling us that fashions in women have changed: what +seems to me almost more interesting is that fashions in men (the stable +sex) have changed to match. The new woman (by which I mean the very +newest) would not fall in love with Mr. Rochester. It is therefore 'up +to' the novelists to create heroes whom the modern heroine will fall in +love with. This, to the popular satisfaction, they have done. And not +only in fiction have the men changed; in life, too, the men of to-day +are quite different. I know, because my friends marry them.</p> + +<p>It is immensely interesting, this difference. One by one, the man has +sloughed off his most masculine (as we knew them) characteristics. Gone +are Mr. Rochester, who fought the duel with the vicomte at dawn, and +Burgo Fitzgerald (the only love of that incomparable woman, Lady +Glencora Palliser), who breakfasted on curaçao and pâté de foie gras. No +longer does Blanche Ingram declare, 'An English hero of the road would +be the next best thing to an Italian bandit,<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> and that could only be +surpassed by a Levantine pirate.' Blanche Ingram wants—and gets—the +Humanitarian Hero; some one who has particular respect for convicts and +fallen women, and whose favorite author is Tolstoï. He must qualify for +the possession of her hand by long, voluntary residence in the slums; he +may inherit ancestral acres only if he has, concerning them, socialistic +intentions. He must be too altruistic to kill grouse, and if he is to be +wholly up-to-date, he must refuse to eat them. He must never order +'pistols and coffee': his only permitted weapon is benevolent +legislation.</p> + +<p>I do not mean that he is to be a milk-sop—'muscular Christianity' has +at least taught us that it is well for the hero to be in the pink of +condition, as he may any day have a street fight on his hands. And he +should have the tongue of men and of angels. Gone is the inarticulate +Guardsman—gone forever. The modern hero has read books that Burgo +Fitzgerald and Guy Livingstone and Mr. Rochester never heard of. He is +ready to address any gathering, and to argue with any antagonist, until +dawn. He is, preferably, personally unconscious of sex until the heroine +arrives; but he is by no means effeminate. He is a very complicated and +interesting creature. Some mediæval traits are discernible in him; but +the eighteenth century would not have known him for human.</p> + +<p>What has he lost, this hero, and what has he gained?<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> How did it all +begin? In life, doubtless, it began with a feminine change of taste. +Brilliant plumage has ceased to allure; and, I suspect, the peacock's +tail, as much as the anthropoid ape's, is destined to elimination. We +women of to-day are distrustful of the peacock's tail. We are mortally +afraid of being misled by it, and of discovering, too late, that the +peacock's soul is not quite the thing. Never has there been among the +feminine young more scientific talk about sex, and never among the +feminine young such a scientific distrust of it. Before a young woman +suspects that she wants to marry a young man, she has probably discussed +with him, exhaustively, the penal code, white slavery, eugenics, and +race-suicide. The miracle—the everlasting miracle of Nature—is that +she should want, in these circumstances, to marry him at all. She +probably does not, unless his views have been wholly to her +satisfaction. And with those views, what has the perpetual glory of the +peacock's tail to do?</p> + +<p>So much for life. In our English fiction, I am inclined to believe that +George Eliot began it with Daniel Deronda. But, in our own day, Meredith +did more. Up to the time of Meredith, the dominant male was the +fashionable hero. Tom Jones, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Fairfax +Rochester, and 'Stunning' Warrington are as different as possible; but +all of them, in their several ways, keep up one male tradition in +fiction. It is within our own day that that tradition<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> has entirely +changed. Have you ever noticed how inveterately, in Meredith's novels, +the schoolmaster or his spiritual kinsman comes out on top? Lord Ormont +cannot stand against Matey Weyburn, Lord Fleetwood against Owain Wythan, +Sir Willoughby Patterne against Vernon Whitford. The little girl who +fell in love with Mr. Rochester would have preferred any one of these +gentlemen (yes, even Sir Willoughby!) to his rival; but I dare say the +event would have proved her wrong. Certainly the wisdom of the ladies' +choice was never doubtful to Meredith himself. The soldier and the +aristocrat cannot endure the test they are put to by the sympathetic +male with a penchant for the enfranchised woman. Vain for Lord Ormont to +accede to Aminta's taste for publicity; vain for Lord Fleetwood to +become the humble wooer of Carinthia Jane: each has previously been +convicted of pride.</p> + +<p>Now, in an earlier day, no woman would have looked at a man who was not +proud—who was not, even, a little too proud. Pride, by which Lucifer +fell, was the chief hall-mark of the gentleman. Moreover, in that +earlier day, women did not expect their heroes to explain everything to +them: a certain amount of reticence, a measure of silence, was also one +of the hallmarks of the gentleman. If a bit of mystery could be thrown +in, so much the better. It gave her something to exercise her +imagination on. Think of the Byronic<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> males—Conrad, Lara, and the rest! +If they had told all, where would they have been? Think of Lovelace and +Heathcote and Darcy and Brian de Bois Guilbert!</p> + +<p>Heroes, once, were always disdaining to speak, and spurning their foes. +Nowadays, no hero disdains to speak, and no hero ventures to spurn +anyone—least of all, his foes. He is humble of heart and very +loquacious. Mrs. Humphry Ward has inherited from George Eliot; and the +latest heroes of Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Hewlett, for example, are the +children of Vernon Whitford, Matey Weyburn, and Owain Wythan (of whom it +is not explicitly written that they had any others). They are +humanitarian and democratic; they are ignorant of hatred; they are +inclined to think the ill-born necessarily better than the well-born; +and they are quite sure that women are superior to men. True, Mr. +Galsworthy always seems to be looking backward; he never forgets the +ancient tradition that he is combating. His young aristocrats who eschew +the ways of aristocracy are unhappy, and virtue in their case is 'its +only reward.' Perhaps that is why his novels always leave us with the +medicinal taste of inconclusion in our mouths. But take a handful of +heroes elsewhere: the Reverend John Hodder, the ex-convict,'Daniel +Smith,' 'V. V.', or even Coryston, the Socialist peer. Where, in the lot +of them do you find either pride or reticence in the old sense?<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> Where, +in any one of them, do you find the Satanic charm? Which one would +Harriet Byron, or Jane Eyre, or Catherine Earnshaw, or Elizabeth +Bennett, have looked at with eyes of love?</p> + +<p>The 'Satanic charm.' The phrase is out. Milton, I suspect, is +responsible for the tradition that has lasted so long, and is now being +broken utterly to pieces. Milton made Satan delightful, and our good +Protestant novelists for a long time followed his lead, in that they +gave their delightful men some of the Satanic traits. Proud they were +and scornfully silent, as we have recalled; and conventional to the last +degree. 'Conventional,' that is, in the stricter sense; by which it is +not meant that as portraits they were unconvincing, or that, as men, +they never offended Mrs. Grundy. They were conventional in that they +followed a convention; in that they were, to a large extent, predicable. +They were jealous of their honor, and believed it vindicable by the +duel; they had no doubt that good women were better than bad, and that +pedigree in human beings was as important as pedigree in animals; and +though they might be quixotic on occasion, they were not democratic +<i>pour deux sous</i>. The barmaid was not their sister, nor the stevedore +their brother. (The Satan of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, as we all remember, was a +splendid snob.)</p> + +<p>Moreover, they were sophisticated—and not merely out of books. The +Faust idea, having prevailed<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> for many centuries, has at last been +abandoned—and perhaps, our sober sense may tell us, rightly; but not so +long ago there was still something more repellent to the female +imagination about the man who chose not to know than about the man who +chose not to abstain. I do not mean that we were supposed always to be +looking for a Tom Jones or a Roderick Random—we might be looking for a +Sir Charles Grandison, no less; but at least, when we found our hero, we +expected to find him wiser than we. Nowadays, a girl rather likes to +give a man points—and often (in fiction, at least) has to. Meredith +railed against the 'veiled virginal doll' as heroine. Well: our heroines +now are never veiled virginal dolls; but sometimes our heroes are. +Lancelot has gone out, and Galahad has come in. I suspect that there is +a literary law of compensation, and that, Ibsen and Strindberg to the +contrary notwithstanding, there has to be a veiled virginal doll +somewhere in a really taking romance. Perhaps it is fair that the +sterner sex should have its turn at guarding ideals by the hearthstone, +while women make the grand tour.</p> + +<p>Let me not be misunderstood. I am not referring particularly to that +knowledge which any man is better without, but to the Odyssean +experience which, in their respective measures, heroes were wont to have +behind them:—<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">And saw the cities, and the counsels knew</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">. . . . . .</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Of many men, and many a time at sea</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Within his heart he bore calamity.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>They had at least seen the towns and the minds of men, and their morals +were the less likely to be upset by a conventional assault upon them. +Does any one chance to remember, I wonder, Theron Ware, led to his +'damnation' by his first experience of a Chopin nocturne? It would have +taken more than a Chopin nocturne to make any of our seasoned heroes do +something that he did not wish to. They knew something of society, and +<i>ergo</i> of women; they had experienced, directly or vicariously, human +romance; and they had read history. Nowadays, they are apt to know +little or nothing—to begin with—of society, women, or romance, except +what may be got from brand-new books on sociology; and they pride +themselves on knowing no history. History, with its eternal stresses and +selections, is nothing if not aristocratic, and our heroes nowadays must +be democratic or they die. It is an age of complete faith in the +superiority of the lower classes—the swing of the pendulum, no doubt, +from the other extreme of thinking the lower classes morally and +æsthetically negligible. 'Privilege' is as detestable now in matters of +intellect and breeding as in matters of finance and politics. The man +with the muck-rake has got past the office into the drawing-room. If +your hero<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> has the bad luck not to have been born in the slums, he must +at least have the wit to take up his habitation there as soon as he +comes of age. We have learned that riches are corrupting, but (except in +the special sense of vice-commission reports) we have not yet learned +that poverty is rather more corrupting than wealth.</p> + +<p>Sophistication, whether social, intellectual, or æsthetic, is now the +deadly sin. If we are sophisticated, we may not be good enough for Ellis +Island. And there goes another of the hallmarks of the gentleman as he +was once known to fiction. Our hero in old days might not have +condescended to the glittering assemblies of fashion, but there was +never any doubt that, if he had, he would, in spite of himself, have +been king of his company as soon as he entered the room. He might have +been hard up, but his necktie would not have been 'a black sea holding +for life a school of fat white fish.' He might have been lonely or +gloomy, but he would not have been diffident, and he would never, never, +<i>never</i> have 'blinked' at the heroine. 'My godlike friend had carelessly +put his hair-brush into the butter' says Asticot, at the outset, of the +Beloved Vagabond. Now in picaresque novels, we were always meeting +people who did that sort of thing; but they were not gentlemen. Whereas, +the Beloved Vagabond is of noble birth, and despite his ten years' +abeyance, finds the countess quite ready to marry him. She does not +marry him in the end, to be sure, but we are permitted to feel that<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> +there was something lacking in her because Paragot's manners at tea did +not please her.</p> + +<p>The hero of old had what used to be called 'a sense of fitness,' and a +saving sense of humor, which combined to prevent his entering a ballroom +as John the Baptist. The same lucky combination would have prevented +him—in literature, at least—from wooing the millionaire's child with +dusty commonplaces of the Higher Criticism or jeremiads against the +daughters of Heth. But perhaps millionaires' children to-day take that +sort of thing for manners. To the argument that a performance of the +kind takes courage, one can only reply that, judging from the enthusiasm +with which the preaching hero is received by the heroine, it apparently +does not. And in any case, the hero is too sublimely ignorant of what +socially constitutes courage to deserve any credit for it.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, of course, like Mr. Galsworthy's men, he perceives, with some +inherited sense, that his kind of thing is not likely to be welcomed; +and then he goes sadly and sternly away, leaving the girl to accept a +wooer with more technique. But usually he cuts out everybody. For the +chief hall-mark of a gentleman, now, is the desire to reform his own +class out of all recognition.</p> + +<p>Women, as we know, have long wanted to be talked to as if they were men; +and the result is that heroines now let themselves be lectured at in a +way that very<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> few men would endure. Alison Parr marries the Rev. John +Hodder, and Carlisle Heth would have married V. V. if he had lived. +Well: Clara Middleton married Vernon Whitford, and Carinthia Jane +married Owain Wythan, and Aminta married Matey Weyburn.</p> + +<p>I may have seemed to be speaking cynically. That, I can give my word of +honor, I am not. It is well that we have come to realize that there are +some adventures which, in themselves, add no lustre to a man's name. It +is well that we take thought for the lower strata of humanity—though +our actual reforms, I fancy, show their authors as taking thought not +for to-morrow but for to-day. Certainly brutality, or the indifference +which is negative brutality, is not a beautiful or a moral thing; and +certainly we do not particularly sympathize with Thackeray shedding +tears as he went away from his publishers because they had obliged him +to save Pendennis's chastity. That dreadful person, Arthur Pendennis, +would surely not have been made any less dreadful by being permitted to +seduce Fanny Bolton.</p> + +<p>It is right to think of the poor; it is right to bend our energies, as +citizens, to the economic bettering of their lot. No one could sanely +regret our doing so. But there is always danger in saying the thing +which is not, and in pretending that because some virtues have hitherto +not been recognized, the virtues that have been recognized are no good. +One sympathizes with Towneley<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> (in that incomparable novel <i>The Way of +All Flesh</i>) when Ernest asks him,—</p> + +<p>'"Don't you like poor people very much yourself?"</p> + +<p>'Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw and said +quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, no, no," and escaped.</p> + +<p>'Of course, some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but +as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one +was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes +there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable barrier.'</p> + +<p>It is a great pity that Samuel Butler did not live longer and write more +novels. But in regretting him, we shall do well to remember that though +publication was delayed until some time after the author's death, the +bulk of <i>The Way of All Flesh</i> was written in the '70's. <i>The Way of All +Flesh</i> is not sympathetic to the contemporary mood; it is one of those +books so much ahead of its time (except perhaps in ecclesiastical +matters) that the time has not yet caught up with it. It was doomed +inevitably to an interval of oblivion. The case reminds one of <i>Richard +Feverel</i>.</p> + +<p>Only in one way is <i>The Way of All Flesh</i> quite contemporary. The hero +thinks so well of the prostitute that he marries her. On the other hand, +to be sure, he bitterly regrets it, which is not contemporary. I do not +mean that the hero's marrying her is especially in the<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> literary +fashion, but his thinking well of her is. You will notice that in our +moral fever we do not leave the prostitute out of our novels—no, +indeed: she must be there to give spice, as of old. Only now, instead of +being entangled with her, the young gentleman preaches to her; and she +loves him for it. Perhaps this is what happens nowadays in real life. I +do not pretend to know; but I suspect it is true, for I fancy the only +kind of person who could invent the contemporary plot is the kind who +would live it. The wildest imaginings of the people who are made +differently would hardly stretch to it. And not only does the hero find +himself immensely touched by the tragedy of the disreputable +woman,—which is, after all, in certain cases plausible enough,—he +burns to introduce his fiancée to her. Now that, again, may be +life,—Mr. Winston Churchill, for example, should know better than +I,—but it is certainly a world with the sense of values gone wrong. And +when we have lost our sense of values, we shall presently lose the +values as well. The girl herself is often to blame: did not the fiancée +of Simon de Gex go of her own initiative to see the animal-tamer, and +come away to renounce him, convinced that the animal-tamer was the +nobler woman? Which, emphatically, she was not. But then, as we know +from long experience of Mr. Locke, he cannot keep his head with +circus-people about; and sawdust is incense to him. Let Mr. Locke have +his little foibles by all means; but even<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> Mr. Locke should not have +made the spoiled darling of society marry the animal-tamer (one side of +her face having been nearly clawed off) and <i>then</i> go with her into city +missionary work. Yet I do not believe it is really Mr. Locke's fault. +The public at present loves as a sister the woman with a past; and loves +city missionary work, if possible, more.</p> + +<p>The fact is that with all our imitation of Meredith—and every one who +is not imitating Tolstoï is imitating Meredith—he has failed to save +us. We have taken all his prescriptions blindly—except one. We have +emancipated our women and emasculated our men; we have cast down the +mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree; we have learned +all the Radical shibboleths and say them for our morning prayers; and we +have faced the fact of sex so squarely that we can hardly see anything +else. But we have not learned his saving hatred of the sentimentalist. +Miss May Sinclair has admirably pointed out in her study of the <i>Three +Brontës</i> that Charlotte Brontë was exceedingly modern in her detestation +of sentimentality. Modern she may have been—with Meredith; but not +modern with the present novelists, for they are almost too sentimental +to be endured. And there is the whole trouble. We think Thackeray an old +fool for being sentimental over Amelia Sedley; but how does it better +the case to be sentimental, instead, over the heroine of <i>The Promised +Land</i>? Amelia Sedley was all in all a much nicer person,<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> if not half so +clever. She may have sniveled a good deal, but she was capable of loving +some one else better than herself.</p> + +<p>Of course, I have cited only a few instances—those that happened to +come most easily to mind. But let any reader of fiction run over +mentally a group of contemporary heroes, and see if the substitutions I +have named have not pretty generally taken place. Has not pride given +way to humility, reticence to glibness, class-consciousness to a wild +democracy, the code of manners to an uncouth unworldliness, and honor in +the old sense to a burning passion for reform—'any old' reform? Do not +these men lead us into the heterogeneous company of the unclassed of +both sexes—and ask us to look upon them as saints in motley? Has not +the world of fiction changed in the last twenty years? The hero in old +days sometimes fell foul of the law by getting into debt. But we were +not supposed, therefore, to be on his side against the law. Now, the +hero does not, perhaps, get into legal difficulties himself, but he is +always passionately on the side of the people whom laws were devised to +protect the respectable from. The scientific tendency to consider that +aristocracy consists merely in freedom from certain physical taints has +permeated fiction. 'Is not one man as good as another?' asked the +demagogue. 'Of course he is, and a great deal better!' replied the +excited Irishman in the crowd. We are in the thick of a popular mania +for thinking all the<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> undesirables 'a good deal better.' The modern hero +is, to my mind, in intention, if not in execution, an admirable figure; +and though one rather expects him any day to give his whole fortune for +a gross of green spectacles, one will not, for that, find him any less +likable. Some day he will rediscover the Dantesque hierarchy of souls +implicit in humanity. And then, perhaps, he will get back his charm.</p> + +<p>Some one is probably bursting to observe that we have a school of +realists at hand; and that no one can accuse Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett +of sentimentality—also that we have Mr. Shaw and Mr. Granville Barker +and Mr. Masefield as mounted auxiliaries in the field. I grant Mr. +Bennett; I am not so sure about Mr. Wells. But certainly Mr. Wells is +not sentimental as Mr. William de Morgan, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. +Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Theodore Dreiser, Mr. H. S. Harrison, and Miss +Ellen Glasgow are sentimental. If he is sentimental at all, it is rather +over ideas than people. (Mr. Masefield, I am inclined to think, is +simply catering to the special audience that Thomas Hardy, by his +silence, has left gaping and empty.) Let us look into the matter a +little. 'Sentimental' is one of the most difficult catchwords in the +world to define; and you can get a roomful of intelligent people +quarreling over it any time. Perhaps, for our purposes, it will serve +merely to say that the sentimentalist is always, in one way or another, +disloyal to facts. He cannot be<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> trusted to give a straight account, +because his own sense of things is more valuable to him than the truth. +He has come in on the top of the pragmatic wave, and the sands of +Anglo-Saxondom are strewn thick with him. He serves, in Kipling's +phrase, the God of Things as They Ought to Be (according to his private +feeling). His own perversion may be æsthetic, or intellectual, or moral, +or sociological, but he is always recognizable by his tampering with +truth.</p> + +<p>Now, Mr. Wells does tamper with truth. He did it, for example, in the +case of Ann Veronica. He wanted Ann Veronica to be a nice girl under +twenty, and he wanted her, even more, to be unduly awakened to certain +physical aspects of sex. It was sentimentality that made him draw her as +he did: determination to prove that the girl who loved as he wanted her +to love was just as conventional as any one else. You cannot have your +cake and eat it too; but the sentimentalist blindly refuses to accept +that. Accordingly, we get the unconvincing creature that Mr. Wells +wanted to believe existed. Mr. Wells's heroes may not seem to bear out +my argument so well as Mr. Galsworthy's. To be sure, Mr. Wells is not so +sentimental as Mr. Galsworthy, and he has not, like the author of <i>The +Man of Property</i>, and <i>Fraternity</i>, and <i>Justice</i>, one—just one—fixed +idea. Mr. Galsworthy always deals with a man who is in love with some +other man's wife; and his world is thereby narrowed. Mr. Wells<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> is +interested in a good many things, and his politics are not purely +philanthropic as most of our novelists' politics are. But Mr. Wells's +heroes, even when they are fairly fortunate, are preoccupied with their +own notions of sociological duty, even more than they are preoccupied +with passion, though their passion is 'special' enough when it comes. +Would any one except a Wells hero take a trip to India and come away +having seen nothing but the sweat-shops of Bombay? Always the author's +sympathy is with the under dog; whether it is Kipps or Mr. Polly living +out his long foredoomed existence, or George Ponderevo analyzing +Bladesover with diabolic keenness and aching contempt. 'I'm a spiritual +guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses,' says Ponderevo in a +burst of frankness. There you have the Wells hero to the life. And Mr. +Bennett's people are only spiritual guttersnipes who are <i>not</i> in love +with unimaginable goddesses.</p> + +<p>The point is that the guttersnipe is having his turn in fiction: if our +American heroes are not guttersnipes themselves, it is their sign of +grace to be supremely interested in guttersnipes. In one way or the +other, the guttersnipe must have his proper prominence. Of course, there +are differences and degrees: a few heroes get no nearer the lower +classes than a passionate desire for reform tickets and municipal +sanitation. But ordinarily they must go through Ernest Pontifex's state +of believing that poor people are not only more<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> important, but in every +way nicer than rich people; and few of them go back utterly on that +belief, as Ernest did. Perhaps that, more than anything else, marks the +change of fashion in men. For gentlemen were always, in their way, +benevolent; but formerly they had not achieved the paradox that the +object of benevolence is <i>ex officio</i> more interesting than the +bestower.</p> + +<p>Books have been written before now in the interest of reform. They tell +us that <i>Justice</i> set the Home Secretary to thinking. Well: Marcus +Clarke actually caused the reform of the Australian penal settlements by +his now forgotten novel, <i>For the Term of His Natural Life</i>. The hero of +Marcus Clarke's book was innocent and unjustly condemned; the hero of +<i>Justice</i> is guilty. Wanton cruelty is wicked whether the victim be a +bad man or a good one; but the difference between these two heroes is +not so purely accidental as, at first blush, it may seem. The author of +<i>His Natural Life</i> starting out to capture sympathy, showed the brutal +system wreaking itself on an innocent man, of good family, condemned for +another's guilt. Mr. Galsworthy, equally eager to capture sympathy, +makes his protagonist guilty of the theft, having tried in vain to +incriminate an innocent person. Each writer depended, doubtless, on +public sentiment for his effect. In Marcus Clarke's time, public +sentiment—however unfortunate the fact may be—simply could not have +been<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> aroused to such a pitch by the sufferings of a liar and a thief as +by the sufferings of an innocent man who is consciously paying another +person's penalty. The Humanitarian Hero had not come into fashion—nor +yet the guttersnipe. But Marcus Clarke's book did its work—proof that +even in the '50's we were not so callous as we seemed.</p> + +<p>I said earlier that in life, as well as in literature, men had changed. +One's instances, obviously, must be from books, and not from one's +acquaintance; but I spoke truth. Philanthropy is the latest social +ladder, but it would not be so if the people on the top rung were not +interested in philanthropy. There has been, for whatever reason, a +tremendous spurt of interest in sociological questions. Our hard-headed +young men, of high ideals, find themselves fighting, of necessity, on a +different battlefield from any that strategists would have chosen thirty +years ago. Moreover, philanthropy being woman's way into politics, women +have been giving their calm, or hysterical, attention to problems which, +thirty years since, did not, as problems, exist for them. I said that +the change of taste in women would probably account for much of the +change of fashion in men. A schoolmate of mine, writing me some years +since of her engagement, said (in nearly these words), 'He is +tremendously interested in city missionary work; it wouldn't have been +quite perfect if we hadn't had that in common.' Both were spoiled<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> +darlings of fortune, but the statement was quite sincere. Undoubtedly, +without that, it would not have been 'quite perfect' in the eyes of +either.</p> + +<p>The mere conversation of the marriageable young has changed past belief. +'Social service' has usurped so many subjects! Have many people stopped +to realize, I wonder, how completely the psychological novel and the +'problem' play (in the old sense) have gone out of date? The psychology +of hero and heroine, their emotional attitudes to each other, are +largely worked out now in terms of their attitudes to impersonal +questions, their religious or their sociological 'principles.' The +individual personal reaction counts less and less. If they agree on the +same panacea for the social evils, the author can usually patch up a +passion sufficient for them to marry on. Gone, for the most part, are +the pages of intimate analysis. No intimate analysis is needed any +longer. As for the 'problem play,' we have it still with us, but in +another form. <i>The Doll's House</i> and <i>The Second Mrs. Tanqueray</i> are +both antiquated: we do not call a drama a problem play now unless it +preaches a new kind of legislation. And as for sex,—in its finer +aspects it no longer interests us.</p> + +<p>There was a great deal more sex, in its subtler manifestations, in the +old novels and plays, than in the new ones. Not so long ago, a novel was +a love story; and it was of supreme importance to a hero whether or not +he could make the heroine care for him. It was also of<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> supreme +importance to the heroine. The romance was all founded on sex; and yet +sex was hardly mentioned. Our heroes and heroines still marry; but when +they consider sex at all, they are apt to consider it biologically, not +romantically. We, as a public, are more frankly interested in sex than +ever; but we think of it objectively, and a little brutally, in terms of +demand and supply. And so we get often the pathetic spectacle of the +hero and heroine having no time to make love to each other in the good +old-fashioned way, because they are so busy suppressing the red-light +district and compiling statistics of disease. Much of the frankness, +doubtless, is a good thing; but beyond a doubt, it has cheapened +passion. For passion among civilized people is a subtle thing: it is +wrapped about with dreams and imaginings; and can bring human beings to +salvation as well as to perdition. But when it is shown to us as the +mere province of courtesans, small wonder that we turn from it to the +hero who will have difficulty in feeling or inspiring it. Especially +since we are told, at the same time, that even the courtesan plies her +trade only from direst necessity.</p> + +<p>After all, the only safe person to fall in love with nowadays <i>is</i> a +reformer: socially, financially, and sentimentally. And most women, at +least, could (if they would) say with the Princesse Mathilde, 'Je n'aime +que les romans dont je voudrais être l'héroïne.' Certainly, unless for +some special reason, no novel of<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> which one would not like to be the +heroine—in love with the hero—will reach the hundred thousand mark. If +there are any of us left who regret the gentlemen of old—who still +prefer our Darcy or even our Plantagenet Palliser—we must write our own +novels, and divine our own heroes under the protective coloring of their +conventional breeding. For they are not being 'featured,' at present, +either in life or in literature.<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_130.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_130_sml.jpg" width="550" height="123" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="A_Confession_in_Prose" id="A_Confession_in_Prose"></a>A Confession in Prose<br /><br /> +<small>By Walter Prichard Eaton</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">U</span><small>NLIKE</small> M. Jourdain, who had been speaking prose all his life without +knowing it, I have been writing it nearly all of mine, quite +consciously, and earning my living thereby since I was twenty-one years +old. I am now thirty-four. I have been a professional writer of prose, +then, for thirteen years—or shall I say a writer of professional prose? +Much of this writing has been done for various American magazines; still +more has been done to fill the ravenous columns of American newspapers; +some, even, has been immured between covers. I have tried never to write +sloppily, though I have of necessity often written hastily. I can +honestly say, too, that I have tried at times to write beautifully, by +which I mean rhythmically, with a conscious adjustment of sound and +melody to the sense, with the charm of word-chiming further to heighten +heightened thought. But I can also as honestly say that in this latter +effort I have never been encouraged by a newspaper editor, and I have +been not infrequently discouraged by magazine editors. Not all +magazines<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> compel you to chop up your prose into a maximum paragraph +length of ten lines, as does a certain one of large circulation. Not all +newspapers compel you to be 'smart,' as did one for which I worked +compel us all. But the impression among editors is prevalent, none the +less, that a conversational downrightness and sentence and paragraph +brevity are the be-all and end-all of prose style, or at least of so +much of prose style as can be grasped by the populace who read their +publications; and that beautiful writing must be 'fine writing,' and +therefore never too much to be avoided. So I started out from the +classroom of Professor Lewis E. Gates, one of the keenest and most +inspiring analysts of prose beauties this country has produced, to be a +professional writer of prose, and dreamed, as youth will, of wrapping my +singing robes about me and ravishing the world. I was soon enough told +to doff my singing robes for the overalls of journalism, and I have +become a writer of professional prose instead.</p> + +<p>These remarks have been inspired by a long and wistful evening just +spent in perusing Professor Saintsbury's new book, called <i>The History +of English Prose Rhythm</i>. I shall hold no brief for the good professor's +method of scansion. It matters little to me, indeed, how he chooses to +scan prose. What does matter to me is that he has chosen to scan it at +all, that he has brought forward the finest examples in the stately +procession of English literature, and demonstrated with<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> all the weight +of his learning, his authority, his fine enthusiasm, that this prose is +no less consciously wrought to pleasing numbers than is verse. We who +studied under Professor Gates knew much of this before, if not in so +detailed and would-be methodical a fashion. Charles Lamb knew it when he +wrote, 'Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best +measured cadences (prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm +of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors"; or the wild sweep of +winds at midnight.' Sir Thomas Browne was not exactly unaware of it as +he prepared his <i>Urn Burial</i> for the printer; nor the authors of the +King James Version of the Bible when they translated—or if you prefer, +paraphrased—the rhapsodic chapters of Isaiah. But it is pleasant, and +not unimportant, to be once more reminded, in a generation when written +speech has sunk to the conversational level of the man in the street, +that 'prose has her cadences'; and to me, at least, it is melancholy, +also. For I would strive to write such prose, in my stumbling fashion, +were I permitted.</p> + +<p>Writing about a fine art, as I am so often called upon to do, I would +endeavor with what might lay in me to write about it finely. Suppose +that art chances to be the drama. Why, when some compact, weighty, and +worthily performed example comes to our stage, should I be expected to +toss off a description of it in a style less compact and weighty and +worthily conducted?<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> On the rare occasions when a new play chances to be +poetic, am I not justified in writing of it in poetic prose? How else, +indeed, can I truly render back to my readers the subtler aspects of its +charm? But for such writing there is little room in our hurrying and +'conversational' press, though now and then a despised dramatic editor +is found who understands. Even the drama itself strives to be +'conversational' at all costs, under the banner of 'realism,' and +profanity flourishes on our stage in what we must infer to be a most +life-like manner, while we have almost forgotten that the spoken word +can be melodious or imaginative. Criticism cries at its heels, and helps +with flippant jest and broken syntax and cacophonous combinations of our +poorest vernacular, in the general debasement. Do not tell me that men +do not exist who could write differently of the stage, as men exist who +can, and do, write differently for it. Every worthy dramatist can be +paralleled by at least one worthy critic, and more probably by three or +four, since the true creative instinct in drama is perhaps the rarest of +human attributes, save only charity. But the editors appear to have +determined that the public does not want such critics—and perhaps the +editors are right. At least, the public does not often get them.</p> + +<p>We are speaking now of prose, not of opinions, and we may safely +introduce the name of a living critic, William Winter. For nearly half a +century Mr. Winter<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> has written prose about the theatre, and although +that prose was produced for a morning newspaper it was carefully and +consistently balanced and welded, and, when the subject demanded it, +rose, according to its creator's ideas of beauty, into the heightened +eloquence of sentence rhythm and syllabic harmony. Leisure may improve, +but haste cannot prevent the rhythm of prose, provided the instinct for +it resides in the writer, and the opportunity exists for practice and +expression. Two examples of Mr. Winter's use of rhythm come to my +memory, and I quote only phrases, not whole sentences, merely because I +am sure of no more. Writing one morning of a new and very 'modern' play, +presented the previous evening by a well-known actress, he said: 'Sarah +Bernhardt at least made her sexual monsters interesting, wielding the +lethal hatpin or the deadly hatchet with Gallic grace and sweet +celerity.' Again, in reviewing Pinero's <i>Iris</i>, he took up two of Henry +Arthur Jones's phrases, recently made current in a lecture, and played +with them, ending with mellifluous scorn, 'Such are "the great realities +of modern life," flowers of disease and blight that fringe the charnel +house of the "serious drama."'</p> + +<p>These are certainly examples of rhythmic, or cadenced prose, and they +are examples taken from journalistic reviews. They admirably express the +writer's point of view toward his subject matter, but they also reveal +his care for the manner of expression, they<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> satisfy the ear; and +therefore to one at all sensitive to literature they are doubly +satisfying. The arrow of irony is ever more delightful when it sings on +its flight. The trick, then, can be done. Mr. Winter, too often perhaps +for modern ears, performed it by recourse to the Johnsonian balance of +period and almost uniform, swelling roll. But that is neither here nor +there. The point is that he performed it—and that it is no longer +performed by the new generation, either in newspaper columns, or, we +will add at once, anywhere else. Rhythmic prose, prose cadenced to charm +the ear and by its melodies and harmonies properly adjusted to heighten, +as with an under-song, the emotional appeal of the ideas expressed, is +no longer written. It appears to be no longer wanted. We are fallen upon +harsh and colloquial times.</p> + +<p>No one with any ear at all would deny Emerson a style, even if his +rhythms are often broken into the cross-chop of Carlyle. No one would +deny Irving a style, or Poe,—certainly Poe at his best,—or, indeed, to +hark far back, Cotton Mather in many passages of the <i>Magnalia</i>, where +to a quaint iambic simplicity he added a Biblical fervor which redeems +and melodizes the monotony. Mather suggests Milton, Irving suggests +Addison, Emerson suggests Carlyle, Poe, shall we say, is often the too +conscious workman typified by De Quincey. But thereafter, in this +country, we descend rapidly into second-hand imitations,<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> into rhythm +become, in truth, mere 'fine writing,' until its death within recent +memory. Yet we do not find even to-day the true cadenced prose either +uninteresting or out of date. Emerson is as modern as the morning paper. +Newman's description of the ideal site for a university, in the clear +air of Attica beside the blue Ægean, charms us still with its perfect +blend of sound and sense, its clear intellectual idea borne on a +cadenced undersong, as of distant surf upon the shore; and the exquisite +epilogue to the <i>Apologia</i>, with its chime of proper names, still brings +a moisture to our eyes. The triumphant tramp of Gibbon, the headlong +imagery and Biblical fervor of Ruskin, the languid music of Walter +Pater, each holds its separate charm, and the charm is not archaic.</p> + +<p>Is such prose impossible any more? Certainly it is not. The heritage of +the language is still ours, the birthright of our noble English tongue. +Simply, we do not dare to let ourselves go. We seem tortured with the +modern blight of self-consciousness; and while the cheaper magazines are +almost blatant in their unblushing self-puffery, they are none the less +cravenly submissive to what they deem popular demand, and turn their +backs on literature, on style, as something abhorrent to a race which +has been fed on the English Bible for three hundred years. Their ideal +of a prose style now seems to consist of a series of staccato yips. It +really cannot be described in any other way. The<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> 'triumphantly +intricate' sentence celebrated by Walter Pater would give many a modern +editor a shiver of terror. He would visualize it as mowing down the +circulation of the magazine like a machine gun. Rhythm and beauty of +style can hardly be achieved by staccato yips. The modern magazine +writer, trying to be rhetorically effective, trying to rise to the +demands of heightened thought or emotional appeal, reminds one of that +enthusiastic German tympanist who wrote an entire symphonic poem for +kettle-drums.</p> + +<p>I read one of the autumn crop of new novels the other day. Curiously +enough, it was written by a music critic who, in his reviews of music, +is constantly insisting on the primal importance of melody and harmony, +who is an arch foe of the modern programme school and the whole-tone +scale of Debussy. But the prose of his novel was utterly devoid of these +prized elements, melody and harmony. A heavy, or sometimes turgid, +journalistic commonplaceness sat upon it. I will not be unfair and tear +an illustration from some passage of rightly simple narration. I will +take the closing sentences from one of the climactic chapters, when the +mood had supposedly risen to intensity, and, if ever, the prose would +have been justified in rising to reinforce the emotion.</p> + +<p>The house was aroused to extravagant demonstrations. Across the +footlights it looked like a brilliantly<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> realistic piece of acting, and +the audience was astonished at the vigor of the hitherto cold Americano.</p> + +<p>'But Nagy was not deceived. Crushed, dishevelled, breathless, she knew +that her dominion over him was gone forever. She had tried to show him +his soul and he had begun to see the light.'</p> + +<p>Now, an ear attuned to the melodies of English prose must surely find +this commonplace, and the closing sentence of all actually as harsh as +the tonalities of Strauss or Debussy seem to the writer. Let us, even if +a little unfairly, set it beside a passage from <i>Henry Esmond</i>, again a +climactic passage, but one where the style is climactic, also, rising to +the mood.</p> + +<p>'"You will please, sir, to remember," he continued, "that our family +hath ruined itself by fidelity to yours: that my grandfather spent his +estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service; that my +dear lord's grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right and title +too) died for the same cause; that my poor kinswoman, my father's second +wife, after giving away her honor to your wicked perjured race, sent all +her wealth to the King; and got in return that precious title that lies +in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue ribbon. I lay this at your +feet and stamp upon it; I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; +and had you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have +driven it through your heart, and no more<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> pardoned you than your father +pardoned Monmouth. Frank will do the same, won't you, cousin?"'</p> + +<p>This justly famous passage, be it noted, is dialogue. To-day we +especially do not dare to rise above a conversational level in dialogue. +We should be accused of being 'unnatural.' Does no one speak beautifully +any more, then, even in real life? Are the nerve-centres so shattered in +the modern anatomy that no connection is established between emotions +and the musical sense? Does an exquisite mood no longer reflect itself +in our voice, in our vocabulary? Does no lover rise to eloquence in the +presence of his Adored? If that is the case, surely we now speak +unnaturally, and it should be the duty of literature to restore our +health! Nor need such speech in fiction float clear away from solid +ground. Notice how Thackeray in his closing sentence—'Frank will do the +same, won't you, cousin?'—anchors his rhetoric to the earth.</p> + +<p>We are, let it be said again, in the grasp of realism, and realism but +imperfectly understood. Just as our drama aims to reproduce exactly a +'solid' room upon the stage, and to set actors to talking therein the +exact speech of every day, so our oratory, so-called, is the +reproduction of a one-sided conversation, and our novels (when they are +worthy of consideration) are reproductions of patiently accumulated +details, set forth in impatiently assembled sentences. But all this does +not of necessity constitute realism, because its<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> effect is not of +necessity the creation of illusion, however truthful the artist's +purpose. Of what avail, in the drama, for example, are solid rooms and +conversational vernacular if the characters do not come to life in our +imaginations, so that we share their joys and sorrows? Of what effect +are the realistic details of a novel, whether of incident or language, +if we do not re-live its story as we read? Surely, the answer is plain, +and therefore any literary devices which heighten the mood for us are +perfectly justifiable weapons of the realist, even as they are of the +romanticist. One of these devices is consciously wrought prose. For the +present we plead for its employment on no higher ground than this of +practical expediency.</p> + +<p>But how, you may ask,—no, not you, dear reader, who understand, but +some other chap, a poor dog of an author, perhaps,—can consciously +wrought prose aid in the creation of illusion? How can it be more than +pretty?</p> + +<p>Let us turn for answer to Sir Thomas Browne, to 'The Garden of Cyrus,' +to the closing numbers:—</p> + +<p>'Besides, Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the oneirocritical +masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is +little encouragement to dream of paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest +delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep, wherein the dulness of +that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of +Cleopatra, can<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.'</p> + +<p>That is archaic, perhaps, and not without a certain taint of quaintness +to modern ears. But how drowsy it is, how minor its harmonies, how +subtly soothing its languid melody! It tells, surely, in what manner +consciously wrought prose may aid in the creation of illusion. The mood +of sleep was here to be evoked, and lo! it comes from the very music of +the sentences, from the drowsy lullaby of selected syllables.</p> + +<p>We might choose a quite different example, from a seemingly most +unlikely source, from the plays of George Bernard Shaw. One hardly +thinks of Mr. Shaw with a style, but rather with a stiletto. His +prefaces have been too disputative, his plays too epigrammatic, for the +cultivation of prose rhythms. Yet his prose is almost never without a +certain crisp accuracy of conversational cadence; his ear almost never +betrays him into sloppiness; and when the occasion demands, his style +can rise to meet it. The truth is, Mr. Shaw is seldom emotional, so that +his crisp accuracy of speech is most often the fitting garment for his +thought. But in <i>John Bull's Other Island</i> his emotions are stirred, and +when Larry Doyle breaks out into an impassioned description of Ireland +the effect on the imagination of the heightened prose, when a good actor +speaks it, is almost startling.</p> + +<p>'No, no; the climate is different. Here, if the life is<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> dull, you can +be dull too, and no great harm done. (<i>Going off into a passionate +dream.</i>) But your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those +white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those +hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colors in +the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. +Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, +never-satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! (<i>Savagely.</i>) +No debauchery that ever coarsened and brutalized an Englishman can take +the worth and usefulness out of him like that dreaming. An Irishman's +imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies +him; but it makes him so that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor +handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and +(<i>bitterly, at Broadbent</i>) be "agreeable to strangers," like a +good-for-nothing woman on the streets.'</p> + +<p>This, to be sure, is prose to be spoken, not prose to be read. Different +laws prevail, for different effects are sought. But the principle of +cadence calculated to fit the mood, and by its melodic, or, as here, its +percussive character to heighten the emotional appeal, remains the same.</p> + +<p>But beyond the argument for cadenced prose as an aid to illusion, +employed in the proper places,—that is, where intensity of imagery or +feeling can benefit by it,—is the higher plea for sheer lingual beauty +for its<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> own sake. Shall realism preclude all other effects of artistic +creation? Because the men on our streets, the women in our homes, talk +sloppily, shall all our books be written in their idiom, all our stage +characters reproduce their commonplaceness, nearly all our magazines and +newspapers give no attention to the graces of style? I am pleading for +no Newman of the news story, nor am I seeking to arm our muck-rakers +with the pen of Sir Thomas Browne. I would not send Walter Pater to +report a football game (though Stevenson could doubtless improve on most +of the 'sporting editors'), nor ask that Emerson write our editorials. +But there is a poor way, and there is a fine way, to write everything, +and inevitably the man who has an ear for the rhythms of prose, who has +been trained and encouraged to write his very best, will fit his style +appropriately to his subject. He will not seek to cadence his sentences +in bald narration or in exposition, but he will, nevertheless, keep them +capable of natural and pleasant phrasing, he will avoid monotony, +jarring syllables, false stress, and ugly or tripping terminations which +throw the voice as one's feet are thrown by an unseen obstacle in the +path. His paragraphs, too, will group naturally, as falls his thought. +But when the subject he has in hand rises to invective, to exhortation, +to the dignity of any passion or the sweep of any vision, then if his +ear be tuned and his courage does not fail him he must inevitably write +in cadenced<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> periods, the effectiveness of his work depending on the +adjustment of these cadences to the mood of the moment, on his skill as +an artist in prose.</p> + +<p>And just now the courage of our young men fails. The unrestrained +abandonment of all art to realism, of every sort of printed page to bald +colloquialism, has dulled the natural ear in all of us for comely prose, +and made us deaf to more stately measures. The complete democratizing of +literature has put the fear of plebeian ridicule in our hearts, and the +wider a magazine's circulation, it would seem, the more harm it does to +English prose, because in direct ratio to its sale are its pages given +over to the Philistines, and the dignity and refinement of thought which +could stimulate dignity and refinement of expression are unknown to its +contributors, or kept carefully undisclosed.</p> + +<p>I have often fancied, in penitential moments, a day of judgment for us +who write, when we shall stand in flushed array before the Ultimate +Critic and answer the awful question, 'What have you done with your +language?' There shall be searchings of soul that morning, and +searchings of forgotten pages of magazines and 'best sellers' and books +of every sort, for the cadence that may bring salvation. But many shall +seek and few shall find, and the goats shall be sorted out in droves, +condemned to an eternity of torture, none other than the everlasting +task of listening to their own prose read aloud.<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p> + +<p>'What have you done with your language?' It is a solemn question for all +of us, for you who speak as well as for us who write. Our language is a +priceless heritage. It has been the ladder of life up which we climbed; +with it we have bridged the sundering flood that forever rolls between +man and man; through its aid have come to us the treasures of the past, +the world's store of experience; by means of it our poets have wrought +their measures, our philosophers their dreams. Bit by bit, precious +mosaic after precious mosaic, the great body of English literature has +been built up, in verse and prose, the crown of that division of +language we call our own. Consciously finding itself three centuries +ago, our English prose blossomed at once into the solemn splendors of +the King James Bible and then into the long-drawn, ornate magnificence +of Sir Thomas Browne, never again till our day to lose consciousness of +its power, to forget its high and holy task, the task of maintaining our +language at full tide and ministering to style and beauty. There were +fluxes in the fashions, naturally; little of Browne's music being found +in the almost conversational fluency (but not laxness) of Addison, even +as the suave Mr. Addison himself has vanished in the tempestuous +torrents of Carlyle. But there always was an Addison, a Carlyle, a +Newman, a Walter Pater, whose work loomed large in popular regard, whose +influence was mighty in shaping a taste for prose style. Who now, we may +ask, looking around us<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> in America, looms large in popular regard as a +writer of ample vision, amply and beautifully clothed in speech, and +whose influence is mighty in shaping a taste for prose style? It is not +enough to have the worthies of the past upon our shelves. Each age must +have its own inspiration. Again we hear the solemn question, 'What have +you done with your language?' Only Ireland may answer, 'We have our +George Moore, and we had our Synge not long ago—but we stoned his +plays.'</p> + +<p>We have stifled our language, we have debased it, we have been afraid of +it. But some day it will reassert itself, for it is stronger than we, +alike our overlord and avatar. Deep in the soul of man dwells the lyric +impulse, and when his song cannot be the song of the poet it will shape +itself in rhythmic prose, that it may still be cadenced and modulated to +change with the changing thought and sound an obligato to the moods of +the author's spirit. How wonderful has been our prose,—grave and +chastely rich when Hooker wrote it, striding triumphant over the pages +of Gibbon on tireless feet, ringing like a trumpet from Emerson's white +house in Concord, modulated like soft organ-music heard afar in Newman's +lyric moods, clanging and clamorous in Carlyle, in Walter Pater but as +the soft fall of water in a marble fountain while exquisite odors flood +the Roman twilight and late bees are murmurous, a little of all, +perhaps, in Stevenson! We, too,<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> we little fellows of to-day, could +write as they wrote, consciously, rhythmically, if we only cared, if we +only dared. We ask for the opportunity, the encouragement. Alas! that +also means a more liberal choice of graver subjects, and a more +extensive employment of the essay form. Milton could hardly have been +Miltonic on a lesser theme than the Fall of the Angels, and Walter Pater +wrote of the Mona Lisa, not Lizzie Smith of Davenport, Iowa. It is +doubtless of interest to learn about Lizzie, but she hardly inspires us +to rhythmic prose.<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_153.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_153_sml.jpg" width="550" height="125" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="In_the_Chair" id="In_the_Chair"></a>In the Chair<br /><br /> +<small>By Ralph Bergengren</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><small>BOUT</small> once in so often a man must go to the barber for what, with +contemptuous brevity, is called a haircut. He must sit in a big chair, a +voluminous bib (prettily decorated with polka dots) tucked in round his +neck, and let another human being cut his hair for him. His head, with +all its internal mystery and wealth of thought, becomes for the time +being a mere poll, worth two dollars a year to the tax-assessor: an +irregularly shaped object, between a summer squash and a canteloupe, +with too much hair on it, as very likely several friends and +acquaintances have advised him. His identity vanishes.</p> + +<p>As a rule the less he now says or thinks about his head, the better: he +has given it to the barber, and the barber will do as he pleases with +it. It is only when the man is little and is brought in by his mother, +that the job will be done according to instructions; and this is because +the man's mother is in a position to see the back of his head. Also +because the weakest woman under such circumstances has strong +convictions.<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> When the man is older the barber will sometimes allow him +to see the haircut, cleverly reflected in two mirrors; but not one man +in a thousand—nay, in ten thousand—would dare express himself as +dissatisfied. After all, what does he know of haircuts, he who is no +barber? Women feel differently; and I know of one man, returning home +with a new haircut, who was compelled to turn round again and take what +his wife called his 'poor' head to another barber by whom the haircut +was more happily finished. But that was exceptional. And it happened to +that man but once.</p> + +<p>The very word 'haircut' is objectionable. It snips like the scissors. +Yet it describes the operation more honestly than the substitute 'trim,' +a euphemism indicating a jaunty habit of dropping in frequently at the +barber's, and so keeping the hair perpetually at just the length that is +most becoming. For most men, although the knowledge must be gathered by +keen, patient observation and never by honest confession, there is a +period, lasting about a week, when the length of their hair is +admirable. But it comes between haircuts. The haircut itself is never +satisfactory. If his hair was too long before (and on this point he has +the evidence of unprejudiced witnesses), it is too short now. It must +grow steadily—count on it for that!—until for a brief period it is +'just right,' æsthetically suited to the contour of his face and the cut +of his<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> features, and beginning already imperceptibly to grow too long +again.</p> + +<p>Soon this growth becomes visible, and the man begins to worry. 'I must +go to the barber,' he says in a harassed way. 'I must get a haircut.' +But the days pass. It is always to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. +When he goes, he goes suddenly.</p> + +<p>There is something within us, probably our immortal soul, that postpones +a haircut; and yet in the end our immortal souls have little to do with +the actual process. It is impossible to conceive of one immortal soul +cutting another immortal soul's hair. My own soul, I am sure, has never +entered a barber's shop. It stops and waits for me at the portal. +Probably it converses on subjects remote from our bodily consciousness +with the immortal souls of barbers, patiently waiting until the barbers +finish their morning's work and come out to lunch.</p> + +<p>Even during the haircut our hair is still growing, never stopping, never +at rest, never in a hurry: it grows while we sleep, as was proved by Rip +Van Winkle. And yet perhaps sometimes it is in a hurry; perhaps that is +why it falls out. In rare cases the contagion of speed spreads; the last +hair hurries after all the others; the man is emancipated from +dependence on barbers. I know a barber who is in this independent +condition himself (for the barber can no more cut his own hair than the +rest of us) and yet sells his customers a preparation<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> warranted to keep +them from attaining it, a seeming anomaly which can be explained only on +the ground that business is business. To escape the haircut one must be +quite without hair that one cannot see and reach; and herein possibly is +the reason for a fashion which has often perplexed students of the +Norman Conquest. The Norman soldiery wore no hair on the backs of their +heads; and each brave fellow could sit down in front of his polished +shield and cut his own hair without much trouble. But the scheme had a +weakness. The back of the head had to be shaven, and the fashion +doubtless went out because, after all, nothing was gained by it. One +simply turned over on one's face in the barber's chair instead of +sitting up straight.</p> + +<p>Fortunately we begin having a haircut when we are too young to think, +and when also the process is sugar-coated by the knowledge that we are +losing our curls. Then habit accustoms us to it. Yet it is significant +that men of refinement seek the barber in secluded places, basements of +hotels for choice, where they can be seen only by barbers and by other +refined men having or about to have haircuts; and that men of less +refinement submit to the operation where every passer-by can stare in +and see them, bibs round their necks and their shorn locks lying in +pathetic little heaps on the floor. There is a barber's shop of this +kind in Boston where one of the barbers, having no head to<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> play with, +plays on a cornet, doubtless to the further distress of his immortal +soul peeping in through the window. But this is unusual even in the city +that is known far and wide as the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.</p> + +<p>I remember a barber—he was the only one available in a small town—who +cut my left ear. The deed distressed him, and he told me a story. It was +a pretty little cut, he said—filling it with alum—and reminded him of +another gentleman whose left ear he had nipped in identically the same +place. He had done his best with alum and apology, as he was now doing. +Two months later the gentleman came in again. 'And by golly!' said the +barber, with a kind of wonder at his own cleverness, 'if I didn't nip +him again in just the same place!'</p> + +<p>A man can shave himself. The Armless Wonder does it in the Dime Museum. +Byron did it, and composed poetry during the operation, although, as I +have recently seen scientifically explained, the facility of composition +was not due to the act of shaving but to the normal activity of the +human mind at that time in the morning. Here therefore a man can refuse +the offices of the barber. If he wishes to make one of a half-dozen +apparently inanimate figures, their faces covered with soap, and their +noses used as convenient handles to turn first one cheek and then the +other—that is his own lookout. But human ingenuity has yet<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> to invent a +'safety barber's shears.' It has tried. A near genius once made an +apparatus—a kind of helmet with multitudinous little scissors inside +it—which he hopefully believed would solve the problem; but what became +of him and his invention I have not heard. Perhaps he tried it himself +and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed +suicide, for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found +a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't would be thrown +into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded +in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' where nobody +could see him but the hardened attendants, by his sensitive family. The +important fact is that the invention never got on the market. Until some +other investigator succeeds to more practical purpose, the rest of us +must go periodically to the barber. We must put on the bib—</p> + +<p>Here, however, there is at least an opportunity of selection. There are +bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of +satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the +newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still +intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons +of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to +be deeply interested in the <i>Illustrated London News</i>. The patrons of +the barber's shop where I lost part of<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> my ear—I cannot see the place, +but those whom I take into my confidence tell me that it has long since +grown again—had no sleeves to their bibs, but nevertheless managed +awkwardly to hold the <i>Police Gazette</i>. And this opportunity to hold the +<i>Police Gazette</i> without attracting attention becomes a pleasant feature +of this type of barber's shop: I, for example, found it easier—until my +ear was cut—to forget my position in the examination of this journal +than in the examination of the <i>Illustrated London News</i>. The pictures, +strictly speaking, are not so good, either artistically or morally, but +there is a tang about them, an I-do-not-know-what. And it is always +wisest to focus attention on some such extraneous interest. Otherwise +you may get to looking in the mirror.</p> + +<p>Do not do that.</p> + +<p>For one thing, there is the impulse to cry out 'Stop! Stop! Don't cut it +all off!</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">'Oh, barber, spare that hair!</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Leave some upon my brow!</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> For months it's sheltered me!</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> And I'll protect it now!</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>'Oh, please! P-l-e-a-s-e!—' These exclamations annoy a barber, rouse a +demon of fury in him. He reaches for a machine called 'clippers.' Tell +him how to cut hair, will you! A little more and he'll shave your +head—and not only half-way either, like the Norman soldiery at the time +of the Conquest! Even if you are<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> able to restrain this impulse, +clenching your bib in your hands and perhaps dropping or tearing the +<i>Illustrated London News</i>, the mirror gives you strange, morbid +reflections. You recognize your face, but your head seems somehow +separate, balanced on a kind of polka-dotted mountain with two hands +holding the <i>Illustrated London News</i>. You are afraid momentarily that +the barber will lift it off and go away with it. Then is the time to +read furiously the weekly contribution of G. K. Chesterton. But your +mind reverts to a story you have been reading about how the Tulululu +Islanders, a savage but ingenious people, preserve the heads of their +enemies so that the faces are much smaller but otherwise quite +recognizable. You find yourself looking keenly at the barber to discover +any possible trace of Tulululu ancestry. And what is he going to get +now? A krees? No, a paint-brush. Is he going to paint you? And if +so—what color? The question of color becomes strangely important, as if +it made any real difference. Green? Red? Purple? Blue? No, he uses the +brush dry, tickling your forehead, tickling your ears, tickling your +nose, tickling you under the chin and down the back of your neck. After +the serious business of the haircut, a barber must have some relaxation.</p> + +<p>There is one point on which you are independent: you will not have the +bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which +nevertheless has<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors +you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his sense of business +economy.</p> + +<p>He takes off your bib.</p> + +<p>From a row of chairs a man leaps to his feet, anxious to give <i>his</i> head +to the barber. A boy hastily sweeps up the hair that was yours—already +as remote from you as if it had belonged to the man who is always +waiting, and whose name is Next. Oh, it is +horrible—horrible—horrible!<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_252.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_252_sml.jpg" width="550" height="130" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="The_Passing_of_Indoors" id="The_Passing_of_Indoors"></a>The Passing of Indoors<br /><br /> +<small>By Zephine Humphrey</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><small>NDOORS</small> is going. We may just as well make up our minds on this +revolutionary point, and accept it with such degree of hardy rejoicing +or shivering regret as our natures prompt in us.</p> + +<p>The movement has been long under way, gradually working the perfect +ejection which seems now at hand. We might have recognized the +dislodging process long ago, had we been far-sighted enough. It +began—who shall say when it did begin? Surely not in the shaggy breasts +of those rude ancestors of ours whom we hold in such veneration, and to +whose ways we seem to ourselves to be so wisely returning. They dragged +their venison into the depths of a cave darker and closer than any +house, and devoured it in great seclusion. Perhaps it began in the San +Marco Piazza at Venice, with the little open-air tables under the +colonnades. "So delightful! So charming!" Thus the tourists, as they +sipped their coffee and dallied with their ices. They were right; it was +delightful and charming, and<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> so it is to this day, but it was perhaps +the thin edge of the wedge which is turning us all out now.</p> + +<p>Supper was the first regular meal to follow the open-air suggestion, +country supper on the piazza in the warm summer evening. That also was +delightful, of course, and not at all alarming. All nations and ages +have practiced the sport of occasional festive repasts out of doors when +the weather has permitted. But breakfast was not long in following suit; +and when dinner, that most conservative, conventional of meals, +succumbed to the outward pressure and spread its congealing gravies in +the chilly air, we were in for the thing in good earnest, the new custom +was on. No longer a matter of times and seasons, the weather had nothing +to do with it now; and in really zealous families the regular summer +dining-room was out of doors. Summer dining-room—that sounds well; +since summer and warmth go together traditionally. But not always +actually in New England, where bleak rains overtake the world now and +then, and clearing north-west winds come racing keenly. It was soon +essential to introduce a new fashion in dinner garments: overcoats, +sweaters, and heavy shawls, felt hats and mufflers.</p> + +<p>'Excuse me while I run upstairs to get a pair of mittens?'</p> + +<p>'Finish your soup first, dear; it will be quite cold if you leave it.'<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a></p> + +<p>The adherents of the new doctrine are very conscientious and faithful, +as was only to be expected. We are a valiant race in the matter of our +enthusiasms and can be trusted to follow them sturdily, buckling on +armor or overcoats or whatever other special equipment the occasion +demands. Conscientiousness is a good trait, but there is perhaps more of +the joy of life in some other qualities.</p> + +<p>Sleeping outdoors was the next great phase in the open-air movement. +That also began casually enough and altogether charmingly. One lingered +in the hammock, watching the stars, musing in the still summer night, +until, lo! there was the dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A +wonderful experience. Not much sleeping about it truly,—there is +commonly not much sleeping about great experiences,—but so beautiful +that the heart said, 'Go to! why not have this always? Why not sleep +outdoors every night?' Which is of course exactly the way in which human +nature works; very reasonable, very sane and convincing, but +unfortunately never quite so successful as it should be. That which has +blessed us once must be secured in perpetuity for our souls to feast on +continually; revelation must fold its wings and abide with us. So we +soberly go to work and strip all the poetry of divine chance, all the +delight of the unexpected, from our great occasions by laying plans for +their systematic recurrence.<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">He who bends to himself a joy,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Does the winged life destroy;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">But he who kisses a joy as it flies,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Lives in eternity's sunrise.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>It is a pity that William Blake could not teach us that once for all. As +a matter of fact, of course, great occasions care nothing at all for our +urging; and a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. The +stars and the dawn do not condescend to such paraphernalia for waylaying +them as sleeping-bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito +netting, with a stout club close at hand in case of tramps or a skunk.</p> + +<p>One experience of my own recurs to my memory poignantly here, and I +think I cannot do better than set it forth. I had passed an +unforgettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by the evening +almost insensibly into 'solemn midnight's tingling silences,' and thence +into the austere dawn. It was an episode such as should have sealed my +lips forever; but I profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion of +interest spread through the little village.</p> + +<p>'What fun! Did you have your rubbers on? Did you sit in a chair? I +should think you would have sat in a chair—so much more comfortable! +Well, I tell you what, let's do it together,—a lot of us, so we won't +be afraid,—and let's climb a mountain. The sunset and dawn will be +beautiful from a mountain.'</p> + +<p>We did it; I blush to confess that some twenty-five<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> of us did it. It +was an excursion planned and discussed for a matter of two weeks (a full +moon being part of the programme), and there was no accident unforeseen, +no event unprovided for. The procession that wended its way, toiling and +puffing, up the ascent of Haystack,—the favored mountain selected for +the high pedestal of our rapture,—on the auspicious night, was about as +sad, and withal as funny, an affront as the secrecy of beauty ever +received. Blankets, steamer-rugs, pillows, shawls, hammocks, +whiskey-flasks—how we groaned beneath the burden of all these things. +We lost the way, of course, and had to beat the woods in every +direction; we were tired and hot and—cross? Perhaps. But we knew what +our rôle was, and when we reached the top of the mountain, we all of us +stood very solemnly in a row and said, 'How beautiful!'</p> + +<p>It was beautiful; that was just the fineness of the night's triumph over +us—over me at least; I cannot speak for the other twenty-four. To this +day, be it said in parentheses, whenever we mention that night on +Haystack we lift our eyes in ecstasy, and no one of us has ever +confessed any sense of lack. But honestly, honestly at the last (dear +stalwart relief of honesty!), that experiment was a failure—so +beautiful that the spirit should have been lifted out of the body, and +would have been, had it stood alone, had it not already exhausted itself +in plans and expectations. Beneath us, a far-spreading sea of misty, +rolling hills, all vague and<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> blended in the light of the soaring moon; +above us, such a sweep of sky as only mountain-tops command; around us, +silence, silence. Yet the unstrenuous orchard at home, with its tranquil +acceptance of such degree of sunset light as was granted to it, and of +the moon's presence when she rose above the apple trees, would have +conveyed the night's message a thousand times more clearly.</p> + +<p>It is seldom worth while to describe any failure of the spirit very +minutely, and tragedy is not the tone this paper would assume; but one +slight episode of the dawn following that fatal night must be related. +We were gathered on the eastern edge of our mountain top, a tousled, +gray, disheveled lot, heavy-eyed and weary. Does the reader understand +the significance of the term 'to prevent the dawn'? He does if he has +stood and waited for the sun to rise—or the moon or any of the +constellations, for that matter. All heavenly bodies retard their +progress through the influence of being waited for. 'Surely now!' a +dozen times we warned one another there, with our faces toward the +quickening east; yet no glittering, lambent rim slid up to greet our +eyes.</p> + +<p>At last a decent comely cloud came to the rescue of the sun, halting and +embarrassed, and settled snugly all about the mountain of the +day-spring. Into this the sun was born, so obscurely that it rode high +above the mountain's edge, shorn and dull, a rubber ball, before<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> we +discovered it. 'Why—why—' some one began, stammering; and then there +was a dramatic pause. Brave and determined though we were in our pursuit +of ecstasy, we could not burst forth into song like Memnon statues at +the sight of that belated orange, 'Lo, the Lord Sun!' Not at all. It was +the merest varlet. In this dilemma of our hearts, a funny little wailing +cry came from the cliff's edge: 'I want my money back! I want my money +back!' It was a perfect commentary on the whole situation, as fine and +humorous and true an utterance as could be asked on the foiled occasion. +We laughed at it, and all the air was straightway clearer for us. Then +down the mountain-side we trooped, and went home to bed.</p> + +<p>Of course I am not unaware of the impatience of some readers, if they +have taken pains to scan so far this earnest exposition. The outdoor +movement is not one primarily of sentiment, but of health and happiness; +and the story just related is aside from the point. That may be true. I +certainly stand in respect of the great claims of the physical side of +the subject, and would not deal with them. By all means, let all people +be as well as possible. But it is still the other side, the side of +sentiment and rapture, which is most pleadingly often brought home to +me.</p> + +<p>It is pitiful how helpless we are against the invasions of a new +enthusiasm like this—we sober, conservative folk. I still sleep in my +bed, in my room, but the satisfaction<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> I used to take in the innocent +practice is broken of late by haunting fears that I may not be able to +keep it up. My friends will not let me alone.</p> + +<p>'Of all things! why don't you sleep out here, on this little upper +piazza? Precisely the place! I can't understand how you can ignore such +an opportunity.'</p> + +<p>'Well, you see,'—my answer was glib at first,—'the piazza overhangs +the road, and the milk-wagons go by very early. I don't want to get up +at four o'clock every morning.'</p> + +<p>'They couldn't see much of you, I should think,'—with a thoughtful +measuring glance,—'not more than your toes and the tip of your nose.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, thank you, that's quite enough!'</p> + +<p>'Well, you might saw off the legs of a cot, to bring it below the +railing. Or just a mattress spread on the floor would do very well.'</p> + +<p>Just a mattress spread on the floor! That closes the argument. I have no +spirit left to prefer any other objections to these dauntless souls, +such as the rain (the piazza has no roof). But what would a cold bath be +if not distinctly so much to the good in view of the toilet operations +of the following morning? There is no course left me but that final +one,—which should in honesty have come first,—of damning myself by the +hopeless assertion, 'I don't want to sleep out of doors.' This locks the +argument, and the barrier stands complete, shutting me off in a world by +myself, interrupting<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> the genial flow of sympathetic friendship. But I +love my friends. Therefore it follows that I tremble for my further +repose in my bed. I fear I shall yet utter midnight sighs on that piazza +floor.</p> + +<p>Indoors, dear indoors! I would I might plead its cause a little here. +Does no one ever pause to reflect that there was never any outdoors at +all until indoors was created? The two had a simultaneous birth, but it +was an appurtenance of the latter that marked the distinction and gave +the names. A little humiliating that might have seemed to any creatures +less generous than woods and mountains—to have been here really from +the beginning, ages and ages in glorious life, and then to take their +first generic name, find their first classification, all of them in a +lump together (what a lump!) as the other side of a fragile barrier to a +mushroom construction. One wonders that those who exalt the outdoors as +everything nowadays, do not find some better title for it than its +dooryard term. But those who love the indoors too, though they may smile +at the calm presumption of its dubbing the universe, accept the +conclusion without any question. Man is after all the creature of +creatures, and his life is of first importance. We do not hear that the +woodchuck speaks of <i>out-hole</i>, or the bird of <i>out-tree</i>.</p> + +<p>Such life of man is an inner thing, intensely inner; its essence lies in +its inwardness. It can hardly know itself 'all abroad'; it must needs +have devised for itself a<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> shelter as soon as it came to +self-consciousness, a refuge, not only from storm and cold but from the +distracting variety of the extensive world. Indoors is really an august +symbol, a very grave and reverend thing, if we apprehend it rightly. It +stands for the separate life of man, apart from (though still a part of, +too) the rest of the universe. Take any one room inhabited daily by a +person of strong individuality,—how alive it is! How brisk and alert in +the very attitudes of the chairs and the pictures on the walls! Or, more +happily, how serene and reposeful! Or how matter-of-fact! Morbid and +passionate, flippant, austere, boisterous, decorous,—anything, +everything a room may be which a human creature may be; and that range, +as most of us know, is almost unlimited.</p> + +<p>It is hard to understand how any person can fail to respond to the warm +appeal of his own abode. Say one has been abroad all day (another term +that assumes the house as a starting-point), climbing the mountains, +exploring the woods, ravishing eyes and heart with the beauty of the +excellent world. Night comes at last, and weariness droops upon the +flesh. Enough! Even the spirit's cry finds a pause. Enough, enough! The +wide world suddenly spreads so vast that it overwhelms and frightens; +there is something pitiless in the reach of the unbounded sky. Then, as +fast as they can, the lagging feet make for a point on the hillside +where the eyes can command the valley, and swiftly, eagerly flies<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> the +glance to one dear accustomed goal. A white house nestled among the +trees,—that is all, yet it thrills the heart with a potent summons +which mountain-peaks and sunsets do not know. Home! Ah, hurry, then!</p> + +<p>Down the hill, across the pasture, in at the white gate, and up the two +marble steps. The front door stands open unconcernedly. The house makes +no stir at receiving its inmate back,—its inmate whose life it has held +and brooded during his absence, waiting to reinvest him with it when he +wants it again,—but there is a quiet sense of welcome, a content of +returning, which is among the sweetest and most establishing of human +experiences. The clock ticks steadily in the hall, its hands approaching +the genial hour of supper-time. Within the open library door, the books +dream on the shelves. Little sounds of a tranquil preparation come from +the dining-room; the tea-kettle sings, the black kitten purrs. Blessed +indoors! It draws a veil gently over the tired head, bewildered with +much marveling, lays a cool hand over the eyes, says, 'Now rest, rest.' +Indoors is like the Guardian Angel in Browning's poem.</p> + +<p>After supper, one sits by the lamp and reads peacefully. Aunt Susan +reads, too, on the other side of the big table, and Cousin Jane sews. +The books and the pictures look on benignly, and even the furniture is +instinct with a mute eloquence of companionship. The song of the night +insects throbs without, and millers hurl themselves with soft thuds +against the windows;<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> an owl mutters to himself in the maple tree. But +not for anything would one go out, not for anything would one leave this +glowing, brooding, protecting indoors which one has regained. After a +while, one goes upstairs and lays one's self in the safe white bed in +one's own room. The windows are open to the night, but solid walls are +all round about; and, before the sleepily closing eyes, gleam one's own +peculiar cherished belongings in the creeping moonlight. Into the very +heart of one's life one has returned at the close of the day, and there +one goes to sleep. 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in +quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.'</p> + +<p>And we will not? Is the discouraged clause, promptly succeeding to that +most beautiful verse of Isaiah, true, then, of us? Are we going to +despoil ourselves of all the poetry, the intimate meaning of our indoor +life?</p> + +<p>'A place in which to dress and undress—that is all I want of a house,' +an energetic young woman said.</p> + +<p>A bath-house would suit her perfectly. Perhaps that is what we are +coming to—rows of bath-houses, with sleeping-bags stored up in them +against the night. Alas for the pictures! Alas for the music! Alas for +the books!</p> + +<p>The books! There is a happy suggestion. I believe the books will save +us. There is certainty nothing that objects with greater decision and +emphasis to sleeping out of doors than a book—yes, even a volume of +Walt Whitman. Books are obstinate in their way; they know<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> their own +minds, and there are some things which they will not do. The effect of +leaving one in the orchard inadvertently over night has a final +melancholy about it which most book-lovers understand poignantly. Could +books be printed on india rubber and bound in water-proof cloth? +Perhaps; but the method does not sound attractive enough to be feasible +even in these practical days. No, I believe the books will save us. They +are a great army and they have power; a steady conservative hold is +theirs on their restless owners. Other threatening situations, they have +saved and are constantly saving.</p> + +<p>'I sometimes think I'd give up housekeeping, and not have a home any +more,' one woman said, 'if it weren't for my books. But I can't part +with them, nor yet can I get them all into one room; so here I stay.'</p> + +<p>'Buy books?' exclaimed a New York man. 'No; it hurts them too much to +move them.'</p> + +<p>Which innocent implication has caused me many a thoughtful smile.</p> + +<p>Essentially human,—with the humanity of the ages, not of a few +decades,—books understand what man really wants, and what he must have, +better than he does himself. In the serene and gracious indoors, they +took up their places long ago, and there they remain, and there they +will always make shift to abide. Perhaps, if we sit down close at their +feet, we, too, may abide.<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a></p> + +<p class="figcenter"> +<a href="images/ill_pg_045.jpg"> +<img src="images/ill_pg_045_sml.jpg" width="550" height="119" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> +</p> + +<h2><a name="The_Contented_Heart" id="The_Contented_Heart"></a>The Contented Heart<br /><br /> +<small>By Lucy Elliot Keeler</small></h2> + +<p class="nind"><i><span class="letra">C</span><small>ŒUR</small> Content, grand Talent</i>, runs the motto of one of my friends; +which early led me to dub her, Contented Heart. Is it not human nature, +such easy assumption of an interesting aspiration as a fact to be +posted? As logical as to expect Mr. Short to check his stature at five +feet two; as humanly contrary as for the Blacks to name their girls +Lily, Blanche, and Pearl. They usually do. I remember a Bermudian +rector, leaning down to inquire the name of the black baby to be +christened, suddenly quickened into audibility by the mother's reply: +'Keren-Happuck, sir, yes, sir, one of the Miss Jobs, sir.' Now Job's +daughters were fairest among the daughters of men.</p> + +<p>Contented Heart has obsessed my mind of late. I like to take the other +side: everybody does. Does like to and does; and because the air to-day +is redolent of unrest and discontent, I put in the assertion that, +nevertheless, the great majority of my acquaintances possess that great +talent,—translate it knack, or translate it acquirement,—a contented +heart. I seldom<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> talk intimately with anybody but I hear something like +this:—</p> + +<p>'I have been visiting at the X's. What a superb place! but I do not envy +them. Think of the care and expense and the servant question. Simple as +my cot is, I honestly prefer it.' Or, 'What a fortune the H's appear to +have. It would be comfortable to get what one wants and go where one +wishes; not to worry at tax-paying time and new-suit time. Still I doubt +if they get half the enjoyment from their acquisitions that we do who +have to save and plan for ours.' Or, 'You do not use eye-glasses? How +fortunate! they are such a nuisance. But hush—such a boon. I should be +helpless without them. I am not sure but it is even a good thing to be +born with them on, so to speak. My contemporaries who are beginning to +use them are most unhappy, while glasses are just a part of my face.' +Or, 'It is a great affliction to be deaf in even one ear. The person on +that one side of you thinks you prefer the conversation of the person on +the other side. Yet, as my brother said when he saw me struggling to +make out a dull speaker's words, "Why abuse your natural advantage?"</p> + +<p>How do people with two good ears sleep? They cannot bury them both in +the pillow. Suppose our ears were so sensitive that we noticed every +footstep on the street! Being deaf is merely to enjoy some of the +advantages that the society to prevent unnecessary<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> noises seeks to +confer on a normal public. We admire a beautiful face and then add, 'But +how she must hate to grow old; a tragedy of the mirror that we homely +souls are spared.' All my life I envied persons with straight noses till +I began to observe that with age the straight nose droops into a beak, +whereas the youthful tip-tilt and concavity kind straightens its end to +a fair classicism. Thus others than the Vicar of Wakefield draw upon +content for the deficiencies of fortune.</p> + +<p>Of course content is dilemma enough to have its two horns: the double +peaks of taking life too easily, and of taking it too hard. In his +statue of Christ, Thorvaldsen expressed his conviction that he had +reached his culminating point,—since he had never been so satisfied +with any work before,—and was 'alarmed that I <i>am</i> satisfied.' That +'the people ask nothing better' is the slogan of the grafter. No reform +comes without its preceding period of discontent; dissatisfaction is the +price to be paid for better things; a revolutionary attitude must be +maintained. Stevenson knew a Welsh blacksmith who at twenty-five could +neither read nor write, at which time he heard a chapter of <i>Robinson +Crusoe</i> read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat +content, huddled in his ignorance; but he left the kitchen another man. +There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine day-dreams, written and +printed and bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at pleasure. +Down he sat that day, painfully<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> learned to read Welsh, and returned to +borrow the book. It had been lost, nor could he find another copy, only +one in English. Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length +with entire delight read <i>Robinson</i>.</p> + +<p>As there is a noble way of being discontented, so there is an ignoble +content. The Contented Heart is not a phrase to soothe us, but a power +to work results. It must constantly emerge upon a higher plane, or it +will fall. Few of us would be willing to retain just the personal habits +that we have now. Sir Gilbert Elliot drove his sister out of her +literary inertia when he bet gloves to ribbons that she could not write +a modern ballad on the <i>Flowers of the Forest</i>. The result is one of the +most popular songs of Scotland. There is also a sham content whose +practitioners often get their 'cumuppances' as effectively as did Thomas +Raikes. The Duchess of York led him about her garden, where was a +menagerie crowded with eagles and some favorite macaws. A herd of +kangaroos and ostriches appeared and a troop of monkeys. Next morning a +kangaroo and a macaw strolled into Raikes's bedroom. He was too much of +a courtier to tell his terror. At breakfast he said, 'If I like one +creature more than another it is a kangaroo, while there is nothing so +good for a bedroom sentinel as a strong-legged macaw.' The good Duchess +smiled pleasantly and put Raikes down in her will for two macaws.<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a></p> + +<p>A certain kind of content enlivens us with the bliss of others' +ignorance. Tacitus was one of the first historians in our modern sense, +yet he described a motionless frozen sea in the north from which a hiss +is heard as the sun plunges down into it at night; and Pliny noted that +the reflection of mirrors is due to the percussion of the air thrown +back upon the eyes. Kipling laughed slyly at the traveler in India who +spent his time gazing at the names of the railway stations in Baedeker. +When the train rushed through a station he would draw a line through the +name and say, 'I've done that.' Satisfaction with our learning is +confined to no age or nation. Two Frenchmen in a restaurant showing off +their English opined, 'It deed rain to-morrow.' 'Yes, it was.' +Satisfaction with virtue was rebuked by Francis de Sales when he told +the nuns, who asked to go barefoot, to keep their shoes and change their +brains. Satisfaction with our importance recalls Harlequin, who when +asked what he was doing on his paper throne replied that he was +reigning. Satisfaction with our future is the satisfaction of the eighth +square of the chessboard where we shall all be queens together, and it's +all feasting and fun.</p> + +<p>I would not, as advocate of the Contented Heart, go so far as Walt +Whitman when he said that whoever was without his volume of poems should +be assassinated; but his remark suggests that extreme measures are +frequently curative. Stanislaus of Poland did not<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> hesitate to recall to +his daughter the bad days they had undergone. 'See, Marie, how +Providence cares for good people: you had not even a chemise in 1725, +and now you are Queen of France.' To take up Dante and read about devils +boiled in pitch must by comparison cheer morbid humans. The spectacle of +tragedy in the lives of kings and favorites of the gods such as the +Greek stage presented was believed to be wholesome because beholders +thereby faced a scale of misfortune so much exceeding anything in their +own lives that their mishaps appeared of slight importance in +comparison. I know that after seeing <i>Œdipus Rex</i> given by the three +Salvinis and others in the old amphitheatre in Fiesole, I went off +murmuring, 'What does it matter if my trunk is lost!' a state of mind to +which no slighter argument had sufficed to bring me. Surely life is too +interesting to spend it all knocking off its pretty scallops by aimless +exaggeration of small troubles, or hanging out our large ones to flap +the passer-by. Besides which, we get no more sympathy from the passer-by +than did Giant Despair who sometimes, in sunshiny weather, fell into +fits.</p> + +<p>Captivating as a 'born,' a fortuitous, untrained content may be, trained +content is of a finer type. One is quantity content, the other quality +content. Not to smash things up and make them over just as we want them, +which we should like to do but cannot; not to waste our time fighting +against conditions, but to take<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> up those conditions, that environment, +and out of them forge the <i>œs triplex</i> of a contented heart—that, I +take it, is to be an adept in the fine art of living, and I for one am +votary.</p> + +<p>That the most restless heart can train itself to find content in simple, +commonplace things, like work, nature, health, books, meditation, and +friends,—illustrations are bewilderingly abundant. Burne-Jones said he +would like to stay right in his own house for numberless years, the hope +of getting on with his painting was happiness enough. Macaulay would +'rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who +did not love reading'; and King James said that if he were not a king he +would be a university man, and if it were so that he must be a prisoner +he would desire no other durance than to be chained in the Bodleian +Library with so many noble authors. Carlyle's chief luxury was 'to think +and smoke tobacco, with a new clay pipe every day, put on the doorstep +at night for any poor brother-smoker or souvenir-hunter to carry away.'</p> + +<p>All Diogenes wanted was that Alexander and his men should stand from +between him and the sun. Goethe found content in Nature and earnest +activity; and the happy Turk told Candide that he had twenty acres of +land which he cultivated with his children, work which put them far from +great evils: ennui, vice, and need,—'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.' +Diocletian,<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> one of the cleverest of the Roman emperors, reigned +twenty-two years and then retired to private life in Dalmatia, building, +planting, and gardening. Solicited by Maximian to resume the imperial +purple, he replied that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he +had planted with his own hands he would no longer be urged to relinquish +his enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power. Fanny Kemble lived +all summer in the Alps, the guides describing her exquisitely as the +lady who goes singing over the mountains. Pedaretus, being left out of +the election of the three hundred, went home merry, saying that it did +him good to find there were three hundred better than himself in the +city. St. Augustine on his thirty-third birthday gave his friends a +moderate feast followed by a three days' discussion of the Happy Life. +Bunyan wrote <i>The Pilgrim's Progress</i> not to please his neighbors, but +his own self to satisfy; in prison, too.</p> + +<p>Catherine of Siena, whatever her sufferings, was always jocund, 'ever +laughing in the Lord.' The blind Madame du Deffand rejoiced that her +affliction was not rheumatism; Spurgeon's receipt for contentment was +never to chew pills, but to swallow the disagreeable and have done with +it; Darwin's comfort was that he had never consciously done anything to +gain applause; and Jefferson never ceased affirming his belief in the +satisfying power of common daylight, common pleasures, and all the +common relations of life. Essipoff,<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> when commiserated on the smallness +of her hands, insisted that longer ones would be cumbersome. Robert +Schauffler's specific for a blue Monday is to whistle all the Brahms +tunes he can remember. Dr. Cuyler, when very ill, replied to a +relative's suggestion of the glorious company waiting him above, 'I've +got all eternity to visit with those old fellows; I am in no hurry to +go'; and old Aunt Mandy, when asked why she was so constantly cheerful, +replied, 'Lor', chile, I jes' wear this world like a loose garment.'</p> + +<p>Acts, all these, the flinging out of hand or tongue against adverse +fortune. The brain can do it, too. One of the most remarkable statements +I ever heard is Mary Antin's that she never had a dull hour in her life. +Now, outside things, doings, could not so have thrilled her days. Her +spirit kept dullness distant. On the rafters of Montaigne's tower-room +was written in Greek, 'It is not so much things that torment man as the +opinion that he has of things.' Our opinions then make the contented or +the discontented heart. Coleridge affirmed the shaping power of +imagination to be so vitally human that the joy of life consists in it. +Haydon's chief pleasure was 'feeding on his own thoughts.' 'Make for +yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts,' Ruskin urged. 'Whether God gave +the Venetians St. Mark's bones does not matter,' he says elsewhere, 'but +he gave them real joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we +have in our real ones.'<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> Lord Rosebery urges people to garden in winter +in the imagination. Stevenson writes of the ease and pleasure of travels +in the calendar and a voyage in the atlas; and Keats thought that a man +might pass a very pleasant life by reading certain pages of poetry and +wandering with them and musing and dreaming upon them.</p> + +<p>It is the mood that makes the contented heart, just as the eye makes the +horizon, and we ourselves make the light that we see things by. Clothes +warm us only by keeping our own heat in. 'Everyone is well or ill at +ease,' says Epictetus, 'according as he finds himself; not he whom the +world believes but himself believes to be so is content.' To be +concrete, take riches. 'Greedy fools,' sings the modern poet,</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left">'Measure themselves by poor men never;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Their standard being still richer men</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Makes them poor ever.'</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>The rich man is merely one who has something to spare; and the really +poor one he who has nothing over. If you can give anything you are rich. +Try it. An old man tells me how Mark Hopkins used to examine the boys in +the Westminster Catechism: 'What is the chief end of man?' 'To glorify +God and enjoy him forever.' 'Well,' he burst forth, 'why don't you do it +then?' It is not conceit, but hygiene of the soul, to 'enjoy one's +self,' taking the conventional phrase literally. The trick of happiness, +says Walt Whitman, is to tone down your wants and tastes low enough; +and<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> Stevenson puts in his say that the true measure of success is +appreciation: 'I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment +with life than of knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue.' What would the +possession of a thousand a year avail, asks Thackeray, to one who was +allowed to enjoy it only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a +couple of nails in it?</p> + +<p>Take knowledge, not to be confounded with wisdom,—'I have none,' sang +Keats's thrush, 'and yet the evening listens.' It did not hurt Horace</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="center">if others be</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">More rich or better read than me,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Each has his place.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>Montaigne would rather be more content and less knowing; and there is +Lessing's great confession of faith: that if God in his right hand held +all truth, and in his left the striving for truth, 'if he should say to +me, "Choose," I would say, "Father, give me this striving, pure truth is +for thee alone."'</p> + +<p>Take work. Do you complain of it? Try doing more, of a productive sort. +An engine-builder received complaint that his engine burned too much +coal. 'How many cars on the train?' was the telegraphed query, with the +reply, 'Four.' 'Try twelve,' went the prescription, and the train drew +twelve with economy of fuel. 'Your brain tired?' William James echoed a +student. 'Never mind, work straight on and your brain will get its +second wind.' I myself do not know of any<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> anodyne surer and quicker +than that found in the garden. When all the world is askew, dibbling in +seedlings in straight rows is a wonderful solace. Why do so many women +treat domesticity as drudgery? Its infinite variety, so unlike the +monotonous tasks of men, often wearies the mind, but like Chesterton I +do not see how it can narrow it. And socialism, with its cry of +armchairs for workingmen! Armchairs, as Creighton nobly says, will bring +no lasting happiness; but to quicken a human being, even one's self, +into a sense of the meaning of his life and destiny, that is a real +happiness.</p> + +<p>Take sorrow. Is it not infinitely better to have loved and lost than +never to have loved at all? Are there not many good moments in life +which outweigh its greatest sorrows?</p> + +<p>Take overpressure. Luther advised Melanchthon to stop managing the +universe and let the Almighty do it; and Dr. Trumbull preached 'the duty +of refusing to do good.'</p> + +<p>Take the grief caused by others. One of the bravest women I know used in +times of anxiety to gather her little children about her and say gayly, +'Now I will make some graham gems, and open some marmalade, and we will +take a little comfort.' Solomon or Aristotle could have done no more.</p> + +<p>Take, for a smile's sake, the weather. It may be bad, but as we cannot +change it, the thing is our attitude<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> toward it; and as dark enshrouds +us, 'The sun is set,' said Mr. Inglesant, cheerfully; 'but it will rise +again. Let us go home.'</p> + +<p>In such ways as these the right-minded person will meet his discontents +face to face, and one by one eliminate them. He will also take stock of +his assets. St. Teresa said that by thinking of heaven for a quarter of +an hour every day one might hope to deserve it. Why do we not +deliberately devote some minutes each day to saying to ourselves, 'I am +tolerably well; I have food and shelter; everybody so far as I know +respects me, and a few persons love me truly. I have books and a garden, +the stars and the sea. I enjoy this and that, and before long the other. +The thing so long dreaded has never come to pass. I will embark at any +rate for the land of the Contented Heart.' Would not such a conscious +recapitulation be an actual force building up this thing of which we +talk?</p> + +<p>Can content be conveyed? Can it be passed from one who has it to one who +has it not—as one lamp lights another nor grows less? I wonder what +would be the effect of a group of young women, lately conning over in +college class—</p> + +<p class="c">With what I most enjoy contented least—</p> + +<p class="nind">if they should resolve to stop all that, and, undeterred by others' +estimate of values, be trustees of their own content, not suffering it +to be contingent upon the<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> manners and conduct of others? I believe that +it would act like the magnet, which not only attracts the needle but +infuses it with the power of drawing others. Great-heart so inspired the +travelers that Christiana seized her viol and Mercy her lute, and, as +they made sweet music, Ready-to-Halt took Despondency's daughter, Mrs. +Much-Afraid, by the hand and together they went dancing down the road.</p> + +<p>Which is apropos of my contention that the Contented Heart is not so +rare!</p> + +<p> +<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<p class="c">THE END</p> + +<p><a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a></p> + +<p> +<br /> +<br /> +</p> + +<p class="c"><span style="font-family:Old English Text MT;"> +The Riverside Press</span><br /> +CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS<br /> +U. S. A.</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Classics, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + +***** This file should be named 37758-h.htm or 37758-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/7/5/37758/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Atlantic Classics + +Author: Various + +Release Date: October 14, 2011 [EBook #37758] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + +ATLANTIC +CLASSICS + +The Atlantic Monthly Company +Boston + +COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY + + TO + + The Pleasantest of Companions, + Most Constant of Friends, + Who Seeks not Flattery but Counsel, + Provoked on Occasion only + And never Vexing beyond Endurance, + Wise with Ancient Wisdom, + And Fresh from the Fountain of Youth-- + + THE + ATLANTIC CONTRIBUTOR + + + + +Preface + + +This volume, composed of essays which on their appearance in the +_Atlantic_ have met with especial favor and which from their character +seem to deserve a longer life than the paper covers of a magazine +permit, is published out of deference to a multitude of requests. Many +readers have asked that this essay or that be preserved in permanent +form, while many teachers both in college and high school have written +us that the usefulness of the _Atlantic_ in the classroom would be +enhanced by the appearance of an edition which, selecting from the +selection already made from month to month, should constitute a kind of +_Atlantic Anthology_, preserving the magazine's flavor and character and +offering, as it were, a sample of what it aims to be. + +To give to this collection that variety which is the spice of a +magazine's life, the editor has selected a single contribution from each +of sixteen characteristic _Atlantic_ authors, making his choice from +material not greatly affected by the interests of the moment. In two or +three instances appears an essay which has already been published in +some collection of an author's work, and the _Atlantic_ wishes to +acknowledge with thanks permission from Houghton Mifflin Company to +print once again Professor Sharp's delightful "Turtle Eggs for Agassiz," +which has been included in his volume "The Face of the Fields," and Mr. +Nicholson's agreeable delineation of the "Provincial American"; while it +gratefully adds its acknowledgment to Henry Holt and Company for the +reappearance of Mr. Strunsky's "The Street," already published in his +inimitable little volume, "Belshazzar Court." + +Our chief thanks, now and always, are due to the _Atlantic's_ +contributors, to whom we owe all we have or hope for. Were not our +design limited, we should gladly enrich this collection with much +material from our file, which is quite as worthy to represent the +magazine, but which, for one reason or another, we judge less suitable +for the purposes of the present volume. + +THE EDITOR. + + + + +Contents + + +FIDDLERS ERRANT _Robert Haven Schauffler_ 1 + +TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ _Dallas Lore Sharp_ 23 + +A FATHER TO HIS FRESHMAN SON _Edward Sanford Martin_ 45 + +INTENSIVE LIVING _Cornelia A. P. Comer_ 59 + +REMINISCENCE WITH POSTSCRIPT _Owen Wister_ 87 + +THE OTHER SIDE _Margaret Sherwood_ 110 + +ON AUTHORS _Margaret Preston Montague_ 124 + +THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN _Meredith Nicholson_ 130 + +OUR LADY POVERTY _Agnes Repplier_ 153 + +ENTERTAINING THE CANDIDATE _Katharine Baker_ 173 + +THE STREET _Simeon Strunsky_ 181 + +FASHIONS IN MEN _Katharine Fullerton Gerould_ 201 + +A CONFESSION IN PROSE _Walter Prichard Eaton_ 225 + +IN THE CHAIR _Ralph Bergengren_ 243 + +THE PASSING OF INDOORS _Zephine Humphrey_ 252 + +THE CONTENTED HEART _Lucy Elliot Keeler_ 265 + + + + +Fiddlers Errant + +By Robert Haven Schauffler + +I + + +MUSICAL adventures largely depend on your instrument. Go traveling with +a bassoon or clarionet packed in your trunk, and romance will pass you +by. But far otherwise will events shape themselves if you set forth with +a fiddle. + +The moment I turned my back upon the humdrum flute and embraced the +'cello, that instrument of romance, things began happening thick and +fast in a hitherto uneventful life. I found that to sally forth with +your 'cello couchant under your arm, like a lance of the days of +chivalry, was to invite adventure. You tempted Providence to make things +interesting for you, up to the moment when you returned home and stood +your fat, melodious friend in the corner on his one leg--like the stork, +that other purveyor of joyful surprises. + +One reason why the 'cellist is particularly liable to meet with musical +adventures is because the nature of his talent is so plainly visible. +The parcel under his arm labels him FIDDLER in larger scare-caps than +Mr. Hearst ever invented for headlines. It is seen of all men. There is +no concealment possible. For it would, indeed, be less practicable to +hide your 'cello under a bushel than to hide a bushel under your 'cello. + +The non-reducible obesity of this instrument is apt to bring you +adventures of all sorts: wrathful sometimes, when urchins recognize it +as a heaven-sent target for snowballs; or when adults audibly quote Dean +Swift's asinine remark, 'He was a fiddler and therefore a rogue.' +Absurd, sometimes, as when the ticket-chopper in the subway bars your +path under the misapprehension that you are carrying a double-bass; and +when the small boys at the exit offer you a _Saturday Evening Post_ in +return for 'a tune on that there banjo.' But more often the episodes are +pleasant, as when your bulky trademark enables some kindred spirit to +recognize you as his predestined companion on impromptu adventures in +music. + +I was at first almost painfully aware of my 'cello's conspicuousness +because I had abandoned for it an instrument so retiring by nature that +you might carry it till death in your side pocket, yet never have it +contribute an unusual episode to your career. But from the moment when I +discovered the exaggerated old fiddle in the attic, slumbering in its +black coffin, and wondered what it was all about, and brought it +resurrection and life,--events began. I have never known exactly what +was the magic inherent in the dull, guttural, discouraged protests of +the strings which I experimentally plucked that day. But their +songs-without-words-or-music seemed to me pregnant with promises of +beauty and romance far beyond the ken of the forthright flute. So then +and there I decided to embark upon the delicate and dangerous enterprise +of learning another instrument. + +It was indeed delicate and dangerous because it had to be prosecuted as +secretly as sketching hostile fortifications. Father must not suspect. I +feared that if he heard the demonic groans of a G string in pain, or the +ghoulish whimperings of a manhandled A, he would mount to the attic, +throw back his head, look down upon me through those lower crescents of +his spectacles which always made him look a trifle unsympathetic, and +pronounce that baleful formula: 'My son, come into my study!' For I knew +he labored under the delusion that I already 'blew in' too much time on +the flute, away from the companionship of All Gaul, _enteuthen +exelaunei_, and Q.E.D. As for any additional instrument, I feared that +he would reduce it to a pulp at sight, and me too. + +My first secret step was to secure a long strip of paper to be pasted on +the finger-board under the strings. It was all pockmarked with black +dots and letters, so that if the music told you to play the note G, all +you had to do was to contort your neck properly and remove your left +hand from the path of vision, then gaze cross-eyed and upside down at +the finger-board until you discovered the particular dot labeled G. The +next move was to clap your fingertip upon that dot and straighten out +your neck and eyes and apply the bow. Then out would come a triumphant +G,--that is, provided your fingers had not already rubbed G's +characteristically undershot lip so much as to erase away the letter's +individuality. In that case, to be sure, all your striving for G might +result only in C after all. + +It was fascinating work, though. And every afternoon as the hour of +four, and father's 'constitutional,' approached, I would 'get set' like +a sprinter on my mark in the upper hall. The moment the front door +closed definitely behind my parent I would dash for the attic and +commence my cervical and ocular contortions. It was dangerous, too. For +it was so hard to stop betimes that one evening father made my blood run +cold by inquiring, 'What were you moaning about upstairs before dinner?' +I fear that I attributed these sounds to travail in Latin scholarship, +and an alleged sympathy for the struggles of the dying Gaul. + +The paper finger-board was so efficacious that in a week I felt ready to +taste the first fruits of toil. So I insinuated a pair of musical +friends into the house one afternoon, to try an easy trio. They were a +brother and sister who played violin and piano. Things went so +brilliantly that we resolved on a public performance within a few days, +at the South High School. Alas, if I had only taken the supposed +rapidity of my progress with a grain of attic salt! But my only +solicitude was over the problem how to smuggle the too conspicuous +instrument to school, on the morning of the concert, without the +knowledge of a vigilant father. We decided at last that any such attempt +would be suicidal rashness. So I borrowed another boy's father's 'cello, +and, in default of the printed strip, I penciled under the strings notes +of the whereabouts of G, C, and so forth, making G shoot out the lip +with extra decision. + +Our public performance was a _succes fou_,--that is, it was a _succes_ +up to a certain point, and _fou_ beyond it, when one disaster followed +another. My fingers played so hard as to rub out G's lower lip. They +quite obliterated A, turned E into F, and B into a fair imitation of D. +These involuntary revisions led me to introduce the very boldest modern +harmonies into one of the most naively traditional strains of Cornelius +Gurlitt. Now, in the practice of the art of music one never with +impunity pours new harmonic wine into old bottles. The thing is simply +not done. + +Perhaps, though, we might have muddled through somehow, had not my +violinist friend, during a rest, poked me cruelly in the ribs with his +bow and remarked in a coarse stage whisper, 'Look who's there!' + +I looked, and gave a gasp. It might have passed for an excellent +rehearsal of my last gasp. In the very front row sat--father! He +appeared sardonic and businesslike. The fatal formula seemed already to +be trembling upon his lips. The remnants of B, C, D, and so forth +suddenly blurred before my crossed eyes. With the most dismal report our +old bottle of chamber music blew up, and I fled from the scene. + +'My son, come into my study.' + +In an ague I had waited half the evening for those hated words; and with +laggard step and miserable forebodings I followed across the hall. But +the day was destined to end in still another surprise. When father +finally faced me in that awful sanctum, he was actually smiling in the +jolliest manner, and I divined that the rod was going to be spared. + +'What's all this?' he inquired. 'Thought you'd surprise your old dad, +eh? Come, tell me about it.' + +So I told him about it; and he was so sympathetic that I found courage +for the great request. + +'Pa,' I stammered, 'sometimes I think p'raps I don't hold the bow just +right. It scratches so. Please might I take just four lessons from a +regular teacher so I could learn all about how to play the 'cello?' + +Father choked a little. But he looked jollier than ever as he replied, +'Yes, my son, on condition that you promise to lay the flute entirely +aside until you have learned _all_ about how to play the 'cello.' + +I promised. + +I have faithfully kept that promise. + + +II + +Fiddlers errant are apt to rush in and occupy the centre of the stage +where angels in good and regular practice fear even to tune up. One of +the errant's pet vagaries is to volunteer his services in orchestras too +good for him. Not long after discovering that I would need more than +four lessons to learn quite all there was to know about the 'cello,--in +fact, just nine months after discovering the coffin in the attic,--I +'rushed in.' Hearing that _The Messiah_ was to be given at Christmas, I +approached the conductor and magniloquently informed him that I was a +'cellist and that, seeing he was he, I would contribute my services +without money and without price to the coming performance. + +With a rather dubious air my terms were accepted. That same evening at +rehearsal I found that the entire bass section of the orchestra +consisted of three 'cellos. These were presided over by an inaudible, +and therefore negligible, little girl, a hoary sage who always arrived +very late and left very early, and myself. I shall never forget my +sensations when the sage, at a crucial point, suddenly packed up and +left me, an undeveloped musical Atlas, to bear the entire weight of the +orchestra on one pair of puny shoulders. Under these conditions it was a +memorable ordeal to read at sight 'The Trumpet Shall Sound.' The trumpet +sounded, indeed. That was more than the 'cello did in certain passages! +As for the dead being raised, however, that happened according to +programme. + +After this high-tension episode, I pulled myself together, only to fall +into a cruel and unusual pit which the treacherous Haendel dug for +'cellists by writing one single passage in that unfamiliar alto clef +which looks so much like the usual tenor clef that before the least +suspicion of impending disaster dawns, you are down in the pit, +hopelessly floundering. + +I emerged from this rehearsal barely alive; but I had really enjoyed +myself so much more than I had suffered, or made others suffer, that my +initial impulse to rush at sight into strange orchestras now became +stereotyped into a habit. Since then what delightful evenings I have +spent in the old Cafe Martin and in the old Cafe Boulevarde where my +'cellist friends in the orchestras were ever ready to resign their +instruments into my hands for a course or two, and the leader always let +me pick out the music! + +But one afternoon in upper Broadway I met with the sort of adventure +that figures in the fondest dreams of fiddlers errant. I had strolled +into the nearest hotel to use the telephone. As I passed through the +restaurant, my attention was caught by a vaguely familiar strain from +the musicians' gallery. Surely this was unusual spiritual provender to +offer a crowd of typical New York diners! More and more absorbed in +trying to recognize the music, I sank into an armchair in the lobby, the +telephone quite forgotten. The instruments were working themselves up to +some magnificent climax, and working me up at the same time. It began to +sound more and more like the greatest of all music,--the musician's very +holiest of holies. Surely I must be dreaming! My fingers crooked +themselves for a pinch. But just then the unseen instruments swung back +into the opening theme of the Brahms piano quartette in A major. +Merciful heavens! A Brahms quartette in Broadway? Pan in Wall Street? +Silence. With three jumps I was up in the little gallery, wringing the +hands of those performers and calling down blessings upon their +quixotism as musical missionaries. 'Missionaries?' echoed the leader in +amusement. 'Ah, no. We could never hope to convert those down there.' He +waved a scornful hand at the consumers of lobster below. 'Now and then +we play Brahms just in order that we may save our own souls.' The +'cellist rose, saluted, and extended his bow in my direction, like some +proud commander surrendering his sword. 'Will it please you,' he +inquired, 'to play the next movement?' It pleased me. + + +III + +Fiddlers errant find that traveling with a 'cello is almost as good--and +almost as bad--as traveling with a child. It helps you, for example, in +cultivating friendly relations with fellow passengers. Suppose there is +a broken wheel, or the engineer is waiting for Number 26 to pass, or you +are stalled for three days in a blizzard,--what more jolly than to +undress your 'cello and play each of those present the tune he would +most like to hear, and lead the congregational singing of 'Dixie,' +'Tipperary,' 'Drink to me only,' and 'Home, Sweet Home'? A fiddle may +even make tenable one of those railway junctions which Stevenson cursed +as the nadir of intrinsic uninterestingness, and which Mr. Clayton +Hamilton praised with such _brio_. + +But this is only the bright side. In some ways traveling with a 'cello +is as uncomfortable as traveling, not only with a baby, but with a +donkey. Unless indeed you have an instrument with a convenient hinged +door in the back so that you may pack it full of pyjamas, collars, +brushes, MSS, and so forth, thus dispensing with a bag; or unless you +can calk up its _f_ holes and use the instrument as a canoe on occasion, +a 'cello is about as inconvenient a traveling companion as the corpse in +R.L.S.'s tale, which would insist on getting into the wrong box. + +Some idea of the awkwardness of taking the 'cello along in a sleeping +car may be gathered from its nicknames. It is called the 'bull-fiddle.' +It is called the 'dog-house.' But, unlike either bulls or kennels, it +cannot safely be forwarded by freight or express. The formula for +Pullman travel with a 'cello is as follows: First ascertain whether the +conductor will let you aboard with the instrument. If not, try the next +train. When successful, fee the porter heavily at sight, thus softening +his heart so that he will assign the only spare upper birth to your +baby. And warn him in impressive tones that the instrument is priceless, +and on no account to touch it. You need not fear thieves. Sooner than +steal a 'cello, the light-fingered would button his coat over a baby +white elephant and let it tusk his vitals. + +I have cause to remember my first and only holiday trip with the +Princeton Glee, Mandolin, and Banjo Clubs. My function being to play +solos and to assist the Mandolin Club, I demanded for the 'cello an +upper berth in the special car. But I was overwhelmed with howls of +derision and assurances that I was a very fresh soph indeed. The first +night, my instrument reposed in some mysterious recess under a leaky +cooler, where all too much water flowed under its bridge before the +dawn. The second night it was compressed into a strait and narrow closet +with brushes and brooms, whence it emerged with a hollow chest, a stoop, +a consumptive quality of voice, and the malady known as _compressio +pontis_. Thereafter it occupied the same upper with me. Twice I overlaid +it, with well-nigh fatal consequences. + +Short-distance travel with a 'cello is not much more agreeable. In +trolleys you have to hold it more delicately than any babe, and be ready +to give a straight-arm to any one who lurches in your direction, and to +raise it from the floor every time you jolt over cross-tracks or run +over pedestrians, for fear of jarring the delicate adjustment of the +sound-post. As for a holiday crush down town, the best way to negotiate +it with a 'cello is to fix the sharp end-pin in place, and then, holding +the instrument at charge like a bayonet, impale those who seem most +likely to break its ribs. + +After my full share of such experiences, I learned that if you are a +fiddler errant it is better to leave your instrument at home and live on +the country, as it were, trusting to the fact that you can beg, borrow, +or rent some kind of fiddle and of chamber music almost anywhere, if you +know how to go about it. + + +IV + +Only don't try it in Sicily! + +For several months I had buried the fiddler in the errant pure and +simple, when, one sunset, across a gorge in Monte Venere, my first +strain of Sicilian music floated, to reawaken in me all the primeval +instincts of the musical adventurer. The melody came from the reed pipe +of a goat-herd as he drove his flock down into Taormina. Such a pipe was +perhaps to Theocritus what the fiddles of Stradivarius are to us. It was +pleasant to imagine that this goat-herd's music might possibly be the +same that used to inspire the tenderest of Sicilian poets twenty-three +hundred years ago. + +Piercingly sweet, indescribably pathetic, the melody recalled the Largo +in Dvorak's New World Symphony. Yet, there on the mountain-side, with +AEtna rosy on the right, and the purple Mediterranean shimmering far +below, the voice of the reed sounded more divine than any English horn +or Boehm flute I had ever heard singing in the depths of a modern +orchestra. And I began to doubt whether music was so completely a +product of the last three centuries as it purported to be. + +But that evening, when the goat-herd, ensnared by American gold, turned +himself into a modern chamber musician in our hotel room, I regained +poise. Removed from its properly romantic setting, like seaweed from the +sea, the pastoral stop of Theocritus became unmistakably a penny +whistle, with an intonation of the whistle's conventional purity. Our +captured Comatas seemed to realize that the environment was against him +and that things were going 'contrairy'; for he refused to venture on any +of the soft Lydian airs of Monte Venere, and confined himself strictly +to tarantellas, native dances, which he played with a magnificent +feeling for rhythm (if not for in-tuneness) while, with a pencil, I +caught--or muffed--them on the fly. One was to this effect:-- + +[Illustration: musical notation] + +While this was going on, a chance hotel acquaintance dropped into the +room and revealed himself as a professor by explaining that the +tarantella was named for its birthplace, the old Greek city of Taranto +over yonder in the heel of the Italian boot; that dancing it was once +considered the only cure for the maddening bite of the spider known as +the Lycosa Tarantula; and that some of the melodies our goat-herd was +playing might possibly be ancient Greek tunes, handed down traditionally +in Taranto, and later dispersed over Calabria and Sicily. + +This all sounded rather academic. But his next words sent the little +professor soaring in our estimation. He disclosed himself as a fiddler +errant by wistfully remarking that all this made him long for two +things: his violin, and a chance to play trios. Right heartily did we +introduce ourselves as pianist and 'cellist errant at his service. And +he and I decided to visit Catania next day to scout for fiddles and +music. We thought we would look for the music first. + +Next day, accordingly, we invaded the largest music store in Catania. +Did they have trios for violin, violoncello, and piano? 'Certainly!' We +were shown a derangement of La Somnambula for violin and piano, and +another for 'cello and piano. If we omitted one of the piano parts, we +were assured, a very beautiful trio would result, as surely as one from +four makes three. + +Finding us hard to please, the storekeeper referred us to the conductor +of the Opera, who offered to rent us all the standard works of chamber +music. The 'trios' he offered us turned out to be elementary pieces +labeled 'For Piano and Violin or 'Cello.' But nothing we could say was +able to persuade our conductor that 'or' did not mean 'and.' To this day +I feel sure that he is ready to defend his interpretation of this word +against all comers. + +We turned three more music stores upside down and had already abandoned +the hunt in despair when we discovered a fourth in a narrow side street. +There were only five minutes in which to catch the train; but in thirty +seconds we had unearthed a genuine piece of chamber music. Hallelujah! +it was the finale of the first Beethoven trio! + +Suddenly the oil of joy curdled to mourning. The thing was an +arrangement for piano solo! We left hurriedly when the proprietor began +assuring us that the original effect would be secured if the piano was +doubled in the treble by the violin and in the bass by the 'cello. + +This piano solo was the nearest approach to chamber music that a +thorough search and research revealed in the island of Trinacria. But +afterwards, recollecting the misadventure in tranquility, we concluded +that it was as absurd to look for chamber music in Sicily as to look for +'Die Wacht am Rhein' among the idylls of Theocritus. + + +V + +SCENE: a city composed of one department store and three houses, on the +forbidding shores of Newfoundland. + +TIME: one of those times when a fellow needs a friend,--when he's in a +stern, strange land on pleasure bent--and has to have a check cashed. I +don't know why it is that one always runs out of ready money in +Newfoundland. Perhaps because salmon flies are such fleeting creatures +of a day that you must send many postal orders to St. Johns for more. +Perhaps because the customs officials at Port au Basques make you +deposit so much duty on your fishing tackle. At any rate, there I was +penniless, with the burly storekeeper scowling in a savage manner at my +check and not knowing at all whether to take a chance on it. Finally he +thought he wouldn't, but conceded that I might spend a night under his +roof, as there was really nowhere else to go. + +At this pass something made me think of music. Perhaps it was the parlor +piano which, when new, back in the stone age, had probably been in tune. +I inquired whether there were any other instruments. The wreckage of a +violin was produced. With two pieces of string and a table fork I set up +the prostrate sound-post. I glued together the bridge and put it in +position. The technique of the angler proved helpful in splicing +together some strange-looking strings. The A was eked out with a piece +of salmon leader, while an old mandolin yielded a wire E. + +When all was at last ready, a fresh difficulty occurred to me. The +violin was an instrument which I had never learned to play! But +necessity is the mother of pretension. I thought of that check. And +placing the small fiddle carefully between my knees, I pretended that it +was a 'cello. + +So the daughter of the house seated herself at the relic of the stone +age, and we had a concert. Newfoundland appeared not to be over-finicky +in the matter of pitch and tone-quality. And how it did enjoy music! As +the audience was of Scotch-English-Irish descent, we rendered equal +parts of 'Comin' Through the Rye,' 'God Save the King,' and 'Kathleen +Mavourneen.' Then the proprietor requested the Sextette from _Lucia_. +While it was forthcoming he toyed furtively with his bandana. When it +ceased he encored it with all his might. Then he slipped out storewards +and presently returned with the fattest, blackest, most +formidable-looking cigar I ever saw, which he gravely proffered me. + +'We like' he remarked in his quaint idiom, 'to hear music at scattered +times.' He was trying to affect indifference. But his gruff voice shook, +and I knew then that music hath charms to cash the savage check. + + +VI + +This essay has rambled on an unconscionable while. The shades of +editorial night are already descending; and still I have not yet +described one of those unexpected and perfect orgies of chamber +music,--one of those little earthly paradises full of + + Soul-satisfying strains--alas! too few,-- + +which true fiddlers errant hope to find in each new place they visit, +but which usually keep well in advance of them, like the foot of the +rainbow. + +One such adventure came to me not long ago in a California city, while I +was gathering material for a book of travel. On my first evening there I +was taken to dine with a well-known writer in his beautiful home, which +he had built with his own two hands in the Spanish mission style during +fourteen years of joyous labor. This gentleman had no idea that I was to +be thrust upon him. But his hospitality went so far as to insist, before +the evening was over, that I must stay a week. He would not take no for +an answer. And for my part I had no desire to say no, because he was a +delightful person, his home with its leaf-filled patio was most +alluring, and I had discovered promising possibilities for fiddlers +errant in the splendid music-room and the collection of phonograph +records of Indian music which mine host had himself made in Arizona and +New Mexico. Then too there were rumors of skillful musical vagabonds in +the vicinity. + +Such an environment fairly cried aloud for impromptu fiddling. So, armed +with a note to the best violinist in that part of California, I set +forth next morning on the trail of the ideal orgy. At the address given +I was told that my man had moved and his address was not known. That was +a setback, indeed! But determined fiddlers errant usually land on their +feet. On the way back I chanced to hear some masterly strains of +Bach-on-the-violin issuing from a brown bungalow. And ringing at a +venture I was confronted by the very man I sought. + +Blocking the doorway, he read the note, looking as bored as +professionals usually do when asked to play with amateurs. But just as +he began to tell me how busy he was and how impossible, and so forth, he +happened to glance again at the envelope, and a very slight gleam came +into his eye. + +'You're not by any chance the fellow who wrote that thing about fiddlers +in the _Atlantic_, are you?' he inquired. At my nod he very flatteringly +unblocked the doorway and dragged me inside, pumping my hand up and down +in a painful manner, shouting for his wife, and making various kind +representations, all at the same time. And his talk gradually simmered +down into an argument that of course the only thing to do was to fiddle +together that very night. + +I asked who had the best 'cello in town. He told me the man's name, but +looked dubious. 'The trouble is, he loves that big Amati as if it were +twins. I doubt if he could bring himself to lend it to any one. Anyway, +let's try.' + +He scribbled a card to his 'cellist friend and promised, if I were +successful, to bring along a good pianist and play trios in the evening. +So I set forth on the trail of the Amati. Its owner had just finished +his noonday stint in a hotel orchestra and looked somewhat tired and +cross. He glanced at the card and then assumed a most conservative +expression and tried to fob off on me a cheap 'cello belonging to one of +his pupils, which sounded very much as a three-cent cigar tastes. At +this point I gave him the secret thumb-position grip and whispered into +his ear one of those magic pass words of the craft which in a trice +convinced him that I was in a position to dandle a 'cello with as tender +solicitude as any man alive. On my promising, moreover, to taxicab it +both ways with the sacred burden, he passed the Amati over, and the orgy +of fiddlers errant was assured. + +And that night how those beautiful Spanish walls did resound to +Beethoven and Dvorak and Brahms, most originally interspersed with the +voice of the Mexican servant's guitar, with strange, lovely songs of the +aboriginal West and South,--and with the bottled sunshine of Californian +hill-slopes; while El Alcalde Maiore, the lone gnarled tree-giant that +filled the patio, looked in through the open windows and contributed, by +way of accompaniment, leafy arpeggios _sotto voce_. And sometimes, +during rests, I remembered to be thankful that I had once snapped my +fingers at the howling wolf, and at fat pot-boilers, while I scribbled +for the _Atlantic_ that little essay on fiddlers which had gained me +this priceless evening. + + + + +Turtle Eggs for Agassiz + +By Dallas Lore Sharp + + +It is one of the wonders of the world that so few books are written. +With every human being a possible book, and with many a human being +capable of becoming more books than the world could contain, is it not +amazing that the books of men are so few? and so stupid! + +I took down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the +four volumes of Agassiz's _Contributions to the Natural History of the +United States_. I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster, +had touched those volumes for twenty-five years. They are an excessively +learned, a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit of vast and +heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the +United States, and their embryology. The work was published more than +half a century ago (by subscription); but it looked old beyond its +years--massive, heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks. It was +difficult to feel that Agassiz could have written it--could have built +it, grown it, for the laminated pile had required for its growth, the +patience and painstaking care of a process of nature, as if it were a +kind of printed coral reef. Agassiz do this? The big, human, magnetic +man at work upon these pages of capital letters, Roman figures, +brackets, and parentheses in explanation of the pages of diagrams and +plates! I turned away with a sigh from the weary learning, to read the +preface. + +When a great man writes a great book he usually flings a preface after +it, and thereby saves it, sometimes, from oblivion. Whether so or not, +the best things in most books are their prefaces. It was not, however, +the quality of the preface to these great volumes that interested me, +but rather the wicked waste of durable book-material that went to its +making. Reading down through the catalogue of human names and of thanks +for help received, I came to a sentence beginning:-- + +'In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also +received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of +Burlington; ... from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord; ... and from Mr. +J. W. P. Jenks of Middleboro'.' And then it hastens on with the thanks +in order to get to the turtles, as if turtles were the one and only +thing of real importance in all the world. + +Turtles no doubt are important, extremely important, embryologically, as +part of our genealogical tree; but they are away down among the roots +of the tree as compared with the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington. +I happen to know nothing about the Rev. Zadoc, but to me he looks very +interesting. Indeed any reverend gentleman of his name and day who would +catch turtles for Agassiz must have been interesting. And as for Henry +Thoreau, we know he was interesting. The rarest wood-turtle in the +United States was not so rare a specimen as this gentleman of Walden +Woods and Concord. We are glad even for this line in the preface about +him; glad to know that he tried, in this untranscendental way, to serve +his day and generation. If Agassiz had only put a chapter in his turtle +book about it! But this is the material he wasted, this and more of the +same human sort, for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro' (at the end of the +quotation) was, years later, an old college professor of mine, who told +me some of the particulars of his turtle contributions, particulars +which Agassiz should have found a place for in his big book. The preface +says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the +thousands--brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing +this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle +_eggs_ to Cambridge--_brought_ them, I should say; and all there is to +show for it, so far as I could discover, is a sectional drawing of a bit +of the mesoblastic layer of one of the eggs! + +Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that mesoblastic drawing, or some +other equally important drawing, and had to have the fresh turtle egg to +draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he +wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he +gets someone else to get it. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad +and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell about the +getting of it, and so made merely a learned turtle book of what might +have been an exceedingly interesting human book. + +It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or +interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them. Nothing +at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find +them. So with anything else,--good copper stock, for instance, if you +should chance to want it, and should chance to be along when they chance +to be giving it away. But if you want copper stock, say of C & H +quality, _when_ you want it, and are bound to have it, then you must +command more than a college professor's salary. And likewise, precisely, +when it is turtle eggs that you are bound to have. + +Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them--not a minute over +three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem +exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hen eggs only three +hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private +turtle-coop in Harvard Yard; and provided he could have made his +turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-scraps and +the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud +turtle's nest in the back yard to the table in the laboratory; but to +get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were +laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this, in +the days of Darius Green, might have called for nice and discriminating +work--as it did. + +Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his _Contributions_. He +had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished +but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried +the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single +exception of one--the very earliest--that stage of first cleavages, when +the cell begins to segment, immediately upon its being laid. That +beginning stage had brought the _Contributions_ to a halt. To get eggs +that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been +impossible. + +There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded: he might have +got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some +pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the +reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of +that--as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this +was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing--asked Mr. +Jenks of Middleboro' to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz +knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating +thing is, that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, +at least in the preface to his monumental work. + +It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college +professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz. + +'I was principal of an academy, during my younger years,' he began, 'and +was busy one day with my classes, when a large man suddenly filled the +door-way of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called +out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz. + +'Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to +me across the room. + +'Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I +get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? +Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only +once. + +'When I promised Agassiz those eggs I knew where I was going to get +them. I had got turtle eggs there before--at a particular patch of sandy +shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy. + +'Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was +thirty-five miles; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or +four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty +miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and +got the trip down to two hours,--record time:--driving from the pond to +the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by +cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays. + +'Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we +didn't figure on was the turtle.' And he paused abruptly. + +'Young man,' he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding +the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, 'young man, +when _you_ go after turtle eggs, take into account the turtle. No! no! +that's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle--and youth seldom +ought to. Only old age does that; and old age would never have got those +turtle eggs to Agassiz. + +'It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long +before there was any likelihood of the turtles laying. But I was eager +for the quest, and so fearful of failure, that I started out to watch at +the pond, fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be +expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May 14. + +'A little before dawn--along near three o'clock--I would drive over to +the pond, hitch my horse near by, settle myself quietly among some +thick cedars close to the sandy shore, and there I would wait, my kettle +of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the +cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to +open the academy for the morning session. + +'And so the watch began. + +'I soon came to know individually the dozen or more turtles that kept to +my side of the pond. Shortly after the cold mist would lift and melt +away, they would stick up their heads through the quiet water; and as +the sun slanted down over the ragged rim of tree-tops, the slow things +would float into the warm, lighted spots, or crawl out and doze +comfortably on the hummocks and snags. + +'What fragrant mornings those were! How fresh and new and unbreathed! +The pond odors, the woods odors, the odors of the ploughed fields--of +water-lily, and wild grape, and the dew-laid soil! I can taste them yet, +and hear them yet--the still, large sounds of the waking day--the +pickerel breaking the quiet with his swirl; the kingfisher dropping +anchor; the stir of feet and wings among the trees. And then the thought +of the great book being held up for me! Those were rare mornings! + +'But there began to be a good many of them, for the turtles showed no +desire to lay. They sprawled in the sun, and never one came out upon the +sand as if she intended to help on the great professor's book. The +embryology of her eggs was of small concern to her; her contribution to +the Natural History of the United States could wait. + +'And it did wait. I began my watch on the 14th of May; June first found +me still among the cedars, still waiting, as I had waited every morning, +Sundays and rainy days alike. June first was a perfect morning, but +every turtle slid out upon her log, as if egg-laying might be a matter +strictly of next year. + +'I began to grow uneasy,--not impatient yet, for a naturalist learns his +lesson of patience early, and for all his years; but I began to fear +lest, by some subtile sense, my presence might somehow be known to the +creatures; that they might have gone to some other place to lay, while I +was away at the school-room. + +'I watched on to the end of the first week, on to the end of the second +week in June, seeing the mists rise and vanish every morning, and along +with them vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morning vigil. +Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell together in the same clump of +cedars, and I had begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning mists +wrapping me around had at last soaked through to my bones. But Agassiz +was waiting, and the world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I +would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no use bringing a china +nest-egg to a turtle; she is not open to any such delicate suggestion. + +'Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with dawn breaking a little after +three: a warm, wide-awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the +level surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had seen it any +morning before. + +'This was the day: I knew it. I have heard persons say that they can +hear the grass grow; that they know by some extra sense when danger is +nigh. That we have these extra senses I fully believe, and I believe +they can be sharpened by cultivation. For a month I had been watching, +brooding over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring of the pulse +of things that the cold-hearted turtles could no more escape than could +the clods and I. + +'Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, understood, I slipped +eagerly into my covert for a look at the pond. As I did so, a large +pickerel ploughed a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his +wake rose the head of an enormous turtle. Swinging slowly around, the +creature headed straight for the shore, and without a pause, scrambled +out on the sand. + +'She was about the size of a big scoop-shovel; but that was not what +excited me, so much as her manner, and the gait at which she moved; for +there was method in it and fixed purpose. On she came, shuffling over +the sand toward the higher open fields, with a hurried, determined +see-saw that was taking her somewhere in particular, and that was bound +to get her there on time. + +'I held my breath. Had she been a dinosaurian making Mesozoic +footprints, I could not have been more fearful. For footprints in the +Mesozoic mud, or in the sands of time, were as nothing to me when +compared with fresh turtle eggs in the sands of this pond. + +'But over the strip of sand, without a stop, she paddled, and up a +narrow cow-path into the high grass along a fence. Then up the narrow +cow-path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into +the high, wet grass along the fence. + +'I kept well within sound of her, for she moved recklessly, leaving a +trail of flattened grass a foot and a half wide. I wanted to stand +up,--and I don't believe I could have turned her back with a rail,--but +I was afraid if she saw me that she might return indefinitely to the +pond; so on I went, flat to the ground, squeezing through the lower +rails of the fence, as if the field beyond were a melon-patch. It was +nothing of the kind, only a wild, uncomfortable pasture, full of +dewberry vines, and very discouraging. They were excessively wet vines +and briery. I pulled my coat-sleeves as far over my fists as I could get +them, and with the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to +avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, on after the turtle. + +'She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this +dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to, +warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me, at a clip +that was thrilling. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down +across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on +to a fence along a field of young corn. + +'I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before, +wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a +large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle +stop, and begin to paw about in the loose, soft soil. She was going to +lay! + +'I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried this place, and that +place, and the other place--the eternally feminine!--But _the_ place, +evidently, was hard to find. What could a female turtle do with a whole +field of possible nests to choose from? Then at last she found it, and +whirling about, she backed quickly at it, and, tail first, began to bury +herself before my staring eyes. + +'Those were not the supreme moments of my life; perhaps those moments +came later that day; but those certainly were among the slowest, most +dreadfully mixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours +long. There she was, her shell just showing, like some old hulk in the +sand alongshore. And how long would she stay there? and how should I +know if she had laid an egg? + +'I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over the freshly awakened +fields, floated four mellow strokes from the distant town clock. + +'Four o'clock! Why, there was no train until seven! No train for three +hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this +was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o'clock train,--none +till after nine. + +'I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun +crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were +the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! And I cleared the fence, and +the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge, at a single jump. He +should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven +o'clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any +horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and upsetting the +astonished turtle, I scooped out her round, white eggs. + +'On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care +my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so +with another layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand, +I ran back for my horse. + +'That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he +was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He turned out of that field into the +road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling +me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between +my knees. + +'I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to +Cambridge! or even half way there; and I would have time to finish the +trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, the +pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the +bang on them, as we pounded down the wood road, was terrific. But +nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned +over in the sand before they came to Agassiz. + +'In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away +from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and +were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of +me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick sharp whistle of a +locomotive. + +'What did it mean? Then followed the _puff_, _puff_, _puff_, of a +starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet +for a longer view, I pulled into a side road, that paralleled the track, +and headed hard for the station. + +'We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind +the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It +was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and topping +a little hill I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring +from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its +swift run down the rails. + +'My horse was on the gallop, going with the track, and straight toward +the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me--the bare thought +of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half--a quarter +of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced +field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine. + +'With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the +field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should +carry me and my eggs to Boston! + +'The engineer pulled the rope. He saw me standing up in the rig, saw my +hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, +and he jerked out a succession of sharp halts! But it was he who should +halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the +carriage on top of the track. + +'The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a +standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down +the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard +the cab. + +'They offered no resistance; they hadn't had time. Nor did they have the +disposition, for I looked strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, +dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby +or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand. + +"'_Crazy_," the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue. + +'I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now. + +'"Throw her wide open," I commanded. "Wide open! These are fresh turtle +eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before +breakfast." + +'Then they knew I was crazy, and evidently thinking it best to humor me, +threw the throttle wide open, and away we went. + +'I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field, +and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold +myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled +through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, +while the other kept his hand upon a big, ugly wrench. Neither of them +spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of +their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head +of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as +perhaps the easiest way of disposing of me. + +'I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that +station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next; +when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should +have passed in the night, and was making up lost time. + +'Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands +with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I +was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my +diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the +engineer, with a look that said, "See the lunatic grin; he likes it!" + +'He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails! +How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the +fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just +ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of +the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by +the mile! + +'I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of +Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,--luck,--luck,--until the +multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming "luck! +luck! luck!" They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless +wheels was doing its very best to get the eggs to Agassiz! + +'We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun +from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the +cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the +engineer watching me narrowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in +Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and +forced it to carry me to Boston. + +'Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men +should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I +would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to +Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left, in +which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my +captors. But it was too late. Nothing could avail against my actions, my +appearance, and my little pail of sand. + +'I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes +caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my +full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all +night with a tiny, tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the +decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning! + +'I began to feel like a hunted criminal. The situation was serious, or +might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way +have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply. + +'Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freightyard, the train slowed +down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but I had no chance. They +had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch +again. What time we had made! It was only six o'clock, with a whole +hour to get to Cambridge. + +'But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes--ten--went by. + +"'Gentlemen," I began, but was cut short by an express train coming +past. We were moving again, on--into a siding; on--on to the main track; +and on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the +length of the train; on at a turtle's pace, but on,--when the fireman, +quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, +and--the chance had come! + +'I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of +the track, and made a line for the yard fence. + +'There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were +after me. Evidently their hands were full, and they didn't know I had +gone. + +'But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when +it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my +pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over--a very wise +thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open +square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club--looking +for me. + +'I flattened for a moment, when some one in the yard yelled at me. I +preferred the policeman, and grabbing my pail I slid over to the +street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of +sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab! + +'Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, +and squared away. I waved a paper dollar at him, but he only stared the +more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar. +I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab, +calling, "Cambridge!" + +'He would have taken me straight to the police station, had I not said, +"Harvard College. Professor Agassiz's house! I've got eggs for Agassiz"; +and pushed another dollar up at him through the hole. + +'It was nearly half-past six. + +'"Let him go!" I ordered. "Here's another dollar if you make Agassiz's +house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!" + +'He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on +a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down +the wood roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and +crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we +took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in +Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons. + +'Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, +and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the +jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not +daring to let go even to look at my watch. + +'But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to +seven o'clock it might be. The sweat was dropping from my nose, so close +was I running to the limit of my time. + +'Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dove forward, ramming my head into +the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the +small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs +helter-skelter over the floor. + +'We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house; and without taking time to +pick up the scattered eggs, I tumbled out, and pounded at the door. + +'No one was astir in the house. But I would stir them. And I did. Right +in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid. + +'"Agassiz," I gasped, "I want Professor Agassiz, quick!" And I pushed by +her into the hall. + +'"Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go +'way, sir!" + +'"Call him--Agassiz--instantly, or I'll call him myself." + +'But I didn't; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great, +white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick, loud +voice called excitedly,-- + +'"Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!" + +'And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic +gown, came sailing down the stairs. + +'The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with +both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a +swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my +trembling hands ticked its way to seven--as if nothing unusual were +happening to the history of the world.' + + * * * * * + +'You were in time then?' I said. + +'To the tick. There stands my copy of the great book. I am proud of the +humble part I had in it.' + + + + +A Father to his Freshman Son + +By Edward Sanford Martin + + +No doubt, my son, you have got out of me already what there was to help +or mar you. You are eighteen years old and have been getting it, more or +less and off and on, for at least seventeen of those years. I regret the +imperfections of the source. No doubt you have recognized them. To have +a father who is attentive to the world, indulgent to the flesh, and with +a sort of kindness for the Devil--dear son, it is a good deal of a +handicap! Be sure I make allowances for you because of it. _Ex eo +fonte--fons_, masculine, as I remember; _fons_ and _mons_ and _pons_, +and one other. Should the pronoun be _illo?_ As you know, I never was an +accurate scholar, and I suppose you're not--_Ex eo fonte_ the stream is +bound to run not quite clear. + +My advice to you is quite likely to be bad, partly from the imperfection +of its source, partly because I am not you, and partly because of my +imperfect acquaintance with the conditions you are about to meet. When I +came to college my father gave me no advice. He gave me his love and +some necessary money, which did not come, I fear, as easy as the love. +His venerable uncle who lived with us--my great uncle--gave me his +blessing and told me, I remember, that so far as book-learning went, I +could learn as much without going to college. Still he did not +discourage my going. He was quite right. I could have got more +book-learning out of college than I did get in college, and I suppose +that you, too, might get, out, more than you will get, in. Of course, +that's not the whole story; neither is it true of all people. For me, +college abounded in distractions, and I suppose it will for you. And I +was incorrigibly sociable and ready to spend time to get acquainted, and +more, to stay acquainted, and if you have that propensity you needn't +think it was left on the doorstep. You come by it lawfully. Getting +acquainted is, for most of us, one of the important branches. But it's +only one of them, and to devote one's whole time to it is a mistake, and +one that the dean will help you avoid if necessary, which probably, if I +know you at all, it won't be. + +It is important to know people, but it is more important to be worth +knowing. College offers you at least two valuable details of +opportunity: a large variety of people to know, and a large variety of +means to make yourself better worth knowing. I hope, my son, that you +will avail yourself of both these details. + +This is a mechanical age, and the most obtrusive of the current +mechanisms is the automobile. It has valves and cylinders and those +things that give it power and speed, and rubber tires that it runs on, +and a wheel and steering-gear and handles and treadles by which it is +directed. Your body, especially your stomach, is the rubber tires; your +brains are the cylinders and valves; and your will and the spiritual +part of you are the chauffeur and his wheel. + +I beg you to be kind to your stomach, as heretofore. It needs no alcohol +at your time of life--if ever--and the less you find occasion to feed +into it, the more prosperous both your physical and mental conditions +are likely to be. I am aware that life, and college life in particular, +has its convivial intervals; but you might as well understand (and I +have been remiss, or have wasted time, if you do not understand it +already) that alcohol is one of the chief man-traps, abounding in +mischiefs if you play with it too hard. Be wary, always wary, with it, +my son, and especially with hard liquor. + +Your mind, like your body, is a thing whereof the powers are developed +by effort. That is a principal use, as I see it, of hard work in +studies. Unless you train your body you can't be an athlete, and unless +you train your mind you can't be much of a scholar. The four miles an +oarsman covers at top speed is in itself nothing to the good, but the +physical capacity to hold out over the course is thought to be of some +worth. So a good part of what you learn by hard study may not be +permanently retained, and may not seem to be of much final value, but +your mind is a better and more powerful instrument because you have +learned it. 'Knowledge is power,' but still more the faculty of +acquiring and using knowledge is power. If you have a trained and +powerful mind, you are bound to have stored it with something, but its +value is more in what it can do, what it can grasp and use, than in what +it contains; and if it were possible, as it is not, to come out of +college with a trained and disciplined mind and nothing useful in it, +you would still be ahead, and still, in a manner, educated. Think of +your mind as a muscle to be developed; think of it as a searchlight that +is to reveal the truth to you, and don't cheat it or neglect it. + +As to competitive scholarship, to my mind it is like competitive +athletics,--good for those who have the powers and like the game. Tests +are useful; they stimulate one's ambition, and so do competitions. But a +success in competitive scholarship, like a success in competitive +athletics, may, of course, be too dearly bought. Not by you, though, I +surmise, my son. If you were more urgent, either as a scholar or as an +athlete, I might think it needful to warn you not to wear your tires out +scorching too early in life. As things are, I say to you, as I often say +to myself: Don't dawdle; don't scramble. When you work, work; when you +play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the time. + +When you get hold of an instructor who is worth attention, give him +attention. That is one way of getting the best that a college has to +offer. A great deal you may get from books, but some of the most +valuable things are passed from mind to mind, and can only be had from +some one who has them, or else from the great Source of all truth. I +suspect that the subtle development we call 'culture' is one of those +things, and the great spiritual valuables are apt to come that way. + +You know you are still growing, both in mind and body, and will continue +so to be for years to come,--I hope, always. One of the valuable things +about college is that it gives you time to grow. You won't have to earn +any money and will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself +and others, as well as with some of the wisdom that is spread upon the +records. You would be so engaged, more or less, in these years, wherever +you might be. But in college, where you are so much your own man, and +are freed from the demands and solicitudes of your parents, the +conditions for it are exceptionally favorable. I suppose that is one +thing that continues the colleges in business, since I read so often +that at present they are entirely misdirected and teach the wrong things +in the wrong way. + +But nobody denies that they give the young a breathing spell. Breathe, +my son; breathe freely. Remember that the aim of all these prospective +processes is to bring out the man there is in you, and arm him more or +less for the jousts ahead. It is not to make you over into somebody +else: that can't be done,--not in three or four years, anyhow; but only +to bring out, and train as much as possible of you. There's plenty in +most of us if we can only get it out; more, very much more, than we ever +do get out. So will you please think of college as a nursery in which +you are to grow a while,--and mind you do grow,--and then, presently, to +be transplanted. It is not as if college was the chief arena of human +effort. Nevertheless, for your effort, while you are there, it is the +chief arena, and I am far from giving you the counsel to put off trying +until you leave. + +I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how +important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of +scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall +still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are +more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment. +They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and +chances the clubs involve; so bad it may be to be in this one; so bad to +be out of that; so much choice there is between them, and so much +choice exercised within them, by which any mother's hopeful may be +excluded. + +There is a democratic ideal of a great college without any clubs, where +the lion and the lamb shall escort one another about with tails +entwined, and every student shall be like every other student, and have +similar habits and associates. This ideal is a good deal discussed and a +good deal applauded in the public press. Whether it will ever come true +I can't tell, but there has been some form or other of clubs in our +older colleges, I suppose, for one or two centuries, and they are there +now and will at least last out your time; so it may be you will have to +take thought about them in due time. + +Not much, however, until they take thought of you. + +You see, clubs seem to be a sort of natural provision, just as tails +were, maybe, before humanity outgrew them. I guess there is a propensity +of nature toward groups, and the natural basis of grouping seems to be +likeness in feathers and habits. The propensity works to include the +like and, incidentally but necessarily, to exclude the unlike. Whether +it is the Knights of the Round Table or the Knights of the Garter or the +Phi Beta Kappa, you see these principles working. The measure of success +in a club is its ability to make people want to join it, and that seems +to be best demonstrated and preserved by keeping most of them out. + +Now the advantages of the clubs are considerable. To have a place +always open where you can hang up your hat, and where a hospitable +welcome always awaits you, and where there is enough of a crowd and not +too much, and where you can in your later years inspect at all times a +family of selected undergraduates,--all that is valuable and good, and +pleasant besides, and this continuity of interest that the clubs foster +among their members helps to keep up in those members a lively and +helpful interest in their college. The drawback to the clubs is their +essential selfishness, and their disposition to take you out of a large +family and limit you to a small one, and one that is not yours by birth, +or entirely by choice, but is selected for you largely by other persons. + +In any club you yield a certain amount of freedom and individuality, the +amount being determined by the degree in which the club absorbs you. +Don't yield too much! Don't take the mould of any club! A college is +always bigger than its clubs, and the biggest thing in a college is +always a man. The object of being in college is to develop as a man. If +clubs help in that development,--and I think they do help some +men,--they are a gain; but, of course, if they dwarf you down to the +dimensions of a club-man, they are a loss. Some men take their club +shape, such as it is, and find a sufficient satisfaction in it. Others +react on their clubs, take what they have to give, add to it what is to +be had elsewhere, and turn out rather more valuable people than if they +had had no club experience. + +At all events, don't take this matter of the clubs too hard. For those +youths, comparatively few, who by luck and circumstances find themselves +eligible to them, they are an interesting form of discipline or +indulgence, and I will not say that they are unimportant. Neither would +I have you keep out of them because of their drawbacks. If you begin by +keeping out of all things that have drawbacks, your progress in this +world will involve constant hesitations. Alcohol has numerous drawbacks, +but I don't advise you to be a teetotaller. Tobacco has drawbacks, but I +believe you smoke it. Money has drawbacks, and so has advertisement. +But, bless you, we have to take things as they come and deal with them +as we can. The trick is to get the kernel and eliminate the shuck. A +large proportion of people do the opposite. If you can manage that way +with the clubs,--provided you ever get a chance,--you will be amused to +observe in due time how large a proportion of your brethren value these +organizations chiefly for their shuck, and grasp most eagerly at that. +For the shuck, as I see it, is exclusiveness, which is not valuable +except to persons justly doubtful of their own merits. Whereas the +kernel is the fellowship of like minds which has always been treasured +by the wise. + +The clubs, my son, some more than others, are recruited considerably +from what is known as the leisure class. To be sure, I don't see any +very definite or important leisure class about in our land. Everybody +who amounts to anything works, and always did and must, for you can't +amount to anything otherwise; but the people who have money laid up +ahead for them, are apt to work somewhat less strenuously than the rest +of us, and not so much for money. Don't get it into your head that you +want to tie up to the leisure class, or that the condition of not having +to work is desirable. Have it in mind that you are to work just about as +hard as the quality of your tires and cylinders will warrant. Plan to +get into the game if you have to go on your hands and knees. Plan to +earn your living somehow. Don't aim to go through life spoon-fed; don't +aim to get a soft seat. If you do, you won't have your fair share of +fun. There is no real fun in ease, except as you need it because you +have worked hard. + +I say, plan to earn your living! Whether you actually earn the money you +live on, makes no great difference, though in your case I guess you'll +have to if you are going to live at all well. But if you get money +without earning it, it leaves you in debt to society. Somebody has to +earn the money you spend. In mine, factory, railroad, or office, +somebody works for the money that supports you. No matter where the +money comes from, that is true: somebody has to earn it. If you get it +without due labor of your own, you owe for it. Recognize that debt and +qualify yourself to discharge it. Study to put back into the world +somewhat more than you take out of it. Study to be somewhat more than +merely worth your keep. Study to shoulder the biggest load your strength +can carry. That is life. That is the great sport that brings the great +compensations to the soul. Getting regular meals and nice clothes, and +acceptable shelter and transportation, and agreeable acquaintances, is +only a means to an end, and if you accept the means and shirk the end, +the means will pall on you. + +I said 'agreeable acquaintances.' A very large proportion of the +acquaintances you can make will be agreeable if you can bring enough +knowledge and a sufficiently hospitable spirit to your relations with +them. I don't counsel you to cultivate the arts of popularity, for they +are apt not to wash,--apt, that is, to conflict with inside qualities +that are vastly more valuable than they are. But keep, in so far as you +can, an open heart. There is no one to whom you are not related if only +you can find the relation; there is no one but you owe him a benefit if +you can see one you can do him. + +Don't be too nice. It is such an impediment to usefulness as stuttering +is to speech,--a sort of spiritual indigestion; a hesitation in your +carbureter. By all means, be a gentleman, in manners and spirit, in so +far as you know how, but be one from the inside out. + +If you had come as far as you have in life without acquiring manners, +you might well blush for your parents and teachers. I don't think you +have, but I beg you hold on to all the good manners you have, and get +more. Good manners seem to me a good deal to seek among present-day +youth, but I suppose they have always been fairly scarce, and the more +appreciated for their scarcity. Tobacco manners are uncommonly free and +bad in this generation; more so, I think, than they were in mine. Since +cigarettes came in, especially, youths seem to feel licensed to smoke +them in all places and company. And the boys are prone to too much ease +of attitude, and lounge and loll appallingly in company, and I see them +in parlors with their legs crossed in such a fashion that their feet +might almost as well be in the ladies' laps. + +Have a care for these matters of deportment. Be strict with yourself and +your postures. Keep your legs and feet where they belong; they were not +meant for parlor ornaments. Show respect for people! Lord bless me! the +things I see done by males with a claim to be gentlemen: tobacco-smoke +puffed in women's faces; men who ought to know better, smoking as they +drive out with ladies; men who put their feet on the table and expect +you to talk over them! Show respect for people; for all kinds of people, +including yourself, for self-respect is at the bottom of all good +manners. They are the expression of discipline, of good-will, of respect +for other people's rights and comfort and feelings. I suppose good +manners are unselfish, but the most selfish people might well cultivate +them, they are so remunerative. In the details of life, in the public +vehicles, in crowds, and in all situations where the demand presses hard +on supply, what you get by hogging is incomparably less than what you +get by courtesy. The things you must scramble and elbow for are not +worth having; not one of them. They are the swill of life, my son; leave +them to swine. + +You will have to think more or less about yourself, because that belongs +to your time of life, provided you are the sort that thinks at all. But +don't overdo it. You won't, because you will find it, as all healthy +people do, a subject in which over-indulgence tends rapidly to nausea. +To have one's self always on one's mind is to lodge a kill-joy; to act +always from calculation is a sure path to blunders. + +Most of these specific counsels I set down more for your entertainment +than truly to guide you. You don't live by maxims any more than you +speak by rules of grammar. You will speak by ear (improving, I hope, in +your college environment), and you will live by whatever light there is +in you, getting more, I hope, as you go along. + +Grow in grace, my son! If your spirit is right, the details of life +will take care of their own adjustment. Go to church; if not invariably, +then variably. They don't require it any more in college, but you can't +afford not to; for the churches reflect and recall--very imperfectly to +be sure--the religion and the spirit of Christ; and on that the whole of +our civilization rests. Get understanding of that. It is by far the most +important knowledge in the whole book, the great fountain of sanity, +tolerance, and political and social wisdom, a gateway to all kinds of +truth, a rectifying and consoling current through all of life. + + + + +Intensive Living + +By Cornelia A. P. Comer + + +Said Honoria casually,-- + +'When I was in town yesterday, I went to see Adelaide in her new house.' + +The others looked up alertly, Martha from her darning, Grace from her +Irish crochet. + +'Oh, really? And how did you like the house?' + +Honoria hesitated, looking to the wide view for clarification. The three +sat on a cottage veranda in the foothills of Southern California, one +February day. In front of them the landscape ran, laughing, down-hill to +the sea. Spread beneath them like a map were thirty miles of town and +country: orange orchards brave with fruit; eucalyptus groves appealing +to the sky; friendly roofs inclosed in deep-sheltering trees; great open +spaces where the wind moved free; round-topped hills, green near at hand +(for the rains had come and gone thus early), changing to a dusky blue +out yonder where the bright Pacific flashed at the end of the long, +delightful view. For love of this prospect Martha had lately left steep, +sturdy hills, brown brooks, elm-shaded streets and old friends, girding +at herself as she did so. Honoria had lived here many years, while Grace +was but a winter's guest in Honoria's home, whose hospitable brown +gables, low and wide-spreading, were visible beyond the cypress hedge +encircling Martha's cottage. + +'It is a good-looking mansion. She had a capable architect. The building +is Tudor,--consistent, graceful, well proportioned. For two people it is +a very large house indeed, but it is a good house, and I see perfectly +how Adelaide means it to express the idea of dignified, comfortable +living. The decorator was not bad of his kind, either.' + +'All this sounds like praise,' said Grace, 'yet I feel that you are +keeping something back. What is the matter with Adelaide's house?' + +Again Honoria hesitated. + +'It seems ungracious to find fault with such a perfectly worthy +performance, yet I came away chilled and uncomfortable, almost unhappy, +indeed. Thinking about the matter on the way home, it became clear to me +at last that the house is too large for Adelaide's personality. You know +how perfectly she pervaded that old house of hers. Old-fashioned, in +some respects inconvenient, with far less perfect fittings, it still was +thoroughly delightful, for where the rugs failed or the draperies +faltered, Adelaide's personality somehow stepped in and eked out all +insufficiencies, corrected all errors. It was hers entirely. In this +blameless achievement of architect and decorator, there are no +insufficiencies to be eked out, and so Adelaide's personality seems to +slip and slide helplessly upon a kind of glacial surface which it cannot +penetrate and make its own. I may be expressing myself very poorly, but +I know I have hold of something real. Adelaide's new house, good-looking +as it is, is not interesting,--that is what I mean,--and even the dear +woman herself seems less interesting, and less herself now that she is +enfolded in it.' + +'Did you know,' interposed Martha, 'that the first winter in a new house +the heating actually requires more coal than is ever needed again?' + +'No, I didn't know that--but I can well believe it. Why shouldn't it +take more coal to warm it when it evidently takes more vitality to cheer +it? It's a serious business, this breaking in of a large house to one's +self late in life, as so many Americans do. The draughts upon their +vital forces are more taxing than the coal bills.' + +'We all ought to live in inherited homesteads,' suggested Grace,'where +the humanizing of the bricks and mortar has been done for us by our own +people.' + +'Honoria,' Martha demanded, ignoring this unpractical suggestion, 'tell +me the truth! If you were in Adelaide's place and had _carte blanche_ to +incarnate your idea of a house for yourself and your family, wouldn't +you over-build and over-decorate too? I should enjoy doing it! The +furniture in my bungalow is altogether too sketchy at present, and I am +tired of eking it out with personality. You would feel differently if +you hadn't brought your old mahogany when you came West!' + +Honoria set a few stitches, and looked at her friends with eyes in which +conviction flamed. + +'I don't over-dress, and I don't over-eat, though I have abundant +opportunity,' she said, 'but it may be that I would over-build and +over-decorate, or at least that I would have done so until yesterday. I +don't think I would do it to-day--now that I know what ails Adelaide's +house. As for your bungalow, Martha, it is comfortable and it is alive. +There isn't a picture on the wall nor an ornament on the mantel that +hasn't a reason for being exactly where it is. That is triumph, and you +know it. I don't believe you would really exchange your house for +Adelaide's.' + +'Try me and see! I would like just for once to ignore beauty and +suitability, and go in for size and sheer, luxurious comfort.' + +'You would go distracted in two weeks in a place that was "sheer, +luxurious comfort" and nothing else,' returned Honoria decidedly. 'You +would hate it as you hate everything smug and fat and complacent. I have +known you too long, Martha, not to know the ways of you with a house. To +satisfy you, a domicile has to be livable. If you consider all the +houses, little and big, of your friends, you will see that there are +fixed limits to the amount of space in them that is truly and pleasantly +habitable. You can't get the lovable "lived-in look" in rooms where you +do not actually live, and you can't live all over a house that is bigger +than your needs. Why! life isn't long enough, especially if you seldom +stay at home! Think how dreary are most of the great houses we know. +Consider Mrs. King's new marble palace with its commanding site and its +ninety rooms. There isn't a single spot in it except her own bed-room +and sitting-room that wouldn't give your spirit a congestive chill if +you sat there for an hour. I know a woman in Colorado who so loathed her +big new house as it left the hands of a New York decorator, that she +would have moved back into the old one if she hadn't been afraid of her +friends' laughter. And, Grace, even inherited homesteads are sometimes +as difficult as uncongenial kin. Old houses have ways and wills of their +own.' + +'Houses _are_ curious things,' said Grace. 'We take a morsel of +illimitable space and wall it in and roof it over. Suddenly it ceases to +be part of God's out-of-doors and becomes an entity with an atmosphere +of its own. We warm it with our fires, we animate it with our +affections, we furnish it with such things as seem good in our eyes. We +do this to get shelter for our bodies, but we acquire as well an +instrument for our spirits that reacts on us in its turn.' + +'In other words,' returned Honoria, warming to her subject, 'as we live +our way into a house, adapting it to our need, the bricks and mortar, +the paint and plaster, cease to be inert matter and become alive. +Superficial sociologists have taunted woman with being "more anabolic or +plant-like" than man, but I count it her second glory. The plant is an +organism that "slowly turns lifeless into living matter," and this is +the thing that woman has done from the beginning with her shelter! In +our houses we achieve almost an organic extension of our very selves. +That is part of what I was trying to say. But, obviously, there should +exist some reasonable ratio between the self and its extensions. I take +it, the modern multitude of overgrown mansions, like the Kings' or the +Clays' or even Adelaide's smaller dwelling,--all these places whose +owners never find out why they are not at home in them,--are symptoms of +our modern disease of materialism. The essence of that disease is the +desire to grasp more matter than the spirit can fully animate. That the +infection can lay hold on Adelaide shows how all-pervading it is, +gripping the just as well as the unjust. When I saw her tired and +dissatisfied; when I felt the lack of charm and quality in the house, +and remembered how full of both her old house and garden had been, I +tried to think it out. It all works around to just this: you can't have +quality, you can't have charm in your material environment unless you +put them into it yourself. It is a plain question of your ability to +choose, arrange and vitalize things. And the latter requisite is by far +the most important of the three. For I have really seen, with these +eyes, poor, mean rooms where absolutely nothing was beautiful or +noteworthy, so charged with a gracious and comforting personality that +you forgot their shabbiness and said, "What a home-like place!" Please +note that that is the adjective we always use of places that draw us by +their personality--as if personality and nothing else were the essence +of home. + +'Now Adelaide's old house had personality; it was completely vitalized. +It was all under her hand, and as high as her heart. But Adelaide's big +new house is as yet barren and chilly, for it is not vitalized at all. +Of course I know that after she has lived in it longer, it is bound to +improve, because it is her nature to humanize and modify all her +surroundings. But the crucial question is--_how big a house can she +humanize?_ Something bigger than a cottage probably--but certainly +something much smaller than a hotel. The longer I looked at this +question, the more it seemed to me that unconsciously I had put my +finger on the vital query that, in the ideal state, should underlie all +property, all education, all privilege. + +'I have been talking about houses,--they are the most intimate, the +most organic of a woman's possessions,--but the argument applies to all +we own. It is the mark of our era to want more of everything than we can +use, yet when we get the Too-Much we demand, we are crushed by it, as +Tarpeia was crushed by the shields.' + +'I have often thought' said Grace, 'that the sheer, brute mass of +life--of people to know, of books to read, of plays to hear, of pictures +to see, of things to do, buy, learn, enjoy--within reach of the +well-to-do person in the modern world, far outruns the capacity of any +human being to take it in and make of it the sane whole that a life +should be.' + +'Yes--yet we go crazily on, trying to expand to illimitable +possibilities, thinking we shall be happier so soon as we have discarded +all our present belongings and opportunities for bigger, newer, richer +ones. How many people do you know who have not met a substantial +increase of income with a corresponding enlargement of their whole scale +of living, a senseless expansion sometimes out-running their increased +ability to provide for it? There is no future but chaos for a society +with such ambitions. They are centrifugal and can only lead to +disintegration. + +'The truth is, we have no notion of the value and necessity of a +doctrine of limitations. Just as an illustration--not once in all the +mass of matter printed in the last twenty years about the gyro-car, the +aeroplane or other inventions capable of enormous swiftness, have I +seen the faintest intimation that human beings could not intelligently +direct a speed of two hundred miles an hour--yet the railroads are now +tardily discovering that the capacity of engineers is seriously taxed by +sixty miles! + +'Don't mistake my meaning. I am not preaching the moral value of +poverty. I am no convert to asceticism. That method of ridding one's +self of the overweight of the material life is too extreme to the +correct solution. I am simply calling attention with all my might to the +aesthetic and vital value of Not-Too-Much. I am not afraid of Enough. I +am greatly afraid of Too-Much. And the reason I am afraid is this:-- + +'Just as the capacity of the human stomach is limited to a certain +quantity of food, so also is limited the capacity of the human spirit +for appropriating and assimilating property in its different forms. +Beyond a certain somewhat variable point, material possessions _do the +holder no more good_. The common saying, "All you get in this world is +your board and clothes," is the popular acknowledgment of this +restricted capacity. The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds +good as regards the property of the mind--education, cultivation, +aesthetic satisfactions--just as it does of material goods. There is a +definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. Beyond that +limit, possession is a detriment.' + +'The direct result of helping ourselves to too much of anything is to +coarsen and degrade. We can see this clearly as regards the primal +necessity of food. Nature promptly writes it, in large letters, all over +the man or woman of gross appetites.' + +'It is as plainly printed, if in smaller type, on the faces of those who +want too much of other things,--houses, notoriety, money, power,--what +you will. The porcine brand is there, however disguised. Personally, I +fear the Mark of the Pig as I fear nothing else on earth. Shaler says +that certain lines of evolution terminate in such grotesque effects that +one almost believes the guiding thought behind the process was humorous. +I never see a stye with its squealing, shouldering inhabitants, without +thinking how tremendously satiric it is--a master-caricature of human +greed, not over-drawn! And I say, "Brother Pig, Heaven grant that I keep +my voracities better concealed than thou."' + +Her companions regarded Honoria, in type thin, nervous, ardent, with a +keen and vivid face. The comparison was certainly not apparent--but the +heart knoweth its own gluttonies. + +'You are doing fairly well at it thus far,' said Martha dryly. 'What's +the next step in your argument, Honoria?' + +'Since our capacity is limited, and since to glut ourselves beyond it +burdens and degrades, clearly the thing for each individual with +intelligence to do is to find out where, for him, lies the golden point +beyond which riches turns to the poverty of burden. When even the wise +and earnest Adelaides get their houses too big and don't know what is +the matter, it is time to formulate the principles of First Aid to the +Prosperous. I believe the point from which the women of the comfortable +classes should attack the problem of a saner living is this doctrine of +limitation and selection, and that we should attack it first of all in +our homes. + +'Now, we human beings really do something to our immediate material +surroundings which I can best describe as charging them with our +personality. With the revolution of the days, personality accumulates in +the things we handle and love and live with, much as electricity gathers +upon the accumulator of a static machine with the revolution of the +plates. This idea has always been popular with the poets and artists, +but people who advance it in everyday life always do so apologetically, +with the air of saying, "I know this is slightly fantastic, but doesn't +it seem true?" Yet most housekeepers know its utter truth. I never +doubted from the time I consciously began to care for old furniture, old +rugs, old china--all the beautiful cast-offs of vanished lives--that a +vast part of their charm was atmosphere, something imparted to them by +the affection of those forgotten ones and now inhering, for the +perceptive vision, in their very substance. The craftsman of those elder +days is not the only creator of the beauty that has come down to us. +Whoever has loved another's work has thereby added something to it. Is +it not so? And I, in my turn, ought to be beautifying my belongings for +those who come after me.' + +Grace and Martha nodded readily enough, for this doctrine needs no long +expounding to any woman who has lived her way into her material +possessions, and distilled atmosphere from them for the comfort of her +household. She knows what she has done, and knows, though she says +little about it, that this business of turning lifeless into living +things is one of her important natural functions. + +'When I studied physics,' Honoria went on, 'I learned that science had +been compelled to posit ether, an all-pervading, absolutely elastic, +wave-bearing substance, to explain the commonest facts of our physical +experience. Later yet, I learned that the passage of thought-waves +through ether had found defenders among men of the exact sciences. +Naturally I said to myself, "Ah, the scientists are growing 'warm.' +Next, they will be demonstrating some of the things women have always +known. They will show how we send out vibrations that get caught and +entangled in our intimate belongings, never to be wholly freed again. +The thing will be worked out and demonstrated like a problem in +geometry. Doubtless they will be measuring everybody's wave-lengths and +teaching children in the Eighth Grade easy ways of charging their +belongings with their personality so unmistakably that stealing will +have to become a lost art." Well! They haven't done it yet. In fact, +they don't seem so near doing it as they once did. The mechanism of the +process by which I take a chair fresh from Grand Rapids and in the +course of years make it _my_ chair and no other woman's, is a secret +still, but I don't have to argue with anybody who ever had a favorite +chair that the thing is as I have stated it. Neither do I have to argue +that I could not so appropriate and make my own the output of an entire +factory. It must be equally obvious that the dignified, proper +environment for me and my family contains what we can thus make our own, +and not much more.' + +'Of course there are people,' said Martha reflectively, 'the routine of +whose living demands large and formal apartments, impossible to do +anything with from your point of view.' + +'Assuredly there are such people,' Honoria admitted, 'just as there are +people whose entertaining must be in the line of banquets rather than +little dinners. I am not predicating a world full of model cottages, +even though I think it might prove the happiest world. Still, outside of +official circles, the need of state drawing-rooms is certainly not +general, and it is of the very gist of my argument--my argument isn't +all developed yet, Martha, don't think it!--that for the sake of +developing a finer and more individual quality in our possessions, we +should cut off some superfluous ones. Please listen patiently while I +carry the idea to its logical limit, even though that limit lies beyond +the bounds of practicability. + +'Economists profess that, in an ideal distribution of goods, each man +would have as much as he could consume without waste. But this takes no +account of the differing needs of men, developed through ages of the +upward struggle, nor of their different capabilities of turning goods to +account. If you are going to dabble at all in theories of ideal +distribution, why not have one that is genuinely ideal--that is, +non-material? _The true distribution would require that each man should +possess what goods he could animate and vitalize._ Even so, how vastly +would possessions differ in amount and quality! + +'If life could be adjusted on this basis, it would automatically become +simplified, charged with beauty and with character. We should slough off +ugly and useless possessions, or, if we retained through affection +things ugly in themselves, that very affection would impart to them a +certain importance and distinction. We should then, at least, live in a +world in which everything had significance. Think of the infinite +satisfaction of that!' + +'What do you mean when you say, "if life could be adjusted on this +basis," Honoria?' Grace inquired. 'Are you implying some kind of a final +socialistic state which calls for an omniscient Distributor of Goods who +shall know how much each man can vitalize?' + +'Really, Grace, I am not a fool, even when I am evolving a reformed +society!' returned Honoria promptly. 'Most conceptions of an improved +state demand God for their Chief Executive and an enormous force of +government officials with the fine honor which, thus far, has only been +developed in human nature by conditions entirely different from those +the visionaries are forecasting. Unquestionably we have fallen into the +habit of thinking that if we only pass a law, any wrong at which we aim +is regulated. In fact, however, so long as that law only expresses the +practice of a minority, its enforcement will be evaded. Legislation +without character is as helpless as a motor without fuel,--and my little +reform, like every other effective change, must proceed from within +outward. + +'So I believe that if I wish to live in a world where nobody has more +food, clothes, houses, wealth, power, than he can make significant and +vital use of, it is up to me to remake my own life on that basis first. +I am, if not the only woman whom I can reform, at least the most +suitable subject for my experimentation. And I admit that I have too +many possessions. Sometimes I am ridden to exhaustion by the care of my +"things," modest as they are when compared to the goods of my +neighbors. I know that if thousands of people did not feel as I do, the +"simple life" slogan would never have acquired the popularity it had +some years ago. We no longer hear much of the simple life, but we need +it increasingly. Personally, I am persuaded that the method I am trying +to set forth is workable. + +'Why shouldn't a human being, seeking to get the most out of life, take +lessons from the husbandman seeking to get the richest returns from the +soil? It used to be thought that to cultivate many acres superficially +was the way to feed the world and enrich the farmer. But the study of +the soil as a science has taught us that we must resort, instead, to the +intensive farming which gives greater returns from reduced acreage. What +is true of the returns earth makes to our granaries, is true of the +returns life makes to our spirits. We need a science of intensive living +that we may get the larger crop from the smaller field. It will be +worked out by women, and it must begin in their domain, which still is, +in spite of the sociologists, the home.' + +'The Norwegian maid who cared for my rooms at the hotel last winter had +figured out something of the sort for herself,' said Grace. 'After I had +put a few bits of things about, she said to me, "I like dis room. It +looks like Norway. Dere iss more moneys in America, but in Norway t'ings +iss more pretty. Even de kitchen iss good to see. Dere iss shelves an' +copper cooking-dishes all shiny, all so happy-looking. I like dem way +best. It iss better not so much moneys to haf, but to be more happy wit' +one's t'ings!"' + +'That is the doctrine in a nutshell! In its poorer, more restricted +days, the world learned that secret of the art of living, and it still +lingers in corners that our blatant, crashing "civilization" passes +by--so that a Norwegian peasant's daughter may know far more than an +American girl "who has always had everything" about the priceless secret +of being "happy wit' one's t'ings." It is the richest knowledge a woman +can possess.' + +'What is the real rock-bottom reason why people go on piling up money +after they have enough?' Martha demanded. + +'I imagine,' said Honoria, 'that excessive accumulation is a form of +egotism. Now, if public opinion, the race-ideal, or what you please, +once demanded that we vitalize all our possessions; if it were once +admitted to be unspeakably gross to demand more property than we can +animate, as gross as it now is to over-eat, then the stress upon +possession would be transferred at once from "How much" to "How," and +large possessions would really become what some of the undistinguished +rich now fondly imagine them to be--a direct and sensitive register of +the finer qualities.' + +Martha suddenly and irresistibly chuckled. + +'I have a story for you, Honoria,' she said. 'A lot of ranchers over +there,' she vaguely gestured toward the southwest across the hills, +'have grown suddenly rich, raising sugar beets, and have bought +motor-cars and other paraphernalia proper to their improved condition. +One of them was heard to say, "I b'lieve these college graduates that +teach school 'round here really think they're as good as us rich folks." +That is the real attitude of your "undistinguished rich" toward the +gifts of culture and the finer qualities!' + +'Honoria,' said Grace, 'haven't the sages always said, "Give me neither +poverty nor riches"? Why should your propaganda succeed where Job and +Socrates have failed? Job lived a long while ago! If the race were going +to be converted to his view, the process ought to be more advanced. You +will need very strong arguments for your doctrine of limitations.' + +'Arguments are to be had for the picking up,' returned Honoria. 'What +kind will you have? Reasonable limitation on the material side always +brings some amazing flowering of mind or spirit like the blossoming of a +root-bound plant. If you want a racial argument, consider the Irish--the +poorest people in Europe and _therefore_ the richest in spirit. Poverty +forced them to concentrate their attention upon their neighbors; there +resulted an astonishing increase in sympathy, wit, and general +humanness.--If you want an argument from Art, consider the Middle Ages. +Peering out of a narrow world, hemmed in by ignorance and squalor, the +mediaeval artist caught sight of beauty and immediately loved it with +such fervent, personal passion that everything he made in its image was +vital and wonderful. As his world broadened in the Renaissance, much of +his art grew florid and meaningless, lacking that marvelous, intimate +quality of the earlier, restricted day.--If you want an argument from +literary material, there's the _Picciola_ of Saintine. You can make an +imperishable literary masterpiece out of a convict's love for a tiny +plant struggling up between two stones in a prison-yard, but you cannot +make men listen to tales of great possessions. The interest in Monte +Cristo centres upon the process of _acquirement_, and it is the same in +any successful money-romance. Midas is only fit to point a moral, never +to adorn a tale.--If you want an argument from philology, consider that +the diminutives in every language show the lesser thing to be the dearer +thing, always. Remember Marie Antoinette and the Little Trianon! +Consider the increasing specialization in science--science which always +falls on its feet! I know a thousand arguments! The thing I am in need +of is converts!' + +'If you could get them,' said Martha, 'there might really be a Woman's +Reformation, only it would begin at home instead of at the polls.' + +'What other permanent thing is there in life but the hearthstone? +Nations rise and fall, laws and institutions come and go--but that +remains, the one fixed point in human society. I take it, therefore, it +is the one point from which the lever can successfully be brought to +bear on human society. If anything is to be moved or altered, the force +must be applied there.' + +'But human society _has_ changed, Honoria,' urged Grace. 'Look at all +our new powers and possessions! Steam and electricity have remade the +world, and we are not yet adjusted to the alteration. No generation ever +lived under our conditions; thus we have no traditions for handling our +new environment. No heritage of ancestral wisdom tells us what of the +hundreds of new opportunities to accept, what to reject. Save in so far +as we are thinking beings--and that is not very far--we are as much at +the mercy of our desires as babies in a toy-shop, grabbing now this and +now that, heaping up a lapful of futilities and calling it a life.' + +'Yes. But why should we make steam and electricity serve our greed only? +Why use them chiefly to darken the world and make life a horror? Dare +you affirm that we women and our demands are not at the very centre of +the tragic tangle of modern living? Isn't all this horrible speeding-up +of business largely an outgrowth of our exactions? What do men do +business for, anyhow, except to get us what we want! Homes are to other +material possessions what souls are to the bodies--the centre from which +the life moves outward. If there is no greed in the home, is there not +bound to be less greed in the offices?' + +'I'm not so sure, Honoria,' Grace returned. 'No amount of intensiveness +in the home would eliminate man's love of power for its own sake.' + +'Perhaps. Yet isn't the lust for power a secondary development? We begin +by being greedy because we want things; we keep on after we have more +things than we know what to do with, because greed has created the +power-lust. It is the aftermath from that ugly root. If the pressure the +home puts on the man for money were suddenly slackened all along the +line, above the point of poverty, might not the matter of unseemly +accumulations correct itself? If we women of the more favored classes +avowedly undertook to give quality to our belongings, instead of +demanding belongings which we hope will confer quality upon us, there +would surely be both a lessening in the stress of life and an +improvement in its texture. I can think of nothing else but the Golden +Rule that would help to solve so many menacing problems, such as the +high cost of living, the commercialization of life, and the divorce +problem. Oh, it would be very far-reaching, that attitude, if we could +only achieve it!' + +'Why wouldn't plain Christianity do all your reforming, and do it +better?' demanded Martha abruptly. + +'Assuredly it would--if Christianity were more generally a condition +instead of a theory among us. I wouldn't undertake to say off-hand why +the sanctions of common sense seem more precious to the present +generation than the sanctions of religion, when in so many points they +are identical, but I must conform my theorizings to the fact. Yet with +all our neglect of religion the traditions of the spirit have not +changed! They are the same from everlasting to everlasting. And one of +the things the nineteenth century most wonderfully made clear was that +the evolution of the spirit is the thing Nature has been seeking for +hundreds of millions of years. I don't suppose that age-long process +with the tremendous impetus of all creation behind it is really going to +be upset by the turmoil of one materialistic generation. But I do +believe that if we go with the current of materialism, we and all our +works shall be tossed aside as refuse, thrown into Nature's garbage-can. +I tell you, I can't bear the disgrace of it.' + +'Honoria, you almost persuade me to be intensive,' said Grace, 'but I am +not reconciled to the doctrine at one point--the question of beauty. I +admit that one cannot vitalize a lot of senseless luxury. I admit, too, +that comfort and a certain amount of beauty can always be successfully +domesticated and charged with personality, as you phrase it, and that +the result is completely satisfying. But is one never to indulge one's +self in _all the beauty money will buy_, never to have everything of an +absolute perfection? You are against great houses, but there is Mountly +House, at home. It is big, but so beautiful that you are at home in it +all over. What of it, and others like it?' + +'Big and beautiful it is, but it is on my side of the argument, none the +less. If you remember, the architect was also the decorator. It is the +triumph of his imagination. He designed it as a background for a woman +of opulent beauty and domestic tastes. He ransacked Europe for the +furnishings, tapestries, all sorts of exquisite, ancient things. He was +a great artist and he created a work of art. The family fit into the +picture more or less awkwardly. It is his house, not theirs at all. And +I truly believe that the ultimate purpose of our houses excludes our +going up and down another's stairs. + +'Yet I believe in all the beauty one can vitalize. It is essentially +wholesome. It does not lend itself to morbid demands. The collector's +passion looks like greed, and doubtless for a time it is greed. But, +sooner or later, Too-Much sickens them. Their adorable possessions teach +them there is profanation in having more wonderful things than they can +enter into personal relation with. Therefore the inevitable end of all +overgrown collections is the museum or the auction-room. I have seen it +too often not to know it is true!--If you want a perfect illustration of +this in literature read Mrs. Wharton's _The Daunt Diana_. It cuts down +like a knife to the essential fact that our relations with beauty must +be limited enough to have the personal quality. And--don't you +see?--this automatic destruction of greed that beauty finally teaches to +the collector, is the same automatic destruction of it that I dare think +intensive living in our homes might bring to all greed. It is a proof of +the theory on another plane.' + +'I think one might own a Mountly House without greed,' persisted Grace +wistfully. 'Having no house at all, I naturally refuse to think of +myself as ending my days in any less perfect domicile. What do you mean +by the "ultimate purpose" of our houses?' + +'Ah! that,' said Honoria, with a quick indrawing of her breath, 'is the +very core of all my thought, and I don't know how to make you see it!' + +She rose abruptly and walked to the end of the veranda. She stood there +a while, looking across at the spreading gables of her own brown +bungalow, with the yearning on her face that only house-mothers know. +Yonder was her home. Set on a mighty shoulder of the earth, facing the +sunset and the sea, it clung to the soil as the brown rocks cling. +Behind it were the mighty Sierras with their crests of snow; before it, +the sweetest land God ever smiled upon; within it, all the treasures of +her eyes, her mind, her heart. Just as it stood there in the February +sun, it was an abode compact of love, of aspiration, of desire. The +ancient love of man for his shelter had gone into it, and the love of +woman for the place of her appointed suffering. Desire for beauty and +hope of peace were in its making. Its walls had heard the birth-cries; +her children had played about its doors; out from it had been borne her +dead. Inconsiderable speck on the vast hill-shoulder that it was, it +could defy time and the elements, even as she defied them, for she had +given it of her own immortality. + +'I have not yet said it all,' she said a little thickly. 'It is hard to +say, even to you. I have found an attitude of mind, a path, a way of +life I call intensive, for lack of a better name, and I believe in it, +not only because it increases my sane satisfaction in living, but also +because it finally leads _out_--out of all this tangle of our material +lives, into the eternal spaces. + +'I see the world of men's business activities chiefly as a place of +wrath and greed, and yet even the most grasping must be blindly seeking +through their greed an ultimate satisfaction--not more houses or more +automobiles, or railroads, or mines, or even power, but something dimly +apprehended as beyond all these and more than they--something that is +good and that _endures_. For we all want the Enduring Thing. One man +sees it here, another there. As for me, I see it in my house. I tell +you, the Greeks and Romans did not make a religion of the hearthstone; +they merely recognized the religion that the hearthstone _is_. Under +that quiet roof I have learned that it is a woman's business to take +stones and make them bread. Only she can make our surroundings live and +nourish us. + +'Beyond the need for bread, a woman's needs are two; deeper than all +cravings save the mother's passion, firm-rooted in our endless past, is +the heart-hunger. The trees that sweep my chimney have their roots at +the world's core! The flowers in my dooryard have grown there for a +thousand years! What millenniums have done, shall decades undo? We are +not so shallow, so plastic as that! We will go into the mills, the +shops, the offices, if we must, but we know we are off the track of +life. Neither our desire nor our power is there. + +'I have talked glibly enough about restricting superfluous possessions +for the sake of developing a finer quality in those we have; I have said +only personality gives that quality to our surroundings--but I have not +said the final thing. It is this: I believe that in the humble business +of loving the material things that are given to us to own and love, in +shaping our homes around them, in making them vital and therefore +beautiful, so that they serve our spirits in their turn, we are not only +making the most of our resources in this life, but are doing more than +that. Somehow, I cannot tell you how, I know that we are _getting them +across_--into the timeless places! In making them vital we are making +them enduring. + +'Christ tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What did +that mean to you when you were young? I thought it meant a procession of +self-denials and charities, more or less lifeless because the offering +was made slightly against the grain! I had no idea that when I loved +somebody very much or pitied somebody very much, when I shared my heart +or shared my roof eagerly, that I was doing the commanded thing. Still +less did I realize, when I worked hard to make my home more comfortable +or more beautiful, that I was sending vibrations from my everyday world +right into the eternal one--every deed an actual hammer stroke on my +house not made with hands. But so sure as that our mortal shall put on +immortality, I now hold it that what we first find in the eternal world +will be the things into which we have unstintingly flung our vitality, +our _feeling_, while we are briefly here. + +'_Here we have no continuing city_. But when I am making my house live, +I and no other, putting into it as I best may something of the serenity +of Athens and the sacredness of Jerusalem and the beauty of Siena, then +it is taking its place beside my greater loves. Then I am creating a +home, not only in this world, but in the next. I have put something over +into the eternal world that fire cannot burn, nor floods destroy, nor +moth and rust corrupt. It is safe, even from myself, forever! No Heaven +can be holy to me if I have not made this spot holy. I shall not ask, +even from the mercy of the Merciful, a heavenly mansion if I have failed +to make this earthly dwelling live. Eternity begins beside my hearth, +shaped by my will. A woman knows!' + + + + +Reminiscence with Postscript + +By Owen Wister + + +I + +Not alone because of their good meat and drink are three meals shrined +at the heart of these following impressions. Singly, each one did +delightfully engage the palate, but the three together speak appealingly +to sentiment. It is of a great house, a little inn, and of the fair +region round about them that I shall mainly discourse--and whether I do +or don't give a final _x_ to the name of the house, there are people and +documents to say I have spelt it wrong: which comes very near to saying +that both ways are right. The _x_ shall remain, the majority seems to +favor it, and I at once beg that you share my relish of these posturing +Renaissance lines, written by royal command in honor of Chenonceaux:-- + + Au saint bal des dryades, + A Phoebus, ce grand dieu, + Aux humides nayades + J'ai consacre ce lieu. + +This highly plaster-cast lyric was recited during the 'triomphe' held at +Chenonceaux to celebrate the arrival there of Francois II and Mary +Stuart. The hostess was as distinguished as her visitors; and never, +before I went to Chenonceaux, did I associate naiads and dryads and +poems of welcome with Catherine de'Medici. But we must allow this +monstrous personage an eye for good houses. She preferred Chenonceaux to +all her dwellings--she preferred it so much, indeed, that she made +another lady get out of it, exchanging for it the decidedly inferior +residence of Chaumont. And we have Catherine to thank (I fear) for the +strangely felicitous fancy that placed upon the arches built from the +rear of the house to the farther side of the river by her rejected +predecessor, Diane de Poitiers, that enchanting hall or gallery, which +rises three stories high, if you count the nine windows in the steeply +and gracefully pitched slate roof. + + Basti si magnifiquement + Il est debout, comme un geant, + Dedans le lit de la riviere, + C'est-a-dire dessus un pont + Qui porte cent toises de long. + +These verses bump down heavily upon the bridge, and, despite their +scrupulous statistics as to its length, they scarcely measure the +excellence of Chenonceaux, but rather the gap between French verse and +French architecture in the sixteenth century. Villon could have come +nearer the mark; but Villon was long gone before the ancient mill on the +river Cher was transfigured by its purchaser into the chateau he did not +live to complete. 'S'il vient a point' said Thomas Bohier, and he graved +it in many ornamental places of his edifice, 'me souviendra.' + +And here am I writing his name and thinking about him, three hundred and +ninety-two years after his death. What a pleasant reason for being +remembered! What a quietly illustrious introduction to posterity: the +originator of the mansion whose sheer beauty brought a succession of +kings and queens and other great people to sojourn in it, whose walls +have listened to the blandishments of Francois I, the sallies of +Fontenelle and Voltaire, the sentimentalities of Rousseau. Do their +ghosts walk here upon these terraces? Do they meet in the long gallery +over the Cher? If they don't, they are less wise in the next world than +they were in this. Almost might one envy some figure in a well-preserved +piece of tapestry, hanging in any hall or chamber here and commanding a +view out of any window that looked up or down the placid river. +Embroidered thus for ever, amid high company, ladies and gentlemen of +importance with hawks and feathers and armor and steeds richly +caparisoned, ministered to by esquires and serfs, one would exist +admired, valued, and carefully dusted. Daily sight-seers from all lands +would be conducted into one's presence (Sundays included, 10-11 A.M., +2-6 P.M.), thus animating one's feudal leisure with sufficient variety. +There one would be, an acknowledged masterpiece, for ever aloof from the +unstable present, nevermore driven to enlist against the restless evils +of the world. The trouble is, somebody from Pittsburg might buy one. Now +I could no more brook living as tapestry in America than I could live as +an American in Europe, expatriated and trivially evaporating amid +beauties and comforts that were none of my native heritage. + +Do you know the country where Chenonceaux stands? Do you know the river? +Have you ever gone there from Tours, or come there the opposite way, +from Bourges through Vierzon and Montrichard? + +The region shares a secret with certain rare people, whom all of us are +glad to count among our acquaintance. Certain men and women, immediately +on our first meeting them, make us desire to meet them again; not +because they have uttered remarkable thoughts or reminded us of Venus or +Apollo: perhaps they have said nothing that you and I couldn't say, and +we may know people much better looking. But they radiate--what is it +that they radiate? We feel it, we bask in it, it flows over us. It isn't +sunlight or moonlight, but a fairy-light of their own. When these +shining creatures come into the room, happiness enters with them. How do +they do it? It gets us nowhere to say that there is 'something' in the +tone of their voice, or 'something' in the look of their eyes: what is +the something? I'm glad I don't know; mystery is growing so scarce, that +I am thankful for anything which cannot be explained. + +Now this rare quality (and don't flatter yourself that you understand it +because you happen to know its name) is possessed not only by men and +women, but also by places; and, no more than with people, has it +anything to do with their being remarkable or beautiful. The White +Mountains in New Hampshire haven't a trace of it; it fills the mountains +of North Carolina; there is almost none along our Atlantic seaboard, but +it hangs over and haunts nearly every foot of our Pacific Coast. + +Whenever one of these happy spots has been long known to man, man has +invariably cherished it in word and deed. His chronicles celebrate it; +he sets it lovingly like a jewel in his romances, dramas, verse, prose, +song; he graces it with his best in architecture; his roads and gardens +bring it alike into his hours of work and of ease; in fine, he garlands +it with his imagination, weaves it into his life century after century, +until it comes to smile upon him from the heart of his History and +Literature, as well as upon his daily present. That is what mankind has +done beneath the spell of a place which has charm. + +Thus Touraine to the Frenchman,--_beau pays de Touraine_, as the page in +Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_ sings of it in that opera's second act, which +takes place at Chenonceaux. I suppose--indeed I remember--that rain +falls in that country; yet, when I think about it, sunshine invariably +sparkles through the picture--not the kind that glares and burns, but +the kind that plays gently among leaves and shores and shadows; sunshine +upon the twinkling, feathered silver of the poplars, the grapes in +sloping vineyards, the green islands and tawny bluffs of the Loire, the +quiet waters of the Indre and the Cher; a jocund harmony seems to play +about the very names,--Beaulieu, Montresor, Saint-Symphorien,--but were +I to begin upon the music in the names of France, I should run far +beyond the limits of Touraine and of your patience. Say to yourself +aloud, properly, Amboise, Chateaurenault, La Chapelle-Blanche, +Saint-Martin-le-Beau, and then say Naugatuck, Saugatuck, Pawtucket, +Woonsocket, Manayunk, Manunkachunk, and you will catch my drift. +Stevenson's joy in our names was at bottom purely that of the collector. + +But have you ever seen the Loire and its tributary realm? I have already +owned myself (together with all other men) as unable to explain the +mystery of charm. No Niagara is hereabouts, nor Matterhorn, nor anything +you could call sublime; nothing so lustrously beautiful as Bar Harbor, +or the Berkshire Hills. Wildness is wholly absent, but so is tameness +too. It is somehow through its very moderation that the glamour of this +land is wrought. But we must nicely distinguish between the poetry and +the prose of moderation: Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is perfectly +moderate, and is also the type and pattern of hundreds of thousands of +square, comfortable, unoffending miles in the United States which you +would never wish to see again--indeed which you would never wish to see +once; whereas, even as I write, I am homesick for Touraine, though it +isn't my home. + +Once again I must draw the parallel between human qualities and the ways +of our mother earth. We place at the top of our esteem those people who +take chivalrously the heavy blows of life, who are not brave merely, but +gallant. We draw scant inspiration from the sight of somebody who is all +too obviously and dutifully bearing something; who goes, day after day, +with a set and sombre expression that says as plainly as words: 'Just +watch me carrying my Cross. Just wait till you have one.' We prefer +those whose gayety so conceals the fact that they're behaving well, that +we should never suspect it, did we not know what they have passed, and +are passing, through. Thus also does Touraine conceal the tears and the +blood she has known. Louis the Eleventh, Catherine de' Medici, the +gibbet balcony of the Salle des Armes at Amboise, the iron cage and the +black dungeons of Loches,--Touraine, with her smiling, high-bred +elegance, keeps all this to herself, and gives you a bright welcome. +Often as she has been the scene of Tragedy, often as the glaive and not +the lute has been the instrument of her drama, she might well look in +her glass and exclaim with Richard the Second,-- + + Hath sorrow struck + So many blows upon this face of mine, + And made no deeper wounds? + +Wearing no crape, betraying no scars, hinting naught of its dark +experience of life, this realm, this _beau pays_, more than any in +Europe, to my thinking, lies in the true key of high comedy, of masque +and pastoral. If, here and there above its trees or upon its hills, the +brooding frown of some tower, the gaunt stare of some donjon in ruins, +fierce with memories, brings one up short, so that in joy's mid-current +some smack of the bitter wells up--this is not Nature's doing. Look away +from these works of man to the feathered poplars, the vineyards, the +gentle waters, and see the earth's countenance, smiling and serene. +Decorous it is always; only the irregularities of the Loire and its +channel seem to bear any reference to the conduct of those beautiful +historic ladies who dispersed their reputations in the vicinity. Even +man did not always build a Langeais or a Loches. Urbane and gracious +amid their parks or on their bluffs rise those dwellings planned when +France's architectural genius was in its happiest mood--though not its +loftiest. They look like the good society which once assembled in them; +their mere aspect suggests the wits, the brilliant talkers and listeners +of a day when conversation was a living art still, the day which +furnishes us even now with those letters and memoirs which are the +dainty wainscotting and mantelpieces, the interior decorations of +Literature. You may wander almost anywhere among the poplars and the +chestnuts in the valleys of the Loire's quiet tributaries; you can +hardly go wrong; if the turrets of Usse against their rising woodland do +not regale your eye, it will be Azay-le-Rideau, or something less +famous, or, best of all, Chenonceaux, to which I now return. + + +II + +I saw it first upon an afternoon when no air was stirring, even in the +poplars, when the green of Touraine was changing to gold: golden fruit, +pears, and apples, where summer's fruit had been; golden leaves +flickering down from high branches, or raked into golden heaps; while +the faint, sweet smoke of burning twigs hovered in the autumn day. It +was the moment and scene of the year when, just because other things +have ceased to grow, memories blossom in the mind; and on every golden +heap of leaves retrospect seemed to be sitting. We visitors were three. +I can recall the first sight of the chateau's yellow facade, framed by +the distant end of the high, formal avenue into which we turned to +approach it. All sorts of feet had stepped where we were walking: +almost four centuries of distinguished feet had gone in and out of that +beautiful front door; but over its appealing associations the still more +appealing aspect of the wonderful house triumphed. If I knew about _Le +Devin du Village_ then, the scene of its first performance interested me +much more because that long and many-windowed gallery was built right +over the water, right across the Cher, upon arches that the glassy +surface of the stream reflected symmetrically. I was captured then and +for ever by the beauty and the originality of this residence. Our best +country houses take earth and air into partnership, but this abode of +grace possessed, embraced, a little river. To go in at your front door +on one green margin and come out of your back door on the other; to +dwell in a masterpiece that was house and bridge in one--I can still +recover my first sensations of delight at this triumph of French art. +Only--the concierge didn't let us go out of the back door; and my +disappointment was cherished through long years, until its sequel, which +I shall presently reach. This first afternoon became a chapter in the +most delightful of guide-books, from which I quote the following:-- + +'We took our way back to the Grand Monarque, and waited in the little +inn parlor for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had +an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were +still content to sit a while and exchange remarks upon the superior +civilization of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have +fared so well?... At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_ was not +only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by +mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the +elder lady, as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.' + +On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hotel +de l'Univers in Tours, the chateau of Amboise was described to us by an +English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere +then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned +spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments. +She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't +respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be +with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about +Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious +she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it +invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.' + +In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and +graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and +whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door +on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had +so dropped out of my thoughts that it fairly burst upon my sight. +Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained +edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our +party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came +into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of +the chateau, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration, +that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!' + +Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular +and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors +have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though +never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January, +1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses. +But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the +other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its +secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress, +Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's +success with Francois Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the +Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on +the day Diane was married.--But I resist the temptation to dwell upon +Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all +accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of +four made, this spring day. + +Touraine was now all delicate in green; as lovely, as gracious, as +discreet in its budding leaves as when the leaves had flickered down, +spangling the air and grass and garden-walks with their gold. We had met +at the little inn the same welcome, the same excellent _cuisine_, the +same agreeable Vouvray mousseux. Mademoiselle was not there, but mamma +was. Her premises and herself showed no ill effect from the prosperity +brought to her through the guide-book I have already quoted. No +guide-book in its author's plan, it was now become established as one, +and he, petitioned in a letter from mamma, had corrected a certain +error. In the first edition, page 60, you may read that we took our way +back to the Grand Monarque; in later editions it is the Hotel du +Bon-Laboureur. The confusion to travelers, the injury to her custom, +ensuing from the wrong name, madame had represented to the author; and +now all was well. The inn wasn't any larger, but more and more each +season were pilgrims with expectant appetites led to her door. + +'Tenez, monsieur,' she said to me eagerly, when I narrated to her how I +had been present at the germination of her renown, 'tenez. Voila!' She +showed me the precious guide-book. She treasured it, though she couldn't +read it, because it was in English. And I came in for her smiles and +cordiality, which really belonged to the author. + +You will have perceived, our party this time took their _dejeuner_, not +their dinner, at the Bon-Laboureur. The good omelette and cheese and +fruit and wine, mamma's prosperity and her well-preserved state,--for +now she was really an elderly woman,--all this had brought us in +peaceful and pleased spirits to the chateau. When we had seen the rooms +downstairs and the concierge was conducting the other sightseers--some +ten or twelve--to the second story, our party under my guidance stole +away to the back door. + +'Back door' implies no dishonorable passage through pantry and kitchen; +we simply didn't go up the staircase in the wake of the concierge, but +independently along the hall instead, and thus across the Cher through +Catherine's celebrated gallery. _Le Devin du Village_ came into my mind, +and I wondered which figure was the more diverting, Jean-Jacques +Rousseau composing opera, or Richard Wagner dabbling in philosophy. + +The door was open. I emerged, the happy leader of my party, upon stone +steps, crossed a little draw-bridge, and our triumphant feet trod the +grass beneath the trees which shaded the river's bank. I had my wish; +and as my obedient band followed me, I fear my complacent back and +Anabasis manner expressed some sentiment like this: 'Only observe how it +pays to see France with a person who knows the ropes!' We sauntered, we +expatiated, we paused before what I'll call by metonymy the tocsin--a +great bell and chain suspended from strong framework; from this point +the chateau, with its fine, detached, cylindrical donjon tower of the +fifteenth century, looked, in the afternoon light, particularly well: +those poor sheep with the concierge weren't getting this view. We must +have lingered by the tocsin a quarter of an hour, enjoying ourselves, +before returning to the back door. + +It was shut. It was locked. Rattling made no impression upon it, nor +shaking, nor kicking. We knocked then, fancying this to be an accident. +Next we called, or rather, I, the party's personal conductor and +competent guide, began to call. Nothing happened. I augmented my +efforts. Catherine's gallery, famous scene of the first performance of +Rousseau's _Devin du Village_, responded with cavernous echoes. Between +these reigned silence, and a gentle breeze rustled the young leaves of +the chestnuts. We abandoned the door and went a few steps down the river +to where our gesticulations could be seen from the windows of +Chenonceaux. We made these gesticulations with our four umbrellas, +whilst I shouted continually. Not a window blinked. It might have been a +sorcerer's palace, and we his four new victims, presently to be roasted, +boiled, or changed into cats. We looked down the river--no escape; up +the river half-a-mile was a bridge; but what impediment mightn't lie +between? And even if the way were clear, to go round by the bridge would +lose us our train to Tours. One of us, in her deep voice, said that she +hoped the robin-red-breasts would find her body and cover it with +leaves. Again we flourished our four umbrellas, during vociferations +from me, at the imperturbable chateau. Then, quite suddenly, something +did happen. Out of a window in the donjon tower of the fifteenth century +was thrust a head, and from across the river it wagged at us +malevolently. + +It was the concierge. The shock of discovering he had locked us out +purposely in punishment of our independent excursion, threw me into +extreme rage. My Anabasis manner had already dropped from me; but +Xenophon got his party successfully back, and this same task was now +searchingly, compellingly, 'up to me.' More malevolent wagging from the +tower was all that resulted from my next demonstrations. In these I was +now alone; my party, at the apparition of the concierge, had become +abruptly quiet, thinking doubtless that loud calls and wavings would +diminish my dignity less than theirs, whose years and discretion were +more than mine. Therefore my companions brandished their umbrellas no +more, but stood upon the banks of the Cher decorously, in a reserved +attitude, patient yet stately, as if awaiting the tumbril; I, meanwhile, +hurled international threats across the river. These wrought no change. +In repose my French halts, but when roused it acquires both speed and +point; yet none of my idioms disturbed the concierge at his window. And +now I was visited by inspiration. I seized the chain and rang the +tocsin. It sounded as if Attila were coming at once. Somebody would have +come, undoubtedly,--the whole _arrondissement_ I should think,--but +after a few moments of that din, the head disappeared; in a few more the +door was unlocked, and my companions preceded me with restraint yet with +celerity across Catherine's gallery and out of Chenonceaux's front door +and away, down the avenue to the railway, whilst I delivered some final +idioms to the concierge. I am happy to record that these made him livid, +and in the presence of a highly attentive audience. But--we had in truth +small idea with whom we were dealing. Some time later we got final news +of him. He had committed a murder, been caught, tried, convicted, +sentenced, and executed. + +You will remember the British lady at the Hotel de l'Univers in Tours, +who, in her description of Amboise, pronounced curious to rhyme with +glorious. Her kind was still pervading the quieter hotels of the +continent (the Hotel de l'Univers was still quiet) while her more +muscular sister was still climbing all the Alps in valiant weeds. This +time, another of the identical type sat next me at the table d'hote, and +from the corner of my eye I perceived her to be making endless and +surreptitious dives with her head at my bottle of Vouvray mousseux. +Becoming sure that this was neither St. Vitus's dance nor kleptomania, +but a desire to learn the name of my wine, I made her a slight bow, +turning my bottle so that she could more easily read its label; at which +she squeaked skittishly, 'I-didn't-think-you'd-see-me!' + + +III + +The mid-Victorian spinster was gone, the automobile was come, the much +expanded Hotel de l'Univers was quiet no more and had abandoned the +table d'hote for small tables when next I saw Chenonceaux. Eager as I +had been to return to it, still more did I desire to enjoy that +particular pleasure which one takes in introducing a scene one delights +in to a friend. We were, this time, as we had been the first time, a +party of three, and the day was July 4, 1914; but in the Cathedral of +Bourges that morning, and at Montrichard and along the Cher that +forenoon, firecrackers seemed remote. Later, the Hotel de l'Univers had +illuminations and national melodies for the benefit of its American +patrons--these having now swelled to the lucrative proportions of +invasion. + +But Chenonceaux hadn't changed, Chenonceaux looked just as young as +ever. Its bright, serene aspect showed no confusion at changing masters +so often. To my friends it more than fulfilled my promises for it, while +for me it was even fairer than my memory. The concierge, a woman this +time, told her band of sightseers enough, but much less than she knew. +She had acquired (one somehow divined and discerned) a certain scorn +for her sightseers. She had found (one saw) the affluent automobile to +be the chariot of well-informed stomachs, but seldom of intelligences +which had ever heard, or would ever care to hear, about Madame Dupin and +her many distinguished guests. They knew their Michelin, where to buy +_petrol_ along the road, which roads to avoid; and the road they had +particularly avoided was the one conducting to civilization. Some of +them were present on this occasion with their goggles, their magenta +veils, and their brass voices. To these the concierge imparted what she +deemed them able to digest. She didn't mention the _Devin du +Village_--but I did! This brought an immediate _rapprochement_, as we +lingered with her behind the departing goggles. She knew and loved her +Chenonceaux; her scorn fell from her; but she told us nothing so +interesting as the fact that during the last twelvemonth _twenty +thousand_ visitors had given each their required franc to see the place. +The chateau, at this rate, will pay its way down the ages. + +But what of the Bon-Laboureur? If the mid-Victorian spinster and the +table d'hote hadn't survived the pace of the new century, what had the +automobile done to the innocent village inn? I hope you will be glad to +learn that it hadn't--as yet--done much. I have now reached the third of +those meals which I mentioned at the outset. The Bon-Laboureur seemed a +little larger,--people were lunching in two rooms instead of one, and +out behind, kitchenward, there was a hint of bustle and of chauffeurs, +and perhaps the personal note of welcome was fainter. But it wasn't +quite absent; and still the food was excellent, still the service was +courteous, a pleasant young woman waiting; and I felt that here was a +good, small tradition still somewhat holding out against the +beleaguering pressure of the wholesale. So I spoke to the pleasant young +woman and inquired if the old _patronne_ were still living. + +'Mais si, monsieur!' I was, to my astonishment, answered. 'A deux pas +d'ici.' + +The personal note of welcome warmed up on learning that I was an old +visitor here; the patronne would value a call from one who remembered +her good cooking; she was now very old; she had sold the business and +the good-will; she lived very quietly; would I not go to see her? And +her house was pointed out to me. + +Along the street of the little white village I went, slowly, in the +midsummer warmth. The grape-leaves, trailing and basking on the walls, +the full-leaved trees, the light and laziness of earth and sky, conveyed +the same hush of repose that had exhaled from the golden autumn and the +delicate spring I remembered so well; in this July sunshine, also, the +pleasant land lay dreamy and unvexed. At a door standing slightly open, +I knocked. Though a pause followed, I felt I had been heard; then I was +bidden to enter, by a very old voice. Two rooms were accessible from the +tiny hall, but I entered the right one, and there by the window sat the +patronne. I had remembered her as moving alertly round her table, quiet +and vigorous, above average height. All of this was gone; and as her +dark, feeble eyes looked at me, I felt in them a certain apprehension, +and found myself unpremeditatedly saying,-- + +'Madame, I trust you will not think ill of an intruder when you learn +why it is that he has ventured to knock at your door. They assured me +you would like my visit. Here is my little story: One Sunday afternoon +in September, 1882, three travelers came to the Bon-Laboureur. I was one +of them; and never forgetting your excellent meal and service, I +returned at my first opportunity, in April, 1896. Meanwhile that good +meal of yours, and you its hostess, had been mentioned in a book by +another of those three guests; and you told me of the prosperity this +had brought you. Since that visit, thirty-two years ago, I have become a +writer of books too. Of me you will not have heard, but you cannot have +forgotten Mr. Henry James, whose praise brought so many guests to the +Bon-Laboureur.' + +Her eyes, during my speech, had awakened, and now she stood up. + +'My servant is absent,' she said, 'or you would not have had to come in +so. But my son lives close by in that large place. He will like very +much to see you. I will call him.' + +She would have gone for him on her trembling feet, but this I begged she +would not do; I had but five minutes; friends were waiting for me. + +'I am ninety years old,' she said. 'Ah, monsieur, il est bien triste de +vieillir. One has nothing any more.' She became suddenly moved, and +tears fell from her. + +I need not recall the little talk we had then. Strangers though we were, +we did not speak as strangers; the memories that rose in each of us, so +separate, so different, flowed together in some way, united beneath our +spoken words, and made them sacred. But I may record that she got out +her old books to show me, her registry-books of the Bon-Laboureur, +little, old, modest volumes, where in many handwritings through many +years the names of her guests had been inscribed. They had come from +almost everywhere in the world. No longer strong enough, she had parted +with the business and the good-will; but from these tokens of her past +she could not part. She clung to the inanimate survivals of her good +days and her renown. And on a blank page of the last volume which she +placed before me, putting a pen in my hand, I wrote briefly for her of +my three pilgrimages to her _petit pays_. Of the international +distinction of her son she was touchingly and justly proud: famous +peonies have spread his name wide as their cultivator and producer. For +this, too, was the Bon-Laboureur in its way responsible. + +Perhaps I may not see it again, or its grand neighbor, the chateau, that +secular shrine of a vivacious and select Past. But I shall need no +Michelin, or Baedeker, or Joanne, to guide my memories thither. They are +with me, every moment and breath of them, for my perpetual delight, a +safe possession, unweakened and undimmed; and to conjure them before me +it needs no more than the haunting syllables of Chenonceaux and the +quaint, cherished volumes of the patronne. + + IN CHENONCEAUX + + My noiseless thoughts, if changed to their just sound + Amid these courts of silence once so gay + With love and wit, that here full pleasure found + Where Kings put off their crowned cares to play, + Would shake in laughter at some jest unheard; + Would sing like viols in a saraband; + Would whisper kisses--but express no word + That would not be too dim to understand. + + Like to a child, who far from ocean's flood + Against his ear a shell doth fondly hold + To hear the murmur that is his own blood, + And half believes the fairy-tale he's told, + So I within this shell mistake my sea + Of musing for the tide of History. + + + + +The Other Side + +By Margaret Sherwood + + +Like every other attentive reader of our periodical literature, I am +increasingly aware of our persistent exposure of sin and wrong-doing in +high places and in low; like many another attentive reader, I am growing +a bit rebellious against this constant demand and supply in the matter +of information regarding recent evil. Have we not grown over-alert in +the search for this special kind of news? We take vice with our +breakfast porridge; perjury with our after-dinner coffee; our essayists +vie with one another in seeing who can write up the most startling story +of crimes; and it is a bankrupt family nowadays that cannot produce one +member to expose civic or political corruption. Undoubtedly much genuine +ethical impulse lies back of all this; undoubtedly, too, much of the +picturesque and spectacular treatment springs from a desire to startle, +and ministers, in many a reader who would scorn paper-covered fiction, +to a love of the sensational. Surely it must seem to the people of other +countries that we take pride in the immensity of our sins, as we take +pride in Niagara, in the length of the Mississippi, in the extent of our +western plains. + +Many may be, and must be, the good effects of throwing the searchlight +upon dark places, but the constant glare of the searchlight bids fair to +rob us of our normal vision of life. My poor mind has become a +storehouse of misdeeds not my own. I am sick with iniquity; I walk +abroad under the shadow of infamy, and I sup with horrors. I shrink from +meeting my friends,--not that they are not the best people in the world, +but I dread lest they pour into my ears some newly acquired knowledge of +wrong-doing. For me, as for others, the sun of noonday is clouded by +graft, bribery, treachery, and corruption; and I fear to close my eyes +in the dark because of the pictured crimes that crowd before them. +Suppose poor Christian had had to drag after him not only his own bag of +transgressions, but those of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Facing-both-ways, +and all the denizens of Vanity Fair, what chance would he ever have had +of getting out of the Slough of Despond? + +It is not that I wish to shirk; I am not afraid of facing anything that +I ought to know, and I have not the slightest doubt that we are all, in +great measure, responsible for our neighbors' sins. But I am not sure +that we are taking the wisest way to mend them. It seems to me +incontestable that, with the large issues of individual and of national +well-being in mind, we are over-doing the exposure, and slighting the +incentives to right action; emphasizing the negative at the expense of +the positive; and that, with our weakening convictions regarding the +things that are right, it is dangerous to go on loudly proclaiming the +things that are wrong. We are much in the position of a village +improvement society which has pulled down a bridge because it is +rotting, and is impotent to build another and a better. We have invested +our national all in wrecking machinery, and have nothing left for +constructive tools. It is said that in our explosive setting forth of +civic and national wrong-doing, we are all too prone to stop with the +explosion, as if mere knowledge of these things would set them right. +Mere knowledge never yet set anything right; only the ceaselessly +active, creative will can fashion a world of law out of chaos. + +Of the criticism often made that exposure of wrong should be followed, +more closely than is done here, by constructive action, if anything is +to be really effected, it is not my task to speak. The aspect of the +matter which interests me especially concerns the youth of the land; it +is the educational aspect. Not through loud wailing over evil can a +nation be built, but through resolute dwelling with high ideals. In +certain ugly tendencies of recent years among the young, as, for +instance, the unabashed sensuality of much of the modern dancing, may we +not detect, perhaps, a cynical assumption that life is at basis +corrupt,--a natural result of continued harping on evil things, and of +failure to keep before them images of moral beauty? Our magazine writers +would be far better employed, if, instead of making our ears constantly +resound with reports of civic iniquities, they were, part of the time at +least, studying Plato's _Republic_, and filling mind and soul with the +hope of the perfect state. Wrong things we dare hope are of small and +fleeting consequence as compared with the right; it is not the sin of +Judas Iscariot, but the righteousness of his Master, that has brought +the human race a gleam of hope and possible redemption. When I was told, +not long ago, of a student in one of our great universities who had +elected 'Criminology 16,' I could not help reflecting that he might far +better have taken Idealistic Philosophy I. + +Whether or not our study of evil should be lessened, our study of the +good needs to be vastly strengthened. We are losing the vision! 'Your +old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,' said the +prophet, in promising wonders in the heavens and in the earth, after his +account of fasting, weeping, mourning, and beating the breast. There is +a time for beating the breast and for tearing the hair, and of this we +have had our day, but perpetual sitting upon the ash-heap and howling +will not raise the walls of state. Sitting there may, in time, even +become a luxury; can it be that we are doing so much of it partly +because it is easier, and because the heaven-sent task of building up +and shaping is too hard for us? + +Take away from youth the power of seeing visions, of dreaming dreams, +and you take away the future. It would behoove us to remember, perhaps, +that the eras of great deeds have not been eras of analysis, but eras +when the creative imagination was at work. Yet our modern mental habit +is overwhelmingly a habit of analysis, for which science, in teaching us +to pick the world to bits, is partly, though not wholly, responsible. It +has brought us an immense amount of interesting information; it has +brought also a danger whose gravity we can hardly estimate, in the +constant lessening of the synthetic power. The power to image, to +fashion high ideals, and to create along the line of the imagining, is +weakening, instead of growing more strong. In the glorious days of Queen +Elizabeth, in the unparalleled days of Periclean Athens, great ideals +formed themselves before men's eyes and great achievements followed; +emotion, hope, vision, shaped human nature to great issues. I wonder +what influence those perfect marble representations of perfect form had +upon the very bodies of the youths and the maidens of Athens, what +creative force they exercised,--the imaginative grasp of the perfect +reaching forward toward perfectness in the human being. I wonder what +influence the character of Sir Philip Sidney alone, with 'high-erected +thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy,' has had upon succeeding +generations of English youth. 'A man to be greatly good,' said Shelley, +'must imagine intensely and comprehensively.' + +Here my quarrel with our present intellectual trend and our present +system of education becomes more acute. We are not only losing the habit +of mind that fosters idealism, but we are more and more breaking with +the past. The door of that storehouse of noble thought and noble example +is being slowly but firmly closed, and there is little in modern +teaching that can meet the inroads made by the devastating knowledge of +evil of which we have been speaking; little that can build up where this +tears down. Study of Greek life, with its incomparable power of shaping +existence toward the beautiful, is all but cast aside; most +unfortunately now, when, with the rush of ignorant peoples to our +shores, it might have a far-reaching potency never attained before. The +ignorance of contemporary youth regarding that other and finer +loveliness of 'Gospel books' is amazing. More and more we are stripped +of the humanities; the incredulity of science in contemplating +philosophy, art, literature, as part of the educational curriculum, is +full of menace. There has never been, I think, in the history of the +civilized world, a time when people were so anxious to cast off the +past. In our eager Marathon race of material and physical progress we +want to go as lightly equipped as possible. The aeroplane carries small +luggage; our light modern mind is ever ready to throw overboard even its +precious heritage, in its eagerness for swift flight. As earlier days +have reverenced the old, we reverence the new, and are all too +insistently contemporaneous. + +We need, as we never needed before, a broader and deeper study of +history, of philosophy, of literature; for most of our young, a +knowledge of the mental and spiritual past of the race is of far greater +importance than a knowledge of the physical past, at the amoeba stage, +or any other. Science, much as it can do for us, can never meet our +deepest need; the world of imaginative beauty and the world of ethical +endeavor are apart from its domain. It has no spring to touch the will, +yet that which has, the magnificent inheritance of our literature, is +more and more neglected for the latest machinery that applied science +has devised, or the most recent treatise on insect, bird, or worm. It is +well to study insect, bird, and worm, for they are endlessly +interesting, but I maintain that neither the full sum of knowledge +concerning them, nor even the ultimate fact about the ultimate star, can +be a substitute for knowledge of the idealism of Thomas Carlyle, of the +categorical imperative of Kant,--for that study of the humanities which +means preserving, for the upbuilding of youth, that which was best and +finest in the past, as we go on toward the future. + +If the swift retort should come, from those who think the present the +only era of attainment and the physical world the only source of wisdom, +that the past is full of villainies, of lapses from high standards, one +can but say that for ethical purposes our study should be frankly a +selective study, emphasizing the fine and high, subordinating the evil. +There is no hypocrisy in such selection; there is deliberate choice of +the higher upon which to dwell, as a formative power, quickening feeling +and imagination. I have heard it said that a woman, by resolute dwelling +on things noble and pure, may shape the inner nature of her unborn +child, and I have faith to believe it. Even so should the nation yet to +be be shaped by resolute dwelling on the good. It was not all cowardice, +as many a present writer thinks, that led the mothers of earlier days to +say little to their sons and daughters regarding evil things, and much +regarding right things. Doubtless greater frankness would have been +better, yet I doubt if our protracted dwelling on the evil will produce +better results. + +Should any one object that this emphasis on the good means suppression +of the truth, we can but reply that, for the rational soul, the truth is +not necessarily the mechanically worked-out sum of all the facts. That +we have forgotten the distinction between fact--that which has indeed +come to pass, but which may be momentary--and truth, which endures, is +one of the many signs of what William Sharp calls the 'spiritual +degradation' of our time. Much of our modern thinking and teaching, much +of our realistic fiction, rests upon a failure to make the distinction; +much that is indisputable in individual instances of wrong-doing may be, +thank God! false in the long run. + +'That is not true, scientifically true,' we hear often in regard to some +fine hope or aspiration of the race; but in the real import of the term +there is no such thing as scientific truth. It is a pity that a word of +such profound and distinctive meaning should come to be more and more +exclusively identified with the observation of physical phenomena, and +the formulation of physical laws, whereas the very root-meaning of the +word true, from Anglo-Saxon _treowe_, signifying faithful, gives +justification for the idealist's belief that vital truth is partly a +matter of the will, not of mere perception and of intellectual +deductions drawn therefrom. We have need of deeper truth than that of +mere fact; and the truth that shall set us free is a truth of choice, of +selection; it embraces that part of human thought and human experience +which is worth keeping. + +Faithfulness to the best and finest in the past and in the present, +rather than horrified gaping at the present's worst, is the attitude +that means continued and bettered life, for we become what we will. What +are we offering, in the way of concrete examples, or of finely expressed +thought about virtue, to the young, to the ignorant nations who are +pouring in upon us, that will help them form their vision of the +perfect? With our narrowing knowledge of the greater past, our choice of +heroes becomes more and more local and national, yet our hierarchy of +sacred dead is too small to afford that variety of heroic action and +heroic choice that should always be kept before the minds of youth. We +teach them that George Washington never told a lie; we teach them +something--and there could be nothing better--of Lincoln; but those two +figures are lonely upon Olympus, and the great tragic story of the way +in which Lincoln faced the greatest crisis in our history will not alone +suffice to help the everyday citizen shape his thought and action toward +constructive idealism. The lesser heroes of our young republic have +acquitted themselves nobly in this struggle and in that, but the +struggles have been too closely akin in nature to give the embryo hero +that breadth and depth of nurture that he requires. We need an enlarged +vision of history, and the sight of great men of all ages faithful to +small tasks as to great; we need the companionship of heroes of other +times and of other nations, and not of military heroes alone. Saint +Francis with his unceasing tenderness to man and beast, Father Damien at +work among the lepers, might far better occupy the pages of our +magazines, than the pictured deeds of criminals and the achievements of +contemporary multimillionaires. + +If we need a wider range of concrete examples of the good, we need +still more a wider range of nobly expressed ideals. Our thought grows +narrow; we smother for lack of breathing space. Benjamin Franklin's +philosophy was far from grasping the best of life, yet we remember him +better than we do our Emerson, whose plea for spiritual values as the +only real ones is lost in the louder and louder groaning of the wheels +of our machinery. The idealism that is taught the young in Sunday +schools is too often inextricably bound up with unnecessary theology; +and many and many a pupil, in discarding the latter, discards the other +also. The ideal of success upheld in much journalistic admonition is +often rather mean and low; the young of this country need no printed +incentives to urge them into commercialism and the victories of trade. +The best influences that are being brought to bear upon them are those +which concern social responsibilities and the needs of the poor. Yet all +this thought and endeavor should supplement and not supersede, as it is +doing, a deep concern with the things of the spirit; and no admonition +regarding hygiene for one's self or others is a substitute for-- + + A sense sublime + Of something far more deeply interfused, + Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, + And the round ocean, and the living air, + And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; + A motion and a spirit, that impels + All thinking things, all objects of all thought + And rolls through all things. + +The great things of the past in all nations, history can teach us; the +possible, both literature and philosophy can teach us. We must forego no +noble expression of idealistic faith, lest we impoverish our own souls, +and beggar those who come after us. The pure intellectual passion of +Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, the noble stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, the spiritual vision of Plato, of Spenser, the heroic strain +of Wordsworth's 'Liberty Sonnets' and his 'Happy Warrior,' Shelley's +ardent and generous sympathy, Browning's dynamic spiritual force, should +make up part of our life and thought, checking our insistent impulse +toward mechanical things, and correcting the evil within and without. +More than anything else, we need a revival of interest in great poetry. + +'Now therein of all sciences,' said Sir Philip Sidney, 'is our poet the +monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a +prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter it.... He cometh +to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, +or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, +forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from +play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and, pretending no more, doth +intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue.' + +The poet's 'perfect picture' of the good, the great image, causes noble +passion, wakes us out of our 'habitual calm,' and stirs us almost +beyond our possibilities. The imagination is the miracle-working power +in human nature; through it alone can the human soul come to its own. +Only that which is fine and high can feed it aright, while baseness can +make of it a destructive tool of terrible power. As I think back to +childhood, I can remember the devastating effect that one tale of +cruelty had upon my mind, haunting me by day in vivid pictures, turning +my dreams to horror, and making me, while the obsession lasted, believe +that the world of grown folk must be all alike cruel. So, too, the +compelling vision of the good came through concrete instances; and the +people, both the living and the dead, in whom I passionately believed, +shaped all my faith. + +The imagination of youth,--there is no power like it, no machine that +can equal it in dynamic force, nothing so full of power, so full of +danger. We become that which we look upon, contemplate, remember; it is +for this that I dread the ultimate effect of the long, imaginative +picturing of our neighbor's sins now presented in our periodicals. +Images of evil can hardly help dimming and tarnishing the bright ideals +of youth; is there no way--with all our modern wisdom can we find no +way--of limiting our exposure of crime to the people who can be of +service in helping check it, and keeping it from those who cannot help, +but can only be silently hurt? A moment, an hour of some fresh vision, +and a child's destiny is perhaps decided for good or for ill. One +afternoon's reading of Spenser made the boy Keats a poet; who, knowing +the potency of brief experience in the flush of youth, can doubt the +lasting wrong wrought again and again by the sudden shock of contact +with things evil? + +Many images of wrong must of necessity come to the young; let them not +be multiplied in our feverish and morbid fashion of to-day. Above all, +let them be crowded out by constant suggestion of noble images and noble +thought, which will work both consciously and subconsciously, shaping +the dream when the dreamer is least aware. To hold up before the ardent +and impressionable young that which they may become in strength, in +purity, would surely be better than placing before them this perpetual +moving-picture show of our civic and national transgressions. I can but +believe, as I read article after article of exposure, that this +continued presentation to youth of the unholy side of life, with our +increasing tendency to make education a mere matter of the intellect and +of the eye, is bound to lessen the moral energy of the race. Would it +not be better if we were more diligent in searching history, philosophy, +literature, for 'whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are +lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,' and in bidding the young +think on these things? + + + + +On Authors + +By Margaret Preston Montague + + +I write myself; therefore I feel free to say what I please about +authors; but if you, sir, or madam, who read, but do not write, were to +give voice to the reflections that are even now beginning to distill +from my pencil, I should doubtless resent them. And here, indeed, I am +faced by the sudden reflection that much of what I say myself I might +resent in the mouths of others. This leads to a whole new train of +thought, which, however, I refuse to take, and board instead the one I +set out for,--The Authors' Unlimited. There are many things to be +remarked about authors, but in so short a paper it is possible to touch +upon only a very few. One of the first facts that strikes the +investigator in this field is that members of my profession do not +always appear to endear themselves to those with whom they have +dealings. + +'What do you think of authors?' I once asked an editor. + +'I hate 'em!' he answered without a moment's hesitation. + +Another editor assured me, with a weary sigh, that authors were 'kittle +cattle.' This affords a writer a little leap of amusement. So editors +suffer from authors, even as authors from editors! Well, yes, we _are_ +kittle cattle! But some of this is due, no doubt, to what people expect +of us. I was presented once to a lady who immediately fixed me with an +eager eye. + +'I am making a study of the habits of authors,' she announced. (Here a +dreadful sinking of the heart assailed me.) 'Kindly tell me at what hour +you retire.' + +'Usually at half-past ten,' I answered wretchedly. + +At that, as I had expected, her eyebrows went up. 'The author of _When +All Was Dark_,' she informed me, 'sits up all night. She says she cannot +sleep until she has savored the dawn.' However, she was kind enough to +give me another chance. 'What do you eat?' she asked. + +'Three hearty meals a day,' I answered. + +'Not _breakfast_!' she pleaded. 'Why, St. George Dreamer _never_ takes +more than three drops of brandy on a lump of sugar in the morning. Just +the sight of a coffee cup will upset his work for a week.' + +And then she left me, sure, I have no doubt, that no real author could +confess to such distressingly normal habits as mine. + +Doubtless she is an eager reader of all those little paragraphs +informing us how authors write. How this one has to have his black mammy +rub his head for an hour before he can even think of work; and that one +confesses that to write a love scene she must have the odor of decayed +bananas in the room. Well, the world would be a sadder place without +these little paragraphs. Would that I had something of a like nature to +offer! But alas! I have no black mammy, and the smell of over-ripe fruit +leaves my hero cold. Also, to give forth such gems of information one +must be able to observe a certain rule. It is, Don't laugh or you might +wake up. This rule is always sacredly in force at literary gatherings. +The fact of being an author, and of being at an authors' meeting, +induces, it appears, an intense seriousness. In my younger days I did +not realize this, and once at a gathering of this nature, I asked a +carefree question. 'Do you think,' I inquired of the author next me, +'that it is possible for an unmusical person to write verse?' + +I confess now that I put the question somewhat in the spirit of the +Irishman, who, asking after his friend's health, added, 'Not that I care +a damn, but it makes conversation.' Heaven defend me from ever again +making so much conversation! A gleam shot up in my author's eye. 'Let us +go over and ask Professor ---- ' he cried. 'He wrote _What Poets Cannot +Do_. He's just the man to tell us!' And before I could escape, he +dragged me through the press of authors, and flung me before the +professor, with the tag, 'Unmusical, but aspires to write verse,--is +this possible?' + +I know now how the beetle feels beneath the microscope. Seeing the +little group we made, two young authors 'hurried up, and more, and more, +and more.' They surrounded me to listen, to inspect, to comment; they +asked one another eager questions about me, they compared notes, they +appealed to the author of _What Poets Cannot Do_, and always their +dreadful eyes were fixed upon me. Never, never again will I dare the +dreadful seriousness of an authors' meeting with an idle question! + +I have also learned another lesson. It is how to converse with authors. +I shudder now to think of my early and crude attempts in this matter. +The remembrance of one particular occasion stands out with dreadful +vividness. I had been introduced to a distinguished writer. She raised +her eyes to mine for a wan instant, a pale flicker of recognition passed +over her face, and then--silence. Readers,--nay, let me call you friends +while I make this terrible confession,--_I broke that silence!_ I was +young; I did not understand. I do now. I have never been able since to +read 'The Ancient Mariner'--I know too well the awfulness of having shot +an albatross. 'The lady,' I said to my inexperienced self, 'does not +care to converse; she expects you to do so.' Accordingly, I broke into +light and cheerful talk, something in conversation corresponding, I +fear, to what in dry goods the clerk recommends as 'a nice line of +spring styles.' I realize that only a series of illustrations can make +the situation clear. Imagine then, if you please, a tinkling cymbal +serenading a smouldering volcano; a puppy trying to woo the Sphinx to a +game of tag; sunlit waves breaking upon a 'stern and rock-bound coast,' +and you may get a faint idea of the situation. I began almost +immediately to experience that far-from-home sensation of which +Humpty-Dumpty speaks with so much feeling. As I beheld one after another +of my little remarks dash itself to nothingness against that stern and +rock-bound coast, only the time and the place kept me from bursting into +tears. Fortunately it did not last too long. In another minute one or +the other of us would have shattered into the maniac's wild laughter. +And I have every reason to fear that I should have been that one. +Others, however, realizing the awful thing I was doing, rushed up and +separated us. Sympathetic hands were stretched to her; low words were +murmured, and she was drawn into a secluded corner where her silence +might be preserved from any further onslaughts of a like sacrilegious +nature. But no one stretched a hand to _me_; no sympathetic words were +murmured in _my_ ear! + +I now know that in conversations with authors there should be long +pauses. This is because every remark, after being received by the ear, +must be submitted to a strict brain analysis, and then given a soul-bath +before it is proper to venture a reply. I have found, also, that in +answering too quickly, I myself lose caste. I now make it a point never +to respond to a question addressed to me by an author until I have +counted twenty. If the author is very distinguished, I make it fifty for +good measure. + +Much more remains to be said about authors. I realize that I have, as it +were, merely scraped the surface of the subject. Space, however, allows +me only room to add one last anecdote. But this one may indeed prove +more illuminating than all that has gone before. Once, then, in a +certain city where I was visiting, I was invited to attend a meeting of +its authors' club. 'Now at this meeting,' I instructed myself before +going, 'you will probably encounter the most serious species of author +native to this climate.' Accordingly I set forth with a light and +expectant heart. As I entered the hall I was aware of another person +entering from an opposite door,--a serious, awkward person, with just +that peculiar, vague, and almost feeble-minded expression that I have +come to associate with writers in general. 'Behold, my child, the +SERIOUS AUTHOR,' I commented happily to myself. I looked again, and saw +it was _myself in a mirror_! + + + + +The Provincial American + +By Meredith Nicholson + + _Viola._ What country, friends, is this? + + _Captain._ Illyria, lady. + + _Viola._ And what should I do in Illyria? + My brother he is in Elysium. + + _--Twelfth Night._ + + +I am a provincial American. My forbears were farmers or country-town +folk. They followed the long trail over the mountains out of Virginia +and North Carolina, with brief sojourns in Western Pennsylvania and +Kentucky. My parents were born, the one in Kentucky, the other in +Indiana, within two and four hours of the spot where I pen these +reflections, and I was a grown man and had voted before I saw the sea or +any Eastern city. + +In attempting to illustrate the provincial point of view out of my own +experiences I am moved by no wish to celebrate either the Hoosier +commonwealth--which has not lacked nobler advertisement--or myself; but +by the hope that I may cheer many who, flung by fate upon the world's +byways, shuffle and shrink under the reproach of their metropolitan +brethren. + +Mr. George Ade has said, speaking of our freshwater colleges, that +Purdue University, his own alma mater, offers everything that Harvard +provides except the sound of _a_ as in father. I have been told that I +speak our _lingua rustica_ only slightly corrupted by urban contacts. +Anywhere east of Buffalo I should be known as a Westerner; I could not +disguise myself if I would. I find that I am most comfortable in a town +whose population does not exceed a fifth of a million,--the kind of +place that enjoys street-car transfers, a woman's club, and a post +office with carrier delivery. + + +I + +Across a hill-slope that knew my childhood, a bugle's grieving melody +used to float often through the summer twilight. A highway lay hidden in +the little vale below, and beyond it the unknown musician was quite +concealed, and was never visible to the world I knew. Those trumpetings +have lingered always in my memory, and color my recollection of all that +was near and dear in those days. Men who had left camp and field for the +soberer routine of civil life were not yet fully domesticated. My bugler +was merely solacing himself for lost joys by recurring to the vocabulary +of the trumpet. I am confident that he enjoyed himself; and I am equally +sure that his trumpetings peopled the dusk for me with great captains +and mighty armies, and touched with a certain militancy all my youthful +dreaming. + +No American boy born during or immediately after the Civil War can have +escaped in those years the vivid impressions derived from the sight and +speech of men who had fought its battles, or women who had known its +terror and grief. Chief among my playthings on that peaceful hillside +was the sword my father had borne at Shiloh and on to the sea; and I +remember, too, his uniform coat and sash and epaulets and the tattered +guidon of his battery, that, falling to my lot as toys, yet imparted to +my childish consciousness a sense of what war had been. The young +imagination was kindled in those days by many and great names. Lincoln, +Grant, and Sherman were among the first lispings of Northern children of +my generation; and in the little town where I was born, lived men who +had spoken with them face to face. I did not know, until I sought them +later for myself, the fairy tales that are every child's birthright; and +I imagine that children of my generation heard less of + + old, unhappy, far-off things + And battles long ago, + +and more of the men and incidents of contemporaneous history. Great +spirits still on earth were sojourning. I saw several times, in his last +years, the iron-willed Hoosier War Governor, Oliver P. Morton. By the +time I was ten, a broader field of observation opening through my +parents' removal to the state capital, I had myself beheld Grant and +Sherman; and every day I passed in the street men who had been partners +with them in the great, heroic, sad, splendid struggle. These things I +set down as a background for the observations that follow,--less as text +than as point of departure; yet I believe that bugler, sounding charge +and retreat and taps in the dusk, and those trappings of war beneath +whose weight I strutted upon that hillside, did much toward establishing +in me a certain habit of mind. From that hillside I have since +ineluctably viewed my country and my countrymen and the larger world. + +Emerson records Thoreau's belief that 'the flora of Massachusetts +embraced almost all the important plants of America,--most of the oaks, +most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the +nuts. He returned Kane's arctic voyage to a friend of whom he had +borrowed it, with the remark, that most of the phenomena noted might be +observed in Concord.' + +The complacency of the provincial mind is due less, I believe, to +stupidity and ignorance, than to the fact that every American county is +in a sense complete, a political and social unit, in which the sovereign +rights of a free people are expressed by the courthouse and town hall, +spiritual freedom by the village church-spire, and hope and aspiration +in the school-house. Every reader of American fiction, particularly in +the realm of the short story, must have observed the great variety of +quaint and racy characters disclosed. These are the _dramatis personae_ +of that great American novel which some one has said is being written in +installments. Writers of fiction hear constantly of characters who would +be well worth their study. In reading two recent novels that penetrate +to the heart of provincial life, Mr. White's _A Certain Rich Man_ and +Mrs. Watts's _Nathan Burke_, I felt that the characters depicted might, +with unimportant exceptions, have been found almost anywhere in those +American states that shared the common history of Kansas and Ohio. Mr. +Winston Churchill, in his admirable novels of New England, has shown how +closely the purely local is allied to the universal. 'Woodchuck +sessions' have been held by many American legislatures. + +When _David Harum_ appeared, characters similar to the hero of that +novel were reported in every part of the country. I rarely visit a town +that has not its cracker-barrel philosopher, or a poet who would shine +but for the callous heart of the magazine editor, or an artist of +supreme though unrecognized talent, or a forensic orator of wonderful +powers, or a mechanical genius whose inventions are bound to +revolutionize the industrial world. In Maine, in the back room of a shop +whose windows looked down upon a tidal river, I have listened to tariff +discussions in the dialect of Hosea Biglow; and a few weeks later have +heard farmers along the un-salt Wabash debating the same questions from +a point of view that revealed no masted ships or pine woods, with a new +sense of the fine tolerance and sanity and reasonableness of our +American people. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, one of the shrewdest students +of provincial character, introduced me one day to a friend of his in a +village near Indianapolis who bore a striking resemblance to Abraham +Lincoln, and who had something of Lincoln's gift of humorous narration. +This man kept a country store, and his attitude toward his customers, +and 'trade' in general, was delicious in its drollery. Men said to be +'like Lincoln' have not been rare in the Mississippi Valley, and +politicians have been known to encourage belief in the resemblance. + +Colonel Higginson has said that in the Cambridge of his youth any member +of the Harvard faculty could answer any question within the range of +human knowledge; whereas in these days of specialization some man can +answer the question, but it may take a week's investigation to find him. +In 'our town'--a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine +own!--I dare say it was possible in that _post bellum_ era to find men +competent to deal with almost any problem. These were mainly men of +humble beginnings and all essentially the product of our American +provinces. I should like to set down briefly the ineffaceable impression +some of these characters left upon me. I am precluded by a variety of +considerations from extending this recital. The rich field of education +I ignore altogether; and I may mention only those who have gone. As it +is beside my purpose to prove that mine own people are other than +typical of those of most American communities, I check my exuberance. +Sad indeed the offending if I should protest too much! + + +II + +In the days when the bugle still mourned across the vale, Lew Wallace +was a citizen of my native town of Crawfordsville. There he had amused +himself in the years immediately before the civil conflict, in drilling +a company of 'Algerian Zouaves' known as the Montgomery Guards, of which +my father was a member, and this was the nucleus of the Eleventh Indiana +Regiment which Wallace commanded in the early months of the war. It is +not, however, of Wallace's military services that I wish to speak now, +nor of his writings, but of the man himself as I knew him later at the +capital, at a time when, in the neighborhood of the federal building at +Indianapolis, any boy might satisfy his longing for heroes with a sight +of many of our Hoosier Olympians. He was of medium height, erect, dark +to swarthiness, with finely chiseled features and keen, black eyes, with +manners the most courtly, and a voice unusually musical and haunting. +His appearance, his tastes, his manner, were strikingly Oriental. + +He had a strong theatric instinct, and his life was filled with +drama--with melodrama, even. His curiosity led him into the study of +many subjects, most of them remote from the affairs of his day. He was +both dreamer and man of action; he could be 'idler than the idlest +flowers,' yet he was always busy about something. He was an aristocrat +and a democrat; he was wise and temperate, whimsical and injudicious in +a breath. As a youth he had seen visions, and as an old man he dreamed +dreams. The mysticism in him was deep-planted, and he was always a +little aloof, a man apart. His capacity for detachment was like that of +Sir Richard Burton, who, at a great company given in his honor, was +found alone poring over a puzzling Arabic manuscript in an obscure +corner of the house. Wallace, like Burton, would have reached Mecca, if +chance had led him to that adventure. + +Wallace dabbled in politics without ever being a politician; and I might +add that he practiced law without ever being, by any high standard, a +lawyer. He once spoke of the law as 'that most detestable of human +occupations.' First and last he tried his hand at all the arts. He +painted a little; he moulded a little in clay; he knew something of +music and played the violin; he made three essays in romance. As boy and +man he went soldiering; he was a civil governor, and later a minister to +Turkey. In view of his sympathetic interest in Eastern life and +character, nothing could have been more appropriate than his appointment +to Constantinople. The Sultan Abdul Hamid, harassed and anxious, used +to send for him at odd hours of the night to come and talk to him, and +offered him on his retirement a number of positions in the Turkish +government. + +With all this rich experience of the larger world, he remained the +simplest of natures. He was as interested in a new fishing-tackle as in +a new book, and carried both to his houseboat on the Kankakee, where, at +odd moments, he retouched a manuscript for the press, and discussed +politics with the natives. Here was a man who could talk of the _Song of +Roland_ as zestfully as though it had just been reported from the +telegraph office. + +I frankly confess that I never met him without a thrill, even in his +last years and when the ardor of my youthful hero worship may be said to +have passed. He was an exotic, our Hoosier Arab, our story-teller of the +bazaars. When I saw him in his last illness, it was as though I looked +upon a gray sheik about to fare forth unawed toward unmapped oases. + +No lesson of the Civil War was more striking than that taught by the +swift transitions of our citizen soldiery from civil to military life, +and back again. This impressed me as a boy, and I used to wonder, as I +passed my heroes on their peaceful errands in the street, why they had +put down the sword when there must still be work somewhere for fighting +men to do. The judge of the federal court at this time was Walter Q. +Gresham, brevetted brigadier-general, who was destined later to adorn +the cabinets of presidents of two political parties. He was cordial and +magnetic; his were the handsomest and friendliest of brown eyes, and a +noble gravity spoke in them. Among the lawyers who practiced before him +were Benjamin Harrison and Thomas A. Hendricks, who became respectively +President and Vice-President. + +Those Hoosiers who admired Gresham ardently were often less devotedly +attached to Harrison, who lacked Gresham's warmth and charm. General +Harrison was akin to the Covenanters who bore both Bible and sword into +battle. His eminence in the law was due to his deep learning in its +history and philosophy. Short of stature, and without grace of +person,--with a voice pitched rather high,--he was a remarkably +interesting and persuasive speaker. If I may so put it, his political +speeches were addressed as to a trial judge rather than to a jury, his +appeal being to reason and not to passion or prejudice. He could, in +rapid flights of campaigning, speak to many audiences in a day without +repeating himself. He was measured and urbane; his discourses abounded +in apt illustration; he was never dull. He never stooped to pietistic +clap-trap, or chanted the jaunty chauvinism that has so often caused the +Hoosier stars to blink. + +Among the Democratic leaders of that period, Hendricks was one of the +ablest, and a man of many attractive qualities. His dignity was always +impressive, and his appearance suggested the statesman of an earlier +time. It is one of immortality's harsh ironies that a man who was a +gentleman, and who stood moreover pretty squarely for the policies that +it pleased him to defend, should be published to the world in a bronze +effigy in his own city as a bandy-legged and tottering tramp, in a frock +coat that never was on sea or land. + +Joseph E. McDonald, a Senator in Congress, was held in affectionate +regard by a wide constituency. He was an independent and vigorous +character who never lost a certain raciness and tang. On my first timid +venture into the fabled East I rode with him in a day-coach from +Washington to New York on a slow train. At some point he saw a peddler +of fried oysters on a station platform, alighted to make a purchase, and +ate his luncheon quite democratically from the paper parcel in his car +seat. He convoyed me across the ferry, asked where I expected to stop, +and explained that he did not like the European plan; he liked, he said, +to have 'full swing at a bill of fare.' + +I used often to look upon the towering form of Daniel W. Voorhees, whom +Sulgrove, an Indiana journalist with a gift for translating Macaulay +into Hoosierese, had named 'The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash.' In a +crowded hotel lobby I can still see him, cloaked and silk-hatted, the +centre of the throng, and my strict upbringing in the antagonistic +political faith did not diminish my admiration for his eloquence. + +Such were some of the characters who came and went in the streets of our +provincial capital in those days. + + +III + +In discussions under captions similar to mine it is often maintained +that railways, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers are knitting us +together, so that soon we shall all be keyed to a metropolitan pitch. +The proof adduced in support of this is of the most trivial, but it +strikes me as wholly undesirable that we should all be ironed out and +conventionalized. In the matter of dress, for example, the women of our +town used to take their fashions from _Godey's_ and _Peterson's via_ +Cincinnati; but now that we are only eighteen hours from New York, with +a well-traveled path from the Wabash to Paris, my counselors among the +elders declare that the tone of our society--if I may use so perilous a +word--has changed little from our good old black alpaca days. The hobble +skirt receives prompt consideration in the 'Main' street of any town, +and is viewed with frank curiosity, but it is only a one day's wonder. A +lively runaway or the barbaric yawp of a new street fakir may dethrone +it at any time. + +New York and Boston tailors solicit custom among us biennially, but +nothing is so stubborn as our provincial distrust of fine raiment. I +looked with awe, in my boyhood, upon a pair of mammoth blue-jeans +trousers that were flung high from a flagstaff in the centre of +Indianapolis, in derision of a Democratic candidate for governor, James +D. Williams, who was addicted to the wearing of jeans. The Democrats +sagaciously accepted the challenge, made 'honest blue jeans' the +battle-cry, and defeated Benjamin Harrison, the 'kid-glove' candidate of +the Republicans. Harmless demagoguery this or bad judgment on the part +of the Republicans; and yet I dare say that if the sartorial issue +should again become acute in our politics the banner of bifurcated jeans +would triumph now as then. A Hoosier statesman who to-day occupies high +office once explained to me his refusal of sugar for his coffee by +remarking that he didn't like to waste sugar that way; he wanted to keep +it for his lettuce. I do not urge sugared lettuce as symbolizing our +higher provincialism, but mayonnaise may be poison to men who are +nevertheless competent to construe and administer law. + +It is much more significant that we are all thinking about the same +things at the same time, than that Farnam Street, Omaha, and Fifth +Avenue, New York, should vibrate to the same shade of necktie. The +distribution of periodicals is so managed that California and Maine cut +the leaves of their magazines on the same day. Rural free delivery has +hitched the farmer's wagon to the telegraph office, and you can't buy +his wife's butter now until he has scanned the produce market in his +newspaper. This immediacy of contact does not alter the provincial point +of view. New York and Texas, Oregon and Florida, will continue to see +things at different angles, and it is for the good of all of us that +this is so. We have no national political, social, or intellectual +centre. There is no 'season' in New York, as in London, during which all +persons distinguished in any of these particulars meet on common ground. +Washington is our nearest approach to such a meeting-place, but it +offers only short vistas. We of the country visit Boston for the +symphony, or New York for the opera, or Washington to view the +government machine at work, but nowhere do interesting people +representative of all our ninety millions ever assemble under one roof. +All our capitals are, as Lowell put it, 'fractional,' and we shall +hardly have a centre while our country is so nearly a continent. + +Nothing in our political system could be wiser than our dispersion into +provinces. Sweep from the map the lines that divide the states and we +should huddle like sheep suddenly deprived of the protection of known +walls and flung upon the open prairie. State lines and local pride are +in themselves a pledge of stability. The elasticity of our system makes +possible a variety of governmental experiments by which the whole +country profits. We should all rejoice that the parochial mind is so +open, so eager, so earnest, so tolerant. Even the most buckramed +conservative on the Eastern coastline, scornful of the political +follies of our far-lying provinces, must view with some interest the +dallyings of Oregon with the Referendum, and of Des Moines with the +Commission System. If Milwaukee wishes to try Socialism, the rest of us +need not complain. Democracy will cease to be democracy when all its +problems are solved and everybody votes the same ticket. + +States that produce the most cranks are prodigal of the corn that pays +the dividends on the railroads the cranks despise. Indiana's amiable +feeling toward New York is not altered by her sister's rejection or +acceptance of the direct primary, a benevolent device of noblest +intention, under which, not long ago, in my own commonwealth, my fellow +citizens expressed their distrust of me with unmistakable emphasis. It +is no great matter, but in open convention also I have perished by the +sword. Nothing can thwart the chastening hand of a righteous people. + +All passes; humor alone is the touchstone of democracy. I search the +newspapers daily for tidings of Kansas, and in the ways of Oklahoma I +find delight. The Emporia _Gazette_ is quite as patriotic as the +Springfield _Republican_ or the New York _Post_, and to my own taste, +far less depressing. I subscribed for a year to the Charleston _News and +Courier_, and was saddened by the tameness of its sentiments; for I +remember (it must have been in 1884) the shrinking horror with which I +saw daily in the Indiana Republican organ a quotation from Wade Hampton +to the effect that 'these are the same principles for which Lee and +Jackson fought four years on Virginia's soil.' Most of us are +entertained when Colonel Watterson rises to speak for Kentucky and +invokes the star-eyed goddess. When we call the roll of the states, if +Malvolio answer for any, let us suffer him in tolerance and rejoice in +his yellow stockings. 'God give them wisdom that have it; and those that +are fools, let them use their talents.' + +Every community has its dissenters, protestants, kickers, cranks, the +more the merrier. I early formed a high resolve to strive for membership +in this execrated company. George W. Julian,--one of the noblest of +Hoosiers,--who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice-President in +1852, a delegate to the first Republican convention, five times a member +of Congress, a supporter of Greeley's candidacy, and a Democrat in the +consulship of Cleveland, was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 I +was dusting law-books in an office where mugwumpery flourished, and +where the iniquities of the tariff, Matthew Arnold's theological +opinions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley were discussed +at intervals in the day's business. + + +IV + +It is constantly complained that we Americans give too much time to +politics, but there could be no safer way of utilizing that extra drop +of vital fluid which Matthew Arnold found in us. Epithets of opprobrium +pinned to a Nebraskan in 1896 were riveted upon a citizen of New York in +1910, and who, then, was the gentleman? No doubt many voices will cry in +the wilderness before we reach the promised land. A people which has +been fed on the Bible is bound to hear the rumble of Pharaoh's chariots. +It is in the blood to feel the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's +contumely. The winter evenings are long on the prairies, and we must +always be fashioning a crown for Caesar or rehearsing his funeral rites. +No great danger can ever seriously menace the nation so long as the +remotest citizen clings to his faith that he is a part of the +governmental mechanism and can at any time throw it out of adjustment if +it doesn't run to suit him. He can go into the court-house and see the +men he helped to place in office; or if they were chosen in spite of +him, he pays his taxes just the same and waits for another chance to +turn the rascals out. + +Mr. Bryce wrote: 'This tendency to acquiescence and submission; this +sense of the insignificance of individual effort, this belief that the +affairs of men are swayed by large forces whose movement may be studied +but cannot be turned, I have ventured to call the Fatalism of the +Multitude.' It is, I should say, one of the most encouraging phenomena +of the score of years that have elapsed since Mr. Bryce's _American +Commonwealth_ appeared, that we have grown much less conscious of the +crushing weight of the mass. It has been with something of a child's +surprise in his ultimate successful manipulation of a toy whose +mechanism has baffled him that we have begun to realize that, after all, +the individual counts. The pressure of the mass will yet be felt, but in +spite of its persistence there are abundant signs that the individual is +asserting himself more and more, and even the undeniable acceptance of +collectivist ideas in many quarters helps to prove it. With all our +faults and defaults of understanding,--populism, free silver, Coxey's +army, and the rest of it,--we of the West have not done so badly. Be not +impatient with the young man Absalom; the mule knows his way to the oak +tree! + +Blaine lost Indiana in 1884; Bryan failed thrice to carry it. The +campaign of 1910 in Indiana was remarkable for the stubbornness of +'silent' voters, who listened respectfully to the orators but left the +managers of both parties in the air as to their intentions. In the +Indiana Democratic State Convention of 1910 a gentleman was furiously +hissed for ten minutes amid a scene of wildest tumult; but the cause he +advocated won, and the ticket nominated in that memorable convention +succeeded in November. Within fifty years Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois +have sent to Washington seven presidents, elected for ten terms. Without +discussing the value of their public services it may be said that it has +been an important demonstration to our Mid-Western people of the +closeness of their ties with the nation, that so many men of their own +soil have been chosen to the seat of the presidents; and it is +creditable to Maine and California that they have cheerfully acquiesced. +In Lincoln the provincial American most nobly asserted himself, and any +discussion of the value of provincial life and character in our politics +may well begin and end in him. We have seen verily that + + Fishers and choppers and ploughmen + Shall constitute a state. + +Whitman, addressing Grant on his return from his world's tour, declared +that it was not that the hero had walked 'with kings with even pace the +round world's promenade'; + + But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, + Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, + Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the + front, + Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round + world's promenade, + Were all so justified. + +What we miss and what we lack who live in the provinces seem to me of +little weight in the scale against our compensations. We slouch,--we are +deficient in the graces, we are prone to boast, and we lack in those +fine reticences that mark the cultivated citizen of the metropolis. We +like to talk, and we talk our problems out to a finish. Our +commonwealths rose in the ashes of the hunter's campfires, and we are +all a great neighborhood, united in a common understanding of what +democracy is, and animated by ideals of what we want it to be. That +saving humor which is a philosophy of life flourishes amid the tall +corn. We are old enough now--we of the West--to have built up in +ourselves a species of wisdom, founded upon experience, which is a part +of the continuing unwritten law of democracy. We are less likely these +days to 'wobble right' than we are to stand fast or march forward like +an army with banners. + +We provincials are immensely curious. Art, music, literature, +politics--nothing that is of contemporaneous human interest is alien to +us. If these things don't come to us we go to them. We are more truly +representative of the American ideal than our metropolitan cousins, +because (here I lay my head upon the block) we know more about, oh, so +many things! We know vastly more about the United States, for one thing. +We know what New York is thinking before New York herself knows it, +because we visit the metropolis to find out. Sleeping-cars have no +terrors for us, and a man who has never been west of Philadelphia seems +to us a singularly benighted being. Those of our Western school-teachers +who don't see Europe for three hundred dollars every summer get at least +as far east as Concord, to be photographed by the rude bridge that +arched the flood. + +That fine austerity, which the voluble Westerner finds so smothering on +the Boston and New York express, is lost utterly at Pittsburg. From +gentlemen cruising in day-coaches--rude wights who advertise their +personal sanitation and literacy by the toothbrush and fountain-pen +planted sturdily in their upper left-hand waistcoat pockets--one may +learn the most prodigious facts and the philosophy thereof. 'Sit over, +brother; there's hell to pay in the Balkans,' remarks the gentleman who +boarded the inter-urban at Peru or Connersville, and who would just as +lief discuss the papacy or child-labor, if revolutions are not to your +liking. + +In Boston a lady once expressed her surprise that I should be hastening +home for Thanksgiving Day. This, she thought, was a New England +festival. More recently I was asked by a Bostonian if I had ever heard +of Paul Revere. Nothing is more delightful in us, I think, than our +meekness before instruction. We strive to please; all we ask is 'to be +shown.' + +Our greatest gain is in leisure and the opportunity to ponder and brood. +In all these thousands of country towns live alert and shrewd students +of affairs. Where your New Yorker scans headlines as he 'commutes' +homeward, the villager reaches his own fireside without being shot +through a tube, and sits down and reads his newspaper thoroughly. When +he repairs to the drug-store to abuse or praise the powers that be, his +wife reads the paper, too. A United States Senator from a Middle +Western State, making a campaign for renomination preliminary to the +primaries, warned the people in rural communities against the newspaper +and periodical press with its scandals and heresies. 'Wait quietly by +your firesides, undisturbed by these false teachings,' he said in +effect; 'then go to your primaries and vote as you have always voted.' +His opponent won by thirty thousand,--the amiable answer of the little +red schoolhouse. + + +V + +A few days ago I visited again my native town. On the slope where I +played as a child I listened in vain for the mourning bugle; but on the +college campus a bronze tablet commemorative of those sons of Wabash who +had fought in the mighty war quickened the old impressions. The college +buildings wear a look of age in the gathering dusk. + + Coldly, sadly descends + The autumn evening. The field + Strewn with its dank yellow drifts + Of withered leaves, and the elms, + Fade into dimness apace, + Silent; hardly a shout + From a few boys late at their play! + +Brave airs of cityhood are apparent in the town, with its paved streets, +fine hall and library; and everywhere are wholesome life, comfort, and +peace. The train is soon hurrying through gray fields and dark +woodlands. Farmhouses are disclosed by glowing panes; lanterns flash +fitfully where farmers are making all fast for the night. The city is +reached as great factories are discharging their laborers, and I pass +from the station into a hurrying throng homeward bound. Against the sky +looms the dome of the capitol; the tall shaft of the soldiers' monument +rises ahead of me down the long street and vanishes starward. Here where +forests stood seventy-five years ago, in a state that has not yet +attained its centenary, is realized much that man has sought through all +the ages,--order, justice, and mercy, kindliness and good cheer. What we +lack we seek, and what we strive for we shall gain. And of such is the +kingdom of democracy. + + + + +Our Lady Poverty + +By Agnes Repplier + + +I + +The last people to read the literature of poverty are the poor, and this +fact may be cited as one of the ameliorations of their lot. If they were +assured day after day that they were degraded and enslaved, it would be +a trifle hard for them to cherish their respectability, and enjoy their +freedom. If their misery were dinned into their ears, they would +naturally cease being cheerful. If they were convinced that tears are +their portion, they would no longer have the temerity to laugh. Indeed +their mirth is frankly repellent to the dolorous writers of to-day. + + A burst of hollow laughter from a hopeless heart + +is permitted as seemly and in character; even the poet of the slums +grants this outlet for emotion; but the rude sounds which denote +hilarity disturb the sympathetic soul. One agitated lady describes with +shrinking horror the merriment of the scrub-women going to their labor. +All the dignity, all the sacredness of womanhood are defiled by these +poor old creatures tramping through the chill dawn; and yet, and +yet,--oh, mockery of nobler aspirations!--'The scrub-women were going to +work, and they went laughing!' + +The dismalness of serious writers, especially if humanity be their +theme, is steeping us in gloom. The obsession of sorrow seems the most +reasonable of all obsessions, because facts can be crowded upon facts +(to the general exclusion of truth) by way of argument and illustration. +And should facts fail, there are bitter generalizations which shroud us +like a pall. + + Behind all music we can hear + The insistent note of hunger-fear; + Beyond all beauty we can see + The land's defenseless misery. + +Mr. Percy MacKaye in his preface to that treatise on eugenics which he +has christened _To-Morrow_, and humorously designated as a play, makes +this inspiriting statement: 'Our world is hideously unhappy, and the +insufferable sense of that unhappiness is the consecration of modern +leaders in art. Realism is splendidly their incentive.' + +This opens up a cheering vista for the public. If the dramatists of the +near future are to have no finer consecration than an insufferable sense +of unhappiness, we must turn for amusement to lectures and organ +recitals. If novelists and poets are to be hallowed by grief, there will +be nothing left for light-hearted readers save the study of political +economy, erstwhile called the dismal science, but now, by comparison, +gay. No artist yet was ever born of an insufferable sense of +unhappiness. No leader and helper of men was ever bedewed with tears. +The world is old, and the world is wide. Of what use are we in its +tumultuous life, if we do not know its joys, its griefs, its high +emotions, its call to courage, and the echo of the laughter of the ages? + +Perhaps the only literature of poverty (I use the word 'literature' in a +purely courteous sense) which was ever written for the poor is that +amazing issue of tracts, _Village Politics_, _Tales for the Common +People_, and scores of similar productions, which a hundred years ago +were let loose upon rural England. The moral in all of them is the same, +and is expressed with engaging simplicity: 'Don't give trouble to people +better off than yourself.' The fact that many of these tracts had a +prodigious sale points to their distribution--by the rich--in quarters +where it was thought that they would do most good. They were probably +read in the same spirit as that in which a Sunday-school library was +read by two small and unregenerate boys of my acquaintance, who worked +through whole shelves at a fixed rate, ten cents for a short book, +twenty-five cents for a long one,--the money paid by a pious +grandmother, and a point of honor not to skip. + +The smug complacency of Hannah More and her sisterhood was rudely +disturbed by Ebenezer Elliott, who published his _Corn-Law Rhymer_, +with its profound pity and its somewhat impotent wrath, in 1831. England +woke up to the disturbing conviction that men and women were +starving,--always a disagreeable thing to contemplate,--and the Corn +Laws were repealed; but the 'Rhymes' were probably as little known to +the laborer of 1831 as was _Piers Plowman_ to the laborer of 1392. +Langland--to whom partial critics have for five hundred years ascribed +this great poem of discontent--was keenly alive to the value of +husbandry as a theme; and his ploughman came in time to be recognized as +the people's suffering representative; but the poet, after the fashion +of poets, wrote for 'lettered clerks,' of which class he was a shining +example, his praiseworthy purpose in life being to avoid 'common men's +work.' In the last century, _Les Miserables_ was called the 'Epic of the +Poor'; but its readers were, for the most part, as comfortably remote +from poverty as Victor Hugo himself, and as alive to the advantages of +wealth. + +In this age of print, the literature of poverty has swollen to an +enormous bulk. Statistical books, explicit and contradictory. Hopeful +books by social workers who see salvation in girls' clubs and refined +dancing. Hopeless books by other social workers who believe--or, at +least, who say--that the employed are enslaved by the employer, and that +women and children are the prey of men. Highly colored books by +adventurous young journalists who have masqueraded (for copy's sake) as +mill and factory hands. Gray books by casual observers who are paralyzed +by the mere sight of a slum. Furious books by rabid socialists who hold +that the poor will never be uplifted while there is left in the world a +man rich enough to pay them wages. Imaginative books by poets and +novelists who deal in realism to the exclusion of reality. All this +profusion and confusion of matter is thrust upon us month after month, +while the working-man reads his newspaper, and the working-girl reads _A +Coronet of Shame_, or _Lost in Fate's Fearful Abyss_. + +It was Mr. George Gissing who, in his studies of the poor, first made +popular the invective style; who hurled at London such epithets as +'pest-stricken,' 'city of the damned,' 'intimacies of abomination,' +'utmost limits of dread,'--phrases which have been faithfully copied by +shuddering defamers of New York and Chicago. Mr. John Burns, for +example, after a brief visit to the United States, said that Chicago was +a pocket edition of hell; and subsequently, without, we hope, any +personal experience to back him, said that hell was a pocket edition of +Chicago. + +Americans have borrowed these flowers of speech from England, and have +invaded her territory. Was it because he could find no poverty at home +worthy of his strenuous pen, that Mr. Jack London crossed the sea to +write up the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, already so +abundantly exploited by English authors? Was there anything _he_ could +add to the dark pictures of Mr. Gissing, or to the more convincing +studies of Mr. Arthur Morrison, who has lit up the gloom with a grim +humor, not very mirthful, but acutely and unimpeachably human? Mr. +Gissing's poor have money for nothing but beer (it would be a bold +writer who denied his starvelings beer); but Mr. Morrison sees his way +occasionally to bacon, and tea, and tinned beef, and even, at rare +intervals, to a pompous funeral, provided that the money for mutes can +be saved from the sick man's diet. He is the legitimate successor of +Dickens, and Dickens knew his field from experience rather than from +observation. The lighthouse-keeper sees the storm, but the cabin boy +feels it. + +In the annals of poverty there are few pages more poignant than the one +which describes the sick child, Charles Dickens, taken home from work by +a kind-hearted lad, and his shame lest this boy should learn that 'home' +for him meant the debtors' prison. In vain he tried to get rid of his +conductor, Bob Fagin by name, protesting that he was well enough to walk +alone. Bob knew he was not, and stuck to his side. Together they pushed +along until little Charles was fainting with weakness and fatigue. Then +in desperation he pretended that he lived in a decent house near +Southwark bridge, and darted up the steps with a joyous air of being at +last in haven, only to creep down again when Bob's back was turned, and +drag his slow steps to the Marshalsea. + +Out of this dismal and precocious experience sprang two results,--a +passionate resolve _not_ to be what circumstances were conspiring to +make him, and an insight into the uncalculating habits which deepen and +soften poverty. Dickens--once free of institutions--wrote of the poor, +even of the London poor, with amazing geniality; but it cannot be denied +that his infallible recipe for brightening up the scene is the timely +introduction of a pot of porter, or a pitcher of steaming flip. If we +try to think of him writing in a prohibition state, we shall realize +that he owed as much to beer and punch as ever Horace did to wine. +Imagination fails to grasp either of them in the role of a +water-drinker. The poor of Dickens are a sturdy lot, but they are jovial +only in their cups. His wholesome hatred of institutions would have been +intensified could he have lived to hear the Camberwell Board of +Guardians decide--at the instigation, alas! of a woman member--that the +single mug of beer which for years had solaced the inmates of Camberwell +Workhouse on Christmas Day, should hereafter be abolished as an immoral +indulgence. The generous ghost of Dickens must have groaned in Heaven +over that melancholy and mean reform. + + +II + +'To achieve what man may, to bear what man must,'--since the struggle +for life began, this has been the purpose and the pride of humanity. We +Americans were trained from childhood to believe that while, in the +final issue, each of us must answer for himself, the country--our +country--gave to all scope for effort, and chance of victory. + +This was not mere Fourth of July oratory, nor the fervent utterances of +presidential campaigns. It was a serious and a sober faith, based upon +some knowledge of the Constitution, some inheritance of experience, some +element of democracy which flavored our early lives. The mere sense of +space carried with it a profound and eager hopefulness. Those of us +whose fathers or whose grandfathers had crossed the sea to escape from +more cramping conditions, felt this atmosphere of independence keenly +and consciously. Those of us whose fathers or whose grandfathers brought +up their families in an alien land with decent industry and thrift, were +aware, even in childhood, that the Republic had fostered our growth. +Therefore am I pardonably bewildered when I hear American workmen called +'slaves' and 'prisoners of starvation,' and American employers called +'base oppressors,' and 'despots on their thrones.' This fantastic +nomenclature seems immeasurably removed from the temperate language in +which were formulated the temperate convictions of my youth. + +The assumption that the American laborer to-day stands where the French +laborer stood before the Revolution, where the English laborer stood +before the passing of the first Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn +Laws, shows a lack of historical perspective. The assumption that all +strikes represent an agonized protest against tyranny, an agonized +appeal from injustice, is a perversion of truth. The assumption that +child-labor in the United States is the blot upon civilization that it +was in England seventy years ago, denies the duty of comparison. If the +people who write verses about 'Labor Crucified' would make a table of +the wages paid to skilled and unskilled workmen, from the Chicago +carpenter to the Philadelphia street-cleaner, they might sing in a more +cheerful strain. If the people who to-day echo the bitterest lines of +Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' would ascertain and bear in mind +the proportion of little boys and girls who are going to school in the +United States, how many years they average, and how much the country +pays for their education, they might spare us some violent invectives. +Even Mr. Robert Hunter permits himself the use of the word 'cannibalism' +when speaking of child-workers, and this in the face of legislation +which every year extends its area, and grows more stringently +protective. + +There is a great deal of loose writing on this important theme, and it +stands in the way of amendment. It is assumed that parents are seldom or +never to blame for sending their children to work. The mill-owner +snatches them from their mothers' arms. It is assumed that the child who +works would--if there were no employment for him--be at school, or at +play, happy, healthy, and well-nourished. No one even alludes to the +cruel poverty of the South, which, for generations before the cotton +mills were built, stunted the growth and sapped the strength of Southern +children. They lived, we are told, a 'wholesome rural life,' and the +greed of the capitalist is alone responsible for the blighting of their +pastoral paradise. + +There is no need to write like this. The question at issue is a grave +and simple one. It makes its appeal to the conscience and the sense of +the nation, and every year sees some measure of reform. If a baby girl +in an American city, a child of three or five, is forced to toil all +day, winding artificial daisy stems at a penny a hundred, let the name +of her employer and the place of her employment be made public. The +Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children can deal peremptorily +with such a case. It is not even the privilege of parents to work a +little child so relentlessly. If the pathetic story is not supported by +facts, or is not in accord with facts, it is neither wise nor well to +publish it. Why should a sober periodical, like the _Child-Labor +Bulletin_, devoted to a good cause, print a poem called 'A Song of the +Factory,' in which happy children are portrayed as sporting in beautiful +meadows, + + Idling among the feathery blooms, + +until a sort of ogre comes along, builds a factory, drives the poor +innocents into it, and compels them to + + Crouch all day by the spindles, wizened, and wan, and old, + +earning 'his bread.' Apparently--and this is the gist of the +matter--they have no need to earn bread for themselves. The accompanying +illustrations show us on one page a prettily dressed little girl sitting +daisy-crowned in the fields, and, on the other page, a ragged and +tattered little girl with a shawl over her head going to the work which +has but too plainly impoverished her. Hansel and Gretel are not more +distinctly within the boundaries of fairyland than are these entrapped +children. The witch is not more distinctly a child-eating hobgoblin than +is the capitalist of such fervid song. + +The sickly and unreasoning tone which pervades the literature of poverty +is demoralizing. There is nothing helpful in the assumption that effort +is vain, resistance hopeless, and the world monstrously cruel. The +dominating element of such prose and verse is a bleak despair, unmanly, +unwomanly, inhuman. Out of the abundance of material before me, I quote +a single poem, published in the New York _Call_, reprinted in the +_Survey_, and christened mockingly,-- + + THE STRAIGHT ROAD + + They got y', kid, they got y', just like I said they would; + You tried to walk the narrow path, + You tried, and got an awful laugh; + And laughs are all y' did get, kid, they got y' good! + + They never saw the little kid,--the kid I used to know, + The little bare-legged girl back home, + The little girl that played alone, + They don't know half the things I know, kid; ain't it so? + + They got y', kid, they got y',--you know they got y' right; + They waited till they saw y' limp, + Then introduced y' to the pimp, + Ah, you were down then, kid, and couldn't fight. + + I guess you know what some don't know, and others know damn well, + That sweatshops don't grow angel's wings, + That working girls is easy things, + And poverty's the straightest road to hell. + +And this is what our Lady Poverty, bride of Saint Francis, friend of all +holiness, counsel of all perfection, has come to mean in these years of +grace! She who was once the surest guide to Heaven now leads her chosen +ones to Hell. She who was once beloved by the devout and honored by the +just, is now a scandal and a shame, the friend of harlotry, the +instigator of crime. Even a true poet like Francis Thompson laments that +the poverty exalted by Christ should have been cast down from her high +caste. + + All men did admire + Her modest looks, her ragged, sweet attire + In which the ribboned shoe could not compete + With her clear simple feet. + But Satan, envying Thee thy one ewe-lamb, + With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity + Was not content, till last unthought-of she + Was his to damn. + Thine ingrate, ignorant lamb + He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her + This thing which qualms the air, + Vile, terrible, old, + Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold. + +These are the words of one to whom the London gutters were for years a +home, and whose strengthless manhood lay inert under a burden of pain he +had no courage to lift. Yet never was sufferer more shone upon by +kindness than was Francis Thompson; never was man better fitted to +testify to the goodness of a bad world. And he did bear such brave +testimony again and yet again, so that the bulk of his verse is alien to +pessimism,--'every stanza an act of faith, and a declaration of good +will.' + +The demoralizing quality of such stuff as 'The Straight Road,' which is +forced upon us with increasing pertinacity, is its denial of kindness, +its evading of obligation. Temptation is not only the occasion, but the +justifier of sin,--a point of view which plays havoc with our common +standard of morality. When a vicious young millionaire like Harry Thaw +runs amuck through his crude and evil environment, we sigh and say, 'His +money ruined him.' When a poor young woman abandons her weary +frugalities for the questionable pleasures of prostitution, we sigh and +say, 'Her poverty drove her to it.' Where then does goodness dwell? What +part does honor play? The Sieur de Joinville, in his memoirs of Saint +Louis, tells us that a certain man, sore beset by the pressure of +temptation, sought counsel from the Bishop of Paris, 'whose Christian +name was William.' And this wise William of Paris said to him: 'The +castle of Montl'hery stands in the safe heart of France, and no invading +hosts assail it. But the castle of La Rochelle in Poitou stands on the +line of battle. Day and night it must be guarded from assault, and it +has suffered grievously. Which gentleman, think you, the King holds high +in favor, the governor of Montl'hery, or the governor of La Rochelle? +The post of danger is the post of glory, and he who is sorely wounded in +the combat is honored by God and man.' + + +III + +There are those whose ardor for humanity finds a congenial vent in the +denouncement of all they see about them,--all the institutions of their +country, all the laborious processes of civilization. Sociologists of +this type speak and write of an ordinary American city in terms which +Dante might have envied. Nobody, it would seem, is ever cured in its +hospitals; they only lie on 'cots of pain.' Nobody is ever reformed in +its reformatories. Nobody is reared to decency in its asylums. Nobody +is--apparently--educated in its schools. Its industries are ravenous +beasts, sucking the blood of workers; its poor are 'shackled slaves'; +its humble homes are 'dens.' I have heard a philanthropic lecturer talk +to the poor upon the housing of the poor. She threw on a screen enlarged +photographs of narrow streets and tenement rooms which looked to me +unspeakably dreary, but which the working-women around me gazed at in +mild perplexity, seeing nothing amiss, and wondering that their +residences should be held up to this unseemly scorn. They did not do as +did the angry Italians of a New Jersey town,--smash the invidious +pictures which shamed their homes; they sat in stolid silence and +discomfiture, dimly conscious of an unresented insult. + +It is hard to grasp a point of view immeasurably remote from our own; +but what can we understand of other lives unless we do this difficult +thing? Old women in the out-wards of an almshouse (of all earthly abodes +the saddest) have boasted to me that their floors were scrubbed every +other day, and their sheets changed once a week; and this braggart humor +stunned my senses until I called to mind the floor and the bed of one of +them (an extraordinarily dirty old woman) whom I had known in other +years. Last winter the workers in a settlement house were called upon at +midnight to succor a woman who had been kicked and beaten into +unconsciousness by a drunken husband. The poor creature was all one +bleeding bruise. When she was revived, her dim eyes traveled over the +horrified faces about her. 'It's pretty bad,' she gasped, 'it's mighty +bad'; and then, with another look at the group of protecting, pitying +spinsters, 'but it must be something fierce to be an old maid.' + +The city is a good friend to the poor. It gives them day nurseries for +their babies, kindergartens for their little children, schools for their +boys and girls, playgrounds, swimming-pools, recreation piers, +reading-rooms, libraries, churches, clubs, hospitals, cheap amusements, +open-air concerts, employment agencies, the companionship of their kind, +and the chance of a friend at need. In return, the poor love the city, +and cling to it with reasonable but somewhat stifling affection. They +know that the hardest thing in life is to be isolated,--'unrelated,' to +use Carlyle's apt word; and they escape this fate by eschewing the +much-lauded fields and farms. They know also that in the country they +must stand or fall by their own unaided efforts, they must learn the +hard lesson of self-reliance. Many of them propose to live, as did the +astute author of _Piers Plowman_, 'in the town, and on the town as +well.' Moreover, pleasure means as much to them as it does to the rest +of us. We hardly needed Mr. Chesterton to tell us that a visit to a +corner saloon may be just as exciting an event to a tenement-house +dweller, as a dinner at a gold-and-marble hotel is to the average +middle-class citizen; and that the tenement-house dweller may be just as +moderate in his potations:-- + + Merrily taking twopenny rum, and cheese with a pocket knife. + +Poverty, we are assured, is an 'error,' like ill-health and crime. It is +an anachronism in civilization, a stain upon a wisely governed land. But +into our country which, after a human fashion, is both wise and foolish, +pours the poverty of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with +but a few dollars between them and want; with scant equipment, physical +or mental, for the struggle of life; with an inheritance of feebleness +from ill-nourished generations before them,--this is the problem which +the United States faces courageously, and solves as best she can. What +she cannot do is miraculously to convert poverty into plenty,--certainly +not before the next year doubles, and the third year trebles the +miracle-seeking multitude. She cannot properly house or profitably +employ a million of immigrants before the next million is clamoring at +her doors. Nor is she even given a fair chance to accomplish her giant +task. The demagogues who are employed in the congenial sport of railroad +baiting, and who are enjoying beyond measure the fun of chivying +business interests into dusty corners, are the ones to lift up their +voices in shrill appeal for the army of the unemployed. They refuse to +connect one phenomenon with the other. The notion that crippling +industries will benefit the industrious is not so new as it seems. AEsop +must have had a clear insight into its workings when he wrote the fable +of the goose that laid the golden egg. + +The City of New York expends, according to a recent report of the +Hospital Investigating Committee, more than a million of dollars a year +for the care of sick, defective, and otherwise helpless aliens. It +expended in 1913 nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the care of +aliens who had been in this country less than five years. This is the +record of our greatest city, the one in which the astute immigrant takes +up his abode. The education she gives her little foreign-born children +comprises for the most part manual and vocational training, clinics for +the defective, schools for the incorrigible, free or cost-price lunches, +doctoring, dentistry, the care of trained nurses, and a score of similar +attentions unknown to an earlier generation, undreamed of in the +countries whence these children come. In return for such fostering care, +New York is held up to execration because she has the money to pay the +taxes which are expended in this fashion, because she lays the golden +egg which benefits the poor of twenty nations. Her unemployed +(reinforced hugely from less favored communities) riot in her streets +and churches, and agitators curse her for a thing of evil, a city of +palaces and slums, corroded with the + + Shame of lives that lie + Couched in ease, while down the streets + Pain and want go by. + +The only people who take short views of life are the poor, the poor +whose daily wage is spent on their daily needs. Clerks and bookkeepers +and small tradesmen (toilers upon whose struggle for decency and +independence nobody ever wastes a word of sympathy) may fret over the +uncertainty of their future, the narrow margin which lies between them +and want. But the workman and his family have a courage of their own, +the courage of the soldier who does not spend the night before battle +calculating his chances of a gun-shot wound, or of a legless future. It +is exasperating to hear a teamster's wife cheerfully announce the coming +of her tenth baby; but the calmness with which she faces the situation +has in it something human and elemental. It is exasperating to see the +teamster risk illness and loss of work (he might at least pull off his +wet clothes when he gets home); but he tells you he has not gone to his +grave with a cold _yet_, and this careless confidence saves him as much +as it costs. I read recently an economist's sorrowful complaint that +families, in need of the necessities of life, go to moving-picture +shows; that women, with their husbands' scanty earnings in their hands, +take their children to these blithesome entertainments instead of buying +the Sunday dinner. It sounds like the citizens who buy motor cars +instead of paying off the mortgages on their homes, and it is an error +of judgment which the working man is little likely to condone; but that +the pleasure-seeking impulse--which social workers assign exclusively to +the spirit of youth--should mutiny in a matron's bones suggests +survivals of cheerfulness, high lights amid the gloom. + +The deprecation of earthly anxiety taught by the Gospels, the precedence +given to the poor by the New Testament, the value placed upon voluntary +poverty by the Christian Church,--these things have for nineteen hundred +years helped in the moulding of men. There still remain some leaven of +courage, some savor of philosophy, some echoes of ancient wisdom (heard +oftenest from uneducated men), some laughter loud and careless as the +laughter of the Middle Ages, some slow sense of justice, not easy to +pervert. These qualities are perhaps as helpful as the 'divine +discontent' fostered by enthusiasts for sorrow, the cowardice bred by +insistence upon trouble and anxiety, the rancor engendered by invectives +against earth and heaven. No lot is bettered by having its hardships +emphasized. No man is helped by the drowning of his courage, the +destruction of his good-will, the paralyzing grip of + + Envy with squinting eyes, + Sick of a strange disease, his neighbor's health. + + + + +Entertaining the Candidate + +By Katharine Baker + + +Bag in hand, brother stops in for fifteen minutes, from campaigning, to +get some clean shirts. He says the candidate will be in town day after +to-morrow. Do we want him to come here, or shall he go to a hotel? + +We want him, of course. But we deprecate the brevity of this notice. +Also the cook and chambermaid are new, and remarkably inexpert. Brother, +however, declines to feel any concern. His confidence in our power to +cope with emergencies is flattering if exasperating. + +There is nothing in the markets at this time of year. Guests have a +malignant facility in choosing such times. We scour the country for +forty miles in search of green vegetables. We confide in the fishmonger, +who grieves sympathetically over the 'phone, because all crabs are now +cold-storage, and he'd be deceiving us if he said otherwise. + +Still we are determined to have luncheon prepared in the house. Last +time the august judge dined with us we summoned a caterer from a hundred +miles away, and though the caterer's food was good, it was late. We +love promptness, and we are going to have it. Ladies knew all about +efficiency long before Mr. Frederick Taylor. Only they couldn't teach it +to servants, and he would find he couldn't either. But every mistress of +a house knows how to make short cuts, and is expert at 'record +production' in emergencies. + +The casual brother says there will be one or two dozen people at +luncheon. He will telephone us fifteen minutes before they arrive. Yes, +really, that's the best he can do. + +So we prepare for one or two dozen people, and they must sit down to +luncheon because men hate a buffet meal. We struggle with the problem, +how many chickens are required for twelve or twenty-four people? The +answer, however, is really obvious. Enough for twenty-four will be +enough for twelve. + +Day after to-morrow arrives. The gardener comes in to lay hearth-fires +and carry tables. We get out china and silver. We make salad and rolls, +fruit-cup and cake. We guide the cook's faltering steps over the +critical moments of soup and chicken. We do the oysters in our own +particular way, which we fancy inimitable. We arrange bushels of flowers +in bowls, vases, and baskets, and set them on mantels, tables, +book-cases, everywhere that a flower can find a footing. The chauffeur +comes in proudly with the flower-holder from the limousine, and we fill +it in honor of the distinguished guest. + +Then we go outside to see that the approach to the house is +satisfactory. The bland old gardener points to the ivy-covered wall, and +says with innocent joy, '---- it, ain't that ivory the prettiest thing +you ever saw in your life?' And we can't deny that the lawn looks well, +with ivy, and cosmos, and innumerable chrysanthemums. + +The cook and chambermaid will have to help wait on the table. The +chambermaid, who is what the butler contemptuously calls 'an educated +nigger,' and so knows nothing useful, announces that she has no white +uniform. All she has is a cold in her head. We give her a blouse and +skirt, wondering why Providence doesn't eliminate the unfit. + +We run upstairs to put on our costliest shoes and stockings, and our +most perishable gown. The leisurely brother gets us on the wire to say +that there will be twenty guests in ten minutes. + +Descending, we reset the tables to seat twenty guests, light the +wood-fires, toss together twenty mint-juleps, and a few over for luck, +repeat our clear instructions to the goggling chambermaid, desperately +implore the butler to see that she keeps on the job, drop a last touch +of flavoring in the soup, and are sitting by the fire with an air of +childish gayety and carelessness when the train of motor-cars draws up +to the door. + +Here is the judge, courteous and authoritative. Here is his assiduous +suite. The room fills with faces well known in every country that an +illustrated newspaper can penetrate. From the Golden Gate and the Rio +Grande, from New York and Alabama, these men have come together, intent +on wresting to themselves the control of the Western Hemisphere. Now +they are a sort of highly respectable guerillas. To-morrow, very likely, +they will be awe-inspiring magnates. + +Theoretically we are impressed. Actually they have mannerisms, and some +of them wear spectacles. We reflect that the triumvirs very likely had +mannerisms, too, and Antony himself might have been glad to own +spectacles. We try to feel reverence for the high calling of these men. +We hope they'll like our luncheon. + +The butler brings in the juleps and we maintain a detached look, as +though those juleps were just a happy thought of the butler himself, and +we were as much surprised as anybody. The judge won't have one, but most +everybody else will. The newspaper men look love and gratitude at the +butler. + +That earnest youth is the judge's secretary. The huge, iron-gray man +expects to be a governor after November fifth, if dreams come true. The +amiable old gentleman who never leaves the judge's side, has come two +thousand miles out of pure political enthusiasm, to protect the +candidate from assassins. He can do it, too, we conclude, when we look +past his smiling mouth into his steely eyes. + +Here is the campaign manager, business man and man-of-the-world. + +This pretty little newspaper-woman from Utah implores us to get an +utterance on suffrage from the judge. Just a word. It will save him +thousands of votes. Well, she's a dear little thing, but we can't take +advantage of our guest. + +Luncheon is announced. Brother, slightly apologetic, murmurs that there +are twenty-three. Entirely unforeseen. He babbles incoherently. + +But it's all right. We women won't come to the table. Voting and eating +and things like that are better left to the men anyway. Why should women +want to do either, when they have fathers and brothers to do it for +them? We can sit in the gallery and watch. It's very nice for us. And +exclusive. Nothing promiscuous. Yes, go on. We'll wait. + +Whoever is listening to our conversation professes heartbreak at our +decision, and edges toward the rapidly filling dining-room. + +We sit down to play lady of leisure, in various affected attitudes. We +are not going near the kitchen again. The luncheon is simple. Everything +is perfectly arranged. The servants can do it all. It's mere machine +work. + +From afar we observe the soup vanishing. Then one by one we +stammer,--'The mayonnaise--'--'I wonder if the rolls are hot--'--'Cook's +coffee is impossible,'--fade silently up the front stair, and scurry +down the kitchen-way. + +We cover the perishable gown with a huge white apron, we send up a +fervent prayer for the costly shoes, and go where we are needed most. + +We save the day for good coffee. With the precision of a juggler we +rescue plates from the chambermaid, who is overcome by this introduction +to the great world and dawdles contemplatively through the pantry door. +Charmed with our proficiency, she stands by our side, and watches us +clear a shelf of china in the twinkling of an eye. If she could find a +stool, she would sit at our feet, making motion studies. But she +couldn't find it if it were already there. She couldn't find anything. +We order her back to the dining-room, where she takes up a strategic +position by the window, from which she can idly survey the mob outside, +and the hungry men within. + +The last coffee-cup has passed through the doorway. Cigars and matches +are circulating in the butler's capable hands. No more need for us. + +We shed the enveloping aprons, disappear from the kitchen, and +materialize again, elegantly useless, in the drawing-room. Nobody can +say that luncheon wasn't hot and promptly served. + +Chairs begin to clatter. They are rising from the table. A brass band +outside bursts into being. + +Brother had foretold that band to us, and we had expressed vivid +doubts. He said it would cost eighty dollars. Now eighty dollars in +itself is a respectable sum, a sum capable even of exerting some mild +fascination, but eighty dollars viewed in relation to a band becomes +merely ludicrous. + +We said an eighty-dollar band was a thing innately impossible, like +free-trade, or a dachshund. Brother attested that the next best grade of +band would demand eight hundred. We justly caviled at eight hundred. We +inquired, Why any band? Brother claimed that it would make a cheerful +noise, and we yielded. + +So at this moment the band begins to make a noise. We perceive at once +that the price was accurately gauged. It is unquestionably an +eighty-dollar band. We begin to believe in dachshunds. + +To these supposedly cheerful strains the gentlemen stream into the +drawing-room. They beam repletely. They tell us what a fine luncheon it +was. They are eloquent about it. All the conditions of their +entertainment were ideal, they would have us believe. They imply that we +are mighty lucky, in that our men can provide us with such a luxurious +existence. They smile with majestic benignity at these fair, but +frivolous pensioners on masculine bounty. American women are petted, +helpless dolls, anyway. Foreigners have said so. They clasp our useless +hands in fervent farewells. They proceed in state to the waiting cars. +They hope we will follow them to the meeting. Oh, yes, we will come, +though incapable of apprehending the high problems of government. + +Led by the honest band, surrounded by flags, followed by cheers, they +disappear in magnificent procession. Now we may straggle to the +dining-room and eat cold though matchless oysters, tepid chicken, and in +general whatever there is any left of. + +The chambermaid has broken a lovely old Minton plate. We are glad we +didn't use the coffee-cups that were made in France for Dolly Madison. +She would have enjoyed wrecking those. + +We hurry, because we don't want to miss the meeting altogether. We think +enviously of the men. In our secret souls, we'd like to campaign. We +love to talk better than anything else in the world, and we could make +nice speeches, too. But we must do the oysters and the odd jobs, and +keep the hearth-fires going, like responsible vestal virgins. It's +woman's sphere. Man gave it to her because he didn't want it himself. + + + + +The Street + +By Simeon Strunsky + + +It is two short blocks from my office near Park Row to the Subway +station where I take the express for Belshazzar Court. Eight months in +the year it is my endeavor to traverse this distance as quickly as I +can. This is done by cutting diagonally across the street traffic. By +virtue of the law governing right-angled triangles I thus save as much +as fifty feet and one fifth of a minute of time. In the course of a year +this saving amounts to sixty minutes, which may be profitably spent over +a two-reel presentation of 'The Moonshiner's Bride,' supplemented by an +intimate picture of Lumbering in Saskatchewan. But with the coming of +warm weather my habits change. It grows more difficult to plunge into +the murk of the Subway. + +A foretaste of the languor of June is in the air. The turnstile +storm-doors in our office building, which have been put aside for brief +periods during the first deceptive approaches of spring, only to come +back triumphant from Elba, have been definitively removed. The +steel-workers pace their girders twenty floors high almost in +mid-season form, and their pneumatic hammers scold and chatter through +the sultry hours. The soda-fountains are bright with new compounds whose +names ingeniously reflect the world's progress from day to day in +politics, science, and the arts. From my window I can see the long black +steamships pushing down to the sea, and they raise vague speculations in +my mind about the cost of living in the vicinity of Sorrento and +Fontainebleau. On such a day I am reminded of my physician's orders, +issued last December, to walk a mile every afternoon on leaving my +office. So I stroll up Broadway with the intention of taking my train +farther up-town, at Fourteenth Street. + +The doctor did not say stroll. He said a brisk walk with head erect, +chest thrown out, diaphragm well contracted, and a general aspect of +money in the bank. But here enters human perversity. The only place +where I am in the mood to walk after the prescribed military fashion is +in the open country. Just where by all accounts I ought to be sauntering +without heed to time, studying the lovely texts which Nature has set +down in the modest type-forms selected from her inexhaustible fonts,--in +the minion of ripening berries, in the nonpareil of crawling insect +life, the agate of tendril and filament, and the 12-point diamond of the +dust,--there I stride along and see little. + +And in the city, where I should swing along briskly, I lounge. What is +there on Broadway to linger over? On Broadway, Nature has used her +biggest, fattest type-forms. Tall, flat, building fronts, brazen with +many windows and ribbed with commercial gilt lettering six feet high; +shrieking proclamations of auction sales written in letters of fire on +vast canvasses; railway posters in scarlet and blue and green; rotatory +barber-poles striving at the national colors and producing vertigo; +banners, escutcheons, crests, in all the primary colors--surely none of +these things needs poring over. And I know them with my eyes closed. I +know the windows where lithe youths in gymnasium dress demonstrate the +virtue of home exercises; the windows where other young men do nothing +but put on and take off patent reversible near-linen collars; where +young women deftly roll cigarettes; where other young women whittle at +sticks with miraculously stropped razors. I know these things by heart, +yet I linger over them in flagrantly unhygienic attitudes, my shoulders +bent forward and my chest and diaphragm in a position precisely the +reverse of that prescribed by the doctor. + +Perhaps the thing that makes me linger before these familiar sights is +the odd circumstance that in Broadway's shop-windows Nature is almost +never herself, but is either supernatural or artificial. Nature, for +instance, never intended that razors should cut wood and remain sharp; +that linen collars should keep on getting cleaner the longer they are +worn; that glass should not break; that ink should not stain; that +gauze should not tear; that an object worth five dollars should sell for +$1.39; but all these things happen in Broadway windows. Williams, whom I +meet now and then, who sometimes turns and walks up with me to +Fourteenth Street, pointed out to me the other day how strange a thing +it was that the one street which has become a synonym for 'real life' to +all good suburban Americans is not real at all, but is crowded either +with miracles or with imitations. + +The windows on Broadway glow with wax fruits and with flowers of muslin +and taffeta drawn by bounteous Nature from her storehouses in Parisian +garret workshops. Broadway's ostrich feathers have been plucked in East +Side tenements. The huge cigars in the tobacconist's windows are of +wood. The enormous bottles of champagne in the saloons are of cardboard, +and empty. The tall scaffoldings of proprietary medicine bottles in the +drug shops are of paper. 'Why,' said Williams, 'even the jewelry sold in +the Japanese auction stores is not genuine, and the sellers are not +Japanese.' + +This bustling mart of commerce, as the generation after the Civil War +used to say, is only a world of illusion. Artificial flowers, artificial +fruits, artificial limbs, tobacco, rubber, silks, woolens, straws, gold, +silver. The young men and women who manipulate razors and elastic cords +are real, but not always. Williams and I once stood for a long while +and gazed at a young woman posing in a drug-shop window, and argued +whether she was alive. Ultimately she winked and Williams gloated over +me. But how do I know her wink was real? At any rate the great mass of +human life in the windows is artificial. The ladies who smile out of +charming morning costumes are obviously of lining and plaster. Their +smug Herculean husbands in pajamas preserve their equanimity in the +severest winter weather only because of their wire-and-plaster +constitution. The baby reposing in its beribboned crib is china and +excelsior. Illusion everywhere. + +But the Broadway crowd is real. You only have to buffet it for five +minutes to feel, in eyes and arms and shoulders, how real it is. When I +was a boy and was taken to the circus it was always an amazing thing to +me that there should be so many people in the street moving in a +direction away from the circus. Something of this sensation still besets +me whenever we go down in the Subway from Belshazzar Court to hear +Caruso. The presence of all the other people on our train is simple +enough. They are all on their way to hear Caruso. But what of the crowds +in the trains that flash by in the opposite direction? It is not a +question of feeling sorry for them. I try to understand and I fail. But +on Broadway on a late summer afternoon the obverse is true. The natural +thing is that the living tide as it presses south shall beat me back, +halt me, eddy around me. I know that there are people moving north with +me, but I am not acutely aware of them. This onrush of faces converges +on me alone. It is I against half the world. + +And then suddenly out of the surge of faces one leaps out at me. It is +Williams, whose doctor has told him that the surest way of fighting down +the lust for tobacco is to walk down from his office to the ferry every +afternoon. Williams and I salute each other after the fashion of +Broadway, which is to exchange greetings backward over the shoulder. +This is the first step in an elaborate minuet. Because we have passed +each other before recognition came, our hands fly out backward. Now we +whirl half around, so that I who have been moving north face the west, +while Williams, who has been traveling south, now looks east. Our +clasped hands strain at each other as we stand there poised for flight +after the first greeting. A quarter of a minute perhaps, and we have +said good-bye. + +But if the critical quarter of a minute passes, there ensues a change of +geographical position which corresponds to a change of soul within us. I +suddenly say to myself that there are plenty of trains to be had at +Fourteenth Street. Williams recalls that another boat will leave Battery +Place shortly after the one he is bound for. So the tension of our +outstretched arms relaxes. I, who have been facing west, complete the +half circle and swing south. Williams veers due north, and we two men +stand face to face. The beat and clamor of the crowd fall away from us +like a well-trained stage mob. We are in Broadway, but not of it. + +'Well, what's the good word?' says Williams. + +When two men meet on Broadway the spirit of optimism strikes fire. We +begin by asking each other what the good word is. We take it for granted +that neither of us has anything but a chronicle of victory and courage +to relate. What other word but the good word is tolerable in the lexicon +of living, upstanding men? Failure is only for the dead. Surrender is +for the man with yellow in his nature. So Williams and I pay our +acknowledgments to this best of possible worlds. I give Williams the +good word. I make no allusion to the fact that I have spent a miserable +night in communion with neuralgia; how can that possibly concern him? +Another manuscript came back this morning from an editor who regretted +that his is the most unintelligent body of readers in the country. The +third cook in three weeks left us last night after making vigorous +reflections on my wife's good nature and my own appearance. Only an hour +ago, as I was watching the long, black steamers bound for Sorrento and +Fontainebleau, the monotony of one's treadmill work, the flat +unprofitableness of scribbling endlessly on sheets of paper, had become +almost a nausea. But Williams will know nothing of this from me. Why +should he? He may have been sitting up all night with a sick child. At +this very moment the thought of the little parched lips, the moan, the +unseeing eyes, may be tearing at his entrails; but he in turn gives me +the good word, and many others after that, and we pass on. + +But sometimes I doubt. This splendid optimism of people on Broadway, in +the Subway and in the shops and offices--is it really a sign of high +spiritual courage, or is it just lack of sensibility? Do we find it easy +to keep a stiff upper lip, to buck up, to never say die, because we are +brave men, or simply because we lack the sensitiveness and the +imagination to react to pain? It may be even worse than that. It may be +part of our commercial gift for window-dressing, for putting up a good +front. + +Sometimes I feel that Williams has no right to be walking down Broadway +on business when there is a stricken child at home. The world cannot +possibly need him at that moment as much as his own flesh and blood +does. It is not courage; it is brutish indifference. At such times I am +tempted to dismiss as mythical all this fine talk about feelings that +run deep beneath the surface, and bruised hearts that ache under the +smile. If a man really suffers he will show it. If a man cultivates the +habit of not showing emotion he will end by having none to show. How +much of Broadway's optimism is--But here I am paraphrasing William +James's _Principles of Psychology_, which the reader can just as well +consult for himself in the latest revised edition of 1907. + +Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely Williams's children are all in +perfect health, and my envelope from the editor has brought a check +instead of a rejection slip. It is on such occasions that Williams and +I, after shaking hands the way a locomotive takes on water on the run, +wheel around, halt, and proceed to buy something at the rate of two for +a quarter. If any one is ever inclined to doubt the spirit of American +fraternity, it is only necessary to recall the number of commodities for +men that sell two for twenty-five cents. In theory, the two cigars which +Williams and I buy for twenty-five cents are worth fifteen cents apiece. +As a matter of fact they are probably ten-cent cigars. But the +shopkeeper is welcome to his extra nickel. It is a small price to pay +for the seal of comradeship that stamps his pair of cigars selling for a +single quarter. Two men who have concluded a business deal in which each +has commendably tried to get the better of the other may call for +twenty-five cent perfectos or for half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I understand +there are such. But friends sitting down together will always demand +cigars that go for a round sum, two for a quarter or three for fifty (if +the editor's check is what it ought to be). + +When people speak of the want of real comradeship among women, I +sometimes wonder if one of the reasons may not be that the prices which +women are accustomed to pay are individualistic instead of fraternal. +The soda fountains and the street cars do not dispense goods at the rate +of two items for a single coin. It is infinitely worse in the department +stores. Treating a friend to something that costs $2.79 is +inconceivable. But I have really wandered from my point. + +'Well, be good,' says Williams, and rushes off to catch his boat. + +The point I wish to make is that on Broadway people pay tribute to the +principle of goodness that rules this world, both in the way they greet +and in the way they part. We salute by asking each other what the good +word is. When we say good-bye we enjoin each other to be good. The +humorous assumption is that gay devils like Williams and me need to be +constantly warned against straying off into the primrose paths that run +out of Broadway. + +Simple, humorous, average American man! You have left your suburban +couch in time to walk half a mile to the station and catch the 7.59 for +the city. You have read your morning paper; discussed the weather, the +tariff, and the prospects for lettuce with your neighbor; and made the +office only a minute late. You have been fastened to your desk from nine +o'clock to five, with half an hour for lunch, which you have eaten in a +clamorous, overheated restaurant while you watched your hat and coat. At +odd moments during the day the thought of doctor's bills, rent bills, +school bills, has insisted on receiving attention. At the end of the +day, laden with parcels from the market, from the hardware store, from +the seedman, you are bound for the ferry to catch the 5.43, when you +meet Smith, who, having passed the good word, sends you on your way with +the injunction to be good--not to play roulette, not to open wine, not +to turkey-trot, not to joy-ride, not to haunt the stage door. Be good, O +simple, humorous, average suburban American! + +I take back that word suburban. The Sunday Supplement has given it a +meaning which is not mine. I am speaking only of the suburban in spirit, +of a simplicity, a meekness which is of the soul only. Outwardly there +is nothing suburban about the crowd on lower Broadway. The man in the +street is not at all the diminutive, apologetic creature with side +whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought forth and named Common People, who +begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the Rent-Payer and the Ultimate +Consumer. The crowd on lower Broadway is alert and well set up. Yes, +though one hates to do it, I must say 'clean-cut.' The men on the +sidewalk are young, limber, sharp-faced, almost insolent young men. +There are not very many old men in the crowd, though I see any number of +gray-haired young men. Seldom do you detect the traditional signs of +age, the sagging lines of the face, the relaxed abdominal contour, the +tamed spirit. The young, the young-old, the old-young, but rarely quite +the old. + +I am speaking only of externals. Clean-cut, eager faces are very +frequently disappointing. A very ordinary mind may be working behind +that clear sweep of brow and nose and chin. I have known the shock of +young men who look like kings of Wall Street and speak like shoe clerks. +They are shoe clerks. But the appearance is there, that athletic +carriage which is helped out by our triumphant, ready-made clothing. I +suppose I ought to detest the tailor's tricks which iron out all ages +and all stations into a uniformity of padded shoulders and trim +waist-lines and hips. I imagine I ought to despise our habit of wearing +elegant shoddy where the European chooses honest, clumsy woolens. But I +am concerned only with externals, and in outward appearances a Broadway +crowd beats the world. AEsthetically we simply are in a class by +ourselves when compared with the Englishman and the Teuton in their +skimpy, ill-cut garments. Let the British and German ambassadors at +Washington do their worst. This is my firm belief and I will maintain it +against the world. The truth must out. _Ruat coelum. Ich kann nicht +anders. J'y suis, j'y reste._ + +Williams laughs at my lyrical outbursts. But I am not yet through. I +still have to speak of the women in the crowd. What an infinitely finer +thing is a woman than a man of her class! To see this for yourself you +have only to walk up Broadway until the southward-bearing stream breaks +off and the tide begins to run from west to east. You have passed out of +the commercial district into the region of factories. It is well on +toward dark, and the barracks that go by the unlovely name of loft +buildings, are pouring out their battalions of needle-workers. The crowd +has become a mass. The nervous pace of lower Broadway slackens to the +steady, patient tramp of a host. It is an army of women, with here and +there a flying detachment of the male. + +On the faces of the men the day's toil has written its record even as on +the women, but in a much coarser hand. Fatigue has beaten down the soul +of these men into brutish indifference, but in the women it has drawn +fine the flesh only to make it more eloquent of the soul. Instead of +listlessness, there is wistfulness. Instead of vacuity you read mystery. +Innate grace rises above the vulgarity of the dress. Cheap, tawdry +blouse and imitation willow-plume walk shoulder to shoulder with the +shoddy coat of the male, copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may attain +to five dollars. But the men's shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman +transfigures and subtilizes the cheap material. The spirit of grace +which is the birthright of her sex cannot be killed--not even by the +presence of her best young man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by the +heritage of her sex, and America has accentuated her title. This +America which drains her youthful vigor with overwork, which takes from +her cheeks the color she has brought from her Slavic or Italian peasant +home, makes restitution by remoulding her in more delicate, more +alluring lines, gives her the high privilege of charm--and neurosis. + +Williams and I pause at the Subway entrances and watch the earth suck in +the crowd. It lets itself be swallowed up with meek good-nature. Our +amazing good-nature! Political philosophers have deplored the fact. They +have urged us to be quicker-tempered, more resentful of being stepped +upon, more inclined to write letters to the editor. I agree that only in +that way can we be rid of political bosses, of brutal policemen, of +ticket-speculators, of taxi-cab extortioners, of insolent waiters, of +janitors, of indecent congestion in travel, of unheated cars in the +winter and barred-up windows in summer. I am at heart with the social +philosophers. But then I am not typical of the crowd. When my neighbor's +elbow injects itself into the small of my back, I twist around and +glower at him. I forget that his elbow is the innocent mechanical result +of a whole series of elbows and backs extending the length of the car, +to where the first cause operates in the form of a station-guard's +shoulder ramming the human cattle into their stalls. In the faces about +me there is no resentment. Instead of smashing windows, instead of +raising barricades in the Subway and hanging the train-guards with +their own lanterns about their necks, the crowd sways and bends to the +lurching of the train, and young voices call out cheerfully, 'Plenty of +room ahead.' + +Horribly good-natured! We have taken a phrase which is the badge of our +shame and turned it into a jest. Plenty of room ahead! If this were a +squat, ill-formed proletarian race obviously predestined to subjection, +one might understand. But that a crowd of trim, well-cut, self-reliant +Americans, sharp-featured, alert, insolent as I have called them, that +they should submit is a puzzle. Perhaps it is because of the fierce +democracy of it all. The crush, the enforced intimacies of physical +contact, the feeling that a man's natural condition is to push and be +pushed, to shove ahead when the opportunity offers and to take it like a +man when no chance presents itself--that is equality. A seat in the +Subway is like the prizes of life for which men have fought in these +United States. You struggle, you win or lose. If the other man wins +there is no envy; admiration rather, provided he has not shouldered and +elbowed out of reason. That god-like freedom from envy is passing +to-day, and perhaps the good-nature of the crowd in the Subway will +pass. I see signs of the approaching change. People do not call out, +'Plenty of room ahead,' so frequently as they used to. + +Good-natured when dangling from the strap in the Subway, good-natured +in front of baseball bulletins on Park Row, good-natured in the face of +so much oppression and injustice, where is the supposed cruelty of the +'mob'? I am ready to affirm on oath that the mob is not vindictive, that +it is not cruel. It may be a bit sharp-tongued, fickle, a bit +mischievous, but in the heart of the crowd there is no evil passion. The +evil comes from the leaders, the demagogues, the professional distorters +of right thinking and right feeling. The crowd in the bleachers is not +the clamorous, brute mob of tradition. I have watched faces in the +bleachers and in the grand-stand and seen little of that fury which is +supposed to animate the fan. For the most part he sits there with folded +arms, thin-lipped, eager, but after all conscious that there are other +things in life besides baseball. No, it is the leaders, the baseball +editors, the cartoonists, the humorists, the professional stimulators of +'local pride,' with their exaggerated gloatings over a game won, their +poisonous attacks upon a losing team, who are responsible. It is these +demagogues who drill the crowd in the gospel of loving only a +winner--but if I keep on I shall be in politics before I know it. + +If you see in the homeward crowd in the Subway a face over which the +pall of depression has settled, that face very likely is bent over the +comic pictures in the evening paper. I cannot recall seeing any one +smile over these long serials of humorous adventure which run from day +to day and from year to year. I have seen readers turn mechanically to +these lurid comics and pore over them, foreheads puckered into a frown, +lips unconsciously spelling out the long legends which issue in the form +of little balloons and lozenges from that amazing portrait gallery of +dwarfs, giants, shrilling viragos and their diminutive husbands, +devil-children, quadrupeds, insects,--an entire zoology. If any stimulus +rises from these pages to the puzzled brain, the effect is not visible. +I imagine that by dint of repetition through the years these grotesque +creations have become a reality to millions of readers. It is no longer +a question of humor, it is a vice. The Desperate Desmonds, the +Newly-weds, and the Dingbats, have acquired a horrible fascination. +Otherwise I cannot see why readers of the funny page should appear to be +memorizing pages from Euclid. + +This by way of anticipation. What the doctor has said of exercise being +a habit which grows easy with time is true. It is the first five minutes +of walking that are wearisome. I find myself strolling past Fourteenth +Street, where I was to take my train for Belshazzar Court. Never mind, +Forty-Second Street will do as well. I am now on a different Broadway. +The crowd is no longer north and south, but flows in every direction. It +is churned up at every corner and spreads itself across the squares and +open places. Its appearance has changed. It is no longer a factory +population. Women still predominate, but they are the women of the +professions and trades which centre about Madison Square--business women +of independent standing, women from the magazine offices, the publishing +houses, the insurance offices. You detect the bachelor girl in the +current which sets in toward the home quarters of the undomesticated, +the little Bohemias, the foreign eating-places whose fixed _table +d'hote_ prices flash out in illumined signs from the side streets. Still +farther north and the crowd becomes tinged with the current of that +Broadway which the outside world knows best. The idlers begin to mingle +with the workers, men in English clothes with canes, women with plumes +and jeweled reticules. You catch the first heart-beat of Little Old New +York. + +The first stirrings of this gayer Broadway die down as quickly almost as +they manifested themselves. The idlers and those who minister to them +have heard the call of the dinner hour and have vanished, into hotel +doors, into shabbier quarters by no means in keeping with the cut of +their garments and their apparent indifference to useful employment. +Soon the street is almost empty. It is not a beautiful Broadway in this +garish interval between the last of the matinee and shopping crowd and +the vanguard of the night crowd. The monster electric sign-boards have +not begun to gleam and flash and revolve and confound the eye and the +senses. At night the electric Niagara hides the squalid fronts of ugly +brick, the dark doorways, the clutter of fire-escapes, the rickety +wooden hoardings. Not an imperial street this Broadway at 6.30 of a +summer's afternoon. Cheap jewelry shops, cheap tobacconist's shops, +cheap haberdasheries, cheap restaurants, grimy little newspaper agencies +and ticket-offices, and 'demonstration' stores for patent foods, patent +waters, patent razors. + +O Gay White Way, you are far from gay in the fast-fading light, before +the magic hand of Edison wipes the wrinkles from your face and +galvanizes you into hectic vitality; far from alluring with your tinsel +shop windows, with your puffy-faced, unshaven men leaning against +door-posts and chewing pessimistic toothpicks, your sharp-eyed newsboys +wise with the wisdom of the Tenderloin, and your itinerant women whose +eyes wander from side to side. It is not in this guise that you draw the +hearts of millions to yourself, O dingy, Gay White Way, O Via Lobsteria +Dolorosa! + +Well, when a man begins to moralize it is time to go home. I have walked +farther than I intended, and I am soft from lack of exercise, and tired. +The romance of the crowd has disappeared. Romance cannot survive that +short passage of Longacre Square, where the art of the theatre and of +the picture-postcard flourish in an atmosphere impregnated with +gasolene. As I glance into the windows of the automobile salesrooms and +catch my own reflection in the enamel of Babylonian limousines I find +myself thinking all at once of the children at home. They expand and +fill up the horizon. Broadway disappears. I smile into the face of a +painted promenader, but how is she to know that it is not at her I smile +but at the sudden recollection of what the baby said at the +breakfast-table that morning? Like all good New Yorkers when they enter +the Subway, I proceed to choke up all my senses against contact with the +external world, and thus resolving myself into a state of coma, I dip +down into the bowels of the earth, whence in due time I am spewed out +two short blocks from Belshazzar Court. + + + + +Fashions in Men + +By Katharine Fullerton Gerould + + +Never, I fancy, has it been more true than it is to-day, that fiction +reflects life. The best fiction has always given us a kind of +precipitate of human nature--_Don Quixote_ and _Tom Jones_ are equally +'true' and true, in a sense, for all time; but our modern books give us +every quirk and turn of the popular ideal, and fifty years hence, if +read at all, may be too 'quaint' for words. And to any one who has been +reading fiction for the last twenty years, it is cryingly obvious that +fashions in human nature have changed. + +My first novel was _Jane Eyre_; and at the age of eight, I fell +desperately in love with Fairfax Rochester. No instance could serve +better to point the distance we have come. I was not an extraordinary +little girl (except that, perhaps, I was extraordinarily fortunate in +being permitted to encounter the classics in infancy), and I dare say +that if I had not met Mr. Rochester, I should have succumbed to some +imaginary gentleman of a quite different stamp. It may be that I should +have fallen in love--had time and chance permitted--with 'V. V.' or The +Beloved Vagabond. But I doubt it. In the first place, novels no longer +assume that it is the prime business of the female heart (at whatever +age) to surrender itself completely to some man. Consequently, the men +in the novels of to-day are not calculated, as they once were, to hit +the fluttering mark. The emotions are the last redoubt to be taken, as +modern tactics direct the assault. + +People are always telling us that fashions in women have changed: what +seems to me almost more interesting is that fashions in men (the stable +sex) have changed to match. The new woman (by which I mean the very +newest) would not fall in love with Mr. Rochester. It is therefore 'up +to' the novelists to create heroes whom the modern heroine will fall in +love with. This, to the popular satisfaction, they have done. And not +only in fiction have the men changed; in life, too, the men of to-day +are quite different. I know, because my friends marry them. + +It is immensely interesting, this difference. One by one, the man has +sloughed off his most masculine (as we knew them) characteristics. Gone +are Mr. Rochester, who fought the duel with the vicomte at dawn, and +Burgo Fitzgerald (the only love of that incomparable woman, Lady +Glencora Palliser), who breakfasted on curacao and pate de foie gras. No +longer does Blanche Ingram declare, 'An English hero of the road would +be the next best thing to an Italian bandit, and that could only be +surpassed by a Levantine pirate.' Blanche Ingram wants--and gets--the +Humanitarian Hero; some one who has particular respect for convicts and +fallen women, and whose favorite author is Tolstoi. He must qualify for +the possession of her hand by long, voluntary residence in the slums; he +may inherit ancestral acres only if he has, concerning them, socialistic +intentions. He must be too altruistic to kill grouse, and if he is to be +wholly up-to-date, he must refuse to eat them. He must never order +'pistols and coffee': his only permitted weapon is benevolent +legislation. + +I do not mean that he is to be a milk-sop--'muscular Christianity' has +at least taught us that it is well for the hero to be in the pink of +condition, as he may any day have a street fight on his hands. And he +should have the tongue of men and of angels. Gone is the inarticulate +Guardsman--gone forever. The modern hero has read books that Burgo +Fitzgerald and Guy Livingstone and Mr. Rochester never heard of. He is +ready to address any gathering, and to argue with any antagonist, until +dawn. He is, preferably, personally unconscious of sex until the heroine +arrives; but he is by no means effeminate. He is a very complicated and +interesting creature. Some mediaeval traits are discernible in him; but +the eighteenth century would not have known him for human. + +What has he lost, this hero, and what has he gained? How did it all +begin? In life, doubtless, it began with a feminine change of taste. +Brilliant plumage has ceased to allure; and, I suspect, the peacock's +tail, as much as the anthropoid ape's, is destined to elimination. We +women of to-day are distrustful of the peacock's tail. We are mortally +afraid of being misled by it, and of discovering, too late, that the +peacock's soul is not quite the thing. Never has there been among the +feminine young more scientific talk about sex, and never among the +feminine young such a scientific distrust of it. Before a young woman +suspects that she wants to marry a young man, she has probably discussed +with him, exhaustively, the penal code, white slavery, eugenics, and +race-suicide. The miracle--the everlasting miracle of Nature--is that +she should want, in these circumstances, to marry him at all. She +probably does not, unless his views have been wholly to her +satisfaction. And with those views, what has the perpetual glory of the +peacock's tail to do? + +So much for life. In our English fiction, I am inclined to believe that +George Eliot began it with Daniel Deronda. But, in our own day, Meredith +did more. Up to the time of Meredith, the dominant male was the +fashionable hero. Tom Jones, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Fairfax +Rochester, and 'Stunning' Warrington are as different as possible; but +all of them, in their several ways, keep up one male tradition in +fiction. It is within our own day that that tradition has entirely +changed. Have you ever noticed how inveterately, in Meredith's novels, +the schoolmaster or his spiritual kinsman comes out on top? Lord Ormont +cannot stand against Matey Weyburn, Lord Fleetwood against Owain Wythan, +Sir Willoughby Patterne against Vernon Whitford. The little girl who +fell in love with Mr. Rochester would have preferred any one of these +gentlemen (yes, even Sir Willoughby!) to his rival; but I dare say the +event would have proved her wrong. Certainly the wisdom of the ladies' +choice was never doubtful to Meredith himself. The soldier and the +aristocrat cannot endure the test they are put to by the sympathetic +male with a penchant for the enfranchised woman. Vain for Lord Ormont to +accede to Aminta's taste for publicity; vain for Lord Fleetwood to +become the humble wooer of Carinthia Jane: each has previously been +convicted of pride. + +Now, in an earlier day, no woman would have looked at a man who was not +proud--who was not, even, a little too proud. Pride, by which Lucifer +fell, was the chief hall-mark of the gentleman. Moreover, in that +earlier day, women did not expect their heroes to explain everything to +them: a certain amount of reticence, a measure of silence, was also one +of the hallmarks of the gentleman. If a bit of mystery could be thrown +in, so much the better. It gave her something to exercise her +imagination on. Think of the Byronic males--Conrad, Lara, and the rest! +If they had told all, where would they have been? Think of Lovelace and +Heathcote and Darcy and Brian de Bois Guilbert! + +Heroes, once, were always disdaining to speak, and spurning their foes. +Nowadays, no hero disdains to speak, and no hero ventures to spurn +anyone--least of all, his foes. He is humble of heart and very +loquacious. Mrs. Humphry Ward has inherited from George Eliot; and the +latest heroes of Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Hewlett, for example, are the +children of Vernon Whitford, Matey Weyburn, and Owain Wythan (of whom it +is not explicitly written that they had any others). They are +humanitarian and democratic; they are ignorant of hatred; they are +inclined to think the ill-born necessarily better than the well-born; +and they are quite sure that women are superior to men. True, Mr. +Galsworthy always seems to be looking backward; he never forgets the +ancient tradition that he is combating. His young aristocrats who eschew +the ways of aristocracy are unhappy, and virtue in their case is 'its +only reward.' Perhaps that is why his novels always leave us with the +medicinal taste of inconclusion in our mouths. But take a handful of +heroes elsewhere: the Reverend John Hodder, the ex-convict,'Daniel +Smith,' 'V. V.', or even Coryston, the Socialist peer. Where, in the lot +of them do you find either pride or reticence in the old sense? Where, +in any one of them, do you find the Satanic charm? Which one would +Harriet Byron, or Jane Eyre, or Catherine Earnshaw, or Elizabeth +Bennett, have looked at with eyes of love? + +The 'Satanic charm.' The phrase is out. Milton, I suspect, is +responsible for the tradition that has lasted so long, and is now being +broken utterly to pieces. Milton made Satan delightful, and our good +Protestant novelists for a long time followed his lead, in that they +gave their delightful men some of the Satanic traits. Proud they were +and scornfully silent, as we have recalled; and conventional to the last +degree. 'Conventional,' that is, in the stricter sense; by which it is +not meant that as portraits they were unconvincing, or that, as men, +they never offended Mrs. Grundy. They were conventional in that they +followed a convention; in that they were, to a large extent, predicable. +They were jealous of their honor, and believed it vindicable by the +duel; they had no doubt that good women were better than bad, and that +pedigree in human beings was as important as pedigree in animals; and +though they might be quixotic on occasion, they were not democratic +_pour deux sous_. The barmaid was not their sister, nor the stevedore +their brother. (The Satan of _Paradise Lost_, as we all remember, was a +splendid snob.) + +Moreover, they were sophisticated--and not merely out of books. The +Faust idea, having prevailed for many centuries, has at last been +abandoned--and perhaps, our sober sense may tell us, rightly; but not so +long ago there was still something more repellent to the female +imagination about the man who chose not to know than about the man who +chose not to abstain. I do not mean that we were supposed always to be +looking for a Tom Jones or a Roderick Random--we might be looking for a +Sir Charles Grandison, no less; but at least, when we found our hero, we +expected to find him wiser than we. Nowadays, a girl rather likes to +give a man points--and often (in fiction, at least) has to. Meredith +railed against the 'veiled virginal doll' as heroine. Well: our heroines +now are never veiled virginal dolls; but sometimes our heroes are. +Lancelot has gone out, and Galahad has come in. I suspect that there is +a literary law of compensation, and that, Ibsen and Strindberg to the +contrary notwithstanding, there has to be a veiled virginal doll +somewhere in a really taking romance. Perhaps it is fair that the +sterner sex should have its turn at guarding ideals by the hearthstone, +while women make the grand tour. + +Let me not be misunderstood. I am not referring particularly to that +knowledge which any man is better without, but to the Odyssean +experience which, in their respective measures, heroes were wont to have +behind them:-- + + And saw the cities, and the counsels knew + . . . . . . . . + Of many men, and many a time at sea + Within his heart he bore calamity. + +They had at least seen the towns and the minds of men, and their morals +were the less likely to be upset by a conventional assault upon them. +Does any one chance to remember, I wonder, Theron Ware, led to his +'damnation' by his first experience of a Chopin nocturne? It would have +taken more than a Chopin nocturne to make any of our seasoned heroes do +something that he did not wish to. They knew something of society, and +_ergo_ of women; they had experienced, directly or vicariously, human +romance; and they had read history. Nowadays, they are apt to know +little or nothing--to begin with--of society, women, or romance, except +what may be got from brand-new books on sociology; and they pride +themselves on knowing no history. History, with its eternal stresses and +selections, is nothing if not aristocratic, and our heroes nowadays must +be democratic or they die. It is an age of complete faith in the +superiority of the lower classes--the swing of the pendulum, no doubt, +from the other extreme of thinking the lower classes morally and +aesthetically negligible. 'Privilege' is as detestable now in matters of +intellect and breeding as in matters of finance and politics. The man +with the muck-rake has got past the office into the drawing-room. If +your hero has the bad luck not to have been born in the slums, he must +at least have the wit to take up his habitation there as soon as he +comes of age. We have learned that riches are corrupting, but (except in +the special sense of vice-commission reports) we have not yet learned +that poverty is rather more corrupting than wealth. + +Sophistication, whether social, intellectual, or aesthetic, is now the +deadly sin. If we are sophisticated, we may not be good enough for Ellis +Island. And there goes another of the hallmarks of the gentleman as he +was once known to fiction. Our hero in old days might not have +condescended to the glittering assemblies of fashion, but there was +never any doubt that, if he had, he would, in spite of himself, have +been king of his company as soon as he entered the room. He might have +been hard up, but his necktie would not have been 'a black sea holding +for life a school of fat white fish.' He might have been lonely or +gloomy, but he would not have been diffident, and he would never, never, +_never_ have 'blinked' at the heroine. 'My godlike friend had carelessly +put his hair-brush into the butter' says Asticot, at the outset, of the +Beloved Vagabond. Now in picaresque novels, we were always meeting +people who did that sort of thing; but they were not gentlemen. Whereas, +the Beloved Vagabond is of noble birth, and despite his ten years' +abeyance, finds the countess quite ready to marry him. She does not +marry him in the end, to be sure, but we are permitted to feel that +there was something lacking in her because Paragot's manners at tea did +not please her. + +The hero of old had what used to be called 'a sense of fitness,' and a +saving sense of humor, which combined to prevent his entering a ballroom +as John the Baptist. The same lucky combination would have prevented +him--in literature, at least--from wooing the millionaire's child with +dusty commonplaces of the Higher Criticism or jeremiads against the +daughters of Heth. But perhaps millionaires' children to-day take that +sort of thing for manners. To the argument that a performance of the +kind takes courage, one can only reply that, judging from the enthusiasm +with which the preaching hero is received by the heroine, it apparently +does not. And in any case, the hero is too sublimely ignorant of what +socially constitutes courage to deserve any credit for it. + +Sometimes, of course, like Mr. Galsworthy's men, he perceives, with some +inherited sense, that his kind of thing is not likely to be welcomed; +and then he goes sadly and sternly away, leaving the girl to accept a +wooer with more technique. But usually he cuts out everybody. For the +chief hall-mark of a gentleman, now, is the desire to reform his own +class out of all recognition. + +Women, as we know, have long wanted to be talked to as if they were men; +and the result is that heroines now let themselves be lectured at in a +way that very few men would endure. Alison Parr marries the Rev. John +Hodder, and Carlisle Heth would have married V. V. if he had lived. +Well: Clara Middleton married Vernon Whitford, and Carinthia Jane +married Owain Wythan, and Aminta married Matey Weyburn. + +I may have seemed to be speaking cynically. That, I can give my word of +honor, I am not. It is well that we have come to realize that there are +some adventures which, in themselves, add no lustre to a man's name. It +is well that we take thought for the lower strata of humanity--though +our actual reforms, I fancy, show their authors as taking thought not +for to-morrow but for to-day. Certainly brutality, or the indifference +which is negative brutality, is not a beautiful or a moral thing; and +certainly we do not particularly sympathize with Thackeray shedding +tears as he went away from his publishers because they had obliged him +to save Pendennis's chastity. That dreadful person, Arthur Pendennis, +would surely not have been made any less dreadful by being permitted to +seduce Fanny Bolton. + +It is right to think of the poor; it is right to bend our energies, as +citizens, to the economic bettering of their lot. No one could sanely +regret our doing so. But there is always danger in saying the thing +which is not, and in pretending that because some virtues have hitherto +not been recognized, the virtues that have been recognized are no good. +One sympathizes with Towneley (in that incomparable novel _The Way of +All Flesh_) when Ernest asks him,-- + +'"Don't you like poor people very much yourself?" + +'Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw and said +quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, no, no," and escaped. + +'Of course, some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but +as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one +was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes +there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable barrier.' + +It is a great pity that Samuel Butler did not live longer and write more +novels. But in regretting him, we shall do well to remember that though +publication was delayed until some time after the author's death, the +bulk of _The Way of All Flesh_ was written in the '70's. _The Way of All +Flesh_ is not sympathetic to the contemporary mood; it is one of those +books so much ahead of its time (except perhaps in ecclesiastical +matters) that the time has not yet caught up with it. It was doomed +inevitably to an interval of oblivion. The case reminds one of _Richard +Feverel_. + +Only in one way is _The Way of All Flesh_ quite contemporary. The hero +thinks so well of the prostitute that he marries her. On the other hand, +to be sure, he bitterly regrets it, which is not contemporary. I do not +mean that the hero's marrying her is especially in the literary +fashion, but his thinking well of her is. You will notice that in our +moral fever we do not leave the prostitute out of our novels--no, +indeed: she must be there to give spice, as of old. Only now, instead of +being entangled with her, the young gentleman preaches to her; and she +loves him for it. Perhaps this is what happens nowadays in real life. I +do not pretend to know; but I suspect it is true, for I fancy the only +kind of person who could invent the contemporary plot is the kind who +would live it. The wildest imaginings of the people who are made +differently would hardly stretch to it. And not only does the hero find +himself immensely touched by the tragedy of the disreputable +woman,--which is, after all, in certain cases plausible enough,--he +burns to introduce his fiancee to her. Now that, again, may be +life,--Mr. Winston Churchill, for example, should know better than +I,--but it is certainly a world with the sense of values gone wrong. And +when we have lost our sense of values, we shall presently lose the +values as well. The girl herself is often to blame: did not the fiancee +of Simon de Gex go of her own initiative to see the animal-tamer, and +come away to renounce him, convinced that the animal-tamer was the +nobler woman? Which, emphatically, she was not. But then, as we know +from long experience of Mr. Locke, he cannot keep his head with +circus-people about; and sawdust is incense to him. Let Mr. Locke have +his little foibles by all means; but even Mr. Locke should not have +made the spoiled darling of society marry the animal-tamer (one side of +her face having been nearly clawed off) and _then_ go with her into city +missionary work. Yet I do not believe it is really Mr. Locke's fault. +The public at present loves as a sister the woman with a past; and loves +city missionary work, if possible, more. + +The fact is that with all our imitation of Meredith--and every one who +is not imitating Tolstoi is imitating Meredith--he has failed to save +us. We have taken all his prescriptions blindly--except one. We have +emancipated our women and emasculated our men; we have cast down the +mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree; we have learned +all the Radical shibboleths and say them for our morning prayers; and we +have faced the fact of sex so squarely that we can hardly see anything +else. But we have not learned his saving hatred of the sentimentalist. +Miss May Sinclair has admirably pointed out in her study of the _Three +Brontes_ that Charlotte Bronte was exceedingly modern in her detestation +of sentimentality. Modern she may have been--with Meredith; but not +modern with the present novelists, for they are almost too sentimental +to be endured. And there is the whole trouble. We think Thackeray an old +fool for being sentimental over Amelia Sedley; but how does it better +the case to be sentimental, instead, over the heroine of _The Promised +Land_? Amelia Sedley was all in all a much nicer person, if not half so +clever. She may have sniveled a good deal, but she was capable of loving +some one else better than herself. + +Of course, I have cited only a few instances--those that happened to +come most easily to mind. But let any reader of fiction run over +mentally a group of contemporary heroes, and see if the substitutions I +have named have not pretty generally taken place. Has not pride given +way to humility, reticence to glibness, class-consciousness to a wild +democracy, the code of manners to an uncouth unworldliness, and honor in +the old sense to a burning passion for reform--'any old' reform? Do not +these men lead us into the heterogeneous company of the unclassed of +both sexes--and ask us to look upon them as saints in motley? Has not +the world of fiction changed in the last twenty years? The hero in old +days sometimes fell foul of the law by getting into debt. But we were +not supposed, therefore, to be on his side against the law. Now, the +hero does not, perhaps, get into legal difficulties himself, but he is +always passionately on the side of the people whom laws were devised to +protect the respectable from. The scientific tendency to consider that +aristocracy consists merely in freedom from certain physical taints has +permeated fiction. 'Is not one man as good as another?' asked the +demagogue. 'Of course he is, and a great deal better!' replied the +excited Irishman in the crowd. We are in the thick of a popular mania +for thinking all the undesirables 'a good deal better.' The modern hero +is, to my mind, in intention, if not in execution, an admirable figure; +and though one rather expects him any day to give his whole fortune for +a gross of green spectacles, one will not, for that, find him any less +likable. Some day he will rediscover the Dantesque hierarchy of souls +implicit in humanity. And then, perhaps, he will get back his charm. + +Some one is probably bursting to observe that we have a school of +realists at hand; and that no one can accuse Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett +of sentimentality--also that we have Mr. Shaw and Mr. Granville Barker +and Mr. Masefield as mounted auxiliaries in the field. I grant Mr. +Bennett; I am not so sure about Mr. Wells. But certainly Mr. Wells is +not sentimental as Mr. William de Morgan, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. +Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Theodore Dreiser, Mr. H. S. Harrison, and Miss +Ellen Glasgow are sentimental. If he is sentimental at all, it is rather +over ideas than people. (Mr. Masefield, I am inclined to think, is +simply catering to the special audience that Thomas Hardy, by his +silence, has left gaping and empty.) Let us look into the matter a +little. 'Sentimental' is one of the most difficult catchwords in the +world to define; and you can get a roomful of intelligent people +quarreling over it any time. Perhaps, for our purposes, it will serve +merely to say that the sentimentalist is always, in one way or another, +disloyal to facts. He cannot be trusted to give a straight account, +because his own sense of things is more valuable to him than the truth. +He has come in on the top of the pragmatic wave, and the sands of +Anglo-Saxondom are strewn thick with him. He serves, in Kipling's +phrase, the God of Things as They Ought to Be (according to his private +feeling). His own perversion may be aesthetic, or intellectual, or moral, +or sociological, but he is always recognizable by his tampering with +truth. + +Now, Mr. Wells does tamper with truth. He did it, for example, in the +case of Ann Veronica. He wanted Ann Veronica to be a nice girl under +twenty, and he wanted her, even more, to be unduly awakened to certain +physical aspects of sex. It was sentimentality that made him draw her as +he did: determination to prove that the girl who loved as he wanted her +to love was just as conventional as any one else. You cannot have your +cake and eat it too; but the sentimentalist blindly refuses to accept +that. Accordingly, we get the unconvincing creature that Mr. Wells +wanted to believe existed. Mr. Wells's heroes may not seem to bear out +my argument so well as Mr. Galsworthy's. To be sure, Mr. Wells is not so +sentimental as Mr. Galsworthy, and he has not, like the author of _The +Man of Property_, and _Fraternity_, and _Justice_, one--just one--fixed +idea. Mr. Galsworthy always deals with a man who is in love with some +other man's wife; and his world is thereby narrowed. Mr. Wells is +interested in a good many things, and his politics are not purely +philanthropic as most of our novelists' politics are. But Mr. Wells's +heroes, even when they are fairly fortunate, are preoccupied with their +own notions of sociological duty, even more than they are preoccupied +with passion, though their passion is 'special' enough when it comes. +Would any one except a Wells hero take a trip to India and come away +having seen nothing but the sweat-shops of Bombay? Always the author's +sympathy is with the under dog; whether it is Kipps or Mr. Polly living +out his long foredoomed existence, or George Ponderevo analyzing +Bladesover with diabolic keenness and aching contempt. 'I'm a spiritual +guttersnipe in love with unimaginable goddesses,' says Ponderevo in a +burst of frankness. There you have the Wells hero to the life. And Mr. +Bennett's people are only spiritual guttersnipes who are _not_ in love +with unimaginable goddesses. + +The point is that the guttersnipe is having his turn in fiction: if our +American heroes are not guttersnipes themselves, it is their sign of +grace to be supremely interested in guttersnipes. In one way or the +other, the guttersnipe must have his proper prominence. Of course, there +are differences and degrees: a few heroes get no nearer the lower +classes than a passionate desire for reform tickets and municipal +sanitation. But ordinarily they must go through Ernest Pontifex's state +of believing that poor people are not only more important, but in every +way nicer than rich people; and few of them go back utterly on that +belief, as Ernest did. Perhaps that, more than anything else, marks the +change of fashion in men. For gentlemen were always, in their way, +benevolent; but formerly they had not achieved the paradox that the +object of benevolence is _ex officio_ more interesting than the +bestower. + +Books have been written before now in the interest of reform. They tell +us that _Justice_ set the Home Secretary to thinking. Well: Marcus +Clarke actually caused the reform of the Australian penal settlements by +his now forgotten novel, _For the Term of His Natural Life_. The hero of +Marcus Clarke's book was innocent and unjustly condemned; the hero of +_Justice_ is guilty. Wanton cruelty is wicked whether the victim be a +bad man or a good one; but the difference between these two heroes is +not so purely accidental as, at first blush, it may seem. The author of +_His Natural Life_ starting out to capture sympathy, showed the brutal +system wreaking itself on an innocent man, of good family, condemned for +another's guilt. Mr. Galsworthy, equally eager to capture sympathy, +makes his protagonist guilty of the theft, having tried in vain to +incriminate an innocent person. Each writer depended, doubtless, on +public sentiment for his effect. In Marcus Clarke's time, public +sentiment--however unfortunate the fact may be--simply could not have +been aroused to such a pitch by the sufferings of a liar and a thief as +by the sufferings of an innocent man who is consciously paying another +person's penalty. The Humanitarian Hero had not come into fashion--nor +yet the guttersnipe. But Marcus Clarke's book did its work--proof that +even in the '50's we were not so callous as we seemed. + +I said earlier that in life, as well as in literature, men had changed. +One's instances, obviously, must be from books, and not from one's +acquaintance; but I spoke truth. Philanthropy is the latest social +ladder, but it would not be so if the people on the top rung were not +interested in philanthropy. There has been, for whatever reason, a +tremendous spurt of interest in sociological questions. Our hard-headed +young men, of high ideals, find themselves fighting, of necessity, on a +different battlefield from any that strategists would have chosen thirty +years ago. Moreover, philanthropy being woman's way into politics, women +have been giving their calm, or hysterical, attention to problems which, +thirty years since, did not, as problems, exist for them. I said that +the change of taste in women would probably account for much of the +change of fashion in men. A schoolmate of mine, writing me some years +since of her engagement, said (in nearly these words), 'He is +tremendously interested in city missionary work; it wouldn't have been +quite perfect if we hadn't had that in common.' Both were spoiled +darlings of fortune, but the statement was quite sincere. Undoubtedly, +without that, it would not have been 'quite perfect' in the eyes of +either. + +The mere conversation of the marriageable young has changed past belief. +'Social service' has usurped so many subjects! Have many people stopped +to realize, I wonder, how completely the psychological novel and the +'problem' play (in the old sense) have gone out of date? The psychology +of hero and heroine, their emotional attitudes to each other, are +largely worked out now in terms of their attitudes to impersonal +questions, their religious or their sociological 'principles.' The +individual personal reaction counts less and less. If they agree on the +same panacea for the social evils, the author can usually patch up a +passion sufficient for them to marry on. Gone, for the most part, are +the pages of intimate analysis. No intimate analysis is needed any +longer. As for the 'problem play,' we have it still with us, but in +another form. _The Doll's House_ and _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ are +both antiquated: we do not call a drama a problem play now unless it +preaches a new kind of legislation. And as for sex,--in its finer +aspects it no longer interests us. + +There was a great deal more sex, in its subtler manifestations, in the +old novels and plays, than in the new ones. Not so long ago, a novel was +a love story; and it was of supreme importance to a hero whether or not +he could make the heroine care for him. It was also of supreme +importance to the heroine. The romance was all founded on sex; and yet +sex was hardly mentioned. Our heroes and heroines still marry; but when +they consider sex at all, they are apt to consider it biologically, not +romantically. We, as a public, are more frankly interested in sex than +ever; but we think of it objectively, and a little brutally, in terms of +demand and supply. And so we get often the pathetic spectacle of the +hero and heroine having no time to make love to each other in the good +old-fashioned way, because they are so busy suppressing the red-light +district and compiling statistics of disease. Much of the frankness, +doubtless, is a good thing; but beyond a doubt, it has cheapened +passion. For passion among civilized people is a subtle thing: it is +wrapped about with dreams and imaginings; and can bring human beings to +salvation as well as to perdition. But when it is shown to us as the +mere province of courtesans, small wonder that we turn from it to the +hero who will have difficulty in feeling or inspiring it. Especially +since we are told, at the same time, that even the courtesan plies her +trade only from direst necessity. + +After all, the only safe person to fall in love with nowadays _is_ a +reformer: socially, financially, and sentimentally. And most women, at +least, could (if they would) say with the Princesse Mathilde, 'Je n'aime +que les romans dont je voudrais etre l'heroine.' Certainly, unless for +some special reason, no novel of which one would not like to be the +heroine--in love with the hero--will reach the hundred thousand mark. If +there are any of us left who regret the gentlemen of old--who still +prefer our Darcy or even our Plantagenet Palliser--we must write our own +novels, and divine our own heroes under the protective coloring of their +conventional breeding. For they are not being 'featured,' at present, +either in life or in literature. + + + + +A Confession in Prose + +By Walter Prichard Eaton + + +Unlike M. Jourdain, who had been speaking prose all his life without +knowing it, I have been writing it nearly all of mine, quite +consciously, and earning my living thereby since I was twenty-one years +old. I am now thirty-four. I have been a professional writer of prose, +then, for thirteen years--or shall I say a writer of professional prose? +Much of this writing has been done for various American magazines; still +more has been done to fill the ravenous columns of American newspapers; +some, even, has been immured between covers. I have tried never to write +sloppily, though I have of necessity often written hastily. I can +honestly say, too, that I have tried at times to write beautifully, by +which I mean rhythmically, with a conscious adjustment of sound and +melody to the sense, with the charm of word-chiming further to heighten +heightened thought. But I can also as honestly say that in this latter +effort I have never been encouraged by a newspaper editor, and I have +been not infrequently discouraged by magazine editors. Not all +magazines compel you to chop up your prose into a maximum paragraph +length of ten lines, as does a certain one of large circulation. Not all +newspapers compel you to be 'smart,' as did one for which I worked +compel us all. But the impression among editors is prevalent, none the +less, that a conversational downrightness and sentence and paragraph +brevity are the be-all and end-all of prose style, or at least of so +much of prose style as can be grasped by the populace who read their +publications; and that beautiful writing must be 'fine writing,' and +therefore never too much to be avoided. So I started out from the +classroom of Professor Lewis E. Gates, one of the keenest and most +inspiring analysts of prose beauties this country has produced, to be a +professional writer of prose, and dreamed, as youth will, of wrapping my +singing robes about me and ravishing the world. I was soon enough told +to doff my singing robes for the overalls of journalism, and I have +become a writer of professional prose instead. + +These remarks have been inspired by a long and wistful evening just +spent in perusing Professor Saintsbury's new book, called _The History +of English Prose Rhythm_. I shall hold no brief for the good professor's +method of scansion. It matters little to me, indeed, how he chooses to +scan prose. What does matter to me is that he has chosen to scan it at +all, that he has brought forward the finest examples in the stately +procession of English literature, and demonstrated with all the weight +of his learning, his authority, his fine enthusiasm, that this prose is +no less consciously wrought to pleasing numbers than is verse. We who +studied under Professor Gates knew much of this before, if not in so +detailed and would-be methodical a fashion. Charles Lamb knew it when he +wrote, 'Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best +measured cadences (prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm +of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors"; or the wild sweep of +winds at midnight.' Sir Thomas Browne was not exactly unaware of it as +he prepared his _Urn Burial_ for the printer; nor the authors of the +King James Version of the Bible when they translated--or if you prefer, +paraphrased--the rhapsodic chapters of Isaiah. But it is pleasant, and +not unimportant, to be once more reminded, in a generation when written +speech has sunk to the conversational level of the man in the street, +that 'prose has her cadences'; and to me, at least, it is melancholy, +also. For I would strive to write such prose, in my stumbling fashion, +were I permitted. + +Writing about a fine art, as I am so often called upon to do, I would +endeavor with what might lay in me to write about it finely. Suppose +that art chances to be the drama. Why, when some compact, weighty, and +worthily performed example comes to our stage, should I be expected to +toss off a description of it in a style less compact and weighty and +worthily conducted? On the rare occasions when a new play chances to be +poetic, am I not justified in writing of it in poetic prose? How else, +indeed, can I truly render back to my readers the subtler aspects of its +charm? But for such writing there is little room in our hurrying and +'conversational' press, though now and then a despised dramatic editor +is found who understands. Even the drama itself strives to be +'conversational' at all costs, under the banner of 'realism,' and +profanity flourishes on our stage in what we must infer to be a most +life-like manner, while we have almost forgotten that the spoken word +can be melodious or imaginative. Criticism cries at its heels, and helps +with flippant jest and broken syntax and cacophonous combinations of our +poorest vernacular, in the general debasement. Do not tell me that men +do not exist who could write differently of the stage, as men exist who +can, and do, write differently for it. Every worthy dramatist can be +paralleled by at least one worthy critic, and more probably by three or +four, since the true creative instinct in drama is perhaps the rarest of +human attributes, save only charity. But the editors appear to have +determined that the public does not want such critics--and perhaps the +editors are right. At least, the public does not often get them. + +We are speaking now of prose, not of opinions, and we may safely +introduce the name of a living critic, William Winter. For nearly half a +century Mr. Winter has written prose about the theatre, and although +that prose was produced for a morning newspaper it was carefully and +consistently balanced and welded, and, when the subject demanded it, +rose, according to its creator's ideas of beauty, into the heightened +eloquence of sentence rhythm and syllabic harmony. Leisure may improve, +but haste cannot prevent the rhythm of prose, provided the instinct for +it resides in the writer, and the opportunity exists for practice and +expression. Two examples of Mr. Winter's use of rhythm come to my +memory, and I quote only phrases, not whole sentences, merely because I +am sure of no more. Writing one morning of a new and very 'modern' play, +presented the previous evening by a well-known actress, he said: 'Sarah +Bernhardt at least made her sexual monsters interesting, wielding the +lethal hatpin or the deadly hatchet with Gallic grace and sweet +celerity.' Again, in reviewing Pinero's _Iris_, he took up two of Henry +Arthur Jones's phrases, recently made current in a lecture, and played +with them, ending with mellifluous scorn, 'Such are "the great realities +of modern life," flowers of disease and blight that fringe the charnel +house of the "serious drama."' + +These are certainly examples of rhythmic, or cadenced prose, and they +are examples taken from journalistic reviews. They admirably express the +writer's point of view toward his subject matter, but they also reveal +his care for the manner of expression, they satisfy the ear; and +therefore to one at all sensitive to literature they are doubly +satisfying. The arrow of irony is ever more delightful when it sings on +its flight. The trick, then, can be done. Mr. Winter, too often perhaps +for modern ears, performed it by recourse to the Johnsonian balance of +period and almost uniform, swelling roll. But that is neither here nor +there. The point is that he performed it--and that it is no longer +performed by the new generation, either in newspaper columns, or, we +will add at once, anywhere else. Rhythmic prose, prose cadenced to charm +the ear and by its melodies and harmonies properly adjusted to heighten, +as with an under-song, the emotional appeal of the ideas expressed, is +no longer written. It appears to be no longer wanted. We are fallen upon +harsh and colloquial times. + +No one with any ear at all would deny Emerson a style, even if his +rhythms are often broken into the cross-chop of Carlyle. No one would +deny Irving a style, or Poe,--certainly Poe at his best,--or, indeed, to +hark far back, Cotton Mather in many passages of the _Magnalia_, where +to a quaint iambic simplicity he added a Biblical fervor which redeems +and melodizes the monotony. Mather suggests Milton, Irving suggests +Addison, Emerson suggests Carlyle, Poe, shall we say, is often the too +conscious workman typified by De Quincey. But thereafter, in this +country, we descend rapidly into second-hand imitations, into rhythm +become, in truth, mere 'fine writing,' until its death within recent +memory. Yet we do not find even to-day the true cadenced prose either +uninteresting or out of date. Emerson is as modern as the morning paper. +Newman's description of the ideal site for a university, in the clear +air of Attica beside the blue AEgean, charms us still with its perfect +blend of sound and sense, its clear intellectual idea borne on a +cadenced undersong, as of distant surf upon the shore; and the exquisite +epilogue to the _Apologia_, with its chime of proper names, still brings +a moisture to our eyes. The triumphant tramp of Gibbon, the headlong +imagery and Biblical fervor of Ruskin, the languid music of Walter +Pater, each holds its separate charm, and the charm is not archaic. + +Is such prose impossible any more? Certainly it is not. The heritage of +the language is still ours, the birthright of our noble English tongue. +Simply, we do not dare to let ourselves go. We seem tortured with the +modern blight of self-consciousness; and while the cheaper magazines are +almost blatant in their unblushing self-puffery, they are none the less +cravenly submissive to what they deem popular demand, and turn their +backs on literature, on style, as something abhorrent to a race which +has been fed on the English Bible for three hundred years. Their ideal +of a prose style now seems to consist of a series of staccato yips. It +really cannot be described in any other way. The 'triumphantly +intricate' sentence celebrated by Walter Pater would give many a modern +editor a shiver of terror. He would visualize it as mowing down the +circulation of the magazine like a machine gun. Rhythm and beauty of +style can hardly be achieved by staccato yips. The modern magazine +writer, trying to be rhetorically effective, trying to rise to the +demands of heightened thought or emotional appeal, reminds one of that +enthusiastic German tympanist who wrote an entire symphonic poem for +kettle-drums. + +I read one of the autumn crop of new novels the other day. Curiously +enough, it was written by a music critic who, in his reviews of music, +is constantly insisting on the primal importance of melody and harmony, +who is an arch foe of the modern programme school and the whole-tone +scale of Debussy. But the prose of his novel was utterly devoid of these +prized elements, melody and harmony. A heavy, or sometimes turgid, +journalistic commonplaceness sat upon it. I will not be unfair and tear +an illustration from some passage of rightly simple narration. I will +take the closing sentences from one of the climactic chapters, when the +mood had supposedly risen to intensity, and, if ever, the prose would +have been justified in rising to reinforce the emotion. + +The house was aroused to extravagant demonstrations. Across the +footlights it looked like a brilliantly realistic piece of acting, and +the audience was astonished at the vigor of the hitherto cold Americano. + +'But Nagy was not deceived. Crushed, dishevelled, breathless, she knew +that her dominion over him was gone forever. She had tried to show him +his soul and he had begun to see the light.' + +Now, an ear attuned to the melodies of English prose must surely find +this commonplace, and the closing sentence of all actually as harsh as +the tonalities of Strauss or Debussy seem to the writer. Let us, even if +a little unfairly, set it beside a passage from _Henry Esmond_, again a +climactic passage, but one where the style is climactic, also, rising to +the mood. + +'"You will please, sir, to remember," he continued, "that our family +hath ruined itself by fidelity to yours: that my grandfather spent his +estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service; that my +dear lord's grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right and title +too) died for the same cause; that my poor kinswoman, my father's second +wife, after giving away her honor to your wicked perjured race, sent all +her wealth to the King; and got in return that precious title that lies +in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue ribbon. I lay this at your +feet and stamp upon it; I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; +and had you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have +driven it through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father +pardoned Monmouth. Frank will do the same, won't you, cousin?"' + +This justly famous passage, be it noted, is dialogue. To-day we +especially do not dare to rise above a conversational level in dialogue. +We should be accused of being 'unnatural.' Does no one speak beautifully +any more, then, even in real life? Are the nerve-centres so shattered in +the modern anatomy that no connection is established between emotions +and the musical sense? Does an exquisite mood no longer reflect itself +in our voice, in our vocabulary? Does no lover rise to eloquence in the +presence of his Adored? If that is the case, surely we now speak +unnaturally, and it should be the duty of literature to restore our +health! Nor need such speech in fiction float clear away from solid +ground. Notice how Thackeray in his closing sentence--'Frank will do the +same, won't you, cousin?'--anchors his rhetoric to the earth. + +We are, let it be said again, in the grasp of realism, and realism but +imperfectly understood. Just as our drama aims to reproduce exactly a +'solid' room upon the stage, and to set actors to talking therein the +exact speech of every day, so our oratory, so-called, is the +reproduction of a one-sided conversation, and our novels (when they are +worthy of consideration) are reproductions of patiently accumulated +details, set forth in impatiently assembled sentences. But all this does +not of necessity constitute realism, because its effect is not of +necessity the creation of illusion, however truthful the artist's +purpose. Of what avail, in the drama, for example, are solid rooms and +conversational vernacular if the characters do not come to life in our +imaginations, so that we share their joys and sorrows? Of what effect +are the realistic details of a novel, whether of incident or language, +if we do not re-live its story as we read? Surely, the answer is plain, +and therefore any literary devices which heighten the mood for us are +perfectly justifiable weapons of the realist, even as they are of the +romanticist. One of these devices is consciously wrought prose. For the +present we plead for its employment on no higher ground than this of +practical expediency. + +But how, you may ask,--no, not you, dear reader, who understand, but +some other chap, a poor dog of an author, perhaps,--can consciously +wrought prose aid in the creation of illusion? How can it be more than +pretty? + +Let us turn for answer to Sir Thomas Browne, to 'The Garden of Cyrus,' +to the closing numbers:-- + +'Besides, Hippocrates hath spoke so little, and the oneirocritical +masters have left such frigid interpretations from plants, that there is +little encouragement to dream of paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest +delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep, wherein the dulness of +that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of +Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.' + +That is archaic, perhaps, and not without a certain taint of quaintness +to modern ears. But how drowsy it is, how minor its harmonies, how +subtly soothing its languid melody! It tells, surely, in what manner +consciously wrought prose may aid in the creation of illusion. The mood +of sleep was here to be evoked, and lo! it comes from the very music of +the sentences, from the drowsy lullaby of selected syllables. + +We might choose a quite different example, from a seemingly most +unlikely source, from the plays of George Bernard Shaw. One hardly +thinks of Mr. Shaw with a style, but rather with a stiletto. His +prefaces have been too disputative, his plays too epigrammatic, for the +cultivation of prose rhythms. Yet his prose is almost never without a +certain crisp accuracy of conversational cadence; his ear almost never +betrays him into sloppiness; and when the occasion demands, his style +can rise to meet it. The truth is, Mr. Shaw is seldom emotional, so that +his crisp accuracy of speech is most often the fitting garment for his +thought. But in _John Bull's Other Island_ his emotions are stirred, and +when Larry Doyle breaks out into an impassioned description of Ireland +the effect on the imagination of the heightened prose, when a good actor +speaks it, is almost startling. + +'No, no; the climate is different. Here, if the life is dull, you can +be dull too, and no great harm done. (_Going off into a passionate +dream._) But your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those +white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those +hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colors in +the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. +Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, +never-satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! (_Savagely._) +No debauchery that ever coarsened and brutalized an Englishman can take +the worth and usefulness out of him like that dreaming. An Irishman's +imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies +him; but it makes him so that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor +handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and +(_bitterly, at Broadbent_) be "agreeable to strangers," like a +good-for-nothing woman on the streets.' + +This, to be sure, is prose to be spoken, not prose to be read. Different +laws prevail, for different effects are sought. But the principle of +cadence calculated to fit the mood, and by its melodic, or, as here, its +percussive character to heighten the emotional appeal, remains the same. + +But beyond the argument for cadenced prose as an aid to illusion, +employed in the proper places,--that is, where intensity of imagery or +feeling can benefit by it,--is the higher plea for sheer lingual beauty +for its own sake. Shall realism preclude all other effects of artistic +creation? Because the men on our streets, the women in our homes, talk +sloppily, shall all our books be written in their idiom, all our stage +characters reproduce their commonplaceness, nearly all our magazines and +newspapers give no attention to the graces of style? I am pleading for +no Newman of the news story, nor am I seeking to arm our muck-rakers +with the pen of Sir Thomas Browne. I would not send Walter Pater to +report a football game (though Stevenson could doubtless improve on most +of the 'sporting editors'), nor ask that Emerson write our editorials. +But there is a poor way, and there is a fine way, to write everything, +and inevitably the man who has an ear for the rhythms of prose, who has +been trained and encouraged to write his very best, will fit his style +appropriately to his subject. He will not seek to cadence his sentences +in bald narration or in exposition, but he will, nevertheless, keep them +capable of natural and pleasant phrasing, he will avoid monotony, +jarring syllables, false stress, and ugly or tripping terminations which +throw the voice as one's feet are thrown by an unseen obstacle in the +path. His paragraphs, too, will group naturally, as falls his thought. +But when the subject he has in hand rises to invective, to exhortation, +to the dignity of any passion or the sweep of any vision, then if his +ear be tuned and his courage does not fail him he must inevitably write +in cadenced periods, the effectiveness of his work depending on the +adjustment of these cadences to the mood of the moment, on his skill as +an artist in prose. + +And just now the courage of our young men fails. The unrestrained +abandonment of all art to realism, of every sort of printed page to bald +colloquialism, has dulled the natural ear in all of us for comely prose, +and made us deaf to more stately measures. The complete democratizing of +literature has put the fear of plebeian ridicule in our hearts, and the +wider a magazine's circulation, it would seem, the more harm it does to +English prose, because in direct ratio to its sale are its pages given +over to the Philistines, and the dignity and refinement of thought which +could stimulate dignity and refinement of expression are unknown to its +contributors, or kept carefully undisclosed. + +I have often fancied, in penitential moments, a day of judgment for us +who write, when we shall stand in flushed array before the Ultimate +Critic and answer the awful question, 'What have you done with your +language?' There shall be searchings of soul that morning, and +searchings of forgotten pages of magazines and 'best sellers' and books +of every sort, for the cadence that may bring salvation. But many shall +seek and few shall find, and the goats shall be sorted out in droves, +condemned to an eternity of torture, none other than the everlasting +task of listening to their own prose read aloud. + +'What have you done with your language?' It is a solemn question for all +of us, for you who speak as well as for us who write. Our language is a +priceless heritage. It has been the ladder of life up which we climbed; +with it we have bridged the sundering flood that forever rolls between +man and man; through its aid have come to us the treasures of the past, +the world's store of experience; by means of it our poets have wrought +their measures, our philosophers their dreams. Bit by bit, precious +mosaic after precious mosaic, the great body of English literature has +been built up, in verse and prose, the crown of that division of +language we call our own. Consciously finding itself three centuries +ago, our English prose blossomed at once into the solemn splendors of +the King James Bible and then into the long-drawn, ornate magnificence +of Sir Thomas Browne, never again till our day to lose consciousness of +its power, to forget its high and holy task, the task of maintaining our +language at full tide and ministering to style and beauty. There were +fluxes in the fashions, naturally; little of Browne's music being found +in the almost conversational fluency (but not laxness) of Addison, even +as the suave Mr. Addison himself has vanished in the tempestuous +torrents of Carlyle. But there always was an Addison, a Carlyle, a +Newman, a Walter Pater, whose work loomed large in popular regard, whose +influence was mighty in shaping a taste for prose style. Who now, we may +ask, looking around us in America, looms large in popular regard as a +writer of ample vision, amply and beautifully clothed in speech, and +whose influence is mighty in shaping a taste for prose style? It is not +enough to have the worthies of the past upon our shelves. Each age must +have its own inspiration. Again we hear the solemn question, 'What have +you done with your language?' Only Ireland may answer, 'We have our +George Moore, and we had our Synge not long ago--but we stoned his +plays.' + +We have stifled our language, we have debased it, we have been afraid of +it. But some day it will reassert itself, for it is stronger than we, +alike our overlord and avatar. Deep in the soul of man dwells the lyric +impulse, and when his song cannot be the song of the poet it will shape +itself in rhythmic prose, that it may still be cadenced and modulated to +change with the changing thought and sound an obligato to the moods of +the author's spirit. How wonderful has been our prose,--grave and +chastely rich when Hooker wrote it, striding triumphant over the pages +of Gibbon on tireless feet, ringing like a trumpet from Emerson's white +house in Concord, modulated like soft organ-music heard afar in Newman's +lyric moods, clanging and clamorous in Carlyle, in Walter Pater but as +the soft fall of water in a marble fountain while exquisite odors flood +the Roman twilight and late bees are murmurous, a little of all, +perhaps, in Stevenson! We, too, we little fellows of to-day, could +write as they wrote, consciously, rhythmically, if we only cared, if we +only dared. We ask for the opportunity, the encouragement. Alas! that +also means a more liberal choice of graver subjects, and a more +extensive employment of the essay form. Milton could hardly have been +Miltonic on a lesser theme than the Fall of the Angels, and Walter Pater +wrote of the Mona Lisa, not Lizzie Smith of Davenport, Iowa. It is +doubtless of interest to learn about Lizzie, but she hardly inspires us +to rhythmic prose. + + + + +In the Chair + +By Ralph Bergengren + + +About once in so often a man must go to the barber for what, with +contemptuous brevity, is called a haircut. He must sit in a big chair, a +voluminous bib (prettily decorated with polka dots) tucked in round his +neck, and let another human being cut his hair for him. His head, with +all its internal mystery and wealth of thought, becomes for the time +being a mere poll, worth two dollars a year to the tax-assessor: an +irregularly shaped object, between a summer squash and a canteloupe, +with too much hair on it, as very likely several friends and +acquaintances have advised him. His identity vanishes. + +As a rule the less he now says or thinks about his head, the better: he +has given it to the barber, and the barber will do as he pleases with +it. It is only when the man is little and is brought in by his mother, +that the job will be done according to instructions; and this is because +the man's mother is in a position to see the back of his head. Also +because the weakest woman under such circumstances has strong +convictions. When the man is older the barber will sometimes allow him +to see the haircut, cleverly reflected in two mirrors; but not one man +in a thousand--nay, in ten thousand--would dare express himself as +dissatisfied. After all, what does he know of haircuts, he who is no +barber? Women feel differently; and I know of one man, returning home +with a new haircut, who was compelled to turn round again and take what +his wife called his 'poor' head to another barber by whom the haircut +was more happily finished. But that was exceptional. And it happened to +that man but once. + +The very word 'haircut' is objectionable. It snips like the scissors. +Yet it describes the operation more honestly than the substitute 'trim,' +a euphemism indicating a jaunty habit of dropping in frequently at the +barber's, and so keeping the hair perpetually at just the length that is +most becoming. For most men, although the knowledge must be gathered by +keen, patient observation and never by honest confession, there is a +period, lasting about a week, when the length of their hair is +admirable. But it comes between haircuts. The haircut itself is never +satisfactory. If his hair was too long before (and on this point he has +the evidence of unprejudiced witnesses), it is too short now. It must +grow steadily--count on it for that!--until for a brief period it is +'just right,' aesthetically suited to the contour of his face and the cut +of his features, and beginning already imperceptibly to grow too long +again. + +Soon this growth becomes visible, and the man begins to worry. 'I must +go to the barber,' he says in a harassed way. 'I must get a haircut.' +But the days pass. It is always to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. +When he goes, he goes suddenly. + +There is something within us, probably our immortal soul, that postpones +a haircut; and yet in the end our immortal souls have little to do with +the actual process. It is impossible to conceive of one immortal soul +cutting another immortal soul's hair. My own soul, I am sure, has never +entered a barber's shop. It stops and waits for me at the portal. +Probably it converses on subjects remote from our bodily consciousness +with the immortal souls of barbers, patiently waiting until the barbers +finish their morning's work and come out to lunch. + +Even during the haircut our hair is still growing, never stopping, never +at rest, never in a hurry: it grows while we sleep, as was proved by Rip +Van Winkle. And yet perhaps sometimes it is in a hurry; perhaps that is +why it falls out. In rare cases the contagion of speed spreads; the last +hair hurries after all the others; the man is emancipated from +dependence on barbers. I know a barber who is in this independent +condition himself (for the barber can no more cut his own hair than the +rest of us) and yet sells his customers a preparation warranted to keep +them from attaining it, a seeming anomaly which can be explained only on +the ground that business is business. To escape the haircut one must be +quite without hair that one cannot see and reach; and herein possibly is +the reason for a fashion which has often perplexed students of the +Norman Conquest. The Norman soldiery wore no hair on the backs of their +heads; and each brave fellow could sit down in front of his polished +shield and cut his own hair without much trouble. But the scheme had a +weakness. The back of the head had to be shaven, and the fashion +doubtless went out because, after all, nothing was gained by it. One +simply turned over on one's face in the barber's chair instead of +sitting up straight. + +Fortunately we begin having a haircut when we are too young to think, +and when also the process is sugar-coated by the knowledge that we are +losing our curls. Then habit accustoms us to it. Yet it is significant +that men of refinement seek the barber in secluded places, basements of +hotels for choice, where they can be seen only by barbers and by other +refined men having or about to have haircuts; and that men of less +refinement submit to the operation where every passer-by can stare in +and see them, bibs round their necks and their shorn locks lying in +pathetic little heaps on the floor. There is a barber's shop of this +kind in Boston where one of the barbers, having no head to play with, +plays on a cornet, doubtless to the further distress of his immortal +soul peeping in through the window. But this is unusual even in the city +that is known far and wide as the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. + +I remember a barber--he was the only one available in a small town--who +cut my left ear. The deed distressed him, and he told me a story. It was +a pretty little cut, he said--filling it with alum--and reminded him of +another gentleman whose left ear he had nipped in identically the same +place. He had done his best with alum and apology, as he was now doing. +Two months later the gentleman came in again. 'And by golly!' said the +barber, with a kind of wonder at his own cleverness, 'if I didn't nip +him again in just the same place!' + +A man can shave himself. The Armless Wonder does it in the Dime Museum. +Byron did it, and composed poetry during the operation, although, as I +have recently seen scientifically explained, the facility of composition +was not due to the act of shaving but to the normal activity of the +human mind at that time in the morning. Here therefore a man can refuse +the offices of the barber. If he wishes to make one of a half-dozen +apparently inanimate figures, their faces covered with soap, and their +noses used as convenient handles to turn first one cheek and then the +other--that is his own lookout. But human ingenuity has yet to invent a +'safety barber's shears.' It has tried. A near genius once made an +apparatus--a kind of helmet with multitudinous little scissors inside +it--which he hopefully believed would solve the problem; but what became +of him and his invention I have not heard. Perhaps he tried it himself +and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed +suicide, for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found +a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't would be thrown +into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded +in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' where nobody +could see him but the hardened attendants, by his sensitive family. The +important fact is that the invention never got on the market. Until some +other investigator succeeds to more practical purpose, the rest of us +must go periodically to the barber. We must put on the bib-- + +Here, however, there is at least an opportunity of selection. There are +bibs with arms, and bibs without arms. And there is a certain amount of +satisfaction in being able to see our own hands, carefully holding the +newspaper or periodical wherewith we pretend that we are still +intelligent human beings. And here again are distinctions. The patrons +of my own favored barber's shop have arms to their bibs and pretend to +be deeply interested in the _Illustrated London News_. The patrons of +the barber's shop where I lost part of my ear--I cannot see the place, +but those whom I take into my confidence tell me that it has long since +grown again--had no sleeves to their bibs, but nevertheless managed +awkwardly to hold the _Police Gazette_. And this opportunity to hold the +_Police Gazette_ without attracting attention becomes a pleasant feature +of this type of barber's shop: I, for example, found it easier--until my +ear was cut--to forget my position in the examination of this journal +than in the examination of the _Illustrated London News_. The pictures, +strictly speaking, are not so good, either artistically or morally, but +there is a tang about them, an I-do-not-know-what. And it is always +wisest to focus attention on some such extraneous interest. Otherwise +you may get to looking in the mirror. + +Do not do that. + +For one thing, there is the impulse to cry out 'Stop! Stop! Don't cut it +all off! + + 'Oh, barber, spare that hair! + Leave some upon my brow! + For months it's sheltered me! + And I'll protect it now! + +'Oh, please! P-l-e-a-s-e!--' These exclamations annoy a barber, rouse a +demon of fury in him. He reaches for a machine called 'clippers.' Tell +him how to cut hair, will you! A little more and he'll shave your +head--and not only half-way either, like the Norman soldiery at the time +of the Conquest! Even if you are able to restrain this impulse, +clenching your bib in your hands and perhaps dropping or tearing the +_Illustrated London News_, the mirror gives you strange, morbid +reflections. You recognize your face, but your head seems somehow +separate, balanced on a kind of polka-dotted mountain with two hands +holding the _Illustrated London News_. You are afraid momentarily that +the barber will lift it off and go away with it. Then is the time to +read furiously the weekly contribution of G. K. Chesterton. But your +mind reverts to a story you have been reading about how the Tulululu +Islanders, a savage but ingenious people, preserve the heads of their +enemies so that the faces are much smaller but otherwise quite +recognizable. You find yourself looking keenly at the barber to discover +any possible trace of Tulululu ancestry. And what is he going to get +now? A krees? No, a paint-brush. Is he going to paint you? And if +so--what color? The question of color becomes strangely important, as if +it made any real difference. Green? Red? Purple? Blue? No, he uses the +brush dry, tickling your forehead, tickling your ears, tickling your +nose, tickling you under the chin and down the back of your neck. After +the serious business of the haircut, a barber must have some relaxation. + +There is one point on which you are independent: you will not have the +bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which +nevertheless has some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors +you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his sense of business +economy. + +He takes off your bib. + +From a row of chairs a man leaps to his feet, anxious to give _his_ head +to the barber. A boy hastily sweeps up the hair that was yours--already +as remote from you as if it had belonged to the man who is always +waiting, and whose name is Next. Oh, it is +horrible--horrible--horrible! + + + + +The Passing of Indoors + +By Zephine Humphrey + + +Indoors is going. We may just as well make up our minds on this +revolutionary point, and accept it with such degree of hardy rejoicing +or shivering regret as our natures prompt in us. + +The movement has been long under way, gradually working the perfect +ejection which seems now at hand. We might have recognized the +dislodging process long ago, had we been far-sighted enough. It +began--who shall say when it did begin? Surely not in the shaggy breasts +of those rude ancestors of ours whom we hold in such veneration, and to +whose ways we seem to ourselves to be so wisely returning. They dragged +their venison into the depths of a cave darker and closer than any +house, and devoured it in great seclusion. Perhaps it began in the San +Marco Piazza at Venice, with the little open-air tables under the +colonnades. "So delightful! So charming!" Thus the tourists, as they +sipped their coffee and dallied with their ices. They were right; it was +delightful and charming, and so it is to this day, but it was perhaps +the thin edge of the wedge which is turning us all out now. + +Supper was the first regular meal to follow the open-air suggestion, +country supper on the piazza in the warm summer evening. That also was +delightful, of course, and not at all alarming. All nations and ages +have practiced the sport of occasional festive repasts out of doors when +the weather has permitted. But breakfast was not long in following suit; +and when dinner, that most conservative, conventional of meals, +succumbed to the outward pressure and spread its congealing gravies in +the chilly air, we were in for the thing in good earnest, the new custom +was on. No longer a matter of times and seasons, the weather had nothing +to do with it now; and in really zealous families the regular summer +dining-room was out of doors. Summer dining-room--that sounds well; +since summer and warmth go together traditionally. But not always +actually in New England, where bleak rains overtake the world now and +then, and clearing north-west winds come racing keenly. It was soon +essential to introduce a new fashion in dinner garments: overcoats, +sweaters, and heavy shawls, felt hats and mufflers. + +'Excuse me while I run upstairs to get a pair of mittens?' + +'Finish your soup first, dear; it will be quite cold if you leave it.' + +The adherents of the new doctrine are very conscientious and faithful, +as was only to be expected. We are a valiant race in the matter of our +enthusiasms and can be trusted to follow them sturdily, buckling on +armor or overcoats or whatever other special equipment the occasion +demands. Conscientiousness is a good trait, but there is perhaps more of +the joy of life in some other qualities. + +Sleeping outdoors was the next great phase in the open-air movement. +That also began casually enough and altogether charmingly. One lingered +in the hammock, watching the stars, musing in the still summer night, +until, lo! there was the dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A +wonderful experience. Not much sleeping about it truly,--there is +commonly not much sleeping about great experiences,--but so beautiful +that the heart said, 'Go to! why not have this always? Why not sleep +outdoors every night?' Which is of course exactly the way in which human +nature works; very reasonable, very sane and convincing, but +unfortunately never quite so successful as it should be. That which has +blessed us once must be secured in perpetuity for our souls to feast on +continually; revelation must fold its wings and abide with us. So we +soberly go to work and strip all the poetry of divine chance, all the +delight of the unexpected, from our great occasions by laying plans for +their systematic recurrence. + + He who bends to himself a joy, + Does the winged life destroy; + But he who kisses a joy as it flies, + Lives in eternity's sunrise. + +It is a pity that William Blake could not teach us that once for all. As +a matter of fact, of course, great occasions care nothing at all for our +urging; and a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. The +stars and the dawn do not condescend to such paraphernalia for waylaying +them as sleeping-bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito +netting, with a stout club close at hand in case of tramps or a skunk. + +One experience of my own recurs to my memory poignantly here, and I +think I cannot do better than set it forth. I had passed an +unforgettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by the evening +almost insensibly into 'solemn midnight's tingling silences,' and thence +into the austere dawn. It was an episode such as should have sealed my +lips forever; but I profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion of +interest spread through the little village. + +'What fun! Did you have your rubbers on? Did you sit in a chair? I +should think you would have sat in a chair--so much more comfortable! +Well, I tell you what, let's do it together,--a lot of us, so we won't +be afraid,--and let's climb a mountain. The sunset and dawn will be +beautiful from a mountain.' + +We did it; I blush to confess that some twenty-five of us did it. It +was an excursion planned and discussed for a matter of two weeks (a full +moon being part of the programme), and there was no accident unforeseen, +no event unprovided for. The procession that wended its way, toiling and +puffing, up the ascent of Haystack,--the favored mountain selected for +the high pedestal of our rapture,--on the auspicious night, was about as +sad, and withal as funny, an affront as the secrecy of beauty ever +received. Blankets, steamer-rugs, pillows, shawls, hammocks, +whiskey-flasks--how we groaned beneath the burden of all these things. +We lost the way, of course, and had to beat the woods in every +direction; we were tired and hot and--cross? Perhaps. But we knew what +our role was, and when we reached the top of the mountain, we all of us +stood very solemnly in a row and said, 'How beautiful!' + +It was beautiful; that was just the fineness of the night's triumph over +us--over me at least; I cannot speak for the other twenty-four. To this +day, be it said in parentheses, whenever we mention that night on +Haystack we lift our eyes in ecstasy, and no one of us has ever +confessed any sense of lack. But honestly, honestly at the last (dear +stalwart relief of honesty!), that experiment was a failure--so +beautiful that the spirit should have been lifted out of the body, and +would have been, had it stood alone, had it not already exhausted itself +in plans and expectations. Beneath us, a far-spreading sea of misty, +rolling hills, all vague and blended in the light of the soaring moon; +above us, such a sweep of sky as only mountain-tops command; around us, +silence, silence. Yet the unstrenuous orchard at home, with its tranquil +acceptance of such degree of sunset light as was granted to it, and of +the moon's presence when she rose above the apple trees, would have +conveyed the night's message a thousand times more clearly. + +It is seldom worth while to describe any failure of the spirit very +minutely, and tragedy is not the tone this paper would assume; but one +slight episode of the dawn following that fatal night must be related. +We were gathered on the eastern edge of our mountain top, a tousled, +gray, disheveled lot, heavy-eyed and weary. Does the reader understand +the significance of the term 'to prevent the dawn'? He does if he has +stood and waited for the sun to rise--or the moon or any of the +constellations, for that matter. All heavenly bodies retard their +progress through the influence of being waited for. 'Surely now!' a +dozen times we warned one another there, with our faces toward the +quickening east; yet no glittering, lambent rim slid up to greet our +eyes. + +At last a decent comely cloud came to the rescue of the sun, halting and +embarrassed, and settled snugly all about the mountain of the +day-spring. Into this the sun was born, so obscurely that it rode high +above the mountain's edge, shorn and dull, a rubber ball, before we +discovered it. 'Why--why--' some one began, stammering; and then there +was a dramatic pause. Brave and determined though we were in our pursuit +of ecstasy, we could not burst forth into song like Memnon statues at +the sight of that belated orange, 'Lo, the Lord Sun!' Not at all. It was +the merest varlet. In this dilemma of our hearts, a funny little wailing +cry came from the cliff's edge: 'I want my money back! I want my money +back!' It was a perfect commentary on the whole situation, as fine and +humorous and true an utterance as could be asked on the foiled occasion. +We laughed at it, and all the air was straightway clearer for us. Then +down the mountain-side we trooped, and went home to bed. + +Of course I am not unaware of the impatience of some readers, if they +have taken pains to scan so far this earnest exposition. The outdoor +movement is not one primarily of sentiment, but of health and happiness; +and the story just related is aside from the point. That may be true. I +certainly stand in respect of the great claims of the physical side of +the subject, and would not deal with them. By all means, let all people +be as well as possible. But it is still the other side, the side of +sentiment and rapture, which is most pleadingly often brought home to +me. + +It is pitiful how helpless we are against the invasions of a new +enthusiasm like this--we sober, conservative folk. I still sleep in my +bed, in my room, but the satisfaction I used to take in the innocent +practice is broken of late by haunting fears that I may not be able to +keep it up. My friends will not let me alone. + +'Of all things! why don't you sleep out here, on this little upper +piazza? Precisely the place! I can't understand how you can ignore such +an opportunity.' + +'Well, you see,'--my answer was glib at first,--'the piazza overhangs +the road, and the milk-wagons go by very early. I don't want to get up +at four o'clock every morning.' + +'They couldn't see much of you, I should think,'--with a thoughtful +measuring glance,--'not more than your toes and the tip of your nose.' + +'Oh, thank you, that's quite enough!' + +'Well, you might saw off the legs of a cot, to bring it below the +railing. Or just a mattress spread on the floor would do very well.' + +Just a mattress spread on the floor! That closes the argument. I have no +spirit left to prefer any other objections to these dauntless souls, +such as the rain (the piazza has no roof). But what would a cold bath be +if not distinctly so much to the good in view of the toilet operations +of the following morning? There is no course left me but that final +one,--which should in honesty have come first,--of damning myself by the +hopeless assertion, 'I don't want to sleep out of doors.' This locks the +argument, and the barrier stands complete, shutting me off in a world by +myself, interrupting the genial flow of sympathetic friendship. But I +love my friends. Therefore it follows that I tremble for my further +repose in my bed. I fear I shall yet utter midnight sighs on that piazza +floor. + +Indoors, dear indoors! I would I might plead its cause a little here. +Does no one ever pause to reflect that there was never any outdoors at +all until indoors was created? The two had a simultaneous birth, but it +was an appurtenance of the latter that marked the distinction and gave +the names. A little humiliating that might have seemed to any creatures +less generous than woods and mountains--to have been here really from +the beginning, ages and ages in glorious life, and then to take their +first generic name, find their first classification, all of them in a +lump together (what a lump!) as the other side of a fragile barrier to a +mushroom construction. One wonders that those who exalt the outdoors as +everything nowadays, do not find some better title for it than its +dooryard term. But those who love the indoors too, though they may smile +at the calm presumption of its dubbing the universe, accept the +conclusion without any question. Man is after all the creature of +creatures, and his life is of first importance. We do not hear that the +woodchuck speaks of _out-hole_, or the bird of _out-tree_. + +Such life of man is an inner thing, intensely inner; its essence lies in +its inwardness. It can hardly know itself 'all abroad'; it must needs +have devised for itself a shelter as soon as it came to +self-consciousness, a refuge, not only from storm and cold but from the +distracting variety of the extensive world. Indoors is really an august +symbol, a very grave and reverend thing, if we apprehend it rightly. It +stands for the separate life of man, apart from (though still a part of, +too) the rest of the universe. Take any one room inhabited daily by a +person of strong individuality,--how alive it is! How brisk and alert in +the very attitudes of the chairs and the pictures on the walls! Or, more +happily, how serene and reposeful! Or how matter-of-fact! Morbid and +passionate, flippant, austere, boisterous, decorous,--anything, +everything a room may be which a human creature may be; and that range, +as most of us know, is almost unlimited. + +It is hard to understand how any person can fail to respond to the warm +appeal of his own abode. Say one has been abroad all day (another term +that assumes the house as a starting-point), climbing the mountains, +exploring the woods, ravishing eyes and heart with the beauty of the +excellent world. Night comes at last, and weariness droops upon the +flesh. Enough! Even the spirit's cry finds a pause. Enough, enough! The +wide world suddenly spreads so vast that it overwhelms and frightens; +there is something pitiless in the reach of the unbounded sky. Then, as +fast as they can, the lagging feet make for a point on the hillside +where the eyes can command the valley, and swiftly, eagerly flies the +glance to one dear accustomed goal. A white house nestled among the +trees,--that is all, yet it thrills the heart with a potent summons +which mountain-peaks and sunsets do not know. Home! Ah, hurry, then! + +Down the hill, across the pasture, in at the white gate, and up the two +marble steps. The front door stands open unconcernedly. The house makes +no stir at receiving its inmate back,--its inmate whose life it has held +and brooded during his absence, waiting to reinvest him with it when he +wants it again,--but there is a quiet sense of welcome, a content of +returning, which is among the sweetest and most establishing of human +experiences. The clock ticks steadily in the hall, its hands approaching +the genial hour of supper-time. Within the open library door, the books +dream on the shelves. Little sounds of a tranquil preparation come from +the dining-room; the tea-kettle sings, the black kitten purrs. Blessed +indoors! It draws a veil gently over the tired head, bewildered with +much marveling, lays a cool hand over the eyes, says, 'Now rest, rest.' +Indoors is like the Guardian Angel in Browning's poem. + +After supper, one sits by the lamp and reads peacefully. Aunt Susan +reads, too, on the other side of the big table, and Cousin Jane sews. +The books and the pictures look on benignly, and even the furniture is +instinct with a mute eloquence of companionship. The song of the night +insects throbs without, and millers hurl themselves with soft thuds +against the windows; an owl mutters to himself in the maple tree. But +not for anything would one go out, not for anything would one leave this +glowing, brooding, protecting indoors which one has regained. After a +while, one goes upstairs and lays one's self in the safe white bed in +one's own room. The windows are open to the night, but solid walls are +all round about; and, before the sleepily closing eyes, gleam one's own +peculiar cherished belongings in the creeping moonlight. Into the very +heart of one's life one has returned at the close of the day, and there +one goes to sleep. 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in +quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.' + +And we will not? Is the discouraged clause, promptly succeeding to that +most beautiful verse of Isaiah, true, then, of us? Are we going to +despoil ourselves of all the poetry, the intimate meaning of our indoor +life? + +'A place in which to dress and undress--that is all I want of a house,' +an energetic young woman said. + +A bath-house would suit her perfectly. Perhaps that is what we are +coming to--rows of bath-houses, with sleeping-bags stored up in them +against the night. Alas for the pictures! Alas for the music! Alas for +the books! + +The books! There is a happy suggestion. I believe the books will save +us. There is certainty nothing that objects with greater decision and +emphasis to sleeping out of doors than a book--yes, even a volume of +Walt Whitman. Books are obstinate in their way; they know their own +minds, and there are some things which they will not do. The effect of +leaving one in the orchard inadvertently over night has a final +melancholy about it which most book-lovers understand poignantly. Could +books be printed on india rubber and bound in water-proof cloth? +Perhaps; but the method does not sound attractive enough to be feasible +even in these practical days. No, I believe the books will save us. They +are a great army and they have power; a steady conservative hold is +theirs on their restless owners. Other threatening situations, they have +saved and are constantly saving. + +'I sometimes think I'd give up housekeeping, and not have a home any +more,' one woman said, 'if it weren't for my books. But I can't part +with them, nor yet can I get them all into one room; so here I stay.' + +'Buy books?' exclaimed a New York man. 'No; it hurts them too much to +move them.' + +Which innocent implication has caused me many a thoughtful smile. + +Essentially human,--with the humanity of the ages, not of a few +decades,--books understand what man really wants, and what he must have, +better than he does himself. In the serene and gracious indoors, they +took up their places long ago, and there they remain, and there they +will always make shift to abide. Perhaps, if we sit down close at their +feet, we, too, may abide. + + + + +The Contented Heart + +By Lucy Elliot Keeler + + +_Coeur Content, grand Talent_, runs the motto of one of my friends; +which early led me to dub her, Contented Heart. Is it not human nature, +such easy assumption of an interesting aspiration as a fact to be +posted? As logical as to expect Mr. Short to check his stature at five +feet two; as humanly contrary as for the Blacks to name their girls +Lily, Blanche, and Pearl. They usually do. I remember a Bermudian +rector, leaning down to inquire the name of the black baby to be +christened, suddenly quickened into audibility by the mother's reply: +'Keren-Happuck, sir, yes, sir, one of the Miss Jobs, sir.' Now Job's +daughters were fairest among the daughters of men. + +Contented Heart has obsessed my mind of late. I like to take the other +side: everybody does. Does like to and does; and because the air to-day +is redolent of unrest and discontent, I put in the assertion that, +nevertheless, the great majority of my acquaintances possess that great +talent,--translate it knack, or translate it acquirement,--a contented +heart. I seldom talk intimately with anybody but I hear something like +this:-- + +'I have been visiting at the X's. What a superb place! but I do not envy +them. Think of the care and expense and the servant question. Simple as +my cot is, I honestly prefer it.' Or, 'What a fortune the H's appear to +have. It would be comfortable to get what one wants and go where one +wishes; not to worry at tax-paying time and new-suit time. Still I doubt +if they get half the enjoyment from their acquisitions that we do who +have to save and plan for ours.' Or, 'You do not use eye-glasses? How +fortunate! they are such a nuisance. But hush--such a boon. I should be +helpless without them. I am not sure but it is even a good thing to be +born with them on, so to speak. My contemporaries who are beginning to +use them are most unhappy, while glasses are just a part of my face.' +Or, 'It is a great affliction to be deaf in even one ear. The person on +that one side of you thinks you prefer the conversation of the person on +the other side. Yet, as my brother said when he saw me struggling to +make out a dull speaker's words, "Why abuse your natural advantage?" + +How do people with two good ears sleep? They cannot bury them both in +the pillow. Suppose our ears were so sensitive that we noticed every +footstep on the street! Being deaf is merely to enjoy some of the +advantages that the society to prevent unnecessary noises seeks to +confer on a normal public. We admire a beautiful face and then add, 'But +how she must hate to grow old; a tragedy of the mirror that we homely +souls are spared.' All my life I envied persons with straight noses till +I began to observe that with age the straight nose droops into a beak, +whereas the youthful tip-tilt and concavity kind straightens its end to +a fair classicism. Thus others than the Vicar of Wakefield draw upon +content for the deficiencies of fortune. + +Of course content is dilemma enough to have its two horns: the double +peaks of taking life too easily, and of taking it too hard. In his +statue of Christ, Thorvaldsen expressed his conviction that he had +reached his culminating point,--since he had never been so satisfied +with any work before,--and was 'alarmed that I _am_ satisfied.' That +'the people ask nothing better' is the slogan of the grafter. No reform +comes without its preceding period of discontent; dissatisfaction is the +price to be paid for better things; a revolutionary attitude must be +maintained. Stevenson knew a Welsh blacksmith who at twenty-five could +neither read nor write, at which time he heard a chapter of _Robinson +Crusoe_ read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat +content, huddled in his ignorance; but he left the kitchen another man. +There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine day-dreams, written and +printed and bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at pleasure. +Down he sat that day, painfully learned to read Welsh, and returned to +borrow the book. It had been lost, nor could he find another copy, only +one in English. Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length +with entire delight read _Robinson_. + +As there is a noble way of being discontented, so there is an ignoble +content. The Contented Heart is not a phrase to soothe us, but a power +to work results. It must constantly emerge upon a higher plane, or it +will fall. Few of us would be willing to retain just the personal habits +that we have now. Sir Gilbert Elliot drove his sister out of her +literary inertia when he bet gloves to ribbons that she could not write +a modern ballad on the _Flowers of the Forest_. The result is one of the +most popular songs of Scotland. There is also a sham content whose +practitioners often get their 'cumuppances' as effectively as did Thomas +Raikes. The Duchess of York led him about her garden, where was a +menagerie crowded with eagles and some favorite macaws. A herd of +kangaroos and ostriches appeared and a troop of monkeys. Next morning a +kangaroo and a macaw strolled into Raikes's bedroom. He was too much of +a courtier to tell his terror. At breakfast he said, 'If I like one +creature more than another it is a kangaroo, while there is nothing so +good for a bedroom sentinel as a strong-legged macaw.' The good Duchess +smiled pleasantly and put Raikes down in her will for two macaws. + +A certain kind of content enlivens us with the bliss of others' +ignorance. Tacitus was one of the first historians in our modern sense, +yet he described a motionless frozen sea in the north from which a hiss +is heard as the sun plunges down into it at night; and Pliny noted that +the reflection of mirrors is due to the percussion of the air thrown +back upon the eyes. Kipling laughed slyly at the traveler in India who +spent his time gazing at the names of the railway stations in Baedeker. +When the train rushed through a station he would draw a line through the +name and say, 'I've done that.' Satisfaction with our learning is +confined to no age or nation. Two Frenchmen in a restaurant showing off +their English opined, 'It deed rain to-morrow.' 'Yes, it was.' +Satisfaction with virtue was rebuked by Francis de Sales when he told +the nuns, who asked to go barefoot, to keep their shoes and change their +brains. Satisfaction with our importance recalls Harlequin, who when +asked what he was doing on his paper throne replied that he was +reigning. Satisfaction with our future is the satisfaction of the eighth +square of the chessboard where we shall all be queens together, and it's +all feasting and fun. + +I would not, as advocate of the Contented Heart, go so far as Walt +Whitman when he said that whoever was without his volume of poems should +be assassinated; but his remark suggests that extreme measures are +frequently curative. Stanislaus of Poland did not hesitate to recall to +his daughter the bad days they had undergone. 'See, Marie, how +Providence cares for good people: you had not even a chemise in 1725, +and now you are Queen of France.' To take up Dante and read about devils +boiled in pitch must by comparison cheer morbid humans. The spectacle of +tragedy in the lives of kings and favorites of the gods such as the +Greek stage presented was believed to be wholesome because beholders +thereby faced a scale of misfortune so much exceeding anything in their +own lives that their mishaps appeared of slight importance in +comparison. I know that after seeing _OEdipus Rex_ given by the three +Salvinis and others in the old amphitheatre in Fiesole, I went off +murmuring, 'What does it matter if my trunk is lost!' a state of mind to +which no slighter argument had sufficed to bring me. Surely life is too +interesting to spend it all knocking off its pretty scallops by aimless +exaggeration of small troubles, or hanging out our large ones to flap +the passer-by. Besides which, we get no more sympathy from the passer-by +than did Giant Despair who sometimes, in sunshiny weather, fell into +fits. + +Captivating as a 'born,' a fortuitous, untrained content may be, trained +content is of a finer type. One is quantity content, the other quality +content. Not to smash things up and make them over just as we want them, +which we should like to do but cannot; not to waste our time fighting +against conditions, but to take up those conditions, that environment, +and out of them forge the _oes triplex_ of a contented heart--that, I +take it, is to be an adept in the fine art of living, and I for one am +votary. + +That the most restless heart can train itself to find content in simple, +commonplace things, like work, nature, health, books, meditation, and +friends,--illustrations are bewilderingly abundant. Burne-Jones said he +would like to stay right in his own house for numberless years, the hope +of getting on with his painting was happiness enough. Macaulay would +'rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who +did not love reading'; and King James said that if he were not a king he +would be a university man, and if it were so that he must be a prisoner +he would desire no other durance than to be chained in the Bodleian +Library with so many noble authors. Carlyle's chief luxury was 'to think +and smoke tobacco, with a new clay pipe every day, put on the doorstep +at night for any poor brother-smoker or souvenir-hunter to carry away.' + +All Diogenes wanted was that Alexander and his men should stand from +between him and the sun. Goethe found content in Nature and earnest +activity; and the happy Turk told Candide that he had twenty acres of +land which he cultivated with his children, work which put them far from +great evils: ennui, vice, and need,--'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.' +Diocletian, one of the cleverest of the Roman emperors, reigned +twenty-two years and then retired to private life in Dalmatia, building, +planting, and gardening. Solicited by Maximian to resume the imperial +purple, he replied that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he +had planted with his own hands he would no longer be urged to relinquish +his enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power. Fanny Kemble lived +all summer in the Alps, the guides describing her exquisitely as the +lady who goes singing over the mountains. Pedaretus, being left out of +the election of the three hundred, went home merry, saying that it did +him good to find there were three hundred better than himself in the +city. St. Augustine on his thirty-third birthday gave his friends a +moderate feast followed by a three days' discussion of the Happy Life. +Bunyan wrote _The Pilgrim's Progress_ not to please his neighbors, but +his own self to satisfy; in prison, too. + +Catherine of Siena, whatever her sufferings, was always jocund, 'ever +laughing in the Lord.' The blind Madame du Deffand rejoiced that her +affliction was not rheumatism; Spurgeon's receipt for contentment was +never to chew pills, but to swallow the disagreeable and have done with +it; Darwin's comfort was that he had never consciously done anything to +gain applause; and Jefferson never ceased affirming his belief in the +satisfying power of common daylight, common pleasures, and all the +common relations of life. Essipoff, when commiserated on the smallness +of her hands, insisted that longer ones would be cumbersome. Robert +Schauffler's specific for a blue Monday is to whistle all the Brahms +tunes he can remember. Dr. Cuyler, when very ill, replied to a +relative's suggestion of the glorious company waiting him above, 'I've +got all eternity to visit with those old fellows; I am in no hurry to +go'; and old Aunt Mandy, when asked why she was so constantly cheerful, +replied, 'Lor', chile, I jes' wear this world like a loose garment.' + +Acts, all these, the flinging out of hand or tongue against adverse +fortune. The brain can do it, too. One of the most remarkable statements +I ever heard is Mary Antin's that she never had a dull hour in her life. +Now, outside things, doings, could not so have thrilled her days. Her +spirit kept dullness distant. On the rafters of Montaigne's tower-room +was written in Greek, 'It is not so much things that torment man as the +opinion that he has of things.' Our opinions then make the contented or +the discontented heart. Coleridge affirmed the shaping power of +imagination to be so vitally human that the joy of life consists in it. +Haydon's chief pleasure was 'feeding on his own thoughts.' 'Make for +yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts,' Ruskin urged. 'Whether God gave +the Venetians St. Mark's bones does not matter,' he says elsewhere, 'but +he gave them real joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we +have in our real ones.' Lord Rosebery urges people to garden in winter +in the imagination. Stevenson writes of the ease and pleasure of travels +in the calendar and a voyage in the atlas; and Keats thought that a man +might pass a very pleasant life by reading certain pages of poetry and +wandering with them and musing and dreaming upon them. + +It is the mood that makes the contented heart, just as the eye makes the +horizon, and we ourselves make the light that we see things by. Clothes +warm us only by keeping our own heat in. 'Everyone is well or ill at +ease,' says Epictetus, 'according as he finds himself; not he whom the +world believes but himself believes to be so is content.' To be +concrete, take riches. 'Greedy fools,' sings the modern poet, + + 'Measure themselves by poor men never; + Their standard being still richer men + Makes them poor ever.' + +The rich man is merely one who has something to spare; and the really +poor one he who has nothing over. If you can give anything you are rich. +Try it. An old man tells me how Mark Hopkins used to examine the boys in +the Westminster Catechism: 'What is the chief end of man?' 'To glorify +God and enjoy him forever.' 'Well,' he burst forth, 'why don't you do it +then?' It is not conceit, but hygiene of the soul, to 'enjoy one's +self,' taking the conventional phrase literally. The trick of happiness, +says Walt Whitman, is to tone down your wants and tastes low enough; +and Stevenson puts in his say that the true measure of success is +appreciation: 'I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment +with life than of knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue.' What would the +possession of a thousand a year avail, asks Thackeray, to one who was +allowed to enjoy it only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a +couple of nails in it? + +Take knowledge, not to be confounded with wisdom,--'I have none,' sang +Keats's thrush, 'and yet the evening listens.' It did not hurt Horace + + if others be + More rich or better read than me, + Each has his place. + +Montaigne would rather be more content and less knowing; and there is +Lessing's great confession of faith: that if God in his right hand held +all truth, and in his left the striving for truth, 'if he should say to +me, "Choose," I would say, "Father, give me this striving, pure truth is +for thee alone."' + +Take work. Do you complain of it? Try doing more, of a productive sort. +An engine-builder received complaint that his engine burned too much +coal. 'How many cars on the train?' was the telegraphed query, with the +reply, 'Four.' 'Try twelve,' went the prescription, and the train drew +twelve with economy of fuel. 'Your brain tired?' William James echoed a +student. 'Never mind, work straight on and your brain will get its +second wind.' I myself do not know of any anodyne surer and quicker +than that found in the garden. When all the world is askew, dibbling in +seedlings in straight rows is a wonderful solace. Why do so many women +treat domesticity as drudgery? Its infinite variety, so unlike the +monotonous tasks of men, often wearies the mind, but like Chesterton I +do not see how it can narrow it. And socialism, with its cry of +armchairs for workingmen! Armchairs, as Creighton nobly says, will bring +no lasting happiness; but to quicken a human being, even one's self, +into a sense of the meaning of his life and destiny, that is a real +happiness. + +Take sorrow. Is it not infinitely better to have loved and lost than +never to have loved at all? Are there not many good moments in life +which outweigh its greatest sorrows? + +Take overpressure. Luther advised Melanchthon to stop managing the +universe and let the Almighty do it; and Dr. Trumbull preached 'the duty +of refusing to do good.' + +Take the grief caused by others. One of the bravest women I know used in +times of anxiety to gather her little children about her and say gayly, +'Now I will make some graham gems, and open some marmalade, and we will +take a little comfort.' Solomon or Aristotle could have done no more. + +Take, for a smile's sake, the weather. It may be bad, but as we cannot +change it, the thing is our attitude toward it; and as dark enshrouds +us, 'The sun is set,' said Mr. Inglesant, cheerfully; 'but it will rise +again. Let us go home.' + +In such ways as these the right-minded person will meet his discontents +face to face, and one by one eliminate them. He will also take stock of +his assets. St. Teresa said that by thinking of heaven for a quarter of +an hour every day one might hope to deserve it. Why do we not +deliberately devote some minutes each day to saying to ourselves, 'I am +tolerably well; I have food and shelter; everybody so far as I know +respects me, and a few persons love me truly. I have books and a garden, +the stars and the sea. I enjoy this and that, and before long the other. +The thing so long dreaded has never come to pass. I will embark at any +rate for the land of the Contented Heart.' Would not such a conscious +recapitulation be an actual force building up this thing of which we +talk? + +Can content be conveyed? Can it be passed from one who has it to one who +has it not--as one lamp lights another nor grows less? I wonder what +would be the effect of a group of young women, lately conning over in +college class-- + + With what I most enjoy contented least-- + +if they should resolve to stop all that, and, undeterred by others' +estimate of values, be trustees of their own content, not suffering it +to be contingent upon the manners and conduct of others? I believe that +it would act like the magnet, which not only attracts the needle but +infuses it with the power of drawing others. Great-heart so inspired the +travelers that Christiana seized her viol and Mercy her lute, and, as +they made sweet music, Ready-to-Halt took Despondency's daughter, Mrs. +Much-Afraid, by the hand and together they went dancing down the road. + +Which is apropos of my contention that the Contented Heart is not so +rare! + + +THE END + +The Riverside Press + +CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS + +U. S. A. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Classics, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC CLASSICS *** + +***** This file should be named 37758.txt or 37758.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/7/5/37758/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images available at The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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