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diff --git a/38280-0.txt b/38280-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fc0b6e --- /dev/null +++ b/38280-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8878 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Modern Essays + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Modern Essays + +Author: John Macy + William Allen White + Rupert Brooke + Don Marquis + David W. Bone + William McFee + Joyce Kilmer + Joseph Conrad + A. P. Herbert + O. W. Firkins + Hilaire Belloc + William Osler + Stephen Leacock + Harry Morgan Ayres + Thomas Burke + A. A. Milne + Max Beerbohm + Stuart P. Sherman + H. M. Tomlinson + Louise Imogen Guiney + Stewart Edward White + Marian Storm + George Santayana + Simeon Strunsky + George Saintsbury + Bertrand Russell + Philip Guedalla + Robert Palfrey Utter + Logan Pearsall Smith + James Branch Cabell + Robert Cortes Holliday + Harry Esty Dounce + Heywood Broun + +Editor: Christopher Morley + +Release Date: December 11, 2011 [eBook #38280] +[Most recently updated: January 23, 2022] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN ESSAYS *** + + + + +MODERN ESSAYS + +SELECTED BY + +CHRISTOPHER MORLEY + +[Illustration] + +NEW YORK + +HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY + +COPYRIGHT. 1921, BY + +HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. + +PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY + +QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC. + +RAHWAY, N. J. + + + + +PREFACE + + +IT had been my habit, I am now aware, to speak somewhat lightly of the +labors of anthologists: to insinuate that they led lives of bland +sedentary ease. I shall not do so again. When the publisher suggested a +collection of representative contemporary essays, I thought it would be +the most lenient of tasks. But experience is a fine aperitive to the +mind. + +Indeed the pangs of the anthologist, if he has conscience, are +burdensome. There are so many considerations to be tenderly weighed; +personal taste must sometimes be set aside in view of the general plan; +for every item chosen half a dozen will have been affectionately conned +and sifted; and perhaps some favorite pieces will be denied because the +authors have reasons for withholding permission. It would be enjoyable +(for me, at any rate) to write an essay on the things I have lingered +over with intent to include them in this little book, but have finally +sacrificed for one reason or another. How many times--twenty at least--I +have taken down from my shelf Mr. Chesterton's _The Victorian Age in +Literature_ to reconsider whether his ten pages on Dickens, or his +glorious summing-up of Decadents and Æsthetes, were not absolutely +essential. How many times I have palpitated upon certain passages in +_The Education of Henry Adams_ and in Mr. Wells's _Outline of History_, +which, I assured myself, would legitimately stand as essays if shrewdly +excerpted. + +But I usually concluded that would not be quite fair. I have not been +overscrupulous in this matter, for the essay is a mood rather than a +form; the frontier between the essay and the short story is as +imperceptible as is at present the once famous Mason and Dixon line. +Indeed, in that pleasant lowland country between the two empires lie (to +my way of thinking) some of the most fertile fields of prose--fiction +that expresses feeling and character and setting rather than action and +plot; fiction beautifully ripened by the lingering mild sunshine of the +essayist's mood. This is fiction, I might add, extremely unlikely to get +into the movies. I think of short stories such as George Gissing's, in +that too little known volume _The House of Cobwebs_, which I read again +and again at midnight with unfailing delight; fall asleep over; forget; +and again re-read with undiminished satisfaction. They have no +brilliance of phrase, no smart surprises, no worked-up 'situations' +which have to be taken at high speed to pass without breakdown over +their brittle bridgework of credibility. They have only the modest and +faintly melancholy savor of life itself. + +Yet it is a mere quibble to pretend that the essay does not have easily +recognizable manners. It may be severely planned, or it may ramble in +ungirdled mood, but it has its own point of view that marks it from the +short story proper, or the merely personal memoir. That distinction, +easily felt by the sensitive reader, is not readily expressible. Perhaps +the true meaning of the word _essay_--an attempt--gives a clue. No +matter how personal or trifling the topic may be, there is always a +tendency to generalize, to walk round the subject or the experience, and +view it from several vantages; instead of (as in the short story) +cutting a carefully landscaped path through a chosen tract of human +complication. So an essay can never be more than an attempt, for it is +an excursion into the endless. Any student of fiction will admit that in +the composition of a short story many entertaining and valuable +elaborations may rise in the mind of the author which must be strictly +rejected because they do not forward the essential motive. But in the +essay (of an informal sort) we ask not relevance to plot, but relevance +to mood. That is why there are so many essays that are mere marking +time. The familiar essay is easier to write than the short story, but it +imposes equal restraints on a scrupulous author. For in fiction the +writer is controlled and limited and swept along by his material; but in +the essay, the writer rides his pen. A good story, once clearly +conceived, almost writes itself; but essays are written. + +There also we find a pitfall of the personal essay--the temptation to +become too ostentatiously quaint, too deliberately 'whimsical' (the word +which, by loathsome repetition, has become emetic). The fine flavor and +genius of the essay--as in Bacon and Montaigne, Lamb, Hazlitt, +Thackeray, Thoreau; perhaps even in Stevenson--is the rich bouquet of +personality. But soliloquy must not fall into monologue. One might put +it thus: that the perfection of the familiar essay is a conscious +revelation of self done inadvertently. + +The art of the anthologist is the art of the host: his tact is exerted +in choosing a congenial group; making them feel comfortable and at ease; +keeping the wine and tobacco in circulation; while his eye is tenderly +alert down the bright vista of tablecloth, for any lapse in the general +cheer. It is well, also, for him to hold himself discreetly in the +background, giving his guests the pleasure of clinching the jape, and +seeking only, by innocent wiles, to draw each one into some +characteristic and felicitous vein. I think I can offer you, in this +parliament of philomaths, entertainment of the most genuine sort; and +having said so much, I might well retire and be heard no more. + +But I think it is well to state, as even the most bashful host may do, +just why this particular company has been called together. My intention +is not merely to please the amiable dilettante, though I hope to do that +too. I made my choices, first and foremost, with a view to stimulating +those who are themselves interested in the arts of writing. I have, to +be frank, a secret ambition that a book of this sort may even be used as +a small but useful weapon in the classroom. I wanted to bring it home to +the student that as brilliant and sincere work is being done to-day in +the essay as in any period of our literature. Accordingly the pieces +reprinted here are very diverse. There is the grand manner; there is +foolery; there is straightforward literary criticism; there is pathos, +politics, and the picturesque. But every selection is, in its own way, a +work of art. And I would call the reader's attention to this: that the +greater number of these essays were written not by retired æsthetes, but +by practising journalists in the harness of the daily or weekly press. +The names of some of the most widely bruited essayists of our day are +absent from this roster, not by malice, but because I desired to include +material less generally known. + +I should apologize, I suppose, for the very informal tone of the +introductory notes on each author. But I conceived the reader in the +rôle of a friend spending the evening in happy gossip along the shelves. +Pulling out one's favorites and talking about them, now and then reading +a chosen extract aloud, and ending (some time after midnight) by +choosing some special volume for the guest to take to bed with him--in +the same spirit I have compiled this collection. Perhaps the editorial +comments have too much the manner of dressing gown and slippers; but +what a pleasant book this will be to read in bed! + +And perhaps this collection may be regarded as a small contribution to +Anglo-American friendliness. Of course when I say Anglo-, I mean Brito-, +but that is such a hideous prefix. Journalists on this side are much +better acquainted with what their professional colleagues are doing in +Britain, than they with our concerns. But surely there should be a +congenial fraternity of spirit among all who use the English tongue in +print. There are some of us who even imagine a day when there may be +regular international exchanges of journalists, as there have been of +scholars and students. The contributions to this book are rather evenly +divided between British and American hands; and perhaps it is not +insignificant that two of the most pleasing items come from Canada, +where they often combine the virtues of both sides. + +It is a pleasant task to thank the authors and publishers who have +assented to the reprinting of these pieces. To the authors themselves, +and to the following publishers, I admit my sincere gratitude for the +use of material copyrighted by them:--Doubleday Page and Company for the +extracts from books by John Macy, Stewart Edward White and Pearsall +Smith; Charles Scribner's Sons for Rupert Brooke's _Niagara Falls_; the +New York _Sun_ for Don Marquis's _Almost Perfect State_; the George H. +Doran Company for the essays by Joyce Kilmer and Robert Cortes Holliday; +Mr. James B. Pinker for permission to reprint Mr. Conrad's Preface to _A +Personal Record_; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for the essays by H. M. +Tomlinson, A. P. Herbert and Philip Guedalla; Lady Osler for the essay +by the late Sir William Osler; Henry Holt and Company for Thomas Burke's +_The Russian Quarter_; E. P. Dutton and Company for _A Word for Autumn_, +by A. A. Milne; the New York _Evening Post_ for the essays by Stuart P. +Sherman and Harry Esty Dounce; Harper and Brothers for Marian Storm's _A +Woodland Valentine_; Dodd, Mead and Company for Simeon Strunsky's +_Nocturne_, from his volume _Post-Impressions_; the Macmillan Company +for _Beer and Cider_, from Professor Saintsbury's _Notes on a Cellar +Book_; Longmans Green and Company for Bertrand Russell's _A Free Man's +Worship_, from _Mysticism and Logic_; Robert M. McBride and Company for +the selection from James Branch Cabell; Harcourt, Brace and Company for +the essay by Heywood Broun; _The Weekly Review_ for the essays by O. W. +Firkins, Harry Morgan Ayres and Robert Palfrey Utter. The present +ownership of the copyright of the essay by Louise Imogen Guiney I have +been unable to discover. It was published in _Patrins_ (Copeland and +Day, 1897), which has long been out of print. Knowing the purity of my +motives I have used this essay, hoping that it might introduce Miss +Guiney's exquisite work to the younger generation that knows her hardly +at all. + +CHRISTOPHER MORLEY + +OCTOBER, 1921 + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +Preface iii + +AMERICAN LITERATURE _John Macy_ 3 + +MARY WHITE _William Allen White_ 22 + +NIAGARA FALLS _Rupert Brooke_ 30 + +THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE _Don Marquis_ 39 + +"THE MAN O' WAR'S 'ER 'USBAND" _David W. Bone_ 49 + +THE MARKET _William McFee_ 60 + +HOLY IRELAND _Joyce Kilmer_ 67 + +A FAMILIAR PREFACE _Joseph Conrad_ 81 + +ON DRAWING _A. P. Herbert_ 94 + +O. HENRY _O. W. Firkins_ 100 + +THE MOWING OF A FIELD _Hilaire Belloc_ 113 + +THE STUDENT LIFE _William Osler_ 128 + +THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA _Stephen Leacock_ 145 + +AMERICA AND THE ENGLISH TRADITION _Harry Morgan Ayres_ 153 + +THE RUSSIAN QUARTER _Thomas Burke_ 160 + +A WORD FOR AUTUMN _A. A. Milne_ 173 + +"A CLERGYMAN" _Max Beerbohm_ 177 + +SAMUEL BUTLER _Stuart P. Sherman_ 187 + +BED-BOOKS AND NIGHT-LIGHTS _H. M. Tomlinson_ 210 + +THE PRECEPT OF PEACE _Louise Imogen Guiney_ 219 + +ON LYING AWAKE AT NIGHT _Stewart Edward White_ 229 + +A WOODLAND VALENTINE _Marian Storm_ 236 + +THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY _George Santayana_ 241 + +NOCTURNE _Simeon Strunsky_ 246 + +BEER AND CIDER _George Saintsbury_ 253 + +A FREE MAN'S WORSHIP _Bertrand Russell_ 263 + +SOME HISTORIANS _Philip Guedalla_ 278 + +WINTER MIST _Robert Palfrey Utter_ 291 + +TRIVIA _Logan Pearsall Smith_ 297 + +BEYOND LIFE _James Branch Cabell_ 304 + +THE FISH REPORTER _Robert Cortes Holliday_ 316 + +SOME NONSENSE ABOUT A DOG _Harry Esty Dounce_ 331 + +THE FIFTY-FIRST DRAGON _Heywood Broun_ 338 + + + + +MODERN ESSAYS + + + + +AMERICAN LITERATURE + +_By_ JOHN MACY + + + This vigorous survey of American letters is the first chapter of + John Macy's admirable volume _The Spirit of American Literature_, + published in 1913--a book shrewd, penetrating and salty, which has + unfortunately never reached one-tenth of the many readers who would + find it permanently delightful and profitable. Mr. Macy has no + skill in vaudeville tricks to call attention to himself: no shafts + of limelight have followed him across the stage. But those who have + an eye for criticism that is vivacious without bombast, austere + without bitterness, keen without malice, know him as one of the + truly competent and liberal-minded observers of the literary scene. + + Mr. Macy was born in Detroit, 1877; graduated from Harvard in 1899; + did editorial service on the _Youth's Companion_ and the _Boston + Herald_; and nowadays lives pensively in Greenwich Village, writing + a good deal for _The Freeman_ and _The Literary Review_. Perhaps, + if you were wandering on Fourth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, you + might see him treading thoughtfully along, with a wide sombrero + hat, and always troubled by an iron-gray forelock that droops over + his brow. You would know, as soon as you saw him, that he is a man + greatly lovable. I like to think of him as I first saw him, some + years ago, in front of the bright hearth of the charming St. + Botolph Club in Boston, where he was usually the center of an + animated group of nocturnal philosophers. + + The essay was written in 1912, before the very real reawakening of + American creative work that began in the 'teens of this century. + The reader will find it interesting to consider how far Mr. Macy's + remarks might be modified if he were writing to-day. + + _The Spirit of American Literature_ has been reissued in an + inexpensive edition by Boni and Liveright. It is a book well worth + owning. + +AMERICAN literature is a branch of English literature, as truly as are +English books written in Scotland or South Africa. Our literature lies +almost entirely in the nineteenth century when the ideas and books of +the western world were freely interchanged among the nations and became +accessible to an increasing number of readers. In literature nationality +is determined by language rather than by blood or geography. M. +Maeterlinck, born a subject of King Leopold, belongs to French +literature. Mr. Joseph Conrad, born in Poland, is already an English +classic. Geography, much less important in the nineteenth century than +before, was never, among modern European nations, so important as we +sometimes are asked to believe. Of the ancestors of English literature +"Beowulf" is scarcely more significant, and rather less graceful, than +our tree-inhabiting forebears with prehensile toes; the true progenitors +of English literature are Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, and French. + +American literature and English literature of the nineteenth century are +parallel derivatives from preceding centuries of English literature. +Literature is a succession of books from books. Artistic expression +springs from life ultimately but not immediately. It may be likened to a +river which is swollen throughout its course by new tributaries and by +the seepages of its banks; it reflects the life through which it flows, +taking color from the shores; the shores modify it, but its power and +volume descend from distant headwaters and affluents far up stream. Or +it may be likened to the race-life which our food nourishes or +impoverishes, which our individual circumstances foster or damage, but +which flows on through us, strangely impersonal and beyond our power to +kill or create. + +It is well for a writer to say: "Away with books! I will draw my +inspiration from life!" For we have too many books that are simply +better books diluted by John Smith. At the same time, literature is not +born spontaneously out of life. Every book has its literary parentage, +and students find it so easy to trace genealogies that much criticism +reads like an Old Testament chapter of "begats." Every novel was suckled +at the breasts of older novels, and great mothers are often prolific of +anæmic offspring. The stock falls off and revives, goes a-wandering, and +returns like a prodigal. The family records get blurred. But of the main +fact of descent there is no doubt. + +American literature is English literature made in this country. Its +nineteenth-century characteristics are evident and can be analyzed and +discussed with some degree of certainty. Its "American" +characteristics--no critic that I know has ever given a good account of +them. You can define certain peculiarities of American politics, +American agriculture, American public schools, even American religion. +But what is uniquely American in American literature? Poe is just as +American as Mark Twain; Lanier is just as American as Whittier. The +American spirit in literature is a myth, like American valor in war, +which is precisely like the valor of Italians and Japanese. The +American, deluded by a falsely idealized image which he calls America, +can say that the purity of Longfellow represents the purity of American +home life. An Irish Englishman, Mr. Bernard Shaw, with another falsely +idealized image of America, surprised that a face does not fit his +image, can ask: "What is Poe doing in that galley?" There is no answer. +You never can tell. Poe could not help it. He was born in Boston, and +lived in Richmond, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia. Professor van Dyke +says that Poe was a maker of "decidedly un-American cameos," but I do +not understand what that means. Facts are uncomfortable consorts of +prejudices and emotional generalities; they spoil domestic peace, and +when there is a separation they sit solid at home while the other party +goes. Irving, a shy, sensitive gentleman, who wrote with fastidious +care, said: "It has been a matter of marvel, to European readers, that a +man from the wilds of America should express himself in tolerable +English." It is a matter of marvel, just as it is a marvel that Blake +and Keats flowered in the brutal city of London a hundred years ago. + +The literary mind is strengthened and nurtured, is influenced and +mastered, by the accumulated riches of literature. In the last century +the strongest thinkers in our language were Englishmen, and not only the +traditional but the contemporary influences on our thinkers and artists +were British. This may account for one negative characteristic of +American literature--its lack of American quality. True, our records +must reflect our life. Our poets, enamored of nightingales and Persian +gardens, have not altogether forgotten the mocking-bird and the woods of +Maine. Fiction, written by inhabitants of New York, Ohio, and +Massachusetts, does tell us something of the ways of life in those +mighty commonwealths, just as English fiction written by Lancashire men +about Lancashire people is saturated with the dialect, the local habits +and scenery of that county. But wherever an English-speaking man of +imagination may dwell, in Dorset or Calcutta or Indianapolis, he is +subject to the strong arm of the empire of English literature; he cannot +escape it; it tears him out of his obscure bed and makes a happy slave +of him. He is assigned to the department of the service for which his +gifts qualify him, and his special education is undertaken by +drill-masters and captains who hail from provinces far from his +birthplace. + +Dickens, who writes of London, influences Bret Harte, who writes of +California, and Bret Harte influences Kipling, who writes of India. Each +is intensely local in subject matter. The affinity between them is a +matter of temperament, manifested, for example, in the swagger and +exaggeration characteristic of all three. California did not "produce" +Bret Harte; the power of Dickens was greater than that of the Sierras +and the Golden Gate. Bret Harte created a California that never existed, +and Indian gentlemen, Caucasian and Hindoo, tell us that Kipling +invented an army and an empire unknown to geographers and war-offices. + +The ideas at work among these English men of letters are +world-encircling and fly between book and brain. The dominant power is +on the British Islands, and the prevailing stream of influence flows +west across the Atlantic. Sometimes it turns and runs the other way. Poe +influenced Rossetti; Whitman influenced Henley. For a century Cooper has +been in command of the British literary marine. Literature is +reprehensibly unpatriotic, even though its votaries are, as individual +citizens, afflicted with local prides and hostilities. It takes only a +dramatic interest in the guns of Yorktown. Its philosophy was nobly +uttered by Gaston Paris in the Collège de France in 1870, when the city +was beleaguered by the German armies: "Common studies, pursued in the +same spirit, in all civilized countries, form, beyond the restrictions +of diverse and often hostile nationalities, a great country which no +war profanes, no conqueror menaces, where souls find that refuge and +unity which in former times was offered them by the city of God." The +catholicity of English language and literature transcends the temporal +boundaries of states. + +What, then, of the "provincialism" of the American province of the +empire of British literature? Is it an observable general +characteristic, and is it a virtue or a vice? There is a sense in which +American literature is not provincial enough. The most provincial of all +literature is the Greek. The Greeks knew nothing outside of Greece and +needed to know nothing. The Old Testament is tribal in its +provinciality; its god is a local god, and its village police and +sanitary regulations are erected into eternal laws. If this racial +localism is not essential to the greatness of early literatures, it is +inseparable from them; we find it there. It is not possible in our +cosmopolitan age and there are few traces of it in American books. No +American poet has sung of his neighborhood with naïve passion, as if it +were all the world to him. Whitman is pugnaciously American, but his +sympathies are universal, his vision is cosmic; when he seems to be +standing in a city street looking at life, he is in a trance, and his +spirit is racing with the winds. + +The welcome that we gave Whitman betrays the lack of an admirable kind +of provincialism; it shows us defective in local security of judgment. +Some of us have been so anxiously abashed by high standards of European +culture that we could not see a poet in our own back yard until European +poets and critics told us he was there. This is queerly contradictory to +a disposition found in some Americans to disregard world standards and +proclaim a third-rate poet as the Milton of Oshkosh or the Shelley of +San Francisco. The passage in Lowell's "Fable for Critics" about "The +American Bulwers, Disraelis and Scotts" is a spoonful of salt in the +mouth of that sort of gaping village reverence. + +Of dignified and self-respecting provincialism, such as Professor Royce +so eloquently advocates, there might well be more in American books. Our +poets desert the domestic landscape to write pseudo-Elizabethan dramas +and sonnets about Mont Blanc. They set up an artificial Tennyson park on +the banks of the Hudson. Beside the shores of Lake Michigan they croon +the love affairs of an Arab in the desert and his noble steed. This is +not a very grave offence, for poets live among the stars, and it makes +no difference from what point of the earth's surface they set forth on +their aerial adventures. A Wisconsin poet may write very beautifully +about nightingales, and a New England Unitarian may write beautifully +about cathedrals; if it is beautiful, it is poetry, and all is well. + +The novelists are the worst offenders. There have been few of them; they +have not been adequate in numbers or in genius to the task of describing +the sections of the country, the varied scenes and habits from New +Orleans to the Portlands. And yet, small band as they are, with great +domestic opportunities and responsibilities, they have devoted volumes +to Paris, which has an able native corps of story-makers, and to Italy, +where the home talent is first-rate. In this sense American literature +is too globe-trotting, it has too little savor of the soil. + +Of provincialism of the narrowest type American writers, like other men +of imagination, are not guilty to any reprehensible degree. It is a vice +sometimes imputed to them by provincial critics who view literature from +the office of a London weekly review or from the lecture rooms of +American colleges. Some American writers are parochial, for example, +Whittier. Others, like Mr. Henry James, are provincial in outlook, but +cosmopolitan in experience, and reveal their provinciality by a +self-conscious internationalism. Probably English and French writers may +be similarly classified as provincial or not. Mr. James says that Poe's +collection of critical sketches "is probably the most complete and +exquisite specimen of _provincialism_ ever prepared for the edification +of men." It is nothing like that. It is an example of what happens when +a hack reviewer's work in local journals is collected into a volume +because he turns out to be a genius. The list of Poe's victims is not +more remarkable for the number of nonentities it includes than "The +Lives of the Poets" by the great Doctor Johnson, who was hack for a +bookseller, and "introduced" all the poets that the taste of the time +encouraged the bookseller to print. Poe was cosmopolitan in spirit; his +prejudices were personal and highly original, usually against the +prejudices of his _moment and milieu._ Hawthorne is less provincial, in +the derogatory sense, than his charming biographer, Mr. James, as will +become evident if one compares Hawthorne's American notes on England, +written in long ago days of national rancor, with Mr. James's British +notes on America ("The American Scene"), written in our happy days of +spacious vision. + +Emerson's ensphering universality overspreads Carlyle like the sky above +a volcanic island. Indeed Carlyle (who knew more about American life and +about what other people ought to do than any other British writer +earlier than Mr. Chesterton) justly complains that Emerson is not +sufficiently local and concrete; Carlyle longs to see "some Event, Man's +Life, American Forest, or piece of creation which this Emerson loves and +wonders at, well _Emersonised._" Longfellow would not stay at home and +write more about the excellent village blacksmith; he made poetical +tours of Europe and translated songs and legends from several languages +for the delight of the villagers who remained behind. Lowell was so +heartily cosmopolitan that American newspapers accused him of +Anglomania--which proves their provincialism but acquits him. Mr. +Howells has written a better book about Venice than about Ohio. Mark +Twain lived in every part of America, from Connecticut to California, he +wrote about every country under the sun (and about some countries beyond +the sun), he is read by all sorts and conditions of men in the +English-speaking world, and he is an adopted hero in Vienna. It is +difficult to come to any conclusion about provincialism as a +characteristic of American literature. + +American literature is on the whole idealistic, sweet, delicate, nicely +finished. There is little of it which might not have appeared in the +_Youth's Companion._ The notable exceptions are our most stalwart men of +genius, Thoreau, Whitman, and Mark Twain. Any child can read American +literature, and if it does not make a man of him, it at least will not +lead him into forbidden realms. Indeed, American books too seldom come +to grips with the problems of life, especially the books cast in +artistic forms. The essayists, expounders, and preachers attack life +vigorously and wrestle with the meaning of it. The poets are thin, +moonshiny, meticulous in technique. Novelists are few and feeble, and +dramatists are non-existent. These generalities, subject to exceptions, +are confirmed by a reading of the first fifteen volumes of the _Atlantic +Monthly_, which are a treasure-house of the richest period of American +literary expression. In those volumes one finds a surprising number of +vigorous, distinguished papers on politics, philosophy, science, even on +literature and art. Many talented men and women, whose names are not +well remembered, are clustered there about the half dozen salient men of +genius; and the collection gives one a sense that the New England mind +(aided by the outlying contributors) was, in its one Age of Thought, an +abundant and diversified power. But the poetry is not memorable, except +for some verses by the few standard poets. And the fiction is naïve. +Edward Everett Hale's "The Man Without a Country" is almost the only +story there that one comes on with a thrill either of recognition or of +discovery. + +It is hard to explain why the American, except in his exhortatory and +passionately argumentative moods, has not struck deep into American +life, why his stories and verses are, for the most part, only pretty +things, nicely unimportant. Anthony Trollope had a theory that the +absence of international copyright threw our market open too +unrestrictedly to the British product, that the American novel was an +unprotected infant industry; we printed Dickens and the rest without +paying royalty and starved the domestic manufacturer. This theory does +not explain. For there were many American novelists, published, read, +and probably paid for their work. The trouble is that they lacked +genius; they dealt with trivial, slight aspects of life; they did not +take the novel seriously in the right sense of the word, though no doubt +they were in another sense serious enough about their poor productions. +"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Huckleberry Finn" are colossal exceptions to +the prevailing weakness and superficiality of American novels. + +Why do American writers turn their backs on life, miss its intensities, +its significance? The American Civil War was the most tremendous +upheaval in the world after the Napoleonic period. The imaginative +reaction on it consists of some fine essays, Lincoln's addresses, +Whitman's war poetry, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (which came before the war but +is part of it), one or two passionate hymns by Whittier, the second +series of the "Biglow Papers," Hale's "The Man Without a Country"--and +what else? The novels laid in war-time are either sanguine melodrama or +absurd idyls of maidens whose lovers are at the front--a tragic theme if +tragically and not sentimentally conceived. Perhaps the bullet that +killed Theodore Winthrop deprived us of our great novelist of the Civil +War, for he was on the right road. In a general speculation such a +might-have-been is not altogether futile; if Milton had died of whooping +cough there would not have been any "Paradise Lost"; the reverse of this +is that some geniuses whose works ought inevitably to have been produced +by this or that national development may have died too soon. This +suggestion, however, need not be gravely argued. The fact is that the +American literary imagination after the Civil War was almost sterile. If +no books had been written, the failure of that conflict to get itself +embodied in some masterpieces would be less disconcerting. But thousands +of books were written by people who knew the war at first hand and who +had literary ambition and some skill, and from all these books none +rises to distinction. + +An example of what seems to be the American habit of writing about +everything except American life, is the work of General Lew Wallace. +Wallace was one of the important secondary generals in the Civil War, +distinguished at Fort Donelson and at Shiloh. After the war he wrote +"Ben-Hur," a doubly abominable book, because it is not badly written and +it shows a lively imagination. There is nothing in it so valuable, so +dramatically significant as a week in Wallace's war experiences. +"Ben-Hur," fit work for a country clergyman with a pretty literary gift, +is a ridiculous inanity to come from a man who has seen the things that +Wallace saw! It is understandable that the man of experience may not +write at all, and, on the other hand, that the man of secluded life may +have the imagination to make a military epic. But for a man crammed with +experience of the most dramatic sort and discovering the ability and the +ambition to write--for him to make spurious oriental romances which +achieve an enormous popularity! The case is too grotesque to be typical, +yet it is exceptional in degree rather than in kind. The American +literary artist has written about everything under the skies except what +matters most in his own life. General Grant's plain autobiography, not +art and of course not attempting to be, is better literature than most +of our books in artistic forms, because of its intellectual integrity +and the profound importance of the subject-matter. + +Our dreamers have dreamed about many wonderful things, but their faces +have been averted from the mightier issues of life. They have been +high-minded, fine-grained, eloquent in manner, in odd contrast to the +real or reputed vigor and crudeness of the nation. In the hundred years +from Irving's first romance to Mr. Howells's latest unromantic novel, +most of our books are eminent for just those virtues which America is +supposed to lack. Their physique is feminine; they are fanciful, dainty, +reserved; they are literose, sophisticated in craftsmanship, but +innocently unaware of the profound agitations of American life, of life +everywhere. Those who strike the deeper notes of reality, Whitman, +Thoreau, Mark Twain, Mrs. Stowe in her one great book, Whittier, Lowell +and Emerson at their best, are a powerful minority. The rest, beautiful +and fine in spirit, too seldom show that they are conscious of +contemporaneous realities, too seldom vibrate with a tremendous sense of +life. + +The Jason of western exploration writes as if he had passed his life in +a library. The Ulysses of great rivers and perilous seas is a +connoisseur of Japanese prints. The warrior of 'Sixty-one rivals Miss +Marie Corelli. The mining engineer carves cherry stones. He who is +figured as gaunt, hardy and aggressive, conquering the desert with the +steam locomotive, sings of a pretty little rose in a pretty little +garden. The judge, haggard with experience, who presides over the most +tragi-comic divorce court ever devised by man, writes love stories that +would have made Jane Austen smile. + +Mr. Arnold Bennett is reported to have said that if Balzac had seen +Pittsburgh, he would have cried: "Give me a pen!" The truth is, the +whole country is crying out for those who will record it, satirize it, +chant it. As literary material, it is virgin land, ancient as life and +fresh as a wilderness. American literature is one occupation which is +not over-crowded, in which, indeed, there is all too little competition +for the new-comer to meet. There are signs that some earnest young +writers are discovering the fertility of a soil that has scarcely been +scratched. + +American fiction shows all sorts of merit, but the merits are not +assembled, concentrated; the fine is weak, and the strong is crude. The +stories of Poe, Hawthorne, Howells, James, Aldrich, Bret Harte, are +admirable in manner, but they are thin in substance, not of large +vitality. On the other hand, some of the stronger American fictions fail +in workmanship; for example, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which is still vivid +and moving long after its tractarian interest has faded; the novels of +Frank Norris, a man of great vision and high purpose, who attempted to +put national economics into something like an epic of daily bread; and +Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," a madly eloquent romance of the sea. A +few American novelists have felt the meaning of the life they knew and +have tried sincerely to set it down, but have for various reasons failed +to make first-rate novels; for example, Edward Eggleston, whose stories +of early Indiana have the breath of actuality in them; Mr. E. W. Howe, +author of "The Story of a Country Town"; Harold Frederic, a man of great +ability, whose work was growing deeper, more significant when he died; +George W. Cable, whose novels are unsteady and sentimental, but who +gives a genuine impression of having portrayed a city and its people; +and Stephen Crane, who, dead at thirty, had given in "The Red Badge of +Courage" and "Maggie" the promise of better work. Of good short stories +America has been prolific. Mrs. Wilkins-Freeman, Mrs. Annie Trumbull +Slosson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Rowland Robinson, H. C. Bunner, Edward +Everett Hale, Frank Stockton, Joel Chandler Harris, and "O. Henry" are +some of those whose short stories are perfect in their several kinds. +But the American novel, which multiplies past counting, remains an +inferior production. + +On a private shelf of contemporary fiction and drama in the English +language are the works of ten British authors, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. H. G. +Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Eden Phillpotts, Mr. George Moore, Mr. +Leonard Merrick, Mr. J. C. Snaith, Miss May Sinclair, Mr. William De +Morgan, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Bernard Shaw, yes, +and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Beside them I find but two Americans, Mrs. +Edith Wharton and Mr. Theodore Dreiser. There may be others, for one +cannot pretend to know all the living novelists and dramatists. Yet for +every American that should be added, I would agree to add four to the +British list. However, a contemporary literature that includes Mrs. +Wharton's "Ethan Frome" and Mr. Dreiser's "Jennie Gerhardt" both +published last year, is not to be despaired of. + +In the course of a century a few Americans have said in memorable words +what life meant to them. Their performance, put together, is +considerable, if not imposing. Any sense of dissatisfaction that one +feels in contemplating it is due to the disproportion between a limited +expression and the multifarious immensity of the country. Our +literature, judged by the great literatures contemporaneous with it, is +insufficient to the opportunity and the need. The American Spirit may be +figured as petitioning the Muses for twelve novelists, ten poets, and +eight dramatists, to be delivered at the earliest possible moment. + + + + +MARY WHITE + +By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE + + + Mary White--one seems to know her after reading this sketch written + by her father on the day she was buried--would surely have laughed + unbelievingly if told she would be in a book of this sort, together + with Joseph Conrad, one of whose books lay on her table. But the + pen, in the honest hand, has always been mightier than the grave. + + This is not the sort of thing one wishes to mar with clumsy + comment. It was written for the Emporia _Gazette,_ which William + Allen White has edited since 1895. He is one of the best-known, + most public-spirited and most truly loved of American journalists. + He and his fellow-Kansan, E. W. Howe of Atchison, are two + characteristic figures in our newspaper world, both masters of that + vein of canny, straightforward, humane and humorous simplicity that + seems to be a Kansas birthright. + + Mr. White was born in Emporia in 1868. + + +THE Associated Press reports carrying the news of Mary White's death +declared that it came as the result of a fall from a horse. How she +would have hooted at that! She never fell from a horse in her life. +Horses have fallen on her and with her--"I'm always trying to hold 'em +in my lap," she used to say. But she was proud of few things, and one +was that she could ride anything that had four legs and hair. Her death +resulted not from a fall, but from a blow on the head which fractured +her skull, and the blow came from the limb of an overhanging tree on the +parking. + +The last hour of her life was typical of its happiness. She came home +from a day's work at school, topped off by a hard grind with the copy on +the High School Annual, and felt that a ride would refresh her. She +climbed into her khakis, chattering to her mother about the work she was +doing, and hurried to get her horse and be out on the dirt roads for the +country air and the radiant green fields of the spring. As she rode +through the town on an easy gallop she kept waving at passers-by. She +knew everyone in town. For a decade the little figure with the long +pig-tail and the red hair ribbon has been familiar on the streets of +Emporia, and she got in the way of speaking to those who nodded at her. +She passed the Kerrs, walking the horse, in front of the Normal Library, +and waved at them; passed another friend a few hundred feet further on, +and waved at her. The horse was walking and, as she turned into North +Merchant Street she took off her cowboy hat, and the horse swung into a +lope. She passed the Tripletts and waved her cowboy hat at them, still +moving gaily north on Merchant Street. A _Gazette_ carrier passed--a +High School boy friend--and she waved at him, but with her bridle hand; +the horse veered quickly, plunged into the parking where the low-hanging +limb faced her, and, while she still looked back waving, the blow came. +But she did not fall from the horse; she slipped off, dazed a bit, +staggered and fell in a faint. She never quite recovered consciousness. + +But she did not fall from the horse, neither was she riding fast. A year +or so ago she used to go like the wind. But that habit was broken, and +she used the horse to get into the open to get fresh, hard exercise, and +to work off a certain surplus energy that welled up in her and needed a +physical outlet. That need has been in her heart for years. It was back +of the impulse that kept the dauntless, little brown-clad figure on the +streets and country roads of this community and built into a strong, +muscular body what had been a frail and sickly frame during the first +years of her life. But the riding gave her more than a body. It released +a gay and hardy soul. She was the happiest thing in the world. And she +was happy because she was enlarging her horizon. She came to know all +sorts and conditions of men; Charley O'Brien, the traffic cop, was one +of her best friends. W. L. Holtz, the Latin teacher, was another. Tom +O'Connor, farmer-politician, and Rev. J. H. J. Rice, preacher and police +judge, and Frank Beach, music master, were her special friends, and all +the girls, black and white, above the track and below the track, in +Pepville and Stringtown, were among her acquaintances. And she brought +home riotous stories of her adventures. She loved to rollick; persiflage +was her natural expression at home. Her humor was a continual bubble of +joy. She seemed to think in hyperbole and metaphor. She was mischievous +without malice, as full of faults as an old shoe. No angel was Mary +White, but an easy girl to live with, for she never nursed a grouch five +minutes in her life. + +With all her eagerness for the out-of-doors, she loved books. On her +table when she left her room were a book by Conrad, one by Galsworthy, +"Creative Chemistry" by E. E. Slosson, and a Kipling book. She read Mark +Twain, Dickens and Kipling before she was ten--all of their writings. +Wells and Arnold Bennett particularly amused and diverted her. She was +entered as a student in Wellesley in 1922; was assistant editor of the +High School Annual this year, and in line for election to the editorship +of the Annual next year. She was a member of the executive committee of +the High School Y. W. C. A. + +Within the last two years she had begun to be moved by an ambition to +draw. She began as most children do by scribbling in her school books, +funny pictures. She bought cartoon magazines and took a course--rather +casually, naturally, for she was, after all, a child with no strong +purposes--and this year she tasted the first fruits of success by having +her pictures accepted by the High School Annual. But the thrill of +delight she got when Mr. Ecord, of the Normal Annual, asked her to do +the cartooning for that book this spring, was too beautiful for words. +She fell to her work with all her enthusiastic heart. Her drawings were +accepted, and her pride--always repressed by a lively sense of the +ridiculousness of the figure she was cutting--was a really gorgeous +thing to see. No successful artist ever drank a deeper draught of +satisfaction than she took from the little fame her work was getting +among her schoolfellows. In her glory, she almost forgot her horse--but +never her car. + +For she used the car as a jitney bus. It was her social life. She never +had a "party" in all her nearly seventeen years--wouldn't have one; but +she never drove a block in the car in her life that she didn't begin to +fill the car with pick-ups! Everybody rode with Mary White--white and +black, old and young, rich and poor, men and women. She liked nothing +better than to fill the car full of long-legged High School boys and an +occasional girl, and parade the town. She never had a "date," nor went +to a dance, except once with her brother, Bill, and the "boy +proposition" didn't interest her--yet. But young people--great +spring-breaking, varnish-cracking, fender-bending, door-sagging carloads +of "kids" gave her great pleasure. Her zests were keen. But the most fun +she ever had in her life was acting as chairman of the committee that +got up the big turkey dinner for the poor folks at the county home; +scores of pies, gallons of slaw; jam, cakes, preserves, oranges and a +wilderness of turkey were loaded in the car and taken to the county +home. And, being of a practical turn of mind, she risked her own +Christmas dinner by staying to see that the poor folks actually got it +all. Not that she was a cynic; she just disliked to tempt folks. While +there she found a blind colored uncle, very old, who could do nothing +but make rag rugs, and she rustled up from her school friends rags +enough to keep him busy for a season. The last engagement she tried to +make was to take the guests at the county home out for a car ride. And +the last endeavor of her life was to try to get a rest room for colored +girls in the High School. She found one girl reading in the toilet, +because there was no better place for a colored girl to loaf, and it +inflamed her sense of injustice and she became a nagging harpie to those +who, she thought, could remedy the evil. The poor she had always with +her, and was glad of it. She hungered and thirsted for righteousness; +and was the most impious creature in the world. She joined the +Congregational Church without consulting her parents; not particularly +for her soul's good. She never had a thrill of piety in her life, and +would have hooted at a "testimony." But even as a little child she felt +the church was an agency for helping people to more of life's abundance, +and she wanted to help. She never wanted help for herself. Clothes +meant little to her. It was a fight to get a new rig on her; but +eventually a harder fight to get it off. She never wore a jewel and had +no ring but her High School class ring, and never asked for anything but +a wrist watch. She refused to have her hair up; though she was nearly +seventeen. "Mother," she protested, "you don't know how much I get by +with, in my braided pigtails, that I could not with my hair up." Above +every other passion of her life was her passion not to grow up, to be a +child. The tom-boy in her, which was big, seemed to loathe to be put +away forever in skirts. She was a Peter Pan, who refused to grow up. + +Her funeral yesterday at the Congregational Church was as she would have +wished it; no singing, no flowers save the big bunch of red roses from +her Brother Bill's Harvard classmen--Heavens, how proud that would have +made her! and the red roses from the _Gazette_ force--in vases at her +head and feet. A short prayer, Paul's beautiful essay on "Love" from the +Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians, some remarks about her +democratic spirit by her friend, John H. J. Rice, pastor and police +judge, which she would have deprecated if she could, a prayer sent down +for her by her friend, Carl Nau, and opening the service the slow, +poignant movement from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which she loved, +and closing the service a cutting from the joyously melancholy first +movement of Tschaikowski's Pathetic Symphony, which she liked to hear in +certain moods on the phonograph; then the Lord's Prayer by her friends +in the High School. + +That was all. + +For her pall-bearers only her friends were chosen; her Latin teacher--W. +L. Holtz; her High School principal, Rice Brown; her doctor, Frank +Foncannon; her friend, W. W. Finney; her pal at the _Gazette_ office, +Walter Hughes; and her brother Bill. It would have made her smile to +know that her friend, Charley O'Brien, the traffic cop, had been +transferred from Sixth and Commercial to the corner near the church to +direct her friends who came to bid her good-by. + +A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her +coffin as her nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But +the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was +flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn. + + + + +NIAGARA FALLS + +_By_ RUPERT BROOKE + + + The poet usually is the best reporter, for he is an observer not + merely accurate but imaginative, self-trained to see subtle + suggestions, relations and similarities. This magnificent bit of + description was written by Rupert Brooke as one of the letters sent + to the _Westminster Gazette_ describing his trip in the United + States and Canada in 1913. It is included in the volume _Letters + from America_ to which Henry James contributed so affectionate and + desperately unintelligible a preface--one of the last things James + wrote. Brooke's notes on America are well worth reading: they are + full of delightful and lively comments, though sometimes much (oh, + very much!) too condescending. The last paragraph in this essay is + interesting in view of subsequent history. + + Brooke was born in 1887, son of a master at Rugby School; was at + King's College, Cambridge; died of blood-poisoning in the Ægean, + April 23, 1915. + + +Samuel Butler has a lot to answer for. But for him, a modern traveler +could spend his time peacefully admiring the scenery instead of feeling +himself bound to dog the simple and grotesque of the world for the sake +of their too-human comments. It is his fault if a peasant's _naïveté_ +has come to outweigh the beauty of rivers, and the remarks of clergymen +are more than mountains. It is very restful to give up all effort at +observing human nature and drawing social and political deductions from +trifles, and to let oneself relapse into wide-mouthed worship of the +wonders of nature. And this is very easy at Niagara. Niagara means +nothing. It is not leading anywhere. It does not result from anything. +It throws no light on the effects of Protection, nor on the Facility for +Divorce in America, nor on Corruption in Public Life, nor on Canadian +character, nor even on the Navy Bill. It is merely a great deal of water +falling over some cliffs. But it is very remarkably that. The human +race, apt as a child to destroy what it admires, has done its best to +surround the Falls with every distraction, incongruity, and vulgarity. +Hotels, powerhouses, bridges, trams, picture post-cards, sham legends, +stalls, booths, rifle-galleries, and side-shows frame them about. And +there are Touts. Niagara is the central home and breeding-place for all +the touts of earth. There are touts insinuating, and touts raucous, +greasy touts, brazen touts, and upper-class, refined, gentlemanly, +take-you-by-the-arm touts; touts who intimidate and touts who wheedle; +professionals, amateurs, and _dilettanti_, male and female; touts who +would photograph you with your arm round a young lady against a faked +background of the sublimest cataract, touts who would bully you into +cars, char-à-bancs, elevators, or tunnels, or deceive you into a +carriage and pair, touts who would sell you picture post-cards, +moccasins, sham Indian beadwork, blankets, tee-pees, and crockery, and +touts, finally, who have no apparent object in the world, but just +purely, simply, merely, incessantly, indefatigably, and ineffugibly to +tout. And in the midst of all this, overwhelming it all, are the Falls. +He who sees them instantly forgets humanity. They are not very high, but +they are overpowering. They are divided by an island into two parts, the +Canadian and the American. + +Half a mile or so above the Falls, on either side, the water of the +great stream begins to run more swiftly and in confusion. It descends +with ever-growing speed. It begins chattering and leaping, breaking into +a thousand ripples, throwing up joyful fingers of spray. Sometimes it is +divided by islands and rocks, sometimes the eye can see nothing but a +waste of laughing, springing, foamy waves, turning, crossing, even +seeming to stand for an instant erect, but always borne impetuously +forward like a crowd of triumphant feasters. Sit close down by it, and +you see a fragment of the torrent against the sky, mottled, steely, and +foaming, leaping onward in far-flung criss-cross strands of water. +Perpetually the eye is on the point of descrying a pattern in this +weaving, and perpetually it is cheated by change. In one place part of +the flood plunges over a ledge a few feet high and a quarter of a mile +or so long, in a uniform and stable curve. It gives an impression of +almost military concerted movement, grown suddenly out of confusion. But +it is swiftly lost again in the multitudinous tossing merriment. Here +and there a rock close to the surface is marked by a white wave that +faces backwards and seems to be rushing madly up-stream, but is really +stationary in the headlong charge. But for these signs of reluctance, +the waters seem to fling themselves on with some foreknowledge of their +fate, in an ever wilder frenzy. But it is no Maeterlinckian prescience. +They prove, rather, that Greek belief that the great crashes are +preceded by a louder merriment and a wilder gaiety. Leaping in the +sunlight, careless, entwining, clamorously joyful, the waves riot on +towards the verge. + +But there they change. As they turn to the sheer descent, the white and +blue and slate color, in the heart of the Canadian Falls at least, blend +and deepen to a rich, wonderful, luminous green. On the edge of disaster +the river seems to gather herself, to pause, to lift a head noble in +ruin, and then, with a slow grandeur, to plunge into the eternal thunder +and white chaos below. Where the stream runs shallower it is a kind of +violet color, but both violet and green fray and frill to white as they +fall. The mass of water, striking some ever-hidden base of rock, leaps +up the whole two hundred feet again in pinnacles and domes of spray. The +spray falls back into the lower river once more; all but a little that +fines to foam and white mist, which drifts in layers along the air, +graining it, and wanders out on the wind over the trees and gardens and +houses, and so vanishes. + +The manager of one of the great power-stations on the banks of the river +above the Falls told me that the center of the riverbed at the Canadian +Falls is deep and of a saucer shape. So it may be possible to fill this +up to a uniform depth, and divert a lot of water for the power-houses. +And this, he said, would supply the need for more power, which will +certainly soon arise, without taking away from the beauty of Niagara. +This is a handsome concession of the utilitarians to ordinary +sight-seers. Yet, I doubt if we shall be satisfied. The real secret of +the beauty and terror of the Falls is not their height or width, but the +feeling of colossal power and of unintelligible disaster caused by the +plunge of that vast body of water. If that were taken away, there would +be little visible change, but the heart would be gone. + +The American Falls do not inspire this feeling in the same way as the +Canadian. It is because they are less in volume, and because the water +does not fall so much into one place. By comparison their beauty is +almost delicate and fragile. They are extraordinarily level, one long +curtain of lacework and woven foam. Seen from opposite, when the sun is +on them, they are blindingly white, and the clouds of spray show dark +against them. With both Falls the color of the water is the +ever-altering wonder. Greens and blues, purples and whites, melt into +one another, fade, and come again, and change with the changing sun. +Sometimes they are as richly diaphanous as a precious stone, and glow +from within with a deep, inexplicable light. Sometimes the white +intricacies of dropping foam become opaque and creamy. And always there +are the rainbows. If you come suddenly upon the Falls from above, a +great double rainbow, very vivid, spanning the extent of spray from top +to bottom, is the first thing you see. If you wander along the cliff +opposite, a bow springs into being in the American Falls, accompanies +you courteously on your walk, dwindles and dies as the mist ends, and +awakens again as you reach the Canadian tumult. And the bold traveler +who attempts the trip under the American Falls sees, when he dare open +his eyes to anything, tiny baby rainbows, some four or five yards in +span, leaping from rock to rock among the foam, and gamboling beside +him, barely out of hand's reach, as he goes. One I saw in that place was +a complete circle, such as I have never seen before, and so near that I +could put my foot on it. It is a terrifying journey, beneath and behind +the Falls. The senses are battered and bewildered by the thunder of the +water and the assault of wind and spray; or rather, the sound is not of +falling water, but merely of falling; a noise of unspecified ruin. So, +if you are close behind the endless clamor, the sight cannot recognize +liquid in the masses that hurl past. You are dimly and pitifully aware +that sheets of light and darkness are falling in great curves in front +of you. Dull omnipresent foam washes the face. Farther away, in the roar +and hissing, clouds of spray seem literally to slide down some invisible +plane of air. + +Beyond the foot of the Falls the river is like a slipping floor of +marble, green with veins of dirty white, made by the scum that was foam. +It slides very quietly and slowly down for a mile or two, sullenly +exhausted. Then it turns to a dull sage green, and hurries more swiftly, +smooth and ominous. As the walls of the ravine close in, trouble stirs, +and the waters boil and eddy. These are the lower rapids, a sight more +terrifying than the Falls, because less intelligible. Close in its bands +of rock the river surges tumultuously forward, writhing and leaping as +if inspired by a demon. It is pressed by the straits into a visibly +convex form. Great planes of water slide past. Sometimes it is thrown up +into a pinnacle of foam higher than a house, or leaps with incredible +speed from the crest of one vast wave to another, along the shining +curve between, like the spring of a wild beast. Its motion continually +suggests muscular action. The power manifest in these rapids moves one +with a different sense of awe and terror from that of the Falls. Here +the inhuman life and strength are spontaneous, active, almost resolute; +masculine vigor compared with the passive gigantic power, female, +helpless and overwhelming, of the Falls. A place of fear. + +One is drawn back, strangely, to a contemplation of the Falls, at every +hour, and especially by night, when the cloud of spray becomes an +immense visible ghost, straining and wavering high above the river, +white and pathetic and translucent. The Victorian lies very close below +the surface in every man. There one can sit and let great cloudy +thoughts of destiny and the passage of empires drift through the mind; +for such dreams are at home by Niagara. I could not get out of my mind +the thought of a friend, who said that the rainbows over the Falls were +like the arts and beauty and goodness, with regard to the stream of +life--caused by it, thrown upon its spray, but unable to stay or direct +or affect it, and ceasing when it ceased. In all comparisons that rise +in the heart, the river, with its multitudinous waves and its single +current, likens itself to a life, whether of an individual or of a +community. A man's life is of many flashing moments, and yet one stream; +a nation's flows through all its citizens, and yet is more than they. In +such places, one is aware, with an almost insupportable and yet +comforting certitude, that both men and nations are hurried onwards to +their ruin or ending as inevitably as this dark flood. Some go down to +it unreluctant, and meet it, like the river, not without nobility. And +as incessant, as inevitable, and as unavailing as the spray that hangs +over the Falls, is the white cloud of human crying.... With some such +thoughts does the platitudinous heart win from the confusion and thunder +of a Niagara peace that the quietest plains or most stable hills can +never give. + + + + +THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE + +_By_ DON MARQUIS + + + Don Marquis is a real name, not a pseudonym; it is pronounced + _Markwiss_, not _Markee_. I reprint here two of Mr. Marquis's + amiable meditations on the "Almost Perfect State," which have + appeared in the column (_The Sun Dial_) conducted by him for ten + years in the New York Sun. According to the traditional motto of + sun-dials, Mr. Marquis's horologe usually numbers only the serene + hours; but sometimes, when the clear moonlight of his Muse is + shining, it casts darker and even more precious shadows of satire + and mysticism. His many readers know by this time the depth and + reach of his fun and fancy. Marquis is a true philosopher and wit, + his humor adorns a rich and mellow gravity. When strongly moved he + sometimes utters an epigram that rings like steel leaving the + scabbard. + + There are many things to be said against American newspapers, but + much of the indictment is quashed when one considers that every now + and then they develop a writer like Don Marquis. The violent haste, + pressure and instancy of newspaper routine, purgatorial to some + temperaments, is a genuine stimulus to others--particularly if they + are able, as in the case of the columnist, to fall back upon + outside contributors in their intervals of pessimism or sloth. + + Mr. Marquis's _The Old Soak_, a post-prohibition portrait of a + genial old tippler, is perhaps the most vital bit of American humor + since _Mr. Dooley_--some say since Mark Twain. His _Prefaces_ and + his poems will also be considered by the judicious. He was born in + Illinois in 1878, and did newspaper work in Philadelphia and + Atlanta before coming to the _Sun_ in 1912. + + +I + +No matter how nearly perfect an Almost Perfect State may be, it is not +nearly enough perfect unless the individuals who compose it can, +somewhere between death and birth, have a perfectly corking time for a +few years. The most wonderful governmental system in the world does not +attract us, as a system; we are after a system that scarcely knows it is +a system; the great thing is to have the largest number of individuals +as happy as may be, for a little while at least, some time before they +die. + +Infancy is not what it is cracked up to be. The child seems happy all +the time to the adult, because the adult knows that the child is +untouched by the real problems of life; if the adult were similarly +untouched he is sure that he would be happy. But children, not knowing +that they are having an easy time, have a good many hard times. Growing +and learning and obeying the rules of their elders, or fighting against +them, are not easy things to do. Adolescence is certainly far from a +uniformly pleasant period. Early manhood might be the most glorious time +of all were it not that the sheer excess of life and vigor gets a fellow +into continual scrapes. Of middle age the best that can be said is that +a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in +spite of his troubles. + +It is to old age that we look for reimbursement, the most of us. And +most of us look in vain. For the most of us have been wrenched and +racked, in one way or another, until old age is the most trying time of +all. + +In the Almost Perfect State every person shall have at least ten years +before he dies of easy, carefree, happy living ... things will be so +arranged economically that this will be possible for each individual. + +Personally we look forward to an old age of dissipation and indolence +and unreverend disrepute. In fifty years we shall be ninety-two years +old. We intend to work rather hard during those fifty years and +accumulate enough to live on without working any more for the next ten +years, for we have determined to die at the age of one hundred and two. + +During the last ten years we shall indulge ourself in many things that +we have been forced by circumstances to forego. We have always been +compelled, and we shall be compelled for many years to come, to be +prudent, cautious, staid, sober, conservative, industrious, respectful +of established institutions, a model citizen. We have not liked it, but +we have been unable to escape it. Our mind, our logical faculties, our +observation, inform us that the conservatives have the right side of the +argument in all human affairs. But the people whom we really prefer as +associates, though we do not approve their ideas, are the rebels, the +radicals, the wastrels, the vicious, the poets, the Bolshevists, the +idealists, the nuts, the Lucifers, the agreeable good-for-nothings, the +sentimentalists, the prophets, the freaks. We have never dared to know +any of them, far less become intimate with them. + +Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall +be the ribald, useless, drunken outcast person we have always wished to +be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not +walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic +beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a +bucket of hot water, with a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and +write ribald songs against organized society; strapped to one arm of our +chair will be a forty-five caliber revolver, and we shall shoot out the +lights when we want to go to sleep, instead of turning them off; when we +want air we shall throw a silver candlestick through the front window +and be damned to it; we shall address public meetings to which we have +been invited because of our wisdom in a vein of jocund malice. We shall +... but we don't wish to make any one envious of the good time that is +coming to us ... we look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonored +and disorderly old age. + +(In the meantime, of course, you understand, you can't have us pinched +and deported for our yearnings.) + +We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old +age each person wants is possible to him. Of course, all of you may not +want the kind we want ... some of you may prefer prunes and morality to +the bitter end. Some of you may be dissolute now and may look forward to +becoming like one of the nice old fellows in a Wordsworth poem. But for +our part we have always been a hypocrite and we shall have to continue +being a hypocrite for a good many years yet, and we yearn to come out in +our true colors at last. The point is, that no matter what you want to +be, during those last ten years, that you may be, in the Almost Perfect +State. + +Any system of government under which the individual does all the +sacrificing for the sake of the general good, for the sake of the +community, the State, gets off on its wrong foot. We don't want things +that cost us too much. We don't want too much strain all the time. + +The best good that you can possibly achieve is not good enough if you +have to strain yourself all the time to reach it. A thing is only worth +doing, and doing again and again, if you can do it rather easily, and +get some joy out of it. + +Do the best you can, without straining yourself too much and too +continuously, and leave the rest to God. If you strain yourself too much +you'll have to ask God to patch you up. And for all you know, patching +you up may take time that it was planned to use some other way. + +BUT ... overstrain yourself _now and then_. For this reason: The things +you create easily and joyously will not continue to come easily and +joyously unless you yourself are getting bigger all the time. And when +you overstrain yourself you are assisting in the creation of a new +self--if you get what we mean. And if you should ask us suddenly just +what this has to do with the picture of the old guy in the wheel chair +we should answer: Hanged if we know, but we seemed to sort o' run into +it, somehow. + + +II + +Interplanetary communication is one of the persistent dreams of the +inhabitants of this oblate spheroid on which we move, breathe and suffer +for lack of beer. There seems to be a feeling in many quarters that if +we could get speech with the Martians, let us say, we might learn from +them something to our advantage. There is a disposition to concede the +superiority of the fellows Out There ... just as some Americans +capitulate without a struggle to poets from England, rugs from +Constantinople, song and sausage from Germany, religious enthusiasts +from Hindustan and cheese from Switzerland, although they have not +tested the goods offered and really lack the discrimination to determine +their quality. Almost the only foreign importations that were ever +sneezed at in this country were Swedish matches and Spanish influenza. + +But are the Martians ... if Martians there be ... any more capable than +the persons dwelling between the Woolworth Building and the Golden Horn, +between Shwe Dagon and the First Church, Scientist, in Boston, Mass.? +Perhaps the Martians yearn toward earth, romantically, poetically, the +Romeos swearing by its light to the Juliets; the idealists and +philosophers fabling that already there exists upon it an ALMOST PERFECT +STATE--and now and then a wan prophet lifting his heart to its gleams, +as a cup to be filled from Heaven with fresh waters of hope and courage. +For this earth, it is also a star. + +We know they are wrong about us, the lovers in the far stars, the +philosophers, poets, the prophets ... or _are_ they wrong? + +They are both right and wrong, as we are probably both right and wrong +about them. If we tumbled into Mars or Arcturus or Sirius this evening +we should find the people there discussing the shimmy, the jazz, the +inconstancy of cooks and the iniquity of retail butchers, no doubt ... +and they would be equally disappointed by the way we flitter, frivol, +flutter and flivver. + +And yet, that other thing would be there too ... that thing that made +them look at our star as a symbol of grace and beauty. + +Men could not think of THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE if they did not have it +in them ultimately to create THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE. + +We used sometimes to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, that song in stone +and steel of an engineer who was also a great artist, at dusk, when the +tides of shadow flood in from the lower bay to break in a surf of glory +and mystery and illusion against the tall towers of Manhattan. Seen from +the middle arch of the bridge at twilight, New York with its girdle of +shifting waters and its drift of purple cloud and its quick pulsations +of unstable light is a miracle of splendor and beauty that lights up the +heart like the laughter of a god. + +But, descend. Go down into the city. Mingle with the details. The dirty +old shed from which the "L" trains and trolleys put out with their +jammed and mangled thousands for flattest Flatbush and the unknown +bourne of ulterior Brooklyn is still the same dirty old shed; on a hot, +damp night the pasty streets stink like a paperhanger's overalls; you +are trodden and over-ridden by greasy little profiteers and their +hopping victims; you are encompassed round about by the ugly and the +sordid, and the objectionable is exuded upon you from a myriad candid +pores; your elation and your illusion vanish like ingenuous snowflakes +that have kissed a hot dog sandwich on its fiery brow, and you say: +"Beauty? Aw, h--l! What's the use?" + +And yet you have seen beauty. And beauty that was created by these +people and people like these.... You have seen the tall towers of +Manhattan, wonderful under the stars. How did it come about that such +growths came from such soil--that a breed lawless and sordid and prosaic +has written such a mighty hieroglyphic against the sky? This glamor out +of a pigsty ... how come? How is it that this hideous, half-brute city +is also beautiful and a fit habitation for demi-gods? How come? + +It comes about because the wise and subtle deities permit nothing worthy +to be lost. It was with no thought of beauty that the builders labored; +no conscious thought; they were masters or slaves in the bitter wars of +commerce, and they never saw as a whole what they were making; no one of +them did. But each one had had his dream. And the baffled dreams and the +broken visions and the ruined hopes and the secret desires of each one +labored with him as he labored; the things that were lost and beaten and +trampled down went into the stone and steel and gave it soul; the +aspiration denied and the hope abandoned and the vision defeated were +the things that lived, and not the apparent purpose for which each one +of all the millions sweat and toiled or cheated; the hidden things, the +silent things, the winged things, so weak they are easily killed, the +unacknowledged things, the rejected beauty, the strangled appreciation, +the inchoate art, the submerged spirit--these groped and found each +other and gathered themselves together and worked themselves into the +tiles and mortar of the edifice and made a town that is a worthy fellow +of the sunrise and the sea winds. + +Humanity triumphs over its details. + +The individual aspiration is always defeated of its perfect fruition and +expression, but it is never lost; it passes into the conglomerate being +of the race. + +The way to encourage yourself about the human race is to look at it +first from a distance; look at the lights on the high spots. Coming +closer, you will be profoundly discouraged at the number of low spots, +not to say two-spots. Coming still closer, you will become discouraged +once more by the reflection that the same stuff that is in the high +spots is also in the two-spots. + + + + +"THE MAN-O'-WAR'S 'ER 'USBAND" + +_By_ DAVID W. BONE + + + Those who understand something of a sailor's feeling for his ship + will appreciate the restraint with which Captain Bone describes the + loss of the _Cameronia_, his command, torpedoed in the + Mediterranean during the War. You will notice (forgive us for + pointing out these things) how quietly the quoted title pays + tribute to the gallantry of the destroyers that stood by the + sinking ship; and the heroism of the chief officer's death is not + less moving because told in two sentences. This superb picture of a + sea tragedy is taken from _Merchantmen-at-Arms_, a history of the + British Merchants' Service during the War; a book of enthralling + power and truth, illustrated by the author's brother, Muirhead + Bone, one of the greatest of living etchers. + + David William Bone was born in Partick (near Glasgow) in 1873; his + father was a well-known Glasgow journalist; his great-grandfather + was a boyhood companion of Robert Burns. Bone went to sea as an + apprentice in the _City of Florence_, an old-time square-rigger, at + the age of fifteen; he has been at sea ever since. He is now master + of S.S. _Columbia_ of the Anchor Line, a well-known ship in New + York Harbor, as she has carried passengers between the Clyde and + the Hudson for more than twenty years. Captain Bone's fine sea + tale, The _Brass-bounder_, published in 1910, has become a classic + of the square-sail era; his _Broken Stowage_ (1915) is a collection + of shorter sea sketches. In the long roll of great writers who have + reflected the simplicity and severity of sea life, Captain Bone + will take a permanent and honorable place. + + +A sense of security is difficult of definition. Largely, it is founded +upon habit and association. It is induced and maintained by familiar +surroundings. On board ship, in a small world of our own, we seem to be +contained by the boundaries of the bulwarks, to be sailing beyond the +influences of the land and of other ships. The sea is the same we have +known for so long. Every item of our ship fitment--the trim arrangement +of the decks, the set and rake of mast and funnel, even the furnishings +of our cabins--has the power of impressing a stable feeling of custom, +normal ship life, safety. It requires an effort of thought to recall +that in their homely presence we are endangered. Relating his +experiences after having been mined and his ship sunk, a master confided +that the point that impressed him most deeply was when he went to his +room for the confidential papers and saw the cabin exactly in everyday +aspect--his longshore clothes suspended from the hooks, his umbrella +standing in a corner as he had placed it on coming aboard. + +Soldiers on service are denied this aid to assurance. Unlike us, they +cannot carry their home with them to the battlefields. All their scenes +and surroundings are novel; they may only draw a reliance and comfort +from the familiar presence of their comrades. At sea in a ship there is +a yet greater incitement to their disquiet. The movement, the limitless +sea, the distance from the land, cannot be ignored. The atmosphere that +is so familiar and comforting to us, is to many of them an environment +of dread possibilities. + +It is with some small measure of this sense of security--tempered by our +knowledge of enemy activity in these waters--we pace the bridge. Anxiety +is not wholly absent. Some hours past, we saw small flotsam that may +have come from the decks of a French mail steamer, torpedoed three days +ago. The passing of the derelict fittings aroused some disquiet, but the +steady routine of our progress and the constant friendly presence of +familiar surroundings has effect in allaying immediate fears. The rounds +of the bridge go on--the writing of the log, the tapping of the glass, +the small measures that mark the passing of our sea-hours. Two days out +from Marseilles--and all well! In another two days we should be +approaching the Canal, and then--to be clear of 'submarine waters' for a +term. Fine weather! A light wind and sea accompany us for the present, +but the filmy glare of the sun, now low, and a backward movement of the +glass foretells a break ere long. We are steaming at high speed to make +the most of the smooth sea. Ahead, on each bow, our two escorting +destroyers conform to the angles of our zigzag--spurring out and +swerving with the peculiar "thrown-around" movement of their class. +Look-out is alert and in numbers. Added to the watch of the ship's crew, +military signalers are posted; the boats swung outboard have each a +party of troops on guard. + +An alarmed cry from aloft--a half-uttered order to the steersman--an +explosion, low down in the bowels of the ship, that sets her reeling in +her stride! + +The upthrow comes swiftly on the moment of impact. Hatches, coal, a huge +column of solid water go skyward in a hurtling mass to fall in torrent +on the bridge. Part of a human body strikes the awning spars and +hangs--watch-keepers are borne to the deck by the weight of water--the +steersman falls limply over the wheel with blood pouring from a gash on +his forehead.... Then silence for a stunned half-minute, with only the +thrust of the engines marking the heartbeats of the stricken ship. + +Uproar! Most of our men are young recruits: they have been but two days +on the sea. The torpedo has gone hard home at the very weakest hour of +our calculated drill. The troops are at their evening meal when the blow +comes, the explosion killing many outright. We had counted on a +proportion of the troops being on the deck, a steadying number to +balance the sudden rush from below that we foresaw in emergency. +Hurrying from the mess-decks as enjoined, the quick movement gathers way +and intensity: the decks become jammed by the pressure, the gangways and +passages are blocked in the struggle. There is the making of a +panic--tuned by their outcry, _"God! O God! O Christ!"_ The swelling +murmur is neither excited nor agonized--rather the dull, hopeless +expression of despair. + +The officer commanding troops has come on the bridge at the first +alarm. His juniors have opportunity to take their stations before the +struggling mass reaches to the boats. The impossibility of getting among +the men on the lower decks makes the military officers' efforts to +restore confidence difficult. They are aided from an unexpected quarter. +The bridge-boy makes unofficial use of our megaphone. "Hey! Steady up +you men doon therr," he shouts. "Ye'll no' dae ony guid fur yersels +croodin' th' ledders!" + +We could not have done it as well. The lad is plainly in sight to the +crowd on the decks. A small boy, undersized. "Steady up doon therr!" The +effect is instant. Noise there still is, but the movement is arrested. + +The engines are stopped--we are now beyond range of a second +torpedo--and steam thunders in exhaust, making our efforts to control +movements by voice impossible. At the moment of the impact the +destroyers have swung round and are casting here and there like hounds +on the scent: the dull explosion of a depth-charge--then another, rouses +a fierce hope that we are not unavenged. The force of the explosion has +broken connections to the wireless room, but the aerial still holds and, +when a measure of order on the boatdeck allows, we send a message of our +peril broadcast. There is no doubt in our minds of the outcome. Our +bows, drooping visibly, tell that we shall not float long. We have +nearly three thousand on board. There are boats for sixteen +hundred--then rafts. Boats--rafts--and the glass is falling at a rate +that shows bad weather over the western horizon! + +Our drill, that provided for lowering the boats with only +half-complements in them, will not serve. We pass orders to lower away +in any condition, however overcrowded. The way is off the ship, and it +is with some apprehension we watch the packed boats that drop away from +the davit heads. The shrill ring of the block-sheaves indicates a +tension that is not far from breaking-point. Many of the life-boats +reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the +tackles--far beyond their working load--is too great for all to stand to +it. Two boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently +to the water, where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A +third dangles from the after fall, having shot her manning out at +parting of the forward tackle. Lowered by the stern, she rights, +disengages, and drifts aft with the men clinging to the life-lines. We +can make no attempt to reach the men in the water. Their life-belts are +sufficient to keep them afloat: the ship is going down rapidly by the +head, and there remains the second line of boats to be hoisted and swung +over. The chief officer, pausing in his quick work, looks to the bridge +inquiringly, as though to ask, "How long?" The fingers of two hands +suffice to mark our estimate. + +The decks are now angled to the deepening pitch of the bows. Pumps are +utterly inadequate to make impression on the swift inflow. The chief +engineer comes to the bridge with a hopeless report. It is only a +question of time. How long? Already the water is lapping at a level of +the foredeck. Troops massed there and on the forecastle-head are +apprehensive: it is indeed a wonder that their officers have held them +for so long. The commanding officer sets example by a cool nonchalance +that we envy. Posted with us on the bridge, his quick eyes note the +flood surging in the pent 'tween-decks below, from which his men have +removed the few wounded. The dead are left to the sea. + +Help comes as we had expected it would. Leaving _Nemesis_ to steam fast +circles round the sinking ship, _Rifleman_ swings in and brings up +alongside at the forward end. Even in our fear and anxiety and distress, +we cannot but admire the precision of the destroyer captain's +manœuver--the skilful avoidance of our crowded life-boats and the men +in the water--the sudden stoppage of her way and the cant that brings +her to a standstill at the lip of our brimming decks. The troops who +have stood so well to orders have their reward in an easy leap to +safety. Quickly the foredeck is cleared. _Rifleman_ spurts ahead in a +rush that sets the surrounding life-boats to eddy in her wash. She takes +up the circling high-speed patrol and allows her sister ship to swing in +and embark a number of our men. + +It is when the most of the life-boats are gone we realize fully the +gallant service of the destroyers. There remain the rafts, but many of +these have been launched over to aid the struggling men in the water. +Half an hour has passed since we were struck--thirty minutes of frantic +endeavor to debark our men--yet still the decks are thronged by a packed +mass that seems but little reduced. The coming of the destroyers alters +the outlook. _Rifleman's_ action has taken over six hundred. A sensible +clearance! _Nemesis_ swings in with the precision of an express, and the +thud and clatter of the troops jumping to her deck sets up a continuous +drumming note of deliverance. Alert and confident, the naval men accept +the great risks of their position. The ship's bows are entered to the +water at a steep incline. Every minute the balance is weighing, casting +her stern high in the air. The bulkheads are by now taking place of keel +and bearing the huge weight of her on the water. At any moment she may +go without a warning, to crash into the light hull of the destroyer and +bear her down. For all the circling watch of her sister ship, the +submarine--if still he lives--may get in a shot at the standing target. +It is with a deep relief we signal the captain to bear off. Her decks +are jammed to the limit. She can carry no more. _Nemesis_ lists heavily +under her burdened decks as she goes ahead and clears. + +Forty minutes! The zigzag clock in the wheelhouse goes on ringing the +angles of time and course as though we were yet under helm and speed. +For a short term we have noted that the ship appears to have reached a +point of arrest in her foundering droop. She remains upright as she has +been since righting herself after the first inrush of water. Like the +lady she always was, she has added no fearsome list to the sum of our +distress. The familiar bridge, on which so many of our safe sea-days +have been spent, is canted at an angle that makes foothold uneasy. She +cannot remain for long afloat. The end will come swiftly, without +warning--a sudden rupture of the bulkhead that is sustaining her weight. +We are not now many left on board. Striving and wrenching to man-handle +the only remaining boat--rendered idle for want of the tackles that have +parted on service of its twin--we succeed in pointing her outboard, and +await a further deepening of the bows ere launching her. Of the +military, the officer commanding, some few of his juniors, a group of +other ranks, stand by. The senior officers of the ship, a muster of +seamen, a few stewards, are banded with us at the last. We expect no +further service of the destroyers. The position of the ship is +over-menacing to any approach. They have all they can carry. Steaming at +a short distance they have the appearance of being heavily overloaded; +each has a staggering list and lies low in the water under their deck +encumbrance. We have only the hazard of a quick out-throw of the +remaining boat and the chances of a grip on floating wreckage to count +upon. + +On a sudden swift sheer, _Rifleman_ takes the risk. Unheeding our +warning hail, she steams across the bows and backs at a high speed: her +rounded stern jars on our hull plates, a whaler and the davits catch on +a projection and give with the ring of buckling steel--she turns on the +throw of the propellers and closes aboard with a resounding impact that +sets her living deck-load to stagger. + +We lose no time. Scrambling down the life-ropes, our small company +endeavors to get foothold on her decks. The destroyer widens off at the +rebound, but by clutch of friendly hands the men are dragged aboard. One +fails to reach safety. A soldier loses grip and goes to the water. The +chief officer follows him. Tired and unstrung as he must be by the +devoted labors of the last half-hour, he is in no condition to effect a +rescue. A sudden deep rumble from within the sinking ship warns the +destroyer captain to go ahead. We are given no chance to aid our +shipmates: the propellers tear the water in a furious race that sweeps +them away, and we draw off swiftly from the side of the ship. + +We are little more than clear of the settling fore-end when the last +buoyant breath of _Cameronia_ is overcome. Nobly she has held afloat to +the debarking of the last man. There is no further life in her. Evenly, +steadily, as we had seen her leave the launching ways at Meadowside, she +goes down. + + + + +THE MARKET + +_By_ WILLIAM MCFEE + + + William McFee's name is associated with the sea, but in his writing + he treats the life of ships and sailors more as a background than + as the essential substance of his tale. I have chosen this brief + and colorful little sketch to represent his talent because it is + different from the work with which most of his readers are + familiar, and because it represents a mood very characteristic of + him--an imaginative and observant treatment of the workings of + commerce. His interest in fruit is intimate, as he has been for + some years an engineer in the sea service of the United Fruit + Company, with a Mediterranean interim--reflected in much of his + recent writing--during the War. + + The publication of McFee's _Casuals of the Sea_ in 1916 was + something of an event in the world of books, and introduced to the + reading world a new writer of unquestionable strength and subtlety. + His earlier books, _An Ocean Tramp_ and _Aliens_ (both republished + since), had gone almost unnoticed--which, it is safe to say, will + not happen again to anything he cares to publish. His later books + are _Captain Macedoine's Daughter_, _Harbours of Memory_, and _An + Engineer's Notebook_. He was born at sea in 1881, the son of a + sea-captain; grew up in a northern suburb of London, served his + apprenticeship in a big engineering shop, and has been in ships + most of the time since 1905. + + +There is a sharp, imperative rap on my outer door; a rap having within +its insistent urgency a shadow of delicate diffidence, as though the +person responsible were a trifle scared of the performance and on tiptoe +to run away. I roll over and regard the clock. Four-forty. One of the +dubious by-products of continuous service as a senior assistant at sea +is the habit of waking automatically about 4 A. M. This gives one +several hours, when ashore, to meditate upon one's sins, frailties, and +(more rarely) triumphs and virtues. For a man who gets up at say +four-thirty is regarded with aversion ashore. His family express +themselves with superfluous vigor. He must lie still and meditate, or +suffer the ignominy of being asked when he is going away again. + +But this morning, in these old Chambers in an ancient Inn buried in the +heart of London City, I have agreed to get up and go out. The reason for +this momentous departure from a life of temporary but deliberate +indolence is a lady. "Cherchez la femme," as the French say with the dry +animosity of a logical race. Well, she is not far to seek, being on the +outside of my heavy oak door, tapping, as already hinted, with a sharp +insistent delicacy. To this romantic summons I reply with an articulate +growl of acquiescence, and proceed to get ready. To relieve the anxiety +of any reader who imagines an impending elopement it may be stated in +succinct truthfulness that we are bound on no such desperate venture. We +are going round the corner a few blocks up the Strand, to Covent Garden +Market, to see the arrival of the metropolitan supply of produce. + +Having accomplished a hasty toilet, almost as primitive as that favored +by gentlemen aroused to go on watch, and placating an occasional +repetition of the tapping by brief protests and reports of progress, I +take hat and cane, and drawing the huge antique bolts of my door, +discover a young woman standing by the window looking out upon the +quadrangle of the old Inn. She is a very decided young woman, who is +continually thinking out what she calls "stunts" for articles in the +press. That is her profession, or one of her professions--writing +articles for the press. The other profession is selling manuscripts, +which constitutes the tender bond between us. For the usual agent's +commission she is selling one of my manuscripts. Being an unattached +and, as it were, unprotected male, she plans little excursions about +London to keep me instructed and entertained. Here she is attired in the +flamboyant finery of a London flowergirl. She is about to get the +necessary copy for a special article in a morning paper. With the +exception of a certain expectant flash of her bright black Irish eyes, +she is entirely businesslike. Commenting on the beauty of an early +summer morning in town, we descend, and passing out under the ponderous +ancient archway, we make our leisurely progress westward down the +Strand. + +London is always beautiful to those who love and understand that +extraordinary microcosm; but at five of a summer morning there is about +her an exquisite quality of youthful fragrance and debonair freshness +which goes to the heart. The newly-hosed streets are shining in the +sunlight as though paved with "patines of bright gold." Early 'buses +rumble by from neighboring barns where they have spent the night. And, +as we near the new Gaiety Theatre, thrusting forward into the great +rivers of traffic soon to pour round its base like some bold Byzantine +promontory, we see Waterloo Bridge thronged with wagons, piled high. +From all quarters they are coming, past Charing Cross the great wains +are arriving from Paddington Terminal, from the market-garden section of +Middlesex and Surrey. Down Wellington Street come carts laden with +vegetables from Brentwood and Coggeshall, and neat vans packed with +crates of watercress which grows in the lush lowlands of Suffolk and +Cambridgeshire, and behind us are thundering huge four-horse vehicles +from the docks, vehicles with peaches from South Africa, potatoes from +the Canary Islands, onions from France, apples from California, oranges +from the West Indies, pineapples from Central America, grapes from Spain +and bananas from Colombia. + +We turn in under an archway behind a theatre and adjacent to the +stage-door of the Opera House. The booths are rapidly filling with +produce. Gentlemen in long alpaca coats and carrying formidable marbled +note-books walk about with an important air. A mountain range of +pumpkins rises behind a hill of cabbages. Festoons of onions are being +suspended from rails. The heads of barrels are being knocked in, +disclosing purple grapes buried in corkdust. Pears and figs, grown under +glass for wealthy patrons, repose in soft tissue-lined boxes. A broken +crate of tangerine oranges has spilled its contents in a splash of ruddy +gold on the plank runway. A wagon is driven in, a heavy load of beets, +and the broad wheels crush through the soft fruit so that the air is +heavy with the acrid sweetness. + +We pick our way among the booths and stalls until we find the flowers. +Here is a crowd of ladies, young, so-so and some quite matronly, and all +dressed in this same flamboyant finery of which I have spoken. They are +grouped about an almost overpowering mass of blooms. Roses just now +predominate. There is a satisfying solidity about the bunches, a +glorious abundance which, in a commodity so easily enjoyed without +ownership, is scarcely credible. I feel no desire to own these huge +aggregations of odorous beauty. It would be like owning a harem, one +imagines. Violets, solid patches of vivid blue in round baskets, +eglantine in dainty boxes, provide a foil to the majestic blazonry of +the roses and the dew-spangled forest of maiden-hair fern near by. + +"And what are those things at all?" demands my companion, diverted for a +moment from the flowers. She nods towards a mass of dull-green affairs +piled on mats or being lifted from big vans. She is a Cockney and +displays surprise when she is told those things are bananas. She shrugs +and turns again to the musk-roses, and forgets. But to me, as the harsh, +penetrating odor of the green fruit cuts across the heavy perfume of the +flowers, comes a picture of the farms in distant Colombia or perhaps +Costa Rica. There is nothing like an odor to stir memories. I see the +timber pier and the long line of rackety open-slatted cars jangling into +the dark shed, pushed by a noisy, squealing locomotive. I see the boys +lying asleep between shifts, their enormous straw hats covering their +faces as they sprawl. In the distance rise the blue mountains; behind is +the motionless blue sea. I hear the whine of the elevators, the +monotonous click of the counters, the harsh cries of irresponsible and +argumentative natives. I feel the heat of the tropic day, and see the +gleam of the white waves breaking on yellow sands below tall palms. I +recall the mysterious impenetrable solitude of the jungle, a solitude +alive, if one is equipped with knowledge, with a ceaseless warfare of +winged and crawling hosts. And while my companion is busily engaged in +getting copy for a special article about the Market, I step nimbly out +of the way of a swarthy gentleman from Calabria, who with his +two-wheeled barrow is the last link in the immense chain of +transportation connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the +cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and purchases a banana for +a couple of pennies. + + + + +HOLY IRELAND + +_By_ JOYCE KILMER + + + This echo of the A.E.F. is probably the best thing Joyce Kilmer + ever wrote, and shows the vein of real tenderness and insight that + lay beneath his lively and versatile career on Grub Street. In him, + as in many idealists, the Irish theme had become legendary, it was + part of his religion and his dream-life, and he treated it with + real affection and humor. You will find it cropping out many times + in his verses. The Irish problem as it is reflected in this country + is not always clearly understood. Ireland, in the minds of our + poets, is a mystical land of green hills, saints and leprechauns, + and its political problems are easy. + + Joyce Kilmer was born in New Brunswick in 1886; studied at Rutgers + College and Columbia University; taught school; worked on the staff + of the Standard Dictionary; passed through phases of socialism and + Anglicanism into the Catholic communion, and joined the Sunday + staff of the New York _Times_ in 1913. He was killed fighting in + France in 1918. This sketch is taken from the second of the three + volumes in which Robert Cortes Holliday, his friend and executor, + has collected Joyce Kilmer's work. + + +We had hiked seventeen miles that stormy December day--the third of a +four days' journey. The snow was piled high on our packs, our rifles +were crusted with ice, the leather of our hob-nailed boots was frozen +stiff over our lamed feet. The weary lieutenant led us to the door of a +little house in a side street. + +"Next twelve men," he said. A dozen of us dropped out of the ranks and +dragged ourselves over the threshold. We tracked snow and mud over a +spotless stone floor. Before an open fire stood Madame and the three +children--a girl of eight years, a boy of five, a boy of three. They +stared with round frightened eyes at les soldats Americans, the first +they had ever seen. We were too tired to stare back. We at once climbed +to the chill attic, our billet, our lodging for the night. First we +lifted the packs from one another's aching shoulders: then, without +spreading our blankets, we lay down on the bare boards. + +For ten minutes there was silence, broken by an occasional groan, an +oath, the striking of a match. Cigarettes glowed like fireflies in a +forest. Then a voice came from the corner: + +"Where is Sergeant Reilly?" it said. We lazily searched. There was no +Sergeant Reilly to be found. + +"I'll bet the old bum has gone out after a pint," said the voice. And +with the curiosity of the American and the enthusiasm of the Irish we +lumbered downstairs in quest of Sergeant Reilly. + +He was sitting on a low bench by the fire. His shoes were off and his +bruised feet were in a pail of cold water. He was too good a soldier to +expose them to the heat at once. The little girl was on his lap and the +little boys stood by and envied him. And in a voice that twenty years of +soldiering and oceans of whisky had failed to rob of its Celtic +sweetness, he was softly singing: "Ireland Isn't Ireland Any More." We +listened respectfully. + +"They cheer the King and then salute him," said Sergeant Reilly. + +"A regular Irishman would shoot him," and we all joined in the chorus, +"Ireland Isn't Ireland Any More." + +"Ooh, la, la!" exclaimed Madame, and she and all the children began to +talk at the top of their voices. What they said Heaven knows, but the +tones were friendly, even admiring. + +"Gentlemen," said Sergeant Reilly from his post of honor, "the lady who +runs this billet is a very nice lady indeed. She says yez can all take +off your shoes and dry your socks by the fire. But take turns and don't +crowd or I'll turn yez all upstairs." + +Now Madame, a woman of some forty years, was a true bourgeoise, with all +the thrift of her class. And by the terms of her agreement with the +authorities she was required to let the soldiers have for one night the +attic of her house to sleep in--nothing more; no light, no heat. Also, +wood is very expensive in France--for reasons that are engraven in +letters of blood on the pages of history. Nevertheless-- + +"Asseyez-vous, s'il vous plait," said Madame. And she brought nearer to +the fire all the chairs the establishment possessed and some chests and +boxes to be used as seats. And she and the little girl, whose name was +Solange, went out into the snow and came back with heaping armfuls of +small logs. The fire blazed merrily--more merrily than it had blazed +since August, 1914, perhaps. We surrounded it, and soon the air was +thick with steam from our drying socks. + +Meanwhile Madame and the Sergeant had generously admitted all eleven of +us into their conversation. A spirited conversation it was, too, in +spite of the fact that she knew no English and the extent of his French +was "du pain," "du vin," "cognac" and "bon jour." Those of us who knew a +little more of the language of the country acted as interpreters for the +others. We learned the names of the children and their ages. We learned +that our hostess was a widow. Her husband had fallen in battle just one +month before our arrival in her home. She showed us with simple pride +and affection and restrained grief his picture. Then she showed us those +of her two brothers--one now fighting at Salonica, the other a prisoner +of war--of her mother and father, of herself dressed for First +Communion. + +This last picture she showed somewhat shyly, as if doubting that we +would understand it. But when one of us asked in halting French if +Solange, her little daughter, had yet made her First Communion, then +Madame's face cleared. + +"Mais oui!" she exclaimed, "Et vous, ma foi, vous êtes Catholiques, +n'est-ce pas?" + +At once rosary beads were flourished to prove our right to answer this +question affirmatively. Tattered prayer-books and somewhat dingy +scapulars were brought to light. Madame and the children chattered their +surprise and delight to each other, and every exhibit called for a new +outburst. + +"Ah, le bon S. Benoit! Ah, voilà, le Conception Immacule! Ooh la la, le +Sacré Cœur!" (which last exclamation sounded in no wise as irreverent +as it looks in print). + +Now other treasures, too, were shown--treasures chiefly photographic. +There were family groups, there were Coney Island snapshots. And Madame +and the children were a gratifyingly appreciative audience. They admired +and sympathized; they exclaimed appropriately at the beauty of every +girl's face, the tenderness of every pictured mother. We had become the +intimates of Madame. She had admitted us into her family and we her into +ours. + +Soldiers--American soldiers of Irish descent--have souls and hearts. +These organs (if the soul may be so termed) had been satisfied. But our +stomachs remained--and that they yearned was evident to us. We had made +our hike on a meal of hardtack and "corned willy." Mess call would sound +soon. Should we force our wet shoes on again and plod through the snowy +streets to the temporary mess-shack? We knew our supply wagons had not +succeeded in climbing the last hill into town, and that therefore bread +and unsweetened coffee would be our portion. A great depression settled +upon us. + +But Sergeant Reilly rose to the occasion. + +"Boys," he said, "this here lady has got a good fire going, and I'll bet +she can cook. What do you say we get her to fix us up a meal?" + +The proposal was received joyously at first. Then some one said: + +"But I haven't got any money." "Neither have I--not a damn sou!" said +another. And again the spiritual temperature of the room fell. + +Again Sergeant Reilly spoke: + +"I haven't got any money to speak of, meself," he said. "But let's have +a show-down. I guess we've got enough to buy somethin' to eat." + +It was long after pay-day, and we were not hopeful of the results of the +search. But the wealthy (that is, those who had two francs) made up for +the poor (that is, those who had two sous). And among the coins on the +table I noticed an American dime, an English half-crown and a Chinese +piece with a square hole in the center. In negotiable tender the money +came in all to eight francs. + +It takes more money than that to feed twelve hungry soldiers these days +in France. But there was no harm in trying. So an ex-seminarian, an +ex-bookkeeper and an ex-street-car conductor aided Sergeant Reilly in +explaining in French that had both a brogue and a Yankee twang that we +were hungry, that this was all the money we had in the world, and that +we wanted her to cook us something to eat. + +Now Madame was what they call in New England a "capable" woman. In a +jiffy she had the money in Solange's hand and had that admirable child +cloaked and wooden-shod for the street, and fully informed as to what +she was to buy. What Madame and the children had intended to have for +supper I do not know, for there was nothing in the kitchen but the fire, +the stove, the table, some shelves of dishes and an enormous bed. +Nothing in the way of a food cupboard could be seen. And the only other +room of the house was the bare attic. + +When Solange came back she carried in a basket bigger than herself these +articles: (1) two loaves of war-bread; (2) five bottles of red wine; (3) +three cheeses; (4) numerous potatoes; (5) a lump of fat; (6) a bag of +coffee. The whole represented, as was afterward demonstrated, exactly +the sum of ten francs, fifty centimes. + +Well, we all set to work peeling potatoes. Then with a veritable French +trench-knife Madame cut the potatoes into long strips. Meanwhile Solange +had put the lump of fat into the big black pot that hung by a chain +over the fire. In the boiling grease the potatoes were placed, Madame +standing by with a big ladle punched full of holes (I regret that I do +not know the technical name for this instrument) and keeping the +potato-strips swimming, zealously frustrating any attempt on their part +to lie lazily at the bottom of the pot. + +We forgot all about the hike as we sat at supper that evening. The only +absentees were the two little boys, Michael and Paul. And they were +really absent only from our board--they were in the room, in the great +built-in bed that was later to hold also Madame and Solange. Their +little bodies were covered by the three-foot thick mattress-like red +silk quilt, but their tousled heads protruded and they watched us +unblinkingly all the evening. + +But just as we sat down, before Sergeant Reilly began his task of +dishing out the potatoes and starting the bottles on their way, Madame +stopped her chattering and looked at Solange. And Solange stopped her +chattering and looked at Madame. And they both looked rather searchingly +at us. We didn't know what was the matter, but we felt rather +embarrassed. + +Then Madame began to talk, slowly and loudly, as one talks to make +foreigners understand. And the gist of her remarks was that she was +surprised to see that American Catholics did not say grace before +eating like French Catholics. + +We sprang to our feet at once. But it was not Sergeant Reilly who saved +the situation. Instead, the ex-seminarian (he is only temporarily an +ex-seminarian; he'll be preaching missions and giving retreats yet if a +bit of shrapnel doesn't hasten his journey to Heaven) said, after we had +blessed ourselves: "Benedicite; nos et quae sumus sumpturi benedicat +Deus, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen." + +Madame and Solange, obviously relieved, joined us in the Amen, and we +sat down again to eat. + +It was a memorable feast. There was not much conversation--except on the +part of Madame and Solange--but there was plenty of good cheer. Also +there was enough cheese and bread and wine and potatoes for all of +us--half starved as we were when we sat down. Even big Considine, who +drains a can of condensed milk at a gulp and has been known to eat an +apple pie without stopping to take breath, was satisfied. There were +toasts, also, all proposed by Sergeant Reilly--toasts to Madame, and to +the children, and to France, and to the United States, and to the Old +Gray Mare (this last toast having an esoteric significance apparent only +to illuminati of Sergeant Reilly's circle). + +The table cleared and the "agimus tibi gratias" duly said, we sat +before the fire, most of us on the floor. We were warm and happy and +full of good food and good wine. I spied a slip of paper on the floor by +Solange's foot and unashamedly read it. It was an accounting for the +evening's expenditures--totaling exactly ten francs and fifty centimes. + +Now when soldiers are unhappy--during a long, hard hike, for +instance--they sing to keep up their spirits. And when they are happy, +as on the evening now under consideration, they sing to express their +satisfaction with life. We sang "Sweet Rosie O'Grady." We shook the +kitchen-bedroom with the echoes of "Take Me Back to New York Town." We +informed Madame, Solange, Paul, Michael, in fact, the whole village, +that we had never been a wanderer and that we longed for our Indiana +home. We grew sentimental over "Mother Machree." And Sergeant Reilly +obliged with a reel--in his socks--to an accomplishment of whistling and +handclapping. + +Now, it was our hostess's turn to entertain. We intimated as much. She +responded, first by much talk, much consultation with Solange, and +finally by going to one of the shelves that held the pans and taking +down some paper-covered books. + +There was more consultation, whispered this time, and much turning of +pages. Then, after some preliminary coughing and humming, the music +began--the woman's rich alto blending with the child's shrill but sweet +notes. And what they sang was "Tantum ergo Sacramentum." + +Why she should have thought that an appropriate song to offer this +company of rough soldiers from a distant land I do not know. And why we +found it appropriate it is harder still to say. But it did seem +appropriate to all of us--to Sergeant Reilly, to Jim (who used to drive +a truck), to Larry (who sold cigars), to Frank (who tended a bar on +Fourteenth Street). It seemed, for some reason, eminently fitting. Not +one of us then or later expressed any surprise that this hymn, familiar +to most of us since our mothers first led us to the Parish Church down +the pavements of New York or across the Irish hills, should be sung to +us in this strange land and in these strange circumstances. + +Since the gracious Latin of the Church was in order and since the season +was appropriate, one of us suggested "Adeste Fideles" for the next item +on the evening's program. Madame and Solange and our ex-seminarian knew +all the words and the rest of us came in strong with "Venite, adoremus +Dominum." + +Then, as if to show that piety and mirth may live together, the ladies +obliged with "Au Clair de la Lune" and other simple ballads of old +France. And after taps had sounded in the street outside our door, and +there was yawning, and wrist-watches were being scanned, the evening's +entertainment ended, by general consent, with patriotic selections. We +sang--as best we could--the "Star-Spangled Banner," Solange and her +mother humming the air and applauding at the conclusion. Then we +attempted "La Marseillaise." Of course, we did not know the words. +Solange came to our rescue with two little pamphlets containing the +song, so we looked over each other's shoulders and got to work in +earnest. Madame sang with us, and Solange. But during the final stanza +Madame did not sing. She leaned against the great family bedstead and +looked at us. She had taken one of the babies from under the red +comforter and held him to her breast. One of her red and toil-scarred +hands half covered his fat little back. There was a gentle dignity about +that plain, hard-working woman, that soldier's widow--we all felt it. +And some of us saw the tears in her eyes. + +There are mists, faint and beautiful and unchanging, that hang over the +green slopes of some mountains I know. I have seen them on the Irish +hills and I have seen them on the hills of France. I think that they are +made of the tears of good brave women. + +Before I went to sleep that night I exchanged a few words with Sergeant +Reilly. We lay side by side on the floor, now piled with straw. +Blankets, shelter-halves, slickers and overcoats insured warm sleep. +Sergeant Reilly's hard old face was wrapped round with his muffler. The +final cigarette of the day burned lazily in a corner of his mouth. + +"That was a pretty good evening, Sarge," I said. "We sure were in luck +when we struck this billet." + +He grunted affirmatively, then puffed in silence for a few minutes. Then +he deftly spat the cigarette into a strawless portion of the floor, +where it glowed for a few seconds before it went out. + +"You said it," he remarked. "We were in luck is right. What do you know +about that lady, anyway?" + +"Why," I answered, "I thought she treated us pretty white." + +"Joe," said Sergeant Reilly, "do you realize how much trouble that woman +took to make this bunch of roughnecks comfortable? She didn't make a +damn cent on that feed, you know. The kid spent all the money we give +her. And she's out about six francs for firewood, too--I wish to God I +had the money to pay her. I bet she'll go cold for a week now, and +hungry, too. + +"And that ain't all," he continued, after a pause broken only by an +occasional snore from our blissful neighbors. "Look at the way she +cooked them pomme de terres and fixed things up for us and let us sit +down there with her like we was her family. And look at the way she and +the little Sallie there sung for us. + +"I tell you, Joe, it makes me think of old times to hear a woman sing +them church hymns to me that way. It's forty years since I heard a hymn +sung in a kitchen, and it was my mother, God rest her, that sang them. I +sort of realize what we're fighting for now, and I never did before. +It's for women like that and their kids. + +"It gave me a turn to see her a-sitting there singing them hymns. I +remembered when I was a boy in Shangolden. I wonder if there's many +women like that in France now--telling their beads and singing the old +hymns and treating poor traveling men the way she's just after treating +us. There used to be lots of women like that in the Old Country. And I +think that's why it was called 'Holy Ireland.'" + + + + +A FAMILIAR PREFACE + +_By_ JOSEPH CONRAD + + + This glorious expression of the credo of all artists, in whatever + form of creation, lastingly enriches the English tongue. It is from + the preface to _A Personal Record_, that fascinating + autobiographical volume in which Conrad tells the curious story of + a Polish boy who ran away to sea and began to write in English. As + a companion piece, those who have the honor of the writer's craft + at heart should read Conrad's preface to _The Nigger of the + Narcissus_. + + "All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the + miseries or credulities of mankind." Is it permissible to wonder + what some newspaper owners--say Mr. Hearst--would reply to that? + + Mr. Conrad's career is too well known to be annotated here. If by + any chance the reader is not acquainted with it, it will be to his + soul's advantage to go to a public library and look it up. + + +As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk about +ourselves; yet this little book[A] is the result of a friendly +suggestion, and even of a little friendly pressure. I defended myself +with some spirit; but, with characteristic tenacity, the friendly voice +insisted, "You know, you really must." + +It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must!... + +You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put +his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of +sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this +by way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable +than reflective. Nothing humanely great--great, I mean, as affecting a +whole mass of lives--has come from reflection. On the other hand, you +cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, for +instance, or Pity. I won't mention any more. They are not far to seek. +Shouted with perseverance, with ardor, with conviction, these two by +their sound alone have set whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry, +hard ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue" for +you if you like!... Of course, the accent must be attended to. The right +accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering or the +tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was +an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics +commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the +right word and the right accent and I will move the world. + +What a dream for a writer! Because written words have their accent, too. +Yes! Let me only find the right word! Surely it must be lying somewhere +among the wreckage of all the plaints and all the exultations poured out +aloud since the first day when hope, the undying, came down on earth. It +may be there, close by, disregarded, invisible, quite at hand. But it's +no good. I believe there are men who can lay hold of a needle in a +pottle of hay at the first try. For myself, I have never had such luck. + +And then there is that accent. Another difficulty. For who is going to +tell whether the accent is right or wrong till the word is shouted, and +fails to be heard, perhaps, and goes down-wind, leaving the world +unmoved? Once upon a time there lived an emperor who was a sage and +something of a literary man. He jotted down on ivory tablets thoughts, +maxims, reflections which chance has preserved for the edification of +posterity. Among other sayings--I am quoting from memory--I remember +this solemn admonition: "Let all thy words have the accent of heroic +truth." The accent of heroic truth! This is very fine, but I am thinking +that it is an easy matter for an austere emperor to jot down grandiose +advice. Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic; +and there have been times in the history of mankind when the accents of +heroic truth have moved it to nothing but derision. + +Nobody will expect to find between the covers of this little book words +of extraordinary potency or accents of irresistible heroism. However +humiliating for my self-esteem, I must confess that the counsels of +Marcus Aurelius are not for me. They are more fit for a moralist than +for an artist. Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also +sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it +delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to +embroil one with one's friends. + +"Embroil" is perhaps too strong an expression. I can't imagine among +either my enemies or my friends a being so hard up for something to do +as to quarrel with me. "To disappoint one's friends" would be nearer the +mark. Most, almost all, friendships of the writing period of my life +have come to me through my books; and I know that a novelist lives in +his work. He stands there, the only reality in an invented world, among +imaginary things, happenings, and people. Writing about them, he is only +writing about himself. But the disclosure is not complete. He remains, +to a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a suspected rather than a +seen presence--a movement and a voice behind the draperies of fiction. +In these personal notes there is no such veil. And I cannot help +thinking of a passage in the "Imitation of Christ" where the ascetic +author, who knew life so profoundly, says that "there are persons +esteemed on their reputation who by showing themselves destroy the +opinion one had of them." This is the danger incurred by an author of +fiction who sets out to talk about himself without disguise. + +While these reminiscent pages were appearing serially I was remonstrated +with for bad economy; as if such writing were a form of self-indulgence +wasting the substance of future volumes. It seems that I am not +sufficiently literary. Indeed, a man who never wrote a line for print +till he was thirty-six cannot bring himself to look upon his existence +and his experience, upon the sum of his thoughts, sensations, and +emotions, upon his memories and his regrets, and the whole possession of +his past, as only so much material for his hands. Once before, some +three years ago, when I published "The Mirror of the Sea," a volume of +impressions and memories, the same remarks were made to me. Practical +remarks. But, truth to say, I have never understood the kind of thrift +they recommend. I wanted to pay my tribute to the sea, its ships and its +men, to whom I remain indebted for so much which has gone to make me +what I am. That seemed to me the only shape in which I could offer it to +their shades. There could not be a question in my mind of anything else. +It is quite possible that I am a bad economist; but it is certain that I +am incorrigible. + +Having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions of +sea life, I have a special piety toward that form of my past; for its +impressions were vivid, its appeal direct, its demands such as could be +responded to with the natural elation of youth and strength equal to the +call. There was nothing in them to perplex a young conscience. Having +broken away from my origins under a storm of blame from every quarter +which had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion, removed by +great distances from such natural affections as were still left to me, +and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totally +unintelligible character of the life which had seduced me so +mysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the blind +force of circumstances the sea was to be all my world and the merchant +service my only home for a long succession of years. No wonder, then, +that in my two exclusively sea books--"The Nigger of the Narcissus," and +"The Mirror of the Sea" (and in the few short sea stories like "Youth" +and "Typhoon")--I have tried with an almost filial regard to render the +vibration of life in the great world of waters, in the hearts of the +simple men who have for ages traversed its solitudes, and also that +something sentient which seems to dwell in ships--the creatures of their +hands and the objects of their care. + +One's literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to memories and +seek discourse with the shades, unless one has made up one's mind to +write only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for +what it is not, or--generally--to teach it how to behave. Being neither +quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these +things, and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificance +which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other. +But resignation is not indifference. I would not like to be left +standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying +onward so many lives. I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so +much insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and compassion. + +It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticism +I am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of facts--of +what the French would call _sécheresse du cœur_. Fifteen years of +unbroken silence before praise or blame testify sufficiently to my +respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the +garden of letters. But this is more of a personal matter, reaching the +man behind the work, and therefore it may be alluded to in a volume +which is a personal note in the margin of the public page. Not that I +feel hurt in the least. The charge--if it amounted to a charge at +all--was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone of regret. + +My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of +autobiography--and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can +only express himself in his creation--then there are some of us to whom +an open display of sentiment is repugnant. I would not unduly praise the +virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not +always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more +humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of +either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the +reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of +emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or +contempt. No artist can be reproached for shrinking from a risk which +only fools run to meet and only genius dare confront with impunity. In a +task which mainly consists in laying one's soul more or less bare to the +world, a regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the +regard for one's own dignity which is inseparably united with the +dignity of one's work. + +And then--it is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this +earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of +pain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacity +for suffering which makes man august in the eyes of men) have their +source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as +the common inheritance of us all. Joy and sorrow in this world pass +into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight +of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling +brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the +distant edge of the horizon. + +Yes! I, too, would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over +laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of +imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender +oneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or within +one's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for +love or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligence +can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is bound +to be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim to particular wisdom because +of my dislike and distrust of such transactions. It may be my sea +training acting upon a natural disposition to keep good hold on the one +thing really mine, but the fact is that I have a positive horror of +losing even for one moving moment that full possession of myself which +is the first condition of good service. And I have earned my notion of +good service from my earlier into my later existence. I, who have never +sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--I +have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the +more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have +become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of +pure esthetes. + +As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself +mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness +of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable +or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general +principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know +not. After the middle turn of life's way we consider dangers and joys +with a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I have +always suspected in the effort to bring into play the extremities of +emotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move others +deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond +the bounds of our normal sensibility--innocently enough, perhaps, and of +necessity, like an actor who raises his voice on the stage above the +pitch of natural conversation--but still we have to do that. And surely +this is no great sin. But the danger lies in the writer becoming the +victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, +and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too +blunt for his purpose--as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent +emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and +giggles. + +These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals, +condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear +duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however +humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his +thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined +adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance +or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say +Nay to his temptations if not his conscience? + +And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly +open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except those which +climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual +and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit +of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so much +the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, such +ambitions are their own reward. Is it such a very mad presumption to +believe in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for other means, for +other ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work? +To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. A historian of hearts is +not a historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as he +may be, since his aim is to reach the wry fount of laughter and tears. +The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They are worthy +of respect, too. And he is not insensible who pays them the +undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile +which is not a grin. Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but +resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one +of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham. + +Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the +creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is to +will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will +is--or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of life +and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the +How. As the Frenchman said, "_Il y a toujours la manière_." Very true. +Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in +indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner +in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner +truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. + +Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal +world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as +old as the hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of +Fidelity. At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way +or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been +revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty +convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards +ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace +of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at +these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All +claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from +which a philosophical mind should be free. + + + + +ON DRAWING + +_By_ A. P. HERBERT + + + A. P. Herbert is one of the most brilliant of the younger English + writers, and has done remarkable work in fields apparently + incompatible: light verse, humorous drolleries, and a beautifully + written tragic novel, _The Secret Battle_. This last was + unquestionably one of the most powerful books born of the War, but + its sale was tragically small. _The House by the River_, a later + book, was also an amazingly competent and original tale, apparently + cast along the lines of the conventional "mystery story," but + really a study of selfishness and cowardice done with startling + irony and intensity. + + Mr. Herbert went to Winchester School and New College, Oxford, + where he took his degree in 1914. He saw military service at the + Dardanelles and in France, and is now on the staff of _Punch_. + There is no young writer in England from whom one may more + confidently expect a continuance of fine work. This airy and + delicious little absurdity is a perfect example of what a genuine + humorist can do. + + If there is still any one in doubt as to the value of the + oldfashioned classical training in forming a lusty prose style, let + him examine Mr. Herbert's _The Secret Battle_. This book often + sounds oddly like a translation from vigorous Greek--e.g., + Herodotus. It is lucid, compact, logical, rich in telling epithet, + informal and swift. If these are not the cardinal prose virtues, + what are? + + +It is commonly said that everybody can sing in the bathroom; and this is +true. Singing is very easy. Drawing, though, is much more difficult. I +have devoted a good deal of time to Drawing, one way and another; I have +to attend a great many committees and public meetings, and at such +functions I find that Drawing is almost the only Art one can +satisfactorily pursue during the speeches. One really cannot sing +during the speeches; so as a rule I draw. I do not say that I am an +expert yet, but after a few more meetings I calculate that I shall know +Drawing as well as it can be known. + +The first thing, of course, is to get on to a really good committee; and +by a good committee I mean a committee that provides decent materials. +An ordinary departmental committee is no use: generally they only give +you a couple of pages of lined foolscap and no white blotting-paper, and +very often the pencils are quite soft. White blotting-paper is +essential. I know of no material the spoiling of which gives so much +artistic pleasure--except perhaps snow. Indeed, if I was asked to choose +between making pencil-marks on a sheet of white blotting-paper and +making foot-marks on a sheet of white snow I should be in a thingummy. + +Much the best committees from the point of view of material are +committees about business which meet at business premises--shipping +offices, for choice. One of the Pacific Lines has the best white +blotting-paper I know; and the pencils there are a dream. I am sure the +directors of that firm are Drawers; for they always give you two +pencils, one hard for doing noses, and one soft for doing hair. + +When you have selected your committee and the speeches are well away, +the Drawing begins. Much the best thing to draw is a man. Not the +chairman, or Lord Pommery Quint, or any member of the committee, but +just A Man. Many novices make the mistake of selecting a subject for +their Art before they begin; usually they select the chairman. And when +they find it is more like Mr. Gladstone they are discouraged. If they +had waited a little it could have been Mr. Gladstone officially. + +As a rule I begin with the forehead and work down to the chin (Fig. 1). + +[Illustration: FIG. 1] + +When I have done the outline I put in the eye. This is one of the most +difficult parts of Drawing; one is never quite sure where the eye goes. +If, however, it is not a good eye, a useful tip is to give the man +spectacles; this generally makes him a clergyman, but it helps the eye +(Fig. 2). + +[Illustration: FIG. 2] + +Now you have to outline the rest of the head, and this is rather a +gamble. Personally, I go in for _strong heads_ (Fig. 3). + +[Illustration: FIG. 3] + +I am afraid it is not a strong neck; I expect he is an author, and is +not well fed. But that is the worst of strong heads; they make it so +difficult to join up the chin and the back of the neck. + +The next thing to do is to put in the ear; and once you have done this +the rest is easy. Ears are much more difficult than eyes (Fig. 4). + +[Illustration: FIG. 4] + +I hope that is right. It seems to me to be a little too far to the +southward. But it is done now. And once you have put in the ear you +can't go back; not unless you are on a _very_ good committee which +provides india-rubber as well as pencils. + +Now I do the hair. Hair may either be very fuzzy or black, or lightish +and thin. It depends chiefly on what sort of pencils are provided. For +myself I prefer black hair, because then the parting shows up better +(Fig. 5). + +[Illustration: FIG. 5] + +Until one draws hair one never realizes what large heads people have. +Doing the hair takes the whole of a speech, usually, even one of the +chairman's speeches. + +This is not one of my best men; I am sure the ear is in the wrong place. +And I am inclined to think he ought to have spectacles. Only then he +would be a clergyman, and I have decided that he is Mr. Philip Gibbs at +the age of twenty. So he must carry on with his eye as it is. + +I find that all my best men face to the west; it is a curious thing. +Sometimes I draw two men facing each other, but the one facing east is +always a dud. + +There, you see (Fig. 6)? The one on the right is a Bolshevik; he has a +low forehead and beetling brows--a most unpleasant man. Yet he has a +powerful face. The one on the left was meant to be another Bolshevik, +arguing with him. But he has turned out to be a lady, so I have had to +give her a "bun." She is a lady solicitor; but I don't know how she came +to be talking to the Bolshevik. + +[Illustration: FIG. 6] + +When you have learned how to do men, the only other things in Drawing +are Perspective and Landscape. + +PERSPECTIVE is great fun: the best thing to do is a long French road +with telegraph poles (Fig. 7). + +I have put in a fence as well. + +LANDSCAPE is chiefly composed of hills and trees. Trees are the most +amusing, especially fluffy trees. + +Here is a Landscape (Fig. 8). + +Somehow or other a man has got into this landscape; and, as luck would +have it, it is Napoleon. Apart from this it is not a bad landscape. + +[Illustration: FIG. 7] + +[Illustration: FIG. 8] + +But it takes a very long speech to get an ambitious piece of work like +this through. + +There is one other thing I ought to have said. Never attempt to draw a +man front-face. It can't be done. + + + + +O. HENRY + +_By_ O. W. FIRKINS + + + Several years ago I turned to _Who's Who in America_ in hope of + finding some information about O. W. Firkins, whose brilliant + reviews--chiefly of poetry--were appearing in _The Nation_. I found + no entry, but every few months I would again rummage that stout red + volume with the same intention, forgetting that I had done so + before without success. It seemed hardly credible that a critic so + brilliant had been overlooked by the industrious compilers of that + work, which includes hundreds of hacks and fourflushers. When + gathering the contents of this book I tried _Who's Who_ again, + still without result. I wrote to Mr. Firkins pleading for + biographical details; modestly, but firmly, he denied me. + + So all I can tell you is this, that Mr. Firkins is to my mind one + of the half-dozen most sparkling critics in this country. One + sometimes feels that he is carried a little past his destination by + the sheer gusto and hilarity of his antitheses and paradoxes. That + is not so, however, in this essay about O. Henry, an author who has + often been grotesquely mispraised (I did not say overpraised) by + people incompetent to appreciate his true greatness. Mr. Robert + Cortes Holliday, in an essay called "The Amazing Failure of O. + Henry," said that O. Henry created no memorable characters. Mr. + Firkins suggests the obvious but satisfying answer--New York itself + is his triumph. The New York of O. Henry, already almost erased + physically, remains a personality and an identity. + + Mr. Firkins is professor of English at the University of Minnesota, + and a contributing editor of _The Weekly Review_, in which this + essay first appeared in September, 1919. The footnotes are, of + course, his own. + + +There are two opinions concerning O. Henry. The middle class views him +as the impersonation of vigor and brilliancy; part of the higher +criticism sees in him little but sensation and persiflage. Between these +views there is a natural relation; the gods of the heathens are _ipso +facto_ the demons of Christianity. Unmixed assertions, however, are +commonly mixtures of truth and falsehood; there is room to-day for an +estimate which shall respect both opinions and adopt neither. + +There is one literary trait in which I am unable to name any writer of +tales in any literature who surpasses O. Henry.[B] It is not primary or +even secondary among literary merits; it is less a value _per se_ than +the condition or foundation of values. But its utility is manifest, and +it is rare among men: Chaucer and Shakespeare prove the possibility of +its absence in masters of that very branch of art in which its presence +would seem to be imperative. I refer to the designing of stories--not to +the primary intuition or to skill in development, in both of which finer +phases of invention O. Henry has been largely and frequently surpassed, +but to the disposition of masses, to the blocking-out of plots. That a +half-educated American provincial should have been original in a field +in which original men have been copyists is enough of itself to make his +personality observable. + +Illustration, even of conceded truths, is rarely superfluous. I supply +two instances. Two lads, parting in New York, agree to meet "After +Twenty Years" at a specified hour, date, and corner. Both are faithful; +but the years in which their relation has slept in mutual silence and +ignorance have turned the one into a dashing criminal, the other into a +sober officer of the law. Behind the picturesque and captivating +rendezvous lurks a powerful dramatic situation and a moral problem of +arresting gravity. This is dealt with in six pages of the "Four +Million." The "Furnished Room," two stories further on, occupies twelve +pages. Through the wilderness of apartments on the lower West Side a man +trails a woman. Chance leads him to the very room in which the woman +ended her life the week before. Between him and the truth the avarice of +a sordid landlady interposes the curtain of a lie. In the bed in which +the girl slept and died, the man sleeps and dies, and the entrance of +the deadly fumes into his nostrils shuts the sinister and mournful +coincidence forever from the knowledge of mankind. O. Henry gave these +tales neither extension nor prominence; so far as I know, they were +received without bravos or salvos. The distinction of a body of work in +which such specimens are undistinguished hardly requires comment. + +A few types among these stories may be specified. There are the Sydney +Cartonisms, defined in the name; love-stories in which divided hearts, +or simply divided persons, are brought together by the strategy of +chance; hoax stories--deft pictures of smiling roguery; "prince and +pauper" stories, in which wealth and poverty face each other, sometimes +enact each other; disguise stories, in which the wrong clothes often +draw the wrong bullets; complemental stories, in which Jim sacrifices +his beloved watch to buy combs for Della, who, meanwhile, has sacrificed +her beloved hair to buy a chain for Jim. + +This imperfect list is eloquent in its way; it smooths our path to the +assertion that O. Henry's specialty is the enlistment of original method +in the service of traditional appeals. The ends are the ends of fifty +years ago; O. Henry transports us by aeroplane to the old homestead.[C] + +Criticism of O. Henry falls into those superlatives and antitheses in +which his own faculty delighted. In mechanical invention he is almost +the leader of his race. In a related quality--a defect--his leadership +is even more conspicuous. I doubt if the sense of the probable, or, more +precisely, of the available in the improbable, ever became equally +weakened or deadened in a man who made his living by its exercise. The +improbable, even the impossible, has its place in art, though that place +is relatively low; and it is curious that works such as the "Arabian +Nights" and Grimm's fairy tales, whose stock-in-trade is the incredible, +are the works which give almost no trouble on the score of +verisimilitude. The truth is that we reject not what it is impossible to +prove, or even what it is possible to disprove, but what it is +impossible to imagine. O. Henry asks us to imagine the unimaginable--that +is his crime. + +The right and wrong improbabilities may be illustrated from two burglar +stories. "Sixes and Sevens" contains an excellent tale of a burglar and +a citizen who fraternize, in a comic midnight interview, on the score of +their common sufferings from rheumatism. This feeling in practice would +not triumph over fear and greed; but the feeling is natural, and +everybody with a grain of nature in him can imagine its triumph. Nature +_tends_ towards that impossibility, and art, lifting, so to speak, the +lid which fact drops upon nature, reveals nature in belying fact. In +another story, in "Whirligigs," a nocturnal interview takes place in +which a burglar and a small boy discuss the etiquette of their mutual +relation by formulas derived from short stories with which both are +amazingly conversant. This is the wrong use of the improbable. Even an +imagination inured to the virtues of burglars and the maturity of small +boys will have naught to do with this insanity. + +But O. Henry can go further yet. There are inventions in his tales the +very utterance of which--not the mere substance but the utterance--on +the part of a man not writing from Bedlam or for Bedlam impresses the +reader as incredible. In a "Comedy in Rubber," two persons become so +used to spectatorship at transactions in the street that they drift into +the part of spectators when the transaction is their own wedding. Can +human daring or human folly go further? O. Henry is on the spot to prove +that they can. In the "Romance of a Busy Broker," a busy and forgetful +man, in a freak of absent-mindedness, offers his hand to the +stenographer _whom he had married the night before_. + +The other day, in the journal of the Goncourts, I came upon the +following sentence: "Never will the imagination approach the +improbabilities and the antitheses of truth" (II, 9). This is dated +February 21, 1862. Truth had still the advantage. O. Henry was not born +till September of the same year. + +Passing on to style, we are still in the land of antithesis. The style +is gross--and fine. Of the plenitude of its stimulus, there can be no +question. In "Sixes and Sevens," a young man sinking under accidental +morphia, is kept awake and alive by shouts, kicks, and blows. O. Henry's +public seems imaged in that young man. But I draw a sharp distinction +between the _tone_ of the style and its _pattern_. The tone is brazen, +or, better perhaps, brassy; its self-advertisement is incorrigible; it +reeks with that air of _performance_ which is opposed to real +efficiency. But the pattern is another matter. The South rounds its +periods like its vowels; O. Henry has read, not widely, but wisely, in +his boyhood. His sentences are _built_--a rare thing in the best writers +of to-day. In conciseness, that Spartan virtue, he was strong, though it +must be confessed that the tale-teller was now and then hustled from the +rostrum by his rival and enemy, the talker. He can introduce a felicity +with a noiselessness that numbers him for a flying second among the +sovereigns of English. "In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. +McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat +went into Mrs. McCaskey." + +I regret the tomfoolery; I wince at the slang. Yet even for these +levities with which his pages are so liberally besprinkled or bedaubed, +some half-apology may be circumspectly urged. In nonsense his ease is +consummate. A horseman who should dismount to pick up a bauble would be +childish; O. Henry picks it up without dismounting. Slang, again, is +most pardonable in the man with whom its use is least exclusive and +least necessary. There are men who, going for a walk, take their dogs +with them; there are other men who give a walk to their dogs. Substitute +slang for the dog, and the superiority of the first class to the second +will exactly illustrate the superiority of O. Henry to the abject +traffickers in slang. + +In the "Pendulum" Katy has a new patch in her crazy quilt which the ice +man cut from the end of his four-in-hand. In the "Day We Celebrate," +threading the mazes of a banana grove is compared to "paging the palm +room of a New York hotel for a man named Smith." O. Henry's is the type +of mind to which images like this four-in-hand and this palm room are +presented in exhaustless abundance and unflagging continuity. There was +hardly an object in the merry-go-round of civilized life that had not +offered at least an end or an edge to the avidity of his consuming eyes. +Nothing escapes from the besom of his allusiveness, and the style is +streaked and pied, almost to monotony, by the accumulation of lively +details. + +If O. Henry's style was crude, it was also rare; but it is part of the +grimness of the bargain that destiny drives with us that the mixture of +the crude and the rare should be a crude mixture, as the sons of whites +and negroes are numbered with the blacks. In the kingdom of style O. +Henry's estates were princely, but, to pay his debts, he must have sold +them all. + +Thus far in our inquiry extraordinary merits have been offset by +extraordinary defects. To lift our author out of the class of brilliant +and skilful entertainers, more is needed. Is more forthcoming? I should +answer, yes. In O. Henry, above the knowledge of setting, which is clear +and first-hand, but subsidiary, above the order of events, which is, +generally speaking, fantastic, above the emotions, which are sound and +warm, but almost purely derivative, there is a rather small, but +impressive body of first-hand perspicacities and reactions. On these his +endurance may hinge. + +I name, first of all, O. Henry's feeling for New York. With the +exception of his New Orleans, I care little for his South and West, +which are a boyish South and West, and as little, or even less, for his +Spanish-American communities. My objection to his opera-bouffe republics +is, not that they are inadequate as republics (for that we were entirely +prepared), but that they are inadequate as opera. He lets us see his +show from the coulisses. The pretense lacks standing even among +pretenses, and a faith must be induced before its removal can enliven +us. But his New York has quality. It is of the family of Dickens's +London and Hugo's Paris, though it is plainly a cadet in the family. Mr. +Howells, in his profound and valuable study of the metropolis in a +"Hazard of New Fortunes," is penetrating; O. Henry, on the other hand, +is _penetrated_. His New York is intimate and clinging; it is caught in +the mesh of the imagination. + +O. Henry had rare but precious insights into human destiny and human +nature. In these pictures he is not formally accurate; he could never or +seldom set his truth before us in that moderation and proportion which +truths acquire in the stringencies of actuality. He was apt to present +his insight in a sort of parable or allegory, to upraise it before the +eyes of mankind on the mast or flagpole of some vehement exaggeration. +Epigram shows us truth in the embrace of a lie, and tales which are +dramatized epigrams are subject to a like constraint. The force, +however, is real. I could scarcely name anywhere a more powerful +exposition of fatality than "Roads of Destiny," the initial story in the +volume which appropriates its title. It wanted only the skilled romantic +touch of a Gautier or Stevenson to enroll this tale among the +masterpieces of its kind in contemporary letters. + +Now and then the ingredient of parable is hardly perceptible; we draw +close to the bare fact. O. Henry, fortunate in plots, is peculiarly +fortunate in his renunciation of plot. If contrivance is lucrative, it +is also costly. There is an admirable little story called the "Pendulum" +(in the "Trimmed Lamp"), the simplicity of whose fable would have +satisfied Coppée or Hawthorne. A man in a flat, by force of custom, has +come to regard his wife as a piece of furniture. She departs for a few +hours, and, by the break in usage, is restored, in his consciousness, to +womanhood. She comes back, and relapses into furniture. That is all. O. +Henry could not have given us less--or more. Farcical, clownish, if you +will, the story resembles those clowns who carry daggers under their +motley. When John Perkins takes up that inauspicious hat, the reader +smiles, and quails. I will mention a few other examples of insights with +the proviso that they are not specially commended to the man whose quest +in the short story is the electrifying or the calorific. They include +the "Social Triangle," the "Making of a New Yorker," and the "Foreign +Policy of Company 99," all in the "Trimmed Lamp," the "Brief Début of +Tildy" in the "Four Million," and the "Complete Life of John Hopkins" in +the "Voice of the City." I cannot close this summary of good points +without a passing reference to the not unsuggestive portrayal of humane +and cheerful scoundrels in the "Gentle Grafter." The picture, if false +to species, is faithful to genus. + +O. Henry's egregiousness, on the superficial side, both in merits and +defects, reminds us of those park benches so characteristic of his tales +which are occupied by a millionaire at one end and a mendicant at the +other. But, to complete the image, we must add as a casual visitor to +that bench a seer or a student, who, sitting down between the previous +comers and suspending the flamboyancies of their dialogue, should gaze +with the pensive eye of Goldsmith or Addison upon the passing crowd. + +In O. Henry American journalism and the Victorian tradition meet. His +mind, quick to don the guise of modernity, was impervious to its spirit. +The specifically modern movements, the scientific awakening, the +religious upheaval and subsidence, the socialistic gospel, the +enfranchisement of women--these never interfered with his artless and +joyous pursuit of the old romantic motives of love, hate, wealth, +poverty, gentility, disguise, and crime. On two points a moral record +which, in his literature, is everywhere sound and stainless, rises +almost to nobility. In an age when sexual excitement had become +available and permissible, this worshiper of stimulus never touched with +so much as a fingertip that insidious and meretricious fruit. The +second point is his feeling for underpaid working-girls. His passionate +concern for this wrong derives a peculiar emphasis from the general +refusal of his books to bestow countenance or notice on philanthropy in +its collective forms. When, in his dream of Heaven, he is asked: "Are +you one of the bunch?" (meaning one of the bunch of grasping and +grinding employers), the response, through all its slang, is +soul-stirring. "'Not on your immortality,' said I. 'I'm only the fellow +that set fire to an orphan asylum and murdered a blind man for his +pennies.'" The author of that retort may have some difficulty with the +sentries that watch the entrance of Parnassus; he will have none with +the gatekeeper of the New Jerusalem. + + + + +THE MOWING OF A FIELD + +_By_ HILAIRE BELLOC + + + We have not had in our time a more natural-born essayist, of the + scampering sort, than Hilaire Belloc. He is an infectious fellow: + if you read him much you will find yourself trying to imitate him; + there is no harm in doing so: he himself caught the trick from + Rabelais. I do not propose to rehash here the essay I wrote about + him in a book called _Shandygaff_. You can refer to it there, which + will be good business all round. I know it is a worthy essay, for + much of it was cribbed from an article by Mr. Thomas Seccombe, + which an American paper lifted from the English journal which, + presumably, paid Mr. Seccombe for it. I wrote it for the Boston + _Transcript_, where I knew the theft would be undetected; and in + shoveling together some stuff for a book (that was in 1917, the + cost of living was rising at an angle of forty-five degrees, as so + many graphs have shown) I put it in, forgetting (until too late) + that some of it was absolute plunder. + + Mr. Chesterton once said something like this: "It is a mistake to + think that thieves do not respect property. They only wish it to + become _their_ property, so that they may more perfectly respect + it." + + And by the way, Max Beerbohm's parody of Belloc, in _A Christmas + Garland_, is something not to be missed. It is one of the best + proofs that Belloc is a really great artist. Beerbohm does not + waste his time mimicking the small fry. + + Hilaire Belloc--son of a French father and an English mother; his + happy junction of both English and French genius in prose is + hereditary--was born in France in 1870. He lived in Sussex as a + child; served in the French field artillery; was at Balliol + College, Oxford, 1893-95, and sat four years (1906-10) in the House + of Commons. Certainly you must read (among his gatherings of + essays) _On Nothing_, _On Everything_, _On Something_, _Hills and + the Sea_, _First and Last_; then you can read _The Path to Rome_, + and _The Four Men_, and _Caliban's Guide to Letters_ and _The + Pyrenees_ and _Marie Antoinette_. If you desire the bouillon (or + bullion) of his charm, there is _A Picked Company_, a selection (by + Mr. E. V. Lucas) of his most representative work. It is published + by Methuen and Company, 36 Essex Street W. C., London. + + Having done so, come again: we will go off in a corner and talk + about Mr. Belloc. + + +There is a valley in South England remote from ambition and from fear, +where the passage of strangers is rare and unperceived, and where the +scent of the grass in summer is breathed only by those who are native to +that unvisited land. The roads to the Channel do not traverse it; they +choose upon either side easier passes over the range. One track alone +leads up through it to the hills, and this is changeable: now green +where men have little occasion to go, now a good road where it nears the +homesteads and the barns. The woods grow steep above the slopes; they +reach sometimes the very summit of the heights, or, when they cannot +attain them, fill in and clothe the coombes. And, in between, along the +floor of the valley, deep pastures and their silence are bordered by +lawns of chalky grass and the small yew trees of the Downs. + +The clouds that visit its sky reveal themselves beyond the one great +rise, and sail, white and enormous, to the other, and sink beyond that +other. But the plains above which they have traveled and the Weald to +which they go, the people of the valley cannot see and hardly recall. +The wind, when it reaches such fields, is no longer a gale from the +salt, but fruitful and soft, an inland breeze; and those whose blood was +nourished here feel in that wind the fruitfulness of our orchards and +all the life that all things draw from the air. + +In this place, when I was a boy, I pushed through a fringe of beeches +that made a complete screen between me and the world, and I came to a +glade called No Man's Land. I climbed beyond it, and I was surprised and +glad, because from the ridge of that glade, I saw the sea. To this place +very lately I returned. + +The many things that I recovered as I came up the countryside were not +less charming than when a distant memory had enshrined them, but much +more. Whatever veil is thrown by a longing recollection had not +intensified nor even made more mysterious the beauty of that happy +ground; not in my very dreams of morning had I, in exile, seen it more +beloved or more rare. Much also that I had forgotten now returned to me +as I approached--a group of elms, a little turn of the parson's wall, a +small paddock beyond the graveyard close, cherished by one man, with a +low wall of very old stone guarding it all round. And all these things +fulfilled and amplified my delight, till even the good vision of the +place, which I had kept so many years, left me and was replaced by its +better reality. "Here," I said to myself, "is a symbol of what some say +is reserved for the soul: pleasure of a kind which cannot be imagined +save in a moment when at last it is attained." + +When I came to my own gate and my own field, and had before me the house +I knew, I looked around a little (though it was already evening), and I +saw that the grass was standing as it should stand when it is ready for +the scythe. For in this, as in everything that a man can do--of those +things at least which are very old--there is an exact moment when they +are done best. And it has been remarked of whatever rules us that it +works blunderingly, seeing that the good things given to a man are not +given at the precise moment when they would have filled him with +delight. But, whether this be true or false, we can choose the just turn +of the seasons in everything we do of our own will, and especially in +the making of hay. Many think that hay is best made when the grass is +thickest; and so they delay until it is rank and in flower, and has +already heavily pulled the ground. And there is another false reason for +delay, which is wet weather. For very few will understand (though it +comes year after year) that we have rain always in South England between +the sickle and the scythe, or say just after the weeks of east wind are +over. First we have a week of sudden warmth, as though the south had +come to see us all; then we have the weeks of east and south-east wind; +and then we have more or less of that rain of which I spoke, and which +always astonishes the world. Now it is just before, or during, or at the +very end of that rain--but not later--that grass should be cut for hay. +True, upland grass, which is always thin, should be cut earlier than +the grass in the bottoms and along the water meadows; but not even the +latest, even in the wettest seasons, should be left (as it is) to flower +and even to seed. For what we get when we store our grass is not a +harvest of something ripe, but a thing just caught in its prime before +maturity: as witness that our corn and straw are best yellow, but our +hay is best green. So also Death should be represented with a scythe and +Time with a sickle; for Time can take only what is ripe, but Death comes +always too soon. In a word, then, it is always much easier to cut grass +too late than too early; and I, under that evening and come back to +these pleasant fields, looked at the grass and knew that it was time. +June was in full advance; it was the beginning of that season when the +night has already lost her foothold of the earth and hovers over it, +never quite descending, but mixing sunset with the dawn. + +Next morning, before it was yet broad day, I awoke, and thought of the +mowing. The birds were already chattering in the trees beside my window, +all except the nightingale, which had left and flown away to the Weald, +where he sings all summer by day as well as by night in the oaks and the +hazel spinneys, and especially along the little river Adur, one of the +rivers of the Weald. The birds and the thought of the mowing had +awakened me, and I went down the stairs and along the stone floors to +where I could find a scythe; and when I took it from its nail, I +remembered how, fourteen years ago, I had last gone out with my scythe, +just so, into the fields at morning. In between that day and this were +many things, cities and armies, and a confusion of books, mountains and +the desert, and horrible great breadths of sea. + +When I got out into the long grass the sun was not yet risen, but there +were already many colors in the eastern sky, and I made haste to sharpen +my scythe, so that I might get to the cutting before the dew should dry. +Some say that it is best to wait till all the dew has risen, so as to +get the grass quite dry from the very first. But, though it is an +advantage to get the grass quite dry, yet it is not worth while to wait +till the dew has risen. For, in the first place, you lose many hours of +work (and those the coolest), and next--which is more important--you +lose that great ease and thickness in cutting which comes of the dew. So +I at once began to sharpen my scythe. + +There is an art also in the sharpening of the scythe, and it is worth +describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you will +see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet it. Then +also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it is a good +thing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all your day's +mowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade pointing away from +you, and put your left hand firmly on the back of the blade, grasping +it: then you pass the rubber first down one side of the blade-edge and +then down the other, beginning near the handle and going on to the point +and working quickly and hard. When you first do this you will, perhaps, +cut your hand; but it is only at first that such an accident will happen +to you. + +To tell when the scythe is sharp enough this is the rule. First the +stone clangs and grinds against the iron harshly; then it rings +musically to one note; then, at last, it purrs as though the iron and +stone were exactly suited. When you hear this, your scythe is sharp +enough; and I, when I heard it that June dawn, with everything quite +silent except the birds, let down the scythe and bent myself to mow. + +When one does anything anew, after so many years, one fears very much +for one's trick or habit. But all things once learnt are easily +recoverable, and I very soon recovered the swing and power of the mower. +Mowing well and mowing badly--or rather not mowing at all--are separated +by very little; as is also true of writing verse, of playing the fiddle, +and of dozens of other things, but of nothing more than of believing. +For the bad or young or untaught mower without tradition, the mower +Promethean, the mower original and contemptuous of the past, does all +these things: He leaves great crescents of grass uncut. He digs the +point of the scythe hard into the ground with a jerk. He loosens the +handles and even the fastening of the blade. He twists the blade with +his blunders, he blunts the blade, he chips it, dulls it, or breaks it +clean off at the tip. If any one is standing by he cuts him in the +ankle. He sweeps up into the air wildly, with nothing to resist his +stroke. He drags up earth with the grass, which is like making the +meadow bleed. But the good mower who does things just as they should be +done and have been for a hundred thousand years, falls into none of +these fooleries. He goes forward very steadily, his scythe-blade just +barely missing the ground, every grass falling; the swish and rhythm of +his mowing are always the same. + +So great an art can only be learnt by continual practice; but this much +is worth writing down, that, as in all good work, to know the thing with +which you work is the core of the affair. Good verse is best written on +good paper with an easy pen, not with a lump of coal on a whitewashed +wall. The pen thinks for you; and so does the scythe mow for you if you +treat it honorably and in a manner that makes it recognize its service. +The manner is this. You must regard the scythe as a pendulum that +swings, not as a knife that cuts. A good mower puts no more strength +into his stroke than into his lifting. Again, stand up to your work. +The bad mower, eager and full of pain, leans forward and tries to force +the scythe through the grass. The good mower, serene and able, stands as +nearly straight as the shape of the scythe will let him, and follows up +every stroke closely, moving his left foot forward. Then also let every +stroke get well away. Mowing is a thing of ample gestures, like drawing +a cartoon. Then, again, get yourself into a mechanical and repetitive +mood: be thinking of anything at all but your mowing, and be anxious +only when there seems some interruption to the monotony of the sound. In +this mowing should be like one's prayers--all of a sort and always the +same, and so made that you can establish a monotony and work them, as it +were, with half your mind: that happier half, the half that does not +bother. + +In this way, when I had recovered the art after so many years, I went +forward over the field, cutting lane after lane through the grass, and +bringing out its most secret essences with the sweep of the scythe until +the air was full of odors. At the end of every lane I sharpened my +scythe and looked back at the work done, and then carried my scythe down +again upon my shoulder to begin another. So, long before the bell rang +in the chapel above me--that is, long before six o'clock, which is the +time for the Angelus--I had many swathes already lying in order parallel +like soldiery; and the high grass yet standing, making a great contrast +with the shaven part, looked dense and high. As it says in the Ballad of +Val-ès-Dunes, where-- + + The tall son of the Seven Winds + Came riding out of Hither-hythe, + +and his horse-hoofs (you will remember) trampled into the press and made +a gap in it, and his sword (as you know) + + was like a scythe + In Arcus when the grass is high + And all the swathes in order lie, + And there's the bailiff standing by + A-gathering of the tithe. + +So I mowed all that morning, till the houses awoke in the valley, and +from some of them rose a little fragrant smoke, and men began to be +seen. + +I stood still and rested on my scythe to watch the awakening of the +village, when I saw coming up to my field a man whom I had known in +older times, before I had left the Valley. + +He was of that dark silent race upon which all the learned quarrel, but +which, by whatever meaningless name it may be called--Iberian, or +Celtic, or what you will--is the permanent root of all England, and +makes England wealthy and preserves it everywhere, except perhaps in the +Fens and in a part of Yorkshire. Everywhere else you will find it active +and strong. These people are intensive; their thoughts and their labors +turn inward. It is on account of their presence in these islands that +our gardens are the richest in the world. They also love low rooms and +ample fires and great warm slopes of thatch. They have, as I believe, an +older acquaintance with the English air than any other of all the +strains that make up England. They hunted in the Weald with stones, and +camped in the pines of the green-sand. They lurked under the oaks of the +upper rivers, and saw the legionaries go up, up the straight paved road +from the sea. They helped the few pirates to destroy the towns, and +mixed with those pirates and shared the spoils of the Roman villas, and +were glad to see the captains and the priests destroyed. They remain; +and no admixture of the Frisian pirates, or the Breton, or the Angevin +and Norman conquerors, has very much affected their cunning eyes. + +To this race, I say, belonged the man who now approached me. And he said +to me, "Mowing?" And I answered, "Ar." Then he also said "Ar," as in +duty bound; for so we speak to each other in the Stenes of the Downs. + +Next he told me that, as he had nothing to do, he would lend me a hand; +and I thanked him warmly, or, as we say, "kindly." For it is a good +custom of ours always to treat bargaining as though it were a courteous +pastime; and though what he was after was money, and what I wanted was +his labor at the least pay, yet we both played the comedy that we were +free men, the one granting a grace and the other accepting it. For the +dry bones of commerce, avarice and method and need, are odious to the +Valley; and we cover them up with a pretty body of fiction and +observances. Thus, when it comes to buying pigs, the buyer does not +begin to decry the pig and the vendor to praise it, as is the custom +with lesser men; but tradition makes them do business in this fashion:-- + +First the buyer will go up to the seller when he sees him in his own +steading, and, looking at the pig with admiration, the buyer will say +that rain may or may not fall, or that we shall have snow or thunder, +according to the time of the year. Then the seller, looking critically +at the pig, will agree that the weather is as his friend maintains. +There is no haste at all; great leisure marks the dignity of their +exchange. And the next step is, that the buyer says: "That's a fine pig +you have there, Mr. ----" (giving the seller's name). "Ar, powerful fine +pig." Then the seller, saying also "Mr." (for twin brothers rocked in +one cradle give each other ceremonious observance here), the seller, I +say, admits, as though with reluctance, the strength and beauty of the +pig, and falls into deep thought. Then the buyer says, as though moved +by a great desire, that he is ready to give so much for the pig, naming +half the proper price, or a little less. Then the seller remains in +silence for some moments; and at last begins to shake his head slowly, +till he says: "I don't be thinking of selling the pig, anyways." He will +also add that a party only Wednesday offered him so much for the +pig--and he names about double the proper price. Thus all ritual is duly +accomplished; and the solemn act is entered upon with reverence and in a +spirit of truth. For when the buyer uses this phrase: "I'll tell you +what I _will_ do," and offers within half a crown of the pig's value, +the seller replies that he can refuse him nothing, and names half a +crown above its value; the difference is split, the pig is sold, and in +the quiet soul of each runs the peace of something accomplished. + +Thus do we buy a pig or land or labor or malt or lime, always with +elaboration and set forms; and many a London man has paid double and +more for his violence and his greedy haste and very unchivalrous +higgling. As happened with the land at Underwaltham, which the +mortgagees had begged and implored the estate to take at twelve hundred +and had privately offered to all the world at a thousand, but which a +sharp direct man, of the kind that makes great fortunes, a man in a +motor-car, a man in a fur coat, a man of few words, bought for two +thousand three hundred before my very eyes, protesting that they might +take his offer or leave it; and all because he did not begin by praising +the land. + +Well then, this man I spoke of offered to help me, and he went to get +his scythe. But I went into this house and brought out a gallon jar of +small ale for him and for me; for the sun was now very warm, and small +ale goes well with mowing. When we had drunk some of this ale in mugs +called "I see you," we took each a swathe, he a little behind me because +he was the better mower; and so for many hours we swung, one before the +other, mowing and mowing at the tall grass of the field. And the sun +rose to noon and we were still at our mowing; and we ate food, but only +for a little while, and we took again to our mowing. And at last there +was nothing left but a small square of grass, standing like a square of +linesmen who keep their formation, tall and unbroken, with all the dead +lying around them when the battle is over and done. + +Then for some little time I rested after all those hours; and the man +and I talked together, and a long way off we heard in another field the +musical sharpening of a scythe. + +The sunlight slanted powdered and mellow over the breadth of the valley; +for day was nearing its end. I went to fetch rakes from the steading; +and when I had come back the last of the grass had fallen, and all the +field lay flat and smooth, with the very green short grass in lanes +between the dead and yellow swathes. + +These swathes we raked into cocks to keep them from the dew against our +return at daybreak; and we made the cocks as tall and steep as we could, +for in that shape they best keep off the dew, and it is easier also to +spread them after the sun has risen. Then we raked up every straggling +blade, till the whole field was a clean floor for the tedding and the +carrying of the hay next morning. The grass we had mown was but a little +over two acres; for that is all the pasture on my little tiny farm. + +When we had done all this, there fell upon us the beneficent and +deliberate evening; so that as we sat a little while together near the +rakes, we saw the valley more solemn and dim around us, and all the +trees and hedgerows quite still, and held by a complete silence. Then I +paid my companion his wage, and bade him a good night, till we should +meet in the same place before sunrise. + +He went off with a slow and steady progress, as all our peasants do, +making their walking a part of the easy but continual labor of their +lives. But I sat on, watching the light creep around towards the north +and change, and the waning moon coming up as though by stealth behind +the woods of No Man's Land. + + + + +THE STUDENT LIFE + +By WILLIAM OSLER + + + Sir William Osler, one of the best-loved and most influential + teachers of his time, was born in Canada in 1849. He began his + education in Toronto and at McGill University, Montreal, where he + served as professor of medicine, 1874-84. Wherever he worked his + gifted and unique personality was a center of inspiration--at the + University of Pennsylvania, 1884-89; at Johns Hopkins, 1889-1904. + In 1904 he went to Oxford as Regius Professor of Medicine; he died + in England in 1919. + + Only our medical friends have a right to speak of the great + doctor's place in their own world; but one would like to see his + honorable place as a man of letters more generally understood. His + generous wisdom and infectious enthusiasm are delightfully + expressed in his collected writings. No lover of the essay can + afford to overlook _Æquanimitas and Other Addresses, An Alabama + Student and Other Biographical Essays, Science and Immortality and + Counsels and Ideals_, this last an anthology collected from his + professional papers by one of his pupils. He stands in the + honorable line of those great masters who have found their highest + usefulness as kindly counselors of the young. His lucid and + exquisite prose, with its extraordinary wealth of quotation from + the literature of all ages, and his unfailing humor and tenderness, + put him in the first rank of didactic essayists. One could get a + liberal education in literature merely by following up all his + quotations and references. He was more deeply versed in the + classics than many professors of Greek and Latin; the whole music + of English poetry seemed to be current in his blood. His essay on + Keats, taken with Kipling's wonderful story _Via Wireless_, tells + the student more about that poet than many a volume of biography. + When was biography more delightfully written than in his volume _An + Alabama Student?_ + + Walt Whitman said, when Dr. Osler attended him years ago, "Osler + believes in the gospel of encouragement--of putting the best + construction on things--the best foot forward. He's a fine fellow + and a wise one, I guess." The great doctor's gospel of + encouragement is indeed a happy companion for the midnight reader. + Rich in every gentle quality that makes life endeared, his books + are the most sagacious and helpful of modern writings for the young + student. As one who has found them an unfailing delight, I venture + to hope that our medical confrères may not be the only readers to + enjoy their vivacity and charm. + + +EXCEPT it be a lover, no one is more interesting as an object of study +than a student. Shakespeare might have made him a fourth in his immortal +group. The lunatic with his fixed idea, the poet with his fine frenzy, +the lover with his frantic idolatry, and the student aflame with the +desire for knowledge are of "imagination all compact." To an absorbing +passion, a whole-souled devotion, must be joined an enduring energy, if +the student is to become a devotee of the gray-eyed goddess to whose law +his services are bound. Like the quest of the Holy Grail, the quest of +Minerva is not for all. For the one, the pure life; for the other, what +Milton calls "a strong propensity of nature." Here again the student +often resembles the poet--he is born, not made. While the resultant of +two molding forces, the accidental, external conditions, and the hidden +germinal energies, which produce in each one of us national, family, and +individual traits, the true student possesses in some measure a divine +spark which sets at naught their laws. Like the Snark, he defies +definition, but there are three unmistakable signs by which you may +recognize the genuine article from a Boojum--an absorbing desire to know +the truth, an unswerving steadfastness in its pursuit, and an open, +honest heart, free from suspicion, guile, and jealousy. + +At the outset do not be worried about this big question--Truth. It is a +very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as +much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the +whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be +content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. +In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the +thirst--a thirst that from the soul must rise!--the fervent longing, are +the be-all and the end-all. What is the student but a lover courting a +fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp? In this very elusiveness is +brought out his second great characteristic--steadfastness of purpose. +Unless from the start the limitations incident to our frail human +faculties are frankly accepted, nothing but disappointment awaits you. +The truth is the best you can get with your best endeavor, the best that +the best men accept--with this you must learn to be satisfied, retaining +at the same time with due humility an earnest desire for an ever larger +portion. Only by keeping the mind plastic and receptive does the student +escape perdition. It is not, as Charles Lamb remarks, that some people +do not know what to do with truth when it is offered to them, but the +tragic fate is to reach, after years of patient search, a condition of +mind-blindness in which the truth is not recognized, though it stares +you in the face. This can never happen to a man who has followed step by +step the growth of a truth, and who knows the painful phases of its +evolution. It is one of the great tragedies of life that every truth has +to struggle to acceptance against honest but mind-blind students. Harvey +knew his contemporaries well, and for twelve successive years +demonstrated the circulation of the blood before daring to publish the +facts on which the truth was based.[D] + +Only steadfastness of purpose and humility enable the student to shift +his position to meet the new conditions in which new truths are born, or +old ones modified beyond recognition. And, thirdly, the honest heart +will keep him in touch with his fellow students, and furnish that sense +of comradeship without which he travels an arid waste alone. I say +advisedly an honest heart--the honest head is prone to be cold and +stern, given to judgment, not mercy, and not always able to entertain +that true charity which, while it thinketh no evil, is anxious to put +the best possible interpretation upon the motives of a fellow worker. It +will foster, too, an attitude of generous, friendly rivalry untinged by +the green peril, jealousy, that is the best preventive of the growth of +a bastard scientific spirit, loving seclusion and working in a +lock-and-key laboratory, as timorous of light as is a thief. + +You have all become brothers in a great society, not apprentices, since +that implies a master, and nothing should be further from the attitude +of the teacher than much that is meant in that word, used though it be +in another sense, particularly by our French brethren in a most +delightful way, signifying a bond of intellectual filiation. A fraternal +attitude is not easy to cultivate--the chasm between the chair and the +bench is difficult to bridge. Two things have helped to put up a +cantilever across the gulf. The successful teacher is no longer on a +height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles. The +new methods have changed all this. He is no longer Sir Oracle, perhaps +unconsciously by his very manner antagonizing minds to whose level he +cannot possibly descend, but he is a senior student anxious to help his +juniors. When a simple, earnest spirit animates a college, there is no +appreciable interval between the teacher and the taught--both are in the +same class, the one a little more advanced than the other. So animated, +the student feels that he has joined a family whose honor is his honor, +whose welfare is his own, and whose interests should be his first +consideration. + +The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the +education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a +medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years +under teachers is but a preparation. Whether you will falter and fail in +the race or whether you will be faithful to the end depends on the +training before the start, and on your staying powers, points upon which +I need not enlarge. You can all become good students, a few may become +great students, and now and again one of you will be found who does +easily and well what others cannot do at all, or very badly, which is +John Ferriar's excellent definition of a genius. + +In the hurry and bustle of a business world, which is the life of this +continent, it is not easy to train first-class students. Under present +conditions it is hard to get the needful seclusion, on which account it +is that our educational market is so full of wayside fruit. I have +always been much impressed by the advice of St. Chrysostom: "Depart from +the highway and transplant thyself in some enclosed ground, for it is +hard for a tree which stands by the wayside to keep her fruit till it be +ripe." The dilettante is abroad in the land, the man who is always +venturing on tasks for which he is imperfectly equipped, a habit of mind +fostered by the multiplicity of subjects in the curriculum: and while +many things are studied, few are studied thoroughly. Men will not take +time to get to the heart of a matter. After all, concentration is the +price the modern student pays for success. Thoroughness is the most +difficult habit to acquire, but it is the pearl of great price, worth +all the worry and trouble of the search. The dilettante lives an easy, +butterfly life, knowing nothing of the toil and labor with which the +treasures of knowledge are dug out of the past, or wrung by patient +research in the laboratories. Take, for example, the early history of +this country--how easy for the student of the one type to get a +smattering, even a fairly full acquaintance with the events of the +French and Spanish settlements. Put an original document before him, and +it might as well be Arabic. What we need is the other type, the man who +knows the records, who, with a broad outlook and drilled in what may be +called the embryology of history, has yet a powerful vision for the +minutiæ of life. It is these kitchen and backstair men who are to be +encouraged, the men who know the subject in hand in all possible +relationships. Concentration has its drawbacks. It is possible to become +so absorbed in the problem of the "enclitic de," or the +structure of the flagella of the Trichomonas, or of the toes of the +prehistoric horse, that the student loses the sense of proportion in his +work, and even wastes a lifetime in researches which are valueless +because not in touch with current knowledge. You remember poor Casaubon, +in "Middlemarch," whose painful scholarship was lost on this account. +The best preventive to this is to get denationalized early. The true +student is a citizen of the world, the allegiance of whose soul, at any +rate, is too precious to be restricted to a single country. The great +minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, +and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company +of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the +cosmopolitan standpoint. I care not in what subject he may work, the +full knowledge cannot be reached without drawing on supplies from lands +other than his own--French, English, German, American, Japanese, +Russian, Italian--there must be no discrimination by the loyal student +who should willingly draw from any and every source with an open mind +and a stern resolve to render unto all their dues. I care not on what +stream of knowledge he may embark, follow up its course, and the +rivulets that feed it flow from many lands. If the work is to be +effective he must keep in touch with scholars in other countries. How +often has it happened that years of precious time have been given to a +problem already solved or shown to be insoluble, because of the +ignorance of what had been done elsewhere. And it is not only book +knowledge and journal knowledge, but a knowledge of men that is needed. +The student will, if possible, see the men in other lands. Travel not +only widens the vision and gives certainties in place of vague surmises, +but the personal contact with foreign workers enables him to appreciate +better the failings or successes in his own line of work, perhaps to +look with more charitable eyes on the work of some brother whose +limitations and opportunities have been more restricted than his own. +Or, in contact with a mastermind, he may take fire, and the glow of the +enthusiasm may be the inspiration of his life. Concentration must then +be associated with large views on the relation of the problem, and a +knowledge of its status elsewhere; otherwise it may land him in the +slough of a specialism so narrow that it has depth and no breadth, or he +may be led to make what he believes to be important discoveries, but +which have long been current coin in other lands. It is sad to think +that the day of the great polymathic student is at an end; that we may, +perhaps, never again see a Scaliger, a Haller, or a Humboldt--men who +took the whole field of knowledge for their domain and viewed it as from +a pinnacle. And yet a great specializing generalist may arise, who can +tell? Some twentieth-century Aristotle may be now tugging at his bottle, +as little dreaming as are his parents or his friends of a conquest of +the mind, beside which the wonderful victories of the Stagirite will +look pale. The value of a really great student to the country is equal +to half a dozen grain elevators or a new trans-continental railway. He +is a commodity singularly fickle and variable, and not to be grown to +order. So far as his advent is concerned there is no telling when or +where he may arise. The conditions seem to be present even under the +most unlikely externals. Some of the greatest students this country has +produced have come from small villages and country places. It is +impossible to predict from a study of the environment, which a "strong +propensity of nature," to quote Milton's phrase again, will easily bend +or break. + +The student must be allowed full freedom in his work, undisturbed by the +utilitarian spirit of the Philistine, who cries, Cui bono? and distrusts +pure science. The present remarkable position in applied science and in +industrial trades of all sorts has been made possible by men who did +pioneer work in chemistry, in physics, in biology, and in physiology, +without a thought in their researches of any practical application. The +members of this higher group of productive students are rarely +understood by the common spirits, who appreciate as little their +unselfish devotion as their unworldly neglect of the practical side of +the problems. + +Everywhere now the medical student is welcomed as an honored member of +the guild. There was a time, I confess, and it is within the memory of +some of us, when, like Falstaff, he was given to "taverns and sack and +wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, +pribbles and prabbles"; but all that has changed with the curriculum, +and the "Meds" now roar you as gently as the "Theologs." On account of +the peculiar character of the subject-matter of your studies, what I +have said upon the general life and mental attitude of the student +applies with tenfold force to you. Man, with all his mental and bodily +anomalies and diseases--the machine in order, the machine in disorder, +and the business yours to put it to rights. Through all the phases of +its career this most complicated mechanism of this wonderful world will +be the subject of our study and of your care--the naked, new-born +infant, the artless child, the lad and the lassie just aware of the tree +of knowledge overhead, the strong man in the pride of life, the woman +with the benediction of maternity on her brow, and the aged, peaceful in +the contemplation of the past. Almost everything has been renewed in the +science and in the art of medicine, but all through the long centuries +there has been no variableness or shadow of change in the essential +features of the life which is our contemplation and our care. The sick +love-child of Israel's sweet singer, the plague-stricken hopes of the +great Athenian statesman, Elpenor, bereft of his beloved Artemidora, and +"Tully's daughter mourned so tenderly," are not of any age or any +race--they are here with us to-day, with the Hamlets, the Ophelias, and +the Lears. Amid an eternal heritage of sorrow and suffering our work is +laid, and this eternal note of sadness would be insupportable if the +daily tragedies were not relieved by the spectacle of the heroism and +devotion displayed by the actors. Nothing will sustain you more potently +than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may +be thought, the true poetry of life--the poetry of the commonplace, of +the ordinary man, of the plain, toilworn woman, with their loves and +their joys, their sorrows and their griefs. The comedy, too, of life +will be spread before you, and nobody laughs more often than the doctor +at the pranks Puck plays upon the Titanias and the Bottoms among his +patients. The humorous side is really almost as frequently turned +towards him as the tragic. Lift up one hand to heaven and thank your +stars if they have given you the proper sense to enable you to +appreciate the inconceivably droll situations in which we catch our +fellow creatures. Unhappily, this is one of the free gifts of the gods, +unevenly distributed, not bestowed on all, or on all in equal portions. +In undue measure it is not without risk, and in any case in the doctor +it is better appreciated by the eye than expressed on the tongue. +Hilarity and good humor, a breezy cheerfulness, a nature "sloping toward +the southern side," as Lowell has it, help enormously both in the study +and in the practice of medicine. To many of a somber and sour +disposition it is hard to maintain good spirits amid the trials and +tribulations of the day, and yet it is an unpardonable mistake to go +about among patients with a long face. + +Divide your attentions equally between books and men. The strength of +the student of books is to sit still--two or three hours at a +stretch--eating the heart out of a subject with pencil and notebook in +hand, determined to master the details and intricacies, focussing all +your energies on its difficulties. Get accustomed to test all sorts of +book problems and statements for yourself, and take as little as +possible on trust. The Hunterian "Do not think, but try" attitude of +mind is the important one to cultivate. The question came up one day, +when discussing the grooves left on the nails after fever, how long it +took for the nail to grow out, from root to edge. A majority of the +class had no further interest; a few looked it up in books; two men +marked their nails at the root with nitrate of silver, and a few months +later had positive knowledge on the subject. They showed the proper +spirit. The little points that come up in your reading try to test for +yourselves. With one fundamental difficulty many of you will have to +contend from the outset--a lack of proper preparation for really hard +study. No one can have watched successive groups of young men pass +through the special schools without profoundly regretting the haphazard, +fragmentary character of their preliminary education. It does seem too +bad that we cannot have a student in his eighteenth year sufficiently +grounded in the humanities and in the sciences preliminary to +medicine--but this is an educational problem upon which only a Milton or +a Locke could discourse with profit. With pertinacity you can overcome +the preliminary defects and once thoroughly interested, the work in +books becomes a pastime. A serious drawback in the student life is the +self-consciousness, bred of too close devotion to books. A man gets shy, +"dysopic," as old Timothy Bright calls it, and shuns the looks of men, +and blushes like a girl. + +The strength of a student of men is to travel--to study men, their +habits, character, mode of life, their behavior under varied conditions, +their vices, virtues, and peculiarities. Begin with a careful +observation of your fellow students and of your teachers; then, every +patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he +suffers. Mix as much as you possibly can with the outside world, and +learn its ways. Cultivated systematically, the student societies, the +students' union, the gymnasium, and the outside social circle will +enable you to conquer the diffidence so apt to go with bookishness and +which may prove a very serious drawback in after-life. I cannot too +strongly impress upon the earnest and attentive men among you the +necessity of overcoming this unfortunate failing in your student days. +It is not easy for every one to reach a happy medium, and the +distinction between a proper self-confidence and "cheek," particularly +in junior students, is not always to be made. The latter is met with +chiefly among the student pilgrims who, in traveling down the Delectable +Mountains, have gone astray and have passed to the left hand, where +lieth the country of Conceit, the country in which you remember the +brisk lad Ignorance met Christian. + +I wish we could encourage on this continent among our best students the +habit of wandering. I do not know that we are quite prepared for it, as +there is still great diversity in the curricula, even among the leading +schools, but it is undoubtedly a great advantage to study under +different teachers, as the mental horizon is widened and the sympathies +enlarged. The practice would do much to lessen that narrow "I am of Paul +and I am of Apollos" spirit which is hostile to the best interests of +the profession. + +There is much that I would like to say on the question of work, but I +can spare only a few moments for a word or two. Who will venture to +settle upon so simple a matter as the best time for work? One will tell +us there is no best time; all are equally good; and truly, all times are +the same to a man whose soul is absorbed in some great problem. The +other day I asked Edward Martin, the well-known story-writer, what time +he found best for work. "Not in the evening, and never between meals!" +was his answer, which may appeal to some of my hearers. One works best +at night; another, in the morning; a majority of the students of the +past favor the latter. Erasmus, the great exemplar, says, "Never work at +night; it dulls the brain and hurts the health." One day, going with +George Ross through Bedlam, Dr. Savage, at that time the physician in +charge, remarked upon two great groups of patients--those who were +depressed in the morning and those who were cheerful, and he suggested +that the spirits rose and fell with the bodily temperature--those with +very low morning temperatures were depressed, and vice versa. This, I +believe, expresses a truth which may explain the extraordinary +difference in the habits of students in this matter of the time at which +the best work can be done. Outside of the asylum there are also the two +great types, the student-lark who loves to see the sun rise, who comes +to breakfast with a cheerful morning face, never so "fit" as at 6 A. M. +We all know the type. What a contrast to the student-owl with his +saturnine morning face, thoroughly unhappy, cheated by the wretched +breakfast bell of the two best hours of the day for sleep, no appetite, +and permeated with an unspeakable hostility to his vis-à-vis, whose +morning garrulity and good humor are equally offensive. Only gradually, +as the day wears on and his temperature rises, does he become endurable +to himself and to others. But see him really awake at 10 P. M. while our +blithe lark is in hopeless coma over his books, from which it is hard to +rouse him sufficiently to get his boots off for bed, our lean +owl-friend, Saturn no longer in the ascendant, with bright eyes and +cheery face, is ready for four hours of anything you wish--deep study, +or + + Heart affluence in discoursive talk, + +and by 2 A. M. he will undertake to unsphere the spirit of Plato. In +neither a virtue, in neither a fault we must recognize these two types +of students, differently constituted, owing possibly--though I have but +little evidence for the belief--to thermal peculiarities. + + + + +THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA + +_By_ STEPHEN LEACOCK + + + Nineteen hundred and ten was an important year. Halley's comet came + along, and some predicted the End of the World. And Stephen + Leacock's first _humorous_ book--_Literary Lapses_--was published. + First humorous book, I said, for Mr. Leacock--who is professor of + political economy at McGill University, Montreal--had published his + _Elements of Political Science_ in 1906. + + It seems to me that I have heard that _Literary Lapses_ was + obscurely or privately published in Canada before 1910; that Mr. + John Lane, the famous London publisher, was given a copy by some + one as he got on a steamer to go home to England; that he read it + on the voyage and cabled an offer for it as soon as he landed. This + is very vague in my mind, but it sounds probable. At any rate, + since that time Professor Leacock's humorous volumes have appeared + with gratifying regularity--_Nonsense Novels, Behind the Beyond_, + etc.; and some more serious books too, such as Essays and _Literary + Studies_ and The _Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice_. One of the + unsolved riddles of social injustice is, why should Professor + Leacock be so much more amusing than most people? + + We usually think of him as a Canadian, but he was born in England + in 1869. + + +Coming up home the other night in my car (the Guy Street car), I heard a +man who was hanging onto a strap say: "The drama is just turning into a +bunch of talk." This set me thinking; and I was glad that it did, +because I am being paid by this paper to think once a week, and it is +wearing. Some days I never think from morning till night. + +This decline of the drama is a thing on which I feel deeply and +bitterly; for I am, or I have been, something of an actor myself. I +have only been in amateur work, I admit, but still I have played some +mighty interesting parts. I have acted in Shakespeare as a citizen, I +have been a fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and I was once one end +(choice of ends) of a camel in a pantomime. I have had other parts too, +such as "A Voice Speaks From Within," or "A Noise Is Heard Without," or +a "Bell Rings From Behind," and a lot of things like that. I played as A +Noise for seven nights, before crowded houses where people were being +turned away from the door; and I have been a Groan and a Sigh and a +Tumult, and once I was a "Vision Passes Before the Sleeper." + +So when I talk of acting and of the spirit of the Drama, I speak of what +I know. + +Naturally, too, I was brought into contact, very often into quite +intimate personal contact, with some of the greatest actors of the day. +I don't say it in any way of boasting, but merely because to those of us +who love the stage all dramatic souvenirs are interesting. I remember, +for example, that when Wilson Barrett played "The Bat" and had to wear +the queer suit with the scales, it was I who put the glue on him. + +And I recall a conversation with Sir Henry Irving one night when he said +to me, "Fetch me a glass of water, will you?" and I said, "Sir Henry, it +is not only a pleasure to get it but it is to me, as a humble devotee +of the art that you have ennobled, a high privilege. I will go +further--" "Do," he said. Henry was like that, quick, sympathetic, what +we call in French "vibrant." + +Forbes Robertson I shall never forget: he owes me 50 cents. And as for +Martin Harvey--I simply cannot call him Sir John, we are such dear old +friends--he never comes to this town without at once calling in my +services to lend a hand in his production. No doubt everybody knows that +splendid play in which he appears, called "The Breed of the Treshams." + +There is a torture scene in it, a most gruesome thing. Harvey, as the +hero, has to be tortured, not on the stage itself, but off the stage in +a little room at the side. You can hear him howling as he is tortured. +Well, it was I who was torturing him. We are so used to working together +that Harvey didn't want to let anybody do it but me. + +So naturally I am a keen friend and student of the Drama: and I hate to +think of it going all to pieces. + +The trouble with it is that it is becoming a mere mass of conversation +and reflection: nothing happens in it; the action is all going out of it +and there is nothing left but thought. When actors begin to think, it is +time for a change. They are not fitted for it. + +Now in my day--I mean when I was at the apogee of my reputation (I think +that is the word--it may be apologee--I forget)--things were very +different. What we wanted was action--striking, climatic, catastrophic +action, in which things not only happened, but happened suddenly and all +in a lump. + +And we always took care that the action happened in some place that was +worth while, not simply in an ordinary room with ordinary furniture, the +way it is in the new drama. The scene was laid in a lighthouse (top +story), or in a mad house (at midnight), or in a power house, or a dog +house, or a bath house, in short, in some place with a distinct local +color and atmosphere. + +I remember in the case of the first play I ever wrote (I write plays, +too) the manager to whom I submitted it asked me at once, the moment he +glanced at it, "Where is the action of this laid?" "It is laid," I +answered, "in the main sewer of a great city." "Good, good," he said; +"keep it there." + +In the case of another play the manager said to me, "What are you doing +for atmosphere?" "The opening act," I said, "is in a steam laundry." +"Very good," he answered as he turned over the pages, "and have you +brought in a condemned cell?" I told him that I had not. "That's rather +unfortunate," he said, "because we are especially anxious to bring in a +condemned cell. Three of the big theaters have got them this season, and +I think we ought to have it in. Can you do it?" "Yes," I said, "I can, +if it's wanted. I'll look through the cast, and no doubt I can find one +at least of them that ought to be put to death." "Yes, yes," said the +manager enthusiastically, "I am sure you can." + +But I think of all the settings that we used, the lighthouse plays were +the best. There is something about a lighthouse that you don't get in a +modern drawing room. What it is, I don't know; but there's a difference. +I always have liked a lighthouse play, and never have enjoyed acting so +much, have never thrown myself into acting so deeply, as in a play of +that sort. + +There is something about a lighthouse--the way you see it in the earlier +scenes--with the lantern shining out over the black waters that suggests +security, fidelity, faithfulness, to a trust. The stage used generally +to be dim in the first part of a lighthouse play, and you could see the +huddled figures of the fishermen and their wives on the foreshore +pointing out to the sea (the back of the stage). + +"See," one cried with his arm extended, "there is lightning in yon sky." +(I was the lightning and that my cue for it): "God help all the poor +souls at sea to-night!" Then a woman cried, "Look! Look! a boat upon the +reef!" And as she said it I had to rush round and work the boat to make +it go up and down properly. Then there was more lightning, and some one +screamed out, "Look! See! there's a woman in the boat!" + +There wasn't really; it was me; but in the darkness it was all the same, +and of course the heroine herself couldn't be there yet because she had +to be downstairs getting dressed to be drowned. Then they all cried out, +"Poor soul! she's doomed," and all the fishermen ran up and down making +a noise. + +Fishermen in those plays used to get fearfully excited; and what with +the excitement and the darkness and the bright beams of the lighthouse +falling on the wet oilskins, and the thundering of the sea upon the +reef--ah! me, those were plays! That was acting! And to think that there +isn't a single streak of lightning in any play on the boards this year! + +And then the kind of climax that a play like this used to have! The +scene shifted right at the moment of the excitement, and lo! we are in +the tower, the top story of the lighthouse, interior scene. All is still +and quiet within, with the bright light of the reflectors flooding the +little room, and the roar of the storm heard like muffled thunder +outside. + +The lighthouse keeper trims his lamps. How firm and quiet and rugged he +looks. The snows of sixty winters are on his head, but his eye is clear +and his grip strong. Hear the howl of the wind as he opens the door and +steps forth upon the iron balcony, eighty feet above the water, and +peers out upon the storm. + +"God pity all the poor souls at sea!" he says. (They all say that. If +you get used to it, and get to like it, you want to hear it said, no +matter how often they say it.) The waves rage beneath him. (I threw it +at him, really, but the effect was wonderful.) + +And then, as he comes in from the storm to the still room, the climax +breaks. A man staggers into the room in oilskins, drenched, wet, +breathless. (They all staggered in these plays, and in the new drama +they walk, and the effect is feebleness itself.) He points to the sea. +"A boat! A boat upon the reef! With a woman in it." + +And the lighthouse keeper knows that it is his only daughter--the only +one that he has--who is being cast to death upon the reef. Then comes +the dilemma. They want him for the lifeboat; no one can take it through +the surf but him. You know that because the other man says so himself. + +But if he goes in the boat then the great light will go out. Untended it +cannot live in the storm. And if it goes out--ah! if it goes out--ask of +the angry waves and the resounding rocks of what to-night's long toll of +death must be without the light! + +I wish you could have seen it--you who only see the drawing-room plays +of to-day--the scene when the lighthouse man draws himself up, calm and +resolute, and says: "My place is here. God's will be done." And you know +that as he says it and turns quietly to his lamps again, the boat is +drifting, at that very moment, to the rocks. + +"How did they save her?" My dear sir, if you can ask that question you +little understand the drama as it was. Save her? No, of course they +didn't save her. What we wanted in the Old Drama was reality and force, +no matter how wild and tragic it might be. They did not save her. They +found her the next day, in the concluding scene--all that was left of +her when she was dashed upon the rocks. Her ribs were broken. Her bottom +boards had been smashed in, her gunwale was gone--in short, she was a +wreck. + +The girl? Oh, yes, certainly they saved the girl. That kind of thing was +always taken care of. You see just as the lighthouse man said "God's +will be done," his eye fell on a long coil of rope, hanging there. +Providential, wasn't it? But then we were not ashamed to use Providence +in the Old Drama. So he made a noose in it and threw it over the balcony +and hauled the girl up on it. I used to hook her on to it every night. + +A rotten play? Oh, I am sure it must have been. But, somehow, those of +us who were brought up on that sort of thing, still sigh for it. + + + + +AMERICA AND THE ENGLISH TRADITION + +_By_ HARRY MORGAN AYRES + + + This admirable summary of Anglo-American history first appeared + (February, 1920) as an editorial in the _Weekly Review_. It seemed + to me then, and still does, as a model in that form of writing, + perfect in lucidity, temperance and good sense. Mr. Ayres is a + member of the faculty of Columbia University (Department of + English) and also one of the editors of the _Weekly Review_. + Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Seneca seem to be his favorite + hobbies. + + To sum up the gist of Anglo-American relations in half a dozen + pages, as Mr. Ayres does here, is surely a remarkable achievement. + + +The recently established chair in the history, literature, and +institutions of the United States which is to be shared among the +several universities of Great Britain, is quite different from the +exchange professorships of sometimes unhappy memory. It is not at all +the idea to carry over one of our professors each year and indoctrinate +him with the true culture at its source. The occupant of the chair will +be, if the announced intention is carried out, quite as often British as +American, and quite as likely a public man as a professor. The chief +object is to bring to England a better knowledge of the United States, +and a purpose more laudable can scarcely be imagined. Peace and +prosperity will endure in the world in some very precise relation to +the extent to which England succeeds in understanding us. + +It is not an illusion to suppose that our understanding of the British +is on the whole better than theirs of us. The British Empire is a large +and comparatively simple fact, now conspicuously before the world for a +long time. The United States was, in British eyes, until recently, a +comparatively insignificant fact, yet vastly more complicated than they +imagined. Each, of course, perfectly knew the faults of the other, +assessed with an unerring cousinly eye. The American bragged in a nasal +whine, the Briton patronized in a throaty burble. Whoever among the +struggling nations of the world might win, England saw to it that she +never lost; your Yankee was content with the more ignoble triumphs of +merchandising, willing to cheapen life if he could only add to his +dollars. But the excellence of English political institutions and +methods, the charm of English life, the tremendous power of the Empire +for promoting freedom and civilization in the world, these are things +which Americans have long recognized and in a way understood. Anything +like an equivalent British appreciation of America in the large seems +confined to a very few honorable exceptions among them. Admiration for +Niagara, which is half British anyway, or enthusiasm for the "Wild +West"--your better-class Englishman always thrills to the frontier--is +no step at all toward rightly appreciating America. + +To no inconsiderable extent this is America's own fault. She does not +present to the world a record that is easily read. It is obvious, for +instance--and so obvious that it is not often enough stated--that +America has and will continue to have a fundamentally English +civilization. English law is the basis of her law. English speech is her +speech, and if with a difference, it is a difference that the +philologist, all things considered, finds amazingly small. English +literature is her literature--Chaucer and Shakespeare hers because her +blood then coursed indistinguishably through the English heart they knew +so well; Milton, Dryden, and the Queen Anne men hers, because she was +still a part of England; the later men hers by virtue of affectionate +acquaintanceship and a generous and not inconsiderable rivalry. English +history, in short, is her history. The struggles of the thirteenth +century through which law and parliament came into being, the struggles +of the seventeenth century through which law and parliament came to +rule, are America's struggles upon which she can look back with the +satisfaction that some things that have been done in the world need +never be undone or done over again, whatever the room for improvement +may still be. Americans, no less than British, recognize that +independence was largely an accidental result of a war which sprang out +of a false theory of economics, but whose conclusion carried with it a +lesson in the management of empire which subsequent history shows the +British to have learned thoroughly and for the benefit of all concerned. +American independence, however, once established, pointed a way to +democratic freedom which England hastened to follow. This we know. And +yet-- + +And yet we allow these obvious and fundamental considerations to become +marvelously obscured. We allow England's failure to solve an insoluble +Irish problem to arouse in us an attitude of mind possibly excusable in +some Irishmen, but wholly inexcusable in any American. We allow a +sentimental regard for some immigrant from Eastern Europe, who comes to +us with a philosophy born of conditions that in English-speaking lands +ceased to be centuries ago, to make us pretend to see in him the true +expression of America's traditional ideals. We allow ourselves to be far +too easy with the phrase, "He is not pro-German, he is merely +anti-British." Why are they anti-British? Why should they be permitted +to make it falsely appear that recognition of the English basis of +America involves approval of everything that England in her history may +or may not have done? Why should they be allowed to pretend that +disapproval of some particular act of England justifies repudiation of +most of the things by virtue of which we are what we are? America from +the first has been part of the great English experiment--great because +it is capable of learning from experience. + +The world has put a big investment in blood and treasure, and all that +they imply, into the education of England. It is satisfied--the world's +response to Germany's insolent challenge is the proof of it--that its +pains have been well bestowed. England is more nearly fit than any other +nation to wield the power that is hers. That is not to deny the peculiar +virtues of other nations; indeed, these virtues have largely contributed +to the result. Italy has educated her; France has educated her; we have +done something; and Germany. In result, she is not perfect--the English +would perhaps least of all assert that--but she has learned a great deal +and held herself steady while she learned it. It is a bigger job than +the world cares to undertake to teach any other nation so much. Nor +would it be at all likely to succeed so well. For what England has to +offer the world in return is not simply her institutions; it is not +merely a formula for the effective discharge of police duty throughout +the world; it is the English freeman, whether he hail from Canada, +Australia, Africa, or the uttermost isles of the sea. + +A most adaptable fellow, this freeman, doing all sorts of work +everywhere, and with tremendous powers of assimilation. Consider him in +his origins. He began by assimilating fully his own weight in Danes, +while remaining an English freeman. He then perforce accepted a Norman +king, as he had accepted a Danish one, hoping, as always, that the king +would not trouble him too much. But when Norman William, who was very +ill-informed about the breed, killed off most of his natural leaders and +harried the rest into villeiny, how did he manage in a small matter of +two hundred years or so to make an English gentleman not only of himself +but of all the rag-tag of adventurers who had come over with William and +since? How did he contrive, out of a band of exiles fleeing from an +Egypt of ecclesiastical tyranny, broken younger sons, artisans out of a +job, speculators, bondmen, Swedes, Dutchmen, and what not, to make +America? Is he one likely to lose his bearings when in his America the +age-old problem again heaves in view? This is a job he has been working +at pretty successfully for more than a thousand years. Grant him a +moment to realize himself afresh in the face of it. Don't expect him to +stop and give a coherent explanation of what he is doing. He wouldn't +be the true son of the English tradition that he is if he could do that. +Perhaps the occupants of the new chair can do something of the sort for +him. + + + + +THE RUSSIAN QUARTER + +_By_ THOMAS BURKE + + + Thomas Burke, a young newspaper man in London, came into quick + recognition with his first book, _Nights in Town_ (published in + America as _Nights in London_) in 1915. His first really popular + success, however, was _Limehouse Nights_, less satisfactory to + those who had read the first book, as it was largely a repetition + of the same material in fiction form. (In fact, Mr. Burke holds + what must be almost a record among authors by having worked over + nearly the identical substance in four different versions--as + essays and sketches, in _Nights in Town_; as short stories, in + _Limehouse Nights_; as a novel, in _Twinkletoes_; as poetry, in + _The Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse_.) + + Mr. Burke has specialized on London, and with great ability. In the + Limehouse series his colorings seem just a little too consciously + vivid, his roguishness a little too studied, to be quite + satisfying. _The Outer Circle_, a volume of rambles in the London + suburbs, is to me more truly a work of art. + + +I had known the quarter for many years before it interested me. It was +not until I was prowling around on a Fleet Street assignment that I +learned to hate it. A murder had been committed over a café in Lupin +Street; a popular murder, fruity, cleverly done, and with a sex +interest. Of course every newspaper and agency developed a virtuous +anxiety to track the culprit, and all resources were directed to that +end. Journalism is perhaps the only profession in which so fine a public +spirit may be found. So it was that the North Country paper of which I +was a hanger-on flung every available man into the fighting line, and +the editor told me that I might, in place of the casual paragraphs for +the London Letter, do something good on the Vassiloff murder. + +It was a night of cold rain, and the pavements were dashed with smears +of light from the shop windows. Through the streaming streets my hansom +leaped; and as I looked from the window, and noted the despondent +biliousness of Bethnal Green, I realized that the grass withereth, the +flower fadeth. + +I dismissed the cab at Brick Lane, and, continuing the tradition which +had been instilled into me by my predecessor on the London Letter, I +turned into one of the hostelries and had a vodka to keep the cold out. +Little Russia was shutting up. The old shawled women, who sit at every +corner with huge baskets of black bread and sweet cakes, were departing +beneath umbrellas. The stalls of Osborn Street, usually dressed with +foreign-looking confectionery, were also retiring. Indeed, everybody +seemed to be slinking away, and as I sipped my vodka, and felt it burn +me with raw fire, I cursed news editors and all publics which desired to +read about murders. I was perfectly sure that I shouldn't do the least +good; so I had another, and gazed through the kaleidoscopic window, +rushing with rain, at the cheerful world that held me. + +Oh, so sad it is, this quarter! By day the streets are a depression, +with their frowzy doss-houses and their vapor-baths. Gray and sickly is +the light. Gray and sickly, too, are the leering shops, and gray and +sickly are the people and the children. Everything has followed the +grass and the flowers. Childhood has no place; so above the roofs you +may see the surly points of a Council School. Such games as happen are +played but listlessly, and each little face is smirched. The gaunt +warehouses hardly support their lopping heads, and the low, beetling, +gabled houses of the alleys seem for ever to brood on nights of bitter +adventure. Fit objects for contempt by day they may be, but when night +creeps upon London, the hideous darkness that can almost be touched, +then their faces become very powers of terror, and the cautious soul, +wandered from the comfort of the main streets, walks and walks in a +frenzy, seeking outlet and finding none. Sometimes a hoarse laugh will +break sharp on his ear. Then he runs. + +Well, I finished my second, and then sauntered out. As I was passing a +cruel-looking passage, a girl stepped forward. She looked at me. I +looked at her. She had the haunting melancholy of Russia in her face, +but her voice was as the voice of Cockaigne. For she spoke and said:-- + +"Funny-looking little guy, ain't you?" + +I suppose I was. So I smiled and said: "We are as God made us, old +girl." + +She giggled.... + +I said I felt sure I should do no good on the Vassiloff murder. I +didn't. For just then two of her friends came out of the court, each +with a boy. It was apparent that she had no boy. I had no idea what the +occasion might be, but the other four marched ahead, crying, "Come on!" +And, surprised, yet knowing of no good reason for being surprised, I +felt the girl's arm slip into mine, and we joined the main column.... + +That is one of London's greatest charms: it is always ready to toss you +little encounters of this sort, if you are out for them. + +Across the road we went, through mire and puddle, and down a long, +winding court. At about midway our friends disappeared, and, suddenly +drawn to the right, I was pushed from behind up a steep, fusty stair. +Then I knew where we were going. We were going to the tenements where +most of the Russians meet of an evening. The atmosphere in these places +is a little more cheerful than that of the cafés--if you can imagine a +Russian ever rising to cheerfulness. Most of the girls lodge over the +milliners' shops, and thither their friends resort. Every establishment +here has a piano, for music, with them, is a somber passion rather than +a diversion. You will not hear comic opera, but if you want to climb the +lost heights of melody, stand in Bell Yard, and listen to a piano, lost +in the high glooms, wailing the heart of Chopin, or Rubinstein or +Glazounoff through the fingers of pale, moist girls, while the ghost of +Peter the Painter parades the naphtha'd highways. + +At the top of the stair I was pushed into a dark, fusty room, and guided +to a low, fusty sofa or bed. Then some one struck a match, and a lamp +was lit and set on the mantelshelf. It flung a soft, caressing radiance +on its shabby home, and on its mistress, and on the other girls and +boys. The boys were tough youngsters of the district, evidently very +much at home, smoking Russian cigarettes and settling themselves on the +bed in a manner that seemed curiously continental in Cockney toughs. I +doubt if you would have loved the girls at that moment; and yet ... you +know ... their black or brassy hair, their untidiness, and the cotton +blouses half-dropped from their tumultuous breasts.... + +The girl who had collared me disappeared for a moment, and then brought +a tray of Russian tea. "Help 'selves, boys!" We did so, and, watching +the others, I discovered that it was the correct thing to lemon the +ladies' tea for them and stir it well and light their cigarettes. I did +so for Katarina--that was her name--while she watched me with little +truant locks of hair running everywhere, and a slow, alluring smile +that seemed to hold all the agony and mystery of the steppes. + +The room, on which the wallpaper hung in dank strips, contained a +full-sized bed and a chair bedstead, a washstand, a samovar, a potpourri +of a carpet, and certain mysteries of feminine toilet. A rickety +three-legged table stood by the window, and Katarina's robes hung in a +dainty riot of frill and color behind the door, which only shut when you +thrust a peg of wood through a wired catch. + +One of the boys sprawled himself, in clumsy luxury, on the bed, and his +girl arranged herself at his side, and when she was settled her hair +tumbled in a shower of hairpins, and everybody laughed like children. +The other girl went to the piano, and her boy squatted on the floor at +her feet. + +She began to play.... You would not understand, I suppose, the +intellectual emotion of the situation. It is more than curious to sit in +these rooms, in the filthiest spot in London, and listen to Moszkowsky, +Tchaikowsky, and Sibelius, played by a factory girl. It is ... something +indefinable. I had visited similar places in Stepney before, but then I +had not had a couple of vodkas, and I had not been taken in tow by an +unknown girl. They play and play, while tea and cigarettes, and +sometimes vodka or whisky, go round; and as the room gets warmer, so +does one's sense of smell get sharper; so do the pale faces get +moister; and so does one long more and more for a breath of cold air +from the Ural Mountains. The best you can do is to ascend to the flat +roof, and take a deep breath of Spitalfields ozone. Then back to the +room for more tea and more music. + +Sanya played.... Despite the unventilated room, the greasy appointments, +and other details that would have turned the stomach of Kensington, that +girl at the piano, her dress cunningly disarranged, playing, as no one +would have dreamed she could play, the finer intensities of Wieniawski +and Moussorgsky, shook all sense of responsibility from me. The burdens +of life vanished. News editors and their assignments be damned. Enjoy +yourself, was what the cold, insidious music said. Take your moments +when the fates send them; that was life's best lesson. Snatch the joy of +the fleeting moment. Why ponder on time and tears? + +Devilish little fingers they were, Sanya's. Her technique was not +perhaps all that it might have been; she might not have won the Gold +Medal of our white-shirted academies, but she had enough temperament to +make half a dozen Bechstein Hall virtuosi. From valse to nocturne, from +sonata to prelude, her fancy ran. With crashing chords she dropped from +"L'Automne Bacchanale" to the Nocturne in E flat; scarcely murmured of +that, then tripped elvishly into Moszkowsky's Waltz, and from that she +dropped to a song of Tchaikowsky, almost heartbreaking in its childish +beauty, and then to the lecherous music of the second act of "Tristan." +Mazurka, polonaise, and nocturne wailed in the stuffy chamber; her +little hands lit up the enchanted gloom of the place with bright +thrills, until the bed and the dingy surroundings faded into phantoms +and left only two stark souls in colloquy: Katarina's and mine. + +Katarina had settled, I forget how, on the sofa, and was reclining very +comfortably with her head on my shoulder and both arms about me. We did +not talk. No questions passed as to why we had picked one another up. +There we were, warmed with vodka and tea, at eleven o'clock at night, +five stories above the clamorous world, while her friend shook the silly +souls out of us. With the shy boldness of my native country, I stretched +a hand and inclosed her fingers. She smiled; a curious smile that no +other girl in London could have given; not a flushed smile, or a +startled smile, or a satisfied smile, or a coy smile; but a smile of +companionship, which seemed to have realized the tragedy of our living. +So it was that she had, by slow stages, reached her comfortable +position, for as my hand wandered from finger to wrist, from wrist to +soft, rounded arm, and so inclosed her neck, she slipped and buried me +in an avalanche of flaming, scented tresses. + +Sanya at the piano shot a glance over her shoulder, a very sad-gay +glance; she laughed, curiously, I almost said foreignly. I felt somehow +as though I had been taken complete possession of by these people. I +hardly belonged to myself. Fleet Street was but a street of dream. I +seemed now to be awake and in an adorable captivity. + +With a final volley of chords, the pianist slid from the chair, and sat +by her boy on the carpet, smoothing his face with tobacco-stained +fingers, and languishing, while her thick, over-ripe lips took his +kisses as a baby bird takes food from its mother. + +We talked--all of us--in jerks and snatches. Then the oil in the lamp +began to give out, and the room grew dim. Some one said: "Play +something!" And some one said: "Too tired!" The girl reclining on the +bed grew snappy. She did not lean for caresses. She seemed morose, +preoccupied, almost impatient. Twice she snapped up her boy on a casual +remark. I believe I talked vodka'd nonsense.... + +But suddenly there came a whisper of soft feet on the landing, and a +secret tap at the door. Some one opened it, and slipped out. One heard +the lazy hum of voices in busy conversation. Then silence; and some one +entered the room and shut the door. One of the boys asked, casually, +"What's up?" His question was not answered, but the girl who had gone to +the door snapped something in a sharp tone which might have been either +Russian or Yiddish. Katarina loosened herself from me, and sat up. The +girl on the bed sat up. The three of them spat angry phrases about, I +called over to one of the boys: "What's the joke? Anything wrong?" and +received a reply: "Owshdiknow? I ain't a ruddy Russian, am I?" + +Katarina suddenly drew back her flaming face. "Here," she said, "you +better go." + +"Go?" + +"Yes--fathead! Go's what I said." + +"But--" I began, looking and feeling like a flabbergasted cat. + +"Don't I speak plain? Go!" + +I suppose a man never feels a finer idiot than when a woman tells him +she doesn't want him. If he ever does, it is when a woman tells him that +she loves him. Katarina had given me the bullet, and, of course, I felt +a fool; but I derived some consolation from the fact that the other boys +were being told off. Clearly, big things were in the air, about to +happen. Something, evidently, had already happened. I wondered.... Then +I sat down on the sofa, and flatly told Katarina that I was not going +unless I had a reason. + +"Oh," she said, blithely, "ain't you? This is my room, ain't it? I +brought you here, and you stay here just as long as I choose, and no +longer. Who d'you think you are, saying you won't go? This is my room. I +let you come here for a drink, and you just got to go when I say. See?" + +I was about to make a second stand, when again there came a stealthy tap +at the door, and the whispering of slippered feet. Sanya glided to the +door, opened it, and disappeared. In a moment she came back, and called, +"'Rina!" Katarina slipped from my embrace, went to the door, and +disappeared too. One girl and three boys remained--in silence. + +Next moment Katarina reappeared, and said something to Sanya. Sanya +pulled her boy by the arm, and went out. The other girl pushed her boy +at the neck and literally threw him out. Katarina came over to me, and +said: "Go, little fool!" + +I said: "Shan't unless I know what the game is." + +She stood over me; glared; searched for words to meet the occasion; +found none. She gestured. I sat as rigid as an immobile comedian. +Finally, she flung her arms, and swept away. At the door she turned; +"Blasted little fool! He'll do us both in if y'ain't careful. You don't +know him. Both of us he'll have. Serveyeh right." + +She disappeared. I was alone. I heard the _sup-sup_ of her slippered +feet down the stair. + +I got up, and moved to the door. I heard nothing. I stood by the window, +my thoughts dancing a ragtime. I wondered what to do, and how, and +whether. I wondered what was up exactly. I wondered ... well, I just +wondered. My thoughts got into a tangle, sank, and swam, and sank again. +Then there was a sudden struggle and spurt from the lamp, and it went +black out. From a room across the landing a clock ticked menacingly. I +saw, by the thin light from the window, the smoke of a discarded +cigarette curling up and up to the ceiling like a snake. + +I went again to the door, peered down the steep stair and over the crazy +balustrade. Nobody was about; no voices. I slipped swiftly down the five +flights, met nobody. I stood in the slobbered vestibule. From afar I +heard the sluck of the waters against the staples of the wharves, and +the wicked hoot of the tugs. + +It was then that a sudden nameless fear seized me; it was that simple +terror that comes from nothing but ourselves. I am not usually afraid of +any man or thing. I am normally nervous, and there are three or four +things that have power to terrify me. But I am not, I think, afraid. At +that moment, however, I was afraid of everything: of the room I had +left, of the house, of the people, of the inviting lights of the +warehouses and the threatening shoals of the alleys. + +I stood a moment longer. Then I raced into Brick Lane, and out into the +brilliance of Commercial Street. + + + + +A WORD FOR AUTUMN + +_By_ A. A. MILNE + + + This is the sort of urbane pleasantry in which British essayists + are prolific and graceful. Alan Alexander Milne was born in 1882, + went to Trinity College, Cambridge; was editor of _The Granta_ (the + leading undergraduate publication at Cambridge at that time); and + plunged into the great whirlpool of London journalism. He was on + the staff of _Punch_, 1906-14. He has now collected several volumes + of charming essays, and has had considerable success as a + playwright: his comedy, _Mr. Pim Passes By_, recently played a + prosperous run in New York. "A Word for Autumn" is from his volume + _Not That It Matters_. + + +Last night the waiter put the celery on with the cheese, and I knew that +summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn there may be--the +reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the misty +evenings--but none of these comes home to me so truly. There may be cool +mornings in July; in a year of drought the leaves may change before +their time; it is only with the first celery that summer is over. + +I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was saying that +winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun to seem possible +lately that a miracle might happen, that summer might drift on and on +through the months--a final upheaval to crown a wonderful year. The +celery settled that. Last night with the celery autumn came into its +own. + +There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October. It +is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat. It crackles +pleasantly in the mouth. Moreover it is excellent, I am told, for the +complexion. One is always hearing of things which are good for the +complexion, but there is no doubt that celery stands high on the list. +After the burns and freckles of summer one is in need of something. How +good that celery should be there at one's elbow. + +A week ago--("A little more cheese, waiter")--a week ago I grieved for +the dying summer. I wondered how I could possibly bear the waiting--the +eight long months till May. In vain to comfort myself with the thought +that I could get through more work in the winter undistracted by +thoughts of cricket grounds and country houses. In vain, equally, to +tell myself that I could stay in bed later in the mornings. Even the +thought of after-breakfast pipes in front of the fire left me cold. But +now, suddenly, I am reconciled to autumn. I see quite clearly that all +good things must come to an end. The summer has been splendid, but it +has lasted long enough. This morning I welcomed the chill in the air; +this morning I viewed the falling leaves with cheerfulness; and this +morning I said to myself, "Why, of course, I'll have celery for lunch." +("More bread, waiter.") + +"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," said Keats, not actually +picking out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the +general blessings of the autumn. Yet what an opportunity he missed by +not concentrating on that precious root. Apples, grapes, nuts, and +vegetable marrows he mentions specially--and how poor a selection! For +apples and grapes are not typical of any month, so ubiquitous are they, +vegetable marrows are vegetables _pour rire_ and have no place in any +serious consideration of the seasons, while as for nuts, have we not a +national song which asserts distinctly, "Here we go gathering nuts in +May"? Season of mists and mellow celery, then let it be. A pat of butter +underneath the bough, a wedge of cheese, a loaf of bread and--Thou. + +How delicate are the tender shoots unfolded layer by layer. Of what a +whiteness is the last baby one of all, of what a sweetness his flavor. +It is well that this should be the last rite of the meal--_finis coronat +opus_--so that we may go straight on to the business of the pipe. Celery +demands a pipe rather than a cigar, and it can be eaten better in an inn +or a London tavern than in the home. Yes, and it should be eaten alone, +for it is the only food which one really wants to hear oneself eat. +Besides, in company one may have to consider the wants of others. Celery +is not a thing to share with any man. Alone in your country inn you may +call for the celery; but if you are wise you will see that no other +traveler wanders into the room. Take warning from one who has learnt a +lesson. One day I lunched alone at an inn, finishing with cheese and +celery. Another traveler came in and lunched too. We did not speak--I +was busy with my celery. From the other end of the table he reached +across for the cheese. That was all right! it was the public cheese. But +he also reached across for the celery--my private celery for which I +owed. Foolishly--you know how one does--I had left the sweetest and +crispest shoots till the last, tantalizing myself pleasantly with the +thought of them. Horror! to see them snatched from me by a stranger. He +realized later what he had done and apologized, but of what good is an +apology in such circumstances? Yet at least the tragedy was not without +its value. Now one remembers to lock the door. + +Yes, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it +was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet, +dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other +things--crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. +Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end +of the summer is not the end of the world. Here's to October--and, +waiter, some more celery. + + + + +"A CLERGYMAN" + +_By_ MAX BEERBOHM + + + Max Beerbohm, I dare say (and I believe it has been said before), + is the most subtly gifted English essayist since Charles Lamb. It + is not surprising that he has (now for many years) been referred to + as "the incomparable Max," for what other contemporary has never + once missed fire, never failed to achieve perfection in the field + of his choice? Whether in caricature, short story, fable, parody, + or essay, he has always been consummate in grace, tact, insouciant + airy precision. I hope you will not miss "No. 2 The Pines" (in _And + Even Now_, from which this selection also comes), a reminiscence of + his first visit to Swinburne in 1899. That beautiful (there is no + other word) essay shows an even ampler range of Mr. Beerbohm's + powers: a tenderness and lovely grace that remind one, almost + against belief, that the gay youth of the '90's now mellows + deliciously with the end of the fifth decade. He was so enormously + old in 1896, when he published his first book and called it his + _Works_; he seems much younger now: he is having his first + childhood. + + This portrait of the unfortunate cleric annihilated by Dr. Johnson + is a triumphant example of the skill with which a perfect artist + can manœuver a trifle, carved like an ivory trinket; in such + hands, subtlety never becomes mere tenuity. + + Max Beerbohm was born in London in 1872; studied at Charterhouse + School and Merton College, Oxford; and was a brilliant figure in + the _Savoy_ and _Yellow Book_ circles by the time he was + twenty-four. His genius is that of the essay in its purest + distillation: a clear cross-section of life as seen through the + lens of self; the pure culture (in the biological sense) of + observing personality. + + I have often wondered how it came about (though the matter is + wholly nonpertinent) that Mr. Beerbohm married an American + lady--quite a habit with English essayists, by the way: Hilaire + Belloc and Bertrand Russell did likewise. _Who's Who_ says she was + from Memphis, which adds lustre to that admirable city. + + He now lives in Italy. + + +Fragmentary, pale, momentary; almost nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it +were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath the +rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits my +weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, abruptly, he +asked a question, and received an answer. + +This was on the afternoon of April 7th, 1778, at Streatham, in the +well-appointed house of Mr. Thrale. Johnson, on the morning of that day, +had entertained Boswell at breakfast in Bolt Court, and invited him to +dine at Thrale Hall. The two took coach and arrived early. It seems that +Sir John Pringle had asked Boswell to ask Johnson "what were the best +English sermons for style." In the interval before dinner, accordingly, +Boswell reeled off the names of several divines whose prose might or +might not win commendation. "Atterbury?" he suggested. "JOHNSON: Yes, +Sir, one of the best. BOSWELL: Tillotson? JOHNSON: Why, not now. I +should not advise any one to imitate Tillotson's style; though I don't +know; I should be cautious of censuring anything that has been applauded +by so many suffrages.--South is one of the best, if you except his +peculiarities, and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of +language.--Seed has a very fine style; but he is not very theological. +Jortin's sermons are very elegant. Sherlock's style, too, is very +elegant, though he has not made it his principal study.--And you may add +Smalridge. BOSWELL: I like Ogden's Sermons on Prayer very much, both +for neatness of style and subtility of reasoning. JOHNSON: I should like +to read all that Ogden has written. BOSWELL: What I want to know is, +what sermons afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence. +JOHNSON: We have no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for +anything; if you mean that kind of eloquence. A CLERGYMAN, whose name I +do not recollect: Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions? +JOHNSON: They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may." + +The suddenness of it! Bang!--and the rabbit that had popped from its +burrow was no more. + +I know not which is the more startling--the début of the unfortunate +clergyman, or the instantaneousness of his end. Why hadn't Boswell told +us there was a clergyman present? Well, we may be sure that so careful +and acute an artist had some good reason. And I suppose the clergyman +was left to take us unawares because just so did he take the company. +Had we been told he was there, we might have expected that sooner or +later he would join in the conversation. He would have had a place in +our minds. We may assume that in the minds of the company around Johnson +he had no place. He sat forgotten, overlooked; so that his +self-assertion startled every one just as on Boswell's page it startles +us. In Johnson's massive and magnetic presence only some very remarkable +man, such as Mr. Burke, was sharply distinguishable from the rest. +Others might, if they had something in them, stand out slightly. This +unfortunate clergyman may have had something in him, but I judge that he +lacked the gift of seeming as if he had. That deficiency, however, does +not account for the horrid fate that befell him. One of Johnson's +strongest and most inveterate feelings was his veneration for the Cloth. +To any one in Holy Orders he habitually listened with a grace and +charming deference. To-day, moreover, he was in excellent good humor. He +was at the Thrales', where he so loved to be; the day was fine; a fine +dinner was in close prospect; and he had had what he always declared to +be the sum of human felicity--a ride in a coach. Nor was there in the +question put by the clergyman anything likely to enrage him. Dodd was +one whom Johnson had befriended in adversity; and it had always been +agreed that Dodd in his pulpit was very emotional. What drew the +blasting flash must have been not the question itself, but the manner in +which it was asked. And I think we can guess what that manner was. + +Say the words aloud: "Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the +passions?" They are words which, if you have any dramatic and histrionic +sense, _cannot_ be said except in a high, thin voice. + +You may, from sheer perversity, utter them in a rich and sonorous +baritone or bass. But if you do so, they sound utterly unnatural. To +make them carry the conviction of human utterance, you have no choice: +you must pipe them. + +Remember, now, Johnson was very deaf. Even the people whom he knew well, +the people to whose voices he was accustomed, had to address him very +loudly. It is probable that this unregarded, young, shy clergyman, when +at length he suddenly mustered courage to 'cut in,' let his high, thin +voice soar _too_ high, insomuch that it was a kind of scream. On no +other hypothesis can we account for the ferocity with which Johnson +turned and rended him. Johnson didn't, we may be sure, mean to be cruel. +The old lion, startled, just struck out blindly. But the force of paw +and claws was not the less lethal. We have endless testimony to the +strength of Johnson's voice; and the very cadence of those words, "They +were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may," convinces me +that the old lion's jaws never gave forth a louder roar. Boswell does +not record that there was any further conversation before the +announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been temporarily +deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes out to the +poor dear clergyman exclusively. + +I said a moment ago that he was young and shy; and I admit that I +slipped those epithets in without having justified them to you by due +process of induction. Your quick mind will have already supplied what I +omitted. A man with a high, thin voice, and without power to impress any +one with a sense of his importance, a man so null in effect that even +the retentive mind of Boswell did not retain his very name, would +assuredly not be a self-confident man. Even if he were not naturally +shy, social courage would soon have been sapped in him, and would in +time have been destroyed, by experience. That he had not yet given +himself up as a bad job, that he still had faint wild hopes, is proved +by the fact that he did snatch the opportunity for asking that question. +He must, accordingly, have been young. Was he the curate of the +neighboring church? I think so. It would account for his having been +invited. I see him as he sits there listening to the great Doctor's +pronouncement on Atterbury and those others. He sits on the edge of a +chair in the background. He has colorless eyes, fixed earnestly, and a +face almost as pale as the clerical bands beneath his somewhat receding +chin. His forehead is high and narrow, his hair mouse-colored. His hands +are clasped tight before him, the knuckles standing out sharply. This +constriction does not mean that he is steeling himself to speak. He has +no positive intention of speaking. Very much, nevertheless, is he +wishing in the back of his mind that he could say something--something +whereat the great Doctor would turn on him and say, after a pause for +thought, "Why, yes, Sir. That is most justly observed" or "Sir, this has +never occurred to me. I thank you"--thereby fixing the observer forever +high in the esteem of all. And now in a flash the chance presents +itself. "We have," shouts Johnson, "no sermons addressed to the +passions, that are good for anything." I see the curate's frame quiver +with sudden impulse, and his mouth fly open, and--no, I can't bear it, I +shut my eyes and ears. But audible, even so, is something shrill, +followed by something thunderous. + +Presently I reopen my eyes. The crimson has not yet faded from that +young face yonder, and slowly down either cheek falls a glistening tear. +Shades of Atterbury and Tillotson! Such weakness shames the Established +Church. What would Jortin and Smalridge have said?--what Seed and South? +And, by the way, who _were_ they, these worthies? It is a solemn thought +that so little is conveyed to us by names which to the palæo-Georgians +conveyed so much. We discern a dim, composite picture of a big man in a +big wig and a billowing black gown, with a big congregation beneath +him. But we are not anxious to hear what he is saying. We know it is all +very elegant. We know it will be printed and be bound in finely-tooled +full calf, and no palæo-Georgian gentleman's library will be complete +without it. Literate people in those days were comparatively few; but, +bating that, one may say that sermons were as much in request as novels +are to-day. I wonder, will mankind continue to be capricious? It is a +very solemn thought indeed that no more than a hundred-and-fifty years +hence the novelists of our time, with all their moral and political and +sociological outlook and influence, will perhaps shine as indistinctly +as do those old preachers, with all their elegance, now. "Yes, Sir," +some great pundit may be telling a disciple at this moment, "Wells is +one of the best. Galsworthy is one of the best, if you except his +concern for delicacy of style. Mrs. Ward has a very firm grasp of +problems, but is not very creational.--Caine's books are very edifying. +I should like to read all that Caine has written. Miss Corelli, too, is +very edifying.--And you may add Upton Sinclair." "What I want to know," +says the disciple, "is, what English novels may be selected as specially +enthralling." The pundit answers: "We have no novels addressed to the +passions that are good for anything, if you mean that kind of +enthralment." And here some poor wretch (whose name the disciple will +not remember) inquires: "Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed to the +passions?" and is in due form annihilated. Can it be that a time will +come when readers of this passage in our pundit's Life will take more +interest in the poor nameless wretch than in all the bearers of those +great names put together, being no more able or anxious to discriminate +between (say) Mrs. Ward and Mr. Sinclair than we are to set Ogden above +Sherlock, or Sherlock above Ogden? It seems impossible. But we must +remember that things are not always what they seem. + +Every man illustrious in his day, however much he may be gratified by +his fame, looks with an eager eye to posterity for a continuance of past +favors, and would even live the remainder of his life in obscurity if by +so doing he could insure that future generations would preserve a +correct attitude towards him forever. This is very natural and human, +but, like so many very natural and human things, very silly. Tillotson +and the rest need not, after all, be pitied for our neglect of them. +They either know nothing about it, or are above such terrene trifles. +Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines who were not +elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they lasted. And let us +keep a specially large portion for one whose lot was so much worse than +merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate had not been at the +Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the silence that so well +became him, his life would have been drab enough, in all conscience. But +at any rate an unpromising career would not have been nipped in the bud. +And that is what in fact happened, I'm sure of it. A robust man might +have rallied under the blow. Not so our friend. Those who knew him in +infancy had not expected that he would be reared. Better for him had +they been right. It is well to grow up and be ordained, but not if you +are delicate and very sensitive, and shall happen to annoy the greatest, +the most stentorian and roughest of contemporary personages. "A +Clergyman" never held up his head or smiled again after the brief +encounter recorded for us by Boswell. He sank into a rapid decline. +Before the next blossoming of Thrale Hall's almond trees he was no more. +I like to think that he died forgiving Dr. Johnson. + + + + +SAMUEL BUTLER: DIOGENES OF THE VICTORIANS + +_By_ STUART P. SHERMAN + + + Professor Sherman's cold compress, applied to the Butler cult, + caused much suffering in some regions, where it was said to be more + than a cooling bandage--in fact, a wet blanket. In the general + rough-and-tumble among critical standards during recent years, Mr. + Sherman is one of those who have dealt some swinging blows in favor + of the Victorians and the literary Old Guard--which was often + square but rarely hollow. + + Stuart Pratt Sherman, born in Iowa in 1881, graduated from Williams + in 1903, has been since 1911 professor of English at the University + of Illinois. His own account of his adventures, written without + intended publication, is worth consideration. He says: + + "My life hasn't been quite as dryly 'academic,' nor as simply + 'middle-Western,' as the record indicates. For example: I lived in + Los Angeles from my 5th to my 13th year, and then went on a seven + months' adventure in gold mining in the Black Cañon of Arizona, + where I had some experience with drouth in the desert, etc. That is + not 'literary.' + + "Recently, I've been thinking I might write a little paper about + some college friends at Williams. I was in college with Harry James + Smith (author of _Mrs. Bumpstead Lee_), Max Eastman, and + 'Go-to-Hell' Whittlesey. As editor of the _Williams Monthly_ I have + accepted and rejected manuscripts of both the two latter, and have + reminiscences of their literary youth. + + "Then I spent a summer in the _Post_ and _Nation_ in 1908, which is + a pleasant chapter to remember; another summer teaching at + Columbia; this past summer teaching at the University of + California. My favorite recreations are climbing little mountains, + chopping wood, and canoeing on Lake Michigan. + + "This summer I have been picking out a place to die in--or rather + looking over the sites offered in California. I lean towards the + high Sierras, up above the Yosemite Valley. + + "My ambition in life is to retire--perhaps at the age of + seventy--and write only for amusement. When I can abandon the task + of improving my contemporaries, I hope to become a popular + author." + + Professor Sherman, you will note, is almost an exact contemporary + of H. L. Mencken, with whom he has crossed swords in more than one + spirited encounter; and Sherman is likely to give as good as he + takes in such scuffles, or even rather better. It is high time that + his critical sagacity and powerful reasoning were better known in + the market-place. + + + +UNTIL I met the Butlerians I used to think that the religious spirit in +our times was very precious, there was so little of it. I thought one +should hold one's breath before it as before the flicker of one's last +match on a cold night in the woods. "What if it should go out?" I said; +but my apprehension was groundless. It can never go out. The religious +spirit is indestructible and constant in quantity like the sum of +universal energy in which matches and suns are alike but momentary +sparkles and phases. This great truth I learned of the Butlerians: +Though the forms and objects of religious belief wax old as a garment +and are changed, faith, which is, after all, the precious thing, endures +forever. Destroy a man's faith in God and he will worship humanity; +destroy his faith in humanity and he will worship science; destroy his +faith in science and he will worship himself; destroy his faith in +himself and he will worship Samuel Butler. + +What makes the Butlerian cult so impressive is, of course, that Butler, +poor dear, as the English say, was the least worshipful of men. He was +not even--till his posthumous disciples made him so--a person of any +particular importance. One writing a private memorandum of his death +might have produced something like this: Samuel Butler was an +unsociable, burry, crotchety, obstinate old bachelor, a dilettante in +art and science, an unsuccessful author, a witty cynic of inquisitive +temper and, comprehensively speaking, the unregarded Diogenes of the +Victorians. Son of a clergyman and grandson of a bishop, born in 1835, +educated at Cambridge, he began to prepare for ordination. But, as we +are told, because of scruples regarding infant baptism he abandoned the +prospect of holy orders and in 1859 sailed for New Zealand, where with +capital supplied by his father he engaged in sheep-farming for five +years. In 1864, returning to England with £8,000, he established himself +for life at Clifford's Inn, London. He devoted some years to painting, +adored Handel and dabbled in music, made occasional trips to Sicily and +Italy, and wrote a dozen books, which generally fell dead from the +press, on religion, literature, art and scientific theory. "Erewhon," +however, a Utopian romance published in 1872, had by 1899 sold between +three and four thousand copies. Butler made few friends and apparently +never married. He died in 1902. His last words were: "Have you brought +the cheque book, Alfred?" His body was cremated and the ashes were +buried in a garden by his biographer and his man-servant, with nothing +to mark the spot. + +Butler's indifference to the disposal of his earthly part betokens no +contempt for fame. Denied contemporary renown, he had firmly set his +heart on immortality, and quietly, persistently, cannily provided for +it. If he could not go down to posterity by the suffrage of his +countrymen, he would go down by the shrewd use of his cheque book; he +would buy his way in. He bought the publication of most of the books +produced in his lifetime. He diligently prepared manuscripts for +posthumous publication and accumulated and arranged great masses of +materials for a biographer. He insured an interest in his literary +remains by bequeathing them and all his copyrights to his literary +executor, R. A. Streatfeild. He purchased an interest in a biographer by +persuading Henry Festing Jones, a feckless lawyer of Butlerian +proclivities, to abandon the law and become his musical and literary +companion. In return for these services Mr. Jones received between 1887 +and 1900 an allowance of £200 a year, and at Butler's death a bequest of +£500, the musical copyrights and the manifest responsibility and +privilege of assisting Streatfeild with the propagation of Butler's +fame, together with their own, in the next generation. + +These good and faithful servants performed their duties with exemplary +zeal and astuteness. In 1903, the year following the Master's death, +Streatfeild published "The Way of All Flesh," a book packed with +satirical wit, the first since "Erewhon" which was capable of walking +off on its own legs and exciting general curiosity about its +author--curiosity intensified by the announcement that the novel had +been written between 1872 and 1884. In the wake of this sensation there +began the systematic annual relaunching of old works, with fresh +introductions and memoirs and a piecemeal feeding out of other literary +remains, culminating in 1917 with the publication of "The Note-Books," a +skilful collection and condensation of the whole of Butler's +intellectual life. Meanwhile, in 1908, the Erewhon dinner had been +instituted. In spite of mild deprecation, this feast, with its two +toasts to his Majesty and to the memory of Samuel Butler, assumed from +the outset the aspect of a solemn sacrament of believers. Among these +was conspicuous on the second occasion Mr. George Bernard Shaw, not +quite certain, perhaps, whether he had come to give or to receive honor, +whether he was himself to be regarded as the beloved disciple or rather +as the one for whom Butler, preaching in the Victorian wilderness, had +prepared the way with "free and future-piercing suggestions." + +By 1914 Streatfeild was able to declare that no fragment of Butler's was +too insignificant to publish. In 1915 and 1916 appeared extensive +critical studies by Gilbert Cannan and John F. Harris. In 1919 at last +arrives Henry Festing Jones with the authoritative memoir in two +enormous volumes with portraits, documents, sumptuous index, elaborate +bibliography and a pious accounting to the public for the original +manuscripts, which have been deposited like sacred relics at St. John's +College, the Bodleian, the British Museum, the Library of Congress and +at various shrines in Italy and Sicily. Here are materials for a fresh +consideration of the man in relation to his work. + +The unconverted will say that such a monument to such a man is absurdly +disproportionate. But Butler is now more than a man. He is a spiritual +ancestor, leader of a movement, moulder of young minds, founder of a +faith. His monument is designed not merely to preserve his memory but to +mark as well the present importance of the Butlerian sect. The memoir +appears to have been written primarily for them. The faithful will no +doubt find it delicious; and I, though an outsider, got through it +without fatigue and with a kind of perverse pleasure in its perversity. + +It is very instructive, but it by no means simplifies its puzzling and +complex subject. Mr. Jones is not of the biographers who look into the +heart of a man, reduce him to a formula and recreate him in accordance +with it. He works from the outside, inward, and gradually achieves life +and reality by an immense accumulation of objective detail, without +ever plucking out, or even plucking at, the heart of the mystery. What +was the man's "master passion" and his master faculty? Butler himself +did not know; consequently he could not always distinguish his wisdom +from his folly. He was an ironist entangled in his own net and an +egotist bitten with self-distrust, concealing his wounds in +self-assertion and his hesitancies in an external aggressiveness. Mr. +Jones pierces the shell here and there, but never removes it. +Considering his opportunities, he is sparing in composed studies of his +subject based on his own direct observation; and, with all his +ingenuousness and his shocking but illuminating indiscretions, he is +frequently silent as a tomb where he must certainly possess information +for which every reader will inquire, particularly those readers who do +not, like the Butlerians, accept Samuel Butler as the happy +reincarnation of moderation, common sense and fearless honesty. + +The whole case of the Georgians against the Victorians might be fought +out over his life and works; and indeed there has already been many a +skirmish in that quarter. For, of course, neither Streatfeild nor Mr. +Jones is ultimately responsible for his revival. Ultimately Butler's +vogue is due to the fact that he is a friend of the Georgian revolution +against idealism in the very citadel of the enemy; the extraordinary +acclaim with which he is now received is his reward for having long ago +prepared to betray the Victorians into the hands of a ruthless +posterity. He was a traitor to his own times, and therefore it follows +that he was a man profoundly disillusioned. The question which we may +all reasonably raise with regard to a traitor whom we have received +within our lines is whether he will make us a good citizen. We should +like to know pretty thoroughly how he fell out with his +countrymen--whether through defects in his own temper and character or +through a clear-eyed and righteous indignation with the incorrigible +viciousness of their manners and institutions. We should like to know +what vision of reformation succeeded his disillusion. Hitherto the +Georgians have been more eloquent in their disillusions than in their +visions, and have inclined to welcome Butler as a dissolving agent +without much inspecting his solution. + +The Butlerians admire Butler for his withering attack on family life, +notably in "The Way of All Flesh"; and many a studious literary man with +a talkative wife and eight romping children would, of course, admit an +occasional flash of romantic envy for Butler's bachelor apartments. Mr. +Jones tells us that Theobald and Christina Pontifex, whose nakedness +Butler uncovers, were drawn without exaggeration from his own father and +mother. His work on them is a masterpiece of pitiless satire. Butler +appears to have hated his father, despised his mother and loathed his +sisters in all truth and sincerity. He nursed his vindictive and +contemptuous feelings towards them all through his life; he studied +these feelings, made notes on them, jested out of them, lived in them, +reduced them to a philosophy of domestic antipathy. + +He was far more learned than any other English author in the psychology +of impiety. When he heard some one say, "Two are better than one," he +exclaimed, "Yes, but the man who said that did not know my sisters." +When he was forty-eight years old he wrote to a friend that his father +was in poor health and not likely to recover; "but may hang on for +months or go off with the N. E. winds which we are sure to have later +on." In the same letter he writes that he is going to strike out forty +weak pages in "Erewhon" and stick in forty stronger ones on the "trial +of a middle-aged man 'for not having lost his father at a suitable +age.'" His father's one unpardonable offense was not dying early and so +enlarging his son's income. If this had been a jest, it would have been +a little coarse for a deathbed. But Mr. Jones, who appears to think it +very amusing, proves clearly enough that it was not a jest, but an +obsession, and a horrid obsession it was. Now a man who attacks the +family because his father does not die as promptly as could be desired +is not likely to propose a happy substitute: his mood is not +reconstructive, funny though it may be in two old boys of fifty, like +Butler and Jones, living along like spoiled children on allowances, +Butler from his father, Jones from his mother. + +The Butlerians admire Butler for his brilliant attack on "romantic" +relations between the sexes. Before the advent of Shaw he poured poison +on the roots of that imaginative love in which all normal men and +maidens walk at least once in a lifetime as in a rosy cloud shot through +with golden lights. + +His portraits show a man of vigorous physique, capable of passion, a +face distinctly virile, rather harshly bearded, with broad masculine +eyebrows. Was he ever in love? If not, why was he not? Elementary +questions which his biographer after a thousand pages leaves unanswered. +Mr. Jones asserts that both Overton and Ernest in "The Way of All Flesh" +are in the main accurately autobiographical, and he furnishes much +evidence for the point. He remarks a divergence in this fact, that +Butler, unlike his hero, was never in prison. Did Butler, like his hero, +have children and farm them out? The point is of some interest in the +case of a man who is helping us to destroy the conventional family. + +Mr. Jones leaves quite in the dark his relations with such women as the +late Queen Victoria would not have approved, relations which J. B. +Yeats has, however, publicly discussed. Mr. Jones is ordinarily cynical +enough, candid enough, as we shall see. He takes pains to tell us that +his own grandfather was never married. He does not hesitate to +acknowledge abundance of moral ugliness in his subject. Why this access +of Victorian reticence at a point where plain-speaking is the order of +the day and the special pride of contemporary Erewhonians? Why did a +young man of Butler's tastes leave the church and go into exile in New +Zealand for five years? Could a more resolute biographer perhaps find a +more "realistic" explanation than difficulties over infant baptism? Mr. +Shaw told his publisher that Butler was "a shy old bird." In some +respects he was also a sly old bird. + +Among the "future-piercing suggestions" extolled by Mr. Shaw we may be +sure that the author of "Man and Superman" was pleased to acknowledge +Butler's prediscovery that woman is the pursuer. This idea we may now +trace quite definitely to his relations with Miss Savage, a witty, +sensible, presumably virtuous woman of about his own age, living in a +club in London, who urged him to write fiction, read all his +manuscripts, knitted him socks, reviewed his books in women's magazines +and corresponded with him for years till she died, without his +knowledge, in hospital from cancer. Her letters are Mr. Jones' mainstay +in his first volume and she is, except Butler himself, altogether his +most interesting personality. Mr. Jones says that being unable to find +any one who could authorize him to use her letters, he publishes them on +his own responsibility. But he adds, "I cannot imagine that any relation +of hers who may read her letters will experience any feelings other than +pride and delight." This lady, he tells us, was the original of Alethea +Pontifex. But he marks a difference. Alethea was handsome. Miss Savage, +he says, was short, fat, had hip disease, and "that kind of dowdiness +which I used to associate with ladies who had been at school with my +mother." Butler became persuaded that Miss Savage loved him; this bored +him; and the correspondence would lapse till he felt the need of her +cheery friendship again. On one occasion she wrote to him, "I wish that +you did not know wrong from right." Mr. Jones believes that she was +alluding to his scrupulousness in matters of business. Butler himself +construed the words as an overture to which he was indisposed to +respond. The debate on this point and the pretty uncertainty in which it +is left can surely arouse in Miss Savage's relations no other feelings +than "pride and delight." + +This brings us to the Butlerian substitute for the chivalry which used +to be practised by those who bore what the Victorians called "the grand +old name of gentleman." In his later years, after the death of Miss +Savage, in periods of loneliness, depression and ill-health, Butler made +notes on his correspondence reproaching himself for his ill-treatment of +her. "He also," says his biographer, "tried to express his remorse" in +two sonnets from which I extract some lines: + + She was too kind, wooed too persistently, + Wrote moving letters to me day by day; + + Hard though I tried to love I tried in vain, + For she was plain and lame and fat and short, + Forty and overkind. + + 'Tis said that if a woman woo, no man + Should leave her till she have prevailed; and, true, + A man will yield for pity if he can, + But if the flesh rebel what can he do? + I could not; hence I grieve my whole life long + The wrong I did in that I did no wrong. + +In these Butlerian times one who should speak of "good taste" would +incur the risk of being called a prig. Good taste is no longer "in." Yet +even now, in the face of these sonnets, may not one exclaim, Heaven +preserve us from the remorseful moments of a Butlerian Adonis of fifty! + +The descendants of eminent Victorians may well be thankful that their +fathers had no intimate relations with Butler. There is a familiar story +of Whistler, that when some one praised his latest portrait as equal to +Velasquez, he snapped back, "Yes, but why lug in Velasquez?" Butler, +with similar aversion for rivals, but without Whistler's extempore wit, +slowly excogitated his killing sallies and entered them in his +note-books or sent them in a letter to Miss Savage, preserving a copy +for the delectation of the next age: "I do not see how I can well call +Mr. Darwin the Pecksniff of Science, though this is exactly what he is; +but I think I may call Lord Bacon the Pecksniff of his age and then, a +little later, say that Mr. Darwin is the Bacon of the Victorian Era." To +this he adds another note reminding himself to call "Tennyson the Darwin +of Poetry, and Darwin the Tennyson of Science." I can recall but one +work of a contemporary mentioned favorably in the biography; perhaps +there are two. The staple of his comment runs about as follows: +"Middlemarch" is a "longwinded piece of studied brag"; of "John +Inglesant," "I seldom was more displeased with any book"; of "Aurora +Leigh," "I dislike it very much, but I liked it better than Mrs. +Browning, or Mr., either"; of Rossetti, "I dislike his face and his +manner and his work, and I hate his poetry and his friends"; of George +Meredith, "No wonder if his work repels me that mine should repel him"; +"all I remember is that I disliked and distrusted Morley"; of Gladstone, +"Who was it said that he was 'a good man in the very worst sense of the +words'?" The homicidal spirit here exhibited may be fairly related to +his anxiety for the death of his father. + +It was on the whole characteristic of Victorian free-thinkers to attack +Christianity with reverence and discrimination in an attempt to preserve +its substance while removing obstacles to the acceptance of its +substance. Butler was Voltairean. When he did not attack mischievously +like a gamin, he attacked vindictively like an Italian laborer whose +sweetheart has been false to him. I have seen it stated that he was a +broad churchman and a communicant; and Mr. Jones produces a letter from +a clergyman testifying to his "saintliness." But this must be some of +Mr. Jones's fun. From Gibbon, read on the voyage to New Zealand, Butler +imbibed, he says, in a letter of 1861, "a calm and philosophic spirit of +impartial and critical investigation." In 1862 he writes: "For the +present I renounce Christianity altogether. You say people must have +something to believe in. I can only say that I have not found my +digestion impeded since I left off believing in what does not appear to +be supported by sufficient evidence." When in 1865 he printed his +"Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ," the manner of his +attack was impish; and so was the gleeful exchange of notes between him +and Miss Savage over the way the orthodox swallowed the bait. In his +notebook he wrote: "Mead is the lowest of the intoxicants, just as +Church is the lowest of the dissipations, and carraway seed the lowest +of the condiments." He went to church once in 1883 to please a friend +and was asked whether it had not bored him as inconsistent with his +principles. "I said that, having given up Christianity, I was not going +to be hampered by its principles. It was the substance of Christianity, +and not its accessories of external worship, that I had objected to ... +so I went to church out of pure cussedness." Finally, in a note of 1889: +"There will be no comfortable and safe development of our social +arrangements--I mean we shall not get infanticide, and the permission of +suicide, nor cheap and easy divorce--till Jesus Christ's ghost has been +laid; and the best way to lay it is to be a moderate churchman." + +Robert Burns was a free-thinker, but he wrote the "Cotter's Saturday +Night"; Renan was a free-thinker, but he buried his God in purple; +Matthew Arnold was a free-thinker, but he gave new life to the religious +poetry of the Bible; Henry Adams believed only in mathematical physics, +but he wrote of Mont St. Michel and Chartres with chivalrous and almost +Catholic tenderness for the Virgin: for in all these diverse men there +was reverence for what men have adored as their highest. There was +respect for a tomb, even for the tomb of a God. Butler, having +transferred his faith to the Bank of England, diverted himself like a +street Arab with a slingshot by peppering the church windows. He +established manners for the contemporary Butlerian who, coming down to +breakfast on Christmas morning, exclaims with a pleased smile, "Well, +this is the birthday of the hook-nosed Nazarene!" + +Butler's moral note is rather attractive to young and middle-aged +persons: "We have all sinned and come short of the glory of making +ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done." His ethics is +founded realistically on physiology and economics; for "goodness is +naught unless it tends towards old age and sufficiency of means." +Pleasure, dressed like a quiet man of the world, is the best teacher: +"The devil, when he dresses himself in angels' clothes, can only be +detected by experts of exceptional skill, and so often does he adopt +this disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at +all, and prudent people will follow after pleasure as a more homely but +more respectable and on the whole more trustworthy guide." There we have +something of the tone of our genial Franklin; but Butler is a Franklin +without a single impulse of Franklin's wide benevolence and practical +beneficence, a Franklin shorn of the spirit of his greatness, namely, +his immensely intelligent social consciousness. + +Having disposed of Christianity, orthodox and otherwise, and having +reduced the morality of "enlightened selfishness" to its lowest terms, +Butler turned in the same spirit to the destruction of orthodox +Victorian science. We are less concerned for the moment with his +substance than with his character and manner as scientific +controversialist. "If I cannot," he wrote, "and I know I cannot, get the +literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know +I can, heave bricks into the middle of them." Though such professional +training as he had was for the church and for painting, he seems never +to have doubted that his mother wit was sufficient equipment, +supplemented by reading in the British Museum, for the overthrow of men +like Darwin, Wallace and Huxley, who from boyhood had given their lives +to collecting, studying and experimenting with scientific data. "I am +quite ready to admit," he records, "that I am in a conspiracy of one +against men of science in general." Having felt himself covertly +slighted in a book for which Darwin was responsible, he vindictively +assailed, not merely the work, but also the character of Darwin and his +friends, who, naturally inferring that he was an unscrupulous "bounder" +seeking notoriety, generally ignored him. + +His first "contribution" to evolutionary theory had been a humorous +skit, written in New Zealand, on the evolution of machines, suggested by +"The Origin of Species," and later included in "Erewhon." To support +this whimsy he found it useful to revive the abandoned "argument from +design"; and mother wit, still working whimsically, leaped to the +conception that the organs of our bodies are machines. Thereupon he +commenced serious scientific speculator, and produced "Life and Habit," +1878; "Evolution Old and New," 1879; "Unconscious Memory," 1880; and +"Luck or Cunning," 1886. The germ of all his speculations, contained in +his first volume, is the notion of "the oneness of personality existing +between parents and offspring up to the time that the offspring leaves +the parent's body"; thence develops his theory that the offspring +"unconsciously" remembers what happened to the parents; and thence his +theory that a vitalistic purposeful cunning, as opposed to the Darwinian +chance, is the significant factor in evolution. His theory has something +in common with current philosophical speculation, and it is in part, as +I understand, a kind of adumbration, a shrewd guess, at the present +attitude of cytologists. It has thus entitled Butler to half a dozen +footnotes in a centenary volume on Darwin; but it hardly justifies his +transference of Darwin's laurels to Button, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin and +himself; nor does it justify his reiterated contention that Darwin was +a plagiarist, a fraud, a Pecksniff and a liar. He swelled the ephemeral +body of scientific speculation; but his contribution to the verified +body of science was negligible, and the injuries that he inflicted upon +the scientific spirit were considerable. + +For their symptomatic value, we must glance at Butler's sallies into +some other fields. He held as an educational principle that it is hardly +worth while to study any subject till one is ready to use it. When in +his fifties he wished to write music, he took up for the first time the +study of counterpoint. Mr. Garnett having inquired what subject Butler +and Jones would take up when they had finished "Narcissus," Butler said +that they "might write an oratorio on some sacred subject"; and when +Garnett asked whether they had anything in particular in mind, he +replied that they were thinking of "The Woman Taken in Adultery." In the +same decade he cheerfully applied for the Slade professorship of art at +Cambridge; and he took credit for the rediscovery of a lost school of +sculpture. + +At the age of fifty-five he brushed up his Greek, which he "had not +wholly forgotten," and read the "Odyssey" for the purposes of his +oratorio, "Ulysses." When he got to Circe it suddenly flashed upon him +that he was reading the work of a young woman! Thereupon he produced his +book, "The Authoress of the Odyssey," with portrait of the authoress, +Nausicaa, identification of her birthplace in Sicily, which pleased the +Sicilians, and an account of the way in which she wrote her poem. It was +the most startling literary discovery since Delia Bacon burst into the +silent sea on which Colonel Fabyan of the biliteral cypher is the latest +navigator. That the classical scholars laughed at or ignored him did not +shake his belief that the work was as important as anything he had done. +"Perhaps it was," he would have remarked, if any one else had written +it. "I am a prose man," he wrote to Robert Bridges, "and, except Homer +and Shakespeare"--he should have added Nausicaa--"I have read absolutely +nothing of English poetry and _very little_ of English prose." His +inacquaintance with English poetry, however, did not embarrass him, +when, two years after bringing out his Sicilian authoress, he cleared up +the mysteries of Shakespeare's sonnets. Nor did it prevent his +dismissing the skeptical Dr. Furnivall, after a discussion at an A. B. +C. shop, as a poor old incompetent. "Nothing," said Alethea Pontifex, +speaking for her creator, "is well done nor worth doing unless, take it +all round, it has come pretty easily." The poor old doctor, like the +Greek scholars and the professional men of science, had blunted his wits +by too much research. + +Butler maintained that every man's work is a portrait of himself, and +in his own case the features stand out ruggedly enough. Why should any +one see in this infatuated pursuer of paradox a reincarnation of the +pagan wisdom? In his small personal affairs he shows a certain +old-maidish tidiness and the prudence of an experienced old bachelor, +who manages his little pleasures without scandal. But in his +intellectual life what vestige do we find of the Greek or even of the +Roman sobriety, poise and decorum? In one respect Butler was +conservative: he respected the established political and economic order. +But he respected it only because it enabled him, without bestirring +himself about his bread and butter, to sit quietly in his rooms at +Clifford's Inn and invent attacks on every other form of orthodoxy. With +a desire to be conspicuous only surpassed by his desire to be original +he worked out the central Butlerian principle; videlicet: The fact that +all the best qualified judges agree that a thing is true and valuable +establishes an overwhelming presumption that it is valueless and false. +With his feet firmly planted on this grand radical maxim he employed his +lively wit with lawyer-like ingenuity to make out a case against family +life, of which he was incapable; against imaginative love, of which he +was ignorant; against chivalry, otherwise the conventions of gentlemen, +which he had but imperfectly learned; against Victorian men of letters, +whom, by his own account, he had never read; against altruistic +morality and the substance of Christianity, which were repugnant to his +selfishness and other vices; against Victorian men of science, whose +researches he had never imitated; and against Elizabethan and classical +scholarship, which he took up in an odd moment as one plays a game of +solitaire before going to bed. To his disciples he could not bequeath +his cleverness; but he left them his recipe for originality, his manners +and his assurance, which has been gathering compound interest ever +since. In the original manuscript of "Alps and Sanctuaries" he consigned +"Raffaele, along with Socrates, Virgil [the last two displaced later by +Plato and Dante], Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Goethe, Beethoven, and +_another_, to limbo as the Seven Humbugs of Christiandom." Who was the +unnamed seventh? + + + + +BED-BOOKS AND NIGHT-LIGHTS + +_By_ H. M. TOMLINSON + + + I shall not forget with what a thrill of delight I came upon H. M. + Tomlinson's _Old Junk_, the volume of essays from which this is + borrowed. One feels, in stumbling upon such a book, much as some + happy and astounded readers must have felt in 1878 when _An Inland + Voyage_ came out. It makes one wonder, submitting one's self to the + moving music and magic of that prose, so simple and yet so subtle + in its flavor, whether poetry is not, after all, an inferior and + more mechanic form. "The cool element of prose," that perfect + phrase of Milton's, comes back to mind. How direct and satisfying a + passage to the mind Mr. Tomlinson's paragraphs have. How they build + and cumulate, how the sentences shift, turn and move in delicate + loops and ridges under the blowing wind of thought, like the sand + of the dunes that he describes in one essay. And through it all, as + intangible but as real and beautifying as moonlight, there is the + pervading brightness of a particular way of looking at the world, + something for which we have no catchword, the illumination of a + spirit at once humorous, melancholy, shrewd, lovely and humane. + Somehow, when one is caught in the web of that exquisite, + considered prose, the awkward symbols of speech seem transparent; + we come close to a man's mind. + + In Mr. Tomlinson's three books--_The Sea and the Jungle_ (1912), + _Old Junk_ (1920) and _London River_ (1921) is revealed one of the + most sincere and perfect workmen in contemporary prose. + + H. M. Tomlinson was born in 1873; among his early memories he + records: "I was an office boy and a clerk among London's ships, in + the last days of the clippers. And I am forced to recall some of + the things--such as bookkeeping in a jam factory and stoking on a + tramp steamer." He joined the staff of the London _Morning Leader_ + in 1904; which was later merged with the _Daily News_, and to this + journal he was attached for several years. During the War he was a + correspondent in France; at the danger of incurring his anger + (should he see this) I quote Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe on this phase of + his work:--"One who was the friend of all, a sweet and fine spirit + moving untouched amid the ruin and terror, expressing itself + everywhere with perfect simplicity, and at times with a shattering + candor." + + In 1917 he became associate editor of the London _Nation_, where, + if you are interested, you may find his initials almost weekly. + + +The rain flashed across the midnight window with a myriad feet. There +was a groan in outer darkness, the voice of all nameless dreads. The +nervous candle-flame shuddered by my bedside. The groaning rose to a +shriek, and the little flame jumped in a panic, and nearly left its +white column. Out of the corners of the room swarmed the released +shadows. Black specters danced in ecstasy over my bed. I love fresh air, +but I cannot allow it to slay the shining and delicate body of my little +friend the candle-flame, the comrade who ventures with me into the +solitudes beyond midnight. I shut the window. + +They talk of the candle-power of an electric bulb. What do they mean? It +cannot have the faintest glimmer of the real power of my candle. It +would be as right to express, in the same inverted and foolish +comparison, the worth of "those delicate sisters, the Pleiades." That +pinch of star dust, the Pleiades, exquisitely remote in deepest night, +in the profound where light all but fails, has not the power of a +sulphur match; yet, still apprehensive to the mind though tremulous on +the limit of vision, and sometimes even vanishing, it brings into +distinction those distant and difficult hints--hidden far behind all our +verified thoughts--which we rarely properly view. I should like to know +of any great arc-lamp which could do that. So the star-like candle for +me. No other light follows so intimately an author's most ghostly +suggestion. We sit, the candle and I, in the midst of the shades we are +conquering, and sometimes look up from the lucent page to contemplate +the dark hosts of the enemy with a smile before they overwhelm us; as +they will, of course. Like me, the candle is mortal; it will burn out. + +As the bed-book itself should be a sort of night-light, to assist its +illumination, coarse lamps are useless. They would douse the book. The +light for such a book must accord with it. It must be, like the book, a +limited, personal, mellow, and companionable glow; the solitary taper +beside the only worshiper in a sanctuary. That is why nothing can +compare with the intimacy of candle-light for a bed-book. It is a living +heart, bright and warm in central night, burning for us alone, holding +the gaunt and towering shadows at bay. There the monstrous specters +stand in our midnight room, the advance guard of the darkness of the +world, held off by our valiant little glim, but ready to flood instantly +and founder us in original gloom. + +The wind moans without; ancient evils are at large and wandering in +torment. The rain shrieks across the window. For a moment, for just a +moment, the sentinel candle is shaken, and burns blue with terror. The +shadows leap out instantly. The little flame recovers, and merely looks +at its foe the darkness, and back to its own place goes the old enemy +of light and man. The candle for me, tiny, mortal, warm, and brave, a +golden lily on a silver stem! + +"Almost any book does for a bed-book," a woman once said to me. I nearly +replied in a hurry that almost any woman would do for a wife; but that +is not the way to bring people to conviction of sin. Her idea was that +the bed-book is soporific, and for that reason she even advocated the +reading of political speeches. That would be a dissolute act. Certainly +you would go to sleep; but in what a frame of mind! You would enter into +sleep with your eyes shut. It would be like dying, not only unshriven, +but in the act of guilt. + +What book shall it shine upon? Think of Plato, or Dante, or Tolstoy, or +a Blue Book for such an occasion! I cannot. They will not do--they are +no good to me. I am not writing about you. I know those men I have named +are transcendent, the greater lights. But I am bound to confess at times +they bore me. Though their feet are clay and on earth, just as ours, +their stellar brows are sometimes dim in remote clouds. For my part, +they are too big for bed-fellows. I cannot see myself, carrying my +feeble and restricted glim, following (in pajamas) the statuesque figure +of the Florentine where it stalks, aloof in its garb of austere pity, +the sonorous deeps of Hades. Hades! Not for me; not after midnight! Let +those go who like it. + +As for the Russian, vast and disquieting, I refuse to leave all, +including the blankets and the pillow, to follow him into the gelid +tranquillity of the upper air, where even the colors are prismatic +spicules of ice, to brood upon the erratic orbit of the poor mud-ball +below called earth. I know it is my world also; but I cannot help that. +It is too late, after a busy day, and at that hour, to begin overtime on +fashioning a new and better planet out of cosmic dust. By +breakfast-time, nothing useful would have been accomplished. We should +all be where we were the night before. The job is far too long, once the +pillow is nicely set. + +For the truth is, there are times when we are too weary to remain +attentive and thankful under the improving eye, kindly but severe, of +the seers. There are times when we do not wish to be any better than we +are. We do not wish to be elevated and improved. At midnight, away with +such books! As for the literary pundits, the high priests of the Temple +of Letters, it is interesting and helpful occasionally for an acolyte to +swinge them a good hard one with an incense-burner, and cut and run, for +a change, to something outside the rubrics. Midnight is the time when +one can recall, with ribald delight, the names of all the Great Works +which every gentleman ought to have read, but which some of us have +not. For there is almost as much clotted nonsense written about +literature as there is about theology. + +There are few books which go with midnight, solitude, and a candle. It +is much easier to say what does not please us then than what is exactly +right. The book must be, anyhow, something benedictory by a sinning +fellow-man. Cleverness would be repellent at such an hour. Cleverness, +anyhow, is the level of mediocrity to-day; we are all too infernally +clever. The first witty and perverse paradox blows out the candle. Only +the sick in mind crave cleverness, as a morbid body turns to drink. The +late candle throws its beams a great distance; and its rays make +transparent much that seemed massy and important. The mind at rest +beside that light, when the house is asleep, and the consequential +affairs of the urgent world have diminished to their right proportions +because we see them distantly from another and a more tranquil place in +the heavens where duty, honor, witty arguments, controversial logic on +great questions, appear such as will leave hardly a trace of fossil in +the indurated mud which presently will cover them--the mind then +certainly smiles at cleverness. + +For though at that hour the body may be dog-tired, the mind is white and +lucid, like that of a man from whom a fever has abated. It is bare of +illusions. It has a sharp focus, small and starlike, as a clear and +lonely flame left burning by the altar of a shrine from which all have +gone but one. A book which approaches that light in the privacy of that +place must come, as it were, with honest and open pages. + +I like Heine then, though. His mockery of the grave and great, in those +sentences which are as brave as pennants in a breeze, is comfortable and +sedative. One's own secret and awkward convictions, never expressed +because not lawful and because it is hard to get words to bear them +lightly, seem then to be heard aloud in the mild, easy, and confident +diction of an immortal whose voice has the blitheness of one who has +watched, amused and irreverent, the high gods in eager and secret debate +on the best way to keep the gilt and trappings on the body of the evil +they have created. + +That first-rate explorer, Gulliver, is also fine in the light of the +intimate candle. Have you read lately again his Voyage to the +Houyhnhnms? Try it alone again in quiet. Swift knew all about our +contemporary troubles. He has got it all down. Why was he called a +misanthrope? Reading that last voyage of Gulliver in the select intimacy +of midnight I am forced to wonder, not at Swift's hatred of mankind, not +at his satire of his fellows, not at the strange and terrible nature of +this genius who thought that much of us, but how it is that after such a +wise and sorrowful revealing of the things we insist on doing, and our +reasons for doing them, and what happens after we have done them, men do +not change. It does seem impossible that society could remain unaltered, +after the surprise its appearance should have caused it as it saw its +face in that ruthless mirror. We point instead to the fact that Swift +lost his mind in the end. Well, that is not a matter for surprise. + +Such books, and France's "Isle of Penguins," are not disturbing as +bed-books. They resolve one's agitated and outraged soul, relieving it +with some free expression for the accusing and questioning thoughts +engendered by the day's affairs. But they do not rest immediately to +hand in the book-shelf by the bed. They depend on the kind of day one +has had. Sterne is closer. One would rather be transported as far as +possible from all the disturbances of earth's envelope of clouds, and +"Tristram Shandy" is sure to be found in the sun. + +But best of all books for midnight are travel books. Once I was lost +every night for months with Doughty in the "Arabia Deserta." He is a +craggy author. A long course of the ordinary facile stuff, such as one +gets in the Press every day, thinking it is English, sends one +thoughtless and headlong among the bitter herbs and stark boulders of +Doughty's burning and spacious expanse; only to get bewildered, and the +shins broken, and a great fatigue at first, in a strange land of fierce +sun, hunger, glittering spar, ancient plutonic rock, and very Adam +himself. But once you are acclimatized, and know the language--it takes +time--there is no more London after dark, till, a wanderer returned from +a forgotten land, you emerge from the interior of Arabia on the Red Sea +coast again, feeling as though you had lost touch with the world you +used to know. And if that doesn't mean good writing I know of no other +test. + +Because once there was a father whose habit it was to read with his boys +nightly some chapters of the Bible--and cordially they hated that habit +of his--I have that Book too; though I fear I have it for no reason that +he, the rigid old faithful, would be pleased to hear about. He thought +of the future when he read the Bible; I read it for the past. The +familiar names, the familiar rhythm of its words, its wonderful +well-remembered stories of things long past--like that of Esther, one of +the best in English--the eloquent anger of the prophets for the people +then who looked as though they were alive, but were really dead at +heart, all is solace and home to me. And now I think of it, it is our +home and solace that we want in a bed-book. + + + + +THE PRECEPT OF PEACE + +_By_ LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY + + + Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920), one of the rarest poets and most + delicately poised essayists this country has reared, has been + hitherto scantily appreciated by the omnipotent General Reader. Her + dainty spoor is perhaps too lightly trodden upon earth to be + followed by the throng. And yet one has faith in the + imperishability of such a star-dust track. This lovely and profound + "Precept of Peace" is peculiarly characteristic of her, and reminds + one of the humorous tranquillity with which she faced the complete + failure (financially speaking) of almost all her books. There was a + certain sadness in learning, when the news of her death came, that + many of our present-day critical Sanhedrim had never even become + aware of her name. + + There is no space, in this brief note, to do justice to her. The + student will refer to the newly published memoir by her friend, + Alice Brown. + + She was born in Boston in 1861, daughter of General Patrick Guiney + who fought in the Civil War. From 1894-97 she was postmistress in + Auburndale, Mass. Her later years were spent in England, mostly at + Oxford: the Bodleian Library was a candle and she the ecstatic + moth. + + +A certain sort of voluntary abstraction is the oldest and choicest of +social attitudes. In France, where all esthetic discoveries are made, it +was crowned long ago: la sainte indifférence is, or may be, a cult, and +le saint indifférent an articled practitioner. For the Gallic mind, +brought up at the knee of a consistent paradox, has found that not to +appear concerned about a desired good is the only method to possess it; +full happiness is given, in other words, to the very man who will never +sue for it. This is a secret neat as that of the Sphinx: to "go softly" +among events, yet domineer them. Without fear: not because we are brave, +but because we are exempt; we bear so charmed a life that not even +Baldur's mistletoe can touch us to harm us. Without solicitude: for the +essential thing is trained, falcon-like, to light from above upon our +wrists, and it has become with us an automatic motion to open the hand, +and drop what appertains to us no longer. Be it renown or a new hat, the +shorter stick of celery, or + + "The friends to whom we had no natural right, + The homes that were not destined to be ours," + +it is all one: let it fall away! since only so, by depletions, can we +buy serenity and a blithe mien. It is diverting to study, at the feet of +Antisthenes and of Socrates his master, how many indispensables man can +live without; or how many he can gather together, make over into +luxuries, and so abrogate them. Thoreau somewhere expresses himself as +full of divine pity for the "mover," who on May-Day clouds city streets +with his melancholy household caravans: fatal impedimenta for an +immortal. No: furniture is clearly a superstition. "I have little, I +want nothing; all my treasure is in Minerva's tower." Not that the +novice may not accumulate. Rather, let him collect beetles and Venetian +interrogation-marks; if so be that he may distinguish what is truly +extrinsic to him, and bestow these toys, eventually, on the children of +Satan who clamor at the monastery gate. Of all his store, unconsciously +increased, he can always part with sixteen-seventeenths, by way of +concession to his individuality, and think the subtraction so much +concealing marble chipped from the heroic figure of himself. He would be +a donor from the beginning; before he can be seen to own, he will +disencumber, and divide. Strange and fearful is his discovery, amid the +bric-a-brac of the world, that this knowledge, or this material benefit, +is for him alone. He would fain beg off from the acquisition, and shake +the touch of the tangible from his imperious wings. It is not enough to +cease to strive for personal favor; your true indifférent is Early +Franciscan: caring not to have, he fears to hold. Things useful need +never become to him things desirable. Towards all commonly-accounted +sinecures, he bears the coldest front in Nature, like a magician walking +a maze, and scornful of its flower-bordered detentions. "I enjoy life," +says Seneca, "because I am ready to leave it." Meanwhile, they who act +with too jealous respect for their morrow of civilized comfort, reap +only indigestion, and crow's-foot traceries for their deluded +eye-corners. + +Now nothing is farther from le saint indifférent than cheap +indifferentism, so-called: the sickness of sophomores. His business is +to hide, not to display, his lack of interest in fripperies. It is not +he who looks languid, and twiddles his thumbs for sick misplacedness, +like Achilles among girls. On the contrary, he is a smiling industrious +elf, monstrous attentive to the canons of polite society. In relation to +others, he shows what passes for animation and enthusiasm; for at all +times his character is founded on control of these qualities, not on the +absence of them. It flatters his sense of superiority that he may thus +pull wool about the ears of joint and several. He has so strong a will +that it can be crossed and counter-crossed, as by himself, so by a dozen +outsiders, without a break in his apparent phlegm. He has gone through +volition, and come out at the other side of it; everything with him is a +specific act: he has no habits. Le saint indifférent is a dramatic +wight: he loves to refuse your proffered six per cent, when, by a little +haggling, he may obtain three-and-a-half. For so he gets away with his +own mental processes virgin: it is inconceivable to you that, being +sane, he should so comport himself. Amiable, perhaps, only by painful +propulsions and sore vigilance, let him appear the mere inheritor of +easy good-nature. Unselfish out of sheer pride, and ever eager to claim +the slippery side of the pavement, or the end cut of the roast (on the +secret ground, be it understood, that he is not as Capuan men, who +wince at trifles), let him have his ironic reward in passing for one +whose physical connoisseurship is yet in the raw. That sympathy which +his rule forbids his devoting to the usual objects, he expends, with +some bravado, upon their opposites; for he would fain seem a decent +partizan of some sort, not what he is, a bivalve intelligence, Tros +Tyriusque. He is known here and there, for instance, as valorous in +talk; yet he is by nature a solitary, and, for the most part, somewhat +less communicative than + + "The wind that sings to himself as he makes stride, + Lonely and terrible, on the Andean height." + +Imagining nothing idler than words in the face of grave events, he +condoles and congratulates with the genteelest air in the world. In +short, while there is anything expected of him, while there are +spectators to be fooled, the stratagems of the fellow prove +inexhaustible. It is only when he is quite alone that he drops his jaw, +and stretches his legs; then heigho! arises like a smoke, and envelopes +him becomingly, the beautiful native well-bred torpidity of the gods, of +poetic boredom, of "the Oxford manner." + +"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable!" sighed Hamlet of this mortal +outlook. As it came from him in the beginning, that plaint, in its +sincerity, can come only from the man of culture, who feels about him +vast mental spaces and depths, and to whom the face of creation is but +comparative and symbolic. Nor will he breathe it in the common ear, +where it may woo misapprehensions, and breed ignorant rebellion. The +unlettered must ever love or hate what is nearest him, and, for lack of +perspective, think his own fist the size of the sun. The social prizes, +which, with mellowed observers, rank as twelfth or thirteenth in order +of desirability, such as wealth and a foothold in affairs, seem to him +first and sole; and to them he clings like a barnacle. But to our +indifférent, nothing is so vulgar as close suction. He will never +tighten his fingers on loaned opportunity; he is a gentleman, the hero +of the habitually relaxed grasp. A light unprejudiced hold on his +profits strikes him as decent and comely, though his true artistic +pleasure is still in "fallings from us, vanishings." It costs him little +to loose and to forego, to unlace his tentacles, and from the many who +push hard behind, to retire, as it were, on a never-guessed-at +competency, "richer than untempted kings." He would not be a +life-prisoner, in ever so charming a bower. While the tranquil Sabine +Farm is his delight, well he knows that on the dark trail ahead of him, +even Sabine Farms are not sequacious. Thus he learns betimes to play the +guest under his own cedars, and, with disciplinary intent, goes often +from them; and, hearing his heart-strings snap the third night he is +away, rejoices that he is again a freedman. Where his foot is planted +(though it root not anywhere), he calls that spot home. No Unitarian in +locality, it follows that he is the best of travelers, tangential +merely, and pleased with each new vista of the human Past. He sometimes +wishes his understanding less, that he might itch deliciously with a +prejudice. With cosmic congruities, great and general forces, he keeps, +all along, a tacit understanding, such as one has with beloved relatives +at a distance; and his finger, airily inserted in his outer pocket, is +really upon the pulse of eternity. His vocation, however, is to bury +himself in the minor and immediate task; and from his intent manner, he +gets confounded, promptly and permanently, with the victims of +commercial ambition. + +The true use of the much-praised Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, has +hardly been apprehended: he is simply the patron saint of indifférents. +From first to last, almost alone in that discordant time, he seems to +have heard far-off resolving harmonies, and to have been rapt away with +foreknowledge. Battle, to which all knights were bred, was penitential +to him. It was but a childish means: and to what end? He meanwhile--and +no man carried his will in better abeyance to the scheme of the +universe--wanted no diligence in camp or council. Cares sat handsomely +on him who cared not at all, who won small comfort from the cause which +his conscience finally espoused. He labored to be a doer, to stand well +with observers; and none save his intimate friends read his agitation +and profound weariness. "I am so much taken notice of," he writes, "for +an impatient desire for peace, that it is necessary I should likewise +make it appear how it is not out of fear for the utmost hazard of war." +And so, driven from the ardor he had to the simulation of the ardor he +lacked, loyally daring, a sacrifice to one of two transient opinions, +and inly impartial as a star, Lord Falkland fell: the young +never-to-be-forgotten martyr of Newburg field. The imminent deed he made +a work of art; and the station of the moment the only post of honor. +Life and death may be all one to such a man: but he will at least take +the noblest pains to discriminate between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, if +he has to write a book about the variations of their antennæ. And like +the Carolian exemplar is the disciple. The indifférent is a good +thinker, or a good fighter. He is no "immartial minion," as dear old +Chapman suffers Hector to call Tydides. Nevertheless, his sign-manual is +content with humble and stagnant conditions. Talk of scaling the +Himalayas of life affects him, very palpably, as "tall talk." He deals +not with things, but with the impressions and analogies of things. The +material counts for nothing with him: he has moulted it away. Not so +sure of the identity of the higher course of action as he is of his +consecrating dispositions, he feels that he may make heaven again, out +of sundries, as he goes. Shall not a beggarly duty, discharged with +perfect temper, land him in "the out-courts of Glory," quite as +successfully as a grand Sunday-school excursion to front the cruel +Paynim foe? He thinks so. Experts have thought so before him. Francis +Drake, with the national alarum instant in his ears, desired first to +win at bowls, on the Devon sward, "and afterwards to settle with the +Don." No one will claim a buccaneering hero for an indifférent, however. +The Jesuit novices were ball-playing almost at that very time, three +hundred years ago, when some too speculative companion, figuring the end +of the world in a few moments (with just leisure enough, between, to be +shriven in chapel, according to his own thrifty mind), asked Louis of +Gonzaga how he, on his part, should employ the precious interval. "I +should go on with the game," said the most innocent and most ascetic +youth among them. But to cite the behavior of any of the saints is to +step over the playful line allotted. Indifference of the mundane brand +is not to be confounded with their detachment, which is emancipation +wrought in the soul, and the ineffable efflorescence of the Christian +spirit. Like most supernatural virtues, it has a laic shadow; the +counsel to abstain, and to be unsolicitous, is one not only of +perfection, but also of polity. A very little nonadhesion to common +affairs, a little reserve of unconcern, and the gay spirit of sacrifice, +provide the moral immunity which is the only real estate. The +indifférent believes in storms: since tales of shipwreck encompass him. +But once among his own kind, he wonders that folk should be circumvented +by merely extraneous powers! His favorite catch, woven in among escaped +dangers, rises through the roughest weather, and daunts it: + + "Now strike your sailes, ye jolly mariners, + For we be come into a quiet rode." + +No slave to any vicissitude, his imagination is, on the contrary, the +cheerful obstinate tyrant of all that is. He lives, as Keats once said +of himself, "in a thousand worlds," withdrawing at will from one to +another, often curtailing his circumference to enlarge his liberty. His +universe is a universe of balls, like those which the cunning Oriental +carvers make out of ivory; each entire surface perforated with the same +delicate pattern, each moving prettily and inextricably within the +other, and all but the outer one impossible to handle. In some such +innermost asylum the right sort of dare-devil sits smiling, while men +rage or weep. + + + + +ON LYING AWAKE AT NIGHT + +_By_ STEWART EDWARD WHITE + + + This is from _The Forest_--one of Stewart Edward White's many + delightful volumes. A very large public has enjoyed Mr. White's + writings--many of his readers, perhaps, without accurately + realizing how extraordinarily good they are. + + Mr. White was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1873; studied at the + University of Michigan; has hunted big game in Africa; served as + major of field artillery, 1917-18; and is a Fellow of the Royal + Geographical Society. His first book, _The Westerners_, was + published in 1901, since when they have followed regularly. + + +_"Who hath lain alone to hear the wild goose cry?"_ + +About once in so often you are due to lie awake at night. Why this is so +I have never been able to discover. It apparently comes from no +predisposing uneasiness of indigestion, no rashness in the matter of too +much tea or tobacco, no excitation of unusual incident or stimulating +conversation. In fact, you turn in with the expectation of rather a good +night's rest. Almost at once the little noises of the forest grow +larger, blend in the hollow bigness of the first drowse; your thoughts +drift idly back and forth between reality and dream; when--_snap!_--you +are broad awake! + +Perhaps the reservoir of your vital forces is full to the overflow of a +little waste; or perhaps, more subtly, the great Mother insists thus +that you enter the temple of her larger mysteries. + +For, unlike mere insomnia, lying awake at night in the woods is +pleasant. The eager, nervous straining for sleep gives way to a +delicious indifference. You do not care. Your mind is cradled in an +exquisite poppy-suspension of judgment and of thought. Impressions slip +vaguely into your consciousness and as vaguely out again. Sometimes they +stand stark and naked for your inspection; sometimes they lose +themselves in the mist of half-sleep. Always they lay soft velvet +fingers on the drowsy imagination, so that in their caressing you feel +the vaster spaces from which they have come. Peaceful-brooding your +faculties receive. Hearing, sight, smell--all are preternaturally keen +to whatever of sound and sight and woods perfume is abroad through the +night; and yet at the same time active appreciation dozes, so these +things lie on it sweet and cloying like fallen rose-leaves. + +In such circumstance you will hear what the _voyageurs_ call the voices +of the rapids. Many people never hear them at all. They speak very soft +and low and distinct beneath the steady roar and dashing, beneath even +the lesser tinklings and gurglings whose quality superimposes them over +the louder sounds. They are like the tear-forms swimming across the +field of vision, which disappear so quickly when you concentrate your +sight to look at them, and which reappear so magically when again your +gaze turns vacant. In the stillness of your hazy half-consciousness they +speak; when you bend your attention to listen, they are gone, and only +the tumults and the tinklings remain. + +But in the moments of their audibility they are very distinct. Just as +often an odor will wake all a vanished memory, so these voices, by the +force of a large impressionism, suggest whole scenes. Far off are the +cling-clang-cling of chimes and the swell-and-fall murmur of a multitude +_en fête_, so that subtly you feel the gray old town, with its walls, +the crowded market-place, the decent peasant crowd, the booths, the +mellow church building with its bells, the warm, dust-moted sun. Or, in +the pauses between the swish-dash-dashings of the waters, sound faint +and clear voices singing intermittently, calls, distant notes of +laughter, as though many canoes were working against the current--only +the flotilla never gets any nearer, nor the voices louder. The +_voyageurs_ call these mist people the Huntsmen; and look frightened. To +each is his vision, according to his experience. The nations of the +earth whisper to their exiled sons through the voices of the rapids. +Curiously enough, by all reports, they suggest always peaceful scenes--a +harvest-field, a street fair, a Sunday morning in a cathedral town, +careless travelers--never the turmoils and struggles. Perhaps this is +the great Mother's compensation in a harsh mode of life. + +Nothing is more fantastically unreal to tell about, nothing more +concretely real to experience, than this undernote of the quick water. +And when you do lie awake at night, it is always making its unobtrusive +appeal. Gradually its hypnotic spell works. The distant chimes ring +louder and nearer as you cross the borderland of sleep. And then outside +the tent some little woods noise snaps the thread. An owl hoots, a +whippoorwill cries, a twig cracks beneath the cautious prowl of some +night creature--at once the yellow sunlit French meadows puff away--you +are staring at the blurred image of the moon spraying through the +texture of your tent. + +The voices of the rapids have dropped into the background, as have the +dashing noises of the stream. Through the forest is a great silence, but +no stillness at all. The whippoorwill swings down and up the short curve +of his regular song; over and over an owl says his rapid _whoo, whoo, +whoo_. These, with the ceaseless dash of the rapids, are the web on +which the night traces her more delicate embroideries of the unexpected. +Distant crashes, single and impressive; stealthy footsteps near at hand; +the subdued scratching of claws; a faint _sniff! sniff! sniff!_ of +inquiry; the sudden clear tin-horn _ko-ko-ko-óh_ of the little owl; the +mournful, long-drawn-out cry of the loon, instinct with the spirit of +loneliness; the ethereal call-note of the birds of passage high in the +air; a _patter, patter, patter_, among the dead leaves, immediately +stilled; and then at the last, from the thicket close at hand, the +beautiful silver purity of the white-throated sparrow--the nightingale +of the North--trembling with the ecstasy of beauty, as though a +shimmering moonbeam had turned to sound; and all the while the blurred +figure of the moon mounting to the ridge-line of your tent--these things +combine subtly, until at last the great Silence of which they are a part +overarches the night and draws you forth to contemplation. + +No beverage is more grateful than the cup of spring water you drink at +such a time; no moment more refreshing than that in which you look about +you at the darkened forest. You have cast from you with the warm blanket +the drowsiness of dreams. A coolness, physical and spiritual, bathes you +from head to foot. All your senses are keyed to the last vibrations. You +hear the littler night prowlers; you glimpse the greater. A faint, +searching woods perfume of dampness greets your nostrils. And somehow, +mysteriously, in a manner not to be understood, the forces of the world +seem in suspense, as though a touch might crystallize infinite +possibilities into infinite power and motion. But the touch lacks. The +forces hover on the edge of action, unheeding the little noises. In all +humbleness and awe, you are a dweller of the Silent Places. + +At such a time you will meet with adventures. One night we put fourteen +inquisitive porcupines out of camp. Near McGregor's Bay I discovered in +the large grass park of my camp-site nine deer, cropping the herbage +like so many beautiful ghosts. A friend tells me of a fawn that every +night used to sleep outside his tent and within a foot of his head, +probably by way of protection against wolves. Its mother had in all +likelihood been killed. The instant my friend moved toward the tent +opening the little creature would disappear, and it was always gone by +earliest daylight. Nocturnal bears in search of pork are not uncommon. +But even though your interest meets nothing but the bats and the woods +shadows and the stars, that few moments of the sleeping world forces is +a psychical experience to be gained in no other way. You cannot know the +night by sitting up; she will sit up with you. Only by coming into her +presence from the borders of sleep can you meet her face to face in her +intimate mood. + +The night wind from the river, or from the open spaces of the wilds, +chills you after a time. You begin to think of your blankets. In a few +moments you roll yourself in their soft wool. Instantly it is morning. + +And, strange to say, you have not to pay by going through the day +unrefreshed. You may feel like turning in at eight instead of nine, and +you may fall asleep with unusual promptitude, but your journey will +begin clear-headedly, proceed springily, and end with much in reserve. +No languor, no dull headache, no exhaustion, follows your experience. +For this once your two hours of sleep have been as effective as nine. + + + + +A WOODLAND VALENTINE + +_By_ MARIAN STORM + + + Marian Storm was born in Stormville, N. Y., and educated at Penn + Hall, Chambersburg, Pa., and at Smith College. She did editorial + and free-lance work in New York after graduation, and later went to + Washington to become private secretary to the Argentine Ambassador. + Since 1918 she has been connected with the New York _Evening Post_. + + This essay comes from _Minstrel Weather_, a series of open-air + vignettes which circle the zodiac with the attentive eye of a + naturalist and the enchanted ardor of a poet. + + +Forces astir in the deepest roots grow restless beneath the lock of +frost. Bulbs try the door. February's stillness is charged with a faint +anxiety, as if the powers of light, pressing up from the earth's center +and streaming down from the stronger sun, had troubled the buried seeds, +who strive to answer their liberator, so that the guarding mother must +whisper over and over, "Not yet, not yet!" Better to stay behind the +frozen gate than to come too early up into realms where the wolves of +cold are still aprowl. Wisely the snow places a white hand over eager +life unseen, but perceived in February's woods as a swimmer feels the +changing moods of water in a lake fed by springs. Only the thick stars, +closer and more companionable than in months of foliage, burn alert and +serene. In February the Milky Way is revealed divinely lucent to lonely +peoples--herdsmen, mountaineers, fishermen, trappers--who are abroad in +the starlight hours of this grave and silent time of year. It is in the +long, frozen nights that the sky has most red flowers. + +February knows the beat of twilight wings. Drifting north again come +birds who only pretended to forsake us--adventurers, not so fond of +safety but that they dare risk finding how snow bunting and pine finch +have plundered the cones of the evergreens, while chickadees, sparrows, +and crows are supervising from established stations all the more +domestic supplies available, a sparrow often making it possible to annoy +even a duck out of her share of cracked corn. Ranged along a +brown-draped oak branch in the waxing light, crows show a lordly +glistening of feathers. (Sun on a sweeping wing in flight has the +quality of sun on a ripple.) Where hemlocks gather, deep in somber +woods, the great horned owl has thus soon, perhaps working amid snows at +her task, built a nest wherein March will find sturdy balls of fluff. +The thunderous love song of her mate sounds through the timber. By the +time the wren has nested these winter babies will be solemn with the +wisdom of their famous race. + +There is no season like the end of February for cleaning out brooks. +Hastening yellow waters toss a dreary wreckage of torn or ashen leaves, +twigs, acorn cups, stranded rafts of bark, and buttonballs from the +sycamore, never to come to seed. Standing on one bank or both, according +to the sundering flood's ambition, the knight with staff and bold +forefinger sets the water princess free. She goes then curtsying and +dimpling over the shining gravel, sliding from beneath the ice that +roofs her on the uplands down to the softer valleys, where her quickened +step will be heard by the frogs in their mansions of mud, and the fish, +recluses in rayless pools, will rise to the light she brings. + +Down from the frozen mountains, in summer, birds and winds must bear the +seed of alpine flowers--lilies that lean against unmelting snows, +poppies, bright-colored herbs, and the palely gleaming, fringed beauties +that change names with countries. How just and reasonable it would seem +to be that flowers which edge the ice in July should consent to bloom in +lowlands no colder in February! The pageant of blue, magenta, and +scarlet on the austere upper slopes of the Rockies, where nights are +bitter to the summer wanderer--why should it not flourish to leeward of +a valley barn in months when icicles hang from the eaves in this tamer +setting? But no. Mountain tempests are endurable to the silken-petaled. +The treacherous lowland winter, with its coaxing suns followed by +roaring desolation, is for blooms bred in a different tradition. + +The light is clear but hesitant, a delicate wine, by no means the mighty +vintage of April. February has no intoxication; the vague eagerness that +gives the air a pulse where fields lie voiceless comes from the secret +stirring of imprisoned life. Spring and sunrise are forever miracles, +but the early hour of the wonder hardly hints the exuberance of its +fulfilment. Even the forest dwellers move gravely, thankful for any +promise of kindness from the lord of day as he hangs above a sea-gray +landscape, but knowing well that their long duress is not yet to end. +Deer pathetically haunt the outskirts of farms, gazing upon cattle +feeding in winter pasture from the stack, and often, after dark, +clearing the fences and robbing the same disheveled storehouse. Not a +chipmunk winks from the top rail. The woodchuck, after his single +expeditionary effort on Candlemas, which he is obliged to make for +mankind's enlightenment, has retired without being seen, in sunshine or +shadow, and has not the slightest intention of disturbing himself just +yet. Though snowdrops may feel uneasy, he knows too much about the Ides +of March! Quietest of all Northern woods creatures, the otter slides +from one ice-hung waterfall to the next. The solitary scamperer left is +the cottontail, appealing because he is the most pursued and politest of +the furry; faithfully trying to give no offense, except when starvation +points to winter cabbage, he is none the less fey. So is the mink, +though he moves like a phantom. + +Mosses, whereon March in coming treads first, show one hue brighter in +the swamps. Pussy willows have made a gray dawn in viny caverns where +the day's own dawn looks in but faintly, and the flushing of the red +willow betrays reveries of a not impossible cowslip upon the bank +beneath. The blue jay has mentioned it in the course of his voluble +recollections. He is unwilling to prophesy arbutus, but he will just +hint that when the leaves in the wood lot show through snow as early as +this.... Once he found a hepatica bud the last day of February.... +Speaking with his old friend, the muskrat, last week.... And when you +can see red pebbles in the creek at five o'clock in the afternoon.... +But it is no use to expect yellow orchids on the west knoll this spring, +for some people found them there last year, and after that you might as +well.... Of course cowslips beside red willows are remarkably pretty, +just as blue jays in a cedar with blue berries.... He is interminable, +but then he has seen a great deal of life. And February needs her blue +jays' unwearied and conquering faith. + + + + +THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY + +_By_ GEORGE SANTAYANA + + + George Santayana was born in Madrid in 1863, of Spanish parentage. + He graduated from Harvard in 1886, and taught philosophy there, + 1889-1911. He lives now, I think, in England. I must be frank: + except his poems, I only know his work in that enthralling volume, + _Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana_, edited + by L. Pearsall Smith. Much of it is too esoteric for my grasp, but + Mr. Smith's redaction brings the fascination of Santayana's + philosophy within the compass of what Tennyson called "a + second-rate sensitive mind"; and, if mine is a criterion, such will + find it of the highest stimulus. This discourse on poetry seems to + me one of the most pregnant utterances on the subject. It is not + perfectly appreciated by merely one reading; but even if you have + to become a poet to enjoy it fully, that will do yourself least + harm. + + +If poetry in its higher reaches is more philosophical than history, +because it presents the memorable types of men and things apart from +unmeaning circumstances, so in its primary substance and texture poetry +is more philosophical than prose because it is nearer to our immediate +experience. Poetry breaks up the trite conceptions designated by current +words into the sensuous qualities out of which those conceptions were +originally put together. We name what we conceive and believe in, not +what we see; things, not images; souls, not voices and silhouettes. This +naming, with the whole education of the senses which it accompanies, +subserves the uses of life; in order to thread our way through the +labyrinth of objects which assault us, we must make a great selection in +our sensuous experience; half of what we see and hear we must pass over +as insignificant, while we piece out the other half with such an ideal +complement as is necessary to turn it into a fixed and well-ordered +conception of the world. This labor of perception and understanding, +this spelling of the material meaning of experience, is enshrined in our +workaday language and ideas; ideas which are literally poetic in the +sense that they are "made" (for every conception in an adult mind is a +fiction), but which are at the same time prosaic because they are made +economically, by abstraction, and for use. + +When the child of poetic genius, who has learned this intellectual and +utilitarian language in the cradle, goes afield and gathers for himself +the aspects of nature, he begins to encumber his mind with the many +living impressions which the intellect rejected, and which the language +of the intellect can hardly convey; he labors with his nameless burden +of perception, and wastes himself in aimless impulses of emotion and +reverie, until finally the method of some art offers a vent to his +inspiration, or to such part of it as can survive the test of time and +the discipline of expression. + +The poet retains by nature the innocence of the eye, or recovers it +easily; he disintegrates the fictions of common perception into their +sensuous elements, gathers these together again into chance groups as +the accidents of his environment or the affinities of his temperament +may conjoin them; and this wealth of sensation and this freedom of +fancy, which make an extraordinary ferment in his ignorant heart, +presently bubble over into some kind of utterance. + +The fullness and sensuousness of such effusions bring them nearer to our +actual perceptions than common discourse could come; yet they may easily +seem remote, overloaded, and obscure to those accustomed to think +entirely in symbols, and never to be interrupted in the algebraic +rapidity of their thinking by a moment's pause and examination of heart, +nor ever to plunge for a moment into that torrent of sensation and +imagery over which the bridge of prosaic associations habitually carries +us safe and dry to some conventional act. How slight that bridge +commonly is, how much an affair of trestles and wire, we can hardly +conceive until we have trained ourselves to an extreme sharpness of +introspection. But psychologists have discovered, what laymen generally +will confess, that we hurry by the procession of our mental images as we +do by the traffic of the street, intent on business, gladly forgetting +the noise and movement of the scene, and looking only for the corner we +would turn or the door we would enter. Yet in our alertest moment the +depths of the soul are still dreaming; the real world stands drawn in +bare outline against a background of chaos and unrest. Our logical +thoughts dominate experience only as the parallels and meridians make a +checkerboard of the sea. They guide our voyage without controlling the +waves, which toss forever in spite of our ability to ride over them to +our chosen ends. Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a +dream controlled. + +Out of the neglected riches of this dream the poet fetches his wares. He +dips into the chaos that underlies the rational shell of the world and +brings up some superfluous image, some emotion dropped by the way, and +reattaches it to the present object; he reinstates things unnecessary, +he emphasizes things ignored, he paints in again into the landscape the +tints which the intellect has allowed to fade from it. If he seems +sometimes to obscure a fact, it is only because he is restoring an +experience. The first element which the intellect rejects in forming its +ideas of things is the emotion which accompanies the perception; and +this emotion is the first thing the poet restores. He stops at the +image, because he stops to enjoy. He wanders into the bypaths of +association because the bypaths are delightful. The love of beauty which +made him give measure and cadence to his words, the love of harmony +which made him rhyme them, reappear in his imagination and make him +select there also the material that is itself beautiful, or capable of +assuming beautiful forms. The link that binds together the ideas, +sometimes so wide apart, which his wit assimilates, is most often the +link of emotion; they have in common some element of beauty or of +horror. + + + + +NOCTURNE + +_By_ SIMEON STRUNSKY + + + Simeon Strunsky is one of the most brilliant and certainly the most + modest of American journalists. I regret that I cannot praise him, + for at present we both work in the same office, and kind words + uttered in public would cause him to avoid me forever. All that is + necessary is for my readers to examine his books and they will say + for themselves what I am restrained from hinting. There is a + spontaneous play of chaff in Mr. Strunsky's lighter vein which is + unsurpassed by any American humorist; his more inward musing is + well exemplified by this selection (from _Post-Impressions_, 1914). + If you read _Post-Impressions_, _The Patient Observer_, _Belshazzar + Court_, _Professor Latimer's Progress_ and _Sinbad and His + Friends_, you will have made a fair start. + + Strunsky was born in Russia in 1879; studied at the Horace Mann + High School (New York) and graduated from Columbia University in + 1900. He worked on the staff of the New International Encyclopædia + in 1900-06, and since then has been on the staff of the New York + _Evening Post_, of which he is now editor. + + +Once every three months, with fair regularity, she was brought into the +Night Court, found guilty, and fined. She came in between eleven o'clock +and midnight, when the traffic of the court is at its heaviest, and it +would be an hour, perhaps, before she was called to the bar. When her +turn came she would rise from her seat at one end of the prisoners' +bench and confront the magistrate. + +Her eyes did not reach to the level of the magistrate's desk. A +policeman in citizen's clothes would mount the witness stand, take oath +with a seriousness of mien which was surprising, in view of the +frequency with which he was called upon to repeat the formula, and +testify in an illiterate drone to a definite infraction of the law of +the State, committed in his presence and with his encouragement. While +he spoke the magistrate would look at the ceiling. When she was called +upon to answer she defended herself with an obvious lie or two, while +the magistrate looked over her head. He would then condemn her to pay +the sum of ten dollars to the State and let her go. + +She came to look forward to her visits at the Night Court. + + * * * * * + +The Night Court is no longer a center of general interest. During the +first few months after it was established, two or three years ago, it +was one of the great sights of a great city. For the newspapers it was a +rich source of human-interest stories. It replaced Chinatown in its +appeal to visitors from out-of-town. It stirred even the languid pulses +of the native inhabitant with its offerings of something new in the way +of "life." The sociologists, sincere and amateur, crowded the benches +and took notes. + +To-day the novelty is worn off. The newspapers long ago abandoned the +Night Court, clergymen go to it rarely for their texts, and the tango +has taken its place. But the sociologists and the casual visitor have +not disappeared. Serious people, anxious for an immediate vision of the +pity of life, continue to fill the benches comfortably. No session of +the court is without its little group of social investigators, among +whom the women are in the majority. Many of them are young women, +exceedingly sympathetic, handsomely gowned, and very well taken care of. + +As she sat at one end of the prisoners' bench waiting her turn before +the magistrate's desk, she would cast a sidelong glance over the railing +that separated her from the handsomely gowned, gently bred, sympathetic +young women in the audience. She observed with extraordinary admiration +and delight those charming faces softened in pity, the graceful bearing, +the admirably constructed yet simple coiffures, the elegance of dress, +which she compared with the best that the windows in Sixth Avenue could +show. She was amazed to find such gowns actually being worn instead of +remaining as an unattainable ideal on smiling lay figures in the shop +windows. + +Occupants of the prisoners' bench are not supposed to stare at the +spectators. She had to steal a glance now and then. Her visits to the +Night Court had become so much a matter of routine that she would +venture a peep over the railing while the case immediately preceding her +own was being tried. Once or twice she was surprised by the clerk who +called her name. She stood up mechanically and faced the magistrate as +Officer Smith, in civilian clothes, mounted the witness stand. + +She had no grudge against Officer Smith. She did not visualize him +either as a person or as a part of a system. He was merely an incident +of her trade. She had neither the training nor the imagination to look +behind Officer Smith and see a communal policy which has not the power +to suppress, nor the courage to acknowledge, nor the skill to regulate, +and so contents itself with sending out full-fed policemen in civilian +clothes to work up the evidence that defends society against her kind +through the imposition of a ten-dollar fine. + +To some of the women on the visitors' benches the cruelty of the process +came home: this business of setting a two-hundred-pound policeman in +citizen's clothes, backed up by magistrates, clerks, court criers, +interpreters, and court attendants, to worrying a ten-dollar fine out of +a half-grown woman under an enormous imitation ostrich plume. The +professional sociologists were chiefly interested in the money cost of +this process to the tax-payer, and they took notes on the proportion of +first offenders. Yet the Night Court is a remarkable advance in +civilization. Formerly, in addition to her fine, the prisoner would pay +a commission to the professional purveyor of bail. + +Sometimes, if the magistrate was young or new to the business, she would +be given a chance against Officer Smith. She would be called to the +witness chair and under oath be allowed to elaborate on the obvious lies +which constituted her usual defense. This would give her the +opportunity, between the magistrate's questions, of sweeping the +courtroom with a full, hungry look for as much as half a minute at a +time. She saw the women in the audience only, and their clothes. The +pity in their eyes did not move her, because she was not in the least +interested in what they thought, but in how they looked and what they +wore. They were part of a world which she would read about--she read +very little--in the society columns of the Sunday newspaper. They were +the women around whom headlines were written and whose pictures were +printed frequently on the first page. + +She could study them with comparative leisure in the Night Court. +Outside in the course of her daily routine she might catch an occasional +glimpse of these same women, through the windows of a passing taxi, or +in the matinée crowds, or going in and out of the fashionable shops. But +her work took her seldom into the region of taxicabs and fashionable +shops. The nature of her occupation kept her to furtive corners and the +dark side of streets. Nor was she at such times in the mood for just +appreciation of the beautiful things in life. More than any other walk +of life, hers was of an exacting nature, calling for intense powers of +concentration both as regards the public and the police. It was +different in the Night Court. Here, having nothing to fear and nothing +out of the usual to hope for, she might give herself up to the esthetic +contemplation of a beautiful world of which, at any other time, she +could catch mere fugitive aspects. + +Sometimes I wonder why people think that life is only what they see and +hear, and not what they read of. Take the Night Court. The visitor +really sees nothing and hears nothing that he has not read a thousand +times in his newspaper and had it described in greater detail and with +better-trained powers of observation than he can bring to bear in +person. What new phase of life is revealed by seeing in the body, say, a +dozen practitioners of a trade of whom we know there are several tens of +thousands in New York? They have been described by the human-interest +reporters, analyzed by the statisticians, defended by the social +revolutionaries, and explained away by the optimists. For that matter, +to the faithful reader of the newspapers, daily and Sunday, what can +there be new in this world from the Pyramids by moonlight to the habits +of the night prowler? Can the upper classes really acquire for +themselves, through slumming parties and visits to the Night Court, +anything like the knowledge that books and newspapers can furnish them? +Can the lower classes ever hope to obtain that complete view of the +Fifth Avenue set which the Sunday columns offer them? And yet there the +case stands: only by seeing and hearing for ourselves, however +imperfectly, do we get the sense of reality. + +That is why our criminal courts are probably our most influential +schools of democracy. More than our settlement houses, more than our +subsidized dancing-schools for shopgirls, they encourage the +get-together process through which one-half the world learns how the +other half lives. On either side of the railing of the prisoners' cage +is an audience and a stage. + +That is why she would look forward to her regular visits at the Night +Court. She saw life there. + + + + +BEER AND CIDER + +_By_ GEORGE SAINTSBURY + + + How pleasant it is to find the famous Professor Saintsbury--known + to students as the author of histories of the English and French + literatures, the _History of Criticism_ and _History of English + Prosody_--spending the evening so hospitably in his cellar. I print + this--from his downright delightful _Notes on a Cellar Book_--as a + kind of tantalizing penance. It is a charming example of how + pleasantly a great scholar can unbend on occasion. + + George Saintsbury, born in 1845, studied at Merton College, Oxford, + taught school 1868-76, was a journalist in London 1876-95, and held + the chair of English Literature at Edinburgh University, 1895-1915. + If you read _Notes on a Cellar Book_, as you should, you will agree + that it is a charmingly light-hearted _causerie_ for a gentleman to + publish at the age of seventy-five. More than ever one feels that + sound liquor, in moderation, is a preservative of both body and + wit. + + +There is no beverage which I have liked "to live with" more than Beer; +but I have never had a cellar large enough to accommodate much of it, or +an establishment numerous enough to justify the accommodation. In the +good days when servants expected beer, but did not expect to be treated +otherwise than as servants, a cask or two was necessary; and persons who +were "quite" generally took care that the small beer they drank should +be the same as that which they gave to their domestics, though they +might have other sorts as well. For these better sorts at least the good +old rule was, when you began on one cask always to have in another. +Even Cobbett, whose belief in beer was the noblest feature in his +character, allowed that it required some keeping. The curious "white +ale," or lober agol--which, within the memory of man, used to exist in +Devonshire and Cornwall, but which, even half a century ago, I have +vainly sought there--was, I believe, drunk quite new; but then it was +not pure malt and not hopped at all, but had eggs ("pullet-sperm in the +brewage") and other foreign bodies in it. + +I did once drink, at St David's, ale so new that it frothed from the +cask as creamily as if it had been bottled: and I wondered whether the +famous beer of Bala, which Borrow found so good at his first visit and +so bad at his second, had been like it.[E] + +On the other hand, the very best Bass I ever drank had had an exactly +contrary experience. In the year 1875, when I was resident at Elgin, I +and a friend now dead, the Procurator-Fiscal of the district, devoted +the May "Sacrament holidays," which were then still kept in those remote +parts, to a walking tour up the Findhorn and across to Loch Ness and +Glen Urquhart. At the Freeburn Inn on the first-named river we found +some beer of singular excellence: and, asking the damsel who waited on +us about it, were informed that a cask of Bass had been put in during +the previous October, but, owing to a sudden break in the weather and +the departure of all visitors, had never been tapped till our arrival. + +Beer of ordinary strength left too long in the cask gets "hard" of +course; but no one who deserves to drink it would drink it from anything +but the cask if he could help it. Jars are makeshifts, though useful +makeshifts: and small beer will not keep in them for much more than a +week. Nor are the very small barrels, known by various affectionate +diminutives ("pin," etc.) in the country districts, much to be +recommended. "We'll drink it in the firkin, my boy!" is the lowest +admission in point of volume that should be allowed. Of one such firkin +I have a pleasant memory and memorial, though it never reposed in my +home cellar. It was just before the present century opened, and some +years before we Professors in Scotland had, of our own motion and +against considerable opposition, given up half of the old six months' +holiday without asking for or receiving a penny more salary. (I have +since chuckled at the horror and wrath with which Mr. Smillie and Mr. +Thomas would hear of such profligate conduct.) One could therefore move +about with fairly long halts: and I had taken from a friend a house at +Abingdon for some time. So, though I could not even then drink quite as +much beer as I could thirty years earlier a little higher up the Thames, +it became necessary to procure a cask. It came--one of Bass's minor +mildnesses--affectionately labeled "Mr. George Saintsbury. Full to the +bung." I detached the card, and I believe I have it to this day as my +choicest (because quite unsolicited) testimonial. + +Very strong beer permits itself, of course, to be bottled and kept in +bottles: but I rather doubt whether it also is not best from the wood; +though it is equally of course, much easier to cellar it and keep it +bottled. Its kinds are various and curious. "Scotch ale" is famous, and +at its best (I never drank better than Younger's) excellent: but its +tendency, I think, is to be too sweet. I once invested in some--not +Younger's--which I kept for nearly sixteen years, and which was still +treacle at the end. Bass's No. 1 requires no praises. Once when living +in the Cambridgeshire village mentioned earlier I had some, bottled in +Cambridge itself, of great age and excellence. Indeed, two guests, +though both of them were Cambridge men, and should have had what Mr. +Lang once called the "robust" habits of that University, fell into one +ditch after partaking of it. (I own that the lanes thereabouts are very +dark.) In former days, though probably not at present, you could often +find rather choice specimens of strong beer produced at small breweries +in the country. I remember such even in the Channel Islands. And I +suspect the Universities themselves have been subject to "declensions +and fallings off." I know that in my undergraduate days at Merton we +always had proper beer-glasses, like the old "flute" champagnes, served +regularly at cheese-time with a most noble beer called "Archdeacon," +which was then actually brewed in the sacristy of the College chapel. I +have since--a slight sorrow to season the joy of reinstatement +there--been told that it is now obtained from outside.[F] And All Souls +is the only other college in which, from actual recent experience, I can +imagine the possibility of the exorcism, + + Strongbeerum! discede a lay-fratre Petro, + +if lay-brother Peter were so silly as to abuse, or play tricks with, the +good gift. + +I have never had many experiences of real "home-brewed," but two which I +had were pleasing. There was much home-brewing in East Anglia at the +time I lived there, and I once got the village carpenter to give me some +of his own manufacture. It was as good light ale as I ever wish to drink +(many times better than the wretched stuff that Dora has foisted on us), +and he told me that, counting in every expense for material, cost and +wear of plant, etc., it came to about a penny[G] a quart. The other was +very different. The late Lord de Tabley--better or at least longer known +as Mr. Leicester Warren--once gave a dinner at the Athenæum at which I +was present, and had up from his Cheshire cellars some of the old ale +for which that county is said to be famous, to make flip after dinner. +It was shunned by most of the pusillanimous guests, but not by me, and +it was excellent. But I should like to have tried it unflipped.[H] + +I never drank mum, which all know from The Antiquary, some from "The +Ryme of Sir Lancelot Bogle," and some again from the notice which Mr. +Gladstone's love of Scott (may it plead for him!) gave it once in some +Budget debate, I think. It is said to be brewed of wheat, which is not +in its favor (wheat was meant to be eaten, not drunk) and very bitter, +which is. Nearly all bitter drinks are good. The only time I ever drank +"spruce" beer I did not like it. The comeliest of black malts is, of +course, that noble liquor called of Guinness. Here at least I think +England cannot match Ireland, for our stouts are, as a rule, too sweet +and "clammy." But there used to be in the country districts a sort of +light porter which was one of the most refreshing liquids conceivable +for hot weather. I have drunk it in Yorkshire at the foot of Roseberry +Topping, out of big stone bottles like champagne magnums. But that was +nearly sixty years ago. Genuine lager beer is no more to be boycotted +than genuine hock, though, by the way, the best that I ever drank (it +was at the good town of King's Lynn) was Low not High Dutch in origin. +It was so good that I wrote to the shippers at Rotterdam to see if I +could get some sent to Leith, but the usual difficulties in establishing +connection between wholesale dealers and individual buyers prevented +this. It was, however, something of a consolation to read the delightful +name, "our top-and-bottom-fermentation beer," in which the +manufacturer's letter, in very sound English for the most part, spoke of +it. English lager I must say I have never liked; perhaps I have been +unlucky in my specimens. And good as Scotch strong beer is, I cannot say +that the lighter and medium kinds are very good in Scotland. In fact, in +Edinburgh I used to import beer of this kind from Lincolnshire,[I] where +there is no mistake about it. My own private opinion is that John +Barleycorn, north of Tweed, says: "I am for whisky, and not for ale." + + * * * * * + +"Cider and perry," says Burton, "are windy drinks"; yet he observes that +the inhabitants of certain shires in England (he does not, I am sorry to +say, mention Devon) of Normandy in France, and of Guipuzcoa in Spain, +"are no whit offended by them." I have never liked perry on the few +occasions on which I have tasted it; perhaps because its taste has +always reminded me of the smell of some stuff that my nurse used to put +on my hair when I was small. But I certainly have been no whit offended +by cider, either in divers English shires, including very specially +those which Burton does not include, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, or in +Normandy. The Guipuzcoan variety I have, unfortunately, had no +opportunity of tasting. Besides, perry seems to me to be an abuse of +that excellent creature the pear, whereas cider-apples furnish one of +the most cogent arguments to prove that Providence had the production of +alcoholic liquors directly in its eye. They are good for nothing else +whatever, and they are excellent good for that. I think I like the weak +ciders, such as those of the west and the Normandy, better than the +stronger ones,[J] and draught cider much better than bottled. That of +Norfolk, which has been much commended of late, I have never tasted; but +I have had both Western and West-Midland cider in my cellar, often in +bottle and once or twice in cask. It is a pity that the +liquor--extremely agreeable to the taste, one of the most +thirst-quenching to be anywhere found, of no overpowering alcoholic +strength as a rule, and almost sovereign for gout--is not to be drunk +without caution, and sometimes has to be given up altogether from other +medical aspects. Qualified with brandy--a mixture which was first +imparted to me at a roadside inn by a very amiable Dorsetshire farmer +whom I met while walking from Sherborne to Blandford in my first Oxford +"long"--it is capital: and cider-cup who knoweth not? If there be any +such, let him not wait longer than to-morrow before establishing +knowledge. As for the pure juice of the apple, four gallons a day per +man used to be the harvest allowance in Somerset when I was a boy. It is +refreshing only to think of it now. + +Of mead or metheglin, the third indigenous liquor of Southern Britain, I +know little. Indeed, I should have known nothing at all of it had it not +been that the parish-clerk and sexton of the Cambridgeshire village +where I lived, and the caretaker of a vinery which I rented, was a +bee-keeper and mead-maker. He gave me some once. I did not care much for +it. It was like a sweet weak beer, with, of course, the special honey +flavor. But I should imagine that it was susceptible of a great many +different modes of preparation, and it is obvious, considering what it +is made of, that it could be brewed of almost any strength. Old literary +notices generally speak of it as strong. + + + + +A FREE MAN'S WORSHIP + +_By_ BERTRAND RUSSELL + + + "A Free Man's Worship" was written in 1902; it was republished by + Mr. Russell in 1918 in his volume _Mysticism and Logic_. It is + interesting to note carefully Mr. Russell's views in this fine + essay in connection with the fact that he was imprisoned by the + British Government as a pacifist during the War. + + Much of Mr. Russell's writing, in mathematical and philosophical + fields, is above the head of the desultory reader; but so + stimulating a paper as this one should not be neglected by the + moderately inquisitive amateur. + + Bertrand Russell was born in 1872, studied at Trinity College, + Cambridge, and is widely known as a thinker of uncompromising + liberalism. + + +To Dr. Faustus in his study Mephistopheles told the history of the +Creation, saying: + +"The endless praises of the choirs of angels had begun to grow +wearisome; for, after all, did he not deserve their praise? Had he not +given them endless joy? Would it not be more amusing to obtain +undeserved praise, to be worshiped by beings whom he tortured? He smiled +inwardly, and resolved that the great drama should be performed. + +"For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At +length it began to take shape, the central mass threw off planets, the +planets cooled, boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed, +from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged the barely solid +crust. And now the first germ of life grew in the depths of the ocean, +and developed rapidly in the fructifying warmth into vast forest trees, +huge ferns springing from the damp mould, sea monsters breeding, +fighting, devouring, and passing away. And from the monsters, as the +play unfolded itself, Man was born, with the power of thought, the +knowledge of good and evil, and the cruel thirst for worship. And Man +saw that all is passing in this mad, monstrous world, that all is +struggling to snatch, at any cost, a few brief moments of life before +Death's inexorable decree. And Man said: 'There is a hidden purpose, +could we but fathom it, and the purpose is good; for we must reverence +something, and in the visible world there is nothing worthy of +reverence.' And Man stood aside from the struggle, resolving that God +intended harmony to come out of chaos by human efforts. And when he +followed the instincts which God had transmitted to him from his +ancestry of beasts of prey, he called it Sin, and asked God to forgive +him. But he doubted whether he could be justly forgiven, until he +invented a divine Plan by which God's wrath was to have been appeased. +And seeing the present was bad, he made it yet worse, that thereby the +future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that +enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; +and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and +worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's +sun; and all returned again to nebula. + +"'Yes,' he murmured, 'it was a good play; I will have it performed +again.'" + +Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is +the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if +anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the +product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; +that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his +beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that +no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve +an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, +all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of +human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar +system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably +be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, +if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no +philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the +scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding +despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. + +How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as +Man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that +Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular +hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a +child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge +of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his +unthinking Mother. In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental +control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to +criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the +world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this +lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward +life. + +The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before +the powers of Nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects +more than Power, he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, +without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship. Pathetic and +very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of degradation +and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods: +surely, the trembling believer thinks, when what is most precious has +been freely given, their lust for blood must be appeased, and more will +not be required. The religion of Moloch--as such creeds may be +generically called--is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, +who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master +deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet +acknowledged, Power may be freely worshiped, and receive an unlimited +respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain. + +But gradually, as morality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world +begins to be felt; and worship, if it is not to cease, must be given to +gods of another kind than those created by the savage. Some, though they +feel the demands of the ideal, will still consciously reject them, still +urging that naked Power is worthy of worship. Such is the attitude +inculcated in God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind: the divine power +and knowledge are paraded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint. +Such also is the attitude of those who, in our own day, base their +morality upon the struggle for survival, maintaining that the survivors +are necessarily the fittest. But others, not content with an answer so +repugnant to the moral sense, will adopt the position which we have +become accustomed to regard as specially religious, maintaining that, in +some hidden manner, the world of fact is really harmonious with the +world of ideals. Thus Man creates God, all-powerful and all-good, the +mystic unity of what is and what should be. + +But the world of fact, after all, is not good; and, in submitting our +judgment to it, there is an element of slavishness from which our +thoughts must be purged. For in all things it is well to exalt the +dignity of Man, by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny of +non-human Power. When we have realized that Power is largely bad, that +man, with his knowledge of good and evil, is but a helpless atom in a +world which has no such knowledge, the choice is again presented to us: +Shall we worship Force, or shall we worship Goodness? Shall our God +exist and be evil, or shall he be recognized as the creation of our own +conscience? + +The answer to this question is very momentous, and affects profoundly +our whole morality. The worship of Force, to which Carlyle and Nietzsche +and the creed of Militarism have accustomed us, is the result of failure +to maintain our own ideals against a hostile universe: it is itself a +prostrate submission to evil, a sacrifice of our best to Moloch. If +strength indeed is to be respected, let us respect rather the strength +of those who refuse that false "recognition of facts" which fails to +recognize that facts are often bad. Let us admit that, in the world we +know there are many things that would be better otherwise, and that the +ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of +matter. Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal +of perfection which life does not permit us to attain, though none of +these things meet with the approval of the unconscious universe. If +Power is bad, as it seems to be, let us reject it from our hearts. In +this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God +created by our own love of the good, to respect only the heaven which +inspires the insight of our best moments. In action, in desire, we must +submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in +aspiration, we are free, free from our fellow-men, free from the petty +planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, +from the tyranny of death. Let us learn, then, that energy of faith +which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good; and let +us descend, in action, into the world of fact, with that vision always +before us. + +When first the opposition of fact and ideal grows fully visible, a +spirit of fiery revolt, of fierce hatred of the gods, seems necessary to +the assertion of freedom. To defy with Promethean constancy a hostile +universe, to keep its evil always in view, always actively hated, to +refuse no pain that the malice of Power can invent, appears to be the +duty of all who will not bow before the inevitable. But indignation is +still a bondage, for it compels our thoughts to be occupied with an evil +world; and in the fierceness of desire from which rebellion springs +there is a kind of self-assertion which it is necessary for the wise to +overcome. Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our +desires; the Stoic freedom in which wisdom consists is found in the +submission of our desires, but not of our thoughts. From the submission +of our desires springs the virtue of resignation; from the freedom of +our thoughts springs the whole world of art and philosophy, and the +vision of beauty by which, at last, we half reconquer the reluctant +world. But the vision of beauty is possible only to unfettered +contemplation, to thoughts not weighted by the load of eager wishes; and +thus Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall +yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations +of Time. + +Although the necessity of renunciation is evidence of the existence of +evil, yet Christianity, in preaching it, has shown a wisdom exceeding +that of the Promethean philosophy of rebellion. It must be admitted +that, of the things we desire, some, though they prove impossible, are +yet real goods; others, however, as ardently longed for, do not form +part of a fully purified ideal. The belief that what must be renounced +is bad, though sometimes false, is far less often false than untamed +passion supposes; and the creed of religion, by providing a reason for +proving that it is never false, has been the means of purifying our +hopes by the discovery of many austere truths. + +But there is in resignation a further good element: even real goods, +when they are unattainable, ought not to be fretfully desired. To every +man comes, sooner or later, the great renunciation. For the young, there +is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a +passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by +death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, +each one of us, that the world was not made for us, and that, however +beautiful may be the things we crave for, Fate may nevertheless forbid +them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without +repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain +regrets. This degree of submission to Power is not only just and right: +it is the very gate of wisdom. + +But passive renunciation is not the whole wisdom; for not by +renunciation alone can we build a temple for the worship of our own +ideals. Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of +imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of +reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines +and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of +change, remote from the failures and disenchantments of the world of +fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will +shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge the +world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs +whatever is not incapable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple. + +Except for those rare spirits that are born without sin, there is a +cavern of darkness to be traversed before that temple can be entered. +The gate of the cavern is despair, and its floor is paved with the +gravestones of abandoned hopes. There Self must die; there the +eagerness, the greed of untamed desire must be slain, for only so can +the soul be freed from the empire of Fate. But out of the cavern the +Gate of Renunciation leads again to the daylight of wisdom, by whose +radiance a new insight, a new joy, a new tenderness, shine forth to +gladden the pilgrim's heart. + +When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learnt both +to resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognize that +the non-human world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at +last so to transform and refashion the unconscious universe, so to +transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining +gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the +world--in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the +events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of Death--the +insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which +its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery +over the thoughtless forces of Nature. The more evil the material with +which it deals, the more thwarting to untrained desire, the greater is +its achievement in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden +treasures, the prouder its victory in compelling the opposing forces to +swell the pageant of its triumph. Of all the arts, Tragedy is the +proudest, the most triumphant; for it builds its shining citadel in the +very center of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest +mountain; from its impregnable watch-towers, his camps and arsenals, his +columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls the free life +continues, while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair, and all the +servile captains of tyrant Fate, afford the burghers of that dauntless +city new spectacles of beauty. Happy those sacred ramparts, thrice happy +the dwellers on that all-seeing eminence. Honor to those brave warriors +who, through countless ages of warfare, have preserved for us the +priceless heritage of liberty, and have kept undefiled by sacrilegious +invaders the home of the unsubdued. + +But the beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more +or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the +spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the +irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an +overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the +inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange +marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. +In these moments of insight, we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, +all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little +trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of +day by day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the +flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling +waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great night without, a chill +blast breaks in upon our refuge; all the loneliness of humanity amid +hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul, which must +struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole +weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. +Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true +baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into +the overmastering beauty of human existence. From that awful encounter +of the soul with the outer world, renunciation, wisdom, and charity are +born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost +shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to +be--Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the +powerlessness of man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity +to vanity--to feel these things and know them is to conquer them. + +This is the reason why the Past has such magical power. The beauty of +its motionless and silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late +autumn, when the leaves, though one breath would make them fall, still +glow against the sky in golden glory. The Past does not change or +strive; like Duncan, after life's fitful fever it sleeps well; what was +eager and grasping, what was petty and transitory, has faded away, the +things that were beautiful and eternal shine out of it like stars in the +night. Its beauty, to a soul not worthy of it, is unendurable; but to a +soul which has conquered Fate it is the key of religion. + +The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison +with the forces of Nature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate +and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, +and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great +as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless +splendor, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no +longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb +it, and make it a part of ourselves. To abandon the struggle for private +happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with +passion for eternal things--this is emancipation, and this is the free +man's worship. And this liberation is effected by a contemplation of +Fate; for Fate itself is subdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be +purged by the purifying fire of Time. + +United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a +common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, +shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a +long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by +weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where +none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from +our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief +is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or +misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten +their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a +never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith +in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits +and demerits, but let us think only of their need--of the sorrows, the +difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their +lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same +darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves. And so, when their +day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the +immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, +where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark +of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with +encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage +glowed. + +Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, +sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of +destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, +condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through +the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow +falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the +coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his +own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a +mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly +defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his +knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding +Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the +trampling march of unconscious power. + + + + +SOME HISTORIANS + +By PHILIP GUEDALLA + + + Philip Guedalla, born 1889, is a London barrister and at the + present time an Independent Liberal candidate for the House of + Commons. He has written excellent light verse and parodies, and a + textbook on European history, 1715-1815. His most conspicuous + achievement so far is the brilliant volume _Supers and Supermen_, + from which my selection is taken. + + _Supers and Supermen_ is a collection of historical and political + portraits and skits. It is mercilessly and gloriously humorous. + Those who can always follow the wit and irony that Guedalla knows + how to conceal in a cunningly turned phrase, will find the book a + prodigious delight. He has an unerring eye for the absurd; his + paradoxes, when pondered, have a way of proving excellent truth. + (Truth is sometimes like the furniture in Through the Looking + Glass, which could only be reached by resolutely walking away from + it.) + + Ten years ago Mr. Guedalla was considered the most continuously and + insolently brilliant undergraduate of the Oxford of that day. The + charm and vigor of his ironical wit have not lessened since his + fellow-undergraduates strove to convince themselves that no man + could be as clever as "P. G." seemed to be. When Mr. Guedalla + "holds the mirror up to Nietzsche" or "gives thanks that Britons + never never will be Slavs," or dynasticizes Henry James into three + reigns: "James I, James II, and the Old Pretender;" or when he + speaks of "the cheerful clatter of Sir James Barrie's cans as he + went round with the milk of human kindness," there will be some who + will sigh; but there will also (I hope) be many who will forgive + the bravado for the quicksilver wit. + + +It was Quintillian or Mr. Max Beerbohm who said, "History repeats +itself: historians repeat each other." The saying is full of the mellow +wisdom of either writer, and stamped with the peculiar veracity of the +Silver Age of Roman or British epigram. One might have added, if the +aphorist had stayed for an answer, that history is rather interesting +when it repeats itself: historians are not. In France, which is an +enlightened country enjoying the benefits of the Revolution and a public +examination in rhetoric, historians are expected to write in a single +and classical style of French. The result is sometimes a rather +irritating uniformity; it is one long Taine that has no turning, and any +quotation may be attributed with safety to Guizot, because _la nuit tous +les chats sont gris_. But in England, which is a free country, the +restrictions natural to ignorant (and immoral) foreigners are put off by +the rough island race, and history is written in a dialect which is not +curable by education, and cannot (it would seem) be prevented by +injunction. + +Historians' English is not a style; it is an industrial disease. The +thing is probably scheduled in the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the +publisher may be required upon notice of the attack to make a suitable +payment to the writer's dependants. The workers in this dangerous trade +are required to adopt (like Mahomet's coffin) a detached +standpoint--that is, to write as if they took no interest in the +subject. Since it is not considered good form for a graduate of less +than sixty years' standing to write upon any period that is either +familiar or interesting, this feeling is easily acquired, and the +resulting narrations present the dreary impartiality of the Recording +Angel without that completeness which is the sole attraction of his +style. Wilde complained of Mr. Hall Caine that he wrote at the top of +his voice; but a modern historian, when he is really detached, writes +like some one talking in the next room, and few writers have equaled the +legal precision of Coxe's observation that the Turks "sawed the +Archbishop and the Commandant in half, and committed other grave +violations of international law." + +Having purged his mind of all unsteadying interest in the subject, the +young historian should adopt a moral code of more than Malthusian +severity, which may be learned from any American writer of the last +century upon the Renaissance or the decadence of Spain. This manner, +which is especially necessary in passages dealing with character, will +lend to his work the grave dignity that is requisite for translation +into Latin prose, that supreme test of an historian's style. It will be +his misfortune to meet upon the byways of history the oddest and most +abnormal persons, and he should keep by him (unless he wishes to forfeit +his Fellowship) some convenient formula by which he may indicate at once +the enormity of the subject and the disapproval of the writer. The +writings of Lord Macaulay will furnish him at need with the necessary +facility in lightning characterization. It was the practice of Cicero to +label his contemporaries without distinction as "heavy men," and the +characters of history are easily divisible into "far-seeing statesmen" +and "reckless libertines." It may be objected that although it is +sufficient for the purposes of contemporary caricature to represent Mr. +Gladstone as a collar or Mr. Chamberlain as an eye-glass, it is an +inadequate record for posterity. But it is impossible for a busy man to +write history without formulæ, and after all sheep are sheep and goats +are goats. Lord Macaulay once wrote of some one, "In private life he was +stern, morose, and inexorable"; he was probably a Dutchman. It is a +passage which has served as a lasting model for the historian's +treatment of character. I had always imagined that Cliché was a suburb +of Paris, until I discovered it to be a street in Oxford. Thus, if the +working historian is faced with a period of "deplorable excesses," he +handles it like a man, and writes always as if he was illustrated with +steel engravings: + + The imbecile king now ripened rapidly towards a crisis. Surrounded + by a Court in which the inanity of the day was rivaled only by the + debauchery of the night, he became incapable towards the year 1472 + of distinguishing good from evil, a fact which contributed + considerably to the effectiveness of his foreign policy, but was + hardly calculated to conform with the monastic traditions of his + House. Long nights of drink and dicing weakened a constitution that + was already undermined, and the council-table, where once Campo + Santa had presided, was disfigured with the despicable apparatus of + Bagatelle. The burghers of the capital were horrified by the wild + laughter of his madcap courtiers, and when it was reported in + London that Ladislas had played at Halma the Court of St. James's + received his envoy in the deepest of ceremonial mourning. + +That is precisely how it is done. The passage exhibits the benign and +contemporary influences of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Bowdler, and it +contains all the necessary ingredients, except perhaps a "venal +Chancellor" and a "greedy mistress." Vice is a subject of especial +interest to historians, who are in most cases residents in small county +towns; and there is unbounded truth in the rococo footnote of a writer +on the Renaissance, who said _à propos_ of a Pope: "The disgusting +details of his vices smack somewhat of the morbid historian's lamp." The +note itself is a fine example of that concrete visualization of the +subject which led Macaulay to observe that in consequence of Frederick's +invasion of Silesia "black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red +men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America." + +A less exciting branch of the historian's work is the reproduction of +contemporary sayings and speeches. Thus, an obituary should always close +on a note of regretful quotation: + + He lived in affluence and died in great pain. "Thus," it was said + by the most eloquent of his contemporaries, "thus terminated a + career as varied as it was eventful, as strange as it was unique." + +But for the longer efforts of sustained eloquence greater art is +required. It is no longer usual, as in Thucydides' day, to compose +completely new speeches, but it is permissible for the historian to +heighten the colors and even to insert those rhetorical questions and +complexes of personal pronouns which will render the translation of the +passage into Latin prose a work of consuming interest and lasting +profit: + + The Duke assembled his companions for the forlorn hope, and + addressed them briefly in _oratio obliqua_. "His father," he said, + "had always cherished in his heart the idea that he would one day + return to his own people. Had he fallen in vain? Was it for nothing + that they had dyed with their loyal blood the soil of a hundred + battlefields? The past was dead, the future was yet to come. Let + them remember that great sacrifices were necessary for the + attainment of great ends, let them think of their homes and + families, and if they had any pity for an exile, an outcast, and an + orphan, let them die fighting." + +That is the kind of passage that used to send the blood of Dr. Bradley +coursing more quickly through his veins. The march of its eloquence, the +solemnity of its sentiment, and the rich balance of its pronouns unite +to make it a model for all historians: it can be adapted for any period. + +It is not possible in a short review to include the special branches of +the subject. Such are those efficient modern text-books, in which events +are referred to either as "factors" (as if they were a sum) or as +"phases" (as if they were the moon). There is also the solemn business +of writing economic history, in which the historian may lapse at will +into algebra, and anything not otherwise describable may be called +"social tissue." A special subject is constituted by the early conquests +of Southern and Central America; in these there is a uniform opening for +all passages running: + + It was now the middle of October, and the season was drawing to an + end. Soon the mountains would be whitened with the snows of winter + and every rivulet swollen to a roaring torrent. Cortez, whose + determination only increased with misfortune, decided to delay his + march until the inclemency of the season abated.... It was now the + middle of November, and the season was drawing to an end.... + +There is, finally, the method of military history. This may be +patriotic, technical, or in the manner prophetically indicated by Virgil +as _Belloc_, _horrida Belloc_. The finest exponent of the patriotic +style is undoubtedly the Rev. W. H. Fitchett, a distinguished colonial +clergyman and historian of the Napoleonic wars. His night-attacks are +more nocturnal, and his scaling parties are more heroically scaligerous +than those of any other writer. His drummer-boys are the most moving in +my limited circle of drummer-boys. One gathers that the Peninsular War +was full of pleasing incidents of this type: + + THE NIGHT ATTACK + + It was midnight when Staff-Surgeon Pettigrew showed the flare from + the summit of Sombrero. At once the whole plain was alive with the + hum of the great assault. The four columns speedily got into + position with flares and bugles at the head of each. One made + straight for the Watergate, a second for the Bailey-guard, a third + for the Porter-house, and the last (led by the saintly Smeathe) for + the Tube station. Let us follow the second column on its secret + mission through the night, lit by torches and cheered on by the + huzzas of a thousand English throats. "---- the ----s," cried + Cocker in a voice hoarse with patriotism; at that moment a red-hot + shot hurtled over the plain and, ricocheting treacherously from the + frozen river, dashed the heroic leader to the ground. Captain + Boffskin, of the Buffs, leapt up with the dry coughing howl of the + British infantryman. "---- them," he roared, "---- them to ----"; + and for the last fifty yards it was neck and neck with the ladders. + Our gallant drummer-boys laid to again, but suddenly a shot rang + out from the silent ramparts. The 94th Léger were awake. _We were + discovered!_ + +The war of 1870 requires more special treatment. Its histories show no +particular characteristic, but its appearance in fiction deserves +special attention. There is a standard pattern. + + HOW THE PRUSSIANS CAME TO GUITRY-LE-SEC + + It was a late afternoon in early September, or an early afternoon + in late September--I forget these things--when I missed the boat + express from Kerplouarnec to Pouzy-le-roi and was forced by the + time-table to spend three hours at the forgotten hamlet of + Guitry-le-sec, in the heart of Dauphiné. It contained besides a + quantity of underfed poultry one white church, one white mairie, + and nine white houses. An old man with a white beard came towards + me up the long white road. "It was on just such an afternoon as + this forty years ago," he began, "that...." + + "Stop!" I said sharply. "I have met you in a previous existence. + You are going to say that a solitary Uhlan appeared sharply + outlined against the sky behind M. Jules' farm." He nodded feebly. + + "The red trousers had left the village half an hour before to look + for the hated Prussian in the cafés of the neighboring town. You + were alone when the spiked helmets marched in. You can hear their + shrieking fifes to this day." He wept quietly. + + I went on. "There was an officer with them, a proud, ugly man with + a butter-colored mustache. He saw the little Mimi and drove his + coarse Suabian hand upward through his Mecklenburger mustache. You + dropped on one knee...." But he had fled. + + In the first of the three cafés I saw a second old man. "Come in, + Monsieur," he said. I waited on the doorstep. "It was on just such + an afternoon...." I went on. At the other two cafés two further old + men attempted me with the story; I told the last that he was + rescued by Zouaves, and walked happily to the station, to read + about Vichy Célestins until the train came in from the south. + +The Russo-Japanese War is a more original subject and derives its +particular flavor from the airy grace with which Sir Ian Hamilton has +described it. Like this: + + WAO-WAO, _Jan._ 31.--The _rafale_ was purring like a _mistral_ as I + shaved this morning. I wonder where it is; must ask ----. ---- is a + charming fellow with the face of a Baluchi Kashgai and a voice like + a circular saw. + + 11:40--It was eleven-forty when I looked at my watch. The + shrapnel-bursts look like a plantation of powder-puffs suspended in + the sky. Victor says there is a battle going on: capital chap + Victor. + + 2 P. M.--Lunched with an American lady-doctor. How feminine the + Americans can be. + + 7 P. M.--A great day. It was Donkelsdorp over again. Substitute the + Tenth Army for the Traffordshire's baggage wagon, swell Honks + Spruit into the roaring Wang-ho, elevate Oom Kop into the frowning + scarp of Pyjiyama, and you have it. The Staff were obviously + gratified when I told them about Donkelsdorp. + + The Rooskis came over the crest-line in a huddle of massed + battalions, and Gazeka was after them like a rat after a terrier. I + knew that his horse-guns had no horses (a rule of the Japanese + service to discourage unnecessary changing of ground), but his men + bit the trails and dragged them up by their teeth. Slowly the + Muscovites peeled off the steaming mountain and took the funicular + down the other side. + + I wonder what my friend Smuts would make of the Yen-tai coal mine? + Well, well.--_"Something accomplished, something done."_ + +The technical manner is more difficult of acquisition for the beginner, +since it involves a knowledge of at least two European languages. It is +(a) cardinal rule that all places should be described as _points +d'appui_, the simple process of scouting looks far better as +_Verschleierung_, and the adjective "strategical" may be used without +any meaning in front of any noun. + +But the military manner was revolutionized by the war. Mr. Belloc +created a new Land and a new Water. We know now why the Persian +commanders demanded "earth and water" on their entrance into a Greek +town; it was the weekly demand of the Great General Staff, as it called +for its favorite paper. Mr. Belloc has woven Baedeker and geometry into +a new style: it is the last cry of historians' English, because one was +invented by a German and the other by a Greek. + + + + +WINTER MIST + +_By_ ROBERT PALFREY UTTER + + + Robert Palfrey Utter was born in 1875, in Olympia, Washington. He + graduated from Harvard (I am sorry there are so many Harvard men in + this book: I didn't know they were Harvard men until too late) in + 1898 and took his Ph.D. there in 1906. After a varied experience, + including editorial work on the _Youth's Companion_, reporting on + the New York _Evening Post_, ranching in Mexico and graduate study + at Harvard, he went to Amherst, 1906-18, as associate professor of + English. He was on the faculty of the A. E. F. University at + Beaune, France, 1919; and in 1920 became associate professor of + English at the University of California. + + Mr. Utter has contributed largely to the magazines, and has + published _Guide to Good English_ (1914), _Every-Day Words and + Their Uses_ (1916), and _Every-Day Pronunciation_ (1918). + + Former students of his at Amherst have told me of the lasting + stimulus his teaching has given them: that he can beautifully + practise what he preaches of the art of writing, this essay shows. + + +From a magazine with a rather cynical cover I learned very recently that +for pond skating the proper costume is brown homespun with a fur collar +on the jacket, whereas for private rinks one wears a gray herringbone +suit and taupe-colored alpine. Oh, barren years that I have been a +skater, and no one told me of this! And here's another thing. I was +patiently trying to acquire a counter turn under the idle gaze of a +hockey player who had no better business till the others arrived than to +watch my efforts. "What I don't see about that game," he said at last, +"is who wins?" It had never occurred to me to ask. He looked bored, and +I remembered that the pictures in the magazine showed the wearers of the +careful costumes for rink and pond skating as having rather blank eyes +that looked illimitably bored. I have hopes of the "rocker" and the +"mohawk"; I might acquire a proper costume for skating on a small river +if I could learn what it is; but a bored look--why, even hockey does not +bore me, unless I stop to watch it. I don't wonder that those who play +it look bored. Even Alexander, who played a more imaginative game than +hockey, was bored--poor fellow, he should have taken up fancy skating in +his youth; I never heard of a human being who pretended to a complete +conquest of it. + +I like pond skating best by moonlight. The hollow among the hills will +always have a bit of mist about it, let the sky be clear as it may. The +moonlight, which seems so lucid and brilliant when you look up, is all +pearl and smoke round the pond and the hills. The shore that was like +iron under your heel as you came down to the ice is vague, when you look +back at it from the center of the pond, as the memory of a dream. The +motion is like flying in a dream; you float free and the world floats +under you; your velocity is without effort and without accomplishment, +for, speed as you may, you leave nothing behind and approach nothing. +You look upward. The mist is overhead now; you see the moon in a +"hollow halo" at the bottom of an "icy crystal cup," and you yourself +are in just such another. The mist, palely opalescent, drives past her +out of nothing into nowhere. Like yourself, she is the center of a +circle of vague limit and vaguer content, where passes a swift, +ceaseless stream of impression through a faintly luminous halo of +consciousness. + +If by moonlight the mist plays upon the emotions like faint, bewitching +music, in sunlight it is scarcely less. More often than not when I go +for my skating to our cosy little river, a winding mile from the +mill-dam to the railroad trestle, the hills are clothed in silver mist +which frames them in vignettes with blurred edges. The tone is that of +Japanese paintings on white silk, their color showing soft and dull +through the frost-powder with which the air is filled. At the mill-dam +the hockey players furiously rage together, but I heed them not, and in +a moment am beyond the first bend, where their clamor comes softened on +the air like that of a distant convention of politic crows. The silver +powder has fallen on the ice, just enough to cover earlier tracings and +leave me a fresh plate to etch with grapevines and arabesques. The +stream winds ahead like an unbroken road, striped across with soft-edged +shadows of violet, indigo, and lavender. On one side it is bordered with +leaning birch, oak, maple, hickory, and occasional groups of hemlocks +under which the very air seems tinged with green. On the other, rounded +masses of scrub oak and alder roll back from the edge of the ice like +clouds of reddish smoke. The river narrows and turns, then spreads into +a swamp, where I weave my curves round the straw-colored tussocks. Here, +new as the snow is, there are earlier tracks than mine. A crow has +traced his parallel hieroglyph, alternate footprints with long dashes +where he trailed his middle toe as he lifted his foot and his spur as he +brought it down. Under a low shrub that has hospitably scattered its +seed is a dainty, close-wrought embroidery of tiny bird feet in +irregular curves woven into a circular pattern. A silent glide towards +the bank, where among bare twigs little forms flit and swing with low +conversational notes, brings me in company with a working crew of pine +siskins, methodically rifling seed cones of birch and alder, chattering +sotto voce the while. Under a leaning hemlock the writing on the snow +tells of a squirrel that dropped from the lowest branch, hopped +aimlessly about for a few yards, then went up the bank. Farther on, +where the river narrows again, a flutter-headed rabbit crossing at top +speed has made a line seemingly as free from frivolous indirection as if +it had been defined by all the ponderosities of mathematics. There is no +pursuing track; was it his own shadow he fled, or the shadow of hawk? + +The mist now lies along the base of the hills, leaving the upper ridges +almost imperceptibly veiled and the rounded tops faintly softened. The +snowy slopes are etched with brush and trees so fine and soft that they +remind me of Dürer's engravings, the fur of Saint Jerome's lion, the +cock's feathers in the coat of arms with the skull. From behind the veil +of the southernmost hill comes a faint note as + + From undiscoverable lips that blow + An immaterial horn. + +It is the first far premonition of the noon train; I pause and watch +long for the next sign. At last I hear its throbbing, which ceases as it +pauses at the flag station under the hill. There the invisible +locomotive shoots a column of silver vapor above the surface of the +mist, breaking in rounded clouds at the top, looking like nothing so +much as the photograph of the explosion of a submarine mine, a titanic +outburst of force in static pose, a geyser of atomized water standing +like a frosted elm tree. Then quick puffs of dusky smoke, the volley of +which does not reach my ear till the train has stuck its black head out +of fairyland and become a prosaic reminder of dinner. High on its +narrow trestle it leaps across my little river and disappears between +the sandbanks. Far behind it the mist is again spreading into its even +layers. Silence is renewed, and I can hear the musical creaking of four +starlings in an apple tree as they eviscerate a few rotten apples on the +upper branches. I turn and spin down the curves and reaches of the river +without delaying for embroideries or arabesques. At the mill-dam the +hockey game still rages; the players take no heed of the noon train. + + Let Zal and Rustum bluster as they will, + Or Hatim call to supper.... + +Their minds and eyes are intent on a battered disk of hard rubber. I +begin to think I have misjudged them when I consider what effort of +imagination must be involved in the concentration of the faculties on +such an object, transcending the call of hunger and the lure of beauty. +Is it to them as is to the mystic "the great syllable Om" whereby he +attains Nirvana? I cannot attain it; I can but wonder what the hockey +players win one-half so precious as the stuff they miss. + + + + +TRIVIA + +_By_ LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH + + + It would be extravagant to claim that Pearsall Smith's _Trivia_, + the remarkable little book from which these miniature essays are + extracted, is well known: it is too daintily, fragile and absurd + and sophisticated to appeal to a very large public. But it has a + cohort of its own devotees and fanatics, and since its publication + in 1917 it has become a sort of password in a secret brotherhood or + intellectual Suicide Club. I say suicide advisedly, for Mr. Smith's + irony is glitteringly edged. Its incision is so keen that the + reader is often unaware the razor edge has turned against himself + until he perceives the wound to be fatal. + + Pearsall Smith was, in a way, one of the Men of the Nineties. But + he had Repressions--(an excellent thing to have, brothers. Most of + the great literature is founded on judicious repressions). He came + of an excellent old intellectual Quaker family down in the + Philadelphia region. His father (if we remember rightly) was one of + Walt Whitman's staunchest friends in the Camden days. But when the + strong wine of the Nineties was foaming in the vats and noggins, + Mr. Smith (so we imagine it, at least) was still too close to that + "guarded education in morals and manners" that he had had at + Haverford College, Pennsylvania (and further tinctured with + docility at Harvard and Balliol) to give full rein to his inward + gush of hilarious satirics. Like a Strong Silent Man he held in + that wellspring of champagne and mercury until many many years + later. When it came out (in 1902 he first began to print his + _Trivia_, privately; the book was published by Doubleday in 1917) + it sparkled all the more tenderly for its long cellarage. + + But we must be statistical. Logan Pearsall Smith was born at + Melville, N. J., in 1865. As a boy he lived in Philadelphia and + Germantown (do you know Germantown? it is a foothill of that + mountain range whereof Parnassus and Olivet are twin peaks) and was + three years at Haverford in the class of '85. He went to Harvard + for a year, then to Balliol College, Oxford, where he took his + degree in 1893. Ever since then, eheu, he has lived in England. + + +STONEHENGE + +They sit there for ever on the dim horizon of my mind, that Stonehenge +circle of elderly disapproving Faces--Faces of the Uncles and +Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth. + +In the bright center and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; but +when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placates +them, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak, old, +contemptuous Faces. + + +THE STARS + +Battling my way homeward one dark night against the wind and rain, a +sudden gust, stronger than the others, drove me back into the shelter of +a tree. But soon the Western sky broke open; the illumination of the +Stars poured down from behind the dispersing clouds. + +I was astonished at their brightness, to see how they filled the night +with their soft lustre. So I went my way accompanied by them; Arcturus +followed me, and becoming entangled in a leafy tree, shone by glimpses, +and then emerged triumphant, Lord of the Western Sky. Moving along the +road in the silence of my own footsteps, my thoughts were among the +Constellations. I was one of the Princes of the starry Universe; in me +also there was something that was not insignificant and mean and of no +account. + + +THE SPIDER + +What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a +waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full +of floating froth and refuse? + +No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on +leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops +and dead flies. And at its center, pondering for ever the Problem of +Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul. + + +L'OISEAU BLEU + +What is it, I have more than once asked myself, what is it that I am +looking for in my walks about London? Sometimes it seems to me as if I +were following a Bird, a bright Bird that sings sweetly as it floats +about from one place to another. + +When I find myself, however, among persons of middle age and settled +principles, see them moving regularly to their offices--what keeps them +going? I ask myself. And I feel ashamed of myself and my Bird. + +There is though a Philosophic Doctrine--I studied it at College, and I +know that many serious people believe it--which maintains that all men, +in spite of appearances and pretensions, all live alike for Pleasure. +This theory certainly brings portly, respected persons very near to me. +Indeed, with a sense of low complicity, I have sometimes watched a +Bishop. Was he, too, on the hunt for Pleasure, solemnly pursuing his +Bird? + + +I SEE THE WORLD + +"But you go nowhere, see nothing of the world," my cousins said. + +Now though I do go sometimes to the parties to which I am now and then +invited, I find, as a matter of fact, that I get really much more +pleasure by looking in at windows, and have a way of my own of seeing +the World. And of summer evenings, when motors hurry through the late +twilight, and the great houses take on airs of inscrutable expectation, +I go owling out through the dusk; and wandering toward the West, lose my +way in unknown streets--an unknown City of revels. And when a door opens +and a bediamonded Lady moves to her motor over carpets unrolled by +powdered footmen, I can easily think her some great Courtezan, or some +half-believed Duchess, hurrying to card-tables and lit candles and +strange scenes of joy. I like to see that there are still splendid +people on this flat earth; and at dances, standing in the street with +the crowd, and stirred by the music, the lights, the rushing sound of +voices, I think the Ladies as beautiful as Stars who move up those lanes +of light past our rows of vagabond faces; the young men look like Lords +in novels; and if (it has once or twice happened) people I know go by +me, they strike me as changed and rapt beyond my sphere. And when on hot +nights windows are left open, and I can look in at Dinner Parties, as I +peer through lace curtains and window-flowers at the silver, the women's +shoulders, the shimmer of their jewels, and the divine attitudes of +their heads as they lean and listen, I imagine extraordinary intrigues +and unheard-of wines and passions. + + +THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND + +I have my Anglican moments; and as I sat there that Sunday afternoon, in +the Palladian interior of the London Church, and listened to the +unexpressive voices chanting the correct service, I felt a comfortable +assurance that we were in no danger of being betrayed into any unseemly +manifestations of religious fervor. We had not gathered together at that +performance to abase ourselves with furious hosannas before any dark +Creator of an untamed Universe, no Deity of freaks and miracles and +sinister hocus-pocus; but to pay our duty to a highly respected Anglican +First Cause--undemonstrative, gentlemanly, and conscientious--whom, +without loss of self-respect, we could decorously praise. + + +CONSOLATION + +The other day, depressed on the Underground, I tried to cheer myself by +thinking over the joys of our human lot. But there wasn't one of them +for which I seemed to care a button--not Wine, nor Friendship, nor +Eating, nor Making Love, nor the Consciousness of Virtue. Was it worth +while then going up in a lift into a world that had nothing less trite +to offer? + +Then I thought of reading--the nice and subtle happiness of reading. +This was enough, this joy not dulled by Age, this polite and unpunished +vice, this selfish, serene, life-long intoxication. + + +THE KALEIDOSCOPE + +I find in my mind, in its miscellany of ideas and musings, a curious +collection of little landscapes and pictures, shining and fading for no +reason. Sometimes they are views in no way remarkable--the corner of a +road, a heap of stones, an old gate. But there are many charming +pictures too: as I read, between my eyes and book, the Moon sheds down +on harvest fields her chill of silver; I see autumnal avenues, with the +leaves falling, or swept in heaps; and storms blow among my thoughts, +with the rain beating for ever on the fields. Then Winter's upward +glare of snow appears; or the pink and delicate green of Spring in the +windy sunshine; or cornfields and green waters, and youths bathing in +Summer's golden heats. + +And as I walk about, certain places haunt me; a cathedral rises above a +dark blue foreign town, the color of ivory in the sunset light; now I +find myself in a French garden, full of lilacs and bees, and shut-in +sunshine, with the Mediterranean lounging and washing outside its walls; +now in a little college library, with busts, and the green reflected +light of Oxford lawns--and again I hear the bells, reminding me of the +familiar Oxford hours. + + +THE POPLAR + +There is a great tree in Sussex, whose cloud of thin foliage floats high +in the summer air. The thrush sings in it, and blackbirds, who fill the +late, decorative sunshine with a shimmer of golden sound. There the +nightingale finds her green cloister; and on those branches sometimes, +like a great fruit, hangs the lemon-colored Moon. In the glare of +August, when all the world is faint with heat, there is always a breeze +in those cool recesses, always a noise, like the noise of water, among +its lightly-hung leaves. + +But the owner of this Tree lives in London, reading books. + + + + +BEYOND LIFE + +_By_ JAMES BRANCH CABELL + + + To my taste, _Beyond Life_, an all-night soliloquy put into the + mouth of the author's _alter ego_ Charteris, is the most satisfying + of Mr. Cabell's books. Its point of view is deftly sharpened, its + manner is urbane and charming, without posture or allegorical + pseudo-romantics. From this book I have taken the two closing + sections, which form a beautiful and significant whole. + + James Branch Cabell, born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1879, graduated + from William and Mary College in 1898. He had some newspaper + experience in Richmond and on the New York _Herald_, and began + publishing in 1904. Not until 1915, until Mr. McBride, the New York + publisher, and his untiring literary assistant, Mr. Guy Holt (to + whom much of Cabell's appreciation is due), began their work, did + critics begin to take him at all seriously. Since that time Mr. + Cabell's reputation has been enormously enhanced by the idiotic + suppression of his novel _Jurgen_. The Cabell cult has been almost + too active in zeal, but there can be no doubt of his very real and + refreshing imaginative talent. + + +I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in +my own life. I appeal for charity, and implore that literature afford me +what I cannot come by in myself.... + +For I want distinction for that existence which ought to be peculiarly +mine, among my innumerable fellows who swarm about earth like ants. Yet +which one of us is noticeably, or can be appreciably different, in this +throng of human ephemeræ and all their millions and inestimable millions +of millions of predecessors and oncoming progeny? And even though one +mote may transiently appear exceptional, the distinction of those who +in their heydays are "great" personages--much as the Emperor of Lilliput +overtopped his subjects by the breadth of Captain Gulliver's nail--must +suffer loss with time, and must dwindle continuously, until at most the +man's recorded name remains here and there in sundry pedants' libraries. +There were how many dynasties of Pharaohs, each one of whom was absolute +lord of the known world, and is to-day forgotten? Among the countless +popes who one by one were adored as the regent of Heaven upon earth, how +many persons can to-day distinguish? and does not time breed emperors +and czars and presidents as plentiful as blackberries, and as little +thought of when their season is out? For there is no perpetuity in human +endeavor: we strut upon a quicksand: and all that any man may do for +good or ill is presently forgotten, because it does not matter. I wail +to a familiar tune, of course, in this lament for the evanescence of +human grandeur and the perishable renown of kings. And indeed to the +statement that imperial Cæsar is turned to clay and Mizraim now cures +wounds, and that in short Queen Anne is dead, we may agree lightly +enough; for it is, after all, a matter of no personal concern: but how +hard it is to concede that the banker and the rector and the +traffic-officer, to whom we more immediately defer, and we ourselves, +and the little gold heads of our children, may be of no importance, +either!... In art it may so happen that the thing which a man makes +endures to be misunderstood and gabbled over: yet it is not the man +himself. We retain the _Iliad_, but oblivion has swallowed Homer so deep +that many question if he ever existed at all.... So we pass as a cloud +of gnats, where I want to live and be thought of, if only by myself, as +a distinguishable entity. And such distinction is impossible in the long +progress of suns, whereby in thought to separate the personality of any +one man from all others that have lived, becomes a task to stagger +Omniscience.... + +I want my life, the only life of which I am assured, to have symmetry +or, in default of that, at least to acquire some clarity. Surely it is +not asking very much to wish that my personal conduct be intelligible to +me! Yet it is forbidden to know for what purpose this universe was +intended, to what end it was set a-going, or why I am here, or even what +I had preferably do while here. It vaguely seems to me that I am +expected to perform an allotted task, but as to what it is I have no +notion.... And indeed, what have I done hitherto, in the years behind +me? There are some books to show as increment, as something which was +not anywhere before I made it, and which even in bulk will replace my +buried body, so that my life will be to mankind no loss materially. But +the course of my life, when I look back, is as orderless as a trickle of +water that is diverted and guided by every pebble and crevice and +grass-root it encounters. I seem to have done nothing with +pre-meditation, but rather, to have had things done to me. And for all +the rest of my life, as I know now, I shall have to shave every morning +in order to be ready for no more than this!... I have attempted to make +the best of my material circumstances always; nor do I see to-day how +any widely varying course could have been wiser or even feasible: but +material things have nothing to do with that life which moves in me. +Why, then, should they direct and heighten and provoke and curb every +action of life? It is against the tyranny of matter I would +rebel--against life's absolute need of food, and books, and fire, and +clothing, and flesh, to touch and to inhabit, lest life perish.... No, +all that which I do here or refrain from doing lacks clarity, nor can I +detect any symmetry anywhere, such as living would assuredly display, I +think, if my progress were directed by any particular motive.... It is +all a muddling through, somehow, without any recognizable goal in view, +and there is no explanation of the scuffle tendered or anywhere +procurable. It merely seems that to go on living has become with me a +habit.... + +And I want beauty in my life. I have seen beauty in a sunset and in the +spring woods and in the eyes of divers women, but now these happy +accidents of light and color no longer thrill me. And I want beauty in +my life itself, rather than in such chances as befall it. It seems to me +that many actions of my life were beautiful, very long ago, when I was +young in an evanished world of friendly girls, who were all more lovely +than any girl is nowadays. For women now are merely more or less +good-looking, and as I know, their looks when at their best have been +painstakingly enhanced and edited.... But I would like this life which +moves and yearns in me, to be able itself to attain to comeliness, +though but in transitory performance. The life of a butterfly, for +example, is just a graceful gesture: and yet, in that its loveliness is +complete and perfectly rounded in itself, I envy this bright flicker +through existence. And the nearest I can come to my ideal is +punctiliously to pay my bills, be polite to my wife, and contribute to +deserving charities: and the program does not seem, somehow, quite +adequate. There are my books, I know; and there is beauty "embalmed and +treasured up" in many pages of my books, and in the books of other +persons, too, which I may read at will: but this desire inborn in me is +not to be satiated by making marks upon paper, nor by deciphering +them.... In short, I am enamored of that flawless beauty of which all +poets have perturbedly divined the existence somewhere, and which life +as men know it simply does not afford nor anywhere foresee.... + +And tenderness, too--but does that appear a mawkish thing to desiderate +in life? Well, to my finding human beings do not like one another. +Indeed, why should they, being rational creatures? All babies have a +temporary lien on tenderness, of course: and therefrom children too +receive a dwindling income, although on looking back, you will recollect +that your childhood was upon the whole a lonesome and much put-upon +period. But all grown persons ineffably distrust one another.... In +courtship, I grant you, there is a passing aberration which often mimics +tenderness, sometimes as the result of honest delusion, but more +frequently as an ambuscade in the endless struggle between man and +woman. Married people are not ever tender with each other, you will +notice: if they are mutually civil it is much: and physical contacts +apart, their relation is that of a very moderate intimacy. My own wife, +at all events, I find an unfailing mystery, a Sphinx whose secrets I +assume to be not worth knowing: and, as I am mildly thankful to narrate, +she knows very little about me, and evinces as to my affairs no morbid +interest. That is not to assert that if I were ill she would not nurse +me through any imaginable contagion, nor that if she were drowning I +would not plunge in after her, whatever my delinquencies at swimming: +what I mean is that, pending such high crises, we tolerate each other +amicably, and never think of doing more.... And from our blood-kin we +grow apart inevitably. Their lives and their interests are no longer the +same as ours, and when we meet it is with conscious reservations and +much manufactured talk. Besides, they know things about us which we +resent.... And with the rest of my fellows, I find that convention +orders all our dealings, even with children, and we do and say what +seems more or less expected. And I know that we distrust one another all +the while, and instinctively conceal or misrepresent our actual thoughts +and emotions when there is no very apparent need.... Personally, I do +not like human beings because I am not aware, upon the whole, of any +generally distributed qualities which entitle them as a race to +admiration and affection. But toward people in books--such as Mrs. +Millamant, and Helen of Troy, and Bella Wilfer, and Mélusine, and +Beatrix Esmond--I may intelligently overflow with tenderness and +caressing words, in part because they deserve it, and in part because I +know they will not suspect me of being "queer" or of having ulterior +motives.... + +And I very often wish that I could know the truth about just any one +circumstance connected with my life.... Is the phantasmagoria of sound +and noise and color really passing or is it all an illusion here in my +brain? How do you know that you are not dreaming me, for instance? In +your conceded dreams, I am sure, you must invent and see and listen to +persons who for the while seem quite as real to you as I do now. As I +do, you observe, I say! and what thing is it to which I so glibly refer +as I? If you will try to form a notion of yourself, of the sort of a +something that you suspect to inhabit and partially to control your +flesh and blood body, you will encounter a walking bundle of +superfluities: and when you mentally have put aside the extraneous +things--your garments and your members and your body, and your acquired +habits and your appetites and your inherited traits and your prejudices, +and all other appurtenances which considered separately you recognize to +be no integral part of you,--there seems to remain in those +pearl-colored brain-cells, wherein is your ultimate lair, very little +save a faculty for receiving sensations, of which you know the larger +portion to be illusory. And surely, to be just a very gullible +consciousness provisionally existing among inexplicable mysteries, is +not an enviable plight. And yet this life--to which I cling +tenaciously--comes to no more. Meanwhile I hear men talk about "the +truth"; and they even wager handsome sums upon their knowledge of it: +but I align myself with "jesting Pilate," and echo the forlorn query +that recorded time has left unanswered.... + +Then, last of all, I desiderate urbanity. I believe this is the rarest +quality in the world. Indeed, it probably does not exist anywhere. A +really urbane person--a mortal open-minded and affable to conviction of +his own shortcomings and errors, and unguided in anything by irrational +blind prejudices--could not but in a world of men and women be regarded +as a monster. We are all of us, as if by instinct, intolerant of that +which is unfamiliar: we resent its impudence: and very much the same +principle which prompts small boys to jeer at a straw-hat out of season +induces their elders to send missionaries to the heathen. The history of +the progress of the human race is but the picaresque romance of +intolerance, a narrative of how--what is it Milton says?--"truth never +came into the world but, like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that +brought her forth, till time hath washed and salted the infant, declared +her legitimate, and churched the father of his young Minerva." And I, +who prattle to you, very candidly confess that I have no patience with +other people's ideas unless they coincide with mine: for if the fellow +be demonstrably wrong I am fretted by his stupidity, and if his notion +seem more nearly right than mine I am infuriated.... Yet I wish I could +acquire urbanity, very much as I would like to have wings. For in +default of it, I cannot even manage to be civil to that piteous thing +called human nature, or to view its parasites, whether they be +politicians or clergymen or popular authors, with one-half the +commiseration which the shifts they are put to, quite certainly, would +rouse in the urbane.... + +So I in point of fact desire of literature, just as you guessed, +precisely those things of which I most poignantly and most constantly +feel the lack in my own life. And it is that which romance affords her +postulants. The philtres of romance are brewed to free us from this +unsatisfying life that is calendared by fiscal years, and to contrive a +less disastrous elusion of our own personalities than many seek +dispersedly in drink and drugs and lust and fanaticism, and sometimes in +death. For, beset by his own rationality, the normal man is goaded to +evade the strictures of his normal life, upon the incontestable ground +that it is a stupid and unlovely routine; and to escape likewise from +his own personality, which bores him quite as much as it does his +associates. So he hurtles into these very various roads from reality, +precisely as a goaded sheep flees without notice of what lies ahead.... + +And romance tricks him, but not to his harm. For, be it remembered that +man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams. Romance it is +undoubtedly who whispers to every man that life is not a blind and +aimless business, not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that his +existence is a pageant (appreciatively observed by divine spectators), +and that he is strong and excellent and wise: and to romance he listens, +willing and thrice willing to be cheated by the honeyed fiction. The +things of which romance assures him are very far from true: yet it is +solely by believing himself a creature but little lower than the +cherubim that man has by interminable small degrees become, upon the +whole, distinctly superior to the chimpanzee: so that, however +extravagant may seem these flattering whispers to-day, they were +immeasurably more remote from veracity when men first began to listen to +their sugared susurrus, and steadily the discrepancy lessens. To-day +these things seem quite as preposterous to calm consideration as did +flying yesterday: and so, to the Gradgrindians, romance appears to +discourse foolishly, and incurs the common fate of prophets: for it is +about to-morrow and about the day after to-morrow, that romance is +talking, by means of parables. And all the while man plays the ape to +fairer and yet fairer dreams, and practice strengthens him at +mimickry.... + +To what does the whole business tend?--why, how in heaven's name should +I know? We can but be content to note that all goes forward, toward +something.... It may be that we are nocturnal creatures perturbed by +rumors of a dawn which comes inevitably, as prologue to a day wherein we +and our children have no part whatever. It may be that when our +arboreal propositus descended from his palm-tree and began to walk +upright about the earth, his progeny were forthwith committed to a +journey in which to-day is only a way-station. Yet I prefer to take it +that we are components of an unfinished world, and that we are but as +seething atoms which ferment toward its making, if merely because man as +he now exists can hardly be the finished product of any Creator whom one +could very heartily revere. We are being made into something quite +unpredictable, I imagine: and through the purging and the smelting, we +are sustained by an instinctive knowledge that we are being made into +something better. For this we know, quite incommunicably, and yet as +surely as we know that we will to have it thus. + +And it is this will that stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and +the affairs of earth, not as they are, but "as they ought to be," which +we call romance. But when we note how visibly it sways all life we +perceive that we are talking about God. + + + + +THE FISH REPORTER + +_By_ ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY + + + This informal commentary on the picturesque humors of trade + journalism is typical of Mr. Holliday's great skill in capturing + the actual vibration of urban life. He has something of George + Gissing's taste for the actuality of city scenes and characters, + with rather more pungent idiosyncrasy in his manner of + self-expression. Careful observers of the art of writing will see + how much shrewd skill there is in the apparently unstudied manner. + One of Mr. Holliday's favorite discussions on the art of writing is + a phrase of Booth Tarkington's--"How to get the ink out of it." In + other words, how to strip away mere literary and conscious + adornment, and to get down to a translucent portraiture of life + itself in its actual contour and profile. + + We are told that Mr. Holliday, in his native Indianapolis (where he + was born in 1880), was a champion bicycle rider at the age of + sixteen. That triumph, however, was not permanently satisfying, for + he came to New York in 1899 to study art; lived for a while, + precariously, as an illustrator; worked for several years as a + bookseller in Charles Scribner's retail store, and passed through + all sorts of curious jobs on Grub Street, among others book + reviewer on the _Tribune_ and _Times_. He was editor of _The + Bookman_ after that magazine was taken over by the George H. Doran + Company, and retired to the genteel dignity of "contributing + editor" in 1920, to obtain leisure for more writing of his own. + + Mr. Holliday has the genuine gift of the personal essay, mellow, + fluent, and pleasantly eccentric. His _Walking-Stick Papers_, + Broome Street Straws, Turns about Town and _Peeps at People_ have + that charming rambling humor that descends to him from his masters + in this art, Hazlitt and Thackeray. When Mr. Holliday was racking + his wits for a title for _Men and Books and Cities_ (that odd + Borrovian chronicle of his mind, body and digestion on tour across + the continent) I suggested _The Odyssey of an Oddity_. He + deprecated this; but I still think it would have been a good title, + because strictly true. + + +Men of genius, blown by the winds of chance, have been, now and then, +mariners, bar-keeps, schoolmasters, soldiers, politicians, clergymen, +and what not. And from these pursuits have they sucked the essence of +yarns and in the setting of these activities found a flavor to stir and +to charm hearts untold. Now, it is a thousand pities that no man of +genius has ever been a fish reporter. Thus has the world lost great +literary treasure, as it is highly probable that there is not under the +sun any prospect so filled with the scents and colors of story as that +presented by the commerce in fish. + +Take whale oil. Take the funny old buildings on Front Street, out of +paintings, I declare, by Howard Pyle, where the large merchants in whale +oil are. Take salt fish. Do you know the oldest salt-fish house in +America, down by Coenties Slip? Ah! you should. The ghost of old Long +John Silver, I suspect, smokes an occasional pipe in that old place. And +many are the times I've seen the slim shade of young Jim Hawkins come +running out. Take Labrador cod for export to the Mediterranean lands or +to Porto Rico via New York. Take herrings brought to this port from +Iceland, from Holland, and from Scotland; mackerel from Ireland, from +the Magdalen Islands, and from Cape Breton; crabmeat from Japan; +fishballs from Scandinavia; sardines from Norway and from France; caviar +from Russia; shrimp which comes from Florida, Mississippi, and Georgia, +or salmon from Alaska, and Puget Sound, and the Columbia River. + +Take the obituaries of fishermen. "In his prime, it is said, there was +not a better skipper in the Gloucester fishing fleet." Take disasters to +schooners, smacks, and trawlers. "The crew were landed, but lost all +their belongings." New vessels, sales, etc. "The sealing schooner +_Tillie B._, whose career in the South Seas is well known, is reported +to have been sold to a moving-picture firm." Sponges from the Caribbean +Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. "To most people, familiar only with the +sponges of the shops, the animal as it comes from the sea would be +rather unrecognizable." Why, take anything you please! It is such stuff +as stories are. And as you eat your fish from the store how little do +you reck of the glamor of what you are doing! + +However, as it seems to me unlikely that a man of genius will be a fish +reporter shortly I will myself do the best I can to paint the tapestry +of the scenes of his calling. The advertisement in the newspaper read: +"Wanted--Reporter for weekly trade paper." Many called, but I was +chosen. Though, doubtless, no man living knew less about fish than I. + +The news stands are each like a fair, so laden are they with magazines +in bright colors. It would seem almost as if there were a different +magazine for every few hundred and seven-tenth person, as the +statistics put these matters. And yet, it seems, there is a vast, a very +vast, periodical literature of which we, that is, magazine readers in +general, know nothing whatever. There is, for one, that fine, old, +standard publication, Barrel and Box, devoted to the subjects and the +interests of the coopering industry; there is too, _The Dried Fruit +Packer and Western Canner_, as alert a magazine as one could wish--in +its kind; and from the home of classic American literature comes _The +New England Tradesman and Grocer_. And so on. At the place alone where +we went to press twenty-seven trade journals were printed every week, +from one for butchers to one for bankers. + +_The Fish Industries Gazette_--Ah, yes! For some reason not clear +(though it is an engaging thing, I think) the word "gazette" is the +great word among the titles of trade journals. There are _The Jewellers' +Gazette_ and _The Women's Wear Gazette_ and _The Poulterers' Gazette_ +(of London), and _The Maritime Gazette_ (of Halifax), and other gazettes +quite without number. This word "gazette" makes its appeal, too, +curiously enough, to those who christen country papers; and trade +journals have much of the intimate charm of country papers. The "trade" +in each case is a kind of neighborly community, separated in its parts +by space, but joined in unity of sympathy. "Personals" are a vital +feature of trade papers. "Walter Conner, who for some time has conducted +a bakery and fish market at Hudson, N. Y., has removed to Fort Edward, +leaving his brother Ed in charge at the Hudson place of business." + +_The Fish Industries Gazette_, as I say, was one of several in its +field, in friendly rivalry with _The Oyster Trade and Fisherman_ and +_The Pacific Fisheries_. It comprised two departments: the fresh fish +and oyster department, and myself. I was, as an editorial announcement +said at the beginning of my tenure of office, a "reorganization of our +salt, smoked, and pickled fish department." The delectable, mellow +spirit of the country paper, so removed from the crash and whirr of +metropolitan journalism, rested in this, too, that upon the _Gazette_ I +did practically everything on the paper except the linotyping. Reporter, +editorial writer, exchange editor, make-up man, proof-reader, +correspondent, advertisement solicitor, was I. + +As exchange editor, did I read all the papers in the English language in +eager search of fish news. And while you are about the matter, just find +me a finer bit of literary style evoking the romance of the vast wastes +of the moving sea, in Stevenson, Defoe, anywhere you please, than such a +news item as this: "Capt. Ezra Pound, of the bark _Elnora_, of Salem, +Mass., spoke a lonely vessel in latitude this and longitude that, +September 8. She proved to be the whaler _Wanderer_, and her captain +said that she had been nine months at sea, that all on board were well, +and that he had stocked so many barrels of whale oil." + +As exchange editor was it my business to peruse reports from Eastport, +Maine, to the effect that one of the worst storms in recent years had +destroyed large numbers of the sardine weirs there. To seek fish +recipes, of such savory sound as those for "broiled redsnapper," +"shrimps bordelaise," and "baked fish croquettes." To follow fishing +conditions in the North Sea occasioned by the Great War. To hunt down +jokes of piscatory humor. "The man who drinks like a fish does not take +kindly to water.--Exchange." To find other "fillers" in the consular +reports and elsewhere: "Fish culture in India," "1800 Miles in a Dory," +"Chinese Carp for the Philippines," "Americans as Fish Eaters." And, to +use a favorite term of trade papers, "etc., etc." Then to "paste up" the +winnowed fruits of this beguiling research. + +As editorial writer, to discuss the report of the commission recently +sent by congress to the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, to report on the +condition of our national herd of fur seals; to discuss the official +interpretation here of the Government ruling on what constitutes +"boneless" codfish; to consider the campaign in Canada to promote there +a more popular consumption of fish, and to brightly remark _à propos_ +of this that "a fish a day keeps the doctor away"; to review the current +issue of _The Journal of the Fisheries Society of Japan_, containing +leading articles on "Are Fishing Motor Boats Able to Encourage in Our +Country" and "Fisherman the Late Mr. H. Yamaguchi Well Known"; to combat +the prejudice against dogfish as food, a prejudice like that against +eels, in some quarters eyed askance as "calling cousins with the great +sea-serpent," as Juvenal says; to call attention to the doom of one of +the most picturesque monuments in the story of fish, the passing of the +pleasant and celebrated old Trafalgar Hotel at Greenwich, near London, +scene of the famous Ministerial white-bait dinners of the days of Pitt; +to make a jest on an exciting idea suggested by some medical man that +some of the features of a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, that is, baths, be +introduced into the fo'c's'les of Grand Banks fishing vessels; to keep +an eye on the activities of our Bureau of Fisheries; to hymn a praise to +the monumental new Fish Pier at Boston; to glance at conditions at the +premier fish market of the world, Billingsgate; to herald the fish +display at the Canadian National Exhibition at Toronto, and, indeed, +etc., and again etc. + +As general editorial roustabout, to find each week a "leader," a +translation, say, from _In Allgemeine Fishcherei-Zeitung_, or _Economic +Circular No. 10_, "Mussels in the Tributaries of the Missouri," or the +last biennial report of the Superintendent of Fisheries of Wisconsin, or +a scientific paper on "The Porpoise in Captivity" reprinted by +permission of _Zoologica_, of the New York Zoölogical Society. To find +each week for reprint a poem appropriate in sentiment to the feeling of +the paper. One of the "Salt Water Ballads" would do, or John Masefield +singing of "the whale's way," or "Down to the white dipping sails"; or +Rupert Brooke: "And in that heaven of all their wish, There shall be no +more land, say fish"; or a "weather rhyme" about "mackerel skies," when +"you're sure to get a fishing day"; or something from the New York Sun +about "the lobster pots of Maine"; or Oliver Herford, in the Century, +"To a Goldfish"; or, best of all, an old song of fishing ways of other +days. + +And to compile from the New York _Journal of Commerce_ better poetry +than any of this, tables, beautiful tables of "imports into New York": +"Oct. 15.--From Bordeaux, 225 cs. cuttlefish bone; Copenhagen, 173 pkgs. +fish; Liverpool, 969 bbls. herrings, 10 walrus hides, 2,000 bags salt; +La Guayra, 6 cs. fish sounds; Belize, 9 bbls. sponges; Rotterdam, 7 +pkgs. seaweed, 9,000 kegs herrings; Barcelona, 235 cs. sardines; Bocas +Del Toro, 5 cs. turtle shells; Genoa, 3 boxes corals; Tampico, 2 pkgs. +sponges; Halifax, 1 cs. seal skins, 35 bbls. cod liver oil, 215 cs. +lobsters, 490 bbls. codfish; Akureyri, 4,150 bbls. salted herrings," +and much more. Beautiful tables of "exports from New York." "To +Australia" (cleared Sep. 1); "to Argentina";--Haiti, Jamaica, Guatemala, +Scotland, Salvador, Santo Domingo, England, and to places many more. And +many other gorgeous tables, too. "Fishing vessels at New York," for one, +listing the "trips" brought into this port by the _Stranger_, the _Sarah +O'Neal_, the _Nourmahal_, a farrago of charming sounds, and a valuable +tale of facts. + +As make-up man, of course, so to "dress" the paper that the "markets," +Oporto, Trinidad, Porto Rico, Demerara, Havana, would be together; that +"Nova Scotia Notes"--"Weather conditions for curing have been more +favorable since October set in"--would follow "Halifax Fish +Market"--"Last week's arrivals were: Oct. 13, schr. _Hattie Loring_, 960 +quintals," etc.--that "Pacific Coast Notes"--"The tug _Tatoosh_ will +perform the service for the Seattle salmon packers of towing a vessel +from Seattle to this port via the Panama Canal"--would follow "Canned +Salmon"; that shellfish matter would be in one place; reports of +saltfish where such should be; that the weekly tale of the canned fish +trade politically embraced the canned fish advertising; and so on and so +on. + +Finest of all, as reporter, to go where the fish reporter goes. There +the sight-seeing cars never find their way; the hurried commuter has +not his path, nor knows of these things at all; and there that racy +character who, voicing a multitude, declares that he would rather be a +lamp post on Broadway than Mayor of St. Louis, goes not for to see. Up +lower Greenwich Street the fish reporter goes, along an eerie, dark, and +narrow way, beneath a strange, thundering roof, the "L" overhead. He +threads his way amid seemingly chaotic, architectural piles of boxes, of +barrels, crates, casks, kegs, and bulging bags; roundabout many great +fetlocked draught horses, frequently standing or plunging upon the +sidewalk, and attached to many huge trucks and wagons; and much of the +time in the street he is compelled to go, finding the side walks too +congested with the traffic of commerce to admit of his passing there. + +You probably eat butter, and eggs, and cheese. Then you would delight in +Greenwich Street. You could feast your highly creditable appetite for +these excellent things for very nearly a solid mile upon the signs of +"wholesale dealers and commission merchants" in them. The letter press, +as you might say, of the fish reporter's walk is a noble pæan to the +earth's glorious yield for the joyous sustenance of man. For these +princely merchants' signs sing of opulent stores of olive oil, of +sausages, beans, soups, extracts, and spices, sugar, Spanish, Bermuda, +and Havana onions, "fine" apples, teas, coffee, rice, chocolates, dried +fruits and raisins, and of loaves and of fishes, and of "fish products." +Lo! dark and dirty and thundering Greenwich Street is to-day's +translation of the Garden of Eden. + +Here is a great house whose sole vocation is the importation of caviar +for barter here. Caviar from over-seas now comes, when it comes at all, +mainly by the way of Archangel, recently put on the map, for most of us, +by the war. The fish reporter is told, however, if it be summer, that +there cannot be much doing in the way of caviar until fall, "when the +spoonbill start coming in." And on he goes to a great saltfish house, +where many men in salt-stained garments are running about, their arms +laden with large flat objects, of sharp and jagged edge, which resemble +dried and crackling hides of some animal curiously like a huge fish; and +numerous others of "the same" are trundling round wheelbarrow-like +trucks likewise so laden. Where stacks of these hides stand on their +tails against the walls, and goodness knows how many big boxes are, +containing, as those open show, beautifully soft, thick, cream-colored +slabs, which is fish. And where still other men, in overalls stained +like a painter's palette, are knocking off the heads of casks and +dipping out of brine still other kinds of fish for inspection. + +Here it is said by the head of the house, by the stove (it is chill +weather) in his office like a shipmaster's cabin: "Strong market on +foreign mackerel. Mines hinder Norway catch. Advices from abroad report +that German resources continue to purchase all available supplies from +the Norwegian fishermen. No Irish of any account. Recent shipment sold +on the deck at high prices. Fair demand from the Middle West." + +So, by stages, on up to turn into North Moore Street, looking down a +narrow lane between two long bristling rows of wagons pointed out from +the curbs, to the façades of the North River docks at the bottom, with +the tops of the buff funnels of ocean liners, and Whistleranean +silhouettes of derricks, rising beyond. Hereabout are more importers, +exporters, and "producers" of fish, famous in their calling beyond the +celebrities of popular publicity. And he that has official entrée may +learn, by mounting dusky stairs, half-ladder and half-stair, and by +passing through low-ceilinged chambers freighted with many barrels, to +the sanctums of the fish lords, what's doing in the foreign herring way, +and get the current market quotations, at present sky-high, and hear +that the American shore mackerel catch is very fine stock. + +Then roundabout, with a step into the broad vista of homely Washington +Street, and a turn through Franklin Street, where is the man decorated +by the Imperial Japanese Government with a gold medal, if he should +care to wear it, for having distinguished himself in the development of +commerce in the marine products of Japan, back to Hudson Street. An +authentic railroad is one of the spectacular features of Hudson Street. + +Here down the middle of the way are endless trains, stopping, starting, +crashing, laden to their ears with freight, doubtless all to eat. +Tourists should come from very far to view Hudson Street. Here is a +spectacle as fascinating, as awe-inspiring, as extraordinary as any in +the world. From dawn until darkness falls, hour after hour, along Hudson +Street slowly, steadily moves a mighty procession of great trucks. One +would not suppose there were so many trucks on the face of the earth. It +is a glorious sight, and any man whose soul is not dead should jump with +joy to see it. And the thunder of them altogether as they bang over the +stones is like the music of the spheres. + +There is on Hudson Street a tall handsome building where the fish +reporter goes, which should be enjoyed in this way: Up in the lift you +go to the top, and then you walk down, smacking your lips. For all the +doors in that building are brimming with poetry. And the tune of it goes +like this: "Toasted Corn-Flake Co.," "Seaboard Rice," "Chili Products," +"Red Bloom Grape Juice Sales Office," "Porto Rico and Singapore +Pineapple Co.," "Sunnyland Foodstuffs," "Importers of Fruit Pulps, +Pimentos," "Sole Agents U. S. A. Italian Salad Oil," "Raisin Growers," +"Log Cabin Syrups," "Jobbers in Beans, Peas," "Chocolate and Cocoa +Preparations," "Ohio Evaporated Milk Co.," "Bernese Alps and Holland +Condensed Milk Co.," "Brazilian Nuts Co.," "Brokers Pacific Coast +Salmon," "California Tuna Co.," and thus on and on. + +The fish reporter crosses the street to see the head of the Sardine +Trust, who has just thrown the market into excitement by a heavy cut in +prices of last year's pack. Thence, pausing to refresh himself by the +way at a sign "Agency for Reims Champagne and Moselle Wines--Bordeaux +Clarets and Sauternes," over to Broadway to interview the most august +persons of all, dealers in fertilizer, "fish scrap." These mighty +gentlemen live, when at business, in palatial suites of offices +constructed of marble and fine woods and laid with rich rugs. The +reporter is relayed into the innermost sanctum by a succession of richly +clothed attendants. And he learns, it may be, that fishing in Chesapeake +Bay is so poor that some of the "fish factories" may decide to shut +down. Acid phosphate, it is said, is ruling at $13 f.o.b. Baltimore. + +And so the fish reporter enters upon the last lap of his rounds. +Through, perhaps, the narrow, crooked lane of Pine Street he passes, to +come out at length upon a scene set for a sea tale. Here would a lad, +heir to vast estates in Virginia, be kidnapped and smuggled aboard to +be sold a slave in Africa. This is Front Street. A white ship lies at +the foot of it. Cranes rise at her side. Tugs, belching smoke, bob +beyond. All about are ancient warehouses, redolent of the Thames, with +steep roofs and sometimes stairs outside, and with tall shutters, a +crescent-shaped hole in each. There is a dealer in weather-vanes. Other +things dealt in hereabout are these: chronometers, "nautical +instruments," wax gums, cordage and twine, marine paints, cotton wool +and waste, turpentine, oils, greases, and rosin. Queer old taverns, +public houses, are here, too. Why do not their windows rattle with a +"Yo, ho, ho"? + +There is an old, old house whose business has been fish oil within the +memory of men. And here is another. Next, through Water Street, one +comes in search of the last word on salt fish. Now the air is filled +with gorgeous smell of roasting coffee. Tea, coffee, sugar, rice, +spices, bags and bagging here have their home. And there are haughty +bonded warehouses filled with fine liquors. From his white cabin at the +top of a venerable structure comes the dean of the saltfish business. +"Export trade fair," he says; "good demand from South America." + + + + +SOME NONSENSE ABOUT A DOG + +_By_ HARRY ESTY DOUNCE + + + Harry Esty Dounce was born in Syracuse in 1889 and graduated from + Hamilton College in 1910. His first job was as a cub reporter on + the journal that newspapermen affectionately call "the old _Sun_"; + the adjective is pronounced as though it were in italics. He was on + the staff of the Syracuse _Herald_, 1912-14; spent a year in New + Orleans writing short stories, and returned in 1916 to the magazine + staff of the Sun. He was editor of the Sun's book review section, + 1919-20; in 1920 he joined the staff of the New York _Evening + Post_. + + + "My hand will miss the insinuated nose--" + + _Sir William Watson_. + +But the dog that was written of must have been a big dog. Nibbie was +just a comfortable lapful, once he had duly turned around and curled up +with his nose in his tail. + +This is for people who know about dogs, in particular little mongrels +without pedigree or market value. Other people, no doubt, will find it +disgustingly maudlin. I would have found it so before Nibbie came. + +The day he came was a beautiful bright, cool one in an August. A touring +car brought him. They put him down on our corner, meaning to lose him, +but he crawled under the car, and they had to prod him out and throw +stones before they could drive on. So that when I came home I found, +with his mistress-elect, a sort of potbellied bundle of tarry oakum, +caked with mud, panting convulsively still from fright, and showing the +whites of uncommonly liquid brown eyes and a pink tongue. There was +tennis that evening and he went along--I carried him over the railroad +tracks; he gave us no trouble about the balls, but lay huddled under the +bench where she sat, and shivered if a man came near him. + +That night he got chop bones and she got a sensible homily on the +unwisdom of feeding strays, and he was left outdoors. He slept on the +mat. The second morning we thought he had gone. The third, he was back, +wagging approval of us and intent to stay, which seemed to leave no +choice but to take him in. We had fun over names. "Jellywaggles," +suggested from next door, was undeniably descriptive. "Rags" fitted, or +"Toby" or "Nig"--but they had a colored maid next door; finally we +called him "Nibs," and soon his tail would answer to it. + +Cleaned up--scrubbed, the insoluble matted locks clipped from his coat, +his trampish collar replaced with a new one bearing a license tag--he +was far from being unpresentable. A vet. once opined that for a mongrel +he was a good dog, that a black cocker mother had thrown her cap over +Scottish mills, so to speak. This analysis accounted for him perfectly. +Always, depending on the moment's mood, he was either terrier or +spaniel, the snap and scrap and perk of the one alternating with the +gentle snuggling indolence of the other. + +As terrier he would dig furiously by the hour after a field mouse; as +spaniel he would "read" the breeze with the best nose among the dog folk +of our neighborhood, or follow a trail quite well. I know there was +retrieving blood. A year ago May he caught and brought me, not doing the +least injury, an oriole that probably had flown against a wire and was +struggling disabled in the grass. + +Nibbie was shabby-genteel black, sunburnt as to the mustache, grizzled +as to the raggy fringe on his haunches. He had a white stock and +shirt-frill and a white fore paw. The brown eyes full of heart were the +best point. His body coat was rough Scottish worsted, the little black +pate was cotton-soft like shoddy, and the big black ears were genuine +spaniel silk. As a terrier he held them up smartly and carried a plumy +fishhook of a tail; as a spaniel the ears drooped and the tail swung +meekly as if in apology for never having been clipped. The other day +when we had to say good-by to him each of us cut one silky tuft from an +ear, very much as we had so often when he'd been among the burdocks in +the field where the garden is. + +Burrs were by no means Nibbie's only failing. In flea time it seemed +hardly possible that a dog of his size could sustain his population. We +finally found a true flea bane, but, deserted one day, he was populous +again the next. They don't relish every human; me they did; I used to +storm at him for it, and he used, between spasms of scratching, to +listen admiringly and wag. We think he supposed his tormentors were +winged insects, for he sought refuge in dark clothes-closets where a +flying imp wouldn't logically come. + +He was wilful, insisted on landing in laps when their makers wanted to +read. He _would_ make advances to visitors who were polite about him. He +_would_ get up on the living-room table, why and how, heaven knows, +finding his opportunity when we were out of the house, and taking care +to be upstairs on a bed--white, grimeable coverlets preferred--by the +time we had the front door open; I used to slip up to the porch and +catch through a window the diving flourish of his sinful tail. + +One of his faults must have been a neurosis really. He led a hard life +before we took him in, as witnessed the game hind leg that made him sit +up side-saddle fashion, and two such scars on his back as boiling hot +grease might have made. And something especially cruel had been done to +him when asleep, for if you bent over him napping or in his bed he would +half rouse and growl, and sometimes snap blindly. (We dreaded exuberant +visiting children.) Two or three experiments I hate to remember now +convinced me that it couldn't be whipped out of him, and once wide +awake he was sure to be perplexedly apologetic. + +He was spoiled. That was our doing. We babied him abominably--he was, +for two years, the only subject we had for such malpractice. He had more +foolish names than Wogg, that dog of Mrs. Stevenson's, and heard more +Little Language than Stella ever did, reciprocating by kissing proffered +ears in his doggy way. Once he had brightened up after his arrival, he +showed himself ready to take an ell whenever we gave an inch, and he was +always taking them, and never paying penalties. He had conscience enough +to be sly. I remember the summer evening we stepped outside for just an +instant, and came back to find a curious groove across the butter, on +the dining table, and an ever-so-innocent Nibbie in a chair in the next +room. + +While we were at the table he was generally around it, bulldozing for +tid-bits--I fear he had reason to know that this would work. One +fortnight when his Missie was away he slept on his Old Man's bed (we had +dropped titles of dignity with him by then) and he rang the welkin +hourly, answering far-away dog friends, and occasionally came north to +lollop my face with tender solicitude, just like the fool nurse in the +story, waking the patient up to ask if he was sleeping well. + +More recently, when a beruffled basket was waiting, he developed an +alarming trick of stealing in there to try it, so I fitted that door +with a hook, insuring a crack impervious to dogs. And the other night I +had to take the hook, now useless, off; we couldn't stand hearing it +jingle. He adopted the junior member on first sight and sniff of him, by +the way; would look on beaming as proudly as if he'd hatched him. + +The last of his iniquities arose from a valor that lacked its better +part, an absurd mixture of Falstaff and bantam rooster. At the critical +point he'd back out of a fuss with a dog of his own size. But let a +police dog, an Airedale, a St. Bernard, or a big ugly cur appear and +Nibbie was all around him, blackguarding him unendurably. It was lucky +that the big dogs in our neighborhood were patient. And he never would +learn about automobiles. Usually tried to tackle them head on, often +stopped cars with merciful drivers. When the car wouldn't stop, luck +would save him by a fraction of an inch. I couldn't spank that out of +him either. We had really been expecting what finally happened for two +years. + +That's about all. Too much, I am afraid. A decent fate made it quick the +other night, and clean and close at hand, in fact, on the same street +corner where once a car had left the small scapegrace for us. We tell +ourselves how glad we are it happened as it did, instead of an agonal +ending such as many of his people come to. We tell ourselves we +couldn't have had him for ever in any event; that some day, for the +junior member's sake, we shall get another dog. We keep telling +ourselves these things, and talking with animation on other topics. The +muzzle, the leash, the drinking dish are hidden, the last muddy paw +track swept up, the nose smudges washed off the favorite front window +pane. + +But the house is full of a little snoofing, wagging, loving ghost. I +know how the boy Thoreau felt about a hereafter with dogs barred. I want +to think that somewhere, some time, I will be coming home again, and +that when the door opens Nibbie will be on hand to caper welcome. + + + + +THE FIFTY-FIRST DRAGON + +_By_ HEYWOOD BROUN + + + Heywood Broun, who has risen rapidly through the ranks of newspaper + honor from sporting reporter and war correspondent to one of the + most highly regarded dramatic and literary critics in the country, + is another of these Harvard men, but, as far as this book is + concerned, the last of them. Broun graduated from Harvard in 1910; + was several years on the New York _Tribune_, and is now on the + _World_. + + There is no more substantially gifted newspaper man in his field; + his beautifully spontaneous humor and drollery are counterbalanced + by a fine imaginative sensitiveness and a remarkable power in the + fable or allegorical essay, such as the one here reprinted. His + book, _Seeing Things at Night_, is only the first-fruit of truly + splendid possibilities. If I may be allowed to prophesy, thus + hazarding all, I will say that Heywood Broun is likely, in the next + ten or fifteen years, to do as fine work, both imaginative and + critical, as any living American of his era. + + +Of all the pupils at the knight school Gawaine le Cœur-Hardy was +among the least promising. He was tall and sturdy, but his instructors +soon discovered that he lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when +the jousting class was called, although his companions and members of +the faculty sought to appeal to his better nature by shouting to him to +come out and break his neck like a man. Even when they told him that the +lances were padded, the horses no more than ponies and the field +unusually soft for late autumn, Gawaine refused to grow enthusiastic. +The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce were discussing +the case one spring afternoon and the Assistant Professor could see no +remedy but expulsion. + +"No," said the Headmaster, as he looked out at the purple hills which +ringed the school, "I think I'll train him to slay dragons." + +"He might be killed," objected the Assistant Professor. + +"So he might," replied the Headmaster brightly, but he added, more +soberly, "we must consider the greater good. We are responsible for the +formation of this lad's character." + +"Are the dragons particularly bad this year?" interrupted the Assistant +Professor. This was characteristic. He always seemed restive when the +head of the school began to talk ethics and the ideals of the +institution. + +"I've never known them worse," replied the Headmaster. "Up in the hills +to the south last week they killed a number of peasants, two cows and a +prize pig. And if this dry spell holds there's no telling when they may +start a forest fire simply by breathing around indiscriminately." + +"Would any refund on the tuition fee be necessary in case of an accident +to young Cœur-Hardy?" + +"No," the principal answered, judicially, "that's all covered in the +contract. But as a matter of fact he won't be killed. Before I send him +up in the hills I'm going to give him a magic word." + +"That's a good idea," said the Professor. "Sometimes they work wonders." + +From that day on Gawaine specialized in dragons. His course included +both theory and practice. In the morning there were long lectures on the +history, anatomy, manners and customs of dragons. Gawaine did not +distinguish himself in these studies. He had a marvelously versatile +gift for forgetting things. In the afternoon he showed to better +advantage, for then he would go down to the South Meadow and practise +with a battle-ax. In this exercise he was truly impressive, for he had +enormous strength as well as speed and grace. He even developed a +deceptive display of ferocity. Old alumni say that it was a thrilling +sight to see Gawaine charging across the field toward the dummy paper +dragon which had been set up for his practice. As he ran he would +brandish his ax and shout "A murrain on thee!" or some other vivid bit +of campus slang. It never took him more than one stroke to behead the +dummy dragon. + +Gradually his task was made more difficult. Paper gave way to +papier-mâché and finally to wood, but even the toughest of these dummy +dragons had no terrors for Gawaine. One sweep of the ax always did the +business. There were those who said that when the practice was +protracted until dusk and the dragons threw long, fantastic shadows +across the meadow Gawaine did not charge so impetuously nor shout so +loudly. It is possible there was malice in this charge. At any rate, the +Headmaster decided by the end of June that it was time for the test. +Only the night before a dragon had come close to the school grounds and +had eaten some of the lettuce from the garden. The faculty decided that +Gawaine was ready. They gave him a diploma and a new battle-ax and the +Headmaster summoned him to a private conference. + +"Sit down," said the Headmaster. "Have a cigarette." + +Gawaine hesitated. + +"Oh, I know it's against the rules," said the Headmaster. "But after +all, you have received your preliminary degree. You are no longer a boy. +You are a man. To-morrow you will go out into the world, the great world +of achievement." + +Gawaine took a cigarette. The Headmaster offered him a match, but he +produced one of his own and began to puff away with a dexterity which +quite amazed the principal. + +"Here you have learned the theories of life," continued the Headmaster, +resuming the thread of his discourse, "but after all, life is not a +matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and +the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and +sometimes unpleasant. Your problem, for example, is to slay dragons." + +"They say that those dragons down in the south wood are five hundred +feet long," ventured Gawaine, timorously. + +"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Headmaster. "The curate saw one last week +from the top of Arthur's Hill. The dragon was sunning himself down in +the valley. The curate didn't have an opportunity to look at him very +long because he felt it was his duty to hurry back to make a report to +me. He said the monster, or shall I say, the big lizard?--wasn't an inch +over two hundred feet. But the size has nothing at all to do with it. +You'll find the big ones even easier than the little ones. They're far +slower on their feet and less aggressive, I'm told. Besides, before you +go I'm going to equip you in such fashion that you need have no fear of +all the dragons in the world." + +"I'd like an enchanted cap," said Gawaine. + +"What's that?" answered the Headmaster, testily. + +"A cap to make me disappear," explained Gawaine. + +The Headmaster laughed indulgently. "You mustn't believe all those old +wives' stories," he said. "There isn't any such thing. A cap to make you +disappear, indeed! What would you do with it? You haven't even appeared +yet. Why, my boy, you could walk from here to London, and nobody would +so much as look at you. You're nobody. You couldn't be more invisible +than that." + +Gawaine seemed dangerously close to a relapse into his old habit of +whimpering. The Headmaster reassured him: "Don't worry; I'll give you +something much better than an enchanted cap. I'm going to give you a +magic word. All you have to do is to repeat this magic charm once and no +dragon can possibly harm a hair of your head. You can cut off his head +at your leisure." + +He took a heavy book from the shelf behind his desk and began to run +through it. "Sometimes," he said, "the charm is a whole phrase or even a +sentence. I might, for instance, give you 'To make the'--No, that might +not do. I think a single word would be best for dragons." + +"A short word," suggested Gawaine. + +"It can't be too short or it wouldn't be potent. There isn't so much +hurry as all that. Here's a splendid magic word: 'Rumplesnitz.' Do you +think you can learn that?" + +Gawaine tried and in an hour or so he seemed to have the word well in +hand. Again and again he interrupted the lesson to inquire, "And if I +say 'Rumplesnitz' the dragon can't possibly hurt me?" And always the +Headmaster replied, "If you only say 'Rumplesnitz,' you are perfectly +safe." + +Toward morning Gawaine seemed resigned to his career. At daybreak the +Headmaster saw him to the edge of the forest and pointed him to the +direction in which he should proceed. About a mile away to the southwest +a cloud of steam hovered over an open meadow in the woods and the +Headmaster assured Gawaine that under the steam he would find a dragon. +Gawaine went forward slowly. He wondered whether it would be best to +approach the dragon on the run as he did in his practice in the South +Meadow or to walk slowly toward him, shouting "Rumplesnitz" all the way. + +The problem was decided for him. No sooner had he come to the fringe of +the meadow than the dragon spied him and began to charge. It was a large +dragon and yet it seemed decidedly aggressive in spite of the +Headmaster's statement to the contrary. As the dragon charged it +released huge clouds of hissing steam through its nostrils. It was +almost as if a gigantic teapot had gone mad. The dragon came forward so +fast and Gawaine was so frightened that he had time to say "Rumplesnitz" +only once. As he said it, he swung his battle-ax and off popped the head +of the dragon. Gawaine had to admit that it was even easier to kill a +real dragon than a wooden one if only you said "Rumplesnitz." + +Gawaine brought the ears home and a small section of the tail. His +school mates and the faculty made much of him, but the Headmaster wisely +kept him from being spoiled by insisting that he go on with his work. +Every clear day Gawaine rose at dawn and went out to kill dragons. The +Headmaster kept him at home when it rained, because he said the woods +were damp and unhealthy at such times and that he didn't want the boy to +run needless risks. Few good days passed in which Gawaine failed to get +a dragon. On one particularly fortunate day he killed three, a husband +and wife and a visiting relative. Gradually he developed a technique. +Pupils who sometimes watched him from the hill-tops a long way off said +that he often allowed the dragon to come within a few feet before he +said "Rumplesnitz." He came to say it with a mocking sneer. Occasionally +he did stunts. Once when an excursion party from London was watching him +he went into action with his right hand tied behind his back. The +dragon's head came off just as easily. + +As Gawaine's record of killings mounted higher the Headmaster found it +impossible to keep him completely in hand. He fell into the habit of +stealing out at night and engaging in long drinking bouts at the village +tavern. It was after such a debauch that he rose a little before dawn +one fine August morning and started out after his fiftieth dragon. His +head was heavy and his mind sluggish. He was heavy in other respects as +well, for he had adopted the somewhat vulgar practice of wearing his +medals, ribbons and all, when he went out dragon hunting. The +decorations began on his chest and ran all the way down to his abdomen. +They must have weighed at least eight pounds. + +Gawaine found a dragon in the same meadow where he had killed the first +one. It was a fair-sized dragon, but evidently an old one. Its face was +wrinkled and Gawaine thought he had never seen so hideous a countenance. +Much to the lad's disgust, the monster refused to charge and Gawaine was +obliged to walk toward him. He whistled as he went. The dragon regarded +him hopelessly, but craftily. Of course it had heard of Gawaine. Even +when the lad raised his battle-ax the dragon made no move. It knew that +there was no salvation in the quickest thrust of the head, for it had +been informed that this hunter was protected by an enchantment. It +merely waited, hoping something would turn up. Gawaine raised the +battle-ax and suddenly lowered it again. He had grown very pale and he +trembled violently. The dragon suspected a trick. "What's the matter?" +it asked, with false solicitude. + +"I've forgotten the magic word," stammered Gawaine. + +"What a pity," said the dragon. "So that was the secret. It doesn't +seem quite sporting to me, all this magic stuff, you know. Not cricket, +as we used to say when I was a little dragon; but after all, that's a +matter of opinion." + +Gawaine was so helpless with terror that the dragon's confidence rose +immeasurably and it could not resist the temptation to show off a bit. + +"Could I possibly be of any assistance?" it asked. "What's the first +letter of the magic word?" + +"It begins with an 'r,'" said Gawaine weakly. + +"Let's see," mused the dragon, "that doesn't tell us much, does it? What +sort of a word is this? Is it an epithet, do you think?" + +Gawaine could do no more than nod. + +"Why, of course," exclaimed the dragon, "reactionary Republican." + +Gawaine shook his head. + +"Well, then," said the dragon, "we'd better get down to business. Will +you surrender?" + +With the suggestion of a compromise Gawaine mustered up enough courage +to speak. + +"What will you do if I surrender?" he asked. + +"Why, I'll eat you," said the dragon. + +"And if I don't surrender?" + +"I'll eat you just the same." + +"Then it doesn't mean any difference, does it?" moaned Gawaine. + +"It does to me," said the dragon with a smile. "I'd rather you didn't +surrender. You'd taste much better if you didn't." + +The dragon waited for a long time for Gawaine to ask "Why?" but the boy +was too frightened to speak. At last the dragon had to give the +explanation without his cue line. "You see," he said, "if you don't +surrender you'll taste better because you'll die game." + +This was an old and ancient trick of the dragon's. By means of some such +quip he was accustomed to paralyze his victims with laughter and then to +destroy them. Gawaine was sufficiently paralyzed as it was, but laughter +had no part in his helplessness. With the last word of the joke the +dragon drew back his head and struck. In that second there flashed into +the mind of Gawaine the magic word "Rumplesnitz," but there was no time +to say it. There was time only to strike and, without a word, Gawaine +met the onrush of the dragon with a full swing. He put all his back and +shoulders into it. The impact was terrific and the head of the dragon +flew away almost a hundred yards and landed in a thicket. + +Gawaine did not remain frightened very long after the death of the +dragon. His mood was one of wonder. He was enormously puzzled. He cut +off the ears of the monster almost in a trance. Again and again he +thought to himself, "I didn't say 'Rumplesnitz'!" He was sure of that +and yet there was no question that he had killed the dragon. In fact, he +had never killed one so utterly. Never before had he driven a head for +anything like the same distance. Twenty-five yards was perhaps his best +previous record. All the way back to the knight school he kept rumbling +about in his mind seeking an explanation for what had occurred. He went +to the Headmaster immediately and after closing the door told him what +had happened. "I didn't say 'Rumplesnitz,'" he explained with great +earnestness. + +The Headmaster laughed. "I'm glad you've found out," he said. "It makes +you ever so much more of a hero. Don't you see that? Now you know that +it was you who killed all these dragons and not that foolish little word +'Rumplesnitz.'" + +Gawaine frowned. "Then it wasn't a magic word after all?" he asked. + +"Of course not," said the Headmaster, "you ought to be too old for such +foolishness. There isn't any such thing as a magic word." + +"But you told me it was magic," protested Gawaine. "You said it was +magic and now you say it isn't." + +"It wasn't magic in a literal sense," answered the Headmaster, "but it +was much more wonderful than that. The word gave you confidence. It took +away your fears. If I hadn't told you that you might have been killed +the very first time. It was your battle-ax did the trick." + +Gawaine surprised the Headmaster by his attitude. He was obviously +distressed by the explanation. He interrupted a long philosophic and +ethical discourse by the Headmaster with, "If I hadn't of hit 'em all +mighty hard and fast any one of 'em might have crushed me like a, like +a--" He fumbled for a word. + +"Egg shell," suggested the Headmaster. + +"Like a egg shell," assented Gawaine, and he said it many times. All +through the evening meal people who sat near him heard him muttering, +"Like a egg shell, like a egg shell." + +The next day was clear, but Gawaine did not get up at dawn. Indeed, it +was almost noon when the Headmaster found him cowering in bed, with the +clothes pulled over his head. The principal called the Assistant +Professor of Pleasaunce, and together they dragged the boy toward the +forest. + +"He'll be all right as soon as he gets a couple more dragons under his +belt," explained the Headmaster. + +The Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed. "It would be a shame to +stop such a fine run," he said. "Why, counting that one yesterday, he's +killed fifty dragons." + +They pushed the boy into a thicket above which hung a meager cloud of +steam. It was obviously quite a small dragon. But Gawaine did not come +back that night or the next. In fact, he never came back. Some weeks +afterward brave spirits from the school explored the thicket, but they +could find nothing to remind them of Gawaine except the metal parts of +his medals. Even the ribbons had been devoured. + +The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce agreed that it +would be just as well not to tell the school how Gawaine had achieved +his record and still less how he came to die. They held that it might +have a bad effect on school spirit. Accordingly, Gawaine has lived in +the memory of the school as its greatest hero. No visitor succeeds in +leaving the building to-day without seeing a great shield which hangs on +the wall of the dining hall. Fifty pairs of dragons' ears are mounted +upon the shield and underneath in gilt letters is "Gawaine le +Cœur-Hardy," followed by the simple inscription, "He killed fifty +dragons." The record has never been equaled. + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +wtihout malice=>without malice + +smooth and omnious=>smooth and ominous + +kinds words uttered=>kind words uttered + +It is cardinal rule=>It is (a) cardinal rule + + * * * * * + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[A] _A Personal Record._ + +[B] William Sidney Porter, 1862-1910, son of Algernon Sidney Porter, +physician, was born, bred, and meagerly educated in Greensboro, North +Carolina. In Greensboro he was drug clerk; in Texas he was amateur +ranchman, land-office clerk, editor, and bank teller. Convicted of +misuse of bank funds on insufficient evidence (which he supplemented by +the insanity of flight), he passed three years and three months in the +Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus. Release was the prelude to life in +New York, to story-writing, to rapid and wide-spread fame. Latterly, his +stories, published in New York journals and in book form, were consumed +by the public with an avidity which his premature death, in 1910, +scarcely checked. The pen-name, O. Henry, is almost certainly borrowed +from a French chemist Etienne-Ossian Henry, whose abridged name he fell +upon in his pharmacal researches. See the interesting "O. Henry +Biography" by C. Alphonso Smith. + +[C] O Henry's stories have been known to coincide with earlier work in a +fashion which dims the novelty of the tale without clouding the +originality of the author. I thought the brilliant "Harlem Tragedy" (in +the "Trimmed Lamp") unique through sheer audacity, but the other day I +found its motive repeated with singular exactness in Montesquieu's +"Lettres Persanes" (Letter LI). + +[D] "These views, as usual, pleased some more, others less; some chid +and calumniated me, and laid it to me as a crime that I had dared to +depart from the precepts and opinions of all Anatomists."--De Motu +Cordis, chap. i. + +[E] This visit (in the early eighties) had another relish. The inn +coffee-room had a copy of Mr. Freeman's book on the adjoining Cathedral, +and this was copiously annotated in a beautiful and scholarly hand, but +in a most virulent spirit. "Why can't you call things by their plain +names?" (in reference to the historian's Macaulayesque periphrases) etc. +I have often wondered who the annotator was. + +[F] When I went up this March to help man the last ditch for Greek, I +happened to mention "Archdeacon": and my interlocutor told me that he +believed no college now brewed within its walls. After the defeat, I +thought of the stages of the Decline and Fall of Things: and how a sad +but noble ode might be written (by the right man) on the Fates of Greek +and Beer at Oxford. He would probably refer in the first strophe to the +close of the Eumenides; in its antistrophe to Mr. Swinburne's great +adaptation thereof in regard to Carlyle and Newman; while the epode and +any reduplication of the parts would be occupied by showing how the +departing entities were of no equivocal magnificence like the Eumenides +themselves; of no flawed perfection (at least as it seemed to their +poet) like the two great English writers, but wholly admirable and +beneficent--too good for the generation who would banish them, and whom +they banished. + +[G] This was one of the best illustrations of the old phrase, "a good +pennyworth," that I ever knew for certain. I add the two last words +because of a mysterious incident of my youth. I and one of my sisters +were sitting at a window in a certain seaside place when we heard, both +of us distinctly and repeatedly, this mystic street cry: "A bible and a +pillow-case for a penny!" I rushed downstairs to secure this bargain, +but the crier was now far off, and it was too late. + +[H] By the way, are they still as good for flip at New College, Oxford, +as they were in the days when it numbered hardly any undergraduates +except scholars, and one scholar of my acquaintance had to himself a set +of three rooms and a garden? And is "The Island" at Kennington still +famous for the same excellent compound? + +[I] It came from Alford, the chef-lieu, if it cannot be called the +capital, of the Tennyson country. I have pleasant associations with the +place, quite independent of the beery ones. And it made me, partially at +least, alter one of the ideas of my early criticism--that time spent on +a poet's local habitations was rather wasted. I have always thought "The +Dying Swan" one of its author's greatest things, and one of the champion +examples of pure poetry in English literature. But I never fully heard +the "eddying song" that "flooded" + + the creeping mosses and clambering weeds, + And the willow branches hoar and dank, + And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds. + And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, + And the silvery marish-flowers that throng + The desolate creeks and pools among-- + +till I saw them. + +[J] Herefordshire and Worcestershire cider can be very strong and the +perry, they say, still stronger. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN ESSAYS *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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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