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diff --git a/42110-0.txt b/42110-0.txt index 0387146..776197d 100644 --- a/42110-0.txt +++ b/42110-0.txt @@ -1,23 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Seven Ages of Man - -Author: Ralph Bergengren - -Release Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #42110] - -Language: English - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42110 *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was @@ -1633,365 +1614,4 @@ a little tune of its own, the burden of which is "Life is long." 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Seven Ages of Man - -Author: Ralph Bergengren - -Release Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #42110] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN - -Books by -Ralph Bergengren - -THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN -THE COMFORTS OF HOME -_Each $1.00_ - -For -Younger Readers -JANE, JOSEPH AND JOHN -_Boxed, $3.00_ - - - - -_The_ -SEVEN AGES _of_ MAN - -BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - -[Illustration: colophon] - -The Atlantic Monthly Press -Boston - -COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - - - - -CONTENTS - -I. Baby, Baby 1 - -II. To be a Boy 17 - -III. On Meeting the Beloved 33 - -IV. This is a Father 47 - -V. On Being a Landlord 64 - -VI. Old Flies and Old Men 78 - -VII. The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Man 94 - - - - -I - -BABY, BABY - - _In meeting a baby, one should behave as much as possible like a - baby one's self. We cannot, of course, diminish our size, or - exchange our customary garments for baby-clothes; neither can we - arrive in a perambulator, and be conveyed in the arms, either of a - parent or a nursemaid, into the presence of the baby whom we are to - meet. The best we can do is to hang, as it were on the hatrack, our - preconceived ideas of what manner of behavior entertains a baby, as - cooing, grimacing, tickling, and the like, and model our deportment - on the dignified but friendly reticence that one baby evinces in - meeting another._--BABY: HIS FRIENDS AND FOES. - - -Of the many questions that Mr. Boswell, at one time and another, asked -his friend, Dr. Johnson, I can hardly recall another more searching -than one that he himself describes as whimsical. - -"I know not how so whimsical a thought came into my head," says Boswell, -"but I asked, 'If, sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a new-born -child with you, what would you do?' - -"JOHNSON: Why, sir, I should not much like my company. - -"BOSWELL: But would you take the trouble of rearing it? - -"He seemed, as may be supposed, unwilling to pursue the subject: but, -upon my persevering in my question, replied, 'Why, yes, sir, I would; -but I must have all conveniences. If I had no garden, I would make a -shed on the roof, and take it there for fresh air. I should feed it, and -wash it much, and with warm water, to please it, not with cold water, to -give it pain.' - -"BOSWELL: But, sir, does not heat relax? - -"JOHNSON: Sir, you are not to imagine the water is to be very hot. I -would not _coddle_ the child." - -It appears, too, that the Doctor had given some thought to the subject, -although never expecting to be a mother himself: his immediate -insistence upon fresh air promises well for the infant, and the -frequency with which he proposes to wash his little companion indicates -that, so long as the water-supply of the castle lasted, he would have -done his part. A cow in the castle seems to have been taken for granted; -but, in 1769, even Dr. Johnson would have known little or nothing about -formulas, nor would it have occurred to him to make a pasteurizing -apparatus, as so many parents do nowadays, out of a large tin pail and a -pie-plate. Here the baby would have had to take his eighteenth-century -chance. And I wish, too, that he might have had a copy of "The Baby's -Physical Culture Guide," that modern compendium of twenty-four -exercises, by which a reasonably strongarmed mother may strengthen and -develop the infant's tiny muscles; for I like to think of Dr. Johnson -exercising his innocent companion in his shed on the roof. "Sir," he -says, "I do not much like my employment; but here we are, and we'll have -to make the best of it." - -Such an experience, no doubt, would have been good for Dr. Johnson, and -good for the baby (if it survived). "That into which his little mind is -to develop," says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "is plastic--like -a wax record, ready to retain such impressions as are made upon it"; and -on this wax some, at least, of the impressions left by Dr. Johnson must -have been valuable. But on the real mystery of babyhood--the insoluble -enigma that the "Guide" can only in small measure dispose of by -comparing the rearing of an infant with the home-manufacture of a record -for the gramaphone--the experience would have thrown no light. - -The Doctor, I dare say, would have written a paper on the feeding and -washing of infants, and later dictionaries of familiar quotation might -perhaps have been enriched by the phrase,"'The baby is grandfather to -the man.'--JOHNSON." But of this grandfather the man has no memory. His -babyhood is a past concerning which he is perforce silent, a time when -it is only by the report of others that he knows he was living. His -little mind seems to have been more than a little blank; and although -gifted novelists have set themselves the imaginative task of thinking -and writing like babies, none, in my reading, has ever plausibly -succeeded. The best they can do is to think and write like little -adults. I recall, for example, the honest effort of Miss May Sinclair, -whom I greatly respect as an adult, to see Mr. Olivier through the eyes -of his baby daughter Mary. "Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, -all by himself. He was dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down -in front of him and one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was -smiling because his cheeks swelled high up in his face, so that his eyes -were squeezed into narrow, shining slits. When they came out again, you -saw scarlet specks and smears in their corners." A fearsome Papa!--and, -although I have no way of knowing that fathers do not present -themselves in this futurist aspect to their helpless offspring, I am -glad to think otherwise. At all events a baby is, and must be, well used -to living in Brobdingnag. - -It would be a surprising thing, if it were not so common, that a man -shows so little curiosity about this forgotten period of his life. But -such curiosity would be impossible to satisfy. Existing photographs of -him at that time are a disappointment: he seldom admits seeing any -resemblance, and, if he does, the likeness rarely, if ever, gives him -any visible satisfaction. Nor can anything of real and personal interest -be found out by interviewing those who then knew him. Of a hundred, nay, -of a thousand or a million babies,--and though I cannot speak as a -woman, it seems to me (except, perhaps, for a livelier interest and -pleasure among them in their infant appearance) that everything I am -saying applies equally to babies of that fascinating sex,--the trivial -details observed by those who are nearest them are practically -identical. They thump their heads. They chew their fingers. They try to -feed their toes; and, sillier yet, they try to feed them with things -that are obviously inedible. And so forth. And so forth. If Dr. Johnson, -actually shut up in a castle, and a new-born child with him, had kept a -record, the result would have been very much like the records that -mothers now keep in what, unless I am mistaken, are called "Baby Books." -If you've seen one Baby Book, as the cynical old man said about -circuses, you've seen all of 'em. - -Nor does any man take pleasure in preserving and reading over his own -Baby Book. Hercules, to be sure, might have been interested to read in -his mother's handwriting,--"_Tuesday._ An eventful day. Two big, horrid -Snakes came in from the garden, and got in Darling's cradle, frightening -Nurse into hysterics; but Darling only cooed and strangled them both -with his dear, strong little hands. He gets stronger and cunninger every -day. When the horrid Snakes were taken away from him, he cried and said, -'Atta! Atta!'" - -But Hercules was an exceptionally interesting baby; and the average Baby -Book records nothing that a grown man can regard with pride, and much, -if he has any sensitiveness at all, that must make him blush. Nothing -but respect for his mother, it is almost safe to say, would withhold him -from hurrying the incriminating document to the cellar, and cremating it -in the furnace. - -For in the beginning Captain William Kidd, George Washington, Dr. -Johnson, the writer of this essay, and even the editor of the "Atlantic -Monthly," looked and behaved very much alike. And so, for that matter, -did little Moll Cutpurse and little Susan B. Anthony. So far as anybody -could then have said, Captain Kidd might have become a thoughtful, -law-abiding essayist, and I a pirate, handicapped, indeed, by changed -conditions of maritime traffic, but unconscientiously doing my wicked -best. - -As the twig is bent, says the proverb, so is the tree inclined; but -these little twigs are bent already, and I humbly submit, with all -respect to my scientific friends, and their white mice and their guinea -pigs, that where and how it happened remains an insoluble mystery. -Little as I know about myself, I know that I am neither a white mouse -nor a guinea pig. And this, mark you, is no mere conceit. Scientists -themselves have decided that when babies, in that remote past when they -first began really to interest their parents, and the human mother, the -most pathetic figure of that primitive world, first began the personal -and affectionate observation that was to develop slowly, over millions -of years, until it found expression in the first Baby Book--scientists, -themselves, I say, have decided that, then and there, you and I, -intelligent reader, began to differ essentially from every other known -kind of mammal. There appeared--oh, wonder!--something psychical as well -as physical about us; but _where it came from_, they cannot tell us. -"Natural selection," so John Fiske once summed up this opinion, "began -to follow a new path and make psychical changes instead of physical -changes." Little enough there seems to have been to start with; little -enough, indeed, there seems to be now--yet enough more to encourage us -to believe that Baby is a lot further along in the right direction than -he was a good many million years ago. And with this helpful conviction, -Baby himself, whether he will grow up to write essays or commit -picturesque murder, seems reasonably well satisfied. We solemn adults, -standing around the crib, may well admire, not so much the pinkness and -chubbiness of his toes, as the pinkness and chubbiness (if I may so -express it) of his simple satisfaction with the mere fact of existence, -his simple faith in the Universe. And when we think how impossible it is -to think of its beginning, we, too, may capture something of this -infantile optimism. - -It is by no means impossible (though not susceptible of scientific -proof) that Baby may have a life of his own; and, if we may assume -Hercules weeping and saying, "Atta! Atta!"--because shrewd observers of -babyhood declare it to be characteristic of babies to say, "Atta! Atta!" -when something desirable, in this case two dead snakes, is removed from -their range of vision,--may we not assume also a universal language of -babies, and a place, such as it may be, from which they have emigrated? -Here, indeed, one follows M. Maeterlinck, except that, in his judgment, -unborn babies speak French. Such a theory is no help to the novelist, -for in that case baby Mary Olivier's impressions of Mr. Olivier must be -rendered in baby--a language equally unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her -readers. Babies have been heard to say, for example, "Nja njan dada atta -mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meen[)e] m[)o]mm -m[)o]mma ao-u"--and who but another baby knows whether this may not be -speech? The assumption that this is an effort to speak the language of -the baby's elders is academic, as, for that matter, is the assumption -that they are his elders. There may even be no baby at all; for, as -Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put it, "The uneasiness that keeps the -never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that -the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence." -But this, I confess, is far too deep for me. - - Baby, baby in your cot, - Are you there?--or are you not? - If you're not, then what of me! - Baby, _what_ and _where_ are we? - -For all practical purposes, however, Baby is sufficiently -real--substantial enough, indeed, as "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide" -shows in Exercise 24, to be lifted by his little feet and stood on his -little head; but, mercifully adds the "Guide," "do not hold Baby on his -head very long." For all practical purposes we must, and do, assume our -own existence. "Here we are," as I have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to -his innocent new-born comrade, "and we'll have to make the best of it." -Nobody has thought of a better way, or any other way at all, for us to -get here; and the familiar Biblical phrase, 'born again,' may perhaps be -more literal than we are wont to imagine, and apply to this world as -well as the next. Baby himself may just have been born again. That -innocent-seeming and rather silly-sounding monologue, which we flatter -ourselves is an earnest attempt to imitate our own speech,--"Nja njan -dada atta mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meene[)e] -m[)o]mm m[)o]mma ao-u,"--may it not be the soliloquy of a gentle -philosopher, or, again, the confession of an out-and-out rascal, -talking to himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and cooing over them, -indeed, before he forgets them in this new state of being? May not Papa, -waggishly shaking his forefinger and saying, "You little rascal, you," -be speaking with a truthfulness which, if known, would make him sick? - -Meanwhile, as says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "Don't jerk Baby -round. Never rush through his exercises, but talk to him in a happy, -encouraging way. When he is able to talk he will be glad to tell you -what great, good fun he has been having." - -So speaks, I think, a mother's imagination; in sober reality, even the -great good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgotten. Which is perhaps why, -although I have heard men wish they could again be children, I have -never heard any man say he would like to be a baby. - - - - -II - -TO BE A BOY - - -_I love dearly to watch the boys at their play. How gayly they pitch and -catch their baseball with their strong little hands! How blithely they -run from base to base! How merrily their voices come to me across the -green; for, although I cannot hear what they say, I know it expresses a -young, innocent joy in this big, good world. Yet even in this Garden -there is a Serpent, and one day two of the little innocents quarreled -and came to blows. A real fight! I soon hurried out and stopped that, -but the sight of their little faces distorted with rage, and one poor -boy bleeding at the nose, upset me for quite a time._--AN OLD MAID'S -WINDOW. - - * * * * * - -In "The Boyhood of Great Men," published by Harper and Brothers, in -1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it is told of Sir Isaac Newton -that "An accident first fired him to strive for distinction in the -school-room. The boy who was immediately above him in the class, after -treating him with a tyranny hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick him -in the stomach, with a severity that caused great pain. Newton resolved -to have his revenge, but of such a kind as was natural to his reasoning -mind, even at that immature age. He determined to excel his oppressor in -their studies and lessons; and, setting himself to the task with zeal -and diligence, he never halted in his course till he had found his way -to the top of the class; thus exhibiting and leaving a noble example to -others of his years similarly situated. Doubtless, after this, he would -heartily forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who could not but -henceforth feel ashamed of his unmanly conduct, while Newton would feel -the proud consciousness of having done his duty after the bravest and -noblest fashion which it is in the power of man to adopt." - -We cannot all be Sir Isaac Newtons, and, although I may wish for a -passing moment that some sturdy little school-fellow had kicked me too -in the stomach, the resulting sequence of events would probably have -been different, and the world would have gained little or nothing by my -natural indignation. Having an impartial mind, I should like to know -also _why_ Sir Isaac was kicked in the stomach, and what became -afterward of the boy who kicked him. As his fame grew in the world, the -reflected glory of having thus kicked Sir Isaac Newton in the stomach -would presumably have brightened in proportion, but, lacking other -distinction, the kicker served his evolutionary purpose and has now -vanished. - -But this much remains of him--that his little foot kicks also in the -stomach the widely accepted fallacy that boyhood is an age of unalloyed -gold, to which every man now and then looks back and vainly yearns to be -a boy again. "Oh! happy years!"--so sighed the poet Byron,--"once more, -who would not be a boy?" And so to-day, as one may at least deduce from -his general newspaper reading, sigh all the editors of all the -newspapers in the United States. Not, indeed, for a boyhood like Sir -Isaac Newton's, but for the standard American boyhood, to which, in -theory, every ageing American looks back with tender reminiscence--that -happy time when he went barefooted, played "hookey" from school, fished -in the running brook with a bent pin for a hook, and swam, with other -future bankers, merchants, clerks, clergymen, physicians and surgeons, -confidence-men, pickpockets, authors, actors, burglars, etc., etc., in -an old swimming-hole. The democracy of the old swimming-hole is, in -fact, the democracy of the United States, naked and unashamed; and even -in the midst of a wave of crime (one might almost imagine), if the -victim should say suddenly to the hold-up man,-- - - "Oh, do you remember the ole swimmin' hole, - And the hours we spent there together; - Where the oak and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather? - - Ah, sweet were those hours together we spent - In innocent laughter and joy! - How little we knew at the time what it meant - To be just a boy--just a boy!" - ---the hold-up man would drop his automatic gun, and the two would -dissolve on each other's necks in a flood of sympathetic tears. - -It is a pleasant and harmless fallacy, and I for one would not destroy -it; I am no such stickler for exactitude that I would take away from any -man whatever pleasure he may derive from thinking that he was once a -barefoot boy, even if circumstances were against him and his mother as -adamant in her refusal to let him go barefooted. But the fallacy is -indestructible: the symbols may not have been universal, but it is true -enough of boyhood that time then seems to be without limit; and this -comfortable, unthinking sense of immortality is what men have lost and -would fain recover. One forgets how cruelly slow moved the hands of the -school-room clock through the last, long, lingering, eternal fifteen -minutes of the daily life-sentence. One forgets how feverishly the -seconds chased each other, faster than human feet could follow, when -one's little self was late for school, and the clamor of the distant -bell ended in a solemn, ominous silence. Then was the opportunity for -stout heart to play "hookey," and to lure the finny tribe with a poor -worm impaled on a bent pin; and that, in the opinion of all the editors -of all the newspapers in the United States, is what all of us always -did. But in the painful reality most of us, I think, tried to overtake -those feverish seconds, seeking indeed to outrun time, and somehow or -other, though the bell had stopped ringing, get unostentatiously into -our little seats before it stopped. And so we ran, and ran, and ran, -lifting one leaden foot after the other with hopeless determination, in -a silent, nightmare world where the road was made of glue and the very -trees along the way turned their leaves to watch us drag slowly by. -Little respect we would have had then for the poet Byron and his "Ah! -happy years! once more, who would not be a boy?" - -But even when time seemed to stand still, or go too fast, we had no -consciousness that the complicated clock of our individual existence -could ever run down and stop; and so happily careless were we of this -treasure, that we often wished to be men! "When I was young," says the -author of "The Boy's Week-Day Book,"--another volume that is not read -nowadays as much as it used to be,-- - - I doubted not the time would come, - When grown to man's estate, - That I would be a noble 'squire, - And live among the great. - - It was a proud, aspiring thought, - That should have been exiled:-- - I wish I was more humble now - Than when I was a child. - -I wonder what proud, aspiring thought Uncle Jones, as he called himself, -just then had in mind; but it was evidently no wish to be a boy again: -perhaps he meditated matrimony. - -For my own part I cannot successfully wish to be a boy; I remain -impervious to all the efforts of all the editors of all the newspapers -in the United States to dim my eye; and there must be many another eye -like mine, or else it is unbelievably unique. I lean back in my chair, -close my undimmed eye, and do my best; but, contrary to all editorial -expectation, I can summon no desire to go barefooted, fish with a bent -pin, or revisit the old swimming-hole - - Where the elm and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather. - -I prefer a beach and a bathing-suit and somebody my own age. Yet do not -think, shocked reader, that I am unsympathetic with youth. I am more -sympathetic--that is all--with my contemporaries; and the thought -forces itself upon me that boyhood is a narrow and conventional period, -in which my own desire to go without shoes was exactly similar to my -mother's determination to wear a bustle. Equally anxious to follow the -fashion of our respective sets, neither understood the other; and I -would no more have worn a bustle than my mother would have gone -barefooted. My father, similarly thwarted in a single desire, would have -cared less: his wider interests--politics, business, family, the local -and world gossip that immersed him in his newspaper, art, literature, -music, and the drama, to say nothing of professional baseball and -pugilism (in which, however, many fathers and sons have a common -interest)--would have absorbed his disappointment. - -But my narrower world, so to speak, was all feet. An unconventional -boy, as I think the most erudite student of boy-life and boy-psychology -will admit, is much more rare than an unconventional man; and even then -his unconventionality is likely to be imposed upon him "for his own -good" by well-meaning but tyrannical parents. "I have known boys," wrote -Uncle Jones, observing but not comprehending this characteristic fact, -"when playing at 'Hare and hounds' and 'Follow my leader,' to scramble -over hedges, leap over brooks, and mount up precipices, in a manner -which they would not have dared to attempt, had it not been for the -examples set them by their school-fellows; but," he adds, "I do not -remember any instance of a boy imitating another on account of his good -temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or piety." - -Naturally not. You and I, Uncle Jones, might be expected to imitate -each other's good temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or -piety,--though I do not say that we would,--but from the point of view -of a boy these virtues are unconventional. Their practice shocks and -disconcerts the observer. The behavior of Sir Isaac Newton, when kicked -in the stomach, was perfectly scandalous. - -And what is there, after all, in the life of a boy, that a man would -find interesting? Or that he may not do, if such is sufficiently his -desire to "make" the time for it, as he makes time for his adult -pleasures, and if he is not too old or too fat? He can spend his -vacation at the old swimming-hole--but he never does it. He can go -barefooted whenever he wishes: his mother can no longer prevent him. He -can fish with a bent pin in the porcelain bathtub,--adding a goldfish -to make the pursuit more exciting,--every morning before he takes his -bath. He can chase butterflies; here and there, indeed, a man makes a -profession of it, and institutions of learning call him an entomologist, -and pay him much honor and a small salary. Nobody forbids him to enlarge -his mental horizon by reading the lives of criminals and detectives; and -I can myself direct him to many an entertaining book, which is at once -far worse and far better, morally and artistically, than the sober -narratives that Old Sleuth used to write by the yard for boys to read by -stealth. He can roll a hoop; in many cases it would do him a world of -good to roll it down to the office in the morning and back home at -night. If he can persuade other ageing men, wishful of renewed boyhood, -to join with him, he can play at marbles, tick, puss-in-the-corner, -hop-scotch, ring-taw, and "Hot beans ready buttered." (Uncle Jones -mentions these games. I do not remember all of them myself, but "Hot -beans ready buttered" sounds especially interesting.) And where better -than in some green, quiet corner at the Country Club? And why, if you -_will_ raise the question of conventionality, why more foolish than -golf, or folk-dancing? - -But what he cannot do is to assume the boy's unconsciousness of his own -mortality. What he cannot unload is his own consciousness of -responsibility to and for others. Life, in short, has provided the man -with a worrying company of creditors of whom the boy knows -nothing--Creditor Cost-of-Living, Creditor Ambition, Creditor -Conscience, and Creditor Death. And the boy is unmarried! It is even -claimed by one philosopher of my acquaintance that this is why men wish -they were once more boys. I grant the plausibility of this opinion; for -the more a man is is devoted to his wife and family, the more he is -beset and worried by these troublesome creditors, the more, one may -reasonably argue, he feels the need of time to meet his obligations, and -is likely now and then to envy the boy his narrow, conventional, but -immortal-feeling life. - -Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fundamental fact. He is always trying -to destroy the boy's sense of immortality in this world by trying to -persuade him to read the Bible and prepare for immortality in the next. -"When a boy first begins his A B C," says Uncle Jones, "it is terrible -work for him for a short time; yet how soon he gets over it, and begins -to read! And, then, what a pleasure to be able to read a good and -pleasant book! Oh, it is worthwhile to go through the trouble of -learning to read fifty times over, to obtain the advantage of reading -the Bible." - - - - -III - -ON MEETING THE BELOVED - - _Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State and Mysterie of Loue that - youre trew Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a deepe - Humilitie and a loftie Conceit of Hymselfe. For with respect to - this, hys Mistresse, he believes himself a most inferior Person, - and as it were a mere Worme; yet if he doth suspect her to regard - any Man els as his Equal, he is consumed with great Astonishment - and raging Indignation, for this same Loue is a great Destroyer of - Common Sense in its Victimes. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior to - her because he is her Louer, and superior to all Men els for the - same silly Reason._--ANATOMIE OF LOUE. - - -To any sensitive man, not yet armored by the indifference that comes of -being married himself, there is cause for apprehension in the prospect -of meeting for the first time that person, male or female, whom somebody -he knows and loves has recently agreed to marry. The event, when it -comes, is unavoidable, nor is there any period in adult life when it may -not happen, or anybody we know so old that he or she may not occasion -it. Fact is more romantic, or at any rate remains romantic much later in -life, than fiction. Only the other day I read in the newspaper of a man -of one hundred and thirty-five years who had just subjected his little -circle to this formality. Very likely the newspaper exaggerated, but the -case undermines the security that one ordinarily feels in his -relationship with the ageing. - -Now it needs no argument that to be happy in the happiness of others is -an inexpensive pleasure and well worth cultivating. Other things being -equal, one should go dancing and singing to his first meeting with -another's beloved. Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or sixty, -should blossom, to his imagination, from the granite curb along his way; -and, though a foolish convention may repress the song and dance, yet -should he walk as if shod with the most levitating heels ever made from -the liveliest of live rubber, and sing merrily in his heart. - -But, thus to enter into the happiness of another, one must see and feel, -as if for himself, some good and sufficient reason for that happiness; -and the deep, insoluble mystery essential to all proper betrothals is -that this good and sufficient reason is not necessarily visible: these -two are happy-mad, and how shall anybody who is sane enter into their -lunacy? - -Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d,--to take the first name that comes to mind,--has -become engaged to Miss Margaret Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well and -good. Nature, which, for some reason that mankind has long curiously and -vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to continue the human race, is, one -may believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is one job among many. But -the satisfaction of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it could be put to such -haberdashery use, would girdle the Equator, and the ends, tied in a true -lover's knot, would flutter beyond the farthest visible star. Men and -women have become engaged in the past; men and women will become engaged -in the future; but this engagement of Harvey Todd and Margaret Lemon is -and will ever remain unique--and so whoever is now called upon to -appraise one party to this wonder and congratulate the other, may well -be troubled. He is not so much afraid of what he may do and say,--for -any man may hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost sobbing pressure of -the hand and a few muttered words,--as of the way, in spite of himself, -that he will look when he does and says it; there, indeed, the amateur -actor profits by his hobby. There is, to be sure, the saving chance that -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so pleasurably affect him that the ordeal -will be less difficult than he anticipates: there is even the rare -chance that he may _instantly and completely agree with Mr. Todd's -estimate of Miss Lemon_; but this is the happy-madness itself, and -certainly not desirable under the circumstances. There is the -possibility, even more rare and less desirable, that Miss Lemon, seeing -him for the first time, _will instantly and completely prefer him to -Mr. Todd_. There is the possibility that he may recoil with horror from -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be recoiled from, or that both may recoil -simultaneously, falling over, figuratively, on their backs, and being -picked up and carried away unconscious, and in opposite directions, by -surprised onlookers. His whole nature may, in short, instinctively run -toward, or away from, the beloved; and between these extremes lies a -gamut of intermediary emotions, which at the moment he would hardly wish -to uncover. This stiff and geometrical smile, he asks himself at the -worst, can it deceive anybody? this hypocritical mutter of -congratulation, does it proceed from his own or an ice chest? Nor is he -much relieved when Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, proves -how genuine appeared his smile, how sincere his mutter, by asking him -in affectionate detail what he thinks of the other--a procedure which -should be legally forbidden the newly engaged, under penalty of being -refused a marriage license for at least ten years. - -This state of mind in lovers, so important to those who are called upon -to meet the beloved for the first time, has engaged the attention of -essayists, conversationalists, and philosophers. "They fall at once," -wrote Stevenson, "into that state in which another person becomes to us -the very gist and centre point of God's creation, and demolishes our -laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with -the one master-thought, that even the trivial cares of our own person -become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is -translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and -desirable a fellow creature. And all the while their acquaintances look -on in stupor." - -"No, sir," said Dr. Johnson, promptly improving Mr. Boswell's milder -assertion that love is like being enlivened with champagne, "No, sir. -Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne"--an -opinion, one hopes, that will not some day be made the basis of a -nation-wide campaign to prohibit falling in love. - -"His friends," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "find in her a likeness to her -mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees -no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to -rainbows and the song of birds." - -Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon (so like a rainbow) are impervious to any lack -of enthusiasm that you or I, dear, unselfish, sensitive reader, may fear -to exhibit when either leads us the other by the hand and says, "This -is IT." Ours, if any, will be the suffering. It may even happen that -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd--Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon beaming consent and -approval--will suggest that _we call her_ (_or him_) _Margaret_ (_or -Harvey_). - -Yet from another point of view, but this is a selfish one, apprehension -is justified in proportion to the sensitive man's previous intimacy with -the individual whose beloved he is about to meet. For until that meeting -is over, "previous" is the word for it: whatever opinion the beloved may -form of him will determine the degree and manner of its continuance. If -Miss Lemon disapproves of him, though Mr. Todd has hitherto loved him as -Damon did Pythias, all is over; if Mr. Todd disapproves of him, though -he has known Miss Lemon from her perambulator, all is over. A pale -ghost, he may, in either case, sometimes hang his spectral hat in the -Todd hallway, and even extend his phantom legs under the Todd mahogany; -but ALL IS OVER. Divinely harmonious as they seem, these two will never -agree to let him try, however humbly and conscientiously, to cultivate -the inexpensive pleasure of being happy in their happiness. He becomes -what no self-respecting man can wish to be--a fly in the ointment. Most -cases, fortunately, are not so serious: he will be given a reasonable -chance to make a place for himself on this new plane to which Mr. Todd -and Miss Lemon have been translated; but it is always a question whether -he can enter that plane himself, or must hereafter be content with -hearing from his former friend through a medium. For he has not, as is -so often gracefully but emptily said on these trying occasions, been -enriched by the acquisition of a new friend: he has simply exchanged -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd (as the case may be) for a composite, a Toddlemon -or a Lemontodd--a few years will show which. He must make the best he -can of that composite. He who was formerly described as (let us say) "my -friend, Mr. Popp," becomes, if he becomes at all, "our friend, Mr. -Popp"; and if ever he hears himself being introduced as "Mr. Todd's -friend, Mr. Popp," or as "Mrs. Todd's friend, Mr. Popp," he had better -go away as soon as politeness permits, and never come back. Never. - -I speak, of course, in generalities; for there are no rules immutably -governing all cases, and life is mellowed and beautified by shining, -sensible examples, in which Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon become one, yet -realize that in many respects, being human, they must still remain two; -then, indeed, the congratulator may actually be enriched by the -acquisition of a new friend--but not instantly, as one is enriched by -the acquisition of a new hat. Yet it is always the wiser part, in -preparing to meet a beloved, to prepare for the worst. - -These are evidently the apprehensions of a bachelor, sensitive but not -unselfish; the mental attitude is different with a student, philosopher, -and idealist who, thinking not of himself, contemplates another's -marriage in the calm, intelligent way, having as yet no beloved in which -he can contemplate his own. Such a one weighs. Such a one is conscious -that, little as _he_ knows the beloved of Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, there -is grave danger that Mr. Todd knows Miss Lemon, or Miss Lemon Mr. Todd, -hardly better. This happy-madness may not only be a delusion, as a calm -outside intelligence contemplates it, but it may be a snare. Mistakes do -happen. There are known cases in which the happy lunatic has been -mistaken in a beloved not once but often; and the persistent effort of -these poor madmen and madwomen to correct one mistake by making another -is one of the most discussed and pitiable phases of our civilization. -The calm intelligence must balance also the practical aspects of the -business, its risks and liabilities as well as its profits; and so -serious is the enterprise when thus examined that he can hardly fail to -be terrified for anybody he knows and loves who is undertaking it. - -O Harvey! Harvey! (or Margaret! Margaret!) - -Tact is what he will pray for. And if his prayer is granted, when Mr. -Todd (or Miss Lemon) asks him, "Now, honestly, what do you think of her -(or him)?" he will say, "Of course I do not know Miss Lemon (or Mr. -Todd) very well _yet_, but I have never met anybody whom I _hoped_ to -know and like better." Which will be quite true, and please the -twittering questioner much more than if he said, "Oh, I don't know. I -_don't_ know." - - - - -IV - -THIS IS A FATHER - - _Proud Parent, in this little life - Yourself reflected see, - And think how Baby will progress - A man like you to be! - - So stout, so strong, so wise, and when - Sufficient years have flown, - Like you the happy parent of - A baby of his own! - - And when that unborn baby grows - To be a man like you, - Oh, think how proud that man will be - To be a parent too. - - So think, when life oppresses you - And you are feeling sad, - A million, million, million times - You'll be a happy dad._ - - --THE FATHER'S ANTHEM. - - -In the life of man fatherhood is so likely to happen, that I wonder -Shakespeare did not select father as a natural, and indeed inevitable, -successor to lover in his well-known seven ages. He chose the soldier, -"full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard," presumably because -such soldiers were common in Elizabethan London. But fathers must have -been more so: they must have gone in droves past the tavern window where -Shakespeare (as what we now call the "wets" so like to think) sat at his -ale-stained table, dipping now his quill in an inkwell, and again his -nose in a tankard; but they seem to have made no impression. Indeed this -unromantic, necessary figure, composite as it is of all sorts and -conditions of men, has never appealed strongly to the poets; perhaps it -is their revenge because fathers so seldom read poetry. - -Whatever else a man does, whether he lives by banking or burglary, -ascends to the presidency or descends to the gutter, he is likely to be -a father: they are as countless as the pebbles on a beach or the leaves -in Vallombrosa, and the few who evade paternity evade also the purpose -for which nature evidently created them, and go through life thumbing -their noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. So taken for granted is -this vocation of fatherhood, and so little considered in comparison with -other masculine employments, that no correspondence school offers a -course, and many a young man undertakes to raise children with less -hesitation than he would start in to raise chickens. Some accept -fatherhood with joy, others with resignation, like a recently wedded -young Italian who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the other day of his own -new little one. "Zee fadder and zee modder," he said, "zey work and zey -slave for zee leetle one. But what-a good? When he is grow up, he say, -'To hell wiz zee fadder and zee modder!'" And so, as Shakespeare may -have decided, there is no universal type of fatherhood, nor has the -imagination of mankind created one, as in the case of mothers, for -convenient literary and conversational use. The lines of the -balladist,-- - - With his baby on his knee - He's as happy as can be,-- - -were, to be sure, something in this direction; but they have become so -wholly associated with humor, that even the late Mr. Rogers, had he -known the ballad, could hardly have found inspiration therein for a -group; nor Shakespeare adapted the lines to describe seriously one of -his seven ages. He might have scribbled experimentally,-- - - Then the father, - Infant on knee, and happy like the clam,-- - -but that would have been the end of it. He would have crossed out the -experiment, and taken another drink. - -Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the mind of the general, so far -behind that he is almost invisible, a tiny object on red wheels at the -end of a string. But the little fellow carries a pocketbook: when Mother -needs money she pulls in the string, and he comes up in a hurry. And, as -is usually the case with popular conceptions, this odd, erroneous -notion, which most fathers seem cheerfully enough to accept, has no -doubt its historic foundation, and derives from the unquestionable -supremacy of Mother in the beginning. At that period, indeed, it is -hardly to be expected that any father should feel immediately _en -rapport_ with his new-born child, or become intimately associated with -its helpless, flower-like life. Ever since the idea, which has now so -long lost its original element of bewildering surprise, yet remains -always somewhat surprising, first dawned upon a human father and mother -that _this baby_ belonged to _them_, conditions have inexorably -consigned the infant to the care of its mother, while its father pursued -elsewhere the equally necessary business of providing sustenance for the -family. A division of labor was imperative: somebody must stay at home -in the cave and tend the baby, somebody must go out in the woods and -hustle for provisions. Maternity was, as it must have been, already a -feminine habit, but paternity was something new and unexpected; and -although I suspect, in many cases, this astonishing discovery was -followed by speedy flight. Trueheart the First took up his -responsibilities and his stone axe together. - -The horror is recorded with which Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being -left alone in a castle with a new-born child; and this feeling in so -civilized a man was no doubt an echo of the emotion with which poor, -bewildered, primitive, but faithful Trueheart would have envisaged being -left alone in the cave with his new-born baby: the sense of relief, of -gayety, of something definite and within his capabilities to do, with -which the young father nowadays takes his hat and starts for the office, -must be much the same as that with which Trueheart took his stone axe -and started for the woods. - -Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became -subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not -fundamentally changed, it has ever since continued. "Mothers' Day," for -example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; "Fathers' Day" remains a mere -humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as -now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not -quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little -importance. - -I am not forgetting--for I do them an honor I can hardly express--those -fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, -back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion -incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted -babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby's -wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some -article of infant use or pleasure that the little rascal has -mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways -patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost -impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical -father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up -and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the -proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins -to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father's position become -responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior -has consequences. - -Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business--yet even to-day many -a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than -had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, -meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon tea. A blind attachment (I am -putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) -springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, -Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any -Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, -Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to -believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil. - -And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes -a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father--and -who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking -together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with -which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly -evident that Harvey Todd has given hardly more thought to the -tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than -might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do -not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; -but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, -when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great -big man like himself. And according as he _has_ conducted himself, that -great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying -degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, -it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief -respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, -cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the -glasses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and make mine chocolate. For -this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality -an immortal spirit (though he doesn't know which), and here he -stands,--I said chocolate,--and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his -experience, could not tell him what to do about it. - -So we clink our long-handled spoons. - -For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this -topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have -advanced materially since he was a father. "He that spareth his rod," -said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed -the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, "hateth his son: But he -that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." And again, "The rod and the -reproof giveth wisdom." We know better nowadays: the rod has become a -figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are -fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be -described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is -something objective for a father to do--an occasion when Mother pulls in -the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes -up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over -the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the -paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to -attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in -this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success -as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. -Hamlet's father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and -never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark -smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no -better than follow the elder Hamlet's example; and in so doing he will -show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on -proverbs and a stout stick. "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth -his neck," said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to -"get it in the neck"), "shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond -remedy"; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no -longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for -Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon's Book of Proverbs but Theodore -Roosevelt's Letters to his Children. - -If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact -that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden -our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has -gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may -compose a proverb myself-- - - The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; - And the wise father maketh a friend of his son. - -But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, -which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and -truthful speech, is here especially difficult. "To speak truth," says -Stevenson, "there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence -between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal -fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is -another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of -the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial -gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with -his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly -judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth." - -Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his -paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental -experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and -wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an -affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line -of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his -jolly old father's opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, -Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is -bound up in the heart of the child"--and there he stopped, after adding -his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, -O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. -Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with. - -And so the father plays his unapplauded part--"tragedy, comedy, history, -pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, -tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem -unlimited," as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants -no "Father's Day." He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems -to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in -statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though -most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a -Great Father. - - - - -V - -ON BEING A LANDLORD - - _In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a - Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another - tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of - the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may - eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case - comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity - pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the - ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just - landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS - TO LET. - - -On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women -and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. -Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. -Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, -Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; -indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear -title,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily -readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and -Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he -devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I -like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw," -mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, -however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that -brave little company-- - - BUTTON - HOPP - CARROT - BARBER - KARSEN - CAWKINS - SMITH - RANEE - MAHONEY - SIBLEY - LE MAIRE - TROLLEY - BROWN - MURPHY - ---would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout -leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, -short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted -along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a -cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, -my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you -will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I -will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at -the terms assigned. So help me God and his saints." - -Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was -paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that -now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, -through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this -sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved -helpmate. - -Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of -that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the -rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. -There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a -civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact -no more than a "fair rent"; at our weakest, when a tenant gets in -arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least -resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the -tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes -more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the -inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves -the while, to be strict. - -I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that "in the beginning -man probably dwelt in trees after the fashion of his ape-like ancestors. -He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird's -eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects." And my own experience leads -me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I -draw the line at birds' eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at -which items of an earlier menu even the scientific mind seems to baulk. -But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got -possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share -its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may -landlordry have been established. - -Millions of years have passed since then,--a mere flicker in the great -movie of eternity,--and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but -the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present -there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal -diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), -invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a -complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we -have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to -the simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in -this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks -large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin's -Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise -the rent. One must assume, of course, that he is thinking about it just -before taking his morning bath. - -It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who -profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect -Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by -fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal -seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the -social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, -for he lets apartments only to what he calls "nice people," whose -society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose -financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain -such that no painful embarrassment on this sordid but necessary side of -their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I -gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the -nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in -general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual "Ah, -yes, the rent." Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of -landlordry. - -I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written -entitled - - THE RENT - - CHARACTERS: MRS. BUTTON, a tenant. - - I, a landlord. - - SCENE: _A tenement, owned by_ I, _but referred to as_ MRS. - BUTTON'S, _which is perhaps more correct._ MRS. BUTTON _is washing - dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man - coming upstairs._ MRS. BUTTON _smiles enigmatically. A knocking at - the door, as in "Macbeth."_ - - MRS. BUTTON. Come in. (I _enters._) - - I _(laughing with affected lightness)._ Ah, _good-_morning, Mrs. - Button. I've come for the rent. - - MRS. BUTTON _(weeping)._ It's not me, as ye know, sir, that likes - to be behind with th' rint. I'm proud. - - I _(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in - tears)._ I know _that._ But you've been here seven months, Mrs. - Button, without-- - - MRS. BUTTON _(wiping her eyes)._ Yis, I'm an old tenant, and 't - would break me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin payin' reg'lar - only nixt week, sir. It's th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel - harrd to leave it. - - I (_sternly_). Very well. Very well. I shall _expect_ the money - next week. Good-day, Mrs. Button. - - MRS. BUTTON. Good-day, sir. - - I _exits_. MRS. BUTTON _resumes washing dishes, smiling - enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily - downstairs, fainter and fainter_. - - (CURTAIN) - -It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human -beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of -making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier -plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of -disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have -nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in -dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those -of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory -psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the -effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is -rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, -in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of -course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,--but -it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked. - -One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long -and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping -peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, -firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything -more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent." - -One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his -desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to -figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; -insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, -light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at -Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., -etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man. - -Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case -of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, -who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they -produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give -way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right -through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and -play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. -Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic -Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running -feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, -and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy -all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play." - -But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize -incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to -his tenant, "All is over between us; we must part forever--and at once." -To which, judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately -been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, "All right, you Old -Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I'll shake the dust of your -disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from -to-morrow." - -It's a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to -raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) -unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and -figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a -distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, -Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le -Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, -Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough. - - - - -VI - -OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN - - -_To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished my grandson by standing on my -head, and by entering the kitchen by turning a back-somersault through -the door--exercises which I frequently practise for the benefit of my -digestion, but not often in public. His bewilderment at seeing a man of -my years perform such acrobatics was most comical. But there, there, one -must amuse one's self with the young sometimes. I have thought more or -less seriously of advising these exercises for general use; but few men -have had the advantage of being brought up in a circus, and what seems -easy to me would no doubt present insuperable obstacles to most. The -main thing, after all, is not to grow old before your time, because the -silly younger generation likes to flatter itself by thinking you -antediluvian._--LETTERS OF FATHER WILLIAM. - -Few men read Shakespeare, and so, fortunately enough, few think of -themselves as being some day a pantaloon--lean and slippered (as -Shakespeare described this sixth age of man), with spectacles on nose, -his youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, -and his big, manly voice, turning again to childish treble, operating -like a penny whistle when he tries to converse. But the Bard made a -bogey: at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons visible than there -probably were in Elizabethan England; and the sixth age of man appears -more logically to offer a kind of Indian summer that is well worth -living for. Shakespeare, it seems to me, slipped a cog in his sequence; -and I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian centenarian, who began at -forty to restrict his diet (though this I care less for), and wrote of -himself at eighty-three: "I enjoy a happy state of body and mind. I can -mount my horse without assistance; I climb steep hills; and I have -lately written a play abounding in innocent wit and humor. And I am a -stranger to those peevish and morose humors which fall so often to the -lot of old age." - -Granting some other choice of mental employment,--for writing that kind -of a play seems nowadays too useless an occupation even for an old man's -leisure,--this is the kind of an old man I should like to be. - -In the light of recent scientific research with flies, Cornaro probably -inherited his longevity from long-lived ancestors, and would have done -about as well on a less restricted diet: he might reasonably have -lasted as long if not as comfortably. Ideas have changed since Pope -asked himself,-- - - Why has not man a microscopic eye?-- - -and promptly answered,-- - - For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. - Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, - T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? - -Man since then has provided himself with a remarkably good microscopic -eye. He has inspected the mite, and discovered resemblances between this -innocently disgusting little insect and himself, which make it -desirable, in some cases, to suspend the swatter, and study instead of -assassinate. Granting that the proper study of mankind is Man, the -proper study of mankind is Flies; for the days of a fly present an -entertaining and instructive parallel to the years of a man: a -seventy-year-old man and a seventy-day-old fly are contemporaries; -other things being equal, they might almost be called twins. Confined in -glass bottles and observed impartially from birth to burial, each baby -fly, it appears, inherits a maximum number of days on this perplexing -planet, and lives fewer according to the activity with which he expends -his inheritance. If flies had copybooks one might compose a maxim for -little flies to copy,-- - - Do not fly too much or fast, - And you will much longer last. - -Thus one scientific gentleman has watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 -flies--3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), and 2620 of their -natural, and only, admirers--from their separate birth-minutes till each -in turn paid his or her little debt to nature, and passed away. It is an -odd thing to contemplate--this self-election of a man to the positions -of guardian, health officer, divine providence, nursemaid, matchmaker, -clergyman, physician, undertaker, and sexton to 5836 flies. Yet it -redounds to his credit, and is another proof of the poet's contention -that we men are superior: for what fly would ever think of studying us -to find out anything about himself? And, by deduction, I, like the -little fly, inherit my span of life, although either accident or a germ -may get me if I don't watch out. - -But even if man, like the fly, inherits his individual length of life, -he will, again like the fly, go on living it with little concern as to -whatever invisible string may be fastened to his inheritance. He will -think hopefully that any ancestor he has had who died by violence or a -germ might otherwise have lived to be as hale and hearty as Father -William, that lively sage whose habit was to stand on his head at -intervals, and to enter a door by turning a back-somersault. Heredity -is still a mystery; the ancestry of free men is much more complicated -than that of flies in bottles; and any of us, if he anxiously carried -his genealogical research far enough back, would find a goodly number of -forbears, prematurely carried off, from whom he might reasonably have -inherited quite a lot of what the scientific mind calls the -"hypothetical substance or substances which normally prevent old age and -natural death." Flies growing gracefully old in glass bottles therefore -need not worry us, and every ancestor who has been hanged is a reason -for optimism. - -And there is another reason even more valuable than a pendent ancestor. -You and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though there may be times of -discouragement when we wish we hadn't), and old age is a mere trivial -incident in our jolly eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin growing -older, by the conventional measurement of time, with our first breath; -but who can prove that we are not in reality very much older than we -look in the beginning, and very much younger than we look in the end? I -get these sober thoughts from the laboratory rather than the pulpit, -from evolution rather than dogma. O aged fly, to whom your seventy days -are a long life and your glass bottle a perfectly natural and normal -world in which to have lived it! O aged man, to whom your seventy years -are a long life, and who may also have lived it, for all you know, in a -kind of glass bottle, big enough to contain comfortably this little -planet and all the visible stars! Whoever respects age for its own sake -must impartially salute you both. - -"It is a man's own fault," said Dr. Johnson, then seventy years old, -but no pantaloon, "it is from want of use, if the mind grows torpid in -old age." And so plausible is this observation, that any reasonably -intelligent man might make it to his wife at breakfast without at all -astonishing her. Here, to be sure, one gets no help from flies in glass -bottles who depart this world according as they fly more or fly less, -for theirs apparently is a democracy in which no outside observer can -yet say that any one fly thinks more or thinks less than another. A -scientific study of 5836 old men (in biographies instead of bottles) -would very likely do no more than verify the generalization that any -thinker may make at breakfast. And this being the case, civilization -tends naturally enough to reduce the number of pantaloons. Universal -education, books, newspapers, magazines, politics, movies, anything and -everything that to any degree employs and exercises the mind, postpones -its torpidity; and statistics indicate that an increasing proportion of -babies live to be middle-aged people--but a decreasing proportion of -middle-aged people live to be old enough to become pantaloons. For many -a not-so-very-promising baby survives nowadays who would have perished -under earlier conditions; and many a man gets to middle life who would -otherwise be dead already, and lacks the "pep," as a popular magazine -editor might say, to get very much further. What a survival of the -fittest, for example, was that of the beautiful Galeria Copiola, who, I -have read, made her first dazzling appearance in the theatre of ancient -Rome at the age of ninety! She acted and danced; and Roman playgoers of -seventy, sitting in the front rows, had opportunity to become madly -infatuated with a charmer twenty years their senior, such as now falls -only to the lot of the college undergraduate or the tired business man. -And if anybody doubts this surprising youthfulness of Galeria, I offer -the corroborative evidence of the seventeenth-century pamphlet, "The -Olde, Olde, very Olde Man; or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr," in -which John Taylor, the Water Poet, describes the pre-Adamite who was -brought up to London at the age of 152, met the King, and had such a -great good time in general, that his death nine months later was -attributed to over-excitement. - - He was of old Pythagoras' opinion - That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion; - Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig, - Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig: - Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy, - He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy. - -(I have looked up "metheglin," and I find it to have been a "strong -liquor made by mixing honey with water and flavoring it, yeast or some -similar ferment being added, and the whole allowed to ferment." "Ale" -was also a liquor, but made from malt. "Nappy" means heady and strong: -"Nappie ale," says an old writer, was "so called because, if you taste -it thoroughly, it will either catch you by the nape of the neck or cause -you to take a nappe of sleepe." The use of these drinks, it may still be -argued, shortened Parr's life; but the fly-research that I have -mentioned seems to indicate that their tendency to decrease physical -activity by inducing "nappes" may have materially helped him to conserve -his inheritance of longevity.) - -But these cases are exceptional, and for my part I have no desire to be -the Thomas Parr of the twentieth or twenty-first century. It is more -important to live right (and there, indeed, is a job for anybody!) than -to live long; and old age, like young love, is often oversentimentalized. -Mr. Boswell, I think, oversentimentalized it when he asked his -long-suffering friend, "But, sir, would you not know old age?... I mean, -sir, the Sphinx's description of it--morning, noon, and night. I would -know night as well as morning and noon." And the doctor restored the -subject to its proper place when he answered: "Nay, sir, what talk is -this? Would you know the gout? Would you have decrepitude?" He might, -indeed, have gone further. "Do you suppose, sir" (he might have added), -"you will know night when you see it? Why, sir, what does a baby know -about morning?" - -So with Pantaloon: we comparative youngsters have only an external and -objective idea of him--his slippers, his stockings, his peevish and -morose humors, his feeble mirth and empty garrulity. What living is -really like to him we cannot know until we are pantaloons ourselves, and -then, mayhap, we shall have forgotten what living is like to us now; let -it suffice that we shall probably be far less bothered by our shrunk -shanks and piping voices than we now believe possible. At the same time, -it will do no harm for some of us to "watch our step." Already I--and -there must be many another like me--am sometimes a little peevish and a -little morose; a mere _soupçon_ reasonably explainable by natural -causes--but there it is! I am hardly aware of it myself. Yet when it is -called to my attention by those nearest and dearest to me, I experience -an odd, perverse inclination to be more peevish and more morose than -before. I _enjoy_, I take a queer, twisted, unnatural, hateful, -demoniac pleasure, like Mr. Hyde when Dr. Jekyll turned into him, in the -idea of being more peevish and more morose. Here indeed is something to -look out for: resist that inclination, and we are laying the foundation -of a serene and respected old age; obey that impulse, and we comfort the -Devil, and run the risk of some day becoming, not only old men, but old -nuisances. I do not know, though I very much doubt, that one old fly is -ever more peevish and morose than another old fly; but with mankind, -whose superior intelligence so often makes trouble for his associates, -the variations are visible. Savages, unhampered by the conventions of an -artificial civilization, have efficiently knocked their elders on the -head in consequence. - -Let us, then, do our best to beat the Devil, and prepare for that Indian -summer, which, with all respect to Shakespeare, is the true sixth age -of man. And they reach it best (to judge by some who have got there) who -do their daily work with a good conscience, share their incidental joys -with others, and meet their troubles in the spirit of that stout old -seaman, Sir Andrew Barton, as I the other day saw his ballad quoted with -reference to R. L. Stevenson:-- - - A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; - Ile but lye downe and bleede a while, - And then Ile rise and fight againe. - - - - -VII - -THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN - -_Now concernynge the Soule, it is a Queer Thynge consydering that it -lives in the Bodie yett dieth nott; and so I conclude that the Soule was -made separate, and thys Bodie for its brief use and tenement; and how it -gets in and gets oute I cannot tell you. And belyke there bee all sortes -and condiciones of Soules, some goode, some bad, some so-so; but because -Goode is better than Evil, and because they lyve in Eternity, the bad -Soules will finde itt oute in time, and become goode; and the so-so -Soules will learn wisdome, and cease of their foolishnesse. But why they -were nott alle made alyke to start, that I cannot tell you; nor juste -how they was made._--THE SAGE'S OWNE BOKE. - - -It was a poetess, I am glad to say, and not a poet, who wrote the once -popular lines:-- - - Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! - I am so weary of toil and of tears,-- - Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-- - Take them, and give me my childhood again. - -Many a voice no doubt sagged under this load of pathos as it read "Rock -Me to Sleep, Mother" to a little group of sympathetic listeners; but if -such melancholies are to be set on paper, and circulated in print, I am -unchivalrous enough to wish that joyless occupation on the gentler sex. -Most of us perform prodigies of toil, which seem to receive scant -recompense, and shed figuratively many a bucket of seemingly useless -tears. But I do not imagine that this sad poetess was half as badly off -as she seemed to think; and, more than that, she had only to wait long -enough, and keep alive long enough, to get her childhood back without -asking for it. Time, the Groceryman, in due season would hand her a -second childhood in many respects "just as good" as the first; for we -who are betwixt and between can observe an unintelligent ignorance of -later troubles in one condition, neatly balanced by an unintelligent -forgetfulness of them in the other. Our lugubrious poetess, one might -say, was neither more nor less than asking the tide of the years -obligingly to assist her to commit suicide. Had her request been -granted, there would have been one more child in the world--and one less -poetess. - -An impressive parallel may, indeed, be drawn between these two -childhoods--the first a period of dependence upon its elders, and the -second of dependence upon its youngers, and each, to the reflective -observer, a pretty evenly balanced reversal of the other. It is as if, -in the beginning, the whole family of recognizable human -characteristics, Curiosity, Memory, Affection, Dislike, Ambition, Love, -Hate, Good Nature, Bad Temper, and all the rest of them, were moving, -one after another, into a new house; and as if, in the end, the whole -family, one after another, were leaving an old one. The very youngest -and the very oldest men in the world seem equally equipped for living in -it--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"; and Baby, a -little older, when he goes out in his perambulator is much like ancient -Thomas Parr being conveyed to London as a human curiosity in a "litter -and two horses (for the more easy carriage of a man so enfeebled and -worn with age).... And to cheere up the olde man and make him merry, -there was an antique-faced fellow, called Jacke, or John the Foole." - -Why, I myself, meeting a baby in a perambulator, have made such antic -faces that I might fairly have been called Jacke, or John the Foole, by -anybody who saw me, and all to cheere up the younge man and make him -merry. A little older yet, the child will run and play, rolling his -hoop, spinning his top, enjoying the excitement of tag and -hide-and-go-seek; and I dare say that the old man, a little younger than -before, would be just as happy with hoop and top (if he were again -introduced to them), and would have a grand, good time at tag and -hidey-go if he had other old men and old women to play with, and his -youngers would let him. I do not mean that he would do any of these -things as well as the child; but it would please him as much to do them -to the top of his aged bent, though now and then a flicker of remembered -convention, which the child has never known and considered, would make -him self-consciously abandon these simple pleasures. Even as an old cat, -caught trying to catch its tail, will sit up with dignity and pretend -that it wasn't. - -There was once a custom of including a skeleton, or perhaps a mummy, in -the festivity of a banquet, to remind the diners of their mortality, -and, for all I know, the after-dinner speakers of the shortness of time; -though very likely they soon got used to their silent companion, and -took their mortality as lightly as most people do at dinner. An "Olde, -Olde, very Olde Man," as a contemporary writer called the unpicturesque -human ruin I have just referred to, would, it seems to me, have answered -the same purpose, and answered it better. Human nature takes neither the -skeleton nor the mummy with continuous seriousness, and proves by its -attitude that, if we instinctively fear death at one moment, we -instinctively ridicule our fear at another. I have read it argued that -man with his clothes on is nevertheless naked,--such arguments seem to -amuse the philosophers,--and by the same entertaining process of -reasoning we are all skeletons together, though some may worry lest -others consider them too fat for romantic admiration. Or, again, to the -man who believes that death snuffs him out like a candle, this skeleton -at the feast might easily become an urgent reminder that he is still -living, and he would most unwisely stuff himself out like a toy balloon -while he still had a chance. But your olde, olde, very olde man is a -reality: he is both dead and alive; his presence, to say nothing of his -table manners, should tend to make each guest regard death as a friend -rather than an enemy, and his state of mind and body prove such a -warning against pride in either, that even the after-dinner speakers -would take notice and modestly shorten their speeches. - -Let it not be imagined that I lack respect for age. I tell you frankly, -ageing and respected Reader, that so long as you can intelligently read -even this essay, you are _not_ seriously old; and when you cannot, you -won't know the difference, and no respect of mine will be of any value -to you. Your time has not come to sit propped up at table as the latest -modern improvement on the skeleton at the feast; and if ever it does, -you, my friend, will not be there. Where you will be, I cannot faintly -imagine, and neither churchmen nor philosophers help me, for the -churchmen are too objective and the philosophers too abstract; the best -I can do is to take John Fiske's word for it, who knew far more about -both science and metaphysics than I can hope to, when he says the -materialistic theory that the life of the soul ends with the life of the -body is "perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that -is known to the history of philosophy." But when its house has become a -ruin, my soul will certainly have sense enough to look for something -more habitable, and may conceivably depart while there are still a few -embers burning in the furnace, leaving the fire to die out when it will. -Man is a conventional being, and perhaps his most astonishing convention -is a funeral. - -But the custom has long gone out of thus poignantly reminding diners -that a time is coming when they will have no stomachs; and olde, olde, -very olde men will get no invitations out to dine for any suggestion of -mine. Fortunately there are other uses for them. They are, for example, -a source of innocent pride to their families. "Grandpa was eighty-nine -his last birthday, and he still has a tooth." They interest the million -readers of the morning newspaper. "Friends from far and near gathered -yesterday to celebrate the 101st birthday of Mr. John Doe, 17 Jones -Avenue. The venerable patriarch, who can still walk unaided from his -place of honor by the steam radiator to his cushioned chair in the -dining-room, when asked to what he attributes his ripe old age, replied -with astonishing intelligence that the winters are longer than they used -to be. Mr. Doe was surrounded by 247 living children, grandchildren, and -great-grand-children." These are visible uses; but this olde, olde, very -olde man may have, invisibly, a more important function; and the -helplessness of age, like that of infancy, may well have been a -necessary factor in the slow conversion of our ape-like ancestor into -you and me. - -I have commented elsewhere on the natural astonishment of the first -parents who realized, with their inefficient prehistoric minds, that -_this_ baby belonged to _them_, and how, in the considered opinion of -able scientists, the little hitherto missing link joined father and -mother into the first human family. Tending and providing for Baby made -the cave a home; but I suspect it was a long time before tending and -providing for Grandpa added another motive for the cultivation of those -higher qualities that distinguish man from all other animals. Why, there -were savages who ate him! Yet in due time the olde, olde, very olde man -became such a motive, and to-day man is the only animal that takes care -of its grandfather. When you think of the differences between men to-day -and men then, between men then and the ape-men before them, and between -men now as they go about their various occupations, it seems quite -possible that ape-men had no souls at all, and that some men to-day have -rudimentary ones, millions of years behind others in evolution. It -explains much. And so, wherever there is an olde, olde, very olde man, I -dare say the care his youngers take of him is doing them good; they -might even reverse the parental platitude of punishment, and say, -"Grandpa, this does me more good than it does you." - -But this proud possession of an olde, olde, very olde man does not -always work visibly toward such beneficent ends. His obstreperous -infancy, masquerading in mature garments, sometimes exhausts the -patience of his youngers; and his permanent conviction (often the only -sign of intelligence left) that he knows more than they do, and perhaps -more than anybody else, makes their task difficult: it is one thing, so -to speak, to take care of a baby when it is growing up, and another -thing to take care of a baby when it is growing down. Then, indeed, one -needs the assurance of immortality, the conviction that Grandpa is, -little as one might think it, still growing up, and that this simulacrum -of Grandpa that still remains to be looked after, must not be taken too -seriously. These olde, olde, very olde men are not all just alike: there -are grandpas whom anybody might be proud to take care of, and grandpas -whom anybody might be excused for wishing (as the brisk, modern phrase -has it) to sidestep. And the explanation of this diversity, as of much -else that puzzles us in a puzzling world, may be that they were not all -just alike when they were babies. Inside their thin and tiny skulls some -had better brains than others, brains with more of those wonderful -little pyramidal neurones, which, able scientists (unless I get their -message twisted) tell me, correlate, connect, assemble, and unite our -individual ideas, memories, sensations, and intellectual and emotional -what-nots. Men, in short, may be born free, but they are not born equal. - -But why worry? If the individual soul is still young, it will keep on -growing in wisdom and experience; nor will it lose touch with other -souls that are akin to it, and, in the measurement of eternity, its -contemporaries; and it will have a better and better house to live in, -with ever more modern improvements in the way of pyramidal neurones. As -the March Hare conclusively replied to Alice, when she asked why the -three little sisters who lived in the treacle-well learned to draw by -drawing everything that began with an M, "Why not?" - -So if ever I become like the valetudinarian described by Macaulay, who -"took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished -his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty -laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales," I hope that somebody will -considerately push my chariot, boil me an occasional chicken, and keep -handy my spectacles and the Queen of Navarre's mirth-provokers. The weak -wine and water I shall have to do without. But my soul, I like to think, -which is the Me for work and play, love, friendship, and all the finer -things of life, already will have closed the door of its house and gone -away. And as it goes, I like to think, also, that it whistles cheerfully -a little tune of its own, the burden of which is "Life is long." - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - -***** This file should be named 42110-8.txt or 42110-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/1/1/42110/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/42110-8.zip b/42110-8.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index b761ff3..0000000 --- a/42110-8.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/42110-h.zip b/42110-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index abb5788..0000000 --- a/42110-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/42110.txt b/42110.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8a6b69c..0000000 --- a/42110.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1999 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Seven Ages of Man - -Author: Ralph Bergengren - -Release Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #42110] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN - -Books by -Ralph Bergengren - -THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN -THE COMFORTS OF HOME -_Each $1.00_ - -For -Younger Readers -JANE, JOSEPH AND JOHN -_Boxed, $3.00_ - - - - -_The_ -SEVEN AGES _of_ MAN - -BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - -[Illustration: colophon] - -The Atlantic Monthly Press -Boston - -COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - - - - -CONTENTS - -I. Baby, Baby 1 - -II. To be a Boy 17 - -III. On Meeting the Beloved 33 - -IV. This is a Father 47 - -V. On Being a Landlord 64 - -VI. Old Flies and Old Men 78 - -VII. The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Man 94 - - - - -I - -BABY, BABY - - _In meeting a baby, one should behave as much as possible like a - baby one's self. We cannot, of course, diminish our size, or - exchange our customary garments for baby-clothes; neither can we - arrive in a perambulator, and be conveyed in the arms, either of a - parent or a nursemaid, into the presence of the baby whom we are to - meet. The best we can do is to hang, as it were on the hatrack, our - preconceived ideas of what manner of behavior entertains a baby, as - cooing, grimacing, tickling, and the like, and model our deportment - on the dignified but friendly reticence that one baby evinces in - meeting another._--BABY: HIS FRIENDS AND FOES. - - -Of the many questions that Mr. Boswell, at one time and another, asked -his friend, Dr. Johnson, I can hardly recall another more searching -than one that he himself describes as whimsical. - -"I know not how so whimsical a thought came into my head," says Boswell, -"but I asked, 'If, sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a new-born -child with you, what would you do?' - -"JOHNSON: Why, sir, I should not much like my company. - -"BOSWELL: But would you take the trouble of rearing it? - -"He seemed, as may be supposed, unwilling to pursue the subject: but, -upon my persevering in my question, replied, 'Why, yes, sir, I would; -but I must have all conveniences. If I had no garden, I would make a -shed on the roof, and take it there for fresh air. I should feed it, and -wash it much, and with warm water, to please it, not with cold water, to -give it pain.' - -"BOSWELL: But, sir, does not heat relax? - -"JOHNSON: Sir, you are not to imagine the water is to be very hot. I -would not _coddle_ the child." - -It appears, too, that the Doctor had given some thought to the subject, -although never expecting to be a mother himself: his immediate -insistence upon fresh air promises well for the infant, and the -frequency with which he proposes to wash his little companion indicates -that, so long as the water-supply of the castle lasted, he would have -done his part. A cow in the castle seems to have been taken for granted; -but, in 1769, even Dr. Johnson would have known little or nothing about -formulas, nor would it have occurred to him to make a pasteurizing -apparatus, as so many parents do nowadays, out of a large tin pail and a -pie-plate. Here the baby would have had to take his eighteenth-century -chance. And I wish, too, that he might have had a copy of "The Baby's -Physical Culture Guide," that modern compendium of twenty-four -exercises, by which a reasonably strongarmed mother may strengthen and -develop the infant's tiny muscles; for I like to think of Dr. Johnson -exercising his innocent companion in his shed on the roof. "Sir," he -says, "I do not much like my employment; but here we are, and we'll have -to make the best of it." - -Such an experience, no doubt, would have been good for Dr. Johnson, and -good for the baby (if it survived). "That into which his little mind is -to develop," says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "is plastic--like -a wax record, ready to retain such impressions as are made upon it"; and -on this wax some, at least, of the impressions left by Dr. Johnson must -have been valuable. But on the real mystery of babyhood--the insoluble -enigma that the "Guide" can only in small measure dispose of by -comparing the rearing of an infant with the home-manufacture of a record -for the gramaphone--the experience would have thrown no light. - -The Doctor, I dare say, would have written a paper on the feeding and -washing of infants, and later dictionaries of familiar quotation might -perhaps have been enriched by the phrase,"'The baby is grandfather to -the man.'--JOHNSON." But of this grandfather the man has no memory. His -babyhood is a past concerning which he is perforce silent, a time when -it is only by the report of others that he knows he was living. His -little mind seems to have been more than a little blank; and although -gifted novelists have set themselves the imaginative task of thinking -and writing like babies, none, in my reading, has ever plausibly -succeeded. The best they can do is to think and write like little -adults. I recall, for example, the honest effort of Miss May Sinclair, -whom I greatly respect as an adult, to see Mr. Olivier through the eyes -of his baby daughter Mary. "Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, -all by himself. He was dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down -in front of him and one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was -smiling because his cheeks swelled high up in his face, so that his eyes -were squeezed into narrow, shining slits. When they came out again, you -saw scarlet specks and smears in their corners." A fearsome Papa!--and, -although I have no way of knowing that fathers do not present -themselves in this futurist aspect to their helpless offspring, I am -glad to think otherwise. At all events a baby is, and must be, well used -to living in Brobdingnag. - -It would be a surprising thing, if it were not so common, that a man -shows so little curiosity about this forgotten period of his life. But -such curiosity would be impossible to satisfy. Existing photographs of -him at that time are a disappointment: he seldom admits seeing any -resemblance, and, if he does, the likeness rarely, if ever, gives him -any visible satisfaction. Nor can anything of real and personal interest -be found out by interviewing those who then knew him. Of a hundred, nay, -of a thousand or a million babies,--and though I cannot speak as a -woman, it seems to me (except, perhaps, for a livelier interest and -pleasure among them in their infant appearance) that everything I am -saying applies equally to babies of that fascinating sex,--the trivial -details observed by those who are nearest them are practically -identical. They thump their heads. They chew their fingers. They try to -feed their toes; and, sillier yet, they try to feed them with things -that are obviously inedible. And so forth. And so forth. If Dr. Johnson, -actually shut up in a castle, and a new-born child with him, had kept a -record, the result would have been very much like the records that -mothers now keep in what, unless I am mistaken, are called "Baby Books." -If you've seen one Baby Book, as the cynical old man said about -circuses, you've seen all of 'em. - -Nor does any man take pleasure in preserving and reading over his own -Baby Book. Hercules, to be sure, might have been interested to read in -his mother's handwriting,--"_Tuesday._ An eventful day. Two big, horrid -Snakes came in from the garden, and got in Darling's cradle, frightening -Nurse into hysterics; but Darling only cooed and strangled them both -with his dear, strong little hands. He gets stronger and cunninger every -day. When the horrid Snakes were taken away from him, he cried and said, -'Atta! Atta!'" - -But Hercules was an exceptionally interesting baby; and the average Baby -Book records nothing that a grown man can regard with pride, and much, -if he has any sensitiveness at all, that must make him blush. Nothing -but respect for his mother, it is almost safe to say, would withhold him -from hurrying the incriminating document to the cellar, and cremating it -in the furnace. - -For in the beginning Captain William Kidd, George Washington, Dr. -Johnson, the writer of this essay, and even the editor of the "Atlantic -Monthly," looked and behaved very much alike. And so, for that matter, -did little Moll Cutpurse and little Susan B. Anthony. So far as anybody -could then have said, Captain Kidd might have become a thoughtful, -law-abiding essayist, and I a pirate, handicapped, indeed, by changed -conditions of maritime traffic, but unconscientiously doing my wicked -best. - -As the twig is bent, says the proverb, so is the tree inclined; but -these little twigs are bent already, and I humbly submit, with all -respect to my scientific friends, and their white mice and their guinea -pigs, that where and how it happened remains an insoluble mystery. -Little as I know about myself, I know that I am neither a white mouse -nor a guinea pig. And this, mark you, is no mere conceit. Scientists -themselves have decided that when babies, in that remote past when they -first began really to interest their parents, and the human mother, the -most pathetic figure of that primitive world, first began the personal -and affectionate observation that was to develop slowly, over millions -of years, until it found expression in the first Baby Book--scientists, -themselves, I say, have decided that, then and there, you and I, -intelligent reader, began to differ essentially from every other known -kind of mammal. There appeared--oh, wonder!--something psychical as well -as physical about us; but _where it came from_, they cannot tell us. -"Natural selection," so John Fiske once summed up this opinion, "began -to follow a new path and make psychical changes instead of physical -changes." Little enough there seems to have been to start with; little -enough, indeed, there seems to be now--yet enough more to encourage us -to believe that Baby is a lot further along in the right direction than -he was a good many million years ago. And with this helpful conviction, -Baby himself, whether he will grow up to write essays or commit -picturesque murder, seems reasonably well satisfied. We solemn adults, -standing around the crib, may well admire, not so much the pinkness and -chubbiness of his toes, as the pinkness and chubbiness (if I may so -express it) of his simple satisfaction with the mere fact of existence, -his simple faith in the Universe. And when we think how impossible it is -to think of its beginning, we, too, may capture something of this -infantile optimism. - -It is by no means impossible (though not susceptible of scientific -proof) that Baby may have a life of his own; and, if we may assume -Hercules weeping and saying, "Atta! Atta!"--because shrewd observers of -babyhood declare it to be characteristic of babies to say, "Atta! Atta!" -when something desirable, in this case two dead snakes, is removed from -their range of vision,--may we not assume also a universal language of -babies, and a place, such as it may be, from which they have emigrated? -Here, indeed, one follows M. Maeterlinck, except that, in his judgment, -unborn babies speak French. Such a theory is no help to the novelist, -for in that case baby Mary Olivier's impressions of Mr. Olivier must be -rendered in baby--a language equally unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her -readers. Babies have been heard to say, for example, "Nja njan dada atta -mama papai attai na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meen[)e] m[)o]mm -m[)o]mma ao-u"--and who but another baby knows whether this may not be -speech? The assumption that this is an effort to speak the language of -the baby's elders is academic, as, for that matter, is the assumption -that they are his elders. There may even be no baby at all; for, as -Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put it, "The uneasiness that keeps the -never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that -the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence." -But this, I confess, is far too deep for me. - - Baby, baby in your cot, - Are you there?--or are you not? - If you're not, then what of me! - Baby, _what_ and _where_ are we? - -For all practical purposes, however, Baby is sufficiently -real--substantial enough, indeed, as "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide" -shows in Exercise 24, to be lifted by his little feet and stood on his -little head; but, mercifully adds the "Guide," "do not hold Baby on his -head very long." For all practical purposes we must, and do, assume our -own existence. "Here we are," as I have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to -his innocent new-born comrade, "and we'll have to make the best of it." -Nobody has thought of a better way, or any other way at all, for us to -get here; and the familiar Biblical phrase, 'born again,' may perhaps be -more literal than we are wont to imagine, and apply to this world as -well as the next. Baby himself may just have been born again. That -innocent-seeming and rather silly-sounding monologue, which we flatter -ourselves is an earnest attempt to imitate our own speech,--"Nja njan -dada atta mama papai attai na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meene[)e] -m[)o]mm m[)o]mma ao-u,"--may it not be the soliloquy of a gentle -philosopher, or, again, the confession of an out-and-out rascal, -talking to himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and cooing over them, -indeed, before he forgets them in this new state of being? May not Papa, -waggishly shaking his forefinger and saying, "You little rascal, you," -be speaking with a truthfulness which, if known, would make him sick? - -Meanwhile, as says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "Don't jerk Baby -round. Never rush through his exercises, but talk to him in a happy, -encouraging way. When he is able to talk he will be glad to tell you -what great, good fun he has been having." - -So speaks, I think, a mother's imagination; in sober reality, even the -great good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgotten. Which is perhaps why, -although I have heard men wish they could again be children, I have -never heard any man say he would like to be a baby. - - - - -II - -TO BE A BOY - - -_I love dearly to watch the boys at their play. How gayly they pitch and -catch their baseball with their strong little hands! How blithely they -run from base to base! How merrily their voices come to me across the -green; for, although I cannot hear what they say, I know it expresses a -young, innocent joy in this big, good world. Yet even in this Garden -there is a Serpent, and one day two of the little innocents quarreled -and came to blows. A real fight! I soon hurried out and stopped that, -but the sight of their little faces distorted with rage, and one poor -boy bleeding at the nose, upset me for quite a time._--AN OLD MAID'S -WINDOW. - - * * * * * - -In "The Boyhood of Great Men," published by Harper and Brothers, in -1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it is told of Sir Isaac Newton -that "An accident first fired him to strive for distinction in the -school-room. The boy who was immediately above him in the class, after -treating him with a tyranny hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick him -in the stomach, with a severity that caused great pain. Newton resolved -to have his revenge, but of such a kind as was natural to his reasoning -mind, even at that immature age. He determined to excel his oppressor in -their studies and lessons; and, setting himself to the task with zeal -and diligence, he never halted in his course till he had found his way -to the top of the class; thus exhibiting and leaving a noble example to -others of his years similarly situated. Doubtless, after this, he would -heartily forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who could not but -henceforth feel ashamed of his unmanly conduct, while Newton would feel -the proud consciousness of having done his duty after the bravest and -noblest fashion which it is in the power of man to adopt." - -We cannot all be Sir Isaac Newtons, and, although I may wish for a -passing moment that some sturdy little school-fellow had kicked me too -in the stomach, the resulting sequence of events would probably have -been different, and the world would have gained little or nothing by my -natural indignation. Having an impartial mind, I should like to know -also _why_ Sir Isaac was kicked in the stomach, and what became -afterward of the boy who kicked him. As his fame grew in the world, the -reflected glory of having thus kicked Sir Isaac Newton in the stomach -would presumably have brightened in proportion, but, lacking other -distinction, the kicker served his evolutionary purpose and has now -vanished. - -But this much remains of him--that his little foot kicks also in the -stomach the widely accepted fallacy that boyhood is an age of unalloyed -gold, to which every man now and then looks back and vainly yearns to be -a boy again. "Oh! happy years!"--so sighed the poet Byron,--"once more, -who would not be a boy?" And so to-day, as one may at least deduce from -his general newspaper reading, sigh all the editors of all the -newspapers in the United States. Not, indeed, for a boyhood like Sir -Isaac Newton's, but for the standard American boyhood, to which, in -theory, every ageing American looks back with tender reminiscence--that -happy time when he went barefooted, played "hookey" from school, fished -in the running brook with a bent pin for a hook, and swam, with other -future bankers, merchants, clerks, clergymen, physicians and surgeons, -confidence-men, pickpockets, authors, actors, burglars, etc., etc., in -an old swimming-hole. The democracy of the old swimming-hole is, in -fact, the democracy of the United States, naked and unashamed; and even -in the midst of a wave of crime (one might almost imagine), if the -victim should say suddenly to the hold-up man,-- - - "Oh, do you remember the ole swimmin' hole, - And the hours we spent there together; - Where the oak and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather? - - Ah, sweet were those hours together we spent - In innocent laughter and joy! - How little we knew at the time what it meant - To be just a boy--just a boy!" - ---the hold-up man would drop his automatic gun, and the two would -dissolve on each other's necks in a flood of sympathetic tears. - -It is a pleasant and harmless fallacy, and I for one would not destroy -it; I am no such stickler for exactitude that I would take away from any -man whatever pleasure he may derive from thinking that he was once a -barefoot boy, even if circumstances were against him and his mother as -adamant in her refusal to let him go barefooted. But the fallacy is -indestructible: the symbols may not have been universal, but it is true -enough of boyhood that time then seems to be without limit; and this -comfortable, unthinking sense of immortality is what men have lost and -would fain recover. One forgets how cruelly slow moved the hands of the -school-room clock through the last, long, lingering, eternal fifteen -minutes of the daily life-sentence. One forgets how feverishly the -seconds chased each other, faster than human feet could follow, when -one's little self was late for school, and the clamor of the distant -bell ended in a solemn, ominous silence. Then was the opportunity for -stout heart to play "hookey," and to lure the finny tribe with a poor -worm impaled on a bent pin; and that, in the opinion of all the editors -of all the newspapers in the United States, is what all of us always -did. But in the painful reality most of us, I think, tried to overtake -those feverish seconds, seeking indeed to outrun time, and somehow or -other, though the bell had stopped ringing, get unostentatiously into -our little seats before it stopped. And so we ran, and ran, and ran, -lifting one leaden foot after the other with hopeless determination, in -a silent, nightmare world where the road was made of glue and the very -trees along the way turned their leaves to watch us drag slowly by. -Little respect we would have had then for the poet Byron and his "Ah! -happy years! once more, who would not be a boy?" - -But even when time seemed to stand still, or go too fast, we had no -consciousness that the complicated clock of our individual existence -could ever run down and stop; and so happily careless were we of this -treasure, that we often wished to be men! "When I was young," says the -author of "The Boy's Week-Day Book,"--another volume that is not read -nowadays as much as it used to be,-- - - I doubted not the time would come, - When grown to man's estate, - That I would be a noble 'squire, - And live among the great. - - It was a proud, aspiring thought, - That should have been exiled:-- - I wish I was more humble now - Than when I was a child. - -I wonder what proud, aspiring thought Uncle Jones, as he called himself, -just then had in mind; but it was evidently no wish to be a boy again: -perhaps he meditated matrimony. - -For my own part I cannot successfully wish to be a boy; I remain -impervious to all the efforts of all the editors of all the newspapers -in the United States to dim my eye; and there must be many another eye -like mine, or else it is unbelievably unique. I lean back in my chair, -close my undimmed eye, and do my best; but, contrary to all editorial -expectation, I can summon no desire to go barefooted, fish with a bent -pin, or revisit the old swimming-hole - - Where the elm and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather. - -I prefer a beach and a bathing-suit and somebody my own age. Yet do not -think, shocked reader, that I am unsympathetic with youth. I am more -sympathetic--that is all--with my contemporaries; and the thought -forces itself upon me that boyhood is a narrow and conventional period, -in which my own desire to go without shoes was exactly similar to my -mother's determination to wear a bustle. Equally anxious to follow the -fashion of our respective sets, neither understood the other; and I -would no more have worn a bustle than my mother would have gone -barefooted. My father, similarly thwarted in a single desire, would have -cared less: his wider interests--politics, business, family, the local -and world gossip that immersed him in his newspaper, art, literature, -music, and the drama, to say nothing of professional baseball and -pugilism (in which, however, many fathers and sons have a common -interest)--would have absorbed his disappointment. - -But my narrower world, so to speak, was all feet. An unconventional -boy, as I think the most erudite student of boy-life and boy-psychology -will admit, is much more rare than an unconventional man; and even then -his unconventionality is likely to be imposed upon him "for his own -good" by well-meaning but tyrannical parents. "I have known boys," wrote -Uncle Jones, observing but not comprehending this characteristic fact, -"when playing at 'Hare and hounds' and 'Follow my leader,' to scramble -over hedges, leap over brooks, and mount up precipices, in a manner -which they would not have dared to attempt, had it not been for the -examples set them by their school-fellows; but," he adds, "I do not -remember any instance of a boy imitating another on account of his good -temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or piety." - -Naturally not. You and I, Uncle Jones, might be expected to imitate -each other's good temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or -piety,--though I do not say that we would,--but from the point of view -of a boy these virtues are unconventional. Their practice shocks and -disconcerts the observer. The behavior of Sir Isaac Newton, when kicked -in the stomach, was perfectly scandalous. - -And what is there, after all, in the life of a boy, that a man would -find interesting? Or that he may not do, if such is sufficiently his -desire to "make" the time for it, as he makes time for his adult -pleasures, and if he is not too old or too fat? He can spend his -vacation at the old swimming-hole--but he never does it. He can go -barefooted whenever he wishes: his mother can no longer prevent him. He -can fish with a bent pin in the porcelain bathtub,--adding a goldfish -to make the pursuit more exciting,--every morning before he takes his -bath. He can chase butterflies; here and there, indeed, a man makes a -profession of it, and institutions of learning call him an entomologist, -and pay him much honor and a small salary. Nobody forbids him to enlarge -his mental horizon by reading the lives of criminals and detectives; and -I can myself direct him to many an entertaining book, which is at once -far worse and far better, morally and artistically, than the sober -narratives that Old Sleuth used to write by the yard for boys to read by -stealth. He can roll a hoop; in many cases it would do him a world of -good to roll it down to the office in the morning and back home at -night. If he can persuade other ageing men, wishful of renewed boyhood, -to join with him, he can play at marbles, tick, puss-in-the-corner, -hop-scotch, ring-taw, and "Hot beans ready buttered." (Uncle Jones -mentions these games. I do not remember all of them myself, but "Hot -beans ready buttered" sounds especially interesting.) And where better -than in some green, quiet corner at the Country Club? And why, if you -_will_ raise the question of conventionality, why more foolish than -golf, or folk-dancing? - -But what he cannot do is to assume the boy's unconsciousness of his own -mortality. What he cannot unload is his own consciousness of -responsibility to and for others. Life, in short, has provided the man -with a worrying company of creditors of whom the boy knows -nothing--Creditor Cost-of-Living, Creditor Ambition, Creditor -Conscience, and Creditor Death. And the boy is unmarried! It is even -claimed by one philosopher of my acquaintance that this is why men wish -they were once more boys. I grant the plausibility of this opinion; for -the more a man is is devoted to his wife and family, the more he is -beset and worried by these troublesome creditors, the more, one may -reasonably argue, he feels the need of time to meet his obligations, and -is likely now and then to envy the boy his narrow, conventional, but -immortal-feeling life. - -Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fundamental fact. He is always trying -to destroy the boy's sense of immortality in this world by trying to -persuade him to read the Bible and prepare for immortality in the next. -"When a boy first begins his A B C," says Uncle Jones, "it is terrible -work for him for a short time; yet how soon he gets over it, and begins -to read! And, then, what a pleasure to be able to read a good and -pleasant book! Oh, it is worthwhile to go through the trouble of -learning to read fifty times over, to obtain the advantage of reading -the Bible." - - - - -III - -ON MEETING THE BELOVED - - _Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State and Mysterie of Loue that - youre trew Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a deepe - Humilitie and a loftie Conceit of Hymselfe. For with respect to - this, hys Mistresse, he believes himself a most inferior Person, - and as it were a mere Worme; yet if he doth suspect her to regard - any Man els as his Equal, he is consumed with great Astonishment - and raging Indignation, for this same Loue is a great Destroyer of - Common Sense in its Victimes. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior to - her because he is her Louer, and superior to all Men els for the - same silly Reason._--ANATOMIE OF LOUE. - - -To any sensitive man, not yet armored by the indifference that comes of -being married himself, there is cause for apprehension in the prospect -of meeting for the first time that person, male or female, whom somebody -he knows and loves has recently agreed to marry. The event, when it -comes, is unavoidable, nor is there any period in adult life when it may -not happen, or anybody we know so old that he or she may not occasion -it. Fact is more romantic, or at any rate remains romantic much later in -life, than fiction. Only the other day I read in the newspaper of a man -of one hundred and thirty-five years who had just subjected his little -circle to this formality. Very likely the newspaper exaggerated, but the -case undermines the security that one ordinarily feels in his -relationship with the ageing. - -Now it needs no argument that to be happy in the happiness of others is -an inexpensive pleasure and well worth cultivating. Other things being -equal, one should go dancing and singing to his first meeting with -another's beloved. Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or sixty, -should blossom, to his imagination, from the granite curb along his way; -and, though a foolish convention may repress the song and dance, yet -should he walk as if shod with the most levitating heels ever made from -the liveliest of live rubber, and sing merrily in his heart. - -But, thus to enter into the happiness of another, one must see and feel, -as if for himself, some good and sufficient reason for that happiness; -and the deep, insoluble mystery essential to all proper betrothals is -that this good and sufficient reason is not necessarily visible: these -two are happy-mad, and how shall anybody who is sane enter into their -lunacy? - -Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d,--to take the first name that comes to mind,--has -become engaged to Miss Margaret Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well and -good. Nature, which, for some reason that mankind has long curiously and -vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to continue the human race, is, one -may believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is one job among many. But -the satisfaction of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it could be put to such -haberdashery use, would girdle the Equator, and the ends, tied in a true -lover's knot, would flutter beyond the farthest visible star. Men and -women have become engaged in the past; men and women will become engaged -in the future; but this engagement of Harvey Todd and Margaret Lemon is -and will ever remain unique--and so whoever is now called upon to -appraise one party to this wonder and congratulate the other, may well -be troubled. He is not so much afraid of what he may do and say,--for -any man may hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost sobbing pressure of -the hand and a few muttered words,--as of the way, in spite of himself, -that he will look when he does and says it; there, indeed, the amateur -actor profits by his hobby. There is, to be sure, the saving chance that -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so pleasurably affect him that the ordeal -will be less difficult than he anticipates: there is even the rare -chance that he may _instantly and completely agree with Mr. Todd's -estimate of Miss Lemon_; but this is the happy-madness itself, and -certainly not desirable under the circumstances. There is the -possibility, even more rare and less desirable, that Miss Lemon, seeing -him for the first time, _will instantly and completely prefer him to -Mr. Todd_. There is the possibility that he may recoil with horror from -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be recoiled from, or that both may recoil -simultaneously, falling over, figuratively, on their backs, and being -picked up and carried away unconscious, and in opposite directions, by -surprised onlookers. His whole nature may, in short, instinctively run -toward, or away from, the beloved; and between these extremes lies a -gamut of intermediary emotions, which at the moment he would hardly wish -to uncover. This stiff and geometrical smile, he asks himself at the -worst, can it deceive anybody? this hypocritical mutter of -congratulation, does it proceed from his own or an ice chest? Nor is he -much relieved when Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, proves -how genuine appeared his smile, how sincere his mutter, by asking him -in affectionate detail what he thinks of the other--a procedure which -should be legally forbidden the newly engaged, under penalty of being -refused a marriage license for at least ten years. - -This state of mind in lovers, so important to those who are called upon -to meet the beloved for the first time, has engaged the attention of -essayists, conversationalists, and philosophers. "They fall at once," -wrote Stevenson, "into that state in which another person becomes to us -the very gist and centre point of God's creation, and demolishes our -laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with -the one master-thought, that even the trivial cares of our own person -become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is -translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and -desirable a fellow creature. And all the while their acquaintances look -on in stupor." - -"No, sir," said Dr. Johnson, promptly improving Mr. Boswell's milder -assertion that love is like being enlivened with champagne, "No, sir. -Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne"--an -opinion, one hopes, that will not some day be made the basis of a -nation-wide campaign to prohibit falling in love. - -"His friends," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "find in her a likeness to her -mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees -no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to -rainbows and the song of birds." - -Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon (so like a rainbow) are impervious to any lack -of enthusiasm that you or I, dear, unselfish, sensitive reader, may fear -to exhibit when either leads us the other by the hand and says, "This -is IT." Ours, if any, will be the suffering. It may even happen that -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd--Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon beaming consent and -approval--will suggest that _we call her_ (_or him_) _Margaret_ (_or -Harvey_). - -Yet from another point of view, but this is a selfish one, apprehension -is justified in proportion to the sensitive man's previous intimacy with -the individual whose beloved he is about to meet. For until that meeting -is over, "previous" is the word for it: whatever opinion the beloved may -form of him will determine the degree and manner of its continuance. If -Miss Lemon disapproves of him, though Mr. Todd has hitherto loved him as -Damon did Pythias, all is over; if Mr. Todd disapproves of him, though -he has known Miss Lemon from her perambulator, all is over. A pale -ghost, he may, in either case, sometimes hang his spectral hat in the -Todd hallway, and even extend his phantom legs under the Todd mahogany; -but ALL IS OVER. Divinely harmonious as they seem, these two will never -agree to let him try, however humbly and conscientiously, to cultivate -the inexpensive pleasure of being happy in their happiness. He becomes -what no self-respecting man can wish to be--a fly in the ointment. Most -cases, fortunately, are not so serious: he will be given a reasonable -chance to make a place for himself on this new plane to which Mr. Todd -and Miss Lemon have been translated; but it is always a question whether -he can enter that plane himself, or must hereafter be content with -hearing from his former friend through a medium. For he has not, as is -so often gracefully but emptily said on these trying occasions, been -enriched by the acquisition of a new friend: he has simply exchanged -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd (as the case may be) for a composite, a Toddlemon -or a Lemontodd--a few years will show which. He must make the best he -can of that composite. He who was formerly described as (let us say) "my -friend, Mr. Popp," becomes, if he becomes at all, "our friend, Mr. -Popp"; and if ever he hears himself being introduced as "Mr. Todd's -friend, Mr. Popp," or as "Mrs. Todd's friend, Mr. Popp," he had better -go away as soon as politeness permits, and never come back. Never. - -I speak, of course, in generalities; for there are no rules immutably -governing all cases, and life is mellowed and beautified by shining, -sensible examples, in which Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon become one, yet -realize that in many respects, being human, they must still remain two; -then, indeed, the congratulator may actually be enriched by the -acquisition of a new friend--but not instantly, as one is enriched by -the acquisition of a new hat. Yet it is always the wiser part, in -preparing to meet a beloved, to prepare for the worst. - -These are evidently the apprehensions of a bachelor, sensitive but not -unselfish; the mental attitude is different with a student, philosopher, -and idealist who, thinking not of himself, contemplates another's -marriage in the calm, intelligent way, having as yet no beloved in which -he can contemplate his own. Such a one weighs. Such a one is conscious -that, little as _he_ knows the beloved of Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, there -is grave danger that Mr. Todd knows Miss Lemon, or Miss Lemon Mr. Todd, -hardly better. This happy-madness may not only be a delusion, as a calm -outside intelligence contemplates it, but it may be a snare. Mistakes do -happen. There are known cases in which the happy lunatic has been -mistaken in a beloved not once but often; and the persistent effort of -these poor madmen and madwomen to correct one mistake by making another -is one of the most discussed and pitiable phases of our civilization. -The calm intelligence must balance also the practical aspects of the -business, its risks and liabilities as well as its profits; and so -serious is the enterprise when thus examined that he can hardly fail to -be terrified for anybody he knows and loves who is undertaking it. - -O Harvey! Harvey! (or Margaret! Margaret!) - -Tact is what he will pray for. And if his prayer is granted, when Mr. -Todd (or Miss Lemon) asks him, "Now, honestly, what do you think of her -(or him)?" he will say, "Of course I do not know Miss Lemon (or Mr. -Todd) very well _yet_, but I have never met anybody whom I _hoped_ to -know and like better." Which will be quite true, and please the -twittering questioner much more than if he said, "Oh, I don't know. I -_don't_ know." - - - - -IV - -THIS IS A FATHER - - _Proud Parent, in this little life - Yourself reflected see, - And think how Baby will progress - A man like you to be! - - So stout, so strong, so wise, and when - Sufficient years have flown, - Like you the happy parent of - A baby of his own! - - And when that unborn baby grows - To be a man like you, - Oh, think how proud that man will be - To be a parent too. - - So think, when life oppresses you - And you are feeling sad, - A million, million, million times - You'll be a happy dad._ - - --THE FATHER'S ANTHEM. - - -In the life of man fatherhood is so likely to happen, that I wonder -Shakespeare did not select father as a natural, and indeed inevitable, -successor to lover in his well-known seven ages. He chose the soldier, -"full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard," presumably because -such soldiers were common in Elizabethan London. But fathers must have -been more so: they must have gone in droves past the tavern window where -Shakespeare (as what we now call the "wets" so like to think) sat at his -ale-stained table, dipping now his quill in an inkwell, and again his -nose in a tankard; but they seem to have made no impression. Indeed this -unromantic, necessary figure, composite as it is of all sorts and -conditions of men, has never appealed strongly to the poets; perhaps it -is their revenge because fathers so seldom read poetry. - -Whatever else a man does, whether he lives by banking or burglary, -ascends to the presidency or descends to the gutter, he is likely to be -a father: they are as countless as the pebbles on a beach or the leaves -in Vallombrosa, and the few who evade paternity evade also the purpose -for which nature evidently created them, and go through life thumbing -their noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. So taken for granted is -this vocation of fatherhood, and so little considered in comparison with -other masculine employments, that no correspondence school offers a -course, and many a young man undertakes to raise children with less -hesitation than he would start in to raise chickens. Some accept -fatherhood with joy, others with resignation, like a recently wedded -young Italian who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the other day of his own -new little one. "Zee fadder and zee modder," he said, "zey work and zey -slave for zee leetle one. But what-a good? When he is grow up, he say, -'To hell wiz zee fadder and zee modder!'" And so, as Shakespeare may -have decided, there is no universal type of fatherhood, nor has the -imagination of mankind created one, as in the case of mothers, for -convenient literary and conversational use. The lines of the -balladist,-- - - With his baby on his knee - He's as happy as can be,-- - -were, to be sure, something in this direction; but they have become so -wholly associated with humor, that even the late Mr. Rogers, had he -known the ballad, could hardly have found inspiration therein for a -group; nor Shakespeare adapted the lines to describe seriously one of -his seven ages. He might have scribbled experimentally,-- - - Then the father, - Infant on knee, and happy like the clam,-- - -but that would have been the end of it. He would have crossed out the -experiment, and taken another drink. - -Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the mind of the general, so far -behind that he is almost invisible, a tiny object on red wheels at the -end of a string. But the little fellow carries a pocketbook: when Mother -needs money she pulls in the string, and he comes up in a hurry. And, as -is usually the case with popular conceptions, this odd, erroneous -notion, which most fathers seem cheerfully enough to accept, has no -doubt its historic foundation, and derives from the unquestionable -supremacy of Mother in the beginning. At that period, indeed, it is -hardly to be expected that any father should feel immediately _en -rapport_ with his new-born child, or become intimately associated with -its helpless, flower-like life. Ever since the idea, which has now so -long lost its original element of bewildering surprise, yet remains -always somewhat surprising, first dawned upon a human father and mother -that _this baby_ belonged to _them_, conditions have inexorably -consigned the infant to the care of its mother, while its father pursued -elsewhere the equally necessary business of providing sustenance for the -family. A division of labor was imperative: somebody must stay at home -in the cave and tend the baby, somebody must go out in the woods and -hustle for provisions. Maternity was, as it must have been, already a -feminine habit, but paternity was something new and unexpected; and -although I suspect, in many cases, this astonishing discovery was -followed by speedy flight. Trueheart the First took up his -responsibilities and his stone axe together. - -The horror is recorded with which Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being -left alone in a castle with a new-born child; and this feeling in so -civilized a man was no doubt an echo of the emotion with which poor, -bewildered, primitive, but faithful Trueheart would have envisaged being -left alone in the cave with his new-born baby: the sense of relief, of -gayety, of something definite and within his capabilities to do, with -which the young father nowadays takes his hat and starts for the office, -must be much the same as that with which Trueheart took his stone axe -and started for the woods. - -Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became -subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not -fundamentally changed, it has ever since continued. "Mothers' Day," for -example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; "Fathers' Day" remains a mere -humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as -now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not -quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little -importance. - -I am not forgetting--for I do them an honor I can hardly express--those -fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, -back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion -incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted -babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby's -wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some -article of infant use or pleasure that the little rascal has -mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways -patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost -impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical -father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up -and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the -proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins -to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father's position become -responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior -has consequences. - -Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business--yet even to-day many -a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than -had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, -meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon tea. A blind attachment (I am -putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) -springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, -Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any -Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, -Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to -believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil. - -And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes -a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father--and -who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking -together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with -which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly -evident that Harvey Todd has given hardly more thought to the -tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than -might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do -not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; -but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, -when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great -big man like himself. And according as he _has_ conducted himself, that -great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying -degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, -it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief -respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, -cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the -glasses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and make mine chocolate. For -this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality -an immortal spirit (though he doesn't know which), and here he -stands,--I said chocolate,--and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his -experience, could not tell him what to do about it. - -So we clink our long-handled spoons. - -For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this -topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have -advanced materially since he was a father. "He that spareth his rod," -said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed -the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, "hateth his son: But he -that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." And again, "The rod and the -reproof giveth wisdom." We know better nowadays: the rod has become a -figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are -fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be -described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is -something objective for a father to do--an occasion when Mother pulls in -the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes -up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over -the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the -paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to -attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in -this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success -as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. -Hamlet's father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and -never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark -smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no -better than follow the elder Hamlet's example; and in so doing he will -show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on -proverbs and a stout stick. "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth -his neck," said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to -"get it in the neck"), "shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond -remedy"; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no -longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for -Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon's Book of Proverbs but Theodore -Roosevelt's Letters to his Children. - -If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact -that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden -our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has -gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may -compose a proverb myself-- - - The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; - And the wise father maketh a friend of his son. - -But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, -which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and -truthful speech, is here especially difficult. "To speak truth," says -Stevenson, "there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence -between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal -fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is -another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of -the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial -gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with -his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly -judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth." - -Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his -paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental -experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and -wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an -affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line -of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his -jolly old father's opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, -Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is -bound up in the heart of the child"--and there he stopped, after adding -his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, -O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. -Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with. - -And so the father plays his unapplauded part--"tragedy, comedy, history, -pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, -tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem -unlimited," as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants -no "Father's Day." He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems -to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in -statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though -most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a -Great Father. - - - - -V - -ON BEING A LANDLORD - - _In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a - Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another - tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of - the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may - eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case - comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity - pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the - ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just - landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS - TO LET. - - -On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women -and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. -Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. -Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, -Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; -indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear -title,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily -readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and -Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he -devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I -like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw," -mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, -however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that -brave little company-- - - BUTTON - HOPP - CARROT - BARBER - KARSEN - CAWKINS - SMITH - RANEE - MAHONEY - SIBLEY - LE MAIRE - TROLLEY - BROWN - MURPHY - ---would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout -leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, -short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted -along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a -cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, -my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you -will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I -will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at -the terms assigned. So help me God and his saints." - -Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was -paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that -now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, -through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this -sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved -helpmate. - -Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of -that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the -rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. -There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a -civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact -no more than a "fair rent"; at our weakest, when a tenant gets in -arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least -resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the -tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes -more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the -inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves -the while, to be strict. - -I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that "in the beginning -man probably dwelt in trees after the fashion of his ape-like ancestors. -He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird's -eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects." And my own experience leads -me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I -draw the line at birds' eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at -which items of an earlier menu even the scientific mind seems to baulk. -But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got -possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share -its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may -landlordry have been established. - -Millions of years have passed since then,--a mere flicker in the great -movie of eternity,--and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but -the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present -there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal -diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), -invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a -complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we -have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to -the simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in -this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks -large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin's -Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise -the rent. One must assume, of course, that he is thinking about it just -before taking his morning bath. - -It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who -profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect -Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by -fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal -seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the -social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, -for he lets apartments only to what he calls "nice people," whose -society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose -financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain -such that no painful embarrassment on this sordid but necessary side of -their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I -gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the -nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in -general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual "Ah, -yes, the rent." Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of -landlordry. - -I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written -entitled - - THE RENT - - CHARACTERS: MRS. BUTTON, a tenant. - - I, a landlord. - - SCENE: _A tenement, owned by_ I, _but referred to as_ MRS. - BUTTON'S, _which is perhaps more correct._ MRS. BUTTON _is washing - dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man - coming upstairs._ MRS. BUTTON _smiles enigmatically. A knocking at - the door, as in "Macbeth."_ - - MRS. BUTTON. Come in. (I _enters._) - - I _(laughing with affected lightness)._ Ah, _good-_morning, Mrs. - Button. I've come for the rent. - - MRS. BUTTON _(weeping)._ It's not me, as ye know, sir, that likes - to be behind with th' rint. I'm proud. - - I _(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in - tears)._ I know _that._ But you've been here seven months, Mrs. - Button, without-- - - MRS. BUTTON _(wiping her eyes)._ Yis, I'm an old tenant, and 't - would break me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin payin' reg'lar - only nixt week, sir. It's th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel - harrd to leave it. - - I (_sternly_). Very well. Very well. I shall _expect_ the money - next week. Good-day, Mrs. Button. - - MRS. BUTTON. Good-day, sir. - - I _exits_. MRS. BUTTON _resumes washing dishes, smiling - enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily - downstairs, fainter and fainter_. - - (CURTAIN) - -It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human -beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of -making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier -plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of -disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have -nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in -dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those -of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory -psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the -effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is -rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, -in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of -course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,--but -it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked. - -One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long -and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping -peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, -firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything -more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent." - -One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his -desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to -figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; -insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, -light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at -Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., -etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man. - -Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case -of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, -who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they -produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give -way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right -through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and -play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. -Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic -Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running -feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, -and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy -all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play." - -But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize -incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to -his tenant, "All is over between us; we must part forever--and at once." -To which, judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately -been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, "All right, you Old -Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I'll shake the dust of your -disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from -to-morrow." - -It's a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to -raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) -unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and -figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a -distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, -Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le -Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, -Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough. - - - - -VI - -OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN - - -_To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished my grandson by standing on my -head, and by entering the kitchen by turning a back-somersault through -the door--exercises which I frequently practise for the benefit of my -digestion, but not often in public. His bewilderment at seeing a man of -my years perform such acrobatics was most comical. But there, there, one -must amuse one's self with the young sometimes. I have thought more or -less seriously of advising these exercises for general use; but few men -have had the advantage of being brought up in a circus, and what seems -easy to me would no doubt present insuperable obstacles to most. The -main thing, after all, is not to grow old before your time, because the -silly younger generation likes to flatter itself by thinking you -antediluvian._--LETTERS OF FATHER WILLIAM. - -Few men read Shakespeare, and so, fortunately enough, few think of -themselves as being some day a pantaloon--lean and slippered (as -Shakespeare described this sixth age of man), with spectacles on nose, -his youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, -and his big, manly voice, turning again to childish treble, operating -like a penny whistle when he tries to converse. But the Bard made a -bogey: at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons visible than there -probably were in Elizabethan England; and the sixth age of man appears -more logically to offer a kind of Indian summer that is well worth -living for. Shakespeare, it seems to me, slipped a cog in his sequence; -and I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian centenarian, who began at -forty to restrict his diet (though this I care less for), and wrote of -himself at eighty-three: "I enjoy a happy state of body and mind. I can -mount my horse without assistance; I climb steep hills; and I have -lately written a play abounding in innocent wit and humor. And I am a -stranger to those peevish and morose humors which fall so often to the -lot of old age." - -Granting some other choice of mental employment,--for writing that kind -of a play seems nowadays too useless an occupation even for an old man's -leisure,--this is the kind of an old man I should like to be. - -In the light of recent scientific research with flies, Cornaro probably -inherited his longevity from long-lived ancestors, and would have done -about as well on a less restricted diet: he might reasonably have -lasted as long if not as comfortably. Ideas have changed since Pope -asked himself,-- - - Why has not man a microscopic eye?-- - -and promptly answered,-- - - For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. - Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, - T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? - -Man since then has provided himself with a remarkably good microscopic -eye. He has inspected the mite, and discovered resemblances between this -innocently disgusting little insect and himself, which make it -desirable, in some cases, to suspend the swatter, and study instead of -assassinate. Granting that the proper study of mankind is Man, the -proper study of mankind is Flies; for the days of a fly present an -entertaining and instructive parallel to the years of a man: a -seventy-year-old man and a seventy-day-old fly are contemporaries; -other things being equal, they might almost be called twins. Confined in -glass bottles and observed impartially from birth to burial, each baby -fly, it appears, inherits a maximum number of days on this perplexing -planet, and lives fewer according to the activity with which he expends -his inheritance. If flies had copybooks one might compose a maxim for -little flies to copy,-- - - Do not fly too much or fast, - And you will much longer last. - -Thus one scientific gentleman has watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 -flies--3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), and 2620 of their -natural, and only, admirers--from their separate birth-minutes till each -in turn paid his or her little debt to nature, and passed away. It is an -odd thing to contemplate--this self-election of a man to the positions -of guardian, health officer, divine providence, nursemaid, matchmaker, -clergyman, physician, undertaker, and sexton to 5836 flies. Yet it -redounds to his credit, and is another proof of the poet's contention -that we men are superior: for what fly would ever think of studying us -to find out anything about himself? And, by deduction, I, like the -little fly, inherit my span of life, although either accident or a germ -may get me if I don't watch out. - -But even if man, like the fly, inherits his individual length of life, -he will, again like the fly, go on living it with little concern as to -whatever invisible string may be fastened to his inheritance. He will -think hopefully that any ancestor he has had who died by violence or a -germ might otherwise have lived to be as hale and hearty as Father -William, that lively sage whose habit was to stand on his head at -intervals, and to enter a door by turning a back-somersault. Heredity -is still a mystery; the ancestry of free men is much more complicated -than that of flies in bottles; and any of us, if he anxiously carried -his genealogical research far enough back, would find a goodly number of -forbears, prematurely carried off, from whom he might reasonably have -inherited quite a lot of what the scientific mind calls the -"hypothetical substance or substances which normally prevent old age and -natural death." Flies growing gracefully old in glass bottles therefore -need not worry us, and every ancestor who has been hanged is a reason -for optimism. - -And there is another reason even more valuable than a pendent ancestor. -You and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though there may be times of -discouragement when we wish we hadn't), and old age is a mere trivial -incident in our jolly eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin growing -older, by the conventional measurement of time, with our first breath; -but who can prove that we are not in reality very much older than we -look in the beginning, and very much younger than we look in the end? I -get these sober thoughts from the laboratory rather than the pulpit, -from evolution rather than dogma. O aged fly, to whom your seventy days -are a long life and your glass bottle a perfectly natural and normal -world in which to have lived it! O aged man, to whom your seventy years -are a long life, and who may also have lived it, for all you know, in a -kind of glass bottle, big enough to contain comfortably this little -planet and all the visible stars! Whoever respects age for its own sake -must impartially salute you both. - -"It is a man's own fault," said Dr. Johnson, then seventy years old, -but no pantaloon, "it is from want of use, if the mind grows torpid in -old age." And so plausible is this observation, that any reasonably -intelligent man might make it to his wife at breakfast without at all -astonishing her. Here, to be sure, one gets no help from flies in glass -bottles who depart this world according as they fly more or fly less, -for theirs apparently is a democracy in which no outside observer can -yet say that any one fly thinks more or thinks less than another. A -scientific study of 5836 old men (in biographies instead of bottles) -would very likely do no more than verify the generalization that any -thinker may make at breakfast. And this being the case, civilization -tends naturally enough to reduce the number of pantaloons. Universal -education, books, newspapers, magazines, politics, movies, anything and -everything that to any degree employs and exercises the mind, postpones -its torpidity; and statistics indicate that an increasing proportion of -babies live to be middle-aged people--but a decreasing proportion of -middle-aged people live to be old enough to become pantaloons. For many -a not-so-very-promising baby survives nowadays who would have perished -under earlier conditions; and many a man gets to middle life who would -otherwise be dead already, and lacks the "pep," as a popular magazine -editor might say, to get very much further. What a survival of the -fittest, for example, was that of the beautiful Galeria Copiola, who, I -have read, made her first dazzling appearance in the theatre of ancient -Rome at the age of ninety! She acted and danced; and Roman playgoers of -seventy, sitting in the front rows, had opportunity to become madly -infatuated with a charmer twenty years their senior, such as now falls -only to the lot of the college undergraduate or the tired business man. -And if anybody doubts this surprising youthfulness of Galeria, I offer -the corroborative evidence of the seventeenth-century pamphlet, "The -Olde, Olde, very Olde Man; or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr," in -which John Taylor, the Water Poet, describes the pre-Adamite who was -brought up to London at the age of 152, met the King, and had such a -great good time in general, that his death nine months later was -attributed to over-excitement. - - He was of old Pythagoras' opinion - That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion; - Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig, - Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig: - Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy, - He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy. - -(I have looked up "metheglin," and I find it to have been a "strong -liquor made by mixing honey with water and flavoring it, yeast or some -similar ferment being added, and the whole allowed to ferment." "Ale" -was also a liquor, but made from malt. "Nappy" means heady and strong: -"Nappie ale," says an old writer, was "so called because, if you taste -it thoroughly, it will either catch you by the nape of the neck or cause -you to take a nappe of sleepe." The use of these drinks, it may still be -argued, shortened Parr's life; but the fly-research that I have -mentioned seems to indicate that their tendency to decrease physical -activity by inducing "nappes" may have materially helped him to conserve -his inheritance of longevity.) - -But these cases are exceptional, and for my part I have no desire to be -the Thomas Parr of the twentieth or twenty-first century. It is more -important to live right (and there, indeed, is a job for anybody!) than -to live long; and old age, like young love, is often oversentimentalized. -Mr. Boswell, I think, oversentimentalized it when he asked his -long-suffering friend, "But, sir, would you not know old age?... I mean, -sir, the Sphinx's description of it--morning, noon, and night. I would -know night as well as morning and noon." And the doctor restored the -subject to its proper place when he answered: "Nay, sir, what talk is -this? Would you know the gout? Would you have decrepitude?" He might, -indeed, have gone further. "Do you suppose, sir" (he might have added), -"you will know night when you see it? Why, sir, what does a baby know -about morning?" - -So with Pantaloon: we comparative youngsters have only an external and -objective idea of him--his slippers, his stockings, his peevish and -morose humors, his feeble mirth and empty garrulity. What living is -really like to him we cannot know until we are pantaloons ourselves, and -then, mayhap, we shall have forgotten what living is like to us now; let -it suffice that we shall probably be far less bothered by our shrunk -shanks and piping voices than we now believe possible. At the same time, -it will do no harm for some of us to "watch our step." Already I--and -there must be many another like me--am sometimes a little peevish and a -little morose; a mere _soupcon_ reasonably explainable by natural -causes--but there it is! I am hardly aware of it myself. Yet when it is -called to my attention by those nearest and dearest to me, I experience -an odd, perverse inclination to be more peevish and more morose than -before. I _enjoy_, I take a queer, twisted, unnatural, hateful, -demoniac pleasure, like Mr. Hyde when Dr. Jekyll turned into him, in the -idea of being more peevish and more morose. Here indeed is something to -look out for: resist that inclination, and we are laying the foundation -of a serene and respected old age; obey that impulse, and we comfort the -Devil, and run the risk of some day becoming, not only old men, but old -nuisances. I do not know, though I very much doubt, that one old fly is -ever more peevish and morose than another old fly; but with mankind, -whose superior intelligence so often makes trouble for his associates, -the variations are visible. Savages, unhampered by the conventions of an -artificial civilization, have efficiently knocked their elders on the -head in consequence. - -Let us, then, do our best to beat the Devil, and prepare for that Indian -summer, which, with all respect to Shakespeare, is the true sixth age -of man. And they reach it best (to judge by some who have got there) who -do their daily work with a good conscience, share their incidental joys -with others, and meet their troubles in the spirit of that stout old -seaman, Sir Andrew Barton, as I the other day saw his ballad quoted with -reference to R. L. Stevenson:-- - - A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; - Ile but lye downe and bleede a while, - And then Ile rise and fight againe. - - - - -VII - -THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN - -_Now concernynge the Soule, it is a Queer Thynge consydering that it -lives in the Bodie yett dieth nott; and so I conclude that the Soule was -made separate, and thys Bodie for its brief use and tenement; and how it -gets in and gets oute I cannot tell you. And belyke there bee all sortes -and condiciones of Soules, some goode, some bad, some so-so; but because -Goode is better than Evil, and because they lyve in Eternity, the bad -Soules will finde itt oute in time, and become goode; and the so-so -Soules will learn wisdome, and cease of their foolishnesse. But why they -were nott alle made alyke to start, that I cannot tell you; nor juste -how they was made._--THE SAGE'S OWNE BOKE. - - -It was a poetess, I am glad to say, and not a poet, who wrote the once -popular lines:-- - - Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! - I am so weary of toil and of tears,-- - Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-- - Take them, and give me my childhood again. - -Many a voice no doubt sagged under this load of pathos as it read "Rock -Me to Sleep, Mother" to a little group of sympathetic listeners; but if -such melancholies are to be set on paper, and circulated in print, I am -unchivalrous enough to wish that joyless occupation on the gentler sex. -Most of us perform prodigies of toil, which seem to receive scant -recompense, and shed figuratively many a bucket of seemingly useless -tears. But I do not imagine that this sad poetess was half as badly off -as she seemed to think; and, more than that, she had only to wait long -enough, and keep alive long enough, to get her childhood back without -asking for it. Time, the Groceryman, in due season would hand her a -second childhood in many respects "just as good" as the first; for we -who are betwixt and between can observe an unintelligent ignorance of -later troubles in one condition, neatly balanced by an unintelligent -forgetfulness of them in the other. Our lugubrious poetess, one might -say, was neither more nor less than asking the tide of the years -obligingly to assist her to commit suicide. Had her request been -granted, there would have been one more child in the world--and one less -poetess. - -An impressive parallel may, indeed, be drawn between these two -childhoods--the first a period of dependence upon its elders, and the -second of dependence upon its youngers, and each, to the reflective -observer, a pretty evenly balanced reversal of the other. It is as if, -in the beginning, the whole family of recognizable human -characteristics, Curiosity, Memory, Affection, Dislike, Ambition, Love, -Hate, Good Nature, Bad Temper, and all the rest of them, were moving, -one after another, into a new house; and as if, in the end, the whole -family, one after another, were leaving an old one. The very youngest -and the very oldest men in the world seem equally equipped for living in -it--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"; and Baby, a -little older, when he goes out in his perambulator is much like ancient -Thomas Parr being conveyed to London as a human curiosity in a "litter -and two horses (for the more easy carriage of a man so enfeebled and -worn with age).... And to cheere up the olde man and make him merry, -there was an antique-faced fellow, called Jacke, or John the Foole." - -Why, I myself, meeting a baby in a perambulator, have made such antic -faces that I might fairly have been called Jacke, or John the Foole, by -anybody who saw me, and all to cheere up the younge man and make him -merry. A little older yet, the child will run and play, rolling his -hoop, spinning his top, enjoying the excitement of tag and -hide-and-go-seek; and I dare say that the old man, a little younger than -before, would be just as happy with hoop and top (if he were again -introduced to them), and would have a grand, good time at tag and -hidey-go if he had other old men and old women to play with, and his -youngers would let him. I do not mean that he would do any of these -things as well as the child; but it would please him as much to do them -to the top of his aged bent, though now and then a flicker of remembered -convention, which the child has never known and considered, would make -him self-consciously abandon these simple pleasures. Even as an old cat, -caught trying to catch its tail, will sit up with dignity and pretend -that it wasn't. - -There was once a custom of including a skeleton, or perhaps a mummy, in -the festivity of a banquet, to remind the diners of their mortality, -and, for all I know, the after-dinner speakers of the shortness of time; -though very likely they soon got used to their silent companion, and -took their mortality as lightly as most people do at dinner. An "Olde, -Olde, very Olde Man," as a contemporary writer called the unpicturesque -human ruin I have just referred to, would, it seems to me, have answered -the same purpose, and answered it better. Human nature takes neither the -skeleton nor the mummy with continuous seriousness, and proves by its -attitude that, if we instinctively fear death at one moment, we -instinctively ridicule our fear at another. I have read it argued that -man with his clothes on is nevertheless naked,--such arguments seem to -amuse the philosophers,--and by the same entertaining process of -reasoning we are all skeletons together, though some may worry lest -others consider them too fat for romantic admiration. Or, again, to the -man who believes that death snuffs him out like a candle, this skeleton -at the feast might easily become an urgent reminder that he is still -living, and he would most unwisely stuff himself out like a toy balloon -while he still had a chance. But your olde, olde, very olde man is a -reality: he is both dead and alive; his presence, to say nothing of his -table manners, should tend to make each guest regard death as a friend -rather than an enemy, and his state of mind and body prove such a -warning against pride in either, that even the after-dinner speakers -would take notice and modestly shorten their speeches. - -Let it not be imagined that I lack respect for age. I tell you frankly, -ageing and respected Reader, that so long as you can intelligently read -even this essay, you are _not_ seriously old; and when you cannot, you -won't know the difference, and no respect of mine will be of any value -to you. Your time has not come to sit propped up at table as the latest -modern improvement on the skeleton at the feast; and if ever it does, -you, my friend, will not be there. Where you will be, I cannot faintly -imagine, and neither churchmen nor philosophers help me, for the -churchmen are too objective and the philosophers too abstract; the best -I can do is to take John Fiske's word for it, who knew far more about -both science and metaphysics than I can hope to, when he says the -materialistic theory that the life of the soul ends with the life of the -body is "perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that -is known to the history of philosophy." But when its house has become a -ruin, my soul will certainly have sense enough to look for something -more habitable, and may conceivably depart while there are still a few -embers burning in the furnace, leaving the fire to die out when it will. -Man is a conventional being, and perhaps his most astonishing convention -is a funeral. - -But the custom has long gone out of thus poignantly reminding diners -that a time is coming when they will have no stomachs; and olde, olde, -very olde men will get no invitations out to dine for any suggestion of -mine. Fortunately there are other uses for them. They are, for example, -a source of innocent pride to their families. "Grandpa was eighty-nine -his last birthday, and he still has a tooth." They interest the million -readers of the morning newspaper. "Friends from far and near gathered -yesterday to celebrate the 101st birthday of Mr. John Doe, 17 Jones -Avenue. The venerable patriarch, who can still walk unaided from his -place of honor by the steam radiator to his cushioned chair in the -dining-room, when asked to what he attributes his ripe old age, replied -with astonishing intelligence that the winters are longer than they used -to be. Mr. Doe was surrounded by 247 living children, grandchildren, and -great-grand-children." These are visible uses; but this olde, olde, very -olde man may have, invisibly, a more important function; and the -helplessness of age, like that of infancy, may well have been a -necessary factor in the slow conversion of our ape-like ancestor into -you and me. - -I have commented elsewhere on the natural astonishment of the first -parents who realized, with their inefficient prehistoric minds, that -_this_ baby belonged to _them_, and how, in the considered opinion of -able scientists, the little hitherto missing link joined father and -mother into the first human family. Tending and providing for Baby made -the cave a home; but I suspect it was a long time before tending and -providing for Grandpa added another motive for the cultivation of those -higher qualities that distinguish man from all other animals. Why, there -were savages who ate him! Yet in due time the olde, olde, very olde man -became such a motive, and to-day man is the only animal that takes care -of its grandfather. When you think of the differences between men to-day -and men then, between men then and the ape-men before them, and between -men now as they go about their various occupations, it seems quite -possible that ape-men had no souls at all, and that some men to-day have -rudimentary ones, millions of years behind others in evolution. It -explains much. And so, wherever there is an olde, olde, very olde man, I -dare say the care his youngers take of him is doing them good; they -might even reverse the parental platitude of punishment, and say, -"Grandpa, this does me more good than it does you." - -But this proud possession of an olde, olde, very olde man does not -always work visibly toward such beneficent ends. His obstreperous -infancy, masquerading in mature garments, sometimes exhausts the -patience of his youngers; and his permanent conviction (often the only -sign of intelligence left) that he knows more than they do, and perhaps -more than anybody else, makes their task difficult: it is one thing, so -to speak, to take care of a baby when it is growing up, and another -thing to take care of a baby when it is growing down. Then, indeed, one -needs the assurance of immortality, the conviction that Grandpa is, -little as one might think it, still growing up, and that this simulacrum -of Grandpa that still remains to be looked after, must not be taken too -seriously. These olde, olde, very olde men are not all just alike: there -are grandpas whom anybody might be proud to take care of, and grandpas -whom anybody might be excused for wishing (as the brisk, modern phrase -has it) to sidestep. And the explanation of this diversity, as of much -else that puzzles us in a puzzling world, may be that they were not all -just alike when they were babies. Inside their thin and tiny skulls some -had better brains than others, brains with more of those wonderful -little pyramidal neurones, which, able scientists (unless I get their -message twisted) tell me, correlate, connect, assemble, and unite our -individual ideas, memories, sensations, and intellectual and emotional -what-nots. Men, in short, may be born free, but they are not born equal. - -But why worry? If the individual soul is still young, it will keep on -growing in wisdom and experience; nor will it lose touch with other -souls that are akin to it, and, in the measurement of eternity, its -contemporaries; and it will have a better and better house to live in, -with ever more modern improvements in the way of pyramidal neurones. As -the March Hare conclusively replied to Alice, when she asked why the -three little sisters who lived in the treacle-well learned to draw by -drawing everything that began with an M, "Why not?" - -So if ever I become like the valetudinarian described by Macaulay, who -"took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished -his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty -laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales," I hope that somebody will -considerately push my chariot, boil me an occasional chicken, and keep -handy my spectacles and the Queen of Navarre's mirth-provokers. The weak -wine and water I shall have to do without. But my soul, I like to think, -which is the Me for work and play, love, friendship, and all the finer -things of life, already will have closed the door of its house and gone -away. And as it goes, I like to think, also, that it whistles cheerfully -a little tune of its own, the burden of which is "Life is long." - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - -***** This file should be named 42110.txt or 42110.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/1/1/42110/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Seven Ages of Man - -Author: Ralph Bergengren - -Release Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #42110] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN - -Books by -Ralph Bergengren - -THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN -THE COMFORTS OF HOME -_Each $1.00_ - -For -Younger Readers -JANE, JOSEPH AND JOHN -_Boxed, $3.00_ - - - - -_The_ -SEVEN AGES _of_ MAN - -BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - -[Illustration: colophon] - -The Atlantic Monthly Press -Boston - -COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - - - - -CONTENTS - -I. Baby, Baby 1 - -II. To be a Boy 17 - -III. On Meeting the Beloved 33 - -IV. This is a Father 47 - -V. On Being a Landlord 64 - -VI. Old Flies and Old Men 78 - -VII. The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Man 94 - - - - -I - -BABY, BABY - - _In meeting a baby, one should behave as much as possible like a - baby one's self. We cannot, of course, diminish our size, or - exchange our customary garments for baby-clothes; neither can we - arrive in a perambulator, and be conveyed in the arms, either of a - parent or a nursemaid, into the presence of the baby whom we are to - meet. The best we can do is to hang, as it were on the hatrack, our - preconceived ideas of what manner of behavior entertains a baby, as - cooing, grimacing, tickling, and the like, and model our deportment - on the dignified but friendly reticence that one baby evinces in - meeting another._--BABY: HIS FRIENDS AND FOES. - - -Of the many questions that Mr. Boswell, at one time and another, asked -his friend, Dr. Johnson, I can hardly recall another more searching -than one that he himself describes as whimsical. - -"I know not how so whimsical a thought came into my head," says Boswell, -"but I asked, 'If, sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a new-born -child with you, what would you do?' - -"JOHNSON: Why, sir, I should not much like my company. - -"BOSWELL: But would you take the trouble of rearing it? - -"He seemed, as may be supposed, unwilling to pursue the subject: but, -upon my persevering in my question, replied, 'Why, yes, sir, I would; -but I must have all conveniences. If I had no garden, I would make a -shed on the roof, and take it there for fresh air. I should feed it, and -wash it much, and with warm water, to please it, not with cold water, to -give it pain.' - -"BOSWELL: But, sir, does not heat relax? - -"JOHNSON: Sir, you are not to imagine the water is to be very hot. I -would not _coddle_ the child." - -It appears, too, that the Doctor had given some thought to the subject, -although never expecting to be a mother himself: his immediate -insistence upon fresh air promises well for the infant, and the -frequency with which he proposes to wash his little companion indicates -that, so long as the water-supply of the castle lasted, he would have -done his part. A cow in the castle seems to have been taken for granted; -but, in 1769, even Dr. Johnson would have known little or nothing about -formulas, nor would it have occurred to him to make a pasteurizing -apparatus, as so many parents do nowadays, out of a large tin pail and a -pie-plate. Here the baby would have had to take his eighteenth-century -chance. And I wish, too, that he might have had a copy of "The Baby's -Physical Culture Guide," that modern compendium of twenty-four -exercises, by which a reasonably strongarmed mother may strengthen and -develop the infant's tiny muscles; for I like to think of Dr. Johnson -exercising his innocent companion in his shed on the roof. "Sir," he -says, "I do not much like my employment; but here we are, and we'll have -to make the best of it." - -Such an experience, no doubt, would have been good for Dr. Johnson, and -good for the baby (if it survived). "That into which his little mind is -to develop," says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "is plastic--like -a wax record, ready to retain such impressions as are made upon it"; and -on this wax some, at least, of the impressions left by Dr. Johnson must -have been valuable. But on the real mystery of babyhood--the insoluble -enigma that the "Guide" can only in small measure dispose of by -comparing the rearing of an infant with the home-manufacture of a record -for the gramaphone--the experience would have thrown no light. - -The Doctor, I dare say, would have written a paper on the feeding and -washing of infants, and later dictionaries of familiar quotation might -perhaps have been enriched by the phrase,"'The baby is grandfather to -the man.'--JOHNSON." But of this grandfather the man has no memory. His -babyhood is a past concerning which he is perforce silent, a time when -it is only by the report of others that he knows he was living. His -little mind seems to have been more than a little blank; and although -gifted novelists have set themselves the imaginative task of thinking -and writing like babies, none, in my reading, has ever plausibly -succeeded. The best they can do is to think and write like little -adults. I recall, for example, the honest effort of Miss May Sinclair, -whom I greatly respect as an adult, to see Mr. Olivier through the eyes -of his baby daughter Mary. "Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, -all by himself. He was dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down -in front of him and one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was -smiling because his cheeks swelled high up in his face, so that his eyes -were squeezed into narrow, shining slits. When they came out again, you -saw scarlet specks and smears in their corners." A fearsome Papa!--and, -although I have no way of knowing that fathers do not present -themselves in this futurist aspect to their helpless offspring, I am -glad to think otherwise. At all events a baby is, and must be, well used -to living in Brobdingnag. - -It would be a surprising thing, if it were not so common, that a man -shows so little curiosity about this forgotten period of his life. But -such curiosity would be impossible to satisfy. Existing photographs of -him at that time are a disappointment: he seldom admits seeing any -resemblance, and, if he does, the likeness rarely, if ever, gives him -any visible satisfaction. Nor can anything of real and personal interest -be found out by interviewing those who then knew him. Of a hundred, nay, -of a thousand or a million babies,--and though I cannot speak as a -woman, it seems to me (except, perhaps, for a livelier interest and -pleasure among them in their infant appearance) that everything I am -saying applies equally to babies of that fascinating sex,--the trivial -details observed by those who are nearest them are practically -identical. They thump their heads. They chew their fingers. They try to -feed their toes; and, sillier yet, they try to feed them with things -that are obviously inedible. And so forth. And so forth. If Dr. Johnson, -actually shut up in a castle, and a new-born child with him, had kept a -record, the result would have been very much like the records that -mothers now keep in what, unless I am mistaken, are called "Baby Books." -If you've seen one Baby Book, as the cynical old man said about -circuses, you've seen all of 'em. - -Nor does any man take pleasure in preserving and reading over his own -Baby Book. Hercules, to be sure, might have been interested to read in -his mother's handwriting,--"_Tuesday._ An eventful day. Two big, horrid -Snakes came in from the garden, and got in Darling's cradle, frightening -Nurse into hysterics; but Darling only cooed and strangled them both -with his dear, strong little hands. He gets stronger and cunninger every -day. When the horrid Snakes were taken away from him, he cried and said, -'Atta! Atta!'" - -But Hercules was an exceptionally interesting baby; and the average Baby -Book records nothing that a grown man can regard with pride, and much, -if he has any sensitiveness at all, that must make him blush. Nothing -but respect for his mother, it is almost safe to say, would withhold him -from hurrying the incriminating document to the cellar, and cremating it -in the furnace. - -For in the beginning Captain William Kidd, George Washington, Dr. -Johnson, the writer of this essay, and even the editor of the "Atlantic -Monthly," looked and behaved very much alike. And so, for that matter, -did little Moll Cutpurse and little Susan B. Anthony. So far as anybody -could then have said, Captain Kidd might have become a thoughtful, -law-abiding essayist, and I a pirate, handicapped, indeed, by changed -conditions of maritime traffic, but unconscientiously doing my wicked -best. - -As the twig is bent, says the proverb, so is the tree inclined; but -these little twigs are bent already, and I humbly submit, with all -respect to my scientific friends, and their white mice and their guinea -pigs, that where and how it happened remains an insoluble mystery. -Little as I know about myself, I know that I am neither a white mouse -nor a guinea pig. And this, mark you, is no mere conceit. Scientists -themselves have decided that when babies, in that remote past when they -first began really to interest their parents, and the human mother, the -most pathetic figure of that primitive world, first began the personal -and affectionate observation that was to develop slowly, over millions -of years, until it found expression in the first Baby Book--scientists, -themselves, I say, have decided that, then and there, you and I, -intelligent reader, began to differ essentially from every other known -kind of mammal. There appeared--oh, wonder!--something psychical as well -as physical about us; but _where it came from_, they cannot tell us. -"Natural selection," so John Fiske once summed up this opinion, "began -to follow a new path and make psychical changes instead of physical -changes." Little enough there seems to have been to start with; little -enough, indeed, there seems to be now--yet enough more to encourage us -to believe that Baby is a lot further along in the right direction than -he was a good many million years ago. And with this helpful conviction, -Baby himself, whether he will grow up to write essays or commit -picturesque murder, seems reasonably well satisfied. We solemn adults, -standing around the crib, may well admire, not so much the pinkness and -chubbiness of his toes, as the pinkness and chubbiness (if I may so -express it) of his simple satisfaction with the mere fact of existence, -his simple faith in the Universe. And when we think how impossible it is -to think of its beginning, we, too, may capture something of this -infantile optimism. - -It is by no means impossible (though not susceptible of scientific -proof) that Baby may have a life of his own; and, if we may assume -Hercules weeping and saying, "Atta! Atta!"--because shrewd observers of -babyhood declare it to be characteristic of babies to say, "Atta! Atta!" -when something desirable, in this case two dead snakes, is removed from -their range of vision,--may we not assume also a universal language of -babies, and a place, such as it may be, from which they have emigrated? -Here, indeed, one follows M. Maeterlinck, except that, in his judgment, -unborn babies speak French. Such a theory is no help to the novelist, -for in that case baby Mary Olivier's impressions of Mr. Olivier must be -rendered in baby--a language equally unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her -readers. Babies have been heard to say, for example, "Nja njan dada atta -mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meen[)e] m[)o]mm -m[)o]mma ao-u"--and who but another baby knows whether this may not be -speech? The assumption that this is an effort to speak the language of -the baby's elders is academic, as, for that matter, is the assumption -that they are his elders. There may even be no baby at all; for, as -Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put it, "The uneasiness that keeps the -never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that -the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence." -But this, I confess, is far too deep for me. - - Baby, baby in your cot, - Are you there?--or are you not? - If you're not, then what of me! - Baby, _what_ and _where_ are we? - -For all practical purposes, however, Baby is sufficiently -real--substantial enough, indeed, as "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide" -shows in Exercise 24, to be lifted by his little feet and stood on his -little head; but, mercifully adds the "Guide," "do not hold Baby on his -head very long." For all practical purposes we must, and do, assume our -own existence. "Here we are," as I have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to -his innocent new-born comrade, "and we'll have to make the best of it." -Nobody has thought of a better way, or any other way at all, for us to -get here; and the familiar Biblical phrase, 'born again,' may perhaps be -more literal than we are wont to imagine, and apply to this world as -well as the next. Baby himself may just have been born again. That -innocent-seeming and rather silly-sounding monologue, which we flatter -ourselves is an earnest attempt to imitate our own speech,--"Nja njan -dada atta mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meene[)e] -m[)o]mm m[)o]mma ao-u,"--may it not be the soliloquy of a gentle -philosopher, or, again, the confession of an out-and-out rascal, -talking to himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and cooing over them, -indeed, before he forgets them in this new state of being? May not Papa, -waggishly shaking his forefinger and saying, "You little rascal, you," -be speaking with a truthfulness which, if known, would make him sick? - -Meanwhile, as says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "Don't jerk Baby -round. Never rush through his exercises, but talk to him in a happy, -encouraging way. When he is able to talk he will be glad to tell you -what great, good fun he has been having." - -So speaks, I think, a mother's imagination; in sober reality, even the -great good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgotten. Which is perhaps why, -although I have heard men wish they could again be children, I have -never heard any man say he would like to be a baby. - - - - -II - -TO BE A BOY - - -_I love dearly to watch the boys at their play. How gayly they pitch and -catch their baseball with their strong little hands! How blithely they -run from base to base! How merrily their voices come to me across the -green; for, although I cannot hear what they say, I know it expresses a -young, innocent joy in this big, good world. Yet even in this Garden -there is a Serpent, and one day two of the little innocents quarreled -and came to blows. A real fight! I soon hurried out and stopped that, -but the sight of their little faces distorted with rage, and one poor -boy bleeding at the nose, upset me for quite a time._--AN OLD MAID'S -WINDOW. - - * * * * * - -In "The Boyhood of Great Men," published by Harper and Brothers, in -1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it is told of Sir Isaac Newton -that "An accident first fired him to strive for distinction in the -school-room. The boy who was immediately above him in the class, after -treating him with a tyranny hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick him -in the stomach, with a severity that caused great pain. Newton resolved -to have his revenge, but of such a kind as was natural to his reasoning -mind, even at that immature age. He determined to excel his oppressor in -their studies and lessons; and, setting himself to the task with zeal -and diligence, he never halted in his course till he had found his way -to the top of the class; thus exhibiting and leaving a noble example to -others of his years similarly situated. Doubtless, after this, he would -heartily forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who could not but -henceforth feel ashamed of his unmanly conduct, while Newton would feel -the proud consciousness of having done his duty after the bravest and -noblest fashion which it is in the power of man to adopt." - -We cannot all be Sir Isaac Newtons, and, although I may wish for a -passing moment that some sturdy little school-fellow had kicked me too -in the stomach, the resulting sequence of events would probably have -been different, and the world would have gained little or nothing by my -natural indignation. Having an impartial mind, I should like to know -also _why_ Sir Isaac was kicked in the stomach, and what became -afterward of the boy who kicked him. As his fame grew in the world, the -reflected glory of having thus kicked Sir Isaac Newton in the stomach -would presumably have brightened in proportion, but, lacking other -distinction, the kicker served his evolutionary purpose and has now -vanished. - -But this much remains of him--that his little foot kicks also in the -stomach the widely accepted fallacy that boyhood is an age of unalloyed -gold, to which every man now and then looks back and vainly yearns to be -a boy again. "Oh! happy years!"--so sighed the poet Byron,--"once more, -who would not be a boy?" And so to-day, as one may at least deduce from -his general newspaper reading, sigh all the editors of all the -newspapers in the United States. Not, indeed, for a boyhood like Sir -Isaac Newton's, but for the standard American boyhood, to which, in -theory, every ageing American looks back with tender reminiscence--that -happy time when he went barefooted, played "hookey" from school, fished -in the running brook with a bent pin for a hook, and swam, with other -future bankers, merchants, clerks, clergymen, physicians and surgeons, -confidence-men, pickpockets, authors, actors, burglars, etc., etc., in -an old swimming-hole. The democracy of the old swimming-hole is, in -fact, the democracy of the United States, naked and unashamed; and even -in the midst of a wave of crime (one might almost imagine), if the -victim should say suddenly to the hold-up man,-- - - "Oh, do you remember the ole swimmin' hole, - And the hours we spent there together; - Where the oak and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather? - - Ah, sweet were those hours together we spent - In innocent laughter and joy! - How little we knew at the time what it meant - To be just a boy--just a boy!" - ---the hold-up man would drop his automatic gun, and the two would -dissolve on each other's necks in a flood of sympathetic tears. - -It is a pleasant and harmless fallacy, and I for one would not destroy -it; I am no such stickler for exactitude that I would take away from any -man whatever pleasure he may derive from thinking that he was once a -barefoot boy, even if circumstances were against him and his mother as -adamant in her refusal to let him go barefooted. But the fallacy is -indestructible: the symbols may not have been universal, but it is true -enough of boyhood that time then seems to be without limit; and this -comfortable, unthinking sense of immortality is what men have lost and -would fain recover. One forgets how cruelly slow moved the hands of the -school-room clock through the last, long, lingering, eternal fifteen -minutes of the daily life-sentence. One forgets how feverishly the -seconds chased each other, faster than human feet could follow, when -one's little self was late for school, and the clamor of the distant -bell ended in a solemn, ominous silence. Then was the opportunity for -stout heart to play "hookey," and to lure the finny tribe with a poor -worm impaled on a bent pin; and that, in the opinion of all the editors -of all the newspapers in the United States, is what all of us always -did. But in the painful reality most of us, I think, tried to overtake -those feverish seconds, seeking indeed to outrun time, and somehow or -other, though the bell had stopped ringing, get unostentatiously into -our little seats before it stopped. And so we ran, and ran, and ran, -lifting one leaden foot after the other with hopeless determination, in -a silent, nightmare world where the road was made of glue and the very -trees along the way turned their leaves to watch us drag slowly by. -Little respect we would have had then for the poet Byron and his "Ah! -happy years! once more, who would not be a boy?" - -But even when time seemed to stand still, or go too fast, we had no -consciousness that the complicated clock of our individual existence -could ever run down and stop; and so happily careless were we of this -treasure, that we often wished to be men! "When I was young," says the -author of "The Boy's Week-Day Book,"--another volume that is not read -nowadays as much as it used to be,-- - - I doubted not the time would come, - When grown to man's estate, - That I would be a noble 'squire, - And live among the great. - - It was a proud, aspiring thought, - That should have been exiled:-- - I wish I was more humble now - Than when I was a child. - -I wonder what proud, aspiring thought Uncle Jones, as he called himself, -just then had in mind; but it was evidently no wish to be a boy again: -perhaps he meditated matrimony. - -For my own part I cannot successfully wish to be a boy; I remain -impervious to all the efforts of all the editors of all the newspapers -in the United States to dim my eye; and there must be many another eye -like mine, or else it is unbelievably unique. I lean back in my chair, -close my undimmed eye, and do my best; but, contrary to all editorial -expectation, I can summon no desire to go barefooted, fish with a bent -pin, or revisit the old swimming-hole - - Where the elm and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather. - -I prefer a beach and a bathing-suit and somebody my own age. Yet do not -think, shocked reader, that I am unsympathetic with youth. I am more -sympathetic--that is all--with my contemporaries; and the thought -forces itself upon me that boyhood is a narrow and conventional period, -in which my own desire to go without shoes was exactly similar to my -mother's determination to wear a bustle. Equally anxious to follow the -fashion of our respective sets, neither understood the other; and I -would no more have worn a bustle than my mother would have gone -barefooted. My father, similarly thwarted in a single desire, would have -cared less: his wider interests--politics, business, family, the local -and world gossip that immersed him in his newspaper, art, literature, -music, and the drama, to say nothing of professional baseball and -pugilism (in which, however, many fathers and sons have a common -interest)--would have absorbed his disappointment. - -But my narrower world, so to speak, was all feet. An unconventional -boy, as I think the most erudite student of boy-life and boy-psychology -will admit, is much more rare than an unconventional man; and even then -his unconventionality is likely to be imposed upon him "for his own -good" by well-meaning but tyrannical parents. "I have known boys," wrote -Uncle Jones, observing but not comprehending this characteristic fact, -"when playing at 'Hare and hounds' and 'Follow my leader,' to scramble -over hedges, leap over brooks, and mount up precipices, in a manner -which they would not have dared to attempt, had it not been for the -examples set them by their school-fellows; but," he adds, "I do not -remember any instance of a boy imitating another on account of his good -temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or piety." - -Naturally not. You and I, Uncle Jones, might be expected to imitate -each other's good temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or -piety,--though I do not say that we would,--but from the point of view -of a boy these virtues are unconventional. Their practice shocks and -disconcerts the observer. The behavior of Sir Isaac Newton, when kicked -in the stomach, was perfectly scandalous. - -And what is there, after all, in the life of a boy, that a man would -find interesting? Or that he may not do, if such is sufficiently his -desire to "make" the time for it, as he makes time for his adult -pleasures, and if he is not too old or too fat? He can spend his -vacation at the old swimming-hole--but he never does it. He can go -barefooted whenever he wishes: his mother can no longer prevent him. He -can fish with a bent pin in the porcelain bathtub,--adding a goldfish -to make the pursuit more exciting,--every morning before he takes his -bath. He can chase butterflies; here and there, indeed, a man makes a -profession of it, and institutions of learning call him an entomologist, -and pay him much honor and a small salary. Nobody forbids him to enlarge -his mental horizon by reading the lives of criminals and detectives; and -I can myself direct him to many an entertaining book, which is at once -far worse and far better, morally and artistically, than the sober -narratives that Old Sleuth used to write by the yard for boys to read by -stealth. He can roll a hoop; in many cases it would do him a world of -good to roll it down to the office in the morning and back home at -night. If he can persuade other ageing men, wishful of renewed boyhood, -to join with him, he can play at marbles, tick, puss-in-the-corner, -hop-scotch, ring-taw, and "Hot beans ready buttered." (Uncle Jones -mentions these games. I do not remember all of them myself, but "Hot -beans ready buttered" sounds especially interesting.) And where better -than in some green, quiet corner at the Country Club? And why, if you -_will_ raise the question of conventionality, why more foolish than -golf, or folk-dancing? - -But what he cannot do is to assume the boy's unconsciousness of his own -mortality. What he cannot unload is his own consciousness of -responsibility to and for others. Life, in short, has provided the man -with a worrying company of creditors of whom the boy knows -nothing--Creditor Cost-of-Living, Creditor Ambition, Creditor -Conscience, and Creditor Death. And the boy is unmarried! It is even -claimed by one philosopher of my acquaintance that this is why men wish -they were once more boys. I grant the plausibility of this opinion; for -the more a man is is devoted to his wife and family, the more he is -beset and worried by these troublesome creditors, the more, one may -reasonably argue, he feels the need of time to meet his obligations, and -is likely now and then to envy the boy his narrow, conventional, but -immortal-feeling life. - -Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fundamental fact. He is always trying -to destroy the boy's sense of immortality in this world by trying to -persuade him to read the Bible and prepare for immortality in the next. -"When a boy first begins his A B C," says Uncle Jones, "it is terrible -work for him for a short time; yet how soon he gets over it, and begins -to read! And, then, what a pleasure to be able to read a good and -pleasant book! Oh, it is worthwhile to go through the trouble of -learning to read fifty times over, to obtain the advantage of reading -the Bible." - - - - -III - -ON MEETING THE BELOVED - - _Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State and Mysterie of Loue that - youre trew Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a deepe - Humilitie and a loftie Conceit of Hymselfe. For with respect to - this, hys Mistresse, he believes himself a most inferior Person, - and as it were a mere Worme; yet if he doth suspect her to regard - any Man els as his Equal, he is consumed with great Astonishment - and raging Indignation, for this same Loue is a great Destroyer of - Common Sense in its Victimes. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior to - her because he is her Louer, and superior to all Men els for the - same silly Reason._--ANATOMIE OF LOUE. - - -To any sensitive man, not yet armored by the indifference that comes of -being married himself, there is cause for apprehension in the prospect -of meeting for the first time that person, male or female, whom somebody -he knows and loves has recently agreed to marry. The event, when it -comes, is unavoidable, nor is there any period in adult life when it may -not happen, or anybody we know so old that he or she may not occasion -it. Fact is more romantic, or at any rate remains romantic much later in -life, than fiction. Only the other day I read in the newspaper of a man -of one hundred and thirty-five years who had just subjected his little -circle to this formality. Very likely the newspaper exaggerated, but the -case undermines the security that one ordinarily feels in his -relationship with the ageing. - -Now it needs no argument that to be happy in the happiness of others is -an inexpensive pleasure and well worth cultivating. Other things being -equal, one should go dancing and singing to his first meeting with -another's beloved. Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or sixty, -should blossom, to his imagination, from the granite curb along his way; -and, though a foolish convention may repress the song and dance, yet -should he walk as if shod with the most levitating heels ever made from -the liveliest of live rubber, and sing merrily in his heart. - -But, thus to enter into the happiness of another, one must see and feel, -as if for himself, some good and sufficient reason for that happiness; -and the deep, insoluble mystery essential to all proper betrothals is -that this good and sufficient reason is not necessarily visible: these -two are happy-mad, and how shall anybody who is sane enter into their -lunacy? - -Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d,--to take the first name that comes to mind,--has -become engaged to Miss Margaret Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well and -good. Nature, which, for some reason that mankind has long curiously and -vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to continue the human race, is, one -may believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is one job among many. But -the satisfaction of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it could be put to such -haberdashery use, would girdle the Equator, and the ends, tied in a true -lover's knot, would flutter beyond the farthest visible star. Men and -women have become engaged in the past; men and women will become engaged -in the future; but this engagement of Harvey Todd and Margaret Lemon is -and will ever remain unique--and so whoever is now called upon to -appraise one party to this wonder and congratulate the other, may well -be troubled. He is not so much afraid of what he may do and say,--for -any man may hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost sobbing pressure of -the hand and a few muttered words,--as of the way, in spite of himself, -that he will look when he does and says it; there, indeed, the amateur -actor profits by his hobby. There is, to be sure, the saving chance that -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so pleasurably affect him that the ordeal -will be less difficult than he anticipates: there is even the rare -chance that he may _instantly and completely agree with Mr. Todd's -estimate of Miss Lemon_; but this is the happy-madness itself, and -certainly not desirable under the circumstances. There is the -possibility, even more rare and less desirable, that Miss Lemon, seeing -him for the first time, _will instantly and completely prefer him to -Mr. Todd_. There is the possibility that he may recoil with horror from -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be recoiled from, or that both may recoil -simultaneously, falling over, figuratively, on their backs, and being -picked up and carried away unconscious, and in opposite directions, by -surprised onlookers. His whole nature may, in short, instinctively run -toward, or away from, the beloved; and between these extremes lies a -gamut of intermediary emotions, which at the moment he would hardly wish -to uncover. This stiff and geometrical smile, he asks himself at the -worst, can it deceive anybody? this hypocritical mutter of -congratulation, does it proceed from his own or an ice chest? Nor is he -much relieved when Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, proves -how genuine appeared his smile, how sincere his mutter, by asking him -in affectionate detail what he thinks of the other--a procedure which -should be legally forbidden the newly engaged, under penalty of being -refused a marriage license for at least ten years. - -This state of mind in lovers, so important to those who are called upon -to meet the beloved for the first time, has engaged the attention of -essayists, conversationalists, and philosophers. "They fall at once," -wrote Stevenson, "into that state in which another person becomes to us -the very gist and centre point of God's creation, and demolishes our -laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with -the one master-thought, that even the trivial cares of our own person -become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is -translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and -desirable a fellow creature. And all the while their acquaintances look -on in stupor." - -"No, sir," said Dr. Johnson, promptly improving Mr. Boswell's milder -assertion that love is like being enlivened with champagne, "No, sir. -Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne"--an -opinion, one hopes, that will not some day be made the basis of a -nation-wide campaign to prohibit falling in love. - -"His friends," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "find in her a likeness to her -mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees -no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to -rainbows and the song of birds." - -Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon (so like a rainbow) are impervious to any lack -of enthusiasm that you or I, dear, unselfish, sensitive reader, may fear -to exhibit when either leads us the other by the hand and says, "This -is IT." Ours, if any, will be the suffering. It may even happen that -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd--Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon beaming consent and -approval--will suggest that _we call her_ (_or him_) _Margaret_ (_or -Harvey_). - -Yet from another point of view, but this is a selfish one, apprehension -is justified in proportion to the sensitive man's previous intimacy with -the individual whose beloved he is about to meet. For until that meeting -is over, "previous" is the word for it: whatever opinion the beloved may -form of him will determine the degree and manner of its continuance. If -Miss Lemon disapproves of him, though Mr. Todd has hitherto loved him as -Damon did Pythias, all is over; if Mr. Todd disapproves of him, though -he has known Miss Lemon from her perambulator, all is over. A pale -ghost, he may, in either case, sometimes hang his spectral hat in the -Todd hallway, and even extend his phantom legs under the Todd mahogany; -but ALL IS OVER. Divinely harmonious as they seem, these two will never -agree to let him try, however humbly and conscientiously, to cultivate -the inexpensive pleasure of being happy in their happiness. He becomes -what no self-respecting man can wish to be--a fly in the ointment. Most -cases, fortunately, are not so serious: he will be given a reasonable -chance to make a place for himself on this new plane to which Mr. Todd -and Miss Lemon have been translated; but it is always a question whether -he can enter that plane himself, or must hereafter be content with -hearing from his former friend through a medium. For he has not, as is -so often gracefully but emptily said on these trying occasions, been -enriched by the acquisition of a new friend: he has simply exchanged -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd (as the case may be) for a composite, a Toddlemon -or a Lemontodd--a few years will show which. He must make the best he -can of that composite. He who was formerly described as (let us say) "my -friend, Mr. Popp," becomes, if he becomes at all, "our friend, Mr. -Popp"; and if ever he hears himself being introduced as "Mr. Todd's -friend, Mr. Popp," or as "Mrs. Todd's friend, Mr. Popp," he had better -go away as soon as politeness permits, and never come back. Never. - -I speak, of course, in generalities; for there are no rules immutably -governing all cases, and life is mellowed and beautified by shining, -sensible examples, in which Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon become one, yet -realize that in many respects, being human, they must still remain two; -then, indeed, the congratulator may actually be enriched by the -acquisition of a new friend--but not instantly, as one is enriched by -the acquisition of a new hat. Yet it is always the wiser part, in -preparing to meet a beloved, to prepare for the worst. - -These are evidently the apprehensions of a bachelor, sensitive but not -unselfish; the mental attitude is different with a student, philosopher, -and idealist who, thinking not of himself, contemplates another's -marriage in the calm, intelligent way, having as yet no beloved in which -he can contemplate his own. Such a one weighs. Such a one is conscious -that, little as _he_ knows the beloved of Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, there -is grave danger that Mr. Todd knows Miss Lemon, or Miss Lemon Mr. Todd, -hardly better. This happy-madness may not only be a delusion, as a calm -outside intelligence contemplates it, but it may be a snare. Mistakes do -happen. There are known cases in which the happy lunatic has been -mistaken in a beloved not once but often; and the persistent effort of -these poor madmen and madwomen to correct one mistake by making another -is one of the most discussed and pitiable phases of our civilization. -The calm intelligence must balance also the practical aspects of the -business, its risks and liabilities as well as its profits; and so -serious is the enterprise when thus examined that he can hardly fail to -be terrified for anybody he knows and loves who is undertaking it. - -O Harvey! Harvey! (or Margaret! Margaret!) - -Tact is what he will pray for. And if his prayer is granted, when Mr. -Todd (or Miss Lemon) asks him, "Now, honestly, what do you think of her -(or him)?" he will say, "Of course I do not know Miss Lemon (or Mr. -Todd) very well _yet_, but I have never met anybody whom I _hoped_ to -know and like better." Which will be quite true, and please the -twittering questioner much more than if he said, "Oh, I don't know. I -_don't_ know." - - - - -IV - -THIS IS A FATHER - - _Proud Parent, in this little life - Yourself reflected see, - And think how Baby will progress - A man like you to be! - - So stout, so strong, so wise, and when - Sufficient years have flown, - Like you the happy parent of - A baby of his own! - - And when that unborn baby grows - To be a man like you, - Oh, think how proud that man will be - To be a parent too. - - So think, when life oppresses you - And you are feeling sad, - A million, million, million times - You'll be a happy dad._ - - --THE FATHER'S ANTHEM. - - -In the life of man fatherhood is so likely to happen, that I wonder -Shakespeare did not select father as a natural, and indeed inevitable, -successor to lover in his well-known seven ages. He chose the soldier, -"full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard," presumably because -such soldiers were common in Elizabethan London. But fathers must have -been more so: they must have gone in droves past the tavern window where -Shakespeare (as what we now call the "wets" so like to think) sat at his -ale-stained table, dipping now his quill in an inkwell, and again his -nose in a tankard; but they seem to have made no impression. Indeed this -unromantic, necessary figure, composite as it is of all sorts and -conditions of men, has never appealed strongly to the poets; perhaps it -is their revenge because fathers so seldom read poetry. - -Whatever else a man does, whether he lives by banking or burglary, -ascends to the presidency or descends to the gutter, he is likely to be -a father: they are as countless as the pebbles on a beach or the leaves -in Vallombrosa, and the few who evade paternity evade also the purpose -for which nature evidently created them, and go through life thumbing -their noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. So taken for granted is -this vocation of fatherhood, and so little considered in comparison with -other masculine employments, that no correspondence school offers a -course, and many a young man undertakes to raise children with less -hesitation than he would start in to raise chickens. Some accept -fatherhood with joy, others with resignation, like a recently wedded -young Italian who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the other day of his own -new little one. "Zee fadder and zee modder," he said, "zey work and zey -slave for zee leetle one. But what-a good? When he is grow up, he say, -'To hell wiz zee fadder and zee modder!'" And so, as Shakespeare may -have decided, there is no universal type of fatherhood, nor has the -imagination of mankind created one, as in the case of mothers, for -convenient literary and conversational use. The lines of the -balladist,-- - - With his baby on his knee - He's as happy as can be,-- - -were, to be sure, something in this direction; but they have become so -wholly associated with humor, that even the late Mr. Rogers, had he -known the ballad, could hardly have found inspiration therein for a -group; nor Shakespeare adapted the lines to describe seriously one of -his seven ages. He might have scribbled experimentally,-- - - Then the father, - Infant on knee, and happy like the clam,-- - -but that would have been the end of it. He would have crossed out the -experiment, and taken another drink. - -Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the mind of the general, so far -behind that he is almost invisible, a tiny object on red wheels at the -end of a string. But the little fellow carries a pocketbook: when Mother -needs money she pulls in the string, and he comes up in a hurry. And, as -is usually the case with popular conceptions, this odd, erroneous -notion, which most fathers seem cheerfully enough to accept, has no -doubt its historic foundation, and derives from the unquestionable -supremacy of Mother in the beginning. At that period, indeed, it is -hardly to be expected that any father should feel immediately _en -rapport_ with his new-born child, or become intimately associated with -its helpless, flower-like life. Ever since the idea, which has now so -long lost its original element of bewildering surprise, yet remains -always somewhat surprising, first dawned upon a human father and mother -that _this baby_ belonged to _them_, conditions have inexorably -consigned the infant to the care of its mother, while its father pursued -elsewhere the equally necessary business of providing sustenance for the -family. A division of labor was imperative: somebody must stay at home -in the cave and tend the baby, somebody must go out in the woods and -hustle for provisions. Maternity was, as it must have been, already a -feminine habit, but paternity was something new and unexpected; and -although I suspect, in many cases, this astonishing discovery was -followed by speedy flight. Trueheart the First took up his -responsibilities and his stone axe together. - -The horror is recorded with which Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being -left alone in a castle with a new-born child; and this feeling in so -civilized a man was no doubt an echo of the emotion with which poor, -bewildered, primitive, but faithful Trueheart would have envisaged being -left alone in the cave with his new-born baby: the sense of relief, of -gayety, of something definite and within his capabilities to do, with -which the young father nowadays takes his hat and starts for the office, -must be much the same as that with which Trueheart took his stone axe -and started for the woods. - -Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became -subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not -fundamentally changed, it has ever since continued. "Mothers' Day," for -example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; "Fathers' Day" remains a mere -humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as -now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not -quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little -importance. - -I am not forgetting--for I do them an honor I can hardly express--those -fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, -back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion -incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted -babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby's -wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some -article of infant use or pleasure that the little rascal has -mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways -patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost -impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical -father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up -and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the -proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins -to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father's position become -responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior -has consequences. - -Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business--yet even to-day many -a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than -had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, -meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon tea. A blind attachment (I am -putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) -springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, -Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any -Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, -Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to -believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil. - -And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes -a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father--and -who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking -together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with -which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly -evident that Harvey Todd has given hardly more thought to the -tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than -might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do -not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; -but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, -when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great -big man like himself. And according as he _has_ conducted himself, that -great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying -degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, -it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief -respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, -cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the -glasses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and make mine chocolate. For -this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality -an immortal spirit (though he doesn't know which), and here he -stands,--I said chocolate,--and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his -experience, could not tell him what to do about it. - -So we clink our long-handled spoons. - -For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this -topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have -advanced materially since he was a father. "He that spareth his rod," -said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed -the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, "hateth his son: But he -that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." And again, "The rod and the -reproof giveth wisdom." We know better nowadays: the rod has become a -figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are -fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be -described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is -something objective for a father to do--an occasion when Mother pulls in -the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes -up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over -the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the -paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to -attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in -this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success -as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. -Hamlet's father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and -never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark -smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no -better than follow the elder Hamlet's example; and in so doing he will -show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on -proverbs and a stout stick. "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth -his neck," said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to -"get it in the neck"), "shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond -remedy"; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no -longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for -Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon's Book of Proverbs but Theodore -Roosevelt's Letters to his Children. - -If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact -that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden -our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has -gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may -compose a proverb myself-- - - The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; - And the wise father maketh a friend of his son. - -But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, -which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and -truthful speech, is here especially difficult. "To speak truth," says -Stevenson, "there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence -between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal -fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is -another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of -the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial -gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with -his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly -judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth." - -Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his -paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental -experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and -wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an -affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line -of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his -jolly old father's opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, -Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is -bound up in the heart of the child"--and there he stopped, after adding -his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, -O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. -Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with. - -And so the father plays his unapplauded part--"tragedy, comedy, history, -pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, -tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem -unlimited," as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants -no "Father's Day." He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems -to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in -statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though -most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a -Great Father. - - - - -V - -ON BEING A LANDLORD - - _In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a - Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another - tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of - the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may - eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case - comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity - pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the - ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just - landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS - TO LET. - - -On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women -and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. -Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. -Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, -Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; -indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear -title,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily -readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and -Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he -devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I -like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw," -mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, -however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that -brave little company-- - - BUTTON - HOPP - CARROT - BARBER - KARSEN - CAWKINS - SMITH - RANEE - MAHONEY - SIBLEY - LE MAIRE - TROLLEY - BROWN - MURPHY - ---would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout -leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, -short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted -along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a -cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, -my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you -will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I -will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at -the terms assigned. So help me God and his saints." - -Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was -paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that -now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, -through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this -sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved -helpmate. - -Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of -that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the -rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. -There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a -civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact -no more than a "fair rent"; at our weakest, when a tenant gets in -arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least -resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the -tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes -more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the -inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves -the while, to be strict. - -I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that "in the beginning -man probably dwelt in trees after the fashion of his ape-like ancestors. -He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird's -eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects." And my own experience leads -me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I -draw the line at birds' eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at -which items of an earlier menu even the scientific mind seems to baulk. -But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got -possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share -its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may -landlordry have been established. - -Millions of years have passed since then,--a mere flicker in the great -movie of eternity,--and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but -the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present -there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal -diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), -invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a -complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we -have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to -the simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in -this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks -large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin's -Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise -the rent. One must assume, of course, that he is thinking about it just -before taking his morning bath. - -It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who -profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect -Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by -fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal -seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the -social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, -for he lets apartments only to what he calls "nice people," whose -society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose -financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain -such that no painful embarrassment on this sordid but necessary side of -their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I -gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the -nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in -general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual "Ah, -yes, the rent." Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of -landlordry. - -I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written -entitled - - THE RENT - - CHARACTERS: MRS. BUTTON, a tenant. - - I, a landlord. - - SCENE: _A tenement, owned by_ I, _but referred to as_ MRS. - BUTTON'S, _which is perhaps more correct._ MRS. BUTTON _is washing - dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man - coming upstairs._ MRS. BUTTON _smiles enigmatically. A knocking at - the door, as in "Macbeth."_ - - MRS. BUTTON. Come in. (I _enters._) - - I _(laughing with affected lightness)._ Ah, _good-_morning, Mrs. - Button. I've come for the rent. - - MRS. BUTTON _(weeping)._ It's not me, as ye know, sir, that likes - to be behind with th' rint. I'm proud. - - I _(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in - tears)._ I know _that._ But you've been here seven months, Mrs. - Button, without-- - - MRS. BUTTON _(wiping her eyes)._ Yis, I'm an old tenant, and 't - would break me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin payin' reg'lar - only nixt week, sir. It's th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel - harrd to leave it. - - I (_sternly_). Very well. Very well. I shall _expect_ the money - next week. Good-day, Mrs. Button. - - MRS. BUTTON. Good-day, sir. - - I _exits_. MRS. BUTTON _resumes washing dishes, smiling - enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily - downstairs, fainter and fainter_. - - (CURTAIN) - -It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human -beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of -making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier -plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of -disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have -nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in -dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those -of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory -psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the -effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is -rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, -in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of -course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,--but -it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked. - -One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long -and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping -peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, -firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything -more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent." - -One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his -desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to -figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; -insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, -light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at -Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., -etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man. - -Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case -of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, -who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they -produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give -way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right -through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and -play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. -Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic -Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running -feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, -and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy -all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play." - -But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize -incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to -his tenant, "All is over between us; we must part forever--and at once." -To which, judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately -been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, "All right, you Old -Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I'll shake the dust of your -disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from -to-morrow." - -It's a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to -raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) -unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and -figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a -distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, -Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le -Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, -Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough. - - - - -VI - -OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN - - -_To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished my grandson by standing on my -head, and by entering the kitchen by turning a back-somersault through -the door--exercises which I frequently practise for the benefit of my -digestion, but not often in public. His bewilderment at seeing a man of -my years perform such acrobatics was most comical. But there, there, one -must amuse one's self with the young sometimes. I have thought more or -less seriously of advising these exercises for general use; but few men -have had the advantage of being brought up in a circus, and what seems -easy to me would no doubt present insuperable obstacles to most. The -main thing, after all, is not to grow old before your time, because the -silly younger generation likes to flatter itself by thinking you -antediluvian._--LETTERS OF FATHER WILLIAM. - -Few men read Shakespeare, and so, fortunately enough, few think of -themselves as being some day a pantaloon--lean and slippered (as -Shakespeare described this sixth age of man), with spectacles on nose, -his youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, -and his big, manly voice, turning again to childish treble, operating -like a penny whistle when he tries to converse. But the Bard made a -bogey: at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons visible than there -probably were in Elizabethan England; and the sixth age of man appears -more logically to offer a kind of Indian summer that is well worth -living for. Shakespeare, it seems to me, slipped a cog in his sequence; -and I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian centenarian, who began at -forty to restrict his diet (though this I care less for), and wrote of -himself at eighty-three: "I enjoy a happy state of body and mind. I can -mount my horse without assistance; I climb steep hills; and I have -lately written a play abounding in innocent wit and humor. And I am a -stranger to those peevish and morose humors which fall so often to the -lot of old age." - -Granting some other choice of mental employment,--for writing that kind -of a play seems nowadays too useless an occupation even for an old man's -leisure,--this is the kind of an old man I should like to be. - -In the light of recent scientific research with flies, Cornaro probably -inherited his longevity from long-lived ancestors, and would have done -about as well on a less restricted diet: he might reasonably have -lasted as long if not as comfortably. Ideas have changed since Pope -asked himself,-- - - Why has not man a microscopic eye?-- - -and promptly answered,-- - - For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. - Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, - T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? - -Man since then has provided himself with a remarkably good microscopic -eye. He has inspected the mite, and discovered resemblances between this -innocently disgusting little insect and himself, which make it -desirable, in some cases, to suspend the swatter, and study instead of -assassinate. Granting that the proper study of mankind is Man, the -proper study of mankind is Flies; for the days of a fly present an -entertaining and instructive parallel to the years of a man: a -seventy-year-old man and a seventy-day-old fly are contemporaries; -other things being equal, they might almost be called twins. Confined in -glass bottles and observed impartially from birth to burial, each baby -fly, it appears, inherits a maximum number of days on this perplexing -planet, and lives fewer according to the activity with which he expends -his inheritance. If flies had copybooks one might compose a maxim for -little flies to copy,-- - - Do not fly too much or fast, - And you will much longer last. - -Thus one scientific gentleman has watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 -flies--3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), and 2620 of their -natural, and only, admirers--from their separate birth-minutes till each -in turn paid his or her little debt to nature, and passed away. It is an -odd thing to contemplate--this self-election of a man to the positions -of guardian, health officer, divine providence, nursemaid, matchmaker, -clergyman, physician, undertaker, and sexton to 5836 flies. Yet it -redounds to his credit, and is another proof of the poet's contention -that we men are superior: for what fly would ever think of studying us -to find out anything about himself? And, by deduction, I, like the -little fly, inherit my span of life, although either accident or a germ -may get me if I don't watch out. - -But even if man, like the fly, inherits his individual length of life, -he will, again like the fly, go on living it with little concern as to -whatever invisible string may be fastened to his inheritance. He will -think hopefully that any ancestor he has had who died by violence or a -germ might otherwise have lived to be as hale and hearty as Father -William, that lively sage whose habit was to stand on his head at -intervals, and to enter a door by turning a back-somersault. Heredity -is still a mystery; the ancestry of free men is much more complicated -than that of flies in bottles; and any of us, if he anxiously carried -his genealogical research far enough back, would find a goodly number of -forbears, prematurely carried off, from whom he might reasonably have -inherited quite a lot of what the scientific mind calls the -"hypothetical substance or substances which normally prevent old age and -natural death." Flies growing gracefully old in glass bottles therefore -need not worry us, and every ancestor who has been hanged is a reason -for optimism. - -And there is another reason even more valuable than a pendent ancestor. -You and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though there may be times of -discouragement when we wish we hadn't), and old age is a mere trivial -incident in our jolly eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin growing -older, by the conventional measurement of time, with our first breath; -but who can prove that we are not in reality very much older than we -look in the beginning, and very much younger than we look in the end? I -get these sober thoughts from the laboratory rather than the pulpit, -from evolution rather than dogma. O aged fly, to whom your seventy days -are a long life and your glass bottle a perfectly natural and normal -world in which to have lived it! O aged man, to whom your seventy years -are a long life, and who may also have lived it, for all you know, in a -kind of glass bottle, big enough to contain comfortably this little -planet and all the visible stars! Whoever respects age for its own sake -must impartially salute you both. - -"It is a man's own fault," said Dr. Johnson, then seventy years old, -but no pantaloon, "it is from want of use, if the mind grows torpid in -old age." And so plausible is this observation, that any reasonably -intelligent man might make it to his wife at breakfast without at all -astonishing her. Here, to be sure, one gets no help from flies in glass -bottles who depart this world according as they fly more or fly less, -for theirs apparently is a democracy in which no outside observer can -yet say that any one fly thinks more or thinks less than another. A -scientific study of 5836 old men (in biographies instead of bottles) -would very likely do no more than verify the generalization that any -thinker may make at breakfast. And this being the case, civilization -tends naturally enough to reduce the number of pantaloons. Universal -education, books, newspapers, magazines, politics, movies, anything and -everything that to any degree employs and exercises the mind, postpones -its torpidity; and statistics indicate that an increasing proportion of -babies live to be middle-aged people--but a decreasing proportion of -middle-aged people live to be old enough to become pantaloons. For many -a not-so-very-promising baby survives nowadays who would have perished -under earlier conditions; and many a man gets to middle life who would -otherwise be dead already, and lacks the "pep," as a popular magazine -editor might say, to get very much further. What a survival of the -fittest, for example, was that of the beautiful Galeria Copiola, who, I -have read, made her first dazzling appearance in the theatre of ancient -Rome at the age of ninety! She acted and danced; and Roman playgoers of -seventy, sitting in the front rows, had opportunity to become madly -infatuated with a charmer twenty years their senior, such as now falls -only to the lot of the college undergraduate or the tired business man. -And if anybody doubts this surprising youthfulness of Galeria, I offer -the corroborative evidence of the seventeenth-century pamphlet, "The -Olde, Olde, very Olde Man; or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr," in -which John Taylor, the Water Poet, describes the pre-Adamite who was -brought up to London at the age of 152, met the King, and had such a -great good time in general, that his death nine months later was -attributed to over-excitement. - - He was of old Pythagoras' opinion - That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion; - Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig, - Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig: - Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy, - He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy. - -(I have looked up "metheglin," and I find it to have been a "strong -liquor made by mixing honey with water and flavoring it, yeast or some -similar ferment being added, and the whole allowed to ferment." "Ale" -was also a liquor, but made from malt. "Nappy" means heady and strong: -"Nappie ale," says an old writer, was "so called because, if you taste -it thoroughly, it will either catch you by the nape of the neck or cause -you to take a nappe of sleepe." The use of these drinks, it may still be -argued, shortened Parr's life; but the fly-research that I have -mentioned seems to indicate that their tendency to decrease physical -activity by inducing "nappes" may have materially helped him to conserve -his inheritance of longevity.) - -But these cases are exceptional, and for my part I have no desire to be -the Thomas Parr of the twentieth or twenty-first century. It is more -important to live right (and there, indeed, is a job for anybody!) than -to live long; and old age, like young love, is often oversentimentalized. -Mr. Boswell, I think, oversentimentalized it when he asked his -long-suffering friend, "But, sir, would you not know old age?... I mean, -sir, the Sphinx's description of it--morning, noon, and night. I would -know night as well as morning and noon." And the doctor restored the -subject to its proper place when he answered: "Nay, sir, what talk is -this? Would you know the gout? Would you have decrepitude?" He might, -indeed, have gone further. "Do you suppose, sir" (he might have added), -"you will know night when you see it? Why, sir, what does a baby know -about morning?" - -So with Pantaloon: we comparative youngsters have only an external and -objective idea of him--his slippers, his stockings, his peevish and -morose humors, his feeble mirth and empty garrulity. What living is -really like to him we cannot know until we are pantaloons ourselves, and -then, mayhap, we shall have forgotten what living is like to us now; let -it suffice that we shall probably be far less bothered by our shrunk -shanks and piping voices than we now believe possible. At the same time, -it will do no harm for some of us to "watch our step." Already I--and -there must be many another like me--am sometimes a little peevish and a -little morose; a mere _soupçon_ reasonably explainable by natural -causes--but there it is! I am hardly aware of it myself. Yet when it is -called to my attention by those nearest and dearest to me, I experience -an odd, perverse inclination to be more peevish and more morose than -before. I _enjoy_, I take a queer, twisted, unnatural, hateful, -demoniac pleasure, like Mr. Hyde when Dr. Jekyll turned into him, in the -idea of being more peevish and more morose. Here indeed is something to -look out for: resist that inclination, and we are laying the foundation -of a serene and respected old age; obey that impulse, and we comfort the -Devil, and run the risk of some day becoming, not only old men, but old -nuisances. I do not know, though I very much doubt, that one old fly is -ever more peevish and morose than another old fly; but with mankind, -whose superior intelligence so often makes trouble for his associates, -the variations are visible. Savages, unhampered by the conventions of an -artificial civilization, have efficiently knocked their elders on the -head in consequence. - -Let us, then, do our best to beat the Devil, and prepare for that Indian -summer, which, with all respect to Shakespeare, is the true sixth age -of man. And they reach it best (to judge by some who have got there) who -do their daily work with a good conscience, share their incidental joys -with others, and meet their troubles in the spirit of that stout old -seaman, Sir Andrew Barton, as I the other day saw his ballad quoted with -reference to R. L. Stevenson:-- - - A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; - Ile but lye downe and bleede a while, - And then Ile rise and fight againe. - - - - -VII - -THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN - -_Now concernynge the Soule, it is a Queer Thynge consydering that it -lives in the Bodie yett dieth nott; and so I conclude that the Soule was -made separate, and thys Bodie for its brief use and tenement; and how it -gets in and gets oute I cannot tell you. And belyke there bee all sortes -and condiciones of Soules, some goode, some bad, some so-so; but because -Goode is better than Evil, and because they lyve in Eternity, the bad -Soules will finde itt oute in time, and become goode; and the so-so -Soules will learn wisdome, and cease of their foolishnesse. But why they -were nott alle made alyke to start, that I cannot tell you; nor juste -how they was made._--THE SAGE'S OWNE BOKE. - - -It was a poetess, I am glad to say, and not a poet, who wrote the once -popular lines:-- - - Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! - I am so weary of toil and of tears,-- - Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-- - Take them, and give me my childhood again. - -Many a voice no doubt sagged under this load of pathos as it read "Rock -Me to Sleep, Mother" to a little group of sympathetic listeners; but if -such melancholies are to be set on paper, and circulated in print, I am -unchivalrous enough to wish that joyless occupation on the gentler sex. -Most of us perform prodigies of toil, which seem to receive scant -recompense, and shed figuratively many a bucket of seemingly useless -tears. But I do not imagine that this sad poetess was half as badly off -as she seemed to think; and, more than that, she had only to wait long -enough, and keep alive long enough, to get her childhood back without -asking for it. Time, the Groceryman, in due season would hand her a -second childhood in many respects "just as good" as the first; for we -who are betwixt and between can observe an unintelligent ignorance of -later troubles in one condition, neatly balanced by an unintelligent -forgetfulness of them in the other. Our lugubrious poetess, one might -say, was neither more nor less than asking the tide of the years -obligingly to assist her to commit suicide. Had her request been -granted, there would have been one more child in the world--and one less -poetess. - -An impressive parallel may, indeed, be drawn between these two -childhoods--the first a period of dependence upon its elders, and the -second of dependence upon its youngers, and each, to the reflective -observer, a pretty evenly balanced reversal of the other. It is as if, -in the beginning, the whole family of recognizable human -characteristics, Curiosity, Memory, Affection, Dislike, Ambition, Love, -Hate, Good Nature, Bad Temper, and all the rest of them, were moving, -one after another, into a new house; and as if, in the end, the whole -family, one after another, were leaving an old one. The very youngest -and the very oldest men in the world seem equally equipped for living in -it--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"; and Baby, a -little older, when he goes out in his perambulator is much like ancient -Thomas Parr being conveyed to London as a human curiosity in a "litter -and two horses (for the more easy carriage of a man so enfeebled and -worn with age).... And to cheere up the olde man and make him merry, -there was an antique-faced fellow, called Jacke, or John the Foole." - -Why, I myself, meeting a baby in a perambulator, have made such antic -faces that I might fairly have been called Jacke, or John the Foole, by -anybody who saw me, and all to cheere up the younge man and make him -merry. A little older yet, the child will run and play, rolling his -hoop, spinning his top, enjoying the excitement of tag and -hide-and-go-seek; and I dare say that the old man, a little younger than -before, would be just as happy with hoop and top (if he were again -introduced to them), and would have a grand, good time at tag and -hidey-go if he had other old men and old women to play with, and his -youngers would let him. I do not mean that he would do any of these -things as well as the child; but it would please him as much to do them -to the top of his aged bent, though now and then a flicker of remembered -convention, which the child has never known and considered, would make -him self-consciously abandon these simple pleasures. Even as an old cat, -caught trying to catch its tail, will sit up with dignity and pretend -that it wasn't. - -There was once a custom of including a skeleton, or perhaps a mummy, in -the festivity of a banquet, to remind the diners of their mortality, -and, for all I know, the after-dinner speakers of the shortness of time; -though very likely they soon got used to their silent companion, and -took their mortality as lightly as most people do at dinner. An "Olde, -Olde, very Olde Man," as a contemporary writer called the unpicturesque -human ruin I have just referred to, would, it seems to me, have answered -the same purpose, and answered it better. Human nature takes neither the -skeleton nor the mummy with continuous seriousness, and proves by its -attitude that, if we instinctively fear death at one moment, we -instinctively ridicule our fear at another. I have read it argued that -man with his clothes on is nevertheless naked,--such arguments seem to -amuse the philosophers,--and by the same entertaining process of -reasoning we are all skeletons together, though some may worry lest -others consider them too fat for romantic admiration. Or, again, to the -man who believes that death snuffs him out like a candle, this skeleton -at the feast might easily become an urgent reminder that he is still -living, and he would most unwisely stuff himself out like a toy balloon -while he still had a chance. But your olde, olde, very olde man is a -reality: he is both dead and alive; his presence, to say nothing of his -table manners, should tend to make each guest regard death as a friend -rather than an enemy, and his state of mind and body prove such a -warning against pride in either, that even the after-dinner speakers -would take notice and modestly shorten their speeches. - -Let it not be imagined that I lack respect for age. I tell you frankly, -ageing and respected Reader, that so long as you can intelligently read -even this essay, you are _not_ seriously old; and when you cannot, you -won't know the difference, and no respect of mine will be of any value -to you. Your time has not come to sit propped up at table as the latest -modern improvement on the skeleton at the feast; and if ever it does, -you, my friend, will not be there. Where you will be, I cannot faintly -imagine, and neither churchmen nor philosophers help me, for the -churchmen are too objective and the philosophers too abstract; the best -I can do is to take John Fiske's word for it, who knew far more about -both science and metaphysics than I can hope to, when he says the -materialistic theory that the life of the soul ends with the life of the -body is "perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that -is known to the history of philosophy." But when its house has become a -ruin, my soul will certainly have sense enough to look for something -more habitable, and may conceivably depart while there are still a few -embers burning in the furnace, leaving the fire to die out when it will. -Man is a conventional being, and perhaps his most astonishing convention -is a funeral. - -But the custom has long gone out of thus poignantly reminding diners -that a time is coming when they will have no stomachs; and olde, olde, -very olde men will get no invitations out to dine for any suggestion of -mine. Fortunately there are other uses for them. They are, for example, -a source of innocent pride to their families. "Grandpa was eighty-nine -his last birthday, and he still has a tooth." They interest the million -readers of the morning newspaper. "Friends from far and near gathered -yesterday to celebrate the 101st birthday of Mr. John Doe, 17 Jones -Avenue. The venerable patriarch, who can still walk unaided from his -place of honor by the steam radiator to his cushioned chair in the -dining-room, when asked to what he attributes his ripe old age, replied -with astonishing intelligence that the winters are longer than they used -to be. Mr. Doe was surrounded by 247 living children, grandchildren, and -great-grand-children." These are visible uses; but this olde, olde, very -olde man may have, invisibly, a more important function; and the -helplessness of age, like that of infancy, may well have been a -necessary factor in the slow conversion of our ape-like ancestor into -you and me. - -I have commented elsewhere on the natural astonishment of the first -parents who realized, with their inefficient prehistoric minds, that -_this_ baby belonged to _them_, and how, in the considered opinion of -able scientists, the little hitherto missing link joined father and -mother into the first human family. Tending and providing for Baby made -the cave a home; but I suspect it was a long time before tending and -providing for Grandpa added another motive for the cultivation of those -higher qualities that distinguish man from all other animals. Why, there -were savages who ate him! Yet in due time the olde, olde, very olde man -became such a motive, and to-day man is the only animal that takes care -of its grandfather. When you think of the differences between men to-day -and men then, between men then and the ape-men before them, and between -men now as they go about their various occupations, it seems quite -possible that ape-men had no souls at all, and that some men to-day have -rudimentary ones, millions of years behind others in evolution. It -explains much. And so, wherever there is an olde, olde, very olde man, I -dare say the care his youngers take of him is doing them good; they -might even reverse the parental platitude of punishment, and say, -"Grandpa, this does me more good than it does you." - -But this proud possession of an olde, olde, very olde man does not -always work visibly toward such beneficent ends. His obstreperous -infancy, masquerading in mature garments, sometimes exhausts the -patience of his youngers; and his permanent conviction (often the only -sign of intelligence left) that he knows more than they do, and perhaps -more than anybody else, makes their task difficult: it is one thing, so -to speak, to take care of a baby when it is growing up, and another -thing to take care of a baby when it is growing down. Then, indeed, one -needs the assurance of immortality, the conviction that Grandpa is, -little as one might think it, still growing up, and that this simulacrum -of Grandpa that still remains to be looked after, must not be taken too -seriously. These olde, olde, very olde men are not all just alike: there -are grandpas whom anybody might be proud to take care of, and grandpas -whom anybody might be excused for wishing (as the brisk, modern phrase -has it) to sidestep. And the explanation of this diversity, as of much -else that puzzles us in a puzzling world, may be that they were not all -just alike when they were babies. Inside their thin and tiny skulls some -had better brains than others, brains with more of those wonderful -little pyramidal neurones, which, able scientists (unless I get their -message twisted) tell me, correlate, connect, assemble, and unite our -individual ideas, memories, sensations, and intellectual and emotional -what-nots. Men, in short, may be born free, but they are not born equal. - -But why worry? If the individual soul is still young, it will keep on -growing in wisdom and experience; nor will it lose touch with other -souls that are akin to it, and, in the measurement of eternity, its -contemporaries; and it will have a better and better house to live in, -with ever more modern improvements in the way of pyramidal neurones. As -the March Hare conclusively replied to Alice, when she asked why the -three little sisters who lived in the treacle-well learned to draw by -drawing everything that began with an M, "Why not?" - -So if ever I become like the valetudinarian described by Macaulay, who -"took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished -his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty -laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales," I hope that somebody will -considerately push my chariot, boil me an occasional chicken, and keep -handy my spectacles and the Queen of Navarre's mirth-provokers. The weak -wine and water I shall have to do without. But my soul, I like to think, -which is the Me for work and play, love, friendship, and all the finer -things of life, already will have closed the door of its house and gone -away. And as it goes, I like to think, also, that it whistles cheerfully -a little tune of its own, the burden of which is "Life is long." - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - -***** This file should be named 42110-8.txt or 42110-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/1/1/42110/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Seven Ages of Man - -Author: Ralph Bergengren - -Release Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #42110] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="311" height="550" alt="bookcover" title="bookcover" /></a> -</p> - -<p class="cb">THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN</p> - -<div class="boxx"> -<p class="cb"> -Books by<br /> -Ralph Bergengren<br /> -<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Perfect Gentleman</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">The Comforts of Home</span><br /> -<i>Each $1.00</i><br /><br /> -—<br /><br /> -For<br /> -Younger Readers<br /> -<span class="smcap">Jane, Joseph and John</span><br /> -<i>Boxed, $3.00</i></p> -</div> - -<h1><i>The</i><br /> -SEVEN AGES <i>of</i> MAN</h1> - -<p class="cb">BY<br /> -RALPH BERGENGREN<br /> -<br /><br /><br /> -<img src="images/colophon.jpg" -width="125" -height="95" -alt="colophon" /><br /> -<br /><br /><br /> -The Atlantic Monthly Press<br /> -Boston<br /> -</p> - -<p> </p> - -<p class="c"> -<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1921, by<br /> -Ralph Bergengren</span><br /> -</p> - -<p> </p><h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#I">I</a>.</td><td align="left">Baby, Baby</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#II">II</a>.</td><td align="left">To be a Boy</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_017">17</a></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#III">III</a>.</td><td align="left">On Meeting the Beloved</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_033">33</a></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IV">IV</a>.</td><td align="left">This is a Father</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_047">47</a></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#V">V</a>.</td><td align="left">On Being a Landlord</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_064">64</a></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VI">VI</a>.</td><td align="left">Old Flies and Old Men</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_078">78</a></td></tr> -<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VII">VII</a>.</td><td align="left">The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Man</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_094">94</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I<br /><br /> -BABY, BABY</h2> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><i>In meeting a baby, one should behave as much as possible like a -baby one’s self. We cannot, of course, diminish our size, or -exchange our customary garments for baby-clothes; neither can we -arrive in a perambulator, and be conveyed in the arms, either of a -parent or a nursemaid, into the presence of the baby whom we are to -meet. The best we can do is to hang, as it were on the hatrack, our -preconceived ideas of what manner of behavior entertains a baby, as -cooing, grimacing, tickling, and the like, and model our deportment -on the dignified but friendly reticence that one baby evinces in -meeting another.</i>—<span class="smcap">Baby: his Friends and Foes.</span></p></div> - -<p>O<small>F</small> the many questions that Mr. Boswell, at one time and another, asked -his<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> friend, Dr. Johnson, I can hardly recall another more searching -than one that he himself describes as whimsical.</p> - -<p>“I know not how so whimsical a thought came into my head,†says Boswell, -“but I asked, ‘If, sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a new-born -child with you, what would you do?’</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Johnson</span>: Why, sir, I should not much like my company.</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Boswell</span>: But would you take the trouble of rearing it?</p> - -<p>“He seemed, as may be supposed, unwilling to pursue the subject: but, -upon my persevering in my question, replied, ‘Why, yes, sir, I would; -but I must have all conveniences. If I had no garden, I would make a -shed on the roof, and take it there for fresh air. I should feed it, and -wash it much, and with warm water, to please it, not with cold water, to -give it pain.<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a>’</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Boswell</span>: But, sir, does not heat relax?</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">Johnson</span>: Sir, you are not to imagine the water is to be very hot. I -would not <i>coddle</i> the child.â€</p> - -<p>It appears, too, that the Doctor had given some thought to the subject, -although never expecting to be a mother himself: his immediate -insistence upon fresh air promises well for the infant, and the -frequency with which he proposes to wash his little companion indicates -that, so long as the water-supply of the castle lasted, he would have -done his part. A cow in the castle seems to have been taken for granted; -but, in 1769, even Dr. Johnson would have known little or nothing about -formulas, nor would it have occurred to him to make a pasteurizing -apparatus, as so many parents do nowadays, out of a large tin pail and a -pie-plate. Here the<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> baby would have had to take his eighteenth-century -chance. And I wish, too, that he might have had a copy of “The Baby’s -Physical Culture Guide,†that modern compendium of twenty-four -exercises, by which a reasonably strongarmed mother may strengthen and -develop the infant’s tiny muscles; for I like to think of Dr. Johnson -exercising his innocent companion in his shed on the roof. “Sir,†he -says, “I do not much like my employment; but here we are, and we’ll have -to make the best of it.â€</p> - -<p>Such an experience, no doubt, would have been good for Dr. Johnson, and -good for the baby (if it survived). “That into which his little mind is -to develop,†says “The Baby’s Physical Culture Guide,†“is plastic—like -a wax record, ready to retain such impressions as are made upon itâ€; and -on this wax some,<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> at least, of the impressions left by Dr. Johnson must -have been valuable. But on the real mystery of babyhood—the insoluble -enigma that the “Guide†can only in small measure dispose of by -comparing the rearing of an infant with the home-manufacture of a record -for the gramaphone—the experience would have thrown no light.</p> - -<p>The Doctor, I dare say, would have written a paper on the feeding and -washing of infants, and later dictionaries of familiar quotation might -perhaps have been enriched by the phrase,“‘The baby is grandfather to -the man.’—<span class="smcap">Johnson</span>.†But of this grandfather the man has no memory. His -babyhood is a past concerning which he is perforce silent, a time when -it is only by the report of others that he knows he was living. His -little mind seems to have been more than a little blank; and although -gifted<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> novelists have set themselves the imaginative task of thinking -and writing like babies, none, in my reading, has ever plausibly -succeeded. The best they can do is to think and write like little -adults. I recall, for example, the honest effort of Miss May Sinclair, -whom I greatly respect as an adult, to see Mr. Olivier through the eyes -of his baby daughter Mary. “Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, -all by himself. He was dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down -in front of him and one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was -smiling because his cheeks swelled high up in his face, so that his eyes -were squeezed into narrow, shining slits. When they came out again, you -saw scarlet specks and smears in their corners.†A fearsome Papa!—and, -although I have no way of knowing that fathers do not present -themselves<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> in this futurist aspect to their helpless offspring, I am -glad to think otherwise. At all events a baby is, and must be, well used -to living in Brobdingnag.</p> - -<p>It would be a surprising thing, if it were not so common, that a man -shows so little curiosity about this forgotten period of his life. But -such curiosity would be impossible to satisfy. Existing photographs of -him at that time are a disappointment: he seldom admits seeing any -resemblance, and, if he does, the likeness rarely, if ever, gives him -any visible satisfaction. Nor can anything of real and personal interest -be found out by interviewing those who then knew him. Of a hundred, nay, -of a thousand or a million babies,—and though I cannot speak as a -woman, it seems to me (except, perhaps, for a livelier interest and -pleasure among them in their infant appearance) that everything<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> I am -saying applies equally to babies of that fascinating sex,—the trivial -details observed by those who are nearest them are practically -identical. They thump their heads. They chew their fingers. They try to -feed their toes; and, sillier yet, they try to feed them with things -that are obviously inedible. And so forth. And so forth. If Dr. Johnson, -actually shut up in a castle, and a new-born child with him, had kept a -record, the result would have been very much like the records that -mothers now keep in what, unless I am mistaken, are called “Baby Books.†-If you’ve seen one Baby Book, as the cynical old man said about -circuses, you’ve seen all of ‘em.</p> - -<p>Nor does any man take pleasure in preserving and reading over his own -Baby Book. Hercules, to be sure, might have been interested to read in -his mother’s handwriting,-<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a>-“<i>Tuesday.</i> An eventful day. Two big, horrid -Snakes came in from the garden, and got in Darling’s cradle, frightening -Nurse into hysterics; but Darling only cooed and strangled them both -with his dear, strong little hands. He gets stronger and cunninger every -day. When the horrid Snakes were taken away from him, he cried and said, -‘Atta! Atta!’â€</p> - -<p>But Hercules was an exceptionally interesting baby; and the average Baby -Book records nothing that a grown man can regard with pride, and much, -if he has any sensitiveness at all, that must make him blush. Nothing -but respect for his mother, it is almost safe to say, would withhold him -from hurrying the incriminating document to the cellar, and cremating it -in the furnace.</p> - -<p>For in the beginning Captain William Kidd, George Washington, Dr. -Johnson,<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> the writer of this essay, and even the editor of the “Atlantic -Monthly,†looked and behaved very much alike. And so, for that matter, -did little Moll Cutpurse and little Susan B. Anthony. So far as anybody -could then have said, Captain Kidd might have become a thoughtful, -law-abiding essayist, and I a pirate, handicapped, indeed, by changed -conditions of maritime traffic, but unconscientiously doing my wicked -best.</p> - -<p>As the twig is bent, says the proverb, so is the tree inclined; but -these little twigs are bent already, and I humbly submit, with all -respect to my scientific friends, and their white mice and their guinea -pigs, that where and how it happened remains an insoluble mystery. -Little as I know about myself, I know that I am neither a white mouse -nor a guinea pig. And this, mark you, is no mere conceit. Scientists -themselves<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> have decided that when babies, in that remote past when they -first began really to interest their parents, and the human mother, the -most pathetic figure of that primitive world, first began the personal -and affectionate observation that was to develop slowly, over millions -of years, until it found expression in the first Baby Book—scientists, -themselves, I say, have decided that, then and there, you and I, -intelligent reader, began to differ essentially from every other known -kind of mammal. There appeared—oh, wonder!—something psychical as well -as physical about us; but <i>where it came from</i>, they cannot tell us. -“Natural selection,†so John Fiske once summed up this opinion, “began -to follow a new path and make psychical changes instead of physical -changes.†Little enough there seems to have been to start with; little -enough, indeed, there seems to be<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> now—yet enough more to encourage us -to believe that Baby is a lot further along in the right direction than -he was a good many million years ago. And with this helpful conviction, -Baby himself, whether he will grow up to write essays or commit -picturesque murder, seems reasonably well satisfied. We solemn adults, -standing around the crib, may well admire, not so much the pinkness and -chubbiness of his toes, as the pinkness and chubbiness (if I may so -express it) of his simple satisfaction with the mere fact of existence, -his simple faith in the Universe. And when we think how impossible it is -to think of its beginning, we, too, may capture something of this -infantile optimism.</p> - -<p>It is by no means impossible (though not susceptible of scientific -proof) that Baby may have a life of his own; and, if we may assume -Hercules weeping<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> and saying, “Atta! Atta!‗because shrewd observers of -babyhood declare it to be characteristic of babies to say, “Atta! Atta!†-when something desirable, in this case two dead snakes, is removed from -their range of vision,—may we not assume also a universal language of -babies, and a place, such as it may be, from which they have emigrated? -Here, indeed, one follows M. Maeterlinck, except that, in his judgment, -unborn babies speak French. Such a theory is no help to the novelist, -for in that case baby Mary Olivier’s impressions of Mr. Olivier must be -rendered in baby—a language equally unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her -readers. Babies have been heard to say, for example, “Nja njan dada atta -mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meenÄ•-meenÄ•-meenÄ• mÅmm -mÅmma ao-u‗and who but another baby knows<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> whether this may not be -speech? The assumption that this is an effort to speak the language of -the baby’s elders is academic, as, for that matter, is the assumption -that they are his elders. There may even be no baby at all; for, as -Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put it, “The uneasiness that keeps the -never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that -the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence.†-But this, I confess, is far too deep for me.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Baby, baby in your cot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are you there?—or are you not?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If you’re not, then what of me!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Baby, <i>what</i> and <i>where</i> are we?<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>For all practical purposes, however, Baby is sufficiently -real—substantial enough, indeed, as “The Baby’s Physical Culture Guide†-shows in Exercise 24, to be lifted by his little feet and stood on his -little head; but, mercifully<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> adds the “Guide,†“do not hold Baby on his -head very long.†For all practical purposes we must, and do, assume our -own existence. “Here we are,†as I have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to -his innocent new-born comrade, “and we’ll have to make the best of it.†-Nobody has thought of a better way, or any other way at all, for us to -get here; and the familiar Biblical phrase, ‘born again,’ may perhaps be -more literal than we are wont to imagine, and apply to this world as -well as the next. Baby himself may just have been born again. That -innocent-seeming and rather silly-sounding monologue, which we flatter -ourselves is an earnest attempt to imitate our own speech,—“Nja njan -dada atta mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meenÄ•-meenÄ•-meeneÄ• -mÅmm mÅmma ao-u,‗may it not be the soliloquy of a gentle -philosopher, or, again, the confession<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> of an out-and-out rascal, -talking to himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and cooing over them, -indeed, before he forgets them in this new state of being? May not Papa, -waggishly shaking his forefinger and saying, “You little rascal, you,†-be speaking with a truthfulness which, if known, would make him sick?</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, as says “The Baby’s Physical Culture Guide,†“Don’t jerk Baby -round. Never rush through his exercises, but talk to him in a happy, -encouraging way. When he is able to talk he will be glad to tell you -what great, good fun he has been having.â€</p> - -<p>So speaks, I think, a mother’s imagination; in sober reality, even the -great good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgotten. Which is perhaps why, -although I have heard men wish they could again be children, I have -never heard any man say he would like to be a baby.<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II<br /><br /> -TO BE A BOY</h2> - -<p><i>I love dearly to watch the boys at their play. How gayly they pitch and -catch their baseball with their strong little hands! How blithely they -run from base to base! How merrily their voices come to me across the -green; for, although I cannot hear what they say, I know it expresses a -young, innocent joy in this big, good world. Yet even in this Garden -there is a Serpent, and one day two of the little innocents quarreled -and came to blows. A real fight! I soon hurried out and stopped that, -but the sight of their little faces distorted with rage, and one poor -boy bleeding at the nose, upset me for quite a time.</i>—<span class="smcap">An Old Maid’s -Window.</span></p> - -<p>I<small>N</small> “The Boyhood of Great Men,†published by Harper and Brothers, in<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> -1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it is told of Sir Isaac Newton -that “An accident first fired him to strive for distinction in the -school-room. The boy who was immediately above him in the class, after -treating him with a tyranny hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick him -in the stomach, with a severity that caused great pain. Newton resolved -to have his revenge, but of such a kind as was natural to his reasoning -mind, even at that immature age. He determined to excel his oppressor in -their studies and lessons; and, setting himself to the task with zeal -and diligence, he never halted in his course till he had found his way -to the top of the class; thus exhibiting and leaving a noble example to -others of his years similarly situated. Doubtless, after this, he would -heartily forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who could not but -henceforth feel ashamed<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> of his unmanly conduct, while Newton would feel -the proud consciousness of having done his duty after the bravest and -noblest fashion which it is in the power of man to adopt.â€</p> - -<p>We cannot all be Sir Isaac Newtons, and, although I may wish for a -passing moment that some sturdy little school-fellow had kicked me too -in the stomach, the resulting sequence of events would probably have -been different, and the world would have gained little or nothing by my -natural indignation. Having an impartial mind, I should like to know -also <i>why</i> Sir Isaac was kicked in the stomach, and what became -afterward of the boy who kicked him. As his fame grew in the world, the -reflected glory of having thus kicked Sir Isaac Newton in the stomach -would presumably have brightened in proportion, but, lacking other -distinction, the kicker served his<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> evolutionary purpose and has now -vanished.</p> - -<p>But this much remains of him—that his little foot kicks also in the -stomach the widely accepted fallacy that boyhood is an age of unalloyed -gold, to which every man now and then looks back and vainly yearns to be -a boy again. “Oh! happy years!‗so sighed the poet Byron,—“once more, -who would not be a boy?†And so to-day, as one may at least deduce from -his general newspaper reading, sigh all the editors of all the -newspapers in the United States. Not, indeed, for a boyhood like Sir -Isaac Newton’s, but for the standard American boyhood, to which, in -theory, every ageing American looks back with tender reminiscence—that -happy time when he went barefooted, played “hookey†from school, fished -in the running brook with a bent pin for a hook, and<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> swam, with other -future bankers, merchants, clerks, clergymen, physicians and surgeons, -confidence-men, pickpockets, authors, actors, burglars, etc., etc., in -an old swimming-hole. The democracy of the old swimming-hole is, in -fact, the democracy of the United States, naked and unashamed; and even -in the midst of a wave of crime (one might almost imagine), if the -victim should say suddenly to the hold-up man,—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Oh, do you remember the ole swimmin’ hole,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">And the hours we spent there together;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Where the oak and the chestnut o’ershadowed the bowl,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">And tempered the hot summer weather?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i1">Ah, sweet were those hours together we spent<br /></span> -<span class="i3">In innocent laughter and joy!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">How little we knew at the time what it meant<br /></span> -<span class="i3">To be just a boy—just a boy!â€<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">—the hold-up man would drop his automatic gun, and the two would -dissolve on each other’s necks in a flood of sympathetic tears.<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a></p> - -<p>It is a pleasant and harmless fallacy, and I for one would not destroy -it; I am no such stickler for exactitude that I would take away from any -man whatever pleasure he may derive from thinking that he was once a -barefoot boy, even if circumstances were against him and his mother as -adamant in her refusal to let him go barefooted. But the fallacy is -indestructible: the symbols may not have been universal, but it is true -enough of boyhood that time then seems to be without limit; and this -comfortable, unthinking sense of immortality is what men have lost and -would fain recover. One forgets how cruelly slow moved the hands of the -school-room clock through the last, long, lingering, eternal fifteen -minutes of the daily life-sentence. One forgets how feverishly the -seconds chased each other, faster than human feet could follow, when -one’s little<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> self was late for school, and the clamor of the distant -bell ended in a solemn, ominous silence. Then was the opportunity for -stout heart to play “hookey,†and to lure the finny tribe with a poor -worm impaled on a bent pin; and that, in the opinion of all the editors -of all the newspapers in the United States, is what all of us always -did. But in the painful reality most of us, I think, tried to overtake -those feverish seconds, seeking indeed to outrun time, and somehow or -other, though the bell had stopped ringing, get unostentatiously into -our little seats before it stopped. And so we ran, and ran, and ran, -lifting one leaden foot after the other with hopeless determination, in -a silent, nightmare world where the road was made of glue and the very -trees along the way turned their leaves to watch us drag slowly by. -Little respect we would have had then for the<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> poet Byron and his “Ah! -happy years! once more, who would not be a boy?â€</p> - -<p>But even when time seemed to stand still, or go too fast, we had no -consciousness that the complicated clock of our individual existence -could ever run down and stop; and so happily careless were we of this -treasure, that we often wished to be men! “When I was young,†says the -author of “The Boy’s Week-Day Book,‗another volume that is not read -nowadays as much as it used to be,—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I doubted not the time would come,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">When grown to man’s estate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That I would be a noble ‘squire,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And live among the great.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">It was a proud, aspiring thought,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">That should have been exiled:—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I wish I was more humble now<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Than when I was a child.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">I wonder what proud, aspiring thought Uncle Jones, as he called himself, -just then had in mind; but it was evidently<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> no wish to be a boy again: -perhaps he meditated matrimony.</p> - -<p>For my own part I cannot successfully wish to be a boy; I remain -impervious to all the efforts of all the editors of all the newspapers -in the United States to dim my eye; and there must be many another eye -like mine, or else it is unbelievably unique. I lean back in my chair, -close my undimmed eye, and do my best; but, contrary to all editorial -expectation, I can summon no desire to go barefooted, fish with a bent -pin, or revisit the old swimming-hole</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Where the elm and the chestnut o’ershadowed the bowl,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And tempered the hot summer weather.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">I prefer a beach and a bathing-suit and somebody my own age. Yet do not -think, shocked reader, that I am unsympathetic with youth. I am more -sympathetic—that is all—with my contemporaries;<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> and the thought -forces itself upon me that boyhood is a narrow and conventional period, -in which my own desire to go without shoes was exactly similar to my -mother’s determination to wear a bustle. Equally anxious to follow the -fashion of our respective sets, neither understood the other; and I -would no more have worn a bustle than my mother would have gone -barefooted. My father, similarly thwarted in a single desire, would have -cared less: his wider interests—politics, business, family, the local -and world gossip that immersed him in his newspaper, art, literature, -music, and the drama, to say nothing of professional baseball and -pugilism (in which, however, many fathers and sons have a common -interest)—would have absorbed his disappointment.</p> - -<p>But my narrower world, so to speak,<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> was all feet. An unconventional -boy, as I think the most erudite student of boy-life and boy-psychology -will admit, is much more rare than an unconventional man; and even then -his unconventionality is likely to be imposed upon him “for his own -good†by well-meaning but tyrannical parents. “I have known boys,†wrote -Uncle Jones, observing but not comprehending this characteristic fact, -“when playing at ‘Hare and hounds’ and ‘Follow my leader,’ to scramble -over hedges, leap over brooks, and mount up precipices, in a manner -which they would not have dared to attempt, had it not been for the -examples set them by their school-fellows; but,†he adds, “I do not -remember any instance of a boy imitating another on account of his good -temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or piety.â€</p> - -<p>Naturally not. You and I, Uncle<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> Jones, might be expected to imitate -each other’s good temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or -piety,—though I do not say that we would,—but from the point of view -of a boy these virtues are unconventional. Their practice shocks and -disconcerts the observer. The behavior of Sir Isaac Newton, when kicked -in the stomach, was perfectly scandalous.</p> - -<p>And what is there, after all, in the life of a boy, that a man would -find interesting? Or that he may not do, if such is sufficiently his -desire to “make†the time for it, as he makes time for his adult -pleasures, and if he is not too old or too fat? He can spend his -vacation at the old swimming-hole—but he never does it. He can go -barefooted whenever he wishes: his mother can no longer prevent him. He -can fish with a bent pin in the porcelain bathtub,—<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a>adding a goldfish -to make the pursuit more exciting,—every morning before he takes his -bath. He can chase butterflies; here and there, indeed, a man makes a -profession of it, and institutions of learning call him an entomologist, -and pay him much honor and a small salary. Nobody forbids him to enlarge -his mental horizon by reading the lives of criminals and detectives; and -I can myself direct him to many an entertaining book, which is at once -far worse and far better, morally and artistically, than the sober -narratives that Old Sleuth used to write by the yard for boys to read by -stealth. He can roll a hoop; in many cases it would do him a world of -good to roll it down to the office in the morning and back home at -night. If he can persuade other ageing men, wishful of renewed boyhood, -to join with him, he can play at marbles, tick, puss-in-the-corner,<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> -hop-scotch, ring-taw, and “Hot beans ready buttered.†(Uncle Jones -mentions these games. I do not remember all of them myself, but “Hot -beans ready buttered†sounds especially interesting.) And where better -than in some green, quiet corner at the Country Club? And why, if you -<i>will</i> raise the question of conventionality, why more foolish than -golf, or folk-dancing?</p> - -<p>But what he cannot do is to assume the boy’s unconsciousness of his own -mortality. What he cannot unload is his own consciousness of -responsibility to and for others. Life, in short, has provided the man -with a worrying company of creditors of whom the boy knows -nothing—Creditor Cost-of-Living, Creditor Ambition, Creditor -Conscience, and Creditor Death. And the boy is unmarried! It is even -claimed by<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> one philosopher of my acquaintance that this is why men wish -they were once more boys. I grant the plausibility of this opinion; for -the more a man is is devoted to his wife and family, the more he is -beset and worried by these troublesome creditors, the more, one may -reasonably argue, he feels the need of time to meet his obligations, and -is likely now and then to envy the boy his narrow, conventional, but -immortal-feeling life.</p> - -<p>Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fundamental fact. He is always trying -to destroy the boy’s sense of immortality in this world by trying to -persuade him to read the Bible and prepare for immortality in the next. -“When a boy first begins his A B C,†says Uncle Jones, “it is terrible -work for him for a short time; yet how soon he gets over it, and begins -to read! And, then, what a pleasure to<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> be able to read a good and -pleasant book! Oh, it is worthwhile to go through the trouble of -learning to read fifty times over, to obtain the advantage of reading -the Bible.<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a>â€</p> - -<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III<br /><br /> -ON MEETING THE BELOVED</h2> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State and Mysterie of Loue that -youre trew Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a deepe -Humilitie and a loftie Conceit of Hymselfe. For with respect to -this, hys Mistresse, he believes himself a most inferior Person, -and as it were a mere Worme; yet if he doth suspect her to regard -any Man els as his Equal, he is consumed with great Astonishment -and raging Indignation, for this same Loue is a great Destroyer of -Common Sense in its Victimes. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior to -her because he is her Louer, and superior to all Men els for the -same silly Reason.</i>—<span class="smcap">Anatomie of Loue.</span></p></div> - -<p>T<small>O</small> any sensitive man, not yet armored by the indifference that comes of -being<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> married himself, there is cause for apprehension in the prospect -of meeting for the first time that person, male or female, whom somebody -he knows and loves has recently agreed to marry. The event, when it -comes, is unavoidable, nor is there any period in adult life when it may -not happen, or anybody we know so old that he or she may not occasion -it. Fact is more romantic, or at any rate remains romantic much later in -life, than fiction. Only the other day I read in the newspaper of a man -of one hundred and thirty-five years who had just subjected his little -circle to this formality. Very likely the newspaper exaggerated, but the -case undermines the security that one ordinarily feels in his -relationship with the ageing.</p> - -<p>Now it needs no argument that to be happy in the happiness of others is -an inexpensive pleasure and well worth<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> cultivating. Other things being -equal, one should go dancing and singing to his first meeting with -another’s beloved. Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or sixty, -should blossom, to his imagination, from the granite curb along his way; -and, though a foolish convention may repress the song and dance, yet -should he walk as if shod with the most levitating heels ever made from -the liveliest of live rubber, and sing merrily in his heart.</p> - -<p>But, thus to enter into the happiness of another, one must see and feel, -as if for himself, some good and sufficient reason for that happiness; -and the deep, insoluble mystery essential to all proper betrothals is -that this good and sufficient reason is not necessarily visible: these -two are happy-mad, and how shall anybody who is sane enter into their -lunacy?<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a></p> - -<p>Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d,—to take the first name that comes to mind,—has -become engaged to Miss Margaret Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well and -good. Nature, which, for some reason that mankind has long curiously and -vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to continue the human race, is, one -may believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is one job among many. But -the satisfaction of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it could be put to such -haberdashery use, would girdle the Equator, and the ends, tied in a true -lover’s knot, would flutter beyond the farthest visible star. Men and -women have become engaged in the past; men and women will become engaged -in the future; but this engagement of Harvey Todd and Margaret Lemon is -and will ever remain unique—and so whoever is now called upon to -appraise one party to this wonder and congratulate<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> the other, may well -be troubled. He is not so much afraid of what he may do and say,—for -any man may hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost sobbing pressure of -the hand and a few muttered words,—as of the way, in spite of himself, -that he will look when he does and says it; there, indeed, the amateur -actor profits by his hobby. There is, to be sure, the saving chance that -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so pleasurably affect him that the ordeal -will be less difficult than he anticipates: there is even the rare -chance that he may <i>instantly and completely agree with Mr. Todd’s -estimate of Miss Lemon</i>; but this is the happy-madness itself, and -certainly not desirable under the circumstances. There is the -possibility, even more rare and less desirable, that Miss Lemon, seeing -him for the first time, <i>will instantly and completely prefer<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> him to -Mr. Todd</i>. There is the possibility that he may recoil with horror from -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be recoiled from, or that both may recoil -simultaneously, falling over, figuratively, on their backs, and being -picked up and carried away unconscious, and in opposite directions, by -surprised onlookers. His whole nature may, in short, instinctively run -toward, or away from, the beloved; and between these extremes lies a -gamut of intermediary emotions, which at the moment he would hardly wish -to uncover. This stiff and geometrical smile, he asks himself at the -worst, can it deceive anybody? this hypocritical mutter of -congratulation, does it proceed from his own or an ice chest? Nor is he -much relieved when Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, proves -how genuine appeared his smile, how sincere his mutter, by asking him -in<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> affectionate detail what he thinks of the other—a procedure which -should be legally forbidden the newly engaged, under penalty of being -refused a marriage license for at least ten years.</p> - -<p>This state of mind in lovers, so important to those who are called upon -to meet the beloved for the first time, has engaged the attention of -essayists, conversationalists, and philosophers. “They fall at once,†-wrote Stevenson, “into that state in which another person becomes to us -the very gist and centre point of God’s creation, and demolishes our -laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with -the one master-thought, that even the trivial cares of our own person -become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is -translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and -desirable a fellow creature.<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> And all the while their acquaintances look -on in stupor.â€</p> - -<p>“No, sir,†said Dr. Johnson, promptly improving Mr. Boswell’s milder -assertion that love is like being enlivened with champagne, “No, sir. -Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne‗an -opinion, one hopes, that will not some day be made the basis of a -nation-wide campaign to prohibit falling in love.</p> - -<p>“His friends,†said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “find in her a likeness to her -mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees -no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to -rainbows and the song of birds.â€</p> - -<p>Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon (so like a rainbow) are impervious to any lack -of enthusiasm that you or I, dear, unselfish, sensitive reader, may fear -to exhibit<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> when either leads us the other by the hand and says, “This -is IT.†Ours, if any, will be the suffering. It may even happen that -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd—Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon beaming consent and -approval—will suggest that <i>we call her</i> (<i>or him</i>) <i>Margaret</i> (<i>or -Harvey</i>).</p> - -<p>Yet from another point of view, but this is a selfish one, apprehension -is justified in proportion to the sensitive man’s previous intimacy with -the individual whose beloved he is about to meet. For until that meeting -is over, “previous†is the word for it: whatever opinion the beloved may -form of him will determine the degree and manner of its continuance. If -Miss Lemon disapproves of him, though Mr. Todd has hitherto loved him as -Damon did Pythias, all is over; if Mr. Todd disapproves of him, though -he has known<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> Miss Lemon from her perambulator, all is over. A pale -ghost, he may, in either case, sometimes hang his spectral hat in the -Todd hallway, and even extend his phantom legs under the Todd mahogany; -but <span class="smcap">ALL IS OVER</span>. Divinely harmonious as they seem, these two will never -agree to let him try, however humbly and conscientiously, to cultivate -the inexpensive pleasure of being happy in their happiness. He becomes -what no self-respecting man can wish to be—a fly in the ointment. Most -cases, fortunately, are not so serious: he will be given a reasonable -chance to make a place for himself on this new plane to which Mr. Todd -and Miss Lemon have been translated; but it is always a question whether -he can enter that plane himself, or must hereafter be content with -hearing from his former friend through a medium. For he has not, as is -so often gracefully<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> but emptily said on these trying occasions, been -enriched by the acquisition of a new friend: he has simply exchanged -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd (as the case may be) for a composite, a Toddlemon -or a Lemontodd—a few years will show which. He must make the best he -can of that composite. He who was formerly described as (let us say) “my -friend, Mr. Popp,†becomes, if he becomes at all, “our friend, Mr. -Poppâ€; and if ever he hears himself being introduced as “Mr. Todd’s -friend, Mr. Popp,†or as “Mrs. Todd’s friend, Mr. Popp,†he had better -go away as soon as politeness permits, and never come back. Never.</p> - -<p>I speak, of course, in generalities; for there are no rules immutably -governing all cases, and life is mellowed and beautified by shining, -sensible examples, in which Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon become<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> one, yet -realize that in many respects, being human, they must still remain two; -then, indeed, the congratulator may actually be enriched by the -acquisition of a new friend—but not instantly, as one is enriched by -the acquisition of a new hat. Yet it is always the wiser part, in -preparing to meet a beloved, to prepare for the worst.</p> - -<p>These are evidently the apprehensions of a bachelor, sensitive but not -unselfish; the mental attitude is different with a student, philosopher, -and idealist who, thinking not of himself, contemplates another’s -marriage in the calm, intelligent way, having as yet no beloved in which -he can contemplate his own. Such a one weighs. Such a one is conscious -that, little as <i>he</i> knows the beloved of Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, there -is grave danger that Mr. Todd knows Miss Lemon, or Miss Lemon Mr.<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> Todd, -hardly better. This happy-madness may not only be a delusion, as a calm -outside intelligence contemplates it, but it may be a snare. Mistakes do -happen. There are known cases in which the happy lunatic has been -mistaken in a beloved not once but often; and the persistent effort of -these poor madmen and madwomen to correct one mistake by making another -is one of the most discussed and pitiable phases of our civilization. -The calm intelligence must balance also the practical aspects of the -business, its risks and liabilities as well as its profits; and so -serious is the enterprise when thus examined that he can hardly fail to -be terrified for anybody he knows and loves who is undertaking it.</p> - -<p>O Harvey! Harvey! (or Margaret! Margaret!)</p> - -<p>Tact is what he will pray for. And if<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> his prayer is granted, when Mr. -Todd (or Miss Lemon) asks him, “Now, honestly, what do you think of her -(or him)?†he will say, “Of course I do not know Miss Lemon (or Mr. -Todd) very well <i>yet</i>, but I have never met anybody whom I <i>hoped</i> to -know and like better.†Which will be quite true, and please the -twittering questioner much more than if he said, “Oh, I don’t know. I -<i>don’t</i> know.<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a>â€</p> - -<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV<br /><br /> -THIS IS A FATHER</h2> - -<div class="poem" style="font-style:italic;"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Proud Parent, in this little life<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Yourself reflected see,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And think how Baby will progress<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A man like you to be!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">So stout, so strong, so wise, and when<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Sufficient years have flown,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like you the happy parent of<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A baby of his own!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And when that unborn baby grows<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To be a man like you,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh, think how proud that man will be<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To be a parent too.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">So think, when life oppresses you<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And you are feeling sad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A million, million, million times<br /></span> -<span class="i2">You’ll be a happy dad.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">—<span class="smcap">The Father’s Anthem.</span><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p><a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a></p> - -<p>I<small>N</small> the life of man fatherhood is so likely to happen, that I wonder -Shakespeare did not select father as a natural, and indeed inevitable, -successor to lover in his well-known seven ages. He chose the soldier, -“full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,†presumably because -such soldiers were common in Elizabethan London. But fathers must have -been more so: they must have gone in droves past the tavern window where -Shakespeare (as what we now call the “wets†so like to think) sat at his -ale-stained table, dipping now his quill in an inkwell, and again his -nose in a tankard; but they seem to have made no impression. Indeed this -unromantic, necessary figure, composite as it is of all sorts and -conditions of men, has never appealed strongly to the poets; perhaps it -is their revenge because fathers so seldom read poetry.<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a></p> - -<p>Whatever else a man does, whether he lives by banking or burglary, -ascends to the presidency or descends to the gutter, he is likely to be -a father: they are as countless as the pebbles on a beach or the leaves -in Vallombrosa, and the few who evade paternity evade also the purpose -for which nature evidently created them, and go through life thumbing -their noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. So taken for granted is -this vocation of fatherhood, and so little considered in comparison with -other masculine employments, that no correspondence school offers a -course, and many a young man undertakes to raise children with less -hesitation than he would start in to raise chickens. Some accept -fatherhood with joy, others with resignation, like a recently wedded -young Italian who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the other day of his own -new little one.<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> “Zee fadder and zee modder,†he said, “zey work and zey -slave for zee leetle one. But what-a good? When he is grow up, he say, -‘To hell wiz zee fadder and zee modder!’†And so, as Shakespeare may -have decided, there is no universal type of fatherhood, nor has the -imagination of mankind created one, as in the case of mothers, for -convenient literary and conversational use. The lines of the -balladist,—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">With his baby on his knee<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He’s as happy as can be,—<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">were, to be sure, something in this direction; but they have become so -wholly associated with humor, that even the late Mr. Rogers, had he -known the ballad, could hardly have found inspiration therein for a -group; nor Shakespeare adapted the lines to describe seriously one of -his seven ages. He might have scribbled experimentally,—<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a></p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i6">Then the father,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Infant on knee, and happy like the clam,—<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">but that would have been the end of it. He would have crossed out the -experiment, and taken another drink.</p> - -<p>Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the mind of the general, so far -behind that he is almost invisible, a tiny object on red wheels at the -end of a string. But the little fellow carries a pocketbook: when Mother -needs money she pulls in the string, and he comes up in a hurry. And, as -is usually the case with popular conceptions, this odd, erroneous -notion, which most fathers seem cheerfully enough to accept, has no -doubt its historic foundation, and derives from the unquestionable -supremacy of Mother in the beginning. At that period, indeed, it is -hardly to be expected that any father should feel immediately <i>en -rapport</i> with his new-born child, or become<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> intimately associated with -its helpless, flower-like life. Ever since the idea, which has now so -long lost its original element of bewildering surprise, yet remains -always somewhat surprising, first dawned upon a human father and mother -that <i>this baby</i> belonged to <i>them</i>, conditions have inexorably -consigned the infant to the care of its mother, while its father pursued -elsewhere the equally necessary business of providing sustenance for the -family. A division of labor was imperative: somebody must stay at home -in the cave and tend the baby, somebody must go out in the woods and -hustle for provisions. Maternity was, as it must have been, already a -feminine habit, but paternity was something new and unexpected; and -although I suspect, in many cases, this astonishing discovery was -followed by speedy flight. Trueheart the First took up<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> his -responsibilities and his stone axe together.</p> - -<p>The horror is recorded with which Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being -left alone in a castle with a new-born child; and this feeling in so -civilized a man was no doubt an echo of the emotion with which poor, -bewildered, primitive, but faithful Trueheart would have envisaged being -left alone in the cave with his new-born baby: the sense of relief, of -gayety, of something definite and within his capabilities to do, with -which the young father nowadays takes his hat and starts for the office, -must be much the same as that with which Trueheart took his stone axe -and started for the woods.</p> - -<p>Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became -subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not -fundamentally<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> changed, it has ever since continued. “Mothers’ Day,†for -example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; “Fathers’ Day†remains a mere -humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as -now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not -quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little -importance.</p> - -<p>I am not forgetting—for I do them an honor I can hardly express—those -fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, -back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion -incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted -babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby’s -wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some -article of infant use or pleasure that the little<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> rascal has -mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways -patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost -impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical -father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up -and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the -proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins -to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father’s position become -responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior -has consequences.</p> - -<p>Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business—yet even to-day many -a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than -had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, -meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> tea. A blind attachment (I am -putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) -springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, -Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any -Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, -Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to -believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil.</p> - -<p>And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes -a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father—and -who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking -together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with -which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly -evident that Harvey Todd<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> has given hardly more thought to the -tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than -might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do -not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; -but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, -when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great -big man like himself. And according as he <i>has</i> conducted himself, that -great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying -degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, -it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief -respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, -cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the -glasses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> make mine chocolate. For -this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality -an immortal spirit (though he doesn’t know which), and here he -stands,—I said chocolate,—and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his -experience, could not tell him what to do about it.</p> - -<p>So we clink our long-handled spoons.</p> - -<p>For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this -topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have -advanced materially since he was a father. “He that spareth his rod,†-said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed -the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, “hateth his son: But he -that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes.†And again, “The rod and the -reproof giveth wisdom.†We know better nowadays: the rod has<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> become a -figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are -fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be -described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is -something objective for a father to do—an occasion when Mother pulls in -the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes -up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over -the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the -paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to -attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in -this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success -as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. -Hamlet’s father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> Hamlet, and -never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark -smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no -better than follow the elder Hamlet’s example; and in so doing he will -show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on -proverbs and a stout stick. “He that, being often reproved, hardeneth -his neck,†said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to -“get it in the neckâ€), “shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond -remedyâ€; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no -longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for -Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon’s Book of Proverbs but Theodore -Roosevelt’s Letters to his Children.</p> - -<p>If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact -that<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden -our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has -gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may -compose a proverb myself—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the wise father maketh a friend of his son.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, -which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and -truthful speech, is here especially difficult. “To speak truth,†says -Stevenson, “there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence -between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal -fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is -another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of -the child’s character, formed in early<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> years or during the equinoctial -gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with -his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly -judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth.â€</p> - -<p>Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his -paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental -experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and -wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an -affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line -of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his -jolly old father’s opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, -Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. “Foolishness,†said Solomon, “is -bound up in the heart of the child‗and<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> there he stopped, after adding -his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, -O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. -Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with.</p> - -<p>And so the father plays his unapplauded part—“tragedy, comedy, history, -pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, -tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem -unlimited,†as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants -no “Father’s Day.†He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems -to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in -statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though -most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a -Great Father.<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V<br /><br /> -ON BEING A LANDLORD</h2> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><i>In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a -Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another -tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of -the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may -eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case -comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity -pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the -ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just -landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon’s.</i>—<span class="smcap">Apartments -To Let.</span></p></div> - -<p>O<small>N</small> my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> -and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. -Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. -Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, -Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; -indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear -title,—as, for example, ‘my husband, Mr. Hopp,’—I should hastily -readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and -Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo <i>may</i> be married; he -devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I -like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of “The Yellow Claw,†-mysteriously mentions as “ancient, unnamable evils.†In feudal times, -however, I should have known them all better.<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that -brave little company—</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="2" summary=""> -<tr><td><span class="smcap">Button</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Hopp</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Carrot</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Barber</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Karsen</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Cawkins</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Smith</span></td> - -<td><span class="smcap">Ranee</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Mahoney</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Sibley</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">le Maire</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Trolley</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Brown</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">Murphy</span></td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="nind">—would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout -leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, -short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted -along by himself as an interesting human curiosity—or, perhaps, in a -cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, “Know ye this, -my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you -will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I -will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at -the<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> terms assigned. So help me God and his saints.â€</p> - -<p>Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was -paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that -now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, -through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this -sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved -helpmate.</p> - -<p>Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of -that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the -rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. -There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a -civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact -no more than a “fair rentâ€; at our weakest,<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> when a tenant gets in -arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least -resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the -tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes -more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the -inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves -the while, to be strict.</p> - -<p>I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that “in the beginning -man probably dwelt in trees after the fashion of his ape-like ancestors. -He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird’s -eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects.†And my own experience leads -me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I -draw the line at birds’ eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at -which items of an earlier menu even the<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> scientific mind seems to baulk. -But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got -possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share -its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may -landlordry have been established.</p> - -<p>Millions of years have passed since then,—a mere flicker in the great -movie of eternity,—and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but -the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present -there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal -diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), -invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a -complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we -have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to -the<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in -this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks -large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin’s -Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise -the rent. One must assume, of course, that he is thinking about it just -before taking his morning bath.</p> - -<p>It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who -profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect -Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by -fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal -seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the -social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, -for he lets apartments only to what he calls “nice<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> people,†whose -society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose -financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain -such that no painful embarrassment on this sordid but necessary side of -their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I -gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the -nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in -general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual “Ah, -yes, the rent.†Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of -landlordry.</p> - -<p>I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written -entitled</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">THE RENT</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Characters: Mrs. Button</span>, a tenant.</p> - -<p class="c">I, a landlord.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Scene</span>: <i>A tenement, owned by</i> I, <i>but<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> referred to as</i> <span class="smcap">Mrs. -Button’s</span>, <i>which is perhaps more correct.</i> <span class="smcap">Mrs. Button</span> <i>is washing -dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man -coming upstairs.</i> <span class="smcap">Mrs. Button</span> <i>smiles enigmatically. A knocking at -the door, as in “Macbeth.â€</i></p> - -<p> </p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Button</span>. Come in. (I <i>enters.</i>)</p> - -<p>I <i>(laughing with affected lightness).</i> Ah, <i>good-</i>morning, Mrs. -Button. I’ve come for the rent.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Button</span> <i>(weeping).</i> It’s not me, as ye know, sir, that likes -to be behind with th’ rint. I’m proud.</p> - -<p>I <i>(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in -tears).</i> I know <i>that.</i> But you’ve been here seven months, Mrs. -Button, without—</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Button</span> <i>(wiping her eyes).</i> Yis, I’m an old tenant, and ‘t -would break me heart to go. An’ me goin’ to begin<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> payin’ reg’lar -only nixt week, sir. It’s th’ only home I’ve got, an’ it’s cruel -harrd to leave it.</p> - -<p>I (<i>sternly</i>). Very well. Very well. I shall <i>expect</i> the money -next week. Good-day, Mrs. Button.</p> - -<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Button.</span> Good-day, sir.</p> - -<p>I <i>exits</i>. <span class="smcap">Mrs. Button</span> <i>resumes washing dishes, smiling -enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily -downstairs, fainter and fainter</i>.</p> - -<p class="c">(<span class="smcap">Curtain</span>)</p></div> - -<p>It is a grave responsibility—this power to dispossess other human -beings of their little home—to say nothing of the recurrent task of -making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier -plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of -disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> need have -nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in -dealing with certain oysters, “with sobs and tears he sorted out those -of the largest size.†But something might even now be done by compulsory -psychopathic—I had nearly said psychopathetic—treatment; for thus the -effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is -rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, -in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,—including, of -course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,—but -it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked.</p> - -<p>One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long -and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping -peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> repeating, -firmly and monotonously, “When you wake up you will never want anything -more than a just rent—a just rent—a just rent—a just rent.â€</p> - -<p>One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his -desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to -figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; -insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, -light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman’s Annual Ball, postman at -Christmas, wear and tear on landlord’s shoes, etc., etc., etc., -etc.—now, if ever, there is a tired business man.</p> - -<p>Or,—to take another aspect of this great reform,—there is the sad case -of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, -who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they -produce in Mrs.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give -way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right -through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and -play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. -Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic -Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. “Madam, when you awake, the sound of running -feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, -and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play—happy -all day—run and play—run and play—happy all day—run and play.â€</p> - -<p>But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize -incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to -his tenant, “All is over between us; we must part forever—and at once.†-To which,<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a> judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately -been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, “All right, you Old -Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I’ll shake the dust of your -disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from -to-morrow.â€</p> - -<p>It’s a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to -raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) -unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and -figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a -distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, -Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le -Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, -Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough.<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI<br /><br /> -OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN</h2> - -<p><i>To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished my grandson by standing on my -head, and by entering the kitchen by turning a back-somersault through -the door—exercises which I frequently practise for the benefit of my -digestion, but not often in public. His bewilderment at seeing a man of -my years perform such acrobatics was most comical. But there, there, one -must amuse one’s self with the young sometimes. I have thought more or -less seriously of advising these exercises for general use; but few men -have had the advantage of being brought up in a circus, and what seems -easy to me would no doubt present insuperable obstacles to most. The -main thing, after all, is not to grow old before your time, because the -silly younger generation<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> likes to flatter itself by thinking you -antediluvian.</i>—<span class="smcap">Letters of Father William</span>.</p> - -<p>F<small>EW</small> men read Shakespeare, and so, fortunately enough, few think of -themselves as being some day a pantaloon—lean and slippered (as -Shakespeare described this sixth age of man), with spectacles on nose, -his youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, -and his big, manly voice, turning again to childish treble, operating -like a penny whistle when he tries to converse. But the Bard made a -bogey: at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons visible than there -probably were in Elizabethan England; and the sixth age of man appears -more logically to offer a kind of Indian summer that is well worth -living for. Shakespeare, it seems to me, slipped a cog in his sequence; -and I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> centenarian, who began at -forty to restrict his diet (though this I care less for), and wrote of -himself at eighty-three: “I enjoy a happy state of body and mind. I can -mount my horse without assistance; I climb steep hills; and I have -lately written a play abounding in innocent wit and humor. And I am a -stranger to those peevish and morose humors which fall so often to the -lot of old age.â€</p> - -<p>Granting some other choice of mental employment,—for writing that kind -of a play seems nowadays too useless an occupation even for an old man’s -leisure,—this is the kind of an old man I should like to be.</p> - -<p>In the light of recent scientific research with flies, Cornaro probably -inherited his longevity from long-lived ancestors, and would have done -about as well on a less restricted diet: he might<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> reasonably have -lasted as long if not as comfortably. Ideas have changed since Pope -asked himself,—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Why has not man a microscopic eye?—<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">and promptly answered,—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Say what the use, were finer optics giv’n,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav’n?<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="c">Man since then has provided himself with a remarkably good microscopic -eye. He has inspected the mite, and discovered resemblances between this -innocently disgusting little insect and himself, which make it -desirable, in some cases, to suspend the swatter, and study instead of -assassinate. Granting that the proper study of mankind is Man, the -proper study of mankind is Flies; for the days of a fly present an -entertaining and instructive parallel to the years of a man: a -seventy-year-old man and a seventy-day-old fly are contemporaries;<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> -other things being equal, they might almost be called twins. Confined in -glass bottles and observed impartially from birth to burial, each baby -fly, it appears, inherits a maximum number of days on this perplexing -planet, and lives fewer according to the activity with which he expends -his inheritance. If flies had copybooks one might compose a maxim for -little flies to copy,—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Do not fly too much or fast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And you will much longer last.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Thus one scientific gentleman has watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 -flies—3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), and 2620 of their -natural, and only, admirers—from their separate birth-minutes till each -in turn paid his or her little debt to nature, and passed away. It is an -odd thing to contemplate—this self-election of a man to the positions -of guardian, health officer, divine providence,<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> nursemaid, matchmaker, -clergyman, physician, undertaker, and sexton to 5836 flies. Yet it -redounds to his credit, and is another proof of the poet’s contention -that we men are superior: for what fly would ever think of studying us -to find out anything about himself? And, by deduction, I, like the -little fly, inherit my span of life, although either accident or a germ -may get me if I don’t watch out.</p> - -<p>But even if man, like the fly, inherits his individual length of life, -he will, again like the fly, go on living it with little concern as to -whatever invisible string may be fastened to his inheritance. He will -think hopefully that any ancestor he has had who died by violence or a -germ might otherwise have lived to be as hale and hearty as Father -William, that lively sage whose habit was to stand on his head at -intervals, and to<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> enter a door by turning a back-somersault. Heredity -is still a mystery; the ancestry of free men is much more complicated -than that of flies in bottles; and any of us, if he anxiously carried -his genealogical research far enough back, would find a goodly number of -forbears, prematurely carried off, from whom he might reasonably have -inherited quite a lot of what the scientific mind calls the -“hypothetical substance or substances which normally prevent old age and -natural death.†Flies growing gracefully old in glass bottles therefore -need not worry us, and every ancestor who has been hanged is a reason -for optimism.</p> - -<p>And there is another reason even more valuable than a pendent ancestor. -You and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though there may be times of -discouragement when we wish we hadn’t), and old age is a mere trivial -incident in our jolly<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin growing -older, by the conventional measurement of time, with our first breath; -but who can prove that we are not in reality very much older than we -look in the beginning, and very much younger than we look in the end? I -get these sober thoughts from the laboratory rather than the pulpit, -from evolution rather than dogma. O aged fly, to whom your seventy days -are a long life and your glass bottle a perfectly natural and normal -world in which to have lived it! O aged man, to whom your seventy years -are a long life, and who may also have lived it, for all you know, in a -kind of glass bottle, big enough to contain comfortably this little -planet and all the visible stars! Whoever respects age for its own sake -must impartially salute you both.</p> - -<p>“It is a man’s own fault,†said Dr.<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> Johnson, then seventy years old, -but no pantaloon, “it is from want of use, if the mind grows torpid in -old age.†And so plausible is this observation, that any reasonably -intelligent man might make it to his wife at breakfast without at all -astonishing her. Here, to be sure, one gets no help from flies in glass -bottles who depart this world according as they fly more or fly less, -for theirs apparently is a democracy in which no outside observer can -yet say that any one fly thinks more or thinks less than another. A -scientific study of 5836 old men (in biographies instead of bottles) -would very likely do no more than verify the generalization that any -thinker may make at breakfast. And this being the case, civilization -tends naturally enough to reduce the number of pantaloons. Universal -education, books, newspapers, magazines, politics, movies, anything<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> and -everything that to any degree employs and exercises the mind, postpones -its torpidity; and statistics indicate that an increasing proportion of -babies live to be middle-aged people—but a decreasing proportion of -middle-aged people live to be old enough to become pantaloons. For many -a not-so-very-promising baby survives nowadays who would have perished -under earlier conditions; and many a man gets to middle life who would -otherwise be dead already, and lacks the “pep,†as a popular magazine -editor might say, to get very much further. What a survival of the -fittest, for example, was that of the beautiful Galeria Copiola, who, I -have read, made her first dazzling appearance in the theatre of ancient -Rome at the age of ninety! She acted and danced; and Roman playgoers of -seventy, sitting in the front rows, had opportunity to become<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> madly -infatuated with a charmer twenty years their senior, such as now falls -only to the lot of the college undergraduate or the tired business man. -And if anybody doubts this surprising youthfulness of Galeria, I offer -the corroborative evidence of the seventeenth-century pamphlet, “The -Olde, Olde, very Olde Man; or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr,†in -which John Taylor, the Water Poet, describes the pre-Adamite who was -brought up to London at the age of 152, met the King, and had such a -great good time in general, that his death nine months later was -attributed to over-excitement.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He was of old Pythagoras’ opinion<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">(I have looked up “metheglin,†and I find it to have been a “strong -liquor<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> made by mixing honey with water and flavoring it, yeast or some -similar ferment being added, and the whole allowed to ferment.†“Ale†-was also a liquor, but made from malt. “Nappy†means heady and strong: -“Nappie ale,†says an old writer, was “so called because, if you taste -it thoroughly, it will either catch you by the nape of the neck or cause -you to take a nappe of sleepe.†The use of these drinks, it may still be -argued, shortened Parr’s life; but the fly-research that I have -mentioned seems to indicate that their tendency to decrease physical -activity by inducing “nappes†may have materially helped him to conserve -his inheritance of longevity.)</p> - -<p>But these cases are exceptional, and for my part I have no desire to be -the Thomas Parr of the twentieth or twenty-first century. It is more -important to<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> live right (and there, indeed, is a job for anybody!) than -to live long; and old age, like young love, is often -oversentimentalized. Mr. Boswell, I think, oversentimentalized it when -he asked his long-suffering friend, “But, sir, would you not know old -age?... I mean, sir, the Sphinx’s description of it—morning, noon, and -night. I would know night as well as morning and noon.†And the doctor -restored the subject to its proper place when he answered: “Nay, sir, -what talk is this? Would you know the gout? Would you have decrepitude?†-He might, indeed, have gone further. “Do you suppose, sir†(he might -have added), “you will know night when you see it? Why, sir, what does a -baby know about morning?â€</p> - -<p>So with Pantaloon: we comparative youngsters have only an external and -objective idea of him—his slippers, his<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> stockings, his peevish and -morose humors, his feeble mirth and empty garrulity. What living is -really like to him we cannot know until we are pantaloons ourselves, and -then, mayhap, we shall have forgotten what living is like to us now; let -it suffice that we shall probably be far less bothered by our shrunk -shanks and piping voices than we now believe possible. At the same time, -it will do no harm for some of us to “watch our step.†Already I—and -there must be many another like me—am sometimes a little peevish and a -little morose; a mere <i>soupçon</i> reasonably explainable by natural -causes—but there it is! I am hardly aware of it myself. Yet when it is -called to my attention by those nearest and dearest to me, I experience -an odd, perverse inclination to be more peevish and more morose than -before. I <i>enjoy</i>, I take a queer, twisted, unnatural,<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> hateful, -demoniac pleasure, like Mr. Hyde when Dr. Jekyll turned into him, in the -idea of being more peevish and more morose. Here indeed is something to -look out for: resist that inclination, and we are laying the foundation -of a serene and respected old age; obey that impulse, and we comfort the -Devil, and run the risk of some day becoming, not only old men, but old -nuisances. I do not know, though I very much doubt, that one old fly is -ever more peevish and morose than another old fly; but with mankind, -whose superior intelligence so often makes trouble for his associates, -the variations are visible. Savages, unhampered by the conventions of an -artificial civilization, have efficiently knocked their elders on the -head in consequence.</p> - -<p>Let us, then, do our best to beat the Devil, and prepare for that Indian -summer,<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> which, with all respect to Shakespeare, is the true sixth age -of man. And they reach it best (to judge by some who have got there) who -do their daily work with a good conscience, share their incidental joys -with others, and meet their troubles in the spirit of that stout old -seaman, Sir Andrew Barton, as I the other day saw his ballad quoted with -reference to R. L. Stevenson:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ile but lye downe and bleede a while,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And then Ile rise and fight againe.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p><a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII<br /><br /> -THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN</h2> - -<p><i>Now concernynge the Soule, it is a Queer Thynge consydering that it -lives in the Bodie yett dieth nott; and so I conclude that the Soule was -made separate, and thys Bodie for its brief use and tenement; and how it -gets in and gets oute I cannot tell you. And belyke there bee all sortes -and condiciones of Soules, some goode, some bad, some so-so; but because -Goode is better than Evil, and because they lyve in Eternity, the bad -Soules will finde itt oute in time, and become goode; and the so-so -Soules will learn wisdome, and cease of their foolishnesse. But why they -were nott alle made alyke to start, that I cannot tell you; nor juste -how they was made.</i>—<span class="smcap">The Sage’s Owne Boke</span>.<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a></p> - -<p>It was a poetess, I am glad to say, and not a poet, who wrote the once -popular lines:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I am so weary of toil and of tears,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Take them, and give me my childhood again.<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">Many a voice no doubt sagged under this load of pathos as it read “Rock -Me to Sleep, Mother†to a little group of sympathetic listeners; but if -such melancholies are to be set on paper, and circulated in print, I am -unchivalrous enough to wish that joyless occupation on the gentler sex. -Most of us perform prodigies of toil, which seem to receive scant -recompense, and shed figuratively many a bucket of seemingly useless -tears. But I do not imagine that this sad poetess was half as badly off -as she seemed to think; and, more than that, she had only to wait long -enough, and keep alive long enough, to get her childhood<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> back without -asking for it. Time, the Groceryman, in due season would hand her a -second childhood in many respects “just as good†as the first; for we -who are betwixt and between can observe an unintelligent ignorance of -later troubles in one condition, neatly balanced by an unintelligent -forgetfulness of them in the other. Our lugubrious poetess, one might -say, was neither more nor less than asking the tide of the years -obligingly to assist her to commit suicide. Had her request been -granted, there would have been one more child in the world—and one less -poetess.</p> - -<p>An impressive parallel may, indeed, be drawn between these two -childhoods—the first a period of dependence upon its elders, and the -second of dependence upon its youngers, and each, to the reflective -observer, a pretty evenly balanced reversal of the other. It is as if, -in the<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> beginning, the whole family of recognizable human -characteristics, Curiosity, Memory, Affection, Dislike, Ambition, Love, -Hate, Good Nature, Bad Temper, and all the rest of them, were moving, -one after another, into a new house; and as if, in the end, the whole -family, one after another, were leaving an old one. The very youngest -and the very oldest men in the world seem equally equipped for living in -it—“sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everythingâ€; and Baby, a -little older, when he goes out in his perambulator is much like ancient -Thomas Parr being conveyed to London as a human curiosity in a “litter -and two horses (for the more easy carriage of a man so enfeebled and -worn with age).... And to cheere up the olde man and make him merry, -there was an antique-faced fellow, called Jacke, or John the Foole.<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Why, I myself, meeting a baby in a perambulator, have made such antic -faces that I might fairly have been called Jacke, or John the Foole, by -anybody who saw me, and all to cheere up the younge man and make him -merry. A little older yet, the child will run and play, rolling his -hoop, spinning his top, enjoying the excitement of tag and -hide-and-go-seek; and I dare say that the old man, a little younger than -before, would be just as happy with hoop and top (if he were again -introduced to them), and would have a grand, good time at tag and -hidey-go if he had other old men and old women to play with, and his -youngers would let him. I do not mean that he would do any of these -things as well as the child; but it would please him as much to do them -to the top of his aged bent, though now and then a flicker of remembered -convention, which the<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> child has never known and considered, would make -him self-consciously abandon these simple pleasures. Even as an old cat, -caught trying to catch its tail, will sit up with dignity and pretend -that it wasn’t.</p> - -<p>There was once a custom of including a skeleton, or perhaps a mummy, in -the festivity of a banquet, to remind the diners of their mortality, -and, for all I know, the after-dinner speakers of the shortness of time; -though very likely they soon got used to their silent companion, and -took their mortality as lightly as most people do at dinner. An “Olde, -Olde, very Olde Man,†as a contemporary writer called the unpicturesque -human ruin I have just referred to, would, it seems to me, have answered -the same purpose, and answered it better. Human nature takes neither the -skeleton nor the mummy with continuous<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> seriousness, and proves by its -attitude that, if we instinctively fear death at one moment, we -instinctively ridicule our fear at another. I have read it argued that -man with his clothes on is nevertheless naked,—such arguments seem to -amuse the philosophers,—and by the same entertaining process of -reasoning we are all skeletons together, though some may worry lest -others consider them too fat for romantic admiration. Or, again, to the -man who believes that death snuffs him out like a candle, this skeleton -at the feast might easily become an urgent reminder that he is still -living, and he would most unwisely stuff himself out like a toy balloon -while he still had a chance. But your olde, olde, very olde man is a -reality: he is both dead and alive; his presence, to say nothing of his -table manners, should tend to make each guest regard death as<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> a friend -rather than an enemy, and his state of mind and body prove such a -warning against pride in either, that even the after-dinner speakers -would take notice and modestly shorten their speeches.</p> - -<p>Let it not be imagined that I lack respect for age. I tell you frankly, -ageing and respected Reader, that so long as you can intelligently read -even this essay, you are <i>not</i> seriously old; and when you cannot, you -won’t know the difference, and no respect of mine will be of any value -to you. Your time has not come to sit propped up at table as the latest -modern improvement on the skeleton at the feast; and if ever it does, -you, my friend, will not be there. Where you will be, I cannot faintly -imagine, and neither churchmen nor philosophers help me, for the -churchmen are too objective and the philosophers too abstract;<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> the best -I can do is to take John Fiske’s word for it, who knew far more about -both science and metaphysics than I can hope to, when he says the -materialistic theory that the life of the soul ends with the life of the -body is “perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that -is known to the history of philosophy.†But when its house has become a -ruin, my soul will certainly have sense enough to look for something -more habitable, and may conceivably depart while there are still a few -embers burning in the furnace, leaving the fire to die out when it will. -Man is a conventional being, and perhaps his most astonishing convention -is a funeral.</p> - -<p>But the custom has long gone out of thus poignantly reminding diners -that a time is coming when they will have no stomachs; and olde, olde, -very olde men<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> will get no invitations out to dine for any suggestion of -mine. Fortunately there are other uses for them. They are, for example, -a source of innocent pride to their families. “Grandpa was eighty-nine -his last birthday, and he still has a tooth.†They interest the million -readers of the morning newspaper. “Friends from far and near gathered -yesterday to celebrate the 101st birthday of Mr. John Doe, 17 Jones -Avenue. The venerable patriarch, who can still walk unaided from his -place of honor by the steam radiator to his cushioned chair in the -dining-room, when asked to what he attributes his ripe old age, replied -with astonishing intelligence that the winters are longer than they used -to be. Mr. Doe was surrounded by 247 living children, grandchildren, and -great-grand-children.†These are visible uses; but this olde, olde, very -olde man may have,<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> invisibly, a more important function; and the -helplessness of age, like that of infancy, may well have been a -necessary factor in the slow conversion of our ape-like ancestor into -you and me.</p> - -<p>I have commented elsewhere on the natural astonishment of the first -parents who realized, with their inefficient prehistoric minds, that -<i>this</i> baby belonged to <i>them</i>, and how, in the considered opinion of -able scientists, the little hitherto missing link joined father and -mother into the first human family. Tending and providing for Baby made -the cave a home; but I suspect it was a long time before tending and -providing for Grandpa added another motive for the cultivation of those -higher qualities that distinguish man from all other animals. Why, there -were savages who ate him! Yet in due time the olde, olde, very olde man -became such a motive,<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> and to-day man is the only animal that takes care -of its grandfather. When you think of the differences between men to-day -and men then, between men then and the ape-men before them, and between -men now as they go about their various occupations, it seems quite -possible that ape-men had no souls at all, and that some men to-day have -rudimentary ones, millions of years behind others in evolution. It -explains much. And so, wherever there is an olde, olde, very olde man, I -dare say the care his youngers take of him is doing them good; they -might even reverse the parental platitude of punishment, and say, -“Grandpa, this does me more good than it does you.â€</p> - -<p>But this proud possession of an olde, olde, very olde man does not -always work visibly toward such beneficent ends. His obstreperous -infancy, masquerading<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> in mature garments, sometimes exhausts the -patience of his youngers; and his permanent conviction (often the only -sign of intelligence left) that he knows more than they do, and perhaps -more than anybody else, makes their task difficult: it is one thing, so -to speak, to take care of a baby when it is growing up, and another -thing to take care of a baby when it is growing down. Then, indeed, one -needs the assurance of immortality, the conviction that Grandpa is, -little as one might think it, still growing up, and that this simulacrum -of Grandpa that still remains to be looked after, must not be taken too -seriously. These olde, olde, very olde men are not all just alike: there -are grandpas whom anybody might be proud to take care of, and grandpas -whom anybody might be excused for wishing (as the brisk, modern phrase -has it) to sidestep. And the<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> explanation of this diversity, as of much -else that puzzles us in a puzzling world, may be that they were not all -just alike when they were babies. Inside their thin and tiny skulls some -had better brains than others, brains with more of those wonderful -little pyramidal neurones, which, able scientists (unless I get their -message twisted) tell me, correlate, connect, assemble, and unite our -individual ideas, memories, sensations, and intellectual and emotional -what-nots. Men, in short, may be born free, but they are not born equal.</p> - -<p>But why worry? If the individual soul is still young, it will keep on -growing in wisdom and experience; nor will it lose touch with other -souls that are akin to it, and, in the measurement of eternity, its -contemporaries; and it will have a better and better house to live in, -with ever more modern improvements in the<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> way of pyramidal neurones. As -the March Hare conclusively replied to Alice, when she asked why the -three little sisters who lived in the treacle-well learned to draw by -drawing everything that began with an M, “Why not?â€</p> - -<p>So if ever I become like the valetudinarian described by Macaulay, who -“took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished -his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty -laugh over the Queen of Navarre’s tales,†I hope that somebody will -considerately push my chariot, boil me an occasional chicken, and keep -handy my spectacles and the Queen of Navarre’s mirth-provokers. The weak -wine and water I shall have to do without. But my soul, I like to think, -which is the Me for work and play, love, friendship, and all the finer -things of life, already will have<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> closed the door of its house and gone -away. And as it goes, I like to think, also, that it whistles cheerfully -a little tune of its own, the burden of which is “Life is long.â€</p> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - -***** This file should be named 42110-h.htm or 42110-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/1/1/42110/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Seven Ages of Man - -Author: Ralph Bergengren - -Release Date: February 16, 2013 [EBook #42110] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN - -Books by -Ralph Bergengren - -THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN -THE COMFORTS OF HOME -_Each $1.00_ - -For -Younger Readers -JANE, JOSEPH AND JOHN -_Boxed, $3.00_ - - - - -_The_ -SEVEN AGES _of_ MAN - -BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - -[Illustration: colophon] - -The Atlantic Monthly Press -Boston - -COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY -RALPH BERGENGREN - - - - -CONTENTS - -I. Baby, Baby 1 - -II. To be a Boy 17 - -III. On Meeting the Beloved 33 - -IV. This is a Father 47 - -V. On Being a Landlord 64 - -VI. Old Flies and Old Men 78 - -VII. The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Man 94 - - - - -I - -BABY, BABY - - _In meeting a baby, one should behave as much as possible like a - baby one's self. We cannot, of course, diminish our size, or - exchange our customary garments for baby-clothes; neither can we - arrive in a perambulator, and be conveyed in the arms, either of a - parent or a nursemaid, into the presence of the baby whom we are to - meet. The best we can do is to hang, as it were on the hatrack, our - preconceived ideas of what manner of behavior entertains a baby, as - cooing, grimacing, tickling, and the like, and model our deportment - on the dignified but friendly reticence that one baby evinces in - meeting another._--BABY: HIS FRIENDS AND FOES. - - -Of the many questions that Mr. Boswell, at one time and another, asked -his friend, Dr. Johnson, I can hardly recall another more searching -than one that he himself describes as whimsical. - -"I know not how so whimsical a thought came into my head," says Boswell, -"but I asked, 'If, sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a new-born -child with you, what would you do?' - -"JOHNSON: Why, sir, I should not much like my company. - -"BOSWELL: But would you take the trouble of rearing it? - -"He seemed, as may be supposed, unwilling to pursue the subject: but, -upon my persevering in my question, replied, 'Why, yes, sir, I would; -but I must have all conveniences. If I had no garden, I would make a -shed on the roof, and take it there for fresh air. I should feed it, and -wash it much, and with warm water, to please it, not with cold water, to -give it pain.' - -"BOSWELL: But, sir, does not heat relax? - -"JOHNSON: Sir, you are not to imagine the water is to be very hot. I -would not _coddle_ the child." - -It appears, too, that the Doctor had given some thought to the subject, -although never expecting to be a mother himself: his immediate -insistence upon fresh air promises well for the infant, and the -frequency with which he proposes to wash his little companion indicates -that, so long as the water-supply of the castle lasted, he would have -done his part. A cow in the castle seems to have been taken for granted; -but, in 1769, even Dr. Johnson would have known little or nothing about -formulas, nor would it have occurred to him to make a pasteurizing -apparatus, as so many parents do nowadays, out of a large tin pail and a -pie-plate. Here the baby would have had to take his eighteenth-century -chance. And I wish, too, that he might have had a copy of "The Baby's -Physical Culture Guide," that modern compendium of twenty-four -exercises, by which a reasonably strongarmed mother may strengthen and -develop the infant's tiny muscles; for I like to think of Dr. Johnson -exercising his innocent companion in his shed on the roof. "Sir," he -says, "I do not much like my employment; but here we are, and we'll have -to make the best of it." - -Such an experience, no doubt, would have been good for Dr. Johnson, and -good for the baby (if it survived). "That into which his little mind is -to develop," says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "is plastic--like -a wax record, ready to retain such impressions as are made upon it"; and -on this wax some, at least, of the impressions left by Dr. Johnson must -have been valuable. But on the real mystery of babyhood--the insoluble -enigma that the "Guide" can only in small measure dispose of by -comparing the rearing of an infant with the home-manufacture of a record -for the gramaphone--the experience would have thrown no light. - -The Doctor, I dare say, would have written a paper on the feeding and -washing of infants, and later dictionaries of familiar quotation might -perhaps have been enriched by the phrase,"'The baby is grandfather to -the man.'--JOHNSON." But of this grandfather the man has no memory. His -babyhood is a past concerning which he is perforce silent, a time when -it is only by the report of others that he knows he was living. His -little mind seems to have been more than a little blank; and although -gifted novelists have set themselves the imaginative task of thinking -and writing like babies, none, in my reading, has ever plausibly -succeeded. The best they can do is to think and write like little -adults. I recall, for example, the honest effort of Miss May Sinclair, -whom I greatly respect as an adult, to see Mr. Olivier through the eyes -of his baby daughter Mary. "Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, -all by himself. He was dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down -in front of him and one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was -smiling because his cheeks swelled high up in his face, so that his eyes -were squeezed into narrow, shining slits. When they came out again, you -saw scarlet specks and smears in their corners." A fearsome Papa!--and, -although I have no way of knowing that fathers do not present -themselves in this futurist aspect to their helpless offspring, I am -glad to think otherwise. At all events a baby is, and must be, well used -to living in Brobdingnag. - -It would be a surprising thing, if it were not so common, that a man -shows so little curiosity about this forgotten period of his life. But -such curiosity would be impossible to satisfy. Existing photographs of -him at that time are a disappointment: he seldom admits seeing any -resemblance, and, if he does, the likeness rarely, if ever, gives him -any visible satisfaction. Nor can anything of real and personal interest -be found out by interviewing those who then knew him. Of a hundred, nay, -of a thousand or a million babies,--and though I cannot speak as a -woman, it seems to me (except, perhaps, for a livelier interest and -pleasure among them in their infant appearance) that everything I am -saying applies equally to babies of that fascinating sex,--the trivial -details observed by those who are nearest them are practically -identical. They thump their heads. They chew their fingers. They try to -feed their toes; and, sillier yet, they try to feed them with things -that are obviously inedible. And so forth. And so forth. If Dr. Johnson, -actually shut up in a castle, and a new-born child with him, had kept a -record, the result would have been very much like the records that -mothers now keep in what, unless I am mistaken, are called "Baby Books." -If you've seen one Baby Book, as the cynical old man said about -circuses, you've seen all of 'em. - -Nor does any man take pleasure in preserving and reading over his own -Baby Book. Hercules, to be sure, might have been interested to read in -his mother's handwriting,--"_Tuesday._ An eventful day. Two big, horrid -Snakes came in from the garden, and got in Darling's cradle, frightening -Nurse into hysterics; but Darling only cooed and strangled them both -with his dear, strong little hands. He gets stronger and cunninger every -day. When the horrid Snakes were taken away from him, he cried and said, -'Atta! Atta!'" - -But Hercules was an exceptionally interesting baby; and the average Baby -Book records nothing that a grown man can regard with pride, and much, -if he has any sensitiveness at all, that must make him blush. Nothing -but respect for his mother, it is almost safe to say, would withhold him -from hurrying the incriminating document to the cellar, and cremating it -in the furnace. - -For in the beginning Captain William Kidd, George Washington, Dr. -Johnson, the writer of this essay, and even the editor of the "Atlantic -Monthly," looked and behaved very much alike. And so, for that matter, -did little Moll Cutpurse and little Susan B. Anthony. So far as anybody -could then have said, Captain Kidd might have become a thoughtful, -law-abiding essayist, and I a pirate, handicapped, indeed, by changed -conditions of maritime traffic, but unconscientiously doing my wicked -best. - -As the twig is bent, says the proverb, so is the tree inclined; but -these little twigs are bent already, and I humbly submit, with all -respect to my scientific friends, and their white mice and their guinea -pigs, that where and how it happened remains an insoluble mystery. -Little as I know about myself, I know that I am neither a white mouse -nor a guinea pig. And this, mark you, is no mere conceit. Scientists -themselves have decided that when babies, in that remote past when they -first began really to interest their parents, and the human mother, the -most pathetic figure of that primitive world, first began the personal -and affectionate observation that was to develop slowly, over millions -of years, until it found expression in the first Baby Book--scientists, -themselves, I say, have decided that, then and there, you and I, -intelligent reader, began to differ essentially from every other known -kind of mammal. There appeared--oh, wonder!--something psychical as well -as physical about us; but _where it came from_, they cannot tell us. -"Natural selection," so John Fiske once summed up this opinion, "began -to follow a new path and make psychical changes instead of physical -changes." Little enough there seems to have been to start with; little -enough, indeed, there seems to be now--yet enough more to encourage us -to believe that Baby is a lot further along in the right direction than -he was a good many million years ago. And with this helpful conviction, -Baby himself, whether he will grow up to write essays or commit -picturesque murder, seems reasonably well satisfied. We solemn adults, -standing around the crib, may well admire, not so much the pinkness and -chubbiness of his toes, as the pinkness and chubbiness (if I may so -express it) of his simple satisfaction with the mere fact of existence, -his simple faith in the Universe. And when we think how impossible it is -to think of its beginning, we, too, may capture something of this -infantile optimism. - -It is by no means impossible (though not susceptible of scientific -proof) that Baby may have a life of his own; and, if we may assume -Hercules weeping and saying, "Atta! Atta!"--because shrewd observers of -babyhood declare it to be characteristic of babies to say, "Atta! Atta!" -when something desirable, in this case two dead snakes, is removed from -their range of vision,--may we not assume also a universal language of -babies, and a place, such as it may be, from which they have emigrated? -Here, indeed, one follows M. Maeterlinck, except that, in his judgment, -unborn babies speak French. Such a theory is no help to the novelist, -for in that case baby Mary Olivier's impressions of Mr. Olivier must be -rendered in baby--a language equally unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her -readers. Babies have been heard to say, for example, "Nja njan dada atta -mama papai attai na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meen[)e] m[)o]mm -m[)o]mma ao-u"--and who but another baby knows whether this may not be -speech? The assumption that this is an effort to speak the language of -the baby's elders is academic, as, for that matter, is the assumption -that they are his elders. There may even be no baby at all; for, as -Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put it, "The uneasiness that keeps the -never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that -the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence." -But this, I confess, is far too deep for me. - - Baby, baby in your cot, - Are you there?--or are you not? - If you're not, then what of me! - Baby, _what_ and _where_ are we? - -For all practical purposes, however, Baby is sufficiently -real--substantial enough, indeed, as "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide" -shows in Exercise 24, to be lifted by his little feet and stood on his -little head; but, mercifully adds the "Guide," "do not hold Baby on his -head very long." For all practical purposes we must, and do, assume our -own existence. "Here we are," as I have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to -his innocent new-born comrade, "and we'll have to make the best of it." -Nobody has thought of a better way, or any other way at all, for us to -get here; and the familiar Biblical phrase, 'born again,' may perhaps be -more literal than we are wont to imagine, and apply to this world as -well as the next. Baby himself may just have been born again. That -innocent-seeming and rather silly-sounding monologue, which we flatter -ourselves is an earnest attempt to imitate our own speech,--"Nja njan -dada atta mama papai attai na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meene[)e] -m[)o]mm m[)o]mma ao-u,"--may it not be the soliloquy of a gentle -philosopher, or, again, the confession of an out-and-out rascal, -talking to himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and cooing over them, -indeed, before he forgets them in this new state of being? May not Papa, -waggishly shaking his forefinger and saying, "You little rascal, you," -be speaking with a truthfulness which, if known, would make him sick? - -Meanwhile, as says "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide," "Don't jerk Baby -round. Never rush through his exercises, but talk to him in a happy, -encouraging way. When he is able to talk he will be glad to tell you -what great, good fun he has been having." - -So speaks, I think, a mother's imagination; in sober reality, even the -great good fun of Exercise 24 will be forgotten. Which is perhaps why, -although I have heard men wish they could again be children, I have -never heard any man say he would like to be a baby. - - - - -II - -TO BE A BOY - - -_I love dearly to watch the boys at their play. How gayly they pitch and -catch their baseball with their strong little hands! How blithely they -run from base to base! How merrily their voices come to me across the -green; for, although I cannot hear what they say, I know it expresses a -young, innocent joy in this big, good world. Yet even in this Garden -there is a Serpent, and one day two of the little innocents quarreled -and came to blows. A real fight! I soon hurried out and stopped that, -but the sight of their little faces distorted with rage, and one poor -boy bleeding at the nose, upset me for quite a time._--AN OLD MAID'S -WINDOW. - - * * * * * - -In "The Boyhood of Great Men," published by Harper and Brothers, in -1853, but now, I fear, very little read, it is told of Sir Isaac Newton -that "An accident first fired him to strive for distinction in the -school-room. The boy who was immediately above him in the class, after -treating him with a tyranny hard to bear, was cruel enough to kick him -in the stomach, with a severity that caused great pain. Newton resolved -to have his revenge, but of such a kind as was natural to his reasoning -mind, even at that immature age. He determined to excel his oppressor in -their studies and lessons; and, setting himself to the task with zeal -and diligence, he never halted in his course till he had found his way -to the top of the class; thus exhibiting and leaving a noble example to -others of his years similarly situated. Doubtless, after this, he would -heartily forgive his crestfallen persecutor, who could not but -henceforth feel ashamed of his unmanly conduct, while Newton would feel -the proud consciousness of having done his duty after the bravest and -noblest fashion which it is in the power of man to adopt." - -We cannot all be Sir Isaac Newtons, and, although I may wish for a -passing moment that some sturdy little school-fellow had kicked me too -in the stomach, the resulting sequence of events would probably have -been different, and the world would have gained little or nothing by my -natural indignation. Having an impartial mind, I should like to know -also _why_ Sir Isaac was kicked in the stomach, and what became -afterward of the boy who kicked him. As his fame grew in the world, the -reflected glory of having thus kicked Sir Isaac Newton in the stomach -would presumably have brightened in proportion, but, lacking other -distinction, the kicker served his evolutionary purpose and has now -vanished. - -But this much remains of him--that his little foot kicks also in the -stomach the widely accepted fallacy that boyhood is an age of unalloyed -gold, to which every man now and then looks back and vainly yearns to be -a boy again. "Oh! happy years!"--so sighed the poet Byron,--"once more, -who would not be a boy?" And so to-day, as one may at least deduce from -his general newspaper reading, sigh all the editors of all the -newspapers in the United States. Not, indeed, for a boyhood like Sir -Isaac Newton's, but for the standard American boyhood, to which, in -theory, every ageing American looks back with tender reminiscence--that -happy time when he went barefooted, played "hookey" from school, fished -in the running brook with a bent pin for a hook, and swam, with other -future bankers, merchants, clerks, clergymen, physicians and surgeons, -confidence-men, pickpockets, authors, actors, burglars, etc., etc., in -an old swimming-hole. The democracy of the old swimming-hole is, in -fact, the democracy of the United States, naked and unashamed; and even -in the midst of a wave of crime (one might almost imagine), if the -victim should say suddenly to the hold-up man,-- - - "Oh, do you remember the ole swimmin' hole, - And the hours we spent there together; - Where the oak and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather? - - Ah, sweet were those hours together we spent - In innocent laughter and joy! - How little we knew at the time what it meant - To be just a boy--just a boy!" - ---the hold-up man would drop his automatic gun, and the two would -dissolve on each other's necks in a flood of sympathetic tears. - -It is a pleasant and harmless fallacy, and I for one would not destroy -it; I am no such stickler for exactitude that I would take away from any -man whatever pleasure he may derive from thinking that he was once a -barefoot boy, even if circumstances were against him and his mother as -adamant in her refusal to let him go barefooted. But the fallacy is -indestructible: the symbols may not have been universal, but it is true -enough of boyhood that time then seems to be without limit; and this -comfortable, unthinking sense of immortality is what men have lost and -would fain recover. One forgets how cruelly slow moved the hands of the -school-room clock through the last, long, lingering, eternal fifteen -minutes of the daily life-sentence. One forgets how feverishly the -seconds chased each other, faster than human feet could follow, when -one's little self was late for school, and the clamor of the distant -bell ended in a solemn, ominous silence. Then was the opportunity for -stout heart to play "hookey," and to lure the finny tribe with a poor -worm impaled on a bent pin; and that, in the opinion of all the editors -of all the newspapers in the United States, is what all of us always -did. But in the painful reality most of us, I think, tried to overtake -those feverish seconds, seeking indeed to outrun time, and somehow or -other, though the bell had stopped ringing, get unostentatiously into -our little seats before it stopped. And so we ran, and ran, and ran, -lifting one leaden foot after the other with hopeless determination, in -a silent, nightmare world where the road was made of glue and the very -trees along the way turned their leaves to watch us drag slowly by. -Little respect we would have had then for the poet Byron and his "Ah! -happy years! once more, who would not be a boy?" - -But even when time seemed to stand still, or go too fast, we had no -consciousness that the complicated clock of our individual existence -could ever run down and stop; and so happily careless were we of this -treasure, that we often wished to be men! "When I was young," says the -author of "The Boy's Week-Day Book,"--another volume that is not read -nowadays as much as it used to be,-- - - I doubted not the time would come, - When grown to man's estate, - That I would be a noble 'squire, - And live among the great. - - It was a proud, aspiring thought, - That should have been exiled:-- - I wish I was more humble now - Than when I was a child. - -I wonder what proud, aspiring thought Uncle Jones, as he called himself, -just then had in mind; but it was evidently no wish to be a boy again: -perhaps he meditated matrimony. - -For my own part I cannot successfully wish to be a boy; I remain -impervious to all the efforts of all the editors of all the newspapers -in the United States to dim my eye; and there must be many another eye -like mine, or else it is unbelievably unique. I lean back in my chair, -close my undimmed eye, and do my best; but, contrary to all editorial -expectation, I can summon no desire to go barefooted, fish with a bent -pin, or revisit the old swimming-hole - - Where the elm and the chestnut o'ershadowed the bowl, - And tempered the hot summer weather. - -I prefer a beach and a bathing-suit and somebody my own age. Yet do not -think, shocked reader, that I am unsympathetic with youth. I am more -sympathetic--that is all--with my contemporaries; and the thought -forces itself upon me that boyhood is a narrow and conventional period, -in which my own desire to go without shoes was exactly similar to my -mother's determination to wear a bustle. Equally anxious to follow the -fashion of our respective sets, neither understood the other; and I -would no more have worn a bustle than my mother would have gone -barefooted. My father, similarly thwarted in a single desire, would have -cared less: his wider interests--politics, business, family, the local -and world gossip that immersed him in his newspaper, art, literature, -music, and the drama, to say nothing of professional baseball and -pugilism (in which, however, many fathers and sons have a common -interest)--would have absorbed his disappointment. - -But my narrower world, so to speak, was all feet. An unconventional -boy, as I think the most erudite student of boy-life and boy-psychology -will admit, is much more rare than an unconventional man; and even then -his unconventionality is likely to be imposed upon him "for his own -good" by well-meaning but tyrannical parents. "I have known boys," wrote -Uncle Jones, observing but not comprehending this characteristic fact, -"when playing at 'Hare and hounds' and 'Follow my leader,' to scramble -over hedges, leap over brooks, and mount up precipices, in a manner -which they would not have dared to attempt, had it not been for the -examples set them by their school-fellows; but," he adds, "I do not -remember any instance of a boy imitating another on account of his good -temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or piety." - -Naturally not. You and I, Uncle Jones, might be expected to imitate -each other's good temper, patience, forbearance, principle, or -piety,--though I do not say that we would,--but from the point of view -of a boy these virtues are unconventional. Their practice shocks and -disconcerts the observer. The behavior of Sir Isaac Newton, when kicked -in the stomach, was perfectly scandalous. - -And what is there, after all, in the life of a boy, that a man would -find interesting? Or that he may not do, if such is sufficiently his -desire to "make" the time for it, as he makes time for his adult -pleasures, and if he is not too old or too fat? He can spend his -vacation at the old swimming-hole--but he never does it. He can go -barefooted whenever he wishes: his mother can no longer prevent him. He -can fish with a bent pin in the porcelain bathtub,--adding a goldfish -to make the pursuit more exciting,--every morning before he takes his -bath. He can chase butterflies; here and there, indeed, a man makes a -profession of it, and institutions of learning call him an entomologist, -and pay him much honor and a small salary. Nobody forbids him to enlarge -his mental horizon by reading the lives of criminals and detectives; and -I can myself direct him to many an entertaining book, which is at once -far worse and far better, morally and artistically, than the sober -narratives that Old Sleuth used to write by the yard for boys to read by -stealth. He can roll a hoop; in many cases it would do him a world of -good to roll it down to the office in the morning and back home at -night. If he can persuade other ageing men, wishful of renewed boyhood, -to join with him, he can play at marbles, tick, puss-in-the-corner, -hop-scotch, ring-taw, and "Hot beans ready buttered." (Uncle Jones -mentions these games. I do not remember all of them myself, but "Hot -beans ready buttered" sounds especially interesting.) And where better -than in some green, quiet corner at the Country Club? And why, if you -_will_ raise the question of conventionality, why more foolish than -golf, or folk-dancing? - -But what he cannot do is to assume the boy's unconsciousness of his own -mortality. What he cannot unload is his own consciousness of -responsibility to and for others. Life, in short, has provided the man -with a worrying company of creditors of whom the boy knows -nothing--Creditor Cost-of-Living, Creditor Ambition, Creditor -Conscience, and Creditor Death. And the boy is unmarried! It is even -claimed by one philosopher of my acquaintance that this is why men wish -they were once more boys. I grant the plausibility of this opinion; for -the more a man is is devoted to his wife and family, the more he is -beset and worried by these troublesome creditors, the more, one may -reasonably argue, he feels the need of time to meet his obligations, and -is likely now and then to envy the boy his narrow, conventional, but -immortal-feeling life. - -Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fundamental fact. He is always trying -to destroy the boy's sense of immortality in this world by trying to -persuade him to read the Bible and prepare for immortality in the next. -"When a boy first begins his A B C," says Uncle Jones, "it is terrible -work for him for a short time; yet how soon he gets over it, and begins -to read! And, then, what a pleasure to be able to read a good and -pleasant book! Oh, it is worthwhile to go through the trouble of -learning to read fifty times over, to obtain the advantage of reading -the Bible." - - - - -III - -ON MEETING THE BELOVED - - _Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State and Mysterie of Loue that - youre trew Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a deepe - Humilitie and a loftie Conceit of Hymselfe. For with respect to - this, hys Mistresse, he believes himself a most inferior Person, - and as it were a mere Worme; yet if he doth suspect her to regard - any Man els as his Equal, he is consumed with great Astonishment - and raging Indignation, for this same Loue is a great Destroyer of - Common Sense in its Victimes. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior to - her because he is her Louer, and superior to all Men els for the - same silly Reason._--ANATOMIE OF LOUE. - - -To any sensitive man, not yet armored by the indifference that comes of -being married himself, there is cause for apprehension in the prospect -of meeting for the first time that person, male or female, whom somebody -he knows and loves has recently agreed to marry. The event, when it -comes, is unavoidable, nor is there any period in adult life when it may -not happen, or anybody we know so old that he or she may not occasion -it. Fact is more romantic, or at any rate remains romantic much later in -life, than fiction. Only the other day I read in the newspaper of a man -of one hundred and thirty-five years who had just subjected his little -circle to this formality. Very likely the newspaper exaggerated, but the -case undermines the security that one ordinarily feels in his -relationship with the ageing. - -Now it needs no argument that to be happy in the happiness of others is -an inexpensive pleasure and well worth cultivating. Other things being -equal, one should go dancing and singing to his first meeting with -another's beloved. Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or sixty, -should blossom, to his imagination, from the granite curb along his way; -and, though a foolish convention may repress the song and dance, yet -should he walk as if shod with the most levitating heels ever made from -the liveliest of live rubber, and sing merrily in his heart. - -But, thus to enter into the happiness of another, one must see and feel, -as if for himself, some good and sufficient reason for that happiness; -and the deep, insoluble mystery essential to all proper betrothals is -that this good and sufficient reason is not necessarily visible: these -two are happy-mad, and how shall anybody who is sane enter into their -lunacy? - -Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d,--to take the first name that comes to mind,--has -become engaged to Miss Margaret Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well and -good. Nature, which, for some reason that mankind has long curiously and -vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to continue the human race, is, one -may believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is one job among many. But -the satisfaction of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it could be put to such -haberdashery use, would girdle the Equator, and the ends, tied in a true -lover's knot, would flutter beyond the farthest visible star. Men and -women have become engaged in the past; men and women will become engaged -in the future; but this engagement of Harvey Todd and Margaret Lemon is -and will ever remain unique--and so whoever is now called upon to -appraise one party to this wonder and congratulate the other, may well -be troubled. He is not so much afraid of what he may do and say,--for -any man may hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost sobbing pressure of -the hand and a few muttered words,--as of the way, in spite of himself, -that he will look when he does and says it; there, indeed, the amateur -actor profits by his hobby. There is, to be sure, the saving chance that -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so pleasurably affect him that the ordeal -will be less difficult than he anticipates: there is even the rare -chance that he may _instantly and completely agree with Mr. Todd's -estimate of Miss Lemon_; but this is the happy-madness itself, and -certainly not desirable under the circumstances. There is the -possibility, even more rare and less desirable, that Miss Lemon, seeing -him for the first time, _will instantly and completely prefer him to -Mr. Todd_. There is the possibility that he may recoil with horror from -Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be recoiled from, or that both may recoil -simultaneously, falling over, figuratively, on their backs, and being -picked up and carried away unconscious, and in opposite directions, by -surprised onlookers. His whole nature may, in short, instinctively run -toward, or away from, the beloved; and between these extremes lies a -gamut of intermediary emotions, which at the moment he would hardly wish -to uncover. This stiff and geometrical smile, he asks himself at the -worst, can it deceive anybody? this hypocritical mutter of -congratulation, does it proceed from his own or an ice chest? Nor is he -much relieved when Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, proves -how genuine appeared his smile, how sincere his mutter, by asking him -in affectionate detail what he thinks of the other--a procedure which -should be legally forbidden the newly engaged, under penalty of being -refused a marriage license for at least ten years. - -This state of mind in lovers, so important to those who are called upon -to meet the beloved for the first time, has engaged the attention of -essayists, conversationalists, and philosophers. "They fall at once," -wrote Stevenson, "into that state in which another person becomes to us -the very gist and centre point of God's creation, and demolishes our -laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with -the one master-thought, that even the trivial cares of our own person -become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is -translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and -desirable a fellow creature. And all the while their acquaintances look -on in stupor." - -"No, sir," said Dr. Johnson, promptly improving Mr. Boswell's milder -assertion that love is like being enlivened with champagne, "No, sir. -Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne"--an -opinion, one hopes, that will not some day be made the basis of a -nation-wide campaign to prohibit falling in love. - -"His friends," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "find in her a likeness to her -mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees -no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to -rainbows and the song of birds." - -Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon (so like a rainbow) are impervious to any lack -of enthusiasm that you or I, dear, unselfish, sensitive reader, may fear -to exhibit when either leads us the other by the hand and says, "This -is IT." Ours, if any, will be the suffering. It may even happen that -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd--Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon beaming consent and -approval--will suggest that _we call her_ (_or him_) _Margaret_ (_or -Harvey_). - -Yet from another point of view, but this is a selfish one, apprehension -is justified in proportion to the sensitive man's previous intimacy with -the individual whose beloved he is about to meet. For until that meeting -is over, "previous" is the word for it: whatever opinion the beloved may -form of him will determine the degree and manner of its continuance. If -Miss Lemon disapproves of him, though Mr. Todd has hitherto loved him as -Damon did Pythias, all is over; if Mr. Todd disapproves of him, though -he has known Miss Lemon from her perambulator, all is over. A pale -ghost, he may, in either case, sometimes hang his spectral hat in the -Todd hallway, and even extend his phantom legs under the Todd mahogany; -but ALL IS OVER. Divinely harmonious as they seem, these two will never -agree to let him try, however humbly and conscientiously, to cultivate -the inexpensive pleasure of being happy in their happiness. He becomes -what no self-respecting man can wish to be--a fly in the ointment. Most -cases, fortunately, are not so serious: he will be given a reasonable -chance to make a place for himself on this new plane to which Mr. Todd -and Miss Lemon have been translated; but it is always a question whether -he can enter that plane himself, or must hereafter be content with -hearing from his former friend through a medium. For he has not, as is -so often gracefully but emptily said on these trying occasions, been -enriched by the acquisition of a new friend: he has simply exchanged -Miss Lemon or Mr. Todd (as the case may be) for a composite, a Toddlemon -or a Lemontodd--a few years will show which. He must make the best he -can of that composite. He who was formerly described as (let us say) "my -friend, Mr. Popp," becomes, if he becomes at all, "our friend, Mr. -Popp"; and if ever he hears himself being introduced as "Mr. Todd's -friend, Mr. Popp," or as "Mrs. Todd's friend, Mr. Popp," he had better -go away as soon as politeness permits, and never come back. Never. - -I speak, of course, in generalities; for there are no rules immutably -governing all cases, and life is mellowed and beautified by shining, -sensible examples, in which Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon become one, yet -realize that in many respects, being human, they must still remain two; -then, indeed, the congratulator may actually be enriched by the -acquisition of a new friend--but not instantly, as one is enriched by -the acquisition of a new hat. Yet it is always the wiser part, in -preparing to meet a beloved, to prepare for the worst. - -These are evidently the apprehensions of a bachelor, sensitive but not -unselfish; the mental attitude is different with a student, philosopher, -and idealist who, thinking not of himself, contemplates another's -marriage in the calm, intelligent way, having as yet no beloved in which -he can contemplate his own. Such a one weighs. Such a one is conscious -that, little as _he_ knows the beloved of Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, there -is grave danger that Mr. Todd knows Miss Lemon, or Miss Lemon Mr. Todd, -hardly better. This happy-madness may not only be a delusion, as a calm -outside intelligence contemplates it, but it may be a snare. Mistakes do -happen. There are known cases in which the happy lunatic has been -mistaken in a beloved not once but often; and the persistent effort of -these poor madmen and madwomen to correct one mistake by making another -is one of the most discussed and pitiable phases of our civilization. -The calm intelligence must balance also the practical aspects of the -business, its risks and liabilities as well as its profits; and so -serious is the enterprise when thus examined that he can hardly fail to -be terrified for anybody he knows and loves who is undertaking it. - -O Harvey! Harvey! (or Margaret! Margaret!) - -Tact is what he will pray for. And if his prayer is granted, when Mr. -Todd (or Miss Lemon) asks him, "Now, honestly, what do you think of her -(or him)?" he will say, "Of course I do not know Miss Lemon (or Mr. -Todd) very well _yet_, but I have never met anybody whom I _hoped_ to -know and like better." Which will be quite true, and please the -twittering questioner much more than if he said, "Oh, I don't know. I -_don't_ know." - - - - -IV - -THIS IS A FATHER - - _Proud Parent, in this little life - Yourself reflected see, - And think how Baby will progress - A man like you to be! - - So stout, so strong, so wise, and when - Sufficient years have flown, - Like you the happy parent of - A baby of his own! - - And when that unborn baby grows - To be a man like you, - Oh, think how proud that man will be - To be a parent too. - - So think, when life oppresses you - And you are feeling sad, - A million, million, million times - You'll be a happy dad._ - - --THE FATHER'S ANTHEM. - - -In the life of man fatherhood is so likely to happen, that I wonder -Shakespeare did not select father as a natural, and indeed inevitable, -successor to lover in his well-known seven ages. He chose the soldier, -"full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard," presumably because -such soldiers were common in Elizabethan London. But fathers must have -been more so: they must have gone in droves past the tavern window where -Shakespeare (as what we now call the "wets" so like to think) sat at his -ale-stained table, dipping now his quill in an inkwell, and again his -nose in a tankard; but they seem to have made no impression. Indeed this -unromantic, necessary figure, composite as it is of all sorts and -conditions of men, has never appealed strongly to the poets; perhaps it -is their revenge because fathers so seldom read poetry. - -Whatever else a man does, whether he lives by banking or burglary, -ascends to the presidency or descends to the gutter, he is likely to be -a father: they are as countless as the pebbles on a beach or the leaves -in Vallombrosa, and the few who evade paternity evade also the purpose -for which nature evidently created them, and go through life thumbing -their noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. So taken for granted is -this vocation of fatherhood, and so little considered in comparison with -other masculine employments, that no correspondence school offers a -course, and many a young man undertakes to raise children with less -hesitation than he would start in to raise chickens. Some accept -fatherhood with joy, others with resignation, like a recently wedded -young Italian who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the other day of his own -new little one. "Zee fadder and zee modder," he said, "zey work and zey -slave for zee leetle one. But what-a good? When he is grow up, he say, -'To hell wiz zee fadder and zee modder!'" And so, as Shakespeare may -have decided, there is no universal type of fatherhood, nor has the -imagination of mankind created one, as in the case of mothers, for -convenient literary and conversational use. The lines of the -balladist,-- - - With his baby on his knee - He's as happy as can be,-- - -were, to be sure, something in this direction; but they have become so -wholly associated with humor, that even the late Mr. Rogers, had he -known the ballad, could hardly have found inspiration therein for a -group; nor Shakespeare adapted the lines to describe seriously one of -his seven ages. He might have scribbled experimentally,-- - - Then the father, - Infant on knee, and happy like the clam,-- - -but that would have been the end of it. He would have crossed out the -experiment, and taken another drink. - -Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the mind of the general, so far -behind that he is almost invisible, a tiny object on red wheels at the -end of a string. But the little fellow carries a pocketbook: when Mother -needs money she pulls in the string, and he comes up in a hurry. And, as -is usually the case with popular conceptions, this odd, erroneous -notion, which most fathers seem cheerfully enough to accept, has no -doubt its historic foundation, and derives from the unquestionable -supremacy of Mother in the beginning. At that period, indeed, it is -hardly to be expected that any father should feel immediately _en -rapport_ with his new-born child, or become intimately associated with -its helpless, flower-like life. Ever since the idea, which has now so -long lost its original element of bewildering surprise, yet remains -always somewhat surprising, first dawned upon a human father and mother -that _this baby_ belonged to _them_, conditions have inexorably -consigned the infant to the care of its mother, while its father pursued -elsewhere the equally necessary business of providing sustenance for the -family. A division of labor was imperative: somebody must stay at home -in the cave and tend the baby, somebody must go out in the woods and -hustle for provisions. Maternity was, as it must have been, already a -feminine habit, but paternity was something new and unexpected; and -although I suspect, in many cases, this astonishing discovery was -followed by speedy flight. Trueheart the First took up his -responsibilities and his stone axe together. - -The horror is recorded with which Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being -left alone in a castle with a new-born child; and this feeling in so -civilized a man was no doubt an echo of the emotion with which poor, -bewildered, primitive, but faithful Trueheart would have envisaged being -left alone in the cave with his new-born baby: the sense of relief, of -gayety, of something definite and within his capabilities to do, with -which the young father nowadays takes his hat and starts for the office, -must be much the same as that with which Trueheart took his stone axe -and started for the woods. - -Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became -subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not -fundamentally changed, it has ever since continued. "Mothers' Day," for -example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; "Fathers' Day" remains a mere -humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as -now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not -quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little -importance. - -I am not forgetting--for I do them an honor I can hardly express--those -fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, -back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion -incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted -babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby's -wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some -article of infant use or pleasure that the little rascal has -mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways -patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost -impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical -father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up -and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the -proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins -to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father's position become -responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior -has consequences. - -Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business--yet even to-day many -a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than -had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, -meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon tea. A blind attachment (I am -putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) -springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, -Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any -Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, -Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to -believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil. - -And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes -a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father--and -who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking -together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with -which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly -evident that Harvey Todd has given hardly more thought to the -tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than -might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do -not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; -but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, -when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great -big man like himself. And according as he _has_ conducted himself, that -great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying -degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, -it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief -respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, -cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the -glasses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and make mine chocolate. For -this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality -an immortal spirit (though he doesn't know which), and here he -stands,--I said chocolate,--and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his -experience, could not tell him what to do about it. - -So we clink our long-handled spoons. - -For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this -topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have -advanced materially since he was a father. "He that spareth his rod," -said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed -the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, "hateth his son: But he -that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." And again, "The rod and the -reproof giveth wisdom." We know better nowadays: the rod has become a -figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are -fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be -described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is -something objective for a father to do--an occasion when Mother pulls in -the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes -up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over -the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the -paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to -attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in -this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success -as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. -Hamlet's father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and -never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark -smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no -better than follow the elder Hamlet's example; and in so doing he will -show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on -proverbs and a stout stick. "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth -his neck," said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to -"get it in the neck"), "shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond -remedy"; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no -longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for -Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon's Book of Proverbs but Theodore -Roosevelt's Letters to his Children. - -If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact -that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden -our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has -gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may -compose a proverb myself-- - - The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; - And the wise father maketh a friend of his son. - -But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, -which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and -truthful speech, is here especially difficult. "To speak truth," says -Stevenson, "there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence -between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal -fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is -another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of -the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial -gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with -his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly -judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth." - -Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his -paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental -experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and -wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an -affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line -of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his -jolly old father's opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, -Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is -bound up in the heart of the child"--and there he stopped, after adding -his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, -O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. -Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with. - -And so the father plays his unapplauded part--"tragedy, comedy, history, -pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, -tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem -unlimited," as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants -no "Father's Day." He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems -to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in -statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though -most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a -Great Father. - - - - -V - -ON BEING A LANDLORD - - _In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a - Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another - tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of - the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may - eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case - comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity - pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the - ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just - landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS - TO LET. - - -On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women -and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. -Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. -Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, -Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; -indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear -title,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily -readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and -Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he -devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I -like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw," -mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, -however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that -brave little company-- - - BUTTON - HOPP - CARROT - BARBER - KARSEN - CAWKINS - SMITH - RANEE - MAHONEY - SIBLEY - LE MAIRE - TROLLEY - BROWN - MURPHY - ---would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout -leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, -short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted -along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a -cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, -my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you -will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I -will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at -the terms assigned. So help me God and his saints." - -Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was -paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that -now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, -through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this -sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved -helpmate. - -Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of -that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the -rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. -There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a -civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact -no more than a "fair rent"; at our weakest, when a tenant gets in -arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least -resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the -tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes -more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the -inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves -the while, to be strict. - -I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that "in the beginning -man probably dwelt in trees after the fashion of his ape-like ancestors. -He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird's -eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects." And my own experience leads -me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I -draw the line at birds' eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at -which items of an earlier menu even the scientific mind seems to baulk. -But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got -possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share -its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may -landlordry have been established. - -Millions of years have passed since then,--a mere flicker in the great -movie of eternity,--and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but -the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present -there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal -diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), -invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a -complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we -have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to -the simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in -this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks -large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin's -Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise -the rent. One must assume, of course, that he is thinking about it just -before taking his morning bath. - -It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who -profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect -Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by -fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal -seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the -social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, -for he lets apartments only to what he calls "nice people," whose -society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose -financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain -such that no painful embarrassment on this sordid but necessary side of -their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I -gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the -nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in -general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual "Ah, -yes, the rent." Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of -landlordry. - -I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written -entitled - - THE RENT - - CHARACTERS: MRS. BUTTON, a tenant. - - I, a landlord. - - SCENE: _A tenement, owned by_ I, _but referred to as_ MRS. - BUTTON'S, _which is perhaps more correct._ MRS. BUTTON _is washing - dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man - coming upstairs._ MRS. BUTTON _smiles enigmatically. A knocking at - the door, as in "Macbeth."_ - - MRS. BUTTON. Come in. (I _enters._) - - I _(laughing with affected lightness)._ Ah, _good-_morning, Mrs. - Button. I've come for the rent. - - MRS. BUTTON _(weeping)._ It's not me, as ye know, sir, that likes - to be behind with th' rint. I'm proud. - - I _(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in - tears)._ I know _that._ But you've been here seven months, Mrs. - Button, without-- - - MRS. BUTTON _(wiping her eyes)._ Yis, I'm an old tenant, and 't - would break me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin payin' reg'lar - only nixt week, sir. It's th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel - harrd to leave it. - - I (_sternly_). Very well. Very well. I shall _expect_ the money - next week. Good-day, Mrs. Button. - - MRS. BUTTON. Good-day, sir. - - I _exits_. MRS. BUTTON _resumes washing dishes, smiling - enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily - downstairs, fainter and fainter_. - - (CURTAIN) - -It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human -beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of -making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier -plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of -disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have -nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in -dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those -of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory -psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the -effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is -rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, -in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of -course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,--but -it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked. - -One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long -and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping -peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, -firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything -more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent." - -One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his -desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to -figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; -insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, -light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at -Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., -etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man. - -Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case -of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, -who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they -produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give -way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right -through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and -play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. -Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic -Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running -feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, -and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy -all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play." - -But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize -incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to -his tenant, "All is over between us; we must part forever--and at once." -To which, judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately -been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, "All right, you Old -Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I'll shake the dust of your -disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from -to-morrow." - -It's a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to -raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) -unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and -figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a -distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, -Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le -Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, -Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough. - - - - -VI - -OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN - - -_To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished my grandson by standing on my -head, and by entering the kitchen by turning a back-somersault through -the door--exercises which I frequently practise for the benefit of my -digestion, but not often in public. His bewilderment at seeing a man of -my years perform such acrobatics was most comical. But there, there, one -must amuse one's self with the young sometimes. I have thought more or -less seriously of advising these exercises for general use; but few men -have had the advantage of being brought up in a circus, and what seems -easy to me would no doubt present insuperable obstacles to most. The -main thing, after all, is not to grow old before your time, because the -silly younger generation likes to flatter itself by thinking you -antediluvian._--LETTERS OF FATHER WILLIAM. - -Few men read Shakespeare, and so, fortunately enough, few think of -themselves as being some day a pantaloon--lean and slippered (as -Shakespeare described this sixth age of man), with spectacles on nose, -his youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, -and his big, manly voice, turning again to childish treble, operating -like a penny whistle when he tries to converse. But the Bard made a -bogey: at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons visible than there -probably were in Elizabethan England; and the sixth age of man appears -more logically to offer a kind of Indian summer that is well worth -living for. Shakespeare, it seems to me, slipped a cog in his sequence; -and I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian centenarian, who began at -forty to restrict his diet (though this I care less for), and wrote of -himself at eighty-three: "I enjoy a happy state of body and mind. I can -mount my horse without assistance; I climb steep hills; and I have -lately written a play abounding in innocent wit and humor. And I am a -stranger to those peevish and morose humors which fall so often to the -lot of old age." - -Granting some other choice of mental employment,--for writing that kind -of a play seems nowadays too useless an occupation even for an old man's -leisure,--this is the kind of an old man I should like to be. - -In the light of recent scientific research with flies, Cornaro probably -inherited his longevity from long-lived ancestors, and would have done -about as well on a less restricted diet: he might reasonably have -lasted as long if not as comfortably. Ideas have changed since Pope -asked himself,-- - - Why has not man a microscopic eye?-- - -and promptly answered,-- - - For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. - Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, - T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? - -Man since then has provided himself with a remarkably good microscopic -eye. He has inspected the mite, and discovered resemblances between this -innocently disgusting little insect and himself, which make it -desirable, in some cases, to suspend the swatter, and study instead of -assassinate. Granting that the proper study of mankind is Man, the -proper study of mankind is Flies; for the days of a fly present an -entertaining and instructive parallel to the years of a man: a -seventy-year-old man and a seventy-day-old fly are contemporaries; -other things being equal, they might almost be called twins. Confined in -glass bottles and observed impartially from birth to burial, each baby -fly, it appears, inherits a maximum number of days on this perplexing -planet, and lives fewer according to the activity with which he expends -his inheritance. If flies had copybooks one might compose a maxim for -little flies to copy,-- - - Do not fly too much or fast, - And you will much longer last. - -Thus one scientific gentleman has watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 -flies--3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), and 2620 of their -natural, and only, admirers--from their separate birth-minutes till each -in turn paid his or her little debt to nature, and passed away. It is an -odd thing to contemplate--this self-election of a man to the positions -of guardian, health officer, divine providence, nursemaid, matchmaker, -clergyman, physician, undertaker, and sexton to 5836 flies. Yet it -redounds to his credit, and is another proof of the poet's contention -that we men are superior: for what fly would ever think of studying us -to find out anything about himself? And, by deduction, I, like the -little fly, inherit my span of life, although either accident or a germ -may get me if I don't watch out. - -But even if man, like the fly, inherits his individual length of life, -he will, again like the fly, go on living it with little concern as to -whatever invisible string may be fastened to his inheritance. He will -think hopefully that any ancestor he has had who died by violence or a -germ might otherwise have lived to be as hale and hearty as Father -William, that lively sage whose habit was to stand on his head at -intervals, and to enter a door by turning a back-somersault. Heredity -is still a mystery; the ancestry of free men is much more complicated -than that of flies in bottles; and any of us, if he anxiously carried -his genealogical research far enough back, would find a goodly number of -forbears, prematurely carried off, from whom he might reasonably have -inherited quite a lot of what the scientific mind calls the -"hypothetical substance or substances which normally prevent old age and -natural death." Flies growing gracefully old in glass bottles therefore -need not worry us, and every ancestor who has been hanged is a reason -for optimism. - -And there is another reason even more valuable than a pendent ancestor. -You and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though there may be times of -discouragement when we wish we hadn't), and old age is a mere trivial -incident in our jolly eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin growing -older, by the conventional measurement of time, with our first breath; -but who can prove that we are not in reality very much older than we -look in the beginning, and very much younger than we look in the end? I -get these sober thoughts from the laboratory rather than the pulpit, -from evolution rather than dogma. O aged fly, to whom your seventy days -are a long life and your glass bottle a perfectly natural and normal -world in which to have lived it! O aged man, to whom your seventy years -are a long life, and who may also have lived it, for all you know, in a -kind of glass bottle, big enough to contain comfortably this little -planet and all the visible stars! Whoever respects age for its own sake -must impartially salute you both. - -"It is a man's own fault," said Dr. Johnson, then seventy years old, -but no pantaloon, "it is from want of use, if the mind grows torpid in -old age." And so plausible is this observation, that any reasonably -intelligent man might make it to his wife at breakfast without at all -astonishing her. Here, to be sure, one gets no help from flies in glass -bottles who depart this world according as they fly more or fly less, -for theirs apparently is a democracy in which no outside observer can -yet say that any one fly thinks more or thinks less than another. A -scientific study of 5836 old men (in biographies instead of bottles) -would very likely do no more than verify the generalization that any -thinker may make at breakfast. And this being the case, civilization -tends naturally enough to reduce the number of pantaloons. Universal -education, books, newspapers, magazines, politics, movies, anything and -everything that to any degree employs and exercises the mind, postpones -its torpidity; and statistics indicate that an increasing proportion of -babies live to be middle-aged people--but a decreasing proportion of -middle-aged people live to be old enough to become pantaloons. For many -a not-so-very-promising baby survives nowadays who would have perished -under earlier conditions; and many a man gets to middle life who would -otherwise be dead already, and lacks the "pep," as a popular magazine -editor might say, to get very much further. What a survival of the -fittest, for example, was that of the beautiful Galeria Copiola, who, I -have read, made her first dazzling appearance in the theatre of ancient -Rome at the age of ninety! She acted and danced; and Roman playgoers of -seventy, sitting in the front rows, had opportunity to become madly -infatuated with a charmer twenty years their senior, such as now falls -only to the lot of the college undergraduate or the tired business man. -And if anybody doubts this surprising youthfulness of Galeria, I offer -the corroborative evidence of the seventeenth-century pamphlet, "The -Olde, Olde, very Olde Man; or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr," in -which John Taylor, the Water Poet, describes the pre-Adamite who was -brought up to London at the age of 152, met the King, and had such a -great good time in general, that his death nine months later was -attributed to over-excitement. - - He was of old Pythagoras' opinion - That green cheese was most wholesome with an onion; - Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig, - Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig: - Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy, - He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy. - -(I have looked up "metheglin," and I find it to have been a "strong -liquor made by mixing honey with water and flavoring it, yeast or some -similar ferment being added, and the whole allowed to ferment." "Ale" -was also a liquor, but made from malt. "Nappy" means heady and strong: -"Nappie ale," says an old writer, was "so called because, if you taste -it thoroughly, it will either catch you by the nape of the neck or cause -you to take a nappe of sleepe." The use of these drinks, it may still be -argued, shortened Parr's life; but the fly-research that I have -mentioned seems to indicate that their tendency to decrease physical -activity by inducing "nappes" may have materially helped him to conserve -his inheritance of longevity.) - -But these cases are exceptional, and for my part I have no desire to be -the Thomas Parr of the twentieth or twenty-first century. It is more -important to live right (and there, indeed, is a job for anybody!) than -to live long; and old age, like young love, is often oversentimentalized. -Mr. Boswell, I think, oversentimentalized it when he asked his -long-suffering friend, "But, sir, would you not know old age?... I mean, -sir, the Sphinx's description of it--morning, noon, and night. I would -know night as well as morning and noon." And the doctor restored the -subject to its proper place when he answered: "Nay, sir, what talk is -this? Would you know the gout? Would you have decrepitude?" He might, -indeed, have gone further. "Do you suppose, sir" (he might have added), -"you will know night when you see it? Why, sir, what does a baby know -about morning?" - -So with Pantaloon: we comparative youngsters have only an external and -objective idea of him--his slippers, his stockings, his peevish and -morose humors, his feeble mirth and empty garrulity. What living is -really like to him we cannot know until we are pantaloons ourselves, and -then, mayhap, we shall have forgotten what living is like to us now; let -it suffice that we shall probably be far less bothered by our shrunk -shanks and piping voices than we now believe possible. At the same time, -it will do no harm for some of us to "watch our step." Already I--and -there must be many another like me--am sometimes a little peevish and a -little morose; a mere _soupcon_ reasonably explainable by natural -causes--but there it is! I am hardly aware of it myself. Yet when it is -called to my attention by those nearest and dearest to me, I experience -an odd, perverse inclination to be more peevish and more morose than -before. I _enjoy_, I take a queer, twisted, unnatural, hateful, -demoniac pleasure, like Mr. Hyde when Dr. Jekyll turned into him, in the -idea of being more peevish and more morose. Here indeed is something to -look out for: resist that inclination, and we are laying the foundation -of a serene and respected old age; obey that impulse, and we comfort the -Devil, and run the risk of some day becoming, not only old men, but old -nuisances. I do not know, though I very much doubt, that one old fly is -ever more peevish and morose than another old fly; but with mankind, -whose superior intelligence so often makes trouble for his associates, -the variations are visible. Savages, unhampered by the conventions of an -artificial civilization, have efficiently knocked their elders on the -head in consequence. - -Let us, then, do our best to beat the Devil, and prepare for that Indian -summer, which, with all respect to Shakespeare, is the true sixth age -of man. And they reach it best (to judge by some who have got there) who -do their daily work with a good conscience, share their incidental joys -with others, and meet their troubles in the spirit of that stout old -seaman, Sir Andrew Barton, as I the other day saw his ballad quoted with -reference to R. L. Stevenson:-- - - A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; - Ile but lye downe and bleede a while, - And then Ile rise and fight againe. - - - - -VII - -THE OLDE, OLDE, VERY OLDE MAN - -_Now concernynge the Soule, it is a Queer Thynge consydering that it -lives in the Bodie yett dieth nott; and so I conclude that the Soule was -made separate, and thys Bodie for its brief use and tenement; and how it -gets in and gets oute I cannot tell you. And belyke there bee all sortes -and condiciones of Soules, some goode, some bad, some so-so; but because -Goode is better than Evil, and because they lyve in Eternity, the bad -Soules will finde itt oute in time, and become goode; and the so-so -Soules will learn wisdome, and cease of their foolishnesse. But why they -were nott alle made alyke to start, that I cannot tell you; nor juste -how they was made._--THE SAGE'S OWNE BOKE. - - -It was a poetess, I am glad to say, and not a poet, who wrote the once -popular lines:-- - - Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! - I am so weary of toil and of tears,-- - Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-- - Take them, and give me my childhood again. - -Many a voice no doubt sagged under this load of pathos as it read "Rock -Me to Sleep, Mother" to a little group of sympathetic listeners; but if -such melancholies are to be set on paper, and circulated in print, I am -unchivalrous enough to wish that joyless occupation on the gentler sex. -Most of us perform prodigies of toil, which seem to receive scant -recompense, and shed figuratively many a bucket of seemingly useless -tears. But I do not imagine that this sad poetess was half as badly off -as she seemed to think; and, more than that, she had only to wait long -enough, and keep alive long enough, to get her childhood back without -asking for it. Time, the Groceryman, in due season would hand her a -second childhood in many respects "just as good" as the first; for we -who are betwixt and between can observe an unintelligent ignorance of -later troubles in one condition, neatly balanced by an unintelligent -forgetfulness of them in the other. Our lugubrious poetess, one might -say, was neither more nor less than asking the tide of the years -obligingly to assist her to commit suicide. Had her request been -granted, there would have been one more child in the world--and one less -poetess. - -An impressive parallel may, indeed, be drawn between these two -childhoods--the first a period of dependence upon its elders, and the -second of dependence upon its youngers, and each, to the reflective -observer, a pretty evenly balanced reversal of the other. It is as if, -in the beginning, the whole family of recognizable human -characteristics, Curiosity, Memory, Affection, Dislike, Ambition, Love, -Hate, Good Nature, Bad Temper, and all the rest of them, were moving, -one after another, into a new house; and as if, in the end, the whole -family, one after another, were leaving an old one. The very youngest -and the very oldest men in the world seem equally equipped for living in -it--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"; and Baby, a -little older, when he goes out in his perambulator is much like ancient -Thomas Parr being conveyed to London as a human curiosity in a "litter -and two horses (for the more easy carriage of a man so enfeebled and -worn with age).... And to cheere up the olde man and make him merry, -there was an antique-faced fellow, called Jacke, or John the Foole." - -Why, I myself, meeting a baby in a perambulator, have made such antic -faces that I might fairly have been called Jacke, or John the Foole, by -anybody who saw me, and all to cheere up the younge man and make him -merry. A little older yet, the child will run and play, rolling his -hoop, spinning his top, enjoying the excitement of tag and -hide-and-go-seek; and I dare say that the old man, a little younger than -before, would be just as happy with hoop and top (if he were again -introduced to them), and would have a grand, good time at tag and -hidey-go if he had other old men and old women to play with, and his -youngers would let him. I do not mean that he would do any of these -things as well as the child; but it would please him as much to do them -to the top of his aged bent, though now and then a flicker of remembered -convention, which the child has never known and considered, would make -him self-consciously abandon these simple pleasures. Even as an old cat, -caught trying to catch its tail, will sit up with dignity and pretend -that it wasn't. - -There was once a custom of including a skeleton, or perhaps a mummy, in -the festivity of a banquet, to remind the diners of their mortality, -and, for all I know, the after-dinner speakers of the shortness of time; -though very likely they soon got used to their silent companion, and -took their mortality as lightly as most people do at dinner. An "Olde, -Olde, very Olde Man," as a contemporary writer called the unpicturesque -human ruin I have just referred to, would, it seems to me, have answered -the same purpose, and answered it better. Human nature takes neither the -skeleton nor the mummy with continuous seriousness, and proves by its -attitude that, if we instinctively fear death at one moment, we -instinctively ridicule our fear at another. I have read it argued that -man with his clothes on is nevertheless naked,--such arguments seem to -amuse the philosophers,--and by the same entertaining process of -reasoning we are all skeletons together, though some may worry lest -others consider them too fat for romantic admiration. Or, again, to the -man who believes that death snuffs him out like a candle, this skeleton -at the feast might easily become an urgent reminder that he is still -living, and he would most unwisely stuff himself out like a toy balloon -while he still had a chance. But your olde, olde, very olde man is a -reality: he is both dead and alive; his presence, to say nothing of his -table manners, should tend to make each guest regard death as a friend -rather than an enemy, and his state of mind and body prove such a -warning against pride in either, that even the after-dinner speakers -would take notice and modestly shorten their speeches. - -Let it not be imagined that I lack respect for age. I tell you frankly, -ageing and respected Reader, that so long as you can intelligently read -even this essay, you are _not_ seriously old; and when you cannot, you -won't know the difference, and no respect of mine will be of any value -to you. Your time has not come to sit propped up at table as the latest -modern improvement on the skeleton at the feast; and if ever it does, -you, my friend, will not be there. Where you will be, I cannot faintly -imagine, and neither churchmen nor philosophers help me, for the -churchmen are too objective and the philosophers too abstract; the best -I can do is to take John Fiske's word for it, who knew far more about -both science and metaphysics than I can hope to, when he says the -materialistic theory that the life of the soul ends with the life of the -body is "perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that -is known to the history of philosophy." But when its house has become a -ruin, my soul will certainly have sense enough to look for something -more habitable, and may conceivably depart while there are still a few -embers burning in the furnace, leaving the fire to die out when it will. -Man is a conventional being, and perhaps his most astonishing convention -is a funeral. - -But the custom has long gone out of thus poignantly reminding diners -that a time is coming when they will have no stomachs; and olde, olde, -very olde men will get no invitations out to dine for any suggestion of -mine. Fortunately there are other uses for them. They are, for example, -a source of innocent pride to their families. "Grandpa was eighty-nine -his last birthday, and he still has a tooth." They interest the million -readers of the morning newspaper. "Friends from far and near gathered -yesterday to celebrate the 101st birthday of Mr. John Doe, 17 Jones -Avenue. The venerable patriarch, who can still walk unaided from his -place of honor by the steam radiator to his cushioned chair in the -dining-room, when asked to what he attributes his ripe old age, replied -with astonishing intelligence that the winters are longer than they used -to be. Mr. Doe was surrounded by 247 living children, grandchildren, and -great-grand-children." These are visible uses; but this olde, olde, very -olde man may have, invisibly, a more important function; and the -helplessness of age, like that of infancy, may well have been a -necessary factor in the slow conversion of our ape-like ancestor into -you and me. - -I have commented elsewhere on the natural astonishment of the first -parents who realized, with their inefficient prehistoric minds, that -_this_ baby belonged to _them_, and how, in the considered opinion of -able scientists, the little hitherto missing link joined father and -mother into the first human family. Tending and providing for Baby made -the cave a home; but I suspect it was a long time before tending and -providing for Grandpa added another motive for the cultivation of those -higher qualities that distinguish man from all other animals. Why, there -were savages who ate him! Yet in due time the olde, olde, very olde man -became such a motive, and to-day man is the only animal that takes care -of its grandfather. When you think of the differences between men to-day -and men then, between men then and the ape-men before them, and between -men now as they go about their various occupations, it seems quite -possible that ape-men had no souls at all, and that some men to-day have -rudimentary ones, millions of years behind others in evolution. It -explains much. And so, wherever there is an olde, olde, very olde man, I -dare say the care his youngers take of him is doing them good; they -might even reverse the parental platitude of punishment, and say, -"Grandpa, this does me more good than it does you." - -But this proud possession of an olde, olde, very olde man does not -always work visibly toward such beneficent ends. His obstreperous -infancy, masquerading in mature garments, sometimes exhausts the -patience of his youngers; and his permanent conviction (often the only -sign of intelligence left) that he knows more than they do, and perhaps -more than anybody else, makes their task difficult: it is one thing, so -to speak, to take care of a baby when it is growing up, and another -thing to take care of a baby when it is growing down. Then, indeed, one -needs the assurance of immortality, the conviction that Grandpa is, -little as one might think it, still growing up, and that this simulacrum -of Grandpa that still remains to be looked after, must not be taken too -seriously. These olde, olde, very olde men are not all just alike: there -are grandpas whom anybody might be proud to take care of, and grandpas -whom anybody might be excused for wishing (as the brisk, modern phrase -has it) to sidestep. And the explanation of this diversity, as of much -else that puzzles us in a puzzling world, may be that they were not all -just alike when they were babies. Inside their thin and tiny skulls some -had better brains than others, brains with more of those wonderful -little pyramidal neurones, which, able scientists (unless I get their -message twisted) tell me, correlate, connect, assemble, and unite our -individual ideas, memories, sensations, and intellectual and emotional -what-nots. Men, in short, may be born free, but they are not born equal. - -But why worry? If the individual soul is still young, it will keep on -growing in wisdom and experience; nor will it lose touch with other -souls that are akin to it, and, in the measurement of eternity, its -contemporaries; and it will have a better and better house to live in, -with ever more modern improvements in the way of pyramidal neurones. As -the March Hare conclusively replied to Alice, when she asked why the -three little sisters who lived in the treacle-well learned to draw by -drawing everything that began with an M, "Why not?" - -So if ever I become like the valetudinarian described by Macaulay, who -"took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished -his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty -laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales," I hope that somebody will -considerately push my chariot, boil me an occasional chicken, and keep -handy my spectacles and the Queen of Navarre's mirth-provokers. The weak -wine and water I shall have to do without. But my soul, I like to think, -which is the Me for work and play, love, friendship, and all the finer -things of life, already will have closed the door of its house and gone -away. And as it goes, I like to think, also, that it whistles cheerfully -a little tune of its own, the burden of which is "Life is long." - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Ages of Man, by Ralph Bergengren - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN *** - -***** This file should be named 42110.txt or 42110.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/1/1/42110/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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