diff options
Diffstat (limited to '78473-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 78473-0.txt | 3123 |
1 files changed, 3123 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/78473-0.txt b/78473-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..693dcf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/78473-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3123 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78473 *** + + + + + REFLECTIONS OF + A BEGINNING HUSBAND + + BY + EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN + + AUTHOR OF + “THE LUXURY OF CHILDREN” + “LUCID INTERVALS,” ETC. + + [Illustration] + + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + MCMXIII + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + PUBLISHED APRIL, 1913 + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. BY THE SECOND INTENTION 1 + + II. SOME DETAILS OF LIVING 27 + + III. COMMODITIES AND CONTENTMENT 52 + + IV. THE BABY 73 + + V. A CONTRIBUTION FROM MAJOR BRACE 94 + + VI. POLITICS 116 + + VII. WE DINE OUT AND DISCUSS EDUCATION 125 + + VIII. MY PROSPECTS IMPROVE 146 + + + + + REFLECTIONS OF A BEGINNING + HUSBAND + + + + + REFLECTIONS OF + A BEGINNING HUSBAND + + + + +I + +BY THE SECOND INTENTION + + +“Dear Mr. French,” my letter began, “Cordelia and I have a mind again +to get married. But having once been engaged and quit, we have no mind +at all to be engaged again and divulge it. Would you mind, please, you +and Mrs. French, if we eloped? It seems so much the more feasible and +private way.” + +I would rather have broken it to him by word of mouth, but for some +things it is written words or none. If you have determined to elope +with a man’s daughter you can’t very well go and ask leave of him. +Suppose he objects! Of course he will object, especially after +consulting his wife. The only way, if you propose to consult him at +all, is to write, and mail the letter on the way to the church and come +back to the house afterward for the answer. + +Cordelia felt she just couldn’t be publicly engaged to me again. Of +course I didn’t mind. I think meanly of the engaged state _per se_, but +I had always rather be engaged to Cordelia than not. But that was only +because I had always wanted to marry her, and had been glad to throw +any convenient obstacle, even an engagement, in the way of her marrying +any one else. The thing that had bothered me was to have the engagement +end without our being married. I wanted to have it die a natural death +in church, with flowers and a minister, and it had irked me very sore +indeed to be “released” like a baseball-player before the end of the +season. It left me on a miserably awkward footing with the rest of the +world and with her, and it left her in the same case. Nobody quite +knew whether to congratulate either of us on getting rid of the other. +People naturally wanted to know why, and of course you can’t tell in +the newspaper. It was awkward for our families. There was a feeling +that they ought to quarrel, because somebody must be to blame, and the +other side ought to resent it. But they didn’t want to quarrel, and +wouldn’t; not even a little, to keep up appearances. They held their +tongues and went on about their business as before, but inevitably +flocked more apart than they had been wont to do, because when they met +it excited too much interest. + +I don’t mean that they were such conspicuous people that the London +papers had cables about them. It was only that when Mrs. Fessenden +or Mrs. Somebody Else got home from the Jenkinses’ tea she told her +family, and whomever she had to dinner, that Mrs. French and Harriet +and Mrs. Jesup were at the Jenkinses’ and spoke, as they passed, as +politely as though nothing had happened. And then would follow a little +chattering tribute of discourse about Cordelia French and Peregrine +Jesup, and why did they break their engagement, anyway! + +Not that my family, or Cordelia’s, got direct reports of what was +said at Mrs. Fessenden’s dinner-table. They didn’t; at least, not +often. But they knew what must have been said, and families don’t like +to be subjects of speculation or of critical or even compassionate +observation. They can bear the eye of approval, of admiration, and +even of a moderate envy, but what family likes to have the Fessendens, +the Jenkinses, the Underharrows, the Overtons, and the rest of the +families getting their heads together to swap surmises as to what the +Frenches and the Jesups have got in their closet! + +Maybe you’d like to know why Cordelia and I loosed hands after our +intentions had been six months on file. In this private way why should +I not explain that it was not so much the fault of either of us as of +the conditions of life as we found them. You see, I was twenty-three, +and Cordelia was two years younger. I was studying the profession +in which I hope to be useful in my day and generation, and by the +practice of which I hope to derive a respectable maintenance from a +contributory world, which Cordelia was already inspecting. That’s what +she was doing. She was out of school and looking about, shifting from +continent to continent to get a better view; getting acquainted with +people and things, ascertaining whom and what she liked and what places +seemed more joyous to her than others. What for so much inspection +and investigation to prepare her for a destiny already measured off, +tied up, and waiting to be called for? If she had been in college, +she might possibly have kept. I don’t know what are the merits of the +women’s colleges as depositories for engaged girls, but they may have +a value for that use. But a roving life of enlargement by travel and +social experience has no such value at all. There was I, tied up to +professional studies, on such allowances as my indulgent parents could +afford me without too gross injustice to their own family life and +their obligations to their other dependents. And there was Cordelia, +diligently qualifying herself to live creditably and profitably on an +income of from twelve thousand a year up. + +You might suppose that ordinary precautions would have been taken to +prevent her from seeing much of a person so unsuited to her needs as +I, but they were not. There was nothing against me: I had no criminal +record, did not drink much, was of respectable origin, had known +Cordelia a long time already, and was such a person, in a general way, +as she might properly enough marry sometime, if circumstances suited. +Cordelia came out, and went to dances and dinners. She had to dance +with somebody. Male persons of the dancing age and disposition with +incomes of from twelve thousand up are rather scarce. Dances cannot +be equipped with such alone: neither can dinners. So Cordelia danced +with anybody who asked her soon enough, and that was often me; and +she ate her dinner alongside of whoever was put next to her, and that +was sometimes me. And when it wasn’t me I wished it was; and so what +happened, happened all in natural course and according to reasonable +expectation, and nobody ventured to disprove, though doubtless there +was a fair volume of conjecture as to whose money Cordelia French and +Peregrine Jesup proposed to get married on. But we had not selected +anybody to underwrite our prospective happiness. We had not got so +far as that. We had just got irresponsibly engaged, according to the +American plan and the spontaneous promptings of youth and affection. + +What about our current American practice of turning most of the girls +loose from school at eighteen or nineteen and keeping most of the +youths, who are their natural mates, tied up to professional studies +or business apprenticeships four or five years longer, and letting +them play together meanwhile, and expecting them to shape their own +destinies on practical and satisfactory lines? Isn’t a good deal +expected of us young people, all tinder, sparks, and indiscretion? The +French, they tell me, expect less and provide more. I have thought a +good deal of these concerns since Cordelia and I were first engaged +and found our intentions unseasonable. Of course, I wanted to be +considered in Cordelia’s plans and deportment; wanted, naturally, to +have her stay around where I could see her at recess and on Sundays +and other holidays, and perhaps meet her at festive gatherings when +the urgency of my studies permitted me to get to them. I liked to +have her around handy, but of course I could not interdict her from +going about, or even from going beyond the seas when it suited her +parents to take her. I could say that she had already seen as much +of the world and the people in it as was necessary, but how was I +to insist that, while I was cultivating and improving my abilities +all I knew how, Cordelia should let most of hers lie fallow and mark +time and wait? If she had only had a steady job to work at in the +intermission while I was qualifying myself to work at mine, things +might have worked out serenely; but the only job she had was to get +married, and meanwhile to cheer and satisfy her parents, and try to +be worth her keep to them while she was making acquaintance with the +world. Marriage seems to be a complete occupation (circumstances being +favorable), but being engaged isn’t. It’s just a makeshift, delightful +for six weeks, very suitable for three months, and tolerable for six; +but when it contemplates indefinite extension into uncertain years it +is an asset of very doubtful value to a girl in active social life. +When the Frenches found that Cordelia seemed to be losing interest in +affairs, was indifferent to dances and dinners, was apt to be abandoned +by mankind to the society of chaperones, was getting left out of +house-parties that I could not go to, was gently indisposed to put the +sea or any wide expanse of land between herself and me, and was rather +aggravated than appeased by the little she could see of me when I was +near, they said--the parents did: “This isn’t working to much of a +charm! Nobody is ahead on it, and we are getting behind. Cordelia’s no +fun any more, and there is no end of it in sight.” + +And soon after Cordelia and I called our engagement off, much to our +grief and with the sympathy of our elders. I advised her to put me +down to the account of experience, and try to figure out a profit on +me, if she could. But I never put her down to account of anything, +being of just the same mind about her that I always had been, though +grievously put out to leave her blooming on the paternal bush without +any “hands-off” sign on her, protected only by her natural thorns. + +There was a line in the paper to say the engagement was off, Cordelia +went abroad again, I continued my studies, and time went on. It does go +on somehow; the trick is to keep on going with it. Who does that, gets +somewhere in spite of impediments, lacerations of the affections, and +all misgivings about the possibility of there being a gap anywhere in +the procession of self-supporters that a new aspirant can fit himself +into. I have been called “sensible.” It seems a painfully tame thing +to be, and I presume I was called so by way of disparagement. But, +after all, there are times when there is no choice but between being +sensible and being silly, and then you have just got to be sensible if +you can, no matter how it tastes. Being sensible, while one is working +to get a start in life, must be excused, because it is the price of +adventure, indiscretion, speculation--all the really glorious and +spectacular parts of human existence. + +Three years I was sensible and plugged away at my job, learning the +rudiments and then the application of them. All that time I had never +a word with Cordelia. How could I? I could not go on where I left off, +and unless, or until, I could do that, how could I go on at all? Sight +of her I did have now and then, but seldom; for, though she was often +in town and I nearly always there, our occupations usually kept us from +accidental meetings. We didn’t travel the same beats. + +I finished my professional studies, sustained the tests provided to +measure my proficiency, and got a job in an office with a small salary +and some prospects. Candor requires that I admit that I passed those +examinations pretty well, for really I had not spared work in the long +preparation for them. + +And the job I got was a good one as beginners’ jobs go, and the +prospects were as good, so far as I could see, as the prospects of +anybody of my time of life and in my line of endeavor. So I didn’t see +why, barring accidents, I should not get somewhere presently. + +So the months sped. Coming early up-town on a late October day, I got +into a pay-as-you-enter car at Forty-second Street, and there was +Cordelia, alone and with a seat vacant beside her, which I took. + +“This is a fine day,” said I, “and you become it very much, and I hope +you have good health?” + +“Oh yes,” said Cordelia. + +“And good spirits?” said I. + +“Oh yes;” but she said it more doubtfully and with no more than a +languid affirmation. + +“And I hope that sport is good,” said I; and she assented to that, +but in a way that suggested that it might be more boisterously +satisfactory. And with that we fell into discourse, trifling but +easy, and that progressed in its tone from easy to friendly, and from +friendly to old-friendly. And I let the car pass Fifty-fourth Street +and pretended to myself I was going to Fifty-ninth, and let it pass +Fifty-ninth and pretended nothing further to myself. It wasn’t until +some days later that I learned that her intended destination was +Fifty-seventh Street. As it was, while rolling through the Sixties +we each cautiously discovered that we were bound for the Museum at +Eighty-second Street, and there we got off; and since it was, as I +pointed out to her, too lovely an autumn day to go indoors, we went +and sat down in the Park instead, and there, a little off the track +of passers-by, fell into discussion of the conditions of contemporary +existence. + +“Cordelia,” said I, “are you having any fun?” + +She meditated a moment. Three years is a long time in the early +twenties, and Cordelia had grown perceptibly thoughtfuler since she and +I left off. + +“Fun? Oh yes, I have _some_. It has been a pleasant summer. We went +abroad in the spring, and it was nice in the country after we got home. +People were sometimes interesting; some of the books were good to read; +I liked the flowers in the garden, and I liked to ride a horse, and +sometimes motoring was pleasant, and the swimming and the sailing.” + +I confess that my heart settled back a bit at this list of profitable +occupations. “Are you marrying any one this fall, Cordelia?” said I. +“Have you an interesting line of suitors now? Or can it be that being +well off you have the unusual discretion to realize it?” + +“Oh, I realize it; yes, a good deal. But I am only temporarily well +off.” + +“What’s the matter? Father’s stocks look shaky to you?” + +“Oh no. Father doesn’t seem anxious.” + +“Suitors, maybe. Perhaps you feel yourself near capitulation?” + +“Possibly! But I have not diagnosed it so.” + +“Down there where you spend your summers there are stock-brokers +growing on every bush, and the stock-brokers, you know, Cordelia, are +the only _young_ men--except the hereditary rich--who have money enough +to get married on.” + +“Why didn’t you turn to that yourself, Peregrine?” + +“I? Bless you! I never had a chance. Nobody ever seemed to see the +making of a stock-broker in me. And besides--well, I confess I have +never felt drawn to that vocation. I would like uncommonly well to +earn plenty of money, and I mean to, sometime; but I’d rather have the +pay seem more like an incident of my job than have my job an incident +of my pay.” + +“I’m afraid you are not a really earnest money-maker, Peregrine?” + +“Just wait till I get a chance to throw in my clutch; then you’ll +see! And I’ll soon begin to get it now! But if you think well of the +stock-broker calling, Cordelia, there was Archibald Tassel. I heard of +him as having the discernment to be your warm admirer; and a wholesome, +hearty young man too, and well found. And yet you seem never to have +smiled on him?” + +“So?” + +“It must be you don’t care for a sporting life. Well, I am only +moderately drawn to it myself. You have to work so hard and pay so +high for what you get, and it’s so hard on the tissues, and you get +so little in the end. But there was that cheerful young Van Terminal, +Cordelia; pockets bulging with ancestral coin; nice manners, immense +energy, large appetite for pleasure, four or five automobiles in his +garage, and a private tank of gasolene with a pipe-line connection +with Hunters Point. If there is an eligible young man about, it is +Corlear Van Terminal, and yet, Cordelia--” + +“Mercy, Peregrine, would you have me marry him?” + +“Oh no! By no means. No! No! I never was the least keen to have you. +But why didn’t you?” + +“Why should I?” + +“Everything money can buy, and not such a bad encumbrance. Amiable +young man enough, and you with your great qualifications for +companionship and direction might have kept him out of serious +mischief all his days. I don’t say you could have done it, but it was +conceivably possible.” + +“He’s very nice and so jocund. Mother and I were much pleased with +him--are still. I don’t know what efforts I should have made if it +hadn’t been for father.” + +“What did _he_ say?” + +“I hardly like to tell you!” + +“Oh yes, do!” + +“He said: ‘Good God! Cordelia. Not that one! Wait, and perhaps you may +catch a _man_! Leave those joyous natures to marry chorus girls,’ +he said, and told me I was built for something better than to be the +ballast for a joy-rider’s motor-car. That’s just like father. He’s not +very practical. But it flattered me, and I didn’t try after that.” + +“Poor girl! What a father! What a tremendous handicap parents are, +anyway!” + +“You needn’t complain of father. That was the only time he meddled. +He has done his best for me. He knows admirable young men! ‘Father’s +friends,’ I call them. Somehow they never make up to me. But I’m +improving; I know I am. I think so much my hair is coming out, and the +day may come when I shall find grace in the eyes of one of ‘father’s +friends.’” + +“Oh no! Cordelia, don’t! I have a better plan for you. I know such a +good young man, who has needed you with gnawing destitution, night and +day going on four years.” + +“How interesting! The poor young man! Destitute of me and I suppose +of all the other goods of this world, and mortgaged besides for the +support of his aged grandmother! I beg you, Peregrine, not to attempt +to entangle me with impossible good young men. Life is too fleeting. +The American spring is too short. All in a minute is it summer, and +to-morrow comes Fourth of July and haytime, and we are cut down and +cast into the oven.” + +“Well, dear Cordelia, take a broker--take a broker! Or some nice old +gentleman; or a widower or something, with ready-made shekels strung on +him!” + +“Don’t be unkind to me, Peregrine!” + +“Oh, well--I was telling you--where was I? You put me all out when +you speak like that. Oh yes--the good young destitute man! Well, the +good young man has no grandmother to support--only himself as yet, and +can do that, by George! And it’s time; he’s rising twenty-seven. And +his prospects are not bad now. And if he could manage to get married +they’d be better; they’d have to be. You see, we have to get one thing +at a time, and I’ve known awful cases--even I in my short experience +have observed them--of men who waited until they had got a good living +before they got married, and found, when they got ready to get a wife, +that their minds had been on other things so long that they had clean +forgotten how. That’s awful, isn’t it? It happens all the time. I +see it at the clubs. I don’t want it to happen to--to the good young +semi-destitute man I had in mind.” + +“Oh no, Peregrine; surely not. It’s an awful thought; awful! But yet, +suppose he got the girl, what--” + +“What costs so dreadfully much, Cordelia? I know of quite a decent +flat for fifty dollars a month; a nice flat over a tailor shop, and +not in Harlem either--not twenty blocks from where we’re sitting. +And for three dollars a day you can get food enough for two or three +persons--eggs not superlatively fresh, perhaps, but eggs--and for a +dollar a day you can hire a very good servant, and that’s only a little +more than forty dollars a week; and a good young man of twenty-seven, +with four or five years of hard work behind him, who can’t see his way +to lay his hands on at least sixty dollars a week isn’t good enough for +you. But sixty would about do it, Cordelia. Sixty plunks is a great +deal of money--a whole lot of money to earn--but not an unattainable +wage; not one that a diligent and competent trained hand need consider +the limit of his aspirations--no, not in a city like this with a +traction company to be supported, and eighty million people in the +back country to help pay five millions of us for living here.” + +“You are a more calculating person than you used to be, Peregrine. When +did you work all that out? And suppose it were possible to live on +sixty dollars a week, what makes you think it would pay to do it, and +why do most people of our habits think they need so very much more?” + +“The trouble with them is they haven’t been emancipated. The things +that cost are amusement and social aspirations. If you can cut those +out for a time, living is not so impossibly dear. But stupid people +can’t do it, and unemancipated people don’t dare to.” + +“Unemancipated? Unemancipated! Unemancipated from what, Peregrine?” + +“From _things_, Cordelia, and the habit of needing them in superfluous +quantity; from the standards of living set by people who are poor on +fifty thousand a year; from the idea of life that is based on what you +have got; from automobiles, and expensive sports, and boxes at the +opera; from the notion that it is essential to keep in the swim, and +know only the right people; from pleasures and from people that waste +time and money and give nothing back that is worth having.” + +“My! Peregrine! When did you turn anarchist?” + +“Not long after our engagement was broken. I loved you, Cordelia, +that’s the truth, and I hated everything that broke it. I learned to +see that there was no obstacle between you and me that a little time +and hard work could not easily overcome, and that the obstacles that +looked biggest and blackest had no real substance to them, and could be +brushed aside whenever we were ready and had the grit to do it. Don’t +cry, Cordelia! If you let me hold your hand again, I don’t think any +one would notice.” + +“I was--I wasn’t crying, Peregrine. I--I was--only thinking!” + +“Don’t cry! Because this is such a delightful world for folks who are +free and can work, and have the courage to shape their own courses. It +looks all lovely colors to me, with you here--so much to get and such +an interesting stunt to get to it; so much to do, and such inspirations +for the doing of it; such excellent loads to lift at and maybe +shoulder. Think, Cordelia, think by all means! That is the most fun +there is, and the most we shall either of us get for some time to come +if you marry me on sixty dollars a week. Oh dear! There were times when +I feared you weren’t going to wait! Those were the worst pinches of the +pull. To get tired and have no heart of refuge to fly to--you know that +is pretty trying, Cordelia.” + +“I know, Peregrine. And to wait with folded hands and not know--it +tries the faith. A bunch of roses on my birthday, a bunch of roses on +Christmas morning, not a line with either of them! Oh, Peregrine!” + +“There! Nobody saw us but the squirrel! ‘Far out of sight, while +sorrows still enfold us, lies the fair country where our hearts abide.’ +Do you know that hymn, Cordelia? There were days together when it ran +in my head. It meant heaven to whoever wrote it, but to me it meant a +fifty-dollar-a-month flat and you.” + +“Don’t cry, Peregrine!” + +“I wasn’t crying. But you must allow a man some sentiment. Are you game +for the flat and sixty dollars a week?” + +“Let us look at the flat. I hope all the rooms are not cupboards. Do +you know that my aunt just passed on the drive in a victoria? Gracious! +I have just time to get home before dark and dinner.” + +That was the substance of the discourse we had that autumn day. I never +mailed that letter I wrote to Cordelia’s father. We concluded that it +would not be polite to our parents to elope, and, since we both had +very indulgent parents, what was the use! So I broke it to the old +man, and he was quite reasonable and let me stay to dinner, and we had +champagne. And Cordelia’s mother was kind, too, and though she declared +that I was as bad a match as any worldly-wise woman could ask for, she +felt that Cordelia had come as nearly to years of marital discretion +as women who get married ever come, and that it was certainly time she +knew whether I was the ineligible man she wanted or not. + +So I told my own parents, too, and my father smiled and said more +marriages hereabouts seemed to be spoiled nowadays by too much money +than by too little; and my mother shed some tears, but they were not +tears of discontent. She has begun to be interested in my trousseau, +and keeps suggesting things that I had better buy and have charged to +Father, and I hear of her being seen in the neighborhood of auction +shops where they sell furniture, and she has counseled me by no means +to trench upon Great-aunt Susan’s legacy, which constitutes the total +sum of my private fortune. It is not a large legacy, and how I shall +ever add anything to it, except Cordelia, I cannot imagine; but I am +going to somehow, and meanwhile Cordelia will be an immense asset and +make me a rich man at the start. + +Perhaps Aunt Susan’s legacy will start on its career as the total +fortune of a married man by a period of depletion; for the truth is +I am not taking in the whole of sixty dollars a week at the present +juncture. It is no great income to command at twenty-seven if one +has begun his money-getting at seventeen, but it is a great deal for +any one of that age who has spent three or four years in general +enlargement of the ideas and experiences in a college and three or four +more in learning how to do something that will support life. + +I observe that elders are fairly willing to abet the young in getting +married if only the adventurers are positively enough set on the +adventure and have the courage of their intentions. The thing that the +wiser elders won’t do if they can help it is to take responsibility +about the intending parties being pleased with their bargain. For the +rest, unless the adventure is _too_ rash or premature, or they have +violent personal objections, the elders, as far as I see, are apt to be +complaisant, and even to push along an affair that is clearly at the +stage where it is safe to push it. + +The cards are out for three weeks from next Thursday. It was the first +our friends in general heard of it, which was as it should be. The flat +is hired, and yesterday I got my pay raised five a week. Where there’s +a will there’s a way to break it, the lawyers say, but Cordelia and I +have passed through that once, and our will is going to probate this +time. + +I am thinking about what we shall talk about, for talk will have to be +our main reliance for entertainment. There’s a fireplace in the flat, +and I dare say I shall be seen going home dragging boards and boxes +after me like the children one sees in the street, for I don’t know +how we shall afford any wood for that fireplace. Wood, I understand, +is dear. Never mind; we shall have a fire and sit before it, and talk +about everything--about votes for women (which I don’t want, though it +matters little), whether we ought to be abstainers (I’d rather not, but +it matters little), whether the good English are played out, about the +future of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, whether it +isn’t time for the Democrats to shelve Thomas Jefferson and get a new +prophet, whether Tammany will ever be killed permanently dead and what +then, whether the People have got any sense, whether legislation has an +important effect upon divorce, whether the Americans are too much bent +on substituting legislation for character, and all those things that +one thinks about. + +I wonder if she will be willing to talk about those things! Very likely +she won’t. It will be more prudent, I think, not to let her see the +catalogue of them beforehand. Unless brought up to them gently she +might shy. One talks, I find, to another person a good deal according +to what is in the other person’s mind. + +And for a change we can gossip, and extenuate our neighbor’s faults, +first agreeing what they are, which always is a pleasant exercise. And +when somebody makes a good book with real meat in it, well served--if +any one should--we can read it, and that’s fun, and cheap, and will +make more talk. And charities are interesting if one goes at them right +(and cheap as things go), and so are politics. + +It is such an interesting world if you get the hang at all of what is +going on in it, and why, and whither things are tending! I do love to +see it roll along and to try to puzzle out why things happen as they +do. It will be fun to talk to Cordelia about all these matters. What +is there about a woman’s mind--if it is a fairly good one--that it is +so extraordinarily stimulating to a man’s mind, so that when you’re +too tired to talk to a man you can chatter on amazingly to a woman, +provided she’s the right one! They beat drink; they certainly do! They +are the great natural stimulant and tonic for mankind. + + + + +II + +SOME DETAILS OF LIVING + + +Cordelia and I duly got married (see the newspaper a piece back) +and are still married, and, speaking for myself and, as far as +observation enables me, for Cordelia, we are still pleased with our +audacious experiment. But why should I call it audacious? I am more +and more impressed, so far, with the calculating prudence of it, and +surely sensible observers must agree with me, and for ten who will +think we were rash to get married on sixty dollars a week there will +be hundreds, certainly, who will smile at the idea of that being a +doubtful income to marry on. + +Our maid, Matilda Finn, is a person of considerable talent. I doubt +whether two people who aim to subsist on sixty dollars a week +are entitled to have a maid at all. I dare say they belong in a +boarding-house, or else in a flat where they do their own work and +put at least fifty dollars in the bank the first of every month. Oh, +delightful thought! Imagine being six hundred dollars to the good at +the end of the year, and putting it into some safe gamble that would +be the corner-stone of a competence! And if I had only courted Matilda +Finn instead of Cordelia it would have been so easy! Do you remember +Andrew Cannybee and his first investment in Pullman? But he was living +with his mother then and had few expenses. I suppose the money-savers +are folks who go without everything they want except money until they +cease to want it. That would have been all right if I had wanted +Matilda Finn. I know I could have held myself down to self-denial until +I could really afford to marry, and by that time I should have got +over wanting Matilda. Whereas I never could endure the thought of not +wanting Cordelia. I am afraid the Cannybee strain in me isn’t strong +enough to do any good. I seem to like life while it is here. + +All the same I like Matilda, who is part of life at these presents, +and so does Cordelia. Matilda is cheerful, she is clean and indulgent, +and she can cook. When food is scarce and dear and you have to have +it, you don’t want to have it fooled with by the wasteful or the +inexpert. The little that man wants here below he has to have two or +three times a day, and it does make a difference how it is fixed up for +him. Consider the staples of nourishment--bread, toast, tea, coffee, +bacon, eggs, chickens, chops, beefsteak, fish, codfish, oysters, +clams, lettuce, rice, beans, milk, and the package foods that some of +us eat for breakfast to divert our minds from diet! How various are +the dealings of the human mind and hand with these simple alimentary +provisions! What grace or defect of human character is there that +cannot find its demonstration in the way an egg is dropped on toast! +There is as much difference in toast as there is in people; there is a +great native difference in eggs, and much individuality; no two slabs +of bacon are alike to start with, or are affected quite the same by +smoke and other processes of education. When it comes to coffee, what a +problem! Leaving out all the coffee that is not coffee at all, consider +the horde of coffees that _are_ coffee; their propensity to masquerade +under names that do not belong to them, to be blended, and to taste +unexpectedly every time you get a new lot! + +But give the coffees their due. Nearly all of them are good. It is only +that some of them are enough better than others to interest an aspiring +spirit which reaches out instinctively in the direction of the highest +good for the money. Such a spirit will early recognize that, food being +variable, the mind that prepares it should be constant and sagacious in +its processes. + +I would not have you suppose I am an epicure. I never think much about +food unless it is not so good as I think it ought to be, all things +considered; or else is better than I expected. There needs to be some +standard of nourishment in a family, and in our family of three it +has to be adjusted to an expenditure of three dollars a day. Cordelia +says that I contribute the standard and the dollars and leave her to +furnish the adjustment. That is where Matilda Finn comes in. I asked +Mrs. French once if Cordelia could cook--asked her quite casually, and +not, of course, as though it was of any consequence. She said yes, +that every woman could cook, and that Cordelia could, of course, and +that the question was whether any man could live off her cooking. She +has taken cooking lessons since then and courses in Domestic Science, +which includes cooking, and I think she can do it. But cooking is an +agitating job, and I don’t like to have Cordelia agitated. Nor is +there any need. I like better to have her stick to her own profession, +which is ministering to happiness. I suppose they don’t teach that in +the domestic-science courses. Cordelia ministers to Matilda Finn’s +happiness, and Matilda cooks and does all the other things that need +to be done in a flat, except what Cordelia and I do; and Cordelia +ministers to my happiness remarkably. All sorts and conditions of folks +Cordelia ministers to: she has captivated her mother’s market-man, +with whom she talks meat, poultry, fish, politics, and current events +every morning. She knows all his reasons for the high price of meat. +“That man,” she said the other day, “can bamboozle me into anything!” +Nevertheless, she seems to be getting intimately acquainted with the +butcher business and the anatomy of the animals on which we elect to +subsist, and the comparative cost and edibleness of their various +sections. The spring lamb that we had for dinner the day Caseby dined +with us was “a bargain I got off of Mr. Cooper,” who had an oversupply +of fore quarters and sold one at a great reduction to young Mrs. Jesup. +As a rule, we do not subsist on spring lamb at home in the spring. That +seems to be a favorite dinner-party provision, and we still dine out +enough to keep up our acquaintance with it. The “lamb” we have is the +most neutral of all meats, unexciting, but sufficient for the purpose +of nourishment. + +Cordelia sings at her work, and that makes me think she must like the +life. Perhaps I should say her employments rather than her work. Being +away all day, I don’t know very much about them, but at least I hear +her singing while she is putting up her hair. + +This matter of woman’s work looks important. I wonder what they do +all day--girls, that is, like Cordelia. If she had a job it would +simplify matters, particularly if it was a remunerated job, for I dare +say Cordelia would spend more money if she had it. _I_ could. But it +would have to be some kind of an independent home job, like painting +or writing or taking in washing. If she went out to work and had any +boss but me, it would not be tolerable. Moreover, if she had a job that +she was qualified for and was worthy of her talents, she would probably +be better at it than I am at mine and earn more at it than I do, and +then where would I come in! Think of us both coming home tired from +wage-earning! Awful! I am glad she has no job except, as I said before, +the great one of ministering to happiness. I seem to be just a poor +old-fashioned monopolist, not much farther along than the Stone Age. + +But she does keep busy in a way. I hear of her making calls--though +she says calls are a queer employment for a lady who lives over a +tailor shop--and she goes to see her mother, and my mother, and various +girls, and goes to market, and sews a little and reads a little and +does charities a good deal, and has girls in to lunch and feeds them on +I don’t know what. She says it’s not wise to break with the life you +know any more than you have to, and of course that’s so; though neither +is it wise to hang on to the life you know when you can’t afford it. +The life you know isn’t the only good one even for you. I have come +to feel that tremendously since I turned anarchist--to feel that life +is a big thing, a bully thing, and that we are fools to cramp it and +trim it down too much to fit usage and environment. Friends are very +valuable, acquaintance is valuable, a standard of living and a set of +associations when once you are used to them are very hard to shift +from; but all those things are the accessories of life rather than life +itself, and it seems a chicken-hearted sort of prudence that would +sacrifice life to its accessories. + +This from a man who is as sensitive as I am to the differences in +dropped eggs, and feels as strongly as I do about fish-balls and bacon, +and who likes caviare when it is really good, and alligator-pears, and +pâtés of goose-livers, may sound a little forced; but must it follow +that because one sees and admires the trees he cannot see the forest? + +Yes, I am glad Cordelia has no money-making job, but I suppose that +is no argument against such employments for women in general who need +them. _I_, being so gifted in money-getting and commanding the income +I do, did not need to have my labors supplemented in the wage-earning +line. _My_ need was for assistance in spending our money. + +By the way, as I meditate on money and my large appetite for it +and the ways of getting it, it occurs to me that there is a new +profession--muck-raking. Maybe it’s not new, since nothing is, but at +any rate it’s coming along on a good slant just now, is very lively, +looks altruistic, and I dare say can be made modestly remunerative; for +muck-rakers, of course, like other working folks, must live. More than +moderately remunerative it can hardly be without spoiling it, for the +great business opportunity in it would be to make a great record as a +prosecutor and then be retained for the defense. To me, as a lawyer, +that looks good, but there are those who would gibe at it as a sort of +blackmail. + +Well, there does seem to be a lot of tar in money. Sometimes I despair +of ever getting enough to keep an auto on without having to pay some +impossibly defiling or enslaving price for it; but I haven’t got to +have an auto yet, so I take courage. + +Father and Father-in-law both growl at the muck-rakers, as is proper +enough for gentlemen of their years and responsibilities, but the +muck-rakers look to me like microbes of a very natural and timely kind, +lawfully and inevitably produced, and going about a necessary business +with a catching sort of enthusiasm. When they beat a bad grab, the +anarchist in me insists upon rejoicing, no matter what respect the +lawyer in me may feel for clients who appreciate lawyers and pay them +suitably. + +Father-in-law has sent me three gallons of superior European champagne +put up in bottles the usual way, mostly pints. He is a kind man. Why he +thinks it wise to cultivate expensive thirsts in Cordelia and me I do +not know, but my theory is that he thinks a taste for beverages that +we can’t afford will make for abstemiousness. So it will, I dare say. +Cordelia says the gallons are just a tribute of affection, unsullied +by ulterior purposes of any sort. We are going to ask Father-in-law to +dinner, and that is a great tribute, for even reduced to his simplest +needs he is expensive to feed. + +Naturalists have observed and recorded a tendency in married people to +duplication. That is, in some respects, a solemn thought. I understand +you can get lots more room in Brooklyn for the same money, and people +do it; but to me that’s a much more solemn thought than the other +one--too solemn altogether. Up the island there are extraordinary rows +and successions of human hives. Cordelia and I catch a Sunday afternoon +automobile ride up there once in a while and marvel at them as we +pass. One could get a fine detachment up there; though for that matter +there is an interesting grade of detachment to be had in Brooklyn. +And detachment has its value--breaks habits, brings folks in some +ways harder up against the facts of life, invites a new inspection of +people, brings various releases and stimulations--but I don’t know that +it is a thing that Cordelia and I are disposed to chase very hard for +its own sake. We are hard enough up against the facts of life as it +is, and we are gregarious people and like companions, and if we got a +good detachment would go right to work, I suppose, to mitigate it by +new associations. We will never move to Harlem or beyond merely for +the sake of pioneering, nor swap associations for the mere benefit of +swapping. And yet that’s what the Methodist ministers used to do under +the old three-years-in-a-place rule--may be doing it still. It was +the intention that they should gather no moss, so the plan was to keep +them rolling. To me, now, moss looks very nice, and I wouldn’t mind +its adhering. I love old associations and permanence of relation, and +my heart is even hospitable to some fixity of condition; but there +is plenty to be said in favor of wearing the garments of life loose +enough to shed them when they get seriously in the way. One should be +enough of a change artist to quit a part he cannot excel in before the +scene-shifters shut him out. The predicament of people who haven’t +it in them to prosper in the social level they find themselves in, +and who are so fettered by the conventions and expectations of that +level that they can’t break into another, is very pathetic. We hear +plenty about the tragedies of families that sink, but what of the +tragedies of those that rise, as when a man makes a raft of money and +his sons experiment with leisure, drink, chorus-girls, and divorce; +and his daughter, for lack of inviting marital opportunities, is +obliged to elope with the chauffeur! That sounds better than eloping +with the coachman, as used to happen; but still there is a prejudice +against it. Of course advantages--most of them--are advantageous, else +civilization wouldn’t get ahead; but, by George! they have their price. +If Cordelia and I were a grain less stylish we might be living in a +model tenement and saving money. (I wonder if we could get one that +would hold Matilda too!) The residents of New York around here where +we live are roughly divided into two classes, people who eat in the +front basement and are getting rich, and people who are too stylish to +eat in the front basement, and have upstairs dining-rooms and butler’s +pantries, and are (some of them) getting poor. The receipt for getting +rich in this neighborhood is--Eat in the basement! But I’m not sure +that it is a reliable receipt. It tends to blight some opportunities. +Anyhow, it does not fit the ambitions of the socially ambitious of this +generation, to whom eating in the basement would seem to conflict with +about all that is delectable in life. Of course basement dining-rooms +belong to the habits of forty years ago, and invited the simple life, +which now for the most part has been chased into flats. But the truth +remains that advantages are bought with a price. + +It is harder to get something for nothing than we think it is when we +read of wills going to probate. They do go there, and then it is to +observe whether the heirs get the money or the money gets the heirs. We +don’t take medicine unless we are sick. Money in large chunks is pretty +strong medicine, but we take it when it offers without regard to our +condition, and it does not always do us good. + +Tom Merchant was saying something the other day to the effect that a +man could not be of very considerable use in the world until he ceased +to be dependent on his work for his living. Of course that is not so, +as Lincoln’s case and innumerable others attest, and as new cases keep +attesting every day. Nevertheless, the venerable John Bigelow has said +something very like what Tom said, and I think there is a slice of +truth in it. Money in store is power, and makes for leisure to think +and act, and may help enormously, in a crisis, to independence in +thought and action. Lincoln was poor, but, after all, he had enough +cash in hand to spare the time for the debate with Douglas and for all +the politics that followed, up to the time when he began to draw a +salary as President. + +The trouble with the chaps that come early into ready-made money is +that so few of them ever learn enough about common human life, and +people, and the elements of the job, to be considerably useful, even +if they aspire to be. Still, I think they do better nowadays than they +used to. The money-getting school, whatever course you take, is an +exacting school. Somehow you have to deliver the goods--some kind of +goods that somebody is willing to pay for. I wonder how much the girls +miss, those of them who do miss it, by not taking the courses in that +school! Of course, they miss some great possibilities of development, +but against that you have to measure what they would miss by not being +able to do two kinds of things in the same years, and sacrificing what +they get as it is, for what they might get as it might be. There comes +in the division of work between men and women and the difference in +their natural careers. Cordelia as she is, for me. + +Cordelia and I are agreed that we will have rhododendrons in our +garden. Those in the Park have begun to bloom, and I am excessively +pleased with them. They have such a fine Greek name that takes me +back to Xenophon’s Anabasis, and such splendid blossoms and such +interesting shades of color, and then they bloom in the shade. I +respect them most of all for that. To live in the shade and turn +out so splendid--well, allegorically speaking, it happens more or +less to folks, too. It will cost us something to have a good lot of +rhododendrons in our garden, but when it comes to planning for our +country place we never spare expense. Why should we? Frugality of +imagination is no saving to anybody. Cordelia is less extravagant in +that particular than I am, because when I see the men who earn a lot +of money I speculate in my mind as to how they do it and whether _I_ +could do it, and I usually decide that I shall be able to presently if +I have time, and then, naturally, I think what I shall have when I get +all that money, and just now it is rhododendrons because they are just +coming along. A good deal goes with rhododendrons: hired men, domestic +animals, chariots of locomotion; I dare say by the time Cordelia and +I get around to have them aeroplanes will have become a reasonable +solicitation. But there’s no hurry. The rhododendrons in the Park are +lovely, and I dare say there are more in the Bronx (if you can get +there), and we have hospitable friends who have them in gardens. + +This observing the money-getters and noticing how they do it, and +computing how long it will take to learn the trick and acquire the +necessary prestige, is all right enough and even useful, but it plagues +me when I get my mind too much on it. That’s not really the way to +live--and yet, and yet. “The life is more than meat; the body more than +raiment,” but, having life, meat comes very handy, and having a body, +raiment is convenient. The people who miss it are those who starve +life, or overlook it, in their solicitude for meat and motors. + +The prevalent habit of going to Europe is curious. For that matter the +habits of contemporary Americans are very curious--the motor-car habit +so conspicuous just now, their travel habit, much cultivated by farmers +in winter and by city people in summer. They are remarkable habits; +instructive, no doubt; expensive, but somehow at present there is money +for them. Cordelia says she has traveled, and need not go on the road +again for some time. I haven’t, but I am content to wait until it is +convenient. This town of New York is trying to live in in some ways, +but it can be said for it that here a great many things are brought to +the door. There are pictures here, and very pleasing objects in the +shop windows, and a variety of people, and spoken languages enough +to satisfy the most ambitious, and a mighty interesting assortment +of architecture, and more making while you wait. Some Americans in +time past have been to Europe to good purpose--as witness our newer +architecture--and some keep going there to pretty good purpose every +year. That makes it the easier to stay at home and say _Cœlum non +animum_ to oneself, and grub along. Cordelia and I bestow some of our +spare attention on the growth of characters. They don’t seem to grow +so very much on the road. Intelligence and powers of comparison may +get a boost in the school of itineracy, but character not so probably. +Corlear Van Terminal has been to Europe once or twice every year since +I can remember, and gads constantly when at home, and all but sleeps in +a motor-car, and yet, so far as I can see, he’s always just the same as +he was the last time. I can’t see that he’s got ahead one lap. Chapman +says the soul of man requires to be fed on the Bible and the Greek +poets. One can do that at home, and one can work at home, and have +faith and endure and plug along--all quite useful to character, and as +developing in some ways as travel and Europe can be in others. + +Cordelia and I have been reading about the Wesleys and the characters +they got and how they got them. There were eighteen children or +thereabouts, and a dozen or so grew up. Fine people, too; admirable +stock and developed by discipline, privation, and pious training, all +tempered by affection, humor, and lots of quality in the trainers. It +makes you feel that character is a very expensive product, and hardly +to be had at the ten-cent store where we and our contemporaries are +prone to go for it. + +The Wesleys were poor; very much poorer than is thought at all suitable +in these times, even for the reverend clergy or for the teachers +of our youth. The father was a clergyman; the mother was a lady of +excellent abilities and education, and they lived in the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries. Food was plain and hard to get in that +family, and raiment was only slightly related to embellishment, and +sickness was frequent and poverty perpetual; but with what audacity +those Wesleys took hold on life! It makes our timid overtures look +like mill-pond voyaging. Really it is wholesome to sit by the window, +within ear-shot of the rattle of the street-cars and the chug-chug of +the automobiles, and read of the past straits of the straitened and the +courage of the bold, and observe on what shoulders of men and women, +and through what bogs of privation, civilization has come along. + +Not that the Wesleys had a preference for privation. The Reverend +Samuel scrambled actively to maintain his family, but the increasing +family outran his best diligence. We have changed all that. Families +are less apt to outrun the paternal diligence in these days. So far as +numbers go, they trudge along respectfully behind the census man and +look over his shoulder at the figures. But that change is all in the +day’s work, and springs out of changed conditions. People in our time +are not curious enough about the processes of nature to raise very +large families in order that they may watch near at hand the workings +of the rule about the survival of the fittest. What they can observe +of the application of that rule in written biography and among the +neighbors seems to suffice, and in their own personal speculation they +seem to care for no more progeny than they think they can contrive +survival for, whether they are fittest or not. So butts in man, and +tries to adjust the processes of nature to match his judgment and his +taste in expenditure. + +When it gets hot Cordelia will be going off to her father’s country +palace in Connecticut, varying that experience in due time by a sojourn +in my father’s country palace in New Jersey, and I shall spend with +her so much of the time as my urban duties permit. That will save +us from dependence on any fresh-air funds this year. Parents are a +considerable convenience, especially nowadays, when so many of them +have learned their place, and especially in this town of New York, +where it costs all you can earn to provide a winter habitation, and +where the young wives of earnest workers like me are apt to be a good +deal out of a job in summer. Much more systematic provision is made +to carry my kind of man through the summer than for Cordelia’s kind +of woman--the clubs, for example. For man and wife at our stage of +life parents, duly qualified and equipped, are a very suitable and +timely provision. Indeed, I feel sometimes that the worthlessness and +miscellaneous degeneracy of parents in these times is exaggerated. I +don’t say this by way of casting an anchor to the windward, nor out +of mere magnanimity, but because I honestly think so. People say that +parental authority is all gone. Some think it good riddance; others +lament. Since democracy came to be the fashion everybody wants his own +way more than formerly, and gets it rather more, children included. But +parental direction is still a factor in life, and parental influence +is enormous, and influence gets to the springs of action and character +even more effectually than dogmatic authority. It is much harder +for a fool father to blight a Mirabeau nowadays, and those Wesley +parents that I spoke of might in our time have meddled less with their +daughters’ marriages, thereby, possibly, avoiding some disasters; for +the Wesley girls chose ill, but their parents, in choosing for them, +chose still worse. Parents doubtless realize the limitations of their +calling better than they did, and a good deal more is done in these +days than formerly to piece out their deficiencies and help them with +their duties. Doctors give them better advice than the Wesley parents +got; schools in this country--in spite of the constant stream of +criticism and deprecation which schools endure--average surely a great +deal better than schools did fifty years ago. The raising and training +of the young, being as important a matter as there is in sight, has had +protracted attention from some of the best minds, and has had money +showered on it in a huge profusion. All that has been more or less +helpful to parents, but it does not warrant the idea, so popular among +current commentators, that parents have come to be supernumeraries on +the public stage. That is a ridiculous notion, the absurdity of which +would be demonstrated in about half a day if parents universally should +quit work and take a half-holiday. + +We ought to save a little money this summer living on our fathers. It +is a grand way to save. I don’t know of a better. It makes frugality +possible without self-denial--at least without privation. They say +there is excellent sport to be got out of self-denial, and I read that +saving money and the repression of the impulse to spend it make like +everything for the development of character. I dare say that is so. +It is all a part of self-control, and of government by intelligence +instead of by impulse. And self-control, including timely and suitable +repression of expenditure, means freedom, and power to give, and +the power to do, and the power to jump in and seize an opportunity. +Possibly I can acquire the accomplishment of not buying some things +that I want, even though I have the money to pay for them. That will be +a wonderful acquisition to me, though I have got so far as to be mighty +particular about what I buy on credit. One has got to get as far as +that if he is going to get married on such an income as ours. + +That was a great stroke--getting married. I don’t see how I had the +nerve to do it. Probably I hadn’t. I dare say we got married on +Cordelia’s nerve, for when you come down to the facts it was she who +took most of the chances, and really made the choice. To choose and to +decide things seem in our day to be very largely women’s work. I am +more and more impressed with that as I go more and more to Cordelia +to get her views. I get them on pretty much everything except points +of law. I am the specialist on that and on the earning of money, but +she is the specialist on the arrangement of life. I guess she is an +obedient wife, but in practice I seem to make suggestions and she to +make decisions. She makes them with great consideration and indulgence +for me, and with a degree of judgment that saves me much mental effort. +The opportunities of mental effort that I enjoy below Canal Street, +between ten o’clock and six, suffice to keep my mind exercised, and +I am no glutton about making unnecessary mental efforts after I get +uptown. Perhaps that simplifies life for Cordelia. I wonder what women +do whose husbands don’t have to work! + + + + +III + +COMMODITIES AND CONTENTMENT + + +We have been out to Orange County to spend a week-end with the +Peytons. They are about our age, but differ from us in condition in +that they have adequate means of support. Archie Peyton got them by +inheritance, and they are very ample and enable Archie and Eleanor to +have all the desirable things and do everything they want to. They try +conscientiously to live up to their opportunities, making pretty hard +work of it, but that’s natural, for it _is_ hard work. They went abroad +in the summer, and now they are providing country lodging and food and +sport for their available friends. This sport is golf and tennis and +road exercises, relieved by dabs of riding after hounds, for the Orange +County Hunt meets out in their country. Eleanor says it’s nice, except +that they have to invite too many people who have had too much to eat +and are trying to get thin, whereas it would be more satisfactory to +be inviting people who have had too little to eat and were trying to +get fat. + +That’s not why they asked us, for we had been living on our parents all +summer and were quite plump. They have got motor-cars, horses, butlers, +valets, chrysanthemums, greenhouses, and all the apparatus of pride. +For us on sixty dollars a week it is rather expensive even to nibble +at it. We can’t do it often, but we saved money living on our parents, +and the fall is a grand season, and to fill one’s lungs with the air +of it and one’s vision with autumn colors is worth some fiscal strain, +and it always does me good, too, spiritually even more than physically, +to get over a little easy country on a horse. Besides, Archie is my +client, and that’s important. I have discovered that one of the great +secrets of prosperity and advancement in this world, especially in the +profession that I affect, is to have one’s coevals grow up and prosper +and have business, especially law business, that somebody must be paid +to do. When people have these opportunities of lawful gain to bestow +they seem to like to bestow them on habitual friends, provided that +they have any and can persuade themselves that they are competent. A +great deal of opportunity goes by association--is bound to. + +To be honest, I did not make all these discoveries solely on my own +hook. Though they are simple enough. Major Brace expounded some of them +to me after dinner. He gave me great encouragement in the effort to +exist. Promotion, he said, cometh neither from the East nor the West, +but from the cemetery, so it was almost sure to come to any one that +could hold out; and in the long run a man who was sober, competent and +diligent, and intelligent about his associations couldn’t very well +miss it. There were so many advantageous jobs to distribute and each +generation had them in turn, as the world and what is in it came to be +its property. Moreover, as things go now and with us, each generation +has a lot more things and opportunities and good employments than the +generation that preceded it, not only absolutely, but _per capita_, +because the increase of wealth and business is outrunning the increase +of population. It wasn’t a scramble, the Major insisted, for a share in +a limited quantity of goods, but for an unlimited quantity, and the +harder the scramble the more there was to distribute. + +All that came out of a discussion whether we should restrict our wants +or try to satisfy them. Try to satisfy them, the Major said. Effort +in that direction enriches and develops civilization. It tends to +increase the supply of commodities. It is not the satisfied people, +nor the people who are content to go without, that make civilization +go forward, but the unsatisfied ones, who want a lot of things they +have not got, and get out and go after them and build railroads and +factories and improve agriculture and invent machinery and multiply +automobiles and take an interest in aeroplanes and try to accumulate +money and keep it employed. + +“Are you doing all those things, Major?” said I. + +“Me? Oh no! I belong to the police. My job is to help to keep order +and protect property. I never had one of the large-sized appetites +for commodities--just food, clothes, shelter, money in the bank, and +something to give away, and protection against rainy days, and enough +to keep my wife and children off the Charity Organization when I get +run over by a motor-car--that’s all I want. You see, I’m a lazy man and +like to read the newspaper and invite my soul, and everything I can’t +get by working five or six hours a day I go without. Don’t take me for +a pattern. I haven’t got the progress of civilization really at heart.” + +“The express-drivers help it on, I suppose, Major, when they strike for +more pay?” They were striking at that time. + +“No doubt. All that should help distribution, provided the funds they +are all striking to share exist in sufficient quantity. Distribution +is next in importance to production. You’ve got to have something to +distribute, and strikes are not immediately helpful to production, as +you may have noticed, but the organization of labor ought to be helpful +to distribution. Only nowadays when an important strike is won the +cost of it is immediately shifted onto the general public by a gentle +elevation of prices.” + +The Major is a lawyer and practises considerably as a trustee, and is +doubtless more concerned with the philosophy of business than if his +energies were enlisted in selling goods and wresting a profit out of +it. “Mankind can be eased considerably in this earthly competition,” +he went on, “by great increases of production, great extensions of +agriculture and manufacturing and transportation, and great economies +in all of them, provided that distribution fairly keeps pace with +production.” It comes nearer to doing so, he thought, than all the +exhorters and socialist people admit, because products have to find a +market; but when it comes to that, this is a fairly roomy world, with +many mouths and backs in it, and transportation is cheap and markets +are world-wide, and goods as yet don’t necessarily pile up on any of us +because there are a lot of them produced. + +And so the Major argued in effect that one way to help bring on +the millennium was to increase the production and distribution of +commodities. I suppose that _is_ one way. There must be some connection +between the millennium and civilization. The millennium isn’t going to +swoop down on a world that has no meat in the house and where half the +people live in trees. It is true that it was not a lack of commodities +that drove Eve to eat the apple and brought on working for a living, +and most of us realize that man cannot live by bread alone, and that +with binsful of commodities on every corner free for the taking the +world would not be saved nor the folks in it satisfied and happy. What +an interesting simplification of wants would happen in that case, and +how quickly people would come to ascertain what they really needed and +refuse to be loaded up with anything else! Still, there is a connection +between human progress and wants and the commodities that appease them. +A missionary’s daughter told me once about her father’s experience +with the South-African blacks. Now and then he would make a convert, +and always, if it was a thorough job, the convert would begin to reach +out after civilization--some clothes, a bigger dwelling--presently, +I dare say, a top-hat. It wasn’t all mere acquisitiveness, either, +for some of the incidents of conversion were inconvenient, especially +the troublesome domestic readjustment called for by the theory of the +sufficiency of one wife. Of course, the millennium may swoop down and +find us running about in skins or less, and living on roots, but I bet +it won’t. It is much more likely to be welcomed by flocks of aeroplanes +to an enormously productive earth, worked for all it is worth by +people intelligent enough to have abolished poverty and solved the +problem of distribution. + +What does man want here below, anyway? Room and bath, food, clothes, a +newspaper, and a job and fair opportunities to better himself. He has +got the newspaper already. In this country, at least, there are enough +newspapers to go around, and in the cities any one who declines to buy +one can supply himself out of the first ash barrel. There is nothing +so cheap as newspapers, and that is a consequence of the pressure of +commodities on the market. The advertiser pays all but a cent’s worth +of the cost of the newspaper, and would gladly pay that, no doubt, but +for the fear of arousing the reader’s suspicions. How much this has to +do with the fact that I hear of likely young men who come out of the +nurseries of learning and look wistfully at the newspapers and fail to +see attractive jobs on them and go away and do something else, I don’t +know. It may be that likely young men never did troop in large swarms +into newspapering. Banking usually looks better to them, because men +get rich at it, and law because a knowledge of it is no hindrance in +any calling. + +The supply of rooms and baths is not so nearly equal to human needs +as the supply of newspapers, but it is gaining on the population. Out +there at the Peytons’ house, for example, it has caught up. In all the +newer country houses hereabouts the great architectural feature is +room and bath. In a Long Island house just completed that I inspected +last spring before the family moved in there were between twenty and +twenty-five bathrooms. There were three in the family, with a liability +to guests if the owner’s wife ever succeeded in getting rested. I +thought this marked a considerable forward stride in civilization. +Church unity still hangs back a bit, but we are getting pretty strong +on plumbing, and the millennium may find us with a bath apiece. + +The Peytons hadn’t so many bathrooms, because their house was not so +large as the Long Island house, and they had to save part of it for +clothed appearances; but they had many, and Cordelia and I admired +them very much. Living in a six-hundred-dollar New York flat makes +marvelously for the appreciation of space, light, air, and running +water. Of course the Peytons’ country house had all these blessings, +and, besides, was delightfully fresh and clean and embellished with +very pleasing adornments. “No doubt, Cordelia,” said I, “you might +have had a set of things like this if you had shown a little timely +judgment.” “Possibly;” said Cordelia; “this is a nice set, too. How +many bathrooms shall _we_ need, Peregrine?” + +“One--two--four--six; six will do us, I think, with a little management +and a few extra sets of bath-robes and slippers. We don’t want to keep +a plumber. To have more than a dozen makes a home too much like a +hotel.” + +But there are a number of things that we shall want before we have +even one house with even six bathrooms in it. I do not greatly +covet a superfluity of bathrooms, though enough of them is one of +the great luxuries of our time. Hot water is one of the leading +valuables of life--one of the things that help to reconcile humanity +to civilization and to offset its interference with such privileges +as living out-of-doors and not having newspapers. That has long been +appreciated. I believe the Greeks liked hot water and made provision to +have it. Certainly the Romans liked it and went in strong for baths. +The English have liked it and had it in fair quantity, along with daily +deluges of cold water. We Americans delight in it and have more of it +already, I suppose, than any people ever had before, and our supply +is constantly increasing and constantly spreading from the cities to +the country. It is cheap, as things go, and there is fair prospect +that there will eventually be enough to go around. To have a universal +supply of hot water and newspapers and a long start toward a universal +supply of what we call education is doing not so ill as things go. I +can wait for the six bathrooms, or even three. We have one now. One is +a great blessing. I suppose it is our egotism that makes us more or +less indifferent to what is not ours and cannot be for the present. +What most of us want is the next thing--the thing almost within our +reach. We don’t think about the things that are altogether beyond the +scope of our fortunes. We do not covet them, nor are we jealous of our +neighbors who have them, unless we conclude that we have too little +because they have too much. If the competition seems to us fair, we +rather like to see prizes go to those who can win them, for a life with +prizes in it for winners, even material prizes, looks richer and more +attractive to most of us than a life planned on the principle of a +division of the gate money among all who come in. + +Do you notice how strong the propensity is among all the fairly +comfortable people to consider their own condition and their own +standards as normal and truly desirable, and those of other folks, +whether they have more or less, as a little off? I think that +propensity is a wonderful provision for human happiness. We value, as +a rule, what seems the best thing obtainable for ourselves. Whether it +is abundance or a stimulating degree of privation, we incline to think +it is a good thing for us and a better thing than other people have who +have something different. + +“Cordelia,” said I, while we were talking about the bathroom, “you +might have got a better set of things with some other man, but he +would not have the experience or the discipline that I shall have by +the time I have acquired the set of things that you ought eventually +to get with _me_.” There you are! We think we’re better off than the +Peytons because we haven’t got so much as they have, and better off +than the Goves because we’ve got more (mostly prospective) than they +have. _We_ are the standard. We laugh at ourselves, but surely it’s a +fine thing to have so strong a bent toward toleration of things as they +are, and expectation of being pleased with them as they’re going to be. +I suppose it is just a different form of this same self-satisfaction +that makes the teetotalers want to vote away everybody’s grog, and +the college authorities insist that all the boys shall want to be +high scholars like themselves, and the appeased women deprecate the +agitations of the unappeased for woman’s suffrage. + +Probably Cordelia and I are exceptionally resigned to our condition; +more so than the average of mankind. Yes, I suspect that is so, but +I suspect also that it is only a provisional resignation. We reached +out and got the next thing--each other. That was highly satisfactory +and a good deal better than if we had waited for something else. +But this reaching out for the next thing seems to be a continuing +process, and I suspect it has to go on till stopping-time, and that +satisfaction in life is pretty closely geared to the ability to +maintain it effectively. That is not altogether a soothing reflection, +but I don’t know that it is desirable that all reflections should be +soothing. A fair proportion of them ought to be stimulating. I observe +that I read the writings of the efficient when my energies are high, +and when they are low find solace in those of the lazy--only they must +not be too lazy to write. Some of the very best writers were lazy, and +struggled with it. Maybe it’s hard work to be a writer, but then it’s +hard work to be _much_ of anything. But that’s nothing! Nobody wastes +sympathy, or ought to, on hard workers, provided they get in fair +measure what they go out after. And one of the greatest things they get +is increased ability to work hard. This is not entirely my discovery. +It was suggested by an aged friend, but as far as I have experimented +with it I think it is so. Of course, the suggestion was accompanied +by a reminder in quotation-marks that life would be endurable except +for its pleasures, but that’s not to be accepted too confidently. It +depends on the pleasures and whether they please or not. There are +a lot of things that are labeled “pleasure,” and most of them are +price-marked in more or less forbidding figures, but the considerable +satisfactions of life seem to be conditions of the mind which may +be related to living conditions that cost money, but which are not +themselves price-marked in figures that are at all plain. There’s polo, +a good, lively pleasure and fairly high-priced and consumptive also +of time, but I judge the main value of active sports of that sort to +aspiring men is indirect. They contribute to a physical efficiency +which is useful just so far as it promotes mental efficiency--sanity +and activity of mind, spontaneity of thought and speech and power. No +doubt for some men sports are a form of discipline. They train some +spirits to exertion, and make for energy and supply driving force for +work, but, dear me, they take a lot of time and tend to consume more +energy than they furnish. They are fine for boys, soldiers, Englishmen, +and people with a disposition to grow fat, and an excellent vacation +employment for some people, but I suspect there is an economic warrant +for the disposition of the common run of American adults to intrust +the transaction of their active sports to persons who can give their +whole time to them, and whose skilful exertions it is restful now and +then to watch. + +I remember my classmate Hollaway saying one day of a group of sporty +young gentlemen whom we were discussing, “The things that seem to amuse +them would not give me pleasure.” That was true. Hollaway liked to +_think_. That was the way he had most of his fun. He was willing to put +in enough physical exertion to make his machinery run smoothly, and +liked, as a rule, to do it quickly and have it over, but he got his fun +out of what went on in his head, and in talk. He practised and enjoyed +all the mental processes, observation, cogitation, consideration, +reflection, rumination, imagination, and the rest, with resulting and +accompanying discourse. Nobody around had more fun than Hollaway. +Somebody said he had a “happy activity of the soul.” Maybe that is out +of Emerson. I’ll ask Cordelia, who confesses to some acquaintance with +Emerson. But, anyhow, the happy activity of the soul is good to have +and not visibly price-marked nor denied necessarily, like the opera +and polo, to the impecunious. + +Going out to visit the Peytons was an enlivening change, and gave +us new topics for discourse and reflection, but the best of it was +to talk about it with Cordelia. I like the tranquillity of being +married--married, that is, to Cordelia. Visiting the Peytons is a bit +of embroidery on the fabric of life, but coming home to the flat and +staying in all the evening and reading as many of the contemporary +periodicals as I can manage to get hold of and get time to explore, and +talking to Cordelia--that is the very web of life. I seldom have the +sense of justification in life so strongly as in these domesticated +discourses with Cordelia. I have got her to reading the contemporary +periodicals and the newspapers and keeping some track of what is going +on in the world. I don’t know what kind of radicals we will turn out to +be if we keep our minds on that diet. But I get the other point of view +down-town, where my employment is largely to assist my boss to help +gentlemen with property to adjust the management of their concerns to +laws contrived with intent to retard their processes of acquisition. +It is nip and tuck in these days between the gentlemen who make the +progressive political periodicals and the gentlemen who control the +railroads and banks and trusts and their employees, to determine who +is going to run the country. As things are, the country is run, after +a fashion. The wheels do turn, and production and distribution are +accomplished. To be sure, the wheels screech more or less, and the +production is pretty wasteful compared with what the professional +economists say it might be, and the stream of distribution runs so +lumpy that it makes you laugh; but a fair proportion of the Lord’s will +seems to be done, and hopeful people calculate that the proportion +is increasing, though you might not always think so to read the +progressive periodicals. A large part of the happy activity of nature +consists of the big creatures eating the little ones, but we complain +awfully about it when we think we see it going on in human society, +and the law, whose humble but aspiring servant I am, was invented to +check it. Everything that is invented to check that propensity tends +to develop an appetite of its own. The law, the church, the walking +delegate, all have in them the ingredients of voracity, and I dare say +the same ingredients are latent in the progressive periodicals. Who has +the brains to govern will govern, and the mere substitution of lean +masters for fat ones is not necessarily an advantage. I suppose it is +largely our own consciousness of that that restrains us from taking the +country away from the interests and giving it to the periodicals; and +besides, of course, it is harder, because the interests hang on so to +what is theirs, and the law, which is me, finds so many obstacles to +detaching them. + +Well, practising law all day below Canal Street in the interest +of the interests, and reading the progressive periodicals all the +evening--there’s such a raft of them--in the interest of righteousness, +altruism, and the people, ought to make me a very broad-minded +person--so broad-minded probably that I shall lose sense of direction +and fetch up in the driver’s place on a Brooklyn street-car. + +And yet probably not, with Cordelia as a partner. I have consulted her +about going to the Assembly. Not that anybody wants me to go there, +but it looks interesting. I wish my boss would employ me to go there +and see that I did not starve. But he couldn’t very well. I would +be a legislator in the employ of an employee of the interests, and +all the fun would be gone. Father and Father-in-law might finance me, +but neither of them is that much of a patriot. If I were employed +by one of the periodicals there would be less scandal in that, but +that’s not a practical thought. I dare say that I shall have to make +considerably more progress in the practice of my profession before I +can go to Albany, and by that time I shall have become too valuable to +myself and dependent associates to be spared to go there. After all, +I got married, and I suppose that is as fatal an indiscretion as a +person of my attenuated means should permit himself at this stage of +his endeavors. It is about politics very much as it is about getting +married--if you wait till you’re ready, you can’t. It seems as if +everything had to be shot on the wing. We ought to be governed by +people of independent means. They are the only people who can afford +the employment. But most people who have independent means have a point +of view to match, and there you are--it isn’t quite the point of view +of a large proportion of the governed. Just so contradictory things +are, and yet, after all, it’s that that makes the game. + +My, my! We have been married nearly a year, and have not yet repented. +Our circumstances improve a little from month to month. Besides The +Firm’s regular contribution to my maintenance, I pick up odd jobs now +and then on my own account. Father and Father-in-law take occasional +chances in the lottery of my accomplishments by sending me bits of +business, and I pick up other bits from other people. I have even made +literary compositions, and tried, not always fruitlessly, to sell them. +That is a good enough game, if one dared give himself to it, but, +except as compounded with politics, economics, or public service of +some sort, it leads away from law, so I don’t follow it hard. + + + + +IV + +THE BABY + + +Undoubtedly the baby makes a great difference. He fills up the flat, +for one thing. I foresee that he will turn us out of it. Nevertheless +he is valuable, and probably worth his space even in New York. His +name is Samuel French. Cordelia named him after her father. She is +extremely pleased with him. So is Matilda Finn, so is my mother, so +is my mother-in-law. Even the trained assistant to nature who was +here to welcome him seemed very pleased to meet Samuel, and both his +grandfathers have been around to inspect him, and have approved and +duly benefacted him. Neither of these aged but still profitable men has +had a grandchild before, and they seem to like it. As for me, naturally +I am like to burst with the pride at being associated, however humbly, +with an achievement so important. Father-in-law is building a new +room on to his summer palace in Connecticut, with a view, I think, to +the more convenient entertainment of his new descendant, and I think +that nothing but consideration for my fiscal incapacity withholds him +from building Cordelia a country house. By various expedients I have +swelled our sixty dollars a week to about seventy, which is a grateful +gain, and appreciable in spite of the demands of the Post-office, +the public transportation companies, the market-men, and the other +agencies of depletion, so corroding to the fiscal being; but even--let +me see, seven times fifty-two weeks--but even $3,640 is not an annual +income that seems equal to the maintenance of two residences. I guess +if we are to have a suburban home it must be an all-the-year-round +home for the present, and father-in-law’s place in Connecticut is not +just the right place for that. It is some miles from the station, and +involves maintenance of horsepower of some sort, and of course that +is unspeakable except as father-in-law provides it. Our lay would be +a villa about the length of a baseball ground from the station, or, +better still, something five cents from Wall Street by tunnel or +trolley, and you catch the car on the next corner. + +But think of the crowd on the car! + +No, I won’t think of it. It is the common lot hereabouts, and I should +be able to stand my share of it, which I would not get in full, anyhow, +because, being a lawyer, I can leave home a little later, and leave +for home usually a little earlier or later than the great body of the +workers for a living. + +My new responsibility has brought me a variety of new appreciations. +As a parent I find I have new sentiments about parents, and increased +esteem and regard for them as pillars that uphold life and direct it. +Beyond doubt, they are fine for upholding grandchildren. No doubt +there would be considerably more grandchildren in our world if there +were more grandparents who recognized their responsibilities and made +provision, as a matter of course, to meet them. But that does not +accord with the lively individualism of our generation. Not only are +we all desirous of independent life, but our parents prefer it for us. +Accordingly, when we get above the social plane in which independent +life for man and wife can be maintained for twenty dollars a week, +marriage is apt to come late. There are immense advantages about that +social plane in which twenty dollars a week is a complete living, and +the wife is cook and housemaid, wife, mother, and nurse all in one, +and the state provides education, and the doctor adjusts his charges +to your income, and all the man has to look after is food, clothes, +shelter, and pocket money! I hope the people who are born with a call +on that phase of existence appreciate their luck. To rise to the +twenty-dollar-a-week phase must be full of satisfactions, but to drop +to it is quite another matter. Whatever starting-point is dealt out to +us, it is from that point that we have to go on, and, whether we like +it or not, the point at which it behooves us to arrive is measured from +the point at which we start. + +Raising babies must have been very much simplified by the invention of +the kodak. There is no attitude, expression, sentiment, costume, or +absence of costume of Samuel that this handy little instrument has not +perpetuated. And inasmuch as Samuel varies and progresses from hour to +hour, acquiring personality, weight, and accomplishments, changing in +his features and developing new resemblances, the click of the kodak +is almost as frequent in our flat as the whir of the sewing-machine. +When infants had to run to the photographer’s for every new picture, I +don’t see how they got their natural rest. You know they sleep about +eighteen hours a day. One would think that with all that somnolence a +baby would be no more trouble than a dormouse, but Samuel is almost +a complete occupation. As an example of woman’s work he qualifies by +being never done. When he is asleep he is about to waken, and when +he is awake he is about to sleep, and either way he is either taking +nourishment or about to take it, or taking a bath, or changing his +clothes, or acquiring ideas, or taking first lessons in language. Since +I have known him I sympathize with the woman who thought it just as +easy to raise six children as one, because one took up all your time, +and six couldn’t do more. + +I never saw Cordelia so much amused with anything, and I admit to +being, myself, more diverted and entertained than I should have thought +possible. I had a puppy once that was a delight, so cheerful, so +prodigal of affectionate welcomes, and so incessant in his activities. +Mother has got him now. She appropriated him--or he her--and kept him, +she said, to remind her of me. But Samuel beats the puppy. He does not +get around as briskly yet as the puppy did, but he has the same delight +in very simple toys, and a similar liveliness of mind, and a like +capacity to be pleased. He is quite a lot like that puppy as he was +when I first got him. + +I didn’t need anything to increase my interest in getting home at +night. Cordelia attended to that. But Samuel has increased it. He is +awake when I get home, and, though he is usually getting ready to go to +bed, he always expresses a flattering satisfaction at meeting me again, +and has interesting details of progress to report, and smiles, and puts +out arms, and makes inarticulate noises, and sits in my lap, and makes +an inventory of my accessible properties. + +And, of course, there is a great deal to be told about him, including +the day’s report of what has been said of him by admiring friends, and +of the visits he has made and received, and, now and then, statistics +of his weight and progress in intelligence and activity. I think +Cordelia talks to Matilda Finn and her various visitors about him all +day, and then to me about him most of the evening. It is surprising +that so small a carcass should afford so much discourse. + +We have entered him at a suitable school, which is perhaps another +token of the incompleteness of my emancipation. You know that for some +years past some of the boarding-schools have been so highly esteemed, +for one reason or another, by unemancipated parents that they have +coveted the privilege of having their sons go to them, and, to insure +getting it, have entered their boys’ names at those schools as soon as +they were born. So I entered Samuel at the school where I went myself. +If that implied incompleteness of emancipation in me, I don’t care. +Samuel must have his chance. It is enough for _me_ to be emancipated. +Emancipation is a personal affair, like conversion, and no one ought to +try to force his emancipation on any one else, least of all a parent +on a child. Samuel may prefer the old order, and by the time he grows +up we may have the wherewithal to enable him to experiment with it if +there is any of it left. I don’t know that there will be, and, to be +sure, when did life offer a bigger or more uncertain speculation than +this that Samuel yawns and gapes in the face of? Perhaps I ought not to +call it uncertain, except as to times and means and details, but that’s +enough; and as to those the uncertainty is ample. The great task that +is doing now seems to be the improvement of the common lot. No doubt +that is always going on when civilization is in its forward moods, but +nowadays there is uncommon urgency about it, and remarkable command +and handling of the progressive forces, and apparent enfeeblement of +the powers of resistance. It is very attractive, very hopeful, but I +suppose no thoughtful person denies that it is possible to improve the +common lot so much and so fast as to force society into the hands of a +receiver. That is one possibility that little Samuel is up against, and +for that matter so are his parents; for the receivership may come, and +reorganization after it, before Samuel is old enough to sit into the +game. + +My! my! what will you see, little son? All the women voting, all +the trades-unions joined under a single head, armies abolished, the +immediate will of majorities the supreme and only law, detachable +marriage, detachable judges, detachable constitutions? + +You may, you may; and so may your parents, for that matter, and are +as likely to, perhaps, as you are. But stay with us, none the less. +There seems always to be good sport in this world for good sports--no +matter what may be going on. Folks lived, and liked to live, hereabouts +when the men walked between plow-handles with a rifle across their +shoulders, and they can stand considerable variations in public habits +without losing the appetite for life. An unchanging order is bound to +grow tiresome, always did, always will; though outside of China it is +hard to find one, and even there the old order is moving now. We must +try to make a good sport of Samuel; one who will be interested in life +no matter what, and, when new rules are making, have a say about them. + +I don’t see why I hang back so about votes for women. At times I think +I am not opposed. I think I don’t care. But I read all the opposed +discourse that has any sense in it with sympathy, and all the _pro_ +discourse in a critical spirit, rejoicing when it seems to me unsound. +It is true enough that there is no compelling reason why I should want +votes for women. _My_ proprietors don’t want them. Mother sniffs at +them. Cordelia is observant, with very much such an instinctive leaning +toward the _antis_ as I have. Why should I excite myself about “equal +suffrage” when my ladies like things better as they are? Aren’t mother +and Cordelia representative women? A great deal more so, I think, than +most of the suffragists. The mass of women hereabouts don’t seem to +be concerned about voting. The suffragists in agitating to make them +concerned seem to be trying to create an artificial want. They go about +to persuade women that they are oppressed, and are rated politically +with insane persons, criminals, and aliens. + +Now, what is all that? Is it progress, or is it mischief? Is it based +on a mistaken conception of women’s job, or is it a natural detail of +the redistribution of powers and privileges that appears to be going +on? Am I opposed because I am a pig and a stand-patter and an old fogy? +Are votes worth so much fuss, anyhow, and is it going to make any vital +difference whether American women have them or not? + +I don’t know that it is. The women and the men are so inextricably +bound together that it is inconceivable that with woman suffrage the +vote should divide in proportions materially different from what +happens now. But that’s not a reason for letting suffrage come. I +do think that at present men and women do not long work together on +the same level at the same tasks. Where women come in either they +work under the direction of men or the men go out. The departments +of life in which they rule--and there are plenty of them--are those +in which men do not compete. I don’t think they can compete with men +as voters or as organizers and directors of political government. If +the suffragists get their votes for women, they will get an enlarged +electorate controlled by men as now. And why should it be expected that +the controlling men in that case will be better than they are now? Are +the mass of women wiser, more honest, and better judges of men than the +mass of men? I don’t think so. I think men and women are just mates. +There seems to be a woman to match every man, but different from him, +and a man to match almost every woman. It is not sensible to compare a +superior woman with an ordinary or inferior man, and point out that she +is fitter to vote than he is. Of course she is, but that does not touch +the real question, which is whether government will be better conducted +with votes for all women than it is now. + +Those agitators talk about the “injustice” of depriving women of the +ballot. They might as well talk of the injustice of the refusal of +water to run uphill. There’s no injustice about it. It is nature. If it +can be bettered, all right. Water will run uphill if there is enough +pressure behind it. But if injustice has been done woman about her +vote, it was done when she was born female and not male, and the appeal +from that lies to the higher court. + +Was there any done? Take it by and large, is it a misfortune to born +a girl and not a boy? That may happen to any of us any time we happen +to be born. It’s a toss-up. It’s not the slightest credit to us to be +born male, and certainly it should not be the slightest discredit to us +to be born female; but according as we are born male or female we are +born to different duties. If political government is one of the male +duties, civilization will not get ahead by having men loosen their +hold on it. For my part I suppose that down in the intricacies of my +composition I have an instinctive conviction, or hunch, that political +government is a male attribute, and that out of that comes my objection +to abdicate, or even dilute, my share of it. Instinctive convictions +have great weight in these matters, though the surface arguments they +put out may be inadequate or mistaken, as the anti-suffrage arguments +are so apt to be. The suffragist expounders demolish them, and think +that they have accomplished something; but, alas! the demolition of +puerile arguments leaves the question just where it was, with the pith +of it still untouched. Still I think the agitation does good, bothering +people like me, and making us think; asking us, What does belong to +women, then, if not votes? How else are you going to give them equal +life? What does justice demand for them if not the suffrage? + +If the males since the beginning of time have overestimated their +importance and erred in regarding themselves as specialists in +government, then it is only a matter of time when we shall be disabused +of that error and shaken down into our rightful places. But if +government--meaning political government rather than domestic--really +prospers better in the long run in the hands of males, in their hands +it is likely to stay--the substance of it certainly, however that +shadow we call a vote may flutter off, and wherever it may alight. + +Nothing happens without a cause. If the men are to be abased, doubtless +it will be for their abundant sins. If they will not work as men +should, they will lose their jobs. If they will not govern as men +should, they will be governed. History is a record of the strong races +subduing the weak, and the wise the foolish, to the end that strength +and wisdom shall prevail in human affairs. In these days of Monroe +doctrines and alliances and arbitration treaties those harsh processes +seem to have been superseded. Is this invasion by women of the province +of men a new expedient of Nature to preserve the competition that is +essential to human progress? + +We cannot beat Nature. She is obdurate, resourceful, impossible to +fool, with a trick to meet every trick that is offered her. She seems +determined that man shall come to something and plays man against +man to make him better himself, and is probably equal, if occasion +demands it, to play one half of him against the other. For of course +that is what woman is--the other half of man. There cannot be a real +competition between the two halves, for they are inseparably joined +and have to pull each other along. But for all that, they are distinct +individuals, and one in a given period may make faster progress than +the other, with a good deal of disturbance of relations and equities +and ideas. What man gets, woman gets; what woman gets, man gets. When +woman gets education, liberty, opportunity, protection, the whole race +gets those benefits. + +Then shall we say that when woman gets the vote the race is that much +ahead? It may be, but to me it has not been so revealed up to these +presents. Who gave man strength gave him dominion. If he loses dominion +it will be because he has either misused his strength or lost it. + +Samuel has not lost his. He is truly a great power. As I have said, +he is almost a complete occupation for his mother, and a profitable, +satisfying occupation, too. I confess to fears in time past that +girls of Cordelia’s sort did not have enough to do to bring them their +proper growth and keep them happy. If they didn’t go to college and +didn’t marry as soon as they got out of school, they seemed to drift +into a lot of occupations that looked rather futile, and like a mere +provision for killing time. They played around, they visited, they +dabbled in anything that came handy--dances, charities, house-parties, +art, music, extra improvements for the mind--anything that could be +cast into a void of time which should have ached, and doubtless did. It +used to make me sorry for the girls because it seemed so hard for them +to buckle down to anything remunerative and continuous and really get +ahead in it. If they did that, they forfeited too many opportunities of +the leisure class, to which it seems to be intended that the daughters +of the well-to-do, from nineteen to about twenty-three, shall belong. +If they went to college, that solved the problem for those years, but +it came back at them as soon as they came out. If they were satisfied +with their indefinite employments it was bad, and if they were not it +was also bad. So I used to feel sorry for the girls because their +job looked to me so vague, and their employments so fragmentary and +unpromising. + +I dare say I was wrong, and that the girls were working more hours +at their proper vocation than I had the wit to recognize. I see it +more clearly now; that there are fruits that ripen best in the sun, +and should not be hurried in the process; that Cordelia did not +really waste those years in which she waited for me to get started +as a wage-earner, but learned in them a kind of patience and useful +domestication, besides other accomplishments that make her better to +live with now. + +Major Brace has paid us the compliment to look in and inspect Samuel. +He expressed himself as pleased with him, and was very gratifying in +the warmth of his congratulations to Cordelia and me. Speaking as +a father of almost complete experience, he told me of the special +enthusiasm he felt for a child that had never run up a dentist’s bill. +Samuel hasn’t. There is little or nothing about him as yet that would +interest a dentist; but Cordelia, whose forefinger is a good deal in +his mouth, says there may be any minute. + +I must ask mother if that is so. No doubt Cordelia’s enthusiasm is +liable to mislead her. + +I believe Cordelia dislikes to spend money. I find her perpetually +weighing something that might be had against its price, and deciding +not to have it. Unless the purchasable object is indispensable or +very positively desirable--like a kodak to snap at Samuel--the money +looks better to her. That’s remarkable, isn’t it? People differ in +temperament as well as in training about that, inheriting tighter or +looser fists, I suppose, according to the forebear they individually +trace back to. To me, now, things that I want always look better than +what money I have. It makes me unhappy to spend _much_ more than I +have, but I enjoy very much spending what I have got. I never have any +money ahead, unless you can see savings in life insurance, to which I +make some inadequate pretense. Maybe that is a defect in my character, +though accumulation on seventy dollars a week has its reluctances when +you have a wife and baby and a cook and flat and all that. Still, if +I had no elders to fall back on I’d have to pinch some salvage out of +every dollar. + +But Cordelia is naturally more retentive than I am. It is remarkable +how little she cares, relatively, for things. She has a good many +things, and has always been used to them. She likes them, but with an +interest that is altogether secondary, preferring power, independence, +and tranquillity of mind to objects of convenience or embellishment, +and to almost everything else except health and an easy conscience. She +has a private fortune--I don’t know that I have mentioned that--not +large, but yielding sufficient income to buy her clothes. All girls +ought to have private fortunes. Small ones will do: do better, perhaps, +than larger ones, for I don’t suppose it is quite ideal to be swamped +by your wife’s money. Cordelia gets a great deal of comfort out of +hers, but I see her basis of expenditure is different from mine. Mine +is adjusted to what I have; hers to what, on due reflection, she would +rather have than money. On that basis she spends not only her own +money, but mine. I dare say she will be a rich woman some day, and, +I hope, still married to me; so there is a chance that, with other +good luck, I may gather some surplus too. I believe she dislikes to +shop; indeed, I have heard her say so. There is a streak of Scotch in +the Frenches, and I dare say it happened her way. My! my! What luck! +When you think of the women--and men too, but especially women--whose +highest happiness is to buy things and lug them home, it seems a +marvelous dispensation that I should have acquired a companion of so +opposite a sort. To be sure, no girl that was infatuated with the joys +of purchase would have thought twice of me; and yet, who can tell, +for I suppose there are girls who have neither self-restraint nor +self-denial about anything, and are liable to think they must have +something that really would not suit them at all? I have always thought +that Rosamond Viney in _Middlemarch_ was the most fatal character in +literature. What must it be to be money-grubber for a woman like that, +with an expensive appreciation of the material side of life and no +conception of the rest of it! Stars above! how much better it is to be +lucky than wise, especially in youth, when, as Major Brace assures me, +none of us know anything. There was Solomon, who wrote the Proverbs, +and Ben Franklin, who wrote Poor Richard; both able to make shrewd +discourse by the ream, and neither of them fortunate on the domestic +side. Probably it does not accord with the economy of nature that wise +men should have wise wives; certainly if there is a scheme of things +that is worthy of respect, it would not have fitted into it for me to +have a foolish one. + + + + +V + +A CONTRIBUTION FROM MAJOR BRACE + + +I remark the disposition of contemporary American families to regulate +their church-going by the inclination of the ladies. I suppose it will +soon happen that Cordelia and I will go to church when Cordelia feels +it to be desirable, and that when she stays at home it will look more +profitable to me to stay at home with her. Although that means that we +will go pretty regularly, it is not quite as it should be, any more +than that I should go without my dinner when she has a failure of the +appetite. But it seems apt to be so with contemporary Protestant people +who get married. Even if the male has a previous habit of church-going, +and convictions or preferences in favor of it, the woman is apt to +be captain in that particular, and to assume command of the family +conscience. That is an item in the contemporary slump of the male in +the business of directing the course of life. He tries to keep a hand +of his own on politics, but in the concerns of religion easily falls +into the practice of looking to the woman to make his decisions and +remind him of his practices. Which is feeble of him, for, as between +religion and politics, religion is decidedly the more important, for it +shapes and inspires and regulates the whole of life, politics included, +whereas politics is no more than a detail. + +When I think of women and their needs and powers and rights, and +their office in life--as I do a great deal nowadays, with Cordelia to +observe and those suffragists prodding at the subject all the time--I +have bursts of momentary conviction to the effect that if women go +on assimilating four-fifths of the available religion and leaving +nine-tenths of the alcohol and nearly all the tobacco to the men, they +will govern our world before we know it. The Turks understand better. +The male Turks make a specialty of piety, go without rum, and share +tobacco liberally with their women; so to be a male Turk is still a +relatively powerful condition, though I understand the Turkish ladies +are restless nowadays, in spite of sweetmeats and cigarettes, and are +covetous of education, and suspect that there should be more coming to +them than they are getting. + +Cordelia has intimated that that observation of mine about men having +strength, and therefore dominion, is something of a bluff. She is too +polite to contradict it, but not too polite to stir me to further +reflections about it. Are men stronger? Have they dominion? + +There is no doubt that the average man we see about can hit harder +than the average woman. He can also run faster and make better time +up a tree, so that he seems to have the best of it, physically, both +in offense and escape. If you come to translate these powers into +practical contemporary factors he can usually earn more money at +present than she can, and is much less vulnerable in the reputation. It +may be argued that this superiority in male abilities is not the work +of nature at all, but a consequence of male malignancy and oppression, +and that if woman had a fair show to get her due development she could +stand up to man when he put up his hooks, and run him down when he ran +away. So Olive Schreiner seems to feel about it. Man’s power to make +more money than woman is challenged as an injustice. Perhaps it is an +injustice in many cases. Perhaps our industrial system is not adjusted +yet to women’s undomestic work in schools and factories and offices, +and maybe the payroll will be revised in time in women’s favor. Still +I think man’s superior money-making powers are of a piece with his +power to hit harder and run faster. Money-getting seems to be more in +the line of his natural job than of hers. He is less distracted from +it by other leanings than she is. I guess he will always be the head +money-getter, though very likely her claim on what he gets may come to +rest even more on a basis of natural right than it does at present. +It is a very much respected claim as it is, and supported by law and +sentiment. + +Man is superior in some kinds of bodily strength, and apparently in +some kinds of mental strength, too, but does it give him dominion? +Some, I think. It seems to give him a good deal of dominion among +savages, and less and less as civilization increases. Probably it would +give him more if he were not inferior in some of the kinds of strength, +and in some other respects that we are not used to classify as +strength, but which offset it. There are war-powers and peace-powers. +Admitting, in spite of Kipling’s she-bear poem, that man’s war-powers +beat woman’s, how about peace-powers? Of course they are enormous. If +she uses them for offense, she can spoil the man’s cake at any time. +There is no living without women, and to be assigned to one of them +and have her contrive that there shall be no living with her makes a +serious dilemma. I have discussed this matter with our old friend Major +Brace, and he has illuminated it with such wisdom as his great age (as +he says) has enabled him to supply. “We can’t do anything, Peregrine,” +he said, “but try our utmost [of course he really said damnedest] to +make them happy, and hope that they will be good.” He told me a story +about a house-painter he once knew in the country who had some ferrets. +“I noticed when looking at the ferrets,” the Major said, “that he had a +padlock on the place where he kept them, and he let me know, somehow, +that he carried the key in his pocket and let nobody but himself +meddle with them. I took note of that, because it seemed to me that +the ferrets being part of the domestic establishment, the natural way +would have been to leave the key in the house when he was away and +intrust the ferrets to his wife. But that was not his way, and I set +him down in my mind as a believer in male dominion and an upholder of +the authority of the head of the house. And, accordingly, when I heard +about a year later that his wife had eloped with the butcher I wasn’t +at all surprised. No doubt he had felt about her as he had about the +ferrets--that she was his property. I heard that he was extremely put +out when she ran away, and took it so much to heart that he left the +village. I suppose he didn’t know any better, though of course it +is possible that the woman was a fool and couldn’t be trusted. Her +going off with the butcher implies a certain carelessness, though not +necessarily a lack of intelligence. + +“You see, Peregrine, one measure of the liberty of women is the +intelligence of man. And it works the other way round, too. A man who +is intelligent enough to prefer a free woman for his companion will +plan and take thought to have one; and a woman who is clever enough +to prefer a free man will take thought to keep her man free and still +keep him. That’s what all decent people do nowadays who are passably +wise, and I suppose it is what such people have been doing, not +always, perhaps, but easily since the time of Adam. And I dare say the +better-grade animals do the like.” + +I asked the Major if he thought Kipling was right about the she-bear +and the superior offensiveness of females. He said he thought there +was a good deal of meat in Kipling’s verses, and that few intelligent +men came to be half a century old without having had to take thought +of the intensity of the female disposition. “Somehow, Peregrine,” said +he, “they seem to be a little nearer nature than we are. The primitive +creature seems to survive in them a little more perceptibly than it +does in us. And it is a very valuable survival--very valuable--and +fit to receive the most respectful consideration, because, as Kipling +intimates, it is a factor in the continuation of the race. When a man +has a wise wife who loves him, as you and I have, Peregrine, it is his +business to get the benefit of everything she has. All her strength as +well as his is needed in their common business. If he troubles her +with his limitations, checks her initiative, and ignores her dissent, +it is as bad for the common interest as when she does the like to him. +He should attend to her risings-up and her sittings-down, and when at +times the primitive creature rises up in her, his best procedure often +is neither to run nor to try to rule the storm, but to sit down in the +sand, wrap his burnoose around his head, and keep his face attentively +to leeward until the gale blows out and calm re-eventuates. Then, +in due time, she will dig him out again, if necessary, and he will +have much less to unsay and repent of than if he had talked back. And +usually, if he has been attentive, he will have learned something that +it is valuable to know. + +“Lord love us,” went on the Major, “I hate subdued wives. I hate +subdued husbands also, but subdued wives worse, if possible, because +what subdues a wife is usually such an offensive combination of egotism +and stupidity. And yet I know quite able men who bully their wives and +have checked their wives’ development and diminished their abilities by +doing so. It is a shocking waste, although it is to admire the wives +who bear it. That is apt to be the best thing they can do, under the +circumstances. You see, in marriage that suggestion of Scripture about +cutting off the right hand that offends has only limited application. +Man or woman of us, when we have stood up in church and acquired a +right hand of the opposite gender, we have need to go mighty slow about +casting it from us. To read the divorce statistics, and about the +growth of that practice in this country in the last twenty years, you’d +think divorce was on the way to become a universal habit. But I guess +it won’t. I guess when the ratio has reached a point where it provides +duly for the irresponsible, intemperate, light-minded, and unfortunate, +the increase will stop, and maybe, if civilization improves, the +figures will begin to run the other way. That may seem optimistic, but +I can’t think that woman’s extraordinary gift for living with man, and +man’s surprising talent for getting along with woman, are going to +perish or be wasted.” + + * * * * * + +My coevals that I meet are still talking about football; not +exclusively, of course, but with perseverance and of a lively +appearance of interest. Talking about it has some obvious advantages +over playing it, but I never learned to be really expert in either. +Cordelia and I saved quantities of money last fall staying away from +football games. Also quite a lot in staying away from the great final +series in professional baseball. Also time and strength on both of +these items. If our circumstances had been four or five times as easy +and Samuel could have spared us, we would have enriched our experience +of contemporary life by taking in several of these contests. As studies +in crowdology they are mighty good and leave permanent impressions +behind them. And they are interesting socially and anthropologically. +And sometimes they are pretty good as sport--the football games better, +I think, than before the rules were changed. But as it was, it was a +very easy economy for us. Cordelia said she had been to football games +and didn’t believe there were any important new thrills left in them +for her; and we read a lot about them in the papers and were content, +though I don’t think football really makes first-class newspaper +reading. I can’t follow the ball in type even as well as from the +seats, and I only get the score and the spectacular features. The +worst of it is I cannot care inordinately who wins. Of course, the +players do. They ought to. And so should the undergraduates and persons +just emerged from that condition. But I don’t understand why such +large masses of adult people contrive to care so much--if they really +do--whether Harvard beats Yale, or either of them beats Princeton, or +whether the Army or the Navy wins. + +I am getting deplorably careless in my feelings in this great subject. +To be sure, when there is a big game I want to know how it has gone, +and buy the latest evening paper and take it home and assimilate, and +discuss a little, its disclosures about what the score was and why it +was so. But however it turns out it doesn’t affect my appetite for +dinner, nor my interest in food, and I can’t talk about it more than +half an hour. And when the Sunday paper comes with all the details I +am apt to get interested in other news and skip the football stories +altogether, or until late at night. + +Really, I am ashamed. It comes, no doubt, with increase of years and +the pressure of responsibilities and concern about the more vital +details of human existence. Cordelia reviles me and says I am getting +older than my years. Maybe I am, mentally, though she is just about +as much interested in football as I am, and no more. I suppose sport +naturally falls into a secondary place in the thoughts of people +who have a living to make and rent to pay and a child to raise. If +everybody was like us, sport might languish, and that would be a pity. +I’m glad they’re not. The Pharisee was not so far out, perhaps, in +thanking God he was not like other men. The trouble was, he did not +go on and thank God that other men were not like him. There needs to +be great variety in the world if all the jobs are to get attention. +I’m thankful that the prosperity of football does not depend on me, +and that I can be bored by it without detriment to the great cause of +sport, because, I suppose, it really is a great cause, and related to +the perpetuation of vigor and virility in men. + + * * * * * + +I have been thinking about celibates. There is something to be said for +persons to whom celibacy comes natural. To most persons it does not +come natural. It never did to me, for instance. I hate it when it is +forced, and object with what may be a Protestant detestation to vows +that bind people to it; but there are marvelously useful people in the +ranks of the unmarried. + +Brookfield, a contemporary whose line is education, has been telling +me a story about a rich man, named Thompson, who has got interested in +the improvement of mankind. Somebody said the other day that the men +who get rich are those who are able to get more out of other people +than other people get out of them. That is a very plausible definition +and good as far as it goes, but the story I heard made me realize that +it doesn’t cover all the ground, and that many rich men are creators +of wealth. This Thompson that I heard of had extraordinary brains for +business. He could think to the bottom of propositions, and think out +all their details and perceive whether they could be made profitable +and how. He got at business almost as young as Alexander Hamilton, for +his parents, who were good people, both died when he was fifteen and +left him, as you might say, with his hat on, going out to look for +means of support. He went to a big town and got a job with a good +concern. At the end of three years he was ill, probably from overwork. +His employer told him to go away and stay two months and get rested. +He went, and stayed six weeks, and came back with the biggest bunch of +orders that the firm had ever had. His employer saw then that he was +incorrigible, and pretty soon he took him into partnership. + +Now there comes another likeness to Hamilton. The boy wanted to know +more, and determined that when he had got money enough he would quit +work and go off and study. He calculated that he would have a million +dollars by the time he was twenty-six, and he thought that would do. +He actually did get his million and something to spare at twenty-six +(and this is not a newspaper story, either; Brookfield told it to me), +and actually did pull out and go off to Europe and spent three years +in France and Germany improving his mind. Now comes in his gift of +celibacy, in which he was quite different from Hamilton--who never +had any discernible talent that way--and from me. Instead of getting +married and raising a family, and having a flower-garden and horses +and cows--this being before they had invented automobiles--and enjoying +life, he did not get married at all. I don’t know why not. Maybe he +didn’t know how and was too old to learn; maybe somebody else persuaded +the girl that he aspired to persuade. At any rate, he didn’t marry, +but came home and made lots more money, and finally retired from +active business and set his wits to see what he could do to make the +world better. Now he lives on twelve or fifteen thousand a year, and +spends most of his strength and his surplus income and more or less +of his principal chiefly on one considerable enterprise that combines +philanthropy and education. But he is dragged back into business now +and then, Brookfield told me, when a commercial rescue job offers, that +looks so difficult that nobody else will touch it. + +Of course, celibacy has no particular bearing on Thompson’s usefulness +except that he was qualified to get along with it, and it left him +entirely free to spend himself in trying to better the general +conditions of life. It is not news that there are always some mighty +useful bachelors about. Still less is it news that there are many +indispensable spinsters. I suppose the sentiment that everybody must +get married and have four children has got some open seams in it; but a +life is the thing that folks like best to leave in the world, and with +reason, for, on the whole, a life, if it is good enough, lasts the best +of anything, and leaves the most imperishable effects. + +It is too soon yet to say if my son Samuel is going to leave an +imperishable effect in the world, but he is doing well, and the more +perishable effects have already been found to be so little suited to +him that one of his grandmothers has given him a modern rag-doll--an +elegant creation that comes from a shop--and the other a teddy-bear. +Teddy-bears are scarcer in the toy shops than they were, because the +current of politics has rolled on, but they can still be had and may +yet become more plentiful. Samuel lives a care-free life. In that +respect he is an example and encouragement to us all. He assumes no +responsibility about anything, takes his nourishment without turning +a hair or sweating so much as one bead, and shows indifference to the +primal curse. It is cheering and strengthening to have such a spirit in +the family. + +Ben Bowling, who came home with me to dinner the other night, has some +of Samuel’s quality. Ben likes life and does not care what happens. I +threatened him with universal prohibition and the total disappearance +of potable grog from Christendom. He said it would never happen so, +but if it did he didn’t care. He drank too much, anyhow, and if there +was nothing to drink it would be good for his health and save him lots +of money. I threatened him with woman suffrage. He refused even to +object; said checkers was still checkers after all the pieces had got +into the king-row, and as good a game as ever, though with differences +of detail. I threatened him with stagnation of all industrial activity +as the result of enforcing the Sherman law. He didn’t care; said he +worked too hard, anyway, and needed a rest; could eat very simple food +at a pinch; was too fat; was threatened with an unsuitable entanglement +of the affections, and might escape the bag if the times were hard +enough. Then we all talked about the Sherman law. I see in the papers +that the consumption of alcoholic drinks in the United States last year +was the greatest on record. No wonder, when you think how much the +Sherman law has been talked over: a dry subject on which you get no +further and sink into despondency unless buoyed up. It is funny to see +the sagacity of the country flunked, apparently, by that problem. What +Ben and I agree on is so, and we agreed that the Sherman law, grinding +out prosecutions and disorganizing business because public opinion +could not settle on any plan to improve or amend it, was not unlike +the silver-purchase law that kept loading silver into the Treasury and +scaring off gold until Cleveland finally got it repealed. We did not +agree that the Sherman law ought to be repealed, but did agree that it +might elect the next President. Also that neither party was satisfied +with any one who was running for nomination, though that is perhaps +not an unusual condition when nomination is still five or six months +off. But Ben did not care. He was attentive, interested, and amused, +but hoped to stay aboard, no matter what the weather was, and help in +navigation if his services were required. He and Samuel are reassuring. + +Another thing I find reassuring is the glimpses I get now and then of +men who are at work providing government for the country; especially +unadvertised men whom few people ever hear of, who hold no office +and aspire to none; whose pictures are never in the papers, nor +their names in the reporter’s books or the mouths of the multitude. +I heard the other day about one such person (Brookfield told me), a +man of sufficient fortune--a million, I dare say--not a celibate like +Thompson, but married and with a few children; a shrewd, experienced, +thoughtful man, whose interest in life is and always has been politics, +to handle the machinery of it and get the best results compatible +with the material offered to pass laws and fill the offices, and the +prejudices and mental disabilities of the voters. “I have known that +man,” Brookfield said, “for eighteen years, and watched him play +politics all that time; plan and direct; weigh men and choose between +them; use their talents and abilities when they had them: put them in +places where they belonged when he could; put in the next-best man +when he couldn’t. He always played fair; always wanted the best man, +the best law, and the best principle that he could see, and never +wanted anything for himself except the fun of playing the game. You +couldn’t drive him into office. He never tried to make a penny out of +legislation. The less he was seen and heard of the better he liked +it, but he recognized politics as the great man’s game, and he liked +to play it. No doubt the sense of power was pleasant to him, but his +use of power was entirely conscientious, and the source of his power +was never money, but the confidence that men had in his sagacity and +his unselfishness. Back in him somewhere there was, of course, a sense +of duty and a belief in certain principles of government, and a sort +of unconscious consecration to the desire to see our experiment in +government go well and to see the country prosper. But the immediate +interest that kept his mind busy was just a delight in guiding the +political affairs of men.” + +I dare say Brookfield’s man is an exceptional political boss; but I +dare say, also, that in so far as we have, or ever have had, or will +have, decent government, we owe it to somebody who has had a call to +provide it for us, and has had the talents necessary to make his call +effective. The rare thing about Brookfield’s man, as he described him, +was his self-effacement and superiority to vanity. He loved to play +the game, but not only never thought of the gate money, but never cared +to be a grandstand player. To do the job and do it well brought him +the joy of a true artist in his art. As I said, I have felt encouraged +about the future of politics in this country since I heard about him. +If he had been a saint I wouldn’t have been so much encouraged, but +Brookfield represented him as a mere human being, like any of us, +looking about for things that interested his mind and made life taste +good, and finding them supremely in politics. It is an encouragement +to find that our politics is so good a game that folks with money and +brains enough to experiment with pleasures will play at it purely for +their inward satisfaction, and without attention even to the applause. +Of course, men of that temperament and that high degree of sagacity and +self-control are rare, but we have our share of men with an insight +into cause and effect, and an understanding of the human mind both in +the individual and in the crowd, and with ability to hear what is going +on when they put their ears to the ground, and with a lively interest +in human affairs that must surely draw them into politics whenever +they see that politics is a paramount interest. We have no picturesque +Dukes of Devonshire drudging dutifully at government without vanity +or political ambition, as fathers drudge for their families, and as +Washington, maybe, drudged for us, but I believe we have a native +product of our own that does like work, and quite as often with +intelligence, because the work calls to them and because they not +only feel the responsibilities of civilization, but find delight in +undertaking them. + +And why not, to be sure! What else is there in life that is so fruitful +in recompenses as a cheerful undertaking of the responsibilities of +civilization? Mine are represented mainly, as yet, by Cordelia and +Samuel, but I mean to undertake lots more. I see quantities of them +about waiting to be undertaken. So does Cordelia, who is one of the +most active and responsible of responsibilities, and, being less tied +up to wage-earning than I am, gives more attention to putting props +under civilization. + + + + +VI + +POLITICS + + +My calling does not seem nowadays to inspire respect. Folks hoot at +lawyers, declaring with much reiteration that law has ceased to be a +profession and become a business. They vary that by pointing out that +all the best talent in it is bought up day by day by the corporations +and the rich. Even the judges--look at them! The current disposition +is, when you don’t like a decision of a court, to take the judge’s +number and write to the management to have him fired. It is to laugh at +decisions and the feeling about them. The other day the United States +Supreme Court decided something thus and so by four to three. Justices +1, 3, and 5 protested vigorously. Personally I sustained the dissenting +opinion, and thought the decision left the law in a bad condition. +That could be cured by Congress, which is perhaps the best way, but +the popular method would be to dock Justices 2, 4, 6, and 7 a month’s +pay, and try the case again with a full court. That’s how folks seem to +feel, and perhaps some of them would act on their feelings. + +_Some_ of them! Stars above! What some of us would do is past guessing. +What some of us are thought capable of doing quite outruns belief, +but that is because the air is charged with politics and with plans +and specifications for making over the world, and with a perceptible +leaning, as I have intimated, toward beginning with the legal +profession. + +Oh, well, let ’em! I’m not afraid. A man who can make a living by +law can make a living at something else if necessary. It is the +understanding when they put young fellows to learn the law that they +will be qualified, more or less, if they learn it, not only to be +lawyers, but to be bankers, brokers, railroad officers, editors, +milliners, grocers, contractors, and nurses-general to ailing +industries, and undertakers. Accordingly they usually appoint lawyers +to receiverships, and usually the appointees go ahead and bury the +patient. No doubt it is a natural consequence of this theory that +lawyers shall know and do everybody’s business that there is this +prevalence of impressions that everybody ought to be able to beat the +lawyers at law. Of course there ought to be reciprocity in omniscience. +Of course the lawyer trade can be overdone, but there’s more to it +than these recall people think. I guess it will last my time. It’s the +science of keeping order in the world. I admit that it needs assistance +from cops and sometimes from soldiers, and cannon and warships, and +that too much of the time it keeps a sort of crystallized disorder that +has to be smashed occasionally and rearranged. But when it comes to +rearrangement, back they come to the lawyers, professors of the science +of keeping order in the world. + +It is interesting how people divide in politics. All the decent people +seem to be after the same thing, more or less, but differ according to +knowledge, temperament, circumstances, and affiliations as to methods +of getting it. And the differences last so wonderfully! There’s free +trade and protection, or high and low protection--we’ve been discussing +those matters in this country voluminously and insistently for from +fifty to a hundred years, and by far the most of us don’t know now +precisely where we stand. We are, reasonably enough, for as much +improvement as will do us good, and not for any more than is helpful +at the price. But tariff-improvement isn’t to be had in quarter-yard +lengths. Congress makes a rough effort to please customers, and when it +has finished it is take it or leave it, and the customers usually go +off grumbling. + +And the other things that people want--restraint of corporations, +restraint of labor-unions, restraint of political bosses, changes in +the machinery of politics, hand-made government by the people, single +taxes, income taxes, minimum wages, municipal ownership of public +utilities, votes for women--my gracious--there’s a new remedy every day. + +Not but that many of them are good and some of them timely. The world +seems to be progressive nowadays, and I suppose its progress is upward, +and not to the bow-wows. But it is to wonder about every proposed +change whether it is really improvement or merely change, and about +every novelty that people clamor for whether their true need is not +something else--a change in themselves, rather than any practicable +change in the regulations of life. For one need not be very old to +observe that different people make out very differently in the same +circumstances, and that folks affect circumstances much more than +circumstances affect folks. Yet circumstances do affect folks very +much, crush them sometimes, and stunt or warp them often; and certainly +there is an obligation in the folks who have it in them to affect +circumstances to improve them for the benefit of all hands, and provide +reasonable access to opportunity. + +Do I get in with the cart-tail orators this campaign? Why not, to be +sure? Politics has been an early crop this year, sprouting hard in +March, and working overtime ever since, with an enormous profusion of +discourse and a vast expenditure of time and money in a general public +effort to get somewhere. But that’s all right. The crop is going to be +worth the labor. This is really the first time the political school has +been run wide open since Bryan’s first campaign, and that was sixteen +years ago, a period that carries me clear back to Eton collars. Alas +for me! I suppose I’m a sort of conservative. They ought to examine the +blood and find out where people belong, and save us some of our mental +struggles to discover it by cerebral analysis. I don’t know what’s in +my blood, but when people are for scuttling the ship so as to get the +boats out easier I always seem to be for some other plan. Now and then +it’s necessary to scuttle. There was the everlasting French Revolution, +where they blew up their ship, and in the long run made a good thing +out of it. But that was an exceptionally rotten ship, and they had +things fixed aboard so that the crew were too successfully separated +from the grub--a feat that a large share of human ability seems always +at work to accomplish, and which, when it is successfully pulled off, +achieves a very penetrating and comprehensive quality of ruin. Perhaps +it is the conservative molecules in my blood that makes me as much +adverse to this detachment of the crew from the grub as I am to blowing +up the ship. No true friend of navigation wants either of them. + +I guess it’s more fun to be a meat-ax radical than a conservative. +The ax-handle is a simple implement, and probably blisters the hands +less than this eternal pulling on the sheets and throwing the wheel +over. But we don’t really choose our line in politics. We take the +steer we get from our inside, and which comes down to us, no doubt, +from our forebears, along with the tendency to fat or lean, and +variations in the adherence of hairs to our scalps. I dare say we +are not as grateful as we should be to other persons whose molecular +inheritance is different from ours for going their way and following +their hereditary propensities, so that we can better and more helpfully +follow ours. If we all got the same steer I dare say the ship would +run aground. To avoid that there comes this variety of propensity, and +also the great principle of reaction on inherited inclinations, which +has always raised up from time to time such valuable and efficient +revolutionaries. The pinch for the natural conservatives comes at +times when conservatism has outrun its license and crystallized into a +do-nothingness which is more dangerous than radicalism. Then the real +conservatives like me, who always want to let things down easy, have to +flop, and it is always a very nice matter to know just when to do it +and what to flop to. + +This is a pretty floppy year, no doubt about it. I’d give a penny to +know whose cart-tail, if any, I should aspire to mount. Great din at +this writing, and a handsome field of candidates, with leaders whom +we have been contemplating for months, and putting on the scales and +pulling off, and whose points we have reckoned and re-reckoned. And as +it comes to the choice, how prevalent is dubiety of mind as to whether +we shall get candidates for whom we want to vote! Was there ever such +a lot of men put up for office? I read the papers, all varieties of +them, and have been studying candidates hard now for three or four +months, and begin to wonder how so many incompetent or unprincipled +citizens have contrived to cheat the gallows and avoid all places of +detention all these years. Not one of them has so much as been to +jail as yet. I dare say they would pass even now as half-way decent +men if they were not candidates. Perhaps we are too particular. I +notice that a large proportion of the important work in the world has +been done by pretty bad men: men, some of them, who would have been +insufferable if they had not been indispensable. When things are in +a bad-enough hole, the indispensable man has to be taken whether he +is insufferable or not. But luckily we’re not up against it so hard +as that. Nobody seems indispensable this year. Our world seems to me +less tippy nowadays, blowing as it is at all its blow-holes, than it +did six or seven years ago, when stocks were kiting and being kited, +and everybody was consolidating, and every active person who wasn’t a +syndicate or an underwriter of something was asking the way to those +fashionable employments. We have blown off a lot of steam since then, +and our safety-valves are all working pretty well; and, though they’re +noisy, to me they don’t look dangerous. We must be patient with the +candidates, and look sometimes on their bright sides. When we regard +them all with discontent, it is too much like that common saying, “Why +do women marry such men?” They marry the best in sight, and that’s all +we can do about candidates. But, by George! the light that beats upon a +throne is mere moonshine to the light that beats upon a candidate. + +We shall see about the candidates, but just what we shall see beats me. + + + + +VII + +WE DINE OUT AND DISCUSS EDUCATION + + +We want to ask people to dinner--at least _I_ do--and do ask a good +many, first and last, in spite of restricted space and our other +restrictions. About four besides ourselves is our limit, and that’s +a dinner-party. More often I bring home a man, or a married pair of +our generation come in and bring new topics and points of view, and +sometimes news, into our discourse. People seem willing enough to come +to dinner if you have something to eat in the house and something to +say. I sometimes wish we had more dinner-parties, but the doctrine of +compensation comes in on that, for, I suppose, if we were rich enough +to have people to dinner whenever we wanted, we would have to dine +out the rest of the time, and the upshot of it would be that we would +never have time to read up anything really good to say. But we do dine +out considerably as it is, not only with our cherished relatives who +regale us when occasion offers (and also when it doesn’t) with meat, +drink, and affection, but also with our friends, both those who live +somewhat near our economic plane and those who move and have beings in +planes much more exalted and profuse. + +For example, we dine sometimes with Major and Mrs. Brace, indulgent +elders of whom I have so often spoken, and who, I think, are disposed +to assume some restricted but affectionate responsibility for our +successful progress through this vale of dues. We are on such terms +with that family that Mrs. Brace has a habit of telephoning to Cordelia +please to come and fill in at a dinner-party when a pair of guests give +out at the last moment, which we do, when we can, with cheerfulness of +spirit. Then the Major bestows little jobs of law business on me from +time to time, and is apt to say “Come to dinner, and talk it over, and +fetch Cordelia.” And then we talk other things over also, and maybe +play auction bridge for an hour. + +The last one of Mrs. Brace’s dinners we filled in at was unusually +well stocked with persons apt at discussion, and the talk took a turn +toward the education of women, and more particularly the education of +daughters of well-to-do parents in New York. On the general subject I +don’t see that there is much to discuss. The prevailing practice is +to teach girls up to eighteen or nineteen years of age anything that +they will consent to learn, the same as boys. The girls don’t go to +college yet as generally as the boys do, but they go a good deal, and +more and more, I should say, all the time. The girls’ colleges prosper +and increase in number and in size, but the authorities seem to feel +that they have not yet fully struck their gait; not yet established +themselves as the best places for girls in general between eighteen and +twenty-two, and not yet demonstrated to the satisfaction of all the +observant and considerate that the training they give fulfils its aim, +and is better worth the time of girls who acquire it or might acquire +it than some other things that some of them are or might be doing in +those four years, if they were not doing that. + +You may say that the same reluctance of unrestricted approval attaches +to the boys’ colleges. There was the New Haven lady who felt so +strongly that Yale was one of the more popular gates of hell, and +the late Mr. Crane, of Chicago, who maintained that our whole system +of college education was pernicious and a shocking waste of time, +and Dr. Wilson, late of Princeton, who felt so strongly that the +college side-shows, athletic and social, had diverted to themselves +the stronger currents of young life, to the great detriment of the +academic performance in the main tent, and who did what he could to +bring them back. Certainly the boys’ colleges are imperfect enough, +and are conceded both by their friends and their detractors to be so, +but at least they have won in the competition with home training. As a +rule, the boys who can, go to college. They may not get there what they +should, but they are not kept at home and put into business, or brought +out into society, for fear that what they may miss by not staying at +home will be more valuable than what they may gain by being in college. +All sorts of boys go to college; the rich and the poor, the fashionable +and the simple; the boys with a living to scramble for, and those with +cotton-wadded places and ready-made incomes waiting for them. It is +felt that boys must know one another if they know nothing else, and +that college is a good place to get that knowledge. + +So it is felt about girls, that they must know one another, and also +boys, if nothing else, but college is not yet the place where the +more modish girls in the biggest cities can know the girls whom it +belongs to them to know. The American girls from the big cities who +are advantageously situated for experiments in polite society do not +yet go much to college. Their brothers go as matter of course. Their +brothers, like as not, are sent five or six years to boarding-school, +and then three or four years to college, and then perhaps kept away +several years longer learning the rudiments of some profession in which +they start to work at twenty-five or later. But to keep the girls off +in institutions away from their mothers, until they reach so ripe an +age as that, or even the maturity of twenty-two, is an experiment that +affectionate parents who have social aspirations for their daughters, +and some means of furthering them, are apt to look upon with hostility, +doubt, or, at best, with grudging and uncertain approval. The mass +of the college girls seems to be recruited from the lesser cities, +or from families whose daughters have a doubtful prospect, or worse, +of inheriting means of support, and must, as a matter of common +prudence, be qualified betimes for self-maintenance and all the kinds +of self-help, against a turn of fortune that may leave them without a +competent wage-earner to depend on. + +These considerations all got due attention at Mrs. Brace’s +dinner-party. “Send Maria to college?” exclaimed Mrs. Van Pelt. “What +for? She’s eighteen, and has been to school as it is ever since she +was four years old, and to boarding-school three years, and knows an +enormous amount, and can read and spell fairly, speak some French, and +read German, and knows the English kings, and a few of the Presidents, +and whether Dryden or Milton wrote the ‘Fairy Queen.’ Mercy! The +child’s crammed with knowledge; what she needs to know is how to use +some of it. She can’t talk at a dinner-party. I want her to learn to +talk. I want her to have an acquaintance. It won’t hurt her to inspect +the young gentlemen. The colleges are nunneries, full of nuns whose +mothers I don’t know, busy learning unimportant things like how to cut +up frogs, and the pedigrees of the Saxon kings, and eschatology, and +neglecting all the important things like how to put on a hat, how to +cut up a lobster, how to keep hair attached to the scalp, how to talk +to a boy, how to help a mother, how to engage a cook, whom to ask to a +dinner-party. Why college? Maria’d come home in four years, forgotten +by all the girls she ought to know, qualified to be a school-teacher +and with a large acquaintance among young ladies similarly qualified, +and with a strong and reasonable impulse to put her acquirements to +practical use either by continuing her studies or getting a situation +and earning her living. I don’t want her to get a situation and earn +her living, I want her to get married.” + +“Oh, come!” said the Major, who was sitting next to her. “It isn’t so +bad as that. I know Maria. She’ll get married anyhow, but give her +time. Does she want to go to college?” + +“She could have gone. She knew enough when she got out of school. She +passed the examinations, and she thought about it more or less. But +finally she came out instead. She may go yet. I don’t know. She still +talks to her father about it, and meanwhile she takes courses with +learned women about art and such things, and does something at music. +And she goes to dances a little, and dines out a little, and slums a +little, and organizes charity a little.” + +“Does she play with the boys?” + +“A very little. The young men don’t seem to be the absorbing interest +they were when I was young. But I suppose that is more a change in +human nature. New York has come to be a good deal of a street-car, with +people crowding in and out all the time, and the conductor perpetually +calling out, ‘Please move up there in front!’ Girls and young men don’t +meet here familiarly any more. I don’t know how they ever see enough of +one another to get married unless they meet in the summer somewhere. +New York girls seem mostly to marry men they meet on steamers, +nowadays.” + +“I understand,” said the Major, “that our population is now divided +into those who travel and those who stay at home. Those who travel +meet, especially on steamers where they are cooped up together with +a week of idle time on their hands and are liable to develop mutual +appreciations. Those who don’t travel also meet more or less, and some +of them seem to marry. There were you and Cordelia, Peregrine; you were +not a traveler, yet you got married somehow.” + +“Oh yes,” said I. “I had to. There was nothing else that I wanted to do +that was compatible with earning a living. I never traveled. I never +could; but Cordelia traveled plenty.” + +“To be sure,” put in Mrs. Van Pelt, “they can travel if they don’t go +to college. It doesn’t cost much more, and they have the time. And +they do travel. Also they visit about with their school friends, and +find their way about Boston and Philadelphia and Washington and other +places more civilized than this, and I have known of girls who went to +visit in St. Louis, Chicago, and St. Paul, which was interesting and +enlarging to the mind, though not so necessary perhaps as though we did +not have the finished products of those cities brought daily to our +doors, and could not inspect them and the rest of the United States any +day on Fifth Avenue, or by walking through the Waldorf-Astoria or the +Plaza Hotel, or at home, or out at dinner--and I beg you to recognize, +Mrs. Lamson, that I remember that we borrowed you from Seattle, and +you and your husband, Mrs. Butler, from Buffalo, and that I, who was +brought here from Baltimore, speak humbly and with great respect of +all our Western cities. But send your girl to college, and then she is +like a butterfly pinned to a card. Can’t visit, can’t travel, can’t +beguile her father, can’t console her mother, can’t take her brother to +dances, can’t pay calls, lost to earth, learning the family connections +of mollusks--what is a mollusk?--and the other unusable things that +erudite people have put into tiresome books. And yet I don’t doubt that +Maria’s father will send her to college if she wants to go.” + +Mr. Van Pelt, farther down the table, seeing that his wife had the +floor, had lent an ear to her deliverance. “Well,” said he, “what can +you do? Four years is only four years, and a girl in these days can +afford to spend it in getting something definite and lasting, if only +she gets it. I only know this game of being a girl by observation. I +have never played at it. But my wife knows it as a player, and what +she perceives in it by experience and instinct always outweighs my +theories in my own judgment. She decides these matters except in so +far as Maria decides them for herself, which is a good ways. My wife is +uncertain about the good of girls’ colleges because she never went to +one. They’re very new. They didn’t prevail so much in her educational +period as they do now. They must be excellent for girls whose mothers +are desperate or frivolous characters, from whom they need to be +separated. All the institutions are valuable in separating children +with possibilities from impossible parents. But where the parents +are not impossible, of course the separation involves loss. We feel +as to boys that the gain pretty certainly counterbalances it. But we +feel that girls do well to form the habit of living at home, which is +something that takes practice, and even prayers, if you’re going to do +it as you should. If Maria goes to college, I’m for having her sleep +at home, where I can see her at dinner. Though whether that’s right +or not, I don’t know. I don’t expect to give Maria more than a very +imperfect steer in this life anyhow. That’s all I got; all my wife +got; all my father and mother got. But I don’t mind taking a chance +if it looks good, and the fact that college does not fit conveniently +into the social machinery that has been devised for the development +of girls in New York does not appall me. The machinery exists for the +benefit of the girls, not the girls for the machinery. What we are +after is to train fine women. You don’t do it by wholesale processes. +It is hard work, anyhow, and what suits one doesn’t suit another. It +is with a girl, I take it, as it is with a boy. The facts they get in +college they mostly lose, but the minds of some of them expand in the +process of getting facts, and gain scope and power, and the ability to +understand things, and increased interest in life, and capacity. Any +way, so that the girls get their own.” + +“If we’ve all got to vote presently,” said Mrs. Brace, “no doubt the +girls will have to go to college. I’m told we’re not constitutional in +our political remedies.” + +“As to votes,” said the Major, “it’s a case of half-knowledge is a +dangerous thing. The most able women that I happen to know, the most +thoroughly trained and schooled in hard mental work, those that seem to +me the deepest thinkers, don’t want votes for women. Of course college +at its best is only a step, but it is a step toward sound thinking. I +should be inclined to argue that college for a girl was a step toward +giving her such a grasp upon human affairs and the conditions of life +as would incline her to leave votes where they are, and spend her +strength in other forms of expression. So if Maria sends herself to +college, Van Pelt, it may be a process in the making of a really able +anti-suffragist who will understand herself, and other women and men, +and can sift the chaff out of an argument. If the suffragists are to +be beaten they will be beaten by the rest of women--those who have +found their vocation and are happy in it, those who are busy, at least, +whether happy or not, and cannot be harangued into excitement about +politics, and those of first-rate mental powers and deep experience, +who can turn the whole matter over in their minds and conclude that +woman suffrage would not help society. At any rate, woman suffrage or +not, the way out lies in the direction of more power in the human mind, +male and female, and not in less.” + +We males continued to discuss this subject when the ladies had gone +out and we went into the Major’s library to burn tobacco. They set +upon me as the latest transplantation from the college nursery into +the garden of actual life, and demanded to know what I had got out +of college. I said that for one thing I had got an acquaintance with +several hundred men of about my own age, a good many of them now living +in New York and the rest scattered variously about the country. Some +of these men I knew intimately. All of them I knew well enough to have +views about their qualities, and what I knew of them helped me to +know other men, and gave me a measure which helped me to estimate men +in general. I said that the way to know pictures was to be where you +could see pictures, that the way to know men was, doubtless, to live +with them and look them over, and that college--a big college--was a +very convenient place to view a collection of young men, and learn +to know the species. I said I didn’t think any other thing we got in +college was so important as that, because the other things you might +learn in a big college could be learned anywhere if you took the +necessary time and put in the necessary work. But the beauty about +college was that you had the time there to add to knowledge in all +the ways, to learn the men and also to inspect the books and examine +the mental secretions of the professors, and that with reasonable +gumption and diligence you could do it all. As to that end of it I +quoted Tomlinson, who dined with us the other night. He is a still +more recent college product than I am, and is still immersed in law +studies. We got to talking college and what we thought it had done +for us, and he said, as I remember, that he could hardly recall a +fact that he had learned in college, but still he thought he had got +great good out of it. When he was an undergraduate, he said, he was +interested mostly in history, government, and economics. When he got +out, his tastes entirely changed, and he got interested in literature +and philosophy. “Nowadays,” said he, “I look forward to Sunday with the +utmost impatience, and when it comes round I put it in with Spencer, +Huxley, and Emerson. I am getting to be an authority on biology, I tell +you, and wrestle with _First Principles_ in a way to make my law-books +jealous.” + +They were quite interested in Tomlinson. The Major said he loved to see +a boy come out of college with a desire to know something. “Now that +boy,” said he, “is really interested in what is going on, and wants +to know why. It’s delightful. He’s got the inquiring mind, and, you +see, college has developed it. Perhaps it would have developed anyhow, +but at least the environment was favorable. It’s a mighty inquisitive +mind that develops on general lines if it is put hard into the game +of money-grubbing at seventeen. And I don’t know that the game of +‘society’ is so much better for girls, though it is better in this: +that its more strenuous phase doesn’t last long, and after that a girl +who has not yet formed an attachment has a great deal more leisure +than a boy who is tied up to a job. We should recognize that ‘society’ +is intended to give to girls that acquaintance with people, and the +opportunities to observe them and handle them, that Jesup, here, values +so much in college. Only ‘society’ does not include the systematic +cultivation of recorded knowledge which the colleges still exact. If +your Maria, now, Van Pelt, could supplement her social experiments with +such fruits of college learning as that young Tomlinson reports, she’d +be ahead on it. Don’t you think so? She’d be a more interesting woman, +and have a livelier interest in life, and take hold of things more +intelligently, and put in her spare time to better purpose, and have +more fun. It is a great thing, it really is a great thing, to get the +young started up the tree of knowledge; to get them to want to know, +and start them climbing.” + +“I agree with you, Major,” said Mr. Van Pelt. “I quite agree with you. +But Tomlinson’s a boy and Maria’s a girl. Is that going to make a +difference? Evidently Tomlinson’s not going to let the trees obstruct +his view of the forest. He seems to be after knowledge because it will +help him to understand life. That’s all the good there is in knowledge. +Now I see women who seem to claw after knowledge as though it were a +sunburst, or some such embellishment that adorned them to good purpose. +I see their minds caked up with it, so that they don’t work well. Some +of the learned ladies are tiresome, just as some of the learned men +are. They are not tiresome because they know too much, but because they +lack the instinct that should tell them how to be interesting. You know +a lively retail shop with a good show-window is always more interesting +than a storage warehouse, no matter what treasures the warehouse may +contain. I was saying the other day that Mrs. Jameson, the professor’s +wife, was such a charming lady, and a very accomplished woman who heard +me, said, ‘Oh yes; but she doesn’t know English literature.’ What odds +whether she knows English literature or not if she is a charming lady? +As much English literature as will make her lovelier and better able +to express herself and more interesting and wiser is a good thing, and +more than that is of very secondary importance except to a specialist. +But that other lady who did know English literature like a specialist +spoke of Mrs. Jameson’s defective hold on it very much as though it +were an absent sunburst or an unbecoming gown. As for Maria, I should +hate to spoil a woman to make a scholar. But on the other hand, I +should hate to stunt a woman to make a pretty lady.” + +The Major said that in Maria’s case he would rather take the first +chance than the second. “But if you will encourage Maria to come around +here to dinner, Van Pelt,” he said, “I’ll get Jesup to catch that young +Tomlinson person, and we will examine his mind. Perhaps Maria may be +interested to look into it, and if she is, I should love to see her +try. I don’t know why, but when I hear of girls who are disposed to +use their heads to think with, and who think it would be nice to know +what’s doing, I always have irresistible impulses to abet them. They +may sometime--yes, any time--think out and disclose such interesting +things. For, after all, women are women, and we men all grope and want +to know when we speculate about them.” + +He got up, went to a table drawer, and got out a little paper, which he +gave me, saying “Here’s a tract for you, Peregrine,” and then we went +back to the ladies. + +When Cordelia and I got home that night, and had viewed, approved, and +tucked in our slumbering son, Samuel, and had discussed the company and +their discourse, I brought out the Major’s tract and read it to her, to +wit: + +“What are regarded as the great prizes of life--fame, money, and such +showy things--are nearly all things geared to the powers of men. It is +easy to measure the successes of men. They stand out in plain sight to +be weighed and examined. + +“But the successes of most of the successful women are much +less tangible. As a rule they are contributions to life as it +passes--influence, care, nurture, direction, companionship; valuables +of the highest order, but which finally appear, not as properties of +the woman from whom they proceeded, but of the men or the children who +received them, and the families and communities that they have blessed. + +“The evidences of the success of men stand on pedestals and hang on +walls and are recorded in books and occupy safe-deposit boxes in bank +vaults. They stretch across the country in the form of steel rails or +copper wires, or stand as buildings in stone and steel. On every one of +them is the woman’s hand. In every one of them she has had her share. +There is no success of any kind, no power, no progress, which is not +half hers. But ordinarily she does not much appear; not, at least, +in a degree at all commensurate with her importance. Her work is not +expressed--not much--in things. It is made flesh. + +“Is that unjust to her? Is it unfair that man should seem to outdo her? + +“Who shall say what is fair and what not in the management of this +universe? We flatter ourselves with the idea that the Almighty has +chosen to express Himself in mankind. Admitting that, it is a daring +critic who will assert that woman is disparaged because it is allotted +to her to express herself in like fashion.” + + + + +VIII + +MY PROSPECTS IMPROVE + + +How am I to get a garden for Cordelia? I love so to see her in a +garden. They’re fine for women. I like them myself, but the calls +of the industry I pursue below Canal Street distract me from +floriculture and personal pokings in the earth. I don’t even _plan_ +garden in any detail, which is partly, of course, because we have +no actual garden possibilities yet to plan, though we still aspire +to remote rhododendrons. But I get perceptible refreshment out of +flower-beds, and very innocent and healing joys in the colors and +texture and designs of flowers and the various patterns of millinery +they affect. They are the great natural argument for art and beauty; +immensely consoling and inspiring both for what they are and for what +they intimate. Admiring them, even the imperfectly Scriptural, like +me, revert instinctively to Scripture and to consideration of the +lilies, that toil not, neither spin, and yet are in the front of the +competition for looks, and fit for their beauty’s sake to reproach the +doubts of them of little faith. Certainly the Creator did not get up +flowers for nothing. + +We must have a garden, if only for its pious uses, but for Cordelia +it has admirable physical and mental uses besides. It gives her all +the exercises--of mind, body, and spirit. Detached as she is from the +soil she sprang from, in her mother’s garden she gets personally back +to earth, grubbing in it with trowels and like implements, with beads +on her brow and blisters and mosquito bites wherever they happen to +come, but with a zest and an enjoyment that comes near to passion. +Our parents, happily, have pretty good gardens, and all the spring we +have been improving the week-ends by getting near to nature on the +paternal suburban reservations. This being Samuel’s first spring, he +has viewed it mostly from a perambulator, but, so seen, it has been +profitable to him, and he has regarded its advances with perceptible +approval, especially when it has been warm enough, and dry enough, for +him to sleep informally out-of-doors. No doubt the modern theory is +sound that it is never too cold or too wet to sleep out-of-doors, but +Samuel, being naturally robust, has never had to be absolutely modern +in his observances. I leave it to any fair person if it is tolerable +to think of his growing up without close and long association with the +green-and-brown earth? Yet children do it by the hundred thousand in +New York, and a fair proportion of them grow up stronger and better +than a considerable proportion of the country-bred children. There +are children, I am told, whom the city agrees with, and others--a +minority--who suffer from the nervous tension of it. It is agreed, I +suppose, that all children are better off out of town in summer, but so +are grown people, provided they go to a healthier place and can find +fit employments, or make them for themselves. But the hardy children, +like the hardy grown-ups, seem to get along in town or out. I find that +in June the country air begins to taste different from the town air, +and when I get off the cars in the rural districts I fill my lungs with +great gulps of it, to the easement of my feelings. + +Bless me, how much we want, and how much it seems to cost to get it! +Everybody wants a lot nowadays, and everybody, except the seriously +opulent, seems to find the cost excessive. I suppose everybody wants +for his child what Cordelia and I want for Samuel. Everybody seems to +want to live some sort of a life that’s worth living, and to get the +price of it somehow. It is a large contract for society to meet these +natural and reasonable desires; no wonder the world’s machinery groans +so, and that strikes and perplexities and trust trials so much abound, +and that so much talk is in the air about the right of the people to +rule. But ruling is a skilled job, and though it is none too well +done, and never has been, the notion that “the people” are first-class +experts at it who are kept out of power by interlopers seems to me +more or less humorous. And so is the notion that we “people” have any +great eagerness to rule. We haven’t. That’s one trouble. Almost all of +us want to go about our business and procure some of the ameliorations +of existence. Ruling is hard work and small pay. We want some one else +to do it, if possible; some one who has a call and feels that he has +a talent for government. These gentlemen who talk about the people +ruling are usually gentlemen who have inward admonitions that they +possess governmental talent. We choose between them, and to that extent +we rule, and have been ruling for some time, and will rule, I guess, +for some time to come. + +Cordelia and I would like to vote for more room in our flat. It’s too +tight. Now, with Samuel and his belongings to provide for, we haven’t +room to hang up and put away our things. We want a larger apartment, +cheaper food, especially milk, reduction in the price of clothes, +lower servants’ wages--more, generally, for our money. But I don’t +know just how to vote for these things without running up against +the reasonable needs of other people. All the measures I would favor +as suitable to make my earnings go further seem constituted to make +somebody else’s earnings less. That wouldn’t hinder me from voting to +reduce the tariff, because I think it ought to be reduced, but I don’t +want to vote any less wages for Matilda Finn. Demand and taxation fix +rents; how am I going to vote them cheaper? If the Meat Trust makes +meat unduly dear, I’m against it; but I am not at all sure that it +does. If the excessive multiplication of grocers makes potatoes high, +it is a pity, but how am I going to vote against it? I can vote, when +the chance comes, for the best city government that is offered, and +the best obtainable bargain about public utilities, and supervision +of milk, and such things; and I can vote for tariff reform, and trust +regulation, and conservation in so far as those desirables are affected +by retaining or dismissing the present administrators of the Federal +government; but after I have voted all I can--and expressed my primary +preference, and initiated and recalled and referended, if those +privileges are offered me--it will still remain undoubtedly that if I +want more closet-room for Cordelia and a continuing residence in town +and a garden somewhere, I’ve got to get in more money. So I’m in just +the same case as the mill-hands and the miners and everybody else who +has been on a strike lately, except that I haven’t got to strike unless +I want to, and I sha’n’t want to until I have an offer of something +better than I’ve got now. + +It makes me ashamed to keep wanting more money, even though the +mill-hands and miners and the rest feel just as I do about it. But, +after all, that want is the great spur of civilization. If most of +us didn’t want more closet-room, and a garden, and a roof-garden +sleeping-apartment for Samuel, and a little larger dinner-parties +than we can give as it is and more of them, and food, clothes, +education, leisure, travel, automobiles, and all the other necessaries +and unnecessaries, I suppose all progress would slacken. The whole +apparatus of civilization seems to be geared to these more or less +humble human desires. Politics is a sort of rash that breaks out on +bodies of men that are tired with too much work, or hungry, or starved +in their spirits, or thwarted in their aspirations, or who need more +closet-room and gardens. The politicians are not rulers, after all; +they are doctors, making diagnoses, and offering prescriptions and +treatments, and taking fees, and flunked a good deal of the time by the +symptoms of the patient. A real cure of human ailments by politics is +inconceivable. There are too many people, and they want more than there +is, and if they were all satisfied for once at a quarter past six, +there would be a lot more of them, and they would have developed a lot +more wants, by seven o’clock. But that only proves that politics is a +continuing job, that never will lapse, and never will be finished so +long as there are folks on the earth. + +It is wonderful what is accomplished; how we endure labor, privations, +disappointment, restricted closet-space, and lack of gardens, and go +on comparatively orderly and patient, getting what we can and going +without the rest. Shops are full of goods and the doors open; trains +run, crowds surge here and there, strikers strike and pickets picket, +judges sit, juries find, the polls open and close, and the papers tell +us who was elected. Somehow, in all this muddle, life is fairly safe, +most of the people are fed, babies get attention, the dead are buried, +the processes of existence go on. + +The whole of politics seems secondary because the whole material side +of life, even gardens and closet-room, seems secondary. I guess that +is what saves the world alive. There are not enough material things +to satisfy everybody. I doubt indeed if there are enough to satisfy +anybody. But of the things of the mind and of the things of the spirit +there is a boundless supply, and any one who can may help himself. + +We scramble for things as though they were all there was, and yet the +main joys of life are in ideas--in religion, in love, in beauty, in +duty, in truth--things that no trust can monopolize, and which come +tariff-free through any port. They are the realities, and these bodily +things are mostly shadows, indispensable, to be sure--things that it is +a reproach and a high inconvenience to be without, but which take care +of themselves so long as the realities prosper. + + * * * * * + +Well, I have got a boost. Major Brace has suggested to me that I move +my tools over to his office this fall and become a partner in his firm. +The suggestion is agreeable to me, and I have closed with it. His firm +is undergoing reorganization. At present it is Brace & Ketcham, but Mr. +Ketcham’s wife has fallen into so much money that, having also some +savings of his own, he feels the need of foreign travel, country air, +and like delights, and proposes to retire from active practice and +concern himself with self-improvement, cows, and public or quasi-public +duties, like being a director in banks and corporations, serving on +committees, or even running for public office. There seems to be a +great deal for competent and experienced citizens to do whenever they +have acquired the means of support and can afford to take nominal pay, +or none, for their services. The new firm is to be Brace, Witherspoon +& Jesup; which last is me. It will be a strong firm. The Major has +experience and connections; Mr. Witherspoon has knowledge, especially +of law, and appalling diligence; and I have a living to make for +Cordelia and Samuel and myself, and everything to buy, including a +city mansion, a country residence, some automobiles, and a garden with +rhododendrons in it. When I think how modest my proportion of the +firm’s winnings is to be, and how much it is to buy, my arithmetical +talents are strained to compute the princely affluence that must be +coming out of the new firm to the Major. + +Anyhow, my circumstances will be eased enough for us to move into a +more commodious flat next fall, which is important. The modification +in my prospects pleases me very much. I am attached to the Major. +He is good to be with. I feel confident that he will make a living, +and either make it honestly or make it look so honest to me that my +self-esteem will not be wounded by a lot of compunctions. I think +so because I believe he is at least as scrupulous as I am, and has +more experience in adjusting his scruples to the facts of life. And +that is a mighty delicate matter. If you can’t do it you get nowhere, +and if you overdo it you get eventually, I presume, to that ideality +that we call “hell.” I don’t know that I should necessarily mind +that, for it is possible that the attractions of hell may have been +under-rated; but I hate consumedly the processes of getting there as I +see them. The by-path by drink is so far out of my line that I don’t +have to take serious thought about it; nor yet about the propensity +to divagations in feminine companionship, which makes some persons so +much trouble; but I believe I may say without affectation that I would +hate the detachment from that ideality which we call “truth.” Surely +the greatest possible luxury in life is to think you are on the right +side; to know the truth and follow it, or at least, since we are all so +fallible, to think you know it and are on its trail. To think that I +was going to practise law merely as the agent of the astute, filching +unwarranted profits from the simple, would be quite intolerable, of +course. It would be so at least as long as I continued to be any good, +for I should think of it as a progress to “hell”; and when it ceased to +bother me, that would be the sign that I had arrived. That’s the kind +of hell the idea of which is repellent--the hell in which the damned +are fat and hard and solvent, and relentlessly and eternally gainful +for themselves. Ugh! They make me sick; at least the thought of them +does. When you come to look for them in the flesh, of course they have +their human modifications and are often lean, jocund, and charming. + +The Major says there’s a new morality growing up that will express +itself presently in some new commandments, or a new interpretation of +the sixth. Stealing, as heretofore understood, has been limited, he +says, to taking from some one something that was his. But there is a +growing sentiment that it applies also to hogging an unconscionable +amount of things desirable for the mass of folks, but to which none of +them had established legal ownership. As “the people” grow stronger +and more intelligent there is more interest in having them get what +should be coming to them. So the Major looks for the evolution of a +commandment to the general effect of “Thou shalt not take more than +thy share,” and for lots of legislation based on it. And since what +anybody’s share is depends on all manner of circumstances, and is +highly debatable, and is sure to get into court again and again, he +looks for busy--and profitable--times for our profession. + +Meanwhile the bulk of the law business is not a wrangle between the +wolf and the lamb, with all the best talent retained for the wolf. +A good deal of it is wrangles between wolves, wherein it is just as +virtuous to be on one side as the other; and a lot more of it is not +wrangle at all, but a tame exercise of the lawyer’s true profession of +keeping order in the world. + +All the same, it must be embarrassing to any lawyer’s ethical +self-esteem always to be the defender, at a high price, of the +strong. It can’t be easy to avoid it, once a man gets a considerable +reputation; but I guess it does pinch. Politically, of course, it +is very expensive, and that, without much regard for the truth that +when Strength is right, even though it is incorporated, it is just +as important to society that it should get its dues under the law as +though it were somebody else. The risks of an employment are one of +the considerations on which its rate of payment is based, and in this +legal employment to which I seem committed, the risk of discredit may +well be one basis for extra large fees. Disreputability is bound to rub +off of clients on their lawyers, provided there is enough of it, and +the association is long enough continued, and highly enough paid, or +insufficiently varied by professional associations of another sort. + +I should not like to be committed bodily to the side of the Haves in +my legal experiences, and I know I never shall be so long as I am in +the same firm with the Major. Neither do I want to tie up to impossible +enthusiasms and altruisms; and to plans that won’t work, and to +fabulous expectations of making the earth equally comfortable for all +its residents irrespective of their powers and qualities. The Major +does not go in for those phantoms. He will not always be right, but he +will never be systematically impossible. + +I guess Witherspoon is going to get rich. He is terribly smart; so +smart, and so nearly sound-minded, and so nearly drink-proof, that, +with the start he has, it will be virtually impossible for him to stay +poor. If not myself, I would rather be Witherspoon than any one I see +about. I could not afford to be the Major; he is too old. I have too +much to do, and too much expectation of liking to do it, to wish to be +he, much as I like him. Witherspoon is older than I am, older by nine +or ten years, I guess, but I could almost afford that advancement in +years for what I might gain in ability by having his head instead of +mine. Not, of course, that I would be he, unless it was compulsory that +I should be some one other than I am. A property that one has taken so +much pains to improve as me becomes dear to the owner. I rate among +improvements Cordelia and Samuel (though you may call them liabilities +if you like), all that I know, my acquaintance, my reputation, the +repairs done on my teeth (which were quite expensive), advertisement +as so far acquired (except as already mentioned under acquaintance and +reputation), a little life insurance paid up to date, and there must +be a lot of other improvements I can’t think of. To offset all that, I +have expensive habits (like Cordelia and Samuel) and the probability +of others. I smoke and drink, though inexpensively as yet, and like +better food and rather better clothes than I am entitled to. + +One thing that I admire about Witherspoon is his clothes; they are so +bad--or rather he is so oblivious to them. I guess they are pretty good +clothes, but he is apt to wear them like a man in the woods; I see +him sometimes going about in this polite community in rough-looking, +unshiny, russet shoes, a flannel shirt with a soft collar, his trousers +turned up, not precisely but casually; and if he has on black shoes, +like as not they are not polished. That is liable to be his working +dress. He does better at times; does better doubtless if he happens to +think of it or his wife tells him, and he togs himself out properly +when he goes out to dinner; but his mind is not on raiment, nor much +on details of living, anyhow. Presently, I suppose, his wife will say +he must have a valet, and his clothes will be pressed and laid out for +him for the rest of time, and he will put them on and always go forth +shining. But he’s fine as he is. + +It is grand to be enough of a man to be worth a servant to do all one’s +chores. It is also grand meanwhile to be able to dress as inattentively +as Witherspoon does. If he were lazy he couldn’t do it, nor yet if he +had not on him so many of the marks of a first-class man. If he were +just ordinary, you’d be displeased with him for not being clean-shaven, +but when he smiles and begins to talk you don’t care whether he shaved +yesterday or the day before, nor whether his shoes are blacked, nor +what kind of a collar he has on. + +I’m not that way at all. I have to wear respectable clothes, brush my +hair and teeth, shave every morning, black my shoes, and pay attention +to millinery. I succeed in all these details, and would make, I +suppose, an acceptable body-servant for a really great man, or a fairly +good housemaid, if it were not that I am able, under Providence, to +put the remnant of my time after attending to my own details to more +profitable use than doing ordinary details for some one else. Details +I shall do, no doubt, for some time to come if not forever, but they +will be fairly remunerative details, I hope, requiring judgment and +knowledge. + +It’s all service, and all that matters much to the moralist is that +each of us should come, somehow, where he belongs, and get the sort of +job he can learn to be good at, and delve at it until a better one +calls him--if it does. But of course to find one’s proper job is a +great achievement in life, being the one that engages my energies at +present. Also to find a man proper for a job that needs doing seems to +be a considerable achievement, bigger or less big, according to the +size of the job, but supremely important when the job is a vital matter +like the Presidency sometimes, or the discovery of an effectual general +in war, or a revolutionary leader. The processes by which the top men +come to the top are as interesting as anything in history. Indeed, they +almost constitute history. Usually they are processes of trying out, +and it seems that the qualifications for a great place must include, +as a rule, the ability to get the place, and, if it is political, to +get it away from somebody else. But the unpolitical places don’t seem +so much to be wrested from anybody. The most powerful men just come to +their own. Commonly they make the places which they occupy, and the +places grow with them, until, when they get out, there is a gaping +vacancy to be filled. + +That is not the sort of place for which the Major has selected me. Not +yet. It’s just a chance to do some work as it comes along, and make +a place, possibly, which can be recognized as definite, commodious, +and profitable because of some scarcity of the qualities required to +fill it. I have great confidence in the Major, and feel strongly that +his judgment in choosing persons and foreseeing labors for them is +excellent, and I have faith in particular, as I have intimated, in his +sagacity in selecting Witherspoon. So I am a good deal pleased that he +should have invited me. + + +THE END + + + + +TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES + + +Typo corrected: “perfomance” to “performance” (page 128). + +Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78473 *** |