^ The • Opinion s • of- a • 
 Philosopher ^?f^^ 
 
 fby* 
 
 Robert Grant 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 

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 3 1924 021 989""557" 
 
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'T'he Opinions of 
 a Philosopher 
 
 By 
 
 Robert Grant 
 
 Illustrated by 
 W. T. Smedley and C. S. Reinhart 
 
 t 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 New York s=;:==^ 1893 
 
Cofy/right, 189^, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 K 
 
 TBOW DIRECTORy 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBIKDINQ COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
THE OPINIONS 
 OF A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 MY wife Josephine declares tliat I haYe 
 become a philosopher in my old age, 
 and perhaps she is right. Now that I am 
 forty, and a trifle less elastic in my move- 
 ments, with patches of gray about my ears 
 which give me a more venerable appearance, 
 I certainly have a tendency to look at the 
 world as through a glass. Yet not altogether 
 darkly be it said. That is, I trust I am no 
 cynic like that fellow Diogenes who set the 
 fashion centuries ago of turning up the nose 
 at everything. I have a natural sunniness of 
 disposition which would, I believe, be proof 
 against the sardonic fumes of contemplation 
 even though I were a real philosopher. 
 However, just as the mongoose of the bag- 
 
2 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 man's story was not a real mongoose, neither 
 am I a real philosopher. 
 
 You will remember that Diogenes, who 
 was a real philosopher, occupied a tub as a 
 permanent residence. He would roll in hot 
 sand during the heat of summer, and embrace 
 a statue of snow in winter, just to show his 
 superiority to ordinary human conventions 
 and how much wiser he was than the rest of 
 the world. The real philosophers of the 
 present day are not quite so peculiar ; but 
 they are apt to be fearfully and wonderfully 
 superior to the weaknesses of humanity. For 
 the most part they are to be found in the 
 peaceful environs of a university or on some 
 mountain top a Sabbath day's journey from 
 the hum of civilization, where they eschew 
 nearly everything which the every-day mortal 
 finds requisite to comfort and convenience, 
 unless it be whiskey and water. I have some- 
 times fancied that more real philosophers 
 than we are aware of are partial on the sly to 
 whiskey and water. But that is neither here 
 nor there ; for, as I have already stated, I am 
 not a real philosopher. 
 
 I have altogether too many faults to be 
 one, and should constantly be flying in the 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 3 
 
 face of my own tlieories. Barring the afore- 
 said weakness for whiskey and water, it is 
 fair to assume that the average real philoso- 
 pher lives up to his own lights and by them ; 
 whereas I, at least according to Josephine, 
 am liable to be frightfully inconsistent. She 
 has never forgotten my profanity on the occa- 
 sion when we discovered after dinner that 
 the soot had come down in the drawing-room 
 and was over everything in spite of the fact 
 that the chimney had been swept three weeks 
 before. Now, if there is one thing which I 
 abhor and am perpetually inveighing against 
 as vulgar and futile, it is unbridled language. 
 Josephine must have heard me say fifty times 
 if she has heard me once that the man who 
 fouls his tongue with an oath is a senseless 
 oaf. And yet I am bound to admit that when 
 I discovered what had happened I swore de- 
 liberately and roundly like the veriest trooper. 
 In order to appreciate the situation exactly I 
 should add that it has long been a mooted 
 point between Josephine and me whether 
 chimneys require to be swept at all. My dar- 
 ling insists that the sweep shall overhaul the 
 house annually, while I cling, with what she 
 is pleased to call masculine fatuity, to the 
 
4 
 
 THE OPINIONS OP 
 
 theory that soot, like sleeping dogs, should 
 be let alone. 
 
 Have you ever entered a drawing-room 
 
 just after a healthy, thorough faU of soot ? If 
 so, you will appreciate what is meant by its 
 all-pervasiveness. The remotest articles of 
 furniture are rife with infinitesimal smut. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 5 
 
 much as they were rife with the remains of 
 the lady in Kipling's story after the jealous 
 orang-outang had done with her. And yet 
 granting that the provocation was dire, a 
 philosopher, a real philosopher, would have 
 acted very differently. A philosopher of the 
 grandest type would have reasoned that what 
 was done was done, and that there was no 
 more use in crying over fallen soot than over 
 spilt milk. He would calmly have adopted 
 prompt measures to ameliorate the situation, 
 and after the servants were fairly at work 
 would have taken his wife apart and pointed 
 out to her, in well-chosen language, that here 
 was only another instance of his superior 
 wisdom. One of a more virulent type, but 
 stiU a philosopher, might have indulged in 
 mirth — quiet sarcastic mirth. No person of 
 a truly philosophic cast of mind and with a 
 rooted antipathy to damning would have 
 sworn lustily as I did. 
 
 I remember taking little Fred, my name- 
 sake and eldest son, to skate with me one 
 winter's afternoon on a suburban pond. He 
 did famously for a tyro, but we both wearied 
 at last of his everlasting strife to maintain the 
 perpendicular, and I was conscious of a rush 
 
6 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 of joy wlien he became completely absorbed 
 in watching a man who was fishing for pick- 
 erel. Have you ever fished for pickerel 
 through a hole in the ice ? If so you wUl 
 recall that it is chilly and rather dispiriting 
 work, especially if the fish are shy. They 
 certainly were shy that afternoon, for the in- 
 dividual in question had angled long and 
 bagged nothing, as I gleaned from the an- 
 swers to the direct interrogatories put by my 
 urchin during the few minutes I stood pater- 
 nally by and watched the proceedings. 
 
 "Caught anything?" 
 
 "Nop." 
 
 "Had a bite?" 
 
 "Nop." 
 
 " How long you been fishing ? " 
 
 " An hour." 
 
 As I glided away light-heartedly on the 
 delicious curves of the outer edge, I reflected 
 that he was evidently a persevering pot-hun- 
 ter who would not be easily discouraged, and 
 that I could count upon his engrossing the 
 attention of my ofi'spring for a considerable 
 period. Accordingly, I was surprised some 
 five minutes later to observe the fisherman 
 (who wore no skates) shambling across the 
 
A PHILOSOPEER 7 
 
 pond toward the shore. Glancing from him 
 to his late station I perceived a little group 
 of skaters gathered around my son and heir, 
 who was dabbling with a stick in the aban- 
 doned hole. They appeared to be diverted 
 by something, and one of them, my friend 
 Harry Bolles, who had his handkerchief up 
 to his mouth, made a bee-line to meet me. 
 From his lips I learned what had happened, 
 which was this wise : The homy-handed pot- 
 hunter, having presently pulled a solitary 
 pickerel out upon the ice and freed it from 
 his hook, turned aside to cut another piece of 
 bait ; whereupon my hopeful picked up the 
 fish and popped it back into its native ele- 
 ment without so much as a syllable of com- 
 mentary ; and thereupon (being act three in 
 the tragedy) he of the homy hand, having 
 realized the situation in its terrible entirety, 
 pulled up his line, shovelled back the parti- 
 cles of ice into the hole and betook himself 
 upon his shambling way without one word. 
 Not a word, mark you. There was a real 
 philosopher, if you like, a thorough-going, 
 square-trotting philosopher. The only alter- 
 native was child-murder or silence, and my 
 pot-hunter chose the simplest form of the di- 
 
8 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 lemma. " I thought the fish would like it," 
 said little Fred, when interrogated upon the 
 subject. 
 
 And yet, despite my occasional inability 
 to practice what I preach, Josephine is cor- 
 rect in her diagnosis that my cast of mind is 
 becoming more philosophic as the years roll 
 on. The consciousness that I am the author 
 of four children (two strapping sons and 
 two tall daughters), anyone of whom may 
 constitute me a grandfather before I am fifty, 
 renders me conservatiye and disposed, meta- 
 phorically speaking, to draw in my horns a 
 little. I am beginning to go to church again, 
 for instance. You may have taken it for 
 granted that I have been regular in my attend- 
 ance at the sanctuary^ Certainly I have never 
 been a scoffer; but, on the other hand, I 
 must confess that somehow it has come to 
 pass since Josephine and I plighted our troth 
 that our pew has stood empty on the Lord's 
 day oftener than the orthodox consider fit- 
 ting. And the worst of it is I used to attend 
 service about every other Sabbath before 1 
 became a benedict, and Josephine taught a 
 Sunday-school class up to within six months 
 of our wedding ceremony. She, dear girl, has 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 9 
 
 harbored ever since the belief that she con- 
 tinues to go to church almost every Sunday 
 either in the morning or the afternoon, a 
 harmless delusion which for some time I 
 took no pains to dispel, knowing as I did 
 that she meant to go every Sunday. Yet I 
 knew also that pitiless, unemotional statistics 
 would reveal an average attendance on her 
 part of rather less than ten times in the 
 course of each year. I was brute enough 
 finally to call her attention to a tally-sheet, 
 covering a period of three calendar months, 
 which I had kept for my private edification, 
 and I was punished by seeing her sweet eyes 
 fill with tears before she proceeded to plead 
 to the indictment. 
 
 "You know, Fred, perfectly well that I 
 have to stay at home with the children every 
 other Sunday morning in order to allow 
 Lucille to go to church." 
 
 " But how about the other mornings and 
 all the afternoons ? " I inquired, with the 
 effrontery of a hardened sinner seizing his 
 opportunity to take a saint to task. 
 
 Josephine blushed, partly from guilt and 
 partly from indignation. " It rained torrents 
 last Sunday morning, and Sunday morning 
 
10 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 fortnight — er — I was sick. I remember that 
 I was all dressed to go one afternoon when 
 old Mr. Philipps called and I didn't like to 
 leave him. Besides, I feel as though I ought 
 to stay at home occasionally on Sunday after- 
 noons in order to teach the children the 
 Scriptures. The Sunday morning before that 
 — er — I went. No, it must have been a fort- 
 night previous, for I recollect now that I had 
 planned to go, when you said that you hated 
 to skate alone and declined to take the entire 
 responsibility of the children on the pond on 
 account of little Fred and the pickerel." 
 
 " And I said, too, I remember, that in all 
 probability there wouldn't be black ice again 
 all winter." 
 
 " You did, you did," my darling cried, with 
 tragic impetuosity, "and it is cruel of you to 
 remind me of it." 
 
 "Moreover, it was a correct prophecy. It 
 snowed that very night and the people who 
 waited until Monday were nowhere." 
 
 "Oh, Fred, Fred, I'm a wicked woman. 
 You're the last person in the world who 
 ought to tax me with it, but it is true. I 
 don't go to church as I ought. And yet I do 
 mean to go. But if it isn't one thing which 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 11 
 
 prevents, it's another. Lucille must have 
 every other Sunday morning, and you seem 
 so disappointed if I refuse to go skating or 
 canoeing Avith you and the children on the 
 fine days that I foolishly yield." 
 
 "And you the daughter of a deacon," I 
 continued, unsparingly. Let me state by way 
 of explanation that Josephine's late father 
 was for many years one of the pillars of the 
 religious society to which he belonged. 
 
 " I know, I know. It is shameful. I — we 
 are little better than heathens, Fred. Only 
 think of it, four times in three months ! " she 
 added, glancing at the tell-tale sheet. " And 
 I brought up to go regularly both morning 
 and afternoon in addition to Sunday-school ! 
 I am a heathen ; and as for you, I don't 
 know what to call you ! " she exclaimed, with 
 a sad, reproachful smile. 
 
 So long as Josephine was content to berate 
 herself without including me in her anath- 
 emas, I had been ready to acquiesce in what 
 she said, but now that she seemed disposed 
 to drag me into the conversation I felt it in- 
 cumbent upon me to reply with dignity : 
 
 "Will you please explain, my dear, Avhy it 
 is that, though I used to be a regular wor- 
 
12 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 shipper before we became man and wife, I 
 have almost entirely ceased to attend church 
 since that time ? Who is responsible for the 
 change, I wonder." 
 
 There is a point beyond which it is not 
 safe to prod Josephine, and I could see from 
 the expression of her eye that we had reached 
 it on this occasion. She drew herself up and 
 answered haughtily : 
 
 " 1 have heard you make that insinuation 
 several times before, Fred. It is not merely 
 silly, it is disgraceful. I keep you from 
 church? Don't you know," she exclaimed, 
 with a quaver of emotion, " that your refusal to 
 go is a source of genuine grief to me, and that 
 I just hate to go alone ? Don't you know that 
 I should like nothing better than to go with 
 you every Sunday, and that I am ready to go 
 to any church you will select ? " 
 
 " Yes," I answered, doggedly, " I am well 
 aware that you would prefer to have me be- 
 come anything rather than remain — er — a 
 steadfast worshipper of nature." 
 
 Josephine made a little gesture of impa- 
 tience such as my well-worn apotheosis of 
 nature is apt to evoke. For a few moments 
 she looked as though she were going to cry ; 
 
A PHTL080PHER 13 
 
 then, Avith an almost passionate outburst, she 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "You will promise me, Fred, won't you, 
 that when the children are old enough to un- 
 derstand what it means not to go to church 
 you win go too ? " 
 
 Now, it may be that my response at the 
 time to this pathetic appeal was not alto- 
 gether satisfactory to my darling; but she 
 has forgotten her fears and her tears to-day in 
 the happy consciousness that as surely as the 
 bells begin to ring on Sunday morning I 
 begin to brush my silk hat with the feverish 
 impatience of an abandoned church-goer. 
 Punctuality, which has always seemed to 
 Josephine a pitiful sort of virtue, ranks in my 
 category of human conduct almost on a par 
 with brotherly love, and I am apt to make 
 myself and her pretty miserable on each re- 
 turning Sabbath by my endeavors to get the 
 family out of the house and into our pew on 
 time. It is only by bearing strictly in mind 
 what day it is that I am able to keep my lips 
 from speaking guile when little Fred re- 
 members at the last moment that he has for- 
 gotten his pocket-handkerchief or Josephine's 
 glove bursts open in the process of being 
 
14 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 hastily rammed on and I am compelled to 
 wait while she sends upstairs for a fresh 
 pair. You should see how her nostrils swell 
 with pride as we sweep by my old pal, 
 Nicholas Long, and his wife, who are mani- 
 festly not going to church. I can discern on 
 Nick's face, as we pass, an expression which 
 is half sardonic, half pitiful. Evidently he 
 has not forgotten my quondam oft-repeated 
 TOW that no child of mine should be taught 
 the orthodox fairy tales in unlearning which 
 I had spent some of the best years of my 
 life. And now I am a recreant, and he who 
 aided and abetted me in my asseverations 
 of independence remains faithful. Yes, but 
 Nick, poor fellow, has no children. His grin 
 seems to say, " See what you are missing, 
 poor old patriarch ; Dorothy and I are off for 
 a ten-mile tramp in the country." 
 
 Yet, despite his apparent jubilation of 
 spirit, I detect a longing expression in Doro- 
 thy's eyes and I notice that she steals a sec- 
 ond glance over her tailor-made shoulder at 
 little Winona, our youngest, who is an un- 
 commonly pretty child, if I do say it. 
 
 " There go a light-hearted, honest couple 
 with the courage of their convictions," I re- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 15 
 
 mark to Josephine, tentatively. " Before the 
 sermon has begun they will be on the river 
 and they will come home delightfully tired 
 just in time for dinner." 
 
 "Light-hearted? I believe, Fred, that 
 they are both perfectly miserable," she ex- 
 claimed, with a sweeping glance of pride at 
 her progeny. "I was thinking just before 
 you spoke how miich I pitied that woman." 
 
 I can remember as if it were yesterday 
 Nick Long telling me with bubbling ecstasy, 
 shortly after he was engaged, that his lady- 
 love had a clear, analytical mind, almost like 
 a man's. "No nonsense about her," he said. 
 " She sees things just as they are." I rather 
 got the impression at the time that he in- 
 tended thereby to insinuate gently but plainly 
 that he was a far luckier dog than I who had 
 married a woman with a mind conspicuously 
 feminine. I should like very much to know 
 whether, if Dorothy were to be blessed with 
 children after all, Nick would have to go to 
 church. 
 
 Not only have I lost moral courage in the 
 matter of some of my deepest convictions, 
 but I notice also with consternation that my 
 physical bravery is ebbing away as my years 
 
16 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 increase. I have drawn the line, for exam- 
 ple, squarely and tautly on burglars. One 
 night not very long since I was awakened 
 by noise and, after listening, I came to the 
 conclusion that it proceeded from house- 
 breakers. I slipped out of bed stealthily 
 
 '//, ,4iS^^ J^ ^ ^^^ I id put my ear 
 
 to the bolted 
 chamber door in 
 order to confirm iny cuuviction. My move- 
 ments aroused Josephine, who sat up in bed 
 and asked hoarsely what the matter was. I 
 put my finger on my lips quite irrelevantly, 
 for it was pitch dark. 
 
 " Fred, are there burglars in the house ? " 
 she gasped. 
 "Sh! Yes." 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 17 
 
 "What are you doing, Fred? Oh, you 
 mus'n't go down and expose yourself on any 
 account." She was evidently very much ag- 
 itated. " Promise me that you will not." 
 
 Having ascertained that the door was se- 
 cure I waited across the room and turned on 
 the electric light. Josephine was sitting bolt 
 upright, quivering with excitement. Her 
 eyes followed my every movement, as, having 
 slipped on my trousers and a pair of boots, I 
 began to look around me, tramping stur- 
 dily. 
 
 " Fred, they'll hear you if you make such 
 a noise," said my wife, ia an agonized whis- 
 per. 
 
 " I fervently trust so," I retorted. " That's 
 why I'm doing it." 
 
 As I spoke my eye lit at last on something 
 adapted to my purpose. I had been trying 
 to avoid the destruction of a wash basin, and 
 I seized with grateful eagerness the pair of 
 Indian clubs which offered themselves and, 
 lifting them to the level of my brow, let them 
 fall clamorously on the floor. The welkin 
 rang, so to speak, and I sank with nervous 
 exhaustion into an arm-chair. 
 
 The house seemed deathly still and it 
 3 
 
18 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 struck me that Josephine on her part was 
 ominously quiet. When she spoke at last it 
 was to ask : 
 
 " Haven't you a pistol ?" 
 
 " Yes, dear." 
 " Are you going to let 
 them take everything ? " 
 "It is for them to 
 decide, darling." 
 
 "But, Fred " 
 
 Josephine did 
 not finish her 
 sentence. The 
 words she ut- 
 tered were, 
 however, so full 
 of poignant 
 surprise and 
 disappoint- 
 ment that I felt 
 constrained to inquire with a guilty attempt 
 at nonchalance : 
 
 " Is there anything you would like to have 
 me do?" 
 
 "You are the best judge, of course," she 
 answered, coldly. " Only, do you think it is 
 the usual way ? " 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 19 
 
 " The usual way ? " I echoed. Among the 
 few points in Josephine's character which 
 irritate me is her weakness for custom, and it 
 is growing on her. " No, I suppose that the 
 correct social thing would have been to stand 
 at the head of the banisters in my nightgown 
 with a lighted candle and make a target of 
 myself." 
 
 " Why did you buy a pistol, then ? " in- 
 quired my better half. 
 
 " So that the children needn't shoot them- 
 selves with it after it was locked up and the 
 cartridges carefully hidden," I replied, with 
 levity. We were both so heated that we had 
 practically forgotten that flat burglary was 
 supposed to be going on. 
 
 "You didn't use to talk in that "way," said 
 Josephine, with slow precision. "I only 
 hope, Fred, for your sake that people won't 
 hear about this." 
 
 " They will not, certainly, unless you tell 
 them, Josephine." 
 
 "Tell them? I wouldn't mention what 
 has happened for the world," she answered, 
 looking at me Avith a sort of sorrowful dis- 
 dain. Thus is it that the ideals which women 
 form concerning us are one by one shattered ! 
 
20 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 I am sure that Josephine would have been 
 inconsolable had I fallen a victim to the bul- 
 let of a house-breaker. You will recall that 
 her first impulse was to prevent me from ex- 
 posing myself for the sake of the solid silver 
 service. She had taken it for granted that I 
 would slip the bolt and go part way down 
 stairs, at least, pistol in hand, and she had 
 wished to caution me against undue rashness. 
 Consequently, it was a rude blow to her sen- 
 sibilities to find that I was such a craven. 
 She cared no more for our apostle spoons 
 and gold-lined vegetable dishes than I did ; 
 it was the principle of the thing which dis- 
 tressed her. Why had I bought a six-shooter 
 shortly after our marriage except to be 
 equipped for just such an emergency? It 
 did certainly seem that I was bound by all 
 the laws of custom to pop at least once over 
 the banisters, even though I took no aim and 
 scurried back into my bedroom immediately 
 after. That would have satisfied her, she 
 subsequently admitted to me ; but to drop a 
 pair of Indian clubs on the floor in order to 
 make a clatter could be regarded as little less 
 than pusillanimous, philosophy or no philos- 
 ophy. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 21 
 
 We have talked it over many times since, 
 and I have endeavored to make plain to her 
 that in the process of evolution thinking men 
 have come to the conclusion that the hus- 
 band and father who chops logic at dead of 
 night with an accomplished burglar on the 
 wrong side of his chamber door is akin to a 
 lunatic. She listens to my arguments at- 
 tentively, and she has done me the honor to 
 admit that there is more to be said in my be- 
 half than she thought at first ; but I remem- 
 ber that the last time we conversed upon 
 the subject she shook her head with the air 
 of a woman who, in spite of everything, is 
 stUl of the same opinion, and she murmm-ed 
 gently : 
 
 " As I told you before, Fred, if you had 
 fired once over the banisters, I would say 
 nothing." 
 
 " But I might have been killed or maimed 
 for life as a consequence," I blurted, feelingly. 
 
 Josephine looked a little grave, as she is 
 apt to do at any suggestion of my sudden 
 taking off, but with a sweet sigh she answered, . 
 succinctly : 
 
 " There are certain risks in this world that 
 a man has to take." 
 
II 
 
 You may remember that I have four chil- 
 dren ; my namesake Fred, David, who 
 was christened in honor of his maternal grand- 
 father, Josephine, or Josie as we call her in 
 order not to confound her with her mother, 
 and Winona, the baby of the family. We 
 have lately moved into another house. The 
 old one would not hold us any longer. At 
 least Josephine declared that it would not 
 shortly after the agents of the Board of 
 Health fumigated the establishment with sul- 
 phur to kill scarlet-fever germs. She said it 
 would be cheaper to move than to buy new 
 wall-papers and window-shades. When I 
 
OPINIONS OF A PHIL080PHEB 23 
 
 asked how this could be she waxed a little 
 wroth at what she called my density, and 
 asked if I did not appreciate that we should 
 have to move at any rate in a year or two in 
 order to provide the children with a bedroom 
 apiece. The necessity for this had not oc- 
 curred to me, I must confess, and I was mak- 
 ing bold to inquire why the two boys could 
 not continue to occupy one room and their 
 sisters another as in the past, when Jose- 
 phine added, in an awful whisper : 
 
 " Besides, the house is overrun with cock- 
 roaches. Now mind, Fred," she continued, 
 with an imperative frown, " that is a matter 
 which is not to be repeated to anyone." 
 
 " Why should I wish to repeat it? " I asked, 
 meekly. 
 
 " I never know beforehand what you will 
 repeat and what you will not. I should ex- 
 pect to hear from Jemima BoUes the next time 
 we met that you had confided it to her hus- 
 band, and positively I don't care to have her 
 know. Then, too," Josephine continued, with 
 the manner of one selecting a few of many 
 grievances to air, " I haven't an inch of un- 
 occupied closet room ; and, moreover, you 
 remember, Fred, that the plumber said the 
 
•24 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 last time he was here that by good rights the 
 plumbing ought all to be renewed." My wife 
 dwelt on these concluding words with insin- 
 uating emphasis. She knows that I am daft, 
 as she calls it, on two points, closing windows 
 on the eve of a thunder-shower and defective 
 drainage. 
 
 " He said that we could manage very weU 
 for some time longer without the slightest 
 real risk," I answered, doughtily. 
 
 Josephine's lower lip trembled. Presently 
 she burst out, as though she had resolved to 
 throw feline argument and sophistic persua- 
 sion to the winds, " I am just tired of this 
 house, Fred, and I should like to move to- 
 morrow. It is pitifully small and disgust- 
 ingly dirty with dirt that I can't get rid of, 
 and everything about it is old as the hills. It 
 has never been the same place since that fall 
 of soot. If I am obliged to live in it I shall 
 have to, but I am sure that a new, clean 
 house Avould add ten years to my life." 
 
 " Jehosaphat ! " I added, startled by this 
 appeal into borromng the latest expletive 
 from the vocabulary of my eldest son, at 
 which Josephine bridled for an instant, 
 thinking that she had detected blasphemy. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 25 
 
 When it dawned upon her that the phrase 
 in question was only one of those hybrid, 
 meaningless objurgations, the use of which 
 will scarcely justify a lecture, my darling 
 gulped dismally and waited for me to go 
 on. 
 
 I am inclined to think that a gradually 
 evolved tendency of mine not to go on when 
 I am expected to was what first prompted my 
 wife to dub me a philosopher. She fancies, 
 dear soul, that she is a loser by this lately 
 developed proclivity to seek refuge in silence 
 on the occasions when she or the children 
 sweep down upon me with some hair-lifting 
 project which craves an immediate decision. 
 But she is in error. It is true there are times 
 when the sweet onslaught of the sons and 
 daughters of my house and their mother has 
 brought the old man to terms on the spot, 
 and wrung from him an immediate permission 
 to do or to spend ; but, on the other hand, 
 Josephine, who in spite of her cunning is no 
 philosopher, and her offspring little realize 
 how often their feelings have been saved 
 from laceration by this trick of mine (she 
 calls it a trick) of saying nothing until I have 
 had time for reflection. No man is so wise 
 
26 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 as his wife and children combined, but it 
 takes him a little while to find it out ; and I 
 have discovered that to chew a matter over 
 and over is the surest way to avoid promul- 
 gating a stern refusal. 
 
 So it was in this instance. Had I uttered 
 the words which rose to my lips, I should 
 have felt obliged to inform Josephine that, 
 her premature taking off to the contrary not- 
 withstanding, to move into another house 
 was out of the question and totally unneces- 
 sary. How could I afford to move ? Why 
 should we move ? The dear old house where 
 we had passed so many joyous years and 
 which Josephine used to say was extraordi- 
 narily convenient ! I remember that I be- 
 came successively irate, pathetic, and bump- 
 tious in my secret soul. I said to myself 
 stoutly that it was all nonsense, and that by 
 means of a little fresh paint and new cover- 
 ings for the dining-room chairs, we should be 
 happy where we were for another five years. 
 Cockroaches? Bah! Was there not insect 
 powder ? 
 
 The married man who knows in his secret 
 soul that he cannot afford to move and who 
 has made up his mind that nothing on earth 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 27 
 
 shall induce him to, is terribly morose for 
 the first few weeks after his wife has unbos- 
 omed herself upon the subject. He peruses 
 with a savage frown the real estate columns 
 of the daily newspapers, Avhile he mutters 
 -vicious sentences such as, "I'll be blessed if 
 I will ! " or, " Not if I know myself, and I 
 think I do!" He observes moodily every 
 house in process of erection, and scrutinizes 
 those " To Let " with an animosity not quite 
 consistent with his determination to put his 
 foot down for once and crush the whole proj- 
 ect in the bud. Why is it that he slyly visits 
 after business hours the outlying section of 
 the city, where the newest and most desirable 
 residences are offered at fashionable prices ? 
 Why at odd moments does he make rows of 
 figures on available scraps of paper and on 
 the blotter at his oiBce, and abstractedly 
 compute interest on various sums at four and 
 a half and five per cent. ? Why ? Because 
 the leaven of his wife's threat that her life 
 will be shortened is working in his bosom 
 and he beholds her in his restless dreams 
 crushed to death beneath a. myriad of water- 
 bugs, all for the lack of an inch of closet- 
 room. Why? Because he is haunted per- 
 
28 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 petually by the countenances of his daughters, 
 on which he reads sorrowfully written that 
 they are wasting awtiy for lack of the bed- 
 chamber apiece promised them by their 
 mother. Why? Because, in brief, he is a 
 philosopher, and recognizes that what is to 
 be is to be, and that it is easier to dam up the 
 waters of the Nile with bulrushes (to adopt 
 an elegant and well-seasoned exemplar of im- 
 possibility) than to check the progress of 
 maternal pride. 
 
 Some four months after Josephine's an- 
 nouncement that she would live ten years 
 longer elsewhere, I returned home one after- 
 noon with what she subsequently stigmatized 
 as a sly expression about the corners of my 
 mouth. I doubt if I did look sly, for I pride 
 myself on my ability to control my features 
 when it is necessary. However that may be, 
 having persuaded Josephine to take a walk, I 
 conducted her to the door of a newly finished 
 house in the fashionable quarter. 
 
 " It might be amusing to go in and look it 
 over," I murmured. " I should rather like 
 to see the ramifications of a modem house." 
 
 Josephine, albeit a little surprised, was en- 
 raptured. She promptly took the lead and 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 29 
 
 I tramped at her side religiously from cellar 
 to attic, while she peeped into all the closets 
 
 and investigated the laundry and kitchen ac- 
 commodations and drew my attention to the 
 fact that the furnace and the ice-chest would 
 be amply separated. 
 
30 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " You know, Fred, that in our hoiise they 
 are side by side and we use a scandalous 
 amount of ice as a consequence," she said, 
 hooking her arm in mine lovingly. 
 
 " The whole house strikes me as very well 
 arranged," I retorted, in a bluff tone, as much 
 as to say that I saw through her blandish- 
 ments. I think she appreciated this. Never- 
 theless, a few minutes later when we were on 
 the dining-room story, she rubbed her head 
 against my shoulder and said, "Just see what 
 a love of a pantry, Fred. Mine is a hole 
 compared to it. Servants in a house like this 
 would never leave one. And do look at this 
 ceiling. It is simple, but divinely clean and 
 appropriate." 
 
 " It is well enough," said I, coldly. 
 
 After indulging in various other raptures, 
 to which I seemed to turn a deaf ear, and ex- 
 amining everything to her heart's discontent, 
 Josephine moved toward the front door with 
 a sigh. Then it was that I remarked : 
 
 " So the house suits you, my dear ? " 
 
 " It is ideal," she murmured, " simply 
 ideal." 
 
 " There are things about it which I don't 
 fancy altogether," said I. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 31 
 
 " Oil, Fred, if we only had a house like it, 
 I should be perfectly satisfied." 
 
 " Should you ? It is yours," I answered. 
 
 " Don't be unkind, Fred." 
 
 " It is yours," I repeated, a little more ex- 
 plicitly. 
 
 Josephine devoured me with inquiring 
 eyes. As she gazed, the expression of my 
 countenance brought the blood to her cheeks 
 and she cried with the plaintiveness of a 
 wounded animal, " What do you mean, dear? 
 It is cruel of you to make sport of me." 
 
 " I am not making sport of you, Josephine. 
 The house is yours — ours. I bought it yes- 
 terday. Here is the deed, if you mistrust 
 me," I continued, solemnly drawing from my 
 pocket the document in question. 
 
 Josephine took it like one dazed. She 
 looked from me to it and back again from it 
 to me, then with a joyous laugh she ex- 
 claimed, "Eeally? It is really true? Oh, 
 Fred, you are an angel ! " 
 
 " No, my dear," I answered, as she flung 
 her arms about my neck — for she does so 
 still once in a while — "I am merely a phi- 
 losopher who has learned to recognize that 
 what must be must be." 
 
32 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 My wife was too much absorbed in her 
 own mysterious mental processes to take note 
 of or analyze this observation. For a few 
 moments she was lost in 
 a brown study, and gazed 
 about her with a glance 
 that struck me as some- 
 what critical. 
 
 "You are an angel, 
 Fred," she repeated, 
 ruminantly. "You 
 took me in splendid- 
 ly, didn't you ? And 
 to think of your do- 
 ing it all by your- 
 , self!" 
 
 She wandered 
 back into the din- 
 ing-room, and 
 thence to the hall, 
 where she stood 
 peering up the 
 Gtairway at the skylight. "Yes," she con- 
 tinued presently, in a judicial, contempla- 
 tive tone, " I think it will do very well, on 
 the whole. I am not perfectly sure that 
 the laundress will be satisfied with the ar- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 33 
 
 rangement of the laundry, and I don't see ex- 
 actly, Fred, what you are to do for a dress- 
 ing-room, when we have more than one 
 visitor. I am out of conceit with the tinting 
 of the drawing-room ceiling, and — and sev- 
 eral of the mantelpieces are hideous. But, 
 on the other hand, the dining-room is per- 
 fectly lovely, there is no end of closet-room, 
 and the kitchen is a gem. Oh, thank you, 
 Fred, thank you ever so much. I really never 
 expected that we could afford to leave the 
 dear old house. It will almost break my 
 heart to leave it, too, although it is so 
 dirty." 
 
 Josephine's guns were spiked, as it were. 
 Having declared that the house was ideal, 
 she was barred from utterly blasting it in the 
 next breath. To tell the truth, I felt as a 
 consequence decidedly perky and inclined to 
 perform the double-shuffle or something of 
 the sort quite out of keeping with the tradi- 
 tional repose of a philosopher. It was so 
 obvious to me that I had escaped weeks, if 
 not months, of misery by the ruse which I 
 had adopted that I was fain to dance with 
 joy. Had I allowed Josephine to pick out a 
 house she would have felt obliged, even 
 3 
 
34 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 though she was thoroughly satisfied with the 
 first she saw, to inspect from top to bottom 
 every other in the market, for fear that she 
 might see something which pleased her bet- 
 ter, and I should have been compelled to ac- 
 company her. There are a few advantages 
 after all in being of a philosophic turn of 
 mind. 
 
 And here is another bit of philosophy for 
 you which I am thoroughly convinced is 
 sound. A woman adroitly handled wiU per- 
 mit her husband to choose a new unfurnished 
 house for her without serious demur. But 
 let the lord and master beware who takes 
 it upon himself to do the furnishing also 
 stealthily and of his own accord. I will con- 
 fess that it did occur to me at first to put 
 through the whole business at one fell swoop 
 — house, wall-papers, dados, chandeliers, car- 
 pets, and curtains. I even went so far as to 
 cross the street one day with the intention 
 of asking Poultney Briggs, who makes a busi- 
 ness of letting people know what they ought 
 to like in the line of interior decoration, to 
 name his price to complete the job. But my 
 courage failed me at the last minute, for I 
 had a presentiment that Josephine would be 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 35 
 
 disappointed if I did. You see I know her 
 pretty well after all these years. 
 
 " I should nsYer have forgiven you, Fred 
 — never ! " said my better-half, emphatically, 
 when I told her how near I had come to the 
 crucial act. "I should have hated every- 
 thing. Besides, no one nowadays thinks 
 anything of Poultney Briggs as a decorator. 
 He is terribly behind the times." 
 
 I accepted this reproof and the accom- 
 panying verdict with becoming meekness. I 
 remember that when we first went to house- 
 keeping Poultney Briggs was in the van of 
 artistic progress, and that no one was to be 
 mentioned in the same breath with him ; yet 
 now, apparently, he was of the sere-and-yel- 
 low-leaf order, professionally speaking. And 
 I was old fogy enough not to have been aware 
 of it. Clearly, I was not fit to be entrusted 
 with the selection of even a door-mat, to say 
 nothing of the wall-papers and carpets. It 
 was with a thankful heart over my foresight 
 that I relinquished to Josephine the whole 
 task of furnishing, with the sole reservation 
 that I should have my say about the wine- 
 cellar. My only revenge, a miserable one 
 forsooth, was that she resembled a skeleton 
 
36 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 three months later ; a pale, pitiful bag of 
 bones, though proud and radiant withal. 
 Had it not been for that prediction that her 
 life was to be lengthened, I should have felt 
 anxious. What a marvellous creation a 
 woman is, to be sure ! Man and philosopher 
 as I am, my impulse would have been to con- 
 sign the contents of the garret to the auc- 
 tioneer or the ash-man, and to retain most of 
 the least-used furniture and upholstery to 
 eke out our new splendor. But Josephine's 
 method was distinctly opposite. She was 
 critical of nearly everything respectable-look- 
 ing in the old house ; on the other hand, 
 there was scarcely anything in the attic or 
 lumber-room, where our useless things were 
 stored, which did not turn out to be a treasure 
 and just the thing for the new establishment. 
 To begin with, there was a love of a set of and- 
 irons and a brass fender (to reproduce Jo- 
 sephine's description exactly), which had been 
 discarded at the time we began housekeep- 
 ing as too old-fashioned and peculiar. Of 
 equal import was a disreputable-looking ma- 
 hogany desk with brass handles and claw 
 feet which had belonged to my great-grand- 
 mother before it was banished to the garret 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 37 
 
 within a month after oux wedding ceremony, 
 on the plea that none of the drawers would 
 work. They don't stUl, for that matter. A 
 cumbersome, stately Dutch clock and a toast- 
 rack of what Josephine styled mediaeval pat- 
 tern, were among the other discoTeries. The 
 latter was reposing in a soap-box in company 
 with a battered, vulgar nutmeg-grater. But 
 the pieces of resistance, as I called them, on 
 account of the difficulty we had in moving 
 them from behind a pUe of old window- 
 blinds, were the portraits of a little gentleman 
 in small-clothes, with his hair in a cue and a 
 seeming cast in one eye, and a stout lady 
 with a high complexion and corkscrew ring- 
 lets. 
 
 " Oh, Fred, who are they ? " cried Joseph- 
 ine, ecstatically, and she began to dust the 
 seedy, frameless canvases with a reverential 
 air. " Where did they come from ? " 
 
 " They're ancestors of mine, love." 
 
 " Ancestors ? How lovely, Fred ! I didn't 
 know you had any. I mean I didn't know 
 you had any who had their portraits painted." 
 
 " On the contrary, Josepliine, I told you 
 who they were when we were engaged, and I 
 remember I was rather anxious to hang them 
 
88 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 in the diiiing-room, but you said they were a 
 pair of old frumps, and that you wouldn't 
 give them house space. So we compromised 
 on the attic." 
 
 " Did I ? " said my darling, gravely. " Well, 
 it must have been because the dining-room 
 was too small for them. They will look de- 
 lightfully in our new one, when they are 
 mounted and touched up a bit, and they wiU 
 set off our Copley of my great-aunt in the 
 turban. What are their names ? They must 
 have names." 
 
 " They are my great-grandfather Plunkett 
 and his wife, on my father's side. He was a 
 common hangman." 
 
 " Now don't be idiotic, Fred." 
 
 " He was, my dear. It was you yourself 
 who said it. Don't you remember my calling 
 two of your forbears a precious pair of don- 
 keys because they wouldn't eat any form of 
 shell-fish, and your replying that, though I 
 was in the habit of grandiloquently describ- 
 ing my ancestor who used to execute people 
 as 'the sheriff of the county,' he was only a 
 common hangman? " 
 
 "Oh, was that the man? All I said was 
 that if he had been my ancestor instead of 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 39 
 
 yours, you would have called him a hangman. 
 He was sheriff of the county, wasn't he, 
 dear?" 
 
 " So I have been taught to believe." 
 
 '"My ancestor, the high sheriff,' won't 
 sound badly at all," she said, jauntily. 
 
 " Especially if we can tone up the old gen- 
 tleman's game eye a little." 
 
 Josephine's face expressed open admira- 
 tion. " You are a genius and a duck," she 
 exclaimed ; then, after a reflective pause, she 
 murmured, " Very likely he met with an ac- 
 cident just before he was painted." 
 
 " Yes, dear. Consequently, if the eye can't 
 be improved by means of the best modern 
 artistic talent, the least we can do is to put a 
 shade over it." 
 
 This waggish remark seemed to be lost on 
 Josephine. She wore a far-away look as 
 though her thoughts were following some 
 fancy which had appealed to her. She did 
 not deign to take me into her confidence at 
 the moment, but a fortnight later I happened 
 to come upon her in close confabulation with 
 a very clever, rising, local artist, over this 
 same portrait of my great-grandfather Plun- 
 kett. 
 
40 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "Fred," she said, nonclialantly, "Mr. 
 Binkey thinks he can do something to this 
 which will improve it." 
 
 " I shouldn't suppose that it was easy to 
 improve upon nature," I remarked, oracularly. 
 
 Josephine blushed a little, but she replied, 
 with sturdy decision, " Oh, but he never 
 could have looked like that. His eyes must 
 have been alike, Fred. Mustn't they, Mr. 
 Binkey?" 
 
 " I should imagine," said our rising local 
 artist, with a meditative squint at the pict- 
 ure, "that the fault was in the technique 
 rather than in the subject-matter of the 
 portrait." 
 
 " Precisely," said Josephine, triumphantly. 
 " Besides, Mr. Binkey says it needs varnish- 
 ing." 
 
 What can one say in the teeth of profes- 
 sional authority? When great-grandfather 
 and great-grandmother Plunkett came back 
 to us at the end of a month, they were newly 
 varnished and in bright, tasteful frames, and 
 no one would ever have detected that the 
 old gentleman's eyes did not resemble each 
 other closely. Since then I have often heard 
 Josephine declare her gratitude that she did 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 41 
 
 not allow any squeamishness to preyent her 
 from giving the children and people gener- 
 ally the correct impression of a man who was 
 eminent in his day and gener- 
 ation. Indeed, I have heard 
 her call the attention of vis- 
 itors to the strong similar- 
 
 ity about the brow and eyes which our second 
 son David bears to his great-grandfather, 
 High Sheriif Plunkett, and I do not question 
 in the least that she believes the cast in the 
 
42 OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 old gentleman's optic never to have existed 
 save in the original portrait-painter's imag- 
 ination. I must admit that, notwithstanding 
 the changes made by local talent in my ances- 
 tor's physiognomy, I am occasionally struck 
 myself with the strong resemblance specified 
 by Josephine ; and the longer I live the less 
 doubt I have that she is a far cleverer person 
 than your humble servant. 
 
Ill 
 
 SHOETLY before we moved to the sea- 
 side this summer, it was evident to me 
 that Josephine had something on her mind 
 which she hesitated to broach to me. I sus- 
 pect that the dear girl realized that we had 
 had rather a trying winter in our new estab- 
 lishment, and was accordingly a little nervous 
 as to how I would receive a new suggestion, 
 which was aimed directly at my personal com- 
 fort. I had indeed found the winter some- 
 what trying on account of the number of small 
 repairs which had proved to be necessary. 
 Most of the doors would not open except by 
 the application of brute force, and many of 
 the windows rattled, so that carpenters were 
 in possession of the premises a total of one 
 hundred and twenty-eight hours in the course 
 of nine calendar months, and I was compelled 
 to listen in hang-dog silence to Josephine's 
 sibilant commentary, that this was the nat- 
 
44 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ural result of buying a ready-made house. 
 Still, I must admit that on the whole she be- 
 haTed extraordinarily well under these trying 
 circumstances, and said nothing more tart 
 than that, if she ever were so foolish as to 
 moYe again, she should insist on building a 
 house to suit herself; which struck me as 
 rather a boomerang of a speech, seeing that 
 it implied a lurking doubt on her part as to 
 whether she had been wise in moving at all. 
 I even came near admitting to her in conse- 
 quence that I was thankful we had moved, 
 and that, surface indications to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, I was extremely happy in 
 my new surroundings, and egregiously proud 
 of her taste and cleverness in the selection of 
 wall-papers and upholstery. I could have 
 truthfully added also that, though a slippery 
 hump had replaced the cosey hollow in my 
 renovated easy-chair, I had found one of the 
 new chairs exactly suited to my sensibilities, 
 and should be secretly pleased if the old one 
 were to softly and suddenly vanish away dur- 
 ing our absence at the sea-side, after the man- 
 ner of the Boojum of ditty. I have really no 
 adequate reason to give why I delayed to 
 make this amiable confession. It was the 
 
A PHILOSOPHBH 45 
 
 consciousness, however, that I had it to make 
 which prompted me to help my darling out 
 of her quandary when I perceived that she 
 seemed afraid to beard the lion in his den. 
 
 " It has been very evident to me, Joseph- 
 ine, for the last two days, that you are keep- 
 ing back something. If your mind is really 
 set on altering the tinting of the drawing- 
 room ceiling, I will consent to have it done 
 while we are out of town." 
 
 "It isn't that at all, Fred. I agree with 
 you that we can't afford it this year." 
 
 " Is it the extra tub in the laundry, then ? " 
 
 " Of course it would be very nice if we 
 could have an extra tub. But it isn't that." 
 
 " Then there is something ? " 
 
 " Yes," she murmured. " Oh, Fred, I do 
 hope, now that the doctor has ordered you to 
 take more exercise, you will get one of those 
 pretty, striped, tennis suits." 
 
 " Yes, do, father dear," exclaimed my eld- 
 est daughter, who happened to enter the room 
 at the moment and overheard her mother's 
 speech. "You would look perfectly lovely 
 in one." 
 
 " It would be a satisfaction for once to see 
 you wear something a little joyous," con- 
 
46 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 tinued my wife, emboldened by the enthusi- 
 asm of her offspring. 
 
 "You seem to forget, dear, that I am a 
 plain man," I answered, though to tell the 
 truth I was asking myself whether I was not 
 a trifle weary of posing in that sublime ca- 
 pacity. Now that I thought of it, what was 
 the especial virtue of being a plain citizen ? 
 
 When I came to reflect on the matter fur- 
 ther, I realized that my programme for the 
 past fifteen years has been to put on a plain 
 pepper-and-salt suit of modest demeanor in 
 the morning, eat two plain-boiled eggs for 
 breakfast, walk down town in a plain black 
 overcoat to my office in a plain-looking build- 
 ing, where I pursue my calling until it is time 
 to go home and doff my pepper-and-salt of 
 modest demeanor for a plain suit of sables, 
 the funereal dress-clothes of commerce and 
 convention. Even this coal-black tribute to 
 ceremony has discredited me with some, who 
 argue that I am not a plain man because I do 
 not prefer to dine in the same old pepper- 
 and-salt. Verily the only bits of warm color 
 in my wardrobe have been a robin's-egg-blue 
 necktie, which I have never dared to wear 
 except once at a wedding, and a pair of pa- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 47 
 
 jamas reserved for very occasional jaunts on 
 yachts and sleeping-cars. And now that I 
 had the doctor's orders to take more exer- 
 cise, I had been on the point of selecting 
 an ordinary, plain, pepper-and-salt flannel 
 shirt, and condemning one of my oldest and 
 plainest pairs of pepper-and-salt trousers for 
 the purpose. 
 
 And yet it was not always so. I remember 
 that when I was a young fellow and a bach- 
 elor I used to be, if not a dandy exactly, very 
 particular regarding my personal appearance, 
 and that I was willing to approach the border 
 line of gaudiness as closely as any of my con- 
 temporaries. It took courage, too, then : the 
 youth who wore down town even a garden 
 flower in his button-hole was liable to be sus- 
 pected of a lack of purpose. One got very 
 little encouragement at the best in any effort 
 to fly in the face of the perpetual black tie 
 and black broadcloth frock-coat of the plain 
 American citizen, and he who chose not to 
 wear the garb of the Eepublic not merely 
 cut himseK off from the possibility of ever 
 becoming President, but ran the risk of be- 
 ing refused employment of any kind. Nat- 
 urally, therefore, I began after I was mar- 
 
48 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ried to do pretty much as the rest of my 
 feliow-citizens did, save in the matter of a 
 dress-coat at*dinner, which I continued to 
 don daily out of respect to Josephine's feel- 
 ings. (This has been one of the few points 
 in my behavior upon which she has ever laid 
 particular stress, and I thank her here public- 
 ly for her pertinacity. It has saved me from 
 the slough of utter carelessness.) Barring the 
 single blue necktie and the pajamas, I drift- 
 ed into and have stuck to blacks and browns 
 and the least ostentatious cuts until my own 
 wife and children have felt called upon to 
 proclaim me fusty. 
 
 To tell the truth, I had been more or less 
 conscious for some time of my degeneration 
 in this respect, but it is no easy matter to es- 
 cape from a rut when one is middle-aged. 
 Josephine's stricture concerning the lack of 
 joyousness in my apparel, however, brought 
 me up standing, as the phrase is, and served 
 not merely to spur me to action, but to 
 crystallize a tissue of reflections which had 
 been churning in my brain during a consid- 
 erable period. One evening a fortnight later 
 I sauntered into the drawing-room, where 
 my wife and four children were congregated 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 49 
 
 round the family lamps, and drew attention 
 to my appearance by a timorous cough. 
 
 Josephine was the first to look up. My 
 foot-fall will usually draw from her a wel- 
 coming smile, but she happened to be ab- 
 sorbed at the moment in the end of a novel, 
 the beginning of which she was going to read 
 later, so that it was not until I coughed that 
 she raised her eyes from her book. For a 
 moment she stared at me as though she were 
 doubtful whether I was not one of the char- 
 acters in whose vicissitudes she had been en- 
 grossed, then, letting the volume fall to the 
 ground, she exclaimed in a voice of rapture, 
 "Children, look at your father!" 
 
 Boused from their respective volumes by 
 the ardor of this exhortation, my two sons 
 and two daughters bent their critical eyes 
 upon the male author of their being. It was 
 a moment of sweet triumph for the old man 
 for which he had made the most careful 
 preparations. It was in vain that their gim- 
 let-like faculties sought to discover flaws in 
 the eminently fashionable costume of white 
 striped serge, the brand-new yellow shoes, 
 the jaunty summer necktie, and the appro- 
 priate hat, whereby I was transformed from 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 a plain man to a respectable-looking mem- 
 ber of society. The father who can rim the 
 gauntlet of his children's censorship may 
 
 look the cold world in the face without a 
 quaYer. Philosophy has taught me this, and 
 it was under the spur of the philosophic 
 spirit that I had sought out the most expen- 
 
A PHILOSOPHBB 51 
 
 sive and most fashionable tailor in town, and 
 told him to bnild me a summer outfit such as 
 no one could carp at. Expense ? He was to 
 spare none. Cut? The latest and most joyous. 
 
 The children clapped their hands and 
 there was a liA'ely chorus of approval, and I 
 had the satisfaction of hearing Josie, whose 
 hair is ornamentally auburn, and whose face 
 reminds me of her mother at the same age, 
 declare that I looked "perfectly scrump- 
 tious," a sentiment which, in spite of its 
 flavor of school-girl slang, seemed to express 
 the critical estimate of the family circle. 
 
 " I look like a perfect idiot," I remarked, 
 with becoming modesty, as I surveyed myself 
 in the glass. I did not think so, all the same. 
 Indeed, I was saying to myself that I had 
 had no idea I could look so well. Yet, after 
 all, it is other people who decide whether one 
 looks like an idiot or not. 
 
 " On the contrary," said Josephine, having 
 surveyed me once more from head to foot to 
 make sure that I was in nowise peculiar, but 
 just like everybody else (only nicer, as she 
 would say), "you look neat, and cool as a 
 cucumber, and five years younger. Doesn't 
 he, dears?" 
 
52 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " I should think so," said little Fred, who 
 is aiming to be a dandy himself. " Father 
 has cut us all out completely." 
 
 "It is a comfort to think that I shall 
 no longer be a disgrace to my family," I re- 
 marked, with humble mien. "I may add 
 that this is not all. I possess not merely this 
 costume, but I have replenished my ward- 
 robe utterly. When you see my new trou- 
 sers, my new summer overcoat, my assortment 
 of neckties, my brilliant shoes — both patent 
 leather and strawberry roan — you will no 
 longer be able to state, Josephine, that my 
 clothes lack joyousness." 
 
 Later in the evening, after the children 
 had gone to bed, Josephine, who had been up- 
 stairs to inspect my purchases, sat down be- 
 side me on the sofa, and nestled her head 
 against my shoulder. 
 
 "Fred, you are very good," she said. 
 " It must have bothered you terribly to get 
 all those things — you, who are so busy. 
 Everything is lovely, and the latest and pret- 
 tiest of its kind. You have shown exquisite 
 taste, dear ; but I feel as though I had bad- 
 gered you into it, following as it does on top 
 of the house and everything else." 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 53 
 
 "No, dearest," I answered, stroking lier 
 hair. " I am proud of you — I am grateful 
 to you. A man falls behind the times before 
 he is aware of it. The world changes and 
 paterfamilias ought to change with it out of 
 consideration for his children. You were 
 
 perfectly right, Josephine, just as you were 
 right about the moving. Our house was too 
 small and I was getting to look fusty and 
 frowsy." 
 
 " Not so bad as that, Fred. I never said 
 that you didn't look perfectly clean and re- 
 spectable. All I meant was that there are 
 such pretty things now, it seems a pity not 
 
54- THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 to wear them. It wasn't the fashion to wear 
 them when you were young. I mean young- 
 er than you are now," she added, patting my 
 cheek. " I am glad, Fred, that you are rec- 
 onciled to the house. I know that I have 
 been a thorn in your flesh for the last eigh- 
 teen months on account of it. I didn't 
 mean to be irritating about the moving, but 
 I was, and my soul has been wearing sack- 
 cloth and ashes ever since because I was so 
 nasty. You see, Fred, in the first place, 
 though I pretended to be pleased at your se- 
 lecting the house, I was really dreadfully dis- 
 appointed, for half the fun of a new house is 
 choosing it. Of course a new house chosen by 
 some one else is better than none at all, but a 
 woman hates surprises of that sort, and some- 
 how my teeth were set on edge by the few 
 things about the house that didn't suit me. 
 And then, dear," she continued, caressingly, 
 " I don't think it was very nice of me to med- 
 dle with your great-grandfather Plunkett's 
 portrait. It was too much in the line of the 
 people who have their ancestors painted to 
 order. I think of it quite often at night and 
 blush, which shows that I have a guilty con- 
 science on the subject, though I can't help 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 55 
 
 feeling that it has been very much improved 
 ■whenever I look at it." 
 
 "It was a very trifling amelioration," I 
 answered. " And, if I remember rightly, it 
 was I who put you up to it." 
 
 " Yes, but you were only in jest, and I was 
 base enough to adopt the idea and act upon 
 it. No, Fred, though I agree that everything 
 has worked out a great deal more satisfac- 
 torily than I deserve, and that we are infi- 
 nitely better off than we have ever been be- 
 fore in point of comfort and general happi- 
 ness, I look back on the last year and a half 
 as a sort of nightmare. You were content to 
 live along steadily in the dear old house and 
 to toil unselfishly for us all, and I was per- 
 petually prodding you. It has made me feel 
 myself to be a perfect ogre of a woman. 
 And yet it seemed to me to be necessary, 
 Fred." 
 
 " It was not merely necessary, Josephine. 
 It was essential. Thank goodness we have 
 got through it so lightly! It is not every 
 man who survives the operation. But, as I 
 have said to you already, I am the one who 
 should be grateful, and I too was the one at 
 fault. Had you waited for me to make the 
 
56 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 suggestion, we should have been still in that 
 dirty little box of a house, and I should have 
 been wearing the same black wisp of a neck- 
 tie such as I have worn for the last fifteen 
 years. Kiss me, darling." 
 
 She did so, and as she leaned her head 
 lovingly against my breast she looked up and 
 said, tremulously : " It was aU on account of 
 the children, Fred. I wish them to have 
 every chance there is." There spoke the 
 fond mother-bird. The children ! Are these 
 young giants and giantesses our children? 
 Seemingly but yesterday they were little tots 
 pottering in the sand with spade and shovel, 
 alternately angelic and demoniac, supplying 
 annual testimony to the inability of green 
 apples to oppress a hardy digestion, and free 
 from every inkling of responsibility save a 
 faint, intermittent respect for parental man- 
 date. Now they tower before me ia the 
 glory of budding manhood and maidenhood ; 
 lovable, yet haughty ; with star-like eyes and 
 brows perplexed by aU the problems of the 
 universe ; God-like in their devotion to pria- 
 ciple, though distressingly eager for pocket- 
 money. 
 
 "Fred," whispers the dear woman at my 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 57 
 
 side, breaking in upon my cogitation, " what 
 were you like as a boy — er — a young man, I 
 mean?" 
 
 Her words are the answering echo to my 
 own secret thought. Like myself she is grop- 
 ing for light and counsel. May not the clev- 
 erest man and woman fitly quail before the 
 soul-hunger of eager adolescent youth ? And 
 I do not profess to be clever. 
 * " What were you like as a young woman ? " 
 
 "I was afraid you would make that an- 
 swer," she murmurs, reproachfully. " Oh, I 
 have forgotten ! " 
 
 " And if we could remember, Josephine, it 
 would not help us very much. Each genera- 
 tion finds the world a virgin field. Some- 
 how, though, I had fancied that when we had 
 seen them through the scarlet fever and 
 landed them in college, it would be plain 
 sailing. We have to begin all over again, 
 though, and the second half promises to be 
 the most difficult." 
 
 " I know it. And think how we worried, 
 or rather tried not to worry, over them when 
 they were little things, and how we fancied 
 there were no problems to compare in diffi- 
 culty with supplying them with proper food 
 
68 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and proper masters. In the last fifteen years 
 they have had everything — chicken-pox, 
 measles, whooping-cough, mumps, and sear- 
 let fever. And they've collected everything 
 — postage-stamps, minerals, butterflies, coins, 
 and cigarette pictures. And they've kept 
 everything — rabbits, goats, bull-terriers, -white 
 mice, a pony, and guinea-pigs." 
 
 "And owned, and subsequently discarded, 
 to my certain knowledge, a music-box, doU's- 
 liouse, puppet-show, printing-press, steam- 
 engine, aquarium, and camera." 
 
 "Yes, and over and above their school 
 learning they've been taught to swim, ride, 
 dance, use tools, play on the piano, and 
 speak fair to middling French. Yet, as you 
 say, Fred, the most difficult part is to come, 
 just as we fancied that we were through. 
 And the terrible reflection is that we're not 
 so sure now what we ought to do for them as 
 we were when they were younger." 
 
 "Precisely, dear." 
 
 " And it seems sometimes very strange to 
 me, Fred, that though they've eaten out of 
 the same dish, as it were, all their days, and 
 had the same opportunities, they should be 
 so totally unlike one another physically, men- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 59 
 
 tally, and morally. It's impossible to lay 
 down any hard-and-fast rule for them now, 
 as one could when they were little." 
 
 It is indeed. I see them on the threshold 
 of manhood and maidenhood looking up to 
 my wife and me for guidance and counsel, 
 though they pretend to be sufficient to them- 
 selves in matters of judgment. A word of 
 encouragement or of disapproval from us 
 may be the turning-point in their destinies, 
 may set the seal on what they are to become. 
 Even as the flowers are drawn by the sun 
 and the willows follow the prevailing wind, 
 their young lives may be turned to good or 
 saved from ill by our loving sympathy or re- 
 monstrance in the pick of time. We clinch 
 our fingers in the stress of uncertainty. 
 Good counsel ? Yes, a thousand times yes ; 
 but who will counsel the counsellors ? 
 
 How the world has changed since Joseph- 
 ine and I were their age ! More particu- 
 larly that choicest section of it which we 
 were taught to think and speak of as the 
 land of the free and the home of the brave. 
 As I look back now in philosophic mood, 
 simplicity seems to me to have been the key- 
 note of our day. Not merely had the glad- 
 
60 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 some flannel costume and the Indian pajamas 
 not yet begun to force an issue with, the or- 
 atorical black broadcloth coat and the up- 
 and-down white nightgown. There were no 
 shingle staius to speak of but those of time 
 and eternity, and he who owned a vehicle of 
 any kind must needs be careful that it was 
 of sombre hue and homely pattern. Among 
 the fixed truths which we imbibed with the 
 maternal milk, and from the prejudice of 
 which I never expect to be whoUy free, were 
 these : That though the blatant blast of the 
 Western politician offend the sensitive ear of 
 culture by exaggeration, it is still true that 
 we are the greatest nation under the sun by 
 virtue of our total disregard of everything 
 which other nations have held fast to ; that 
 the American woman is a newly created spe- 
 cies ; that George Washington never told a 
 lie ; that though France was on our side in 
 our struggle for Independence, for which we 
 should ever be profoundly grateful, the cus- 
 tom of handing over young people to be 
 married at parental dictate, coupled with cer- 
 tain hoarse suspicions of an unmentionable 
 character, must be an everlasting barrier be- 
 tween us and the Gaul ; that, nevertheless. 
 
A PHIL080PHJE!I{ 61 
 
 if a man will have his fling, he may do so in 
 Paris once without being held to strict ac- 
 count for it, provided that he comes home 
 and lives a respectable life ever after on this 
 side the water ; that Russia's ill treatment of 
 the serf and general barbaric conditions are 
 to be overlooked on account of the friendli- 
 ness she displayed toward us in our hour of . 
 need, barbarism being on the whole a less 
 crucial blemish than the above-mentioned 
 peculiarities of our other ally; and that 
 everyone should hitch his wagon to a star. 
 
 In this last injunction lay, perhaps, the 
 gist of the whole matter. To hitch one's 
 wagon to a star was to be, primarily, a plain 
 person, to go in for truth, patriotism, fineness 
 of soul, long hours of labor, little exercise and 
 no vacations, pies and doughnuts, ugliness of 
 physical surroundings, and squeaky feminine 
 voices. Public opinion justified making all 
 the money one could, provided it was not 
 spent in rendering life ornate or beautiful. 
 So lived our fathers and mothers, our up- 
 right, vigorous, single-minded, ascetic prede- 
 cessors ; and in our day their precepts were 
 stUl held in reverence. Yet even then there 
 were indications of a change. The newly 
 
62 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 created species took it into her head to look 
 around her, especially in summer, first by 
 itineraries along the rock-bound coast of her 
 native land, and later by amazon-like pilgrim- 
 ages abroad. She invented Bar Harbor, and 
 while electrified Europe held its breath per- 
 ambulated Paris alone and climbed Mont 
 ^ Blanc with a single man. She also made 
 the pertinent discovery that her popper's 
 purse was pudgy with the proceeds of wheat, 
 corn, dry goods, and railway shares. Though 
 she still urged the successive youths who 
 strolled and sat under her Japanese sunshade 
 to hitch their wagons to heavenly bodies, she 
 gave it sweetly, and little by little to be un- 
 derstood that chastity among women and high 
 resolve among men need not preclude more 
 picturesque paraphernalia and a broader 
 field of investigation. She bought French 
 clothes ; her brothers took the hint from her, 
 and hied them to Paris and Vienna to pursue 
 their studies ; penetrated to Pekin and Con- 
 stantinople, and hunted the tiger in the jun- 
 gles of India, while popper's pudgy purse 
 grew more and more plethoric despite the 
 drafts upon it. Purification by pie waned, and 
 the first Queen Anne cottage reared its head. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 63 
 
 I wooed and won Josephine in those early, 
 transitory days when the influence of the 
 past was still upon us, though we foresaw 
 and caught glimpses of the new. We were 
 simple souls. I believed that Josephine's 
 wagon was hitched to a star; else I could 
 not have loved her. And she believed the 
 same of mine. She wandered in the panoply 
 of her maiden independence to far-off rook- 
 eries attended by me only (or some other 
 swain only). Though we were fain to dis- 
 cuss De Musset and Herbert Spencer, Dar- 
 win and Dobsou, George Eliot and Philip 
 Gilbert Hamerton — strange names to the 
 elder generation — our scheme of life was 
 still essentially grave and plain for all Jo- 
 sephine's Japanese sunshade and tendency to 
 make the most of her willowy figure. Little 
 did we dream of the later development which, 
 like a huge wave, was to sweep over the land 
 of the free and the home of the brave, over- 
 whelming its native simplicity with the virt- 
 ues, tastes, and vices of the other nations 
 against which our forefathers barred the 
 door. Palaces in all but the name stand 
 where the buffalo was wont to disport him- 
 self, and where the American eagle in hu- 
 
64 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 man form once flapped his wings and scream- 
 ed most viciously in contempt of the effete 
 civilization of the older world. Sons and 
 daughters of the pioneers who bolted their 
 dinners on the stroke of twelve find seven 
 too early for elegant convenience. Among 
 the reddest and palest of hot-house roses, 
 which deck their tables, glisten glass of Ve- 
 netian pattern and china from the bankrupt 
 stock of kings. According to their intellect- 
 ualities their talk is of labor and capital, of 
 working-girls' clubs and model tenement- 
 houses, of Buddha and Zola, of foreign titles, 
 and transplanted fox-hunting. To-day a hun- 
 dred thousand dollars is barely a competency, 
 and a building less than a dozen stories high 
 dwarfs the highway of trade. The vestibule 
 limited, the ocean greyhound, the Atlantic 
 cable, and the voice-bearing telephone have 
 made all nations kin, and bid fair to amal- 
 gamate society. Even the newly created 
 species condescends to swap her birthright 
 for a coronet. 
 
 All this has come to pass while Josephine 
 and I have been plodding along the route of 
 all flesh, trying not to forget our early aspi- 
 rations. We have changed our dinner-hour 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 65 
 
 with the rest of the world ; we have learned 
 to talk more or less unintelligently about the 
 sweating system and Buddhism ; we have 
 bowed our necks to the yoke of the electric 
 wire. Now that Josephine has spurred me 
 on to it, I have even bought a modern house, 
 and replenished my wardrobe so as to keep 
 pace with thought and custom. But, never- 
 theless, sitting here in my renovated easy- 
 chair, vdth my feet stretched toward the brass 
 andirons which were the pride of one of my 
 great-grandmothers, listening to the ticking 
 of the old-fashioned clock which belonged 
 to another of them, and conscious that the 
 eyes of my most distinguished ancestor are 
 looking dovrai at me from the wall, I feel 
 bewildered, as it were, by this latter-day 
 metamorphosis, bristling with new and for- 
 midable problems. Whither is civilization 
 tending? What is one to think of it all? 
 And by the shades of my forefathers, puri- 
 fied by pie, how shall we best help our sons 
 and daughters to hitch their wagons to 
 stars? That is what is worrying Josephme 
 and me. 
 
IV 
 
 W 
 
 E have just faced our first serious 
 problem. 
 Said my wife to me one day not long ago, 
 handing me the newspaper 
 as she spoke, " Look at this, 
 my dear. Little Fred has 
 been selected to play on the 
 University foot-ball eleven." 
 By way of contradistinc- 
 tion to me, who am rather 
 short and slight, my name- 
 sake and eldest son is still 
 habitually spoken of in the 
 family as Little Fred, not- 
 withstanding that he is a 
 head taller than I, and a strongly built, 
 muscular youth into the bargain. He is 
 in coUege — a sophomore — and I do not 
 hesitate to declare that when he left school 
 he was about as clean cut a young fellow, 
 
OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 67 
 
 both mentally and physically, as anyone 
 would wish to see. I have always encour- 
 aged him to take a sensible amount of exer- 
 cise and have been glad that he seemed fond 
 of the athletic sports in vogue among the 
 growing lads of the country and did not need 
 to be prodded, like his brother David for 
 instance, to keep out of doors. I have been 
 aware that he has been a prominent member 
 of an amateur base-ball nine and foot-ball 
 eleven, and I have been proud to follow in a 
 confused sort of fashion, for the technical 
 tenns have changed sadly since I was a boy, 
 the defeats and victories, principally the lat- 
 ter, I think, of those illustrious organiza- 
 tions. Although I was never his equal phys- 
 ically, I look back with considerable pride 
 to my own foot-ball days, and my children 
 have heard me repeatedly describe the fa- 
 mous dash which I once made with the ball 
 from one end of the field to the other, with 
 Tom Euggs, the butcher's boy, at my heels, 
 and how he never caught me until after I 
 had sent it flying over the goal line, and we 
 had won the game. That was a long time 
 ago now, and we played a very different game, 
 as I have since discovered. I hear a great 
 
68 
 
 THE OPINIONS OP 
 
 deal said nowadays about the lack of atten- 
 tion which the older generation gave to 
 manly sports. We did not make much fuss 
 about them, I agree, and 
 consequently some boys 
 may have been allowed 
 to grow to manhood with- 
 out proper physical train- 
 ing ; but it seems to me 
 that most of us were 
 playing something in the 
 fresh air the greater por- 
 tion of the time. How- 
 ever, I have always been 
 a great believer in manly 
 sports and I wish to con- 
 tinue to be. 
 
 When my boy entered 
 college I remember tell- 
 ing him kindly but ex- 
 plicitly that it was a cost- 
 ly matter to send him 
 there, and that I 
 should expect him 
 to make the most of the opportunities for 
 improvement which were offered him. I 
 knew that he was not especially clever at his 
 
A PHILOSOPHEB 69 
 
 books like Ms brother David, yet at the same 
 time I had set him down as a sensible, wide- 
 awake fellow with at least an average amount 
 of brains and with plenty of tact and com- 
 mon sense. It was my hope that he would 
 devote himself to political economy and 
 mathematics, in which case I should try and 
 find an opening for him after graduation with 
 the firm of Leggatt & Paine, our leading 
 bankers. I expected, of course, that he 
 would continue to take a suitable amount 
 of exercise, to keep himself in good trim; 
 row on the river and not altogether renounce 
 base-ball. Indeed, although I was aware 
 that collegiate sports were a much more seri- 
 ous tax on a student's time than in my day, 
 I should not have seriously demurred had 
 he been selected to row on the University 
 crew or play on the University base-ball nine. 
 I should have greatly preferred to have him 
 steer clear of both ; still, I try to remember 
 that I was once his age myself, and I am 
 given to understand that the rivalry between 
 the several colleges in these matters is more 
 intense than ever. There was a time when 
 nothing seemed to me of such vital interest 
 as whether Harvard or Yale won the boat 
 
70 THE OPINIONS OP 
 
 race. The Darwinian theory paled in com- 
 parative importance beside it. Indeed, I 
 still take more interest in it than it deserves, 
 perhaps. Nevertheless, I took pains to im- 
 press, upon Fred that his studies were to be 
 his first consideration. 
 
 We did not play foot-ball in college when I 
 was there, which was the reason, perhaps, 
 why I assumed that it was a boy's game, to 
 be shuffled off with other purely youthful 
 sports when one became a dignified student. 
 I had heard here and there the statement that 
 it was a rough game, which did not impress 
 me very much, recalKng as I did my own 
 hacked shins. It was not until I read my 
 friend Horace Plympton's letter to the Uven- 
 ing Times, that my attention was particu- 
 larly called to the matter. Horace seemed to 
 have lashed himself into a perfect fury on the 
 subject. He stigmatized the modern game as 
 it was played by University students as a bar- 
 baric spectacle, dangerous to limb, if not to 
 life. Horace has always been more or less 
 of a pepper-pot, but he is not exactly a 
 croaker, and he served in the war with dis- 
 tinction. Hence his diatribe made me frown, 
 even though it rather amused me. It was 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 71 
 
 written in the autumn of the year before Fred 
 went to Cambridge, and I read it aloud to 
 the family circle as being of interest to a 
 sub-freshman. 
 
 " What perfect nonsense ! " exclaimed that 
 profound young gentleman, when I had fin- 
 ished. " The man who wrote that letter is a 
 flub-dub, father." 
 
 Though not aware of the precise meaning 
 of this epithet, I realized that it was a severe 
 arraignment. I felt, too, that my manner of 
 reading the communication had given license 
 to my boy's tongue. I answered, therefore, 
 with some unction : 
 
 " The writer, Horace Plympton, is a brave 
 and sensible man. I know him very well." 
 
 " I giiess he never kicked foot-ball." 
 
 " In his day the young men who were fort- 
 unate enough to be sent to college were better 
 occupied. Foot-ball ? It is a game for high- 
 schools, not universities." 
 
 " It is the greatest game of the day, father," 
 said my sub-freshman, with the haughty con- 
 sciousness of superior knowledge which the 
 waning, though reigning, generation has so 
 often to bow to. 
 
 Of course that settled the question. I be- 
 
72 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 lieve that I made a futile remark to the effect 
 that the president ought to put a stop to it, 
 or something of the sort, but I knew enough 
 to know that I had been convicted of error. 
 I saw Fred glance at his sisters, and all three 
 at their mother, who looked anxious in her 
 desire not to seem to take sides against 
 me, though manifestly sympathizing with 
 them. I said to myself that if foot-ball was 
 the greatest game of the day, I was not going 
 to put my foot down and prevent my boys 
 from playing it merely because I was old fogy 
 enough not to understand that it was the 
 greatest game of the day, and Horace Plymp- 
 ton had written a letter to the Evening 
 Times. Accordingly, when the time came 
 for Fred to go to college I merely cautioned 
 him generally against wasting his time, and 
 uttered no fulminations against foot-ball in 
 particular. 
 
 "On the University foot-ball eleven?" I 
 echoed, taking the newspaper from my wife, 
 and as I read I felt a little lump of emotional 
 pride rise in my throat. There it was, sure 
 enough, ta black and white, though I could 
 not help wondering why the fact was of im- 
 portance enough to be chronicled in the daily 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 73 
 
 press along with tlie telegraphic news, and 
 the deaths and marriages. It was evidently a 
 matter of considerable moment, though I 
 could not quite see why. 
 
 " He will be perfectly delighted," said Jo- 
 sephine. " He has been extremely doubtful 
 whether he would be chosen. Oh, Fred," 
 she exclaimed, in a tone of solicitude, " do 
 you really think it's safe ? " 
 
 How exactly that was like a woman. Here 
 was my wife, who had secretly aided and 
 abetted her son in his design, and been the 
 recipient of his hopes and fears on the sub- 
 ject, turning to me, who had dared to utter a 
 feeble protest or two only to be scoffed a;t, 
 and summarily sat upon, asking if the game 
 was really safe. 
 
 " There are certain risks in this world that 
 a man has to take," I answered, borrowing the 
 sentiment which she had uttered on the occa- 
 sion of our affair with the burglars. 
 
 Josephine did not appreciate my irony. 
 " Why, oh why, did you give your consent to 
 his playing foot-ball ? " she asked, tragically. 
 " I understand that it is a terribly rough and 
 dangerous game." 
 
 " I give my consent ? This is monstrous. 
 
74 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Josephine, monstrous. I did not wish to be 
 a killjoy and a marplot, or I would have for- 
 bidden Fred to touch a foot-ball after he en- 
 tered college. Had you, my dear, given me 
 the least bit of support, I should have nipped 
 the whole business in the bud. Yet now you 
 seek to throw the blame on me." 
 
 The suggestion of the dire parental stern- 
 ness of which I had evidently just missed 
 being guilty caused her thoughts to fly off on 
 an opposite tack. " The poor darling, his 
 heart was so set on being chosen," she said. 
 " I am sure, Fred, it would have been a ter- 
 rible blow to him if he had not succeeded." 
 
 " I dare say that it was his chief motive in 
 going to college," I interjected, a little in- 
 dignantly. 
 
 " I really think it was," she murmured, 
 with sweet maternal sympathy. "I shall 
 live though in constant dread until it is over 
 and done with." 
 
 " What is over and done with ? " 
 
 " The Harvard-Yale foot-ball match. It's 
 on account of that he's been so anxious 
 to belong. And, Fred, he said to me the 
 other day that if he was chosen, he hoped 
 that we would go to Springfield to see the 
 
A PHILOSOPIIEn 75 
 
 game. It is terrible to think that I might 
 see him killed before my eyes, but he is set 
 on our going." 
 
 " It is all a piece of infernal nonsense," I 
 remarked, with majestic dignity; neverthe- 
 less, the idea did not strike me as a bad one. 
 To tell the truth, I was beginning to be curi- 
 ous to see this game, which, according to the 
 views of my eldest son, was the greatest 
 game of the day, and to those of Horace 
 Plympton a barbaric spectacle. 
 
 And now befell me a curious experience ; 
 at least it seemed to me such. I found that 
 I, who, though considered an industrious and 
 painstaking lawyer, have never awakened 
 any especial interest in the community, had 
 acquired lustre and importance by virtue of 
 the circumstance that I had a son on the 
 University foot-ball eleven. CoUege gradu- 
 ates of various ages, who had hitherto classed 
 me with the general run of their acquaint- 
 ance, grew suddenly cordial and congratula- 
 tory in their manner, and I had the satisfac- 
 tion of reading in the public prints an item 
 
 to the effect that Frederick , the father 
 
 of the well-known half-back of the Harvard 
 University foot-ball eleven, had recently vis- 
 
76 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ited New York for a few days. Altogether 
 I had become, for the first time in my exist- 
 
 •i*— 1 1' 
 
 ence, an object of consequence to my fellow- 
 citizens, and almost to the world at large. 
 
 As for the hero himself, he bore his im- 
 portance modestly and meekly, though he 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 77 
 
 evidently considered that he had rescued the 
 family name from obscurity and set it glori- 
 ously in the public eye by dint of his re- 
 nown. He was in strict training, and fierce- 
 ly conscientious as to what he ate and drank, 
 and as to his hours of sleep. Little was 
 heard in the house when he was at home but 
 conjecture and estimate as to who was likely 
 to win in the impending contest. Had I 
 been properly attentive, I might have learned 
 from his lips not merely the names and nick- 
 names of the members of the respective 
 teams and the positions on the field they 
 were to fill, but their weights in fighting trim, 
 their fine points both as foot-ball kickers 
 and as men, and not improbably their love 
 affairs. When now and then, as occasionally 
 happened, I betrayed by an unfortunate 
 question or by unappreciative silence my lack 
 of familiarity with this or that celebrity, the 
 look of wondering pity with which my boy, 
 and indeed every member of the family, re- 
 garded me made me feel myself to be a veri- 
 table ignoramus. Josephine and her girls 
 knew the whole business from beginning to 
 end, and I must confess that I secretly drank 
 in more than I pretended. 
 
78 -f-, THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 A fortnight before the match was to come 
 off Sam Bangs, who, as some of you will re- 
 member, is a second cousin of mine and rather 
 a pal of Josephine's, appeared at the house 
 one evening and laid before me, in his en- 
 gaging, plaiisible fashion, a project which he 
 and his wife and my wife had cooked up be- 
 tween them. He and Josephine assured me, 
 in the first place, that I wouldn't have the 
 least bother in the matter, and that every- 
 thing would be perfectly plain running for 
 the reason that Sam was intimate with the 
 manager of the railroad, and that little Fred 
 had secured the requisite number of tickets 
 for the game. Then he proceeded to inform 
 me that they had conceived the idea of go- 
 ing to see the game at Springfield in a 
 private special car; that the manager had 
 promised to let him have one, and that it 
 would be much more jolly to go with a few 
 friends like that and have luncheon comfort- 
 ably served by a caterer than to be lumped 
 in the common cars with Tom, Dick, and 
 Harry, who were liable to be noisy students, 
 or still more noisy prize-fighters, and starve ; 
 that there were several people crazy to go 
 whom it v/ould be very pleasant to have. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 79 
 
 notably Mrs. Guy Sloane and Mrs. Walter 
 Warner {nee Polly Flinders), and that the 
 expense would be comparatively trifling. 
 
 " I think it would be particularly nice, Fred, 
 on Josie's account," added my wife. " I should 
 ask two or three of her girls, and some 
 boys to match. She is inclined to be shy, 
 and this would be just the occasion to help 
 her to feel at her ease with young men. Then 
 I thought you would like to have a chat with 
 Polly Warner; you so rarely see her now, 
 and you and she used to get on so well to- 
 gether; and you Imow Mrs. Guy Sloane 
 always stimulates you. I think you would 
 have a very good time ; and, as Sam says, it's 
 a Dutch treat, so the expense would fall on 
 everybody alike." 
 
 Seeing that Josephine's heart was set on 
 going in just that way, I did not attempt to 
 interpose objections. I took the liberty, 
 however, of remarking that, though we as 
 the parents of one of the players had a reason 
 for going, I could not understand why a culti- 
 vated woman like Mrs. Guy Sloane was will- 
 ing, crazy indeed according to what they had 
 said, to take so much trouble to see a pack 
 of college youths knock each other about. In 
 
80 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 answer to this, Sam declared that every man, 
 woman, and child in the city who could pos- 
 sibly get away was going to Springfield ; that 
 trains were to be run every fifteen minutes, 
 and that no less than twenty special private 
 cars in addition to ours had been chartered 
 for the occasion. Again I hung my dimin- 
 ished head before this broadside of superior 
 information. 
 
 Sam was perfectly right. I have rarely 
 seen such a crowd in a small compass as was 
 collected at the railway station before we 
 started. How we ever reached Sam, who 
 made himself visible to me at last across 
 an ocean of heads by lifting himself on the 
 shoulders of obliging friends, and found our 
 special . car seems mysterious to me as I 
 look back upon it. It really appeared as 
 though every man, woman, and child in the 
 city loere going, from the highest officials of 
 the State and our leading citizens in various 
 fields to the veriest street Arab who had 
 managed to beg, borrow, or earn the req- 
 uisite fare. Everj^body, or nearly every- 
 body, carried a flag, and Josephine seemed 
 to think that I, as a Harvard man and the 
 father of the half-back of the team, Avas 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 81 
 
 lacking in enthusiasm because I had not got 
 possession of one. 
 
 " It will be time enough for enthu- 
 siasm when we win the match," I re- 
 marked, sententiously, though what 
 with the general crowd and the files 
 of students bubbling over with 
 Kah-rah-rahs as they tore along 
 
82 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 the platform to find seats in the several 
 trains, I was beginning to feel very tremu- 
 lous about the gills, so to speak. 
 
 I doubt if Josephine heard my answer. 
 Her attention had suddenly]! been absorbed 
 by the sight of Mrs. Willoughby "Walton, on 
 the way to her special car, in all her glory, 
 which consisted of a new seal-brown cos- 
 tume with tiger-skin trimmings and a retinue 
 comprising Gillespie Gore, Dr. Henry Mere- 
 dith, the specialist on nervous diseases (who, 
 like everybody else, had evidently taken a 
 day off), and half a dozen youths who looked 
 young enough to be freshmen. She was 
 frantically waving a crimson flag, which she 
 shook at the windows of our ear as she 
 passed with the spirit of a belle of nineteen. 
 
 "That woman is simply wonderful," mur- 
 mured my darling. " She is fifty-five if she 
 is a day, but she will not give up." 
 
 "Eah! rah! rah! Harvard!" I ejaculated 
 hysterically. I felt that I was getting rat- 
 tled, as my famous son calls it- 
 
 " Look here. Cousin Fred," said Sam Bangs 
 at my shoulder. " Seen the morniag pa- 
 per ? Here he is cabinet size and a full fam- 
 ily history annexed. It's something which 
 
A PHILOSOPEBB 
 
 83 
 
 his great-grandchildren svill be proud of. 
 Where the dickens, by the way, is Mrs. 
 Sloane? I've been looking for her every- 
 
 where in the station. She's coming, because 
 she telephoned me last night to inquire if 
 I could squeeze one more into our car. We'U 
 be off in another five minutes." 
 
 " What do you mean, Sam ? What is it ? " 
 
84 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 asked Josephine, as she seized and held to 
 the light the newspaper which he was ex- 
 tending. 
 
 I looked over her shoulder and broke into 
 a cold perspiration at beholding an execrable 
 three-quarters length cut of my darling son 
 superscribed by his name in holograph. 
 
 " It's an indecent outrage," I hissed. 
 
 "It isn't like him in the least. No one 
 would ever know who it was. It makes him 
 look like a prize-fighter," cried Josephine. 
 
 " They've no right to print his picture at 
 all ; it'U do the boy a serious injury by lead- 
 ing him to believe there is nothing else in 
 the world worth thinking about but foot- 
 ball," I asserted. " What right have they to 
 doit?" 
 
 "Pooh, Cousin Fred," said Sam. "It's 
 nothing but ordinary newspaper enterprise. 
 They print everybody's portrait nowadays, 
 from the common murderer up. Your ox is 
 gored this time, that's all. Cheer up, old 
 man — Eah ! rah ! rah ! Harvard ! " 
 
 " I never supposed they would make him 
 look like that, or I wouldn't have let Fred 
 have the photograph to give them," said 
 Josephine, forlornly. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 85 
 
 " Do you mean that you gave it to them ? " 
 I asked, in horror. 
 
 " It was to Fred I gave it. He said that 
 his picture was to appear with the others, 
 and that he must have a photograph. But 
 they have made him much the worst looking 
 of them all. It's a libel on the dear boy." 
 
 I was saved from intemperate language by 
 the sudden advent of Mrs. Guy Sloane, in 
 whose custody appeared the Eev. Bradley 
 Mason, our spiritual adviser. They were 
 both breathless with haste, occasioned, as we 
 shortly learned, by the necessity imposed on 
 our beloved pastor of marrying a couple be- 
 fore he could escape from his fold. 
 
 "If I had ever dreamed that you would 
 come, Mr. Mason, I should have sent you an 
 invitation myself," said Josephine, whose de- 
 light, as I perceived, was tinged with jeal- 
 ousy. 
 
 " I planned it as a delicious surprise," in- 
 terjected Mrs. Sloane. " I knew you would 
 be only too glad to have him if there was 
 room. I dare say you thought I was a little 
 mysterious over the telephone last night, Mr. 
 Bangs," she added with a blithe twist of her 
 neck in Sam's direction. 
 
86 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " I am a thorough believer in the efficacy 
 of manly sports on character," I heard Mr. 
 Mason remark to my wife. " They cannot be 
 too much encouraged by us all." 
 
 "It is very kind of you to say so," said 
 Josephine, with a radiance which told me 
 plainly that her qualms concerning the whole 
 proceeding as an educational factor were at 
 least temporarily dispelled. " I shall tell 
 little Fred that you were with us. It will 
 gratify him very much to know that you saw 
 the game." 
 
 " It must be a proud day for you as a father 
 and a college man," he continued, with a 
 kindly smile in my direction. 
 
 "Really, sir, I am not altogether certain 
 yet," I answered, a trifle doggedly. "My 
 judgment is in a state of suspension." 
 
 He obviously mistook my philosophic ut- 
 terance for fears concerning the outcome of 
 the game, inasmuch as he presently sought 
 to soothe me by a speech to the effect that a 
 game well lost was a victory in ethics, which 
 prompted me to remark, under my breath : 
 
 " Provided it doesn't cost a leg or a rib or 
 two." 
 
 " Cost nothing," cried the irrepressible 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 87 
 
 Sam, whose ear caught what I had meant 
 for an aside. " He'll come out of it all right, 
 Cousin Fred. "We're bound to win too. Eah ! 
 rah ! rah ! Harv-a-rd ! " Thereupon the en- 
 gine gave a puff and a couple of snorts, and 
 we were off. 
 
WE were early on the groiind. That is to 
 say, only a few hundred people were 
 in their places when we arrived. The seating 
 accommodations were for thousands. Have 
 you ever seen an intercollegiate foot -ball 
 field ? If not, picture to yourself a long, level, 
 rectangular arena about a hundred yards long 
 and fifty yards wide marked out with white 
 lines at certain regular intervals. At either , 
 end stands a crossbar supported by two posts. 
 These are the respective goals. All along 
 the field on either side runs a tall tier of 
 seats similar to those at a hippodrome, 
 and there are tiers of seats also opposite the 
 ends ; but the best seats are likely to be those 
 on either side in proximity to the middle of 
 the field. 
 
 Sam Bangs led the way with the confident 
 tread of a drum-major down the Harvard 
 side — for the cvistom is to apportion the seats 
 
OPINIONa OF A PMILOSOPHEB 89 
 
 on one of the long sides of the field among 
 the friends of one college, and those on the 
 other correspondingly — until he reached a 
 desirable location. Then we established our- 
 selves according to his directions and waited. 
 It was rather a long wait — nearly two hours — 
 during which I had ample leisure to phi- 
 losophize to the top of my bent. We had to 
 console us Sam's assurance that it was neces- 
 sary to take time by the forelock to this 
 radical extent in order to secure satisfactory 
 places. For the next two hours a steady 
 stream of people poured along the two sides 
 of the field until they became great walls of 
 crimson and blue humanity. Flags waved, 
 badges fluttered, the human voice worked it- 
 self hoarse in every .form of encouraging out- 
 cry from the full-chested song to the indis- 
 criminate cat-call. In front of each section 
 of seats stood a separate youth, who at very 
 short intervals, and at the slightest provoca- 
 tion, invoked cheers upon cheers for every- 
 thing and everybody, from the captain of the 
 le&m. to the college costermonger. An hour 
 before the game began the benches were 
 crowded, and I seemed to have recognized 
 in the passing throng every person of con- 
 
90 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 sideration among my acquaintance. Mrs. 
 Willoughby Walton and her party were 
 among the last to arrive. I was curious to 
 see where they would bestow themselves, 
 seeing that we were all packed tight as her- 
 rings, and there was only here and there an 
 occasional chance for another mortal to 
 squeeze in, and that generally at the cost of 
 clambering over the heads of two or three 
 hundred people. As Josephine said to me 
 later, I might have known that Mrs. Walton 
 would not put herself in any such plight. I 
 was just wondering what on earth her elegant 
 procession, which had halted in front of the 
 section next to ours, was going to do, when 
 of a sudden the occupants of the two best 
 rows of seats trooped out in orderly file and 
 relinquished their places to the fashionable 
 party. Sam, after a moment's dazed si- 
 lence, which must have been gall to him, for 
 he does not like to be imposed upon in such 
 matters, furnished us with the solution of 
 this act of legerdemain. 
 
 " They were mUl hands subsidized to come 
 early and hold the seats untU Mrs. Willough- 
 by arrived. 
 
 Another hour of anticipation, and then at 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 91 
 
 last a roar; a roar whicli runs like a fire 
 down our side of the field, waking tired 
 lungs to new enthusiasm and calling into ac- 
 tion every crimson fiag and rag. Only the 
 wearers of the blue are quiet ; their benches 
 remain coldly silent. The Harvard eleven 
 have arrived on a tally-ho, and in a few 
 minutes more are disporting themselves like 
 a band of prairie dogs over the campus. The 
 uproar is deafening, but they seem to pay no 
 attention to it. They strip off their crim- 
 son jerseys and concentrate their energies 
 on bunting and punting a leather foot-ball 
 about the field. They wear earth-colored 
 canvas jackets and earth-colored knicker- 
 bockers ending in crimson stockings, and I 
 say to myself that they are the most unpleas- 
 ant-looking band of ruffians I have ever be- 
 held. Nor are my fond paternal eyes able to 
 make a reservation in little Fred's favor on 
 this point. I have considerable difficulty, 
 indeed, in distinguishing him from his mates, 
 though Josephine declares that she singled 
 him out the moment he appeared on the 
 scene. He suggests to me a compromise be- 
 tween a convict and a hod-carrier. Neverthe- 
 less, my eyes begin to water as I follow his 
 
92 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 every movement, and my pulses throb eagerly. 
 At the same time I am impelled to link my 
 arm affectionately in my son David's, next to 
 whom I am sitting. I cannot help wonder- 
 ing what he, dear boy, is thinking of it all. 
 He is perfectly healthy, but he is slight, and 
 will never be an athlete. His tastes do not 
 run in that direction. He graduated at 
 school last summer next to the head of his 
 class, and it was no class of two, but of 
 twenty times that number. We were very 
 proud of it, Josephine and I. We went to 
 the exhibition and saw him receive a number 
 of prizes. It was a pleasant occasion, but 
 how trifling and insignificant were the plau- 
 dits he received compared with the uproari- 
 ous ovation accorded a successful haK-back. 
 I feel almost indignant, even in the midst 
 of my excitement over little Fred, and would 
 fain throw my arms round his brother's 
 neck and whisper that he must not take the 
 matter to heart, and that the whole business 
 is terribly unjust. 
 
 Now comes another uproar, and this time 
 from the opposite side of the field. The 
 Yale eleven have arrived and are stripping 
 off their jerseys. They career over the arena 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 93 
 
 in dirt color and dark blue, while the dark 
 blue benches surge tumultuously. There is 
 no more delay. The umpire calls the game, 
 and the two sides line up for action. I feel 
 Josephine, who is on my other side, clutch my 
 arm and sigh. There is only one object for 
 her on the field, as I well know. She has 
 been trying to learn the rules from Sam for 
 the last half hour (she doubts my knowledge 
 on such subjects nowadays), and I can see 
 that she is seeking in vain to concentrate 
 her mind on her new-found information and 
 to shut out the vision of little Fred being 
 borne off the field on a litter. I confess that 
 Horace Plympton's letter recurs to me for a 
 moment, but I shake myself and utter an in- 
 ward " Pooh ! " and haughtily determine to 
 view the contest dispassionately and from 
 the standpoint of a third person and a phi- 
 losopher. 
 
 Harvard has won the toss and is to have 
 the ball. In my day we had to kick it ; now 
 it is manipulated with the hands, and not for- 
 ward, but backward. The players form a 
 phalanx, and one of their number snaps, as it 
 is called, the ball between his legs to some- 
 one behind him, who in turn passes it to an- 
 
94 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 other, who is expected to make a forward 
 dash with it. Before I can quite realize what 
 is being done the Harvard men are speeding 
 toward the Yale goal in a V-shaped body. 
 Little Fred has the ball. Or rather he had it. 
 All I can see now is an indiscriminate mass 
 of bodies, legs, and arms. A great pile of men 
 are struggling on the ground, and I have rea- 
 son to believe that little Fred is at the bottom 
 of the pile. 
 
 " A scrimmage," says Sam, looking round 
 at Josephine. 
 
 "Oh, yes," she answers, with apparent 
 calm, but I can feel her tremble. 
 
 "This is nothing; it's like this most of 
 the time," says Sam. " You see he's all right, 
 and " 
 
 A yell cuts him short. 
 
 " Good enough ! Harvard still has the ball," 
 he continues, at its close. 
 
 " Can you see him? " whispers Josephine, 
 in my ear. 
 
 " He's all right," I murmur, assuringiy. 
 
 See him ! I can see him distinctly. He has 
 lost his cap already ; his hair is in wild con- 
 fusion ; he is covered with dirt from head to 
 foot; he limps a little. But Harvard still 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 95 
 
 has the ball. And Sam says it is nothing 
 and like this most of the time. Sam must 
 know. 
 
 "Eah! rah! rah! Harvard!" I cry with 
 the rest unflinchingly. 
 
 There is a second yell, this time from our 
 enemies. Harvard has lost the ball and 
 Yale has it. And now before my bewildered 
 eyes scrimmage follows scrimmage with 
 fierce iteration, and one pile of bodies, arms, 
 
96 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and legs succeeds another. The player, 
 fortunate enough to carry or force the ball 
 a yard or more toward the rival goal by a 
 frantic rush before he is overwhelmed and 
 squashed, reaps a whirlwind of applause 
 from the absorbed multitude. Every inch 
 of ground is disputed. Once in a long in- 
 terval when the ball gets dangerously near a 
 goal, someone on the imperilled side kicks it 
 half the length of the field, and the scrim- 
 mages are renewed. But it is rarely kicked at 
 all except at such junctures. Foot-ball ! I 
 say to myself that it is a gladiatorial combat 
 with an occasional punt thrown in by way of 
 identification. But every one around me is 
 declaring that the play of both sides is mag- 
 nificent, that the team work is perfection, and 
 the head qualities displayed unique in the 
 annals of the game. Sam teUs me again and 
 again that Fred is doing sheer wonders and 
 is the backbone of the Harvard side, and I 
 wonder how he can distinguish so easily 
 which is Fred and whether he has any back- 
 bone left. I can no longer make out much 
 of anything except that one ruffian closely re- 
 sembles every other ruffian, and that one poor 
 boy is lying on the ground perfectly stiU, as 
 
A PHIL080PHEB 97 
 
 though he were dead. There is just a little 
 lull on the benches. People are interested. 
 
 " Who is it ? " gasps Josephine. " Is it he, 
 dear?" 
 
 " ' Butchered to make a Boman holiday,'" 
 I mutter between my teeth, with my heart in 
 my mouth. 
 
 They are pulling and rubbing the victim, 
 and a doctor, retained for such emergencies, 
 is bending over him. After a few moments 
 ■more he rises slowly, looks round him- in a 
 dazed fashion, and resumes his position with 
 a painful limp, to a round of applause. 
 
 " It isn't Fred," says Josephine. 
 
 " But he has a mother, though," I answer. 
 
 "He'll be all right in a minute or two," 
 says Sam. " They stamped the wind out of 
 him, that's all." 
 
 To have the wind stamped out of one is a 
 mere bagatelle, of course, and I have forgot- 
 ten it in another moment under the spur 'of 
 excitement. A Harvard player has the baU, 
 and no one seems to be able to stop him. He 
 throws off this antagonist and dodges two 
 others, and races down the field like a deer, 
 while the wearers of the crimson scream his 
 name with transport and floirrish their ban- 
 7 
 
98 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ners like madmen. It is Fred, it is Fred, it 
 is Fred ! I know his figure now. He has the 
 ball and is flying like the wind with two great 
 brutes at his heels. Will they catch him? 
 Will they kill him? They are gaining on 
 him. 
 
 " Kun — run — run," I shout, in spite of my- 
 self, whUe all the people on our benches rise 
 in their excitement, and Josephine covers her 
 eyes with her hands, unwilling to look. On, 
 on my boy runs, until at last he falls with his' 
 two pursuers on top of him full across the 
 Yale line. 
 
 "A touch-down, a touch-down ! " bursts out 
 Sam, as be grasps my hand in his wild enthu- 
 siasm. I do not know exactly what has oc- 
 curred except that there is pandemonium on 
 the Harvard side of the field unequalled as 
 yet by anything that has happened, and a 
 deathly tranquillity along the benches oppo- 
 site. After making sure that Fred is still 
 alive, I listen to the explanation that a touch- 
 down counts a certain number of points, and 
 gives the right to the side which wins it to 
 try to kick a goal. This attempt is presently 
 made. A player lies on the ground and holds 
 the ball between his hands for another to kick. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 99 
 
 Presto ! the ball sails through the air ; for an 
 instant there is agonized suspense; and then a 
 shout from Yale. It has failed to go between 
 the goal-posts, and consequently has missed. 
 
 "Four to nothing, anyway," says Sam. 
 " That was a magnificent run. Eah ! rah ! 
 rah! Harvard." 
 
 Josephine is wiping her eyes and every- 
 body in our neighborhood is nudging each 
 other in consequence of the news that we are 
 blood relations of the hero of the hour. Mrs. 
 Sloane nods her congratulations, and Mrs. 
 Walton signals with a crimson flag from the 
 adjoining section, and our beloved pastor 
 smiles at Josephine in his delightful way. 
 
 And what foUows ? What follows is fierce 
 and harrowing. What follows continues to 
 hold that great audience spellbound to the 
 close. The score is four to nothing ia favor 
 of Harvard ; but the Yale team, smarting from 
 defeat, throw themselves into the ever-recur- 
 ring scrimmages with set faces. It is not my 
 purpose to foUow the contest in detail. I am 
 writing as a father and philosopher, and not 
 as a chronicler of athletic struggles. Suffice 
 it to state that the scrimmages grow still more 
 savage and earnest, and that a player from 
 
100 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 each side is obliged by the referee to retire 
 from the field, because he has slugged an op- 
 ponent. Suffice it to Btate that presently a 
 rusher is obliged to retire from the field by 
 reason of a sprained ankle. It is not little 
 Fred, but might it not have been ? Suffice it 
 to state that by the end of the first three- 
 quarters of an hour — let the uninitiated here 
 learn that a match is divided into two bouts 
 of that length each, with an interim of fifteen 
 minutes — the Yale team, by the most magnifi- 
 cent work (according to Sam Bangs), has 
 forced the ball steadily and surely toward 
 the Harvard line, and won a touch-down and 
 kicked a goal, leaving the score for the first 
 half six to four in favor of the blue. Just 
 after the ball has flown between the goal- 
 posts, amid thimders of triumph from our 
 enemies, the timpire calls time. 
 
 Suffice it to state that the second three- 
 quarters of an hour is largely a repetition of 
 the first — short, furious rushes, everlasting 
 scrimmages, and here and there a punt. The 
 ruffians look still more ruffianly from frequent 
 contact with mother-earth and the clutches of 
 one another. Ominous gloom and depress- 
 ing silence take possession of the friends of 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 10] 
 
 Harvard ; their very cheers are anxious, and 
 with good reason. Yale has kicked another 
 goal from the field in the first twenty minutes 
 and the crimson is being gradually and stead- 
 ily outplayed. My heart bleeds for my son ; 
 he will be so disappointed if he loses. And 
 I shall be so happy when the game is over 
 and I am sure that he is not maimed for life. 
 He is doing wonders still, dear boy. Twice I 
 see him lying flat and motionless on the field 
 with the wind stamped out of him, to borrow 
 Sam's euphemism, while his mother wriggles 
 in her seat in the throes of uncertainty and 
 is hardly to be restrained from going to him. 
 Twice, after the doctor has fumbled over him 
 and water has been dashed in his face, I see 
 Sam's diagnosis vindicated, and my half-back 
 rise to his feet, and the game go on as though 
 nothing had happened. Such episodes are a 
 matter of course, and not to be taken too seri- 
 ously. A broken rib or two is not a vital mat- 
 ter, and only one rib is broken in the second 
 three-quarters of an hour. Even then the 
 poor victim does not have to be carried off 
 on a litter, for he is able to walk with the 
 help of the doctor and a friend. It is not 
 Pred : Fred has merely had the \vind stamped 
 
102 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 out of him a few times and is still doing won- 
 ders. Will it never end ? I look at my watch 
 feverishly. The ball is close by the Harvard 
 goal, and Yale holds it there with the tenacity 
 of a bull-dog. Bull-dog ? They are all bull- 
 dogs — twenty- two buU-dogs cheek by jowl. 
 
 " Isn't it magnificent ? " murmurs Sam, 
 looking back at me. " They have outplayed 
 us fairly and squarely. Only five minutes 
 left, and the score eleven to four against us. 
 We're not in it. That run of Fred's was the 
 most brilliant play of the day, though." 
 
 " The poor darling will be broken-hearted," 
 whispers Josephine. 
 
 " That is better than being broken-headed 
 — better for us," I whisper in reply. 
 
 " I do hope he hasn't lost any of his front 
 teeth. His mouth was bleeding the last time 
 he fell," continues his mother. 
 
 "False ones nowadays are very satisfac- 
 tory," I answer. 
 
 Ten minutes later we are moving along 
 with the rest of our acquaintance on the way 
 to the railroad. Tale has won, eleven to four, 
 and the bruised and battered players of both 
 teams have departed on their respective taUy- 
 hos, and Josephine and I are free to receive 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 103 
 
 the congratulations of our friends with a calm 
 mind, though my darling is still haunted by 
 the fear that our illustrious son has left a 
 tooth or two on the arena. Fred's run is on 
 everybody's lips, and we as the authors of his 
 being are made much of. Mr. Leggatt, the 
 banker, works his way lap to me through the 
 crowd at great personal distress, for he is a fat 
 man, in order to say, with an enthusiastic shake 
 of the hand : 
 
 " Great boy that of yours ; splendid grit ; I 
 must have him when he graduates." 
 
 I sputter many thanks confusedly. Here 
 is a strange development truly. I had been 
 hoping, as you may remember, to be able to 
 go to Mr. Leggatt, at Fred's graduation, and 
 to ask for a clerkship for my boy on the plea 
 of his steadiness and sterling common sense ; 
 and now the solicitation has come to me on 
 the score of his grit as a foot-ball kicker. The 
 world seems just a little topsy-turvy, and I am 
 not quite sure whether to laugh or to cry. 
 
 We got home at last somehow ; and here I 
 am sitting in my library trying to collect my 
 faculties and to appreciate the honor which 
 has been thrust upon me — ^the honor of being 
 the father of a famous half-back. To tell 
 
104 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 the truth, it sticks in my crop just a littleand 
 does not relish to the extent which would 
 seem appropriate. Indeed I am not alto- 
 gether sure whether I can see a distinction 
 between being the father of a famous half- 
 back and the father of a famous toreador or 
 famous prize-fighter. I know that Leggatt 
 and one or two others, to whom I ventured 
 to exp(3se my qualms on the way home, de- 
 clared them preposterous, and that the game 
 was magnificent discipline for both mind and 
 body. Come to that, the vicissitudes of a 
 matador are magnificent discipline for both 
 mind and body. So are those of a gladiator. 
 Yet I have my doubts whether Leggatt would 
 like to be the father of either. Nevertheless, 
 although he is a citizen of far greater consid- 
 eration than I, he gave me to understand 
 that he would be proud to be described in 
 the newspapers as the father of a famous 
 half-back, and to see a son of his handed 
 down to posterity in the public prints as a 
 prize animal of this description. 
 
 I fear there must be a screw loose some- 
 where in my make-up as a father and a phi- 
 losopher. You remember the case of the 
 burglars ? It did not seem to me worth 
 
A PniLOaOPHEB 105 
 
 while to go downstairs and expose myself to 
 be shot. Yet Josephine felt differently on 
 the point. 
 
 Moreover, I have never been able to un- 
 derstand why it is courageous or meritorious 
 to be an amateur Alpine climber, whereas 
 many are fain to admire the beauties of nat- 
 ure from an elevation where a false step or a 
 rotten rope would be passports to destruc- 
 tion. Then, again, people who cross the 
 ocean in dories, or fast for indefinite periods, 
 have never aroused my enthusiasm. On the 
 contrary, I regard them as being in the same 
 general category with lunatics. I have never 
 seen a bull-fight, and I have sometimes fancied 
 that I should be weak enough to attend one 
 out of curiosity if I happened to be in Spain 
 at the right time ; but I am sure that I should 
 never care to go twice. And yet I am ex- 
 pected to feel proud and grateful because 
 my eldest son has made prowess at foot- 
 ball the aim and object of his college course. 
 I am trying to, trying hard, but I fear it is 
 no use. I should like to understand why it 
 is glorious or sensible for an honest, strap- 
 ping fellow, who has been sent to college 
 by dint of some economy on the part of 
 
106 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 his parents, to devote his entire energies to a 
 course of training which will entitle him to 
 run the risk of having his legs, arms, or ribs 
 broken in fighting for a leather ball before 
 several thousand people. Of one thing I 
 am certain already, even at the risk of seem- 
 ing to agree with Horace Plympton, which 
 is, that if I had another son with like pro- 
 clivities, I should put a stop to it. 
 
 But then, as Josephine reminds me, the 
 fact that our David does not care a picayune 
 for anything of the sort, robs my resolve of 
 much of its solemnity. I might, to be sure, 
 interpose a mandate at this late hour and 
 cut off little Fred in the flower of his renown, 
 and (to quote my wife once more) break his 
 heart; which might be a more serious con- 
 sequence than a broken leg. No, I am in- 
 clined to think, on the whole, now that the 
 mischief is done, we may as well let him 
 follow the path he has chosen, especially as 
 Leggatt has his eye on him and has prom- 
 ised to give him a start. We must live in 
 the hope that the breath will not be trampled 
 out of him once too often before that desira- 
 ble result is brought to pass. Moreover, if 
 he is borne off the field on a litter, it will not 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 107 
 
 be in the presence of his parents. We have 
 seen one gladiatorial combat, and our thirst 
 for gore is sated. 
 
 Henceforth we shall be content to cower 
 by the hearth on the days when the great 
 matches are played and fancy each ring at 
 the door-bell the summons of a telegraphic 
 emissary. And by way of celebrating our 
 first escape from bereavement, I am going 
 to present our David with a gold watch for 
 the excellent showing he made in his stud- 
 ies last summer. 
 
VI 
 
 LITTLE FEED has been graduated from 
 college without the loss of his front 
 teeth or an eye. He has a few scars, which 
 will not permanently disfigure him ; and 
 though he halts slightly as the result of a 
 strained tendon in the calf of one of his legs, 
 Dr. Meredith assures us that this is chiefly a 
 nervous symptom, which will pass off pres- 
 ently. He says Fred is a little run down, 
 and he advises raw eggs and milk between 
 meals. I assume that the doctor is right, but 
 it seems strange to me that a boy should get 
 run down through foot-ball exercise. How- 
 ever, he is to go abroad for six months, which 
 ought to mend matters, and then buckle down 
 to work with Leggatt & Paine. He is an 
 honest, manly fellow, who will make friends, 
 and, provided he does not break his neck in 
 following the hounds or playing polo, is likely 
 to do well. 
 
OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 109 
 
 David, my second boy, is a born chemist 
 and a genuine book-lover besides. He is at 
 the School of Science, to which we decided to 
 send him, instead of to college, in view of the 
 fact that his proclivities were in the line of 
 gases and forces rather than Greek roots and 
 history. He is doing famously, I believe; 
 and though I am a profound ignoramus on 
 such matters, I should not be at all surprised 
 if he were to make a name for himself early 
 in life by some valuable discovery in the 
 electrical or bacillic line. He has lately made 
 a test of all the wall-papers and upholstery 
 in our house, and discovered, to our dismay, 
 that ,there is arsenic in pretty nearly every- 
 thing, including some of the bed - sheets, 
 which, strange to state, in spite of their inno- 
 cent appearance, proved to be particularly 
 full of the deleterious poison. We have had 
 to overhaul everything in consequence, and 
 Josephine firmly believes that Fred's nervous 
 halt is due to the presence of arsenic in his 
 system, for the bed-sheets in his college room 
 belonged to the condemned batch. Seeing 
 that the rest of us are perfectly well, I se- 
 cretly suspect that late hours and tobacco 
 are more to blame than arsenic for my athlet- 
 
110 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ic son's condition ; but in the teeth of scien- 
 tific warning I have not ventured to run the 
 risk of continued exposure, and have con- 
 sented to the purchase of new carpets, cur- 
 tains, window-shades, and other household 
 apparel. 
 
 I am much more concerned, to tell the 
 truth, lest some of the germs which David is 
 cosseting in his bed-chamber may get loose 
 and ravage the community. He has a bacil- 
 lus farm, where, according to his account, the 
 cholera germ, the germ of tuberculosis, the 
 typhoid-fever germ, and the diphtheria germ 
 are growing side by side for his private edifi- 
 cation. As Josephine says, there are certain 
 risks which a brave man has to take ; but I 
 am not sure that this is one of them. Even 
 my darling is a little anxious on the score of 
 contamination, in spite of her scientific son's 
 assurance' that his pets are thoroughly harm- 
 less. 
 
 I do not really know whether Josephine is 
 prouder of Fred or of David. Certainly her 
 mind is comparatively at rest regarding them 
 both, notwithstanding my second boy is not 
 quite like other people. I do not mean that he 
 is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is book- 
 
A PHILOSOPHEB 111 
 
 ish and self-absorbed. He takes no interest 
 in his personal appearance, and he avoids 
 every young woman except his sisters. Fred 
 is dandified, keenly fond of the social inter- 
 ests of the day and of the other sex. I fore- 
 see that he bids fair to be a leading man of 
 affairs, and to figure prominently in society, 
 and later on to become a member of Congress 
 or to be sent abroad as a foreign minister. 
 But he is just like everybody else, so to 
 speak ; or rather he accepts the world as 
 he finds it and accommodates himself to 
 it. Now, David is cast in a different mould. 
 He is essentially unconventional. And yet, 
 though his mother sighs now and then over 
 his repugnance to young ladies, and tries to 
 badger him into looking a little more spruce, 
 I can perceive that she is thoroughly proud 
 of his originality and independence, and be- 
 lieves that he is even more likely than his 
 conventional brother to distinguish himself 
 and immortalize the family name. Josephine 
 used to say, when the boys were little, that she 
 hoped one of them would be a clergyman, 
 and I know that she has more sympathy than 
 I — and I have considerable — with a scheme 
 of life which entertains starving in a garret 
 
112 THE OPINIONS OB' 
 
 for the sake of art or science as a meritorious 
 contingency. She has held up before her 
 boys, since their earliest childhood, the perils 
 of idle and purely worldly living, and spurred 
 them to make the most of themselves. 
 
 Curiously enough, our two girls are just as 
 dissimilar to each other as Fred and David. 
 Josie, the elder — who, as I have already speci- 
 fied, is, according to the world at large, the 
 image of her mother at the same age — will not 
 be troublesome in the least degree, so my 
 wife teUs me. She has taken to society as a 
 duck takes to water. She has a natural apti- 
 tude for pleasing and being pleased; conse- 
 quently she has plenty of partners. My wife 
 says that, considering the dear child was all 
 legs and arms three years ago, wo have every 
 reason to congratulate ourselves that she has 
 turnoil out such a pleasant-looking girl, and 
 that her red hair is decidedly ornamental. I 
 call her handsome, but Josephine declares 
 that I make myself ridiculous by the asser- 
 tion, and that it is very rare that a girl who 
 has not really a ray of beauty to commend 
 her becomes such a thorough-going favorite 
 in her first season. 
 
 " She constantly reminds me of you, and 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 113 
 
 that is enough for me," I remarked, tenderly, 
 on one occasion. 
 
 "You make me boil when you say that, 
 Fred. I was really a very pretty girl, if I do 
 say it ; whereas Josie, the sweet soul, only just 
 escapes being homely. Her smile and her 
 hair save her, so that she passes. But it is a 
 libel to compare her with what I was at her 
 age. We must look facts in the face, dear." 
 
 " People tell me every day that she is the 
 living image of her mother," I answered 
 humbly. 
 
 " People are idiots. They know you will 
 believe it because you are a man. They don't 
 dare tell me anything of the sort. No, Fred, 
 we must build all our hopes of beauty on 
 Winona." 
 
 " Ah ! " I remarked, with an intonation of 
 pride ; " even her mother will not be able to 
 pick a flaw in her." 
 
 " She is a very handsome girl, but " 
 
 Josephine stopped short, and I could see 
 that her lip was trembling with emotion. 
 
 " There is no ' but," " I protested. " What- 
 ever Josie may be, Winona is a raving 
 beauty." 
 
 " Oh, yes, Fred, I am perfectly satisfied 
 8 
 
Hi OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER _ 
 
 with lier looks. That makes it all the harder. 
 I'm on tenterhooks lest she is going to be 
 queer." 
 
 " Queer ? " I inquired, with agitation, dread- 
 ing some disclosure of mental derangement. 
 
 "Odd — not like other people. It would 
 break my heart, Fred. She is seventeen, and 
 she doesn't take the slightest interest in com- 
 ing out. You remember I had her appear for 
 an hour at Josie's party, and that she was 
 surrounded by young men from the moment 
 she entered the room until I sent her to bed ? 
 Most girls would have been in danger of hav- 
 ing their heads turned. Winona was bored." 
 
 " She wiU get over that as soon as she is a 
 year older. She is shy." 
 
 " She is not shy. If she were shy I should 
 think nothing of it. She declares that soci- 
 ety is all nonsense, and that she wishes never 
 to come out at all." 
 
 "What an egregiously sensible girl," I 
 murmured. 
 
 " I hope you will not encourage her, Fred," 
 pleaded my darling. "I have counted so 
 much on her. If Josie had taken it into her 
 head to be queer, I shouldn't have said a 
 word, for I think myself that it is often for a 
 
116 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 plain girl's happiness not to have to undergo 
 the ordeal of being neglected ; but in the case 
 of a beauty like Winona it would be such a 
 waste ! There is not a girl of her age who 
 compares with her in beauty." 
 
 " What is it she wishes to do ? " I asked, 
 with a knitted brow. A man is apt to leave 
 the management of his own daughters to his 
 wife, even though he is a philosopher and 
 prolific in theories. I had rather taken it 
 for granted that certain advanced notions of 
 mine regarding the conduct of women's lives 
 would be allowed to lie dormant in my brain 
 for lack of an animating cause, or, more ac- 
 curately speaking, for lack of moral courage 
 on my part to exploit them for the benefit of 
 my own flesh and blood. It is more satis- 
 factory to try experiments in the line of edu- 
 cation on someone else's children. Besides, 
 I had argued that Josephine was the proper 
 person to propose a departure from the es- 
 tablished method, in conformity with which 
 conclusion I had paid out a handsome round 
 sum for a coming-out party and a social ward- 
 robe for my eldest girl. But now I felt in 
 conscience bound to prick up my ears. 
 
 " She doesn't know herself what she wishes 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 117 
 
 to do," said my wife, dejectedly. "She is 
 daft on the subject of books and education." 
 
 " Is not that rather to her credit ? " I vent- 
 ured to inquire. 
 
 Josephine gazed at me as though my words 
 had stung her. 
 
 " Of course it is 
 to her credit," she 
 replied, almost 
 fiercely. "You 
 know perfectly well, 
 Fred, I have en- 
 couraged the girls 
 to study and culti- 
 vate their minds iu 
 every conceivable 
 manner, and that I 
 have always said 
 they should have 
 equal advantages in 
 
 the way of education with their brothers so far 
 as it was possible to procure them. I have 
 just told you that if Josie had wished to be a 
 student and to go in for a career of some 
 kind, I should have been perfectly willing ; 
 yes, I should have been glad. But it does 
 seem hard that they should change places, 
 
118 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and the one who is a radiant beauty, and 
 sure to be universally admired, should take 
 it into her head to cut loose from society. I 
 remember saying when she was christened 
 that we were gambling with Divine Provi- 
 dence in giving her such an individualizing 
 name, for fear she would grow up a fright. 
 I little thought I was running the risk of such 
 a contingency as this." 
 
 " It is hard, Josephine," I murmured, wish- 
 ing to be sympathetic. " I think, though, 
 you are a little premature in taking it for 
 granted that Winona will not come round all 
 right in the end." 
 
 My darling shook her head. " She may 
 consent to go about in order to please me, 
 but her heart will never be in it. Oh, I 
 know ! " she added, with another outburst, 
 as though she were arguing with an accusing 
 spirit, " that society is all very frivolous in 
 theory and a waste of time, and that the 
 moralists and people who never had the 
 chance to go anywhere would tell me I ought 
 to be thankful to have a daughter who cares 
 for something besides going to balls and din- 
 ner-parties and flirting with young men. 
 That's the way they would look at it ; but 
 
A PIIIL080PHBB 119 
 
 they might argue until they were black in 
 the face and they couldn't make me feel 
 otherwise than disappointed. And, what is 
 more, I believe that Winona will be very sorry 
 herself ten years hence if she perseveres in 
 her present determination." 
 
 These last words were spoken by my wife 
 almost tragically, and it was evident to me 
 that they proceeded from the heart. I am 
 free to confess that when Josephine gives 
 utterance to opinions with so much earnest- 
 ness as this I cannot help feeling that there 
 must be more or less truth in them. She 
 may be no philosopher, but she is a sensible 
 woman. And especially in a matter where 
 another woman, and one of her own flesh and 
 blood, besides, is concerned, it would certain- 
 ly seem as though she would be apt to be 
 right. This whole business of the emancipa- 
 tion of woman is one well adapted to drive a 
 philosopher, to say nothing of the father of- a 
 family, crazy. Naturally I wish my daugh- 
 ters to become all that they ought to be. On 
 the other hand, if a paterfamilias cannot trust 
 his better half on this particular subject, he 
 may as well imitate the example of certain 
 savage tribes, and make mince-meat of the 
 
120 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 girls. Perhaps I seem to be worked up on 
 the subject? Well, I am. The din of the 
 moralists, and of the people who have never 
 had a chance to go anywhere, is in my ears, 
 and I cannot get altogether rid of it. Let us 
 start afresh and attack the question from 
 another point of view. 
 
 There is no doubt, even to the average 
 masculine mind, although the possessor of 
 the mind may not publish the fact on the 
 housetops, that the most interesting product 
 of this enlightened century is emancipated 
 woman. There are certain enthusiasts, though 
 principally of the emancipated sex, who are 
 already so confident as to the rapid future 
 progress and ultimate glorious evolution of 
 womankind that they are ready to venture 
 the prediction to people whom they think 
 they can trust, that sooner or later there will 
 be no more men. Whether this desirable re- 
 sult is to be brought about by the gradual 
 extinction or snuffing out of the hitherto 
 sterner sex by a process of kUling kindness, 
 or by the discovery of a system of generation 
 whereby women only will be procreated, is 
 not foretold by these seers of the future ; ac- 
 cordingly, while one might not be warranted 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 121 
 
 in dismissing the theory as utenable, its ful- 
 filment may fairly be regarded as a remote 
 expectancy, and consigned to the considera- 
 tion of real philosophers. 
 
 There is no doubt, though, that woman has 
 been kept down for generations, and has 
 only just begun to bob up serenely, to hazard 
 a colloquial metaphor. The eyes of ciyiliza- 
 tion are upon her, and there is legitimate 
 curiosity from Christiania to Yokohama to 
 discover what she is going to do. To me as 
 a philosopher, and taking into account one 
 consideration with another, including Jo- 
 sephine's plaint, it seems as though woman 
 would have much plainer sailing in her pro- 
 gress toward reconstruction if it were not 
 that she is so exceedingly good-looking in 
 spots and bunches. Let her distiaction as 
 an ornamental factor be totally negatived and 
 overcome, and there is no telling how rapidly 
 she might progress. By ornament, I mean, 
 of course, not merely beauty of face and form, 
 but sweetness of speech, delicacy of physique 
 and sentiment, captivating clothes, and all 
 those distinguishing characteristics which 
 have tended to fasten upon the female sex 
 the epithet of gentle. It will generally be 
 
r22 THE orimoNS of 
 
 admitted that women of homely presence, 
 clumsy in their gait, dowdy in their dress, 
 and raucous in their intonation, are much 
 safer from the infliction of gallantries at the 
 hands or lips of mortal men than those whose 
 attributes are more pleasing ; and it is safe 
 to assert that many a male monster has been 
 rooted to his seat in street-cars by the coldly 
 intellectual eye of some not altogether able- 
 bodied feminine person. The recent victories 
 all along the line of women over men in ex- 
 amination-rooms, and their more or less suc- 
 cessful ventures in the fields of law, medicine, 
 and newspaper enterprise, would be more ap- 
 palHng to man and encouraging to the pro- 
 gressionists,^ but for the obstinate though 
 obvious adhesion of the great mass of woman- 
 kind to the trick bequeathed to them by their 
 great-great-grandmothers of trying to look as 
 Avell as they can. And the terrible part of it 
 is they succeed so wonderfully that philos- 
 ophers like myself are apt to find our ratio- 
 cinations wofuUy mixed when we try to reason 
 about the matter. 
 
 You remember, perhaps, that Josephine 
 induced me earlier in our wedded life to give 
 a large party for her sister Julia ? Within a 
 
A PHIL080PUEB 123 
 
 year I have submitted to a similar domestic 
 upheaval on account of my elder daughter, 
 and I do not think that it can be said that I 
 acquitted myself in either case malignantly 
 or even morosely. Indeed, though this is 
 not strictly relevant to the discussion, my 
 wife informed me after Josie's party was over 
 that I had behaved like an angel. Now, my 
 sister-in-law, Julia, is still unmarried, and she 
 cannot be far from thirty. As I reflected at 
 the time she came out, she is less comely 
 than my wife and not so sagacious, but she is 
 decidedly an attractive girl. She has had 
 every advantage in the line of social enter- 
 tainments, and every opportunity to meet 
 available young men. She has waltzed all 
 winter and been successively to Bar Harbor 
 and Newport in summer. She has been to 
 Europe so as to let people forget her and to 
 reappear as a novelty, and she has altered 
 the shape of her hair twice to my individual 
 observation. Yet somehow she hangs fire. 
 I am informed by Josephine, in strict confi- 
 dence, that she has had offers and might have 
 been married to at least one eminently de- 
 sirable man before this had she seen fit to 
 accept him ; but I tell my darling that though 
 
124 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 the consciousness of what might have been 
 may be a legitimate consolation to her and to 
 her sister, it does not controvert the bald fact 
 that Julia is still unmarried at the end of ten 
 years of social divagations. 
 
 I do not mean that Julia may not marry. 
 Very likely she wiU. She certainly ought to 
 if she has the desire; and she has time 
 enough yet if the right man only thinks so. 
 It is rather on the system I am pondering 
 than on the individual, though the vision of 
 Josie at thirty unwedded, and a little hard 
 and worn, haunts my retina and makes me 
 feel philosophical. Away down in the bottom 
 of my boots or my soul, or wherever a man 
 can most safely harbor a secret reflection, has 
 long lain a feeling of wonder that the world 
 continues to put its daintiest, most cherished, 
 and most carefully tended daughters through 
 the peculiar social progi'amme in vogue. Is 
 it not bewilderingly true that every young 
 woman of position and manners in Christen- 
 dom, be her father a Knight of the Garter or 
 a Congressman, her mother an azure-blooded 
 countess or the ambitious better half of a 
 retired grocer, finds on the threshold of life 
 only one course open to her if she desires to 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 125 
 
 be conventional, and to do what is naturally 
 expected of her? From twelve to eighteen 
 instruction — and in these latter days exem- 
 plary instruction — Latin, Greek, if there is a 
 craving for it, history, psychology, chemistry, 
 political economy, to say nothing of the mod- 
 em languages and special courses in summer 
 in botany, conchology, and physiology. And 
 then, dating from a long anticipated day, or 
 rather night, a metamorphosis startling as the 
 transition of the cocoon; a formal letting 
 loose of the finished maiden on the polished 
 parquet floor of the social arena. Tra-la-la- 
 la-la ! Tra-la-la-la-la ! Off she whirls to the 
 rhythm of a Strauss waltz or a blood-stirring 
 polka, and for the next four years, on an aver- 
 age, she never stops, metaphorically speaking. 
 She may not always be waltzing or polkaing, 
 but if she is conventionally sound she is sure 
 to be in a whirl. She exchanges daylight for 
 gaslight ; her daily sustenance is stewed mush- 
 rooms with a rich gray gravy, beef-tea, and 
 ice-cream, varied by an occasional mouthful 
 of fiUet as a conscience composer. All winter 
 she participates in a feverish round of balls, 
 receptions, luncheons, dinners, teas, theatre 
 parties, with every now and then a wedding. 
 
1-2G TUB OPINIONS OF 
 
 All summer she sails, floats, glides, sits, 
 perches, sprawls, walks, meanders, talks, 
 climbs, rides, saunters, or dances madly as 
 her mood or circumstances suggest. There 
 is her life, varying a little according to clime 
 and disposition, according to whether she is 
 daughter of a duke or of a successful grocer. 
 It is what everyone expects of her, so no 
 one is surprised ; and she is expected also to 
 keep up the pace until she is married, which 
 is likely to come to pass any day, but which, 
 as in the case of poor Julia, may not be until 
 she is thirty. Fancy living on mushrooms 
 with a rich gray gravy and successively waltz- 
 ing, meandering, or floating with tlie Tom, 
 Dick, and Harry of the workaday social world 
 from eighteen to thirty ! And yet we fathers 
 and philosophers ask ourselves why in thunder 
 (or even more vehemently) our daughters have 
 nervous prostration. Why should they? And 
 yet I hear Josephine ask, for the discussion is 
 uppermost in our thoughts at the moment : 
 
 " Do you wish Winona to become a second 
 Miss Jacket ? " 
 
 Let me explain that Miss Jacket, Miss 
 Cora Jacket, M.D., lives opposite to us, 
 and has for some months been a serious 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 127 
 
 menace to the happiness of Josephine, in 
 that my wife declares that the wretch is 
 poisoning our Winona's mind. The charge 
 startled me seriously when it was broached, 
 but I have been trying to consider dispas- 
 sionately whether the injury likely to be 
 worked will be greater than that consequent 
 upon a continuous fare of mushrooms with 
 rich gray gravy and flirtation. Winona and 
 Miss Cora Jacket, M.D., are certainly thicker 
 thau thieves ; hence a pardonable lurking 
 suspicion in Josephine's mind that the older 
 woman is seeking to induce the beauty of 
 our family to study medicine. Dr. Jacket 
 must be thirty — ^just about the age of my 
 sister-in-law. To me she appears to be a 
 trig, energetic little woman, rather pretty 
 and rather well dressed, and though she 
 seems intelligent there is nothing especially 
 frigid or forbidding in her eye. Its intellect- 
 uality is not forced upon one. I have found 
 her so attractive that I ventured to insinuate, 
 by way of answer to my wife's expostulation, 
 that Winona might do much worse than 
 model herself on Miss Cora Jacket, M.D. 
 This drew upon my head the vial of Jose- 
 phine's righteous wrath. 
 
128 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " Now, Fred, just stop and think for one 
 moment," she said. " I have not a word to 
 say against Miss Jacket. I have no doubt 
 she is a most worthy young woman and an 
 excellent physician, though I should never 
 care to consult her myself. But that is 
 neither here nor there. Do you happen to 
 know what Miss Jacket's antecedents were, 
 and what her life has been ? " 
 
 I shook my head droopingly. 
 
 " She was bom in Ohio, and was left an 
 orphan, and practically unprovided for, at 
 an early age. She was helped by kind 
 friends — aU this is from her own lips — imtil 
 she was old enough to help herself by teach- 
 ing, and then, by some means or other, she 
 came East and studied medicine, and made 
 the start for herself that you see. All of 
 which, I beg to anticipate you in saying, is 
 marvellously to her credit. She is plainly a 
 brilliant and capable young woman of whom 
 any mother might be proud, provided she 
 had to be. But because it was creditable and 
 sensible in Miss Jacket to make the most of 
 herself in that particular way, you surely 
 would not advocate that the daughters of the 
 
A PHILOSOPHEli 129 
 
 Princess of Wales and the Empress of Ger- 
 many should do the same." 
 
 "I should certainly advocate their doing 
 something useful," I said in my dogged 
 fashion. " Besides, Winona is the daughter 
 neither of the Princess of Wales nor the 
 Empress of Germany." 
 
 " No, she is not," said Josephine, in a tone 
 which seemed to imply that she was grateful 
 for the escape. After all, who of us to-day 
 would give a rush to be a king or queen? 
 What successful business or professional man 
 would exchange the exquisite comfort of the 
 domestic hearth and all the magazines for the 
 prerogatives of royalty ? I understood per- 
 fectly what Josephine wished to express, and 
 agreed with her on the point. Her daughters, 
 save for a little pomp and circumstance, were 
 practically the peers of any and all princesses. 
 
 " Just consider, for a moment, Winona and 
 Miss Jacket side by side," Josephine contin- 
 ued. " Don't you see any difference between 
 them?" 
 
 " Well, of course, Winona is an unusually 
 handsome girl," I murmured. " Besides, she 
 is younger." 
 
 " Younger ! " groaned Josephine, evidently 
 9 
 
130 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 believing me hopeless. " Do you really, se- 
 riously think, Fred, that they are to be men- 
 tioned in the same breath as ladies ? " 
 
 I rather think I looked foolish and twiddled 
 my fingers. 
 
 " If," said Josephine, with an emphasis on 
 the conjunction, and repeating it still more 
 emphatically, " if it were necessary I would 
 not say a word. If Winona were one of seven 
 girls, I should be sorry, but I would not say 
 a word. If it had been Josie. I should have 
 been rather pleased — which shows, Fred, that 
 I am not altogether hostile to the spirit of the 
 age. But I am not prepared as yet to see 
 my only really handsome daughter — and such 
 a handsome one, Fred — fly in the face of con- 
 vention and custom merely — merely to please 
 Miss Jacket and the people who never have 
 a chance to go anywhere." 
 
 All Josephine's combativeness and pride 
 of opinion seemed to ooze suddenly away, 
 and she buried her face on my shoulder, 
 murmuring — 
 
 " Oh, yes, the whole system of society for 
 girls is ridictdous and degenerating. I know it, 
 I know it perfectly well. I don't approve of it, 
 I never have approved of it. I wonder that so 
 
A PHILOSOPHBB 131 
 
 many come out of it as well as they do. And 
 they are not content as in my day to be merely 
 giddy ; they go in now for smoking cigarettes 
 and drinking liqueurs after dinner, and some 
 of them paint their faces. Not all of them, 
 of course, not one-tenth of them ; Josie will 
 never do anything of the kind. I ought, 
 though, to be thankful, heartily thankful, if 
 Winona prefers to stay away from all this and 
 to develop worthy tastes of her own. She 
 shall do what she pleases, Fred, only " 
 
 My darling stopped short as though she 
 had concluded not to complete her sentence. 
 She gulped bravely and lifted her eyes to 
 mine. 
 
 "Kiss me, dear," she whispered. "I am 
 not really so worldly as you think." 
 
 " You are an angel, and will never be any- 
 thing else to me," I responded, stroking her 
 hair. 
 
 She lay still for a moment, happy but pen- 
 sive. " She shall do whatever she pleases ; 
 only it is a very much easier matter for you 
 to be virtuous and to say, 'Let her study 
 medicine,' than for me." 
 
 " I have not said so, dearest." 
 
 "You have thought so, though. You do 
 
132 THB OPINIONS OF 
 
 not need to speak to have me know when you 
 are thinking things. No man can possibly 
 conceive what it means to a mother to have a 
 daughter a radiant beauty and peculiar." 
 
 "I dare say not," I murmured, humbly. 
 
 "Especially," she continued, reflectively, 
 "when you consider that, though society is 
 foolish, there is really nothing else at present 
 to take its place to give a girl what nothing 
 else is likely to give her — I do not say noth- 
 ing else can give it to her, but nothing else is 
 in the least likely to ; and when you consider 
 the vast number of wives and mothers who 
 who have been through it all when they were 
 young, and are charming and — yes, Fred, 
 sensible, intelligent women to-day. I don't 
 pretend that I myself am half what I might 
 have been, but I went through it all as a girl 
 without becoming absolutely vapid and vola- 
 tile. Didn't I, dear?" 
 
 " You certainly did, Josephine. If Winona 
 turns out your equal I shall be more than 
 satisfied." 
 
 " Thank you, dear, but you mustn't say it. 
 I do wish her to have more mind. My mind 
 was more or less neglected ; but, on the other 
 hand, Fred, I never had the opportunity to 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 133 
 
 be peculiar, for there was no chance to be in 
 those days. Now the disease is liable to break 
 out in any family. All we can do, Fred, is to 
 remember that we are growing old, and to trust 
 that the world of to-day is wiser than we." 
 
 " Amen ! " I murmured. 
 
 And yet the consciousness that Josephine 
 passed through it all and is what she is, 
 makes me feel a little doubtful still on the 
 score of the new dispensation, in spite of the 
 mushrooms with rich gray gravy. 
 
vn 
 
 MY daughter Winona has become a Chris- 
 tian Scientist, and Josephine says I 
 have only myseK to blame in that I en- 
 couraged her to model herseH upon Miss 
 Jacket. This strikes me as a little harsh, see- 
 ing that Miss Jacket, M.D., is a regular prac- 
 titioner in the allopathic line, whereas Wi- 
 nona declares that the science of medicine is 
 all nonsense, for the excellent reason that 
 there is no such thing as disease. When I 
 used this argument as a defence, Josephine 
 regarded me scornfully, and remarked that 
 the pair were practically one in ideas, and 
 that it was futile of me to split straws on such 
 a point. Ye gods and little fishes ! Is it, for- 
 sooth, splitting straws to maintain that there 
 can be no sympathy of soul between a woman 
 doctor who takes you at your word and ad- 
 ministers castor-oil to cure your stomach-ache 
 and one who elevates her nose and vows that 
 you haven't one? 
 
OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 135 
 
 " You can't make fish of one and flesh of 
 another," continued my wife, majestically. 
 "The mischief was done when they walked 
 arm-in-arm for weeks together while they 
 were becoming intimate. It makes little dif- 
 ference, it seems to me, as to the precise nat- 
 ure of the development. If Winona hadn't 
 embraced (as she calls it) Christian Science, 
 she would in all probability have worn 
 bloomers, in which case I should not have 
 held Dr. Cora Jacket guiltless merely because 
 that young woman continued to wear petti- 
 coats. Neither do I in the present emer- 
 gency. Who was it introduced Winona to 
 Mrs. Titus, I should like to know ? " 
 
 " Was Miss Jacket responsible for that ? " 
 I inquired, respectfully, not venturing to con- 
 test further the soundness of my wife's logic 
 in her present excited frame of mind. 
 
 " She was indeed, and it is very little con- 
 solation to me that she professes to be sorry 
 for it now." Josephine tapped her foot with 
 a worried air, which found voice presently in 
 a laugh bom of sheer desperation. " Isn't it 
 perfectly ludicrous, Fred? Do you realize 
 what the child wishes to do ? " 
 
 "I understood you to state that she wishes 
 
136 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 to enter upon a crusade to show that all our 
 aches and pains are hallucinations. There 
 ought to be a fortune in that, my dear, com- 
 pared with which the profits from David's elec- 
 trical discovery will pale into insignificance." 
 
 " This is no laughing matter, Fred. She is 
 intensely in earnest; her heart is set upon 
 the plan, and there is no use in arguing with 
 her. She simply looks calm and tells you 
 that you don't know." 
 
 I scratched my head and pondered. My 
 yoimger daughter's plan, as it had been im- 
 folded to me, was this : She proposed to set 
 up as a practitioner of Christian Science in 
 partnership with another young woman of 
 the same faith. They were to cure disease 
 apparently by dint of assuring their patients 
 that because there is no such thing as matter, 
 nothing could be the matter with any one. 
 Their instructress, Mrs. Titus, had demon- 
 strated the truth of this theory by a varied 
 line of cures, and they had been encouraged 
 by her to go on with the good work. Had I 
 any objection to the scheme ? 
 
 " Perhaps I had better talk the matter over 
 with her and try to bring her to her senses," 
 I remarked. 
 
A PHILOaOPSEB 137 
 
 " I wish you joy of tlie experience," said 
 my wife, with a wry smile. " She is like a 
 seraph in her serenity, and I might just as 
 well have been talking to a stone wall for all 
 the effect my words seemed to have. Of 
 course you can prevent her ; she understands 
 that ; but I should like to see you alter her 
 opinion." 
 
 I concluded to try. Accordingly, I sum- 
 moned Winona to the library that evening, 
 and we were closeted with folded doors, as 
 the phrase is, for an hour and a half. Being 
 a father I was desirous naturally to be judi- 
 cious and yet sympathetic ; being a philoso- 
 pher, I was willing to be enlightened if I was 
 ignorant. My son David had demonstrated 
 to me that a young germ of tuberculosis has 
 all the engaging attractiveness of a six- 
 months' old baby ; perhaps it had been re- 
 served for my daughter to prove to me that I 
 had never had constitutional headaches. If 
 so, what an amount of unnecessary misery I 
 had undergone from sheer lack of knowledge ! 
 
 Conventional conceptions are slow to relax 
 their grip even when one's reason is prepared 
 to discard them as out -worn. I am not giv- 
 ing utterance in this sententious fashion to 
 
138 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 distrust in allopathy ; I simply am thinking 
 of the qualms which persisted ia harrowing 
 my soul as I gazed upon my very beautiful 
 daughter, and tried to feel proud that she was 
 endeavoring to do something useful. My as- 
 sociations with lovely women are so intimate- 
 ly associated with the ball-room floor and 
 the purlieus of polite society, that, in spite 
 of my secret sympathy -vsith the progress of 
 the sex, I could not completely school my 
 mental machinery so as to exclude a lurking 
 regret that such arrant good looks were to be 
 wasted upon people who had nothing the 
 matter with them, and who would, perhaps, 
 be slow in recognizing the fact. I was even 
 weak enough to remark : 
 
 "Winona, my dear, you look this evening 
 handsome enough to eat." 
 
 As Christian Scientists are said to harbor 
 the belief that, owing to the non-existence of 
 matter, looks of any kind are a delusion and 
 snare, for the reason that individuals do not 
 really exist, but are merely so many reflec- 
 tions of the one eternal and immutable exist- 
 ence, just as the various reflections in a 
 stream are often but the contiauous duplica- 
 tion of some single incandescent jet, it was 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 139 
 
 scarcely to be expected that my darling 
 daughter would fall a victim to the lure which 
 I held out to her. She had the goodness to 
 smile a <ghost of a smile, but it was evident 
 that the speech interested her very little. 
 Before settling down to the business in hand 
 I cotild not help, however, saying to myself 
 that, if I were a young man, I should fall 
 down and worship before this particular 
 shrine. Christian Science and delusion to the 
 contrary notwithstanding. Then I said, with 
 as much cheer as I could muster : 
 
 "And so you wish to practise medicine, 
 Winona ? " 
 
 "Not medicine, father. It is Christian 
 Science." 
 
 " Excuse me. But are not Christian Scien- 
 tists doctors ? " 
 
 ""We do not give medicine." 
 
 " But you cure sick people ? " 
 
 Winona shook her head and smiled sweet- 
 ly. "There are no sick people," she said, 
 with quiet decision. 
 
 " Then why are there so many physi- 
 cians ? " 
 
 "If people had the requisite faith, there 
 would be no more physicians." 
 
140 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " Only Christian Scientists." 
 My daughter looked at me no less sweetly 
 because of my taunt, and responded : 
 
 " In time we shall all be able to heal our- 
 selves. It is simply a question of strength and 
 degree. Some of us have more power than 
 others at present, but as the world grows the 
 number of those sufficient unto themselves 
 will increase." 
 
A FHILOSOPHEB 141 
 
 " What makes you think so ?" 
 
 "I know it, father." 
 
 " From Mrs. Titus ? " 
 
 "Mrs. Titus knows it too; but I know it 
 not merely because she knows it, but because 
 I can feel that it is so." 
 
 " But, my dear child, surely you do not 
 mean to tell me that if I were to have typhoid 
 fever, I shouldn't have it ? " 
 
 "I know that you would think you had 
 it." 
 
 "Well, supposing I died, wouldn't I be 
 dead?" 
 
 Winona hesitated for an instant, but it was 
 only in order to avoid committing herself to 
 one heresy while seeking to avoid another. 
 " You would be dead, though perhaps not as 
 we now understand being dead. You would 
 not have died of typhoid fever, but of the be- 
 lief that you were suffering from typhoid 
 fever induced by the hallucination of error." 
 
 "I see," I answered, though to tell the 
 truth I did not, and it was very evident to me 
 that Winona thought so too, for her serene 
 smile revealed just a tinge of amusement. 
 Even a real philosopher would be apt to feel 
 nettled were he to suspect that he was mak- 
 
142 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ing himself ridiculous in the eyes of his most 
 beautiful daughter. I said a little sternly : 
 
 "I wish you would explain to me, in the 
 first place, what you mean by saying that I 
 might not be dead as we now understand be- 
 ing dead." 
 
 Winona folded her hands. "I said that, 
 father, because we Christian Scientists are 
 not yet certain as to what is the precise nat- 
 ure of death. There are some who deem 
 death also an hallucination, and the appar- 
 ent annihilation of matter consequent upon 
 it merely a reflex confirmation of the truth 
 that there is no matter, only spirit; and it 
 may well be that as the world grows in 
 faith, death wUl disappear in that we shall 
 cease to think we see matter. Mrs. Titus 
 holds this view, but I am not yet sufficiently 
 free from error to be sure that I believe it." 
 
 "But you are sure you believe that I 
 should not have typhoid fever ? " 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 " But what if the doctors said I had ? " 
 
 " They would be mistaken, father." 
 
 I stroked my chin in order to bridle my 
 tongue. "How old are you, Winona?" I 
 asked. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 143 
 
 " Just eighteen, father." 
 
 " You have never studied medicine, I be- 
 lieve ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Nor had any special advantages or op- 
 portunities to investigate the nature of dis- 
 ease?" 
 
 " Only through Mrs. Titus." 
 
 "Precisely. And yet you are willing to 
 call yourself wiser than the men who have 
 devoted their lives to its study — the physi- 
 cians of London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, 
 to say nothing of those of New York and 
 Boston." 
 
 A faint flush overspread Winona's face. 
 "The doctors have been mistaken many 
 times before, father. You remember Harvey 
 and the circulation of the blood. The doc- 
 tors laughed at him at first." 
 
 " But Harvey was a trained student of 
 medicine ; you are a school-girl." 
 
 " Mrs. Titus is not a school-girl." 
 
 " Has she ever studied medicine ? " 
 
 "I think not. But as disease is simply 
 human error, we consider the study of medi- 
 cine a waste of time. Our faith teaches us 
 that everything which doctors call illness is 
 
144 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 merely a clouding of truth in the soul by 
 error." 
 
 " And how do you cure your patients who 
 suffer from the error of typhoid fever ? " 
 
 "By the restoration of truth and their 
 faith in truth." 
 
 " By what active means ? What do you 
 do?" 
 
 " We think of them. We bring our minds 
 to bear upon the error in their minds." 
 
 " Is that aU ? " 
 
 "It is sufficient, father. Mrs. Titus has 
 effected wonderful cures by this means 
 only." 
 
 " Does she cure all her patients ?" 
 
 " When she does not cure them, it is be- 
 cause error has blinded them to the percep- 
 tion of truth. If all could perceive truth, 
 there would be no more error ; and, as it is, 
 there are many who cannot perceive as yet 
 even faintly." 
 
 "And this is all?" 
 
 " Yes, provided you understand." 
 
 " I understand the fundamental truth to be 
 that matter does not exist." 
 
 " It does not." 
 
 " So that even our bodies are a sham." 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 145 
 
 " We believe that our bodies exist, but 
 they do not really." 
 
 " Then why do you believe it ? " 
 " I do not believe it, but I am not yet con- 
 scious that my body does not exist. I hope 
 to be some day, yet very likely I shall never 
 be. Mrs. Titus is conscious of the truth at 
 times." 
 
 " "Why do you say ' at times ? ' " 
 "Because she is still somewhat sensitive 
 to the error of heat and cold. She considers 
 this a weakness, and she is willing to admit 
 that she is not wholly free from error. You 
 see, Mrs. Titus is a perfectly reasonable 
 woman, father. I am sure you would think 
 so, if you could hear her talk. I heard her 
 questioned the other day on that very point 
 of susceptibility to cold. Some one asked — 
 and asked in a scoffing spirit, father : ' Sup- 
 posing you were to go out-doors, Mrs. Titus, 
 with nothing on, when the thermometer was 
 below zero, should you feel cold ? ' Her an- 
 swer was : ' I fear I should, though I ought 
 not to. It is possible that after a while I 
 might be proof against the weakness, but in 
 all probability I should never be able to 
 overcome it. It is simply a question of time, 
 10 
 
146 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 though, when Christian Science is able to 
 subdue this error.' Was that not unassum- 
 ingly and beautifully put, father ? " 
 
 " Quite unlike the brutal dogmatism of the 
 regular practitioner, who would be apt to 
 recommend a strait-jacket for the individual 
 who should venture to brave the rigor of our 
 New England climate without a stitch of 
 clothing." 
 
 Although I spoke with a sober and sympa- 
 thetic mien, my beautiful daughter plainly 
 distrusted the sincerity of my words. Her 
 great brown eyes regarded me mournfully, 
 and it seemed to me there was pity in them 
 — pity for her poor benighted parent. She 
 said, sweetly and softly : 
 
 " You must not make sport of Christian 
 Science, father. It has done a great deal of 
 good already. Besides, Mrs. Titus did not 
 do anything of the kind. There is nothing 
 in the least sensational about her." 
 
 " And you wish to foUow in her footsteps, 
 my dear ? " 
 
 " I should like to try to." 
 
 " And what if I should forbid you to do 
 anything of the sort ? " 
 
 Winona's cheek flushed and her eyes 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 147 
 
 dropped a little in the face of my appearance 
 of sternness, but slie answered with the same 
 ineffable sweetness, as though she were seek- 
 ing to impress upon me that persecution 
 could not ruffle the temper of one of her 
 faith. " I should have to give up the plan, 
 of course. But," she murmured, " I should 
 stUl be a Christian Scientist. I could not 
 help being one, you know." 
 
 If you ask me why I did not remand her 
 to afternoon teas and the mantua^makers, or 
 advise her to allay her skipping spirit with 
 some cold drops of philanthropy, I fear that 
 I coidd not give a very satisfactory expla- 
 nation. I am not, and I never shall be, 
 a Christian Scientist, notwithstanding my 
 beauty of a daughter declares that she can 
 cure the proletariat of coughs, colics, and 
 fevers simply by thinking about them. It 
 was Josephine, not I, who remarked, after 
 the matter was settled, and Winona had be- 
 gun to keep office hours, that , on the whole 
 it was less dreadful than if she had become 
 an actress or joined a settlement of the Toyn- 
 bee Hall variety, for the reason that she still 
 remained at home, and we had not wholly 
 lost our hold upon her. Evidently Josephine 
 
148 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 regards her behavior as a passing phase 
 which will sooner or later wear off and leave 
 her more like other people, and she consid- 
 ers the actual practice of Christian Science 
 rather less demoralizing, from a conventional 
 point of view, than some other forms of revolt. 
 I can see what she means. However honor- 
 able her intentions, a woman who has knocked 
 about on the stage for half a dozen years is 
 likely to have her perspective of life enlarged 
 to such an extent that she can behold with- 
 out winking many things which are carefully 
 hidden from the general run of the sex, and 
 the consequence is that she is apt to refuse 
 to wear blinders for the rest of her existence. 
 So, too, it can be safely predicated that con- 
 tinuous exalted fellowship with the dregs of 
 the population on the part of women weaned 
 from the lap of luxury, and a consequent 
 sacrifice of almost every form of creature 
 comfort, barring a tooth-brush, a small piano, 
 a few books, and an etching or two, will be 
 likely to create a sterner and sterner disrelish 
 for the ice-cream and mushrooms vista of life 
 at the end of which stands a husband with a 
 newly furnished house and an ample income. 
 My wife is ready to admit that purely from 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 149 
 
 the point of view of common sense she would 
 have preferred to have the child do almost 
 anything peculiar rather than engage in her 
 present mummery, because some people will 
 consider her crazy ; but, on the other hand, 
 she maintains that the chances of losing her 
 altogether are much less serious than if she 
 had become a Toynbee Haller, for instance. 
 "Mind you," said Josephine, "however 
 much I might have fumed, I should really 
 have been very, very proud if she had gone 
 in for that. I can imagine, if you once got 
 used to the idea, feeling quite as happy over 
 it as if one's son had become a clergyman, 
 which of course," she added, meditatively, 
 " is a peculiar kind of happiness not just like 
 any other. But it would have meant separa- 
 tion forever, to all intents and purposes, for 
 I am too old to change my interests now, 
 however much I may disapprove of them in 
 theory, and though I should very likely go in 
 for something of the same kind in case I 
 were to begin life over again. But I don't 
 feel as though this Christian Science were 
 more than a temporary craze ; and being 
 just the ordinary every-day woman I am, I 
 cannot help welcoming the possibility that 
 
150 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Winona in course of time will come to her 
 senses. It may be selfish of me, but I can't 
 help it." 
 
 Now, I do not regard the matter from quite 
 such a personal point of view as Josephine, 
 though I agree with» her that I should not 
 have picked out Christian Science as the 
 most desirable loop-hole of escape from the 
 trammels of convention. To be sure, as 
 Josephine says, it is her loss rather than 
 mine, for a father is much less completely 
 estranged from a daughter who is peculiar 
 than is a mother, in that the bond of clothes 
 and parties and all the hitherto traditional 
 tastes of woman does not exist between a 
 father and daughter. Hence it is probably 
 much easier for me to look at the matter 
 philosophically than it is for Josephine. Ac- 
 cordingly, though I laugh in my sleeve at 
 the solemn pretensions of my dear deluded 
 daughter, and am more or less uncomfortable 
 in consequence of my consciousness that all 
 the sensible people of my acquaintance are 
 laughing at her also, I am inclined to watch 
 her progress with a sympathy which includes 
 the hope that she will work out of her pres- 
 ent state of lunacy into a more practical 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 151 
 
 field, rather than that she will relapse into 
 the stereotyped woman whom we all know. 
 When, however, Josephine asked me the other 
 day to specify the field, I was obliged to 
 admit that my ideas were a trifle hazy. My 
 state of mind doubtless proceeds from a rooted 
 conviction that the emancipation of woman 
 has only just begun, and a certain sympa- 
 thetic curiosity with her each and every eflbrt 
 to advance. To realize her progress, I have 
 only to glance up at my ancestor with the 
 mended eye and consider what a doll and a 
 toy she was to him. Then I look at my wife, 
 who was brought up on the old system, and 
 say to myself that, unless, indeed, man is to 
 be utterly snuffed out and extinguished, there 
 are certain feminine characteristics in the 
 preservation of which he is deeply interested, 
 even when, like myself, he is at heart an 
 aider and abettor of emancipation. No more 
 gingerbread education, no more treatment as 
 dolls and nincompoops, no more discrimina- 
 tion between one sex and the other as to 
 knowledge of this world's wickedness, no 
 more curtailment of personal liberty on the 
 score of that bugaboo, propriety — all these, if 
 you like, ladies ; but we men, we fathers and 
 
152 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 philosophers, ask that you retain, for our 
 sakes, beauty of face and form, beauty of 
 raiment, low, modulated voices, and a grace- 
 ful carriage, faith, hope, and charity, even 
 though you continue to reveal these last- 
 named as at present with sweet, illogical in- 
 consequence. More than this, we cannot do 
 without the tender devotion, the unselfish 
 forethought, the aspiring faith, which, even 
 though we seem to mock and to be blind, 
 saves us from the world and from ourselves. 
 If you are to become merely men in petti- 
 coats, what will become of us ? We shall go 
 down, down, down, like the leaden plummet 
 cast into the depths of the sea. We shall be 
 snuffed out and extinguished in sober truth. 
 Hence, certain that the work of emancipa- 
 tion is to continue, my philosophical glance 
 follows fondly and almost proudly the course 
 of my second daughter, who is making a fool 
 of herself at the moment by practising Chris- 
 tian Science, because she has beauty and 
 grace and a knowledge of the value of colors, 
 purity and tenderness and aspiring faith, as 
 her mother had before her, while at the same 
 time she has forsaken the beaten path of con- 
 vention and turned her brow to the morning. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 153 
 
 All of which, Josephine informs me, is charm- 
 ing reasoning, proyided Winona does not fall 
 in love with somebody. I do not understand 
 the precise logic of this criticism ; but, on the 
 other hand, Josephine is very apt to know 
 what she is talking about. 
 
VIII 
 
 I CAME home one afternoon with a puck- 
 ered brow. 
 
 " Has the Supreme Court decided another 
 case against you ? " asked Josephine, with 
 solicitude. 
 
 I shook my head, and answered wearily : 
 " Worse than that." 
 
 My wife regarded me in anxious silence, 
 while manifestly she was cudgelling her 
 brains to divine what could have happened. 
 As she told me afterward, she imagined, from 
 my doleful air, that I must at least have a 
 seed in my little sac. 
 
 " They have asked me to run for Con- 
 gress in this district," I finally vouchsafed to 
 state. 
 
 Josephine dropped her fancy-work and sat 
 upright with an air of satisfaction which was 
 wholly out of keeping with my own dejected 
 mien. 
 
OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 155 
 
 "Eeally, Fred! Who has asked you? 
 The Governor ? " 
 
 " The Governor does not usually go round 
 on his bended knees asking candidates to run 
 for Congress," I answered, with mild sar- 
 casm. 
 
 " Well, the Mayor then ? " 
 
 I have labored for years to make plain to 
 Josephine the ramifications of our National, 
 State, and Municipal Government ; but just 
 as I am beginning to think that she under- 
 stands the matter tolerably well, she is sure 
 to break out in some such hopeless fashion as 
 this, which shows that her conceptions are 
 still crookeder than a ram's horn. And the 
 strangest part is that she can tell you all 
 about the English Parliament and Home 
 Rule, and whether any given statesman is a 
 Liberal or a Liberal Unionist, and about M. 
 Olemenceau and the relative strength of the 
 Bonapartists and Orleans factions. But when 
 it comes to distinguishing clearly between 
 an Alderman and a State Senator, or a 
 Member of Congress and a Member of the 
 Legislature, she is apt to get exasperatingly 
 muddled. I asked her once, in my most 
 impressive manner, why it was that she 
 
156 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 did not take a more vital interest in the 
 politics of lier native country, and after re- 
 flecting a moment, she told me that she 
 thought it must be because they were so 
 stupid. On the other hand, with apparent 
 inconsistency, she has many times expressed 
 the hope that I would some day be conspicu- 
 ously connected with them. I have been 
 conscious for some time that it would suit 
 her admirably to have me round off my pro- 
 fessional career as Speaker of the National 
 House of Bepresentatives or Minister to the 
 Court of St. James. 
 
 " Josephine," I said, in a tone of despair, 
 " have I not explained to you time and time 
 again that Members of Congress are the Bep- 
 resentatives from the several States who are 
 sent to Washington ? How could the Gov- 
 ernor, who is a State officer, or the Mayor, 
 who is a municipal officer, have anything to 
 do with the nomination of a Member of the 
 National House of Bepresentatives ? Only 
 think, dear, what you are saying." 
 
 Probably Josephine would have evinced 
 more contrition in tribute to this harangue 
 had not her ears been fascinated by my ref- 
 erence to the Capital of our country. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 157 
 
 " It loas stupid of me, Fred. Do you mean 
 to tell me, dear, they are going to send you 
 to Washington? That would be perfectly 
 delightful." 
 
 " I merely have been asked to accept the 
 nomination for Congress in the Fourth Dis- 
 trict," I answered, dryly. 
 
 " And what did you tell them ? " 
 
 " I said I would think it over." 
 
 " You must accept. Of course you will ac- 
 cept ? It would be splendid, Fred. I would 
 a great deal rather have you in Congress than 
 go on our trip to Japan. I have often 
 thought I should like to pass a winter in 
 Washington." 
 
 By dint of economy and some shrewd in- 
 vestments I had managed to save up a vaca- 
 tion fund of more than normal size, by means 
 of which Josephine and I were proposing to 
 enjoy a jaunt to Japan. We had been look- 
 ing forward to this excursion, which I felt 
 that we had fairly earned by strict devotion 
 to home and business ties for a long period 
 of years. 
 
 " The district is hopelessly Bepublican, in 
 the first place, my dear, and I, as you know, 
 am a Democrat." 
 
158 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Josephine looked grave for a moment. 
 " But a great many Republicans would vote 
 for you, Fred. Oh, I am sure they would ! " 
 she added, eagerly, impressed by the plau- 
 sibility of the idea. "Harry Bolles is a 
 Republican, and I am certain he would vote 
 for you ; so would Dr. Meredith and Sam 
 Bangs." 
 
 "They are three out of several thousand 
 voters in the district, Josephine. You argue 
 like the committee which waited upon me." 
 
 "They said a great many Republicans 
 would vote for you, didn't they? And they 
 thought you would be elected ? " 
 
 " They were kind enough to state that I 
 had a good fighting chance ; which means, my 
 dear, that I haven't the ghost of a show." 
 
 Josephine regarded me a moment distrust- 
 fully. " It doesn't seem to me there is any 
 use in being too modest about such a matter 
 as this, Fred. Somebody has to be elected, 
 and it might as well be you as anybody. I 
 have always hoped you would go into poli- 
 tics, you know. If they hadn't wanted you 
 they wouldn't have asked you." 
 
 " The only certain thing about it is, that, 
 if they had supposed I could possibly be 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 159 
 
 elected, they wouldn't have offered me the 
 nomination." 
 
 " What do you mean, Fred ? I call that 
 mock modesty, darling." 
 
 I did not consider that I was called upon to 
 unfold more particularly to my wife the cyni- 
 cal estimate of the case which I entertained 
 in my secret soul, especially in view of the 
 fact that the committee which had waited 
 upon me comprised not merely politicians, 
 but some of our best citizens. Although a 
 man who is invited to run for Congress in a 
 district hopelessly hostile is likely to cherish 
 secret suspicions as to the sincerity of those 
 who offer him the nomination, the bait of 
 self-sacriiice for the public good has lured 
 many a cleverer man than I to his destruc- 
 tion. Besides, a fighting chance invariably 
 seems more prodigious to the one who is said 
 to have it, than to anyone else. There were 
 certainly weak joints in the armor (an anal- 
 ogy supplied me by the committee) of my 
 opponent, who was a dyed-in-the-wool poli- 
 tician, and indisputably I had a great many 
 friends. Could I afford to disregard the pite- 
 ous, eloquent argument of the spokesman, 
 Honorable David Flint, that the sacred cause 
 
160 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 of Reform demanded me as its champion, and 
 that victory was possible only under my ban- 
 ner ? I had promised to think it over, which 
 was a coy way of stating that I would accept. 
 Having made up my mind to run, I was 
 obliged to tell Josephine that this would 
 mean good-by for many a long and weary 
 month to our jaunt. 
 
 " If you're elected, Fred, I shall be only 
 too glad to postpone it. And if by any 
 chance you don't get in, Ave'll forget all about 
 it in dear Japan." 
 
 " You do not quite understand the situa- 
 tion, pet. We stay at home in any case, 
 election or no election. The expenses will 
 eat up my savings for a rainy day in Japan. 
 I shall have to contribute handsomely to 
 everybody and everything. It's an outrage, 
 but one of the painful results of having great- 
 ness thrust upon one." 
 
 Thereupon Josephine flung her arms 
 around my neck and informed me that I was 
 not only a dear, noble hero, but that Japan 
 or no Japan, she would not begrudge one 
 copper of any sum I might be obliged to 
 spend in order to defeat that odious wretch, 
 Mr. Daniel Spinney. A few days later, after 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 161 
 
 my letter of acceptance was published, she 
 said that she did not see how anyone who 
 had the least respect for the sacred right of 
 suffrage could hesitate between us. 
 
 " Spinney is not such a bad fellow at bot- 
 tom," I replied, albeit touched by the warm 
 partisanship of my wife. 
 
 " Didn't I read in the newspaper this 
 morning that he is a notorious spoilsman ? " 
 
 "Very likely, dear. Spinney has always 
 called Civil Service Beform a humbug." 
 
 "And he is all wrong on the tariff." 
 
 "We think so." 
 
 " Well, then, how can you say that he isn't 
 a bad fellow at bottom ? " 
 
 " I mean, Josephine, that apart from poli- 
 tics he is a very decent sort of person. I 
 couldn't help thinking while I was chatting 
 with him yesterday that there was something 
 quite attractive about him. He isn't exactly 
 the kind of man I should hold up as a model 
 to my sons, but, as I said before, he is by no 
 means a bad fellow." 
 
 Josephine had been looking at me aghast 
 ever since the opening sentence of this speech. 
 "You don't mean to tell me, Fred, that you 
 .stopped and chatted with that wretch ? " 
 11 
 
162 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " Indeed I do. We happened to meet, 
 and so we hobnobbed for five minutes on the 
 street comer and drew each other out in the 
 friendliest sort of fashion as to our mutual 
 13rospects. He says he has a walk-over, and 
 I told him that he isn't in it." 
 
 " I'm glad you showed a little spirit, any- 
 how." 
 
 "What would you have had me do? 
 Make a fell assault upon his hair and eye- 
 balls ? As it was, I perpetrated a deliberate 
 falsehood in the good cause. He knows that 
 I know I am beaten from the start." 
 
 "Nonsense," said Josephine. "You pro- 
 voke me, Fred, when you talk in that fash- 
 ion. What was the use of accepting if you 
 didn't intend to win if you could ? " 
 
 "So I do intend, but I can't." 
 
 " You can't certainly if you hobnob with 
 the rival candidate and call him a good fel- 
 low." 
 
 "You ought to have been a politician, Jo- 
 sephine." 
 
 "No, I'm only crazy to have you win, 
 Fred, and I'm convinced you can win if you 
 only think so yourself and pitch in as if you 
 thought so. I dare say Mr. Spinney may be 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 163 
 
 well enough apart from politics, but it is poli- 
 tics we are interested in at present, and it 
 seems to me it is your duty to hate him — 
 until the election is over, anyway. If you 
 defeat him, you may ask him to dinner, if 
 you like." 
 
 Her eyes sparkled like diamonds, and 
 there M'as a dangerous look in them which 
 would have boded ill for Mr. Spinney or 
 any other Eepublican had he happened to 
 thrust his head inside our doors just then. 
 As for me, I felt a little sheepish at my lack 
 of courage, I must confess, and I cried with 
 genuine ardor : " Hurrah for Beform ! You're 
 right, my dear," I added, " I must pitch in. 
 I haven't been quite so pusillanimous, how- 
 ever, as it would seem, for I have got Nick 
 Long to superintend my campaign." 
 
 You may remember that Nicholas Long, 
 or Nick Long, as we always speak of him, has 
 never stood high in Josephine's good graces 
 on account of his unorthodox habits regard- 
 ing church-going. He has an unpleasant 
 way of encountering us on our way to the 
 sanctuary in the toggery of a man who is 
 going to take a day off in the country. He 
 has, however, a cool, analytical mind, and his 
 
164 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 name has been associated for some years 
 with reform politics. In obtaining his ser- 
 vices as a manager I felt that I had done well 
 and wisely. Josephine looked a little sober, 
 as though she was not altogether gratified at 
 my selection, but realizing, very likely on 
 second thought, that the children's habits 
 were formed, she contented herself by re- 
 marking : 
 
 " I shall keep my eye upon him and make 
 sure that he doesn't get you into any mis- 
 chief." 
 
 " You seem to forget," I said, " that he is 
 a leading reformer." 
 
 Josephine smiled incredulously. " Fred," 
 she continued presently, with a pensive air, 
 " I wish it were the custom here, as it is in 
 England, for a candidate's wife to go about 
 and buttonhole people and beg votes and kiss 
 babies for him, and all that sort of thing. 
 I'm not so young as I was, I know, but I 
 dare say I should appear quite as well as 
 Mrs. Daniel Spinney, whoever she may be. I 
 really think I could make a fairly respectable 
 speech just on the strength of my conjugal 
 devotion and righteous indignation against 
 that villain of a man. * Ahem ; Fellow Dem- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 165 
 
 ocrats, I beseech you in the name of common 
 sense and decency, in the name of the God- 
 dess of Liberty, and of good government and 
 order, and as you love your cradles and your 
 firesides, not to vote for that dyed-in-the- 
 wool Republican and spoilsman, Daniel Spin- 
 ney, but to vote early and often for that tal- 
 ented, noble, self-sacrificing, upright citizen 
 and Democrat, Frederick ' " 
 
 " E pluribus unum I Let her go, Galla- 
 gher ! Erin go bragh ! rah ! rah ! rah ! Har- 
 vard ! " I cried, as I seized the lovely orator 
 in my arms and hugged her to my breast, 
 thereby, to adopt her own words, squeezing 
 out of her the little breath which she had 
 left. " Bravo, Josephine ! If you were to 
 take the stump it would be I and not Mr. 
 Spinney who would have a walk-over." 
 
 " At any rate, Fred," she continued, after 
 she had regained her breath and recomposed 
 her ruffled hair, " I can put in a word to help 
 you here and there among our friends. It 
 was on the tip of my tongue yesterday to call 
 Eev. Bradley Mason's attention to the fact 
 that you were a candidate, in the hope that 
 he might make just a slight allusion to it 
 from the pulpit. Not directly by name, of 
 
166 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 course ; he couldn't do that very well ; but 
 he might speak of the importance of aiding 
 those who were battling for the noble cause 
 of pure government, so that people could 
 guess what he meant. I didn't do it," she 
 added, a little ruefully, " because I was afraid 
 you might possibly not like it, and there was 
 plenty of time in which to give him the 
 hint." 
 
 " Thank goodness you didn't say a word 
 on the subject," I answered. "It wouldn't 
 have done at all." 
 
 For the next six weeks our house was a 
 veritable bureau of political activity. Al- 
 though Josephine lived up to her threat of 
 keeping an eye on Nicholas Long, she ad- 
 mitted before many days had passed that he 
 was what my boys call a thorough-going 
 hustler, and that he was determined to leave 
 no portion of my Congressional acreage un- 
 sown with Democratic seed. This farming 
 metaphor was borrowed from Nick, who had 
 many others at his command suited to the 
 various classes of constituents he wished to 
 reach. His brain fairly buzzed with fertile 
 expedients devised to catch this and that 
 portion of the popular vote. He was a great 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 167 
 
 believer in documents. As he expressed it, 
 the territory must be plastered with statistigs 
 and other printed matter, which were much 
 more serviceable nowadays than in the past. 
 He said that formerly the average voter flung 
 everything into the waste-basket and went to 
 the polls simply on the strength of party 
 prejudice fortified by the glamour of a torch- 
 light procession, but that now he read and 
 thought, and refused to support the party 
 candidate merely because he was the party 
 candidate. He deluged the community with 
 copies of my letter of acceptance, and three 
 days later overwhelmed the postal service 
 with a batch of circulars embodying a short, 
 pithy description of my personal virtues and 
 talents, interwoven with sound doctrine. Al- 
 though he confided to me that torchlight or- 
 ganizations were moribimd factors in political 
 warfare, he advised me to supply uniforms 
 and torches, and a promise of abundant 
 cigars, ice-cream, and ginger-beer for the 
 cementation of a band of youthful warriors 
 eager to call themselves the " Fourth District 
 Reform Cadets." " There is not more than 
 one voter in twenty among them," said Nick, 
 " but it will please their fathers, and do no 
 
168 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 harm in any event, especially as your wife 
 and I have devised a costume for them that 
 will drive the Spinney Guards raider cover 
 with jealousy." 
 
 The costume in question was a pattern of 
 garish ingenuity: white bearskin caps with 
 red, white, and blue pompons ; bright blue 
 blouses dashed with white, and white leather 
 belts, and red zouave knickerbockers. Their 
 torches were encased in fantastic glass lan- 
 terns alternately red, white, and blue. On 
 the occasion of their first parade, when they 
 drew up before the house to receive their 
 transparency, adorned on one side with a vil- 
 lainous portrait of myself superscribed by the 
 motto, " Our Fathers Fought For Freedom, 
 We Are Fighting For The Eight," and on 
 the other a cut depicting the rival candidate 
 up to his armpits in the bog of Civil Service 
 Eeform, described as " Spinney's Walk- 
 Over " (a happy blending, as Nick called it, 
 of serious principle and humorous sugges- 
 tion), I appeared on the door-steps and de- 
 livered a few halting sentences of gratitude 
 and augury for success, which were received 
 with loud plaudits and the rattle of the drum 
 corps. Thereupon I invited the battalion to 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 169 
 
 enter and partake of a little simple hospi- 
 tality, which they hastened to do to the num- 
 ber of two hundred, including a dozen ward 
 heelers in citizens' raiment, and three or fom" 
 
 nondescripts whom nobody knew, but whom 
 Nick said it would be impolitic to offend by 
 exclusion. A hearty supper was ready for 
 them in the dining-room, presided over by 
 Josephine and her daughters, whose presence 
 seemed at first to abash my warriors of the 
 
170 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 torch. But only for a few moments. Real- 
 izing presently that these Goddesses had 
 apparently but one aim in life, to wit, to help 
 them to salad, oysters, and ice-cream, diffi- 
 dence disappeared like fog before the morn- 
 ing sun, and with it the viands down the 
 throats of my red, white, and blue support- 
 ers. In the liquid line Josephine gave a 
 choice of hot coffee and chocolate, thereby 
 joining issue for the first time with my man- 
 ager on the subject of methods. Nick was 
 in favor of champagne, on the score that the 
 Spinney Guards had been regaled with beer 
 and sherry, but my darling declared that even 
 if it were the turning-point of the election, she 
 would not consent to win votes by playing 
 Hebe to beardless youths. A political aspi- 
 rant who is forced to decide between his 
 manager and his wife has need of all the phi- 
 losophy at his command. 
 
 To atone for this obduracy, Josephine had 
 a pleasant little surprise ready iu the shape 
 of a basket of silken badges emblematic 
 chiefly of myself, and more remotely of the 
 Presidential candidate and our party princi- 
 ples. She and her daughters, despite my 
 blushes, fastened these one by one to the blue 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 171 
 
 blouses of the members of the Fourth District 
 Reform Cadets after everything to eat and 
 drink in the house had vanished. Not only 
 then, but henceforth until the end of the 
 campaign, it was embarrassing to me to note 
 how subordinate a position every other can- 
 didate held in Jose- 
 phine's regard. One 
 would have supposed 
 that I was the party 
 nominee for the chief 
 magistracy of the na- 
 tion, instead of the 
 leader of a forlorn con- 
 test for a congression- 
 al seat in a hopeless- 
 ly Eepublican district. 
 On the occasion of the 
 torchlight parade two 
 
 miles long, whereby the enemy sought to 
 carry the city by storm, and which passed 
 close to our front door, our house was as 
 dark as Erebus. Josephine insisted even 
 that the lights in the front hall and in the 
 basement should be extinguished, and she 
 drew the drawing-room curtains over the 
 window-shades so that we need not seem to 
 
172 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 furnish our foes with one pale ray of comfort. 
 Induced by curiosity to peep out at the pass- 
 iag show, she limited her strictures to scorn- 
 ful but tranquil denunciation of the campaign 
 rhetoric blazoned on the 
 transparencies, until the 
 Spinney Guards arrived, 
 headed by a magnificent 
 mulatto bearing a delinea- 
 tion of the Reform Candi- 
 date submerged in a huge 
 soup-tureen with an appro- 
 priate tag beneath. For 
 an instant she stared, then 
 she gasped as though some 
 one had struck her, and she 
 fiercely started to raise the 
 window. 
 
 "What are you trying to 
 do, Josephine ? " 
 " Let me go, Fred. I will, I will. How 
 dare they? " 
 
 " Pooh, dear ! All is fair in politics. It's 
 no worse than the Swamp of Civil Service 
 Keform," I said, as I tore away her vindic- 
 tive grasp from the window which she had 
 succeeded in opening a foot or two, and shut 
 it hastily. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 173 
 
 " How dare they ? You had no right to 
 prevent me from hissing, Fred. I should like 
 to fling something at them too. It's an out- 
 rage making you look like that, and — and in 
 the soup, too." 
 
 Not all the enthusiasm generated by our 
 rival procession, which took place forty-eight 
 hours later, nor indeed the long flattering list 
 of my supporters published by Nick Long in 
 the newspapers for two days prior to elec- 
 tion day, sufficed entirely to obliterate from 
 Josephine's soul the bitterness of this insult. 
 As she expressed it, was it not cruel to flaunt 
 such a thing in the faces of children who 
 had been used to think of their father as the 
 most dignified of men, one with whose per- 
 sonality no one would dare to tamper or 
 trifle ? It nerved her, however, to more des- 
 perate efforts in my behalf. She ventured 
 even on holding up our beloved pastor, the 
 Eev. Bradley Mason, in the street, and cap- 
 turing his signature to the list of leading citi- 
 zens who supported me. This ought, she de- 
 clared, to outweigh sixty soup-tureens. 
 
 Before the votes were counted I knew well 
 enough that I had been defeated, but for 
 Josephine's dear sake I allowed her to pre- 
 
174 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 pare a victor's banquet, on the assumption 
 that my friends would be pouring in upon 
 me with congratulations. It was she who 
 drove me from my evening paper, to which I 
 was settling down like a philosopher after 
 dinner, to go to my headquarters and ascer- 
 tain the result. She was sure I was elected. 
 If not (and here her voice melted) the people 
 were not fit to have such a pearl offered to 
 them. I went, and it was half-past ten when 
 I returned. She heard my step, and rushed 
 down to meet me at the front door. I was 
 calm and smUing. 
 
 " Defeated by one hundred and fourteen 
 votes, dear. A close fight, wasn't it ? " 
 
 "Ah, Fred, defeated! You poor, poor 
 boy." 
 
 " I can stand it if you can, Josephine," I 
 answered, as with my arm wound around her 
 waist I led her into the dining-room, where 
 the stalled ox and truffled turkey and a glit- 
 tering array of glass confronted us. 
 
 " It was that horrid soup-tureen did it, I 
 am convinced," she murmured, sitting down 
 beside me on the sofa. 
 
 " Nonsense, dear. Everyone says I got a 
 wonderful vote against such odds. They are 
 
A PHILOSOPHER lib 
 
 talking about it downtown as though I had 
 won a victory. Nick is called a great man- 
 ager." 
 
 " But that Spinney is elected all the same," 
 she said, dejectedly. 
 
 " Yes, he is, Josephine. We can't escape 
 from that. I tell you what, I'm going to have 
 a glass of champagne," I said, entering the 
 china closet and taking possession of one 
 of the bottles which had been packed in ice 
 for the refreshment of my friends. I filled a 
 glass for each of us and drained mine to the 
 philosophical toast, "Here's to peace and a 
 quiet life, my dear," 
 
 "It would have been very nice to go to 
 Washington," said Josephine, between her 
 sips. " It might have been a stepping-stone 
 to higher things. You know you would be 
 pleased to be sent abroad as a foreign minis- 
 ter. It would have just suited you, Fred." 
 
 " It may be that the President, when he 
 hears of the gallant fight I made, will reward 
 me with something in that line," I answered, 
 with a twinkle in my eye. "By the way, 
 what egotists we are ! I did notteU you, and 
 you did not inquire, who had been elected 
 President. We have won a glorious victory." 
 
176 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 " I'm very glad, I'm sure," said Josephine, 
 in a tone which was scandalously absent- 
 minded considering the importance of the in- 
 formation. After a moment she remarked, 
 coyly : " I should really think, Fred, there 
 might be a chance of his giving you some- 
 thing when he hears." 
 
 "Not the slightest, you dear woman. I 
 was only teasing you. I am a very humble 
 figure in the politics of the country, I assure 
 you, and even if the President is aware of my 
 existence when he enters office, it will never 
 occur to him to pick me out for preferment. 
 Besides, I don't wish anything. I am per- 
 fectly content to sink back into the obscurity 
 from which I was lured by the call of duty. 
 It would have tickled my pride a little to de- 
 feat Spinney, but I am inclined to think 
 I should have found it rather a bore to be 
 only one Congressman among so many." 
 
 " Just think of it, one hundred and fifteen 
 more votes would have given you the elec- 
 tion. It seems hard to have missed it by so 
 little. You mustn't think me a goose about 
 you, Fred," she added, after a thoughtful 
 pause. I don't usually praise you to your 
 face and make an undue fuss about you, do I 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 177 
 
 dear ? I think I am disposed to be critical 
 of you rather than otherwise. But you are 
 so much superior to the men they generally 
 put up, that I'm unable to reconcile myself 
 to the idea that you're not to be anything 
 distinguished after all. Of course I didn't 
 really expect that you were going to be very 
 great ; and yet in politics one cannot always 
 telL Men no more remarkable than you have 
 been elected President ; though I'm not at all 
 sure that I should have cared to have you in 
 the White House." 
 
 "Yet you will not cease to love me now 
 that I am doomed to be only a poor private 
 citizen for the rest of my days?" I asked, 
 fondly, as my arm stole around her waist, 
 which, though no longer wisp-like as of yore, 
 is shapely stiU. "Poor, too, iu every sense," 
 I added, unpleasantly reminded by the press- 
 ure of the check-book in my coat-pocket of 
 my sadly diminished bank account. 
 
 " I am afraid I should continue to love you, 
 Fred, even if you were bad — a Daniel Spin- 
 ney or a Nicholas Long, for example," she 
 answered, imprinting a kiss upon my cheek. 
 " But you are an angel, dear." 
 
 It was worth being defeated for Congress 
 13 
 
178 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 in order to learn how mucli my wife appreci- 
 ated me, and also to learn to appreciate her 
 more thoroughly, philosophical deductions 
 which I whispered in her ear with appro- 
 priate circumlocution. " But, Josephine," I 
 added, " why do you include Spinney and 
 Nick Long in the same category of wicked- 
 ness ? " 
 
 " Because they are both wicked." 
 " But Nick is a reformer, my dear." 
 " Hasn't he nearly ruined you ? " 
 " I had to hand over a great deal of money 
 to him, certainly," I answered, ruefully. 
 " What did he spend it for ? " 
 " I didn't ask him for the details, but he 
 always said he needed it for printing, dear. 
 You know there was a great deal of printing 
 done," I hastened to add, feeling a little nerv- 
 ous under the stress of cross-examination. 
 "Then there were the uniforms and the 
 torches and the supper for the cadets." 
 
 " I know what they cost exactly. Fred, what 
 do you suppose he could have used all that 
 money for ? " 
 
 " Printing, I have told you, Josephine. 
 There are all sorts of expenses in a campaign 
 of this sort, the details of which one has to 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 179 
 
 leave to one's manager. I have implicit con- 
 fidence in Nick's good judgment," I contin- 
 ued, a trifle austerely. To tell the truth, I 
 had been wondering myself where all the 
 money had gone to. Josephine was thought- 
 ful for several minutes, then she said : " Do 
 you know, Fred, I have a feeling that if you 
 had managed your own campaign without 
 the aid of a reformer you would have got just 
 as many votes — and — and we should have 
 had money enough left to go to Japan." 
 
 If a woman has a prejudice against a 
 man he might be spotless as the Archangel 
 Gabriel, and she would be able to pick a 
 flaw in him. 
 
IX 
 
 SIX months ago an astonishing piece of 
 news was revealed to me. Astonishing at 
 least to me, though Josephine says that I need 
 not have been astonished had I kept my eyes 
 open, inasmuch as the affair was going on 
 under my very nose, and everybody in town 
 except myself knew how it was likely to end. 
 I refer to my daughter Josie's engagement. 
 
 Yesterday I gave her away — a euphemistic 
 way of stating that she was torn from my 
 arms — to a young man of whom I know next 
 to nothing, though I hear on all sides that he 
 is a very nice fellow, which might mean that 
 he is utterly without principle and an easy- 
 going, idle, selfish hound. In appearance he 
 does not seem to me to differ from nine- 
 tenths of the young men who in the course 
 of the last five years have said, " How d'y 
 do ? " or " Good-by " to me (rarely more or 
 less) -when they have run across me in my 
 
OPINIONS OP A PHILOSOPHER 181 
 
 own drawing-room. My wife declares that 
 he has a spiritual face, and that he reminds 
 her of me at the same age, which I regard as 
 an ingenious attempt to prepossess me in his 
 favor. She has informed me also that Josie is 
 over head and ears in love with him and he 
 with Josie, a predicament on his part which 
 I am not surprised at ; and I suppose that 
 I am bound to admit that my daughter is 
 justified in her infatuation for him, if he re- 
 sembles me at thirty. 
 
 Plainly, I have become an old cynic by rea- 
 son of the loss of my dear Josie. I realize that 
 I have been like a bear with a sore head ever 
 since the ceremony. As for Josephine, she 
 has been mooning about the house aU day in a 
 state of chronic tearfulness. The responsibil- 
 ity of the bride's appearance and the wedding 
 collation kept her nerved until everything 
 was over. Last evening she collapsed and 
 fell asleep in my arms, sobbing like a child. 
 
 His name is James Perkins. I have been 
 doing my best for several months to caU him 
 "Jim," as everybody else does, instead of 
 "James," or "Perkins," and yesterday I suc- 
 ceeded twice in doing so. I had had three 
 glasses of champagne. He is an architect, 
 
182 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and I understand from Josie that he has al- 
 ready made his mark in the erection. of a 
 church, two school-houses, and a town-hall in 
 the suburbs, which I have promised her to go 
 and see. It seems that a week before he had 
 the impertinence to offer himself to her he re- 
 ceived word that his plans for a vast railroad 
 station in one of the large Western cities had 
 been accepted. But for this untoward circum- 
 stance, my dear Josie would still be the light 
 of my house, and I should not be gnawing at 
 my mustache in the throes of misanthropy. 
 
 Jim is slight and not very tall, and he does 
 not look especially strong. They tell me 
 that he has worked very hard, and that he 
 has won his way purely by his own energy 
 and talent. He does not smoke, which rath- 
 er prejudiced me against him, in spite of 
 the fact that I believe we should all be the 
 healthier if we did not use tobacco. This, as 
 Josephine would say, only shows what an in- 
 consistent creature I am. And I a philoso- 
 pher, too ! But I said at the outset that I was 
 not a real philosopher. Josie met James — I 
 beg his pardon, Jim — at her coming-out 
 party, and it seems that he fell in love with 
 her at first sight. If, now, somebody had 
 
A PHILOaOPHEB 183 
 
 fallen in love at first sight with my sister-in- 
 law, Julia, how much more satisfactory it 
 would have been all round. But that is the 
 way of the world ; Julia was overlooked and 
 my girl taken, to my miserable discomfiture. 
 Jim was one of the youths without fathers 
 and mothers whom you see at every large en- 
 tertainment. That is to say, my wife had 
 never heard of his father and mother at the 
 time she invited him, though they prove to 
 have been very respectable people. Indeed, 
 we were all of us struck by the diguified 
 appearance which his family as a whole 
 presented at the wedding. Alas ! I realize 
 already that when I have got used to the 
 idea that anybody is to have her, I shall be 
 thoroughly happy in the thought that I have 
 given her away to such a decent fellow, a man 
 with self-respect and principles, a man of in- 
 dustry and capacity, and one, too, who is 
 ready to drink his glass of champagne like 
 the rest of the world — although he does not 
 smoke. I have let my grudge have free scope, 
 and all I have been able to rake up against 
 him is that he shakes his head when I offer 
 him a pipe or a cigar. In my secret soul I 
 am egregiously proud of him already, and but 
 
184 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 for my wounded sensibilities I could dance 
 with joy over the reflection that he is likely 
 to make her perfectly happy. And yet all 
 this talk of marrying and giving in marriage 
 has broken my spirit. 
 
 " Since it had to be someone," I said by 
 way of consolation to Josephine when we 
 awoke this morning, " it's extremely fortunate 
 that she did not fall in love with a dashing 
 soldier, who would carry her off to a barracks 
 on the frontier of a Sioux reservation, or a 
 swashing sailor, who would leave her at home 
 while he went on long cruises, or a splendid- 
 looking creature, with a sonorous voice, who 
 would drink himself into his grave or else 
 make her miserable by devoting himself to 
 another woman. Some of the nicest fellows I 
 ever knew have made their wives thoroughly 
 wretched. When you think that there really 
 isn't anything very wonderful to look at 
 about — er — Jim, that is, anything to appeal 
 especially to the romantic side of a girl, I 
 think it's very greatly to Josie's credit that 
 she should have chosen him. Many girls 
 might have overlooked his solid attractions 
 and gone in for a Jim dandy of a chap who 
 wasn't worth his salt." 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 185 
 
 My wife looked a little blank over this 
 philosophic statement, then she glanced up 
 at me with a roguish smile and said : " You 
 seem to forget, dear, that I accepted you." 
 
 " True enough," I answered, merrily. " I 
 dare say I wasn't a trifle less commonplace- 
 looking than son-in-law. Besides we both 
 have spiritual faces." 
 
 " You should give me and Josie credit for 
 being able to see below the surface," said my 
 darling, fondly. " A soldier or a sailor, or a 
 splendid-looking creature such as you de- 
 scribe, is delightful at a party ; but gold but- 
 tons, or even a very handsome mustache, 
 don't go far nowadays toward blinding a sen- 
 sible girl to the fact that she wUl have to pass 
 all her days with the man she chooses. You 
 know, dear, that you and I have never believed 
 that marriage is a lottery. We were sure of 
 each other beforehand. So are Josie and 
 Jim." 
 
 "Thank God that it is so; and may he, 
 darling, grant them such happiness as he has 
 given us." 
 
 "Amen! And, Fred, he— James" (Jo- 
 sephine prefers to call him James ; she thinks 
 Jim undignified) " is not really homely. He 
 
186 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 isn't an Adonis, of course, and doesn't impress 
 one especially at first glance, but anyone who 
 looks at him twice can see that he is very in- 
 telligent, and that he has the appearance of a 
 gentleman." 
 
 " Eight you are, my dear. Perhaps I was 
 unconsciously comparing him with the young 
 man whom I met strolling with your other 
 daughter not many days ago." 
 
 "With Winona? When?" she asked 
 with a start. 
 
 "About dusk." 
 
 " No, no, on what day ? " 
 
 " Let me see. It must have been a week 
 ago yesterday." 
 
 " Who was he ? Why didn't you tell me 
 before ? " 
 
 " He was tall, handsome, and impressive- 
 looking," I replied, with quiet deliberation. 
 
 " What do you mean, Fred ? How slow 
 you are. Do go on." 
 
 " As to telling you before, I thought it best 
 to wait until you had one of your girls off 
 your mind. As to being slow, I have told 
 you all there is to tell already. I met Wi- 
 nona about dusk a week ago yesterday in the 
 company of a tall, handsome, impressive- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 187 
 
 looking young man whom I had never seen 
 in my life. I don't know where they were 
 going or where they came from or what it 
 
 meant. I hope to see him again so as to 
 say to him, ' Young man, beware ; I have lost 
 one daughter, and I am in no mood to be 
 trifled with.' I dare say," I continued, non- 
 
188 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 chalantly, " that if you were to keep your eyes 
 open you would be able to see what is eTident- 
 ly going on under your Tery nose, my dear." 
 
 Josephine did not heed this taunt ; she was 
 thinking hard. 
 
 " I wonder who it could have been," she 
 murmured, presently. " I have noticed lately 
 that Winona has acted as though she had 
 something on her mind ; but I had assumed 
 it might be because her patients were falling 
 off, owing to the death of that woman with 
 consumption who could not be persuaded 
 that she had nothing the matter with her. 
 It would be a great relief to my mind to see 
 the dear girl happily married. What did he 
 look like, Fred ? Are you certain you have 
 never seen him before ? Just think : you're 
 sure it wasn't Mr. Dyer or Mr. Benson ? One 
 might caU either of them tall, handsome, and 
 impressive-looking. ' ' 
 
 " I have told you everything I know, Jo- 
 sephine," I retorted, fiercely. " I don't know 
 the man from Adam. I should think," I 
 added, with a sepulchral outburst, " that after 
 what happened yesterday, Josephine, you 
 wouldn't be in so much haste to marry the 
 the only girl we have left." 
 
A PHIL080PHBB 189 
 
 " Excuse me, Fred," she said, gently. " It 
 was cruel of me to suggest such a thing so 
 soon. And yet I suppose we must be pre- 
 pared for something of the kind sooner or 
 later. You know you have constantly ex- 
 pressed the hope that neither of them would 
 hang fire like dear Julia." 
 
 "Oh, I know it. I'm a selfish brute, 
 Josephine," I answered, beginning to hone 
 my razor with the desperate air of one who 
 would fain cut his own throat as the simplest 
 solution of the problem of living. 
 
 And only six months ago the horizon of 
 my domestic happiness looked so clear and 
 comforting. Not even a cloud of the tradi- 
 tional smaUness of a man's hand marred its 
 serenity. Little Fred was pegging away at 
 Leggatt & Paine's with commendable steadi- 
 ness all day, and, though he was apt to dance 
 all night by way of making up for it, I was 
 comforted in my solicitude regarding his 
 health by the recollection that I used to do 
 the same when I was his age, my spiritual 
 countenance to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 Besides, Leggatt has always a good word to 
 say for him, and evidently still keeps an eye 
 on him, notwithstanding that Fred has ceased 
 
190 TUE OPINIONS OF 
 
 to kick foot-ball and limps no longer. To be 
 sure, I have been beguiled once or twice by 
 the dear boy's assurance that I would make 
 my fortune, if I would follow his advice, in- 
 to buying investment securities the market 
 price of which at present is far less than I 
 paid for them. However, the financial mis- 
 information imparted by one's own flesh and 
 blood is more easily forgiven than that which 
 emanates from one's regular broker. Besides, 
 there is the chance that the stocks wiU come 
 up again some day or other. Fred says they 
 are sure to. Everything considered he was, 
 and indeed he still is, doing remarkably well, 
 and he is such an honest-looking, manly fel- 
 low that Josephine says she wonders all the 
 girls do not fall in love with hira. His pres- 
 ent safety seems to lie in the fact that he is 
 in love with all the girls and not with any 
 particular one, a condition of affairs which I 
 trust will last until he is properly able to 
 support a wife. I remember that before I 
 fell in love with Josephine — well, no matter. 
 I have almost forgotten their names and 
 should have to ask my darling to tell me who 
 they were, and all about it. I have never 
 really loved anybody but her, God bless her. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 191 
 
 Then there was David — again I must admit 
 there still is David — whose rapid success in 
 his adopted profession and whose general 
 steadiness of character have been a source of 
 perpetual gladness to us. He stiU causes his 
 mother some concern by his utter disinclina- 
 tion for the society of young women, but I 
 know of no other fault with which to re- 
 proach him. His bacillic pets no longer 
 have a domicile under the paternal roof. 
 He has a laboratory of his own downtown 
 where, doubtless, they thrive and multiply. 
 But his special interest 'at present is electric- 
 ity. This has already brought him reputa- 
 tion and money by virtue of an appliance in 
 the storage battery line, the details of which 
 I do not precisely tmderstand. Although 
 Little Fred shook his head gravely at the 
 mention of the word "patent," I was impru- 
 dent enough to follow my scientific son's lead 
 to the tune of several thousand dollars, the 
 happy consequence of which seemed to be 
 that Josephine and I would be able to have 
 our jaunt to Japan whenever the spirit moved 
 us. That was before I counted the cost of 
 marrying a daughter. 
 
 Thirdly, there was that daughter, a dear, 
 
192 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 sweet girl, who seemed to me perfectly con- 
 tent in her enjoyment of the social pleasures 
 in which she was so well adapted to shine. 
 I regarded her as still a mere child, and though 
 youths came and went, never for one moment 
 did I suspect that she was meditating the 
 blow which she has since inflicted upon me, 
 until Josephine told me one evening, with 
 a mysterious, agitated air, that Mr. James 
 Perkins wished to see me in the library. 
 He saw me, and all the consolation I de- 
 rived from our interview was the impres- 
 sion that he considered that he was acting 
 generously in asking my consent to the 
 match, and that custom would have justi- 
 fied him in letting me hear the news of my 
 daughter's engagement elsewhere and in see- 
 ing me further, as the phrase is, before he 
 saw me at all. Remembering as I did that I 
 regarded the views of Josephine's father 
 concerning our little matter twenty - five 
 years ago as a matter of mere detail, only 
 think how far I fell short of the temper of 
 a real philosopher in allowing myself to 
 become violently angry, and to pace the 
 library until one o'clock in the morning after 
 my would-be son-in-law had left it ! An es- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 193 
 
 pecially futile proceeding, as Josephine sub- 
 sequently remarked, inasmuch as, by my own 
 admission, I had behaved like a veritable 
 lamb in his presence and had told him 
 blandly that if he and my daughter were 
 agreed upon the subject I had not a word to 
 say against it. 
 
 This was the first break in our peaceful, 
 happy domestic circle. Do you know what 
 the period of an idolized daughter's engage- 
 ment seems to the disdained and discarded 
 husband and father? He is too shy and 
 dignified to peep at the billing and cooing 
 through the crack of the drawing-room door 
 like the younger members of the family ; con- 
 sequently, the six months which intervene 
 between the making of the match and its 
 consummation, impress him as a Sahara of 
 tedious confabulation between the pair of 
 turtle doves as . to whether they have too 
 many salt-cellars for their marital needs, and 
 whether the exchange of a third set of oyster- 
 forks without the knowledge of the donor 
 would be a violation of the highest code 
 of ethics. Presents, presents, nothing but 
 presents, of every kind and degree, from the 
 solid silver tea-set of exquisitely fluted pattern 
 13 
 
194 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 to the excruciatingly ugly bit of bric-d-brac 
 which has captivated the undiscerning eye of 
 some dear friend. After every ring at the 
 door-bell appears the nxaid with a fresh parcel 
 
 iiiJji'' 
 
 wrapped in snow-white paper fastened with a 
 dainty ribbon, and on each occasion my dear 
 Josie's eyes sparkle more excitedly as she 
 clutches it and frees it from its caparisons. 
 And ever and anon I am struck by the fact 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 195 
 
 that she is growing thin and pale. I mention 
 it to Josephine, but she tells me that girls 
 always get peaked before their weddings, and 
 that she herself was thin as a rail at the time 
 she married me. I get no sympathy anywhere. 
 My sole connection with the matter is that I 
 am to giTe tjie bride away. 
 
 I did so yesterday in the presence of our 
 entire social acquaintance and their dress- 
 makers, most of whom I subsequently enter- 
 tained at a mid-day collation, where I shook 
 hands with a vast array of young people 
 whom I did not know, and tried to keep up 
 my spirits by asking my old friends to take 
 wine with me. It was after the third glass 
 that the spirit moved me to address my new 
 son-in-law as "Jim." An hour later I saw 
 the young rascal carry off my Josie in a car- 
 riage with an air as though he owned her, 
 and I could have strangled him. At the 
 same moment I was unpleasantly conscious 
 that a quantity of rice hurled by an enthusi- 
 astic miss of nineteen was going down my 
 back. I made a mad rush forward like a 
 bull; I don't know exactly what I had in 
 mind to do, but I was bunted aside by a 
 youth who, I am sure, could never have had 
 
196 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 a father and motlier. He held an old shoe 
 in his hand, which he proceeded to cast with 
 such unerring aim that it landed on the top 
 of the bridal coach, to the infinite delight of 
 everybody except myself. I could see no 
 especial humor in it, but Josephine teUs me 
 that we underwent precisely the same expe- 
 rience at our own wedding and thought it 
 amusing. I perceive that it makes consider- 
 able difference in this world whose ox is 
 gored, or, to put it more accurately, whether 
 one is carrying off some other man's daughter 
 or is being robbed of his own. 
 
 And now to crown aU, I am haunted by 
 the vision of Winona and that tall, hand- 
 some, impressive-looking young man in 
 whose company I met her the other day 
 about dusk. In saying to Josephine that I 
 had told her all, I did not speak the truth in 
 a certain sense. I did tell her all I knew, 
 but I did not confide to her all that I sus- 
 pected. I did not reveal to her that at the 
 moment my eye fell upon them my only re- 
 maining daughter was gazing up into the face 
 of her male companion with that peculiar 
 look of absorbed attention which has so of- 
 ten wrought the ruin of Platonic friendship. 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 197 
 
 It entered like iron into my parental soul, 
 already quivering with its recent wound, and 
 
198 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 I murmured to myself, " Oh, my prophetic 
 soul, my second son-in-law ! " 
 
 Winona too ! Two years have passed 
 since I granted her permission to practise 
 Christian Science, and from that time to this 
 she has gone regularly every day to her office 
 to minister to the patients who have applied 
 to her for treatment. I am unable to state 
 whether these have been many or few ; to be 
 frank, I have been amazed that she has had 
 any at aU. But I am sure that she has had 
 some, and that she claims to have cured sev- 
 eral sufferers from chronic disorders whom 
 the regular practitioners had declared incur- 
 able. Or, more accurately, I should say that 
 she has demonstrated that there was nothing 
 the matter with them save a superabundance 
 of error in their souls. I have learned, too, 
 that she has experienced some dismal fail- 
 ures, notably in the case of the woman with 
 consumption, referred to by Josephine, who, 
 as Winona explained to us, would have got 
 well had she only been able to realize that 
 she was getting better. There was also a 
 patient suffering from mental derangement 
 who grew crazier and crazier, untU she was 
 finally carried off by her friends, whereas, as 
 
A PHILOaOPHER 199 
 
 Winona sweetly explained to us, if they had 
 only allowed her to remain a little longer she 
 would have been completely cured, because 
 in Christian Science, as in nature, darkness 
 is apt to be most signal just before the dawn. 
 This diagnosis of the case struck me as 
 highly reasonable. Indeed, I have constantly 
 said to myself that, provided the dear child 
 managed to escape indictment, I had every 
 reason to be contented that she was living up 
 to her lights to the top of her bent. So alto- 
 gether you can see that my home was a happy 
 one, and that I desired no change. 
 
 My two sons-in-law! I see them in my 
 mind's eye walking on either side of me, the 
 one short and slim with a spiritual counte- 
 nance ; the other tall, handsome, and impres- 
 sive-looking. Their main object in life seems 
 to be to help me on with my overcoat, and to 
 guide my senile steps over street-crossings, 
 though Dr. Meredith tells me that I am good 
 for twenty years yet, and that I haven't an 
 unsound organ in my body. They disagree 
 with me in politics so politely that I am fool 
 enough to open my best wine when they 
 come to dinner. They dog my footsteps ; 
 they silently pass judgment upon me, and I 
 
200 OPimONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 shall never be able to shake them oflf until I 
 am dead. Why did they come to worry us ? 
 We were so happy before we knew of their 
 existence. Out upon them both ! 
 
 Alas, poor philosopher ! Shall I begrudge 
 to my darlings the happiness that I have 
 known in the too swiftly fleeting years of our 
 married life? Love has come to claim my 
 flesh and blood even as it claimed me and 
 Josephine a quarter of a century ago never 
 to loose us from his silken chains. Love the 
 immortal, the transfigurer of souls, the un- 
 sealer of eyes which in vain have sought the 
 light which streams from eternity, thou hast 
 come to work anew the old, old story, even 
 though thy coming rends my heart-strings. 
 Down, selfish, stubborn fumes of senile cyni- 
 cism ! I bow to the law of life. Come to my 
 embrace, O sons-in-law ; I love you, I bid 
 you welcome to my hearth, even though you 
 regard me as one for whom the grave is 
 yawning ! Listen how bravely I call Jim — 
 Jim — Jim, a thousand times Jim. And you, 
 the other one, whose name I do not know, 
 but whose fell purpose I have detected, when 
 your name is divulged to me I will call that 
 too. 
 
SAID Josephine to me some three months 
 ago : " Fred, we shall have been mar- 
 ried twenty-five years on the twenty-first of 
 next November. "We ought to celebrate it in 
 some way." 
 
 " How better than by having a silver wed- 
 ding?" 
 
 " Because so many people would feel 
 obliged to give us silver," she replied. "1 
 am perfectly willing, Fred, that people should 
 send me flowers when I'm dead, but I will 
 not have them send silver to my silver wed- 
 ding." 
 
 " The simplest way then would be to tell 
 them not to. Put in the corner of the invi- 
 tation the letters A. S. W. B. S. B. 'All sil- 
 ver wUl be sent back.' " 
 
 " This is a serious subject, Fred. I should 
 like very much to have our best friends with 
 us on the anniversary, if I could feel sure 
 
202 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 that they wouldn't regard it as a tax. We all 
 give willingly when people are married,but it 
 does seem rather a grind, as the children used 
 to say, to have to go out and buy something 
 else a quarter of a century later, when you 
 know that the senile old couple will be able 
 to use whatever you get only a few years at 
 the farthest, and that then it will be snapped 
 up or melted up by their children or grand- 
 children. Mind you, dear, I should often be 
 glad to give sUver myself, if I could afford 
 it ; but I am looking at the matter from the 
 point of view of the world at large. Do you 
 know," she added, " that isn't at all a bad 
 idea of yours. We could put on the cards 
 ' No silver,' just as they put ' No flowers.' 
 It was quite a brilliant suggestion, Fred." 
 
 " There are always fools, though, who will 
 disregard such a notice just from sheer con- 
 trariness." 
 
 " Oh, if we once gave them warning, and 
 they chose to send notwithstanding, it would 
 be their own fault," exclaimed Josephine, 
 buoyantly. " I should hope there would be a 
 few such people, for I should be very glad to 
 have more silver. It's not that I object to 
 the silver, but because I wish to give a loop- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 203 
 
 hole of escape to the people who wouldn't 
 send it unless they felt obliged to. I should 
 expect surely to receiye quite a lot in one 
 way or another. And it loould be conyenient, 
 love, for Winona did not get any too much 
 when she was married. Everything ran to 
 furniture and books, and out of the little sil- 
 ver she received there were seven large salad 
 forks, all of which had her initials on them, 
 so that she couldn't change them." 
 
 There are people who refrain from having 
 their wills drawn on the score tbat they 
 would be likely to die if they did. While I 
 have no sympathy with this superstition, I 
 must confess that a formal celebration of the 
 twenty-fifth anniversary of your wedding- 
 day has always seemed to me to savor of 
 willingness to have your account with life 
 audited, with a view to being able to sink 
 quietly and becomingly into your grave when- 
 ever you were called. In view of the fact 
 that, though each of us has trifling ailments, 
 neither of us is seriously disabled, it seemed 
 a little soon to be takiog account of stock and 
 talking of putting up the shutters forever. 
 Yet Time's figures are not to be gainsaid, 
 and especially in the Land of Liberty people 
 
204 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 are not allowed to forget that they are grow- 
 ing old even if they have no tall sons and 
 daughters to attest the fact. What boots it 
 to protest that we feel as young as we ever 
 did? We might be allowed to say so un- 
 challenged, provided we did not try to act on 
 the assumption, but the youths without par- 
 ents and the newly created species would 
 soon bring us to our senses if we were to as- 
 sert ourselves in society so as to cause them 
 the slightest inconvenience. The middle- 
 aged are allowed to drive and go to the thea- 
 tre, and are tolerated at weddings on the 
 ground that they may have given a wedding 
 present, and at garden parties where there is 
 no lack of space, but their room is consid- 
 ered better than their company everywhere 
 else, in spite of the pretty speeches one some- 
 times hears as to the charm of entertain- 
 ments where all ages are gathered together, 
 and the glory of growing old gracefully as 
 they do in England. I am not complaining, 
 for between you and me we wouldn't be 
 hired to go to one-tenth of the places to 
 which we ought to be invited, so far as our 
 physical state is concerned ; but it would be 
 soothing to be asked occasionally and not to 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 205 
 
 be treated as though we were moribund, and 
 bidden only to Class Day spreads and to 
 church weddings without a card for the re- 
 ception. Once in a while lately Josephine 
 and I have taken it into our heads to put in 
 an appearance at the Assemblies, where, 
 though we had been respectfully and cor- 
 dially received, it has been evident to us that 
 we were regarded as social Kip Van Winkles, 
 and that at least half the company were in- 
 quiring who in thunder we were, and the re- 
 mainder, who did know us, were wondering 
 why in time we came. 
 
 A remark of Josephine's served to crystal- 
 lize these reflections. " Do you know, Fred, 
 that I think on the whole we shall have a 
 happier day if we pass it, quietly together, 
 and simply have the children to dine. So 
 many of the people of whom we were fond 
 at the time we were married have passed 
 away, thiat I am sure we should be appalled 
 by the thinness of the ranks when we began 
 to reckon who are left. Besides, I don't 
 think that a notice not to bring silver would 
 really protect the poor wretches who didn't 
 wish to bring any. It would seem too evi- 
 dently to mean that they needn't bring any 
 
206 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 unless they chose to, but that it would be 
 acceptable all the same, which would worry 
 dreadfully those who like to do whatever 
 others do. Don't you think so? You see 
 everybody understands that nobody really 
 objects to receiving silver. Besides, it would 
 involve no end of fuss, and we should be 
 so occupied with the arrangements that we 
 should forget to pay any attention to each 
 other, so that it would be a dreary day to 
 look back upon." 
 
 " Indeed, Josephine, I agree with you en- 
 tirely," said I. " Unless such affairs go off 
 just right they are stiff and ghastly. People 
 who are bent on paying us a compliment will 
 have an opportunity to come to our funerals 
 before very long." 
 
 " Not together, though. Oh, Fred, wouldn't 
 it be the crowning thing of all, after so much 
 happiness, if we could die at the same time 
 and never know what it was to miss each 
 other ! " 
 
 Although we are jointly and severally 
 aware that the years have been slipping 
 away, and that our turns to bid farewell to 
 this dear earth may come any day now de- 
 spite the fact that we feel young as ever, we 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 207 
 
 choose still to regard death as a shy visitor 
 which is likely to prefer others to us. I say 
 to myself that people rarely die of rheuma- 
 tism, Avhioh is Josephine's only cross, and 
 though pneumonia is a fell destroyer, I know 
 that Josephine is firmly convinced that the 
 colds to which I am subject never attack my 
 lungs. Some day one of us will wake up 
 and miss the other, unless my darling's pray- 
 er that we be taken away together be grant- 
 ed ; but until we do, are we not happier for 
 cherishing the delusion that we are to be 
 overlooked indefinitely ? 
 
 Was it a delusion, too, which made my 
 darling, as I helped her into our top-buggy 
 on the morning of our twenty-fifth anniver- 
 sary, seem to me no less beautiful than on 
 the day when we plighted our troth at the 
 altar? Did she not wear the same sweet, 
 trusting- smile, the same noble look in her 
 dear eyes ? I told her so, and she informed 
 me that I was demented, but I know she 
 knew that I thought she had not changed, 
 which I am sure was enough for her even 
 if Providence has dimmed my eyes. Tet I 
 maintain that I am right. She is a little 
 stouter, of course ; I can see a wrinkle and 
 
208 TEE OPINIONS OF 
 
 a crow's foot here and there ; and her hair 
 is grizzled. But to all intents and purposes 
 she does not look a day older. 
 
 It was a glorious morning ; one of those 
 mild, mellow days of the late autumn, when 
 unscientific people wag their heads and pro- 
 claim that the climate is changing. There 
 was scarcely a breath of wind, and the land- 
 scape toward which our steady nag trotted 
 sturdily wore a faint atmosphere of saffron 
 haze, as though the sunlight had been steeped 
 in the lees of the yellow foliage. And the 
 day we were married there was a driving 
 snow-storm ! Josephine had predicted so 
 confidently that history would repeat itself on 
 our anniversary, that I think she was rather 
 disappointed when she awoke to find the sun 
 shining and all the elements at rest. 
 
 Our Pegasus scarcely needed the guid- 
 ance of the reins. He knew where we were 
 going, and sped along with our comfortable 
 if old-fashioned top-buggy at a stylish yet 
 self-respecting gait in keeping with th'fe dig- 
 nity of the occasion. Our first destination 
 was the attractive home of our daughter 
 Winona, who lives eight miles out of town, 
 on a hundred lordly acres. She has an ador- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 209 
 
 ing husband— the tall, handsome, impressive- 
 looking youth of my prophetic soul— and an 
 adored infant six months old. Her husband 
 is a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest 
 families in the city, and he has already made 
 his mark in the political field. He has been 
 a Congressman, and his admirers are talking 
 of giving him the next party nomination— not 
 my party (so you see that my partiality does 
 not proceed from political affiliation)— for 
 Governor. He is altogether a delightful 
 young man ; and as for the baby — . 
 
 Josephine broke in upon my rhapsodies 
 over my grandson to say again, for about the 
 fiftieth time during the last year : 
 
 " To think, Fred, that though you saw him 
 face to face, you never realized that your mag- 
 nificent unknown was merely Harold Bruce, 
 whom you had seen and shaken hands with 
 under our roof time and time again. I laugh 
 whenever I think of it. You gave me a fright 
 that day, when you told me that you had run 
 across Winona in the company of a mysteri- 
 ous stranger, which I haven't fully recovered 
 from yet, in spite of the fact that everything 
 has turned out so well. I dreamed that night 
 that she had married a professional gambler, 
 14 
 
210 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 who cut hor throat in the course of the first 
 six months because the dear child refused to 
 aid and abet his nefarious schemes." 
 
 I replied, meekly, for the fiftieth time, 
 
 something as to the agonies I had undergone 
 for several years in trying to distinguish one 
 young man from another when they had pre- 
 sented themselves at my house in stereotyped 
 evening dress and done me the honor of 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 211 
 
 squeezing my hand so hard that it was evi-* 
 dently in mistake for the hand of one of my 
 girls. But though my plea has a sardonic 
 look, the words were spoken on this day of 
 days — even as Josephine's were spoken — 
 with an air of gentle, joyous reminiscence, as 
 though, which was indeed the case, we found 
 delight in reviewing again and again the de- 
 tails of the great happiness which has been 
 granted to us in the marriage of our beauti- 
 ful daughter to one worthy of her. 
 
 We drove up the long avenue of tall, stately 
 pines, and found her sitting with her hus- 
 band and their little hostage to fortune en- 
 joying the glorious mellow sunshine. The 
 tiny monarch sat in his wagon playing 
 with a handful of autumn leaves which his 
 father, with proud paternal indifference to 
 the immaculate surface of the silken carriage 
 blanket, had bestowed upon him. I now be- 
 came the rival — the successful rival — of the 
 rustling autumn leaves. At my instigation 
 his mother freed him from his equipage and 
 a little anxiously yet resolutely laid him in 
 my arms. I dandled him, I chirruped to 
 him, I hummed to him, I encouraged him to 
 gnaw my watch and to claw my mustache. 
 
212 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and presently I began to toss him up in my 
 hands and let him down again. 
 
 " Be careful, Fred," said Josephine, warn- 
 
 ^5 -^ /^r'^^ 
 
 ingly ; and I saw a shadow of solicitude cross 
 my daughter's face, though she was plainly 
 doing her best to seem unconcerned. 
 
 " Pooh," I answered. " I tossed up all my 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 213 
 
 own babies in this way year in and year 
 out, and not one of them ever got a scratch. 
 I'm not going to begin by letting my precious 
 grandson fall. Am I, little lamb ? " 
 
 Thereupon, by way of showing what an 
 adept I was in the art of baby tossing, I shot 
 him upward with self-confident impetus. To 
 be sure, my hands never really left him ; they 
 followed him as he ascended and as he came 
 down. Still, pride, the traditional precursor 
 of falls, stood me in bad stead, as it has stood 
 others before me. Just as my precious grand- 
 son was descending for the third time, one of 
 my wrists seemed to turn or give way, de- 
 stroying thereby the admirable balance main- 
 tained by my hands, and, quick as thought. 
 Master Baby slipped from my grasp and 
 tumbled to the ground. 
 
 A horrible wail of mingled pain and fright, 
 which wrung my heart-strings, welled from 
 the lips of the little lamb, as mother, father, 
 and grandmother rushed to raise him, knock- 
 ing their own heads together in the process. 
 Harold, white as a sheet and with a son-in- 
 law's curse, as I imagined, trembling on his 
 lips, succeeded in picking him up. I could 
 discern that my grandson's bald little head 
 
214 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 was dabbled with blood. His mother evident- 
 ly perceived the same, for she cried, with the 
 maternal fierceness akin to that which we are 
 taught to associate with a tigress protecting 
 its young : 
 
 " Harold, give baby to me, and run for the 
 doctor." 
 
 Why is it that at the most solemn and seri- 
 ous junctures of life thoughts wholly irrele- 
 vant to the occasion will arise without our 
 bidding and thrust themselves into discon- 
 certing prominence ? I was not positive that 
 I had not maimed my grandson for life, though 
 I agree that his stentorian yeU had relieved 
 my solicitude a trifle. Certainly, it was a 
 moment of cruel torture, which should have 
 precluded every other consideration from my 
 brain than concern for the hapless infant and 
 harsh self-reproach. And yet, as Winona 
 finished speaking, I made the imp of a re- 
 flection that she was sending for a doctor in 
 spite of Christian Science, and that the scales 
 of hallucination had fallen from her eyes at 
 the wail of her own flesh and blood. I was 
 even tempted for an instant to hazard the 
 suggestion that, as there is no such thing as 
 matter, there could be nothing the matter 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 215 
 
 with baby, but I bit my tongue in the throes 
 of my disgust at my involuntary levity. 
 
 Harold had sped down the avenue like an 
 arrow, but scarcely had he disappeared be- 
 fore the gory streak which dabbled my poor 
 little victim's brow, and which had seemed 
 to my heated imagination almost an arterial 
 outburst, yielded to the whisk of a pocket- 
 handkerchief. Although he still yelled as if 
 his heart would break, I was beginning to re- 
 flect that, barring the very slight scratch on 
 his forehead, he was more frightened than 
 hurt, when Josephine suggested, like a true 
 grandmother, the possibility of internal in- 
 juries. 
 
 My heart began to throb violently once 
 more, and my mouth to taste dry, but Wino- 
 na came to my rescue. 
 
 "Mother," she exclaimed, in a tone of 
 stern impressiveness, "it is of the utmost im- 
 portance for baby's sake that you shouldn't 
 think anything of the kind, for by thinking 
 that he has any internal injuries you might, 
 or I might, or father might cause the darling 
 to think the same. We ought all to think 
 that he has nothing the matter with him, and 
 then he will soon cease to cry. Come, let 
 
216 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 us all think of other things and take our 
 minds off baby. Don't even look at him." 
 
 We hastened to do as we were bid. I began 
 to whistle cheerily, and turning my back on 
 my precious grandson, called Josephine's at- 
 tention to the beauties of the landscape in a 
 series of philosophic utterances. As for 
 Winona herself, she was Spartan enough to 
 restore the little lad to his baby-carriage, and 
 to busy herself in reflecting whether the spot 
 of blood on her robin's-egg blue morning 
 wrapper would wash out. Within three min- 
 utes more Master Baby had ceased to sob, 
 and was playing contentedly again with the 
 rustling autumn leaves, when the regular prac- 
 titioner who, it seemed, lived close by, ar- 
 rived with Harold at full trot. Winona rose 
 to receive him with a sweet smile, and said, 
 with her old serenity : " Baby is quite well. 
 Doctor. We all applied Christian Science 
 principles to his condition, and he finds that 
 he .was in error to suppose that he was really 
 hurt. Thank you so much for coming." 
 
 I was really too much overwhelmed by 
 this speech to think of criticising, but Jose- 
 phine evidently suspected me of something 
 of the kind, for she pinched unmistakably my 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 217 
 
 arm. As for the poor doctor, he was smiling 
 in a sickly sort of fashion when my son-in- 
 law, who I am glad to see is something of a 
 philosopher himself, broke in with — 
 
 " Since there are no bones broken, the 
 least thing you can do for us, Doctor, is to 
 stay to luncheon. I haTe opened a bottle of 
 Clos Vougeot in honor of the twenty-fifth 
 anniversary of the wedding of my wife's 
 father and mother." 
 
 "Yes, do stay. Doctor," said Winona. 
 " And I am very anxious that you should 
 come and vaccinate baby next week." 
 
 The doctor stayed and drank our health in 
 a bottle of excellent wine, and not a word 
 was said about science of any kind by any- 
 one. As we drove home I remarked to 
 Josephine that I had made two discoveries : 
 first, that I had lost my grip a little, espe- 
 cially in the matter of babies, and secondly, 
 that Christian Science was evidently a con- 
 venient doctrine which could be put on or off 
 like a glove as the occasion demanded. Ee- 
 plying thereto my wife said : " Fred, I con- 
 sider that you had a marvellous escape with 
 that baby, and that Winona bore it splendid- 
 ly. As for her sUly nonsense, she is evi- 
 
218 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 dently in the moulting state, and I prophesy 
 that by the time baby has the measles we 
 shall hear no more of it. Harold seems to 
 understand perfectly how to handle her." 
 
 That evening we had our four children 
 and our two sons-in-law to dine with us. It 
 was a state occasion. Josephine was in black 
 velvet, and wore the modest diamond star 
 which I presented to her just before we sat 
 down to table. The girls looked superbly in 
 their best plumage, and it seemed to me, as I 
 glanced to right and left from my patri- 
 archal position, that I had every reason to be 
 proud of the four young men who will con- 
 trol the destinies of the family when I am 
 under the sod. Proud not only of my two 
 dear sons, but of my two dear sons-in-law, 
 who, though one is slight and short, and the 
 other impressive-looking and tall, and though 
 both hold absurd political notions with which 
 I ha,ve not the slightest sympathy, have so 
 completely won my heart by their devotion 
 to their wives and generally exemplary be- 
 havior, that I cannot choose between them. I 
 M'as in a jovial mood that evening, I can tell 
 you, and there was nothing excellent and rare 
 in my limited but not wholly featureless eel- 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 219 
 
 lar whicli my four brave boys did not have 
 an opportunity to sample in honor of Jose- 
 phine's and my twenty-fifth anniversary. 
 
 Just after the cigars were finished there 
 was a ring at the front door-bell, and Sam 
 Bangs came into the dining-room, rather to 
 my astonishment, for I knew that he had not 
 been invited. "How d'y do. Cousin Jose- 
 phine ; how d'y do, Cousin Fred. Many 
 happy returns of the day." 
 
 I observed that Sam spoke with a sort of 
 mysterious blitheness, as though he was under 
 the influence of a joke, and I noticed that he 
 whispered something to my daughter Josie in 
 answer to an inquiring glance from her. Just 
 then there was another ring at the door-bell, 
 and presently through the half-open dining- 
 room doors I caught sight of a host of people 
 gayly trooping into the front hall. 
 
 " The Philistines are upon thee, Samson," 
 exclaimed Sam Bangs, as I started to rise in 
 my astonishment. " Cousin Fred and Cousin 
 Josephine, a select party of your friends have 
 taken the liberty of celebrating your silver 
 wedding, and are on the way to the drawing- 
 room, where you are requested to join them." 
 
 I was too dazed to speak ; indeed, I was 
 
220 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 conscioias of a lump in my throat quite in- 
 consistent with a philosophic temperament. 
 Glancing at my darling, I perceived that she 
 was agitated, and straightway the nightmare, 
 which was at odds with her joy, as to how 
 she was to provide a suitable supper for 
 these delightful visitors, took possession also 
 of my brain. 
 
 " Sam," she gasped, " how many are 
 there ? " 
 
 " All the world and his mother, including 
 the youths without parents,'' answered her 
 provoking relative with a beaming smile. 
 
 But Josie, who it seems was in the secret 
 with Sam, and had managed with him the 
 whole affair, put her arms around her mother's 
 neck and whispered, "Don't believe him. 
 Only people who really care for you are com- 
 ing. The supper is aU provided for, mamma. 
 I entered into a conspiracy with your cook, 
 and you needn't give a thought to anything." 
 
 We didn't ; and we gave ourselves up to 
 the occasion with a right good will. As our 
 daughter had said, only dear friends whose 
 congratulations were precious to us had been 
 invited, and they, to the number of about fif- 
 ty, filled out our drawing-room weUnigh to 
 
A PHILOSOPHEB 221 
 
 overflowing. Most of them had brought sil- 
 ver — shall I say alas ! or happily ? General- 
 ly some pretty trifle which vouched for the 
 sentiment and taste of the gift horse without 
 seeming to tax the poor animal's resources. 
 For instance, Mrs. Guy Sloane brought a sil- 
 ver butterfly intended for a pen-wiper, and 
 my old friend Sam BoUes a silver paper- 
 knife. Polly Flinders (I never remember her 
 married name), who has babies of her own, 
 gave Josephine a silver whistle, ostensibly in- 
 tended for my grandson, and Gillespie Gore 
 handed me, with his best bow, an Etntique 
 silver decanter label marked " Madeira." To 
 be sure, Mrs. Willoughby Walton did bring 
 a splendid Indiaia silver necklace of exquisite 
 workmanship, which she hung about Jose- 
 phine's neck with a grand air, informing her 
 that it had once belonged to a princess. As 
 Josephine said to me later, Mrs. WiUoughby 
 can afford to be munificent if she chooses, 
 and the necklace will just suit Winona's style 
 of beauty. 
 
 Supper was served at half-past ten, and 
 no one would have guessed that my darling 
 had not ordered it. Our healths were drunk, 
 and the healths of our children and grand- 
 
222 
 
 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 child, and I was badgered finally into rising 
 and making a few scattering reniarks by way 
 of grateful acknowledgment. An effort of 
 this kind would be trying to the sensibilities 
 
 
 ^.< 
 
 J'AS 
 
 of even a real philosopher, and I will confess 
 that, what with stammering and repeating 
 myself, I was uncertain for some moments 
 whether I should be able to make myself in- 
 telligible. At last, however, a sudden reflec- 
 tion coming straight from my heart drew me 
 
A PHILOSOPHER 223 
 
 from the slough of renewing thanks and un- 
 sealed my lips. 
 
 "If," I said, "kind friends, you behold me 
 in my fifty-fifth year a contented man, toler- 
 ably well preserved, and with the lustre of 
 true happiness shining from my eyes ; if you 
 see around me brave sons and fair daugh- 
 ters, with whose promise of usefulness as 
 men and women you are not ill-pleased ; if, 
 indeed, there is any good or any virtue in 
 me or mine, know as the source, the foun- 
 tain-head, the inspiration of it all, the sweet- 
 est woman in the whole wide world, there 
 she stands, my wife Josephine." 
 
 As I sat down amid a tumult of approba- 
 tion, my darling's confused but happy smile 
 shone like a beam from heaven athwart my 
 misty gaze. I see it still as I sit here to- 
 night, with her hand in mine in our silent 
 but joyous home. The mystery of mysteries, 
 life ! Why were we born ? We do not know. 
 What is to become of us when we go hence ? 
 We have no knowledge, but we live in hope. 
 I live in hope. When the last trump sounds, 
 and the graves give up their dead ; when the 
 myriads of souls are brought face to face with 
 God to learn the solution of all mysteries, I 
 
224 OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER 
 
 shall seek only for Josephine. That I may 
 behold her then is all that I ask of eternity. 
 
 If I do not see her sweet face, it will be not 
 because I am perfect, but because I have 
 sinned too much. 
 
ROBERT GRANT'S BOOKS. 
 
 The Opinions of a Philosopher, 
 
 A Sequel to the Reflections of a Married Man. 
 
 With numerous Illustrations by C. S. Reinhart and W. T. 
 Smedley. i2mo, $i.oo. 
 
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