MM il i I I I I I ill \RTJMnf, WORLD ^j C^'^KJl LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON. N. J. PRESENTED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY UBtiARY BX 9821 .C3 1918 Cabot, Ella Lyman. Our part in the world THE BEACON PRESS PUBLICATIONS IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THE NEW BEACON COURSE OF GRADED LESSONS William I. Lawrance Flobence Buck Editors OUR PART IN THE WORLD OUR PART IN THE WORLD BY ELLA LYMAN CABOT Member Massachusetts State Board of Education Author of "Everyday Ethics," "Ethics for Children," etc. THE BEACON PRESS 25 BEACON STREET BOSTON, MASS. COPTRIGHT, 1918, BY THE BEACON PRESS, Inc. All righta reserved TO HER MORE LOVED, MORE KNOWN, MORE BLESSED EACH DAY, MY FIRST RELIGIOUS TEACHER. EDITORS' PREFACE The Beacon Course in Religious Education aims to acquaint the pupils who use it with the relationships into which they are progressively entering, and to de- velop their native impulse to live as they ought to live who are heirs to so great obligations and privi- leges. As the course progresses, the emphasis on personal responsibility becomes, quite naturally, more and more pronounced. At the senior period of the pupil's development, approximately at the ages of fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, the time seems to have arrived to present a direct challenge to each one to face frankly his or her own life problem, to assume responsibility for self-direction, and to enlist in the army of those who strive for the promotion of human well-being. This manual is prepared especially for pupils fifteen years old, but will be found helpful to those who, at whatever age, are at the threshold of the self-dii'ected life. It points out the place of the individual in that complex of physical and spiritual forces into which he has now fully entered, indicating the ways in which he may do his part. The desire to get into the game of fife is intense with young people in the senior period. Just how to accomplish that purpose and to meet ade- quately the ever-widening demands and opportunities that come to them may best be set before the inquiring mind by those who, like the author of this manual, have traveled this way with open eyes and sympa- thetic understanding, and have through all preserved the spirit of youth. X Editors' Preface The full equipment for this year in the Beacon Course in Religious Education comprises two volumes, one entitled Our Part in the World, the other, Teachers' Manual for Our Part in the World. Each pupil needs the first of these. The teacher needs them both. The Editors. AUTHOR'S PREFACE To write a book is to become aware that one is a debtor to uncountable other books. And because most of these debts have been left unacknowledged so long that they cannot now be paid, I all the more desire to express my gratitude to Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to print an extract from The Promised Land, by Marj- Antin; to E. P. Button & Co. for an extract from A Student in Arms, by Donald Hankey; to IMcClure, Phillips & Co. for an extract from He Knew Lincoln, by Ida M. Tarbell; to W. A. Butterfield for a paragraph from Mademoiselle Miss; to the Young Men's Christian Association Press and to Professor Home himself for an admirable list of the qualifications needed by teachers, used in the Teachers' Manual, from Lead- ership of Bible Study Groups, by Herman H. Home. I have received many a valuable suggestion or found many an illuminating incident in The Uphuilders, by Lincoln Steffens, Doubleday, Page & Co.; A Lie Never Justifiable, by H. Clay Tmmbull, John D. Wattles & Co.; Priests in the Firing Line, by R^n4 Gael, Long- mans, Green & Co. ; The Varmint, by Owen John- son, A. L. Burt Co. ; The Immortal Hope, by William Adams Brown, Charles Scribner's Sons. It gives me special pleasure to refer in my text to these and many other enriching books. To give even a taste of them must often mean to give a taste for them and so to put before the reader a liberal feast. The editors of this course, Rev. William I. Lawrance and Rev. Florence Buck, have helped me more than xii Author's Preface they know by their faith and their faithfulness, their encouragement and kindly patience. And lastly, as I inadequately try to express my grat- itude, I turn to what is far off and very near: How can I begin to tell a thousandth part of what I owe to the authors of our Bible? Ella Lyman Cabot. A WORD TO THE STUDENT There has never been a time in the history of the entire world that the prompt service of youth was more needed. You are needed as food is needed in a famine, as water is needed in a raging fire, as nurses are needed in a pestilence, as a sea-captain is needed in a blinding storm at sea, as George Washington was needed after the Declaration of Independence. All nations are draiiving together. They are drawn together by suf- fering, by the chance to help and by abounding hopes. There is nothing that draws even strangers together as quickly as need and the chance to help. And it is your generation who will help or hinder in the greatest need the world has ever suffered and in the most wide- reaching design it has known since the time of Christ. But how does one learn to help? you will ask. You know how you learn to play a tune well. You listen when it is played, you practise it over and over, re- peating especially the parts you fail in, but also you think about the key, the time, the rhythm, the melody and the meaning of it all. So you will learn to help, partly by watching intently those who are helping now, partly by trying to do your bit, and partly by thinking about the meaning of this upsurging life about us. In this book I have tried to show a glimpse of the universe when we try to see it, not just as getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, but as an amazingly complicated, thrilling, tragic, rejoicing, growing world that is calling to us. It has its immensely xiv A W(yrd to the Student long history, whose beginning no man saw, its engross- ing present, its future for which we are, in our minute but exigeant way, responsible. The world in which we take our part is wide as well as long. Each of us starts from his own center of family and friends, but we cannot go any distance without finding ourselves Hnked to nations three thousand miles aw^ay. The world is mysterious and full of problems. Why is one man rich and another poor? Why is one strong and another ill? Why does one suffer blow after blow and another go unscathed? There is but one answer, ''God knows." That is why in this book, as I attempt to point toward the direction of your part in the world, I must turn to religion. God knows. How shall we best find out all of His truth that we are capable of understanding? In two ways. By watching for and doing His will, and by living with those who know Him best. The chances to know by doing are all about you. You may not feel strongly yet the need of living with those who know God. By and by you will. Whenever you do you will turn first to those very near you who seem to have an insight you want but do not possess, and then, I believe, to the source of their strength, to him who knew God best and who told us how we too could know Him. Ella Lyman Cabot. CONTENTS Page Editors' Preface ix Author's Preface xi A Word to the Student xiii Chapter I. God Cares for a Barren World 1 II. The World as Moulded by Men's Hands .... 5 III. The FamUy 11 IV. The Neighborhood 15 V. The City 19 VI. America, and What It Stands For: 1. Home and Freedom 23 VII. America, and What It Stands For: 2. The Union . 28 VIII. America, and What It Stands For: 3. Equahty . . 32 IX. America, and What It Stands For: 4. The Least of These 36 X. America, and What It Stands For: 5. Social Ser- vice 40 XI. America, and What It Stands For : 6. Honor and Chivalry 45 XII. America, and WTiat It Stands For: 7. Education . 49 XIII. International Ties 54 XIV. The Past 60 XV. The Present 65 XVI. The Future 70 XVII. The Church 75 XVIII. Our Dependence on God 79 XIX. Our Dependence on One Another 83 XX. Everybody's Interests 88 XXI. Interests as Sources of Health and Happiness . . 93 XXII. Special Choices 97 XXIII. Universal Service 101 XXIV. War for Righteousness 105 XXV. The Disciplines of Peace 109 XXVI. The Fight Against Disease 114 XXVII. Qualities that Attract Success: 1. Devotion . . . 118 XXVIII. Qualities that Attract Success: 2. Imagination . . 125 xvi Contents Chapter Page XXIX. Qualities that Attract Success: 3. Readiness to take Responsibility 129 XXX. Qualities that Attract Success: 4. Truth .... 133 XXXI. Qualities that Attract Success : 5. Loyalty .... 137 XXXII. Qualities that Attract Success: 6. Courage . . . 140 XXXIII. Work 145 XXXIV. Team Play 151 XXXV. Friendship 157 XXXVI. Enemies 162 XXXVII. Misfortune as Opportunity 168 XXXVIII. Making the Best of It 173 XXXIX. Our Part in the Plan 179 XL. Immortality 183 CHAPTER I GOD CARES FOR A BARREN WORLD We know that ages ago the earth was seething, siz- zUng hot, hke molten ii'on ; but it is hard to believe it until we happen to feel this central heat still at work. One afternoon when I was traveling through the Yellowstone Park and examining strange blue pools that tasted of sulphur, I heard voices on all sides crying: "The Giant! The Giant is spouting!" I looked up, and everybody was racing, — galloping soldiers, tearing stage-coaches, scurrying nurse-maids, shouting children, breathless tourists. The Giant Geyser spouts only once in five or six years and it never lets you know when it is going to perform; but there it was, shooting a fierce, white stream up into the sky. It was a wonderful sight. A thunderous roar sounded from the bottom of the crater and a great cone of water throbbed up in enormous pulsations. "Keep out of the steam!" someone shouted. It was scalding hot. An experience like this makes one think about the beginning of the world. After the earth had cooled somewhat, its crust began to form, and with the air mo\'ing rapidly about it — as we sometimes shake a piece of paper to dry the wet ink — the earth began to dry. It became less hot, and its crust grew thicker. By and by clouds condensed around the earth and a great sea covered all the land. "Strange days and nights those must have been on the earth when the great sea was still too hot for hving things to exist in it. The land above the water-line 2 Our Part in the IVorld was bare rocks. These were rapidly being crumbled by the action of the air, which was not the mild, pleas- ant air we know, but was full of destructive gases, breathed out through cracks in the thin crust of the earth from the heated mass below. If you stand on the edge of a lava lake, like one of those on the islands of the Hawaiian group, the stifling fumes that rise make you feel as if you were back at the beginning of the earth's history, when the sohd crust was just a thin film on an unstable sea of molten rock, and this volcano but one of the vast niunber of openings by which the boiling lava and the condensed gases found their way to the surface. Then the rivers ran black with the waste of the rocky earth they furrowed, and there was no vegetation to soften the blackness of the landscape." * Almost such a barren picture as this the first verses of Genesis describe: ''And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved (or was brooding) upon the face of the waters."! Waste and void: they are suggestive words, words with more than one meaning. "Waste" we think of as meaning bare or desolate, but also useless. We have waste-paper baskets to toss away papers that we think of no value, and waste barrels in which to throw the scraps of food we have done with. ''Void" is an interesting word because it means absolutely empty. But is any place ever en- tirely empty? We talk about empty houses. Are they empty? If you take all the furniture, rugs, cur- tains and books out of a room it looks empty, doesn't it? But something else — air — rushes in to fill the space. When we say, then, that any place is empty or void what do we mean? We mean empty or void * Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know, Julia E. Rogers, pp. 134-135. t Revised Version. God Cares for a Barren World 3 of interest. There is nothing in it that we care for. "Oh, there's nothing in the newspaper to-night!" you exclaim as you throw it down. Well, there are as many printed columns as usual and they may be what someone else most wants to read, but they don't hit your interest. You want to know about the National Baseball League, and there is not a word about it in the paper. It is void of interest. WTiat, then, are the enduring interests of the world? We care for our family, our friends, our homes, our na- tion, for books, for music, for our basket-ball team or our baseball team. We care for the friendly animals who seem to want to live with man, — horses, dogs, cana- ries. But when the v/orld began, billions of years ago, longer indeed than any man can really think of, there was little we should have loved for there were no human beings, nor even any animals, flowers or ferns in existence. Have you ever tried to think what it means to say that there was a world with no human beings in it? There w^ould seem to be nobody to know about it. The rocks and clouds do not understand the world. Can the universe be real if nobody knows about it? No ; and this is very important. You or I do not have to be there, nor anyone we know, but there must be someone who understands, loves, and guides even this strange world. Who is this maker and guide of the world? The Bible says, ''The Spirit of God was brood- ing over the face of the waters." There could be no truer expression than this. God loved the world. He saw the coming life of His creation even when it was barren and dark and waste. Because He cared for the world and brooded over it. His love filled the universe and made it become all that it was capable of becoming. He saw even from the beginning the coming of Christ. 4 Our Part in the World In the winter, when the ground is frozen hard, we begin to plan for summer; to think: What shall I plant in my garden? Where shall I go in vacation time? Have you seen the baseball field deep in snow and thought how soon it would be spring and the field made ready to be played on? " Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift, The warm rosebuds below." * That is how I believe God saw the world even from the beginning. It was not waste, void, or dark to Him, because He cared for it in both senses of the word care. He loved the world and He guided it toward its own ends. Several years ago I rode down the Grand Canon of the Colorado River in Arizona from the top — eight thousand feet high — to the river bottom. Oh! but the path was steep and stony and barren. Nothing seemed to grow in the hard rocks. How could any- thing grow? I thought. The air is so dry that no flower can Uve. The rocks are so hard that no delicate root could penetrate them. And then with startling suddenness I saw rising out of the very rock a glorious white flower, a yucca on a stem eight feet high. How- ever barren the soil and however dry, that flower had managed not merely to struggle along in a dead-alive way, but to soar up and shine white against the steel- blue sky. God knew it would flower even through the waste. Even so He could love the world and help it to become itself at a moment when the earth looked utterly void. When men love one another as God loves the whole world they too have chances to be creators. * R. W. Emerson, "The World Soul," Poems, p. 23, Riverside Edition. CHAPTER II THE WORLD AS MOULDED BY MEN'S HANDS There is no animal that has ever constructed a tool. True, the beaver makes a remarkable dam by using his strong, flat tail, but he does not seem to have thought of using a spade to help him dig. Stags in the forest fight with their great antlers, but they do not invent swords or guns. Birds with the help of their bills weave intricate nests, but they have never learned to make or to use a needle in order to bind the strands firmly together. If you drop a bit of twine out of doors in springtime you may see an English sparrow dart on it and carry it streaming behind him up to his nest, but as for weaving a bit of twine on a frame, the idea never seems to occur to him. So man is sometimes called the tool-using animal. It gives an extraordinary power to be able to use tools. Even strong men are physically weak com- pared to the larger animals. Bulls, oxen, horses, could knock any man down, and yet by whips and reins men can control them. Men cannot run nearly as fast as many animals, but men can invent engines that move faster than the swiftest deer. Men have weak teeth compared to those of the tiger, but they have made knives to cut their food, and they can sharpen them to the finest edge. Men cannot draw oxygen from water, like fish, but they have invented sub- marines in which the air is brought to them compressed and stored for days. Men have no wings, but they have invented aeroplanes to sail in the air and to carry weight no birds can carry. Men have short sight 6 Our Part in the World compared to eagles, but through telescopes they can look even into the secrets of the stars and the moon. Men have weak voices, and ears that unaided can hear only for a short distance, yet in 1915, through the invention of the wireless telephone, the breaking of waves on the Pacific Coast was clearly heard by people on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. This power of invention, of creation, sharply differ- entiates men from beasts. The animals live their lives, and except for a few dens they have scooped out or the grass and herbs that they have eaten the world is unchanged. But when human beings come, they can begin, with God's help, to be creators, and change the face of the world. In what ways do men mould the world? (1) Men mould and change the physical world. Mountains seem far more permanent than men. Men come into life and depart from life ; mountains remain. Yet tunnels have been driven through the greatest mountains of Switzerland and hills leveled to the ground. ''If ye have faith even as a grain of mustard seed," said Jesus, ''ye shall say unto this mountain. Be ye removed." It is true; it has been done again and again by faithful engineers; not at one stroke, but with equal sureness. Irrigation and planting are other ways by which men change the face of the physical world. In going west one sees arid deserts strewn here and there with the bones of animals who have died of thirst. But men learn to harness the river high up the stream and its water is turned on the arid land. Then it becomes not only productive land, but often superlatively good. The desert leaps into verdure, corn and flowers spring up, houses are built, trees are planted, herds of cows and sheep graze on the new grass. In a few years the country is unrecognizable. The World as Moulded by Men's Hands 7 (2) Men change the vieaning of time and space. Many scientific inventions do not affect perceptibly the outward world but they revise the mode of life of all who use them. The wireless telegraph and the tele- phone have already annulled distance for us and the aeroplane and submarine enlarge our highways. Man is taking possession not only of the earth but of the air and the bottom of the sea. Here is an astounding extract clipped from a business-like Annual Report of the American Telephone Company. It shows what the wireless telephone is beginning to accomplish: ''On October 22, 1915, from the Arlington tower in Virginia, we successfully transmitted speech across the Atlantic Ocean to the Eiffel Tower at Paris. . . . This same day (when speech was being transmitted by our wireless telephone apparatus at Arlington to our engineer and the French military officers at the Eiffel Tower in Paris) a man who was the engineer at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, together with an officer of the United States Na\^, overheard the words." * Thus through the genius of hard-working inventors the dullest of us is able to do things that a century ago would have seemed miracles. It is not we who deserve the credit. The first telegraphic message sent by the Morse system beat out words that are forever true: "What hath God wrought! " (3) Men bring in art to change the world. Often enough it is very bad art, but still it is intentional decoration. Look around your dining-room. Patterns and designs are everywhere, — on wall-paper, furni- ture, mantelpiece, curtains, rugs, forks and spoons, even on the radiator and the stove. In far greater ways the art of man changes the world. The great cathedrals of Europe have made their impress upon many generations, so that all civU- * Report of the American Telephone Co., 1915. 8 Our Pari in the World ized nations cried out with horror when Rheims Cathedral was deUberately ruined by German shells. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor shouts to every incomer who has ears to hear, ''America stands for freedom to worship God!" Trumpet,, organ, drum, and violin, these tools of art, rouse and change men. Often in the presence of martial music cowardice is abashed and vanishes; when the Angelus rings, the peasants of France bow confessing their sins. (4) Great men change the world of thought. Lincoln, brooding over the nation's problems, was reminded perhaps of some family quarrel among his neighbors when he wrote concerning our nation, ''A house divided against itself cannot stand." That thought made history and a new South. It is as true now as it was when Lincoln said it, and it is applicable in many places. If we are to play our part in the world, we must learn to work together. We cannot be a house divided against itself. I spoke once to a college president about the difficul- ties of handling men of many different opinions. "Ever been in a cotton mill?" he asked quickly. ''The very first operation is the carding-machine, to straighten out the tangled threads. You can't weave unless all the threads run the same way." Here is a thought to tie to! (5) Great thinkers change the actions of future gen- erations as well as of their own. Less than one hundred years ago prisoners were thought of as degraded men and women, fit only to be herded together and kept from doing harm. Now expert psychologists examine criminals with tests to judge fairly what they are capable of doing or understanding. They are given memory tests: to look at a picture a minute and recall what they saw. They are given easy drawings to imitate or blocks to fit together — things that children The World as Moulded by Men's Hands 9 of different ages could easily do. These tests show that fully one-third of our prisoners are mentally below par. We used to think of criminals as clever and quick. On the contrary, many of them are under- witted. And from this thought has just begun a new treatment of prisoners that you in your generation must carry farther. You will be able to separate the prisoners who are feeble-minded, and so do not under- stand what doing wrong means, from the others. Keep them from hurting themselves or others; keep them for life if necessary ; but treat them as sick or as childish, not as wicked. (6) In proportion to the greatness of a man is his power to enlarge our knowledge of God. Because it is more important to know God than to know anything else, the names of religious leaders stand out in the history of the world. Probably you know very few names in India or Arabia, but you have heard of Buddha and of Mohammed. I doubt if you could tell of any great Chinese general, but you know the name of Confucius. You know it because these re- ligious teachers have made dents in the world through teaching us of God. And if it is true that the names of Confucius and Buddha mean something to us, how much more does the name of Jesus. Here is a simple peasant of a far remote town of Galilee who, because he knew and loved God as no other man has done, changed the whole life of the world. More than nine- teen hundred years have passed since his birth, yet there is no one more alive and nearer to all of us, no one without whom our lives would be so utterly changed, as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus changed the outer world very little in his lifetime. Probably as a carpenter he built a few boats or sheds, made a few yokes for oxen; and on Lake Gennesaret, whose name now sounds sacred to us, he 10 Our Pari in the World caught fish. But since his death he has utterly- changed the world. Cathedrals, churches, meeting- houses, statues, pictures, poems, chorales, songs, rise in his praise, and for his sake missionaries go out to risk their lives among the heathen. I suppose it is true to say that the greater part of the work done for the sick, for prisoners, for the handicapped, for the despairing, has been done in the name of Christ. CHAPTER III THE FAMILY It seems perfectly natural to be alive, yet it is really marvelous, for the whole earth had to be made ready for oiu" coming. For untold centuries we could not have lived on it at all. It was scorching hot, barren, and, except in God's thought, lifeless. And when the beginnings of life were once estabhshed in ways that nobody understands, even then danger for the new lives was on every hand. The early forms of amoeba had. Professor Shaler tells us, only one chance in a hundred thousand to live. I once heard of a very sick man who asked whether he was going to die. "Well," answered the doctor, ''you have one chance in a hundred to get well." ''AH right," repUed the patient, cheerfully, "I'll take the one chance." Every one of us has had far less chance than one in a hundred to be alive at all. Yet here we are. You have often thought, of course, how it is that new life is formed. Perhaps j'ou have read about it in encyclopedias. Boys and girls do, and no wonder, for it is extraordinarily interesting and important. In early organisms, such as the jelly- like mass called amoeba, new families are made just by division. The parent spontaneously divides into several fairly equal parts, as an orange might be divided into its segments. This was all very well as long as there were no special organs, but if we comph- cated beings were divided in such a way there would not be hearts or eyes or arms enough to go round. Then the next step was taken. New Hfe was made 12 Our Part in the World by buds. The sea-anemones bud from a parent stock, and when they are complete in the needed parts they are gently detached and swim off. Some buds, such as the corals and the sponges, and all our flower buds remain on the parent stock, though horticultu- rists know how to cut through a stem with a bud on it, plant it in sand, and let it root and become an entirely separate plant. Some of the scientists who study evolutionary pro- cesses think that one reason why this budding method was outgrown is that it became important to have two parents instead of one. Parents are unlike one another. They naturally have different gifts to bring to the new life they are privileged to create. Each can give its best through inheritance and through personal influence. For a long time, however, the father or mother gave little besides inheritance to the new child. ''The seed or the egg," writes Professor Shaler, ''was sent forth from the parent, but it had to shift for itself to find food or shelter." And what happened was, of course, that only one seed or spore or one tiny egg in one hundred thousand survived to grow up. "Therefore we find that about as soon as the spores and germs are contrived there begins a series of experiments in the way of providing food along with them so that the new life may be helped a certain distance on its way."* This help more and more means strain for the parents and especially for the mother. Some moths die invariably in de- positing their eggs. Among the birds anyone can see how busy the parents are kept, feeding their clamorous brood. But for the human child even greater care and sac- rifice is given. If the tiny eggs from which we all start were exposed to the air or protected only as birds * Nathaniel S. Shaler, The Individual, D. Appleton, 1900. The Family 13 protect their eggs, almost all would die. To keep babies safe they are not only developed within the body of their mother but fed by her and cared for by her for years ^^•hen if left to themselves they would be absolutely helpless. A calf can feed itself in a few weeks; a baby of a year would die with milk in a pail beside it unless it were fed. And so not only must the earth be made ready from the beginning for our coming, but every single one of our direct ancestors must have been kept alive by someone's protecting care, and then must have helped to keep some son or daughter alive. Not one of us could be here except for the self-sacrifice of genera- tions upon generations above us. In The Promised Land, Mary Antin tells about her mother's engagement and marriage. Among the Jews in Russia where ]\Iary Antin was born, the strange custom prevailed of letting all the rest of the family circle except the bride and groom discuss whether they should be married. When Mary Antin's mother was betrothed, a troublesome cousin, a strange lady dressed in odds and ends with a scarlet flower stuck in her wig, made endless objections. It was hours before she could be silenced and the contract signed. Of this incident Mary Antin writes: ''That is the way my fate was sealed. It gives me a shudder of wonder to think what a narrow escape I had; I came so near not being born at all. If the beggarly cousin with the frowsy wig had prevailed upon her family and broken off the match, then my mother would not have married my father, and I should at this moment be an unborn possibility in a philosopher's brain. It is right that I should pick my words most carefully, and meditate over every comma, because I am describing miracles too great for careless utterance. *'If I had died after my first breath, my history 14 Our Part in the World would still be worth recording. For before I could lie on my mother's breast, the earth had to be pre- pared, and the stars had to take their places; a million races had to die, testing the laws of life; and a boy and girl had to be bound for life to watch together for my coming. I was millions of years on the way, and I came through the seas of chance, over the fiery moun- tain of law, by the zigzag path of human possibihty. Multitudes were pushed back into the abyss of non- existence, that I should have way to creep into being. And at the last, when I stood at the gate of life, a weazen-faced fishwife, who had not wit enough to support herself, came near shutting me out. ''Such creatures of accident are we, liable to a thou- sand deaths before we are born. But once we are here, we may create our own world, if we choose."* You see, strange as it sounds, every living being is like someone who has been saved in a shipwreck by the courage of the captain and crew. We have es- caped a million dangers that might have prevented our being born. And we are alive and well and strong only because for century after century there has been family life. Family life is a ship that has breasted all storms and brought us safe here. Without the family life behind us in the past no one of us would be alive. The future side of this truth is equally clear. Unless we make the right kind of family of our own there will be no chance for those who come after us. Over the hills of Greece in olden times messengers running with torches bore tidings important to the nation. Running till they were exhausted they surrendered their torch to fresh messengers. Family life is like a lighted torch. We have received it burning. We are next in line. It is our turn to pass on the torch undimmed. * Mary Antin, The Promised Land, pp. 58, 59, Houghton MiflSin Com- pany, 1912. CHAPTER IV THE NEIGHBORHOOD There are different kinds of neighborhood. Being near anything may not be in any true sense touching it in space or even Uving with it in time. For many things or people that are physically near to us do not interest us at all, and without interest there is no real neighborhood. A baseball field half a mile away may be much nearer to you than a banking office next door. A friend in California may be more of a neigh- bor, to all intents and purposes, than the old lady whose house touches yours. Have you ever thought how much nearer the sun seems than the moon, though compared to the distance of the sun from the earth, the moon is just round the corner from us? The sun is near because we live by its warmth and light. We literaUy depend on the sun. Without its heat we should die both from cold and from want of light and vegetation. We depend on the sun for light and warmth to sustain our physical existence in some- thing of the same way that we depend on a friend for insight and love. The sun and the friend seem near. As it is true that the remote in space may be closer than the physically near, so it is with time. One distant day may be nearer to us all than any other day. Our birthdays make us near to our family and friends, but the birthday of Christ makes all Chris- tians near to one another. Why is this? Because Jesus took us, every one, into his family, accepted us as his friend. And that makes us neighbors one to another through him. ^__,- 16 Our Part in the V/orld On Christmas Eve it is a custom in my city to throw up the window shades and put candles in every window. Then several hundred of us march down the streets with lanterns, singing carols with the neighbors who are well and to the neighbors who are ill or in trouble. On Christmas Eve in 1915 such a group sang ''Adeste Fideles" and ''Silent Night" before the house of a young widow married but a year, whose husband had just been killed while valiantly charging on the plains of Flanders. As we stood there singing, she came quickly to the candle-lighted window, her tiny baby in her arms, and looking down greeted us, smihng, radiant, triumphant, and at peace. For a moment we strangers looked into her soul and saw its faithful courage. So I like to think of Christmas Eve as a time when all curtains are drawn aside, in our houses and in our hearts, because we celebrate the birth of him who called us all his friends and so makes us neighbors one to another. How do we become neighbors to anyone? Some people are born neighborly, some acquire neighborli- ness, and some have neighborliness thrust upon them. Abraham Lincoln was one of the most neighborly men the world has ever known. There is a good story about Lincoln's neighborhness told by Ida M. Tarbell in He Knew Lincoln. It is a characteristic story, even if the incident did not liter- ally happen. Aunt Sally Lowdy had been like a mother to Lincoln when he lived in the little town of New Salem, and when he was elected President she traveled up to Springfield to see him. A crowd of people was gathered round Lincoln, and Aunt Sally got ''kind of scared," as she put it. The story is told in the lan- guage of one of the neighbors. "Well, Aunt Sally stood lookin' kind of scared seein' so many strangers and not knowin' precisely The Neighborhood 17 what to do, when ]\Ir. Lincohi spied her. Quick as a wink he said, 'Excuse me, gentlemen,' and he just rushed over to that old woman and shook hands with both of his'n and saj's: 'Now, Aunt Sally, this is real kind of you to come and see me. How are you and how's Jake? ' (Jake was her boy.) ' Come right over here,' and he led her over, as if she was the biggest lady in Illinois, and says: 'Gentlemen, this is a good old friend of mine. She can make the best flapjacks you ever tasted.' Aunt Sally was just as pink as a rosy — she was tickled. And she says: 'Abe, I had to come to say good-bye. ... I thought I'd come and bring you a present. Knit 'em myself'; and I'll be blamed if that old lady didn't pull out a great big pair of yarn socks and hand 'em to Mr. Lincoln. "Well, sir, it was the funniest thing to see jMr. Lincoln take them socks and hold 'em up by the toes. Then he laid 'em down and he took Aunt Sally's hand and he says tender-like: 'Aunt Sally, you couldn't a' done nothin' which would have pleased me better. I'll take 'em to Washington and wear 'em and think of you when I do it.' " * Lincoln was naturally neighborly, but some of us are shy or self-conscious, and have to overcome these traits in order to be of use. Prof. Nathaniel Shaler, in his book called The Neighbor, says that as a child he had a horror of seeing anyone who was badly wounded or in any way unnatural. Once, when he was twelve years old, a surgeon asked the boy to help him in working over the gruesome wounds of a very sick man. Shaler felt terrified at first, and then, as he actually touched with his hands the wounded body, suddenly all his fear vanished, and to his astonishment he found that the man was becoming dear to him. He had * Condensed from He Knew Lincoln, by Ida M. Tarbell, McClure, Phillips & Co. 18 Our Part in the World touched the sick man and was trying to help him. ''That blessed touch," says Professor Shaler, ''awakens the sense of kinship as nothing else does." * So if you do not love your neighbor, try to help him and you will find your love beginning to grow. It seems as if, when Jesus told the greatest of all stories of neighborliness, the story of the Good Samari- tan, he must have thought that neighborhness means opportunity to help. "And who is my neighbor?" asked the lawyer, seeking to justify the fact that he did not love his neighbor as himself. Jesus was too wise to answer by a list of people or by marking off the district where the lawyer lived as his neighbor- hood. He told the story of the Good Samaritan and through it let the lawyer answer his own question, "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said. He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go thou and do likewise." Jesus knew that helping those in trouble would make the lawyer begin to care for them. It means some- thing that we use this word "care" in two senses. When we have cared for people we are apt to love them, to care for them. Is that one of the reasons why God loves us, God, from whose nearness we can- not escape? * The Neighbor, by N. S. Shaler, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904, p. 32. CHAPTER V THE CITY We are accustomed to seeing cities. But once I remember asking myself— \\Tiat is a city? Why does a city happen? The farm supports itself by its prod- uce—cows, fruit or hay; the factory by its steel, or cloth, or shoes. How does a city support itself? It often produces very httle, for the land is too costly for farming or factories. The city distributes. Its business is largely collect- ing and shipping the fruits of others' labor. Effective distribution requires free space. Have you noticed how crowded the business streets become and how often the smaller alleys are blocked by barrels, gar- bage, hand-carts and children? You can help here. Instead of interrupting traffic, take care not to block any street, move quickly, keep to the right. Always give women and old people the outer seats in open cars, so that they can get out easily and quickly. The city means also that we want to be together. That is really its deepest reason for existence. The city is gay, because many people meet there, and because when large numbers come together it is easy and profitable to give plays, music, dances, mo\dng- picture shows. But though it is gay, the city in some quarters is almost always full of illness and poverty. Why does this happen? In the great seaports hke New York, Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco, it is, I suppose, partly because among the many aliens who arrive large numbers lack sufficient enterprise to go further. Then, since rent and food are high, many of them get into debt or five in unsanitary quarters. 20 Our Part in the World But the overcrowding and disease in cities is also due partly to the fact that people are sociable. They do not want to live out in the suburbs where land is cheaper and the air is freer from germs. They prefer comrade- ship and close quarters to solitude and fresh air. Cities mean, then, both opportunities to have a good time and opportunities to help people who are having a very bad time. Because of this crowding and of these unsanitary conditions, each city or town needs the help of every citizen. If you have been to a camp with a party of boys and girls, you will have found out how essential is sanitary care whenever we have large numbers together. Diseases spread quickly in crowded quarters, malaria and yellow fever are communicated by mosquitoes, and our common fly is being watched as a suspicious character. You can help toward the health of your town by encouraging and supporting cleanliness and freedom from disease-carrying insects. To keep the streets clear and clean, to destroy mos- quitoes, caterpillars, and flies, — these are useful things to do. I hope you will all take a part in them. But there is something far more significant about many of our cities, especially those in the eastern part of the United States; they have stood for religious freedom, — the opportunity to worship God. Nearly two hundred years ago, in 1740, a band of Moravians, followers of John Huss, came across the seas to Eastern Pennsylvania and established little towns, in which to worship God without the fear of persecution. One group of villages they named Beth- lehem, Nazareth, and Emmaus. The villages sur- vive. The Moravian Church, still at Bethlehem, numbers two thousand parishioners: still from the tower trombones announce by special calls the death of an old man, a young man, a woman or a child. Still on Easter Day a service of resurrection is held in The City 21 the peaceful Moravian cemetery where Indians and German settlers lie side by side. But what does Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, mean to most people? \Miat word is commonly put next to ''Bethlehem"? ''Steel Works"! They send their black smoke up out of the valley, and at the shriek of their whistle the workers awake each morning. Which is it better for a city to have — steel works dominant, or church towers calling the worshippers to praise God? Some of you will say, — Both. Well, if we are to have both church-towers and the chimnej^s of steel works on the horizon, in what ways can we keep the church spire as the more important, if not the highest, object in the city? Only by a strong, personal devotion toward our own church, combined with breadth of sympathy toward every religion. Every genuine churchgoer is trying to serve God. Let us respect and honor him. Honor the Catholics with their marvelous historic past. Honor each Protestant sect and try to see the good in its special doctrines. Honor the Jews. We owe more to them than to any other race. Honor the Russian church with its glorious music. We are liberals. Let us show it both by never running down other sects or nations, and by untiring service to our individual church and faith. Prepare, then, to serve your city and to find out your best form of service. The citizens of a city, if they care enough, can make their city famous. I know a man, Major Henry L. Higginson, who for sixty years has devoted himself to the welfare of his city. When he was still in college Lincoln's call for volunteers roused him and he went to the front. One of his comrades in the Civil War, Charles Lowell, wrote just before he died, to Major Higginson: — "Don't grow rich; if you once begin you'll find it much more difficult to be a useful citizen. Don't seek 22 Our Part in the World office; but don't ' disremember ' that the useful citizen holds his time, his trouble, his money, and his life always ready at the hint of his country. The useful citizen is a mighty unpretending hero; but we are not going to have a country very long unless such heroism is developed. There! what a stale sermon I'm preaching! But, being a soldier, it does seem to me that I should like nothing so well as being a useful citizen."* Major Higginson has followed this advice. Boston recognizes him as leader in every movement for the city or the nation. There comes a fire which leaves families homeless; you will find Major Higginson both giving and collecting money for relief. The people have little music of high quality; Major Higginson puts his hand very deep into his pocket and makes possible the Symphony Orchestra. To endow these concerts he keeps on working in his banking office long after the doctors have advised him to stop. ''I want people always to have music," is all he says. The Harvard students need a playground for athletics. He gives the beautiful ''Soldiers' Field," and names it for his friends. Radcliffe needs a treasurer. He not only serves freely, but if investments go wrong he makes up the difference. Harvard men are separated into small, clubs. He gathers them under one roof by giving the Harvard Union building, a club-house open to all. Major Higginson is, of course, rich in this world's goods, but he thinks of himself not as a possessor of wealth, but as a trustee. Our money and our time and our strength are never just our own. Every cent and every minute we owe to God in the service of his children. The city you live in is a central point for your service. You are one of the trustees to guard and further its life. * Four Addresses, Henry Lee Higginson, The Merrymount Press, Boston, 1902, p. 26. CHAPTER VI AMERICA, AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR 1. Home and Freedom Some months ago I was talking with a distinguished immigrant who had been in America six years. His experience in his own country had been full of pain be- cause his religion, for which he cared more than for anything else in the world, was looked down upon. He seemed filled with happiness to live in the freedom of the United States, and in these words he spoke of his J03': "I can never think of America without adding to myself, 'Holy America!'" As I heard the thrill of reverence in his voice I felt almost ashamed, for I had taken the joy of living in America too much for granted. I asked myself, What that is holy does America stand for? Then I thought that I might find an answer by looking closely at the words of our national hymn, ''My Country, 'tis of Thee." The first thought of America to each of us is, as our own country, our home. Everybody instinctively and rightly likes his own home best. ''The Naulahka," one of Ivipling's American-Indian stories, centres round the hero's passion for the rough and undeveloped town of Topaz. He will talk about it for hours, dwell- ing on its magnificent prospects. He is not only sure that it is going to be the most phenomenal city in the United States, but he is determined to make it so. The new railroad line must be brought to run through Topaz, for Tarvin is convinced that Topaz will be the greatest railroad centre in the State. Tarvin's efforts to win the railroad line for Topaz take him as far as 24 Our Part in the World India, but in all India he can see nothing that com- pares with the glory of Topaz: Topaz has the glory of home. Somewhat like this proud passion for his town may be our love of the United States, our country. In The Man without a Country, by Edward Everett Hale, you will find perhaps the best story ever written about love of America. All nations feel this same love of country. Up in Labrador the fisher-folk starve and suffer, year by year, rather than leave their home. Dr. Grenfell may tell them of the sunny South, where there is work and plenty, but most of them prefer icy Labrador. Men of any race can sing ''My Country, 'tis of Thee," though each singer in a group may think of a different nation. And all nations may think of their home as holy, because it is the land where their fathers died. But all nations cannot say that their country is a land of liberty. America, with its inheritance from the Barons at Runnymede, seems to stand especially for freedom, and for the chance to help other nations to obtain or preserve their freedom. This is easily said, but we must go deeper. What does freedom involve? If you are free to do right, it is clear that you are free to do wrong. If you have freedom of speech, cannot you speak blasphemous words as well as noble ones? Yes, freedom always means the tremendous fact of moral choice. God gives us freedom to do right. Are we in any degree worthy of it? Let us go deeper still into the meaning of freedom. Clearly in America our choices are not wholly free. We have innumerable laws forbidding many a pleasant act, like playing baseball in city streets, or riding bicycles on the sidewalk. The United States seems to say, You shall be free, but not free to trouble your neighbors or interfere with their freedom. Freedom America, and What It Stands For 25 in a democracy does not in the least mean doing just what you please, or even doing just what you think it is right to do. Anarchists might think it right to destroy the government ; labor union leaders sometimes think it right forcibly to prevent outsiders from taking their places at work during a strike; mothers may think it right not to vaccinate their children who are attending school, — and still the laws of the State en- force obedience. Our nation believes usually in freedom of speech, be- cause it knows that when the kettle is boiling inside, it is safer to let out the steam. We know, too, that acts or ideas that seem shocking to our generation may have a value in them that we need to know. But there are certain things you are not permitted even to say: You can be tried in court if you bear false witness against j'our neighbor; if you slander his character; if you denounce the government of the United States; if you use indecent language; if you induce soldiers to desert in time of war. And the law^s which forbid these things are right. Freedom is never the chance to do or to say whatever you please. There is, as St. Paul said, a law of liberty. The supreme hberty of America is freedom to wor- ship God. Jesus said: " Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice and I will be their shepherd." We in America believe that anyone who loves God must be free to worship Him in his own truest w^ay, not forced into conformity wdth others, and neither scorned nor perse- cuted for following his own beliefs. In May, 1378, in the high-vaulted hall of Black- friars in London, the priests of England gathered to- gether to try John Wycliffe for heresy. He was an old man and quite alone. He had spent his life in 26 Our Part in the World preaching and in study of the Scriptures. His great- est ambition was to translate the Bible into English so that the common people could read it, and the life of Jesus no longer be a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. "The sacred Scriptures," he said, ''are the property of the people, and one which no one should be allowed to wrest from them. . . . Christ and his apostles con- verted the world by making known the Scriptures to men in a form familiar to them . . . and I pray with all my heart that through doing the things contained in this book, we may all together come to the everlasting hfe."* Can you imagine that any man in America could be condemned for such teaching? No, nor in England now, for freedom in religious worship has spread far and wide. Indeed, our danger lies in the other direc- tion. To worship God involves no danger, no per- secution, no scorn. I sometimes wish it were danger- ous; for to be easy-going in relation to one's religious faith is more often than not to be careless, forgetful, asleep. Take every chance, then, to stand up for your religion, that your freedom may not be indifference. Here is a valiant message from the history of the early settlement of our country. John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts, was a wealthy lawyer of Suffolk, England. He sold all his property and for the sake of religious freedom came out to help the little sea-girt colony in New England. That first winter must have been a disheartening experience. We often think of the attacks by Indians in early Colonial days as exciting and dramatic. But it is far easier to re- sist attack when you are well armed and well fed than when you are short of arms, half-starved, and sick. On many a cold morning in that first wintei' * Quoted by Smythe, How we got our Bible, p. 63. America, and What It Starids For 27 John Wintlirop must have wished himself at home, and then instantly checked the wish and turned to his task. He found the colony in a sad and unexpected con- dition. About eighty of them out of three hundred had died the winter before, and many of those alive were weak andsick, all the corn and bread among them being hardly sufficient to feed them.* Yet Wmthrop did not complain. He wrote gaily, "My dear wife, we are here in a paradise. Though we have not beef and mutton, etc., yet God be praised w^e want them not ; our Indian corn answers for all. . . . We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ. Is not this enough? What would we have more?"t This is the free spirit of America. * Memorial History of Boston, Justin Winsor, p. 113. flhid., p. 117. CHAPTER VII AMERICA, AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR 2. The Union When the thirteen original colonies united they were thirteen independent States making an alliance, rather than one nation. Intentionally, for fear of offending someone's locality, the Constitution gave the people of these united States no common name. They were still New Englanders or Southerners, men of Massachusetts or Virginia, united to help each other rather than welded into an unbreakable chain. "Liberty!" was the cry of the early days of our in- dependence. One sentence from a celebrated speech of Patrick Henry's still rings in the ears of every school- boy: ''Give me liberty, or give me death." It was not till 1830 that there was heard another whose words echo as loudly as the words of Patrick Henry. Nobody troubles himself much now to remember who Hayne was or what kind of remarks he was indulging in that led Daniel Webster to reply. But the reply clangs down the century: ''Liberty and Union, now and for- ever, one and inseparable." It was not just a speech that Webster made: it was a discovery. Liberty is not enough to live by. Liberty is a lonely kind of solitaire. We are not happy until we are living together. True, union interferes with our freedom, but it is far preferable to be together, even though — perhaps just because — we must learn to get along with one another. So it was that our national history led us more and more to ''liberty and union, one and insepa- America, mid What It Stands For 29 rable," and we began to be a nation, not just a number of scattered States. Before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun wTote: "I never use the word 'nation' in speaking of the United States. I always use the word 'Union' or 'Confeder- acy,' . . . England is a nation, Austria is a nation, Russia is a nation, but the United States are not a nation." "The United States are'' — how queer it sounds! We shall never again say anything but "The United States is!" Borne in the mouth of the eagle on our sih'er half-dollar you will see a scroll with the words "E pluribus unum" — Out of many, one. Our many States are now one nation. "Out of man3% one." That is the same idea that St. Paul urged upon the quarrelsome Corinthians: "For the body is not one member, but many." "The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee : nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary." "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it."* Thus in our national life we need each other. The old and the young, the strong and the feeble, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, descend- ants from the earhest settlers and recently-arrived mimigrants, people north and south and east and west, — we all need all the rest in order to have here in America one nation, a real Union. And in order to perfect that Union each one must do his best in what he can best do. In the summer a group of my friends camp for a few weeks on an island in one of the smaller Adirondack *1 Cor. 12: 14. 21-22, 26. 30 Our Part in the World ponds. When we arrive tents must be put up, beds made, water brought from the lake, dinner cooked, the table set, trunks moved into place, boats varnished, dishes washed, mosquito-netting sewed for each bed. Instinctively each one chooses his special work. Helen takes to cooking; Hal much prefers chopping wood for the camp-fire; Dorothy has always a needle ready to sew rents; Arthur likes best to row to the hotel for supplies; Hugh is an expert fisherman; Bertha undertakes the washing. At home, where we press a button for electric light, telephone to get food or order an automobile to go down town, it is not nearly so clear as it is in camp that the ideal cooperation is that of many folk working in different ways for one end. City life conceals our debt to the distant farmer who hoes his corn, and to the shoemaker who sticks to his last. We need people for a great many different reasons; sometimes for practical help, sometimes, also, for united strength, but always for comradeship and sym- pathy. You remember, in Edward Everett Hale's story The Man without a Country, how wretched Nolan was, just because he was so utterly cut off from the very United States he had cursed. It would be the worst punishment conceivable, Prof. William James once said, if no one took any notice of us; if people "cut us dead," passed us as if we were a post by the wayside. We should soon be so lonely that we would prefer any other penalty no matter how pain- ful. Our deepest need of one another is, then, the need of friendship, of loving and being loved, each in his special way. Have you ever noticed how different, one from another, were the friends of Jesus? Peter must have annoyed John many a time by his impetu- osity, just as Martha was provoked by Mary, who did not seem to be doing her share of the work. Yet they America, and Ml\ai It Standi For 31 all needed Jesus, and he needed them all, needed their very differences. Differences are essential in any great union. It is most fortunate that we are different and like to do different things. It would be awkward if everybody wanted to play the violin and nobody wanted to cook; or if everyone wanted to make speeches and no one cared to listen. There are great differences between men and women; most valuable differences. In a true family a man and a woman, loving and under- standing one another, can help each other the more through being unlike. There is a great deal of sense in trying to understand one another, and none in trying to be exactly alike. Each of us is meant to be unique that he may serve God in his special way, a way that no one else can follow as well. You have seen maps of the United States cut up in irregular picture-puzzle shapes, and yet uniting to make a complete w^hole, so that if a single piece is lost there is an ugly gap. Each piece belongs some- where; it is awkwardly out of place elsewhere. Each piece though in itself insignificant is necessary to make up the complete whole. Something like this is our part in the w^orld. Taken by ourselves, we are insig- nificant; but the world is a whole in God's plan, and when we find our place we are united with all who serve because we achieve something that is needed. CHAPTER VIII AMERICA, AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR 3. Equality ''All men are created equal." Well, that certainly is not true! One man is born blind; another has a crippled heart; one has brilliant musical gifts; an- other inherits feeble-mindedness, — he plods along, barely mastering the fourth grade at school. How can we call men free who inherit mental defects, or say that men are equal when one is four times as strong as another? And yet the saying that all men are born free and equal means something in America. It means that the United States really cares that every man shall have a chance to rise to his own height of power. I was speaking to a young lawyer lately about a humble- minded, unassuming woman who, by dint of patient looking through a microscope, has risen to be the most important expert about malaria in the world. "That's bully!" shouted my friend. "That's America!" And so it is and must be: America, who glories when her rail-splitters become the princes of men. America stands for democracy in this sense: that every man shall count for one before the law; that every man shall have a fair trial; that every man shall be protected in life and property, in his own country and when he lives abroad. Like a fair-minded and generous mother America covers all her children, poor or rich, wise or foolish, with the mantle of her faith and her protection. Others may think of you as better America, and What It Stands For 33 or worse, valuable or worthless, but America does not estimate or separate among her extraordinarily varied flock. "He sendeth His rain on the just and the un- just." This is true of our homeland, and in its love resides something of the protecting tenderness of the love of God. Story after story told of Abraham Lincoln brings out his desire for equaUty of opportunity among men. Indeed his desire that all the inhabitants of the United States should have a fair chance extended even to beetles. Meeting one day in his walk a beetle who was sprawling on its back, Lincoln bent his six feet five inches and turned it upright, saying: "I couldn't feel quite right if I left that bug on its back. I wanted it to have an equal chance with all the other bugs in its class." In what ways can Americans be equal? Clearly equahty can never mean that opportunities exactly balance. Even a carefully planned tennis court is apt to have one side less good on account of sun or wind. In tennis we try to balance advantages by giving .choice of ''serve" to compensate choice of court, but talents do not balance. Mr. Roosevelt has roused the country by proclaiming that the only equality all men can and should have is "a square deal." Even this is difficult of attainment. It is impossible to square the circle, and it is difficult even to square a square, that is, to make it perfectly square all round. But America does aim to make opportunities as square as the inade- quate tools of government can make them. One famous amendment to our Constitution expresses a negative aspect of this square deal,— No deprivations on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The words run ofT our lips smoothly now, but they were won in rough and dangerous travail, and the first man who inserted them into a legislative bill must have had 34 Our Part in the World turned on him a volley of reproaches. This clause denoted the end of slavery. Perfect equality is forever impossible. To recognize this leads us in first-rate sport toward the higher motto of St. Paul, ''In honor preferring one another." We are continually tempted to put our own claims first. It seems a bit more pressing and important that I should win a set in tennis than that my adversary should, and for this reason, if for no other, perfect fairness must become generosity. I thought my ball was just within the hne, you thought not. Take the play over again. I served when you were not quite ready and you missed. I will serve another ball. You thought the score 40-30 in your favor, I thought it 40-30 in mine. Let's call it deuce. Christ proclaims a standard far above equality, far beyond even the standard ''in honor preferring one another." "He that is greatest among you let him be your servant." Jesus said amazing things, but few more startling than this. The pomp of Rome and the pride of the Pharisees surrounded the Jews ; Roman and Pharisee alike held himself aloof and superior, towering above the common folk. Jesus undermined their whole structm-e, for he beheld a greatness loftier than theirs, — the greatness of those who serve. All through the centuries since, two impulses have struggled against one another, — the desire of the dominant church to express itseK in splendor of robes and land and luxury, and the deske to follow him who chose to become the servant of all. So as we reach greater minds we climb rung by rung a ladder of ascending standards. First and lowest, selfish equality, — we see it among children, — "If you have a peach, I ought to have one." Then fair- minded equality, "The vote shall be given to all over twenty-one who can read and write." Beyond that, Avierica, and What It Stands For 35 chivalry, "Women and children first; the best seat for the man tu-ed by hard work." "Noblesse oblige." Then far beyond even chivalry, humility in serving God. He who has the most to give in talent, tmie, physi- cal or mental strength, for that reason owes the most, for, in the beautiful words in the offertoiy, "All things come of Thee, God, and of Thine own have we given Thee." CHAPTER IX AMERICA, AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR 4. The Least of These The United States stands for humanity, and espe- cially for generous humanity toward women and children. When the steamship Titanic struck an iceberg in mid-ocean and quickly sank, the call ''Women first!" to the lifeboats found ready response from almost every man on board. It was the women who protested, loving husbands or sons too dearly to leave them behind. Is it right, this ''Women first"? They do not think so in China. Here is the Chinese rule: Save first the young men, then the young women, then the children, and, last of all, the old men and women. "Save first the useful and the strong," say the Chinese. "Save first the weak and helpless" is the creed of our people. And why should you save weaklings? Why not toss them aside, as the farmer at harvest-time tosses away an undeveloped ear of corn? I believe there is only one answer: "We are Christians." Christ saw a value in people that differed from the value of usefulness. To him, the least of the little ones was as precious as the mighty, and the repentant wrong-doer more eagerly to be helped than the proudly righteous. In these days people are inclined perhaps more than ever before to do things on a large scale, to provide help for Belgium, to reform factories or hospitals, to change housing conditions, to give vocational educa- tion to everyone. Necessary and good in their way America, and What It Stands For 37 as these efforts to do large-sized deeds may be, they tend sometimes to make us forget ''the least of these." Jesus, who changed the known and unknown world more than any of us can possibly hope to do, never forgot the individual, — the leper who besought him kneeling, the woman who had given up all hope of being cured of a dragging disease, the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus, the little children whom he saw among his followers. These and such as these appealed to him. Jesus thought more of each than he did of all. His quick-seeing mercy beheld the smallest. Some time ago I heard an able man complain that his Sunday-school teaching was both difficult and dull. "After all," he said, *4t's very little use, only a dozen boys in my class to influence." ''Only a dozen," echoed his friend, a distinguished ■v\Titer. "What a wonderful chance. The IVIaster had just twelve dis- ciples." "WTiat would the world be without these twelve whom Jesus helped! There is another way in which the minute oppor- tunity becomes important. The laws of perspective are reversed in moral life. The distant looks large, the near looks small. The great opportunities seem to lie in the future when we know more, when we are grown-up, when we are distinguished. But no real service can ever be done in the future. It always comes now, this minute, right here. The tone of voice you use or the act of kindness you do is one of these least, but it is your chance to serve. If you could follow the incidents that led to great discoveries and great reforms you would be startled to find in what small ways they began. People don't sit down and think first about great schemes; they meet an experience that startles or puzzles, hurts or delights them, and brood over it till it germinates into a plan or grows into an institution. Mr. William 38 Our Part in the World George started the George Junior Republic because he saw some boys snatching at a trunk of second-hand clothes sent to them as a gift, and perceived that free gifts were not good for them. Another instance of a small concrete ^tarting-point from which a great movement grew is shown in the history of the Juvenile Court. In Denver, Colorado, some years ago, an Italian boy was being tried for stealing. It was clear enough that he had committed the theft, and Judge Lindsey, who was presiding, had no choice but to give the boy a sentence. But at the moment he rendered the verdict he heard a woman shriek, and turning his eyes toward the place whence the sound came he saw in the back of the room an old woman tearing her hair and beating her head against the wall in agony. That very evening Judge Lindsey went to the dirty, squalid house where the woman lived and talked with her and the boy. He found that the boy had stolen to help his father and mother and the baby, who were suffering from cold, and that it would only do him harm to go to prison. ''Well," said Judge Lindsey, as he told the story afterward, ''I said I'd take care of that boy myself, and I visited him and his mother often, and — well, we — ^his mother and I — with the boy helping — we saved that boy, and to-day he is a fine fellow, industri- ous, self-respecting, and a friend of the Court."* Another day three boys of twelve to sixteen years were taken to court for burglary. What had they stolen? A querulous old man came up as witness to say that these boys were forever stealing his pigeons. At last he had caught three of the gang and he wanted them put in jail. Then a curious thing happened, — * Upbuilders, Lincoln Steffens, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1909, p. 99. See also The Beast, by Ben B. Lindsey and H. J. Higgins, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1910, p. 82. America, and What It Stands For 39 Judge Lindsey remembered that he himself had as a boy started with some other boys to rob a pigeon-loft. He got seared and let the other boys do it alone, but he was on the very edge of being a burglar. And when he came to ask the old man where his pigeon-loft was, Lindsey found that here was the very man he had tried to burglarize years before. This made Judge Lindsey think! Suppose he had been caught and sent to prison — would it have been good for him? Lindsey changed his mind. Instead of sending the boys to prison he invited them in to talk with him. He found out that the boys had stolen from the old man because they wanted to get back some pigeons of their own which had joined the old man's flock. The Judge explained that even then it wasn't "square" to steal, for the coop did belong to the old man; and when the Judge explained it thus, the boys understood. Then he said that he wanted the whole gang to stop stealing; he didn't let the three boys tell on the rest, but asked them to bring the others in to talk with him. They did this, and they all of them made a bargain with the Judge, not only to stop stealing themselves, but to stop others from doing it too, if possible. And they kept their bargain. It was hearing cases like these that led Judge Lindsey to found the Juvenile Court. He knew that to make boys and girls afraid, bitter and sullen will make them lie and deceive; to treat them fairly will encourage them to tell the truth. Lindsey's great achievement has come through an observant and persistent love for *Hhe least of these." CHAPTER X AMERICA, AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR 5. Social Service Service is a word that in our twentieth century is coming back triumphant into honorable usage. There was a time when the word servant meant something servile, degraded, cringing. I beheve it never will be so used again. Notice how often four different uses of the word service — military service, civil service, public service, and social service — strike on our ears nowadays. The military and naval ser- vice undertakes to help the State in times of war or danger; the civil service includes all other government positions; the public service corporations (gas, elec- tricity, water-power, railroads), though not everywhere under the State, supply what everyone needs, and so are servants of the public; social service helps those who are sick, poor, helpless, or in moral diffi- culties. When to this hst we add the teachers who are all included under the civil service, and the parents, who certainly are doing social service though they don't trouble to call it so, there are few grown people of much value in the United States who are not in one way or another servants. So, as I said, the words service and duty have become so familiar and useable that we hardly think of their original meanings. ''How long is your service at the City Hospital?" one doctor asks another. "I can't get out this evening, I am on duty," the trained nurse tells her friend. The soldier speaks with America, and What It Stands For 41 pride of being "in the service." Kipling celebrating the dauntless Indian mail-service by foot to the Hills, thus describes the runner who starts up the footpath as twilight falls, with two bags of the Overland mail on his back: "Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim. Has the rain wTecked the road? He must cUnib by the cliff. Docs the torrent cry 'Halt'? What are tempests to him? The Service admits not a 'but' or an 'if.' While the breath's in his mouth, he must hear %\'ithout fail. In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail." America, it seems to me, stands peculiarly for ser- vice. We have not hesitated to call our highest au- thorities servants of the State. The motto of the Prince of Wales, "Ich dien" (I serve), seems to us the rightful speech of princes. The Roman Pope is called "The servant of the servants of men." Our President is a servant of the people, more so than any other, more, not less, at the call of the people, because the whole nation turns to him. Lincoln, even m the stress of the Civil War, would refuse no \isitor, because he felt that the head of the nation must be always at the service of its members. One of the greatest among American women, Clara Barton, made herself the servant of every community and every nation in trouble. The founding of the American Red Cross is largely due to her persistent efforts. In 1870 France declared war against Prussia; within three days Clara Barton was asked to help; in a week she sailed, for she remembered only too vividly our Civil War. She had nursed at Fredericksburg; she had seen wounded soldiers star\'ing and frozen at Petersburg, or broiling under the July sun at Gettys- burg. She knew the agonies of war, the crowded prisons, the burned houses of the poor, the widows 42 Our Part in the World struggling alone to earn their children's bread. When then, in 1870 Clara Barton saw how the Red Cross brought comfort in the Franco-Prussian War, she said, ''If I live to return to my country, I will try to make my people understand the value of the Red Cross." It was a work of twelve long, discouraging years, but at last in 1882 the United States joined the Red Cross Association. What has it done in America? Look at the list below and see a few of the opportunities to serve in time of so-called peace. Every year, in our widespread country, terrible disasters happen, — flood, fire, earthquake, pestilence. As I look through the thick volume of Clara Barton's History of the Red Cross, I read of these disasters, among many others in which that organization rendered aid: 1881 Michigan Forest Fu-es 1882 Mississippi Floods 1883 Mississippi Cyclone 1884 Ohio and Mississippi Floods 1885 Texas Famine 1886 Charleston Earthquake 1888 IlKnois Cyclone 1889 Johnstown Disaster 1891-92 Russian Famine Ten years of work, and in almost every one a great disaster and a great chance to help! In Michigan, to take the first instance, the forest fires raged for days, destroying every hving thing in their path. As one report put it, ''So sweeping has been the destruction that there is not food enough left in its track for a rabbit to eat, and, indeed, no rabbit to eat it, if there were. If we did not hear the crackling of the flames, our skies grew murky and dark and our atmosphere bitter with the drifting smoke that rolled over from the blazing fields of our neighbors of Michigan, whose America, and What It Stands For 43 living thousands fled in terror, whose dying hundreds writhed in the embers, and whose dead blackened in the ashes of their hard-earned homes." Prompt help was given through the Red Cross. "Instantly," the re- port adds, "we felt the help and strength of your organization, young and untried as it was. We were grateful that in this first ordeal your sympathetic Presi- dent was with us. We were deeply grateful for your prompt call to action, given through her, which rallied us to our work. Our relief rooms were secured, and our white banner with its bright scarlet cross, which has never been furled since that hour, was thrown to the breeze, telling to every looker-on what we were there to do, and pointing to every generous heart an outlet for its sympathy. We had not mistaken the spirit of our people; our scarce-opened doorway was filled with men, vv-omen, and children bearing their gifts of pity and love. Tables and shelves were piled; our working committee of ladies took every article under inspection; their faithful hands made all gar- ments whole and strong; lastly, each article received the stamp of the Red Cross, and all were carefully and quickly consigned to the firm packing cases awaiting them. Eight large boxes were shipped at first, others followed directly, and so we continued until notified by the Relief Committee of IMichigan that no more were needed." * In 1917, when our nation was at war, the whole country poured its funds by millions into the Red Cross. It was an expression of that sometimes hidden, deep desire to serve, which is a native plant in the United States. I beheve that each true American at heart recog- nizes as his own the ideal of Christ: ''He that is great- * The Red Cross, Clara Barton, American Historical Press, 1899, pp. 108-109. 44 Our Part in the World est among you shall be your servant." All devoted service to men is but one way of serving God, and there ' is no higher title of office than that of ''Servant of the Lord." "Title of office" I said intentionally. There is a far more tender name — ' ' Friends of God. ' ' ' ' Hence- forth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you" (John 15: 15). CHAPTER XI AMERICA, AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR G. Honor and Chivalry Soon after the invasion of Belgium in August, 1914, I saw a cartoon representing King Albert of Belgium and the German Kaiser. Sneeringly the Emperor pointed out the diminished territory held by the King, and vociferated, "All is lost." ''True," answered Iving Albert; "all is lost except my soul." I suppose honor is just what we mean by the soul of a man, and because honor is his centre of command it is like a magnet drawing into its service all other qualities. An honorable man must have courage, — quantities of it fresh for service at all times; he must be fair and square, he must be chivalrous to women, trutliful beyond question, generous, loyal. And there come times, such as came to the young King of Bel- gium, when to keep honor one must part with every- thing else one holds dear. Then a king must go to exile or to death, must ache to see his cities, cathedrals and libraries in ruins, and women and babies fleeing in terror from fire and shell. Only the spirit of the martyrs can hold a man unrepentant that he has held to his pledge, when in so doing he has devastated his country. Such faitlifulness increases the sum of honor in the world. The Belgians standing firm to honor and troth against an overwhelming force have died for us as well as for their nation. Seeing such standards of loyalty to their word, all the standards of the world wave in 46 Our Part in the World steadier strength. ''For the sake of her own honor the United States must never take an inch of Mexican , soil," President Wilson told us. ''But what is honor anyway?" asked one of the audience. "What does it amount to? It's not success, or prosperity, or health. What good does it do to the United States?" Let us answer, in the words of liing Albert, no good except that good which is above all good, the finding of our soul. Each generation has to meet national issues that touch its honor. The generation above mine learned to know that slavery was dishonorable; my generation is learning that we must protect liberty and honor cove- nant even with our lives. What will be the great- est question of honor that will meet your generation? Can you prophesy? One field of honor is the tournament field of chivalry. Since the beginning of our history it has been true (with a few shameful exceptions) that America has stood for chivalry, for special help to the weak, to the unfortunate, and to women. Lincoln's chivalry re- volted at the sight of slavery. When he was a young man he built a raft and towed a load of produce down the Mississippi River to sell it in New Orleans for his employer. New Orleans at that time contained a flourishing slave-market, and after Lincoln had sold his goods he wandered off with another boatman to see it. I suppose they went for curiosity, as any of us might do, but what they saw roused in Lincoln far more than curiosity. At the slave-market, in long rows, stood black men, women, and children, standing against the wall to be stared at. In front of them the auctioneer shouted out their good points, as he would praise a horse or a cow. And then came the tragic moment. Some Southern planter would decide to buy a wife without her husband, or a child without its America, and What It Stands For 47 mother. Families were separated forever. Lincoln's blood boiled, and with a choking voice he turned to his companion and muttered, ''If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I will hit it hard, by the Eternal God." In the North, not long after, the wife of a country- minister received a letter from her sister. "If I had your gift for -^ATiting, I would strike a blow at slavery," the latter wrote. "With God's help, I will," she an- swered, — it was Harriet Beecher Stowe, — and both she and Lincoln kept their word. They were then insig- nificant, poor, uninfluential ; but they saw and did not forget a great wrong. The powerful of the nation were against them. That did not matter. They remem- bered, they acted, — and slavery fell. If any of you have a chance to strike at slavery in whatever form it may take, — the rule of the boss, the crushing of Armenians, the overworking of children, the subjuga- tion of little nations, the degradation of women, — ^hit it a hard blow and God will be with you. Whom shall we honor most? We often appear to honor most people whose lives are successful and sho\\y. The man who has made his pile of money is frequently the most honored man in a small town. But it is treacherous to honor him till we know how he has made, and how he spends, his wealth. We honor a general decorated with medals and insignia of rank. How has he acquired his rank? By courage, by disci- pline, and by hours of wTacking work, or by favoritism? We honor the captain of a college football team or the crack pitcher of the Red Sox. There is in them much to honor. They have shown persistence, control, energy, self-denial. Honor to whom honor is due. But you will notice that Jesus seemed to disregard our conomon standards of honor. He was very poor, but he did not bow down before the rich young man. Instead, he was sorry for him, because it was hard for 48 Our Part in the World him to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus spoke with pecuhar honor of one poor woman. His quick eyes noted her as she put her two mites into the treas- ury of the synagogue, and he saw that she had given more than all the rest. Soldiers of the great Roman Empire marched by Jesus in the streets of Jerusalem, their helmets blazing under the tropic sun, but he hardly seems to have noticed them. He looked elsewhere and saw children. When his disciples asked who should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he took a child and set him in the midst of them. To Jesus the child stood for purity, openness, truthfulness. The most honorable men are, Jesus knew, the most modest, the most child- like, the purest in heart. He knew that the pure in heart shall see God, and that those who see God are the most to be honored. chapter xii a:merica, and what it stands for -7. Education ''What is the use of going to school? Why don't we hve out in the country in tents with a pony to ride, plant our farms, and make clothes out of skins?" asked a boy of fourteen. ''I don't see any sense in learning mathematics and Latin. What good are they, anyway?" It is, when you think of it, an extraordinary law that forces parents in many States to send their children to school from the time they are seven — or in some States five — years of age until they are fourteen or even older. The parents often want the children to help at home; they may need the oldest girl to help with the washing or take care of the baby; but the State pays no atten- tion to these wishes. Nothing but the child's illness or ''inability to profit by the instruction given" is a sufficient reason to keep him at home. Uncle Sam must think education very significant if he is ready not only to insist that all the children shall go, but also that all the tax-payers, whether or not they have any children, shall contribute money to support the public schools. If children do not want an education why should it be forced upon them? The answer to such a question comes best not from the people who have had education heaped upon them, but from those who have had to dig for it. Let us take two cases. Booker Washington in Up from Slav- 60 Our Part in the World ery tells of his early childhood. He was born in Vir- ginia some time during the year 1858, but no one kept ■any record of which day was his birthday. The house in which he was born was a log cabin fourteen by six- teen feet square. There were no windows. Light came in through a cut in the wall. It was cold enough in winter, with a loose door on rickety hinges, and an open hole of eight inches for the cat to get out and in as she pleased. The floor was of earth, and in the centre was a square pit for storing sweet potatoes. The chil- dren slept on a heap of dirty rags. They never sat down together to a meal, but ate whatever scraps there happened to be. They wore wooden shoes, and shirts of flax that scratched like a burr. There was no time for play; everyday they swept out yards or took corn to the mill to be ground. As soon as he was thought useful enough, Booker was made to work in a salt mine. He often began work at four in the morning, and of course worked all day. Once he saw a barrel with xviii marked on it and he copied the number. Then he persuaded his mother to get him a spelling-book and taught himself the alphabet. One night there came to the neighborhood a young col- ored man who called himself a teacher. The whole community gathered to admire his remarkable ability as he read the newspaper. A school was started. Even old men and women came because they wanted to learn to read the Bible. As for Booker, he worked all day, but he went to school in the evening, though he often had to walk several miles to reach it. One day he heard two miners talking about a great school, and he crept up close, to hear better. ''At Hampton," they said, ''you could pay for your board by work, and learn at the same time." Booker re- solved at once to go. True, it was five hundred miles away, but he could walk and earn as he went. How America, and What It Stands For 51 he got there and proved his mettle you will want to read for yourself in Up from Slavery * for that boy in the salt mine became the most distinguished and val- ued man of his race. Another boy, of whose passion for education we know, was Abraham Lincoln. He was as hungry for reading as most of us are for dinner. He told a friend once that he had read through every book he heard of within a circuit of fifty miles, and from each book he copied long extracts with his turkey-buzzard pen and brier- root ink.f Could anyone now compete with this record? Lincoln went deeper than just reading books. His passion was to understand. "I never went to school more than six months in my life," he said, ''but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections I re- member how, when a mere child, I used to get irri- tated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neigh- bors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. ''I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea, until I had caught it and w^hen I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I repeated it over and over, until I had it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north * Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington. t The Life of Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, McClure, 1902, Vol. I, p. 30. 52 Our Part in the World and bounded it south, and bounded it east and bounded it west." * ' And now we can answer the question why an edu- cated person is better off than an uneducated one. He is better off in three important ways. The first is suggested by Lincoln. 1. He can understand the world better. Suppose I took you into a vast hall in which lay an uncounted number of different instruments, — violins, golf-sticks, wireless apparatus, electric cooking-stoves, planes, paint-boxes, skates, skis, moving-picture films. What you would get from these treasures would depend entirely on what skill you had in using them. From the violin Kreisler draws magic; I draw nothing but squeaks. The tennis racket will send his ball just where McLoughlin wants it to go; but my tennis racket seems to misunderstand the situation: the ball goes to the wrong place. The whole world is, like this hall, full of treasures. They are ours if we can use them. If we cannot, they cumber the ground. "I can't imagine what that is. It is Greek to me," is a common phrase. But Greek to someone else means stories of adventure, friendship with great men like Socrates and Plato, dramas to act, the New Testament in the original to read. Education means new eyes and ears. We can hear the strange sounds indeed, but we are practi- cally deaf to Hebrew or Japanese. The botanist and the ornithologist have no stronger sight than the rest of us, but we are to all intents and purposes blind compared to them in the power of seeing new flowers or catching glimpses of hidden birds. This is the first great value of education. It puts within our reach the treasures of the entire world. Knowledge is a hook to catch passing experience. 2. The uneducated person is more likely to he deceived. ♦ The Life of Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, McCIure, 1902, Vol. I, p. 44. America, and What It Stands For 53 He is like a blind person in so far as he is dependent on others for what books or letters say. The ignorant person unintentionally deceives himself as well as others. He has studied no science and is easily fooled by such superstitions as that the windows should be closed if one of his children has tuberculosis. As in this case, the tragedy often is that he does kindly and ignorantly exactly the WTong tiling for those he most wants to help. 3. Education means also the power to take our part in the world. Much schooling that seems dull is nothing but the acquisition of tools so that we can work. Arithmetic, spelling, wTiting, grammar, foreign verbs, are like axes, hammers, and spades. They are tools of a trade. Without them we are as awkw^ard and help- less as if we had to cut dow^n a tree with our hands. The uneducated person is shut out from many of the most interesting employments. Engineering requires mathematics; consular service requires a mastery of languages; physicians need a knowledge of chemistry; trained nurses have to study anatomy and physiology. Or even if an uneducated person gets on and makes money, he may be unfitted to take his part in the w^orld's service. He lacks history which would help him to un- derstand the present and future by knowing the past. Late in life he cannot easily learn the languages that w^ould help him or by which he could help other races. In a word, then, education enlarges one's outlook, one's soul. That is its supreme reward. CHAPTER XIII INTERNATIONAL TIES "All those European quarrels are no affair of ours," I have sometimes heard people say. Could anything be more absurd! Where did we all come from? Who gave us our ancestry, our literature, our art, our music, our Protestant faith, our ideals of freedom? A man cannot honorably forget the giver of inestimable gifts. Socrates, Shakespeare and Dante, Hans Andersen, Burns, Beethoven, Pasteur, Selma Lagerlof, Cer- vantes, Chopin, Tolstoi, Carmen Sylva — these are a few of the many leaders, each from a different nation in Europe, without whom we were spindling little up- starts. There are people in Asia and Africa and even in parts of Europe who have lived isolated for cen- turies, but we Americans are bound by unbreakable ties to an ancestry in many lands. I suppose it is inevitable that these many dear ties will make problems for us, just as a large family brings problems; but let us take our good fortune, problems included. When the European war broke out in 1914 we in America held our breath. Half stunned by the shock- ing crime, we did not as a nation protest against the invasion of Belgium. But when we could pull our- selves together we wanted to help the suffering, for Americans are sensitive to human need. Let me tell you of two young Americans who did help. One, Victor Chapman, was a lad born of an Italian mother, fiery and God-loving, and of an American father whose passionate impulse to bear the sins committed International Ties 55 by any American comes down from a great ancestor, John Jay. Victor Chapman, who had the fearlessness of chivalry, promptly joined the Foreign Legion and later was transferred to the little corps of American flyers who had the privilege of serving France. One day in July, 1916, Victor soared up into the air, tak- ing with him in his airplane some oranges for a friend sick in a hospital. He risked being shot by the Ger- mans, that he might bring pleasure to a friend. As he flew above the trenches and up into clear space he saw three American airplanes attacked and en- dangered by four German Tauben. Instantly he soared up toward them, and, darting into the fray, put two German airplanes out of commission. Quickly the other Germans turned on him and he fell, dying — an Italian- American in the service of France. France in the midst of her anguish does not forget the American dead. Before the statue of Washington in Paris a ser\dce was held and tributes of glowing flowers, given by a nation never too poor to abandon generosity, commemorated the Americans who had died for France. Dying they live eternally. M. Bri- and. Prime Minister of France, spoke of Victor Chap- man as a ''living symbol of American idealism."* About the time that Victor made his choice, there was an American girl over in France studying art. She offered her services at once, and was sent to a small French hospital on the Riviera. Later she heard that an examination was to be held for a nurse's diploma in the French Red Cross. She studied literally night and day to get this diploma; was examined by nine doctors, and passed with credit. Then she was sent to the French front, not as a civilian nurse, but with the rank of lieutenant in an army hospital. And there began her active service. ''I am a soldier now," * Victor Chapman's Letters from France, Macmillan. 56 Our Part in the World she writes. "We are just behind the firing Hne and only get desperate cases. I work always more than fourteen hours a day." In a single day she had to help in thirty- three operations; the average was twenty-five. She was often ill or tired before the war, but now she was well — ''Too busy to remember my- self, present or future,"* is the way she puts it. ''I think you would sicken with fright if you could see the operations that a poor nurse is called on to perform," she writes, — "the putting in of drains, the washing of wounds so huge and ghastly as to make one marvel at the endurance that is man's, the digging about for bits of shrapnel. I assure you the word 'responsibility' takes a special meaning here." One day a man whose leg had been terribly wounded was told by the surgeon that it must be cut off. In the sick man's face was an agony Mademoiselle Miss could not endure. She begged for twenty-four hours' delay, which the surgeon granted. All that time she bathed the leg in boric acid water and iodine. Next day the doctor, as he visited the patient, said, "In- deed, this is curious, — the leg is no worse": and he gave her twenty-four hours more. So day by day it went, till after four days he could say to the soldier: "My old man, you are in luck. Mademoiselle has suc- ceeded. You will keep your leg." A month later No. 19 left with his leg for a sunnier clime! It is one of the deep and mysterious things in the adventures of Mademoiselle Miss that the more she loved and served France, the more she loved America. Partly it was that being actively at work she was more alive all over, and so more brimful of love; partly that seeing a nation under the consecration of self-sacrifice, she suddenly saw what her nation might become. "All at once America has become Cathay to me — * Mademoiselle Miss, Butterfield, Boston, p, 33, International Ties 57 a far more luminous discovery than Columbus ever dreamed of — a Promised Land flowing with ether and cotton and all sorts of surgical delights. All of a sudden I find myself growing patriotic, to a degree I ne\'er knew in former days. It's quite true that whenever I turn my eyes toward the end of my ward, where hangs the bright trophj^ (the flags of the Allies), the little American banner below with the light shin- ing through gives me a wee thrill that is quite peculiar, and makes me think that some day I may be a better American." * Year by year international ties increase. All over the known world men, women, and children are united, for they think about the same things in differ- ent ways. As they make new inventions, plan re- forms, start societies, they turn with added under- standing to one another. For example, the experiences in many lands of Boy Scouts unite them all. Very lately General Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouts in England, made a tour of the w^orld from South Africa and Japan to the United States. Every- where he was received by the shouts of Boy Scouts. Here are some of the deeds he found them doing. In the Isthmus of Panama Boy Scouts were helping to drive out yellow fever and malaria by squirting oil on stagnant pools and drains. In Chicago five thousand Boy Scouts gave exhibitions of first aid, of saving the drowning, and of wdreless telegraphy. They competed to see who could light a fire quickest without matches. Do you know how they do it? They twirl a pointed stick on a piece of flat cedar wood, till the stick gets hot and works tlirough the board, dropping a little pile of ashes; dry bits of cotton are laid on these ashes and blown on till the cotton catches fire. It is a good deal easier to talk about than to do. * Mademoiselle Miaa, p. 59. 58 Our Part in the World In the United States General Baden-Powell saw also bands of blind Scouts, with sometimes a troop half of blind boys and half of seeing, to lead the others. From much Scout work the blind are cut off; but they can compete in a tug-of-war, make raised maps, play the bugle and gain honors in sewing. There are some things they can do better than the seeing! They have exceptional skill in listening for sounds; for hear- ing, smell and touch are increased by use, as Helen Keller's book The World I Live In shows us.* In the Philippines, Baden-Powell found that during a recent fii'e in Manila, which burnt several thousand houses, two Boy Scouts had worked for hours getting the frightened people to safety, rescuing their posses- sions, and obeying the directions of the firemen. An even more interesting bit of work was done in Australia. A baby was taken violently ill with convulsions on a train. No doctor was at hand. A trained Boy Scout ran to the engine, got from the engineer a bucket of hot water, tested its heat, plunged the baby in and rubbed it till it recovered. Another Boy Scout in Tasmania was decorated for saving a man from drowning. With all his clothes on, and with the frightened man dragging him under, the Scout had a difficult task, but he got himself and the man safely ashore. A girl in South Africa did equally good work. Seeing a lady beyond her depth and in danger of drowning, this girl, Carrie Cross, plunged in, and, though not a good smmmer, kept her head and dragged the woman ashore. From Sweden comes an interesting story. The wife and two children of a workman in Gottenburg were suddenly attacked with diphtheria, and were taken to a hospital. The man was away at the factory all day and could pay no one for keeping the house and caring for the third child. When he came home on the sec- * The Century Company. International Ties 59 ond day he found the house cleaned and in order, with one Scout playing with his child, and another doing the housework. For two weeks these boys — sons, one of a rich and one of a poor man — continued their good work. Then the mother was well enough to take it up. Baden-Powell tells how the Belgian Scouts worked with the soldiers in putting out a forest fire and helping those who had been burnt in fighting the flames. "WTien the war came, those boys must have been thank- ful that they knew how to help. These stories of Scouts exemplify one among many international institutions that unite us to one another. If you were traveling any^vhere and met a Boy Scout he would seem like a friend, for you are united in the universal cause of helpfulness. CHAPTER XIV THE PAST We speak sometimes as if the past were over and done with: ''That's past; that's out of date; that's ended." Yet try to obUterate in your thought all that is past. It is impossible, of course, because in so doing we obliterate ourselves. Without the help of what we call the past we could not live at all. But conceive yourself alive and still able to annul all past human experience as if an earthquake had engulfed it. All science would vanish, not only our late inventions (the swift means of communication through telegraph, telephone, automobiles, steam-engines, wireless), not only our chief means of Hght and heat (gas, electricity, coal), but all tools, all medicine, all weapons of de- fence. Architecture, music, painting, books, even language itself would be gone. We should have to build from the bottom. Suppose we had to invent cooking, weaving, writing. Suppose we had even to invent the way to light a fire. How far would our individual lives advance? Inevitably not more than a few steps, for too much time would be consumed in merely keeping alive. The past, instead of being done with, is, then, the real fibre of the world as we know it. Just as the food we eat nourishes us till it becomes what we act with, so the past is always what we think with. We think with language; we reap the thoughts that our people have sowed about us; we hold, almost all of us, the faith of our fathers. Some people are Catholics, some are Protestants, but the great majority of either are The Past 61 what they were brought up to be. They abide in the traditions of their race, resting on the past for support. And CathoHc and Protestant ahke go back to early Christianity for their source. From that Uving stream flows the water whereof we drink, and to call it past, in any sense that means it is over and done with, would be as absurd as to call the source of a brook past because we happened to live further down the stream. The past is alive, not dead. It influences us every moment. Yes, and we in turn can direct that influ- ence, can make the past that lives in the present differ- ent from what it would have been wdthout us. A young man went out in the Adirondacks to shoot deer. Through the woods he saw bright eyes shining and heard a low snort. He leveled his rifle and fired. The deer fell. He rushed to the spot, delighted at his luck. But when he reached the bleeding deer it looked up at him with such sad eyes, blurring in death, that he resolved never to shoot again except when in need of food. He could not save that deer, — the act was done; but he could make with that past act the begin- ning of a new future. A Russian proprietor had as one of his tenants a peasant who was a hard drinker of strong vodka. One da}^ coming home angry and uncontrolled, as drink makes a man, this peasant dealt his young \^'ife a blow which knocked her to the floor. As she fell her head struck against the stone stove, which is the main fur- niture of every Russian moujik's house, and the blow killed her. Hearing of this tragedy, the peasant's employer, ^Michael Tchelisheff, was intensely moved. Then and there he resolved, first, that he would never touch vodka himself, and second, that he would devote his life to its abolition. Vodka was wholly under government control. 62 Our Part in the World Tchelisheff became mayor of his city and tried to stop the sale of vodka. He failed, naturally enough, for he was an unknown man, and millions of roubles were being made by the government through the sale of vodka. Undiscouraged, he resolved to get himself elected to the Russian Parliament, the' Douma, and there to speak against vodka. Here, again, he was laughed at and scorned, but failure made his will stronger. He resolved to gather together a great body of facts showing the evil done by drinking vodka, and to that task he devoted the next years of his life. In the Douma he managed to form a party opposed to vodka, and finally to have his bill for Prohibition passed. So far so good, but it was blocked by the Imperial Council. The dauntless peasant went directly to the Czar, who received him with more than kindness, with profound interest. Anyone who cares for his cause intensely enough becomes eloquent. Tchelisheff roused the Czar to go among his people and see for himself what results, in crime, disease, failure, and poverty, were caused by drink. The Czar was con- vinced. He wrote to his ministers, ''The journey through several governments of the Great Russia which I undertook last year with God's aid, afforded me an opportunity to study directly the vital needs of my people. . . . With profound grief, I saw sorrowful pictures of the people's helplessness, of family poverty, of broken-up households, and all the inevitable con- sequences of inebriety. . . . We cannot make our fiscal prosperity dependent upon the destruction of the spir- itual and economic powers of many of my subjects."* No man cuts through an oak tree with one blow of the axe. Tchelisheff struck again and again against vodka, till the structure trembled. Then came the ♦ See The Scientific Temperance Journal, April, 1916. The Past 63 hurricane of the war of 1914 to finish his work. The Czar and his ministers had, through TchelishelT, a great many facts before them concerning the evils of vodka in weakening men's bodies and Avills. When every man's courage, strength, and skill were needed, vodka could not be allowed. Very soon after the war was begun the Czar issued an order forbidding abso- lutel}^ the sale of vodka throughout his kingdom. Far in the past lay Tchelisheff's resolve and the crime out of which it came. But in the present de- crease of drunkenness, and in the stronger children's children born of parents who do not drink, he can see the past moulded to a new future. Without that ex- perience of the death of his tenant's wife, Tchelisheff could not have seen so clearly what must be done. The past evil became a torch lighting a great reform. Out of a crime Tchelisheff created a new world. This power to make from the past a variety of new forms is what Maurice Maeterlinck means by saying, ''The past is docile." It is docile because we can teach it what it shall mean. In this vast living realm we call the past, the greatest advances have usually been made by many men and women working together. But a few men tower above the rest as a cathedral in some European city towers above the wooden houses that huddle round its base. The cathedral is the work of many men, but when it is finished it is unique. The houses crumple and fall; the cathedral remains. So in his- tory certain names stand out: Buddha, Socrates, Paul, Galileo, Shakespeare. They live among us still with a life keener than that of any living man, because they have made in the structure of things an extraordi- nary impression. "The play of Hamlet is full of quo- tations," I once heard someone say. Shakespeare's words are so familiar that he lives in our daily speech. 64 Our Part in the World The guidance of those we call dead may be clearer and of more value than that of those we call alive. Of all the figures in the world's history, one stands apart as leaving the deepest mark. Professor Shaler thus expresses it: ''To take the most, significant example, a Jewish peasant who died nearly two thou- sand years ago shapes to this day by his brief and simple life the ways of men."* A hymn by a Unitarian writer, Sir John Bowring, sung in churches of many creeds, lifts up these trumpet- like words: "In the cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time." It is literally true to say that the cross of Christ towers above the wrecks that time has made among the great monuments of the world. I saw, lately, a postcard representing men and women of all nations, clad in every kind of raiment, lifting up their pleading hands to the cross. On the battlefields of Europe, dying Frenchmen, or Germans, English, Greeks, Italians, Serbians, still turn to the sign that once was a sign of humiliation, and find help, for it has become a sign of spiritual victory. f "It is finished. Into thy hands I commend my spirit," Jesus said when he was dying. But he knew that because it was finished it was begun. His life had fulfilled the task that his Father gave him to do, and therefore his ended life was a new beginning for the life of the world. * Nathaniel S. Shaler, The Neighbor, p. 9. tRead "The Cross at Neuve Chapelle" in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1918. CHAPTER XV THE PRESENT The Cubans have a favorite word — ''manana" (to-morrow) — by which they are said to answer any request for work. Not to-day, but to-morrow, they will undertake it, and when to-morrow comes there is still another "manana" on to which the task can be slid. Anyone sending a Cuban to market would soon find himself saying: ''No, not to-morrow. Do it now." But if the Cuban was more inclined to argue than to work he might retort: ''How can I do it now? Now is past, even before you have finished saying the word, much more before I have started for market." And he would literally be right. Strictly speaking the present vanishes into the past before anyone can say "Jack," or "Robinson" either. The present is far more slippery than the past, for the past stays like an enclosed pond; the present is like a brook, whose waters perpetually glide away. Whsit do we mean, then, by the present? Usually we mean a little section of time, some of it past, some of it to come, but held together by a plan, or an act. There is the present session of Congress, as contrasted with last year's legislature; the present season of base- ball, as contrasted with last autumn's games. We use "present" in another sense also. An officer calls his rank of soldiers: "Present," they answer, one by one. They are present here; that is, together in space. Look in a shop-window. How many things can you notice in thirty seconds and then recall, as a picture 66 Our Part in the World of that window display? Not many, though this is a simple task compared to that of holding as present events that cover many experiences in time and space; seeing them, that is, from beginning to end as a whole. The battle of Verdun, continuing for months, will be present as a whole perhaps only to a few generals like Foch or Hindenburg. The Heroic Symphony is present, from the beginning to the end, to the leader of the orchestra which plays it, as it was to Beethoven, who wrote it. I think of God as one to whom are present (as a whole full of meaning) all the events of the world past and to come, in space and in time. That, it seems to me, is what the Bible means in saying that to God a thousand years is as one day. When you go to bed you think over the events of an exciting day when your school team beat Andover; and it is to you a single whole from the arrival of the team to the last hurrah. To God, a thousand years are as clear, as present, as that. He rejoices that the purpose of the world is being fulfilled. To God all things are present, and God is present in all things. God not only sees a thousand years as present. He is rightly described as ''a very present help in trouble"; for when trouble comes, God is nearer than we knew before. Some day a great son-ow will advance toward you: it may be the death of somebody you love; it may be failure in what you want most to do; it may be disappointment in having to give up some oppor- tunity that seemed certain. As you see the blow com- ing, dark and hea\^, you will try to dodge it. You will insist to yourself that your father is going to get well; that you can't fail to be elected captain of the basket-ball team; that there will be money enough to spare, so that you can go on that Alaskan trip. Then the blow falls, and to your astonishment, The Present 67 help to bear it comes, — not at the moment when you are doubtful of its coming, but at the moment it drops upon you with crushing weight. Even the most timid person is braver than he knows when misfortune comes, because almost always the sunny vision of new truth and a new-born realization of what ought to be done comes with the blow. Lightning not only shat- ters, it shows up with luminous and swift flashes what before was dark. So trouble not only strikes, it gives insight. A boy I know went to Yale with the great desire of making either the "Skull and Bones" or the "Keys." Not to get into one of the two most popular societies seemed to him failure. He had been to boarding- school with a group of gay and fashionable men, and they at once asked him to dine at their private table. They were men certain of being "tapped" among the first, and his friendship with them made more certain his success. But the more he saw of these men the less he admired them. They drank too much; they talked jestingly about writing answers to probable examination questions on their cuffs; they boasted that every bill from a tailor or washerwoman went at once into the waste-paper basket. Tom's dislike of these men was returned: they thought him brusque, opinionated, self-important, condemnatory. He did not distinguish between the good and the bad in his comrades, and they resented it. At the end of the term they re-formed their dining-table, invited to it every other man except Tom, and quietly dropped him. With that fell all his prospects of social success. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me," he said afterward. "It made me see two things: first, that I had been behaving like a boor, and then that I was with a group of men of whom I could never make friends. They were cutting me off from the men who 68 Our Part in the World would be lasting friends and from the studies I really cared for. I was blue enough at first, but it did me no end of good. It showed things up as no less heavy a blow could have done. After that I made friends of an entirely different kind, friends I have never lost; and I found the study that has meant most to me — philosophy." The present like the past is malleable. We com- plain of being thrown with dull or uncongenial people, of having hard luck in our social surroundings. But think of the way Dickens met commonplace people and made both them and himself immortal thereby. Jesus, like many a boy of Judea, was brought up to build sheds or boats, or to catch fish. Other boys simply obeyed and followed the trade. But as Jesus followed his trade, he thought not of httle houses and perishing meat, but of buildings not made with hands, and of men whose lives could be turned to the ser\'ice of God. Great ideas carried out make great adventures. Jesus needed no stirring times; where he went, life moved swiftly with the current of his search for God. "The event in itself is pure water that flows from the pitcher of fate, and seldom has it either savour or perfume or colour. But even as the soul may be w^herein it seeks shelter, so will the event become joyous or sad, become tender or hateful, become deadly or quick with life. To those round about us there happen incessant and countless adventures whereof everyone, it would seem, contains a germ of heroism; but the adventure passes away, and heroic deed is there none. But when Jesus Christ met the Samaritan, met a few children, an adulterous woman, then did humanity rise three times in succession to the level of God."* * From Wisdom and Destiny, by Maurice Maeterlinck, Dodd, Mead & Co., p. 28. The Present 69 I once went to see a woman who had just lost her only brother. **A great sorrow is a great gift," she said. What did she mean? That sorrow, rightly met, leads us into the presence of that light that light- eth every man that cometh into the world; that the light of truth destroys illusions, reduces trifles to their own petty size, and illumines the beauty of human nature. The present, then, is what we make it, and its size is exactly that size which our hands are capable of grasping. What we make of that little point of time called the present is the test of character. CHAPTER XVI THE FUTURE It was the Sunday before Commencement at Har- vard College. A group of seniors and another group of men who had been graduated twenty-five years earlier were each holding services at Appleton Chapel. One service was at three in the afternoon, the next at four. The two classes met at the doorway, one going in as the other was coming out. The seniors, in their black mortar-board caps and trailing gowns, looked athletic, serious, and ambitious. They felt the sudden inva- sion of responsibility now that college was over; but they were determined to make a dent in the world; that is, if they could only get their hands on it. How to do this they did not quite know. Into the chapel marched the twenty-fifth-anniver- sary men. They had made dents in the world, some- times ineradicable ones. The world had made dents in them, too. They were less muscular and upright; they were balder; and their faces were marked with lines that made them, on the whole, more interesting and individual than were those of the younger men. Here you saw a man who had helped build the Panama Canal. Responsibility and command were in his eyes. There was the most expert physician in the United States. He looked tender and keen. Here was a United States District Attorney, incorruptible and eloquent. The preacher who gave the sermon was one of the class; so was the tenor who sang Men- delssohn's ''If with all your hearts ye truly seek Me, The Future 71 ye shall ever surely find Me." The seniors going out had just begun to face the future. The men coming in had attained or had failed. Twenty-five years lay between, written over with records of judgment days. This event happens every year at Harvard. Every class has men who become famous and men who fail. The seniors coming out from the Chapel and seeing the faces of men twenty-five years older might almost be looking dkectly into their own future. "Choose!" the men coming in after twenty-five years might say. "^Miich of us will you yourself be?" Will it be possible to choose, or is a great part of our future success and failure luck? At first you would tliinlv fortune played a large part. One boy or girl uiherits riches, another has an uncle who finds a good place for liim; another is poor, unattractive, delicate, or, just as he starts on a promising career, he is hurt m a railroad accident and maimed for life. It seems, then, that what happens to us we often cannot con- trol. True; but the way we each one act about what happens to us is in our power. I knew a boy of five whose right leg became so dangerously infected that it had to be cut off near the hip, so high up indeed that the attachment of a w^ooden leg was wearying and did not greatly help. At sixteen that boy was swimming, rowing, playing tennis, and had prepared for college. He took his misfortune gaily and stanchly from the first. ''Of course I can get into a boat much quicker than you can," I once heard him say. "I've only one leg to get in." So he will go ahead in life all the faster for his handicap. He knows he must work harder, and he is the more liked and admired because people realize the heavy burden he carries so lightly. Every careful research, every year's experience, shows that, talented or simple, the men and women 72 Our Pari in the World who have moral strength succeed because they are needed and wanted. Our future is in our power — not, indeed, what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us. Any mishap can become happiness; any chance event can be made my chance. Frankhn might have attracted hghtning with a key and merely burnt his fingers. Because he was Franklin, he made a study of the use of electricity. We cannot all be Franklins, of course, nor do we have to be; but we can do something worth while, if we take whatever happens to us in the way that Franklin took the lightning shock. How can we best meet an unknown future? Three things seem to be essential: resolve, resource, dis- cipline. In 1916 a society for special aid in prepared- ness was started in Boston. Questions were sent round to every member, asking: ''What can you do in an emergency? Mark your choice on the following list." Then came such suggestions as cooking, nurs- ing, knitting, dressmaking, stenography, running a motor car, raising vegetables, and the like. One of my friends, an exceptionally talented girl, champion in golf contests, expert in dancing, violin- playing and bridge whist, was suddenly horrified at her own deficiencies. ''There is nothing useful I know how to do," she bemoaned. Of course she could learn, but she was unprepared. War may never again come to America, but emergencies mil surely come. If we are to meet our own future, or the far more important future of our nation, we must be trained and disci- plined to accurate and thorough work. We must learn to stand criticism, to keep at any task till it is done, not only passably, but right up to the mark. We must be clear-headed and we must be resolute and resourceful. Life in a city is small test of anyone's ability to deal The Future 73 with emergencies. Said my nature-loving friend, Mr. Phillips, rather scornfully: "In a city, if you miss your party or your connections, you take a five- dollar bill and go to a hotel. When you are alone in the woods, money is of no use to you." This man kne^^•. A few years ago he went for his vacation to an unfrequented lake in Labrador, with an Indian as guide. The Indian asserted, with great assurance, that he had been to this particular spot many times; but on the third day, as the food supply diminished and no signs of the lake appeared, he admitted that he had lied. He had never been there and was absolutely lost. Silently the city man turned round. Without any knowledge of the country, and with only a day's sup- ply of food, they must find then- way back to the camp whence they came. They had no map and no guide but a compass, — and a compass is useless unless you know in what du-ection you want to go. The general direction must be south and toward the river; that was all my friend could tell. The wood was thick. IMany of the trees had fallen so that the two men had to scramble over rough, bare branches with hollow depths below. Doggedly they went. Then came a crash and a moan. The Indian had fallen through the branches into a deep hole and broken his leg. What should be done? There were but two alternatives: to leave the Indian with what remained of the food beside him and go swiftly for help, or to carry hun painfully through those broken and tortuous woods. The Indian in piteous tones maintained that he should die if left alone. Very well, he should be carried. He was over six feet tall and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. In addition to the Indian there was a rifle, an axe, a heavy pack of blankets, a shelter tent, frjdng-pans and food to carry. 74 Our Part in the World My friend strapped the groaning Indian over his back; carried him as far as he could stand the weight, lifted him down and went back to get the pack and rifle. Again and again was this wearisome process repeated till, as dark was drawing in, he, heard a wel- come sound of waters, — the river was near. The river, but no boat, of course. With his axe he cut some long logs; he had no rope or nails, but he tied the logs together with strips of the flexible moose- wood. He cut himself a pole of spruce, skinned off the bark care- fully to a smooth surface that would not chafe his hands, lifted the Indian on board the raft, put on rifle, axe and food, and poled down. What a relief after the weight he had lifted in the tangle of rough woods! But his troubles were not over. As he poled he heard rapids ahead. It was too late to go back, and he knew that his hastily-built raft would not stand the strain. ''We'll go as far as we can," he thought, ''and then swim." Two-thirds of the way through, the raft whirled about, smashed against the rocks and sank. Mr. Phillips swam at once to the Indian, lifted him above the water and bore him ashore. Food, equip- ment, axe, raft and rifle were sunk in the water. He laid the Indian on a bank and walked along the shore. A hundred yards off he saw his own camp, with food, shelter and supplies. Our own future may be spiritually and physically as rough, wild, comphcated as this adventure. To meet its uncertainties we need to know what to do in woods where we have lost our life-way and in whirlpools that break to pieces our cherished hopes. CHAPTER XVII THE CHURCH How many churches are there in your town? Why do we have churches at all? What is the use of a church? It is clear enough, of course, what markets, dry-goods stores, gas-houses, banks and business of- fices, coal-wharves and water-reservoirs are for. No- body can live without food, and in our climate it would be difficult to live without warm clothes and without light and heat. Banks and business offices are useful to bring about the quick and easy exchange of one kind of goods for another through the medium of money. These are useful institutions. Yes, but useful for what? You say, — to keep us alive, to help us to earn money, or even to become rich. This is true; but what is the use of being rich? You have heard the story of a rich man obliged to flee from a burning island and unwilling to part with his gold. All of it that he could carry he did up in a bag and hung about his waist. Then he plunged into the water and made for shore. He had s^^aml but a few strokes when he sank, never to rise again. His gold had weighted him down. Money always does weight people down unless they use it for something. For money is a medium of ex- change; that is, it is just a means, a way, to get some- thing else. With money we can buy a great many valuable things. But there are certain still more im- portant possessions that money cannot buy. Service can be bought with money, but love cannot, nor peace of mind, nor eternal life. To have friends, to be loved, to be at peace, to have what we do continue 76 Our Part in the World after death, — these are goods of a kind different from worldly possessions. One of my friends was in San Francisco during the great earthquake. For three days the fires caused by the earthquake burned, until finally his house was wholly destroyed. As he stood looking ^t the ruins of his property, he told me that his first thought and his last thought, too, was: "What does it matter if all my worldly possessions go? Everything that is im- portant remains. I have my wife and my children safe; I have strength and my hands to work for their support. It is enough." If my friend had lost his wife and baby and had saved his money he would not have been happy. If he had saved his house by some unfair use of the city water supply he would have been still less happy. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Two studies have it as their aim to find out and to give us the key to what is really worth while and lasting: one is philosophy, the love of wisdom; the other is theology, the study concerning God. Some philoso- phers have said that pleasure is what we all want most, and some have said power. But, after all, pleasure comes" and goes. We cannot keep it secure. A sharp toothache drives it away. The death of a friend leaves us careless of what used to give us pleasure. Success and power we want, of course. To be a famous sur- geon, an actor who can make his audience laugh or cry, a baseball player earning thousands of dollars and applauded by thousands of hands, — this is a thing to dream of. But even if you get it, does it last? Base- ball players drop out by the age of thirty; singers' voices grow too old to please; actors must make their "positively-last" appearance before the public gets tired of them. And then even the strongest men and women die. What lasts after death? I suppose this The Church 77 question has been more eagerly and more persistently asked than any other. Religion alone gives the answer with entire confidence. That is one reason why gen- eration after generation turns to religion. At the beginning of this chapter I asked about the value of churches. We can answer now. We come to church and Sunday school to learn what is most worth while, and we find that what is most worth while is that wliich is permanent and brings enduring peace and joy. Nothing can give this but religion. Religion tells us of God; throughout all history there has been no one who knew God as intimately and fully or who followed God as perfectly as Jesus. That is why we study the Old Testament, which is the back- ground of Chi'ist's life, and the New Testament, which is the story of what he resigned and what he sought for, of what he said and did, and of what others said and did under his inspiration. As you learn of great men and women in history you will more and more be surprised to find how little the things that most people find important mattered to them. It is not that they would not enjoy good food, handsome furniture or clothes, comfortable houses, beautiful jewels, the homage of men, as much as any- one. But they are too busy, too full of something else they find more important, to care much, comparatively, for these things. Michael Angelo wants most to paint the Sistine Chapel; Dante, to write his Divine Comedy; Lincoln, to bring the nation together in peace; Florence Nightingale, to nurse wounded soldiers; Captain Robert Scott, to find the South Pole; and each one knows that you cannot eat, drink and be merry every day if you want most to accomplish any of these things. A man's deepest aim is his joy, his peace; it is to him as his food. This was what Jesus meant when he told his disciples that he had meat to eat that they 78 Our Part in the World knew not of. Jesus had none of the things that often seem to absorb men. He was very poor; he owned neither house nor land; during all his life he influenced only a few people, and these mostly of humble station. He did not live even to middle age; and he died a most painful death, deserted at the last by most of his dis- ciples. And yei Jesus was at peace, for he had found, the pearl of great price and was ready to give up all else. He knew and rejoiced to fulfil the will of God. CHAPTER XVIII OUR DEPENDENCE ON GOD "O God, in whom we live and move and have our being." '*.\lmighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid." ''O God, who so carest for every one of us as though Thou carest for him alone and so for all as though all were but one." Here are the opening sentences of tliree ancient prayers that have lived tlu'ough many centuries be- cause of their eternal truth. The meaning of the last is magnificent and clear. The meaning of the first and second is more puzzling. The first prayer tells us that God is inescapable. Some people seem to need solitude. They get tired and irritable unless they can have some time by themselves. Others hate to be alone. They feel lonely or uneasy unless there is someone around to talk to or play mth or even just to be with in silence. Really to be alone would be terrifying. But is any- one ever wholly alone? No; just as there is never any space with nothing in it, so there is never any time with no presence in it; never utter solitude. We call our- selves alone. What do we think about? We say that we recall people, or events. The phrase is accurate. We recall, — we call them back into our presence. We can never be wholly separate from the people we know, for because we have once been with them their influ- ence is still about us. Robinson Crusoe felt very soli- tary in his desert island, but he felt solitary just be- cause the presence of people was all about him. If he 80 Our Part in the World had never known them he would not have missed them, he would not have known what loneliness meant. He had with him his axe. Who invented axes? Not he. He spoke aloud the English language, the voice of great numbers of people. Their life was still ab.out him. At the other extreme is that miller of Dee, of whom Isaac Bickerstaff writes in his play, ''Love in a Village " : "There was a jolly miller once, Lived on the river Dee; He worked and sung from morn till night: No lark more blithe than he. "And this the burden of his song Forever used to be, — I care for nobody, no, not I, If no one cares for me." He seemed to himself to have got well rid of people. But as he sang and worked, with whose words did he sing and for whom was he working? The world that loved music, the world that had invented the grind- ing of grain into flour and the baking of flour into bread was still sustaining his solitary life. We can never be free from our fellow-men, because, however isolated we seem to be, we still have our being — that is our human characteristics — from them. Even more true is it that in God we live and move and have our being. You lose your way in the woods and dread that you may never get home. But you never doubt that the place you call home exists, or that there is a way there if you could find it. You know that reality holds firm even when you are bewildered. If everything about you were shifting, if magic ruled, if the logs for your fire flowed away like water or your boat suddenly became iron and sank, you would be wholly baffled and without God. God is stability and order and by these alone are we able to live and move. Our Dependence on God 81 God is the final reality, within whose certainty we can act with confidence. The second prayer that I quoted spoke of God as one to whom all hearts are open, ^\^len the Roentgen Ra}^ was disco\-ered and first used to photograph in- visible bones in our bodies, I heard astonished people say, "Well, they will soon be seeing our thoughts right tlii'ough our brains!" An absurd idea it was, and yet it made me wonder how it would be if not only what we chose to say but all our passing thoughts were known to our comrades. There would be many thoughts of vanity, of scorn, of pettiness, of selfish- ness, of cowardice, that one would hate to have known. I think, too, that there would be impulses to help, kind desires, aspirations, courageous resolves, that now are never known. Never known, that is, except to God, — a very miportant exception! God hears as clearly what we mean as others hear what we shout aloud. But God does not judge as others judge us. He does not call us cowards because we shrink, or liars because we have wavered from the truth. He sees us moving on a path toward or away from courage and truth. He knows we are not brave when we boast of an act that happened to be easy for us, nor cowardly when we do our level best to overcome fear, — and fail. So God condemns us often when our comrades applaud, and upholds us when our fellow-men condemn. From God no secrets are hid. God is the truth and in truth is victory. When I was sixteen the verses that meant most to me were Arthur Hugh Clough's: "It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe'er I stray and range, Whate'cr I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall." 82 Our Part in the World Something in the universe, or, more truly, the universe in its wholeness, is unshakable. Everybody knows the miserable feehng of slipping into a lie when asked a sudden awkward question. That lie is like a dockweed, it keeps scattering seeds about and other lies grow out of it. One awkward question is followed by another, and you lie again because each lie tumbles down with a loud thump unless you back it up by more. But truth stands firm alone, and the more a truthful person is found out, the steadier the situation becomes. I suppose the reason that we feel shaky when we lie is because we are fighting with our pigmy strength against the Truth, and so against God. Once, during the hardest struggles of the Civil War, Abraham Lin- coln was asked if he thought God was on the side of the North. "I'm not so much concerned as to whether God is on our side," he answered, "but as to whether we are on God's side." Lincoln's desires were rooted in truth and so held firm in God. I CHAPTER XIX OUR DEPENDENCE ON ONE ANOTHER Here is a characteristic story told of Abraham Lincoln. When he was President an acquaintance found him one day blacking his boots. "Why, Mr. Lincoln," exclaimed the visitor in a shocked voice, ''do you black your own boots? " "Well, yes," replied Lincoln, drily; "whose boots would you have me black?" Lincoln was too independent to be ashamed to black his boots, even if he were President. To be unable to care for himself would make him to that extent de- pendent. For, after all, who are the dependent classes? Not the energetic poor who learn to turn their hand to any needed task, but those, rich or poor, who are slack, lazy, uninterested in learning to do anything well, who do not know how to think well, or to cook well; how to cut out a dress, or to cut down expenses in a factory; how to put an argument before a judge, or to put in a window-sash; how to develop a tract of land, or to develop a plan of campaign. There is another sense, however, in which every one of us is dependent all the time. I spoke in the last chapter of our dependence on people even when we are alone. Clearly, all of us depend on our parents, for without them we could not have lived at all. Most of you depend on them for the continuance of life through food. If you could see in a heap all the meat, vegetables, bread and sugar you eat in a year it would startle you! We are dependent on our parents for physical shelter, and even more for the shelter of our 84 Our Part in the World spirits, exposed to ridicule and distrust. Others may dislike and cast us off; then we turn and feel the solid strength on which we lean, the strength of home. We depend not only on our families but to some de- gree on many nations of Europe, Asia and South America for supplies. Beet sugar for your cereal may have come from Germany; the flax in your linen tablecloth was probably woven in Ireland; the banana you had for lunch may have grown in Costa Rica; the wool of your winter coat was perchance sheared off flocks in Australian pastures; your fireworks for the glorious Fourth originated in China; a Japanese plate held the rice grown, it may be, in the swamps of India, and your father's coffee probably came from Arabia. When the European war largely cut off supplies from Germany, we realized suddenly that we had depended on her for dyestuffs, medicines, coal-tar products, and for thousands of other articles, from microscopes to Christmas toys. The entire world is linked together. Touch any part of the chain and the whole vibrates. The very day that Roumania declared war against Austria, American wheat went down in price, for Roumania began to supply the Allies. Not only for maintaining our civilization as it is, but for advance in whatever we undertake, we depend on the discoveries and on the inventions made in different countries. If we did not have an alphabet we should have to invent one; but this was done for us long ago, apparently by the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Greeks. The Chinese, as early as 123 B.C., had a kind of paper far cheaper than the Egyptian papyrus. Printing, that makes the books of all time accessible to us, was invented in Germany; and it is good to think that the first book printed, in 1450, was a complete Bible. America has done her share in inventions. Our Dependence on One Another 85 She has given the world the cotton gin, telegraph, telephone, the Wright aeroplane, and many other valuable ideas. All nations and all times, then, belong together, because help is given from all to each. Only by the cooperation of all countries can the old world plunge ahead into clearer air. Even more than we depend on physical supplies do we depend on one another's character. Clearly, there may come a time when — in a country with as wide a temperate zone as ours — we shall cultivate most of the necessities of life within our own borders; but there will never come a time when we do not depend with all our weight on each other's truth and honesty. We rely on the bank to take care of our money; on the railroad company to keep road-bed and equip- ment safe for travel; on the fidelity of engineers and firemen to whom we intrust our lives. Integrity of character is an essential element of our civilization. Unless we could depend upon it, in the main, in all our deahngs, we could not retain what the past has bequeathed us nor take a step forward. For the structure of our civilization rests largely on the high standard of right and wrong that the best people uphold. A merchant who refuses to advertise falsely; a doctor who will never lie to his patient; a janitor who scrupulously returns the money he finds left by tenants; a nurse who will not shirk the hardest strain or the most disagreeable task; a poli- tician who lives not as eye-server, but with good will doing service unto the State, — these people steady and upbuild our ideals of right. Because they are nearest to us, it is especially our parents and our friends who hold us to standards we should have been too weak to sustain alone. An American lad of twenty-two writes thus to his parents from the trenches near the River Sonune in France: 86 Our Part in the World "All your letters arrive day by day, and I am so glad to get them. They are somethmg to hold on to m the midst of this wild, bewildering life I lead. I wonder how I am going to keep my head under fire? The first moment will be frightful. Happily I have a pretty complete mastery of my person and will soon show my carcasse what I think of it." Then a month later: "I have been thro' my first battle. I am a baptized soldier. I had to live up to the standard you had raised me to. You were so brave, how could I not grin and bear it, — both of you deserve to be cite" (honorably mentioned).* Some years ago, a boy whose parents drank and neglected him was sent by a charitable agency to a Boston merchant, with a note asking whether he could take the lad into his office. Fred was shabbily dressed; his inheritance was against him, and he admitted that his education had been meagre. The merchant smiled, and said he would give Fred a trial. There were complicated issues coming up in the mills of the State, and the president of the company, natu- rally, had his time full; yet he never seemed to forget Fred, nor, indeed, anyone in his office. One day he brought the stenographer some sweet peas from his garden; another day he suggested that Fred might like to go to the Young Men's Christian Union for evening games, and handed him a letter to the presi- dent. At Christmas Fred found a check on his desk, with "Merry Christmas! Perhaps you would hke to get a new suit," written on the envelope; and unexpectedly, the first of January his salary was raised. Fred had never thought much about rehgion before, but he felt its presence now; and one day his sudden question came: "What church does the president goto?" ♦Letter in Boston Transcript of August 28, 1916, p. 11. : Our Dependence on One Another 87 "Unitarian," answered the head clerk. "Why do you want to know?" "I want to have the same rehgion he does," repUed Fred. This is what Emerson means in his couplet: " Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed hath lent." CHAPTER XX EVERYBODY'S INTERESTS When you see a crowd of people lingering on a street corner and others joining them one by one as if at- tracted by a magnet, you make a shrewd guess what to expect; — horse down, fire engine, lost child, news on the Bulletin Board — "Red Sox win!" — will be some of your guesses. These things are everybody's concern. Gay, tragic or startling events these are, and when they crop up something deeper in us than our differ- ences unites us. There are other interests which we all share and yet which lead our thoughts along separate paths. Every normal mother cares for her own son whether he be Abraham Lincoln or Jesse Pomeroy; every man whose soul is alive cares for his nation, yet while Walter Scott cares for Scotland, Heine cares for Germany, and Gari- baldi for the beloved Italy he helped to free. Another common interest leading through a universal channel out to a special person is shown in the rhyme: "And each man thought of a different girl, But they all sang Annie Laurie." Our common interests or loyalties include our family, our friends, our work, our nation. Stretching beyond these on the horizon are two other great common con- cerns, the interest in democracy and the perennial interest in religion. In our time we are looking straight into the soul of democracy, a democracy that is born of patriotism, yet is even greater in its scope. Presi- Everybody's Interests S9 dent Wilson, in his resounding speech of April 2, 1917, said, "The world must be made safe for democracy." In less than three days those great words echoed round the globe. British soldiers printed and tossed them from airplanes into the German lines. Wilson's speech was translated and read to French and Italian children in every school. Newly-freed Russia rejoiced; from ^Mesopotamia were heard the hurrahs of British and Indian soldiers; from snowy Siberia twenty thou- sand released political exiles returning on their end- less procession of sledges must have shouted for joy. Democracy, the government of the people by them- selves, is everyone's interest. The spirit of Lincoln has arisen anew and America breathes untainted air when its President proclaims that "we must dedicate ourselves and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, to the principles that gave us birth." "WTien the President ended this, one of the most important speeches in all history, he ended it, speak- ing for America, in these words, ''God helping her, she can do no other." Why did President Wilson use religious words? Because the deepest concern of everybody is religion. I know that it does not seem so, and that a great many people do not realize that this is their chief interest. You know people who much prefer the latest novel to church, who seem far more interested in the last edition of a newspaper than in the Bible. Yes, in the latest novel and in to-day's newspaper, but the novel of a century ago has little appeal and the newspaper of last week must choose between being wrapping-paper or fuel. It is not the quick-growing poplar tree that lives long, but the slow and strong cedar of Lebanon. Newspapers and novels are temporary and local; the Bible and the Church Universal are permanent and far-reaching. They 90 Our Part in the World draw to themselves those who know hfe and who want the eternal. They draw all men when they are feel- ing most strongly and thinking most keenly. Under the stress of battle thousands of careless young men are joining communion classes. Few mothers but want a christening to express their gratitude and hope for each child. Almost no one is there who does not desire the church service after death has touched his household. When we are living most deeply, we need religion most. Still I almost hope you will not believe it when I say that religion is everyone's deepest interest. Why do I hope so? Because it is too important a truth to be believed on anyone's assertion. If on my state- ment alone you believed that religion was of the deepest concern to everybody, you might accept the next man's sneering opinion that religion was out- grown in these "progressive" days. We can only be quite sure that religion is our deepest and most wide- spread interest when we have experienced the begin- nings of religion for ourselves and have seen its light in the faces of others. When, then, does this experience come, and how? Certain experiences that will come to you, and to everyone you know, we sometimes call searching ex- periences. They really are just this. They search us as a policeman might search a prisoner, or a highway- man his victim. "What do you possess of any value? " They throw aside our trifles, and search for the real. And then we turn and, on our part, search the experi- ence to find what it means, where it leads, why it has happened. Sooner or later you will find yourself asking one or another of these questions: Is the world good or evil, this world that is so exposed to suffering? Is there any value in suffering? How can I keep happy even Everybody's Interests 91 when everything goes against me? What can a person take hold of to guide him in pitch-darkness? How can I ever be worthy of my friend? What should I be without him? How can I get on if he should die? Does life really end at death? What is it all for? Of course you may shove such questions aside, but you will never be wholly happy till you have answered them. They are everybody's questions and they all lead straight to religion. Questions that search us come up most often when we first choose our work, when we find or when we lose our best friend, and when we are in the presence of death. Here is an incident in the life of an Englishman on the battlefield of France. He had never bothered much about religion while at home, but "a, man couldn't sit in a trench hour after hour and day after day with shells whizzing through the air over his head, or bursting thunderously ten yards from him, without trying to get some grip of his mental attitude towards them. He could not see his comrades killed and mutilated 'without in some way defining his views on life and death and duty and fate."* Then the day came when this man was badly wounded in a daylight charge. He lay still in the field, sheltered by the long grass, fearful of death, knowing his comrades had retreated. At last the stars came out, the vast stars that made everything else seem small and trivial. He felt more lonely and deserted than ever, more like a worthless, transitory pigmy under the cold eternal stars. But his thoughts went on. "I am more than the stars for I can suffer and I know my littleness. There is that in me which is not in the stars unless God is every^vhere." " 'God!' he whispered softly, 'God everywhere!' * From A Stvdent in Arma, by Donald Hankey, E. P. Dutton, p. 133. 92 Our Part in the World Then into his tired brain came a new phrase — ' Under- neath are the everlasting arms.' " Over and over he haK chanted the words, till, hours later, the moon sank and his companions could steal out in the dark- ness and carry him to safety. ''He will never again be sound of limb; but there is in his memory and in his heart that which may make him a stanch fighter in other fields. He has learnt a new way of prayer, and a courage that is born of faith well founded. '' * *From A Student in Arms, by Donald Hankey, E. P. Button, p. 152. CHAPTER XXI INTERESTS AS SOURCES OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS Some years ago a doctor called to see a young medical student and found him with high fever and severe rheumatism. "Progressive arthritis," thought the doctor, ''the lad will be permanently crippled." "You must do no work at all," he said aloud. "Take a complete rest. Get out in the country if possible and eat a lot of nourishing food." Excellent and useless advice was this, as the doctor soon saw. The bo}' was working his waj" thi'ough the school. He could not afford cream and oil or country life. Still less could he buy rest for his body or soul when his mind was restlessh' pacing the future. The student grew decidedly worse. Next time the doctor came he gave very different advice. "Get up and go back to j'our laboratory work in the Medical School. Try it and see if you can stand it. I'll look out for your tuition fee." The work was difficult enough to the crippled, muscleless hands of the student, but under its influence he grew astonishingly better. As he forgot himself in his tasks, his body, too, seemed to drop its burden. His hands and feet were crippled for life. He had to use crutches and at times he had to be carried about. The written examination at the end of the year appalled him. "How can I write decently with hands like these?" "Fire ahead!" answered the doctor, laconically. * ' You'll get through." And he did. But the end of the Medical School meant only a 94 Our Part in the World far more difficult beginning. How could he practice medicine? He applied first for a place so disagree- able that nobody coveted it, an ill-paid position at a local almshouse in an out-of-the-way town among sick, old and feeble-minded paupers. There he stayed for several years, making a life out of it as well as a living. When he had saved a little money he hired a horse and buggy and set up a small private practice in the country. Gradually he grew more crippled; he had to be lifted into his buggy and out again on his round of visits, but surely he helped his patients the more because they saw that he was often far more ill than those he went to serve. Year by year he has won his way into the hearts of his patients and into a knowledge of how to mitigate and partially control for others the disease that had failed to master his dauntless spirit. His interest has held him in health and happiness. Another such case is that of a Canadian woman who came, anxious and discouraged, to a Boston hospital to learn whether the trouble with her legs was curable. The verdict was against her; both legs had to be cut off above the knees. As she lay in the hospital, inactive, she thought not of herself but about all the convalescents around her. How much they needed something to do to occupy their time! As soon as she was able, she started knitting classes. When she recovered she began clearly and valiantly to plan her own future. With a little help she would set up a small dressmaking shop. ''I can paddle round and get at the bottom of skirts beautifully," was her judgment, ''and I can always hop on a chair to fit the shoulders." When, with the help of friends, her work succeeded, she broached her secret ideal. She wanted to enlarge her little shop and take in other cripples whom she would teach and employ as Interests as Sources of Health and Happiness 95 assistants. So there she is still, full of ambition, faith, and cheer, carrying out her special mission. It is true of each of us, as of these two, that on the choice and pursuit of our main interest depends very largely our health, our happiness and our serviceable- ness. Indeed, interests are sources of health largely be- cause they are sources of happiness. Happiness is a shy bird : it ducks under when you look for it or at it. It surprises you by rising to the surface when you have forgotten both it and yourself in your work. Even the word "interest" carries this message. Happy people are interested, that is, they are, in our accurate slang, "in it" {iiiter esse); unhappy people are almost inva- riably those who are "out of it." I knew once a self- distrustful, unhappy woman, whose husband's busi- ness took him to a flourishing town in the middle West. She came of a large family and felt stranded and alone, away from old and familiar surroundings. She tried to be conscientious, she took good care of her house and her daughter, but she was lonely and self-conscious and did not readily make friends. When, one winter, she was asked to join a class in folk-dancing, she began half-heartedly, but came back from the first lesson with her eyes shining. "I feel like a new being," she told her husband. "I am going to learn folk-dancing so thoroughly that I can teach it, and do you know who will be my first pupils? All the sewing women and milliners in this town. They sit stock-still all day long and they must need some fun and exercise." Her first plan was not only carried out, but it grew, as all good plans do. Before many years she was giving folk-dancing lessons to teachers, old and young, to newsboys, to firemen, and to the little colony of French-Canadian women who worked in the mills. Once every year a dance which united all the classes 96 Our Part in the World was held in the largest hall the town contained. No question of class or dress or fortune was there. Who- ever could dance best was most applauded. So from class to class my friend goes with shining eyes of hap- piness, and all she says when gratitude falls upon her is, ''Well, if you've had a good time dancing, go and teach someone else." This is of course the missionary spirit, nothing less. It is the desire to give the best we know to all those we can reach, to shout the good news to all who will listen. What is the best news in all history? Surely the gospel of Jesus that God is our loving Father, that to do His will is meat and drink, that neither life nor death can separate us from His love. Wherever or however we can spread this gospel, happy are we. Dr. Grenfell, of whom I spoke in an earlier chapter, says that his hardest experience in life is to be unable to get his great secret — the infinite value of rehgion — into the hearts of men. This powerlessness torments him. He finds the strain appalling. Yet Dr. Grenfell need not fear. His great secret is known. For what makes anyone believe another's truth? Very little his arguments, very much his life. It is Dr. Grenfell' s life that is swiftly spreading his faith. CHAPTER XXII SPECIAL CHOICES I ONCE knew a boy who from the age of two up showed scientific interest. He could not walk across a bridge without peering underneath to see how it was constructed. His toys interested him far less than the things he could make. Surrounded by cardboard, pins and rubber bands, he spent hours in planning new machinery. While in his early teens, he sent to the United States Patent Office at Washington a valuable device for the automatic coupling of freight cars. At eighteen he entered the scientific school at Harvard, graduated in mechanical engineering, worked in a machine shop to get practical training, and when the war with Germany broke out was equipped to offer his services as an expert engineer. So clear a choice of interests is rare; most of us have to feel our way toward happiness and service. We often begin by facing clearly what we do not want. Mathematics, banking, compiling a dic- tionary, bricklaying, accounting, tunneling, shipbuild- ing, will not appeal to many girls, although I know of one who is an expert naval architect, and of another who has been most successful in the Woman's Depart- ment of a stockbroker's office. Care of children, kin- dergarten teaching, millinery, dressmaking, will be rejected by most boys, although the heads of the great Parisian firms of dressmaking are usually men. Men and women differ in their native tastes; for that reason among many others they need each other and should honor each other the more. In the army 98 Our Part in the World women are sorely needed as nurses, for few men keep, a.s women do, a spirit of tenderness, gaiety and pa- tience under the routine of nursing. Few women would be capable of steering or handling a transat- lantic liner at sea. They lack the interest and power in navigation that men possess. What are the best interests? Those that are your own, in which you can serve God in a special way; and this means those interests into which you can put your whole heart. Now you can never quite put your whole self into an interest that is mean or harmful. Something always nags at your conscience, and part of your effort goes into trying not to notice the harm you are doing. Interests that are fruitful are naturally better than time-consuming occupations that leave no fruit. It would be of little value to count how many times Shakespeare used the word "the"; it might be very enhghtening to find how often he used the word "re- ligion." Fruitfulness in an interest means growth. The best interests do not narrow us. They make us more alive to other interests and they keep spreading to new fields. A doctor may start with an interest in science, but if he is a good doctor he will develop interest in people; interest in industrial diseases that come from wrong conditions of work; interest in the health that comes from the right work; interest in health insurance; and so on and on till the end of his life. How shall we find our own best interests? One test is this: For our special interest we shall be ready to go through drudgery and count it gain. Per- haps this year you are both learning Latin and learn- ing to play basket-ball. There is drudgery in each. But why does one seem to you to have more drudgery than the other? Special Choices 99 A second test is this: our own best interest lights us up and makes us eager. Does learning a Schubert sonata bore you, or does it seem worth while? Does camp-cooking or work in electric wiring find you dull or alert? Many of you, of course, will feel that you do not know what your interests are. Take every chance then of trying out for a few weeks or months a piece of work that appeals to you. I know a boy of fifteen who passed his summer in a doctor's office just to experiment with that kind of work before deciding whether to take the long and severe training of a medical school. Continuation schools and college ex- tension work now offer to boys and girls first-rate chances to test their interests. And, given interest, nobody needs to depend upon great originality or talent to succeed; perseverance, thoroughness, sym- pathy and good sense are far more needed. WTien you try to do anything perfectly you will come up hard against an experience well known to all workers. You will find every fault in your char- acter warring against you; you will find that your only chance of complete success lies in overcoming your faults. If you are naturally untidy or unpunct- ual, you may hardly have realized it when someone picked up your things or waited till you came; but an employer does not do that for long. If you have let yourself be selfish, opinionated, or moody, it will soon tell against you in your work, as a menacing bunker seems to say to the golf-player, ''Get over me if you can, or lose the game." Sin is defeating. You want popularity. Do you get it by rudeness, quick temper, self-seeking? You want to be a great football player. Does laziness, disobedience, or fear help you? You want to be a trained nurse. Can you succeed if you are slack, or unsympathetic? You would like to 100 Our Part in the World have a reputation for good fellowship. "Will stinginess, meanness, self-centeredness give that impression? No; every fault throws its dark shadow on the bed of flowers we are trying to grow. We can't indulge ourselves in faults of any kind, any more than we can indulge in liquor, without the result soon showing in the defeat of what we most want. "Why are interests of such importance? Because, like instruments, we are not ourselves till we are active in helpful ways. The pent-up, unused energy of our natures will wear us out as a millstone in motion will wear itself to pieces unless it has something to grind. More than this is true. We are none of us truly our- selves until we go beyond ourselves in work for our family, our friends, our nation, and other loved nations, and, through them all, for God. Every human being needs someone to love and work for. Look for eager, shining, happy faces and you will find them among doctors, nurses, social workers, generous statesmen, devoted parents; not among rich misers, political grafters, or domineering rulers. As we delve deeper we find that in doing our special part, we serve God, each in his own way. Sometimes I am amazed that God could make so many of us and remember all His children. Why so many? What is the use of all of us? "God knows," we say. That is the only true answer, — God knows; and we shall begin to find out of what use we are when we work just as hard and as clear-sightedly as we can at our special task. If you can do something worth doing, do it with all your will and do it in your own way, you will see, or begin to see, that there is in the universe a place where you, and you only, are needed now and forever. CHAPTER XXIII UNIVERSAL SERVICE During our time the people of the United States have used, one after another, certain catchwords. Very interesting these catchwords are. Some ten years ago the first words any foreigner heard, and heard so often that he learned them without even knowing their meaning, were "All right." They ex- pressed our American good nature and contentment most pleasantly. But then came criticism of our rail- roads and of our factories. A new word sprang up, ''Efficiency," and a new set of business men sprang into being called ''efficiency experts." To do every- thing up to the mark is, of course, a good idea, pro- vided that your mark is worth hitting. That is the trouble with efficiency. It does not say what it is all for. You can cultivate the efficient pickpocket and the expert liar or spy by just the same methods that you cultivate the efficient teacher or the efficient banker. The cry of efficiency languished after the great war broke out in Europe in August, 1914. It looked then as if some people had been efficient for wrong ends. Another phrase much used, shortly before that time, was the call ''Safety First," of which some of us were very fond. "Watch your step" and "Safety first" are said to have saved many headlong lives. Ameri- cans are proverbially careless, and I have no doubt that "Safety first" taught for a time a needed lesson. It is ridiculous to burn your house to roast your pig; it is equally foohsh to break your leg in order to get 102 Our Part in the World home in time for a roast-pork dinner. But that im- pelling word ''First" came after the word ''Safety." The motto "Safety before speed" would in most cases have been right, but "Safety First," is impossible to the sons of a nation inspired by Lincoln. So we began to drop "Safety First " after the great war broke out and to adopt as our own the words of the Boy Scouts of America, "Be prepared." But these words still left darkness upon the face of any special duty. Be pre- pared — for what? Preparedness for anything is a somewhat confusing idea. You can prepare for a hot day, or an icy day, a thunderstorm, an earthquake, a fire, a drought, a host of locusts, or a pestilence, a marriage, or an examination in algebra, but to attempt to prepare for everything at once is apt to make one's head spin. Preparedness was a catchword that meant well; but it spurred on the rider without telling him where to go. At last in April, 1917, came with the President's message a new phrase that expressed a great and clear ideal, — "Universal selective service." It meant that everyone without exception must help in the way for which each is best fitted. This seems to me part of the plan for which God sent us into the world and keeps us here. We are worth while from now on to eter- nity, if we give constantly of our unique best. Universal service must be given by each in his own way. You would not expect policemen to wheel perambulators, or nurse- maids to work in mines; but there is something some- where for which each of us is needed. How about those not able to work, — the sick, the aged, the babies? Perhaps they are the most needed of all, although they don't know they are of any use. "What is baby doing now?" I asked a proud father in war-time. "Oh! Billy's doing the best thing in the world. He makes so many jokes that he keeps every one of us from get- Universal Service 103 ting depressed for a minute." And as for many of the old, their spirit is often more clear-sighted, more de- voted, than om-s. Only to-day a white-haired woman who was building my fire burst out, ''Oh! I wish they'd send me to the war, to help. I'd just love to wait on those poor, brave men from morning to night. They've suffered so much, and I say I'm half a sol- dier myself, for my husband was in the Civil War." And I doubt not that her warm, trained and endless devotion would assuage the pain of many a wounded soldier. Universal selective service: each of us doing his special task. It is a great ideal, but there come times when a greater duty calls us. ''SO S." The wire- less telegraph sounds these letters through the air. What do they mean? We may interpret them to mean : Suspend other service. They herald a need greater than all others. Sometimes it is a family need. A young Jew is told by his doctor that his bride has con- sumption. "Would Colorado give her the best chance of recovery? How soon must she go? Before cold weather? Well, I have a little drygoods business just started, but I'll sell out and go to Colorado in a month. I can work in the mines if necessary."* Suspend other service. There he was, ready to go down into darkness to work for his wife's sake. Her need came first. It was an S S call. Sometimes the call is sudden and short, a call from your neighborhood. In 1915 a fire burned down part of the city of Salem. Thousands of f amihes were home- less. To neighboring towns and cities came the call, SOS, Suspend other service. Open wide your doors; pom* your time and your money freely into the gap. Help in whatever way you can help best, — by cooking, by organizing, by building shelters, by caring for the * Social Service and the Art of Healing, by Richard C. Cabot, p. 7. 104 Our Part in the World children. Lift the fallen; put them, as we say graphic- ally, on their feet again. Sometimes it is the call of your nation, misled by false politicians, or invaded by foes. SOS, Suspend other service. Leave your home and serve in the Senate or in the army. The place does not matter if your country needs you. Whenever the call comes ringing truly it is a call to serve God through serving family, friend, neighbor, or nation. ''Leave all and follow me." Suspend other service. The early disciples to whom Jesus spoke did not understand, or did not want to understand. It is giving up all other service that baffles the will. "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." Jesus, who looked into men's souls as clearly as we look into their eyes, must have seen in these words an excuse, not a reason, — a kind of reserve like the reserve of Ananias and Sapphira in keeping back a part of their money. The half-hearted cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. They always look back to the kingdoms of the world, and trip because they are looking backward. It was not that Jesus wanted his disciples to neglect their families. He who so tenderly put his mother into the care of John could not do that. But he wanted to make sure what the disciples put first. ''Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." The only universal service is the service of God. CHAPTER XXIV WAR FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS ''There is a peace of God that passe th understand- ing; and there is a strife of God which passeth under- standing no less. Apart from the peace of God the strife of God has neither motive nor end; apart from the strife, peace is a slumber of the soul."* Our gener- ation has heard again the ruffle of drums, the shout of military coirunands, the bursting of shells. In 1915, for the first time in half a centurj^ men all over this country began to drill. Women began to work for the Red Cross; they learned to plough and to plant, and made ready to take the place of their brothers. In 1917 we entered the great world conflict. \Mien, we asked, is war right? James W. Gerard, our Ambassador to Berlin, gave in a speech after his return an unforgettable answer: ''I am willing to break the peace if only by so doing I can keep the faith." War, then, may be right when all other honor- able means fail to preserv^e faith or to root out an intolerable wrong. Lord Asquith, in an address to Parliament in relation to the entrance of the United States into the war, said the motive that led America into the conflict was ''not calculation of material gains, not hope of terri- torial aggrandizement, not even the pricking of one of those so-called points of honor which in days gone by have driven nations, as they used to drive indi- \iduals, to the dueling ground. It was the constrain- ing force of conscience and humanity, growing in ♦From An Interim Religion, by L. P. Jacka, Hibbert Journal, April, 1916. 106 Our Part in the World strength and compulsive authority month by month. It was that force alone which brought home to the great democracy overseas the momentous truth that they were standing at the parting of the ways."* To enforce peace, to hold the faith, to rescue the down- trodden, to keep children safe in sunny homes, to guard the sanctity of women, to be true to our national life: these, then, are some of the occasions when, as a last resort, war may be right. But we must always say as a last resort, that is, after all honorable means have failed, for the prevention of war, like the prevention of disease, is mainly due to a right state of living before the crisis comes. How are we going to make sure that there will never again be a war from unworthy motives? First, by straight and thorough thinking about the place of war; second, by action to increase good will. Deep thinking is tough work; often it is harder than the deep ploughing of a field and much harder than shoul- dering a gun. But it is equally essential. Lincoln, most tender-hearted of men, wrote during the Civil War, "If God wills the removal of a great wrong and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."t That is the word of a steadfast thinker. See what great principles he has worked out. First, that slavery is an intolerable wrong; then, that the North as weU as the South was guilty and must atone; and lastly, that not to any human conqueror, but to God alone was the glory due. Lincoln thought and thought again, ploughing deeper each time into the meaning of * From The New York Times, April, 1917. t From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ida M. Tarbell, McClure, PhUlips & Co., Vol. II., p. 220. War for Righteousness 107 God's will, until at last these three great points were clear to hiin. Then, because he saw as God saw, Lin- coln was able to be absolutely forgiving and tender toward the South. The rebellious States were to him wandering children. He want-ed them to come back into the Union just as quickly as they would. "Find- ing themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad." Lincoln spent the morning of the day on which he was assassinated in urging his Cabinet to be kind and generous to the defeated South. He had thought the meaning of the war through. The disease of war comes from ill-will, narrowness, and selfishness in the world. We must then act to increase good will. Jesus was no believer in peace at any price; but he knew that the Kingdom of God was the highest good, and that the Kingdom of God cometh not by violence. If he had desired the kingdoms of this world, desired power, desired visible success, he might have been driven to war. There have been many wars for these ends. But while Jesus could not have engaged in such a war, he would, I think, have believed in any war that roots out evil and clears darkened eyes. Jesus blessed the peacemakers, not the passive. He did not say, with Pilate, I wash my hands of it, but "Love ye your enemies and do good." Jesus put one thing first: do the will of God; and second, show good will to men. God's will must always be done, at times, if necessary, through force, but never without an abiding will for good held through force and gentleness alike. In January, 1916, a young American, Henry Butters, who was serving as Second Lieutenant with the British Royal Field Artillery, wrote home to his parents: "I am no longer untried. Two weeks' action 108 Our Part in the World in a great battle is to my credit, and if my faith in the wisdom of my course or my enthusiasm for the cause had been due to fail it would have done so during that time. But it has only become stronger; I find myself a soldier among millions of others in the great allied armies fighting for all I believe right and civilized and humane against a power which is evil and which tlireatens the existence of all the right we prize and the freedom we enjoy. "It may seem to you that for me this is all quite uncalled for, that it can only mean either the supreme sacrifice for nothing, or at best some of the best years of my life wasted; but I tell you that not only am I willing to give my life to this enterprise (for that is comparatively easy except w^hen I think of you), but that I firmly believe — if I live through it to spend a useful lifetime with you — that never will I have an opportunity to gain so much honorable advancement for my own soul, or to do so much for the cause of the world's progress, as I have here daily, defending the liberty that mankind has so far gained against the attack of an enemy who would deprive us of it and set the world back some centuries if he could have his way. "I think less of myself than I did, less of the heights of personal success I aspired to climb, and more of the service that each of us must render in payment for the right to live and by virtue of which only we can progress."* * Reprinted from the Boston Herald, September 29, 1916, by the American Rights League. CHAPTER XXV THE DISCIPLINES OF PEACE At a time when our country is at war for righteous- ness, it is our part to offer all we have in the service of our nation, ^^^len peace is restored, it is our part in the world to make sure that it is and continues to be a peace worth the terrible and tragic yet glorious sacrifice. It is undeniable that war can bring even in its horrible train much that is of supreme good; for war demands our all and human nature when it is called on to the uttermost answers with amazing courage. War brings to men adventures of body and soul and union in noble comradeship; patriotism ceases to be a word and becomes a quickening spirit. War brings to women new chances for self-sacrifice and for wider service. It brings to all of us who are worth our salt an intenser sense of responsibility. But these results are not due to the fact of war as such. Our pioneer ancestors, brought up hard against the stern realities of implacable nature, must have felt an equal demand for service, and for sacrifice. Even now, though on a small scale as compared with a titanic war, the fighting of a famine in India, of a typhus fever epidemic in Serbia, of a flood on the Mississippi River, will bring out the same glad and heroic response to need. But war is like a gigantic searchlight whose blazing eye plays upon experience until even those dim of vision can see. War is life stretched out to its utmost, tense, high-strung. No inch of slack remains. We could not permanently 110 Our Part in the World bear such strain. We do not really desire that peace should have at every moment the quivering intensity of war, but if democracy is worth dying for, we must make it worth living for, we must be on the alert, even in times of peace. The celebrated physician and novelist, Dr. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia, was once seated in the front of the hall at a conference of Boards of Trade in New York City, and was listening to speeches on the prosperity of America. After a short time Dr. Mitchell rose hastily and left the room. His friend followed to inquire, ''Are you ill?" "Oh, no, indeed," answered Dr. Mitchell. "I am simply weary and discouraged by hearing so much talk about billions of dollars and nothing about literature, nothing about science, noth- ing about religion." If peace is going to link itself chiefly to prosperity, then better is any trial that stabs us wide awake and teaches us what is worth while. Jesus said, "You cannot serve God and mammon." The search for money without any ideal back of it makes men misers, or makes them mercenary, or soft, flabby and luxuri- ous. Money in the service of God may build a cathe- dral whose windows flame through the centuries, may strew flowers across a wilderness, may save the blind from despair, heal the precious sick, give the seeker for truth his needed bread. But peace must never again mean the search for money, or for luxury as an end in itself. What, then, are we to work for in times of peace? Surely for the holding and strengthening of those things that were and are worth dying for, — loyalty to our pledges, the rescue of the weak, the holiness of home life, the ideals of our nation. When you grow old enough you will take part in some of these ways, — • you will enter political service, uphold the merit The Disciplines of Peace 111 system, improve factory conditions, help children, give all negroes a chance for their best education, see that no one is forced to over-long labor, care for the sick. And I hope and believe that there will come in your day a time when each of you will be definitely trained to help and to understand America. Some years ago Professor William James was writing on the possible time when war should be no more. We need something, he said, to make us hardy, fearless of hardship, resolute, devoted, loyal in danger to our nation, for human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. War makes these great qualities leap out, but we could not for a second ask for the scourge of war in order to improve our characters. The sacrifice which war teaches men to lay down on the altar, we must learn to make in time of peace. War is vivid, is exacting, is relentless in its tests of character. War's demand is, "Leave all and follow me." But it is possible to be a soldier of the Lord, a servant of the Lord, a prisoner of the Lord, without blood- shed. A great and growing nation needs every citizen to fight against the forces of nature, to control famine,, flood and disease, to fight against evil in high places. WTiat is it especially that war brings out in men and women? jMost of all a disciplined will. Discipline is the power of self-control that enables a man to do what he means to do accurately and unflinchingly whether he is afraid or not. But peace has its disciplines as well as war. It takes a disciplined will to speak up in public on the unpopular side and say exactly what you think in a tactful way. It requires a disciplined will to obey an order in a football game instantly and intelligently. It takes a disciplined will to do your full and difficult share in an emergency and never mention the fact. It takes a disciplined will to stick to your job to the end when you feel like shirk- 112 Our Part in the World ing. It requires a disciplined will to get on happily and successfully with what Kipling calls a diversity of creatures, that is, with all sorts and conditions of men, never losing your own point of view and never being baffled by theirs. Firemen may any day require and exercise the dis- cipline that we associate with war, and often a better because a more intelligent kind of discipline. Here is an incident told by Jacob Riis of a fire-insurance patrol man. Sergeant Vaughan. In February, 1892, the Hotel Royal in New York took fire. The whole five-story building blazed from top to bottom. As so often happens, the elevator shaft, round which the stairway ran, made a marvelously good chimney for the flames, and both stairs and elevator were unus- able. Men and women jumped wildly or hung out- stretched from windows. Sergeant Vaughan darted up the steps and stairway of an adjoining house, leaned out of the window (while another fireman held one of his legs), grabbed some electric wires for support and let three men and a woman pass over his body to safety, while he steadied them with his free hand. Immediately afterward, as he climbed up to the roof, he saw a man standing in a fifth-story window, with the paved courtyard sixty feet below and the flames approaching. Vaughan thought of only one possible way to save him. He got four of his men to sit firmly on his legs while he swung across to where the man stood. ' ' Jump ! " commanded Vaughan. The stranger jumped and caught the Sergeant's wrists. "Now hoist!" shouted Vaughan to his men on the roof. They tugged furiously but absolutely without effect. The smoke grew denser, the flames burnt the Ser- geant's hair. "Possibly I can swing the man up," he thought, and with terrific resolve and energy, he swung the man like a pendulum higher and higher till his The Disciplines of Peace 113 coat was grabbed by the men on the roof. Then, reheved by the weight of two hundred pounds, his firemen rescued their sergeant, just in time. He was badly exhausted. It was two months before he could work again. Naturally he was made much of, but he did not make much of his own exploit. He had ac- quired discipline, and to do the right act seemed to him natural and inevitable, undeserving of praise. CHAPTER XXVI THE FIGHT AGAINST DISEASE Some years ago I met an Englishwoman who told me of an experience I think I shall never forget. She was in Japan at the time of cherry blossoms, a date that the flower-lo\dng Japanese keep as a kind of fes- tival. The blossoms were said to be especially beauti- ful at a certain temple near Kioto and there she drove on a shining day of spring. Her first glimpse was enchanting. The sky back of the temple wall was a gleaming blue and the blossoming trees were cov- ered with rosy petals caught and clustered in the air. Almost dazzled, she looked down for a minute. At her feet was a sight shocking beyond words. A group of lepers in all stages of disease had crawled out to the temple and were lying or kneeling at its base, moaning for help. Some of us, I suppose, would have told the driver to turn right round and drive home. Others might have stopped long enough to put some money in the outstretched hands of the lepers. This English- woman did neither. She then and there resolved to give up her life to helping the lepers. She had some money; she was free from immediate family claims; being the daughter of a missionary, she was accustomed to strenuous, unremitting service. She went back to the city and studied the condition of lepers in Japan. She found that not only were there no proper hospitals, but that lepers were treated as outcasts cursed of God, and destined to perdition. The situation became clear to her. Whether or not their disease could be cured, the lepers should be ten- The Fight Against Disease 115 derly cared for, protected, believed in, and made to know the love of Christ. Since that day her dream has been largely fulfilled, and as she told us of her new hospital, of the lepers happily at work, of a possible cure in sight, many of us asked, in wonder, "And you, how have you stood these shocking sights and this exposure to disease during these eleven years? " ''Oh," she answered, "there is little danger of catching the disease if one is careful." And as for the deformities, she and the lepers sometimes laughed together over them, for the spirit of rejoicing in the Lord was among them. Christ had healed lepers; St. Francis of Assisi had overcome his loathing and taken a leper in his arms. Why not she? I suppose the greatest thing this Englishwoman has done is to bring the spirit of Christianity to those out- cast people, and perhaps the next best thing is that she has helped to root out the idea that such disease is a punishment from God and so not to be opposed, and to plant the idea that God is especially eager to help, not so much those who help themselves, as those who help others. We in our time are going to be needed to fight against disease, as well as to find ways for those handicapped in war to earn a living. How can we help? Think for a moment of some of the contributing causes of disease. Some diseases are due to wrong ways of living. Now, people may live wrongly through ig- norance or thi'ough sin. The life of Dr. Edward Trudeau, who is famous for his sanitarium for tuber- culosis in the Adirondacks, gives a clear example of illness caused by lack of knowledge. Dr. Trudeau had, as a young man, nursed his tubercular brother. At that time all doctors advised that every window in a sick room should be closed, day and night. Dr. Trudeau carried out this requirement conscien- 116 Our Part in the World tiously. The more ill his brother grew the tighter were the windows closed. No one thought of telling Dr. Trudeau to take any precautions against infection. He caught the disease, suffered from fever, and- was told to exercise, thereby exhausting his strength. Weak and emaciated he came at last to Saranac Lake to have a little pleasure before he died. He passed the days flat in a canoe, his devoted guide paddling. Little by little he realized that air was good, not evil, in such illness. He grew daily stronger. Then, lifting him- self above the tragedy of his wrecked career, he began to help others. He has taught us that tuberculosis in its early stages can be arrested by sunshine and air. We must spread the news especially among the foreign- ers in our midst. France is a prey to the lack of this knowledge. Ireland and Italy are only beginning to learn it. Most foreigners who come here are afraid of air and especially afraid of night air. Such ignorance can be overcome. Other diseases are due directly to wrongdoing. Sev- eral are closely linked with alcoholism, and in many diseases the drinker's past weakness in taking alcohol means that his chance of recovery is lessened. Often his will is so slack that he does not resist the tempta- tion that brings disease. Join the fight against alco- hol. It is estimated by Dr. Alonzo Taylor of Phila- delphia that the grain and sugar now put into intoxi- cating drinks would give seven million men full rations for a year. And would it not also make seven million women and children happier and safer, and their hus- bands earners instead of parasites? Spread the truth about alcohol without a tinge of exaggeration. Truth is strong in its own strength, and its color glows with- out artificial dyeing. For the prevention and cure of disease many scien- tists are working with unquenchable zeal, throwing The Fight Against Disease 117 away most of their experiments as failures, abandoning pet hypotheses, keeping unweariedly on. Few can do such work, but all can honor it by an attitude of unquenchable zeal toward their own work whatever it may be. Typhoid fever, hydrophobia, lockjaw, diphtheria, yellow fever, malaria, typhus fever and small-pox are now almost wholly under control because of the patient labore of scientists. What a record is this of lives saved! Great as is the conquest of disease made by man, it is easy for him to take too much credit to himself. The forces of nature in the cure and prevention of dis- ease are far greater than most of us realize. Sleep is the gi'eat upbuilder of health. Its sheltering arms about us, repairing the tissues broken by our restless labor and useless worry, are like those of a protecting father. "He giveth unto His beloved in sleep," the Bible says.* It is true in more meanings than one. The same tender, invisible care that renews the earth reaches out to refresh us and remake us in our sleep. In the presence of light, the restorer of health, physi- cians find less use for drugs and splints. Sun, air, sleep, food, — these great forces that we are incapable of originating, — to them are due the steadiest, most beneficent sources of health. * Psalm 127: 2 (R. V. and margin). CHAPTER XXVII QUALITIES THAT ATTRACT SUCCESS 1. Devotion The word ''success" is one of the most rousing in the EngHsh language. In that seven-lettered word are wrapped up the hopes of every one of us. Success hangs above us like a star, darkened at times by the clouds of failure that surround us, shining out again when by the insight of faithfulness we penetrate the mist. Success is never wholly reached; it is always beyond us, yet always attracting us as long as we are spiritually alive. There comes now and again to a hospital a sad-eyed patient who when asked her symptoms answers that she has lost her ambition. It is that that troubles her more than discomfort, and rightly; for in losing what she calls "her ambition" she has lost that which makes life worth living. Those downcast, sodden people who don't care enough for success to raise a finger for it are of all I know the most depressing. For unless there is something — vague or definite — that the thought of success stirs in you, you are hardly alive at all. I believe that there are certain characteristics as sure to attract success as is a flowering rhododendron to attract bees. I believe also that though the secret of what these qualities are has been often told, it has not yet been fully heard. There is need to tell it over and over again. I will try to tell this secret of suc- cess in such a way that you will hear it. The quality that attracts success which will here Qimlities that Attract Success 119 J_ first be considered is devotion. Devotion implies the ability to care deeply and care persistently. To play the violin indifferently or carelessly is to play it badly. Indifference is always failure. It does not so much lead to failure; it is itself failure. To succeed, then, we must care for our work all the tune. You know the type of worker who says, "Well, that job is off my hands at last!" You know too those who delight in their work. Ray Stannard Baker so exults in the detailed investigation of social conditions necessary for writing magazine articles that he says it seems wrong to be paid for doing it. An enthusiastic Boston doctor was asked how he had enjoyed his summer in Europe. "England was great," he replied, "and the vacation in Spain was magnificent, but nothing is half as much fun as my work at the Massachusetts General Hos- pital." But, you may feel, such enthusiasm is tempera- mental. Some people are hot-blooded all the time, Uke Roosevelt; others have what might be called a sub-normal moral temperature. Ask such an one, "Would you like to go to the theatre?" He answers with provoking languor, "I don't care whether I do or not. It's all the same to me." To succeed in any work it is essential to care, I said. WTiat can a person do who is not natufally enthusi- astic? First, attack his work all the harder. The dull is always the shallow. It is the superficial of which we tire. When we get deep into any work it almost always becomes interesting, even fascinating. You must have felt this in some of your studies. The lessons that at first seemed dull, surprised you by becom- ing interesting when you worked hard over them. Start in, then, with a little carefully nurtured interest and keep it polished by elbow grease until it shines as bright as a copper kettle. 120 Our Part in the World Second, don't admit that you are bored by your work. Wait until that mood passes before you speak of it. I know a girl who gives up one piece of work after another because she tu'es of each. She seems to imagine that the fact that she is bored is of any importance. She does not realize that we must make life interesting rather than wait for it to amuse us. There would be fewer failures if we all realized that, no matter what our mood may be, we can always show devotion to our task. Devotion means not only the power of caring a great deal, it also means doing more than you are told and more than is expected of you. Anyone who does more than he is told is exceedingly likely to be success- ful. We all know people who try to get off with just so much work and no more — the people who cut their work off sharply as with the edge of a hatchet. The workman leaving his nearly completed job on the stroke of four, or the girl watching the clock while practicing so that she can jump up the minute that the hour is over, — both these are sure to be failures, in the sense that they will never reach the heights they are capable of reaching. But the person who does more than he is told to do and does it well is rare, extraordinarily rare. If I hire a man to shovel the snow off my side- walk, and I find that, without being told, he has sanded it carefully where it was slippery, and made a path also to my barn, that is the kind of man I am unlikely to part with. Devotion means also being all there, concentrated, thorough. It is the opposite of the attitude that says, ''I shall not be much late," or ''That will do fairly well," or ''I'll do better another time." You remem- ber Josh Billings' remark about the moral symbolism of a postage-stamp: "Consider the postage-stamp, my son. It takes a firm hold and sticks to it until it Qualities that Attract Success 121 gets there." A person need not be quick or brilliant. He may be slow and almost stupid, but if he has these qualities of thought fulness and thoroughness, he will win success in his own line. Have you ever noticed that we use this one word "devotion" in two different ways? Devotion means caring with all your might; it also means an act of worship. I suppose both meanings belong together. "\Mien you care a great deal you become consecrated toward what you love. It is, as we say, all the world to you. Captain Robert Scott was devoted to his object of reaching the South Pole. Day after day, he and his group of friends tramped and trudged, har- nessed to a heavy sledge, over loose, sandy snow, broken and clogging, or sharp and cutting. It was piercing cold, deadly monotonous, mcreasingly dan- gerous every day. Yet they would not turn back. They were devoted to their cause with all their heart and mind and strength: with all their heart, for they loved it bej^ond life and were ready to die for its sake; with all their mind, for every thought was directed to one aim. That they were devoted with every atom of their strength, no one who knew the physical strain upon them could ever doubt. I said they were devoted to their aim with all their heart, but that is not quite true. Back of their desire to be the first Englishmen to find the South Pole and return in safety, was something else that held them steady under disappointment and unto death. They desired the will of God more than to be great discoverers. And that is why the story of their last weeks cuts through any tangle of repining selfishness down to the bed-rock of character. When the five explorers — Scott, Wilson, Gates, Evans and Bowers — neared the South Pole, Bowers' quick eye saw a black speck. It was the Norwegian flag. Amundsen, their rival, had got 122 Our Part in the World there first. All their hopes of being discoverers were ended. "Well," wrote Scott, ''we have turned our backs now on the goal of our ambition and must face our eight hundred miles of solid dragging, — and. good-bye to most of our day-dreams. It is a terrible disappoint- ment, and I am very sorry for my loyal companions."* ''Many thoughts come," ... he added; but the extraordinary thing is that these thoughts, bitter and regretful as they may have been, were held from utter- ance. The men bore their disappointment, like every other hardship, manfully, though I truly believe that they would have succeeded in getting back safely if the tragedy of failure had not weakened their spirited resistance to hardship. All the way toward home was a valiant, tragic fight with intense cold, with gnawing and weakening hunger, and with dangerous frost-bites. Finally Evans, weak- ening mentally each day, fainted in the snow and died. The rest struggled on, Wilson, the doctor, sacrificing his own chances of safety by working in the cold over Gates' feet. Still, as Scott says, they all were unend- ingly cheerful when in the tent. "One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though outwardly cheerful."! Before very long Gates' feet gave out entirely. He not only suffered terribly, he delayed the others and he knew the end was near. Gn March 15th he deliberately walked out from the tent into the raging blizzard, sajdng simply, "I am just going outside and may be some time." He never came back. He wanted to give his comrades a chance. By the 18th Scott's right foot was frozen and infected and next day he knew that amputation was the only hope. The bliz- * The Voyages of Captain Scott, by Charles Turiey, p. 384. t Ibid., p. 410. Qualities that Attract Success 123 zard held on in fury for four days and the thermom- eter was forty below zero. It was impossible to move, food was low, and fuel exhausted. They were wholly without means of heat. Yet through these last days in paralyzing cold the men's courage was dauntless. To the last they put science first, and carried to the tent where they died besides necessary supplies a hea\'y' additional burden, thu-ty-five pounds of im- portant geologic specimens. The end drew near for them all. As he lay slowly freezing and starving, Scott wrote letter after letter of tender sympathy to the relatives of his dying friends. Of Dr. Wilson, his best friend, he wrote: ''I should like you to know how splendid he was at the end — everlastingly cheer- ful and ready to sacrifice himself for others, never a word of blame to me for leading him into this mess. . . . His eyes have a comfortable blue look of hope and his mind is peaceful with the satisfaction of his faith in regarding himself as part of the great scheme of the Almighty." * For himself he added: ''If I knew the wife and boy were in safe keeping I should ha^^e little regret in leaving the world, for I feel that the country need not be ashamed of us. The great God has called me." Death terrifies men sometimes, more often it comes like sleep, gently and unforeseen; but it is rare that, facing death in the lonely presence of cold and piercing wind, a man can spend his last minutes and use his freezing fingers to write words of consolation, of courage, of peace, and of ready acceptance of the frustrating will of God. Was the life of Captain Scott failure or success? Is it not truer to say that either word is too small to hold the greatness of his soul or the greatness of the spirit of his deeds? There is a sense of worldly failure in * The Voyages of Captain Scott, by Charles Turley, p. 421. 124 Our Part in the World Scott's death. There is a far more stirring sense of heavenly victory. True, he and his company did not reach the South Pole first, but that is almost irrelevant. The attempt was not a game to see who could get there first. It was an effort to know the southernmost reaches of the world. Scott's party reached the Pole, and they reached it because of their intelligence, de- votion and courage. That is surely success. They were successful in their scientific work. The photo- graphs, the geologic specimens, the weather observa- tions and the sketches found beside their dead bodies are evidence of victory. Even more, they reached an amazing moral success. No one can read these letters written by Captain Scott, as he lay slowly dying, without feeling a death- less nobility and grandeur. Death is usually passive and solitary. But there in their canvas tent, the three friends lay together dying in a peace that surely passed understanding, loving each other and serving each other to the very end. Those who found these heroes knew that such a death is swallowed up in victory. When the burial service had been read, their comrades worked ''from this time well into the next day to build a mighty cairn above them," surmounted by a cross of skis, and on it with a short record of their history was written, "A slight token to per- petuate their successful and gallant attempt to reach the Pole." ,CH.\PTER XXVIII QUALITIES THAT ATTRACT SUCCESS 2. Imagination " Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us," wrote Robert Burns. It has long seemed to me a strangely mistaken request. To see ourselves as others see us would be distinctly embarrassing. It would tend to make us self-conscious. Just as Mr. Politicus began an eloquent speech he would become aware that Mrs. Critical thought his mouth too large. As Harry played his pet serve in tennis he would be made awkward by the consciousness that Tom was criticising the position of his arm. If the ''power" did let us see ourselves as others see us, we should often have to muster our forces to do our work without car- ing what anybody thought of us. But there is a reallj^ valuable gift that the power called imagination bestows on us, and that is the ability to see others as they see themselves. Imagination trains the power to see other people's joys and sorrows as though they were our own. Have you ever thought how much more real and vivid our view of our own affairs is than that of our neighbor's affairs? If I fall awkwardly on the ice and bump myself it hurts much more and it is not nearly as fumiy as when someone else falls do\Mi. Yet I know, of course, that my neighbor's black and blue spots are as sensitive as my own. If my friend's train is delayed so that she misses an important engagement, it is difficult to reaUze that it is quite as disappointing as when I 126 Our Part in the World miss mine. Through imagination I can picture her disappointment and perhaps help her out by the use of my automobile. Because imagination gives the power to see others as they see themselves, it is one of the sustaining quali- ties in friendship. Friends can rest in the loyalty of the person of quick and trained sympathy. Just as many thoughtless, pain-giving acts are done through lack of imagination, so dehghtful, unexpected acts are born of sympathy. Only lately I heard one of them. A little old woman traveling east from Chicago leaned forward to a neighbor and asked, "Does the train stop fifteen minutes at Springfield? I have been traveling since yesterday morning, and I do think a cup of coffee would taste so good." As the train drew in to Springfield off she hopped, but came back in a minute looking unsatisfied and worried. My friend imagined the cause. The old lady had lost her nerve. The coffee-room was crowded and she was distrustful of the time. Quietly my friend slipped out of the train, into the lunch-room, and was back to the car with a steaming cup of coffee for the old lady. She could not get over her gratitude. Time and again on the trip to Boston she leaned forward murmuring rapturously, "You ain't got no idea how good that coffee tasted." From the smallest acts of courtesy to strangers to the most brilliant new inventions, imagination has play. Everyone needs it, everyone, I beheve, has a httle. Imagination grows like a vine under cultiva- tion. If you feel yourself lacking in imagination, train yourself to observe, watch for chances to help, try to put yourself in the situation of others. Learn to think ahead what will be needed on a mountain climb; make a point of writing to the friend who is going Qualities that Attract Success 127 away, picture the lives of the people you meet, read books that will light up distant countries or near-by conditions. A friend of mine calls imagination the inside point of view. It is the power to see through the veils that cover people and things. So Jesus looked through the veil in every person he met and deep down to their hopeful goodness. Without imagination we cannot be in any important sense successful, for we shall miss the inner meanings, the hidden opportunities, the messages that come through looks, not words, the chances to see what is new in the old places. Lack of imagination leads to acts that are brutal. A deformed boy in addition to his own handicap has to bear the pain of having people stare at him. Does anyone imagine that he would himself enjoy being stared at if he were deformed? A child who was paralyzed once told me that almost everyone turned round and scrutinized her, looking at her long and curiously as if at a strange animal. This scrutiny was tormenting to her at first and drove her into discomfort and self-consciousness whenever she had to go out alone. She was a plucky child and she learned to ignore these piercing eyes, but a quicker imagination on the part of the passers-by would have banished their unintentional cruelty or transformed it into sen- sitive kindness. Why do people stare at deformity? Simply from curiosity unchecked by sympathy. They do not see others as others see themselves. Yet it is quite possible to express one's natural interest by a deed, not of careless curiosity, but of quick, imaginative kindness. Let me tell you of such an act. In the early uses of the powerful X-ray machine, many doctors were injured. The delicate tissues of their hands were destroyed and sometimes several fingers were so diseased that they had to be amputated. 128 Our Part in the_ World An X-ray practitioner, whom I will call Dr. Swift, was one of these whose hands suffered most and became most painfully deformed. One evening Dr. and Mrs. Swift were asked to a dinner of distinguished people. The doctor was troubled because he knew it would look strange to the men and women about him if he wore gloves while at dinner, and yet his pitiful hands were too disfigured to let him go without gloves. When the dinner began, what was his surprise to find that his thoughtful host also wore gloves all through the meal, so that Dr. Swift, far from being conspicu- ous, was apparently simply following his host's cus- tom. All of us have chances to use our imagination for such delicate deeds of kindness. It is well worth while to hunt for such opportunities. Imagination keeps us from many a hurtful deed. I remember once reading of a boy sent to a Reform School for stealing who was given some watermelon seeds to plant in his garden patch. Just before one huge melon was ripe, it was stolen and carried off. The imagination in that boy was roused. He saw what property meant. For the first time he realized that other people loved what they cared for, and that it was theirs, not his. Much that is wrong is done through lack of imagination, and, on the other hand, the noblest acts are sunlit with its beauty. Shelley felt so strongly the need of imagination in daily life that he wrote: ''A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively. The joys and sor- rows of his race must be as his own," CHAPTER XXIX QUALITIES THAT ATTRACT SUCCESS 3. Readiness to take Responsibility In the life of Sister Dora, by Lonsdale, is an incident that illustrates her exceptional readiness for responsi- bility. Though delicate when a child, she grew up unusually strong, and had, what is far more important to success than a strong body, a tremendous love of people. She became interested in, and worked for, the coal and u'on workers at Walsall, England, who were often badly injured through accidents in the mines. Gradually she became such an expert in setting frac- tures and in dressing wounds that the doctors used to leave simple surgical operations to her. One night a strong young man was brought into the hospital with his arm torn and twisted by a machine. The doctor wanted to amputate the arm at once. The young fel- lo\y groaned out: ''O Sister, save my arm. It's my right arm!" Its loss meant poverty and misery for wife and children. Sister Dora observed his strength. She examined the wound and decided that the arm might be saved. Then she said to the surgeon, "I believe I can save this arm if you'll let me try." The doctor exclaimed: ''Are you mad? Nothing but amputation can save his life." Quickly Sister Dora turned to the patient. ^'Are you willing to let me try to save your arm?" The young man joyfully con- sented. ''Well," said the doctor, "his death is on your conscience. I wash my hands of him." It was a hea\'y responsibility to bear alone, — the risk of letting a 3'oung man die, — but Sister Dora thought it right to take the chances. For three weeks she 130 Our Part in the World watched and tended ''her arm," as she called it, almost literally day and night. It was a time of terrible sus- pense, but little by little the arm improved. At the end of the time she begged the doctor to come and look at her patient. He came, still grumbling and reluctant, but when he saw the lad's arm straight and healed he was genuinely delighted. He brought all the rest of the hospital staff to exult with him in Sister Dora's achievement. ^ The workman became a de- voted friend to Sister Dora. Months later, when she herself was ill, he walked twenty-two miles every Sunday morning just to inquire for her health. When the servant appeared in answer to his vigorous pull at the hospital bell, he eagerly asked, ''How's Sister?" and when he had received his answer, said, "Tell her, that's her arm that rang the bell." We are not likely to meet just the type of responsi- bility that faced Sister Dora on her path, but we shall every one of us find responsibility in our own path, that road which we must take if we are to advance. Whether or not we face the danger and conquer it, depends largely on whether we have cultivated in small things, as in great, the courage of initiative. It is such courage of initiative, such readiness to take responsibility that makes men and women leaders. Watch the faces and the actions of the people around you on the streets, in business, in political life. Soon you will begin to dis- tinguish leaders from followers. What is the differ- ence between the leaders, the followers, and the drift- ers? Notice their motions, quick and intentional, or .timid and vacillating. Look at their mouths, — firm in line or drooping, sneering or reverent, interested or bored. Watch where their eyes turn. Are they intel- ligently examining something, are they wandering, or are they looking, like a collie, for the command of a master? I heard one day a business man speaking of his Qvxilities that Attract Success 131 stenographer. "She is admirable," he said, "abso- lutel}' faithful, exact, orderly, regular, but as soon as I ask her to do anything out of the ordinary run, — to phrase a letter to one of my correspondents, or to make a new decision, — she fails me. I should be glad enough to advance her salary if she would only show some initiative." "What is your httle Itahan office boy doing now?" I asked another man. "He is rising like an aeroplane," he answered. "From the start he was most intelligent and alert! He noticed everything, he helped out in every difficulty, he was so ready to take new jobs and do them well, that now he is at the head of the office staff. He may be a partner yet." In the less responsible days of the United States, it was gaily said that every boy thought of himself as a possible future President. Of the responsibilities of a President we are becoming more and more aware. The strain of unending work, the weight of immense de- cisions, rests on the man who receives that honor. Even in far less important positions the weight of responsibility must be carried. Here is a description of some difficult and responsible ambulance-dri\'ing during the Great War. "Such driving as we do was never conceived of by motorists before this war. . . . Driving a car laden ^dth men whose lives depend on reaching the hospital as soon as possible is a consider- able responsibihty. When, in addition, they have to be carried along roads, or, more likely, mere trails, that are being shelled or may be swept with rifle fire, often at night with no light, and through the unending crowd of moving troops, guns, ammunition, and re- victualing trains, the responsibility is considerably increased. A man must keep absolutely cool and his temper unruffled," * * Harvard Volunteers in Europe, ed. by M. A. DeW. Howe, Houghton Mifilin Company, chapter by Richard Norton, p. 191. 132 Our Part in the World To measure up to responsibility demands steady at- tention, being ''all there/' and there to the end; it re- quires unswerving control, clearness of head, and above all a disciplined will. " Once two men were putting up a lightning-rod on a high steeple. At a, height of seventy feet from the ground, one had to stand on the other's shoulders and hold a pail of molten lead. The wind rose and blew some of the lead out of the pail on to the hand and arm of the man below, burn- ing him badly. If he had jumped or tried to scrape the lead off, he would have caused the man on his shoulders to fall and be killed. But the man did not move: he held still and let the hot lead burn into his flesh. By so doing he saved the life of his friend. Wlien the disciples of Jesus asked him light-heartedly who should sit on his right hand and his left in the coming Kingdom, he answered by the searching ques- tion, ''Are ye able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" The weight of responsi- bility resting upon Jesus, lifted by him as he lifted his cross and bore it, was inuneasurably heavy. Most reformers are satisfied to help a small group, to reform a town, to improve an institution. Jesus came to save the world and to bring in the Kingdom of God. We think unduly sometimes of the tenderness and gentleness of Christ. He was above all a commander. His appeal was never a mere request or invitation; it was in the imperative: "Come unto me." "Judge not that ye be not judged." "Get thee hence, Satan." "Leave all and follow me." These are the words of a leader of men. CHAPTER XXX QUALITIES THAT ATTRACT SUCCESS 4. Truth During the broiling days of the summer of 1863 Mr. H. Clay Trumbull tells us he was a prisoner of war in Columbia, South Carolina.* He was desper- ately lonely, and since he was not on parole, but con- fined under guard in a jail, his thoughts and those of his fellow-prisoners turned persistently to plans of escape. One night a scheme that seemed likely to succeed was proposed. Trumbull at first eagerly in- dorsed it, but as the plan was developed he saw that it almost inevitably involved lying to the enemy. He recoiled, he even refused to go if he were forced to lie. '^ A lie ! What is it to lie to an enemy? Would you not be quite ready to kill him?" exclaimed his astonished comrades. "Yes, surely," answered young Trumbull. ''To kill him would be my duty just as it is on the battlefield." ''Why, then, not he?" Trumbull could only answer that a lie seemed to him a sin against God. Later he thought the question out and came to this conclusion: God is the author of hfe and death. Go\'ernments derive all their powers from God. In a righteous war, the officers of government take life in the prosecution of the war as God's agents. In a righteous cause, then, a man takes the enemy's life as he risks his own in the service of God. But, argued Trumbull, God can kill but He cannot lie. God is * A Lie Never Justifiable, by H. Clay Trumbull, John D. Wattles & Co., Philadelphia, 1893. 134 Our Part in the World Truth; lying is contrary to His nature, and if He cannot lie, neither can He authorize others to lie. Lying is always ungodlike, contrary to the nature of God and therefore always wrong. Decisively, then, Trumbull refused to escape from imprisonment at the cost of a single lie, for he felt that any lie misrepresents and dishonors God. Many men will not lie under oath, but, asked Trumbull, ''What difference does an oath make?" Every lie is in full sight of God, goes against His truth and dishonors Him. It is therefore never, at bottom, a question of not lying to harm one's neighbor or society, important as this is. No, even if lying helped society or one's neighbor, lying is wrong, for in lying one injures the cause of God. At first sight many of you will turn away from this view of lying. Do not do that too quickly. Think of it a long time, let the picture impress itseK on your mind. Hold the idea in your thought even though it does not appeal to you, for it is one that years hence you may see is true. Truth is supreme among the virtues. It is like a lake that reflects experience. Falsehood muddies this reflection of reality; wind- blo\vn exaggeration breaks reahty into uneven sur- faces. Falsehood we accurately call perversion. It twists, snarls, confuses, tortures the face of reality. To pervert the truth intentionally is like sullying a well on whose pure water the people depend for life. Can you conceive of Christ's lying even for the kindest of reasons? No, not to conceal the fate of Jerusalem from its people, nor to spare them the suffering caused by the knowledge of his death, nor to evade the enemies who would kill him. Jesus healed the sick, but we cannot picture Him trying to save their lives by lying to them. His life is translucent truth. A clever man once put together these two sayings: "A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very Qualities that Attract Success 135 present help in trouble." It is true. A lie is a very present help out of difficulty, but, and tliis is the point to remember, it helps you in the immediate present and injures you, and not only you but society as a whole, in the long future. For observe this argument: (1) No one lies except in the hope that he will be believed, but (2) every lie makes it harder to be believed again and therefore (3) every lie tends to make it hard in future either to lie or to secure belief when you tell the truth. I remember as a child being impressed by a story of Dr. Howard N. Brown's. It told of an untruthful girl who joyfully escaped from the restraints of home and went to a country in wliich lying was popular and prevalent. Plere at first she had a time of perfect bUss, for it was the land of promise if not the Promised Land. Everything was promised to her, high wages, comfort, fun, luxury. But notliing was ever done, for lying, kind and soothing lying, was all the fashion. Dr. Brown brought out in this story a very significant fact. In a community of liars or in the mouth of an habitual liar, a lie is useless because it is not believed. Lying is suicidal. If anyone is kno^vn to lie, his words are discounted and his expression or his actions are watched. Therefore lying is only made possible by the general practice of truth-telling. In refusing ever to swerv^e from the truth we uphold and defend society which depends for its safety upon tiaith and confidence. But, I almost hear you say, how can I be decently poUte and still tell the truth? I answer by another question. Is lying really courteous? We do not lie to our best friends. No, I believe that to lie to any one through mistaken kindness is to dishonor him by the assumption either that he is outside the pale of your friendship or that he is within it but is a weakling who cannot bear a blow. That you want to tell him the 136 Our Part in the World truth pleasantly goes without saying, and telling the truth never means dumping out all you may have in your mind in a confused heap. Telling the truth means giving what you believe to be the facts, carefully, accurately, and with special consideration of your hearer's point of view. It is at bottom an effort to back up reality, to do our minute but important part in sustaining God's truth. Here is a selection from a very ancient document, from the Shepherd of Hermas, in which this idea is well though quaintly expressed: "Love the truth and let nothing but truth proceed from your mouth, that the spirit which God has placed in your flesh may be found truthful before all men and the Lord who dwelleth in you will be glorified, because the Lord is truthful in every word and in Him is no falsehood. They, therefore, who lie, deny the Lord and rob Him, not giving back to Him the deposit which they have received. For they received from Him a spirit free from falsehood. If they give Him back this spirit untruthful, they pollute the com- mandment of the Lord and become robbers."* * Shepherd nf Hermas, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Book II., Command- ment Third. CHAPTER XXXI QUALITIES THAT ATTRACT SUCCESS 5. Loyalty In the region east of the St. Lawrence River Uved a half-breed Indian named Tom. One summer two gentlemen asked Tom to guide them on a trip back thi'ough the deep woods to a soUtary pond called Lac de la Lune where moose and caribou were said to abound and little white ermine and sable ran wild in the woods. Tom could not go hmiself, but he said his boy Walter, aged fourteen, knew the way and would guide them. So Walter was engaged and they set off by canoe with a good store of provisions and their rifles and axes. Soon after they reached the Lac de la Lune, Walter begged to run up to the top of a hill near by to get a look out over the country. The hunters were glad enough to let the restless lad go, but told him to return in an hour. The afternoon passed and no Walter; night came with fog and smoke obscuiing the hills, a very uncom- fortable night for the hunters. They shouted for Walter; they built a large fire to attract hun if he were within sight; and they discussed what they should do when it grew light enough to hunt for the lost boy. Both agreed that he was unhkel}'^ to return to the spot where they were if he had been wandering all night, and they decided that the wisest thing to do was to find their way, as best they could in that unkno^^^l and unbroken country, back to Tom's camp. Without Walter's knowledge of the country they could only guess as to direction, and they guessed wrong. For 138 Our Part in the World two days they scrambled over fallen trees before they struck the river and found the camp. As soon as Tom was seen, peacefully smoking by his fire, they shouted, ''Have you seen Walter?" ''Walter? Oh, yes," he answered. "And is he safe and here?" "Not here," he replied; "I ask Walter where were his gentlemen! I tell him go right back and get them." With only a piece of bread, Walter had set out again over the lonely trail to Lac de la Lune. Loyalty to your word, loyalty under any change of conditions whatsoever, was Tom's standard. The two hunters were amazed. It would take at least two nights for Walter to regain Lac de la Lune, two nights alone in the woods with wolves growling around him and only a loaf of bread for provender if he lost his way. Back went the hunters over their tracks to Lac de la Lune. There was Walter sitting on a log by the fire, whittling. "Weren't you lonely?" they asked. "Oh, no; but the wolves howled all night," replied Walter. He told them that when he had climbed the hill he lost his way in the smoke and came down on the wrong side. After wandering about some time he saw a landmark he knew and tracked his way home. But he was not in the least surprised or indignant that his father sent him off directly to find the hunters. ' ' Fulfil your contracts no matter how hard," — that was the code of the stern and upright Indian father. And though it often leads up through rough country, loyalty to your pledges is almost the earmark of character, disloyalty its defacement. Such loyalty begins in small ways, but even in trifles it makes its dent in character. When you make up a bed, study a Latin lesson, or pick a quart of blueberries, it is a test of character, whether you do it right up to the mark and straight through to the end, or whether in the middle you dip into a magazine on the table or Qualities that Attract Success 139 nibble a few of the blueberries that were to fill the quart measure. "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much," said Jesus. I once engaged a Japanese artist to paint a frieze of irises and herons round the base of my dining-room walls. Day by day, squatted on the floor, he labored patiently, onlj'- stopping at noon to eat his rice and fish. One day as I came in I said: "You need not decorate that wall. The sideboard is to stand there per- manently and the wall will be hidden." He looked at me almost sternly. "Madam, that wall shall be painted as beautifully as the rest," he replied, and I was silenced. I had been thinking only of what was visible; he was painting for an invisible master. It was a small piece of work. That did not matter. He would do it as to the Lord; he would not shirk. CHAPTER XXXII QUALITIES THAT ATTRACT SUCCESS 6. Courage Here are two different stories of courage that come from the great European War. Both are true. The first is that of a young soldier in the British Army. It was his duty to throw bombs, a very dangerous task. One afternoon, just as he was about to throw his bomb, it was struck by shrapnel from the opposing forces. Instinctively he dropped the bomb and darted up the side of the trench to escape the explosion. But, turning, he saw in an instant that the bomb in explod- ing must kill the others in the trench. He did not hesitate. He leaped back into the trench and threw his body down upon the bomb. It exploded and he was killed in a flash; but by his sacrifice he had saved every man in his trench. The other story * is of a French mother, an elderly peasant woman, whose three sons went to fight for France. In the terrible battle of the Marne, at the outset of the war, her house was burned down and the two older sons were killed. The youngest, Gustave, — only seventeen, — was her beloved. She felt toward him as Jacob felt toward Benjamin, for ''her life was bound up in the lad's life." A year passed and the old mother heard that Gustave had been wounded and was in a hospital a hundred miles away. She packed up her little bundle of clothes and set out to walk the long miles to the hospital. I have seen, thrown on the screen, the photograph of Gustave and his mother. * From The White Road to Verdun, by Kathleen Burke, George H. Doran Co., p. 166. Qualities that Attract Success 141 They are sitting in the open cloister of an abbey now used as a hospital for the wounded. Gustave is slowly getting well, and all day long his mother sits close beside him. His head is in her lap. They seem wholly at peace. One day the head nurse passing by said to the mother, "Do you not almost wish that your son need never go back to the war? " The mother's eyes flashed. "Indeed I do not so wish. He must go. You do wrong even to ask the question, mademoiselle. What would become of our beloved France if every mother or sweetheart or wife spoke as you speak?" Here is the letter that President Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Bixby, that Boston woman who lost five sons in the Ci\il War. ''Dear IMadam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant- General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the sol- emn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." Do men or women have to play the braver part in war? No one can ever wholly know. All we know is that God gives to each his special task, whether it be pain or death or loneliness, and with the task the courage comes. Can we ever say that men are any more brave than women? They are on the whole more fearless, but is it the same thing to be brave as to be fearless? No; courage is always the 142 Our Part in the World overcoming of fear, and that means that those who are naturally timid may have more and better chances for courage than those who are naturally fearless. A large prize was offered for the greatest act of heroism shown during the year 1916. It was given to a sailor on a torpedoed vessel who at great risk in a rough and icy sea swam three times back from the life-boat to the ship to rescue three comrades who could not swim. Surely it was a brave act, but as I read of it, I could not but think: Who can con- ceivably estimate which is the most valiant act in that year blazing with heroic self-sacrifice? God alone knows, for He alone knows the secret terror overcome, the hopes thrust aside, the dive forward from cowardice to self-forgetting valor. There are many different ways of being brave. It may take far more courage to speak the truth than to suffer pain. It may be braver in a lad to bear without striking the taunts of his companions who think him a coward than to fight. There is a seem- ing courage that is mere bravado. True courage knows the danger, counts the cost, and yet dares to act. There is courage whose center is long, unflinching initiative and endurance. One of the heroines of the twentieth century is Catherine Breshkovski, a woman whose life is an extraordinary romance. The rich and noble Russian family of whom she came lived in Oriental luxury. Money was freely lavished, but not given to the poor. As a child of five Catherine was re- proached for giving a poor girl her velvet cloak. ''The Bible tells us to do it," was Catherine's answer. When she grew up she tried to solve the land-boundary diffi- culties of the peasants, then she began to teach them, till all teaching was discouraged by the government. Her father opposed her wish to earn her living, but Qualities that Attract Success 143 the desire was too deep to be rooted out. She learned a wool-dyer's trade because in practicing it she could go from village to village and teach the people. They did not know of her rank, for she stained her face and roughened her hands to pass among the peasants as one of them. One day the collection of maps and papers express- ing her socialistic beliefs was found by a peasant girl who betrayed her to the govermnent. For two years she was kept in solitary confinement at Petrograd and in Moscow, then was sent without a trial to Si- beria for eighteen years. She worked contentedly making clothes for the prisoners until her very occu- pation helped her to escape. WTiile she rattled the sewing-machine to cover the noise of his undertaking, another prisoner dug a hole by which she with three others escaped. She was undiscouraged by one hundred m.iles' walk in the snow, but when she found that the peasants who were ordered to arrest her would be put to death if they returned without her, she persuaded the other exiles to give her up. With an added sentence of twenty- two years, back she went to the terrible prison of Kara. She was sometimes six days without food, and the dirt and stench were intolerable, yet, char- acteristically, she calls these the happiest years of her life, because there she met the noblest and most undaunted of the pohtical prisoners. Whenever a chance came she went to the near woods and to keep her soul free and sane she sang aloud every tune she could remember. Her father's intense love followed her exile with gifts, but he could not shorten her term. He died before her twenty-two years were ended. Then she came back, not broken, as anyone would expect, but blithe, optimistic, undaunted, ready for a trip to the United States. I saw her when she was in Boston some years ago, a merry, gray-haired woman 144 Our Part in the World of sixty, ready to dance to amuse the children at Denison House, happy, full of hope. She knew that a pure democracy requires time and sacrifice. She felt no bitterness toward the Czar. ''Poor mistaken boy! He is good to his wife and his children. He's a kind neighbor." She foresaw her renewed im- prisonment on her return to Russia. "But what does it matter? I am an old woman." So she was rearrested. From her Siberian exile she wrote again dauntless and happy letters to her Ameri- can friends, all about the kindness of the men and boys around her. Then came the almost bloodless Russian revolution of 1917, and to the exiles in distant loneliness the knowledge that they were free to go home. Across the snow hurried many thousand sledges, and on one of them was Catherine Breshkovski, exile no longer. Before many weeks we heard that she was elected as one of the most important delegates of the new govern- ment. And there she will be called on for a new and different courage in holding the nation to its ideals. She has learned in the hard and noble school of ad- versity and she will not fail even in prosperity. CHAPTER XXXIII WORK In one of ]\Ir. Dooley's pointed and sparkling essays there is an amusing description of the contrast be- tween two imaginary parades of the unemployed. One group carried a banner which bore the motto, "Give us work or we perish." The banner of the other group, he says, accentuated the words, ''Give us nothing to do or we perish." These two mottoes express the feelings of two different sorts of people. On the whole, the American whom we think of as typical, enjoys and believes in work and is vaguely or consciously unhappy without it. He likes to use his hands; they help to express him. When he can- not use them he is apt to feel self-conscious. This desire for work comes also from the fact that Americans expect to rise, and they know that hard work is an Alpenstock. "What Abraham Lincoln said in his speech at New Haven expresses the hope of all true Americans: "I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flatboat, just what might happen to any poor man's son. I want every man to have a chance to better his condition, that he may be a hired laborer this year and the next work for himself, and finally hire a man to work for him." Work, again, is good because it takes us out of the stagnation of self-pity or pride into the current of activity. Work eagerly undertaken cleanses us from self-centredness. 146 Our Part in the World Health, as well as spirits, improves under work. I remember one extraordinary example. A woman over sixty with serious heart trouble, an invalid by necessity, not choice, came to her doctor to ask whether she might not abandon her restricted and unoccupied life, for a time at least, and help take the United States census of 1900. She had done it ten years before and greatly enjoyed the task and its reward. The doctor considered first her happiness, secondly her health. ''Well, try it," he told her, "but do not be disappointed if you should have to give it up." Five days later one of the woman's daughters came to the doctor to report: "Mother is wonderfully better. We take her lunch to her in the middle of the day to save her walking home, and we find her still fresh and eager to go on." The improve- ment continued till the task was accomplished, and for months after. Her heart was not cured, but she responded, as we all do in surprising ways, to the call for loved or needed service. Work, then, is the American's sword and shield. With it he cuts his way, and by it he shields himself against morbidness of body or soul. Some of you are beginning to face the question of how to get work. Some excellent suggestions as to methods are found in H. C. Bunner's story of Zadoc Pine. After his father's death Zadoc is left to earn his living and goes to a place where he knows no one, and where no special opportunity is evident. Quite undaunted and with a readiness to turn both his hand and his brain to anything, he rises to legitimate success. This is the bare outline of the story; read it yourself to get its flavor. If you are ready to begin at the bottom and equally determined to climb step by step to the top, you are more than likely to get there. The great secret of success is to become indispensable, to have Work 147 your employer find that things go well when you are on hand and that he misses your faitlifulness and your initiative whenever you take your vacation. As you rise in the ranks of successful workers, you are going to learn not only to find work where you can do your bit well, but also to improve the conditions of work for those less strong than yourself, to see that it is not too arduous or of the wrong kind. No leader has done enough when he or she has found congenial work. You must make sure that those who work for you or near you are not working under harmful conditions. Here, for example, is a case of child-labor needing redress. A few years ago a little girl of six years was helping her mother in a Southern mill. She could run errands and pick up the spools and skeins, the mother thought, and so help her to earn more money. "Besides," she said, "how can I leave her all alone to run wild in the street or get burnt on the stove at home? I must keep her with me while I work." One day the child got too near the wheels of a power- ful electric machine. In its rapid motion, it sucked her toward itself. Instantly her clothes were caught and she was drawn up in the air. Fortunately the child's dress was old and worn. It gave way under the strain and down she fell, startled but not hurt. If her dress had held, she would have been mangled or killed. Such cases must not only move us, they must make us move. Should children be allowed in mills where there is machinery? Already The National Child Welfare League is trying to see that working conditions for children are improved. By the time you are able to take hold, the opportunities to help children who must work will be numerous and most important. Those who are to become not only good workers 148 Our Part in the World but leaders in work, need to learn two things fully as important as the power of working w^th their hands: first, the power to observe; and second, the ability to think. John Ruskin once said, ''For every man who can see, there are a thousand who' can talk." In my Adirondack camp I employed two guides. One, named George, a clever woodsman and carpen- ter, laid himself out to foresee our wants. If it was a cold night, he put a covered lantern in each bed till the lack of air extinguished it and left the bed- clothes comfortably heated. He saw that we needed waste-paper baskets, and fashioned them out of birch- bark. To save room in a crowded tent, he invented a double-decker bunk of two bed frames, one on top of the other. He put up seats in the woods and planted balsam fir near the paths. The second guide, John, was a strong, pleasant fellow, but somehow his work was often left undone. One morning I asked George what was the trouble with John. ''Oh, he means well," was George's answer, "but he doesn't see." That's the trouble with many of us. We don't see what is needed. This inability to see comes partly from our being surrounded by the conveniences of civilization. How different it is with the Indians! "The young Indians have many hard lessons to learn from their earliest days, — hard lessons and hard punishments. With them the dread penalty of failure is 'Go hungry till you win,' and no harder task have they than their reading lesson. Not twenty-six characters are to be learned in this exercise, but one thousand; not clear, straight print are they, but dim, washed-out, crooked traces; not indoors on comfortable chairs, with a patient teacher always near, but out in the forest, often alone and in every kind of weather, they slowly decipher their letters and read sentences of the oldest Work 149 writing on earth — the one universal script — the tracks in the dust, mud, or snow. These are the inscrip- tions that every hunter must learn to read infallibly, and be they strong or faint, straight or crooked, simple or overwritten with many a puzzling diverse phrase, he must decipher and follow them swiftly, unerringly, if there is to be a successful ending to a hunt which provides his daily food." * But to do the best work we must not only observe; we must also think. I gave in Chapter XII an ac- count of Booker T. Washington's and of Abraham Lincoln's desire for education. Booker T. Washing- ton wanted to be able to do things, and the school he sought was primarily an industrial school. Lincoln most of all wanted to understand, to gain knowledge. He did not vitally care whether he earned a living by his knowledge or not. On the whole we might say that Booker Washington wanted answers to the question ''How?" and Lincoln wanted answers to the question ''Why?" Most people are content with asking "i/oiyf " How do you sail a boat? How do you build a house? How do you raise hens? How do you learn to be a mechan- ical engineer? How do you make a vegetable garden? How do you bandage a wound? Comparatively few people see any use in asking "Why?" but those who do are apt to get farthest ahead in the long run, though not always at the start. The reason for this is that back of every "How" there is a "Why," that is, a reason. How do you take a backhander in tennis? You turn sideways, cross your right arm over to your left side, shift your hand on the racket so that the back of your hand is nearest your body, and hit the ball from as far back as your arm can reach. Yes, but why do you take a ball back-handed? Here we * From Boy ScoxUs of America, by Ernest Thompson Seton. 150 Our Part in the World get at the reason. It is quicker to shift the position of your arm than to run sideways. ''How shall I build a wooden house?" is a very different question from ''Why should I build a wooden house?" The answer to the latter question may con- vince you that you ought not to build in wood at all: stone, brick, or concrete may be what you really want; even a khaki tent may answer your purpose. "How did the Allies resist the Central Powers?" is a ques- tion that will interest every military man. But "Why did the Allies resist the Central Powers?" is an inquiry far more penetrating, and of interest to every one. "Why is loyalty to one's word more important than death?" "Why is democracy the hope of the world?" The power to think which enables us to answer such questions as these penetrates, before long, into religious realms. The question "Why?" when we follow it as we would follow a brook, leads on to a larger kind of question, as the brook speeds on to the sea. CHAPTER XXXIV TEAM PLAY As 3^ou look over the courses of study in a high school catalogue, do you ever feel that there are gaps, and that the things you most want to know have been left out? "When I hear of nature study, I often ask myself, why not courses in human nature study? For though it is interesting to know about the trans- formation of caterpillars and the best methods of pressing flowers, it is certainly far more essential to understand the transformations in human beings and the wa^'s of preserving right relations to them. And though you may want to get on in your study of the Latin names of plants, you want far more to get on with men and women, with your comrades and your employers. That is true, people say, but it is simply impossible to make a study of human nature. I do not agree. I believe that by observation, by thought, and by practice, we can learn to know people well and to make our relations to them far better than the}^ often are now. Doctors learn the art of respond- ing wisely to human nature; politicians learn to get on with all sorts and conditions of men; prison re- formers grow to understand the men and women under their charge. There is skill but no magic in the process. We learn because we want and need to learn ; also because we practice the art of team play. Team play has a double meaning. Accent the word play and it applies to sport, but accent team and it means acting together rather than singly in any enter- prise. The English-speaking races have long been 152 Our Part in the World devoted to sport. Tennis is described by Shakespeare and was even then a well-estabHshed game. Cricket in England and baseball in the United States are games in which an entire nation exults. And I sup- pose that the greatest gain from such sports, beyond and above that of health and happiness, has been the development of fair play and of team play. Fair play I have described before as a characteristic Amer- ican trait. Team play, an almost equally important trait, we are learning partly through the stress of modern war, which requires all members of the nation to work together, and partly in early youth, through athletics. In athletics everybody has to possess or to acquire the power to be a good loser. If two are playing against one another, one must win and one must lose; therefore to be both a good loser and a good winner is essential. How does one learn to be a good loser? It comes much harder to some folks than to others. The happy-go-lucky and the thoughtless may forget the loss of a game instantly, but to those who find defeat hard, the only cure lies in a very swift read- justment of one's point of view. The readjustment in one's mind is something like this: ''I'm beaten! Well, I am going to learn to play so much better, that I can win. I'm beaten, but that is no reason for being sulky. I've got to brace up, and congratu- late the winner. It wasn't hard luck; I was not good enough to win." To win without conceit is a parallel art, learned, first of all, because conceit is universally unpopular, but becoming in the end a definite habit of looking beyond the immediate and transitory success to one's own ideal. For one never wholly succeeds and one never wholly fails. Beyond the success in a particu- lar game one looks out to the vast possibilities of any Team Play 153 interesting game, and bej'ond a momentary failure, to all which that failure can teach of future success. It is often in athletics that the power of team play is first learned. If this power develops as it should, it becomes a far greater thing, the abihty to get on with different kinds of people. How can this power of getting on with many kinds of people be learned? First by the clearly chosen intention of liking every- body. In the summer of 1917, when starvation faced the entire world, the United States Department of Agriculture, among other wise suggestions for food economy, issued this one: ''Remove from your vocabu- lary 'Don't like' or 'Can't eat.' Most individual prejudices against certain foods are either imaginary or baseless. Try to hke all kinds of foods; give them a fair trial." Translate this into other terms and it still holds good. "Remove from your vocabulary 'Don't like' or 'Can't get on with.' Most individual prejudices against certain folks are either imaginary or baseless. Try to like all kinds of folks; give them a fair trial." Again and again you wall find that the reason you don't like people is because you think they don't like you, and the reason they don't like you is because they imagine that you don't like them. It is a vicious circle. Break it! How? Make a point of noticing every good quality the disliked person possesses. Praise him to yourself whenever you think of him and whenever you speak of him. Above all, do him a good turn whenever you have a chance. It is diffi- cult to keep on bad terms with anyone to whom you keep doing kindnesses. Deem yourself a failure if you can't get on with a wide variety of people. Vari- ety is the spice of life. Like everybody, and you are pretty sure to be hked. One great secret in getting on with people and with 154 Our Part in the World work, too, is apparently a negative one. It is the power to refrain. "He was so provoking that I couldn't help giving him a piece of my mind." Now a piece of your mind may well be a most generous and intimate gift, but the piece we give under irritation is apt to be raw. Can you refrain from criticism? Can you refrain from gossip? Can you refrain from rudeness? Can you refrain from temptation that will waste your time and misdirect your effort? The things a person has the self-command not to say or not to do may help him more than seven-league boots that carry him in the wrong direction. Ability to get on with all sorts of people is depend- ent largely on interest in them and a real desire to understand them. The point of contact, even with entire strangers, is quickly found when we are looking for the best in sight. One every-day incident will illustrate this point. On a stage-coach trip in the Yosemite Valley a few summers ago, we were one day stranded at the foot of the mountain. The coach in which we had been traveling left us to return to its starting-point. Another coach was to meet us, but as we alighted there was no sign of it. Half an hour passed and still no coach was in sight. The situation looked sterile. We were on a dusty road with no view in any direc- tion except sight of further stretches of dusty road, a large, roughly constructed stable, and a little shanty in which the stable-keeper lived. The stout old Ger- man in our party with his equally stout wife in their crumpled linen dusters settled down on the bank to growl at fate. Nothing could move them from this engrossing occupation. The stableman was currying his horses and did not invite interruption. The bride and her adoring husband had other reasons for ab- sorption. We peered about us for possible openings. Tea7n Play 155 Then we saw the door of the little shanty open and a child of three toddled out, followed slowly by its lame mother, who carried a baby. She came some- what painfully up the steep road and greeted us. "Oh, I'm glad to see you folks! It is so lonesome here, and most people go right on as soon as the horses are changed." The Germans and the bride ignored the interruption and stared past her down the coach- less road. We turned to her eagerly: "Do you live here all the year round, and are there no neighbors?" "Nobody nearer than Raymond. In the winter I go there and it's perfectly lovely," she said, naming a dreary town which the railroad terminus had evolved, — a town we had rejoiced to leave. "But eight months of the year L have no one to talk to but John, and he's mostly busy \^dth the horses. I don't dare to think what would happen if the children were to take sick. There is no doctor within fifty miles. The baby's teething now and she's very fretful. I don't think the milk suits her." An inlet into patient loneliness opened before us; part of the anxiety we could cure, a little of the lone- liness we could Hghten for a time by the lift of human kindness. The doctor prescribed a better mixing of milk for the baby, he gave the tired woman some directions for her own help, he looked at the bruised arm of the stable-keeper, washed and bound it up. And one more grievance was alleviated, — httle Charlie, aged three, persistently ran away. We suggested tethering him to a large stone, and, feeUng the irre- sistible pull of the rope when he reached the limit, Charfie accepted the inevitable with entire content- ment. The arrival of the coach startled us; we were not nearly at the end of an interesting talk. We had only time to give our address to the woman and ask 156 Our Pari in the World her to let us know about the baby's health. The rest of the party growled through all the long drive in the moonlit woods. Our minds were full of a little human drama, a touch of reality as moving in its way as the chastened outline of the Half-Dome. Not every halting-place contains a bit of human drama, but the seeing eye, the readiness of sympathy, the resource of penetrating faith, will never fail to find and to construct the best personal relations. Team play, then, in its least important form makes one a good mixer, liked in any society. In its more important form it makes one an invaluable worker, capable of organizing a group. In its highest form it makes one a master of fate. CHAPTER XXXV FRIENDSHIP I WISH we had a word intennediate between "ac- quaintance" and "friend." When I receive a multi- graphed letter from a total stranger beginning "Dear Friend," it is apt to go into that useful article of furniture, my waste-paper basket. And why? Be- cause he has addressed his letter to the wrong person: I am not his friend. I know that I have not won the title. I want the word deepened, not lessened, in meaning. In an official report printed by a Directory of Charities a few years ago a well-known institution of philanthropy gives the following notice: "Friend- ship furnished to all ages and both sexes." The remark was made in earnest, but it is best received with humor. Friendship cannot be dealt out like pea-soup to all comers. It cannot be cut m measured lengths like a machine-made suit. Pity can be given, servility may be bought, but friendship is won or grows by the grace of God. WTiat, then, is friendship? Friendship is a re- lationship in which we mutually and lovingly seek to find and sustain in one another the fullest life. How dry that sounds! Let us try again. Emerson says that there are two qualities essential to friendship, truth and tenderness. ' ' A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which 158 Our Part in the World men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another." * When we face clearly the meaning of this perfect truthfulness which is essential to friendship we see that it at once limits the number of those whom v^^e can call our friends. Like a sudden advance in the standard of marking an examination, it excludes as below par much that has before passed muster. What would it be to have every thought, great or trivial, float out unchecked into hearing? Almost invariably we restrain our thoughts and revise them before we speak. A stranger often misunderstands our meaning unless we do this. We ourselves are sometimes ashamed of what we have for a few moments let ourselves think. But Emerson speaks of friendship as a relation of such trust that even our unchastened and fleeting thoughts would be seen by our friend in their true perspective and so understood. There is another aspect to this perfect openness. The presence of my friend may enable me to speak aloud my inner- most thoughts, because his presence will abash all that is unworthy and call forth something better than I myself knew before. Emerson does not, of course, mean that one should always think aloud with one's friends. That would become both embarrassing and wearisome. What he does mean is that nothing disloyal to our friendship should be permitted to linger in our thought. Is it right ever to say behind a friend's back what you would be unwilling to have him or her hear? Of course, there might be compliments that would embarrass our friend. There might be something about her health that we wanted to talk over with the doctor or with her mother, and were unwilling to have her hear. There * Essays, First Series, by P. W. Emerson, Houghton Mifflin Company. Friendship 159 are friends so sensitive that we could not give them any direct criticism though we might within perfect kindness use the same words in speaking of their faults to another. Perhaps we may agree on this state- ment: "We should never say behind a friend's back what we should be ashamed to have him hear." Do we live up to this standard? Since I clearly faced this requirement of friendship, I have been shocked to find how easily I can fall into careless, disloyal criti- cism, that I would be ashamed to have my friend hear. The second quality by which Emerson describes friendship is tenderness. I think he used this word rather than any other synonym of affection to express a tie at once hot and pure: "We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed and we so pure that we can offer him tenderness?" * Tlirough these two characteristics of perfect sin- cerity and of tenderness we reach far into the nature of friendship. I should add as a closely connected es- sential of friendship that it reaches out to include the whole of a person's life and interests. "I can't be friends with anyone unless I know what his real relig- ious beliefs are," said a very unanalytical and spon- taneous woman. She wanted the whole of her friend, and in this whole, religion w^as so integral a part that she could not feel herself thoroughly a friend to any one until she knew what it was that was most central in his life. Tenderness, openness and confidence, — especially reHgious confidence, — these, then, are the characteristics of friendship. \\Tiat are the best ways to win and to keep friends? Three! Be worth knowing; be outgoing; be growing. * Op. cit. 160 Our Part in the World Friendship sometimes comes unsought and it is always partly undeserved, as every friend knows. We dig the channel for a stream but we do not supply the rain; we did not plant the exquisite ferns and iris that bend over the brook. Nevertheless, unless we keep the channel deep and unclogged, the stream will dwindle or overflow to other banks. If we are truly worth knowing, someone will find it out, as birds find in a drought the deeper pools that have not dried. We win and keep friends, also, by being outgoing and lovable, not by the effort to be loved. The ardent passion to be loved scorches friendship. It is when we think of others that our friends think most of us. It is when we are wide-awake to the interests of the world and care more about others than ourselves, that people find us good comrades. An enduring friendship, therefore, depends on our growing more worthy of friendship rather than on our being forever near one another. Absence is far less a barrier than the most continual intercourse tainted by pettiness or by jealousy. Every time we are unfair or disloyal to our friends we are carried farther than a thousand miles away from them. I find myself more and more sure that people hear even an unuttered suspicion of them. We feel distrust and disloyalty through all surface cordiality. It sounds strange, yet it is really true, that if we have said un- kind things behind a friend's back, he will know it, though he may hardly be aware that he knows it. Something delicate in the friendship is crushed by every pettiness. But absence rightly spent may even strengthen friendship. When we meet again a friend we have not seen for years, one of the greatest joys is to find that we are even better friends than we knew how to be before. Our experience, our loyalty to our work, our gains in self-control, in sympathy and in Friendship 161 resourcefulness wall make us each year more useful friends. We shall have the marvelous experience of finding that all we have done, have suffered, have conquered, has prepared us for meeting again our old friends and for making new ones. We need not fear absence in friendship; we must rather dread and shun the disintegrating power of wrong doing and WTong thinking. CHAPTER XXXVI ENEMIES A PROMINENT citizen of Boston was once asked what text in the Bible had impressed him most as a boy. ''The text 'Love your enemies,' " he rephed instantly. "It seemed to me amazing. I could not understand how it was possible to love my enemies. And yet the saying felt true to me. I knew in some strange way that it was the right thing to do." How, indeed, can we love our enemies? It seems absolutely self-contradictory. Enemies are people we hate. Can one turn wolves into sheep-dogs? It will help us to answer this question if we define the word "enemy." Our enemies, it seems to me, are the people who tempt us to wrong doing, who thwart our efforts, misrepresent us, work secretly or openly to injure us. Naturally, we dislike them. Owen Jolmson, in The Varmint, describes the rivalry between Dink Stover and Tough McCarthy.* Stover hated Tough bitterly, and had hated him ever since the day when he. Stover, just arrived at school, had "been reprimanded for freshness by Tough and a number of older boys. Most of his first year Dink Stover had continued to be impudent, had taken re- proof grumpily, and had finally centered all his bitter- ness on Tough. In his second year. Stover, on ac- count of his speed in running and his quick mind, made the school Varsity eleven as a substitute. He had by now learned his place and behaved himself like a proper lower-form boy; he was on good terms with the rest of the school, but not with Tough. * Retold from The Varmint, by Owen Johnson, Baker Taylor Co. Enemies 163 Him he hated still, and would accept no chance for reconciliation. Finally came the great game of the year, and owing to mischances among the regular members of the team Stover was put in. The game was already going against his side. In vain the cap- tain had tried to urge on the team; they had little fight left in them. Stover did his best, but he could not feel that the others were doing all they could. There was Tough McCarthy in particular; why didn't he fight more, thought Stover bitterly. Then gradually Stover became so occupied in try- ing to see ways to get through that other line that he forgot to hate Tough, w^ho was on his side, and sud- denly he realized that it was Tough who had been hauling him out of a desperate scrimmage, who had given him a pat on the back, who had cried out, "Good old Dink!" The attack was coming all on his end now, and he and Tough McCarthy were the only ones who could stop the advance. Dink plunged ahead side by side with his former enemy, no longer alone and desperate, but nerved with the conscious- ness of a partner whose gameness matched his own. They carried the ball thirty yards down the field, only to be forced back again toward their own goal. Dink began to his amazement to find that he loved Mc- Carthy, fighting there by his side. In one of the last plays Stover was knocked out. As they walked him up and down for a minute it was McCarthy's arm which was round him. "O Dink, you can last, can't you?" ''I'm all right." "It's the last stand, old boy." So the game began again, with only two minutes more to play. Stover saw their own goal posts right over his shoulders; they must hold their opponents from scoring. He gave a harsh cry and slammed his way through the inter- ference with Tough beside him. And then — they 164 Our Part in the World heard the call of time. The ball had been only four yards from the goal posts, but the other side had not scored. That evening Dink wandered down in the darkness to the field to think it all over again; and there he found McCarthy, who had come to do the same thing. ''Hullo," said Tough, ''that was a great game." "It was you pulled me through," cried Stover. "Rats!" "It was; and, Tough, — I guess we won't have any fight now." "No — not after this." "But what did we have a grudge for?" wondered Stover. "Why, I always liked you. Dink, but you wouldn't have it." "I was a mean little varmint," cried Stover. And then the school rushed down over the hill, hunting for them, and carried them off to be cheered with the rest of the team at the bonfire. As he went to sleep that night Stover thought: "How bully it was! And Tough McCarthy, what a bully chap — bully! We're going to be friends — ^pals! Everything is bully — everything!"* Our enemies, strange as it may seem, are the very people we need. We can never succeed in football, in politics, in social work, in managing a household, in caring for children or indeed in anything else until all our weak spots in character are toughened or invulner- able. Our enemies are just the people who find out and attack us in our weakest spots. They keep right at it until we have grown strong in that spot and can no longer be hurt there. I know a girl who can't stand being criticised or ridiculed. Naturally, she hates the kind of people who seize on her every peculiarity and hold it mercilessly up to the limelight. Hateful ene- mies! Yes, but for that very reason they are her most useful allies. No one can be thoroughly successful, do any remarkable work, or hold any prominent position * The Varmint, by Owen Johnson, pp. 283 and 287. Enemies 165 without being criticised up and down. ' He must learn to laugh at himself quicker than others laugh at him. He must learn how to take criticism; not merely to take it coolly, but to welcome it with outstretched hands. Achilles had a single vulnerable spot, — his heel. Of course his enemies attacked that spot. If Achilles had learned early from the assaults of his foes, he might have made even his heel in\Tjlnerable. When Charles Darwin published his book. The Origin of Species, he knew that it would be violently condemned on all sides. It was. What did he do? He kept the most careful account of each criticism, so that the next edition of his book would have the benefit o^ every true remark that the enemies of his views had made. It is much more important, he told his friends, to know what is said against your book than what is said in favor of it. The criticism may point out where you are weak. We need our enemies, then, just because they are peculiarly trying. ""What trying weather!" people say as they work wearily through a broiling summer day. Trying, yes, but in another sense. The weather tries and thereby tests us. Can weather dominate us? Can pain make us u'ritable? Does wearing less good clothes than our friends trouble us? ^ATiy, then we still need trjdng days, illness, pain, and poverty, for these enemies are still unconquered. "The last enemy that shall be put under foot is death." There may come a time when we do not need death. If so, it will be because we have overcome death by living here and now within immortal life. Enemies, then, help us to be successful. But how can they ever become friends? Back in the Old Testa- ment, even in the often sarcastic book of Proverbs, an early and true answer is found. "If thine enemy be 166 Our Part in the World hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink; for thou wilt heap coals of fire upon his head" (Proverbs 25: 21, 22). Jesus not only told us to love our enemies, he told us how we could do it. ''But I say unto you. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). It is an extraordinary fact that we cannot keep on steadily doing good to an enemy and still hate him. If you really mean to love your enemy don't just try to like him. Think up what it is he wants most and help him to get it. Gradually you will find that the mask that covered his real face and made him look like an enemy has fallen. Opportunities to transform our enemies into friends are always nearer than we think. In Stevenson's Kid- napped is a famous scene of reconciliation through music. Alan Stewart was a bitter enemy to Robin Macgregor. The feud had come down from father to son, and it burst into flame the minute that Alan and Robin met. Duncan Dhu, the host of both, made haste to intercept the contest of swords by pro- posing a contest of bagpipes, and somewhat sullenly the two youths postponed their duel. Robin started the contest on the pipes, and Alan, giving but a faint breath of praise, took the pipes and embroidered exquisitely on his rival's theme in a series of warbling notes. "That's no very bad, Mr. Stewart," said his rival. ''You're a very creditable piper for a Stewart." And taking the pipes he greatly improved on Alan's theme. Alan's face grew lowering and he sat and gnawed his nails, bitterly resenting his rival's skill. But Robin did not end with exulting over his victory. Suddenly he began to play the pibroch that all Alan's family had Enemies 167 loved, and to play it with consummate skill. Alan's face changed, and before the music had gone far his anger had fled before its magic. "Robin," said Alan, "ye are a great piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. Body of me! Ye have mail music in your sporran than I have in my head. And though it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, it'll no be fair. It would go against my heart to haggle a man that can blow the pipes as ye can!"* And so a current from far above the combatants swept away their enmity. Against the force of sky-blown music, petty anger had no hold. Seen in its laughable little- ness, the quarrel was soon made up. * Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson, chap. xxv. CHAPTER XXXVII MISFORTUNE AS OPPORTUNITY Can a very great misfortune leave us with a better opportunity to succeed than we had before? It seems almost impossible! Yet consider the case of Helen Keller. Born in a little town in Alabama, she was, up to the age of eighteen months, just one among thousands of healthy, happy babies. Then almost the greatest physical handicap conceivable came to her. After a few days of cerebral meningitis, she came back to life totally blind and totally deaf, a helpless, speechless baby, groping her way in a darkened world. An appalling misfortune it must have seemed to her parents. They may have felt at times that it would have been better for her if she had not lived through the scourging fever. And yet it seems to me almost impossible that Helen Keller without her heavy handi- cap could have had anything like the chances she has had with it. She would probably have grown up ambitious, happy, and a talented writer, but she could have had nothing to tell so poignant, enlighten- ing, and stimulating as what she has written in her autobiography and in The World I Live In. For Helen Keller lives in a mysterious world. All of us want to know what very few of those within its dark, still walls can tell. She writes gaily: ''But while other self-recording creatures are permitted at least to seem to change the subject, apparently nobody cares what I think of the tariff, the conservation of our natural resources, or the conflicts which revolve about the name of Dreyfus. If I offer to reform the educational system Misfortujie as Opportunity 169 of the world, my editorial friends say,. 'That is inter- esting. But will you please tell us what idea you had of goodness and beauty when you were six years old?'"* Whatever Helen Keller writes of her ex- perience is accepted by any publisher because she is famous as the valiant conqueror of a great handicap. There is no doubt, then, that she is far more widely and eagerly known than she could have been without her burden. Fame and popularity are much-desired gifts, but friendship with the noblest is an even greater privilege, and this her handicap and her overcoming of it have won Miss Keller. Among her truly intimate friends were Phillips Brooks, most eloquent preacher, Alex- ander G. Bell, inventor of the telephone, and Samuel G. Howe, the devoted helper of the blind. She met Edward Everett Hale frequently and he was keenly interested in her. Had she been but a healthy South- ern girl, in all probability these great men would never have heard of her. Everyone, too, cares to light an unquenchable flame of hope, to stand as an example of difficulties over- come. When other blind or deaf girls and boys hear that Helen Keller was graduated cum laude at Radcliff e, has learned to speak in public and to earn her living, they follow their leader with renewed confidence. With these three gifts of fame, friendship, and influ- ence, I believe that, in spite of all she is cut off from, Helen Keller is better oiT, nobler, and probably happier than if no misfortune had crossed her path. In Bordeaux, France, a young Spanish girl had both her hands so injured in an accident that her arms had to be cut off near the elbow joint. She is now so proficient, in spite of the injury, that she is employed as teacher in a large school for wounded * The World I Live In, by Helen Keller, The Century Co., pp. 11-12. 170 Our Part in the World soldiers similarly handicapped. What she can do with these stumps is astonishing and inspiring. She threads a needle, sews, writes quite beautifully, in fact does many things that you think of as being done only by a normal pair of hands. But still more valuable, says the director of the school, is her extraordinary spirit of courage which permeates the workroom and radiates hope and reassurance to thousands of crippled soldiers. There are many kinds of misfortune: war, illness, poverty, failure, sin, the death of our beloved. Can good come out of any one of these? From any event good can come if, God helping us, we will that it shall. Much good has been mingled with the evil of war. War is hell, but it is hell shot through with redeeming rays from heaven. You have heard many stories of the bravery, the self-sacrifice, the patriotism shown by common men and women in the world war that began in 1914. These stories are all the more pre- cious because they are not exceptional. They are like water gushing from a rock. All through history there have been illustrations of this great truth: good does not come out of evil, but out of the effort to overcome evil. Paul DuBois considers it an overwhelming misfortune for his chil- dren that they are negroes, cut off from many prized opportunities for work, for position, for recreation, for social equality. Yes, it is hard for them, but not impossibly hard. Booker T. Washington felt his own lot an uphill road at first, but being a man of unflinch- ing purpose he brought himself to rejoice that he was born a negro and a slave, because thereby he could the better help his race. Could he have been as dis- tinguished a man, or made the nation as proud to own him, had he been white? Misfortune as Opportunity 171 Another kind of evil is sin. Can any good come out of hurtful but bitterly repented wrongdoing? In- deed it can if one has persistent courage. Any re- pentant wrongdoer has an extraordinary power of appeal to those who need help. In Harold Begbie's Twice Born Men you can read story after story of the special vigor and usefulness of men made over, reformed, and using their sordid past as a proof that God can save even those most degraded. I once knew a very popular boy who was nominated to be president of the George Junior Repubhc, a self-governing settlement for boys and girls at Freeville, New York. Much to every- one's surprise Dan refused the nomination. Soon after, he came to Mr. William George, Jr., director of the Republic, and told him the reason for his refusal. Dan had committed a crime and had never confessed it. It seemed to him that to accept the nomination for president before he had told of his misdeed was wrong. After making his confession Dan was deter- mined to make good. He was not satisfied until his guilt was more than fully atoned for, as one pays back a long-standing debt, — principal and compound inter- est. By confessing his sin and atoning for it he threw out many a stumbhng-stone from the path of others. You will notice in reading the Gospels that Jesus often seems especially hopeful about repentant sinners, and correspondingly anxious about complacent people. Jesus knew that along with genuine and thorough- going repentance goes memory, and to this memory he could appeal with entire hope. In that marvelous scene at the temple, when a woman who had sinned was brought before him trembling, expecting to be condemned and stoned to death, we have a picture as vivid and unforgetable as if drawn by Raphael. Unheeding the angry tumult, Jesus stooped down as though he heard them not and wrote 172 Our Part in the World with his finger upon the dusty ground. We shall never know what he wrote, but we know what he said when at last he looked up: ''He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Then memory began to gnaw at the conscience of everyone present, and one by one they stole away. No one among them could throw that stone, nor could anyone among us. Jesus was left absolutely alone with the woman. And he, pure from sin, would not judge her as evil, because he believed she could become good. ''Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." Could she ever forget those words of amazing trust? CH.\PTER XXXVIII MAKING THE BEST OF IT We have all known people who seem pursued by hard luck. Whenever they travel it is wretched weather, — too hot, or too cold; every hotel is uncom- fortable, the food is poor, the beds hard. When they go to the theatre the plays are invariably worth- less, the novels they persistently read are trashy, the people they meet are commonplace. I cannot but pity these unlucky acquaintances; they certainly have a hard time. One day a friend of mine happened to go with people of this sort on one of their depressing journeys, and, strange to say, she found everything different. The dreadful weather was to her a delicate, refreshing drizzle. The coimtry inn did, indeed, have hard beds, but she forgot to mention that fact because she was so eager to tell about the romantic charm of the low- studded rooms with their uneven floors, their high canopied beds, and their great fireplaces. "I have never been to a place more stimulating to one's imagi- nation," she wrote. ''The country-folk are so quaint and humorous that everything they said was just what I wanted for the setting of my story on New England village life." She came away exhilarated by an experience that bored and depressed her companions. I remember the surprise I felt when first it occurred to me that after all it might possibly be people them- selves who made their own good or evil fortune, or rather, who made the best or the worst out of it. Experience comes to us, as it were, like flour or dough. 174 Our Part in the Wwld Our task is to knead it into the shape we desire, to heat it by our ardent will till it becomes food for our life. How to take the experience before us, whatever it is, and make, wring, or coax, the best that then and there can be got out of it or of ourselves, — this is my topic. It is an impelling and a chastening subject. It is im- pelling because the transforming attitude, wherever it is found, is the characteristic human attitude. A cork drifts with the tide out to sea; a man swims with the current or against it, going always toward his goal. He uses the tide, if possible; if not, he swims the harder because of its resistance. The transformation of experience is a chastening subject because in attack- ing it we must face the hardest and most bewildering tragedies. There are experiences that seem beyond our power to understand. There are instances of deaden- ing sorrow, of hopeless infirmity, of shattered beauty, of degrading surroundings. The lepers alone in their misery, the crushed lives of sodden workers, the innocent sufferers from disgusting disease, the artist beholding the destruction of his life work in a fire, the sensitive woman whose duty forces her into asso- ciation for life with a drunken husband, — these trag- edies cannot be forgotten; the weight of their sorrow can with difficulty, if at all, be made a source of strength to come. Yet whenever a human being is in any degree himself, there becomes possible the trans- formation of experience; there man can prove his manhood. What happens to anyone may be compared to his possession of a millstone. The question always is, "What are you going to do with the millstone?" One man fastens the millstone around his neck and it con- tinually weighs him down. Another man takes the same millstone and by it as a stepping-stone lifts Making the Best of It 175 himself toward his goal. What the world calls success or what it considers to be failure may be a weight to drag us down or a stepping-stone to lift us up. A young Westerner who entered Harvard College some years ago became at once a leader through his brilliant football playing, his easy mastery of the re- quired work, his geniality toward everyone he met. During his four years in college the eyes of all his httle world watched hmi. He was applauded for every good deed, admired, trusted. His future was talked of as inevitably a remarkable one. At the close of his college course any number of positions were open to him. He chose one, but it did not satisfy his ambition. In six months he threw it up to try something wholly different. A year or two later this, too, ceased to satisfy, and now for some months he has been vainly seeking employment. ''It seems strange that he has not found a place," com- mented a stranger; ''has he had any obstacles against him?" "Yes, indeed," was the reply; "when he left college he was so much admired that the most distinguished business men in Boston besieged hun with offers of a position. A man could hardly meet a greater obstacle than that!" For, as the speaker realized, this young man was in appalling danger of becoming satisfied with himself and critical of others. His too-easy success will become a millstone to drag him down unless he can learn to turn it into a stepping- stone toward a higher ideal. In like manner what the world calls hard luck may be transformed into the best of fortune. A young normal school graduate went a few years ago to take charge of an ungraded room in a country school. The class was mixed in age and in attaimnent, the children had had no systematic work, and, worst of all, it had become ahnost a tradition among them 176 Our Part in the Wcn-ld that everyone should behave just as badly as possible. Everyone naturally thought that my friend had hard luck. I saw her after she had been there two weeks and she looked worn but resolute. She had no ten- dency to blame the children; she insisted that if she made her lessons interesting enough they would listen and learn. I saw her again a month later and she had conquered. She had divided the class and thereby improved the grading. She had succeeded in making history and geography interesting. She had given special responsibilities to the most unruly boys and had won their esteem. The more dejected girls, who threw up their hands in despair over arith- metic, had been invited to her room and in its quiet atmosphere she had solved their difficulties. She had won the affection and the allegiance of almost every pupil. And not only this; through that chastening experience she had gained a power of discipline, an ingenuity of resource, that no easy class could have given her. That for which we were tempted to pity her had become through her own resolution and faith, and through the insight born of need, a stimulating opportunity. The failure of my athlete who had ''good luck" and the success of my teacher who had ''hard luck" show how much depends on the way we take the events that the days bring. The spirit in which we meet any experience may be cheery, good-humored, easy-going, without being an- imating; that is, without creating a soul, making new life out of the crude material. There are in every community happy-go-lucky people off whom experi- ence slips like melting snow off a steep roof. They are congenial and attractive companions, but just because nothing that happens greatly affects their equanimity, they are not among those who grow and who create. This easy-going quality has its charm Making the Best of It 177 and its comfort, but the qualitj^ that out of misfortune or of joy makes a new opportunity is the quality of genius. After the earthquake of April 18, 1906, in San Francisco, two hundred thousand people were gath- ered in the Presidio, an open government park. Some of them were in despair over their lot. "Oh, dear," they moaned, "isn't it awful? Whatever can we do? What if there should be another earthquake? Sup- pose the fire should reach us here?" These natural moanings simply delayed and disheartened. Other people took the appalling situation good-humoredly but showed no initiative in piecing together again the scattered fragments of their lives. For weeks they hved on charity, went day by day to beg for food and clothing, and could hardly be driven from the park when it was once more time to take up their own burdens. On the other hand, there were during the fire tlu^illing instances of foresighted, dauntless in- genuity. A little settlement of Italians on Telegraph Hill saved their houses from destruction, when water could not be procured, by putting out each spark as it fell, with towels soaked in their native wines. One j'oung officer alone in the chaos of that bewildering morning broke into a deserted bakeshop and secured bread for the starving people at the Presidio, escorted a number of murderers from the shattered prison to a place of safety and restraint; destroyed a large quantity of intoxicating liquor, and rescued from the burning art gallery a number of precious pictures. The experiences of that terrible morning were mani- fold. At its close the weariness caused by despair contrasted with the weariness caused by heroic efTort and marked the difference between the passive and the constructive attitude in misfortune. There are, then, these various ways in which the 178 Our Part in the World hard experiences of life may be met. There is the passive attitude, shown by depression or by content- ment, and there is the constructive attitude, which is recognized by its readiness to meet the unforeseen; by its ingenuity, its self-reUance and its sympathy. The extreme experiences of hfe hght up these varying attitudes as the fires that followed the earthquake lighted up the city of San Francisco. CHAPTER XXXIX OUR PART IN THE PLAN When Lincoln Steffens was traveling some years ago tlirough the Catskill Mountains he got into conversa- tion with a raih'oad employe and spoke to him admir- ingly of the scenery along the Hudson River. ''It's well enough," the brakeman agreed, ''but it's not nearly so beautiful as the Pennsylvania Railroad station. That's got finish, and there's not much finish in nature. I helped build that station; it was great seeing it grow. There's another reason I like the Pennsylvania Rail- road station best, and that's because a man really worked it out. Why, it must have been just an idea in his head once. But," he mused regretfully, "the workmen weren't told about the plan of the building. I hope the time will come when every workman will be shown the plan." In this book I have tried as best I knew how, to make a rough sketch of The Plan. To know the plan and to have some part, small or great, in carrying it out, — everyone feels this need in his work and his life. But is it not an even greater need in relation to the meaning of the universe? If we could both know what it is for and do our bit to help it grow, that surely would be an immense satisfaction. That there is some plan and that we are a working part of it, is certain, though the details of it that look important to our short-sighted eyes may not be essential. For think, if the laborers on the Pennsylvania Railroad station had been shown the architect's plan, would they have understood more than a very small part of it? No more can we understand the richly intricate plan of 180 Our Part in the World the Universe, though we do, I beheve, recognize it at those points where, through the telescope of love or the microscope of our chosen work, we see most clearly. Would not any of us stake our lives on the faith that friendship was a part of the world plan? At other places the outline of the plan looks faint or twisted. The skeleton lines of war, of death, of innocent suffering, of pestilence, of starvation in mind and body, — these designs in the plan of the world look wrong. It is only by flashes of a stronger light thrown on the whole that we see what these tragedies may mean. Yet that there is a meaning, even in these tragedies, is sure, since the meaningless is the unreal and tragedy is surely real. After all, would it not be a dull, standstill kind of world if every whipper- snapper could see right through it? An old veteran of the Civil War was telling, fifty years later, his story of a strange order given out one night by his commanding officer. ' ' The Yankee troops were besieged by Johnston, the Confederate general in Chattanooga," he said, ''and General Sherman was coming to relieve us. Well, sir, the very night that Sherman was to arrive, we were ordered to march out of the city in full sight of the enemy and pass behind the mountain. Before dawn we were ordered to march right plumb back to the city we started from. I thought for sure General Hooker had lost his nerve in ordering that retreat. It wasn't till thirty years afterwards that I saw what happened. We were marched out of the city so that the Rebs would think we had retreated before General Sherman arrived. Then, thinking we were gone, the enemy would feel strong enough to attack next morning, but by that time we were back again in force. It was all part of a plan." In this case the soldier had been an essential part Our Part in the Plan 181 of the plan and had gone sturdily through what seemed a senseless task, tlimking it a failure when it was a triumph. Thirty years later, in view of the whole campaign, he saw liis part in it. For himself and his comrades in the ranks, a night's march round the mountain and back looked like unnecessary hiking. Not so to the general in command. Our experience must often and inevitably be like that of the private in the ranks. We know roughly and with gaps the outline of the plan. We know that God sustains and guides the Universe toward its own fulfillment. We know that He needs us sometimes as direct helpers, sometimes, it may be, as faithful failures, occasionally as a warning to others: ''Do not take this path." Within this general plan of the Universe we see certain things that have to normal men and women every- where seemed good, worth living for, worth dying for. Look rapidly through the centuries. What have men seen as truly good, truly a part of the plan? Their families, their clan, their friends, their city, their nation, their special interest, their churches, the great cathedrals, beauty in nature, music, painting, poetry, stained glass, laughter, kindness, the discovery of truth, opportunities to help, and finally the hope of immortality, the passion that all that is good shall remain. Whenever you read a great book, you will find in it the love of some one or more of these things. Do novels touch them? Why, surely! George Meredith thought of his novels as so sketching the struggle and growth of human nature that they would help people to understand one another. He said his central hope and aim was to make a bridge over which future gen- erations could cross and reach a deeper understanding. Tolstoi went so far as to think that novels were only good when they directly helped people to love and 182 Our Part in the World serve one another better. Robert Louis Stevenson names as the three greatest things in the world: ''Health, work and, O ye gods, friends." Romain RoUand, the talented French writer, puts art as the greatest of human goods. ''A work of art like Rheims cathedral is far more than a human life, it is a whole people. Through this organ of stone the centuries tremble like a symphony. The cathedral holds its memories of joy, of glory, of suffering, its meditations, its ironic laughter, its dreams. It is the tree of the race, whose roots plunge to the depths of the soil and with a marvelous spring, stretch their arms toward the sky. But the cathedral is more than this. Its beauty, uplifted far above the conflicts of nations, is the har- monious answer of the human spirit to the mystery of life, — it is the light of the mind, more essential to the soul than the light of the Sun." * It is thus that in their different ways great men in all times and places point to the plan of the world. Like a lantern-bearer passing through the darkness of a thick forest, great men light the path around them, and we see. All of us get blinded by custom. The seers of our race recognize and point out the plan, as the trained eye of an Indian observes and points out the horns of a deer, seen through blurring branches. ''The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," Jesus said. It was a new vision, but once pointed out, the eyes of all can follow and behold its truth. "The Kingdom of God is within you." Again Jesus pointed to the plan of the Universe. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." This among all the Beatitudes is the ultimate blessing. The wholly pure shall see the Holy Plan. * Homain Holland, Above the Battle. CHAPTER XL IMMORTALITY In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a marble group called "Death and the Sculptor." The young sculptor is keenly at work on an unfinished bas-relief. He is eager, happy, making beauty from chaos. Stand- ing near him is the figure of Death, and his hand is stretched out to snatch the sculptor from his task. You would expect the angel of Death to be modeled as cruel. No, it is drawn as relentless yet compas- sionate. I know no other statue that makes one stop and think as this one does. Can death be right when it puts an end to an unfinished task? What has become of the hopes and plans of all the young artists, musicians, scientists, discoverers, poets, who lie dead on the fields of Flanders? What power has death over the soul? "If a man die shall he live again" and fulfill his task? Too great questions are these to answer in the short space of five or six pages, yet too important, I believe, to leave untouched in a book on Our Part in the World, for our part depends in large measure on the possi- bility that both w^hat we do and what we are lasts. Let us consider first, then, a few of the questions that center about the relation of body and soul. Body is not inseparably connected with soul. Clearly we can and do lose much of our body wdth little or no change in what we call ourselves. Notice how in daily ways bits of our bodies pass from us almost without our notice. Loss of tissues, of hair, of flakes of skin leave us quite unconcerned. Every seven years, we are told by some authorities, our entire body is changed. 184 Our Part in the World Whether or not this is accurate, our body is changing all the time, yet we are the same person. Losing the body, then, is not dying. Something beyond this body ma.kes you yourself. Does this mean that we need no bodies in order to be ourselves? No. I believe that some body we must have, but it need not be woven of perishable flesh. The kind of body we need may be what St, Paul calls "sl spiritual body," — that is, something by which and in which to express ourselves. As the world is the embodiment of God's thought and as without this embodiment or some other God would not be real to us, so it seems to me that some outward embodiment or expression of our- selves will always remain, though in what form we cannot tell. Since, however, our entire body can gradually change and we remain the same person, we need not fear that bodily death will deprive us of life. Why is death terrifying? I think that what chiefly terrifies us is that when we picture our own death, we think of our- selves as at once alive and dead. We try furtively to watch our dead selves, which naturally shows that we still think of ourselves as alive. And that paradox hghts up the very interesting fact that we cannot really conceive ourselves as dead. A shadowy self al- ways watches my passive body and that self is actively alive. It is equally true that while we speak of our friends as dead we almost never think of them as dead. They are away from us, perhaps never to be seen again. We know that their bodies lie in the ground, but the more we love them and the stronger their individuality, the more we instinctively think of them as alive and active. Indeed I doubt whether, if they have been a part of ourselves, we can truly think of them as dead, for to be dead is to be unreal and they are real. Immortality 185 The Buddhists think of the dead as passing from form to form, bound to the wheel of life and carried on its unending turns from one existence to another. The Buddhist dreads, not death, but undesirable life. "He might awake as a noxious serpent, feared and hated, with a price set upon his head. He might live again as a beast of burden, the slave of some ignorant or brutal master. He might inhabit the body of some deformed or crippled specimen of human- ity, the beggar nursing his sores by the wayside, eking out a precarious livelihood from the charity of the passers-by. The one thing certain was that the life to come would be no finality." * Not a pleasant outlook, this, yet, like the happier conception of purgatory, it shows how tenacious is the belief that life is eternal, and death, in spite of all ap- pearances, unreal. So far I have tried to show that, though the death of the body is all about us, it is impossible to believe in ultimate death. What does it mean that we cannot truly think of ourselves as dead? It means that, strictly speaking, we cannot think away existence. Do you remember that in the first chapter I said that we could not think of the uncreated world without thinking of it as a plan known to God? So our lives are held in God's thought, and therefore death is not wholly death, for God holds even that apparent death in the life of His thought. You cannot think of creation out of nothing, neither can you think of life dying down to nothing. Both are inconceivable. Beginning means God's plan. Ending, too, means God's plan. We can- not think away God, and therefore we cannot think of the complete vanishing of consciousness from the world. But are we individually worth keeping? May we not be merged in God as a drop in the sea? Or may * The Christian Hope, by William A. Brown, p. 9. 186 Our Part in the World it be that He can be Himself without us? No, this is impossible. God needs the ministers of His plan, His expression in the world. If you were to make a pencil map of France and then rub out every village, city, river, hill and bay, France would no longer be itself. So reverently we can say that God would not be Himself unless He were expressed through His children. If we are doing our part in the world in our own way and to our utmost, I believe that God needs us and will keep us. As a mother away from her children feels lonely and unlike herself, so I believe God, the life of the whole world, needs the children He has made. One of the strongest reasons for belief in immortality is this: We cannot believe that God, who made what we are surest is of value, made it just to throw it away. No maid throws out the dishes with the dish-water, no sculptor throws away the statue with the plaster mould, and no true father decides his child is too much of a burden to keep. God, whose hope for us is everlasting, God to whom the least of these is precious for its special gift, will not leave His children to perish in the grave. Emerson once put this evidence for immortality in a concise form. "What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent." Belief in immortality is linked to belief in God and His will to hold whatever is good in His safe-keeping. Yet even when we are assured beyond doubt of im- mortality, something that is best in us remains un- satisfied. Immortality is too great a treasure to re- ceive as a gift. We want to win it by being worthy of it. How can we be? I said that each person, when he is doing his work, is needed in the whole. But sup- pose our choice of service is one that no one else can Immortality 187 perform in quite the same way, and one that requires infinite time. Then we are needed forever. Have you any such infinite aim? At first it seems unHkely. But what is it you want? To play tennis perfectly, to be a baseball expert, to be universally popular, to win fame, to be of real help in the world? These are natural and common aims, yet notice that each of them, as you follow it, goes on and on unendingly. For when you think of it, athletic power is never com- pletely attained; you can always do better, — or rather, there is always something better to be done. As for popularity, the world is wide and you will never know enough of its inhabitants to be sure of your ability to get on wdth all sorts and conditions of men. So it is with the desire for fame, or with the eager purpose to help human beings. There are ahvays more laurels to win, more folks to comfort. Your aim reaches out to infinity. I was speaking lately with a philosophical friend of mine about the mission of Christ. ''The purpose of Jesus was to hunt for souls and save them," he said. "Till the last soul is saved Jesus would remain un- satisfied. Therefore his mission is infinite and re- quires eternity for its fulfillment." But if the aim of Jesus is infinite, our aims, too, may become like his. The creative love of God will see and protect the least germ of good in us, as the gardener sees the minutest growth of new life in a plant which to dull eyes looks dead. In that hope and with valiant wills we can set forth to do our part in the world. In life and death God will keep us with Him.