Class P ^^6S57 . Book Ar^L. Copyright^^. 1±LA ESSAYS BY IRENE CLARK SAFFORD BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS Copyright, 1920, by Richard G. Badger All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. MAY 27 !920 ©aA570194 CONTENTS PAGE Misuse of Wohd Affinity in Love Affairs 7 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 14 The Blight of Poverty as a Factor in Society 21 Curiosity of Mankind about the Other Side 26 A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind .... 33 The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 40 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 47 The Visible and thi: Invisible Forces in the Game of Life . . 53 About Heroes 60 The Pursuit of Ghosts 65 A Feature of the Hour 70 Our Dumb Relations 74 Prophets and Disciples 78 Satan in Literature 83 Concerning Happiness 87 Individuality 91 Science and Laughter 95 Life and Literature 100 Enemies and Revenges 105 The Gospel of Despair 109 Environment 114 The Riddle of Life 119 Concerning Slander 123 Woes of the Misunderstood 126 Other People's Ills 130 Telling the Truth 135 The Touch of Nature 140 Practical Side of Brotherly Love 145 Dreams and Visions 150 Laws and Lawmakers 154 The Boy and the Man 158 Concerning Fools 163 Tangles of Life 167 The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister .... 171 The Ethics and Morals of the Laughing Habit 178 3 CONTENTS The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire The Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness Enchantment of the Green-robed Forest Monarchs The Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winds The Secrets of Nature as Revealed by the Night The Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor The End and Ends of Life Twin Stars in Love's Firmament Power of the Written Word . Note Time by Its Gain, Not Loss A Word More Love's Troubles Marriage as a Duty The Word and the Idea As the War Revealed Her PAGE 185 192 199 206 213 219 226 230 233 236 241 246 250 253 257 ESSAYS E S S A V S MISUSE OF WORD "AFFINITY" IN LOVE AFFAIRS YOU may give a dog a bad name and hang him. It's different with ideas. Aye, too, with the words that express tliem. Thoughts are things, and words that deal with realities are not easily disposed of. "Affinity has been given a bad name and hung," says a disgusted commentator upon the signs of the times. "Soul affinities" are some- thing he had never heard of till reaching our shores, de- clared the grand old commander of the Salvation Army to Boston interviewers. A fearful invention of modern sin- ners too dreadful to discuss is about his characterization of it, and who can blame him in the face of the use that has been made of it in these latter days. Nevertheless, the hanging is wrongly applied, the con- demnation misses its object. Affinity is the law that swings the spheres and keeps all life and matter in harmonious relation. Cross it anywhere and life goes wrong, and dis- cord displaces harmony. Every particle of matter seeks its affinity, every plant or organism or germ, from sea ooze up, crawls after it. Chemists, naturalists, scientists in all lines, know the calamities that ensue by the coming together of the uncongenial elements, the nonaffinities, in the physi- cal world. Nature, indeed, wastes little sentiment upon the matter, and makes short shrift of any of her subjects or 7 8 Misuse of Wo7'd "Affinity" in Love Affairs forces that would disregard the eternal law of attraction and repulsion that she has set up for their observance. Destructive explosions, deadl}'^ blight, war to the death, wait upon the mixture of the uncongenial elements and crea- tions through all the plant and animal kingdom. Every flower and shrub knows its affinity and refuses to take up with any other, even to the extent of withering in a night, the gardeners tell us, in many cases if planted beside the unloved alien. Botanists well know the curious tastes of the wild flowers, and the swift answer to its own that brings the fragrant white clover from the scattered wood ashes, the catchfl}' pink from the blasted ledge, and the dainty dwarf dandelion from the oily refuse dropped by the flying engine. What marvels in the plant world may come from cultivating plant affinities, the California wizard. Bur- bank, begins to reveal to an astonished world, and that greater wonders must wait upon the same law and principle brought to bear upon the animal world he confidently ex- pects. Shall man, then, reverse or despise this principle and expect to gain by it? On the contrary, is he not much like the plants, observing it almost unconsciously in the order- ing of his life and relation everywhere; from the choice of the companion who shows what he is, to the search for the "woman thou gavest me," though she commonly eludes him. Reverenced or derided, the native affinities, the "marriage of true minds" figure supremel}^ in the weal or woe of the hu- man family. The great and happy ones testify to this, too, however vaguely, and live by it whether they know it or not. That honored general who never heard of soul affinities till he reached our shores has plainly been living by just Misuse of Word ''Affinity''' in Love Affairs 9 such union to the noble woman who shared his life work anfl pilgrimage with him till recently. Nothing but death could have parted him from his wife, he says, and he knows that death is but a temporary sepa- ration — the soul union was complete. When it comes to the definition of the real thing he seems equal to putting it in good shape, too. "The couple who have solved the prob- lem of loving their neighbor as tlicmselves and who enjoy the perfect understanding that unites them so closely that differences of opinion do not suggest the divorce court, would, I should think, be near to what you Americans term 'soul affinities,' " he says, and it is well to have a good straightforward Englishman help out American mumblings on the subject like that. It may tend, too, to secure some better name for "a crime against humanity" that cloaks itself under the most sacred truths of life. Affinitj^ like marriage, has been made to stand for so many monstrous evils that have no relation to it that its true significance is almost lost in them. Why not call a spade a spade and let the queen of hearts preserve her own colors.'' Sarah Grand told the wretched truth when she said, "There is more nonsense talked in the abstract about marriage as a failure than is talked about any other branch of the conduct of life." The paragrapher is quite to the mark also who writes: "Marriage is never a failure, but often the contracting parties are." So it is with the subtle laws of attraction that draw two people together. You can not explain them or philosophize about them, but they are never a failure, though their counterfeit always is. "The people who claim to have found their affinity don't, as a rule, look as if they had found much," says one jester. No, but the people who have found their affinity, though they don't 10 Misuse of Word "Affinity" in Love Affairs proclaim it to the public, knoAV, like the good Salvation Army general, that they have found everything. In the midst of all the scoffing and cynicism touching love and marriage, it is a fine thing to come upon such testimo- nies as some of our great ones bear to the divine beauty and true affinity of the tie that binds. Not long ago there died in New York the aged and well- known poet, Richard Henry Stoddard, and one who knew him well writes : "The sweetest story of his life was the love for his wife. Half a century ago he married her and for fifty years he made her happy. They say that true love and real sympathy speak without words ; that a man and a woman, their lives in tune, can sit hand in hand and each understand the very heart throbs of the other without one spoken word. That is true sometimes. It means a devo- tion that is unselfish and holy." Is it too much to expect that poor, selfish humanity should reach that ideal in its marriages .f* Well, at least to recognize it as the ideal, the real, even on our faulty earth, would be something for hon- est souls to build on. And as for sorrows and disappoint- ments in marriage, the writer who traces them all to the hour when "the mysterious door which leads to perfect sym- pathy is shut" knew well her ground. It is said that one of the recent victims of abused affinity admitted that she "believed in free love with some qualifica- tions." And there is another term that has been done to death by slanderous tongues. True love is always free. It was never bought nor bound by any power nor device of man. It knows no chains, but yields itself in voluntar}^ and joyful service and union on the strength of that very bond of nature and spirit which the blind world makes such abuse of. It is marriage's sure foundation, and besides it there is no other. To understand and abide by this would Misuse of Word "Affinity" in Love Affairs 11 speedily end all the wretched wrangle and rupture in mari- tal circles and relieve us of the eternal nonsense talked and undertaken by those who bring all manner of creeds and homilies to bear upon holy matrimony. That brilliant ^^oung senator who declares that he would rather talk to his wife than to all of the world is not likely to run after any affinities not nestling at his own fireside. No doubt, too, there are plenty of others in the same safe and happ3' case. For Sarah Grand is right again in opin- ing that the majority of married people are jogging along very comfortably and are reasonably happy in their united state, which supposes, of course, that the mysterious door which leads to genuine sympathy is not quite shut to them. That native and subtle attraction which draws two people from all the world of humanity to each other should have force enough to hold them together if nature is at all true to itself. There should remain enough appreciation of the situa- tion to make one blush to own an affinity with a nature that has shown itself devoid of honor and decency in any re- lation. It is no wonder that men who abuse their wives and vio- late every sacred obligation "don't, as a rule, look as if they had found much" when they take up with their affinities. As a rule they haven't. If it is a severe test to be judged by the company you keep, what must it be to be judged by the one you own as your soul's affinity .^ Marriage itself makes a terrible drain on the individual character in this respect. A suspicion of some poor leanings in the man or M^oman who accepts an inferior person for a life companion inevitably arises — and perhaps is commonly justifiable. But what must it be to stand committed to some dishon- orable creature with a record for "crimes against human- 12 Misuse of Word "Affinity" in Love Affairs ity" and wrongs to his own household as his soul affinity? Whether able to live up to it or not, it would seem to be one whose soul was white as the whitest, that any high- minded mortal would wish to tie to in that self-revealing fashion. Perhaps there may be a bad lot of "affinities" in this fallen world, and to bring them together as generally as possible may be a way to work along the true nature line for the happy affiliation of the better sort. Paul probably realized this when he wrote the Corinthians. "Be ye not unequally yoked together," and if the Christian world had heeded his admonition no doubt the matrimonial bark would have been sailing on smooth shining seas by this time. It is hunting the affinity in season, and not out of season, that makes all the difference. Once unequally yoked together not all the saints or sages of the universe offer much help for a mortal. But even the worst publicans and sinners who have some meeting points of sympathy and equality may sometimes work out each other's purification when yoked together, if they do not too speedily work out each other's extinction — and in either case the world is benefited by it. "One never need be afraid of catching love a second time," says that earnest jester, Jerome K. Jerome. "Like the measles, we take it only once. The man who has had it can go into the most dangerous places, and play the most fool- hardy tricks with perfect safety. He can look into sunny eyes and not be dazzled. He can listen to siren voices, yet sail on with steady helm. He can clasp white hands in his and feel no electric thrill." Clearly such a man is immune from the affinity microbe and the good people who are alarmed about it might lay this to heart. For it is, indeed, more than the "idle thoughts of an idle fellow," that rise to the truth that love is one and Misuse of Word '^Affinity" in Love Affairs 13 indivisible, and though admiration and affection may come in at the open door of the human heart often, and ever, yet "their great celestial master, Love, in his royal progress, pays but one visit and departs." As Alexander Dumas says, "Whoever has loved twice has never loved at all." For "love is not an earthly fire, it is divine; not chance, not an unforeseen shock causes it to spring up, the universal harmony creates it," he submits, and they who seek the heavenly sense and not debasing nonsense in the idea of soul affinities might find it here. "Happy are those," says these writers, "who can kindle their earthly altars at love's flame," and they might truly add, unhappy and insecure are all those who attempt to kindle them at any other. THE CHANGING SEASON AND ITS OBVIOUS LESSONS REALLY if people will keep on dying, unnecessary as it is, some speculation in futurities ought to be found to match it— not, to be sure, that saints and sages of all ages have failed to paint future blessedness or damnation for the race generally, or to declare how other people should look upon the private war with death. But to bring the reality of it home to any mortal creature so that he should truly shape some future at all worth while in his honest de- sires, to relieve his human dread of death, has not been within the power of any master or mystic in the whole strange field. The crowning mystery, which the ancient Brahmin declared the deepest in all human life, still re- mains, that all men die, yet no man believes that he is mortal. There is no nicer work that advancing psychology could turn its attention to than this strange inconsistency in the attitude of dying man. If by its second or psychic sight it could draw from it the scientific conclusion that they are not dying, why then the speculation in the here or the hereafter might receive an impulse that all the religions of the world have not been able to give them. Perhaps the time of the falling leaf and withering flower is not so favorable to the life vision the new psychology would foster, as some more gladsome days of summer, yet the very fact that it has been spreading its image of decay before human eyes through all the centuries without at all persuading man that he shall 14 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 15 fall as the leaf is a point of no minor significance in the per- sistence of the life dreams uppermost in the human soul. What Stevenson calls man's healthy indifference to death goes deeper than any "fire, sensibility and volume" of his physical nature can explain, else youth would absorb the whole strength of it and age make its chief business to pre- pare itself for the narrow house without demur. It is a fact in human experience, however, that though 3'^outh may show a more reckless disregard of life, the hold upon life and the schemes for it grow more insistent as the years in- crease. Some of the grandest achievements in human his- tory Avere undertaken by men far past the prime of life, who deliberately started their ambitious enterprises as if death had no possible chance of stealing in upon their full completion. The mystery of this general attitude of all mankind toward the problem of life and death is quite as Stevenson presents it when he says : "We live the time that a match flickers ; we pop the cork of a ginger beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not in the highest sense of human speech incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger beer and regard so little the devouring earth- quake?" Since life and death got foothold on the same planet that incongruity has endured and not till one gains the victory over the other can the incredibility of it entirely disappear. The most natural conclusion that could attend such incred- ible conduct in rational beings is so simple that more than a handful of seers or sages one would think might have found in it what one of them calls the "blazing evidence" that life holds the palm, crowds out the idea of death, that the de- vouring earthquake does not devour, that, "if our bark sinks 'tis to another sea," and that it is high time some more 16 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons general and tangible ideas of what awaits man on those deeper seas of being should become a part of human thoughts, dreams and plans. If there is anything conceiv- able that could take the sting from death it would certainly be some natural, familiar, common conception of the un- broken chain of being which science as well as religion could legitimately indorse. The position of the great philosopher Swedenborg, who turned the whole current of theology to- ward the rational, tangible ideas of a future state, seems the one in point. "As the church's faith was overthrown by science, so on the basis of science must it be rebuilt," he states, and the trend of modern teaching on the subject largely confirms the claim. Spencer's argument for the reality of the things that per- sist in consciousness has laid hold of many thinkers, and the logic of life which can be made to fit with no other theory than the continuity of it shapes much of the reasoning which all writers bring to the subject. It is men of science, in the medical and other professions, who, like Dr. William H. Thompson, in his article on "The Future State," in a recent publication, give the affirmative side of the problem in its strongest, fullest light. Indeed, to . reduce the whole sub- ject of spirit life and law to a science is the work of some of the profoundest thinkers of to-day. "The lawful truths of spirit are more scientific than the constantly shifting facts of intellectual standards. Hence this is the only true sci- ence," says a recent writer on "The Science of Being," who aims to make a practical application of long-cherished truths of the spirit to man's life and future. The spiritual principles that underlie all human life are shaping the theories of leaders and teachers in every walk of life, so that it is not an extravagant charge which one fiery writer makes when he avers that a conspicuous leader The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 17 even in the political world is making his grand success through dramatizing the Ten Commandments. The appli- cation of spirit laws and truths to this present world may be the first step in getting them comfortably applied to the next one. But considering the difficulty men in the mass find in building upon that basis, it would clearly be well for the individual to do more to achieve the happy foundation for himself. Maeterlinck realizes this when he says "it be- hooves every man to formulate some theory of life and the universe for himself," and the probability is that most any man left to himself can fashion a heaven and a hereafter that is not so far from one the gracious powers designed for him, but that he could safely sit down and refresh himself in the light of it through all his mortal days. The encouraging feature in the case is that by the laws of life and goodness no finite dream can surpass the joys he may mark out for himself (that are prepared for him) in that future state. Accepting simply the one incontrovert- ible principle of science and philosophy that change, but not destruction of even the smallest atom, can prevail through all creation bounds, the whole embarrassing problem of death, and evil, which moves in the shadow of death, drop out of the reckoning, and a chance to bring dreams and realities together in a world of goodness is the legitimate, the logical result with all the possibilities of joy that may wait upon it. The fashion of that joy may vary, to be sure, with the individual's growth and capacity, but that it is his by divine right and heritage of the spirit is a part of that "science of being" which the growing revelations of all law and truth are making known to man. It is the be- lief, too, of the great masters in the field that man's whole life here would be transformed and glorified by substituting this nobler and more philosophical view of death and the 18 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons hereafter for the vague and grewsome ones that, in spite of all his lofty religious creeds and professed beliefs in a blessed hereafter, he still clings to. A recent speaker on the preciousness of death, as declared in the sacred writings, says: "A change which is precious in the sight of the Lord and a joy to the angels should be made to yield something of spiritual uplift and eternal outlook to our lives." This is the larger, happier note which the spread of spiritual truth and the better understanding of the laws of life bring to the subject. It is beyond even the best of the old reckon- ing, which submits : If we do well here, we will do well there. And I could tell you no more if I preached till fourscore. It permits that rejected "more," and how much it is only the soul that knows its own longings and desires can esti- mate. Man may deceive himself as to the means of happiness, but his desire for it can never die out, nor cease to appeal to the being who implanted it in him for its lawful fulfill- ment. Moreover, it is true that even the worst of men per- ceive a gleam of the divine, the good and pure, in that "some- thing still" called happiness "for which they bear to live or dare to die." Hence if the ruling passion lives on and ful- fills itself in "an ampler ether and diviner air" the heaven of happiness must be reached by all who keep the dream of it, however perverted, alive in their souls. There is no doubt that man's idea of heaven, like his idea of God, Avill undergo some startling changes when he gets there, and mainly because he does not give a more cordial welcome to the higher thought of it here to which nature as well as saints and philosophers invite him. There is not a 3'^ellowing forest of autumn nor restless The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons 19 wave that beats on the shore that does not carry a meanmg far beyond any that the poets of the falling leaf and ebbhig tide convey to us, A sense of the infinity of being and of the beauty and peace in which nature yields herself to its changing but endless round brings a kindred spell to the right beholder which can Make time break And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due. It was thus Benson declares it when, at the sight of a deep wood veiled in an autumn mist, or a shining wave half stranded on the sea beach, he says "one feels by instinct and by intuition that one's own mind is simply a part of a large and immortal life, which for a time is fenced by a little barrier of identity in the human just as a tiny pool of sea water is for a few hours separated from the great ocean tide to which it belongs." In her splendors of decay as in her loveliness of revival nature speaks of an underlying life of beauty and jo}' of which man is a part, and, but for losing his primal consciousness in some deep pass of the human, would know himself a part, as Adam and Eve did in their happy garden. The fall of man no doubt is somehow con- nected with the "delusion," as Benson expresses it, that he is alone and apart, instead of one with the great ocean of life and joy. It is certain that the closer man gets to nature, the less he fears death. It was in the purple fastnesses of the great Sierras that the light broke upon Joaquin Miller, and, look- ing up to its cloud-piercing peaks, he cried : "Death is de- lightful. Death is dawn." So was it that Whitman hears "whispers of heavenly death" through "mystical breezes wafted soft and low," and reads the symbol of it in "Ripples 20 The Changing Season and Its Obvious Lessons of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing." Nature makes change and decay so far from terrible that it must be through some frightful break with her that man has managed to fill them with such grewsomc horrors as the final change still carries. To restore it to something of her gentle and orderly process, if not eliminate it altogether, is the effort of a goodly company of mental and psychic teach- ers, and assuredly it is not to be despised. But when all is told some measure of familiarity of truer touch with the world to be is the great help needed for people who are not to find themselves mourning like the "woman in glory," for their house, their bread, their sheets to v,^ash and whiten. Browning was never more the master seer in every human field than when he wrote : New hopes should animate the world. New light should dawn from new revealings To a race weighed down so long, forgotten so long. Thus should the heaven reserved for us At last receive the creatures whom no unwonted splendors blind. THE BLIGHT OF POVERTY AS A FACTOR IN SOCIETY THE "sociological woman" who proposed killing off the children of the slums should have taken counsel with the sociological man. Then she would have known that her humane effort would be only a work of supererogation. John Spargo, in his notable book, "The Bitter Cry of the Children," shows how effectually the business takes care of itself. Eighty thousand babies a year succumb to their deadly environment in the sweet Christian cities of our land. And this, too, when they are born sound and healthy and with the same physical chance for life that tlie most favored child of wealth and luxury can show. "Poverty is the Herod of modern civilization'* that slaughters the children of one year old and under with neater dispatch than the Judean tyrant ever knew. So far, so good, as the heroic method of the woman re- ferred to goes. For they are put out of their misery and squalor, and society is saved a new influx of criminals and imbeciles. Nevertheless, a new factor has entered into the reckoning, and one of such vital import that every lover of the race should take it into consideration at once. It de- velops along the line of the long contention between heredity and environment for controlling influence in human life, and, as set forth by the latest research, declares emphatically that this old biologic quarrel touching modifications in the human species must stop both in the interest of disease and the uplifting of the race. 21 2S The Blight of Poverty as a Fhctor in Society Heredity in the old sense is nonexistent. The anomalies are neither due to inherent wickedness of the germ plasm, nor are they inscrutable acts of God, but are due to definite physical causes. The offspring of normal people are not foreordained to be normal nor the children of degenerates to be damned. From this it follows conclusively that the admittedly healthy babe of the slums could have an equal chance with the babe of the castle, if equally good physical causes could be brought to bear upon it, and it, in short, may not be too much to say with such writers that "were the social programme adequate, an entire generation could be taken in hand and elevated at a jump." Meanwhile, the significant fact that the problem of pov- erty lies back of this and pinching want declares itself, here as elsewhere, the grand agent of human destruction, might narrow still farther the work of the humanitarian and reformer. Indeed, if the cause of all human ills is once fixed upon, why should not all human effort and all human gospel be concentrated upon the intelligent purpose of removing it. "Feed my sheep," "oppress not the poor," "give to him that needeth" ; this is an old Gospel and, in the light of sociology and science, about the only one the world requires for its uplifting. It is rounding out the circle most significantly when we find age and infancy uniting in such testimonies to the wrong in the case as the authorities now give us. "Povert}'^ is the Herod of modern civilization" that slaughters the innocents by the thousands and tens of thousands, writes Spargo. "Remove poverty and nearly all the ills of life and society would vanish with it," says another close stu- dent of the social problem. It is going far afield to talk of killing off the degenerate and unfortunate, he humanely adds, when simply bettering their physical condition would lift The Blight of Poverty as a F\actor in Society 23 them out of the deforming blackness into the light of good and useful citizens. "Poverty is the slough of despond," says an older and stronger writer still, "which Bunyan saw in his dream, and into which good books may be tossed for- ever without results. To make people industrious, prudent, skillful and intelligent they must be relieved from want. If you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman you must first make him free." The wonder is that gibes and judgment, preaching and prayers, treatises and arguments, are alike unavailing in the face of an evil that all men recognize as the deadliest one that afflicts society. Not all those who trumpet the club speaker's proposal to chloroform slum babies abroad pause to consider the cause given for such extreme measures. Disclaiming all desire for notoriety, she declares: "I sug- gest this because I have worked myself thin trying to inter- est municipal officers and philanthropic individuals in the poverty and frightful conditions prevailing in New York. I have talked myself hoarse. I have lectured. I have written letters to authorities without effect," and it is because "no other remedy can be found" that she would put an end "to miserable children to whom living is only prolonged agony." But meantime for teachers or reformers to go on preach- ing any other gospel or propounding any other method of salvation for the race till this fundamental one is put in operation is rather a waste of breath and ammunition. "Here," says Mr. Spargo, "is the real reconstruction of society, the building of healthy bodies and brains," and "to fight poverty in its dire effect upon the child," to say noth- ing of the adult, he tells us that the "co-operation of all the constructive forces in society, private and public, is neces- sary." He is not the first one to suggest either that pen- 24 The Blight of Poverty as a Fkictor in Society sions to mothers dependent upon their earnings should be a prime care of any government tliat would have good citi- zens and members of society turned out from human homes. But how much attention is even our own proud government giving to these sociological truths? It still seems better to it to build prisons and reform schools for such boy criminals and degenerates as now infest our cities than to give poor, overworked mothers the chance to bear and rear their chil- dren in the sane and healthful atmosphere that would save them all. Perhaps it is not strange that the discouraged worker in these fields feels at times that there is nothing but chloro- form for the unfortunates, so strangely cold and deaf is the ear which those in authority turn to these vital questions. Theoretically every decent citizen professes to desire the ele- vation of the human race. Practically he will give more intelligent care to a breed of cattle or poultry along scientific lines than to a whole generation of children. And this, too, when science assures him that by the same care of the chil- dren the whole race could be elevated at a jump. The modern Herod is not heredity ; it is environment, pov- erty of nourishment and air, unsanitary and bad economic conditions, is the reading of the case John Spargo brings to the surface. And still the desperately earnest woman, who has worked herself thin trying to bring philanthropic people to the help of the impoverished children, finds it so hopeless that she wants to chloroform them all — the children, not the philanthropists — though perhaps one might take it either way. No doubt, at any rate, a new order of pilanthropists should be raised up to meet the present position and illumi- nation of the social problem, and if they can not do some- thing better than distribute tracts and books, and cast-off clothing, to "meet a starving people's needs," or still "the The Blight of Poverty as a Factor in Society 25 bitter cry of the children," then the teachers and the preachers and the noisy reformers might as well retire from their labors and let the world slide downhill as fast as it will. At least, we should not be making a mock of people's mis- fortunes, and a hypocrisy of all the humane and pious pro- fessions we trumpeted through the earth. To be shown a way of salvation for the race and turn our backs on it should at least end any further pretensions that we are loftily concerned in saving anybody but ourselves. CURIOSITY OF MANKIND ABOUT THE OTHER SIDE I ALWAYS have been curious to know what was on the other side," he said, and slipped away in dreamy sleep to find out. And "summer was in the world, sweet singing." And he loved the summer, and the birds and flowers, this gentle Uncle Remus, who wrote himself kin to every living thing in the Father's world. Why should the great unknown have beckoned him with such mystic spell? How could he bear to die and leave so much beneath the summer sun ? The poet says that When he heard the darkness calling He knew that darkness dreamed of light. But, no, he only guessed it. He was curious to know. He was strong to try. He died in July and in the July issue of his magazine the note repeats itself,- I shall make a brave death. Stand, then, by and see How old comrade Life and I Can part company. To part in a cr}^ for higher knowledge is not entirely new to men who have been going out in philosophic question of the "great perhaps" in all ages. But that the desire to know may become a ruling passion that can rob death of its terrors seems not improbable in the growing insistence of that knocking at the gates of the unseen which the times 26 Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side 27 record. More than one suicide in recent days has given "comrade life" the slip through the strength of his curiosity to know what was on the other side. A strange reaction from that dread of something after death appears in the haunting desire of all men to know what that something is. It is not only the psychical societies that compact with the departing comrade to help bore a tunnel, as Sir Oliver Lodge puts it, beneath the roaring waters of time and eternity, whereby the two worlds may come into communica- tion, but even an orthodox parent was but lately shaken out of his dying slumber by a devoted daughter who craved a last pledge that he would in some way speak to her from the other shore. That an existence which holds death in its reckoning owes some better account of it than has yet been given, is a con- viction of many thinkers, while the sense of the unknown, forever haunting the known, makes the true enjoyment of life a thing impossible. "Our only chance in this world of a complete happiness," writes Mr. Arthur Symons, "lies in the measure of our success in shutting the eyes of the mind and deadening its sense of hearing, and dulling the keenness of its apprehension of the unknown. To live through a single day with that overpowering consciousness of our real position, which, in the moments in which alone it mercifully comes, is like blinding light or the thrust of a flaming sword, would drive any man out of his senses. And so there is a great, silent conspiracy between us to forget death; all our lives are spent in busily forgetting death." That is one phase of the subject, but another quite as forceful shows itself in the determination to make death de- liver up its secrets and let in some knowledge of the life be- yond. "It is a strange fact," says a writer on this side of the case, "that this generation has no fear of death. We have 28 Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side a morbid dread of disease, a horror of age and decay, but we do not fear to die." Death as the great revealer is verily coming to be courted bj the human race, and unless science can probe the darkness, or religion recruit man's faith, suicides for enlightenment may not be an impossible development of man's desire to know what shall be after him under the sun. It is a curious circumstance that it is in the path of the suicide that one of the greatest of modern painters shows death robbed of his last chance. The picture, "Death on the Pale Horse," was suggested to the artist, Ryder, by the suicide of a man who had lost all his savings on the race track. It presents a bleak and lonely track, shadowed by weird shapes of lowering cloud and distant hill, where death having "ridden down all rivals, is condemned to ride round forever deprived of the dear companionship of his enemy and victim, man." It is not exactly the Christian idea of the victory over death, but it certainly might suggest the short work man would make of it if he took the mystery of life and death into his own hands, either as a matter of escape or illumination. It would seem also to carry small encouragement for the self-slayer, however effective his method of robbing death of his pastime, since a black pall of desolation and emptiness covers the very field of the suicide's operation and leaves a sense of utter annihilation the only one that follows him. It is the very opposite of the apoca- lyptic vision of death's vanquishment, where living victors in the tabernacle of the Most High hear the resounding note, "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying." Life reigns in the one case and death in the other, and art has issued a canon against self-slaughter of telling character, whether designed or not. Curiosity of Mankind About the OtJier Side 29 The attempts of artist natures to probe death's secrets are told elsewhere than on canvas in some cases, but still tlie curtain drops with the last breath. Not long ago a famous Russian author undertook to try the last pass for himself and his fellows. He committed suicide and arranged to give all the light that could come to him to his friends in writing. Having opened the veins of his left arm he writes, "I am indescribably happy. There is a sweet taste in my mouth though I am unable to quench my thirst Avith water. Every- thing around me is filled with a beautiful blue smoke full of the finest perfume. To die seems great happiness." So far so good — but the rest is silence. Of what the friends most longed to hear there is not a word. "Death, like gen- eration, is a secret of nature," said Aurelius, and whether of nature or of God man makes small headway in seeking to probe it. The oldest science and the newest meet on the same plane without establishing anything. A famous French scientist lately submits that at death the soul, or astral body, escapes like a nebulous globe. "When my wife died," he says, "a nebulous globe escaped from her like a soul." But does he consider how long ago Heraclitus declared that "the soul is a dry light which flies out of the body at death as lightning escapes from a cloud?" Stories of suspended animation are as old as stories of hu- man life, but what evidence of the tales brought back by them is of a kind to satisfy human intelligence.'* Even the charge of skepticism that stands in the way of it is ancient as the hills, for does not Plutarch tell us that "the knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity?" That, too, is an unproved claim, for who of all the believing saints, save in a mystic dream, has ever unbarred the gates of death far enough to give humanity a reliable vision of the 30 Curiosity of ManJdnd About the Other Side other shore? Powers beyond man's reach still guard the avenues of sight, and we "are all of us better believers than we can possibly give a reason for." The gain is in the ages that have so widely changed fear to expectancy and given place for a pleasing curiosity in the things to come to enter into the death sentence which both nature and theology in their sterner aspect had made so terrible. Such horrors as but lately hung over the poor soul's curiosity to know what was on the other side only writers like Mrs. Stone could do justice to, or that fiery Jonathan Edwards, who pictured it dangling over the pit of hell in a manner not calculated to quicken expectancy or speculation as to the future state. The better ideas of death, quite as much as the better ideas of life, mark the progress of the race starward. The relation of the living to the dead has much to do with this. "Dead and forgotten" has been too much the mournful story of those who have crossed the bar, though still some gentle souls like Dickens have earnestly reminded us that though the dead may not need us, yet forever and forever we need the dead. Verily, is it not rude "to leave the dead wholely dead," when in such abounding being they declare their immortal- ity.'' Rounding out time by eternity is that part of seeing life whole which wipes death out of the reckoning with great souls. As a guess at the beyond, too, it is the most logical thing in the count. "A brother to the eternal light," as some one so beautifully calls Harris, could well afford to let his fanc}^ rove in curious questioning of the other side. Nor can the humblest of earth's dwellers afford to leave him "wholly dead" who "made the lowly cabin fires light the far windows of the world." It is a pretty story that tells of a tame rabbit appearing mysteriously from undiscover- able quarters at the dead author's home within a week after Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side 31 his departure, and persistently making its bed beneath his window, as if in tender tribute to the friend who drew Br'er Rabbit into the universal friendship. None can say, either, that some subtle chord of sympathy and relationship did not bring the strange, shy visitant in that supreme hour to a spot linked so closely with its tiny life. The unities of being, the tie that binds all living creatures, are but dimly guessed by us, and the mysteries of life lying all about us are deep and baffling enough to make the mys- tery of death not so very strange after all. Emerson's idea that the power that can manage the one can safely be trusted to take care of the other is the logic of the situation, and the good cheer of it is with him, too, when he adds : "I have seen what glories of climate, of summer mornings and even- ings, of midnight sky; I have enjoyed the benefits of all the complex machinery of arts and civilization, and its results of comfort. The good power can easily provide me millions more as good." Physicians and scientists are struggling as never before to prolong man's days upon earth. Every week turns out sage treatises admonishing us to take care of all that we think — yea, even of wretched meat and drink — that we may continue in the land of the living. One thing makes them all valueless. They do not master the secret of perennial youth. Life without that is a thankless offer- ing. Death as the way to it is a boon none would forego. The English writer speaks to the mark in declaring that it is age, not death, that this generation fears. No sane man would want to live 200 years, or even 100, dwelling upon the sordid animal affairs of eating and drinking, says an American writer who weighs the dietetic counsels. Better to have a church fall on him or some such kindly accident carry him off. Till youth and native vigor that set man free from these poor proddings of the flesh can come at 32 Curiosity of Mankind About the Other Side science's call, the prolongation of his days holds little charm for him. Rather, his heart is with the poet, who prays : When the warp and woof are thinning, And the daylight is half blind. Give me death, that I may find Life, upon some morning height. Sheen and sheer above the night. A CHAPTER ON DOGS AND THEIR SERVICE TO MANKIND HERO DOGS" is a good name for a book, but it would take a great many books to do justice to the subject. In all the volumes that have already been given to "man's best friend" the half has not been told. Writers find themselves swamped in an attempt to enumerate tlie instances of hero- ism which the dogs of any little town or neighborhood can furnish. The good woman who has lately organized a "So- ciety of Hero Dogs" is likely to be overwhelmed by the com- pany of eligible subjects. Scarcely a home can be found where some tale of fidelity or sacrifice on the part of the hero dog does not enter into its history or traditions, and more than the poor Indian finds it hard to dream of any heaven where his faithful dog shall not bear him company. From the dogs of the Zodiac to the three-headed dog of the Styx, there is no place so high or low in man's universe that the dog can not find entrance to it. Classic literature especially abounds in tributes to the dog, whether Ulysses or Alcibiades furnish the varying text. It was the famous epitaph of Lord Byron on his dog. Boatswain, however, that put the noble dog in his true place among earth's habitants. "Near this spot," wrote the poet, "are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength with- out insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices. This praise, which would be un- meaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to Boatswain." 33 34 A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind Comparisons between man and the dog are commonly on the dog's side, and even hero worship shows a leaning in that direction that the "Society of Hero Dogs" but tardily recognizes. "I have known dogs and I have known school heroes that, set aside the fur, could hardly have been told apart,'* said Stevenson. Unquestionably if the refinement of heroism lies in giving one's life for another, no company of school heroes can match the army of faithful dogs that have given their lives for their masters or their boy play- mates, to say nothing of those that have perished in the cause of science and exploration. It is quite to the mark that one writer exclaims, "Now that the hurrahing over polar expeditions is dying down, humane journals are pointing out that a portion of the praise bestowed upon North Pole explorers should be awarded to the unfortunate dogs, with- out whose services, given at a great cost of suffering to themselves, the attempt at pole searching would have been impossible." It is Nansen himself who gives the force to this position in the brief quotation from his book "Farthest North." For after admitting the horrible cruelty practiced upon these polar dogs, he says, "When I think of all those splendid animals, toiling for us without a murmur as long as they could move a muscle, never getting any thanks or so much as a kind word, daily writhing under the lash, I have moments of bitter self-reproach." It is Nansen, too, who points the fearful moral that such treatment of man's faithful friend carries. "It is a sad part of expeditions of this kind," he writes, "that one systematically kills all better feelings until only hard-hearted egoism remains." This is the more hu- man side of the dog question which science and civilization are largely responsible for. When man roamed free through the glad early world regardless of poles or "world plaudits," A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 35 his faithful dog served many of the purposes which the involved machiner}^ of civilization have since made necessary? from pantries to scavengers. The Kentucky colonel who furnishes a late paragraph for the "wet and dry" columns preserves the traditions of those happy days. "He ate a breakfast every day," we are told, "which consisted of a nice juicy stake, a bottle of whisky and a dog. He had the dog eat the steak." The wandering Ulysses needed no pantry nor scavenger to care for the left-overs from his daily meal. The dog disposed of it all, and half the sani- tation problems of to-day were done away with. It was when Alcibiades cut off his dog's tail to divert the unwelcome attentions of the Athenians from himself, that the more selfish and inhuman uses of his four-legged friend began to show themselves in man. The bobtailed curs and horses of the present day are a living commentary upon the heartlessness and ingratitude of the gay Athenian youth toward the splendid animal that had clung to him in patient watchfulness through many a bout that had put his human companions to flight. That they should cease to comment upon his crooked ways in turning their attention to his bobtailed dog was the brilliant excuse of the young poet and philosopher for the abuse of his famous pet. The amount of abuse that the dog will stand and cling still to a "miserable, thankless master" is a thing unparalleled in the whole world of sentient creatures, and that man has taken advantage of it in so many ways is one of the poorest things in all his history. Sometimes it comes from a lack of intelligence which the wonderful sagacity of the dog makes pitiful. But lately a beautiful shepherd dog came to his death through just such woeful stupidity on the part of man. For years he had been the pet and servant of a family liv- ing in the wooly West, where a watchdog's services were no 36* A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind sinecure. From tramps to coyotes and rattlesnakes, he had guarded the household and little ones from many a threat- ened danger, and bore numerous battle scars from savage animals encountered in the children's path — in one case being frightfully gored by an infuriated cow that bore down upon the toddling baby. Hitched to a sled, he pulled the children to school through the snows of winter, and watched them safely past the frail bridge over a roaring creek in summer — never failing to be at his post when the hour of their return arrived. When in the course of human events one daughter married and went into a remote part of the region, he became the mail carrier to bear notes back and forth from the two homes. From the hour that the first note was tied about his neck with the simple word "Take it to Mamie," he never misunderstood or failed in his mission ; and, more wonder- ful still, being told to wait for an answer, he would settle down on Mamie's stoop till she tied the white scrap about his neck, when he fled like a deer through wood and mead, back to the old home. Sometimes the storm made the creek high and the way beset with difficulties, but the faithful messenger always managed to preserve the note intact. On one occasion the dark hours came before the rural deliverer could make his way through the tangled wood and swollen stream to the daughter's cottage. It happened, too, by one of those cruel turns of fate no creature can account for, that an alarm of mad dogs had that day disturbed the scattered families of the neighbor- hood, and Mamie and her husband had gone to bed with the terror of them before their eyes. So, when the eager "Tow- ser" leaped on the porch, all wet and muddy, and began his friendly wiggling and wagging against the familiar door, the poor, stupid human creatures within never paused to A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind 37 consider that it might be tjieir own noble friend bearing the home message to them, but, taking him for one of the mad- dest of the mad dogs in their bewildered minds, shot him through the heart from the cottage window. And there, in the dim light of their lantern, they found him, with the little note about his neck, all safe and dry, though his shaggy fur was dripping with muddy water from the creek and gullies through which he had made his way to them. One affection- ate glance of his great, pathetic eyes, he turned upon them, one shiver of pain passed througli his shaggy frame and he lay dead at their feet. It would take a Roberts or a Thompson Seton to do jus- tice to tragedies of this kind in the animal Avorld, though the commonness of them might furnish material for many a writer. The mad dog craze, or superstition as some deem it, lies at the bottom of many of them, as when in another instance a master brutally murdered a great noble New- foundland dog that had just pulled its boy playmate from a near-by stream and rushed home all wet and frothing from the effort, to bring the parents to the shore where their idol lay insensible. Leaping upon the mother in its eagerness, and trying to seize her garments and draw her to the door the father deemed it mad, and with a fearful blow from a club broke its skull. Yet the wounded creature managed to make the poor human maniacs understand his purpose and follow him to the spot where their little one lay in time to save him. And then, while they worked over the child, he crept off into the woods and died. There are no nobler instances of devotion and heroism to be found in all the annals of mankind than stories like this that roll up by the score in the dog's history. It fairly looks as though Stevenson might have gone farther than the fur, in declaring how to tell dog heroes and school heroes 38 A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to Mankind iipart. But. the darkest feature in the case which the stu- dents of it unfold is the one which Nansen notes when he says that this common acceptance of the dog's life servicp and sacrifice tends to deaden all the better feelings in man. It is a principle which applies to more than the faithful dog in the animal kingdom. The growth of the humane societies, which bespeak protection for all our dumb rela- tions, from horses to birds and butterflies, is one of the most promising signs of tlie age, where human character is concerned. There is no question that the gentle, peaceful soul of the Oriental is closely- related to the tenderness to- ward all creatures great and small that his faith and philos- ophy inculcate. And yet the belief that "the soul of his grandam might haply inhabit a bird," as Shakespeare puts it, or the spirit of a lost love float past him on the wings of a butterfly, is no more reason for man's respect for these lesser creatures than the Occidental Christian teaching, that the spirit of the Great Creator breathes through every form of life his wonderful wide universe can show. Whoever gives even a passing stud}^ to the marvelous pro- visions that nature, "which is God," makes for the life and protection of the lower creatures, from the little green worm that matches its leafy coil, to the striped tiger that fits disguisinglj^ into the lights and shades of the jungle, must feel some measure of awe at the mysterious spirit of life and love visible everywhere. Thoreau tells us that the light in the young partridge's eye is something that never began with the bird, but declares itself co-eval with the eternal. Another writer notes how the shades of gray and ruddy brown of its plumage harmonize with the tints of its environ- ment and protect it from the shafts of the cruel hunter. Thus, is it, too, with the little brown thrush that hides itself in the thicket or hedge row, and A Chapter on Dogs and Their Service to ManJcind 39 Sings each song twice over, Lest you sliould think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture. It is noted as a significant mark of our leaning to Ori- ental lines of thought and spirituality that this kindliness toward the animal creation grows more marked and general. It certainly does seem significant that, as in one case men- tioned, a business man of a busy Western city should turn aside from the call of trade to have a man arrested for "setting a bulldog on a poor little kitten" and that a muni- cipal court should fine him $50 for the act. But, indeed, the root of the matter lies far back of race lines or distinction in the better heart of humanity, and in that Eden dream of unity and love running through all creation, when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and a little child shall lead them. THE PLACE OF THE HOME IN THE PLAN OF LIFE FOOLS build houses and wise men live in them," said some observing soul before the house-building associa- tions had tempted family men to reverse the proposition. Either way, however, it is wrong. Wise or foolish, to build your own house and live in it is the proper thing. Thus only can you fit it happily to all your follies, or adjust it to the nice requirement of your higher wisdom. Furthermore, thus only can you attach yourself to it in any way to make it other than a pile of brick and mortar, largely devised to tangle your steps and bruise your limbs at night and close about you with more or less prisonlike gloom by day. Of course, this supposes that you put something more than the raw material into the house 3'ou build ; and, indeed, you do, or you wouldn't build it at all. Plenty of heart and sentiment go into its construction, though you may scorn to admit it, and Gilder's exquisite poem, "How My Chimney Was Builded," will give you countenance for it all. It takes a little time, however, to resolve this part of the business to perfection, but when it is done your house will certainly stand for something not to be computed in dollars and cents. Well may the sage declare that "it is what is done and suf- fered in the house that has the profoundest interest for us," for, indeed, it is in "the familiar room" that love and death stand waiting to do their utmost, and the most beautiful ad- ventures of life are found. To break the tie and turn from the familiar room, with all its deep and sacred associa- 40 The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 41 tioiis, is no light thing, therefore, in human lives. Almost, as with the disrupting of ties of love and friendship, some "fair and honorable portion of existence falls away" and we be- come dislodged "from one of life's dear provinces." Hawthorne's picture of the man who turns his back on the human home and drops into mysterious disappearances from it, as becoming in the end an outcast of the universe, has a truth worth pondering in these days of shifting habi- tations and apartment houses, "with accommodations like a sleeping car," and as many stations for taking leave of them. The instability of all life and character follows naturally in the wake of such an existence, and the conditions of modern society are a glowing proof of it. Skyscrapers, that bear less relation to the sky than the hospitals, and "suite homes" that have no element of sweetness in them, fit marriages "made on a wager on a ferr}'^ boat," and a people whom the observing Arab sheikh declared are "always rushing madly to and fro as if a jaguar pursued them." He goes back to his skin tent in the desert or his hut in the forest, we are told, from his New York visit fully convinced that his way of living is the best. "Better the trees of the forest," he says, "than those tall buildings, which shut out the sun" ; and the problem that he carries with him is, "Why do men — - wealthy men, I am told — imprison themselves in those build- ings? Is that the way they were meant to live?" Thus does the dwelling house which Emerson declares the true index of the character of a people and the hope of a time convince the savage that we are "a nation of fools," and the only thing worth having at our hands is our mar- velous cannon whereby they may be able to keep out the rest of our civilization." And meantime the anthropological societies are playing into the hands of the savage by show- ing that the ancient pile dwelling was of so noble a character IJ^ '/'/(<• riacr of thr Home in the Plan of Life as 111 tiiniisli I 111' imxK'l tOr llu' IxMiuliful (Jrci-k loiupirs of classic iviu)wii. In (Jjh'cic ami nmiiv i)Uu>r parts of Iho world tluriiii»; the stoiio and bron/o a^vs they toll us "the oi'ioinal himian dwcllin*;' was a houso on piles, which also was the first (Iwcllini;- of the ii,()(ls, so that the worulcrful (irook temple, with its classic columns, is "a hig'hlv idealized and couveiitionali/ed expression of the oriivinal pile dwelling" of the [)oor barbarian whose ways we contemn. .lust when men be^-aii to let their houses oVrmaster them and become other than tlwelllno- [ilai'es of the ^ods of their truer bein^- it is not easy to say, but that they ha ye somehow made the blunder and reaped sorrow iji the path of it that poet seems to understand Avho writes of his young home builders: If now beyond or crib or cot Our house be grown, sure I know not \Vhy griefs sht>uld grow or pleasures pall Because the roof tree is so tall; Or hearts become less warm, Cu)d wot, For you and me. The eternal iitness of things no doubt has much to do with the general trouble, and indiyiduality in homes, as well as characters, would do much to relieye the situation. To devise his own habitation and cling to it while the tax asses- sors allow is therefore a point of wisdom in the case, despite the old ailage. Next to that there is something in choosing between the fool's house ami the wise mati's, however similar the exterior. There is certainly an aroma of being, as well as material points of con\fort and taste, that may tell in the long run upon the occupant. Perhaps the atmosphere of one deyil may not invite seven more devils to keep it com- pany, as in the ancient story, but thoughts that are things will somehow have impressed themselves upon the surround- The Place of the Home m the Plan, of Life 43 iiigs. H, is vvliul we call Uk- hciKMJicUon of a pnjstaicr.', that ina_y linger longer tliari we know about the familiar spot. MucJi that is most wonderful and interesting in the whole njalrn of [)Hy(;hic phenorrK-na hears ijf)ori this Huhject. iMcri- tal impressions and intense thought that well-nigh reach visible form and action arc held to account for strange things in human houses. They stand back of the weird tales of haunting spirits that have so long clung to homes of tragedy and blood. How far they reach or just what laws govern them the psychical societies are still studying, and till they make it out it may be well to take the chances with the better thought forces even here, and add a new chapter to the "Saints' Rest," for the edification of those who seek promising abiding places even this side of the River Jordan. If ever we do reach the time when the rrn'nd becf)mes th(; sculptor and architect in the world of matter, the fools and wise men will have no trouble to keep themselves apart on the house proposition. (Certainly, too, an interesting unique- ness, instead of depressing conformity, will attach itself to that "dear liut our home" winch would more harmoniously coincide with nature's wise plan in fitting every creature in licr realm to its nest, from the green worm in its leafy bed to the chambered nautilus of the sea. Indeed, this building of its own stately mansions, to which Holmes invites the soul in his beautiful poem, may yet have more than poetic rela- tion to the human family, if it is to escape the effectual clos- ing in of the prison house of time to which society condemns man from his narrow-walled crib up. The lack of means that shuts the majority of mankind away from such elevating influences of S7)acious halls and noble domes is something that would be sore indeed if nature did not in a measure atone for it by offering lier skyey dome and woodland halls to prince and peasant alike who will 44- The Placf of tin- Home in the Plan of Life seek her household tree. More thuu the Bedouin of the des- ert could euipluisi/.e nuin's folly in turning his buck upon his hirge ancestral inheritance here to cling- to his cribbed and cabined life in tenement rows of the city. To conspire with nature to secure a local liabitation and a name that shall not all belie hun is the only resource which the crushing fences of these days appear to allow the humbler builder. Yet vho privilege is a larger one than he realizes. As the poet tells him, "Thou shalt have the Avhole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath. The woods and the rivers thou shalt own, and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders." Thus may the poorest mortal find him a home "majes- tically dressed" and appointed, where sun and air and friendly soil shall do for him what all the architects and decorators of the proud cities could never approach. So wedded, indeed, are the cities and towns to their conventional and cramped apartments and suites that even a poet can not let his soul soar beyond them without accident to his best efforts. It is thoroughly characteristic of the time that when Ella Wheeler Wilcox undertook to put forth her sonnet with the significant line, "My soul is a lighthouse keeper,'" the up-to-date printer turned it out in his morning news- paper, ""^ly soul is a light housekeeper." As a case of more truth than poetry it is not to be sur- passed cither. That it sizes up the situation in many re- spects is pitifully true. The days are long gone when the modest young couple's domestic venture could fit the picture of Ik Marvels' dream, the more's the pity. "Your home, when it is entered, is just Avhat it sliould be, quiet, small, with everything she wishes and nothing more than she wishes. The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way ; the piano is the sweetest-toned in the world ; the librarv is stocked to The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life 45 H chanii, and Mad^c, that blessed wife, is there, adorning and giving life to it all." The lover who has such a dream as that nowadays is advised that he ought never to marry, and he seems disposed to accept the advice. To love and then to part, or n^ieet in some "mutual friend's" mansion seems safer than to take tiie chances in the sixth-story flat with the money shark's lien on all the furniture. Nor is it love alone, hut life with all its chances and refinements, that goes out in the desolation of lodgings and light housekeeping that allows no lighthouse outlook for the soul. There is bitter truth, indeed, in the sarcasm of a modern novelist who says of his heroine, "When her relatives learned that she lived in lodgings and would probably need assistance if she were encouraged to dine out, they had the delicacy not to intrude upon her sorrow." Heredity and environment have kept the scholars busy in trying their rival claims in the cliaracter molding of the race, though the meaning of the home in the latter case has never been fully estimated. But that homes do likewise bear some impress of their occupants that poet certainly believes who gives us this neat characterization of it: Mrs. O'Hara has a house 1'hat seem to say O ! O ! The blinds all off, the gate askew. Opening surprised big eyes at you. But Miss Diedamia's little cottage. Its mouth is thin and gray, And the closed shutters frown at you And murmur, Go away. Our house is pleasantest of all, With poppies down the walk, And hollyhocks that lean to you ; 46 The Place of the Home in the Plan of Life The porch has arms that reach right out, And the knocker seems to talk. At twilight, when I hurry home, My dripping skates across my back, The twinkling windows smile at me And I smile back. THE FEAR OF LIFE AND ITS EVIL EFFECTS THE paradox of living which never knows life is not a new one in the story of man's wrestle with that "spangle of existence" allotted him here. Of late, however, the voice, without both temple and tavern, cries more insistently against the loss entailed by the closed door and man's com- plicity in it. You know how little while we have to stay, And once departed, may return no more, was the ancient appeal for the opened door, and now a grow- ing murmur against mortal cowardice that dares not force the lock is in all the air. "You are the dreams we do not dare to dream" is the gentle challenge of the poet, and a nation "afraid of life" is the bold charge of the critic, where the last chance to taste of life in all its freedom and fullness has been offered man- kind. With no more worlds to conquer, it is sad to read that Americans have missed their opportunity and through a "fear of life" involved themselves and their literature in a "labyrinth of gentle fancy, of wan emotion, of love without passion and faith without rapture." Especially sad, too, when some at least of their literary forefathers certainly started them out in the right path. Was it not "the prim- itive and enduring" that appealed to Thoreau, when he said : "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 47 48 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects to front only the essential facts of life. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Was it not life in its very essence that Emerson considered when he said if man "plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come around to him." Alas, when did American instincts grow too tame and domestic for any large world of life or literature to come round to them? For this you will note, far more than the cry of commercialism, is the sin against genius and force which the subtler critics lay at their door. The loss of "primal passions" in the free and primal atmosphere of a new world is something for which the children of light and literature find it hard to forgive them. To talk of "the stainless integrity of their private lives" in the face of tameness in their literature is more than pathetic and amus- ing to the elect of letters. It is like seeing a star go out in a new heaven prepared for it, and a tallow dip of modest home construction take the place of it. Naturally enough Puritanism, with its narrow creeds and forms and innumerable proprieties and, above all, its "New England conscience" was held largely responsible for it. For the majority of these broader critics appear to think, with Stevenson, that "the person, man or dog, who has a con- science is eternally condemned to some degree of humbug and the sense of law in their members precipitates them toward a frozen and affected bearing." The utmost "abandon of life" is the point insisted upon and that our greatest genius in fiction, Nathaniel Hawthorne, used the conscience motto for his intense and unparalleled probing at the heart of life is a phenomenon before which they confess themselves wrapped in wonder. Some Villon of the plains, some Balzac to record "the pas- sion of a desert" is what they demand and, lacking this, even The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 49 Whitman, with his bold dash at the underside of things and 3^earning for "the unanchored and driving free" did not lift us above the fear of life into the atmosphere of the immortals. The new world inheritance that brought neither a new pan- theism nor a new pain to interpret or augment the still sad music of humanity, nor yet a life free as the wild birds to defy all pain or fear, seemed a wasted splendor, a lost chance to recover for man the universal spirit, the universal joy. That Thoreau declared nature herself "vast, drear and in- human," not to be associated with man in any Wordsworth- ian S3'mpathy or tenderness, does not preclude the idea that somehow in the unprofaned deeps of the primeval forest or the vast solitude of the hills the American man should have come upon the "hidden deity" of elemental life who would relieve him of all his fears, and above all of his pestiferous conscience. That instead man settled down to puritan prayer meet- ings, blue laws and patient psalms of life is something for which the bohemian soul of genius and art can scarcely for- give him. And yet there may still be hope for him. If abandon to desire and defiance of troublesome laws lead the way to native force and passion a veritable Olympus may soon be set up in our midst. The only trouble is that by all the laws of art genius must know the way from the pit to the Empyrean, and a majoritj^ of those who go doAvn to test the tartarean shivers lose themselves in the operation, and thus leave the divine comedy of life but partially revealed to us. No wonder, either, when the very expression "aban- don of life" commonly carries with it some sinister idea of lawlessness in darker desires and passions, instead of the pure and enduring joys which ever lie at the heart of life. A lingering vision of the primitive lords of life and liberty faring forth to seize feudal castle or Sabine women as the 50 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects native impulse seized them, goes still with this high theory of life's abandon. That the essence of life is divine, and the true fearlessness of life grows out of that truth, is something not dwelt upon by the majority of our critics. Yet here is the real potency of their demand for a brave facing of life, to the utmost, in the creature of force or genius, and their charge that a fear of life can pale all the fires of thought, being or achieving in any nation or individual. "Life means intensely and it means good," said one of the mightiest sons of genius who ever braved the sun and tried the stuff of life through every glint of gold or dross, the highest or the lowest phase of being could bring to it, and to fling one's self into the life current with that faith is to welcome the rough water as well as the smooth, and count every human experience worth all it cost — aye, cover the suffering and the sinning that are the eye-openers of the soul. "The unlit lamp and the ungirt loin," are the only deadly forms of fear such vision recognizes. To fear to battle for his soul's desire, his life's set prize, be it what it will, is the coward faltering at the heart of life, which blights and kills. It is not strange, either, that Browning places it in the domain of love, since love he held to be the grand prize of life, though one which mortal cowardice and weakness have most abused and for- feited. To dare to be true to love, when the world and its ways stood at all in the path of it, has apparently been given only to the great ones of the earth, while yet there is nothing surer than That to turn from love is life's one treason That treads down all the suns. There is a place where fear of life does more than im- poverish literature and a deeper cry than the artist's might The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects 51 well be raised against it. Of course, too, it is the perfect love that casteth out fear, which is to save us in the end, and it may be that the very upheavals of society in the line of divorce and marriage are on the search for it, although it is difficult to trace such end in either the life or literature of the hour. One thing is sure, however, and that is that it is not the poets and writers who drop us down in the mire of the strife, or carry us back to the brute instincts of crea- tion, and whisper "Here's life, be not afraid of it," who will purge us of our coward fears. "Half dust," but also "half deity," life's life only as it includes the divine. Live for eternity as well as time, and the fearlessness and joy of the "perfect round" is assured to you. Especially if you do not try to reverse the method and stake all of eternity upon an hour of time ; nor yet like Atlas to carry the world on your shoulders in the wrestle with time. You can smile at one man's failure, even your own, if sure that another hand will tfring the desired victor3\ "Atlas was just a gen- tleman with a protracted nightmare," says Stevenson, and so is any single individual who "coddles himself into the fancy that his own work is of exceptional importance" and fears life's utmost ability to carry it on to any worthy end without him. Indeed, the dignity and grandeur of life in its far-reaching ends and fulfillments is something that glori- fies every participant in it, and, though we are in a measure novices and "vagabonds in the great universe of power," yet there is nothing to fear, since history and science alike show us that "our little wherry is taken in tow by the ship of the Great Admiral, who knows the way and has the force to draw men and states and planets to their good." The primal passions to which the critics look for any strength in life or genius were lit at the divine fire of being, and the white flame at that altar needs no taint of any lower 52 The Fear of Life and Its Evil Effects life to give it force. The "stainless integrity of a private life" ought not to militate against the fiercest fires of genius, and if it seems to it must be because the world and the critics have not yet discovered what stainless integrity in human life and relations means. We may grant them frankly that it does not mean "the mildl}'^ domestic" nor conventionally proper, but even then a white margin is left for the high passions to disport themselves in, which Dante knew, but minor writers have lost entirel3^ Who will restore to us the lost clew, who will give us the "Vita Nuova" which shall trace life and love to their in- tensest emotions, yet leave the celestial skies of Eden inno- cence and purit}^ enfolding them both? The lion of love is hardly a fit animal for a domestic pet, the modern writers tell us, and the social records seem to sustain them, but what better they do with him in turning him loose in the company now sought for him, it is not becoming to consider. Some Dante or Browning to reinstate love on his own high throne is a prime need of society, and then the life philosopher may more safel}' say to us with Fichte, "What thou lovest thou livest." Perhaps the fear of life will drop away, even from strait-laced America, and, without the asset of broken hearts or broken morals, our poets maA' retrieve their lost inher- itance, and be able yet to tell the new world's story of A life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being. ' Yet, if the critics fail to "get their money's worth of life" out of the epic story, there is still a whisper from the last rim of the golden west, that "we are caught in the coil of a god's romance," and must wait the sequel from afar. THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE FORCES IN THE GAME OF LIFE LIFE as a game, death as an adventure, Is a philosoph- ical wa}^ of taking the whole "scheme incomprehensible," which puzzled humanity more and more inclines to. One of the latest books dealing with the eternal mystery calls death "the great adventure," and pictures the fearless and eager interest whicli a perfectly wholesome nature might take in it from such a viewpoint. The idea is not a new one, either, though elaborated in an unusual way. More people than the writers know have faced death in the spirit of the beloved Uncle Remus, who only whispered, "I have always been curi- ous to know what was on the other side," as he passed over with a gentle smile into the face of his wife. Attempts to solve the mystery, either on the part of science or religion, have tended directly to cloud this pleasing speculation in it without in any way lifting the veil that obscured it. In general they are of a character best illustrated by the story of the two men each of whom was asked as to the existence of hell. The first man being a plain unlettered sort of per- son, simply answered, "I don't know," and was promptly set down as an agnostic, a heretic and a dangerous individual. The other, who was high of brow, wrote out his answer in full. He took 5000 words to introduce his subject and then 70,000 words to tell what the first man had told in three, and he was hailed as a philosopher, an uplifter, and a leader. To air their supposed wisdom or their doctrine is about all the would-be-teachers in this unknown realm can do, and 53 54- Visible and Invisible Forces in Game of Life that it leaves the matter about as it found it is as true to-day as when the Persian poet tells us "I heard the great argu- ment" of doctor and saint, about it and about — but, ever- more, "came out by tiie same door wherein I went." From tirst to last life is a riddle and guessing at the riddle is a large part of the entertainment it offers. That death changes this order of things and solves all life's puzzles in some fixed state either of bliss or woe, is a view of the great change accepted by many, but more or less appalling to all, and wholly unwarranted by any logic of happy being known on earth. That it will take ages on ages to find out what "lies on the other side" is more probabl}^ the truth of the busi- ness if we are not all to drop into some stagnant pool or monotonous plane of existence where no blaze of eternal glory could atone for tlie interest and zest of the game we have left behind us on the uncertain earth. That "man is hurled from change to change, his soul's wings never furled" or sure of the next peak to be reached, is the more cheering view of the situation that progressive spirits like Browning take of it. The main difference there and here may be that the eternal wonder as to how anything is "going to turn out" will be accompanied by some sustaining sense that it will turn out all right. The difficulty of lajang hold of that comforting assurance in this crooked world, is what hurts the game, although it may give it a kind of desperate zest the good angels know nothing about. It is possible, how- ever, to put a certain faith in what men call destiny, that will give one boldness and indeed delight in playing the game of life even when it goes against him. In his defini- tion of romance a recent writer brings out this point in a significant manner. "Romance," he saj^s, "is a chain of cir- cumstances which out of the infinite chaos links two living things together for a definite end — that end, which is a Visible mul Invisible Forces in dame of Life 55 pendant upon the chain itself, and may be a heart with a lock of hair inside, or a cross or a dagger or a crown. But whatever it is you may know that end was meant to be and for a very good reason." This knowledge that you are in the hands of destiny "gives you boldness." It carries a sense that you are meant to meet the people and circumstances that come in your path, and hence are not acting entirely of your own puny self in taking the preposterous steps and chances that your bold encounter with them might seem to imply. Of course this is little more than that faith in the ultimate good and man's appointed part in it, which saints as well as philosophers have been recommending through all ages. But, resolving the whole business into a romance, filling it with the "rigors of the game," is not commonly a part of the philosophic plan, nor yet the theologic, although to be sure Bunyan did send his pilgrims out with something of the zest for a fray, and the Sir Galahads of righteous renown have played a thrilling part in the pages of life and literature. But in fact, it is the Young Lochinvars of little thought beyond their own prowess and romantic desires, who find the battle and the game of life most zestful, while those who dwell upon the paradise to come or "heed the rumble of a distant drum" very shortly fall out of the enjoyment of the game and con- sequently bear no very effective part in it. This, of course, is why observing souls have proposed to drop them, saints and sinners alike, out of the earthly being and leave only those young spirits that could keep the zest of the game, the romance of the unexpected, whether good or bad, alive in the human arena. It may be directly in the interests of these that life, as an endless adventure, is the livelier note sounded from pulpit as well as lecture halls, and the soothing doctrine of under- 56 Visible and Invisible Forces in Game of Life lying good directs itself more to the race than the individual who is left to play the cards or weapons dealt out to him with the old uncertainty whether he is to win or lose in the present battle. That there is always a chance to win on the Lord's side is the standing encouragement held out to him though he may see many an Apolyon carry off the vic- tory in single combat. While success or failure in any field depends still upon circumstances that "may leap out of infinite chaos," neither the doctrine of the ultimate good, nor the pleasing idea of the master man, can destroy the element of chance the situation holds and the real interest of the game demands. And as all this exists as truly in age as youth, with a world of unexplored chances and prizes within it, it is certainly strange that the spirit of adventure so soon dies out in human breasts. To rouse it to fresh life, and carry it even beyond the shadowy pall of death, is a prime step in the modern movement to turn back the powers of darkness and despair that have so long spoiled the wonder game of life for all beyond the earliest stages of it. "Getting old is not a necessity. It is merely a bad habit," says Ellen Key, and the worst of the habit lies in the acceptance of the old idea that there comes a time when life has nothing more to offer and memory of the past must take the place of eager hope in the future. No wonder that life grows "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable," to those who fall out thus weakly in any stage of the game. "Oh, the brief and unctuous self-confidence of those who have not yet found out," says one cynic in the face of youth's glowing assurance. But oh, the self-destroying assurance of those who think they have found out, arid hold dead sea apples the fruit of life's tree. The boy will never become truly father to the man till aU the radiant faith and hope in the unknown world before him remains a potent force and charm Visible mid Invisible Forces in Game of Life 57 of age as of happy youth. A "boy who keeps on growing" in a world that keeps on offering the wonderful and unex- pected at every stage, is what the ideal human being must be to fulfill the life of adventure prepared for him. A world that is "all gates, all opportunities, strings of ten- sion waiting to be struck," need never grow stale and unpro- fitable to any being upon its shores nor can the oldest or the youngest of its explorers ever tell what hour a new conti- nent may loom on its horizon, or a Halley*s comet flame into view that shall blazon his name in the splendors of im- mortal 3"outh upon the shining sky. The testimony of Victor Hugo is the one most gloriously in point for those who would secure life from the drear sentence too often pronounced upon it as a tale that is told^ "Winter is on my head," he writes, "but spring is in my heart. I breathe at this hour, the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets and the roses, as at twenty years, the earth gives me its generous sap, and heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds. It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale and it is history." That forces of good and evil battle together in this fairy tale of life and adventure honest thinkers like Hugo have been fain to admit, and that man's place in the giant play of these invisible forces is a precarious and uncertain one. But the improvement the Christian philosopher made upon the pagan one, was in the larger faith in the good than the evil power at the back of the game. It increased that bold- ness in the player which the novelist submits is essential to the romance of life, as well as the courageous encounter with it where little romance seems left. The stoicism of the pagan as against the faith of the Christian is well symbolized in the contrast between the sphinx of destiny and the god of love, at the back of the two different systems. An invisible and inscrutable power controlling the field, however man oS Vhiblf and Im'isihlt' Fonts in (itniw of Life handloil his forces, was an aikuowledged point in both cases, but it • made a ditt'erence whether ruthless fate or loving purpose was behind that power. The pleasure in the life irame could only come with the full consciousness tluvt no mere demon of ill or stern fatality held the stakes, or dealt the cards, but one who meant fair play and endless chance for ever}' participator in the game. It is only thus that the odds of any game can be taken with zest and pleasure. Loaded dice soon doovu a game, but the uncertain turn of the honest dice gives all the interest to it. "The uncertain factors of success, the entrance of accidents, the intrusion of the unforeseen make life worth living," says one advocate of the scheme of things about us. Bvit it took a large faith in the being who holds the balance of the unforeseen to con- vince him of this. It is a significant feature in the new theology and the new psychology that luck and providence are becoming closely united. The visible and invisible forces in the game of life are coming into more intelligible relations to each other. ^Mental science is taking a strong hand in the game. That man "is one with life's almighty source," is a truth of the ages that is rendering the ancient' chance more marvel- ously sweet and alluring. Life is an endless adventure, a voyage of discovery in which "good luck" and "God speed" are kin notes the best of the preachers combine in their "shouts of cheer" to the voyagers. "The devil for luck" is a lost note in the game. Man's own vision has outstretched that stake, and writes the distance from it in the poet's lines for the years calendar. Enough to know of chance and luck. The stroke we choose to strike is strvick; The deed we slight will slighted be, In spite of all necessity. Vixihle aii/l Invinihle ForceH in (iarae of fAfe 59 Alun'h fn.e will and a loving (jOcJ'k Kovc-rcignly arc work- ing out the problem of life along more glorious lines thafi the v/'divrmf^ theologians over the seemingly conflicting doc- trines ever dreamed of. ABOUT HEROES THERE is no comfort after all in trjang to dispose of the historic heroes who bestride the world to the em- barrassment of smaller men, unless we can be sure that the legendary ones will not push into the ranks of veritable his- tory to take their places. No sooner have we relieved our- selves of Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington and "ze great Christopher Columbo" than up leaps Hiawatha as the veri- table father, not of one, but six nations, and possessed of all the sublime virtues of which our own illustrious fathers have been denuded by the writers. It is fair to state that it is the restless German intellect, not the American, that has done this. Longfellow knew enough to meet the question. "Whence these stories, whence these legends and traditions," with the "misty odors of the forest" and the whisperings of the west wind. It is a German scholar deep in the mysteries of ethnology and anthropology who has tracked them to the remnant of the Onondagas and learned from the lips of the old chief at their New York reservation the veritable story upon which they are founded. This settles it for Hiawatha, and the beauty of the verification is that not a virtue or a grace which the finest fancy of the romancer could weave about him is lost in the reality. From the hour when he took the fair Minnehaha from the tribe of the Mohawks to the day when he broke from his long mourning for her loss, to meet the call of his people and fix the totem pole for the clans, not a breath of wrong or reproach stained the glory of this "plumed knight" or chief 60 About Heroes 61 of American history. True to one affection and one pure purpose of uplifting his people, he buried the sorrow of his life in his bosom, and having bound the confederacy to keep in his absence the constitution he had framed for them, dis- appeared, like the old Greek patriot and lawmaker, to return no more. "In the glory of the sunset; in the purple mists of evening," verily did his white canoe vanish from the strain- ing eyes of the tribes, and here we are up against a hero whom no probing of the story can besmirch. More than that to the white man is the moral and to civilization the reproach. Could any of "them" prying scholars and "fool literary fellers" do worse for us than that.'' Would that Owen Seaman would spear them all with a jest, and let us have white lambs for heroes that are not quite so "ominous" when served up with the mint sauce of present society. Nevertheless, since philosophy seems to insist that all our ideas are born of experience and no conception of life or character beyond the range of experience is possible to the mind, we may have to take all the aureoled heroes of song and story as men and brothers yet. There is no denying, either, that when we do come upon them in the ranks of com- mon life the}' surpass anything that the romancers have ever claimed for them. We can afford to lose all the Norse heroes of fiction, whom John Fiske's searching work, "New France and New England," wipes out in the glory of those humble men and maidens of authentic history' that he raises up to stem the tide of savagery, tyranny, superstition and wrong in the new land. What are a hundred Jeannie Deans, either, besides the almost unknown woman, Mary Easty, who faced ail the powers of court and clergy in a trial for witch- craft with protestations of its falseness, and the dying prayer, "I petition not to your honors for my own life, for I know I must die. But by my own innocency I know you 62 About Heroes are in the wrong way." There are heroic souls and exalted spirits enough in real life to make us uneasy in our vanities, without going to fiction for them. The only thing we can ask of the searchers after their types or prototypes, is that they shall not be thrust upon us too ruthlessly before we are able to bear them. It was a solid comfort to know that the new Enoch Arden of Meriden, Conn., who recently came from the Klondike to gaze silently through the garden gate upon the fair wife Annie, who, believing him dead, was playing "little wife" to another, went way back to Alaska and sat down, without upsetting the gracefully shifting currents of love and matrimony of our day. And what if he did hear his baby boy calling another "papa .?" There is a good Eng- lishman not unknown to society who always tells his wife that in case of the "divided path of development" she can have both the boys to dispose of as she pleases. Enoch Arden should know that in these days love Fulfills itself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. It is only when some fierce Zola rises up to cry, "I accuse," to the ruling orders that trouble arises, and even then small harm is done unless he dies and shows them a white-souled hero of truth and justice at the back of it. It is these just men everywhere that disturb the dreams of kings, and when society has spent ages in banishing them, and literature in painting their weaknesses, why should restless anthropolo- gists hunt legends and archives to reinstate them on the face of the earth, especially when it remands us back to a state of nature or savages to find them.? "These people are can- nibals," said Zola of the representatives of French aris- tocracy and intellect, who crowded the courtroom to ring out their cheers over the base verdict, "Guilty." But, of About Heroes 63 course, any poor, ignorant cannibal who merely gratifies his appetite for dinner might blush to find himself ranged beside these cultured monsters, athirst for lives, honor and every human principle of decency or justice. It is the growth in power and intellect without a corresponding growth in goodness and truth that is the reproach of civi- lization everywhere, and the thing that makes it almost an appalling matter to have some white embodiment of all its own ideals step out of the dim past and very ranks of sav- agery to try its progress along the eternal lines. However, there is still a chance for us, for has not the well-known president of a voters' league recently declared that he would not indorse the Angel Gabriel if he were not on the winning ticket, and it has never been the part of these ideal creatures to get themselves on the winning ticket. To all appearances they only become our snow-white heroes when they are dead and well out of the way. If they can not attach themselves to earth by a few weaknesses while they live, society generally takes up the matter and fits them out with a saving panoply of sins and accusations if it pro- poses to make any use of them. It is more than possible that if truth were told there are heroes of true and honest pur- pose among us to-day. But let them start out to do an unusual and earnest work, and see what hints of evil and all duplicity will be brought to bear upon them. That gen- tle-souled Walt Whitman may have intended no sarcasm when he declared that it is only after the "noble inventors" that the sons of God may come upon the earth singing his songs. But he perpetrated a rather neat one, notwithstand- ing, and perhaps it is not till we have lost these noble in- ventors of dusky earth garments for our heroes that we need be very much afraid that we shall have to creep under their huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable 64 About Heroes graves, but to be able to speak with the assurance of Brown- mg of "My peers the heroes of old" would certainly be an agreeable thing to any man if he could reconcile the world to it. Many and varied counsels thereto have been offered him also, from Byron's advice that the hero must drink bra'T.dy to the modern diplomat's insistence that, like Janus, he must have two faces. But perhaps that discerning old jssayist, Addison, comes nearest to the case when he declares simply that he must know how to make both the hero and the man complete. THE PURSUIT OF GHOSTS PURELY by accident the psychic societies captured a ghost. An uncapped lens of a camera, left in the de- serted library of an old English manor house, revealed on tlie developed negative the veritable figure of the lord of the manor seated in a high-backed chair of the ancient sanctum. And this at the very hour when the body of said lord was being laid away in a kirkyard near by. Of course, the society for psychic research took care of the mystery, and the poets and seers who stand harking with spirit ear at the door of the arcanum advised us not to be cast down by such mystery; or marvel, but to "go right on." Joining hands with science, they whispered stoutly, "Let us recognize that mystery of this kind exists, but until it reveal itself we have not the right to relax our efforts nor cast down our eyes and resign ourselves to silence." The aim of all men should be to master the forces of matter and wrest from them their secret, and then go on to that gen- eral secret of all life which "lies hidden at the end." The fact that science has become hospitable to a ghost and set upon taking its photograph is directly in the line of their counsel, even though the unbelieving are out with cameras and confederates trying to show by what neat tricks and accidents the filmy ghosts may be developed. There was a time when the wondrous feats of the Indian fakirs were submitted slyly to the tests of the camera, and the trees and flowers and dancing angels which they claimed to bring straight from paradise or some deeps of the un- 65 66 The Pursuit of Ghosts known would make no impression on its plates. Hence they were not there, said the savants, and meant simply an op- tical illusion produced by the magicians, and on the strength of this dictum the value of the camera in catching creatures or things that were there has been on the increase. No freaks of the imagination or nerve disorders could deceive this calm "e3^e of science," it was said, and the veritable figure of a dead or absent lord on the sensitive plate of an open camera in his deserted library must mean something of that lord's ability to transport himself about, indepen- dent of his body. Barring the chance of some sly page or butler slipping in to assist a materialized spirit to the lord's oak chair, one would say that it must. And just for this reason it may be well to take the advice of the higher lights and go straight on spiritualizing ourselves with a view to getting thus at the truth of the matter, however science may hobble along either with or without us. It must be easier for spirit to discern spirit than for the lens of a camera to catch up with one, and if a respectable dead man will go and sit down with a photographic apparatus there may be no reason why he would not associate with any of the least of us if we would give him proper encouragement. The dullness with which the second centur}^ man looked into the infinite deep of heaven with all the starry realms of being and deemed it but a pretty tinted cover for his flat earth, was slight beside the stupid blindness in which we walk among the invisible forces of creation, and powers that sway us on every hand in the practical belief that we are the only quickened spirits in the illimitable space. That every drop of water or atom of matter is aglow with invis- ible life science declares to us, but that the highest form of life, the spirit life, is everywhere we are loth to believe, because science has not adjusted its lens to capture it. As The Pursuit of Ghosts 67 Avell might wc declare that there is no melody in the forest nor music in the spheres, because the human ear can follow but to a certain point those vibrations of sound, which yet go on and on in divinist harmony through all creation's bounds. To listen with "soul, not ear," and catch the "quir- ing to the young-eyed cherubims," as the poet catches it through spirit sympathetics, is the thing the seers and sing- ers of all ages have taught us, and yet we wait for some advance of material science to convince us that there are spirits touching us at every corner. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall sec God," said the Lord of Spirits, and that appears to be all there is of it ; and no time, nor condition is set to the achievement of that purity and sight. Moses, Socrates, Buddha, may all have compassed it, as the tales record, and any living creature who could bring himself to that pure, transparent atmosphere of the unstained spirit, could no doubt walk witli God and the angels, whether in the body or out of the body. It is in such hours of spirit exaltation that the good and gifted ones of all ages have believed that they broke through the bars of sense and held communion with celestial beings, or with the souls of their beloved dead. And whether their belief is assured or not, at least there is enough in it to point the conclusion that it is along this spirit line that our best hope comes. Speak to him, for he hears you. And spirit with spirit may meet, says Tennyson, and there is little doubt that Avith that faith and understanding the communion of spirits, whether visible or invisible, ought not be difficult to establish. Everything in the universe has its own medium of life and communication, and innocence and trust may be more en- 68 TJie Fursuit of Ghosts ticing to spirits than all the scientific courtesies of tlic schools. Poets like Shelley and Wordswortli have believed that sweet and guileless infancy holds long a close and glad relation to the angels, ere the "shades of the prison house begin to close about the growing boy," and it may be that here, as elsewhere, it is tlic little child who can best show us the way into the kingdom. A pretty story of one of these little ones comes from a fair suburban home not far away. Two children, John and Mary, were born to that home, and, as the old poet has it, "grew in beauty side by side," while all nature bower- gownied and blossomed about them and filled their souls with its joy. Cultured Christian parents nurtured them and a little leaf-embowered church and Sunday school gathered them in for wondrous stories of heaven and the angels. But one sad da}^ a shadow fell across the threshold and in the wake of it Mary slipped away to another countr3\ The parents mourned her as dead, but Johnny, who had been told that she was an angel, went out under the spreading elm where they had been wont to play together to find out about it. And there, shortly, his mother found him, in great joy, pla3'ing, as he insisted, with the little sister who had come when he called her and promised to be his play- mate still. For days and weeks he plaj'ed about the old haunts, or rambled through the woods in the avowed com- panionship of the departed sister, and the astonished par- ents, who watched him curiously, found him talking, laugh- ing and sporting gleefulh' as Avith some visible playmate. He did not die, nor go into a fever, nor develop any of the brain diseases nor eccentricities that science might have ex- pected of him. But one day he came in sadly and told his mother that Mary had gone away and could not come to play with him any more. The Pursuit of Ghosts 69 Of course tlie ]).sycliioa] societies make short work of such cases, and there may be plenty of them among the imagina- tive children of the land. But, after all, in their trusting simplicity, tliey come perhaps as near to the spirit truths in the matter as "the obstinate questionings" and "blank misgivings" of older creatures, "moving about in worlds not realized." A FEATURE OF THE HOUR THE literary man in politics is a feature of the hour. Not that he is a new figure there, but rather that he is not. It is the change of front that counts. The blot on a Dryden's genius and the national star on a Lowell's is the measure of that change. It is the difference between cower- ing and commanding, leading and being led, and in days past, even John Milton himself was not free from the spoiler's touch. The poet in exile and the poet in a President's cab- inet points the progress of the world in the direction of the literary statesman and politician, and republican Amer- ica clearly keeps up with the procession. Poets and ro- mancers, playwrights and fable makers are in high demand as legislative candidates and members of Congress, and even law, medicine and pedagogics are hunting the man who knows how to keep romance alive in his heart. Nobody questions that this may be tlie way of refresh- ment for murky politics and musty law. To have the guardians of the central fires let in to their courts and cau- cuses must inevitably do something to warm and refine their paling altars. But for the high priests, or priestesses, of the sacred flame, themselves, what of them? Are they to keep their souls alive and fed at the ward meeting, or the boodler trial, or find an influx of the divine afflatus in the trooping stream of applicants at ambassador's or execu- tive's door. Alas, every peaceful spring of Helicon, or "many fountained Ida" cries out against such sacrilege, and 70 A Feature of the Hour 71 the vision of Charles Lamb in the counting room rises up to decry it. If the country has really come to feel the need of the lit- erary man's influence in society and state, why not give him the chance to speak the truth that is within him in his own wa}^? If he is to be a support to the government in such work why not allow him the recognition and remuneration of a servant of the government that he may keep his sa- cred office quite apart from the sordid question of popular taste and market value in the word he utters? The his- tory of all literature is the history of the world's neglect and stupidity in this direction. The effort to restore the Poe cottage at Fordham, N. Y., recalled some of our grand sinning here. Picture our greatest American poet sitting shivering by that bed of straw, where his young wife lay dying, with only the coat he had torn from his back for her covering. And Sidney Lanier, that divine master of song and lute, how did his life go out in suff^ering and want, to the eternal loss of American literature, while publishers were printing books that would sell, or bringing out war ditties that perished with the occasion. Dr. Johnson writing "Rasselas" to pay for his mother's funeral, Dante learning in want and exile how bitter it was to climb another's stairs, Carlyle half starving on bread and porridge at Craigenputtock, these are but a few of the authors' woes that point the world's nice care of her best writers. And, although to-day the author with his piling editions can scarcely pose as a mendicant or consumer of the midnight oil, yet it is doubtful if the live connection between bread and glory, truth and the day's living, can be much more happily effected. Truth may be, in a vague way, what the world wants, but the inner observer who writes that 'F A Feature of the Hour it is truth "toned down, diluted, conventionalized, trimmed," probably knows what he is talking about. To make the writer totally independent of the world's passing whims and pleasure is the only way, therefore, to enable him to minister to its fundamental and eternal needs. And, as dead men can tell no tales, even to publishers, some author's fund or government pay to enable the author, as well as the state's attorney, to stand by truth and justice and the higher things of life without starving for it, is a clear necessity in the case. It will be a very different world from what it is now when our Whitmans and our Emersons, our truest "conservators of the vestal fire" anywhere in literature, will stand much show among ward politicians and Tammany chiefs, and even our successful literary statesmen and executives have been more or less obliged to abandon the "higher calling" in en- tering upon the public and political life. If then it is true that it is through the author, the poet, that "all men see," is not something lost to us when his high office is sacrificed to any other, and should not the note of true progress and enlightenment in modern life reveal itself, not in sinking him in the politician, but in lifting him so eff^ectively into the freedom and greatness of his own work that the poli- tician's glories would have small attraction for him? It meant something for the higher humanity M^hen the son of our beloved poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, stood up at a Western university and declared to teacher and student alike, that the glory of the ideal, "the joy of eternal pur- suit" could run like a romantic passion through every branch of their work or study, that neither law nor medi- cine, nor any known profession need be "commonplace," while the romance of the unachieved, the passion for the ideal, burned within them. But was it not very much the A Feature of the Hour 73 fine fruition of the New England poet's thought coming down to us as a divine inheritance? And how would it have fared with the whole of that rich inheritance if joung Oliver Wendell Holmes had given himself to politics and the anti- slavery movement in the formative period of his life, as his abolitionist friends so clamorously demanded? Indeed, his interesting letter to James Russell Lowell explaining his principles on the subject is the significant answer to the whole matter, and one which the keepers of the sacred fires would do well to ponder before taking the stump or casting in their lot too effectually with the politicians. However, the gods do sometimes interpose to save their own, and it may be that Booth Tarkington's stage fright was a special evidence of their care. Certainly if it comes again he should take it for a sign. OUR DUMB RELATIONS WHAT is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?" asks a Twelfth Night philosopher. "That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird," re- plies another. Times have changed since the age of Pythagoras, yet to-day, whatever we may think of our grandams, we have lost no respect for wild fowl. It is not probable that the ancient doctrine of metempsychosis will be revived, but certainly if the glorification of animals goes much farther it will no longer be open to theologians to dis- miss the question of the immortality of brutes as "invidi- ous." Indeed, Bishop Butler himself scarcely does that, although Goldwin Smith so interprets him, for he admits, negatively at least, that there may be something in the brute which, along his line of argument, might come in for immortality, but that the question can in no way militate against the immortality of man. However, the animal lovers of to-day would more and more confound the theologian, for it is not alone the brute instinct or lower order of intelligence they are finding in them, but the higher moral qualities. Maeterlinck has just shown us in the insect world the highest type of that altru- ism, which is held the basis of all morality, in the unswerv- ing devotion of the bee to the good of the community, and the annual sacrifice it makes of all its years of toils and gains to the next generation. "The act," he submits, "be it conscious or not, undoubtedly passes the limit of human morality." Spiders, which we are told, are properly 74 Our Dumb Relations 75 classed as animals, are making themselves interesting to sci- ence through what one writer calls the "personal bravery" of their courtships, which always includes the probability of being pounced upon by the scornful female and devoured alive. Turtles, in the laboratory at Harvard, are evincing perceptive faculties that are higlily wise, if not otherwise moral, and beyond everything else the noble dog has come into the kingdom, and, in the "person" of the beloved "Pluto" of Chicago, been honored, solely for his virtues, with as distinguished a funeral as the prominent citizens of three suburban villages could turn out. Truly none can liereafter deny immortality to brutes, and it only remains for devout worshipers of their superiority to get out litanies and rituals in their service, as even the best efforts of village clerks and society leaders do not seem quite up to the mark. For really it does seem a little with these gentle creatures of field and forest, as Socrates said of women, that "once made our equals they become our superi- ors. If they really have souls to know the wrongs and burdens put upon them and the irony of our small human mastery over them, and yet carry themselves with that meek, patient and cheery spirit toward all creation which the do- mestic animals disclose, they certainly are so much greater than we that we might well set them up in our temples and prepare to do them reverence. The main trouble seems to be that we have about as mixed ideas concerning the real virtues of birds and beasts as we ever show regarding our own, and if the new teachers of the animal school are right the old ones are altogether wrong. Here is Maeterlinck telling us that an unconscious act of the bee can exceed the limit of human morality, thus sweeping morals quite out of the field of intelligent responsi- bilitv. Brave Pluto was honored in his death because he 76 Owr Dumb delations was never known to bite a human being. The dogs tliat de- light to bark and bite are now out of the ring, although the excellent Watts has assured us that "God hath made them so," and for a purpose we know that some worthy watch dogs have turned to good account. Science even justifies Dr. Watts in saying, "Let bears and lions growl and fight ; for it is their nature to," and the great law of the survival of the fittest is conserved thereby. Nevertheless, in the fond efforts to fit them out with human virtues pet bears and other wild animals are often taken into family circles or naturalists' camps, and then summarily executed when they eat up the small children within reach, though it is their nature to. Even dogs and cats suffer no end of violence through being expected to live up to the human standard of domestic virtues, to say nothing of the violence they inflict on their teachers. An Irish setter that had been extrava- gantly petted by its mistress recently undertook to drown a new baby that was supplanting him in her affections, and was promptly shot by his owner for his misguided affection. To live out its true nature, to fulfill the ends of its own being, which Spinoza makes the highest virtue of dogs or men, is clearly not one which the new animal theories are prepared to accept and if the soul of our grandam did in- habit a wild fowl, it is expected to show itself superior to us by carrying all the virtues of our higher incarnation into its low estate. But nature knows better, and perhaps when a few more babies are sacrificed to Irish setters, or beau- tiful women, like Miss Elizabeth Mayland, of Yorkshire fame, sent to nunneries through the lacerations of jealous collies, the place of our dumb relations in the scale of being will be more safely adjusted, and babies and poodles not so embarrassingly mixed in human homes and sympathies. The recent story of a gallant fireman carrying out a pet poodle Our Dumb Relations 77 in its blankets and pillows from a burning mansion in the brave hope that he was rescuing the heir of the family, is a good companion-piece to the flowery obsequies of the late lamented Pluto. Tlie waste of sentiment upon beasts and all creeping things while everywhere humanity is starving for it, is one of the edifying spectacles of our modern civilization, and only equaled by the irony of the animal's sublimely indif- ferent attitude toward it. One of the truest animal lovers of the land, touching their best estate, writes: "Not one of them is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth," and clearly he deems it enough for man to bear the weight of unhappy respectability without trjung to fit the free ani- mal kingdom to it. Society may be, as the duchess of Bed- ford deems it, a kind of zoo, but, even so, each beast after his own kind was the order of creation, and science has not yet found the missing link that quite unites the human and animal zoo. That it discerns in all shapes of animal life "a form of the same great power that quickens us also," is the real ground of the respect it demands of us for every living thing. In the light of this high truth it does indeed become a serious matter to set foot upon a worm. Never- theless, it is no pleasanter now than in Job's day to say to the worm, "Thou art my mother and my sister." PROPHETS AND DISCIPLES THERE is always danger of a Saul among the prophets. Worse still, the possibility of falling into the hands of lying prophets. But when a great seer declares his limita- tions and avers that it is only the ignorant who have con- fidence in him he really ought to awaken a better confidence in all hearers. It is one of the prime truths in the line of the psychic tliat only they who are ignorant turn to the outside prophet. They who are not ignorant look within. "The mystic," says a recent speaker, "is he who beholds things from his viewpoint of the unseen, and he is always a plagiarist because of necessity he builds that unseen from the images and material of the seen." To what end there- fore should Maeterlinck, Whitman, Blake or any other seer or mystic undertake to shape the spirit world for the man who can think for himself, or resolve the secret of spirit power save to those who have never learned it for them- selves.'^ It is the ignorant, of course, who turn to them fo5 light and commonly, too, it is the ignorant who abuse them for the unsatisfying character of that light. The main difficulty in this field is from an army of "dis- appointed and ignorant disciples" who expect from every new prophet or explorer who arises in it something that he is in nowise competent to furnish them, and that is the life touch that shall open their eyes. Not until man knows himself as a part of the unseen world is it any use to paint the imagery and mastery of it to his bewildered mind. The utmost that any poet, prophet, teacher or preacher can do, 78 Prophets and Disciples 79 is to "play upon the latent infinity within us," as Stanley Lee expresses it, and help us find that larger self that knits us to the unseen, the universal. Why then should any ra- tional creature run after sage or mystic to instruct him instead of sitting down under his own bo-tree and making it all out for himself? Or better still, walking his own straightforward, fearless way into the open door of the kingdom that has never been denied him? There is no question, of course, that there are great and infallible psychic laws whereby the mastery of the spirit forces may be laid hold of. But the beauty of this truth is, that the humblest peasant appears to have been as suc- cessful as the subtlest philosopher in finding them out, or, at least, in living them out, with no concern about defining them. Indeed, the majority of people who live bravely and decently their troublous lives are entirely in the line of them, and the tremendous metaphysical, theosophical and occult S3^stems and teachings that are built around them serve oft- times only to bewilder and perplex the "ignorant," but self- taught "disciple." It is like the professor's wife who had no trouble in sewing on a button till her inquiring husband said, "My dear, how do you manage to hit the hole instead of the button? I never could do it." Then for the first time she broke her needle in seeking the hole, and replied merely, "Well, since you have called my attention to it, I can't either.'* Before man began to speculate much about the laws and principles that knit him to his creator he sat placidly in tent doors or beside still waters communing with God and his angels on all the affairs of life. But when there came priests and rites and cumbrous systems the veil of the tem- ple rose between him and his God, and not even the coming of the human Christ has thoroughly rent it asunder. Never- 80 Prophets arid, Disciples theless the intervention of all creatures was rejected by him. "Go into your closet and when you have shut your door commune with your Father, who is in secret, and your Father who seeth in secret shall reward you openl3^" That is all there is of it. Don't ask Maeterlinck, or Blake, or sage or mystic of any school, how you shall reach the invisible. Talk to God for yourself and establish your own connection, "All that God is," says Nash, "he puts in pledge for your perfecting," and there is nothing for man to do but claim the benefit of that pledge. The foundation of that grand principle of human brotherhood which now runs through every branch of philosoph}^, sociology or religion is, of course, the great truth that every man has God for his Father and can approach him in the full confidence of a child at any moment. The new platonic mysticism which Plotinus well charac- terizes as "half a swoon and half an ecstasy" still pours its subjective stream into much of the teaching on this subject, so that nothing short of a trance or an epileptic fit seems equal to reducing man to that etherealized condition held necessary for the sacred communication. Even the sanest of the modern mystics tell us that much inner knowledge and deep experience must have been acquired to open to us this spirit connection. But consider, in the weight of all this, the simplicity of that open-air call of the Lord to the man in the sycamore tree, "Zacchaeus, come down, for this day I must abide at thy house." "God has most to give us in the common things of life," says a writer of to-day, and one of but yesterday declares, "God must have loved the common people best — he made so many of them." Is it conceivable, then, that only to a few ecstatic dreamers, or even sage psychologists, he would have left the secret of that tie that binds man to himself, instead Prophets and Disciples 81 of to the whole army of toiling men, the publicans and the sinners, who cry out in their need to him, and in that very cry establish the relation over which the schools and philoso- phers have been agonizing for ages? It is life that teaches, and few can go very far in it without learning that some- thing beyond brute force is at the heart of power. To "feel after" and find it is better than asking some other feeler how far along he is in the business. And if a writer has spent his life in trying to bring this truth home to men and still they turn to him for illumination and some coveted revelation, is it strange that he calls them his "ignorant disciples." A knowledge that can only come from within is a curious thing to be demanding of one's teachers and it is a recog- nized difficulty in the study of even psychic phenomena that not all the testimony in the world Avill convince a man of anything occult that he can not verify in his own experi- ence. Who of all the devout advocates of a literal Scrip- ture verily believes that Lazarus rose from the dead, or, claiming to believe it, takes in one shadow of its tremendous import in the still baffling questions of death and the here- after? Out of the depths of his own consciousness, or no- where, man comes to the belief in immortality, and so in the silence and deeps of his own soul and its needs, he touches hands with God and the spirit forces, or nowhere. To what mounts of power or vision the touch shall lift him is another matter not to be determined by the teachers. Not all who see God in the burning bush take off their shoes or leave the night behind them. Yet, there are souls that can make their bed in hell without losing their hold on God, while others can serve in all his holy temples without ever finding him. Here, too, the soul baffles the creed-mak- ers and psychologist and renders it impossible to say by 82 Prophets and Disciples what principle of light or darkness the power of the invis- ible is made known to it. That always and everywhere that power waits to unfold itself to every soul is about all that can be confidently asserted. And if, knowing that, man can not manage to make his own connection with the life forces, it is doubtful if all the prophets or teachers in the universe can do much to help him. SATAN IN LITERATURE TO Shakespeare and his contemporaries the Prince of Darkness was a gentleman. The flower of wickedness of old required some fineness in it. Sin was a sweet morsel under the tongue. The confessions of a Rosseau or Au- gustine touched the empyrean as well as the pit. Verlaine in the slums or the criminal's cell was still a god of celes- tial flights and unrivaled intuitions of spirit truth. Villon in his blackest moments bore still the spotless sheen of "the snows of yesterday." The divinity of genius glorified the very cohorts of hell, and Satan was but a fallen Lucifer, whom the worshipers of power and greatness must perforce admire. All this was too much honor for Satan. "The angels, not half so happy in heaven, went envying him" and his. And so now he has fallen from his high estate, and we have the "journal intime," or notes from his confessional, full of small worries over toothbrushes and black underclothes, and redolent of vulgar oaths, which science tells us the most impotent of his subjects indulge in to change the currents of their ruffled being by shocking ears polite. Worst of all, the women, who have taken him in charge, propose to marry him and dress him out in "conventional clothes" and set him up in a little red and yellow heaven of short dura- tion, which shall match him. It is hard to part like this with the grand Byronic devil, or accomplished Mephis- topheles of literature. But, after all, it may be the only 83 84* Satan in Literature way to escape his beguiling subtleties and set up a safer ruler in his place. The work of the decadents and even realists, the D'An- nuncios, and Moores, and Zolas, has been to cultivate the devil along such low and loathsome lines that every trace of Lucifer-like greatness has been taken out of him, and unless some new devil can be put in literature it is no use asking us to run along the slimy track of this poor, shining, pes- simistic Satan, in conventional clothes or petticoats, wildly anathematizing the universe and asking us to pity him in his own damnation. It was a very wise discerner of the laws of life who tells us that "when half gods go, the gods arrive," and it may be that when this Satanic half god of the romances fails him he will cast about for some true god to put in his place. And then perhaps we shall see that spiritual renaissance in literature which the spiritual renais- sance in thought and philosophy should have ushered in ere this. To resolve some strength, intensity and sparkle of ef- fervescent life into the better forces, some Miltonic touch to show "the might and majesty of loveliness," has been the crying need of modern life and literature. For though all science and philosophy conspire to show us how poor, stu- pid and self-destructive evil is, and how weak, senseless and craven the cry of the pessimist, yet the effort to bring life and letters up to the standard of such teaching is scarcely perceptible, unless it may be in this very dismantling of the devil of all the finer glories that once shone about him. That does, indeed, suggest the hope that some grand master of the new order may arise to consign the glories and heroism of life to their true place and show us "how sublime it is to suffer and be strong." Nay, more, to refuse to suffer like dumb beasts of the field, when we may swing ourselves into Satan in Literature 85 the ryhthmic joy and harmony of the spheres and look down the ages with a laugh and a song. There was a time, to be sure, when about everything bright, spicy, and beguiling was consigned to the devil. That was before the teachers had shown us that "the mis- chief in a boy is the basis of his education," or the theo- logians had opened their ears to the Psalmist's declaration that "gladness is sown for the upright." Beauty and strength belong, indeed, to the sanctuaries of the Lord of life, in these days, and "the diseased has he not strength- ened." That is why the diseased and neurotic writers send out such weak and piteous wails to some "devil, fate, or world," to come and help them, and more and more as they define the devil they believe in, they show him totally impo- tent to do anything for them. The angels of light are sweep- ing through his old dominion, and gathering to themselves even the bright and primrose things of human dalliance he has been wont to claim. Mirth and laughter, wit and song, are of them, love is all of them, and those natural human desires, into wliich the poor degenerates are trying to fuse such lurid flames of hell, burn with their brightest glow at their pure altars. It is the white heat of the furnace, not the red, that marks the utmost intensity of the fire, and life at its mightiest is ever the white flame. The writers who can show us that, are the coming masters in literature, and all science and nature are ready to wait upon them. "Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose," says one of our sarcastic poets, but the sweet rose of life is not to lose its fragrance because it has become, in the nostrils of the decadent or pessimist, "an empty damned weariness." The end of it can only be, now as ever, that the rose will be- long to liim who can pluck it, and a hundred devils to paint it red will not turn it over to the grasp of any too weak to 86 Satan in Literature seize it in its pristine loveliness. Genius, in all its bounds, well knows this, and it must be to tempt them to their own destruction that it is leading its false votaries farther and farther away from the saving truth of it. Meantime, in the common walks of life, the work may be for our salva- tion, for so long as Satan himself could borrow the harp of a Villon or Verlaine we were bound to run after him , and risk hades for the glimpse of heaven he could unfold to us. Now, only, when he drops down into the pit of the pessimist and whines in impotence are we quite ready to part com- pany with him. CONCERNING HAPPINESS THERE is no word in any language so idly tossed about by wise and foolish alike as that beguiling word hap- piness. Pursued by everybody and understood by none — truly achieved by none — happiness is still expatiated upon, inculcated, and estimated, by every writer or speaker who can catch the public ear as if any knowledge of experience could lay back of the effort. The result in recent days has come to be a contradiction of terms which any honest mind must discern for itself. Happiness as a duty, happiness as a task, a "great task," as one honest soul puts it, has come to be the interesting form in which the delicious, elusive and mysterious object of all human hopes and dreams is presented to man's mind. And this in the light of the rec- ognized fact in human experience that what comes un- sought, unbought, takes fright at the very idea of becom- ing a task. It seems to be the cheering up philosopher who is re- sponsible for this turn of affairs in the kingdom of happi- ness. The cheerful spirit, the habit of looking on the bright side of things, may indeed be cultivated and make life far more bearable and probably more open to the entrance of the deeper spirit of joy. But it is true still that such la- bored cheer is not happiness nor worthy to be compared with it in any true sense. Even a modern Christian philosopher admits this. "The resolute cheerfulness that can be to a certain extent captured and secured by an effort of the will," he says, "though it is perhaps a more useful quality than 87 88 Concerning Happmess natural joy, is not to be compared with the unreasoning, in- communicable rapture, which sometimes without conscious effort or desire descends upon the spirit like sunshine after rain." The quality of happiness, like mercy, it appears from this, is not strained as the teachers make it, but drop- peth like the gentle dew from heaven and requires merely the proper atmosphere to resolve itself in. To say that it can accommodate itself to any condition is unscientific and untrue, and the tendency of such teaching is to embarrass and hinder any saving solution of the problem. In fact, the thing that makes it look as though happi- ness, as we count it, was not exactly meant to be our salva- tion, is that the best of it is liable to pall upon our hands and the hour arrives when the bravest of us begin to ques- tion if the game is worth the candle. It is then, too, that the test moment for the menticulturist comes in, and if he has not brought us to a point where we can face life with- out happiness, the whole foundation of his gorgeous temple crumbles. Has anybody said that it is not happiness, but the courage to bear unhappiness, that humanity stands in need of .'^ If not, life says it at every turn, and with all the sugar coating they put upon the pill it is little more than that the New Thought people are offering us. Ah, they are too wise to dream that happiness can be caught with hook or line of either mind or matter's casting. Something just drops out of the sky or tree top, or perhaps the post- man's bag, and there stands the grinning little joy imp and all the universe is a-twitter with him. About the only thing that can be definitely predicated of him is that he is more likely to arrive when you have made up your mind that you can get along without him. Perhaps, however, it is just as well not to tell any lies about not wanting him, and, above all else, not to say that he is dead. There really is some- Concerning Happiness 89 thing in believing that he exists and is at the heart of true life wherever it is. This, of course, is why the pious ones tell us that he is one with the good, but as they make such a botch about determining what the good is, they are often, as little Alice Carroll has it, "more stupider" than the im- pious in resolving the problem. Certainly it is only when some of them '"turn their backs" that we are able to "sneak happiness" from the so-called impious ones who comprehend the situation. At the best, happiness is an uncertain commodity, and if you can not find it in the "wind on the heath, brother," or the daisy on the hillside, or most of all, the burning bush by the wayside, don't be too sure that you can evolve it from those diamonds, pomps and "conditions" of the wealthy which the matter-of-fact philosophers are trying to per- suade you are the essential part of it. In fact, it is a chance to escape from their "conditions" and chase light- footed happiness to some gypsy cover for wliich the ma- jority of these "fortunate" ones are this moment sighing. Wealth and society have pretty effectually armed themselves against happiness and well-nigh chased it off the face of the earth. Nevertheless, the good things of life are not to be despised in the case, and if the menticulturists can show us how to grab them by keeping calm about it there is no use in turning our backs upon them. It is not every one who has what a Western editor terms the "mental endowment" to be fascinated by the nearness of bankruptcy or take supreme pleasure in finding the in- visible line between a sufficiency and a deficiency," and for those who need a little gold dust or carbon, more or less, to put them at ease, it is not ill to know the kind of mental en- dowment that helps in that direction also. The scientists do say that pessimistic views of the situation secrete a slow 90 Concerning Happmess poison in the S3^stem that makes the achievement of any de- sire more difficult, and so perhaps "thinking happiness" is not so irrational a thing after all, unless, of course, one sits down like the old woman in the story and lets the more active aspirer kick over his basket of eggs while he is think- ing. Merely to get enough happiness or good cheer into his thoughts to set him moving appears to be the main end of the happy philosophy, and then, by the time the true disciple comes to the place where he finds that he was fooled about happiness, he has recruited enough strength to go on without it. Courage, therefore, is the first and last word of the whole philosophy, and it has been so ever since our first parents fared forth into the wilderness wondering how they could go on with their backs to Eden. INDIVIDUALITY IF you want to know what an occult and unresolved being you are, both to yourself and your nearest of kin, read Prof. Royce's scholarly little volume on "The Conception of Immortality." If you want to know how to attain a hope of ever finding yourself and immortality together, read it again to the last syllable. Between whiles ponder on your loneliness and consider whether it is worth while to cheat yourself into the idea that you know anybody or give your affections to anything but the unique and elusive ideal of somebody. It is all a question of individuality, and though that seems easy to the superficial observer, who thinks only that you are you and I am I, it takes, as Prof. Royce shows, an "en- tire system of philosophy" to give it one peg to hang on. But when you have compassed that philosophy you have got at the heart of all things and attained not only your own unique place as an individual, but your true and ever- lasting relation "to other individuals and to the all-inclusive individual God himself." Hence the pledge of immortality in this idea and demand of individuality — uniqueness of be- ing — which here finds no fulfillment. Meantime there is the lonesomeness of it. "For we love individuals, we trust in them, we honor and pursue them, we glorify them and hope to know them. But we know, if we are sufficiently thought- ful, that we can never either find them with our eyes or de- fine them in our minds." And this hopelessness of finding what we most love, this loneliness of the soul in the critical 91 92 Individuality light of life, "constitutes one of the deepest tragedies of human existence." Prof. Royce commits this tragedy of loneliness, this mock- ing vanity of the search for the true beloved mainly to the "keenly critical," the "worldly wise," but in reality it has been the throbbing pain of all humanity since time and love began. The vain strivings "to find one anotlier," to ex- press ourselves to one another, lie at the root of half man's bitterest experiences and defeated days. The long history of art and literature is little more than the story of their efforts to help us in this sad business, and the gauge of their success is the exact measure of their power in this direction. It is for this that we fall down and worship Shakespeare; for this that we forgive Balzac his coarseness, Browning his hard rhymes, Maeterlinck his cloudy sj^mbolisms, and for this that we rush madly after any Dudeney or Wharton who promises to offer us some new touchstone of the inner be- ing. "Do we know anybody .? Ah, dear me, we are very lonely in the world," murmurs the gentle Thackeray, and every master writer since writing began has sounded the same chord. "Man is born alone, grows up alone, learns alone, works alone, thinks alone, dies alone," writes Walter Besant. "The only thing that seems to take away his lone- liness is his marriage. Then, because he has another per- son always in the house with him, he feels perhaps that he is not quite so lonely. It is an illusion; every man is quite alone." That is the measure of it. Every man is quite alone, and too often doubly alone when he has some one in the house with him. Prof. Royce is right. "An individual is a being that no finite search can find. Not even in case of our most trusted friends, not even after years of closest intimacy, can men as they now are either define in thought or find di- Individuality 93 rectly presented in experience the individual beings whom they most love and trust." As he quotes you from Brown- ing, that most excellent lady of your choice and worship is not to be found even in the house you "inhabit together," though you "search room after room." From the wing to tlie center She goes out as you enter. However, she goes somewhere. Prof. Royce is sure that she is not a pure abstraction ; she is "somehow certainly real," and that she is and that you can not find her here, yet preserve the vision of her, is the sweet assurance of some beyond where you shall find her. Wherefore hang to your ideals, cling to your spirit loves? Helen may desert you for Paris, Abelard prove, as Mark Twain has it, "an un- principled humbug," Launcelot and Guinevere tear up a king's household, but that unique and glorious being who represents to j^ou what nobody else ever was or could be still lives for you "in a higher and richer realm" of perfected being. There, says Royce, shall your friend's life "glow with just that unique position of the divine that no other life in all the world expresses," and meet your first demand that there shall be none beside it. And this because the very uniqueness of the divine life demands it. "Just because God attains and wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives win, in our union with him, the individuality which is essen- tial to their true meaning." This is better than being "swal- lowed up in Brahm," after the conception of the Hindoo, or even sharing in the "personality of the absolute," after the idea of Hegel. But why, since individuality and ideals can only be realized through union with God, in the end they should not seek this method in the beginning is more than 94 Individuality any of the philosophers can make clear to us. All the saints and seers since Augustine down have been plainly declaring to us that such union was all we needed. "Restless till we rest in Thee" is the verdict of all who have known man, or in anywise read the spirit that is within him. Nevertheless, we go chasing up and down the earth in pursuit of the "elusive goal," of an individual to meet our needs, or sit down in a great, wide, loneliness and stare into the faces of the specters we have captured, and wonder why life is empty. The tragedy of seeking what we most love and finding it not lies heavy upon us, while all the time it is nigh us, even at the door. By no mystic vision, says Prof. Royce, can we win our union with God. We must toil for it. No doubt. Yet other voices have whispered that is was simply to feel after if haply we might find him. The "finite strivings" that con- sciously intend "oneness with God" are vain, indeed, if they do not consciously find oneness with Him. It is in the silence and the darkness and the loneliness of these finite strivings, and gropings, and yearnings, that no brother man can un- derstand or lighten, that the soul most needs the conscious- ness of union with the all-good and powerful. It may be as set forth that the fulfillment of that union is "not here, not now, in time and amid the blind striving of the present." But it is somehow through the darkness that the shining link is forged that binds man to the eternal, and, as the poet tells us, Through the dim. Close prison bars that shut man from his kind God reaches down to make us one with Him. SCIENCE AND LAUGHTER A WORLD of no laughter is the refined estate which threatens us, "Mirth and jollity are well-nigh ban- ished from the globe," writes a British scientist and "laugh- ter holding both its sides" has been kicked from circle to circle of life's playhouse till even the pit has incontinentl}^ turned it out of doors. A mechanical hand-clapping of solemn, bored-looking spectators is all that the most rol- licking farce can elicit from an audience of to-day. Man, as a laughing animal, is no longer distinguished from the brute creation. Indeed, science finds that dogs, apes and other happy beasts can refresh themselves with a grin, while care-burdened man is losing even the muscles that could shape themselves into a laugh. Incidentally, too, the mind and the morals. No man is wholly bad who can laugh, said the ancient student of his kind, and the mod- ern scientist is beginning to consider what, by inference, he must become when he can not laugh. Saturnine, if not Satanic, is the moral phase of it. And, as for the mental, the distance from the grim troglodyte to the laughing philosopher is the measure of that. The cave man, it is said, did not laugh. It took unfathomed deeps of time and thought to resolve him into an Aristophanes or a Rabelais. However, even "when the bird walks we see that it has wings," and, having learned to laugh, it may not be easy to wipe the impress of that laugh out of the human family. It is a curious circumstance that the cry of its decline should come at just the time when all creation is recommending the 95 96 Science and Laughter cheerful act as the escape from every ill or hardship of mor- tal destiny. To "sit on the stile and continue to smile" is the one pre- scribed way to "soften the heart" of any "terrible cow" or lion encountered in all life's highway. And it is just like science, and the irony of fate, to show us the exact way to save ourselves, and then declare that we have lost the power to use it. It is of a piece with the heartless squib which tells us to read the irresistible joke on "making the best of it," and then adds that it was dug up in the excavations near Nippur. To have lost the power to smile over the soothing reflections of the new thought philosophy is cer- tainly one of the meanest turns outrageous fate has served us. Not to be able to sit above the ashes of our dead hopes and smile that at least we have not a hair lip, as one bright philosopher, or satirist, invites us, is a calamity that may well claim the attention of science. The time to laugh is so clearly when the lightning strikes you that it is strange that neither saints nor philosophers found it out earlier. Stranger still that the presiding deities at the fount of true laughter are shutting off our power to laugh, just as we have found it out. The connection is too patent to escape the suggestion that perhaps they are not altogether pleased with our assumed spirits. This laughing "that we may not weep" is grand and Byronic, no doubt, but, somehow, it seems to be at the core of much of the lost mirth and laughter of the whole earth. Perhaps there is something too forced and artificial in it. Like the stump speaker who declared that he was never so strained as when he kicked at nothing, this sweet smiling at everything or nothing may be overreaching itself. At any rate, it is putting the cart before the horse in many cases, and trying to make the prescribed smile take the place Science and Laughter 97 of the energetic action that should win it. "I'm tired of playing the cheerful idiot among pots and kettles," said a talented woman recently, when a reverse of fortune flung her from parlor to kitchen to try the "contented spirit" philoso- pliy, and then she rose up and conquered through her true powers the laugh of him who wins. It is only when you have tried every other way possible to propitiate fate that you can afford to sit down and ring defiant laughter into his grim face. It is onl}^ then, too, that he will come, a smil- ing subject, to see "what you are laughing at." He laughs best who laughs last, runs the old adage, and some measure of security in the cheerful throne set up for them is a demand Avhich the disciples of the new Democritus may well make of him. Reduced to the last analysis, it is mainly a chance to laugh that the earth child of any century needs. Give him that, and neither science nor society need fear that he will lose the capacity for it. In truth the springs of laughter, as of tears, lie too deep for either of them. The winds that sigh in the pine trees, and wliistle in the rushes, may know the secret of it. The clouds that weep, and the sun- beams that dance in glee, may guess why one morn wakes to unexplainable deeps of sadness, and another to soft rap- tures of mysterious joy. Mother nature and the mystic sis- ters of the distaff and spindle hold still the threads that flash gold or gray into the fabric of man's life. But one thing is certain, and that is, that they do not ask him to call black white, nor swear that the mantle of gray or sable is cheering to him as the cloth of gold. Sorrow may be bet- ter than laughter, yet none but a new school Ananias will pretend to say that he likes it as well. Indeed, since laugh- ter chased age and death along the plains of Gerar, and heaven made Sarah "to laugh," so that all the world should 98 Science and Laughter laugh with her, no son of earth feels quite secure of his heri- tage if that bright humor and laugh which Harris so ex- pressively calls "a form of tenderness" be left out of it. A world of no laughter, indeed ! Why man even shrinks from a heaven with that ban upon it. And shall he be ex- pected to face the world pain in the chill of it. Not even the mourning saints have asked it of him, nor the prophets of any age. The righteous shall laugh and be glad, is the burden of their lay, and the British scientist is quite in its refrain when he calls laughter "the most beautiful expres- sion of goodness," the one that "gives genuineness to virtue and brings it nearest" to our human hearts. That it is "the manna," too, "on which good fellowship most loves to feed" more hearts than his can testify, even though such manna is denied them. It is no lack of will or skill that is stilling the sweet note of honest laughter in the earth. The impulse to smile in the pure atmosphere of smiles is not dead in poor humanity. Give us a chance to laugh, oh complain- ing world, and science will find no torpor in our organs. Stop the fever fret and drive, the strain of weariness, the oppression and the wrong, that choke the springs of glad- ness everywhere, and "deterioration in the physical and men- tal structure" will not prevent a choral strain of laughter from welling up from happy hearts through all creation's bounds. It is in the "moral nidus," say the wise ones, that laughter finds its colors. The death of laughter and the grave of joy is not the thing you promised us, oh sweet and smiling earth. "Stand by your early pledges, fulfill your millennium whispers of peace and good will to all men, "feed pure love," enkindle noble hope, and, above all, "beget the smile that has no bit- terness," or confess that you have mocked humanity with your own laughing skies and dimpled waters, and, as the an- Science and Laughter 99 cients declared of you, borne children only to devour them. The calm and smiling face of nature in the teeth of all man's woes is a thing for which he must forever revile her. And yet, perhaps, the reproach is unjust; for with every recurring seed time and harvest she is trying to teach him the saving truth that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, and that you can not sow tears and dragons' teeth and reap laughter. LIFE AND LITERATURE THE authors, like Chronos, have taken to devouring their children — turning out books by the ton, as one publisher reckons it, they still declare reading a lost art, great books a voice of the past, and the idea of a book in any shape one that the healthful, natural man rejects. Any one might have known that it would come to tliis. Conversation has long been declared a lost art, thinking has been pronounced a disease and reading must naturally go the way of its intellectual sisters. Education seems to be the only bugbear left to frighten us, but Gerald Stanley Lee is dealing it some telling blows and George Madden Mar- tin prepared its jfinish when he writes of Emmy Lou's in- structors, "Miss Fanny was a real person. The others had been teachers." Life rather than books, nature above all training, form the keynote of the new. liberty. The joy of living is the main thing, and to kill all our teachers the nearest wa}' to achieve it. Religion itself is not a thing to be "told to men." It is but a show to move their special wonder and set them to "trying for themselves" what it may be. Art still rides the wave, but art which is individual and whose "essential spiritual element" is "delight, delight, de- light." To find the spring of joy in his own soul and give free play to it is in short the beginning and end of the whole philosophy. Meantime he who thinks he has a story to tell, a message to bear to humanity, can spout it to the stars, or to the little fishes. Life, of which literature has been but the 100 ' Life and Literature 101 clumsy expression, is now to reveal itself through shining eyes and pulsing hearts that feel it. Man is to live his romance, not hunt it in a book, and the Shakespeare who unlocks his heart with a sonnet is still the "less Shakespeare" for his pains. They had no poet and they lived, no lawgiver and they loved one another, no preacher and they found the truth, is the story of the new man to be written not in books or on tables of stones, but fleshly tablets of the heart. Already souls have been discovered in Mulberry Street, and even in Fifth avenue, and Jacob Ries declares that one throb of the human heart is worth a w^hole book of sociol- ogy and all the stuff men write to reduce each other to items in infallible systems. "God wastes no history," says Brooks. Angels do not write books ; life and character are the only volumes that can truly record the truths and lessons of the ages. "Ye are our epistles, known and read of all men," said Paul to the Corinthians. Socrates and Christ wrote no books, left not a scrap of writing, and the round world has been molded by them. To follow the currents of humanity is the only hope of literature, and the man of to-day is the true story of all the past. To know only consists "in open- ing out a way whereby the imprisoned splendor may escape" and nature more truly than art can find that way. Oh, fret not after knowledge. I have none, And yet — the evening listens, sings Keats' thrush. Once man swings into the harmony of his own being the work of all his tutors will be done ; and it is time, no doubt, that the Gospel should be heeded which saith, "Much stud}'^ is a weariness of the flesh," and of tlie making of many books there should be an end. At least to pause long enough to get some new experience or ecstasy 102 Life and Literature of life to put into thein would seem to be the part of wisdom, and it is to this end no doubt that the philosophers in the business are trying to spur man on to dip his soul in some fierce caldron of passion or delight that they may secure a new rapture if not a "new shudder" for their exhausted stock. To go on repeating the same joy and the same sor- row, the same longing and the same unrest, which the old Greeks weighed in the mythics of life long ago is beginning to pall upon the writers themselves, to say nothing of the long-suffering readers. To cease the eternal quest in the measured strains of literature and pursue it to the bound- less ocean of life is not a bad idea to dawn upon some of them. For, doubt it who will, the life secret that all the poets and writers of all ages have been blindly feeling after in song and story, is throbbing somewhere in the undersoul of being, and who knows what radiant day or fair new year may bring it to the surface .f" Already the joy bells of the round earth are beginning to ring its chimes, and the psy- chical wave in all thought and philosophy to herald its com- ing. One strong triumphant soul, not to write about it, but to discover it in living it, is all that is needed. And, oh, the longing souls that are waiting for that one. It is a marvel how the great Teacher who said, "Who- soever liveth and believeth in me shall never die," ever es- caped from the clamors of the dying in all directions. A greater marvel still that the mystic but philosophic truth of his words has but just begun to dawn upon a perishing world. Yet the truths that set men free must come slowly to the toiling masses, say all the prophets, but that is be- cause they have forgotten the Scripture, which saith that when the kingdom of heaven is come the violent take it by force. Books, preachers, poets may pipe or prose forever about the secret springs of life, but he who breaks the way Life and Liter attire 103 to them, tastes them for himself, alone knows of their sweet- ness and reality. "Look in thy heart and write," was the counsel of the bookish past, and wise was the writer who heeded it. But, look in thy heart and live is the cry of the glorious present, and yet absolutely to do this one must get away as far as possible from nearly all the writers, and a large proportion of the teachers and preachers. Such per- versions of the human heart and its affections as have been palmed off on us as the real thing by our masters and men- tors would incline us to look into Tophet or Hecate's cal- dron rather than waste time on such inner deformities. No doubt it is this violence done to the heart and its pure life currents by the so-called makers of literature that leads some of the more earnest of our writers to doubt if the natural man was ever meant to sit down and read a book. Like poor Francesca, playing with Greek fire "to bring to birth new ardors in her soul," it is an element of wild de- struction that the natural man too often finds himself sport- ing with when he sits down to read a book. "Delight" may be indeed, as Arthur Jerome Eddy declares, "the essential spiritual element" of art, as it ever is of life, but, ah, it is its "raiment of pure joy" that the exiled soul is seeking, and who, of all our artists, knows how to weave for it that white and seamless garment? "If I were to tell you what I really think of the best books, I am afraid you would call me the greatest literary heretic or an utter ignoramus," said that great student of language and literature. Max Muller. "I know few books, if any, which I should call good from beginning to end." The truth is that it has been too much the imperfect, the incomplete man who has made our books for us. Life, with all its aspirations, all its passions, all its heroisms, has not yet swept him up to those celestial heights where he could see and interpret it in all its beauty 104* Life and Literature and fullness. It is life that must grow greater, clearer, surer and diviner to the spirit's sight before the true book shall be bom to us. But perhaps when that time comes we shall need no books, whether it be this year or the next. ENEMIES AND REVENGES THE old-fashioned idea appears still to prevail that a man can dispose of his enemy by killing him. Also, that he can get away from himself by blowing his own brains out. Both ideas are scorned by the enlightened. If the red slayer thinks he slays, Or if the slain thinks he is slain. They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Thus Brahm punctured the bubble long ago, and science has been riddling it with shot wherever it appeared, ever since. And yet to-day not the smallest sheet issues from the morning press without reeking with the tale of murders and suicides the world over. Lombroso and his school call this red peril disease, or insanity, and there is no ques- tion that some vile disorder is in it. Yet, while there is no telling whose son or brother may waken up at morn or in the dead of night in the worst throes of the malady, it is really risking too much to trust to the uncertain diagnosis of the criminologists. As there is considerable method in the madness, too, a possibility of reasoning together over the towering unrea- son in the principle of it may 3^et be left us. It is, of course, a general blindness, despite all science's teaching, to the true laws of being that lies at the root of the trouble. A few glimpses into Dante's universe of moral order, where the deed returns upon the head of the doer, and the murderer 105 106 Enemies and Revenges swelters in the blood he has spilt, or the suicide who kills himself because he is "tired of buttoning and unbuttoning," dwells ever in the darkness and quagmire of his own glooms and inactivities, might change perhaps the effort of mad humanity to call death to its assistance in accomplishing ends that life denies it. In a rude mining camp of the far West a discouraged miner rose up one black morning and walked boldly into the eating room of a newcomer, who had flung out the enticing sign, "Meals at All Hours," to the hungry gold diggers. "Stranger," he said, going up to the counter, "I have had devilish hard times lately. I think I'll kill somebody to change my luck." And at that he shot the peaceful restaurant man through the heart. The min- ers consummated the desperado's luck by hanging him to the nearest tree, but the logic of his performance was about the same as that which actuates every crazy creature who tries the death remedy for his ills. The odds of life have gone against him and he kills himself, or somebody else, in some mad dream of changing his luck. That there is noth- ing in death to change anything in the line of conscious being is a reflection away beyond him. Yet even to the most clouded intellect it would seem to be clear that it is life and not death that can enable a man to eff^ect his ends, either toward himself or toward his enemies, and life at its highest. The true way to revenge oneself on an enemy is to let him live, and practice the Christian virtues upon him. If that does not make him shrivel up and fall off^ the earth, or the part of it that you inhabit, no amount of lead in his body will. It may seem an easy matter to kill your enemies, but unless you can do it, as some people tell us the good Lord does, by destroying both soul and body in fire, it is no use taking savage liberties with the body. Lacking this power, it is really safest to "agree with thine adversary quickly," Enemies and Revenges 10*7 lest by your efforts to harm him he secures the spiritual mas- tery in the case, and hands you over to the Judge of Life, and the Judge casts you into that prison where every soul must languish that does the slightest wrong to another soul. Verily, thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. For that is the law of life, running from the womb to man, and the philosopher is right who tells us that there is "No god dare wrong a worm." Tlie danger in an enemy is not so much that he may wrong you as that you may be surprised into doing some despicable wrong to him which will turn you back on your whole up- ward course for its expiation. The greatest of the psy- chologists knew what he was doing for man when he taught him to love his enemies, and that wise old Publius discerned the higher gains in the matter when he said "it is an un- happy lot which finds no enemies." "I had a friend," was the explanation which one sweet soul gave for all the riches and graces of life and character that came to him, but "I had an enemy" is ofttimes the secret of higher greatness and development. The most baffling enemy, of course, to deal with is the enemy within one's self. Armies and navies can not rid one of this foe, and the pessimistic weaklings who are trying to throttle him with bed ropes are getting farther and farther away from any hope in the case. " 'Tis life of which their nerves are scant," and to ask death to sup- ply the want is the last lunacy. One bold grasp for them- selves of that full orb of life which they are petitioning fate, worlds and red devils to bring them, would end the battle and give them suns, stars and eternities to wait upon them. It is because he does not know himself and the powers that are within him that man sends such puerile wails into the universe. Do not try to save your brother by sermons or criticism, 108 Enemies and Revenges says the priest of Brahmin. Tell him who and what he is and he will save himself, and it is certain that he who knows his life to be one with the eternal will not try to kill himself with a jack-knife. It is a great thing to go about feeling that the infinite spirit of the universe is interested in what you do, says Dr, Hale, and then, he adds, with an uncon- scious sarcasm perhaps upon the pessimistic literature of to-day, that this feeling is not to be found in books, but in the open air, in the breaking off of a dandelion, the heark- ening to a bird song. The farmer boy of the wide West does not curse his fate, he tells us, and if the farmer girl does, it must be because she gives more attention to the bath- room floor and the scrub brush than to that "floor of heaven thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," which nowhere shines with more seductive dreams of all infinity and might than in that magic West, where plain and sky melt into one vast and boundless immensity, or mountain peaks in still and awful grandeur "pierce the white radiance of eternity." To lose himself in the bosom of the infinite is the only hope that science, nature and religion off'er man in his effort to get away from that smaller ego that troubles him so. And meantime the yet grander truth remains that only in such loss can he ever truly find himself. THE GOSPEL OF DESPAIR EVIDENTLY it is not all that labor and are heavy laden who care to have their burdens aired by the nov- elists. Miss Mary E, Wilkins was taken to task by the New England shoemaker, and the "Portion of Labor" she had assigned to him most incontinently scorned by his criticisms. Any shoemaker could write a better novel, he averred indignantly, which, considering the kind of talent she ascribed to the shoe man, is rather hard on Mary Wil- kins. It is the retort discourteous that might be expected, however, from the exaggerated pictures that are drawn in many cases of the "other half" of humanity by that com- plaisant upper half that really knows nothing about it. With the best intention in the world to help the matter, many good souls have put it almost beyond the reach of help by the impenetrable blackness flung about it, and it is not strange that a few voices from this charnel house of all joy or comeliness, to which writers have assigned laborer, tramp, bankrupt, thief or outcast in a body, should send forth a cry against being considered in such a dread and "bony light." Even Tommy Atkins has come back upon his cham- pion in many cases, with small thanks for the pains that took him out of the ranks of "the thin red line," and it is said that the ver}' worm of the slums is beginning to turn upon the upper class slummer, who is crowding it too deeply into the slime of the street for the benefit (?) of the cause. "The slummer's illusions," as one writer has it, which pic- ture a wailing, warring mass of humanity weltering in filth 109 ] 10 The Gospel of Despair and vice, while only curses, groans and pistol shots fill the air, are yielding to a comprehension of "men and women going about their ordinary work in an ordinary way, quietly putting up with the inevitable," which, in their case, is bad enough, heaven knows, but not so bad as to make them unfit for decent eyes to look upon. A young society girl, going out last summer with tracts and lessons in behavior to the children of a country settlement recruited from the city slums, declared that the main difference she found in them was that they were more eager to learn and less bold in tlieir manners and questions than the children of the fash- ionable set, with whom she had labored in the Sunday schools. Human nature has its good and bad trails every- where, and even that "unspeakable Gorky" finds some sparks of the divine fire in the most blackened and beastly specimens that have ever been called up to pollute the pages of slum literature. The sin and stupidity of burying the objects of mission work in tlieir own slime is pre-eminently set forth, however, in the case of this new luminary from the pits. For, with all the scintillations from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche that he flashes through them in exploiting his own philosophy, the conclusion is inevitable that they are only fit for the lake that burnetii with fire and brimstone, and that, to "root them out of existence," as one of their own prophets has said, is the only way to save society from such moral lepers. And is it for this that Gorky came up from the abyss and was hailed as the "literary Messiah" who was to lead his poor brethren of the night out of their moral wilderness ? Indeed should it be for this anywhere that authors or artists, or so-called reformers, go down to the underworld with palette, pen or tract .'' If it is but to hunt the sores and putrefactions of humanity and proclaim them irremediable, The Gospel of Despair 111 with the awful stolidity of the fatalist, or even the doom- promising dogmatist, to what end are our eyes invited to rest upon such spectacles, or the writhing victims of them called up to furnish them? Even as subjects for strong art there is no virtue in them, unless through them in some way the healing gleam of that eternal beauty and light wherein true art reposes can be made to shine. What then is to be said of an artist who setting out like Gorky witli this high thought in his mind yet misses the aim, and turns the awful but heroic figures of his first sketches into rant- ing and loathsome prophets of anarchy and rebellion pro- nouncing their own doom and extinction in his subsequent flights? Not so does Tolstoi, of whom he was proclaimed the suc- cessor, handle the promethean spark in his poor downtrod- den serfs. Not so did Victor Hugo work out the redemp- tion of his remarkable ex-convict. Not so did Dickens lift up the poor and oppressed in all the hovels and workshops of England. Not so does Dante treat even the souls in hades, who dwell "content in fire" because they discern the way to Paradise that lies through it. And this is the con- demnation of the realist and would-be "Messiahs" of to-day who take up the cause of the outcast and the unfortunate whom perhaps society's blind and brutal forces have made what they are, that they steal their last chance to placate human help and sympathy by wiping out every spark of humanity, to say nothing of divinity, within them and leav- ing them to no better nature than that of the beast that perisheth. And that too when in the fluctuations of the social and economic systems of the hour, all the lines of rank and class are continually shifting — when the tramp at the door may be, perchance, the Varsity boy out on a vaca- tion job, when Gorky himself was educated and inspired 112 The Gospel of Despair by a cook, and the liU/arus of to-tlay is more than liable to bo the Dives of to-uiorrow. Indeed the plaint of hopeless degradation anywhere, com- ing either from oppressed or oppressor, is unwarranted in a world of free will and the innnanent spirit of the divine throbbing in all being. Especially should one who has proven the power of Godlike will to break through even Russian bands and bars, be slow to preach the gospel of despair and negation to his struggling brethren. And, above all, should he halt at the awful mistake of putting them beyond the pale of human brotherhood and writing them, in all the colors of beasts and demons, as "Creatures Who Have Been Men." God himself put no such brand as that upon even the head of Cain. It was to save him from becoming a vagabond and a fugitive that he set the mark in his forehead. ''Lest any finding him should kill him," runs the tender sentence, and why, then, are men and prophets setting such brands upon their fellows that noth- ing but killing them on sight seems left in the case? Un- less, indeed, they can put the stamp of the brotherhood upon them in some way, however blurred, begrimed or dis- figured by woe or crime it may be, there is little use in go- ing down into the abyss or coming up from the abyss to spread the story of the lost and fallen. The greatest of the reformers have ever held that the human soul can never wholly shed the fragrance of the para- dise from which it has been expelled, and certainl}' it is in the strength of tluit belief alone that any intelligent effort can be brought to bear upon either class or individual from whom that fragrance seems to have fled. That not all re- formers or writers know how to discern it, and in their blindness make fearful havoc of the cause or class they un- dertake to speak for, may be good and sufficient reason Tlie Gospel of Despair 113 why even a shoemaker should leave his last to come out and arrest the general tendency to knock a man down in order to save him. The sorriest of life's unfortunates may have a remnant of pride left to suffer by such a process, and the intelligent laborer at the shop, like tiie intelligent hus- bandman with the hoe, may object to being pictured as "A thing that neither feels nor thinks." ENVIRONMENT NEXT to heredity, environment is the grand boon to the problem hunter. Everything occult that can not be resolved into some atavistic wonder or mystery can be dumped into the deep well of environment, to be fished for by every truth seeker. Moreover, environment is an avail- able force for the individual to conjure by. Heredity, like damnation by election, is a power beyond him; but en- vironment, like free will, can be thrown in to save him. No one can get away from his grandfather, but who is obliged to sit down in the vicinity of Mount Pelee.? That we all do it in one way or another is a defect that is in ourselves, not in our stars. When God turned man out of Eden because the place had become dangerous and alien to him, he showed him what manner of wisdom and care he should exercise in choos- ing his environment, a.nd gave him the whole wide earth for that choice. Nevertheless, if there is a forbidden tree or sociable devil to be found anywhere, it is directly there that the ordinary mortal will plant himself and his garden. And as for the alien, the unpropitious atmosphere, con- sider how persistently the excellent of the earth will drop themselves into it and stick. One of the commonest laments we hear uttered over thwarted lives is that, under other con- ditions or surroundings, the individual might have been great. What business, then, had he not to hunt those con- ditions, or, with the sagacity of even the common spider, tear up the web that proved unfit for him? 114 Environment 115 Nothing, intleed, in all creation is so dull as man in cling- ing to a poor situation. Even the flowers of the field in- sist upon their own soil and air, and what some one calls "the ancestral remedy of flight" is known to all the animal kingdom. Only man will drop into a wholly black and bar- ren corner and plod on there forever. Indirectly, too, the very eff'orts of his higher teachers abet him in the folly. "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell," he is loftily reminded, regardless of the fact that in a heaven all made for it the mind could go on to yet grander achievements than denying its environment. It may be great to rise above one's surroundings, however op- pressive they are, but that is when there is no chance to get away from them. While there is a loophole of escape left, sagacity is shown in finding it. It is only when you can not run away from your troublesome neighbors, your cred- itors, or perhaps even your creaky-boot husband that it be- comes really brilliant to sit down and look them into thin air, and let your own mortal, or immortal, mind fill the landscape. "Submission to what people call their lot is simply ig- noble," says that delightful Elizabeth, and it is the crown- ing lesson of that garden experiment in environment which showed her that bread and butter which is "devoid of charm in a drawing room" becomes "ambrosia eaten under a tree." To find the place where your bread and butter lot can take on ambrosial flavor is the nice secret of life and happiness for people who are made subtly susceptible to every Avind that blows or odor that floats through the moist airs of spring. Not till science can more effectually reduce the world to "will and idea" can mortals afford to ignore those mighty influences of "sense and outward things" which play upon them almost unawares, turning joy to sorrow, or sor- 116 Environment row to jo J by some passing of a cloud fleet o'er the rose of dawn, or trickle of a sunbeam through the chill dark of a deep woods. Poets and musicians and finely strung natures every- where feel most deeply this influence of the external, but that the most phlegmatic are not insensible to it many a lesson of daily life and history reveals to us. But recently a sad story ran through the newspapers of an aged couple, who after years of sorrow, wandered back to the home of their first youth and love, a little vine-wreathed cottage by the sea, that had been their bridal bower. Here they hoped to bury in the tender associations of the place the terrible losses and bereavements that in their later life had come to them. But, alas ! they had forgotten Dante's famous lines, "There is no sorrow like remembering a happy time in mis- ery," and soon the}'^ found the place, with its fltting ghosts of lost delight, so insupportable that they deliberately killed themselves and were found lying dead together in their bridal chamber. It may not be great, it may not be heroic, but to run away from memories, and from sorrows, and bereavements, is sometimes the only way to endure them, or escape "the death in life of days that are no more." Nor is it wholly true, either, that it is but to change the place and not the pain that the flight is made, for new scenes and new associa- tions affect the soul in spite of itself and in a wider sense tlian the old poet intended, it stands approved that he who fights in the battle of life "and runs away will live to fight another day." Adjustment to one's environment, adapta- tion of the internal to the external, has long been declared a law of life, but how could there be any progressive being save in the changing environment for the changing and en- larging creature? The poet's invocation, "Build thee more Environment 117 stately mansions, O, my soul, as the swift seasons roll," has a temporal as well as spiritual significance, and the love man has for beautifying and enriching his home, as his intellectual needs increase, is directly in the line of all human progress. "Another da}', another way," runs Leife's definition of progress, and with all tlie lurking sarcasm in it it breathes the principle of true growth. Almost any change is better than no change at all in a state that falls short of per- fection. Even love can almost be forgiven its fickle and fluctuating ways, considering that it finds nothing perfect to fasten itself upon here. It is well, however, that men should fling it flowers, and smiles, and rosy offerings, and if they would but keep it in the growing light of such en- vironment it might live a little longer, even in earth's alien atmosphere. It is too often for lack of its vital breath of beauty, sunshine and gladness that it languishes under our dun skies. So long as lovers can keep the glow of en- thusiasm, winsomeness and song alive for it, they can take almost any other liberties with it they please. It is when it comes to heaviness, "jar and fret" that "love is made a vain regret." Say what you will, too, of its ethereal and exalted nature, environment does count with it, at least among creatures of a material world. Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is, Love forgive us ! cinders, ashes, dust, cries Keats, and there is too much truth in it to warrant the building of much romance on such a combination. It is a truth, too, that points the final lesson upon the power of environment, for if love can not overcome it nothing else can. "I am going a long way," says sad King Arthur, when royal life and love had failed him. 118 Environment To tlie island-valley of Avilion, that lies, Deep meadow'd, happy, fair, with orchard lawns, And bowery hollows, crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound. It may not be given to all sufferers to hunt the island- valley of Avilion to cure their wounds. But at least they need not plant themselves beside all manner of smoky vol- canoes and rumbling cities and wait till the eruption is upon them before they take to their heels and fly. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE SOME 800 years ago one of the gentlest scholars who ever wrestled with the darkness of the Middle Ages died sorrowing, because he "had to leave unsolved the nature of the human soul." Curiously enough, this learned Anselm believed that he possessed the ability to unravel it, with which those coming after him might not be endowed. Emphati- cally, the latter part of his surmise was realized. For, though the poor soul was torn to tatters by the dialecticians and the theologians of the scholastic period, no ray of light was evolved as to its true nature. However, the mind was set free to speculate about it, and to this day the brilliant and futile work goes on through all branches of thought and philosophy. Indeed, it is the very problem of the soul and the mysteries of life that circle around it that keep all the currents of thought astir about us, and it is impossible to imagine what would have become of all our writers if the good Anselm had given it away. One could wish that he might have achieved the desired work, for it seems probable that we shall never have a happy world to live in till we know all about it. The riddle of existence is the thing which humanity seems least able to endure, and the unsolved mystery of that "awful soul that dwells in clay" impresses itself in saddening lines upon everything in creation that our eyes rest upon. And thus it shall ever be, so long as we know not life's secret." Even though that secret might be "monstrous" the knowledge of it would be a relief from the pains and fears 119 180 Tilt' HidJh' of Lift- of iguorjiiu'o. '1\) walk '\u darkness !i}ipoars to be the liard- est lot the gods have visited upon men, and to submit himself to the limitations of his Hnite knov, ledi^-e, the one thing which the human philosopher seems unable to compass. liike the souls that dwelt "content in fire" because they saw the meaning of it, the burden of all human pain would be endurable, if but the mystery of it could be unraveled. Is it strange then that great souls and nunds of all ages have given themselves to the attempted solution of it? In truth, it might not be if any or all of their efforts could show one step of progress in that direction. But with the best lights of all time declaring to us again and again that the problem is absolutely insoluble by any effort of human reason, can anything be madder than the manner in which humanity goes on repeating the vain endeavor to make it out and beating its head against a stone ^vall to no purpose? It may be that no intelligent being can rest content at the heart of a mystery without some effort to unravel it, but how long should it take the intelligent being to learn that a mystery is insoluble and the path of peace and happiness lies outside the wrestle with it? The happiest heart that ever beat Was in some quiet breast That found the common daylight sweet xVnd left to heaven the rest, says the poet, and that is much the state of the case, and any one who goes to nature and the bee for his philosoph}' will find it out. The bee shows no pangs nor misgivings in sporting or toiling out his brief hour amid the flowers or honey cells and turning over his work to his gay successor, and if we are to consider his ways and be wise why should we not The Riddle of Life 121 accept that crowning lesson against "the pitiful weighing of fate" and the sad discussion of ills which some of our own poets have found in it? When tlie bee community arrives at the height of its riches and prosperity it promptly abandons its wealth and its home to the next generation, and "this act," we are told, "be it conscious or unconscious, undoubtedly passes the limit of human morality." But why? Do not all the genera- tions of men toil and vanish and another enter into their labors? It must be because of the "heroic" and unquestion- ing spirit with which the bee submits itself to its destiny. It does not, as Walt Whitman expresses it, "sweat or whine about its condition" or rend the skies with the eternal repetitions of the vain question why. It takes the Septem- ber sacrifice of its "thrice happy home" or city as cheerily as the summer rearing of it amid the flowers and running waters. Perchance it perceives the same law of life and good running through both of them, but, at any rate, it loses no joy in the summer sun for fear of the September wandering. And this, indeed, is the worst misfortune of the persistent human struggle with unfathomable fate, that it loses the joy of the sunshine in the consuming endeavor to penetrate the shadows. Nay, even to get at the heart of the rose, it will heedlessly scatter its fair petals to the breeze. Like Carlyle's small brandishers of the torch of science, it wastes its time studying how the apple got in the dumpling, while the unquestioning banqueter eats dumpling, apple, crust and all, and finds it good — which, indeed, is the only way to know anything about it. Life, says Emerson, is a succession of riddles or lessons, which must be lived to be understood. All the speculations of the philosophers are vain and idle. The only key to the riddle is the key of experience, and each one must apply it to the successive chambers of being for 122 The Riddle of Life himself. It may be that the good Anselm has solved the problem of the soul by this time, and again it may be that he is still at work on it. But, at any rate, it is eternally true, That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road. Which to discover we must travel, too. CONCERNING SLANDER IT is one of the most curious things in human history that people who can not get at the real motive in a single act of their fellow-beings should set themselves up in judg- ment upon them, even in the most secret and sacred affairs of their lives and unquestionably the love of scandal, the desire to stir a sensation, lies at the root of a great deal of it. If sensationalism and slander were to be wiped out of all decent life and journalism, the result would be almost incalculable in the uplifting of society. And this not half so much through any redemption wrought for the victim as for the perpetrator of the sensational story or gossip. In- deed, it is to this latter subject of the evil that the new psychology directs its first attention. It is the slanderer and not the slandered who is the patient for its treatment. Nor is it true, scientifically speaking, that any creature at any time was ever "done to death by slanderous tongues." It was some lack of sustaining strength or poise in his own rectitude that let in the "poisoned darts." "The mind, con- scious of rectitude, laughs to scorn the falsehood of report," said Ovid, and it was a very wise as well as good man who said when told of a vile calumny concerning him, "I will act so that nobody will believe it." Nothing really is more absurd than for an innocent man to worry over any slander. It is the poor slanderer who needs to worry and to move all the philanthropists of the earth to rush after and help him, for by every law of truth and being he has turned the currents of his life into the 123 124 Concerning Slander narrows of the pit, and secured for himself a future, a karma, that either philosopher or theologian must shudder to look upon. No sinful act of man more surely than this breaks that ladder of love on which he climbs to the light in drawing his brother after him. It is significant to note how even time itself brings the sequence of his deed to bear in its very colors upon the head of the slanderer. In a little town of the West, not long since, a very epidemic of scandal broke out among the respected citizens. Reputations withered at a breath and character was no safeguard against the back- yard gossip. But the wave passed, and the assailed parties managed to pull through alive. Curiously enough, how- ever, in the homes of the slanderers developed shortly the very evils they had sought to fasten upon others, and mothers and sisters found through the fierce obloquy cast upon their own dear ones, how fearfully in seeking to condemn others they had condemned themselves. It is not always that retribution follows so closely on the steps of wrong, nor can any one yet say what subtle influ- ences in the mental atmosphere may set a suggested evil to developing itself in susceptible quarters. But that the deed somehow returns upon the head of the doer is an inevitable law of life and a dart hurled at the soul and character of a fellow being is the worst arrow of destruction that one can let loose to cross his path at any stage of the way. Whether it is aimed in malice or in idle gossip, he must meet it at Phillipi and pay the full price of it. It is for him therefore and not the innocent victim, whose cause is safe with heaven, that the safeguards of restraint and fair speaking should be set up, and when the better thought and psychology of the day succeed in convincing men of this cardinal truth, slanders and yellow journalism will no doubt die a natural death. Concerning Slander 125 Of course, it may be said that to tell the truth about a man is not to slander him ; yet when one considers that it is little more than the dangerous half truth that can be known to the outside party it is safest, perhaps, to let un- pleasant truths take care of themselves and work out their own dark penalty or sequence in its due place, as they always do. Besides, it is much, as one of the great ones gone has intimated in the case, "If you take temptation into account who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?" "I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself," says Montaigne, and while that remains true of a man whose moral precepts and lofty philosophy have gone into every corner of the earth, and been translated into all tongues, would it not be well for common mortals to con- sider what monster is within themselves ? Really, too, if the spice of the matter is the thing desired, nothing in any outside sinner could begin to equal the bub- bling of the witches' cauldron of mischief and temptation in man's own soul, nor give a hint of the moral crises he goes through in the secret places of his life. If he does not find it well therefore to make a sensation out of his own coquetry with the devil, why should he call his neighbor in for the Mepistophelian drama? The very fact that man aims so neatly to conceal his own shortcomings is reason enough why he should be slow to uncover his neighbor's. Let him that is without sin cast the first stone is, of course, the divine principle that probes to the heart of the whole matter, and it leaves little margin for trading upon human weaknesses, either for sensation or example. To resolve man's virtues into something worth exploiting is really the principle for true journalism and ethics, and we ought to be far enough along in the moral graces to find some attraction in good- ness without an army of stage villains to set it off. WOES OF THE MISUNDERSTOOD AFTER all, neither wisdom nor destiny amount to much unless human beings can manage somehow to under- stand each other. Considering the poverty of our means of communication with each other, the plain Scripture rule of thinking no evil is the only one to sa,ve us. Our language not only conceals thought, but it manages to conceal about every decent principle and aspiration that lurks within us. It tangles up the best of friends and has parted lovers that not all the blast of time or adverse fate could sever. Half the crimes and wars of the Christian centuries rage about the words and teachings of the Christ, and, although nineteen centuries of scholars have been trying to make out what they mean, nobody is sure of it yet. Hamlet is a mooning maniac to one sage critic, and a deep and subtle scholar and philosopher to s^nother. At the uni- versities one professor presents Macbeth as an essentially good, brave and heroic soldier, ruined by his thoroughly fiendish wife, and another as a poor coward in both deed and purpose, hung like a millstone around the neck of a woman who would have been one of the greatest characters in his- tory without him. Nearly every writer who puts pen to paper is damned for what he never knew he was saying, and keys, commentators and women's clubs give themselves to reading into the rem- nant of the saved something that they never dreamed of say- ing. The "June baby" who cried "such a much" over her apronful of flowers or kittens is about as neat an expositor 126 Woes of the Misunderstood 127 of the tangle as recent examples furnish. And yet when people open their mouths and speak it is fair to believe that they mean something, and unless their actions belie it, some- thing decent. There really ought to be such a thing as character that could stand despite all the confusion of tongues that could be brought to bear upon it. A lover and man of the quill, gone on a journey recently, sent his love a letter that seemed to write him one of the "gay deceivers," against whom all her Byronic favorites had warned her. Being of an explosive nature, she was about to create an earthquake that would engulf both love and the lover, when she bethought herself that this wandering Ulysses had been rather a stanch devotee at her shrine for some eight or ten years and it was curious that he should undergo so tremendous a sea change in the space of a few weeks. Hence she gave him the benefit of the doubt and a chance to explain himself. And, lo ! it turned out that he meant just the opposite of what he said and was overwhelmed at the misunderstanding. Since which time these two intel- lectual and long familiar creatures are using a kind of letter writer's manual to preserve themselves. Before using, how- ever, they might have been a light to the world if from their neat experience they could have taught human beings to believe in each other in spite of our idiotic tongue. Really, "to understand is to forgive" in nearly all our blundering offenses against each other, and if our words and theories could be sifted down to some clear and accurate expression of what we verily do think and mean, half our disagreements in creed, code and principle would disappear at a breath. Some day, perhaps, there will arise, as Whitman sus- pected, "the true son of God singing his songs," speaking his language, and then they who are not already lost in a 128 Woes of the Misunderstood babel of tongues will be able to unveil themselves to each other without fear of a policeman, a heresy trial or a ban from the insapient. But, meantime, it remains true, as Macaulay observed, that the "flashes of silence" are the most "delightful" part of any conversation, and certainly the safest. The picture of Carlyle dismissing Tennyson after an afternoon visit with the eager invitation, "Come again, Alfred, we have had such a fine chat," when neither of them had uttered a syllable during the entire interview, is one of the most refreshing, as well as significant ones, in all literature. That it requires two well-attuned souls to accomplish it is no reason why even lesser creatures might not taste such bliss, for who knows what kindred spirits in any circle might not be beating in unison with our own if we could keep still long enough to find it out ? It was noted recently that in their ideas of diplomacy in conducting a campaign the man said "don't talk" and the woman "talk ceaselessly." The end in view is the measure of the wisdom in either course, for if it is to befuddle an adversary what better can one do than to pelt him with words, words, words, and the discomfiture to which poor tongue-tied man has been driven by such a policy ought to teach him the value of it in the ruder warfare of life. But when it comes to the heights, the spirit altitudes and com- munication, words are too gross. It is about as that poet- seer tells us, "When the finer feelings are touched one can only have music or silence." Writers like Maeterlinck in all the grace of poetry and art have tried to put us in communication with life and relations be^^ond the bounds of sense, elemental, universal, and yet through the necessity of speaking in terms of sense the grossest meanings and ideas have been attributed to them. How then, shall the ungifted be expected to save themselves in their dull grapple with Woes of the Misunderstood 129 the indiscretions of speech? It is a tender legend which tells us that the tears of the recording angel wash out all the evil or the unfortunate words of the good man, and if some kind lord of life would teach the recording angels of earth to do likewise this world would be a better place to live in. As it is, the very goodness of the saints is held on the tip of the tongue and goes down with a misinterpreted phrase or symbol. OTHER PEOPLE'S ILLS A PROMINENT business man recently sprained his back by some rash stroke in athletics and came home to his wife more or less disabled for life. When her sympa- thy grew tearful he assured her that there was scarcely a man of his acquaintance not largely the worse for some such physical injury. This seemed to comfort them both, and the disaster to the spinal column became a secondary con- sideration. The philosophy is as old as humanity, and about as curi- ous. Why it should comfort a man with a broken back to know that another man's back is broken it is not easy to say. But apparently it does, though heaven is not the legitimate outcome of such a philosophy. Indeed, Sweden- borg seems to be its true interpreter when he tells us that the good Lord, out of his tender mercy, provided "the hells" where, as it were, people of broken backs and lame limbs in morals could get together and enjoy what Plutarch calls the comfort of society in shipwreck. Meantime to educate us up to it is the part of much of the instruction offered from the very nursery in the line of comforting reflections upon the sins and miseries of other people. That we are all poor sinners is a relief that theology itself oJfFers to the strain of that deeper cry, be merciful to me a sinner, though nothing in all the history of ethics can show that one human soul has been helped by it. Poets and philosophers of course of all ages have tried to make suf- fering as the common lot the bases of individual endurance, 130 Other People's Ills 131 though how the grandeur of tliat endurance was borne out by it none of tlicm could declare to us. Plin}' beneath the belch- ing fires of Vesuvius tells us that he found his "miserable consolation" in the belief that it was the end of the world and all mankind was perishing with him, and in their secret souls all these great ones know that it is but a "miserable consolation" which can come to any creature out of the sufferings of others. That it is closely akin to pleasure in those sufferings some of the more honest of them would seem to have made out in their reflections upon our poor mor- tality. "I am convinced," said Burke, "that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real mis- fortunes and pains of others," and that odious maxim-maker, Rochefoucauld, even goes farther and declares that "in the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is not wholly displeasing to us." What more could all Hades ask than that to found its hells upon ! And yet it is not an unnatural deduction from the accepted principle that misery loves company and finds its own ground of endurance in it. Indeed, the fear that our friends through too much prosperity will get out of the reach of us and our misfortunes is the gentlest explanation that is made of the hideous maxim, and the desire to bind them to us even in the bond of common woes is not largely discountenanced by the philosophers. In truth, community in suffering, perhaps in despair of community in joy, is so largely a part of poor mortals' demand upon each other that scarcely God could come to earth without declaring himself a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Pains, wrongs and all manner of ills are borne patiently if a whole community shares them together, and age, decay, death and oblivion are to be held tolerable, because, as one of our own poets puts it, "All that breathe shall share the destiny." 132 Other People's Ills The crowning bitterness of life everywhere grows out of its, inequalities, and half the fires of war, anarchy and rebellion are kindled less for the pain men suffer, which in default of contrast they do not so much consider, as for fury of the fact that others refuse to bear it with them — push out of the common lot to what they deem the uncommon. Some soul in fire that could look up and honestly rejoice that another soul was lying at peace in Abraham's bosom, and scorn the consolation that one creature was left to suf- fer with him, might revolutionize the whole scheme of purga- torial pains in earth or hades and show the angels a height of greatness that they are not competent to attain. Of course, teachers and mystics of different ages have sighted this glory afar off, and some of the blessed martyrs made a fair grasp for it, but one person alone really descended into hell to teach men the universal love that alone could com- pass it. For love and love alone is the secrt of rising above any consolation in others' afflictions which the odiously dis- cerning philosophers find in us, and every true household is a proof of it. Imagine a son comforting himself over a frac- tured spine because his father or brother was similarly afflicted ! Picture a fond mother finding consolation in the decay of her charms through beholding that a beautiful daughter was fading with her. Try Rochef aucauld's maxim on friends who had reached the Damon and Pythias stage of affection. Everywhere it is the poverty and dearth of love which that consolation of a common lot in sorrow builds upon, and one touch of the fire of a true affection shivers it at a breath. Let universal love "lie like a shaft of light across the land" and all men's good be each man's care, and there will be small comfort in knowing that pains and bruises are spread over other People's IUh 133 tlu! \vliol(.' race. Kven that incentive to courage wliich is supposed to lodge in the idea that if otliers have suffered and endured vou can, is a small matter beside the strength of treading the wine press alone and rejoicing that others know nothing of its crimson deeps. Indeed, the truth of the mat- ter is that it is one of our greatest misfortunes, instead of gains, that we are so tangled up in other people's lives that we can scarcely have the toothache without setting a whole family in commotion. To find a place where we could have it out with ourselves when our souls faltered or our limbs failed would bo much better than calling in a whole army of the halt and maimed to suffer with us. Tlie lad in the mourners' seat who reproved the boy behind him for crying when it was "none of his funeral" hada measure of the right spirit in him after all. Sympatliy may be well enough for the sympathizer, but strength to abide without it is better for the sufTerer. Most of all the form of consolation which looks upon the ten thousand woes and evils that men bring upon themselves as but a part of the common lot, as it were appointed of heaven, is the thing that blights. Heaven never asks any man to fracture his anatomy at either work or play, and if he does, it is small business to charge it to the general order and so pervert the kindlier ends of being. Pain is, as all the teachers tell us, the child of wrong doing somewhere, and to dispose of it as far as possible by right doing is certainly better than to declare it universal and take con- solation in the worst form of it. Really joy is the only thing that men can afford to dwell upon as common, and it is significant that it was when the woman in the Bible had found, not lost, her piece of silver that she is made to call in the friends and neighbors to sympathize with her. It is due 134< Other People's Ills to our misconception of life and its true bonds that sym- pathy and the "common lot" mean ever something dolorous, and that people scarcely think of them save in connection with some misfortune or damage to the original. TELLING THE TRUTH THE story of Jeanie Deans will have to be rewritten. The twentieth century has no use for the one-ideaed puritan maiden who would swear away a loved one's life rather than tell an inspirational lie to save it. The case has been tried in the criminal court of a large city, and not one member of the grand jury could be found willing to indict the trembling sweatheart who swore to a false alibi to save the man she loved from the penitentiary. However, the ends of justice are satisfied. The man has gone to the penitentiary, and, as the lie did not save him, there is no danger that a series of lover's perjuries will undermine the majesty of the law. The main thing needed in the case is a Walter Scott or a Tolstoi to put it in a romance, for if there is not a spiritual "resurrection" effected in that poor convict's soul through the power of that maiden's love, lie and all, then the angels are behind the jurymen in making the most of "the greatest thing on earth." When he saw his sweetheart sink back pale and trembling before the counter-testimony that threatened to expose her, he leaped to his feet, runs the record, and shouted aloud that he was guilty. Thus giving himself up, argued the jurymen, he met the demands of justice and removed any necessity for considering the poor girl's testimony. Hence their return was "no bill" when the effort came to indict her. This closed the last act in the city court-room, but in the higher courts of the spirit it looks very much as though some new act had just begun. A Hugo or a Tolstoi would cer- 135 136 Telling the Truth tainly produce a new soul in the hero's case from such a life germ, though it were trailed through a hundred prisons in the operation, and probably the Great Master of life and souls is not behind them. But just what life or litera- ture would do with the heroine's case is really another mat- ter, and it lies too deep for any surface treatment to dispose of. It is certain that Walter Scott kept some eternal truths of life and its sequences intact when he refused to let a white- souled heroine introduce the black thread of a rank perjury into the web of her life. Nevertheless, it shadows her with something almost equally as dark when she is made to stand up and swear away, so far as her power goes, the life of a loved one, to keep her own soul inviolate, and human love and reason refuse to believe that such violence done to nature and the tender affections can ever turn out a means of grace. The real lesson in such monstrous spectacles is to set forth the deplorableness of laws and civilizations that can not get beyond them. Society is said to be a tissue of falsehood from beginning to end, and no wonder when, from the school- boy to the court witness, human beings are expected to turn state's evidence against their best beloved for the purpose of having them put under the rod or the executioner's ax in some clumsy form of law and punishment. One of the early recollections of a New England boarding school life shows a tender maid of sixteen incarcerated for seven long days in a dreary chamber, and fed like a jailbird on bread and water, allegorically called toast and tea, be- cause she refused to betray a favorite schoolmate whom she had accidentally seen skip through an open window and go off with the "boy tenor" for a stroll in the summer moonlight. That she was truthful enough to confess that she knew the parties, and loyal enough to insist that she could not betray them, was the head and front of her offending. And this Telling the Truth 137 is much the condition of things with many a trembling witness who is snapped up to give evidence in different direc- tions against friend or lover, with only this deadly difference in more serious cases, that refusal to speak means often most fatal indorsement of the evidence on the other side. Since home discipline has gone into the hands of the children instead of the parents, we hear less of brothers and sisters being required to give each other over to the rod or torture chamber by witness bearing against one another. But for how long was that a recognized part of family training and policy.'' Not till brilliant humorists like Ingersoll began showing parents that standing over puny creatures with a club, ready to annihilate them on conviction, was not the way to make the sensible child lay bare his soul before them, or tell the painful truth about which boy hacked the cherry tree. And now that the children have got the club, and smash the furniture or hang themselves over the roof if a stern look crops out anywhere, it is a courageous parent who dares say that his soul's his own. Intimidation works to the repression of troublesome facts in either child or adult, and when it is brought to bear upoi. the finer feelings it is not so strange that some skillful tac- tics in "breaking the legs" of injurious truth should be re- sorted to. "I speak truth, not so much as I would, but so much as I dare," said the high-minded Montaigne, and it is a nice commentary upon the state of life and society that that should be very much the case with all of us. To tell the truth is the natural impulse of the soul. It is the danger and calamity that attend it that begin to train the innocent-minded child to phase and twist it till often, the more intelligent he grows, the more of an adept he becomes in the operation. It is the pleasant sophistry of some to imagine that they can save themselves from too much com-* 138 Telling the Tnitli pounding AvitJi the father of lies by suppressing the truth, while they fail to utter the falsehood. But it is just that that society has set itself to outwit most effectually. Like the poor girl on the witness stand, to fail to testify against is to admit the evidence for the thing that undoes us, and so a protective panoply of white lies becomes almost a necessity in guarding our most sacred possessions. Everywhere, in love, in law, in religion, there is a penalty attached to the truth. How many ministers dare speak it to any people as their inmost souls behold it.'' How many mismated couples dare face it honestly and openly, though all their lives become a living lie in consequence.'' What cowards in love everywhere do violence to the very life prin- ciple of their souls, because the truth is made a costly thing for them.'' What scores of Jeanie Deans are hiding the slips of recreant loved ones because society knows nothing better than to crowd them into pens of contamination, bru- tality and ignominy if the slip becomes known.'' Indeed, what church, court, government or civilization, the world over, has brought itself to the sublime height of dealing honestly with life as it is, or making .it possible for other than children and fools, as the old adage has it, to tell the truth about things as they are.'' The little English lad who defined a lie as "an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, but a very present help in time of trouble" sized up the whole situation. And yet truth is the very central flame that feeds the "white radiance of eternity," and to clear the path to it the most essential thing for any creatures who would reach the eternal hills. To put a premium on lies and make martyrs or monsters of those who would speak the truth has been too long the world's system of education in such matters, and it is certainly a ground of congratulation if an}' jurymen in any land look to the motive, and not the Telling the Truth 139 deed, that imperfect human courts themselves impel. Long ago a prophet, dreaming, whispered of a day when mercy and truth should meet together. It is for that we wait. And lieaven grant that it may dawn before the exigencies of the present system hurl us all into the "lake that burn- eth" through our futile endeavors to connect the two. THE TOUCH OF NATURE IT is a divine touch in literature which seeks to make all life kin to us. To knit the animal world to our own in almost human loves and human sympathies, has been the work of our most engaging writers, and in stirring the pulse of tenderness and respect for all created things, especially in the heart of childhood, the work has been a splendid one. But, with all respect for the gentle and gifted ones who have so happil}^ preserved for us the unities of life in all the remotest corners of the kingdom, it is still a regret that for any cause or effect they should have been moved to drop down the burden of human pain, as well as human pleasure, upon the free, glad spirit of the lower world. It was bad enough for man to come to that state of higher conscious- ness which would fill him with pain, fear and mourning over the ordinary processes of nature, or stir his bitterness and revenge over the natural workings of that great law of the survival of the fittest. But when it comes to tangling br'er wolf and brother bear in the heavy and pathetic toils of it, the very ends of nature seem turned astray. The one great answer to the tremendous problem of suf- fering in the animal world, and all the prejang of the stronger upon the weaker therein, was that it is not suffer- ing in any real human sense ; that the processes of life and death go on there with no such jars and wrenches of relations and affections, such passions of grief, despair and longing, as mark our beautiful "higher intelligence." Yet here are our loveliest writers filling our dumb relations with such in- 140 The Touch of Nature 141 tensifications of our mental throes and emotions that, really, the beasts at Ephesus become of as pathetically heroic mold as the martyrs, and the boy who lamented that one poor lion in the arena "didn't have any Christian to eat" was entirely in the line of the new relationship. Meantime, too, the gladness of the world becomes seriously eclipsed by it, and the taste for tragedy is receiving a new impulse in un- wonted fields. A little lad wlio recently took one of Seton Thompson's exquisite books to his Quaker grandmother to read to him said sturdily, "Thee knows, grandmother, that the stories are all very sad" ; and then the little tragedy lover sat down to let his heart bleed over the sorrows and wrongs of poor "Wabb" and his heroic journey into the poisonous valley of death. This, no doubt, is the effective side of the wonder- ful animal books that are bringing all living, creeping or crawling things into our closer sympathy, acquaintance and fellowship. But for the joy of that companionship, the gladsomeness of creatures that could charm us away from all the narrow lines of human society and relationship into the free, wide air of elemental being, this flinging of the weight of "man's mortality" and almost accountability upon beast and bird, is rather a dangerous experiment. And if it does not end in giving us br'er wolves and grizzly bears that lie awake at night and mourn for their sins, we may be very thankful. The truth is, too, that, with all the playfulness, fun and even humor that have been read into the lower animals by the genial Uncle Remuses and other authors who have claimed them, the half of it has not been told. Some one recently suggests that we may be more sport to the playful kitten than it can possibly be to us, and it seems very prob- able that all the kittenish things in creation have their own 14)2 The Touch of Nature fun over our clumsy efforts to dance after or around them — witness, for instance, a sportive colt leading his master a coquettish chase over field or meadow, or a sly squirrel or rabbit darting from your path when he has tempted you within a hand's touch of him. Did you ever really try to put salt on a bird's tail, or clap your hand on the saucy minnow that flashed toward ^^ou in a secluded bathing place? Imagine the mirth of the tuneful mosquito when Swift's "forked straddling animal, with bandy legs," lunges vainly at him from his distracted couch, or the amusement of the myriad-eyed fly when the portly housewife tries to creep up behind it with the paper whacker. Consider the humor of the bee when he sees a small population of stately bipeds performing an impromptu clog dance before his tiny sting, or even the pleasure of the butterfly in carrying the urchin, with his upturned hat, an airy chase from flower to flower. Man is said to be the only animal that laughs, but what really is the dog about when he twists his countenance into such ungodly contortions to placate you when you try to dislodge him from some favorite corner? Even to get hilar- iously drunk is not the privilege of pleasure-loving man alone, for does not the sly prairie dog go out and "fill up" on the juice of an intoxicating weed and come home "half seas over" in the morning? Solely for this, says the natural- ist, does he take the owl to house with him and guard his entrance, and the rattlesnake to make sure of his bed. Wliat must be his contempt for the man who will "do the deed and regret it," or spoil the insane delight of it with the Keeley cure? Everything in all creation is free to the animal revelers, and they are the true "scientists" who live up to the belief that nothing in their maker's world can harm them. Shall man, then, encumber them in the weight of his conscious fears, and qualms, and stolen knowledge of The Touch of Nature 143 good and evil ? Shall he fill the happy creatures of the day and hour, the glad spirits of wood and sky, with his canker- ing hates and bitter memories, his long-cherished revenges and suicidal abuses of "restful death"? Nay, then, let Shelley tell him — What objects are the fountains Of their happy strains. What fields, or waves, or mountains, What shapes of sky or plain, What love of their own kind, what ignorance of pain. It is enough for us poor mortals to worry through the golden years, cowards of conscience, slaves of fear, victims of idle tears and vain regrets, of deadly hates and passions. But let the birds and beasts be free to roam the wide crea- tion and drink the intoxicating draught of life in ignorance of pain ; and die at nature's close, aye, even fall at the hunter's dart, untouched by any thought of wrong or malevolence in all the universe. The sting of death is sin, we are told by the good book, and to these creatures, inno- cent of sin, death, even at each other's hands, may have no real terrors. Certainly, their joyous life and song in the constant presence of it would lead us to perceive, as the poet tells us, that They of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream. It is to share their song, not burden them with our sighing, that the companionship of such free creatures should be sought. It is the heaviness of our souls, "the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin," that keeps us out of our best inheritance of strength or talent. lii The 'Vouch of \' (it lire ToiU'h mo Imir I ho <;la«.lnoss Tliat thy brain must know, Siioh harmonious madness From my lips would How, Tho world would listen then, as I am listening now, cries Shelley to his skylark, and it is as true as the subtlest truth of art. We never shall achieve our highest in life or labor till we catch the "clear, keen joyance" of the skylark's note. PRACTICAL SIDE OF BROTHERLY LOVE RELIGION is not, altruism, we arc told ; humanitarian- ism can not save the soul. So there it is. Just when we hud hegun to hope that brotherly love should continue and the good deed done unto the least of the brethren was done unto the Master, it appears that the whole thing is wrong. It is settling up a Ininian love for a divine love, and leaving tlie debt to the individual soul unpaid. Worse still, it is exalting materialism and creature comfort above that spirituality and triumph over the flesh which are supposed to go with bare feet and serge garments. And, above all, it is a cant and a hypocrisy on the very face of it, for no human being ever did or could love his brother as he loved himself, or really love him at all unless he developed a few qualities on his own account worth loving. Reduced to its last analysis, therefore, altruism pure and simple is nonexistent, and the people who are condemning it are passing judgment upon something which they have never seen — a feat not unknown to solons of all ages. "We run about," says one writer, "without either worship or pra^'er, declaring noisily that we want to see everybody happy, and do not care what sacrifices we make to that end. But we make no sacrifices, fill no voids, console no wounded hearts and do nothing to knit men together for any end greater than conviviality." And on this sham image of human love and brotherhood the teachers are passing judgment, and declaring the long dream of the ages and the life principle of all religions, from Brahma to Jesus, which made men one in 145 146 Practical Side of Brotherly Love the divine love and family, each ministering to the other, a failure or a myth. "Sirs, by your own confession you have never seen altru- ism. You are miles and miles away from human brother- hood. How do you know it is not religion? How can you say that if properly encouraged to show its head, the thing you deprecate might not only prove a religion, but, like Ben Adam's name in the angel reckoning, lead all the rest." To say that it is impossible is to say that all the sacred teachers of the earth have been giving themselves for an idea, that the Master himself laid down his life for a delution, and, in "giving men an example that they should do as he had done," set the world forever on a false trail and merely raised a mirage in life's desert. There must be something in this idea of a love surpassing the love of self that comes in to exalt humanity, or the poets, seers and philosophers, as well as the sacred teachers of all ages, have gone astray, and, before the new wave in the old thought is quite swept from the planet one would really like to know what it is. To make it easy a young and prominent minister recently assured his hearers that it was not a matter of loving every brother who got his name on the church rolls. You don't do that and 3'^ou can't, and it is not demanded of you, he added, and it seemed as though a great thrill of satisfaction and relief passed through the large audience. And then he quoted various tender passages of Scripture, touching ungodly men, to show, ver}' much as the "Goblin boy" has it, that "religious cussing" could be done "according to the Bible." In short, that brotherly love, inside or outside of the church, meant little more than following the instincts of the human heart in the direction of the fair and pleasing everywhere. Meantime the unpleasing and the unblest, who is to go after Judas, Simon Magus, and the great company Practical Side of Brotherly Love 147 of the unlovely and the foresworn whom Dante so conven- iently chains up in the lowest pit of hell, "according to the Scripture." There is apparently not a power in earth or heaven so far as yet made known to man to make brothers of any of them. More significant still is the company of the Dr. Fell order, at the other end of the pendulum. Noth- ing in all the creeds or brotherhoods has carried man beyond the familiar old doggerel: "I do not love thee. Doctor Fell ; The reason why I can not tell," etc. Only the blessed little intermediates, the children of the slums and the Ghetto, have walked straight into our hearts so that we love them, even to the extent of giving them "ruffles for their shirts," and that is mainly because the authors have fitted them out with such enticing mental frills in introducing them. No one can fairly say that he has grasped this brotherhood problem because he goes slumming, or takes some Maxime Gorky to his bosom. All this empha- sizes the minister's idea that it is not simply being on the church or human roll that insures the love of a brother, but presenting the qualities and attractions meet for it — which certainly other than bodies of divinity could make out for us with little trouble. The altruism which sacrifices self for other selves, individual or collective, can not legitimately therefore be put forward as a step toward universal brother- hood in any sense of knitted hearts and sympathies. Some- tliing wider than this must cover a field which contains an- tagonisms and difference so great as to make even the touch of nature, in many cases, hard to find. Really to allow men the right to their differences, the rejection of the alien ties, and yet love them to the extent of having mercy on them, might come nearer to the help needed, and perhaps included 148 Practical Side of Brotherly Love in the Master^s thought when he said "Go ye and learn what that meaneth ; I will have mercy and not sacirlSce." In any case, to get as far in the love of humanity as to have charity and tolerance for brothers and non-brothers alike would be an immense stride in the direction of the millennium. It is curious, indeed, to hear so much loud talk of sacrifice and self- giving for the good of others, when just a decent regard for them, a simple attitude of common kindness toward them, would be all required. It is precisely as the poet sees it : So many gods, so many creeds. So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs. When men can love each other to the extent of being kind even to "the unthankful and to the evil" they will have a right indeed to put their humanitarianism on a footing with religion, and it would be like denying the Master to rise up and say that the church would have none of it. In a brilliant article in the Nouville Revue on the "Secret of Human Happiness," M. Novikoff declares that the object of socialism — to give to each inhabitant of the planet an ex- istence worthy of man — is the beginning and end of all polit- ical wisdom, while its means, collectivism, is pure madness. Thus may it be with the whole brotherhood idea. An ex- istence worthy of man may be the true debt man owes to man, and, that paid, brotherhoods and social orders could take care of themselves. To count nothing human as for- eign to you, or lacking in a claim to your fair treatment and respect, is an old teaching in human brotherhood, which no new science, socialism or religion has been able to supplant. Nor can any authority logically declare the whole system void till that divine idea has taken root in human society. Practical Side of Brotherly Love 149 If such humanitarianism could not save the soul it could at least project it well along in the path of that eternal law and justice whose "seat is the bosom of God," whose "voice the harmony of the world." DREAMS AND VISIONS AT last the impossible heroes of fiction are explained to us. They are such stuff as dreams are made of and their little life is rounded by a vision. Altogether the dis- closure is a rash one. No writer short of Dante can afford to tell his visions, if he has them, and he had to pass among mortals as "the man who had been through hell" in conse- quence. Generally speaking, it is much out of hades that the visions come, for, if we are to trust the authors, it is only when they have reached the last pitch of desperation and despair that the visions burst upon them. That is why the unregenerate "line-o'type" poets are trying to make it a matter of mince pie. That is why the craziest thing an author can do is to tell his troubles or escapes to a reporter. If angels or devils have come to his relief, let him lock the secret in his own breast and pretend at least that he has evolved the brilliant climax or troublesome solution from his inner consciousness. Only Prof. James and a few others know that it is the same thing, and until they have taught us something further about the "lifting of that threshold of consciousness," which lets in the vision, even they can not have much to say. The curious thing in the case, however, is that they are more tolerant than the general public to the imperfect vision and will go about patiently investigating visions and revela- tions of uneducated Websters, and travesties of life and art, which that same public rejects with a sneer and a jest. The underlying demand of the public is that anything which 150 Dreams and Visions 151 partakes of the supersensuous or unknown shall have some- thing superior to the known to give it character. And though that may be wholly unscientific to the investigator it touches a fundamental faith of humanity which is after all more value to the race than aught that science has yet un- folded, and that is a belief in the ideal beaut}'^, truth and perfection which sleep in the unseen and which any true vision of it must reveal to man. It is this that has made the jealous exactions upon art in all directions. Standing as a seer upon the mountain tops of vision, the artist is expected to disclose to man something beyond the dull level of his common life, and if he can not do it his vision is discredited. Says life to art, I love thee best, Not when I find in thee My very face and form expressed In dull fidelity. But when in thee my yearning eyes Behold continually The mystery of my memories And all I long to be. That is the true demand upon art everywhere, and all the waves of realism that have been brought to bear upon it can not obscure it. Indeed, it is the eternal protest of the soul that the ideal is the real. It is also the admission of the soul that it is walking now in rather a vain show, con- sidering that so little of the ideal is disclosed about it. Neither is it any use to look for the ideal along tlie ordinary lines of man's investigation. With all respect to the gifted writer who found the climax that satisfied her etched above the head of a Sunday speaker, the ideals of truth and beauty are not always found in halos about the head of pious preachers or even positivist philosophers, but come up oft- 168 Dreams and Visions times c'K'urr.st from tlu- pit wlioro somr (iclirious INn', I)r Quincy or Villon fights buck tlir murky lohorts of the night and lets the startled daylight in. The main consolation in the case is the certainty that the gloiious ideal is always existent back of all phenomena, and waiting ever to break through the evil of the so-called actnal, nuich as Carlyle expresses it when he exclaims, "Oh, thou who pinest in the imprisoinnent of the actual and criest to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing (the ideal) thou scekest is already Avith thee, covdd'st thou only soe." The prayer of Ajax for the light is, therefore, the main one that the wrestler with either life or art has need of, and back of that the death- less faith to believe that the children of the light are there, though his vision or his craft should never reach them. This is, of course, the life principle of all achievements, of all endeavor, and it is not strange that in the pursuit of it the feverish artist should hearken at every door of the oc- cult, the mystic, to see if some chink through the darkness will not let in the sound or glimpse of the eternal. It is only when he ceases to hearken or cries back to the waiting multitudes that the ideal is a dream that his work is dead — nay, more, that he is dead also. For it is nuich with life as the poet writes of friendship: I am not shocked by failings in my friend. For human life's a zigzag to the end ; But when he to a lower plane descends Contented there, alas, my former friend! Contentment on the lower plane, acceptance of the im- perfect shadow for tiie perfect reality, is the one sin for which the spirits of light and progress know no redemption. Fortunately, it is not a connnon one to restless humanity. Dreaina and Visions 153 'J'li«Mi;^li coiintlc.'ss charriiers on every liaiui offer it the shadow for the substance, and all tlie pleasures of the phantom show, the hunger "pain of finite hearts that yearn" for the infinite real is preferred before them. Art, romance, the poet's dream and the prophet's vision, all, all are tried and tested by this inner longing, and if they fall short of the demands, the scoffs and jests of disappointed spirits ring round them and the dusts of time receive them. Bad dreams may indeed bring bloody hands and daggers for the artists' use, but after all he who sees to the end of dreams alone can fit them to the eternal issues and leave the moral order of the universe uncaricatured by them. It is dangerous for an author to put much trust in a vision till he has tried the vision to see if it be of tlie gods. I'hat these gods are in better business than untangling the knots of sensational novels is the thing commonly predicted of them. But, after all, that may be only another of the pious frauds perpetrated upon us by those who claim a closer acquaintance with them than the exhibition of it warrants. That no one can quite declare where, in all the seething mass of mind or intellect their swift lightning may strike, is the first lesson of capricious genius and mental power. With such great moral teachers as Hugo, Hawthorne, Dick- ens, before our eyes no one can well deny it to the novelist. All that we can fairly ask of them in dealing with the high- er powers and visions is that they shall observe something of the harmonies of the old Greek dramatists who made it a rule never to let a god appear urdess for actions worthy of a god. LAWS AND LAWMAKERS ArUOMINKN'r club woman of Chicago once found herself in an enibarrnssing- situation. With a view to reforming' things in the educational aft'airs of the city she called upon the president of the board of education to say that her club demanded the enactment of a particular rule. Being induced to put that rule in writing she was shown bv the papers of the board that the identical regulation required had not only been in existence, but in actual opera- tion, for some twelve or fourteen years. This was trying, of course, to an "estimable and intelligent" leader of clubs and reforms and it is to be feared that the amused president rather pressed his advantage when he requested her to give the matter away more eit'ectually by circulating copies of the embarrassing rule among the members of her club. Yet this she might have accomplished \vith a laugh, although it is said she declined the opportunity of turning the neat joke into club sport and left the triumphant president to serve it up for his own purposes in an Eastern paper. How- ever, a boai'd of education president ought not to be too sarcastic over it, for it is not a dull woman that could draw up on a u\omeut's notice a fundamental rule for the right management of schools, and that she was disturbing the air with demands for a law that already existed is no more than all teachers, pi-eachers, agitators, reformers and lawmakers the world over are more or less engaged in. There is not a legislator who ever formulated a law worth considering tliat he was not simply repeating a rule of life Ifvl Lawn a/iid LawmalcerH 1 55 already in existence. Indeed, the beauty of life i.s that there is a definite rule or law for securing to us every joy or good our souls can pine for, and the only concern we have in tlie nnatter is not to cross those laws. Yet consider the army of enterprising Solons, who go about laying down rules for everything and laws to regulate the universe, while only now and then some honest Philistine will tell us frankly that we need none of them, and that "the ideal of life is only man's normal life.'*^ It is a law of being that we should be j;erfect, that we should be fair, that we should be happy, that tlie things we want should come to us, the friends we seek seek us, and the love we need need us. Yet from all time people quite outside the secrets of our individual lives and needs have been industriously telling us "how to be happy," "liow to be good," "how to be beautiful," "how to be beloved." In fact, the inmost sanctities of our souls have been resolved into codes and treaties till half the sweetness and the flavor have been taken out of them. What finer, sub- tler thing exists in life tlian a perfect human friendship.'' Yet consider the cold-blooded analysis and rule-making to which it has been subjected by different writers from Plato down, till it has actually come to pass that we read and find approved such counsel as this: "Friendship is to be valued for what there is in it, and not for what can be gotten out of it. When two peo[)le appreciate each other because eaclj has found the other convenient to have around, they are not friends." What is a woman's naive tampering with an existent school law by the side of that? And love! that more than earthly mystery and miracle of all being! What has been done by the lawmakers with its "free primeval spirit of holi- ness and light." To such tape measure rules of life and liberty, such desecrating ideas of right and wrong, has it 156 Laws and Lawmakers been subjected that it has actually become necessary for its best friends to put forth "credos" to declare that in all its manifestations and promptings it is an "emanation of the divine." Goodness itself has been made such an outer shell of creeds and systems that many an energetic soul has a mad desire to steep itself in wickedness if only to get at the kernel of life in some way. "There are many vices which do not deprive us of our friends ; there are many virtues which pre- vent our having any," said the great Talleyrand, and no man knew better than he the mistaking codes of life that made it so. Nevertheless, those codes were all aiming at the same thing — to hit upon the right law in the case, though to do that was but to repeat the club woman's exploit of clamoring for a law that already existed. In its last analysis, therefore, the whole thing resolves itself to about the position which John Jay Chapman adopts when he advises rulemakers and reformers that "idealism is the shortest road to their goal." It is in treating man as a selfish animal when he is normally unselfish that the mistakes in government and philanthropy or reform have been made, he tells us, and in this light it is difficult to see just where the whole cumbersome machinery of law and government comes in any way. For, if to legislate for man as a sinner is a mistake, and to legislate for him as a saint is unneces- sary, the only legitimate end of human institutions would seem to be to enlighten and not govern, to lift up and not bind down — in short, to show man who and what he is and what are his true relations to those eternal laws of life which are written in the very nature of things, and let him control and reform himself. "In his will is our peace," was the one note of law the great lifeseer, Dante, bore to the very souls in hell, and out of that fundamental truth in the moral order of the universe Laws and Lawmakers 157 he left them to climb to paradise. It is to know heaven's law, not multiply earths' laws, that humanity most needs, and one of the greatest strides that the race ever made was in recognizing that that law was everywhere, in the natural and the spiritual world, and everywhere for joy, and beauty, and good. When it came to pass that man could truly say with the poet, "I spoke as I saw, I report as a man may of God's work, yet all's law, all's love," his redemption drew nigh. Simply to put himself in the path of it was all re- quired of him. "It is just a matter of mental attitude," sav the wise psychologists, and whether Christian faith or psychic science help you to the right attitude, the blind laws of men become ofttimes worse than superfluous in the light of it. It was Solon himself who said that they were like cobwebs where tlie weak or trifling were caught, but the great broke through and were off. Yet more and more as the great break through the flimsy nets of man's laws, they shoAv us the shining bars of the eternal laws of life and love holding, guiding, protecting us in every path of beauty and holiness, until, as the gentle Whittier puts it, "All things sweet and good seem our natural habitude." THE BOY AND THE MAN IN all the anomalies of nature there is little more astonish- ing than the contrast between the boy and the man. Any one who can may believe that the child is father to the man, but until life shows a few more cherubic pilgrims along her grown-up highways, it is a proposition that child lovers will question the world over. Something comes into the cold and calculating spirit of the man that you will search for in vain in any child that was ever born into the world. Something inheres in the glad and trusting spirit of the poorest child that is lost totally in the grown-up man. What becomes of it, poets and philosophers have tried to tell us at different times, and in different forms and fashions, but it all amounts to little more than this — that At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. To the nurse or mother, however, the transformation in the growing boy is far less gradual. Whether the cherubic age of his enchantment depends upon angels or petticoats, he commonly abandons it with the latter, and springs full- armed into that bumptious and destructive creature, known to past ages as the "enfant terrible" and to the present one as the heir presumptive to brilliant and unmeasured genius. Nevertheless, he gives no hint of machivelian deeps in his translucent nature and does all his deviltry so joyfully to be seen of men, that no one can connect the directly opposite type of grown-up scribe or pharisee with the small boy's 158 The Boy and the Man 159 fathering. "Delight and liberty" are, indeed, his "simple creed" of life and conduct, and to keep them free from the blind interdicts of grown-ups, a mere question of logic or ingenuity. "Mamma said we must not pla}' in the park to- day," said nurse to 5-year-old Johnny, as he pulled her to- ward the gate where the crowds were gathering. "But mamma won't know it," said the young reasoner. "But what if she asks us if we went there when we go home?" in- quired the nurse. "Us'll say no," replied the innocent without a thought of harm. Sin as sin is totally unknown to the small boy, and now that psychology has found that all the mischief and diablerie he has been held accountable for is not inbred sin, but vital energy fermenting within him, it is a matter of no slight interest to know when and how he strikes that awful line which turns the good to evil and leaves him to "mix identi- ties" with the grown-up man and sinner. Out of such an in- nocent beginning to come to such a sad and sullied end is something that no theories or philosophies of the human soul have begun to account for or even recognize at its full meaning. The best man that ever lived stands confounded before one glimpse of his innocent boyhood and finds it hard to identify himself with the radiant youth, who touched hands with all good angels and genii, and saw heaven break- ing through earth in every rose of morning. Could any good creator have designed this thing, or gentle mother na- ture have put up such a retrogressive horror upon her chil- dren.'' It is impossible to believe it. Who told you that j^ou were naked.'' That is the ques- tion that rings down the ages at the gates of a lost Eden, and as each child in his development repeats the story of the race it is no doubt when some serpent of darkness blights the blue sky of babyhood with some knowledge of evil that 160 The Boy and the Man his fall begins. Not until the human intellect has reached a point where it can know good and evil along the eternal line of cause and eifect, act and sequence, can conviction of sin be made a means of grace to it. Before that it would be the first impulse of the startled creature to run away and hide himself from an}' God who seemed responsible for such deadly issues. The wisest little Eve who ever grap- pled with the dark question was that niece of Phillips Brooks, who, when told that she had been naughty and must ask God to forgive her, replied clieerily, "Oh, I told him all about it and he just said, 'Don't mention it, Miss Brooks.' " The lilliputian Adam, however, takes it more heavily, and that, perhaps, as much as the different conditions of his life, is the reason why he is caught more deeply in the toils and falls away more swiftly and perceptibly than the girl child from the divine innocence of his first years. In any case the change is woeful, and the indications are that the man him- self goes mourning it to the end of his days. "Would I were a boy again" is the cry of his heart at every burst of spring or flurry of first snoAv in the December heavens. The charm of half his Avooing is in the visions of the boy heaven, with all its angels that it calls up, and if he does not build the domestic fireside mainly to find a corner where he can play the boy again, he tries the ticklish game about it often enough. The scenes of his boyhood are ever the ones near- est his heart, and the close of life finds him babbling of the green fields of childhood or murmuring, A\-ith the dying schoolmaster, "It is growing dark, boys ; we must go home." Hood sings I remember, I remember The fir trees dark and high. I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky. The Boy and the Man 161 It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis httle joy To know I'm farther ofF from heaven Than when I was a boy. All literature and life throb with the pathos of this cry, yet few pause to question why it should be so, or what it would mean if man's consciousness of heaven and nearness to it grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength, instead of falling away into the "obstinate questioning" and "blank misgivings" of the world-worn creature who trembles, as the poet tells us, before the high instincts of his childhood "like a guilty thing surprised." Somehow to reverse his steps and become again as a little child was the only redemption which the Lord himself discerned for the wretched wanderers who had strayed so far away from those glad groves of childhood whose palm tree tops "were close against the sky." Yet how shall a man be born again when he is old was the legitimate question that waited upon it, and not all the subtlest logic of the Christian faith and mys- teries could answer it in a manner exactly creditable to the crooked wanderer. To worry "through the toil and moil of many years" just for the brilliant "chance of getting back to where and what he was" is not all that was to be expected of a progressive being, or a progressive order of being, and this squeezing of a frightened penitent into heaven at the last gasp, when all his life has been a chase in the other di- rection, is not a thing to do humanity proud, any way you look at it. That the end of man's mortal life should be fairer, purer, diviner than any dream of its beginning is what the law of life demands, and what the Giver of Life must have intended when he made man. What thwarted the plan or stepped in at the quickening point of a soul to turn the evolutionary 162 The Boy and the Man course of being into confusion is, of course, the question that has torn philosophers and theologians since time began. But that such earth blight need not be, one little babe of Bethlehem, wearing human flesh and walking in growing grace and beauty, all human ways, has testified to all time. And the sweetest thing at the heart of all that testimony was the ceaseless insistence that he came from the Father and knew all men as his brethren. Convince man of his heredity from God, or, as the old Brahmin has it, "tell him who and what he is," and heaven will lie about him in age as in infancy, nor can all "the years that bring the inev- itable yoke make him Forget the glories he hath known And that imperial palace whence he came. CONCERNING FOOLS THE dangers of a little knowledge are beginning to en- gage the attention of writers and educators the world over. After a long swing of the pendulum in the direction of cramming, pruning, pounding into pedagogic holes and casts, the reaction has begun, and we are told that we are all "boors of culture," victims of mob violence in educa- tion, rows of misfits in the garments of knowledge, and, in short, as the oldest authority on the subject has it, "in professing ourselves to be wise we have become fools." Any, one might have seen that it would end in this when, indeed, nature made us fools in the beginning, and science has been systematically protesting to us that in all that is worth knowing we must remain fools to the end. To set up, there- fore, that we know anything, is to fly in the face of all the brilliant mystery and tangle of things to which we have been born. The only thing that we can legitimately claim of life or society is the right to be fools after our own hearts. It is mainly a question of choice in the kingdom of fools, and it is not clear why one fool has not about as good a right, to protection as another. According to all teachers, preachers, schools or sects, the people on the other side are always a set of fools or scoundrels, and every man who has a difference with another man sets him down as a hope- less idiot if he can not bring him over to his own view. It is impossible to determine how many "kinds of an ignoramus" the human being everywhere becomes when any question of the other sex is uppermost. From the begin- 163 IG-i Concerniny FooLs ning men and woincn have boon Inrgoly fools and enigmas to each other, and the safest thing that either of them can ask under the circumstances is the right to remain so. There is no possible indication that the modern effort to tear away the veil and find something more comprehensible and Avell ordered behind it is of any advantage to eitlier party. "A fool there was, and he made his prayer,'' is rather the keynote to the situation still, especially where any tender romance is considered among creatures who really prefer to believe each other everything under the shining heavens but just what they are. That Charlotte, "like a well-con- ducted person, goes on spreading bread and butter," is the last thine that her lover wants to hear about her when he is borne worsted past her on a shutter. That she should go into hysterics like any common little idiot Avould please him bettor. And Charlotte — does she want to know that her lover is putting heart, breath, brain and every fiber of his being into a man's chase for place or power, instead of being ready to sacrifice all creation for one smile from her, as he has idiotically sworn that he could.'' "Thou little thinkest hoAv a little foolery governs the world.'' said one of the old philosophers, and what would become of love's world without it not the bravest of the world's philosophers has undertaken to set forth. If half we tell the girls were true, If half we swear to be or do, Were aught but lying's bright illusion. This world Avould bo in strange confusion, sang the honest Byron, and yet to-day eA'ery creature in love believes things that would turn the very stars out of their courses if they were true. And who would undertake to end it.' It would be the verv madness the Bible itself Concerning Fools 165 warns us against when it declares that "he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Yet here are our new guides telling us to prove all things, and stand foi- nothing that is not based on facts ground out of our own experience. Hut, of course, this is because they have caught the mani- acs to the idea of "being well informed" trying, like the .Vew York belle of Boyesen's acquaintance, to get the gist of Spinoza's philosophy out of her learned partner as she swung round the ballroom floor with him, or the club woman "doing" the "Women of the Renaissance" for a next fort- night's paper, or that "half educated woman" of Prof. Munsterberg's dinner acquaintance, settling problems of life, death and the soul's essence "between two spoonfuls of ice cream." And they don't like it. They call them all fools for their pains, and no doubt they are; but, after all, what more of certified knowledge have their wise critics achieved by longer poring into the heart of things.'' And why is the connection of wars and fashion plates, doorknobs and crops in Europe, learned in Herbert Spencer and frivolous in the society girl.'' If the grade scholar opines that two and two may make five he is put on the dunce block. When Ibsen asks, "Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five?" the world cries "Hear! hear!" The wise man knows that he is a fool, says Shakespeare, but does he when he flounts all other fools for being fools after their own kind, and is he really ready to respect a farmer who does not know "a Hobbema from a garden tool," because he does know a wheatfield from early rye, or to trust a physi- cian who asks him "if Ambroise Pare was the Ambroise that loved Heloise so deeply," because he has mastered the in- tricacies of appendicitis.'' Not until the scholars themselves are ready to admit that life is too short and beclouded to make it other than a choice 166 Concerning Fools of ignorance more than knowledge will this grasping after surface culture to hide the defects of all ignorance be done away with. And, meantime, why not be happy in our ig- norance and choose the line of ignorance that means most bliss? "Let's be frivolous and gay and superficial," says the heroine of a modern novel, and no doubt she, or her creator, had learned the folly of trying to get Spinoza's philosophy in a nutshell. If Michael O'Hennesy, sitting in his brougham, is a genuinely happy object, as Mr. Lee ad- mits, why should he become wretched by trying to run an automobile into the heart of science, civilization and all dark mysteries. "All I ask of you," said a society girl to a gay Lothario she was about to marry, "is that if you do any fool things after the wedding curtain drops you will keep them to yourself." And village story saith they lived like turtledoves ever after. It is the eternal prying into knowl- edge inconvenient to us that makes havoc of homes and all human institutions everywhere. "The unknown God, him declare I unto you," said the wisest of the apostles, and to see eye to eye, and know as we are known, is a consumma- tion wisely reserved for a better world than this. Where- fore the fool's prayer, as one of our own poets has written it, touches the core of all wisdom. "God be merciful to me, a fool," is no doubt the most fitting petition that our stam- mering tongues and groping minds can put up. But the pity of it is that no one short of a God has any ear for such a prayer. And that is largely what is the matter with our poor pretentious and pedantic little earth. TANGLES OF LIFE MORE and more life in the hands of our teachers is becoming like the picture puzzles. "The Arab is look- ing for his camel; where is it?" Scrawling lines and barren plain, and never a gleam of anything that looks more like a camel than a sage bush; yet all the brilliant ones take much delight in drawing the humpbacked creature out of his retirement and displaying to us his goodly proportions. The ambition of the scientific and unscientific alike seems to be to present life as a bewildering puzzle and yet show us how to draw the object of our desire out of it. Gra- ciously, too, when revealed, they show us that it was a part of the landscape, and expect us to admire the skill of the artist who put it there. Those who find it appear to. Those who miss it challenge the sense of the craftsman at once, and for any other purpose than hiding a camel or some other ungainly beast in a wilderness his effort is a poor one. That is why the whole game seems beneath the dignity of the Great Artist of the universe. Out of a little suburban window one of his spring pictures opens this moment to the view. A woodland park, carpeted in a soft, fresh velvet green that no loom of the Orient can match ; trees just showing a faint glimmer of coming leaf or bud against the airy tracing of thin, bare boughs ; a sky of ethereal blue melting in a kind of misty tenderness into the calm bosom of the great lake that sweeps on and on, in delicate waves of purple and azure, to the far horizon. Where is the camel.'' What lumbering, slow-footed beast of 167 168 Ttiiiiylfs of Life \nn\ini\ dcsxvc has nuv oci'vilt m.'iuiat.' to projocl inti> tlmt scejio? Aiul (."an anv rational croaturo bolicvo that the di- vine artist meant tl\e lunng for whom he pjiinted it to do aught but sit down in rapt content ami ilrink it in to Ins soul's refreshing: Last night a round. yeUow moon hvmg K)w in tlie soft skv, and out of the brooiiing forest the erv of tl\e whip-poor-will rang full anil elear. What tortured shape of desire would vou paint there- Nothing short of two voung lovers newly wed would tit tho seeno, and no doubt it was maile for them aiul all other happv spirits who have no problems to innit in it. To projeet man's ilark and tangled in\ages of desire into the fair and open faee of nature and set him hunting for them there is to pervert the tinest ministry of creation to his soul's unrest. This searching for some hidden meaning everywhere, some pu./le in the picture, some shape that shall spring forth to satisfy the haunting demon of desire, is the thing that steals from us the very glory of the universe, aud the old Brahmins were no doubt right in teaching that only in the death of desire was the birth of any true life or fullness of beiiig possible to man. So long as he is search- ing for bis own little dromedary or caravan to wait upon him all the eternal forces of creation sweep round him in vain. Kven Sylvia's absence should not take the music out of the Nightingale. Yet it does, and that is one of the sorri- est features of the case, since from time innnemorial all na- ture and life have beiMi trying to teach man that she, too, could drop out of the landscape — nay, only by some raiv chance could be found in it. The most capricious wizard tliat ever tried to hide steetls in a wilderness is that little God of love. Yet all creation turns life into a picture puz- Tangles of Life 169 zle to find thorn at his behest, and commonly resolves it to a desert, or som(.'thing worse in the operation: To be witli VV'illielm, that's my lieaven ; Without him — that's my hell. So runs th(; delirious lesson. And sliortly Willielm takes to the woods, or that mysterious realm of "You can never know why," and there you are in hell, just where you ought to be for trying to make heaven out of any creature but the highest. That is the secret of life's picture puzzle if you want to know it ; and of every leaf and flower and growing thing that freshens and blooms in the springtime and fades and blooms again, in life's eternal round. They all speak of a light that fails not, a love that knows no satiety; a being that floats high and higher toward that great white cen- ter of life, unhampered by the need of any Ariadne clews of philosopher or mystic to show it the way. That grand old Hebrew palmist knew it, when he said "The heaven declares the glory of the Lord and the firmament showeth his handi- work," and there is nothing obscure in that matchless pic- ture that he rolls out. That poet, "beautiful as an angel," knew it when he sent his skylark careening through the golden light, "like an unbodied joy whose race is just be- gun." There are no tears and puzzles in "the sweet face that na- ture wears," save as man, with his fears and groanings, and selfish individual desires and ambitions, puts them there, for himself, or his brother. And, oh ! the pity that some strong hand can not wipe them out and give us the rapture of the open picture before it is folded up like a scroll from our failing sight. Once to gaze upon it, without that haunting sense of some hidden want, some puzzling problem to 1k' 170 Tangles of Life wrought out of it, might reveal to us the end of all wants in its harmonious whole. For Avhat we want of life may be, after all, of less moment than what it wants of us, and if we could fit into the picture perhaps the tangle of the whole business would be resolved for us. For many decades the very gentlest of the philosophers have been telling us that what God has made his creatures to need that he invariably provides. ''I do not believe that God ever made a want without providing for its supply," says one of the latest of them, and that seems the only true principle for any fair creator to go upon. Considering, then, tliat we spend the better part of our days chasing after wants that are never supplied, the natural conclusion is that we are on the track of wants not made by the Cre- ator. And this, indeed, it may be, that turns the fair face of things into mysteries and tangles, when the bounties of heaven are ever open as the day and common to every crea- ture that breathes. To draw the object of his own desire out of the human canvas there is no limit to the liberty which man will take with the picture, and in the main all the psychic teachers of the day are abetting him in it. Mean- time, life teaches him, as one great preacher has it, to "satisfy his wants by lopping off his desires," and not till he has mastered that lesson can he know, indeed, how glori- ous is the provision which the Creator offers for every want that he has made. THE VIRTUES OF THE RELATION OF BROTHER AND SISTER HOW to keep young is an endless theme for all writers. Volumes could be given to the guesses that have been made at it. Rules and recipes are a drug on the market. Yet one prime secret in the case has been wholly ignored. It is so simple, too, that children of one family ought to have guessed it long ago. Eschew marriage and cling to your brothers and sisters. That is all there is of it — un- less some troublesome reasoner should suggest that without marriage there'd be no brothers and sisters, and then it might be necessary to add, if tribulations must come, at least take a recess from them and hunt the playmates of youth, the ones who always stand as children with you in the records of time. Brothers are always young — sisters remain "Sis" to the end. "We children" turns the scale backward whenever the family relation comes uppermost. The philosophy of it lies partly in the fact that no more than the leopard can change its spots can the kinks and char- acteristics of the child that made sport for the teasing brother or the mischievous sister fail to declare themselves when the old touch calls the hidden springs of being into play. Three children of one house — Emily, Sarah and Tom — recently met almost by chance at one of life's way sta- tions, when the spring began to stir spring in the blood for all earth's children. The family trio by count of years stood anywhere between 50 and 60, with Tom at the head of the record. But, what with rollicking and reminiscencing, the 171 172 Thf yirtucs of tlu: Udaiion of Brother and Sister dig'Tutv of years sut v^o lii;hllv upon their shoulders that tlic very third day found Tom slipping- a pollyNVOg into Sarah's plump hand just to hear her scream and blowing up frogs through hollow straws stuck in their throats to make Emily laugh as she "used to" at their fuuiiy attempts to dive in- stead of float when he flung them back into the water. Tom and ^Maggie Tulliver, in the sweetest and truest life story George Kliot ever wrote, tells the truth of a relation that is the purest and most enduring of all earthly ties, and the one above any other that ''always finds us young and always keeps us so.'' Long before George Eliot's day, too, the masters of literature gave their sublimest efforts to glorifying a brother and a sister's love. Sophocles' master- piece is given to this theme. In his immortal drama, An- tigone, a sister's love shines like a star above every love of earth. In Dickens' "Child's Dream of a Star" it is the whisper, "Has my brother come yet.-^'' that points his fin- est conception of the love that weathers time and awaits the soul in heaven. "We never love as the angels do till love's first passion dies," said an old English poet ; but a brother's love begins that way and knits itself to the love of the an- gels without the need of any fires of time to burn out its dross. Love as a "brief madness" is so much the story of a lover's love that human affection would show a strange face if the ties of blood were stricken out of it. "Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quan- tity of love, make up my sum," cries mooning Hamlet, when fair Ophelia had perished in the very atmosphere of his love. But it is the brother who feels the eternal bond when he whispers, "A ministering angel shall my sister be.'' That blood is thicker than water the writers tell us is not only one of the most familiar, but one of the very oldest proverbs in The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 173 existence, and the sympathy in years as well as relation- ship makes the tie of blood peculiarly strong in brothers and sisters. Divine as the love may be between parents and children, the inequality of age and relationship hurts that perfect sympathy and freedom which makes love and inter- course complete. Stevenson gives the case correctly, when he says, that, to make intercourse perfect there must be moral equality between the parties and to make love com- plete a mutual understanding which is love's very essence. "But the parent," he writes, "begins with an imperfect no- tion of the child's character, formed in early years, or dur- ing the equinoctial gales of youth ; to this he adheres, noting only the facts which suit with his preconceptions ; and hence between parent and child, intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained." While love continues to fly out of the window when bank failures come in at the door, a brother who is born for ad- versity can discount the lover or titled lord any day. It is a significant fact that the only friend the Scripture rec- ognizes as one that sticketh closer than a brother is the Divine friend whose love outvied all men's. Of all the re- lations known to man, the one he chose to bring him closest to human need was that of an elder brother. If marriage ever does become what it ought to be on this troubled earth, it will be considerable of the elder brother and kin sister that will enter into it. It appears that even those fine creatures, the Maeterlinck's, had much trouble in adjust- ing the relationship until something like a natural harmony was established between them. Mme. Maeterlinck admits that many a jar marked their first days of matrimony. The artist temperament in both struck high, but dissimilar vibra- 174 The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister tions in each, and, until many breathing exercises (perhaps not all laid down by science) had achieved "perfect polariza- tion of the nerves," much trouble ensued. It may be for some adversities of this nature that the brother is born, and at any rate the woman who has learned to keep her vibration in perfect harmony with the brother will understand far better than the brotherless one how to polarize her nerves in her husband's case. It may be that men have lost more than they know in rejecting so scorn- fully and hotly their undecided sweetheart's proposals to love them as brothers. A faithful test of this nature might save half the incompatibilities of temper and temperament that keep the divorce courts busy. The club women who have recently made the surprising discovery that the ideal husband and wife should be "spiritual comrades, mental com- panions, physical mates," should go farther and advise us how to make sure of that nice adjustment without some bet- ter acquaintance than the ordinary lines of courtship allow. If it took the Maeterlincks so many moons to understand and harmonize the "two rates of vibrations," how are ordi- nary pairs to accomplish it in time to save them from the final "jars" that land them in the divorce courts? Steven- son's suggestion that if they can remain together long enough without coming to fisticuffs they will find "some pos- sible ground of compromise," seems to be the romantic one accepted in most cases. It is with this state of things in his mind that the author reproaches the presumptuous husband for risking a wife's happiness where he would never think of risking a sister's. "If she were only your sister," he writes, "how doubtfully would you entrust her future to a man no better than your- self." This touches upon a point in love which in itself favors brother love above all others. It may not be known to all brothers or approved of all men, but it is deepest in> The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 175 the heart and dreams of every woman. It supposes a love that would keep Princess Ida on her throne, Diana in her free and hallowed woods, and abate not an iota of its strength and intensity. "I am more obliged to women for this ideal of the divine huntress," Stevenson admits, "than for any other," and, until marriage becomes the high and holy thing it should be, it is an ideal to be cherished every- where, and naturally one that must appeal to brothers who so "doubtfully" commit their sister playmates to men as they know them to be. For though there are men, not a few, of feelings as fine and sensitive as any woman's, they are not alive to the na- ture of the sensitive chords in a woman's soul, and, perhaps, unless Marcel Prevost can succeed in fathoming the mys- tery of such souls, they never will be. He seems to lean to the Diana ideal of the clear-eyed and self-sustaining woman, and in his dream of making marriage a pure matter of rea- son, he may liberate love from some of its domestic diffi- culties, and leave more "slim and lovely maidens to run the woods to the note of Diana's horn" and try a world where all the men are brothers, and "all the brothers valiant." The interesting and edifying discussion which this latest of the immortals has stirred up in literary and club circles as to whether love will ever go out of fashion, seems to ignore the possibility that it can live without marriage. Yet that very high priestess at the altar of love, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, declared in her immortal sonnets: If you can not love as the angels do, With the breadth of heaven between you two. It is not love. "A virtue for heroes," she declared love to be, and, con- sidering the heroic demands some marriages make upon it, the terms are well chosen. "How easy it would be for a man 176 The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister to remain in love with his wife if he had only married some one else," is one of the clever comments of a clever journal, which verily does throw a "side light" on the situation. Save with the brother and sister who grow into a sweet fellow- ship from childhood, the strain of living eternally under one roof through all the moods and commonplaces of domestic existence, is almost more than human nature can be found to stand for in effecting any happy relation between man and woman. Even the good bishops of England begin to tell us that "Every husband and wife would be better if they had a fortnight's holiday away from each other every year." And this, of course, is but a confirmation of the saying of the older teachers that "the secret of two people living hap- pily together lies in their not living too much together." Of course, it is in the very nature of the love that per- chance brings them together that the mischief lies. For the philosopher is right who says that, "like other violent ex- citements, love throws up not only what is best, but what is worst and smallest in men's character." "Some," he says, "are moody, jealous and exacting when they are in love, who are honest, downright good-hearted fellows enough in the everyday affairs and humors of the world." This ver- ily does explain, on truly psychological grounds, where everything in these days is required to rest, why a brother may be more desirable than a husband for the bright "hu- mors" and enjoyment of life. It would certainly explain why many a wife, who has grown weary of struggling with the jealousies, moods and exactions of the husband who, perhaps in his own way does truly love her, might feel like crying with the little child in its loneliness and grief: Oh, call my brother back to me, I cannot play alone. The Virtues of the Relation of Brother and Sister 177 It is verily, too, when "the summer comes with flower and bee" that tlie cry grows strongest, and the^^ are happy, in- deed, whether men or women, who can answer to the child- hood's call and gather as a company of brothers and sis- ters about some sunny playground of youth. THE ETHICS AND MORALS OF THE LAUGHING HABIT WHAT rational creature should be content to laugh without understanding the science of laughter? And when he does understand it, why should he laugh at all? From Aristotle to Bergson in his essay on the comic, the analytical work of the scientists and philosophers is to reduce laughter to little more than Byron's bitter scorn of it, and life together, when he said: "And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'tis that I may not weep." It is the defects, the awkwardness, the "rigidity" of body, mind and charac- ter of poor faulty humanity that science finds provokes laughter, and there is no very pious, just or kind note to be traced in the laughter which builds itself on such exhibi- tions. Incidentally it may act to correct them, but this is no thanks to the "laugher," for it is. through no conscious purpose that he falls into his corrective outburst, but by "some mechanism set up within him by nature that goes off on its own account." Thus, when he laughs vociferously at sight of some poor wretch slipping up on a banana peel, or chasing his hat down street in a windstorm, he is neither to blame for the heartless explosion, nor to be commended for the incentive to more prudence or elasticity in the hu- man subject, but simply to be taken as an exposition of that principle and machinery of laughter whereby nature pro- poses to keep her children from making themselves ridicu- lous in each other's eyes by losing that fawnlike grace and agility which should belong to them. 178 V The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 179 This shows the deep insight of Watts when he put into his "Hymns and Spiritual Songs" the admonition, "Fly like a youthful hart or roe over the hills where spices grow," and perhaps suggests the reason why, when you take your lithe thoroughbred to a jaunt over the hills with you, you long for the free grace with which he leaps over rock and gully as a part of the redemption from the fall, or falls, which no Christian grace has yet furnished. There is no question that we are all poor sinners in our stumbling ways, but whether we can be laughed out of them is so doubtful a matter that to stake the whole ethical value of laughter upon that chance seems to give it less force in the moral field than it ought to have. The effort of the psychic cults to find the ethical value of laughter more directly in its re- lation to the man who laughs than any man who provokes the laugh, would promise better results no doubt if only the moving impulse to laughter could be somewhat redeemed from this scientific location of it in the foibles of our fellow- men. The inti'oaction of these two ethical principles, if they may be so called, of laughter, is curious enough and must be somewhat bewildering to students of the whole prob- lem. • For, while laughing at the awkward man may tend to cure him of his awkwardness, the wholesome effect of laugh- ter in the human being would be lost if the awkward man in all the phases of his rigidity and grotesqueness were effec- tually cured of his defects. That his failings have a definite ethical value in keeping the helpful note of laughter, if it is such, in the ranks of men is a legitimate conclusion from Prof. Bergson's claim that the comic does not exist outside the pale of the human and the "mechanical inelasticity" in the stumbling mortal is the only cause and occasion for laughter on earth. To be perfectly consistent, of course, Prof. Bergson does 180 TJie Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit not hold laughter up as one of the cardinal virtues. Rather, he gives it over to a decidedly low place in the scale of jus- tice, kindness, or really Christian behavior, and it is up to the laughing philosophers and cheering-up men to do what they can with what he has left of it. That they themselves have turned it to uses not altogether to be commended, is a point declaring itself somewhat too strongly in the life of to-day. "A generation of spurious laughers," one writer declares, as the result of the teacher's efforts to make the glad hand and smiling countenance the sign by which to con- quer in every field of life and activity. Laughter, as a business asset, the broad presidential smile, figure in Success magazines and records of political campaigns till nothing short of a "smile like the Mediterranean Sea" seems due to spread over the face of the whole nation if its welfare is to be assured. Meantime, however, a crop of cheerful hypo- crites lurking in the background, or dashing across the stage, engage the attention of a few discerning souls who threaten to go to the opposite extreme of declaring the death of laughter and the return of the serious countenance, the only chance for the regeneration of mankind. Thus is it that the pendulum swings back and forth in every line of human thought or endeavor, and whether we laugh or whether we cry we are sure to be wrong some way. It really seems as though Bernard Shaw must be right when he sub- mits that the unconscious self is the real and only power to be trusted and that our very breathing goes wrong the moment the conscious self meddles with it. When Rabelais declared that "to laugh is proper to the man" and did his brilliant best to encourage it he probably contributed as much to the best use and understanding of laughter as the case allows. Granted that man was made a laughing animal something The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 181 better than the defects of his kind ought to minister to the impulses within him. It is true that a close student of the case avers that while we smile at wit it is only a gross exhi- bition of the ridiculous that calls out laughter. Where- fore, if the author is right who claims that only man's fan- tastic tricks and blunders contain the elements of the ridicu- lous, why, then, there is nothing left for us but to laugh at wliat makes the angels weep in our fellowmen. Nor is there any escape from the proposition that mocking and unregen- erate man must cease his laughter before much headway can be made in the uplifting of the race. When one con- siders, however, what a dull world would be left to man if laughter should be wiped out of it, it is utterly impossible to give the matter over to scientific analysis and moral con- siderations. A something not dreamed of in their philoso- phy must reside in these subtle springs of laughter im- planted in human breasts. For one thing, despite all that may be said of their reformatory purposes in social life, it is doubtful if any true sociability could endure if society reformed its members to the extent of wiping laughter out of its ranks. There was deep sagacity in the great French- man's claim that he must attach himself to earth and its children by something sill}^, although chasing his hat, or re- peating Balzac's picture of a huge animal chasing its tail, may not have_been the figure that occurred to him. The significance of his position was admirably presented by a recent writer, who says : "Our souls rebel against be- ing kept ceaselessly at any pitch, no matter how clear and sonorous the tone may be. We may admire a friend's wit and intellectual power, we may lean upon his sympathy and sound judgment, yet it is his moment of giving way to un- considered mirth, his sudden drop to sheer nonsense, that endears him to us." And as against the claim of one writer, 182 Tlie Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit who says that "laughter is not an aid to progress," this friend of laughter declares that "a pretty atmosphere of fun creates a glamour where the best of us may bloom. In its mild warmth we grow and thrive, and, like the sparkle of tiny waves on a sunny day, it marks the steady prog- ress of the tide." It is true enough that much of the great and serious work of the world has been done by serious souls, though in their very seriousness they have perchance moved the "inextinguishable laughter of the gods." It is not every pious wrestler with his earth pilgrim's progress who real- izes with Bunyan that at the best many things "are of such a nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." There is, in truth, a laughter at the heart of things terrestrial which seers, if not scientists, are fain to admit, and the most serious-minded actor is liable to be caught in the tide of it. The contretemps of life have no respect for piety or voca- tion, and the most solemn actor is often entangled in them somewhat as Mansfield was in the tragic scene of "A Pari- sian Romance," when, as "Baron Chevrial," he falls dead at supper while the music and the conversation were at their height. It was the business of the doctor in the play to rise upon the scene with the solemn call, "Stop the music; the baron is dead." But, in the perversity or mischief of things, it chanced that the music was jangling out of tune, and the doctor bewildered as to his part. Hence the audience was electrified, if not convulsed, by the sonorous call, "Stop the music ; it has killed the baron," and even the corpse was shadowed by an awful grin. The serio-comic, the melo- dramatic, is so liable to break out of the unforeseen and uncontrollable, that it seems impossible to believe that some spirit of mirth and mischief is not at the root of laughter in this whole terrestrial globe of ours. The immortal bard The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit 183 was surely in the seci*et of laughter when he put a mis- chievous Puck in the field to effect those slips and accidents in human pathways which "make the whole quire hold their hips and laffe." The laughter of things as well as "the tears of things" figures too deeply in this planet of ours to be wholly ignored in life's riddle. Something more than the "rigidity" of man must take part in that unexpected blast which flings a signboard or a stray fruit rind in his path, to trip him up just when he is passing the window of the elegant Charlotte. It seems best typified by that fairy, Robin Goodfellow, of nature's domain, who, as the poet ex- plains, "leads us" and "makes us stray," And when we stick in mire and clay. Doth, with laughter (and to laughter) leave us. It may be that the angels in their proper heaven have no such tricks to entrap us for their own or our diversion. But something to take the place of merry laughter must enter into their shining sphere if the pleasure is to be com- plete, or the great poet and believer is right who tells us that "what we learn on earth we shall practice in heaven." A land of no laughter would certainly be a chill place to spirits tuned to laughter by all the brightest things of earth. It seems more natural to picture those heavenly courts ring- ing with the happy laughter of children who have found their Father's house. For, when all is said, the only laugh- ter worth considering is that which bubbles up from some spring of joy in the heart, and the gay and innocent laugh- ter of happy children is the sole embodiment of that. There is nothing sweeter in this old world of ours than the laugh- ter of children. It belongs to the heaven that lies about us in our infancy and might well belong to the heaven that may dawn upon us in our angel infancy. Save when perverted 184 The Ethics and Morals of Laughing Habit by some adult influence, the laugh of the child has not one touch of that mocking or derisive character that science finds in the cachinnations of tlie man. The child laughs, and, perchance, claps his little hands in glee, for pure glad- ness, delight in his coveted toy, pleasure in his eager play or joy in the coming of some beloved idol or hero in the world of men. It is here in the child's world that the man of science must stud}'^ the problem of laughter in its true na- ture, and he can do no better than to follow the counsel of the poet who tells him: Go learn from a little child each day, Go catch the lilt of his laughter gay, And follow his dancing feet as they stray ; For he knows the road to Laughtertown, ye who have lost the way! THE CURRENT DEMAND FOR AN INSPIRED MILLIONAIRE AN inspired millionaire is one of the latest dreams of the writers. That brilliant optimist, Gerald Stanley Lee, is on the track of him. He "is the next best thing that is going to hajjpen to the world." He will not come in shoals, but as a solitary prodigy among big fishes, setting tlie unlieard-of example of not eating up tlie little ones. "One will be enough. He will make the rest unhappy. They will watch him really living and doing big interesting things with his money, and they will feel bored." He is due, we are told; overdue, we should say. That nothing but in- spiration can bring forth a millionaire with the modest tastes and conceptions of true living ascribed to him seems curi- ous, but perhaps the authors know. Can any good come out of Dives? "Can a vampire's body be white?" are prob- lems they have long been wrestling with, and if they have at last found out that it takes a Messiah to save the lost millionaire it is charity all around to make it known. Nothing short of genius, pure inspiration, on his own ac- count, ever taught a writer to bring dreams and not ser- mons to bear upon the milloinaire's case. That the poor ( ?) wretch had troubles of his own writers have discerned afore- time. "Alas, for Dives," says one, "whom every reformer wants to reform, wliom every socialist wants to strip, whom every demagogue wants to fatten on, and every promoter and philanthropist and college jn'esident and trustee of school, or hospital, or museum to 'interest.' Alas, for him. 185 186 The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire Every rascal tries to dip into him; good men warn him that he should relax his strings; bad men threaten to rip him up, and in the intervals between assaults his own con- science warns him that he has far more than his proper share of this world's goods." All this and more has been known of the plutocrat's woes, yet when the question comes, as with this writer, "What shall we say to him?" the wisest of his accusers gets no farther than the answer given here. "Let him try to be honest. That is all." "Let him dream dreams." "Let him become his own Messiah," is a whisper straight from the gods, dropped into Gerald Stanley Lee's ear. Not, truly, that the millionaire and his advisers have not had dreams before, dreams of empire and dreams of aggrandizement and even dreams of philanthropy and general culture. But this is different. Did any of our millionaires ever persuade men "to believe that being a rich man is one of the greatest and most honorable of all the professions, that a man can be rich and be a gentleman with his money down to the last dollar — that he can even be a great artist with it.?" That is what Lee's American millionaire is to do offhand, although but lately a fine French critic declared that con- summation in the art line a vain dream for a class who make art "a thing of trade, not to be produced, but to be imported at an exceedingly high price." Nevertheless when Messiah comes he will show us greater things than this, for he will show us how easy instead of how hard it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven and pull all other rich men in with him. It will take a millionaire Messiah to do this. That is a guess that ought to have been made long ago. The poverty of the Buddhas, aye, the poverty of the Christ, appealed to the poor, provided for the poor, and The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 187 more or less excluded the rich, if not directly damning them. In the dreams of the disciples there lurked an idea, to be sure, that a second appearing of the Christ would be in great power and glory fitted to the demands of the proud- est of the millionaires, and perhaps some reflex of this is working in the subconscious mind of the present author. In any case a Messiah of boundless wealth is the only one to show man how to overcome temptations which poverty could not bring to any being, however ready to be "tempted in all points like as we are." Both the opportunities and temptations of wealth are shut off from the poor, and hence the very logic of life demands a Messiah who knows them to lead his own to victory and salvation. It is time, too, that the Machiavellian verdict that "vir- tue and riches seldom settle on one man," should be broken in upon, and the lofty speculations that the nonwealthy in- dulge in, as to the good they would do with riches if the gods had been wise enough to favor them, put to the test in the interests of mankind. It would certainly help to elucidate, if not justify, the ways of God to men, if this matter of putting the mightiest known agency for relieving the suf- ferings, and uplifting the souls of men which money repre- sents, into the hands of the least worthy could be changed or cleared up in some way. The poor have long enough had the gospel of endurance preached to them to very lit- tle betterment of their woes. If some one can stir up an inspired Messiah to call the rich to the rescue there may be hope of salvation along reasonable lines. The marvel and the mystery of the whole problem is that, with the power for such supreme joys and splendid deeds in their hands the millionaires fritter away their chances on such poor and petty objects and go down to dust and oblivion without one real pearl of life in their grasp. There 188 The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire is no jo J known to men so great, and so pure, and so last- ing, as the joy of lifting up some other life from the dark- ness of want and deprivation, and slow death to the light and ecstasy of true life and opportunity under God's blue heavens and with the means to bring such blessedness to countless worthy lives what are the millionaires about that they so rarely improve their golden chance? The vision of "a great village smoking up to the sky blessing him," is one that more geniuses than Lee have held before the rich man's eyes. Goethe's master stroke was given to that same dream of the supreme moment of life and joy when the redeemed Faust looked upon the great village smoking up to the sky which he had lifted from pestilential bogs to health and beauty and the sweet peace of grassy lawns and sunlit parlors where, with no fear of a wolf at the door, a rescued peasantry could live and love as God meant his creatures should the wide world over. An inspired people, or even a half-awake people, could achieve the best results in this line, and so it is well that our author includes the inspired laborer in the millennium he hopes to bring about. If heaven would trust a few more of the common people with the means to live and achieve the world miglit even get along and swing starward without an}'^ inspired millionaire to help it. It is poverty that ruins the world, that curses mankind, that blights talent, dwarfs in- tellect and spreads crime and wretchedness everywhere. Wealth, fairly earned and distributed, would remedy the whole evil, and leave no work for the inspired millionaire to do. In fact, it would wipe out the millionaire, inspired or uninspired, and end all the misery that riches in the hands of a few have brought into the world. When Seneca wrote riches "the greatest source of human trouble," it was, as with every other philosopher of sucli The Current Demand for an Inspired MUUonaire 189 faith, the abuse of riches that he had in mind whereby the many become minions or slaves of the few. Freedom, which is the true end of riches, can bring trouble to no man, nor will men ever become free for the better things of life till means sufficient to end the daily grind for its poorer neces- sities can be secured to all. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but no harvest of souls will ever be gathered in till people have a chance to pause in the struggle for bread to find out that they have souls. Sermons to half-starved men arc about the climax of idiocy. Feed my sheep was the be- ginning and end of all the master's teaching to the zealous disciple who sought to bring religion to bear upon the world. Poverty and crime, save by some special interposition of divine grace, are inseparable. "If I were starving I would steal," said a prominent minister of to-day. "Hadst thou been born and reared, surrounded and tempted like the criminal who excites thy indignation thou shouldst prob- ably not be better than he," says Bishop Spalding, and in the face of the recent disclosure of starving school children in New York how sternly sounds his statement. "They who starve the body can not nourish the mind, and if the heads of institutions of learning have not the means to supply copious, wholesome food, they should be made to withdraw from the business of education, but if, having the means, they seek to save money at the expense of health and life, they should be dealt with as criminals." Before Lee lands his inspired millionaire in the field, a goodly number of uninspired millionaires may have to be dealt with as criminals, if such work as the schools and courts have been lately disclosing goes on. The dream of men and lawyers who "will not sell their souls to make grand larceny possible" may have to achieve realization first. It is along 190 Thr Currt'nt Dfnuvuf for an Inspired MUUonaire this line tluit tho njition\s progress is most confidently pre- dicted b}'^ some. Before the Circuit Court of Appeals took up the case we were assured that a fine of $'29,000,000, im- posed by a Federal Court upon a "wicked millionaire," meant salvation and inspiration for a whole nation. Now we seem to be rather thrown back upon the mercy of the individual Croesus again, and unless writers can inspire him to good behavior, or colleges confer honor as well as degrees upon him, there is no more hope than before. The demand for a jNIessiah is the true herald of his ap- pi*oach, and people as well as gods must take a hand in cre- ating the atmosphere of truth and genius that fosters "world singers" and ''Messiahs,"' to build up a world. It is easy to see that special powers and graces must attend the millionaire who is to "forge out the great faiths" that will lead his people to pious and unselfish world-ends and achievements. There have been millionaires — quite a few — "as good as anybody," but they have not redeemed their class. A special baptism from the heavenly powers, such as "great artists" know, may naturally be called for by any curious creed, however, which supposes that the majority of men are not to be ti'usted with wealth. Just the reverse of it is what ought to be the case, and what ought to be will be before the world drama is closed. Even a moderate de- gree of wealth puts a mail in position to do noble service both for himself and his fellow-men, and to suppose that human beings are made of such poor stuif as to go on pi'o- testing and abusing this grand chance forever, is to suppose heaven ]\as made a race of beings fit only for the death and damnation to which zealous Calvinists consigned them. There is certainly a strange misapprehension with the best of writers on this point. The maxims are endless which make wealth and prosper- The Current Demand for an Inspired Millionaire 191 ity the most dangerous bequests to man. And yet the most that can be claimed is that tliey bring out what is in man, and offer tlie good as well as bad a cliance to declare itself. It is not true, either, as even the genial Stevenson says, that "it is as difficult to be generous on .$80,000 a year as on .$1000 a year." The man who can barely make both ends meet in the struggle for daily life has no resource but to smother every generous impulse within him. Tlie fact is, that it is impossible to say what a man's true character, taste or ability may be, until a fair measure of wealth has given him freedom and opportunity for self-expression. Let such opportunity become general, and it might turn out, as Fenelon long since told us, that "we are all inspired, but our mode of life stifles it." THE MODERN DEMAND FOR THE VIRTUE OF CHEERFULNESS WHERE is the Milton who would venture to put forth an ode to melancholy in these days? An ode to mirth is the demand of the hour. "Sadness as inseparably connected with the sublime" is a poetic principle that no new Foe is born to proclaim. The sweetness of music that the minor key closes floats faint and far beneath the jubi- lante which the clamorous world now demands of its sing- ers. What this may have to do with that loss of all great harpers, which the higher critics lament, the poets must consider for themselves. But in the humbler ranks of life and talent there seem to be losses entailed by the festive demands to which the jovial masters of the feast are not wholly alive. It is something kin in rather reversed fash- ion to the situation of the old-time reveler at the prohibi- tion banquet of to-daj^ as his toast gives it: Here's to a temperance supper, With water in glasses tall. And coffee and tea to end with — And me not there at all. The glad song and the glad countenance and even the glad hand still leave so much of the real absent that the es- tablishment of man's truest relations and friendships upon the basis of them somehow misses fulfillment. They lack something of that touch of nature which belongs to human frailties and susceptibilities to pain and lapses, that no 192 Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 193 amount of Christian or any other science can quite do away with. The stern effort to deny them in ourselves or ignore them in our next friends acts something like the cup of cold water at the feast or an icy veil of concealment through which the warmest sympathies of the soul can not penetrate. It may be true enough that the divinest sympathy will declare itself along the line of the glad hosannas Avhen we shall become as the angels, or even the good and trusting humans that we ought to be. But while the shades of the prison house cling about us and make pitfalls for our steps and graves for our loved ones, it does not seem strange that even the Master himself forgot the glory that was revealed to weep at the tomb of Lazarus, or groan in spirit over the sins and sufferings of a wandering world. Unquestionably, it was the tenderness of a sympathy born of this recogni- tion that knit him so closely in ties of love and friendship to the weeping sisters, Martha and Mary. It is a truth which any one may test for himself that, whatever pseons may be sung to the cheerful friend, it is the one who turns to you in sorrow that most stirs the deeps of tenderness, sympathy and affection in the soul. There is a chill, therefore, in any philosophy which meets the troubles and sorrows of an imperfect world with the calm claim that they are nonexistent. It well justifies the recent sage reflection that "heights of philosophy are good places on which to freeze." But more than that, it misses the true height and depth of human philosophy which ever takes into account the finite mysteries, the tears in things and the inevitable sadness that springs from what is best and greatest in man himself. Carlyle recognizes this when he says, "Man's unhappiness comes in part from his great- ness." A later than Carlyle, in the teeth of all the present pro- 194< Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness test, gives mnn porniissiou to admit liis ills and even turn them to account in the world. "Why should avc wish to conceal the fact that we have suffered, that we suffer, that we are likely to suiter to the end?" says Benson, who strikes almost the INliltonic note in the "Sable Goddess" behalf. "There is a significance in suffering. It is not all a clumsy error, a well-meaning blunder. It is a deliberate part of tlie constitution of the world." To wisely weigh our sorrow witli our comfort, he holds, with Shakespeare, the logical course. And for those who scorn such concession to "self- asserted ills," he comes back with yet finer scorn in his own gentle and inimitable fashion : "My belief is this," he writes : "As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a cer- tain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow. I see that many people find the world dreary, some find it interesting, some surprising, some find it entirely satisfac- tory. But those who find it satisfactory seem to me as a rule to be natures who do not trouble their heads very much about other people, but go cheerfully and optimistically on their way, closing their eyes as far as possible to things painful and sorrow^ful." "Well, to speak very sincerely and humbly, such a life," he adds, "seems to me the worst kind of a failure." And as to the call for happiness every- where, he writes : "The only happiness worth seeking for is a happiness which takes all these dark things— in the track of suffering and the most sorrowful m3'stery of death— into account, looks them in the face, reads the secret of their dim eyes and set lips, dwells with them and learns to be tran- quil in their presence." Faith and philosophy may soothe in time, but the}' can not do away with the reality of our pains and losses. The very science Avhich proposes to do this for us in many re- spects only bewilders. It is as Benson says: "More and Modern Demand for tlic Virtue of Clieerftdness 1*J5 more wc feel tlie impenetrability of the mystery that sur- rounds us ; the discoveries of science, instead of raising tlie veil, seem only to make the problem more complex, more bizarre, more insoluble." The form of so-called science, which takes refuge in denials and assertions buck of experi- ence, though coniniendably enough reaching out to the mind of God for illumination, in no way clears up the problem which the claims of infinite love ynd infinite power b)-ing to the entrance of so much that is not love into the scheme of being. To trace it to "a misunderstanding of the truth of being," is only to push the question a step farther back and leave the finite mind still pondering why the trutii of being was not made clear to it at the outset. Aye, and who is to be trusted to make it clear now.'' Only I discern Infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn, says Browning, and the wisest of our teachers do not seem to discern much more. To grant us some hours of sadness, and some hearts to con)e closer for the sympathy in it, is therefore a part of our human heritage which should not be taken from us. Since man was made a little lower than the angels, some sympathy with dust as well as deity seems es- sential for that perfect understanding which is the basis of perfect love anywhere. "The trouble with perfect people," says a scornful Philis- tine, "is that they expect too much of their friends. They demand that you shall be as good as tlie}^ and good in tiie same way, otherwise they throw you into the Irish Sea." The friend who will take us as we are and not demand, like the photographers, that we shall look pleasant despite all that nature and time may be doing to prevent it, is the one 196 Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness to come closest to us after all. There is a hint for the modern philosophers in the frankness of the woman who re- plied to the photographer's request that she assume a more pleasing expression, "I suppose I can do it if you insist, but I can tell you right now it won't look like me." Shadow and sunshine, smiles and tears, enter so inerad- icably into the fabric of life that the person who wears the smile that won't come off has too much the character of the figure on a billboard for yearning, throbbing humanity to take him very tenderly to heart. There is truth, no doubt, in Dr. Johnson's assertion that the habit of looking on the bright side of things is worth a thousand pounds a year, but only he who recognizes that there is another side can do this to any saving purpose in the world of men. One must go to the deeps of sorrow to declare the sublimity of joy. Denying or ignoring the pains and wrongs and sor- rows of our common humanity can never reach the heart of the trouble. The Christ himself, as a late writer saj^s, in- stead of denying, "met them face to face, with perfect di- rectness, perfect sympathy, perfect perceptions." "But he made allowance for weakness and despaired of none. He proved that nothing was unbearable, but that the human spirit can face the worst calamities with an indomitable sim- plicity which adorns it with an imperishable beauty and proves it to be indeed divine." This seems to be the true basis for that cheerful spirit which is so largely in demand. But it is not exactly the one that the professedly and professionally cheerful person lays down for us, and that is why some ungrateful souls, who do not recognize that at least his aims are good, call him alto- gether depressing. Another point in the philosophy which is too commonly ignored is the part which nature takes in fashioning man to his moods. "Some people are born to Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness 197 make life pretty and others to grumble tliat it is not pretty," says George Eliot, and though multitudinous counsels are brought to the help of the latter class, yet until the sur- geons take hold of them it is not probable that the responsi- bility can be entirely fastened upon them nor the happy thought cure be made very effective. They seem to be as incorrigible as the man who insisted upon hanging to a street car strap though the conductor pointed him to a vacant seat, because he was elected to "show tlie street car indignities" and proposed to say truthfully that he "had ridden downtown six successive days hanging to a strap." There are always some people who set out in plain dress and repellant exterior to find the seamy side of life and con- gregations, and they invariably find it. But they are hardly the ones who appeal to us in the tender fashion of George Eliot's heroine, who whispers, "Pray make a point of liking me, in spite of my deficiencies," or can fathom the great poet's meaning when he said that next to the pleasure of love is its pain. A shallow pessimism and a shallow op- timism alike miss the true meaning and grandeur of life. Likewise they miss that finer understanding upon which hu- man ties and friendships are based, and that subtle and pensive spell which the very sense and mystery of mortality brings to the "bright glints of immortality" flashing for- ever through the fleshly bars. Even worldly prosperity, which lifts a friend too absorb- ingly into the sunlight lessens ofttimes the tender tie that other days have bound. It can be nothing else than this that gave us that dreary maxim of La Rochefoucauld which submits that "in the adversity of our best friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing." That they will come nearer to us in sorrow than in joy may be a selfish 198 Modern Demand for the Virtue of Cheerfulness feeling, but it proclaims a human truth that philosophy can not afford to ignore. It is interwoven for some purpose in that grand virtue of sympathy wherein lies man's true great- ness and chance of usefulness to his fellow-men. And herein consists the danger of any code of life that would separate itself from human conditions and needs, and deny both ex- istence and sympathy to such conditions. For the author is right who says : "We can not solve the mystery of this difficult world ; but we may be sure of this, that it is not for nothing that we are set in the midst of interests and rela- tionships, of liking and loving, of tenderness and mirth, of sorrow and pain." If we are to get the most and best out of life we must not seclude ourselves from these things. One of the nearest and simplest of duties is sympathy with others, and sympathy in no limited sense, but sympathy that we can only gain through looking at humanity in its wholeness. ENCHANTMENT OF THE GREEN-ROBED FOREST MONARCHS RUSKIN is right. It was a beautiful thing when God thought of a tree. Of all the pageant train of nature that puts on the bloom and splendor of Litanias courts to keep the summer festival, this monarch of the forest strikes deepest into the heart of earth, as it also climbs highest into the blue of heaven. The daisies and the buttercups nestle close to the ground ; even the lilies and the roses come and go in transient fellowship with the sod and the grass on the hillside withers at the parched earth's breath or "the wind passes over it and it is gone." But "the green-robed sen- ators of mighty woods, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, dream on and on" in the azure deeps of heaven, and by a myriad finger points of verdant green and airy light- ness lift man farthest from the earth. No doubt it is this close communion with the skies, and all the whispering voices of the upper air, which has given to these high priests of nature the "anciently reported spells" which Druids and sibyls sages and seers, poets and mystics of all ages have ascribed to them. Nor can these fair humanities of old religions quite forsake their haunts in "piny mountain" or "forest by slow stream." Still, a presence is in the silent wood, a sense of life "more deep and true" than any mortal knows is in the trusting sway of the delicate branches to any softest breeze or rushing whirlwind of the skies that may sweep over them. And science tells us, could we but turn less sense-dulled ears to their whispering voices, the very 199 200 Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs music of the spheres would come down to us on their eolian harps of melody. Such secrets as the talking oaks of Dodona revealed to the ancient Greek, may verily belong to their high union with the heart of nature, could souls as kin to them as the nature-loving Greeks once more be found. Closest in all the symbolism of the outside world to the inner verities the history of the tree might almost stand for the history of man in all his mortal hopes and strivings. Not only in his early Eden did it play sentinel and second in his spirit gains and losses, but all along the path of history in his failing like the green bay tree, his failing like "the leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa." The mysteries of ancient faiths, the oracles of the gods, the secrets of the under world, were whispered man from the leafy temples of Egeria, the sacred oaks of Dodona, and written on the sibylline leaves of nature everywhere. In the gardens and groves of Sophocles the heavenly muse decended to mortal man, and in the Arcadian forest the pipe of Pan first woke the world to tuneful melody. Woodland bowers for lovers, forest temples for gods, classic elms for scholars, aye, char- ter oaks "for nations, and immemorial pines as sentinels of the ages, have been so much a part of the world's history that the best of life would seem to have been lost if simply tlie tree in the midst of all earth's gardens had been "caught away" from sinful man, though all the sweet flowers and grasses of the field had still remained to him. Beautiful glooms, soft drinks in the noonday fire, Woodland privacies, closets of lone desire. Emerald twilights, Virginal shy lights. Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows When lovers pace timidly down through the green colon- nades Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 201 Of the dim, sweet, woods, of the dear, dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades. Such sanctuary does the forest offer to the yearning heart of man, while, in the "passion of the groves" a myriad winged things in leafy bough or covert thrill to the soul of love and waft the choral strain far up to the blue empyrean. " 'Tis love creates the woodland melody," said the season's poet, Thomson, "and all this waste of music is the voice of love." How naturally must the ancient oak record the secrets of the eternal love, and if in days of human innocence it whis- pered them to kin and trusting creatures, the miracle was not so strange a one. A "talking oak" that was wiser than any talking man or woman in the world, is something that "the intelligible forms of ancient poets" found not so diffi- cult to mingle with the faith, which held "that every flower enjoys the air it breathes." "He who forgets the tree under whose shade he gamboled in the days of his youth is a stranger to the sweetest im- pressions of the human heart," says one of the kin spirits to "the venerable brotherhood of trees." It is a beautiful play upon the same chord, too, which led the Arabian poet to greet the solitary palm tree at Seville with a cry of sympa- thy and fellowship in its lonely and alien estate. "O palm tree !" he moans, in uncontrollable sorrow, "like myself, thou art alone in this land; thou also art away from thy kin- dred. Thou weepest and closest the calix of thy flowers. Why? Dost thou lament the generating seed scattered on the mountains?" And the tree made answer: "Yea, I do; for, although they all may take root in a congenial soil, like that watered by the Euphrates, yet orphans are they all, since Beni Abba has driven me away from my family." Less gentle, yet full of the same human sympathy, is the answer 202 EncJiantiiu'iit of tlw Green-Robed Forest Monarehs which the giant oak in the Merlin idyll makes to the false Vivian, who would steal the enchanter's spell. Challenging all earth and heaven to blast her "brain to cinder" if she lies, suddenly the tree that shone "white listed through the gloom, with deafening crash darts spikes and splinters of the wood the dark earth round," till Vivian, dazed by the "livid flickering fork and deafened with the stammering crack," flings herself upon jNIerlin's mercy and protection. Nor does the raging cease till Merlin himself "o'er talked and overworn" by the beguiling Vivian, yields up the charm, and sinks "as lost to life, and use, and name, and fame," in the riven oak's bosom. Tree and enchanter go down to- gether, and who shall say that the same pain of ruin and defeat does not rini through the kindred life-currents in each.'' And, for the joy of life, and all that youth and love can dream of being's crown, let loose a Rosalind and Orlando in the forest of Arden, and see how truly the "trees become the books" the "barks, the thoughts," and every eye in the forest "the Mdtnesses'' that deify the name of Love and Rosalind. Or, drop some brooding Jaques "under an oak, whose antique root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along the wood," and watch him "lose and neglect the creep- ing hours of time" in its soft murmuring of immemorial days and endless summer calm. How truly do the "incom- municable trees," by some finer sense than speech, still call to us to come and live with them and "quit our weary, worry- ing life of solenm trifles." And most when spring and the warm south wind stirs with one breath the sap in the maple and the blood in the impassioned soiil of man, does the cry of Amiens ring through the land. Come hither, come hither, come hither, lender the greenwood tree. Who loves to lie with me. Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 203 And tune hi.s nieny noto Unto the sweet bird's throat; Here sfiall he see No enemy. Alas, that so many a shepherd and courtier alike should be in "too parlous a state" to accept so gracious a call. The Arden forest is still "a geographical pu/zle" to most hearers, and to "loiter in its tangled glens and magnificent depths," when all the captains of fortune and industry are rallj'ing their hosts for battle is held fit only for "the fool, the motley fool," that Jaques met in the forest. Only the crown of wild olive, that came after war and toil "to cool the tired brow through a few years of peace," can even re- motely appeal to the driven multitude to-day, from the whole brotherhood of trees, and Ruskin has a strenuous time in bringing even that home to them. "Will you, still throughout the puny totality of your life weary yourselves in the fire of vanity.''" he sternly asks. "Was the grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your bed.'' And can you never lie down upon it, but only under it.'' The heathen, to whose creed you have returned, thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest. No proud one, no jeweled circlet flaming through heaven, above the height of the unmerited throne ; only some few leaves of wild olive cool to the tired brow through a few years of peace. . . . This, such as it is, you ma}' win while yet you live — type of honor and sweet rest." It is strange that with the Christian centuries the mission of the sacred grove is so lost to man. "The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the attic bird trills her thick warbled notes the summer long." How far in the dim past it lies! 204 Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs In such green palaces [says Waller] the first kings reigned, Slept in their shades and angels entertained, With such old counsellors they did advise, And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise. The Hebrew story itself hides the secret of all life in the mystic tree, the tree of life in the midst of the garden ; and, shining through all the phantasmagorie of the dreamy John's apocalyptic vision, rises again the symbolic tree, the tree of life, "on either side of the river," and "in the midst," now, "of the paradise of God." Why should the Bible Christian yield up to David, priest or pagan, "the presence in the wood," the tongues in trees, and human good and kinship in everything, especially when not an aspen "dusks and shivers" without breathing of the sacred crosg and all the love of heaven let down to earth in the wondrous life, yielding itself for man on the sorrowful tree. Not alone in deference to the crown of wild olive, but to the crown of thorns, might a Christian artist bespeak surcease to tyranny and strife and selfishness, and a return to sweet peace and love and heavenly trust within the templed groves and pillared aisles of the great All Father. "Free-hearted- ness and graciousness and undisturbed trust and requited love and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to pain — these," says Ruskin, "and the blue sky above j^ou, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mysteries and presences innumerable of living things" in wood and wold — "these may yet be your riches, untorment- ingly and divine; serviceable for the life that now is, and not without promise of that which is to come." Again the bud is on the bough, The leaf is on the tree. Enchantment of the Green-Robed Forest Monarchs 205 And to the quickened heart of man "the south wind brings warmth and desire." Many voices call in many varjung strains to tired and wayworn souls. But the poet strikes the keynote to the true harmony and refreshment when he sings : O, good eartli, warm with youth, My childhood heart renew, Make me elate, sincere. Simple and glad as you, (), waters running free, With full exultant song. Give me for worn-out dream, Life that is clean and strong. THE SALUTARY INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE WINDS THE wind that bloweth where it listeth certainly does make havoc of human calculations. It was an ancient wise man who said he that observeth the wind shall not sow. The futility' of human science and resource in the face of nature still declares itself in tlie words of another venerable sage who says "they who plow the sea do not carry the winds in their hands." By land or water the wind roams free and furnishes every freedom-loving soul of earth the crowning simile for his dream or song. "I must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the wind," cries the awakened mortal in the green forest of Ar- den, and the specified privilege '"to blow on whom I please" is one much coveted no doubt by other than Arden dream- ers. To "go the wind's way,'' to be "free as the wind when the heart of the twilight is stirred" is an impulse known to other than the children of "vagabondia," though a majority of earth's children are fairly content if the kindly >dnd will but come their way in some free and generous fashion. The crowning worth of it in all human life and enjoyment can never be told, but may be strongly guessed by what the want of it means in any region of the earth. Stagnation and death settle down upon any spot where the still air receives no purifying current in the reviving breeze. The scorching simoon, or the raging blizzard are more merciful than the becalmed sea to human life, and the ancient poets who claimed fellowship with "brother wind" were not far wrong in the relationship. 206 Tlie Salutary Influence of the Sinrit of the Winds 207 It is not alone in death valleys or the silent sea of the Ancient Mariner that the life ministry of the wind declares itself by its absence. Strike camp in the southwestern portion of the Lone Star State for instance when summer suns burn hot and wait for the gulf breeze to find you, and "brother wind" will claim your love and reverence forever. "In fact "forty thousand brothers with all their quantity of love" could not make up the sum of comfort and delight this embracing breeze brings with it. There is a luxury and friendliness and life spell in it that verily docs seem to give it a human character and purpose in its relation to men. It even seems to war with the fiery and adverse elements which the scorching land interposes. It is a curious fea- ture of the air currents in this semitropic region that they will blow hot and cold almost in the same breath and even while a blast as from a red-hot furnace touches your brow, a cooling wave sweeps over it and claims the life victory. It is night, however, that perfects its reign. All the fiery cohorts of flaming day withdraw when the "hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain" sink over the western horizon and leave the grateful earth to the ministry of winds and waves that never slumber. Sweeter than the murmur "of doves in immemorial elms" is the soft play of the breeze through the feathery boughs of the mesquite trees that abound in this region. The rhythm of it, in the heart of such a forest, is .soft and regular and soothing as the plash of the waves upon some sea-washed shore. Indeed, so like the murmur of waters is it that some call of the "deep entreating sea" seems ever sounding through it, yet with a tone so soft that no dream is lost in its bosom. Nights that would be unendurable, days that would savor of Gehenna, are thus made glorious by what men call the "vagrant winds," and beyond all of nature's 208 The Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winds forces commit to the fitful and elusive things of time — some- times even the most malign agencies in time's path. Indeed, all powers of good or evil, love or hate, are commonly sym- bolized by them. From spirit birth to withering death writ- ers, sacred and profane, make the winds their interpreters. As the wind that bloweth where it listeth and ye can not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the spirit, says the sacred word, in one strain, and in another pictures man as a flower of the field, that "the wind passeth over and it is gone." The poets in their own strong way repeat the opposing measures: Swift wind of God Quickening the clod, Give of the heavens strong My heart a song, writes one, and another cries bitterly : O summer, weep to see the havoc done By cruel winds that hate thy benison. Beauty, andi innocence, and hope, are slain. Something that hateth God's fair' universe Hath set on summer's brow the winter of its curse. Thus in his blindness and his joy or sorrow man hunts his God in the winds, and, from red man to white man, finds him benevolent or malevolent, much as the winds blow fierce or gentle. That any God of his worship rides in the whirl- wind the best of saints rather shudder to believe, and an angry Pan "stamping his hoof in. the night thicket" still lingers in the minds of many who inquire too curiously whence the wind cometh that makes cities crumble and man perish like a flower in its path. Neither science nor theol- ogy can master the problem of the winds, and to give them Tlie Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winds 209 over to art and the common pathway they are graciously disposed to travel is no doubt the better part of that wis- dom that is humble that it knows no more. At any rate it is here emphatically that "the troubled and uncertain ele- ment" in which we dwell calls, as Stevenson noted, for some- thing that reason can not satisfy and art and human ex- perience can turn to the best use. The poet knows this who says: Wind, breathe thine art Upon my heart ; Blow the wild sweet in, Let my song begin. What the winds bring to quicken both soul and body is of more interest to the children of earth than any knowledge of whence they come or whither they go. They have strains for all moods, and what they bring depends on what they find, somewhat as Ingersoll noted when he said: "Stand by the seashore, and what its wind-swept waves say to you will depend on what you are and what you have suffered." Yet in this "rhythm of land and sea" sounds forever, as in the quiring stars, that harmony that is in immortal souls, and more closely than the stars it brings the appeal home to man. It is no idle fancy of a local enthusiast which connects what he calls "the variety of sunny South Texas" with the soft gulf breezes that sweep over the wide plains and breathe in very truth the rhythm of both land and sea into human hearts and lives. "In this 'land of heart's delight,' " he says, "I have the feeling of being in an atmosphere of so- cial sanity," and he calls to the nerve-racked denizens of the turbulent cities to flee from their discordant world into this wind-swept realm of happiness and harmony. It is verily the wind's call turned to place and people as the wind knows 210 Till' Snlutari/ Influence of the Sjnrit of the Winds lu)W. Sooivt and vnnnblo as arc all its ways, it has a subtle powcM- of a(lai)tin^' itsrlf ti) all the varied phases of human life and sun-ouiidin^-. Out of the north eoineth the whirl- wind, says the Clooci Hook, and though fortunately Brother Wind does not always present himself in quite such stirring fashion to the Northern man, yet he has a breezy note that fits the sturdy Northern nature better than the soft strains of the South. This Swinburne reeoi>ni/es. Winds from the nortli and the south eanie to the making- of man, he tells us. "They breathed upon his mouth; they filled his body with life." Surely, too, they left their spell upon him, for while the sharp breeze of the North is life and joy to the child reji of the North, for natures "sloping to the South- ern side" the languorous airs and balmy zephyrs that come from sun-kissed gulfs and tropic seas bring truer bene- dictions. Out of his ver^'^ j*^.^'^ ^^^^^^ pains man plays into this spirit of the winds. Hurt souls seek ever, like the heart-sore King Arthur, some "island valley of Avalon where never wind blows coldly," while to the strong and heartwhole rings cheeriest the Zincale cry, "Tliere's- a wind on the heath, brother, there's a wind on the heath," and tramping the gi'cat North road seems the crowning bliss of being. That "joy of movement free," which one poet notes makes man kin- dred to the winds and to the sea, is strongest, no doubt, in strongest lives and natures, where health of both body and mind reigns unshaken. Breathing the North winds, defy- ing the bli/zard, "wantoning with the breakers" has a fas- cination for healthy and adventurous mortals. It is, as Stevenson observes, the pampered and enervated children of hot house airs and luxuries who cower behind walls and sealed windows when the Avind roars its challenge to the strong. "Shrilly sovuid Pan's pipes ; and behold, the banker The Salutary Influence of the Spirit of the Winfls 211 instanhly concealed in the bank parlor!" he exclainis, and no doubt the ecstasies as perchance some of the agonies of life are missed thereby. Certainly the sum of human experience is sensibly dimin- ished by any feeble or midway course or custom which re- fuses to take the rough with the smooth, the terror with the delight, which the winds of heaven and the winds of destiny have brought to the making of life on this earthly planet. Fortunately, the homely old adage which declares it an ill wind that blows nobody any good favors a gracious ac- ceptance of the wind's way, even where least desired, and though it may be mixed up with all man's moods and im- pulses, it curiously escapes connection with his evil tempers and arraigrunents of fate in finer spirits. Shakespeare gives a true expression of this when he makes the houseless King Lear, exposed to the raging blasts of winter, murmur sadly, "Blow, winds ! rage ! blow ! I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness," And again in the familiar lines in "As You Like It": Blow, blow, tliou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude. The sentiment, if not the strain, is caught by a modern writer who said of a Turkish outbreak, "A whirlwind or earthquake is found to be kind, gentle and soothing com- pared with a Moslem." The poet who in her recent song imputes the nature of human hate to the raging winds strikes a different note from the majority of earth's singers. In measures grave or gay they follow the wind's free way be- yond the narrow bounds of the moralities, with their weary burden of good and evil, love and hate. But it is Henry Borrow who really chases it down to its true place in the 212 Tlie Salutary luflitcnce of the Spirit of the Winds M'orld of nature and life. And so we come back to the great North road and the gypsy's song: There's niglit and day, brother, Both sweet things ; There's sun, moon and stars, brother — All sweet things. There's a wind on the heath, brother, A wind on the heath. And just to liear that I would Gladly live forever. THE SECRETS OF NATURE AS REVEALED BY THE NIGHT NOT the least of the boons the summer holds for man is acquaintance with the night. A "dead, monotonous period" to people "who cower under roofs" during much of the year, night becomes the hour of luxurious comfort, beauty and infinite outreaches of being when summer opens her starry realms of endless space, and quietude, and gran- deur, to mortal sense and sight. Most any of earth's chil- dren feel the great thoughts of space and eternity in the majestic hour somewhal as Walt Whitman did when he ex- claimed in his night watch on the prairie, "How plenteous ! how spiritual. I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not day exhibited. I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me, myriads of other globes." But even for those whose thoughts and feelings stray no farther tlian their own hushed little globe, summer night's peace and loveliness enfolds them like a spell. Shapes and moving shadows take on the enchantment of a new and airy world which Shakespeare himself could scarcely portray. The commonest domestic animal moves like a milk white doe through rustling branches or thickets and the veriest freak in human form ma}' claim the poet's benediction : "Bless thee bottom ; bless thee ! thou art translated." The waking senses feel no need of slumber for any perfection of rest, or if perchance "an exposition of sleep" comes over them, the dream it induces is "past the wit of man to report," 213 814 The St'i'irts of Natnn- tis Hevealed h// tin- yiijUt SI) siil)llv Is il inixrd \>illi all I hi' nivslic inlluriiri's iti wn- turo's outdoor world. Tlir smuiucr world whirh at last has uooi'd iiu'ii Iroiii lashioiiublr holi'ls and count fy palaces ii\to fields and forests, where "(irod keeps open house" is re- storing- a long" lost wealth of beauty and strength that the childiin of the morning- knew in their open tents, and tlicir mossy pillows, and their altar stairs of worship which, like Jacob's ladder, climbed nighily to the stars. The span of life which stretched on into the centuries may well connect itself with this tent and outdoor life of patriarch and Arab. It is certain that the civili/ed life that shut man away from nature's closest ministry began at once to shorten his days and rob his nights of their life-giv- ing" power. For, as Stevenson says, "what seems," ayo what is "a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains is only a light aud living- slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear nature breathing deeply and freely and even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles, and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses when a wakeful life influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere which all outdoor creatures feel." It is then, he says, that "men who have lain dowiA with the fowls open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night." It is then that they share some life thrill of mother earth hAow their resting bodies. It is a "nightly resurrection" wrapped in the deep mysteries of nature which "even shepherds and old country folk best read in these arcana can not fathom." Yet any child of earth may share it with all outdoor creatures if, wooed by the sunnner night, he will leave his stifling- walls and cur- tains and lie down in the open starlight and become "for the time being a sheep of nature's flock.'' It seems to be a part of nature's generous off'eriiigs that they are freest to The Secrets of Nature as Revealed by the Night 215 the humblest and, as the student of her night gifts and glories declares in "Love's Labour Lost," Those earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. It is true enough of life's rarest offerings that ofttimes "Light seeking light doth light of light beguile," and to let "soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet har- mony" in troubled breasts, without asking how or why is the true Arden philosophy which the "fool in the forest" under- stands perchance better than the sage. The sound which is back of silence in all creation's bounds stirs in the pulse of night as if a myriad insect throats and whirring wings were striving to keep tune with the very music of the spheres. Every leaf and blade is alive with these tiny choristers, bringing to the soft night, freed from the din of garish day, touches of sweet harmony that only those who go out into the bosom of night can ever know. The wonder of it breaks like a revelation from the unseen upon the unaccustomed ear, nor can any amount of familiarity destroy the spell of the universal and the invisible which throbs in undertones to the music of the world. What gifts of grace attend the tremulous strains for mortal beings Wordsworth noted well when he said of nature's sweest child: "The stars of midnight shall be dear to her." "And beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into her face." It is not sleep alone that acts as nature's sweet restorer in the stilly night. Sleep indeed is like a feverish night- mare without the soothing influence which wind and open 216 The Secrets of Nature as Revealed hy the Night sky can bring to refresh the sleeper. And for those trou- bled moments when, as by some mystic summons, or strange unrest, the eyes flash open to the night, what in the most luxurious chamber can meet their gaze with the soothing spell of the calm, kindl}'' stars and all the "serene of heaven." Stevenson tells the story in his picture of night in the open. "This sudden awakening," he says, "comes as a pleasant in- cident. We are disturbed in our slumber only that we may the better and more sensibly relish it. We have a moment to look upon the stars, and there is a special pleasure in feeling that we share the impulses with all outdoor creatures in some quickening thrill of Mother Earth." He declares that he "thought with horror" of inns and houses, of "con- gregated nightcaps, and the nocturnal prowess of clerks and students, of hot theaters and pass keys and close rooms," It is thus that a few nights in the open will liberate man from the whole burden of his costly civilization and give him the "serene possession of himself" that heaven designed for him and society has been stealing away from him for many generations. Life, which moves in a circle, seerns slowly bringing men back to the open-air chamber from which the sons of the morning drew their strength and inspiration. Screened porches, roofless galleries, tents and outdoor cots furnish sleeping quarters for a large portion of the population in certain sections of the country, while camp life has claimed hundreds of those who once stifled themselves at inn and summer boarding place, where congregated night caps and clerks of startling nocturnal prowess profaned nature's sanctuaries of rest. The war upon tuberculosis and other diseases has added to the open-air movement in the life- saving resources of the race. Nevertheless, while many have sought the crowning wealth in nature's store, "yet still," The Secrets of Nature as Revealed by the Night 217 as the old h\'mn 1ms it, "there's room for millions more," and when the dog star reigns in the sky the call of the night is emphasized by nature herself in the discomfort she drops down from her flaming suns upon the day. It is almost as if she would drive poor, plodding, unobservant mortals out into the realms of night to find the joy of being no day can unfold to them. "I have found I had discovered a new pleasure for myself," said Stevenson of his night in the open, and although he leaves his reader to guess what that pleas- ure was, he had no hesitancy in declaring that through it was opened to him the life that is "the most complete and free." But the half of life is known to one who reads its mean- ing only by day. "And who, and who, are the travelers.'"' asks the poet, that cover time's stages in the king's highway. "They are night and day and day and night." Why slight one of these "ancient cavaliers" because he walks in shadow? Burning midnight oil to him when he has stars for tapers is a poor human policy whereby even the wise have no doubt hurt his guiding power to wandering men. It may be that "Man-Afraid-of-the-Dark," as the children of nature re- gard the white brother who "cowers into his house" at night- time, has deprived night of some of its celestial ministries and raised up ghouls and goblins in its path that timorous mortals may have trouble to lay. Even the star-souled Milton declared that "when night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine," thus turning his eyes upon the evil and not the hal- lowed train that move in the path of night. But over all man's fears or visions comes that strain of the heavenly host which chose "the listening ear of night" for the sublim- est message ever conveyed to mortal man. J^IS Tlif Stiitfs of Xdtiiif (IS Unudlal btf tlir X'KjIit "It ctwnc ui>c)n tlu« midnight clear 'I'hal glorious sDiii;' of olil" ixud thri)Ui;h "tho dead vast and midillo of the night" it still rings out the promise of peace anil gooil-will to men as no lunir of noisy day can repeat it. THE CHARM OV TfTE SOUTH TO THE NORTHERN VISITOR PLACJ'JS, like people, Ijave a genius of tfn-ir own. Geo- graphical lines are not all that mark localities, nor can the ablest of the writers define the special or controlling spell of different sections even of tlie same land. Innumer- able and eloquent efforts have been made to convey to the Northern man the charm of the South. To one who has never crossed the mystic border line the efforts are vain. Nature holds the secret in her own keeping. Her '! ;e en- chantments are for those who seek them on her own ground. They may come, as one poet perceives, with a "shock of wonder and delight in which the traveler learns that he has passed the indefinable line that separates South from North." "A color, a flower, a scent" may bring this delicious con- sciousness, or it may not break upon him until "one fine morning lie wakes up with the Southern sunshine peeping through the jjersiennes and the Southern patois confusedly audible below his windows." But whenever or however it comes it will not be like anything he has found in books or could have laid hold of in any day, but from present con- sciousness. The best his pleasant Southern tourist books may liave done for him is to make liim "prick u|j his ears" at the enthusiasm in the very name of the South and be- come as anxious to seek out beauties and get by heart the lines and characters of the place, as if he had been told that it was all his own. Yet, after all, it is not the books, but the conformation 219 220 Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor of his own feelings which makes this magic sense of pos- session lay hold of him. For whether it be the wide, free welcome of the Southern sunshine, or the generous open kindliness of the warm Southern heart, there is a sweet sense of coming into his own which the traveler experiences under Southern skies, as nowhere else in his wandering. It is as Stevenson says, though only experience can confirm it, "even those who have never been there before feel as if they had been, and every one goes comparing and seeking for the familiar and finding it with such ecstasies of recognition, that one would think they were coming home after a weary absence." It is like trying to define the indefinable, however, to at- tempt to explain the cause of all the compelling sweetness that lays hold of one in the Southern world. The writers who tell us that atmosphere is the charm of the South and give it up at that, do perhaps, as well as the subtle case allows, although it is a little like saying that temperament is the gauge of the individual and leaving people who con- found it with tempers to make what they will out of it. A people subject to all the skyey influences its citizens may be in a marked degree, for whatever else may be said of the South, it is a region where you can never leave the sky out of the landscape, nor out of the brains and ways of men. Perhaps it is to the wide-awake Northerner that the un- paralleled wonders of the Southern sky make the strongest appeal. Its ethereal blue, with cloud argosies of white radi- ance floating through it by day, draw his gaze upward in defiance of the hottest sun. A vision of the sunset opens a realm of beauty and color in a myriad forms and tints al- most too bright, indeed, "for spotted man to intrude upon without novitiate and probation." Sometimes a round sil- very moon breaks in upon the scene, through floating waves Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 221 of rose or early stars peep through soft films of amber with the m^^stic glow and spell of worlds afar. "There are al- ways sunsets," says Emerson, "but it depends upon the mood of the man whether he shall see them," and the North- ern man, who stands entranced before the Southern sunset, must naturally wonder what is the mood of the many leisure- ly ones that pass him, in park, or plaza, or country byway, without a glance at the transcendant pageant in the eve- ning sky. The charm of atmosphere and light would seem to have reached a climax there, and all the community of men should be with the poet who says, "We leave the world of politics and personalities to penetrate bodily this incred- ible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element and bathe our eyes in these lights and forms." If it is true that the hues of sunset make life great, the greatest style of heroes should be born under Southern skies. Here certainly, too, the stars "rain down an influence" that should lift man heavenward. Is there elsewhere to be found a spot where they shine so brightly as to stretch long shad- ows of tree or pillar that intercepts their rays.? The Lone Star State reveals such spectacle to wondering Northern eyes. The evening star blazes forth in the sky with a radi- ance that clearly outlines the shadow of vine or pillar on the Southern veranda, and has led some Northern eyes to hunt for a young moon to explain the strange effect. Set hours and iron rules, and stern edicts of powers that be, whereby life at every turn is controlled at the North, fall away like "rusty mail in monumental mockery," when once the opulence of sunlight or the breath of the magnolia proclaims that the land of Dixie has been safely reached, and the whole problem of existence is what "you all" would "like" in any matter. It need not be told, that "you all" soon fall into the ways of "we all" and grumble not at all 222 Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor if the milk man, or the vegetable man, or the man of any trade or calling that serves sordid needs, come at all hours, or no hours, very much as the fancy takes him. There are always gardens of bloom, and beauty, and fragrance, where my lady may take her ease while servants loiter, and "a beaker full of the warm South," such as Keats prayed for, "with dance and song and sunburnt mirth" to refresh every creature, high or low. Occasionally some Nortliern woman refuses to fall in with the domestic spirit of the place and even upbraids her liege lord for taking life on its easy-going lines. But in the end the stars or melting suns "incline" her also when with the Romans (?) to do as the Romans, and she compromises with her past by telling how strange and lax the country's ways seemed to her when she first came — and thus she comes un- der the spell, instead of under the yoke, of daily life, with its sunrise and its sunsets, and all the shifting drama be- tween sun and sun. "It costs a rare combination of clouds, and lights to overcome the common and poor," says Emer- son, and he seems to be in touch with the Southern spirit when he adds, "What do you look for in the landscape, in sunsets and sunrises but a compensation for the cramp and pettiness of human performances." "The strenuous life," the mania for doing things, unquestionably pales unde tropical skies ; but in the rare combination of clouds and lights, nature truly makes compensations that beings of power and fancy to accept her aid, and follow her flights, can turn to better account than anything which the work-a-day world can off*er. "An armory of powei-s" she may indeed offer to the man of science who would "harness bird, beast and in- sect to his work," Prove the virtues of each bed of rock, And, like the chemist with his loaded jars. Charm of the South to the Northern Visitor 223 Draw from each stratum its adapted use To drug his crops or weaken his arts withal. Yet it remains true that "nature serves us best when in her rarest beauty she speaks to the imagination and we feel that the huge heaven and earth are but a web drawn around us and that the light, the skies and the mountains are but the painted vicissitudes of the soul." Some of the Southern writers, and more than one of their poets, strike such a note in their sky-caught messages, and truly he has missed the truest inspiration of the land who has not felt some symbol or kinship of the soul uniting him to the light, the skies and all the web of beauty drawn about him. Like Father Tabb's sense of kinship with the violet, in a world of beauty beyond all worlds of utility, the ultimate truth of being comes to the soul as by a flash of heaven's own light that sets it free from the toilsome ways a.nd worries of homely life and sor- did ends. It is in the Southland if anywhere that men will find an answer to the long yearning cry, Has it a meaning after all. Or is it one of nature's lies, That net of beauty that she casts Over life's unsuspecting eyes.'' Some day, somewhere, when weary, toiling, money-grab- bing men find time to bring the powers within them, whether sharpened under northern skies or fancy-fired by southern moons and sunsets, into perfect touch with the "majestic beauties that daily wrap us in," they will surely escape the barriers that render them so impotent and learn for them- selves what "rainbows teach and sunsets show" of the eternal laws of beauty, truth and being, which are one. It is "sophistication and the second thought," the seers and psy- 2^4 Chann of titr South to thr Xortlurn Visitor choU)^ists loll us, that shuts us away from beauty's power and prevents nature from entrancing us. Perhaps this is why to fresh Northern eyes and unsophisticated souls the all-embraoiug beauty of the semitropic world conies with an enchantment tluit the old resitient has in a measure lost. Anil yet the line of the Southerner for his home and land is something which befits the spell that nature has woven about them. It is not so strange that even a Northern statesman should have chosen "Dixie"' rather than ''The Star-Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia" or any other Northern air as the intensest expression of patriotism and the love of onc\s native land the country furnishes. It seems to be with the Southerner as Ingalls said of the Kan- sMu in olden days. "He may wander. He may roam. He may travel. He may go elsewhere, but no other land can claim hin\ as a citizen. As the 'gray and melancholy main' to the sailor, the desert to the Bedouin, the Alps to the moun- taineer," so is the land of the palm tree and the pomegran- ate, the myrtle and the magnolia and the wide, white fields of cotton to all its children." It rouses aii allegiance that can never be foresworn. Un- consciously, too, the influences of earth tind air work changes in the human temper and outlook that the North- ern man's ready characterization of all life as "slow" but dinily fathoms. It is from an old Bengal poet that a cleAV may be found to the better meaning in the climatic influ- ences which bear upon the more easy-going life of the South. Out of his ancient comnumion with "Mother Earth, Father Sky, Brother Wind, Friend Light and Sweetheart Water" comes the simple but vital truth that it is "in the power of the good company of earth and sky, of wind, and light, and water, to rid man of the fear of poverty." This haunting fear which drives the Northern man continually along his Charm of the Soutli to the Northern Visitor 225 hustling way seems verily to have lost its power in the good company of his beautiful earth, and sky, and light, with the Southern man. There is even a picturesque side to such poverty as may exist that fits into the landscape and makes it seem less squalid than under Northern skies. As Steven- son noted in the group of washerwomen relieved against the blue sky, some harmony of color is characteristic of the Southern garb, even when reduced to the scant lines of pov- erty. But, last of all, is the liberation of spirit which sim- plicity of wants brings to children of nature and the open air. And it takes the soft Southern skies to perfect that life. And as to the general activities and enterprises that enter into the little span of human life, why not accept the saving principle, born perchance of those skies, that noth- ing need be done in a hurry that can possibly be done slowly or even left undone. THE END AND ENDS OF LIFE TO be famous and to be loved were the modest boons the great Balzac asked of life. Both were granted him. Yet he died in bitter sorrow, pleading with his doctor for even six hours more of life. Fame had reached its brilliant culmination, love's long passion was crowned by marriage, the heavy burden of debt was lifted and the golden hour for the indulgence of his splendid genius just at hand when death dropped the curtain and tore him from all that was dear in life. Is it strange that he found it hard to go and leave so much beneath the friendly summer sun.'' Would it have been easier to loose his hold when clouds lowered, life's struggle seemed vain, and its burdens too heavy to be borne? It is for mortal man at his best estate to say, for the majorit}^ of great men go out by one or the other of these doors. To build the house beautifuland abide in it, to reach the mountain top and enjoy its star-charmed freedom and repose, is given to the merest fraction of the human race. Yet death is so busy with great and low alike in these latter days that its relation to life may Avell arouse fresh thought and questioning in human breasts. And surely the man who can see his earthl}^ hopes and desires realized even for one brief hour of the golden day, would seem more ready to say Avith Stevenson, "Glad did I live and gladly die" than he who must yield up this earthly chance with all the lonfi-ing-s of his soul unsatisfied. It mav be that to the ma- jority of earth's children the kindliest feature of the stern summons is in the poet's whisper, 226 The End and Ends of Life "Death comes to set thee free, Oh, nieet him cheerily, And all thy fears shall cease And in eternal peace Thy sorrows end." But tliis is not the happiest, the bravest, nor the truest note in mortal pathways. Not "eternal peace," not dreamless sleep, but the life more abundant is what strong souls de- sire and the achievement of life's ends in one stage of being is the best pledge of their achievement in another. By the very logic of existence it must be a sorrow and a loss to die with one true end of human life and joy unrealized. A man must win a man's joy here or nowhere, and there is a pathos unmeasured in the face of the countless lives that miss it — a crime unmeasured in the social wrongs and lunacies that conspire to frustrate it. Yet the crowning madness lies in tlie spiritless manner in which ordinary mortals yield up their birthright of joy at tlie beliest of a blind and sordid world with all "its sickly forms that err from honest na- ture's rule." "Let a man contend to liis uttermost for his life's set prize be it what it will," is the charge of a wise philosopher as well as a Christian poet. And the future doom of those who fail in this is told in the flaming lines, "They see not God I know, Nor all that ciiivalry of His, The soldier saints, who row on row, Burn upward to their point of bliss, Since the end of life being manifest. They had burned their way through the world to this." The pity of it is, though perhaps too, the glory, that men must burn their way through the stupid and jealous 228 The End and Ends of Life world to most any point of bliss marked out for themselves. And as Browning held with Drummond that love is the great- est thing in the world it is there that he fixes the prize most to be sought by those who would mount upward in the path of being. As one of his best commentators notes, "For Browning love both symbolizes and arouses that thirst for the Infinite which is the primary need of humanity." And this claim is dimly confirmed in that ideal of purity and goodness which even the most commonplace lovers seek in each other. Yet nothing is so beset with difficulties, wrongs, and base suspicions, as love, and to "burn their way" through an uncomprehending world to it, has been the need of nearly all the famous lovers of history. As- suredly in studying the relations of life and death the nature of one's controlling affection is of all importance. For it is love that alone can conquer death and give the crowning evidence of immortality. All human history bears testi- mony to the divine truth that — "love, pure and true, is to the soul the sweet immortal dew, that gems life's petals in its hour of dusk." "If you would make out the tangled map of life," said a great preacher, "let love teach you," and surely if you would master the pass of death love must point the way. For "life is God and God is love," and nothing but his own weak surrender of his birthright can separate man from that life in love. The "unlit lamp and the ungirt loin" is the ground of loss here as elsewhere : What adverse fate and outside foes may wrest from the soul's desires here is sure to be regained hereafter. "There shall never be one lost good. What was shall live as before," and in the faith of that one may smile at the utmost that "envious and calumniating time" can do to rob the good and true of their ultimate and happy ends. Without this faith all human The End and Ends of Life 229 life is a mockery and a traged}^, in the face of death. P'roni the physical standpoint no truer picture was ever drawn of it than Ingersoll offered at his brother's grave, when he said : "Whether in mid sea or among the breakers of the farther shore a wreck must mark at last the end of each and all. Every life, no matter if its every hour is jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad, and deep, and dark, as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death." "Silence and pathetic dust" are indeed all that mortal man can see in his end save as the immortal spirit asserts its union witli the eternal goodness, the everlasting love. TWIN STARS IN I.OYE'S FIRMAMENT TRULY, the poetry of earth is never dead. The "Vita Nuova" is still the love poem of the ages. Its appeal is as direct and vital to the lovers of today as when the youthful Dante inscribed it to the fair Lady Beatrice through the mists of medieval thought and theology. It is interesting indeed, to find recently a theological journal bringing home this appeal to the men of our troubled hour, and casting the immortal role of the great Bard mainly in the realm of immortal love. For it is as a disciple of love that the writer in question considers Dante's relation and message to mankind and verily womankind may read be- tween the lines. Duly recognizing Dante's immortal fame, not only as a poet but as a prophet and pioneer of truth and freedom, the writer states "he was also an arch, lover, a tender, chaste, ardent disciple of love." And to point the moral of this phase of his renown he adds "his pure love, his obedient following of the light Beatrice shed upon his life are a con- stant challenge to every true man to follow the purest and brightest star that shines for his own soul." Many a poet and not a few philosophers have advanced such lofty views of love as make it the purest and bright- est star that shines for man's soul. But not all of these have ventured to advise man to follow it under the circum- stances which attended Dante's faithful devotion to his "Glorious lad3^" For this love of Dante's was certainly compassed about Avith many of those features that render 230 Twin Stars in Love''s Firmament 231 irregular love such a firebrand to society that few writers can be found to courtesy to great kings or poets in its be- half. How such a love has come down the ages untainted by a single dark reflection may be due partly to the fine mysticism of the scholars who souglit to glorify it as a purely imaginary worship of some ideal of divine wisdom and goodness which the dreamy poet carried about in the recesses of his own brain. Added to this, of course, is what one writer calls the remoteness of its object, since it seems clear that Beatrice saw her lover but once or twice in her earthly form and semblance and not till she had enveloped herself in the heavenly did she give free expression to the love for which his ardent soul long yearned — a precaution which might indeed protect most lovers who wish to prose- cute a life affection without benefit of clergy. In fact, it is here that every Beatrice in love's calender should apply herself to the Dante School for her education, and, while men are learning how to follow the brightest star that shines for their souls, instruct herself in the nice business of keep- ing that star in the heavenly remoteness which zealous fol- lowing naturally requires. The reckless manner in which beautiful stars in love's firmament have fallen to earth or gone, like the lost pleiad, wandering in the void, for lack of the Beatricean secret of keeping both their lover and their orbit is woeful enough to make that glorious lady leave the high courts of the blessed to teach her sisters, as she taught her lover, what "love might be, hath been indeed and is" in its divine end and essence. That the most exquisite love-poem of the ages was given to setting forth this great truth has strangely availed lit- tle in woman's world, though Dante frankly admitted his obligations to Beatrice for the exaltation of their love and plainly sets forth her method of preserving it from all Twm Stars in Love's Firmament those woes and pitfalls that yawn for ardent lovers who go searching for love-light in the eyes of married women and intercepting their pathways in the street. There is some- thing deliciously honest and refreshing in that open manner in which he declares in the "Vita Nuova" his frequent efforts to win a glance from Beatrice in her walks, though only once did she favor him with a passing greeting. And yet there is evidence in the end of the story that she loved her strange dark lover — loved him well enough to come from the bowers of Paradise to hold him true to their love, and the moral of the matchless love-poem surely means as much to the woman as to the man in this question of truth to the soul's best star. To hold her lover to the heights is the only hope of any woman who finds herself in the path of an irregular love, for it is not clear at all that Dante himself would have behaved as he should if more encouragement had been given to his passionate pursuit of the lady of his "heart and mind," and by no means is it certain that he would have kept his wor- ship of her unchanged if she had stooped from her starry heights to satisfy in any way his earthly yearnings, how- ever fervently he might have importuned her thereto. It is meet that Dante students should do her honor by declar- ing that "she shines ever above the image of the poet him- self." For though poets and artists have placed her in the high heaven of love, yet to the lover more than to the lady has the world looked for the supreme lesson in human life and affection. It is a lofty moral which draws from this matchless love story a challenge to every true man to follow his soul's star. But the challenge to every true woman to preserve the soul's star undimmed may yet be the essential one in the making of any Dante, ancient or modern, in the Divine Comedy of life and love. POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD BYRON was right. It is the drop of ink falling like dew upon a thought that counts. Buried in the brain of the thinker the finest thought loses its true force and purpose. Nothing is clearer than that "Thoughts shut up want air and spoil like bales unopened to the sun." Hence printers' ink will never lose its power and purpose in human lives. Nor yet will those who use it ever escape the tremendous responsibility that rests upon them. Stu- dents of historj^ have little difficulty in tracing the whole course of mankind to the ideals of youth which the written word fostered. The strange eclipse of liberalism and inter- nationalism, which, before this mad world war, promised so much for mankind, ma}' logically therefore be laid at the door of the "sentimental nationalism" which the litera- ture of the middle classes of Europe brought to bear upon the idealism of the hour. The broad patriotism which would make the world its country and the cause of human- ity its own, was lost for a time in that narrow nationalism of "my Country right or wrong" which has wrecked the cause of truth and justice through so many troubled ages of human history. Add to Balzac's statement that "the whole principle of good and evil lies in thought," the later writer's assertion that "the literary element rules the whole universe of thought," and Byron's idea of making humanity think, re- ceives its full endorsement. To bring the literary bibles to bear upon every creature's education becomes thus a first 233 234. Power of the Written Word principle of salvation even if the rising generation is in- clined to turn its back upon them. The fact is, too, that there is no saving line of thought that does not run back to them. There is some truth in Brugere's statement that the finest and most beautiful thoughts have been carried awaj before our times and that to glean after the ancients is all that remains to us. It matters ver}^ little, however, where the thought comes from, if it can take lodgment in the brain and stir the soul to vaster issues. Ingenious mod- erns may shape it anew and mould it into creeds and cults but the mind that lays hold of it is the one to give it life in the veritable sense of the word made flesh and dwelling among us. "I think therefore I Am" and am what I am, is a truth of life and philosophy not to be gainsaid. Where- fore, nothing in all the forces of time can be so vitally important as that which gives the trend to human thoughts. Balzac declared that it is religion alone that can prepare, subdue, and mould the mind of man to life-giving thoughts and there is no question that there are words of sacred writ that above all others can lift man into the eternal spaces where life and joy forever reside. But, while what Stev- enson calls "our little piping theologies, tracts and ser- mons" have so dulled and blurred the light of sacred truth one must go to the fountain head to find the jo3^-note which is ever the life-note in any human pathway. And if this should take him to the literary Bibles as well as the Chris- tian's Scriptures, it would but strengthen Balzac's claim that religion is at the root of all high thinking. Truth "married to immortal verse" takes hold of the mind in a way Heaven well knew when it made its poets "hierophants of inspiration." Coleridge foresaw the eclipse when he said, "Thev live no longer in the faith of reason." Power of the Written Word 235 It is not, alojK; that "a verse iimy find liini wlioin a ser- mon flies," hut tliat it can stay with him in an hour of need to turn percJiance the whole current of liis thoughts from darkness and despair to courage and light. In the midst of the confusion and unrest enveloping all life and thought at this hour, may still be heard an under cry for some one to sing us the song of tlie etei'nal, and deep in the heart of humanity persists the faith that that song will ever be a song of joy. "The pendulum of the years will swing back," says one writer, "and bring again to the ears of men the music of mighty poets who will sing, not of wars and empire, nor yet of things sociological, metaphysical or psycholog- ical, but the immortal song full of the heat and glow of tiie eternal hopes and emotions of the human heart." To recognize the supremacy of spirit and let tiie kindred spirit within him unite him to the supreme source of joy and power is the working hypothesis recommended to man by more teachers in fact than the one who presents it as "the central tenet of the Christian faith." That it is this, and more, masters who perceive that "sensible and conscientious men all over the world are of one religion" are not slow to show us. And in this they can safely rest, that, whether from the Hindu Vedas or the Christian Scriptures, from Socrates or Bergson, from David or Tagore, the thought comes that ancliors man in the "God consciousness" for his strength and hope, the peace that passeth understanding flows into his soul at that hour and the light that is not of day illumines all his way. To find out where this heart of joy resides and give it a voice beyond singing was the high calling which Stevenson set for the writers, and it may be well that "trenchant essayists" and spiritual advisors are concerned to remind those who let fall the drop of ink that makes millions think, of this high charge. NOTE TIME BY ITS GAIN, NOT LOSS MAN as a progressive being, has ^^et to find himself. To get lost, like Dante, "about midway" in tlie jour- ney of his life, is his wonted exploit. It is much the fault of the calendar, of course. It set him reckoning life by figures on a dial and when a certain point was reached, it palmed off on him the illusion that the best had gone, and what remained was cheerfully to be designated the decline of life. But Time has about had this jest out with man. Alfred the Great, with his notched candle, can no longer make a tallow-dip of existence. Back of him is the bright sibyl of life, whispering through all science, count minutes by sensations and not by calendars and every moment is a gain and the whole race a life. Man was not made a wheel- work, to wind up in youth and be discharged of all his gifts and forces as life goes on. "Grown, his growth lasts," and still he learns a thousand things a minute and never twice the same. It is curious how even clocks and pessimists could delude man into the idea of looking backwards for the strength and glory of his years, or halting mournfully in the low-vaulted past, while ever the dome more vast was beckoning him onward. And yet the depressing spell has been upon him. "We wiU not believe," says Emerson, "that there is any force in today to rival or recreate the beautiful yesterday." "We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs nor believe that the spirit can feed, shelter, and nerve us again. We fancy tliat we cannot find again, aught so dear, so sweet, so grace- 236 Note Time by Its Gain, Not Loss 237 ful." And, meantime, the very violets in the grass, and the Maybloom on all the hillsides are proclaiming the eternal Genesis of life, and what even a blind girl calls the "large certainties" in the unmeasured scale of being. "We cannot go forward, however, without leaving some things behind," says a most up-to-date philosopher, and that really seems to be the key-note to much of the difficulty. The baby wants its rattle, the boy his hoby-horse, while Nature's kindly nurse is offering him the larger gifts which he will not see. Compensation is the law of Life. There is a gain for every loss, and not a feeling or experience touches the soul without pushing it forward, often, perhaps, against its will. Aye, even that dark Matrix sorrow, sends forth the newborn spirit, as the poet tells us : "Strong for im- mortal toil up such great heights, as crown o'er crown rise through Eternit3\" Indeed, if achievement is the true joy of life — and you will hunt long for any better one — then must the young-leafed Spring bow down to golden Summer, and Autumn crown the field. It is with the true vision and facult}^ divine that the artist has moulded the beautiful statues of opportunity and achievement, in forms of youth and gladness. For he who strives is always young, and to ride the billows of Time with clear eye, and dauntless smile, is ever to achieve, though no trumpets of Fame may tell it to the nations. With sweet insouciance, youth spurns at fate, but with knowledge, brave maturity scoffs at its power. "I know life," said one sweet victor. "It mocks you at every turn." But the calm smile on her face showed life at her feet. Howells understood this, when he said of his heroine that "She had glimpsed in luminous moments an infinite compassion, encompassing our whole being like a sea, where every trouble of our sins and sorrows must cease at last, like a circle in the water." The radiant Aphro- 238 Note Time by Its Gain, Not Loss dite, rising from the sea, can feel little weight of years, and significantly enough, it is this luminous glimpsing of the life springs and verities on the part of woman herself, that is helping the whole world to throw off that old man of the , Mountains, Time, and rise to the grandeur of ever increas- / ing strength and enjo\Tnent. Nothing in all the develop- { ments of this wonder-working age is much more significant / than the shifting forward into the lengthening years of all '' those interests, powers, and enthusiasms which but lately / were confined to the brief span of early youth. The woman / of forty-five or fifty today, is as full of zest, strength, and bloom as the most radiant belle of eighteen of the olden ^ days. Indeed, it is with as much truth as satire, that a j brilliant English countess pictured that old-time belle as ! now sallow and torn by the conflicting currents of the stren- ( uous life about her, while the clear-e3^ed matron of 60 is / riding the topmost wave in smiling serenity, running clubs \ and state conventions, or getting ready for her third hus- band. Meantime, Professors and students of human life, I on high scientific grounds, are assuring her brother man that the brightest and most useful period of his existence can only arrive when the worries and experiments of youth are over, and he grasps life as it is. And as for those poor and imaginative things known as the infirmities of age, the menticulturist proposes to eliminate them from the whole human equation. Thus time shall lose its power to make hollow specters of any of us, and a dream, old as the human heart, that somehow, time should be giving instead of tak- ing from life's store, will realize itself in every stage of being. The wings that are slowly groTsdng within the chrysalis of clay, vriW control the flight, and the restless- ness and discontent with which they have battered us about in our days of blindness, will be no more. Emerson, in his Note Time hy Its Gain, Not Loss 239 beautiful essay on immortality, represents two friends ab- sorbed deeply in the spirit life, and mysteries, who met ever along the dividing years with the question, "What light?" And, gazing into each other's eyes with that sole thought, they never saw that Time was whitening the hair or blanch- ing the cheek of either. They were young and eager souls to each other, wrapped ever in the warm glow of the fade- less spirit. It is sweet to think that the time will come when all friends will meet, and look into each others' faces with much such spirit sight and questioning, and science is not slow to tell us that that way lies Arden's forest, and immortal youth. Nature has ever done her utmost to fill each year with equal bloom. She never painted an Easter lily or a May violet a shade fairer for any vision of youth that was brought to bear upon it, despite all the poetic fic- tions that have been palmed off on us in that direction. But Ah ! she has waited long for that one spirit breath "rose beauty above" to "Pant through the blueness, and perfect the Summer" for purblind man. Perhaps Mitchni- koff was right, and man's early years are too troubled, too strenuous, for that fine spirit breath to reach him. The harvest of a quiet eye may be indeed the one to gather in the perfect sheaf of Life. In any case, the field is rich and endless. The golden age is always before and not behind any growing creature, and friends may well look in each other's countenances, to behold what is found, not lost, il- luminated, not darkened, in the widening pathway of end- less being. Even friendship itself sifts out the chaff as the shadows lengthen, and that "masterpiece of nature," the true friend, comes only with the years. "I thought you had a little friend with you today. Tommy," said a lady to a child who was walking disconsolate and alone about a playground where the favorite playmate had been wont to shadow him. / S-IO Note Time hy Its Gain, Not Loss "I have a little friend, but I hate him," replied the hon- est lad, and the sweet vicissitudes of early friendship are well represented in the truthful answer. Bacon knew life, when he declared that friends, like wine, grew richer as they grew older. In truth, too, poets and philosophers are be- ginning to tell us this of all good things, and over against the long madness that has flung every gift worth having into one fierce cauldron of youth, is the saner vision that now reserves a few allurements for man's ripening years. A WORD MORE THE last word on manners was not with our gentle Emerson, difBcult as it might be to find anything more exhaustive and refined than his treatment of that subject. Speaking from the social standpoint, his exquisite and dis- cerning canvas of the much canvassed theme leaves nothing to be added. It was when he covered the whole life-field with the assertion that there is always time for courtesy that he struck ground where some things remain to be said. Pre- eminently, too, America is the place to say them. The au- thor who carries the proposition into the business world makes a fair start in that direction when he declares that the Americans spoil more business through lack of good manners than in any other way. Yet to leave the matter there is much like expecting to save sinners by convicting them of sin. It is not difficult to convince a nation of hustlers in every line of business that they are deficient in manners, and no doubt the worse for it, since many of the poor driven creatures have a trouble- some sense of such drawbacks in their business careers. But to convert them to a belief that there is always time for courtesy is a work of grace that would require a whole gospel to set forth — perhaps, too, a new code of manners to meet the need. It seems hard for some people to realize that the man- ners of the drawing-room can never be made to fit the busi- ness world. The street-car conductor who told two ladies exchanging courteous farewells while he waited past time 241 242 A Word More for one of them to alight that his car was "no 'ception par- lor" may have failed in his manners but he certainly indi- cated the failure of parlor manners in such a place. The gentlemanly railroad officials who furnish formulas for the ticket agent to use in meeting the inane questions put to them by the traveling public, and all manner of explicit di- rections with tickets and wrappers for the traveler him- self, know something of the difficulties to be encountered in preserving the courtesies of their tremendous business. Ap- parently, too, they have a fair sense of the ground of those difficulties, for when a lady, recently inquiring for her train, was able to give its name and number, a higher official standing near smilingly declared that she was one in a thousand. When it comes to dealing with different lines of life and activity the laws of behavior may indeed "yield to the en- ergy of the individual." In professional as well as business life, the more energetic the worker the less time is left for courtesy iij the common acceptation of the term. Doctors, authors and editors are often held up as examples of breaches of etiquette in their dealings with lesser creatures. Yet no doubt they all suffer serious drains upon their time and energy by people wholly ignorant of the demands of their calling or the etiquette that properly belongs to it. Even the very forms of speech in the business and profes- sional world carry sometimes a special meaning in their place that outside of it might seem objectionable if not of- fensive. A very gracious editor of a large newspaper who rather prided himself on maintaining perfect courtesy toward all callers, fell woefully from grace by simply ap- plying the newspaper term "Stuff" to a contribution one lady brought him. A brief glance at the Ms. showed him that it belonged to a class of matter they had ceased to A Word More 243 publish. But when he inadvertently told her that they were not using stuff of that nature, she exclaimed indignantly : "Stuff is it, sir ! Well, at least I thought I was coming into the presence of a gentleman," and the fine garment of man- ners ceased to adorn that autocrat of the press for her and her set from that hour. Editors perhaps have taken warning from experiences of that kind, for they now couch their answers to the undesired applicants for their favor in such gracious and beguiling language that it is rather a pleasure to be rejected by them. Indeed, there are some of the busiest editors who will spare time for words of encouragement with a returned Ms. that ought to let them into the kingdom of heaven, as angels of the helping hand now open it. The greatest are the kindliest in every instance, and this may be a point worth noting in that plea for manners in the business world which the students of the subject are now presenting. It naturally connects itself with that finer view of business which holds the human element above all systems or scientific formulas that were ever devised; for it takes a man of large mind and heart and thorough understanding of mankind to realize the power of simple kindliness, from which all good manners proceed, in dealing with men every- where. The old Greek sage who said that the charm of a man is his kindness gave man the prime rule for winning his cause in any field where human nature figures, and the growing sense of human brotherhood adds the crowning im- pulse to Christian courtesy toward every one with whom man in any station or relation has to do. The general manager of a large business concern knew well the ground of success when he looked for a sales man- ager who was "big and broad mentally, but most of all a man who was human." The man who is big and human, 244 A Word More though he may not find time for the forms of courtesy pre- scribed by pohte society, will never forget the respect due to the human being in all his manner and demeanor toward him. It is the pompous clerk or subordinate dressed in a little brief authority who assumes such rude and supercilious airs as spoil business in his atmosphere. The great cap- tains of industry, the magnates in the commercial world, whatever else they may be, are men who maintain the cour- tesies of life and good breeding in business as other relations. It is true, however, that "good manners need the support of manners in others" and the people with whom business men have to deal may not give exactly the support indicated. "Business tips to Americans" might take into account the good or ill effect which the manners of the general pub- lic toward those who serve it naturally have. People of any country who fail in civility to the humblest clerk or employe in any field must help to spoil business more seri- ously perhaps than they realize, as well as some other things much finer than business. The changes in economic and industrial lines which send women of established social position into the business world have done much toward bringing the amenities of life to bear upon it, and still there is room for something more. From the Christmas shopper to the mistress of the mansion there is still too little of that kindly consideration for those that serve them which brings the gentle word and manner that true courtesy and good breeding demand, and above all the social ideals of the hour. From the ^'noblesse oblige" of the old order to the human brotherhood and equality of the new, the transition is not sufficiently complete to have wiped out class distinctions, and curtness rather takes the place of condescension in the dealings of the upper classes with A Word More M5 the lower, which, though less humiliating, is certainly not more conducive to good manners. When all is told it is the Christian ideal of loving kind- ness toward all, which "the first true gentleman that ever breathed" brought to the world, that must prevail if men are ever to achieve that genuine courtesy for which there is always time. LOVE'S TROUBLES We are all born for love. The strangest thing about it is however, that while love is the one eternal and transcendent passion, there is none less sympathized with by others in cases where its existence does not conform to every custom and convention sanctioned by time and tradition. — Johnson. SHAKESPEARE was by no means the less Shakespeare when he reckoned Love's troubles among the crowning ills that "make calamity" of earthly life. Even at its best estate its encounter with time is calamitous enough to war- rant the poets in all the mournful strains they have given to "Love in such a wilderness as this." It is not in the tragedies and suicides that find their way into the daily papers of all nations that the ruinous work of love in blind human pathways is greatest. In hearts that never betray a sign of this anguish to the world its wounds are deadliest and in the simple fact that the course of true love never does run smooth lies a depth of universal sorrow and loss that ought to find some mitigation if love is to retain any foothold on our troubled earth. Indeed long ago one stu- dent of the case declared that "AH the evils we know on earth, find in the violence done to love their full and legiti- mate birth." Unless one is to liold with Hardy, that man is in the toils of some malicious power bent on causing suffering, it is impossible to believe that so divine a spirit as love was sent on earth to work such havoc in human hearts and lives. It was a risky business no doubt to let Love follow man out of Eden into a world of thorns and thistles and that com- 246 Love's Troubles 247 mercialisni vvhicli is now found to be the original sin. Yet there seems to be no sufficient reason for fortune, even in such a world, to prove "an unrelenting foe to Love" if man could put some right estimate upon life itself. That "Love is life's fine centre and includes heart and mind" is a truth that more than poets recognize, yet it is in a mad chase for what they call life that Love is lost to a majority of man- kind. By this blindness all manner of counterfeits for love are caught up to meet the passing needs or ideas of a con- ventional life and society and thus the fulness of life which is ever in love is comparatively unknown to the race. Mean- time the haunting dream of it, or perchance some unauthor- ized acquaintance with it, fills with pathetic yearning and unrest the souls of hapless mortals. In the beginning it was not so, as the Good Book itself declares, but because of the hardness of men's hearts all this abuse of life and love came about. Worse still it has come to be accepted so compla- cently as a part of man's make-up that one of the greatest of the matchless French writers presents his hero in the toils of two or three imperfect loves and at the end declares he "was a great sinner" but, in big capitals, "A MAN." If nature's verdict "This was a man" is the one in point, as Shakespeare made it, sinners against Love could hardly merit it, since there great nature allows no shuffling. To be true to tlie one Love of his heart and soul despite all time or fortune can bring against it, is the victory over life and death she imperatively demands. Graciously, too, she has marked out the way for man to know the true Love from the false. There arc women, said John J. Ingalls, whom to love makes it impossible ever to love another. What surer rem- edy could be devised for the fickle and imperfect loves that leave man still hungering for another. "Whoever has loved twice has never loved at all. A man may have two passions, 248 Love's Troubles never two loves," wrote Alexander Duman, recognizing as Ingalls did nature's provision in the case. To be sure one sorry cynic observes that "every man seeks his ideal woman, but heaven only knows when he finds her — ^he never does." That, however, is a gross libel upon the race. Every man and every woman knows it full well when the true all-satis- fying love takes possession of the soul and if every child of earth would wait for that assurance though there might be fewer marriages there would be an end to the false and wretched ones which hold man back from all the Eden joy and glory designed for him. But meantime such dire calamities attend the thing called love in the path of marry- ing mortals that they might be tempted to imitate the dis- tracted nations that in the face of loud pretensions to broth- erly love were but yesterday found declaring in the fiery blasts of war "enough of that kind of love, let us try hatred instead." At least hatred carries an open front and men may face it or turn their backs on it as they choose. But who can honorably escape from the evils of unhappy loves that have entangled them in their social, perchance legal, meshes? Above all who can measure the wreck of joy and power they effect in that fine seat and centre of life where love resides ? The proud silence in which the victims of love's wounds hide their pains and losses, renders this evil more dark and deadly than any other in human pathways. The woman who recently declared, in a prize essay, that of all the achievements of her life she was proudest of the living lie that enabled her to turn a smiling front to family and society while enduring a loathsome hell with a husband who loved and supported another woman, supposedly unknown to her, unearthed a condition in human affairs that tells what beastly wrongs, crosses and concealments in love may cover. Jacob serving seven years for Rachel only to have Love's Troubles 249 Leah imposed upon him for family reasons and the custom of a country is a patriarchal lunacy not unknown to our own times. But recently comes a story of a selfish mother who pledged a son of eighteen not to marry while any of the family relatives had need of him, and it was not until he was in his seventy-eighth year that the last of those relatives gra- ciously died and freed him for old age's chance in the rosy realm of love. Not infrequently some departing husband or wife will take steps to prevent any future unions in the one left behind, although admitting by this very act the pitiful failure of their own. Let the foresworn chance of the ideal love and wedded life cross the path of such a darkly bound victim, and the height of earthly woe and martyrdom is reached. Nothing in all the range of time can work such mis- ery in human lives as this same love which was no doubt meant to bring the quintessence of joy to all lives. For- tunately, too, it is not left without witnesses to its su- preme worth in the right hands. There are homes of spot- less purity, infinite peace, where heaven tunes the harp of life to such love "as spirits feel in worlds whose course is equable and pure" and the gates of Eden open to man as when time began. "Love is the only good in the world," says Browning, and clearly it is the only Good upon which the ideal home that is the hope of the world can be founded. Further still it is the only Good that carries its own assurance of the eternal home where all is love. Whoever has truly loved knows that the wondrous life he has entered into is endless — is one with the life of God. He who would find life therefore must find love, for he who misses Love has scarcely crossed the threshold of that sacred temple of Life whose dome pierces "the white radiance of eternity." MARRIAGE AS A DUTY THAT life for men of these momentous days "consists entirely of duties" is a proposition that might reach beyond the stern Briton by whom it was propounded. But when it comes to reckoning marriage among those duties, it is not strange that some men, like the lad who was told that it was his duty to love a disagreeable neighbor, wish that they could be got in duty free. Of all things that elude the intermeddlers, pious or impious offices, this matter of taking a partner for life is the supreme one. Marriage may go by destiny, as the great Bard claims, but need and ex- pediency strike chill notes in the case till manifest destiny shows itself on some higher plane. "Hail wedded love! Mysterious law, true source of hu- man offspring," wrote England's poet of the golden lyre and the nation that gave Milton to the world may well be confounded at the idea of marrying to replenish the race numerically. Considering what hasty and hap-hazard mar- riages have done for the race it seems the climax of folly to look for any benefit along such lines. Indeed all the long struggle of mankind to reach the heights looks to the ideal marriage, the "marriage of true minds" for its real- ization. To lower the standard of marriage would be about the last calamity war's aftermath could bring upon the World. Not very much farther would it have to go in the backward path to make the forcible seizure of wives and the fate of 250 Marriage as a Duty 251 the Sabine women a part of this principle of expediency and necessity which it advocates. For although "attractive girls" may truly appear in the returning soldiers' horizon, yet the mutual nature of that attraction can no more be as- sured in their path than any other. "Much ado there was God wot "He wold love and she wold not, wrote an old English ballad maker in the days when attrac- tive girls were much more ready to take the men that were "willing" to marry them than in our time. Half-hearted and one-sided love affairs make more and more ado in hu- man pathways as the world advances especially in relation to marriage where the two hearts that beat as one are the prime necessity, and 3'^et as much the sport of chance or fate as when Dan Cupid began his capricious work with human lives and loves. Whatever has become of romance or re- ligion in these desperate days, love still follows its own laws and leading and defies the efforts of courts or ar- mies to move it against its will. Not even his own will can control the entrance of that mysterious visitant that takes possession of the lover's soul and sways it to its pur- poses. "Is human love the growth of human will.?" asks one of the world's great novelists and the answer is written in the woeful story of many a hero and heroine who sought to bring will and worldly interests to bear upon human af- fections. Duty and expediency may prevent the expression of love in its own direction but neither of them can turn it in any other direction and when this fact is duly recognized "wedded love— true source of human offspring" will shape human life and wipe out forever all laws or theories touch- ing marriage save those that Love has made. 252 Marriage as a Duty "Marriage is a matter of more worth than to be dealt in by attorneyship," wrote the master seer of the ages, but of what celestial worth, no vision of man may divine till Love has had its perfect work in human lives and unions. THE WORD AND THE IDEA NO one denies the power of words. Yet the half of it has never been told. The very meaning of existence it- self has been lost in one dark word — dead. "It is an as- tonishing thing how man believes in words," said Turgenev, and it is more than probable that the overpowering horror that invests that process of rebirth, of life's renewals, which runs through all nature is comprehended in the blind ac- ceptance and belief humanity attaches to that word, dead. The idea of death, born of darkness and superstition, has troubled the sages of all history, yet wiping out completely the form of speech that carried this idea has been too feebly considered even in their counsels to bear much relation to the common tongue. Browning's earnest prayer to his friends, "Never speak of me as dead," carried an admoni- tion that might work a veritable revolution in human thought, and life which is the outcome of thought — if widely heeded. Shakespeare expressed the extraordinary situa- tion which the word and the idea have brought about when he said, "Of all the wonders that I yet have heard It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come." Viewed as a necessary end to one stage of being in Life's progressive path it would indeed be most strange that any rational creature should attach to death the fear and horror 253 254 The Word and the Idea that commonly becloud it and to call it by some better name may be a prime step in that victory over death which the Master-seer of the ages predicted for mankind. One of the modern poets touches the core of the matter when he writes, "Words are great forces in the realm of life Who talks of evil conjures into shape That formless thing and gives it life and scope This is the law; then let no word escape That does not breathe of everlasting hope." Only he who can master the laws of the mind and their supreme influence upon all the character and events of life could duly measure what it has meant to humanity to have the chrysalis instead of the winged butterfly give the con- trolling idea to the physical changes which from insect to man marks the progress of evolutionary being throughout all its realm. That the Supreme Master of life and all its forces declared of the loved one who had lain three days in his grave "He is not dead," should warrant the Christian world at least in denying that any of their loved ones were dead or ever thinking of them in such ghastly light. The fact is, too, that the human heart does reject the awful thing the word, in its common acceptation implies, and some- times, to mourning souls a strange sense of the living spirit, closer and dearer than ever before, stirs a pulse of real ec- stacy as in a bond of life and love lifted beyond all reach of time and man's mortality. Especially is this true where barriers of time and fate have kept kindred spirits apart in their earthly pilgrimage. Above all the anguish of the human separation in that last great change, flashes the quick and rapturous consciousness of the beloved one set free to claim his own in earth or heaven as "spirit with spirit may meet." Mystic, intangible as this may be, it The Word and the Idea 255 belongs to those things which, persisting in consciousness, are declared b}' the great author of the Synthetic philosophy to be legitimate subjects of scientific interest and investiga- tion. Assuredly it belongs to those things which so foster the belief in that awakening from sleep which the whole logic of life demands that the very name of death should be lost in the growing light of immortality. The patient souls that "winning times discharge" have "passed triumphant to the life more large" surely deserve some better thought of them than the dead word dead allows. As Mr. Palmer said of the beloved wife and famous educator who left him for that larger life, "To leave the dead wholly dead is rude. Vivid creature that she was she must not be forgotten." That goes to the core of the matter. Vivid creature, that she was what had aught that dies to do with that flame of life ; what has it ever to do with the burning, yearning soul that with its latest human breath, cries out for life and the life more abundant.? "As the bodily powers fail, my soul grows more luminous," said Victor Hugo, "when I go down to the grave I can say I have finished my day's work, but I cannot say I have finished my life. My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alle}'^ ; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight to open with the dawn." In the light of such an assurance a man might well say "never speak of me as dead." And that it is an assurance all humanity inherited when man, touched by the breath of the eternal, became a living soul, science itself must recognize in the indestructibility of all life, even though science may not yet penetrate the veil that shuts man from the fuller knowledge of the life beyond. Yet even that, perchance, might come to man, if the truth of his im- mortality were not so overborne by the thought and speech 256 The Word and the Idea that keep the physical and not the spiritual phase of ex- istence forever in the foreground. If life, with no human infusions of death in the cup, were the draught held to man's lips, how truly might he "quaff immortality and joy" from the foaming beaker. Forever and forever it should be a song of life, not death, on human lips, and what it would mean to mankind one poet reveals in the ringing strain, "Sing me, O singer, a song of life," Cried an eager youth to me. And I sang of a life without alloy Beyond our years — till the heart of the boy Caught the golden beauty, and love, and joy. Of the great eternity. AS THE WAR REVEALED HER TO find some good in things evil is a philosophy of life which was never more desperately appealed to than in those mad war days. From the old theological stand- point of attempting to justify the ways of God to man the effort was as vain as ever. Even from a rationalistic stand- point no creature could make out why a race of intelligent thinking beings could not bring the ends of justice and lib- erty to pass without such a senseless, brutish, wholesale butchery of each other. Taking about any of the blessed results which the courageous optimists would draw from the unblessed carnage it is easy to see that common enlighten- ment should have brought them to pass ages ago. The woman question is pre-eminently one in point here, because it reached such a swift and world-wide solution in the revela- tion of woman's true character and worth. But what is to be said of a world that never found it out before. A recent writer directly declared that woman was completely changed by the war, while the significant fact that the change is in the public with which she has to deal does not enter into his calculations. Indeed the great truth that woman's case, like that of her brothers, has passed into the hands of destiny and the on-marching ages does not appear to im- press all beholders who consider the marvelous changes of this fateful hour. To realize that everlasting nature changes not and that woman is today what she always was and always will be in every essential feature of her being and aims, is something that may still require time to en- 257 258 As the War Revealed Her * graft itself on the public mind. Nor is it so very strange considering some preconceived ideas of woman in ante-war days, that man deems it almost a re-creation which pre- sents her now as a being "sublime in self-sacrifice," capable and devoted in service, rich in resource, and, as ex-Premier Asquith declared, "performing work without detriment to the prerogatives of her sex heretofore regarded as belong- ing exclusively to man." The picture that perturbed poli- ticians and social censors previously drew of modern woman bears little relation to such a noble sisterhood. Not only the "dire and forbidding features" of the Militant Suffragette, but the audacious and law-defying attitude of the social leader entered into the cartoon, and no doubt created an impression not easily effaced. Out of the mouth of the playwrights and novelists of ante-war days David Grant drew a conception of modern woman and what she was "after" that might almost warrant an idea that noth- ing short of a new deluge or world cataclysm of some kind could cut short her career and restore the good and self- sacrificing woman as God made her to a place in the sun. A being "of unstable virtue," bent upon "individual lib- erty," especially in the matter of "hunting the father of her child in or out of marriage as the approved parentage might declare itself." This, we are told, was the new woman as her "brilliant male leaders" presented her and naturally poor intimidated man could only see his finish in such "ad- vanced feminism." More naturally still, however, no woman on earth could possible recognize herself or her sisters in such a guise nor conceive how woman's struggle for the purer, higher ideals in all the relations of life and societ}' could possibly be so misconstrued. It is evident that men and nations never knew woman in her "noble spirit and self- sacrificing efficiency" before her work in this terrible hour As the War Revealed Her 259 of the world's history revealed her to them. But that is no reason why she should be deemed in any sense a product of that demon's carnival of war. There is an old saying, "Earth waits for her Queen," and perchance in that final struggle of brute force the way was being prepared for her — nevertheless even yet it seems doubtful if the poor blind world would know her if she came.