Class J2>3_515' 
 
 CorpgktN"^. /H/__ 
 
 COJEWtlGHT DEPOSIT, 
 
 ii 
 
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR 
 
 THE EYES OF FAITH 
 
 THE MAN OF POWER 
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF DECISION 
 
 THE MEN OF THE GOSPELS 
 
 THE LURE OF BOOKS 
 
 ATHANASIUS : THE HERO 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF A PREACHER 
 
 THE QUEST FOR WONDER, AND OTHER PHILO- 
 SOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 THE LITTLE OLD LADY 
 
 THE CLEAN SWORD 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROTESTANT REFOR- 
 MATION 
 
 FLYING OVER LONDON 
 
The Opinions of 
 John Clearfield 
 
 By 
 LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 

 Copyright, 1921, by 
 LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 
 
 OCT 26 1921 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 0)C[.A624992 
 
«>4 
 
 to my friend 
 Martin Luther Haggerty 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Man of Books and Men 9 
 
 Getting on All Sides of Things 13 
 
 The Explosive Mind of Nietzsche 18 
 
 The Virility of Ralph Connor 23 
 
 The Empty Rooms 28 
 
 Poise and Passion 33 
 
 Capturing Our Rarest Moods 36 
 
 The Man Who Expects to be Surprised ... 40 
 
 By An Unknown Disciple 44 
 
 The Reading of Poetry 49 
 
 The Danger of Losing Your Way 52 
 
 Books as Tools and Books as Friends 57 
 
 Among the Crowds of Passing Books 61 
 
 A Commanding Voice 67 
 
 Types of Political Leaders 71 
 
 The Future of American Politics 76 
 
 Off for the Summer 80 
 
 The Human Touch 85 
 
 The Art of Being Alone 88 
 
 The Man of the Hour 92 
 
 The Man Who is Lost in a Point of View. 97 
 
8 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "Preaching and Paganism" 102 
 
 The United States and the World 107 
 
 The League of Nations 113 
 
 A Notable Preacher 118 
 
 With John Clearfield at Sea 122 
 
 Literary Hospitality 126 
 
 Dr. Kelman and America 130 
 
 Social Unrest in England and America. . . 135 
 
 The Power of Hope 139 
 
 Two Dangers and Two Opportunities 143 
 
 Victory and Peace 148 
 
 The Speech Which We Brought From 
 England 152 
 
 The Middle West 157 
 
 Contemporary Poetry 160 
 
 Concerning Abraham LincCln 163 
 
 The International View 166 
 
 John Clearfield at Chautauqua 170 
 
 "Tusitala" 174 
 
 The Magic of Good Books 178 
 
 The Practical Dreamer 183 
 
THE MAN OF BOOKS AND MEN 
 
 1 FIRST met John Clearfield about seven 
 years ago. He was a man who sug- 
 gested possibilities in the adventure of friend- 
 ship from the first. His sharp, clean-cut 
 face, his deep, quiet eyes, with their sudden 
 flashing of hidden fire, his rich and many- 
 toned voice, which seemed to have a response 
 for every sort of feeling — all these attracted 
 me. But when he began to talk, in that 
 quick and decisive fashion which his friends 
 know so well, I began to sense the real qual- 
 ity of the man. He saw everything with his 
 own eyes, and he was always thinking in a 
 fearless and individual way. That first talk 
 led to others, and it was not long until the 
 habit of going over things together had de- 
 veloped. In the years which have passed 
 since then we have been in constant touch. 
 Sometimes I have his letters with their vivid 
 and penetrating and interpreting phrases, 
 sometimes we talk together by the hour. 
 Long ago I nicknamed him the "Man of 
 Books and Men" because he has such a deep 
 
 9 
 
10 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and understanding contact both with books 
 and people. But he never writes. He seems 
 to feel no debt to the world at large except 
 the faithful discharge of the duties of his 
 profession in which he has made such a genuine 
 and notable place for himself. 
 
 One day we were out walking together. I 
 had been urging him to write, using every 
 argument of which I could think. He was 
 entirely irresponsive, smiling in a whimsical 
 and half-tantalizing way he has, all the while. 
 At last I turned sharply upon him. 
 
 "If you won't break into print for yourself, 
 I'm going to break into print for you," I 
 declared. 
 
 He laughed outright at that. Then he said, 
 with laughter still playing in his eyes: "You 
 think you'll add being a Boswell to your 
 other activities, do you?" 
 
 He thought for a moment. Then he went 
 on: "All right. Try it out. I haven't the 
 slightest objection, if you don't use my name, 
 and if I don't have to read what you write." 
 
 We both laughed at this and he added: 
 "I never could talk naturally to you again if 
 I had the sense of an invisible audience. So 
 I won't read what you write and I won't see 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 11 
 
 it, and we will never speak of the matter 
 again." 
 
 It was a curious sort of an understanding. 
 But we both have lived up to it. At first I 
 thought he was a little less free in his talk, 
 but that soon wore off, and there is not the 
 slightest lack of the old spontaneous quality 
 to our exchange of opinions. I have kept 
 jotting down notes of his talk, and now I 
 am going to live up to my word. As he won't 
 break into print for himself, I am going to 
 break into print for him. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to add a word or two in 
 further explanation. It may seem strange 
 that a busy and successful lawyer should have 
 time to delve into so many fields. The truth 
 is that Clearfield has the most amazing health. 
 And he has declared that long reading and 
 thinking in other fields simply leave his mind 
 clearer for his own work. I have caught him 
 engrossed with some bit of scholastic philos- 
 ophy or some remote period of history the 
 night before he was to try an important case. 
 When I expressed surprise, he looked at me 
 with a twinkle in his eye, and said, "I'm just 
 clearing the cobwebs out of my mind." 
 
 The reader may be interested in knowing 
 
n THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 that John Clearfield's father was a distin- 
 guished preacher, with a scholar's habits of 
 mind, and that his mother was a musician of 
 that rare and sensitive spirit which makes 
 real interpretation possible. She never played 
 in public, but her son used to say that she 
 set the home to music, and that there was 
 always a rhythm even about the way she set 
 about household tasks. These things do not 
 account for Clearfield. But they do throw 
 light upon his character and his ways. 
 
 I am really sorry that he refuses to read 
 any of these articles and that I do not even 
 dare to mention them in his presence. But 
 at any rate I am hoping that a great many 
 people will come to know him, and to sense 
 the quality and significance of his opinions. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 13 
 
 GETTING ON ALL SIDES OF THINGS 
 
 THE Man of Books and Men was obvi- 
 ously preoccupied. He answered every 
 remark which I made in monosyllables. His 
 eyes had a far-away look. I tried one subject 
 after another, and I quite failed to rouse him. 
 At length I picked up my hat and started 
 toward the door, remarking as I put my hand 
 on the knob: "I'll drop in to-morrow if you 
 are sure you will not be entertaining invisible 
 friends." 
 
 John Clearfield was at my side in a bound. 
 He seized my arm and forced me into a chair. 
 
 "Now, sit there for a minute," he said, 
 "until I am ready to talk." 
 
 His moods are familiar to me and I waited 
 patiently. In perhaps five minutes he looked 
 up, his face still bearing marks of the con- 
 centration with which he had been thinking. 
 
 "Do you remember the line, 'Struck by the 
 splendor of a sudden thought'?" he asked. 
 "Well, it happened just before you came in, 
 and I had to work it out a little. Now I am 
 ready to talk." 
 
14 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "And what was the sudden thought?" I 
 asked. 
 
 John Clearfield looked out at the window for 
 a moment. Then he picked Gilbert Chester- 
 ton's little volume on the Life of Robert 
 Browning from the table. 
 
 "It was really Chesterton who did it," he 
 began. "I read this life of Browning when it 
 first came out, and I have been throjigh it 
 three times since. There is more actual com- 
 prehension of the man and the poet here than 
 I have seen anywhere else. Half an hour 
 ago I picked up the book. Some remark made 
 by Chesterton sent me back to *The Ring and 
 the Book.' Then I fell to thinking. You 
 know the poem, arid we have often talked 
 about it together. But I have never felt 
 before as I did after turning over the familiar 
 pages for a half hour what the plan of the 
 poem means. Why did Browning tell the 
 same sordid story of an ItaHan murder from 
 twelve different points of view? It was not 
 merely to show how cleverly he could reveal 
 the ways in which different types of people 
 see the same thing. Browning is always too 
 much in earnest about art and about life to 
 be contented with mere cleverness. It came 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 15 
 
 to me like a flash that all these people, even 
 those who are most mistaken, do help you to 
 get at the truth of the whole story. It is not 
 until you have seen Pompilia and the rest 
 against the background of all these people 
 and their ways and their thoughts, that you 
 begin to apprehend the truth about the whole 
 situation. Even the most cynical misinterpre- 
 tation helps you to understand. At the mo- 
 ment when you came in I was summing it all 
 up in a sort of conclusion. And the conclusion 
 went something like this: You have never 
 really seen a thing until you have seen all 
 sides of it, even the sides which do not exist." 
 
 I pulled up the conversation at that. 
 
 "Wait," I cried, "until I am sure that I 
 know what you mean." 
 
 He laughed a little and then said, "I mean 
 that you understand a man better after you 
 know the sort of lies his enemies tell about 
 him. There is always something revealing 
 about a lie." 
 
 I saw that Clearfield was about to continue, 
 and again I called a halt. 
 
 "You mean that any point of view about 
 anything is worth studying because nobody 
 would think of it if, in some confused, dis- 
 
16 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 torted way, it was not related to the truth?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "That is a part of it," he replied. "As a 
 matter of fact, we are all the while tempted 
 to close the doors on further thought. We 
 conclude that we have exhausted a subject or 
 a person, and we make no attempt to go 
 farther. There are always more significant 
 things to know. People have a touch of the 
 infinite in them, and subjects have pretty 
 nearly endless relations. The man with the 
 mind which is really alive keeps going all 
 about people and subjects and getting more 
 light upon them. And at last he learns some 
 things from the very way they stand in the 
 shadows when they are misinterpreted." 
 
 "But what's the use of all this?" I asked. 
 "Why not be contented with a simple, direct 
 view and let it go at that?" 
 
 John Clearfield stood above me with a quick 
 movement which meant that he was really 
 stirred. 
 
 "This is the reason," he said. "If you are 
 not all the while getting fresh views of things, 
 you lose your sense of the views you have. 
 The only way to keep a hold on the simplest 
 truth is to keep seeing it in more and more 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 17 
 
 relations, and the only way to keep a great 
 relation to people is to be discovering new 
 things about them all the while." 
 
 "But what if there is nothing new to dis- 
 cover?" I asked. 
 
 "There always is," replied Clearfield with 
 assurance. "Personality is the only thing 
 which you cannot exhaust." 
 
18 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE EXPLOSIVE MIND OF NIETZSCHE 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was holding a little 
 book in his hand. I peered over his 
 shoulder and discovered that it was Maxi- 
 milian A. Mugee's discussion of Friedrich 
 Nietzsche in the series called The People's 
 Books. The Man of Books and Men was just 
 ready to break out into speech. It was evident 
 that without the slightest intention of doing 
 it I had timed my arrival with precise rela- 
 tion to his mood and his welcome. 
 
 "I've been running over a wonderfully use- 
 ful little summary of the teaching of Nietzsche," 
 said John. "It is written with intimate knowl- 
 edge and with a real attempt to understand 
 in some sympathetic fashion what Nietzsche 
 was about. I used to go to Zarathustra when 
 I had a particularly difficult case on hand and 
 needed to have my brain keyed up to its high- 
 est pitch. There was something about the 
 very intellectual and moral audacity of it all 
 which quickened my mind in amazing fashion. 
 The more angry I became at some of the 
 burning and blazing bits of scornful speech 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 19 
 
 the more I felt something like quicksilver 
 running through my own veins. I wouldn't 
 want Nietzsche as food. But I find him a 
 splendid tonic." 
 
 I walked over to the shelves of books just 
 beyond where John was sitting and pulled 
 out a well-worn copy of Thus Spake Zarathus- 
 tra. While I was fingering its pages John 
 went on talking. 
 
 "In a way Nietzsche is one of the very few 
 thoroughgoing opponents Christianity has ever 
 met. Most men have accepted a part of the 
 thing they opposed. Spencer could not be- 
 lieve in a personal God, but he imported Chris- 
 tian ethics into his system and made his whole 
 evolutionary philosophy find its crown here. 
 Nietzsche had the daring of a dauntless logic, 
 and he was willing to go the whole length of 
 his maddest conclusions. All this is seen in 
 one passage in The Anti-Christ, 'I condemn 
 Christianity. I bring against the Christian 
 Church the most terrible accusation ever 
 voiced. It is to me the greatest of all imag- 
 inable corruptions. It has brought about the 
 ultimate corruption. It has left nothing un- 
 contaminated by its depravity; it has made 
 every valuable thing worthless, every truth a 
 
20 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 lie, every honest impulse a baseness of soul.' 
 Nietzsche believed in the struggle for existence. 
 He believed in the survival of the fittest. He 
 believed that the struggle must go on relent- 
 lessly and remorselessly and that it must lead 
 to the entire elimination of the unfit. He 
 believed that Christianity was a method by 
 which the unfit were enabled to survive. He 
 believed that its whole spirit of compassion 
 and of tenderness toward the weak was filling 
 the world with undesirable citizens. It was a 
 slave morality. It was a conspiracy of the 
 weak against the strong. It was the dastardly 
 method by which those who had no right 
 to be alive attempted to gain possession of 
 the earth." 
 
 Just here I interrupted: "Are you attack- 
 ing or defending?" 
 
 "I'm doing neither," declared John, "I am 
 describing.'* 
 
 "Your description sounds a good deal like 
 a subtle advocacy," I remarked. 
 
 John was every bit the keen lawyer as he 
 replied : 
 
 "Your opponent should never be able to 
 put his own case more strongly than you 
 have put it for him. You don't have to mis- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 21 
 
 interpret Nietzsche in order to get a verdict 
 against him at last." 
 
 I leaned back in my chair and said: "All 
 right. Go to it." 
 
 "The will to power is a most interesting 
 part of Nietzsche's philosophy In his hard- 
 and-fast mechanical system the will to power 
 will find it difficult to find a logical home. 
 But even if it is a sort of illegitimate son of 
 his thinking, it does have immense power to 
 rouse and to quicken all the men who turn 
 to Nietzsche as a guide. Here you have an 
 emphasis on creative energy and masterful 
 capacity and dominant leadership. You always 
 feel a certain vigor coming from the very 
 thought of personal masterfulness as Nietzsche 
 interprets it. The superman has his grave 
 limitations. He is really a sort of super 
 beast. But at least he is a man of action. 
 At least he is not caught in the clutter of 
 things. At least he is not the slave of the 
 system in which he lives. Of course Nietzsche 
 had no right to him. Only a personal philos- 
 ophy gives a real place for even powerful 
 selfish personaKty. But in a world where 
 things have gotten into the saddle and are 
 riding mankind it is refreshing to have the 
 
22 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 call for vigor of will sounded so loudly. The 
 fact is tliat if Nietzsche could only have seen 
 that every man is potentially a superman in 
 the making it would have saved him from 
 most of his errors. If he had seen that Chris- 
 tianity is not the survival of the unfit, but 
 the supremest power to make men fit to sur- 
 vive it would have changed his thought of a 
 thousand relationships. If he had seen that 
 the will to power is only a step in the evolu- 
 tion which reaches its full meaning in the will 
 to serve and the will to sacrifice, vast vistas 
 would have opened before his mind. As it 
 was his mind staggered under the weight of 
 his own philosophy. Clearly, if there is a 
 superman, Nietzsche did not belong to the 
 class. According to his own standards he was 
 not fit to survive." 
 
 We sat in silence for a little while. Then 
 John spoke one more sentence: 
 
 "The man who tried to be God after all 
 only made it more clear that it is not by being 
 God but by trusting God that you can get 
 safely through the world." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 23 
 
 THE VIRILITY OF RALPH CONNOR 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was just turning the 
 last page of a book as I entered the room. 
 I looked over his shoulder and promptly dis- 
 covered that he had been reading the last 
 volume from the prolific pen of that Winnipeg 
 minister whom the world of letters knows as 
 Ralph Connor. My friend was on his feet in 
 an instant. After our greetings were over 
 he took a turn or two about the room. Then 
 he turned to me with a question: 
 
 "Have you read The Sky Pilot in No Man's 
 Land?" 
 
 'T carried it off with me on my last week- 
 end trip, and when I got home the last chapter 
 had been read," I replied. 
 
 The Man of Books and Men did not ask 
 for any comment. He was in a mood when 
 he wanted to talk, and he leaned back in his 
 chair in a way which I quite understood. 
 So I sat silently beside him waiting until he 
 found his first sentence. 
 
 "It was in 1899," he began. *T was in the 
 East at the time. One night at dinner I heard 
 
24 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 some remark about a new Canadian author 
 who had a trick of making people and their 
 experiences live again before your eyes. The 
 next day I bought a copy of Black Rock. 
 It was like a breath of clear mountain air. 
 And what tremendous people there were in 
 it. They had downright passions. They 
 knew how to love. They knew how to hate. 
 And right while you watched them they were 
 held by the human grip of real religion in a 
 way that filled you with astonishment. From 
 that day I knew that Ralph Connor had 
 something for me. Then came The Sky Pilot. 
 One cannot forget Gwen's Canyon. There 
 was wonderfully delicate art here and a 
 power to delineate simple and sincere human 
 devotion which quite held one's heart. Book 
 followed book rapidly enough now. Some- 
 times it was young life in a Canadian home. 
 Sometimes it was the career of young people 
 finding their way in life. The wide West 
 was in it all. The mountains hovered over it. 
 Artificial conventions were made to seem petty 
 in the presence of the direct and powerful 
 people one met in these books of strong men. 
 There were literary weaknesses enough. Some- 
 times the sentiment became cloyingly sweet. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 25 
 
 There was little of that probing insight into 
 the subtler processes of the soul which is the 
 glory of much contemporary fiction. One had 
 a way of meeting the same character with a 
 different name attached as one passed through 
 Connor's books. But all this and more was 
 forgiven. For without question this whole- 
 hearted Canadian did have something real and 
 potent and mastering which you cared so 
 much about that you thought very little of 
 the qualities which his work lacked. Most of 
 his books celebrated the wedlock of red blood 
 and religion and very happy you were to 
 attend these nuptials." 
 
 Clearfield walked over to a shelf of books 
 while he was talking and picked up The Major. 
 
 "Here is Connor's first war book," he said. 
 "You get a graphic picture of a Canada which 
 had no dream of the world tragedy which was 
 impending. You see the various attitudes of 
 men as the danger approaches. You see the 
 response of an aroused people when the crisis 
 comes. But you do not go to France. It is 
 The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land which takes 
 you over the ocean and into the actual fighting. 
 The book is full of touches which come from 
 first-hand contact. Even a man who had 
 
26 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 read little of the war literature would know 
 a good deal about what this war was like by 
 the time he finished the book. There is a fine 
 upstanding manliness about it. There is an 
 atmosphere of grit and endurance and daunt- 
 less courage. There is a passionate love for 
 Canada, a deep loyalty to the Empire, a hearty 
 appreciation of the Allies, and a warm and 
 generous enthusiasm for America. You watch 
 the young minister at war as he comes to 
 understand what are the needs of the men, 
 and as he learns how to minister to them. 
 There is quick movement, there is the dash 
 of swift and terrible adventure. There is the 
 cloud of grief black with bereavement, but 
 always with a golden fiash of hope from be- 
 yond the cloud. There is the bloom of a fair 
 flower of human love, and this with the sud- 
 denness and stormy energy which character- 
 izes so many experiences in a time of war. 
 There is the hovering consciousness of an un- 
 seen Presence mighty and strong, tender and 
 rich in wonderful companionship, the presence 
 of the God who watches over the fighters in 
 the war-torn world. But most of all, there 
 is the characteristic note of Connor — the note 
 of a gripping and masterful virility. Strong 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 27 
 
 men move through the pages of this book. 
 Their strength stands out as if it were a suit 
 of armor. The book makes you understand 
 the meaning and the necessity of such strength 
 of character as it portrays. It is a book of 
 virility triumphant. It is a virihty conse- 
 crated to the service of Christ. The man 
 who represents the invisible captain is him- 
 self a captain of courage, the peer of any of 
 the sturdy men with whom he serves." 
 
 The Man of Books and Men waited for a 
 moment after he had spoken so swiftly and 
 so rapidly. Then he said: 
 
 *Tt is wonderfully good to escape from the 
 complexities of the introspective novel once and 
 a while, and to read tales as direct and as 
 simple in their assumptions and their actions as 
 are those which Connor writes. There is a 
 finer and a more manly spirit in Canada and in 
 America because one Canadian minister knows 
 how to make his love of courageous manliness 
 live in his tales of the Northwest." 
 
28 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE EMPTY ROOMS 
 
 THE other night after dinner I dropped in 
 upon my friend John Clearfield. I 
 found him deep in a comfortable chair in his 
 library. He was in a brown study. For a 
 while I moved about among his books, leaving 
 him in the company of his busy thoughts. 
 At length he looked up: 
 
 "Can you tell me the most impressive evi- 
 dence of contemporary inefficiency?" he asked. 
 
 "The comparison of the skill with which we 
 produce things with our bungling methods of 
 dealing with persons," I replied after a mo- 
 ment of thought. 
 
 John kindled at once. 
 
 "You are more than half right about that," 
 he conceded. "When we give as much atten- 
 tion to the production of human character as 
 we now give to the production of luxuries we 
 will transform the life of the world. We 
 are capable when we deal with things. We 
 move with futility and incapacity when we 
 deal with persons." 
 
 Clearfield sat quite still as he turned the 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 29 
 
 thought over in his mind. Then he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 ''That is not what I was thinking about, 
 though the two things do have a connection. 
 I was thinking that the typical modern man 
 lives in a house with many empty rooms. He 
 owns his house. But he never really uses it 
 to its full capacity. And sometimes the rooms 
 he never enters are really the most important 
 rooms of all." 
 
 'T know a good many people who are over- 
 flowing their houses and want bigger ones more 
 than they want anything else," I observed. 
 
 "You know perfectly well that I am talking 
 about the houses you can't burn up," inter- 
 rupted John with some acid in his voice. 
 "You don't usually find it necessary to be so 
 desperately literal." 
 
 "I only thought you would talk better if 
 you felt near to the typical contemporary 
 mind," J replied so gently that John threat- 
 ened to throw a paper weight at me. 
 
 "It's a big house the Master of life gives to 
 every growing boy," said Clearfield soberly 
 when we had finished chaffing. "It has no 
 end of wonderful rooms in it. And it really 
 seems a pity to have so many men die with- 
 
30 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 out ever entering rooms where they might 
 find such stimulus and pleasure and out of 
 which they might go with such power to serve 
 the world." 
 
 I was idly penciling pictures of large houses 
 on some white paper I had picked up from the 
 library table of my friend. He stood looking 
 over my shoulder and smiling whimsically. 
 Then he reached over and deftly turned one 
 of my houses into a church by the trick of 
 giving it a steeple and a row of Gothic windows. 
 
 "Every house ought to have a church in it," 
 said John. "At least every house ought to 
 have a private chapel. And that's one of the 
 rooms a good many men never enter. It 
 came to me with a queer shock the other day 
 that the room of prayer in the lives of masses 
 of modern men is all full of dust and cob- 
 webs with never the mark of human feet. If 
 there's Somebody waiting there to meet you, 
 he waits a long time. It must be terribly dull 
 and lonely. You pass a good many lives in 
 the night. Once and a while you see a beau- 
 tiful light. And as you look closely you know 
 that it is shining through the exquisite win- 
 dows of the room of prayer. A man misses a 
 lot who leaves that room empty." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 31 
 
 Clearfield walked over in front of the open 
 fire and gazed steadily at the red embers. 
 
 "I met a man the other day," he said, "who 
 told me that he perfectly hated to be alone. 
 He was all the while bustling about, keeping 
 in the midst of noise and confusion, in per- 
 petual fear that some time he might be left 
 with nobody but himself in the neighborhood. 
 He kept the room of meditation tightly locked. 
 The worst of it was you could not tell him 
 what he was missing. He would not have 
 understood a word you said." 
 
 "You have to take them young," I inter- 
 jected. 
 
 "Right you are," said Clearfield. "But just 
 the same it's a sad sort of experience to watch 
 a lonely man — living in a big house he has 
 never learned to use." 
 
 Few men know more various types than my 
 friend John, and as he went on to picture the 
 men he had known who never entered the 
 room of love, who had lost their capacity for 
 affection in hard, self -centered activity; as he 
 spoke of the men who never entered the room 
 of study and whose mental horizon became 
 smaller with every year; as he spoke of the 
 men who never enter the room of radiant 
 
32 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ideals and so live lives dull gray and unin- 
 spired, I began to share his own acute per- 
 ception of how much a man may miss as he 
 goes through the world. 
 
 "I went by a house the other night where 
 every room was lighted. It was a big house. 
 Some sort of party was in progress. And 
 out of every window brightness was shining. 
 That's what a man's life ought to be like — a 
 house with no empty rooms." 
 
 A little later I said "Good night," and as 
 I walked away my own mind seemed warmed 
 and brightened by my friend's picture of the 
 house with bright light shining from every 
 room. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 33 
 
 POISE AND PASSION 
 
 A LITTLE group of men had gathered 
 around John Clearfield in a corner of 
 the lounge in his favorite club. As I entered 
 the room I recognized the president of a big 
 corporation, a well-known judge, and a pro- 
 fessor of history in one of our universities. 
 The captain of industry was speaking as I 
 came up to the group. 
 
 "There are no two ways about it, Clearfield," 
 were the first words I heard. "We have got 
 to do something stern and unhesitating. And 
 we have got to do it right away. The radicals 
 think they are in the saddle, and they will 
 dash over the precipice with the whole coun- 
 try if we don't stop them." 
 
 At the moment a leader widely appreciated 
 for his social passion joined the group. He 
 overheard the last words which had been 
 spoken and broke in at once, putting his hand 
 on the shoulder of the man of big business 
 who was one of his close friends. 
 
 "There you go again," he said with a rather 
 serious twinkle in his eye, "seeing red as usual. 
 
34 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 If men like you don't watch out they will get 
 so excited that they will produce the very 
 conditions which they fear." 
 
 The judge looked up at this. "Now you've 
 said something," he declared. "The great need 
 of the hour is poise. We are in danger of 
 being ruined by the intensity of our feelings. 
 In an hour of nation-wide passion, the man of 
 poise is the one safe man." 
 
 "Providing he isn't a helpless man," inter- 
 rupted the professor of history. 'Tassion often 
 gets a hearing while poise is rejected and 
 ignored. It was Luther, and not Erasmus, who 
 changed the current of modern history." 
 
 John Clearfield had been listening with 
 every faculty alert. I always enjoy watching 
 the fashion in which he listens when he is 
 really interested in what is being said. Now 
 he spoke. 
 
 "Perhaps you are all right," he said, "and 
 perhaps if you put everything you say to- 
 gether the way through the confusion will 
 begin to be seen. How about the man with 
 passionate poise as the man to pilot us to 
 safer waters? If a man is as steady as a ju- 
 dicial mind can make him, and as full of pas- 
 sion as a deep and sympathetic understanding 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 35 
 
 of the issues can lead him to be, he will have 
 the magnetism of a leader and the dependable- 
 ness of a judge." (This with a gleam in his 
 eye as he looked toward the man of the bench.) 
 He waited the fraction of a minute. Then he 
 said, "The man with passion and without 
 poise is often influential and always dangerous. 
 The man with poise and without passion is 
 safe and ineffective. The man of passionate 
 poise can capture the imagination of men and 
 lead them to a better day." 
 
36 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 CAPTURING OUR RAREST MOODS 
 
 THERE were times when John Clearfield's 
 face was wonderfully good to look upon. 
 When a great idea got possession of him, and 
 his whole personality was tingling with the 
 power of it, his face had a way of positively 
 glowing. "It's as if you hung a lantern inside 
 him," said one of his friends. "He becomes 
 positively incandescent." I used to sit and 
 watch Clearfield at such a time, half for- 
 getting what he was saying, while the play 
 of light on his face worked its fine magic, like 
 an artist putting the last secret of charm into 
 a masterpiece. Once when the very glory of 
 his enthusiasm had transfigured his whole 
 countenance, gleaming in his eyes, flushing in 
 a sort of rosy light upon his cheeks, I inter- 
 rupted his flow of speech: 
 
 "O John," I cried, "if you could say it as 
 you look it, your words would be immortal." 
 
 "And if I could keep looking it, I could say 
 it without words," he flashed back, almost be- 
 fore the words were out of my mouth. 
 
 "You make me think of one of Mrs. Whar- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 37 
 
 ton's characters," I replied, "of whom it is 
 said that her face in its carvings as you looked 
 at it in repose, suggested her rarest mood." 
 
 "And that is the problem of life," said the 
 Man of Books and Men. "You have done the 
 great and masterful and glorious thing, when 
 you have captured your rarest mood." 
 
 We walked along in silence for a while after 
 that. I was thinking of the common faces, and 
 the dull faces, and the wicked faces, which I 
 had seen illuminated by some swift and reveal- 
 ing mood of love or hope or aspiration. The 
 vision of all these people good and bad, strong 
 and weak, mentally nimble and slow of mind, 
 capturing the rapturous strength of their rarest 
 mood, was like an apocalypse of hope. In a 
 moment John Clearfield was speaking again. 
 
 "I have been going over the Gospels lately," 
 he was saying, "to try to find the secret of 
 Jesus' immediate grip upon men. And I think 
 I have found it. He made men feel that the 
 mood which was so fine and high that they had 
 never dared to take it seriously, was really a reve- 
 lation of the deepest meaning of their lives. He 
 had a way of catching a man with a great thought, 
 and then saying in effect: *My friend, this is 
 actually you. How dare you be anything differ- 
 
38 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ent, or anything less?' And so he went about 
 with a fine spiritual audacity, making men be- 
 lieve in the validity of their rarest moods." 
 
 Clearfield's train of thought had taken me on 
 board by this time, and I found myself saying: 
 "And I suppose he often produced that rare mood, 
 and then gave men courage to be loyal to it." 
 
 My friend nodded approvingly at that. 
 "Often he did create the mood," he said, "but 
 he always made it rise up as from the depths 
 of a man's own life. He never brought it as 
 something wonderful from the outside. The 
 thing that gave men courage was this feeling 
 that the mood belonged to them, that the seed 
 of it was in their own lives. If he revealed 
 to a man his worst self and made him hate 
 it, he revealed to that same man his best self, 
 and showed him how to be loyal to it. So he 
 made men more humble than they had ever 
 been, and he made them more joyously hope- 
 ful than they had ever dared to be." 
 
 "A good many people have learned that 
 secret from him," I ventured now. "Phillips 
 Brooks knew it. All his preaching was a 
 declaration of independence in the name of 
 the best moods of his hearers. Mrs. Maud 
 Ballington Booth knows it. I heard her speak 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 39 
 
 to fifteen hundred prisoners in a big peni- 
 tentiary one day. She seemed an incarnate 
 challenge, calling those men to believe in hopes 
 they had buried, and to go back to dreams of 
 manhood they had turned from in despair. 
 I have listened to quiet preachers in little 
 churches who knew it. And all their preach- 
 ing glowed with the surprise and the gladness 
 of it. They put a new meaning into the old 
 phrase justification by faith." 
 
 I was watching John Clearfield now with 
 an arrested intent gaze. It was as if he were 
 seeing a sunrise beyond my gaze, and his 
 face had caught the splendor of it. He stood 
 thus for a little while, and I waited for the 
 words which I knew would come. At length 
 he turned to me smiling whimsically. "There 
 is no hunting like it, is there.^" he said. "It's 
 really big game you are after. And that is just 
 what the adventure of life means, taking all the 
 risks and going forth to capture your highest 
 moods." In a moment his voice softened, and 
 he spoke with that simple sincerity which al- 
 ways gripped me. "It's a big thing to have a 
 Guide who knows all the habits of the game." 
 
 As I walked home that night I was still 
 thinking of the light upon my friend's face. 
 
40 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE MAN WHO EXPECTS TO BE 
 SURPRISED 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was in high good 
 humor. He was moving about his library, 
 sorting out papers, replacing books in their 
 proper shelves, and gayly whistling all the 
 while. I sat watching him and drinking in 
 the contagion of his high spirits. After a little 
 he flung himself into a chair beside me. 
 
 "Do you want to know what it is all about .f*" 
 he asked with a gleam of fun in his eye. 
 
 "Go on with your dissertation," I replied. 
 "Only let me name it first. It is to be called 
 The Psychology of a Whistle.' " 
 
 The Man of Books and Men sent forth one 
 more series of joyously whistled notes. Then 
 he began to talk. 
 
 "It's Henri Bergson," he said. "You see, 
 I was in just the right mood last night, and I 
 went through his Creative Evolution, reading 
 every one of the passages which I had marked 
 when I first read the book. This time I didn't 
 pay so much attention to the reasoning. I 
 just drank in the mood. It was like a new 
 declaration of independence of the human 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 41 
 
 spirit. It set quicksilver moving in my veins. 
 I went to bed feeling that the big things are 
 all to come. Life hasn't worn out. The hu- 
 man spirit hasn't come to an end of its re- 
 sources. Men are full of creative energy. 
 There are glorious possibilities everywhere. 
 And you simply cannot tell what is going to 
 happen next." 
 
 He paused quite out of breath. Then he 
 turned toward me in his quick engaging way, 
 and went on. 
 
 "When finally I went to sleep the spell of it 
 was still upon me. I dreamed that I made a new 
 world with seven moons revolving round it." 
 
 He laughed a little, but sobered instantly. 
 
 "The dream was all right at the heart of 
 it," he insisted. "We rea ly can make a new 
 world if we try hard enough." 
 
 I broke in upon him here long enough to 
 quote: 
 
 "Beat down yon beetling mountain 
 
 And raise yon jutting cape. 
 A world is on the anvil, 
 
 Now smite it into shape. 
 Whence comes that iron music 
 
 Whose sound is heard afar? 
 The hammers of the world-smiths 
 
 Are beating out a star." 
 
42 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "Yes, that's exactly the mood," he assented. 
 "And the lack of that mood is what's the 
 matter with the world. We have lost con- 
 fidence. We think the great things have hap- 
 pened. We do not expect to be surprised. 
 Even the war has left multitudes of people 
 completely sluggish. They do not really be- 
 lieve in reconstruction. They think that after 
 a little flurry everything will settle down to be 
 just as it has been. They have no mounting 
 dreams. They have no climbing hopes. They 
 do not sense at all the great creative impulses 
 which are abroad in the world now, and which 
 are always potential in the human heart." 
 
 We were silent for a moment after this out- 
 burst. Then Clearfield took up the thread of 
 his thought. 
 
 "The nineteenth century was the big ma- 
 chine age. Even the mind was seen as the 
 last expression of the machine idea. Every- 
 body thought in the terms of wheels. And 
 the spirit of the living creature got ground up 
 in the wheels. We lost the sense of deep per- 
 sonal initiative. We became sluggish at the 
 center of our lives. Our thinkers were effective 
 in classification. They quite lost the power of 
 inspiration. And life began to get dull and 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 43 
 
 gray. Then came Bergson and men of his 
 type. They made plenty of mistakes. But 
 they got hold of one tremendous thing. They 
 renewed our belief in life. They showed us 
 that the world is not exhausted. They taught 
 us to believe in the future. They brought into 
 existence the type of man who expects to be 
 surprised." 
 
 John Clearfield turned over the pages of the 
 copy of Bergson's Creative Evolution which 
 was in his hand. Then he said very seriously, 
 "The hope of the world is the man who expects 
 the unexpected." 
 
44 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 BY AN UNKNOWN DISCIPLE 
 
 LATE Good Friday afternoon I dropped 
 into John Clearfield's study. I found 
 him turning over the pages of a new book of 
 which I had seen some newspaper notices, but 
 upon which my own eyes had not yet fallen. It 
 was that fresh telling of the story of the life of 
 Jesus By An Unknown Disciple. I dropped into 
 an easy chair on the other side of a table, picked 
 up the announcement of that new weekly, the 
 Review, and was running over its promises, when 
 John laid down his book and spoke : 
 
 "I always read some life of Christ when the 
 Lenten season comes around," he said. "Last 
 year it was that discerning and stirring little 
 book. The Jesus of History, by T. R. Glover. 
 On two successive years it was David Smith's 
 curiously vivid book, The Days of His Flesh. 
 You will remember that the London Times 
 called it definitely the life of Christ for our 
 time. This year I have read this little book 
 By An Unknown Disciple." 
 
 The Man of Books and Men leaned back in 
 his chair fingering the pages of the volume. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 45 
 
 "The man who wrote this book is a practical 
 craftsman," he said. "He had written many 
 a page before he laid his hand to this task. 
 And if I am not mistaken this is far from being 
 the first book which he has published. There 
 is deft and understanding and effective work- 
 manship on every page. Then the book has 
 an atmosphere all of its own. All the while 
 you see Jesus against a wonderfully well drawn 
 background. The author of the book knew the 
 period. And he was master of no end of small 
 and intimate matters which lend that air of 
 reality to a book which is an almost priceless 
 asset." 
 
 I put forth my hand for the book and in a 
 moment was going through it, picking out an 
 effective sentence here and there. 
 
 "I wouldn't do that if I were you," remarked 
 John. "You ought to get the impact of the 
 whole of it in consecutive reading. I read the 
 book at one sitting. It doesn't tire you. From 
 start to finish it holds your interest. The man 
 who wrote it cared a great deal about the 
 Master and he was wonderfully eager to make 
 him real to other people. The Unknown Dis- 
 ciple is the possessor of a daring mind. He 
 thinks things out for himself. And he has 
 
46 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 many a fresh and curious bit of interpretation. 
 Even when you do not agree with him, you 
 have to do some thinking for yourself, and so 
 you come to see the Master in clearer and 
 sharper perspective." 
 
 I closed the book obediently while Clear- 
 field talked on, resisting the temptation to tell 
 him that he did not want me to read sentences 
 from it simply because he wanted to talk about 
 it himself. He caught the telltale gleam in 
 my eyes, however, and reading my thoughts 
 with his usual readiness, he stopped to say: 
 
 "You wonder how you are going to get a 
 completely fresh impression of the book if I 
 keep talking about it, don't you? Well, you 
 will. I'll get you to be so eager to prove that I 
 haven't seen all there is in the book that you'll 
 bring twice your usual amount of attention to 
 it, and so you will really read it." 
 
 "That was really a rather terrible reply to 
 a remark which I did not make," I interrupted. 
 John smiled with a little edge of irony on his 
 teeth, and then hurried on. 
 
 "The man who wrote this book loved people. 
 He knew them, too. And when he talks about 
 them you see them. You will not forget his 
 picture of Mary Magdalene. He has a feeling 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 47 
 
 for the past, and he makes you feel how the 
 shadow of other days fell upon the twelve and 
 their Master. He has a feeling for nature. 
 And you feel the quality of the day or the 
 night as you follow him through the pages of 
 the book." 
 
 "You have said almost everything about the 
 book except what I want most to know," I 
 broke in long enough to say. "What about 
 the central figure? What about the portrait 
 of Jesus?" 
 
 John was silent for a little while. He had a 
 sort of finely delicate reverence when he spoke 
 of the Master which always appealed to me. 
 At length he spoke again: 
 
 "Well," he said, "it is really a splendidly 
 wrought out picture of a part of the life of 
 the Man of the Gospels. Perhaps I can put 
 it in this way: When you have finished this 
 book, you are sure to love Jesus, but I am not 
 at all clear that it would occur to you to wor- 
 ship him. When you have finished the Gospels 
 themselves you not only love the Master but 
 you feel that you must give him worship as 
 well as devotion. This book is a delightfully 
 graphic portrayal of a real part of the life of 
 Christ. But there are deep and marvelous 
 
48 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 aspects of his experience which it does not 
 touch. I hke books of this sort for what they 
 do. Then I go to some other place to find 
 what they have not been able to give me." 
 
 "And where would you go in this case.'^" 
 I asked. 
 
 John smiled as he replied: "Why not go to 
 the four Gospels themselves? After all, the 
 best service of a book like this is to sharpen 
 your appreciation when you go back to the 
 New Testament." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 49 
 
 THE READING OF POETRY 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was seated deep in 
 a big and comfortable chair in his library 
 with a volume of poems by Nicholas Vachel 
 Lindsay in his hand. 
 
 "One of these days I want to tell you a 
 number of convictions I hold regarding Vachel 
 Lindsay," he said as I threw myself into a 
 chair on the other side of the big fireplace. 
 
 "Eventually — why not now?" I asked. 
 
 "Because I want to talk about something 
 else to-night," replied the Man of Books and 
 Men. "I want to talk about poetry." 
 
 He mused for a little while and then he began: 
 
 "The other afternoon I heard Dr. Walter 
 Leaf talk about Persian poetry. The fact that 
 this very powerful banker and distinguished 
 Homeric scholar had taken time to get into 
 Persian poetry interested me immensely. But 
 I came away feeling that I would be willing 
 to let the typical busy man in America pass 
 by Persian poetry if he would only pay a little 
 more attention to English poetry." 
 
 John was warming to his theme. 
 
50 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "Do you know," he said, "I visited an An- 
 nual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church the other day. I strolled into the room 
 where there was a fairly large collection of 
 books on sale. It was a good selection too. 
 I was surprised and pleased at many of the 
 works which I found on the big table. But 
 one thing puzzled me. And it did not please 
 me at all. There was almost no poetry to be 
 found on the long table full of books. There 
 were a couple of war anthologies. There was 
 a volume of poems by Henry van Dyke. There 
 was a book of Robert Service's unconventional 
 verse. And that was practically all. Does it 
 mean that all the radiant idealism, all the 
 rich and versatile human sympathy, all the 
 gripping and living phrases of contemporary 
 verse have no particular appeal to the typical 
 contemporary minister .f^" 
 
 Without waiting for a reply, Clearfield 
 dashed on. 
 
 "The other night I was at a dinner of a 
 little group of lawyers. I chanced to mention 
 Robert Frost. Only one man at the table knew 
 anything about him. Only one man had read 
 Master's Spoon River Anthology, though all 
 had heard of it. Not a man of them had read 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 51 
 
 Masefield's ^Everlasting Mercy/ One knew the 
 poems of Alfred Noyes fairly well. I was the 
 only man of the group who had gone much 
 beyond 'General William Booth Enters Into 
 Heaven' with Vachel Lindsay." 
 
 We sat by the fire while gleams of slow- 
 burning driftwood played with curious fanci- 
 ful colors before our eyes. I looked over at 
 John and watched the glow upon his face. 
 The fire light had something to do with that 
 glow, but it came from a fire within as well 
 as from a fire without. He was speaking very 
 quietly and simply now. 
 
 "Men need the poets," he said. "They 
 need them more than they know." Then he 
 changed a word in a recent vivid rime and 
 quoted : 
 
 "A verse can split the sky in two and let 
 the face of God shine through." 
 
 He was looking intently into the fire as if 
 he could see wonderful lights in the blazing 
 embers. 
 
 "There are other faces too," he said — "faces 
 of men and women and little children. We 
 have never seen all of life until we have seen 
 it through the poets' eyes." 
 
52 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE DANGER OF LOSING YOUR WAY 
 
 I FOUND John Clearfield and Judge Clayton 
 in the midst of a hot discussion the other 
 night. They were sitting in Clearfield's library, 
 and in their preoccupation scarcely noticed 
 my entrance. The Judge was saying: 
 
 "That's just the trouble with you political 
 idealists. You are always expecting too much 
 of the people. The truth of the matter is that 
 the great issues must be decided for them. 
 The ordinary man is not capable of thinking 
 his way through the intricacies of a really 
 complex problem. He must be taught to 
 follow wise leadership." 
 
 "And how will he be able to tell what leader- 
 ship is really wise.^^" John flashed back in an 
 instant. The Judge smiled at the neatness of 
 the question. 
 
 "Come! Come! Clearfield," cried the Judge, 
 "don't try any of your jury tricks with me. 
 You know perfectly well that a man can have 
 a shrewd practical insight which tells him 
 which of two men is really trying to give him 
 helpful advice, and is really able to give it. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 53 
 
 without himself being able to follow all the 
 involved steps of a diflScult argument." 
 
 "What becomes of democracy in your coun- 
 try of docile sheep led by wise shepherds?'* 
 asked the Man of Books and Men. "Don't 
 you really belong back in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury in the age of benevolent despots?" 
 
 The Judge moved a little uneasily in his 
 chair. 
 
 "Of course you don't change hard facts by 
 disagreeable comparisons," he said at length. 
 "In an intricate and bewildering situation like 
 that which has followed the war, the simple 
 truth is that men are almost certain to lose 
 their way, unless you can get them to go back 
 to the habit of letting men of experience and 
 of tried leadership guide them through the 
 maze in which they find themselves." 
 
 "Would you suggest President Lowell or 
 Senator Lodge as the guide?" queried John. 
 I chuckled a little too audibly at this and the 
 Judge turned with a little flash of malice in 
 his eye. "It's easy enough for you to main- 
 tain your delightful optimism in a theological 
 chair," he observed. "Come and sit on the 
 bench with me for a few weeks and then see 
 if you are so ready to trust the mob." 
 
54 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Clearfield was standing between us now. "I 
 know what you want to say to the Judge. So 
 I'll be impolite and say it. Your honor," he 
 continued sententiously, "my client desires me 
 to affirm that you sit on the bench judging a 
 few people in one age, while he sits on a bench 
 judging all the people of all the ages. That's 
 what it means to be a teacher of history." We 
 all laughed at that. Then it became evident 
 that the Man of Books and Men had the floor 
 and that he intended to keep it for a while. 
 
 "It's a great thing to save people from 
 making mistakes," he began, "but when you 
 save them by holding them in an eternal 
 childhood, when you save them by robbing 
 them of the opportunity for real development, 
 when you crush their personality in order to 
 maintain your even scheme of order, when 
 you enslave their minds in order to secure 
 good ways of life, the price which you pay is 
 too great. And it is an impossible price. You 
 are simply preparing the way for an uprising 
 which will overthrow all your carefully erected 
 edifice." 
 
 Judge Clayton was about to interrupt, but 
 Clearfield hun-ied on: 
 
 "Really, Judge, you have unconsciously ut- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 55 
 
 tered the most tremendous argument for men- 
 tal and moral education. It is true that people 
 are in the greatest danger of losing their way. 
 It is true that it is the easiest thing in the 
 world to make mistakes. That means that in 
 a republic you must train every voter to think 
 clearly and closely and honestly about public 
 questions. It means that you must diffuse 
 that kind of ethical education which gives 
 men candor and caution and courage. It 
 means that democracy is never safe unless 
 particular democrats, the majority of them, 
 are men who can be depended upon. It means 
 that you must put the gravest responsibilities 
 upon everyday men, and then that you must 
 train them to be capable of meeting them and 
 worthy of meeting them. To say that some 
 one else must do the thinking for them is a 
 counsel of despair. They must be stimulated. 
 They must be encouraged. The whole structure 
 of life must be made such that it is feasible 
 for them to develop into the fullest capacity 
 for functioning in relation to life's gravest and 
 most serious problems. We are not to be a 
 nation of sheep. We are to be a nation of 
 citizens." 
 
 Judge Clayton looked at his watch as John 
 
5Q THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 came to the end of his trenchant outburst. 
 Then he looked at John and me with a twinkle 
 in his eye. 
 
 "The jury seems carried quite away by your 
 eloquence, Clearfield," he said. "I don't be- 
 lieve that any instructions from the court will 
 have very much effect." 
 
 In a moment the Judge had gone from us, 
 in his stately fashion, taking out of the room a 
 subtle sense of gracious charm as he departed. 
 
 "Dear old Tory," said John as we listened 
 to the sound of the Judge's feet on the pave- 
 ment outside. "The old day had some sort of 
 justification in being able to produce men as 
 fine as he. But for all that his face is turned 
 toward the past. And he has not seen the 
 sunrise on the eastern hills." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 57 
 
 BOOKS AS TOOLS AND BOOKS 
 AS FRIENDS 
 
 WE had been silent for some time. As 
 a matter of fact, my friendship with 
 John Clearfield was quite as remarkable for 
 its silences as for its speech. And I profoundly 
 regret my inability to report any of these 
 pregnant silences, when our companionship was 
 deep and real and our friendship was ripening 
 all the while. 
 
 This particular evening, however, the silence 
 was the prelude to an animated discussion on 
 the part of my friend. He had been spending 
 a good deal of time with a very brilliant young 
 physician, the range of whose humanistic in- 
 terests amazed him. He came in once and 
 again after spending an evening with his new 
 friend bubbling over with enthusiasm. "He 
 is a man of the most genuine scientific spirit," 
 he used to say, "and at the same time he is a 
 born bookman. Books are a real part of his 
 life. They are bone of his bone and flesh of 
 his flesh. And to watch his mind playing with 
 the thoughts of his favorite poets and throwing 
 
58 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 out quick, keen phrases about them is a 
 delight/' 
 
 After our long silence John turned about in 
 a sharp, decisive way which his friends all 
 knew well. 
 
 "I have been thinking about that young 
 Dr. Tilton," he said. "I think now that I 
 have discovered his secret." 
 
 At once I leaned back in my chair in an 
 attitude of expectancy. There was no mood in 
 which I enjoyed John more than that of 
 analyzing people and following the trail of 
 their psychological processes. 
 
 "Multitudes of men have large libraries with 
 which they never become at home," said my 
 friend. "They all the while give you the 
 feeling that they are entertaining guests a little 
 above them in social station, and that they are 
 not quite at ease. Then there are no end of 
 people who regard books as a carpenter regards 
 his hammer, his plane, and his saw. Books are 
 useful tools. But they do not arouse affection. 
 One would never think of writing a lyric ex- 
 pressing one's devotion to an ax. One would 
 not write a love song addressed to a collection 
 of nails. And there are all too many people 
 who never get past the entirely utilitarian view 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 59 
 
 of books. They are tools, but they are not 
 friends. Now Dr. Tilton represents another 
 type. He knows how to use books as tools. 
 He is an alert young physician and his col- 
 leagues tell me that he has unusual technical 
 mastery of his materials. But while he knows 
 how to use books as he might use a hoe or a 
 spade that does not exhaust his relation to 
 them. He has whole ranges of friendships 
 with books. Some are just pleasant acquaint- 
 ances. He has met them in a charming and 
 informal way and he rather hopes that he will 
 see them again. Some are good chums. He 
 has taken them with him on no end of journeys. 
 They have shared some of his most difficult 
 and dangerous experiences. Some of them 
 went with him through the war. He knows 
 he can count on them. They are as steady 
 and as faithful as a man's most intimate 
 friends ought to be. Some he loves with a 
 dim and wistful adoration. They seem remote 
 in their splendid beauty and yet they allure 
 him and they summon him. Some he loves 
 with an abiding passion because there have 
 been golden moments when they have revealed 
 to him the mighty secrets by which he lives. 
 They have opened their heart to him, there- 
 
60 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 fore he loves them. So he has a social world 
 of the most varied types and the richest and 
 most diversified interest among his books. The 
 professional attitude is all forgotten. The 
 utilitarian attitude is brushed aside. His book 
 friends are among the best friends he has in 
 all the world.'' 
 
 Clearfield looked at me shrewdly for a mo- 
 ment. Then he said: "Of course a university 
 must teach men how to use books as tools. 
 But it fails of its richest contribution to their 
 lives if it does not teach them how to make 
 friends with books. Oxford has done that 
 generation after generation. I wonder — " 
 
 He let the sentence trail off into nothing, 
 but the alert look was still in his eyes. I knew 
 that he was not thinking of Oxford. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 61 
 
 AMONG THE CROWDS OF PASSING 
 BOOKS 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was standing at a 
 table on which he had placed two piles 
 of books. 
 
 "Going! Going! Gone!" he cried merrily as 
 I entered. 
 
 "What in the world are you doing.'^" I asked 
 as I surveyed his flushed face and looked upon 
 the table full of volumes which he had taken 
 from the shelves. 
 
 "I am a judge and a jury," said John, "and 
 I have tried and decided one hundred cases 
 this morning." 
 
 By this time I was beginning to examine the 
 books on the table. 
 
 "Don't mix them up," said the Man of 
 Books and Men, sternly. "This pile to your 
 right consists of books which have been ac- 
 quitted. They are to go back to my shelves 
 again. The books on your left have been 
 found guilty of intellectual vagrancy. They 
 have gotten into my library under false pre- 
 tenses. And here they are claiming a perfectly 
 
62 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 good home and all the while they are without 
 visible means of support. I have sentenced 
 every one of them this morning, and now they 
 are to be taken away to pay the penalty the 
 law attaches to their offense." 
 
 The books on the left hand included a num- 
 ber of best sellers. There were some which had 
 quickly caught the popular fancy. There were 
 some which many people had taken very 
 seriously. But the sharp, clear judgment of 
 Clearfield had decided against them all. And 
 away they were to go. I moved around to 
 look at the group of books on the right. Some 
 of them were books any person of ordinary 
 discernment would have known to possess 
 permanent value. Some were books which by 
 some particular quality had caught the ad- 
 miring allegiance of John Clearfield. If he 
 liked a book he liked it, and that was all there 
 was to be said about it. I was particularly 
 interested in a little bundle of books published 
 during the war which he had decided to keep. 
 I made some comment about them, and this 
 set my friend to talking: 
 
 "Three novels published in England during 
 the war have really made a place for them- 
 selves in my mind," he began. "First, there 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 63 
 
 was Mr. Britling. When I had finished it, I 
 was not sure that Mr. BritHng had seen it 
 through, but I was sure that I had seen through 
 Mr. Brithng. A man's soul is spread out as 
 the sensitive surface upon which the war is 
 to make its impression, and you see it all, 
 every mark clear and indelible. It is a great 
 study of a father, a poor study of a husband, 
 and no study at all when it comes to really 
 telling what friendship can mean in a time of 
 war. Then came The Tree of Heaven. If Mr. 
 Wells had told about the effect of the war upon 
 a man. Miss Sinclair told about the effect of 
 the war upon a family. There is a wonderful 
 study of childhood in the book. You get 
 amazing inside glimpses of the meaning of 
 this little collection of human lives. Very 
 sharp and very fine instruments Miss Sinclair 
 uses, and the result is art of a very high order. 
 The last hundred pages of the book move at 
 a lofty height of understanding passion. At 
 first you have a notable family without a cause. 
 When they find a cause they are transfigured. 
 And as you read you know that the thing 
 happened not to a family alone, but to a na- 
 tion. The third English war novel which 
 gripped me was Sonia. It has a hero, and there 
 
64 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 are a number of powerful men, but there is no 
 heroine. The men are all bigger than the 
 women in the crisis. You live over again the 
 experiences of school and university, and Ox- 
 ford exerts its never-ending charm in these 
 pages. You move out into the hard glittering 
 life of a society which mistook motion for en- 
 joyment and extravagance for gayety. Then the 
 war comes. And with its sudden sharp and 
 unescapable demand the soul of fineness emerges 
 and you see the true England which had been 
 hidden in the smoke and incense of its own 
 prosperity. To read these three books is to 
 have a memorable series of experiences. They 
 do not tell all the truth. But they do tell you 
 some things you can never forget." 
 
 By this time I had made my way into the 
 little pile of books and was holding one of 
 them in my hand. 
 
 "I see you have kept some volumes of per- 
 sonal experience," I said. "Here is Donald 
 Hankey's Student in Arms." 
 
 John put forth his hand for the volume I 
 had lifted from the table. "Yes, I have both 
 the Student Books by Hankey," he said. "I 
 will want to go back to them again and again. 
 Hankey found the jewel in the midst of the 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 65 
 
 mire. And when he died his own face was 
 bright with the joy of the discovery. We 
 cannot forget him. And that young man whose 
 father preaches in New Jersey, and who kept 
 his dreams and his insights in the midst of all 
 the terror/, and found himself anew in the 
 tumult and the pain — one must go back to his 
 simple human little books once and again. 
 Coningsby Dawson has said some things in 
 Carry On and Living Bayonets which show 
 the eyes of youth clear and certain in the 
 midst of all the horrors of war. There's a 
 young fellow on the Pacific Coast whose in- 
 sight has been quickened by his days in France. 
 There are interesting stories about Bill Stidger's 
 experiences over there. I met him in a Y. M. 
 C. A. Hut not far from the Front. I saw then 
 that he was a wonderfully vital chap. But his 
 little book, Soldier Silhouettes, surprised me. 
 He brushes aside the incidental so easily. He 
 finds the little blooming flower with such a 
 sure instinct. He is such a curious combina- 
 tion of red blood and idealism. A good many 
 people went to France without seeing what 
 Bill Stidger saw. But that is because they 
 went without Bill Stidger's eyes." 
 
 Now I started to say something about a 
 
66 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 whole group of books. And I have only be- 
 gun to talk about them when my space is 
 used up. I'll have to leave it at this. When 
 we got into the heart of the pile, I found that 
 the important books were all there. And John 
 Clearfield did have remarkably trenchant things 
 to say about them. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 67 
 
 A COMMANDING VOICE 
 
 "T'VE heard your ministerf cried John 
 JL Clearfield, as he threw himself into a 
 chair in my study the other Sunday after- 
 noon. Curiously enough, he had not been in 
 Evanston on a Sunday since the arrival of 
 Dr. Ernest F. Tittle, with the mark of war 
 heavy upon his life, and his words tense with 
 qiiiet, deep social passion. Sitting opposite my 
 friend I waited for him to go on. I had been 
 looking forward with no little relish to the 
 day when he would feel the strength and the 
 momentum of the personality of our new leader. 
 John smiled a little as he looked across at 
 me, reading my thought. "Do you know I 
 was almost afraid to hear him.?" he said. 
 "During the war Dr. Tittle preached once in 
 the City Temple in London. Last summer 
 once and again I met Londoners who remem- 
 bered that sermon. I ran into people who had 
 heard him in the university town where he 
 preached in Ohio, and in the capital of his 
 State where he won such a notable hearing. 
 All that I heard made me feel that I was fairly 
 sure to expect too much." 
 
68 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 John stopped a minute. Then he let the 
 whole depth of his feelings flash in his eyes. 
 
 "But, man," he said, "y<^u never gave me 
 a notion of what this morning would be like. 
 Before he uttered a word Dr. Tittle made me 
 want to listen. Personality fairly exhales from 
 him. Then his voice is full of richness, and 
 color, and capacity to interpret all his moods. 
 And where did he ever learn to use the English 
 language? Great quantities of words must be 
 lying all about him as he speaks, and with a 
 sure, deft instinct, he selects words of force, 
 and vital energy, and with cutting edge, and 
 words with luminous power. His phrases come 
 with a fresh vigor and often with genuine 
 distinction. His mind is a great storehouse. 
 Literary and historical references make you 
 feel that he moves about the ages and among 
 the minds of men with a firm, sure step. And 
 it is all done with such naturalness that you 
 scarcely realize in what ways of varied erudition 
 you are being guided. There is the glow of 
 humor, and the flash of the quick blade of 
 irony. And all the while there is a splendidly 
 human quality. You are having a wonderful 
 time meeting a mind. You are having a finer 
 time meeting a man." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 69 
 
 "When you do surrender you capitulate like 
 a gentleman," I observed. John turned on me 
 a little impatiently. 
 
 "Capitulate! who wouldn't capitulate.^" he 
 exclaimed. "I haven't spent most of my life 
 reading and thinking and studying and com- 
 paring without being ready for this sort of 
 experience when it comes. One does not have 
 too many mornings like this. The world is 
 full of words — but to-day I heard a voice." 
 
 He walked back and forth for a little while. 
 Then he spoke a bit softly. 
 
 "But, best of all, the man's message is bigger 
 than the man. There is simple, deep sincerity. 
 There is profound and moving passion. There 
 is the fire of a quenchless devotion to the ideals 
 of Jesus. There is unhesitating commitment to 
 his moral and spiritual lordship. There is 
 readiness to pay a costly price to make brother- 
 hood real in the world. The best thing Dr. 
 Tittle did for me was to make me forget the 
 man in his message." 
 
 We sat silent for a while. Then I found that 
 John Clearfield was repeating softly his favorite 
 lines from Arnold's "Rugby Chapel." After 
 that he said: "He is young yet. What a 
 moral and spiritual adventure life is to such 
 
70 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 a man. And what doors open before the men 
 and women who hear him. Take good care 
 of yourselves and of him, my friend." 
 
 And then as quickly as he had come John 
 Clearfield had slipped away. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 71 
 
 TYPES OF POLITICAL LEADERS 
 
 THE train going East was crowded. I had 
 bought my ticket and had secured my 
 Pullman reservations several days before, how- 
 ever, and so I had nothing to fear. Then the 
 man who was to sleep above me soon took 
 himself off to the smoker, and so I had the 
 section practically to myself. The porter 
 placed a table for me. I got out my little 
 Corona, and soon its keys were ticking merrily 
 and I was working quite as if I had been in 
 my own study. By dinner time there were 
 several good hours of work behind me, and I 
 felt ready to be human and friendly, if the 
 train chanced to contain a friend. It was 
 with entire delight, therefore, that in one of 
 the cars through which I passed on my way 
 to the diner I found John Clearfield, just 
 emerging from a book which he had been read- 
 ing. In a few minutes we were seated opposite 
 each other in the dining car, dinner ordered, 
 and ready for talk. 
 
 It was only a few days after the death of 
 Colonel Roosevelt and soon the conversation 
 
72 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 turned upon him. My lawyer friend summed 
 up his career, in sentences as telling and 
 trenchant as one expects from him. There was 
 admiration, and critical insight, and a real 
 apprehension of the deeper meaning of American 
 life in what he said. Then there came a quick 
 turn in the conversation and John Clearfield 
 began to talk about political life in America. 
 I have been thinking a good deal since about 
 what he said, and I am inclined to take it 
 very seriously. 
 
 "American political parties have always 
 built themselves about the conflict between two 
 ideas," said my friend. "On the one hand, 
 there is the idea that we ought to have a 
 firmer central authority. That has been the 
 basic principle of Alexander Hamilton and of 
 all his successors. On the other hand, there 
 is the idea that the individual man and the 
 individual state ought to be kept to the front. 
 This has been in some form the basic idea of 
 all the successors of Thomas Jefferson." 
 
 Just here the soup was served. The train gave 
 a sudden lurch and John Clearfield narrowly 
 escaped an application of hot, thick fluid to his 
 freshly pressed coat. A deft movement averted 
 the danger, however, and he continued: 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 73 
 
 "The curious thing about the poHtical de- 
 velopment of the country after the Civil 
 War was the more and more complete organ- 
 ization of the party for its own sake, and not 
 for the sake of the principles it avowed. Now, 
 the type of man whose whole activity was 
 based upon the ambition to keep in politics 
 became ubiquitous. Political exploitation of the 
 country was taken almost as a matter of course. 
 Over against the corrupt politician arose a man 
 of protest. He was a man of brains. He was 
 a man of character. He became a political 
 independent. Carl Schurz is a good repre- 
 sentative of the type. Everybody admired him. 
 And everybody respected him. But at length 
 he made a sad and disillusioning discovery. 
 The political bosses all liked him. They liked 
 him because he was so respectable and so 
 harmless. He never seriously thwarted their 
 plans. He was a picturesque and noble, but 
 a sadly ineffective figure. This was the situa- 
 tion in America when a certain young New 
 Yorker began to make himself felt in the Em- 
 pire State. The crisis in his career came when 
 he tried ineffectually to prevent the nomina- 
 tion of Blaine for the Presidency. He went 
 away to a Western ranch to think the matter 
 
74 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 out. He saw, on the one hand, the machine 
 poKtician, who was exploiting the country. 
 He saw, on the other, the helpless independent, 
 incorruptible, and ineffective. He did not want 
 to play the part of either. He made up his 
 mind to make an experiment. He would get 
 into the game just as the machine politicians 
 got into it. He would be a part of the big 
 machine. But he would play the game for his 
 country, and not for himself. He would bend 
 the machine to the purposes of patriotism. 
 He would be as shrewd as the most conscience- 
 less politician. He would be as incorruptible 
 as the sternest independent." 
 
 Clearfield was silent for a moment. He 
 smiled amiably at a steak which had just 
 been served. Then he went on. 
 
 "Something interesting has been happening in 
 American politics ever since that decision. It 
 explains Roosevelt's career. It explains the 
 political bad company he sometimes kept. It 
 explains the tremendous impact of his prac- 
 tical political idealism upon American life. 
 He played the game with infinite skill. But 
 he always played it for the good of the country." 
 
 Clearfield was every inch the keen, practical 
 lawyer as he continued his analysis: 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 75 
 
 "Woodrow Wilson has exactly the same 
 political philosophy. He has often disagreed 
 with Roosevelt about particular issues. He 
 has always agreed with him as to the funda- 
 mental matters of method. He too has played 
 the game with infinite skill. He too has kept 
 the good of the country as he saw it in mind." 
 
 We were silent for a little while. I was busy 
 thinking of all that my friend had said. But 
 he was not through. As the dessert was served 
 he spoke again: 
 
 "The only trouble with this type of prac- 
 tical idealism is that you pay such a big price 
 for it. Roosevelt did. Wilson does. Once 
 it was said of Wilson that he got a certain 
 amount of forward-looking legislation at the 
 price of the worst pork-barrel Congress since 
 the Civil War. We must work out a method 
 by which the practical idealist gets his results 
 without sacrificing so much." 
 
 "And how can we do it?" I asked. 
 
 "That will have to wait for another time," 
 laughed Clearfield. The train was slowing up 
 at the moment. "This is my station," said 
 John. "Have a good time in New York and 
 we will talk this thing out when you come 
 back," 
 
76 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS 
 
 WE were seated once more in John 
 Clearfield's comfortable, capacious den. 
 The Man of Books and Men had in his hand 
 a volume discussing the history of political 
 parties in America. This reminded me of a 
 discussion of this very subject which had 
 taken place when we were both traveling East 
 a few weeks before. I reverted to the topic 
 again. 
 
 "You said the other day on the train," I 
 began, "that we would have to evolve a new 
 political method in America. Do you know 
 what it will be?" 
 
 John Clearfield kept turning over the pages 
 of the book in his hand as he sat thinking. 
 At length he said: 
 
 "If I remember, I had made several state- 
 ments: First, the old type of organization 
 politician must be completely overthrown; 
 second, the isolated political independent is 
 respected and helpless; third, the practical 
 political idealist who plays the game shrewdly 
 but for the good of the country, does get some 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 77 
 
 important things accomplished, but he pays 
 too great a price. In fact, the price is so great 
 that we must find some more inexpensive way 
 to get important things done." 
 
 "That's a good summary of your discussion," 
 I rephed. "Now what is the next step.^" 
 
 "Before I take the next step," rephed my 
 friend, "let me make you ready for it." 
 
 He walked back and forth across the room 
 for a few minutes. Then he spoke again: 
 
 "There is a curious fact about American 
 political parties which you may have observed. 
 The two great parties are always tending 
 toward an equilibrium. Sometimes one is the 
 stronger, sometimes the other. But, on the 
 whole, they tend to balance each other. 
 Thoughtful observers have seen in this tendency 
 a suggestion of far-reaching importance. Where 
 the parties so nearly equal each other in 
 strength a small but determined balance of 
 power group could turn an election either way. 
 If in every congressional district you had a 
 group of independents organized and ready 
 for action, studying the political situation, and 
 giving their votes to the man who stood 
 effectively for the right things, their influence 
 would be so far-reaching that they could 
 
78 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 transform American politics. They would not 
 be impotent as was the isolated independent 
 of an older day. They would be as incor- 
 ruptible as he, but their organization, and the 
 balance of power principle would make them 
 most effective. Such organizations as the 
 National Voters' League would keep them 
 fully informed, and they would act together." 
 
 "Would that mean the disruption of the 
 present parties?" I inquired. 
 
 "Not at all," replied John. "It would mean 
 holding them to high principles. It would 
 mean committing them to right practices. The 
 earnest, alert balance of power groups would 
 become so influential that at last neither 
 party could afford to countenance practices of 
 which they did not approve. The organized 
 independent groups would simply enable the 
 parties to function more adequately and faith- 
 
 fully." 
 
 "But isn't that rather a pipe dream, after 
 all.'^" I inquired. "You don't expect it to 
 happen, do you?" 
 
 "A pipe dream, indeed!" burst out Clearfield 
 scornfully. "It's right along the line of con- 
 temporary political evolution. Don't you know 
 that the number of people who vote inde- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 79 
 
 pendently is increasing all the while? Don't 
 you know that an independent vote reelected 
 President Wilson? And this growing body of 
 thoughtful independents waits for wise leader- 
 ship and adequate organization. The future is 
 in their hands. 'V\Tien they realize what they 
 can do as organized balance of power groups 
 we will enter upon a new stage in America's 
 political practice." 
 
 Just at the moment the telephone rang. A 
 voice at the other end of the wire called me to 
 an important meeting. I found my hat and 
 overcoat and hurried away. Soon I was sitting 
 with a group of men who were busily dis- 
 cussing a situation acute with the need of 
 reform. Incidentally, there were many sharp 
 criticisms of the present condition of American 
 politics. All this set me to thinking the more 
 of John Clearfield's plan. I wonder if he 
 is right? 
 
THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 OFF FOR THE SUMMER 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was in the highest 
 possible spirits. The well-oiled machinery 
 of his oflSce was moving with fine precision. 
 A notable case had just been decided to his 
 entire satisfaction after a vigorous tussle. The 
 vacation time was approaching and John was 
 busy selecting the little box of books he always 
 carried of! with him to the mountain cottage 
 where he so often spent the summer. 
 
 This was in the year nineteen sixteen and 
 for one hour the Man of Books and Men 
 seemed to have forgotten the presence of the 
 World War. His mind was off among the hills 
 and the fresh and invigorating mountain air 
 might have been blowing in his face. At least 
 his rapt look and the flush of health upon his 
 cheek suggested that he had left the big town, 
 and was at that moment in his cottage beside 
 the wonderful little mountain lake, for which 
 he had such an affection. 
 
 I looked at John enviously. "You don't need 
 to go off for a vacation. You are as fit as an 
 athlete after weeks of training," I observed. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 81 
 
 "Oh, I'm fit," John admitted, lifting his arms 
 and contracting the muscles which stood out 
 so obviously. "I'm fit. But I'm a bit stale 
 for all that. The hills will put me all right in 
 a week. And after two months of it I'll be 
 ready for another ten months of a man's work. 
 It's only by resting before he's really pressed 
 by the need of it that a man keeps his fight- 
 ing edge." 
 
 I chuckled a little as I murmured "fighting 
 edge." This phrase so perfectly described 
 John. 
 
 Now he was bending over the little wooden 
 box which was to contain his summer's 
 treasures. 
 
 He stood beside it and began to speak 
 oracularly. 
 
 "No book published since 1900 is to go into 
 this box. Of course I'll have some new books 
 sent up to the cottage. But this box is to 
 represent old masters and old friends. Most 
 of the summer I'm going to cultivate humility 
 for myself and my generation by reading 
 notable books which were written before I 
 began to practice law." 
 
 One after another he picked up several 
 volumes of Hazlitt's essays. "There's urbanity 
 
82 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and insight and lucid speech with an echo of 
 music in it," he said. "I'm so busy making 
 sentences that I keep forgetting how to build 
 paragraphs. I'm so busy balancing epigrams 
 on a verbal tight rope, that I forget how a 
 really leisurely and distinguished sentence can 
 move with dignity down a highway. But 
 Hazlitt changes all that. He makes me 
 ashamed of my nervous haste. He gives me 
 back the old perspective of ample and easy 
 culture expressing itself in phrases whose dig- 
 nity equals their penetration and whose quiet 
 charm matches their caustic strength. I'll 
 have a good time with Hazlitt this summer." 
 
 His hand was on another book whose title 
 I could not see. 
 
 "I know what it is," I cried. "That is 
 Henry Esmond. In your present mood you 
 couldn't possibly do without Thackeray." 
 
 John laughingly admitted that I was right. 
 Then he picked up another volume. "Now, 
 magician, name this book and get a real repu- 
 tation for reading yoiu- friend's mind." 
 
 I hesitated a moment and then ventured a 
 guess. 
 
 "It's George Eliot's Romola," I said. 
 
 John smiled a little ironically. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 83 
 
 "No, it isn't Romola," he said. "But it is 
 John Inglesant, and I suppose that belongs 
 to the same class. I'm going to get into the 
 Cavalier mood again. I'm a Puritan by nature 
 and habit of mind. But Shorthouse always 
 makes me feel that there is a real word which 
 the Cavalier has to say." 
 
 Then John went to a shelf where I knew 
 he kept his favorite poets. 
 
 He picked up worn volumes of Tennyson and 
 Browning and a volume of Milton's poems 
 which suggested the attention of a devoted 
 reader. He saw the twinkle in my eye, and 
 spoke. 
 
 "Do you think Milton saves one from being 
 Mid-Victorian.^ His mind rouses me, and his 
 music at its best is like a pipe organ. Any- 
 how I'm not going to be frightened out of 
 allegiance to Tennyson and Browning. Tenny- 
 son is an orchestra playing in the moonlight 
 near a waterfall. And Browning is a dream 
 city where people are so human that you have 
 to prick yourself to make sure they are not 
 real. And how he thinks! He had enough 
 ideas to furnish three centuries of poets. And 
 he had a subtle music of his own." 
 
 Then John stooped again. I bent over him. 
 
84 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Guizot's History of Civilization was there ("to 
 be read after the war," interjected the Man of 
 Books and Men). Plato's Republic was by its 
 side ("to be compared with modem concep- 
 tions of Democracy," said Clearfield), and a 
 volume of F. W. Robertson's sermons was near 
 ("to keep my soul alive," remarked my friend). 
 I turned to go while the process of selection 
 was still going on "The best will come last," 
 taunted John Clearfield cheerily as I walked 
 through the door. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 85 
 
 THE HUMAN TOUCH 
 
 "T HAVE just finished reading Bill Stidger's 
 I last book," said John Clearfield. There 
 was a twinkle in his eye and there was a chuckle 
 in his voice. But back of the twinkle and back 
 of the chuckle there was something which made 
 me feel that my friend was more than ordinarily 
 moved. 
 
 "What an amazing chap Stidger is," he went 
 on. "He has all the temperament and all the 
 virile individual quality which we associate 
 with genius. He has style, too — his own style 
 — very often he tears sentences to bits in his 
 hurry and just leaves a gripping emotion rising 
 from a rather confused mass of words. Then 
 sometimes his words echo with music, and 
 sometimes they gleam with light. Nobody has 
 ever tamed his style. I fancy nobody ever will. 
 I am rather glad he doesn't have the over- 
 sophisticated literary consciousness which 
 makes it impossible for some highly trained 
 men of letters ever to forget themselves in an 
 abandon of glowing sentences." 
 
 "That's a good deal of a concession for you 
 to make," I interrupted with some amusement. 
 
86 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Jolin smiled a little grimly. "The literary 
 self-control which shuts life out and keeps 
 distinction at the expense of vitality has 
 spoiled many a promising young writer," he 
 shot back. "But about Stidger," he went on. 
 "I have been trying to analyze the secret of 
 his power. Of course he has a forceful and 
 magnetic personality. The day he stormed a 
 number of publishing houses in New York 
 and sold wares written and unwritten in one 
 after another illustrated that. But it isn't 
 merely personality and it isn't merely force. 
 It's sympathy. It's the human touch. Bill 
 senses the human heart of a situation in an 
 instant and then he runs off to find a sentence 
 which will tell the story so that it will mean 
 to you just what it means to him. And in a 
 minute the sentence is carried back in triumph, 
 perhaps a little worn for the tussel, but very 
 much alive, like a dog with bright eyes gleam- 
 ing through shaggy hair. This last book of 
 Stidger's, Star Dust from the Dugouts, is all 
 the while talking about soldiers and religion. 
 The soldiers are very real. The religion is 
 very unconventional. But you feel that you 
 are getting close to the essence of religion and 
 close to the little shrines covered up at the 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 87 
 
 center of the soldier's life. Bill is a born 
 idealist. He knows all about the world. He 
 knows all sorts of other things. But he went 
 to France as a prospector. Anybody can tell 
 you where gold was not. Stidger wastes no 
 time on that. He tells you where the gold 
 was and is. And he calls it star dust. The 
 book leaves a good taste m your mouth. You 
 are glad there is a young fellow in America 
 who thinks the thoughts which glow in Stid- 
 ger's mind. You are glad he writes them out 
 with such an abandon of vital force. You like 
 to think that he speaks for no end of Americans 
 who have the same things in their hearts, but 
 do not know how to get them on their tongues." 
 
88 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE ART OF BEING ALONE 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD was in fine fettle. 
 He seemed to exude a sort of contagious, 
 vital energy. His eye had a quick, telling 
 luster. His voice rang with a sort of gay 
 challenge. His step seemed set to an intangible 
 decisive music. He gave you a sense of quiver- 
 ing potential energy. I looked at him ad- 
 miringly and then asked: 
 
 "What has happened to you, Old Chap? 
 You seem all made over and quite as good as 
 new." 
 
 "Really better than new," laughed John. 
 "You see I've been away on a retreat, and I'm 
 rested through and through." 
 
 "Where did you go.^" I asked. "And what 
 did you do?" 
 
 "I went to the country and for ten whole 
 days I did not do a thing but eat and sleep and 
 walk and dream." 
 
 "And did that put all this snap into your 
 eyes, and all this electricity into your way of 
 walking about?" I inquired. 
 
 "That and no end of other things," replied 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 89 
 
 the Man of Books and Men. "I have really 
 caught up with myself and I've found the 
 relish of life all over again." 
 
 "But can a man get all that in ten days.^*'* 
 I wondered. 
 
 "It depends upon the man," said my friend. 
 "Most people do not know how to be alone. 
 They get on their own nerves. They get un- 
 speakably restless. They wear themselves away 
 being tired of themselves. They pack up their 
 troubles in their own small heads, and think 
 of them over and over again until they become 
 big as mountains and completely unendurable. 
 Rest becomes a disease and not a cure. Leisure 
 becomes a malignant attack and they are glad 
 to be free from it at last. When they are 
 alone they meet their worst foe, and when 
 they come back to work they are tremendously 
 glad to escape from themselves." 
 
 "It's a rather doleful picture you paint," I 
 admitted. "But how do you escape from all 
 this?" 
 
 "When I am alone," said John Clearfield, 
 oracularly, "the first thing I do is to decide 
 to be completely amiable with myself. All 
 the temptation to say ugly things to myself 
 just because I am alone, I resolutely put aside. 
 
90 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 I refuse to remember anything unkind which 
 anybody had ever said about me. I refuse to 
 think over the last ugly bit of newspaper mis- 
 interpretation. I think of all the pleasant 
 things which I can lay my hands on. I special- 
 ize in the happy, delightful memories which are 
 hiding away in various parts of my mind. I 
 treat myself as an honored guest who deserves 
 the finest and most gracious consideration. And 
 so all the blue devils of ugly thoughts give up 
 the fight at last and I am left in a perfectly 
 quiet and restful and dreamy world. It takes 
 about three days to get completely relaxed. 
 The remainder of the time I take long walks, 
 and eat heartily three times a day, and dream 
 dull, easy-going, contented dreams. At the 
 end of ten days I am fit and fine and ready 
 to get into the game again and play it with 
 all my might." 
 
 "You don't get much mental or moral 
 discipline out of that, do you?" I asked. 
 
 "I don't go into it for mental or moral 
 discipline. I get that in other ways and at 
 other times. My rest retreat is for just one 
 purpose and that purpose gets accomplished. 
 I know no end of men who say that they go 
 away to rest. Really they go away to think 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 91 
 
 about their business and tbat is the reason 
 why they come back tired and unrefreshed. I 
 know a man who used to have a report of his 
 business sent to him every day by wireless when 
 he was crossing the ocean. That man had never 
 learned the real use of the sea. An ocean voyage 
 is a time to let go of business and forget alljthe 
 worries. This man made it a time to remember. 
 He did not know how to be alone." 
 
 *'But don't you get dreadfully lonely with 
 your mind altogether empty?" 
 
 "I did at first. But that was merely a stage 
 through which I had to pass. When I quite 
 refused to let it get the best of me the loneli- 
 ness got tired of being around and departed. 
 The art of having a contented and empty 
 mind does not come without a struggle. But 
 it is worth all that it costs and more." 
 
 We sat silent for a little while. Then John said : 
 
 "When you fill your mind again after it has 
 had a real rest everything is so new and fresh 
 and wonderful that it's like being a child again 
 and getting those bright first impressions 
 which are the glory of youth and the haunting 
 memory of maturity." 
 
 "That's your secret, I think," I said at last. 
 "You keep the boy alive in the man." 
 
92 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE MAN OF THE HOUR 
 
 THE other day I found John Clearfield 
 in a comfortable corner of his favorite 
 club. He was fingering a magazine, but it 
 was evident at once that he was not reading. 
 There was a little wrinkle in his forehead which 
 always indicates close and intense thought. 
 I dropped into a chair beside him. In a mo- 
 ment he looked up. 
 
 "Behold a beggar," I began. *T am going 
 from door to door asking kindly people to give 
 me a few thoughts from their ample store. 
 I am an intellectual vagrant living from ear 
 to brain. I have had no real mental food for 
 over twenty-four hours and I am very nearly 
 famished. Kind sir, will you supply me from 
 your bountiful board.^" 
 
 The Man of Books and Men grinned cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 "You are always dangerous when you are 
 modest," he replied. "I know perfectly well 
 that you came here with the definite intention 
 of trying to convert me to some view which 
 has captured your mind. But I am going to 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 93 
 
 get the best of you. I am not going to allow 
 you to talk. I am going to take you at your 
 word and do the talking myself. I am going 
 to be as oracular as Macaulay, and as persistent 
 with my assertions as Socrates was with his 
 questions. You might as well sit back com- 
 fortably, for I intend to fix you with my eye 
 as the Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding 
 guest, and you are to sit speechless while I talk." 
 I twisted myself into a position in my chair 
 which John declared looked supremely uncom- 
 fortable and which I declared was the most 
 restful and easy position possible. Then I 
 looked him in the eye, and gave the signal. 
 "Shoot away." 
 
 "The world won't let you alone these days," 
 began my friend. "I have all sorts of things 
 to do and all sorts of things to think about. 
 But this persistent, impertinent world keeps 
 doing things to attract my attention. I used 
 to think I was capable of making a fairly 
 accurate forecast regarding the future. Now I 
 never know what is going to happen next. 
 The world has taken the bit in its teeth, and 
 I'm not quite sure but it's made up its mind to 
 go dashing off on its own account and leave the 
 solar system behind. What will you do then?" 
 
94 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 The Man of Books and Men paused dra- 
 matically. 
 
 "Fortunately I'm not allowed to talk. So I 
 do not need to make any reply," I threw back 
 at him. But already he was in the saddle 
 again and off on a vigorous canter of speech. 
 
 "There are two kinds of people I am watch- 
 ing with a good deal of anxiety," said John. 
 "In the first place I am watching the Bour- 
 bons all over the world. True to caste, they 
 have learned nothing and they have forgotten 
 nothing. With the most childlike confidence 
 and assurance they are ready to turn back 
 the clock of civilization. They do not see that 
 the war has changed anything. They do not 
 see that we live in a new day. They refuse to 
 make concessions of any kind. They are 
 willing to fight to the death for every old 
 privilege. They put themselves solidly in the 
 way of the advancing life of the world." 
 
 Clearfield sat silent for a moment, while I 
 turned over in my mind the story of an en- 
 counter in which he had engaged with this 
 type of man a few days before. The story of 
 the argument had gone all over town and I 
 had received a vivid account of the wrathful 
 and bewildered impotence in which John had 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 95 
 
 left his opponent when the talk was done. 
 But now my friend was speaking again. 
 
 "Then I am watching the people who want 
 to make everything over completely all at 
 once, and who have absolutely no notion of the 
 cost or the dangers or of the proper method. 
 They assume with the most innocent assurance 
 that every good thing in the social structure 
 will quietly maintain itself, while they go ham- 
 mering away at important changes. They 
 have not thought out to their inevitable con- 
 sequences the changes which they suggest. 
 They do not understand the world they are 
 going to make over again. They have the 
 most tragic ignorance of the way in which 
 human nature actually functions. And they 
 are quite capable in their irresponsible fashion 
 of destroying the very civilization which they 
 are eager to make into something finer. They 
 represent a wealth of idealism. But they are 
 undisciplined and untrained in practical rela- 
 tionships. And while their best motives are 
 the hope of the world, very often their methods 
 are a menace to the world." 
 
 Again John lapsed into silence. Then a gleam 
 came into his eye, and he spoke with more 
 than his usual vigor. 
 
96 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "We must produce a new type. We must 
 develop a new attitude. The man of the hour 
 is the man who appreciates the past and yet 
 looks forward to fresh and new elements in 
 the future. He must be a man who sees that 
 you must hold civilization steady while you 
 go on with your surgery. He is not willing 
 to report that the operation has been success- 
 ful but the patient has died. He will be as 
 radical as the wisdom of a real forward look. 
 He will be as conservative as the most genuine 
 appreciation of those slowly built solidarities 
 which must be kept at the basis of any depend- 
 able life for the world. He will combine cau- 
 tion with daring. He will gain the confidence 
 of those who are afraid of disintegration. He 
 will secure the loyal support of those who 
 seek wise and legitimate change. He will not 
 push the world apart into contending groups. 
 He will draw men together to work in har- 
 mony about common tasks. He will — " 
 
 At this moment we became conscious that 
 the room was being paged for some club 
 member. 
 
 "Mr. Clearfield," rang out a sharp insistent 
 voice. John got to his feet and was off at once. 
 And so the conversation came to an end. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 97 
 
 THE MAN WHO IS LOST IN A 
 POINT OF VIEW 
 
 THE other day I found John Clearfield 
 walking up and down in his den with 
 furrowed brow and hands closed tightly. It 
 seemed evident that he had just come out of 
 a fight or else was just about to get into a fight. 
 John always has some stiff battle of the mind 
 as a part of the day's work. So I was not at 
 all surprised at the general air of belligerency 
 which was expressing itself in his whole per- 
 sonality. The only question had to do with 
 the nature of this particular conflict. 
 
 "Well, what's the fight about?" I asked as I 
 dropped into a chair. 
 
 John turned upon me wrathfully: 
 "There isn't any fight. That's just what is 
 the matter," he burst out. "Do you know 
 that America is getting to be a series of various 
 groups who take their opinions ready made and 
 do almost no thinking for themselves? With 
 the usual American boy getting an education 
 consists, in as far as it has any intellectual 
 aspect at all, in making a collection of the 
 
98 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 things which a well-made man ought to think, 
 and in learning how to express them with a 
 certain amount of deftness and skill. We are 
 becoming a nation of human cabinets, each 
 containing a large amount of carefully classi- 
 fied material, and each complacently contented 
 to go on with an actual minimum of genuine 
 thought." 
 
 "What did you eat for dinner last night?" 
 I inquired of the Man of Books and Men. 
 My friend smiled cheerfully. 
 
 "I had a perfectly nutritious and a perfectly 
 digestible dinner at six-thirty last night, and 
 I slept like a top," he said, crisply. "It all 
 comes out of a book which I have been reading 
 this morning. It is a clever book. It is a 
 wonderfully attractive book. The author thinks 
 he has an intellectual life. His readers are apt 
 to think that he has an intellectual life. But 
 really there are no indications of deep and tell- 
 ing personal grapple with his theme. There are 
 plenty of thoughts. There is no thought. The 
 author has accepted with the most innocent 
 and child-like simplicity a whole point of view 
 and he has quite lost himself and his own 
 mind in his eagerness to exploit it. It reminds 
 you of the classic criticism in a great review. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 99 
 
 *There is much in this book which is true. 
 There is much in this book which is new. 
 But that which is true is not new. And that 
 which is new is not true.' " 
 
 "What is the book.^ And who is the author.?" 
 I put in at this moment. 
 
 "I am not going to tell you either," replied 
 my friend a little defiantly. ' *I don't want to 
 discuss that book. I want to talk about the 
 general principles which the reading of the 
 book brought into my mind. And if we get 
 to thinking of this book and its author and 
 his contentions we will simply clutter up our 
 minds." 
 
 "All right, Autocrat, shoot away," I cried 
 in mock submissiveness. 
 
 "Whenever an age begins to idealize its own 
 methods and its own thought processes," said 
 John, "it is time for somebody to object. We 
 have just about come to the time for another 
 Francis Bacon, who will point out our idols. 
 Or we need another Descartes, who will brush 
 aside a good deal of contemporary intellectual 
 rubbish in the name of a really constructive 
 criticism. Our schools are producing too 
 many nice boys who know what intellectual 
 clothes to wear, but who are perfectly helpless 
 
100 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 when it comes to really original and inventive 
 and resourceful mental activity. We give them 
 a finely worked-out point of view and expect 
 them to substitute mental submission for men- 
 tal activity." 
 
 ''Would you have students object merely 
 for the sake of objecting, even when there is 
 good reason to believe that it is the truth 
 which is being taught to them?" I inquired. 
 
 John had a dangerous flicker in his eye as 
 he replied. 
 
 "Our knowledge is not complete enough as 
 yet to make that expedient necessary. And in 
 any event truth is so rich and many-sided a 
 thing that one expression rarely does justice 
 to all of its aspects. It is always safe to look 
 for the element the teacher has missed, even 
 when he is a very able man. I am only saying 
 that I object as much to the modern scientific 
 scholasticism, as I object to the scholasticism 
 of the Middle Ages. Each is wonderfully acute 
 and completely barren." 
 
 "In other words, you think the methods of 
 a law school would be better than the methods 
 of a contemporary college of liberal arts?" I 
 ventured. 
 
 My friend turned sharply upon me at that. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 101 
 
 "Oh, I admit that we have our own scholasti- 
 cism," he replied. "There is the same fight 
 all the way along the line. But I do insist that 
 our boys should not be imprisoned in the 
 views of their contemporaries. I insist that 
 the production of a keenly original and in- 
 quiring type of mind, which is not exhausted 
 by its own methods of technical research, is 
 one of the great ends of the whole process of 
 education." 
 
 "And, now, will you tell me the name of the 
 book which stirred you that you wanted to 
 say all this.^^" I asked. 
 
 John smiled in a tantalizing way he has. 
 
 "Call it Everyman's first book," he replied. 
 
102 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "PREACHING AND PAGANISM" 
 
 IT was evident that John Clearfield was 
 deeply moved. He was walking about his 
 study with a sort of restless eagerness. 
 
 "Come in," he said. "Take that chair by 
 the fire. And do not dare to say a word until 
 I am through. I received your letter a couple 
 of weeks ago. I was a little amused at your 
 enthusiasm. But I sent out for Professor 
 Fitch's Preaching and Paganism at once. I 
 was a few days getting it. I have just finished 
 my first reading of the book." 
 
 He picked a volume off the library table as 
 he spoke. I stood beside him as he turned its 
 pages. 
 
 "You seem to have marked nearly every- 
 thing in the book," I observed. 
 
 "Not quite so bad as that," said John. 
 "Professor Fitch gave me most of the kinds 
 of pleasure there are. And he did not deny 
 me that really luxurious pleasure of disagree- 
 ment." 
 
 "And with what did you disagree?" I asked. 
 
 "O, I'm not going to begin with disagree- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 103 
 
 ments," said my friend. "Besides you are 
 not to ask questions. You are to listen." 
 
 "You have all the ears I possess at the mo- 
 ment," I cried. 
 
 "And how many more ears do you expect to 
 possess at some later moment .f^" asked my ironic 
 friend. 
 
 "I'll have at least one new ear for sarcasm," 
 I replied. 
 
 But John would not be diverted long. 
 
 "This book," he said, "may not be a great 
 prescription. It is at least a very great piece 
 of diagnosis. And, personally, I am inclined 
 to think that the discerning reader will find 
 far more than an astonishingly penetrating 
 analysis of our whole intellectual and ethical 
 and religious situation. The amazing thing 
 about the book, of course, is just that you 
 have a prophet among the Sauls. Just this 
 sort of prophecy nobody expected from Pro- 
 fessor Fitch. He is an intellectual Brahman. 
 He is a humanist by nature and more so by 
 practice. The evangelical tradition is not 
 precious in his eyes. Indeed, when he makes 
 a tremendous evangelical statement he makes 
 it instinctively by means of a set of fresh and 
 brilliant phrases which suggest no connection 
 
104 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 with the evangelical tradition. He hardly sus- 
 pects how near his conscience brings him to 
 places which his taste would avoid. But it is 
 just all this which makes the book so tre- 
 mendous. Out of the heart of the group so 
 ready to make noble social passion a substi- 
 tute for transforming ethical contact with the 
 character of Almighty God comes this flashing 
 sword of protest. And what execution the 
 sword does accomplish. The humanism which 
 would be a substitute for religion is seen in 
 all its pitiable helplessness. You turn to that 
 cock-sure cosmopolitanism which releases every 
 lawless voice of the body and finds distin- 
 guished phrases in which to disguise the un- 
 abashed animalism of it, and lo it stands before 
 you unclothed and the wrongness of its mind 
 and the real quality of its nature in clear view. 
 All your favorite illusions, all your bright and 
 happy evasions go down before you. And at 
 last the ultimate moral and spiritual problem 
 emerges. It must be faced. It cannot be 
 avoided. And in this high and honest mood 
 you meet as if for the first time the great 
 God and the mighty personality of Jesus Christ." 
 I sat quite still, somewhat overwhelmed by 
 this onslausjht. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 105 
 
 "With all its trenchant sternness it is never 
 narrow and it is never provincial," John went 
 on. "The vast weight of erudition which 
 Professor Fitch carries so lightly is at his 
 service all the while. It is a citizen of the 
 whole world who says these things. It is a 
 citizen of all the ages who brings this master- 
 ing word in the name of ethically transforming 
 religion. It is a man of the widest sympathy 
 who makes you see that sympathy does not 
 prevent a clear mind from making terribly 
 cleaving distinctions." 
 
 "And now I think I want to know some- 
 thing about the disagreements," I ventured. 
 
 John smiled at that. 
 
 "Well, I believe in worship. But I do not think 
 Doctor Fitch always keeps in mind his own 
 most fundamental insights when he discusses 
 it. The fact is, he has come from the moun- 
 tain so soon after seeing the vision that he 
 has not related it to all the rest of his thinking. 
 So there are amazingly interesting contradic- 
 tions. But they all grow out of the type of 
 mind more interested in reality than in formal 
 logic. And so the very statements with which 
 you do not agree stimulate you in a surprising 
 fashion." 
 
106 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 I stood for a little while fingering the pages 
 of Professor Fitch's book. Then John spoke 
 again : 
 
 "I have a subtitle," he said. "It is this: 
 'What Every Preacher Ought to Know.' " 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 107 
 
 THE UNITED STATES AND THE 
 WORLD 
 
 THE telephone rang just as I was finishing 
 my dinner the other night. John Clear- 
 field's voice came distinctly over the wire: 
 
 "Jack Silton is just back from France. He 
 is spending the night with me. Don't you 
 want to come over and see him.?" 
 
 My reply was eager enough, for the gritty 
 young major had won my heart long before 
 he went to West Point. I had watched his 
 whole career with the keenest interest and 
 relish. 
 
 So an hour later I was sitting by the library 
 table in the home of the Man of Books and 
 Men, looking across at the bronzed face of the 
 oflScer who had seen such testing service on the 
 Western Front. He had the way, so charac- 
 teristic of many of the men who got into the 
 heart of the thing which was fought out in 
 Europe, of unconsciously giving you the im- 
 pression that he had not really come back 
 from France. Sometimes he would seem to 
 look through you and beyond you as if he 
 
108 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 were seeing things invisible to your eyes. 
 Clearfield, with his sharp incisive kindness, 
 was inclined to call our friend to account 
 for it. 
 
 "You must come and spend a week with us 
 when you really get back to America," he said 
 as we sat down together. 
 
 The major looked up quickly. 
 
 *Ts it as bad as that.f^" he asked. "Really 
 you must forgive me. I confess that I can't 
 quite realize even yet that the war is over. 
 And I find my mind back there in the midst 
 of it all just when I think I am most safely 
 and completely in America again. You see, 
 war is a most masterful thing. It seizes you 
 and it holds you. And when the fighting is 
 over, you are still held in the grip of the expe- 
 rience. Just give us time. We will all come 
 back to America after a while. And we will 
 come caring for our country more than we ever 
 did before." 
 
 We sat silent for a moment. It was evident 
 that Major Silton had something more to say, 
 and was feeling about for the right words. 
 After a little he went on: 
 
 "We are eager enough to come back. But, 
 after all, you must not expect us ever to be 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 109 
 
 quite the same chaps again. Too much has 
 happened. We have seen too much. We have 
 thought too much. We have been shaken out 
 of our old selves. And we have found out 
 many things of which we did not have a glim- 
 mer three years ago." 
 
 John Clearfield was leaning forward eagerly. 
 
 "That's what we want to know about, Jack," 
 
 he said, earnestly. "Tell us some of the things 
 
 you pulled out of the wreck on the other side 
 
 of the world." 
 
 There was a deeply serious and friendly 
 invitation about Clearfield's very tone which 
 anybody would have found it hard to resist. 
 Jack Silton did not try to resist it. He seemed 
 to want to talk about these matters to his 
 two old friends. He moved a little in his 
 chair, and then he spoke: 
 
 "You know we began by discovering the 
 United States of America over there," he said. 
 "Most of us had taken for granted the old 
 U. S. A. before. All of a sudden we came to 
 know that you can't do that. Some things 
 just as much a part of our American life as 
 the rising of the sun, some things which we 
 had rather assumed to belong to all the people 
 in the world, we didn't find over there. We 
 
110 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 began to learn where we were different. And 
 then we began to ask why we were different. 
 And then we began to see the courage and the 
 faith that had worked out our American insti- 
 tutions and had put them so deeply into our 
 life that we provincial Americans who had not 
 lived in Europe never realized the uniqueness 
 or the significance of our own life. Every once 
 and a while we would find on the other side 
 that we were making assumptions in the most 
 natural way which the people to whom we were 
 talking did not make and did not understand. 
 It was a great study. And out of it I found 
 the meaning of the Americanism which is in 
 my very blood." 
 
 The major rose and began to walk about 
 the room, talking as he moved. 
 
 "It was by no means all a one-sided thing, 
 though," he said. "One soon began to under- 
 stand that if we have some things to give to 
 our friends on the other side, they have many 
 things to give to us. I got to feel that the 
 world is much older, and much bigger, and 
 much more complex than I had ever under- 
 stood before. At first I felt rather resentful. 
 I wanted to throw it all off. I wanted to come 
 back to the old America, with the old out- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 111 
 
 look and the old plans. Then I saw that 
 would not do. I got to know that the world 
 is one big world. And we are a part of it. 
 We can't get out of it. All together we have 
 got to face the world's problem. And all to- 
 gether we have got to work it out. After 
 that I took no end of trouble trying to under- 
 stand the fellows over there. I tried to get 
 at the things they were so sure of that they 
 never talked about them. I tried to get at 
 the things they assumed without ever saying 
 them. And all the while I got to understand 
 myself better. And all the while I got to 
 understand them better. Then in the fighting 
 I found out a lot of things about human na- 
 ture. They were things that go 'way down 
 beneath the differences which mark off French- 
 men and Englishmen and Americans. I got 
 the feel of the world somehow. That's just 
 about the only way I can put it. And I think 
 that puts it right. I did for the first time 
 really get the feel of the world. And so while 
 I am a better American than I ever was before, 
 I am a citizen of the world now. And I wasn't 
 when I went to France." 
 
 We were quite silent for a little while. Then 
 Clearfield said: 
 
112 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "I wonder how typical you are. Jack? Did 
 it happen to many, this thing you are talking 
 about?" 
 
 Jack Silton was his characteristically modest 
 self, but he gave you the feeling that he was 
 right, when he replied: 
 
 "Maybe I thought more about it than some 
 of the fellows. But we were all up against the 
 same proposition. And most of us got it 
 even if we don't talk much about it. We 
 know any amount more what the United 
 States is about. We know a lot more what 
 the world is about. And we are not going to 
 forget." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 113 
 
 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 THE war left a deep mark upon the person- 
 ality of John Clearfield. It was as if every 
 issue was fought over in his mind, and every 
 battle came to its climax of struggle in his heart. 
 He exposed the whole sensitive surface of his 
 inner life to all the tense and tragic quality of the 
 life of the passing days. Then he managed to get 
 to France on a piece of Red Cross activity, and 
 was with the soldiers there when peace came. 
 When he returned to America I found that his 
 insight had been sharpened and his whole power 
 of thought had been quickened by all his expe- 
 riences. As the winter wore on his interest in 
 occurrences at Paris was intense. From the 
 first he was an eager advocate of the League 
 of Nations. On the morning when the President 
 was setting forth on his second trip to France 
 I met Clearfield swinging down a street in 
 Chicago. He greeted me in his usual vital and 
 hearty fashion and seizing my arm carried 
 me off on a less frequented street almost be- 
 fore I knew what he was about. 
 
 "Have you read the President's New York 
 
114 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 speech?" he began, "or have you been too 
 busy with the Nicene Creed to think about 
 contemporary politics?" 
 
 "If Athanasius were alive to-day he would 
 read the President's speech before he ate his 
 breakfast," I replied, with some heat. "Besides, 
 there is the most real connection between the 
 Nicene Creed and the President's speech. One 
 was to make the world safe for religion. The other 
 is to help to make the world safe for politics." 
 
 "I won't have it," laughed John. "I won't 
 listen. This situation is complex enough with- 
 out trying to mix up theology and world politics. 
 Theologian, go back to your den and leave me 
 in peace — if that is the best you can do." 
 
 "Then it's your move," I replied. "What is 
 the best you can do? What have you to say 
 about the meeting in New York last night?" 
 
 John quickened his pace a little, and I, 
 perforce, followed his example. Then he spoke 
 with a sort of sharp, quick emphasis. 
 
 "Last night's meeting lifted the issue com- 
 pletely out of party politics," he began. "When 
 Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson spoke from the 
 same platform at the Metropolitan Opera 
 House for the League of Nations, notice was 
 given to the world that we are not to meet 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 115 
 
 this issue as Republicans or as Democrats. 
 We are to meet this issue as Americans." 
 
 "How do you feel about the Monroe Doc- 
 trine .f^'* I asked. 
 
 John Clearfield stopped short for a moment. 
 "I heard you say in a lecture the other night," 
 he began, "that Darwin dealt with the doc- 
 trine of evolution in one field, while Herbert 
 Spencer made it a universal principle. Let me 
 paraphrase your words. The message of Pres- 
 ident Monroe applied to a particular part of 
 the world. The League of Nations gives the 
 Monroe Doctrine a universal application. It is 
 a generalized Monroe Doctrine dealing with the 
 whole world. The things Monroe desired to do 
 for a few peoples the League of Nations is to do 
 for all peoples. Everyone who believes in the 
 Monroe Doctrine should be an advocate of 
 such a league as has been planned in Paris." 
 
 "How do you feel about the surrender of 
 sovereignty which is involved on the part of 
 the United States.'^" I inquired. 
 
 Clearfield was instant with his reply. "There 
 are only two ways to avoid some surrender 
 of sovereignty. One is absolute isolation on 
 the part of a nation, so that it gives nothing 
 and receives nothing. One is world mastery, so 
 
116 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 that all nations obey the behests of the con- 
 quering people. Germany tried to have the 
 second. China once had the first. In all 
 other nations every deep and significant rela- 
 tion involves give and take. Every treaty in- 
 volves some surrender of sovereignty. Every 
 admission of principles of international law 
 involves some surrender of sovereignty. The 
 League of Nations asks the surrender of nothing 
 vital to our full and productive and self-respect- 
 ing life. And it promises a new era of hope 
 and of achievement for all the world." 
 
 "Ought the present document to be amend- 
 ed?" I asked John some months later. 
 
 "It ought to be perfected in the light of 
 experience of its working," Clearfield replied. 
 "It is a remarkable achievement as it is, 
 though I do not regard it as in any sense final. 
 But we need to remember that amendments 
 which seem innocent to us may involve rela- 
 tions which risk the whole structure. On the 
 whole, there is a good deal to be said for putting 
 it to work and then amending it in the light of 
 practical knowledge of its functioning." 
 
 "Are you solicitous about the effect of the 
 present war of hostile criticism .f^" 
 
 "Not I," declared my lawyer friend. "Part 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 117 
 
 of it is just wholesome caution. There was the 
 most nervous and frightened criticism of the 
 Constitution under which we Hve in the 
 United States before it was adopted. Every 
 forward movement must run the gauntlet of 
 that sort of thing. Part of the criticism is 
 just petty partisan politics. Mr. Taft is 
 making that sort of thing increasingly impossi- 
 ble. Part of it is of more sinister origin. The 
 insight of the American people can be trusted 
 to deal with that. The American people as a 
 whole are for the league. When the crisis 
 comes the man who opposes it will commit 
 political suicide. In the meantime every 
 church, every social group, and every indi- 
 vidual who sees the issues should communicate 
 with the senators. The voice of the people may 
 not always be the voice of God. But it is a voice 
 which the Senate does not dare to ignore." 
 
 Long after events had seemed to falsify his 
 predictions, I referred to this conversation. 
 Clearfield only smiled a slow quiet smile. 
 "The time element is always dangerous in 
 prophecy," he said. "In the long run America 
 will justify my confidence." 
 
118 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 A NOTABLE PREACHER 
 
 "TT HEARD a sermon this morning," de- 
 J_ clared John Clearfield with a note of 
 triumph in his voice. "And there was a real 
 man back of the sermon," he added as he 
 settled down in a chair beside me in the writing 
 room of a certain New York hotel. 
 
 The two of us had landed from the Adriatic 
 the day before and we were tasting the de- 
 lights of the homeland with eager relish after 
 our weeks in the Old World. John was look- 
 ing at me with a touch of mischief in his eye. 
 "Why did you never tell me of Henry Sloane 
 CoflSn.f^" he asked. "You know that I depend 
 on you to be a sort of incarnate who's who in 
 the ministry for me. Think of what I have 
 been missing. I am in New York usually one 
 Sunday out of every six. And it was only by 
 accident that I dropped into the Madison 
 Avenue Presbyterian Church this morning." 
 
 My friend sat with his chin held reflectingly 
 in his hand for a moment. (I often tell him 
 that I do not feel sure that he uses his brains 
 when he reflects, but I know that he reflects 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 119 
 
 by means of his chin.) After a httle he looked 
 up with a quiet, serious Hght in his eye. 
 
 "One often takes his body to church," said 
 John, "but Dr. Coffin took my mind to church. 
 Then I found that he had taken my con- 
 science to church. And soon I knew that my 
 heart was there too." 
 
 "Tell me about the sermon," I said, leaning 
 a little nearer to my friend. The orchestra in 
 the dining room was making music merrily, 
 and a brilliant scene revealed itself as one 
 looked out into the long corridors of the hotel. 
 But I was intent on knowing more about the 
 man who had captured the interest of my 
 friend. John is the most critical of men. But 
 he has a noble simplicity and a fine responsive- 
 ness whenever a note of genuine reality is 
 struck. 
 
 "He talked about EHsha. And he talked 
 about education. He talked about a course 
 of study which would teach men how to live 
 alone with God. He spoke of a course of study 
 which would teach men how to live with God 
 among men. He spoke of a course of study 
 which would bring a man into intimate and 
 gripping contact with human life and human 
 woe. And the degree to be conferred upon 
 
120 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 the student who had completed all the work 
 was given m his text *Man of God.' A woman 
 had called the prophet that. She had given 
 him his degree." 
 
 John moved a little in his chair. "It was 
 a sermon which grew right out of the Bible. 
 It was also a sermon which grew right out of 
 modern life. Dr. CoflSn never intruded his 
 culture. But you felt it all the while enrich- 
 ing all that he said. He was sparing in his 
 use of quotations. But they seemed taken out 
 of the very quarry from which the sermon 
 itself had come. And through it all Dr. CoflSn 
 made you feel that he had lived, that he had 
 known life, and that he really understood men. 
 He touched contemporary problems with a 
 skill and a certainty of movement which gave 
 you a sort of surprised pleasure. He sent you 
 away from the church quickened, and kindled 
 and eager. Now, don't you wish you had 
 been with me this morning.'^" 
 
 I was about to reply. But John — how often 
 I have told him that he had a way of inter- 
 rupting before I had said a word — was off 
 again. 
 
 "And, man, you should have heard his little 
 sermon to the children. It was all about a 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 121 
 
 Jack-in-the-Pulpit. He held it up and he 
 made it talk. He said he met many preachers 
 in the woods and in the hills this summer. 
 And you believed him. It is a wonderful 
 world in which that man lives." 
 
 Now it was my turn to go off on a long 
 mental journey. John saw the mood coming 
 and let me stray off with my thoughts. I 
 knew that my friend had come near to the 
 sources of a preacher's power in his last sentence 
 of tribute— "It is a wonderful world in which 
 that man lives." How can a man help young 
 fellows to be the kind of men of whom that 
 same thing will be said in some future day.^ 
 I sat thinking of it for a long time. 
 
122 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 WITH JOHN CLEARFIELD AT SEA 
 
 WHEN I came on board the Mauretania 
 last Friday I kept an alert eye on the 
 lookout for familiar faces. Before very long 
 I gave a little start of pleasure as I beheld 
 the figure of that brilliant human New Yorker, 
 Dr. Nehemiah Boynton, the pastor of the 
 Clinton Avenue Congregational Church in 
 Brooklyn. In five minutes I was chuckling 
 over one of his irresistible funny stories, and 
 getting the glow of his wholesome optimistic 
 personality. But the surprise of the day came 
 when I looked up to find John Clearfield walk- 
 ing aboard. "Is it really true," I cried, as I 
 gripped his hand, "or are you a make-believe 
 just about to vanish.^" 
 
 The Man of Books and Men laughed in his 
 hearty way. 
 
 "I thought I'd give you a real experience of 
 astonishment," he said as he sat down on a 
 steamer chair beside me. "Never say again 
 that I cannot keep a secret. And admit that 
 I was the soul of pensive regret when I wished 
 you bon voyage last week." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 123 
 
 "It really did sound authentic," I replied. 
 "But what is taking you over? And how long 
 are you going to stay?" 
 
 At that John launched into an account of 
 the intricate piece of work which required his 
 presence in London. It was to be a hurried 
 trip, for it was necessary for him to be in 
 Chicago again before the end of August. As 
 we talked the passengers were rapidly coming 
 aboard and at length a warning whistle told 
 us that we were about to be off. We all pressed 
 to the railing and watched the people on the 
 pier as the great old ship moved out into the 
 Hudson. Down the river into the bay we 
 moved, on past the Statue of Liberty, into the 
 outer bay and then into the welcoming wonder 
 of the sea. John and I were swinging about 
 the deck arm in arm by this time and he was 
 talking as happily as a boy let out from school. 
 
 The days since have been full to the brim. 
 The sea has been wonderfully friendly and the 
 glorious moonlight nights have made talk a 
 magic thing against a background of shim- 
 mering beauty. On Sunday morning Dr. 
 Boynton gave a refreshing and helpful address 
 on the "Friendliness of the Sea." There have 
 been no end of interesting people with whom 
 
124 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 to talk. There have been enticing books. 
 And Clearfield has kept up a rapid fire of 
 scintillating and penetrating talk. The other 
 day I dropped down beside him just as he 
 was at the end of a little book. I picked it 
 up as he closed it, and found that it was What 
 Happened to Europe, by Mr. Frank Vanderlip, 
 recently president of the National City Bank. 
 As I sat on the steamer chair next to John 
 he began to speak: 
 
 "This little volume of Frank Vanderlip's 
 ought to have a wide hearing," he began. "It 
 was written after a trip to a number of the 
 countries of Europe. He had seen pretty much 
 everything and he had talked with pretty 
 much everybody, especially with the people 
 of financial significance. Then he dictated this 
 book on the five days' voyage home. It's like 
 having a talk with him five days long. And 
 he is one of the few men with whom I would 
 be willing to talk for five days. He takes an 
 unusually advanced position with regard to the 
 relations of capital and labor. He analyzes 
 the economic situation in practically every 
 significant country in Europe. It is all easy 
 talk as you read it. But you feel the trained 
 mind back of it all the while. You feel the 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 125 
 
 problem of Europe after the war as you have 
 not been able to feel it before. And you feel 
 the splendid opportunity of America. Of 
 course it is a banker's book. And that means 
 that the whole problem is seen from a special- 
 ized mind. But in many ways it is all the 
 more significant for that very fact. Put the 
 book into your pocket and read it before 
 another day goes by." 
 
 By this time the appeal of the sea was tug- 
 ging at us both, and putting aside all thoughts 
 of economic questions we paced the deck, 
 watching all the colors on the water and 
 dreaming idly such dreams as travelers upon 
 the deep have dreamed since the first time 
 when a bark ventured in timid audacity out 
 of the sight of land. 
 
126 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 LITERARY HOSPITALITY 
 
 "T 7|[ THAT are you going to do to-night?" 
 
 V V I asked of John Clearfield as we 
 walked out of his office together. 
 
 *T am going to give a dinner party," replied 
 John at once with a little twinkle in his eye. 
 He kept looking at me whimsically. I walked 
 at his side waiting for him to speak. 
 
 "Don't you want to know the names of some 
 of the guests .f^" he queried with a chuckle. 
 
 "It's evidently a very mysterious dinner 
 party," I parried. "But you needn't think 
 you can surprise me. Your human contacts 
 are as varied as the kinds of people there are 
 in the world. Perhaps you are going to imitate 
 the London lady who gave a party to deadly 
 enemies. I understand that her party was a 
 great success." 
 
 The Man of Books and Men laughed at that. 
 
 "No, it's nothing so audacious as a get- 
 together of people who hate each other," he 
 said. "It's to be a party of books. My wife 
 is away. The children are off for the week- 
 end. I am going to put a row of books in 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 127 
 
 front of me, and have a perfectly good time 
 with them while I eat my dinner. Then I'm 
 going to browse about with them for a couple 
 of quiet hours." 
 
 "Have you selected these literary guests?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 "Yes, and they are all good friends of mine. 
 They are more or less recent books. I have 
 read them all and I have marked them. But I 
 want to have some more conversation with 
 them before I put them in their places on my 
 shelves." 
 
 We walked along briskly for a moment. 
 
 "Now, I think I am ready for their names," 
 I suggested at length. 
 
 John wrinkled his brow for a second. Then 
 he said: 
 
 "First of all, there is President Tucker's 
 My Generation. It is a thoroughly manly 
 book. It comes from a sturdy, upstanding life. 
 There is keen, clear thinking. There is the 
 action of a steady and energetic ethical life-. 
 And there is a habit of thinking in calm, large 
 ways about significant themes. I like to think 
 that it is quite like New England to produce 
 men of Tucker's type. They give you a sense 
 of stability in a shifting and transitional age." 
 
128 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 We moved through a bit of congestion as we 
 crossed a street and after that John continued: 
 
 "The second book is John Spargo's Bol- 
 shevism. You know the work of Spargo thor- 
 oughly well. I think you first called my atten- 
 tion to his life of Karl Marx years ago. And 
 you remember how sane and wise was his 
 book on Syndicalism. Was it you who told 
 me that years ago he used to work with Lloyd- 
 George in Hugh Price Hughes' mission in 
 London, and that in these dim days long ago 
 they sometimes shared the same bed after the 
 hours of work? The book on Bolshevism is 
 based upon unusual knowledge of the whole 
 radical movement and its literature, and much 
 of it represents actual contact with Soviet 
 documents. Nowhere does one see more 
 clearly that Bolshevism is a new kind of tyranny 
 with a minority of a small group in control 
 instead of the Czar. The book is full of social 
 passion. But it gives small comfort to the 
 sentimental American who would play with 
 Bolshevism as a child might play with a new 
 toy. The fact that the book is written by a 
 socialist makes it all the more impressive." 
 
 "Is poetry to be represented at this dinner 
 party .f^" I asked. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 129 
 
 The eyes of my friend were very bright now. 
 
 "Make no mistakes about that," he rephed. 
 "Marguerite Wilkinson's New Voices is to be an 
 honored guest. That is a real book. It is an 
 unusual anthology. And the chapters of crit- 
 icism and discussion are nearly always sane 
 and wise. Sometimes they are very clever. 
 There is some needless condescension toward 
 Alfred Noyes. But you get an actual intro- 
 duction to the ideas, the ideals, and the work 
 of the men and women who make up the 
 group. You may not be willing to take them 
 quite as seriously as they take themselves. 
 But you cannot deny their power." 
 
 We were really warming to the subject and 
 I breathed with a little special relish as I 
 watched my friend getting deeper into his 
 theme. But just here another friend joined us. 
 And so I never learned about the other guests 
 at this dinner of books. 
 
130 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 DR. KELMAN AND AMERICA 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD had just been at- 
 tending a University Convocation where 
 Dr. Kelman had spoken. It was his first 
 hearing of the brilliant Edinburgh minister who 
 had come to make New York his home, and I 
 was eager to know his impressions. We were 
 walking along the shore of the Lake together 
 with the University buildings on one side and 
 the many-toned colors of the water on the 
 other. 
 
 "I was prepared to hear a Scotchman. I 
 was not prepared to hear a Greek," John be- 
 gan. I interrupted with a chuckle. 
 
 "You really did find him out in one hear- 
 ing," I said. "He is a fifth-century Athenian 
 preaching the gospel of beauty in a twentieth- 
 century Presbyterian church." 
 
 John weighed the words for a moment. 
 
 "Yesterday I would have laughed at you 
 for that," he said. "I would have declared 
 that the combination was impossible. But 
 to-day I admit that you are right. After all, 
 I ought not to be so completely surprised. For 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 131 
 
 there was Robert Louis Stevenson. His style 
 is chaste Greek art. And the land which pro- 
 duced him produced Dr. Kelman." 
 
 "You will not be forgetting," I interjected, 
 "that one of the very best books about Steven- 
 son, according to high critical authority, comes 
 from the pen of Dr. Kelman. And you will 
 not forget Professor Butcher and his nobly 
 Greek spirit, or the tradition which he repre- 
 sents." 
 
 "It's all true," replied John. "Just the same 
 there is something a bit amazing about the 
 combination of John Knox and Matthew 
 Arnold." 
 
 We stood for a moment looking out over 
 the Lake. There were wonderful efiFects of 
 dancing color, and we let the merry beauty 
 of it enter our own lives before we continued 
 our conversation. 
 
 The Man of Books and Men at length took 
 up the thread of talk again. 
 
 "I see clearly enough the thing for which 
 Dr. Kelman stands," he said. "Unconsciously 
 he was describing himself to-day when he 
 spoke of the type of mind which reconciles 
 the Hebrew love of righteousness and the Greek 
 love of beauty. That is precisely what he is 
 
132 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 doing. But what is he going to accomplish 
 in America? And what is he going to do in 
 New York?" 
 
 My friend was warming to his theme. 
 
 "Of course it is just what New York needs," 
 he said. "And it is undoubtedly the next 
 step in the unfolding of American culture. 
 But are we clear-sighted enough to know it? 
 And are we willing to let a man guide us in 
 that notable fashion from a pulpit?" 
 
 "There have been pulpits in America with 
 a far-flung power," I remarked. 
 
 "Oh, we're ready enough to admit the pulpit 
 to moral leadership in our hours of real aware- 
 ness. And we expect spiritual distinction like 
 that of Dr. Jowett, at least we want it. But 
 we have been rather provincial. Are we ready 
 to admit that Christianity is to provide that 
 larger synthesis where taste and character meet? 
 Are we willing to have our subtlest problems 
 of aesthetics solved by a spiritual prophet?" 
 
 We walked along the shore musing for a 
 little while. Then my friend spoke again. 
 
 "I believe he can do it," he said. "One feels 
 at once that he is a real preacher. The faith 
 once delivered to the saints will have notable 
 and distinguished expression in his minstry. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 133 
 
 You feel at once that he must be a great pastor. 
 He will know his people and they will love 
 him. I have been hearing things about that 
 side of his work in New York already. He 
 has deep social passion. And he will make 
 articulate the characteristic aspirations of those 
 whose eyes are shining with the dream of an 
 accomplished brotherhood. And while he is 
 doing all this, and while many people do not 
 know that he is doing more than this, he will 
 be pouring the richness of his high Greek 
 spirit into the town and into the nation where 
 he lives and works. Gradually those who are 
 ready for the word he has to say will hear it. 
 And out over the land his influence will go. 
 I do not think it will be very dramatic. It 
 may not arouse an unusual amount of com- 
 ment. But a new quality will diffuse itself 
 through American life because he is here. He 
 will invite us to the nuptuals of goodness and 
 beauty, and we will eagerly accept the invi- 
 tation " 
 
 I was smiling quietly as my friend finished. 
 
 "One would think you had read his books. 
 I could almost hear echoes of Among Famous 
 Books and The Road of Life as you were speak- 
 ing," I declared. 
 
134 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "I have not read them," said John. "But 
 you may be sure I will." 
 
 "Then if you want to see Dr. Kelman attack- 
 ing contemporary world-problems, have a look 
 at Social Aspects of International Christianity," 
 I added. John did not hesitate with his reply. 
 "I'll read everything he has published," he said. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 135 
 
 SOCIAL UNREST IN ENGLAND 
 AND AMERICA 
 
 THE Bank Holiday found John Clearfield 
 and me at Margate by the sea. No- 
 body would suggest that it is a very fashion- 
 able resort. But perhaps for that very reason 
 it is all the more typical of the movement of 
 English life. We mingled with the crowds light of 
 step and bright of face. It was a brave and merry 
 company of people. We knew a little of how 
 brave, for we knew that there was pain enough in 
 the hearts hidden away by the bright faces. But 
 the war must not conquer England, not even as a 
 memory, and so the groups of people listening to 
 the band or dancing on the green allowed no 
 telltale stories to get into their faces. 
 
 "This doesn't look like social revolution, 
 does it?" queried John as we looked out on 
 the moving masses of people. 
 
 "England does not have revolutions," 1 ven- 
 tured in reply. "England marches right to the 
 edge of the precipice, and then just in time 
 faces about and marches the other way." 
 
 John smiled. 
 
136 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "That is good history," he said. "I wonder 
 if it is good prophecy." 
 
 Neither of us spoke for a httle while. The Man 
 of Books and Men was evidently busy with his 
 thoughts. At length he turned toward me. 
 
 "The character of a nation really speaks 
 when the moment of acute social crisis comes," 
 he said. "If there is solid self-control and a 
 dependable sense of values, the movement is 
 held in a steady hand. Even a man who wants 
 an entirely new division of the treasures of the 
 world if he is a clear thinker and has poise 
 and perspective, realizes that you do not bring 
 in a better day by destroying the thing which 
 you would like to divide. Our first interest is 
 to preserve civilization. The next is to place 
 its values where they really belong. And with 
 all the wild talk one hears in England, I think 
 the English worker sees this. He will not kill 
 the goose that lays the golden egg. About the 
 situation in America it is less easy to get a 
 dependable answer. Regarding the old Amer- 
 ican stock, I think we can make the same 
 assertion I have made about England. But 
 what about the million a year of immigrants 
 coming into the country before the war.^^ AVhat 
 are they really thinking about? Do they see 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 137 
 
 that we must preserve the structure if anybody 
 is to live in it? Or do they want to destroy it 
 just because they think the wrong people are in 
 possession? Are the processes of Americaniza- 
 tion and education going on rapidly enough to 
 produce in our mixed population a steadying 
 sense of those values which must be preserved 
 whatever comes and whatever goes?" 
 
 We were walking along above the white 
 cliffs now. John seized my arm for a moment. 
 
 "That's what you educators are about, isn't 
 it? Are you getting the steadying influences 
 of knowledge spread through all classes? Are 
 you really saving your country?" 
 
 "There are people who would say you are 
 talking like a reactionary," I reminded him. 
 
 "About as reactionary as a fire engine!" John 
 flashed forth. "No one knows better than 
 you that I have no brief for social injustice. 
 I want every home to be sanitary. I want 
 every worker to have a living wage. I want 
 every child to be well fed and well clothed. 
 I want an ample education to be within the 
 reach of all. I want life to be organized so 
 that the largest and fullest opportunity shall 
 come to every person everywhere. I am will- 
 ing to work for it. I am willing to fight for it. 
 
138 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 But I am not willing to tear the world to pieces 
 with a vague hope that a better world will some- 
 how be made out of the fragments. I will not 
 do it myself. And I will not stand by and let 
 other people do it. Not if I can prevent them." 
 
 My friend spoke with a decision which put 
 steel in his voice. Then he threw back liis 
 head and drew in a deep breath. 
 
 "The American spirit must speak with us as 
 the English spirit must speak here," he said. 
 "And it will not fail to be heard when the day 
 of need arrives. The American spirit has as 
 its very genius an enthusiasm for reform. But 
 it is absolutely firm in its opposition to re- 
 leasing forces which only tear down. It is the 
 foe of social disintegration. Is that spirit 
 moving royally through the hearts of the people 
 who live in our land? A man's head lifts 
 puzzling questions. But his heart tells him 
 that even with the newcomers the spirit of 
 liberty will not turn into the spirit of license. 
 Unrest there is. But unrest will not turn into 
 madness. That is our faith. And we must 
 justify it by spreading the true American 
 spirit over all the ranges of American life." 
 
 After that for a long time we stood looking 
 out at the sea. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 139 
 
 THE POWER OF HOPE 
 
 «|-^0 you know," said John Clearfield, 
 1 U "that some contemporary writers are 
 ^ busy creating a psychology of failure?"^^ Then 
 i without waiting for a reply he went on: "It was 
 all put in a sentence the other day by a gifted 
 Indian who said to John Drinkwater, *Our poets 
 praise life. Your poets revile life.' The cold and 
 distinguished cynicism which is the characteristic 
 product of a good many men of the pen leaves 
 a man depleted of just that zest in life out of 
 which all good work really comes. The songs of 
 hope help to create the power of achievement. 
 The songs of wailing gloom tend to rob a man 
 of the power of action." 
 
 The Man of Books and Men leaned back in 
 his chair and I saw that he was warming to 
 his theme. „ 
 
 "There is a discontent which acts as a spur, 
 he went on. "But it is a discontent which is, 
 after all, based on belief in life and a sound 
 criticism of oneself. There is a discontent 
 which acts as a deadening influence on all 
 one's creative powers. That is based upon 
 
140 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 an utter revolt from life and a certain soft 
 complacency as regards oneself. When you 
 criticize yourself because you are not measuring 
 up to the opportunities which life offers, you 
 are in a really wholesome and promising con- 
 dition. When you criticize the world because 
 it somehow fails to fling open all its doors to 
 your amazingly unusual personality, you are 
 in a state of mind which has no promise either 
 of character or achievement." 
 
 "But there are terrible conditions in the 
 world," I interrupted. 
 
 "No doubt that is true," replied John. 
 "But have you never noticed that it is not 
 the people in terrible conditions who are the 
 wailing pessimists .^^ Very often they surprise 
 us by their cheery hopefulness. It is the well 
 fed and the well clothed who come to the 
 hours of dull and heavy lassitude when life 
 seems to be an entire delusion and a snare. 
 Those who suffer from eating too much rich 
 food are infinitely more misanthropic than 
 those who suffer from having too little. Some- 
 times it seems as if only the poor knew the 
 real and perpetual secret of laughter. Gilbert 
 Chesterton has made all that clear and con- 
 vincing enough in his delightful little book on 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 141 
 
 Charles Dickens. No end of the greatest of 
 the songs of hope have come out of hardship." 
 " *Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,' " I 
 quoted. " 'Cry unto her that her warfare is 
 accomplished.' " 
 
 "Precisely," said John. "That great out- 
 burst was written in exile, and the sad loneli- 
 ness of a foreign land could not prevent the 
 prophet from singing with joy." 
 
 "Do you remember Samuel Crothers' clever 
 saying that a good many comfortable Amer- 
 icans need the new commandment, 'Thou shalt 
 not sulk'? " I asked. 
 
 "Oh, Crothers sees it clearly enough," replied 
 my friend. "He sees this and no end of other 
 things. I wish everybody read his essays. 
 But it goes even deeper than he has seen. 
 There is a great cosmic joy in life which sweeps 
 in high spirits over terrible and disillusioning 
 things straight to the goal. And as it goes by 
 it deals mighty blows at evil institutions from 
 which they cannot recover. It is the quality 
 of vital men and a vital age. There is a Homeric 
 grandeur about it. There is a complete eman- 
 cipation from the delicate decadence of small 
 and anaemic minds. The really vital men and 
 the really vital nations feel hope emerging even 
 
142 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 in hours saturated with gloom. The health of 
 the world and the hope of the world are joined 
 in eternal wedlock. Hopelessness is a sure 
 sign of disease mental, moral, or spiritual. 
 And the hope of mighty health has the prom- 
 ise of good days in it. After all anybody can 
 doubt. The heroes are the men who believe. 
 Anybody can be discouraged. The strong 
 makers of the world are the men who hope." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 143 
 
 TWO DANGERS AND TWO 
 OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 THE other evening I met John Clearfield 
 walking on the Thames Embankment. 
 It was a glorious night, and the moment I saw 
 my friend I knew that he was alive to the 
 finger tips, and I suspected that he was full 
 of some subject concerning which he wished to 
 talk. He promptly seized me by the arm and 
 soon we were walking up and down by the 
 side of the river. 
 
 "I have been thinking," John began, "and 
 I have really reached some conclusions." 
 
 "If the case is analyzed and the facts are 
 tabulated, let me hear the result," I replied. 
 
 We were turning near Waterloo Bridge at 
 the moment. John cast his eye about, drink- 
 ing in the whole scene. Then he went on. 
 
 "As far as I can see individual men and 
 women are confronted by two dangers and 
 two opportunities. If we can avoid the dan- 
 gers and use the opportunities to the full, 
 we will have a spirit in which we can deal 
 with our practical problems in a sure and ade- 
 
144 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 quale fashion, and there will be better days 
 ahead." 
 
 "Please begin with the dangers, so that this 
 conversation won't come to an anti-climax," I 
 interjected. 
 
 "That is exactly what I am going to do," 
 said Clearfield. "Didn't you notice that this 
 was the order in which I spoke of them?" 
 He moved his hand along his stick as if he 
 were about to extract some idea from that 
 inarticulate piece of wood. Then he turned 
 and looked me full in the eye. 
 
 "Our first danger," he said, "is that we will 
 turn a world-wide weariness into a world-wide 
 misanthropy. Our state of mind is at the 
 moment the most dangerous thing in the life 
 of the world. We see everything with tired 
 eyes. We read our own utter war weariness 
 into every problem we analyze. There are 
 elements of grave seriousness in the situation 
 to be sure. But there is nothing in the situa- 
 tion so serious as is our attitude toward it. 
 If we were fresh and full of energy, we would 
 swing through diflSculties which it now seems 
 we cannot surmount. But the very moment 
 we see that our own weariness, the weariness 
 of all the world after the Great War, is creep- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 145 
 
 ing in and affecting our judgment on every 
 subject, that moment we will begin to get a 
 new perspective. We will begin to make 
 allowance for the pessimism of tired minds, and 
 we will make a start at getting a more whole- 
 some view. The second danger is closely akin 
 to the first. And it is very near and very 
 acute. It is the danger of turning a world- 
 wide nervous reaction into a world-wide ethical 
 reaction. The nerves of the world have been 
 held tense and rigid during the testing and 
 terrible years of the war. And how splendidly 
 they did service ! I never can praise enough the 
 quiet good cheer of the English, for instance, 
 in the worst days of the war. But it was at 
 a great physical price. The nerves held taut 
 for so long became mutinous. And after the 
 armistice, the inevitable reaction came. Now, 
 there is nothing tragically dangerous about 
 this, providing we all understand it and meet 
 it with a depreciatory shrug, or best of all with 
 a sense of humor. But if we allow ourselves to 
 get under the weight of it, if we come to take a 
 jaundiced view of life, and at last become the 
 complete victims of our own nervous reaction, 
 lose hope and allow an ethical reaction to fol- 
 low, there will be tragedy indeed. We need 
 
146 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 to understand that in spite of all the prob- 
 lems the thing you fear is never as dangerous 
 as fear itself, and the physical reaction must 
 be met with a quiet patience which accepts 
 it as an ugly but necessary experience and quite 
 refuses to build out of it a despairing or law- 
 less view of life. The nerves of all the world 
 will behave properly again if we only give them 
 time." 
 
 We were in a position from which West- 
 minster Abbey was distinctly visible. In the 
 soft evening light the towers seemed a noble 
 summons. There was a quiet dignity in my 
 friend's voice as he went on: 
 
 "Then there are two opportunities. One has 
 to do with the spirit of man. In the worst 
 days of the war fathers and mothers and fight- 
 ing men found that they had inner resources 
 of which they had no real knowledge before. 
 Those resources remain. And going beneath 
 perplexity and weariness and nervous tension 
 we must find those deep wells of vitality which 
 will carry us through the diflSculties of peace 
 as they carried us through the tortures of war. 
 The other opportunity those Abbey towers 
 seem to be trying to make articulate. The 
 very secrets of vitality a man finds hidden in 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 147 
 
 his own life suggest vast and unexplored con- 
 nections of the human spirit. And in the 
 hour when a man learns that he can retreat 
 into the strength of God he has learned the 
 most amazing thing about our human expe- 
 rience. We may need new and living phrases 
 to tell its story. Or we may experience it 
 without any phrases to tell its meaning at all. 
 But if we have come to the place of deep and 
 poignant need, and in that hour have found 
 our way into the very reality and steadiness 
 and poise of the life of the Master of the world 
 everything is changed. That kind of mysticism 
 saves lost causes. And it transforms the life 
 of men. Quite simply, and all the more eagerly 
 because there is not a touch of professional 
 quality in the words, I am ready to say that 
 the greatest opportunity of the age is a redis- 
 covery of God." 
 
 We stood looking over the river. We 
 watched the lights in the Houses of Parliament. 
 We looked again at the stately Abbey with 
 its tribute to the dead and its immortal hope. 
 Then we walked away in a silent comradeship 
 which needed no word of speech. 
 
148 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 VICTORY AND PEACE 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD and I were walking 
 away from the House of Commons on 
 Monday night, July 21. We had just been 
 listening to the debate on the Peace Treaty 
 and we had heard practically all of it. At the 
 moment, however, John was speaking of the 
 Victory procession which we had witnessed on 
 the Saturday before. 
 
 "Will you ever forget the cold austere 
 strength of the face of Marshal Foch?" he asked, 
 and then without waiting for a reply, he 
 went on, "And can't you see now the sturdy, 
 virile figure of Sir Douglas Haig?" 
 
 "And the hearty, friendly way of General 
 Pershing as he smiled at the British who lined 
 the streets," I broke in. "He seemed to be 
 looking right into the eyes of the people and 
 liking each one of them individually." 
 
 "And were not the American boys superb?" 
 John went on. "They seemed to have the 
 very momentum of success in their swinging 
 steps. You felt that there was solid endurance 
 in the French. But you felt, too, how much 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 149 
 
 they had passed through as you watched their 
 solemn faces. The Httle Belgians gave you a 
 thrilling sense of wonderful days in 1914. The 
 Italians looked as temperamental and music 
 loving as they always do when you really see 
 their faces. The Chinese and the Japanese 
 made you thinli of many things. The hosts 
 from all over the British empire made you 
 think what a great thing it is that all that 
 far-flung power is in the hands of a world- 
 wide democracy." 
 
 "What about Mr. Devlin's speech tonight.^" 
 I asked. This Irishman with the gift of his 
 race for oratory had made a powerful appeal 
 for Ireland in the course of the Peace Treaty 
 debate. 
 
 "The problem about Ireland," replied the 
 Man of Books and Men, sententiously, "is not 
 what Great Britain is willing to give. It is a 
 question of what Ireland is willing to receive. 
 Lord Robert Cecil was right to-night when he 
 spoke with deep and evident feeling of Great 
 Britain as a democracy." 
 
 "Lord Robert Cecil got a wonderful hear- 
 ing," I observed. 
 
 "Everybody is watching him," rephed John. 
 "One of these days he may be prime minister." 
 
150 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "And what did you think of Lloyd-George, 
 to-night?" I asked. 
 
 "It was a very characteristic piece of speak- 
 ing," repHed my friend. "He was human and 
 magnetic. As far as the mere speaking qual- 
 ity was concerned he really quite mastered the 
 House again and again. Men like to hear him 
 talk even if they do not agree with him. And 
 it is hard for them not to like to hear him talk 
 even when they do not feel that they can trust 
 him. I do not mean at all to put myself with 
 that group. I believe he has a real and honest 
 mind trying to find its way about in a difficult 
 time, and to express itself in an effective way. 
 I cannot say that I quite always like his 
 methods. But I believe in the essential earnest- 
 ness of the man. He was sometimes adroit 
 to-night. But once and again he rose to high 
 levels. And the figure of the treaty as a 
 lighthouse was noble enough and lofty enough 
 in its suggestion to fit the occasion." 
 
 By this time we had reached Trafalgar 
 Square and stood looking up at the figure on 
 the summit of the column. John Clearfield 
 was drinking in the whole scene with evident 
 delight. Suddenly he seized me by the arm: 
 
 "Man, do you reahze it.'^ England and 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 151 
 
 America together can bring in the new day 
 for the world. We must stick together. We 
 must understand each other as we have never 
 understood each other. And together we must 
 meet the challenge of the need of all the world." 
 We walked along in silence after that. But 
 both of us were thinking of the responsibility 
 of the English-speaking peoples for the welfare 
 of all mankind. 
 
152 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE SPEECH WHICH WE BROUGHT 
 FROM ENGLAND 
 
 ONE hot day in August I found John 
 Clearfield sitting in a chair in Regent's 
 Park. I walked quickly beside him and stood 
 looking down into his face. 
 
 "Why this far-off, intent look?" I inquired. 
 
 John Clearfield started up quickly, then 
 smiled his characteristic welcome. I sat down 
 beside him. 
 
 "I was thinking of the English language," 
 he said. 
 
 "You seem to have found it very engrossing," 
 I replied a little flippantly, I fear. "I have 
 thought of it too on occasion, but hardly with 
 your look of mystical enthusiasm." 
 
 "That's just it," repHed the Man of Books 
 and Men. "If you really think of it you fall 
 into poetry at once. Really, it isn't a language 
 at all, it is a great series of caravans carrying 
 all the treasures of civilization across the 
 years. When a man takes the English lan- 
 guage to a new country, without ever knowing 
 it he carries all of English history and all of 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 153 
 
 English tradition and all the moral and 
 spiritual idealism of the race. The English 
 language condenses and makes portable that 
 which you could not carry in a million ships. 
 I was just seeing it all as you came up. And 
 you brought me back to Regent's Park with a 
 sudden jolt," John finished a little ruefully. 
 
 "All that ought to have something to do 
 with the friendly and sympathetic relations 
 between Great Britain and America," I ven- 
 tured. 
 
 Clearfield sprang to his feet. 
 
 "It has everything to do with it," he de- 
 clared. "A language literally carries about the 
 soul of a nation. And in speaking the English 
 language we have taken into our national life 
 the very soul of England. We cannot even 
 condemn England without using words whose 
 very judicial quality comes from centuries of 
 English striving and achieving of fair play. 
 And our whole intellectual life is fed by the 
 living phrases which have come leaping from 
 the most notable English experience. Shake- 
 speare far more than we know has made 
 Englishmen of us all. I mean that the way 
 of looking at life, the standards, the feeling 
 a-bout ^ million subtle things which have to 
 
154 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 do with passing human experience feel the 
 impress of Shakespeare's interpretation when 
 we least remember it. Charles Lamb has 
 given a touch of gentle and whimsical humor 
 to the whole English-speaking race. Milton 
 has written a stern and austere sense of the 
 sublime into the lives of all the men who use 
 his tongue. Men feel it who have never heard 
 the name of Milton. Browning has molded 
 the intellectual life of multitudes of young 
 men and women as far as their thinking of the 
 supremest matters of existence is concerned. 
 Carlyle has given the behests of conscience the 
 flash of lightning and the roll of thunder. 
 Matthew Arnold has given to English speech 
 and English life an added quality of chaste 
 and beautiful restraint. And out from English 
 life it has gone into all the world of English- 
 speaking peoples. Tennyson has set to music 
 the most characteristic life of a century and 
 he has done it for America as well as for Eng- 
 land. All of these influences go far beyond 
 those who are actual students and readers. 
 They press their way right through the undis- 
 ciplined and untutored life. You can take it 
 as an axiom that you can never explain the 
 thoughts and the speech of an uneducated man 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 155 
 
 who uses any civilized language without re- 
 ferring to the names of many authors of whom 
 he has never heard." 
 
 John sat down again. Then he went on 
 talking : 
 
 "But in one way the most wonderful thing 
 about a language is the fashion in which it 
 harvests into its own great barns the very 
 most vital meaning of all the thought and 
 struggle of all the people who use it. Lan- 
 guage is democratic in the sense that every 
 man who uses it has a vote. Unconsciously 
 to himself he is affecting the common usage. 
 And that love of freedom, that growing ideal- 
 ism, that belief in the rights of men which is 
 enshrined so deeply in English life and character 
 is part of the very warp and woof of our lan- 
 guage." 
 
 "Is it all English then?" I asked. "Have 
 we no share in it.^^" 
 
 Once more John was on his feet. 
 
 "We have a great share in it. Never doubt 
 that," he replied. "If you do doubt it read 
 the utterances of Abraham Lincoln. Or better 
 still feel your way into the everyday American 
 mind and inspect the live and telling phrases 
 which have come rich and potent out of Amer- 
 
156 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 ican life. It is our language, too. But just as 
 we must speak the same tongue, so we must 
 live the same life And for the sake of the 
 future of the world we must learn how to 
 supplement each other, each building part of 
 the common structure of speech and life. The 
 deepest and most sacred of ties bind us to- 
 gether. We must not be put asunder." 
 
 At the moment a boy came by with some 
 copies of the Westminster Gazette. We each 
 took a paper, and that ended conversation 
 for the time. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 157 
 
 THE MIDDLE WEST 
 
 THE other day I ran into John Clearfield's 
 oflSee just in time to catch him as he 
 was about to go out for luncheon. Soon we 
 were walking together down Michigan Avenue 
 toward John's favorite club. My friend was 
 full of the zest of being back at his desk again 
 after his summer in England. I could see as 
 he looked out over the Lake that he was com- 
 paring the scene on this clear, cool, invigorating 
 day with some of the scenes upon which he 
 had gazed in various English towns a few weeks 
 
 before. 
 
 "It's home again, home again, 
 America for me,'* 
 
 quoted John blithely as we walked along. 
 Then, turning toward me in his quick charac- 
 teristic way, he said: "Do you know that 
 somebody is going to discover the Middle 
 West one of these days.f^" 
 
 "What's to prevent the Middle West from 
 discovering itself?" I asked in return. 
 
 John smiled a little. "Why not?" he said. 
 "In any event the day when the giant in the 
 
158 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Mississippi Valley discovers that he is a giant 
 will be a significant day for the world." 
 
 We walked along for a moment, moving in 
 and out among the throngs of people. Then 
 as we got into a clear space for a moment 
 John spoke again. 
 
 "Do you know what an inland empire this 
 is?" he asked. "The majority of the people 
 in the United States are in the Mississippi 
 Valley. Its grain is a vast treasure with 
 strength and life for American men. Its 
 minerals are waiting to be built into the civ- 
 ilization which is to be. Its systems of trans- 
 portation are such highways for travel as 
 stagger the imagination. And all this is in- 
 creasing and increasing in meaning. The 
 Mississippi Valley is a part of the great world. 
 Its products reach the ends of the earth. And 
 the men of business in the Middle West are 
 beginning to think in the terms of the indus- 
 trial and economic life of the whole world. 
 They have been shaken out of their provin- 
 cialism." 
 
 At the moment we were separated by jostling 
 masses of people. When we found ourselves 
 walking side by side again John went on 
 
 "The war painted a good deal of the world 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 159 
 
 black. The Mississippi Valley contains the 
 greatest mass of able and productive men un- 
 disturbed by the world-wide cataclysm to be 
 found on the planet. The sanity of the world 
 is in a real measure to be restored by the men 
 of the Mississippi Valley." 
 
 Clearfield had quickened his pace a little. 
 
 "Do you know," he said, almost vehemently, 
 "that the need of the hour is the testing of 
 ideas by a deep and practical experience of 
 life.^ The destructive radical must be met by 
 a wholesome mind with a large and significant 
 business experience. The Middle West offers 
 that. It will be progressive without being 
 destructive. It will have visions without be- 
 coming visionary. It will be as conservative 
 as the things which ought to be held steady 
 and as radical as the things which ought to 
 be changed." 
 
 Just at this moment we joined some friends 
 at the entrance of the club and so the con- 
 versation went no further. 
 
160 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 CONTEMPORARY POETRY 
 
 THE other day I overheard John Clearfield 
 talking with a friend who wanted to do 
 some reading in connection with recent move- 
 ments in poetry. I jotted down some of the 
 things which he said, and here they are: 
 
 "The best way to begin is by reading Pro- 
 fessor William Lyon Phelps's The Advance of 
 English Poetry in the Twentieth Century," he 
 said. "Phelps is bright and clever and human 
 and wholesome. He keeps his mind near to 
 the place where you live, and he gives you 
 all sorts of interesting facts and estimates. 
 You will want to keep his book about for 
 reference after you have read it. He is not 
 the apostle of the old and he is not the prophet 
 of the new. He has a hearty, hospitable mind 
 and he welcomes you quite as he welcomes the 
 new poets while he keeps a place for the old. 
 Then I would get into Marguerite Wilkinson's 
 New Voices. This is an anthology with pages 
 and pages of informing comment and inter- 
 pretation thrown in. Usually Mrs. Wilkinson 
 is judicial. But she can be quite color-blind. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 161 
 
 as is revealed by some of the things which she 
 says of Alfred Noyes. You will find many a 
 poem you will not want to forget in the anthol- 
 ogy, and you will be carried along in the trail 
 of a really thoughtful and appreciating mind." 
 
 "And where will I find the book of the 
 advocate?" asked the seeker after bibliograph- 
 ical material. 
 
 "Why not try Louis Untermeyer.f^" Clear- 
 field threw back with a chuckle. "The New 
 Era in American Poetry is written with ample 
 knowledge, with infinite assurance, and once 
 and again with the cut of a really revealing 
 phrase. There is actual criticism in it, and 
 you will have a sense of the new movements 
 as they are felt from within. Then I would 
 go right on to Professor John Livingstone 
 Lowes's Convention and Revolt in Poetry. 
 This new Harvard teacher knows pretty much 
 everything in English literature from the time 
 of Chaucer — especially Chaucer — and you see 
 the new movements in the light of a rather 
 large historical perspective. There is wit 
 and crisp energy and much of the merry, 
 quiet laughter of the mind in the writing of 
 Professor Lowes. And you will feel that 
 many of the principles which he elucidates 
 
162 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 have wide application to other matters as well 
 as to poetry.'* 
 
 John Clearfield leaned back in his chair for 
 a moment. Then he spoke again: 
 
 "On the whole none of these new people is 
 more worth knowing than Vachel Lindsay. 
 Take all his books along with you. Robinson 
 may have a more finished technique. Frost 
 may be able to turn a word into a stone so 
 that you feel its hardness; Amy Lowell may 
 turn phrases into bits of clear and icy crystal; 
 Masters may forget that houses have com- 
 fortable living rooms and go out to make the 
 barnyard vocal; these and many others may 
 do definitely effective things, but the promise 
 which is in Lindsay's daring democracy has 
 the future of American letters at the heart 
 of it. Read every bit of his prose and every 
 bit of his verse. He is the minstrel of a cos- 
 mopolitan commonwealth and he believes that 
 a little Middle Western city is inarticulate and 
 not empty, so he sets himself about giving 
 it a voice." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 163 
 
 CONCERNING ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 THROUGH the rain I swung down White- 
 hall toward Parliament Square. When I 
 pulled up beside Westminster Abbey I found 
 myself on the edge of a crowd of people whose 
 enthusiasm the downpour had been unable to 
 dampen. Just as I reached the spot the flags 
 parted and were lowered and the statue of 
 Abraham Lincoln stood forth, gazing with sad 
 wise scrutiny at the Abbey, where so many of 
 England's great slumber. It was a mighty 
 moment, and very quickly and very deeply 
 one felt many things as he gazed at the noble 
 statue of the most notable man America has 
 produced. One listened reverently to "The 
 Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Save the 
 King," and then the choir sang "The Battle 
 Hymn of the Republic," while past and present 
 seemed to meet in the most curious and vital 
 fashion. 
 
 As I turned to move away I caught the face 
 of John Clearfield, emerging from his tightly 
 buttoned raincoat. It was good to look at 
 that face. Clearfield was alive to every deep 
 
164 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 and subtle meaning of the occasion, and a 
 flash of something of Lincoln's own tender 
 strength was in his eyes. 
 
 Soon the two of us were walking toward 
 the Thames embankment, quite ignoring the 
 rain. For a while neither of us spoke. But 
 John managed to make the silence very preg- 
 nant. At last he turned to me with one vigor- 
 ous sentence: 
 
 "That one man — Lincoln — justifies the exist- 
 ence of the United States of America," he said. 
 
 Again we were silent for a while as we 
 strode along. Then I ventured on a query: 
 
 "How are we going to keep him in the minds 
 of the people who keep being born and growing 
 up and making the future.'^" 
 
 Clearfield turned the matter over in his 
 mind. 
 
 "Books will help," he said. "Have you read 
 Irving Bachellor's Man for the Ages? There is 
 a story in which the buried past lives and you 
 see Lincoln in the making. Every young fellow 
 in America, and many an older one, ought to 
 read Morgan's Abraham Lincoln, the Boy and 
 the Man. It makes no pretense. But Mr. 
 Morgan has covered a vast amount of material 
 and Lincoln lives in the book. An English- 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 165 
 
 man, of course, should make the approach 
 through Lord Charnwood's sympathetic Life. 
 And it is not a bad thing for an American to 
 see Lincoln through English eyes. The chap 
 who is ambitious for any sort o£ leadership 
 should read Rothschild's Lincoln, Master of 
 Men. These are a good start. Then the 
 readers will go on to the massive volumes 
 which offer such abundant materials in biog- 
 raphies which have the authority of long and 
 careful investigation. Nicolay and Hay and 
 Ida M. Tarbell have put us well in their debt." 
 
 The Man of Books and Men swung about 
 and we moved back toward the Houses of 
 Parliament. As we walked along he was say- 
 ing softly to himself the lines of Vachel Lind- 
 say's poem, "Would I could rouse the Lincoln 
 in you all." 
 
 "Lindsay understands Lincoln," he said. 
 Then he added, "And Lindsay knows a good 
 deal about democracy." 
 
166 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE INTERNATIONAL VIEW 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD had just been read- 
 ing Tennyson-Turner's sonnet, "Letty's 
 Globe." His eyes were glowing and it was 
 easy to see that he was picturing to himself 
 the tiny girl with the world held in her chubby 
 hands. He wound up with a swing: 
 
 "And while she hid all England with a kiss. 
 Bright over Europe fell her golden hair." 
 
 "I'll go to Letty for instruction in world- 
 politics," he declared, merrily. "Her arms 
 reach affectionately around the globe. Her 
 golden hair falls over the continent nearest 
 to her. And she hides her own land with a 
 kiss." 
 
 "You were talking to me the other day 
 about the national view in politics," I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 The words were scarcely out of my mouth 
 before John replied: 
 
 "And, of course, the sort of national view 
 I praised is in absolute harmony with the 
 noblest sort of international view. That was 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 167 
 
 clear enough to Letty." This last was said 
 with a whimsical smile. 
 
 "I know that you are ready to deduce the 
 most abstruse principles of metaphysics from 
 the most incidental remarks of Alice in Wonder- 
 land," I retorted, "but suppose you forget 
 the wisdom of the babies for a while and tell 
 me exactly your own position about the inter- 
 national situation." 
 
 The Man of Books and Men looked at me 
 with battle in his eye for a moment. I fully 
 expected a dissertation on the relation of fairy 
 tales to epistemology. But he gave his head a 
 little toss as if dismissing an alluring tempta- 
 tion. Then he said: 
 
 "The world is one world. It is getting 
 smaller every day. All the good things are 
 contagious. All the bad things are contagious. 
 And the only way for any part off the world 
 to be safe is for all the world to be sate. When- 
 ever you increase the capital of human good- 
 ness in the farthest part of Asia, you make 
 life surer and steadier in New York and Chi- 
 cago. The national view insists that the 
 United States shall decide its great problems 
 in the light of the best good of the whole 
 country. In doing that it is serving the whole 
 
168 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 world. For the stability and steadiness and 
 justice of American institutions concern the 
 last bit of organized life on the planet. When 
 the best sort of violin is made you are serving 
 not only the violin but the whole orchestra. 
 I want America to be a splendid violin not 
 only for its own sake, but also for the sake 
 of that great orchestra of the world in which 
 it is to play." 
 
 "I believe all you say," I replied, "but are 
 you not evading the really difficult problem? 
 Are there not many cases where an inter- 
 national view will demand that America do 
 more than perfect its own life for the sake 
 of all the world?" 
 
 John was walking back and forth in the 
 room now. 
 
 "I'm not trying to escape under the cover 
 of specious phrases," he declared. "I admit 
 that you have touched the point of real diffi- 
 culty. Are we willing to go out of our way 
 to help the world? Are we willing to take 
 risks for the sake of the world? Are we willing 
 to become responsible for some of the back- 
 ward peoples?" 
 
 We sat quite silent for a few minutes after 
 my friend had phrased these questions. When 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 169 
 
 he spoke again it was very quietly and very 
 seriously. 
 
 "The great difficulty is that we ought to 
 have begun to educate Americans a genera- 
 tion ago in order to prepare them for the de- 
 mands of to-day. There are books which every 
 American should have read. There are news- 
 papers whose discussions of the world's prob- 
 lems should have been familiar to all our 
 citizens. There is a large and ample habit 
 of thought about mankind which should have 
 been developed. We are thrust into the 
 world's life with unprepared minds. The edu- 
 cational work of the Missionary Education 
 Movement is one of the few examples of an 
 American attempt to train men to think 
 thoughts as large as the problems of the world. 
 Now we must work quickly. And we must 
 work skillfully. In the meantime events them- 
 selves are speaking. The old schoolmaster is 
 hurrying us along at an amazing gait. The 
 Christian Church ought to be a tremendous 
 ally of all men of large and adequate vision. 
 At all events we are to find the deepest meaning 
 of nationality at last in international service." 
 
170 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 JOHN CLEARFIELD AT CHAUTAUQUA 
 
 THE two of us were walking by the Lake 
 on a charming evening early in July. 
 We had just been listening to a delightful con- 
 cert by the New York Symphony Orchestra 
 just home from Europe after its triumphant 
 tour. John always listens to music with a 
 sort of rapt attention. I tell him that he 
 partly creates the effect by the fashion in 
 which he concentrates all his powers of appre- 
 ciation. You have a feeling that he is one of 
 the performers. Incidentally one has the 
 same feeling about him in the grand stand at 
 a baseball game. He seems to do the work 
 of eighteen men while he watches. 
 
 "Chautauqua is all the while talking to me," 
 he said. 
 
 "Suppose you translate the message which 
 is given to your responsive mind," I replied. 
 
 Clearfield smiled with a touch of irony in 
 his smile, but he was not to be diverted. 
 
 "Chautauqua is rather more than an idea," 
 he continued. "It is an atmosphere. You 
 feel the pressure of a very genuine intellectual 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 171 
 
 curiosity. You feel the energy of a very real 
 moral purpose. You sense the quality of a 
 very definite spiritual aspiration. And a cer- 
 tain noble hunger for beauty and charm is 
 moving in the very air you breathe. It is all 
 very democratic and there is a subtle sense 
 that the invisible beauty of the mind and the 
 heart is more permanent than the visible 
 beauty of form. Chautauqua is a symbol of 
 Democracy becoming conscious of its powers 
 and its possibilities." 
 
 "You have seemed to find a good deal of 
 personal stimulus here," I observed. 
 
 "No end of it," replied John, heartily. 
 "Professor Richard Burton's lectures on Con- 
 temporary Literature have been worth a long 
 journey. He is a sort of incarnation of whole- 
 someness. And there is constant and disci- 
 plined literary discernment too I hope his 
 books are widely read. I have bought two 
 of them: one on Bernard Shaw and one on 
 Charles Dickens." 
 
 "That is a rather interesting combination," 
 I chuckled. 
 
 "But think of the daring of the man who 
 ventured to write and to publish those two 
 books. You know a good deal about Professor 
 
172 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 Burton just from the two titles. You know 
 that he is simple and human enough to appre- 
 ciate Dickens, and you know that he is clever 
 and sophisticated enough to appreciate Shaw. 
 I have had some good talks with him. He is 
 ripe and has a mind richly stored, and he 
 weds character and art in all his thinking." 
 
 "I have seen you talking with that Cam- 
 bridge scholar Dr. T. R. Glover," I threw 
 out. 
 
 "And isn't Glover a delight?" the Man of 
 Books and Men retorted "He is a combina- 
 tion of the tradition of the Puritans and some 
 stately strains of Anglican tradition as this is 
 felt at Cambridge. His mind is honest and 
 very subtle, too. He is a technical scholar 
 who has really lived in the periods which he 
 has made his own. And he expresses himself 
 with a skill which cuts right into your mind. 
 Do you remember with what delight we read 
 his Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman 
 Empire? And how eagerly we read his vivid 
 little book The Jesus of History?" 
 
 "These Cambridge and Oxford men do know 
 how to combine scholarship and culture," I 
 replied. 
 
 "Don't be discouraged, my friend," said 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 173 
 
 Clearfield. "We'll emerge from our era of 
 lifeless classification one of these days." 
 
 We had turned back toward the Hotel by 
 this time. There was a quiet beauty about 
 the night which was making its way into our 
 consciousness like the fragrance of a flower. 
 
 "There is a fine spirit back of all this," said 
 John. "One feels all the while in this attempt 
 to bring the very best within the reach of the 
 everyday American mind a belief in people 
 and a belief in the future which is immensely 
 heartening." 
 
 There were still lights in the Amphitheater. 
 
 "Think of the voices which have been heard 
 there," ^id my friend. "And think of the 
 fashion in which they are echoing over the 
 United States." 
 
 So we turned in, leaving the half mystic 
 beauty of the night. 
 
174 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 "TUSITALA" 
 
 THE Man of Books and Men was holding 
 in his hand the one-volume life of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson by Graham Balfour. He had 
 been reading aloud one of the chapters on the 
 South Sea Cruises. At a description of an 
 address before the students of the training 
 college of the London Mission in Malua I 
 called a halt when he had read this sentence; 
 
 "It was on this latter occasion that he was 
 first introduced to the natives by the Rev. J. 
 E. Newell as TusitalaM The Writer of Tales/ 
 the name by which he was afterward most 
 usually known in Samoa." 
 
 "Wasn't that a name to express the very 
 spirit of Stevenson?" I cried, going on at once. 
 "And do you remember the delightful fashion 
 in which Alfred Noyes uses it in *The Flower 
 of Old Japan' ?" 
 
 Clearfield smiled at my enthusiasm. 
 
 "You have not forgotten the thrill with 
 which you read Treasure Island, I see," he 
 said. "And I quite agree with you that the 
 gay spirit of high romance which dwelt in 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 175 
 
 Stevenson made him a writer of tales which 
 will long bewitch the imagination of men and 
 of eager eyed boys and girls. I like to think 
 of Stevenson making a real place for himself 
 in the life of the South Sea people. It was 
 the same gift of sympathy which made him 
 such a teller of memorable tales which enabled 
 him to do that. I like to think of his exhaust- 
 less spirits in his long battle with disease. He 
 knew a fine use of his mind by which he would 
 take wings and escape from his room of illness 
 into some fair and fascinating region. It was 
 Tusitala who was able to do that. But there 
 is another Stevenson who gives me endless 
 pleasure. That is the Stevenson of the dis- 
 tinguished observant essays couched in speech 
 which is carved of gold and ivory. That is 
 Tusitala too, but here the story-teller has laid 
 aside his tales and has become the urbane and 
 alert critic of men and things touching life 
 gently and once and again finding a phrase 
 which sparkles like a gem." 
 
 John reached over to his table and picked 
 up a copy of Memories and Portraits. As he 
 turned its pages he went on talking: 
 
 "Few men have ever given more care to 
 style," he said. "Few men have ever felt a 
 
176 THE OPINIONS OP 
 
 greater love for the right word. And few men 
 have oftener found it. There were times when 
 he ran off on a gallop of masterful speech when 
 it seemed as if by a fine magic he could do 
 anything with the language which he desired. 
 Take this description of a certain brilliant 
 conversationalist in the first essay on *Talk and 
 Talkers/ *He doubles like a serpent, changes 
 and flashes like a shaken kaleidoscope, trans- 
 migrates bodily into the views of others, and 
 so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady 
 rapture, turns questions inside out and flings 
 them empty before you on the ground.' Some- 
 times he delights you by his subtle distinctions 
 as when he speaks of a certain talker as having 
 *a desire to hear, although not always to 
 listen.' I like his literary criticisms with their 
 sense of craftmanship, their large perspective, 
 and their power of perception and leaping 
 understanding phrases." 
 
 I walked over to the shelf where Clearfield 
 kept all the works of Stevenson. Every volume 
 showed signs of frequent handling. ("A well- 
 dressed book is a book for which one does not 
 care. A book which has grown shabby is a 
 book one loves," my friend sometimes said.) 
 I thought as I looked at the books of the 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 177 
 
 fashion in which sometimes John won a case 
 through some sudden phrase which seemed to 
 crystalHze his whole argument into inevitable 
 strength. He never imitated an author, but 
 he learned from all his favorites, and there 
 was much which he had learned from Stevenson. 
 Still standing by the case of books I spoke 
 half whimsically. 
 
 "I wonder what would happen if a hundred 
 young ministers were to take to studying 
 Stevenson seriously until they learned his 
 own passion for potent expression." 
 
 John's eyes gleamed. 
 
 "If I were an intellectual Pope," he de- 
 clared, "I would decree that every young 
 minister should have a course in Tusitala." 
 
178 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 THE MAGIC OF GOOD BOOKS 
 
 MY friend John Clearfield was in one of 
 his expansive moods. He felt very 
 much like talking. And he had no doubt at 
 all of the importance of what he had to say. 
 I knew the mood well, and so I sat in the 
 chair opposite to him waiting expectantly. 
 
 "Most men need two things," he began, 
 oracularly. "They need a new motive and 
 they need a new environment. Christianity 
 gives them the new motive, and they have to 
 find their own way into the new environment." 
 
 "That sounds as if you would have every 
 man move away from his old home as soon as 
 he becomes a Christian," I chuckled. 
 
 John smiled and frowned both at once in a 
 way he had. 
 
 "That is just what I do mean in spite of 
 your flippancy," he said. "Of course, I do not 
 mean that a man is to stop living in the same 
 house and meeting the same people. I mean 
 that the whole set of surroundings which his 
 mind had recognized in the old days is to be 
 changed. He is to find a new environment in 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 179 
 
 the old house. He is to find new surroundings 
 while meeting the same old faces. He is to 
 find an environment in his mind which is to 
 dominate the environment of his body." 
 
 "That sounds like some sort of subtle new 
 thought," I interjected. 
 
 Clearfield gave a little grimace of distaste. 
 
 "It's all as simple as A B C," he said. "If 
 a man keeps reading good books and thinking 
 the thoughts which they suggest the time 
 comes at last when they literally create the 
 mental and moral atmosphere in which he lives. 
 There are some men who live so near to the 
 Bible that the Bible dominates their thoughts 
 and their feelings and their actions. What 
 Isaiah says has a sort of access to their con- 
 sciousness which is never obtained by the 
 gossip of the next-door neighbor. And there 
 are people who read so many great Christian 
 biographies that they are literally surrounded 
 by the Christian strength of the ages. Books 
 have performed the feat of magic which has 
 given them a new and beautiful environment." 
 
 We sat silent for a moment. Then John 
 went on. 
 
 "Good books are the food of the Christian. 
 The new motive will grow weak and vanish 
 
180 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 at last unless it is fed. And the books whieli 
 take a man into the very atmosphere of Chris- 
 tian Hving and Christian achievement are a 
 supplement to the Christian motive of the 
 most far-reaching power. To take a man out 
 of an unpleasant environment is merely to 
 avoid his problem. To give him a masterfully 
 good book which will enable him to create 
 a new environment for his mind in the old 
 surroundings is to show him the way to solve 
 his problem. A missionary once stood before a 
 little shelf with fifteen or twenty great books. 
 He was living in a land of the darkest and 
 dreariest evil. As he looked at the books, 
 which glowed with the best Christian living of 
 twenty centuries, he cried, 'If I can keep these 
 in my mind, paganism will never master my 
 spirit.' But everybody needs it. The world 
 gets to be too much for all of us, as well as too 
 much with us. And the Christian ages are to 
 be speaking to us all the while in the great books 
 which have come forth warm with the vitality of 
 the spirit of Jesus at work in the world." 
 
 "You think that any man's environment 
 may drag him down unless he meets it with 
 an inner environment which is full of moral 
 and spiritual power.^^" I asked. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 181 
 
 "Just that," said my friend. "And nothing 
 is mightier than a good book in providing this 
 new inner environment." 
 
 John rose and began to walk about the 
 room. 
 
 "Nothing amazes me more than the care- 
 lessness of the churches in this matter," he 
 said. "The old masters of the saddle-bags 
 carried books about with them. They knew 
 that if you can guide a man's reading, you 
 can keep him steady and safe and strong. 
 To-day we have no really serious attempt to 
 bring the good book and the man who wants 
 to be a good man together. If every man 
 who is beginning the Christian life would read 
 two great Christian books a month, we could 
 transform America in a quarter of a century. 
 If one Great Book is 'the sword of the Spirit,' 
 there are no end of good books which have 
 their own place as trusted weapons. Books 
 form the air for the breathing of a man's mind. 
 The man who lives in good books will come 
 away from the books to lead a good life in 
 the matters which are external. When a 
 man's working hours are shortened the one 
 important question has to do with how he 
 spends his extra time. If a good part of it is 
 
182 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 given to noble books, all is well with the man, 
 and as far as he goes with the man's land. 
 It is the leaves of good books which may be 
 said to bring about the healing of the nations." 
 
 I looked at the shelves about me in the 
 room which contained the real treasures of 
 my friend. 
 
 "If good books make a good man you have 
 a good deal to live up to," I said. 
 
 And then Clearfield closed the discussion 
 with one sentence: 
 
 "They have made me believe in the New 
 Jerusalem coming down out of heaven," he 
 said softly. 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 183 
 
 THE PRACTICAL DREAMER 
 
 " 'IV/rUSIC makers,' 'dreamers of dreams,'" 
 JLt X repeated John Clearfield. He had 
 just been repeating Arthur O'Shaughnessey's 
 musical poem with a hearty rhythmic swing. 
 We were having a day in the country, and 
 our feet kept time to the beat of the verses 
 as we walked along. Spring had very definitely 
 made its appearance in the part of Wiscon- 
 sin in which we had chosen to spend this 
 day off. And the feeling of spring was in our 
 blood. At length I turned to Clearfield with 
 a question: 
 
 "John, how have you ever kept your glowing 
 idealism in the midst of your hard and de- 
 manding career.? How do you keep the mood 
 of a poet back of the mind of a lawyer?" 
 John chuckled a little. Then he spoke : 
 "O, the futility of some of these conceptions 
 about the mind of a lawyer," he said with a 
 sort of friendly scorn. 
 
 "I keep up this sort of thing partly because 
 I want to be a good lawyer," he went on. 
 "Here is my recipe for a successful man at 
 
184 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 the bar: First a knowledge of law; second a 
 knowledge of human nature; third, a quick 
 mind, and fourth, a sensitive and sympathetic 
 imagination. And one of the greatest of these 
 is a sympathetic, well-developed imagination." 
 
 A bird over our heads was throwing out a 
 mad melody of gay notes as we passed along. 
 We stopped for a moment to listen. 
 
 "Then you would make hearing that bird's 
 song and caring about it a part of your equip- 
 ment as a lawyer," I inquired. 
 
 The whimsical friendly idealist and the 
 shrewd master of strategy fought for a minute 
 in John's face. Then he said: 
 
 "I surely would. As a matter of fact, if I 
 can get that bird into the courtroom in a case 
 I have next week I will win without a mo- 
 ment's doubt. And I believe I can do it." 
 
 I was at the moment remembering some of 
 his extraordinary feats of this kind. 
 
 "I know how you do it," I said, quickly. 
 "The reason you succeed with this sort of 
 thing when so many people fail, is because it 
 is all real to you. If you happen to talk to a 
 jury about the singing of a bird, there is al- 
 ways a bird singing in your mind. So you 
 make them hear it, too." 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 185 
 
 "I am glad you realize," replied my friend, 
 "that even in a court room sincerity is the 
 best asset." 
 
 We swung along for a little while drinking 
 in the freshness and vigor of the day. There 
 was plenty to see. There was plenty to feel. 
 There was plenty to think about. And so the 
 matter of talking was quite incidental. But 
 after a while John took up the thread of the 
 conversation where he had let it drop. 
 
 "A good many people fail," said he, "because 
 they do not know that you must have a poet 
 at the heart of a business man if he is to make 
 a great success. 
 
 "I have known a good many men who were 
 counted men of unusual success in practical 
 affairs," he went on, "and every one of them 
 had fastened the power of a practical man to 
 the soul of a dreamer. This was what gave 
 them their unusual power. There are dreamers 
 without practical brain quality. And, of course, 
 they fail. There are men with the tenacity 
 of the effective practical mind. And they 
 never do really big things. But the man who 
 has captured a bird and kept it singing in his 
 heart while his head worked like a mathe- 
 matical machine is the man you have to watch. 
 
186 THE OPINIONS OF 
 
 He was a practical dreamer. And he changes 
 cities, and commonwealths, and influences the 
 life of the nation. Or he builds up a business 
 where nobody else would have seen any possi- 
 bility of success." 
 
 Once again our feet on the road made the 
 only sound as we walked silently along. I 
 could see that John was thinking. And I did 
 not want to interrupt his thoughts. In a little 
 while he was ready to go on: 
 
 *T was just thinking of a man I knew once," 
 he said. "He was a chap who sold all his 
 dreams for the sake of what he thought would 
 be a definite success. The queer thing about 
 it was the ignominious way in which he failed. 
 At last he carried about such an air of dis- 
 illusioned cynicism that nobody would trust 
 him. If he had kept his dreams, he might 
 have become the head of a great business. 
 He had a wonderfully keen mind, but he be- 
 came incapable of that glowing and dreaming 
 imagination which is one necessary element in 
 the greatest success." 
 
 Then John swung his arms as if dismissing 
 something incidental and spoke with a cheery 
 vigor: "But, after all, what a small place 
 calculation has in one's real decisions! I 
 
JOHN CLEARFIELD 187 
 
 would keep my dreams if it didn't help in my 
 cases. Life is only as big as the range of your 
 appreciation. In the long run the man is the 
 most successful in his personal life who appre- 
 ciates the most. And the man is the most 
 successful socially who helps others to appre- 
 ciate the most. One likes to play the game 
 well. But there is something a good deal 
 deeper than that. And this is the thing one 
 finds in the place where he really lives. If 
 one had to choose one would keep the dreams." 
 
 "Men believe that about you," I replied. 
 "And the interesting thing is that just because 
 they do believe it they come to you all the 
 more. Just the thing in you which some men 
 would call impractical is the element back of 
 some of your greatest successes." 
 
 John smiled quietly. Then for a long time 
 we walked through the spring sunshine in the 
 country road busy with our thoughts.