Essays on things
Date: 2023-12-13T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: American essays -- 20th century

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Title: Essays on things

Author: William Lyon Phelps

Release date: December 13, 2023 [eBook #72395]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

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ESSAYS ON THINGS

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

- Essays on Modern Novelists
- Essays on Russian Novelists
- Essays on Books
- Essays on Modern Dramatists
- Essays on Things
- Howells, James, Bryant and Other Essays
- Reading the Bible
- Teaching in School and College
- Some Makers of American Literature
- The Advance of the English Novel
- The Advance of English Poetry

- The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement

- Human Nature in the Bible
- Human Nature and the Gospel
- Adventures and Confessions
- As I Like It, First, Second, Third Series
- Archibald Marshall
- Happiness
- Love
- Memory
- Music
- A Dash at the Pole
- Browning—How to Know Him

ESSAYS ON THINGS

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1930

Copyright, 1930,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

All rights reserved—no part of this
book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from
the publisher.

Set up and printed. Published September, 1930.

· PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ·

CONTENTS

| PAGE
Sunrise | 3
Molasses | 8
Resolutions When I Come to Be Old | 14
English and American Humour | 20
A Pair of Socks | 26
An Inspiring Cemetery | 31
Ancient Football | 35
Rivers | 39
One Day at a Time | 45
City and Country | 51
Age Before Beauty | 57
Church Unity | 63
Political History | 68
A Room Without a View | 74
Tea | 80
The Weather | 86
War | 91
Man and Boy | 96
Ambition | 101
Birds and Statesmen | 107
Russia Before the Revolution | 113
The Devil | 119
The Forsyte Saga | 124
Profession and Practice | 130
London as a Summer Resort | 135
What the Man Will Wear | 140
Dreams | 146
Eating Breakfast | 151
The Mother Tongue | 157
Our South as Cure for Flu | 163
Going to Church in Paris | 169
Optimism and Pessimism | 175
Translations | 180
Music of the Spheres | 185
Dog Books | 190
Going to Honolulu | 196
Hymns | 201
Old-Fashioned Snobs | 207
A Fair City | 212
Traditions | 218
Spooks | 224
Trial by Jury | 230
Athletics | 235
A Private Library All Your Own | 240
The Greatest Common Divisor | 246
The Great American Game | 252
Ten Sixty-Six | 258
Going Abroad the First Time | 264
Spiritual Healing | 269
Superstition | 274
The Importance of the Earth | 279
What Shall I Think About? | 285

ESSAYS ON THINGS

I
SUNRISE

At an uncertain hour before dawn in February 1912, as I lay asleep in my room on the top floor of a hotel in the town of Mentone, in Southern France, I was suddenly awakened by the morning star. It was shining with inquisitive splendour directly into my left eye. At that quiet moment, in the last stages of the dying night, this star seemed enormous. It hung out of the velvet sky so far that I thought it was going to fall, and I went out on the balcony of my room to see it drop. The air was windless and mild, and, instead of going back to bed, I decided to stay on the balcony and watch the unfolding drama of the dawn. For every clear dawn in this spectacular universe is a magnificent drama, rising to a superb climax.

The morning stars sang together and I heard the sons of God shouting for joy. The chief morning star, the one that had roused me from slumber, recited a splendid prologue. Then, as the night paled and the lesser stars withdrew, some of the minor characters in the play began to appear and take their respective parts. The grey background turned red, then gold. Long shafts of preliminary light shot up from the eastern horizon, and then, when the stage was all set, and the minor characters had completed their assigned rôles, the curtains suddenly parted and the sun—the Daystar—the star of the play, entered with all the panoply of majesty. And as I stood there and beheld this incomparable spectacle, and gazed over the mountains, the meadows and the sea, the words of Shakespeare came into my mind:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen,

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye.

Kissing with golden face the meadows green.

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

It is a pity that more people do not see the sunrise. Many do not get up early enough, many do not stay up late enough. Out of the millions and millions of men, women and children on this globe only a comparatively few see the sunrise, and I dare say there are many respectable persons who have never seen it at all. One really should not go through life without seeing the sun rise at least once, because, even if one is fortunate enough to be received at last into heaven, there is one sight wherein this vale of tears surpasses the eternal home of the saints. “There is no night there,” hence there can be no dawn, no sunrise; it is therefore better to make the most of it while we can.

As a man feels refreshed after a night’s sleep and his morning bath, so the sun seems to rise out of the water like a giant renewed. Milton gave us an excellent description:

So sinks the daystar in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

Browning, in his poem, Pippa Passes, compares the sunrise to a glass of champagne, a sparkling wine overflowing the world:

DAY!

Faster and more fast,
O’er night’s brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim,
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled.
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

The sunset has a tranquil beauty but to me there is in it always a tinge of sadness, of the sadness of farewell, of the approach of darkness. This mood is expressed in the old hymn which in my childhood I used to hear so often in church:

Fading, still fading, the last beam is shining,

Father in heaven! the day is declining.

Safety and innocence fly with the light,

Temptation and danger walk forth with the night.

Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning, saith the Holy Book. The sunrise has not only inexpressible majesty and splendour, but it has the rapture of promise, the excitement of beginning again. Yesterday has gone forever, the night is over and we may start anew. To how many eyes, weary with wakefulness in the long watches of the night, or flushed with fever, is the first glimmer of the dawn welcome. The night makes every fear and worry worse than the reality, it magnifies every trivial distress. Mark Twain said the night brought madness—none of us is quite sane in the darkness. That particular regret for yesterday or apprehension for tomorrow that strikes you like a whiplash in the face at 2:45 A.M. dwindles into an absurdity in the healthy dawn.

Mark Twain, who had expressed the difference between the night and the morning tragically, also expressed it humorously. He said that when he was lying awake in the middle of the night he felt like an awful sinner, he hated himself with a horrible depression and made innumerable good resolutions; but when at 7:30 he was shaving himself he felt just as cheerful, healthy and unregenerate as ever.

I am a child of the morning. I love the dawn and the sunrise. When I was a child I saw the sunrise from the top of Whiteface and it seemed to me that I not only saw beauty but heard celestial music. Ever since reading in George Moore’s Evelyn Innes the nun’s description of her feelings while listening to Wagner’s Prologue to Lohengrin I myself never hear that lovely music rising to a tremendous climax without seeing in imagination what was revealed to the Sister of Mercy. I am on a mountain top before dawn; the darkness gives way; the greyness strengthens, and finally my whole mind and soul are filled with the increasing light.

II
MOLASSES

Before both the word molasses and the thing it signifies disappear forever from the earth, I wish to recall its flavour and its importance to the men and women of my generation. By any other name it would taste as sweet; it is by no means yet extinct; but for many years maple syrup and other commodities have taken its place on the breakfast table. Yet I was brought up on molasses. Do you remember, in that marvellous book, Helen’s Babies, when Toddie was asked what he had in his pantspocket, his devastating reply to that tragic question? He calmly answered, “Bread and molasses.”

Well, I was brought up on bread and molasses. Very often that was all we had for supper. I well remember, in the sticky days of childhood, being invited out to supper by my neighbour Arthur Greene. My table manners were primitive and my shyness in formal company overwhelming. When I was ushered into the Greene dining room not only as the guest of honour but as the only guest, I felt like Fra Lippo Lippi in the most august presence in the universe, only I lacked his impudence to help me out.

The conditions of life in those days may be estimated from the fact that the entire formal supper, even with “company,” consisted wholly and only of bread, butter and molasses. Around the festive board sat Mr. Greene, a terrifying adult who looked as if he had never been young; Mrs. Greene, tight-lipped and serious; Arthur Greene, his sister Alice, and his younger brother, Freddy. As I was company I was helped first and given a fairly liberal supply of bread, which I unthinkingly (as though I were used to such luxuries) spread with butter and then covered with a thick layer of molasses. Ah, I was about to learn something.

Mr. Greene turned to his eldest son, and enquired grimly, “Arthur, which will you have, bread and butter or bread and molasses?”

The wretched Arthur, looking at my plate, and believing that his father, in deference to the “company,” would not quite dare to enforce what was evidently the regular evening choice, said, with what I recognised as a pitiful attempt at careless assurance, “I’ll take both.”

“No, you don’t!” countered his father, with a tone as final as that of a judge in court. His father was not to be bluffed by the presence of company; he evidently regarded discipline as more important than manners. The result was I felt like a voluptuary, being the only person at the table who had the luxury of both butter and molasses. They stuck in my throat; I feel them choking me still, after an interval of more than fifty years.

* * * * *

The jug of molasses was on our table at home at every breakfast and at every supper. The only variety lay in the fact (do you remember?) that there were two distinct kinds of molasses—sometimes we had one, sometimes the other. There was Porto Rico molasses and there was New Orleans molasses—brunette and blonde. The Porto Rico molasses was so dark it was almost black, and New Orleans molasses was golden brown.

The worst meal of the three was invariably supper, and I imagine this was fairly common among our neighbours. Breakfast was a hearty repast, starting usually with oatmeal, immediately followed by beefsteak and potatoes or mutton chops, sometimes ham and eggs; but usually beef or chops. It had a glorious coda with griddle cakes or waffles; and thus stuffed, we rose from the table like condors from their prey, and began the day’s work. Dinner at one was a hearty meal, with soup, roast, vegetables and pie.

Supper consisted of “remainders.” There was no relish in it, and I remember that very often my mother, who never complained vocally, looking at the unattractive spread with lack-lustre eye, would either speak to our one servant or would disappear for a moment and return with a cold potato, which it was clear she distinctly preferred to the sickening sweetish “preserves” and cookies or to the bread and molasses which I myself ate copiously.

However remiss and indifferent and selfish I may have been in my conduct toward my mother—and what man does not suffer as he thinks of this particular feature of the irrecoverable past?—it does me good to remember that, after I came to man’s estate, I gave my mother what it is clear she always and in vain longed for in earlier years, a good substantial dinner at night.

At breakfast we never put cream and sugar on our porridge; we always put molasses. Then, if griddle cakes followed the meat, we once more had recourse to molasses. And as bread and molasses was the backbone of the evening meal, you will see what I mean when I say I swam to manhood through this viscous sea. In those days youth was sweet.

The transfer of emphasis from breakfast to supper is the chief distinguishing change in the procession of meals as it was and as it became. It now seems incredible that I once ate large slabs of steak or big chops at breakfast, but I certainly did. And supper, which approached the vanishing point, turned into dinner in later years.

Many, many years ago we banished the molasses jug and even the lighter and more patrician maple syrup ceased to flow at the breakfast table. I am quite aware that innumerable persons still eat griddle cakes or waffles and syrup at the first meal of the day. It is supposed that the poet-artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti ruined his health by eating huge portions of ham and eggs, followed by griddle cakes and molasses, for breakfast. To me there has always been something incongruous between syrup and coffee; they are mutually destructive; one spoils the taste of the other.

Yet waffles and syrup are a delectable dish; and I am quite certain that nectar and ambrosia made no better meal. What to do, then? The answer is simple. Eat no griddle cakes, no waffles and no syrup at breakfast; but use these commodities for dessert at lunch. Then comes the full flavour.

Many taverns now have hit upon the excellent idea of serving only two dishes for lunch or dinner—chicken and waffles. This obviates the expense of waste, the worry of choice, the time lost in plans. And what combination could possibly be better?

One of the happiest recollections of my childhood is the marvelous hot, crisp waffle lying on my plate, and my increasing delight as I watched the molasses filling each square cavity in turn. As the English poet remarked, “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.”

III
RESOLUTIONS WHEN I COME TO BE OLD

At the age of thirty-two, Jonathan Swift wrote the following:

Resolutions When I Come to Be Old

(1) Not to marry a young woman.

(2) Not to keep young company, unless they desire it.

(3) Not to be peevish, or morose, or suspicious.

(4) Not to scorn present ways, or wits, or fashions, or men, or war, etc.

(5) Not to be fond of children.

(6) Not to tell the same story over and over to the same people.

(7) Not to be covetous.

(8) Not to neglect decency or cleanliness, for fear of falling into nastiness.

(9) Not to be over severe with young people, but give allowances for their youthful follies and weaknesses.

(10) Not to be influenced by, or give ear to, knavish tattling servants, or others.

(11) Not to be too free of advice, or trouble any but those who desire it.

(12) To desire some good friend to inform me which of these resolutions I break or neglect, and wherein, and reform accordingly.

(13) Not to talk too much, nor of myself.

(14) Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favour with ladies, etc.

(15) Not to hearken to flatteries, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman.

(16) Not to be positive or opinionative.

(17) Not too set for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none.

Swift died at the age of seventy-eight; so far as I can find out, he lived up to these resolutions with commendable consistency, except one: his friend, Dr. Sheridan, was sufficiently indiscreet to remind him that he was becoming too parsimonious. Swift resented this criticism, and it spoiled their friendship.

* * * * *

Although Swift was a pessimist, a cynic and a misanthrope, these resolutions contain much wisdom; so much, in fact, that a faithful adherence to them would save most old men much suffering and humiliation. I read them first when I was a boy and they produced a profound impression; now that I am in a position where they fit my case, I believe them to be good medicine, bitter but wholesome. Swift must have been bored horribly by many old men, or he must have observed many old people behaving in a silly fashion to have written down these rules with such emphasis.

(1, 2) “Crabbed age and youth cannot live together,” said Shakespeare; the few exceptions do no more than prove the rule. Many old people suffer because they fear that young people do not desire their company. The solution is for old people not to allow their happiness to be dependent on young folks but to have either company of their own age or intellectual resources which will make them mentally independent. I have taught young people for forty years, and although I am very fond of them, I prefer the society of people of my own age. If I were about to take a trip around the world and could choose either a young or old companion, I would take the latter.

(3) Good advice for any age, but old persons, owing to bodily infirmities, are more apt to show these unlovely characteristics.

(4) This advice was never more needed than now.

(5) I would change this, so it would read “Not to fondle children.” A man with a bushy beard can terrify babes.

(6) “I suppose you have all heard this before, but——” then why tell it?

(7) Especially of the health, vigour, and activity of younger men.

(8) Swift was himself almost fanatically clean. It is a disgusting sight to behold old men who are careless of their clothes and appearance, as though old age gave one the privilege to appear in public with the remains of the last meal on the coat, waistcoat and shirt.

(9) Observe the ways of the dog, and learn wisdom. The dog allows children to pull his tail, and bother him in many ways; not because he likes it, but because he knows children have no sense. It is useless to expect that children and young people will think and act like middle-aged men and women; why be fretful when they are simply running true to form?

(10) One must remember that slander is of value only as a self-revelation, never as an accurate description. The recoil of that particular gun is greater than the discharge.

(11) Every person loves to give advice and no one loves to take it. The mother says to the child, “Now, Freddy, don’t forget to put your rubbers on!” to which Freddy replies “Huh!” Then when Freddy is seventy-six years old, his granddaughter says, “Now, Grandpa, don’t forget to put your rubbers on!” to which the grandparent replies “Huh!” It is a good thing not to force one’s opinion on others unless they ask for it; one’s professions and creed will be judged by one’s life, anyhow.

(12) Ah, that requires the very grace of God. This kind comes only by prayer and fasting.

(13, 14) Many an old man likes to have others think that he was in his prime a devil of a fellow. This particular vanity is hard to eradicate. Even in the moment of Lear’s heartbreaking and shattering grief over the death of his daughter Cordelia he found time to boast of his former prowess.

(15) I say it not cynically, but in all seriousness: There is no one who cannot be successfully flattered, provided the flattery be applied with some skill. We have at the core such invincible egotism that we not only listen greedily to flattery, but, what is far worse, we believe it!

(16) An overbearing, domineering, dogmatic manner in conversation is abominable in persons of any age; when old people behave in this fashion, and it is not resented by the young, it should really all the more humiliate the old. For such acquiescence means that the old man hasn’t any sense, anyhow.

(17) Know thyself. Ulysses showed his wisdom in not trusting himself. A Yale undergraduate left on his door a placard for the janitor on which was written, “Call me at 7 o’clock; it is absolutely necessary that I get up at seven. Make no mistake. Keep knocking until I answer.” Under this he had written. “Try again at ten.”

IV
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HUMOUR

Some one has said that American humour consists in over-statement and English humour in understatement. This judgment does not include everything, but so far as it goes it is not only accurate, but helps both to explain English humour and the frequently heard remark that the English are without it. I suppose one reason many ill-informed Americans say that Englishmen have no sense of humour is because the English do not indulge so commonly as we in boisterous jocularity, exaggeration, surprise and burlesque. The average Englishman does not see why a stranger should accost him with jocosity—many Englishmen do not see why a stranger should accost them at all. It is an excellent plan while travelling in England or anywhere in Europe never to speak first to an Englishman; let him open the conversation.

One of the chief differences between the average Englishman and American is in amiability, responsiveness, amenity. Americans are probably the most amiable people in the world, the most happy to respond to an exploratory remark, the most willing. I dare say it is partly a matter of climate. Our chronic sunshine makes us expansive and ebullient.

In any American city on a terrifically hot day, two hitherto unacquainted men will speak to each other as they pass on the street, one saying, “Don’t you wish you had brought your overcoat!” which harmless jest is returned by the other with equal affability. If you said that to an Englishman, he might stare at you blankly, and perhaps hazard the query, “You mean, of course, your light overcoat?”

After introduction to a resident Englishman in Vancouver, British Columbia, at a small dining-table in a hotel, I remarked gently, “Even though you are behind the times here in Vancouver, I do not see why you should advertise the fact.” “What on earth do you mean?” he enquired. Then I called his attention to the dinner-card, on which was printed Vancouver, B. C. He exclaimed, “But it doesn’t mean that, you know!” I do not believe he was deficient in a sense of humour. I had just met him, and he did not see why a stranger should be sufficiently intimate to be taken otherwise than seriously.

Punch is the best of comic papers; it expresses the genuine original humour of a humorous folk. I remember seeing there a picture of the village orchestra, and as the director rapped for attention, the first violin leaned forward and asked, “What is the next piece?” and being informed, replied, “Why I just played that one.”

Woodrow Wilson once told me a story which illustrates how dangerous it is for anyone to assume that the English have no sense of humour.

Three Americans were telling anecdotes to illustrate the English dearth of humour, when they saw approaching a representative of that nation. It was agreed that he should then and there be put to the test. So one of them stopped him and narrated a side-splitting yarn. The Englishman received the climax with an impassive face. The American, delighted, cried, “Cheer up, old man, you’ll laugh at that next summer.” “No,” said the Briton, gravely, “I think not.” “Why not?” “Because I laughed at that last summer.”

The humour of English political campaign speeches at its best, is unsurpassed. When the late John Morley had finished an oration by requesting his hearers to vote for him, one man jumped up and shouted angrily, “I’d rather vote for the devil.” “Quite so,” returned the unruffled statesman; “but in case your friend declines to run, may I not then count upon your support?”

A perfect retort was made to the great and genial Thackeray, on the one occasion when he ran for Parliament. He met his opponent, Edward Cardwell, during the course of the campaign, and after a pleasant exchange of civilities, Thackeray remarked, “Well, I hope it will be a good fight, and may the best man win.” “Oh, I hope not,” said Cardwell.

The English are the only people who seem to be amused by attacks on their country; does this show a sense of superiority that increases the rage of the critic? Or is it that their sense of humour extends even to that most sacred of all modern religions, the religion of nationalism?

The Irish are supposed to excel the English in humour; but it is a fact that English audiences in the theatre are diverted by sarcastic attacks on the English, whereas it is physically dangerous to try a similar method on an Irish audience. The Irish patriot, Katharine Tynan, said that if she could only once succeed in enraging the English, she would feel that something might be accomplished. “But,” said she, “I tell them at dinner parties the most outrageous things that are said against their country, and they all roar with laughter.” Undue sensitiveness to attack betrays a feeling of insecurity.

Typical American humour is not subtle and ironical; it is made up largely of exaggeration and surprise—Mark Twain was a master of ending a sentence with something unexpected. “I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.”

Anthony Hope, in his recent book Memories and Notes, says that when Mark made his first dinner speech in London before a distinguished audience, there was intense curiosity as to what he would say. He began with an unusually slow drawl. “Homer is dead, Shakespeare is dead—and I am far from well.”

Another true story (which I took pains to verify) happened during the early days of his married life, which synchronised with the beginnings of the telephone. Incredible as it may seem, Mrs. Clemens had not heard Mark swear, for during the engagement he had managed by superhuman efforts to refrain from what he called that noble art, and she did not dream of his oral efficiency. But one day, thinking he was alone, he started to use the telephone. (The Paris Figaro says that to get your telephone connexion is not an achievement; it is a career.) Mark, having difficulties, poured out a torrent of river profanity. He looked around and there was his wife, frozen with horror.

But she had heard that the way to cure a husband of profanity was for the wife to swear in his presence. So, in a cold, artificial voice, she said, “Blankety-Blank-Blank.” Mark cried, “Darling, you know the words, but you don’t know the tune!”

Mark had a way of combining philosophy and humour. This is the gospel according to Mark Twain. “Live so that when you die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

V
A PAIR OF SOCKS

One fine afternoon I was walking along Fifth Avenue, when I remembered that it was necessary to buy a pair of socks. Why I wished to buy only one pair is unimportant. I turned into the first sock shop that caught my eye, and a boy clerk who could not have been more than seventeen years old came forward. “What can I do for you, sir?” “I wish to buy a pair of socks.” His eyes glowed. There was a note of passion in his voice. “Did you know that you had come into the finest place in the world to buy socks?” I had not been aware of that, as my entrance had been accidental. “Come with me,” said the boy, ecstatically. I followed him to the rear of the shop, and he began to haul down from the shelves box after box, displaying their contents for my delectation.

“Hold on, lad, I am going to buy only one pair!” “I know that,” said he, “but I want you to see how marvellously beautiful these are. Aren’t they wonderful!” There was on his face an expression of solemn and holy rapture, as if he were revealing to me the mysteries of his religion. I became far more interested in him than in the socks. I looked at him in amazement. “My friend,” said I, “if you can keep this up, if this is not merely the enthusiasm that comes from novelty, from having a new job, if you can keep up this zeal and excitement day after day, in ten years you will own every sock in the United States.”

* * * * *

My amazement at his pride and joy in salesmanship will be easily understood by all who read this article. In many shops the customer has to wait for some one to wait upon him. And when finally some clerk does deign to notice you, you are made to feel as if you were interrupting him. Either he is absorbed in profound thought in which he hates to be disturbed or he is skylarking with a girl clerk and you feel like apologising for thrusting yourself into such intimacy.

He displays no interest either in you or in the goods he is paid to sell. Yet possibly that very clerk who is now so apathetic began his career with hope and enthusiasm. The daily grind was too much for him; the novelty wore off; his only pleasures were found outside of working hours. He became a mechanical, not an inspired, salesman. After being mechanical, he became incompetent; then he saw younger clerks who had more zest in their work, promoted over him. He became sour and nourished a grievance. That was the last stage. His usefulness was over.

I have observed this melancholy decline in the lives of so many men in so many occupations that I have come to the conclusion that the surest road to failure is to do things mechanically. There is, for example, no greater literature in the world than the Bible and no more exciting subject than religion. Yet I have heard many ministers of the gospel read the Bible in their churches with no interest and no emphasis, whereas they ought to read it as if they had just received it by wireless from Almighty God. I have heard hundreds of sermons preached mechanically, with no more appeal than if the speaker were a parrot. There are many teachers in schools and colleges who seem duller than the dullest of their pupils; they go through the motions of teaching, but they are as impersonal as a telephone.

* * * * *

In reading that remarkable book, The Americanization of Edward Bok, I was impressed by what he said of competition in business. Beginning as a very young man in a certain occupation, he had expected to encounter the severest competition. As a matter of fact, he met no competition at all, and found that success was the easiest thing in the world, if one provided the conditions necessary for it.

He worked along with a number of other young men in the business. He was the only one who ever got to the place ahead of time. At the noon hour at lunch the other youngsters never on a single occasion mentioned the business in which they were engaged. They talked of their girls, or of athletic sports, or of various dissipations. He was the only man who ever remained after business hours, and he was convinced that he was the only one who ever occupied his mind with the business during his evenings.

He rose above the others with consummate ease, and for two obvious reasons: First, he made himself indispensable; second, he found his chief pleasure in his work, not in the dissipations outside of it.

It is simple enough for any one to be attracted by the novelty of a new job. The real difficulty is to keep up that initial enthusiasm every day of one’s life, to go to work every morning with zest and excitement. I believe that a man should live every day as if that day were his first and his last day on earth.

Every person needs some relaxation, some recreation; but a man’s chief happiness should not lie outside his daily work, but in it. The chief difference between the happiness of childhood and the happiness of maturity is that the child’s happiness is dependent on something different from the daily routine—a picnic, an excursion, a break of some kind. But to the right sort of men and women happiness is found in the routine itself, not in departures from it. Instead of hoping for a change, one hopes there will be no change, that one will have sufficient health to continue in one’s chosen occupation. The child has pleasures; the man has happiness. But unfortunately some men remain children all their lives.

VI
AN INSPIRING CEMETERY

Americans should not leave Florence without spending some reflective hours in the so-called Protestant cemetery. The grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is adorned with a beautiful marble tomb designed by the famous artist Leighton, and the only inscription thereupon is “E. B. B. Ob. 1861.”

Not far away lies the famous poet, Walter Savage Landor, who died in 1864 at the age of eighty-nine. His grave is covered with a flat stone. Here is a poem he wrote about it:

Twenty years hence, though it may hap
That I be called to take a nap
In a cool cell where thunder clap
Was never heard,

There breathe but o’er my arch of grass,

A not too sadly sigh’d “Alas!”

And I shall catch ere you can pass,

That wingéd word.

The last time I was in Florence I bent over his grave and with deliberate emphasis I whispered “Alas!” I do not know whether he heard me or not.

Robert and Elizabeth Browning made the poet’s later years as happy as was possible for one of his temperament; they secured a villa for him, furnished it, hired servants and did what they could. He was wildly irascible, and if he did not like a meal that was served, he grabbed the table-cloth, and twitched all the food and dishes on to the floor. All his life he was a fighting man, which makes the beautiful Farewell he wrote somewhat incongruous.

THE LAST FRUIT OF AN OLD TREE

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life.

It sinks and I am ready to depart.

In order to fit my own feelings, I should have to make some slight changes in his poem, so that the amended version would read as follows:

I strove with none. I always hated strife.

Nature I loved, and God and Man and Art.

I warmed both hands before the fire of life;

It sinks—yet I’m not ready to depart.

Landor was sometimes in a more jovial mood, as in his invitation to Tennyson:

I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson,

Come and share my haunch of venison.

I have too a bin of claret,

Good, but better when you share it.

Tho’ ’tis only a small bin,

There’s a stock of it within.

And as sure as I’m a rhymer,

Half a butt of Rudesheimer.

Come; among the sons of men is one

Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson?

Along the path leading to Mrs. Browning’s tomb is the grave of the English poet, Arthur Hugh Clough (pronounced Cluff), who crossed the ocean with Thackeray and James Russell Lowell and whose most famous poem is Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth. He died in 1861 the same year as Mrs. Browning, at the early age of 42. He was a distinguished scholar of Balliol college, Oxford. He expressed in his poems the doubts and struggles that have afflicted so many honest and candid minds.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;
Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild northwesters rave,

How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!

The dripping sailor on the reeling mast,

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away.

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

In addition to the three great English poets who are buried in this cemetery, two famous Americans lie there, Richard Hildreth and Theodore Parker. When I was an undergraduate, I asked Prof. W. G. Sumner what was the best History of the United States that had ever been written; he answered gruffly and without a word of qualification, “Hildreth’s!” Accordingly, I read every word of the six volumes. Many years later I had the unique pleasure of telling Sumner something he had not known; I told him I had done homage at Hildreth’s grave in Florence, and he was surprised to learn that the historian was buried there. If any one believes that the contemporary custom of “debunking” historical characters is new, he should read Hildreth’s Preface to his History.

“Of centennial sermons and Fourth of July orations, whether professedly such or in the guise of history, there are more than enough. It is due to our fathers and ourselves, it is due to truth and philosophy, to present for once, on the historic stage, the founders of our American nation unbedaubed with patriotic rouge, wrapped up in no fine-spun cloaks of excuses and apology, without stilts, buskins, tinsel, or bedizenment, in their own proper persons.”

VII
ANCIENT FOOTBALL

Attacks on the American game of football are often more sensational than the game itself. Some volley out statistics of injuries, in which we see the names of persons “crippled for life” whom we know to be unlike their biographers in that they are both well and cheerful; others descant wildly on the evils of betting and the drunkenness attendant upon a great match; others deplore the time and attention robbed from study; some believe the rivalry of two strong teams causes prolonged bitterness and hatred; some regard the intense earnestness of training as both silly and harmful; some assert that the players on the field behave like ruffians, and some, like the old Puritans, hate the game not because they really think it wicked but because they secretly hate to see eighty thousand people out for a holiday.

There is no doubt that football, like every other sport and recreation, is open to many serious objections. Certain players are every year killed and wounded, though the mortality is nothing like so great as that resulting from automobile accidents and week-end celebrations. It is certainly true that betting and dissipation accompany the game; it is true that many young men sit on the benches, cheering and singing, when they might be studying in the seclusion of their rooms.

It is true that the American spirit—always ambitious of success—makes every member of a university team train with an earnestness that seems tragi-comic to the nonathletic observer. But the immense advantages of this most robust of all sports outweigh all its attendant evils. For football is much more than a contest of animal vigour; in the language of Professor Stagg, who was a moralist before he was an athlete, “Football surpasses every other game in its demand for a high combination of physical, mental and moral qualities.”

This article, however, is not written for the purpose of defending modern football but rather to show that the game thus far has not only flourished in spite of attacks but that there has been a tremendous rise in its respectability since the days of Queen Elizabeth. I cannot just now remember anything on which the Puritans and the playwrights were then agreed, except their opinion of football. What Shakespeare thought of it may be seen in the epithet which Kent applies to one of the most odious characters in King Lear. Tripping up Oswald, he calls him “you base football player.”

Modern legislators must rejoice at finding that they have plenty of precedents for legal prohibition of the game. In 1424 we find “The King forbiddes that na man play fut ball under payne of iiiid.” Sir Thomas Elyot remarked, in 1531, “Foote balle, wherin is nothing but beastly furie and exstreme violence.”

If in Elizabethan days the dramatists, who were not noted for their piety, attacked football, what shall we expect from the Puritans? The most circumstantial indictment of the game came from a Puritan of Puritans, Philip Stubbs. In his Anatomie of Abuses (1583) he thus denounces the sport:

For as concerning football playing, I protest vnto you it may rather be called a frieendly kinde of fight, then a play of recreation; A bloody and murthering practise, then a felowly sporte or pastime. For dooth not euery one lye in waight for his Aduersarie, seeking to ouerthrowe him & to picke him on his nose, though it be vppon hard stones? In ditch or dale, in valley or hil, or what place soeuer it be, hee careth not, so he haue him down. And he that can serue the most of this fashion, he is counted the only felow, and who but he? so that by this meanes, sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometime their legs, sometime their armes; sometime one part thrust out of ioynt, sometime another. Sometime the noses gush out with blood, sometime their eyes start out; and sometimes hurt in one place, sometimes in another. But whosoeuer scapeth away the best, goeth not scotfree, but is either sore wounded, craised, and bruiseed so as he dyeth of it, or else scapeth very hardly, and no meruaile, for they haue the sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the hart with their elbowes, to hit him vnder the short ribbes with their griped fists, and with their knees to catch him vpon the hip, and to pick him on his neck, with a hundred such murdering deuices; and hereof groweth enuie, malice, rancour, cholor, hatred, displeasure, enemities, and what not els; and sometimes fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murther, homicide, and great effusion of blood, as experience dayely teacheth.

In the attack just quoted the most interesting thing to the modern reader is that precisely the same objections were made to the game as we hear today.

In the robust days of Queen Bess football was regarded as low and vulgar; it received the denunciation of the Church and the more potent frown of fashionable society. Today at a great university match prominent clergymen are seen even on the sidelines; the bleachers bloom with lovely women, and in a conspicuous place stands the President of the United States.

VIII
RIVERS

On the first of several agreeable visits to Carbondale in southern Illinois, whither I went to address the best of all audiences—public school teachers—I enquired of the superintendent, Mr. Black, as to the precise distance that separated us from the Mississippi river. I told him I loved all rivers, and this one particularly. I had seen it at St. Paul, at St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. I wished to see it far from the noise, smoke and artificiality of cities. I wished to see it naked. He informed me that he was the proud owner of an open Ford car, that the Father of Waters was only eighteen miles away, and that he would lead me to it that very afternoon.

It was a charming day in early spring. I stood on the bank of the mighty Mississippi. There was no town, settlement, not even a house in sight. The glorious old river at this point was one mile wide, fifty feet deep, and running seven miles an hour. Away up stream on the Missouri side the trees were in the living green of April; and the flood came rolling along in silent majesty.

I thought of the old seventeenth century poet, Denham, and what he said of another river.

Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.

Every river has a fascination for me, because it is alive. In a green landscape, or in a rocky gorge, or in the midst of a forest, or dividing a city, it gives to every scene the element of life. Living waters flowing through meadows, over sands, between mountains are always moving, progressing, going somewhere. If one climbs a hill, and looks off on a vast expanse of fresh woods and pastures new, and suddenly sees a river, the heart leaps up with recognition.

Looking at a map—the expressive face of the world—I have often wished to follow the course of various rivers. I should like to go down the Amazon, the Yukon, and the Yangtze. Each river has a personality. Most rivers that empty into the ocean are tidal; their current is pushed backward by the incoming sea. But the Amazon is so mighty that it overcomes the force of the tide and transforms the ocean into fresh water. Unless voyagers and novelists are abandoned liars, one can be off the coast of South America, out of sight of land and dip up fresh water, so tremendous and far-reaching is the shove of the Amazon. Its mouth is so wide that one could place in it crosswise, the whole Hudson river from New York to Albany, without touching either shore.

The personality of the Mississippi is striking. In the greatest of all Mark Twain’s contributions to literature, the first volume of Life on the Mississippi, he gives us marvellous impressions of the character and behaviour of the stream. And in one of the foremost novels of our time, Charles Stewart’s Partners of Providence, the peculiar habits and whims of the Mississippi are set forth. It quite rightly regards itself as socially superior to the Missouri; so much so, in fact, that for some time after the entrance of the Missouri into its waters, the Mississippi positively refuses to have anything to do with the interloper.

In the old days “before the war” (our war), luxurious passenger steamers plied from St. Louis to New Orleans; and I understand that, after the lapse of many years, we are to have similar vessels. This is as it should be; an immense amount of American literature and history, from De Soto to Edna Ferber, is associated with this river, and the opportunity of travelling on it should be given to all Americans. I have not yet abandoned my youthful dream of travelling on the Mississippi from St. Paul to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to New Orleans.

I never miss a good chance for a river voyage. One has the element of adventure as one rounds the next bend. I have been on the rivers of southern Florida, I have been on the Savannah river in Georgia, and the last time I was at Vanderbilt university, in Nashville, friends gave me a memorable excursion on the Cumberland. One of the most interesting of all inland voyages in the United States is to take the steamer from Norfolk to Richmond on the James. From seven in the morning to eight at night it is a panorama of American history.

The word river occurs many times in the Bible, and think of the part played in the story of mankind by the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Jordan! The Bible begins and ends with a river. In the second chapter of Genesis, we read “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden,” a lovely spectacle, for Paradise would never have been complete without a river. In the last chapter of Revelation, we read, “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

It is curious when the Bible speaks of the River of Life—“on either side of the river there was the tree of life”—that the idea should persist of the River of Death. This is a heathen and pagan idea and has no place in Jewish or Christian thought. Many people speak solemnly of crossing the river—they get the notion either from Greek mythology or from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or metaphorically, from the Promised Land lying on the other side of the Jordan.

In reality the Bible tells us that both the earthly and the heavenly Paradise had a river to refresh and gladden the people.

Without sermonising too grossly, we may say that a river is like a human life. The source is often obscure and humble, then a tiny stream, then growing bigger and more important (the widening of influence), then flowing tranquilly (prosperous, happy days), then getting into sand flats, hardly moving (serious illness), then roaring tempestuously in rapids (times of excitement and adventure), yet going on, somehow and somewhere.

Furthermore, they always arrive ultimately at the same destination—the mysterious open sea, leaving narrow circumstances for a deeper and greater existence.

And even those streams that seem to perish without fulfilling their destiny, are in their subsequent influence like the lives of obscurely good men. Some travellers in a desert came to a bit of green meadow where a river once had been.

IX
ONE DAY AT A TIME

On a certain morning in the year 1900 I called on President Eliot at his office in Harvard University. He was in a gracious mood and we talked of many things. As I rose to leave I said I hoped I might always have the privilege of calling on him whenever I came to Cambridge. He remarked gravely (in every sense of that word): “The next time you come I may not be here.”

“What’s the matter? Are you going to resign?” “Resign? Certainly not. But, remember, I am sixty-six years old.” The only answer to that was a laugh, which I provided spontaneously.

Now if the distinguished president of Harvard had known then that twenty-five years after this interview, he would be in the full possession of his physical and mental faculties, even though he had ceased to possess the Harvard one, he would have wasted not a single moment on the thought of his approaching death. And if gold rusts, what shall iron do?

In the eighteenth century, the poet Young was an intimate friend of the novelist Richardson and their correspondence has a certain mortuary interest. For Young’s letters are as gloomy as his verses; they are largely taken up with predicting his own speedy death, which, however, Richardson awaited in vain, as the aged poet survived him. In his own last moments Richardson may have felt something akin to resentment at having wasted his sympathy on one who would attend his funeral.

We look backward too much and we look forward too much. Thus we miss the passing moment. In our regrets and apprehensions, we miss the only eternity of which man can be absolutely sure, the eternal Present. For it is always NOW.

As Browning’s clever Bishop Blougram remarked:

Do you know, I have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month’s article)
Of man’s poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life forever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being—
In the evolution of successive spheres—
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Halfway into the next, which having reached
It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off!

As when a traveller, bound from North to South,

Scouts fur in Russia; what’s its use in France?

If France spurns flannel; what’s its need in Spain?

If Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!

Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,

A superfluity in Timbuctoo.

When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?

When Thoreau was questioned as to his beliefs in a life beyond the grave, he answered impatiently, “Oh, one world at a time.”

I was deeply impressed in reading Dr. Cushing’s admirable biography of Sir William Osler, to see that the physician and philosopher laid the greatest stress on living one day at a time. That was his summary of the art of living, for all those who wished to accomplish as much as possible, and retain their peace of mind: Live one day at a time.

I remember, when I was twenty years old, I wasted many good hours in speculating on what I should do after graduation from college, which event was two years ahead. An old man told me not to give it a moment’s thought: “You cannot decide what to do till the emergency comes.” Meanwhile there was the daily work. The best way to prepare for the future was to do that well, rather than waste one’s energies on idle worry.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

There are always gloomy prophets who cannot enjoy the present moment, because they are so sure trouble is coming. The winter of 1917–1918 was the coldest in my recollection; and many said, “Well, the climate is changing and we must not expect any mild winters.” Then came the winter of 1918–1919, which was the mildest in my recollection. And how distinctly I recall conversations like the following. Along about Christmastide, I would say, “What a beautiful winter!” and in every instance, without a single exception, I got the reply, “Just wait. We’ll catch it later.” Then when the weather continued sweet all through January, I made the same remark to different individuals, and always got a warning for my pains. But the evil came not at all. My friends had determined to be miserable. They could not enjoy a lovely mild season, for in its loveliness they shook with the chill of apprehension.

The fear of life is the favourite disease of the twentieth century. Too many people are afraid of tomorrow—their happiness is poisoned by a phantom. Many are afraid of old age, forgetting that even if they should lose their bodily vigour, weakness itself may minister to the development of the mind and spirit. In the words of the aged poet Waller,

The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Let the scientists worry about our origin—slime, monkeys, what not; let the prophets worry about our future—“the decline of western civilisations,” and what not. Some people are alarmed because in nine thousand billion years the sun’s fuel may give out. Instead of chagrin over our past, and alarm over our future, suppose we consider our opportunity.

Listen to Emerson: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has earned anything rightly until he knows that every day is doomsday. Today is a king in disguise. Today always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of a uniform experience that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank todays. Let us not be deceived, let us unmask the king as he passes.”

Our Lord, in his daily conversations, was always drawing the attention of his listeners away from vague speculations, to the present moment and the present opportunity. To such absurd enquiries as, “Whose wife shall she be in heaven?” he said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” To the man who said that he must postpone action until he had attended a funeral, the Master replied crisply, “Let the dead bury the dead and come and follow me.” And after an enumeration of the various worries about the future with which men and women torment their minds, he said, “Take no thought for the morrow.” Do not worry about the future. He added, significantly, that if we are determined to look for trouble, we can find it today without waiting for tomorrow.

X
CITY AND COUNTRY

It is generally assumed that the country is more romantic, more poetical than the city; but it would not be so easy to prove this, if one were put to the test. “God made the country and man made the town,” said William Cowper, which meant simply that he preferred rural life. It is rather amusing to consider that in our age, which is so often called the age of machines, and when many people are afraid that simplicity and individuality will be lost, country places, mountain scenery, and the wilderness are more popular than ever before.

Now there are fashions in outdoor nature just as there are fashions in clothes. Today everyone must profess a love for mountains whether one really likes them or not; for mountains are very fashionable. Switzerland is the playground of the world; and the inhabitants make a larger income off their barren rocks than most communities make off fertile and productive plains.

But it is only within two hundred years that mountains have been generally admired. Before that time they were usually regarded as ugly excrescences, both disagreeable and dangerous; and at the best they were no more to be regarded as objects of beauty than pimples. English gentlemen who made the Grand Tour in the seventeenth century thought the Alps were disgusting; they were a monstrous and abominable barrier that must be crossed before the traveller could reach the smiling landscape of Italy.

When Addison wrote home from his travels in 1701, he said that he had had “a very troublesome journey over the Alps. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices; and you can’t imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain!” Such a remark would injure the reputation of a modern pilgrim; but Addison made it in perfect good faith, and with no apology.

Perhaps some of our contemporary love of wild scenery is owing to the comfortable circumstances in which we behold it; transportation, tunnels, fine hotels, luxuries of every description enable us to view mountains in security and serenity; but if we had to pass over them in acute discomfort and in constant danger, our attitude might be more like Addison’s. This by no means explains why the once “horrid” has become fashionable; but it helps to explain the modern love of wild scenery.

Had Addison been told that two centuries later people would build hotels on the edge of Alpine precipices, he would have dismissed the idea as a silly dream; no one would put a roadhouse there. “But, Mr. Addison, I am not talking of roadhouses. These hotels are not on the way to something else; they are not a means, they are an end. People will travel three thousand miles from California to New York, sail three thousand miles from New York to Europe just to spend the summer in a mountain hotel, where it costs twenty dollars a day—” he would have regarded the coming generation as idiotic.

It was Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy, who was one of the first English travellers to see the beauty of the Alps, and it was he therefore who is originally responsible for making them fashionable. He and Horace Walpole drove over the mountains in a chaise, and Gray wrote to his friend West, “Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief.” This was a new note in literature.

It is my belief that mountains and wild scenery are more appreciated today by citified folk who love them for the change and novelty than they are by those who are forced to live among them all the time. When I was young, I walked with three of my college mates from New Haven to the White Mountains; it was a fine expedition, and took us some three weeks. I remember toward twilight on a certain day we entered a gorge and passed through into a place surrounded by austere mountains.

A farmer addressed us: “Where do you boys come from?”

“Connecticut.”

He slowly and solemnly repeated the word CONN-ECT-ICUT—as though he were saying MESOPOTAMIA, and added, “My, I’d like to see Connecticut.”

We told him it was not so very remarkable.

“We have no such mountains as these in Connecticut.”

He replied, “Oh, damn these mountains! I’m sick of the sight of them.” And it appeared that he had never been out of that valley.

I spend a quarter of my life in the country, and love it, but if I had to choose between living all my life in the country or in a large city, I should choose the city immediately. And I believe this is true of most people.

A crowd of unemployed some years ago stood in line at the Detroit city hall. A man came up and offered every one in turn good wages, good food, a good place to sleep, and plenty of fresh air, if he would take for the summer a job on a farm. Every one of the men laughed at him. Some of us more fortunate folks are irritated by this, for in America everybody thinks that everybody else ought to be a farmer. But the truth is that man does not live by bread alone. People do not live in order to live—merely for healthy surroundings and good food. They want excitement, they want something interesting. Who can blame them? Don’t you feel that way yourself?

We should all contribute to the Fresh Air Funds, because little children of the slums ought to have a chance to see unimpaired nature. But very few of the children would be willing to stay there, and in some cases after a few days they are homesick for their native filth. The city is one continuous theatre, admission free; the street is the best playground in this world. There is a fire, a street fight, the appearance of policemen, an arrest, an automobile accident—all the day and all the night, “something doing.”

Thus it is not at all strange that the majority prefer the crowded conditions of the slums to the fresh air of the country; for other things being equal, isn’t that about the way we all feel?

XI
AGE BEFORE BEAUTY

This frequently-heard statement is a left-handed compliment; like many conventional tributes, it carries a smirk rather than a smile. Underneath the formal and hollow homage paid to the ancient the preference is of course elsewhere. It is somewhat like the so-called complimentary vote given to the “favourite son” at a political convention, which no one takes seriously, not even the son. Nothing would perhaps more shockingly disconcert the ballot-casters than to have their candidate receive other than local support.

In the expression Age Before Beauty, it is implied that the two are incompatible; you cannot have both. Yet upon a little reflexion it will appear that the vast majority of objects that receive human attention become more and more beautiful with the accumulation of years. I can think of only two classes of things that are more beautiful in their early than in their later existence.

I refer first to all varieties of animal life, including man; second to all objects whose main purpose is practical usefulness.

It ought to be obvious that kittens, puppies, baby lions, boys and girls are fairer to look upon than aged cats, rheumatic hounds, toothless lions, decrepit men, and time-worn harridans—such as guide you to your seat in the Paris theatres. It is true that the ecclesiastical poet, Dr. Donne, made a couplet comforting to some whose youth is only a memory.

Nor Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such grace

As I have seen in one autumnal face.

But you will observe he said “one” not many; and he had in mind not a number of charming old ladies, but just one. No doubt there are a sufficient number of exceptions to give added stability to the rule.

Browning said the reason why youth is so fair is that it would be intolerable without it; beauty is youth’s only asset. Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense. As soon as they are able to pull their weight in the work of the world and in the intellectual clearing-house of society, then grace and beauty depart. Thus mature people who have no brains and no sense are the last word in futility. They are as ridiculous as old apple-blossoms which for some reason never went into fruition.

The second class of objects which are beautiful only in youth are those which are built mainly for use. The purpose of an automobile is to go. A motor car one year old is better than when ten years old; it is also more attractive to the eye. I suppose Americans are the only people in the world who often buy new cars. If an Englishman has a car that carries him satisfactorily, he keeps it; the American “turns it in.” There is no more striking evidence of the “prosperity” of the American people than the twofold fact of the abundance of new cars, and also—amazing, when you think about it—that the tremendously efficient T-model Ford was not sufficiently lovely to pay for its continued manufacture.

When I was a boy, the number of my acquaintances whose fathers owned a horse and carriage could be counted on the fingers of one hand, like those who now own a steam yacht; the fact that the old Ford car is not “good enough” indicates how times have changed. For the proper epitaph for the T-model we should have to adapt the words of Shakespeare, which he put into a funeral oration:

But yesterday the Ford T-model might

Have stood against the world; now lies it there,

And none so poor to do it reverence.

Beauty and newness are inseparable in the case of bicycles, grocery-wagons, machinery, steamboats, factory buildings, flannel shirts, shoes, typewriters, trousers, socks; with all of these articles age means ugliness. In mechanical objects there is no charm in the accumulation of years.

But cathedrals, trees, mountains, castles, manor-houses, college lawns, violins, with the increase of age take on not only dignity but beauty. A thirteenth-century cathedral is more lovely than a glossy new church; an old tree is more beautiful than any sapling; the ancient turf in the quads of Oxford is fairer to behold than the graded front yard of a new house in Dakota.

Why do hundreds of thousands of Americans travel gladly in Europe every summer? Mainly for one thing. It is that their Yankee eyes may have the sensation of seeing objects which the wear of centuries has made beautiful. Many of us Americans have had the natural habit of associating beauty with newness; the new hat, the new clothes, the new motor car, the new stadium. It is worth while to discover that there are innumerable objects where age, instead of being a humiliation and a “depreciation,” is not only an asset, but a thing of beauty whose loveliness increases.

Boys and girls brought up in the slums naturally regard newness as essential to beauty and worth; the Fresh Air Fund should, if possible, take them not only to fresh woods and fields, but illuminate their minds with the sight of buildings whose age, instead of tarnishing, has made them surpassingly attractive. Henry James, in one of his novels, has a boy from the London slums entertained overnight in an English country house. This is what he saw as he looked out of his window in the early morning.

“He had never in his life been in the country—the real country, as he called it, the country which was not the mere ravelled fringe of London—and there entered through his open casement the breath of a world enchantingly new and after his feverish hours unspeakably refreshing; a sense of sweet sunny air and mingled odours, all strangely pure and agreeable, and of a musical silence that consisted for the greater part of the voices of many birds. There were tall quiet trees near by and afar off and everywhere.... There was something in the way the grey walls rose from the green lawn that brought tears to his eyes; the spectacle of long duration unassociated with some sordid infirmity or poverty was new to him; he had lived with people among whom old age meant for the most part a grudged and degraded survival. In the favored resistance of Medley was a serenity of success, an accumulation of dignity and honour.”

XII
CHURCH UNITY

I have in mind a tiny country village containing one large Catholic church and four small Protestant churches—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal. The Catholic church holds services every Sunday, every holy day and on many other occasions; these services are well attended. Although the four Protestant churches are very small they are not small enough; some of them have long periods when they are not opened at all, and the others are never crowded.

It is not surprising that there should be many sects and denominations among Protestants, for the central principle of Protestantism is individual judgment, which makes uniformity neither possible nor desirable; and, indeed, in large cities it is a good thing that we have so many and such a variety of sectarian church services.

For the variety is not in religious faith; they are all following the same religion. The variety is in the form of worship, what I call religious etiquette.

There are many people who on account of their parentage and early associations love an elaborate ritual, with the clergy in uniform, the vested choir, etc. There are other persons, equally devout, who are repelled by ritualism; they like to see the minister in mufti and to have a service as informal and simple as possible. There are those who would be shocked by the language used by certain soap-box exhorters, but if they cannot endure these things they might remember that God has to listen to them, and take them as a compliment. Perhaps that is what is meant by the Divine Patience. These people feel religiously at home only in a dignified and elaborate service. But there are others who in a “high” church feel as if they were at an opera; their senses may be touched, but their hearts are cold. They are spectators, not worshippers.

How fortunate it is then that in every city of reasonable size every Protestant has the power of choice. If one church service or preacher “gets on his nerves” he can go elsewhere, where his precious nerves will be soothed rather than ruffled, and he can worship God with an etiquette to which he is accustomed.

When a young man and woman become engaged to be married it is extremely probable that during the courtship they will at one time or another discuss religion; the girl will probably ask the man for his views on the subject.

During the engagement of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, when their communications had to be mainly through the post office, she wrote out her religious views, and he immediately responded in an unequivocal manner. Four years later he used these two letters as the basis of his poem Christmas Eve. Elizabeth pointed out the various characteristics of Christian worship, from Roman Catholics to Unitarians, saying that despite the irritating features in many church services she could worship in any of them, though she preferred those of the Dissenters. She was one of those rare persons who combine the most passionate convictions with the largest tolerance. Too often religious convictions produce bigoted narrow-mindedness; too often tolerance is merely a complimentary description of indifference.

There can be, then, genuine church unity without uniformity, and I repeat that in large cities this is well.

But there are, anyhow, two instances where Protestant churches should combine and agree on uniformity as well as on unity. These two are foreign missions and small country towns. The advantage of the former needs no argument; among the many advantages of the latter is one, often overlooked. The minister can omit in his public preaching all nonessential parts of his belief and confine his preaching sermons to the very heart of the Gospel.

I have the best of reasons for knowing this can be successfully accomplished, because in the small corner of Michigan where I am now writing we manage it every Sunday afternoon.

Huron City, on the nail of the “thumb” in Michigan, was in 1865 a very much larger town than it is today. In the old times of lumbering, when the vast pine forests came down to the shore of Lake Huron, this Huron City was a scene of fierce and profitable activity. But after the terrible forest fires of 1871 and 1881 the whole region passed from a timber to an agricultural district, not without difficulty. Gradually the people left and in most cases literally took their houses with them. Today Huron City has no post office, no railroad, no telegraph. It is composed of a schoolhouse, a Methodist church, a general store, a community house, two or three farmers’ dwellings and our summer home. I love it with all my heart.

Every year the Methodist pastor, who has two churches besides this one under his charge, yields me the courtesy of his Huron City Methodist pulpit for the summer, and here we have a service every Sunday afternoon to which farmers and “resorters” come from many miles around.

The point that I wish to emphasise is that in all isolated communities like this it is not only desirable but possible for members of widely different churches and denominations to unite. In order to find out how many religious sects were represented in the audience we distributed cards on which the members of the congregation were asked to write their names, home town and church. Here are the results on the last three Sundays:

Adventists, 2; Baptists, 57; Roman Catholics, 42; Community churches, 11; Congregational, 39; Episcopalian, 83; Evangelical, 30; Jew, 6; Latter Day Saints, 6; Lutheran, 29; Methodist, 549; Moravian, 1; Presbyterian, 170; German Reform, 13; Christian Scientist, 12; Swedenborgian, 2; Unitarian, 3; Universalist, 1; United Brethren, 1; United Church of Canada, 4; members of no church, 8.

XIII
POLITICAL HISTORY

The majority of intelligent men and a considerable number of intelligent women enjoy reading authoritative and well-written books on political history. I recommend to them the political history of Great Britain and Ireland during the last fifty years. I do not know of any country or period—anyhow, since the French Revolution in 1789—that affords so much interesting material for serious consideration. And this for two reasons.

First, I do not believe there has ever been a country or an epoch when so many distinguished men played so prominent parts in politics.

Second, I do not know of any time or place where we have so much definite, precise and intimate information supplied with so much detail by the leading actors themselves.

Consider the following list of statesmen: Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, Parnell, Morley, Bryce, Campbell-Bannerman, Chamberlain, Balfour, Salisbury, Roseberry, Asquith, McCarthy, Healy, O’Connor, Lloyd George, Haldane, Grey, Birrell, Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill.

Nearly all of these men had a first-class education, were deeply read in the best literature, and many of them were authorities in some field of learning outside their profession as statesmen. It is doubtful if any period of history can show a group of politicians equal in intellectual culture and in high character to these.

Furthermore, to obtain intimate knowledge of the “inside politics” of the last fifty years, we have Morley’s monumental life of Gladstone, Morley’s own Recollections and Memorandum, many Lives of Disraeli and Bright, T. P. O’Connor’s Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, J. A. Spender’s Life of Campbell-Bannerman and his The Public Life, Asquith’s Memories and Reflections, Churchill’s The World Crisis, Swift MacNeill’s What I Have Seen and Heard, Haldane’s Autobiography, Memoirs by Tim Healy, Memoirs by Lord Grey, and many other works.

The history of Charles Stewart Parnell is one of the most thrillingly dramatic and romantic that can be found in either biography or legend. His practical ability as a statesman is summed up in a sentence in the Dictionary of National Biography.

“His influence on the course of English and Irish history may be estimated by the fact that when he entered public life home-rule for Ireland was viewed by English politicians as a wild impracticable dream, while within 11 years he had induced a majority of one of the two great English political parties to treat it as an urgent necessity.”

Without meaning anything derogatory to his character as a public man, the portraits of Parnell, his attitude of command, and the methods by which he controlled his party have always brought to my mind the romantic pirate of melodrama. His bearded impassive face, the greatest “poker face” political history has ever known, his quiet tones, his utterly mysterious personality, his glacial manner, his iron resolution, his rule of his party, every member of which had to sign a pledge of absolute loyalty before he could be elected to Parliament, his intolerance of any partner in leadership, all combined to make him a romantically grim figure, hated and dreaded by his foes, dreaded and idolised by his followers.

They knew he alone could and would lead them to victory; and then, when the ten years in which he emerged from obscurity to dazzling eminence were over, and victory was in his grasp, he and his party went down to ruin through his infatuation for one woman, and in less than a year he was in his grave.

For he was drunk with power as well as with love; had he temporarily withdrawn from leadership, his party would have gone on to triumph, and within a very short period he would undoubtedly have been called back to the throne. But the absolute power he had enjoyed for years made him insensible to the rules of the game of life.

In September 1890, I saw Gladstone. He was eighty years old, full of confidence and vitality, for his partnership with Parnell, which had lost the election in 1886, was now the means of triumph, and it was a certainty that he would soon be in a position to make the dream of Home Rule a reality. But in November, in less than two months, the divorce suit brought by Captain O’Shea, in which Parnell was correspondent, and the terrible scenes in December in Committee Room No. 15 where Parnell tried in vain to maintain his rule over his party, changed the whole face of things.

After Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill in 1886, politics became violent. The Grand Old Man was hissed in London drawing-rooms. I remember talking in 1880 with that most extreme of Tories, Professor Mahaffy of the University of Dublin. I thought it strange that differences in political opinion should ruin personal friendship. “Why,” said Mahaffy excitedly, “Gladstone and I have been intimate friends for many years. If I met him on the street now, I would cut him dead.”

Then I asked him about Parnell, and he said contemptuously that Parnell’s relations with women were scandalous. But I think he was repeating the mere gossip of hatred; I do not think he knew anything about Mrs. O’Shea, and that he was as much surprised as anyone else when the truth came out the very next year.

Parnell was a great man. As the years pass, he will become more and more a legendary figure, and there will probably be dozens of biographies written about him. Already St. John Ervine, a man of Belfast who used to hate Parnell, has written a glowing, adulatory Life. I think we probably come nearest to the real Parnell in T. P. O’Connor’s Memoirs.

Those were the great days in Parliament. Listen to “T. P.” on Gladstone.

“The most remarkable thing in the appearance of Gladstone was his extraordinary eyes; they were large, black, and flashing; sometimes there came into them a look that was almost wild.... The blackness and the brightness of his eyes were brought into greater relief by the almost deadly pallor of his complexion.... As he walked up the floor of the House he seemed to be enveloped by a great solitude, so unmistakably did he stand out from all the figures around him.

I must add to this description of his extreme physical gifts the wonderful quality of his voice. It was a powerful voice, but sweet and melodious, and it was managed as exquisitely and as faithfully as the song of a great prima donna. If the speech were ringing, it came to your ears almost soft by that constant change of tone which the voice displayed; it could whisper, it could thunder.... I have seen many great figures, but, with all respect to the greatest among them, the House of Commons without Gladstone seems to me as great a contrast as a chamber illumined by a farthing dip when the electric light has failed.”

XIV
A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW

What is the worst poem ever written by a man of genius? It is certain that if an anthology should be made of the most terrible verses of the English bards the results would be both surprising and appalling. I cannot at this moment think of any worse pair of lines in English literature than those offered in all seriousness by the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Crashaw. They occur in a poem containing many lovely passages. In comparing the tearful eyes of Mary Magdalene to many different things he perpetrated a couplet more remarkable for ingenuity than for beauty. Her eyes are

Two walking baths, two weeping motions,

Portable and compendious oceans.

Alfred Tennyson, in his second volume of poems, bearing the date 1833, included the following, though it is only fair to say that he afterward suppressed it. It aroused the mirth of the critics and still is often resurrected as a specimen of what Tennyson could do when he was deserted by both inspiration and taste.

O DARLING ROOM

O darling room, my heart’s delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.

For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter’s vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.

Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquisite,
With two such couches soft and white;
Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.

Imagine the profanity and laughter this piffle must have aroused among the book reviewers; some of his severer critics called him “Miss Alfred,” not knowing that he was a six-footer, with a voice like a sea captain in a fog.

I have no mind to defend the poem. Apart from the fact that the reading of it ought to teach Americans the correct accent on the word “exquisite,” it must be admitted that when Tennyson wrote this stuff he not only nodded but snored.

But, although it is difficult for me to understand how he could have written it, have read it in proof and then published it, I perfectly understand and sympathise with his enthusiasm for the room.

It is often said that polygamous gentlemen are—at any rate, for a considerable period—monogamous; the Turk may have a long list of wives, but he will cleave to one, either because he wants to or because she compels him to. Thus, even in a house that has a variety of sitting rooms, or living rooms or whatever you choose to call them, the family will use only one. After the evening meal they will instinctively move toward this one favourite room.

There is no doubt that even as dogs and cats have their favourite corner or chair, or favourite cushion of nightly repose, men and women have favourite rooms. And if this is true of a family in general, it is especially true of a man or a woman whose professional occupation is writing; and he becomes so attached to his room that Tennyson’s sentiments, no matter how silly in expression, accurately represent his emotion.

Twice a year, once in June and once in September, circumstances force me to leave a room where I have for a long time spent the larger part of my waking hours; I always feel the pain of parting, look around the walls and at the desk and wish the place an affectionate farewell, hoping to see it again, either in the autumn or in the next summer, as the case may be. I love that room, as Tennyson loved his room. I love it not because of the view from the windows, for a working room should not have too good a view, but for the visions that have there appeared to the eyes of the mind. It is the place where I have sat in thought, where such ideas as are possible to my limited range have appeared to me and where I have endeavoured to express them in words.

And if I can have so strong a passion for a room, with what tremendous intensity must an inspired poet or novelist love the secluded chamber where his imagination has found free play!

We know that Hawthorne, after his graduation from college, spent twelve years in one room in Salem. When he revisited that room as a famous writer he looked at it with unspeakable affection and declared that if ever he had a biographer great mention must be made in his memoir of this chamber, for here his mind and character had been formed and here the immortal children of his fancy had played around him. He was alone and not alone. As far as a mortal man may understand the feelings of a man of genius, I understand the emotion of Hawthorne.

I think nearly every one, if he were able to afford it, would like to have a room all his own. I believe it to be an important factor in the development of the average boy or girl if in the family house each child could have one room sacred to its own personality. When I was a small boy, although I loved to be with family and friends, I also loved to escape to my own room and read and meditate in solitude.

The age of machinery is not so adverse to spiritual development as the age of hotels and apartment houses; there is no opportunity for solitude, and a certain amount of solitude, serene and secure from interruption, is almost essential for the growth of the mind. A great many girls and women could be saved from the curse of “nerves” if there were a place somewhere in the building where they could be for a time alone. One of the worst evils of poverty is that there is no solitude; eating, sleeping, living, all without privacy.

When I was a graduate student in the university I was fortunate enough to possess for one year exactly the right kind of room. The young philosopher, George Santayana, came to see me and exclaimed, “What a perfect room for a scholar! The windows high up, as they should be.” For if one is to have clear mental vision it is not well that the room should have a view.

XV
TEA

“Thank God,” said Sydney Smith, “thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?—how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.” Well, I get along very well without tea, though I rejoice to see that more and more in “big business” houses in American cities there is a fifteen-minute pause for afternoon tea.

One of the chief differences between the life of Englishmen and of Americans is tea. Millions of Englishmen take tea three times a day. Tea is brought to their bedside early in the morning, and thirstily swallowed while in a horizontal attitude. The first thing an Englishman thinks of, if he wakes at dawn, is tea. When Arnold Bennett was travelling in America he took a limited train from New York to Chicago. Early in the morning he rang for the porter and when that individual appeared he commanded nonchalantly a cup of tea. He might as well have asked for a pot of hashish. The porter mechanically remarked that the “diner” would be put on at such-and-such an hour. This unintelligible contribution to the conversation was ignored by the famous novelist, who repeated his demand for tea. He was amazed to find there was no tea. “And you call this a first-class train!”

Then at breakfast—a substantial meal in British homes, though having somewhat the air of a cafeteria—tea is drunk copiously. To the average American tea for breakfast is flat and unprofitable. We are accustomed to the most inspiring beverage in the world, actual coffee. The coffee in England is so detestable that when an American tastes it for the first time he thinks it is a mistake. And he is right. It is. Many Americans give it up and reluctantly order tea. In my judgment, for breakfast the worst coffee is better than the best tea.

There are many Americans who have tea served at luncheon. For some reason this seems to the Englishman sacrilegious. The late Professor Mahaffy, who is now (I suppose) drinking nectar, was absolutely horrified to find that in my house he was offered a cup of tea at lunch. “Tea for lunch!” he screamed, and talked about it for the rest of the meal.

I was invited by a charming American lady to meet an English author at her house for luncheon. Tea was served and she said deprecatingly to the British author, “I don’t suppose you have tea at this time in England.” “Oh, yes,” said he, “the servants often have it below stairs.” To my delight, the hostess said, “Now, Mr. ——, aren’t you really ashamed of offering me an insult like that? Isn’t that remark of yours exactly the kind of thing you are going to be ashamed of when you think it over, all by yourself?”

At precisely 4:13 P.M. every day the average Englishman has a thirst for the astringent taste of tea. He does not care for hot water or hot lemonade coloured with tea. He likes his tea so strong that to me it has a hairy flavour. Many years ago the famous Scot William Archer invited me to his rooms in the Hotel Belmont, New York, for afternoon tea at 4:15. He had several cups and at five o’clock excused himself, as he had to go out to an American home for tea. I suggested that he had already had it. “Oh, that makes no difference.”

There are several good reasons (besides bad coffee) for tea in England. Breakfast is often at nine (the middle of the morning to me), so that early tea is desirable. Dinner is often at eight-thirty, so that afternoon tea is by no means superfluous. Furthermore, of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year in England, very, very few are warm; and afternoon tea is not only cheerful and sociable but in most British interiors really necessary to start the blood circulating.

There are few more agreeable moments in life than tea in an English country house in winter. It is dark at four o’clock. The family and guests come in from the cold air. The curtains are drawn, the open wood fire is blazing, the people sit down around the table and with a delightful meal—for the most attractive food in England is served at afternoon tea—drink of the cheering beverage.

William Cowper, in the eighteenth century, gave an excellent description:

Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

Not long before this poem was written the traveller Jonas Hanway had the bad luck to publish an essay on tea, “considered as pernicious to health, obstructing industry, and impoverishing the nation,” which naturally drew the artillery fire of the great Dr. Johnson. Sir John Hawkins, in his life of Johnson, comments on this controversy. He says: “That it is pernicious to health is disputed by physicians”—where have I heard something like that recently? But Hawkins continues: “Bishop Burnet, for many years, drank sixteen large cups of it every morning, and never complained that it did him the least injury.”

As for Johnson, “he was a lover of tea to an excess hardly credible; whenever it appeared, he was almost raving, and by his impatience to be served, his incessant calls for those ingredients which make that liquor palatable, and the haste with which he swallowed it down, he seldom failed to make that a fatigue to every one else, which was intended as a general refreshment.”

In nearly every English novel I find the expression, “I am dying for my tea!” On a voyage to Alaska, where tea was served on deck every afternoon, at precisely the same moment an elderly British lady appeared from below with precisely the same exclamation: “Oh, is there tea going?” And on her face was a holy look.

Alfred Noyes told me that during the war, when he was writing up important incidents for the benefit of the public, he was assigned to interview the sailors immediately after the tremendous naval battle of Jutland. He found a bluejacket who had been sent aloft and kept there during the fearful engagement, when shells weighing half a ton came hurtling through the air and when ships blew up around him. Thinking he would get a marvellous “story” out of this sailor, Mr. Noyes asked him to describe his sensations during those frightful hours. All the man said was, “Well, of course, I had to miss my tea!”

XVI
THE WEATHER

Nearly all the great poetry of the world, ancient and modern, has been written in Europe. This fact should never be forgotten in reading literature that alludes to the weather. The reason every one talks about the weather is not that the average person has nothing else to say; it is that the weather is usually the most interesting topic available. It is the first thing we think of in the hour of waking; it affects our plans, projects and temperament.

When I was a little boy at school there was a song sung in unison called “Hail, Autumn, Jovial Fellow!” It seemed to me to express correctly the true character of autumn. It was not until I had reached maturity in years that I discovered that the song, as judged by the world’s most famous writers, was a misfit. Instead of autumn’s being jovial, it was dull, damp, dark, depressing. To be sure, I never really felt that way about it; the evidence of my eyes was in favour of the school song, but, as the great poets had given autumn a bad reputation, I supposed in some way she must have earned it.

Still later I learned that Goethe was right when he said that in order to understand a poet you must personally visit the country where he wrote. Literary geography is seldom taught or seriously considered, but it is impossible to read famous authors intelligently without knowing their climatic and geographical environment. So keenly did I come to feel about this that I finally prepared a cardboard map of England, marking only the literary places, and I required my students to become familiar with it. One of them subsequently wrote me a magnificent testimonial, which I have often considered printing on the margin of the map.

Dear Mr. Phelps—I have been bicycling all over England this summer, and have found your Literary Map immensely useful. I have carried it inside my shirt, and I think on several occasions it has saved me from an attack of pneumonia.

There are millions of boys and girls studying Shakespeare in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand; the poet’s frequent allusions to the climate and the weather must seem strange.

That you have such a February face.

February “down under” is midsummer. Southern latitudes give the lie to Shakespeare’s metaphors.

The reason autumn has so bad a name in the world’s poetry and prose is that autumn in Northern Europe is a miserable season. In London, Paris, Berlin, November (and often October) is one of the worst times of the year. A chronically overcast sky, a continual drizzle, a damp chill even on mistily rainless days, combine to produce gloom. The first autumn and winter I spent in Paris revised my notions of those two seasons. As an American, I had thought of the difference between summer and winter as a difference only in temperature; I reasonably expected as much sunshine in autumn and winter as in summer. A typical January day in New York is cold and cloudless.

Well, in Paris the sun disappeared for weeks at a time, and on the rare occasions when it shone people ran out in the street to look at it. One of the worst jokes in the world is the expression, “sunny France.” The French themselves know better. François Coppée wrote of the “rare smiles” of the Norman climate, and Anatole France, describing a pretty girl, wrote “Her eyes were grey; the grey of the Paris sky.”

For the same reason “Italian skies” have been overpraised, because their eulogists are English or French or German. The Italian sky is usually so much better than the sky of more northerly European localities that it seems good by contrast. Now, as a matter of fact the winter sky over Bridgeport, Conn., is superior in brightness and blueness to the sky over Florence or Venice.

November, one of the best months of the year in America, is dreaded by all who live in France, England or Germany. Walking in New Haven one brilliant (and quite typical) day in mid-November, exhibiting the university and city to a visiting French professor, I enquired, “What do you think of our November climate?” He replied, “It is crazy.”

A strange thing is that Bryant, born in the glorious Berkshires of western Massachusetts, where autumn, instead of being pale and wet as the European poets have described it, is brilliant and inspiring, all blue and gold, did not use his eyes; he followed the English poetical tradition.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year.

James Whitcomb Riley used the evidence of his senses, and wrote an autumnal masterpiece.

O it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best....

They’s something kind o’ hearty-like about the atmosphere

When the beat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—Of
course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;

But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a picture that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

One difference between the temperament of the typical Englishman and the typical American is caused largely by the climate, and foreigners in writing books about us should not forget the fact. If nearly every morning the sky were overcast and the air filled with drizzle, we might not be quite so enthusiastic.

On the other hand, the early spring in England and France is more inspiring than ours, perhaps by reason of the darkness of winter. It comes much earlier. Alfred Housman says:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

In our Northern American States a blossoming fruit tree at Eastertide would be a strange spectacle.

XVII
WAR

War is a sentimental affair; that is why it is so difficult to abolish. War is opposed to the dictates of common sense, prudence, rationality, and wisdom. But the sentiments of man and the passions of man are deeper, more elemental, and more primitive than his intelligence, knowledge, and reasoning powers. For intelligence and morality belong to man alone; his instincts he shares with the entire animal creation.

My own plan for getting rid of war would not win a peace prize, because it would never be adopted. But I believe it strikes at the root of war—sentiment. My plan would be to spoil the good looks of the officers and also take away all their drums, fifes, and brass bands. The uniforms are altogether too handsome, too attractive, too becoming.

It is a familiar saying that every woman is in love with a uniform; to which I would add that every man is also. The naval officers look magnificent in their bright blue frock coats, their yellow buttons, and their shining epaulets. These gorgeous hawks of war are decorated by the government as lavishly as Nature, the greatest of all tailors, fits out her birds of prey. A naval officer excels in brilliance the appearance of a civilian, even as the gay feathers of a sparrowhawk excel those of a sparrow.

Furthermore, every military and naval officer has a capable man to look after his wardrobe. Not only are his various uniforms beautiful in design and ornamentation, they are without spot or blemish. His trousers are mathematically creased, his coat unwrinkled, his linen like virgin snow. My suggestion is, that if you really want to get rid of war, the first thing to do is to compel all professional warriors to wear ill-fitting hand-me-downs, shabby and unpressed, and without gold trimmings. The glamour and the glory would vanish with the gold.

Then I would abolish the dance of death. Instead of having perfect drill, hundreds of men deploying with exactitude, I would make them look like Coxey’s Army, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.

But above all, I would silence the drum and fife, and the big brass band. Although I myself hate war, and should like to see it abolished, whenever I hear the thrilling roll of the drums and the shrill scream of the fifes, followed by the sight and sound of marching men, their bayonets gleaming in the sunshine, I want to cry. A lump comes up in my throat and I am ready to fight anybody or anything. If you really want to get rid of war, you must not surround it with pomp and majesty, you must not give it such a chance at our hearts.

Although wars are never started by warriors, but only by politicians and tradesmen, for the very last place where a foreign war could begin would be at Annapolis or West Point; still, there is no doubt that high officers have a ripping time during a great war, and that the surviving soldiers love to talk about it (among themselves) at their regular reunions in later years. Shakespeare, himself no soldier, understood perfectly how the professional feels. This is the farewell he put in the mouth of Othello:

Farewell the tranquil mind: farewell content!

Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars

That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!

Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

Even so: Othello was a sentimentalist. He had more passion than brains. That is why Iago and not Desdemona made him jealous; that is why, with the loss of war and women, he lost everything. He was without any intellectual resources.

The leaders of thought and the leaders of morals have usually been against war. Although the historical books of the Old Testament and the emotional Psalms celebrated the glory of war, the contemporary sober-minded prophets were against it. They prophesied the coming of universal peace, when the money spent on armaments would be devoted to agriculture and to education. The appearance of Jesus was the signal for peace on earth and good will to men.

Jonathan Swift, more than two hundred years ago, said that men were less intelligent than beasts. A single wild beast would fight for his food or his mate; but you could never, said Swift, induce a lot of wild beasts to line up in dress parade, and then fight another set of wild beasts, whom they did not know.

Benjamin Franklin, the wisest of Americans, immediately after the Revolutionary War, which he had helped to win, said there had never been a good war or a bad peace.

But although the wisdom and morality of mankind have been against war, war goes on; the moment it breaks out in any country, all the forces of sentimentalism are employed to glorify, yes, even to sanctify its course. The first great casualty is Reason.

What shall we say of a scholar like the late Sir Walter Raleigh, Professor of English Literature at Oxford? He continually ridiculed religion for its sentimentality; but the moment the great war broke out, no school-girl was more sentimental than he.

Thus the hope for peace lies not in the poets, the literary men, the preachers and the philanthropists; the hope lies in hardheaded Scotsmen like Ramsay MacDonald, whose idealism is built on a foundation of shrewd sense.

XVIII
MAN AND BOY

F. P. A., in his excellent Conning Tower in the New York World for the Ides of March, pays a fine tribute to E. W. Howe and his paragraphs long ago in the Atchison Globe. He says: “There were two paragraphs that appeared just about the time we began reading the Globe, which we are willing to bet were written by Ed himself. He was less oracular in those days. They were something like the following:

‘We have been editing a newspaper for twenty-five years, and have learned that the only thing a newspaper can safely attack is the man-eating shark.

‘A boy thinks, “What a fine time a man has!” And a man thinks, “What a fine time a boy has!” And what a rotten time they both have!’”

There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit that they enjoy life. Having the honour of a personal acquaintance with both F. P. A. and Ed Howe, it is my belief they both had a happy childhood and that they are now having a good time in this strangest of all possible worlds. No one can judge another’s inner state of mind, but as these distinguished humorists are men of unusually high intelligence I think they find life immensely interesting; and to be constantly interested is to be happy.

I remember a magnificent reply made by F. P. A. to a remark of that hirsute Englishman, D. H. Lawrence; the latter, commenting in that tactless fashion so characteristic of foreign visitors to these shores, said, “It must be terrible to be funny every day.” “No,” said F. P. A., “not so terrible as never to be funny at all.”

I spent an agreeable afternoon in Florida talking with Ed Howe, or rather in hearing him talk. He told a succession of anecdotes and stories, and it was clear that he not only enjoyed telling them, which he did with consummate art, but that he enjoyed having them in his mind.

Why is it so many people are afraid to admit they are happy? I have a large and intimate acquaintance with farmers; many of them are splendid men. But how cautious they are in their replies to casual questions! If everything is going as well as could possibly be expected and you ask them how they are, they say, “Can’t complain.”

If a man says, “I have had and am having a happy life,” he is regarded by many as being a shallow and superficial thinker; but if he says, “My most earnest wish is that I had never been born,” many believe that he has a profound mind.

With regard to the saying quoted from the Atchison Globe that a boy thinks a man has a fine time and a man thinks a boy has a fine time and in reality both have a rotten time—well, the statement, whoever said it, is shallow and untrue. When I was a boy I had lots of fun, and I deeply pitied old men of thirty-two because I supposed they had no fun at all. Then, when I became a man, I realised how enormously richer in happiness is manhood than boyhood.

The average American boy has a pretty good time. What fun, on emerging from school on Friday afternoon, to know that tomorrow is Saturday! What fun to play games, to go on exploring adventures in neighbouring woods, to have picnics and jollifications, to live a life of active uselessness! The mere physical health of boyhood makes one feel like a young dog released from a chain. “Mere living” is good.

I remember seeing a picture of an old man addressing a small boy. “How old are you?” “Well, if you go by what Mama says, I’m five. But if you go by the fun I’ve had, I’m most a hundred.”

Joseph Conrad, who was a grave and serious man, said he was neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He did not think life was perfect, but pessimism, he said, was intellectual arrogance. He made the point that no matter what was one’s religion or philosophy, this at all events is a spectacular universe.

To deny life, to show no appreciation of it, seems to me both ungrateful and stupid. If you showed a man the Himalaya Mountains, the ocean in a storm, sunrise in the desert, the Court of Honour in 1893, the Cathedral of Chartres, and he looked at them all with a lack-lustre eye, we should think him stupid. Well, the universe itself is tremendously spectacular, and the best shows in it are free. To go through life in rebellion, disgust or even in petulance, is the sign, not of a great, but of a dull mind.

How ridiculous it is for a boy to wish he were a man and how much more ridiculous for a man to wish he were a boy! It is as silly as crying for the moon. Instead of always longing for something beyond our reach, why not simply make the best of what we have? This would be a platitude if it were not that so very few people follow it.

There is certainly enough sorrow in the world, but I sometimes think we should enjoy life more if we had more of the divine gift of appreciation, if we were not so unappreciative. When Addison thanked God for the various pleasures of life, he thanked Him most of all for a cheerful heart.

More than two hundred years ago he wrote in the Spectator:

Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ;
Nor is the least a cheerful heart
That tastes these gifts with joy.

XIX
AMBITION

What do we really mean when we say of a man, “He is too good for this world?” Do we mean exactly that, do we mean he is so far loftier in character than the average person that he seems almost out of place in a world like this? Don’t we rather mean that he lacks human sympathy and understanding, and therefore can be of no real use to anybody?

If you remember the character of Hilda in Hawthorne’s novel, The Marble Faun, you may remember that she used to be held up as an ideal of the religious life. “Her soul was like a star and dwelt apart.” But from the selfish sanctity of its seclusion, no real good resulted; no one was aided or cheered in the struggle of life. No one could confide in her, for she could not even confide in herself. Her nature may have had the purity of an angel, but it lacked the purity of a noble woman. She was no help to sinners; she was their despair. Her purity was like that of one who hesitates to rescue a drowning man, for fear of soiling his clothes.

Hilda gave up the world and worldly pleasure; easily enough, for she abhorred it, and felt ill at ease in society. But though she gave up many things precious to the average person, she had no conception of the meaning of the word self-denial.

For the true sacrifice, if one wishes to be of real use in this world, consists not in the giving of things, but in giving oneself. If a man’s life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses, so the sacrificial life consists not in the number of luxuries one surrenders, but in the devotion of oneself, in the denial of the will. There is a certain kind of purity which is fundamentally selfish.

This manner of asceticism is not particularly common nowadays, and we need not fear that it will be too generally practiced. I am calling attention to it in order to show that selfishness may take on the mask of purity or of respectability, a selfishness that springs from pure moral motives and a longing for the elevation of character.

But there is another type of respectable selfishness that is far more common, possibly more common in America than in any other country. It is not usually recognised as selfishness, but regarded as one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—of the virtues. It is seen chiefly among earnest and ambitious young men, who assume that life is not a holiday, but a serious affair, a struggle, a strictly competitive race, where if you stop a moment, even for reflexion, you are left behind.

We are bound to respect these men. They have at all events found out half the secret of life. They have set before themselves some goal, in politics, in business, in literature, and they are determined to reach it. They are equally determined to gain the prize by no dishonourable means. Their minds are full of the lessons learned from their predecessors, men who by the sacrifice of temporary pleasures, by the refusal to indulge in recreation or relaxation, have surpassed their competitors and reached the top.

We are constantly told that it is only by intense concentration, by terrific efforts day and night, and by keeping the end constantly in view that one can attain success. Surely these young men are to be admired, surely they are models, examples worthy of emulation?

Well, they are better than criminals, they are better than parasites, they are better than drones. But their driving motive is selfishness. Tennyson wrote The Palace of Art, Browning wrote Paracelsus, because each of these poets knew that his individual danger was not what is usually known as “temptation.” They knew that they would never go to hell by the crowded highway of dissipation, for they were above the mere call of the blood. Their danger lay in a high and noble ambition, which has wrecked many first-rate minds.

Modern life tends to encourage this respectable selfishness. The central law of the so-called science of Economics is selfishness. A whole science is built on one foundation—that every man in the world will get all he can for himself. The subject is naturally studied not from an ethical, but from a scientific standpoint. Life is a race.

Now I believe that Efficiency—mere practical success in the world—is as false an ideal as asceticism. If the morality of withdrawal is not good enough, neither is the morality of success. Those deserve the highest admiration and the most profound respect who have actually aided their human brethren, who have left the world better than they found it.

This is by no means a hopeless ideal of character. It is not necessary to crush a tyrant or to organise a revolution or to reconstruct society or to be a professional reformer. There are plenty of professional reformers who have tremendous enthusiasm for humanity and who have never helped an individual. Those who by unselfish lives and consideration for others elevate the tone of the community in which they live and who by their presence make others happier, these are the salt of the earth. Their daily existence is more eloquent than a sermon.

American young men and women in our High Schools and universities are not often face to face with the mystery of life. They have no conception of the amount of suffering in the world. Their own lives are comparatively free from it, in many cases free even from anxiety. These boys and girls are for the most part sensible, alert, quick-witted, and practical; what I should like to see would be a change in their ideals from mere Success to something nobler. I should like to see them devoting their intelligence and energy to the alleviation of suffering and to the elevation of human thought and life.

If one still believes that the highest happiness and satisfaction come from the attainment of any selfish ambition, no matter how worthy in itself, it is well to remember the significance of the fact that Goethe, acknowledged to be one of the wisest of men, made Faust happy only when he was unselfishly interested in the welfare of others; and to remember that Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the shrewdest of all shrewd Americans, found the greatest pleasure of his long life in two things—public service and individual acts of kindness.

XX
BIRDS AND STATESMEN

When, in the Spring of 1910, Theodore Roosevelt was on his way to England from his African explorations, he wrote a strange letter to the British Foreign Office in London. I call it a strange letter, because it is the kind of epistle one would not expect to be sent by an ex-executive of one country to the Foreign Office of another. He wrote that during his stay in England he would like to make an excursion into the woods, hear the English songbirds and learn their names; in order that he might do this satisfactorily and intelligently, would the Foreign Office please select some naturalist who knew the note of every bird in England and request him to accompany Mr. Roosevelt on this expedition?

Well, the head of the British Foreign Office was Sir Edward Grey and he himself knew the note of every singing bird in England—a remarkable accomplishment for one of the busiest statesmen in the world. He therefore appointed himself as bird-guide for the ex-President of the United States.

The two distinguished men stood on a railway platform one day in May and were surrounded by reporters, who supposed that a new world-problem of the first magnitude was on the carpet. But the two men told the reporters that they were going away into the country for two days, did not wish to be disturbed, and asked the journalists to leave them alone. Accordingly, it was generally believed that Roosevelt and Grey were absorbed in the discussion of international affairs, and as the great war broke out a few years later, some went so far as to believe then that it had its origin in this sinister interview.

Now, as a matter of fact, the two men did not mention either war or politics; they went a-walking in the New Forest and every time they heard the voice of a bird, Grey told Roosevelt the singer’s name. They both agreed (and so do I) that the English blackbird is the best soloist in Great Britain.

It is a curious fact that the four most famous birds in English literature are none of them native in America. The Big Four are the Nightingale, the Skylark, the Blackbird and the Cuckoo. From Chaucer to Kipling the British poets have chanted the praise of the Nightingale. And of all the verses in his honour, it is perhaps the tribute by Keats that is most worthy of the theme.

Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oftimes hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

We never had nightingales in the United States until Edward W. Bok imported them into his Bird Paradise in Florida. Previous attempts to bring them over had failed; the birds invariably died. Some investigators declared that this tragedy was owing to the change of diet; but of course the real reason for their death was American poetry. After the nightingales had listened for centuries to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, etc., the change to the level of American verse was too much for them, and they died of shock.

The English skylark leaves the grass and soars aloft, singing his heart out, so that after he has disappeared in the sky, we hear his voice coming down out of the blue, like a revelation. One of the poets calls it a “sightless song.”

Shakespeare sends the skylark to the gate of heaven.

And Shelley’s poem on the skylark expresses the ethereal nature of the soaring voice of this bird:

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and
Soaring ever singest.

American blackbirds do not sing well; the so-called crow-blackbird, so common in flocks in autumn, makes a noise like tonsillitis, or as if he had a boy’s voice in process of changing, or as if he were a hinge that needed oiling. Our redwing blackbird, with his scarlet epaulets, has a good-natured and perky wheeze, which can hardly be called singing. But the English and Continental blackbird pours out of his throat the most heavenly melody. One Winter day in Munich, in the midst of a snowstorm, I saw a blackbird perched on a tree directly in front of the University building. He was “hove to,” that is, he had his beak turned directly into the wind, and as the snowflakes beat against his little face, he sent straight into the gale the loveliest music. Tennyson has observed how the voice of the blackbird loses its beauty in the hot Summer days.

A golden bill! the silver tongue,
Cold February loved, is dry:
Plenty corrupts the melody
That made thee famous once, when young;

And in the sultry garden-squares,
Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse,
I hear thee not at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares.

The nearest we Americans can get to the English cuckoo is the abominable cuckoo clock. The voice of the English cuckoo sounds exactly like the clock, only of course you can’t train him to strike right. In addition to his regular accomplishment, he is a ventriloquist and can throw his voice a tremendous distance. One day, crossing a field in Sussex, I heard the loud double note of the cuckoo, apparently directly behind me. He was in reality a furlong away.

Wordsworth says:

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Concerning the all too common crimes of shooting, snaring, and eating little singing birds, the English poet, Ralph Hodgson, has expressed himself in words that ought to be everywhere read:

I saw with open eyes
Singing birds sweet
Sold in the shops
For the people to eat,
Sold in the shops of
Stupidity Street.

I saw in a vision
The worm in the wheat
And in the shops nothing
For people to eat:
Nothing for sale in
Stupidity Street.

XXI
RUSSIA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

The best way to invade Russia is by sea; and I advise those who plan to visit the Soviet Republic to go via Stockholm. Copenhagen, Christiania, Stockholm are three interesting cities and should be seen in that order. Stockholm, the “Venice of the North,” is one of the most beautiful, most picturesque, and most attractive places in the world.

It is surprising that the short sea voyage from Stockholm to Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad) is not better known; it is enchantingly beautiful. We left Stockholm at six o’clock in the evening of a fine September day, and as our tiny steamer drew away, the sunset light over the fair city hung a new picture on the walls of my mind. It took some five hours to reach the Baltic, five hours of constantly changing scenery, one view melting into another like a succession of dissolving panoramas. Hundreds of miniature islands dotted with châteaux and country houses; winking lighthouse towers; “the grey sea and the long black land.”

An impossible half-moon lent the last touch of glory to the scene. We stood on the top deck and beheld the spacious firmament on high, thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; while the long level light of the crazy moon fell across the darkening water and the myriad islands.

In the middle of the night we crossed the Baltic, and in the whitening dawn entered the gulf of Finland. The air was nipping and eager, but the sun rose in a cloudless sky. All day long the steamer nosed her way through the blue sea, twisting and turning among the countless points of the earth’s surface that were just able to keep their heads above water. A few of these were covered with green grass, and supported white farm buildings where laughing children accompanied by dignified dogs ran out to see our transit; but for the most part these elevations were bald, with a tall lighthouse as sole decoration.

At five in the afternoon we reached Helsingfors (still my farthest north) and stepped ashore to spend six hours in seeing the town, the boat not proceeding toward Russia until late in the night. The clouded sky was low and harsh the next morning, and the sea was surly. Toward noon it cleared, and early in the afternoon we saw the gilded domes and spires of Holy Russia. After a long delay with passports, we drove across one of the bridges over the Neva to our hotel at a corner of the Nevski Prospekt. Although it was only September, the temperature was under fifty, and seemed colder.

I had a severe cold, which had its origin in a chill I had caught in rashly touching a piece of toast that a waiter brought me in a London hotel. But I was right in style. Accustomed as I was to see on the streets of any American city the healthy, cheerful, well-clad and well-shod men and women, I was appalled by the faces and the clothes of the Russians. What they look like today I know not, but a more unhappy looking crowd than I saw every day on the streets of Russian cities I have never seen outside of pictures of Hell. Many of the people had their ears and mouths bandaged and on their feet were (if they could afford it) enormous knee-boots. All seemed to be suffering from the foot and mouth disease.

Never shall I forget the boots and overcoats and uniforms on the Nevski Prospekt. The question of leg-clothes would have interested the author of Sartor Resartus. In Edinburgh all the men and some of the women wore knickers, with stockings that seemed an inch thick. Compared with Europeans, Americans are tropically clad. In order to avoid the glare of publicity, I bought in Scotland a homespun golf suit.

I tried these abbreviated trousers just once on the Nevski Prospekt. Everybody stopped to stare. Had I worn a flowing purple robe, I should not have attracted such attention. Military officers gazed at me in cold amazement, as though I had leprosy; while the more naïve passers made audible comment, which fortunately I could not translate. Then I tried the experiment of conventional clothing, but wore low shoes. Everyone gazed at my feet, some in wonder, some in admiration, some in terror. I felt as I did many years ago when I wore a striped cap in Brussels. A stranger looked at me earnestly and then said in an almost reverent tone, and he said it three times: Nom de Dieu!

In America our citizens show much the same interest in strange clothing. Professor E. B. Wilson, a distinguished mathematician, bought a suit of clothes in Paris. He wore it only once in America. A citizen gazed at him steadfastly, and said “J——!”

The faces of the common people in Russian cities were sad to behold, whether one saw them on the street or in church. Not only was there no hilarity, such as one sees everywhere in American towns; those faces indicated a total lack of illuminating intelligence. They were blank, dull, apathetic, helpless. Gorki said that the people in Russia had so little to look forward to that they were glad when their own houses burned down, as it made a break in the dull routine of life.

One afternoon I walked the entire length of the Nevski Prospekt, no mean achievement in a heavy overcoat. I began at the banks of the restless, blustering Neva, passed the extraordinary statue of Peter the Great, came through the garden by the statue of Gogol, and with the thin gold spire of the Admiralty at my back, entered the long avenue.

I followed the immense extension of the Nevski, clear to the cemetery, and stood reverently before the tomb of Dostoevski. Here in January, 1881, the body of the great novelist was laid in the grave, in the presence of forty thousand mourners.

In a corner of the enclosure I found the tomb of the composer Chaikovski; I gazed on the last resting-place of Glinka, father of Russian music. On account of the marshy soil, the graves are built above instead of below the surface of the ground, exactly as they are in New Orleans. It is in reality a city of the dead, the only place where a Russian finds peace. I passed out on the other side of the cemetery, walked through the grounds of the convent, and found myself abruptly clear from the city, on the edge of a vast plain.

XXII
THE DEVIL

It is rather a pity that the Devil has vanished with Santa Claus and other delectable myths; the universe is more theatrical with a “personal devil” roaming at large, seeking whom he may devour. In the book of Job the Devil played the part of the return of the native, coming along in the best society in the cosmos to appear before the Presence. And when he was asked where he came from, he replied in a devilishly debonair manner, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”

There are so many things in this world that seem to be the Devil’s handiwork, and there are so many people who look like the devil, that it seems as if he could not be extinct. His chief service to the universal scene was to keep virtue from becoming monotonous; to warn even saints that they must mind their step; to prove that eternal vigilance is the price of safety. The Enemy of Mankind never took a holiday. Homer might nod, but not he. In fact, on human holidays he was, if possible, unusually efficient. The idleness of man was the opportunity of Satan.

The principle of evil is so active, so tireless, so penetrating that the simplest way to account for it is to suppose that men and things receive constantly the personal attention of the Devil. Weeds, and not vegetables, grow naturally; illness, not health, is contagious; children and day-labourers are not instinctively industrious; champagne tastes better than cocoa.

Throughout the Middle Ages, although every one believed steadfastly in the reality of the Devil and that he was the most unscrupulous of all foes, there was a certain friendliness with him, born, I suppose, of daily intimacy. It was like the way in which hostile sentries will hobnob with one another, swap tobacco, etc., in the less tense moments of war. The Devil was always just around the corner and would be glad of an invitation to drop in.

Thus in the mediæval mystery plays, the forerunners of our modern theatres, the Devil was always the Clown. He supplied “comic relief” and was usually the most popular personage in the performance. He appeared in the conventional makeup, a horrible mask, horns, cloven hoofs and prehensile tail, with smoke issuing from mouth, ears and posterior. He did all kinds of acrobatic feats, and his appearance was greeted with shouts of joy. In front of that part of the stage representing Hellmouth he was sometimes accompanied with “damned souls,” persons wearing black tights with yellow stripes. On an examination at Yale I set the question, “Describe the costume of the characters in the mystery plays.” One of the students wrote: “The damned souls wore Princeton colours.”

The modern circus clown comes straight from the Devil. When you see him stumble and fall all over himself, whirl his cap aloft and catch it on his head, distract the attention of the spectators away from the gymnasts to his own antics, he is doing exactly what his ancestor the Devil did in the mediæval plays.

It is at first thought singular that those audiences, who believed implicitly in a literal hell of burning flame, should have taken the Devil as the chief comic character. I suppose the only way to account for this is to remember how essential a feature of romantic art is the element of the grotesque, which is a mingling of horror and humour, like our modern spook plays. If you pretend that you are a hobgoblin and chase a child, the child will flee in real terror, but the moment you stop, the child will say, “Do that again.”

There are many legends of compacts with the Devil, where some individual has sold his soul to gain the whole world. The most famous of these stories is, of course, Faust, but there are innumerable others. Here is a story I read in an American magazine some fifty years ago.

A man, threatened with financial ruin, was sitting in his library when the maid brought in a visiting card and announced that a gentleman would like to be admitted. On the card was engraved

Mr. Apollo Lyon.

As the man looked at it his eyes blurred, the two words ran together, so they seemed to form the one word

Apollyon.

The gentleman was shown in; he was exquisitely dressed and was evidently a suave man of the world. He proposed that the one receiving him should have prosperity and happiness for twenty years. Then Mr. Lyon would call again and be asked three questions. If he failed to answer any of the three the man should keep his wealth and prosperity. If all three were correctly answered the man must accompany Mr. Lyon.

The terms were accepted; all went well for twenty years. At the appointed time appeared Mr. Lyon, who had not aged in the least; he was the same smiling, polished gentleman. He was asked a question that had floored all the theologians. Mr. Lyon answered it without hesitation. The second question had stumped all the philosophers, but it had no difficulties for Mr. Lyon.

Then there was a pause, and the sweat stood out on the questioner’s face. At that moment his wife came in from shopping. She was rosy and cheerful. After being introduced to Mr. Lyon she noticed her husband was nervous. He denied this, but said that he and Mr. Lyon were playing a little game of three questions and he did not want to lose. She asked permission to put the third question and in desperation her husband consented. She held out her new hat and asked: “Mr. Lyon, which is the front end of this hat?” Mr. Lyon turned it around and around, and then with a strange exclamation went straight through the ceiling, leaving behind him a strong smell of sulphur.

XXIII
THE FORSYTE SAGA

It is impossible to say what books of our time will be read at the close of this century; it is probable that many of the poems and tales of Kipling, the lyrics of Housman, dramatic narratives by Masefield, some plays by Shaw and Barrie, will for a long time survive their authors.

Among the novels, I do not know of any that has or ought to have a better chance for the future than the books written about the family of the Forsytes by John Galsworthy. They at present hold about the same place in contemporary English literature as is held in France by Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe. Both are works of great length which reflect with remarkable accuracy the political, social, commercial, artistic life and activity of the twentieth century, the one in England, the other on the Continent.

Entirely apart from their appeal as good novels, that is to say, apart from one’s natural interest in the plot and in the characters, both are social documents of great value. If the future historian wishes to know English and Continental society in the first quarter of the twentieth century, he will do well to give attention and reflexion to these two works of “fiction.”

John Galsworthy was just under forty when in 1906 he published a novel called The Man of Property. He had produced very little before this, but it took no especial critical penetration to discover that the new book was a masterpiece. The family of the Forsytes bore a striking resemblance to one another in basic traits and ways of thinking, yet each was sharply individualised. A new group of persons had been added to British fiction. The word “Property,” as in Tennyson’s Northern Farmer, was the keynote, and before long it began to appear that one of the most dramatic of contrasts was to be used as the subject. This is the struggle between the idea of Property and the idea of Beauty—between the commercial, acquisitive temperament and the more detached, but equally passionate artistic temperament.

Even in the pursuit of beauty Mr. Soames Forsyte never forgot the idea of property. He was a first-class business man in the city, but he was also an expert judge of paintings, which he added to his collection. Oil and canvas do not completely satisfy any healthy business man; so Soames added to his collection, as the masterpiece in his gallery, an exquisitely beautiful woman whom he made his wife.

The philosophy of love comes in here. What is love? Is it exclusively the idea of possession, which often is no more dignified than the predatory instinct or is it the unalloyed wish that the object of one’s love should be as happy and secure as possible? No one can truly and sincerely love Beauty either in the abstract or in the concrete if one’s eyes are clouded by predatory desire. One must look at beauty without the wish to possess it if one is really to appreciate beauty. A first-class French chef would look into the big front window of a confectioner’s shop and fully appreciate the art and taste that created those delectable edibles; but a hungry boy who looked at the same objects would not appreciate them critically at all.

The wife of Soames finds him odious, so odious that we cannot altogether acquit her of guilt in marrying him; and Soames, who as a Man of Property expected her to fulfill her contract, did not make himself more physically attractive by insisting on his rights. She left him for a man of exactly the opposite temperament.

When Mr. Galsworthy finished this fine novel, he had no intention of going on with the history of the family. He wrote many other novels and some remarkable plays, but nothing made the impression on readers that had been produced by the Forsyte family. Nearly twenty years later he returned to the theme, and at once his power as a novelist seemed to rise; there is something in this family that calls out his highest powers. When he discovered that he had written five works of fiction on the Forsytes, three long novels and two short stories, of which the brief interlude called Indian Summer of a Forsyte is an impeccable and I hope imperishable work of art, he hit upon the happy idea of assembling them into one prose epic, and calling the whole thing by the ironical title of The Forsyte Saga. It is my belief that for many years to come the name of John Galsworthy will be associated with this work, in what I fervently hope will be its expanded form.

For since the assembling of the five pieces Mr. Galsworthy has published several other novels dealing with the family—The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon and in 1928 he wrote FINIS with Swan Song. Here he kills Soames, and while he probably does not feel quite so sad as Thackeray felt when he killed Colonel Newcome, I venture to say that he does not gaze on the corpse of Soames with indifferent eyes. For to my mind the most interesting single feature of this whole mighty epic is the development of the character of this man.

Clyde Fitch used to say something that is no doubt true of many works of the imagination; he said that he would carefully plan a play, write his first act, and definitely decide what the leading characters should say and do in the subsequent portions of the work. Then these provokingly independent characters seemed to acquire, not only an independent existence, but a power of will so strong that they insisted on doing and saying all kinds of things which he tried in vain to prevent.

In The Man of Property Soames Forsyte is a repulsive character; he is hated by his wife, by the reader, and by the author. But in these later books Soames becomes almost an admirable person, and we may say of him at the end in reviewing his life, that nothing became him like the leaving of it—for he died nobly. Long before this catastrophe, however, we have learned to admire, respect, and almost to love Soames. Is it possible that Mr. Galsworthy had any notion of this spiritual progress when he wrote The Man of Property, or is it that in living so long with Soames he began to see his good points?

Dickens was a master in this kind of development. When we first meet Mr. Pickwick, he seems like the president of a service club as conceived by Sinclair Lewis; he is the butt of the whole company. Later Mr. Pickwick develops into a noble and magnanimous gentleman, whom every right-minded person loves. Look at Dick Swiveller—when we first see him, he is no more than a guttersnipe. He develops into a true knight.

XXIV
PROFESSION AND PRACTICE

Beautiful lines which show that the man who wrote them had a clear conception of true religion are these:

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,

And even his failings leaned to virtue’s side;

But in his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;

And, as a bird each fond endearment tries

To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,

He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,

Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

The man who wrote them is thus described by James Boswell: “Those who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an excess that the instances of it are hardly credible. When accompanying two beautiful young ladies with their mother on a tour of France, he was seriously angry that more attention was paid to them than to him.” Goldsmith wrote of virtue, modesty, sweet unselfishness in the most convincing manner; his words were more convincing than his behaviour. He allured to brighter worlds, but did not lead the way.

Schopenhauer, the great philosopher of pessimism, taught that absolute asceticism was the only true religion and method of escape from the ills of life; but he never practiced it, and told his disciples to mind his precepts and not his example. Unfortunately, whenever any one gives advice in the field of morality or religion, the first person on whom we test its practical value is the preacher. Emerson remarked, “What you are thunders so loud I cannot hear what you say.”

No great writer of modern times has written more persuasively of the Christian way of life than Tolstoi; there is no doubt that his stories and tracts have had an immense influence on millions of readers and have inspired them toward unselfishness, kindness and humility. But of all great Russian writers, Tolstoi himself was the most difficult to get along with; he could not bear to hear any other writer praised and was lacking in the grace of appreciation. His rival, Turgenev, who had no religious belief of any kind, excelled Tolstoi in the virtues of modesty, unselfishness and consideration for others.

One of the many reasons why the art of bringing up children is the most difficult of all arts is that it is essential for parents to set a daily example. All the moral precepts in the world will not seriously impress children if their parents do not in their daily life come somewhere near the ideals they hold up. The child will after a fashion love his parents anyhow, but as he grows older and begins to compare what he has been taught with what he sees, the child is transformed into a judge. This partly explains that fear of their own children which so many parents secretly feel.

If the parents make their small children go to church and stay home themselves, the children quite naturally regard church-going as one of the numerous penalties imposed on youth and look forward to maturity as an escape from this and many other unpleasant compulsions. If parents impress on their children the necessity of telling the truth, they must not themselves tell lies; they are being watched by the sharpest eyes in the world.

Although in a certain sense we are all hypocrites—for no one can live up to his ideals—we hate any flagrant case of hypocrisy. I suppose one reason we have a sneaking admiration for pirates is that pirates are not hypocrites. There is no doubt that professional pirates are more generally admired than professional politicians. I do not say that politicians are hypocrites; I say that pirates are not.

It is the personalities of great leaders, much more than their sayings, that have had a beneficial influence. The sayings of Jesus—every word that has come down to us—can be read through in three hours. But from His life and character flows a vital force, tremendously effective after nineteen centuries. Very few people read the literary compositions of Sir Philip Sidney, but millions have been influenced by his life and character. The pure, unselfish life of George Herbert is more efficacious than his poems; and consider Saint Francis!

The Christian Church has had in every century of its existence able, honest, determined foes, who have done their best to destroy it; it is probable that they have done it no injury. Nor have the frank sensualists and materialists hurt it at all. It has been injured only by its professed friends.

If a physician opens an office, his most dangerous foes are not his competitors, that is to say, other doctors; his most dangerous foes are those of his patients who say, “Well, I took his medicine, and it did me no good.” The best advertising is done by one’s sincere friends and admirers; the good word about the new doctor, or the new novel, or the new play, is passed along.

The Christian religion professes to make those who accept it better and happier; every one who professes it and exhibits none of its graces is a powerful argument against its validity. A man’s foes are those of his own household.

Sometimes I think religion should first of all show itself in good manners; that is, in true politeness, consideration for others, kindness and deference without servility. Such persons are those we love to meet and be with; they are good advertisements of their religion; they will not have to talk about it because its effects are so plainly and attractively seen.

XXV
LONDON AS A SUMMER RESORT

I had an interesting conversation with Bernard Shaw last week. The next day he and Mrs. Shaw were leaving to spend the summer on the Riviera, which from time immemorial has been regarded as a winter resort. He gave, as is his custom, an original and diverting explanation of the fact that many now prefer to visit winter resorts in the summer. It is a matter of clothes. The Victorians were forced to go to cool places, or at any rate to avoid warm places; because they were compelled to wear stuffy clothes, the men being encased in frock coats, thick waistcoats, collars and swaddling neckcloths. But today, when one leaves off almost everything, the finest place in the world, according to G. B. S., is a climate where one can live outdoors in comfort, day and night.

It is certainly true that many European resorts, where the hotels used to be open only during a short winter season, now attract visitors the year round. The converse is also true. I can well remember when the great hotels of Switzerland—the playground of Europe—were open only during the summer; and were crowded only during the month of August. But now they never close and are as much sought after in December and January as in the good old summertime. The same is true of Lake Placid in America and of many other places. People in Victorian times were forced to dress according to the prevailing style, which bore no reference to climate or common sense; remember how the women used to look, playing golf and tennis!

Furthermore the old idea that everyone who could afford it must leave the city during the “heated term” has become obsolete, even in America. President Harper of the University of Chicago established a Summer Quarter, and professors who wished to do so could take their three months’ vacation in the winter, a privilege that many continue to enjoy. The Country clubs and golf have had much to do with the contentment of business men who remain in cities during the summer. As a matter of fact, the city is not at all a bad place, I mean, of course, for those who can afford to make themselves comfortable.

The city of Munich has for many years been a Mecca for summer pilgrims. The season of music, arranged for foreign visitors, reaches its climax in August. Now I wish to urge the millions of Americans who at one time or another cross the ocean to consider the merits of London as a summer resort.

For over a hundred years July has been a part of the London “season”; Parliament is in session, operas and theatres are open, and parties flourish amain. The twelfth of August, the opening of the grouse shooting season, is the formal beginning of the vacation; Parliament always adjourns for it, and London society flies north. But to an American London is day by day interesting, and there should be no closing of any season for him.

London has no prolonged hot weather, like St. Louis. It has been said that the English climate consists of eight months of winter, and four months of bad weather. This is an exaggeration. Every now and then there is a year when summer is omitted; but even in such an unfortunate time, one is better off in London than in the country. In fact, to an American London, while not the most beautiful city in the world, is assuredly the most interesting. It is inexhaustible. Every foot of it, to one well read in English literature, is hallowed ground; I think I could walk along Fleet street a thousand days in succession, and always receive a thrill.

I wish that every American journalist, every American book reviewer, every American drama critic, would spend a month in London and diligently read the morning newspapers, such as The Times, The Telegraph, The Morning Post. Every page seems to be written for intelligent readers. These London journalists review tennis, golf and cricket matches with more dignity than the average New Yorker reviews plays and books. One reason that militates steadily against intellectual progress in America is the fact that apparently we have no language suitable as a medium for the exchange of ideas. Our book reviews and our drama criticisms are too often written in a cheap kind of slang that is intended to be smart. If anyone imagines that the journalism of London loses in intensity by being written in suitable English, let him turn to a file of The London Times and read the story of Tilden playing tennis at Wimbledon.

A remarkable thing about literary society in London is that age has nothing to do with it. One meets in social gatherings men and women in the twenties and in the eighties—disparity in years seems to be forgotten.

One should remember that, owing to the small size of England, one can use London as a base of operations and take excursions into the country on the swift English trains, returning to London every evening; many happy, baggageless days have I spent in this manner.

When G. K. Chesterton was in America, I asked him what difference between the two countries impressed him most. Instantly he replied, “Your wooden houses.” I had never thought of them as curiosities, but one does not see them in England. The thing that to me is most noticeable on the London streets is the absence of straw hats. There are many more bare male heads than there are straw hats. It is almost impossible to attract attention in London, but a straw hat will come nearest to doing the trick. Some men are exquisitely and others strangely clad, and nobody cares. I saw a man riding a bicycle. He had on tan shoes, homespun trousers, a frock coat, and a tall silk hat.

XXVI
WHAT THE MAN WILL WEAR

Men, women, and children are all interested in clothes; there have been many scholarly works, displaying vast erudition, on the history of costume; and two literary masterpieces, dealing with the philosophy of clothes, belong permanently to literature—A Tale of a Tub, by Jonathan Swift, and Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle.

So much attention has recently been paid in the newspapers and by the public to the clothes of women, that we are forgetting what revolutionary changes have taken place in the garments of men. Women’s clothes have decreased in number, weight, and size. Men’s clothes have gone through a process of softening. Hard hats, hard collars, hard shirts, hard shoes, hard suits, have given way to soft; and, for the first time in centuries, the carcasses of males are comfortably clad.

One hundred years ago the average gentleman, not satisfied with covering his body with an accumulation of intolerably thick clothes, wound an enormous stock around his neck. How stifling they look in those old family portraits! Robert Louis Stevenson applied an unexpected but accurate adjective to those collections of oil paintings of deceased ancestors, with which their descendants adorned walls of their dining rooms. Stevenson called them “these constipated portraits.”

This is the way my father dressed on practically every morning of his life; that is, after he left the farm, and entered upon the practice of his profession. He wore long, heavy flannel underwear, reaching to his ankles and his wrists. He put on a “hard-boiled,” white, full-bosomed shirt, stiff as sheet-iron. At the neck he fastened a stiff, upright, white linen choker collar; at the ends of the sleeves he buttoned on thick, three-ply linen cuffs. He imprisoned his feet, ankles, and shins in black, stiff, leather boots, reaching to the knees, but concealed above the ankles by his trousers. He wore a long-tailed coat, a waistcoat, and trousers made out of thick, dark-blue or black broadcloth. The trousers were strapped over his shoulders by suspenders. For the top of his head there was a tall, heavy, beaver hat.

Thus, clad in impenetrable armour from head to foot, he set out for the day’s work.

Fifty years ago was the age of dressing-gown and slippers. Why is it we never hear slippers mentioned nowadays? I have not owned a pair of slippers (except bedroom slippers) for more than thirty years. Yet in Victorian novels we are always reading of how, when the breadwinner returns to his home in the evening, he finds his slippers ready for him, warmed on the hearth. My father always took off his great boots—worn in summer as well as in winter—and put on his slippers when he came home, having called it a day.

Poets, novelists, and men whose occupation kept them at home, sat down to their desk in dressing-gown and slippers. The moment a man sat down in his own house to anything, with no immediate thought of going out, dressing-gown and slippers were the regulation costume. They were like knights-at-arms, taking off their suits of mail when they entered the interior of the castle.

Eventually the knee-boots gave way to high shoes—called boots in England—which were laced up to the top. In time these were succeeded by low shoes, which are now worn by millions of Americans the year round.

The swaddling, stifling, heavy underclothes were scrapped, and their place taken by sleeveless, shinless undergarments, light in weight, and more or less open in texture. Best of all, the intolerable stiff shirt, the bottom edge of which cut into the abdomen, and bellied out above like a sail in a fair wind, was reserved only for formal evening wear; shirts were made and worn that had no trace of starch in front, back, collar or cuff. I have not worn a stiff shirt (except for evening) in twenty years.

Suspenders (braces) became obsolete; and the pleasant belt came in, the belt that may be loosened or tightened at will, and which in any case leaves the shoulders free. In hot weather the waistcoat was discarded; and the man in his thin, loose clothes moved about almost as easily as Adam in Paradise.

Various are the names for the round stiff hat, derby, dicer, pot hat, bowler, billy-cock. Under any name it is just as bad. Some fifteen or twenty years ago the derby went temporarily out of fashion. Up to that time, if you looked into a cloak-room by a hotel dining-room, you saw about two hundred men’s hats looking exactly alike. Now you see a vast assortment of soft headgear, grey, brown, green, all of pleasing shape. The thousands of men at a football game now show variety aloft, instead of the intolerable black monotony of former years. I have not owned a “derby” since the war. Apart from my own hatred of the object, I always crushed it getting in or out of an automobile. And one indentation ruins a derby forever: every wound is mortal.

I am quite aware that the derby is returning. Everyone knows the nation-wide fame acquired by a certain brown derby. But no stiff hat, black or brown, will ever adorn my brows again during the hours of daylight.

The English, owing to their horrible climate and also partly to an invincible conservatism, still wear heavy clothes, thicksoled high shoes, braces, waistcoats, etc., even in hot weather. The only reform they have made is discarding the frock coat for daily wear, which up to a very few years ago was universal. A common sight in London was to see clerks going to the “city” on bicycles, arrayed in “Prince Albert” coats.

The clothes of an American tourist still look funny to an Englishman; how funny I never realised until I attended a play in London where an American was the object of good-natured caricature. He came on the stage with low shoes and silk shoe-laces, bright, thin socks, trousers held by a belt, no waistcoat, and jacket unbuttoned. The audience burst into roars of laughter and I laughed too, because he did look queer by contrast with the other actors. Then I suddenly realised that I was dressed precisely like the man they were laughing at!

One more reform must be made in men’s dress; and I believe it will come. In very hot weather, men must be allowed to discard the jacket. Even a thin jacket, with its collar and shouldercloth, is intolerable. A clean, attractive shirt, with soft collar and necktie, and belt around the trousers, looks so sensible in hot weather that it ought to become the rule rather than the exception.

XXVII
DREAMS

I look upon horrible dreams as one of the assets of humanity, one of the good things of life; because one feels so elated after waking. I am convinced that most men and women do not sufficiently appreciate the advantages they possess. They either exaggerate their sufferings and drawbacks or, instead of enjoying what they have, they spend their time in longing for what is beyond their reach.

Just as it takes an illness to make one appreciate the satisfactions of health, so one needs a calamity to make one realise how good daily existence really is. It is often said that experience is the best teacher. This is by no means always or even often true. Experience charges too much for her lessons.

There is no good in learning how one might have shown sagacity in business after one is bankrupt; there is no good in discovering how one ought to have avoided a certain article of diet after one is fatally poisoned; there is no good in receiving the proof of the danger in carelessly driving a motor car after one lies dead in the ditch.

Now the best way to discover how cheerful daily life may be is to be visited by a frightful dream. The horrible wild beast has seized us, because when we tried to flee, our legs were lead. Just as it is about to sink its terrible tusks in our shrinking frame, we wake up, and hear the good old trolley car go by. Hurrah! it was only a dream; and we are alive on the blessed earth. And we have learned how sweet plain ordinary life is without the lesson costing us anything but a transitory sweat.

I think, too, that many who either profess to hate life or at all events refuse to admit anything good about it, might appreciate it more if they could be temporarily transferred, not to hell, but to their own imagined heaven. Wagner in the famous music-drama, Tannhäuser, has given an admirable illustration. This knight, like all his fellow-creatures, felt the call of the senses; he was transported from this imperfect earth to the pagan Heaven, where he lived in the constant society of Venus. But after a time this palled upon him and eventually became intolerable. He tore himself away, and suddenly found himself back on the earth. He was in a green pasture in the springtime, and a shepherd boy was singing—what happiness!

The accomplished German dramatist Ludwig Fulda wrote a play, Schlaraffenland. There was a poor boy, ragged, cold and chronically hungry. He dreamed he was in a magic land. Remarkable birds flew so slowly by him that he found he could reach out his hand and grasp them. He did this, and lo, he had in his hand a broiled chicken! He ate several with avidity, but could not eat forever. Glancing at his ragged garments, a wardrobe door flew wide, and he had his choice among many elegant suits. Thus every desire was instantly and abundantly gratified. After some time, this palled upon him, and then became so unendurable that he gave a yell of horror; he woke up. He was cold, ragged, and hungry; but his heart was singing. He was back on the good old earth.

Thus, whether we dream of hell or of heaven, it is usually with a sigh or even a shout of satisfaction that we find ourselves back on this imperfect globe.

Many persons tell me that they never dream; their sleep is blank. It is with me quite otherwise; I almost always dream; many of my dreams are extraordinarily vivid and some are unforgettable.

When I was a child I dreamed three nights in succession of the Devil. The first night the Devil chased me upstairs. I ran as fast as I could, but sank down when only half way up. Then the Devil took from his pocket a shoemaker’s awl and bored it deftly into my right knee. The second night the Devil was in my front yard. Suddenly he changed into the form of a dog; and when another dog rushed barking at him the satanic hound swallowed him as easily as one takes a pill. The third night I also dreamed of the Devil, but I have forgotten the details.

One of the worst dreams I had in childhood was when I was being attacked by wild beasts, and suddenly my mother appeared on the scene. I shrieked to her for help, and she looked at me with calm indifference. That was the worst dream I ever had, and you may be sure it went by contraries.

I suppose the only way we can distinguish dreams from what is called actual life is that in dreams the law of causation is suspended. There is no order in events, and no principle of sufficient reason to account for them. Things change in an impossible manner. Apart from this, dreams are as real as life while they last.

I often have prolonged dreams that are not only fully as real as waking experiences, but are orderly and sensible, and sometimes delightful. Many years ago I dreamed that I was walking the streets of a Russian city with Count Tolstoi. It was one of the most agreeable and most inspiring days of my life, and I have always regretted it never happened. We walked together for hours and discussed modern literature. He said a great many wise and brilliant things, all of which I have, alas, forgotten. The only feature of that dream unlike reality was that Tolstoi had shaved off his beard.

Wilkie Collins, in Armadale, suggested that every dream we have is a repetition of an experience that has actually happened to us during the preceding twenty-four hours. I read that novel in my boyhood and was impressed by that explanation of dreams, and for several months I wrote down my dreams and found that every one was suggested by something that had happened to me during the preceding day.

The only thing I am certain of in dreams is that they do not in any way forecast the future. When I was a child I dreamed I saw heaven and Jesus sitting on a cloud. He called to me, “Willie Phelps, come here.” The next day I told my father and mother about it, and to my surprise they were exceedingly alarmed.

XXVIII
EATING BREAKFAST

In the daily life of the average person the longest interval between eating is that between the evening meal and breakfast; the very name for the morning repast accurately describes its nature. It should therefore, be taken seriously, which means that there should not only be enough to eat, but that plenty of time should be allowed to eat it.

I am aware that there are many men of excellent character who eat almost nothing for breakfast, and that there are some saints who eat no breakfast at all. In character and personal habits, I have never met a man more saintly than Henry Ford. I refer both to the asceticism of his physical life and to the purity of the motives that inspire his conduct. He eats no breakfast at all, not a morsel of food. He rises very early, goes outdoors, runs a mile or two and then works with absolute concentration till one o’clock, when he has the first meal of the day. I asked him if he never felt any desire for food during so long a morning; he replied that it was necessary for him in his vast undertakings to have a mind entirely fresh and clear, and that he found he could do better work on an empty stomach and with a brain unclouded by food.

I suppose every man must be a law unto himself. It does not seem to me that I could live happily without breakfast, yet I am sure that it is better to omit the meal altogether than to eat it in the hurry and fever in which many Americans devour it. Far too many prefer to lie in bed half an hour longer than to use that precious half hour in the consumption of food.

* * * * *

In the days when they had required morning chapel at Yale a great many students came to chapel either without any breakfast or with unassorted junks of it in their stomachs engaged in civil war. One early morning I was walking up Elm Street in New Haven; the streets ware filled with undergraduates sprinting to chapel. The lady with me said: “Do look at those poor boys running to chapel with their tongues hanging out!” I set her right at once. “Those are not tongues, those are griddle cakes!”

Those young men were accurate calculators. Three minutes for breakfast, one minute to reach chapel. They hurried the last griddle cake into their faces as they left the dining hall, and it gradually disappeared as they ran.

I love to see the whole family assemble at breakfast and eat a good meal leisurely. In order to accomplish this, every one must get up early enough to allow for complete preparation in the way of bathing, shaving, etc., and then leave enough time to consume food in peace of mind. Of how many families is this true? Of course, there are many persons who like to eat breakfast in bed, and perhaps, there are some who can do this neatly, even artistically. I never eat breakfast in bed unless I am too sick to get up, for I hate to have crumbs all over my night clothes or inside the bed. Furthermore, in spite of considerable practice during various illnesses, I have never mastered the fine art of swallowing food while in a horizontal position. To take coffee in this manner is an achievement. And what is breakfast without coffee?

Although coffee is not an American product, I have never had a satisfactory cup of coffee outside of the United States of America. Americans alone seem to understand the secret of good coffee. The English meet this problem illegitimately, by substituting tea. Now tea is all very well in the late afternoon, but in the morning it is without inspiration. And every man ought to start the day in an inspired manner.

G. K. Chesterton says that Bernard Shaw is like coffee; he stimulates but does not inspire. I should amend that, by saying Shaw is like coffee because he stimulates but does not nourish. For I firmly believe that both Shaw and coffee are alike in this: they do both stimulate and inspire, but they do not nourish. I used to wonder what Chesterton could possibly mean by saying that coffee did not inspire, when suddenly the true explanation occurred to me. He was thinking of English coffee.

The newspaper should not be read during the sacred rite of breakfast. There is no doubt that many divorces have been caused by the man’s opening and reading the newspaper at breakfast, thereby totally eclipsing his wife. It is simply a case of bad manners, and bad manners at food have in thousands of instances extinguished the fires of love. Nor, although it is a common custom, do I believe that letters should be opened and read at the breakfast table. One letter may contain enough worry, disappointment and anger to upset a reader for hours. And to eat food while one is angry, or worried, or excited is almost as bad as eating poison. I never read letters at breakfast and I never read letters in the evening.

For the same reason breakfast should be eaten in a calm and peaceful state of mind, illuminated by happy family conversation. Many men every day eat breakfast in feverish haste and then run to catch a trolley car or a train. That horrible breakfast soon begins to assert itself, and the man is in an irritable condition all the morning. It simply does not pay to eat in a hurry. Breakfast should not resemble a delirium.

And at the breakfast table all the members of the party should eat or leave the room. It is a sad experience to be in a hotel or in a dining car and have some acquaintance come up briskly and say: “I have already had my breakfast, but I will sit and talk with you while you eat yours.” That means he intends to watch you eat, and, just as your mouth is full of food, he will ask you a question. I have observed many patient men suffering tortures in this manner. I have even observed an enormous mass of unchewed food distend their throats as they hastily bolt it in the endeavor to reply to interrogations. A snake may swallow a toad, but the snake’s constitution differs from a man’s.

If I could have only one meal a day, it would be breakfast. After a good American breakfast—orange juice, cereal, coffee, toast, bacon and eggs—I am ready for everything and anything. If the day begins in the right manner its progress will be satisfactory. And the best of all rules of diet is to eat what you like and take the time to do it.

XXIX
THE MOTHER TONGUE

Judges xii:6—“Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.”

If there were forty-two thousand of the sons of Ephraim who could not speak correctly and distinctly, we may be sure that the sons and daughters of America are not impeccable. Indeed, we have daily evidence not only on the street and in railway coaches, but in schools, churches, colleges and theatres, of linguistic matricide—mortal attacks on the mother tongue, committed with impunity in the absence of the axe. In Old Testament times they had, as we see by the text of this sermon, drastic methods for establishing correct standards of pronunciation; those who did not speak accurately were eliminated.

Besides the suffering inflicted on sensitive and sympathetic ears, there is a feeling of shame in the heart of this present evangelist that the American public school, which ought to be a temple where the English language is treated with reverence, should actually be a scene of cynical—since everything careless is cynical—desecration. I am not condemning colloquial slang, which in its metaphorical picturesqueness is often the very life of speech, but rather the shoddy mutilation of words in good and regular standing.

More important than the study of foreign tongues is the unaffectedly correct pronunciation of that language which is now heard in the uttermost parts of the earth. Furthermore, the very difficulties of English pronunciation make the successful surmounting of them a glorious achievement, one that should appeal to the Spirit of Youth, which instinctively loves a desperate undertaking.

German is practically a phonetic language; leaving out the matter of accent, it is easier for an American, with proper instruction, to speak German words correctly than it is for him to conquer the wild and lawless army of English syllables. Let us then not minimise the strength of the foe; let this rather become an inspiration.

Let me say two things to all school and college teachers: No matter what subject you teach, Greek, chemistry or physics, whenever you hear one of your pupils mispronounce an English word correct him so that he and the other members of the class will learn something valuable there and then. And when you do this, tell the class that if any member of it hears you mispronounce a word, you will be grateful for immediate and public correction.

Second, do not allow any pupil to speak better English than that spoken by you. Our schools and colleges contain a few pupils who speak the language so well that they beat the teacher; the teacher should not permit such a thing to continue. Although I was brought up in a cultivated home, I learned in my boyhood a considerable number of bad pronunciations; I changed these for better ones because I was determined that no one of my students should speak more correctly than I.

Bernard Shaw told me he was on a special committee appointed to standardise English pronunciation in Great Britain; this committee, consisting of a very few, tell all the radio broadcasters exactly how to pronounce a long list of words, in the hope that by this means the millions “listening in” will learn how to speak their own language.

There is no reason why Americans should imitate the British in the pronunciation of certain words which the cultivated citizens of both countries pronounce quite differently—I refer to words like schedule, clerk, capitalist, trait, fracas, lieutenant and the last letter in the alphabet which Shakespeare calls by a bad name.

It is sheer affectation to imitate the British in such special matters, as it is an affectation to imitate what is called the Oxford accent, where the word smoke is pronounced as if it were spelled smilk—see Julian Street’s delightful book In Need of Change. Yesterday afternoon I heard an English actress on the New York stage pronounce No as if it were spelled NAAO. But after all, England is the home of the English speech; and I wish that it were possible for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Capetown and other places to follow in general the best English spelling and pronunciation. For example, it is certainly better for Americans to pronounce the word been like the sacred vegetable of Boston than like the first syllable of the Christian name of Franklin.

In America the most shamefully treated of our five vowels is U, and the combination of letters EW, which should resemble U in accuracy, as it now so often does in sin. There should be a distinct difference between the sound of U and the double O, actually observable to the naked ear in such words as Duke, Duty, Tutor, Constitution, Enthusiasm, Tuesday, News.

The way to make this distinction is to remember that the English language is the only one where the true sound of U is YU; whereas the Russians, Italians and Germans pronounce U like OO, and the French differently from any one of these. Just as the Russians pronounce E as if it were YE, so Americans, when they practice in secret words like evolution, should visualize a Y in front of the U; it will help them.

The most popular letter in our alphabet, E, is abominably treated in such words as cellar, yellow, Philadelphia, where it is so offensively given the sound of U in “skull”; this is even more common and still more unpleasant in two useful words, Very and American.

Cultivated English and Americans laugh at the Cockney for leaving the H silent where it should be heard; but they themselves are equally and more unpardonably guilty in omitting the H in the combination Wh. There should be a difference in the pronunciation of Whine and Wine; yet most cultivated people in both countries talk about games of Wist, and say Wen, Wich and Wy. Let them heal themselves before laughing at the Cockney.

The dogletter, R, has a curious fate in American mouths; it is either unduly accented in such words as Here and Dinner (Middle West) or it is (East) hitched on to the end of words like idea, and saw, where it is as awkward as a sailor on horseback. Listen to the average Yankee when he says “I have no idea of it” and you will see that he speaks the truth.

XXX
OUR SOUTH AS CURE FOR FLU

The chief reason for my present sojourn at Augusta is the flu, which attacked me in Connecticut some weeks ago. The American use of the words “flu” and “grip” is both modern and interesting. Epidemics of influenza, which seem to cross the ocean from Europe to America without suffering any sea-change, have been more or less common since the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Richard Hildreth, in his admirable History of the United States, describes these attacks in the Massachusetts Colony in the seventeenth century; and it appears from his realistic accounts that they differed in no respect from recent nation-wide flu epidemics.

If I remember rightly, the word “grip” was not used currently in America until the epidemic of 1889–1890, which was both severe and general; it was the subject of constant discussion in the newspapers, and it was generally believed to be a French importation, where it was known as la grippe. This in American became the “grip,” except in certain isolated districts, where it was called “the la grippe.” But the word, either in its French or English form, was not commonly used in America until the season of 1889–1890, when France made a Christmas present of it to the United States.

The word “flu” had been British slang for some time before it penetrated America; it was one of the numerous unprofitable things that our country acquired during the war. In a conversation I had with the novelist, William De Morgan, in London, in 1911, he casually used the word “flu,” and for a moment I did not guess its meaning. Then I saw it was an abbreviation. When the disease crossed the ocean in 1918, it brought with it its British pet name, which, universally current in America today, was, I believe, not known here till the last year of the war.

The exact difference between flu and grip I leave to the physician to determine; both differ from a cold in being invariably accompanied by fever, and in both the patient feels the worst after he gets well.

But the speed with which the germs travel through the air remains a mystery. I remember one flu epidemic that hit New York in the morning and was prevalent in remote country districts in Michigan the following afternoon. Manifestly, therefore, the accursed thing does not depend on the comparatively slow method of transmission from one person to another.

If one can possibly afford the time and money, the best way to rid oneself of the after effects of the flu is to leave the icy North in winter time and travel South. There are many coughs in every carload, but soon after they arrive here they cease.

In fact, if one can afford it, it is a good thing to come South in winter whether one is sick or well. “See America First” applies especially to the winter season. Europe should be visited only in the summer, because no Americans are comfortable in Europe at any other time. George Ade once tried to spend a winter in Venice and he nearly froze. He declared that the next winter he would spend in Duluth, where they have steam heat and he could keep warm.

The intolerable thing about most “winter resorts” in Europe is that they are so much warmer outdoors than in. The American takes a pleasant walk in the mild sunshine, and, his body in an agreeable glow, he enters his hotel room which has the chill of the grave. I know one man who, whenever he entered his room, put on overcoat, fur hat, gloves, arctic overshoes and then sat down to be as comfortable as he could.

One impecunious student who spent the winter at a Continental university in a room where apparently no means of heating had ever been employed told me that he kept warm the entire winter on only one stick of wood. In response to my question, he said that his room was on the fifth story; he would study for ten minutes, then fling the stick out of the window. He ran down five flights of stairs, picked up the stick, ran up the stairs and found that this violent exercise kept him warm for exactly ten minutes, when again he flung the stick out of the window. That was an original method, but it is practicable only for those who are young and vigorous. It would be almost useless for an old lady with angina pectoris.

In the winter season our Southern States, or Arizona, or California are what I especially prescribe. For those who wish eternal summer with all its pleasant heat and the delights of sea-bathing, Southern Florida is the best; for those who are middle-aged and elderly, who wish to play golf and tennis, in crisp autumn-like weather, Georgia is incomparable. Here in Augusta the weather is frequently summer-hued; on this blessed January day, for example, the temperature is 78. But in general, the January and February weather here is like mild October in New England, with gentle days and keen nights, good for sleep.

When I was young very few Northerners went South in winter; all who could afford it went in the summer to the mountains or the sea. But today, when there are many ways of keeping cool in the cities, and when the country club is accessible every afternoon and evening, an immense number of business men stay “on the job” in the summer and take their vacation in the winter.

A perfect climate in the winter lies only twenty-four hours from New York. Furthermore, it is an education for Northern men and women who live in the South for a winter season to become acquainted with our Southern people, “whom to know is to love.” To me, a down-East Yankee, it is a delight to meet these charming, gracious men and women of the South; and it is an especial delight to hear the Southern accent, especially on the lips of lovely women.

I wish I might live one hundred years from now. Then, thanks to the men of science, every year there will come a day in November when a general notice will be given in our New England universities for every member of the faculty and students to be indoors at a certain hour. At the prescribed moment, all the dormitories, lecture halls, offices and laboratories will rise majestically in the air, carrying their human freight. They will sail calmly South, and in a few hours float gently down on a meadow in Georgia or Florida, there to remain until the middle of April.

XXXI
GOING TO CHURCH IN PARIS

There are not many Protestant churches in Paris, because there are not many Protestants; and of the vast throng of Americans who visit Paris every summer, I suppose, comparatively speaking, only a few go to church. The average tourist does not visit Paris with the idea of entering churches except as a sight-seer. Yet the American Church of Paris with the Rev. Dr. Joseph Wilson Cochran as pastor, is a flourishing institution. The auditorium is filled every Sunday morning, and the whole work of the church in its Sunday school, Boy Scouts, classes for students, charitable enterprises, etc., is so active and successful that a new edifice has been found necessary. They are erecting a fine church in a splendid location on the Quai D’Orsay; the steel frame is already in place and by another year the building should be complete. Then there is also the American Cathedral church of the Holy Trinity, St. Luke’s Chapel, the Catholic church of St. Joseph, the Methodist Memorial church, the Baptist tabernacle, the First Church of Christ Scientist, and the Second Church of Christ Scientist.

Now I go to church not reluctantly, because I think I ought to, or from any sense of duty, still less from the Pharasaical attempt to set an example to my less godly neighbours. I go to church because I enjoy going, because I really want to go, because the Christian church is my spiritual home.

Last Sunday I attended the French Protestant church of the Oratoire, in the rue St. Honoré. The attitude of the clergy and laity in this church is very similar to that of the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and his congregation in New York. Last Sunday the big church was well filled, and the services, with the single difference that everything was in the French language, were similar to those of any evangelical Protestant church in America. There was no ritual. The prayers were extempore, and among the hymns sung was the familiar one with the familiar tune, “Lord, I Hear of Showers of Blessing,” which was just as good in French as in English.

I felt that I was among my own people, the kind with which I grew up, although there were very few Americans present. The French audience seemed to be composed of the same sort that one sees in any Methodist or Baptist church in America. The pastor preached on the parable of the sower, and explained to the audience the significance of the evangelical Protestant church, as distinguished from the more formal and ritualistic Catholic institution. The Catholics provide beautiful music, a dignified ritual, which is very impressive, he said; “but we appeal not to the eye and the ear, but to the mind and the heart.” I do not think he meant to be antagonistic to the Catholics; he was trying to make his congregation see that there was a good reason for attending church, even though the service might have little or no appeal to the senses.

It was peculiarly interesting for me to hear this aspect of religious worship emphasised, for on the preceding Sunday in London I attended service in an Anglo-Catholic church, where the preacher was the Rev. T. P. Fry, the husband of the famous novelist, Sheila Kaye-Smith. His sermon emphasised only one thing, the Blessed Sacrament. He dwelt on its supreme importance, on its immense significance, of what it should mean to every one who partakes of it. The service was beautiful, with an elaborate ritual, and it was clear that the preacher thought of only one thing—the Mass.

The English novelist, Compton Mackenzie, has recently written a trilogy of novels dealing at great length and with much detail with the life and career of a young English priest. Mr. Mackenzie, like G. K. Chesterton and Maurice Baring, has entered the Catholic church, and while these three novels, The Altar Steps, The Parson’s Progress and The Heavenly Ladder, are frankly Catholic propaganda, I found them interesting and valuable, because I was brought up in the extreme Protestant point of view, and it is important for me to hear and if possible to understand something quite different. Mr. Mackenzie’s young parson says that he does not care if he never succeeds in preaching a good sermon. His only interest is to give the congregation the Blessed Sacrament.

An excellent Catholic lady once said to me, “You do not understand our religion,” I answered, “You must not say religion; your religion is my religion. We have exactly the same religion. What I do not fully understand is your form of worship, the significance of the various parts of your ritual.”

It is a matter of great rejoicing that the old antagonism between Catholics and Protestants has so largely disappeared. It is unfortunate that any irritation or misunderstanding should remain. In a world so full of vice, so full of scepticism, and above all so full of indifference to religion, there should be not the slightest shade of hostility between adherents of Christianity. We should not be divided in the presence of implacable foes.

A magnificent example of the true Christian spirit was given at the beginning of this century by one of the greatest men of modern times, Pope Leo XIII. He publicly offered prayer for the restoration to health of Queen Victoria of England. When one thinks of the historic antagonism, that was a noble and truly religious act.

Once in the cathedral at Cologne, during Mass, I sat between a devout German Catholic and an American tourist. The German bowed, knelt, crossed himself; the American used a pair of opera glasses, as if he were at a spectacular play. I should like to have given to my countryman a little pamphlet written by a Catholic priest, called What Are They Doing at the Altar? so that he might have understood what was going on, and at least have shown some reverence.

There is one important thing that we Protestants ought to learn from our Catholic friends. Many Protestants go to church just to hear a sermon, and if the preacher is in bad form that morning, they feel disappointed, almost aggrieved, as if they had gone to the movies and the pictures happened to be poor.

Going to church ought not to be merely passive; to go and see if the minister can entertain us. It should be a community service, where the audience participates and where spiritual refreshment and stimulation may be obtained. If we go to church merely to hear a popular preacher, then we might as well stay at home and read a popular book. The feeling of actual participation is the supreme need of the Protestant church today; not more clever preachers, but a genuine hunger in the congregation for spiritual nourishment.

XXXII
OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM

I am often called an optimist, and so I am; but perhaps not in the popular meaning of the word. When a worldly wise man calls a person an optimist, he usually regards him with intellectual contempt, just as the elaborate courtesy toward women in the age of chivalry thinly disguised a cynically sensual attitude. Optimism is associated in many minds either with ignorance of life or mental inferiority; and when certain persons call others optimists, look out for them!

Thus recent definitions of the optimist illustrate the superior attitude of the pessimist: “An optimist is a fool unfamiliar with the facts.” “An optimist is one who falls out of a fourth-story window, and as he goes by the third story, he says, ‘So far, so good.’” “An optimist is one who at night makes lemonade out of the lemons that have been handed to him all day.” “A pessimist is one who lives with an optimist.”

Now the familiarly unpleasant back-slapping cheerio person, with a genius for the inopportune, is not necessarily an optimist. He is a nuisance. He was well known and dreaded like a pestilence among the ancient Jews. See the Book of Proverbs, 27:14, “He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him,” and 25:29, “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart.”

* * * * *

A man who attempts to console another by making light of his troubles or by pretending that things are otherwise than what they obviously are will not get very far. One might as well pretend in January that it is June. You cannot get rid of obstacles by ignoring them any more than you can solve problems by forgetting them. Nor can you console sufferers by reminding them of the woes of others or by inopportunely emphasising other things.

If a man slips on an orange peel that some moron has left on the pavement and breaks his leg, you will not help him by saying, “Yesterday a man fell here and broke his neck.” If a manifold father loses one of his sons by a motor accident, you can’t help him by saying, “Cheer up! You’ve got three sons left.”

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” These terrible words were spoken not by a peevish invalid or by a bankrupt, but by the Light of the World. He always and everywhere recognised the forces of evil and never pretended that life was all sunshine. Religion does not pretend that everything is easy and comfortable, for religion is not meant to fill our minds with illusions but rather with fortitude. Our Lord came into the world to show us how to bear the burden of life cheerfully and bravely; life is not easy, but His yoke is.

A true optimist is one who recognises the sorrows, worries, drawbacks, misfortunes of life, its injustice and inequalities. But while seeing these things, the optimist believes that no matter how strong error may be, truth in the long run will triumph, even though it may not be our truth.

The optimist believes that in the long run virtue has superior staying power as compared with vice; that goodness will eventually defeat evil; that life means something; that character counts; that men and women are of more consequence than sparrows; in short, that this is God’s world and that the moral law is as unshakable as the law of gravitation.

What, then, is a pessimist? A pessimist is one who believes that the evolutionary process is the tragedy of the universe or, as Mark Twain put it, that life is the worst practical joke ever played on man by destiny. That from one primordial cell should have developed all complex forms of life through the vegetable kingdom, through the lower forms of animal existence up to man, is generally regarded as an advance. The true pessimist regards it as an irremediable disaster, as the worst of all possible mistakes. According to him, it would have been better had the evolutionary march stopped with the lower forms of animal life and never reached self-consciousness.

The fish, for example, is better off than men and women. The fish functions perfectly. He does exactly what he was meant to do, he has not the torture of self-conscious thought, no fear of death, and dies at the appointed time. But man has thoughts and dreams and longings that seem to belong to eternal life and eternal development, whereas in reality he dies like the fish; only with all his dreams and longings unsatisfied and with the constant fear and horror of annihilation in a universe where, no matter how sublime or far-reaching his thoughts, he is, in reality, of no more importance than a fish and must in the end share the same fate.

Taking this stiff definition, are there then any genuine pessimists? Certainly there are. Thomas Hardy was exactly such a pessimist. He affirmed in his last volume of poems that man would have been happier if he could have remained at the stage of lower animal development, with no power of thought. Alfred Housman, the great lyrical poet, says we could all be happy, if only we did not think. It is when we think that we are overwhelmed with gloom.

The custom of congratulating others on their birthdays is really an acquiescence in optimism. We instinctively (and I believe rightly) regard life as an asset. But Swift believed that the worst thing that had ever happened to him was being born. He therefore, like the honest man he was, kept his birthdays as days of fasting and mourning. He wore black and refused to eat.

For my part I find daily life not always joyous, but always interesting. I have some sad days and nights, but none that are dull. As I advance deeper into the vale of years, I live with constantly increasing gusto and excitement. I am sure it all means something; in the last analysis, I am an optimist because I believe in God. Those who have no faith are quite naturally pessimists and I do not blame them.

XXXIII
TRANSLATIONS

Of course it is best to read every book in the language in which it was originally written; but no man has ever been able to do that. Elihu Burritt, “the learned blacksmith,” could, so I have heard, write an intelligible sentence in fifty languages, but there were many more than fifty of which he was ignorant. The vast majority of even intelligent Americans know no language but their own, and that they do not know any too well. It becomes necessary, therefore, unless one is to cut oneself off from foreign thought and literature, to have recourse to translations; a reader of a newspaper does that every day, though he is not always aware of the fact.

Inasmuch as the greatest works of literature have been translated many times into English, it is rather important to know which is the best translation; no one driving a car would take a bad road if a better one were available.

Great translators are rarer than great creative authors. In order to achieve the best possible translation, one must in the first place have an absolute command of two languages, an accomplishment that is not nearly so common as is often supposed. Indeed, this is too often supposed erroneously by the translator himself.

* * * * *

In the history of the literature of the world, there are four supremely great poets; no one can name a fifth who is in their class. Those four, in chronological order, are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. Every reader, every lover of good books, should know something of the work of these four mighty ones, for there is a perceptible difference between the best and the second best. Goethe’s masterpiece is Faust, and it so happens that we have an English translation of Faust that is so much better than all other English translations that no comparison is possible. This is by the American, Bayard Taylor.

It was the major work of his life; he spent many years of sedulous, conscientious toil perfecting it. It has three admirable features—the English style is beautiful; it is as literal as is consistent with elegance, in this work amazingly literal; it preserves in every instance the original metres which change so often in the German. If you wish to know how superior Taylor is to all other translators of Faust, just read aloud the four stanzas of the Dedication in any other English version and then try the same experiment with Taylor’s. Those who cannot read German and yet wish to come in contact with “the most spacious mind since Aristotle” have the satisfaction of knowing they are very close to the original—both in thought and in expression—in reading Taylor.

Goethe is not only one of the supreme poets of the world; he has the distinction of being the author of the best German novel, Wilhelm Meister. The best translation of this was written and published by Thomas Carlyle more than one hundred years ago. In reading this translation, therefore, one is reading in the same book the works of two men of genius. Carlyle had had almost no opportunity to hear spoken German; he was largely self-taught. But it was characteristic of his honesty, industry, conscience, as well as of his literary gifts, that he should have done his difficult work so well that no one has been able to equal it.

In the course of the novel occurs the exquisite lyric Know’st thou the land? The best English translation of this song was made about fifteen years ago by the late James Elroy Flecker.

No absolutely first-rate translation of Dante into English exists. The best plan is probably to read one in prose and one in verse; the prose by Charles Eliot Norton, the verse by Cary.

A large number of English writers have had a try at Homer. George Chapman, whose version inspired Keats, made a thundering Elizabethan poem. Pope, according to his contemporary, Young, put Achilles into petticoats, but Pope’s translation has anyhow the merit of being steadily interesting. Butcher and Lang wrought together an excellent prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, while the latter poem was artistically translated into rhythmic prose by George Herbert Palmer.

There is an English translation of another work that stands with Taylor’s Faust as being all but impeccable. This is Edward FitzGerald’s version of the stanzas of Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald really wrote a great English poem; it is only necessary to compare his version with a literal prose translation, in Nathan Haskell Dole’s admirable Variorum edition, to see how big is the debt we owe FitzGerald. If Omar and Edward have met in the other world, I am sure Old Fitz has received due acknowledgment.

The great Russian novelists, Turgeney, Dostoevski and Chekhov, have been magnificently translated by Constance Garnett. She has also Englished some of the novels of Tolstoi and Gogol. She has a positive genius for translation. In the centenary year—1928—began an entirely new version of the complete works of Tolstoi, by Aylmer Maude. Mr. Maude knew Tolstoi intimately and is himself an admirable writer.

XXXIV
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

When I was a small boy in Hartford, I often used to see Mark Twain standing in the open air in his shirt-sleeves, the eternal cigar in his mouth and a billiard cue in his hand. The billiard room was on the top floor of his house and a tiny balcony projected from one of the windows; nearly all dwellings built in the seventies had strange abscesses of that kind. While his opponent was shooting, Mark would come out on that platform for a breath of air. Billiards was the only game he cared for; he was by no means fond of exercise. He always said, “Never stand up when you can sit down; never sit down when you can lie down.” Many years later, when he was living in New York, he often attended professional billiard matches and the spectators often looked away from the table at Mark’s superb leonine head and noble old face.

Another famous contemporary writer also found his only recreation in billiards—this was Herbert Spencer. Every afternoon he would give himself and the unknowable a rest and go to the Athenæum Club in London for a game, where his own cue is still preserved as a memorial. If none of his cronies was available, he would challenge a stranger. His philosophy afforded no balm in defeat. On one occasion when he was beaten badly he put his cue in the rack and remarked testily that to play billiards well was an accomplishment; to play it too well was the sign of a misspent life.

It is rather strange, since most of our American games are derived from the English, that we should have taken billiards from France. Few games are more uncommon in the United States than English billiards; cricket is not nearly so unusual a spectacle.

Almost every American boy wants to play billiards. When I was fourteen one of my schoolmates found a man who wished to sell a small table—it had rubber tubes for cushions—but the price was prohibitive, twenty dollars. Our total assets were seventy-five cents. We remembered that my friend’s sister had received a twenty dollar gold piece as a birthday present. Of what possible use could it be to her? We persuaded her to donate it to the good cause, and if any one thinks that our powers of persuasion were extraordinary, he thinks accurately, for I subsequently persuaded her to become my wife. We bought the table and set it up in my house late one Saturday night, too late, alas, to play. Father would not allow me to touch it on Sunday, and early Monday morning I had to be off to school. We got out at four o’clock, made straight for that table and played till eleven at night, not stopping to eat.

I know of no game at which professional skill has developed more rapidly than at billiards. It seems incredible, but only fifty years ago there were four balls on the table and the ordinary friendly game was 34 points! Almost any professional today could run a thousand points—indeed he could go on indefinitely.

I regret that the beautiful game of cushion-caroms, so common in the eighties among the professionals, has become obsolete. In that game there could be no nursing, because one had to make the cue ball hit the cushion either before making the carom or after hitting the object ball. The gentlemen of the green cloth who were most proficient at this game were Vignaux, the Frenchman, and the Americans, “Jake” Schaefer, father of the present expert of that name; Slosson, Sexton and Sutton. In Allyn Hall at Hartford I saw a great match between Vignaux and Schaefer. M. Vignaux was a large man and very dignified; in his evening clothes he looked like a prime minister. Mr. Schaefer was so small that Maurice Daly used to call him the little shaver. They were formally introduced to the spectators by the referee, who remarked with immense unction, “Mr. Schaefer has never in his life played with his coat on; he asks the kind permission of the audience to remove it.” This privilege was granted with fervent applause. When the game began to go against him, M. Vignaux also removed his swallowtail.

At that time the highest run that had ever been made at cushion-caroms was 77, which had been accomplished by Sexton. On this night, by dazzling open-table play, Schaefer made a run of 70. He was called the Wizard, because he played with extreme rapidity, exactly the opposite of Slosson, who was known as the Student.

Now the popular professional game is the balkline, 18.2. A recent champion is Edouard Horemans of Belgium, who won the title from young Schaefer in a hair-raising match at San Francisco. Horemans is a left-handed player and in every respect a worthy champion. His rail play is phenomenal. I saw him give an exhibition on his first visit to America in 1920 and it was clear that he was a dangerous competitor.

Who is the greatest player in history? It is hard to say, but I suspect there never was a greater player than Napoleon Ives. He was one of the first to use a cue weighing more than twenty ounces and was all but unbeatable. Schaefer (senior) once beat him with the anchor shot, which was afterward barred. Unfortunately, tuberculosis cut Ives off in his prime. The heated room, the chalk dust and the excitement of close contests were too much for him.

XXXV
DOG BOOKS

The dog, except in very high latitudes, is not so useful as the horse, the mule, the camel, the donkey; he cannot supply food and drink, like the cow and the goat; but for all that, he is, among all the lower animals, man’s best friend. Even here, as in bipeds, we do not prize our friends for what they can do for us, but for their mental and moral qualities.

If it were possible to collect in one heap all the books and articles that men have written in praise of dogs, it would be a sky-scraper. I cannot tell what the earliest literary allusion to dogs is; but I think it strange that the Bible is so silent. Those books representing the social history of the Jews for many centuries, contain the most beautiful poetry and prose ever written, as well as the most tender and comforting assurances; but they indicate little interest in animals as companions or pets. The word dog is repeatedly used as a term of degradation, and for some unknown reason the Jews were forbidden to bring into the sanctuary the price of a dog, which was coupled with the wages of sin. The only allusion I have found to the dog as a companion is in the Apocrypha, in the eleventh chapter of Tobit: “So they went their way, and the dog went after them.” Even here the dog apparently had to force his attentions upon man, which is a way he has when unappreciated.

The fact that in the New Testament the dogs ate of the crumbs from the table and that the street dogs licked the sores of Lazarus the beggar, proves nothing in the way of appreciation; other animals moved freely about the houses in Palestine, and they were not kept for the charm of their company.

But in the old Indian books of the East, many centuries before Christ, the dog’s fidelity and social attractions were prized; as is shown by the well-known story of the righteous pilgrim coming to the gates of heaven with his dog. He was told to walk right in. “And my dog?” “Oh, no dogs allowed.” “All right, then I don’t go in.” This man thought heaven would not be heaven without dogs, as Siegmund cared naught for heaven without Sieglinde.

Pope alluded to the Indian love of dogs:

“But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.”

The Greeks loved dogs. One of the most affecting incidents in Homer’s Odyssey is where Ulysses returns after years of wandering, and, being in rags, no one recognises him. But his dog Argos, who had waited for his master expectantly all these years, instantly sees and knows him, and through the beggar’s disguise salutes the king. He wags his tail and dies of joy.

English literature is filled with dogolatry. Dr. John Brown’s Rab and His Friends (1858), became a little classic. Tennyson worshipped dogs, and always had two or three huge dogs in the room while he composed poetry, which he read aloud to them. His poem Owd Roa (Old Rover), describes how a dog saved a family when the house was on fire. Bret Harte made a marvellous sketch of the strange appearance and characteristics of the dog Boonder. Stevenson wrote a whimsical essay, The Character of Dogs, in which he proves conclusively that many dogs are snobs. They certainly are; they will fawn on well-dressed strangers, and try to bite the iceman.

Maeterlinck has declared that the dog is the only conscious being in the world who knows and is sure of his god; in The Blue Bird he exalted the moral character of the dog, though I find it hard to forgive him for his slander of the cat. Richard Harding Davis’s masterpiece—among all his brilliant short stories—is The Bar Sinister, an imaginative study of dogs. Rudyard Kipling has celebrated the virtues of dogs both in prose and verse.

Vivisection and dogs have called out many poems, of which two of the most notable are Robert Browning’s Tray and Percy MacKaye’s The Heart of a Dog.

Jack London’s masterpiece is The Call of the Wild, where the great dog reverted to primitive impulses and habits. This is an imperishable work of literature, and although cast in the form of prose fiction, has much of the elevation and majesty of poetry. Among contemporary writers, Albert Payson Terhune has specialised in dogs, and done admirable work in canine psychoanalysis. The late Senator Vest, when a young man, made a speech in court on dogs which will outlast his political orations.

But of all the works in prose or verse, ancient or modern that celebrates the virtues of the dog, the most admirable is the novel, Bob, Son of Battle, by the late Alfred Ollivant. It was published in 1898, and was his first book, written under peculiar circumstances. Mr. Ollivant was a young Englishman who had injured his spine in football; then, having apparently recovered, he received a commission in the artillery at the age of nineteen. A fall from his horse permanently injured him, so that he was an invalid for the rest of his life—he died in 1927. For the first few years he was not able to leave his bed, and at the age of twenty, in horizontal pain and weakness, began to write Bob. It took him three years to finish the book. In England it was published under the poor title, Owd Bob, and attracted no attention; but in America the publishers wisely changed the name to the alliterative Bob, Son of Battle, and the book sold by the hundred thousand. (Those who are interested in the first editions should know that the first English edition differs in style from the first American edition; the London publishers delayed publication, and the author revised the story without injuring it.)

It is a curious fact that this book, written by an Englishman for Englishmen, and dealing exclusively with English scenes and customs, should have attracted no attention in the land of its birth, while selling like the proverbial hot cakes in every city and village in America. In public lectures in Texas, California, and all over the middle West and the East, I had only to mention the name of this novel and a wave of delighted recognition swept over the audience. But even ten years after its appearance it was practically unheard of in England. I asked William De Morgan, Henry Arthur Jones, and William Archer if they had read it; they had never heard of it.

Some years after that, however, a cheap edition was published in Great Britain, and the book slowly made its way, and is now over there as here an acknowledged classic. Its popularity was increased by its being made into a motion picture, and Mr. Ollivant was elected to the Athenæum.

The two most remarkable dogs I ever met in fiction are both in Bob, Son of Battle—the hero, Bob, the Grey Dog of Kenmuir, and the villain Red Wull. Their continued rivalry has an epic force and fervour. It is the eternal strife between the Power of Light and the Power of Darkness.

XXXVI
GOING TO HONOLULU

Remember to pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with “bone,” not with “on.” But, above all, remember, when you are there, never to speak of coming from the United States or from America—you are in the United States. Call your home “the mainland.” I was once giving a lecture in California and I thoughtlessly began a sentence this way: “When I get back to America”—I never finished that sentence. It was owing only to the sense of humour possessed by the audience that I was able to finish the lecture.

People who have travelled all over the world say there are only two places that may accurately be called paradise; they are the Hawaiian Islands and Ceylon. If the wind is right, you get the spicy perfume from Ceylon before the island is visible, as it is written in the missionary hymn. I have never seen Ceylon, but Hawaii will do very well as an earthly paradise. The most vivid and alluring description of it came from the pen of Mark Twain and is to be found at the end of that work of genius, Roughing It. In a certain sense, Mark was always homesick for these islands. He saw them in his youth and he remembered them in his old age.

In honor of Lord Sandwich, Captain Cook in 1778 named them the Sandwich Islands. The next year he was killed there and a native chief affirmed that he had eaten the Captain’s heart. I hope it gave him indigestion.

The islands were conquered by the native king, Kamehameha I, who died in 1819. He was a great man, a combination of warrior and statesman, like William the Conqueror.

In 1820 the American missionaries arrived. They found the natives amiable, like many of the children of the sun, but without religion, morality or education. Just the most blessed state imaginable, say many of our modern writers, whose highest ideal for humanity is animalism. The advantage of such an ideal is that one does not have to struggle to reach it—hence its popularity.

These missionaries were heroic. They came around Cape Horn in sailing vessels and they had to send their children back to the mainland for education by the same route. All ministers of the gospel believe in education and make sacrifices for it.

King Kalakaua was a picturesque and easy-tempered monarch, who loved liquor. His trip around the world was an illuminating excursion in every sense of the word. When he was at the British court, a terrific question of etiquette arose which puzzled the wise men. Should he, in going into dinner after Queen Victoria, precede or follow Edward, Prince of Wales? The matter was settled by the tact and wit of the Prince. “The man is either a king and should precede me, or he should go into the dining-room with a napkin over his arm.”

In 1893 Queen Liliuokalani tried to get a new Constitution giving more power to the throne. An American revolution—the third in our history—took place, and a republic was established, with the late Sanford B. Dole as President. In 1898 the republic was annexed to the United States and in 1900 became the Territory of Hawaii. It will some day become a State.

The voyage thither from San Francisco usually takes six days. Leaving the Golden Gate in a cold fog, one sees hump-backed whales, and thirty miles out the only land, the Farallone Islands, a desolate, melancholy place for school teachers. But school teachers are used to getting the worst of it. The weather is cold for two days, then mild, then warm; plenty of flying fish by day, strange phosphorescence in the sea by night, and overhead unfamiliar stars. The Southern Cross appears, a subject for dispute.

The climate is celestial—much too good for this world. Never hot, never cold in Honolulu. The year round it usually has a minimum of 70, a maximum of 83. The constant northeast trade winds make the climate suitable for civilised man, but they also bring frequent showers. The inhabitants will not admit that these showers are rain—they call them liquid sunshine. They are indeed liquid. On one elevation the wind blows so hard that it is difficult to stand upright and on top of one mountain I saw a waterfall up instead of down, the wind catching it just as it left the rock. But on the small island Oahu, containing Honolulu, one can find an immense variety of wind and weather. Those who dislike showers can live where it practically never rains; other places have genial, windless heat, and still others have the cooling, beneficent breeze.

It is an international place and the brethren dwell together in unity. The streets are filled with Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, English, Germans and other folks, who seem to get along together very well indeed. Punahou College was founded in 1841 and is the oldest American college or university west of the Mississippi. There I saw a remarkable historical pageant, attended by ex-President Dole and ex-Queen Lil. One of the natives made a long address to the Queen, which I wish I could have understood. Her face was grave and impassive and when I was presented to her, I was deeply impressed by her anachronistic expression. She seemed to be living in the past.

I visited many of the schools. At Kaiulaui School there were among the pupils fifty-eight varieties of nationalities—I remember the exact number, as it was one more than the mystic fifty-seven. The United States flag was brought out; the children sang The Star-Spangled Banner. Then they recited part of Longfellow’s Building of the Ship. In the primary grade of another school, the teacher was a Japanese lady. The children seem entirely free from the bigotry of nationalism. The word “foreigner” is not an epithet and the children exhibit that rarest of all human things—democracy.

The natural wonders on the biggest island of the group, Hawaii, beggar description. You must go there yourselves. But I have always been more interested in human nature than in nature. I have seldom seen the latter and never the former show to better advantage than in these delectable oases of the ocean.

XXXVII
HYMNS

The church to which I belong has this very day furnished itself with a new set of hymn-books; when I enter my accustomed pew tomorrow morning I shall find there attractive new volumes. Which fact leads me to the consideration of hymns in general.

The worst verses in the world are to be found among epitaphs and encomiums of the dead. I remember a certain town in Connecticut where the local poet hovered over the bedside of the dying, like a vulture watching a sick horse. Before the corpse was cold, this poetical ghoul had his poem on the “remains” in the village paper. You had to get up very early in the morning to die before he beat you to it, as Matthew Arnold would not say. He added new terrors to death.

Well, probably, in the number of bad verses, hymns rank a good second to epitaphs. There are so many bad hymns that some scoffers think there are few good ones. Such a generalisation is wide of the truth. The literature of hymnology contains many masterpieces; innumerable hymns of the church are as beautiful in poetic art as they are devout in aspiration. If we took all the hymns out of English literature, the loss would be huge.

If a secret ballot could be taken among all classes of people to discover the choice of the favourite hymn, I think it would appear that Cardinal Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light had a majority of votes.

I happened to be in London at the time of Newman’s death in 1890, himself just as old as the nineteenth century. Then were the old bitter controversies forgotten; Catholics, Protestants and the unclassed united in tributes to the genius and beauty of the great Cardinal’s mind and character. And as creeds were for the moment forgotten, so there came instinctively to every one’s lips the words of Newman’s creedless hymn, as creedless as the Lord’s Prayer.

The vicissitudes of literary fame are beyond divination. Who, including first of all Newman, could have dreamed that when the young man composed that poem, it would outlast his scholarly, controversial, pietistic and literary prose of eighty years? Yet such is the fact.

On June 16, 1833, while in a calm at sea, on board an orange-boat and thinking of his doctrinal perplexities, these lines came into Newman’s mind; as suddenly, as inexplicably, as fortunately as the stanzas Crossing the Bar came to Tennyson on a ferryboat crossing the Solent. Newman called the poem, The Pillar and the Cloud.

For details concerning its composition and for some interesting criticisms on the poem itself I will refer readers to Dr. Joseph J. Reilly’s admirable book, Newman as a Man of Letters.

Two of our best American hymn writers are two of our national poets—Whittier and Holmes. The hymns of Whittier are beautiful in their simplicity, sincerity, and universal application:

In simple trust like those who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.

and the universally known hymn, beginning

We may not climb the heavenly steeps.

The splendid hymn by Oliver Wendell Holmes, commencing

Lord of all being, throned afar,

is sung somewhere every Sunday.

Two hymns by Addison, written more than two hundred years ago, are familiar to all churchgoers—one, The spacious firmament on high, which was a favourite with Thackeray, and the other, beginning

When all Thy mercies, O my God.

I have always especially liked one stanza of this hymn:

Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ;
Nor is the least a cheerful heart
That tastes those gifts with joy.

After enumerating many blessings for which he is grateful to God, Addison quite rightly includes the gift of a cheerful heart. Those who are ever fastidious, difficult to please and not grateful for anything miss much happiness.

The king of hymn-writers is Isaac Watts (1674–1748). Although churchgoers sing his hymns every Sunday, he has never received due literary credit for his magnificent sacred poems. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross is a hymn of tremendous passion. In one of his novels Arnold Bennett calls it “that amazing hymn.” In other hymns by Watts there is an austere grandeur.

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) is another master of the art of hymn writing. Hark, Hark, My Soul! and There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy are known everywhere. No martial song was ever more inspiring than Faith of Our Fathers, with its thrilling second stanza. I often wonder when people sing that stanza in church, sing it mechanically with their thoughts elsewhere, what would happen if they took it literally:

Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free;
And blest would be their children’s fate,
If they, like them, should die for Thee.
Faith of our fathers, holy faith,
We will be true to Thee till death.

One of the greatest of all hymns, Nearer, My God, to Thee, was written by Sarah Flower, a friend of the young poet Robert Browning. The first time it was ever heard in public was when Sarah and Eliza Flower sang it as a duet in the Rev. Mr. Fox’s church. Little did those sisters guess that they had added to the Christian church all over the world an imperishable song.

Scores of other hymns might be mentioned, hymns that are exalted and passionate in feeling and aspiration and nobly poetic in expression.

It is a pity that we so seldom hear good congregational singing. People nowadays let others do their singing for them, as well as their praying. If one will look at the faces of an audience in church and notice that although their mouths are open no sound emerges, one will be reminded of a cat on the back doorstep on a winter morning. You look at the cat and the animal opens its mouth as if to mew, but has not sufficient energy to bring the articulate mew to the surface—just an expression of vague discomfort. So during the singing of hymns I see people with no animation in their faces and with open, silent mouths, like the dry mew of the cat.

XXXVIII
OLD-FASHIONED SNOBS

I suppose there never was a time in the history of human society without snobs—that is, without young men of fashion who wished to be thought prominent members of the smart set. The slang of various epochs has called them macaronies, dandies, dudes, toffs, swells—but under various appellations the creature is the same, with the same habits. There are certain persons who cultivate superficial elegancies and are never caught in an informal attitude or off their guard. Lowell said that if N. P. Willis had lived in the Garden of Eden he would have attracted attention by the way he wore his skin.

About three centuries ago, in the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth, as we learn from the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries, and from a satirical guide-book written by Thomas Dekker, the typical young snob in London got through an average day in the following manner:

He rose at noon. Late rising has always been an essential feature of snobbery; because if one gets up early, it proves that one has to earn one’s living, and to support oneself is incompatible with swelldom. If any one thinks that the idea of Walter Camp’s setting-up exercise is new, let me remind him that the Elizabethan dandy, invariably after rising, took a whole series of gymnastic exercises while stark naked. The object of this was twofold: he had to keep in fair physical condition, and these exercises helped to take out of his system the invariable “hangover.”

He then dressed with the utmost care, and here we must remember an essential difference between the mental attitude of Elizabethans and that of young men of today. The late Professor Moulton said that the chief characteristic of our age was anticonspicuousness. And this is quite true. Women wear short skirts not to attract attention, but to avoid it. We follow fashions to escape notoriety. But in Elizabethan times exactly the contrary was true.

The most democratic garment in the world today is men’s evening dress. After six o’clock, in any locality in the so-called civilised world, a man is in style with the black dinner jacket or swallow-tail. Time and again the tailors have fought this, doing their best to persuade men to wear something in colour, or at all events something more individual. But the men thus far have succeeded in preserving economical uniformity.

Now in Elizabethan times the garments of men were as gorgeous as the feathers of male birds. A group of men talking together was a “riot of colour.” A man wore soft leather boots, narrow at the ankle, and with immense, colored flaring tops. His knee breeches were tight-fitting silk or satin. His jacket was a slashed doublet, brilliant in colour; at the neck was an enormous white ruff, which must have kept the laundries busy; imagine eating soup over that ruff! Over the doublet he wore a short velvet cloak, with a high collar. The hat was as elaborate in design as the old style woman’s Easter bonnet, very broad, with an audacious feather. And, of course, he invariably carried a sword, with jewelled hilt.

In this array our young swell walked at ease in the centre aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the favourite place for fashionable display. His tailor sometimes accompanied him like a detective and, in response to a signal, took notes of some new and particularly splendid costume. The young man would salute noblemen and aristocrats in a loud voice, calling them, if he dared, by their first name, so as to give the impression of intimacy; for it was essential then, as now, to be with the “right crowd.” In stentorian tones he would make an appointment for a two o’clock luncheon at an expensive eating house. After luncheon, the toothpick was prominently displayed while on promenade.

In contrast to the modern soldier, who never speaks of his war experiences, the young Elizabethan, if he had fought in the Low Countries or elsewhere, bragged noisily about it in all public places. If he were a poet, he behaved like a tenth-rate poet in Paris today. He entered a restaurant with a solemn, preoccupied air, and, in taking his glove from his pocket, purposely let fall a manuscript. Some one would pick it up and he would remark that it was only a poem he had dashed off an hour ago; but he would manage the conversation so that he would be asked to read it aloud.

Tobacco was “coming in” then, and every young swell must be able to smoke in public without becoming sick. They had their favourite pipes and elaborate silver pouches; they talked about the different brands of tobacco like a professional, and it was a great accomplishment to blow rings.

All public theatrical performances were in the afternoon. The swell always entered late, attracting as much attention as possible, and took a seat on the stage, in full view of the audience. In the midst of a tragedy, he laughed aloud, to show his immunity to sentiment; at a funny play he scowled and sometimes noisily left the theatre, clanking his spurs, and saluting acquaintances as he passed out. Sometimes he would take a rush from the stage floor and playfully tickle the ear of one of the actors.

After the play, he went to the tavern, where it was important to call the waiters by their first names, showing that he was a regular patron; and when the bill was presented he must never look at the items or add them up, which might show that he was a family man, or familiar with current prices; no, he must glance carelessly at the total, and pay with a big tip.

Then in the night he went to his lodgings. One must remember there were no paved streets in London and no sidewalks and no lights; if the young gentleman could afford it, he had a linkboy, carrying a torch, precede him, for in Dryden’s later phrase, the real swell “sailed behind his link.” The boy was properly tipped, so that if he met strangers, he would call out, “My lord, step this way.” Then others gave him place, and the officers of the law respected his intoxicated condition. And so to bed.

XXXIX
A FAIR CITY

Almost every writer and thinker has the city of his dreams, his Utopia. In recent years the novelists W. H. Hudson, H. G. Wells and Alfred Ollivant have each published a book setting forth a conception of the ideal community. It is not my purpose to add another Utopia but rather to call attention to an actual city, which, while it is imperfect like everything else in this motley world, has nevertheless many advantages that might well be imitated by American cities. I refer to Munich, Germany.

Munich is my favourite European town. I had rather live in the United States of America than in any other country; partly because I was born here, partly because I like the country anyway, but if I could not live in the United States I had rather live in Munich than in any other city in the world.

Munich is nearly as large as Boston and yet as quiet as a country village. Where the people are I don’t know, but those who are familiar with Boylston and Tremont Streets in Boston will see nothing like that in Munich. The streets are calm, the sidewalks uncrowded, the highway uncongested by traffic; there is no Great White Way; there are no flaring lights; there is no hurly-burly. You can hear your own footsteps. An American who arrived at Munich at nine o’clock in the evening, observing the silence of the streets, asked his taxi driver to take him somewhere. The driver said, “Isn’t that rather indefinite?” “You know what I mean—take me where there is a lot of noise and a lot of people.” The driver answered, “What you want is the railway station.” And indeed that is the only place in Munich that fulfills those requirements.

There is everything in Munich to make a cultivated foreigner happy, cheerful and content with a long stay. I have never seen any town that has so much to give to the visitor. In the first place, everything that one wants to see is within easy walking distance. If one rooms in a boarding house on a side street off the Ludwig Strasse, one can walk in a few moments to the university, to the public library, to the concert halls, to the State Opera House, to the State Theatre, to the Play House, to the art galleries; and the English Garden, an enormous tract of land, is in the centre of the town and close to all of these other delectable places. In the English Garden in summer one may take long walks or one may sit down and hear music as one sips coffee or beer. In the winter one may skate on the frozen lake. Those who are fond of winter sports have the mountains close at hand. It is estimated that on some Sunday mornings in winter 100,000 people take an early train to the mountains for skiing and other amusements. In the summer the environs of Munich are beautiful. There is a series of lakes where one may take excursions in a little steamer or in a rowboat; where one may visit famous old castles and see the treasures with which they are filled.

If one is fond of tennis, there are three or four tennis courts in the heart of the city where one may become a visiting member at a nominal fee and find plenty of agreeable companions. The golf links are ten minutes by trolley, and there again the entrance fee is nominal. The only objection that I have to the golf links is that the magnificent mountains are so near that one is constantly tempted to lift up one’s eyes to the hills, and, however valuable it may be for one’s spiritual development, it is fatal to one’s efficiency in golf.

Every night in Munich there is something interesting to hear at the opera, at the theatre or at the concert hall. Every morning there is published a little paper devoted exclusively to theatrical and musical affairs. This paper gives every event that will take place in the city in the afternoon and evening, with the exact time of beginning, the exact time of closing and a complete list of the actors, singers and performers.

One of the chief attractions of the theatre and the operas in Munich is the fact that they begin early. The opera begins at six o’clock and is always over before ten, except in the case of a very long opera. The plays begin at seven-thirty and in nearly every instance are over at nine-thirty. In other words, the opera and theatres are run not for the benefit of members of a leisure class who do not have to get up the next morning but for the ordinary citizen and his family who are obliged to rise early and go to work. In New York, in Paris and in London theatre-going and opera-going are in the nature of a dissipation. The theatres in Paris do not close until midnight, and in New York and London one does not usually get to one’s domicile before that. The result is that one is exhausted, and, according to Kipling, “There is nothing certain but the morning head.” To go to the theatre or opera four nights in succession in London, Paris or New York—unless one is able to rise very late the next day—is an exhausting ordeal, but in Munich, during a period of seven months, I averaged five nights a week at the opera and theatre and never felt fatigue.

There is another advantage about beginning early. Instead of going to the opera or theatre stuffed with a soggy dinner and made somnolent by food, one takes tea before going and when the entertainment is over one goes into a cheerful café and has a hot supper in delightful company and is in bed before eleven.

What does going to the theatre mean in New York, London and Paris? It too often means something like this. One attends a dinner party where half the guests arrive late; one then has a long course dinner, hurried toward the end; the entire company is hustled into automobiles and arrives at the theatre or opera a half hour after the performance has begun and in a condition that precludes the possibility of mental concentration.

After one has spent two or three months in Munich, one falls in love with the place, with the temper of the town and with the people. I am frequently homesick for Munich. In one year, after I had spent four months there, I went in April to Italy—the land where the lemon trees bloom. There I lived in sunshine and enjoyed the glory and beauty of the romantic country. But after a while I became homesick for Munich and, although on the morning of my return it was raining and the weather in general was doing its worst, my heart was singing, for I was home again.

XL
TRADITIONS

Whether we like it or not, we are governed by the past. The books written by men long dead have the largest influence in shaping our minds and ruling our conduct; the laws that control our duties and our privileges as citizens were made by men whose names we cannot remember; spirit hands guide our footsteps; we think the thoughts of our ancestors and carry into execution conceptions formed by them. The muscles of our bodies and the swifter impulses of our minds are set in motion by thousands of men and women. We have been shaped by our traditions. We can ourselves add something to these traditions, but even if we would, we cannot annihilate them. They are as real as we are.

Many Americans have such a militant consciousness of independence that they cannot endure the thought of having America’s destiny in any way influenced by hands across the sea. “What! do you mean to say that foreigners shall tell us what we may and may not do?” Now the truth is, that not only men in foreign nations have a vital influence on our present conduct and future acts, but that this is especially true of those foreigners who have been dead for centuries. The situation is humiliating. Bad enough to have an absentee ruler alive—how much more insupportable when he has ceased to exist!

Nothing is more foolish than to despise the past or to attempt to arrange the future without a sound knowledge of history. The difficulty with some radical reformers is that they are deficient in historical knowledge. They do not know that the experiment they have in mind has been tried so many times without success that some lesson might possibly be gained by observation of previous results. “Histories make men wise,” said Bacon; they make us wise, not merely because history books were written by wise men, but because history itself is the accumulation of human wisdom gleaned from human folly. To sneer at the past is to sneer at wisdom. For despite the glib way in which the word evolution is used, despite the advances made in personal luxuries, housing and locomotion, despite the broad (rather than deep) diffusion of culture by which reading and writing have become no more conspicuous than breathing—there is not one scintilla of evidence to prove that the individual mind has advanced a single step in the power of thought, or in the ability to reason, or in the possession of wisdom. The men of ancient times—as represented by their leaders—were in every respect as able-minded as the best products of the twentieth century.

Reflexion makes us realise the imponderable worth of traditions; we know they come only from years. Even if every man had his price, which is not true, there are things beyond all price. A boy who goes to Cambridge or Oxford has something in his education beyond the price he pays for his tuition, or the instruction he receives in lectures, or the advantages of modern laboratories. The grey walls of the cloisters, the noble old towers, the enchanting beauty of the quadrangle, represent not only the best in architecture, but they are hallowed by thousands of ghosts. Lowell coined the phrase, “God’s passionless reformers, influences.” These influences, silently but chronically active, like a deep-flowing river, give something that no recently founded institution can bring; something that makes the so-called almighty dollar look impotent. Any well-disposed multi-millionaire can start a well-equipped university; in time it, too, will have its traditions; but many centuries give a tone and a stamp that cannot be bought or sold.

A certain independent humour accompanies those who live in ancient surroundings—and this humour is frequently the Anglo-Saxon way of expressing pride. After dining in hall with the dons one evening in a college at Oxford, we adjourned successively to three rooms. I asked one of my hosts if that had always been the custom. “No, indeed,” said he, with a smile; “in fact, it is comparatively recent. We have been doing this only since the seventeenth century.” He spoke as though it were a rather startling innovation. A wealthy American was so pleased with the velvet turf of the Oxford quadrangles that he asked a janitor how such turf was produced; it appeared that he wished his front lawn at home to wear a similar aspect. The janitor replied that the matter was simple; all that was necessary was to wait a thousand years. Age sometimes really comes before beauty.

When the Englishman Thomas Hardy sat down in his house at Dorchester to write a poem, he knew that the ground in his garden was filled with the relics of Roman occupation—pottery, utensils and human bones. Twenty centuries were in his dooryard. No wonder there is dignity in his compositions when their roots go so deep.

Tennyson said:

That man’s the best cosmopolite

Who loves his native country best.

I suppose he meant that the man who loved his own country was better fitted to love all countries and thus become a citizen of the world than one who, while professing to be swayed only by international sentiment, should have little affection for any country in particular. We are familiar with the type of man who is filled with enthusiasm for humanity, but who never helps an individual; love, like charity, should begin at home. It is a singular but happy human characteristic that we love so ardently the scenes of our childhood; even those brought up in a detestable climate will, when far away in golden sunlight, become homesick for the fog, the mist, and the rain. Many who have left home in early manhood will return thither in old age, as though drawn by invisible but irresistible bonds.

American traditions go back to Colonial days; and those days went back to the English country and English speech. We ought not to forget these traditions or be untrue to the best that is in Anglo-Saxon civilisation. Perhaps no one thing is more necessary to the welfare and peace of the world today than frank, hearty, sincere friendship and good will between Great Britain and the United States.

XLI
SPOOKS

There are intelligent and well-educated persons who believe in ghosts—I mean they believe in the actual reappearance on earth in visible form of certain individuals who have for some time been dead and buried. These are the genuine ghosts, not the creations of fear or fancy, but as the French call them, revenants, those who come back. Hamlet’s father was a true ghost, seen by a number of reliable witnesses; the bloody Banquo at the dinner table was the painting of Macbeth’s fear, actually not there at all.

The late William De Morgan was a devout believer in ghosts, was convinced that he had himself seen a sufficient number for purposes of verification, and hence did not scruple to introduce them into his novels.

I have not been so fortunate. I cannot even say as many do, “I do not believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them.” I will not say that I do not believe in them, but I am not afraid of them. I never saw one. I have never seen or heard anything that could not be explained in some commonplace fashion. There are many who affirm that they have seen in broad daylight the face and figure of a friend, and as they have drawn nearer in order to converse, the appearance became a disappearance, without any rational explanation. The friend may be living, or he may have long since died. A great many persons are “seeing things,” and I rather envy them. Others have distinctly felt a touch on the shoulder, and on turning, no one was discoverable. I have always, alas, found the responsible party.

But though I have never seen spooks, I have had a few spooky experiences, of which I will mention two.

One night, with the exception of the maids on the top floor, I was alone in the house. I had not been well for many days, and felt particularly miserable when I went to bed. I had lain uneasily for some hours, and had finally lapsed into semi-consciousness. At half-past two I was startled by the loud ringing of the front door bell. Accoutred as I was, I descended, and opened the door. There was no one. For a few moments, like the man in Poe’s poem, I stood, deep into the darkness peering. But the darkness gave no token, and wonderingly I shut the door. I had not got half-way up the stairs, when once again the doorbell rang with violence. It is easy enough to tell this lightly now, but then, alone in the house, and ill, it was worse than mysterious. I ran to the door, and flung it wide open. Not a soul in sight, the street silent and deserted. Then I thought it might after all not have been the doorbell, but the telephone. Accordingly I rang up Central, only to be informed that no one had called my number. While I was considering this, the doorbell once more reverberated through the empty house. Again I opened the door. No one.

I decided that some one with a deficient or perverted sense of humour was making me a victim. Accordingly I shut the front door, and crouched directly behind it, with the intention of leaping out and seizing the humorist as soon as he rang again. In a few moments the bell rang loudly; I jerked back the door and sprang outside. But there was absolutely no one, and there was no sound of retreating steps.

I stood outside the door, lost in amazement and fear, for I was terrified. I gazed wonderingly at the button, half-expecting to see some spirit-finger push it; when, to my utter dismay, the bell rang shriller and louder than ever.

If I had really believed in ghosts, that would have been sufficient evidence. As it is, I shall never forget my distress while the bell continued ringing and I was looking directly at the only means of making it ring. I closed the door, and had a bad night.

In the morning I consulted a specialist, not on nerves, but on doorbells. The explanation was simple. A mouse was enjoying the flavour of the paraffin in which the wires in the cellar were wrapped, and every time he gave a particularly fervent bite, the bell rang. I hope it scared him as much as it did me, but if so, his hunger triumphed over his fear, for he kept returning to the feast.

On another occasion I was out shooting in a desolate place in Michigan. I was accompanied by my friend, A. K. Merritt, now Registrar of Yale College, who will vouch for the truth of the story. Dusk was falling; there was no wind. We had wandered into a scene of stagnant desolation. Dead trees had fallen in rotten ruin across the trail, and the swampy pools were covered with a green mantle of decay. Merritt was walking in front and I close behind him. The gloom and depression of the scene in the deepening dusk had affected our spirits, so that we had not spoken for some time. Suddenly I thought of the scenery of Browning’s poem, Childe Roland. The lines of that masterpiece of horror would well describe this place, I thought; and I began to repeat them in my mind without saying a word aloud. Then methought there was only one thing needed to make the picture complete. That was the horrible horse, which in the poem stood alone and sinister in the gathering night. If that horse were here, I said to myself, this would indeed be the veritable country of Childe Roland. Something impelled me to look behind my back, and, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I found myself looking directly into the eyes of a forlorn old horse. I let out a yell of sheer uncontrollable terror.

Merritt was as startled by the yell as I had been by its cause. I asked him if the horse was really there. It was bad to have him there, but worse if he were not. Merritt reassured me on that point.

I suppose the poor old horse had been pensioned off by some farmer, and had silently followed us on the spongy ground, either because he was lonesome or because he wanted salt. But he gave me the shock of my life.

I have thought much about it since, and I am unable to determine whether the appearance of the horse at the precise moment when I was thinking of him was a coincidence—or was I all the time subconsciously aware of his presence? That is to say, did the nearness of the horse, even though I had no conscious knowledge of it, suggest to my subconscious mind the lines from the poem? I wish I knew.

XLII
TRIAL BY JURY

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, we were fortunate in having as one of our professors Edward John Phelps, who was unexpectedly appointed minister to England by Grover Cleveland, and who, after making a fine impression at the Court of St. James—do you know why it is called that?—returned to his professorship. He was fond of making general statements, not only concerned with his specialty, the law, but on anything that rose to the surface of his mind; so that to take his course was in itself a liberal education.

I well remember his beginning one lecture by saying emphatically, “Trial by jury is a good thing which has outlived its usefulness.”

I believe that when he made that statement, he spoke the truth. If it was true then, it is certainly true now; nothing has happened since to improve the situation, or to make jury trials fairer or less expensive to the state. In America, we have two pieces of obsolete machinery—the electoral college and trial by jury. When I began university teaching, one of my freshman pupils made the only interesting contribution to the workings of the electoral college that I have ever seen. I gave out as a theme subject, “The Electoral College,” and the first theme handed in opened with this sentence—“I do not believe in the Electoral College.” Well, neither did I, so thus far I agreed with my pupil; I read the next sentence to get his reasons; it was the next sentence that contained the original contribution to the subject, “The trouble is,” wrote the freshman, “that in the Electoral College everybody chooses snap courses.”

Now the original idea on which the scheme of trial by jury was founded was as good as human ingenuity could devise. Any person accused of anything involving legal punishment was to be tried by a jury of his peers—twelve average, common-sensible, fair-minded men, who, after hearing all the evidence and the pleas of the lawyers, would bring in a verdict, which presumably would be in accordance with the facts, and therefore just. But in the course of time, although human nature has not changed, circumstances have, and it is difficult to avoid today the conclusion that the chief qualification for a member of a jury is that he should not be fit to serve. Unfitness is the only fitness. Anyone who has an opinion is barred; in order therefore for one to be eligible he must be one who knows little of the world in which he lives and who is curiously insensitive to what everybody is talking about. In a recent editorial in the New Haven Journal-Courier, the point is well made.

An intelligent man even with prejudice would appear to be a better person to entrust the decision of life or death with, after the presentation of the evidence and the interpretation of it by counsel and the judge’s charge, than an ignorant person who knows too little of current life to form any opinions whatever upon any subject.

Furthermore, it frequently happens that after a trial lasting for months the jury disagree, making another trial necessary, and involving an enormous waste of public money. There ought to be some better way of reaching a decision.

Then the very fact that the members of a jury are apt to be below rather than above the average person in intelligence, makes them particularly susceptible to emotional response when skilfully handled by a clever criminal lawyer. Only a short time ago a jealous woman deliberately murdered her husband and the woman she suspected, although neither then nor at any time were they caught in a compromising situation; at the trial the evidence certainly looked black because it was all against the murderess. She was, however, an attractive physical specimen. Her lawyer stood her up in front of the jury, put his arm around her, and defiantly asked the jury if they were going to put to death this beautiful woman whose only offence was that she was a defender of the ideals of the home, American ideals. Should she, who stood so nobly and resolutely for family purity, be slaughtered? The jury acquitted her.

Furthermore, jury verdicts, instead of being in accordance with the evidence and with the law, are often determined by local sentiment. I remember two events in America at the same time, only in widely separated parts of our country. In the first instance, a husband who had for some time suspected his wife, happened to stumble upon the unmistakable proof of guilt; in a transport of rage, he killed his man. He was convicted of murder in the first degree, but the death sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He is in prison now. In the second instance, a husband hearing that his wife had gone to a hotel with another man, deliberately armed himself, went thither and killed both. The local jury instantly acquitted him, and he was a popular hero.

I do not believe in capital punishment, and should like to see it abolished. But its sole merit, acting as a deterrent to crime, can be realised only in a country like England, where trials are conducted with absolute formality, where a decision is speedily reached, and where the verdict of guilty is speedily followed by execution. In the United States the murderer is too often a romantic hero, and has a long career as a great actor, whether or not he is convicted.

It seems to me that the best judges of any case are those who by education and training are best qualified to judge. It is significant that in Connecticut the prisoner may now choose to be tried by three professional judges rather than by twelve incompetent men. In a recent famous instance the prisoner did make that choice.

Too often a public trial by jury becomes a public scandal; of greater harm to the community and to the state than the crime of which the prisoner is accused.

Mark Twain said: “We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.”

XLIII
ATHLETICS

The whole world, with the exception of India, China, Siberia and a few other countries, has gone wild over athletics. Although new stadiums and amphitheatres are in process of construction everywhere, it is impossible to accommodate the crowds. Millions of people have apparently the money and the time to devote to these spectacular contests, and many more millions “listen in” on the radio. In England last June Wimbledon was not half large enough to hold the frantic crowd that wished to see the tennis matches; the same is true of France. At a recent wrestling contest in Austria, after all the seats were taken, the gates were broken down by the mob of spectators who wished to enter; about 150,000 people saw a prize fight in Chicago and it is significant of the times that the only vacant seats were the cheapest.

Every newspaper devotes an immense amount of space to sporting news; and all the leading daily journals employ a highly paid staff of experts on sports, who keep the public agog with excitement before every contest and who endeavour to satisfy its curiosity after the battle is over.

Now there are some pessimistic philosophers who look upon all this athletic fever as a sign of degeneration, as evidence of the coming eclipse of civilisation. They point out that during the decay of the Roman Empire there was a universal excitement over sports, and they draw the inference that European and American civilisation is headed toward disaster.

No one can read the future, although innumerable fakers are paid for doing so. But it is at least possible that the ever-growing interest in athletics, instead of being a sign of degeneration, is in reality one more proof of the gradual domination of the world by Anglo-Saxon language, customs and ideas.

Extreme interest in athletics, though it cannot be defended on strictly rational grounds, is not necessarily accompanied by a lack or loss of interest in intellectual matters. If one had to name the place and the time when civilisation reached its climax, one might well name Athens in the fifth century before Christ. If one compares Athenian public interest in the tragedies of Sophocles with New York public interest in musical comedy, the contrast is not flattering to American pride. Yet that intellectual fervour in Athens was accompanied by a tremendous interest in track athletics. Every Greek city was a separate state; their only bond of union was the track meet held every four years and called the Olympic Games, to which the flower of youth from every Greek town contributed; and the winner of each event—a simon-pure amateur, receiving as prize only a laurel wreath—was a hero for at least four years.

From the strictly rational point of view it is impossible to defend or even to explain the universal ardour over athletics, but it is best to regard it as a fact, and then see what its causes are.

The majority of Anglo-Saxons have always had sporting blood, and the Latin races are now being infused with it. I well remember a train journey near Chicago during the darkest days of the World War. We were all awaiting the newspapers. Suddenly a newsboy entered and we bought eagerly. The man sitting next to me was a clergyman in Episcopal uniform. He looked not at the front part of the paper, but turned feverishly to the sporting page, which he read carefully. When I called on the Very Reverend Dean of Rochester Cathedral, in England, Dean Hole, I was shown into a room containing several thousand books. I glanced over these and all I saw dealt exclusively with sport.

Many excellent men without sporting blood have protested against the domination of athletics. The famous English novelist, Wilkie Collins, published a novel, Man and Wife, which was a protest against the British love of sports, in which both athletes and the public were ridiculed. Why should thousands pay money to see two men run a race? What difference did it make to civilisation which man won?

Yet, although it is easy to overdo excitement about athletics, the growing interest in sport which has been so characteristic of France, Germany and Italy during the last ten years is a good thing for the youth of these countries and for their national and international temper.

Years ago, the space occupied in England and in America by fields devoted to various outdoor sports was in Germany and France used for public gardens, where people sat and drank liquor while listening to a band or watching some vaudeville. When I first travelled on the Continent, I found only one tennis court and that was at Baden-Baden. Today one finds everywhere in France and Germany tennis courts, golf links and football fields.

It is surely not a change for the worse that a German student who used to test his physical endurance by the number of quarts of beer he could drink at a sitting tests it today in tennis, rowing and football, and that the French students with silky beards, who used to strain their eyes looking at women, now, clean-shaven and alert, are looking at the tennis ball.

It is, of course, irrational to take an eager interest in a prize fight, but if you have sporting blood you cannot help it. My father was an orthodox Baptist minister. As I had never heard him mention prize fighting, I supposed he took no interest in it.

But the day after a famous battle, as I was reading aloud the newspaper to him, I simply read the headline, “Corbett Defeats Sullivan,” and was about to pass on to something important when my father leaned forward and said earnestly, “Read it by rounds.”

XLIV
A PRIVATE LIBRARY ALL YOUR OWN

A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking favourite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils. One should have one’s own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in colour and appearance than any wall-paper, they are more attractive in design, and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends. The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing. You do not have to read them all. Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books; and I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers. “Have you read all of these books?” “Some of them twice.” This reply is both true and unexpected.

There are of course no friends like living, breathing, corporeal men and women; my devotion to reading has never made me a recluse. How could it? Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, you cannot always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for YOU. They “laid themselves out,” they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favourable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their inmost heart of heart. The “real Charles Dickens” is in his novels, not in his dressing-room.

Everyone should have a few reference books, carefully selected, and within reach. I have a few that I can lay my hands on without leaving my chair; this is not because I am lazy, but because I am busy.

One should own an Authorised Version of the Bible in big type, a good one-volume dictionary, the one-volume Index and Epitome to the Dictionary of National Biography, a one-volume History of England and another of the United States, Ryland’s Chronological Outlines of English Literature, Whitcomb’s Chronological Outlines of American Literature, and other works of reference according to one’s special tastes and pursuits. These reference books should be, so far as possible, up to date.

The works of poets, dramatists, novelists, essayists, historians, should be selected with care, and should grow in number in one’s private library from the dawn of youth to the day of death.

First editions are an expensive luxury, but are more interesting to the average mind than luxurious bindings. When you hold in your hand a first edition of the seventeenth century, you are reading that book in its proper time-setting; you are reading it as the author’s contemporaries read it; maybe your copy was handled by the author himself. Furthermore, unless you have paid too much for it, it is usually a good investment; it increases in value more rapidly than stocks and shares, and you have the advantage of using it. It is great fun to search book-catalogues with an eye to bargains; it is exciting to attend an auction sale.

But of course most of us must be content to buy standard authors, living and dead, in modern editions. Three qualities are well to bear in mind. In getting any book, get the complete edition of that book; not a clipped, or condensed, or improved or paraphrased version. Second, always get books in black, clear, readable type. When you are young, you don’t mind; youth has the eyes of eagles. But later, you refuse to submit to the effort—often amounting to pain—involved in reading small type, and lines set too close together. Third, get volumes that are light in weight. It is almost always possible to secure this inestimable blessing in standard authors. Some books are so heavy that to read them is primarily a gymnastic, rather than mental exercise; and if you travel, and wish to carry them in your bag or trunk, they are an intolerable burden. Refuse to submit to this. There was a time when I could tell, merely by “hefting” it, whether a book had been printed in England or in America; but American publishers have grown in grace, and today many American books are easy to hold.

Some books must be bought in double column; but avoid this wherever possible, and buy such books only when economy makes it necessary to have the complete works of the author in one volume. A one-volume Shakespeare is almost a necessity; but it should be used for reference, as we use a dictionary, never for reading. Get Shakespeare in separate volumes, one play at a time. It is better to have some of an author’s works in attractive form, than to have them complete in a cumbrous or ugly shape.

Remember that for the price of one ticket to an ephemeral entertainment, you can secure a book that will give strength and pleasure to your mind all your life. Thus I close by saying two words to boys and girls, men and women: BUY BOOKS.

XLV
THE GREATEST COMMON DIVISOR

Some distinguished novelists are like lofty peaks. Few ascend them and those who do breathe rarefied air. There are writers whose fame is apparently secure who have never had many readers, and there are writers who have an enormous public and no fame. George Meredith and Henry James were men of genius, and there will always be enough people of taste to save some of their books from oblivion; but neither of these authors made much money. Both Meredith and James would have liked to have a million readers; perhaps it is to their credit that they made no compromises to increase the sales of their works, perhaps they could not have succeeded in such an undertaking had they tried.

While in the long run it is popularity that determines a writer’s fame—not only Shakespeare, but every first rate English poet has today many thousands of readers—there are also “trashy” books which sell like gasolene, and there are trashy books which do not sell at all. It is a comforting thought that the majority of trashy books have a smaller sale than masterpieces, and that the best book ever written has had, has, and will have the largest sale of all.

It won’t do to prefer posterity to popularity; posterity is more cruel to the average writer than are his contemporaries. Shakespeare was the most popular Elizabethan dramatist; Ben Jonson, the foremost press agent of his time, said that his friend Shakespeare had surpassed all the writers of Greece and Rome, which was exactly what John Dryden, the foremost press agent of his time, said of his contemporary, Milton. Gray’s Elegy, Byron’s Childe Harold, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Kipling’s Recessional, were popular two weeks after their publication, and they are popular now. In the long run the best books have the largest sales.

In every age, however, there are certain novelists of prodigious vogue, whose works nevertheless are to readers of good taste negligible. The common people read them gladly and the Scribes and Pharisees regard them with scorn. When our high school teachers and junior college professors wish to relieve their systems of accumulated bile, they pour out before their sceptical pupils bitter denunciations of Harold Bell Wright, the late Gene Stratton Porter and Zane Grey. They try to persuade their flocks that the books by these writers are not interesting; but the flocks know that they are, and instead of despising these novelists, they lose confidence in their instructors.

Far be it from me to pretend that Mr. Wright and Mr. Grey are literary artists, or to enter the lists as a champion of their works. What I have read of them has not left me with an insatiable appetite for more. But here is a fact of interest to students of books and of human nature—of the “works” of Porter and of Wright over nine million copies have been sold, and as we rate five readers to every copy, each of these two worthies has an audience of forty-five million readers. What does this mean? Many will say it means that the public loves trash. I don’t believe it; the majority of books are trash, and the majority of books do not sell. Some critics and some unsuccessful writers say that they could write just the same sort of thing if they would stoop to it; I don’t believe it. The financial rewards of popularity are so great that many writers would produce tales of adventure if they were sure of a million readers.

It is possible that boys and girls read these books because of their good qualities rather than because of their defects. Why is it that these authors are Greatest Common Divisors? Why do they make the largest appeal to the largest number of people?

Well, in the first place they are novelists, and the foremost of recent novelists, Thomas Hardy, says that the novel should tell a story. The average school-boy knows that a book by Wright, Porter or Grey will have a good story. The majority of our novelists either will not or can not tell a story. All they have is a time-plot, beginning with the smells the baby had in his cradle, of no interest to any one except the novelist, going on with his fights and loves at school, etc., etc. Most people are like the Sultan in the Arabian Nights, they love a good story; Wright, Porter and Grey furnish it. The lives of most boys and girls are not romantic or unusual; in the novel they get an escape from life, a change of air, a vacation; and there is nothing boys love more than a vacation. Again, however deficient in conduct boys and girls may be, they instinctively love courage, honour, truth, beauty, magnanimity; the novels of the Terrible Three all work for righteousness. In the eternal conflict between good and evil, these Greatest Common Divisors are on the right side; even if they do not know much about style, or much about psychology, or much about subtlety of motive, they do know the difference between right and wrong, something that some much bepraised novelists seem to have forgotten or to think unimportant.

I do not believe the majority of supercilious critics and other cultivated mature readers began in early youth by reading great books exclusively; I think they read Jack Harkaway, and Old Sleuth, and the works of Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. From these enchanters they learned a thing of importance—the delight of reading. Once having learned that having found that a book, easily procurable, is the key to happy recreation, they obtained a never-failing resource of happiness.

A similar thing is observable in poetry. If a boy learns to love highly exciting narrative poetry, or pretty sentiments set to easy tunes, it is more probable that he will later love great poetry than if he never caught the lilt of words in youth.

Nothing that I have said is at variance with one of my oft-expressed beliefs—those parents who are not only interested in the welfare of their children, but are capable of setting them a good example, do not need to use the Greatest Common Divisor so often. They can by sympathetic intercourse with their children, and by patience, bring them up from the start on the Bible, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Swift, Defoe and other writers of genius; but a large number of boys and girls come to our schools from uncultivated homes, and from parents who are stupid, or selfish, or silly; these children must learn the magic of books, and it is my belief that the makers of exciting stories, with sentiment laid on thick, with heroes and heroines who are brave, honourable and virtuous are performing a public service.

XLVI
THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME

Baseball is American in its origin, development and area. It is also American in its dynamic qualities of speed and force, and in the shortness of time required to play a full game and reach a decision. Americans do not love serial games like cricket; in literature they are better at writing short stories than at novels, and they enjoy games where a verdict is soon reached.

Looking back over the history of this national pastime, I can remember when the pitcher was allowed nine balls before losing his man, and one year in the last century it took four strikes to retire the batsman. I can also remember when a foul ball caught on the first bound was “out,” when a foul tip—often successfully imitated by clever catchers—was “out,” and I played the game many years before an uncaught foul was a strike. In order to have a wider radius for fouls, the catcher used to stand far back, moving up behind the bat only after the second strike, or when bases had the tenancy of opponents. Every advance in the rules has been in the direction of speed; and at present the game seems unimprovable.

Nearly every game has some inherent defect; as putting is sixty-five per cent of golf, so pitching is sixty-five per cent of baseball. Moral: Be a good putter, and see that your nine has a good pitcher.

Pitching seems to be a greater physical and mental strain than in the last century, although the box artist does not pitch so many balls in the average game as he used to. In spite of that fact, Radbourne of Providence, who was the greatest professional pitcher I ever saw, won the national championship for his team in 1884 by pitching every day for a long period. And his team-mate, the late John M. Ward, who afterwards joined New York, told me that in 1879 he pitched sixty-six consecutive games! The universal disease of nerves, from which no twentieth century American is exempt, is probably responsible for the more careful treatment of pitchers today.

On July 23, 1884, the Providence club, then in the National league, was crippled for pitchers. Radbourne went into the box from that date until September 26 when he had won the National league pennant, daily, except August 2, 18, 20. He pitched thirty-six games during that period, twenty-two on consecutive days, and winning eighteen. Of the thirty-six, he won thirty-one, lost four, and tied one.

Tim Keefe in 1888 broke Radbourne’s record for straight games won, by winning nineteen, and Marquard in 1912 equalled Keefe’s. Next to Radbourne comes Joe Wood, with sixteen straight, won in 1912.

Radbourne’s total feat for the 1884 season of pitching seventy-seven games (seventy-four National league championships and three world series, winning three straight in the world series—no other pitcher was used) is another record that stands.

The greatest baseball player of all time is Tyrus Raymond Cobb, of Georgia. He not only holds an unexampled batting record, his speed in the outfield was so great that he was moved from right to centre, and in his base-running it is not much to say that he raised the art to a higher plane. Ordinarily, the best of players was content to steal second, but if Cobb saw that the ball was not going to beat him to the second bag, he kept right on to third. The bewildered second baseman, who naturally had a psychological caesura when the attempted play failed, had to begin all over again in order to catch his parting guest at third. And, flustered as he was by the sheer audacity of the thing, he was apt to be wild. Cobb capitalised his reputation; he knew the basemen were all “laying for him,” and owing to that curse which has always afflicted humanity, which makes it more difficult to do a thing in proportion to one’s desire to do it, they found it more of a task to retire Cobb than to retire anyone else. If they had not known it was Cobb, they could have got him. Mr. Cobb told me once that it was largely a matter of mind reading; he had to out-guess his opponents, he had to know what they were going to do. Certainly his stealing of bases has been phenomenal; he would steal first base if he could.

His ambitious, fiery, high-strung disposition, which is largely responsible for his success, has also caused him to lose his temper on the field. This is regrettable, and of course, must be punished. And yet I have some sympathy for these lapses, and do not condemn them unqualifiedly as some colder judges do. The anxiety to win is what enrages a player when things go wrong, and I fully understand it though I recognise its sinfulness. Although I myself was very carefully brought up by a pious father and mother, and although I had the unspeakable advantage of being a Yale graduate, I once threw a bat at an umpire when he called me out on strikes. In order to atone for this sin, I have often—like Doctor Johnson—stood unprotected in the rain, when I had no umbrella.

The greatest baseball pitcher in Yale’s history was Amos Alonzo Stagg, of the class of 1888. He won the championship over both Harvard and Princeton five successive years, pitching in every championship game. He headed the batting order, was a fine base-runner, and in minor games, played behind the bat, on the bases and in the outfield. He knew baseball thoroughly. He never had great speed, or wide curves; but he had marvellous control and a memory that was uncanny. If a batsman faced him once, Stagg never forgot him, and thereafter never gave that batsman anything he wanted.

Carter, of the class of ’95, was a great pitcher and all-round ball player, as different in other respects from Stagg as could well be imagined. Stagg was very short; Carter was six foot four. Carter had blinding speed with tremendous curves. But if you compare his record of championships with that of his predecessor, you will see why I rate him second to Stagg. These two men, are, I think, Yale’s foremost box heroes.

Baseball is not so spectacular as football, but in one respect it has a great advantage over its more lusty rival. Everyone sees what happens in baseball; the spectator sees every play, and he knows instantly the reason for every success and every failure. In football the ball is concealed in the line, very few can see exactly what has happened, and no one knows whether a run or a touchdown is going to count or not, until the official has given his consent; and if he withholds his approval, and the ball is brought back, the spectators do not know why.

XLVII
TEN SIXTY-SIX

All persons who speak the English language should never forget the year 1066, for although it bloomed and faded long ago, it was an important event in our lives. In that year William the Conqueror sailed across the English Channel, landed on the south coast of England, and his descendants and those of his party are there yet.

No wonder the British are proud of their naval and military history. England is separated from the continent by only twenty miles; and yet since 1066 not a single person has got into England and stayed there without an invitation. For nearly nine hundred years England has successfully repelled boarders. Many able and determined foes devoted all their energies to realise their heart’s desire. The Spanish Armada was a grandiose war-fleet, but Sir Francis Drake and the surface of the Channel that has made so many tourists seasick, were too powerful a combination for the gallant Spaniards. The dream of Napoleon was to invade and possess England; the nearest he ever got to it was St. Helena. There is an enormous column at Boulogne which was erected to “commemorate the intention of Napoleon to invade England.” I knew that intentions were often used as pavingstones in a certain locality; but, like Browning’s futile lovers in The Statue and the Bust, the immobility of the commemoration is an ironical commentary. In the World War, the Central Powers were well-equipped for an expeditionary force on land, water and air; the best-selling novel in Germany in 1916 was called General Hindenburg’s March into London, but it was a work of the imagination.

In reading Tennyson’s play Harold, it is interesting to see that his sympathies are all with the Saxon king; and it is well to remember that William could not have conquered England had not Harold been engaged in a fatal civil war with his own brother Tostig. Was there ever a more suicidal folly? When William landed, Harold was fighting away up in the North in what is now Yorkshire; and he had to bring his army down to the South coast through incredibly bad roads, and there meet the First Soldier of Europe.

However and whatever Tennyson may have thought, William’s victory was the best thing that ever happened to England and to those who now speak English. The battle of Hastings meant much to Americans. Not only was William a statesman and law-and-order man, he made English a world language. By the addition of the Romance languages to Anglo-Saxon, he doubled the richness of our vocabulary; English is a gorgeous hash of Teutonic and Latin tongues. But William did far more for us than that. Anglo-Saxon, the language spoken by Harold in London, is more unlike the language spoken by King George V than the language of Virgil in Rome is unlike the language spoken by Mussolini. Anglo-Saxon is a difficult language, as difficult for a beginner as German; furthermore, it is inflected. William, although he did not know it, made English the universal language, the clearing-house of human speech in the twentieth century. It is easier for an American to learn either French or German than it is for a German to learn French or a Frenchman to learn German. Not only are there many words in English which are like French words, but the most blessed result of this victory in 1066 was the eventual simplification of English grammar and syntax.

If William had not conquered England, it is probable that today English speech would have inflexions and grammatical gender. George Moore says that he dislikes English, it is a lean language, the adjective does not agree with the noun—I say, thank Heaven for that! With the exception of pronunciation, the English language is ridiculously simple and easy; any foreigner can learn to write, read and understand English in a short time, and he can learn to speak it with fluent inaccuracy. What a blessed thing for a foreigner who must learn English to know that when he learns the name of a thing that name does not change. A book is always a book, no matter what you do with it. Now, if William had not conquered England, every time you did anything to a book, the accursed word would change. “The book is mine,” but “I take bookum,” “I go away booke,” “I tear a page out bookes,” and so on. Then one would have to discover and remember whether book were masculine, feminine, or neuter, and every time one used an adjective, like “good book,” that miserable adjective would have to agree with the book in gender, case and number. When one sits down to dinner in a German hotel, one must remember that the knife is neuter, the fork is feminine, and the spoon masculine, and then one’s troubles have only begun. Remember what Mark Twain said of German. How simple to have no case-ending, no gender, and almost no grammar! No wonder English is becoming the world-language; it will of course never drive out other languages, but it has already taken the place occupied by Latin in the Middle Ages, and by French in the eighteenth century. A man can go almost anywhere in the world with English; and any foreigner who decides to learn one language besides his own, must choose English. Anyhow they all do.

The only difficulty with our language is its pronunciation. Not only are we the only people in the world who pronounce the vowels a, e, i, as we do, there are so many exceptions that this rule does not always apply. One has to learn the pronunciation of every word. Suppose a foreigner learns danger, what will he do with anger? And having finally learned both anger and danger, what will he do with hanger? I never met but one foreigner who spoke English without a trace of accent; that was the late Professor Beljame, who taught English at the Sorbonne. He told me that he had practiced English every day for forty years, and I afterward discovered that his mother was an Englishwoman. One day I met a Polish gentleman who spoke English fluently, but with much accent; he insisted that he spoke it as well as a native. I left him alone for three hours with this sentence:

“Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me through”; and when I came to hear him read it, I thought he was going to lose his mind.

XLVIII
GOING ABROAD THE FIRST TIME

There is no thrill like the first thrill. When Wilhelm Meister kissed the Countess, Goethe said they tasted “the topmost sparkling foam on the freshly poured cup of love,” and Goethe knew what he was talking about. I shall always be glad that my first trip to Europe had three features—I was young; the steamer was small; we landed at Antwerp.

I was twenty-five and in perfect health; my head was stuffed with literature, descriptions and pictures shrieking for verification; my mates and I rode bicycles across Europe and over the Alps; we lived with impunity in cheap inns and on cheap food; we were soaked to the skin by frequent rains; we were exposed to every inclemency of the air and to innumerable germs in rooms, food and water; we were never sick. We stored away memories which have been paying daily dividends.

It is not well to wait until one is old, for an American is, as a rule, never physically comfortable in Europe. Unless one is reeking with cash one is almost always chilly or damp or hungry or filled with the wrong kind of food. But Europe has all the things an intelligent American wants to see, and it is best to see them when one’s health is rugged enough to rise above inconveniences.

I am glad I went on a small boat, for I asked a traveller who recently returned on an enormous ship if the sea was rough: “I have no idea, I never saw it.” Our little Waesland had only one deck, and that was sometimes awash. It was not a hotel, it was a ship. Finally, instead of landing at Cherbourg at some unearthly hour, being transferred to a squeaky lighter, and then to a train with long hours of travel before one reached the destination, we steamed up the Scheldt past the windmills and stepped off the boat right in the midst of one of the most interesting cities in the world. The transition from America to Europe was as dramatic as it could possibly be, unshaded by tenders and trains. Thus I advise first-timers to sail either to London or to Antwerp; you embark at New York and you disembark at the desired haven.

I love Europe, London, Paris, Munich, Florence, with inexpressible fervour; but I can never recapture the first careless rapture. I remember after that fine first afternoon and evening in Antwerp, when we walked about in ecstasy in the rain, we bicycled to Bonn from Cologne, and that evening before going to bed in the little Rhenish inn, I looked out from my bedroom window on the river and on the roofs of the quaint old town, and I said, “Is it real or is it a dream?”

The next day was a fulfillment; for when my classmate, George Pettee, and I were sophomores, we were sitting in the top gallery of the theatre watching a picture of the Rhineland put on the screen by John L. Stoddard. One of us turned to the other and whispered: “I’ll shake hands with you on standing on that spot within seven years.” The answer was, “You’re on!” We had no money and no prospect of getting any; but in five years, not seven, we stood on that identical spot, and as we leaned our bicycles up against the road wall, we reminded each other of the night in the gallery. It is pleasant to dream; but it is pleasanter to make the dream come true.

The most beautiful country I have ever seen is England. It has not the majesty of Switzerland, but it has everything else. Almost exactly the same size as North Carolina or Michigan, it has an amazing variety of scenery and climate. As one approaches it from the Atlantic, the cliffs of Cornwall look austere and forbidding; but there the roses bloom in January. Stand almost anywhere in Devonshire, and you see the meadows leaning on the sky; they are separated from one another not by stone fences, or by split-rails or barbed wire, but by hedgerows in self-conscious bloom; Salisbury Plain is like Western Nebraska, a far horizon; the misty slopes of the Sussex downs reach dreamily to the sea. Every few miles in England the topography changes; could anything be more different than those different counties?

But we do not go to England for natural scenery, though we might well do so; we go because in England every scene is, in the phrase of Henry James, “peopled with recognitions.” The things that we have seen in imagination we see in reality; there they are! The September afternoon when I bicycled alone to Stoke Poges and saw the churchyard in the twilight exactly as it was in 1750 when Gray described it, I fell on my knees. As we looked from the top of the hill down into Canterbury, the setting sun glorified the Cathedral; as we stood on the most solemn promontory in England, Land’s End, and gazed into the yeasty waves at the foot of the cliff, I remembered Tennyson’s lines:

One showed an iron coast and angry waves.

You seemed to hear them climb and fall

And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves,

Beneath the windy wall.

And here one of the Wesley brothers wrote the familiar hymn about the narrow neck of land and the divided seas.

One day, talking with an Englishman on the train, I raved about Warwickshire and about Devon. “Ah,” said he, “if you haven’t seen the valley of the Wye you haven’t seen England.” Accordingly, we went to the little town of Ross in the West; there we hired a rowboat, and two stalwart sons of Britain rowed us many miles down the stream. Occasionally, the river was so shallow they poled us over the pebbly bottom; sometimes it was so narrow we could almost touch the shores; then it would widen out nobly, and we saw the white-faced Hereford cattle feeding in green pastures. “What castle is that?” I asked, pointing to a ruin on a hill. “That is Goodrich Castle, sir.” And that is where Wordsworth met the little girl who knew her departed brother and sister were alive. We moved by Monmouth, sacred to Henry V, the Roosevelt of kings; we came to Tintern Abbey, and you may be sure we stopped there; whatever you see, don’t miss the valley of the Wye.

XLIX
SPIRITUAL HEALING

I believe that the average man or woman today needs one thing more than he needs anything else—spiritual healing. I believe this is truer of the men and women of our age than of those of any preceding epoch—and I believe they need it more than they need material luxuries, increase of mechanical resources, yes, more than they need mental tonics or emotional inspiration.

The people of the United States are suffering from “nerves.” Now the casualties in diseases of the nerves are large, because, as is well known, in cases of nervous prostration everybody dies except the patient. I shall not say that America won the war, but anyhow America was on the winning side. We were triumphantly victorious; we are the only rich and prosperous nation on earth. Americans are the only people in the world who are physically comfortable in bad weather. But although there is a steady increase in physical luxuries, I am not sure of a steady increase in serene happiness, in the calm that comes from mental contentment, in an approach toward universal peace of mind. What shall we say of a prosperous and rich nation whose prosperity and wealth are accompanied by an epidemic of suicide?

We are overwrought, tense, excited; our casual conversations are pimpled with adjectives; our letters are written in italics, and—a sure sign of fever—there has been an increase in cursing and swearing. Many respectable persons show a proficiency in this verbal art that used to be chiefly characteristic of lumberjacks and longshoremen. We become colossally excited about trivial things. Sometimes when I find myself in a state of almost insane irritation over some trifle I seem to hear the quiet voice of Emerson speaking from the grave—Why so hot, little man?

In a charming comedy by Clare Kummer, in which that beautiful and accomplished actress the late Lola Fisher took the leading part, one of her speeches explained that when she was a child her mother told her that whenever she felt herself rising to a boiling point she must stop for a moment and say aloud, “Be calm, Camilla.” That was the name of the play, “Be Calm, Camilla”—and there are many Camillas who need that relaxation.

It is characteristic of the American temperament that it needs mental sedatives more than spurs; and yet thousands of Americans are looking around all the time for something with a “kick” in it. How often we hear in casual conversation the phrase, “I got a fearful kick out of that.” What they need is not a kick, but a poultice; not a prod, but a cool, healing hand.

Although Americans need healing more than the men and women of any other nation, there are times when almost any person would profit by such treatment. The experience of John Stuart Mill is not unusual. He was carefully brought up by his father without religious training. When he was twenty-five years old he fell into a state of profound depression. A cloud of melancholia settled on his mind and heart, so that he not only lost interest in life but felt that the world had no meaning. We know that King Saul was relieved from the evil spirit of nervous melancholy by music; but Mill loved music, and yet in his crisis music failed him. Fortunately, he turned to the poetry of Wordsworth. Now of all the great poets Wordsworth is the best healer, because he drew balm from objects within everybody’s reach. The “Nature” that Wordsworth writes about does not require a long and expensive journey, like going South in winter or travelling to distant mountains. This poet wrote about the simple things in nature—the things that can be seen from the front door or from the back yard.

The novelist George Gissing, who had been chronically tortured by two desperate evils, grinding poverty and ill health, was, owing to a fortunate circumstance, able to live in solitude for a time in the charming county of Devon, in southwest England. The result of his meditations appeared in a book, first published in 1903, called The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. This is a book of healing, and I recommend it to everybody, for I do not know any one who could not profit by it. As Mill had suffered from intellectual depression and been cured by Wordsworth, so Gissing, who had suffered from poverty and sickness, cured himself by preserving the fruit of his communion with nature:

I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single day I had matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been developing unknown to me.

“I had matured astonishingly.” Isn’t that what is really the matter with us, that we haven’t grown up? We are like children crying for the moon, when the riches of the earth are within our reach. Our pursuit of excitement and our resultant sufferings are largely childish. It is unfortunate to suffer from infantile diseases when we are old.

I have been reading a new novel, a book of healing, which most new novels are not. It is curious that so many are eagerly reading new novels and seeing new plays whose only purpose is to stimulate animal instincts which need no stimulation. Or they are reading new novels which distress and torment a mind already tumultuously confused. Be calm, Camilla.

The book I allude to was published in 1927. It is called Winterwise and is written by Zephine Humphrey. It describes a winter spent in a lonely farmhouse in Vermont, a State not yet famous as a winter resort—except for those who think only of winter in connexion with violent athletics. The book is full of deep, tranquil wisdom. It points out sources of abiding happiness—happiness that no disaster can permanently remove.

L
SUPERSTITION

The best definition of superstition that I can remember was made by James Russell Lowell—“Superstition, by which I mean the respecting of that which we are told to respect rather than that which is respectable in itself.” Mental slavery is always degrading; and superstition is a form of slavery, because the mind is subjected to fear. As Notoriety is the bastard sister of Reputation, so Superstition is the bastard sister of Religion. The difference between the two can be easily and simply expressed, but it is literally all the difference in the world. The most elevating influence known to man is Religion; the least elevating is Superstition.

The instinctive pessimism of humanity is shown in many careless phrases such as “It’s too good to be true.” The majority of men and women believe that hopes are illusory, but fears accurately foretell the coming event. Yet any sensible old man or old woman will tell us that nearly all the fears and worries from which they themselves suffered almost daily during a long life really never materialised. They suffered for nothing. We learn little from their experience, but go on our way filled with apprehension and alarm. Shakespeare said the brave man dies only once, but cowards die a thousand times in fearing death. I suppose most of us are cowards. Although we are still in good enough health to carry on, we have already died of cancer, tuberculosis, and many other diseases.

Many social superstitions were cured by that great turning point in history, the French Revolution. The world has never been quite the same since the year 1789. Before that date, people really believed that those who were born in noble and royal families were superior to the common herd; after that date the nobility still believed it, but the common people did not agree. They found they had been respecting that which they had been told to respect, rather than that which is respectable in itself. A Frenchman remarked, “The great appear to us great because we are kneeling—let us rise.” In 1789 everybody stood up.

It is foolish to respect any person or any institution unless it is respectable.

The religion of many unenlightened people seems to be based largely on fear, in which case it is of course not religion at all, but rank superstition. James Whitcomb Riley told me of a remark made by a small boy to his mother at bedtime. He jumped into bed, and to the question of his mother, “What, aren’t you going to say your prayers?” the child answered, “No, I ain’t going to say my prayers tonight, and I ain’t going to say ’em tomorrow night, nor the next night. And then if nothing happens, I ain’t ever going to say ’em again.”

This all-too-typical boy looked upon prayer as a means of warding off danger, and he was sufficiently intelligent and sufficiently brave to risk its omission. But if he had been brought up to believe that prayer is neither a charm against peril nor a method of getting what you want, that prayer was intimate communion with a Divine Friend, he would have looked upon it from a different point of view. George Meredith told his son never to ask any material thing from God, but to pray to Him every day of his life.

Now many men and women have the religious maturity of a small boy, which is infinitely worse than having the religion of a little child. They never pray except when they are in danger, or when they think they are going into danger, or when they have suffered from some calamity. That is like speaking to a friend only when you want to borrow money. The profound wisdom of mysticism consists not in making use of God, but in hoping and believing that God will make some use of us.

The base-born idea that God is against us is accompanied by the idea that He may be placated or humoured. In Richard Halliburton’s exciting account of his adventures in southern countries, he tells us how the pagan priests used to sacrifice thousands of young maidens to their deity. It would seem, looking back on history, that the more abominable the religion, the fewer the atheists. Every sensible person in those countries ought to have been an atheist.

Now although many “enlightened” people today laugh at the terrible fears and even more terrible remedies of those intellectual slaves, they themselves are not very much wiser. It is highly probable that the majority of Americans today would not dare to say “I haven’t had a bad cold this winter” without touching wood. Some of them might grin as they touched it, but they would touch it just the same. Such a gesture is intellectually and morally contemptible.

But many are even poorer in brains. For many would not dare to say that they had not had a cold this winter, with or without wood in reach. They believe that if you express anything pleasant, you will soon “get your come-uppance.” God seems to lie in wait for us, and the moment we seem satisfied or happy or even prominent, He will teach us who is running the show. The best thing therefore is never to appear too happy. For many, who have been foolish enough to say aloud, “I haven’t had a cold this winter,” wake up the next morning snuffling. “Now you see what I’ve got! If I’d only had sense enough to keep my mouth shut, I would have been all right. But of course I had to brag about it!”

The most degrading of all superstitions is the belief that God can be placated, appeased, or diverted, as we humour a refractory boy or a drunken man. This abominable idea sometimes takes an extremely tragic form, as when the Indian mother throws her own baby into the Ganges. “Now, God, you’ve got to be good to me! I’ve given you the best thing I had!”

Sometimes it takes a merely silly form, as when one gives up some pleasant little luxury; not with the great idea of drawing nearer to God by removing an obstacle, but with the absurd idea of bargaining with Him.

LI
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EARTH

Perhaps nothing nowadays is a more common target for ridicule than the hustler and booster, whether he boosts as an individual or as a member of a service organisation. The man whose motto is “bigger and better business,” a bigger town, with a bigger population and bigger buildings, is laughed at for his enthusiasm and for his perspiring efforts. Much of this laughter is merely the cynical adverse criticism of men who have never done anything themselves, never will do anything, and so pretend to be faintly and superciliously amused by the optimistic exertions of others. We may dismiss these unproductive and complacent occupiers of the seats of the scornful, for they are comparatively few in number and their opinions of no moment. But the rational basis for laughter at the booster is that the hustler and the booster often have a false standard of excellence.

When a noisy man roars in your face that the population of his particular town has doubled in ten years we have a right to enquire, what of it? Is it a cause for rejoicing? When you climb into a trolley car on a rainy day you do not rejoice because the population of the trolley car doubles in three minutes. A mere increase in the number of persons at a given spot does not necessarily mean that collectively or individually they are any better off. What we wish to know is something quite different from the word “more.” Is the community growing in intelligence? Are there better schools, better theatres, better art museums, better churches, better orchestras—are the inhabitants of this locality growing in grace and in the fruits of the spirit?

The last thing I wish to be guilty of is to make cheap remarks against science or scientific men to whom I, in common with others, owe so much; but, strangely enough, some of the professional men of science, who are often the first to laugh at the booster because he applies the quantitative rather than the qualitative standard of measurement, are themselves guilty of the same fault on a larger scale. They do not apply standards of size to a growing business or a growing village; they apply these standards to the universe.

Now, as is well known, the Ptolemaic system of cosmogony stated that the earth was the centre of the universe and that around the earth revolved the sun, the moon and all the innumerable stars. Thus man regarded himself as of high importance because he was the centre of everything.

Along came Copernicus, whose book was published in 1543 but not generally accepted until long after its appearance. Copernicus wrought a far greater miracle than Joshua. The Old Testament hero made the sun stand still only for an afternoon; but in the sixteenth century Copernicus commanded the sun to stand still and (relatively speaking) it has not budged since. Copernicus was a magician.

Many astronomers have recently been fond of reminding us that our sun itself is only a tiny star—one out of many billions—and that our earth is but the tiniest speck. They are fond of drawing diagrams showing the comparative size of our sun and that of other globes in the starry skies, and the earth dwindles to a mere point. “Therefore,” say these scientists, “how unimportant is man and how ridiculous that he should consider either himself or his earthly abode a matter of any importance to God or to space or time or gravitation”; the conclusion following that religion and morals are matters of small consequence and we need not bother our heads about them.

Now it seems to me that expressions of this kind are as fallacious and as injurious as any booster’s standard of mere quantity; for what are these gentlemen trying to say except that as the earth is so tiny in comparison with other stars it must necessarily follow that man himself is a very unimportant factor in the universe? On the contrary, I believe the earth to be the most important spot in the entire creation and that the most precious thing on the earth is man—men, women and children.

The ordinary ignoramus looks at the starry vault and exclaims: “There are all those stars and every one inhabited with life!” As a matter of fact the latest researches of science show that the rarest thing in the entire universe is human life. There is not one vestige of evidence to show that life exists anywhere except on the earth.

The universe is frightfully hot. The fixed stars have a temperature ranging from nearly two thousand degrees to more than thirty thousand degrees, which is considerably hotter than the Needles in California. Furthermore, among all the heavenly bodies planets are the most scarce, and the only conditions which can produce a planet occur almost never. Now the planets in our particular little solar system had the good luck to come into being, and of these planets only the earth can support human life. The late Percival Lowell, an eminent astronomer and a gallant gentleman, looking at the sky through the clear air of Arizona, thought he saw evidence of the intelligent work of beings on Mars, but he saw it because his telescope was not good enough; “bigger and better” telescopes destroyed the illusory things he thought he saw.

I advise all those who believe in the insignificance of man because he lives on a small ball to read the last chapter of Sir James Jeans’s book The Universe Around Us. Sir James does not himself say that man has a divine destiny, because that is not the subject of his book. But he does say: “All this suggests that only an infinitesimally small corner of the universe can be in the least suited to form an abode of life.”

People used to be flabbergasted by the consideration of the vastness of the starry heavens while retaining their respect for man and their own self-respect; but of late years many astronomers, by applying the “big and little” method of measurement, have tried to convince us that man is of no importance. Thus astronomy, instead of filling its students with majestic wonder, fills them with despair. To these scientific boosters it is the devout and not the undevout astronomer who is mad.

Fear not, little flock. We are no longer the geographical centre of the universe, but—so far as evidence goes—we are the only part of it that amounts to anything.

LII
WHAT SHALL I THINK ABOUT?

“What shall I think about when I am dying?” said Turgeney. Well, if I were dying at this moment, and were fortunate enough to be conscious—for death is an adventure no one ought to miss—I should endeavour to compose my mind and prepare it properly for its next experience. Then, having made whatever arrangements were necessary for the welfare of those I leave, I might—if there were time—review some of the events of my days on earth from which I had derived the largest amount of pleasure.

Omitting religion and family life, the two greatest sources of happiness that I know, which need no explanation to those familiar with them, and which no language could possibly explain to those unacquainted with them, I must honestly say I have found life good. I would not have missed it for anything. There have of course been misfortunes, illnesses, periods of mental depression, failures, loss of friends, and the general sense of frustration that afflicts every candid mind. But these are shadows, and my life has mainly been passed in sunshine.

It would of course be very nice to be an immortal poet or an immortal something-or-other; to feel the steadfast assurance that one had left on earth some enduring work that would remain as a permanent memorial. But although one knows, as I do, that everything one has done will be speedily forgotten, I do not see why that should make one miserable. Why spend one’s life or even one’s last moments in crying for the moon? Why not make the best of the good old world?

That daily life is really good one appreciates when one wakes from a horrible dream, or when one takes the first outing after a sickness. Why not realise it now?

My life has been divided into four parts—Work, Play, Development, Social Pleasures. Work is man’s greatest blessing. Whenever it is in any way possible, every boy and girl should choose as his life work some occupation which he would like to do anyhow, even if he does not need the money. It has always been necessary for me to work, but if at any time during the last twenty years some eccentric person had left me a million dollars, I should have gone right on working at my chosen professions, teaching, writing, and public speaking. I enjoy all three. I enjoy them so much that I have no hesitation in saying that I enjoy them more than vacations. There are better teachers, there are better writers, there are better lecturers; but I doubt if any of them have enjoyed their work more than I.

I have also had an enormous amount of fun out of play. I am a playboy, and shall never get over it. I like all kinds of games, except alley-bowling, just as I like all famous music except that by Meyerbeer. In every game I have never succeeded in rising above mediocrity; but here again I doubt if the great players—whom I nevertheless envy—have enjoyed playing football, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, billiards, pool, duplicate whist—a better game than bridge—more than I have. If I were now given the opportunity to spend every single day for the next five hundred years in an invariable programme of work all the morning, golf all the afternoon, and social enjoyment all the evening, I should accept with alacrity, making only one stipulation—that at the end of the five hundred years I should have the privilege of renewal. And that’s that.

In cultural development, by which I mean the enrichment of the mind by Nature and by Art, I have had unspeakable delight. Yet I am neither a naturalist nor an artist. I don’t know anything about flowers, and very little about animals. I cannot draw or paint, or make anything with my hands. The only musical instrument I can play is a typewriter.

But no one loves the scenes of nature more than I. The first sunset that I remember with enjoyment occurred when I was ten years old; and how many I have seen since then! On an autumn day in 1903, I saw the sun sink into the ocean off the coast of Normandy, and, by the miracle of memory, I can see it again whenever I wish. I thought of Browning’s lines:

“Than by slow, pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,

At their sad level gaze o’er the ocean—a sun’s slow decline.”

I have seen the Matterhorn from the Gorner Grat, Mont Blanc from Chamonix, and the divine flush on the summit of the Jungfrau.

Forty years ago I heard for the first time the Ninth Symphony; and while I have heard it often since then, the most memorable occasion was in May 1912 when I heard it at Paris, played by a magnificent orchestra, conducted by Felix Weingartner; I have heard Die Meistersinger in Munich, conducted by Arthur Nikisch; I have heard the Emperor Concerto, with Ossip Gabrilowitsch at the piano; I have heard Tod und Verklärung with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra; I have heard De Pachmann (in his prime) play Chopin’s B flat minor sonata, Paderewski play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Josef Hofmann play Beethoven’s Sonata 111. I have heard Carmen sung by Emma Calvé, Emma Eames, Jean de Reszké and Lassalle; Tristan und Isolde sung by Jean de Reszké and Lilli Lehmann; Faust sung by Jean and Edouard de Reszké, Emma Eames, Maurel, and Scalchi; Mignon sung by Mme. Lucrezia Bori; I have repeatedly heard the three greatest bassos of modern times, Edouard de Reszké, Pol Plançon, and Chaliapin.

In the theatre I have seen Edwin Booth as Shylock, Mansfield as Richard III, Irving in The Lyons Mail, Possart as Mephistopheles, Sarah Bernhardt as La Tosca, Duse as Francesca, Salvini as Othello, and twice have I seen the Passion Play at Oberammergau. All these are memorable experiences, and for fear I may not be conscious when I am dying, I am recalling them now. But if I should attempt to recall all the glorious things I have seen in nature and in art, I should have no time for fresh experiences that await me.

As for social pleasures, one of the highest enjoyments is agreeable company and good conversation; and I especially like men, women and children.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Just for the curious: Chapter XVIII has four references to “F. P. A.” but doesn’t give the full name. When this book was written, he was a well-known columnist: Franklin P. Adams.

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Table of Contents

- ESSAYS ON THINGS
- CONTENTS
- ESSAYS ON THINGS
- I SUNRISE
- II MOLASSES
- III RESOLUTIONS WHEN I COME TO BE OLD
- IV ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HUMOUR
- V A PAIR OF SOCKS
- VI AN INSPIRING CEMETERY
- VII ANCIENT FOOTBALL
- VIII RIVERS
- IX ONE DAY AT A TIME
- X CITY AND COUNTRY
- XI AGE BEFORE BEAUTY
- XII CHURCH UNITY
- XIII POLITICAL HISTORY
- XIV A ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW
- XV TEA
- XVI THE WEATHER
- XVII WAR
- XVIII MAN AND BOY
- XIX AMBITION
- XX BIRDS AND STATESMEN
- XXI RUSSIA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
- XXII THE DEVIL
- XXIII THE FORSYTE SAGA
- XXIV PROFESSION AND PRACTICE
- XXV LONDON AS A SUMMER RESORT
- XXVI WHAT THE MAN WILL WEAR
- XXVII DREAMS
- XXVIII EATING BREAKFAST
- XXIX THE MOTHER TONGUE
- XXX OUR SOUTH AS CURE FOR FLU
- XXXI GOING TO CHURCH IN PARIS
- XXXII OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM
- XXXIII TRANSLATIONS
- XXXIV MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
- XXXV DOG BOOKS
- XXXVI GOING TO HONOLULU
- XXXVII HYMNS
- XXXVIII OLD-FASHIONED SNOBS
- XXXIX A FAIR CITY
- XL TRADITIONS
- XLI SPOOKS
- XLII TRIAL BY JURY
- XLIII ATHLETICS
- XLIV A PRIVATE LIBRARY ALL YOUR OWN
- XLV THE GREATEST COMMON DIVISOR
- XLVI THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME
- XLVII TEN SIXTY-SIX
- XLVIII GOING ABROAD THE FIRST TIME
- XLIX SPIRITUAL HEALING
- L SUPERSTITION
- LI THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EARTH
- LII WHAT SHALL I THINK ABOUT?
- Transcriber’s Notes
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE