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The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 12
British loss, more than 150 officers and men, out of the 246.
Surrender of the remnant.
Boer loss--if any--not stated.
They are fine marksmen, the Boers. From the cradle up, they live on
horseback and hunt wild animals with the rifle. They have a passion for
liberty and the Bible, and care for nothing else.
“General Sir George Colley, Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief in
Natal, felt it his duty to proceed at once to the relief of the loyalists
and soldiers beleaguered in the different towns of the Transvaal.” He
moved out with 1,000 men and some artillery. He found the Boers encamped
in a strong and sheltered position on high ground at Laing’s Nek--every
Boer behind a rock. Early in the morning of the 28th January, 1881, he
moved to the attack “with the 58th regiment, commanded by Colonel Deane,
a mounted squadron of 70 men, the 60th Rifles, the Naval Brigade with
three rocket tubes, and the Artillery with six guns.” He shelled the
Boers for twenty minutes, then the assault was delivered, the 58th
marching up the slope in solid column. The battle was soon finished,
with this result, according to Russell--
British loss in killed and wounded, 174.
Boer loss, “trifling.”
Colonel Deane was killed, and apparently every officer above the grade of
lieutenant was killed or wounded, for the 58th retreated to its camp in
command of a lieutenant. (“Africa as It Is.”)
That ended the second battle.
On the 7th of February General Colley discovered that the Boers were
flanking his position. The next morning he left his camp at Mount
Pleasant and marched out and crossed the Ingogo river with 270 men,
started up the Ingogo heights, and there fought a battle which lasted
from noon till nightfall. He then retreated, leaving his wounded with
his military chaplain, and in recrossing the now swollen river lost some
of his men by drowning. That was the third Boer victory. Result,
according to Mr. Russell--
British loss 150 out of 270 engaged.
Boer loss, 8 killed, 9 wounded--17.
There was a season of quiet, now, but at the end of about three weeks Sir
George Colley conceived the idea of climbing, with an infantry and
artillery force, the steep and rugged mountain of Amajuba in the night--a
bitter hard task, but he accomplished it. On the way he left about 200
men to guard a strategic point, and took about 400 up the mountain with
him. When the sun rose in the morning, there was an unpleasant surprise
for the Boers; yonder were the English troops visible on top of the
mountain two or three miles away, and now their own position was at the
mercy of the English artillery. The Boer chief resolved to retreat--up
that mountain. He asked for volunteers, and got them.
The storming party crossed the swale and began to creep up the steeps,
“and from behind rocks and bushes they shot at the soldiers on the
skyline as if they were stalking deer,” says Mr. Russell. There was
“continuous musketry fire, steady and fatal on the one side, wild and
ineffectual on the other.” The Boers reached the top, and began to put in
their ruinous work. Presently the British “broke and fled for their
lives down the rugged steep.” The Boers had won the battle. Result in
killed and wounded, including among the killed the British General:
British loss, 226, out of 400 engaged.
Boer loss, 1 killed, 5 wounded.
That ended the war. England listened to reason, and recognized the Boer
Republic--a government which has never been in any really awful danger
since, until Jameson started after it with his 500 “raw young fellows.”
To recapitulate:
The Boer farmers and British soldiers fought 4 battles, and the Boers won
them all. Result of the 4, in killed and wounded:
British loss, 700 men.
Boer loss, so far as known, 23 men.
It is interesting, now, to note how loyally Jameson and his several
trained British military officers tried to make their battles conform to
precedent. Mr. Garrett’s account of the Raid is much the best one I have
met with, and my impressions of the Raid are drawn from that.
When Jameson learned that near Krugersdorp he would find 800 Boers
waiting to dispute his passage, he was not in the least disturbed. He
was feeling as he had felt two or three days before, when he had opened
his campaign with a historic remark to the same purport as the one with
which the commander of the 94th had opened the Boer-British war of
fourteen years before. That Commander’s remark was, that the Boers
“would turn tail at the first beat of the big drum.” Jameson’s was, that
with his “raw young fellows” he could kick the (persons) of the Boers
“all round the Transvaal.” He was keeping close to historic precedent.
Jameson arrived in the presence of the Boers. They--according to
precedent--were not visible. It was a country of ridges, depressions,
rocks, ditches, moraines of mining-tailings--not even as favorable for
cavalry work as Laing’s Nek had been in the former disastrous days.
Jameson shot at the ridges and rocks with his artillery, just as General
Colley had done at the Nek; and did them no damage and persuaded no Boer
to show himself. Then about a hundred of his men formed up to charge the
ridge-according to the 58th’s precedent at the Nek; but as they dashed
forward they opened out in a long line, which was a considerable
improvement on the 58th’s tactics; when they had gotten to within 200
yards of the ridge the concealed Boers opened out on them and emptied 20
saddles. The unwounded dismounted and fired at the rocks over the backs
of their horses; but the return-fire was too hot, and they mounted again,
“and galloped back or crawled away into a clump of reeds for cover, where
they were shortly afterward taken prisoners as they lay among the reeds.
Some thirty prisoners were so taken, and during the night which followed
the Boers carried away another thirty killed and wounded--the wounded to
Krugersdorp hospital.” Sixty per cent. of the assaulted force disposed
of--according to Mr. Garrett’s estimate.
It was according to Amajuba precedent, where the British loss was 226 out
of about 400 engaged.
Also, in Jameson’s camp, that night, “there lay about 30 wounded or
otherwise disabled” men. Also during the night “some 30 or 40 young
fellows got separated from the command and straggled through into
Johannesburg.” Altogether a possible 150 men gone, out of his 530. His
lads had fought valorously, but had not been able to get near enough to a
Boer to kick him around the Transvaal.
At dawn the next morning the column of something short of 400 whites
resumed its march. Jameson’s grit was stubbornly good; indeed, it was
always that. He still had hopes. There was a long and tedious
zigzagging march through broken ground, with constant harassment from the
Boers; and at last the column “walked into a sort of trap,” and the Boers
“closed in upon it.” “Men and horses dropped on all sides. In the
column the feeling grew that unless it could burst through the Boer lines
at this point it was done for. The Maxims were fired until they grew too
hot, and, water failing for the cool jacket, five of them jammed and went
out of action. The 7-pounder was fired until only half an hour’s
ammunition was left to fire with. One last rush was made, and failed,
and then the Staats Artillery came up on the left flank, and the game was
up.”
Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered.
There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant Boer farmer
there who thought that this white flag was the national flag of England.
He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing’s Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and
supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end
of a fight.
The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett’s estimate of Jameson’s
total loss in killed and wounded for the two days:
“When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants.
There were 76 casualties. There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons.
There were 27 killed on the spot or mortally wounded.”
Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent.--[However,
I judge that the total was really 150; for the number of wounded carried
to Krugersdorp hospital was 53; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports it. The
lady whose guest I was in Krugersdorp gave me the figures. She was head
nurse from the beginning of hostilities (Jan. 1) until the professional
nurses arrived, Jan. 8th. Of the 53, “Three or four were Boers”; I quote
her words.]--This is a large improvement upon the precedents established
at Bronkhorst, Laing’s Nek, Ingogo, and Amajuba, and seems to indicate
that Boer marksmanship is not so good now as it was in those days. But
there is one detail in which the Raid-episode exactly repeats history.
By surrender at Bronkhorst, the whole British force disappeared from the
theater of war; this was the case with Jameson’s force.
In the Boer loss, also, historical precedent is followed with sufficient
fidelity. In the 4 battles named above, the Boer loss, so far as known,
was an average of 6 men per battle, to the British average loss of 175.
In Jameson’s battles, as per Boer official report, the Boer loss in
killed was 4. Two of these were killed by the Boers themselves, by
accident, the other by Jameson’s army--one of them intentionally, the
other by a pathetic mischance. “A young Boer named Jacobz was moving
forward to give a drink to one of the wounded troopers (Jameson’s) after
the first charge, when another wounded man, mistaking his intention; shot
him.” There were three or four wounded Boers in the Krugersdorp
hospital, and apparently no others have been reported. Mr. Garrett, “on
a balance of probabilities, fully accepts the official version, and
thanks Heaven the killed was not larger.”
As a military man, I wish to point out what seems to me to be military
errors in the conduct of the campaign which we have just been
considering. I have seen active service in the field, and it was in the
actualities of war that I acquired my training and my right to speak.
I served two weeks in the beginning of our Civil War, and during all that
time commanded a battery of infantry composed of twelve men. General
Grant knew the history of my campaign, for I told it him. I also told
him the principle upon which I had conducted it; which was, to tire the
enemy. I tired out and disqualified many battalions, yet never had a
casualty myself nor lost a man. General Grant was not given to paying
compliments, yet he said frankly that if I had conducted the whole war
much bloodshed would have been spared, and that what the army might have
lost through the inspiriting results of collision in the field would have
been amply made up by the liberalizing influences of travel. Further
endorsement does not seem to me to be necessary.
Let us now examine history, and see what it teaches. In the 4 battles
fought in 1881 and the two fought by Jameson, the British loss in killed,
wounded, and prisoners, was substantially 1,300 men; the Boer loss, as
far as is ascertainable, was about 30 men. These figures show that
there was a defect somewhere. It was not in the absence of courage. I
think it lay in the absence of discretion. The Briton should have done
one thing or the other: discarded British methods and fought the Boer
with Boer methods, or augmented his own force until--using British
methods--it should be large enough to equalize results with the Boer.
To retain the British method requires certain things, determinable by
arithmetic. If, for argument’s sake, we allow that the aggregate of
1,716 British soldiers engaged in the 4 early battles was opposed by the
same aggregate of Boers, we have this result: the British loss of 700 and
the Boer loss of 23 argues that in order to equalize results in future
battles you must make the British force thirty times as strong as the
Boer force. Mr. Garrett shows that the Boer force immediately opposed to
Jameson was 2,000, and that there were 6,000 more on hand by the evening
of the second day. Arithmetic shows that in order to make himself the
equal of the 8,000 Boers, Jameson should have had 240,000 men, whereas he
merely had 530 boys. From a military point of view, backed by the facts
of history, I conceive that Jameson’s military judgment was at fault.
Another thing.--Jameson was encumbered by artillery, ammunition, and
rifles. The facts of the battle show that he should have had none of
those things along. They were heavy, they were in his way, they impeded
his march. There was nothing to shoot at but rocks--he knew quite well
that there would be nothing to shoot at but rocks--and he knew that
artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly overloaded
with unessentials. He had 8 Maxims--a Maxim is a kind of Gatling, I
believe, and shoots about 500 bullets per minute; he had one
12 1/2-pounder cannon and two 7-pounders; also, 145,000 rounds of
ammunition. He worked the Maxims so hard upon the rocks that five of them
became disabled--five of the Maxims, not the rocks. It is believed that
upwards of 100,000 rounds of ammunition of the various kinds were fired
during the 21 hours that the battles lasted. One man killed. He must
have been much mutilated. It was a pity to bring those futile Maxims
along. Jameson should have furnished himself with a battery of Pudd’nhead
Wilson maxims instead. They are much more deadly than those others, and
they are easily carried, because they have no weight.
Mr. Garrett--not very carefully concealing a smile--excuses the presence
of the Maxims by saying that they were of very substantial use because
their sputtering disordered the aim of the Boers, and in that way saved
lives.
Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded a result
which emphasized a fact which had already been established--that the
British system of standing out in the open to fight Boers who are behind
rocks is not wise, not excusable, and ought to be abandoned for something
more efficacious. For the purpose of war is to kill, not merely to waste
ammunition.
If I could get the management of one of those campaigns, I would know
what to do, for I have studied the Boer. He values the Bible above every
other thing. The most delicious edible in South Africa is “biltong.”
You will have seen it mentioned in Olive Schreiner’s books. It is what
our plainsmen call “jerked beef.” It is the Boer’s main standby. He has
a passion for it, and he is right.
If I had the command of the campaign I would go with rifles only, no
cumbersome Maxims and cannon to spoil good rocks with. I would move
surreptitiously by night to a point about a quarter of a mile from the
Boer camp, and there I would build up a pyramid of biltong and Bibles
fifty feet high, and then conceal my men all about. In the morning the
Boers would send out spies, and then the rest would come with a rush.
I would surround them, and they would have to fight my men on equal
terms, in the open. There wouldn’t be any Amajuba results.
--[Just as I am finishing this book an unfortunate dispute has sprung up
between Dr. Jameson and his officers, on the one hand, and Colonel Rhodes
on the other, concerning the wording of a note which Colonel Rhodes sent
from Johannesburg by a cyclist to Jameson just before hostilities began
on the memorable New Year’s Day. Some of the fragments of this note were
found on the battlefield after the fight, and these have been pieced
together; the dispute is as to what words the lacking fragments
contained. Jameson says the note promised him a reinforcement of 300 men
from Johannesburg. Colonel Rhodes denies this, and says he merely
promised to send out “some” men “to meet you.”]
[It seems a pity that these friends should fall out over so little a
thing. If the 300 had been sent, what good would it have done? In 21
hours of industrious fighting, Jameson’s 530 men, with 8 Maxims, 3
cannon, and 145,000 rounds of ammunition, killed an aggregate of 1
Boer. These statistics show that a reinforcement of 300 Johannesburgers,
armed merely with muskets, would have killed, at the outside, only a
little over a half of another Boer. This would not have saved the day.
It would not even have seriously affected the general result. The
figures show clearly, and with mathematical violence, that the only way
to save Jameson, or even give him a fair and equal chance with the enemy,
was for Johannesburg to send him 240 Maxims, 90 cannon, 600 carloads of
ammunition, and 240,000 men. Johannesburg was not in a position to do
this. Johannesburg has been called very hard names for not reinforcing
Jameson. But in every instance this has been done by two classes of
persons--people who do not read history, and people, like Jameson, who do
not understand what it means, after they have read it.]
CHAPTER LXVIII.
None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its
cussedness; but we can try.
--Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
The Duke of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes deceived him. That
is also what Mr. Rhodes did with the Reformers. He got them into
trouble, and then stayed out himself. A judicious man. He has always
been that. As to this there was a moment of doubt, once. It was when he
was out on his last pirating expedition in the Matabele country. The
cable shouted out that he had gone unarmed, to visit a party of hostile
chiefs. It was true, too; and this dare-devil thing came near fetching
another indiscretion out of the poet laureate. It would have been too
bad, for when the facts were all in, it turned out that there was a lady
along, too, and she also was unarmed.
In the opinion of many people Mr. Rhodes is South Africa; others think he
is only a large part of it. These latter consider that South Africa
consists of Table Mountain, the diamond mines, the Johannesburg gold
fields, and Cecil Rhodes. The gold fields are wonderful in every way.
In seven or eight years they built up, in a desert, a city of a hundred
thousand inhabitants, counting white and black together; and not the
ordinary mining city of wooden shanties, but a city made out of lasting
material. Nowhere in the world is there such a concentration of rich
mines as at Johannesburg. Mr. Bonamici, my manager there, gave me a
small gold brick with some statistics engraved upon it which record the
output of gold from the early days to July, 1895, and exhibit the strides
which have been made in the development of the industry; in 1888 the
output was $4,162,440; the output of the next five and a half years was
(total) $17,585,894; for the single year ending with June, 1895, it was
$45,553,700.
The capital which has developed the mines came from England, the mining
engineers from America. This is the case with the diamond mines also.
South Africa seems to be the heaven of the American scientific mining
engineer. He gets the choicest places, and keeps them. His salary is
not based upon what he would get in America, but apparently upon what a
whole family of him would get there.
The successful mines pay great dividends, yet the rock is not rich, from
a Californian point of view. Rock which yields ten or twelve dollars a
ton is considered plenty rich enough. It is troubled with base metals to
such a degree that twenty years ago it would have been only about half as
valuable as it is now; for at that time there was no paying way of
getting anything out of such rock but the coarser-grained “free” gold;
but
the new cyanide process has changed all that, and the gold fields of the
world now deliver up fifty million dollars’ worth of gold per year which
would have gone into the tailing-pile under the former conditions.
The cyanide process was new to me, and full of interest; and among the
costly and elaborate mining machinery there were fine things which were
new to me, but I was already familiar with the rest of the details of the
gold-mining industry. I had been a gold miner myself, in my day, and
knew substantially everything that those people knew about it, except how
to make money at it. But I learned a good deal about the Boers there,
and that was a fresh subject. What I heard there was afterwards repeated
to me in other parts of South Africa. Summed up--according to the
information thus gained--this is the Boer:
He is deeply religious, profoundly ignorant, dull, obstinate, bigoted,
uncleanly in his habits, hospitable, honest in his dealings with the
whites, a hard master to his black servant, lazy, a good shot, good
horseman, addicted to the chase, a lover of political independence, a
good husband and father, not fond of herding together in towns, but
liking the seclusion and remoteness and solitude and empty vastness and
silence of the veldt; a man of a mighty appetite, and not delicate about
what he appeases it with--well-satisfied with pork and Indian corn and
biltong, requiring only that the quantity shall not be stinted; willing
to ride a long journey to take a hand in a rude all-night dance
interspersed with vigorous feeding and boisterous jollity, but ready to
ride twice as far for a prayer-meeting; proud of his Dutch and Huguenot
origin and its religious and military history; proud of his race’s
achievements in South Africa, its bold plunges into hostile and uncharted
deserts in search of free solitudes unvexed by the pestering and detested
English, also its victories over the natives and the British; proudest of
all, of the direct and effusive personal interest which the Deity has
always taken in its affairs. He cannot read, he cannot write; he has one
or two newspapers, but he is, apparently, not aware of it; until latterly
he had no schools, and taught his children nothing, news is a term which
has no meaning to him, and the thing itself he cares nothing about. He
hates to be taxed and resents it. He has stood stock still in South
Africa for two centuries and a half, and would like to stand still till
the end of time, for he has no sympathy with Uitlander notions of
progress. He is hungry to be rich, for he is human; but his preference
has been for riches in cattle, not in fine clothes and fine houses and
gold and diamonds. The gold and the diamonds have brought the godless
stranger within his gates, also contamination and broken repose, and he
wishes that they had never been discovered.
I think that the bulk of those details can be found in Olive Schreiner’s
books, and she would not be accused of sketching the Boer’s portrait with
an unfair hand.
Now what would you expect from that unpromising material? What ought you
to expect from it? Laws inimical to religious liberty? Yes. Laws
denying, representation and suffrage to the intruder? Yes. Laws
unfriendly to educational institutions? Yes. Laws obstructive of gold
production? Yes. Discouragement of railway expansion? Yes. Laws heavily
taxing the intruder and overlooking the Boer? Yes.
The Uitlander seems to have expected something very different from all
that. I do not know why. Nothing different from it was rationally to be
expected. A round man cannot be expected to fit a square hole right
away. He must have time to modify his shape. The modification had begun
in a detail or two, before the Raid, and was making some progress. It
has made further progress since. There are wise men in the Boer
government, and that accounts for the modification; the modification of
the Boer mass has probably not begun yet. If the heads of the Boer
government had not been wise men they would have hanged Jameson, and thus
turned a very commonplace pirate into a holy martyr. But even their
wisdom has its limits, and they will hang Mr. Rhodes if they ever catch
him. That will round him and complete him and make him a saint. He has
already been called by all other titles that symbolize human grandeur,
and he ought to rise to this one, the grandest of all. It will be a
dizzy jump from where he is now, but that is nothing, it will land him in
good company and be a pleasant change for him.
Some of the things demanded by the Johannesburgers’ Manifesto have been
conceded since the days of the Raid, and the others will follow in time,
no doubt. It was most fortunate for the miners of Johannesburg that the
taxes which distressed them so much were levied by the Boer government,
instead of by their friend Rhodes and his Chartered Company of
highwaymen, for these latter take half of whatever their mining victims
find, they do not stop at a mere percentage. If the Johannesburg miners
were under their jurisdiction they would be in the poorhouse in twelve
months.
I have been under the impression all along that I had an unpleasant
paragraph about the Boers somewhere in my notebook, and also a pleasant
one. I have found them now. The unpleasant one is dated at an interior
village, and says--
“Mr. Z. called. He is an English Afrikander; is an old resident, and has
a Boer wife. He speaks the language, and his professional business is
with the Boers exclusively. He told me that the ancient Boer families in
the great region of which this village is the commercial center are
falling victims to their inherited indolence and dullness in the
materialistic latter-day race and struggle, and are dropping one by one
into the grip of the usurer--getting hopelessly in debt--and are losing
their high place and retiring to second and lower. The Boer’s farm does
not go to another Boer when he loses it, but to a foreigner. Some have
fallen so low that they sell their daughters to the blacks.”
Under date of another South African town I find the note which is
creditable to the Boers:
“Dr. X. told me that in the Kafir war 1,500 Kafirs took refuge in a great
cave in the mountains about 90 miles north of Johannesburg, and the Boers
blocked up the entrance and smoked them to death. Dr. X. has been in
there and seen the great array of bleached skeletons--one a woman with
the skeleton of a child hugged to her breast.”
The great bulk of the savages must go. The white man wants their lands,
and all must go excepting such percentage of them as he will need to do
his work for him upon terms to be determined by himself. Since history
has removed the element of guesswork from this matter and made it
certainty, the humanest way of diminishing the black population should be
adopted, not the old cruel ways of the past. Mr. Rhodes and his gang
have been following the old ways.--They are chartered to rob and slay,
and they lawfully do it, but not in a compassionate and Christian spirit.
They rob the Mashonas and the Matabeles of a portion of their territories
in the hallowed old style of “purchase!” for a song, and then they force
a quarrel and take the rest by the strong hand. They rob the natives of
their cattle under the pretext that all the cattle in the country
belonged to the king whom they have tricked and assassinated. They issue
“regulations” requiring the incensed and harassed natives to work for the
white settlers, and neglect their own affairs to do it. This is slavery,
and is several times worse than was the American slavery which used to
pain England so much; for when this Rhodesian slave is sick,
super-annuated, or otherwise disabled, he must support himself
or starve--his master is under no obligation to support him.
The reduction of the population by Rhodesian methods to the desired limit
is a return to the old-time slow-misery and lingering-death system of a
discredited time and a crude “civilization.” We humanely reduce an
overplus of dogs by swift chloroform; the Boer humanely reduced an
overplus of blacks by swift suffocation; the nameless but right-hearted
Australian pioneer humanely reduced his overplus of aboriginal neighbors
by a sweetened swift death concealed in a poisoned pudding. All these
are admirable, and worthy of praise; you and I would rather suffer either
of these deaths thirty times over in thirty successive days than linger
out one of the Rhodesian twenty-year deaths, with its daily burden of
insult, humiliation, and forced labor for a man whose entire race the
victim hates. Rhodesia is a happy name for that land of piracy and
pillage, and puts the right stain upon it.
Several long journeys--gave us experience of the Cape Colony railways;
easy-riding, fine cars; all the conveniences; thorough cleanliness;
comfortable beds furnished for the night trains. It was in the first
days of June, and winter; the daytime was pleasant, the nighttime nice
and cold. Spinning along all day in the cars it was ecstasy to breathe
the bracing air and gaze out over the vast brown solitudes of the velvet
plains, soft and lovely near by, still softer and lovelier further away,
softest and loveliest of all in the remote distances, where dim
island-hills seemed afloat, as in a sea--a sea made of dream-stuff and
flushed with colors faint and rich; and dear me, the depth of the sky,
and the beauty of the strange new cloud-forms, and the glory of the
sunshine, the lavishness, the wastefulness of it! The vigor and
freshness and inspiration of the air and the sun--well, it was all
just as Olive Schreiner had made it in her books.
To me the veldt, in its sober winter garb, was surpassingly beautiful.
There were unlevel stretches where it was rolling and swelling, and
rising and subsiding, and sweeping superbly on and on, and still on and
on like an ocean, toward the faraway horizon, its pale brown deepening by
delicately graduated shades to rich orange, and finally to purple and
crimson where it washed against the wooded hills and naked red crags at
the base of the sky.
Everywhere, from Cape Town to Kimberley and from Kimberley to Port
Elizabeth and East London, the towns were well populated with tamed
blacks; tamed and Christianized too, I suppose, for they wore the dowdy
clothes of our Christian civilization. But for that, many of them would
have been remarkably handsome. These fiendish clothes, together with the
proper lounging gait, good-natured face, happy air, and easy laugh, made
them precise counterparts of our American blacks; often where all the
other aspects were strikingly and harmoniously and thrillingly African, a
flock of these natives would intrude, looking wholly out of place, and
spoil it all, making the thing a grating discord, half African and half
American.
One Sunday in King William’s Town a score of colored women came mincing
across the great barren square dressed--oh, in the last perfection of
fashion, and newness, and expensiveness, and showy mixture of unrelated
colors,--all just as I had seen it so often at home; and in their faces
and their gait was that languishing, aristocratic, divine delight in
their finery which was so familiar to me, and had always been such a
satisfaction to my eye and my heart. I seemed among old, old friends;
friends of fifty years, and I stopped and cordially greeted them. They
broke into a good-fellowship laugh, flashing their white teeth upon me,
and all answered at once. I did not understand a word they said. I was
astonished; I was not dreaming that they would answer in anything but
American.
The voices, too, of the African women, were familiar to me sweet and
musical, just like those of the slave women of my early days. I followed
a couple of them all over the Orange Free State--no, over its capital
--Bloemfontein, to hear their liquid voices and the happy ripple of their
laughter. Their language was a large improvement upon American. Also
upon the Zulu. It had no Zulu clicks in it; and it seemed to have no
angles or corners, no roughness, no vile s’s or other hissing sounds, but
was very, very mellow and rounded and flowing.
In moving about the country in the trains, I had opportunity to see a
good many Boers of the veldt. One day at a village station a hundred of
them got out of the third-class cars to feed.
Their clothes were very interesting. For ugliness of shapes, and for
miracles of ugly colors inharmoniously associated, they were a record.
The effect was nearly as exciting and interesting as that produced by the
brilliant and beautiful clothes and perfect taste always on view at the
Indian railway stations. One man had corduroy trousers of a faded
chewing gum tint. And they were new--showing that this tint did not come
by calamity, but was intentional; the very ugliest color I have ever
seen. A gaunt, shackly country lout six feet high, in battered gray
slouched hat with wide brim, and old resin-colored breeches, had on a
hideous brand-new woolen coat which was imitation tiger skin--wavy broad
stripes of dazzling yellow and deep brown. I thought he ought to be
hanged, and asked the station-master if it could be arranged. He said
no; and not only that, but said it rudely; said it with a quite
unnecessary show of feeling. Then he muttered something about my being a
jackass, and walked away and pointed me out to people, and did everything
he could to turn public sentiment against me. It is what one gets for
trying to do good.
In the train that day a passenger told me some more about Boer life out
in the lonely veldt. He said the Boer gets up early and sets his
“niggers” at their tasks (pasturing the cattle, and watching them); eats,
smokes, drowses, sleeps; toward evening superintends the milking, etc.;
eats, smokes, drowses; goes to bed at early candlelight in the fragrant
clothes he (and she) have worn all day and every week-day for years. I
remember that last detail, in Olive Schreiner’s “Story of an African
Farm.” And the passenger told me that the Boers were justly noted for
their hospitality. He told me a story about it. He said that his grace
the Bishop of a certain See was once making a business-progress through
the tavernless veldt, and one night he stopped with a Boer; after supper
was shown to bed; he undressed, weary and worn out, and was soon sound
asleep; in the night he woke up feeling crowded and suffocated, and found
the old Boer and his fat wife in bed with him, one on each side, with all
their clothes on, and snoring. He had to stay there and stand it--awake
and suffering--until toward dawn, when sleep again fell upon him for an
hour. Then he woke again. The Boer was gone, but the wife was still at
his side.
Those Reformers detested that Boer prison; they were not used to cramped
quarters and tedious hours, and weary idleness, and early to bed, and
limited movement, and arbitrary and irritating rules, and the absence of
the luxuries which wealth comforts the day and the night with. The
confinement told upon their bodies and their spirits; still, they were
superior men, and they made the best that was to be made of the
circumstances. Their wives smuggled delicacies to them, which helped to
smooth the way down for the prison fare.
In the train Mr. B. told me that the Boer jail-guards treated the black
prisoners--even political ones--mercilessly. An African chief and his
following had been kept there nine months without trial, and during all
that time they had been without shelter from rain and sun. He said that
one day the guards put a big black in the stocks for dashing his soup on
the ground; they stretched his legs painfully wide apart, and set him
with his back down hill; he could not endure it, and put back his hands
upon the slope for a support. The guard ordered him to withdraw the
support and kicked him in the back. “Then,” said Mr. B., “‘the powerful
black wrenched the stocks asunder and went for the guard; a Reform
prisoner pulled him off, and thrashed the guard himself.”
CHAPTER LXIX.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
--Pudd’nhead Wilsons’s New Calendar.
There isn’t a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the
Equator if it had had its rights.
--Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in
South Africa was the diamond-crater. The Rand gold fields are a
stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was
not a stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a noble thing to see, but it
was only another and lovelier variety of our Great Plains; the natives
were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for
the towns, I could find my way without a guide through the most of them
because I had learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like
them in other lands; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a
splendid and absorbing novelty. Very few people in the world have seen
the diamond in its home. It has but three or four homes in the world,
whereas gold has a million. It is worth while to journey around the
globe to see anything which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the
diamond mine is the greatest and most select and restricted novelty which
the globe has in stock.
The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about 1869, I think. When
everything is taken into consideration, the wonder is that they were not
discovered five thousand years ago and made familiar to the African world
for the rest of time. For this reason the first diamonds were found on
the surface of the ground. They were smooth and limpid, and in the
sunlight they vomited fire. They were the very things which an African
savage of any era would value above every other thing in the world
excepting a glass bead. For two or three centuries we have been buying
his lands, his cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale,
for glass beads and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the
diamonds--for he must have picked them up many and many a time. It
would not occur to him to try to sell them to whites, of course, since
the whites already had plenty of glass beads, and more fashionably
shaped, too, than these; but one would think that the poorer sort of
black, who could not afford real glass, would have been humbly content to
decorate himself with the imitation, and that presently the white trader
would notice the things, and dimly suspect, and carry some of them home,
and find out what they were, and at once empty a multitude of
fortune-hunters into Africa. There are many strange things in human
history; one of the strangest is that the sparkling diamonds laid there
so long without exciting any one’s interest.
The revelation came at last by accident. In a Boer’s hut out in the wide
solitude of the plains, a traveling stranger noticed a child playing with
a bright object, and was told it was a piece of glass which had been
found in the veldt. The stranger bought it for a trifle and carried it
away; and being without honor, made another stranger believe it was a
diamond, and so got $125 out of him for it, and was as pleased with
himself as if he had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged
stranger sold it to a pawnshop for $10,000, who sold it to a countess for
$90,000, who sold it to a brewer for $800,000, who traded it to a king
for a dukedom and a pedigree, and the king “put it up the spout.”
--[handwritten note: “From the Greek meaning ‘pawned it.’” M.T.]--I know
these particulars to be correct.
The news flew around, and the South African diamond-boom began. The
original traveler--the dishonest one--now remembered that he had once
seen a Boer teamster chocking his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a
diamond as large as a football, and he laid aside his occupations and
started out to hunt for it, but not with the intention of cheating
anybody out of $125 with it, for he had reformed.
We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are not imbedded in rock
ledges fifty miles long, like the Johannesburg gold, but are distributed
through the rubbish of a filled-up well, so to speak. The well is rich,
its walls are sharply defined; outside of the walls are no diamonds. The
well is a crater, and a large one. Before it had been meddled with, its
surface was even with the level plain, and there was no sign to suggest
that it was there. The pasturage covering the surface of the Kimberley
crater was sufficient for the support of a cow, and the pasturage
underneath was sufficient for the support of a kingdom; but the cow did
not know it, and lost her chance.
The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Coliseum; the
bottom of the crater has not been reached, and no one can tell how far
down in the bowels of the earth it goes. Originally, it was a
perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock or cement, and
scattered through that blue mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the
diamonds. As deep down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep
will the diamonds be found.
There are three or four other celebrated craters near by--a circle three
miles in diameter would enclose them all. They are owned by the De Beers
Company, a consolidation of diamond properties arranged by Mr. Rhodes
twelve or fourteen years ago. The De Beers owns other craters; they are
under the grass, but the De Beers knows where they are, and will open
them some day, if the market should require it.
Originally, the diamond deposits were the property of the Orange Free
State; but a judicious “rectification” of the boundary line shifted them
over into the British territory of Cape Colony. A high official of the
Free State told me that the sum of $400,000 was handed to his
commonwealth as a compromise, or indemnity, or something of the sort, and
that he thought his commonwealth did wisely to take the money and keep
out of a dispute, since the power was all on the one side and the
weakness all on the other. The De Beers Company dig out $400,000 worth
of diamonds per week, now. The Cape got the territory, but no profit;
for Mr. Rhodes and the Rothschilds and the other De Beers people own the
mines, and they pay no taxes.
In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, under the
guidance of the ablest mining-engineering talent procurable in America.
There are elaborate works for reducing the blue rock and passing it
through one process after another until every diamond it contains has
been hunted down and secured. I watched the “concentrators” at work big
tanks containing mud and water and invisible diamonds--and was told that
each could stir and churn and properly treat 300 car-loads of mud per day
1,600 pounds to the car-load--and reduce it to 3 car-loads of slush. I
saw the 3 carloads of slush taken to the “pulsators” and there reduced to
a quarter of a load of nice clean dark-colored sand. Then I followed it
to the sorting tables and saw the men deftly and swiftly spread it out
and brush it about and seize the diamonds as they showed up. I assisted,
and once I found a diamond half as large as an almond. It is an exciting
kind of fishing, and you feel a fine thrill of pleasure every time you
detect the glow of one of those limpid pebbles through the veil of dark
sand. I would like to spend my Saturday holidays in that charming sport
every now and then. Of course there are disappointments. Sometimes you
find a diamond which is not a diamond; it is only a quartz crystal or
some such worthless thing. The expert can generally distinguish it from
the precious stone which it is counterfeiting; but if he is in doubt he
lays it on a flatiron and hits it with a sledgehammer. If it is a
diamond it holds its own; if it is anything else, it is reduced to
powder. I liked that experiment very much, and did not tire of
repetitions of it. It was full of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by
any personal sense of risk. The De Beers concern treats 8,000 carloads
--about 6,000 tons--of blue rock per day, and the result is three pounds
of diamonds. Value, uncut, $50,000 to $70,000. After cutting, they will
weigh considerably less than a pound, but will be worth four or five
times as much as they were before.
All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep, with blue
rock, placed there by the Company, and looks like a plowed field.
Exposure for a length of time make the rock easier to work than it is
when it comes out of the mine. If mining should cease now, the supply of
rock spread over those fields would furnish the usual 8,000 car-loads per
day to the separating works during three years. The fields are fenced
and watched; and at night they are under the constant inspection of lofty
electric searchlight. They contain fifty or sixty million dollars’
worth’ of diamonds, and there is an abundance of enterprising thieves
around.
In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some
time ago the people were granted the privilege of a free wash-up. There
was a general rush, the work was done with thoroughness, and a good
harvest of diamonds was gathered.
The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hundreds of them.
They live in quarters built around the inside of a great compound. They
are a jolly and good-natured lot, and accommodating. They performed a
war-dance for us, which was the wildest exhibition I have ever seen.
They are not allowed outside of the compound during their term of service
three months, I think it is, as a rule. They go down the shaft, stand
their watch, come up again, are searched, and go to bed or to their
amusements in the compound; and this routine they repeat, day in and day
out.
It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds successfully.
They used to swallow them, and find other ways of concealing them, but
the white man found ways of beating their various games. One man cut his
leg and shoved a diamond into the wound, but even that project did not
succeed. When they find a fine large diamond they are more likely to
report it than to steal it, for in the former case they get a reward, and
in the latter they are quite apt to merely get into trouble. Some years
ago, in a mine not owned by the De Beers, a black found what has been
claimed to be the largest diamond known to the world’s history; and, as a
reward he was released from service and given a blanket, a horse, and
five hundred dollars. It made him a Vanderbilt. He could buy four
wives, and have money left. Four wives are an ample support for a
native. With four wives he is wholly independent, and need never do a
stroke of work again.
That great diamond weighs 97l carats. Some say it is as big as a piece
of alum, others say it is as large as a bite of rock candy, but the best
authorities agree that it is almost exactly the size of a chunk of ice.
But those details are not important; and in my opinion not trustworthy.
It has a flaw in it, otherwise it would be of incredible value. As it
is, it is held to be worth $2,000,000. After cutting it ought to be
worth from $5,000,000 to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring to save
money should buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate, and apparently
there is no satisfactory market for it. It is earning nothing; it is
eating its head off. Up to this time it has made nobody rich but the
native who found it.
He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract. That is to
say, a company had bought the privilege of taking from the mine 5,000,000
carloads of blue-rock, for a sum down and a royalty. Their speculation
had not paid; but on the very day that their privilege ran out that
native found the $2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to them. Even the
diamond culture is not without its romantic episodes.
The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in
these matters with three which--according to legend--are among the crown
trinkets of Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to be worth
$20,000,000; another, $25,000,000, and the third something over
$28,000,000.
Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not; and yet
they are of but little importance by comparison with the one wherewith
the Boer wagoner chocked his wheel on that steep grade as heretofore
referred to. In Kimberley I had some conversation with the man who saw
the Boer do that--an incident which had occurred twenty-seven or
twenty-eight years before I had my talk with him. He assured me that
that diamond’s value could have been over a billion dollars, but not
under it. I believed him, because he had devoted twenty-seven years to
hunting for it, and was in a position to know.
A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the tedious and
laborious and costly processes whereby the diamonds are gotten out of the
deeps of the earth and freed from the base stuffs which imprison them is
the visit to the De Beers offices in the town of Kimberley, where the
result of each day’s mining is brought every day, and, weighed, assorted,
valued, and deposited in safes against shipping-day. An unknown and
unaccredited person cannot get into that place; and it seemed apparent
from the generous supply of warning and protective and prohibitory signs
that were posted all about, that not even the known and accredited can
steal diamonds there without inconvenience.
We saw the day’s output--shining little nests of diamonds, distributed a
foot apart, along a counter, each nest reposing upon a sheet of white
paper. That day’s catch was about $70,000 worth. In the course of a
year half a ton of diamonds pass under the scales there and sleep on that
counter; the resulting money is $18,000,000 or $20,000,000. Profit,
about $12,000,000.
Young girls were doing the sorting--a nice, clean, dainty, and probably
distressing employment. Every day ducal incomes sift and sparkle through
the fingers of those young girls; yet they go to bed at night as poor as
they were when they got up in the morning. The same thing next day, and
all the days.
They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native state. They
are of various shapes; they have flat surfaces, rounded borders, and
never a sharp edge. They are of all colors and shades of color, from
dewdrop white to actual black; and their smooth and rounded surfaces and
contours, variety of color, and transparent limpidity make them look like
piles of assorted candies. A very light straw color is their commonest
tint. It seemed to me that these uncut gems must be more beautiful than
any cut ones could be; but when a collection of cut ones was brought out,
I saw my mistake. Nothing is so beautiful as a rose diamond with the
light playing through it, except that uncostly thing which is just like
it--wavy sea-water with the sunlight playing through it and striking a
white-sand bottom.
Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town, and the end of our
African journeyings. And well satisfied; for, towering above us was
Table Mountain--a reminder that we had now seen each and all of the great
features of South Africa except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is
a large exception. I know quite well that whether Mr. Rhodes is the
lofty and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes believe him to
be, or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account him, he is
still the most imposing figure in the British empire outside of England.
When he stands on the Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi.
He is the only colonial in the British dominions whose goings and comings
are chronicled and discussed under all the globe’s meridians, and whose
speeches, unclipped, are cabled from the ends of the earth; and he is the
only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for attention
with an eclipse.
That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of fortune, not even
his dearest South African enemies were willing to deny, so far as I heard
them testify. The whole South African world seemed to stand in a kind of
shuddering awe of him, friend and enemy alike. It was as if he were
deputy-God on the one side, deputy-Satan on the other, proprietor of the
people, able to make them or ruin them by his breath, worshiped by many,
hated by many, but blasphemed by none among the judicious, and even by
the indiscreet in guarded whispers only.
What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his
prodigious wealth--a wealth whose drippings in salaries and in other ways
support multitudes and make them his interested and loyal vassals;
another says it is his personal magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and
that these hypnotize and make happy slaves of all that drift within the
circle of their influence; another says it is his majestic ideas, his
vast schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his patriotic
and unselfish ambition to spread her beneficent protection and her just
rule over the pagan wastes of Africa and make luminous the African
darkness with the glory of her name; and another says he wants the earth
and wants it for his own, and that the belief that he will get it and let
his friends in on the ground floor is the secret that rivets so many eyes
upon him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is unobstructed.
One may take his choice. They are all the same price. One fact is sure:
he keeps his prominence and a vast following, no matter what he does. He
“deceives” the Duke of Fife--it is the Duke’s word--but that does not
destroy the Duke’s loyalty to him. He tricks the Reformers into immense
trouble with his Raid, but the most of them believe he meant well. He
weeps over the harshly-taxed Johannesburgers and makes them his friends;
at the same time he taxes his Charter-settlers 50 per cent., and so wins
their affection and their confidence that they are squelched with despair
at every rumor that the Charter is to be annulled. He raids and robs and
slays and enslaves the Matabele and gets worlds of Charter-Christian
applause for it. He has beguiled England into buying Charter waste paper
for Bank of England notes, ton for ton, and the ravished still burn
incense to him as the Eventual God of Plenty. He has done everything he
could think of to pull himself down to the ground; he has done more than
enough to pull sixteen common-run great men down; yet there he stands, to
this day, upon his dizzy summit under the dome of the sky, an apparent
permanency, the marvel of the time, the mystery of the age, an Archangel
with wings to half the world, Satan with a tail to the other half.
I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a
piece of the rope for a keepsake.
CONCLUSION.
I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the
angels speak English with an accent.
--Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
I saw Table Rock, anyway--a majestic pile. It is 3,000 feet high. It is
also 17,000 feet high. These figures may be relied upon. I got them in
Cape Town from the two best-informed citizens, men who had made Table
Rock the study of their lives. And I saw Table Bay, so named for its
levelness. I saw the Castle--built by the Dutch East India Company three
hundred years ago--where the Commanding General lives; I saw St. Simon’s
Bay, where the Admiral lives. I saw the Government, also the Parliament,
where they quarreled in two languages when I was there, and agreed in
none. I saw the club. I saw and explored the beautiful sea-girt drives
that wind about the mountains and through the paradise where the villas
are: Also I saw some of the fine old Dutch mansions, pleasant homes of
the early times, pleasant homes to-day, and enjoyed the privilege of
their hospitalities.
And just before I sailed I saw in one of them a quaint old picture which
was a link in a curious romance--a picture of a pale, intellectual young
man in a pink coat with a high black collar. It was a portrait of Dr.
James Barry, a military surgeon who came out to the Cape fifty years ago
with his regiment. He was a wild young fellow, and was guilty of various
kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to headquarters in
England, and it was in each case expected that orders would come out to
deal with him promptly and severely, but for some mysterious reason no
orders of any kind ever came back--nothing came but just an impressive
silence. This made him an imposing and uncanny wonder to the town.
Next, he was promoted--away up. He was made Medical Superintendent
General, and transferred to India. Presently he was back at the Cape
again and at his escapades once more. There were plenty of pretty girls,
but none of them caught him, none of them could get hold of his heart;
evidently he was not a marrying man. And that was another marvel,
another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk. Once he was called in
the night, an obstetric service, to do what he could for a woman who was
believed to be dying. He was prompt and scientific, and saved both
mother and child. There are other instances of record which testify to
his mastership of his profession; and many which testify to his love of
it and his devotion to it. Among other adventures of his was a duel of a
desperate sort, fought with swords, at the Castle. He killed his man.
The child heretofore mentioned as having been saved by Dr. Barry so long
ago, was named for him, and still lives in Cape Town. He had Dr.
Barry’s portrait painted, and gave it to the gentleman in whose old Dutch
house I saw it--the quaint figure in pink coat and high black collar.
The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is because I have not
finished. Dr. Barry died in Cape Town 30 years ago. It was then
discovered that he was A WOMAN.
The legend goes that enquiries--soon silenced--developed the fact that
she was a daughter of a great English house, and that that was why her
Cape wildnesses brought no punishment and got no notice when reported to
the government at home. Her name was an alias. She had disgraced
herself with her people; so she chose to change her name and her sex and
take a new start in the world.
We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship, perfectly
appointed. The voyage to England occupied a short fortnight, without a
stop except at Madeira. A good and restful voyage for tired people, and
there were several of us. I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand
years, though it was only a twelvemonth, and a considerable number of the
others were Reformers who were fagged out with their five months of
seclusion in the Pretoria prison.
Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier, where we
embarked thirteen months before. It seemed a fine and large thing to
have accomplished--the circumnavigation of this great globe in that
little time, and I was privately proud of it. For a moment.
Then came one of those vanity-snubbing astronomical reports from the
Observatory-people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light
had lately flamed up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at
a gait which would enable it to do all that I had done in a minute and a
half. Human pride is not worth while; there is always something lying in
wait to take the wind out of it.
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG AND OTHER STORIES
By Mark Twain
CONTENTS:
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG
MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT
THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY
IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?
MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON
AT THE APPETITE-CURE
CONCERNING THE JEWS
FROM THE 'LONDON TIMES' OF 1904
ABOUT PLAY-ACTING
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
LUCK
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA
MEISTERSCHAFT
MY BOYHOOD DREAMS
TO THE ABOVE OLD PEOPLE
IN MEMORIAM--OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG
It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town
in all the region round about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched
during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its
possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its
perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to
its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their
culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education.
Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way
of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to
harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The
neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and
affected to sneer at Hadleyburg's pride in it and call it vanity; but all
the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality
an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that
the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the
recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek
for responsible employment.
But at last, in the drift of time, Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend
a passing stranger--possibly without knowing it, certainly without
caring, for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared not a rap
for strangers or their opinions. Still, it would have been well to make
an exception in this one's case, for he was a bitter man, and revengeful.
All through his wanderings during a whole year he kept his injury in
mind, and gave all his leisure moments to trying to invent a compensating
satisfaction for it. He contrived many plans, and all of them were good,
but none of them was quite sweeping enough: the poorest of them would
hurt a great many individuals, but what he wanted was a plan which would
comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as one person escape
unhurt. At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain
it lit up his whole head with an evil joy. He began to form a plan at
once, saying to himself "That is the thing to do--I will corrupt the
town."
Six months later he went to Hadleyburg, and arrived in a buggy at the
house of the old cashier of the bank about ten at night. He got a sack
out of the buggy, shouldered it, and staggered with it through the
cottage yard, and knocked at the door. A woman's voice said "Come in,"
and he entered, and set his sack behind the stove in the parlour, saying
politely to the old lady who sat reading the "Missionary Herald" by the
lamp:
"Pray keep your seat, madam, I will not disturb you. There--now it is
pretty well concealed; one would hardly know it was there. Can I see
your husband a moment, madam?"
No, he was gone to Brixton, and might not return before morning.
"Very well, madam, it is no matter. I merely wanted to leave that sack
in his care, to be delivered to the rightful owner when he shall be
found. I am a stranger; he does not know me; I am merely passing through
the town to-night to discharge a matter which has been long in my mind.
My errand is now completed, and I go pleased and a little proud, and you
will never see me again. There is a paper attached to the sack which
will explain everything. Good-night, madam."
The old lady was afraid of the mysterious big stranger, and was glad to
see him go. But her curiosity was roused, and she went straight to the
sack and brought away the paper. It began as follows:
"TO BE PUBLISHED, or, the right man sought out by private inquiry
--either will answer. This sack contains gold coin weighing a hundred
and sixty pounds four ounces--"
"Mercy on us, and the door not locked!"
Mrs. Richards flew to it all in a tremble and locked it, then pulled down
the window-shades and stood frightened, worried, and wondering if there
was anything else she could do toward making herself and the money more
safe. She listened awhile for burglars, then surrendered to curiosity,
and went back to the lamp and finished reading the paper:
"I am a foreigner, and am presently going back to my own country, to
remain there permanently. I am grateful to America for what I have
received at her hands during my long stay under her flag; and to one of
her citizens--a citizen of Hadleyburg--I am especially grateful for a
great kindness done me a year or two ago. Two great kindnesses in fact.
I will explain. I was a gambler. I say I WAS. I was a ruined gambler.
I arrived in this village at night, hungry and without a penny. I asked
for help--in the dark; I was ashamed to beg in the light. I begged of
the right man. He gave me twenty dollars--that is to say, he gave me
life, as I considered it. He also gave me fortune; for out of that money
I have made myself rich at the gaming-table. And finally, a remark which
he made to me has remained with me to this day, and has at last conquered
me; and in conquering has saved the remnant of my morals: I shall gamble
no more. Now I have no idea who that man was, but I want him found, and
I want him to have this money, to give away, throw away, or keep, as he
pleases. It is merely my way of testifying my gratitude to him. If I
could stay, I would find him myself; but no matter, he will be found.
This is an honest town, an incorruptible town, and I know I can trust it
without fear. This man can be identified by the remark which he made to
me; I feel persuaded that he will remember it.
"And now my plan is this: If you prefer to conduct the inquiry
privately, do so. Tell the contents of this present writing to any one
who is likely to be the right man. If he shall answer, 'I am the man;
the remark I made was so-and-so,' apply the test--to wit: open the sack,
and in it you will find a sealed envelope containing that remark. If the
remark mentioned by the candidate tallies with it, give him the money,
and ask no further questions, for he is certainly the right man.
"But if you shall prefer a public inquiry, then publish this present
writing in the local paper--with these instructions added, to wit: Thirty
days from now, let the candidate appear at the town-hall at eight in the
evening (Friday), and hand his remark, in a sealed envelope, to the Rev.
Mr. Burgess (if he will be kind enough to act); and let Mr. Burgess there
and then destroy the seals of the sack, open it, and see if the remark is
correct: if correct, let the money be delivered, with my sincere
gratitude, to my benefactor thus identified."
Mrs. Richards sat down, gently quivering with excitement, and was soon
lost in thinkings--after this pattern: "What a strange thing it is!
. . . And what a fortune for that kind man who set his bread afloat upon
the waters! . . . If it had only been my husband that did it!--for we are
so poor, so old and poor! . . ." Then, with a sigh--"But it was not my
Edward; no, it was not he that gave a stranger twenty dollars. It is a
pity too; I see it now. . . " Then, with a shudder--"But it is GAMBLERS'
money! the wages of sin; we couldn't take it; we couldn't touch it. I
don't like to be near it; it seems a defilement." She moved to a farther
chair. . . "I wish Edward would come, and take it to the bank; a burglar
might come at any moment; it is dreadful to be here all alone with it."
At eleven Mr. Richards arrived, and while his wife was saying "I am SO
glad you've come!" he was saying, "I am so tired--tired clear out; it is
dreadful to be poor, and have to make these dismal journeys at my time of
life. Always at the grind, grind, grind, on a salary--another man's
slave, and he sitting at home in his slippers, rich and comfortable."
"I am so sorry for you, Edward, you know that; but be comforted; we have
our livelihood; we have our good name--"
"Yes, Mary, and that is everything. Don't mind my talk--it's just a
moment's irritation and doesn't mean anything. Kiss me--there, it's all
gone now, and I am not complaining any more. What have you been getting?
What's in the sack?"
Then his wife told him the great secret. It dazed him for a moment; then
he said:
"It weighs a hundred and sixty pounds? Why, Mary, it's for-ty thousand
dollars--think of it--a whole fortune! Not ten men in this village are
worth that much. Give me the paper."
He skimmed through it and said:
"Isn't it an adventure! Why, it's a romance; it's like the impossible
things one reads about in books, and never sees in life." He was well
stirred up now; cheerful, even gleeful. He tapped his old wife on the
cheek, and said humorously, "Why, we're rich, Mary, rich; all we've got
to do is to bury the money and burn the papers. If the gambler ever comes
to inquire, we'll merely look coldly upon him and say: 'What is this
nonsense you are talking? We have never heard of you and your sack of
gold before;' and then he would look foolish, and--"
"And in the meantime, while you are running on with your jokes, the money
is still here, and it is fast getting along toward burglar-time."
"True. Very well, what shall we do--make the inquiry private? No, not
that; it would spoil the romance. The public method is better. Think
what a noise it will make! And it will make all the other towns jealous;
for no stranger would trust such a thing to any town but Hadleyburg, and
they know it. It's a great card for us. I must get to the
printing-office now, or I shall be too late."
"But stop--stop--don't leave me here alone with it, Edward!"
But he was gone. For only a little while, however. Not far from his own
house he met the editor--proprietor of the paper, and gave him the
document, and said "Here is a good thing for you, Cox--put it in."
"It may be too late, Mr. Richards, but I'll see."
At home again, he and his wife sat down to talk the charming mystery
over; they were in no condition for sleep. The first question was, Who
could the citizen have been who gave the stranger the twenty dollars? It
seemed a simple one; both answered it in the same breath--
"Barclay Goodson."
"Yes," said Richards, "he could have done it, and it would have been like
him, but there's not another in the town."
"Everybody will grant that, Edward--grant it privately, anyway. For six
months, now, the village has been its own proper self once more--honest,
narrow, self-righteous, and stingy."
"It is what he always called it, to the day of his death--said it right
out publicly, too."
"Yes, and he was hated for it."
"Oh, of course; but he didn't care. I reckon he was the best-hated man
among us, except the Reverend Burgess."
"Well, Burgess deserves it--he will never get another congregation here.
Mean as the town is, it knows how to estimate HIM. Edward, doesn't it
seem odd that the stranger should appoint Burgess to deliver the money?"
"Well, yes--it does. That is--that is--"
"Why so much that-IS-ing? Would YOU select him?"
"Mary, maybe the stranger knows him better than this village does."
"Much THAT would help Burgess!"
The husband seemed perplexed for an answer; the wife kept a steady eye
upon him, and waited. Finally Richards said, with the hesitancy of one
who is making a statement which is likely to encounter doubt,
"Mary, Burgess is not a bad man."
His wife was certainly surprised.
"Nonsense!" she exclaimed.
"He is not a bad man. I know. The whole of his unpopularity had its
foundation in that one thing--the thing that made so much noise."
"That 'one thing,' indeed! As if that 'one thing' wasn't enough, all by
itself."
"Plenty. Plenty. Only he wasn't guilty of it."
"How you talk! Not guilty of it! Everybody knows he WAS guilty."
"Mary, I give you my word--he was innocent."
"I can't believe it and I don't. How do you know?"
"It is a confession. I am ashamed, but I will make it. I was the only
man who knew he was innocent. I could have saved him, and--and--well,
you know how the town was wrought up--I hadn't the pluck to do it. It
would have turned everybody against me. I felt mean, ever so mean; ut I
didn't dare; I hadn't the manliness to face that."
Mary looked troubled, and for a while was silent. Then she said
stammeringly:
"I--I don't think it would have done for you to--to--One mustn't
--er--public opinion--one has to be so careful--so--" It was a difficult
road, and she got mired; but after a little she got started again. "It
was a great pity, but--Why, we couldn't afford it, Edward--we couldn't
indeed. Oh, I wouldn't have had you do it for anything!"
"It would have lost us the good-will of so many people, Mary; and
then--and then--"
"What troubles me now is, what HE thinks of us, Edward."
"He? HE doesn't suspect that I could have saved him."
"Oh," exclaimed the wife, in a tone of relief, "I am glad of that. As
long as he doesn't know that you could have saved him, he--he--well that
makes it a great deal better. Why, I might have known he didn't know,
because he is always trying to be friendly with us, as little
encouragement as we give him. More than once people have twitted me with
it. There's the Wilsons, and the Wilcoxes, and the Harknesses, they take
a mean pleasure in saying 'YOUR FRIEND Burgess,' because they know it
pesters me. I wish he wouldn't persist in liking us so; I can't think
why he keeps it up."
"I can explain it. It's another confession. When the thing was new and
hot, and the town made a plan to ride him on a rail, my conscience hurt
me so that I couldn't stand it, and I went privately and gave him notice,
and he got out of the town and stayed out till it was safe to come back."
"Edward! If the town had found it out--"
"DON'T! It scares me yet, to think of it. I repented of it the minute
it was done; and I was even afraid to tell you lest your face might
betray it to somebody. I didn't sleep any that night, for worrying. But
after a few days I saw that no one was going to suspect me, and after
that I got to feeling glad I did it. And I feel glad yet, Mary--glad
through and through."
"So do I, now, for it would have been a dreadful way to treat him. Yes,
I'm glad; for really you did owe him that, you know. But, Edward,
suppose it should come out yet, some day!"
"It won't."
"Why?"
"Because everybody thinks it was Goodson."
"Of course they would!"
"Certainly. And of course HE didn't care. They persuaded poor old
Sawlsberry to go and charge it on him, and he went blustering over there
and did it. Goodson looked him over, like as if he was hunting for a
place on him that he could despise the most; then he says, 'So you are
the Committee of Inquiry, are you?' Sawlsberry said that was about what
he was. 'H'm. Do they require particulars, or do you reckon a kind of a
GENERAL answer will do?' 'If they require particulars, I will come back,
Mr. Goodson; I will take the general answer first.' 'Very well, then,
tell them to go to hell--I reckon that's general enough. And I'll give
you some advice, Sawlsberry; when you come back for the particulars,
fetch a basket to carry what is left of yourself home in.'"
"Just like Goodson; it's got all the marks. He had only one vanity; he
thought he could give advice better than any other person."
"It settled the business, and saved us, Mary. The subject was dropped."
"Bless you, I'm not doubting THAT."
Then they took up the gold-sack mystery again, with strong interest. Soon
the conversation began to suffer breaks--interruptions caused by absorbed
thinkings. The breaks grew more and more frequent. At last Richards
lost himself wholly in thought. He sat long, gazing vacantly at the
floor, and by-and-by he began to punctuate his thoughts with little
nervous movements of his hands that seemed to indicate vexation.
Meantime his wife too had relapsed into a thoughtful silence, and her
movements were beginning to show a troubled discomfort. Finally Richards
got up and strode aimlessly about the room, ploughing his hands through
his hair, much as a somnambulist might do who was having a bad dream.
Then he seemed to arrive at a definite purpose; and without a word he put
on his hat and passed quickly out of the house. His wife sat brooding,
with a drawn face, and did not seem to be aware that she was alone. Now
and then she murmured, "Lead us not into t . . . but--but--we are so
poor, so poor! . . . Lead us not into . . . Ah, who would be hurt by
it?--and no one would ever know . . . Lead us . . . " The voice died out
in mumblings. After a little she glanced up and muttered in a
half-frightened, half-glad way--
"He is gone! But, oh dear, he may be too late--too late . . . Maybe
not--maybe there is still time." She rose and stood thinking, nervously
clasping and unclasping her hands. A slight shudder shook her frame, and
she said, out of a dry throat, "God forgive me--it's awful to think such
things--but . . . Lord, how we are made--how strangely we are made!"
She turned the light low, and slipped stealthily over and knelt down by
the sack and felt of its ridgy sides with her hands, and fondled them
lovingly; and there was a gloating light in her poor old eyes. She fell
into fits of absence; and came half out of them at times to mutter "If we
had only waited!--oh, if we had only waited a little, and not been in
such a hurry!"
Meantime Cox had gone home from his office and told his wife all about
the strange thing that had happened, and they had talked it over eagerly,
and guessed that the late Goodson was the only man in the town who could
have helped a suffering stranger with so noble a sum as twenty dollars.
Then there was a pause, and the two became thoughtful and silent. And
by-and-by nervous and fidgety. At last the wife said, as if to herself,
"Nobody knows this secret but the Richardses . . . and us . . . nobody."
The husband came out of his thinkings with a slight start, and gazed
wistfully at his wife, whose face was become very pale; then he
hesitatingly rose, and glanced furtively at his hat, then at his wife--a
sort of mute inquiry. Mrs. Cox swallowed once or twice, with her hand at
her throat, then in place of speech she nodded her head. In a moment she
was alone, and mumbling to herself.
And now Richards and Cox were hurrying through the deserted streets, from
opposite directions. They met, panting, at the foot of the
printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each other's
face. Cox whispered:
"Nobody knows about this but us?"
The whispered answer was:
"Not a soul--on honour, not a soul!"
"If it isn't too late to--"
The men were starting up-stairs; at this moment they were overtaken by a
boy, and Cox asked,
"Is that you, Johnny?"
"Yes, sir."
"You needn't ship the early mail--nor ANY mail; wait till I tell you."
"It's already gone, sir."
"GONE?" It had the sound of an unspeakable disappointment in it.
"Yes, sir. Time-table for Brixton and all the towns beyond changed
to-day, sir--had to get the papers in twenty minutes earlier than common.
I had to rush; if I had been two minutes later--"
The men turned and walked slowly away, not waiting to hear the rest.
Neither of them spoke during ten minutes; then Cox said, in a vexed tone,
"What possessed you to be in such a hurry, I can't make out."
The answer was humble enough:
"I see it now, but somehow I never thought, you know, until it was too
late. But the next time--"
"Next time be hanged! It won't come in a thousand years."
Then the friends separated without a good-night, and dragged themselves
home with the gait of mortally stricken men. At their homes their wives
sprang up with an eager "Well?"--then saw the answer with their eyes and
sank down sorrowing, without waiting for it to come in words. In both
houses a discussion followed of a heated sort--a new thing; there had
been discussions before, but not heated ones, not ungentle ones. The
discussions to-night were a sort of seeming plagiarisms of each other.
Mrs. Richards said:
"If you had only waited, Edward--if you had only stopped to think; but
no, you must run straight to the printing-office and spread it all over
the world."
"It SAID publish it."
"That is nothing; it also said do it privately, if you liked. There,
now--is that true, or not?"
"Why, yes--yes, it is true; but when I thought what a stir it would make,
and what a compliment it was to Hadleyburg that a stranger should trust
it so--"
"Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to think,
you would have seen that you COULDN'T find the right man, because he is
in his grave, and hasn't left chick nor child nor relation behind him;
and as long as the money went to somebody that awfully needed it, and
nobody would be hurt by it, and--and--"
She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some comforting
thing to say, and presently came out with this:
"But after all, Mary, it must be for the best--it must be; we know that.
And we must remember that it was so ordered--"
"Ordered! Oh, everything's ORDERED, when a person has to find some way
out when he has been stupid. Just the same, it was ORDERED that the money
should come to us in this special way, and it was you that must take it
on yourself to go meddling with the designs of Providence--and who gave
you the right? It was wicked, that is what it was--just blasphemous
presumption, and no more becoming to a meek and humble professor of--"
"But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long, like
the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to stop not
a single moment to think when there's an honest thing to be done--"
"Oh, I know it, I know it--it's been one everlasting training and
training and training in honesty--honesty shielded, from the very cradle,
against every possible temptation, and so it's ARTIFICIAL honesty, and
weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen this night. God
knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and
indestructible honesty until now--and now, under the very first big and
real temptation, I--Edward, it is my belief that this town's honesty is
as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours. It is a mean town, a hard,
stingy town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so
celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that
if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its
grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I've
made confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I've been one all
my life, without knowing it. Let no man call me honest again--I will not
have it."
"I--Well, Mary, I feel a good deal as you do: I certainly do. It seems
strange, too, so strange. I never could have believed it--never."
A long silence followed; both were sunk in thought. At last the wife
looked up and said:
"I know what you are thinking, Edward."
Richards had the embarrassed look of a person who is caught.
"I am ashamed to confess it, Mary, but--"
"It's no matter, Edward, I was thinking the same question myself."
"I hope so. State it."
"You were thinking, if a body could only guess out WHAT THE REMARK WAS
that Goodson made to the stranger."
"It's perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?"
"I'm past it. Let us make a pallet here; we've got to stand watch till
the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack. . . Oh dear, oh
dear--if we hadn't made the mistake!"
The pallet was made, and Mary said:
"The open sesame--what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark
could have been. But come; we will get to bed now."
"And sleep?"
"No; think."
"Yes; think."
By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their
reconciliation, and were turning in--to think, to think, and toss, and
fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been which
Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark; that remark
worth forty thousand dollars, cash.
The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than usual
that night was this: The foreman of Cox's paper was the local
representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary
representative, for it wasn't four times a year that he could furnish
thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was different.
His despatch stating what he had caught got an instant answer:
"Send the whole thing--all the details--twelve hundred words."
A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest
man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the name of
Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America, from Montreal
to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of Florida;
and millions and millions of people were discussing the stranger and his
money-sack, and wondering if the right man would be found, and hoping
some more news about the matter would come soon--right away.
II
Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated--astonished--happy--vain.
Vain beyond imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and their wives
went about shaking hands with each other, and beaming, and smiling, and
congratulating, and saying THIS thing adds a new word to the
dictionary--HADLEYBURG, synonym for INCORRUPTIBLE--destined to live in
dictionaries for ever! And the minor and unimportant citizens and their
wives went around acting in much the same way. Everybody ran to the bank
to see the gold-sack; and before noon grieved and envious crowds began to
flock in from Brixton and all neighbouring towns; and that afternoon and
next day reporters began to arrive from everywhere to verify the sack and
its history and write the whole thing up anew, and make dashing free-hand
pictures of the sack, and of Richards's house, and the bank, and the
Presbyterian church, and the Baptist church, and the public square, and
the town-hall where the test would be applied and the money delivered;
and damnable portraits of the Richardses, and Pinkerton the banker, and
Cox, and the foreman, and Reverend Burgess, and the postmaster--and even
of Jack Halliday, who was the loafing, good-natured, no-account,
irreverent fisherman, hunter, boys' friend, stray-dogs' friend, typical
"Sam Lawson" of the town. The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton
showed the sack to all comers, and rubbed his sleek palms together
pleasantly, and enlarged upon the town's fine old reputation for honesty
and upon this wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that
the example would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be
epoch-making in the matter of moral regeneration. And so on, and so on.
By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild intoxication
of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent delight--a sort of
deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces bore a look of peaceful,
holy happiness.
Then a change came. It was a gradual change; so gradual that its
beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all, except by
Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always made fun of it,
too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out chaffing remarks about
people not looking quite so happy as they did a day or two ago; and next
he claimed that the new aspect was deepening to positive sadness; next,
that it was taking on a sick look; and finally he said that everybody was
become so moody, thoughtful, and absent-minded that he could rob the
meanest man in town of a cent out of the bottom of his breeches pocket
and not disturb his reverie.
At this stage--or at about this stage--a saying like this was dropped at
bedtime--with a sigh, usually--by the head of each of the nineteen
principal households:
"Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?"
And straightway--with a shudder--came this, from the man's wife:
"Oh, DON'T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put it
away from you, for God's sake!"
But that question was wrung from those men again the next night--and got
the same retort. But weaker.
And the third night the men uttered the question yet again--with anguish,
and absently. This time--and the following night--the wives fidgeted
feebly, and tried to say something. But didn't.
And the night after that they found their tongues and responded
--longingly:
"Oh, if we COULD only guess!"
Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and
disparaging. He went diligently about, laughing at the town,
individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one left in the
village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and emptiness. Not
even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box around
on a tripod, playing that it was a camera, and halted all passers and
aimed the thing and said "Ready!--now look pleasant, please," but not
even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any
softening.
So three weeks passed--one week was left. It was Saturday evening after
supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and bustle and
shopping and larking, the streets were empty and desolate. Richards and
his old wife sat apart in their little parlour--miserable and thinking.
This was become their evening habit now: the life-long habit which had
preceded it, of reading, knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or
paying neighbourly calls, was dead and gone and forgotten, ages ago--two
or three weeks ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited--the
whole village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess
out that remark.
The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the
superscription and the post-mark--unfamiliar, both--and tossed the letter
on the table and resumed his might-have-beens and his hopeless dull
miseries where he had left them off. Two or three hours later his wife
got wearily up and was going away to bed without a good-night--custom
now--but she stopped near the letter and eyed it awhile with a dead
interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it over. Richards,
sitting there with his chair tilted back against the wall and his chin
between his knees, heard something fall. It was his wife. He sprang to
her side, but she cried out:
"Leave me alone, I am too happy. Read the letter--read it!"
He did. He devoured it, his brain reeling. The letter was from a
distant State, and it said:
"I am a stranger to you, but no matter: I have something to tell. I
have just arrived home from Mexico, and learned about that episode. Of
course you do not know who made that remark, but I know, and I am the
only person living who does know. It was GOODSON. I knew him well, many
years ago. I passed through your village that very night, and was his
guest till the midnight train came along. I overheard him make that
remark to the stranger in the dark--it was in Hale Alley. He and I
talked of it the rest of the way home, and while smoking in his house.
He mentioned many of your villagers in the course of his talk--most of
them in a very uncomplimentary way, but two or three favourably: among
these latter yourself. I say 'favourably'--nothing stronger. I remember
his saying he did not actually LIKE any person in the town--not one; but
that you--I THINK he said you--am almost sure--had done him a very great
service once, possibly without knowing the full value of it, and he
wished he had a fortune, he would leave it to you when he died, and a
curse apiece for the rest of the citizens. Now, then, if it was you that
did him that service, you are his legitimate heir, and entitled to the
sack of gold. I know that I can trust to your honour and honesty, for in
a citizen of Hadleyburg these virtues are an unfailing inheritance, and
so I am going to reveal to you the remark, well satisfied that if you are
not the right man you will seek and find the right one and see that poor
Goodson's debt of gratitude for the service referred to is paid. This is
the remark 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN: GO, AND REFORM.'
"HOWARD L. STEPHENSON."
"Oh, Edward, the money is ours, and I am so grateful, OH, so
grateful,--kiss me, dear, it's for ever since we kissed--and we needed it
so--the money--and now you are free of Pinkerton and his bank, and
nobody's slave any more; it seems to me I could fly for joy."
It was a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee
caressing each other; it was the old days come again--days that had begun
with their courtship and lasted without a break till the stranger brought
the deadly money. By-and-by the wife said:
"Oh, Edward, how lucky it was you did him that grand service, poor
Goodson! I never liked him, but I love him now. And it was fine and
beautiful of you never to mention it or brag about it." Then, with a
touch of reproach, "But you ought to have told ME, Edward, you ought to
have told your wife, you know."
"Well, I--er--well, Mary, you see--"
"Now stop hemming and hawing, and tell me about it, Edward. I always
loved you, and now I'm proud of you. Everybody believes there was only
one good generous soul in this village, and now it turns out that
you--Edward, why don't you tell me?"
"Well--er--er--Why, Mary, I can't!"
"You CAN'T? WHY can't you?"
"You see, he--well, he--he made me promise I wouldn't."
The wife looked him over, and said, very slowly:
"Made--you--promise? Edward, what do you tell me that for?"
"Mary, do you think I would lie?"
She was troubled and silent for a moment, then she laid her hand within
his and said:
"No . . . no. We have wandered far enough from our bearings--God spare
us that! In all your life you have never uttered a lie. But now--now
that the foundations of things seem to be crumbling from under us,
we--we--" She lost her voice for a moment, then said, brokenly, "Lead us
not into temptation. . . I think you made the promise, Edward. Let it
rest so. Let us keep away from that ground. Now--that is all gone by;
let us be happy again; it is no time for clouds."
Edward found it something of an effort to comply, for his mind kept
wandering--trying to remember what the service was that he had done
Goodson.
The couple lay awake the most of the night, Mary happy and busy, Edward
busy, but not so happy. Mary was planning what she would do with the
money. Edward was trying to recall that service. At first his
conscience was sore on account of the lie he had told Mary--if it was a
lie. After much reflection--suppose it WAS a lie? What then? Was it
such a great matter? Aren't we always ACTING lies? Then why not tell
them? Look at Mary--look what she had done. While he was hurrying off on
his honest errand, what was she doing? Lamenting because the papers
hadn't been destroyed and the money kept. Is theft better than lying?
THAT point lost its sting--the lie dropped into the background and left
comfort behind it. The next point came to the front: HAD he rendered
that service? Well, here was Goodson's own evidence as reported in
Stephenson's letter; there could be no better evidence than that--it was
even PROOF that he had rendered it. Of course. So that point was
settled. . . No, not quite. He recalled with a wince that this unknown
Mr. Stephenson was just a trifle unsure as to whether the performer of it
was Richards or some other--and, oh dear, he had put Richards on his
honour! He must himself decide whither that money must go--and Mr.
Stephenson was not doubting that if he was the wrong man he would go
honourably and find the right one. Oh, it was odious to put a man in
such a situation--ah, why couldn't Stephenson have left out that doubt?
What did he want to intrude that for?
Further reflection. How did it happen that RICHARDS'S name remained in
Stephenson's mind as indicating the right man, and not some other man's
name? That looked good. Yes, that looked very good. In fact it went on
looking better and better, straight along--until by-and-by it grew into
positive PROOF. And then Richards put the matter at once out of his
mind, for he had a private instinct that a proof once established is
better left so.
He was feeling reasonably comfortable now, but there was still one other
detail that kept pushing itself on his notice: of course he had done
that service--that was settled; but what WAS that service? He must recall
it--he would not go to sleep till he had recalled it; it would make his
peace of mind perfect. And so he thought and thought. He thought of a
dozen things--possible services, even probable services--but none of them
seemed adequate, none of them seemed large enough, none of them seemed
worth the money--worth the fortune Goodson had wished he could leave in
his will. And besides, he couldn't remember having done them, anyway.
Now, then--now, then--what KIND of a service would it be that would make
a man so inordinately grateful? Ah--the saving of his soul! That must
be it. Yes, he could remember, now, how he once set himself the task of
converting Goodson, and laboured at it as much as--he was going to say
three months; but upon closer examination it shrunk to a month, then to a
week, then to a day, then to nothing. Yes, he remembered now, and with
unwelcome vividness, that Goodson had told him to go to thunder and mind
his own business--HE wasn't hankering to follow Hadleyburg to heaven!
So that solution was a failure--he hadn't saved Goodson's soul. Richards
was discouraged. Then after a little came another idea: had he saved
Goodson's property? No, that wouldn't do--he hadn't any. His life?
That is it! Of course. Why, he might have thought of it before. This
time he was on the right track, sure. His imagination-mill was hard at
work in a minute, now.
Thereafter, during a stretch of two exhausting hours, he was busy saving
Goodson's life. He saved it in all kinds of difficult and perilous ways.
In every case he got it saved satisfactorily up to a certain point; then,
just as he was beginning to get well persuaded that it had really
happened, a troublesome detail would turn up which made the whole thing
impossible. As in the matter of drowning, for instance. In that case he
had swum out and tugged Goodson ashore in an unconscious state with a
great crowd looking on and applauding, but when he had got it all thought
out and was just beginning to remember all about it, a whole swarm of
disqualifying details arrived on the ground: the town would have known
of the circumstance, Mary would have known of it, it would glare like a
limelight in his own memory instead of being an inconspicuous service
which he had possibly rendered "without knowing its full value." And at
this point he remembered that he couldn't swim anyway.
Ah--THERE was a point which he had been overlooking from the start: it
had to be a service which he had rendered "possibly without knowing the
full value of it." Why, really, that ought to be an easy hunt--much
easier than those others. And sure enough, by-and-by he found it.
Goodson, years and years ago, came near marrying a very sweet and pretty
girl, named Nancy Hewitt, but in some way or other the match had been
broken off; the girl died, Goodson remained a bachelor, and by-and-by
became a soured one and a frank despiser of the human species. Soon
after the girl's death the village found out, or thought it had found
out, that she carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins. Richards
worked at these details a good while, and in the end he thought he
remembered things concerning them which must have gotten mislaid in his
memory through long neglect. He seemed to dimly remember that it was HE
that found out about the negro blood; that it was he that told the
village; that the village told Goodson where they got it; that he thus
saved Goodson from marrying the tainted girl; that he had done him this
great service "without knowing the full value of it," in fact without
knowing that he WAS doing it; but that Goodson knew the value of it, and
what a narrow escape he had had, and so went to his grave grateful to his
benefactor and wishing he had a fortune to leave him. It was all clear
and simple, now, and the more he went over it the more luminous and
certain it grew; and at last, when he nestled to sleep, satisfied and
happy, he remembered the whole thing just as if it had been yesterday.
In fact, he dimly remembered Goodson's TELLING him his gratitude once.
Meantime Mary had spent six thousand dollars on a new house for herself
and a pair of slippers for her pastor, and then had fallen peacefully to
rest.
That same Saturday evening the postman had delivered a letter to each of
the other principal citizens--nineteen letters in all. No two of the
envelopes were alike, and no two of the superscriptions were in the same
hand, but the letters inside were just like each other in every detail
but one. They were exact copies of the letter received by
Richards--handwriting and all--and were all signed by Stephenson, but in
place of Richards's name each receiver's own name appeared.
All night long eighteen principal citizens did what their caste-brother
Richards was doing at the same time--they put in their energies trying to
remember what notable service it was that they had unconsciously done
Barclay Goodson. In no case was it a holiday job; still they succeeded.
And while they were at this work, which was difficult, their wives put in
the night spending the money, which was easy. During that one night the
nineteen wives spent an average of seven thousand dollars each out of the
forty thousand in the sack--a hundred and thirty-three thousand
altogether.
Next day there was a surprise for Jack Halliday. He noticed that the
faces of the nineteen chief citizens and their wives bore that expression
of peaceful and holy happiness again. He could not understand it,
neither was he able to invent any remarks about it that could damage it
or disturb it. And so it was his turn to be dissatisfied with life. His
private guesses at the reasons for the happiness failed in all instances,
upon examination. When he met Mrs. Wilcox and noticed the placid ecstasy
in her face, he said to himself, "Her cat has had kittens"--and went and
asked the cook; it was not so, the cook had detected the happiness, but
did not know the cause. When Halliday found the duplicate ecstasy in the
face of "Shadbelly" Billson (village nickname), he was sure some
neighbour of Billson's had broken his leg, but inquiry showed that this
had not happened. The subdued ecstasy in Gregory Yates's face could mean
but one thing--he was a mother-in-law short; it was another mistake.
"And Pinkerton--Pinkerton--he has collected ten cents that he thought he
was going to lose." And so on, and so on. In some cases the guesses had
to remain in doubt, in the others they proved distinct errors. In the
end Halliday said to himself, "Anyway it roots up that there's nineteen
Hadleyburg families temporarily in heaven: I don't know how it happened;
I only know Providence is off duty to-day."
An architect and builder from the next State had lately ventured to set
up a small business in this unpromising village, and his sign had now
been hanging out a week. Not a customer yet; he was a discouraged man,
and sorry he had come. But his weather changed suddenly now. First one
and then another chief citizen's wife said to him privately:
"Come to my house Monday week--but say nothing about it for the present.
We think of building."
He got eleven invitations that day. That night he wrote his daughter and
broke off her match with her student. He said she could marry a mile
higher than that.
Pinkerton the banker and two or three other well-to-do men planned
country-seats--but waited. That kind don't count their chickens until
they are hatched.
The Wilsons devised a grand new thing--a fancy-dress ball. They made no
actual promises, but told all their acquaintanceship in confidence that
they were thinking the matter over and thought they should give it--"and
if we do, you will be invited, of course." People were surprised, and
said, one to another, "Why, they are crazy, those poor Wilsons, they
can't afford it." Several among the nineteen said privately to their
husbands, "It is a good idea, we will keep still till their cheap thing
is over, then WE will give one that will make it sick."
The days drifted along, and the bill of future squanderings rose higher
and higher, wilder and wilder, more and more foolish and reckless. It
began to look as if every member of the nineteen would not only spend his
whole forty thousand dollars before receiving-day, but be actually in
debt by the time he got the money. In some cases light-headed people did
not stop with planning to spend, they really spent--on credit. They
bought land, mortgages, farms, speculative stocks, fine clothes, horses,
and various other things, paid down the bonus, and made themselves liable
for the rest--at ten days. Presently the sober second thought came, and
Halliday noticed that a ghastly anxiety was beginning to show up in a
good many faces. Again he was puzzled, and didn't know what to make of
it. "The Wilcox kittens aren't dead, for they weren't born; nobody's
broken a leg; there's no shrinkage in mother-in-laws; NOTHING has
happened--it is an insolvable mystery."
There was another puzzled man, too--the Rev. Mr. Burgess. For days,
wherever he went, people seemed to follow him or to be watching out for
him; and if he ever found himself in a retired spot, a member of the
nineteen would be sure to appear, thrust an envelope privately into his
hand, whisper "To be opened at the town-hall Friday evening," then vanish
away like a guilty thing. He was expecting that there might be one
claimant for the sack--doubtful, however, Goodson being dead--but it
never occurred to him that all this crowd might be claimants. When the
great Friday came at last, he found that he had nineteen envelopes.
III
The town-hall had never looked finer. The platform at the end of it was
backed by a showy draping of flags; at intervals along the walls were
festoons of flags; the gallery fronts were clothed in flags; the
supporting columns were swathed in flags; all this was to impress the
stranger, for he would be there in considerable force, and in a large
degree he would be connected with the press. The house was full. The
412 fixed seats were occupied; also the 68 extra chairs which had been
packed into the aisles; the steps of the platform were occupied; some
distinguished strangers were given seats on the platform; at the
horseshoe of tables which fenced the front and sides of the platform sat
a strong force of special correspondents who had come from everywhere.
It was the best-dressed house the town had ever produced. There were
some tolerably expensive toilets there, and in several cases the ladies
who wore them had the look of being unfamiliar with that kind of clothes.
At least the town thought they had that look, but the notion could have
arisen from the town's knowledge of the fact that these ladies had never
inhabited such clothes before.
The gold-sack stood on a little table at the front of the platform where
all the house could see it. The bulk of the house gazed at it with a
burning interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and pathetic
interest; a minority of nineteen couples gazed at it tenderly, lovingly,
proprietarily, and the male half of this minority kept saying over to
themselves the moving little impromptu speeches of thankfulness for the
audience's applause and congratulations which they were presently going
to get up and deliver. Every now and then one of these got a piece of
paper out of his vest pocket and privately glanced at it to refresh his
memory.
Of course there was a buzz of conversation going on--there always is; but
at last, when the Rev. Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he
could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still. He related the
curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of
Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of
the town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation
was a treasure of priceless value; that under Providence its value had
now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread this
fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world
upon this village, and made its name for all time, as he hoped and
believed, a synonym for commercial incorruptibility. [Applause.] "And
who is to be the guardian of this noble fame--the community as a whole?
No! The responsibility is individual, not communal. From this day forth
each and every one of you is in his own person its special guardian, and
individually responsible that no harm shall come to it. Do you--does
each of you--accept this great trust? [Tumultuous assent.] Then all is
well. Transmit it to your children and to your children's children.
To-day your purity is beyond reproach--see to it that it shall remain so.
To-day there is not a person in your community who could be beguiled to
touch a penny not his own--see to it that you abide in this grace. ["We
will! we will!"] This is not the place to make comparisons between
ourselves and other communities--some of them ungracious towards us; they
have their ways, we have ours; let us be content. [Applause.] I am
done. Under my hand, my friends, rests a stranger's eloquent recognition
of what we are; through him the world will always henceforth know what we
are. We do not know who he is, but in your name I utter your gratitude,
and ask you to raise your voices in indorsement."
The house rose in a body and made the walls quake with the thunders of
its thankfulness for the space of a long minute. Then it sat down, and
Mr. Burgess took an envelope out of his pocket. The house held its
breath while he slit the envelope open and took from it a slip of paper.
He read its contents--slowly and impressively--the audience listening
with tranced attention to this magic document, each of whose words stood
for an ingot of gold:
"'The remark which I made to the distressed stranger was this: "You are
very far from being a bad man; go, and reform."' Then he continued:--'We
shall know in a moment now whether the remark here quoted corresponds
with the one concealed in the sack; and if that shall prove to be so--and
it undoubtedly will--this sack of gold belongs to a fellow-citizen who
will henceforth stand before the nation as the symbol of the special
virtue which has made our town famous throughout the land--Mr. Billson!'"
The house had gotten itself all ready to burst into the proper tornado of
applause; but instead of doing it, it seemed stricken with a paralysis;
there was a deep hush for a moment or two, then a wave of whispered
murmurs swept the place--of about this tenor: "BILLSON! oh, come, this is
TOO thin! Twenty dollars to a stranger--or ANYBODY--BILLSON! Tell it
to the marines!" And now at this point the house caught its breath all
of a sudden in a new access of astonishment, for it discovered that
whereas in one part of the hall Deacon Billson was standing up with his
head weekly bowed, in another part of it Lawyer Wilson was doing the
same. There was a wondering silence now for a while. Everybody was
puzzled, and nineteen couples were surprised and indignant.
Billson and Wilson turned and stared at each other. Billson asked,
bitingly:
"Why do YOU rise, Mr. Wilson?"
"Because I have a right to. Perhaps you will be good enough to explain
to the house why YOU rise."
"With great pleasure. Because I wrote that paper."
"It is an impudent falsity! I wrote it myself."
It was Burgess's turn to be paralysed. He stood looking vacantly at
first one of the men and then the other, and did not seem to know what to
do. The house was stupefied. Lawyer Wilson spoke up now, and said:
"I ask the Chair to read the name signed to that paper."
That brought the Chair to itself, and it read out the name:
"John Wharton BILLSON."
"There!" shouted Billson, "what have you got to say for yourself now?
And what kind of apology are you going to make to me and to this insulted
house for the imposture which you have attempted to play here?"
"No apologies are due, sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge
you with pilfering my note from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it
signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have
gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the
secret of its wording."
There was likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on;
everybody noticed with distress that the shorthand scribes were
scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair, chair! Order!
order!" Burgess rapped with his gavel, and said:
"Let us not forget the proprieties due. There has evidently been a
mistake somewhere, but surely that is all. If Mr. Wilson gave me an
envelope--and I remember now that he did--I still have it."
He took one out of his pocket, opened it, glanced at it, looked surprised
and worried, and stood silent a few moments. Then he waved his hand in a
wandering and mechanical way, and made an effort or two to say something,
then gave it up, despondently. Several voices cried out:
"Read it! read it! What is it?"
So he began, in a dazed and sleep-walker fashion:
"'The remark which I made to the unhappy stranger was this: "You are far
from being a bad man. [The house gazed at him marvelling.] Go, and
reform."'" [Murmurs: "Amazing! what can this mean?"] "This one," said
the Chair, "is signed Thurlow G. Wilson."
"There!" cried Wilson, "I reckon that settles it! I knew perfectly well
my note was purloined."
"Purloined!" retorted Billson. "I'll let you know that neither you nor
any man of your kidney must venture to--"
The Chair: "Order, gentlemen, order! Take your seats, both of you,
please."
They obeyed, shaking their heads and grumbling angrily. The house was
profoundly puzzled; it did not know what to do with this curious
emergency. Presently Thompson got up. Thompson was the hatter. He
would have liked to be a Nineteener; but such was not for him; his stock
of hats was not considerable enough for the position. He said:
"Mr. Chairman, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion, can both of
these gentlemen be right? I put it to you, sir, can both have happened
to say the very same words to the stranger? It seems to me--"
The tanner got up and interrupted him. The tanner was a disgruntled man;
he believed himself entitled to be a Nineteener, but he couldn't get
recognition. It made him a little unpleasant in his ways and speech.
Said he:
"Sho, THAT'S not the point! THAT could happen--twice in a hundred
years--but not the other thing. NEITHER of them gave the twenty
dollars!" [A ripple of applause.]
Billson. "I did!"
Wilson. "I did!"
Then each accused the other of pilfering.
The Chair. "Order! Sit down, if you please--both of you. Neither of
the notes has been out of my possession at any moment."
A Voice. "Good--that settles THAT!"
The Tanner. "Mr. Chairman, one thing is now plain: one of these men has
been eavesdropping under the other one's bed, and filching family
secrets. If it is not unparliamentary to suggest it, I will remark that
both are equal to it. [The Chair. "Order! order!"] I withdraw the
remark, sir, and will confine myself to suggesting that IF one of them
has overheard the other reveal the test-remark to his wife, we shall
catch him now."
A Voice. "How?"
The Tanner. "Easily. The two have not quoted the remark in exactly the
same words. You would have noticed that, if there hadn't been a
considerable stretch of time and an exciting quarrel inserted between the
two readings."
A Voice. "Name the difference."
The Tanner. "The word VERY is in Billson's note, and not in the other."
Many Voices. "That's so--he's right!"
The Tanner. "And so, if the Chair will examine the test-remark in the
sack, we shall know which of these two frauds--[The Chair.
"Order!"]--which of these two adventurers--[The Chair. "Order!
order!"]--which of these two gentlemen--[laughter and applause]--is
entitled to wear the belt as being the first dishonest blatherskite ever
bred in this town--which he has dishonoured, and which will be a sultry
place for him from now out!" [Vigorous applause.]
Many Voices. "Open it!--open the sack!"
Mr. Burgess made a slit in the sack, slid his hand in, and brought out an
envelope. In it were a couple of folded notes. He said:
"One of these is marked, 'Not to be examined until all written
communications which have been addressed to the Chair--if any--shall have
been read.' The other is marked 'THE TEST.' Allow me. It is worded--to
wit:
"'I do not require that the first half of the remark which was made to me
by my benefactor shall be quoted with exactness, for it was not striking,
and could be forgotten; but its closing fifteen words are quite striking,
and I think easily rememberable; unless THESE shall be accurately
reproduced, let the applicant be regarded as an impostor. My benefactor
began by saying he seldom gave advice to anyone, but that it always bore
the hallmark of high value when he did give it. Then he said this--and
it has never faded from my memory: 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN--'"
Fifty Voices. "That settles it--the money's Wilson's! Wilson! Wilson!
Speech! Speech!"
People jumped up and crowded around Wilson, wringing his hand and
congratulating fervently--meantime the Chair was hammering with the gavel
and shouting:
"Order, gentlemen! Order! Order! Let me finish reading, please." When
quiet was restored, the reading was resumed--as follows:
"'GO, AND REFORM--OR, MARK MY WORDS--SOME DAY, FOR YOUR SINS YOU WILL DIE
AND GO TO HELL OR HADLEYBURG--TRY AND MAKE IT THE FORMER.'"
A ghastly silence followed. First an angry cloud began to settle darkly
upon the faces of the citizenship; after a pause the cloud began to rise,
and a tickled expression tried to take its place; tried so hard that it
was only kept under with great and painful difficulty; the reporters, the
Brixtonites, and other strangers bent their heads down and shielded their
faces with their hands, and managed to hold in by main strength and
heroic courtesy. At this most inopportune time burst upon the stillness
the roar of a solitary voice--Jack Halliday's:
"THAT'S got the hall-mark on it!"
Then the house let go, strangers and all. Even Mr. Burgess's gravity
broke down presently, then the audience considered itself officially
absolved from all restraint, and it made the most of its privilege. It
was a good long laugh, and a tempestuously wholehearted one, but it
ceased at last--long enough for Mr. Burgess to try to resume, and for the
people to get their eyes partially wiped; then it broke out again, and
afterward yet again; then at last Burgess was able to get out these
serious words:
"It is useless to try to disguise the fact--we find ourselves in the
presence of a matter of grave import. It involves the honour of your
town--it strikes at the town's good name. The difference of a single
word between the test-remarks offered by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Billson was
itself a serious thing, since it indicated that one or the other of these
gentlemen had committed a theft--"
The two men were sitting limp, nerveless, crushed; but at these words
both were electrified into movement, and started to get up.
"Sit down!" said the Chair, sharply, and they obeyed. "That, as I have
said, was a serious thing. And it was--but for only one of them. But
the matter has become graver; for the honour of BOTH is now in formidable
peril. Shall I go even further, and say in inextricable peril? BOTH
left out the crucial fifteen words." He paused. During several moments
he allowed the pervading stillness to gather and deepen its impressive
effects, then added: "There would seem to be but one way whereby this
could happen. I ask these gentlemen--Was there COLLUSION?--AGREEMENT?"
A low murmur sifted through the house; its import was, "He's got them
both."
Billson was not used to emergencies; he sat in a helpless collapse. But
Wilson was a lawyer. He struggled to his feet, pale and worried, and
said:
"I ask the indulgence of the house while I explain this most painful
matter. I am sorry to say what I am about to say, since it must inflict
irreparable injury upon Mr. Billson, whom I have always esteemed and
respected until now, and in whose invulnerability to temptation I
entirely believed--as did you all. But for the preservation of my own
honour I must speak--and with frankness. I confess with shame--and I now
beseech your pardon for it--that I said to the ruined stranger all of the
words contained in the test-remark, including the disparaging fifteen.
[Sensation.] When the late publication was made I recalled them, and I
resolved to claim the sack of coin, for by every right I was entitled to
it. Now I will ask you to consider this point, and weigh it well; that
stranger's gratitude to me that night knew no bounds; he said himself
that he could find no words for it that were adequate, and that if he
should ever be able he would repay me a thousandfold. Now, then, I ask
you this; could I expect--could I believe--could I even remotely imagine
--that, feeling as he did, he would do so ungrateful a thing as to add
those quite unnecessary fifteen words to his test?--set a trap for
me?--expose me as a slanderer of my own town before my own people
assembled in a public hall? It was preposterous; it was impossible. His
test would contain only the kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I
had no shadow of doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not
have expected a base betrayal from one whom you had befriended and
against whom you had committed no offence. And so with perfect
confidence, perfect trust, I wrote on a piece of paper the opening
words--ending with "Go, and reform,"--and signed it. When I was about to
put it in an envelope I was called into my back office, and without
thinking I left the paper lying open on my desk." He stopped, turned his
head slowly toward Billson, waited a moment, then added: "I ask you to
note this; when I returned, a little latter, Mr. Billson was retiring by
my street door." [Sensation.]
In a moment Billson was on his feet and shouting:
"It's a lie! It's an infamous lie!"
The Chair. "Be seated, sir! Mr. Wilson has the floor."
Billson's friends pulled him into his seat and quieted him, and Wilson
went on:
"Those are the simple facts. My note was now lying in a different place
on the table from where I had left it. I noticed that, but attached no
importance to it, thinking a draught had blown it there. That Mr. Billson
would read a private paper was a thing which could not occur to me; he
was an honourable man, and he would be above that. If you will allow me
to say it, I think his extra word 'VERY' stands explained: it is
attributable to a defect of memory. I was the only man in the world who
could furnish here any detail of the test-mark--by HONOURABLE means. I
have finished."
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the
mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an
audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory. Wilson sat
down victorious. The house submerged him in tides of approving applause;
friends swarmed to him and shook him by the hand and congratulated him,
and Billson was shouted down and not allowed to say a word. The Chair
hammered and hammered with its gavel, and kept shouting:
"But let us proceed, gentlemen, let us proceed!"
At last there was a measurable degree of quiet, and the hatter said:
"But what is there to proceed with, sir, but to deliver the money?"
Voices. "That's it! That's it! Come forward, Wilson!"
The Hatter. "I move three cheers for Mr. Wilson, Symbol of the special
virtue which--"
The cheers burst forth before he could finish; and in the midst of
them--and in the midst of the clamour of the gavel also--some enthusiasts
mounted Wilson on a big friend's shoulder and were going to fetch him in
triumph to the platform. The Chair's voice now rose above the noise:
"Order! To your places! You forget that there is still a document to be
read." When quiet had been restored he took up the document, and was
going to read it, but laid it down again saying "I forgot; this is not to
be read until all written communications received by me have first been
read." He took an envelope out of his pocket, removed its enclosure,
glanced at it--seemed astonished--held it out and gazed at it--stared at
it.
Twenty or thirty voices cried out:
"What is it? Read it! read it!"
And he did--slowly, and wondering:
"'The remark which I made to the stranger--[Voices. "Hello! how's
this?"]--was this: "You are far from being a bad man. [Voices. "Great
Scott!"] Go, and reform."' [Voice. "Oh, saw my leg off!"] Signed by Mr.
Pinkerton the banker."
The pandemonium of delight which turned itself loose now was of a sort to
make the judicious weep. Those whose withers were unwrung laughed till
the tears ran down; the reporters, in throes of laughter, set down
disordered pot-hooks which would never in the world be decipherable; and
a sleeping dog jumped up scared out of its wits, and barked itself crazy
at the turmoil. All manner of cries were scattered through the din:
"We're getting rich--TWO Symbols of Incorruptibility!--without counting
Billson!" "THREE!--count Shadbelly in--we can't have too many!" "All
right--Billson's elected!" "Alas, poor Wilson! victim of TWO thieves!"
A Powerful Voice. "Silence! The Chair's fished up something more out of
its pocket."
Voices. "Hurrah! Is it something fresh? Read it! read! read!"
The Chair [reading]. "'The remark which I made,' etc. 'You are far from
being a bad man. Go,' etc. Signed, 'Gregory Yates.'"
Tornado of Voices. "Four Symbols!" "'Rah for Yates!" "Fish again!"
The house was in a roaring humour now, and ready to get all the fun out
of the occasion that might be in it. Several Nineteeners, looking pale
and distressed, got up and began to work their way towards the aisles,
but a score of shouts went up:
"The doors, the doors--close the doors; no Incorruptible shall leave this
place! Sit down, everybody!" The mandate was obeyed.
"Fish again! Read! read!"
The Chair fished again, and once more the familiar words began to fall
from its lips--"'You are far from being a bad man--'"
"Name! name! What's his name?"
"'L. Ingoldsby Sargent.'"
"Five elected! Pile up the Symbols! Go on, go on!"
"'You are far from being a bad--'"
"Name! name!"
"'Nicholas Whitworth.'"
"Hooray! hooray! it's a symbolical day!"
Somebody wailed in, and began to sing this rhyme (leaving out "it's") to
the lovely "Mikado" tune of "When a man's afraid of a beautiful maid;"
the audience joined in, with joy; then, just in time, somebody
contributed another line--
"And don't you this forget--"
The house roared it out. A third line was at once furnished--
"Corruptibles far from Hadleyburg are--"
The house roared that one too. As the last note died, Jack Halliday's
voice rose high and clear, freighted with a final line--
"But the Symbols are here, you bet!"
That was sung, with booming enthusiasm. Then the happy house started in
at the beginning and sang the four lines through twice, with immense
swing and dash, and finished up with a crashing three-times-three and a
tiger for "Hadleyburg the Incorruptible and all Symbols of it which we
shall find worthy to receive the hall-mark to-night."
Then the shoutings at the Chair began again, all over the place:
"Go on! go on! Read! read some more! Read all you've got!"
"That's it--go on! We are winning eternal celebrity!"
A dozen men got up now and began to protest. They said that this farce
was the work of some abandoned joker, and was an insult to the whole
community. Without a doubt these signatures were all forgeries--
"Sit down! sit down! Shut up! You are confessing. We'll find your
names in the lot."
"Mr. Chairman, how many of those envelopes have you got?"
The Chair counted.
"Together with those that have been already examined, there are
nineteen."
A storm of derisive applause broke out.
"Perhaps they all contain the secret. I move that you open them all and
read every signature that is attached to a note of that sort--and read
also the first eight words of the note."
"Second the motion!"
It was put and carried--uproariously. Then poor old Richards got up, and
his wife rose and stood at his side. Her head was bent down, so that
none might see that she was crying. Her husband gave her his arm, and so
supporting her, he began to speak in a quavering voice:
"My friends, you have known us two--Mary and me--all our lives, and I
think you have liked us and respected us--"
The Chair interrupted him:
"Allow me. It is quite true--that which you are saying, Mr. Richards;
this town DOES know you two; it DOES like you; it DOES respect you;
more--it honours you and LOVES you--"
Halliday's voice rang out:
"That's the hall-marked truth, too! If the Chair is right, let the house
speak up and say it. Rise! Now, then--hip! hip! hip!--all together!"
The house rose in mass, faced toward the old couple eagerly, filled the
air with a snow-storm of waving handkerchiefs, and delivered the cheers
with all its affectionate heart.
The Chair then continued:
"What I was going to say is this: We know your good heart, Mr. Richards,
but this is not a time for the exercise of charity toward offenders.
[Shouts of "Right! right!"] I see your generous purpose in your face,
but I cannot allow you to plead for these men--"
"But I was going to--"
"Please take your seat, Mr. Richards. We must examine the rest of these
notes--simple fairness to the men who have already been exposed requires
this. As soon as that has been done--I give you my word for this--you
shall be heard."
Many voices. "Right!--the Chair is right--no interruption can be
permitted at this stage! Go on!--the names! the names!--according to the
terms of the motion!"
The old couple sat reluctantly down, and the husband whispered to the
wife, "It is pitifully hard to have to wait; the shame will be greater
than ever when they find we were only going to plead for OURSELVES."
Straightway the jollity broke loose again with the reading of the names.
"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Robert J. Titmarsh.'"
'"You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Eliphalet Weeks.'"
"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Oscar B. Wilder.'"
At this point the house lit upon the idea of taking the eight words out
of the Chairman's hands. He was not unthankful for that. Thenceforward
he held up each note in its turn and waited. The house droned out the
eight words in a massed and measured and musical deep volume of sound
(with a daringly close resemblance to a well-known church chant)--"You
are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-a-d man." Then the Chair said, "Signature,
'Archibald Wilcox.'" And so on, and so on, name after name, and
everybody had an increasingly and gloriously good time except the
wretched Nineteen. Now and then, when a particularly shining name was
called, the house made the Chair wait while it chanted the whole of the
test-remark from the beginning to the closing words, "And go to hell or
Hadleyburg--try and make it the for-or-m-e-r!" and in these special
cases they added a grand and agonised and imposing "A-a-a-a-MEN!"
The list dwindled, dwindled, dwindled, poor old Richards keeping tally of
the count, wincing when a name resembling his own was pronounced, and
waiting in miserable suspense for the time to come when it would be his
humiliating privilege to rise with Mary and finish his plea, which he was
intending to word thus: ". . . for until now we have never done any
wrong thing, but have gone our humble way unreproached. We are very
poor, we are old, and, have no chick nor child to help us; we were sorely
tempted, and we fell. It was my purpose when I got up before to make
confession and beg that my name might not be read out in this public
place, for it seemed to us that we could not bear it; but I was
prevented. It was just; it was our place to suffer with the rest. It
has been hard for us. It is the first time we have ever heard our name
fall from any one's lips--sullied. Be merciful--for the sake or the
better days; make our shame as light to bear as in your charity you can."
At this point in his reverie Mary nudged him, perceiving that his mind
was absent. The house was chanting, "You are f-a-r," etc.
"Be ready," Mary whispered. "Your name comes now; he has read eighteen."
The chant ended.
"Next! next! next!" came volleying from all over the house.
Burgess put his hand into his pocket. The old couple, trembling, began
to rise. Burgess fumbled a moment, then said:
"I find I have read them all."
Faint with joy and surprise, the couple sank into their seats, and Mary
whispered:
"Oh, bless God, we are saved!--he has lost ours--I wouldn't give this for
a hundred of those sacks!"
The house burst out with its "Mikado" travesty, and sang it three times
with ever-increasing enthusiasm, rising to its feet when it reached for
the third time the closing line--
"But the Symbols are here, you bet!"
and finishing up with cheers and a tiger for "Hadleyburg purity and our
eighteen immortal representatives of it."
Then Wingate, the saddler, got up and proposed cheers "for the cleanest
man in town, the one solitary important citizen in it who didn't try to
steal that money--Edward Richards."
They were given with great and moving heartiness; then somebody proposed
that "Richards be elected sole Guardian and Symbol of the now Sacred
Hadleyburg Tradition, with power and right to stand up and look the whole
sarcastic world in the face."
Passed, by acclamation; then they sang the "Mikado" again, and ended it
with--
"And there's ONE Symbol left, you bet!"
There was a pause; then--
A Voice. "Now, then, who's to get the sack?"
The Tanner (with bitter sarcasm). "That's easy. The money has to be
divided among the eighteen Incorruptibles. They gave the suffering
stranger twenty dollars apiece--and that remark--each in his turn--it
took twenty-two minutes for the procession to move past. Staked the
stranger--total contribution, $360. All they want is just the loan
back--and interest--forty thousand dollars altogether."
Many Voices [derisively.] "That's it! Divvy! divvy! Be kind to the
poor--don't keep them waiting!"
The Chair. "Order! I now offer the stranger's remaining document. It
says: 'If no claimant shall appear [grand chorus of groans], I desire
that you open the sack and count out the money to the principal citizens
of your town, they to take it in trust [Cries of "Oh! Oh! Oh!"], and use
it in such ways as to them shall seem best for the propagation and
preservation of your community's noble reputation for incorruptible
honesty [more cries]--a reputation to which their names and their efforts
will add a new and far-reaching lustre." [Enthusiastic outburst of
sarcastic applause.] That seems to be all. No--here is a postscript:
"'P.S.--CITIZENS OF HADLEYBURG: There IS no test-remark--nobody made
one. [Great sensation.] There wasn't any pauper stranger, nor any
twenty-dollar contribution, nor any accompanying benediction and
compliment--these are all inventions. [General buzz and hum of
astonishment and delight.] Allow me to tell my story--it will take but a
word or two. I passed through your town at a certain time, and received
a deep offence which I had not earned. Any other man would have been
content to kill one or two of you and call it square, but to me that
would have been a trivial revenge, and inadequate; for the dead do not
SUFFER. Besides I could not kill you all--and, anyway, made as I am, even
that would not have satisfied me. I wanted to damage every man in the
place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but
in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most
vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You
were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and
naturally you were proud of it--it was your treasure of treasures, the
very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and
vigilantly kept yourselves and your children OUT OF TEMPTATION, I knew
how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak
things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire. I laid a plan,
and gathered a list of names. My project was to corrupt Hadleyburg the
Incorruptible. My idea was to make liars and thieves of nearly half a
hundred smirchless men and women who had never in their lives uttered a
lie or stolen a penny. I was afraid of Goodson. He was neither born nor
reared in Hadleyburg. I was afraid that if I started to operate my
scheme by getting my letter laid before you, you would say to yourselves,
'Goodson is the only man among us who would give away twenty dollars to a
poor devil'--and then you might not bite at my bait. But heaven took
Goodson; then I knew I was safe, and I set my trap and baited it. It may
be that I shall not catch all the men to whom I mailed the pretended
test-secret, but I shall catch the most of them, if I know Hadleyburg
nature. [Voices. "Right--he got every last one of them."] I believe
they will even steal ostensible GAMBLE-money, rather than miss, poor,
tempted, and mistrained fellows. I am hoping to eternally and
everlastingly squelch your vanity and give Hadleyburg a new renown--one
that will STICK--and spread far. If I have succeeded, open the sack and
summon the Committee on Propagation and Preservation of the Hadleyburg
Reputation.'"
A Cyclone of Voices. "Open it! Open it! The Eighteen to the front!
Committee on Propagation of the Tradition! Forward--the Incorruptibles!"
The Chair ripped the sack wide, and gathered up a handful of bright,
broad, yellow coins, shook them together, then examined them.
"Friends, they are only gilded disks of lead!"
There was a crashing outbreak of delight over this news, and when the
noise had subsided, the tanner called out:
"By right of apparent seniority in this business, Mr. Wilson is Chairman
of the Committee on Propagation of the Tradition. I suggest that he step
forward on behalf of his pals, and receive in trust the money."
A Hundred Voices. "Wilson! Wilson! Wilson! Speech! Speech!"
Wilson [in a voice trembling with anger]. "You will allow me to say, and
without apologies for my language, DAMN the money!"
A Voice. "Oh, and him a Baptist!"
A Voice. "Seventeen Symbols left! Step up, gentlemen, and assume your
trust!"
There was a pause--no response.
The Saddler. "Mr. Chairman, we've got ONE clean man left, anyway, out of
the late aristocracy; and he needs money, and deserves it. I move that
you appoint Jack Halliday to get up there and auction off that sack of
gilt twenty-dollar pieces, and give the result to the right man--the man
whom Hadleyburg delights to honour--Edward Richards."
This was received with great enthusiasm, the dog taking a hand again; the
saddler started the bids at a dollar, the Brixton folk and Barnum's
representative fought hard for it, the people cheered every jump that the
bids made, the excitement climbed moment by moment higher and higher, the
bidders got on their mettle and grew steadily more and more daring, more
and more determined, the jumps went from a dollar up to five, then to
ten, then to twenty, then fifty, then to a hundred, then--
At the beginning of the auction Richards whispered in distress to his
wife: "Oh, Mary, can we allow it? It--it--you see, it is an
honour--reward, a testimonial to purity of character, and--and--can we
allow it? Hadn't I better get up and--Oh, Mary, what ought we to
do?--what do you think we--" [Halliday's voice. "Fifteen I'm bid!
--fifteen for the sack!--twenty!--ah, thanks!--thirty--thanks again!
Thirty, thirty, thirty!--do I hear forty?--forty it is! Keep the ball
rolling, gentlemen, keep it rolling!--fifty!--thanks, noble Roman!--going
at fifty, fifty, fifty!--seventy!--ninety!--splendid!--a hundred!--pile
it up, pile it up!--hundred and twenty--forty!--just in time!--hundred
and fifty!--Two hundred!--superb! Do I hear two h--thanks!--two hundred
and fifty!--"]
"It is another temptation, Edward--I'm all in a tremble--but, oh, we've
escaped one temptation, and that ought to warn us, to--["Six did I
hear?--thanks!--six fifty, six f--SEVEN hundred!"] And yet, Edward, when
you think--nobody susp--["Eight hundred dollars!--hurrah!--make it
nine!--Mr. Parsons, did I hear you say--thanks!--nine!--this noble sack
of virgin lead going at only nine hundred dollars, gilding and all--come!
do I hear--a thousand!--gratefully yours!--did some one say eleven?--a
sack which is going to be the most celebrated in the whole Uni--"] Oh,
Edward (beginning to sob), we are so poor!--but--but--do as you think
best--do as you think best."
Edward fell--that is, he sat still; sat with a conscience which was not
satisfied, but which was overpowered by circumstances.
Meantime a stranger, who looked like an amateur detective gotten up as an
impossible English earl, had been watching the evening's proceedings with
manifest interest, and with a contented expression in his face; and he
had been privately commenting to himself. He was now soliloquising
somewhat like this: 'None of the Eighteen are bidding; that is not
satisfactory; I must change that--the dramatic unities require it; they
must buy the sack they tried to steal; they must pay a heavy price,
too--some of them are rich. And another thing, when I make a mistake in
Hadleyburg nature the man that puts that error upon me is entitled to a
high honorarium, and some one must pay. This poor old Richards has
brought my judgment to shame; he is an honest man:--I don't understand
it, but I acknowledge it. Yes, he saw my deuces--AND with a straight
flush, and by rights the pot is his. And it shall be a jack-pot, too, if
I can manage it. He disappointed me, but let that pass.'
He was watching the bidding. At a thousand, the market broke: the
prices tumbled swiftly. He waited--and still watched. One competitor
dropped out; then another, and another. He put in a bid or two now.
When the bids had sunk to ten dollars, he added a five; some one raised
him a three; he waited a moment, then flung in a fifty-dollar jump, and
the sack was his--at $1,282. The house broke out in cheers--then
stopped; for he was on his feet, and had lifted his hand. He began to
speak.
"I desire to say a word, and ask a favour. I am a speculator in
rarities, and I have dealings with persons interested in numismatics all
over the world. I can make a profit on this purchase, just as it stands;
but there is a way, if I can get your approval, whereby I can make every
one of these leaden twenty-dollar pieces worth its face in gold, and
perhaps more. Grant me that approval, and I will give part of my gains
to your Mr. Richards, whose invulnerable probity you have so justly and
so cordially recognised tonight; his share shall be ten thousand dollars,
and I will hand him the money to-morrow. [Great applause from the house.
But the "invulnerable probity" made the Richardses blush prettily;
however, it went for modesty, and did no harm.] If you will pass my
proposition by a good majority--I would like a two-thirds vote--I will
regard that as the town's consent, and that is all I ask. Rarities are
always helped by any device which will rouse curiosity and compel remark.
Now if I may have your permission to stamp upon the faces of each of
these ostensible coins the names of the eighteen gentlemen who--"
Nine-tenths of the audience were on their feet in a moment--dog and
all--and the proposition was carried with a whirlwind of approving
applause and laughter.
They sat down, and all the Symbols except "Dr." Clay Harkness got up,
violently protesting against the proposed outrage, and threatening to--
"I beg you not to threaten me," said the stranger calmly. "I know my
legal rights, and am not accustomed to being frightened at bluster."
[Applause.] He sat down. "Dr." Harkness saw an opportunity here. He
was one of the two very rich men of the place, and Pinkerton was the
other. Harkness was proprietor of a mint; that is to say, a popular
patent medicine. He was running for the Legislature on one ticket, and
Pinkerton on the other. It was a close race and a hot one, and getting
hotter every day. Both had strong appetites for money; each had bought a
great tract of land, with a purpose; there was going to be a new railway,
and each wanted to be in the Legislature and help locate the route to his
own advantage; a single vote might make the decision, and with it two or
three fortunes. The stake was large, and Harkness was a daring
speculator. He was sitting close to the stranger. He leaned over while
one or another of the other Symbols was entertaining the house with
protests and appeals, and asked, in a whisper,
"What is your price for the sack?"
"Forty thousand dollars."
"I'll give you twenty."
"No."
"Twenty-five."
"No."
"Say thirty."
"The price is forty thousand dollars; not a penny less."
"All right, I'll give it. I will come to the hotel at ten in the
morning. I don't want it known; will see you privately."
"Very good." Then the stranger got up and said to the house:
"I find it late. The speeches of these gentlemen are not without merit,
not without interest, not without grace; yet if I may be excused I will
take my leave. I thank you for the great favour which you have shown me
in granting my petition. I ask the Chair to keep the sack for me until
to-morrow, and to hand these three five-hundred-dollar notes to Mr.
Richards." They were passed up to the Chair.
"At nine I will call for the sack, and at eleven will deliver the rest of
the ten thousand to Mr. Richards in person at his home. Good-night."
Then he slipped out, and left the audience making a vast noise, which was
composed of a mixture of cheers, the "Mikado" song, dog-disapproval, and
the chant, "You are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-d man--a-a-a a-men!"
IV
At home the Richardses had to endure congratulations and compliments
until midnight. Then they were left to themselves. They looked a little
sad, and they sat silent and thinking. Finally Mary sighed and said:
"Do you think we are to blame, Edward--MUCH to blame?" and her eyes
wandered to the accusing triplet of big bank-notes lying on the table,
where the congratulators had been gloating over them and reverently
fingering them. Edward did not answer at once; then he brought out a
sigh and said, hesitatingly:
"We--we couldn't help it, Mary. It--well it was ordered. ALL things
are."
Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn't return the
look. Presently she said:
"I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good. But--it seems
to me, now--Edward?"
"Well?"
"Are you going to stay in the bank?"
"N--no."
"Resign?"
"In the morning--by note."
"It does seem best."
Richards bowed his head in his hands and muttered:
"Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people's money pour through my
hands, but--Mary, I am so tired, so tired--"
"We will go to bed."
At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to
the hotel in a cab. At ten Harkness had a talk with him privately. The
stranger asked for and got five cheques on a metropolitan bank--drawn to
"Bearer,"--four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000. He put one of the
former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500, he
put in an envelope, and with these he added a note which he wrote after
Harkness was gone. At eleven he called at the Richards' house and
knocked. Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and
received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word. She
came back flushed and a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out:
"I am sure I recognised him! Last night it seemed to me that maybe I had
seen him somewhere before."
"He is the man that brought the sack here?"
"I am almost sure of it."
"Then he is the ostensible Stephenson too, and sold every important
citizen in this town with his bogus secret. Now if he has sent cheques
instead of money, we are sold too, after we thought we had escaped. I
was beginning to feel fairly comfortable once more, after my night's
rest, but the look of that envelope makes me sick. It isn't fat enough;
$8,500 in even the largest bank-notes makes more bulk than that."
"Edward, why do you object to cheques?"
"Cheques signed by Stephenson! I am resigned to take the $8,500 if it
could come in bank-notes--for it does seem that it was so ordered,
Mary--but I have never had much courage, and I have not the pluck to try
to market a cheque signed with that disastrous name. It would be a trap.
That man tried to catch me; we escaped somehow or other; and now he is
trying a new way. If it is cheques--"
"Oh, Edward, it is TOO bad!" And she held up the cheques and began to
cry.
"Put them in the fire! quick! we mustn't be tempted. It is a trick to
make the world laugh at US, along with the rest, and--Give them to ME,
since you can't do it!" He snatched them and tried to hold his grip till
he could get to the stove; but he was human, he was a cashier, and he
stopped a moment to make sure of the signature. Then he came near to
fainting.
"Fan me, Mary, fan me! They are the same as gold!"
"Oh, how lovely, Edward! Why?"
"Signed by Harkness. What can the mystery of that be, Mary?"
"Edward, do you think--"
"Look here--look at this! Fifteen--fifteen--fifteen--thirty-four.
Thirty-eight thousand five hundred! Mary, the sack isn't worth twelve
dollars, and Harkness--apparently--has paid about par for it."
"And does it all come to us, do you think--instead of the ten thousand?"
"Why, it looks like it. And the cheques are made to 'Bearer,' too."
"Is that good, Edward? What is it for?"
"A hint to collect them at some distant bank, I reckon. Perhaps Harkness
doesn't want the matter known. What is that--a note?"
"Yes. It was with the cheques."
It was in the "Stephenson" handwriting, but there was no signature. It
said:
"I am a disappointed man. Your honesty is beyond the reach of
temptation. I had a different idea about it, but I wronged you in that,
and I beg pardon, and do it sincerely. I honour you--and that is sincere
too. This town is not worthy to kiss the hem of your garment. Dear sir,
I made a square bet with myself that there were nineteen debauchable men
in your self-righteous community. I have lost. Take the whole pot, you
are entitled to it."
Richards drew a deep sigh, and said:
"It seems written with fire--it burns so. Mary--I am miserable again."
"I, too. Ah, dear, I wish--"
"To think, Mary--he BELIEVES in me."
"Oh, don't, Edward--I can't bear it."
"If those beautiful words were deserved, Mary--and God knows I believed I
deserved them once--I think I could give the forty thousand dollars for
them. And I would put that paper away, as representing more than gold
and jewels, and keep it always. But now--We could not live in the shadow
of its accusing presence, Mary."
He put it in the fire.
A messenger arrived and delivered an envelope. Richards took from it a
note and read it; it was from Burgess:
"You saved me, in a difficult time. I saved you last night. It was at
cost of a lie, but I made the sacrifice freely, and out of a grateful
heart. None in this village knows so well as I know how brave and good
and noble you are. At bottom you cannot respect me, knowing as you do of
that matter of which I am accused, and by the general voice condemned;
but I beg that you will at least believe that I am a grateful man; it
will help me to bear my burden. [Signed] 'BURGESS.'"
"Saved, once more. And on such terms!" He put the note in the lire.
"I--I wish I were dead, Mary, I wish I were out of it all!"
"Oh, these are bitter, bitter days, Edward. The stabs, through their
very generosity, are so deep--and they come so fast!"
Three days before the election each of two thousand voters suddenly found
himself in possession of a prized memento--one of the renowned bogus
double-eagles. Around one of its faces was stamped these words: "THE
REMARK I MADE TO THE POOR STRANGER WAS--" Around the other face was
stamped these: "GO, AND REFORM. [SIGNED] PINKERTON." Thus the entire
remaining refuse of the renowned joke was emptied upon a single head, and
with calamitous effect. It revived the recent vast laugh and
concentrated it upon Pinkerton; and Harkness's election was a walk-over.
Within twenty-four hours after the Richardses had received their cheques
their consciences were quieting down, discouraged; the old couple were
learning to reconcile themselves to the sin which they had committed.
But they were to learn, now, that a sin takes on new and real terrors
when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out. This gives
it a fresh and most substantial and important aspect. At church the
morning sermon was of the usual pattern; it was the same old things said
in the same old way; they had heard them a thousand times and found them
innocuous, next to meaningless, and easy to sleep under; but now it was
different: the sermon seemed to bristle with accusations; it seemed
aimed straight and specially at people who were concealing deadly sins.
After church they got away from the mob of congratulators as soon as they
could, and hurried homeward, chilled to the bone at they did not know
what--vague, shadowy, indefinite fears. And by chance they caught a
glimpse of Mr. Burgess as he turned a corner. He paid no attention to
their nod of recognition! He hadn't seen it; but they did not know that.
What could his conduct mean? It might mean--it might--mean--oh, a dozen
dreadful things. Was it possible that he knew that Richards could have
cleared him of guilt in that bygone time, and had been silently waiting
for a chance to even up accounts? At home, in their distress they got to
imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening
when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's
innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of
a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he HAD heard it. They
would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been
betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked
her some questions--questions which were so random and incoherent and
seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure that the old people's minds
had been affected by their sudden good fortune; the sharp and watchful
gaze which they bent upon her frightened her, and that completed the
business. She blushed, she became nervous and confused, and to the old
people these were plain signs of guilt--guilt of some fearful sort or
other--without doubt she was a spy and a traitor. When they were alone
again they began to piece many unrelated things together and get horrible
results out of the combination. When things had got about to the worst
Richards was delivered of a sudden gasp and his wife asked:
"Oh, what is it?--what is it?"
"The note--Burgess's note! Its language was sarcastic, I see it now."
He quoted: "'At bottom you cannot respect me, KNOWING, as you do, of
THAT MATTER OF which I am accused'--oh, it is perfectly plain, now, God
help me! He knows that I know! You see the ingenuity of the phrasing.
It was a trap--and like a fool, I walked into it. And Mary--!"
"Oh, it is dreadful--I know what you are going to say--he didn't return
your transcript of the pretended test-remark."
"No--kept it to destroy us with. Mary, he has exposed us to some
already. I know it--I know it well. I saw it in a dozen faces after
church. Ah, he wouldn't answer our nod of recognition--he knew what he
had been doing!"
In the night the doctor was called. The news went around in the morning
that the old couple were rather seriously ill--prostrated by the
exhausting excitement growing out of their great windfall, the
congratulations, and the late hours, the doctor said. The town was
sincerely distressed; for these old people were about all it had left to
be proud of, now.
Two days later the news was worse. The old couple were delirious, and
were doing strange things. By witness of the nurses, Richards had
exhibited cheques--for $8,500? No--for an amazing sum--$38,500! What
could be the explanation of this gigantic piece of luck?
The following day the nurses had more news--and wonderful. They had
concluded to hide the cheques, lest harm come to them; but when they
searched they were gone from under the patient's pillow--vanished away.
The patient said:
"Let the pillow alone; what do you want?"
"We thought it best that the cheques--"
"You will never see them again--they are destroyed. They came from
Satan. I saw the hell-brand on them, and I knew they were sent to betray
me to sin." Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things which
were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished them to
keep to themselves.
Richards was right; the cheques were never seen again.
A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the forbidden
gabblings were the property of the town; and they were of a surprising
sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a claimant for the
sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that fact and then
maliciously betrayed it.
Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it was
not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who was out of
his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was much talk.
After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards's delirious
deliveries were getting to be duplicates of her husband's. Suspicion
flamed up into conviction, now, and the town's pride in the purity of its
one undiscredited important citizen began to dim down and flicker toward
extinction.
Six days passed, then came more news. The old couple were dying.
Richards's mind cleared in his latest hour, and he sent for Burgess.
Burgess said:
"Let the room be cleared. I think he wishes to say something in
privacy."
"No!" said Richards; "I want witnesses. I want you all to hear my
confession, so that I may die a man, and not a dog. I was clean
--artificially--like the rest; and like the rest I fell when temptation
came. I signed a lie, and claimed the miserable sack. Mr. Burgess
remembered that I had done him a service, and in gratitude (and
ignorance) he suppressed my claim and saved me. You know the thing that
was charged against Burgess years ago. My testimony, and mine alone,
could have cleared him, and I was a coward and left him to suffer
disgrace--"
"No--no--Mr. Richards, you--"
"My servant betrayed my secret to him--"
"No one has betrayed anything to me--"
--"And then he did a natural and justifiable thing; he repented of the
saving kindness which he had done me, and he EXPOSED me--as I deserved--"
"Never!--I make oath--"
"Out of my heart I forgive him."
Burgess's impassioned protestations fell upon deaf ears; the dying man
passed away without knowing that once more he had done poor Burgess a
wrong. The old wife died that night.
The last of the sacred Nineteen had fallen a prey to the fiendish sack;
the town was stripped of the last rag of its ancient glory. Its mourning
was not showy, but it was deep.
By act of the Legislature--upon prayer and petition--Hadleyburg was
allowed to change its name to (never mind what--I will not give it away),
and leave one word out of the motto that for many generations had graced
the town's official seal.
It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that
catches it napping again.
MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT
As I understand it, what you desire is information about 'my first lie,
and how I got out of it.' I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my
memory is not as good as it was. If you had asked about my first truth
it would have been easier for me and kinder of you, for I remember that
fairly well. I remember it as if it were last week. The family think it
was week before, but that is flattery and probably has a selfish project
back of it. When a person has become seasoned by experience and has
reached the age of sixty-four, which is the age of discretion, he likes a
family compliment as well as ever, but he does not lose his head over it
as in the old innocent days.
I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my
second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed
that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual
fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable
way and got a ration between meals besides.
It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied
about the pin--advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have
done it; George Washington did it, anybody would have done it. During
the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise
about that temptation and keep from telling that lie. Up to 1867 all the
civilised children that were ever born into the world were liars
--including George. Then the safety-pin came in and blocked the game. But
is that reform worth anything? No; for it is reform by force and has no
virtue in it; it merely stops that form of lying, it doesn't impair the
disposition to lie, by a shade. It is the cradle application of
conversion by fire and sword, or of the temperance principle through
prohibition.
To return to that early lie. They found no pin and they realised that
another liar had been added to the world's supply. For by grace of a
rare inspiration a quite commonplace but seldom noticed fact was borne in
upon their understandings--that almost all lies are acts, and speech has
no part in them. Then, if they examined a little further they recognised
that all people are liars from the cradle onwards, without exception, and
that they begin to lie as soon as they wake in the morning, and keep it
up without rest or refreshment until they go to sleep at night. If they
arrived at that truth it probably grieved them--did, if they had been
heedlessly and ignorantly educated by their books and teachers; for why
should a person grieve over a thing which by the eternal law of his make
he cannot help? He didn't invent the law; it is merely his business to
obey it and keep still; join the universal conspiracy and keep so still
that he shall deceive his fellow-conspirators into imagining that he
doesn't know that the law exists. It is what we all do--we that know. I
am speaking of the lie of silent assertion; we can tell it without saying
a word, and we all do it--we that know. In the magnitude of its
territorial spread it is one of the most majestic lies that the
civilisations make it their sacred and anxious care to guard and watch
and propagate.
For instance. It would not be possible for a humane and intelligent
person to invent a rational excuse for slavery; yet you will remember
that in the early days of the emancipation agitation in the North the
agitators got but small help or countenance from any one. Argue and
plead and pray as they might, they could not break the universal
stillness that reigned, from pulpit and press all the way down to the
bottom of society--the clammy stillness created and maintained by the lie
of silent assertion--the silent assertion that there wasn't anything
going on in which humane and intelligent people were interested.
From the beginning of the Dreyfus case to the end of it all France,
except a couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under the smother of the
silent-assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and
unoffending man. The like smother was over England lately, a good half
of the population silently letting on that they were not aware that Mr.
Chamberlain was trying to manufacture a war in South Africa and was
willing to pay fancy prices for the materials.
Now there we have instances of three prominent ostensible civilisations
working the silent-assertion lie. Could one find other instances in the
three countries? I think so. Not so very many perhaps, but say a
billion--just so as to keep within bounds. Are those countries working
that kind of lie, day in and day out, in thousands and thousands of
varieties, without ever resting? Yes, we know that to be true. The
universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always
and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham,
never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most
timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages
and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and
aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and
religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here
and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them
alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent
assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men are
aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop.
What I am arriving at is this: When whole races and peoples conspire to
propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why
should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why
should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue?
Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we
without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little
lying on our own account? Why shouldn't we be honest and honourable, and
lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be
consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we
help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one
little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just
for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of
our mouth.
Here in England they have the oddest ways. They won't tell a spoken lie
--nothing can persuade them. Except in a large moral interest, like
politics or religion, I mean. To tell a spoken lie to get even the
poorest little personal advantage out of it is a thing which is
impossible to them. They make me ashamed of myself sometimes, they are
so bigoted. They will not even tell a lie for the fun of it; they will
not tell it when it hasn't even a suggestion of damage or advantage in
it for any one. This has a restraining influence upon me in spite of
reason, and I am always getting out of practice.
Of course, they tell all sorts of little unspoken lies, just like
anybody; but they don't notice it until their attention is called to it.
They have got me so that sometimes I never tell a verbal lie now except
in a modified form; and even in the modified form they don't approve of
it. Still, that is as far as I can go in the interest of the growing
friendly relations between the two countries; I must keep some of my
self-respect--and my health. I can live on a pretty low diet, but I
can't get along on no sustenance at all.
Of course, there are times when these people have to come out with a
spoken lie, for that is a thing which happens to everybody once in a
while, and would happen to the angels if they came down here much.
Particularly to the angels, in fact, for the lies I speak of are
self-sacrificing ones told for a generous object, not a mean one; but
even when these people tell a lie of that sort it seems to scare them
and unsettle their minds. It is a wonderful thing to see, and shows
that they are all insane. In fact, it is a country which is full of
the most interesting superstitions.
I have an English friend of twenty-five years' standing, and yesterday
when we were coming down-town on top of the 'bus I happened to tell him a
lie--a modified one, of course; a half-breed, a mulatto; I can't seem to
tell any other kind now, the market is so flat. I was explaining to him
how I got out of an embarrassment in Austria last year. I do not know
what might have become of me if I hadn't happened to remember to tell the
police that I belonged to the same family as the Prince of Wales. That
made everything pleasant and they let me go; and apologised, too, and
were ever so kind and obliging and polite, and couldn't do too much for
me, and explained how the mistake came to be made, and promised to hang
the officer that did it, and hoped I would let bygones be bygones and not
say anything about it; and I said they could depend on me. My friend
said, austerely:
'You call it a modified lie? Where is the modification?'
I explained that it lay in the form of my statement to the police.
'I didn't say I belonged to the Royal Family; I only said I belonged to
the same family as the Prince--meaning the human family, of course; and
if those people had had any penetration they would have known it. I
can't go around furnishing brains to the police; it is not to be
expected.'
'How did you feel after that performance?'
'Well, of course I was distressed to find that the police had
misunderstood me, but as long as I had not told any lie I knew there was
no occasion to sit up nights and worry about it.'
My friend struggled with the case several minutes, turning it over and
examining it in his mind, then he said that so far as he could see the
modification was itself a lie, it being a misleading reservation of an
explanatory fact, and so I had told two lies instead of only one.
'I wouldn't have done it,' said he; 'I have never told a lie, and I
should be very sorry to do such a thing.'
Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a basketful of surprised and
delighted smiles down at a gentleman who was passing in a hansom.
'Who was that, G---?'
'I don't know.'
'Then why did you do that?'
'Because I saw he thought he knew me and was expecting it of me. If I
hadn't done it he would have been hurt. I didn't want to embarrass him
before the whole street.'
'Well, your heart was right, G---, and your act was right. What you did
was kindly and courteous and beautiful; I would have done it myself; but
it was a lie.'
'A lie? I didn't say a word. How do you make it out?'
'I know you didn't speak, still you said to him very plainly and
enthusiastically in dumb show, "Hello! you in town? Awful glad to see
you, old fellow; when did you get back?" Concealed in your actions was
what you have called "a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact"
--the act that you had never seen him before. You expressed joy in
encountering him--a lie; and you made that reservation--another lie. It
was my pair over again. But don't be troubled--we all do it.'
Two hours later, at dinner, when quite other matters were being
discussed, he told how he happened along once just in the nick of time to
do a great service for a family who were old friends of his. The head of
it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously
disgraceful character. If know the facts would break the hearts of the
innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame. There was
no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it.
'The family never found out, G---?'
'Never. In all these years they have never suspected. They were proud
of him and had always reason to be; they are proud of him yet, and to
them his memory is sacred and stainless and beautiful.'
'They had a narrow escape, G---.'
'Indeed they had.'
'For the very next man that came along might have been one of these
heartless and shameless truth-mongers. You have told the truth a million
times in your life, G---, but that one golden lie atones for it all.
Persevere.'
Some may think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is
hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I
do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I
do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the
latter was affected by Bryant, the former by Carlyle.
Mr. Bryant said, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' I have taken
medals at thirteen world's fairs, and may claim to be not without
capacity, but I never told as big a one as that. Mr. Bryant was playing
to the gallery; we all do it. Carlyle said, in substance, this--I do not
remember the exact words: 'This gospel is eternal--that a lie shall not
live.' I have a reverent affection for Carlyle's books, and have read
his 'Revelation' eight times; and so I prefer to think he was not
entirely at himself when he told that one. To me it is plain that he
said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing Americans out of his
back-yard with brickbats. They used to go there and worship. At bottom
he was probably fond of it, but he was always able to conceal it. He
kept bricks for them, but he was not a good shot, and it is matter of
history that when he fired they dodged, and carried off the brick; for as
a nation we like relics, and so long as we get them we do not much care
what the reliquary thinks about it. I am quite sure that when he told
that large one about a lie not being able to live he had just missed an
American and was over excited. He told it above thirty years ago, but it
is alive yet; alive, and very healthy and hearty, and likely to outlive
any fact in history. Carlyle was truthful when calm, but give him
Americans enough and bricks enough and he could have taken medals
himself.
As regards that time that George Washington told the truth, a word must
be said, of course. It is the principal jewel in the crown of America,
and it is but natural that we should work it for all it is worth, as
Milton says in his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It was a timely and
judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances.
But I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth
--a Tower; and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention
from its sublimity by building another Tower alongside of it fourteen
times as high. I refer to his remark that he 'could not lie.' I should
have fed that to the marines; or left it to Carlyle; it is just in his
style. It would have taken a medal at any European fair, and would have
got an honourable mention even at Chicago if it had been saved up. But
let it pass; the Father of his Country was excited. I have been in those
circumstances, and I recollect.
With the truth he told I have no objection to offer, as already
indicated. I think it was not premeditated but an inspiration. With his
fine military mind, he had probably arranged to let his brother Edward in
for the cherry tree results, but by an inspiration he saw his opportunity
in time and took advantage of it. By telling the truth he could astonish
his father; his father would tell the neighbours; the neighbours would
spread it; it would travel to all firesides; in the end it would make him
President, and not only that, but First President. He was a far-seeing
boy and would be likely to think of these things. Therefore, to my mind,
he stands justified for what he did. But not for the other Tower; it was
a mistake. Still, I don't know about that; upon reflection I think
perhaps it wasn't. For indeed it is that Tower that makes the other one
live. If he hadn't said 'I cannot tell a lie' there would have been no
convulsion. That was the earthquake that rocked the planet. That is the
kind of statement that lives for ever, and a fact barnacled to it has a
good chance to share its immortality.
To sum up, on the whole I am satisfied with things the way they are.
There is a prejudice against the spoken lie, but none against any other,
and by examination and mathematical computation I find that the
proportion of the spoken lie to the other varieties is as 1 to 22,894.
Therefore the spoken lie is of no consequence, and it is not worth while
to go around fussing about it and trying to make believe that it is an
important matter. The silent colossal National Lie that is the support
and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and
unfairnesses that afflict the peoples--that is the one to throw bricks
and sermons at. But let us be judicious and let somebody else begin.
And then--But I have wandered from my text. How did I get out of my
second lie? I think I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it
was a long time ago and some of the details have faded out of my memory.
I recollect that I was reversed and stretched across some one's knee, and
that something happened, but I cannot now remember what it was. I think
there was music; but it is all dim now and blurred by the lapse of time,
and this may be only a senile fancy.
THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE
'Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to know,
Mr. Twain,' she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes rest
placidly upon my face, 'for it is kind and good of you to like me and
care to know about me.'
She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from her cheeks with a
small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she watched
the Aurora Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky and wash
the lonely snow plain and the templed icebergs with the rich hues of the
prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendour and beauty; but now
she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble little
history I had asked for. She settled herself comfortably on the block of
ice which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen.
She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the Esquimaux point of view.
Others would have thought her a trifle over-plump. She was just twenty
years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her
tribe. Even now, in the open air, with her cumbersome and shapeless fur
coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was at
least apparent; but her figure had to be taken on trust. Among all the
guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father's hospitable
trough who could be called her equal. Yet she was not spoiled. She was
sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a belle,
there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that
knowledge.
She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her
the better I liked her. She had been tenderly and carefully brought up,
in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions, for
her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the top
of Esquimaux civilisation. I made long dog-sledge trips across the
mighty ice floes with Lasca--that was her name--and found her company
always pleasant and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing with her,
but not in her perilous boat: I merely followed along on the ice and
watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear. We went
sealing together; several times I stood by while she and the family dug
blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she
was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom
I am afraid of bears.
However, she was ready to begin her story, now, and this is what she
said:
'Our tribe had always been used to wander about from place to place over
the frozen seas, like the other tribes, but my father got tired of that,
two years ago, and built this great mansion of frozen snow-blocks--look
at it; it is seven feet high and three or four times as long as any of
the others--and here we have stayed ever since. He was very proud of his
house, and that was reasonable, for if you have examined it with care you
must have noticed how much finer and completer it is than houses usually
are. But if you have not, you must, for you will find it has luxurious
appointments that are quite beyond the common. For instance, in that end
of it which you have called the "parlour," the raised platform for the
accommodation of guests and the family at meals is the largest you have
ever seen in any house--is it not so?'
'Yes, you are quite right, Lasca; it is the largest; we have nothing
resembling it in even the finest houses in the United States.' This
admission made her eyes sparkle with pride and pleasure. I noted that,
and took my cue.
'I thought it must have surprised you,' she said. 'And another thing; it
is bedded far deeper in furs than is usual; all kinds of furs--seal,
sea-otter, silver-grey fox, bear, marten, sable--every kind of fur in
profusion; and the same with the ice-block sleeping-benches along the
walls which you call "beds." Are your platforms and sleeping-benches
better provided at home?'
'Indeed, they are not, Lasca--they do not begin to be.' That pleased her
again. All she was thinking of was the number of furs her aesthetic
father took the trouble to keep on hand, not their value. I could have
told her that those masses of rich furs constituted wealth--or would in
my country--but she would not have understood that; those were not the
kind of things that ranked as riches with her people. I could have told
her that the clothes she had on, or the every-day clothes of the
commonest person about her, were worth twelve or fifteen hundred dollars,
and that I was not acquainted with anybody at home who wore
twelve-hundred dollar toilets to go fishing in; but she would not have
understood it, so I said nothing. She resumed:
'And then the slop-tubs. We have two in the parlour, and two in the rest
of the house. It is very seldom that one has two in the parlour. Have
you two in the parlour at home?'
The memory of those tubs made me gasp, but I recovered myself before she
noticed, and said with effusion:
'Why, Lasca, it is a shame of me to expose my country, and you must not
let it go further, for I am speaking to you in confidence; but I give you
my word of honour that not even the richest man in the city of New York
has two slop-tubs in his drawing-room.'
She clapped her fur-clad hands in innocent delight, and exclaimed:
'Oh, but you cannot mean it, you cannot mean it!'
'Indeed, I am in earnest, dear. There is Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is
almost the richest man in the whole world. Now, if I were on my dying
bed, I could say to you that not even he has two in his drawing-room.
Why, he hasn't even one--I wish I may die in my tracks if it isn't true.'
Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said, slowly, and with
a sort of awe in her voice:
'How strange--how incredible--one is not able to realise it. Is he
penurious?'
'No--it isn't that. It isn't the expense he minds, but--er--well, you
know, it would look like showing off. Yes, that is it, that is the idea;
he is a plain man in his way, and shrinks from display.'
'Why, that humility is right enough,' said Lasca, 'if one does not carry
it too far--but what does the place look like?'
'Well, necessarily it looks pretty barren and unfinished, but--'
'I should think so! I never heard anything like it. Is it a fine house
--that is, otherwise?'
'Pretty fine, yes. It is very well thought of.'
The girl was silent awhile, and sat dreamily gnawing a candle-end,
apparently trying to think the thing out. At last she gave her head a
little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision:
'Well, to my mind there's a breed of humility which is itself a species
of showing off when you get down to the marrow of it; and when a man is
able to afford two slop-tubs in his parlour, and doesn't do it, it may be
that he is truly humble-minded, but it's a hundred times more likely that
he is just trying to strike the public eye. In my judgment, your Mr.
Vanderbilt knows what he is about.'
I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard
was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one in
its own habitat; but the girl's head was set, and she was not to be
persuaded. Presently she said:
'Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours, and
made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?'
'Well, they are pretty good--good enough--but they are not made of
ice-blocks.'
'I want to know! Why aren't they made of ice-blocks?'
I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice in
a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your
ice-bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out:
'Dear me, do you buy your ice?'
'We most surely do, dear.'
She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said:
'Oh, I never heard of anything so silly! My! there's plenty of it--it
isn't worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight,
right now. I wouldn't give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.'
'Well, it's because you don't know how to value it, you little provincial
muggings. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could buy all the
whales in the market with it.'
She looked at me doubtfully, and said:
'Are you speaking true?'
'Absolutely. I take my oath to it.'
This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh:
'I wish I could live there.'
I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could
understand; but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the
impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her
mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil
which I had done, so I said:
'But you wouldn't care for whale-meat if you lived there. Nobody does.'
'What!'
'Indeed they don't.'
'Why don't they?'
'Wel-l-l, I hardly know. It's prejudice, I think. Yes, that is it--just
prejudice. I reckon somebody that hadn't anything better to do started a
prejudice against it, some time or other, and once you get a caprice like
that fairly going, you know it will last no end of time.'
'That is true--perfectly true,' said the girl, reflectively. 'Like our
prejudice against soap, here--our tribes had a prejudice against soap at
first, you know.'
I glanced at her to see if she was in earnest. Evidently she was. I
hesitated, then said, cautiously:
'But pardon me. They had a prejudice against soap? Had?'--with falling
inflection.
'Yes--but that was only at first; nobody would eat it.'
'Oh--I understand. I didn't get your idea before.'
She resumed:
'It was just a prejudice. The first time soap came here from the
foreigners, nobody liked it; but as soon as it got to be fashionable,
everybody liked it, and now everybody has it that can afford it. Are you
fond of it?'
'Yes, indeed; I should die if I couldn't have it--especially here. Do
you like it?'
'I just adore it! Do you like candles?'
'I regard them as an absolute necessity. Are you fond of them?'
Her eyes fairly danced, and she exclaimed:
'Oh! Don't mention it! Candles!--and soap!--'
'And fish-interiors!--'
'And train-oil--'
'And slush!--'
'And whale-blubber!--'
'And carrion! and sour-krout! and beeswax! and tar! and turpentine! and
molasses! and--'
'Don't--oh, don't--I shall expire with ecstasy!--'
'And then serve it all up in a slush-bucket, and invite the neighbours
and sail in!'
But this vision of an ideal feast was too much for her, and she swooned
away, poor thing. I rubbed snow in her face and brought her to, and
after a while got her excitement cooled down. By-and-by she drifted into
her story again:
'So we began to live here in the fine house. But I was not happy. The
reason was this: I was born for love: for me there could be no true
happiness without it. I wanted to be loved for myself alone. I wanted
an idol, and I wanted to be my idol's idol; nothing less than mutual
idolatry would satisfy my fervent nature. I had suitors in plenty--in
over-plenty, indeed--but in each and every case they had a fatal defect:
sooner or later I discovered that defect--not one of them failed to
betray it--it was not me they wanted, but my wealth.'
'Your wealth?'
'Yes; for my father is much the richest man in this tribe--or in any
tribe in these regions.'
I wondered what her father's wealth consisted of. It couldn't be the
house--anybody could build its mate. It couldn't be the furs--they were
not valued. It couldn't be the sledge, the dogs, the harpoons, the boat,
the bone fish-hooks and needles, and such things--no, these were not
wealth. Then what could it be that made this man so rich and brought
this swarm of sordid suitors to his house? It seemed to me, finally,
that the best way to find out would be to ask. So I did it. The girl
was so manifestly gratified by the question that I saw she had been
aching to have me ask it. She was suffering fully as much to tell as I
was to know. She snuggled confidentially up to me and said:
'Guess how much he is worth--you never can!'
I pretended to consider the matter deeply, she watching my anxious and
labouring countenance with a devouring and delighted interest; and when,
at last, I gave it up and begged her to appease my longing by telling me
herself how much this polar Vanderbilt was worth, she put her mouth close
to my ear and whispered, impressively:
'Twenty-two fish-hooks--not bone, but foreign--made out of real iron!'
Then she sprang back dramatically, to observe the effect. I did my level
best not to disappoint her. I turned pale and murmured:
'Great Scott!'
'It's as true as you live, Mr. Twain!'
'Lasca, you are deceiving me--you cannot mean it.'
She was frightened and troubled. She exclaimed:
'Mr. Twain, every word of it is true--every word. You believe me--you do
believe me, now don't you? Say you believe me--do say you believe me!'
'I--well, yes, I do--I am trying to. But it was all so sudden. So
sudden and prostrating. You shouldn't do such a thing in that sudden
way. It--'
'Oh, I'm so sorry! If I had only thought--'
'Well, it's all right, and I don't blame you any more, for you are young
and thoughtless, and of course you couldn't foresee what an effect--'
'But oh, dear, I ought certainly to have known better. Why--'
'You see, Lasca, if you had said five or six hooks, to start with, and
then gradually--'
'Oh, I see, I see--then gradually added one, and then two, and then--ah,
why couldn't I have thought of that!'
'Never mind, child, it's all right--I am better now--I shall be over it
in a little while. But--to spring the whole twenty-two on a person
unprepared and not very strong anyway--'
'Oh, it was a crime! But you forgive me--say you forgive me. Do!'
After harvesting a good deal of very pleasant coaxing and petting and
persuading, I forgave her and she was happy again, and by-and-by she got
under way with her narrative once more. I presently discovered that the
family treasury contained still another feature--a jewel of some sort,
apparently--and that she was trying to get around speaking squarely about
it, lest I get paralysed again. But I wanted to known about that thing,
too, and urged her to tell me what it was. She was afraid. But I
insisted, and said I would brace myself this time and be prepared, then
the shock would not hurt me. She was full of misgivings, but the
temptation to reveal that marvel to me and enjoy my astonishment and
admiration was too strong for her, and she confessed that she had it on
her person, and said that if I was sure I was prepared--and so on and so
on--and with that she reached into her bosom and brought out a battered
square of brass, watching my eye anxiously the while. I fell over
against her in a quite well-acted faint, which delighted her heart and
nearly frightened it out of her, too, at the same time. When I came to
and got calm, she was eager to know what I thought of her jewel.
'What do I think of it? I think it is the most exquisite thing I ever
saw.'
'Do you really? How nice of you to say that! But it is a love, now isn't
it?'
'Well, I should say so! I'd rather own it than the equator.'
'I thought you would admire it,' she said. 'I think it is so lovely.
And there isn't another one in all these latitudes. People have come all
the way from the open Polar Sea to look at it. Did you ever see one
before?'
I said no, this was the first one I had ever seen. It cost me a pang to
tell that generous lie, for I had seen a million of them in my time, this
humble jewel of hers being nothing but a battered old New York Central
baggage check.
'Land!' said I, 'you don't go about with it on your person this way,
alone and with no protection, not even a dog?'
'Ssh! not so loud,' she said. 'Nobody knows I carry it with me. They
think it is in papa's treasury. That is where it generally is.'
'Where is the treasury?'
It was a blunt question, and for a moment she looked startled and a
little suspicious, but I said:
'Oh, come, don't you be afraid about me. At home we have seventy
millions of people, and although I say it myself that shouldn't, there is
not one person among them all but would trust me with untold fish-hooks.'
This reassured her, and she told me where the hooks were hidden in the
house. Then she wandered from her course to brag a little about the size
of the sheets of transparent ice that formed the windows of the mansion,
and asked me if I had ever seen their like at home, and I came right out
frankly and confessed that I hadn't, which pleased her more than she
could find words to dress her gratification in. It was so easy to please
her, and such a pleasure to do it, that I went on and said--
'Ah, Lasca, you are a fortune girl!--this beautiful house, this dainty
jewel, that rich treasure, all this elegant snow, and sumptuous icebergs
and limitless sterility, and public bears and walruses, and noble freedom
and largeness and everybody's admiring eyes upon you, and everybody's
homage and respect at your command without the asking; young, rich,
beautiful, sought, courted, envied, not a requirement unsatisfied, not a
desire ungratified, nothing to wish for that you cannot have--it is
immeasurable good-fortune! I have seen myriads of girls, but none of whom
these extraordinary things could be truthfully said but you alone. And
you are worthy--worthy of it all, Lasca--I believe it in my heart.'
It made her infinitely proud and happy to hear me say this, and she
thanked me over and over again for that closing remark, and her voice and
eyes showed that she was touched. Presently she said:
'Still, it is not all sunshine--there is a cloudy side. The burden of
wealth is a heavy one to bear. Sometimes I have doubted if it were not
better to be poor--at least not inordinately rich. It pains me to see
neighbouring tribesmen stare as they pass by, and overhear them say,
reverently, one to another, "There--that is she--the millionaire's
daughter!" And sometimes they say sorrowfully, "She is rolling in
fish-hooks, and I--I have nothing." It breaks my heart. When I was a
child and we were poor, we slept with the door open, if we chose, but
now--now we have to have a night-watchman. In those days my father was
gentle and courteous to all; but now he is austere and haughty and cannot
abide familiarity. Once his family were his sole thought, but now he
goes about thinking of his fish-hooks all the time. And his wealth makes
everybody cringing and obsequious to him. Formerly nobody laughed at his
jokes, they being always stale and far-fetched and poor, and destitute of
the one element that can really justify a joke--the element of humour;
but now everybody laughs and cackles at these dismal things, and if any
fails to do it my father is deeply displeased, and shows it. Formerly
his opinion was not sought upon any matter and was not valuable when he
volunteered it; it has that infirmity yet, but, nevertheless, it is
sought by all and applauded by all--and he helps do the applauding
himself, having no true delicacy and a plentiful want of tact. He has
lowered the tone of all our tribe. Once they were a frank and manly
race, now they are measly hypocrites, and sodden with servility. In my
heart of hearts I hate all the ways of millionaires! Our tribe was once
plain, simple folk, and content with the bone fish-hooks of their
fathers; now they are eaten up with avarice and would sacrifice every
sentiment of honour and honesty to possess themselves of the debasing
iron fish-hooks of the foreigner. However, I must not dwell on these sad
things. As I have said, it was my dream to be loved for myself alone.
'At last, this dream seemed about to be fulfilled. A stranger came by,
one day, who said his name was Kalula. I told him my name, and he said
he loved me. My heart gave a great bound of gratitude and pleasure, for
I had loved him at sight, and now I said so. He took me to his breast
and said he would not wish to be happier than he was now. We went
strolling together far over the ice-floes, telling all about each other,
and planning, oh, the loveliest future! When we were tired at last we sat
down and ate, for he had soap and candles and I had brought along some
blubber. We were hungry and nothing was ever so good.
'He belonged to a tribe whose haunts were far to the north, and I found
that he had never heard of my father, which rejoiced me exceedingly. I
mean he had heard of the millionaire, but had never heard his name--so,
you see, he could not know that I was the heiress. You may be sure that
I did not tell him. I was loved for myself at last, and was satisfied.
I was so happy--oh, happier than you can think!
'By-and-by it was towards supper time, and I led him home. As we
approached our house he was amazed, and cried out:
'"How splendid! Is that your father's?"
'It gave me a pang to hear that tone and see that admiring light in his
eye, but the feeling quickly passed away, for I loved him so, and he
looked so handsome and noble. All my family of aunts and uncles and
cousins were pleased with him, and many guests were called in, and the
house was shut up tight and the rag lamps lighted, and when everything
was hot and comfortable and suffocating, we began a joyous feast in
celebration of my betrothal.
'When the feast was over my father's vanity overcame him, and he could
not resist the temptation to show off his riches and let Kalula see what
grand good-fortune he had stumbled into--and mainly, of course, he wanted
to enjoy the poor man's amazement. I could have cried--but it would have
done no good to try to dissuade my father, so I said nothing, but merely
sat there and suffered.
'My father went straight to the hiding-place in full sight of everybody,
and got out the fish-hooks and brought them and flung them scatteringly
over my head, so that they fell in glittering confusion on the platform
at my lover's knee.
'Of course, the astounding spectacle took the poor lad's breath away. He
could only stare in stupid astonishment, and wonder how a single
individual could possess such incredible riches. Then presently he
glanced brilliantly up and exclaimed:
'"Ah, it is you who are the renowned millionaire!"
'My father and all the rest burst into shouts of happy laughter, and when
my father gathered the treasure carelessly up as if it might be mere
rubbish and of no consequence, and carried it back to its place, poor
Kulala's surprise was a study. He said:
'"Is it possible that you put such things away without counting them?"
'My father delivered a vain-glorious horse-laugh, and said:
'"Well, truly, a body may know you have never been rich, since a mere
matter of a fish-hook or two is such a mighty matter in your eyes."
'Kalula was confused, and hung his head, but said:
'"Ah, indeed, sir, I was never worth the value of the barb of one of
those precious things, and I have never seen any man before who was so
rich in them as to render the counting of his hoard worth while, since
the wealthiest man I have ever known, till now, was possessed of but
three."
'My foolish father roared again with jejune delight, and allowed the
impression to remain that he was not accustomed to count his hooks and
keep sharp watch over them. He was showing off, you see. Count them?
Why, he counted them every day!
'I had met and got acquainted with my darling just at dawn; I had brought
him home just at dark, three hours afterwards--for the days were
shortening toward the six-months' night at that time. We kept up the
festivities many hours; then, at last, the guests departed and the rest
of us distributed ourselves along the walls on sleeping-benches, and soon
all were steeped in dreams but me. I was too happy, too excited, to
sleep. After I had lain quiet a long, long time, a dim form passed by me
and was swallowed up in the gloom that pervaded the farther end of the
house. I could not make out who it was, or whether it was man or woman.
Presently that figure or another one passed me going the other way. I
wondered what it all meant, but wondering did no good; and while I was
still wondering I fell asleep.
'I do not know how long I slept, but at last I came suddenly broad awake
and heard my father say in a terrible voice, "By the great Snow God,
there's a fish-hook gone!" Something told me that that meant sorrow for
me, and the blood in my veins turned cold. The presentiment was
confirmed in the same instant: my father shouted, "Up, everybody, and
seize the stranger!" Then there was an outburst of cries and curses from
all sides, and a wild rush of dim forms through the obscurity. I flew to
my beloved's help, but what could I do but wait and wring my hands?--he
was already fenced away from me by a living wall, he was being bound hand
and foot. Not until he was secured would they let me get to him. I
flung myself upon his poor insulted form and cried my grief out upon his
breast while my father and all my family scoffed at me and heaped threats
and shameful epithets upon him. He bore his ill usage with a tranquil
dignity which endeared him to me more than ever, and made me proud and
happy to suffer with him and for him. I heard my father order that the
elders of the tribe be called together to try my Kalula for his life.
'"What!" I said, "before any search has been made for the lost hook?"
'"Lost hook!" they all shouted, in derision; and my father added,
mockingly, "Stand back, everybody, and be properly serious--she is going
to hunt up that lost hook: oh, without doubt she will find it!"--whereat
they all laughed again.
'I was not disturbed--I had no fears, no doubts. I said:
'"It is for you to laugh now; it is your turn. But ours is coming; wait
and see."
'I got a rag lamp. I thought I should find that miserable thing in one
little moment; and I set about that matter with such confidence that
those people grew grace, beginning to suspect that perhaps they had been
too hasty. But alas and alas!--oh, the bitterness of that search! There
was deep silence while one might count his fingers ten or twelve times,
then my heart began to sink, and around me the mockings began again, and
grew steadily louder and more assured, until at last, when I gave up,
they burst into volley after volley of cruel laughter.
'None will ever know what I suffered then. But my love was my support
and my strength, and I took my rightful place at my Kalula's side, and
put my arm about his neck, and whispered in his ear, saying:
'"You are innocent, my own--that I know; but say it to me yourself, for
my comfort, then I can bear whatever is in store for us."
'He answered:
'"As surely as I stand upon the brink of death at this moment, I am
innocent. Be comforted, then, O bruised heart; be at peace, O thou
breath of my nostrils, life of my life!"
'"Now, then, let the elders come!"--and as I said the words there was a
gathering sound of crunching snow outside, and then a vision of stooping
forms filing in at the door--the elders.
'My father formally accused the prisoner, and detailed the happenings of
the night. He said that the watchman was outside the door, and that in
the house were none but the family and the stranger. "Would the family
steal their own property?" He paused. The elders sat silent many
minutes; at last, one after another said to his neighbour, "This looks
bad for the stranger"--sorrowful words for me to hear. Then my father
sat down. O miserable, miserable me! At that very moment I could have
proved my darling innocent, but I did not know it!
'The chief of the court asked:
'"Is there any here to defend the prisoner?"
'I rose and said:
'"Why should he steal that hook, or any or all of them? In another day
he would have been heir to the whole!"
I stood waiting. There was a long silence, the steam from the many
breaths rising about me like a fog. At last one elder after another
nodded his head slowly several times, and muttered, "There is force in
what the child has said." Oh, the heart-lift that was in those words!
--so transient, but, oh, so precious! I sat down.
'"If any would say further, let him speak now, or after hold his peace,"
said the chief of the court.
'My father rose and said:
'"In the night a form passed by me in the gloom, going toward the
treasury and presently returned. I think, now, it was the stranger."
'Oh, I was like to swoon! I had supposed that that was my secret; not the
grip of the great Ice God himself could have dragged it out of my heart.
The chief of the court said sternly to my poor Kalula:
'"Speak!"
'Kalula hesitated, then answered:
'"It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beautiful hooks. I
went there and kissed them and fondled them, to appease my spirit and
drown it in a harmless joy, then I put them back. I may have dropped
one, but I stole none."
'Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place! There was an awful hush.
I knew he had pronounced his own doom, and that all was over. On every
face you could see the words hieroglyphed: "It is a confession!--and
paltry, lame, and thin."
'I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps--and waiting. Presently, I
heard the solemn words I knew were coming; and each word, as it came, was
a knife in my heart:
'"It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the
trial by water."
'Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought "trial by water" to our
land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none
knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure
methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with
their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is an
invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the
innocent are proved innocent, without doubt or question, for they drown;
and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not
drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said, "He is innocent,
and he will go down under the waves and I shall never see him more."
'I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms all the
precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of his love upon me,
and oh, I was so miserable and so happy! At last, they tore him from me,
and I followed sobbing after them, and saw them fling him into the sea
--then I covered my face with my hands. Agony? Oh, I know the deepest
deeps of that word!
'The next moment the people burst into a shout of malicious joy, and I
took away my hands, startled. Oh, bitter sight--he was swimming! My
heart turned instantly to stone, to ice. I said, "He was guilty, and he
lied to me!" I turned my back in scorn and went my way homeward.
'They took him far out to sea and set him on an iceberg that was drifting
southward in the great waters. Then my family came home, and my father
said to me:
'"Your thief sent his dying message to you, saying, 'Tell her I am
innocent, and that all the days and all the hours and all the minutes
while I starve and perish I shall love her and think of her and bless the
day that gave me sight of her sweet face.'" Quite pretty, even poetical!
'I said, "He is dirt--let me never hear mention of him again." And oh,
to think--he was innocent all the time!
'Nine months--nine dull, sad months--went by, and at last came the day of
the Great Annual Sacrifice, when all the maidens of the tribe wash their
faces and comb their hair. With the first sweep of my comb out came the
fatal fish-hook from where it had been all those months nestling, and I
fell fainting into the arms of my remorseful father! Groaning, he said,
"We murdered him, and I shall never smile again!" He has kept his word.
Listen; from that day to this not a month goes by that I do not comb my
hair. But oh, where is the good of it all now!'
So ended the poor maid's humble little tale--whereby we learn that since
a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the
border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man
in straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy
ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY
'It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice
has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent
confidence and command.'
I
This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the
Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and
broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was
found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the
nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed
farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning
little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured
flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,
separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the
front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the
manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring
that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.
There was a village a mile away, and a horse-doctor lived there, but
there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a
surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was
summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and
could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time,
and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter,
there was no hurry, she would give me 'absent treatment' now, and come in
the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and
comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I
thought there must be some mistake.
'Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?'
'Yes.'
'And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?'
'Yes.'
'And struck another one and bounced again?'
'Yes.'
'And struck another one and bounced yet again?'
'Yes.'
'And broke the boulders?'
'Yes.'
'That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you
tell her I got hurt, too?'
'I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but
an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock
to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look
like a hat-rack.'
'And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was
nothing the matter with me?'
'Those were her words.'
'I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with
sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorising, or did
she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the
aid of abstract science the confirmation of personal experience?'
'Bitte?'
It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she
couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked
for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket
to pile my legs in, and another capable person to come and help me curse
the time away; but I could not have any of these things.
'Why?'
'She said you would need nothing at all.'
'But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain.'
'She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to
them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such
things as hunger and thirst and pain.'
'She does, does she?'
'It is what she said.'
'Does she seem o be in full and functional possession of her intellectual
plant, such as it is?'
'Bitte?'
'Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?'
'Tie her up?'
'There, good-night, run along; you are a good girl, but your mental
Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions.'
II
It was a night of anguish, of course--at least I supposed it was, for it
had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad. She was middle-aged, and large and bony
and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak
and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was
eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly
deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one
by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand and hung the
articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out
of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it
without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without
passion:
'Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its
dumb servants.'
I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms--
'One does not feel,' she explained; 'there is no such thing as feeling:
therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent as a
contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the
mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.'
'But if it hurts, just the same--'
'It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of
reality. Pain is unreal; hence pain cannot hurt.'
In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion
of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said
'Ouch!' and went tranquilly on with her talk. 'You should never allow
yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you
are feeling: you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit others
to talk about disease or pain or death or similar non-existences in your
preserve. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty
imaginings.' Just at that point the Stubenmadchen trod on the cat's
tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked with
caution:
'Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?'
'A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from the mind only; the lower
animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind opinion is impossible.'
'She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?'
'She cannot imagine a pain, for imagination is an effect of mind; without
mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.'
'Then she had a real pain?'
'I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain.'
'It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the
cat. Because, there being no such thing as real pain, and she not being
able to imagine an imaginary thing, it would seem that God in his Pity
has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion useable
when her tail is trodden on which for the moment joins cat and Christian
in one common brotherhood of--'
She broke in with an irritated--
'Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty
and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an
injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognise and confess that
there is no such thing as disease or pain or death.'
'I am full of imaginary tortures,' I said, 'but I do not think I could be
any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get rid
of them?'
'There is no occasion to get rid of them, since they do not exist. They
are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there is
no such thing as matter.'
'It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it
seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it.'
'Explain.'
'Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter
propagate things?'
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were
any such thing as a smile.
'It is quite simple,' she said; 'the fundamental propositions of
Christian Science explain it, and they are summarised in the four
following self-evident propositions: 1. God is All in all. 2. God is
good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil sin, disease. There
--now you see.'
It seemed nebulous: it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty
in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with
some hesitancy:
'Does--does it explain?'
'Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it.'
With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backward.
'Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter
is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is
God. There--do you understand now?
'It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--'
'Well?'
'Could you try it some more ways?'
'As many as you like: it always means the same. Interchanged in any way
you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it
means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was
before. It was a marvellous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de
force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and
the occult.'
'It seems to be a corker.'
I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it.
'A what?'
'A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, or profound thoughts
--unthinkable ones--un--'
'It is true. Read backwards, or forwards, or perpendicularly, or at any
given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in
statement and proof.'
'Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree
with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they
prove--I mean, in particular?'
'Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove: 1. GOD--Principle, Life,
Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?'
'I--well, I seem to. Go on, please.
'2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it
clear?'
'It--I think so. Continue.'
'3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding.
There it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell.
Do you find a weak place in it anywhere?'
'Well--no; it seems strong.'
'Very well. There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific
Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of
Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity. 1. Physical--Passions and
appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge,
sin, disease, death.'
'Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it.'
'Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. 1. Moral--Honesty,
affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?'
'Crystal.'
'THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. 1. Spiritual--Faith, wisdom, power,
purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and
co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this
Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal
mind disappears.'
'Not earlier?'
'No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are
completed.'
'It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian
Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship, as
I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the
process of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of
mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to
further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and
disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting: go
on, please.'
'Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears.
Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as to
make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, "the last shall be
first and the first shall be last," that God and His idea may be to us
--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be--all-inclusive.'
'It is beautiful. And with that exhaustive exactness your choice and
arrangement of words confirms and establishes what you have claimed for
the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably
produce only temporary absence of mind, it is reserved to the Third to
make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the Second
could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of it
--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect would
disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes
another remarkable specialty to Christian Science: viz., ease and flow
and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must
be a special reason for this?'
'Yes--God-all, all-God, good Good, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit,
Bones, Truth.'
'That explains it.'
'There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God is
one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one
of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one, not
one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.'
'These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does
Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to
incidental reflection?'
'Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body--as
astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar
system--and makes body tributary to Mind. As it is the earth which is in
motion, while the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise one
finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so the
body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems
otherwise to finite sense; but we shall never understand this while we
admit that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that man is included
in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man
coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether,
and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-Mind, Mind-Soul, Love,
Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal.'
(It is very curious, the effect which Christian Science has upon the
verbal bowels. Particularly the Third Degree; it makes one think of a
dictionary with the cholera. But I only thought this; I did not say it.)
'What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a gift of God, or did it
just happen?'
'In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from
Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for
is due to an American lady.'
'Indeed? When did this occur?'
'In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death
disappeared from the earth to return no more for ever. That is, the
fancies for which those terms stand, disappeared. The things themselves
had never existed; therefore as soon as it was perceived that there were
no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature of the
great discovery are set down in the book here, and--'
'Did the lady write the book?'
'Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is "Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures"--for she explains the Scriptures; they were not
understood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus--I
will read it to you.'
But she had forgotten to bring her glasses.
'Well, it is no matter,' she said, 'I remember the words--indeed, all
Christian Scientists know the book by heart; it is necessary in our
practice. We should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She begins
thus: "In the year 1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Healing,
and named it Christian Science." And she says--quite beautifully, I
think--"Through Christian Science, religion and medicine are inspired
with a diviner nature and essence, fresh pinions are given to faith and
understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God."
Her very words.'
'It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too--marrying religion to
medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way; for
religion and medicine properly belong together, they being the basis of
all spiritual and physical health. What kind of medicine do you give for
the ordinary diseases, such as--'
'We never give medicine in any circumstances whatever! We--'
'But, madam, it says--'
'I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk about it.'
'I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some
way inconsistent, and--'
'There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science. The thing is
impossible, for the Science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since
it proceeds directly from the All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which,
also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is
Mathematics purified from material dross and made spiritual.'
'I can see that, but--'
'It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical Principle.'
The word flattened itself against my mind trying to get in, and
disordered me a little, and before I could inquire into its pertinency,
she was already throwing the needed light:
'This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Principle of Scientific
Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which delivers the children of
men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh is heir to.'
'Surely not every ill, every decay?'
'Every one; there are no exceptions; there is no such thing as decay--it
is an unreality, it has no existence.'
'But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you to--'
'My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the
Mind permits no retrogression.'
She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree, therefore there could
be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other
ground and inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the Science.
'Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and
calculation, like America?'
'The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to trivialities
--but let it pass. I will answer in the Discoverer's own words: "God had
been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a
final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing."'
'Many years? How many?'
'Eighteen centuries!'
'All God, God-good, good-God, Truth, Bones, Liver, one of a series alone
and without equal--it is amazing!'
'You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth. This American lady,
our revered and sacred founder, is distinctly referred to and her coming
prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could not have
been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her
name.'
'How strange, how wonderful!'
'I will quote her own words, for her "Key to the Scriptures:" "The
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in
connection with this nineteenth century." There--do you note that?
Think--note it well.'
'But--what does it mean?'
'Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: "In the
opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam,
there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the
present age. Thus:
'"Revelation xii. 1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a
woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her
head a crown of twelve stars."
'That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of Christian Science
--nothing can be plainer, nothing surer. And note this:
'"Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she
had a place prepared of God."
'That is Boston.'
'I recognise it, madam. These are sublime things and impressive; I never
understood these passages before; please go on with the--with the
--proofs.'
'Very well. Listen:
'"And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a
cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little
book."
'A little book, merely a little book--could words be modester? Yet how
stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?'
'Was it--'
'I hold it in my hand--"Christian Science"!'
'Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and
without equal--it is beyond imagination and wonder!'
'Hear our Founder's eloquent words: "Then will a voice from harmony cry,
'Go and take the little book; take it and eat it up, and it shall make
thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.' Mortal,
obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from
beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find
its digestion bitter." You now know the history of our dear and holy
Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now, but give
yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I
go to bed.'
III
Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good word took a brisk start, now, and went
on quite swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this
way and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every
minute or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a
fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours,
and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good
as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.
I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the
head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands
of a woman whom I did not know, and in whose ability to successfully
treat mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified
by the fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the
first, along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of
relief; and indeed the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more
and more bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention
from food and drink.
The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic, in
fact quite horsey, and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so out of delicacy I did not press it. He
looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favourable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would
know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful
of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and
axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in
twenty-four hours or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget
they were on the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then
took his leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and
in any quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care
for food.
I took up the 'Christian Scientist' book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note
the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and
an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical
Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish
was reached at last, the evolutions were complete and a fine success; but
I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer materials.
I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the stomach-ache
into the boots, but I think one could develop the blind staggers out of
the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers produced in this way
would be of a better quality and more lasting than any produced by the
artificial processes of a horse-doctor.
For of all the strange, and frantic, and incomprehensible, and
uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely
this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence
and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often
compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have
any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they
understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all
cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things
as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing
actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their
testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as
Mrs. Fuller did; they do not use their own language, but the book's; they
pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later
that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the
volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible--another Bible,
perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental
desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the
membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it
you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech
delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the
particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a
vigorous instrument which is making a noise it thinks is a tune, but
which to persons not members of the band is only the martial tooting of a
trombone, and merely stirs the soul through the noise but does not convey
a meaning.
The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a
heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than
human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and
so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting
anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence,
and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it
thunders out the startling words, 'I have Proved' so and so! It takes the
Pope and all the great guns of his church in battery assembled to
authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single
unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study
and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she
finds the whole Bible in an unclarified condition, and at small expense
of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid,
reorganises and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and
establishes them with formulae which you cannot tell from 'Let there be
light!' and 'Here you have it!' It is the first time since the dawn-days
of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid
and complacent confidence and command.
IV
A word upon a question of authorship. Not that quite; but, rather, a
question of emendation and revision. We know that the Bible-Annex was
not written by Mrs. Eddy, but was handed down to her eighteen hundred
years ago by the Angel of the Apocalypse; but did she translate it alone,
or did she have help? There seems to be evidence that she had help. For
there are four several copyrights on it--1875, 1885, 1890, 1894. It did
not come down in English, for in that language it could not have acquired
copyright--there were no copyright laws eighteen centuries ago, and in my
opinion no English language--at least up there. This makes it
substantially certain that the Annex is a translation. Then, was not the
first translation complete? If it was, on what grounds were the later
copyrights granted?
I surmise that the first translation was poor; and that a friend or
friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it
into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the
sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything. I
think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English
to-day, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to
guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of
the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the 'Christian Science Journal,'
for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy's.
However, as to the main point: it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did not
doctor the Annex's English herself. Her original, spontaneous,
undoctored English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from
recent articles from her unappeasable pen; double columned with them are
a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw
light. The italics are mine:
1. 'What plague spot, 'Therefore the efficient
or bacilli were (sic) gnawing remedy is to destroy the
(sic) at the heart of this patient's unfortunate belief,
metropolis... and bringing by both silently and audibly
it on bended knee? arguing the opposite facts in
Why, it was an institute that regard to harmonious being
had entered its vitals (sic) representing man as
that, among other things, healthful instead of diseased,
taught games,' et cetera. (P. and showing that it is
670, 'C.S.Journal,' article impossible for matter to suffer,
entitled 'A Narrative--by to feel pain or heat, to be
Mary Baker G. Eddy.') thirsty or sick.' (P. 375, Annex.)
2. 'Parks sprang up (sic)...
electric street cars run 'Man is never sick; for
(sic) merrily through several Mind is not sick, and matter
streets, concrete sidewalks cannot be. A false belief
and macadamised roads dotted is both the tempter and the
(sic) the place,' et cetera. tempted, the sin and the
(Ibid.) sinner, the disease and its
3. 'Shorn (sic) of its cause. It is well to be calm
suburbs it had indeed little in sickness; to be hopeful is
left to admire, save to (sic) still better; but to
such as fancy a skeleton understand that sickness is not
above ground breathing (sic) real, and that Truth can
slowly through a barren (sic) destroy it, is best of all, for
breast.' (Ibid.) it is the universal and perfect
remedy.' (Chapter xii.,
Annex.)
You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled
English of the doctored Annex and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output
of the translator's natural, spontaneous, and unmedicated penwork. The
English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and
painstaking hand--but it was not Mrs. Eddy's.
If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was
exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli which
were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on
bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing
slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to
the book as we have it now--now that the salaried polisher has holystoned
all of the genuine Eddyties out of it.
Will the plague-spot article go into a volume just as it stands? I think
not. I think the polisher will take off his coat and vest and cravat and
'demonstrate over' it a couple of weeks and sweat it into a shape
something like the following--and then Mrs. Eddy will publish it and
leave people to believe that she did the polishing herself:
1. What injurious influence was it that was affecting the city's morals?
It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements,
disseminated a knowledge of games, et cetera.
2. By the magic of the new and nobler influences the sterile spaces were
transformed into wooded parks, the merry electric car replaced the
melancholy 'bus, smooth concrete the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the
macadamised road the primitive corduroy, et cetera.
3. Its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the
wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures.
The Annex contains one sole and solitary humorous remark. There is a
most elaborate and voluminous Index, and it is preceded by this note:
'This Index will enable the student to find any thought or idea contained
in the book.'
V
No one doubts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful
influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the
interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the
wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the
hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their
work. They have all recognised the potency and availability of that
force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that
where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor
will make the bread pill effective.
Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance, but
the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy,
a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as
a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her
from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, 'Have faith
--it is all that is necessary,' and they went away well of their ailments.
She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She
said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw
her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the
patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this
sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets
into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his
business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is
unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of
his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to
year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in
his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is
this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing
from himself.
Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers
have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way
of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind
Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental-Science Cure, and the
Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with
the same old powerful instrument--the patient's imagination. Differing
names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that
instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the
ways of the others.
They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith
Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since
they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he
wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every
conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces
alone. They claim ability to cure malignant cancer, and other affections
which have never been cured in the history of the race. There would seem
to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I
think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were
claimed.
I believe it might be shown that all the 'mind' sects except Christian
Science have lucid intervals; intervals in which they betray some
diffidence, and in effect confess that they are not the equals of the
Deity; but if the Christian Scientist even stops with being merely the
equal of the Deity, it is not clearly provable by his Christian-Science
Amended Bible. In the usual Bible the Deity recognises pain, disease,
and death as facts, but the Christian Scientist knows better. Knows
better, and is not diffident about saying so.
The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my cold;
but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian Science
claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and
confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way.
The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers, and I paid him; in fact I
doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemised
bill for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred and thirty-four
places--one dollar per fracture.
'Nothing exists but Mind?'
'Nothing,' she answered. 'All else is substanceless, all else is
imaginary.'
I gave her an imaginary cheque, and now she is suing me for substantial
dollars. It looks inconsistent.
VI
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to
each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple
many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and
obscurities now.
Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there,
are nevertheless no doubt insane in one or two particulars--I think we
must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I
think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that as
regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are
really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all
accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are
outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun
gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that 6 times
6 are thirty-six; that 2 from 10 leave eight; that 8 and 7 are fifteen.
These are perhaps the only things we are agreed about; but although they
are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an
infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them we know to be
substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane.
Whoever disputes a single one of them we know to be wholly insane, and
qualified for the asylum.
Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to
go at large--but that is concession enough; we cannot go any further than
that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is
insane--just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was, just
as insane as the Pope is. We know exactly where to put our finger upon
his insanity; it is where his opinion differs from ours.
That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and
unbiased Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question
every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters.
When a thoughtful and unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster
Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I
cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove
anything to a lunatic--for that is a part of his insanity and the
evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has
the same defect that afflicts his. All democrats are insane, but not one
of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the
republicans are insane, but only the democrats and mugwumps can perceive
it. The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are
insane. When I look around me I am often troubled to see how many people
are mad. To mention only a few:
The Atheist, The Shakers,
The Infidel, The Millerites,
The Agnostic, The Mormons,
The Baptist, The Laurence Oliphant
The Methodist, Harrisites,
The Catholic, and the other The Grand Lama's people,
115 Christian sects, the The Monarchists,
Presbyterian excepted, The Imperialists,
The 72 Mohammedan sects, The Democrats,
The Buddhist, The Republicans (but not
The Blavatsky-Buddhist, the Mugwumps),
The Nationalist, The Mind-Curists,
The Confucian, The Faith-Curists,
The Spiritualist, The Mental Scientists,
The 2,000 East Indian The Allopaths,
sects, The Homeopaths,
The Peculiar People, The Electropaths,
The Swedenborgians,
The--but there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all
insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but
otherwise sane and rational.
This should move us to be charitable toward one another's lunacies. I
recognise that in his special belief the Christian Scientist is insane,
because he does not believe as I do; but I hail him as my mate and fellow
because I am as insane as he--insane from his point of view, and his
point of view is as authoritative as mine and worth as much. That is to
say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great religious or political
question the opinion of the dullest head in the world is worth the same
as the opinion of the brightest head in the world--a brass farthing. How
do we arrive at this? It is simple: The affirmative opinion of a stupid
man is neutralised by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbour--no
decision is reached; the affirmative opinion of the intellectual giant
Gladstone is neutralised by the negative opinion of the intellectual
giant Cardinal Newman--no decision is reached. Opinions that prove
nothing are, of course, without value--any but a dead person knows that
much. This obliges us to admit the truth of the unpalatable proposition
just mentioned above--that in disputed matters political and religious
one man's opinion is worth no more than his peer's, and hence it follows
that no man's opinion possesses any real value. It is a humbling
thought, but there is no way to get around it: all opinions upon these
great subjects are brass-farthing opinions.
It is a mere plain simple fact--as clear and as certain as that 8 and 7
make fifteen. And by it we recognise that we are all insane, as concerns
those matters. If we were sane we should all see a political or
religious doctrine alike, there would be no dispute: it would be a case
of 8 and 7--just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and none insane.
There there is but one religion, one belief, the harmony is perfect,
there is never a discordant note.
Under protection of these preliminaries I suppose I may now repeat
without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him no
discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he is
insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more
picturesquely insane that some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure
that in one important and splendid particular he is saner than is the
vast bulk of the race.
Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not
ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the
only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is
merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting
than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his 'little book'--the one
described in the previous article; the 'little book' exposed in the sky
eighteen centuries ago by the flaming angel of the Apocalypse and handed
down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy of New Hampshire and
translated by her, word for word, into English (with help of a polisher),
and now published and distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a
clear profit per volume, above cost, of 700 per cent.!--a profit which
distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it
if he can; a 'little book' which the C.S. very frequently calls by just
that name, and always inclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin
exultantly in mind; a 'little book' which 'explains' and reconstructs and
new-paints and decorates the Bible and puts a mansard roof on it and a
lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a little book which
for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly
to it, and within half a century will hitch it in the rear, and
thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march
of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet.
Perhaps I am putting the tandem arrangement too far away; perhaps five
years might be nearer the mark than fifty; for a Viennese lady told me
last night that in the Christian Science Mosque in Boston she noticed
some things which seem to me to promise a shortening of the interval; on
one side there was a display of texts from the New Testament, signed with
the Saviour's initials, 'J.C.;' and on the opposite side a display of
texts from the 'little book' signed--with the author's mere initials?
No--signed with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy's name in full. Perhaps the
Angel of the Apocalypse likes this kind of piracy. I made this remark
lightly to a Christian Scientist this morning, but he did not receive it
lightly, but said it was jesting upon holy things; he said there was no
piracy, for the angel did not compose the book, he only brought it--'God
composed it.' I could have retorted that it was a case of piracy just
the same; that the displayed texts should be signed with the Author's
initials, and that to sign them with the translator's train of names was
another case of 'jesting upon holy things.' However, I did not say these
things, for this Scientist was a large person, and although by his own
doctrine we have no substance, but are fictions and unrealities, I knew
he could hit me an imaginary blow which would furnish me an imaginary
pain which could last me a week. The lady said that in that Mosque there
were two pulpits; in one of them was a man with the Former Bible, in the
other a woman with Mrs. Eddy's apocalyptic Annex; and from these books
the man and the woman were reading verse and verse about:
'Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the
text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our only preachers.
They are the word of God.'--Christian Science Journal, October
1898.
Are these things picturesque? The Viennese lady told me that in a chapel
of the Mosque there was a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before
it burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do
you think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping
that image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be before it
is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, or Christ's equal?
Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as 'Our Mother.'
How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne
beside the Virgin--and later a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and
Mary the Matron; later, with a change of Precedence, Mary the Matron and
Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his
brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in
altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church
ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were as poverty as
compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the
Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will
examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A
favourite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her Annex
to the Scriptures) has 'one distinctive feature which has special
reference to the present age'--and to her, as is rather pointedly
indicated:
'And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a woman clothed with
the sun and the moon under her feet,' etc.
The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy.
Is it insanity to believe that Christian Scientism is destined to make
the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world
since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century
from now it may stand second to Rome only, in numbers and power in
Christendom?
If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it is so just yet, I
think. There seems argument that it may come true. The
Christian-Science 'boom' is not yet five years old; yet already it has
500 churches and 1,000,000 members in America.
It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover,
it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It
has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any
other existing 'ism;' for it has more to offer than any other. The past
teaches us that, in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a
mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it must not claim
entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement on
an existing religion, and show its hand later, when strong and
prosperous--like Mohammedanism.
Next, there must be money--and plenty of it.
Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the
grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged
to ask questions or find fault.
Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and
attractive advantages over the baits offered by the other religions.
A new movement equipped with some of these endowments--like spiritualism,
for instance--may count upon a considerable success; a new movement
equipped with the bulk of them--like Mohammedanism, for instance--may
count upon a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites
but one--it had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with; and,
besides, it appealed to the stupid and the ignorant only. Spiritualism
lacked the important detail of concentration of money and authority in
the hands of an irresponsible clique.
The above equipment is excellent, admirable, powerful, but not perfect.
There is yet another detail which is worth the whole of it put together
--and more; a detail which has never been joined (in the beginning of a
religious movement) to a supremely good working equipment since the world
began, until now: a new personage to worship. Christianity had the
Saviour, but at first and for generations it lacked money and
concentrated power. In Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science possesses the new
personage for worship, and in addition--here in the very beginning--a
working equipment that has not a flaw in it. In the beginning,
Mohammedanism had no money; and it has never had anything to offer its
client but heaven--nothing here below that was valuable. In addition to
heaven hereafter, Christian Science has present health and a cheerful
spirit to offer--for cash--and in comparison with this bribe all other
this-world bribes are poor and cheap. You recognise that this estimate
is admissible, do you not?
To whom does Bellamy's 'Nationalism' appeal? Necessarily to the few:
people who read and dream, and are compassionate, and troubled for the
poor and the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal? Necessarily
to the few; its 'boom' has lasted for half a century and I believe it
claims short of four millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted
by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate 'isms?' The
few again: Educated people, sensitively organised, with superior mental
endowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment
there. And who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit;
its field is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the appeal of
Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the
low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the
vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the
coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the freeman, the
slave, the adult, the child; they who are ailing, they who have friends
that are ailing. To mass it in a phrase, its clientele is the Human
Race? Will it march? I think so.
VII
Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease.
Can it do it? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease
in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then
kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short
of that I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths?
I think so. Can any other (organised) force do it? None that I know of.
Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter
one--for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick
ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there
used to be? I think so.
In the meantime would the Scientist kill off a good many patients? I
think so. More than get killed off now by the legalised methods? I will
take up that question presently.
At present I wish to ask you to examine some of the Scientist's
performances, as registered in his magazine, 'The Christian Science
Journal'--October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this
true picture of 'the average orthodox Christian'--and he could have added
that it is a true picture of the average (civilised) human being:
'He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his
propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents
or drinking deadly things.'
Then he gives us this contrast:
'The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under
his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved
by the average orthodox Christian.'
He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of
your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of
mind, year in year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put
upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any
Church or out of it, except the Scientist's?
Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and
draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in
terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the
indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science
can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's
disease and pain about four-fifths.
In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks; and
not coldly but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk with
health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the unspeakable
glory and splendour of it, after a long sober spell spent in inventing
imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The first
witness testifies that when 'this most beautiful Truth first dawned on
him' he had 'nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to;' that those he
did not have he thought he had--and thus made the tale about complete.
What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit 'for all the
doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country.' Christian
Science came to his help, and 'the old sick conditions passed away,' and
along with them the 'dismal forebodings' which he had been accustomed to
employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful
man, now, and astonished.
But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against subsequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, 'I am
well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have no
disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; all
is Mind, All-Good, Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a series,
ante and pass the buck!'
I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit
a powerful reinforcement in his case.
The second witness testifies that the Science banished 'an old organic
trouble' which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs and
the knife for seven years.
He calls it his 'claim.' A surface-miner would think it was not his
claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the surgeon--for
he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for
'ailment.' The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no
such thing, and he will not use the lying word. All that happens to him
is, that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance sometimes obtrudes
itself which claims to be an ailment, but isn't.
This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has not gone over to the
new sect. He was 'almost blind and deaf.' He was treated by the C.S.
method, and 'when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.' Saw
spiritually. It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable, but this C.S. magazine is
poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:
Indigestion,
Rheumatism,
Catarrh,
Chalky deposits in
Shoulder joints,
Arm joints,
Hand joints,
Atrophy of the muscles of
Arms,
Shoulders,
Stiffness of all those joints,
Insomnia,
Excruciating pains most of the time.
These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but 'I never realised any physical relief from that source.'
After thirty years of torture he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later he 'began to
eat like a well man.' Then 'the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually;' finally, 'they have almost entirely disappeared.' And
--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now 'contented and happy.'
That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist-Church
specialty. With thirty-one years' effort the Methodist Church had not
succeeded in furnishing it to this harassed soldier.
And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance made a pastime. And now and then an
interesting new addition to the Science slang appears on the page. We
have 'demonstrations over' chilblains and such things. It seems to be a
curtailed way of saying 'demonstrations of the power of Christian-Science
Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name of Chilblains.'
The children as well as the adults, share in the blessings of the
Science. 'Through the study of the "little book" they are learning how
to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.' Sometimes they are cured of their
little claims by the professional healer, and sometimes more advanced
children say over the formula and cure themselves.
A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary,
states her age and says, 'I thought I would write a demonstration to
you.' She had a claim derived from getting flung over a pony's head and
landed on a rock-pile. She saved herself from disaster by remember to
say 'God is All' while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it. I
shouldn't have even thought of it. I should have been too excited.
Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that
calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came
down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the
intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting
was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At
school 'it hurt pretty bad--that is, it seemed to.' So 'I was excused,
and went down in the basement and said, "Now I am depending on mamma
instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma."' No doubt
this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the
team and recited 'the Scientific Statement of Being,' which is one of the
principal incantations, I judge. Then 'I felt my eye opening.' Why, it
would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the touchingest things
in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar pumping away at the
Scientific Statement of Being.
There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon
'came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics.'
He was a 'demonstration.' A painless one; therefore his coming evoked
'joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science.'
It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking
together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles.
When little Gordon was two years old, 'he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my "little book." I noticed him stop in his play, take
the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about
for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there.'
This pious act filled the mother 'with such a train of thought as I had
never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who
kept things in her heart,' etc. It is a bold comparison; however,
unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay
membership of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of
its consecrated chiefs.
Some days later, the family library--Christian Science books--was lying
in a deep-seated window. It was another chance for the holy child to
show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to
one side except the Annex. 'It he took in both hands, slowly raised it
to his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the
window.' It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that
first time; but now she was convinced that 'neither imagination nor
accident had anything to do with it.' Later, little Gordon let the
author of his being see him do it. After that he did it frequently;
probably every time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child
than a chromo. If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the
inspired book was supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred and
awful character to this innocent little creature without the intervention
of outside aids. The magazine is not edited with high-priced discretion.
The editor has a claim, and he ought to get it treated.
Among other witnesses, there is one who had a 'jumping toothache,' which
several times tempted her to 'believe that there was sensation in matter,
but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth.' She would not
allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and
drill and split and crush the tool, and tear and slash its ulcerations,
and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't
once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I
have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian
Science faith did her better service than she could have gotten out of
cocaine.
There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an
accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the
other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any
real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon. I can believe this,
because my own case was somewhat similar, as per my former article.
Also there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in a
single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of Christian
Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognise that the ice is
getting thin here. That horse had as many as fifty claims: how could he
demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good,
Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on the
Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being? Now,
could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at
horses. Horses and furniture.
There is a plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted
samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving.
Now we come back to the question; Does it kill a patient here and there
and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for this? I
am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that direction. For
instance: when it lays its hands upon a soldier who has suffered thirty
years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and mind, what is
the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it has restored
to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year for thirty
years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its interference
that man would have essentially died thirty times more, in the three
years which have since elapsed. There are thousand of young people in
the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death similar to
that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and secures to
him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease, it may
plausibly claim that in his person it has saved 300 lives. Meantime it
will kill a man every now and then; but no matter, it will still be ahead
on the credit side.
VIII
'We consciously declare that "Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures," was foretold as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the "mighty angel," or God's highest thought
to this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the
Bible in the "little book open" (verse 2). Thus we prove that
Christian Science is the second coming of Christ--Truth--Spirit.'
--Lecture by Dr. George Tomkins, D.D., C.S.
There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshipped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity [1].
Particularly after her death; for then, as anyone can foresee,
Eddy-worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the
cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, thought it be only a
memorial spoon, is holy and is eagerly and passionately and gratefully
bought by the disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought,
for the Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it
has for sale. And the terms are cash; and not cash only but cash in
advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual
Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian-Science
literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be
real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements
that reality is eagerly and persistently recognised. The hunger of the
Trust for the Dollar, its adoration of the Dollar, its lust after the
Dollar, its ecstasy in the mere thought of the Dollar--there has been
nothing like it in the world in any age or country, nothing so coarse,
nothing so lubricous, nothing so bestial, except a French novel's
attitude towards adultery.
The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science
Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of
spiritual wares to the faithful, always at extravagant prices, and always
on the one condition--cash, cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse
could not go there and get a copy of his own pirated book on credit.
Many, many precious Christian-Science things are to be had there--for
cash: Bible Lessons; Church Manual; C.S. Hymnal; History of the building
of the Mother-Church; lot of Sermons; Communion Hymn, 'Saw Ye My
Saviour,' by Mrs. Eddy, half a dollar a copy, 'words used by special
permission of Mrs. Eddy.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's
little Bible-Annex in eight styles of binding at eight kinds of
war-prices: among these a sweet thing in 'levant, divinity circuit,
leather lined to edge, round corners, gold edge, silk sewed, each,
prepaid, $6,' and if you take a million you get them a shilling
cheaper--that is to say, 'prepaid, $5.75.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's
'Miscellaneous Writings,' at noble big prices, the divinity-circuit
style heading the extortions, shilling discount where you take an
edition. Next comes 'Christ and Christmas,' by the fertile Mrs.
Eddy--a poem--I would God I could see it--price $3, cash in advance.
Then follow five more books by Mrs. Eddy at highwaymen's rates, as
usual, some of them in 'leatherette covers,' some of them in 'pebbled
cloth,' with divinity circuit, compensation balance, twin screw, and
the other modern improvements: and at the same bargain counter can be
had the 'Christian Science Journal.' I wish it were in refined taste
to apply a rudely and ruggedly descriptive epithet to that literary
slush-bucket, so as to give one an accurate idea of what it is like.
I am moved to do it, but I must not: it is better to be refined than
accurate when one is talking about a production like that.
Christian-Science literary oleomargarine is a monopoly of the Mother
Church Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the
trade-mark of the Trust. You must apply there, and not elsewhere; and
you pay your money before you get your soap-fat.
The Trust has still other sources of income. Mrs. Eddy is president (and
perhaps proprietor?) of the Trust's Metaphysical College in Boston, where
the student who has practised C.S. healing during three years the best
he knew how perfects himself in the game by a two weeks' course, and pays
one hundred dollars for it! And I have a case among my statistics where
the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it.
The Trust does love the Dollar when it isn't a spiritual one.
In order to force the sale of Mrs. Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer,
Metaphysical College-bred or other, is allowed to practise the game
unless he possess a copy of that holy nightmare. That means a large and
constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would
consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in
the house. That means an income for the Trust--in the near future--of
millions: not thousands--millions a year.
No member, young or old, of a Christian-Scientist church can retain that
membership unless he pay 'capitation tax' to the Boston Trust every year.
That means an income for the Trust--in the near future--of millions more
per year.
It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1910 there will be
10,000,000 Christian Scientists, and 3,000,000 in Great Britain; that
these figures will be trebled by 1920; that in America in 1910 the
Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1920 politically
formidable--to remain that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable
guess that the Trust (which is already in our day pretty brusque in its
ways) will then be the most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical
politico-religious master that has dominated a people since the palmy
days of the Inquisition. And a stronger master than the strongest of
bygone times, because this one will have a financial strength not dreamed
of by any predecessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible
power as any predecessor had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the
subsidised newspaper, better facilities for watching and managing his
empire than any predecessor has had; and after a generation or two he
will probably divide Christendom with the Catholic Church.
The Roman Church has a perfect organisation, and it has an effective
centralisation of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops
are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands.
They collect from 200,000,000 of people, but they keep the bulk of the
result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his dollar-a-head
capitation-tax from 300,000,000 of the human race, and the Annex and the
rest of his book-shop will fetch in double as much more; and his
Metaphysical Colleges, the annual pilgrimage to Mrs. Eddy's tomb, from
all over the world--admission, the Christian-Science Dollar (payable in
advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads, candles, memorial spoons,
aureoled chromo-portraits and bogus autographs of Mrs. Eddy, cash
offerings at her shrine--no crutches of cured cripples received, and no
imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and necks allowed to be
hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and proved by fire-assay;
cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these money-sources, with a
thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the devotee, will bring the
annual increment well up above a billion. And nobody but the Trust will
have the handling of it. No Bishops appointed unless they agree to hand
in 90 per cent. of the catch. In that day the Trust will monopolise the
manufacture and sale of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Annex,
and raise their price to Annex rates, and compel the devotee to buy (for
even to-day a healer has to have the Annex and the Scriptures or he is
not allowed to work the game), and that will bring several hundred
million dollars more. In those days the Trust will have an income
approaching $5,000,000 a day, and no expenses to be taken out of it; no
taxes to pay, and no charities to support. That last detail should not
be lightly passed over by the read; it is well entitled to attention.
No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in
vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its pulpit for any
suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged
prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions,
foreign missions, libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that
appeals to a human being's purse through his heart.[2]
I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and
have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent
upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to
ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on
a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is
obliged to say no. And then one discovers that the person questioned has
been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a
sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written his
chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound
these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written again
--and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now, and has begged for
defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply does at last
come--to this effect: 'We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content
in the conviction that whatever She[3] does with the money it is in
accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind
without first "demonstrating over" it.'
That settles it--as far as the disciple is concerned. His Mind is
entirely satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an
incantation or two, and that mesmerises his spirit and puts that to
sleep--brings it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer
punctures the old sore again.
Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got
definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not
definite and not valuable. From the definite answers I gather than the
'capitation-tax' is compulsory, and that the sum is one dollar. To the
question, 'Does any of the money go to charities?' the answer from an
authoritative source was: 'No, *not in the sense usually conveyed by this
word*.' (The italics are mine.) That answer is cautious. But definite,
I think--utterly and unassailably definite--although quite
Christian-scientifically foggy in its phrasing. Christian Science is
generally foggy, generally diffuse, generally garrulous. The writer was
aware that the first word in his phrase answered the question which I was
asking, but he could not help adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones,
unless explained by him. It is quite likely--as intimated by him--that
Christian Science has invented a new class of objects to apply the word
charity to, but without an explanation we cannot know what they are. We
quite easily and naturally and confidently guess that they are in all
cases objects which will return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's
investment in them, but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this
case, a sort of nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we
know of the Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty
ways.
Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands business. The Trust does
not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us impertinents to
get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our diligence, we have
not been able to get it to confess what it does with the money. It does
not even let its own disciples find out. All it says is, that the matter
has been 'demonstrated over.' Now and then a lay Scientist says, with a
grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops
there; as to whether any of the money goes to other charities or not, he
is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, the Trust is
composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if it
had a charity on its list which it did not need to blush for, we should
soon hear of it.
'Without money and without price.' Those used to be the terms. Mrs.
Eddy's Annex cancels them. The motto of Christian Science is 'The
labourer is worthy of his hire.' And now that it has been 'demonstrated
over,' we find its spiritual meaning to be, 'Do anything and everything
your hand may find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the money
in advance.' The Scientist has on his tongue's end a cut-and-dried,
Boston-supplied set of rather lean arguments whose function is to show
that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and that the croupiers of
the game have no choice by to obey.
The Trust seems to be a reincarnation. Exodus xxxii.4.
I have no reverence for Mrs. Eddy and the rest of the Trust--if there is
a rest--but I am not lacking in reverence for the sincerities of the lay
membership of the new Church. There is every evidence that the lay
members are entirely sincere in their faith, and I think sincerity is
always entitled to honour and respect, let the inspiration of the
sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion
further than any other missionary except fire and sword, and I believe
that the new religion will conquer the half of Christendom in a hundred
years. I am not intending this as a compliment to the human race, I am
merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that perhaps it is a
compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of an orthodox
preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new Christianity
frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations, bitterness, and
all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains, and fills his
world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If Christian Science,
with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation added--cannot win
half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in the make-up of the
human race.
I think the Trust will be handed down like the other papacy, and will
always know how to handle its limitless cash. It will press the button;
the zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its countless
vassals will do the rest.
IX
The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make
it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had
it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself a man is most
likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which
invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them: and if he is one
of these very wise people he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent
half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that
man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The
outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing power
that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. It is not so, at
all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main thing.
The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that it may
fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer when he
handles the throttle and turns on the steam: the actual power is lodged
exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it would
never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or
Tom, it is all one--his services are necessary, and he is entitled to
such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian
Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or Lourdes
Miracle-Worker, or King's-Evil Expert, it is all one,--he is merely the
Engineer, he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does the
whole work.
In the case of the cure-engine it is a distinct advantage to clothe the
engineer in religious overalls and give him a pious name. It greatly
enlarges the business, and does no one any harm.
The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly the same trade as the
other engineers, yet he out-prospers the whole of them put together. Is
it because he has captured the takingest name? I think that that is only
a small part of it. I think that the secret of his high prosperity lies
elsewhere:
The Christian Scientist has organised the business. Now that was
certainly a gigantic idea. There is more intellect in it than
would be needed in the invention of a couple of millions of Eddy
Science-and-Health Bible Annexes. Electricity, in limitless volume, has
existed in the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since time
began--and was going to waste all the while. In our time we have
organised that scattered and wandering force and set it to work, and
backed the business with capital, and concentrated it in few and
competent hands, and the results are as we see.
The Christian Scientist has taken a force which has been lying idle in
every member of the human race since time began, and has organised it,
and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it at Boston
headquarters in the hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there
are results.
Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its
commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted
in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it
would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured
by unorganised great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that so
long as this one remains compactly organised and closely concentrated in
a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue.
VIENNA: May 1, 1899.
[1] After raising a dead child to life, the disciple who did it writes an
account of her performance, to Mrs. Eddy, and closes it thus: 'My prayer
daily is to be more spiritual, that I may do more as you would have me
do... and may we all love you more and so live it that the world may
know that the Christ is come.'--Printed in the Concord, N.H.,
Independent Statesman, March 9, 1899. If this is no worship, it is a
good imitation of it.
[2] In the past two years the membership of the Established Church of
England have given voluntary contributions amounting to $73,000,000 to
the Church's benevolent enterprises. Churches that give have nothing to
hide.
[3] I may be introducing the capital S a little early--still it is on its
way.
IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?
I was spending the month of March 1892 at Mentone, in the Riviera. At
this retired spot one has all the advantages, privately, which are to be
had publicly at Monte Carlo and Nice, a few miles farther along. That is
to say, one has the flooding sunshine, the balmy air and the brilliant
blue sea, without the marring additions of human pow-wow and fuss and
feathers and display. Mentone is quiet, simple, restful, unpretentious;
the rich and the gaudy do not come there. As a rule, I mean, the rich do
not come there. Now and then a rich man comes, and I presently got
acquainted with one of these. Partially to disguise him I will call him
Smith. One day, in the Hotel des Anglais, at the second breakfast, he
exclaimed:
'Quick! Cast your eye on the man going out at the door. Take in every
detail of him.'
'Why?'
'Do you know who he is?'
'Yes. He spent several days here before you came. He is an old,
retired, and very rich silk manufacturer from Lyons, they say, and I
guess he is alone in the world, for he always looks sad and dreamy, and
doesn't talk with anybody. His name is Theophile Magnan.'
I supposed that Smith would now proceed to justify the large interest
which he had shown in Monsieur Magnan, but, instead, he dropped into a
brown study, and was apparently lost to me and to the rest of the world
during some minutes. Now and then he passed his fingers through his
flossy white hair, to assist his thinking, and meantime he allowed his
breakfast to go on cooling. At last he said:
'No, it's gone; I can't call it back.'
'Can't call what back?'
'It's one of Hans Andersen's beautiful little stories. But it's gone fro
me. Part of it is like this: A child has a caged bird, which it loves
but thoughtlessly neglects. The bird pours out its song unheard and
unheeded; but, in time, hunger and thirst assail the creature, and its
song grows plaintive and feeble and finally ceases--the bird dies. The
child comes, and is smitten to the heart with remorse: then, with bitter
tears and lamentations, it calls its mates, and they bury the bird with
elaborate pomp and the tenderest grief, without knowing, poor things,
that it isn't children only who starve poets to death and then spend
enough on their funerals and monuments to have kept them alive and made
them easy and comfortable. Now--'
But here we were interrupted. About ten that evening I ran across Smith,
and he asked me up to his parlour to help him smoke and drink hot Scotch.
It was a cosy place, with its comfortable chairs, its cheerful lamps, and
its friendly open fire of seasoned olive-wood. To make everything
perfect, there was a muffled booming of the surf outside. After the
second Scotch and much lazy and contented chat, Smith said:
'Now we are properly primed--I to tell a curious history and you to
listen to it. It has been a secret for many years--a secret between me
and three others; but I am going to break the seal now. Are you
comfortable?'
'Perfectly. Go on.'
Here follows what he told me:
'A long time ago I was a young artist--a very young artist, in fact--and
I wandered about the country parts of France, sketching here and
sketching there, and was presently joined by a couple of darling young
Frenchmen who were at the same kind of thing that I was doing. We were
as happy as we were poor, or as poor as we were happy--phrase it to suit
yourself. Claude Frere and Carl Boulanger--these are the names of those
boys; dear, dear fellows, and the sunniest spirits that ever laughed at
poverty and had a noble good time in all weathers.
'At last we ran hard aground in a Breton village, and an artist as poor
as ourselves took us in and literally saved us from starving--Francois
Millet--'
'What! the great Francois Millet?'
'Great? He wasn't any greater than we were, then. He hadn't any fame,
even in his own village; and he was so poor that he hadn't anything to
feed us on but turnips, and even the turnips failed us sometimes. We
four became fast friends, doting friends, inseparables. We painted away
together with all our might, piling up stock, piling up stock, but very
seldom getting rid of any of it. We had lovely times together; but, O my
soul! how we were pinched now and then!
'For a little over two years this went on. At last, one day, Claude
said:
'"Boys, we've come to the end. Do you understand that?--absolutely to
the end. Everybody has struck--there's a league formed against us. I've
been all around the village and it's just as I tell you. They refuse to
credit us for another centime until all the odds and ends are paid up."
'This struck us as cold. Every face was blank with dismay. We realised
that our circumstances were desperate, now. There was a long silence.
Finally, Millet said with a sigh:
'"Nothing occurs to me--nothing. Suggest something, lads."
'There was no response, unless a mournful silence may be called a
response. Carl got up, and walked nervously up and down a while, then
said:
'"It's a shame! Look at these canvases: stacks and stacks of as good
pictures as anybody in Europe paints--I don't care who he is. Yes, and
plenty of lounging strangers have said the same--or nearly that, anyway."
'"But didn't buy," Millet said.
'"No matter, they said it; and it's true, too. Look at your 'Angelus'
there! Will anybody tell me--"
'"Pah, Carl--My 'Angelus!' I was offered five francs for it."
'"When?"
'"Who offered it?"
'"Where is he?"
'"Why didn't you take it?"
'"Come--don't all speak at once. I thought he would give more--I was
sure of it--he looked it--so I asked him eight."
'"Well--and then?"
'"He said he would call again."
'"Thunder and lightning! Why, Francois--"
'"Oh, I know--I know! It was a mistake, and I was a fool. Boys, I meant
for the best; you'll grant me that, and I--"
'"Why, certainly, we know that, bless your dear heart; but don't you be a
fool again."
'"I? I wish somebody would come along and offer us a cabbage for it
--you'd see!"
'"A cabbage! Oh, don't name it--it makes my mouth water. Talk of things
less trying."
'"Boys," said Carl, "do these pictures lack merit? Answer me that."
'"No!"
'"Aren't they of very great and high merit? Answer me that."
'"Yes."
'"Of such great and high merit that, if an illustrious name were attached
to them they would sell at splendid prices. Isn't it so?"
'"Certainly it is. Nobody doubts that."
'"But--I'm not joking--isn't it so?"
'"Why, of course it's so--and we are not joking. But what of it. What
of it? How does that concern us?"
'"In this way, comrades--we'll attach an illustrious name to them!"
'The lively conversation stopped. The faces were turned inquiringly upon
Carl. What sort of riddle might this be? Where was an illustrious name
to be borrowed? And who was to borrow it?
'Carl sat down, and said:
'"Now, I have a perfectly serious thing to propose. I think it is the
only way to keep us out of the almshouse, and I believe it to be a
perfectly sure way. I base this opinion upon certain multitudinous and
long-established facts in human history. I believe my project will make
us all rich."
'"Rich! You've lost your mind."
'"No, I haven't."
'"Yes, you have--you've lost your mind. What do you call rich?"
'"A hundred thousand francs apiece."
'"He has lost his mind. I knew it."
'"Yes, he has. Carl, privation has been too much for you, and--"
'"Carl, you want to take a pill and get right to bed."
'"Bandage him first--bandage his head, and then--"
'"No, bandage his heels; his brains have been settling for weeks--I've
noticed it."
'"Shut up!" said Millet, with ostensible severity, "and let the boy have
his say. Now, then--come out with your project, Carl. What is it?"
'"Well, then, by way of preamble I will ask you to note this fact in
human history: that the merit of many a great artist has never been
acknowledged until after he was starved and dead. This has happened so
often that I make bold to found a law upon it. This law: that the merit
of every great unknown and neglected artist must and will be recognised
and his pictures climb to high prices after his death. My project is
this: we must cast lots--one of us must die."
'The remark fell so calmly and so unexpectedly that we almost forgot to
jump. Then there was a wild chorus of advice again--medical advice--for
the help of Carl's brain; but he waited patiently for the hilarity to
calm down, and then went on again with his project:
'"Yes, one of us must die, to save the others--and himself. We will cast
lots. The one chosen shall be illustrious, all of us shall be rich.
Hold still, now--hold still; don't interrupt--I tell you I know what I am
talking about. Here is the idea. During the next three months the one
who is to die shall paint with all his might, enlarge his stock all he
can--not pictures, no! skeleton sketches, studies, parts of studies,
fragments of studies, a dozen dabs of the brush on each--meaningless, of
course, but his, with his cipher on them; turn out fifty a day, each to
contain some peculiarity or mannerism easily detectable as his--they're
the things that sell, you know, and are collected at fabulous prices for
the world's museums, after the great man is gone; we'll have a ton of
them ready--a ton! And all that time the rest of us will be busy
supporting the moribund, and working Paris and the dealers--preparations
for the coming event, you know; and when everything is hot and just
right, we'll spring the death on them and have the notorious funeral.
You get the idea?"
'"N-o; at least, not qu--"
'"Not quite? Don't you see? The man doesn't really die; he changes his
name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all the world
to help. And I--"
'But he wasn't allowed to finish. Everybody broke out into a rousing
hurrah of applause; and all jumped up and capered about the room and fell
on each other's necks in transports of gratitude and joy. For hours we
talked over the great plan, without ever feeling hungry; and at last,
when all the details had been arranged satisfactorily, we cast lots and
Millet was elected--elected to die, as we called it. Then we scraped
together those things which one never parts with until he is betting them
against future wealth--keepsake trinkets and suchlike--and these we
pawned for enough to furnish us a frugal farewell supper and breakfast,
and leave us a few francs over for travel, and a stake of turnips and
such for Millet to live on for a few days.
'Next morning, early, the three of us cleared out, straightway after
breakfast--on foot, of course. Each of us carried a dozen of Millet's
small pictures, purposing to market them. Carl struck for Paris, where
he would start the work of building up Millet's name against the coming
great day. Claude and I were to separate, and scatter abroad over
France.
'Now, it will surprise you to know what an easy and comfortable thing we
had. I walked two days before I began business. Then I began to sketch
a villa in the outskirts of a big town--because I saw the proprietor
standing on an upper veranda. He came down to look on--I thought he
would. I worked swiftly, intending to keep him interested. Occasionally
he fired off a little ejaculation of approbation, and by-and-by he spoke
up with enthusiasm, and said I was a master!
'I put down my brush, reached into my satchel, fetched out a Millet, and
pointed to the cipher in the corner. I said, proudly:
'"I suppose you recognise that? Well, he taught me! I should think I
ought to know my trade!"
'The man looked guiltily embarrassed, and was silent. I said
sorrowfully:
'"You don't mean to intimate that you don't know the cipher of Francois
Millet!"
'Of course he didn't know that cipher; but he was the gratefullest man
you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place
on such easy terms. He said:
'"No! Why, it is Millet's, sure enough! I don't know what I could have
been thinking of. Of course I recognise it now."
'Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn't rich I
wasn't that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred
francs.'
'Eight hundred!'
'Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork chop. Yes, I got eight
hundred francs for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for
eighty thousand. But that time's gone by. I made a very nice picture of
that man's house and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but that
wouldn't answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold it to
him for a hundred. I sent the eight hundred francs straight to Millet
from that town and struck out again next day.
'But I didn't walk--no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one
picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my
customer:
'"I am a fool to sell a picture of Francois Millet's at all, for that man
is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures can't be
had for love or money."
'I took care to spread that little fact as far as I could, and prepare
the world for the event.
'I take credit to myself for our plan of selling the pictures--it was
mine. I suggested it that last evening when we were laying out our
campaign, and all three of us agreed to give it a good fair trial before
giving it up for some other. It succeeded with all of us. I walked only
two days, Claude walked two--both of afraid to make Millet celebrated too
close to home--but Carl walked only half a day, the bright,
conscienceless rascal, and after that he travelled like a duke.
'Every now and then we got in with a country editor and started an item
around through the press; not an item announcing that a new painter had
been discovered, but an item which let on that everybody knew Francois
Millet; not an item praising him in any way, but merely a word concerning
the present condition of the "master"--sometimes hopeful, sometimes
despondent, but always tinged with fears for the worst. We always marked
these paragraphs, and sent the papers to all the people who had bought
pictures of us.
'Carl was soon in Paris and he worked things with a high hand. He made
friends with the correspondents, and got Millet's condition reported to
England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere.
'At the end of six weeks from the start, we three met in Paris and called
a halt, and stopped sending back to Millet for additional pictures. The
boom was so high, and everything so ripe, that we saw that it would be a
mistake not to strike now, right away, without waiting any longer. So we
wrote Millet to go to bed and begin to waste away pretty fast, for we
should like him to die in ten days if he could get ready.
'Then we figured up and found that among us we had sold eighty-five small
pictures and studies, and had sixty-nine thousand francs to show for it.
Carl had made the last sale and the most brilliant one of all. He sold
the "Angelus" for twenty-two hundred francs. How we did glorify him!
--not foreseeing that a day was coming by-and-by when France would struggle
to own it and a stranger would capture it for five hundred and fifty
thousand, cash.
'We had a wind-up champagne supper that night, and next day Claude and I
packed up and went off to nurse Millet through his last days and keep
busybodies out of the house and send daily bulletins to Carl in Paris for
publication in the papers of several continents for the information of a
waiting world. The sad end came at last, and Carl was there in time to
help in the final mournful rites.
'You remember that great funeral, and what a stir it made all over the
globe, and how the illustrious of two worlds came to attend it and
testify their sorrow. We four--still inseparable--carried the coffin,
and would allow none to help. And we were right about that, because it
hadn't anything in it but a wax figure, and any other coffin-bearers
would have found fault with the weight. Yes, we same old four, who had
lovingly shared privation together in the old hard times now gone for
ever, carried the cof--'
'Which four?'
'We four--for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you
know. Disguised as a relative--distant relative.'
'Astonishing!'
'But true just the same. Well, you remember how the pictures went up.
Money? We didn't know what to do with it. There's a man in Paris to-day
who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for
them. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet
shovelled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it
would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays--that is,
when we consent to let one go!'
'It is a wonderful history, perfectly wonderful!'
'Yes--it amounts to that.'
'Whatever became of Millet?'
'Can you keep a secret?'
'I can.'
'Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining room
to-day? That was Francois Millet.'
'Great--'
'Scott! Yes. For once they didn't starve a genius to death and then put
into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. This
song-bird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid
with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that.'
MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON
In those early days I had already published one little thing ('The
Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that
counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper
could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise
away above that; he must appear in a magazine. He would then be a
Literary Person; also, he would be famous--right away. These two
ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my
contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up to
glory in. I selected the most important one in New York. The
contribution was accepted. I signed it 'MARK TWAIN;' for that name had
some currency on the Pacific coast, and it was my idea to spread it all
over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the
December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number; for
that one would contain the year's list of contributors, my name would be
in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was
meditating.
I did not give the banquet. I had not written the 'MARK TWAIN'
distinctly; it was a fresh name to Eastern printers, and they put it
'Mike Swain' or 'MacSwain,' I do not remember which. At any rate, I was
not celebrated and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person,
but that was all--a buried one; buried alive.
My article was about the burning of the clipper-ship 'Hornet' on the
line, May 3, 1866. There were thirty-one men on board at the time, and I
was in Honolulu when the fifteen lean and ghostly survivors arrived there
after a voyage of forty-three days in an open boat, through the blazing
tropics, on ten days' rations of food. A very remarkable trip; but it
was conducted by a captain who was a remarkable man, otherwise there
would have been no survivors. He was a New Englander of the best
sea-going stock of the old capable times--Captain Josiah Mitchell.
I was in the islands to write letters for the weekly edition of the
Sacramento 'Union,' a rich and influential daily journal which hadn't any
use for them, but could afford to spend twenty dollars a week for
nothing. The proprietors were lovable and well-beloved men: long ago
dead, no doubt, but in me there is at least one person who still holds
them in grateful remembrance; for I dearly wanted to see the islands, and
they listened to me and gave me the opportunity when there was but
slender likelihood that it could profit them in any way.
I had been in the islands several months when the survivors arrived. I
was laid up in my room at the time, and unable to walk. Here was a great
occasion to serve my journal, and I not able to take advantage of it.
Necessarily I was in deep trouble. But by good luck his Excellency Anson
Burlingame was there at the time, on his way to take up his post in
China, where he did such good work for the United States. He came and
put me on a stretcher and had me carried to the hospital where the
shipwrecked men were, and I never needed to ask a question. He attended
to all of that himself, and I had nothing to do but make the notes. It
was like him to take that trouble. He was a great man and a great
American, and it was in his fine nature to come down from his high office
and do a friendly turn whenever he could.
We got through with this work at six in the evening. I took no dinner,
for there was no time to spare if I would beat the other correspondents.
I spent four hours arranging the notes in their proper order, then wrote
all night and beyond it; with this result: that I had a very long and
detailed account of the 'Hornet' episode ready at nine in the morning,
while the other correspondents of the San Francisco journals had nothing
but a brief outline report--for they didn't sit up. The now-and-then
schooner was to sail for San Francisco about nine; when I reached the
dock she was free forward and was just casting off her stern-line. My
fat envelope was thrown by a strong hand, and fell on board all right,
and my victory was a safe thing. All in due time the ship reached San
Francisco, but it was my complete report which made the stir and was
telegraphed to the New York papers, by Mr. Cash; he was in charge of the
Pacific bureau of the 'New York Herald' at the time.
When I returned to California by-and-by, I went up to Sacramento and
presented a bill for general correspondence at twenty dollars a week. It
was paid. Then I presented a bill for 'special' service on the 'Hornet'
matter of three columns of solid nonpareil at a hundred dollars a column.
The cashier didn't faint, but he came rather near it. He sent for the
proprietors, and they came and never uttered a protest. They only
laughed in their jolly fashion, and said it was robbery, but no matter;
it was a grand 'scoop' (the bill or my 'Hornet' report, I didn't know
which): 'Pay it. It's all right.' The best men that ever owned a
newspaper.
The 'Hornet' survivors reached the Sandwich Islands the 15th of June.
They were mere skinny skeletons; their clothes hung limp about them and
fitted them no better than a flag fits the flag-staff in a calm. But
they were well nursed in the hospital; the people of Honolulu kept them
supplied with all the dainties they could need; they gathered strength
fast, and were presently nearly as good as new. Within a fortnight the
most of them took ship for San Francisco; that is, if my dates have not
gone astray in my memory. I went in the same ship, a sailing-vessel.
Captain Mitchell of the 'Hornet' was along; also the only passengers the
'Hornet' had carried. These were two young men from Stamford,
Connecticut--brothers: Samuel and Henry Ferguson. The 'Hornet' was a
clipper of the first class and a fast sailer; the young men's quarters
were roomy and comfortable, and were well stocked with books, and also
with canned meats and fruits to help out the ship-fare with; and when the
ship cleared from New York harbour in the first week of January there was
promise that she would make quick and pleasant work of the fourteen or
fifteen thousand miles in front of her. As soon as the cold latitudes
were left behind and the vessel entered summer weather, the voyage became
a holiday picnic. The ship flew southward under a cloud of sail which
needed no attention, no modifying or change of any kind, for days
together. The young men read, strolled the ample deck, rested and
drowsed in the shade of the canvas, took their meals with the captain;
and when the day was done they played dummy whist with him till bed-time.
After the snow and ice and tempests of the Horn, the ship bowled
northward into summer weather again, and the trip was a picnic once more.
Until the early morning of the 3rd of May. Computed position of the ship
112 degrees 10 minutes longitude, latitude 2 degrees above the equator;
no wind, no sea--dead calm; temperature of the atmosphere, tropical,
blistering, unimaginable by one who has not been roasted in it. There
was a cry of fire. An unfaithful sailor had disobeyed the rules and gone
into the booby-hatch with an open light to draw some varnish from a cask.
The proper result followed, and the vessel's hours were numbered.
There was not much time to spare, but the captain made the most of it.
The three boats were launched--long-boat and two quarter-boats. That the
time was very short and the hurry and excitement considerable is
indicated by the fact that in launching the boats a hole was stove in the
side of one of them by some sort of collision, and an oar driven through
the side of another. The captain's first care was to have four sick
sailors brought up and placed on deck out of harm's way--among them a
'Portyghee.' This man had not done a day's work on the voyage, but had
lain in his hammock four months nursing an abscess. When we were taking
notes in the Honolulu hospital and a sailor told this to Mr. Burlingame,
the third mate, who was lying near, raised his head with an effort, and
in a weak voice made this correction--with solemnity and feeling:
'Raising abscesses! He had a family of them. He done it to keep from
standing his watch.'
Any provisions that lay handy were gathered up by the men and two
passengers and brought and dumped on the deck where the 'Portyghee' lay;
then they ran for more. The sailor who was telling this to Mr.
Burlingame added:
'We pulled together thirty-two days' rations for the thirty-one men that
way.'
The third mate lifted his head again and made another correction--with
bitterness:
'The "Portyghee" et twenty-two of them while he was soldiering there and
nobody noticing. A damned hound.'
The fire spread with great rapidity. The smoke and flame drove the men
back, and they had to stop their incomplete work of fetching provisions,
and take to the boats with only ten days' rations secured.
Each boat had a compass, a quadrant, a copy of Bowditch's 'Navigator,'
and a Nautical Almanac, and the captain's and chief mate's boats had
chronometers. There were thirty-one men all told. The captain took an
account of stock, with the following result: four hams, nearly thirty
pounds of salt pork, half-box of raisins, one hundred pounds of bread,
twelve two-pound cans of oysters, clams, and assorted meats, a keg
containing four pounds of butter, twelve gallons of water in a
forty-gallon 'scuttle-butt', four one-gallon demijohns full of water,
three bottles of brandy (the property of passengers), some pipes,
matches, and a hundred pounds of tobacco. No medicines. Of course
the whole party had to go on short rations at once.
The captain and the two passengers kept diaries. On our voyage to San
Francisco we ran into a calm in the middle of the Pacific, and did not
move a rod during fourteen days; this gave me a chance to copy the
diaries. Samuel Ferguson's is the fullest; I will draw upon it now.
When the following paragraph was written the doomed ship was about one
hundred and twenty days out from port, and all hands were putting in the
lazy time about as usual, as no one was forecasting disaster.
[Diary entry] May 2. Latitude 1 degree 28 minutes N., longitude 111
degrees 38 minutes W. Another hot and sluggish day; at one time,
however, the clouds promised wind, and there came a slight breeze
--just enough to keep us going. The only thing to chronicle to-day
is the quantities of fish about; nine bonitos were caught this
forenoon, and some large albacores seen. After dinner the first
mate hooked a fellow which he could not hold, so he let the line go
to the captain, who was on the bow. He, holding on, brought the
fish to with a jerk, and snap went the line, hook and all. We also
saw astern, swimming lazily after us, an enormous shark, which must
have been nine or ten feet long. We tried him with all sorts of
lines and a piece of pork, but he declined to take hold. I suppose
he had appeased his appetite on the heads and other remains of the
bonitos we had thrown overboard.
Next day's entry records the disaster. The three boats got away, retired
to a short distance, and stopped. The two injured ones were leaking
badly; some of the men were kept busy baling, others patched the holes as
well as they could. The captain, the two passengers, and eleven men were
in the long-boat, with a share of the provisions and water, and with no
room to spare, for the boat was only twenty-one feet long, six wide, and
three deep. The chief mate and eight men were in one of the small boats,
the second mate and seven men in the other. The passengers had saved no
clothing but what they had on, excepting their overcoats. The ship,
clothed in flame and sending up a vast column of black smoke into the
sky, made a grand picture in the solitudes of the sea, and hour after
hour the outcasts sat and watched it. Meantime the captain ciphered on
the immensity of the distance that stretched between him and the nearest
available land, and then scaled the rations down to meet the emergency;
half a biscuit for dinner; one biscuit and some canned meat for dinner;
half a biscuit for tea; a few swallows of water for each meal. And so
hunger began to gnaw while the ship was still burning.
[Diary entry] May 4. The ship burned all night very brightly, and
hopes are that some ship has seen the light and is bearing down upon
us. None seen, however, this forenoon, so we have determined to go
together north and a little west to some islands in 18 degrees or 19
degrees north latitude and 114 degrees to 115 degrees west
longitude, hoping in the meantime to be picked up by some ship. The
ship sank suddenly at about 5 A.M. We find the sun very hot and
scorching, but all try to keep out of it as much as we can.
They did a quite natural thing now: waited several hours for that
possible ship that might have seen the light to work her slow way to them
through the nearly dead calm. Then they gave it up and set about their
plans. If you will look at the map you will say that their course could
be easily decided. Albemarle Island (Galapagos group) lies straight
eastward nearly a thousand miles; the islands referred to in the diary as
'some islands' (Revillagigedo Islands) lie, as they think, in some widely
uncertain region northward about one thousand miles and westward one
hundred or one hundred and fifty miles. Acapulco, on the Mexican coast,
lies about north-east something short of one thousand miles. You will
say random rocks in the ocean are not what is wanted; let them strike for
Acapulco and the solid continent. That does look like the rational
course, but one presently guesses from the diaries that the thing would
have been wholly irrational--indeed, suicidal. If the boats struck for
Albemarle they would be in the doldrums all the way; and that means a
watery perdition, with winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all
points of the compass at once and also perpendicularly. If the boats
tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way
there--in case they ever got half-way--and then they would be in
lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming
down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not
sail within eight points of the wind. So they wisely started northward,
with a slight slant to the west. They had but ten days' short allowance
of food; the long-boat was towing the others; they could not depend on
making any sort of definite progress in the doldrums, and they had four
or five hundred miles of doldrums in front of them yet. They are the
real equator, a tossing, roaring, rainy belt, ten or twelve hundred miles
broad, which girdles the globe.
It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up
their water-butt. The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who
steered. The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep. 'Kept on our
course till squalls headed us off.'
Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains. A heavy and
dangerous 'cobbling' sea. One marvels how such boats could live in it.
Is it called a feat of desperate daring when one man and a dog cross the
Atlantic in a boat the size of a long-boat, and indeed it is; but this
long-boat was overloaded with men and other plunder, and was only three
feet deep. 'We naturally thought often of all at home, and were glad to
remember that it was Sacrament Sunday, and that prayers would go up from
our friends for us, although they know not our peril.'
The captain got not even a cat-nap during the first three days and
nights, but he got a few winks of sleep the fourth night. 'The worst sea
yet.' About ten at night the captain changed his course and headed
east-north-east, hoping to make Clipperton Rock. If he failed, no
matter; he would be in a better position to make those other islands. I
will mention here that he did not find that rock.
On May 8 no wind all day; sun blistering hot; they take to the oars.
Plenty of dolphins, but they couldn't catch any. 'I think we are all
beginning to realise more and more the awful situation we are in.' 'It
often takes a ship a week to get through the doldrums; how much longer,
then, such a craft as ours?' 'We are so crowded that we cannot stretch
ourselves out for a good sleep, but have to take it any way we can get
it.'
Of course this feature will grow more and more trying, but it will be
human nature to cease to set it down; there will be five weeks of it yet
--we must try to remember that for the diarist; it will make our beds the
softer.
May 9 the sun gives him a warning: 'Looking with both eyes, the horizon
crossed thus +.' 'Henry keeps well, but broods over our troubles more
than I wish he did.' They caught two dolphins; they tasted well. 'The
captain believed the compass out of the way, but the long-invisible north
star came out--a welcome sight--and endorsed the compass.'
May 10, 'latitude 7 degrees 0 minutes 3 seconds N., longitude 111 degrees
32 minutes W.' So they have made about three hundred miles of northing
in the six days since they left the region of the lost ship. 'Drifting
in calms all day.' And baking hot, of course; I have been down there,
and I remember that detail. 'Even as the captain says, all romance has
long since vanished, and I think the most of us are beginning to look the
fact of our awful situation full in the face.' 'We are making but little
headway on our course.' Bad news from the rearmost boat: the men are
improvident; 'they have eaten up all of the canned meats brought from the
ship, and are now growing discontented.' Not so with the chief mate's
people--they are evidently under the eye of a man.
Under date of May 11: 'Standing still! or worse; we lost more last night
than we made yesterday.' In fact, they have lost three miles of the
three hundred of northing they had so laboriously made. 'The cock that
was rescued and pitched into the boat while the ship was on fire still
lives, and crows with the breaking of dawn, cheering us a good deal.'
What has he been living on for a week? Did the starving men feed him
from their dire poverty? 'The second mate's boat out of water again,
showing that they over-drink their allowance. The captain spoke pretty
sharply to them.' It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I
got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not
room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third
mate admired it, and what he admired he was likely to enhance.
They were still watching hopefully for ships. The captain was a
thoughtful man, and probably did not disclose on them that that was
substantially a waste of time. 'In this latitude the horizon is filled
with little upright clouds that look very much like ships.' Mr. Ferguson
saved three bottles of brandy from his private stores when he left the
ship, and the liquor came good in these days. 'The captain serves out
two tablespoonfuls of brandy and water--half and half--to our crew.' He
means the watch that is on duty; they stood regular watches--four hours
on and four off. The chief mate was an excellent officer--a
self-possessed, resolute, fine, all-round man. The diarist makes the
following note--there is character in it: 'I offered one bottle of brandy
to the chief mate, but he declined, saying he could keep the after-boat
quiet, and we had not enough for all.'
HENRY FERGUSON'S DIARY TO DATE, GIVEN IN FULL:
May 4, 5, 6, doldrums. May 7, 8, 9, doldrums. May 10, 11, 12,
doldrums. Tells it all. Never saw, never felt, never heard, never
experienced such heat, such darkness, such lightning and thunder,
and wind and rain, in my life before.
That boy's diary is of the economical sort that a person might properly
be expected to keep in such circumstances--and be forgiven for the
economy, too. His brother, perishing of consumption, hunger, thirst,
blazing heat, drowning rains, loss of sleep, lack of exercise, was
persistently faithful and circumstantial with his diary from the first
day to the last--an instance of noteworthy fidelity and resolution. In
spite of the tossing and plunging boat he wrote it close and fine, in a
hand as easy to read as print. They can't seem to get north of 7 degrees
N.; they are still there the next day:
[Diary entry] May 12. A good rain last night, and we caught a good
deal, though not enough to fill up our tank, pails, &c. Our object
is to get out of these doldrums, but it seems as if we cannot do it.
To-day we have had it very variable, and hope we are on the northern
edge, thought we are not much above 7 degrees. This morning we all
thought we had made out a sail; but it was one of those deceiving
clouds. Rained a good deal to-day, making all hands wet and
uncomfortable; we filled up pretty nearly all our water-pots,
however. I hope we may have a fine night, for the captain certainly
wants rest, and while there is any danger of squalls, or danger of
any kind, he is always on hand. I never would have believed that
open boats such as ours, with their loads, could live in some of the
seas we have had.
During the night, 12th-13th, 'the cry of A SHIP! brought us to our feet.'
It seemed to be the glimmer of a vessel's signal-lantern rising out of
the curve of the sea. There was a season of breathless hope while they
stood watching, with their hands shading their eyes, and their hearts in
their throats; then the promise failed: the light was a rising star. It
is a long time ago--thirty-two years--and it doesn't matter now, yet one
is sorry for their disappointment. 'Thought often of those at home
to-day, and of the disappointment they will feel next Sunday at not
hearing from us by telegraph from San Francisco.' It will be many weeks
yet before the telegram is received, and it will come as a thunderclap of
joy then, and with the seeming of a miracle, for it will raise from the
grave men mourned as dead. 'To-day our rations were reduced to a quarter
of a biscuit a meal, with about half a pint of water.' This is on May
13, with more than a month of voyaging in front of them yet! However, as
they do not know that, 'we are all feeling pretty cheerful.'
In the afternoon of the 14th there was a thunderstorm, 'which toward
night seemed to close in around us on every side, making it very dark and
squally.' 'Our situation is becoming more and more desperate,' for they
were making very little northing 'and every day diminishes our small
stock of provisions.' They realise that the boats must soon separate,
and each fight for its own life. Towing the quarter-boats is a hindering
business.
That night and next day, light and baffling winds and but little
progress. Hard to bear, that persistent standing still, and the food
wasting away. 'Everything in a perfect sop; and all so cramped, and no
change of clothes.' Soon the sun comes out and roasts them. 'Joe caught
another dolphin to-day; in his maw we found a flying-fish and two
skipjacks.' There is an event, now, which rouses an enthusiasm of hope:
a land-bird arrives! It rests on the yard for awhile, and they can look
at it all they like, and envy it, and thank it for its message. As a
subject of talk it is beyond price--a fresh new topic for tongues tired
to death of talking upon a single theme: Shall we ever see the land
again; and when? Is the bird from Clipperton Rock? They hope so; and
they take heart of grace to believe so. As it turned out the bird had no
message; it merely came to mock.
May 16, 'the cock still lives, and daily carols forth his praise.' It
will be a rainy night, 'but I do not care if we can fill up our
water-butts.'
On the 17th one of those majestic spectres of the deep, a water-spout,
stalked by them, and they trembled for their lives. Young Henry set it
down in his scanty journal with the judicious comment that 'it might have
been a fine sight from a ship.'
From Captain Mitchell's log for this day: 'Only half a bushel of
bread-crumbs left.' (And a month to wander the seas yet.')
It rained all night and all day; everybody uncomfortable. Now came a
sword-fish chasing a bonito; and the poor thing, seeking help and
friends, took refuge under the rudder. The big sword-fish kept hovering
around, scaring everybody badly. The men's mouths watered for him, for
he would have made a whole banquet; but no one dared to touch him, of
course, for he would sink a boat promptly if molested. Providence
protected the poor bonito from the cruel sword-fish. This was just and
right. Providence next befriended the shipwrecked sailors: they got the
bonito. This was also just and right. But in the distribution of
mercies the sword-fish himself got overlooked. He now went away; to muse
over these subtleties, probably. The men in all the boats seem pretty
well; the feeblest of the sick ones (not able for a long time to stand
his watch on board the ship) 'is wonderfully recovered.' This is the
third mate's detected 'Portyghee' that raised the family of abscesses.
Passed a most awful night. Rained hard nearly all the time, and
blew in squalls, accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning from
all points of the compass.--Henry's Log.
Most awful night I ever witnessed.--Captain's Log.
Latitude, May 18, 11 degrees 11 minutes. So they have averaged but forty
miles of northing a day during the fortnight. Further talk of
separating. 'Too bad, but it must be done for the safety of the whole.'
'At first I never dreamed, but now hardly shut my eyes for a cat-nap
without conjuring up something or other--to be accounted for by weakness,
I suppose.' But for their disaster they think they would be arriving in
San Francisco about this time. 'I should have liked to send B---the
telegram for her birthday.' This was a young sister.
On the 19th the captain called up the quarter-boats and said one would
have to go off on its own hook. The long-boat could no longer tow both
of them. The second mate refused to go, but the chief mate was ready; in
fact, he was always ready when there was a man's work to the fore. He
took the second mate's boat; six of its crew elected to remain, and two
of his own crew came with him (nine in the boat, now, including himself).
He sailed away, and toward sunset passed out of sight. The diarist was
sorry to see him go. It was natural; one could have better spared the
'Portyghee.' After thirty-two years I find my prejudice against this
'Portyghee' reviving. His very looks have long passed out of my memory;
but no matter, I am coming to hate him as religiously as ever. 'Water
will now be a scarce article, for as we get out of the doldrums we shall
get showers only now and then in the trades. This life is telling
severely on my strength. Henry holds out first-rate.' Henry did not
start well, but under hardships he improved straight along.
Latitude, Sunday, May 20, 12 degrees 0 minutes 9 seconds. They ought to
be well out of the doldrums now, but they are not. No breeze--the
longed-for trades still missing. They are still anxiously watching for a
sail, but they have only 'visions of ships that come to naught--the
shadow without the substance.' The second mate catches a booby this
afternoon, a bird which consists mainly of feathers; 'but as they have no
other meat, it will go well.'
May 21, they strike the trades at last! The second mate catches three
more boobies, and gives the long-boat one. Dinner 'half a can of
mincemeat divided up and served around, which strengthened us somewhat.'
They have to keep a man bailing all the time; the hole knocked in the
boat when she was launched from the burning ship was never efficiently
mended. 'Heading about north-west now.' They hope they have easting
enough to make some of these indefinite isles. Failing that, they think
they will be in a better position to be picked up. It was an infinitely
slender chance, but the captain probably refrained from mentioning that.
The next day is to be an eventful one.
[Diary entry] May 22. Last night wind headed us off, so that part
of the time we had to steer east-south-east and then
west-north-west, and so on. This morning we were all startled by a
cry of 'SAIL HO!' Sure enough, we could see it! And for a time we
cut adrift from the second mate's boat, and steered so as to
attract its attention. This was about half-past five A.M. After
sailing in a state of high excitement for almost twenty minutes we
made it out to be the chief mate's boat. Of course we were glad to
see them and have them report all well; but still it was a bitter
disappointment to us all. Now that we are in the trades it seems
impossible to make northing enough to strike the isles. We have
determined to do the best we can, and get in the route of vessels.
Such being the determination, it became necessary to cast off the
other boat, which, after a good deal of unpleasantness, was done,
we again dividing water and stores, and taking Cox into our boat.
This makes our number fifteen. The second mate's crew wanted to
all get in with us, and cast the other boat adrift. It was a very
painful separation.
So these isles that they have struggled for so long and so hopefully have
to be given up. What with lying birds that come to mock, and isles that
are but a dream, and 'visions of ships that come to naught,' it is a
pathetic time they are having, with much heartbreak in it. It was odd
that the vanished boat, three days lost to sight in that vast solitude,
should appear again. But it brought Cox--we can't be certain why. But
if it hadn't, the diarist would never have seen the land again.
[Diary entry] Our chances as we go west increase in regard to being
picked up, but each day our scanty fare is so much reduced. Without
the fish, turtle, and birds sent us, I do not know how we should
have got along. The other day I offered to read prayers morning and
evening for the captain, and last night commenced. The men,
although of various nationalities and religions, are very attentive,
and always uncovered. May God grant my weak endeavour its issue!
Latitude, May 24, 14 degrees 18 minutes N. Five oysters apiece for
dinner and three spoonfuls of juice, a gill of water, and a piece of
biscuit the size of a silver dollar. 'We are plainly getting
weaker--God have mercy upon us all!' That night heavy seas break
over the weather side and make everybody wet and uncomfortable
besides requiring constant baling.
Next day 'nothing particular happened.' Perhaps some of us would have
regarded it differently. 'Passed a spar, but not near enough to see what
it was.' They saw some whales blow; there were flying-fish skimming the
seas, but none came aboard. Misty weather, with fine rain, very
penetrating.
Latitude, May 26, 15 degrees 50 minutes. They caught a flying-fish and a
booby, but had to eat them raw. 'The men grow weaker, and, I think,
despondent; they say very little, though.' And so, to all the other
imaginable and unimaginable horrors, silence is added--the muteness and
brooding of coming despair. 'It seems our best chance to get in the
track of ships with the hope that some one will run near enough to our
speck to see it.' He hopes the other boards stood west and have been
picked up. (They will never be heard of again in this world.)
[Diary entry] Sunday, May 27, Latitude 16 degrees 0 minutes 5
seconds; longitude, by chronometer, 117 degrees 22 minutes. Our
fourth Sunday! When we left the ship we reckoned on having about
ten days' supplies, and now we hope to be able, by rigid economy, to
make them last another week if possible.[1] Last night the sea was
comparatively quiet, but the wind headed us off to about
west-north-west, which has been about our course all day to-day.
Another flying-fish came aboard last night, and one more to-day
--both small ones. No birds. A booby is a great catch, and a good
large one makes a small dinner for the fifteen of us--that is, of
course, as dinners go in the 'Hornet's' long-boat. Tried this
morning to read the full service to myself, with the Communion, but
found it too much; am too weak, and get sleepy, and cannot give
strict attention; so I put off half till this afternoon. I trust
God will hear the prayers gone up for us at home to-day, and
graciously answer them by sending us succour and help in this our
season of deep distress.
The next day was 'a good day for seeing a ship.' But none was seen. The
diarist 'still feels pretty well,' though very weak; his brother Henry
'bears up and keeps his strength the best of any on board.' 'I do not
feel despondent at all, for I fully trust that the Almighty will hear our
and the home prayers, and He who suffers not a sparrow to fall sees and
cares for us, His creatures.'
Considering the situation and circumstances, the record for next day,
May 29, is one which has a surprise in it for those dull people who think
that nothing but medicines and doctors can cure the sick. A little
starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best
medicines and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet; I mean
total abstention from food for one or two days. I speak from experience;
starvation has been my cold and fever doctor for fifteen years, and has
accomplished a cure in all instances. The third mate told me in Honolulu
that the 'Portyghee' had lain in his hammock for months, raising his
family of abscesses and feeding like a cannibal. We have seen that in
spite of dreadful weather, deprivation of sleep, scorching, drenching,
and all manner of miseries, thirteen days of starvation 'wonderfully
recovered' him. There were four sailors down sick when the ship was
burned. Twenty-five days of pitiless starvation have followed, and now
we have this curious record: 'All the men are hearty and strong; even the
ones that were down sick are well, except poor Peter.' When I wrote an
article some months ago urging temporary abstention from food as a remedy
for an inactive appetite and for disease, I was accused of jesting, but I
was in earnest. 'We are all wonderfully well and strong, comparatively
speaking.' On this day the starvation regime drew its belt a couple of
buckle-holes tighter: the bread ration was reduced from the usual piece
of cracker the size of a silver dollar to the half of that, and one meal
was abolished from the daily three. This will weaken the men physically,
but if there are any diseases of an ordinary sort left in them they will
disappear.
Two quarts bread-crumbs left, one-third of a ham, three small cans
of oysters, and twenty gallons of water.--Captain's Log.
The hopeful tone of the diaries is persistent. It is remarkable. Look
at the map and see where the boat is: latitude 16 degrees 44 minutes,
longitude 119 degrees 20 minutes. It is more than two hundred miles west
of the Revillagigedo Islands, so they are quite out of the question
against the trades, rigged as this boat is. The nearest land available
for such a boat is the American group, six hundred and fifty miles away,
westward; still, there is no note of surrender, none even of
discouragement! Yet, May 30, 'we have now left: one can of oysters;
three pounds of raisins; one can of soup; one-third of a ham; three pints
of biscuit-crumbs.'
And fifteen starved men to live on it while they creep and crawl six
hundred and fifty miles. 'Somehow I feel much encouraged by this change
of course (west by north) which we have made to-day.' Six hundred and
fifty miles on a hatful of provisions. Let us be thankful, even after
thirty-two years, that they are mercifully ignorant of the fact that it
isn't six hundred and fifty that they must creep on the hatful, but
twenty-two hundred!
Isn't the situation romantic enough just as it stands? No. Providence
added a startling detail: pulling an oar in that boat, for common
seaman's wages, was a banished duke--Danish. We hear no more of him;
just that mention, that is all, with the simple remark added that 'he is
one of our best men'--a high enough compliment for a duke or any other
man in those manhood-testing circumstances. With that little glimpse of
him at his oar, and that fine word of praise, he vanishes out of our
knowledge for all time. For all time, unless he should chance upon this
note and reveal himself.
The last day of May is come. And now there is a disaster to report:
think of it, reflect upon it, and try to understand how much it means,
when you sit down with your family and pass your eye over your
breakfast-table. Yesterday there were three pints of bread-crumbs; this
morning the little bag is found open and some of the crumbs are missing.
'We dislike to suspect any one of such a rascally act, but there is no
question that this grave crime has been committed. Two days will
certainly finish the remaining morsels. God grant us strength to reach
the American group!' The third mate told me in Honolulu that in these
days the men remembered with bitterness that the 'Portyghee' had devoured
twenty-two days' rations while he lay waiting to be transferred from the
burning ship, and that now they cursed him and swore an oath that if it
came to cannibalism he should be the first to suffer for the rest.
[Diary entry] The captain has lost his glasses, and therefore he
cannot read our pocket prayer-books as much as I think he would
like, though he is not familiar with them.
Further of the captain: 'He is a good man, and has been most kind to us
--almost fatherly. He says that if he had been offered the command of the
ship sooner he should have brought his two daughters with him.' It makes
one shudder yet to think how narrow an escape it was.
The two meals (rations) a day are as follows: fourteen raisins and a
piece of cracker the size of a penny for tea; a gill of water, and a
piece of ham and a piece of bread, each the size of a penny, for
breakfast.--Captain's Log.
He means a penny in thickness as well as in circumference. Samuel
Ferguson's diary says the ham was shaved 'about as thin as it could be
cut.'
[Diary entry] June 1. Last night and to-day sea very high and
cobbling, breaking over and making us all wet and cold. Weather
squally, and there is no doubt that only careful management--with
God's protecting care--preserved us through both the night and the
day; and really it is most marvellous how every morsel that passes
our lips is blessed to us. It makes me think daily of the miracle
of the loaves and fishes. Henry keeps up wonderfully, which is a
great consolation to me. I somehow have great confidence, and hope
that our afflictions will soon be ended, though we are running
rapidly across the track of both outward and inward bound vessels,
and away from them; our chief hope is a whaler, man-of-war, or some
Australian ship. The isles we are steering for are put down in
Bowditch, but on my map are said to be doubtful. God grant they may
be there!
Hardest day yet.--Captain's Log.
Doubtful! It was worse than that. A week later they sailed straight
over them.
[Diary entry] June 2. Latitude 18 degrees 9 minutes. Squally,
cloudy, a heavy sea.... I cannot help thinking of the cheerful and
comfortable time we had aboard the 'Hornet.'
Two days' scanty supplies left--ten rations of water apiece and a
little morsel of bread. BUT THE SUN SHINES AND GOD IS MERCIFUL.
--Captain's Log.
[Diary entry] Sunday, June 3. Latitude 17 degrees 54 minutes.
Heavy sea all night, and from 4 A.M. very wet, the sea breaking
over us in frequent sluices, and soaking everything aft,
particularly. All day the sea has been very high, and it is a
wonder that we are not swamped. Heaven grant that it may go down
this evening! Our suspense and condition are getting terrible. I
managed this morning to crawl, more than step, to the forward end of
the boat, and was surprised to find that I was so weak, especially
in the legs and knees. The sun has been out again, and I have dried
some things, and hope for a better night.
June 4. Latitude 17 degrees 6 minutes, longitude 131 degrees 30
minutes. Shipped hardly any seas last night, and to-day the sea has
gone down somewhat, although it is still too high for comfort, as we
have an occasional reminder that water is wet. The sun has been out
all day, and so we have had a good drying. I have been trying for
the last ten or twelve days to get a pair of drawers dry enough to
put on, and to-day at last succeeded. I mention this to show the
state in which we have lived. If our chronometer is anywhere near
right, we ought to see the American Isles to-morrow or next day. If
there are not there, we have only the chance, for a few days, of a
stray ship, for we cannot eke out the provisions more than five or
six days longer, and our strength is failing very fast. I was much
surprised to-day to note how my legs have wasted away above my
knees: they are hardly thicker than my upper arm used to be. Still,
I trust in God's infinite mercy, and feel sure he will do what is
best for us. To survive, as we have done, thirty-two days in an
open boat, with only about ten days' fair provisions for thirty-one
men in the first place, and these divided twice subsequently, is
more than mere unassisted HUMAN art and strength could have
accomplished and endured.
Bread and raisins all gone.--Captain's Log.
Men growing dreadfully discontented, and awful grumbling and
unpleasant talk is arising. God save us from all strife of men; and
if we must die now, take us himself, and not embitter our bitter
death still more.--Henry's Log.
[Diary entry] June 5. Quiet night and pretty comfortable day,
though our sail and block show signs of failing, and need taking
down--which latter is something of a job, as it requires the
climbing of the mast. We also had news from forward, there being
discontent and some threatening complaints of unfair allowances,
etc., all as unreasonable as foolish; still, these things bid us be
on our guard. I am getting miserably weak, but try to keep up the
best I can. If we cannot find those isles we can only try to make
north-west and get in the track of Sandwich Island-bound vessels,
living as best we can in the meantime. To-day we changed to one
meal, and that at about noon, with a small ration or water at 8 or 9
A.M., another at 12 A.M., and a third at 5 or 6 P.M.
Nothing left but a little piece of ham and a gill of water, all
around.--Captain's Log.
They are down to one meal a day now--such as it is--and fifteen hundred
miles to crawl yet! And now the horrors deepen, and, though they escaped
actual mutiny, the attitude of the men became alarming. Now we seem to
see why that curious incident happened, so long ago; I mean Cox's return,
after he had been far away and out of sight several days in the chief
mate's boat. If he had not come back the captain and the two young
passengers might have been slain, now, by these sailors, who were
becoming crazed through their sufferings.
NOTE SECRETLY PASSED BY HENRY TO HIS BROTHER:
Cox told me last night that there is getting to be a good deal of
ugly talk among the men against the captain and us aft. They say
that the captain is the cause of all; that he did not try to save
the ship at all, nor to get provisions, and that even would not let
the men put in some they had; and that partiality is shown us in
apportioning our rations aft.... asked Cox the other day if he
would starve first or eat human flesh. Cox answered he would
starve.... then told him he would only be killing himself. If we
do not find those islands we would do well to prepare for anything.
.... is the loudest of all.
REPLY:
We can depend on ..., I think, and ..., and Cox, can we not?
SECOND NOTE:
I guess so, and very likely on ...; but there is no telling .... and
Cox are certain. There is nothing definite said or hinted as yet,
as I understand Cox; but starving men are the same as maniacs. It
would be well to keep a watch on your pistol, so as to have it and
the cartridges safe from theft.
Henry's Log, June 5. Dreadful forebodings. God spare us from all
such horrors! Some of the men getting to talk a good deal. Nothing
to write down. Heart very sad.
Henry's Log, June 6. Passed some sea-weed and something that looked
like the trunk of an old tree, but no birds; beginning to be afraid
islands not there. To-day it was said to the captain, in the
hearing of all, that some of the men would not shrink, when a man
was dead, from using the flesh, though they would not kill.
Horrible! God give us all full use of our reason, and spare us from
such things! 'From plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and
murder, and from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us!'
[Diary entry] June 6. Latitude 16 degrees 30 minutes, longitude
(chron.) 134 degrees. Dry night and wind steady enough to require
no change in sail; but this A.M. an attempt to lower it proved
abortive. First the third mate tried and got up to the block, and
fastened a temporary arrangement to reeve the halyards through, but
had to come down, weak and almost fainting, before finishing; then
Joe tried, and after twice ascending, fixed it and brought down the
block; but it was very exhausting work, and afterward he was good
for nothing all day. The clue-iron which we are trying to make
serve for the broken block works, however, very indifferently, and
will, I am afraid, soon cut the rope. It is very necessary to get
everything connected with the sail in good easy running order before
we get too weak to do anything with it.
Only three meals left.--Captain's Log.
[Diary entry] June 7. Latitude 16 degrees 35 minutes N., longitude
136 degrees 30 minutes W. Night wet and uncomfortable. To-day
shows us pretty conclusively that the American Isles are not there,
though we have had some signs that looked like them. At noon we
decided to abandon looking any farther for them, and to-night haul a
little more northerly, so as to get in the way of Sandwich Island
vessels, which fortunately come down pretty well this way--say to
latitude 19 degrees to 20 degrees to get the benefit of the
trade-winds. Of course all the westing we have made is gain, and I
hope the chronometer is wrong in our favour, for I do not see how
any such delicate instrument can keep good time with the constant
jarring and thumping we get from the sea. With the strong trade we
have, I hope that a week from Sunday will put us in sight of the
Sandwich Islands, if we are not safe by that time by being picked
up.
It is twelve hundred miles to the Sandwich Islands; the provisions are
virtually exhausted, but not the perishing diarist's pluck.
[Diary entry] My cough troubled me a good deal last night, and
therefore I got hardly any sleep at all. Still, I make out pretty
well, and should not complain. Yesterday the third mate mended the
block, and this P.M. the sail, after some difficulty, was got down,
and Harry got to the top of the mast and rove the halyards through
after some hardship, so that it now works easy and well. This
getting up the mast is no easy matter at any time with the sea we
have, and is very exhausting in our present state. We could only
reward Harry by an extra ration of water. We have made good time
and course to-day. Heading her up, however, makes the boat ship
seas and keeps us all wet; however, it cannot be helped. Writing is
a rather precarious thing these times. Our meal to-day for the
fifteen consists of half a can of 'soup and boullie'; the other half
is reserved for to-morrow. Henry still keeps up grandly, and is a
great favourite. God grant he may be spared.
A better feeling prevails among the men.--Captain's Log.
[Diary entry] June 9. Latitude 17 degrees 53 minutes. Finished
to-day, I may say, our whole stack of provisions.[2] We have only
left a lower end of a ham-bone, with some of the outer rind and
skin on. In regard to the water, however, I think we have got ten
days' supply at our present rate of allowance. This, with what
nourishment we can get from boot-legs and such chewable matter, we
hope will enable us to weather it out till we get to the Sandwich
Islands, or, sailing in the meantime in the track of vessels
thither bound, be picked up. My hope is in the latter, for in all
human probability I cannot stand the other. Still, we have been
marvellously protected, and God, I hope, will preserve us all in
His own good time and way. The men are getting weaker, but are
still quiet and orderly.
[Diary entry] Sunday, June 10. Latitude 18 degrees 40 minutes,
longitude 142 degrees 34 minutes. A pretty good night last night,
with some wettings, and again another beautiful Sunday. I cannot
but think how we should all enjoy it at home, and what a contrast is
here! How terrible their suspense must begin to be! God grant that
it may be relieved before very long, and He certainly seems to be
with us in everything we do, and has preserved this boat
miraculously; for since we left the ship we have sailed considerably
over three thousand miles, which, taking into consideration our
meagre stock of provisions, is almost unprecedented. As yet I do
not feel the stint of food so much as I do that of water. Even
Henry, who is naturally a good water-drinker, can save half of his
allowance from time to time, when I cannot. My diseased throat may
have something to do with that, however.
Nothing is now left which by any flattery can be called food. But they
must manage somehow for five days more, for at noon they have still eight
hundred miles to go. It is a race for life now.
This is no time for comments or other interruptions from me--every moment
is valuable. I will take up the boy brother's diary at this point, and
clear the seas before it and let it fly.
HENRY FERGUSON'S LOG:
Sunday, June 10. Our ham-bone has given us a taste of food to-day,
and we have got left a little meat and the remainder of the bone for
tomorrow. Certainly, never was there such a sweet knuckle-one, or
one that was so thoroughly appreciated .... I do not know that I
feel any worse than I did last Sunday, notwithstanding the reduction
of diet; and I trust that we may all have strength given us to
sustain the sufferings and hardships of the coming week. We
estimate that we are within seven hundred miles of the Sandwich
Islands, and that our average, daily, is somewhat over a hundred
miles, so that our hopes have some foundation in reason. Heaven
send we may all live to see land!
June 11. Ate the meat and rind of our ham-bone, and have the bone
and the greasy cloth from around the ham left to eat to-morrow. God
send us birds or fish, and let us not perish of hunger, or be
brought to the dreadful alternative of feeding on human flesh! As I
feel now, I do not think anything could persuade me; but you cannot
tell what you will do when you are reduced by hunger and your mind
wandering. I hope and pray we can make out to reach the islands
before we get to this strait; but we have one or two desperate men
aboard, though they are quiet enough now. IT IS MY FIRM TRUST AND
BELIEF THAT WE ARE GOING TO BE SAVED.
All food gone.--Captain's Log.[3]
[Ferguson's log continues]
June 12. Stiff breeze, and we are fairly flying--dead ahead of it
--and toward the islands. Good hope, but the prospects of hunger are
awful. Ate ham-bone to-day. It is the captain's birthday; he is
fifty-four years old.
June 13. The ham-rags are not quite all gone yet, and the
boot-legs, we find, are very palatable after we get the salt out of
them. A little smoke, I think, does some little good; but I don't
know.
June 14. Hunger does not pain us much, but we are dreadfully weak.
Our water is getting frightfully low. God grant we may see land
soon! NOTHING TO EAT, but feel better than I did yesterday. Toward
evening saw a magnificent rainbow--THE FIRST WE HAD SEEN. Captain
said, 'Cheer up, boys; it's a prophecy--IT'S THE BOW OF PROMISE!'
June 15. God be for ever praised for His infinite mercy! LAND IN
SIGHT! rapidly neared it and soon were SURE of it .... Two noble
Kanakas swam out and took the boat ashore. We were joyfully
received by two white men--Mr. Jones and his steward Charley--and a
crowd of native men, women, and children. They treated us
splendidly--aided us, and carried us up the bank, and brought us
water, poi, bananas, and green coconuts; but the white men took care
of us and prevented those who would have eaten too much from doing
so. Everybody overjoyed to see us, and all sympathy expressed in
faces, deeds, and words. We were then helped up to the house; and
help we needed. Mr. Jones and Charley are the only white men here.
Treated us splendidly. Gave us first about a teaspoonful of spirits
in water, and then to each a cup of warm tea, with a little bread.
Takes EVERY care of us. Gave us later another cup of tea, and bread
the same, and then let us go to rest. IT IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY
LIFE.... God in His mercy has heard our prayer.... Everybody is so
kind. Words cannot tell.
June 16. Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a
good night's rest; but not sleep--we were too happy to sleep; would
keep the reality and not let it turn to a delusion--dreaded that we
might wake up and find ourselves in the boat again.
It is an amazing adventure. There is nothing of its sort in history that
surpasses it in impossibilities made possible. In one extraordinary
detail--the survival of every person in the boat--it probably stands
alone in the history of adventures of its kinds. Usually merely a part
of a boat's company survive--officers, mainly, and other educated and
tenderly-reared men, unused to hardship and heavy labour; the untrained,
roughly-reared hard workers succumb. But in this case even the rudest
and roughest stood the privations and miseries of the voyage almost as
well as did the college-bred young brothers and the captain. I mean,
physically. The minds of most of the sailors broke down in the fourth
week and went to temporary ruin, but physically the endurance exhibited
was astonishing. Those men did not survive by any merit of their own, of
course, but by merit of the character and intelligence of the captain;
they lived by the mastery of his spirit. Without him they would have
been children without a nurse; they would have exhausted their provisions
in a week, and their pluck would not have lasted even as long as the
provisions.
The boat came near to being wrecked at the last. As it approached the
shore the sail was let go, and came down with a run; then the captain saw
that he was drifting swiftly toward an ugly reef, and an effort was made
to hoist the sail again; but it could not be done; the men's strength was
wholly exhausted; they could not even pull an oar. They were helpless,
and death imminent. It was then that they were discovered by the two
Kanakas who achieved the rescue. They swam out and manned the boat, and
piloted her through a narrow and hardly noticeable break in the reef--the
only break in it in a stretch of thirty-five miles! The spot where the
landing was made was the only one in that stretch where footing could
have been found on the shore; everywhere else precipices came sheer down
into forty fathoms of water. Also, in all that stretch this was the only
spot where anybody lived.
Within ten days after the landing all the men but one were up and
creeping about. Properly, they ought to have killed themselves with the
'food' of the last few days--some of them, at any rate--men who had
freighted their stomachs with strips of leather from old boots and with
chips from the butter cask; a freightage which they did not get rid of by
digestion, but by other means. The captain and the two passengers did
not eat strips and chips, as the sailors did, but scraped the
boot-leather and the wood, and made a pulp of the scrapings by moistening
them with water. The third mate told me that the boots were old and full
of holes; then added thoughtfully, 'but the holes digested the best.'
Speaking of digestion, here is a remarkable thing, and worth nothing:
during this strange voyage, and for a while afterward on shore, the
bowels of some of the men virtually ceased from their functions; in some
cases there was no action for twenty and thirty days, and in one case for
forty-four! Sleeping also came to be rare. Yet the men did very well
without it. During many days the captain did not sleep at all
--twenty-one, I think, on one stretch.
When the landing was made, all the men were successfully protected from
over-eating except the 'Portyghee;' he escaped the watch and ate an
incredible number of bananas: a hundred and fifty-two, the third mate
said, but this was undoubtedly an exaggeration; I think it was a hundred
and fifty-one. He was already nearly half full of leather; it was
hanging out of his ears. (I do not state this on the third mate's
authority, for we have seen what sort of a person he was; I state it on
my own.) The 'Portyghee' ought to have died, of course, and even now it
seems a pity that he didn't; but he got well, and as early as any of
them; and all full of leather, too, the way he was, and butter-timber and
handkerchiefs and bananas. Some of the men did eat handkerchiefs in
those last days, also socks; and he was one of them.
It is to the credit of the men that they did not kill the rooster that
crowed so gallantly mornings. He lived eighteen days, and then stood up
and stretched his neck and made a brave, weak effort to do his duty once
more, and died in the act. It is a picturesque detail; and so is that
rainbow, too--the only one seen in the forty-three days,--raising its
triumphal arch in the skies for the sturdy fighters to sail under to
victory and rescue.
With ten days' provisions Captain Josiah Mitchell performed this
memorable voyage of forty-three days and eight hours in an open boat,
sailing four thousand miles in reality and thirty-three hundred and sixty
by direct courses, and brought every man safe to land. A bright,
simple-hearted, unassuming, plucky, and most companionable man. I walked
the deck with him twenty-eight days--when I was not copying diaries,--and
I remember him with reverent honour. If he is alive he is eighty-six
years old now.
If I remember rightly, Samuel Ferguson died soon after we reached San
Francisco. I do not think he lived to see his home again; his disease
had been seriously aggravated by his hardships.
For a time it was hoped that the two quarter-boats would presently be
heard of, but this hope suffered disappointment. They went down with all
on board, no doubt, not even sparing that knightly chief mate.
The authors of the diaries allowed me to copy them exactly as they were
written, and the extracts that I have given are without any smoothing
over or revision. These diaries are finely modest and unaffected, and
with unconscious and unintentional art they rise toward the climax with
graduated and gathering force and swing and dramatic intensity; they
sweep you along with a cumulative rush, and when the cry rings out at
last, 'Land in sight!' your heart is in your mouth, and for a moment you
think it is you that have been saved. The last two paragraphs are not
improvable by anybody's art; they are literary gold; and their very
pauses and uncompleted sentences have in them an eloquence not reachable
by any words.
The interest of this story is unquenchable; it is of the sort that time
cannot decay. I have not looked at the diaries for thirty-two years, but
I find that they have lost nothing in that time. Lost? They have
gained; for by some subtle law all tragic human experiences gain in
pathos by the perspective of time. We realize this when in Naples we
stand musing over the poor Pompeian mother, lost in the historic storm of
volcanic ashes eighteen centuries ago, who lies with her child gripped
close to her breast, trying to save it, and whose despair and grief have
been preserved for us by the fiery envelope which took her life but
eternalized her form and features. She moves us, she haunts us, she
stays in our thoughts for many days, we do not know why, for she is
nothing to us, she has been nothing to anyone for eighteen centuries;
whereas of the like case to-day we should say, 'Poor thing! it is
pitiful,' and forget it in an hour.
[1] There are nineteen days of voyaging ahead yet.--M.T.
[2] Six days to sail yet, nevertheless.--M.T.
[3] It was at this time discovered that the crazed sailors had gotten the
delusion that the captain had a million dollars in gold concealed aft,
and they were conspiring to kill him and the two passengers and seize it.
--M.T.
AT THE APPETITE-CURE
This establishment's name is Hochberghaus. It is in Bohemia, a short
day's journey from Vienna, and being in the Austrian Empire is of course
a health resort. The empire is made up of health resorts; it distributes
health to the whole world. Its waters are all medicinal. They are
bottled and sent throughout the earth; the natives themselves drink beer.
This is self-sacrifice apparently--but outlanders who have drunk Vienna
beer have another idea about it. Particularly the Pilsner which one gets
in a small cellar up an obscure back lane in the First Bezirk--the name
has escaped me, but the place is easily found: You inquire for the Greek
church; and when you get to it, go right along by--the next house is that
little beer-mill. It is remote from all traffic and all noise; it is
always Sunday there. There are two small rooms, with low ceilings
supported by massive arches; the arches and ceilings are whitewashed,
otherwise the rooms would pass for cells in the dungeons of a bastile.
The furniture is plain and cheap, there is no ornamentation anywhere; yet
it is a heaven for the self-sacrificers, for the beer there is
incomparable; there is nothing like it elsewhere in the world. In the
first room you will find twelve or fifteen ladies and gentlemen of
civilian quality; in the other one a dozen generals and ambassadors. One
may live in Vienna many months and not hear of this place; but having
once heard of it and sampled it, the sampler will afterward infest it.
However, this is all incidental--a mere passing note of gratitude for
blessings received--it has nothing to do with my subject. My subject is
health resorts. All unhealthy people ought to domicile themselves in
Vienna, and use that as a base, making flights from time to time to the
outlying resorts, according to need. A flight to Marienbad to get rid of
fat; a flight to Carlsbad to get rid of rheumatism; a flight to
Kalteneutgeben to take the water cure and get rid of the rest of the
diseases. It is all so handy. You can stand in Vienna and toss a
biscuit into Kaltenleutgeben, with a twelve-inch gun. You can run out
thither at any time of the day; you go by phenomenally slow trains, and
yet inside of an hour you have exchanged the glare and swelter of the
city for wooded hills, and shady forest paths, and soft cool airs, and
the music of birds, and the repose and the peace of paradise.
And there are plenty of other health resorts at your service and
convenient to get at from Vienna; charming places, all of them; Vienna
sits in the centre of a beautiful world of mountains with now and then a
lake and forests; in fact, no other city is so fortunately situated.
There is an abundance of health resorts, as I have said. Among them this
place--Hochberghaus. It stands solitary on the top of a densely wooded
mountain, and is a building of great size. It is called the Appetite
Anstallt, and people who have lost their appetites come here to get them
restored. When I arrived I was taken by Professor Haimberger to his
consulting-room and questioned:
'It is six o'clock. When did you eat last?'
'At noon.'
'What did you eat?'
'Next to nothing.'
'What was on the table?'
'The usual things.'
'Chops, chickens, vegetables, and so on?'
'Yes; but don't mention them--I can't bear it.'
'Are you tired of them?'
'Oh, utterly. I wish I might never hear of them again.'
'The mere sight of food offends you, does it?'
'More, it revolts me.'
The doctor considered awhile, then got out a long menu and ran his eye
slowly down it.
'I think,' said he, 'that what you need to eat is--but here, choose for
yourself.'
I glanced at the list, and my stomach threw a hand-spring. Of all the
barbarous lay-outs that were ever contrived, this was the most atrocious.
At the top stood 'tough, underdone, overdue tripe, garnished with
garlic;' half-way down the bill stood 'young cat; old cat; scrambled
cat;' at the bottom stood 'sailor-boots, softened with tallow--served
raw.' The wide intervals of the bill were packed with dishes calculated
to gag a cannibal. I said:
'Doctor, it is not fair to joke over so serious a case as mine. I came
here to get an appetite, not to throw away the remnant that's left.'
He said gravely: 'I am not joking; why should I joke?'
'But I can't eat these horrors.'
'Why not?'
He said it with a naivete that was admirable, whether it was real or
assumed.
'Why not? Because--why, doctor, for months I have seldom been able to
endure anything more substantial than omelettes and custards. These
unspeakable dishes of yours--'
'Oh, you will come to like them. They are very good. And you must eat
them. It is a rule of the place, and is strict. I cannot permit any
departure from it.'
I said smiling: 'Well, then, doctor, you will have to permit the
departure of the patient. I am going.'
He looked hurt, and said in a way which changed the aspect of things:
'I am sure you would not do me that injustice. I accepted you in good
faith--you will not shame that confidence. This appetite-cure is my
whole living. If you should go forth from it with the sort of appetite
which you now have, it could become known, and you can see, yourself,
that people would say my cure failed in your case and hence can fail in
other cases. You will not go; you will not do me this hurt.'
I apologised and said I would stay.
'That is right. I was sure you would not go; it would take the food from
my family's mouths.'
'Would they mind that? Do they eat these fiendish things?'
'They? My family?' His eyes were full of gentle wonder. 'Of course
not.'
'Oh, they don't! Do you?'
'Certainly not.'
'I see. It's another case of a physician who doesn't take his own
medicine.'
'I don't need it. It is six hours since you lunched. Will you have
supper now--or later?'
'I am not hungry, but now is as good a time as any, and I would like to
be done with it and have it off my mind. It is about my usual time, and
regularity is commanded by all the authorities. Yes, I will try to
nibble a little now--I wish a light horsewhipping would answer instead.'
The professor handed me that odious menu.
'Choose--or will you have it later?'
'Oh, dear me, show me to my room; I forgot your hard rule.'
'Wait just a moment before you finally decide. There is another rule.
If you choose now, the order will be filled at once; but if you wait, you
will have to await my pleasure. You cannot get a dish from that entire
bill until I consent.'
'All right. Show me to my room, and send the cook to bed; there is not
going to be any hurry.'
The professor took me up one flight of stairs and showed me into a most
inviting and comfortable apartment consisting of parlour, bedchamber, and
bathroom.
The front windows looked out over a far-reaching spread of green glades
and valleys, and tumbled hills clothed with forests--a noble solitude
unvexed by the fussy world. In the parlour were many shelves filled with
books. The professor said he would now leave me to myself; and added:
'Smoke and read as much as you please, drink all the water you like.
When you get hungry, ring and give your order, and I will decide whether
it shall be filled or not. Yours is a stubborn, bad case, and I think
the first fourteen dishes in the bill are each and all too delicate for
its needs. I ask you as a favour to restrain yourself and not call for
them.'
'Restrain myself, is it? Give yourself no uneasiness. You are going to
save money by me. The idea of coaxing a sick man's appetite back with
this buzzard-fare is clear insanity.'
I said it with bitterness, for I felt outraged by this calm, cold talk
over these heartless new engines of assassination. The doctor looked
grieved, but not offended. He laid the bill of fare of the commode at my
bed's head, 'so that it would be handy,' and said:
'Yours is not the worst case I have encountered, by any means; still it
is a bad one and requires robust treatment; therefore I shall be
gratified if you will restrain yourself and skip down to No. 15 and begin
with that.'
Then he left me and I began to undress, for I was dog-tired and very
sleepy. I slept fifteen hours and woke up finely refreshed at ten the
next morning. Vienna coffee! It was the first thing I thought of--that
unapproachable luxury--that sumptuous coffee-house coffee, compared with
which all other European coffee and all American hotel coffee is mere
fluid poverty. I rang, and ordered it; also Vienna bread, that delicious
invention. The servant spoke through the wicket in the door and said
--but you know what he said. He referred me to the bill of fare.
I allowed him to go--I had no further use for him.
After the bath I dressed and started for a walk, and got as far as the
door. It was locked on the outside. I rang, and the servant came and
explained that it was another rule. The seclusion of the patient was
required until after the first meal. I had not been particularly anxious
to get out before; but it was different now. Being locked in makes a
person wishful to get out. I soon began to find it difficult to put in
the time. At two o'clock I had been twenty-six hours without food. I
had been growing hungry for some time; I recognised that I was not only
hungry now, but hungry with a strong adjective in front of it. Yet I was
not hungry enough to face the bill of fare.
I must put in the time somehow. I would read and smoke. I did it; hour
by hour. The books were all of one breed--shipwrecks; people lost in
deserts; people shut up in caved-in mines; people starving in besieged
cities. I read about all the revolting dishes that ever famishing men
had stayed their hunger with. During the first hours these things
nauseated me: hours followed in which they did not so affect me; still
other hours followed in which I found myself smacking my lips over some
tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours
I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which
was a sort of dumplings containing a compost made of caviar and tar.
It was refused me. During the next fifteen hours I visited the bell
every now and then and ordered a dish that was further down the list.
Always a refusal. But I was conquering prejudice after prejudice, right
along; I was making sure progress; I was creeping up on No. 15 with
deadly certainty, and my heart beat faster and faster, my hopes rose
higher and higher.
At last when food had not passed my lips for sixty hours, victory was
mine, and I ordered No. 15:
'Soft-boiled spring chicken--in the egg; six dozen, hot and fragrant!'
In fifteen minutes it was there; and the doctor along with it, rubbing
his hands with joy. He said with great excitement:
'It's a cure, it's a cure! I knew I could do it. Dear sir, my grand
system never failed--never. You've got your appetite back--you know you
have; say it and make me happy.'
'Bring on your carrion--I can eat anything in the bill!'
'Oh, this is noble, this is splendid--but I knew I could do it, the
system never fails. How are the birds?'
'Never was anything so delicious in the world; and yet as a rule I don't
care for game. But don't interrupt me, don't--I can't spare my mouth, I
really can't.'
Then the doctor said:
'The cure is perfect. There is no more doubt nor danger. Let the
poultry alone; I can trust you with a beefsteak, now.'
The beefsteak came--as much as a basketful of it--with potatoes, and
Vienna bread and coffee; and I ate a meal then that was worth all the
costly preparation I had made for it. And dripped tears of gratitude
into the gravy all the time--gratitude to the doctor for putting a little
plain common-sense into me when I had been empty of it so many, many
years.
II
Thirty years ago Haimberger went off on a long voyage in a sailing-ship.
There were fifteen passengers on board. The table-fare was of the
regulation pattern of the day: At 7 in the morning, a cup of bad coffee
in bed; at 9, breakfast: bad coffee, with condensed milk; soggy rolls,
crackers, salt fish; at 1 P.M., luncheon: cold tongue, cold ham, cold
corned beef, soggy cold rolls, crackers; 5 P.M., dinner: thick pea soup,
salt fish, hot corned beef and sour kraut, boiled pork and beans,
pudding; 9 till 11 P.M., supper: tea, with condensed milk, cold tongue,
cold ham, pickles, sea-biscuit, pickled oysters, pickled pigs' feet,
grilled bones, golden buck.
At the end of the first week eating had ceased, nibbling had taken its
place. The passengers came to the table, but it was partly to put in the
time, and partly because the wisdom of the ages commanded them to be
regular in their meals. They were tired of the coarse and monotonous
fare, and took no interest in it, had no appetite for it. All day and
every day they roamed the ship half hungry, plagued by their gnawing
stomachs, moody, untalkative, miserable. Among them were three confirmed
dyspeptics. These became shadows in the course of three weeks. There
was also a bed-ridden invalid; he lived on boiled rice; he could not look
at the regular dishes.
Now came shipwrecks and life in open boats, with the usual paucity of
food. Provisions ran lower and lower. The appetites improved, then.
When nothing was left but raw ham and the ration of that was down to two
ounces a day per person, the appetites were perfect. At the end of
fifteen days the dyspeptics, the invalid, and the most delicate ladies in
the party were chewing sailor-boots in ecstasy, and only complaining
because the supply of them was limited. Yet these were the same people
who couldn't endure the ship's tedious corned beef and sour kraut and
other crudities. They were rescued by an English vessel. Within ten
days the whole fifteen were in as good condition as they had been when
the shipwreck occurred.
'They had suffered no damage by their adventure,' said the professor.
'Do you note that?'
'Yes.'
'Do you note it well?'
'Yes--I think I do.'
'But you don't. You hesitate. You don't rise to the importance of it.
I will say it again--with emphasis--not one of them suffered any damage.'
'Now I begin to see. Yes, it was indeed remarkable.'
'Nothing of the kind. It was perfectly natural. There was no reason why
they should suffer damage. They were undergoing Nature's Appetite-Cure,
the best and wisest in the world.'
'Is that where you got your idea?'
'That is where I got it.'
'It taught those people a valuable lesson.'
'What makes you think that?'
'Why shouldn't I? You seem to think it taught you one.'
'That is nothing to the point. I am not a fool.'
'I see. Were they fools?'
'They were human beings.'
'Is it the same thing?'
'Why do you ask? You know it yourself. As regards his health--and the
rest of the things--the average man is what his environment and his
superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass.
He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive
what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for
himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled
the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the
earth in a year.'
'Those passengers learned no lesson, then?'
'Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English ship,
and pretty soon they were nibbling again--nibbling, appetiteless,
disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half hungry, their outraged
stomachs cursing and swearing and whining and supplicating all day long.
And in vain, for they were the stomachs of fools.'
'Then, as I understand it, your scheme is--'
'Quite simple. Don't eat until you are hungry. If the food fails to
taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you, don't eat
again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you--and do you
good, too.'
'And I am to observe no regularity, as to hours?'
'When you are conquering a bad appetite--no. After it is conquered,
regularity is no harm, so long as the appetite remains good. As soon as
the appetite wavers, apply the corrective again--which is starvation,
long or short according to the needs of the case.'
'The best diet, I suppose--I mean the wholesomest--'
'All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomer than others, but all the
ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether
the food be fine or coarse it will taste good and it will nourish if a
watch be kept upon the appetite and a little starvation introduced every
time it weakens. Nansen was used to fine fare, but when his meals were
restricted to bear-meat months at a time he suffered no damage and no
discomfort, because his appetite was kept at par through the difficulty
of getting his bear-meat regularly.'
'But doctors arrange carefully considered and delicate diets for
invalids.'
'They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and
won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him.'
'It would weaken him, wouldn't it?'
'Nothing to hurt. Look at the invalids in our shipwreck. They lived
fifteen days on pinches of raw ham, a suck at sailor-boots, and general
starvation. It weakened them, but it didn't hurt them. It put them in
fine shape to eat heartily of hearty food and build themselves up to a
condition of robust health. But they did not know enough to profit by
that; they lost their opportunity; they remained invalids; it served them
right. Do you know the trick that the health-resort doctors play?'
'What is it?'
'My system disguised--covert starvation. Grape-cure, bath-cure,
mud-cure--it is all the same. The grape and the bath and the mud make a
show and do a trifle of the work--the real work is done by the
surreptitious starvation. The patient accustomed to four meals and late
hours--at both ends of the day--now consider what he has to do at a
health resort. He gets up at 6 in the morning. Eats one egg. Tramps up
and down a promenade two hours with the other fools. Eats a butterfly.
Slowly drinks a glass of filtered sewage that smells like a buzzard's
breath. Promenades another two hours, but alone; if you speak to him he
says anxiously, "My water!--I am walking off my water!--please don't
interrupt," and goes stumping along again. Eats a candied roseleaf. Lies
at rest in the silence and solitude of his room for hours; mustn't read,
mustn't smoke. The doctor comes and feels of his heart, now, and his
pulse, and thumps his breast and his back and his stomach, and listens
for results through a penny flageolet; then orders the man's bath--half a
degree, Reaumur, cooler than yesterday. After the bath another egg. A
glass of sewage at three or four in the afternoon, and promenade solemnly
with the other freaks. Dinner at 6--half a doughnut and a cup of tea.
Walk again. Half-past 8, supper--more butterfly; at 9, to bed. Six
weeks of this regime--think of it. It starves a man out and puts him in
splendid condition. It would have the same effect in London, New York,
Jericho--anywhere.'
'How long does it take to put a person in condition here?'
'It ought to take but a day or two; but in fact it takes from one to six
weeks, according to the character and mentality of the patient.'
'How is that?'
'Do you see that crowd of women playing football, and boxing, and jumping
fences yonder? They have been here six or seven weeks. They were
spectral poor weaklings when they came. They were accustomed to nibbling
at dainties and delicacies at set hours four times a day, and they had no
appetite for anything. I questioned them, and then locked them into
their rooms--the frailest ones to starve nine or ten hours, the others
twelve or fifteen. Before long they began to beg; and indeed they
suffered a good deal. They complained of nausea, headache, and so on.
It was good to see them eat when the time was up. They could not
remember when the devouring of a meal had afforded them such rapture
--that was their word. Now, then, that ought to have ended their cure, but
it didn't. They were free to go to any meals in the house, and they
chose their accustomed four. Within a day or two I had to interfere.
Their appetites were weakening. I made them knock out a meal. That set
them up again. Then they resumed the four. I begged them to learn to
knock out a meal themselves, without waiting for me. Up to a fortnight
ago they couldn't; they really hadn't manhood enough; but they were
gaining it, and now I think they are safe. They drop out a meal every
now and then of their own accord. They are in fine condition now, and
they might safely go home, I think, but their confidence is not quite
perfect yet, so they are waiting awhile.'
'Other cases are different?'
'Oh yes. Sometimes a man learns the whole trick in a week. Learns to
regulate his appetite and keep it in perfect order. Learns to drop out a
meal with frequency and not mind it.'
'But why drop the entire meal out? Why not a part of it?'
'It's a poor device, and inadequate. If the stomach doesn't call
vigorously--with a shout, as you may say--it is better not to pester it
but just give it a real rest. Some people can eat more meals than
others, and still thrive. There are all sorts of people, and all sorts
of appetites. I will show you a man presently who was accustomed to
nibble at eight meals a day. It was beyond the proper gait of his
appetite by two. I have got him down to six a day, now, and he is all
right, and enjoys life. How many meals to you affect per day?'
'Formerly--for twenty-two years--a meal and a half; during the past two
years, two and a half: coffee and a roll at 9, luncheon at 1, dinner at
7.30 or 8.'
'Formerly a meal and a half--that is, coffee and a roll at 9, dinner in
the evening, nothing between--is that it?
'Yes.'
'Why did you add a meal?'
'It was the family's idea. They were uneasy. They thought I was killing
myself.'
'You found a meal and a half per day enough, all through the twenty-two
years?'
'Plenty.'
'Your present poor condition is due to the extra meal. Drop it out. You
are trying to eat oftener than your stomach demands. You don't gain, you
lose. You eat less food now, in a day, on two and a half meals, than you
formerly ate on one and a half.'
'True--a good deal less; for in those olds days my dinner was a very
sizeable thing.'
'Put yourself on a single meal a day, now--dinner--for a few days, till
you secure a good, sound, regular, trustworthy appetite, then take to
your one and a half permanently, and don't listen to the family any more.
When you have any ordinary ailment, particularly of a feverish sort, eat
nothing at all during twenty-four hours. That will cure it. It will
cure the stubbornest cold in the head, too. No cold in the head can
survive twenty-four hours' unmodified starvation.'
I know it. I have proved it many a time.
CONCERNING THE JEWS
Some months ago I published a magazine article[1] descriptive of a
remarkable scene in the Imperial Parliament in Vienna. Since then I have
received from Jews in America several letters of inquiry. They were
difficult letters to answer, for they were not very definite. But at
last I have received a definite one. It is from a lawyer, and he really
asks the questions which the other writers probably believed they were
asking. By help of this text I will do the best I can to publicly answer
this correspondent, and also the others--at the same time apologising for
having failed to reply privately. The lawyer's letter reads as follows:
'I have read "Stirring Times in Austria." One point in particular
is of vital import to not a few thousand people, including myself,
being a point about which I have often wanted to address a question
to some disinterested person. The show of military force in the
Austrian Parliament, which precipitated the riots, was not
introduced by any Jew. No Jew was a member of that body. No Jewish
question was involved in the Ausgleich or in the language
proposition. No Jew was insulting anybody. In short, no Jew was
doing any mischief toward anybody whatsoever. In fact, the Jews
were the only ones of the nineteen different races in Austria which
did not have a party--they are absolute non-participants. Yet in
your article you say that in the rioting which followed, all classes
of people were unanimous only on one thing, viz., in being against
the Jews. Now, will you kindly tell me why, in your judgment, the
Jews have thus ever been, and are even now, in these days of
supposed intelligence, the butt of baseless, vicious animosities?
I dare say that for centuries there has been no more quiet,
undisturbing, and well-behaving citizen, as a class, than that same
Jew. It seems to me that ignorance and fanaticism cannot alone
account for these horrible and unjust persecutions.
'Tell me, therefore, from your vantage point of cold view, what in
your mind is the cause. Can American Jews do anything to correct it
either in America or abroad? Will it ever come to an end? Will a
Jew be permitted to live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the
rest of mankind? What has become of the Golden Rule?'
I will begin by saying that if I thought myself prejudiced against the
Jew, I should hold it fairest to leave this subject to a person not
crippled in that way. But I think I have no such prejudice. A few years
ago a Jew observed to me that there was no uncourteous reference to his
people in my books, and asked how it happened. It happened because the
disposition was lacking. I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race
prejudices, and I think I have no colour prejudices nor caste prejudices
nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All
that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for
me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can
at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that
I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All
religions issue Bibles against him, and say the most injurious things
about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for
the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this
is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French.
Without this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Of course
Satan has some kind of a case, it goes without saying. It may be a poor
one, but that is nothing; that can be said about any of us. As soon as I
can get at the facts I will undertake his rehabilitation myself, if I can
find an unpolitic publisher. It is a thing which we ought to be willing
to do for any one who is under a cloud. We may not pay Satan reverence,
for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.
A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of
spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of
the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of
the loftiest order. In his large presence the other popes and
politicians shrink to midges for the microscope. I would like to see
him. I would rather see him and shake him by the tail than any other
member of the European Concert. In the present paper I shall allow
myself to use the word Jew as if it stood for both religion and race. It
is handy; and, besides, that is what the term means to the general world.
In the above letter one notes these points:
1. The Jew is a well-behaved citizen.
2. Can ignorance and fanaticism alone account for his unjust treatment?
3. Can Jews do anything to improve the situation?
4. The Jews have no party; they are non-participants.
5. Will the persecution ever come to an end?
6. What has become of the Golden Rule?
Point No. 1.--We must grant proposition No. 1, for several sufficient
reasons. The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even
his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he
is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome.
In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare--in all
countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to
do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long
roll of 'assaults' and 'drunk and disorderlies' his name seldom appears.
That the Jewish home is a home in the truest sense is a fact which no one
will dispute. The family is knitted together by the strongest
affections; its members show each other every due respect; and reverence
for the elders is an inviolate law of the house. The Jew is not a burden
on the charities of the state nor of the city; these could cease from
their functions without affecting him. When he is well enough, he works;
when he is incapacitated, his own people take care of him. And not in a
poor and stingy way, but with a fine and large benevolence. His race is
entitled to be called the most benevolent of all the races of men. A
Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but
there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle. The Jew
has been staged in many uncomplimentary forms, but, so far as I know, no
dramatist has done him the injustice to stage him as a beggar. Whenever
a Jew has real need to beg, his people save him from the necessity of
doing it. The charitable institutions of the Jews are supported by
Jewish money, and amply. The Jews make no noise about it; it is done
quietly; they do not nag and pester and harass us for contributions; they
give us peace, and set us an example--an example which he have not found
ourselves able to follow; for by nature we are not free givers, and have
to be patiently and persistently hunted down in the interest of the
unfortunate.
These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is
a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet,
peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal
dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a
burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in
benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very
quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add that he is as honest
as the average of his neighbours--But I think that question is
affirmatively answered by the fact that he is a successful business man.
The basis of successful business is honesty; a business cannot thrive
where the parties to it cannot trust each other. In the matter of
numbers the Jew counts for little in the overwhelming population of New
York; but that his honest counts for much is guaranteed by the fact that
the immense wholesale business of Broadway, from the Battery to Union
Square, is substantially in his hands.
I suppose that the most picturesque example in history of a trader's
trust in his fellow-trader was one where it was not Christian trusting
Christian, but Christian trusting Jew. That Hessian Duke who used to
sell his subjects to George III. to fight George Washington with got rich
at it; and by-and-by, when the wars engendered by the French Revolution
made his throne too warm for him, he was obliged to fly the country. He
was in a hurry, and had to leave his earnings behind--$9,000,000. He had
to risk the money with some one without security. He did not select a
Christian, but a Jew--a Jew of only modest means, but of high character;
a character so high that it left him lonesome--Rothschild of Frankfort.
Thirty years later, when Europe had become quiet and safe again, the Duke
came back from overseas, and the Jew returned the loan, with interest
added.[2]
The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he
has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of
vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom
transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings
with courts are almost restricted to matters connected with commerce. He
has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising
oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and
for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the
other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable
just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very
well that he has violated the spirit of it. He is a frequent and
faithful and capable officer in the civil service, but he is charged with
an unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier--like the
Christian Quaker.
Now if you offset these discreditable features by the creditable ones
summarised in a preceding paragraph beginning with the words, 'These
facts are all on the credit side,' and strike a balance, what must the
verdict be? This, I think: that, the merits and demerits being fairly
weighed and measured on both sides, the Christian can claim no
superiority over the Jew in the matter of good citizenship.
Yet in all countries, from the dawn of history, the Jew has been
persistently and implacably hated, and with frequency persecuted.
Point No. 2.--'Can fanaticism alone account for this?'
Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for nearly all of it,
but latterly I have come to think that this was an error. Indeed, it is
now my conviction that it is responsible for hardly any of it.
In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii.
We have all thoughtfully--or unthoughtfully--read the pathetic story of
the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph,
with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of
the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money
all away, to the last penny; took a nation's live stock all away, to the
last hoof; took a nation's land away, to the last acre; then took the
nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by
child, till all were slaves; a corner which took everything, left
nothing; a corner so stupendous that, by comparison with it, the most
gigantic corners in subsequent history are but baby things, for it dealt
in hundreds of millions of bushels, and its profits were reckonable by
hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was a disaster so crushing that
its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day, more than
three thousand years after the event.
Is it presumably that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph the foreign Jew
all this time? I think it likely. Was it friendly? We must doubt it.
Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long
in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to
express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let
us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion?
I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark
made by one of the Latin historians. I read it in a translation many
years ago, and it comes back to me now with force. It was alluding to a
time when people were still living who could have seen the Saviour in the
flesh. Christianity was so new that the people of Rome had hardly heard
of it, and had but confused notions of what it was. The substance of the
remark was this: Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error,
they being 'mistaken for Jews.'
The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians,
but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other
they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not
assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates
Christianity and was not born of Christianity? I think so. What was the
origin of the feeling?
When I was a boy, in the back settlements of the Mississippi Valley,
where a gracious and beautiful Sunday school simplicity and practicality
prevailed, the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was hated
with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing to do with it. In a
trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the
Westerner. His shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge, his
enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in applying these forces were
frankly confessed, and most competently cursed.
In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and ignorant Negroes made
the crops for the white planter on shares. The Jew came down in force,
set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit,
and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the
present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the
whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.
The Jew is begin legislated out of Russia. The reason is not concealed.
The movement was instituted because the Christian peasant and villager
stood no chance against his commercial abilities. He was always ready to
lend money on a crop, and sell vodka and other necessities of life on
credit while the crop was growing. When settlement day came he owned the
crop; and next year or year after he owned the farm, like Joseph.
In the dull and ignorant English of John's time everybody got into debt
to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands; he was
the king of commerce; he was ready to be helpful in all profitable ways;
he even financed crusades for the rescue of the Sepulchre. To wipe out
his account with the nation and restore business to its natural and
incompetent channels he had to be banished the realm.
For the like reasons Spain had to banish him four hundred years ago, and
Austria about a couple of centuries later.
In all the ages Christian Europe has been oblige to curtail his
activities. If he entered upon a mechanical trade, the Christian had to
retire from it. If he set up as a doctor, he was the best one, and he
took the business. If he exploited agriculture, the other farmers had to
get at something else. Since there was no way to successfully compete
with him in any vocation, the law had to step in and save the Christian
from the poor-house. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by
statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage in
agriculture; he was forbidden to practise law; he was forbidden to
practise medicine, except among Jews; he was forbidden the handicrafts.
Even the seats of learning and the schools of science had to be closed
against this tremendous antagonist. Still, almost bereft of employments,
he found ways to make money, even ways to get rich. Also ways to invest
his takings well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard conditions
suggested, the Jew without brains could not survive, and the Jew with
brains had to keep them in good training and well sharpened up, or
starve. Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able
to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent;
ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never
uses them now. This history has a very, very commercial look, a most
sordid and practical commercial look, the business aspect of a Chinese
cheap-labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of
it, but not for the other nine.
Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their
livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the
Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed
agriculture and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has
the candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-union
boycott in a religious dispute.
The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and Germany, and lately in
France; but England and America give them an open field and yet survive.
Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are not many
takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and one in Aberdeen; but that
is because they can't earn enough to get away. The Scotch pay themselves
that compliment, but it is authentic.
I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to do with the world's
attitude toward the Jew; that the reasons for it are older than that
event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret for having
persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under the mistaken
impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a Jew--a
skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in
Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew
comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with
the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the
questionable sort.
In Berlin, a few years ago, I read a speech which frankly urged the
expulsion of the Jews from Germany; and the agitator's reason was as
frank as his proposition. It was this: that eighty-five percent of the
successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same
percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany
were in the hands of the Jewish race! Isn't it an amazing confession?
It was but another way of saying that in a population of 48,000,000, of
whom only 500,000 were registered as Jews, eighty-five per cent of the
brains and honesty of the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist
upon the honesty--it is an essential of successful business, taken by and
large. Of course it does not rule out rascals entirely, even among
Christians, but it is a good working rule, nevertheless. The speaker's
figures may have been inexact, but the motive of persecution stands out
as clear as day.
The man claimed that in Berlin the banks, the newspapers, the theatres,
the great mercantile, shipping, mining, and manufacturing interests, the
big army and city contracts, the tramways, and pretty much all other
properties of high value, and also the small businesses, were in the
hands of the Jews. He said the Jew was pushing the Christian to the wall
all along the line; that it was all a Christian could do to scrape
together a living; and that the Jew must be banished, and soon--there was
no other way of saving the Christian. Here in Vienna, last autumn,
an agitator said that all these disastrous details were true of
Austria-Hungary also; and in fierce language he demanded the expulsion of
the Jews. When politicians come out without a blush and read the baby
act in this frank way, unrebuked, it is a very good indication that they
have a market back of them, and know where to fish for votes.
You note the crucial point of the mentioned agitation; the argument is
that the Christian cannot compete with the Jew, and that hence his very
bread is in peril. To human beings this is a much more hate-inspiring
thing than is any detail connected with religion. With most people, of a
necessity, bread and meat take first rank, religion second. I am
convinced that the persecution of the Jew is not due in any large degree
to religious prejudice.
No, the Jew is a money-getter; and in getting his money he is a very
serious obstruction to less capable neighbours who are on the same quest.
I think that that is the trouble. In estimating worldly values the Jew
is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the
morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some
worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute
and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it the end
and aim of his life to get it. He was at it in Egypt thirty-six
centuries ago; he was at it in Rome when that Christian got persecuted by
mistake for him; he has been at it ever since. The cost to him has been
heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy--but it has
paid, for it has brought him envy, and that is the only thing which
men will sell both soul and body to get. He long ago observed
that a millionaire commands respect, a two-millionaire homage,
a multi-millionaire the deepest deeps of adoration. We all know that
feeling; we have seen it express itself. We have noticed that when the
average man mentions the name of a multi-millionaire he does it with that
mixture in his voice of awe and reverence and lust which burns in a
Frenchman's eye when it falls on another man's centime.
Point No. 4--'The Jews have no party; they are non-participants.'
Perhaps you have let the secret out and given yourself away. It seems
hardly a credit to the race that it is able to say that; or to you, sir,
that you can say it without remorse; more, that you should offer it as a
plea against maltreatment, injustice, and oppression. Who gives the Jew
the right, who gives any race the right, to sit still in a free country,
and let somebody else look after its safety? The oppressed Jew was
entitled to all pity in the former times under brutal autocracies, for he
was weak and friendless, and had no way to help his case. But he has
ways now, and he has had them for a century, but I do not see that he has
tried to make serious use of then. When the Revolution set him free in
France it was an act of grace--the grace of other people; he does not
appear in it as a helper. I do not know that he helped when England set
him free. Among the Twelve Sane Men of France who have stepped forward
with great Zola at their head to fight (and win, I hope and believe[3])
the battle for the most infamously misused Jew of modern times, do you
find a great or rich or illustrious Jew helping? In the United States he
was created free in the beginning--he did not need to help, of course.
In Austria and Germany and France he has a vote, but of what considerable
use is it to him? He doesn't seem to know how to apply it to the best
effect. With all his splendid capacities and all his fat wealth he is
to-day not politically important in any country. In America, as early as
1854, the ignorant Irish hod-carrier, who had a spirit of his own and a
way of exposing it to the weather, made it apparent to all that he must
be politically reckoned with; yet fifteen years before that we hardly
knew what an Irishman looked like. As an intelligent force and
numerically, he has always been away down, but he has governed the
country just the same. It was because he was organised. It made his
vote valuable--in fact, essential.
You will say the Jew is everywhere numerically feeble. That is nothing
to the point--with the Irishman's history for an object-lesson. But I am
coming to your numerical feebleness presently. In all parliamentary
countries you could no doubt elect Jews to the legislatures--and even one
member in such a body is sometimes a force which counts. How deeply have
you concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France, and Germany? Or
even in America, for that matter? You remark that the Jews were not to
blame for the riots in this Reichsrath here, and you add with
satisfaction that there wasn't one in that body. That is not strictly
correct; if it were, would it not be in order for you to explain it and
apologise for it, not try to make a merit of it? But I think that the
Jew was by no means in as large force there as he ought to have been,
with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to him on fairly liberal
terms, and it must surely be his own fault that he is so much in the
background politically.
As to your numerical weakness. I mentioned some figures awhile ago
--500,00--as the Jewish population of Germany. I will add some more
--6,000,000 in Russia, 5,000,000 in Austria, 250,000 in the United States.
I take them from memory; I read them in the 'Encyclopaedia Brittannica'
ten or twelve years ago. Still, I am entirely sure of them. If those
statistics are correct, my argument is not as strong as it ought to be as
concerns America, but it still has strength. It is plenty strong enough
as concerns Austria, for ten years ago 5,000,000 was nine per cent of the
empire's population. The Irish would govern the Kingdom of Heaven if
they had a strength there like that.
I have some suspicions; I got them at second-hand, but they have remained
with me these ten or twelve years. When I read in the 'E.B.' that the
Jewish population of the United States was 250,000 I wrote the editor,
and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more Jews than
that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt a misprint
for 25,000,000. I also added that I was personally acquainted with that
many there; but that was only to raise his confidence in me, for it was
not true. His answer miscarried, and I never got it; but I went around
talking about the matter, and people told me they had reason to suspect
that for business reasons many Jews whose dealings were mainly with the
Christians did not report themselves as Jews in the census. It looked
plausible; it looks plausible yet. Look at the city of New York; and
look at Boston, and Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and Chicago, and
Cincinnati, and San Francisco--how your race swarms in those places!--and
everywhere else in America, down to the least little village. Read the
signs on the marts of commerce and on the shops; Goldstein (gold stone),
Edelstein (precious stone), Blumenthal (flower-vale), Rosenthal
(rose-vale), Veilchenduft (violent odour), Singvogel (song-bird),
Rosenzweig (rose branch), and all the amazing list of beautiful and
enviable names which Prussia and Austria glorified you with so long ago.
It is another instance of Europe's coarse and cruel persecution of your
race; not that it was coarse and cruel to outfit it with pretty and
poetical names like those, but it was coarse and cruel to make it pay for
them or else take such hideous and often indecent names that to-day their
owners never use them; or, if they do, only on official papers. And it
was the many, not the few, who got the odious names, they being too poor
to bribe the officials to grant them better ones.
Now why was the race renamed? I have been told that in Prussia it was
given to using fictitious names, and often changing them, so as to beat
the tax-gatherer, escape military service, and so on; and that finally
the idea was hit upon of furnishing all the inmates of a house with one
and the same surname, and then holding the house responsible right along
for those inmates, and accountable for any disappearances that might
occur; it made the Jews keep track of each other, for self-interest's
sake, and saved the Government the trouble[4].
If that explanation of how the Jews of Prussia came to be renamed is
correct, if it is true that they fictitiously registered themselves to
gain certain advantages, it may possible be true that in America they
refrain from registered themselves as Jews to fend off the damaging
prejudices of the Christian customer. I have no way of knowing whether
this notion is well founded or not. There may be other and better ways
of explaining why only that poor little 250,000 of our Jews got into the
'Encyclopaedia'. I may, of course, be mistaken, but I am strongly of the
opinion that we have an immense Jewish population in America.
Point No. 3--'Can Jews do anything to improve the situation?'
I think so. If I may make a suggestion without seeming to be trying to
teach my grandmother to suck eggs, I will offer it. In our days we have
learned the value of combination. We apply it everywhere--in railway
systems, in trusts, in trade unions, in Salvation Armies, in minor
politics, in major politics, in European Concerts. Whatever our strength
may be, big or little, we organise it. We have found out that that is
the only way to get the most out of it that is in it. We know the
weakness of individual sticks, and the strength of the concentrated
faggot. Suppose you try a scheme like this, for instance. In England
and America put every Jew on the census-book as a Jew (in case you have
not been doing that). Get up volunteer regiments composed of Jews
solely, and when the drum beats, fall in and go to the front, so as to
remove the reproach that you have few Massenas among you, and that you
feed on a country but don't like to fight for it. Next, in politics,
organise your strength, band together, and deliver the casting-vote where
you can, and, where you can't, compel as good terms as possible. You
huddle to yourselves already in all countries, but you huddle to no
sufficient purpose, politically speaking. You do not seem to be
organised, except for your charities. There you are omnipotent; there
you compel your due of recognition--you do not have to beg for it. It
shows what you can do when you band together for a definite purpose.
And then from America and England you can encourage your race in Austria,
France, and Germany, and materially help it. It was a pathetic tale that
was told by a poor Jew a fortnight ago during the riots, after he had
been raided by the Christian peasantry and despoiled of everything he
had. He said his vote was of no value to him, and he wished he could be
excused from casting it, for indeed, casting it was a sure damage to him,
since, no matter which party he voted for, the other party would come
straight and take its revenge out of him. Nine per cent of the
population, these Jews, and apparently they cannot put a plank into any
candidate's platform! If you will send our Irish lads over here I think
they will organise your race and change the aspect of the Reichsrath.
You seem to think that the Jews take no hand in politics here, that they
are 'absolutely non-participants.' I am assured by men competent to
speak that this is a very large error, that the Jews are exceedingly
active in politics all over the empire, but that they scatter their work
and their votes among the numerous parties, and thus lose the advantages
to be had by concentration. I think that in America they scatter too,
but you know more about that than I do.
Speaking of concentration, Dr. Herzl has a clear insight into the value
of that. Have you heard of his plan? He wishes to gather the Jews of
the world together in Palestine, with a government of their own--under
the suzerainty of the Sultan, I suppose. At the Convention of Berne,
last year, there were delegates from everywhere, and the proposal was
received with decided favour. I am not the Sultan, and I am not
objecting; but if that concentration of the cunningest brains in the
world were going to be made in a free country (bar Scotland), I think it
would be politic to stop it. It will not be well to let that race find
out its strength. If the horses knew theirs, we should not ride any
more.
Point No. 5.--'Will the persecution of the Jews ever come to an end?'
On the score of religion, I think it has already come to an end. On the
score of race prejudice and trade, I have the idea that it will continue.
That is, here and there in spots about the world, where a barbarous
ignorance and a sort of mere animal civilisation prevail; but I do not
think that elsewhere the Jew need now stand in any fear of being robbed
and raided. Among the high civilisations he seems to be very comfortably
situated indeed, and to have more than his proportionate share of the
prosperities going. It has that look in Vienna. I suppose the race
prejudice cannot be removed; but he can stand that; it is no particular
matter. By his make and ways he is substantially a foreigner wherever he
may be, and even the angels dislike a foreigner. I am using this word
foreigner in the German sense--stranger. Nearly all of us have an
antipathy to a stranger, even of our own nationality. We pile grip-sacks
in a vacant seat to keep him from getting it; and a dog goes further, and
does as a savage would--challenges him on the spot. The German
dictionary seems to make no distinction between a stranger and a
foreigner; in its view a stranger is a foreigner--a sound position,
I think. You will always be by ways and habits and predilections
substantially strangers--foreigners--wherever you are, and that will
probably keep the race prejudice against you alive.
But you were the favourites of Heaven originally, and your manifold and
unfair prosperities convince me that you have crowded back into that snug
place again. Here is an incident that is significant. Last week in
Vienna a hailstorm struck the prodigious Central Cemetery and made
wasteful destruction there. In the Christian part of it, according to
the official figures, 621 window-panes were broken; more than 900
singing-birds were killed; five great trees and many small ones were torn
to shreds and the shreds scattered far and wide by the wind; the
ornamental plants and other decorations of the graces were ruined, and
more than a hundred tomb-lanterns shattered; and it took the cemetery's
whole force of 300 labourers more than three days to clear away the
storm's wreckage. In the report occurs this remark--and in its italics
you can hear it grit its Christian teeth: '...lediglich die israelitische
Abtheilung des Friedhofes vom Hagelwetter ganzlich verschont worden war.'
Not a hailstone hit the Jewish reservation! Such nepotism makes me
tired.
Point No. 6.--'What has become of the Golden Rule?'
It exists, it continues to sparkle, and is well taken care of. It is
Exhibit A in the Church's assets, and we pull it out every Sunday and
give it an airing. But you are not permitted to try to smuggle it into
this discussion, where it is irrelevant and would not feel at home.
It is strictly religious furniture, like an acolyte, or a
contribution-plate, or any of those things. It has never intruded into
business; and Jewish persecution is not a religious passion, it is a
business passion.
To conclude.--If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one
per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust
lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be
heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as
prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial
importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his
bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in
literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning
are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has
made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it
with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be
excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose,
filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and
passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and
they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for
a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have
vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always
was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his
parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive
mind. All things are mortal to the Jew; all other forces pass, but he
remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
Postscript--THE JEW AS SOLDIER
When I published the above article in 'Harper's Monthly,' I was ignorant
--like the rest of the Christian world--of the fact that the Jew had a
record as a soldier. I have since seen the official statistics, and I
find that he furnished soldiers and high officers to the Revolution, the
War of 1812, and the Mexican War. In the Civil War he was represented in
the armies and navies of both the North and the South by 10 per cent of
his numerical strength--the same percentage that was furnished by the
Christian populations of the two sections. This large fact means more
than it seems to mean; for it means that the Jew's patriotism was not
merely level with the Christian's, but overpassed it. When the Christian
volunteer arrived in camp he got a welcome and applause, but as a rule
the Jew got a snub. His company was not desired, and he was made to feel
it. That he nevertheless conquered his wounded pride and sacrificed both
that and his blood for his flag raises the average and quality of his
patriotism above the Christian's. His record for capacity, for fidelity,
and for gallant soldiership in the field is as good as any one's. This
is true of the Jewish private soldiers and of the Jewish generals alike.
Major-General O. O. Howard speaks of one of his Jewish staff officers as
being 'of the bravest and best;' of another--killed at Chancellorsville
--as being 'a true friend and a brave officer;' he highly praises two of
his Jewish brigadier-generals; finally, he uses these strong words:
'Intrinsically there are no more patriotic men to be found in the country
than those who claim to be of Hebrew descent, and who served with me in
parallel commands or more directly under my instructions.'
Fourteen Jewish Confederate and Union families contributed, between them,
fifty-one soldiers to the war. Among these, a father and three sons; and
another, a father and four sons.
In the above article I was neither able to endorse nor repel the common
approach that the Jew is willing to feed upon a country but not to fight
for it, because I did not know whether it was true or false. I supposed
it to be true, but it is not allowable to endorse wandering maxims upon
supposition--except when one is trying to make out a case. That slur
upon the Jew cannot hold up its head in presence of the figures of the
War Department. It has done its work, and done it long and faithfully,
and with high approval: it ought to be pensioned off now, and retired
from active service.
[1] See 'Stirring Times in Austria,' in this volume.
[2] Here is another piece of picturesque history; and it reminds us that
shabbiness and dishonesty are not the monopoly of any race or creed, but
are merely human:
'Congress has passed a bill to pay $379.56 to Moses Pendergrass, of
Libertyville, Missouri. The story of the reason of this liberality is
pathetically interesting, and shows the sort of pickle that an honest man
may get into who undertakes to do an honest job of work for Uncle Sam.
In 1886 Moses Pendergrass put in a bid for the contract to carry the mail
on the route from Knob Lick to Libertyville and Coffman, thirty miles a
day, from July 1, 1887, for one years. He got the postmaster at Knob
Lick to write the letter for him, and while Moses intended that his bid
should be $400, his scribe carelessly made it $4. Moses got the
contract, and did not find out about the mistake until the end of the
first quarter, when he got his first pay. When he found at what rate he
was working he was sorely cast down, and opened communication with the
Post Office Department. The department informed his that he must either
carry out his contract or throw it up, and that if he threw it up his
bondsman would have the pay the Government $1,459.85 damages. So Moses
carried out his contract, walked thirty miles every week-day for a year,
and carried the mail, and received for his labour $4, or, to be accurate,
$6.84; for, the route being extended after his bid was accepted, his pay
was proportionately increased. Now, after ten years, a bill was finally
passed to pay to Moses the difference between what he earned in that
unlucky year and what he received.'
The 'Sun,' which tells the above story, says that bills were introduced
in three or four Congresses for Moses' relief, and that committees
repeatedly investigated his claim.
It took six Congresses, containing in their persons the compressed
virtues of 70,000,000 of people, and cautiously and carefully giving
expression to those virtues in the fear of God and the next election,
eleven years to find out some way to cheat a fellow Christian out of
about $13 on his honestly executed contract, and out of nearly $300 due
him on its enlarged terms. And they succeeded. During the same time
they paid out $1,000,000,000 in pensions--a third of it unearned and
undeserved. This indicates a splendid all-round competency in theft, for
it starts with farthings, and works its industries all the way up to
ship-loads. It may be possible that the Jews can beat this, but the man
that bets on it is taking chances.
[3] The article was written in the summer of 1898.
[4] In Austria the renaming was merely done because the Jews in some
newly-acquired regions had no surnames, but were mostly named Abraham and
Moses, and therefore the tax-gatherer could tell t'other from which, and
was likely to lose his reason over the matter. The renaming was put into
the hands of the War Department, and a charming mess the graceless young
lieutenants made of it. To them a Jew was of no sort of consequence, and
they labelled the race in a way to make the angels weep. As an example,
take these two: Abraham Bellyache and Schmul Godbedamned--Culled from
'Namens Studien,' by Karl Emil Fransos.
FROM THE 'LONDON TIMES' OF 1904
Correspondence of the 'London Times'
Chicago, April 1, 1904
I resume by cable-telephone where I left off yesterday. For many hours
now, this vast city--along with the rest of the globe, of course--has
talked of nothing but the extraordinary episode mentioned in my last
report. In accordance with your instructions, I will now trace the
romance from its beginnings down to the culmination of yesterday--or
today; call it which you like. By an odd chance, I was a personal actor
in a part of this drama myself. The opening scene plays in Vienna.
Date, one o'clock in the morning, March 31, 1898. I had spent the
evening at a social entertainment. About midnight I went away, in
company with the military attaches of the British, Italian, and American
embassies, to finish with a late smoke. This function had been appointed
to take place in the house of Lieutenant Hillyer, the third attache
mentioned in the above list. When we arrived there we found several
visitors in the room; young Szczepanik;[1] Mr. K., his financial backer;
Mr. W., the latter's secretary; and Lieutenant Clayton, of the United
States Army. War was at that time threatening between Spain and our
country, and Lieutenant Clayton had been sent to Europe on military
business. I was well acquainted with young Szczepanik and his two
friends, and I knew Mr. Clayton slightly. I had met him at West Point
years before, when he was a cadet. It was when General Merritt was
superintendent. He had the reputation of being an able officer, and also
of being quick-tempered and plain-spoken.
This smoking-party had been gathered together partly for business. This
business was to consider the availability of the telelectroscope for
military service. It sounds oddly enough now, but it is nevertheless
true that at that time the invention was not taken seriously by any one
except its inventor. Even his financial support regarded it merely as a
curious and interesting toy. Indeed, he was so convinced of this that he
had actually postponed its use by the general world to the end of the
dying century by granting a two years' exclusive lease of it to a
syndicate, whose intent was to exploit it at the Paris World's Fair.
When we entered the smoking-room we found Lieutenant Clayton and
Szczepanik engaged in a warm talk over the telelectroscope in the German
tongue. Clayton was saying:
'Well, you know my opinion of it, anyway!' and he brought his fist down
with emphasis upon the table.
'And I do not value it,' retorted the young inventor, with provoking
calmness of tone and manner.
Clayton turned to Mr. K., and said:
'I cannot see why you are wasting money on this toy. In my opinion, the
day will never come when it will do a farthing's worth of real service
for any human being.'
'That may be; yes, that may be; still, I have put the money in it, and am
content. I think, myself, that it is only a toy; but Szczepanik claims
more for it, and I know him well enough to believe that he can see father
than I can--either with his telelectroscope or without it.'
The soft answer did not cool Clayton down; it seemed only to irritate him
the more; and he repeated and emphasised his conviction that the
invention would never do any man a farthing's worth of real service. He
even made it a 'brass' farthing, this time. Then he laid an English
farthing on the table, and added:
'Take that, Mr. K., and put it away; and if ever the telelectroscope does
any man an actual service--mind, a real service--please mail it to me as
a reminder, and I will take back what I have been saying. Will you?'
'I will,' and Mr. K. put the coin in his pocket.
Mr. Clayton now turned toward Szczepanik, and began with a taunt--a taunt
which did not reach a finish; Szczepanik interrupted it with a hardy
retort, and followed this with a blow. There was a brisk fight for a
moment or two; then the attaches separated the men.
The scene now changes to Chicago. Time, the autumn of 1901. As soon as
the Paris contract released the telelectroscope, it was delivered to
public use, and was soon connected with the telephonic systems of the
whole world. The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently
introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody,
and audibly discussible, too, by witnesses separated by any number of
leagues.
By-and-by Szczepanik arrived in Chicago. Clayton (now captain) was
serving in that military department at the time. The two men resumed the
Viennese quarrel of 1898. On three different occasions they quarrelled,
and were separated by witnesses. Then came an interval of two months,
during which time Szczepanik was not seen by any of his friends, and it
was at first supposed that he had gone off on a sight seeing tour and
would soon be heard from. But no; no word came from him. Then it was
supposed that he had returned to Europe. Still, time drifted on, and he
was not heard from. Nobody was troubled, for he was like most inventors
and other kinds of poets, and went and came in a capricious way, and
often without notice.
Now comes the tragedy. On December 29, in a dark and unused compartment
of the cellar under Captain Clayton's house, a corpse was discovered by
one of Clayton's maid-servants. Friends of deceased identified it as
Szczepanik's. The man had died by violence. Clayton was arrested,
indicted, and brought to trial, charged with this murder. The evidence
against him was perfect in every detail, and absolutely unassailable.
Clayton admitted this himself. He said that a reasonable man could not
examine this testimony with a dispassionate mind and not be convinced by
it; yet the man would be in error, nevertheless. Clayton swore that he
did not commit the murder, and that he had had nothing to do with it.
As your readers will remember, he was condemned to death. He had
numerous and powerful friends, and they worked hard to save him, for none
of them doubted the truth of his assertion. I did what little I could to
help, for I had long since become a close friend of his, and thought I
knew that it was not in his character to inveigle an enemy into a corner
and assassinate him. During 1902 and 1903 he was several times reprieved
by the governor; he was reprieved once more in the beginning of the
present year, and the execution day postponed to March 31.
The governor's situation has been embarrassing, from the day of the
condemnation, because of the fact that Clayton's wife is the governor's
niece. The marriage took place in 1899, when Clayton was thirty-four and
the girl twenty-three, and has been a happy one. There is one child, a
little girl three years old. Pity for the poor mother and child kept the
mouths of grumblers closed at first; but this could not last for ever
--for in America politics has a hand in everything--and by-and-by the
governor's political opponents began to call attention to his delay in
allowing the law to take its course. These hints have grown more and
more frequent of late, and more and more pronounced. As a natural
result, his own part grew nervous. Its leaders began to visit
Springfield and hold long private conferences with him. He was now
between two fires. On the one hand, his niece was imploring him to
pardon her husband; on the other were the leaders, insisting that he
stand to his plain duty as chief magistrate of the State, and place no
further bar to Clayton's execution. Duty won in the struggle, and the
Governor gave his word that he would not again respite the condemned man.
This was two weeks ago. Mrs. Clayton now said:
'Now that you have given your word, my last hope is gone, for I know you
will never go back from it. But you have done the best you could for
John, and I have no reproaches for you. You love him, and you love me,
and we know that if you could honourable save him, you would do it. I
will go to him now, and be what help I can to him, and get what comfort I
may out of the few days that are left to us before the night comes which
will have no end for me in life. You will be with me that day? You will
not let me bear it alone?'
'I will take you to him myself, poor child, and I will be near you to the
last.'
By the governor's command, Clayton was now allowed every indulgence he
might ask for which could interest his mind and soften the hardships of
his imprisonment. His wife and child spent the days with him; I was his
companion by night. He was removed from the narrow cell which he had
occupied during such a dreary stretch of time, and given the chief
warden's roomy and comfortable quarters. His mind was always busy with
the catastrophe of his life, and with the slaughtered inventor, and he
now took the fancy that he would like to have the telelectroscope and
divert his mind with it. He had his wish. The connection was made with
the international telephone-station, and day by day, and night by night,
he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its
life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and
realised that by grace of this marvellous instrument he was almost as
free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars.
He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in this
amusement. I sat in his parlour and read, and smoked, and the nights
were very quiet and reposefully sociable, and I found them pleasant. Now
and then I would her him say 'Give me Yedo;' next, 'Give me Hong-Kong;'
next, 'Give me Melbourne.' And I smoked on, and read in comfort, while
he wandered about the remote underworld, where the sun was shining in the
sky, and the people were at their daily work. Sometimes the talk that
came from those far regions through the microphone attachment interested
me, and I listened.
Yesterday--I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural, for
certain reasons--the instrument remained unused, and that also was
natural, for it was the eve of the execution day. It was spent in tears
and lamentations and farewells. The governor and the wife and child
remained until a quarter-past eleven at night, and the scenes I witnessed
were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four in the
morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out upon the
still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child cried out,
'What is that, papa?' and ran to the window before she could be stopped
and clapped her small hands and said, 'Oh, come and see, mamma--such a
pretty thing they are making!' The mother knew--and fainted. It was the
gallows!
She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I were
alone--alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been
statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter
was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early
spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing
from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside
sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting
ones: they harmonised with the situation and the conditions: the boom and
thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the
dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now and
then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes; and
always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in the
court-yard. After an age of this, another sound--far off, and coming
smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest--a bell tolling
twelve! Another age, and it was tolled again. By-and-by, again. A
dreary long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us
once more--one, two three; and this time we caught our breath; sixty
minutes of life left!
Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky,
and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said:
'That a dying man's last of earth should be--this!' After a little he
said: 'I must see the sun again--the sun!' and the next moment he was
feverishly calling: 'China! Give me China--Peking!'
I was strangely stirred, and said to myself: 'To think that it is a mere
human being who does this unimaginable miracle--turns winter into summer,
night into day, storm into calm, gives the freedom of the great globe to
a prisoner in his cell, and the sun in his naked splendour to a man dying
in Egyptian darkness.'
I was listening.
'What light! what brilliancy! what radiance!... This is Peking?'
'Yes.'
'The time?'
'Mid-afternoon.'
'What is the great crowd for, and in such gorgeous costumes? What masses
and masses of rich colour and barbaric magnificence! And how they flash
and glow and burn in the flooding sunlight! What is the occasion of it
all?'
'The coronation of our new emperor--the Czar.'
'But I thought that that was to take place yesterday.'
'This is yesterday--to you.'
'Certainly it is. But my mind is confused, these days: there are reasons
for it.... Is this the beginning of the procession?'
'Oh, no; it began to move an hour ago.'
'Is there much more of it still to come?'
'Two hours of it. Why do you sigh?'
'Because I should like to see it all.'
'And why can't you?'
'I have to go--presently.'
'You have an engagement?'
After a pause, softly: 'Yes.' After another pause: 'Who are these in the
splendid pavilion?'
'The imperial family, and visiting royalties from here and there and
yonder in the earth.'
'And who are those in the adjoining pavilions to the right and left?'
'Ambassadors and their families and suites to the right; unofficial
foreigners to the left.'
'If you will be so good, I--'
Boom! That distant bell again, tolling the half-hour faintly through the
tempest of wind and sleet. The door opened, and the governor and the
mother and child entered--the woman in widow's weeds! She fell upon her
husband's breast in a passion of sobs, and I--I could not stay; I could
not bear it. I went into the bedchamber, and closed the door. I sat
there waiting--waiting--waiting, and listening to the rattling sashes and
the blustering of the storm. After what seemed a long, long time, I
heard a rustle and movement in the parlour, and knew that the clergyman
and the sheriff and the guard were come. There was some low-voiced
talking; then a hush; then a prayer, with a sound of sobbing; presently,
footfalls--the departure for the gallows; then the child's happy voice:
'Don't cry now, mamma, when we've got papa again, and taking him home.'
The door closed; they were gone. I was ashamed: I was the only friend of
the dying man that had no spirit, no courage. I stepped into the room,
and said I would be a man and would follow. But we are made as we are
made, and we cannot help it. I did not go.
I fidgeted about the room nervously, and presently went to the window and
softly raised it--drawn by that dread fascination which the terrible and
the awful exert--and looked down upon the court-yard. By the garish
light of the electric lamps I saw the little group of privileged
witnesses, the wife crying on her uncle's breast, the condemned man
standing on the scaffold with the halter around his neck, his arms
strapped to his body, the black cap on his head, the sheriff at his side
with his hand on the drop, the clergyman in front of him with bare head
and his book in his hand.
'I am the resurrection and the life--'
I turned away. I could not listen; I could not look. I did not know
whither to go or what to do. Mechanically and without knowing it, I put
my eye to that strange instrument, and there was Peking and the Czar's
procession! The next moment I was leaning out of the window, gasping,
suffocating, trying to speak, but dumb from the very imminence of the
necessity of speaking. The preacher could speak, but I, who had such
need of words--'And may God have mercy upon your soul. Amen.'
The sheriff drew down the black cap, and laid his hand upon the lever. I
got my voice.
'Stop, for God's sake! The man is innocent. Come here and see
Szczepanik face to face!'
Hardly three minutes later the governor had my place at the window, and
was saying:
'Strike off his bonds and set him free!'
Three minutes later all were in the parlour again. The reader will
imagine the scene; I have no need to describe it. It was a sort of mad
orgy of joy.
A messenger carried word to Szczepanik in the pavilion, and one could see
the distressed amazement in his face as he listened to the tale. Then he
came to his end of the line, and talked with Clayton and the governor and
the others; and the wife poured out her gratitude upon him for saving her
husband's life, and in her deep thankfulness she kissed him at twelve
thousand miles' range.
The telelectroscopes of the world were put to service now, and for many
hours the kinds and queens of many realms (with here and there a
reporter) talked with Szczepanik, and praised him; and the few scientific
societies which had not already made him an honorary member conferred
that grace upon him.
How had he come to disappear from among us? It was easily explained.
HE had not grown used to being a world-famous person, and had been forced
to break away from the lionising that was robbing him of all privacy and
repose. So he grew a beard, put on coloured glasses, disguised himself a
little in other ways, then took a fictitious name, and went off to wander
about the earth in peace.
Such is the tale of the drama which began with an inconsequential quarrel
in Vienna in the spring of 1898, and came near ending as a tragedy in the
spring of 1904.
II
Correspondence of the 'London Times'
Chicago, April 5, 1904
To-day, by a clipper of the Electric Line, and the latter's Electric
Railway connections, arrived an envelope from Vienna, for Captain
Clayton, containing an English farthing. The receiver of it was a good
deal moved. He called up Vienna, and stood face to face with Mr. K., and
said:
'I do not need to say anything: you can see it all in my face. My wife
has the farthing. Do not be afraid--she will not throw it away.'
III
Correspondence of the 'London Times'
Chicago, April 23, 1904
Now that the after developments of the Clayton case have run their course
and reached a finish, I will sum them up. Clayton's romantic escape from
a shameful death stepped all this region in an enchantment of wonder and
joy--during the proverbial nine days. Then the sobering process
followed, and men began to take thought, and to say: 'But a man was
killed, and Clayton killed him.' Others replied: 'That is true: we have
been overlooking that important detail; we have been led away by
excitement.'
The telling soon became general that Clayton ought to be tried again.
Measures were taken accordingly, and the proper representations conveyed
to Washington; for in America under the new paragraph added to the
Constitution in 1889, second trials are not State affairs, but national,
and must be tried by the most august body in the land--the Supreme Court
of the United States. The justices were therefore summoned to sit in
Chicago. The session was held day before yesterday, and was opened with
the usual impressive formalities, the nine judges appearing in their
black robes, and the new chief justice (Lemaitre) presiding. In opening
the case the chief justice said:
'It is my opinion that this matter is quite simple. The prisoner at the
bar was charged with murdering the man Szczepanik; he was tried for
murdering the man Szczepanik; he was fairly tried and justly condemned
and sentenced to death for murdering the man Szczepanik. It turns out
that the man Szczepanik was not murdered at all. By the decision of the
French courts in the Dreyfus matter, it is established beyond cavil or
question that the decisions of courts and permanent and cannot be
revised. We are obliged to respect and adopt this precedent. It is upon
precedents that the enduring edifice of jurisprudence is reared. The
prisoner at the bar has been fairly and righteously condemned to death
for the murder of the man Szczepanik, and, in my opinion, there is but
one course to pursue in the matter: he must be hanged.'
Mr. Justice Crawford said:
'But, your Excellency, he was pardoned on the scaffold for that.'
'The pardon is not valid, and cannot stand, because he was pardoned for
killing Szczepanik, a man whom he had not killed. A man cannot be
pardoned for a crime which he has not committed; it would be an
absurdity.'
'But, your Excellency, he did kill a man.'
'That is an extraneous detail; we have nothing to do with it. The court
cannot take up this crime until the prisoner has expiated the other one.'
Mr. Justice Halleck said:
'If we order his execution, your Excellency, we shall bring about a
miscarriage of justice, for the governor will pardon him again.'
'He will not have the power. He cannot pardon a man for a crime which he
has not committed. As I observed before, it would be an absurdity.'
After a consultation, Mr. Justice Wadsworth said:
'Several of us have arrived at the conclusion, your Excellency, that it
would be an error to hang the prisoner for killing Szczepanik, instead of
for killing the other man, since it is proven that he did not kill
Szczepanik.'
'On the contrary, it is proven that he did kill Szczepanik. By the
French precedent, it is plain that we must abide by the finding of the
court.'
'But Szczepanik is still alive.'
'So is Dreyfus.'
In the end it was found impossible to ignore or get around the French
precedent. There could be but one result: Clayton was delivered over for
the execution. It made an immense excitement; the State rose as one man
and clamored for Clayton's pardon and retrial. The governor issued the
pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so,
and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and,
indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with
scorn of 'French justice,' and of the malignant little soldiers who
invented it and inflicted it upon the other Christian lands.
[1] Pronounced (approximately) Shepannik.
ABOUT PLAY-ACTING
I
I have a project to suggest. But first I will write a chapter of
introduction.
I have just been witnessing a remarkable play, here at the Burg Theatre
in Vienna. I do not know of any play that much resembles it. In fact,
it is such a departure from the common laws of the drama that the name
'play' doesn't seem to fit it quite snugly. However, whatever else it
may be, it is in any case a great and stately metaphysical poem, and
deeply fascinating. 'Deeply fascinating' is the right term: for the
audience sat four hours and five minutes without thrice breaking into
applause, except at the close of each act; sat rapt and silent
--fascinated. This piece is 'The Master of Palmyra.' It is twenty years
old; yet I doubt if you have ever heard of it. It is by Wilbrandt, and
is his masterpiece and the work which is to make his name permanent in
German literature. It has never been played anywhere except in Berlin
and in the great Burg Theatre in Vienna. Yet whenever it is put on the
stage it packs the house, and the free list is suspended. I know people
who have seem it ten times; they know the most of it by heart; they do
not tire of it; and they say they shall still be quite willing to go and
sit under its spell whenever they get the opportunity.
There is a dash of metempsychosis in it--and it is the strength of the
piece. The play gave me the sense of the passage of a dimly connected
procession of dream-pictures. The scene of it is Palmyra in Roman times.
It covers a wide stretch of time--I don't know how many years--and in the
course of it the chief actress is reincarnated several times: four times
she is a more or less young woman, and once she is a lad. In the first
act she is Zoe--a Christian girl who has wandered across the desert from
Damascus to try to Christianise the Zeus-worshipping pagans of Palmyra.
In this character she is wholly spiritual, a religious enthusiast, a
devotee who covets martyrdom--and gets it.
After many years she appears in the second act as Phoebe, a graceful and
beautiful young light-o'-love from Rome, whose soul is all for the shows
and luxuries and delights of this life--a dainty and capricious
feather-head, a creature of shower and sunshine, a spoiled child, but a
charming one. In the third act, after an interval of many years, she
reappears as Persida, mother of a daughter who is in the fresh bloom of
youth. She is now a sort of combination of her two earlier selves: in
religious loyalty and subjection she is Zoe: in triviality of character
and shallowness of judgement--together with a touch of vanity in dress
--she is Phoebe.
After a lapse of years she appears in the fourth act as Nymphas, a
beautiful boy, in whose character the previous incarnations are
engagingly mixed.
And after another stretch of years all these heredities are joined in the
Zenobia of the fifth act--a person of gravity, dignity, sweetness, with a
heart filled with compassion for all who suffer, and a hand prompt to put
into practical form the heart's benignant impulses.
There are a number of curious and interesting features in this piece.
For instance, its hero, Appelles, young, handsome, vigorous, in the first
act, remains so all through the long flight of years covered by the five
acts. Other men, young in the firs act, are touched with gray in the
second, are old and racked with infirmities in the third; in the fourth,
all but one are gone to their long home, and this one is a blind and
helpless hulk of ninety or a hundred years. It indicates that the
stretch of time covered by the piece is seventy years or more. The
scenery undergoes decay, too--the decay of age assisted and perfected by
a conflagration. The fine new temples and palaces of the second act are
by-and-by a wreck of crumbled walls and prostrate columns, mouldy,
grass-grown, and desolate; but their former selves are still recognisable
in their ruins. The ageing men and the ageing scenery together convey a
profound illusion of that long lapse of time: they make you live it
yourself! You leave the theatre with the weight of a century upon you.
Another strong effect: Death, in person, walks about the stage in every
act. So far as I could make out, he was supposably not visible to any
excepting two persons--the one he came for and Appelles. He used various
costumes: but there was always more black about them than any other tint;
and so they were always sombre. Also they were always deeply impressive
and, indeed, awe-inspiring. The face was not subjected to changes, but
remained the same first and last--a ghastly white. To me he was always
welcome, he seemed so real--the actual Death, not a play-acting
artificiality. He was of a solemn and stately carriage; and he had a
deep voice, and used it with a noble dignity. Wherever there was a
turmoil of merry-making or fighting or feasting or chaffing or
quarreling, or a gilded pageant, or other manifestation of our trivial
and fleeting life, into it drifted that black figure with the
corpse-face, and looked its fateful look and passed on; leaving its
victim shuddering and smitten. And always its coming made the fussy
human pack seem infinitely pitiful and shabby, and hardly worth the
attention of either saving or damning.
In the beginning of the first act the young girl Zoe appears by some
great rocks in the desert, and sits down exhausted, to rest. Presently
arrive a pauper couple stricken with age and infirmities; and they begin
to mumble and pray to the Spirit of Life, who is said to inhabit that
spot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death--uninvited. They are
(supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, stands
motionless and waits. The aged couple pray to the Spirit of Life for a
means to prop up their existence and continue it. Their prayer fails.
The Spirit of Life prophesies Zoe's martyrdom; it will take place before
night. Soon Appelles arrives, young and vigorous and full of enthusiasm:
he has led a host against the Persians and won the battle; he is the pet
of fortune, rich, honoured, believed, 'Master of Palmyra'. He has heard
that whoever stretches himself out on one of those rocks there and asks
for a deathless life can have his wish. He laughs at the tradition, but
wants to make the trial anyway. The invisible Spirit of Life warns him!
'Life without end can be regret without end.' But he persists: let him
keep his youth, his strength, and his mental faculties unimpaired, and he
will take all the risks. He has his desire.
From this time forth, act after act, the troubles and sorrows and
misfortunes and humiliations of life beat upon him without pity or
respite; but he will not give up, he will not confess his mistake.
Whenever he meets Death he still furiously defies him--but Death
patiently waits. He, the healer of sorrows, is man's best friend: the
recognition of this will come. As the years drag on, and on, and on, the
friends of the Master's youth grow old; and one by one they totter to the
grave: he goes on with his proud fight, and will not yield. At length he
is wholly alone in the world; all his friends are dead; last of all, his
darling of darlings, his son, the lad Nymphas, who dies in his arms. His
pride is broken now; and he would welcome Death, if Death would come, if
Death would hear his prayers and give him peace. The closing act is fine
and pathetic. Appelles meets Zenobia, the helper of all who suffer, and
tells her his story, which moves her pity. By common report she is
endowed with more than earthly powers; and since he cannot have the boon
of death, he appeals to her to drown his memory in forgetfulness of his
griefs--forgetfulness 'which is death's equivalent'. She says (roughly
translated), in an exaltation of compassion:
'Come to me!
Kneel; and may the power be granted me
To cool the fires of this poor tortured brain,
And bring it peace and healing.'
He kneels. From her hand, which she lays upon his head, a mysterious
influence steals through him; and he sinks into a dreamy tranquility.
'Oh, if I could but so drift
Through this soft twilight into the night of peace,
Never to wake again!
(Raising his hand, as if in benediction.)
O mother earth, farewell!
Gracious thou were to me. Farewell!
Appelles goes to rest.'
Death appears behind him and encloses the uplifted hand in his. Appelles
shudders, wearily and slowly turns, and recognises his life-long
adversary. He smiles and puts all his gratitude into one simple and
touching sentence, 'Ich danke dir,' and dies.
Nothing, I think, could be more moving, more beautiful, than this close.
This piece is just one long, soulful, sardonic laugh at human life. Its
title might properly be 'Is Life a Failure?' and leave the five acts to
play with the answer. I am not at all sure that the author meant to
laugh at life. I only notice that he has done it. Without putting into
words any ungracious or discourteous things about life, the episodes in
the piece seem to be saying all the time, inarticulately: 'Note what a
silly poor thing human life is; how childish its ambitions, how
ridiculous its pomps, how trivial its dignities, how cheap its heroisms,
how capricious its course, how brief its flight, how stingy in
happinesses, how opulent in miseries, how few its prides, how
multitudinous its humiliations, how comic its tragedies, how tragic its
comedies, how wearisome and monotonous its repetition of its stupid
history through the ages, with never the introduction of a new detail;
how hard it has tried, from the Creation down, to play itself upon its
possessor as a boon and has never proved its case in a single instance!'
Take note of some of the details of the piece. Each of the five acts
contains an independent tragedy of its own. In each act someone's
edifice of hope, or of ambition, or of happiness, goes down in ruins.
Even Appelles' perennial youth is only a long tragedy, and his life a
failure. There are two martyrdoms in the piece; and they are curiously
and sarcastically contrasted. In the first act the pagans persecute Zoe,
the Christian girl, and a pagan mob slaughters her. In the fourth act
those same pagans--now very old and zealous--are become Christians, and
they persecute the pagans; a mob of them slaughters the pagan youth,
Nymphas, who is standing up for the old gods of his fathers. No remark
is made about this picturesque failure of civilisation; but there it
stands, as an unworded suggestion that civilisation, even when
Christianised, was not able wholly to subdue the natural man in that old
day--just as in our day the spectacle of a shipwrecked French crew
clubbing women and children who tried to climb into the lifeboats
suggests that civilisation has not succeeded in entirely obliterating the
natural man even yet. Common sailors a year ago, in Paris, at a fire,
the aristocracy of the same nation clubbed girls and women out of the way
to save themselves. Civilisation tested at top and bottom both, you see.
And in still another panic of fright we have this same tough civilisation
saving its honour by condemning an innocent man to multiform death, and
hugging and whitewashing the guilty one.
In the second act a grand Roman official is not above trying to blast
Appelles' reputation by falsely charging him with misappropriating public
moneys. Appelles, who is too proud to endure even the suspicion of
irregularity, strips himself to naked poverty to square the unfair
account, and his troubles begin: the blight which is to continue and
spread strikes his life; for the frivolous, pretty creature whom he
brought from Rome has no taste for poverty and agrees to elope with a
more competent candidate. Her presence in the house has previously
brought down the pride and broken the heart of Appelles' poor old mother;
and her life is a failure. Death comes for her, but is willing to trade
her for the Roman girl; so the bargain is struck with Appelles, and the
mother is spared for the present.
No one's life escapes the blight. Timoleus, the gay satirist of the
first two acts, who scoffed at the pious hypocrisies and money-grubbing
ways of the great Roman lords, is grown old and fat and blear-eyed and
racked with disease in the third, has lost his stately purities, and
watered the acid of his wit. His life has suffered defeat. Unthinkingly
he swears by Zeus--from ancient habit--and then quakes with fright; for a
fellow-communicant is passing by. Reproached by a pagan friend of his
youth for his apostasy, he confesses that principle, when unsupported by
an assenting stomach, has to climb down. One must have bread; and 'the
bread is Christian now.' Then the poor old wreck, once so proud of his
iron rectitude, hobbles away, coughing and barking.
In that same act Appelles give his sweet young Christian daughter and her
fine young pagan lover his consent and blessing, and makes them utterly
happy--for five minutes. Then the priest and the mob come, to tear them
apart and put the girl in a nunnery; for marriage between the sects is
forbidden. Appelles' wife could dissolve the rule; and she wants to do
it; but under priestly pressure she wavers; then, fearing that in
providing happiness for her child she would be committing a sin dangerous
to her own, she goes over to the opposition, and throws the casting vote
for the nunnery. The blight has fallen upon the young couple, and their
life is a failure.
In the fourth act, Longinus, who made such a prosperous and enviable
start in the first act, is left alone in the desert, sick, blind,
helpless, incredibly old, to die: not a friend left in the world--another
ruined life. And in that act, also, Appelles' worshipped boy, Nymphas,
done to death by the mob, breathes out his last sigh in his father's
arms--one more failure. In the fifth act, Appelles himself dies, and is
glad to do it; he who so ignorantly rejoiced, only four acts before, over
the splendid present of an earthly immortality--the very worst failure of
the lot!
II
Now I approach my project. Here is the theatre list for Saturday, May 7,
1898, cut from the advertising columns of a New York paper:
[graphic here]
Now I arrive at my project, and make my suggestion. From the look of
this lightsome feast, I conclude that what you need is a tonic. Send for
'The Master of Palmyra.' You are trying to make yourself believe that
life is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing
serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. Send for
'The Master of Palmyra.' You are neglecting a valuable side of your
life; presently it will be atrophied. You are eating too much mental
sugar; you will bring on Bright's disease of the intellect. You need a
tonic; you need it very much. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' You
will not need to translate it; its story is as plain as a procession of
pictures.
I have made my suggestion. Now I wish to put an annex to it. And that
is this: It is right and wholesome to have those light comedies and
entertaining shows; and I shouldn't wish to see them diminished. But
none of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods; they
come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moods have
their appetites--healthy and legitimate appetites--and there ought to be
some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York ought to have
one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions of population,
and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can afford it, she can
support it. America devotes more time, labour, money and attention to
distributing literary and musical culture among the general public than
does any other nation, perhaps; yet here you find her neglecting what is
possibly the most effective of all the breeders and nurses and
disseminators of high literary taste and lofty emotion--the tragic stage.
To leave that powerful agency out is to haul the culture-wagon with a
crippled team. Nowadays, when a mood comes which only Shakespeare can
set to music, what must we do? Read Shakespeare ourselves! Isn't it
pitiful? It is playing an organ solo on a jew's-harp. We can't read.
None but the Booths can do it.
Thirty years ago Edwin Booth played 'Hamlet' a hundred nights in New
York. With three times the population, how often is 'Hamlet' played now
in a year? If Booth were back now in his prime, how often could he play
it in New York? Some will say twenty-five nights. I will say three
hundred, and say it with confidence. The tragedians are dead; but I
think that the taste and intelligence which made their market are not.
What has come over us English-speaking people? During the first half of
this century tragedies and great tragedians were as common with us as
farce and comedy; and it was the same in England. Now we have not a
tragedian, I believe, and London, with her fifty shows and theatres, has
but three, I think. It is an astonishing thing, when you come to
consider it. Vienna remains upon the ancient basis: there has been no
change. She sticks to the former proportions: a number of rollicking
comedies, admirably played, every night; and also every night at the Burg
Theatre--that wonder of the world for grace and beauty and richness and
splendour and costliness--a majestic drama of depth and seriousness, or a
standard old tragedy. It is only within the last dozen years that men
have learned to do miracles on the stage in the way of grand and
enchanting scenic effects; and it is at such a time as this that we have
reduced our scenery mainly to different breeds of parlours and varying
aspects of furniture and rugs. I think we must have a Burg in New York,
and Burg scenery, and a great company like the Burg company. Then, with
a tragedy-tonic once or twice a month, we shall enjoy the comedies all
the better. Comedy keeps the heart sweet; but we all know that there is
wholesome refreshment for both mind and heart in an occasional climb
among the solemn pomps of the intellectual snow-summits built by
Shakespeare and those others. Do I seem to be preaching? It is out of
my life: I only do it because the rest of the clergy seem to be on
vacation.
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER
Last spring I went out to Chicago to see the Fair, and although I did not
see it my trip was not wholly lost--there were compensations. In New
York I was introduced to a Major in the regular army who said he was
going to the Fair, and we agreed to go together. I had to go to Boston
first, but that did not interfere; he said he would go along and put in
the time. He was a handsome man and built like a gladiator. But his
ways were gentle, and his speech was soft and persuasive. He was
companionable, but exceedingly reposeful. Yes, and wholly destitute of
the sense of humour. He was full of interest in everything that went on
around him, but his serenity was indestructible; nothing disturbed him,
nothing excited him.
But before the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he
had a passion, quiet as he was--a passion for reforming petty public
abuses. He stood for citizenship--it was his hobby. His idea was that
every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial
policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their
execution. He thought that the only effective way of preserving and
protecting public rights was for each citizen to do his share in
preventing or punishing such infringements of them as came under his
personal notice.
It was a good scheme, but I thought it would keep a body in trouble all
the time; it seemed to me that one would be always trying to get
offending little officials discharged, and perhaps getting laughed at for
all reward. But he said no, I had the wrong idea: that there was no
occasion to get anybody discharged; that in fact you mustn't get anybody
discharged; that that would itself be a failure; no, one must reform the
man--reform him and make him useful where he was.
'Must one report the offender and then beg his superior not to discharge
him, but reprimand him and keep him?'
'No, that is not the idea; you don't report him at all, for then you risk
his bread and butter. You can act as if you are going to report him
--when nothing else will answer. But that's an extreme case. That is a
sort of force, and force is bad. Diplomacy is the effective thing. Now
if a man has tact--if a man will exercise diplomacy--'
For two minutes we had been standing at a telegraph wicket, and during
all this time the Major had been trying to get the attention of one of
the young operators, but they were all busy skylarking. The Major spoke
now, and asked one of them to take his telegram. He got for reply:
'I reckon you can wait a minute, can't you?' And the skylarking went on.
The Major said yes, he was not in a hurry. Then he wrote another
telegram:
'President Western Union Tel. Co.:
'Come and dine with me this evening. I can tell you how business is
conducted in one of your branches.'
Presently the young fellow who had spoken so pertly a little before
reached out and took the telegram, and when he read it he lost colour and
began to apologise and explain. He said he would lose his place if this
deadly telegram was sent, and he might never get another. If he could be
let off this time he would give no cause of complaint again. The
compromise was accepted.
As we walked away, the Major said:
'Now, you see, that was diplomacy--and you see how it worked. It
wouldn't do any good to bluster, the way people are always doing. That
boy can always give you as good as you send, and you'll come out defeated
and ashamed of yourself pretty nearly always. But you see he stands no
chance against diplomacy. Gentle words and diplomacy--those are the
tools to work with.'
'Yes, I see: but everybody wouldn't have had your opportunity. It isn't
everybody that is on those familiar terms with the President of the
Western Union.'
'Oh, you misunderstand. I don't know the President--I only use him
diplomatically. It is for his good and for the public good. There's no
harm in it.'
I said with hesitation and diffidence:
'But is it ever right or noble to tell a lie?'
He took no note of the delicate self-righteousness of the question, but
answered with undisturbed gravity and simplicity:
'Yes, sometimes. Lies told to injure a person and lies told to profit
yourself are not justifiable, but lies told to help another person, and
lies told in the public interest--oh, well, that is quite another matter.
Anybody knows that. But never mind about the methods: you see the
result. That youth is going to be useful now, and well-behaved. He had
a good face. He was worth saving. Why, he was worth saving on his
mother's account if not his own. Of course, he has a mother--sisters,
too. Damn these people who are always forgetting that! Do you know,
I've never fought a duel in my life--never once--and yet have been
challenged, like other people. I could always see the other man's
unoffending women folks or his little children standing between him and
me. They hadn't done anything--I couldn't break their hearts, you know.'
He corrected a good many little abuses in the course of the day, and
always without friction--always with a fine and dainty 'diplomacy' which
left no sting behind; and he got such happiness and such contentment out
of these performances that I was obliged to envy him his trade--and
perhaps would have adopted it if I could have managed the necessary
deflections from fact as confidently with my mouth as I believe I could
with a pen, behind the shelter of print, after a little practice.
Away late that night we were coming up-town in a horse-car when three
boisterous roughs got aboard, and began to fling hilarious obscenities
and profanities right and left among the timid passengers, some of whom
were women and children. Nobody resisted or retorted; the conductor
tried soothing words and moral suasion, but the toughs only called him
names and laughed at him. Very soon I saw that the Major realised that
this was a matter which was in his line; evidently he was turning over
his stock of diplomacy in his mind and getting ready. I felt that the
first diplomatic remark he made in this place would bring down a
landslide of ridicule upon him, and maybe something worse; but before I
could whisper to him and check him he had begun, and it was too late. He
said, in a level and dispassionate tone:
'Conductor, you must put these swine out. I will help you.'
I was not looking for that. In a flash the three roughs plunged at him.
But none of them arrived. He delivered three such blows as one could not
expect to encounter outside the prize-ring, and neither of the men had
life enough left in him to get up from where he fell. The Major dragged
them out and threw them off the car, and we got under way again.
I was astonished: astonished to see a lamb act so; astonished at the
strength displayed, and the clean and comprehensive result; astonished at
the brisk and business-like style of the whole thing. The situation had
a humorous side to it, considering how much I had been hearing about mild
persuasion and gentle diplomacy all day from this pile-driver, and I
would have liked to call his attention to that feature and do some
sarcasms about it; but when I looked at him I saw that it would be of no
use--his placid and contented face had no ray of humour in it; he would
not have understood. When we left the car, I said:
'That was a good stroke of diplomacy--three good strokes of diplomacy, in
fact.'
'That? That wasn't diplomacy. You are quite in the wrong. Diplomacy is
a wholly different thing. One cannot apply it to that sort; they would
not understand it. No, that was not diplomacy; it was force.'
'Now that you mention it, I--yes, I think perhaps you are right.'
'Right? Of course I am right. It was just force.'
'I think, myself, it had the outside aspect of it. Do you often have to
reform people in that way?'
'Far from it. It hardly ever happens. Not oftener than once in half a
year, at the outside.'
'Those men will get well?'
'Get well? Why, certainly they will. They are not in any danger. I
know how to hit and where to hit. You noticed that I did not hit them
under the jaw. That would have killed them.'
I believed that. I remarked--rather wittily, as I thought--that he had
been a lamb all day, but now had all of a sudden developed into a ram
--battering-ram; but with dulcet frankness and simplicity he said no, a
battering-ram was quite a different thing, and not in use now. This was
maddening, and I came near bursting out and saying he had no more
appreciation of wit than a jackass--in fact, I had it right on my tongue,
but did not say it, knowing there was no hurry and I could say it just as
well some other time over the telephone.
We started to Boston the next afternoon. The smoking compartment in the
parlour-car was full, and he went into the regular smoker. Across the
aisle in the front seat sat a meek, farmer-looking old man with a sickly
pallor in his face, and he was holding the door open with his foot to get
the air. Presently a big brakeman came rushing through, and when he got
to the door he stopped, gave the farmer an ugly scowl, then wrenched the
door to with such energy as to almost snatch the old man's boot off.
Then on he plunged about his business. Several passengers laughed, and
the old gentleman looked pathetically shamed and grieved.
After a little the conductor passed along, and the Major stopped him and
asked him a question in his habitually courteous way:
'Conductor, where does one report the misconduct of a brakeman? Does one
report to you?'
'You can report him at New Haven if you want to. What has he been
doing?'
The Major told the story. The conductor seemed amused. He said, with
just a touch of sarcasm in his bland tones:
'As I understand you, the brakeman didn't say anything?'
'No, he didn't say anything.'
'But he scowled, you say?'
'Yes.'
'And snatched the door loose in a rough way?'
'Yes.'
'That's the whole business, is it?'
'Yes, that is the whole of it.'
The conductor smiled pleasantly, and said:
'Well, if you want to report him, all right, but I don't quite make out
what it's going to amount to. You'll say--as I understand you--that the
brakeman insulted this old gentleman. They'll ask you what he said.
You'll say he didn't say anything at all. I reckon they'll say, How are
you going to make out an insult when you acknowledge yourself that he
didn't say a word?'
There was a murmur of applause at the conductor's compact reasoning, and
it gave him pleasure--you could see it in his face. But the Major was
not disturbed. He said:
'There--now you have touched upon a crying defect in the complaint
system. The railway officials--as the public think and as you also seem
to think--are not aware that there are any insults except spoken ones.
So nobody goes to headquarters and reports insults of manner, insults of
gesture, look, and so forth; and yet these are sometimes harder to bear
than any words. They are bitter hard to bear because there is nothing
tangible to take hold of; and the insulter can always say, if called
before the railway officials, that he never dreamed of intending any
offence. It seems to me that the officials ought to specially and
urgently request the public to report unworded affronts and
incivilities.'
The conductor laughed, and said:
'Well, that would be trimming it pretty fine, sure!'
'But not too fine, I think. I will report this matter at New Haven, and
I have an idea that I'll be thanked for it.'
The conductor's face lost something of its complacency; in fact, it
settled to a quite sober cast as the owner of it moved away. I said:
'You are not really going to bother with that trifle, are you?'
'It isn't a trifle. Such things ought always to be reported. It is a
public duty and no citizen has a right to shirk it. But I sha'n't' have
to report this case.'
'Why?'
'It won't be necessary. Diplomacy will do the business. You'll see.'
Presently the conductor came on his rounds again, and when he reached the
Major he leaned over and said:
'That's all right. You needn't report him. He's responsible to me, and
if he does it again I'll give him a talking to.'
The Major's response was cordial:
'Now that is what I like! You mustn't think that I was moved by any
vengeful spirit, for that wasn't the case. It was duty--just a sense of
duty, that was all. My brother-in-law is one of the directors of the
road, and when he learns that you are going to reason with your brakeman
the very next time he brutally insults an unoffending old man it will
please him, you may be sure of that.'
The conductor did not look as joyous as one might have thought he would,
but on the contrary looked sickly and uncomfortable. He stood around a
little; then said:
'I think something ought to be done to him now. I'll discharge him.'
'Discharge him! What good would that do? Don't you think it would be
better wisdom to teach him better ways and keep him?'
'Well, there's something in that. What would you suggest?'
'He insulted the old gentleman in presence of all these people. How
would it do to have him come and apologise in their presence?'
'I'll have him here right off. And I want to say this: If people would
do as you've done, and report such things to me instead of keeping mum
and going off and blackguarding the road, you'd see a different state of
things pretty soon. I'm much obliged to you.'
The brakeman came and apologised. After he was gone the Major said:
'Now you see how simple and easy that was. The ordinary citizen would
have accomplished nothing--the brother-in-law of a directory can
accomplish anything he wants to.'
'But are you really the brother-in-law of a director?'
'Always. Always when the public interests require it. I have a
brother-in-law on all the boards--everywhere. It saves me a world of
trouble.'
'It is a good wide relationship.'
'Yes. I have over three hundred of them.'
'Is the relationship never doubted by a conductor?'
'I have never met with a case. It is the honest truth--I never have.'
'Why didn't you let him go ahead and discharge the brakeman, in spite of
your favourite policy. You know he deserved it.'
The Major answered with something which really had a sort of distant
resemblance to impatience:
'If you would stop and think a moment you wouldn't ask such a question as
that. Is a brakeman a dog, that nothing but dogs' methods will do for
him? He is a man and has a man's fight for life. And he always has a
sister, or a mother, or wife and children to support. Always--there are
no exceptions. When you take his living away from him you take theirs
away too--and what have they done to you? Nothing. And where is the
profit in discharging an uncourteous brakeman and hiring another just
like him? It's unwisdom. Don't you see that the rational thing to do is
to reform the brakeman and keep him? Of course it is.'
Then he quoted with admiration the conduct of a certain division
superintendent of the Consolidated road, in a case where a switchman of
two years' experience was negligent once and threw a train off the track
and killed several people. Citizens came in a passion to urge the man's
dismissal, but the superintendent said:
'No, you are wrong. He has learned his lesson, he will throw no more
trains off the track. He is twice as valuable as he was before. I shall
keep him.'
We had only one more adventure on the train. Between Hartford and
Springfield the train-boy came shouting with an armful of literature, and
dropped a sample into a slumbering gentleman's lap, and the man woke up
with a start. He was very angry, and he and a couple of friends
discussed the outrage with much heat. They sent for the parlour-car
conductor and described the matter, and were determined to have the boy
expelled from his situation. The three complainants were wealthy Holyoke
merchants, and it was evident that the conductor stood in some awe of
them. He tried to pacify them, and explained that the boy was not under
his authority, but under that of one of the news companies; but he
accomplished nothing.
Then the Major volunteered some testimony for the defence. He said:
'I saw it all. You gentlemen have not meant to exaggerate the
circumstances, but still that is what you have done. The boy has done
nothing more than all train-boys do. If you want to get his ways
softened down and his manners reformed, I am with you and ready to help,
but it isn't fair to get him discharged without giving him a chance.'
But they were angry, and would hear of no compromise. They were well
acquainted with the President of the Boston and Albany, they said, and
would put everything aside next day and go up to Boston and fix that boy.
The Major said he would be on hand too, and would do what he could to
save the boy. One of the gentlemen looked him over and said:
'Apparently it is going to be a matter of who can wield the most
influence with the President. Do you know Mr. Bliss personally?'
The Major said, with composure:
'Yes; he is my uncle.'
The effect was satisfactory. There was an awkward silence for a minute
or more; then the hedging and the half-confessions of over-haste and
exaggerated resentment began, and soon everything was smooth and friendly
and sociable, and it was resolved to drop the matter and leave the boy's
bread and butter unmolested.
It turned out as I had expected: the President of the road was not the
Major's uncle at all--except by adoption, and for this day and train
only.
We got into no episodes on the return journey. Probably it was because
we took a night train and slept all the way.
We left New York Saturday night by the Pennsylvania road. After
breakfast the next morning we went into the parlour-car, but found it a
dull place and dreary. There were but few people in it and nothing going
on. Then we went into the little smoking compartment of the same car and
found three gentlemen in there. Two of them were grumbling over one of
the rules of the road--a rule which forbade card-playing on the trains on
Sunday. They had started an innocent game of high-low-jack and had been
stopped. The Major was interested. He said to the third gentleman:
'Did you object to the game?'
'Not at all. I am a Yale professor and a religious man, but my
prejudices are not extensive.'
Then the Major said to the others:
'You are at perfect liberty to resume your game, gentlemen; no one here
objects.'
One of them declined the risk, but the other one said he would like to
begin again if the Major would join him. So they spread an overcoat over
their knees and the game proceeded. Pretty soon the parlour-car
conductor arrived, and said, brusquely:
'There, there, gentlemen, that won't do. Put up the cards--it's not
allowed.'
The Major was shuffling. He continued to shuffle, and said:
'By whose order is it forbidden?'
'It's my order. I forbid it.'
The dealing began. The Major asked:
'Did you invent the idea?'
'What idea?'
'The idea of forbidding card-playing on Sunday.'
'No--of course not.'
'Who did?'
'The company.'
'Then it isn't your order, after all, but the company's. Is that it?'
'Yes. But you don't stop playing! I have to require you to stop playing
immediately.'
'Nothing is gained by hurry, and often much is lost. Who authorised the
company to issue such an order?'
'My dear sir, that is a matter of no consequence to me, and--'
'But you forget that you are not the only person concerned. It may be a
matter of consequence to me. It is, indeed, a matter of very great
importance to me. I cannot violate a legal requirement of my country
without dishonouring myself; I cannot allow any man or corporation to
hamper my liberties with illegal rules--a thing which railway companies
are always trying to do--without dishonouring my citizenship. So I come
back to that question: By whose authority has the company issued this
order?'
'I don't know. That's their affair.'
'Mine, too. I doubt if the company has any right to issue such a rule.
This road runs through several States. Do you know what State we are in
now, and what its laws are in matters of this kind?'
'Its laws do not concern me, but the company's orders do. It is my duty
to stop this game, gentlemen, and it must be stopped.'
'Possibly; but still there is no hurry. In hotels they post certain
rules in the rooms, but they always quote passages from the State law as
authority for these requirements. I see nothing posted here of this
sort. Please produce your authority and let us arrive at a decision, for
you see yourself that you are marring the game.'
'I have nothing of the kind, but I have my orders, and that is
sufficient. They must be obeyed.'
'Let us not jump to conclusions. It will be better all around to examine
into the matter without heat or haste, and see just where we stand before
either of us makes a mistake--for the curtailing of the liberties of a
citizen of the United States is a much more serious matter than you and
the railroads seem to think, and it cannot be done in my person until the
curtailer proves his right to do so. Now--'
'My dear sir, will you put down those cards?'
'All in good time, perhaps. It depends. You say this order must be
obeyed. Must. It is a strong word. You see yourself how strong it is.
A wise company would not arm you with so drastic an order as this, of
course, without appointing a penalty for its infringement. Otherwise it
runs the risk of being a dead letter and a thing to laugh at. What is
the appointed penalty for an infringement of this law?'
'Penalty? I never heard of any.'
'Unquestionably you must be mistaken. Your company orders you to come
here and rudely break up an innocent amusement, and furnishes you no way
to enforce the order! Don't you see that that is nonsense? What do you
do when people refuse to obey this order? Do you take the cards away
from them?'
'No.'
'Do you put the offender off at the next station?'
'Well, no--of course we couldn't if he had a ticket.'
'Do you have him up before a court?'
The conductor was silent and apparently troubled. The Major started a
new deal, and said:
'You see that you are helpless, and that the company has placed you in a
foolish position. You are furnished with an arrogant order, and you
deliver it in a blustering way, and when you come to look into the matter
you find you haven't any way of enforcing obedience.'
The conductor said, with chill dignity:
'Gentlemen, you have heard the order, and my duty is ended. As to
obeying it or not, you will do as you think fit.' And he turned to
leave.
'But wait. The matter is not yet finished. I think you are mistaken
about your duty being ended; but if it really is, I myself have a duty to
perform yet.'
'How do you mean?'
'Are you going to report my disobedience at headquarters in Pittsburg?'
'No. What good would that do?'
'You must report me, or I will report you.'
'Report me for what?'
'For disobeying the company's orders in not stopping this game. As a
citizen it is my duty to help the railway companies keep their servants
to their work.'
'Are you in earnest?'
'Yes, I am in earnest. I have nothing against you as a man, but I have
this against you as an officer--that you have not carried out that order,
and if you do not report me I must report you. And I will.'
The conductor looked puzzled, and was thoughtful a moment; then he burst
out with:
'I seem to be getting myself into a scrape! It's all a muddle; I can't
make head or tail of it; it never happened before; they always knocked
under and never said a word, and so I never saw how ridiculous that
stupid order with no penalty is. I don't want to report anybody, and I
don't want to be reported--why, it might do me no end of harm! No do go
on with the game--play the whole day if you want to--and don't let's have
any more trouble about it!'
'No, I only sat down here to establish this gentleman's rights--he can
have his place now. But before won't you tell me what you think the
company made this rule for? Can you imagine an excuse for it? I mean a
rational one--an excuse that is not on its face silly, and the invention
of an idiot?'
'Why, surely I can. The reason it was made is plain enough. It is to
save the feelings of the other passengers--the religious ones among them,
I mean. They would not like it to have the Sabbath desecrated by
card-playing on the train.'
'I just thought as much. They are willing to desecrate it themselves by
travelling on Sunday, but they are not willing that other people--'
'By gracious, you've hit it! I never thought of that before. The fact
is, it is a silly rule when you come to look into it.'
At this point the train conductor arrived, and was going to shut down the
game in a very high-handed fashion, but the parlour-car conductor stopped
him, and took him aside to explain. Nothing more was heard of the
matter.
I was ill in bed eleven days in Chicago and got no glimpse of the Fair,
for I was obliged to return East as soon as I was able to travel. The
Major secured and paid for a state-room in a sleeper the day before we
left, so that I could have plenty of room and be comfortable; but when we
arrived at the station a mistake had been made and our car had not been
put on. The conductor had reserved a section for us--it was the best he
could do, he said. But Major said we were not in a hurry, and would wait
for the car to be put on. The conductor responded, with pleasant irony:
'It may be that you are not in a hurry, just as you say, but we are.
Come, get aboard, gentlemen, get aboard--don't keep us waiting.'
But the Major would not get aboard himself nor allow me to do it. He
wanted his car, and said he must have it. This made the hurried and
perspiring conductor impatient, and he said:
'It's the best we can do--we can't do impossibilities. You will take the
section or go without. A mistake has been made and can't be rectified at
this late hour. It's a thing that happens now and then, and there is
nothing for it but to put up with it and make the best of it. Other
people do.'
'Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and
enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this
bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary
trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of
imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and
sue the company for violating its contract.'
'Sue the company?--for a thing like that!'
'Certainly.'
'Do you really mean that?'
'Indeed, I do.'
The conductor looked the Major over wonderingly, and then said:
'It beats me--it's bran-new--I've never struck the mate to it before.
But I swear I think you'd do it. Look here, I'll send for the
station-master.'
When the station-master came he was a good deal annoyed--at the Major,
not at the person who had made the mistake. He was rather brusque, and
took the same position which the conductor had taken in the beginning;
but he failed to move the soft-spoken artilleryman, who still insisted
that he must have his car. However, it was plain that there was only one
strong side in this case, and that that side was the Major's. The
station-master banished his annoyed manner, and became pleasant and even
half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and the
Major made a concession. He said he would give up the engaged
state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking,
one was found whose owner was persuadable; he exchanged it for our
section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the
evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long talk
and got to be good friends. He said he wished the public would make
trouble oftener--it would have a good effect. He said that the
railroads could not be expected to do their whole duty by the traveller
unless the traveller would take some interest in the matter himself.
I hoped that we were done reforming for the trip now, but it was not so.
In the hotel car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled chicken.
The waiter said:
'It's not in the bill of fare, sir; we do not serve anything but what is
in the bill.'
'That gentleman yonder is eating a broiled chicken.'
'Yes, but that is different. He is one of the superintendents of the
road.'
'Then all the more must I have broiled chicken. I do not like these
discriminations. Please hurry--bring me a broiled chicken.'
The waiter brought the steward, who explained in a low and polite voice
that the thing was impossible--it was against the rule, and the rule was
rigid.
'Very well, then, you must either apply it impartially or break it
impartially. You must take that gentleman's chicken away from him or
bring me one.'
The steward was puzzled, and did not quite know what to do. He began an
incoherent argument, but the conductor came along just then, and asked
what the difficulty was. The steward explained that here was a gentleman
who was insisting on having a chicken when it was dead against the rule
and not in the bill. The conductor said:
'Stick by your rules--you haven't any option. Wait a moment--is this the
gentleman?' Then he laughed and said: 'Never mind your rules--it's my
advice, and sound: give him anything he wants--don't get him started on
his rights. Give him whatever he asks for; and it you haven't got it,
stop the train and get it.'
The Major ate the chicken, but said he did it from a sense of duty and to
establish a principle, for he did not like chicken.
I missed the Fair it is true, but I picked up some diplomatic tricks
which I and the reader may find handy and useful as we go along.
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
VIENNA, January 5--I find in this morning's papers the statement that the
Government of the United States has paid to the two members of the Peace
Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000 dollars
each for their six weeks' work in Paris.
I hope that this is true. I will allow myself the satisfaction of
considering that it is true, and of treating it as a thing finished and
settled.
It is a precedent; and ought to be a welcome one to our country. A
precedent always has a chance to be valuable (as well as the other way);
and its best chance to be valuable (or the other way) is when it takes
such a striking form as to fix a whole nation's attention upon it. If it
come justified out of the discussion which will follow, it will find a
career ready and waiting for it.
We realise that the edifice of public justice is built of precedents,
from the ground upward; but we do not always realise that all the other
details of our civilisation are likewise built of precedents. The
changes also which they undergo are due to the intrusion of new
precedents, which hold their ground against opposition, and keep their
place. A precedent may die at birth, or it may live--it is mainly a
matter of luck. If it be imitated once, it has a chance; if twice a
better chance; if three times it is reaching a point where account must
be taken of it; if four, five, or six times, it has probably come to
stay--for a whole century, possibly. If a town start a new bow, or a new
dance, or a new temperance project, or a new kind of hat, and can get the
precedent adopted in the next town, the career of that precedent is
begun; and it will be unsafe to bet as to where the end of its journey is
going to be. It may not get this start at all, and may have no career;
but, if a crown prince introduce the precedent, it will attract vast
attention, and its chances for a career are so great as to amount almost
to a certainty.
For a long time we have been reaping damage from a couple of disastrous
precedents. One is the precedent of shabby pay to public servants
standing for the power and dignity of the Republic in foreign lands; the
other is a precedent condemning them to exhibit themselves officially in
clothes which are not only without grace or dignity, but are a pretty
loud and pious rebuke to the vain and frivolous costumes worn by the
other officials. To our day an American ambassador's official costume
remains under the reproach of these defects. At a public function in a
European court all foreign representatives except ours wear clothes which
in some way distinguish them from the unofficial throng, and mark them as
standing for their countries. But our representative appears in a plain
black swallow-tail, which stands for neither country, nor people. It has
no nationality. It is found in all countries; it is as international as
a night-shirt. It has no particular meaning; but our Government tries to
give it one; it tries to make it stand for Republican Simplicity, modesty
and unpretentiousness. Tries, and without doubt fails, for it is not
conceivable that this loud ostentation of simplicity deceives any one.
The statue that advertises its modesty with a fig-leaf really brings its
modesty under suspicion. Worn officially, our nonconforming swallow-tail
is a declaration of ungracious independence in the matter of manners, and
is uncourteous. It says to all around: 'In Rome we do not choose to do
as Rome does; we refuse to respect your tastes and your traditions; we
make no sacrifices to anyone's customs and prejudices; we yield no jot to
the courtesies of life; we prefer our manners, and intrude them here.'
That is not the true American spirit, and those clothes misrepresent us.
When a foreigner comes among us and trespasses against our customs and
our code of manners, we are offended, and justly so; but our Government
commands our ambassadors to wear abroad an official dress which is an
offence against foreign manners and customers; and the discredit of it
falls upon the nation.
We did not dress our public functionaries in undistinguished raiment
before Franklin's time; and the change would not have come if he had been
an obscurity. But he was such a colossal figure in the world that
whatever he did of an unusual nature attracted the world's attention,
and became a precedent. In the case of clothes, the next representative
after him, and the next, had to imitate it. After that, the thing was
custom; and custom is a petrifaction: nothing but dynamite can dislodge
it for a century. We imagine that our queer official costumery was
deliberately devised to symbolise our Republican Simplicity--a quality
which we have never possessed, and are too old to acquire now, if we had
any use for it or any leaning toward it. But it is not so; there was
nothing deliberate about it; it grew naturally and heedlessly out of the
precedent set by Franklin.
If it had been an intentional thing, and based upon a principle, it would
not have stopped where it did: we should have applied it further.
Instead of clothing our admirals and generals, for courts-martial and
other public functions, in superb dress uniforms blazing with colour and
gold, the Government would put them in swallow-tails and white cravats,
and make them look like ambassadors and lackeys. If I am wrong in making
Franklin the father of our curious official clothes, it is no matter--he
will be able to stand it.
It is my opinion--and I make no charge for the suggestion--that, whenever
we appoint an ambassador or a minister, we ought to confer upon him the
temporary rank of admiral or general, and allow him to wear the
corresponding uniform at public functions in foreign countries. I would
recommend this for the reason that it is not consonant with the dignity
of the United States of America that her representative should appear
upon occasions of state in a dress which makes him glaringly conspicuous;
and that is what his present undertaker-outfit does when it appears, with
its dismal smudge, in the midst of the butterfly splendours of a
Continental court. It is a most trying position for a shy man, a modest
man, a man accustomed to being like other people. He is the most
striking figure present; there is no hiding from the multitudinous eyes.
It would be funny, if it were not such a cruel spectacle, to see the
hunted creature in his solemn sables scuffling around in that sea of
vivid colour, like a mislaid Presbyterian in perdition. We are all aware
that our representative's dress should not compel too much attention; for
anybody but an Indian chief knows that that is a vulgarity. I am saying
these things in the interest of our national pride and dignity. Our
representative is the flag. He is the Republic. He is the United States
of America. And when these embodiments pass by, we do not want them
scoffed at; we desire that people shall be obliged to concede that they
are worthily clothed, and politely.
Our Government is oddly inconsistent in this matter of official dress.
When its representative is a civilian who has not been a solider, it
restricts him to the black swallow-tail and white tie; but if he is a
civilian who has been a solider, it allows him to wear the uniform of his
former rank as an official dress. When General Sickles was minister to
Spain, he always wore, when on official duty, the dress uniform of a
major-general. When General Grant visited foreign courts, he went
handsomely and properly ablaze in the uniform of a full general, and was
introduced by diplomatic survivals of his own Presidential
Administration. The latter, by official necessity, went in the meek and
lowly swallow-tail--a deliciously sarcastic contrast: the one dress
representing the honest and honourable dignity of the nation; the other,
the cheap hypocrisy of the Republican Simplicity tradition. In Paris our
present representative can perform his official functions reputably
clothed; for he was an officer in the Civil War. In London our late
ambassador was similarly situated; for he, also, was an officer in the
Civil War. But Mr. Choate must represent the Great Republic--even at
official breakfasts at seven in the morning--in that same old funny
swallow-tail.
Our Government's notions about proprieties of costume are indeed very,
very odd--as suggested by that last fact. The swallow-tail is recognised
the world over as not wearable in the daytime; it is a night-dress, and a
night-dress only--a night-shirt is not more so. Yet, when our
representative makes an official visit in the morning, he is obliged by
his Government to go in that night-dress. It makes the very cab-horses
laugh.
The truth is, that for awhile during the present century, and up to
something short of forty years ago, we had a lucid interval, and dropped
the Republican Simplicity sham, and dressed our foreign representatives
in a handsome and becoming official costume. This was discarded
by-and-by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not now
known which statesman brought about this change; but we all know that,
stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties in dress, he would not have
sent his daughter to a state ball in a corn-shucking costume, nor to a
corn-shucking in a state-ball costume, to be harshly criticised as an
ill-mannered offender against the proprieties of custom in both places.
And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would not have wounded
the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attending a funeral in
their house in a costume which was an offence against the dignities and
decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom. Yet that man
was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social customs of
civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance, and that no man
with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has any disposition to
transgress these customs.
There is still another argument for a rational diplomatic dress--a
business argument. We are a trading nation; and our representative is a
business agent. If he is respected, esteemed, and liked where he is
stationed, he can exercise an influence which can extend our trade and
forward our prosperity. A considerable number of his business activities
have their field in his social relations; and clothes which do not offend
against local manners and customers and prejudices are a valuable part of
his equipment in this matter--would be, if Franklin had died earlier.
I have not done with gratis suggestions yet. We made a great deal of
valuable advance when we instituted the office of ambassador. That lofty
rank endows its possessor with several times as much influence,
consideration, and effectiveness as the rank of minister bestows. For
the sake of the country's dignity and for the sake of her advantage
commercially, we should have ambassadors, not ministers, at the great
courts of the world.
But not at present salaries! No; if we are to maintain present salaries,
let us make no more ambassadors; and let us unmake those we have already
made. The great position, without the means of respectably maintaining
it--there could be no wisdom in that. A foreign representative, to be
valuable to his country, must be on good terms with the officials of the
capital and with the rest of the influential folk. He must mingle with
this society; he cannot sit at home--it is not business, it butters no
commercial parsnips. He must attend the dinners, banquets, suppers,
balls, receptions, and must return these hospitalities. He should return
as good as he gets, too, for the sake of the dignity of his country, and
for the sake of Business. Have we ever had a minister or an ambassador
who could do this on his salary? No--not once, from Franklin's time to
ours. Other countries understand the commercial value of properly lining
the pockets of their representatives; but apparently our Government has
not learned it. England is the most successful trader of the several
trading nations; and she takes good care of the watchmen who keep guard
in her commercial towers. It has been a long time, now, since we needed
to blush for our representatives abroad. It has become custom to send
our fittest. We send men of distinction, cultivation, character--our
ablest, our choicest, our best. Then we cripple their efficiency through
the meagreness of their pay. Here is a list of salaries for English and
American ministers and ambassadors:
City Salaries
American English
Paris $17,500 $45,000
Berlin 17,500 40,000
Vienna 12,000 40,000
Constantinople 10,000 40,000
St. Petersburg 17,500 39,000
Rome 12,000 35,000
Washington -- 32,500
Sir Julian Pauncefote, the English ambassador at Washington, has a very
fine house besides--at no damage to his salary.
English ambassadors pay no house rent; they live in palaces owned by
England. Our representatives pay house-rent out of their salaries. You
can judge by the above figures what kind of houses the United States
of America has been used to living in abroad, and what sort of
return-entertaining she has done. There is not a salary in our list
which would properly house the representative receiving it, and, in
addition, pay $3,000 toward his family's bacon and doughnuts--the strange
but economical and customary fare of the American ambassador's household,
except on Sundays, when petrified Boston crackers are added.
The ambassadors and ministers of foreign nations not only have generous
salaries, but their Governments provide them with money wherewith to pay
a considerable part of their hospitality bills. I believe our Government
pays no hospitality bills except those incurred by the navy. Through
this concession to the navy, that arm is able to do us credit in foreign
parts; and certainly that is well and politic. But why the Government
does not think it well and politic that our diplomats should be able to
do us like credit abroad is one of those mysterious inconsistencies which
have been puzzling me ever since I stopped trying to understand baseball
and took up statesmanship as a pastime.
To return to the matter of house-rent. Good houses, properly furnished,
in European capitals, are not to be had at small figures. Consequently,
our foreign representatives have been accustomed to live in garrets
--sometimes on the roof. Being poor men, it has been the best they could
do on the salary which the Government has paid them. How could they
adequately return the hospitalities shown them? It was impossible. It
would have exhausted the salary in three months. Still, it was their
official duty to entertain their influentials after some sort of fashion;
and they did the best they could with their limited purse. In return for
champagne they furnished lemonade; in return for game they furnished ham;
in return for whale they furnished sardines; in return for liquors they
furnished condensed milk; in return for the battalion of liveried and
powdered flunkeys they furnished the hired girl; in return for the fairy
wilderness of sumptuous decorations they draped the stove with the
American flag; in return for the orchestra they furnished zither and
ballads by the family; in return for the ball--but they didn't return the
ball, except in cases where the United States lived on the roof and had
room.
Is this an exaggeration? It can hardly be called that. I saw nearly the
equivalent of it, a good many years ago. A minister was trying to create
influential friends for a project which might be worth ten millions a
year to the agriculturists of the Republic; and our Government had
furnished him ham and lemonade to persuade the opposition with. The
minister did not succeed. He might not have succeeded if his salary had
been what it ought to have been--$50,000 or $60,00 a year--but his
chances would have been very greatly improved. And in any case, he and
his dinners and his country would not have been joked about by the
hard-hearted and pitied by the compassionate.
Any experienced 'drummer' will testify that, when you want to do
business, there is no economy in ham and lemonade. The drummer takes his
country customer to the theatre, the opera, the circus; dines him, wines
him, entertains him all the day and all the night in luxurious style; and
plays upon his human nature in all seductive ways. For he knows, by old
experience, that this is the best way to get a profitable order out of
him. He has this reward. All Governments except our own play the same
policy, with the same end in view; and they, also, have their reward.
But ours refuses to do business by business ways, and sticks to ham and
lemonade. This is the most expensive diet known to the diplomatic
service of the world.
Ours is the only country of first importance that pays its foreign
representatives trifling salaries. If we were poor, we could not find
great fault with these economies, perhaps--at least one could find a sort
of plausible excuse for them. But we are not poor; and the excuse fails.
As shown above, some of our important diplomatic representatives receive
$12,000; others, $17,500. These salaries are all ham and lemonade, and
unworthy of the flag. When we have a rich ambassador in London or Paris,
he lives as the ambassador of a country like ours ought to live, and it
costs him $100,000 a year to do it. But why should we allow him to pay
that out of his private pocket? There is nothing fair about it; and the
Republic is no proper subject for any one's charity. In several cases
our salaries of $12,000 should be $50,000; and all of the salaries of
$17,500 ought to be $75,000 or $100,000, since we pay no representative's
house-rent. Our State Department realises the mistake which we are
making, and would like to rectify it, but it has not the power.
When a young girl reaches eighteen she is recognised as being a woman.
She adds six inches to her skirt, she unplaits her dangling braids and
balls her hair on top of her head, she stops sleeping with her little
sister and has a room to herself, and becomes in many ways a thundering
expense. But she is in society now; and papa has to stand it. There is
no avoiding it. Very well. The Great Republic lengthened her skirts
last year, balled up her hair, and entered the world's society. This
means that, if she would prosper and stand fair with society, she must
put aside some of her dearest and darlingest young ways and
superstitions, and do as society does. Of course, she can decline if she
wants to; but this would be unwise. She ought to realise, now that she
has 'come out,' that this is a right and proper time to change a part of
her style. She is in Rome; and it has long been granted that when one is
in Rome it is good policy to do as Rome does. To advantage Rome? No--to
advantage herself.
If our Government has really paid representatives of ours on the Paris
Commission $100,000 apiece for six weeks' work, I feel sure that it is
the best cash investment the nation has made in many years. For it seems
quite impossible that, with that precedent on the books, the Government
will be able to find excuses for continuing its diplomatic salaries at
the present mean figure.
P.S.--VIENNA, January 10.--I see, by this morning's telegraphic news,
that I am not to be the new ambassador here, after all. This--well, I
hardly know what to say. I--well, of course, I do not care anything
about it; but it is at least a surprise. I have for many months been
using my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see expanded into
an ambassadorship, with the idea, of course th--But never mind. Let it
go. It is of no consequence. I say it calmly; for I am calm. But at
the same time--However, the subject has no interest for me, and never
had. I never really intended to take the place, anyway--I made up my
mind to it months and months ago, nearly a year. But now, while I am
calm, I would like to say this--that so long as I shall continue to
possess an American's proper pride in the honour and dignity of his
country, I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of the flag at a
salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be charged with wanting to
live beyond my country's means, I cannot help it. A country which cannot
afford ambassador's wages should be ashamed to have ambassadors.
Think of a Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar ambassador!
Particularly for America. Why it is the most ludicrous spectacle, the
most inconsistent and incongruous spectable, contrivable by even the most
diseased imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king in a
breechclout, an archangel in a tin halo. And, for pure sham and
hypocrisy, the salary is just the match of the ambassador's official
clothes--that boastful advertisement of a Republican Simplicity which
manifests itself at home in Fifty-thousand-dollar salaries to insurance
presidents and railway lawyers, and in domestic palaces whose fittings
and furnishings often transcend in costly display and splendour and
richness the fittings and furnishings of the palaces of the sceptred
masters of Europe; and which has invented and exported to the Old World
the palace-car, the sleeping-car, the tram-car, the electric trolley, the
best bicycles, the best motor-cars, the steam-heater, the best and
smartest systems of electric calls and telephonic aids to laziness and
comfort, the elevator, the private bath-room (hot and cold water on tap),
the palace-hotel, with its multifarious conveniences, comforts, shows,
and luxuries, the--oh, the list is interminable! In a word, Republican
Simplicity found Europe with one shirt on her back, so to speak, as far
as real luxuries, conveniences, and the comforts of life go, and has
clothed her to the chin with the latter. We are the lavishest and
showiest and most luxury-loving people on the earth; and at our masthead
we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever
seen. Oh, Republican Simplicity, there are many, many humbugs in the
world, but none to which you need take off your hat!
LUCK
[NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was
an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth.
--M.T.]
It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three
conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation.
For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name
and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C.,
K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name!
There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands
of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly
to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for ever celebrated.
It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod;
scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble
gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all
over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of
the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the
deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people
and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now,
but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an
instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have
been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes,
and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating the hero
of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is an accident
--just a product of incredible luck.'
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been
Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been
greater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is
what the Reverend told me.
About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at
Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby
underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with
pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely,
while he--why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was
evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was
exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image,
and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for
stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his
behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be
flung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity to
ease his fall as much as I can.
I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history;
and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like
a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar
which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with
flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely
superficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a
thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky
accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was
asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
It was stupefying. Well, although through his course I stood by him,
with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled
child; and he always saved himself--just by miracle, apparently.
Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was
mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I
drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the
line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use, and
then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result:
to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a
perfect ovation in the way of compliments.
Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience
tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through
charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of
any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as
guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a
wooden-head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and
prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his
responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.
The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I
said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to
die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And
it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a
captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the
service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever
have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it
if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my
hair would turn white.
Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to
myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along
with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took
my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and
grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his
regiment, and away we went to the field.
And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything
but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody
had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance
every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations
of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a
man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and rave
too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of
apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the
lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high
that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out
of the sky.
He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his
superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ...
down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby
was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten
minutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over
the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder
now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this
immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a
charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an
enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the
insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?
An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened?
We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that
no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It
must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was
detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell,
over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after
them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and
tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever
saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid
victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment,
admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him,
and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his
right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall
back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over the
hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous military
genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade
while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can
be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has been
pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for
half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and
yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or
a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in
domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is a
record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are
proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is
to be born lucky.
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane'
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us
present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that
blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained mind.
Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane
Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was
in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he
was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was
formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left
ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare
and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding
of India ink: 'Virtue is its own R'd.' (There was a lack of room.) He
was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman. He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the 'advanced' school of
thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles,
somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six
geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a
rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as
I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one
knows that without being told it.
One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a
clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a
great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal:
told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a
glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was
refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, 'Peters, do you ever read the Bible?'
'Well--yes.'
'I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in
dead earnest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't you get discouraged,
but hang right on. First you won't understand it; but by-and-by things
will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to --ear.'
'Yes, I have heard that said.'
'And it's so too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over
'em all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any
getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day.'
'The miracles, too, captain?'
'Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that
business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?'
'Well, I don't know but--'
'Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't any
experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many
for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show
you how to get at the meat of these matters?'
'Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind.'
Then the captain proceeded as follows: 'I'll do it with pleasure. First,
you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to
understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then
after that it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it up,
concerning Isaac[1] and the prophets of Baal. There was some mighty
sharp men amongst the public characters of that old ancient day, and
Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings--plenty of them, too; it
ain't for me to apologise for Isaac; he played a cold deck on the
prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable, considering the
odds that was against him. No, all I say it, 't' wa'n't any miracle, and
that I'll show you so's 't you can see it yourself.
'Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is,
prophets of Isaac's denomination. There were four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is, if
Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say.
Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low
spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he went
a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business, but
't' wa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to anything.
By-and-by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to work and
thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why he begins to throw out
hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other,--nothing very
definite, may be, but just kind of undermining their reputation in a
quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to the King. The
King asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, "Oh, nothing
particular; only, can they pray down fire from heaven on an altar? It
ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That's the idea."
So the King was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of
Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar ready, they
were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too.
'So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the
other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great
crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking
up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was
called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other
team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four
hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing
their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so
on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of
course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they
might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he?
Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every
way he could think of. Says he, "You don't speak up loud enough; your
god's asleep, like enough, or may be he's taking a walk; you want to
holler, you know," or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact
language. Mind I don't apologise for Isaac; he had his faults.
'Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the
afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were
all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.
'What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his,
there, "Pour four barrels of water on the altar!" Everybody was
astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got
whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, "Heave on four more barrels."
Then he says, "Heave on four more." Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.
The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a
trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads--"measures," it
says: I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going
to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They
didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray: he strung along,
and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the
sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual programme,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up
the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!'
'Petroleum, captain?'
'Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You
read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't
tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There
ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go
prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done.'
[1] This is the captain's own mistake.
STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA
I. THE GOVERNMENT IN THE FRYING-PAN.
Here in Vienna in these closing days of 1897 one's blood gets no chance
to stagnate. The atmosphere is brimful of political electricity. All
conversation is political; every man is a battery, with brushes overworn,
and gives out blue sparks when you set him going on the common topic.
Everybody has an opinion, and lets you have it frank and hot, and out of
this multitude of counsel you get merely confusion and despair. For no
one really understands this political situation, or can tell you what is
going to be the outcome of it.
Things have happened here recently which would set any country but
Austria on fire from end to end, and upset the Government to a certainty;
but no one feels confident that such results will follow here. Here,
apparently, one must wait and see what will happen, then he will know,
and not before; guessing is idle; guessing cannot help the matter. This
is what the wise tell you; they all say it; they say it every day, and it
is the sole detail upon which they all agree.
There is some approach to agreement upon another point: that there will
be no revolution. Men say: 'Look at our history, revolutions have not
been in our line; and look at our political map, its construction is
unfavourable to an organised uprising, and without unity what could a
revolt accomplish? It is disunion which has held our empire together for
centuries, and what it has done in the past it may continue to do now and
in the future.'
The most intelligible sketch I have encountered of this unintelligible
arrangement of things was contributed to the 'Traveller's Record' by Mr.
Forrest Morgan, of Hartford, three years ago. He says:
'The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy is the patchwork-quilt, the Midway
Plaisance, the national chain-gang of Europe; a state that is not a
nation, but a collection of nations, some with national memories and
aspirations and others without, some occupying distinct provinces
almost purely their own, and others mixed with alien races, but each
with a different language, and each mostly holding the others
foreigners as much as if the link of a common government did not
exist. Only one of its races even now comprises so much as
one-fourth of the whole, and not another so much as one-sixth; and
each has remained for ages as unchanged in isolation, however
mingled together in locality, as globules of oil in water. There
is nothing else in the modern world that is nearly like it, though
there have been plenty in past ages; it seems unreal and impossible
even though we know it is true; it violates all our feeling as to
what a country should be in order to have a right to exist; and it
seems as though it was too ramshackle to go on holding together any
length of time. Yet it has survived, much in its present shape, two
centuries of storms that have swept perfectly unified countries
from existence and others that have brought it to the verge of
ruin, has survived formidable European coalitions to dismember it,
and has steadily gained force after each; forever changing in its
exact make-up, losing in the West but gaining in the East, the
changes leave the structure as firm as ever, like the dropping off
and adding on of logs in a raft, its mechanical union of pieces
showing all the vitality of genuine national life.'
That seems to confirm and justify the prevalent Austrian faith that in
this confusion of unrelated and irreconcilable elements, this condition
of incurable disunion, there is strength--for the Government. Nearly
every day some one explains to me that a revolution would not succeed
here. 'It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all the nations in the
empire hate the Government--but they all hate each other too, and with
devoted and enthusiastic bitterness; no two of them can combine; the
nation that rises must rise alone; then the others would joyfully join
the Government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance
against a combination of spiders. This Government is entirely
independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases; it has
nothing to fear. In countries like England and America, where there is
one tongue and the public interests are common, the Government must take
account of public opinion; but in Austria-Hungary there are nineteen
public opinions--one for each state. No--two or three for each state,
since there are two or three nationalities in each. A Government cannot
satisfy all these public opinions; it can only go through the motions of
trying. This Government does that. It goes through the motions, and
they do not succeed; but that does not worry the Government much.'
The next man will give you some further information. 'The Government has
a policy--a wise one--and sticks to it. This policy is--tranquillity:
keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible; encourage them
to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory that politics. To this
end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests to teach them to
be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about
things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven, to whose
historic delights they are going to add the charm of their society
by-and-by; and further--to this same end--it cools off the newspapers
every morning at five o'clock, whenever warm events are happening.'
There is a censor of the press, and apparently he is always on duty and
hard at work. A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five
o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices
and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His
company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark
everything which seems to have a dangerous look; then he passes final
judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results
a capricious and unbalanced look: his assistants have diversified notions
as to what is dangerous and what isn't; he can't get time to examine
their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter
which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and
gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which
it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening
edition--provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in
courteous and inoffensive language--and of course the censor cannot say a
word.
Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it
colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it
talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed,
I think, in the journals of any country. Apparently the censor sometimes
revises his verdicts upon second thought, for several times lately he has
suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution. The
distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed. I have
two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember
what I had done with them.
If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed, he
would be less of an inconvenience than he is; but, of course, the papers
cannot wait many minutes after five o'clock to get his verdict; they
might as well go out of business as do that; so they print and take their
chances. Then, if they get caught by a suppression, they must strike out
the condemned matter and print the edition over again. That delays the
issue several hours, and is expensive besides. The Government gets the
suppressed edition for nothing. If it bought it, that would be joyful,
and would give great satisfaction. Also, the edition would be larger.
Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other
matter; they merely snatch they out and leave blanks behind--mourning
blanks, marked 'Confiscated'.
The Government discourages the dissemination of newspaper information in
other ways. For instance, it does not allow newspapers to be sold on the
streets: therefore the newsboy is unknown in Vienna. And there is a
stamp duty of nearly a cent upon each copy of a newspaper's issue. Every
American paper that reaches me has a stamp upon it, which has been pasted
there in the post-office or downstairs in the hotel office; but no matter
who put it there, I have to pay for it, and that is the main thing.
Sometimes friends send me so many papers that it takes all I can earn
that week to keep this Government going.
I must take passing notice of another point in the Government's measures
for maintaining tranquillity. Everybody says it does not like to see any
individual attain to commanding influence in the country, since such a
man can become a disturber and an inconvenience. 'We have as much talent
as the other nations,' says the citizen, resignedly, and without
bitterness, 'but for the sake of the general good of the country, we are
discouraged from making it over-conspicuous; and not only discouraged,
but tactfully and skillfully prevented from doing it, if we show too much
persistence. Consequently we have no renowned men; in centuries we have
seldom produced one--that is, seldom allowed one to produce himself. We
can say to-day what no other nation of first importance in the family of
Christian civilisations can say--that there exists no Austrian who has
made an enduring name for himself which is familiar all around the globe.
Another helper toward tranquillity is the army. It is as pervasive as
the atmosphere. It is everywhere. All the mentioned creators,
promoters, and preservers of the public tranquillity do their several
shares in the quieting work. They make a restful and comfortable
serenity and reposefulness. This is disturbed sometimes for a little
while: a mob assembles to protest against something; it gets noisy
--noisier--still noisier--finally too noisy; then the persuasive soldiery
comes charging down upon it, and in a few minutes all is quiet again, and
there is no mob.
There is a Constitution and there is a Parliament. The House draws its
membership of 425 deputies from the nineteen or twenty states heretofore
mentioned. These men represent peoples who speak eleven different
languages. That means eleven distinct varieties of jealousies,
hostilities, and warring interests. This could be expected to furnish
forth a parliament of a pretty inharmonious sort, and make legislation
difficult at times--and it does that. The Parliament is split up into
many parties--the Clericals, the Progressists, the German Nationalists,
the Young Czechs, the Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, and
some others--and it is difficult to get up working combinations among
them. They prefer to fight apart sometimes.
The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni's necessities. He
could not carry on his Government without a majority vote in the House at
his back, and in order to secure it he had to make a trade of some sort.
He made it with the Czechs--the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for
him: he must issue an ordinance making the Czech tongue the official
language in Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All
the Germans in Austria were incensed. In numbers they form but a fourth
part of the empire's population, but they urge that the country's public
business should be conducted in one common tongue, and that tongue a
world language--which German is.
However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element in Parliament
was apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant.
Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being smooth, was
disappointingly rough from the start. The Government must get the
Ausgleich through. It must not fail. Badeni's majority was ready to
carry it through; but the minority was determined to obstruct it and
delay it until the obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved.
The Ausgleich is an Adjustment, Arrangement, Settlement, which holds
Austria and Hungary together. It dates from 1867, and has to be renewed
every ten years. It establishes the share which Hungary must pay toward
the expenses of the imperial Government. Hungary is a kingdom (the
Emperor of Austria is its King), and has its own Parliament and
governmental machinery. But it has no foreign office, and it has no
army--at least its army is a part of the imperial army, is paid out of
the imperial treasury, and is under the control of the imperial war
office.
The ten-year arrangement was due a year ago, but failed to connect. At
least completely. A year's compromise was arranged. A new arrangement
must be effected before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two
countries become separate entities. The Emperor would still be King of
Hungary--that is, King of an independent foreign country. There would be
Hungarian custom-houses on the Austrian border, and there would be a
Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign office. Both countries would be
weakened by this, both would suffer damage.
The Opposition in the House, although in the minority, had a good weapon
to fight with in the pending Ausgleich. If it could delay the Ausgleich
a few weeks, the Government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated
language ordinance or lose Hungary.
The Opposition began its fight. Its arms were the Rules of the House.
It was soon manifest that by applying these Rules ingeniously it could
make the majority helpless, and keep it so as long as it pleased. It
could shut off business every now and then with a motion to adjourn. It
could require the ayes and noes on the motion, and use up thirty minutes
on that detail. It could call for the reading and verification of the
minutes of the preceding meeting, and use up half a day in that way. It
could require that several of its members be entered upon the list of
permitted speakers previously to the opening of a sitting; and as there
is no time-limit, further delays could thus be accomplished.
These were all lawful weapons, and the men of the Opposition (technically
called the Left) were within their rights in using them. They used them
to such dire purpose that all parliamentary business was paralysed. The
Right (the Government side) could accomplish nothing. Then it had a
saving idea. This idea was a curious one. It was to have the President
and the Vice-Presidents of the Parliament trample the Rules under foot
upon occasion!
This, for a profoundly embittered minority constructed out of fire and
gun-cotton! It was time for idle strangers to go and ask leave to look
down out of a gallery and see what would be the result of it.
II. A MEMORABLE SITTING.
And now took place that memorable sitting of the House which broke two
records. It lasted the best part of two days and a night, surpassing by
half an hour the longest sitting known to the world's previous
parliamentary history, and breaking the long-speech record with Dr.
Lecher's twelve-hour effort, the longest flow of unbroken talk that ever
came out of one mouth since the world began.
At 8.45 on the evening of the 28th of October, when the House had been
sitting a few minutes short of ten hours, Dr. Lecher was granted the
floor. It was a good place for theatrical effects. I think that no
other Senate House is so shapely as this one, or so richly and showily
decorated. Its plan is that of an opera-house. Up toward the straight
side of it--the stage side--rise a couple of terraces of desks for the
ministry, and the official clerks or secretaries--terraces thirty feet
long, and each supporting about half a dozen desks with spaces between
them. Above these is the President's terrace, against the wall. Along
it are distributed the proper accommodations for the presiding officer
and his assistants. The wall is of richly coloured marble highly
polished, its paneled sweep relieved by fluted columns and pilasters of
distinguished grace and dignity, which glow softly and frostily in the
electric light. Around the spacious half-circle of the floor bends the
great two-storied curve of the boxes, its frontage elaborately ornamented
and sumptuously gilded. On the floor of the House the 425 desks radiate
fanwise from the President's tribune.
The galleries are crowded on this particular evening, for word has gone
about that the Ausgleich is before the House; that the President, Ritter
von Abrahamowicz, has been throttling the Rules; that the Opposition are
in an inflammable state in consequence, and that the night session is
likely to be of an exciting sort.
The gallery guests are fashionably dressed, and the finery of the women
makes a bright and pretty show under the strong electric light. But down
on the floor there is no costumery.
The deputies are dressed in day clothes; some of the clothes neat and
trim, others not; there may be three members in evening dress, but not
more. There are several Catholic priests in their long black gowns, and
with crucifixes hanging from their necks. No member wears his hat. One
may see by these details that the aspects are not those of an evening
sitting of an English House of Commons, but rather those of a sitting of
our House of Representatives.
In his high place sits the President, Abrahamowicz, object of the
Opposition's limitless hatred. He is sunk back in the depths of his
arm-chair, and has his chin down. He brings the ends of his spread
fingers together, in front of his breast, and reflectively taps them
together, with the air of one who would like to begin business, but must
wait, and be as patient as he can. It makes you think of Richelieu. Now
and then he swings his head up to the left or to the right and answers
something which some one has bent down to say to him. Then he taps his
fingers again. He looks tired, and maybe a trifle harassed. He is a
gray-haired, long, slender man, with a colourless long face, which, in
repose, suggests a death-mask; but when not in repose is tossed and
rippled by a turbulent smile which washes this way and that, and is not
easy to keep up with--a pious smile, a holy smile, a saintly smile, a
deprecating smile, a beseeching and supplicating smile; and when it is at
work the large mouth opens, and the flexible lips crumple, and unfold,
and crumple again, and move around in a genial and persuasive and angelic
way, and expose large glimpses of the teeth; and that interrupts the
sacredness of the smile and gives it momentarily a mixed worldly and
political and satanic cast. It is a most interesting face to watch. And
then the long hands and the body--they furnish great and frequent help to
the face in the business of adding to the force of the statesman's words.
To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the
crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt
interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in
effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members were
bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush; and
they also were waiting and expecting. Presently the Chair delivered this
utterance:
'Dr. Lecher has the floor.'
Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour as has
not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches surprised
a white settlement at night. Yells from the Left, counter-yells from the
Right, explosions of yells from all sides at once, and all the air sawed
and pawed and clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms
and hands. Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and tempest rose
Dr. Lecher, serene and collected, and the providential length of his
enabled his head to show out of it. He began his twelve-hour speech. At
any rate, his lips could be seen to move, and that was evidence. On high
sat the President, imploring order, with his long hands put together as
in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking. At intervals
he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with vigour, adding its keen
clamour to the storm weltering there below.
Dr. Lecher went on with his pantomime speech, contented, untroubled.
Here and there and now and then powerful voices burst above the din, and
delivered an ejaculation that was heard. Then the din ceased for a
moment or two, and gave opportunity to hear what the Chair might answer;
then the noise broke out again. Apparently the President was being
charged with all sorts of illegal exercises of power in the interest of
the Right (the Government side): among these, with arbitrarily closing an
Order of Business before it was finished; with an unfair distribution of
the right to the floor; with refusal of the floor, upon quibble and
protest, to members entitled to it; with stopping a speaker's speech upon
quibble and protest; and with other transgressions of the Rules of the
House. One of the interrupters who made himself heard was a young fellow
of slight build and neat dress, who stood a little apart from the solid
crowd and leaned negligently, with folded arms and feet crossed, against
a desk. Trim and handsome; strong face and thin features; black hair
roughed up; parsimonious moustache; resonant great voice, of good tone
and pitch. It is Wolf, capable and hospitable with sword and pistol;
fighter of the recent duel with Count Badeni, the head of the Government.
He shot Badeni through the arm and then walked over in the politest way
and inspected his game, shook hands, expressed regret, and all that. Out
of him came early this thundering peal, audible above the storm:
'I demand the floor. I wish to offer a motion.'
In the sudden lull which followed, the President answered, 'Dr. Lecher
has the floor.'
Wolf. 'I move the close of the sitting!'
P. 'Representative Lecher has the floor.' [Stormy outburst from the
Left--that is, the Opposition.]
Wolf. 'I demand the floor for the introduction of a formal notion.
[Pause]. Mr. President, are you going to grant it, or not? [Crash of
approval from the Left.] I will keep on demanding the floor till I get
it.'
P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order. Dr. Lecher has the floor.'
Wolf. 'Mr. President, are you going to observe the Rules of this House?'
[Tempest of applause and confused ejaculations from the Left--a boom and
roar which long endured, and stopped all business for the time being.]
Dr. von Pessler. 'By the Rules motions are in order, and the Chair must
put them to vote.'
For answer the President (who is a Pole--I make this remark in passing)
began to jangle his bell with energy at the moment that that wild
pandemonium of voices broke out again.
Wolf (hearable above the storm). 'Mr. President, I demand the floor. We
intend to find out, here and now, which is the hardest, a Pole's skull or
a German's!'
This brought out a perfect cyclone of satisfaction from the Left. In the
midst of it someone again moved an Adjournment. The President blandly
answered that Dr. Lecher had the floor. Which was true; and he was
speaking, too, calmly, earnestly, and argumentatively; and the official
stenographers had left their places and were at his elbows taking down
his words, he leaning and orating into their ears--a most curious and
interesting scene.
Dr. von Pessler (to the Chair). 'Do not drive us to extremities!'
The tempest burst out again: yells of approval from the Left, catcalls
and ironical laughter from the Right. At this point a new and most
effective noise-maker was pressed into service. Each desk has an
extension, consisting of a removable board eighteen inches long, six
wide, and a half-inch thick. A member pulled one of these out and began
to belabour the top of his desk with it. Instantly other members
followed suit, and perhaps you can imagine the result. Of all
conceivable rackets it is the most ear-splitting, intolerable, and
altogether fiendish.
The persecuted President leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes,
clasped his hands in his lap, and a look of pathetic resignation crept
over his long face. It is the way a country schoolmaster used to look in
days long past when he had refused his school a holiday and it had risen
against him in ill-mannered riot and violence and insurrection. Twice a
motion to adjourn had been offered--a motion always in order in other
Houses, and doubtless so in this one also. The President had refused to
put these motions. By consequence, he was not in a pleasant place now,
and was having a right hard time. Votes upon motions, whether carried or
defeated, could make endless delay, and postpone the Ausgleich to next
century.
In the midst of these sorrowful circumstances and this hurricane of yells
and screams and satanic clatter of desk-boards, Representative Dr.
Kronawetter unfeelingly reminds the Chair that a motion has been offered,
and adds: 'Say yes, or no! What do you sit there for, and give no
answer?'
P. 'After I have given a speaker the floor, I cannot give it to another.
After Dr. Lecher is through, I will put your motion.' [Storm of
indignation from the Left.]
Wolf (to the Chair). 'Thunder and lightning! look at the Rule governing
the case!'
Kronawetter. 'I move the close of the sitting! And I demand the ayes
and noes!'
Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. President, have I the floor?'
P. 'You have the floor.'
Wolf (to the Chair, in a stentorian voice which cleaves its way through
the storm). 'It is by such brutalities as these that you drive us to
extremities! Are you waiting till someone shall throw into your face the
word that shall describe what you are bringing about?[1] [Tempest of
insulted fury from the Right.] Is that what you are waiting for, old
Grayhead?' [Long-continued clatter of desk-boards from the Left, with
shouts of 'The vote! the vote!' An ironical shout from the Right, 'Wolf
is boss!']
Wolf keeps on demanding the floor for his motion. At length--
P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order! Your conduct is unheard of,
sir! You forget that you are in a parliament; you must remember where
you are, sir.' [Applause from the Right. Dr. Lecher is still peacefully
speaking, the stenographers listening at his lips.]
Wolf (banging on his desk with his desk-board). 'I demand the floor for
my motion! I won't stand this trampling of the Rules under foot--no, not
if I die for it! I will never yield. You have got to stop me by force.
Have I the floor?'
P. 'Representative Wolf, what kind of behaviour is this? I call you to
order again. You should have some regard for your dignity.'
Dr. Lecher speaks on. Wolf turns upon him with an offensive innuendo.
Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. Wolf, I beg you to refrain from that sort of
suggestions.' [Storm of hand-clapping from the Right.]
This was applause from the enemy, for Lecher himself, like Wolf, was an
Obstructionist.
Wolf growls to Lecher, 'You can scribble that applause in your album!'
P. 'Once more I call Representative Wolf to order! Do not forget that
you are a Representative, sir!'
Wolf (slam-banging with his desk-board). 'I will force this matter! Are
you going to grant me the floor, or not?'
And still the sergeant-at-arms did not appear. It was because there
wasn't any. It is a curious thing, but the Chair has no effectual means
of compelling order.
After some more interruptions:
Wolf (banging with his board). 'I demand the floor. I will not yield!'
P. 'I have no recourse against Representative Wolf. In the presence of
behaviour like this it is to be regretted that such is the case.' [A
shout from the Right, 'Throw him out!']
It is true he had no effective recourse. He had an official called an
'Ordner,' whose help he could invoke in desperate cases, but apparently
the Ordner is only a persuader, not a compeller. Apparently he is a
sergeant-at-arms who is not loaded; a good enough gun to look at, but not
valuable for business.
For another twenty or thirty minutes Wolf went on banging with his board
and demanding his rights; then at last the weary President threatened to
summon the dread order-maker. But both his manner and his words were
reluctant. Evidently it grieved him to have to resort to this dire
extremity. He said to Wolf, 'If this goes on, I shall feel obliged to
summon the Ordner, and beg him to restore order in the House.'
Wolf. 'I'd like to see you do it! Suppose you fetch in a few policemen
too! [Great tumult.] Are you going to put my motion to adjourn, or not?'
Dr. Lecher continues his speech. Wolf accompanies him with his
board-clatter.
The President despatches the Ordner, Dr. Lang (himself a deputy), on his
order-restoring mission. Wolf, with his board uplifted for defence,
confronts the Ordner with a remark which Boss Tweed might have translated
into 'Now let's see what you are going to do about it!' [Noise and tumult
all over the House.]
Wolf stands upon his rights, and says he will maintain them until he is
killed in his tracks. Then he resumes his banging, the President jangles
his bell and begs for order, and the rest of the House augments the
racket the best it can.
Wolf. 'I require an adjournment, because I find myself personally
threatened. [Laughter from the Right.] Not that I fear for myself;
I am only anxious about what will happen to the man who touches me.'
The Ordner. 'I am not going to fight with you.'
Nothing came of the efforts of the angel of peace, and he presently
melted out of the scene and disappeared. Wolf went on with his noise
and with his demands that he be granted the floor, resting his board at
intervals to discharge criticisms and epithets at the Chair. Once he
reminded the Chairman of his violated promise to grant him (Wolf) the
floor, and said, 'Whence I came, we call promise-breakers rascals!'
And he advised the Chairman to take his conscience to bed with him and
use it as a pillow. Another time he said that the Chair was making
itself ridiculous before all Europe. In fact, some of Wolf's language
was almost unparliamentary. By-and-by he struck the idea of beating out
a tune with his board. Later he decided to stop asking for the floor,
and to confer it upon himself. And so he and Dr. Lecher now spoke at the
same time, and mingled their speeches with the other noises, and nobody
heard either of them. Wolf rested himself now and then from
speech-making by reading, in his clarion voice, from a pamphlet.
I will explain that Dr. Lecher was not making a twelve-hour speech for
pastime, but for an important purpose. It was the Government's intention
to push the Ausgleich through its preliminary stages in this one sitting
(for which it was the Order of the Day), and then by vote refer it to a
select committee. It was the Majority's scheme--as charged by the
Opposition--to drown debate upon the bill by pure noise--drown it out and
stop it. The debate being thus ended, the vote upon the reference would
follow--with victory for the Government. But into the Government's
calculations had not entered the possibility of a single-barrelled speech
which should occupy the entire time-limit of the setting, and also get
itself delivered in spite of all the noise. Goliath was not expecting
David. But David was there; and during twelve hours he tranquilly pulled
statistical, historical, and argumentative pebbles out of his scrip and
slung them at the giant; and when he was done he was victor, and the day
was saved.
In the English House an obstructionist has held the floor with
Bible-readings and other outside matters; but Dr. Lecher could not have
that restful and recuperative privilege--he must confine himself strictly
to the subject before the House. More than once, when the President
could not hear him because of the general tumult, he sent persons to
listen and report as to whether the orator was speaking to the subject or
not.
The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, and it would have troubled
any other deputy to stick to it three hours without exhausting his
ammunition, because it required a vast and intimate knowledge--detailed
and particularised knowledge--of the commercial, railroading, financial,
and international banking relations existing between two great
sovereignties, Hungary and the Empire. But Dr. Lecher is President of
the Board of Trade of his city of Brunn, and was master of the situation.
His speech was not formally prepared. He had a few notes jotted down for
his guidance; he had his facts in his head; his heard was in his work;
and for twelve hours he stood there, undisturbed by the clamour around
him, and with grace and ease and confidence poured out the riches of his
mind, in closely reasoned arguments, clothed in eloquent and faultless
phrasing.
He is a young man of thirty-seven. He is tall and well-proportioned, and
has cultivated and fortified his muscle by mountain-climbing. If he were
a little handsomer he would sufficiently reproduce for me the Chauncey
Depew of the great New England dinner nights of some years ago; he has
Depew's charm of manner and graces of language and delivery.
There was but one way for Dr. Lecher to hold the floor--he must stay on
his legs. If he should sit down to rest a moment, the floor would be
taken from him by the enemy in the Chair. When he had been talking three
or four hours he himself proposed an adjournment, in order that he might
get some rest from his wearing labours; but he limited his motion with
the condition that if it was lost he should be allowed to continue
his speech, and if it was carried he should have the floor at
the next sitting. Wolf was now appeased, and withdrew his own
thousand-times-offered motion, and Dr. Lecher's was voted upon--and lost.
So he went on speaking.
By one o'clock in the morning, excitement and noise-making had tired out
nearly everybody but the orator. Gradually the seats of the Right
underwent depopulation; the occupants had slipped out to the
refreshment-rooms to eat and drink, or to the corridors to chat. Some
one remarked that there was no longer a quorum present, and moved a call
of the House. The Chair (Vice-President Dr. Kramarz) refused to put it to
vote. There was a small dispute over the legality of this ruling, but
the Chair held its ground.
The Left remained on the battle-field to support their champion. He went
steadily on with his speech; and always it was strong, virile,
felicitous, and to the point. He was earning applause, and this enabled
his party to turn that fact to account. Now and then they applauded him
a couple of minutes on a stretch, and during that time he could stop
speaking and rest his voice without having the floor taken from him.
At a quarter to two a member of the Left demanded that Dr. Lecher be
allowed a recess for rest, and said that the Chairman was 'heartless.'
Dr. Lecher himself asked for ten minutes. The Chair allowed him five.
Before the time had run out Dr. Lecher was on his feet again.
Wolf burst out again with a motion to adjourn. Refused by the Chair.
Wolf said the whole Parliament wasn't worth a pinch of powder. The Chair
retorted that that was true in a case where a single member was able to
make all parliamentary business impossible. Dr. Lecher continued his
speech.
The members of the Majority went out by detachments from time to time and
took naps upon sofas in the reception-rooms; and also refreshed
themselves with food and drink--in quantities nearly unbelievable--but
the Minority stayed loyally by their champion. Some distinguished
deputies of the Majority stayed by him too, compelled thereto by
admiration of his great performance. When a man has been speaking eight
hours, is it conceivable that he can still be interesting, still
fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had been speaking eight hours he was still
compactly surrounded by friends who would not leave him, and by foes (of
all parties) who could not; and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his
words, and all testified their admiration with constant and cordial
outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph without precedent in
history.
During the twelve-hour effort friends brought to the orator three glasses
of wine, four cups of coffee, and one glass of beer--a most stingy
re-enforcement of his wasting tissues, but the hostile Chair would permit
no addition to it. But, no matter, the Chair could not beat that man.
He was a garrison holding a fort, and was not to be starved out.
When he had been speaking eight hours his pulse was 72; when he had
spoken twelve, it was 100.
He finished his long speech in these terms, as nearly as a permissibly
free translation can convey them:
'I will now hasten to close my examination of the subject. I conceive
that we of the Left have made it clear to the honourable gentlemen of the
other side of the House that we are stirred by no intemperate enthusiasm
for this measure in its present shape....
'What we require, and shall fight for with all lawful weapons, is a
formal, comprehensive, and definitive solution and settlement of these
vexed matters. We desire the restoration of the earlier condition of
things; the cancellation of all this incapable Government's pernicious
trades with Hungary; and then--release from the sorry burden of the
Badeni ministry!
'I voice the hope--I know not if it will be fulfilled--I voice the deep
and sincere and patriotic hope that the committee into whose hands this
bill will eventually be committed will take its stand upon high ground,
and will return the Ausgleich-Provisorium to this House in a form which
shall make it the protector and promoter alike of the great interests
involved and of the honour of our fatherland.' After a pause, turning
towards the Government benches: 'But in any case, gentlemen of the
Majority, make sure of this: henceforth, as before, you find us at our
post. The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die!'
Then burst a storm of applause which rose and fell, rose and fell, burst
out again and again and again, explosion after explosion, hurricane after
hurricane, with no apparent promise of ever coming to an end; and
meantime the whole Left was surging and weltering about the champion, all
bent upon wringing his hand and congratulating him and glorifying him.
Finally he got away, and went home and ate five loaves and twelve baskets
of fish, read the morning papers, slept three hours, took a short drive,
then returned to the House, and sat out the rest of the thirty-three-hour
session.
To merely stand up in one spot twelve hours on a stretch is a feat which
very few men could achieve; to add to the task the utterance of a hundred
thousand words would be beyond the possibilities of the most of those
few; to superimpose the requirement that the words should be put into the
form of a compact, coherent, and symmetrical oration would probably rule
out the rest of the few, bar Dr. Lecher.
III.--CURIOUS PARLIAMENTARY ETIQUETTE.
In consequence of Dr. Lecher's twelve-hour speech and the other
obstructions furnished by the Minority, the famous thirty-three-hour
sitting of the House accomplished nothing. The Government side had made
a supreme effort, assisting itself with all the helps at hand, both
lawful and unlawful, yet had failed to get the Ausgleich into the hands
of a committee. This was a severe defeat. The Right was mortified, the
Left jubilant.
Parliament was adjourned for a week--to let the members cool off,
perhaps--a sacrifice of precious time; for but two months remained in
which to carry the all-important Ausgleich to a consummation.
If I have reported the behaviour of the House intelligibly, the reader
has been surprised by it, and has wondered whence these law-makers come
and what they are made of; and he has probably supposed that the conduct
exhibited at the Long Sitting was far out of the common, and due to
special excitement and irritation. As to the make-up of the House, it is
this: the deputies come from all the walks of life and from all the
grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, peasants,
mechanics, labourers, lawyers, judges, physicians, professors, merchants,
bankers, shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere,
devoted, and they hate the Jews. The title of Doctor is so common in the
House that one may almost say that the deputy who does not bear it is by
that reason conspicuous. I am assured that it is not a self-granted
title, and not an honorary one, but an earned one; that in Austria it is
very seldom conferred as a mere compliment; that in Austria the degrees
of Doctor of Music, Doctor of Philosophy, and so on, are not conferred by
the seats of learning; and so, when an Austrian is called Doctor, it
means that he is either a lawyer or a physician, and that he is not a
self-educated man, but is college-bred, and has been diplomaed for merit.
That answers the question of the constitution of the House. Now as to
the House's curious manners. The manners exhibited by this convention of
Doctors were not at that time being tried as a wholly new experiment. I
will go back to a previous sitting in order to show that the deputies had
already had some practice.
There had been an incident. The dignity of the House had been wounded by
improprieties indulged in in its presence by a couple of the members.
This matter was placed in the hands of a committee to determine where the
guilt lay and the degree of it, and also to suggest the punishment. The
chairman of the committee brought in his report. By this it appeared
that in the course of a speech, Deputy Schrammel said that religion had
no proper place in the public schools--it was a private matter.
Whereupon Deputy Gregorig shouted, 'How about free love!'
To this, Deputy Iro flung out this retort: 'Soda-water at the Wimberger!'
This appeared to deeply offend Deputy Gregorig, who shouted back at Iro,
'You cowardly blatherskite, say that again!'
The committee had sat three hours. Gregorig had apologised. Iro
explained that he didn't say anything about soda-water at the Wimberger.
He explained in writing, and was very explicit: 'I declare upon my word
of honour that I did not say the words attributed to me.'
Unhappily for his word of honour, it was proved by the official
stenographers and by the testimony of several deputies that he did say
them.
The committee did not officially know why the apparently inconsequential
reference to soda-water at the Wimberger should move Deputy Gregorig to
call the utterer of it a cowardly blatherskite; still, after proper
deliberation, it was of the opinion that the House ought to formally
censure the whole business. This verdict seems to have been regarded as
sharply severe. I think so because Deupty Dr. Lueger, Burgermeister of
Vienna, felt it a duty to soften the blow to his friend Gregorig by
showing that the soda-water remark was not so innocuous as it might look;
that, indeed, Gregorig's tough retory was justifiable--and he proceeded
to explain why. He read a number of scandalous post-cards which he
intimated had proceeded from Iro, as indicated by the handwriting, though
they were anonymous. Some of them were posted to Gregorig at his place
of business and could have been read by all his subordinates; the others
were posted to Gregorig's wife. Lueger did not say--but everybody knew
--that the cards referred to a matter of town gossip which made Mr.
Gregorig a chief actor in a tavern scene where siphon-squirting played a
prominent and humorous part, and wherein women had a share.
There were several of the cards; more than several, in fact; no fewer
than five were sent in one day. Dr. Lueger read some of them, and
described others. Some of them had pictures on them; one a picture of a
hog with a monstrous snout, and beside it a squirting soda-siphon; below
it some sarcastic doggerel.
Gregorig dealt in shirts, cravats, etc. One of the cards bore these
words: 'Much-respected Deputy and collar-sewer--or stealer.'
Another: 'Hurrah for the Christian-Social work among the
women-assemblages! Hurrah for the soda-squirter!' Comment by Dr. Lueger:
'I cannot venture to read the rest of that one, nor the signature,
either.'
Another: 'Would you mind telling me if....' Comment by Dr. Lueger: 'The
rest of it is not properly readable.'
To Deputy Gregorig's wife: 'Much-respected Madam Gregorig,--The
undersigned desires an invitation to the next soda-squirt.' Comment by
Dr. Lueger: 'Neither the rest of the card nor the signature can I venture
to read to the House, so vulgar are they.'
The purpose of this card--to expose Gregorig to his family--was repeated
in others of these anonymous missives.
The House, by vote, censured the two improper deputies.
This may have had a modifying effect upon the phraseology of the
membership for a while, and upon its general exuberance also, but it was
not for long. As has been seen, it had become lively once more on the
night of the Long Sitting. At the next sitting after the long one there
was certainly no lack of liveliness. The President was persistently
ignoring the Rules of the House in the interest of the government side,
and the Minority were in an unappeasable fury about it. The ceaseless
din and uproar, the shouting and stamping and desk-banging, were
deafening, but through it all burst voices now and then that made
themselves heard. Some of the remarks were of a very candid sort, and I
believe that if they had been uttered in our House of Representatives
they would have attracted attention. I will insert some samples here.
Not in their order, but selected on their merits:
Mr. Mayreder (to the President). 'You have lied! You conceded the floor
to me; make it good, or you have lied!'
Mr. Glockner (to the President). 'Leave! Get out!'
Wolf (indicating the President). 'There sits a man to whom a certain
title belongs!'
Unto Wolf, who is continuously reading, in a powerful voice, from a
newspaper, arrive these personal remarks from the Majority: 'Oh, shut
your mouth!' 'Put him out!' 'Out with him!' Wolf stops reading a moment
to shout at Dr. Lueger, who has the floor but cannot get a hearing,
'Please, Betrayer of the People, begin!'
Dr. Lueger, 'Meine Herren--' ['Oho!' and groans.]
Wolf. 'That's the holy light of the Christian Socialists!'
Mr. Kletzenbauer (Christian Socialist). 'Dam--nation! Are you ever
going to quiet down?'
Wolf discharges a galling remark at Mr. Wohlmeyer.
Wohlmeyer (responding). 'You Jew, you!'
There is a moment's lull, and Dr. Lueger begins his speech. Graceful,
handsome man, with winning manners and attractive bearing, a bright and
easy speaker, and is said to know how to trim his political sails to
catch any favouring wind that blows. He manages to say a few words, then
the tempest overwhelms him again.
Wolf stops reading his paper a moment to say a drastic thing about Lueger
and his Christian-Social pieties, which sets the C.S.S. in a sort of
frenzy.
Mr. Vielohlawek. 'You leave the Christian Socialists alone, you
word-of-honour-breaker! Obstruct all you want to, but you leave them
alone! You've no business in this House; you belong in a gin-mill!'
Mr. Prochazka. 'In a lunatic-asylum, you mean!'
Vielohlawek. 'It's a pity that such man should be leader of the Germans;
he disgraces the German name!'
Dr. Scheicher. 'It's a shame that the like of him should insult us.'
Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Contemptible cub--we will bounce thee out of
this!' [It is inferable that the 'thee' is not intended to indicate
affection this time, but to re-enforce and emphasise Mr. Storhbach's
scorn.]
Dr. Scheicher. 'His insults are of no consequence. He wants his ears
boxed.'
Dr. Lueger (to Wolf). 'You'd better worry a trifle over your Iro's word
of honour. You are behaving like a street arab.'
Dr. Scheicher. 'It is infamous!'
Dr. Lueger. 'And these shameless creatures are the leaders of the German
People's Party!'
Meantime Wolf goes whooping along with his newspaper readings in great
contentment.
Dr. Pattai. 'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You haven't the floor!'
Strohbach. 'The miserable cub!'
Dr. Lueger (to Wolf, raising his voice strenuously above the storm).
'You are a wholly honourless street brat!' [A voice, 'Fire the
rapscallion out!' But Wolf's soul goes marching noisily on, just the
same.]
Schonerer (vast and muscular, and endowed with the most powerful voice in
the Reichsrath; comes ploughing down through the standing crowds, red,
and choking with anger; halts before Deputy Wohlmeyer, grabs a rule and
smashes it with a blow upon a desk, threatens Wohlmeyer's face with his
fist, and bellows out some personalities, and a promise). 'Only you
wait--we'll teach you!' [A whirlwind of offensive retorts assails him
from the band of meek and humble Christian Socialists compacted around
their leader, that distinguished religious expert, Dr. Lueger,
Burgermeister of Vienna. Our breath comes in excited gasps now, and we
are full of hope. We imagine that we are back fifty years ago in the
Arkansas Legislature, and we think we know what is going to happen, and
are glad we came, and glad we are up in the gallery, out of the way,
where we can see the whole thing and yet not have to supply any of the
material for the inquest. However, as it turns out, our confidence is
abused, our hopes are misplaced.]
Dr. Pattai (wildly excited). 'You quiet down, or we shall turn ourselves
loose! There will be cuffing of ears!'
Prochazka (in a fury). 'No--not ear boxing, but genuine blows!'
Vieholawek. 'I would rather take my hat off to a Jew than to Wolf!'
Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Jew flunky! Here we have been fighting the Jews
for ten years, and now you are helping them to power again. How much do
you get for it?'
Holansky. 'What he wants is a strait-jacket!'
Wolf continues his reading. It is a market report now.
Remark flung across the House to Schonerer: 'Die Grossmutter auf dem
Misthaufen erzeugt worden!'
It will be judicious not to translate that. Its flavour is pretty high,
in any case, but it becomes particularly gamy when you remember that the
first gallery was well stocked with ladies.
Apparently it was a great hit. It fetched thunders of joyous enthusiasm
out of the Christian Socialists, and in their rapture they flung biting
epithets with wasteful liberality at specially detested members of the
Opposition; among others, this one at Schonerer, 'Bordell in der
Krugerstrasse!' Then they added these words, which they whooped, howled,
and also even sand, in a deep-voiced chorus: 'Schmul Leeb Kohn! Schmul
Leeb Kohn! Schmul Leeb Kohn!' and made it splendidly audible above the
banging of desk-boards and the rest of the roaring cyclone of fiendish
noises. [A gallery witticism comes flitting by from mouth to mouth
around the great curve: 'The swan-song of Austrian representative
government!' You can note its progress by the applausive smiles and nods
it gets as it skims along.]
Kletzenbauer. 'Holofernes, where is Judith?' [Storm of laughter.]
Gregorig (the shirt-merchant). 'This Wolf-Theatre is costing 6,000
florins!'
Wolf (with sweetness). 'Notice him, gentlemen; it is Mr. Gregorig.'
[Laughter.]
Vieholawek (to Wolf). 'You Judas!'
Schneider. 'Brothel-knight!'
Chorus of Voices. 'East-German offal tub!'
And so the war of epithets crashes along, with never-diminishing energy,
for a couple of hours.
The ladies in the gallery were learning. That was well; for by-and-by
ladies will form a part of the membership of all the legislatures in the
world; as soon as they can prove competency they will be admitted. At
present, men only are competent to legislate; therefore they look down
upon women, and would feel degraded if they had to have them for
colleagues in their high calling.
Wolf is yelling another market report now.
Gessman. 'Shut up, infamous louse-brat!'
During a momentary lull Dr. Lueger gets a hearing for three sentences of
his speech. The demand and require that the President shall suppress the
four noisiest members of the Opposition.
Wolf (with a that-settles-it toss of the head). 'The shifty trickster of
Vienna has spoken!'
Iro belonged to Schonerer's party. The word-of-honour incident has given
it a new name. Gregorig is a Christian Socialist, and hero of the
post-cards and the Wimberger soda-squirting incident. He stands vast and
conspicuous, and conceited and self-satisfied, and roosterish and
inconsequential, at Lueger's elbow, and is proud and cocky to be in such
a great company. He looks very well indeed; really majestic, and aware
of it. He crows out his little empty remark, now and then, and looks as
pleased as if he had been delivered of the Ausgleich. Indeed, he does
look notably fine. He wears almost the only dress vest on the floor; it
exposes a continental spread of white shirt-front; his hands are posed at
ease in the lips of his trousers pockets; his head is tilted back
complacently; he is attitudinising; he is playing to the gallery.
However, they are all doing that. It is curious to see. Men who only
vote, and can't make speeches, and don't know how to invent witty
ejaculations, wander about the vacated parts of the floor, and stop in a
good place and strike attitudes--attitudes suggestive of weighty thought,
mostly--and glance furtively up at the galleries to see how it works; or
a couple will come together and shake hands in an artificial way, and
laugh a gay manufactured laugh, and do some constrained and
self-conscious attitudinising; and they steal glances at the galleries to
see if they are getting notice. It is like a scene on the stage--by-play
by minor actors at the back while the stars do the great work at the
front. Even Count Badeni attitudinises for a moment; strikes a reflective
Napoleonic attitude of fine picturesqueness--but soon thinks better of it
and desists. There are two who do not attitudinise--poor harried and
insulted President Abrahamowicz, who seems wholly miserable, and can find
no way to put in the dreary time but by swinging his bell and discharging
occasional remarks which nobody can hear; and a resigned and patient
priest, who sits lonely in a great vacancy on Majority territory and
munches an apple.
Schonerer uplifts his fog-horn of a voice and shakes the roof with an
insult discharged at the Majority.
Dr. Lueger. 'The Honourless Party would better keep still here!'
Gregorig (the echo, swelling out his shirt-front). 'Yes, keep quiet,
pimp!'
Schonerer (to Lueger). 'Political mountebank!'
Prochazka (to Schonerer). 'Drunken clown!'
During the final hour of the sitting many happy phrases were distributed
through the proceedings. Among them were these--and they are strikingly
good ones:
'Blatherskite!'
'Blackguard!'
'Scoundrel!'
'Brothel-daddy!'
This last was the contribution of Dr. Gessman, and gave great
satisfaction. And deservedly. It seems to me that it was one of the
most sparkling things that was said during the whole evening.
At half-past two in the morning the House adjourned. The victory was
with the Opposition. No; not quite that. The effective part of it was
snatched away from them by an unlawful exercise of Presidential force
--another contribution toward driving the mistreated Minority out of their
minds.
At other sittings of the parliament, gentlemen of the Opposition, shaking
their fists toward the President, addressed him as 'Polish Dog'. At one
sitting an angry deputy turned upon a colleague and shouted,
'----------!'
You must try to imagine what it was. If I should offer it even in the
original it would probably not get by the editor's blue pencil; to offer
a translation would be to waste my ink, of course. This remark was
frankly printed in its entirety by one of the Vienna dailies, but the
others disguised the toughest half of it with stars.
If the reader will go back over this chapter and gather its array of
extraordinary epithets into a bunch and examine them, he will marvel at
two things: how this convention of gentlemen could consent to use such
gross terms; and why the users were allowed to get out the place alive.
There is no way to understand this strange situation. If every man in
the House were a professional blackguard, and had his home in a sailor
boarding-house, one could still not understand it; for, although that
sort do use such terms, they never take them. These men are not
professional blackguards; they are mainly gentlemen, and educated; yet
they use the terms, and take them too. They really seem to attach no
consequence to them. One cannot say that they act like schoolboys; for
that is only almost true, not entirely. Schoolboys blackguard each other
fiercely, and by the hour, and one would think that nothing would ever
come of it but noise; but that would be a mistake. Up to a certain limit
the result would be noise only, but, that limit overstepped, trouble
would follow right away. There are certain phrases--phrases of a
peculiar character--phrases of the nature of that reference to
Schonerer's grandmother, for instance--which not even the most spiritless
schoolboy in the English-speaking world would allow to pass unavenged.
One difference between schoolboys and the law-makers of the Reichsrath
seems to be that the law-makers have no limit, no danger-line.
Apparently they may call each other what they please, and go home
unmutilated.
Now, in fact, they did have a scuffle on two occasions, but it was not on
account of names called. There has been no scuffle where that was the
cause.
It is not to be inferred that the House lacks a sense of honour because
it lacks delicacy. That would be an error. Iro was caught in a lie, and
it profoundly disgraced him. The House cut him, turned its back upon
him. He resigned his seat; otherwise he would have been expelled. But
it was lenient with Gregorig, who had called Iro a cowardly blatherskite
in debate. It merely went through the form of mildly censuring him.
That did not trouble Gregorig.
The Viennese say of themselves that they are an easy-going,
pleasure-loving community, making the best of life, and not taking it
very seriously. Nevertheless, they are grieved about the ways of their
Parliament, and say quite frankly that they are ashamed. They claim that
the low condition of the parliament's manners is new, not old. A
gentleman who was at the head of the government twenty years ago confirms
this, and says that in his time the parliament was orderly and
well-behaved. An English gentleman of long residence here endorses this,
and says that a low order of politicians originated the present forms of
questionable speech on the stump some years ago, and imported them into
the parliament.[2] However, some day there will be a Minister of
Etiquette and a sergeant-at-arms, and then things will go better. I mean
if parliament and the Constitution survive the present storm.
IV.--THE HISTORIC CLIMAX
During the whole of November things went from bad to worse. The
all-important Ausgleich remained hard aground, and could not be sparred
off. Badeni's government could not withdraw the Language Ordinance and
keep its majority, and the Opposition could not be placated on easier
terms. One night, while the customary pandemonium was crashing and
thundering along at its best, a fight broke out. It was a surging,
struggling, shoulder-to-shoulder scramble. A great many blows were
struck. Twice Schonerer lifted one of the heavy ministerial fauteuils
--some say with one hand--and threatened members of the Majority with it,
but it was wrenched away from him; a member hammered Wolf over the head
with the President's bell, and another member choked him; a professor was
flung down and belaboured with fists and choked; he held up an open
penknife as a defence against the blows; it was snatched from him and
flung to a distance; it hit a peaceful Christian Socialist who wasn't
doing anything, and brought blood from his hand. This was the only blood
drawn. The men who got hammered and choked looked sound and well next
day. The fists and the bell were not properly handled, or better results
would have been apparent. I am quite sure that the fighters were not in
earnest.
On Thanksgiving Day the sitting was a history-making one. On that day
the harried, bedevilled, and despairing government went insane. In order
to free itself from the thraldom of the Opposition it committed this
curiously juvenile crime; it moved an important change of the Rules of
the House, forbade debate upon the motion, put it to a stand-up vote
instead of ayes and noes, and then gravely claimed that it had been
adopted; whereas, to even the dullest witness--if I without immodesty may
pretend to that place--it was plain that nothing legitimately to be
called a vote had been taken at all.
I think that Saltpeter never uttered a truer thing than when he said,
'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' Evidently the
government's mind was tottering when this bald insults to the House was
the best way it could contrive for getting out of the frying-pan.
The episode would have been funny if the matter at stake had been a
trifle; but in the circumstances it was pathetic. The usual storm was
raging in the House. As usual, many of the Majority and the most of the
Minority were standing up--to have a better chance to exchange epithets
and make other noises. Into this storm Count Falkenhayn entered, with
his paper in his hand; and at once there was a rush to get near him and
hear him read his motion. In a moment he was walled in by listeners.
The several clauses of his motion were loudly applauded by these allies,
and as loudly disapplauded--if I may invent a word--by such of the
Opposition as could hear his voice. When he took his seat the President
promptly put the motion--persons desiring to vote in the affirmative,
stand up! The House was already standing up; had been standing for an
hour; and before a third of it had found out what the President had been
saying, he had proclaimed the adoption of the motion! And only a few
heard that. In fact, when that House is legislating you can't tell it
from artillery practice.
You will realise what a happy idea it was to side-track the lawful ayes
and noes and substitute a stand-up vote by this fact: that a little
later, when a deputation of deputies waited upon the President and asked
him if he was actually willing to claim that that measure had been
passed, he answered, 'Yes--and unanimously.' It shows that in effect the
whole House was on its feet when that trick was sprung.
The 'Lex Falkenhayn,' thus strangely born, gave the President power to
suspend for three days any deputy who should continue to be disorderly
after being called to order twice, and it also placed at his disposal
such force as might be necessary to make the suspension effective. So
the House had a sergeant-at-arms at last, and a more formidable one, as
to power, than any other legislature in Christendom had ever possessed.
The Lex Falkenhayn also gave the House itself authority to suspend
members for thirty days.
On these terms the Ausgleich could be put through in an hour--apparently.
The Opposition would have to sit meek and quiet, and stop obstructing, or
be turned into the street, deputy after deputy, leaving the Majority an
unvexed field for its work.
Certainly the thing looked well. The government was out of the
frying-pan at last. It congratulated itself, and was almost girlishly
happy. Its stock rose suddenly from less than nothing to a premium. It
confessed to itself, with pride, that its Lex Falkenhayn was a
master-stroke--a work of genius.
However, there were doubters--men who were troubled, and believed that a
grave mistake had been made. It might be that the Opposition was
crushed, and profitably for the country, too; but the manner of it--the
manner of it! That was the serious part. It could have far-reaching
results; results whose gravity might transcend all guessing. It might be
the initial step toward a return to government by force, a restoration of
the irresponsible methods of obsolete times.
There were no vacant seats in the galleries next day. In fact,
standing-room outside the building was at a premium. There were crowds
there, and a glittering array of helmeted and brass-buttoned police, on
foot and on horseback, to keep them from getting too much excited. No
one could guess what was going to happen, but every one felt that
something was going to happen, and hoped he might have a chance to see
it, or at least get the news of it while it was fresh.
At noon the House was empty--for I do not count myself. Half an hour
later the two galleries were solidly packed, the floor still empty.
Another half-hour later Wolf entered and passed to his place; then other
deputies began to stream in, among them many forms and faces grown
familiar of late. By one o'clock the membership was present in full
force. A band of Socialists stood grouped against the ministerial desks,
in the shadow of the Presidential tribune. It was observable that these
official strongholds were now protected against rushes by bolted gates,
and that these were in ward of servants wearing the House's livery. Also
the removable desk-boards had been taken away, and nothing left for
disorderly members to slat with.
There was a pervading, anxious hush--at least what stood very well for a
hush in that House. It was believed by many that the Opposition was
cowed, and that there would be no more obstruction, no more noise. That
was an error.
Presently the President entered by the distant door to the right,
followed by Vice-President Fuchs, and the two took their way down past
the Polish benches toward the tribune. Instantly the customary storm of
noises burst out, and rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and
really seemed to surpass anything that had gone before it in that place.
The President took his seat and begged for order, but no one could hear
him. His lips moved--one could see that; he bowed his body forward
appealingly, and spread his great hand eloquently over his breast--one
could see that; but as concerned his uttered words, he probably could not
hear them himself. Below him was that crowd of two dozen Socialists
glaring up at him, shaking their fists at him, roaring imprecations and
insulting epithets at him. This went on for some time. Suddenly the
Socialists burst through the gates and stormed up through the ministerial
benches, and a man in a red cravat reached up and snatched the documents
that lay on the President's desk and flung them abroad. The next moment
he and his allies were struggling and fighting with the half-dozen
uniformed servants who were there to protect the new gates. Meantime a
detail of Socialists had swarmed up the side steps and overflowed the
President and the Vice, and were crowding and shouldering and shoving
them out of the place. They crowded them out, and down the steps and
across the House, past the Polish benches; and all about them swarmed
hostile Poles and Czechs, who resisted them. One could see fists go up
and come down, with other signs and shows of a heady fight; then the
President and the Vice disappeared through the door of entrance, and the
victorious Socialists turned and marched back, mounted the tribune, flung
the President's bell and his remaining papers abroad, and then stood
there in a compact little crowd, eleven strong, and held the place as if
it were a fortress. Their friends on the floor were in a frenzy of
triumph, and manifested it in their deafening way. The whole House was
on its feet, amazed and wondering.
It was an astonishing situation, and imposingly dramatic. Nobody had
looked for this. The unexpected had happened. What next? But there can
be no next; the play is over; the grand climax is reached; the
possibilities are exhausted; ring down the curtain.
Not yet. That distant door opens again. And now we see what history
will be talking of five centuries hence: a uniformed and helmeted
battalion of bronzed and stalwart men marching in double file down the
floor of the House--a free parliament profaned by an invasion of brute
force!
It was an odious spectacle--odious and awful. For one moment it was an
unbelievable thing--a thing beyond all credibility; it must be a
delusion, a dream, a nightmare. But no, it was real--pitifully real,
shamefully real, hideously real. These sixty policemen had been
soldiers, and they went at their work with the cold unsentimentality of
their trade. They ascended the steps of the tribune, laid their hands
upon the inviolable persons of the representatives of a nation, and
dragged and tugged and hauled them down the steps and out at the door;
then ranged themselves in stately military array in front of the
ministerial estrade, and so stood.
It was a tremendous episode. The memory of it will outlast all the
thrones that exist to-day. In the whole history of free parliaments the
like of it had been seen but three times before. It takes its imposing
place among the world's unforgettable things. It think that in my
lifetime I have not twice seen abiding history made before my eyes, but I
know that I have seen it once.
Some of the results of this wild freak followed instantly. The Badeni
government came down with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two in
Vienna; there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague,
followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews and Germans
were harried and plundered, and their houses destroyed; in other Bohemian
towns there was rioting--in some cases the Germans being the rioters, in
others the Czechs--and in all cases the Jew had to roast, no matter which
side he was on. We are well along in December now;[3] the next new
Minister-President has not been able to patch up a peace among the
warring factions of the parliament, therefore there is no use in calling
it together again for the present; public opinion believes that
parliamentary government and the Constitution are actually threatened
with extinction, and that the permanency of the monarchy itself is a not
absolutely certain thing!
Yes, the Lex Falkenhayn was a great invention, and did what was claimed
for it--it got the government out of the frying-pan.
[1] That is, revolution.
[2] 'In that gracious bygone time when a mild and good-tempered spirit
was the atmosphere of our House, when the manner of our speakers was
studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day
were wholly unknown,' etc.--Translation of the opening remark of a
leading article in this morning's 'Neue Freie Presse,' December 11.
[3] It is the 9th.--M.T.
PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE 'JUMPING FROG' STORY
Five or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story in
our Negro dialect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety of
speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's Negro stories, and
gave her a copy of 'Harper's Monthly' containing it. She translated it
for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author of it
instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good
lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but
for that mistake; for it was shown that Boccaccio had told that very
story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith
took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it.
I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few
weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question:
'Do you know how old your "Jumping Frog" story is?'
And I answered:
'Yes--forty-five years. The thing happened in Calaveras County, in the
spring of 1849.'
'No; it happened earlier--a couple of thousand years earlier; it is a
Greek story.'
I was astonished--and hurt. I said:
'I am willing to be a literary thief if it has been so ordained; I am
even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of Hopkinson
Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think would be as
honest as any one if he could do it without occasioning remark; but I am
not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred years. I must ask
you to knock off part of that.'
But the professor was not chaffing: he was in earnest, and could not
abate a century. He offered to get the book and send it to me and the
Cambridge text-book containing the English translation also. I thought I
would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January
30th he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in
this article. It is my 'Jumping Frog' tale in every essential. It is
not strung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there.
To me this is very curious and interesting. Curious for several reasons.
For instance:
I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as
a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would
remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant; he had no gift as a
story-teller, and no invention; in his mouth this episode was merely
history--history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history, too;
he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were austere
facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts; he was
drawing on his memory, not his mind; he saw no humour in his tale,
neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed; in
my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and to his
fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were
worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in
taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's
deep knowledge of a frog's nature--for he knew (as the narrator asserted
and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready
to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They
were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware
that a first-rate story had been told in a first-rate way, and that it
brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected--humour.
Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in
Angel's Camp in the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that day in the
fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its
duplicate happened in Boeotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it
must be a case of history actually repeating itself, and not a case of a
good story floating down the ages and surviving because too good to be
allowed to perish.
I would now like to have the reader examine the Greek story and the story
told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly alike
they are in essentials.
[Translation.]
THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.[1]
An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the road-side
looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian said his was
a remarkable frog, and asked if he would agree to start a contest of
frogs, on condition that he whose frog jumped farthest should receive a
large sum of money. The Athenian replied that he would if the other
would fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he agreed, and
when he was gone the Athenian took the frog, and, opening its mouth,
poured some stones into its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem
larger than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon returned with
the other frog, and the contest began. The second frog first was
pinched, and jumped moderately; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And
he gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort, but he could
not move his body the least. So the Athenian departed with the money.
When he was gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter with the
frog, lifted him up and examined him. And being turned upside down, he
opened his mouth and vomited out the stones.
And here is the way it happened in California:
FROM 'THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY'
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers and chicken cocks, and tom-cats,
and all of them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't
fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog
one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so
he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn
that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him
a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling
in the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple
if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a
cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in
practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could
see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do
'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster
down here on this flor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing
out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring
straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the
floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of
his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd
been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more
ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers
that had travelled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog
that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch
him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a stranger
in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:
'What might it be that you've got in the box?'
And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it's ain't--it's only just a frog.'
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?'
'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing,
I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look, and
give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I
don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, 'Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog
I'd bet you.'
And then Smiley says: 'That's all right--that's all right; if you'll hold
my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller took the
box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set down to
wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then
he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and
filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to his chin--and
set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in
the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog and fetched him in
and give him to this feller, and says:
'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws
just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says, 'One
--two--three--git!' and him and the feller touched up the frogs from
behind, and the new frog hopped off lively; but Dan'l give a heave, and
hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no
more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised,
and he was disgusted, too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter
was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at
the door he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and
says again, very deliberate: 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no p'ints
about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him
--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.' And he ketched Dan'l by the
nape of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why, blame my cats if he
don't weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down, and he belched out a
double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the
maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feeler, but he
never ketched him.
The resemblances are deliciously exact. There you have the wily Boeotain
and the wily Jim Smiley waiting--two thousand years apart--and waiting,
each equipped with his frog and 'laying' for the stranger. A contest is
proposed--for money. The Athenian would take a chance 'if the other
would fetch him a frog'; the Yankee says: 'I'm only a stranger here, and
I ain't got a frog; but if I had a frog I'd bet you.' The wily Boeotian
and the wily Californian, with that vast gulf of two thousand years
between, retire eagerly and go frogging in the marsh; the Athenian and
the Yankee remain behind and work a best advantage, the one with pebbles,
the other with shot. Presently the contest began. In the one case 'they
pinched the Boeotian frog'; in the other, 'him and the feller touched up
the frogs from behind.' The Boeotian frog 'gathered himself for a leap'
(you can just see him!), but 'could not move his body in the least'; the
Californian frog 'give a heave, but it warn't no use--he couldn't budge.'
In both the ancient and the modern cases the strangers departed with the
money. The Boeotian and the Californian wonder what is the matter with
their frogs; they lift them and examine; they turn them upside down and
out spills the informing ballast.
Yes, the resemblances are curiously exact. I used to tell the story of
the 'Jumping Frog' in San Francisco, and presently Artemus Ward came
along and wanted it to help fill out a little book which he was about to
publish; so I wrote it out and sent it to his publisher, Carleton; but
Carleton thought the book had enough matter in it, so he gave the story
to Henry Clapp as a present, and Clapp put it in his 'Saturday Press,'
and it killed that paper with a suddenness that was beyond praise. At
least the paper died with that issue, and none but envious people have
ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The
'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself
through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently,
the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the
gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile has
been used before.
Early in '66 the 'Jumping Frog' was issued in book form, with other
sketches of mine. A year or two later Madame Blanc translated it into
French and published it in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' but the result
was not what should have been expected, for the 'Revue' struggled along
and pulled through, and is alive yet. I think the fault must have been
in the translation. I ought to have translated it myself. I think so
because I examined into the matter and finally retranslated the sketch
from the French back into English, to see what the trouble was; that is,
to see just what sort of a focus the French people got upon it. Then the
mystery was explained. In French the story is too confused and chaotic
and unreposeful and ungrammatical and insane; consequently it could only
cause grief and sickness--it could not kill. A glance at my
retranslation will show the reader that this must be true.
[My Retranslation.]
THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS
Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of
combat, and some cats, and all sorts of things: and with his rage of
betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him
imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to
make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months
he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter)
in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you respond that
he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant
after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make
one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall
upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to
gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised
continually--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a
fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it
was the education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I
him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this
plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, 'Some
flies, Daniel, some flies!'--in a fash of the eye Daniel had bounded and
seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where
he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if
he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen
frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. And when he himself
agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground
in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know.
To jump plain--this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that
Smiley multiplied the bests upon her as long as there to him remained a
red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he
of it was right, for some men who were travelled, who had all seen, said
that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog.
Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried bytimes
to the village for some bet.
One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and
him said:
'What is this that you have then shut up there within?'
Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
'That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is
nothing of such, it not is but a frog.'
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side
and from the other, then he said:
'Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?'
'My God!' responded Smiley, always with an air disengaged, 'she is good
for one thing, to my notice (a mon avis), she can better in jumping (elle
peut batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.'
The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered
to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
'Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog.' (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no
judge.--M.T.]
'Possible that you not it saw not,' said Smiley; 'possible that you--you
comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
an amateur. Of all manner (de toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that
she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the country of Calaveras.'
The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:
'I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had
one, I would embrace the bet.'
'Strong, well!' respond Smiley; 'nothing of more facility. If you will
hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher.)'
Behold, then, the individual who guards the box, who puts his forty
dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attendre). He
attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he
takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills
with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him puts
by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp.
Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
said:
'Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet
upon the same line, and I give the signal'--then he added: 'One, two
three--advance!'
Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new
put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exhalted the
shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? He could not budge, he
is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him
had put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the
turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendre).
The indidivual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it
himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the
shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air
deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant
est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce pas-dessus l'epaule, comme ca,
au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere).
'Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than
another.'
Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,
until that which at last he said:
'I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.
Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.'
He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:
'The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds.'
He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le
malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognised how it was, he was like mad.
He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he
not him caught never.
It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but
I am not acquainted with them.
So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, an incident which has this unique feature about it--that it is
both old and new, a 'chestnut' and not a 'chestnut;' for it was original
when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it
happened in California in our own time.
P.S.
London, July, 1900.--Twice, recently, I have been asked this question:
'Have you seen the Greek version of the "Jumping Frog"?'
And twice I have answered--'No.'
'Has Professor Van Dyke seen it?'
'I suppose so.'
'Then you supposition is at fault.'
'Why?'
'Because there isn't any such version.'
'Do you mean to intimate that the tale is modern, and not borrowed from
some ancient Greek book.'
'Yes. It is not permissible for any but the very young and innocent to
be so easily beguiled as you and Van Dyke have been.'
'Do you mean that we have fallen a prey to our ignorance and simplicity?'
'Yes. Is Van Dyke a Greek scholar?'
'I believe so.'
'Then he knew where to find the ancient Greek version if one existed.
Why didn't he look? Why did he jump to conclusions?'
'I don't know. And was it worth the trouble, anyway?'
As it turns out, now, it was not claimed that the story had been
translated from the Greek. It had its place among other uncredited
stories, and was there to be turned into Greek by students of that
language. 'Greek Prose Composition'--that title is what made the
confusion. It seemed to mean that the originals were Greek. It was not
well chosen, for it was pretty sure to mislead.
Thus vanishes the Greek Frog, and I am sorry: for he loomed fine and
grand across the sweep of the ages, and I took a great pride in him.
M.T.
[1] Sidgwick, Greek Prose Composition, page 116
MY MILITARY CAMPAIGN
You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is
it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started
out to do something in it, but didn't? Thousands entered the war, got
just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by
their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a sort
of voice--not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but an
apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better
people--people who did something--I grant that; but they ought at least
to be allowed to state why they didn't do anything, and also to explain
the process by which they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light
must have a sort of value.
Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the
first months of the great trouble--a good deal of unsettledness, of
leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for
us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was
piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had
gone out of the Union on December 20, 1860. My pilot-mate was a New
Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen
to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my
father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I
had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a
great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if
he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he
was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was
nothing--anybody could pretend to a good impulse; and went on decrying my
Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession
atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi, and I
became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans, January 26,
when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his full share of the rebel
shouting, but was bitterly opposed to letting me do mine. He said that I
came of bad stock--of a father who had been willing to set slaves free.
In the following summer he was piloting a Federal gun-boat and shouting
for the Union again, and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note
for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew;
but he repudiated that note without hesitation, because I was a rebel,
and the son of a man who had owned slaves.
In that summer--of 1861--the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the
shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They
took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points.
The Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty
thousand militia to repel the invader.
I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent
--Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by
night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom Lyman, a
young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience, was
made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant;
I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the
advice of an innocent connected with the organisation, we called
ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one found fault
with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well. The young
fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of
stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric
novels and singing forlorn love-ditties. He had some pathetic little
nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was
Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as common in that
region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear.
So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: d'Unlap. That
contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new
name the same old pronunciation--emphasis on the front end of it. He
then did the bravest thing that can be imagined--a thing to make one
shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and
affectations; he began to write his name so: d'Un Lap. And he waited
patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of
art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name
accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had
known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as
familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of
victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by
consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and
originally written d'Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into
English it would mean Peterson: Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone
or rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter; d', of or
from; un, a or one; hence d'Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that
is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter--Peterson.
Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them;
so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way;
he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was 'no
slouch,' as the boys said.
That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town
jeweller,--trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright,
educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in
life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of
ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked
upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously.
We did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full
of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and
four in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes,
new occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I
went; I did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn't at
twenty-five.
Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey
had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one
time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he
would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his
account which some of us hadn't: he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.
Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber;
lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an
experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar,
and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training, but
was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to
him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow, anyway, and the
boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made
corporal.
These samples will answer--and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd
of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did
as well as they knew how, but really what was justly to be expected of
them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did.
We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary; then,
toward midnight, we stole in couples and from various directions to the
Griffith place, beyond the town; from that point we set out together on
foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south-eastern corner of Marion
County, on the Mississippi River; our objective point was the hamlet of
New London, ten miles away, in Ralls County.
The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that
could not be kept up. The steady trudging came to be like work; the play
had somehow oozed out of it; the stillness of the woods and the
sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the
spirits of the boys, and presently the talking died out and each person
shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second
hour nobody said a word.
Now we approached a log farm-house where, according to report, there was
a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt; and there, in the
deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of
assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was
before. It was a crucial moment; we realised, with a cold suddenness,
that here was no jest--we were standing face to face with actual war. We
were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no
indecision: we said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers,
he could go ahead and do it; but if he waited for us to follow him, he
would wait a long time.
Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us, but it had no effect. Our
course was plain, our minds were made up: we would flank the farmhouse
--go out around. And that is what we did. We turned the position.
We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over
roots, getting tangled in vines, and torn by briers. At last we reached
an open place in a safe region, and sat down, blown and hot, to cool off
and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed, but the rest of
us were cheerful; we had flanked the farm-house, we had made our first
military movement, and it was a success; we had nothing to fret about, we
were feeling just the other way. Horse-play and laughing began again;
the expedition was become a holiday frolic once more.
Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and
depression; then, about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled,
heel-blistered, fagged with our little march, and all of us except
Stevens in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We
stacked our shabby old shot-guns in Colonel Ralls's barn, and then went
in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican War.
Afterwards he took us to a distant meadow, and there in the shade of a
tree we listened to an old-fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder
and glory, full of that adjective-piling, mixed metaphor, and windy
declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and that
remote region; and then he swore us on the Bible to be faithful to the
State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil, no matter whence
they might come or under what flag they might march. This mixed us
considerably, and we could not make out just what service we were
embarked in; but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and
phrase-juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that he
had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the
solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour, colonel
Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey; and he accompanied
this act with another impressive blast.
Then we formed in line of battle and marched four miles to a shady and
pleasant piece of woods on the border of the far-reached expanses of a
flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war--our kind of war.
We pierced the forest about half a mile, and took up a strong position,
with some low, rocky, and wooded hills behind us, and a purling, limpid
creek in front. Straightway half the command were in swimming, and the
other half fishing. The ass with the French name gave this position a
romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and simplified
it to Camp Ralls.
We occupied an old maple-sugar camp, whose half-rotted troughs were still
propped against the trees. A long corn-crib served for sleeping quarters
for the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, was Mason's farm and
house; and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers
began to arrive from several directions, with mules and horses for our
use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which they
judged would be about three months. The animals were of all sizes, all
colours, and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky, and nobody
in the command could stay on them long at a time; for we were town boys,
and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my share was a
very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could throw me
without difficulty; and it did this whenever I got on it. Then it would
bray--stretching its neck out, laying its ears back, and spreading its
jaws till you could see down to its works. It was a disagreeable animal,
in every way. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the
grounds, it would sit down and brace back, and no one could budge it.
However, I was not entirely destitute of military resources, and I did
presently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen many a steam-boat
aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule
would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corn-crib; so I
substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and fetched him home
with the windlass.
I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride,
after some days' practice, but never well. We could not learn to like
our animals; they were not choice ones, and most of them had annoying
peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens's horse would carry him,
when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which form on the
trunks of oak-trees, and wipe him out of the saddle; in this way Stevens
got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers's horse was very large and tall,
with slim, long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size
enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to, with his
head; so he was always biting Bowers's legs. On the march, in the sun,
Bowers slept a good deal; and as soon as the horse recognised that he was
asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were
black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could ever make
him swear, but this always did; whenever the horse bit him he always
swore, and of course Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at this,
and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his balance
and fall off his horse; and then Bowers, already irritated by the pain of
the horse-bite, would resent the laughter with hard language, and there
would be a quarrel; so that horse made no end of trouble and bad blood in
the command.
However, I will get back to where I was--our first afternoon in the
sugar-camp. The sugar-troughs came very handy as horse-troughs, and we
had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed
my mule; but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry-nurse to
a mule, it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed
that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about
everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and ordered
Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice, to feed the mule; but he merely gave
me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven-year-old
horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned
his back on me. I then went to the captain, and asked if it was not
right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was,
but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right that he
himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn't serve
on anybody's staff; and if anybody thought he could make him, let him try
it. So, of course, the thing had to be dropped; there was no other way.
Next, nobody would cook; it was considered a degradation; so we had no
dinner. We lazied the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing
under the trees, some smoking cob-pipes and talking sweethearts and war,
some playing games. By late supper-time all hands were famished; and to
meet the difficulty all hands turned to, on an equal footing, and
gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the meal. Afterward everything
was smooth for a while; then trouble broke out between the corporal and
the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the
higher office; so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of
both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has
many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular
army at all. However, with the song-singing and yarn-spinning around the
camp-fire, everything presently became serene again; and by-and-by we
raked the corn down level in one end of the crib, and all went to bed on
it, tying a horse to the door, so that he would neigh if any one tried to
get in.[1]
We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon; then, afternoons, we rode
off here and there in squads a few miles, and visited the farmers' girls,
and had a youthful good time, and got an honest good dinner or supper,
and then home again to camp, happy and content.
For a time, life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing to
mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was
rumoured that the enemy were advancing in our direction, from over Hyde's
prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us, and general
consternation. It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The
rumour was but a rumour--nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion,
we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at
all, in these uncertain circumstances; but he found that if he tried to
maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no
humour to put up with insubordination. So he yielded the point and
called a council of war--to consist of himself and the three other
officers; but the privates made such a fuss about being left out, that we
had to allow them to remain, for they were already present, and doing the
most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all
were so flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer.
Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the
enemy were approaching from over Hyde's prairie, our course was simple:
all we had to do was not to retreat toward him; any other direction would
answer our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was,
and how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided
that we should fall back upon Mason's farm.
It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the
enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and
things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at
once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the
night grew very black and rain began to fall; so we had a troublesome
time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark; and soon some
person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over
him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other; and then Bowers
came with the keg of powder in his arms, whilst the command were all
mixed together, arms and legs, on the muddy slope; and so he fell, of
course, with the keg, and this started the whole detachment down the hill
in a body, and they landed in the brook at the bottom in a pile, and each
that was undermost pulling the hair and scratching and biting those that
were on top of him; and those that were being scratched and bitten,
scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would
die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this
brook this time, and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the
country along with them--and all such talk as that, which was dismal to
hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly
dark place and so wet, and the enemy maybe coming any moment.
The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and
complaining continued straight along whilst the brigade pawed around the
pasty hillside and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things;
consequently we lost considerable time at this; and then we heard a
sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy
coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow;
but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for
Mason's again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we
got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and wasted a deal of
time finding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason's
stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the
countersign, several dogs came bounding over the fence, with great riot
and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers
and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without
endangering the persons they were attached to; so we had to look on,
helpless, at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the civil
war. There was light enough, and to spare, for the Masons had now run
out on the porch with candles in their hands. The old man and his son
came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but Bowers's; but they
couldn't undo his dog, they didn't know his combination; he was of the
bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock; but they got him
loose at last with some scalding water, of which Bowers got his share and
returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for this
engagement, and also for the night march which preceded it, but both have
long ago faded out of my memory.
We now went into the house, and they began to ask us a world of
questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything
concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made
himself very frank, and said we were a curious breed of soldiers, and
guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because no
Government could stand the expense of the shoe-leather we should cost it
trying to follow us around. 'Marion Rangers! good name, b'gosh!' said
he. And wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket-guard at the place
where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting
party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and
so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a
mere vague rumour--and so on, and so forth, till he made us all fell
shabbier than the dogs had done, and not half so enthusiastically
welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low-spirited; except Stevens.
Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to
automatically display his battle-scars to the grateful, or conceal them
from the envious, according to his occasions; but Bowers was in no humour
for this, so there was a fight, and when it was over Stevens had some
battle-scars of his own to think about.
Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our
activities were not over for the night; for about two o'clock in the
morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a
chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying
around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman
who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from
Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it
could find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a
flurry this time, himself. He hurried us out of the house with all
haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide
ourselves and our tell-tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It
was raining heavily.
We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture-land which
offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the
mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he blackguarded the
war, and the people who started it, and everybody connected with it, and
gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into
it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we
huddled ourselves under the streaming trees, and sent the negro back
home. It was a dismal and heart-breaking time. We were like to be
drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming
thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The
drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still
was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day
older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being
among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the
campaign, and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As
for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did
that.
The long night wore itself out at last, and then the negro came to us
with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one, and that
breakfast would soon be ready. Straightway we were light-hearted again,
and the world was bright, and life as full of hope and promise as ever
--for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty-four years.
The mongrel child of philology named the night's refuse Camp Devastation,
and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast,
in Missourian abundance, and we needed it: hot biscuits; hot 'wheat
bread' prettily criss-crossed in a lattice pattern on top; hot corn pone;
fried chicken; bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk, etc.;--and the
world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal to such a
breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.
We stayed several days at Mason's; and after all these years the memory
of the dullness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous
farm-house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of
death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about;
there was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away
in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there
was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning-wheel, forever
moaning out from some distant room--the most lonesome sound in nature, a
sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life.
The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not invited
to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those nights
were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve.
We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew old and
decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock-strikes. This
was no place for town boys. So at last it was with something very like
joy that we received news that the enemy were on our track again. With a
new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of
battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.
Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave ordered
that our camp should be guarded against surprise by the posting of
pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in
Hyde's prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant
Bowers to go out to that place and stay till midnight; and, just as I was
expecting, he said he wouldn't do it. I tried to get others to go, but
all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather; but the
rest were frank enough to say they wouldn't go in any kind of weather.
This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but it seemed a
perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps
scattered over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps
were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy
independence, and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by
Tom, Dick, and Harry, whom they had known familiarly all their lives, in
the village or on the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that
this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath
recognised the justice of this assumption, and furnished the following
instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was
in a citizen colonel's tent one day, talking, when a big private appeared
at the door, and without salute or other circumlocution said to the
colonel:
'Say, Jim, I'm a-goin' home for a few days.'
'What for?'
'Well, I hain't b'en there for a right smart while, and I'd like to see
how things is comin' on.'
'How long are you going to be gone?'
''Bout two weeks.'
'Well don't be gone longer than that; and get back sooner if you can.'
That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the
private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war, of
course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General
Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first-rate fellow, and
well liked; but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and
modest-salaried operator in our telegraph office, where he had to send
about one dispatch a week in ordinary times, and two when there was a
rush of business; consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day, on
the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort, in a large
military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from
the assembled soldiery:
'Oh, now, what'll you take to don't, Tom Harris!'
It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were
hopeless material for war. And so we seemed, in our ignorant state; but
there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade; learned
to obey like machines; became valuable soldiers; fought all through the
war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very
boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night, and called me an
ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy
way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older.
I did secure my picket that night--not by authority, but by diplomacy. I
got Bowers to go, by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time
being, and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We
stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the
rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bowers's monotonous
growlings at the war and the weather; then we began to nod, and presently
found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle; so we gave up the
tedious job, and went back to the camp without waiting for the relief
guard. We rode into camp without interruption or objection from anybody,
and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries.
Everybody was asleep; at midnight there was nobody to send out another
picket, so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night
again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the
daytime.
In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn-crib;
and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was
full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys' bodies and faces,
annoying and irritating everybody; and now and then they would bite some
one's toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify
his English and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as
heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck
would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a
death-grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed
in the corn-crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war.
No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been
all. I will come to that now.
Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the
enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other
camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumours always
turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to
them. One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old
warning: the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let
him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine
warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins
--for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of
horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and
presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out
altogether, and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon
uneasy--worried--apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we were
committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody
brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement presently began
in the dark, by a general and unvoiced impulse. When the movement was
completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to
the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were
all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring out
toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It was
late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a
veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark
the general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears,
and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right
away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of
smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on
horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got
hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the
logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright.
Somebody said 'Fire!' I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred
flashes and hear a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of
the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first
impulse was an apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his
game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, 'Good--we've got him!--wait for the
rest.' But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the
whisper of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny kind of stillness,
which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late-night
smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept stealthily
out, and approached the man. When we got to him the moon revealed him
distinctly. He was lying on his back, with his arms abroad; his mouth
was open and his chest heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt-front
was all splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a
murderer; that I had killed a man--a man who had never done me any harm.
That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was
down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead; and I would
have given anything then--my own life freely--to make him again what he
had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling in
the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all
they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had
forgotten all about the enemy; they thought only of this one forlorn unit
of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me
a reproachful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I
would rather he had stabbed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled
like a dreamer in his sleep, about his wife and child; and I thought with
a new despair, 'This thing that I have done does not end with him; it
falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.'
In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair
and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you might say; and yet he was as
sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother.
The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and recalling the
details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and if he were a
spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would not hurt him
unless he attacked them first. It soon came out that mine was not the
only shot fired; there were five others--a division of the guilt which
was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree lightened and
diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at
once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated
imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.
The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the
country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him
got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could
not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a
wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just
that--the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal
animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you
found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My
campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped
for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a
child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham
soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self-respect. These
morbid thoughts clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not
believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me
guiltless of his blood; for in all my small experience with guns I had
never hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to
hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased
imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.
The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already
told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another,
and eating up the country--I marvel now at the patience of the farmers
and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary, they
were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it.
In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot, who
afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career bristled
with desperate adventures. The look and style of his comrades suggested
that they had not come into the war to play, and their deeds made good
the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good revolver-shots;
but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and
could snatch a man out of the saddle with it every time, on a full
gallop, at any reasonable distance.
In another camp the chief was a fierce and profane old blacksmith of
sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home-made
bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the
Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising
their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old
fanatic.
The last camp which we fell back upon was in a hollow near the village of
Florida, where I was born--in Monroe County. Here we were warned, one
day, that a Union colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment
at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and
consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that
the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They
were getting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and
were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at
any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the
majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn't
need any of Tom Harris's help; we could get along perfectly well without
him and save time too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself,
mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and
stayed--stayed through the war.
An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people
in his company--his staff, probably, but we could not tell; none of them
was in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris
ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a
whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going to be a
disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little, but it
was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had killed
one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the
rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general
again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and whiskers.
In time I came to know that Union colonel whose coming frightened me out
of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent--General Grant.
I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was
myself; at a time when anybody could have said, 'Grant?--Ulysses S.
Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.' It seems difficult
to realise that there was once a time when such a remark could be
rationally made; but there was, and I was within a few miles of the place
and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.
The thoughtful will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as
being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what
went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the
rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the
steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders; when all their
circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated terrors,
and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had
turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of
that early day has not before been put into history, then history has
been to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place
there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early
camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet it
learned its trade presently, and helped to fight the great battles later.
I could have become a soldier myself, if I had waited. I had got part of
it learned; I knew more about retreating than the man that invented
retreating.
[1] It was always my impression that that was what the horse was there
for, and I know that it was also the impression of at least one other of
the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military
ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago I was
told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his,
that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness,
and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite
too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to
the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had not
thought of that before.
MEISTERSCHAFT
IN THREE ACTS [1]
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
MR. STEPHENSON. MARGARET STEPHENSON.
GEORGE FRANKLIN. ANNIE STEPHENSON.
WILLIAM JACKSON. MRS. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin.
GRETCHEN, Kellnerin
ACT I. SCENE I.
Scene of the play, the parlour of a small private dwelling in a village.
(MARGARET discovered crocheting--has a pamphlet.)
MARGARET. (Solus.) Dear, dear! it's dreary enough, to have to study
this impossible German tongue: to be exiled from home and all human
society except a body's sister in order to do it, is just simply
abscheulich. Here's only three weeks of the three months gone, and it
seems like three years. I don't believe I can live through it, and I'm
sure Annie can't. (Refers to her book, and rattles through, several
times, like one memorising:) Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, konnen Sie
mir vielleicht sagen, um wie viel Uhr der erste Zug nach Dresden abgeht?
(Makes mistakes and corrects them.) I just hate Meisterschaft! We may
see people; we can have society; yes, on condition that the conversation
shall be in German, and in German only--every single word of it! Very
kind--oh, very! when neither Annie nor I can put two words together,
except as they are put together for us in Meisterschaft or that idiotic
Ollendorff! (Refers to book, and memorises: Mein Bruder hat Ihren Herrn
Vater nicht gesehen, als er gestern in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes
war.) Yes, we can have society, provided we talk German. What would
conversation be like! If you should stick to Meisterschaft, it would
change the subject every two minutes; and if you stuck to Ollendorff, it
would be all about your sister's mother's good stocking of thread, or
your grandfather's aunt's good hammer of the carpenter, and who's got it,
and there an end. You couldn't keep up your interest in such topics.
(Memorising: Wenn irgend moglich--mochte ich noch heute Vormittag
Geschaftsfreunde zu treffen.) My mind is made up to one thing: I will be
an exile, in spirit and in truth: I will see no one during these three
months. Father is very ingenious--oh, very! thinks he is, anyway.
Thinks he has invented a way to force us to learn to speak German. He is
a dear good soul, and all that; but invention isn't his fach'. He will
see. (With eloquent energy.) Why, nothing in the world shall--Bitte,
konnen Sie mir vielleicht sagen, ob Herr Schmidt mit diesem Zuge
angekommen ist? Oh, dear, dear George--three weeks! It seems a whole
century since I saw him. I wonder if he suspects that I--that I--care
for him--j-just a wee, wee bit? I believe he does. And I believe Will
suspects that Annie cares for him a little, that I do. And I know
perfectly well that they care for us. They agree with all our opinions,
no matter what they are; and if they have a prejudice, they change it, as
soon as they see how foolish it is. Dear George! at first he just
couldn't abide cats; but now, why now he's just all for cats; he fairly
welters in cats. I never saw such a reform. And it's just so with all
his principles: he hasn't got one that he had before. Ah, if all men
were like him, this world would--(Memorising: Im Gegentheil, mein Herr,
dieser Stoff ist sehr billig. Bitte, sehen Sie sich nur die Qualitat
an.) Yes, and what did they go to studying German for, if it wasn't an
inspiration of the highest and purest sympathy? Any other explanation is
nonsense--why, they'd as soon have thought of studying American history.
[Turns her back, buries herself in her pamphlet, first memorising aloud,
until Annie enters, then to herself, rocking to and fro, and rapidly
moving her lips, without uttering a sound.]
Enter ANNIE, absorbed in her pamphlet--does not at first see MARGARET.
ANNIE. (Memorising: Er liess mich gestern fruh rufen, und sagte mir dass
er einen sehr unangenehmen Brief von Ihrem Lehrer erhalten hatte.
Repeats twice aloud, then to herself, briskly moving her lips.)
M. (Still not seeing her sister.) Wie geht es Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater?
Es freut mich sehr dass Ihre Frau Mutter wieder wohl ist. (Repeats.
Then mouths in silence.)
A. (Repeats her sentence a couple of times aloud; then looks up, working
her lips, and discovers Margaret.) Oh, you here? (Running to her.) O
lovey-dovey, dovey-lovey, I've got the gr-reatest news! Guess, guess,
guess! You'll never guess in a hundred thousand million years--and more!
M. Oh, tell me, tell me, dearie; don't keep me in agony.
A. Well I will. What--do--you--think? They're here!
M. Wh-a-t! Who? When? Which? Speak!
A. Will and George!
M. Annie Alexandra Victoria Stephenson, what do you mean?
A. As sure as guns!
M. (Spasmodically embracing and kissing her.) 'Sh! don't use such
language. O darling, say it again!
A. As sure as guns!
M. I don't mean that! Tell me again, that--
A. (Springing up and waltzing about the room.) They're here--in this
very village--to learn German--for three months! Es sollte mich sehr
freuen wenn Sie--
M. (Joining in the dance.) Oh, it's just too lovely for anything!
(Unconsciously memorising:) Es ware mir lieb wenn Sie morgen mit mir in
die Kirche gehen konnten, aber ich kann selbst nicht gehen, weil ich
Sonntags gewohnlich krank bin. Juckhe!
A. (Finishing some unconscious memorising.)--morgen Mittag bei mir
speisen konnten. Juckhe! Sit down and I'll tell you all I've heard.
(They sit.) They're here, and under that same odious law that fetters us
--our tongues, I mean; the metaphor's faulty, but no matter. They can go
out, and see people, only on condition that they hear and speak German,
and German only.
M. Isn't--that--too lovely!
A. And they're coming to see us!
M. Darling! (Kissing her.) But are you sure?
A. Sure as guns--Gatling guns!
M. 'Sh! don't, child, it's schrecklich! Darling--you aren't mistaken?
A. As sure as g--batteries! [They jump up and dance a moment--then--]
M. (With distress.) But, Annie dear!--we can't talk German--and neither
can they!
A. (Sorrowfully.) I didn't think of that.
M. How cruel it is! What can we do?
A. (After a reflective pause, resolutely.) Margaret--we've got to.
M. Got to what?
A. Speak German.
M. Why, how, child?
A. (Contemplating her pamphlet with earnestness.) I can tell you one
thing. Just give me the blessed privilege: just hinsetzen Will Jackson
here in front of me, and I'll talk German to him as long as this
Meisterschaft holds out to burn.
M. (Joyously.) Oh, what an elegant idea! You certainly have got a mind
that's a mine of resources, if ever anybody had one.
A. I'll skin this Meisterschaft to the last sentence in it!
M. (With a happy idea.) Why Annie, it's the greatest thing in the world.
I've been all this time struggling and despairing over these few little
Meisterschaft primers: but as sure as you live, I'll have the whole
fifteen by heart before this time day after to-morrow. See if I don't.
A. And so will I; and I'll trowel in a layer of Ollendorff mush between
every couple of courses of Meisterschaft bricks. Juckhe!
M. Hoch! hoch! hoch!
A. Stoss an!
M. Juckhe! Wir werden gleich gute deutsche Schulerinnen werden! Juck--
A. --he!
M. Annie, when are they coming to see us? To-night?
A. No.
M. No? Why not? When are they coming? What are they waiting for? The
idea! I never heard of such a thing! What do you--
A. (Breaking in.) Wait, wait, wait! give a body a chance. They have
their reasons.
M. Reasons?--what reasons?
A. Well, now, when you stop and think, they're royal good ones. They've
got to talk German when they come, haven't they? Of course. Well, they
don't know any German but Wie befinden Sie sich, and Haben Sie gut
geschlafen, and Vater unser, and Ich trinke lieber Bier als Wasser, and a
few little parlour things like that; but when it comes to talking, why,
they don't know a hundred and fifteen German words, put them all
together.
M. Oh, I see.
A. So they're going to neither eat, sleep, smoke, nor speak the truth
till they've crammed home the whole fifteen Meisterschafts auswendig!
M. Noble hearts!
A. They've given themselves till day after to-morrow, half-past 7 P.M.,
and then they'll arrive here loaded.
M. Oh, how lovely, how gorgeous, how beautiful! Some think this world
is made of mud; I think it's made of rainbows. (Memorising.) Wenn irgend
moglich, so mochte ich noch heute Vormittag dort ankommen, da es mir sehr
daran gelegen ist--Annie, I can learn it just like nothing!
A. So can I. Meisterschaft's mere fun--I don't see how it ever could
have seemed difficult. Come! We can't be disturbed here; let's give
orders that we don't want anything to eat for two days; and are absent to
friends, dead to strangers, and not at home even to nougat peddlers--
M. Schon! and we'll lock ourselves into our rooms, and at the end of two
days, whosoever may ask us a Meisterschaft question shall get a
Meisterschaft answer--and hot from the bat!
BOTH. (Reciting in unison.) Ich habe einen Hut fur meinen Sohn, ein Paar
Handschuhe fur meinen Bruder, und einen Kamm fur mich selbst gekauft.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Mrs. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin.
WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ach, die armen Madchen, sie hassen die deutsche
Sprache, drum ist es ganz und gar unmoglich dass sie sie je lernen
konnen. Es bricht mir ja mein Herz ihre Kummer uber die Studien
anzusehen.... Warum haben sie den Entchluss gefasst in ihren Zimmern ein
Paar Tagezu bleiben?... Ja--gewiss--das versteht sich; sie sind
entmuthigt--arme Kinder!(A knock at the door.) Herein!
Enter GRETCHEN with card.
GR. Er ist schon wieder da, und sagt dass er nur Sie sehen will. (Hands
the card.) Auch-WIRTHIN. Gott im Himmel--der Vater der Madchen? (Puts
the card in her pocket.) Er wunscht die Tochter nicht zu treffen? Ganz
recht; also, Du schweigst.
GR. Zu Befehl. WIRTHIN. Lass ihn hereinkommen.
GR. Ja, Frau Wirthin! [Exit GRETCHEN.]
WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ah--jetzt muss ich ihm die Wahrheit offenbaren.
Enter Mr. STEPHENSON.
STEPHENSON. Good-morning, Mrs. Blumenthal--keep your seat, keep your
seat, please. I'm only here for a moment--merely to get your report, you
know. (Seating himself.) Don't want to see the girls--poor things,
they'd want to go home with me. I'm afraid I couldn't have the heart to
say no. How's the German getting along?
WIRTHIN. N-not very well; I was afraid you would ask me that. You see,
they hate it, they don't take the least interest in it, and there isn't
anything to incite them to an interest, you see. And so they can't talk
at all.
S. M-m. That's bad. I had an idea that they'd get lonesome, and have
to seek society; and then, of course, my plan would work, considering the
cast-iron conditions of it.
WIRTHIN. But it hasn't, so far. I've thrown nice company in their way
--I've done my very best, in every way I could think of--but it's no use;
they won't go out, and they won't receive anybody. And a body can't
blame them; they'd be tongue-tied--couldn't do anything with a German
conversation. Now, when I started to learn German--such poor German as I
know--the case was very different: my intended was a German. I was to
live among Germans the rest of my life; and so I had to learn. Why,
bless my heart! I nearly lost the man the first time he asked me--I
thought he was talking about the measles. They were very prevalent at
the time. Told him I didn't want any in mine. But I found out the
mistake, and I was fixed for him next time.... Oh yes, Mr. Stephenson, a
sweetheart's a prime incentive.
S. (Aside.) Good soul! she doesn't suspect that my plan is a double
scheme--includes a speaking knowledge of German, which I am bound they
shall have, and the keeping them away from those two young fellows
--though if I had known that those boys were going off for a year's foreign
travel, I--however, the girls would never learn that language at home;
they're here, and I won't relent--they've got to stick the three months
out. (Aloud.) So they are making poor progress? Now tell me--will they
learn it--after a sort of fashion, I mean--in three months?
WIRTHIN. Well, now, I'll tell you the only chance I see. Do what I
will, they won't answer my German with anything but English; if that goes
on, they'll stand stock-still. Now I'm willing to do this: I'll
straighten everything up, get matters in smooth running order, and day
after to-morrow I'll go to bed sick, and stay sick three weeks.
S. Good! You are an angel? I see your idea. The servant girl--
WIRTHIN. That's it; that's my project. She doesn't know a word of
English. And Gretchen's a real good soul, and can talk the slates off a
roof. Her tongue's just a flutter-mill. I'll keep my room--just ailing
a little--and they'll never see my face except when they pay their little
duty-visits to me, and then I'll say English disorders my mind. They'll
be shut up with Gretchen's windmill, and she'll just grind them to
powder. Oh, they'll get a start in the language--sort of a one, sure's
you live. You come back in three weeks.
S. Bless you, my Retterin! I'll be here to the day! Get ye to your
sick-room--you shall have treble pay. (Looking at watch.) Good! I can
just catch my train. Leben Sie wohl! [Exit.]
WIRTHIN. Leben Sie wohl! mein Herr!
ACT II. SCENE I.
Time, a couple of days later. The girls discovered with their work and
primers.
ANNIE. Was fehlt der Wirthin?
MARGARET. Das weiss ich nicht. Sie ist schon vor zwei Tagen ins Bett
gegangen--
A. My! how fliessend you speak!
M. Danke schon--und sagte dass sie nicht wohl sei.
A. Good? Oh no, I don't mean that! no--only lucky for us--glucklich,
you know I mean because it'll be so much nicer to have them all to
ourselves.
M. Oh, naturlich! Ja! Dass ziehe ich durchaus vor. Do you believe
your Meisterschaft will stay with you, Annie?
A. Well, I know it is with me--every last sentence of it; and a couple
of hods of Ollendorff, too, for emergencies. Maybe they'll refuse to
deliver--right off--at first, you know--der Verlegenheit wegen--aber ich
will sie spater herausholen--when I get my hand in--und vergisst Du das
nicht!
M. Sei nicht grob, Liebste. What shall we talk about first--when they
come?
A. Well--let me see. There's shopping--and--all that about the trains,
you know--and going to church--and--buying tickets to London, and Berlin,
and all around--and all that subjunctive stuff about the battle in
Afghanistan, and where the American was said to be born, and so on--and
--and ah--oh, there's so many things--I don't think a body can choose
beforehand, because you know the circumstances and the atmosphere always
have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German
conversation, which is only a kind of an insurrection, anyway. I believe
it's best to just depend on Prov--(Glancing at watch, and gasping.)
--half-past--seven!
M. Oh, dear, I'm all of a tremble! Let's get something ready, Annie!
(Both fall nervously to reciting): Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, konnen
Sie mir vielleicht sagen wie ich nach dem norddeutschen Bahnhof gehe?
(They repeat it several times, losing their grip and mixing it all up.)
BOTH. Herein! Oh, dear! O der heilige--
Enter GRETCHEN.
GRETCHEN (Ruffled and indignant.) Entschuldigen Sie, meine gnadigsten
Fraulein, es sind zwei junge rasende Herren draussen, die herein wollen,
aber ich habe ihnen geschworen dass--(Handing the cards.)
M. Due liebe Zeit, they're here! And of course down goes my back hair!
Stay and receive them, dear, while I--(Leaving.)
A. I--alone? I won't! I'll go with you! (To GR.) Lassen Sie die
Herren naher treten; und sagen Sie ihnen dass wir gleich zuruckkommen
werden. [Exit.]
GR. (Solus.) Was! Sie freuen sich daruber? Und ich sollte wirklich
diese Blodsinnigen, dies grobe Rindvieh hereinlassen? In den hulflosen
Umstanden meiner gnadigen jungen Damen?--Unsinn! (Pause--thinking.)
Wohlan! Ich werde sie mal beschutzen! Sollte man nicht glauben, dass
sie einen Sparren zu viel hatten? (Tapping her skull significantly.) Was
sie mir doch Alles gesagt haben! Der Eine: Guten Morgen! wie geht es
Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? Du liebe Zeit! Wie sollte ich einen
Schwiegervater haben konnen! Und der Andere: 'Es thut mir sehr leid dass
Ihrer Herr Vater meinen Bruder nicht gesehen hat, als er doch gestern in
dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes war!' Potztausendhimmelsdonnerwetter!
Oh, ich war ganz rasend! Wie ich aber rief: 'Meine Herren, ich kenne Sie
nicht, und Sie kennen meinen Vater nicht, wissen Sie, denn er ist schon
lange durchgebrannt, und geht nicht beim Tage in einen Laden hinein,
wissen Sie--und ich habe keinen Schwiegervater, Gott sei Dank, werde auch
nie einen kriegen, werde uberhaupt, wissen Sie, ein solches Ding nie
haben, nie dulden, nie ausstehen: warum greifen Sie ein Madchen an, das
nur Unschuld kennt, das Ihnen nie Etwas zu Leide gethan hat?' Dann haben
sie sich beide die Finger in die Ohren gesteckt und gebetet:
'Allmachtiger Gott! Erbarme Dich unser?' (Pauses.) Nun, ich werde schon
diesen Schurken Einlass gonnen, aber ich werde ein Auge mit ihnen haben,
damit sie sich nicht wie reine Teufel geberden sollen. [Exit, grumbling
and shaking her head.]
Enter WILLIAM and GEORGE.
W. My land, what a girl! and what an incredible gift of gabble!--kind
of patent climate-proof compensation-balance self-acting automatic
Meisterschaft--touch her button, and br-r-r! away she goes!
GEO. Never heard anything like it; tongue journalled on ball-bearings!
I wonder what she said; seemed to be swearing, mainly.
W. (After mumbling Meisterschaft a while.) Look here, George, this is
awful--come to think--this project: we can't talk this frantic language.
GEO. I know it, Will, and it is awful; but I can't live without seeing
Margaret--I've endured it as long as I can. I should die if I tried to
hold out longer--and even German is preferable to death.
W. (Hesitatingly.) Well, I don't know; it's a matter of opinion.
GEO. (Irritably.) It isn't a matter of opinion either. German is
preferable to death.
W. (Reflectively.) Well, I don't know--the problem is so sudden--but I
think you may be right: some kinds of death. It is more than likely that
a slow, lingering--well, now, there in Canada in the early times a couple
of centuries ago, the Indians would take a missionary and skin him, and
get some hot ashes and boiling water and one thing and another, and
by-and-by that missionary--well, yes, I can see that, by-and-by, talking
German could be a pleasant change for him.
GEO. Why, of course. Das versteht sich; but you have to always think a
thing out, or you're not satisfied. But let's not go to bothering about
thinking out this present business; we're here, we're in for it; you are
as moribund to see Annie as I am to see Margaret; you know the terms:
we've got to speak German. Now stop your mooning and get at your
Meisterschaft; we've got nothing else in the world.
W. Do you think that'll see us through?
GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance
at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be!
Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the
text.
W. But what can we talk about?
GEO. Why, anything that Meisterschaft talks about. It ain't our affair.
W. I know; but Meisterschaft talks about everything.
GEO. And yet don't talk about anything long enough for it to get
embarrassing. Meisterschaft is just splendid for general conversation.
W. Yes, that's so; but it's so blamed general! Won't it sound foolish?
GEO. Foolish! Why, of course; all German sounds foolish.
W. Well, that is true; I didn't think of that.
GEO. Now, don't fool around any more. Load up; load up; get ready. Fix
up some sentences; you'll need them in two minutes new. [They walk up
and down, moving their lips in dumb-show memorising.]
W. Look here--when we've said all that's in the book on a topic, and
want to change the subject, how can we say so?--how would a German say
it?
GEO. Well, I don't know. But you know when they mean 'Change cars,'
they say Umsteigen. Don't you reckon that will answer?
W. Tip-top! It's short and goes right to the point; and it's got a
business whang to it that's almost American. Umsteigen!--change subject!
--why, it's the very thing!
GEO. All right, then, you umsteigen--for I hear them coming.
Enter the girls.
A. to W. (With solemnity.) Guten Morgen, mein Herr, es freut mich sehr,
Sie zu sehen.
W. Guten Morgen, mein Fraulein, es freut mich sehr Sie zu sehen.
[MARGARET and GEORGE repeat the same sentences. Then, after an
embarrassing silence, MARGARET refers to her book and says:]
M. Bitte, meine Herren, setzen Sie sich.
THE GENTLEMEN. Danke schon.[The four seat themselves in couples, the
width of the stage apart, and the two conversations begin. The talk is
not flowing--at any rate at first; there are painful silences all along.
Each couple worry out a remark and a reply: there is a pause of silent
thinking, and then the other couple deliver themselves.]
W. Haben Sie meinen Vater in dem Laden meines Bruders nicht gesehen?
A. Nein, mein Herr, ich habe Ihren Herrn Vater in dem Laden Ihres Herrn
Bruders nicht gesehen.
GEO. Waren Sie gestern Abend im Koncert, oder im Theater?
M. Nein, ich war gestern Abend nicht im Koncert, noch im Theater, ich war
gestern Abend zu Hause.[General break-down--long pause.]
W. Ich store doch nicht etwa?
A. Sie storen mich durchaus nicht.
GEO. Bitte, lassen Sie sich nicht von mir storen.
M. Aber ich bitte Sie, Sie storen mich durchaus nicht.
W. (To both girls.) Wenn wir Sie storen so gehen wir gleich wieder.
A. O, nein! Gewiss, nein!
M. Im Gegentheil, es freut uns sehr, Sie zu sehen, alle beide.
W. Schon!
GEO. Gott sei dank!
M. (Aside.) It's just lovely!
A. (Aside.) It's like a poem. [Pause.]
W. Umsteigen!
M. Um--welches?
W. Umsteigen.
GEO. Auf English, change cars--oder subject.
BOTH GIRLS. Wie schon!
W. Wir haben uns die Freiheit genommen, bei Ihnen vorzusprechen.
A. Sie sind sehr gutig.
GEO. Wir wollten uns erkundigen, wie Sie sich befanden.
M. Ich bin Ihnen sehr verbunden--meine Schwester auch.
W. Meine Frau lasst sich Ihnen bestens empfehlen.
A. Ihre Frau?
W. (Examining his book.) Vielleicht habe ich mich geirrt. (Shows the
place.) Nein, gerade so sagt das Buch.
A. (Satisfied.) Ganz recht. Aber--
W. Bitte empfehlen Sie mich Ihrem Herrn Bruder.
A. Ah, das ist viel besser--viel besser. (Aside.) Wenigstens es ware
viel besser wenn ich einen Bruder hatte.
GEO. Wie ist es Ihnen gegangen, seitdem ich das Vergnugen hatte, Sie
anderswo zu sehen?
M. Danke bestens, ich befinde mich gewohnlich ziemlich wohl.
[GRETCHEN slips in with a gun, and listens.]
GEO. (Still to Margaret.) Befindet sich Ihre Frau Gemahlin wohl?
GR. (Raising hands and eyes.) Frau Gemahlin--heiliger Gott! [Is like to
betray herself with her smothered laughter, and glides out.]
M. Danke sehr, meine Frau ist ganz wohl. [Pause.]
W. Durfen wir vielleicht--umsteigen?
THE OTHERS. Gut!
GEO. (Aside.) I feel better, now. I'm beginning to catch on. (Aloud.)
Ich mochte gern morgen fruh einige Einkaufe machen und wurde Ihnen seht
verbunden sein, wenn Sie mir den Gefallen thaten, mir die Namen der
besten hiesigen Firmen aufzuschreiben.
M. (Aside.) How sweet!
W. (Aside.) Hang it, I was going to say that! That's one of the noblest
things in the book.
A. Ich mochte Ihnen gern begleiten, aber es ist mir wirklich heute
Morgen ganz unmoglich auszugehen. (Aside.) It's getting as easy as 9
times 7 is 46.
M. Sagen Sie dem Brieftrager, wenn's gefallig ist, er, mochte Ihnen den
eingeschriebenen Brief geben lassen.
W. Ich wurde Ihnen sehr verbunden sein, wenn Sie diese Schachtel fur
mich nach der Post tragen wurden, da mir sehr daran liegt einen meiner
Geschaftsfreunde in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmanns heute Abend treffen
zu konnen. (Aside.) All down but nine; set'm up on the other alley!
A. Aber, Herr Jackson! Sie haven die Satze gemischt. Es ist
unbegreiflich wie Sie das haben thun konnen. Zwischen Ihrem ersten Theil
und Ihrem letzten Theil haben Sie ganz funfzig Seiten ubergeschlagen!
Jetzt bin ich ganz verloren. Wie kann man reden, wenn man seinen Platz
durchaus nicht wieder finden kann?
W. Oh, bitte, verzeihen Sie; ich habe das wirklich nicht beabsichtigt.
A. (Mollified.) Sehr wohl, lassen Sie gut sein. Aber thun Sie es nicht
wieder. Sie mussen ja doch einraumen, das solche Dinge unertragliche
Verwirrung mit sich fuhren.
[GRETCHEN slips in again with her gun.]
W. Unzweifelhaft haben Sic Recht, meine holdselige Landsmannin....
Umsteigen!
[As GEORGE gets fairly into the following, GRETCHEN draws a bead on him,
and lets drive at the close, but the gun snaps.]
GEO. Glauben Sie dass ich ein hubsches Wohnzimmer fur mich selbst und
ein kleines Schlafzimmer fur meinen Sohn in diesem Hotel fur funfzehn
Mark die Woche bekommen kann, oder, wurden Sie mir rathen, in einer
Privatwohnung Logis zu nehmen? (Aside.) That's a daisy!
GR. (Aside.) Schade! [She draws her charge and reloads.]
M. Glauben Sie nicht Sie werden besser thun bei diesem Wetter zu Hause
zu bleiben?
A. Freilich glaube ich, Herr Franklin, Sie werden sich erkalten, wenn
Sie bei diesem unbestandigen Wetter ohne Ueberrock ausgehen.
GR. (Relieved--aside.) So? Man redet von Ausgehen. Das klingt schon
besser. [Sits.]
W. (To A.) Wie theuer haben Sie das gekauft? [Indicating a part of her
dress.]
A. Das hat achtzehn Mark gekostet.
W. Das ist sehr theuer.
GEO. Ja, obgleich dieser Stoff wunderschon ist und das Muster sehr
geschmackvoll und auch das Vorzuglichste dass es in dieser Art gibt, so
ist es doch furchtbat theuer fur einen solcehn Artikel.
M. (Aside.) How sweet is this communion of soul with soul!
A. Im Gegentheil, mein Herr, das ist sehr billig. Sehen Sie sich nur
die Qualitat an.
[They all examine it.]
GEO. Moglicherweise ist es das allerneuste das man in diesem Stoff hat;
aber das Muster gefallt mir nicht.
[Pause.]
W. Umsteigen!
A. Welchen Hund haben Sie? Haben Sie den hubschen Hund des Kaufmanns,
oder den hasslichen Hund der Urgrossmutter des Lehrlings des
bogenbeinigen Zimmermanns?
W. (Aside.) Oh, come, she's ringing in a cold deck on us: that's
Ollendorff.
GEO. Ich habe nicht den Hund des--des--(Aside.) Stuck! That's no
Meisterschaft; they don't play fair. (Aloud.) Ich habe nicht den Hund
des--des--In unserem Buche leider, gibt es keinen Hund; daher, ob ich
auch gern von solchen Thieren sprechen mochte, ist es mir doch unmoglich,
weil ich nicht vorbereitet bin. Entschuldigen Sie, meine Damen.
GR. (Aside) Beim Teufel, sie sind alle blodsinnig geworden. In meinem
Leben habe ich nie ein so narrisches, verfluchtes, verdammtes Gesprach
gehort.
W. Bitte, umsteigen.
[Run the following rapidly through.]
M. (Aside.) Oh, I've flushed an easy batch! (Aloud.) Wurden Sie mir
erlauben meine Reisetasche heir hinzustellen?
GR. (Aside.) Wo ist seine Reisetasche? Ich sehe keine.
W. Bitte sehr.
GEO. Ist meine Reisetasche Ihnen im Wege?
GR. (Aside.) Und wo ist seine Reisetasche?
A. Erlauben Sie mir Sie von meiner Reisetasche zu bereien.
GR. (Aside.) Du Esel!
W. Ganz und gar nicht. (To Geo.) Es ist sehr schwul in diesem Coupe.
GR. (Aside.) Coupe.
GEO. Sie haben Recht. Erlauben Sie mir, gefalligst, das Fenster zu
offnen. Ein wenig Luft wurde uns gut thun.
M. Wir fahren sehr rasch.
A. Haben Sie den Namen jener Station gehort?
W. Wie lange halten wir auf dieser Station an?
GEO. Ich reise nach Dresden, Schaffner. Wo muss ich umsteigen?
GR. (Aside.) Sie sind ja alle ganz und gar verruckt. Man denke sich sie
glauben dass sie auf der Eisenbahn reisen.
GEO. (Aside, to William.) Now brace up; pull all your confidence
together, my boy, and we'll try that lovely goodbye business a flutter.
I think it's about the gaudiest thing in the book, if you boom it right
along and don't get left on a base. It'll impress the girls. (Aloud.)
Lassen Sie uns gehen: es ist schon sehr spat, und ich muss morgen ganz
fruh aufstehen.
GR. (Aside--grateful.) Gott sei Dank dass sie endlich gehen.
[Sets her gun aside.]
W. (To Geo.) Ich danke Ihnen hoflichst fur die Ehre die Sie mir
erweisen, aber ich kann nicht langer bleiben.
GEO. (To W.) Entschuldigen Sie mich gutigst, aber ich kann wirklich
nicht langer bleiben.
[GRETCHEN looks on stupefied.]
W. (To Geo.) Ich habe schon eine Einladung angenommen; ich kann wirklich
nicht langer bleiben.
[GRETCHEN fingers her gun again.]
GEO. (To W.) Ich muss gehen.
W. (To GEO.) Wie! Sie wollen schon wieder gehen? Sie sind ja eben
erst gekommen.
M. (Aside.) It's just music!
A. (Aside.) Oh, how lovely they do it!
GEO. (To W.) Also denken Sie doch noch nicht an's Gehen.
W. (To Geo.) Es thut mir unendlich leid, aber ich muss nach Hause.
Meine Frau wird sich wundern, was aus mir geworden ist.
GEO. (To W.) Meine Frau hat keine Ahnung wo ich bin: ich muss wirklich
jetzt fort.
W. (To Geo.) Dann will ich Sie nicht langer aufhalten; ich bedaure sehr
dass Sie uns einen so kurzen Besuch gemacht haben.
GEO. (To W.) Adieu--auf recht baldiges Wiedersehen.
W. UMSTEIGNEN!
[Great hand-clapping from the girls.]
M. (Aside.) Oh, how perfect! how elegant!
A. (Aside.) Per-fectly enchanting!
JOYOUS CHORUS. (All) Ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt,
wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt.
[GRETCHEN faints, and tumbles from her chair, and the gun goes off with a
crash. Each girl, frightened, seizes the protecting hand of her
sweetheart. GRETCHEN scrambles up. Tableau.]
W. (Takes out some money--beckons Gretchen to him. George adds money to
the pile.) Hubsches Madchen (giving her some of the coins), hast Du etwas
gesehen?
GR. (Courtesy--aside.) Der Engel! (Aloud--impressively.) Ich habe
nichts gesehen.
W. (More money.) Hast Du etwas gehort?
GR. Ich habe nichts gehort.
W. (More money.) Und morgen?
GR. Morgen--ware es nothig--bin ich taub und blind.
W. Unvergleichbares Madchen! Und (giving the rest of the money)
darnach?
GR. (Deep courtesy--aside.) Erzengel! (Aloud.) Darnach, mein
gnadgister, betrachten Sie mich also taub--blind--todt!
ALL. (In chorus--with reverent joy.) Ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er
hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt!
ACT III.
Three weeks later.
SCENE I.
Enter GRETCHEN, and puts her shawl on a chair. Brushing around with the
traditional feather-duster of the drama. Smartly dressed, for she is
prosperous.
GR. Wie hatte man sich das vorstellen konnen! In nur drei Wochen bin
ich schon reich geworden! (Gets out of her pocket handful after handful
of silver, which she piles on the table, and proceeds to repile and
count, occasionally ringing or biting a piece to try its quality.) Oh,
dass (with a sigh) die Frau Wirthin nur ewig krank bliebe!... Diese
edlen jungen Manner--sie sind ja so liebenswurdig! Und so fleissig!
--und so treu! Jeden Morgen kommen sie gerade um drei Viertel auf neun;
und plaudern und schwatzen, und plappern, und schnattern, die jungen
Damen auch; um Schlage zwolf nehmen sie Abschied; um Sclage eins kommen
sie schon wieder, und plauden und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern;
gerade um sechs Uhr nehmen sie wiederum Abschied; um halb acht kehren sie
noche'mal zuruck, und plaudern und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern
bis zehn Uhr, oder vielleicht ein Viertel nach, falls ihre Uhren nach
gehen (und stets gehen sie nach am Ende des Besuchs, aber stets vor
Beginn desselben), und zuweilen unterhalten sich die jungen Leute beim
Spazierengehen; und jeden Sonntag gehen sie dreimal in die Kirche; und
immer plaudern sie, und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern bis ihnen
die Zahne aus dem Munde fallen. Und ich? Durch Mangel an Uebung, ist
mir die Zunge mit Moos belegt worden! Freilich ist's mir eine dumme Zei
gewesen. Aber--um Gotteswillen, was geht das mir an? Was soll ich
daraus machen? Taglich sagt die Frau Wirthin, 'Gretchen' (dumb-show of
paying a piece of money into her hand), 'du bist eine der besten Sprach
--Lehrerinnen der Welt!' Act, Gott! Und taglich sagen die edlen jungen
Manner, 'Gretchen, liebes Kind' (money-paying again in dumb-show--three
coins), 'bleib' taub--blind--todt!' und so bleibe ich.... Jetzt wird es
ungefahr neun Uhr sein; bald kommen sie vom Spaziergehen zuruck. Also,
es ware gut dass ich meinem eigenen Schatz einen Besuch abstatte und
spazieren gehe.
[Dons her shawl. Exit. L.]
Enter WIRTHIN. R.
WIRTHIN. That was Mr. Stephenson's train that just came in. Evidently
the girls are out walking with Gretchen;--can't find them, and she
doesn't seem to be around. (A ring at the door.) That's him. I'll go
see. [Exit. R.]
Enter STEPHENSON and WIRTHIN. R.
S. Well, how does sickness seem to agree with you?
WIRTHIN. So well that I've never been out of my room since, till I heard
your train come in.
S. Thou miracle of fidelity! Now I argue from that, that the new plan
is working.
WIRTHIN. Working? Mr. Stephenson, you never saw anything like it in the
whole course of your life! It's absolutely wonderful the way it works.
S. Succeeds? No--you don't mean it.
WIRTHIN. Indeed I do mean it. I tell you, Mr. Stephenson, that plan was
just an inspiration--that's what it was. You could teach a cat German by
it.
S. Dear me, this is noble news! Tell me about it.
WIRTHIN. Well, it's all Gretchen--ev-ery bit of it. I told you she was
a jewel. And then the sagacity of that child--why, I never dreamed it
was in her. Sh-she, 'Never you ask the young ladies a question--never
let on--just keep mum--leave the whole thing to me,' sh-she.
S. Good! And she justified, did she?
WIRTHIN. Well, sir, the amount of German gabble that that child crammed
into those two girls inside the next forty-eight hours--well, I was
satisfied! So I've never asked a question--never wanted to ask any.
I've just lain curled up there, happy. The little dears! they've flitted
in to see me a moment, every morning and noon and supper-time; and as
sure as I'm sitting here, inside of six days they were clattering German
to me like a house afire!
S. Sp-lendid, splendid!
WIRTHIN. Of course it ain't grammatical--the inventor of the language
can't talk grammatical; if the dative didn't fetch him the accusative
would; but it's German all the same, and don't you forget it!
S. Go on--go on--this is delicious news--
WIRTHIN. Gretchen, she says to me at the start, 'Never you mind about
company for 'em,' sh-she--'I'm company enough.' And I says, 'All right
--fix it your own way, child;' and that she was right is shown by the fact
that to this day they don't care a straw for any company but hers.
S. Dear me; why, it's admirable!
WIRTHIN. Well, I should think so! They just dote on that hussy--can't
seem to get enough of her. Gretchen tells me so herself. And the care
she takes of them! She tells me that every time there's a moonlight
night she coaxes them out for a walk; and if a body can believe her, she
actually bullies them off to church three times every Sunday!
S. Why, the little dev--missionary! Really, she's a genius!
WIRTHIN. She's a bud, I tell you! Dear me, how she's brought those
girls' health up! Cheeks?--just roses. Gait?--they walk on
watch-springs! And happy?--by the bliss in their eyes, you'd think
they're in Paradise! Ah, that Gretchen! Just you imagine our trying to
achieve these marvels!
S. You're right--every time. Those girls--why, all they'd have wanted
to know was what we wanted done, and then they wouldn't have done it--the
mischievous young rascals!
WIRTHIN. Don't tell me? Bless you, I found that out early--when I was
bossing.
S. Well, I'm im-mensely pleased. Now fetch them down. I'm not afraid
now. They won't want to go home.
WIRTHIN. Home! I don't believe you could drag them away from Gretchen
with nine span of horses. But if you want to see them, put on your hat
and come along; they're out somewhere trapseing along with Gretchen.
[Going.]
S. I'm with you--lead on.
WIRTHIN. We'll go out the side door. It's towards the Anlage. [Exit
both. L.]
Enter GEORGE and MARGARET. R. Her head lies upon his shoulder, his arm
is about her waist; they are steeped in sentiment.
M. (Turning a fond face up at him.) Du Engel!
GEO. Liebste!
M. Oh, das Liedchen dass Du mir gewidmet hast--es ist so schon, so
wunderschon. Wie hatte ich je geahnt dass Du ein Poet warest!
GEO. Mein Schatzchen!--es ist mir lieb wenn Dir die Kleinigkeit
gefallt.
M. Ah, es ist mit der zartlichsten Musik gefullt--klingt ja so suss und
selig--wie das Flustern des Sommerwindes die Abenddammerung hindurch.
Wieder--Theuerste!--sag'es wieder.
GEO. Du bist wie eine Blume!--So schon und hold und rein--Ich schau'
Dich an, und WehmuthSchleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist als ob ich
die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott Dich erhalte, So
rein und schon und hold.
M. A-ch! (Dumb-show sentimentalisms.) Georgie--
GEO. Kindchen!
M. Warum kommen sie nicht?
GEO. Das weiss ich gar night. Sie waren--
M. Es wird spat. Wir mussen sie antreiben. Komm!
GEO. Ich glaube sie werden recht bald ankommen, aber--[Exit both. L.]
Enter GRETCHEN, R., in a state of mind. Slumps into a chair limp with
despair.
GR. Ach! was wird jetzt aus mir werden! Zufallig habe ich in der Ferne
den verdammten Papa gesehen!--und die Frau Wirthin auch! Oh, diese
Erscheinung--die hat mir beinahe das Leben genommen. Sie suchen die
jungen Damen--das weiss ich wenn sie diese und die jungen Herren zusammen
fanden--du heileger Gott! Wenn das gescheiht, waren wir Alle ganz und
gar verloren! Ich muss sie gleich finden, und ihr eine Warnung geben!
[Exit. L.]
Enter ANNIE and WILL, R., posed like the former couple and sentimental.
A. Ich liebe Dich schon so sehr--Deiner edlen Natur wegen. Dass du dazu
auch ein Dichter bist!--ach, mein Leben ist ubermassig reich geworden!
Wer hatte sich doch einbilden konnen dass ich einen Mann zu einem so
wunderschonen Gedicht hatte begeistern konnen?
W. Liebste! Es ist nur eine Kleinigkeit.
A. Nein, nein, es ist ein echtes Wunder! Sage es noch einmal--ich flehe
Dich an.
W. Du bist wie eine Blume!--So schon und hold und rein--Ich schau' Dich
an, und WehmuthSchleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist als ob ich die
HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott Dich erhalt, So rein
und schon und hold.
A. Ach, es ist himmlisch--einfach himmlisch. [Kiss.] Schreibt auch
George Gedicht?
W. Oh, ja--zuweilen.
A. Wie schon!
W. (Aside.) Smouches 'em, same as I do! It was a noble good idea to
play that little thing on her. George wouldn't ever think of that
--somehow he never had any invention.
A. (Arranging chairs.) Jetzt will ich bei Dir sitzen bleiben, und Du--
W. (They sit.) Ja--und ich--
A. Du wirst mir die alte Geschichte, die immer neu bleibt, noch wieder
erzahlen.
W. Zum Beispiel, dass ich Dich liebe!
A. Wieder!
W. Ich--sie kommen!
Enter GEORGE and MARGARET.
A. Das macht nichts. Fortan! [GEORGE unties M.'s bonnet. She reties
his cravat--interspersings of love-pats, etc., and dumb show of
love-quarrellings.]
W. Ich liebe Dich.
A. Ach! Noch einmal!
W. Ich habe Dich vom Herzen lieb.
A. Ach! Abermals!
W. Bist Du denn noch nicht satt?
A. Nein! (The other couple sit down, and MARGARET begins a retying of
the cravat. Enter the WIRTHIN and STEPHENSON, he imposing silence with a
sign.) Mich hungert sehr, ich verhungre!
W. Oh, Du armes Kind! (Lays her head on his shoulder. Dumb-show
between STEPHENSON and WIRTHIN.) Und hungert es nicht mich? Du hast mir
nicht einmal gesagt--
A. Dass ich Dich liebe? Mein Eigener! (Frau WIRTHIN threatens to
faint--is supported by STEPHENSON.) Hore mich nur an: Ich liebe Dich,
ich liebe Dich--
Enter GRETCHEN.
GR. (Tears her hair.) Oh, dass ich in der Holle ware!
M. Ich liebe Dich, ich liebe Dich! Ah, ich bin so glucklich dass ich
nicht schlafen kann, nicht lesen kann, nicht reden kann, nicht--
A. Und ich! Ich bin auch so glucklich dass ich nicht speisen kann,
nicht studieren, arbeiten, denken, schreiben--
S. (To Wirthin--aside.) Oh, there isn't any mistake about it
--Gretchen's just a rattling teacher!
WIRTHIN. (To Stephenson--aside.) I'll skin her alive when I get my
hands on her!
M. Komm, alle Verliebte! [They jump up, join hands, and sing in chorus--]
Du, Du, wie ich Dich liebe, Du, Du, liebest auch mich! Die, die
zartlichsten Triebe--
S. (Stepping forward.) Well! [The girls throw themselves upon his neck
with enthusiasm.]
THE GIRLS. Why, father!
S. My darlings! [The young men hesitate a moment, they they add their
embrace, flinging themselves on Stephenson's neck, along with the girls.]
THE YOUNG MEN. Why, father!
S. (Struggling.) Oh, come, this is too thin!--too quick, I mean. Let
go, you rascals!
GEO. We'll never let go till you put us on the family list.
M. Right! hold to him!
A. Cling to him, Will! [GRETCHEN rushes in and joins the general
embrace, but is snatched away by the WIRTHIN, crushed up against the
wall, and threatened with destruction.]
S. (Suffocating.) All right, all right--have it your own way, you
quartette of swindlers!
W. He's a darling! Three cheers for papa!
EVERYBODY. (Except Stephenson, who bows with hand on heart) Hip--hip
--hip: hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
GR. Der Tiger--ah-h-h!
WIRTHIN. Sei ruhig, you hussy!
S. Well, I've lost a couple of precious daughters, but I've gained a
couple of precious scamps to fill up the gap with; so it's all right.
I'm satisfied, and everybody's forgiven--[With mock threats at Gretchen.]
W. Oh, wir werden fur Dich sorgen--dur herrliches Gretchen!
GR. Danke schon!
M. (To Wirthin.) Und fur Sie auch; denn wenn Sie nicht so freundlich
gewesen waren, krank zu werden, wie waren wir je so glucklich geworden
wie jetzt?
WIRTHIN. Well, dear, I was kind, but I didn't mean it. But I ain't
sorry--not one bit--that I ain't. [Tableau.]
S. Come, now, the situation is full of hope, and grace, and tender
sentiment. If I had in the least poetic gift, I know I could improvise
under such an inspiration (each girl nudges her sweetheart) something
worthy to--to--Is there no poet among us? [Each youth turns solemnly his
back upon the other, and raises his hands in benediction over his
sweetheart's bowed head.]
BOTH YOUTHS AT ONCE. Mir ist als ob ich die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen
sollt'--[They turn and look reproachfully at each other--the girls
contemplate them with injured surprise.]
S. (Reflectively.) I think I've heard that before somewhere.
WIRTHIN. (Aside.) Why, the very cats in Germany know it!
(Curtain.)
[1] [EXPLANATORY.] I regard the idea of this play as a valuable
invention. I call it the Patent Universally-Applicable Automatically
Adjustable Language Drama. This indicates that it is adjustable to any
tongue, and performable in any tongue. The English portions of the play
are to remain just as they are, permanently; but you change the foreign
portions to any language you please, at will. Do you see? You at once
have the same old play in a new tongue. And you can keep changing it
from language to language, until your private theatrical pupils have
become glib and at home in the speech of all nations. Zum Beispiel,
suppose we wish to adjust the play to the French tongue. First, we give
Mrs. Blumenthal and Gretchen French names. Next, we knock the German
Meisterschaft sentences out of the first scene, and replace them with
sentences from the French Meisterschaft--like this, for instance: 'Je
voudrais faire des emplettes ce matin; voulez-vous avoir l'obligeance de
venir avec moi chez le tailleur francais?' And so on. Wherever you find
German, replace it with French, leaving the English parts undisturbed.
When you come to the long conversation in the second act, turn to any
pamphlet of your French Meisterschaft, and shovel in as much French talk
on any subject as will fill up the gaps left by the expunged German.
Example--page 423, French Meisterschaft: On dirait qu'il va faire chaud.
J'ai chaud. J'ai extremement chaud. Ah! qu'il fait chaud! Il fait une
chaleur etouffante! L'air est brulant. Je meurs de chaleur. Il est
presque impossible de supporter la chaleur. Cela vous fait transpirer.
Mettons-nous a l'ombre. Il fait du vent. Il fait un vent froid. Il
fait un tres agreable pour se promener aujourd'hui. And so on, all the
way through. It is very easy to adjust the play to any desired language.
Anybody can do it.
MY BOYHOOD DREAMS
The dreams of my boyhood? No, they have not been realised. For all who
are old, there is something infinitely pathetic about the subject which
you have chosen, for in no greyhead's case can it suggest any but one
thing--disappointment. Disappointment is its own reason for its pain:
the quality or dignity of the hope that failed is a matter aside. The
dreamer's valuation of the thing lost--not another man's--is the only
standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great
and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases. We should
carefully remember that. There are sixteen hundred million people in the
world. Of these there is but a trifling number--in fact, only
thirty-eight millions--who can understand why a person should have an
ambition to belong to the French army; and why, belonging to it, he
should be proud of that; and why, having got down that far, he should
want to go on down, down, down till he struck the bottom and got on the
General Staff; and why, being stripped of this livery, or set free and
reinvested with his self-respect by any other quick and thorough process,
let it be what it might, he should wish to return to his strange serfage.
But no matter: the estimate put upon these things by the fifteen hundred
and sixty millions is no proper measure of their value: the proper
measure, the just measure, is that which is put upon them by Dreyfus, and
is cipherable merely upon the littleness or the vastness of the
disappointment which their loss cost him. There you have it: the measure
of the magnitude of a dream-failure is the measure of the disappointment
the failure cost the dreamer; the value, in others' eyes, of the thing
lost, has nothing to do with the matter. With this straightening out and
classification of the dreamer's position to help us, perhaps we can put
ourselves in his place and respect his dream--Dreyfus's, and the dreams
our friends have cherished and reveal to us. Some that I call to mind,
some that have been revealed to me, are curious enough; but we may not
smile at them, for they were precious to the dreamers, and their failure
has left scars which give them dignity and pathos. With this theme in my
mind, dear heads that were brown when they and mine were young together
rise old and white before me now, beseeching me to speak for them, and
most lovingly will I do it. Howells, Hay, Aldrich, Matthews, Stockton,
Cable, Remus--how their young hopes and ambitions come flooding back to
my memory now, out of the vague far past, the beautiful past, the
lamented past! I remember it so well--that night we met together--it was
in Boston, and Mr. Fiends was there, and Mr. Osgood, Ralph Keeler, and
Boyle O'Reilly, lost to us now these many years--and under the seal of
confidence revealed to each other what our boyhood dreams had been: reams
which had not as yet been blighted, but over which was stealing the grey
of the night that was to come--a night which we prophetically felt, and
this feeling oppressed us and made us sad. I remember that Howells's
voice broke twice, and it was only with great difficulty that he was able
to go on; in the end he wept. For he had hoped to be an auctioneer. He
told of his early struggles to climb to his goal, and how at last he
attained to within a single step of the coveted summit. But there
misfortune after misfortune assailed him, and he went down, and down, and
down, until now at last, weary and disheartened, he had for the present
given up the struggle and become the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. This
was in 1830. Seventy years are gone since, and where now is his dream?
It will never be fulfilled. And it is best so; he is no longer fitted
for the position; no one would take him now; even if he got it, he would
not be able to do himself credit in it, on account of his deliberateness
of speech and lack of trained professional vivacity; he would be put on
real estate, and would have the pain of seeing younger and abler men
intrusted with the furniture and other such goods--goods which draw a
mixed and intellectually low order of customers, who must be beguiled of
their bids by a vulgar and specialised humour and sparkle, accompanied
with antics. But it is not the thing lost that counts, but only the
disappointment the loss brings to the dreamer that had coveted that thing
and had set his heart of hearts upon it, and when we remember this, a
great wave of sorrow for Howells rises in our breasts, and we wish for
his sake that his fate could have been different. At that time Hay's
boyhood dream was not yet past hope of realisation, but it was fading,
dimming, wasting away, and the wind of a growing apprehension was blowing
cold over the perishing summer of his life. In the pride of his young
ambition he had aspired to be a steamboat mate; and in fancy saw himself
dominating a forecastle some day on the Mississippi and dictating terms
to roustabouts in high and wounding terms. I look back now, from this
far distance of seventy years, and note with sorrow the stages of that
dream's destruction. Hay's history is but Howells's, with differences of
detail. Hay climbed high toward his ideal; when success seemed almost
sure, his foot upon the very gang-plank, his eye upon the capstan,
misfortune came and his fall began. Down--down--down--ever down: Private
Secretary to the President; Colonel in the field; Charge d'Affaires in
Paris; Charge d'Affaires in Vienna; Poet; Editor of the Tribune;
Biographer of Lincoln; Ambassador to England; and now at last there he
lies--Secretary of State, Head of Foreign Affairs. And he has fallen
like Lucifer, never to rise again. And his dream--where now is his
dream? Gone down in blood and tears with the dream of the auctioneer.
And the young dream of Aldrich--where is that? I remember yet how he sat
there that night fondling it, petting it; seeing it recede and ever
recede; trying to be reconciled and give it up, but not able yet to bear
the thought; for it had been his hope to be a horse-doctor. He also
climbed high, but, like the others, fell; then fell again, and yet again,
and again and again. And now at last he can fall no further. He is old
now, he has ceased to struggle, and is only a poet. No one would risk a
horse with him now. His dream is over. Has any boyhood dream ever been
fulfilled? I must doubt it. Look at Brander Matthews. He wanted to be
a cowboy. What is he to-day? Nothing but a professor in a university.
Will he ever be a cowboy? It is hardly conceivable. Look at Stockton.
What was Stockton's young dream? He hoped to be a barkeeper. See where
he has landed. Is it better with Cable? What was Cable's young dream?
To be ring-master in the circus, and swell around and crack the whip.
What is he to-day? Nothing but a theologian and novelist. And Uncle
Remus--what was his young dream? To be a buccaneer. Look at him now.
Ah, the dreams of our youth, how beautiful they are, and how perishable!
The ruins of these might-have-beens, how pathetic! The heart-secrets that
were revealed that night now so long vanished, how they touch me as I
give them voice! Those sweet privacies, how they endeared us to each
other! We were under oath never to tell any of these things, and I have
always kept that oath inviolate when speaking with persons whom I thought
not worthy to hear them. Oh, our lost Youth--God keep its memory green
in our hearts! for Age is upon us, with the indignity of its infirmities,
and Death beckons!
TO THE ABOVE OLD PEOPLE
Sleep! for the Sun that scores another Day
Against the Tale allotted You to stay,
Reminding You, is Risen, and now
Serves Notice--ah, ignore it while You stay!
The chill Wind blew, and those who stood before
The Tavern murmured, 'Having drunk his Score,
Why tarries He with empty Cup? Behold,
The Wine of Youth once poured, is poured no more
'Come, leave the Cup, and on the Winter's Snow
Your Summer Garment of Enjoyment throw:
Your Tide of Life is ebbing fast, and it,
Exhausted once, for You no more shall flow.'
While yet the Phantom of false Youth was mine,
I heard a Voice from out the Darkness whine,
'O Youth, O whither gone? Return,
And bathe my Age in thy reviving Wine.'
In this subduing Draught of tender green
And kindly Absinth, with its wimpling Sheen
Of dusky half-lights, let me drown
The haunting Pathos of the Might-Have-Been.
For every nickeled Joy, marred and brief,
We pay some day its Weight in golden Grief
Mined from our Hearts. Ah, murmur not
--From this one-sided Bargain dream of no Relief!
The Joy of Life, that streaming through their Veins
Tumultuous swept, falls slack--and wanes
The Glory in the Eye--and one by one
Life's Pleasures perish and make place for Pains.
Whether one hide in some secluded Nook
--Whether at Liverpool or Sandy Hook
--'Tis one. Old Age will search him out--and He
--He--He--when ready will know where to look.
From Cradle unto Grave I keep a House
OF Entertainment where may drowse
Bacilli and kindred Germs--or feed--or breed
Their festering Species in a deep Carouse.
Think--in this battered Caravanserai,
Whose Portals open stand all Night and Day,
How Microbe after Microbe with his Pomp
Arrives unasked, and comes to stay.
Our ivory Teeth, confessing to the Lust
Of masticating, once, now own Disgust
Of Clay-Plug'd Cavities--full soon our Snags
Are emptied, and our Mouths are filled with Dust.
Our Gums forsake the Teeth and tender grow,
And fat, like over-riped Figs--we know
The Sign--the Riggs' Disease is ours, and we
Must list this Sorrow, add another Woe;
Our Lungs begin to fail and soon we Cough,
And chilly Streaks play up our Backs, and off
Our fever'd Foreheads drips an icy Sweat
--We scoffered before, but now we may not scoff.
Some for the Bunions that afflict us prate
Of Plasters unsurpassable, and hate
To Cut a corn--ah cut, and let the Plaster go,
Nor murmur if the Solace come too late.
Some for the Honours of Old Age, and some
Long for its Respite from the Hum
And Clash of sordid Strife--O Fools,
The Past should teach them what's to Come:
Lo, for the Honours, cold Neglect instead!
For Respite, disputatious Heirs a Bed
Of Thorns for them will furnish. Go,
Seek not Here for Peace--but Yonder--with the Dead.
For whether Zal and Rustam heed this Sign,
And even smitten thus, will not repine,
Let Zal and Rustam shuffle as they may,
The Fine once levied they must Cash the Fine.
O Voices of the Long Ago that were so dear!
Fall'n Silent, now, for many a Mould'ring Year,
O whither are ye flown? Come back,
And break my heart, but bless my grieving ear.
Some happy Day my Voice will Silent fall,
And answer not when some that love it call:
Be glad for Me when this you note--and think
I've found the Voices lost, beyond the Pall.
So let me grateful drain the Magic Bowl
That medicines hurt Minds and on the Soul
The Healing of its Peace doth lay--if then
Death claim me--Welcome be his Dole!
SANNA, SWEDEN, September 15th.
Private.--If you don't know what Riggs's Disease of the Teeth is, the
dentist will tell you. I've had it--and it is more than interesting.
M.T.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Fearing that there might be some mistake, we submitted a proof of this
article to the (American) gentlemen named in it, and asked them to
correct any errors of detail that might have crept in among the facts.
They reply with some asperity that errors cannot creep in among facts
where there are no facts for them to creep in among; and that none are
discoverable in this article, but only baseless aberrations of a
disordered mind. They have no recollection of any such night in Boston,
nor elsewhere; and in their opinion there was never any such night. They
have met Mr. Twain, but have had the prudence not to intrust any
privacies to him--particularly under oath; and they think they now see
that this prudence was justified, since he has been untrustworthy enough
to even betray privacies which had no existence. Further, they think it
a strange thing that Mr. Twain, who was never invited to meddle with
anybody's boyhood dreams but his own, has been so gratuitously anxious to
see that other people's are placed before the world that he has quite
lost his head in his zeal and forgotten to make any mention of his own at
all. Provided we insert this explanation, they are willing to let his
article pass; otherwise they must require its suppression in the interest
of truth.
P.S.--These replies having left us in some perplexity, and also in some
fear lest they distress Mr. Twain if published without his privity, we
judged it but fair to submit them to him and give him an opportunity to
defend himself. But he does not seem to be troubled, or even aware that
he is in a delicate situation. He merely says: 'Do not worry about those
former young people. They can write good literature, but when it comes
to speaking the truth, they have not had my training.--MARK TWAIN.'
The last sentence seems obscure, and liable to an unfortunate
construction. It plainly needs refashioning, but we cannot take the
responsibility of doing it.--EDITOR.
IN MEMORIAM
OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS
DIED AUGUST 18, 1896; AGED 24
In a fair valley--oh, how long ago, how long ago!--
Where all the broad expanse was clothed in vines,
And fruitful fields and meadows starred with flowers,
And clear streams wandered at their idle will;
And still lakes slept, their burnished surfaces
A dream of painted clouds, and soft airs
Went whispering with odorous breath,
And all was peace--in that fair vale,
Shut from the troubled world, a nameless hamlet drowsed.
Hard by, apart, a temple stood;
And strangers from the outer world
Passing, noted it with tired eyes,
And seeing, saw it not:
A glimpse of its fair form--an answering momentary thrill--
And they passed on, careless and unaware.
They could not know the cunning of its make;
They could not know the secret shut up in its heart;
Only the dwellers of the hamlet knew;
They knew that what seemed brass was gold;
What marble seemed, was ivory;
The glories that enriched the milky surfaces--
The trailing vines, and interwoven flowers,
And tropic birds a-wing, clothed all in tinted fires--
They knew for what they were, not what they seemed:
Encrustings all of gems, not perishable splendours of the brush.
They knew the secret spot where one must stand--
They knew the surest hour, the proper slant of sun--
To gather in, unmarred, undimmed,
The vision of the fane in all its fairy grace,
A fainting dream against the opal sky.
And more than this. They knew
That in the temple's inmost place a spirit dwelt,
Made all of light!
For glimpses of it they had caught
Beyond the curtains when the priests
That served the altar came and went.
All loved that light and held it dear
That had this partial grace;
But the adoring priests alone who lived
By day and night submerged in its immortal glow
Knew all its power and depth, and could appraise the loss
If it should fade and fail and come no more.
All this was long ago--so long ago!
The light burned on; and they that worshipped it,
And they that caught its flash at intervals and held it dear,
Contented lived in its secure possession. Ah,
How long ago it was!
And then when they
Were nothing fearing, and God's peace was in the air,
And none was prophesying harm,
The vast disaster fell:
Where stood the temple when the sun went down
Was vacant desert when it rose again!
Ah yes! 'Tis ages since it chanced!
So long ago it was,
That from the memory of the hamlet-folk the Light has passed--
They scarce believing, now, that once it was,
Or if believing, yet not missing it,
And reconciled to have it gone.
Not so the priests! Oh, not so
The stricken ones that served it day and night,
Adoring it, abiding in the healing of its peace:
They stand, yet, where erst they stood
Speechless in that dim morning long ago;
And still they gaze, as then they gazed,
And murmur, 'It will come again;
It knows our pain--it knows--it knows--
Ah surely it will come again.
S.L.C.
LAKE LUCERNE, August 18, 1897.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and
Other Stories, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
CONTENTS:
What Is Man?
The Death of Jean
The Turning-Point of My Life
How to Make History Dates Stick
The Memorable Assassination
A Scrap of Curious History
Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty
At the Shrine of St. Wagner
William Dean Howells
English as She is Taught
A Simplified Alphabet
As Concerns Interpreting the Deity
Concerning Tobacco
Taming the Bicycle
Is Shakespeare Dead?
WHAT IS MAN?
I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had
asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The
Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his
reasons for his position.]
Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
O.M. Where are these found?
Y.M. In the rocks.
O.M. In a pure state?
Y.M. No--in ores.
O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
Y.M. No--it is the patient work of countless ages.
O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
Y.M. No--substantially nothing.
O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?
Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the
Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine
several metals of which brass is made.
O.M. Then?
Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
O.M. You would require much of this one?
Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a
word all the cunning machines of a great factory?
Y.M. It could.
O.M. What could the stone engine do?
Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more, perhaps.
O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. But not the stone one?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the
stone one?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Personal merits?
Y.M. PERSONAL merits? How do you mean?
O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own
performance?
Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
O.M. Why not?
Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the
law of construction. It is not a MERIT that it does the things which it
is set to do--it can't HELP doing them.
O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does
so little?
Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its
make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing PERSONAL about it;
it cannot choose. In this process of "working up to the matter" is it
your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about
the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of
either?
O.M. Yes--but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall
we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage
and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff
of which the steel one was built--but along with a lot of sulphur and
stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old
geologic ages--prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing
within the rock itself had either POWER to remove or any DESIRE to
remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; "Prejudices which nothing within the
rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove." Go on.
O.M. Prejudices must be removed by OUTSIDE INFLUENCES or not at all.
Put that down.
Y.M. Very well; "Must be removed by outside influences or not at all."
Go on.
O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock.
To make it more exact, the iron's absolute INDIFFERENCE as to whether the
rock be removed or not. Then comes the OUTSIDE INFLUENCE and grinds the
rock to powder and sets the ore free. The IRON in the ore is still
captive. An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore. The
iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. An
OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and refines it
into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now--its training is
complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible process can it
be educated into GOLD. Will you set that down?
Y.M. Yes. "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into
gold."
O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden mean,
and steel men, and so on--and each has the limitations of his nature, his
heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build engines out
of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not
require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. In each
case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its
obstructing prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so
forth.
Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
O.M. Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man
is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES brought to bear upon it by
his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed,
COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR influences--SOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not
even a thought.
Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are
talking is all foolishness?
O.M. It is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but
YOU did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are
odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously
from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of
thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out
of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. PERSONALLY you did
not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of
which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the
slender merit of PUTTING THE BORROWED MATERIALS TOGETHER. That was done
AUTOMATICALLY--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the
law of that machinery's construction. And you not only did not make that
machinery yourself, but you have NOT EVEN ANY COMMAND OVER IT.
Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but
that one?
O.M. Spontaneously? No. And YOU DID NOT FORM THAT ONE; your machinery
did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the
need of it.
Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
O.M. Suppose you try?
Y.M. (AFTER A QUARTER OF AN HOUR.) I have reflected.
O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an experiment?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. With success?
Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.
O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command
over itself--it is worked SOLELY FROM THE OUTSIDE. That is the law of its
make; it is the law of all machines.
Y.M. Can't I EVER change one of these automatic opinions?
O.M. No. You can't yourself, but EXTERIOR INFLUENCES can do it.
Y.M. And exterior ones ONLY?
O.M. Yes--exterior ones only.
Y.M. That position is untenable--I may say ludicrously untenable.
O.M. What makes you think so?
Y.M. I don't merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter
upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate
purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. THAT is not the
work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for I
originated the project.
O.M. Not a shred of it. IT GREW OUT OF THIS TALK WITH ME. But for that
it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates anything. All
his thoughts, all his impulses, come FROM THE OUTSIDE.
Y.M. It's an exasperating subject. The FIRST man had original thoughts,
anyway; there was nobody to draw from.
O.M. It is a mistake. Adam's thoughts came to him from the outside.
YOU have a fear of death. You did not invent that--you got it from
outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death--none in
the world.
Y.M. Yes, he had.
O.M. When he was created?
Y.M. No.
O.M. When, then?
Y.M. When he was threatened with it.
O.M. Then it came from OUTSIDE. Adam is quite big enough; let us not
try to make a god of him. NONE BUT GODS HAVE EVER HAD A THOUGHT WHICH
DID NOT COME FROM THE OUTSIDE. Adam probably had a good head, but it was
of no sort of use to him until it was filled up FROM THE OUTSIDE. He was
not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had not a
shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he had to get
the idea FROM THE OUTSIDE. Neither he nor Eve was able to originate the
idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the
apple FROM THE OUTSIDE. A man's brain is so constructed that IT CAN
ORIGINATE NOTHING WHATSOEVER. It can only use material obtained OUTSIDE.
It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power.
IT HAS NO COMMAND OVER ITSELF, ITS OWNER HAS NO COMMAND OVER IT.
Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations--
O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's IMITATIONS. Shakespeare created
nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly
portrayed people whom GOD had created; but he created none himself. Let
us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could
not create. HE WAS A MACHINE, AND MACHINES DO NOT CREATE.
Y.M. Where WAS his excellence, then?
O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a
Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him FROM THE OUTSIDE;
outside influences, suggestions, EXPERIENCES (reading, seeing plays,
playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his
mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and IT
AUTOMATICALLY turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still
compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and
bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect
would have had no OUTSIDE MATERIAL to work with, and could have invented
none; and NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES, teachings, moldings, persuasions,
inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so
Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would have produced
something--something up to the highest limit of Turkish influences,
associations, and training. In France he would have produced something
better--something up to the highest limit of the French influences and
training. In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the
OUTSIDE HELPS AFFORDED BY THAT LAND'S IDEALS, INFLUENCES, AND TRAINING.
You and I are but sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must
do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us
for not turning out Gobelins.
Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel
proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause
and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.
O.M. It isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact.
Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in
being a coward?
O.M. PERSONAL merit? No. A brave man does not CREATE his bravery. He
is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him.
A baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that?
A baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that? The one
is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected
and despised--where is the sense in it?
Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds. What do you say to that?
O.M. That it shows the value of TRAINING IN RIGHT DIRECTIONS OVER
TRAINING IN WRONG ONES. Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
education, in right directions--TRAINING ONE'S SELF-APPROBATION TO
ELEVATE ITS IDEALS.
Y.M. But as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's
project and achievement?
O.M. There isn't any. In the world's view he is a worthier man than he
was before, but HE didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not his.
Y.M. Whose, then?
O.M. His MAKE, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
outside.
Y.M. His make?
O.M. To start with, he was NOT utterly and completely a coward, or the
influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a
cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a
man. There was something to build upon. There was a SEED. No seed, no
plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? It was no
merit of HIS that the seed was there.
Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of CULTIVATING it, the resolution to
cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.
O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence ALL impulses, good or
bad, come--from OUTSIDE. If that timid man had lived all his life in a
community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never
heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy
of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of
bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility
have occurred to him to RESOLVE to become brave. He COULD NOT ORIGINATE
THE IDEA--it had to come to him from the OUTSIDE. And so, when he heard
bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed.
Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you
are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leaf--she did it
for him. HE must not strut around in the merit of it--it is not his.
Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.
O.M. No. OUTSIDE INFLUENCES reared it. At the command--and
trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the
daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE, he
drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to
run, but he did not dare; he was AFRAID to run, with all those soldiers
looking on. He was progressing, you see--the moral fear of shame had
risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of the campaign
experience will have taught him that not ALL who go into battle get
hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also
have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at
with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the
worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating. After that
he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and there will
not be a shade nor suggestion of PERSONAL MERIT in it anywhere; it will
all have come from the OUTSIDE. The Victoria Cross breeds more heroes
than--
Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get
no credit for it?
O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an
important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon.
Y.M. What detail is that?
O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse
that ever moves a person to do a thing.
Y.M. The ONLY one! Is there but one?
O.M. That is all. There is only one.
Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole
impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?
O.M. The impulse to CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT--the NECESSITY of contenting
his own spirit and WINNING ITS APPROVAL.
Y.M. Oh, come, that won't do!
O.M. Why won't it?
Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his
own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing
solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to
himself.
O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do HIM good, FIRST; otherwise he
will not do it. He may THINK he is doing it solely for the other
person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit
first--the other's person's benefit has to always take SECOND place.
Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self-sacrifice? Please
answer me that.
O.M. What is self-sacrifice?
Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
benefit to one's self can result from it.
II
Man's Sole Impulse--the Securing of His Own Approval
Old Man. There have been instances of it--you think?
Young Man. INSTANCES? Millions of them!
O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined
them--critically?
Y.M. They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse
back of them.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man
lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight.
He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his
pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home
through the storm. There--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is
marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some
other way of looking at it?
O.M. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt
and what he thought?
Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the
three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking
of it.
O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?
Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His
heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.
O.M. He felt well?
Y.M. One cannot doubt it.
O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got
for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the REAL why of his
making the investment. In the first place HE couldn't bear the pain
which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of HIS
pain--this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor
the old woman HIS conscience would torture him all the way home.
Thinking of HIS pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn't
relieve the old woman HE would not get any sleep. He must buy some
sleep--still thinking of HIMSELF, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought
himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the
tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all
for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On
his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit!
The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--FIRST--to
CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT; secondly to relieve HER sufferings. Is it your
opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and
inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?
Y.M. From a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others
not. What is your opinion?
O.M. Then there is but ONE law, one source.
Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one
source?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Will you put that law into words?
O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. FROM HIS CRADLE TO
HIS GRAVE A MAN NEVER DOES A SINGLE THING WHICH HAS ANY FIRST AND
FOREMOST OBJECT BUT ONE--TO SECURE PEACE OF MIND, SPIRITUAL COMFORT, FOR
HIMSELF.
Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual
or physical?
O.M. No. EXCEPT ON THOSE DISTINCT TERMS--that it shall FIRST secure HIS
OWN spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who
loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping
family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold,
wounds, and death. Is that seeking spiritual comfort?
O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves MORE than he loves
peace--THE APPROVAL OF HIS NEIGHBORS AND THE PUBLIC. And perhaps there
is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the DISAPPROVAL of
his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go to
the field--not because his spirit will be ENTIRELY comfortable there, but
because it will be more comfortable there than it would be if he remained
at home. He will always do the thing which will bring him the MOST
mental comfort--for that is THE SOLE LAW OF HIS LIFE. He leaves the
weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not
sorry enough to sacrifice his OWN comfort to secure theirs.
Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
and peaceful man to--
O.M. Go to war? Yes--public opinion can force some men to do ANYTHING.
Y.M. ANYTHING?
O.M. Yes--anything.
Y.M. I don't believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do a
wrong thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. He
regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of
religion--but in deference to PUBLIC OPINION he fought a duel. He deeply
loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted
them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong
sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world. In the
then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been
comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight. The
teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart,
his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of
his spiritual comfort. A man will do ANYTHING, no matter what it is, TO
SECURE HIS SPIRITUAL COMFORT; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded
to any act which has not that goal for its object. Hamilton's act was
compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this
it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all
men's lives. Do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? A man
cannot be comfortable without HIS OWN approval. He will secure the
largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices.
Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get PUBLIC
approval.
O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his
family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval
was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in
the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the MOST comfort
of mind, the most SELF-approval; so he sacrificed all other values to get
it.
Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
braved the public contempt.
O.M. They acted ACCORDING TO THEIR MAKE. They valued their principles
and the approval of their families ABOVE the public approval. They took
the thing they valued MOST and let the rest go. They took what would
give them the LARGEST share of PERSONAL CONTENTMENT AND APPROVAL--a man
ALWAYS does. Public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the
wars. When they go it is for other reasons. Other spirit-contenting
reasons.
Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons?
O.M. There are no others.
Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a
burning building, what do you call that?
O.M. When he does it, it is the law of HIS make. HE can't bear to see
the child in that peril (a man of a different make COULD), and so he
tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he was
after--HIS OWN APPROVAL.
Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity,
Magnanimity, Forgiveness?
O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
securing one's self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject
to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the
SAME PERSON all the time. To change the figure, the COMPULSION that
moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the
contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead.
Y.M. That is foolishness. Love--
O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising
form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not
PRIMARILY for the object's sake, but for ITS OWN. When its object is
happy IT is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after.
Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of
mother-love?
O.M. No, IT is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go naked
to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer
torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living
PLEASURE in making these sacrifices. SHE DOES IT FOR THAT REWARD--that
self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. SHE WOULD DO
IT FOR YOUR CHILD IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.
Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.
O.M. It isn't a philosophy, it is a fact.
Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which--
O.M. No. There is NO act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs
from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting
one's own spirit.
Y.M. The world's philanthropists--
O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them--from habit and training;
and THEY could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did
not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes THEM happy to see others
happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are
after--HAPPINESS, SELF-APPROVAL. Why don't miners do the same thing?
Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by NOT doing it.
There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make.
Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty's sake?
O.M. That IS DOES NOT EXIST. Duties are not performed for duty's SAKE,
but because their NEGLECT would make the man UNCOMFORTABLE. A man
performs but ONE duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of
making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most satisfyingly perform
this sole and only duty by HELPING his neighbor, he will do it; if he can
most satisfyingly perform it by SWINDLING his neighbor, he will do it.
But he always looks out for Number One--FIRST; the effects upon others
are a SECONDARY matter. Men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a
thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS
NOT EXISTED. A man often honestly THINKS he is sacrificing himself
merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom
impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus
acquire peace for his soul.
Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their
lives to contenting their consciences.
O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience--that
independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who
is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because there
are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a
philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's in still
another. As a GUIDE or INCENTIVE to any authoritatively prescribed line
of morals or conduct (leaving TRAINING out of the account), a man's
conscience is totally valueless. I know a kind-hearted Kentuckian whose
self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him, to phrase
it with exactness--BECAUSE HE HAD NEGLECTED TO KILL A CERTAIN MAN--a man
whom he had never seen. The stranger had killed this man's friend in a
fight, this man's Kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger
for it. He neglected his duty--kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it
off, and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this
conduct. At last, to get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted
up the stranger and took his life. It was an immense act of
SELF-SACRIFICE (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do
it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented
spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. But we are so made that we
will pay ANYTHING for that contentment--even another man's life.
Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of TRAINED consciences. You mean that we
are not BORN with consciences competent to guide us aright?
O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and
not have to be taught it.
Y.M. But consciences can be TRAINED?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.
O.M. Yes--they do their share; they do what they can.
Y.M. And the rest is done by--
O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences
which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from
cradle to grave.
Y.M. You have tabulated these?
O.M. Many of them--yes.
Y.M. Will you read me the result?
O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour.
Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?
O.M. It CAN'T be trained to do a thing for any OTHER reason. The thing
is impossible.
Y.M. There MUST be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act recorded
in human history somewhere.
O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out.
Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling
in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him--
O.M. Wait. Describe the MAN. Describe the FELLOW-BEING. State if there
is an AUDIENCE present; or if they are ALONE.
Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act?
O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are
alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?
Y.M. If you choose.
O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man's daughter?
Y.M. Well, n-no--make it someone else.
O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?
Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no
audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it.
O.M. But there is here and there a man who WOULD. People, for instance,
like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the fire;
and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and walked
home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who would do
it. And why? Because they couldn't BEAR to see a fellow-being
struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would give THEM
pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account. THEY WOULDN'T
DO IT OTHERWISE. They strictly obey the law which I have been insisting
upon. You must remember and always distinguish the people who CAN'T BEAR
things from people who CAN. It will throw light upon a number of
apparently "self-sacrificing" cases.
Y.M. Oh, dear, it's all so disgusting.
O.M. Yes. And so true.
Y.M. Come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in
order to gratify his mother.
O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies HIM to gratify
his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good boy
would not do the act. He MUST obey the iron law. None can escape it.
Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who--
O.M. You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter
about the bad boy's act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it.
Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man's
conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be
taught and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy,
but I don't think it can go wrong; if you wake it up--
A Little Story
O.M. I will tell you a little story:
Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched by
the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire
which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them
think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last
moments, reproached him and said:
"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY
COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS
WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST."
And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:
"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS
CRUEL THING? WE HAVE DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR
HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD."
The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:
"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD. IN MY
VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH."
Then the mother said:
"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH,
AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD,--AND
LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF
BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT?
WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?"
Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death!
O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.
Y.M. Ah--you see, HIS CONSCIENCE WAS AWAKENED!
O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It PAINED him to see the mother
suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought HIM pain. It did
not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy,
for he was absorbed in providing PLEASURE for himself, then. Providing
it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.
Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of AWAKENED CONSCIENCE.
That awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of
trouble again. A cure like that is a PERMANENT cure.
O.M. Pardon--I had not finished the story. We are creatures of OUTSIDE
INFLUENCES--we originate NOTHING within. Whenever we take a new line of
thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is
ALWAYS suggested from the OUTSIDE. Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel
that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him
come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake
and the mother's. Finally he found himself examining it. From that
moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He became a
believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy
of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It gave him no
rest, no peace. He MUST have rest and peace--it is the law of nature.
There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving
imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan country
ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home and
nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken
hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here
was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other
boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish
faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy in his
last moments reproached him and said:
"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY
COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS
WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST."
And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS
CRUEL THING? WE HAD DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR
HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD."
The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:
"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD. IN MY
VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH."
Then the mother said:
"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH,
AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD--AND
LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF
BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT?
WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?"
The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter
and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former
case. The story is finished. What is your comment?
Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't know
right from wrong.
O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that ONE man's
conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there
are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine
of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing
which I ask you to notice.
Y.M. What is that?
O.M. That in both cases the man's ACT gave him no spiritual discomfort,
and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. But
afterward when it resulted in PAIN to HIM, he was sorry. Sorry it had
inflicted pain upon the others, BUT FOR NO REASON UNDER THE SUN EXCEPT
THAT THEIR PAIN GAVE HIM PAIN. Our consciences take NO notice of pain
inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US.
In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another
person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel
would not have been troubled by that Christian mother's distress. Don't
you believe that?
Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the AVERAGE infidel, I think.
O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty,
would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--Jesuit
missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
episodes quoted by Parkman.
Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number
of qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate,
Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach
misleading MEANINGS to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment,
self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our
attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the
dictionary which ought not to be there at all--Self-Sacrifice. It
describes a thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and
never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every
act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every
emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we are. It is our
breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad,
our only impelling power; we have no other. Without it we should be mere
inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no
progress, the world would stand still. We ought to stand reverently
uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered.
Y.M. I am not convinced.
O.M. You will be when you think.
III
Instances in Point
Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self-Approval since we
talked?
Young Man. I have.
O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
moved you to it--not one that originated in your head. Will you try to
keep that in mind and not forget it?
Y.M. Yes. Why?
O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress
upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought
in his own head. THE UTTERER OF A THOUGHT ALWAYS UTTERS A SECOND-HAND
ONE.
Y.M. Oh, now--
O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our
discussion--tomorrow or next day, say. Now, then, have you been
considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a
self-contenting impulse--(primarily). You have sought. What have you
found?
Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and
apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but--
O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared?
It naturally would.
Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps
who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and practical
laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader of
a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the lumberman, is fired
with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down
and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make this
sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ. He resigns
his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and
preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little
groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. But he
rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause
of Christ. You have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was
constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all
this, but I am thankful to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and
for DUTY'S SAKE he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed.
O.M. Is that as far as you have read?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing
himself--NOT for the glory of God, PRIMARILY, as HE imagined, but FIRST
to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--DID HE
SACRIFICE ANYBODY ELSE?
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
place of it. Had he dependents?
Y.M. Well--yes.
O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect THEM?
Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young
sister with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so
that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was
furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school
and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.
O.M. The old father's comforts were now curtailed?
Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes.
O.M. The sister's music-lessens had to stop?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. The young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell
upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the old
father, or something like that?
Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes.
O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me
that he sacrificed everybody EXCEPT himself. Haven't I told you that no
man EVER sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record
anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch requires a thing of its
slave for either its MOMENTARY or its PERMANENT contentment, that thing
must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may
stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That man RUINED HIS FAMILY
to please and content his Interior Monarch--
Y.M. And help Christ's cause.
O.M. Yes--SECONDLY. Not firstly. HE thought it was firstly.
Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued
that if he saved a hundred souls in New York--
O.M. The sacrifice of the FAMILY would be justified by that great profit
upon the--the--what shall we call it?
Y.M. Investment?
O.M. Hardly. How would SPECULATION do? How would GAMBLE do? Not a
solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible
thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was GAMBLING--with his family
for "chips." However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we can get
on the track of the secret original impulse, the REAL impulse, that moved
him to so nobly self-sacrifice his family in the Savior's cause under the
superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will read a chapter or
so. . . . Here we have it! It was bound to expose itself sooner or
later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went back to
his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps "HURT TO THE HEART, HIS
PRIDE HUMBLED." Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the Savior, for
Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is LOST SIGHT OF, is not
even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely
forgotten! Then what is the trouble? The authoress quite innocently and
unconsciously gives the whole business away. The trouble was this: this
man merely PREACHED to the poor; that is not the University Settlement's
way; it deals in larger and better things than that, and it did not
enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army eloquence. It was courteous to
Holme--but cool. It did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom.
"PERISHED WERE ALL HIS DREAMS OF DISTINCTION, THE PRAISE AND GRATEFUL
APPROVAL--" Of whom? The Savior? No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of
whom, then? Of "His FELLOW-WORKERS." Why did he want that? Because the
Master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it.
That emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been
seeking, the original impulse, the REAL impulse, which moved the obscure
and unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on
that crusade to the East Side--which said original impulse was this, to
wit: without knowing it HE WENT THERE TO SHOW A NEGLECTED WORLD THE LARGE
TALENT THAT WAS IN HIM, AND RISE TO DISTINCTION. As I have warned you
before, NO act springs from any but the one law, the one motive. But I
pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but diligently examine
for yourself. Whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or hear of
one, or of a duty done for DUTY'S SAKE, take it to pieces and look for
the REAL motive. It is always there.
Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten
started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across
a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine it,
I cannot help myself.
O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
Y.M. No--at least, not yet. But take the case of servant-tipping in
Europe. You pay the HOTEL for service; you owe the servants NOTHING, yet
you pay them besides. Doesn't that defeat it?
O.M. In what way?
Y.M. You are not OBLIGED to do it, therefore its source is compassion
for their ill-paid condition, and--
O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
Y.M. Well, yes.
O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Why of course?
Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
to--everybody recognizes it as a DUTY.
O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for DUTY'S sake?
Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not ALL
compassion, charity, benevolence?
Y.M. Well--perhaps not.
O.M. Is ANY of it?
Y.M. I--perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt
and effective service from the servants?
Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't
get any of all, to speak of.
O.M. Couldn't THAT work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?
Y.M. I am not denying it.
O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little
self-interest added?
Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax
knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
and MORE than the right thing, the GENEROUS thing. I think it will be
difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.
O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
the HOTEL bill does it annoy you?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?
Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.
O.M. The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you
came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and
maids had a fixed charge?
Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!
O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had been in the
habit of paying in the form of tips?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion
nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the AMOUNT of
the tax that annoys you. Yet SOMETHING annoys you. What is it?
Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the tax varies
so, all over Europe.
O.M. So you have to guess?
Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in
the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are
only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried
and miserable.
O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay
unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?
Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
of them.
O.M. It has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so
much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom
you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.
Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
it will be hard to find.
O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?
Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a
look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake
there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing
you HAD done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you see,
by the signs, that you have it JUST RIGHT, and you go away mightily
satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you
have given him a good deal MORE than was necessary.
O.M. NECESSARY? Necessary for what?
Y.M. To content him.
O.M. How do you feel THEN?
Y.M. Repentant.
O.M. It is my belief that you have NOT been concerning yourself in
guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would CONTENT
him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.
Y.M. What was it?
O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would
get a look which would SHAME YOU BEFORE FOLK. That would give you PAIN.
YOU--for you are only working for yourself, not HIM. If you gave him too
much you would be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF for it, and that would give YOU
pain--another case of thinking of YOURSELF, protecting yourself, SAVING
YOURSELF FROM DISCOMFORT. You never think of the servant once--except to
guess out how to get HIS APPROVAL. If you get that, you get your OWN
approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. The Master
inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was NO
OTHER thing at stake, as a matter of FIRST interest, anywhere in the
transaction.
Further Instances
Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing
in man, ruled out! non-existent!
O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?
Y.M. Why, certainly.
O.M. I haven't said it.
Y.M. What did you say, then?
O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of
that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another ALONE. Men make daily
sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake FIRST. The act must
content their own spirit FIRST. The other beneficiaries come second.
Y.M. And the same with duty for duty's sake?
O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must
content his spirit FIRST. He must feel better for DOING the duty than he
would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. Take the case of the BERKELEY CASTLE.
O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and
examine it, if you like.
Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the
boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment
on the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved."
There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the women and
children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers
took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on
dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went
down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. Can you view it as other than
that?
O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you
have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that
unflinching way?
Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.
O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping
higher and higher around you.
Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have
endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn't DO
it.
O.M. But it would be your DUTY to do it.
Y.M. Yes, I know--but I couldn't.
O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some
of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that
great duty for duty's SAKE, why not you? Don't you know that you could
go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them
on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of
them would stay in the ranks to the end?
Y.M. Yes, I know that.
O.M. But you TRAIN them, and put them through a campaign or two; then
they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's
self-respect, a soldier's ideals. They would have to content a SOLDIER'S
spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. They could not content
that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they?
Y.M. I suppose not.
O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the DUTY'S sake, but for their
OWN sake--primarily. The DUTY was JUST THE SAME, and just as imperative,
when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn't perform
it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another
spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They HAD to; it is the law.
TRAINING is potent. Training toward higher and higher, and ever higher
ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and diligence.
Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake
rather than be recreant to it.
O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that
is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely
religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must
content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it. He could not
perform that duty for duty's SAKE, for that would not content his spirit,
and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to FIRST. It takes
precedence of all other duties.
Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an
honest man on the other ticket.
O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no
private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. He will always
be true to his make and training.
IV
Training
Young Man. You keep using that word--training. By it do you
particularly mean--
Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of
it--but not a large part. I mean ALL the outside influences. There are
a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of his
trainers stands ASSOCIATION. It is his human environment which
influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets
him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave that road he will find
himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose
approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he
takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about him create
his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his
religion. He creates none of these things for himself. He THINKS he
does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. You have
seen Presbyterians?
Y.M. Many.
O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists?
And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman
Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and the Buddhists Quakers,
and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and the
Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists
Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the Agnostics
Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians Unitarians,
and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans Salvation Warriors,
and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian
Scientists, and the Christian Scientists Mormons--and so on?
Y.M. You may answer your question yourself.
O.M. That list of sects is not a record of STUDIES, searchings, seekings
after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what ASSOCIATION can
do. If you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of
guessing the complexion of his religion: English--Protestant; American
--ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South American--Roman
Catholic; Russian--Greek Catholic; Turk--Mohammedan; and so on. And when
you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious
books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he
avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. In America if
you know which party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations
are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he
reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed
of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge,
and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its
doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are around
SEEKING AFTER TRUTH. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think
he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who
THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought
diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect
honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without
doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE
SEARCH. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith
to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political
Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels
which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True
Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on
the market. In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER;
but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his
bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors.
There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth--have you ever
heard of a permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person is
impossible. However, to drop back to the text--training: all training
is one from or another of OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, and ASSOCIATION is the
largest part of it. A man is never anything but what his outside
influences have made him. They train him downward or they train him
upward--but they TRAIN him; they are at work upon him all the time.
Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed
there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train
downward.
O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It
is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only
to change his habitat--his ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must
come from the OUTSIDE--he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose
in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the
initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The
chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water
a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a
surprising fruitage--in the fields of war. The history of man is full of
such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald
soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal. From
that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it has been shaking
thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two
hundred years--and will go on. The chance reading of a book or of a
paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him
renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are IN SYMPATHY WITH
HIS NEW IDEAL: and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of
his way of life.
Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?
O.M. Not a new one--an old one. Old as mankind.
Y.M. What is it?
O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with
INITIATORY IMPULSES TOWARD HIGH IDEALS. It is what the tract-distributor
does. It is what the missionary does. It is what governments ought to
do.
Y.M. Don't they?
O.M. In one way they do, in another they don't. They separate the
smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they
put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is to say,
they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This would be
well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so
ASSOCIATION makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into
captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively
innocent at times. They hang a man--which is a trifling punishment; this
breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one. They comfortably
jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to
starve.
Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
intuitive perception of good and evil?
O.M. Adam hadn't it.
Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets ALL his
ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.
Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?
O.M. From the OUTSIDE. I did not invent them. They are gathered from a
thousand unknown sources. Mainly UNCONSCIOUSLY gathered.
Y.M. Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?
O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.
Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest
man's the noblest work of God."
O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy, and
sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and
dishonest POSSIBILITIES in him and stops there. The man's ASSOCIATIONS
develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. The result is
accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.
Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to--
O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? HE is not the
architect of his honesty.
Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?
O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
main thing--to HIM. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
damage to them--and so THEY get an advantage out of his virtues. That is
the main thing to THEM. It can make this life comparatively comfortable
to the parties concerned; the NEGLECT of this training can make this life
a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.
Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man
HIMSELF, for it makes him what he is.
O.M. I said training and ANOTHER thing. Let that other thing pass, for
the moment. What were you going to say?
Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty-two years.
Her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful.
We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the
infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold
her for her remissnesses, but at times I do--I can't seem to control
myself. Don't I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to dress,
this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my temper; I
lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang; and
immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful
and speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the
very word I would use: "You've forgotten the clean clothes, Jane." When
she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of
it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and
hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, "You've forgotten
them again!" You say a man always does the thing which will best please
his Interior Master. Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation
to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that come from the
Master, who is always primarily concerned about HIMSELF?
O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse.
SECONDARILY you made preparation to save the girl, but PRIMARILY its
object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper
and not fly out at the girl?
Y.M. Yes. My mother.
O.M. You love her?
Y.M. Oh, more than that!
O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?
Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!
O.M. Why? YOU WOULD DO IT FOR PAY, SOLELY--for PROFIT. What profit
would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?
Y.M. Personally? None. To please HER is enough.
O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, WASN'T to save the
girl a humiliation, but to PLEASE YOUR MOTHER. It also appears that to
please your mother gives YOU a strong pleasure. Is not that the profit
which you get out of the investment? Isn't that the REAL profits and
FIRST profit?
Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.
O.M. In ALL transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that YOU GET
THE FIRST PROFIT. Otherwise there is no transaction.
Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent
upon it, why did I threw it away by losing my temper?
O.M. In order to get ANOTHER profit which suddenly superseded it in
value.
Y.M. Where was it?
O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance.
Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and FOR THE MOMENT
its influence was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished it. In
that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. You
did enjoy it, didn't you?
Y.M. For--for a quarter of a second. Yes--I did.
O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the
MOST pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or FRACTION of a
moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's
LATEST whim, whatever it may be.
Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could have
cut my hand off for what I had done.
O.M. Right. You had humiliated YOURSELF, you see, you had given
yourself PAIN. Nothing is of FIRST importance to a man except results
which damage HIM or profit him--all the rest is SECONDARY. Your Master
was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He required a
prompt REPENTANCE; you obeyed again; you HAD to--there is never any
escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he changes his
mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you
will obey, ALWAYS. If he requires repentance, you content him, you will
always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept
contented, let the terms be what they may.
Y.M. Training! Oh, what's the use of it? Didn't I, and didn't my
mother try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that
girl?
O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?
Y.M. Oh, certainly--many times.
O.M. More times this year than last?
Y.M. Yes, a good many more.
O.M. More times last year than the year before?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?
Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.
O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there IS use in training.
Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.
Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?
O.M. It will. UP to YOUR limit.
Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?
O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was EVERYTHING. I
corrected you, and said "training and ANOTHER thing." That other thing
is TEMPERAMENT--that is, the disposition you were born with. YOU CAN'T
ERADICATE YOUR DISPOSITION NOR ANY RAG OF IT--you can only put a pressure
on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm temper?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it
down nearly all the time. ITS PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT. Your reform will
never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then,
but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make
more. There IS use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach
a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will
proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing
your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight
your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon
you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You
will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the
roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the matter, and it
also strengthens the impulse.
Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will spare
the girl for HER sake PRIMARILY, not mine?
O.M. Why--yes. In heaven.
Y.M. (AFTER A REFLECTIVE PAUSE) Temperament. Well, I see one must
allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is
thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her room;
she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I heard the
water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that Jane had
forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I offered to ring,
but she said, "No, don't do that; it would only distress her to be
confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve
that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her." I
say--has my mother an Interior Master?--and where was he?
O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and
pleasure and contentment. The girl's distress would have pained YOUR
MOTHER. Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. I
know women who would have gotten a No. 1 PLEASURE out of ringing Jane
up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the
law of their make and training, which are the servants of their Interior
Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance
came from training. The GOOD kind of training--whose best and highest
function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon
its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others.
Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it?
Admonition
O.M. Diligently train your ideals UPWARD and STILL UPWARD toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while
contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and
the community.
Y.M. Is that a new gospel?
O.M. No.
Y.M. It has been taught before?
O.M. For ten thousand years.
Y.M. By whom?
O.M. All the great religions--all the great gospels.
Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it?
O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not
been done before.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Haven't I put YOU FIRST, and your neighbor and the community
AFTERWARD?
Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the
difference between frankness and shuffling.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. The others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding
that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first,
and that you will do nothing at FIRST HAND but for his sake; then they
turn square around and require you to do good for OTHER'S sake CHIEFLY;
and to do your duty for duty's SAKE, chiefly; and to do acts of
SELF-SACRIFICE. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the same
ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that resides in
man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others
dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and
illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to
man's SECOND-PLACE powers and to powers which have NO EXISTENCE in him,
thus advancing them to FIRST place; whereas in my Admonition I stick
logically and consistently to the original position: I place the Interior
Master's requirements FIRST, and keep them there.
Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
other schemes aim at and produce the same result--RIGHT LIVING--has
yours an advantage over the others?
O.M. One, yes--a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions.
When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as
to the REAL chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he
is.
Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
IMPRESSION that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an
advantage?
O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking
himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and
feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would
only examine the herald's records.
Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in
his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
and that benefits the community.
O.M. He could do that without being a duke.
Y.M. But would he?
O.M. Don't you see where you are arriving?
Y.M. Where?
O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to
let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty
low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
his purse and cease to be good?
Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he THINKS
he is doing good for others' sake?
O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
handsome conduct.
Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good
deed for his OWN sake first-off, instead of first for the GOOD DEED'S
sake, no man would ever do one.
O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?
Y.M. Yes. This morning.
O.M. Give the particulars.
Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last
night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to
build another one.
O.M. You furnished it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. You were glad you had the money?
Y.M. Money? I hadn't. I sold my horse.
O.M. You were glad you had the horse?
Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been
incapable, and my MOTHER would have captured the chance to set old Sally
up.
O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?
Y.M. Oh, I just was!
O.M. Now, then--
Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them;
but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the
charity knowing it was because the act would give ME a splendid pleasure,
and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would give ME
another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and
out of her trouble would fill ME full of happiness. I did the whole
thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was looking
out for MY share of the profits FIRST. Now then, I have confessed. Go
on.
O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any MORE strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only?
Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played
the limit!
O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect--and I claim to KNOW--that when a
man is a shade MORE STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two
dozen things than he is to do any one of the OTHERS, he will infallibly
do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all
the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the
impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment
he will get out of the act.
Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that
good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the
sake of No. 1?
O.M. That is what I fully believe.
Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.
Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?
O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
mouth and takes back with the other: Do right FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, and be
happy in knowing that your NEIGHBOR will certainly share in the benefits
resulting.
Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.
O.M. DILIGENTLY TRAIN YOUR IDEALS UPWARD AND STILL UPWARD TOWARD A
SUMMIT WHERE YOU WILL FIND YOUR CHIEFEST PLEASURE IN CONDUCT WHICH, WHILE
CONTENTING YOU, WILL BE SURE TO CONFER BENEFITS UPON YOUR NEIGHBOR AND
THE COMMUNITY.
Y.M. One's EVERY act proceeds from EXTERIOR INFLUENCES, you think?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the ORIGINATOR of the idea,
but it comes in from the OUTSIDE? I see him handling money--for
instance--and THAT moves me to the crime?
O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the LATEST
outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
back over a period of years. No SINGLE outside influence can make a man
do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is to
start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of NEW
influences--as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences
can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
character to yield to the FINAL influence and do that thing. I will put
the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here
are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of
characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years
of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down these
strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to
bear upon the ingots?
Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.
O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
succession of hours. Will there be a result?
Y.M. None that I know of.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.
O.M. Very well. The steam is an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, but it is
ineffective because the gold TAKES NO INTEREST IN IT. The ingot remains
as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized
condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The QUICKSILVER is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar
nature--say TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITION) CANNOT BE INDIFFERENT TO. It stirs
up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a SINGLE
application of the influence works no damage. Let us continue the
application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. By the end
of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden
with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. At
last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no
notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We will apply that temptation in the
form of a pressure of my finger. You note the result?
Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
the SINGLE outside influence that does the work, but only the LAST one of
a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how my
SINGLE impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but
only the LAST one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate with a
parable.
A Parable
O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys--twins. They
were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal
appearance. They were the models of the Sunday-school. At fifteen
George had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed
away for the Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen
George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the
advanced Bible class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the
European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and out of
a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At twenty-six
George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the village
church. Then George came home, and was Henry's guest. One evening a man
passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic
smile, "Without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me
reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him,
and goes by here every evening of his life." That OUTSIDE
INFLUENCE--that remark--was enough for George, but IT was not the one
that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the
eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act
for which their long gestation had made preparation. It had never
entered the head of Henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to
clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to vaporized
quicksilver.
V
More About the Machine
Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has
answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that she
has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's
privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt
her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. The
human being always looks down when he is examining another person's
standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up.
The Man-Machine Again
Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
Old Man. I do.
Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control--carries on thought on its own hook?
O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell
it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still
for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it with
subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would
wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
Y.M. Maybe it does.
O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake
to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
another subject. Make the experiment and see.
Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot
keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.
After an Interval of Days
O.M. Now, dreams--but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking
on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me. Also--as you suggested--at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside
in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
Y.M. Don't mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out
and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
"I saw Esau kissing Kate, And she saw I saw Esau; I saw Esau, he saw
Kate, And she saw--"
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! "In the Swee-eet By and By"; etc. Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It
is master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that
it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get
it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me:
a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a
kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old
persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in
character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid
fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are
tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there
are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is
exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through--all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you--and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind
is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic
machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind--if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C
two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of--of--I don't remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork
and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other
suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else's skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way
carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat
brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down,
helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw it
all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked
great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault;
saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast
and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude
black sister of mine? No--it was far away from that scene in an instant,
and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing
and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely
dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there. And so on
and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting
panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind
without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name
the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen
minutes, let alone describe them to you.
O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one
way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
Y.M. What is that way?
O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes
an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and
concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It
will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.
Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say?
O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap
out before you know what is coming.
Y.M. For instance?
O.M. Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. Flash is the right word.
It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no
thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.
Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
The Thinking-Process
O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
the things perceived. That is all.
Y.M. The steam-engine?
O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the
fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved
the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
matter--crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine. [1]
One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not
their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred
years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.
Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He
reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-dances, and so on,
incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization
produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the
ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a
rat.
Y.M. How?
O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The
astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL
superiority or a personal dignity above the other.
Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he
does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?
O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of
necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
(personally created) superiorities over his brother.
Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would
you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
collated facts and instances?
O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Very well?
O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible
by such means.
Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your
conversion--
O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have BEEN a Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Well?
O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are
none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make
it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the
Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
laws of his construction.
Y.M. After so--
O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but
one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--and is merely a
machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not
humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will be
spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless
possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a
damaging fact approaches.
----- 1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a
century earlier.
VI
Instinct and Thought
Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip Man bare of all his
dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.
Old Man. He hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. He
claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.
Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.
O.M. I don't--morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
well above him, there.
Y.M. Are you joking?
O.M. No, I am not.
Y.M. Then what do you mean?
O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large
question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
up.
Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
rat on A level. What is it? The intellectual?
O.M. In form--not a degree.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same
machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and Edison's; like the
African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's.
Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?
O.M. What is instinct?
Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit.
O.M. What originated the habit?
Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.
O.M. How did the first one come to start it?
Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't THINK it out.
O.M. How do you know it didn't?
Y.M. Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.
O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought?
Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.
O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that
it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit;
thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks
in its sleep, so to speak.
Y.M. Illustrate it.
O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It is
an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that
observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox noticed
that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to
escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the
wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's
thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better
one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason
wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both
front and rear.
Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?
O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a
rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin
in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
which can hardly claim a thought-origin.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first--never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.
Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?
O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.
Y.M. The cow illustration is not--
O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the
same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for
it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get
into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the
corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and
went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out
for himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and
that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but I made him
sweat for it.
Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
not very elaborate. Enlarge.
O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. He
comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The
scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept
on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a
journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its
friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months
later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him
home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily
guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory
and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.
Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one.
O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?
Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.
O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case of a
bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird
flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering
cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young
bird in his mouth--unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush
and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird came
for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers
persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a
little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on;
and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way
across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog
was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to
give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the
stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she
knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her
mental processes were what Edison's would have been. She put this and
that together--and that is all that thought IS--and out of them built her
logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't have done it any
better himself.
Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?
O.M. Yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was
raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with
the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things
through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this
and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. Could
you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go
through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?
Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.
O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all
sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to
put things together, and say to themselves, "I get the idea, now: when I
do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I
am punished." Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is
well up toward man?
O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the
superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
separates man and beast.
O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
there is no such frontier.
O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's
and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same
inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like
his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior to the
Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier.
Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
elevates the dumb beasts to--to--
O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast.
Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
O.M. On quite simple ones. "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no
thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS speech. We cannot
understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
phrases. We know when she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when
she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a worm"; we
know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "Quick! hurry! gather
yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!" We understand the cat
when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment
and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we
understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be?
They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the
disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come
over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!"
We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few
of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we
domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the
hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate
to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that
she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of
others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man's vanity
and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull
perceptions. Now as to the ant--
Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to
think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
man and the Unrevealed.
O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant
is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in
proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects who
could approach the air in genius or culture. No civilized race has
produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them
are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for
convenience and adaptability.
Y.M. That could be mere instinct.
O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
before we decide. The ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies;
and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
battle.
Y.M. That could be instinct, too.
O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it
is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.
Y.M. Instinct again.
O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
forced labor.
Y.M. Instinct.
O.M. She has cows, and milks them.
Y.M. Instinct, of course.
O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.
Y.M. Instinct, all the same.
O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock
took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid
them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from the
nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then
carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John
repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants did
as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the
strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that their
reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and
strangers overboard. Come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and
intelligent discussion of a thing new--absolutely new--to their
experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment
executed? Is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't
it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new
circumstances?
Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the
look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
phrase it. I believe it was thought.
O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of
sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or
drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember. At any rate, he
watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemes--failures,
every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a
consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time
they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the
floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over
the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! Was that
instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?
Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
scheme to meet a new emergency.
O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.
I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior
of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an
ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the
stranger is disguised--with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows
every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after
a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway
recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a
affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions made? Not by color,
for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been
dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae
signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized
and the friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of the
same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and
feature--friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! Has
any man a memory for form and feature approaching that?
Y.M. Certainly not.
O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting
this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart
conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly. With
memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects
upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to
far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine;
from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the
capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to
stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to
massed armies. The ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the
preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's
development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call
it all instinct!
Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.
O.M. Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again.
Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result--as I understand it--I am
required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such
frontier--there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more
capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and
works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the
machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it
pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.
Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude
between them, except in quality, not in kind.
O.M. That is about the state of it--intellectuality. There are
pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a
very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the
other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine
and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.
Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have
it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Now look here--let's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.
O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.
Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
things.
O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth--and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures; but the
fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to any creature
that CANNOT. It is my belief that this position is not assailable.
Free Will
Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?
Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer. Isn't it so?
O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.
O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will,
and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between
good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that
man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and
the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was,
COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save HIMSELF--save himself
from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not make the
choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free
Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops
short of FACT. I would not use those words--Free Will--but others.
Y.M. What others?
O.M. Free Choice.
Y.M. What is the difference?
O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other
implies nothing beyond a mere MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to
determine which of two things is nearest right and just.
Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
O.M. The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just
one--its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It
has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.
Y.M. The man's?
O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and
the character which has been built around it by training and environment.
Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's
machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
one.
Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and
judicially points out which of two things is right and just--
O.M. Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the
other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the MIND'S
feeling concerning the matter--that is, WOULD be, if the mind had any
feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is
right he is absolutely BOUND to do that thing?
O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater.
Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then it would have been equally RIGHT for any one else to do it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. Then it would have been RIGHT for a born coward to attempt it?
Y.M. It would--yes.
O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't
you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an
absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't
you?
Y.M. Yes, I know it.
O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be RIGHT to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be RIGHT to
try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay
it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim
that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why
content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT
alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?
Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
O.M. It is what I think. There is WILL. But it has nothing to do with
INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their
command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a
compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
coward's temperament and training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it
commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But
neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do
the right or do the wrong, as their MENTAL verdict shall decide.
Not Two Values, But Only One
Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you draw
the line between MATERIAL covetousness and SPIRITUAL covetousness.
O.M. I don't draw any.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. There is no such thing as MATERIAL covetousness. All covetousness
is spiritual
Y.M. ALL longings, desires, ambitions SPIRITUAL, never material?
O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in ALL cases you shall
content his SPIRIT--that alone. He never requires anything else, he
never interests himself in any other matter.
Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather
distinctly material and gross?
O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and
concrete form a SPIRITUAL DESIRE. Any so-called material thing that you
want is merely a symbol: you want it not for ITSELF, but because it will
content your spirit for the moment.
Y.M. Please particularize.
O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and
your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends
deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are
ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it
again.
Y.M. I think I see. Go on.
O.M. It is the same hat, isn't it? It is in no way altered. But it
wasn't the HAT you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to
please and content your SPIRIT. When it failed of that, the whole of its
value was gone. There are no MATERIAL values; there are only spiritual
ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is ACTUAL,
REAL--there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for even a
moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at
once worthless--like the hat.
Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no MATERIAL value; you think
you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the
spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored
like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune,
and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a
pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His
money's value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came not from the
money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his
family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them.
Money has no MATERIAL value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is
left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or
trivial--there are no exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste
jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same, they
have no MATERIAL value: while they content the SPIRIT they are precious,
when this fails they are worthless.
A Difficult Question
Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate
personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities
of its own, and when he is in that condition I can't grasp it. Now when
_I_ speak of a man, he is THE WHOLE THING IN ONE, and easy to hold and
contemplate.
O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of "my
body" who is the "my"?
Y.M. It is the "me."
O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?
Y.M. The Me is THE WHOLE THING; it is a common property; an undivided
ownership, vested in the whole entity.
O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,
including the hair, hands, heels, and all?
Y.M. Certainly not. It is my MIND that admires it.
O.M. So YOU divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must.
What, then, definitely, is the Me?
Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts--the body and the
mind.
O.M. You think so? If you say "I believe the world is round," who is
the "I" that is speaking?
Y.M. The mind.
O.M. If you say "I grieve for the loss of my father," who is the "I"?
Y.M. The mind.
O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines
and accepts the evidence that the world is round?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the
loss of your father?
Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of FEELING.
O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your MORAL territory?
Y.M. I have to grant it.
O.M. Is your mind a part of your PHYSICAL equipment?
Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual.
O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?
Y.M. Well--no.
O.M. There IS a physical effect present, then?
Y.M. It looks like it.
O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen
if the mind is spiritual, and INDEPENDENT of physical influences?
Y.M. Well--I don't know.
O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?
Y.M. I feel it.
O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain.
Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?
Y.M. I think so.
O.M. But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the
outskirts without the help of the PHYSICAL messenger? You perceive that
the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all. You
say "I admire the rainbow," and "I believe the world is round," and in
these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the MENTAL
part. You say, "I grieve," and again the Me is not all speaking, but
only the MORAL part. You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say
"I have a pain" and find that this time the Me is mental AND spiritual
combined. We all use the "I" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no
help for it. We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole
Thing, and we speak of him as "I," but when we try to define him we find
we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act quite
INDEPENDENTLY of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a
Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a DEFINITE AND
INDISPUTABLE "I," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we
are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and
confess that we cannot find him. To me, Man is a machine, made up of
many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in
accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of
born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences
and trainings; a machine whose ONE function is to secure the spiritual
contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine
whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always IS obeyed.
Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?
O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?
Y.M. I don't know.
O.M. Neither does any one else.
The Master Passion
Y.M. What is the Master?--or, in common speech, the Conscience?
Explain it.
O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the
man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion--the
hunger for Self-Approval.
Y.M. Where is its seat?
O.M. In man's moral constitution.
Y.M. Are its commands for the man's good?
O.M. It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about
anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be TRAINED to
prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them
only because they will content IT better than other things would.
Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out
for its own contentment, and not for the man's good.
O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good,
and never concerns itself about it.
Y.M. It seems to be an IMMORAL force seated in the man's moral
constitution.
O.M. It is a COLORLESS force seated in the man's moral constitution. Let
us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot and
does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares nothing
for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it
will ALWAYS secure that.
Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage
for the man?
O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor
office, nor any other MATERIAL advantage. In ALL cases it seeks a
SPIRITUAL contentment, let the MEANS be what they may. Its desires are
determined by the man's temperament--and it is lord over that.
Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in
fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing
for money?
Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to
take a place in a business house at a large salary.
O.M. He had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his
Spiritual Appetite--and it preferred books to money. Are there other
cases?
Y.M. Yes, the hermit.
O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold,
and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things,
and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that
money can buy. Are there others?
Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist.
O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,
either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price.
You REALIZE that the Master Passion--the contentment of the
spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material
advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?
Y.M. I think I must concede it.
O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that
would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office
as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments seek
the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the
case with the other set. Neither set seeks anything BUT the contentment
of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so,
since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. And in both
cases Temperament decides the preference--and Temperament is BORN, not
made.
Conclusion
O.M. You have been taking a holiday?
Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?
O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?
Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought
over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this
result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions
about Man some day?
O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me
has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. Do
I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you
explain so simply a thing without my help?
Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved
your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside influences
deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses
could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or
originating an idea within itself.
O.M. Correct. Go on.
Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's
hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish,
he will give the order, and it will be obeyed.
O.M. That is correct. Well?
Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the
publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?
O.M. Pardon YOU? You have done nothing. You are an instrument--a
speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said
through them. Outside influences--in the form of lifelong teachings,
trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have
persuaded the Master within you that the publication of these doctrines
would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural, and was to be
expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of ease and
convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what
your Master thinks about it.
Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,
enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride
out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal
credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows
him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and
neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and
piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his
make, outside impulses doing the rest.
O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me--what do men admire most in each
other?
Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance,
charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and--
O.M. I would not go any further. These are ELEMENTALS. Virtue,
fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals--these, and all
the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are MADE OF THE
ELEMENTALS, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals,
just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several
shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. There are
several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we
manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the elementals
of the human rainbow, and also one BLEND--heroism, which is made out of
courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these elements does
the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it intellect?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. He is born with it.
O.M. Is it courage?
Y.M. No. He is born with it.
O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?
Y.M. No. They are birthrights.
O.M. Take those others--the elemental moral qualities--charity,
benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which
spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold
blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man
manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?
Y.M. Born in him.
O.M. Who manufactures them, then?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Where does the credit of it belong?
Y.M. To God.
O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?
Y.M. To God.
O.M. Then it is YOU who degrade man. You make him claim glory, praise,
flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses--BORROWED finery, the
whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced
by his own labor. YOU make man a humbug; have I done worse by him?
Y.M. You have made a machine of him.
O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a
piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is
thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which
automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the
body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who
devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests
itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all
night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all
these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine. I
am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to
call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?
Y.M. I think it is wrong to EXPOSE a fact when harm can come of it.
O.M. Go on.
Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he
is the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages he
has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple
and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant, his life
cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy
in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his
exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked--these have
exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights;
in a word, made his life worth the living. But by your scheme, all this
is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble
prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be
any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be
cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living.
O.M. You really think that?
Y.M. I certainly do.
O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.
Y.M. No.
O.M. Well, _I_ believe these things. Why have they not made me unhappy?
Y.M. Oh, well--temperament, of course! You never let THAT escape from
your scheme.
O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,
nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,
nothing can make him unhappy.
Y.M. What--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?
O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless.
They strive in vain against inborn temperament.
Y.M. I can't believe that, and I don't.
O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not
studiously examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the
happiest? Isn't it Burgess?
Y.M. Easily.
O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams?
Y.M. Without a question!
O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments
are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike--but
look at the results! Their ages are about the same--about around fifty.
Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been
cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country
journalism--and failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't
smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture
himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so and
so--THEN he would have succeeded. They tried the law--and failed.
Burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. Adams was
wretched--because he couldn't help it. From that day to this, those two
men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy
and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know
that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all
the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how it is with
their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have been
zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has always
found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political beliefs
and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have been
Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics--then Presbyterians
again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found rest in these
excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian Science, now,
with the customary result, the inevitable result. No political or
religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy. I
assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are
ACQUIREMENTS, temperaments are BORN; beliefs are subject to change,
nothing whatever can change temperament.
Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.
O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But
the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or
two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the
proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally
balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn
to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and
like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. Nations do not
THINK, they only FEEL. They get their feelings at second hand through
their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought--by force
of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to ANY KIND OF
GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION THAT CAN BE DEVISED; in time it will fit itself to
the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely
fight for them. As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the
Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the
French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South Americans,
the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks--a thousand wild and
tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from
tiger to house-cat, each nation KNOWING it has the only true religion and
the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each
an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each
perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without undoubting confidence
summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes
over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume
compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content,
persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, NO
MATTER WHAT ITS RELIGION IS, NOR WHETHER ITS MASTER BE TIGER OR
HOUSE-CAT. Am I stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race
cheerful? You know it is. Considering what it can stand, and be happy,
you do me too much honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a
system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it.
Nothing can do that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg
you not to be troubled.
THE DEATH OF JEAN
The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,
1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but
a few hours later I found him writing steadily.
"I am setting it down," he said, "everything. It is a relief to me to
write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking." At intervals during
that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then
on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest
in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.
"I have finished it," he said; "read it. I can form no opinion of it
myself. If you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end
my autobiography. It is the final chapter."
Four months later--almost to the day--(April 21st) he was with Jean.
Albert Bigelow Paine.
Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.
JEAN IS DEAD!
Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings
connected with a dear one--happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding
the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain
them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the
mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening
every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable
before--but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how
unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!
Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from
the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from
the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned,
and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until
nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German
dog following. At my door Jean said, "I can't kiss you good night,
father: I have a cold, and you could catch it." I bent and kissed her
hand. She was moved--I saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my
hand in return. Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both,
we parted.
At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door.
I said to myself, "Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the
station for the mail." Then Katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping
at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"
Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through
his heart.
In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon
the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural,
and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she
had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The
doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones,
failed to bring her back to life.
It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It
is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies
there so still.
In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart
with a cablegram which said, "Susy was mercifully released today." I had
to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the
peremptory addition, "You must not come home." Clara and her husband
sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it?
Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.
Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected
health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. Day
before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and
strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill.
Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press.
I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I
must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German papers,
and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2]
and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was
reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the
Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was "dying," and saying "I
would not do such a thing at my time of life."
Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter
so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing
serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's
irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this
evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic?
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable
mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
Seven months ago Mr. Roger died--one of the best friends I ever had, and
the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race;
within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old
friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under
our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was
forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit
here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a
mockery.
Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?
I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as
her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.
The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I
have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
released, but I shall not follow.
Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was
at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
"Mark Twain." We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas
preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then
her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would
follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was
out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed
with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted
surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched
with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal
profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today.
What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise
from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have
happened in the last four days. "Little." Yes--THEN. But not now.
Nothing she said or thought or did is little now. And all the lavish
humor!--what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the
thought of it brings tears.
All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies
yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
Strange--marvelous--incredible! I have had this experience before; but
it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"
That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head
without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me
good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without
formalities.
And so--
I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
floor--everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a
year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now
here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have
labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with her
Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
months.
Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of
overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half
past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the
letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and then
mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her
poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me
after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to
bed.
Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while
absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a housekeeper;
also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's hands.
No--she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter
ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't audit the
bills and let Paine fill out the checks--she would continue to attend to
that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy
assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal
friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that
name, though I was not able to see where my formidable change had been
made.
However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud
of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up
any part of her share in that unlovely work.
In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that
if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was
urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon
that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to
write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.
For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.
Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line
of the hills.
I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer
to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine
months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us
three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many
miles from us. How eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her
father's threshold again!
Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched
with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other
gifts mean and poor--death. I have never wanted any released friend of
mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when
Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara
met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died
suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune
--fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment!
The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. True--but they
were for ME, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he
had ever made before were poverty compared with this one.
Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast
emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of
the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of the
family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would
never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have
entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but
to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the
spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome
me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and
Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and how lovable
their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the
children back and hear them romp again with George--that peerless black
ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to
wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara and Jean
would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had
frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in
this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's
spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic
death--but I will not think of that now.
Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was
her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night.
Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of bank-notes,
for the servants.
Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany.
He has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in
Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders
save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor
at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no
German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean
wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was
ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will
not be neglected.
There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she
always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or
another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent
her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and
grateful to say.
She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. She knew
all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of
various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and
abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two
or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.
She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
kindly error.
She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an
indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy
facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty
through neglect.
The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as
they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother
laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take
away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my
door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the
telegraph would be bringing words like these:
"From the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends."
For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
number of them?
She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy.
There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her
fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own
home.
"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"
It is true. Jean is dead.
A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
yet to appear, and now I am writing--this.
CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals,
and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so
many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this
one--Jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one.
And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovely
miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the
gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care,
and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of
the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped
it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.
About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be
sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon
Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to
greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and
sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment
since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always when
Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the
house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was
his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he always
followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous
gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little I went to
the library--he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow
me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes--big, and kind,
and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature, and is
of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because
they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this one
from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never
barks except when there is occasion--which is not oftener than twice a
week.
In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of
my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I
only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will
keep them. Her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble,
now.
And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing I have often
wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the tears. She
will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the
mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
kind words she loved so well, "Merry Christmas to Jean!" If she could
only have lived one day longer!
At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one
of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
spare--and more, most likely.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's
chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
upon it.
They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,
and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle,
and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went
his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS.
At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it--that Jean could not
see it! She so loved the snow.
The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the
door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was
Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.
From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any
more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies
together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant
childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the
company of Susy and Langdon.
DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here
to see.
2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four
hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The
scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where
her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where
Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five
years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.
FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.
When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I
could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE would be a family. We
said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. That fair dream
was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my
mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
----- 1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family
for twenty-nine years.
2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
I
If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon
the above text. It means the change in my life's course which introduced
what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my career.
But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point
ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much
distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the LAST
link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the
cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its
ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed
share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all
necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the
scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion of
saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we
shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in
the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has
no advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still
retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to
fight it out in arms."
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by
stage, link by link. This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no
bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating
mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.
You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have I; so
has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.
While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with
it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other
side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the
gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST."
So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was
there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast
that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the
aisles of history forever.
If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed.
With such results! Such vast events--each a link in the HUMAN RACE'S
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one,
and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire;
the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins;
the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took
its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being
one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other
immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them)
another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in
ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the
Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which
he COULDN'T, for he was the appointed link) Caesar would not have
crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We
only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They
might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but
their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that
interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but somewhere
else; and probably black--there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he
crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared
anything about it before.
II
To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
have been professionally literary something more than forty years. There
have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link
in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most
CONSPICUOUS link in that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not
any more important than its predecessors. All the other links have an
inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in
making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the
Rubicon included.
I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up
to it and brought it about.
The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a
recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to find the
first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of generations and
start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve and a half years
old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer came, and brought
with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost every
day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. Children
that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in their homes to
save them from the infection. In the homes there were no cheerful faces,
there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice
but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family
moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. I was a prisoner.
My soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. At some time
or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the
marrow, and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and I shall die."
Life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last I made up
my mind to get the disease and have it over, one way or the other. I
escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a
playmate of mine was very ill with the malady. When the chance offered I
crept into his room and got into bed with him. I was discovered by his
mother and sent back into captivity. But I had the disease; they could
not take that from me. I came near to dying. The whole village was
interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not only
once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I would die; but on
the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were
disappointed.
This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got
well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.
She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of
the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers.
I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain
which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I
could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even
that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.
A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and
seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a
CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance
commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege,
just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the
attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I
wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of
Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked
several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one
about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage
up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the
heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a
romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the
museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the
monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also, he told
an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers,
asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the
native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and
down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance.
I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to
open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed that
dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid
enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A person may
PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come
of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off
his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in this way.
Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar
bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. I
advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was
another turning-point, another link.
Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the
Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been
obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools there--shoals
and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind. I was the only one of
my kind.
Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a
partner. Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition. His
temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no
authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot
change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except
temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the
color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray in
certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that
stress is removed.
A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of
a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in
Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the
Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with
the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note--and
WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy
into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn
when it came his turn.
Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me
what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the
case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.
Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve
him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be
mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom
he is an ass yet, and will remain one.
By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and
reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and
without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In
all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have
been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and
reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I
still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect
afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on these occasions,
even deaf persons can hear me think.
I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My
idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I
inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there
never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and
asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on, and said
if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in.
After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with
another turning-point of my life--a new link. On my way down, I had made
the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he
consented. I became a pilot.
By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this time,
in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary
profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh
link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada,
and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted.
In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the
mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea. The
idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement I
scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer
ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and
learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate
between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is
unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style." One of my efforts
attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its
staff.
And so I became a journalist--another link. By and by Circumstance and
the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six
months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of
extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this
extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I
did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the
world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me
upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the "Quaker
City Excursion."
When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with
the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I
was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS
ABROAD. Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild. That was
forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since. Leaving the
Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can say with truth that
the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles
when I was twelve years old.
III
Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details
themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was
rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get
it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way--some
way I had not counted upon.
And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as
much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not
know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general
did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstances would
have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see
the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too
quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about a
matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he
answered the question without any hesitancy. "General, who planned the
the march through Georgia?" "The enemy!" He added that the enemy
usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by neglect or
through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see
your chance and take advantage of it.
Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,
except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES
to plan things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind itself and
doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. Outside
influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left
to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he
would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,
with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men
are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A
Waterbury of that kind, some say.
A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and
Circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. Some patriots
throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and
turns these modest riots into a revolution.
And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new
route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he
found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't
anything to do with it.
Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours)
was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of
the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the
literary guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the Deity ever
issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam
would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be
characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the
fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by
his TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authority over. For
the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named
Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's
temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is
Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let
the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the
blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be obeyed.
They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which is
supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help
feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments.
Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments
made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with
fire and BE MELTED. What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam had been
postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that
splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of
asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have
beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed,
yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race;
there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old
creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild
would have been defeated.
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large
enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening, and that
you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult things to
acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the
head. But they are very valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a
ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within
its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are hard
to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously
unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no
pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the
thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can make nearly anything
stick--particularly IF YOU MAKE THE PICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that is
the great point--make the pictures YOURSELF. I know about this from
experience. Thirty years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every
night, and every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep
from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of
sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this:
"IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--"
"AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--"
"BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--"
Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and
protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the
page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with
certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had
to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. Once I
mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that
evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got
ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--I, A, B, and
so on--and I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink
on my ten finger-nails. But it didn't answer. I kept track of the
figures for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was never quite
sure which finger I had used last. I couldn't lick off a letter after
using it, for while that would have made success certain it also would
have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity enough without
that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I
was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the
matter with my hands.
It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles
passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they did
the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I threw
the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut
my eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a century ago; the
lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I would
rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain. Here are three of them:
(Fig. 1).
The first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me where
to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told me
where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to
burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two
o'clock and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily
perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to
begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no
lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me.
I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you
are to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down PICTURES.
It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and
besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent;
but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them--they
will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in
which you scratched them down. And many will admire to see what a good
memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any better
than mine.
Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess
was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of
this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of the
accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled England from
the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter, hard
contract. It was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't
stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the
kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them.
With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some
way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found
which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings.
I found it, and they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two.
The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes; that would be a
large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the grounds
sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the
high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound through
the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English monarchs,
beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and
clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest down to
Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--EIGHT HUNDRED AND
SEVENTEEN YEARS OF English history under your eye at once!
English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The
world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen had
passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in length
every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody
was interested now--it was watching a race. Would she pass the long
Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long Henry?
Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible! Everybody said
it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years behind.
I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and
at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine
stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it.
Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase
overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers--I can't think of
their name. The vase of William the Conqueror. We put his name on it
and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off
twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's state; then
thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirty-five feet
and drove Stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the
summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and
seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve and
entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.--a level, straight
stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay
exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There
couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand on
the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes shut.
(Fig. 2.)
That isn't the shape of the road--I have bunched it up like that to save
room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was
such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell at
a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes--with
LOCALITY to help, of course.
Although I am away off here in a Swedish village [1] and those stakes did
not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as ever;
and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before me of
their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he takes up
on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you think of
Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns seem about
alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's a foot's
difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a great long stretch
of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins on to Edward
I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit hanging down.
When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady little group of these
small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when I think of George
III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight
of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch when he comes into my
mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by the summer-house.
Victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on the first little
summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; I believe that that would
carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some lightning one
summer when it was trying to hit me.
We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We
trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling
out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going
a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon
people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and Plantagenet, to
give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes, too--apples. I
threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that first shouted the
reign it fell in got the apple.
The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by
the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say
instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in
George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road
mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the
habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and
had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had
often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure;
but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the children.
Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them
alongside the English ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous
French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds. We pegged
them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do not
now remember why. After that we made the English pegs fence in European
and American history as well as English, and that answered very well.
English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues,
cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the English fences
according to their dates. Do you understand? We gave Washington's birth
to George II.'s pegs and his death to George III.'s; George II. got the
Lisbon earthquake and George III. the Declaration of Independence.
Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French
Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey,
Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of the
logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph--anything
and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the English
pegs according to it date and regardless of its nationality.
If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the
kings in the children's heads by means of pictures--that is, I should
have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be
effective WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not the master, for it is the work put
upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my
children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,
they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are
like me.
But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to
use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one
cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are a
procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for
exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This will
bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent
the length of a king's reign.
And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use
the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble.
You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. These will
leave no mark.
Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches
square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror's reign. On
each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of
service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William's
begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and
William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a
landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. By the
time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "William
I.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those details will be
your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything
but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig. 3).
I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for
Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back, but
I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on
the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without it.
Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your first whale from
my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you will not
need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the sample;
examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut
your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then turn
the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and
also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory
until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This will take you twenty
minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can make a
whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also,
up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish William's dates
to any ignorant person that inquires after them.
You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square,
and do William II. (Fig. 4.)
Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him
small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye.
Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that
would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him small; he
was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't
room in him for his father's great spirit. The barb of that harpoon
ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and
ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were
removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the
whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will
know it is a harpoon and attending to business. Remember--draw from the
copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory.
Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its
inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the
details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you
like, you may make merely the whale's HEAD and WATER-SPOUT for the
Conqueror till you end his reign, each time SAYING the inscription in
place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the HARPOON
alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it
will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the
second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length
of the two reigns.
Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of RED paper. (Fig. 5.)
That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable. When
you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly
sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five
times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig. 6).
You begin to understand how how this procession is going to look when it
is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror's twenty-one whales
and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one another and
making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the thirteen blue
squares of William II. will be joined to that--a blue stripe two feet,
two inches long, followed by Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches
long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the
difference in the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the
memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of
YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.)
That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen's name. I
choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I am
not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for
history. The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out.
Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of RED paper. These
hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)
This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what
has been happening in Canterbury.
How we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because he
was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading
crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give him ten
squares of WHITE paper. (Fig. 10).
That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted Richard.
There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not quite know what
it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones are the most
unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better
if they were rights and lefts.
Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called
Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares
of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 11.)
That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is only
an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It used
to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish
and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which
was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old Silurians were
afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has no
representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. First I drew it
sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think it
looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. I
love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of John
coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been
arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of
him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it.
We now come to Henry III.; RED squares again, of course--fifty-six of
them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their
long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys
there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes.
The reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been well
to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it was
too late. (Fig. 12.)
This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the
first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event,
the situation in the House, and was the second great liberty landmark
which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this
was not intentional.
Edward I. comes next; LIGHT-BROWN paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig. 13.)
That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet
on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. I do
not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor
suggests the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if
I had a model, but I made this one from memory. But is no particular
matter; they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome,
and don't pay enough. Edward was the first really English king that had
yet occupied the throne. The editor in the picture probably looks just
as Edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so.
His whole attitude expressed gratification and pride mixed with
stupefaction and astonishment.
Edward II. now; twenty BLUE squares. (Fig. 14.)
Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he
finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that.
That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is
doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing,
and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating.
They are full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture will serve
to remind you that Edward II. was the first English king who was DEPOSED.
Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. He had found kingship a
most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look
of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his blue pencil up for
good now. He had struck out many a good thing with it in his time.
Edward III. next; fifty RED squares. (Fig. 15.)
This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his
tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for
breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at
first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left
shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this shows us the
back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all
around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps
in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born
to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting
that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and
all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something
astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident; you never
know when it is coming. I might have tried as much as a year to think of
such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not
have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the
more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait
with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at Botticelli's
"Spring." Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured
them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to reorganize this
editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will serve to remind
us.
Richard II. next; twenty-two WHITE squares. (Fig. 16.)
We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II.,
he was DEPOSED. He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they
take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small;
but it never fitted him, anyway.
Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the
Lancastrian kings.
Henry IV.; fourteen squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 17.)
This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of
the event. She is giving notice in the usual way. You notice I am
improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them too much
like other animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this to
encourage you. You will find that the more you practice the more
accurate you will become. I could always draw animals, but before I was
educated I could not tell what kind they were when I got them done, but
now I can. Keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although
you may not think it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was
born.
Henry V.; nine BLUE squares. (Fig. 18)
There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the
amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. French history says 20,000
Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians say that
the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000.
Henry VI.; thirty-nine RED squares. (Fig. 19)
This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and
humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc
and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had started
in business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him sad and
weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp.
It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.
Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares. (Fig. 20.)
That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs
crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so
that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they
are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That flower which he is
wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a York rose--and will
serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one was
the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the
Lancastrian dynasty.
Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square. (Fig. 21.)
His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the reigns
displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily
remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane
Grey's, which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized as
a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we
should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair
and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our
lives besides.
Richard III.; two WHITE squares. (Fig. 22.)
That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You
would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only
a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not
light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting
sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a hard heart,
and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that
flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is
said that it grows in only one place in the world--Bosworth Field--and
tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood warmed its
hidden seed to life and made it grow.
Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares. (Fig. 23.)
Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and
quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He liked
to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the
nation's, and hatch them out and count up their result. When he died he
left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a
king to possess in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him the
discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search
out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot's ship up there in
the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to
enlarge her estate--but not the last.
Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.)
That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.
Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.)
He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his
head, which is a LAST--shoemaker's last.
Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.)
The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke.
The first three letters of Mary's name and the first three of the word
martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were
becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes
called Bloody Mary.
This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period
of nearly five hundred years of England's history--492 to be exact. I
think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further
lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the
scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the
pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help
your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has done
for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of
England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other rooms.
This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really worth
something instead of being just flat things to hold the house together.
----- 1. Summer of 1899.
THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
Note.--The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September
10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrian residence. The news came
to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of Vienna.
To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote:
"That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman, and
I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's Jubilee
last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this
murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a
thousand a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the
wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening
and say, in a voice broken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is murdered,'
and fly toward her home before we can utter a question--why, it brings
the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally
interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come flying and
say, 'Caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!'
"Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday,
when the funeral cort`ege marches."
He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it.
He prepared the article which follows, but did not offer it for
publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the
court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There
appears no such reason for withholding its publication now.
A. B. P.
The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and
tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large
event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand
years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine
is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the
murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent.
The murder of an empress is the largest of all events. One must go back
about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one. The
oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in Rome and
traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has
been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. Many
a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been
startled with the news of extraordinary events--the destruction of
cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties,
the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and
their descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all
these things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen times--but to even
that family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no
duplicates in the long reach of its memory.
It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual
now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence
of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable
or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely
to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more.
Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of an
empress then--even the assassination of Caesar himself--could not
electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one reason,
there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as
to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for
another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial
thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and
by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it
left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it
was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous now,
and prodigiously populated--that is one change; and another is the
lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. "The Empress
is murdered!" When those amazing words struck upon my ear in this
Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the disaster, I knew
that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San
Francisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta,
and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing the
perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first began to stretch itself
wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of
the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of a
great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire
surface of the globe has been swept in a single instant with the thrill
of so gigantic an event.
And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this
spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. He is at the
bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value
go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents,
without education, without morals, without character, without any born
charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a
single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could
envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent
stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive,
empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat.
And it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the
human race to reach up--up--up--and strike from its far summit in the
social skies the world's accepted ideal of Glory and Might and Splendor
and Sacredness! It realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are.
Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a
size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and
stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but
only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.
And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often
forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one
way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this
madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but
when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make
him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it
again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is a
madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair
and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw
away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. All the whole
list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares,
griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow,
spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are no healthy
minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident of not having
his malady put to the supreme test.
One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the
pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common,
but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every
child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their
whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of
visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are
glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has
lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk.
This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety
in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and
talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other
dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has
made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns
and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up
prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big
politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions,
and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to
get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city,
or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "Look--there he
goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain,
or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all,
transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will
perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and
kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all
down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it were not
so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart,
in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without
it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of
its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down
re-establishes the doubt.
In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages
respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and
her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and
brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter
griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest
honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She
knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English
fisherman's wife said, "When a body was in trouble she didn't send her
help, she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but she
adorned her crowns.
It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some
curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday there was no one in the world
who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth
claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an
acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued
the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was
sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom
grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject of
conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors
were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside
their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there was a man, at
the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some
time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret
satisfaction, and MENTIONED it--for it was a distinction, now!
It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite
realizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can
remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let
that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way,
some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely human;
the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it
is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way
connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a thing;
we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us
are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of
the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality.
Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it well
as if I were hearing them:
THE COMMANDER: "He was in my army."
THE GENERAL: "He was in my corps."
THE COLONEL: "He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well."
THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember
him well."
THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning
I used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears.
THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his
very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on
the wall--he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own
eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?"
It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables
and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings as
precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful
distinction. The interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not
vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are
allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more
keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.
Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal
militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor
mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One
may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs
done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any
kind. When he saw his photograph and said, "I shall be celebrated," he
laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for
notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as
history--the burning of the temple of Ephesus.
Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
concede high rank to the many which have described it as a "peculiarly
brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." I think
this verdict will not be popular "above." If the deed was ordained from
above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially
responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without
manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its
laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into
preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the
shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the
windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. We came into town
in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.
Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sunday-like;
the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people
were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as
a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and
coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were
closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful
young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years;
and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she always
wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart
broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. The people stood
grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls
turn away wiping the tears from their eyes.
In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church
where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and
severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no
ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that
a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead of
the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the
Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg
ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.
The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and
the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast plate-glass
windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed
terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like
people under water. Under us the square was noiseless, but it was full
of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands,
and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty,
the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty,
he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing
apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing
uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping
ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve
for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two
directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and
press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished,
the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone.
Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a
double-ranked human fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a
beautifully ordered machine.
It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then
carriages began to flow past and deliver the two and three hundred court
personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the
square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in
showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a
narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian
among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the
radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and
on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of
color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies around
them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of
cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another
splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings.
It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the
high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty Austrian
generals, the group opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta and
knights of a German order. The mass of heads in the square were covered
by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and
the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays,
and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly
colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little suns
distributed over it.
Think of it--it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his
imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was
assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church
from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so
unrealizable.
At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file.
At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some bishops;
then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add to the
show. At three-ten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix.
Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty
another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, and
much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals, receding into
the distance.
A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At
three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of
gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near
to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the
sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very
conspicuous where so much warm color is all about.
A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes
into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the
path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next,
three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with
cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red,
gold, and white, exceedingly showy.
Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low
rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk
by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich
feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed.
The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by;
first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and
picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric
splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array.
Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow,
and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three
dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in Austria were
capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of contrasts.
Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854,
when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp
and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and
decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting
and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she
entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the
dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls
again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized,
rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over
pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women
who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and
they were young--and unaware!
A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama "Habsburg" tells
about the first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history
draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but will
try to convey the spirit of the verses:
I saw the stately pageant pass:
In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:
I could not take my eyes away
From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,
That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense
A noble Alp far lighted in the blue,
That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud
And stands a dream of glory to the gaze
Of them that in the Valley toil and plod.
