UMAftY 
 
 UWIVW5ITY OF 
 CAWOINIA 
 SANTA CRUZ 
 
p 
 
Xtttle Essays 
 
 in 
 literature an& %ife 
 
Xittle 
 
 in 
 
 ^Literature anb %ife 
 
 IRicbarfc Burton 
 
 /;) 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MEMBER 
 
 THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF 
 
 ARTS AND LETTERS 
 
 Century (To, 
 1914 
 
Copyright, 1914, by 
 THE CENTUBT Co. 
 
 Published, March, 2924. 
 
TO MY FRIEND 
 WILLIAM C. EDGAR 
 
Contents 
 
 mature 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IMMEMORIAL FIRES 3 
 
 THE MIRACLE CALLED SPRING 8 
 
 OWNING THE EARTH 13 
 
 OUR ELDER BROTHERS ig 
 
 THE IRONY OF NATURE 23 
 
 SHORES OF OUR WESTERN SEA 28 
 
 AGAIN THE GOLDEN WEATHER 33 
 
 fl&an an& Society 
 
 A FIVE-YEAR-OLD 39 
 
 MY FRIEND AND I 44 
 
 OUT OF CHILDHOOD 49 
 
 LOAFING 53 
 
 OLD AGE 58 
 
 THE LURE OF HAPPINESS 63 
 
 AS OTHERS SEE US 68 
 
 THE SOUL BEHIND . . 73 
 
 THE IRONY OF SUCCESS . . 78 
 
 KEEP ON WORKING . > .... . . . . 83 
 
 HEREDITY AND CHARACTER . . . . , V'. . 88 
 
 LIFE THE PLAY . . . ... . , . . . 93 
 
 AN EPIGRAM'S VALUE . . ..;*;;'; . 98 
 
 BENEATH THE THRESHOLD 103 
 
 LOCAL MINDS . . . . . 108 
 
 FALLING IN LOVE . ... 113 
 
 NEW ACQUAINTANCES !l8 
 
 BLUNDERS AND BLUNDERERS I2 3 
 
 GADDING ABOUT I2 8 
 
 AND OTHERS ! 33 
 
Contents 
 
 THE SELFISHNESS OF YOUTH ..... .^38 
 
 CRITICISM AND CANT I43 
 
 UNCIVIL SERVICE I4 g 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY IS3 
 
 Brt and Xetters 
 
 THE HOLINESS OF BEAUTY jfo 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK WITH ROMANCE . . . . . ^ 
 AN OLD DICTIONARY: A REVERY .... 171 
 
 BEAUTY AND SORROW I77 
 
 ON BEING " NATURAL " . . ... . . . jg 2 
 
 THE AUTHOR AS CITIZEN *&j 
 
 THE CALIFORNIA MISSION PLAY . . . . . I92 
 
 MARK TWAIN - . - 2OI 
 
 THE "ANTIGONE" AT THE GREEK THEATER 209 
 THE MORAL OBLIGATION OF LITERATURE . 2I g 
 RE-READING BOOKS . . . . . , . . -223 
 
 SHAW'S WISDOM . . . ... ... . . 229 
 
 BOOKS AND MEN 234 
 
 THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 239 
 
 THE DIFFICULTY OF TRANSLATION .... 244 
 BOOK ONE HUNDRED ONE . . . . . . . 249 
 
 TASTE AND GENIUS IN LETTERS 
 
 254 
 
 THE POVERTY OF POETS . ..... . . 259 
 
 MATTER-OF-FACT FICTION . . . . . . .264 
 
 STEVENSON'S PRAYER-BOOK . .... . .269 
 
 BARRIE AND THE BARONETCY ... . . .282 
 
 THE BROWNINGS 287 
 
 REPUTATION AND REWARD IN LETTERS 
 
 292 
 ST. AUGUSTINE AND BERNARD SHAW ... 302 
 
 THE OLD-FASHIONED VIEW OF ART . . . . 297 
 
 Education 
 
 THE " FEMINIZATION " OF CULTURE - - - 309 
 CULTURE, " CULCHAH " AND COMMON SENSE 3^ 
 VULGARIZING SPEECH 3IQ 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CURRENT EDUCATIONAL IDEALS 324 
 
 THOUGHT AND ITS EXPRESSION 329 
 
 facetiae 
 
 CONCERNING THE JACKASS 337 
 
 THE ESSENCE OF HUMOR 342 
 
 A SUPPRESSED INSTINCT 347 
 
 OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT 352 
 
 Most of these papers have appeared in the columns of 
 The Bellman, and my thanks are due the editor and pro- 
 prietor for the courteous permission to reprint them here- 
 with. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The way of the familiar essay is one, of the formal 
 essay another. The latter is informational, it defines, 
 proves; the former, seeking for friendlier and more 
 personal relations with the reader, aims at suggestion, 
 stimulation. The familiar essay can be an impression- 
 istic reflection of the author's experience in the mighty 
 issues of living, or it may be the frank expression of a 
 mere whim. It should touch many a deep thing in a 
 way to quicken the sense of the charm, wonder, and 
 terror of the earth. The essayist can fly high, if he 
 but have wings, and he can dive deeper than any plum- 
 met line of the intellect, should it happen that the 
 spirit move him. 
 
 It is thus the ambition of the familiar essayist to 
 speak wisdom albeit debonairly, to be thought-provok- 
 ing . without heaviness, and helpful without didacti- 
 cism. Keenly does he feel the lacrymae rerum, but, 
 sensitive to the laughable incongruities of human ex- 
 istence, he has a safeguard against the merely solemn 
 and can smile at himself or others, preserving his sense 
 of humor as a precious gift of the high gods. And 
 
fforeworfc 
 
 most of all, he loves his fellow men, and would come 
 into fellowship with them through thought that is 
 made mellow by feeling. If these qualities are lack- 
 ing in the papers that follow, it is but an example of 
 the difference between desire and deed. 
 
mature 
 
LITTLE ESSAYS IN 
 LITERATURE AND LIFE 
 
 Immemorial 
 
 AS the green gives way to the gold, and the browns 
 and russet reds mingle in the landscape, while 
 overhead the haze of autumn softens and makes in- 
 finitely suggestive the mood of Nature, comes once 
 more the well-remembered tang, the pungent smell of 
 smoke from innumerable fires. From boyhood it has 
 been for me (and surely for many others) a provoca- 
 tive memory, atmospheric with associations. 
 
 I recall, from far-off fields among the upland hills, 
 in the glad vacation time, how a boy, playing at hare 
 and hounds, got the scent in his nostrils and, as he 
 panted on toward the desired end, was in some strange 
 way assisted by the familiar odor; it seemed almost an 
 accompanying friend. Let him but savor it now, and 
 the intervening years roll back, and across the chasm 
 of half a lifetime arise the look and the voice of child- 
 hood. Or, turning a corner of the road, he is sud- 
 denly confronted with a band of gipsies, camped beside 
 the way; dark, mystic folk, immensely exciting to a 
 
 3 
 
Xittie Bssaps in ^Literature an& SLite 
 
 lad's imagination. They converse in a tongue which 
 has all the lure of the alien and the unknown ; the gar- 
 ish picturesqueness of their garb is but an outward 
 symbol of their higher spiritual implication; they tell 
 fortunes, they know the stars, wind, and weather are 
 their familiars, and, most of all, like Whittier's " van- 
 ishers," they are up and away when you are unaware, 
 exulting in open-air liberty, disdaining to be bound by 
 the fixed conventions and day-long duties of common- 
 place mankind. And ever, as their colorful forms take 
 shape out of the time-mists, I see the spiral twists of 
 smoke from their campfires crawl up into the blue air, 
 and again the smell of autumn and of youth challenges 
 my soul. 
 
 Or it may be, far up the side of the New England 
 mountain, the same boy is camping out with his mates ; 
 on the very edge of the wood-line they lie ; a few steps 
 higher, and the bare, rugged, serrated boulders climb 
 straight to the summit, wind-swept and splendid. 
 Many hours has it taken to reach this place of shelter, 
 and the little band of adventurers is wet and cold and 
 hungry. A striking scene in chiaroscuro they make, 
 as one bends down to give hand-shelter to the all- 
 important match; a scratch, a glimmer, and it is well, 
 for, the sticks being gathered, the fire is alight, and 
 soon, drawn together in a circle that is older than civ- 
 ilization, they swap stories while the kettle boils, pre- 
 pare their food and look up, now and then, in a sleepy 
 half-wonder, at the calm great stars seen through a 
 
 4 
 
Immemorial jfires 
 
 somber setting of forest trees. Stand away a little 
 from the fire, to windward, and get the drift of the 
 smoke. There it is again, not a smell, but an evoca- 
 tion of comradeship, and a friendly call out of the past ! 
 
 Stand with me, too, for a moment and lean against 
 the old fence rail, as you let the eye in deep content- 
 ment range over a field where, in admirable rank and 
 file, the corn shocks stretch away; like so many Indian 
 chiefs they stand, sedate, dignified, in a beautiful tonal- 
 ity of yellow and brown and gray. And from some- 
 where, on the field's edge, drifts once more the smoke 
 of a hidden fire of leaves and brush, and as it ascends 
 into the winy upper sky it appears, seen through the 
 fruitful rows, as if these silent braves were gravely 
 smoking the pipe of peace. Nay, if you will but listen, 
 is not that rustle that comes to the ear the echo of the 
 murmur of the Indian speech, as these wise ones of 
 the open places whisper the sacred secrets of their 
 tribe? 
 
 But not personal only are such memories, summoned 
 up by the fires of autumn ; racial are they, too, an ata- 
 vistic reminder of our forefathers in days of eld, 
 We began this way, we denizens of the town ; and let 
 but that perfume of the soul of leaves get in our nos- 
 trils; and there is a stirring, vague yet strong, of hap- 
 penings that well-nigh antedate the years. Beside 
 such a fire, in Time's very dawn, once knelt the 
 son of man; beside it, too, he ate his simple meal, ere 
 he resumed the trail and faced the perilous future. 
 
 5 
 
Xfttle Essays in ^Literature anfc OLtte 
 
 To look forward to it on the march, or after the hunt, 
 was as a beacon of hope; all the cheer and consolation 
 of home rose in his mind with its smoky spirals, and 
 the crackling of its flame was as the call of kin across 
 gloomed, lost places. Its red eye through the wood 
 promised protection at the day's end; the wild beasts 
 slunk away, as did two-footed enemies, at sight of that 
 sign of habitation, and the presence of that social odor. 
 If the Promethean gift of fire brought the dawn of 
 civilization, the camp-fire smoke and the smell of burnt 
 leaves or clean, sweet boughs accompany man's passage 
 out of the unknown into history. For the Israelite 
 by day, the symbol of the pillar of cloud ; but by night, 
 the pillar of fire. 
 
 And with all our boasted gain in creature comfort, 
 how glad are the epicure and the aristocrat to return 
 to this primitive thing, the open fire, indoors and out! 
 How he revels in the household group before the blaze, 
 with swept hearth and apples a-toasting; while, be- 
 yond the confines of the housed-in life, he doubly 
 relishes his simple food, if but it be prepared by the 
 roadside or midwood fire, and eaten beneath sun or 
 stars, in that " great, good place, outdoors." After 
 all, we seem not to have come so far, despite all the de^ 
 vices and agencies of social evolution, when still to-day 
 we can derive no greater comfort than from that 
 which the Phoenician knew, the Egyptian welcomed, 
 the red man cherished; yes, and the caveman must 
 have used. The smoke-drift of their experience 
 
 6 
 
immemorial ffires 
 
 mingles with and makes mellow the time-drift of the 
 years, and by a sweet, ancient odor are we all united. 
 After all, the fire is still the great symbol of home. 
 As Kipling says: 
 
 How can I answer which is best 
 
 Of all the fires that burn ? 
 I have been too often host and guest 
 
 At every fire in turn. 
 
 And so it is that this month of October, the wine 
 month, as the Hollanders call it, brings in its recur- 
 rent splendor, its sober majesty, along with other gifts 
 and tokens not a few, this gift of fires that purify dead 
 matter, with the attendant smoke that is a spiritual 
 note in the autumn landscape and evocative of many 
 far-ranging memories for the individual and the race. 
 It is a month that breeds reminiscence; a month in 
 which Lamb might have written " The Old Familiar 
 Faces," or Landor penned the unforgettable lines to 
 the memoried maiden: 
 
 Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes 
 May weep but never see, 
 A night of memories and of sighs 
 I consecrate to thee. 
 
 October! Like Keats's " farewell," " the very sound 
 is like a bell " ; a rich, chiming, deep-voweled word in 
 whose reverberations, so many and so wide, I find this 
 memory of fires by field and wayside and wood, with 
 the fragrant scent of wind-born smoke and a magic 
 out of old, old times. 
 
 7 
 
fliMracle Callefc Spring 
 
 EVER since man's imagination found expression in 
 literature, spring has been limned in the figure 
 of a coquette. And small wonder, we exclaim, as 
 we are compelled once again to endure the tantalizing 
 probation which ushers in the glad, recurrent miracle. 
 
 March is here, and, like her blustering winds, blows 
 our hopes everywhere, till we scarce know if it be a 
 winter face or a smile of June that peeps at us around 
 the corner. Then, while we catch our breath, April, 
 bewitching, maddening blend of tears and laughter, 
 never sure, ever promiseful, comes tripping by and, 
 with a blithe bow at last, lets in the scented magic 
 and the divine foretaste of the full summertide that 
 goes under the name of May. 
 
 Strange it is, too, how spring, teasing us thus yearly, 
 and known in all her ways, can yet keep back so much 
 of surprise and offer so greatly of variety that her 
 coming bids our pulses beat and our eyes dilate as be- 
 fore a bit of legerdemain. The mere instinctive boy 
 turns livelier and merrier; the gaffer in the sun feels 
 at his withered heart a touch that warms like wine. 
 The farmer rejoices as he sows his seed, and remembers 
 that he, of all men, has an occupation the freest and 
 
 8 
 
Ufoe /HMracle Gaiiefc Spring 
 
 noblest, since he looks alone to Nature and Nature's 
 God. And the man of religion points a moral from 
 the season with the parable of rebirth, and speaks 
 with the more assurance of the Resurrection and the 
 Life. 
 
 Modern thought inclines to consider a miracle not 
 so much a violation of Nature's laws as a new and at 
 first unbelievable revelation of Nature's larger powers. 
 And spring, with all it implies, would be a miracle 
 indeed, were it seen for the first time. Who, without 
 seeing it, would put credence in the stirring of the 
 dry earth to give forth tender, green shoots, or have 
 faith in the vital urge wherefrom the sap runs up in 
 the trees and a shower of apple-blossoms fills all the 
 air with fragrance? But we behold it annually, and 
 we come to trust this sweet and splendid reawakening 
 after the winter sleep, and our joy falls instinctively 
 into the matchless rhythm of " The Song of Songs " : 
 
 The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon 
 the mountains, skipping upon the hills. 
 
 My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he stand- 
 eth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing 
 himself through the lattice. 
 
 My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, 
 my fair one, and come away. 
 
 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; 
 
 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing- of 
 birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land ; 
 
 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines 
 with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my 
 fair one, and come away. 
 
Xfttle Essaps in Xtterarure an& Xife 
 
 This outer magic of change from winter to spring, 
 from stagnation to the life-throb which shall bring 
 fruition, makes an inward miracle in man : love awakes 
 and the divine unrest we call wanderlust, and hope 
 that scales heaven's gate. If the young man's fancy 
 turns to thoughts of love, the fancy of all men at this 
 season of lovely witchery expands with a sense of the 
 infinite possibilities offered by the world, a sense of the 
 bliss that would break through the harsh crust of liv- 
 ing, as the flower breaks through the sod. Gipsy long- 
 ing seizes upon the most sedate; the beck of the long, 
 white road is for some of us like an imperative com- 
 mand; beyond the horizon lie our hopes, our dreams, 
 like many-colored clouds at sunset. " Out into the 
 open " cries the heart, and the legs are fain to follow. 
 
 Oh, to dream, Oh, to awake and wander 
 There, and with delight to take and render 
 Through the trance of silence 
 Quiet breath, 
 
 as Stevenson sings it ; and Bliss Carman, with a 
 pantheistic worship in his soul, invokes April as a 
 young goddess whose touch is potent to change us all. 
 
 And thy great heart beats and quivers 
 To revive the days that were; 
 Make me over, Mother April, 
 When the sap begins to stir! 
 
 There is in this summons of the spring, deeper than 
 its blind instinct of joy and higher than its strongest 
 
 10 
 
Ube flMracle Cailefc Sprino 
 
 lure of earthy rapture, a spiritual note of promise that 
 is yet peace ; here, perhaps, is its noblest service to man- 
 kind. Joy is good, but adoration is better still. The 
 mind that, looking out upon the beauty of the fourth 
 month, is not aware of thoughts that are holy and 
 wise, is barren indeed, and closed about in a winter 
 mood of negation and death. Wordsworth, from his 
 land of lakes and fells, sent us many such messages, 
 as when he sang: 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood, 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 And England's mighty nature poet meant it, 
 for he knew that the intuitions and emotions grasp 
 truth forever shut away from the processes of the 
 brain ; knew, moreover, that nothing in God's breath- 
 ing universe stirs us to the depths more surely than the 
 emanations of April and the ministries of May. 
 
 Summer in her completeness is just ahead, to be sure. 
 It might seem that summer were a better time. But, 
 no, the early hint is more precious: herein is the 
 difference between promise and performance. The 
 imagination is a wonder-worker, and the half becomes 
 more than the whole, in nature, even as it is in art. 
 
 So, for many reasons, where no reason but the 
 natural response to a beautiful thing is necessary, we 
 welcome the annual return and happy harbinger of 
 
 II 
 
%tttie Essays in ^Literature an& %ife 
 
 Nature's mood of benison and bounty. If it delay we 
 are sorely tried, yet are not as those without hope. 
 And when it arrives, we are " like them that dream," 
 dazed with delight and heady intoxication of sense 
 and spirit. Never, we say, was it quite so rare and 
 riant as this year ; never the birds so blithe, the flowers 
 so full of scent, the very smile of earth and sky so 
 eloquent of innumerable pledges and tokens. No time, 
 this, for the cheap mockery of spring and the songs 
 of spring, whereby wretched would-be humorists gain 
 a dubious livelihood, like obnoxious insects befouling 
 the candid petal of a rich red rose. Away with aught 
 but joy and exaltation, belief in beauty and thankful- 
 ness at being alive, that we are still a-pulse, and parts, 
 however small, of the processional splendor of the sea- 
 son. The coming of spring, to our sense of poetry, 
 explains the winter; never could the one be so fair, un- 
 less the other came before, to make the contrast: 
 
 For the sweetest of all seasons 
 Is that which follows pain, 
 And the best of winter's reasons, 
 Is the summer here again. 
 
 12 
 
Owning tbe JEartb 
 
 Y idea of riches is to own the earth," was the 
 whimsical remark of a friend of mine, whose 
 holdings of real estate are large. It was an expres- 
 sion of that love of landed possessions, that zest for 
 contact with the soil, which in the United States is 
 now so commonly familiar, and in a country like Eng- 
 land has led to one man owning a county, and has be- 
 come almost a national instinct. Doubtless, it is this 
 feeling for the possession of the earth we walk on, 
 which constitutes one of the obstacles to all commu- 
 nistic or socialistic theories of land-holding. 
 
 The idea is certainly capable of abuse and has its 
 bad side; but also it is deeply implanted in man, and 
 many good things have come from its exercise. One 
 who owns land in freehold is stimulated thereby to 
 work his doughtiest, with good cheer, led on by hope. 
 See such a man dig into his soil, and compare him with 
 the day-laborer who, with dull iteration, handles his 
 spade against the coming of mealtime. He has no re- 
 lation to, no affection for, the spot he stands on. 
 He lacks rootage. 
 
 There is rest for the weary, too, in the chance to 
 escape from the madding crowd and get behind his 
 
 13 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature a^ %ite 
 
 private defenses after bearing the brunt of the combat. 
 Carry this too far, and you become antisocial; but it 
 has a legitimate use, beyond question, and the worker 
 goes back all the more fitted for social service, who 
 can get somewhere on his own acres and feel that there 
 is a fence or a hedge between him and interruption for 
 a few hours. To ring around your possession with a 
 fence or other sign of demarcation is to experience the 
 deeper content of privacy. The full joy of asking 
 friends to share your pleasure in your own can be 
 tasted only when you set apart the particular section 
 of earth which is yours in some such fashion from the 
 rest of the world. You get satisfaction in showing 
 a friend the fine views in a public park; but what is 
 that contrasted with the zest with which you point 
 out the autumnal coloring in your own wood, or listen 
 to his exclamations of delight at the river which winds 
 its way between your ancestral banks! The English, 
 behind their walls and hedges, have developed a home 
 life that is one of the sources of their hereditary 
 strength. How may the frayed nerves regain equipoise, 
 with no barrier between you and your neighbor, 
 whose dog is in your flower garden and his small boy 
 kicking a football that bounds against your plate-glass 
 window? There is a limit even to neighborliness un- 
 der such circumstances. 
 
 To own the earth, again, attaches a man to one 
 place, which is well. When man ceases to be a 
 nomad, a long step forward in civilization has been 
 
 14 
 
tbe Bartb 
 
 made. The gipsy wanderer, he who feels the lure 
 of the long white road and who in our time degenerates 
 into the familiar hobo, seems to the superficial gaze a 
 freer person than does he of the acres and local in- 
 terests. But, really, it is not so; it is the other way 
 round. " Land from the first," says the historian 
 Green, with feudal England in mind, " was the test 
 of freedom." He means, of course, that it was only 
 when the farmer got freehold possession of his prop- 
 erty that he shook off the overlordship which made 
 him a sort of slave, and could conduct himself as an 
 independent man. And it is the farmer, then and now, 
 who is in a sense the most unshackled of mortals, be- 
 cause he looks not to man, but to Nature and to God 
 for the results of his toil. Benjamin Franklin ex- 
 pressed it memorably more than a century ago : " I 
 think agriculture the most honorable of all employ- 
 ments, being the most independent. The farmer has 
 no need of popular favor nor the favor of the great, 
 the success of his crops depending on the blessing of 
 God upon his industry." 
 
 There is indeed a peculiar dignity about work that 
 is steady in time and defined in space, in comparison 
 with that which is sporadic and bears no relation to 
 yesterday and to-morrow. And the sense of freedom 
 comes to man not alone from the thought that below 
 him is earth he owns, but also from the companion 
 thought that he owns upward into the heavens. No 
 skyscraper blocks his view; he can quote the epitaph, 
 
 15 
 
Xfttle Essays tn Xiterature atto Xife 
 
 derived from a well-known legal sentence and set upon 
 the tomb of a lawyer whose reputation was of good 
 savor: 
 
 Beneath this stone an honest lawyer lies; 
 
 Who owns the earth, owns upward to the skies. 
 
 It is good to see how, of late years, the custom of 
 going back to the country and getting closer to the soil, 
 by sympathetic living on it and through acquiring it as 
 a possession, has grown in this land. To live the 
 simple life, as Wagner taught us to call it, an affec- 
 tionate communion with Nature : surely this is a needed 
 antidote to the congestion of the city and all its un- 
 lovely connotations. Country life is just as whole- 
 some as a corrective now as it was in the days when 
 Horace cried up the pleasures of his Sabine farm, and 
 declared him happy who, afar from business, cul- 
 tivated his ancestral acres in dignified retirement. 
 How much of health and peace of mind and kindly re- 
 lation to everything seems to come to one who takes to 
 the cultivation of his own garden. How much more 
 he gets out of it than if he were simply the salaried 
 gardener; not so much in the literal sense, for there 
 the gardener would be likely to beat him, but in the 
 sense of return in terms of living. Charles Dudley 
 Warner surely would never have had those delightful 
 experiences which make " My Summer in a Garden " 
 such pleasant reading, had that garden (where, by 
 the way, I smoked hayseed as a boy) been a public 
 
 16 
 
tbe Bartb 
 
 one. Fancy such a thing! As well compare, as does 
 Warner, a register indoors with an open fire on the 
 hearth, or a gaslight with the sun. 
 
 " When we have come to live on the fruits of our 
 own gardens," says Emerson in his Journal, " and be- 
 gin to boast that we live a man's life, then shall come 
 some audacious upstart to upbraid us with our false 
 and foreign taste, which steadily plucks up everything 
 which Nature puts in our soil, and laboriously plants 
 everything not intended to grow there." The Concord 
 sage might not have written the words to-day, when 
 the hegira into the country is becoming so general, 
 and the care of the ground so intelligently conducted. 
 Few, even now, are willing to live so austerely close 
 to the bosom of Nature as did Emerson's neighbor, 
 Thoreau, during the period of his Walden Pond experi- 
 ment. But an increasing number are gladly learning 
 the wholesome lesson set forth in the fable of Antaeus: 
 they are growing strong through contact with the 
 earth, and thus they safely defy the Hercules of nerv- 
 ous wear and tear. 
 
 Of a truth, central in the experience is that feeling 
 of ownership, a sense of possession which makes for dig- 
 nity and the obligations and duties which steady men. 
 Travel is no longer travel, unless, finally, we may turn 
 us home. 
 
<>ur fil&er Brothers 
 
 OUR elder brothers they have come to be called 
 in our day, by many a deep-hearted and lofty 
 writer, inspired to that wider world-vision which lifts 
 him into seership. The note was struck by Coleridge 
 in " The Ancient Mariner," when he pictured evil 
 as issuing, so to say, with the life blood of the albatross. 
 It sounded earlier in Sterne when, in " Tristram 
 Shandy," he makes dear Uncle Toby release the fly 
 with those memorable words : " Go, poor devil, get 
 thee gone, why should I hurt thee ? The world surely 
 is wide enough to hold both thee and me." 
 
 The feeling is dominant in Browning's poem on 
 Tray, the " mere instinctive dog " who dived down 
 into the water and saved a little child, while the hu- 
 mans stood about and did nothing. It is a familiar 
 refrain in the song of Bliss Carman, who is forever 
 hymning the little brothers of the air and earth, the 
 birds and beasts of forest and field and flood, who, 
 like us mortals, have briefly the privilege of inhabiting 
 this world. Unlike us, they can pierce the sky and 
 burrow in the soil without the aid of machinery; but 
 are like us again in the frail tenure which is theirs 
 upon the life that is the common and precious posses- 
 sion of man and beast. The tenderness for and sym- 
 
 18 
 
Brotbers 
 
 pathy with the so-called lower animals so notable in the 
 literature of the last hundred years, and of steadily 
 increasing volume, mark a change that keeps pace 
 with the new ideas of science and the better under- 
 standing of the biologic principles of life. Both 
 science and religion, indeed, have had a hand in it. 
 Happily, the days when civilized peoples like the 
 Greeks or Hebrews could offer blood-sacrifices of 
 animals, with the idea that a deity worthy the name 
 should thus be propitiated, have passed away long since. 
 It is easy, of course, to make cheap fun of the idea; 
 the penny-a-liner, like the poor, is always with us and 
 we are too familiar with facetious references to our 
 Simian ancestors clinging by the caudal appendage to 
 the branches of an arboreal eld and filling primeval 
 forests with their chatter. The cheapness of it lies in 
 the fact that behind the silly laugh is a sober and 
 astounding theory, which has revolutionized modern 
 thought and given man a new conception of heaven 
 and of earth. The Darwinian theory of the develop- 
 ment of life upon this planet is not proved, strictly 
 speaking; it is merely a hypothesis. But it is one which, 
 so far as we have gone, best serves to explain the facts 
 as we have acquired them; and for this reason it has 
 won the acceptance, to a point of practical unanimity, 
 of the scientific world. Among the good things it has 
 done is to be found the influence exercised by the new 
 view of organic processes upon man's attitude toward 
 the lower animals. Their rights have come to be 
 
 19 
 
Xittie Essays tn ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 recognized and respected as never under the old dis- 
 pensation, and " certain other duties " established in 
 the better class of minds by the thought that ethical 
 obligations exist here, as in human relations. The 
 scientific teaching of the oneness of all life and the con- 
 sequent removal of the former hard-and-fast line be- 
 tween brute and human have inevitably wrought to 
 quicken this modern conception. 
 
 On all sides are signs of the change. Such a book 
 as that on " Animal Rights," by the well-known Eng- 
 lish thinker, H. S. Salt, is one of many which illustrate 
 the newer attitude. The growth of our state or pri- 
 vate humane societies, which safeguard the interests of 
 animals that are impressed into man's service and have 
 suffered centuries of cruelty at his hands, is another 
 sign. Animals slain for purposes of food are put out 
 of existence more mercifully, because of the greater 
 sensitiveness to their point of view. 
 
 Biological researches have put us in a position 
 to realize more clearly the sufferings of the animal 
 underworld. Hospitals for dogs, horses, and cats are 
 no longer so novel as to awaken the sneering laughter 
 of the unthoughtful and callous. 
 
 It has almost become bad form to be unnecessarily 
 cruel to a defenseless creature whose very lack of 
 protection should make an appeal to mercy. Soon, 
 any cruelty, it may be surmised, will be frowned upon 
 as uncivilized. Of old, it was common enough to hear 
 in justification of some barbarous treatment of an 
 
 20 
 
<S>ur Eifcer Brotbers 
 
 animal a remark to the effect that it did not matter, 
 since it was not a human being. " Animals, don't you 
 know, have no souls." But these delightfully pre- 
 historic utterances are coming to sound hopelessly old- 
 fashioned on the lips of any one who makes the slightest 
 pretense to be modern. It is easier for us to detect 
 glimmers of what looks very much like " soul " in 
 some animals; and harder to find it in some men. 
 We may even look confidently forward to the day 
 when a really modern mother will not allow her dear 
 little boy to impale a beautiful butterfly upon a pin 
 and to derive enjoyment from the slow waving of 
 those God-painted wings, whose rhythmic beating is 
 the innocent and lovely creature's only way of ago- 
 nized protest. Yes, mothers, and their boys along with 
 them, will be educated in the fullness of time. 
 
 It may well be that, with the further unfolding 
 of this nobler feeling, the strained relations now ex- 
 isting between man and many kinds of animals will 
 be removed. Think of the dog in the human home 
 to-day: beloved and cherished like one of our own and 
 mourned in his passing as if of human race! Hear 
 those lines of Byron as he satirizes man and bemoans 
 the loss of a canine favorite: 
 
 To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; 
 I never knew but one, and here he lies. 
 
 John Muir, the naturalist, has said that he found 
 that even the carnivora of the Rocky Mountains, 
 21 
 
Xittle Essays in Xiterature atto %ife 
 
 when he camped fearlessly among them, were not his 
 enemies; they came and sniffed at him, and departed, 
 leaving him unmolested. And this, in spite of all the 
 years during which the word has been handed down 
 among them, " Beware of man and his weapons ! " 
 
 One of Turgenev's wonderful " Poems in Prose " 
 narrates how the author, on the deck of a ship in a 
 great storm, was startled in the midst of the tempest 
 to feel a little cold hand slip into his own. Looking 
 down, he saw a monkey which, terrified by the tem- 
 pest, had sought the man in the instinctive desire for 
 companionship in the face of a mighty common peril. 
 Any line of separation was obliterated in the moment 
 when Nature was a menace to all living things. And 
 in beautiful words Turgenev tells what a strange sen- 
 sation of union with the timorous beast was produced 
 in his mind. The incident may be taken as an al- 
 legory; it gives assurance of a day when our kindness 
 will extend to all God's creatures, and these elder 
 brothers of ours, so long outcast from our fellowship, 
 shall come into their own of friendship and of love. 
 
 22 
 
flron? of mature 
 
 T N his delightful reminiscences, " Thirty Years of 
 * Paris," Alphonse Daudet tells of his companion- 
 ship with Turgenev in those memorable evenings when 
 he, Goncourt, Zola, and the mighty Russian ate sup- 
 per together and talked of literature and life. He 
 recalls how Turgenev gave him every evidence of 
 friendship and affection ; but long after his death, Dau- 
 det read certain words of his friend, wherein the 
 author of " Fathers and Sons " sneers at his French 
 confrere as " the lowest of my kind." And Daudet, 
 with that wonderful Gallic lightness of touch which 
 hides yet reveals the deep things of the heart, sighs 
 over the disillusionment, and exclaims: "I can see 
 him in my house, at my table, gentle, affectionate, 
 kissing my children. I have in my possession many 
 exquisite, warm-hearted letters from him. And this 
 was what lay concealed beneath that kindly smile. 
 Good heavens! How strange life is, and how true 
 that charming word of the Greek language, eironeia! " 
 Yet this is the irony of character and circumstance. 
 There is in life one deeper yet and more terrible: the 
 irony of Nature. You feel that the Daudet episode 
 might possibly be straightened out, that " the faith be- 
 
 23 
 
Xfttle JBB8&V8 in ^Literature an& tfcife 
 
 tween friends " may haply be restored. But the other is 
 different, hopeless. Hawthorne's "The Ambitious 
 Guest " narrates how a family of cheerful folk sit talk- 
 ing with a guest for the night, in their house far up in 
 the White Mountains, and discourse of human fate and 
 their particular desires. Of a sudden they are inter- 
 rupted by a sound of awful omen ; there is a landslide, 
 and when they realize that destruction is upon them they 
 rush forth from the house to seek a place of safety, only 
 to be buried under the avalanche, one and all. But the 
 house in which they sat escapes scot free. Had they 
 remained about the fire and continued their friendly 
 converse, they would not have perished. Acting for 
 what seemed to be the best, they were ruthlessly ex- 
 terminated, since the processes of Nature, represented 
 in this case by the landslide, pay no heed to that petty 
 creature, man, and move on their mysterious ways, as 
 if in mockery of his ineptness and ignorance of the fall 
 of events. At such a juncture, a Plato, a Caesar or a 
 Shakspere is as helpless as the commonest of the earth. 
 Here is that irony which, sooner or later, confronts 
 every thoughtful mind and no doubt often shakes the 
 very foundations of faith. And surely it is far sadder 
 than the irony which inheres in character, because it 
 is, or seems, irremediable. Millions of human beings 
 in the world's history have taken steps to the best of 
 their judgment and actuated by the highest motives, 
 only to be precipitated into calamity and to lose their 
 lives in a manner so disastrous as to make the looker- 
 
 24 
 
Ube flrons of mature 
 
 on shudder with horror. Nature, magnificently in- 
 different to the animalcule who for a brief term of 
 time struts and prates upon the earth, conducts her 
 business according to great general laws, utterly re- 
 fusing to consider the convenience, comfort, or welfare 
 of such an unimportant item in the teeming universe. 
 Often the ironic scene is on a scale of epic grandeur. 
 Not men as individuals, but whole cities go down to 
 death : Pompeii lies buried beneath the lava, San Fran- 
 cisco goes up in smoke, Messina is shaken into ruins. 
 At first, the spectacle of this cruel unconcern of 
 Nature is of staggering effect ; that sometimes it breeds 
 pessimism can well be understood. How, in truth, can 
 this seemingly heartless procedure on the part of Na- 
 ture meaning by the word a personification of the 
 laws and processes operative in the physical universe as 
 observed by man be explained, so that we may re- 
 turn to the soothing thought that not a sparrow falls 
 unnoted, and that, in the forever lovely words of 
 Coleridge, 
 
 He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small; 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all. 
 
 Of course, all such inquiry can be dismissed on the 
 ground that man is not intended to understand, that 
 his limitations make mystery inevitable, and that faith 
 is thus exercised as it faces the vast and curious antin- 
 omies of human life and the course of Nature. If 
 25 
 
Xtttle Bssags in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 we could comprehend all, there were no proper place 
 for that spirit of trust yea, even though it slay us ! 
 which is the very basis of religion. 
 
 Perhaps another thought helps a little when one's 
 mood is darkened by the apparent irony, whether of 
 man or Nature. Why may it not be that all such 
 catastrophic occurrences are but a reminder to us 
 worldlings of the false valuations which are set upon 
 life? Since it is natural for all to die, the manner of 
 going is secondary; and so-called catastrophes are, as 
 a rule, horrible to the observer rather than to. the victim, 
 who most often is painlessly and instantly removed 
 from consciousness. But even if we conceded the suf- 
 fering, it still remains true in a high and holy sense 
 that nothing evil can happen to a good man, worldly 
 evil, yes, in plenty, but not that evil which is the 
 only true tragedy to the philosopher: spiritual failure. 
 What we call our tragedies are, speaking by and large, 
 merely violent and unexpected interruptions of pleasure. 
 And it is certainly salutary to be reminded, although in 
 a way that is repellent, that one whom physical dis- 
 aster overcomes can yet sleep with that smile upon his 
 face which is a sign of triumph, and the certificate of 
 a rest well won. The solemn saying of the Greek, 
 " call no man happy until he is dead," was not uttered 
 in cheap cynicism, but had in mind the fact that each 
 day until the end is a chance for the spiritual success 
 or defeat; and that, therefore, we may not claim the 
 victory until all the days be numbered. It may well 
 
 26 
 
1Fron of IRature 
 
 be, therefore, that what is known as the " pathetic fal- 
 lacy " in literature, the mood of loving trust which 
 makes Wordsworth see beneficent intention in " earth's 
 diurnal course," and sing in his own winsome way, 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good 
 Than all the sages can, 
 
 expresses a truth, a spiritual fact, deeper than any 
 process of logic, and more trustworthy than all self- 
 conscious reasoning. Explain it as we will, and what- 
 ever be the testimony of the brain, there is, as countless 
 stricken souls are aware, a communion with Nature so 
 sweet and strong and sustaining that it is counted 
 among our most precious experiences, and, once over, 
 laid away in the lavender of memory forever. And 
 when we no longer see through a glass darkly, but face 
 to face, it may then become plain that behind the grim 
 look and the chastisement was the benign countenance 
 of the friend, and the unspeakable yearning of the 
 mother heart. Irony, in the last analysis, may resolve 
 itself into a masked good-will. 
 
Sbores of ur Western Sea 
 
 LITTLE Mr. Pope in his Twickenham Villa 
 wrote not seldom about grottoes and groves and 
 suchlike denotements of Nature. But you can tell 
 with half an eye that he did not care about them really. 
 There is no love in his treatment of natural beauties: 
 he gives us a purely conventional handling of such 
 material. We must wait until well into the eighteenth 
 century's second half to get the modern note: the note 
 of Gray, when he wrote his letters descriptive of Al- 
 pine scenery, the note of Burns and Crabbe and Words- 
 worth, the poets who ushered in the splendid new 
 birth of modern romantic poetry, which included the 
 romantic appreciation of sea and shore and sky. 
 
 The sea and the inland plains, the rolling wooded 
 country and the lofty hills 'these and a thousand 
 other manifestations of the Nature moods which make 
 the outer world a breathing miracle of delight to those 
 whose eyes are awake came into English literature 
 in our own day as never before. The modern reader 
 can listen to those " twin voices," as Coleridge calls 
 them, of the sea and mountain, and when he seeks them 
 in vacation time, can receive the double inspiration of 
 their influence; direct, from their physical appearance, 
 
 28 
 
Sbores of <S>ur Mestern Sea 
 
 indirect, from the superb descriptions given to us by 
 the great writers. 
 
 How much the Hudson River, for example, owes to 
 Washington Irving! It is a noble stream, in any case, 
 and certainly was when the red man strode along its 
 banks or canoed upon its placid waters. But inter- 
 wrought with Irving's legendary tales, this river takes 
 on an added loveliness, so that to sail upon it to-day 
 stimulates the fancy as never could have been true before 
 the time of the Knickerbocker author. Similarly, the 
 lake country of England is quite another locality from 
 what it was before Wordsworth and Coleridge and 
 Southey settled there. It is now, and will be for all 
 time to come, clothed in a magic garment of poesy; we 
 see it through a glamorous mist of imagination. 
 
 Generally speaking, one goes to the sea or mountains 
 as an alternative. But it is one of the many advantages 
 of the Pacific Coast (where this paper is being penned) 
 that you get the two in close conjunction and in ex- 
 citing contrast. Westward, is the ever-changing ocean ; 
 to the east the foothills, and further in the background 
 the sheer purple peaks, snow-topped, remote, inacces- 
 sible, virginal ; while between, the landscape smiles with 
 orchards and orange groves; and the chromatic varia- 
 tions of gold and green, of white and purple and 
 brown, of scarlet and lavender and gray, are such as 
 almost to intoxicate a person whose color-sense has been 
 half-starved in other, less-favored regions. 
 
 There are three effects of Nature alike, in that they 
 29 
 
Xtttle 3s0ag5 In ^Literature ant> Xtte 
 
 are all grandiose, and on an impressive scale: those 
 furnished by the ocean, the plain, and the mountain. 
 Naturally, they have evoked corresponding expression in 
 letters, as where Byron invokes the sea, " Roll on, thou 
 deep and dark blue ocean, roll," or Coleridge chants 
 of Chamouni, or our own Whitman cries up the great 
 reaches of the Far West. Personal preferences will, of 
 course, give the palm to one or the other of these 
 mighty exhibitions of Nature's grandeur. But perhaps 
 all will agree that there is more of the steadfast implied 
 in plain and mountain, while the infinite charm and 
 lure of the sea are due in large measure to the protean 
 habit of change. 
 
 To be sure, on the shores of the western sea, it is the 
 mood and aspect of calm that seems dominant; the 
 Pacific, true to her name, laps the sands in caressing 
 susurrus day after day and storms are remote dreams 
 rather than dire realities. Yet we know that this 
 wilderness of water can arouse herself and smite and 
 slay and then easily resume her deceitful semblance of 
 languorous rest. 
 
 The Pacific is the more satisfying to the imagination 
 in that she is, compared with the traffic-dense Atlantic, 
 bare of sails and so less obstructed in the great horizon- 
 sweeps that allow man to use the sea as a type of the 
 Infinite. Lonesome, majestic, untampered with by 
 puny man, the Pacific is the sea, par excellence, to ex- 
 press the feeling of solitude and self-communion. Of 
 course, this is appearance rather than fact, for " ten 
 
 30 
 
Sbores of ur TKftestern Sea 
 
 thousand ships sweep over thee in vain," but the im- 
 agination lives in and thrives by appearances, so that 
 my words are true. 
 
 Then by their proximity, the hills are all the more 
 effective! Meditating by the waters, with your face 
 turned to the west, the fancy broods on the mystery of 
 life, your own small life in relation to the teeming life 
 of fellow-man, going forth as it does upon the mighty 
 waves to seek some haven beyond the sky-line. The 
 solitary gazer associates himself with his kind. Amid 
 the mountains, however, while the mood again is one 
 of communion, it is very different; there is less of 
 quiescence and revery in it, more of the tonic of sum- 
 mons and action. And clearly it is more individual- 
 istic. To look up to the high hills, the Psalmist knew 
 when he added, " Whence cometh my help," is to feel 
 one's smallness, yet to get a kind of pleasure in that 
 sense of personal insignificance; to know God better 
 as humanity shrinks to its true proportions. 
 
 Yet once more, between the remote Sierras and the 
 sea stretches the desert, vast, yellow, rapacious, and 
 deadly hot. Not on the whole round earth is there a 
 more striking illustration of the magic wrought by 
 water than in the way the once arid coast of California, 
 rainless and without irrigation, has been made to smile 
 like a second Eden by the hand of man, which has so 
 used this precious element as to make a very bower of 
 fruits and flowers where once was the silence of desola- 
 tion and the plummet of emptiness. Really, there is 
 31 
 
Xittie Essays in ^Literature anfc SLife 
 
 here the theme for an epic poem. But now that the 
 miracle has been accomplished, there is still the fascina- 
 tion of the arid yellow inland landscape, the wide sum- 
 mer sweep of California plains which, wanting rain, 
 glow like some huge topaz and offer a vivid foil to the 
 sumptuous green of the lands under cultivation. 
 Winter tourists on the western coast miss this color 
 note so beloved of painters, which gives to the color- 
 scheme such a distinctive value. 
 
 The sea, the plain, and the mountain, go to 
 California to enjoy them and get the triune influence 
 of their presence. In the course of time, the incom- 
 parable beauties of Nature in this far-flung barrier to 
 the western sea will get full expression from the native 
 makers of literature even as already much has come 
 from Twain and Stoddard and Harte, from Miller and 
 Norris and London, from Lummis and Muir and 
 Sterling, and from many more of the younger American 
 school. Here is a magnificent motif, still fresh and 
 provocative: men must limn these wonders between sky 
 and sod, between brine and blue. What a poor, im- 
 poverished thing were our literature, indeed, did not 
 her annals increasingly record the inspiration of woods 
 and waters, and hills and plains and prairies, upon the 
 sensitive spirit of man. 
 
Hgain tbe ol5en Meatber 
 
 IF it were our first experience of it, would it be 
 more or less beautiful ? one wonders on these golden 
 days of October. If the marvel of them were a sur- 
 prise instead of a treasured memory, would our joy 
 be diminished or increased? Perhaps the mingling of 
 expectation and fresh delight is what gives the October 
 mood its richest quality. We knew it would come, 
 since it always has, yet we were not quite prepared for 
 the mellow perfection of its look, the too-soon-departed 
 splendor of its spangled hours. To know autumn at 
 its best is to feel that, once at least in life, anticipation 
 is no cheat, for realization even beggars our dream of 
 the truth. 
 
 Nor is it static loveliness. Little by little, as day 
 follows day, there is an added keenness in the air, a 
 winy, crisp flavor to one's very breathing; the yellows 
 become more dominant, the reds creep in to make the 
 chromatic gamut more variegated, and, so gradually 
 that you hardly observe it, the subtle browns and grays 
 and sober bronzes temper the higher coloring and lead 
 on to that ineffable spiritual quality that makes No- 
 vember, to the perceptive soul, the most suggestive 
 month of the year. Melancholy grows with the 
 
 33 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 change, yes ; but it is rather the memory of sorrow than 
 sorrow itself; or, better, it is the sad that is so sweet 
 as to pluck the sting from grief, and substitute for the 
 inertia of loss great brooding thoughts of peace and 
 of fruition. 
 
 Autumn musings are thus reminiscent yet fore-look- 
 ing. It is as though Nature, her active summer work 
 done, sits for a pleasure-while, recalls her harvestings, 
 and is satisfied; and then, facing the winter and its 
 dearth, half-weary but content, aware that with the 
 spring her power shall be renewed by an ancient pact 
 of earth and sky, smiles dreamily and, not unhappy, 
 falls on sleep. 
 
 Just now as I write, the green and gold contend in 
 rivalry for the landscape. My window, which gives on 
 a southern prospect, shows me many an interweaving 
 of these two superb color notes ; and the heavens above, 
 soft yet keen, glitteringly ashine, and sure, as evening 
 approaches, to paint the west with luminous miracles 
 of yellow and red and pink and the intermediate tints 
 that are opaline and pearl-shot and dimmest amethyst, 
 recall Wordsworth's great lines: 
 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
 And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and 
 strong. 
 
 It seems almost cruel that October is but a brief 
 fraction of the cycle of the months. But would it be 
 so dear and wonderful were it a more frequent visitant ? 
 
 34 
 
H0ain tbe <Boit>en Meatbet 
 
 After all, there is wisdom in the alternation of the sea- 
 sons, and man, left to his own devices, might cheapen 
 the benisons of nature by demanding them at will. 
 
 How deep and wholesome the lesson October teaches 
 in her willingness to relax, and recall, to brood and lie 
 fallow for a little, ere the work is resumed. We fussy 
 mortals, with our large-little schemes, our nervous hur- 
 ryings and incoherent hastes, need this admonition of 
 the fields and forests in their autumn semblance. The 
 temptation always to work, to strive for something de- 
 sirable even in the well-earned vacationing, is a uni- 
 versal one, and nowhere stronger than in busy, anxious, 
 emulative America. And rebuking such undue, un- 
 dignified worry, the eternal processes of the earth offer 
 us a sight of their unhasting sequences, and, in a sump- 
 tuous mood of beauty, remind us that to be happy is to 
 be well nourished, as Emerson somewhere says; that 
 just to lie fallow, and dream, may be to do the work 
 of the gods. 
 
 35 
 
fiDan an& Societ? 
 
H 
 
 THE oldest person I know, and the sweetest, is 
 a five-year-old maid. When she looks at me 
 out of those deep, candid eyes of hers, and rebukes 
 with a grave wonder some utterly foolish remark I 
 have made under the prick of social necessity, it is I 
 who feel only five, while she seems, as to wisdom, of an 
 age ineffable and beyond compute. 
 
 It has always seemed to me that there is something 
 very eerie about children in their knowingness; they 
 appear to speak out of a supreme contempt for the 
 evasions and shallownesses of grown-ups. It is as if 
 the accumulated experience of the race were stored up 
 in them, and they held the touchstone which infallibly 
 separates the wheat from the chaff in human character. 
 Hence the exceeding silliness of " talking down " to 
 a little one who looks up to you in the physical sense, 
 since you are the taller; but who looks down on you 
 and patronizes you from a height of spiritual superiority 
 that is beyond plummet-line, measure, or mark. The 
 mature person who is at all perceptive, and has not 
 forgotten his own childhood altogether, thus comes to 
 stand in very awe of a sweet, winsome wisp of a girl 
 such as my five-year-old. 
 
 39 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature anfc SLife 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. It is not moral only, 
 this influence of a child, but intellectual; or, at least, 
 it involves more than being better than I am. 
 
 I stood one day, well along toward sunset, in the 
 bay window, watching the western sky where the 
 Maker of all things was marshaling a splendid array 
 of colors for the final sun-flight. 
 
 "It is beautiful, isn't it, dear?" said I, with a 
 banality for which I immediately hated myself. 
 
 " Yes," replied my five-year-old, with infinite sober 
 sweetness. 
 
 Then with a masterstroke of the commonplace, I 
 added, half to myself, " I wonder what it all means? " 
 Whereupon, those eyes were turned full upon me, and 
 as I shrank from their compassionate pity, came the 
 words: " Why, don't you know? " In a flash I stood 
 confessed, stripped bare, in all my wretched grown- 
 upness ; a creature staled by custom, so many sunsets 
 had I seen ! ashamed to let my intuitions divine the 
 truth, set in the vicious habit of trying to prove in- 
 stead of feeling the truth and being nourished by 
 thoughts that " do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 When she had taught me a salutary lesson, my five- 
 year-old turned, still with the same indescribable sweet 
 dignity, walked to a table, took up a book and became 
 immersed in the best literature in the world, fairy 
 tales. It was exactly as if she had said only a nicer 
 way of saying it " Now I think you understand ; ex- 
 cuse me, I have more important matters than your 
 40 
 
* 
 
 education to attend to." It would have been a colossal 
 mistake had I made any reply ; I simply sneaked out of 
 the room, closing the door very softly for fear of break- 
 ing the revery of the sedate little figure, with that 
 " spirit small hand " of hers propping up the fair white 
 brow and the stray locks of burnished hair falling over 
 the mobile face. 
 
 No wonder scientists tell us that the child is the race 
 writ small, for children certainly have the effect of 
 knowing far more than any one child can, so far as 
 instruction and the experience drawn from their brief 
 sojourn in the earthly environment go. This may lead 
 in the direction of mysticism, but I care not whither it 
 lead, since, to judge from personal observation, it is the 
 honest impression made upon us by the wee inhabitants 
 of our hearts and homes. They remind me constantly 
 that the grown-up tendency is to play a part; in con- 
 trast, they seem rooted in reality. It is only their good 
 breeding which keeps them from openly contemning 
 our foolish assumption of roles, the hangdog manner 
 in which we disport ourselves most of the time. When 
 a mature human being lets go for a bit, waxes natural 
 and dares to be himself, he is sure to be checked by 
 the fatal remark from another sophisticate: "Dear 
 me, don't do that, you act as if you were only ten," 
 after which cold douche you sheepishly resume your 
 solemn customary mask, and go cursing on your way. 
 During that brief, beautiful, dare-devil moment of let- 
 ting go, you may be despised by fool grown-ups, but the 
 
 41 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature aito Xife 
 
 children love you, recognize you for the nonce as their 
 equal ; and will give you such a royal time of it as shall 
 make the return to mature inhibitions painful indeed. 
 
 Remember, I am speaking of the unspoiled child. 
 Double the years of my beloved five-year-old, and when 
 she has attained the reverend age of ten she will begin 
 to obey imitatively, and as an end to some desired result. 
 She will not have her queenlike way of granting a favor. 
 She will have entered into more intimate relations with 
 others and have lost somewhat of that distinctive, fasci- 
 nating personality which at present gives her both 
 power and charm. In short, she will be further along 
 the road that leads to maturity: time of consciousness, 
 convention, and caution. 
 
 I never got really close to my five-year-old until I 
 treated her as my equal in general knowledge, and im- 
 mensely my superior in everything else. This once con- 
 ceded, we were instantly on comrade terms and what I 
 (had the audacity to call my " business " was merely a 
 pretext to keep me busy during the day, while she, too, 
 had her tasks and duties until, evening come, the all 
 too brief hour before bed could be devoted to the truly 
 important part of life : games, stories, conversations, the 
 exchange of experiences and the exercise of the imagi- 
 nation. Here I must drop aside all weariness and, with 
 every faculty alert and my best foot forward, engage in 
 a companionship inexhaustibly varied, fresh, delightful, 
 and instructive. Often I went into it like a clod, and 
 came out a living spirit. My fancy had been dead, it 
 
 42 
 
H 
 
 was alive again; my sense of romance and poetry had 
 slumbered, and once more it was quickened into joy- 
 ous activity. I rejoiced to be alive, believed in myself 
 and my fellow-beings, knew that the undying boy was 
 still in me waiting for the call ; and above and beyond 
 everything else realized the wonder and the witchery 
 of maidenhood whose years are few by earthly telling, 
 but whose winsome lore is big with reverberations from 
 the stored-up wisdom of all past time. I listen to the 
 sweet treble of my five-year-old's laughter, yet almost 
 tremble at something behind it that takes hold on the 
 infinite, and hints of secrets not revealed to man. 
 
 Think not that this child is exceptional. Nay, she is 
 not mine at all, nor do I gaze upon her with the fond, 
 too favorable eye of parental possession. All childhood, 
 looked at aright, has this higher meaning, this mys- 
 terious gift of presence and prescience, this magic of 
 suggestion and intuition. While we " teach " it in 
 our boastful grown-up speech we may let it teach us 
 too, nor be afraid to sit at the feet of babes and suck- 
 lings. 
 
 43 
 
3frten& ant) fl 
 
 I HAD lost my friend, and I went my ways, dazed 
 and dry-eyed, trying to forget, always remember- 
 ing. I repeated to myself, for the comfort of their 
 beauty, Cory's wonderful lines, in which the poet spoke 
 once and for all, for all of us, voicing the wistful pathos 
 of the loss and lonesomeness which are a part of 
 human destiny: 
 
 They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead, 
 They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. 
 I wept, as I remembered how often you and I 
 Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. 
 
 Then one day I found myself in a great wood, 
 gloomed by splendid firs, yet gold-shot by shafts of sun 
 that pierced transversely the scented forest aisles, mak- 
 ing an alluring arabesque of light-and-shade before my 
 tardy feet. And lo, as I walked on in meditation so 
 deep and sad and tender as to be unaware of bodily 
 motion, of a sudden there floated to me, from I know 
 not what aery hidden perch in the tree tops, the note 
 of the hermit thrush, sole singer of spiritual secrets, 
 I like to call him, of all the tuneful choir of our west- 
 ern world. Instantly, with an electric insistence, the 
 44 
 
JFrienfc an& fl 
 
 second and concluding stanza of Cory's poem flooded 
 into my mind: 
 
 And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, 
 A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, 
 Still are they pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake; 
 For Death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. 
 
 What matter whether it be thrush or nightingale, I 
 thought then, the one loved here in America, the other 
 dear across the great water, and bound up with the 
 song and story of many centuries? For with both, 
 Nature speaks through the mouth of a bird, and man 
 listens and receives consolation. There, in the scented 
 wood way, walking upon the soft, springy carpet of 
 pine-needles, and catching glimpses of the summer sky 
 far above, while my lungs drew in the balsam-laden air 
 and the sough of the wind made a subtle music in my 
 ear, I knew, with a knowledge not of the head but of 
 the heart, that my friend was near, and held converse 
 with me after the sweet old fashion. And not all the 
 scornful wisdom of the world shall ever deprive me 
 of that moment of revelation and of bliss. 
 
 Nor was that sylvan drawing-nigh to the friend 
 unique ; for I found that if I sought, I also found ; that 
 some lovely Nature-note or mood was always ready and 
 eager to act as intermediary between me and the one 
 behind the veil. On earth, we had together loved 
 these rare, divine moments when the beauties of earth 
 and sky and all that lies between seized upon our souls 
 and made them one in a noble experience. And so now, 
 45 
 
Xittle Essays in literature a^ !fcife 
 
 if but the moment offered and the mood came, came 
 also the comrade as of yore, and we walked and talked 
 together as if the " unplumbed, salt, estranging sea " 
 which men call death had never rolled between and 
 seemingly sundered our lives. By a marvelous identi- 
 fication of interest, by a happiness so keen that it had 
 to be shared, time and space and the testimony of the 
 eye were not, and only the love that binds human be- 
 ings together remained. 
 
 That day in the wood, when I came to a little clump 
 of white birches, most spirituelle of all forest trees, 
 even as the firs and hemlocks are the most somber and 
 the poplars most quiveringly pathetic, it seemed as if 
 my friend paused and spoke of those elvish creatures; 
 for did he not care for them in special, and had he not 
 written many a lilting line that limned their slender, 
 white perfection and hinted at the symbol of their 
 haunting presence ? And so, side by side, in the hidden 
 healing of the woods, we stood, and looked, communed 
 and were content. 
 
 The season was midsummer, that would soon merge 
 into early autumn. Hence, the rich green leaves of 
 the laurel, that in June embowered the fragrant blos- 
 soms along this enchanted road, were alone a witness 
 to earlier flowering ; but all who know the laurel along 
 New England roadways can love its leaves when blos- 
 soming is over, and so did we, there in the scented dusk, 
 for now the night drew on. My friend, dear 
 though dead, alive because loved, stooped to pluck a bit 
 
 46 
 
if rtenfc anfc tf 
 
 of goldenrod, and held it up high in his grasp against the 
 trees; green behind gold, gold against green; with his 
 exquisite color-sense, I knew how much the picture 
 meant to him, albeit no word dropped from his lips. 
 
 A little later, as we strolled on down the aisles of 
 early evening, and began to see through the pleached 
 tree tops the pale silver of a sickle moon, he paused 
 again to brood tenderly over the wild aster, whose 
 delicate purple was another color-note in a place where 
 the sensitive might feast upon many such a detail. 
 And I saw, not without tears, how the poet soul of 
 my friend spoke to that beautiful wilding thing, and 
 how it gave him back its blessing and its peace. To 
 both of us, unspeakable memories were interwoven with 
 these common wayside blooms, the goldenrod and the 
 aster; overtones out of the past they sounded, and 
 undermeanings they held, too deep to fathom. 
 
 Still we walked on, and the dusk trembled with the 
 reiterant triple note of the thrush ; so shy and hid and 
 minor-cadenced is that songster, that sundown and 
 afterglow and the first dovelike revealings of the night 
 are the hours to hear him ; these, rather than any day- 
 time mood. And as the bird's silver, delayed music 
 mourned through the forest and seemed like a harbinger 
 of the promised floodtide of moonlight, lo, my friend, 
 with his low, sweet voice, his aquiline beauty, and his 
 spirit too fine for the harsh uses of this world, faded out 
 from my ken and, for that time, came no more. 
 
 But, moving down the silvern vistas of the wood, his 
 47 
 
Xittle Essays tn literature an& Xtfe 
 
 touch was still warm upon my hand, his love sustained 
 me, and in the continued plaint of the hermit thrush I 
 felt his presence and was less bereaved. And I was 
 aware that this was no fantasy, but a sane excursion of 
 the soul, fortifying me for the more homely doings that 
 fill my days. 
 
 Returning from the vacation, recalling what has 
 been seen and done, it is natural and perhaps not un- 
 fruitful to think these autumn thoughts, and to wonder 
 if in the contact once again with Nature in our leisure 
 time, we have drawn nearer to the mother breast and 
 made the most of a golden chance, so becoming re- 
 vivified for the sober working-year. For there, in the 
 breathing universe of which the sky and earth are like 
 twin walls, there is a comradeship indeed, and a solace 
 that no shift of fortune or of fate can take away. My 
 friend and I were brought together by that voice, the 
 voice for us that sounded through the thrush, the voice 
 typified in Cory's nightingales : 
 
 For Death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. 
 
ut of CMR>boo& 
 
 THE man herewith recalls a sensational event out 
 of his childhood. His father returned from a 
 trip to Florida, bearing with him a mysterious, small 
 white box, long for its size and perforated with air 
 holes. Arriving in the early morning, he came into 
 the room where the boy was dressing, unscrewed the 
 top of the box, and emptied onto the floor a live baby 
 alligator. 
 
 The little beast, after a dazed moment or two, 
 began to crawl, and the boy took to the nearest chair 
 with an instinctive movement that had in it no ap- 
 parent reasoning: just the immediate, spontaneous phys- 
 ical reaction to fear and astonishment behind which 
 doubtless are occult manceuvers of the brain. Trusting 
 to memory, the man would say that the tiny saurian, 
 thus abruptly introduced into the early menage, was 
 perhaps three feet in length; more likely he was but 
 two; alligators, like other things, grow with the years 
 and the telling. But he was big enough to afford a 
 thrill such as sets that day apart in the corridors of 
 memory and makes it worth while yet to re-live it, for 
 its romance and its poetry. That alligator (I regret 
 to add that it pined away in the bleak northerly air 
 49 
 
Xittie Essays in Xiterature aito %ife 
 
 and died just three weeks after its Floridian hegira) 
 stood for the far away, the unusual, the unexpected, 
 the imagined but never before seen ; all denotements to 
 arouse, in boy or man, the sentiment that makes him 
 tingle with a sense of the wonder of life. 
 
 The wonder of life, there you are! Does it still 
 evoke that feeling in you, at least now and again? If 
 not, beware, and deceive yourself not: you may be but 
 five and thirty, with a clean bill of health from the 
 medical authorities, yet you are to all intents and pur- 
 poses dead, yes, deader than old Marley, than whom 
 was ever a man more definitely extinct? If to you the 
 laws of nature have become a commonplace, and the 
 characters of your fellow-men uninteresting; if there 
 be no longer a stir of the imagination as you look back 
 to your alligator (or whatever the event you summon 
 out of your youth) ; if history seem to you but dry 
 bones, and the turmoil and passion of that present 
 history, which is politics, is naught but a sordid game 
 of personal ambition; if the marvels of science shake 
 you not as mortals burrow the earth, penetrate the sea 
 or sail upon the great winds a mile high in the air; 
 if (and this is inconceivable) there is no vibrancy and 
 sweetness for you in the voice of woman heard in the 
 moonlight under the ancient enchantment of glooming 
 trees; if a land of the present like America fail to 
 make you dream of a future so mighty in achieve- 
 ments as to beggar speech and almost baffle prophecy, 
 then, poor soul, are you but a galley slave, when a 
 
 50 
 
<S>ut of 
 
 king you might be, and no mortal of them all lying 
 in dreamless dust in a dateless and forgotten tomb is 
 so wretchedly null and void as you! For with them, 
 they had the chance and mayhap took it, and it is long 
 over. But for you, with the chance within reach, and 
 with your blood still coursing in your veins, you see 
 nothing around or above or within you, and are merely 
 marking time instead of marching with the great, 
 eternal procession of the years and the nations. 
 
 Lucky the mortal who has had an alligator in his 
 youth and remembers it. Lucky any one who, beaten 
 upon by the cares of life and at times haggard with its 
 responsibilities, can still take joy in a sunset, go a-fish- 
 ing for the sake of the outdoorness of it as well as for 
 the fish, follow the " National Game " without shame, 
 laugh at a clean joke from the lungs instead of from 
 the throat, in short, one who has preserved a capacity 
 for the zest of living and can command upon a fit occa- 
 sion the boy-like mood. Kill the instinct for joy in a 
 mature human being and what is left is a drudge, a 
 bore or a criminal. Remove the sense of poetry from 
 him, as in a hundred ways it applies to life, and he is 
 like a traveler who, midway upon the burning, water- 
 less desert sands, has not even the hope of the green 
 oasis and the blessed drink beneath the pleasant shade 
 trees far away. He has around him only the hopeless 
 barrenness of the desert. 
 
 Man is a creature of bread and meat and daily 
 duties, yes; but also a creature of dreams, ideals, of 
 
%ittle JS&8%$8 in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 spangled memories and immortal forth-looking faith. 
 He was meant to work in the gladness of his heart no 
 less than in the sweat of his brow. If he do not, his 
 doom is not in the intention of the Almighty but in 
 the mistakes of society. 
 
loafing 
 
 j^ENNETH GRAHAME, essayist of charm and 
 -IV. suggestion, speaks of " all good fellows who look 
 upon holidays as a chief end of life," and adds that, 
 " wisest of them all, the Loafer stands apart, supreme." 
 You observe that he dignifies him with a capital, as if 
 in protest at the cheap, conventional estimate of the 
 type, an opprobrious name withal, to fit a drone or 
 blackguard. For Grahame, however, the loafer is wise 
 because he realizes that reflection yields a richer, more 
 lasting joy than action ; that, in sooth, the latter is but 
 a preparation for the " subjective pleasures of the 
 mind." And the true loafer is possessed of such a 
 whimsical turn of mind, and so well dowered with 
 humor, as to derive the more zest from the opinion of 
 him cherished by the Philistine, who looks upon the 
 other as a cumberer of the earth, an economic failure, 
 to be hounded into jails and workhouses, and a theme 
 for admonition and warning. 
 
 The loafer we have in mind the loafer whom Gra- 
 hame sings is no tramp, nor wastrel, nor yet a man 
 who dodges duty. No, he is a sane soul who works 
 hard, yet leaves a margin for play, and in his play is 
 sportively a boy again ; he knows that, so far from wast- 
 
 53 
 
Xittle JEssass in ^literature anfc Xife 
 
 ing time, he is renewing his whole life and that in the 
 very relaxation lies the strength to key up once more 
 for the more active business of life. The Stradivarius 
 which is never unstrung so runs his thought will 
 lose its incomparable tone. He knows, too, that in his 
 apparent idleness and aimless lounging may be hidden 
 processes of assimilation and absorption, precious in- 
 deed for his highest welfare, his finest usefulness for 
 fellow-men. He has learned the secret phrased by 
 Horace centuries ago, that it is wise to fool in season. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, than whom no man of his 
 generation worked more valiantly against greater odds, 
 wrote one day toward the end of his life thus whim- 
 sically to a friend : " I sometimes sit and yearn for 
 anything in the nature of an income that would come in 
 mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the 
 immortal mind of man. What I want is the income 
 that really comes in of itself, while all you have to do 
 is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs." And 
 he goes on to say that, under such conditions, " I should 
 probably amuse myself with works that would make 
 your hair curl, if you had any left." 
 
 Here we get close to the truth. In an ideal state, 
 work would not be for wage, but for the spontaneous 
 and pleasurable expression of personality. And it is 
 safe to say that the bulk of the world's best work has 
 been done in that spirit. Dr. Grenfell tells us that 
 there is no sacrifice in his bleak, splendid Labrador 
 service ; he is simply having a good time, doing what he 
 
 54 
 
Xoafino 
 
 best likes to do; and all the more we honor the service 
 which he renders, and admire the man. 
 
 The only real loafer, then, is the man who, because 
 he can work hard as well, can appreciate the loafing; 
 and who recognizes, in the seeming laziness, the filling 
 of an empty well with the waters of life. The hobo 
 is no genuine loafer, for the sufficient reason that he 
 works hard at it, and has lost the taste of pleasure it 
 should contain. Hence do we regard him with oblique 
 gaze, as an enemy of society. Why should we honor 
 any man who, having elected a profession, finds no re- 
 ward in it ? If, passing along a country road, I should 
 come upon a group of tramps sitting about a fire at 
 their ease and singing some rollicking stave, I would 
 feel a certain respect for them; it would be a symbol 
 of joy in the hardest job on earth, doing nothing as 
 a profession. But did any one ever hear such a song? 
 
 Walt Whitman, in famous words, has extolled the 
 virtue of loafing and inviting our souls. His mean- 
 ing goes deep into the roots of living. Here is the 
 true-blue, culminating validation of that mood which, 
 to the outer eye a mere indulgence in inertia, may be to 
 that inner eye which sees the soul of things, the most 
 important functioning of a life. Truly, we need that 
 hour, day, week, or year; not for rest, refreshment, 
 recreation alone, good as they are, but to take stock 
 of ourselves spiritually, to get on speaking terms with 
 our higher selves, to realize that we are made in the 
 image of God. The mood of seeming idleness invites 
 55 
 
Xfttle Bssaps in ^Literature anfc %ife 
 
 the soul, because for the nonce we drive from mind the 
 practical business which commonly holds us in an iron 
 grip, and makes reflection, readjustment, and new valu- 
 ations impossible; into the mind, thus clarified, and so 
 made hospitably open for better things, flow the sweet 
 and potent influences of the spirit. 
 
 There is your loafer, sublimated and so justified. 
 Away with the shallow definition of the dictionary! 
 Wise is he who preserves the spirit of loafing as an 
 avocation, even as he is foolish who makes it a vocation. 
 Emerson, in this sense, was one of the superb loafers 
 of American life and letters. He walked the Concord 
 woods or beside her streams with his mind inward bent, 
 in that delightful mood which, as Wordsworth has it, 
 " is the bliss of solitude." I daresay, to the inhabitants 
 of the town he sometimes looked idle, a sort of high- 
 class vagrant. But he was ever about his own business, 
 and it was a very important one, as we now regard it 
 and him. He dared to loaf and let in supernal visitors ; 
 he was sensitive to the call not of earth; and so he 
 hitched his wagon to a star. 
 
 In overactive America, we are prone to wax apolo- 
 getic for any " time out." We must remember that 
 time out may be eternity in. We must have the 
 courage of our convictions and when we know that the 
 clock has struck and the loafing hour is fairly come, not 
 be shamed from using it by mere outward appearance, 
 that tyrant over us all. " I have worked," the wise one 
 should reply, " long and dutifully, in order that this 
 
 56 
 
hard-won sacred hour might be granted me; it is here, 
 and I shall use it to my best advantage, benignantly 
 unconcerned, even if, to my neighbor, I seem to misuse 
 an opportunity." And he, on his side, should adopt the 
 principle of ' live and let live ' ; he needs the charitable 
 interpretation, even as do you. Avaunt the thought 
 that the idle man, as we call him, is one who works not 
 when the harvest is ripe; perchance he gleans in fields 
 as fruitful as was that of Boaz to the alien Ruth. It 
 may well be that, at the very moment when his vacant 
 eye seems to be fixed on nothing, he is seeing visions 
 that in the fullness of time shall save a nation. See 
 that you have vision, lest the people perish. 
 
 Long live the loafer who does not abuse his privilege, 
 nor invite other than lofty company into the secret 
 places of his soul! His is the authentic activity that 
 is more than muscular, and his reward is richer than 
 can be computed in any coin of the realm. 
 
 57 
 
K> Hge 
 
 THE tragedy of growing old is that you feel so 
 young. Many a middle-aged person has become 
 amazedly aware of this. To say that a man is as old 
 as he feels and a woman as she looks, is not to get 
 quite to the root of the matter. If a man carries his 
 years in his face, the community credits him with them, 
 however much he may skip about and ape inimitable 
 youth. And as for the other sex, to declare that ap- 
 pearance settles the matter opens the door to the temp- 
 tation of assisting nature with art, hiding maturity 
 behind make-up. Psychologically, both sexes are on a 
 par as to age. Whether man or woman, if the spirit 
 of youth be within, its outward expression in face and 
 form will follow, and joyously set back the clock of 
 Time. 
 
 The deadly thing, almost more aging than age itself, 
 is the insidious, creeping knowledge that the months 
 fly, the years move on apace, and all of us, willynilly, 
 are older by every ticktock of the clock and revolution 
 of the seasons. To brood upon it is to wax morbid, 
 perhaps pessimistic. I am tempted to say that what 
 we call old age is thus a biologic condition plus a state 
 of mind. In other words, self-consciousness plays a 
 
 58 
 
definite part in bringing about " this drooping gait, 
 this altered size," as Coleridge has it, and " this body 
 that does me grievous wrong " has been influenced by 
 the bodeful dwelling upon its slow, sad, inevitable 
 approach. I believe, therefore, that it would be a 
 mighty good thing if we did not tell off our age by 
 months and years at all, and kept no track of the pas- 
 sage of time, so far as we are personally concerned. It 
 is the attitude of the community which develops in us 
 this sickly tally-keeping, whereby we are aware that 
 to-day we are forty or fifty or, alas, sixty years of 
 age! 
 
 Suppose, by the common consent of men, a certain 
 terminal of year-counting were set up: say, thirty-five. 
 Thereafter, we, the community, agree to count our ages 
 backward : being thirty- four at thirty-six, and so follow- 
 ing. At forty-five, you will observe, we should be 
 twenty-five, positively coltish in feeling and no doubt 
 in appearance, for the psychological effect of this 
 thoroughly rational arrangement would be tremendous. 
 This plan would be an improvement, I take it, even 
 upon the state of mind induced by not knowing your 
 age at all, a condition sometimes seen in the persons 
 of very old colored folk, who have lost the count long 
 since, and who notice are invariably a hundred or 
 so years old. But the plan proposed is better still, 
 because we are not only holding Time back, but we are 
 actually growing younger all the while. 
 
 Do not be so foolish as to call this idea whimsical; 
 59 
 
Xittle Essays tn Xiterature arto Xtfe 
 
 it is a fine example of the higher commonsense, and 
 I am proud of it. Remember that the new thing is 
 not necessarily idiotic; by the new thing the world 
 advances. Any mind that is open wider than a mouse- 
 trap can grasp the fact that we are all victims, more or 
 less, of the social conscience and consciousness, meekly 
 walking our ways in accordance with their tyrannous 
 decrees. Surely, in nothing is this truer than in the 
 absurd and hideous conventions of age. 
 
 What woman dare face her dressmaker when the lat- 
 ter remarks, " I think that would be a little young for 
 you?" Or what man, forsooth, although man pre- 
 tends to be indifferent to such fussy distinctions, will 
 not hesitate when the salesman declares oracularly, 
 " Yes, it is a nice piece of goods, but really, you know, 
 that garment belongs in the boys' department." It may 
 be the best fitting and most becoming thing in the place, 
 but you humbly turn away and take some ugly pattern 
 suitable to your calendar record. Ah, me, many are 
 the varieties of slavery here on earth! 
 
 Even as society is now constituted there are allevia- 
 tions not a few. Science and civilization have so pro- 
 longed man's age that we all average longer lives than 
 we did some centuries ago, and some of us live longer 
 than we want to. Moreover, besides living longer in 
 actual enumeration of time, we keep younger while liv- 
 ing, " are in it," as the saying is, far beyond the con- 
 ventional limits set up by earlier killjoys. Men like 
 Gladstone and Lord Kelvin were doing work of im- 
 60 
 
mense value to the world when past eighty ; the Psalm- 
 ist's allotment of years, being seventy, is laughed to 
 scorn, and a man like Dr. Holmes was hailed by all 
 who knew him as eighty years young. 
 
 Women, who by the old dispensation were dead and 
 done for by thirty, are mere social infants now at that 
 age; Balzac discovered the social possibilities of the 
 woman of thirty, a new type in his hands. Within per- 
 sonal observation, the woman of forty has been accepted 
 in literature sure mirror of social thought and feeling 
 and it is common enough in drama and fiction to 
 see that mature age made attractive and entirely con- 
 gruous in the depiction of love between the sexes. 
 
 In Parker's charming play, " Rosemary," a man of 
 forty in love with a girl in her teens is the hero, and 
 all the sympathy of the audience is his. Nay, a much 
 more striking example of the way we are pushing for- 
 ward the age-limit, whether for love or work, is to be 
 found in Bernstein's play, " The Attack," wherein a 
 man of fifty-three is loved and proposed to by a very 
 young girl. A generation ago, this situation could only 
 have been regarded as humorous; now it occurs in a 
 piece of serious import. There is a widespread senti- 
 ment to-day expressed in the line of the darky song: 
 " I'se goin* to live, anyhow, till I die, die, die." 
 
 It is realized that the fundamental technic of living 
 
 is in learning to make the most of the present gift of 
 
 earth life, and to last in it as long as you can, as young 
 
 as you can, with most enjoyment to yourself and most 
 
 61 
 
Xittie Bssass in ^Literature anfc 3Life 
 
 usefulness to others. A this-world commonsense has 
 been developed under the regime of science. Gradually, 
 but with evidently increasing courage, we are refusing to 
 be killed before our time, or to be set aside ere our use- 
 fulness or attraction is over, or to be intimidated into a 
 state of up-stage retirement when the pulses still beat 
 strong and Life beckons yet with infinite sweet promises. 
 We have rebelled against so mechanical a thing as the 
 stroke of the hour or a mere word registered in the 
 family Bible. We resent the impudent questions asked 
 by all sorts of people, whose business seems to offer 
 an excuse, with regard to our length of years. After 
 all, it is our business, not theirs, and if we will only 
 believe it, the matter lies in our own hands. 
 
 " Avaunt, all such harpies," I cry. " It is nobody's 
 affair how old I am, and if you wish to estimate my 
 time of life, watch my actions, observe my many activi- 
 ties of body and mind, and so judge." 
 
 Let us all adopt the pleasant advice : " The moment 
 you feel too old to do a thing, do it at once." 
 
 62 
 
%ure of Ibappinees 
 
 T TAPPINESS is the bluebird which ever lures man 
 * on, elusive, escaping, always beyond his grasp. 
 Joy, content, pleasure, these are his as a mood or a 
 moment, again and again during his human experience. 
 But happiness, which means a permanent condition or 
 state, is not his, nor intended to be. When he 
 finds the good or the beautiful dear and desirable, it is 
 because he recognizes it as fleeting, a thing that 
 beckons him onward, a lure toward perfection, not of 
 earth, or at least not at present on earth. Thus 
 beauty, of whatever kind, is a promise of happiness 
 and holiness; not a state to be completely realized, but 
 a splendid ideal to be striven for, with the hope of a 
 final destination where only the holy shall abide. 
 
 Our forefathers had a sense of this when, in framing 
 the United States Constitution, they named " Life, 
 Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness " as the triple 
 aim of man, government being the machinery to assist 
 him in the attainment of these privileges. It was the 
 pursuit, not the acquirement, of happiness which was 
 set up as an end : an end in itself, since that will-o'-the- 
 wisp is never quite caught. 
 
 Stevenson, in a letter to a friend, declared that he 
 63 
 
Xittle Bssags in ^Literature anfc 3Life 
 
 had known many a delight, that joy had often been 
 his, he learned the great lesson, too, that " the spirit 
 of delight comes on small wings," yet he affirmed 
 he had never grasped happiness. These are significant 
 words, coming from a man who, conspicuous in his 
 generation, loved life, enjoyed it to the full and in all 
 his writings cried up the idea that it was richly worth 
 while. His remark, therefore, was not pessimistic or 
 cynical, although superficially it might be taken as the 
 expression of disillusionment. It was rather his 
 philosophic reminder that life was so constituted, and 
 happiness, in the scheme of things, a desideratum, a 
 dream, never a mere fait accompli. 
 
 There are two ways of receiving this fact: we may 
 challenge the ordering of the universe, call it arbitrary 
 and cruel; or assume that there is a salutary meaning 
 in it all, and hence seek for the answer. Those with 
 voice and vision have inclined to the latter mind. 
 Maeterlinck, in the charming play of child-life and 
 fairy lore which has been giving pleasure to so many 
 folk throughout this country, is one such interpreter. 
 He recognizes the elusive character of the pursuit of 
 happiness, along with the universality of the attempt; 
 the children, lad and lassie, who for a dream-year seek 
 the bird that is blue (until caught), stand for the 
 human race ; we are all like that, whatever be our par- 
 ticular conception of happiness. Again and again do 
 the children reach out their hands to take the bird, 
 but ever it eludes. Cage it and it escapes, or, looked 
 
%ure of Dappiness 
 
 at the second time, begins to fade from its cerulean hue 
 to one more dull and drablike. 
 
 When the dream is over, and the children under the 
 kindly guidance of Light, who is vision, are returned 
 to their humble home, lo! the poet-dramatist would 
 say to us that the bird of happiness is there, was there 
 all the time in those familiar and homely surroundings ; 
 overlooked, it may be, because we fondly imagined that 
 a thing so supernal and fair could not be near at hand, 
 a matter of everyday experience. Of deep significance 
 in the treatment is it, that when Tyltyl gives his pet 
 dove to the sick child of a neighbor, in other words, 
 does a deed of loving-kindness, his dove turns blue 
 and seems to be the very bird they have so long sought. 
 Yet he escapes by an accident, and in truth must; for, 
 otherwise, the allegory were not consistent. It would 
 be a false teaching of life if that desirable, yearned- 
 for bird should pause for long in its flight, were more 
 than momently retained. 
 
 Here, it would seem, we get the clue to the secret. 
 Happiness, a desire of the eyes, a dream of the soul, is 
 placed before us in order that, by the slow process of 
 living, we may learn to distinguish between the joy that 
 is fleeting and of the flesh, and that which is permanent, 
 high and pure. Life, with this in mind, may be defined 
 as a series of discoveries and rejections: the rejection of 
 second-class happinesses, and the discovery of the higher 
 happiness which alone satisfies and abides. That su- 
 preme joy is seen by the artist as Beauty, and so he hails 
 
 65 
 
Xittie 300a$s in Xtterature anfc Xife 
 
 it; by the religionist as the Good, and he bows down 
 before it in worship; and by the philosopher as the 
 Eternal Truth, and austerely he holds it before men as 
 the one perfect and holy thing. But in the guise of 
 happiness each member of this trinity must come, and 
 to the thinker they are but phases of the one indivisible 
 principle. 
 
 Happiness, then, is made a winged and wandering 
 creature to lure us on in an everlasting chase for per- 
 fection. It is the great stimulant of ideals, for the rea- 
 son that it suggests in a world so broken, imperfect, and 
 unsatisfactory, another state, or condition, wherein the 
 gleam becomes steady daylight and the ineffable promise 
 a realized possession. A man without ideals is, in the 
 deepest sense, dead. Happiness is used as a lure, first 
 a mere bauble of pleasure; then, gradually it changes 
 until it becomes the bright particular jewel of our souls 
 which shall take our attention away from the gauds and 
 jimcracks of earth and set our contemplation upon the 
 things of the spirit. Happiness and the undying hope 
 it breeds find their justification here. 
 
 What a comforting light this truth sheds upon a 
 myriad of the pathetic scenes of earth! The love, set 
 upon the friend who must be lost, is translated to a 
 higher love which, without the long training, could not 
 have been. The frustrate plan, so dear to the im- 
 agination, so desired, so worked for through years 
 so long, has left in the soul the priceless treasure of 
 character and conduct ; it needed the plan to bring it to 
 
 66 
 
ZTbe Xurc ot happiness 
 
 a rounded strength. The sad revelation of treachery 
 in the trusted mate only directs the mind to a state 
 where there shall be no shadow of turning. The many 
 bitternesses that come because the cherished wish lies 
 stillborn before us, are seen to be, in the homely 
 phrase, but blessings in disguise in the course of the 
 years : if unworthy, they are well forgotten ; if worthy, 
 we witness their translation into a higher ideal. 
 
 It is one of the many merits of a piece of literature 
 like Maeterlinck's " The Blue Bird " that these deep 
 truths of life are implicit in the story, and that the 
 philosopher is behind the poet, teaching us while he 
 gives us innocent pleasure by music, stage spectacle, and 
 the joy of contact with the simple things of youth and 
 the magic things of the young imagination. Such a 
 play is indeed a welcome visitant to any city, for it 
 leaves an influence, pervasive and strong, though not 
 tangibly appreciable, long after the beautiful fairy 
 fantasy may have faded from our memory. 
 
He tbers See IBs 
 
 NOBODY ever sees his own face in the glass. 
 What he observes there is a compound, divided 
 into three parts: one part himself as he really is, one 
 part representing what he expects to see, and a third 
 part what he wishes to behold. Self-esteem gets be- 
 tween us and the truth in suchwise as to blind us 
 forever to the facts. Did you ever have the awful 
 experience of walking into a full-length mirror, on the 
 assumption that it was a vista and the disagreeable- 
 looking person coming towards you another than your- 
 self? As he approaches, you size him up with the 
 cool, aloof glance which you direct upon strangers in 
 general; on the whole, you do not at all like his de- 
 portment, gait, or general semblance. Suddenly, with 
 a genuine shock, having arrived close to the all-re- 
 vealing yet deceptive glass, you discover the ill-favored 
 stranger to be yourself, and it takes you weeks to 
 get over it. For the nonce, you really have seen your- 
 self as others see you. And you mutter, " Never 
 again!" 
 
 Dr. Holmes in " The Autocrat " tells us there are 
 six personalities involved in a dialogue between John 
 and Thomas : the real John, known only to his Maker ; 
 
 68 
 
Hs tbers See 
 
 John's ideal John, and Thomas' ideal John, who is 
 never the real John ; and the same three with reference 
 to Thomas. This, it will be observed, makes any 
 conversation betwixt two human beings a pretty com- 
 plex affair; it gives one a sobering sense of the subtle 
 difficulty of understanding each other and the futility 
 of making trustworthy estimates of our fellow-mortals. 
 
 For, notice that on top of the mistakes inevitably 
 made by John about Thomas and by Thomas about 
 John must be piled the blunders the community will 
 make regarding both, not only as a community, but as 
 countless judgments of the individuals which make 
 up society. The mind fairly staggers before the 
 mathematics suggested by the mere statement of these 
 reactions and interactions. Add to this the element of 
 time, because opinions shift with time's passing, and 
 the inconstancy of human estimates becomes all the 
 more impressive. If it is practically impossible for a 
 human being to know himself because of the blinding 
 of selfhood, and still more impossible to know others 
 who are contemporary, what likelihood is there of any 
 accuracy in the attempts to depict characters in the 
 past? 
 
 This is where a certain skepticism concerning histor- 
 ical estimates is bred in one who realizes the situation. 
 From all available sources and new material is often 
 offered to necessitate a change of opinion the student 
 of the past tries to reconstruct the picture of some 
 human being who has been of importance in the world's 
 
 69 
 
OLittle Essays in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 development: Alexander, Napoleon, Henry VIII, 
 Lincoln. The acts of this person are studied as they 
 are reported in contemporary records; the diverse 
 judgments, passed upon him by those of his own day, 
 are gathered and collated; attempt is made to get a 
 sense of the general feeling of the community con- 
 cerning him, if any such definite drift of judgment can 
 be discovered. His letters, if any exist, are eagerly 
 read, and the letters he received from others ; the petty 
 ana of the day are sifted with a fine-tooth comb in the 
 hope of new facts, additional light. Then,, bringing 
 these scattered shreds of information together in a 
 synthesis that really looks quite imposing, the historian 
 proudly draws his character sketch, and it seems satis- 
 factory and convincing, until another specialist comes 
 along to knock the picture into a cocked hat and give 
 the world one that may be as much guesswork as the 
 other ! 
 
 Of course, the difficulty grows apace just in propor- 
 tion as you go back in time; the records become 
 scanter, the testimony harder to get, the accurate trans- 
 mission of facts less certain. And so history, so far 
 as it deals with the description of personality, might 
 be defined as a series of reconstructed guesses, intelli- 
 gent in using what is offered in aid, and overcoming 
 so far as may be the insuperable obstacles that con- 
 front all such efforts to solve the unattainable : a true 
 portrait of a human being by the hand of another. 
 Strictly speaking, it has never been achieved and never 
 70 
 
Hs <S>tbers See 1H5 
 
 will be. Not only do you not know a person 
 out of bygone days, and never can know him; 
 you do not know a contemporary. Think of the 
 gross caricatures of any leading politician to-day 
 derived through press and partisan picture! What 
 do you and I really know of the intentions of Kaiser 
 Wilhelm, or the secret counsels of Mr. Asquith, or of 
 the purpose of the Progressive Party in the United 
 States? To be sure, we talk glibly about these things 
 and assume a virtue if we have it not; but be honest 
 with yourself and thoughtful for a moment, and you 
 will readily grant that your ignorance is superb, yours 
 and mine and everybody's. 
 
 Then take an excursion into old times and ask your- 
 self- what your idea of a character like Nero is. 
 Frankly, does he seem to you a man at all ? Is he not 
 rather a hideous, inconceivable monster, playing his 
 fiddle to the orchestral accompaniment of the flames 
 of Rome? And yet, on second thought, you must 
 confess that he was a human being, neither more nor 
 less, to be explained somehow by the laws of human 
 psychology. Whereupon you begin to suspect that the 
 accounts of him do not give the correct picture; some- 
 how or other he is out of drawing in the stock accounts, 
 and you welcome a Stephen Phillips when he tries to 
 show the Roman emperor as a weak, self-indulgent 
 esthete, gradually undermining his character until he 
 is led into the incredible cruelties for which he is 
 notorious. 
 
Xittle Essays in ^literature an& SLife 
 
 It is noticeable that the trend of the modern his- 
 torical reshaping of characters in the past is as a rule 
 in the direction of whitewashing them, when their 
 earlier reputation was dark. This simply means that 
 we have applied a better knowledge of human nature 
 to their case as well as scanned the records more care- 
 fully for new views upon the complex question of 
 what any human being really is. Recognizing this 
 complexity, we see that we must present the character 
 with more of variety and contradiction than before, 
 when it was shown as all white or all black, a too 
 easy disposition of so mixed a matter. In the end, 
 we think a bit better of Henry VIII or Nero perhaps, 
 yes, even of the Devil himself, who, according to 
 the homely saw, may not be as black as he is painted. 
 He had such good qualities in Milton's epic that the 
 great Puritan poet, in spite of himself, made him his 
 hero, quite the most enjoyable personage in the drama 
 of man's fall. 
 
 No, we know not the men and women of the past, 
 nor our contemporaries, nor the members of our own 
 families, not even ourselves. Every man is a mystery to 
 himself, and which way the cat will jump is uncertain 
 to the end. The Greeks knew whereof they spoke 
 when they coined those terrible words: "Know 
 thyself." They saw that life holds nothing more 
 difficult, and worth essaying. For, in so far as we 
 know ourselves, we may know others. 
 
Soul Bebinfc 
 
 IN the best of all possible worlds the face should 
 be an index of character. And it is likely that 
 the general opinion of the present world would lean 
 that way. People judge character by countenance, 
 and believe they find a correspondence between the 
 lines limned by living and the soul that behind these 
 surface signs really represents personality. 
 
 Is the theory true? Oscar Wilde, in his remark- 
 able, morbid study, " The Picture of Dorian Gray," 
 sharply contrasts human beauty and brains. " Beauty, 
 real beauty," he says, " ends where an intellectual 
 expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of ex- 
 aggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. 
 The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all 
 nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at 
 the successful men in any of the learned professions. 
 How perfectly hideous they are. Except, of course, 
 in the church. But then, in the church they don't 
 think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty 
 what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, 
 and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely 
 delightful." 
 
 The epigrammatic cynicism is typical of the author 
 73 
 
Xittle Bssass in ^literature anfc Xife 
 
 and, of course, need not be taken too seriously. But the 
 question it begets is piquant and arresting. It is likely 
 that most thoughtful people have occasionally won- 
 dered, when they have been confronted by some rascal 
 with an angel face, or looked upon the ugly physi- 
 ognomy of a saint, whether, after all, the popular idea 
 that the outward semblance is an index of the inner 
 state is not misleading. 
 
 The question is greatly complicated by the obvious 
 fact that we all read into a face the attributes we have 
 learned, from contact with a person, he really possesses. 
 Therefore, all goodness imputed to a countenance from 
 such knowledge is of dubious value, to say the least. 
 We do not expect a bank-president to look like a yokel, 
 nor the leader of a great humanitarian movement like 
 a cutthroat. Those faces have got to bear some sym- 
 bolic resemblance, we feel, to the activities of their 
 owners ; hence, we see in them the qualities that should 
 be there. The true test, and the only one of scientific 
 value, would be to take a dozen human beings so 
 garbed as to throw no light upon their occupations, 
 half of them worthless and criminal, the other half 
 the salt of the earth, and, mixing them together and 
 standing them up in a row, let a jury, no one of whom 
 ever set eyes on them before, pronounce upon their 
 characters and kinds of work. It would be a vastly 
 interesting experiment, and some of us feel by no means 
 cocksure that the result would not establish and con- 
 firm the theory of " misfit faces," to use an expression 
 
 74 
 
Soul ffiebfnfc 
 
 adopted by an anonymous writer in the Atlantic 
 Monthly some years ago. I, for one, very much doubt 
 my ability to separate the sheep from the goats under 
 such conditions of test. 
 
 It is with this feeling in mind as to the lack of cor- 
 respondence between character and countenance that 
 Rostand has drawn his Cyrano. The poor fellow, with 
 his obesity and his monstrous nose, is anything but a 
 lyric figure; yet he has the brains and the poetry so 
 that he can hide in the shadow and woo Roxane for 
 the handsome Christian, who is a tailor's model for 
 intellect. Christian furnishes the body and Cyrano 
 the soul for that joint- wooing. And at last Roxane 
 appreciates, though too late, the nobility and beauty 
 that hide behind a homely exterior. The masterpieces 
 of literature have not seldom embodied this pathetic 
 contrast, man's sense of his unideal presentment, so 
 incongruous with his best thought and feeling. 
 
 Perhaps the insistence on the correspondence be- 
 tween body and brain, character and countenance, is 
 based upon the human hunger for unity, for the se- 
 quence of cause and effect. Good action ought to 
 translate itself into the lineaments : a soulful eye, mean- 
 ing soul; a delicate peach-bloom complexion, a like 
 delicacy of nature ; and a firm mouth, an inflexible will. 
 It may be conceded that the great majority believe in 
 these correspondences. And it is certain that practi- 
 cally all the world acts upon this assumption. What- 
 ever our philosophic theory, when it comes to everyday 
 
 75 
 
Xittle lEssass in Xtterature an& Xtfe 
 
 action we get a quick impression from a face, and 
 make up our minds about the personality behind it ; we 
 have to have some such short-cut to a decision, and this 
 is the natural one. And if we have some understand- 
 ing of the conditions in our complex lives which mold 
 the features, we cannot, in ordinary cases, go far 
 wrong in our judgments. 
 
 Then, often, the first instinctive opinion may be 
 modified by later experience, as we become what is 
 called " acquainted " with the person on trial. No 
 type is more familiar than the " intuitive " man, who 
 goes by his impressions in this way and tells you that 
 he has never been fooled, that his offhand estimate, 
 made instantly and never changed, is perfectly trust- 
 worthy. Many a business man has taken this kind of 
 judgment from his wife, as likely as not against his 
 own feeling, and found that she was right ; women are 
 credited, with considerable show of reason, with spe- 
 cial powers in this intuitive sizing up of character 
 from appearance. 
 
 Yet it cannot be denied by one who chews the cud 
 of life ruminatingly, and hesitates to arrange his be- 
 liefs in changeless categories, that there is much in this 
 contradictory and well-nigh baffling universe to give 
 him pause when he tries to set up a regular causal con- 
 nection between the soul that molds the face and the 
 face that mirrors the soul. At times, he has the feel- 
 ing that there ought to be such correspondence, and 
 would be if all were ordered aright; but he is not so 
 
Soul IBebinfc 
 
 sure about it. His state of mind is admirably ex- 
 pressed in the words of Sam Lawton in Mrs. Stowe's 
 " Oldtown Folks," a book which we fear the younger 
 generation has hardly heard of. Lawton is venting 
 his mental uncertainty as to life's riddle: "Wai, 
 sometimes I think it is, and then again, I dunno." 
 
 At bottom, I suspect that the attempt to make the 
 face a title-page of what lies beneath and follows after 
 is but a part of man's general attempt to make an 
 essentially mysterious world a bit less mysterious by 
 reading it in terms of logic and causal connection. 
 Art of all sorts is continually striving to do this by 
 offering explanations where life does not, by showing 
 the whole where life gives but a partial peep, by in- 
 troducing regularity and beauty into what seems mostly 
 tangle and distortion. Nor is this a pessimistic con- 
 clusion. It may be in the scheme of things that the 
 soul should be detected in spite of " this muddy vesture 
 of decay," as the old poet calls the body, not because 
 of it; and the frequent association of a plain face with 
 all the Christian virtues may be a method of suggesting 
 to us wordlings that we must look away from the flesh 
 to the spirit, and remember that the one is but the 
 transient companion of the other. 
 
 77 
 
Iron? of Success 
 
 THE irony of success lies in its looking so suc- 
 cessful. The irony, indeed, is dual: the phi- 
 losopher smiles a slow, wise smile, when he sees how 
 others receive the success, and how the recipient him- 
 self takes it. It is in such spectacles that the gods 
 must find their amusement, if they be dowered with a 
 sense of humor. 
 
 Success, in the traditional, worldly sense, means the 
 attainment of those desirables: position, place, and pelf. 
 The man who becomes prominent in a decent way 
 to say nothing of him who becomes notorious, and 
 there are circles where that is success is a success- 
 ful man; so is he who rolls up money; or he who sets 
 before himself not so much prominence as power, be- 
 hind which he perhaps masks, yet gloats on the feeling 
 it brings, a sense of controlling men or events or the 
 physical laws of the universe. To set up an aim, what- 
 ever it may be, and then to gain it; this is commonly 
 reckoned as success among men. 
 
 For the good of the soul, it is salutary to look things 
 square in the face, if only once a year, and no time is 
 better than the new year, with all its chances and 
 changes, its certain tests and trials, its joys and sor- 
 
 78 
 
Ube Urons ot Success 
 
 rows, the infinite opportunities it offers for redress, 
 repentance, reform, growth, and the exercise of the 
 higher activities of one's nature. The irrefutable fact 
 is that, in the estimation of life which sees it in its 
 true proportions, success is none of these gauds and 
 baubles of living. Success is spiritual, and nothing 
 else. You succeed in the great art of life just accord- 
 ing as you have formed character, advanced in the 
 exercise of truth, purity, and kindness. 
 
 Failure, contrariwise, whatever be the conspicuity of 
 your post or the resounding nature of your accomplish- 
 ment before men, is to end life without having, on the 
 whole, evolved out of those lower conditions into some- 
 thing loftier and lovelier. Does this seem a hard say- 
 ing? If so, O friend, it is because you have fallen 
 into an easy acceptance of the notion that there is a 
 difference between preaching and practising; that we 
 may declare of a Sunday that the really important mat- 
 ter is spiritual progress, for ourselves and for the world, 
 without practically meaning it at all. But such self- 
 deception is insidiously undermining. Face the facts, 
 and see without a blench or a denial that, unless it be 
 said that this world is not based four-square on moral 
 foundations, we cannot escape the conclusion that life's 
 only meaning, to the thoughtful eye, lies in its being 
 a spiritual battleground upon which we are all en- 
 gaged in daily conflict, always winning or losing, gain- 
 ing in strength or growing weak from our wounds, 
 and, as from the shaping of swords, acquiring character. 
 
 79 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 If one thinks at all below the surface of life, one sim- 
 ply cannot get away from this truth. 
 
 This is the reason that the great so-called tragic pic- 
 tures of life in literature do not place the emphasis 
 upon the mere matter of death ; why should they, since 
 we all must die, and if that is tragic there is nothing 
 but tragedy in human fate ? The tragedy in " Mac- 
 beth " does not inhere in the deaths of the king and 
 his liege lady, but in the awful spiritual disaster that 
 befalls them through the power of a worldty temptation 
 to seize place and power. And in the same way, the 
 tragedy of King Lear lies not in his passing, but in the 
 pitiable weakness and shortsightedness which led him 
 to mistake the blunt honesty of the faithful Cordelia 
 and so turn to her faithless sisters for comfort and 
 protection. If Lear were not to blame at all for his 
 end, then he would be but a meaningless puppet in 
 the hands of an inscrutable fate. 
 
 The original title of Frances Squire's strong novel, 
 " The Ballingtons," was " The Survival of Ferdinand 
 Ballington"; the publishers, for practical purposes of 
 advertisement, shortened the thing and thereby ob- 
 scured its fine satiric purport. For, in surviving, 
 Ballington exhibits to the reader a splendid example 
 of complete spiritual failure, yet prosperous in the 
 worldly sense; while his beautiful wife, dying, is the 
 book's outstanding illustration of true success, albeit 
 the fleshpots are not for her. Ballington, in other 
 words, survives in the biological sense alone. 
 
 80 
 
1frons of Success 
 
 The shining spiritual successes of history have been 
 prevailingly poor and humble persons: John the Bap- 
 tist, Christ, Socrates, Epictetus, a Kempis, and a sweet 
 host more. The world's records show no more un- 
 successful person, judged by worldly tests, than was the 
 founder of the Christian religion, viewed at the time 
 of his early death. 
 
 " But," says he of practical bent, always and ever 
 demanding some reward for work, " some equivalent 
 in the world or from God, for the long struggle and 
 the hard- won victory, shows us that it pays. If we 
 set out to make money, and get it, we can at least lie 
 back and hear it chink, we can purchase with it many 
 things desired and desirable, we can make our families 
 comfortable, even after our death; and, before and 
 after that event, can do much in a public way to help 
 suffering humanity, not to mention no end of innocent 
 gratification in the way of art and literature and travel. 
 What is your balancing compensation ? " 
 
 It might be a sufficient reply to say that, quite aside 
 from whether one likes it or not, entirely apart from 
 rewards, the world happens to be founded on spiritual 
 facts, and unless the individual has succeeded in the 
 well-nigh impossible task of killing his higher nature, 
 he knows it, however much he may bluster and dodge 
 the stern, inevitable issue. 
 
 Recompense there is, nevertheless. Whatever be the 
 station attained, the material success piled up, the im- 
 portance realized, without that validation of conscience, 
 
 81 
 
Xtttle Bssass in ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 " uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." Have you 
 observed a more enviable expression of happiness upon 
 the faces of those called successful? I wot not. The 
 face, which we agree to call the index of the spirit, re- 
 ports some dreadful secrets concerning some in high 
 places, and those faces rise before you as you read these 
 words. Why do captains of industry turn in their later 
 years to an almost rabid practice of philanthropy? It 
 might be unfair to say, to quiet a guilty conscience ; yet 
 it is perhaps not entirely because in their maturity they 
 see more clearly that service is better than grab. 
 
 Upon the faces of the spiritually successful one ob- 
 serves the peace that passeth all understanding; and 
 knows that it is but an index of a state within. Neither 
 temporal change, time, disaster, nor death can take this 
 away. Riches can be removed in a night and must be 
 left to others in the end; naked we came and naked 
 we shall depart. But a character that is the result of 
 the consistent struggle of a lifetime, that is a per- 
 manent possession. Nothing can take it away, and, 
 though we live a thousand lives, it can but increase 
 with the cycles and be a moving force through all 
 worlds. 
 
 82 
 
fteep on Working 
 
 HEALTH, work, and religion are the three things 
 which make life least a bore and most a blessing. 
 Nor need work apologize to the other two. Work 
 of the right kind conduces to health and becomes re- 
 ligion; hence the Scriptural commendation of good 
 workmen by Solomon : " They shall maintain the 
 fabric of the world, and in the handiwork of their 
 craft is their prayer." 
 
 It was Burke, I believe, who with this in mind 
 offered the advice : " Work, work, and never despair ; 
 but even if you do despair, keep on working." He 
 knew it for a chief antidote against hopelessness. 
 
 Ruskin once said that there were three desiderata 
 for a happy life: congenial work, not too much of it, 
 and a fair return for one's labor. As to this last, he 
 did not mean a mere reward in money, but a sense in 
 the worker that his product is of use, of value to 
 fellow-men, that he has not in this sense labored in 
 vain. The return may come in the respect of the com- 
 munity, its readiness to intrust him with some under- 
 taking of importance to the general weal, in this, 
 rather than in the sum he is paid. The big thing is the 
 consciousness in the worker that he is a help, not a 
 
Xittle Essays fn ^literature anfc 3Lifc 
 
 hindrance, to the social machine; that he makes some- 
 thing that has beauty or utility or, better yet, both. 
 
 The number of those who work in a way to illustrate 
 Ruskin's ideal makes but a small fraction of the great 
 army of workers. Consider the misfits, for one thing. 
 It is astonishing how many folk will say to you, "My 
 business is merely a manner of money-getting. It is 
 distasteful to me in the extreme and I would get out 
 of it to-morrow if I could. My pleasure comes from 
 the hours outside my work." What a pity this is, for 
 if a human being has any right, it is the right of congen- 
 ial employment, the chance to do what he is interested 
 in, that which stimulates his faculties and draws out 
 his best endeavor. It is only by doing such work that 
 he becomes of full value to society. But for various 
 reasons mortals go into work for other than the im- 
 perative reason of calling: because the business was 
 handed down from father to son; because a stern ne- 
 cessity of self-support demanded that the first work 
 that came to hand should be done; or, again, because 
 the rewards were so glittering that repugnance was 
 overcome. And yet, surely, all men and women should 
 be doing the manner of work most to their liking, most 
 expressive of their personality; the one thing they were 
 born to do, and therefore can do happily and do best. 
 
 Parents have a terrible responsibility here, and too 
 often misconceive it, when they compel their young 
 ones to take up some form of activity not suited to 
 their powers. It would be well to understand that, 
 
Ifceep on 
 
 whenever serious-minded, well-meaning young persons 
 have a deep conviction that a certain sort of work calls 
 them, they should be allowed to give it a trial. By do- 
 ing so, either they find that it is their true occupation, or 
 not, and so, satisfied, turn to other work. But if they 
 do not give it a trial, they will be dissatisfied to their 
 death-day. The beginning and basis of the right kind 
 of a life, then, is choosing wisely one's work. The 
 world has no use for misfits, and the misfits are un- 
 happy, poor creatures, when half the time it is not al- 
 together their fault, but the fault of their environment 
 or necessity. 
 
 Think, also, of the immense number of human be- 
 ings who work under the wrong conditions: hours 
 overlong, work-places lacking air and light, needless 
 harshness, even cruelty, of employers, the nature of the 
 toil brutalizing and demoralizing. The figures would 
 sadden, and the facts appal, could they be comprehended 
 to their full extent. It was with this abuse of work, 
 as it touched the children, in mind that great-hearted 
 Mrs. Browning, half a century ago, wrote that piercing 
 " Cry of the Children," which, in its white-hot passion 
 of loving sorrow, was one of the documents of the day, 
 and led on to our own, when industrial conditions are 
 being bettered. 
 
 Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, 
 O my brothers, what ye preach? 
 For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, 
 And the children doubt of each. 
 
 85 
 
Xtttle JEssags tn Xiterature a^ Xite 
 
 Even when the physical conditions that surround the 
 work are endurable or pleasant, that work is not what 
 it should be that lacks a sense of aim and accomplish- 
 ment. It is better to make something one can take a 
 pleasure in the making of ; but how seldom is that true 
 of the worker ! Grant, with the old poet, that to sweep 
 a room in the right spirit " makes that and the action 
 fine " ; still, to be honest, there is work and work, 
 and it is hard to see how the labor of a man in the 
 stockyards, in whatever spirit done, can give that in- 
 ward satisfaction which ought to come from every kind 
 of human labor, no matter how fruitless or lowly. 
 
 A special danger has arisen from the modern differ- 
 entiation of work, for the reason that, where once the 
 head, hand, and heart collaborated in a trinity of ac- 
 tivity to the making of a seemly whole, now, with the 
 advent of machinery, the labor has largely become 
 partial, blind, and so pleasureless. To make a pin may 
 not be esthetic work, but it is much better than to 
 make the head of a pin, because in the former case you 
 are at least intelligently producing something of whole- 
 ness and usefulness. Manhood and womanhood should 
 be retained in the work, but to make the head of a pin 
 has the tendency to make a machine out of a human 
 being: it is not a finished product, but merely part of 
 the process of its making. 
 
 It is a satire to talk about pleasure in one's work 
 under some conditions. The present-day handicraft 
 movement is a reaction to the better conditions of work 
 
 86 
 
fseep on 
 
 in an age past when the artisan, the workman, was also 
 the artist, having joy of his labor, and so preserving 
 his humanity. Doubtless, we shall gradually so alter 
 the social wrongs and evils, which now make this 
 planet appear a little damaged, and install the worker 
 in work so congenial, so close-fitted to his aptitude and 
 desire, that it will be his deepest satisfaction and most 
 lasting solace ; that which steadies, rectifies, uplifts, and 
 rejoices him throughout his days and up to the final 
 rest. Nay, are we not altering our conceptions of 
 Heaven in order to allow of happy, useful, unselfish 
 work there, work, instead of the older notion of sit- 
 ting around in an elegant leisure enlivened by select 
 music ? 
 
 Work, ideally, should be congenial, fruitful, and the 
 worker aware of his worth to the world. Nobody 
 works harder than the idler; he has on his hands the 
 dire task of killing time. Knowing the awfulness of 
 vacuity, he fills the day with a semblance of activity, 
 while gnawing at his peace is a sense of the barren 
 folly of it all. The finest argument for real work is 
 the spectacle of its counterfeit presentment. 
 
Ibere&it? anb Character 
 
 I ONCE saw a turtle tethered to a piece of string, 
 the other end of which was fastened to a large 
 basin of muddy water, in which he might disport him- 
 self when wearied of land explorations. The string 
 was long enough to allow him to walk lumberingly 
 for quite a distance in a line which described a radius 
 from the pail as a center. When he had reached the 
 limit of the circle and the tightening of the bond told 
 him that such was the case, the torpid animal, with 
 projected, yearning head and big staring eyes, still 
 moving onward, as he thought, crept in a slow cir- 
 cumference round the central basin, drawn by the 
 urgency of the confining cord. 
 
 " Poor beast," mused I, " does he not typify man, 
 striving toward some desired end or aim, his path un- 
 consciously determined and made a mere recurrent cir- 
 cling-round, by the inevitable secret forces of environ- 
 ment and heredity ? " 
 
 In truth, modern thought, especially in its scientific 
 aspects, has tended to emphasize the tyrannous influ- 
 ence of the ante-natal powers that condition character 
 and make self-striving seem often futile. Environ- 
 ment, too, is another dominant force of which we hear 
 
ant) Cbaracter 
 
 much, if not too much. If we choose to carry out 
 the idea to its logical extreme, all will-power becomes 
 but a figment of the brain and our doctrine that of the 
 fatalist. Man is then an automaton, pushed blindly 
 on to his doom, given the appearance of freedom in 
 order that he may have heart enough to live with some 
 courage and hope, rather than accepting the fact 
 that he is foreordained to fail take his life and so 
 anticipate his fate. Predestination was familiar to the 
 world in the Calvinistic theology; here, in later time, 
 it receives a wider and even sterner application. 
 
 Whatever of plausibility there may be in this latter- 
 day mode of thinking, one thing is sure: the main work 
 of the world has been done on quite another assump- 
 tion. Since time out of mind, man has gone cheer- 
 fully ahead, believing that he had the right and ability 
 to choose, confident that he was the architect of his 
 own fortunes, and filled with emulation because of the 
 belief. His attitude, and the conviction behind it, are 
 expressed in this fine passage from old Longinus: 
 " Nature never designed man to be a groveling and 
 ungenerous animal but brought him into life, and 
 placed him in the world, as in a crowded theater, not 
 to be an idle spectator, but spurred on by an eager 
 thirst of excelling, ardently to contend in the pursuit 
 of glory. For this purpose she implanted in his soul 
 an invincible love of grandeur, and a constant emula- 
 tion of whatever seems to approach nearer to divinity 
 than himself." 
 
 89 
 
Xittle Bssass in ^Literature an& %ife 
 
 This has the true ring, for it tallies with experience, 
 both one's own and that of man's in general. One may 
 grant the importance of Taine's categories of the race, 
 the milieu and the moment, as immensely influential in 
 life, but at the same time hold on with a death grip 
 dictated by commonsense and necessity alike, to the 
 notion that we are architects of our fortunes, at the 
 last. Philosophically speaking, the old debate over 
 freewill and fate will never cease to split mankind into 
 opposing camps of theory; but practically, man will 
 continue to act as if in his right to choose lay the hour 
 of victory. Moreover, it is rather a comfort to reflect 
 that the latest biological hypotheses incline to give more 
 efficacy to environment and education and personal in- 
 itiative than was conceded a generation ago when Dar- 
 win burst upon the world with his astounding new 
 theory of life. For a while heredity seemed all in all, 
 and this world-effort a mere scratching of the surface, 
 where deep-lying forces were at work to set at naught 
 such eleventh-hour troubling. But now we are com- 
 ing to feel that a very young child with a bad family 
 history, if only subjected early enough to the best kind 
 of influences at home and in school, may entirely over- 
 come the sinister handicap with which he started, 
 a handicap regarded at first as well-nigh fatal. 
 
 In fact, the world will never cease to believe in 
 character as more than an accident ; the very definition 
 of the word suggests overcoming obstacles and shaping 
 conduct toward ends. The right sort of man is irri- 
 
 90 
 
t>erefctt an& Cbaracter 
 
 tated by the mere thought that he lives in that kind of 
 universe where there is no relation between self-con- 
 scious striving and a desired result. He may not have 
 thought it out, but he instinctively accepts that noble 
 saying: " As a category of knowledge, character is the 
 most ultimate thing in the universe." If, by the time 
 middle age has been accomplished, the belief in one's 
 power of controlling events and shaping actions has 
 dimmed, it is not because life has disproved our faith, 
 but only that we sadly confess that, in the words of 
 Stevenson, we have " tried a little, failed much." The 
 theory was right, but our strength to put it into prac- 
 tice, alas, was so uncertain! At twenty we dream, at 
 forty we dine; yes, but we still might dream nobler 
 dreams at forty, at sixty, at eighty, if only we had 
 fought the good fight steadily, unflinchingly, to the 
 last ditch. We must avoid blaming the laws of the 
 universe for our own inability to obey them. 
 
 When this fatalistic view gets into literature, it pro- 
 duces a good deal of superficial, surface brilliancy with 
 a sure dry-rot of substance. Life is not a going con- 
 cern, in the business phrase, with such a theory back 
 of it; and hence, and naturally, its reflection in letters 
 is a sort of static presentation, instead of the dynamics 
 that move the emotions and stimulate the brains of 
 readers. Where, before, the writers were likely to 
 talk about the immortals, now they are more likely to 
 talk about the immorals; the change is not, on the 
 whole, enjoyable. 
 
 91 
 
OLittie Bssags in ^Literature anfc SLife 
 
 The modern man has one thing hammered into him, 
 from the time he goes to his first school to the time 
 he lies down for final sleep: that this world is a reign 
 of law. It is true, of course, but perhaps we have 
 harped upon it a little too insistently in relation to 
 certain higher aspects of living. Maybe it is well to 
 remind ourselves that a law is only a stale miracle; 
 that to Adam the first sunrise must have been a sen- 
 sation comparable to that to-day if before our very eyes 
 the heavens opened and the white throne of God were 
 revealed in all its splendor. 
 
 Long after the particular theories which make our 
 age so important in our own estimation, it will still be 
 true that life, the great spiritual adventure, beckons to 
 each and offers its chances and rewards; and that even 
 as our forefathers could choose and strive and succeed, 
 so can we. We continue to guess about things, and the 
 modern guess is in some ways shrewder; but man is 
 substantially the same creature, and ancestry, heredity, 
 environment, personality, are but names for everlasting 
 facts. Courage is no outworn attitude, and faith, as 
 of yore, is a sign of good health, both of body and soul. 
 
 92 
 
Xife tbe 
 
 A FRENCHMAN has said that life is a comedy 
 for those who think, a tragedy for those who 
 feel. But many of us both think and feel, 
 and for all such life is either tragi-comedy or 
 comi-tragedy ; the former if, despite the tragic ele- 
 ments, it ends well, in the simple phrase; the latter if, 
 with all the unquestionable alleviations, it ends ill, 
 in a blind alley which awaits us all. And this de- 
 pends a good deal on the way we take it. To Pippa, 
 and to Browning back of her, " God 's in his heaven, 
 all 's right with the world " ; whereas to the melodious 
 Preacher all is vanity; it is the same world that both 
 face, only they face it in different moods. In other 
 words, the problem is hypothetical, partly because the 
 play is unfinished, partly because it is colored by the 
 personal view of all who play in it, the most formi- 
 dable list extant of dramatis persona: to wit, the chil- 
 dren of men. 
 
 The type of religionist familiar to the present day 
 and generation declares that the life beyond the grave 
 explains life this side of it, and reconciles the disasters 
 of earth. " And God shall wipe away all tears from 
 their eyes," is the promise, solemn, beautiful, deeply 
 
 93 
 
Xittie JEssass in Xtterature an& Xife 
 
 comforting, of the mystic John. And so hope gilds 
 the gloom, and even through sorrow shines the im- 
 mortal word. 
 
 But for those who conclude that death ends personal 
 consciousness, and there are now many such, life 
 becomes not a reasonable plan so much as a baffling 
 mystery. The plan is explicable so far as this world is 
 concerned; such persons find little difficulty in adjust- 
 ing themselves to the laws which govern human action 
 and lead to success in the conventional meaning of the 
 word ; but however well they may succeed as the world 
 judges, back of all earthly shows they are aware of the 
 sphinx, silent, inscrutable, eternal ; for them at least the 
 riddle remains unsolved. 
 
 Some in this position take refuge in pleasure, sen- 
 sual or high as the case may be. Some, with a sad 
 stoicism, decide to play the game well, whatever it may 
 mean; to act their roles as they should be done, and 
 when the curtain rings down, to say good-night in 
 kindness and with head erect. A few, although believ- 
 ing that the elder faith in a final happy goal must be 
 abandoned, profess to find this world the world of 
 work and love and honorable joy enough, even if the 
 night cometh when no man may work. Bernard Shaw 
 is one such, and doubtless he has his followers who 
 will cordially respond to these ringing words: 
 
 " I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for 
 the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life 
 for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is 
 
 94 
 
%tfe tbe 
 
 a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for 
 the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as 
 possible before handing it on to future generations." 
 
 Still others, weaklings as we call them, blow out 
 their poor brains in despair, maddened by the spectacle 
 of the inevitable cul-de-sac, their position analogous to 
 the Roman who fell on his sword when honor was no 
 more or fate went against him in battle, save that 
 these latter-day deniers of life no longer relish it, where 
 the Roman simply turned his back upon it when, for 
 him, it was over. But a thing to note in this see-saw 
 of conflicting and afflicting guesses at the insoluble is 
 that each and all must perforce adopt some philosophy. 
 These mighty matters cannot be demonstrated as we 
 demonstrate in mathematics; the past, with its neat, 
 mechanical theories of the universe unchallenged by 
 thoughtful minds, has of necessity given way to a 
 larger view, whether affirmative or negative. Mean- 
 while, a reasonable working hypothesis must be chosen, 
 for living calls for action. The cock-sureness of our 
 forefathers is replaced by some such understanding and 
 attitude. 
 
 And here the importance of the purified emotions 
 must be realized, carefully separating them from mere 
 superstition, and that atavistic racial instinct which 
 craves life and therefore postulates it. We are not 
 foolish to trust the spiritual perceptions, since they are 
 the oldest and deepest part of us, and in confiding in 
 them we are exercising a faith which lies at the bottom 
 
 95 
 
Xittie Essays in Xiteratute an& Xtfe 
 
 of all valid human action; as in all processes of reason 
 we assume the reality and reliability of our thinking 
 process, an attitude expressed in Des Cartes' " I think, 
 therefore I am." It is no shame to act as if a thing 
 were so which cannot be proved, for upon such con- 
 fidence all life moves, whether in practical affairs or 
 the sternest method of logic. Two and two make 
 four, we say; why so? Simply because the mind thinks 
 it; on Mars, two and two may make five. What is 
 truth? We ask with Pontius Pilate, and have a deeper 
 sense of the mystery than could have been his. It 
 is perhaps a relation rather than a fact, the relation of 
 the human mind to a reality forever beyond our ken. 
 The philosophy adopted for individual use will be a web 
 woven of wonderfully complex causal threads; an- 
 cestry, epoch, geography, immediate environment, edu- 
 cation, Will, all that personality as the sum total of 
 these influences implies, and something more. And 
 it is of great import to every human soul that some 
 theory be chosen and acted upon, for the play is on, 
 and while we may pause for a moment, like the philos- 
 opher, to look upon the scene and meditate, primarily 
 we are all on the stage, " And all the men and women 
 merely players," and it is our part to play well, gradu- 
 ally learning that the finest art means to be true to 
 our highest thought, that only thus can we impress upon 
 the auditors that action is the solution of the art of 
 living, the greatest of all the arts. 
 
 So, although we may, in turn, sit and applaud the 
 
 96 
 
%ife tbe 
 
 piece, or criticize it, wondering if we divine its end, it is 
 but wise to remember that our place is upon the boards, 
 we must get us back to the stage, throwing ourselves 
 with all heartiness into the entrancing drama of life; 
 and cherishing the hope, which may become belief in 
 time, that if we do our parts well the Dramatist will 
 likewise do his, and the final act (we understand no play 
 until that is over) send actors and audience to their 
 homes in happiness: home, where there are light, and 
 good cheer, and friendly, beckoning faces, yes, and a 
 deep sense of well-being after the fever and the fret. 
 Would the play so enthrall us, if we knew its issue, 
 if there were no surprise at the last curtain? And 
 would home be half so welcome had we never left it 
 for the struggle and strain of the play of life? Hark 
 to the call bell ; up rolls the curtain ; the drama is un- 
 der way. Linger not in the wings with beating hearts, 
 to speculate and question ; the murmur of life comes to 
 you across the footlights; go out, act, grow, and so 
 earn the coveted prize, and the reward of rest. 
 
 97 
 
Hn Epigram's IDaiue 
 
 A CERTAIN man once wrote in his notebook: 
 " At twenty we dream ; at forty we dine." 
 Long years afterwards, he ran across it, and smiled 
 musingly. It seemed so young, so all-knowing; there 
 was something fine and French about it. When it was 
 written the writer firmly believed it to be quite original, 
 a contribution by him to the pensees of the world. 
 Afterward he thought of Talleyrand and La Roche- 
 foucauld, and wondered if it were not purely deriva- 
 tive. 
 
 Well past forty himself, he found that while, un- 
 questionably, he was still dining, he had by no means 
 stopped dreaming. The diminution of dreams with 
 middle age, that is to say, the dimming of the ideal, 
 and the waning use of the imagination, which, with the 
 easy omniscience of youth he had assumed, had not 
 come to pass, he discovered. Indeed, his imagination 
 was more fully awakened to the beauty of the world 
 and the wonder of himself and of his fellow-man. His 
 sense of poetry was keener, and his delight in the best, 
 based on a wider experience and a more vivid sense of 
 life's dramatic contrasts, had grown with what it had 
 fed on. If his desires had become soberer, his vision 
 tinged with a consciousness that the earth is a stern 
 
 98 
 
Bn Epigram's IDalue 
 
 battleground, all the better had he learned to get joy 
 from the lyric interludes of peace and the throbbing 
 raptures of victory. Yes, challenged by the years, his 
 poor, cheap little bit of pseudo-philosophy did not 
 ring true, and was seen for what it was, a surface 
 guess at life, neat enough in expression but with no 
 universal note in it at all. 
 
 This is the defect in all such utterances. They have 
 a value of form perhaps, or a taking smartness which 
 fools the reader or hearer, who imagines he is in the 
 presence of a profound generalization; whereas, what 
 he receives is merely the blase mood of the moment, 
 together with a certain pride in phrasing. Heine, for 
 example, says something in his inimitable way, and the 
 magic of it may hide the fact that, poor fellow on his 
 mattress grave, he is but giving vent to the personal 
 anguish of the instant : to write is his nepenthe. Oscar 
 Wilde took a perverse pleasure in saying,, with a 
 Greek-like perfection of phrase and form, exactly the 
 opposite thing from what the thought might lead us 
 to expect. It was a rather shallow trick in the main, 
 and sadly overworked by the brilliant apostle of 
 estheticism, but it led many to regard him as little 
 less than a demigod. How different in tone and feel- 
 ing and penetration is the Hebrew pessimism of 
 Ecclesiastes and Job! There you hear the ground- 
 swell of the human soul, confronted by the great in- 
 explicable contradictions of life. You respect the soul 
 travail that lies under it, and are made larger as 
 
 99 
 
Xittie Bssags in ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 you listen. Even the melodious despair of Omar 
 Khayyam is a different thing from the linguistic rapier- 
 thrusts of the epigrammatist, because the Persian poet 
 is so sad, so deeply moved in his emotions. 
 
 It would be as well, one surmises, if all authors with 
 the epigrammatic gift were not allowed to frame their 
 thought until they had attained to years of discretion. 
 Then their sallies would be more likely to be sound in 
 substance as well as felicitous in form. We do not 
 object to the satire and cynicism of a Thackeray, be- 
 cause it is tempered with a genial knowledge of the 
 world. We feel that, at forty, he knows whereof he 
 speaks and is not venting personal spleen, but looking 
 at the polite society of his day from behind those 
 analytic spectacles, and distinguishing its weaknesses. 
 Becky Sharp is true, if vicious; she is all but lovable, 
 so human is she, and her creator is fond of her, else 
 why did he give her so happy an end? But with 
 Flaubert's Madame Bovary, on the contrary, you are 
 repelled by the bitterness of the picture. 
 
 An exception might be made in favor of the young 
 poets and essayists whose power of crystallizing human 
 experience in a bon mot, a memorable line or a haunt- 
 ing phrase, seems divination more than knowledge of 
 the world. It is the beautiful folly of youth to dream 
 a star, some one has finely said; and in such a mood 
 you get the epigram without a sting, the wit that 
 stimulates but does not bite, and the laughter that 
 has in it no hard, metallic sound. 
 100 
 
Hn Epigram's tflaiue 
 
 Even when an epigram flashes light into some dark 
 corner of personality, it is more often than not only a 
 half-truth, needing the corrective touch of time which 
 enables the thinker to walk all round his subject and 
 see it from many sides. It is rare that, with polish and 
 concision for an aim, there is not a sacrifice of the 
 symmetry of complete truth. It is a danger that for- 
 ever lurks in this kind of verbal gymnastics. " The 
 more I see of men, the better I like dogs," said Ma- 
 dame de Stae'l. Taken simply as a mode of ex- 
 pressing a love for the canine, this is admirable, and 
 delights all dog-lovers, and their name is legion. 
 But if we are to accept it as a general opinion on men, 
 it is extremely misleading and unfair to a sex which, 
 even in these days of subjugation, can give a better ac- 
 count of itself than the great Frenchwoman would 
 have us believe. Yet, unless the French woman-wit 
 had put it that way, we should not have remembered 
 it, nor had so distinct an impression of her attitude 
 toward a certain species of animal. 
 
 In youth, we play with words and prefer cleverness 
 to accuracy. In maturity, we are more inclined to 
 weigh our sentences and measure their influence upon 
 others. 
 
 It is perhaps fair to say that the pleasure to be de- 
 rived from any epigram is too expensive, if the price we 
 pay for it be the loss of faith and the blight of dis- 
 illusionment. 
 
 Again and again, a false antithesis is set up by these 
 IOI 
 
Olittte Essays in Xtterature anfc Xife 
 
 pinchbeck substitutes for gold, as in the sentence with 
 which we began. Why must one either dream or dine ? 
 Are the two incompatible ? Not at all. But reconcile 
 them and you ruin your smart saying; there's the rub. 
 'Surely, there is a time for dreaming and a time for 
 dining; there is Scripture warrant for the idea. It 
 were the better wisdom to let the years refine the palate 
 to the civilized pleasures of the table, and elevate our 
 dreams until they rise to the prophetic vision of the 
 seer. The dream must be of the right sort. If you 
 do not dine well, the dream may be of the other kind, 
 even the dream that is called nightmare. The homely 
 and the high have a sure connection, and woe to him 
 who, in cultivating his soul, neglects his stomach; for, 
 with an empty stomach, there can be naught but an 
 emptiness and a carking cynicism in the soul. 
 
 How then shall middle age alter the callow sen- 
 tence : " At twenty we dream, at forty we dine " ? 
 
 Let it be written : " At twenty we dream, at forty 
 we are still dreaming, for all men are dreamers until 
 they die and after." This is the allegory of an epi- 
 gram and the years. 
 
 102 
 
ffieneatb tbe bre0bol& 
 
 EVERY man leads three lives: the life social, in 
 relation to his friends, and the world in gen- 
 eral; the life psychic, in which he communes with his 
 own spirit; and the subliminal life, expressing itself in 
 flashes and surges of living that wonderfully excel his 
 usual self. For the most part, he is walking on the 
 plain, where he is one of a vast number making up the 
 social complex. Occasionally he dives into the depths 
 of his own being, to rediscover his soul. And still 
 more infrequently he is lifted to the heights of in- 
 spiration by the urge of forces which, below the thresh- 
 old of his conscious life; seize upon him momentarily, 
 and turn him from man into demigod. 
 
 We know comparatively little as yet of the powers 
 and possibilities of this strange third self in man. 
 What are its boundaries ? Under what stimulus will it 
 rise into consciousness and alter our lives? Is it pri- 
 marily intellectual in character or the child of emo- 
 tional experience? And so on with many another 
 flocking question, since the field is new to investiga- 
 tion, and human psychology, under the modern micro- 
 scope, has taken on an aspect radically differing from 
 the older philosophical conceptions. Is this mysterious 
 103 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature an& SLife 
 
 part of a man, which is apparently beyond the control 
 of his will and outside the realm of his consciousness, 
 the result of all his past life, or is it ancestral, so that 
 an act of his dictated by his subliminal self is really 
 his forbears working in him? Or does it go back far 
 earlier to a racial impulse? Or may it be called the 
 imperial will of the whole of humanity, expressing 
 itself through one puny personal medium? These are 
 vast, awe-inspiring suggestions, shading off into oriental 
 mysticism on the one hand, or becoming tangled with 
 the puerilities of pseudo-spiritualism, or diving deep 
 down into the arcana of the human spirit as revealed 
 in the laboratory by the scalpel of science. 
 
 Whatever the explanation, and however sure we may 
 already be that the progress of science will bring us in 
 good time to a clear understanding of the mystery be- 
 neath the threshold, it is well at the present time to 
 appreciate this capacity of man for rising above his 
 normal self, its importance in his higher life, and that 
 of the race ; and its implications for religion, literature, 
 philosophy, and daily life. It were a mistake not to un- 
 derstand that, just as a great ocean steamer has by far 
 its larger part beneath the surface of the water and 
 hence invisible, so man's hidden part, rarely coming 
 into view, may be, although with some persons never, 
 a large and potent portion of his personality. 
 
 In literature, to say a word on that particular appli- 
 cation of the thought, it means what has been tra- 
 ditionally called " inspiration," as in religion it implies 
 104 
 
Beneatb tbe Ubresbolfc 
 
 " conversion," the spirit of God descending upon a 
 soul hitherto unclaimed. An author is inspired, we 
 say; what do we mean? Surely, that he achieves that 
 which he is not aware to be within his power; ex- 
 hibits a gift (note the word) rather than a recognized 
 capacity; transcends for a little his everyday controlled 
 ability. I was once taking an afternoon walk with a 
 distinguished novelist whose mornings were just then 
 engaged in the writing of a piece of fiction now re- 
 garded as among the best American works. 
 
 " How did you get on to-day? " I asked. 
 
 " Not very well," was the reply; " I did not surprise 
 myself once." 
 
 It is this element of surprise for the author which 
 gives to a creative literary work that quality whereat 
 the reader catches his breath and feels his soul uplift. 
 Of old, as the word " inspiration " shows, we deemed 
 it came from on high; in-spiro, we breathed it in. 
 Now, guided by science, we derive it from below; up 
 it wells from the regions of unconscious cerebration 
 whose central station rules our lives, into the tiny area 
 where self-consciousness reigns and the will works with 
 seeming supremacy. But from whithersoever it come, 
 it is beyond volitional control, that is the main point; 
 and a feeling of awesome wonder is properly begotten 
 for this reason as we watch its workings: an " Ode 
 to a Nightingale " from a Keats, a " Fall of the House 
 of Usher " from a Poe, an " Unfinished Symphony " 
 from a Schubert. 
 
 105 
 
Xittle J608a8 in ^literature anfc %ffc 
 
 To argue that it is not only independent of our will- 
 power at the moment of its appearance, but aside from 
 any control we may exercise or act we may perform, 
 would land us in fatalism, pure and simple. Then are 
 we indeed the sport of ancestry and race, a frail mech- 
 anism pushed on to our doom by blind subconscious 
 force. But, contrary to this depressing, nay, paralyz- 
 ing, idea there is much to justify the faith that it is in 
 accordance with the tenor of our whole lives, along 
 with the operation in us of the ante-natal influences 
 and those summed up in the words " education " and 
 " environment " that the flash of inspiration comes ; 
 that the tongue of the man of letters is suddenly tipped 
 with fire, and the man of God speaks for the nonce as 
 never man spake. 
 
 In close alliance with this dimly guessed power are 
 the unconscious or semi-conscious visions of sleep; the 
 dreams that seem prophetic of coming events, like 
 Joseph's aforetime, and the subtle telepathic communi- 
 cation of man with man, or animal with man. A field, 
 this, as fascinating as it is immense, and so far the 
 trails across it are hardly blazed by the pioneers of 
 psychic investigation. A clergyman, who in his day 
 was regarded as a pulpit orator of high rank, told me 
 that, leaving his unfinished sermon Saturday night at a 
 difficult point in the argument, he had come to know 
 that the solution would be given him in sleep, and his 
 Sunday task successfully completed. Readers of that 
 son of genius, Robert Louis Stevenson, will remem- 
 106 
 
JBeneatb tbe Ubresbolfc 
 
 her his delightful and remarkable essay on the " little 
 people," as he called them, in " A Chapter on Dreams." 
 He referred to the imps of his imagination who, while 
 he lay asleep, set the stage for him in a lighted theater 
 where was played out for his delectation many a dra- 
 matic story, sometimes interrupted by an early awaking, 
 but often played to the end and so furnishing the great 
 romancer with fiction ready-made to his hand. 
 
 " How often," exclaims Stevenson, " have these sleep- 
 less Brownies done me honest service, and given me, 
 as I sat idly taking my pleasure in the boxes, better 
 tales than I could fashion for myself." And then, to 
 prove how vivid were such memories, the novelist nar- 
 rates one of the stories, " exactly as it came " to him. 
 And he adds the curious information that his printed 
 tale, " Olalla," was given to him in this way, he merely 
 adding the scenery, two characters and the moral, " such 
 as it is." Here is one instance, where many similar 
 could be named, of the magic of the Mage, who, behind 
 the scenes of life, moves us to great issues and bids us 
 remember the world beneath the threshold, and respect 
 its might. 
 
 107 
 
local fiDln50 
 
 DOES any one of your friends write a letter quite 
 so charming in a chatty, informal way as he 
 it is more likely to be a she who has a local mind? 
 I mean the mind keenly interested in local happenings, 
 on the qm vive for neighborhood gossip and quick to 
 gather the very latest news. How good it is, when 
 away on your vacation, to receive a missive from this 
 kind of correspondent, who is left in town, it gives 
 you such a feeling of superiority when you are able 
 to be away yourself, from whom you learn just what 
 you want to know: who is married or engaged to be, 
 the strange mishap of Mr. Blank and the startling good 
 fortune of Mrs. Blandish, all the social chitchat that 
 is so small yet bulks so big within the little confines of 
 your particular experience. 
 
 It is all conveyed with a light touch and in a confi- 
 dential tone, so that the talk on paper trips along as 
 easily as if it were by word of mouth. As a rule, you 
 will not find this pattern of person overly interested in 
 large general affairs, unless such are by chance related 
 to the local ; but for the latter he has an absolute genius. 
 
 Naturally, the degeneration of this excellent faculty 
 gives us the quidnunc, the town nuisance, the vicious 
 108 
 
Xocal /HMn&s 
 
 gadder-about. But in its place and in its purity, it is as 
 refreshing as a northwest wind on a mid- August day: 
 refreshingly human, heart-warming and homely in the 
 way it gets into your liking, it and the individual who 
 possesses it. 
 
 For, after all, it is but right and natural that one's 
 interest should start with the local. If charity begins 
 at home, so do many other things. To the countryman, 
 the little doings of the village and countryside are of 
 deep concern, and his excitement over some bucolic de- 
 tail provokes but shallow scorn, since it is all a matter 
 of scale. We denizens of the town, pluming ourselves 
 on wider views and reviews, forget that here again, if 
 we but shift the point of observation to that of some 
 superior order of being regarding mortal affairs, as 
 it were, from Mount Olympus the smallness and pro- 
 vinciality are quite as truly present. How the impor- 
 tance of a world-capital like London shrinks to nothing 
 in the light of stellar imaginings! 
 
 There is something sound and sweet in this tying up 
 to the local, this firm basing of the feet upon the near 
 and the known. A White of Selborne or a Thoreau at 
 Walden makes the whole world cognizant of an obscure 
 spot on the face of the earth, not so much because of its 
 intrinsic merit as for the reason that the naturalist him- 
 self found there what, being what he was, he would have 
 found anywhere : to-wit, a revelation of the wonders of 
 Nature, her wondrous manifestations and her no less 
 wondrous laws. Emerson, lofty idealist as he was, with 
 109 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature an& %ife 
 
 his head so often in the clouds or above them, never- 
 theless knew and loved the earth, and his work, as a 
 result of this trait, has a delightful earthy smack, a 
 plain, vernacular reality. 
 
 Hence, there is no contradiction, necessarily, between 
 the mind with a local tinge and bias and the world-view 
 of the philosopher, poet or historian. Rostand in a 
 lovely line tells us we can see a star in a dewdrop; so 
 may we see all human nature crystallized in the home- 
 liest, most rustic specimen of the race, and range all 
 history at a village town-meeting, if but the eye that 
 looks on be discerning. 
 
 The local mind in literature has always been a power. 
 Carlyle, a Scotch peasant, comes down to London and 
 eventually is recognized as a giant of English letters, 
 just because he preserves the native burr to his speech 
 and the simple, deep faith in certain spiritual funda- 
 mentals inculcated at his mother's knee. Burns, an- 
 other peasant of the same great people, was always most 
 potent in his song magic when he sang of what he saw 
 in his native haunts, the wee mousie, the cotter in 
 his humble home, the bonnie lass the bard loved. Burns 
 in Edinburgh, trying to write pure English and be 
 literary, is a rather sad spectacle. 
 
 It is astonishing how often some small place has 
 cradled and inspired the master minds of the world, 
 a place that might impart the local color to the genius 
 that was to immortalize it : Socrates, Sophocles, Euripi- 
 des, and the other Greek immortals at Athens, Goethe 
 no 
 
OLocai 
 
 and Schiller in Weimar, Emerson and Hawthorne in 
 Concord. It almost seems as if the best way to be uni- 
 versal were to be local, " true to the kindred points of 
 heaven and home," as Wordsworth has it. 
 
 The most effective way of bringing home to the mind 
 general principles and abstract propositions is to be con- 
 crete; to teach by parables, as did the Lord himself. 
 There is a type of great man, of whom Lincoln is a fine 
 example, which has the habit of illuminating some great 
 and serious matter of conduct by the introduction of 
 some homely saw or story, the application of which con- 
 veys the lesson. Those homely yarns of the great presi- 
 dent, how they did their work and how memory treas- 
 ures and repeats them ! To the unthinking, at the time 
 they may have seemed merely undignified, inappro- 
 priate, a piece of rather coarse, unrelated western 
 humor. But we see now that they relieved the terrible 
 strain of tragic life and in their sane, direct, homespun 
 fashion taught the people truths as the language of 
 formal philosophy never could. 
 
 When somebody remarked that Seward did n't be- 
 lieve in the Bible, Lincoln replied : " No wonder, he 
 did n't write it himself." Could you by any other 
 method get so succinct a summary of a certain trait of 
 the man in question? Lincoln had a local mind, in 
 the finest sense, and when Lowell called him " the first 
 American," this among other things must have been in 
 his thought. 
 
 There has been from the first in the American, re- 
 iii 
 
Xtttie Essass in ^literature anfc SLife 
 
 garded as a variant of the English stock, this union of 
 the local and the general, of the practical and the ideal- 
 istic. Adventuresomeness and a utilitarian object were 
 behind the American settlement, and our forefathers 
 came over on a search for land and subsistence, feeling 
 the general urge for conquest and discovery marking the 
 Elizabethan era. And, on arrival, heaven knows the 
 practical was forced upon them: the country had to be 
 made habitable, dangers from man and nature removed, 
 and civilization established. But along with this im- 
 mediate, stern necessity, and beneath it as a motor force, 
 went the dream and the ideal: freedom, civil and reli- 
 gious, sought and found, and a set of convictions that 
 spelled hope, faith, and the democratic love of liberty. 
 
 The local mind is the salt of character. If it does 
 not broaden out into general adaptability, it falls short 
 of the desirable stature; but when it stands on mother 
 earth and peers heavenward, behold the full measure 
 of a man! 
 
 112 
 
falling in Xove 
 
 ONE of the most curious phrases in English speech 
 is this of " falling in love," so familiar, so 
 steadily before us that we do not see its full meaning. 
 Regard it carefully for a moment. In the company 
 of another human being we appear to have had an ac- 
 cident ; we have fallen, with her, into something yclept 
 " love." Love seems to be not so much within the two 
 persons involved, as outside of them, awaiting their 
 coming, biding its time for spell-weaving and for lure. 
 Similarly, the expression, " I am in love with her," 
 bears out the same idea on analysis; once again a joint- 
 experience is implied, and an experience not the ex- 
 clusive possession of this particular pair of mortals, but 
 open to the race. 
 
 It is as if, walking on the shore of life beside the sea 
 of love, he and she decided to jump in and get the ex- 
 hilaration of the great change; so in they go, they 
 have fallen in love and felt the vast heave of its tide, the 
 tonic of its waves, and perhaps the danger of its under- 
 tow. But in their passion they find joy in the tempests 
 of this splendid sea and delight in the unseen treacheries 
 of its depths. 
 
 Vernacular turns of speech usually hide, if they do 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^Literature an& Xite 
 
 not at first reveal, the truths of life, and this is no ex- 
 ception. A deep philosophical meaning lies in this 
 pungent idiom. It is a meaning touched upon by Emer- 
 son in his great essay on love, where he declares that 
 the beautiful human relation so-called has for its highest 
 aim and object the training of the soul to a comprehen- 
 sion of what love is, that mighty and mystic principle 
 which governs the universe. The particular love leads 
 on to one that is wider and includes all and everything. 
 " Thus are we put in training," says Emerson, " for a 
 love which knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, 
 but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the 
 end of increasing virtue and wisdom." 
 
 Is this idea philosophic at the expense of the heart- 
 warming, ordinary way of looking at it, which insists 
 that the beloved is the sum and substance of all earthly 
 (and heavenly) things? Is it not an affront to some- 
 thing sacred to suggest that, by a sort of trick of Na- 
 ture, this sentiment is for our training, far beyond its 
 immediate result in the satisfaction of two souls, each 
 all in all to the other? 
 
 Not at all, for the very good reason that the lovers 
 pay no heed to this ulterior lofty aim of the universe 
 nor believe it for one moment. The splendid outer 
 world, the ordered phenomena of sky and air, of hill 
 and plain and valley, of land and sea and the dimpled 
 isles that make lovely the great waters, are only so 
 much stage-setting for the eternal drama of two in love. 
 Like Romeo and Juliet, they use the stars as their 
 114 
 
in %ox>e 
 
 private symbols, and pile Ossa on Pelion of protesta- 
 tions, the best possible use, to their minds, for those 
 mighty mountains and the justification of their ex- 
 istence. Bird songs are choristers at their bridal service 
 and flowers but open to sprinkle sweet odors along their 
 festal path. 
 
 This superb self-centeredness is altogether right, the 
 world feels ; and those who look on applaud, recall their 
 own trysting, and sigh that it is but a memory. To 
 this beautiful pair of babes, all the love language of the 
 past lovers, set down in books or made dear in a hun- 
 dred other ways of art, is simply so much ready-made 
 material for their use, lest they be unable of themselves 
 completely to express their rapture. They have heard 
 of love, and of falling in love, all their days, before the 
 Great Adventure came their way ; yes, have even smiled 
 pityingly at the extravagances of other of the chosen; 
 now, at last and for the one and only time, they are 
 ready to swear, they have left the shore and are breast- 
 ing the billows, and have already begun to know 
 
 the divine intoxication 
 
 Of the first league out from land. 
 
 It is this unconsciousness, this self-absorption, which 
 adds a touch of pathos to the spectacle of lovers and 
 offers to the ironic mind, as well, a chance for thought- 
 ful amusement. Yet have the lovers altogether the 
 best of it. They are not dupes, because they are under- 
 going one of the highest and holiest experiences life 
 
Xittie J6ssa8 in ^Literature a^ %ife 
 
 can give; they have the utilitarian justification to be 
 found in the fact that their union makes the home pos- 
 sible and the state therefore secure; and the idealistic 
 justification that falling in love is the first step of a 
 progress of which the far-off ultimate goal is that mystic 
 oneness with the universal principle of Love which 
 moves the worlds, and yet, man believes, is personal ; 
 
 L'amor che move il sole e I'altre stelle. 
 
 Moreover, the spectacle radiates out upon life, upon 
 the unfortunate multitudes of those not in the experi- 
 ence, all manner of sweet influences that help mankind 
 to live, and better human conditions. That is why great 
 literature, in handling this solar event, exhibits this 
 helpfulness in many ways ; it would not be fundamental 
 if it did not do this service. Thus, in " Romeo and 
 Juliet " to take an instance of which we have recently 
 been reminded by witnessing the play, the star-crossed 
 lovers are led to the door of a tomb, there to perish. 
 Were that the end of the drama as conceived by the 
 poet, it would be a purely fatalistic presentation of love. 
 The immortal twain met, fell in love, tried to sur- 
 mount circumstances, failed, and in the flower of their 
 youth and the heyday of their splendidly white-souled 
 passion, died untimely, ere they had more than begun 
 their love pilgrimage together. 
 
 Here is the moment, alas, where the garbled version 
 of the play concludes and this is utterly wrong. For in 
 the complete text the reconciliation of the rival houses 
 116 
 
jfalltng in 3Lo\>e 
 
 follows the death, which thus accomplishes a most desir- 
 able good. Out of death comes life, and the divine 
 principle of love triumphs over a feud that stands for 
 the terrible opposing principle of hate. 
 
 Much of the modern cuttings of Shakspere's dramas 
 has a certain excuse, in that under the limitations of 
 time in the modern playhouse the whole drama cannot 
 be given. With the entr'acte now in vogue, Shakspere's 
 " two hours traffic of the stage " would be prolonged to 
 three hours or more, if the entire play were enacted. 
 But in the case of " Romeo and Juliet " it is genuine 
 mutilation to remove an ending which would add but 
 a very few minutes to the playing time and which is the 
 philosophic relief and poetic justification of the too 
 poignant tragedy of the tomb scene. It is a pity that 
 our leading players do not choose to give the piece in its 
 entirety, and so let the master-poet say to us that falling 
 in love, while it may be destined to meet an end so 
 sad, cannot fail to do service to others, not even lovers 
 in the first transports being able to cut themselves off 
 from the race, but rather leaving upon the air, breathed 
 by all who live, a fragrance that sweetens, and an ex- 
 ample that stills strife. 
 
 117 
 
IRew acquaintances 
 
 THE fact that we are inclined to think so well of 
 persons newly met is only a phase of humanity's 
 deep-rooted feeling that the impossible may happen. It 
 is a touching proof of the optimism which, in the face 
 of all past experience, looks upon each last-made ac- 
 quaintance as the Ideal Personality of our dreams. 
 And so, often the one thing needed to destroy the illu- 
 sion is further intimacy. 
 
 Cynicism is quite out of place in judging these quick 
 impressions and sudden decisions of the human heart. 
 Some one has defined golf as " the triumph of hope 
 over experience " ; and in a sense, why might not the 
 definition apply to life itself? We are all hoping for 
 the best, clinging, with counter-testimony overwhelm- 
 ingly to the contrary, to some golden guess, some darling 
 desire. And half the joy of living, did we but realize 
 it, lies in such an attitude of mind. " I do not wish to 
 live in a fool's Paradise," the saying runs; yet were 
 you ever happier than before the gates were shut upon 
 your foolish faith ? It is wrong to treat as shallow and 
 silly these fervent inclinations to seize on the new ac- 
 quaintance, the companion elect, within an hour after 
 the first meeting, as if a cheap nature were thus implied, 
 118 ' 
 
flew Hcquaintances 
 
 either in you or the just-found friend. Friends tried 
 and true are precious, yes; the best of all, if you will. 
 But friendships famed in history and blazoned in litera- 
 ture have been of another sort: to meet and know, to 
 look and love, to let the reason wait upon the heart's 
 pronouncement, this, too, is wise at times. 
 
 Who can ever forget that first meeting of Dante with 
 Beatrice? One glance, and his fate was sealed for- 
 ever, and the lady, whether on earth or in heaven, has 
 become for all after time a type of the spiritual affection 
 which transcends the flesh. And did not Shakspere 
 ask us in the sonnet, " Who ever loved that loved not 
 at first sight ? " with his own amatory experience, per- 
 haps with the " dark lady " filling his mind. In sudden 
 likings or loves there lurks that instinct of the ages 
 which is Nature's short-cut to knowledge, and a most 
 convenient (if sometimes risky) substitute for the slow, 
 cautious, and self-conscious processes of reason. It is 
 that instinct which is at work in what is called 
 " woman's intuition " ; a power or gift by no means 
 confined to the sex, although confessedly more often 
 there than among the masculine persuasion. Many a 
 man has opposed one of these intuitive opinions to his 
 disaster; what he grandiloquently called his common- 
 sense bade him reject the spontaneous judgment, and 
 in the sequence he regretted his failure to trust the 
 instant impression. 
 
 Our attitude toward the mighty forces which are im- 
 plied, in one aspect or the other, in such words as " im- 
 119 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature anfc %ife 
 
 pression," " intuition," " instinct," and the like, 
 conducts us into the fascinating psychic world which is 
 but just opening to our modern scrutiny. We are not 
 quite so sure as of yore that powers and principalities 
 do not exist beyond our ken, and that the subliminal 
 self has not laws as yet but partially understood. 
 Those sympathetic to oriental forms of thought boldly 
 declare that, when two persons display instantly an 
 almost magnetic attraction for each other, it signifies 
 relationship in an earlier existence; this idea, or some- 
 thing very like it, crops out again and again in Brown- 
 ing's poetry. Certainly, most of us have seen, if we 
 have not been participant in, this kind of instantaneous 
 attachment; and have noted that, instead of being a 
 flash in the pan, it endured the shocks of the years as 
 well as connections more sensibly formed and slower in 
 welding. " When Time, that breaks all things, has 
 broken the faith between friends " Swinburne's sad 
 line does not seem to apply to such friendships, which 
 to all appearances shine but the brighter with the pass- 
 ing of the years. Literature, past and present, is full 
 of references which point unmistakably to this senti- 
 ment, or conviction. 
 
 In a current novel I chanced to be reading, " Dawn 
 O'Hara," by Edna Ferber, I ran into this sentence: 
 " We became friends, not step by step, but in one 
 gigantic leap such as sometimes triumphs over the gap 
 between acquaintance and liking." The truth is, man- 
 kind is naturally idealistic. We set clouds of glory 
 
 120 
 
ftew Hcquaintances 
 
 round the new acquaintance, because we would have 
 him so, and as yet there is not sufficient inconvenient 
 knowledge about him to make it difficult to believe. 
 So, too, if we have a genius for friendship, we idealize 
 our friends by simply assuming in them their highest 
 potentialities, and believing that they will live up to 
 them. And it will happen, with one who is all but a 
 stranger, that we can show more of our deeper self for 
 the very reason that the other is not aware of our 
 weaknesses, is, on his side, idealizing us as well ; and 
 cheered by this confidence, we expose psychic layers 
 lying deeper down than we ever go within the bosom 
 of our families. And to treat this experience as if it 
 were an amusing example of the double game of bluff, 
 were to do it foul wrong. In one of those thrusts into 
 human psychology which make her a great writer, 
 George Eliot declared that we are always under- 
 estimating or overestimating each other ; it is only God 
 who can see us as we are. He strikes the balance. 
 
 But it is very safe to say that he who assumes the 
 best in another hits nearer to the fact than he who as- 
 sumes the worst. That first rosy estimate of the 
 new-found friend, so generously taken for granted, so 
 pathetically believed in and trusted, has a solid raison 
 d'etre in human nature, after all allowances are made ; 
 and trust is a kind of higher shrewdness. In our an- 
 alytic, self-conscious age, it is probable that we depend 
 too little upon the testimony of that larger Self which 
 is outside of the petty little Me I am conscious of: 
 121 
 
SLittte Bssass tn ^literature an& %ife 
 
 the Self that means the race with its eons of experience 
 working in my blood ; the Self that is below the thresh- 
 old of consciousness, yet potent to push me on to my 
 destiny ; the Self that is ancestral, the combined wisdom 
 or foolishness of all my forbears influencing my every 
 act; or the Self, if the materialistic explanation be ac- 
 cepted, which is the result of environment ; which, as a 
 French critic has put it, " when placed personally be- 
 fore a question of life or death, obeys no preconceived 
 morality, but laws of equilibrium of a purely physical 
 character as compelling as those of gravity." 
 
 We can well afford to-day, in view of the opening up 
 of the deeper possibilities of personality, to trust this 
 more generously defined Ego of ours, and to 'have faith 
 in new friends, along with the old. The intuitions are 
 not to be despised in the light of modern science; they 
 are to be the more respected. Abt Vogler, the com- 
 poser, speaking for his own art, yet with words wise 
 and beautiful that are of widest application, said: 
 
 " The rest may reason and welcome ; 'tis we musicians know." 
 
 122 
 
ffilunbere an& Blun&erers 
 
 AN oft-repeated phrase is ringing in my ears, 
 " old enough to know better.'* Ye gods, is any- 
 body so old, I wonder, as to avoid the mistake, to 
 check the foolish step, to see the pitfall ere the foot 
 stumble? I fancy not, else were we machines rather 
 than men. We prate of the wisdom of gray hairs, and 
 like to think of " grave and reverend signiors " (outside 
 the play) ; but uncover their deeds withal, and what 
 a motley they would appear. Nay, we are all 
 blunderers, even from the cradle to the grave, and the 
 infinite compassion is in nowise more steadily engaged 
 than in forgiving man his lapses through the seven ages 
 of his strange, eventful history. 
 
 Old enough to know better, forsooth! Lucky the 
 mortal whose career is not wrecked, his reputation 
 ruined, by his fatuous failure to learn even the primary 
 rules of life's game, to say nothing of the delicacies and 
 subtleties that make its technic so difficult a business. 
 When we are come to years of discretion we have 
 learned a few things, granted; but yet how prone to 
 mishaps of our own bringing, how often under the 
 white hairs of age lurk the stored foolishnesses of 
 Time! 
 
 123 
 
Xfttle Bssass in ^Literature anfc 3Life 
 
 And a blessing hides in this inept learning of life's 
 lesson by the best of us. Our blunders, so many, so 
 egregious, so outlasting the years, are after all a sign 
 that we are yet alive ; since when we cease to make mis- 
 takes, we cease to live. This has its frequent applica- 
 tion and illustration in literature. Contrary, perhaps, 
 to the usual opinion, the great writers are not those 
 who produce perfect art-works, blameless of sin as they 
 are splendidly creative in their endeavor. Not at all. 
 It seems as if unequalness were a condition of genius. 
 Shakspere, the supreme man of the race in expression 
 and thought, is so shockingly bad at times as to drive us 
 to the theory that some of the work ascribed to him is 
 not his own. We have long been told that even Homer 
 nods, and the schoolboy who encounters the catalogue of 
 the ships knows it without the telling. When Dante 
 waxes theological and metaphysical all the caressing 
 beauty of the terza rima cannot prevent him from being 
 frankly a bore. 
 
 Or to take a more modern instance: Thackeray has 
 for a generation been contrasted with Dickens, his con- 
 temporary and a man of creative power, as a master of 
 style, and exquisite artist of letters. And so he surely 
 was, in the broad sense. But too often this has been 
 taken to mean that the author of " Vanity Fair " com- 
 mits no literary sins, while he of Gadshill is full of 
 them. Nothing could be further from the truth. I 
 once went through " Vanity Fair " with this matter of 
 artistic perfection in view, and found that the master- 
 124 
 
Blunfcers anfc Blunfcerers 
 
 piece contained a surprising number of faults and flaws. 
 Such a sentence, for example, as " smiling and nodding 
 to his aunt in the carriage within " ; such another one 
 as: "He used to get drunk every night; to beat his 
 pretty Rose sometimes ; to leave her in Hampshire when 
 he went to London for a parliamentary session, without 
 a friend in the wide world," simply illustrate the fact 
 that Thackeray wrote under pressure for serial publica- 
 tion and did not use the labor of the file as would an 
 author of the same class to-day. For the same reason, 
 on a certain page old Osborne is informed of George's 
 regiment going to war; and ten pages later hears of it 
 again as if brand-new. Or again: the author, having 
 claimed the privilege " of peeping into Miss Amelia's 
 bedroom," asks why he should not declare himself the 
 confidant of Rebecca as well ; overlooking the primary 
 principle that in writing a novel in the third person, the 
 right to know everything about the characters is assumed 
 and granted. Yes, there are plenty of these lapses in 
 a very great book, though from laziness, fear of con- 
 vention or ignorance of artistic canons, the whole truth 
 has not been set down in print. But does it, or rather 
 should it, materially change our estimate of this giant 
 of the mid- Victorian period? By no means. Inci- 
 dentally, it should serve to stop the silly comparison set 
 up between Dickens and Thackeray, as if the sins of 
 omission and commission were all on one side. The 
 truth is that both these major men wrote at a time 
 and under such conditions as to make a more careless 
 125 
 
Xittle Essaps in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 technic than that of to-day inevitable; of the two, 
 Dickens worked harder at his craft to perfect himself 
 therein, than his rival. On the other hand, Thackeray 
 doubtless possessed a finer sense of style. But the out- 
 standing consideration is that neither is to be judged 
 by his shortcomings. The world remembers and loves 
 Dickens for his great comic creations, Pecksniff, Micaw- 
 ber, Sarah Gamp, and a host more; and treasures 
 Thackeray for the superb chapter in Esmond where 
 Henry returns from the war to his dear mistress, that 
 " rapture of reconciliation " ; or for the death of that 
 stainless gentleman, Colonel Newcome; or for Becky 
 for the nonce admiring her husband as he floors the evil 
 Steyne. This duo of English immortals are given their 
 very high and sure place, not because they avoided mis- 
 takes, which, being human they did not ; but rather for 
 the good and sufficient reason that they did things, and 
 mighty big, fine things at that. Let it not be forgotten 
 that to be good, in life, literature, and religion is not 
 alone to obey a series of sacred Don'ts, but to do some- 
 thing to the glory of God and the welfare of mankind. 
 
 It hardly needs to be said that this is no argument 
 against striving for perfection in literature or out of 
 it. Our ideals should express that which at present 
 eludes our grasp, hovering ever before us, to lure us 
 forward to better and better achievement. Otherwise, 
 in Browning's words, "what's a heaven for?" 
 
 But it is a frank recognition of what must become 
 apparent to all who think and grow as they live, that to 
 126 
 
JBlunfcers anfc IBlunfcerers 
 
 blunder is but to confess oneself human, and the vaunted 
 sageness of the years will at the best but mitigate the 
 mishaps and mistakes. If mortals did not err, the 
 divine prerogative of forgiveness were taken from the 
 creator. 
 
 " It 's a mad world, my masters," cries Shakspere, 
 with all this in mind. And Lamb the beloved, in that 
 deep-hearted, merry, tender essay of his, " All Fools' 
 Day," was of this mood when he said: " I venerate an 
 honest obliquity of understanding. The more laugh- 
 able blunders a man shall commit in your company, the 
 more tests he giveth you that he will not betray or 
 overreach you." And a little beyond he adds that " he 
 who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath 
 pounds of much worse matter in his composition." 
 
 It is well to think of ourselves, blunderers born and 
 bred under high heaven, in the spirit voiced in that 
 peerless couplet out of " Cymbeline ": 
 
 Golden lads and girls all must, 
 
 Like chimney sweepers, come to dust 
 
 127 
 
Hbout 
 
 UNDER the ban of the climate of the Northwest, 
 and in the quasi-spring, humanity gives way to 
 a " rage of traveling," as Emerson calls it. It is 
 natural enough to shy away from that season which, 
 on some days we are forced to feel, possesses all 
 the vices of both winter and summer, with the virtues 
 of neither. Lucky is the man or woman, we cry, 
 who can fly to the outlands, bask in tempered ocean 
 breezes, play outdoor games, and see and smell the 
 prodigal flowerings that go with those more genial 
 zones, at a time when some of us, less favored, are 
 getting a new sense of the difference between climate 
 and weather. 
 
 " Happy mortal, whose purse and business allow him 
 such hieing away to new fields and pastures green," is 
 the cry of the stay-at-homes. " Let him who may, go 
 gadding about." 
 
 Yet, be it spoken for the comfort of those same less 
 fortunate folk, as well as in the interests of truth, it is 
 possible to form an uneasy habit of going for its own 
 sake, and travel has its dangers, even as its delights. 
 Emerson gave forth of his wisdom upon this, in the 
 essay on " Self-Reliance " : " It is for want of self- 
 128 
 
(BafcMng Hbout 
 
 culture that the idol of Traveling, the idol of Italy, 
 of England, of Egypt, remains for all educated Ameri- 
 cans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece vener- 
 able in the imagination, did so, not by rambling round 
 creation as a moth round a lamp but by sticking fast 
 where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly 
 hours, we feel that duty is our place, and that the 
 merrymen of circumstance should follow as they may. 
 The soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home 
 with the soul, and, when his duties call him from his 
 house or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and is 
 not gadding abroad from himself." 
 
 The time of year, the geography of your habitat and 
 your state of health will doubtless condition the accept- 
 ance of these words, but that they contain a piece of 
 truth, the thoughtful will concede. There are many 
 good things beyond the horizon, let us grant ; but after 
 all, to try to run away from oneself is like that other 
 unsuccessful attempt, the trying to lift oneself by the 
 bootstraps. Coelum non animum, declares Horace: we 
 change our skies, but not our dispositions, when we 
 cross the seas to other lands. 
 
 This tendency to gad about betwixt seasons, how- 
 ever, is not confined to the inhabitants of the North- 
 west, or to any other section of this vast panorama of 
 states. The American as a type is a ubiquitous, un- 
 easy person. Indeed, is not his British parent how 
 much longer can that phrase be used, when we are so 
 fast assimilating fifty nations in the native Melting 
 129 
 
Xittle Essays tn Xfterature anfc Olife 
 
 Pot proverbially a globe-trotter? So that we natu- 
 rally enough take after our sire, adding perhaps an extra 
 volatility and velocity of our own. Whatever the 
 origin of this instinct to move and to change, climate, 
 the settlement of a new country with its demands for 
 pioneer and emigrant, shifting home and fresh enter- 
 prise, or something in the blood by inheritance, be- 
 hold the American, by nature, practice, and desire, gal- 
 loping about the globe, at home in all countries, even 
 his own, which it is said the cosmopolite should be, here 
 to-day and gone to-morrow, or, at best, the day after; 
 and using in the transit the swiftest method of locomo- 
 tion known: the motor car now, the aerial car, it may 
 be, to-morrow. We talk of time fleeing; it is the 
 American that flees, while Father Time sits by and 
 grimly watches this flitting phantom of mortal haste. 
 
 The American likes short-cuts and quick circuits. 
 He is a little impatient of slow-and-sure as a motto and 
 method. He wishes to get to his destination by the 
 most expeditious route, and, on arrival, to see all there 
 is to see in half a day, where other stupid nationalities 
 put in a week over it; and to be off to the next point 
 of interest, there, as before, to lead the procession and 
 push sight-seeing through by daylight. Have you not, 
 judicious reader, sat in a foreign gallery and felt sud- 
 denly apologetic that you had brooded half an hour 
 before some masterpiece, because there swept by a group 
 of resolute, buoyant, still pursuing fellow-citizens of the 
 Great Republic, who literally never stopped at all: 
 130 
 
Hbout 
 
 merely slowed up in front of a Raphael or nudged el- 
 bows when a Van Dyck was reached ? They had heard 
 of him before. But art is long, and luncheon is near. 
 Onward ! 
 
 Something of this seems to get into our business now 
 and again, as the very existence of such a title as " Get- 
 Rich-Quick Wallingford " suggests ; and into our en- 
 deavor, too, in the arts and letters. The American 
 yields to no one in invention, deft skill of handling, 
 sympathetic sensitiveness to life and impressionistic re- 
 sponse to its many motives. But he is so anxious to 
 finish his job, and begin another one, that his particular 
 temptation is to scamp his work. And no one can 
 scrutinize present-day literature for the purpose of an 
 open-minded comparison of English and American pro- 
 ductions, without being forced to the conclusion that, 
 in the matter of thoroughness and well-turned art, our 
 kinsmen overseas are easily our' superiors. 
 
 This is all the more to be deplored, in that it does not 
 mean inferiority of gift or less of aptitude; rather, I 
 fear, does it imply a certain inability of the mind to stay 
 put long enough to do a thing well, just as the body 
 seems unable to stay put in one place, and so is forever 
 traveling, gadding about. In art, some of the latest 
 manifestations are plainly, among other things, the re- 
 sult of a purpose to dodge work, to get to an effect at 
 a jump, and without the slow, steady, devoted labor 
 which properly underlies all genuine artistic perform- 
 ance. It is the Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford idea 
 131 
 
Xittie Essays in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 again, translated into the realm of Beauty. In con- 
 trast, the Greeks had patience; and they rule the cen- 
 turies. There is no short-cut to artistic perfection, any 
 more than there is to heaven; you have got to work 
 for both. 
 
 Here, as in all things, the golden mean is the guide. 
 Never to leave home for rest and refreshment, or that 
 storing and stimulation of the mind which is culture, 
 would be silly indeed. To go for the sake of keeping 
 in motion is foolishness, a pitiable confession of weak- 
 ness and lack of self-resource. Similarly, it is well to 
 be alert, to finish a task with despatch ; even to perceive 
 a joke the same day it is told. 
 
 Artemus Ward, it may be recalled, on the occasion of 
 his first London lecture, informed his audience that 
 citizens who did not understand his witticisms might 
 wait upon him the next morning and have them ex- 
 plained; and the report is that some trusting mortals 
 came. Quickness is all right in its place, but thorough- 
 ness is essential to character; and the gadding about 
 of either mind or body should not be suffered to injure 
 the home-keeping habit, without which there can be 
 no progress in the arts of civilization. 
 
 132 
 
Hnt> tbers 
 
 WE all know the familiar words : " Messrs. 
 Brown, Black, and White, and others," 
 The " others " mean that, though they belong in a 
 general way in the same classification with the gentle- 
 men named, they are too inconspicuous for particular 
 mention, and therefore can be lumped under an all- 
 inclusive and convenient phrase. 
 
 " Others! " Into that category fall the vast major- 
 ity of human beings; in it, we, you and I, must find 
 ourselves some time, somewhere; and surely, sooner or 
 later, by the turn of Fate's wheel, no matter what our 
 success or eminence or merit, we must take our place 
 with the " others," and be content not to be named with 
 the shining few who stand for the rest of us, and so 
 are emphasized. Nor, to be frank, is it altogether 
 pleasant to be set down thus with the outsiders, the 
 undistinguished herd ; respectable, to be sure, for we 
 are at least present among the guests, but hopelessly 
 ordinary, merely one of a number. Many a secret 
 heartburn is due to this cause; to meet it with a smile 
 without, and philosophic content within, is a severe 
 test of character and a spiritual victory, when the feel- 
 ing is conquered. 
 
 133 
 
Xittle Bssags tn ^Literature anfc Otffe 
 
 There are a few comforting reflections for the 
 " others," nor is their case so bad, after all, when it 
 is clearly observed. For one thing, the selection of 
 the distinguished few, over against the nameless 
 " others," is a very fallible proceeding indeed, con- 
 tinually corrected by time, and often guided by tests 
 that are not at all the tests of real merit or service. 
 Wire-pulling may have forced those names into unde- 
 served prominence ; a quid pro quo secret trade may be 
 behind it, or yet again a mere stupid mistake. Perhaps 
 it is so evident that one omitted name overtops all that 
 are mentioned, that a reading of the list is provocative 
 of ironic amusement on the part of all competent to 
 pass judgment. 
 
 Think, O ye " others," hungry for a little apprecia- 
 tive recognition, how many of the greatest of earth 
 have been pushed scornfully or unwittingly into the 
 same nameless class by shortsighted contemporary 
 opinion. Nothing in social history is truer than that 
 the first shall be last, and the last first. Epictetus the 
 slave does not look like a philosopher, nor does it seem 
 probable that Beau Brummel will die in a garret. It 
 may be rather cold comfort to be told that, after death, 
 your name will be sure to have an individual flavor, 
 although now it is insignificant; but remembering that 
 he laughs best who laughs last, it should breed tolerance 
 and good nature. You, for instance, have not worked 
 underground and grubbily to escape from the company 
 of your brothers uncatalogued ; you have not stooped 
 134 
 
Hnfc <S>tbers 
 
 to any underhand action, neither bribed nor begged nor 
 slandered ; and the thought is as a tonic in the blood. 
 
 Think, too, how much you escape by your incon- 
 spicuosity. Your time is much more your own, you 
 are far more independent, less a slave than if a horde 
 of selfseekers disguised under the name of friends and 
 acquaintances was pestering your every step, and leav- 
 ing no moment you could fairly call your private pos- 
 session. The penalty of prominence is publicity, among 
 other drawbacks, and while it looks attractive fror. 
 afar, perhaps, nearer seen, it turns out to be mostly 
 envy, irritation, and the wrong sort of excitement. 
 Safely ensconced with the " others," you can live an 
 existence full of peace if not excitement, and find 
 plenty of agreeable companionship freed of some at 
 least of the strut and strain to be seen where " Brown " 
 and " Black " and " White " those symbols of em- 
 inence walk up and down. 
 
 Nor should you undervalue yourself and your kind. 
 Truth to tell, it is the " others " who do most of 
 the world's work, and without them society would 
 promptly collapse. Thinkers like Carlyle have from 
 time to time cried up the mighty few who are the 
 natural rulers, and justify mankind to itself; but to 
 represent these occasional giants as if they alone meant 
 progress, social evolution, is a notion both false and 
 vicious. No, the sound, democratic doctrine is that 
 human society is upbuilded as is the coral reef: to-wit, 
 by uncounted slow accretions, each contributing of his 
 135 
 
Xittle Bssass in ^Literature ant> Xife 
 
 best, all uniting to make what is truly expressive of 
 the whole race of coral-workers. And for how long 
 that work was carried on beneath the water, unseen 
 yet ever going on, and some day sure to emerge from 
 the surface and take the eye with its white wonder 
 of beauty! 
 
 The older way of writing history was to give 
 emphasis to a few outstanding events and personages. 
 Green and the modern historians have shown us that 
 the true story of the English race, or any other, is 
 the story of the unsensational yet deeply interest- 
 ing development of the common people, as they have 
 gradually learned to cooperate and combine and so bet- 
 ter the general conditions of men. It is an important 
 and lovable part of the human family we belong to, 
 we " others," and there should be pride in the thought, 
 not shame. " Brown " may be a loud-mouthed par- 
 venu, " Black " as bad in hue as his name implies, and 
 " White " a whited sepulcher, for all we know. 
 
 Hidden among the " others " may be found, if but 
 we seek diligently, virtues like diamonds unmined, and 
 pearls such as the sea is loath to let go. Often does it 
 happen that the philosopher, disillusioned of those in 
 high places, finds his recompense in contact with the 
 poor and humble and seemingly ungifted sons of men. 
 
 And after all is said, the facts stare us in the face, 
 
 and we must make the best of them. Mathematically 
 
 stated, it is one chance in ten for any of us to get out of 
 
 the class of " others," and legitimate as it may be to 
 
 136 
 
Hnfc Otbers 
 
 try honorably to enter the more select list, to break our 
 hearts over the failure is foolishness raised to the nth. 
 Life, in all that makes it most worth while, still 
 stretches before us, if we remain with the general, and 
 it is extremely likely that our ego could not have a 
 more needed lesson than this gentle reminder to go back 
 where we belong, and forgather with the numerous 
 good fellows there to be found. If we form the habit 
 of thinking of others rather than ourselves, it may well 
 be that in losing our life we may find it; in any case, 
 peace and contentment will wait upon our days. If 
 we stop trying to get to the goal so feverishly, the 
 miracle of the goal approaching us may be witnessed. 
 And before we realize it, we " others " may be dignified 
 as individuals in lists of honor, respected for our 
 humility and real worth. 
 
 Yet, come to think of it, Messrs. " Brown," 
 " Black," and " White " are taking an unpleasant duty 
 off our hands; somebody has to undergo the discom- 
 fort of appearances, and it has fallen to them. While 
 they are bowing, and scraping, and making set speeches, 
 let us go skating, or fishing, as the season bids, while 
 we remember that it is the daily, homely joys and 
 comforts which make life endurable, and even dear. 
 
 137 
 
Selfishness of l?outb 
 
 IT is the common observation that youth is selfish, 
 while maturity waxes ever more considerate 
 toward others. Altruism grows with the years, and 
 what is at first the instinctive desire for enjoyment, 
 with a heedless disregard of the rights of fellow-man, 
 becomes, as time chastens the natural impulses and 
 widens the experience, a wise and beautiful subordina- 
 tion of the ego to the general welfare. We do not 
 blame this early centering in self, because we remember 
 ourselves in it, and understand that, normally, life 
 will correct the tendency and bring the individual to 
 a broader comprehension of relative values. Life, 
 innocently, to the child is a game of grab; to the sea- 
 soned soul, it is a game of self-surrender for the sake 
 of those we love. 
 
 To the thoughtful mind, as it scrutinizes men and 
 women and gets an ever clearer idea of what life is, 
 comes, recurrently, a thought which is not without its 
 disturbing power. We see how often there is a wide 
 divergence between protestation and performance, be- 
 tween motive and deed. We realize that people talk 
 duty, when they mean desire; that a purpose quite 
 selfish, upon analysis, lies beneath the vaunted ac- 
 complishment. In short, that the difference between 
 
 138 
 
Selfisbness of Koutb 
 
 youth and maturity is not that of selfishness and un- 
 selfishness, but rather that between honest, uncon- 
 cealed action that roots in a self-regarding impulse, 
 and the action which, equally self-regarding, masks 
 itself under an avowed high motive. There is just 
 enough disillusionment in watching human affairs to 
 suggest this solution to any one who thinks. 
 
 If this were so, without reservation, then all hu- 
 manity would be selfish, and the scales would tip in 
 favor of the young. For there is something refreshing 
 in the blunt honesty with which sweet sixteen expresses 
 an uncomplimentary opinion about you, and the superb 
 directness wherewith a lad of ten will make no pre- 
 tense of interest when you in nowise can contribute 
 to his happiness. You are simply ignored, your value 
 is nil and you are made to know it. "If one of us 
 would get out of this swing," said the small boy to his 
 sister, " there would be more room for me." 
 
 There is a sort of tonic in this treatment after the 
 flattery of false friends and the obliquities of polite 
 usage. And when youth does like you, and shows it, 
 the compliment is immense and you trust it as you do 
 the liking of a dog, in whose affection there is no 
 shadow of turning. Honesty is always admirable, 
 never more so than here. This thought, that man- 
 kind has a reprehensible way of cloaking its pleasures 
 and passions under the smug name of virtue, duty and 
 the like, is handled with brilliant satiric force, and more 
 than a modicum of truth, by Bernard Shaw, who 
 139 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature anfc OLife 
 
 would have the race begin upon the firm underpinning 
 of reality and honest dealing with itself. 
 
 No one among recent writers has seen this contrast 
 between protestation and action more clearly than John 
 Morley. In his " Compromises " he points out how 
 innumerable are the evils brought upon mankind by 
 the failure of apparent virtue to be more than apparent, 
 by our readiness to adopt the forms of conventional 
 righteousness in order to cover our real thoughts. It 
 reminds us of the baptism of the Germanic invaders 
 of the Roman Empire, who, devoutly accepting the 
 rites of Christianity, went on doing exactly as before, 
 with the comfortable assurance that they were now de- 
 fenders of the true faith. 
 
 To assume that this is a complete statement of the 
 case is to do a real injustice to our common human na- 
 ture. Man does gain with the years, unless he makes 
 a moral wreck of his opportunities, or is fatally handi- 
 capped by heredity and environment. The deepest 
 meaning of life is to be found in the general spectacle 
 of human beings, gradually, with many set-backs and 
 disasters not a few, evolving into altruism, hu- 
 manitarianism, and brother-love. The rascals of the 
 world, to be sure, will continue to hide behind alleged 
 lofty purposes ; but their action in so doing would have 
 no significance, were the earth not full of others whose 
 profession and practice are not two, but one; and who 
 have in some measure learned that it is more blessed to 
 give than to receive. 
 
 140 
 
Ube Selfisbness of 
 
 The disturbing thought may serve its purpose, all 
 the same, if only, by looking at childhood, our ad- 
 miration for its natural honesty and openness be 
 quickened, and we make new resolve to be more frank 
 in our methods, and less subservient to conventional 
 indirections. If straight dealings, beyond the limit 
 of politeness, be refreshing in a child, maybe a little of 
 it in a man, even if it lay him open to the charge of 
 being brusk and blunt, might not be amiss. It is a 
 wholesome thing, and quite this side of morbidity, for 
 a person to challenge his own motives, in order that 
 he may avoid that pitfall of the inner life, self-con- 
 gratulation over an imagined spiritual victory which, 
 closer seen, turns out to be but cloaked enjoyment of 
 the ego. Even in those moments when we believe we 
 feel 
 
 Through all this fleshly dress. 
 
 Bright shoots of everlastingness, 
 
 in the great words of Vaughan, let us be sure we are 
 not titillating to our own histrionism. 
 
 The child is beyond any question selfish, but not 
 with that ominous form of selfishness which means 
 that life has been lived to no avail. While as modern 
 folk we can no longer accept the Wordsworthian view 
 that 
 
 Trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God who is our home, 
 
 but must rather assume the evolutionary theory as 
 
 applied to man's spiritual growth, and declare that 
 
 141 
 
Slittle Essays in literature an& Slife 
 
 maturity is further along the way toward Bunyan's 
 " Heavenly City " than mere untried, instinctive 
 youth, we can nevertheless get a needed lesson from 
 the child's plain dealing and strive to put it into 
 practice in our commerce with the sophisticated grown- 
 ups of our daily meeting. " Out of the mouths of 
 babes and sucklings " has its application here as else- 
 where. How fine to say nothing about how ef- 
 fective it would.be, never to protest a noble mo- 
 tive, but to go about our business doing the best we 
 can, and keeping our mouth shut as to the aim behind 
 the act. 
 
 Is there any type of human being you more admire 
 than he who, quietly, without parade, and intent upon 
 duty, leaves his work to speak for itself? If he be not 
 the Overman, he is well along toward him, and wel- 
 come wherever met. " The gentleman doth protest 
 too much." Ah, how we do ever suspect him, feeling 
 that words are cheap and works dear. And so the 
 selfishness of youth becomes at once an object-lesson in 
 the dangerous and the desirable. 
 
 142 
 
Criticism an& Cant 
 
 TWO distinct and several kinds of folk are fre- 
 quently confused in the public mind. On the 
 one hand is the type of man who, with the sincerest 
 desire to make his town, his state, his country, or his 
 time advance in the essentials of civilization, animad- 
 verts against whatever holds back the better day. For 
 the very reason that his motive is so patriotic and pure, 
 he does not hesitate to denounce and warn and cry up 
 the worthy though unpopular thing. And he is quite 
 likely to be disliked by his fellow-man, especially if his 
 manner be aggressive and his urgence steady. 
 
 Socrates was this sort of man, and who can doubt 
 that the Athenian, walking downtown of a morning, in 
 the year 410 B. C., did not enjoy being buttonholed 
 by the sage; who fired questions at him after the 
 Socratic method, and would not let him pass on to 
 where business waited or Lesbia, perchance, smiled. 
 The value of this worker-for-the-general-good is seen 
 clearer in the perspective of time than at close range; 
 and his attraction often is inversely according to the 
 square of the distance we stand from him. 
 
 The other type, with mouth awry and eye scornful, 
 damns the present and defies the past, which is always 
 H3 
 
Xtttle Essays In Xiterature a^ %tfe 
 
 golden to his vision, in sad contrast with the dull, 
 leaden-colored now. And he does this, not from any 
 sincere conviction but because he wins thereby a cer- 
 tain reputation as a wiseacre; and when he opens his 
 mouth, let no dog bark. Instead of drawing attention 
 to remediable evils and suggesting the way out of the 
 woods, his ipse dixit is hurled indiscriminatingly about 
 on all sides. He takes intense joy in inditing alarmist 
 articles, and is never so happy as when he can convey 
 the idea that the distance between us and the 
 " demnition bow-wows " is but a brief and easy step, 
 and one we are sure to take. Muckraking is his daily 
 food, and a prediction of a Wall Street panic is to him 
 as a beverage. There are always weather omens in 
 his mind which justify pessimism with regard to the 
 crops. And after the most heart-warming and artistic 
 entertainment you ever attended, he is ready with his 
 sneering qualifier. The wonder of it all is, that while 
 he is not loved, indeed, is not seldom secretly abhorred, 
 he fools a great many into listening to him with con- 
 siderable respect, and is beyond doubt responsible for 
 many a baseless fear and many an abandoned enterprise, 
 so true is it that an effect of wisdom can be gained by 
 this utterly spurious, cheap, and obvious method. And 
 it may be feared that centuries will pass before we reach 
 the enlightened view which will ride him out of town 
 or kill him at the public expense. 
 
 The thing most to be regretted is the confusion to 
 which I draw attention. It would seem as if no two 
 144 
 
Criticism an& Cant 
 
 creatures were more unlike than the worker for the 
 common weal and the worker for himself, yet the 
 former has to assume vicariously the sins of the other 
 more than half the time, and the run of mankind ex- 
 hibits a curious purblindness to the world-wide dif- 
 ference between the twain. The critic, in the noble 
 and true sense, is believed to be a critic in the sense 
 that censoriousness is a principle of his mind and a 
 preference of his heart. Criticism, which properly 
 means a winnowing out of precious grain from much 
 chaff, always with the purpose of pointing out the 
 good, is interpreted to mean envy, hatred and all un- 
 charitableness. And one is not deemed a critic by the 
 ignorant, unless he be possessed of a strong, vitriolic 
 faculty which he must employ liberally when " passing 
 upon his subject." 
 
 Hard as this is upon our worthy friend, the man 
 who would help and has the courage of his convictions, 
 it is far more disastrous for the society which breeds 
 both these types. For by failing to see them apart, not 
 distinguishing between a friend and an enemy, society 
 blocks the work, destructive and constructive, which 
 denotes two aspects of the same spirit of helpfulness. 
 It is just as patriotic to attack a bad thing as it is to 
 build a good thing; in fact, it often happens that only 
 by pulling down the one can the other be put up. 
 Destruction, then construction, is the logical order of 
 progress. The clergyman blamed for the many things 
 he had given up as unbelievable sensibly replied that 
 145 
 
%ittle Essays in ^Literature anfc OLite 
 
 he had got rid of them in order to have room for the 
 big, vital things he did believe. 
 
 When James Russell Lowell returned from his 
 British ministry, he wrote certain essays and otherwise 
 expressed his opinion on democracy. The gist of his 
 views was that democratic methods and ideals were 
 still on trial in this land, and by no means was the 
 victory won, or even the theory justified. Whereupon 
 he was promptly assailed by newspapers of a sort, 
 cried out upon as a traitor to American principles and 
 made the object of much more cheap rodomontade of 
 that kind. As a matter of fact, he was doing us a 
 great service, a first-class mind, fresh from a valuable 
 experience which had enabled him to make comparisons, 
 giving his country the benefit of thought all the more 
 welcome because, perhaps, not soothing to the national 
 vanity, which is always ready to blind itself to its own 
 good. 
 
 In the same fashion, it will be remembered how the 
 late Charles Eliot Norton made himself immensely un- 
 popular throughout the land, in certain circles, by his 
 fearless condemnation of our policy in the matter of the 
 Philippines. The fact that we may have disagreed 
 with him personally should blind no American to the 
 truth that such a man was doing his land a service 
 quite commensurate with that of any soldier on the 
 belted field; a service, moreover, taking courage of a 
 higher sort. Very few are the men who respect and 
 follow the still, small voice rather than popular ac- 
 146 
 
Criticism an& Cant 
 
 claim. It were far easier for the Lowells and Nor- 
 tons, and also far more cowardly, to enjoy their old 
 age in supine selfishness, instead of speaking the brave, 
 ringing words intended to awaken the public con- 
 science. It will be a happy day for any country when 
 such men are appreciated in their motives, and can 
 count on the esteem which is not the object of their 
 endeavor but the accompaniment of their words and 
 their deeds. 
 
 The final thought, then, is the desirability of dis- 
 crimination between types whose resemblance is but 
 superficial, their difference deep. Let us refrain from 
 applying the vulgar word, " knocker," to one who is a 
 patriot in disguise, and be clear-eyed to pick out the 
 other fellow: the man of venom and egotism and self- 
 aggrandizement. For always and ever is he an enemy 
 of the people. It was not Dr. Stockman, in Ibsen's 
 play, who was the enemy, but all the folk who decried 
 him and tried to drive him forth from among men. 
 They, who were too timorous and self-seeking to re- 
 form their city, yet heaped opprobrium upon him who 
 would do it for them. Society was its own enemy in 
 turning to rend him. 
 
^Uncivil Service 
 
 INCIVILITY is not a proof of sound Americanism. 
 Yet often the treatment received by perfectly 
 innocuous patrons of this, that, or the other would 
 seem to imply that it is derogatory to the dignity of 
 an official to reply in pleasant terms with the deport- 
 ment adopted by respectable society, and that common 
 politeness is a flaw in patriotism. 
 
 The underling, in proportion to the degree he is 
 under, seems to feel he should make up for his small 
 salary by using the methods of the hold-up man. His 
 offense begins in the fact that, if you have the misfor- 
 tune to belong to his sex, he refuses, whatever the 
 temptation, to glance your way. His answers are 
 mouthed into the desk before him, or directed jauntily 
 toward the passer-by in the street. This ruffles you 
 slightly, perhaps; but more is to follow. His enuncia- 
 tion is imperfect, and when, through necessity, you re- 
 quest him to repeat the garbled information, fuel is 
 added to the flame of suppressed wrath with which 
 he endures your presence. His intonation is on that 
 dead level of protest or sinking note of despair which 
 leads you to apologize for the fact that your blood is 
 still circulating. 
 
 148 
 
mncfx>fl Service 
 
 You are half-minded to offer him a loan of a thou- 
 sand or so, in order to see if the blandishment would 
 relieve the icy constraint of temporary association with 
 one so far beneath him. But a wiser thought re- 
 minds you that he is as much beyond pecuniary lure as 
 he is impervious to human cajolery. There is in 
 civilization to-day so obviously a misnomer in the 
 premises no sterner test of one's self-esteem than to 
 confront this type of fellow- American, and leave the 
 one-sided battle with a remnant of amour propre left 
 to use next time. 
 
 But let us be just. Should you meet this awful 
 creature in his own house, surrounded by his Lares and 
 Penates, you would find him almost human, a man 
 even capable of waxing amiable in the bosom of his 
 family. It doesn't seem so, yet it may well be. No 
 sentient thing could be as morose and cantankerous 
 steadily as he is when you have the ill-luck to consult 
 him about a time-table, or a theater ticket or a post- 
 office technicality. He must thaw out and look cheer- 
 ful at dinner, say, or of a Sunday afternoon, when 
 his wife's relatives do not come to call, and he strolls 
 out with his comely spouse in her very becoming new 
 hat. It may be that his office gloom and aloofness are 
 the reflex of, or natural reaction from, his household 
 charm. If so, congratulations go to his wife and chil- 
 dren. Here is another kind of double life, and the 
 difference between a Sunday-school superintendent and 
 a yeggman is no greater than that between our official 
 149 
 
OLittle Essays in Xfterature anfc Xife 
 
 friend at home and abroad. The reflection softens 
 our dislike a little, but only a little. 
 
 Wonder is begotten when we reflect that the con- 
 cern for which this ruffian works appears to be per- 
 fectly satisfied with his activities. Else why employ 
 him? He continues to hold down his job, and his 
 neckties are more flamboyant the longer you perforce 
 seek his advice. He has every appearance of prosperity. 
 You know, theoretically, that no one on earth could 
 receive a large wage for such a caricature of service; 
 yet there he is, gaining flesh, and stout to resist all 
 attempts to mold him into the semblance even of 
 decency. 
 
 If it ever happen that you miss him at the receipt of 
 custom, you have an instinct of exultation in the 
 thought that maybe he has been removed by the hand 
 of fate, and will no longer make the approach to 
 pleasure or business a horror that beggars descrip- 
 tion. But not at all ; the chances are that he has been 
 promoted, and become the " man higher up." Of 
 course, you wish he were still higher, so high as to be 
 forevermore invisible. But that is your eccentricity, 
 not his fault. 
 
 The saddest part of it is that this savage, pressed 
 into public service when every outraged instinct in 
 him cries for steady occupation as a thug, plumes 
 himself, as was hinted, on what he supposes to be his 
 American spirit and style. 
 
 Frankly, his kind is not met in European lands, 
 150 
 
TUncfvfl Service 
 
 except as an anomaly that, upon protest, will be 
 quickly given its quietus. The untraveled citizen of 
 this mighty republic when abroad with a few other 
 titles understood is at first amazed when, upon ask- 
 ing some necessary query, the reply comes back in 
 courteous, well-modulated language, and the person 
 speaking evinces seemingly a desire to expedite your 
 affairs, and if he can only legitimately do so, acquire 
 some of your cash. The traveler, wiping the mist 
 from his eyes, remembers that the companion of this 
 well-bred servant of the public at home takes your 
 money as a personal insult, and suggests, by manner 
 and facial expression, that you have not come by it 
 honestly. 
 
 Indeed, I have seen Americans, encountering this 
 gentleman-like behavior on the part of one who tradi- 
 tionally in the land of the free has the habit of accom- 
 modating you at the point of a gun, knocking you 
 down, in the language of Kipling's Mulholland, be- 
 fore he " led you up to grace," become at once suspi- 
 cious of the individual, vaguely uneasy, because a life- 
 time of manhandling had left the recipients dazed in 
 the face of the manners of Lord Chesterfield in a com- 
 mercial connection. 
 
 It is only the " slick citizen," runs the thought of 
 the American abroad, who can afford such manners; 
 he needs it in his business. What a shame it is to 
 make the American flag sponsor for a boor! How 
 salutary to suggest, in every possible way, that good 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature an& SLife 
 
 manners facilitate business, and that the carriage of a 
 gentleman does not imply putting on airs, or a suspi- 
 cious past. The thought underlying the daily ruffianism 
 of cheap officials everywhere is that, by an exhibition 
 of their quality, they convey the idea that they are as 
 good as anybody else, and a trifle better. They 
 are aware that the one intolerable thing from the 
 viewpoint of an American is any concession that a 
 human being of whatsoever sort or description is their 
 superior. It is their touching faith that all men are 
 born and continue to be free and equal. They do not 
 know that the French phrase " liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity " has been long since defined as a " dream be- 
 tween two lies." 
 
 They have much to learn. 
 
 Pessimism, however, is not necessary. The official 
 manners are growing better, not worse. Not seldom 
 nowadays you meet a clerk at the counter or a theater 
 box-office man who, hard worked and put upon as he 
 so often is, preserves all the outward signs of gentle 
 breeding. Long life to him, for his advent means an 
 advance in civilization! It is to our common in- 
 terest to eliminate the other, older kind, the pirate in 
 disguise. We are making strides forward in the mat- 
 ter of government civil service; attention should also 
 be given to uncivil service in our business life, private 
 as well as public. 
 
 152 
 
In&tvt&ual an& Societ? 
 
 THE helpless gregariousness of people who sit 
 about in overlighted, stuffy rooms at summer 
 resorts, languidly listening to, or taking part in, the 
 aimless talk that can be called conversation only by 
 courtesy, illustrates a deep-seated human tendency. 
 Such folk seem to prefer to pass an evening in that 
 fashion, rather than to be alone or to commune with 
 Nature, or to read a good book. " Anybody for com- 
 pany " appears to be their motto. They have a fairly 
 pathetic desire to get with their kind, if only to feel 
 the warmth of human contact and to escape from 
 their own vacuity. 
 
 The instinct for getting together is of immense 
 value and makes modern society, in the broad sense, 
 the significant phenomenon it is. This is altogether 
 desirable, and, rightly applied, means cooperation, the 
 union that is strength. It fortifies the aims and ideals' 
 of the individual so as to help in self-development 
 and alleviate the loneliness which otherwise might 
 lay a chill hand on personal endeavor and paralyze 
 worthy action. 
 
 Even when we are enjoying our own society in- 
 tensely, we have the feeling so felicitously described 
 153 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^Literature an& %ife 
 
 by Stevenson in the inimitable " Travels with a 
 Donkey." Camping out at night in the pine woods 
 of France and reveling in the beauties of the moonlit 
 scene, he suddenly wished for a dear companion to 
 share it with him. " And to live out-of-doors with 
 the woman one loves is, of all lives, the most complete 
 and free," he declares. 
 
 The extension in our time of the associative principle 
 has given us labor unions on the one hand, and trusts 
 on the other, with all the good we are not for the 
 moment concerned with the bad to be connoted 
 by these names. The vague wish to touch elbows 
 with other mortals, whether in some vacation idling, at 
 the club, playhouse, political meeting, synagogue or 
 market place, can be relied on to be an element when- 
 ever or wherever men and women meet. Deprive 
 some one of this opportunity to forgather and swap the 
 news, and you see at once what an exaggerated, even 
 hectic, influence a mere footprint in the sand becomes. 
 The history of the world is changed by the stimulus 
 to human thoughts and deeds due to this get-together 
 instinct. 
 
 At the same time it can be abused, this associative 
 desire, and the ease with which in these latter days one 
 can escape from oneself may breed a kind of person 
 whose individuality is ironed out into a pat con- 
 formity with custom and convention. Such a person 
 hardly knows himself in any true sense. 
 
 He takes his thought, language, dress, deportment 
 154 
 
Ube Hn&ivi&ual an& Society 
 
 and general social conduct from the common center 
 which seems to be the pooled result of social stimula- 
 tion and attrition. Beyond the discussion of the 
 weather, every word that issues from his mouth is 
 second hand, and an act independent of social ap- 
 proval would be as objectionable as a surgical opera- 
 tion. The new terrifies, as such; the old, similarly, 
 is valid in his eyes, not because of its Tightness but 
 because of its ancientness. 
 
 There can be no question that a certain cast of mind 
 is peculiarly prone to look at the world in this way, 
 and is more than a product of environment, for the 
 hen-minded personality doubtless antedates society it- 
 self and has a place, sane if obscure, in the large pur- 
 poses of creation. The penalty man pays for the 
 privileges of the social and how many and dear they 
 are ! is the loss of the outstanding personality, the 
 occasional meteor that flits by erratically among the 
 ordered, calculable courses of the other stars. Per- 
 haps the price may not be too high when the benefits 
 are considered: all the difference between the primitive 
 state of Nature and the complex and impressive spec- 
 tacle of a modern society. 
 
 But it is true as well that we need the individual- 
 istic, and one of the dangers of the day is such a rub- 
 bing down of the qualities natural to a man in the 
 fierce attrition of life as shall take from him his 
 salient traits, the things that make him distinctive. 
 Occasionally, still, you meet a person whom you de- 
 155 
 
Xittlc lEssags in Xiterature an& Xife 
 
 clare to be a " character," a man " with the bark 
 on," in Frederick Remington's piquant phrase. 
 
 What do you mean in so designating him? Simply 
 that such a person is not like everybody else, as most 
 of us are: dares to pursue his idiosyncrasies, to be him- 
 self even if so doing runs counter to the prevalent 
 mode. How many of us, for example, fellow-men, 
 really have the social courage to wear a collar or a 
 necktie that is distinctly out of date, though it cost 
 quite enough and is in an excellent state of preserva- 
 tion? Or how many women have sufficient in- 
 dividuality to adopt a coiffure really becoming to the 
 shape of their heads, in spite of the current fashion 
 which caricatures beauty? 
 
 The matter of small talk offers a specially apt illus- 
 tration. Few indeed are those who, on meeting an- 
 other human being for the first time, have the back- 
 bone to dodge the stereotyped bromidic observations 
 about the weather in order to get at something worth 
 while! This usual beginning seems as inevitable as 
 the portico to a Greek temple. But the man I am 
 thinking of does not conform in these matters, sees 
 no reason why he should, does not allow himself to 
 be drawn into the silly, sheeplike imitations which 
 obsess the majority of earth's inhabitants. He is 
 frank, direct, simple. If he makes a social faux pas, 
 it does not worry him and, as like as not, he is not 
 aware of it. There is a refreshing unconventionality 
 in his speech and garb ; instead of waiting to note what 
 
 156 
 
ZTbe 1FnM\>ifcual an& Society 
 
 others may do in a given case, he acts on his own, as 
 the English say, and he possesses a sort of innate 
 dignity that saves him from being ridiculous, and 
 commands our respect. 
 
 It is one of the great lessons of life to learn to 
 strike a happy mean between these two extremes: to 
 preserve one's individuality, yet get the good that is to be 
 found in the social relations with our fellows, with- 
 out posing as an eccentric or losing identity in the 
 crowd. The danger of the former is obvious and 
 therefore less yielded to than is the temptation to 
 merge personality in a constant mingling with others. 
 For the fullest and freest expression of oneself, the 
 conformity should be external more than internal. 
 Our manners should be those of polite society, but our 
 opinions our own; to reverse this, and make our man- 
 ners our own and our opinions those of others, is to be 
 an empty-headed boor. Our age is commonly called 
 an individualistic one, and certainly there is much in 
 its literature and art to give plausibility to the idea. 
 But that is only one aspect of so complex a time. 
 Just as truly, ours is a social age and it is safe to say 
 that never has there been a stronger pressure upon 
 the individual to make him a part of that social 
 solidity which means civilization. One who is wise 
 will thus cherish his ego, yet remember that he who 
 loseth his life shall find it. 
 
 157 
 
Hrt ant) Xetters 
 
Gbe Iboiiness of Beauty 
 
 r\AVID bids us worship the Lord in the beauty 
 *-^ of holiness. The lovely words are vibrant in 
 our ears, for all the world loves the good, though it 
 may not follow it ; and this is as true of " the po' lost 
 sheep of the sheepfol' " as it is of the saints of the 
 synagogue. Crooks and thugs, harlots and thieves 
 pay tribute in their very vocabulary to virtue as the 
 supreme, beautiful, and desirable thing: they speak of 
 " a straight man," " a square man " ; they say " he 's 
 on the level." We hear of honor among thieves; the 
 hypocrisy of a Pecksniff is his acknowledgment of the 
 ineffable worth of the Good. This splendid passage 
 from The Wisdom of Solomon sums up the feeling: 
 " For in the memory of virtue is immortality; because 
 it is recognized both before God and before man ; 
 when it is present men imitate it, and they long after 
 it when it is departed; and throughout all time it 
 marcheth crowned in triumph, victorious in the strife 
 for the prizes that are undefiled." 
 
 Equally true with the beauty of holiness is the holi- 
 ness of beauty. Sidney Lanier in our own time gave 
 eloquent expression to the thought which is a return 
 to the teaching of Ruskin and Emerson and Plato. 
 161 
 
3Ltttie Bssaps in ^Literature anfc %ife 
 
 Here are Lanier's words : " Let any sculptor hew us 
 out the most ravishing combination of tender curve 
 and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet 
 if the lip have a certain fullness that hints of the 
 flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest par- 
 ticular the physical beauty suggests a moral ugliness, 
 that sculptor, unless he be portraying a moral ugliness 
 for a moral purpose, may as well give over his marble 
 for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are in- 
 exorably moral, will not accept his work. For, in- 
 deed, we may say that he who has not yet perceived 
 how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent 
 lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and 
 who therefore is not afire with moral beauty just as 
 with artistic beauty, that he, in short, who has not 
 come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in 
 which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty 
 mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light 
 within him; he is not yet the great artist." 
 
 Every sincere literary worker feels this, and in his 
 heart of hearts has a religious regard and respect for 
 what he would do. Our finest critic of poetry, the 
 late E. C. Stedman, says that the idealist's recogni- 
 tion of the relations of beauty and truth " is a kind of 
 natural piety, and renders the labor of the poet or 
 other artist of the beautiful a proper form of wor- 
 ship." 
 
 Yet this truth has been largely forgotten, or con- 
 sciously set aside in our day. As literature was pro- 
 162 
 
Ube IboUness of Beauty 
 
 duced, became self-conscious and developed what is 
 called criticism, there arose a theory which separated 
 the beauty that is spiritual from that which is artistic: 
 in other words, esthetic beauty. And the cleavage 
 has become so distinct that in some cases we mark 
 the complete divorcement of those sister-like beauties 
 which, in the language of Tennyson, " never can be 
 sundered without tears." 
 
 The esthete declares that the only beauty he knows 
 and cares about is that of form. Whistler vents the 
 remark that such sentiments as love, patriotism, and 
 religion have nothing to do with art, which is a mat- 
 ter exclusively of form and color. Oscar Wilde, as 
 if trying to show the principle in its reductio ad 
 absurdum, says that a color-sense is more important 
 to the human race than a sense of right and wrong. 
 And Zola declares that the only morality he as a writer 
 recognizes is the morality of the fine phrase. These 
 three utterances, from three men of genius of our 
 day, strikingly illustrate the divorce of esthetics and 
 ethics. But surely this severance is unnatural. And, 
 as surely, it has done harm. For what is beauty in 
 the broad sense? Is not its guiding principle sym- 
 metry, harmony? And this is the same principle 
 which runs not alone through all the arts and litera- 
 ture to give them validity, but also through human con- 
 duct and throughout the physical universe. 
 
 The kiss of word and word, which we call rhyme 
 in poetry, is a vocal agreement or harmony; the 
 
 163 
 
Xtttle Essays in Xtterature a^ %ffe 
 
 makeup of a sonata or symphony is the harmonious 
 arrangement of parts; and what the painter calls his 
 " composition " is the same thing, the harmonious 
 disposition of details to secure a pleasing effect of 
 unity. And in the world of physical fact equally, a 
 sense of the evolutionary unity of life thrills us with 
 the thought of the majestic harmony of agreement, eon 
 dovetailing with eon, and star saluting star in the 
 great rhythm of space and time. Even so in the hu- 
 man body, the systole and diastole of the heart, in 
 tireless iteration, are a symbol of the movement, uni- 
 versal and everlasting, which is in all things and makes 
 life possible. It is because of the verity of this uni- 
 versal principle of creation that it is no mere figure of 
 speech to speak of the music of the spheres. Recall 
 Shakspere's description of music in " The Merchant 
 of Venice": 
 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims. 
 
 It is time for the recognition of the essential bond 
 between these sisters, divinely derived and unhappily 
 sundered, whose mighty mission to the world is prop- 
 erly one, as the poet and philosopher never tire of 
 telling. We should reunite the members of the family 
 and be present as assisting parties at the reestablish- 
 ment of a kin-tie after foolish estrangement. Criticism 
 and commonsense can clasp hands here. There are 
 signs which point to the broader conception of art 
 
 164 
 
Ube Doltness of JSeautp 
 
 which sees that, to be worthy, it must express the 
 spirit, the soul of man, as well as his sense pleasures. 
 Because the holiness of beauty is as true as the 
 beauty of holiness, we find an explanation of the fact 
 that the Bible, apart from being the authoritative 
 guide for conduct, is the greatest work in English 
 literature; and this, despite the other fact that it is a 
 collection of writings out of three foreign tongues, 
 Englished for us in incomparable form in the time of 
 the first Stuart sovereign. It is the one series of writ- 
 ings gathered into a volume which unites with a match- 
 less felicity of expression a steady spiritual purpose 
 and ideal ; it is this which makes it unique, since no 
 such claim can be set up for Shakspere or any other 
 of the major English writers, even for Milton, lofty 
 and pure as he is. The Bible is an object-lesson for 
 the idea that the beauty of holiness and the holiness of 
 beauty are but phases of one cosmic principle. And 
 with the advantage given us by this clearer, broader 
 realization of the significance of the Book of Books, 
 we are studying and enjoying it with more fruitful 
 results than ever before; seeing it as a Book of power 
 and beauty as well as truth, recognizing that none of 
 these attributes is contradictory of the other. 
 
 165 
 
an& Seeh wttb TRomance 
 
 GEORGE MOORE, in one of those intimate mo- 
 ments when he reveals himself as an acute and 
 most suggestive essayist, declares that he feels ac- 
 cording to his temperament but acts according to his 
 looks. Those who know his physiognomy will get 
 the full force of his remark. 
 
 How true it is that we hide our burning romanti- 
 cism under a deadly cloak of convention ! Ashamed of 
 the poetry in us, we talk prose, look it, dress it. The 
 New Englander's understatement, the canny Scotch- 
 man's caution, the matter-of-factness of the Philistine, 
 are, I believe, the mere hiding of the romance that is 
 in us all. George Moore is known to the world as 
 the sternest, most uncompromising of realists; and, 
 in the expressive idiom of the day, he looks the part. 
 But touches there are in his fiction and essays which re- 
 veal another G. M., the Moore who is perhaps the 
 deepest expression of his personality: the shy poet, 
 masking behind the purveyor of crass reality. 
 
 In the same way that arch iconoclast, Bernard Shaw, 
 has flashes of poetry in his plays that are all the more 
 startling because they come from the author of " Mrs. 
 Warren's Profession." 
 
 1 66 
 
an& Seefe witb IRomance 
 
 Yes, and we all play hide and seek with romance, 
 the elusive, shy, fawnlike thing that is yet never far 
 away, easily sought, and loved, though in secret, of 
 us all. It is a strange characteristic of man that he 
 is so prone to disavow this tendency in himself: cover- 
 ing up his sense of poetry with the commonplace, and 
 always denying, with a Peter-like repetition, the de- 
 sire for beauty that is so inextricably interwoven with 
 the warp and woof of his being. 
 
 A New Englander hates to call a lake anything but 
 a pond, for fear he will be caught napping as a suspect 
 on the charge of sentimentality; and the westerner, in- 
 stead of waxing rosy in speech over the loveliness of 
 woman, remarks laconically that she is " some girl " 
 or " easy to look at." 
 
 To explain this avoidance of ostensible romance on 
 the part of many is business for the philosopher: to 
 recognize it is but to gaze at the human show. 
 
 The joke of it is, that if you will only watch this 
 same practical citizen, you shall find him constantly 
 doing things in a kind of shamefaced way, which 
 plainly announces his liking for romance. He will, 
 on the sly, consume hectic fiction that grossly violates 
 the sane conventions, reveling in battle, murder and 
 sudden death, and issue refreshed from this tonic con- 
 tact with the sensational, Stevenson's " penny dreadful 
 and twopence colored." See him at the playhouse and 
 observe how he will patronize the crude melodramas, 
 and insure long runs for them, under the same secret 
 
 167 
 
Xittie JBssa^s in literature anfc Xife 
 
 urge of poetry, romance, the imaginative exhibition of 
 the world's more exciting aspects. Nor have we no- 
 ticed that in the even tenor of business such folk re- 
 frain from plunging and chance-taking, which increases 
 the tempo of the game; while in a motor-car they 
 prefer on general principles to exceed the speed limit, 
 adding thus a dare-devil touch to the experience, when 
 there is no hurry at all. 
 
 Perhaps romance would not be true to its name if 
 it did not dodge in and out of our lives in this way, 
 and were not wooed inconstantly and without formal 
 acknowledgment on our part. It may be that its 
 innocent illicitness is a factor in its charm. George 
 Moore, no doubt, wishes he were as romantic as he 
 feels; and the romantic feeling may be all the stronger 
 in his breast for the very reason that the world at 
 large does not suspect it, and credits him, indeed, with 
 another view. Stevenson, in that charming essay of 
 his, " Lantern Bearers," tells how he and other 
 Scotch lads, on the windy links o' nights, hid the 
 lanterns under their jackets and only revealed mo- 
 mentarily a flash to. a passing comrade, as a shibboleth 
 and shining symbol of brotherhood. The boys rep- 
 resented mankind and the lantern was the quenchless 
 note of romance. They were playing hide and seek 
 with it there by the sounding sea, as we all are beside 
 the sea of life, whose everlasting cadences whisper of 
 the higher destiny and the undying hope. 
 
 The suspicion of romance, or the attempt to dis- 
 168 
 
Dtfce an& Seefc wttb IRomance 
 
 claim it on the part of the millions who really are 
 eager for it, arises from its abuse: from the many 
 false and silly things associated with it and the foolish 
 excesses committed in its fair name. Romance, prop- 
 erly, is not sentimentality nor pose nor affectation of 
 any sort; it does not mean extravagance in speech, 
 dress or behavior, nor is it the enemy of common- 
 sense. 
 
 It is rather the wish, or, better, the instinct for the 
 livelier and lovelier manifestations of life in contrast 
 with the dead-and-alive and drab-hued nothing-doing 
 which at times seems to descend upon us like a fog, 
 squelching zeal, paralyzing action, and putting a 
 quietus upon joy. 
 
 We all meet these desert places upon the journey, 
 and when the oasis is glimpsed, how welcome its green 
 glint and the pro nise of shade beside the cool water! 
 Even if it turn out a mirage, many would prefer to 
 have that instead of the ceaseless stretch of sand; 
 and so they seize on pleasant lies in art and literature 
 and the theater. But this is foolish, because the price 
 you pay is too big: disillusion when the mirage fades 
 and the desert march becomes the more intolerable. 
 But this explains how fervently the false substitutes 
 for romance, the pseudo-art of every kind, are 
 grasped as one grasps a friend's hand, though it prove 
 a foe's. 
 
 Let us at least remember how universal is the ro- 
 mantic appeal (whatever form 4 it take), and not 
 169 
 
Xtttle Essags in ^Literature atto SLife 
 
 despise any honest movement toward it. The fakirs 
 who use it to their own advantage should be sternly 
 handled, but their sins never charged up to that which 
 they are discrediting. Even as breathing is an in- 
 stinctive art of physical self-preservation, so is the 
 aspiration (note the etymology which signifies breath) 
 toward beauty an instinct for psychic self-preservation, 
 and the two are equally legitimate. 
 
 The person who does not breathe deeper in the 
 presence of romance is in danger of a spiritual smother- 
 ing and should forthwith begin to doctor the lungs 
 of his soul. If not a steady, open commerce with so 
 dear an experience, then let it be hide and seek. Nor 
 should we play the game half-heartedly, but lustily, 
 for all it and we are worth. For, curiously, the re- 
 sponse will be swift and sure. Others who dare not, 
 timid souls that they are, will applaud the more ad- 
 venturous; in other words, will buy your pictures or 
 books, listen to your music, attend your plays, swear 
 by you as a man and a brother. He who makes ro- 
 mance can count upon a following. He is doing our 
 work for us, vicariously, and we are willing to pay 
 the price. A kind of virtue issues from his very 
 presence. 
 
 170 
 
Hn lt> 2>ictionan>: H IRevcr? 
 
 WHAT more jejune for the subject of a revery! 
 And yet it appeals clamorously to my sentiment, 
 and you, dear reader, shall know why, and be the 
 arbiter of my mood. 
 
 Imprimis, 't is a copy of John Walker's Pro- 
 nouncing Dictionary, and there is magic for me 
 in the very name: on t ic face of it, I grant you, al- 
 most as unpoetic as Smith, or Brown or Robinson of 
 humdrum connotation. But softly! Do you remem- 
 ber the delightful scene in Dickens' Christmas Carol, 
 where dear old Scrooge, metamorphosed by the kindly 
 coming of the ghosts, pokes his time-worn poll out of 
 the window on Christmas morning and inquires of a 
 street urchin if he knows the whereabouts of a certain 
 poulterer's; and upon getting an affirmative, bids the 
 boy cut away and buy a turkey that shall take the 
 town with wonder for its size; and how the gamin 
 emits the one word of rapturous agnostic wonder: 
 "Walker!" 
 
 I recall how as a boy myself was it longer ago 
 than yesterday ? I reveled in this full-mouthed, sug- 
 gestive exclamation. I had no notion of what it 
 meant, but it was deeply satisfying. And not all my 
 171 
 
Oltttie Essays in ^Literature anfc Xtte 
 
 commerce with dictionaries since, has quite dulled the 
 romance that is forever associated in my mind with 
 that moment of the imagination, that irreverent in- 
 vocation of an august lexicographer! It illuminated 
 the need of literature in a hard world of fact ; it justi- 
 fies John Walker's existence. The knowledge, later 
 acquired, that Walker's was at the time a name to 
 conjure with in the ways of scholarship, has its main 
 use in the light it throws upon this scene out of 
 Dickens, mighty master of life. 
 
 The date of my copy is 1833; tne publishers, Scott 
 & Webster (successors to Mr. Dove, fancy a book- 
 man of the delectable name of Dove!), 36 Charter 
 House Square, London. Dear me, Charter House 
 Square! At once I am off on a tangent, one of 
 those criss-cross paths of the imagination which some- 
 how allure me more than the straight and proper 
 thoroughfares of thought my mind full of the sing- 
 ing memories of sundry Charter House schoolboys: 
 Lovelace and Addison, and Steele (dear Dick!), and 
 Thackeray and John Wesley Heavens, what a 
 crew! Publishers who dwell in Charter House 
 Square should think twice ere they put their imprint 
 upon an avowedly dry-as-dust volume like a dictionary ; 
 't is provocative of dreams, not etymologies. 
 
 The manner of title of the book has a certain 
 
 pathos ; I find myself sentimental over it. 'T is so 
 
 perilously long. That comfortable stagecoach time 
 
 (the iron horse had not yet begun to snort and cavort 
 
 172 
 
Hn lb Dictionary : H 1Rex>en> 
 
 up and down the land) was not unwilling to read its 
 titles long instead of clear : " A Critical Pronouncing 
 Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, 
 in which not only the meaning of every word is 
 clearly explained, and the sound " but no, gentle 
 reader, 'twill not do; 'tis a little essay in itself, and 
 mine must be nothing more. Suffice it for you to 
 know that there are just two hundred and seventy-one 
 words in this entitular address, as it befits to call it. 
 I may add here that the book is bound in plain gray- 
 brown boards, with a green back and white slip cover, 
 a very pleasant unobtrusive dress ; and is, though some- 
 what battered without, interiorly in wondrous good 
 condition, handled, I dare avouch, in its earlier days, 
 by one gentle born, whose hands touched even a dic- 
 tionary with cleanly respect and due courtesy. Which 
 leads me to name another cause for sentiment. The 
 fly leaf of the volume (which I acquired second-hand, 
 the sympathetic reader my have deduced so much) 
 bears the inscription : " Deborah Thidd, 3rd month, 
 1834." Lovely name and lovely thought, a 
 woman, a vestal and a Quaker! The cup of my joy 
 here spills over. There is no one else in all the gen- 
 eration past I should prefer as joint-owner of the 
 precious volume. (Observe, reader, that I do not 
 say former owner; nay, that were formal, most un- 
 friendly to the winsome shade of Deborah, whom I 
 love in all respect and tenderness.) Does any hold 
 that Thidd is a name uneuphonious, unideal ? To him 
 173 
 
Xtttle Essays in Xtterature anfc Xtfe 
 
 I simply say : " Good sir, you make the woeful error 
 to detach the Thidd from that dear, quaint old appella- 
 tion of Deborah, with all its captivating associations 
 of militant righteousness and Puritan fair-maidenhood. 
 Taken together, Deborah Thidd is adorable; even 
 conceding that Thidd alone gives one pause. Mat- 
 thew Arnold, you will remember, hurls the arrow of 
 his winged satire at a certain wretched female yclept 
 Wragg. True, 't is a horrid thing ; but its horror 
 inheres in the absence of any sex-revealing and soften- 
 ing baptismal name as prefix to Wragg. Her pen- 
 chant for crime (if memory serves, she killed her 
 child) seeks an explanation no further afield. 
 
 As I lingeringly turn over the pages of my time- 
 stained Walker, I hold a sort of spiritual communion 
 with the fair Deborah; for fair she was, reader, I am 
 forever convinced. I have sought eagerly yet pa- 
 tiently through its double rows of words (there are 
 nigh six hundred pages) for some mark, some com- 
 ment, some memorandum or marginal token of use; 
 but alas, none sullies the volume's virginal white. 
 'T would have been (for me) a dramatic event in the 
 calendar of sentiment had any such been found. I 
 should have deemed it a personal communication from 
 Deborah, almost a love letter. But it consoles me to 
 reflect that 'twas not in consonance with her nice 
 Quaker way to smirch or deface a book, even by the 
 fine delicate lines her high-bred hand would in- 
 dubitably have traced upon its surface. I have some- 
 174 
 
Hn 10 Dictionary : H 1Re\>erp 
 
 times wondered that Charles Lamb, with his familiar 
 liking for the Quakers, should have had that incor- 
 rigible habit of side-lining and commentarizing in his 
 beloved quartos; but then, he loved books even be- 
 yond Quakers; yea, I doubt not, beyond that fair- 
 haired Quakeress immortalized as Hester. Perhaps 
 it had been otherwise, had he known my Deborah. 
 
 Did you note that Deborah acquired the volume 
 in the third month, in March? That month of hurly- 
 burly, of bluster, bleakness and blow, has little of 
 magic association for us Americans. But the English 
 March is like our April, a season of mild skies, green- 
 ing buds, and a wild hint of coming flowers. So that 
 in imagination I see my dear Quakeress walking across 
 spring fields (she did not set down her habitat in the 
 book, hence my assumption of a country residence, or 
 at least, a suburban, is altogether justified) ; the dic- 
 tionary, neatly done up in blue-gray paper, tucked 
 primly under arm. To look at it and her, you would 
 have believed (with the March odors in your nostrils, 
 mind you) that 'twas a book of lyrics, Keats or 
 Shelley, may be, young men but recently perished 
 in their prime. Or, ah, it is a thought haply con- 
 gruous with my vision of Deborah, it might be 
 taken for a copy of the Essays of Ella, purchased the 
 very year of his death, 1834, the date when Deborah 
 writ her name in Walker and made herself known 
 to me, and through me, I trust, to a few others. 
 But no, in the very teeth of vernal invitation, she 
 175 
 
Xittle Essays In literature anb OLtte 
 
 wends homeward in the company not of the elect of 
 literature, but of one Walker, grave purveyor of verbs 
 and nouns, and suchlike remnants of learning. Surely, 
 it becomes plain our Deborah was fain to be nice in 
 her speech uses and would make no slip in spelling, 
 even in the fervor of Love's most compulsive epistles; 
 hence her burden of dictionary, that far-away but still 
 fragrant morn of March. 
 
 J. Walker, albeit a good scholar, paid the penalty 
 all scholarship must render Time: his tome (worthy 
 monument of his day) is long since superseded. For 
 my daily work I must turn to other men. But he 
 stands on my shelf within hand-reach, an honored 
 guest, a tried friend. I love to have him hard by. If 
 he satisfies not my head, he does my heart, and that 
 after all is more important. What is knowledge 
 compared with the undertow of the emotions? He 
 comes like a faint sweet breath out of the dusty past, 
 and brings, like a bit of arbutus from the spring 
 woods, a thought of my co-heir forever in his outworn 
 wisdom, the unknown, the treasured Quaker, even 
 Deborah Thidd! 
 
 176 
 
Beauty an& Sorrow 
 
 'T DO not wish to see it or hear it, it is so sad; 
 <* there is enough sadness in life, without re- 
 producing it in art and literature," how often one 
 hears the protest. And how true it would be, if the 
 arts did naught else but repeat the misery, reminding 
 man of his inevitable unhappiness, just when he would 
 turn away from reality to art, in order to forget it 
 for the nonce. But that is not what true art does 
 or ever has done. It seizes on the sorrow which is 
 in life, mitigates it, explains it, makes it, like the 
 one discordant note in concerted music, to blend with 
 all the instruments into a total and richer har- 
 mony. 
 
 The truth is that in art, if you make sorrow beauti- 
 ful, you offer consolation. Edward Fitzgerald had a 
 sense of this when he wrote to a friend concerning his 
 as yet unpublished translation of Omar Khayyam: 
 "It is a desperate sort of thing, unfortunately at the 
 bottom of most thinking men's minds; and made 
 music of." As who should say, the music justifies it. 
 So Dante, too, in his telling to Virgil of the loves of 
 Paolo and Francesca, that twain as piteous as the 
 other twain, Romeo and Juliet, speaks of their love 
 177 
 
Xtttie Essays in literature a^ Xite 
 
 time as the time of the beautiful sighings; how the 
 Italian draws out the thought and caresses it, 
 
 Al tempo de' dolci sospiri, 
 
 and Wordsworth signifies his recognition of the 
 law that the sweetest has inevitably a flavor of melan- 
 choly in writing the familiar words: 
 
 In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
 Bring sad thoughts to the mind; 
 
 while Keats, the beloved, high priest of Beauty, if 
 one such there be in English song, knowing well that 
 if you but make sorrow beautiful and set it to music, 
 you pluck out its sting, cries: 
 
 Ay, in the very temple of delight 
 
 Veiled melancholy has her sovran shrine. 
 
 And so, once more, the beauty that is in great trag- 
 edy is to be explained by its harmonious relation to 
 spiritual experience. If the pain which comes from 
 our perception of the dissonance between life as we 
 know it and life as we might imagine it to be, plucked 
 of the pain, be only mitigated by a feeling that in the 
 fleeting vision lies promise of ultimate good when 
 " God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," 
 then the sorrow becomes sweet indeed. Hence the 
 thoughtful suggestiveness of the definition of beauty 
 as " a promise of happiness." 
 
 And so it is in life, even as in the great literature 
 which reflects life. My friend writes me but yester- 
 
 178 
 
Beauts an& Sorrow 
 
 day of facing her first Christmas with the beloved 
 gone; it was an unspeakable sorrow, says she, but not 
 too great, for it was " a sweet sorrow." What an 
 acknowledgment, this, that life was widened, enriched, 
 solemnized, and transfigured by Love's deepening 
 through the loss of the loved one ! 
 
 There is a deep instinct, after all, behind and un- 
 der the demand for a so-called " happy ending " to 
 play, story or poem, in the literature which depicts 
 life. Not because of the desire, merchant-wise, to 
 supply an unthinking request for pleasure at the ex- 
 pense of all truth for the symmetrical verisimilitude of 
 sound art; but rather because the human mind 
 naturally reaches out to the end, through intervening 
 discouragements, as hope sees beyond the storm clouds 
 of a wild day the ineffable soft dove colors of sunset 
 and afterglow. The mind needs, and hence demands, 
 that final compensation to balance the composition 
 and read the riddle plain. A quatrain from the old 
 German lyrist, Giinther, is a hope, and more than a 
 hope, a prescient belief that bespeaks him no less 
 man than poet: 
 
 Der Anfang unser reine Liebe 
 1st Unruh, Ungliick, Hohn und Pein ; 
 Das Mittel 1st nicht mindre Triibe; 
 Doch soil das Ende lustig sein. 
 
 Ah, till the end of all Time toil-worn and pain- 
 riven mortals will murmur those words, " Yet shall 
 the ending happy be," and find in the utterance a com- 
 179 
 
Xittle Bssa^s In ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 fort that transcends all the process of ratiocination. 
 
 This mission of art to make sorrow beautiful and ex- 
 plicable, perhaps the highest service it can perform for 
 mankind since sorrow is of the very texture of life, is 
 the sufficient answer to the intellectual babes-in-arms 
 who cry out for only what they are pleased to call the 
 " pleasant " in literature, and shrink from ^schylus, 
 Shakspere, Balzac, and Ibsen when they would grapple 
 with our souls, purging them, in the Aristotelian sense, 
 of the dross and purifying them through the exercise 
 of pity and terror. But often this noble and hence 
 legitimate use of the sad is changed to an exhibition of 
 the dark and dreary aspects of mankind and the lives 
 they live, because of the sensational nature of the ap- 
 peal; or as expressive of a mood of pessimism and re- 
 volt; sometimes, it would seem, merely for misery's 
 sake. All sane-minded persons are right in the instinct 
 to turn from this and to protest against it. In inten- 
 tion and effect, it is no more like the other high and 
 holy handling of life's disharmonies than a sneak thief 
 is like Prometheus filching fire from heaven to give 
 it to men for their everlasting weal. 
 
 Moreover, the test is simple, a subjective one de- 
 pending upon the effect of what is read upon the 
 reader. How does the poem or drama or novel leave 
 you? Calmed, braced, broadened, solemnized, any 
 or all of these? After it, is there a clear realization 
 of the laws that govern living and the love that sweet- 
 ens it? Then was the tragic presentment worth while, 
 1 80 
 
Beauts anfc Sorrow 
 
 and not otherwise. You have melted " into an ancient 
 woe," nor lost your time. You have listened to ad- 
 vantage to " The still, sad music of humanity." You 
 have been made to realize that " Evil is the soul's 
 misuse of means." Sophocles' " OEdipus," Shakspere's 
 " Lear," Tolstoi's " Resurrection " are all tragedies, 
 delineations of human suffering and human wrong. 
 But they are alike in leaving you better prepared to 
 play your part, helped in the homely but divine busi- 
 ness of daily living. 
 
 The trouble with much modern literature of the 
 false-tragic sort is not only that it lacks hope, but also 
 proportion and love. It is disproportionate in its em- 
 phasis upon a part of the picture, instead of upon the 
 whole. And it lacks love for the reason that the 
 writer is not sympathetically implicated in the fate 
 of his characters, but, more like a scientist than a 
 literary creator, stands coldly aloof, to watch the 
 psychological sequences of cause and effect. Art will 
 never be science till, as Kipling has it, " earth's last 
 picture is painted." Nor will the literature which 
 comes out of life be fully justified until it gives back 
 to life an interpretation thereof that aids man to be 
 wise, just, loving and obedient. 
 
 181 
 
n Being "IRaturai" 
 
 HOW often you hear the remark concerning some 
 distinguished player, " Oh, he does not really 
 act, you know ; he is just himself on the stage ! " The 
 person who understands the technic of the profession, 
 and, more broadly, has given thought to the underlying 
 principles of all art, will secretly smile when such 
 opinion is vented. For he is well aware that if the 
 actor did merely reproduce himself as he is off the 
 stage, he would be hopelessly ineffective. Players like 
 Maude Adams, Ethel Barrymore, John Drew, and 
 William Gillette, who seem, in the parlance of the day, 
 to be giving imitations of themselves, and nothing 
 more, are as likely as not envisaging character and de- 
 parting, by all the difference between art and life, from 
 what would be their private personality. It is true 
 that personality shines through the work; and in this 
 they differ from the so-called character actor who com- 
 pletely merges his external appearance in his part, 
 which from its nature allows him to do so. 
 
 It is a matter of fact that the other's problem is 
 a harder one: in spite of the lack of disguise, to con- 
 vey a sense of fictive character and to denote it by 
 other more hidden means than that of makeup and 
 182 
 
<S>n Eefna "Natural" 
 
 costume. Partridge, in Fielding's novel, it will be 
 recalled, when he was taken to the theater to hear 
 Garrick, could see nothing in the little man who only 
 did what anybody would do under the circumstances. 
 This was an unconscious tribute to the great English 
 player. 
 
 The point is that being " natural " on the stage is 
 being artificial in a way to simulate life, in reality 
 making use of an enlargement of life which is totally 
 different from life itself. Being " natural," in other 
 words, is seeming natural, a vastly different thing, and 
 the legitimate business of art always and ever: seem- 
 ing-true, verisimilitude that is the magic word 
 the shibboleth of the histrio, and of all artists, whatever 
 be their medium of expression. And this difference 
 between art and life is a thing little realized by the 
 Anglo-Saxon mind, practical as it is, and not over- 
 interested in the affairs of artistic representation. No 
 American actor more exquisitely illustrated the natural 
 method of impersonation than the late Joseph Jefferson. 
 Luckily, the present generation of playgoers was 
 brought up on him and can appreciate the reference. 
 And yet, as William Winter says in his admirable life 
 of the great comedian, that which came to the auditor's 
 ear as a sigh, left the actor's lips as a cry: the artificial 
 heightening of effect, necessary to carry to the last 
 seat of the theater, was there steadily, and had to be 
 there, to secure the desired result. 
 
 The difference between good and bad stage art, be- 
 
 183 
 
Xittle Essays tn Xfterature an& %tfe 
 
 tween a Jefferson and one of the Bulls of Bashan who 
 bellow forth their lines and throw the whole picture 
 out of focus, is that, while both are trying to do the 
 same thing, one is doing it by artistic, cunningly con- 
 cealed methods, the other by methods disgustingly un- 
 concealed. In the same way the platform speaker who 
 knows his business and proposes to use the modern 
 realistic technic, strives for an effect of colloquial, off- 
 hand utterance which nevertheless differs, as the earth 
 from the heavens, from the conversational tone of life. 
 To prove this, listen to a tyro who mounts the rostrum 
 and endeavors to chat familiarly with an audience, as he 
 would with two or three friends in private; you are 
 sorry for that man, and still more sorry for his hearers. 
 Indeed, he becomes ridiculous. 
 
 There is a law of the platform as inexorable as that 
 of gravitation: in proportion as his audience increases 
 in size, must the speaker enlarge all his method: his 
 voice must become more orotund, his diction change to 
 ampler rhythm, his gestures, so far as he makes any, 
 be accommodated to the larger space through which 
 they must travel. What would be just right for a 
 hundred people becomes painfully inadequate for a 
 thousand; and if five thousand be present, there is as 
 much difference, in the technical demand, from the 
 audience half the size, as there would be between that 
 and the small audience first assumed. These secrets 
 of the charnel-house do not need to be realized, of 
 course, by those in front. But it is perhaps well that 
 
n Being "matural" 
 
 the difficulties be occasionally brought to mind, in 
 order to give a more intelligent comprehension of all 
 art. The important principle, universally applicable, 
 is that it would not be art did it not differ from life. 
 And whenever that remark is made, intended as a 
 criticism, with regard to the actor walking through his 
 role, we may safely say two things about it: that it 
 is an unintended and naif compliment; and that it 
 also is an exposure of the speaker's complacent igno- 
 rance of the very elements of all good art. 
 
 I remember that Sir Thomas Browne, in one of his 
 essays, holds forth on the thought that God, since he 
 has created a beautiful universe, is a great artist. And 
 he pens this sentence : " Art is the perfection of Na- 
 ture," meaning by perfection the perfecting of what is 
 offered in the natural world. It is a deep saying by 
 the seventeenth century essayist. In a single, brief 
 sentence he tells the whole story so often lost sight of 
 in modern criticism. That is just what art is, and 
 therein lies its difference from the natural. It is not 
 mere reproduction of things in the world; it is re- 
 presentation, or presenting again, and with a change. 
 The change, the difference, involves greater symmetry, 
 the exclusion of all that is irrelevant and not signifi- 
 cant, a clearer bringing out of the meaning of it all: 
 that meaning which, in life itself, is often so misunder- 
 stood, so sadly beriddled and obscure. 
 
 In other words, it is the business of art to make us 
 see life with new eyes, see it mayhap for the first time, 
 
 185 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 because we have been so immersed in its tangle and 
 stunned by its discordant noises as never before to have 
 stopped, listened and understood. Watts's female 
 figure in his great picture, " Hope," is shown with 
 bandaged eyes, bending down to her harp, breathlessly 
 listening; to what? Surely, to that inner harmony of 
 things which unlocks the secret of a world. Going 
 about our business day by day, we hear it not; neither 
 the still, small voice within, nor the supernal music 
 ever sounding for us if only we have ears to hear and 
 can shut out the harsh sounds that circle us in life. 
 And along comes art to do us this service: to show 
 us perfect shapes where we see distortion ; to strike rich 
 chords of music, where for the most part our ears are 
 assaulted by mundane jars and shrieks and winnings; 
 to set down sweet, high things in books, when the 
 language of the street is mostly hieroglyphics; and to 
 send, as if from heaven itself, a promise of perfection 
 upon the myriad imperfections of earth. 
 
 Wise is he who sees that this is being more than 
 " natural," and that the divinity of art lies in the dif- 
 ference. 
 
 1 86 
 
Hutbor as 
 
 TN the ''Letters of George Meredith" we find 
 * that great Victorian author refusing a newspaper 
 interviewer with the remark that, in his opinion, the 
 public has no business with the private and personal 
 affairs of writers, save " as they are reputedly good 
 citizens." 
 
 The words are significant, especially as they are 
 squarely opposed to the current theory. Meredith be- 
 lieved and meant to say that an author's private life is 
 in a sense the public's, because there is an obligation 
 upon him to make his life square with his work. By 
 implication he would contend that a bad personal rep- 
 utation would injure the work in so far as it did not 
 correspond with the writer's professional and public 
 utterances: a knowledge by the reader of the disparity 
 between work and life leading to disillusionment and 
 consequent failure of effect. 
 
 This sounds very homely and old-fashioned, but is 
 all the more needed for that reason. It is of consider- 
 able significance that a confessed giant of nineteenth 
 century English literature should have felt this way. 
 The doctrine of the complete divorcement of work 
 from life, of art from moral obligation, is vastly pop- 
 
 187 
 
Xittle Bssass in Xiterature anfc Xffe 
 
 ular of late years. It has become somewhat quaint to 
 suggest that a great writer should be a decent man; 
 that his audience has a right to expect him to have 
 some sense of noblesse oblige. It was taken as a mat- 
 ter of course in earlier days, when authors like Dickens, 
 Reade, and Kingsley in England, or Longfellow, Whit- 
 tier, and Holmes in America would have been as- 
 tonished if anybody had argued with them that the 
 reading public had neither rights nor interest in their 
 personal conduct. The elder school of American 
 writers has won its present position in part because as a 
 group it represented ideals of conduct and character, 
 as well as accomplishment in letters. 
 
 But we have changed all that. To be degenerate is 
 now one way of setting up a claim to originality, as 
 if it were not more original to be good than bad; if 
 you doubt it, consult statistics. And any notion that a 
 genius should obey the laws that alone make society 
 possible is smiled at as too puerile to discuss. Genius 
 is insanity, cries Nordau, why then expect it to be other 
 than irregular! How preciously worth while the evil 
 course of life of this poet, says a distinguished critic, 
 when it gave us such and such a sonnet! 
 
 The latter-day criers-up of moral irresponsibility 
 should be a little less loud-mouthed and arrogant; be- 
 fore assuming that their contention is right, and the 
 Meredithian view antique and wrong, they might at 
 least first furnish us with the demonstration of the 
 practical results of their theory: give us authors who 
 1 88 
 
Hutbor as Cftijen 
 
 swear by the new creed and give the world books of 
 anything like equal caliber with the despised elders who 
 were so naif as actually to think there was a con- 
 nection between a man's way of living and the expres- 
 sion of himself and his experience in life which we 
 call literature. Contribution against contribution, the 
 comparison should have a rather sobering effect upon 
 the advocates of go-as-you-please ethics. 
 
 The complete fallacy in the idea that the two can be 
 or should be severed may be stated in this way: man, 
 generically, is a morally responsible being. That basal 
 fact was settled some time ago, and remains placidly 
 unshaken by all the parlor pseudo-philosophers and 
 posing perverts from Adam to annihilation. And an 
 author is nothing more nor less than man, writing. 
 Ergo, since the greater contains the less, inasmuch as 
 the human race, whether it pleases particular members 
 thereof or not, comes and must come under the moral 
 law, any attempt to exempt the author from human 
 responsibility is futile, silly and fatuously illogical. 
 The author must pay the penalty, as well as enter 
 on the privilege, of being a human being in his art, 
 quite as truly as he must in his life. He does not cease 
 to be the one when he becomes the other. To dodge this 
 plain fact is to move in the direction of vain striving, 
 repulsive excesses and false thinking. 
 
 It is really extraordinary, nevertheless, how many 
 folk seem impatient to-day, in print or out of it, at any 
 apparent restraint (as they term it) upon the personal 
 
Xtttle Essays in Xiterature an& Xife 
 
 action of those who influence the world through the 
 spoken and written word. " Let them give us worthy 
 work," they shout, " and that is all we have a right to 
 ask; anything more is impertinent meddling." This 
 would be not only plausible but convincing if only one 
 could dispossess one's mind of the very modern reflec- 
 tion that each man (including all writers) is a part of 
 the social body, and that nothing is surer than that 
 we may not live apart and unto ourselves alone, being 
 rather members of the one great body, which sensi- 
 tively feels the action of each in the life of all. The 
 notion that the genius may, like Dundreary's bird, go 
 and flock all by himself in a corner, does not belong 
 in the twentieth century, but savors of the Dark Ages. 
 The only excuse for a man to make a hermit of himself, 
 either mentally or physically, in this enlightened time, 
 be he prince, poet or peasant, is the affliction of some 
 disease of the mind or body which makes him ob- 
 jectionable to his fellow men. 
 
 Independence of soul, freedom in expressing one's 
 views and conclusions, is of the very essence of charac- 
 ter, and to demand of the writer that he tamely submit 
 to the opinions of others and make of himself a sort 
 of household pet, instead of the voice of one crying in 
 the wilderness, were of all things most foolish; it 
 would eviscerate letters and leave only imitation and 
 milk-and-water amusement. The trouble only begins 
 when the author takes advantage of the liberty properly 
 granted to him that he may say his say without fear or 
 190 
 
Hutbot as Cftisen 
 
 favor and, declaring himself practically outside and be- 
 yond all law and order, substitutes license for liberty and 
 the untrammeled presentation of eccentricity and de- 
 generacy for a sane handling of life. 
 
 The fact is, we incline in this day of individualism to 
 talk too much about rights and too little about duties, 
 which are as closely associated with the former as a 
 man's shadow with his body. There is a good philo- 
 sophical argument for the contention that, strictly 
 speaking, no such things as " rights " exist. What we 
 mean by the word is that, in the evolution of society, 
 social thought comes to see that by granting certain 
 privileges to the individual he will evolve the better, 
 it will be to his advantage, and therefore make for 
 the general weal as well. In other words, a right is 
 an ethical concession made by society upon the ba- 
 sis of an altruistic sentiment and commonsense. 
 Whether there be a " natural right," in the usual 
 meaning of the phrase, may well be debated, if not 
 doubted : for example, woman's rights. But no, I have 
 registered a vow in heaven to leave that theme alone! 
 
 191 
 
California flDission fiMa? 
 
 ONE of the most interesting and significant of 
 American dramas has come out of California 
 life. I refer to the so-called mission play, given with 
 marked success for ten weeks during the summer of 
 1912 at San Gabriel, a few miles outside of Pasadena. 
 The drama is the work of John S. McGroarty, a Los 
 Angeles editor and historian, who has long studied 
 the state annals. 
 
 A little group of enthusiasts, fired by the thought of 
 an impressive pageant play which should tell the story 
 of the founding of the Spanish missions along the 
 beautiful southern coast, banded themselves together 
 to make the dream a reality. Just across the way 
 from the quaint old mission church which tourists visit 
 as a matter of course, they erected a unique theater 
 building in the mission style to house the idea; and 
 there at last, to the sound of a great bell hung from 
 the dark rafters stained to suggest the past, the superb 
 tapestried curtain, set in a great gilt frame as if it 
 were some rich old medieval picture, parted and the 
 audience saw the blue Pacific, with a jutting headland 
 on the horizon and sundry lazing Spanish soldiers in 
 192 
 
Ube California /iDission 
 
 the foreground. It was a scene finely suggesting the 
 picturesqueness of the vanished years. 
 
 The play is cast in three acts, and the central figure 
 is Father Junipero, the pioneer priest leader of the 
 wonderful early work. For two acts he is before the 
 spectator: first at False Bay in 1769, in the days when 
 he was striving, with intense religious fervor, to con- 
 vert the native Indians. The half-starved Spaniards of 
 the expedition are deaf to his passionate pleading that 
 they remain until his mission be accomplished. The 
 governor, Don Caspar de Portola, has gone to Mon- 
 terey for help ; he returns with his troopers nearly dead 
 from privations. The priest begs them not to go back 
 to Mexico, and just as he seems to fail, the relief ship, 
 sharp limned against the sunset, rounds Point Loma; 
 Junipero's prayer is answered. It makes a splendid 
 stage picture for the first-act curtain. 
 
 In act second we are within the walls of the mission 
 of San Carlos; a generation has passed, and Father 
 Junipero is an old, white-haired man. To him flock 
 the padres from the other missions scattered up and 
 down the California shore; he has seen the travail of 
 his soul and is satisfied; for, as one after the other 
 makes his report, we hear of Indians christianized by 
 the thousands, where before not a single baptism had 
 occurred. After the reports there is merry-making; 
 Indians and Spaniards dance and sing their typical 
 songs. And with Junipero's prayer for the welfare of 
 the mission long after he has departed, which must 
 193 
 
Xittle Essays in Xtterature anD %tfe 
 
 be soon, the act closes. It is a charming scene, full of 
 bustle, color, and truth, though far less dramatic 
 than the previous one. 
 
 The final stage of the story is enacted at the ruined 
 mission of San Juan Capistrano in the year 1847. 
 The padres are dead, their work is forgotten; an old 
 Mexican caretaker guards the place for the Ameri- 
 canos, and the gaunt Indians in the desert dare hardly 
 approach it. A beautiful Spanish senora, type of the 
 old regime, enters, rebukes the present greed that pro- 
 fanes God's temple, and says a sad farewell to the 
 past: 
 
 " Farewell, dear place. Sleep well, ye tender dead 
 padres, my countrymen. No more thy feet shall come 
 again. Fallen is the altar, and the roof is in the dust. 
 San Juan of God, farewell." 
 
 While the tragic poetry, the wistful, backward- 
 looking pathos of this last picture is undeniable, dramat- 
 ically it is weak; and a serious artistic blemish in the 
 piece as a whole lies in the elimination of the central 
 personage, Junipero, whose career binds together two- 
 thirds of the play. Even in an historical pageant this 
 jars one's sense of unity. The change, too, to the 
 melancholy, at times bitter, note of protest is a ques- 
 tionable shift of key, and the introduction of a miracle 
 the sudden illumination of a golden cup set upon 
 an altar after the manner of the Holy Grail again 
 suggests an appeal less broadly sympathetic than that 
 of the preceding acts. 
 
 194 
 
ZTbe California Mission 
 
 But one prefers to dwell upon the excellencies of 
 both play and performance, which are many. The 
 parts of Junipero and the senora are admirably han- 
 dled by C. H. Horning and Lilian Burkhardt, and the 
 subsidiary characters are all acted in a way to produce 
 any exceptional ensemble effect. But the dominant 
 memory is of the wonderfully effective groupings and 
 massings whereby broad pictures are given, ever re- 
 composing, yet never at loose ends. About three hun- 
 dred people are so manipulated that no one appears 
 supernumerary, but rather each becomes an organic 
 part of the composition. Richard Mansfield, Henry 
 Irving, or Beerbohm Tree at their best never sur- 
 passed these California players in this respect, so vital 
 to the success of a spectacle. The credit for this 
 handling of a mob is due to Mr. Horning, while the 
 scenic side is the work of Henry Kabierske. 
 
 Between the acts, curtains are drawn covering aper- 
 tures at the sides of the theater, and through these 
 one walks out to a path which circles the building, 
 and displays models of all the missions, with their 
 dates given, against a painted background of mountain 
 and sky. Seen from within the darkened auditorium, 
 the loopholes make a perfect illusion, one in tone with 
 the .subject-matter on the stage. 
 
 I saw the play twice, the second time at the last 
 
 matinee of the season, when the large house held 
 
 twenty-five hundred people. So great has been the 
 
 success of the venture this year that the drama will 
 
 195 
 
Little Essays in Literature anfc Life 
 
 again be given daily, and the intent is to make it a 
 permanent entertainment. While I do not doubt that 
 it would win plaudits anywhere, there is a peculiar 
 fitness in continuing it at San Gabriel, so rich in 
 Spanish memories, amid a setting in harmony with its 
 sentiment and story. 
 
 Such a pageant play is more than amusement. In 
 producing it, California, with her unexcelled oppor- 
 tunities for historic pageantry, has placed it with such 
 other pageants in this country as those of Gloucester, 
 Peterborough, and Chicago, notifying the American 
 public that it is as yet hardly awake to the fine pos- 
 sibilities of utilizing native history in memorial scenic, 
 musical, and dramatic forms, in suchwise as to illu- 
 minate the dry annals of the past droned over in school, 
 and so to stimulate patriotism in the younger genera- 
 tion. It is hardly too much to say that the state of 
 California could afford to pay the entrance fee to this 
 mission play for all the children of the commonwealth, 
 for the sake of its influence in fostering intelligent 
 citizenship. When a more enlightened view of the 
 theater, and of education in general, prevails, such 
 expenditures will be a matter of course. 
 
 Surely here is one of the pleasant signs of the day: 
 history and religion brought home to the multitude 
 through scene and act. It made me realize anew the 
 power of the play when, as in the elder days, it was 
 devoted to the noblest themes and was openly aimed 
 at the souls of men. 
 
 196 
 
H TRemarfc of Ibajittt's 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT, in one of his essays, 
 dilates upon the superficial treatment of char- 
 acter on the stage, compared with character as it is 
 delineated in fiction. " The stage," he says, " shows 
 us the masks of men, and the pageant of the world ; 
 books let us into their souls and lay open to us the 
 secrets of our own." 
 
 Hazlitt, mighty book lover that he was, and having 
 his own time in mind, was quite justified in the remark. 
 Yet it is the distinction of the new era in drama to out- 
 date his view, because the stage has now, for a genera- 
 tion, been drawing human beings and presenting them 
 with more and more of the care and faithful transcrip- 
 tion of truth which formerly were the peculiar province 
 of that other form of story-telling which we commonly 
 call fiction. 
 
 Little by little, the drama has striven for a more 
 truthful picture of life, and has gradually tried to avoid 
 the conventional treatment of men and women which 
 the stern limitation of the theater and a tradition which 
 placed plot before characterization have imposed upon 
 the playmaker. Such dramatists to-day as Pinero and 
 Jones, Barrie, Shaw, Galsworthy and Bennett, to name 
 197 
 
Xittle B0sas0 in ^Literature anfc SLife 
 
 but a conspicuous few, have limned human beings with 
 a fidelity to the facts such as was unknown fifty years 
 ago. 
 
 Plot has been subordinated to this purpose of reveal- 
 ing character, and so teaching the world of spectators 
 with regard to the great fundamental laws of social life. 
 The individual's relation to society, society's effect upon 
 the individual, the rights, duties, obligations and 
 dangers of the person in his relation to others in the 
 social complex: to portray these have become the aim 
 and ambition of our best and most representative 
 dramatists. Their function has been taken more seri- 
 ously than ever before, and the drama resulting, while 
 it may have sometimes sacrificed something of the 
 pleasurableness of the picture, has thereby gained in 
 depth, and breadth, and serious meaning. It is this 
 new seriousness of purpose, this attempt to interpret 
 with truthfulness character in its relation to society, 
 which is the essential stamp of the drama of to-day. 
 
 It must not be lost sight of, however, that the inevi- 
 table restrictions of the stage, whereupon a piece of life 
 has to be exhibited in about two hours' time, whereas a 
 novel can in leisurely fashion trace through six or seven 
 hundred pages the minutiae of the interactions of a 
 group of lives, cannot do, and never will, what fiction 
 can, in the subtle analysis of motives, impulses, and 
 thoughts. The drama means action above all else, as 
 the etymology of the word shows. Therefore, in the 
 main, character must be shown in its external indica- 
 198 
 
H IRemark of 
 
 tions of action, and woe to that playwright, be he 
 Granville Barker or another, who endeavors within 
 his " two hours' traffic of the stage " to present the 
 smaller signs of character differentiation; he must put 
 his finger upon the big things, the things that are char- 
 acteristic, revelatory, convincing, and leave the other 
 method to be used by the sister form of fiction. 
 
 This the audience has a right to demand; and in 
 spite of its increasing willingness to see a finer, more 
 discriminating handling of men and women on the 
 stage, so that the villain is seen to have his good points, 
 and the hero his human failings, any attempt to use a 
 Henry James canvas and paint with a camel's-hair 
 brush is foredoomed to failure and ought to be. The 
 dramatist must not blur his figures, and for him the 
 cardinal virtue is clearness. 
 
 Fiction can always say a thing and take it back ; not 
 so the play, which must say a thing, say it hard, repeat 
 it, and stick to it. It is good technic in a novel to fool 
 the reader by a surprise at the end ; Anna Katherine 
 Green has taken money from us all in that way. But 
 it should not be done on the stage, where the proper 
 method is to let the audience into a secret not yet dis- 
 covered by the stage people ; our pleasure in part comes 
 from our superior knowledge, as we watch to see how 
 the dramatis personae will act when they come to learn 
 what we already know. 
 
 With this reservation, we may fairly take pride in 
 the fact that an advance in the drama has largely nulli- 
 199 
 
OLfttle Essays fn ^Literature an& 
 
 fied Hazlitt's remark. Using a broader method, and 
 obeying the stage limitations, it is fast furnishing us 
 with portraits of humanity as it is to-day which at the 
 best rival the fine characterizations of fiction. Not 
 merely masks are they, but living souls; and beneath 
 the " pageant of the world," in Hazlitt's phrase, we are 
 able to detect and take pleasure in the recognition of 
 the springs of action and the contours of life. 
 
 200 
 
fiDarfc Gwain 
 
 A GREAT humorist is only such when he is more 
 than humorist. He must be a thinker, a moralist, 
 a reformer. Recall Rabelais, Aristophanes, Cervantes, 
 Shakspere, and Dickens, to see how true it is. Man 
 laughs because, dowered with self-consciousness, he is 
 aware of the tragedy of life with its incongruities, 
 ironies and antinomies, and needs the alleviation of 
 fun, the 
 
 Respite, respite and Nepenthe. 
 
 The humorist comes to make him smile sympathetic- 
 ally at the foibles of humanity, to satirize folly and 
 fraud, and to remind him of the brotherhood of the 
 race. If he did no more than soothe pain and sorrow, 
 he would be most welcome, his mission salutary; but 
 when the humorist rises to his highest power, he not 
 only smiles away care, but castigates the sinner 
 (Juvenal with his castigat ridendo), and while he shakes 
 the midriff with Homeric laughter sweetens the air and 
 the soul of man with charitable thoughts. Every nation, 
 like every man, is known by the company it keeps ; if it 
 produces a great humorist, the race is revealed by and 
 in him, because in the mood of play, of fun and laugh- 
 201 
 
Xtttle Bssass in Xtterature an& Xife 
 
 ter, one catches it off guard and listens to the very 
 heart-beat of a people. 
 
 Mark Twain was intensely modern, democratic, rep- 
 resentatively American. To those who knew him 
 personally, and that privilege was mine for years as 
 his Hartford neighbor, he was worlds removed from 
 the newspaper funny man. He was no mountebank in 
 motley wear, shaking the fool's zany for the momen- 
 tary, thoughtless merriment of the crowd, but a wise, 
 sane, deep-souled man teaching us the lesson of life. 
 
 Indeed, in private conversation he was the most 
 serious-minded, yes, somber-minded man I have ever 
 known. Certain external denotements were, of course, 
 laugh-provoking: the rich, nasal drawl, the racy idiom 
 that was as natural to him as the drawing of breath. 
 But the mind was ever sober, even solemn. His mind 
 was broad and faced the awful realities of life; his 
 heart was bigger yet, and no man so richly endowed 
 emotionally could snicker over trivialities. That is 
 the first thing to realize about him. 
 
 For this reason, his career, splendidly successful as 
 the world rates success, was in a sense tragic. The 
 great reading public and those who did not read, yet 
 to whom his name was a household word, as once 
 were the names of Barnum and Beecher, insisted on 
 taking him as a funny man. He felt that he could 
 hardly get a contemporary hearing for what was in 
 him, or, at least, for what was deepest. Doubtless, 
 there were elements of his genius which gave some 
 202 
 
/iDarfe 
 
 ground for this: exaggeration, irreverence, horse play. 
 But to stop there were pitifully to misunderstand the 
 man. Hardly a book of his fails to have an underlying 
 serious purpose, the reformatory instinct, the corrective 
 suggestion. If he made fun of King Arthur's time, he 
 wished to show the false romanticizing over the past 
 and to cry up the present as a better day. If he at- 
 tacked Christian Science or the Bacon-Shakspere ques- 
 tion, it was not primarily for the sake of ridicule, but 
 to point out what seemed to him the dangerous ab- 
 surdity of a certain view. It is so throughout his 
 works. 
 
 Mark Twain made fun of many things. But of 
 one thing he was as tender as a woman, as loyal as 
 a lover, as delicate as a maid: namely, the good that 
 is in common humanity. The reverence and faith that 
 were royally in his nature were given to this cause, 
 and he wrought for righteousness as he saw it. He 
 hated Sham as the devil hates holy water. This it 
 was which made him so American, and in a true sense 
 a moralist. He was a believer in the dignity and 
 worth of humankind, especially under crude, new- 
 world conditions ; in other words, he was in the widest, 
 deepest sense a democrat. Of the- people himself, he 
 stood for them, spoke for them, understood and loved 
 them. He was, in this respect, of the lineage of Lin- 
 coln. And so, while his method and manner may 
 shock some to whom conventions and traditions are 
 paramount, he never repels us, as does Dean Swift with 
 203 
 
OLtttle Essays in ^literature an& Xife 
 
 his savage, almost malignant inhumanity, or Bernard 
 Shaw with his arrogant disclaimer of emotional values. 
 One never gets from him 
 
 The laugh mistimed in tragic presences, 
 
 there is never bitterness in his mirth. I know that 
 he was in heart a sad man; but whatever the private 
 sorrow, it was not allowed to sour the written word. 
 As a man of letters he had a sense, none keener, of 
 the obligations of art. 
 
 Mark Twain was a voluminous writer, a man of 
 perhaps forty books. Naturally, time will slowly 
 decimate the list. But it is not difficult even for a 
 contemporary to see that certain works will be chosen 
 out of his long, toilful effort to mark his quality. The 
 forms of his work are many, yet at bottom he was an 
 essayist; and travel-sketch, tale, full-length fiction, 
 speech, and historical study were all essay, because they 
 were just Mark Twain talking, revealing beneath this 
 or that veil his striking personality and setting forth, 
 for the benefit of fellow men, the catholic outlook 
 and inlook of a remarkable mind and a generous na- 
 ture. 
 
 Such are the early books, " Roughing It " and " In- 
 nocents Abroad " ; both, unlike as they seem, do the 
 same service: they reveal the American type under dif- 
 ferent circumstances, the one in pioneer days on his 
 own soil, the other in a European setting. The 
 American at Home and Abroad might well be the 
 204 
 
jflDarfc TTwain 
 
 running title. Such also are the two great boy books, 
 " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer " and " The Ad- 
 ventures of Huckleberry Finn," studies of the Ameri- 
 can lad in contrasted, primitive habitats and exhibiting 
 him in his habit as he lived in now bygone days. This 
 brace of books, the former largely autobiographic, con- 
 stitutes the epic of boyhood, the romance and poetry 
 of life, seen through young eyes in surroundings that, 
 to a gentler training, might seem harsh and homely. 
 But what matters that the speech be rustic, that the 
 setting be crude, that the incidents smack of the soil? 
 Life is a precious thing to these lads, and so Huck and 
 Tom will last with the quaint English speech in which 
 they are embalmed, and keep a morning freshness. 
 Nor is there aught higher or harder than this to ac- 
 complish in the literary endeavor. 
 
 Nor in the category of his best should that beauti- 
 ful little masterpiece, " The Prince and the Pauper," 
 be forgotten ; nor a score of short stories, among which 
 " The Jumping Frog " is a prime favorite, the tale 
 that first gave him fame. Nor can we overlook, among 
 the later works, " Life on the Mississippi," wherein 
 so much of his earlier experience finds graphic repro- 
 duction ; nor that strange, haunting novel, " Pud- 
 d'nhead Wilson," half melodrama, half psychologic 
 romance, and surely one of the finest flowers of his 
 gift. Six or eight books like these, with enough other 
 titles to round out a dozen volumes, will embrace a 
 permanent contribution to American history, to the 
 205 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^Literature anfc !fcife 
 
 native letters, in truth, to the literature of English 
 speech. The British critics have been inclined to say 
 this, before the American. 
 
 Perhaps he repeated himself in his maturest work, 
 at least externally; but there are qualities both of 
 thought and of temperament in the writings of his last 
 years not so fully disclosed in the books that came be- 
 fore. He matured late, and grew mellower, sweeter, 
 more perceptive to the end. In thinking of Mark 
 Twain as a literary force, rather than as a Don Quix- 
 ote riding atilt against all the windmills of Sham, it 
 must also be borne in mind that, quite aside from 
 humor, much of his writing contains passages of noble 
 prose, that any author would covet to claim. Descrip- 
 tive pages in " Roughing It " there are, admirable for 
 picturesqueness, melody and masculine grip on the 
 mother tongue. "The Prince and the Pauper" is a 
 most skilful example of tonality, the right key steadily 
 maintained. The boy books, before mentioned, are a 
 veritable treasure house for dialogue, description and 
 dramatic situation. There are scenes, too, in " Pud- 
 d'nhead Wilson " unforgettable for reality that is lifted 
 into romance by a poet's touch. Nor does this west- 
 ern American lose strength in foreign parts; every 
 reader familiar with his descriptions of travel must 
 feel that on many a page, Germany, Italy and yet other 
 lands are limned with master strokes. Especially is 
 this true in the delineation of Nature, where often 
 Mark Twain is at his happiest. It was the commonly 
 206 
 
Uwain 
 
 expressed opinion in the old Hartford days a city 
 then the haunt of writing folk that here was a 
 wonderful talker, a prose poet in his daily converse. 
 Much of this quality got into his books, although it 
 may be obscured, more 's the pity ! in the dominant note 
 of broad Rabelaisean fun. 
 
 In the final reckoning of the American men of let- 
 ters who have honored us by carrying the country's 
 name beyond our borders, but a very few appear to be 
 of assured permanence. We know now that Emerson 
 and Hawthorne are safe to be of the number; that 
 Longfellow and Lowell may be added to the list, and 
 perchance Whitman. That Mark Twain is likely to 
 be of the company, few critics will hesitate to affirm. 
 It is a select gathering, but our master humorist, who 
 taught us to see life with sane vision, to respect our 
 own, and who commanded tears and smiles as only 
 the great men have, for both correction and consola- 
 tion, will not shame the others. Meanwhile he has 
 sure haven in innumerable human hearts. 
 
 To one who remembers him in former days, there 
 is something appropriate in his recent passing. The 
 sometime happy home, sanctified by love and lightened 
 by the laughter of children, had been long since broken 
 by the insatiate years; one by one the dear ones had 
 preceded him " To where beyond these voices there is 
 peace," and as these inevitable changes marred him, 
 and he was left alone and lonesome, a piercing 
 stanza of Wordsworth's has persisted in my mind as 
 207 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature an& Olife 
 
 singularly applicable, felicitous with a strange, sad 
 felicity : 
 
 If there be one who need bemoan 
 
 His kindred laid in earth, 
 The household hearts that were his own, 
 
 It is the man of mirth. 
 
 Yes, Mark Twain had earned his rest, and now he 
 takes it, by the side of his beloved : where, at the last, 
 every man would fain be: 
 
 "He loved his fellows and their love was sweet; 
 Plant daisies at his head and at his feet." 
 
 208 
 
" 
 
 Hntigone" at tbe (Breefc Gbeater 
 
 / T" S O witness a great Greek tragedy, interpreted by 
 * one of the best modern actors, in a Greek 
 theater which is the most perfect reproduction of the 
 ancient model in existence, and in a setting of Nature 
 of such incomparable beauty that Greece itself could 
 not surpass the effect, may be called an unusual ex- 
 perience. That is what I and some six thousand other 
 human beings enjoyed on an evening in June, at 
 Berkeley, California, an evening so superb that it 
 seemed made expressly for an outdoor performance. 
 The Greek theater on the campus of the University 
 of California was the gift of William R. Hearst and 
 is a restoration of the theater at Epidaurus dating from 
 the fourth century B. C. It seats eight thousand 
 persons and is built upon a hillside surrounded by a 
 magnificent grove of eucalyptus trees. The stone tiers 
 rise gleamingly in a steep, concentric semicircle; above 
 and back of them is the stately black of the tall tree 
 boles, the susurrus of the branches seeming to make a 
 mystic comment on the scene; while, far overhead, the 
 keen glitter of stars, the wonderful gold stars of Cali- 
 fornia, lights the demi-darkness : a sort of supernal 
 stage setting for the human business below. This site, 
 209 
 
3Ltttie Essays in ^Literature anfc %ife 
 
 with its marvelous natural attractions, had been used 
 for several years by the student body for their academic 
 gatherings when President Wheeler drew Mrs. 
 Hearst's attention to its fitness for a temple of art 
 which should be a center of University activities. 
 Thereupon, she interested her son in the idea, with the 
 result that he became the donor. Here, every year 
 now since the theater was erected in 1905, admirable 
 student productions of drama or productions by visit- 
 ing professionals are made : Aristophanes' " The 
 Birds"; Sophocles' "GEdipus"; Racine's "Phedre"; 
 " As You Like It," with Maude Adams ; the morality 
 play, " Everyman," by the original English company, 
 and Stephen Phillips' " Nero " may be mentioned as 
 a few typical performances. The theater is also used 
 for lectures, orchestral concerts and the commencement 
 exercises, its splendid acoustic properties making it an 
 ideal place for all such purposes. When it was empty 
 I stood on the stage and, speaking without the slightest 
 change from a conversational tone, was perfectly under- 
 stood by a friend in the topmost seat. In this respect 
 is it almost as remarkable as the Mormon tabernacle at 
 Salt Lake City, which, it will be recalled, has the ad- 
 vantage of a roofed auditorium. The influence of 
 such a structure, dedicated to such usages, upon the 
 life of the University, can well be imagined. 
 
 As a structure, it consists of the auditorium and 
 the stage built of concrete, raised six feet from the 
 ground, with a broad walk between which accom- 
 210 
 
Ube "Bntigone" at tbe Greek Ubeatet 
 
 modates the orchestra. The semicircle of seats meas- 
 ures two hundred and fifty-four feet; the stage is one 
 hundred and thirty-three feet long with a depth of 
 twenty-eight feet; it is austerely stripped of scenery, 
 but its massive back wall, representing a palace front 
 and pierced at the center by the great royal door, the 
 entrance for the characters of noble lineage, like the 
 gallery above the Elizabethan stage, constitutes an 
 immensely impressive stage setting. This stage is 
 larger than the classic model, in order that an un- 
 obstructed view may be afforded every spectator. In 
 all essentials, however, it is a faithful rendering of 
 that theater of antiquity which Pausanias declared to 
 be the most beautiful in the world, as it is to-day the 
 best preserved. 
 
 On the " Antigone " night the handling of lights 
 was very skilful, and I for one shall never forget 
 the effect when, at the drama's beginning, two slaves 
 appeared at the palace door and lighted the altar flame, 
 which then furnished the half-lucent atmosphere for 
 the doomed girl's first entrance. It set the mood at 
 once; back flew the imagination, two thousand years 
 and more; the glory that was Greece resumed its 
 old, imperial sway, and the soul was attuned to the 
 simple, sculpturesque, heroic, tremendous story of a 
 sister's love for a brother and how that love led to 
 many deaths an elemental tragedy of kin. 
 
 So many fascinating questions were raised by the 
 performance of a play hitherto only known by the re- 
 211 
 
3Littie Bssass in ^Literature an& Xite 
 
 readings of many years, that I would fain make a 
 book about it rather than a brief essay. The alleged 
 fatalism of the Greek drama, the use of the chorus, 
 the value of a continuous performance (just two hours 
 and twenty minutes was the playing time, with no 
 modern entr'acte breaks), the relative excellence of 
 the ancient heroic and modern psychologic style of 
 acting, the use of melodrama, that is, music-drama, 
 in the strict etymological sense, these and yet other 
 problems vital to the scholar throng the mind. Per- 
 sonally, I was so exalted by this evocation of the 
 Past, that bed seemed an absurdity, and I welcomed 
 an invitation to an after-theater supper in San Fran- 
 cisco with Miss Anglin as hostess, there to thresh out 
 with her, her company, and such persons as George 
 Riddle, who was the actress's right-hand man in the 
 production, Percy MacKaye, and James O'Donnell 
 Bennett, the flocking questions of the play, the 
 eternally alluring matters of art. 
 
 But the broader human appeal of the drama and 
 its interpretation by the players, these are, I suppose, 
 of widest interest. The star's work was, it seemed 
 to me, of most remarkable power and loveliness. At 
 times during the evening I caught myself in the query : 
 " Could Rachel have surpassed this ? " Miss Anglin 
 from the moment of her first entrance firmly seized 
 the Sophoclean spirit of the thing. She keyed her 
 rendition to that antique austerity of effect, slow-mov- 
 ing, stately, which is of the very essence of Greek 
 212 
 
ZTbe "Bntioone" at tbe Creefe Ubeater 
 
 genius. It was a terribly difficult task for a player 
 whose forte lies in the plastic modulations of modern 
 emotional work, like " Mrs. Dane's Defense," in 
 which I had just seen her. It speaks much for Miss 
 Anglin's art that she could pass from that instantly 
 and speak blank verse poetry with the noble enlarge- 
 ment which properly accompanies the statuesque move- 
 ment and grave tempo of the Greek drama. 
 
 For clarity of utterance and vocalic range and 
 flexibility her voice work was extraordinary: not a 
 word, not a syllable, was lost by the great audience, 
 even a whisper carried. To the heated imagination, 
 it was as if the very stars could hear and vibrate their 
 approval. Nothing on the vocal side was perhaps so 
 unique as her deft adjustment of the speaking voice to 
 certain musical notes sounded by the chorus at re- 
 current moments, when she not so much spoke as 
 chanted the emotions called forth by the poet's senti- 
 ments. Nobly, too, did she envisage the part; not a 
 large woman, she yet conveyed the true heroic idea 
 by sweep of gesture, amplitude of walk, and dignity 
 of carriage. And she so skilfully blended imperious 
 moral indignation with the piteousness of forsaken, 
 doomed girlhood, as to make one hear the flute notes 
 and the trumpet notes, defiance and pathos inter- 
 mingling, in the character of Antigone. 
 
 The support was admirable. Eugene Ormonde, 
 Miss Anglin's leading man for several seasons, played 
 the exceedingly difficult role of Creon, the king, in 
 213 
 
Xfttle Essays in Xiterature ant) OLife 
 
 a way to bring out clearly his qualities of stiff-necked 
 pride and slow yielding to the teachings of Fate. Spe- 
 cially good was the leader of the chorus, and the mes- 
 senger was remarkably vocalized by a young player, 
 Eugene Shakspere, a name which did no violence to 
 the family tradition. The seer Tiresias, in the hands 
 of John R. Crawford, Creon's son, Hasmon, played 
 by Howard Hull, and Ismene, Antigone's sister, 
 by Miss Frances Jordan, were excellent delineations 
 all. 
 
 It may be said of the cast, as a whole, that they 
 threw themselves with keen ardor into the spirit of 
 the piece and the occasion, as the star most generously 
 acknowledged. Mendelssohn's lovely music for the 
 " Antigone " was rendered by an orchestra of fifty 
 pieces under the leadership of Dr. Wulle, head of the 
 department of music at the University, and was well 
 handled both by chorus and orchestra. But I for one 
 could not but feel that it was too modern, too romantic 
 for the grand simplicity of the theme, and pulled it 
 in the direction of opera at times; to which may be 
 added that the words of the chorus, so integral a part 
 of the Greek play, the poetico-philosophic comment on 
 the course of the story, a function like that of the 
 Prologue and Epilogue in earlier English drama, were 
 rarely distinguishable. Had they been intoned in 
 unison, it might perhaps have been otherwise. 
 
 One opinion I am confirmed in, after hearing the 
 " Antigone " : that in every way it is better dramatic 
 214 
 
TTbe "HntfQone" at tbe (Breefe ^beater 
 
 art, and more enjoyable for the spectators, to have an 
 uninterrupted performance of a play instead of the 
 stupid modern intermissions. Sooner or later (mark 
 the prophecy!) we shall return to the "scene in- 
 dividable " of Shakspere and the Greeks, thereby re- 
 storing the artistic unity of the play, preserving the 
 proper mood on the part of the auditor and, for a 
 practical consideration, getting home earlier than with 
 the present mode. The two hours and more of the 
 " Antigone " made the shortest theater evening I have 
 experienced for years. 
 
 It is the usual thing to say that the Greek drama 
 was fatalistic, where the modern is a drama of the 
 human will. That is, the Greek represents events as 
 controlled by an outer force, the gods pushing hu- 
 mans to their destined ends, irrespective of their at- 
 tempts to exercise will power. I have questioned this 
 sweeping statement, for myself, for years: and the 
 doubt was deepened by witnessing the " Antigone." 
 To be sure, there is a sense of impending doom in the 
 cumulative, dire happenings of the tale, a kind of 
 logic of the tragic. Yet the human will works freely 
 and the essence of the tragic clash lies in the con- 
 trasted ideals of Creon, who stands for a paramount 
 sense of duty to the state, and of his niece, with 
 whom kin ties and their religious obligations come 
 first. In other words, it is a will drama quite as 
 truly as a fate drama, all professors and critics to the 
 contrary notwithstanding. And I suspect that this is 
 215 
 
Xittie Essays in ^Literature an& Olife 
 
 more or less true of the whole body of so-called classic 
 drama. 
 
 As a theme, there can be no question of the dramatic 
 value of the " Antigone " ; but in the conductment 
 thereof, the method is so different from ours as to make 
 one who desires the sharp sensations of the modern 
 " curtain " feel cheated of his due. Many were 
 frankly bored by the performance, as I could gather 
 from remarks in the audience. For one illustrative 
 detail : within five minutes of Antigone's first entrance, 
 practically the whole story is before the spectators and, 
 in truth, the Greek audience, speaking by and large, 
 knew in advance the great myths and family legends 
 which were the stock-in-trade of the dramatists. 
 Hence, there was little or none of the surprise, the 
 suspensive interest, so much coveted in our modern 
 play-making. Nor are there swift or subtle moments 
 in this drama; for those you must substitute the stately 
 massed effects, the monumental, not to say marmoreal, 
 woes of beings, whose flowing robes typify the large 
 outlines, the majestic depths of their nature, resting 
 content on the feeling begotten of the impersonal march 
 of Fate and the impenetrable, mighty minds of 
 the eternal gods. Aristotle's famed remark, that 
 poetic tragedy should purge the mind through the 
 emotions of pity and terror, receives genuine illumina- 
 tion from the mere witnessing of a representative Greek 
 drama adequately performed. It somehow gives you 
 a sense of the bigness, the awesomeness of life, its 
 216 
 
Ube "Bnttgone" at tbe (Breefe ZTbeater 
 
 stern obeyance of law, its indestructible moral founda- 
 tions ; it puts " the fear of God," in the sense of the 
 splendid Old Testament phrase, in your soul. 
 
 And so, with teeming mind and awakened imagina- 
 tion, I go back to what will be with me really one of 
 the few great memories. O! the gold-dusted deeps 
 of indigo blue night-sky, the rich, romantic music of 
 the German master, the demi-lights of the stage, with 
 its gleams of marble, its sweep of varicolored gar- 
 ments: and just beyond, the silence of the vast, hud- 
 dled throng! And in the midst of it all, dominating 
 the scene, and touched with the sacred flame of genius 
 as if she had snatched a live coal from that altar fire 
 out of the past, Margaret Anglin, evoking for us, 
 across the gulf of twice a thousand years, sweet words 
 of wisdom and of song, and laying bare the tortured 
 heart of a Greek girl, who, in the noblest sense, loved 
 most wisely, if too well. The great art of the world 
 obliterates time and civilizes, because it binds men 
 together, of whatever era or land, in the common 
 bonds of elemental emotional experience. They unite, 
 in sooth, in the one touch of Nature that makes the 
 whole world kin. 
 
 217 
 
fiDoral Obligation of literature 
 
 AS remarkable a plea for what is called artistic 
 freedom in literature as was ever made in Eng- 
 lish is to be found in these lines from one of Chau- 
 cer's " Canterbury Tales ": 
 
 And therefore every gentle wight I pray 
 For God's love, deraeth not that I say 
 Of evil intent, but that I mote rehearse 
 Hir tales alle, be they better or worse, 
 Or else falsen some of my matere. 
 
 In other words, the first great English poet declares 
 himself a realist who, if he speaks plainly and depicts 
 an unsavory aspect of life, is but setting down the 
 actual, painting contemporary manners as they are. 
 It is not so much he that is vulgar, runs the argument, 
 as the folk he would faithfully picture. 
 
 This presents the issue fair and square: is it art's 
 business to reproduce men and women as they are, 
 telling everything so long as it occurs; or should it 
 rather select the material and re-compose the picture 
 in such wise as to breathe upon life a certain added 
 charm, the beauty that is peculiar to art? Of old this 
 query would have been answered quickly in favor of 
 the idea that art should not slavishly copy the letter 
 218 
 
Ube /iDoral bligation of ^Literature 
 
 of life, but strive to render its spirit. But in our 
 day, criticism has tended towards the other view. 
 
 Unquestionably, Chaucer's theory would be right if 
 by such changes life were not the better represented. 
 If, for example, the poem or fiction or drama, in 
 showing us men and women in this world, did it so 
 partially or with such distortion as to falsify the essen- 
 tial traits of humanity, it would be a disservice, since 
 the reader would be misled concerning life, and books, 
 instead of helping us to interpret life's meaning, would 
 be a sort of pleasing pabulum, sweet to the taste but 
 bitter in the belly. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that much so-called idealistic 
 literature in the past has prettified and emasculated 
 the truth out of all semblance of reality: the dime 
 novel, in its hectic exaggeration of adventure and ac- 
 cident; the love story, by so representing each sex to 
 the other as to hide from both the sane, sweet realities 
 of social intercourse; and the Utopian books which 
 show, not a possibly better state of existence to be at- 
 tained in time, but an impossible planet governed by 
 laws- which never can apply to this particular star of 
 the solar system. The reason why Plato's " Repub- 
 lic " and More's " Utopia " are of permanent impor- 
 tance is because they do not do this, but suggest 
 ideals of state or society which have since been largely 
 incorporated into practical living. 
 
 But despite this abuse of fact, it were quite wrong 
 to pass to the other extreme and conclude that sound 
 219 
 
3Ltttle Essays in ^Literature an& %ife 
 
 art implies and demands a literal photograph of life. 
 Rather, as Stevenson finely says with fiction in mind, 
 art exists because of its difference from life. He 
 means that, selecting typical things, it eliminates the 
 non-essentials, the myriad confusing and insignificant 
 details, and carefully chooses such traits as properly 
 may stand for the whole; so grading the human 
 phenomena as to give us a sense of the relative values 
 of fact and flesh, brain and soul. First in time, the 
 natural body, then the spiritual body; but in impor- 
 tance, first the spiritual body: that is the law. The 
 value of the flesh, as Browning so nobly and con- 
 sistently taught, lies not so much in itself as in its 
 necessary uses for the purposes of the spirit. 
 
 To illustrate: suppose a novelist desired to draw a 
 human being so that a clear, rounded impression of 
 character might be conveyed. That human being may 
 be supposed to wash his hands three times a day for 
 a lifetime of seventy years ; or, say, in round numbers, 
 more than thirty-one thousand times. A novelist who 
 dwelt upon this fact, and threw it into the foreground, 
 would be a fool. Why? Because this reiterated act 
 would have no human significance, would not reveal 
 character in any real sense. One act of self-sacrifice, 
 if the man were noble, one peculation, if he were weak, 
 would outweigh in revelatory value a million hand- 
 washings, worthy as the instinct or habit of personal 
 cleanliness may be in its due place. The illustration 
 is homely, but to the point. The literary artist must 
 
 220 
 
/iDoral <S>bit0atton of ^Literature 
 
 select and graduate human acts, moods, and thoughts 
 on an ascending scale which begins in protoplasm and 
 ends in the spiritual. To deny this is to make chaos 
 out of psychology and repudiate the validity of the 
 thinking process, ceasing to distinguish between the 
 yelp of the wolf and the hosannah of the redeemed. 
 
 And it is in this sense that moral obligation does 
 exist in all art worthy the name. The writer must be 
 held sternly accountable for his representations, nor be 
 allowed to blur boundary lines; all the more so if he 
 possess the genius of a Chaucer, on the principle of 
 noblesse oblige. The widespread notion that it is 
 art's affair to show life, and that there its responsi- 
 bility ends, " a fine phrase is a good action, I know 
 of no other morality in fiction," cried Zola, an apostle 
 of the pestilential opposite view, is unsound in logic 
 and vicious in result. Nor, broadly speaking, and 
 pace the mighty shade of Chaucer, has it been the 
 way of the world's truly great and abiding art. It 
 is a theory which, from Homer to Hawthorne, has 
 certainly been more honored in the breach than in the 
 observance. 
 
 The Chaucer passage, full of the geniality for which 
 that master of English expression is famed, is, after 
 all, intellectually specious. Certain of his " Canter- 
 bury Tales," extenuate them as we may because of 
 the grosser standards of the fourteenth century, re- 
 main as blots upon a very great writer's name and fame, 
 one who could command the beautiful tenderness of 
 221 
 
Olfttie Essays in ^Literature an& SLife 
 
 the Pyramus and Thisbe tale, the lovely pathos of that 
 of the patient Griselda, or the clean, honest English 
 fun of the story of Chanticleer. We forgive him his 
 grossness in view of the way he could and did soar 
 above the muck into the eternal blue. The idea that 
 his transcripts of common life and coarse people could 
 not have been done without smut is nonsense, and any 
 literary theory that acts on such an assumption mis- 
 conceives the mission of literature. 
 
 As Mr. Howells once declared, and he never said 
 a truer thing, the beast in man is slowly dying in 
 life and should be allowed to die in letters. To poke 
 fun at expurgations and sneer at the process of 
 Bowdlerization is shallow business and begs the ques- 
 tion. An author's picture of humanity, while it 
 should face facts, of course, should also face man up- 
 ward, since that is his deepest significance; he is go- 
 ing that way, or is intended to. Biologically speak- 
 ing, he once went on all fours; when he stood erect on 
 his hind legs, not mechanically, like a trained dog or 
 the ape who is man in the making, it was a physical 
 symbol of a spiritual truth : man's starry aspiration, his 
 quest for things that are above earth. 
 
 222 
 
Boohs 
 
 " A H, the books that one will never read again," 
 -*A. cries George Gissing, and the words will find 
 a responsive echo in many a bookish heart. Life is 
 indeed short, and literary art, in these days of the 
 Jameses and the Bennetts, very long; so that the well- 
 meaning reader is hard put to it to make the acquaint- 
 ance even of a fraction of the contemporary literature 
 supposed to be worth while, let alone re-reading what 
 he has liked in the past, or knows to be of such fair 
 fame as to call him to a closer friendship. 
 
 It is a temperate statement to say that, if we all 
 read fifty fine books and then read them again, it 
 would do more for us in the way of culture and char- 
 acter than to read one hundred books of like value. 
 But the temptation is, under the modern obsession of 
 haste, to cover more ground, although we remember 
 little and absorb less. A first-class piece of literature 
 twice read will be more than doubly appreciated ; many 
 a virtue, which was overlooked at the first contact, is 
 realized to personal enrichment, and you begin to see 
 why the book in hand is called a classic, a masterpiece. 
 Great books, then, are preeminently for a re-reading. 
 Their full greatness is only thus to be comprehended. 
 223 
 
OLittle Essays in Xtterature an& SLtfe 
 
 Another reason for the re-reading is to be found in 
 the undeniable fact that, coming to the experience per- 
 haps five years or even ten later, the book seems to have 
 changed, which means that you have. You know a 
 lot about life, it may well be, that you did not know 
 before. You have grown in mental stature, and so 
 can evaluate excellencies which escaped you earlier; 
 you have come to learn somewhat of literary art, and 
 can judge a work of art from that vantage ground, 
 whereas before you were estimating it rather as a 
 piece of life, a human product. As you have matured, 
 themes not before interesting now seem paramount, and 
 you see that at first you did scant justice to the range, 
 depth, and beauty of the creation. Strictly speaking, 
 to find the whole significance of any book adjudged 
 as of supreme importance by the world, one should 
 read it at intervals of a few years from the school 
 period to the time when the eye closes to all mortal 
 activity, which obviously is a counsel of perfection, 
 but none the less true for that. I have seen folk look 
 with a sort of tolerating condescension upon a fellow- 
 mortal who quietly declares complete ignorance of 
 some startling current phenomenon of letters; but 
 often you will find that quiet, unpretentious person 
 carrying on a steady commerce with the very best 
 literature and too busy and happy in it to worry about 
 the literary nouveau riche. Let us not be so 
 sure that he has the worst of the bargain. 
 
 It is his kind, after all, which makes the true select 
 224 
 
audience for Letters; a plebiscite made up of folk who 
 insist on a personal relation with a book and will not 
 be bullyragged into commerce with it, let the majority 
 say what it will. " Are we to be suspicious of a 
 book's good character," is Lowell's whimsical protest, 
 " in proportion as it appeals more vividly to our own 
 private consciousness and experience?'* These quiet 
 appraisers know better. 
 
 Gissing, however, in the essay from which the 
 sentence was quoted, might have had a different 
 thought in mind. He might have referred to an ex- 
 perience which all true book lovers have sooner or 
 later. I mean the late reading of some book treasured 
 in childhood, loved through a fond mist of memory, 
 and, alas, at the mature re-reading, proving a sad 
 disappointment: the magic gone, the old glamour for- 
 ever departed. This is at once the peril and delight 
 of early, uncritical contact with books. One drains 
 the glass to the dregs, and it is all sweet and palatable ; 
 in the years that bring discrimination, one sips, judges, 
 and finds the vintage no longer rare. There are cer- 
 tain famous pieces of literature, known to every child 
 whose opportunities have been genial, which those chil- 
 dren, now grown-ups, hesitate ever to read again. 
 There is a fear that the cake would turn dough, a 
 pleasant ideal be lost. 
 
 The danger of disillusionment is so considerable, we 
 are so anxious to preserve the affectionate remembrance, 
 that, more likely than not, we refrain throughout our 
 225 
 
Xfttle Essays fn literature an& Xtfe 
 
 days from trying " The Arabian Nights," or 
 " Gulliver's Travels," or " Grimm's Fairy Tales," or 
 " Don Quixote." I had the good fortune, for ex- 
 ample, to be brought up on Dickens, and, by the 
 reverend age of fifteen, his characters, Micawber and 
 Pecksniff, the Wellers and little Dombey, Barkis and 
 the child dressmaker, Peggotty and Ham and little 
 Em'ly, Joe Gargery and Smike and Sarah Gamp, 
 these and a multitude more, had become dear and 
 familiar companions. Then for many years the mas- 
 ter of Gadshill was laid aside. And when, at last, 
 " Bleak House " was settled on for a re-reading and 
 new valuation, there was a cold fear at my heart that 
 the Dickens of the unforgettable past, the Dickens 
 whose folk for grave or gay were as real to my young 
 imagination as those of my own household, and more 
 real than almost all the workaday world, would be 
 seen for the caricatures which some critics had been 
 at pains to tell me they actually were. 
 
 It was, in sooth, a perilous moment, that first 
 plunge into the beautiful dead experience. But be- 
 hold, the master lived again, better than ever, I found, 
 greater than the youngster had dreamed, fuller of 
 meaning, doing noble deeds as well as writing noble 
 words, commanding the fount of tears and smiles, 
 leaving his England a finer place than he found it. I 
 had taken the risk, and glorious had been the issue. 
 The jaded taster of books, with his Dickens more 
 precious than ever, knew now that the mighty Vic- 
 226 
 
torian story-teller was to be a friend and helper all 
 the way along the life-road, and not merely the tem- 
 porary friend of childhood. 
 
 On the whole, it is probable that a real classic, the 
 kind of book that has successfully evaded the destruc- 
 tive attacks of time, will stand this test of re-reading. 
 There are personal exceptions, no doubt, such changes 
 of test and taste not by any means always trust- 
 worthy which result in dislike or indifference where 
 of yore was vehement regard, even supine adoration. 
 But as a generalization, you can trust the great book, 
 and return to it with the confidence that it will re- 
 ward the effort and perhaps give you a delightful sur- 
 prise. " Little Women," beloved as a boy by me, 
 with some shame when I heard that it was called " a 
 girl's book," was re-read late in life with the same 
 result: tears came, joy reawakened wonder that the 
 notion should have got abroad that such a thing was 
 not for all ages and both sexes! 
 
 Ths moral of it all is: re-read the big, beautiful 
 books, nor put it off on the plea of lack of time, or 
 fear of disillusionment, or any other silly reason. 
 Don't allow yourself to make the mistake implied in 
 Gissing's final words : " Books gentle and quieting ; 
 books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to be 
 pored over, not once but many a time. Yet never 
 again shall I hold them in my hand; the years fly 
 too quickly, and are too few. Perhaps when I lie wait- 
 ing for the end, some of these lost books will come 
 227 
 
Xtttle Bssags in literature an& OLife 
 
 into my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember 
 them as friends to whom I owed a kindness, friends 
 passed upon the way. What regret in that last fare- 
 well!" 
 
 228 
 
Sbaw'e Wts&om 
 
 MRS. SHAW has edited a pretty volume of the 
 selected sayings of her husband, George 
 Bernard Shaw, under the title, " The Wisdom of 
 Bernard Shaw." The volume is made up of excerpts 
 from his writings, ranging in length from a brief para- 
 graph to essays of several pages. The book is preface- 
 less, perhaps because the author's own prefaces tend 
 to be voluminous, and the aim is to present the 
 dramatist thinker as a maker of pensees the de- 
 tached, scintillating nuggets of thought in which some 
 theme is so touched and ornamented as to stimulate 
 and charm the reader. 
 
 Such a collection of sayings in one respect does 
 Shaw an injustice, representative though it is. It 
 draws attention to his power of epigram and aphorism 
 at the expense of his quality for sustained and cogent 
 argumentation, an aspect of his genius the world as 
 yet is rather loath to recognize, yet very necessary to 
 a comprehension of this unique son of Ireland. In 
 fact, Shaw's unity of teaching, the singleness of pur- 
 pose and theory which runs through the twenty-odd 
 plays he has written, as well as through the extra-dra- 
 matic critical work, has been largely lost sight of in 
 229 
 
Xittie JBssaB tn ^literature an& Slife 
 
 the enjoyment of his gift as phrasemaker and pur- 
 veyor of paradox. 
 
 With this understood, however, the present book is 
 welcome, and those who read with the habit of rumina- 
 tion will not fail to see that there is more than the 
 happy turn and the startling statement in these pages; 
 that here, on the contrary, is a very earnest mind speak- 
 ing with the force of conviction concerning matters 
 of vital interest to him, and with the desire to persuade 
 others. To go further, I incline to think that this 
 little volume of close-packed thought will place the 
 author with the writers of pensees who have perma- 
 nent value among the literary masters: Pascal, 
 Amiel, La Rochefoucauld, one thinks of the 
 Frenchmen first, Heine, Turgenef, and others of the 
 elect. 
 
 Here is that union of worthy thought with expres- 
 sion that is preservative which one has come to as- 
 sociate with this class of writers; above all, the con- 
 cision and precision which add elegance to strength, 
 and result in that effect of much in little which makes 
 the sentence, the passage, the page memorable. Take 
 this specimen, brief, pregnant, brilliant, chosen from 
 "Man and Superman": "When a man wants to 
 murder a tiger he calls it sport ; when the tiger wants 
 to murder him, he calls it ferocity. The distinction 
 between Crime and Justice is no greater." 
 
 Or again, this from " The Doctor's Dilemma," an 
 excellent example of suggestive thought so happily 
 230 
 
Sbaw's 
 
 couched in language as to make its meaning the more 
 arresting : " What is called Science has always pur- 
 sued the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone, 
 and is just as busy after them to-day as ever it was in 
 the days of Paracelsus. We call them by different 
 names: Immunization or Radiology or what not; but 
 the dreams which lure us into the adventures from 
 which we learn are always at bottom the same." 
 
 One of the things a careful perusal of the little vol- 
 ume will bring out is that Shaw is not a writer who 
 gets his hearing by a mere manipulation of words and 
 the paradoxical reversion of the expected: what Oscar 
 Wilde is often guilty of, and Chesterton, too. Shaw's 
 impression is made by more than surface scintillations; 
 there is solid stuff beneath the glitter of speech or 
 pyrotechnics of method. 
 
 This comes back to my remarj: that the side of Shaw 
 that needs attention and emphasis is not the side which 
 exhibits him as phrasemaker and paradoxer, the side in 
 full evidence in the selections making up the present 
 volume. The Shaw still little known, or at least less 
 known, is the thinker of a definite creed, the serious 
 social student, the believer in life as a splendid, mystic 
 undertaking which each is a part of and must assist by 
 the fullest and freest expression of individuality. Here 
 is Shaw the socialist, the crier-up of the life force, the 
 man with faith in God's plan and man's destiny. 
 Social passion, meaning the burning desire to do one's 
 share for the betterment of society, especially in its 
 231 
 
Xtttle Essays tn Xfterature an& SLtfe 
 
 impoverished and wretched members, irradiates all 
 Shaw's work. 
 
 So far from having no consecutive purpose through- 
 out his writings, no author has ever hammered with 
 Thor strokes at one view for a quarter century more 
 persistently. He put an antic disposition on wittingly 
 because, as he told us, he wished to attract attention to 
 his wares, and knew that the use of the cart and the 
 trumpet was the way to do it. But it is a shallow and 
 foolish deduction from this to suppose him a mounte- 
 bank, because he chose the mountebank methods to 
 bring, not to the specialist but to the general public, 
 his advanced notions on society. Twenty or more 
 years ago, these notions looked very much more alarm- 
 ing than they do now. Shaw was by so much ahead 
 of his age, which has now caught up with him, and 
 people are fast getting wonted to talk about eugenics 
 and pensioning mothers and municipalizing doctors and 
 many another Shaw vagary which turns out to be 
 sound modern thinking. 
 
 Thus the unified and constructive philosophy which 
 underlies this writer's dramatic works and his ample 
 critical books, whether on nominal literary themes, 
 like " The Quintessence of Ibsen," or purely scientific 
 and sociological, as in the Fabian Essays, must be 
 ascertained by that patient reading which comparatively 
 few as yet find time or inclination to devote to Shaw. 
 Meanwhile, the many can enjoy his " wisdom '* as it 
 is revealed in his wife's selections. 
 232 
 
Sbaw's Misfcom 
 
 Shaw is not of the class of authors who say a thing 
 in a striking way which you, poor wordless one, have 
 long felt and wished to say, but being dumb, needed a 
 spokesman to say it for you. We all know the pleas- 
 ure in a writer based on the fact that he thinks as we 
 do and can convey the agreement in felicitous terms. 
 Shaw, quite otherwise, awakens, as likely as not, the 
 most violent disagreement: you almost talk out loud 
 in reply to him as his sentences come along and knock 
 you down like a policeman's club. He arrests you, to 
 carry out the figure, when you have not broken the 
 peace (you believe), and hales you up to judgment on 
 the charge of not being mentally alert. 
 
 He shocks, challenges, manhandles your mind, and 
 this treatment, while it may be as unpleasant as mas- 
 sage to one suffering from rheumatism, is nevertheless 
 a mighty wholesome thing in the way of a shake-up, 
 resulting in a livelier circulation and a certain tonic 
 effect on the sluggish intellect. In the end, you are 
 grateful to one who has forced you to be alive, recon- 
 sider your position, look at the other side of the ques- 
 tion and be sure that what you called your belief was 
 not merely a state of mental inertia. 
 
 233 
 
Boofcs an& flDen 
 
 CHAUCER, bookish though he was, loved Dame 
 Nature and, when spring came, would cry: 
 " Farewell, my books and my devotion ! " Then 
 would he go forth into the open, to breathe the de- 
 licious air and rejoice with all the dear growing things. 
 This line of his is one of many similar references to 
 the contrast between books and man, books and Na- 
 ture, books and life, not only found in literature itself, 
 but heard daily on the lips of mortals. 
 
 Strange it is, nevertheless, and no less unfortunate 
 than strange, that there has arisen in men's minds this 
 conception of literature as separate from life, even in 
 a way antagonistic to it. Hence it comes that the way- 
 faring man goes by on the other side when a book 
 rather than a fellow-man is offered him; he forgets 
 that, in Milton's fine saying, " a good book is the 
 precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and 
 treasured up to a life beyond life." The trouble came 
 in setting down literature upon the printed page. 
 Gradually crept in a seeming distinction between hu- 
 man beings, whose talk made letters, and the talk thus 
 stereotyped in books. 
 
 Yet all literature in its origins, study its rise and de- 
 234 
 
Books anfc flfcen 
 
 velopment in what nation you will, is simply eloquent 
 and gifted folk talking of the world they live in. The 
 talk was written down in manuscript before the age of 
 printing, for the purpose of transmission; later, in the 
 fifteenth century, printing was invented and a far 
 wider circulation became possible. By its aid, litera- 
 ture could be sent broadly over the face of the earth 
 and handed down to after time, thus perpetuating the 
 inspired words of the writer long after he had passed 
 away in the flesh. The incalculable benefits accruing 
 from this preservation of literature are apparent; in- 
 deed, only thus could literature have become the in- 
 heritor of past renown and one of the chief glories of 
 a civilized people, a thesaurus wherein could be found, 
 like the massed jewels in a treasure chest, the stored- 
 up wisdom, eloquence and beauty of which the race is 
 capable. 
 
 But along with this advantage went an injury, a 
 grave one: the artificial division we speak of, between 
 life and literature. In primitive times, let it be said 
 again, literature was life reflected in the tones, the 
 gestures and the burning words of men of genius, 
 and of women as well, when a Sappho lived and sung. 
 The epic poem, the ballad and the lyric were narratives 
 short or long, told in verse, because the measured 
 language of verse was more musical and better remem- 
 bered than that of prose. Early man, in literature, 
 uttered poetry before prose. The lyric was a song- 
 poem where the minstrel, with instrument in hand, 
 235 
 
Xittle Bssass in ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 chanted to the literal accompaniment of the strings. 
 Drama was spoken in some public place, so was ora- 
 tory; the novel in the modern sense had not been 
 born ; recited narrative, whether in prose or verse, took 
 its place; all was spoken or sung, the viva voce out- 
 pourings closely associated with the persons themselves, 
 as they stood before their fellow-men, produced in 
 this simple, forthright, democratic way, the literature 
 of the world. " In the beginning was the word " is 
 as true in literature as in religion; the word being 
 that which comes hot from the heart and living to 
 the lips of human beings who have somewhat to say 
 which the world would willingly hear. 
 
 And yet, because all this became gradually forgotten, 
 our age has set up a false and foolish distinction be- 
 tween the spoken and written word. Thousands read 
 poetry, which is in reality song, without a thought of 
 reading it aloud themselves; they even resent hearing 
 another read it. Drama, for the reason that it can 
 be spoken as well as read, lies under the sad imputa- 
 tion of being unliterary, or but half-literary, and 
 purists go so far as to prefer plays in book form to 
 plays enacted, as all plays should be, upon the very 
 stage. Pale-faced, fiery-eyed enthusiasts gather in dim- 
 lit drawing-rooms and indulge in secret rites which the 
 unregenerate outside understand to be occult and 
 mystic the sacred word " literature " being a shib- 
 boleth which alone passes the devotee into the pene- 
 tralia of the mystery. And we behold the climactic 
 
 236 
 
Boofes anfc 
 
 absurdity of school children brought to make a sharp 
 distinction between books and men, and pedagogues la- 
 menting the wane of literary studies, with the increase 
 of more practical aims and ambitions. As if books, 
 properly used, were not the very tools of life, both 
 for instruction and inspiration. 
 
 You regard it as practical to consult a lawyer or 
 physician in respect of some matter within the domain 
 of his special knowledge. Why is it less practical to 
 consult those same men in the words they have written 
 down in a book? Nor would it be deemed bookish to 
 listen to the thrilling sermon of a vital preacher, yet 
 were a book of his sermons in hand, the word of 
 criticism might be heard. 
 
 The same argument is quite as cogent when it is ap- 
 plied to polite letters in such forms as essay, fiction, po- 
 etry and the drama. Such books give us the wisdom, 
 the music and imagination, the tenderness and fun 
 and noble indignation which are in men, without the 
 waste time of their stupidity, the friction of their per- 
 sonalities, or the disillusion of their evil-doing. You 
 become an Academe with Plato, stand upon some 
 Pisgah Mount with Moses, walk with Dante and 
 Virgil through the underworld and learn the fates of 
 the Florentines ; sail the broad seas with Homer, watch 
 with Shakspere the breaking of mighty Othello's heart, 
 listen to Bacon's sententious melody, each sentence a 
 clean-cut gem, and stretch out your hands to pluck 
 the sun-kissed flowers in the summer mead whereof 
 237 
 
Xittie JEssa^s in Xttemure anfc %tfc 
 
 Keats sings. Do you think for a moment that literal 
 converse with them all, these masters of words, makers 
 of music, weavers of thought that has changed the 
 world and made life richer and sweeter, would have 
 been so well worth while as contact with them in this 
 deeper way through the words which are their im- 
 perishable legacy to all the children of men ? To state 
 the question is to air its folly. 
 
 No, let us have done with this altogether unfruitful 
 mistake. It is bad for education, in that it establishes 
 an unwarrantable prejudice against so-called book cul- 
 ture on the part of the young, who really are ripe and 
 ready for literature when it is sensibly offered. It cur- 
 tails the potent influence of literature over the earth, 
 by suggesting pseudo tests and erroneous standards for 
 its recognition. And, saddest of all, it keeps many of 
 mankind away from the splendid tonic of intercourse 
 with these chosen blithe spirits who have made our 
 great literature, as if they spoke to the few, instead of 
 to all with ears to hear, and were cloistered away from 
 the bosom interests of the race. Whereas, it is their 
 distinction that they know life at large and speak for 
 us all. 
 
ttbe Bible in tbe Schools 
 
 \ TTENTION has been called of late to the mat- 
 -*JL ter of the Bible in the public schools. Interest 
 has been aroused by the recent action of the Pennsyl- 
 vania legislature, which passed a law making it 
 obligatory for every teacher in the State to read daily 
 to the pupils for a few minutes from the Scriptures. 
 
 In these days of -appreciation of the cultural value 
 of the Book it is not eccentric to make the point that 
 this installation of the Bible in the schools is entirely 
 advisable; and more, it is likely to be adopted all over 
 the United States in course of time. The Bible, once 
 read in the school as a matter of course, has been al- 
 most totally banished from our public school system be- 
 cause of old it has been used in a way to give color to 
 criticism: that is, for sectarian purpose or with theo- 
 logical bias ; or if it has not been so used which may 
 well be doubted the fear that it would be has led 
 to its discreet withdrawal from any part in the daily 
 exercises. 
 
 Those of us, however, who are of middle age or 
 
 more can well recall that a generation ago reading 
 
 from the Scriptures was a regular part of the daily 
 
 routine in the grammar and high school. The change 
 
 239 
 
OLittie Bssa^s in Xitetature an& %ife 
 
 all over the Union has been marked in this re- 
 spect. 
 
 Of course, the best argument for the restoration of 
 the Bible in the schools is based upon the undeniable 
 fact that the reading of properly selected passages, 
 passages chosen from the splendid wisdom and poetry 
 of a collection that is confessedly the proudest orna- 
 ment of our English literature, is in the deepest sense 
 educational. It stimulates in the hearer the feeling 
 for the beauty of upright conduct and breeds those 
 ethical ideals which are the safeguard of a nation and 
 the very foundation for that character building which 
 should be education's highest aim. 
 
 It is terribly short-sighted to exclude or neglect a 
 book that is capable of this influence, on the entirely 
 erroneous supposition that it will be and must be used 
 in the interests of propagandism of one sort or the 
 other. A committee, representing the best thought of 
 the community, and of varied attitude as to religious 
 conviction, can be named to make the selections, if it 
 be deemed dangerous to leave it to the option of the 
 individual teacher; and modern men and women, of 
 whatever faith, are fast becoming a unit in the ac- 
 knowledgment of the broad spiritual inspiration to be 
 found in the Book of Books. To avoid possible 
 offense, the excerpts can be drawn exclusively from the 
 Old Testament, if necessary. The finest portions of 
 the Psalms, Proverbs, Prophets, and narrative books, 
 drawn upon in this way, would have an effect simply 
 240 
 
Bible in tbe Scbools 
 
 incalculable, when listened to morning after morn- 
 ing through the school year. Especially is this true 
 when both skill and reverence unite to make the read- 
 ing what it should be, for perfunctory coldness can 
 nullify the effect. 
 
 There is an additional argument for this use of the 
 Bible in the schools of America at the present time. 
 The tendency of our modern educational system has been 
 markedly in the direction of specialization and of the 
 multiplying of studies, and those studies, broadly speak- 
 ing, of a more utilitarian nature, or at least applied 
 to some practical, immediate result. Hence, it has be- 
 come increasingly hard for the young student to keep 
 his proper sense of proportion and to realize that, 
 while all knowledge is good, there must be some unify- 
 ing principle to bind together the many and seemingly 
 unrelated subjects, in the aim to produce sound and 
 useful citizenship. This means turning out from our 
 educational institutions people of self-respect and ca- 
 pacity, with an all-round comprehension of life and 
 solidly grounded in the laws of life. 
 
 Who that has watched with a thoughtful eye the 
 educational trend of our particular generation can 
 deny that, because of this danger of losing the whole 
 in the parts, it is the more imperative not to eliminate 
 from the regular school training an influence which is 
 cultural as opposed to the utilitarian, and spiritual as 
 opposed to the merely intellectual? To place the 
 spiritual, the influence that makes for character, where 
 241 
 
Xittle Essays in ^literature a^ OLife 
 
 it belongs, in the center of a rightly ordered scheme 
 of study, is to establish the right orientation. Con- 
 tact with the literature of the Scriptures furnishes just 
 that discipline, and the land that ignores it is woe- 
 fully wrong in its educational ideal and method. 
 
 As the Bible becomes more widely recognized as a 
 book of power and beauty, and less and less as an 
 autocratic repository of theology, it will be ever more 
 apparent that we shut it out of our schools at the na- 
 tion's peril. The Bible in education is needed as a 
 unique presentation of the spiritual growth of a race, 
 seen in its towering personalities, the story standing 
 for the whole race of man in its evolution to its higher 
 capacities. Nowhere else is there a clearer and more 
 inspiring expression of the life which is of the heart 
 and soul, the life that transcends the flesh and is as 
 much above brain as brain is above brawn. 
 
 Think of the myriad young folk of the land harken- 
 ing of a morning, before turning to their several tasks, 
 to the tenderest of the Psalms, " The Lord is my Shep- 
 herd," or to the magnificent nature chant, " The 
 Heavens declare the glory of God," or to the everlast- 
 ing loveliness of Ruth's utterance, " Intreat me not to 
 leave thee, or to return from following after thee," or 
 to the solemn and splendid words of David's lament, 
 " Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their 
 lives, and in their death they were not divided ! " 
 Who can question the value and need of such an open- 
 ing of the busy day, the activities of which to so great 
 242 
 
ZTbe Bible in tbe Scboois 
 
 a degree draw the mind away from such thoughts and 
 feelings ? 
 
 No definition of the word " education " is broad and 
 right which does not accept as central and of su- 
 preme importance therein the influence of such litera- 
 ture as this upon human beings, and most of all upon 
 the young who are being trained in that formative 
 period when their minds are most open to its recep- 
 tion. It is impossible for the well-wisher of his coun- 
 try not to feel some uneasiness at any sign that this 
 matter of fundamental importance is ignored or 
 minimized or, at any rate, its recognition not incor- 
 porated in action. 
 
 Mrs. Houghton, the principal of the Knox School 
 for Girls at Tarrytown, New York, declares that the 
 modern school must supply the greater part of the 
 spiritual and ethical training which girls of another 
 day got in the home and church. And Mr. Hartman, 
 of the Franklin and Marshall Academy, of Lancaster, 
 Pennsylvania, pleads for the importance of the boy's 
 early religious education at home, to help the school 
 in its work. The wise cooperation of home and 
 school is desirable. Let the people see to it that the 
 school does its duty. 
 
 243 
 
2>tfflkult? of {translation 
 
 THE best piece of translation into English ever 
 made is probably Edward Fitzgerald's " Ru- 
 baiyat " of Omar Khayyam, and that is not a transla- 
 tion at all. The " Rubaiyat," more accurately de- 
 scribed, is a free handling of certain ideas found in 
 the Persian poet by the eccentric Victorian recluse. 
 The original was but the starting-point from which 
 the Englishman set out to express his own strongly in- 
 dividual views about life and love, death, eternity, and 
 the soul's destiny. The carpe diem sentiment of the 
 " Rubaiyat " happened to strike a deeply responsive 
 chord in the breast of the nineteenth century writer 
 and thinker; the rest followed. Not only was Omar's 
 philosophy of " eat, drink and to-morrow we die " 
 sympathetic to " dear old Fitz," as Thackeray affec- 
 tionately styled him, but the poem voiced the spiritual 
 mood of the moment in England and in the Occident 
 in general. 
 
 In the middle of the last century philosophic and 
 spiritual ideals were fast changing under the impulse of 
 the new scientific thought. Old beliefs were given up 
 or else suffered extraordinary changes. Many a boat, 
 torn from the traditional moorings, was adrift upon a 
 244 
 
H>ffRcult of translation 
 
 wide sea of speculation, doubt, even despair. Tenny- 
 son's " In Memoriam " shows how a reverential mind, 
 bred in the Christian faith, had to undergo this in- 
 tellectual anguish before rinding firm ground.. Ar- 
 nold's agnosticism, with its profoundly sad but beauti- 
 ful minor note, was an expression of the same unrest. 
 Readjustment was to come in time, as our own age 
 testifies ; but for a while all was welter, uncertainty and 
 alarm. 
 
 And so, in Fitzgerald's case, the man and his time were 
 ripe to seize upon an interpretation out of the Orient, 
 and make it voice all this occidental agitation. The 
 doctrine that flowers and fair faces alike end in death, 
 that therefore one should snatch the fleeting pleasure 
 since it alone is sure, was the intellectual pose or the 
 soul-wrung conviction of the moment. It is summed 
 up in those melodious and memorable lines: 
 
 Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of spring 
 Your winter-garment of Repentance fling: 
 The Bird of time has but a little way 
 To flutter, and the Bird is on the wing. 
 
 Using, therefore, an entirely different measure from 
 the Persian, and choosing such parts of the poem (a 
 mere fraction of it) as should best convey the teach- 
 ing he wished to present, Fitzgerald, with his wonder- 
 ful gift for the felicitous word, the music that lingers 
 in the ear, wrought what was practically a great English 
 poem with an Eastern motive. 
 
 All of this leads us to the thought that there is no 
 245 
 
Xittie Essays in literature anfc %ife 
 
 such thing as a translation of a genuine piece of litera- 
 ture, particularly of a poem, so as to preserve it intact, 
 because the form of the original is of its very essence, 
 soul of its soul, and that form cannot be lifted over 
 from one tongue to another. Either you must be 
 literal, give the meaning, which is to dissect a rose ; or, 
 departing frankly, like Fitzgerald, from any slavish 
 copy, you must make another true poem. 
 
 Sidney Lanier, who was eminently successful in his 
 translations (to give them the usual name), spoke of 
 the impossibility of doing anything else, and no one 
 was more capable than he of transferring foreign ma- 
 terial to the mother speech. Of the many English 
 renderings of Heine's exquisite " Du bist wie eine 
 Blume," none is happier than that by Emma Lazarus, 
 the gifted Jewish poet; yet one who reads German 
 cannot but feel that even she fails to get the inimitable 
 simplicity and pathos of the original. But try to bet- 
 ter it yourself, as I once did during a week of barren 
 effort, and you will be likely to conclude that the task 
 is beyond accomplishment, that Miss Lazarus has done 
 as well as can be done. No, imitation and dissection 
 are not creation, and never will be. 
 
 This explains why the best modern translating from 
 the classics or the standard poetry of Europe inclines 
 more and more nowadays to the substitution of good, 
 honest prose, recognizing that the disparity between 
 tongues and the inherent nature of form make a closer 
 transference impractical. It was not so in former days, 
 246 
 
2>itKcult ot* ^Translation 
 
 when doughty Chapman turned Homer into sweeping 
 fourteen-syllable lines, or Pope made the Greek urban 
 in the neat rhyming couplets of the eighteenth century. 
 Now, however, most of us prefer the noble Butcher- 
 Lang version, the rhythmic prose sentences of which 
 better convey an idea of the ocean surge of the original 
 epic. The splendid prose translation of Dante by 
 Charles Eliot Norton is a further illustration of the 
 same critical tendency. Better good prose, which 
 avowedly abandons the unattainable, than any substi- 
 tute in verse, which, however skilful and enjoyable, 
 does not reproduce either for the ear or the taste 
 the peculiar, home-bred charm of what is native and 
 a matter of intuition to the creator of the master- 
 piece. 
 
 It must be understood that when the claim is made 
 that form is part of the life-principle of a composition, 
 the view is implicit that form is not a trick, a garment 
 put on and taken off at will, something superimposed 
 from without. On the contrary, form as thus con- 
 ceived is an integral part of personality; a poem, for 
 instance, springs into being, compact of music, metaphor 
 and imagination, all so inextricably intertwined that 
 they can no more be dissevered than can the human 
 body and spirit without the perishing of the whole man. 
 There is a movement, a melody, in the Divine Comedy 
 of the mightiest poet of Italy which never has nor can 
 be transposed to English, because our language from its 
 structure does not admit of the effects secured by the 
 247 
 
Xittle Essays In ^Literature ant) SLife 
 
 continual soft, lingering loveliness of the feminine end- 
 ings in which Italian is so rich. 
 
 In the same way, to turn the grand harmonies, the 
 free, virile music of the biblical poetry into the more 
 confined limits of form common to English verse is to 
 cramp, weaken and make impotent one of the unique 
 poetic contributions of the world. N. P. Willis's 
 biblical paraphrases a generation or more ago are good, 
 even admirable. But they are as water to the wine of 
 the original. And so with innumerable rhymed render- 
 ings of the Psalms and other portions of the Scriptures ; 
 there is always a marked loss and, in most cases, the 
 result is sad indeed. 
 
 It all comes back to a true appreciation of that won- 
 derful thing, personality. The personality of a maker 
 of literature finds voice in his chosen word, the music 
 that is in him, the heat of his inspiration. It is the 
 direct offspring of a creative mood, a thing of his blood 
 and bone, distinctive, set apart. Try to reset it, and 
 the jewel will not gleam forth the same. The Italian 
 saying sums it all up in a brace of pregnant words: 
 traduttore, traditore, " translators are traitors." 
 
 248 
 
Boofc nc 1bunfcre& ne 
 
 LET any one hand me a list of the hundred best 
 books, and immediately and rebelliously I name 
 number one-hundred-one as the particular bright 
 jewel of my soul. I resent being confined to a cen- 
 tury of titles and, still more, I resent it that anybody, 
 even a college of experts, should dictate my reading in 
 such a fashion. Here lies the fundamental objection 
 to any and all attempts to choose a certain number of 
 classic tomes out of the literature of the world, that 
 we may read, mark, and inwardly digest, and then feel 
 that we are truly " cultured." Not enough leeway 
 is left to private taste and personal idiosyncrasy. We 
 no more want our list predigested by other people than 
 we wish to substitute a food pellet for an honest, 
 masticated meal. 
 
 Not but what excellent lists have been furnished, 
 early and late: that by Ruskin a generation ago, the 
 one drawn up by Dr. Eliot (assisted by a formidable 
 array of Harvard specialists) in our day. Far be it 
 from me to deny the virtue of such aids to the (in- 
 tellectually) injured. But I get a certain malicious 
 joy out of the fact that, even in these formal and 
 grave efforts at wisdom, the personal equation creeps 
 249 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^literature anfc SLife 
 
 in, to invalidate the cut-and-dried nature of the work. 
 Ruskin, in making his list, struck out representative 
 novelists like Dickens and Thackeray, but underscored 
 Scott, of whom he was a worshiper; clearly a case of 
 erratic judgment. And so some Latin scholar might 
 give Lucretius place before Virgil, although the con- 
 sensus of opinion would be the other way. The most 
 violent contradictions rage between cultivated knowers 
 of books as to their favorites and, if the whole truth 
 could be brought forth, it is likely that the time- 
 honored conventional statements would be so often 
 disputed by private opinion, the obiter dicta wherein 
 we tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as 
 to leave in a very confused state of mind a person who 
 assumes that relative rank in literature is long since 
 settled. 
 
 Of course, in a broad sense and general way, settled 
 it is. Your notion or mine about William Shakspere 
 and Homer does not shake either author from the place 
 awarded him by the trained criticism of centuries; that 
 may be acknowledged without debate. Nevertheless, I 
 have met college professors of literature who declared 
 to me, under the rose, that they saw nothing at all in 
 the dramas of the Man of Stratford. Did anybody, 
 who did not have to, ever read Spenser's " Faerie 
 Queene " straight through, and preserve a liking for it, 
 I wonder? 
 
 Be all this as it may, I pity the man who does not 
 treasure book one hundred and one; meaning the 
 250 
 
SBoofc <sme 1bun&re& <S>ne 
 
 volume which he has not been informed he must read, 
 as a means to literary salvation, but which he dis- 
 covers for himself and loves as his peculiar and pri- 
 vate possession. Perhaps it is " The Story of My 
 Heart," by Richard Jeffries, that unique revelation of 
 a shy English soul ; or Du Maurier's " Peter Ibett- 
 son," the author's masterpiece, so much more delicate 
 and ideal than the popular " Trilby " ; or again, your 
 love may cling to a short tale of Ouida's, about a dog, 
 in the face of your being told from childhood that 
 she is a thoroughly shoddy writer. Maybe, in the 
 days when you could manage Greek (how long ago 
 they seem!), you came across an idyl by Theocritus 
 which you loved at once and have ever since ; you com- 
 mitted it to memory, and made it your blood and bone 
 by countless repetitions, though no human being you 
 have fallen in with since seemed to be aware of its 
 existence. Or in your browsings in German, suddenly, 
 years ago, a minstrel lay by Rudolph Baumbach was 
 chanced on, and it appeared to be especially penned 
 for you, so that you lonesomely cherish it and quote it 
 only for your intimates. 
 
 These are the recondite pleasures of a reader who 
 insists upon having his personal likings and has read 
 widely and wisely enough to have the courage of his 
 convictions. He cares not a button that these little 
 pearls of thought and expression are not among the 
 world's literary wonders, safely catalogued with the 
 Books You Must Read; sufficient for him that they 
 251 
 
Xittle Essays in literature ant) Xite 
 
 give him a lively and lasting joy, and have become 
 veritable comrades of the mind. Indeed, he gets an 
 added, secret satisfaction in the thought that he found 
 them as likely as not in the byways and hedges of 
 literature, instead of in the beaten highway where con- 
 gregate the elect. Is not the edge of the pleasure 
 blunted when one sits down to read " Faust " or 
 " The Divine Comedy " with the consciousness that 
 all the previous generations have been before you at 
 the feast, that you are taking their leavings, as it were ? 
 This is not a democratic reflection, I dare say, but it is 
 a natural feeling none the less. How delightful to 
 have been the first person to read old Homer, and how 
 sweetly the poet, whom seven cities quarreled for, 
 must have sounded in ears that listened for the first 
 time to the "surge and thunder" of the Odyssey! 
 Verily, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, when 
 it teaches you beforehand just what should be your 
 estimate of an accredited masterpiece. 
 
 It would be an interesting experiment to turn a 
 senstive young reader loose in a library containing all 
 the choice books of Time, quite uninstructed in rela- 
 tive values, and then watch the nai'f, eager spirit taste, 
 and essay and compare and make friends, with no guide 
 save his honest leanings and unfeigned loves. The 
 trouble is that, with no previous training, the choice 
 would likely miss the mark; the books worth while 
 might sue for a hearing in vain. 
 
 But I am inclined to insist on the retention of a 
 252 
 
IBooft ne Duufcrefc <>ne 
 
 corner at least where one's predilections are given 
 free play. Pay your formal compliments, as needs 
 must, to the chosen one hundred, acknowledge the 
 wisdom of the world's decision, and then, on a holiday, 
 or at the bed hour dedicated to pure bookish bliss 
 before sleep, with the courage of your faith and in a 
 mood reckless in its irresponsibility, take down your 
 good book one hundred one from the shelf (where you 
 keep it within easy reach) and revel in it, regardless 
 of consequences. That odd, extra volume may do you 
 more good than all the standard authors from Homer 
 to O. Henry. For after all, honesty in the read- 
 ing habit is quite as necessary as it is anywhere else. I 
 confess to a distinct suspicion of one who has no 
 humble companion among his book friends; if he reads 
 only the aristocrats, I charge him with intellectual 
 snobbery. 
 
 Yes, let us acquire as soon as possible our five-foot 
 shelf of classics, but leave a margin of room for the 
 unpretentious darlings of our hearts, and have fre- 
 quent sessions with them in all tenderness and deep 
 communion; since they have a special message for our 
 souls and have become precious even as those things 
 we have made our very own. 
 
 253 
 
Gaete anb (Benius in letters 
 
 TO have taste without genius implies talent in a 
 writer and a likelihood of success. To have 
 genius without taste means the big effects of litera- 
 ture, and possible starvation. It certainly makes 
 probable a slower recognition than is sure to come to 
 the man of taste and talent. And while the posses- 
 sion of one does not of necessity insure the want of 
 the other, they are not commonly found together. 
 
 One is tempted to go further and say that a lack of 
 self-criticism which results in astonishing inequality of 
 effect is a mark of greatness. Thus the greatest writer 
 of the English race, Shakspere, is one in whom we de- 
 tect the most amazing mingling of good and bad. 
 There are passages in his plays so undistinguished, so 
 utterly lacking the hall-mark of genius, as to seem the 
 work of another hand. Matthew Arnold long since 
 pointed out examples of such inexplicable falling off, 
 in sharp contrast with those passages wherein, as in 
 this from " Hamlet," we have the Shakspere all the 
 world knows and loves: 
 
 If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 
 To tell my story. 
 
 254 
 
Uaste anfc Genius in ^Letters 
 
 It were to write one's self down as insensitive to 
 what makes sound literature not to perceive that here 
 we have the distinctive qualities of grace, clarity, and 
 imaginative beauty; and as equally insensitive not to 
 be aware of many quotations from the same poet which 
 lack them. 
 
 It would be also an easy though ungracious task to 
 adduce more than one selection from Milton where 
 the great Puritan poet, the second greatest of the 
 tongue, is uninspired in like manner. Nobody is 
 heavier and duller than Milton at his worst, unless it 
 be Wordsworth, and the latter is unquestionably the 
 finest nature poet of modern England. The creator 
 of the wonderful sonnets, of the lofty odes and of a 
 score of exquisite lyrics, of which " The Highland 
 Girl " is an example, did not know when he was nod- 
 ding and napping. Two-thirds of Walt Whitman, 
 hailed abroad as in some ways our most remarkable 
 figure, is compounded of the baldest prose. And 
 Mark Twain, standing beyond cavil with the half- 
 dozen of America's most noteworthy writers, needed a 
 constraining hand to save him from his own failure to 
 recognize literary convenances. Shelley, unlike Keats, 
 is at times hopelessly unlyrical, yet is often rated as the 
 greater bard of the two. So with still others, lumina- 
 ries of the larger light, fixed stars, rather than wan- 
 dering, momentarily brilliant meteors. 
 
 On the other hand, the capable talents and neat 
 technicians can be counted on not to do the wrong 
 255 
 
Xittle Bssa^s in literature anfc Xife 
 
 thing. They never offend, partly, it would seem, be- 
 cause they never thrill; they do not tumble to disaster, 
 because they never get high enough to make the fall 
 dangerous. The really creative souls, when once 
 seized with the shaping rapture, are too full of pent- 
 up fire to let it out a la mode, through a blowpipe of 
 technic. Their mistakes are simply the penalty of 
 their passion, the defect of their quality. Literary 
 criticasters in earlier years were fond of pointing out 
 the shortcomings of Charles Dickens, a creative genius 
 in fiction, if ever there was one. They did not stop 
 to see that Dickens was too splendidly engaged in giv- 
 ing life to some three thousand characters for the de- 
 lectation of mankind, to cross every / and dot each i. 
 Nor did they sufficiently reckon with the fact that both 
 Dickens and Thackeray wrote under the severest 
 journalistic pressure, that the printer's devil con- 
 tinually pushed them for " copy." 
 
 Thus, in estimating these men, and others of the 
 greater gods, two things not necessarily connected at 
 all are confused: taste and genius. The mistake is 
 made of imagining that because a writer has the highest 
 creative capacity he also possesses, as a matter of course, 
 the critical faculty as well. The ideal would be, such 
 powers in conjunction: creative fire and the forthright 
 hand to control it to the finest purposes of art. But 
 such a conjunction in the literary firmament is almost 
 as rare as the conjunction of the earth with the sun. 
 Now and then, however, in literary history such 
 
 256 
 
Uaste anfc Genius in Xetters 
 
 writers appear; ancients like Virgil and Sappho, mod- 
 erns like Heine and Stevenson. 
 
 Fragmentary as are the remains of the Greek woman 
 singer, her lyrics, by the consent of scholars, show a 
 mastery of form commensurate with the passion of 
 beauty which she poured into them; the plastic mold 
 which received the primal fire of her word was ap- 
 parent, like a preciously perfect casket to hold jewels 
 above price. And so with Virgil, " wielder qf the 
 stateliest measure ever molded by the lips of man," as 
 Tennyson hailed him; his epic theme did not lead him 
 into carelessness, but noble thought was married to 
 lovely expression to make him one of the permanent 
 poets. 
 
 Nor can criticism deny to Heine, a secondary figure, 
 perhaps, in the significance of his message, such a union 
 of fiery feeling and faultless expression as to make him 
 a good illustration of the blend of taste and genius 
 which we have in mind. He was, among other things, 
 a master of that anticlimax which is a danger to the 
 literary artist; but in general handled it with a con- 
 summate skill which hid the peril. And for simple, 
 sensuous, piercingly pathetic effects where is his su- 
 perior ? 
 
 As for Stevenson, his word to mankind was as vital 
 as his art was flawless and forever alluring. One can- 
 not side with those who think his art was more than his 
 intellect. The doctrine of good cheer, courage, faith 
 and kindliness which he so valiantly preached through 
 257 
 
Xittle Essays tn ^literature anfc Xife 
 
 twenty volumes was a welcome one to a time suffering 
 from spiritual megrim. The cake had turned to sour 
 dough and the child had infantile pains. Stevenson 
 was the kindly physician with a sure cure. But his 
 pill was so deliciously sugar-coated that it was great 
 fun to take his medicine, and some even thought they 
 were sucking candy, instead of being treated for a 
 definite complaint. There is but one such in a gen- 
 eration ; a writer who unites creative genius with such 
 a mastery of form as to make him at once a model for 
 imitation and a source of inspiration. In such a writer 
 the antagonism of taste and genius disappears in a sort 
 of chemical union. 
 
 Nevertheless, the contrast is likely to be eternal. 
 On one hand, Aristophanes, Rabelais, Richter, Carlyle, 
 Whitman, and Twain, mighty men but unsure artists; 
 on the other, Horace, Virgil, Tennyson, and Steven- 
 son, whose beautiful artistry has not quenched the 
 personal charm behind it. And half-way between the 
 two classes come the talents, little and large, the wel- 
 come minores who suit our more mundane moods. To 
 name them were less than kind; yet to know them is 
 often pleasant. They have their place, albeit a modest 
 one. Taste has its triumphs, as well as genius. 
 
 258 
 
povert? of poets 
 
 THE poverty of poets is proverbial. Their lack 
 of this world's goods, treated humorously, is one 
 of the most reverend jokes known to man. And there 
 is enough in literary history to keep it alive, although 
 the facts are by no means all that way. But there is 
 something romantic in the idea of a member of the 
 singing craft going hungry, wanting mere necessary 
 bread, while he bestows priceless riches upon a heedless 
 world. And so the public all but resents a Browning 
 who looks like a prosperous banker and has never been 
 indigent, or a Tennyson whose emoluments place him 
 with the financially successful. How much more ap- 
 pealing to behold a blind beggar called Homer, or a 
 Poe hardly able to buy bread and forced to sit beside 
 his dying wife and see her shiver because of the dearth 
 of bedclothes! 
 
 Money-shortness has become a sort of stage property 
 for the bard, along with unshorn hair, a Byronic col- 
 lar. Any popular man of straw, imagined by the gen- 
 eral, magnified and clung to, becomes dear; it is so 
 inconvenient to have the truth come along and knock 
 the theory into a cocked hat. One has to do some new 
 thinking to change the caricature, to reconstruct the 
 259 
 
Xittie Essays in ^literature anfc OLife 
 
 idol, which means extra work that is not pleasant. 
 The noble genus known as Pinhead hates to deduce 
 an idea from the facts by his own unaided exertions, 
 instead of comfortably taking opinions second-hand 
 from the community. Hence, long live the mendicant 
 minstrel, and may his shadow never grow not less, 
 but more, nor his paunch be lined with good capon! 
 
 The grain of truth in the notion is to be discovered 
 in the appearance of immediate inutility made by 
 poetry. The poet produces beauty as a profession, as 
 does every artist, and at first blush a good figure, 
 by the bye, to use of the poet his wares have neither 
 the look of utility nor commodity. They sell cheap, 
 if they sell at all, in the open competitive market. 
 And so Signor Singer goes but poorly clad, and may- 
 hap worries extensively about the next meal. 
 
 Then an absurd thing happens to the artist, be he 
 painter, poet, or what you will : the community grows 
 rich, cultured, civilized; the reputation of the humble 
 beauty-maker increases also, and lo, you see Signor 
 Singer getting his thousands a night, a violinist coining 
 gold out of a skilful bow, an " Angelus " selling for 
 more than a hundred thousand dollars, and so on 
 with fairy tales that are real. Art becomes an Open 
 Sesame to all the money-bags, and he that was poor 
 waxeth proud. 
 
 In this triumphal progress of Art the capital may 
 now be respectfully adopted the Poet also capital- 
 ized gets his share of fame and fortune, albeit never 
 260 
 
TTbe poverty ot poets 
 
 quite so plutocratic as his brothers of color and sound. 
 But he gets good pay for his work; Tennyson, it is 
 said, received five thousand dollars for a short poem 
 from the Youth's Companion, which seems poetic com- 
 pensation for Milton's twenty-five dollars for " Para- 
 dise Lost." The successful poet can certainly be com- 
 fortable, to put it mildly, if he drop the Bohemian 
 habits so long attributed to him another stage prop- 
 erty and save his dollars. 
 
 Just now we are being told that Alfred Noyes is a 
 good business man, commanding and getting prices that 
 enable him to live from his verse. And he is being 
 pointed out as a sort of infant phenomenon, since he can 
 afford to go from city to city by Pullman and not walk 
 a la Homer and other songful indigents. To treat him 
 as unique is, of course, all nonsense; but it is just as 
 well that he be temporarily an object-lesson to illustrate 
 what is true of many more of that genus. Respect for 
 his ability may lead to a better opinion of the army of 
 his fellow-poets. 
 
 Judging by the amount of printed space relatively 
 filled by prose and verse, poetry is very well paid in- 
 deed. A person with a fair reputation often receives 
 fifty dollars for a poem which occupies a single maga- 
 zine page. Get out the tape measure and you will 
 find that a prose writer who gets a like amount by the 
 page is doing extremely well. Of course, this is mis- 
 leading, for genuine poetry is not to be written so 
 steadily as prose nor is the demand for it so great; 
 261 
 
Xittie Essays in ^Literature ant) OLife 
 
 still, the reward in the case of poetry is by no means 
 contemptible. A high-class publication will give 
 twenty to twenty-five dollars for a sonnet. The elect 
 know that a sonnet is only fourteen lines in length, al- 
 though to the uninitiated it looks like a mere pendant 
 to a prose article ; which again is not so bad as it might 
 be. No, the facts of remuneration hardly square with 
 the traditional pathetic picture of the bard out-at-el- 
 bows. 
 
 The homely truth is that, if a poet is a shabbily pic- 
 turesque object, it is because he has a screw loose some- 
 where, not because he is a poet. It can be granted 
 to the advocatus diaboli that the nature of his work 
 lays him open to the temptations of the imagination 
 and the emotions, not to say the passions. But to im- 
 ply that the poet has to go wrong, as if it were his 
 line of business, is ridiculous. Here we meet with the 
 fallacy of generalizations, a tendency of the human 
 mind that has slain its thousands, and, it may be sub- 
 joined, very often with the jawbone of an ass. Neither 
 poets nor any other class of men are all of a piece. 
 Both Coleridge and Wordsworth were great poets and 
 friends and neighbors up in the Lake Country of Eng- 
 land. But the one never paid his bills, ran away from 
 his family and drank laudanum, while the other was of 
 character so austerely high that one is almost repelled 
 from him and would fain hear that he turned Bohe- 
 mian once in a blue moon, at least. 
 
 It is lazy thinking, again, which leads people to 
 262 
 
poverty of 
 
 establish a category for all poets, with a few over- 
 worked criteria, and then to judge the clan thereby. 
 Take Horace's genus irritabile vatum, for one ex- 
 ample. The idea is that the race of bards is thin- 
 skinned, hypersensitive, quick to take offense. No 
 doubt this is true of many a bard. But how about the 
 actor and the singer ; yes, and the plumber too, when 
 you hint that his work is slack, or his charge excessive? 
 Does not he get out of sorts also? The poet has to 
 father an entirely natural failing of the human race, 
 just because an amiable country gentleman and charm- 
 ing lyrist back in the Roman days, thinking of the class 
 he knew well, made a harmless remark, as it seemed, 
 which he did not himself take too seriously. Horace 
 had a sense of humor, and here is where he plays a 
 posthumous joke on the world. He did n't half mean 
 it, remember that. 
 
 Let us, then, allow the poets to be respectable, even 
 if poor, and not even poor, if they can manage to make 
 money. Poetic composition is not absolutely incom- 
 patible with cutting coupons, although the two acts are 
 not likely to be found in conjunction. And there is 
 no reason in the nature of things why genius should be 
 disreputable, in spite of all the Nordaus. 
 
 263 
 
flDattetvof'ifact fiction 
 
 VEN as the danger of the romantic in literature 
 is that it shall not stand on mother earth, so 
 that of the matter-of-fact treatment of things is that 
 it shall deny the dream and forget the vision. Nor 
 is the second danger less than the first. 
 
 This is the possible lack, one feels, in an acute ob- 
 server of mankind like Arnold Bennett, whose new 
 book giving his impressions of the United States is in 
 the reader's hands and will be generally discussed, no 
 doubt, this winter : a singularly frank and honest book, 
 and most readable. Perhaps nobody in our time has 
 probed with surer hand the secrets of the spirit, and 
 more subtly revealed its arcana than this young British 
 novelist. You realize in reading him that little of the 
 hidden springs of conduct escapes his eye. Yet, if at 
 times he seems slow and uninspiring, here is the reason : 
 he appears all but obsessed with the commonplace and 
 the routine of everyday existence. 
 
 Hilda Lessway's exceedingly humdrum thoughts and 
 doings are interesting, in a way, because they stand for 
 so many of us; then, too, we are sympathetically in- 
 volved because they are so interesting to her. We see 
 through her eyes. Nevertheless, there are moments 
 264 
 
d&atter*of*=jfact fiction 
 
 when one waxes impatient of all such fiction, and 
 would be with Alan in the round house in Stevenson's 
 " Kidnapped," or with the robbers in the cave in 
 Scott's " Guy Mannering," or close beside Beauty as 
 he rides that wonderful winning race in the opening 
 pages of Ouida's " Under Two Flags." Explain it 
 as we will, excuse it if we must, there is something in 
 humanity that, after a surfeit of matter-of-fact fiction, 
 flares up in hot rebellion and demands a picture that 
 is livelier and lovelier. 
 
 Not all excitement is vicious, either in life or letters, 
 and the colors of the spectrum include red and violet 
 and suchlike romantic effects. It may be the sad priv- 
 ilege of mature years to recognize a land of dead- 
 level, but youth knows better, because youth is passing 
 its days in a manner so different, and an attitude so 
 profoundly other, as not only to be bored by the gray- 
 toned realist, but flatly to deny the truth of his rep- 
 resentation. Who among us of the male sex does not 
 remember that thrilling moment of romance far back 
 in the dewy past, when, at four a. m. (the hour may 
 have its variations, but the mood is constant), we 
 slipped out of a side door of the parental dwelling and, 
 with pockets bursting with fire-crackers and other in- 
 cendiary material, whistled up the street for the mates 
 who, similarly equipped, were forgathering at the 
 rendezvous? The street at that early hour looked 
 gray enough to ordinary observation. But not so; it 
 was to boyish vision one splendid, hectic red, because 
 
 265 
 
Xittle Bssass in ^literature an& Xife 
 
 it held all the glorious possibilities of the Fourth of 
 July, and several beautiful hours were between this and 
 breakfast, that unromantic thing of sheer necessity. 
 To deny romance to a world that contains one such 
 experience (and of course there are a million of them) 
 is too absurd to waste words on. 
 
 The maker of the matter-of-fact kind of thing, how- 
 ever, puts in a prompt protest : he declares that what to 
 our uneducated eye appears so commonplace, to him is 
 wildly exciting, even ultra-romantic. Henry James, in 
 an able dissertation on the art of fiction, tells us that to 
 him an ordinary conversation about trivial affairs, be- 
 tween two average humans, is so fraught with tre- 
 mendous implication as to be a sort of spiritual adven- 
 ture for the novelist. We cannot deny him his feeling. 
 But we can reply that, in this, he is hardly typical of 
 the human race. That same bit of dialogue does not 
 enthrall others as it does him; and, after all, fiction is 
 a communicative art or nothing. 
 
 It is not that mankind demands excitement that is 
 purely objective and external. No, that were to over- 
 look the fact, not to be disputed, that the modern in- 
 terest is more and more psychologic. There may be 
 far more of interest, in the true sense, in a scene where 
 two persons sit quietly in chairs on opposite sides of 
 a deal table and talk together in tones never above the 
 conversational than there would be in the rescue, just 
 in the nick of time, of a gentleman bound to a railroad 
 track by human fiends, two seconds before the express 
 266 
 
flDatter*ot*jf act jfiction 
 
 swept by. The two at the table may be settling their 
 fates for all eternity, and every word they utter may 
 be pregnant with doom. Probably, this for the modern 
 mind is as gripping as any scene that can be depicted. 
 It is the way an Ibsen or a Shaw or a Galsworthy 
 chooses to interpret life. 
 
 The excitement must be there, whatever its kind; 
 and for the novelist to make a god of the dull and then 
 expect us, the long-suffering public, to gasp with in- 
 terest instead of gaping with ennui is to ask too much 
 of human nature. I do not mean to imply that Ben- 
 nett produces this effect commonly, but simply that his 
 method suggests this train of reflection; also that, in 
 poorer hands than his, the result is indeed lamentable. 
 
 Do not forget it as among your duties, O Master 
 Novelist, to show us the unusual: the unusual in 
 incident, scene and character, not lying about life, oh 
 no, but merely recognizing that that which may occur 
 and once in a while does has a fresher interest 
 for us, naturally, than that which confronts us every 
 morning of the week. Go to life for your material, 
 and observe that she we attribute femininity to her 
 because she is so delightfully uncertain very often 
 has a card up her sleeve that makes the game tense. 
 Get off your own street if you find that it does not 
 furnish you with the exceptional; or, perhaps better, 
 clear your eyes of mist and see that those desirably 
 romantic things are occurring there too, right under 
 your nose. If it has come to the pass where all is 
 
 267 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^Literature ant> SLife 
 
 flat, stale and unprofitable, decide that you are out of 
 health, or have missed your calling. It is likely that 
 your business of novel-writing looks more monotonous 
 to you than it should, and you are passing over that 
 tired feeling to us. On the contrary, your occupation 
 should seem as fair and fresh and exhilarating to you 
 as a baseball game to a boy, or a moonlight meeting 
 to a pair of lovers. Heavens, man, think what you have 
 for a theme: Life, the exhaustless, the marvelous, 
 the varied; Life, the homely yet divine, the near yet 
 the starry-high, the bitter-sweet, incalculable, mys- 
 terious gift of the Maker of all ! 
 
 It is a sad sight to see a writer, who has attained to 
 a consummate mastery of the technic of his art, soured 
 on life, his doll stuffed with sawdust, and so offering us 
 a shell instead of the substance and sustenance we need. 
 We can agree with Howells that the commonplace is 
 precious, and yet leave room for the uncommon. And 
 we can nod assent to the thing we know, yet welcome 
 the fascinating, hitherto unknown, for those larger ex- 
 periences help us to grow. 
 
 268 
 
Stevenson's 
 
 I DRAW from its handsome case of green crushed 
 levant a little book, faded from its original proud 
 purple to a nondescript brown, and entitled " Family 
 Prayers," by the author of " The Faithful Promiser," 
 " Morning and Night Watches," etc. The publisher's 
 imprint is that of James Nesbit & Company, London, 
 the year of publication 1853. A commonplace volume, 
 surely, whether one looks to external garb or literary 
 content. A prayer-book of over half a century ago, 
 bound in sober cloth, undistinguished in paper, print 
 or binding, is no such matter. 
 
 But stay, gentle reader. We are not come to the 
 heart of this business yet. Human associations gather 
 about this ordinary volume to give it spiritual signifi- 
 cance. It is the most precious item in my library. For 
 on a blank page is written, in a large flowing hand, 
 the name of Thomas Stevenson; and turning to the 
 fly-leaf (already with a quiver, mayhap, of expectation), 
 one discovers a visiting-card affixed thereon which 
 reads : 
 
 Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, 
 
 Athenaeum Club, 
 
 Skerryvore, London. 
 
 Bournemouth. 
 
 By this time those who are sealed of the tribe of 
 
 269 
 
Xittle Essays in literature an& Xife 
 
 Tusitala know full well why this homely book is 
 to its owner of inestimable worth; and, forsooth, an 
 object of interest to all bibliophiles the world over. 
 Stevenson's father, as the signature shows, acquired 
 the volume presumptively when his famous son was 
 a mere lad for he was but three when it was pub- 
 lished. And in the fullness of years, when Louis was 
 a young man already beginning to drift from the or- 
 thodoxy embodied in the prayer-book, it came into 
 his possession and was apparently used much and made 
 his own, as the pages with their penciled marks in his 
 own handwriting testify. Inserted between the leaves 
 are sundry ferns, which upon expert botanical analysis 
 reveal themselves as tropical beyond peradventure, and 
 so point to the conclusion that Stevenson had the 
 volume w T ith him in the final years in Samoa; 
 while the visiting-card suggests his possession of it in 
 an earlier portion of his career. The volume also 
 contains, to augment its interest and value, two sheets 
 of mourning letter-paper, upon which are inscribed, in 
 the elder Stevenson's large hand : " Passages of Scrip- 
 ture to be read in connection with each other " ; the 
 references which follow filling five pages, now yellowed 
 by time. Furthermore, there is at least one inser- 
 tion in the son's hand, while certain penciled additions 
 in yet another hand suggest the novelist's mother, 
 that devoted mother who so valiantly followed him 
 to the far-lying Southern islands which were to be his 
 " long home." 
 
 270 
 
Stevenson's 
 
 With this prayer-book before us, how easy to con- 
 jure up a picture of the family group in the Heriot 
 Street house in the central part of gray old Edinburgh. 
 That residence " a substantial house of gray stone 
 built with the solidity so customary in Scotland ; look- 
 ing across the Queen Street Gardens, where the lilacs 
 bloomed in spring and the pipe of the blackbird might 
 be heard, while from its back windows could be seen 
 the hills of the Kingdom of Fife " was the third oc- 
 cupied by the Stevensons during the life of Louis. 
 Thither they removed when he was seven, and it is 
 that mansion which, amply described by him and others, 
 we associate with the writer, boy and man. In an 
 upper story was his small suite of rooms, one of them 
 originally his nursery; it was here he grew up, at- 
 tended not only by his mother, but by Cummy, that 
 wonder among nurses, whose memory is so fragrantly 
 intertwined with those flowers of the imagination, " A 
 Child's Garden of Verses." In this house, doubtless, 
 God-fearing and regular as it was, the prayers in the 
 little brown book must have been read aloud many 
 a morning, delivered with all the picturesque unction 
 we know Thomas Stevenson to have possessed, from 
 more than one description left by the son. One longs 
 to find in the mass of memorabilia which Robert Louis 
 gave to the world some direct chronicle of this book, 
 some hint of its use or token of its presence. But 
 none such, I fear, can be found ; at any rate, my search 
 has been in vain. It must remain for the mind's eye 
 271 
 
Xittle Essays in literature anfc 3Life 
 
 to see the Heriot Street group listening from day to 
 day to the words of worship drawn from the " Family 
 Prayers." 
 
 The visiting-card, witnessing to the fact that in due 
 time the little volume passed from father to son, is also 
 an evocation ; it recalls a three years' section of his life, 
 momentous to himself and, in truth, to late nineteenth- 
 century letters. It was the period of his mid-manhood, 
 when, from thirty-four to thirty-seven years of age, 
 he lived the life of an invalid at Bournemouth, in the 
 house which his father, then fast aging towards death, 
 had presented to Mrs. Stevenson, and upon which the 
 name " Skerryvore," signifying the most beautiful of 
 the lighthouses built of the family firm, had been ap- 
 propriately bestowed. Stevenson, with that pathetic 
 capacity of his for pleasure in the good things of 
 fortune, had been vastly delighted over this gift and 
 enjoyed to the utmost the family installation in their 
 new demesne. It is described by Mr. Balfour as " a 
 modern brick house, closely covered with ivy ; from the 
 top windows it was possible to catch a glimpse of the 
 sea. There was one-half an acre of ground, very 
 charmingly arranged, running down from the lawns 
 at the back, past a bank of heather, into a chine or 
 small ravine full of rhododendrons and at the bottom 
 a tiny stream." As for the author's childlike delight 
 in the house, take this very characteristic bit from the 
 Letters : " Our drawing-room is now so beautiful 
 that it 's like eating to sit in it. No other room is so 
 272 
 
Stevenson's 
 
 lovely in the world ; there I sit like an old Irish beggar- 
 man's cast-off bauchle in a palace throne-room. Incon- 
 gruity never went so far; I blush for the figure I cut 
 in such a bower." 
 
 From the view-point of literary creation, this frag- 
 ment of his life was one of the most brilliant perhaps 
 the most brilliant of his whole career. It was dur- 
 ing these three years at Skerryvore that he gave forth 
 the " Child's Garden," " Prince Otto," " Dr. Jekyll 
 and Mr. Hyde " and " Kidnapped " a quartette 
 hardly to be matched by any other four books he pro- 
 duced. But, alas ! his health steadily declined ; seldom 
 was he able to go up to London and make use of The 
 Athenaeum Club, of which, as his card indicates, he 
 was a member, there to meet Colvin, perhaps, or Lang 
 or Henley, friends and cronies all. For the most part, 
 he could not pass the confines of his own grounds. 
 Hemorrhages were frequent and violent; an enemy 
 " who was exciting at first, but has now, by the itera- 
 tion of his strokes, become merely annoying and inex- 
 pressibly irksome," is his own comment. 
 
 Then, too, his father, who came down with his 
 wife to live at Bournemouth in the autumn of 1886, 
 in order to be near the son for the ensuing winter, 
 rapidly failed and died in the next spring, his condi- 
 tion, mental as well as physical, being sad indeed. So 
 that Stevenson's day darkened at this time in more 
 ways than one. So poorly was he that, when sum- 
 moned to Edinburgh by his father's passing, he went 
 273 
 
3Ltttie Essays fn Xtteratute an& %ife 
 
 there, but was unable to attend the funeral because of 
 a severe cold he had contracted. Yet the impression 
 one gets of this period from the Letters, and from 
 various other biographical testimony, is by no means 
 one of gloom or discouragement; the incorrigible zest 
 of life was always there: the keen interests, the gaiety, 
 the nobler interpretation of that " Sufficient-unto-the- 
 day " creed which is so valuable for this workaday 
 world. Dear friends of his men like Henley and 
 Fleeming Jenkins were often at Skerryvore, and 
 many were the revels and junketings of which it was the 
 center, despite the frailty of the Master. And to end 
 with the brighter side, it was the books begun or com- 
 pleted at Bournemouth upon which his reputation most 
 securely rests. The imagination kindles at the thought 
 that, could we have sat with Stevenson in his much- 
 admired drawing-room, or still better, beside his bed up- 
 stairs during one of the enforced sojourns in " the land 
 of counterpane," we might have picked up casually 
 from the nearest table the little prayer-book now before 
 us. Surely it had tales to tell of Skerryvore and its 
 doings. Often it must have been in hand, one deems; 
 as likely as not it was read from daily, in private de- 
 votion or family worship we know such to have been 
 the Samoan habit, and the proximity of the parents in 
 that last Bournemouth winter makes it the more prob- 
 able. But the brown book, however lovingly en- 
 treated, will not unlock its secrets. We must content 
 us with inference and guess. 
 274 
 
Stevenson's 
 
 In view of his own unique series of fourteen prayers 
 written for household use at Vailima, valued alike by 
 the lovers of literature and the devotees of religious 
 aspiration, Stevenson's ownership and use of this 
 paternal volume take on a special significance. One's 
 curiosity is piqued by the question whether, in any 
 traceable way, he was influenced by the family heirloom 
 in the penning of his own petitions. Were there uncon- 
 scious echoes of the cadences falling so early on his ear, 
 in the more perfect prose rhythms of the prayers he 
 wrote while he lived in the South Seas? It hardly 
 seems whimsical to believe that there may be some 
 connection between the two: for his cousin, Mrs. 
 Napier, writes : " In the Vailima prayers I seem to 
 hear again an old melody that I know well the echo 
 of his father's words and daily devotions." It would 
 be going too far to assume that this refers only to the 
 impromptu contributions to the home worship by 
 Thomas Stevenson. It may well be that the prayers 
 of this very volume were in mind. There are, at the 
 end of the book of " Family Prayers," a dozen prayers 
 for specific occasions, and it is but natural to read these 
 side by side with Stevenson's own, in the hope that 
 some parallel may be discovered suggesting direct in- 
 fluence. But no such result follows. Indeed, Steven- 
 son's contribution to precatory literature is distin- 
 guished above all else by its unconventional handling, 
 its complete dismissal of the orthodox terminology and 
 mental attitude which characterize the " Family Pray- 
 275 
 
Xittle Essays in ^literature anfc SLife 
 
 ers " ; and also by its special adaptation to the setting 
 of the habitat at Vailima as illustrated, for example, 
 by the two prayers entitled " In Time of Rain." No 
 more striking illustration of the difference between the 
 elder and younger generation in the matter of religious 
 faith and religious consolation could be found than that 
 afforded by these two sets of invocations. Reading 
 those composed by Stevenson, one feels that for the man 
 of our day there have come, verily, a new heaven and 
 a new earth. And one also feels that in the spirit of 
 worship, although the form be changed, the new is full 
 as vital and deep as the old. It is the personal, the 
 individualistic note you hear, as against the traditional 
 and associate in the things of God. 
 
 But there are other features worth mentioning about 
 the copy of " Family Prayers." Noticeable at a first 
 reading is the excellence of its manner, the harmonious, 
 even high beauty of the language in which it is couched. 
 The prayers are independent in form of the unsur- 
 passed English Book of Common Prayer ; but for taste, 
 fitness and literary felicity they are such as one would 
 expect a household like the elder Stevenson's to accept 
 with sympathy. One can easily believe that so fastid- 
 ious an artist of word and phrase as the son would 
 have been loath, even for purposes of religion and with, 
 whatever glamour of parental inheritance, to use a 
 book, as he evidently used this one, which did not pos- 
 sess value of text as well as of tone. Albeit the 
 orthodoxy of the volume is soundly old-fashioned, there 
 
 276 
 
Stevenson's 
 
 is naught of the cheap and common to offend the 
 taste. 
 
 One also notes the frequent work of the pencil, 
 dividing off portions of a particular prayer as of special 
 worth or application; and this expression of preference 
 is interesting. A little examination shows that the 
 impromptu editor, whether father or son, has invari- 
 ably chosen what was most happy in manner or noblest 
 in thought and feeling. Several times, for example, 
 in an invocation for the welfare of the family, the al- 
 lusion to the servants is stricken out. Thus : " Bless 
 the members of this household. May they walk be- 
 fore Thee with a perfect heart. May the young be 
 enabled to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour 
 in all things. May the servants be enabled to live out 
 and act the lofty motto, ' We serve the Lord Christ.' " 
 The final sentence is erased. Again, in another 
 prayer, the text reads: "Bless us who are now 
 surrounding Thy foot-stool, whether as master or 
 servants " ; and, as before, the final clause is pen- 
 ciled through. 
 
 Does this mean that in the Edinburgh home the 
 kitchen folk were not bidden into the fore-room wor- 
 ship; or that Stevenson down in the Samoan Islands, 
 with his dusky servitors around him, did not wish to 
 use the servile word? For it is not unlikely that this 
 book was commonly read in the Vailima house before 
 its master had indited his own prayers, or that they 
 were merely supplementary to it. Whatever be the 
 277 
 
Xittie I600a^0 in ^literature an& Xife 
 
 truth, there is a pleasant thought in the avoidance of 
 the word suggestive of servitude. 
 
 Full of interest to the student of literature are the 
 occasional comments and corrections that look to an 
 improvement in the form of these printed prayers; just 
 what we might have expected from Stevenson, whose 
 ear was so sensitive to the subtleties of English speech. 
 We should not wish the author of the " Christmas 
 Sermon," " Prince Otto " and " Weir of H-ermiston " 
 to overlook, even in the mood of essential imploration, 
 the distinction between " shall " and " will," " should " 
 and " would " a distinction, by the way, which the 
 modern newspaper is rapidly obliterating from the 
 public consciousness. 
 
 It has been said that the Scotch, as compared with 
 the English, are insensitive to this difference in speech 
 forms; an idea which the student of historical English 
 can easily rebuke and which the habit of the finest 
 Scotch writers Scott, Burns, Carlyle, and Stevenson 
 shows to be unsound. Certainly Stevenson was as 
 exquisitely responsive to such nuances of style as is the 
 highly trained musician to close harmonies. In three 
 places he has, plainly in his own hand, stricken out of 
 the word " would " the initial letter and substituted 
 the letters necessary to make it " should " ; thereby 
 changing a mood of volition to one of conditional 
 futurity, where the latter was clearly the intention of 
 the pious framer of the prayers. It is characteristic 
 of Stevenson to take offense at this little jar, one of the 
 
 278 
 
Stevenson's f>raset>:Boofe 
 
 imperfections of expression which, it may be feared, 
 many to-day even of the writing craft could have let go 
 by without a protest and small wonder in view of 
 the shoddy English dinned incessantly into our ears! 
 It will do no harm to quote these passages that the 
 illustrations in their altered form may be before the 
 reader : 
 
 " Had it not been for this inconceivable stoop from 
 the infinite, where should we have been this day? " A 
 little reflection will show that conditional futurity, not 
 modified willing, is what the prayer-book means to 
 convey, and therefore " should " is alone correct. And 
 again: "Were we to be judged by the duties and 
 doings, the sins and shortcomings, of any one day of 
 the passing year, we should be righteously condemned." 
 Here the intended expression of futurity is secured by 
 the change. Once more in the sentence: "Where 
 should we be at this hour, O God" etc., the pious 
 author wished merely to imply futurity, not desire, 
 hence Stevenson's substitution is perfectly sound. The 
 interesting point in the three cases is, we may reiterate, 
 the indication that even in what may be called the non- 
 literary mood, the trained ear and the nice taste of the 
 great essayist and story-maker could not abide false 
 notes. 
 
 Several other changes or interpolations are likewise 
 
 of interest. In one case the text reads : " We come 
 
 anew on this the evening of Thy Holy Day," and there 
 
 is an insertion after " We come " to make it read : 
 
 279 
 
Xittle Bssass in ^literature an& t&ife 
 
 " We come before Thee," the gain in correctness be- 
 ing obvious; here the instinct of the stylist is again 
 at work. 
 
 A grossly careless passage which is set right is the 
 following: "Let each feel that we have some work 
 to perform " ; the amended reading, of course, being : 
 " Let each feel that he has," etc. And in another 
 place, where the original runs: " May they repose 
 their bleeding bosoms on Him " which smacks of 
 the crude anthropomorphic imagery of the older 
 theology the objectionable words, " their bleeding 
 bosoms," are erased. 
 
 These are the only emendations, and the small num- 
 ber testifies in itself to the generally admirable style 
 of this manual for family worship which was so long 
 in the Stevensons' possession. The book had to run 
 a double gauntlet, for Thomas Stevenson, too, was a 
 man of most fastidious literary taste. 
 
 How we would like to have revealed to us the com- 
 plete history of the little brown book! What stories 
 it might tell of father, son and mother, of gray Edin- 
 burgh, of the long wash of Pacific waves, of all the 
 shine and color and alien charms of Vailima, if only 
 its now yellow pages might murmur of the past. But 
 it is something to possess it, to feel sure that it was 
 handled, carried, often used by the man who has be- 
 come to many of us something more than a distin- 
 guished writer, one of the chief ornaments of late Vic- 
 torian literature ; " that 's the world's side." To the 
 280 
 
Stevenson's 
 
 true-blue Stevenson he is a friend and brother, lis- 
 tening to whose vibrant voice we are moved to deep 
 love, and braced by whose sane and winsome doctrine 
 of life we can face the struggle unflinchingly, and with 
 a high heart. 
 
 281 
 
Barrie an& tbe Baronetc? 
 
 BARRIE and a baronetcy! Somehow they don't 
 seem to belong. The whimsical, dear, gifted fel- 
 low whose plays and stories have stirred the imagina- 
 tion, roused the wholesome laughter and moved the 
 sympathies of countless English folk, can be thought 
 of not so easily as Sir James. In truth, a man of 
 genius and the author of " Auld Licht Idyls," " The 
 Little Minister " and " Peter Pan " is surely that 
 always looks a little odd and out of place when the 
 world's conventional honors come his way. 
 
 A Scotch writer whom one thinks of along with 
 Scott, Carlyle, Burns, and Stevenson, does not quite 
 appear to sit in the same galley with the rich brewers 
 and mayors of country towns who nowadays are so 
 frequently knighted in England. 
 
 But softly! Barrie has been made a baronet, not 
 a mere knight, which is a different matter. The 
 title becomes hereditary and, like Tennyson, Barrie 
 can hand on the handle to his name, if he have male 
 issue. 
 
 Nor, in spite of the cheapening of honorary titles in 
 England of late years, should it be forgotten that to 
 designate an author in this way means a desire upon 
 282 
 
3Barrie an& tbe Baronetcy 
 
 the part of his country to show appreciation of his 
 service : it is, too, a recognition of the art of literature, 
 for which he stands, and to refuse it might be churlish, 
 for this reason. Those, therefore, who blame Barrie 
 if any such there be for accepting the dignity 
 should reflect that it does not mean a lack of democratic 
 spirit in him. Writers before him have declined like 
 honors, it is true. Carlyle, the peasant born, did so, 
 as you may know by visiting his house in Chelsea, 
 where are hung the letter of Beaconsfield tendering 
 the bauble and the Scotchman's manly and modest re- 
 fusal. Lord Tennyson who, when he accepted his 
 elevation to the peerage, was bitterly assailed by some 
 on the ground that he was far greater as plain Alfred 
 Tennyson than as Lord Tennyson, First Baron of 
 Aldworth-Farringford, twice declined the prime min- 
 ister's tender of similar honors, and only yielded when 
 he was made to believe that his action was a personal 
 grief to his sovereign, Victoria, whom he admired and 
 loved, as the dedication of the " Idyls of the King " 
 bears witness. 
 
 And yet, and yet, for the life of me I cannot glibly 
 think " Sir James " when I think Barrie. Peculiarly 
 is it so in this case. Glad as we may be that his 
 country has recognized what we all knew before, 
 that he is one of the few authentic and beneficent forces 
 in letters among living men, there remains a feeling 
 not so easy to define, but strong in its insistence, that 
 a title to the name of the man who wrote " Margaret 
 
 283 
 
Xtttie Essa$0 in ^literature and Xffe 
 
 Ogilvie " is not fitting, or at least does not fit. And I 
 seem to detect two traits in Barrie's work which en- 
 gender this feeling. 
 
 One of them is the simple, unfeigned, beautiful sym- 
 pathy for humble folk the folk of his own early 
 life set forth in such works as "A Window in 
 Thrums" and " Auld Licht Idyls." Just as George 
 Eliot did her best work in " Adam Bede " and " The 
 Mill on the Floss," when she went back to her child- 
 hood memories and described the country-folk of War- 
 wickshire, her first home, so Barrie, recalling rural 
 Scotland with its kale-yard setting and quaint, canny, 
 enjoyable characters, gives us of his best and best loved. 
 He is so sensitively human, so democratic, so of the 
 people and with them, that titles, or whatever gewgaws 
 of pride, seem rather absurd when associated with him. 
 
 Then, again, not only is there something simple and 
 democratic in Barrie, but his genius especially in its 
 most mature manifestations has in it a quality of the 
 shy and aloof: it is whimsical, almost elfish at times, 
 with a fairy touch and a delightful irresponsible, un- 
 grown-up mood, the child mood of " Peter Pan " and 
 many another phantasy. Such a writer seems not of 
 this world and its fashion but, rather, belongs in the 
 Land of Heart's Desire and the distant country of 
 our lost innocence. The folk of his imagination are 
 the winsome creatures of romance, all the truer that 
 they walk not in daylight streets under the garish sun 
 but inhabit our minds for " a dream while or so," as 
 284 
 
Barrie ant) tbe Baronetcy 
 
 dear Charles Lamb would say. It would be a shock 
 to come back from Wenty to hear the butler in 
 a Mayfair drawing-room announce:- " Sir James 
 Barrie!" 
 
 The same humor and delicate poetry get into the 
 later plays that deal with more ordinary mortals than 
 those of fairy lore. You feel it in " The Admirable 
 Crichton," with its sly suggestion that a man 's a man, 
 though he be a butler, if once you put him where he 
 can exhibit his manhood. It crops out in the charming 
 " What Every Woman Knows," where woman's im- 
 memorial power of divination is hinted and mere man 
 in his solemn obsession with the practical is good- 
 humoredly made fun of. You get it again in the por- 
 trait of the absent-minded scholar in " The Professor's 
 Love Story," which so wholesomely reminds us of the 
 lovableness of a type too often sneered at as ill adjusted 
 to the demands of daily life. There is nothing in 
 modern literature finer, purer and more salutary than 
 the fun of this same Barrie, as keen of brain as it is 
 warm and sweet of heart. 
 
 This expresses something of the impulse of objec- 
 tion that springs to mind as we read the news and 
 know that, being dubbed baronet and as a loyal sub- 
 ject of the King, Barrie will hereafter take unto him- 
 self such honors and appellations as inhere in the 
 position. It is safe to say that the title will not be 
 appended to his name upon the title-page of his books: 
 for he knows, no man better, that his literary fame 
 
 285 
 
3Lfttle Essays in Xfterature anfc Xife 
 
 is far more to the world, in these days of deeds, than 
 any official naming he may receive. He knows his 
 fellow-men will love and honor him for the gentle 
 teaching, the wise thinking and the tender rending of 
 human hearts which have come from his pen, not for 
 any place or post the prime minister may bestow. He 
 is also aware that neither Burns nor Carlyle nor Steven- 
 son, his great fellow-Scots, received nor needed such- 
 like compliments: that a peer of literature does full 
 as much for the world as any peer of church or state. 
 Indeed, the reflection may as likely as not have given 
 him pause ere he signified his acceptance of the re- 
 ward. 
 
 However, he took it, and must not be blamed, since, 
 as I have said, he may have wished to encourage the 
 recognition of letters in his person, a principle wise 
 and worthy to establish. " They who have shall re- 
 ceive." Already he possessed all that a noble name for 
 writings that charm, enliven and elevate can bring an 
 author. Let him take the ribbon " to wear on his 
 coat," if but to remind Philistines that literature counts 
 in the eyes of the English government. And so, hail 
 to Sir James, and may his days be many in the land he 
 has blessed! 
 
 286 
 
Brownings 
 
 THE recent death of Barrett Browning, only child 
 of Elizabeth and Robert of that ilk, sets me a- 
 brooding upon the Browning house. The son did 
 not live up to the hopes of his parents and almost 
 inevitably suffered from the comparison with his gifted 
 father and mother, two mighty poets of English race 
 and speech. We can be gentle with his memory, for 
 he left us an excellent portrait painting of Robert; 
 moreover, he was placed all his life in the hard posi- 
 tion natural to the offspring of a sire so distinguished. 
 There is sadness in the thought that, physically at 
 least, the family perishes with this son, Barrett. But 
 a second thought chases it away: the family name is 
 safely embalmed in the amber of pure poetry, and 
 those twins of immortality, Robert and Elizabeth 
 Browning, will give it a fragrant meaning among Eng- 
 lish-speaking people for many generations to come. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Robert Browning, 
 who arrived late, is now generally regarded as a major 
 English poet, disputing with Tennyson alone the title 
 of leading singer of the second half of the nineteenth 
 century. Landor's words might be applied to him: 
 " I shall dine late, but the room will be well lighted 
 
 287 
 
3Littie Bssass in ^Literature anfc Xife 
 
 and the guests, though few, select." Long laughed at 
 and neglected, Browning lived to see himself a fashion, 
 almost a fad. He will never be a popular poet, it 
 may be confessed; but the days of slighting are no 
 longer possible. We now see clearly that he was a 
 poet of creative genius and the first important English 
 bard to incorporate into his work the modern realistic 
 method and view-point, freely introducing the gro- 
 tesque, homely, terrible and absurd elements of human 
 life and, moreover, suiting his style to this purpose, 
 and hence shocking criticism at first and holding back 
 the general appreciation of his power and significance. 
 That he won at last is due to more than the fact 
 that he was strong enough to impose his view upon the 
 world; he conquered also because his view was that 
 sure to come with the modern interpretation of the 
 relation of art to life. He expressed the Zeitgeist, in 
 other words. Any man who sums up the spirit of the 
 time in this way possesses a power that is more than 
 personal. 
 
 That Browning was not always a poet in his work, 
 but rather a heady metaphysician, must be conceded, 
 unless we wish to rank ourselves with those mistaken 
 enthusiasts who have given the phrase, " Browning 
 Society," humorous connotation. " Sordello " is not 
 a great nor a successful poem, let the moon-eyed 
 specialist cosset it in a corner as he will. Nor is the 
 poet's alleged obscurity the mere imagining of the 
 Philistine; muddy he is at times, both as to manner 
 288 
 
Ube 
 
 and matter; it is foolish to deny it, and only hurts the 
 true appreciation of the man who wrote " Evelyn 
 Hope " and " Andrea del Sarto " and " Love Among 
 the Ruins " and " Saul " and many a masterpiece more. 
 Browning might well have breathed the prayer: 
 " God save me from my friends," since it is they who 
 are likely to do him most harm. 
 
 The world at large has decided to overlook the eccen- 
 tricities and forgive the faults, because of the fine, 
 stirring message of the man, and the splendid singing 
 moods that came to him; moods that sang him to the 
 very top of his time. The worth-whileness of life, 
 the fact that it is a spiritual battle-ground and the 
 development of soul its one success, Browning never 
 tired of telling this to his fellow-men, and in doing so 
 he handled human material dramatically, that is, in 
 terms of the struggle necessary when characters clash 
 and crises come. To read him understandingly is to 
 drink a rich cordial that warms the heart and braces 
 the muscles for noble action. He is one of the Eng- 
 lish poets who had message as well as music, and who 
 loved life even more than literature. 
 
 What of his wife, the shy, elusive, delicate figure 
 at his side, the two together offering us the most ideal 
 union in the whole range of native letters? Where 
 shall we place her, forgetting for the moment that she 
 was the woman beloved by Robert, snatched from an 
 invalid's couch to fly to Italy with him, there to have 
 those fifteen wonderful years of heavenly comradeship 
 
 289 
 
OLittle Essays in ^Literature anfc Xite 
 
 with each other and with the Muse ? That she helped 
 him beyond computation, we know from " One Word 
 More," " By the Fireside," the superb invocation in 
 " The Ring and the Book," to name no more. 
 
 Often, in criticism, she is patronized ; called, for ex- 
 ample, " the best of English poetesses," an offensive 
 word and an offensive attitude of mind; for Mrs. 
 Browning is either a great English poet or she is not, 
 and it is altogether unnecessary to introduce sex into 
 the discussion. One critic had no doubt as to her 
 quality, her husband. " I am only a painstaking fel- 
 low," he said, " but she has genius." Too modest, this, 
 with respect to himself, beyond question, and charm- 
 ingly chivalrous; but as a judgment upon Elizabeth 
 Barrett, poet, it is sound and sane. Genius she surely 
 had, and whatever her technical faults technically 
 she is as open to criticism as is her husband this 
 tiny, frail woman had in her the divine fire and will, 
 I believe, in the end be awarded a very high place in 
 the English anthology. It is significant that when, 
 in the middle nineteenth century, the post of poet- 
 laureate fell vacant, and the succession was being dis- 
 cussed, Mrs. Browning was mentioned as a natural 
 candidate, Robert Browning not at all. It was after 
 he had injured his reputation by " Sordello " and other 
 injudicious pieces; but the opinion in which Mrs. 
 Browning was held is plain. 
 
 That opinion was justified, and is. If the man 
 wrote great love poetry inspired by the woman, so did 
 290 
 
TTbe Brownings 
 
 she to express her exaltation of happiness when she 
 found that he was hers. For the voicing of pure yet 
 passionate feeling between the sexes, the " Sonnets from 
 the Portuguese " have never been surpassed in English 
 song. Shakspere, Rossetti, Meredith, name the 
 great sonnet sequences as you may, you can find noth- 
 ing to place before the Portuguese series for white-hot 
 spiritual power. They constitute the final and supreme 
 word in the lovers' lexicon. After all, had Mrs. 
 Browning done naught else, she would be among the 
 few lyric singers of England. 
 
 Her other work is notable. The noble patriotism 
 of " Casa Guidi Windows," the piercing social note of 
 "The Cry of the Children," the wealth of intellect 
 and feeling in " Aurora Leigh," and the rapturous 
 lyric movement of a dozen poems, of which " The 
 Great God Pan" and "The Nightingales" are 
 familiar examples, all stamp this woman bard as one 
 divinely called to song, one who possessed depth and 
 breadth and height along with sweetness. Fit mate 
 she was for the other, in song as in life, and together 
 they must go down in the annals of English poetry. 
 
 291 
 
IReputation an& IRevoarfc in letters 
 
 GENERALLY speaking, reputation and reward 
 go hand in hand, and one likes to feel that in 
 the best of all possible worlds it is ever so. In the 
 history of literature, however, there is much to con- 
 tradict this amiable belief. Genius goes unappreciated 
 till long after it is departed; a pittance is paid for a 
 creation eventually of wide fame; and Grub Street is 
 the habitation of those who ply the pen. Milton sells 
 " Paradise Lost " for five pounds, Otway starves to 
 death, Chatterton dies in a garret, and Goldsmith lies 
 abed because he cannot pay for his laundry. The 
 literary biography of the race, and of all races, is full 
 of such pictures. 
 
 Doubtless the reason that the practical person Ar- 
 nold's Philistine has been in the habit of looking 
 askance at artists and litterateurs lies just here: they 
 have not been, speaking by and large, well paid, at least 
 promptly, in their lifetime. Now the world in general, 
 regarding art and literature, judges it by its pay, as it 
 judges every man. Nor can this view be brushed aside 
 with a sneer. Truth to tell, it is the instinct of com- 
 mon-sense as well as of convenience to estimate a con- 
 tribution by the money it fetches. It is, for one thing, 
 292 
 
"Reputation ant) IRewarfc tn ^Letters 
 
 a simple, tangible and quick way to ascertain worth. 
 And, moreover, behind the test is the sensible assump- 
 tion that if a man's work is of use to society it will be 
 paid for in proportion. Even in art, says the Philistine 
 (mark his " even "), if a poem goes a-begging or a pic- 
 ture hangs neglected in the studio, it means that it 
 lacks utility for mankind and so has no raison d'etre. 
 
 There is argument in this and it establishes an excuse 
 for the maker of beauty in any art to hold his work 
 and himself dear and not to cheapen himself and it by 
 giving it away or selling it for a song. Let him re- 
 member that while the connoisseur may appreciate his 
 output, whatever the world's immediate reception of it, 
 the generality, whom he must depend upon for his liv- 
 ing, will judge by his sales and his prices. 
 
 If the poet forms the habit, with Silas Wegg, of 
 dropping into poetry, coyly refers to his work as " a 
 poor thing, but mine own," and always acts as if, sur- 
 prised with a piece of verse upon his person, he were 
 caught with stolen goods, it is highly probable that the 
 world will hold his service light, taking him at his own 
 valuation. 
 
 But whatever be the attitude of the maker of litera- 
 ture, pseudo-modest or egoistically eulogistic, it is still 
 true that masterpieces win their way slowly, so far as 
 general appreciation goes, and often do not get a fair 
 hearing in their own day. Posthumous fame is the 
 award of some of the world's greatest. It is the ex- 
 ception when a Kipling at twenty-five finds himself of 
 293 
 
OLittle Essays in ^Literature an& %ife 
 
 international fame; few mortals can have the pleas- 
 urable sensation of a Byron on waking up on a certain 
 morning, while he was still under thirty, to find himself 
 famous, and can echo his own words, " O the days of 
 our youth are the days of our glory." 
 
 Nor when the recognition comes, early or late, does 
 it as a rule bring with it anything in a financial way 
 commensurate either with similar success in other fields, 
 or with the time and energy devoted to the fulfilment 
 of the task. One naturally thinks of poetry in 
 illustrating, since it is, by confession, the highest form 
 of literary utterance. How many poets have made 
 themselves rich or even gathered together a modest 
 sufficiency? Few, indeed. The legend that makes 
 Homer a poor minstrel is the allegory for all his kind. 
 Tennyson, to be sure, had a large income for many 
 years and the prices paid him late* in his life were so 
 generous that to study his case alone would be most 
 misleading. But, more often, decent poverty or out- 
 and-out indigence has been the singer's lot. Of course, 
 Bohemian habits and personal faults of character, as 
 with a Villon or a Poe, have been factors in the result ; 
 but quite as often the cause has been the slow spread- 
 ing of the news that here was that elusive thing called 
 genius. 
 
 Whittier surely was a poet, one of the major Ameri- 
 can bards by critical consent to-day, nor could he be 
 called a man unsuccessful in the pursuit of the muse; 
 on the contrary, he was a people's poet, with all that 
 294 
 
IReputation an& IRewarfc in betters 
 
 implies of popular applause and pelf. Yet on his 
 death, when Amesbury discovered he had left a mod- 
 erate fortune of something over one hundred thousand 
 dollars, the town was rather taken aback; it had sup- 
 posed he had accumulated much less, and felt per- 
 sonally aggrieved that the poet had not been more fre- 
 quently solicited for civic contributions. Whittier 
 escaped, because he belonged to the clan which was 
 rated as honorably poor. The prizes of prose are bet- 
 ter, it may be granted; but even in the case of ac- 
 credited writers of fiction and drama, the rewards are 
 in most cases exaggerated, and the shining returns only 
 sporadic. Bernard Shaw, frankest of men when he so 
 chooses, tells us that during his first nine years in 
 London, after he went there as a young fellow of 
 twenty to win fame and fortune, he made just six 
 pounds, a trifle mote than three dollars a year! 
 
 In the light of these reflections, the question nat- 
 urally arises: what is the incentive to induce genius 
 to enter the field of imaginative creation, when the re- 
 turn is so slow and uncertain and small? And the 
 reply is ready: the joy of doing it, and the inward 
 sense of contributing that which in the end is uni- 
 versally acknowledged as of highest worth to the cause 
 of civilization. From time out of mind, men have 
 been willing to forego comfort and luxury, to endure 
 neglect and even abuse, and to bide their time until 
 belated recognition come, in order to express their 
 dreams and rejoice in the creative fervor of making 
 295 
 
Xittle Essays tn ^Literature atto SLife 
 
 beauty. And in the quest they are sustained by the 
 indisputable fact that just in proportion as a nation 
 becomes enlightened, do their efforts get their due 
 meed. 
 
 Although money is the most commonly accepted 
 standard whereby to measure worth, part of the re- 
 ward in the case of the maker of art, and a very ap- 
 preciable and important part, is derived from his stand- 
 ing in society whenever and wherever that society is 
 sufficiently evolved to know the higher values. He 
 commands a consideration, a respect and often a social 
 precedence which money cannot buy. He becomes 
 aware that in the strict economic sense he is a citizen 
 whose service to the community is of value, and is so 
 estimated by his fellow-citizens. And he gets his pay, 
 in large measure, in this way rather than in a cash 
 consideration. 
 
 In spite of an apparent anomaly, the reward fol- 
 lows the service here as elsewhere, and a causal con- 
 nection may be seen between the two. The hardship 
 of waiting so long for appreciation is compensated for 
 by the quality and permanence of the reward when it 
 arrives. 
 
 296 
 
U>*]fa0bicme& Diew of Hrt 
 
 WHEN I asked Andrew Lang, in London, what 
 he thought of Arnold Bennett, he replied in ap- 
 parent seriousness, looking the while, after his wont, 
 obliquely down on the floor, " I never heard of him." 
 
 The answer was, whimsical, a sort of protest against 
 the intricate matter-of-factness of Bennett's method. 
 It was also the speaker's way of donning a protective 
 armor against an undesirable subject. Alas, I may 
 never know, since the lips of the man who spoke the 
 words are stopped with dust and silent forever. But 
 in any case, the repudiation of realists and all their 
 works by a writer who believed in and throughout his 
 days stood for romance, points a moral. Lang was 
 completely out of sympathy with the current school 
 of " average life " painters; from his admirable arsenal 
 of wit, wisdom and eloquence he was continually draw- 
 ing weapons of warfare against them. Like his dear 
 friend and fellow-Scot, Stevenson, he thought it the 
 business of letters to present a world somewhat brisker 
 and brighter than one finds it in the dead-and-alive 
 succession of ordinary days. 
 
 He reveled in the past because it afforded a gen- 
 erous opportunity for the display of the more pictur- 
 esque aspect of human life; in melodrama, because it 
 297 
 
Xfttle Essays in ^literature a^ SLifc 
 
 contains the poetry of action; in historic characters 
 like the Scotch Mary, for the reason that whatever 
 may have been her faults, she was never dull and drab 
 and commonplace. And so when he confided to me 
 his ignorance of the very existence of the author of 
 "The Old Wives' Tale," and later added that he 
 thought John Galsworthy's name should have been 
 " Glumsworthy," I smiled and understood. 
 
 The old order passeth, and the men who felt as did 
 Lang, and James Payn and Walter Besant and 
 Stevenson, to mention no more of the elders, are 
 fast leaving the stage, or have already made their final 
 exit. Even as Villon, in his immortal ballade, asks, 
 "Where are the snows of yester year?" so we may 
 soon be asking, Where are the romantics of yesterday? 
 Lang himself was too vital and versatile, altogether too 
 resourceful and amusing, to seem to lag superfluous on 
 the literary board, but there can be no doubt that his 
 position toward his art and toward life as well has an 
 effect of dating from an earlier period. 
 
 The question is, Which is right? Shall we defend 
 Bennett when he analyzes the mental state of Hilda 
 Lessways, or Rider Haggard as he writes of " She "? 
 Shall we prefer the James metaphysics to the Conan 
 Doyle plot-tangle? Shall we let an author lie to us 
 about life, if only he amuse us in the meantime? 
 These be very pertinent queries, in view of the mod- 
 ern drift of literature, the rival claimants and the re- 
 sounding clash of opposing creeds. 
 298 
 
TTbe Ifc^ffasbionefc IDiew of Hrt 
 
 It will be wholesome at the outset to acknowledge 
 that in most cases the personal equation will settle the 
 matter. Those who like the " penny dreadful " in 
 the astute hands of a Stevenson will read it, let the 
 critics cry as they will. And, on the other hand, the 
 devotee of James will continue, despite all ridicule, to 
 find satisfaction in the subtlest probings of the most 
 gentlemanly of modern minds. People simply will not 
 be reasoned into an opinion. And it is perhaps quite 
 as well that this personal latitude exists; it makes for 
 variety, which is the spice for criticism. But grant- 
 ing this, there is no harm in pointing out that both 
 sides, the Langites and anti-Langites, have something 
 of right on their side. 
 
 Literature is both for profit and pleasure and it is its 
 business to show us grim facts as well as gracious 
 alleviation. It is neither true to depict it as all gray 
 nor as all purple, to represent human lives as one long 
 torture or as a sort of perpetual high jinks. Some 
 writers become especially interested in showing the 
 heat and burden of the day; that is the modern tend- 
 ency, on the whole. Others like to remind us of the 
 nights when the moon makes magic of daytime hum- 
 drum and when music fills the air and love talks her 
 own dear language. And these can never become an- 
 tiquated, because they not only are dealing with certain 
 facts of life, but facts that are extremely agreeable, 
 since most folk prefer that moonlit hour to the hour 
 on the stock exchange, in the department store or on 
 299 
 
Xittle Essags in literature aito %ife 
 
 the trolley car. The trouble really begins when one 
 or the other view becomes arrogant and exclusive: the 
 portrayer of the lyric moon asserting that there is no 
 garish light of day, or the defender of workaday 
 things scoffing at the mood of night skies and the soft 
 witcheries of the demi-dark. In an ideal state these 
 two phases of life should blend and justice be done to 
 both; practically and as a rule, one or the other is em- 
 phasized far out of proportion to its importance. 
 
 It has been at once the failing and the virtue of this 
 generation, in literature, that it has developed such a 
 passionate zest in representing the common and unclean 
 as to slight (for a season at least) the high and the 
 holy. The original instinct to do this was democratic, 
 altruistic, noble, but in its cultivation came abuse, and 
 a habit was formed which in extreme cases makes the 
 avoidance of beauty almost a cult. The difference 
 between the merely pretty and the nobly beautiful is 
 lost sight of, and much space given the spectacle of 
 innumerable clever young persons trying their best to 
 be mournful and ugly and tedious for the alleged edi- 
 fication of the world of readers, who really, at this 
 juncture, do not read. 
 
 Therefore, to assume a patronizing, half-contemptu- 
 ous attitude toward the Lang view is silly and shallow 
 in the extreme. The counterview, the view so prev- 
 alent in letters any time during the last thirty years, 
 is capable of monstrous exaggerations and has led to 
 some of the most pernicious literature that has ever 
 300 
 
U>*ifasbicmefc ItHew of Hrt 
 
 bamboozled man. If one has to choose between the 
 two, on the assumption that literature must be either 
 instructive and unpleasant or delightful and naughty, 
 one would very sensibly, it is to be hoped, select the 
 latter. For the art of letters, like all other arts, is 
 primarily for the pleasure of the world, and joy is its 
 own excuse for being. 
 
 As a matter of fact, no such dilemma exists. A 
 sound piece of literature may, and often does, afford 
 the gratification proper to a work of art, while at the 
 same time it teaches us about life, enlarges us mentally, 
 and spiritually uplifts us. Indeed, it is a test of real 
 literature in contrast with the spurious and second- 
 class kind that it performs this double service, do- 
 ing us good, even as it makes us happy. The greatest 
 novelist who has ever lived, Balzac, remarks in the 
 preface to one of his most wonderful books, " Le Pere 
 Goriot," that the writer of fiction should depict the 
 world not only as it is but " a possibly better world." 
 That is the proper ideal for all artists and it is the 
 younger school's failure to realize and recognize the 
 truth of it which irked Andrew Lang. All honor to 
 his memory. 
 
 301 
 
St Hugusttne anb Bernard Sbaw 
 
 THERE is irony, it would seem, in bracketing the 
 two names: the great scholar-saint of the past 
 and the arch iconoclast and satirist of the present. 
 Certainly, their views, even as their times, seem as far 
 apart as the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. 
 
 St. Augustine, among other convictions, believed in 
 a personal devil and made an excellent argument for 
 his faith. Shaw believes in the life force and the 
 eventual Superman: for him, deity and devil alike are 
 depersonalized, existent but in the mind of man. 
 Here indeed are thinkers at the antipodes of thought. 
 
 Yet are they curiously in agreement on certain essen- 
 tials of conduct and conviction. In his recent noble 
 play, " The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnett," in which 
 we may forgive the inaccuracy of the American setting 
 for the sake of the clear spiritual meaning of the 
 drama, Shaw lets his horse thief and would-be black- 
 guard, Posnett, make a remarkable discovery. He has 
 tried hard to be a " bad man," after the approved 
 Bret Harte formula; and he deemed he would suc- 
 ceed. He has stolen a horse crime of crimes on 
 the plains in the old days and is making his " get- 
 away." And lo! just because a woman with a sick 
 302 
 
St. Hugustine an> JSernart) Sbaw 
 
 child, whom he encounters in his flight, needs his horse 
 that she may ride post-haste for a doctor and so save 
 her girl, he dismounts, gives up the beast, and so is 
 caught and haled back for a Judge Lynch trial. 
 His neck is in the noose when we see him in the 
 climax. But he offers the assembled court a piece of 
 his mind, hanging or no hanging, for he has made a 
 very remarkable discovery, he opines. He finds in 
 his own language that there are two games being 
 played in this world : a rotten game and a Great Game. 
 He started out to play the former, but along came the 
 woman in her plight and somehow, he hardly knows 
 how or why, he could not play the game that is 
 " rotten " ; he had to play the Game that is " Great." 
 And he declares, in the pungent idiom of his type, 
 that it "felt bully, just bully." "And so, gents," he 
 decides, " I 'm for the Great Game, every time." He 
 has got the " rotten feel " off him for once, and he 
 never wants it on him again. As Stevenson would put 
 it, he is doomed to nobility. 
 
 The complete change of terminology must not blind 
 us to the unchanging recognition here of the " not our- 
 selves that makes for righteousness," as Arnold phrases 
 it. Poor Blanco seems a far cry from medieval 
 theology, but both Shaw and St. Augustine acknowl- 
 edge, after all, the two opposing principles that are in 
 life : the powers we personify under the names God and 
 the Devil. And this western rough testifies in his 
 fashion to the something in man which cleaves unto 
 303 
 
Xittie Essays in ^literature an& SLife 
 
 the one and abhors the other. Behind whatever 
 nomenclature and above all creeds is the basic fact. 
 Theologies are fluctuant, but they all strive to ex- 
 press the same thing. Deity, say some, First Cause, 
 say the scientists; they but seek to describe the one 
 mystery. 
 
 Some call it evolution, 
 And others call it God, 
 
 sings a modern poet in a poem that is often quoted be- 
 cause it voices a widespread interest and attitude to- 
 day. A modern like Shaw refuses to give a name to 
 that inside him which fills him with a peace that still 
 passeth understanding when he is true to his highest 
 instincts. And the important thing is that the feeling 
 is there and the man able to respond to it; and hence 
 still a living spirit. 
 
 The Great Game cannot be denied by any sane crea- 
 ture: man is so made that he can never quite forget 
 it. He may play the other game for a lifetime and 
 even at times think it is the only one. But sooner or 
 later, in a flash, under pressure, in sorrow, or perhaps 
 when he is most at ease, comes the call, and he be- 
 comes suddenly aware that it is his particular business 
 to play the Great Game, and nothing else. 
 
 Men do not disagree fundamentally on these mat- 
 ters; they dispute over terms rather than spiritual 
 realities. In the matter of definitions, no two mortals 
 could offer a more striking contrast than Shaw and St. 
 304 
 
St. Buaustine anfc Bernard Sbaw 
 
 Augustine. But in their belief in the Great Game, 
 they " are brothers under the skin." 
 
 It is this sense of underlying unity which is drawing 
 human beings together in these days, irrespective of all 
 intellectual differences. Augustine considered it the 
 primary business of a man to save his soul: Bernard 
 Shaw would carefully avoid the theologic word " soul," 
 and would declare it to be man's main affair to assist 
 society that is, his brother man in a development 
 which shall flower forth in the Superman a step 
 toward the saint of the religionist. And they are only 
 engaged with two sides of the same desire, conception, 
 ideal: growth toward the highest, which is God. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the Irish socialist-wit would 
 dodge compromising words like " soul," " conscience " 
 and " duty," he acknowledges them practically all the 
 same, indeed, is a very slave to their implications, be- 
 ing in his fundamental attitude toward life a Puritan 
 of the Puritans, a preacher of the truth as he sees it, 
 who cannot be comfortable while he perceives his fel- 
 low-beings complacently going wrong. 
 
 It is a solemn thought to consider how much of the 
 terrible warfare induced by the intellectual quibblings 
 of theologians and philosophers might have been 
 avoided if only men had got together on the essentials 
 and realized that they differed in the main on terms 
 and the definitions thereof. Many deaths have come of 
 definitions: the torture rack and the fagot flame are 
 its children. 
 
 305 
 
Xtttle j5sa3 in ^literature anfc Xife 
 
 " What is your religion, Dr. Johnson? " asked an in- 
 quisitive lady of the mighty lexicographer, god of the 
 eighteenth century coffee-house. 
 
 " The religion of all sensible men, madam," was the 
 ambiguous reply. 
 
 " But what religion is that? " persisted the lady. 
 
 " That, madam, is what all sensible men keep to 
 themselves," said the doctor, which was his way of 
 suggesting that she mind her own business. If we had 
 all minded our business, historically, in this great mat- 
 ter, what a deal of misery had been spared the children 
 of men! And incidentally, how much nearer the 
 Millennium should we be! "One person I have to 
 make better, myself," quoth Stevenson. " My duty 
 to others may be described by saying that I must try 
 to make my neighbor happy." 
 
 When all is said and done, man has an odd way of 
 appearing equal to himself down through the ages. 
 He has grown, expanded, improved with the centuries, 
 granted. But in his deepest emotions and instincts 
 there is a family resemblance between the cave man and 
 Meredith's Sir Willoughby, the egoist. He needk 
 something to worship still, as he needed it then and 
 he finds it in Nature without or within himself, at his 
 best. 
 
 306 
 
jg&ucatton 
 
" 
 
 ffemtntsatton" of Culture 
 
 SOME time ago the writer attended a class in Eng- 
 lish literature at the University of California, 
 conducted by one of the ablest and most brilliant of 
 the younger professors of that institution. There were 
 fifty persons in the room, of whom just six were men. 
 If an investigator were to take the trouble to go up 
 and down the land, gathering statistics in our colleges 
 and universities where co-education is the system, he 
 would find this proportion constant, the local varia- 
 tions not being sufficient to modify the rule. The 
 literary courses everywhere are followed by so large a 
 percentage of women as to justify the remark of a 
 University of Chicago professor of English, that he 
 might as well be teaching in a woman's college. Fre- 
 quently, in periodicals nowadays, complaint is heard 
 of the " feminization " of education and of culture. 
 A recent essay by a well-known specialist, published in 
 the Atlantic Monthly, will serve to illustrate a com- 
 mon attitude. The fine arts are feminine, the sciences 
 masculine, it was argued by this evidently disturbed 
 mind ; the men are taking the concrete subjects and the 
 practical courses, whereas the women elect and prefer 
 those that are esthetic, cultural, gentle and inspirational 
 309 
 
SLfttle E00a8 fn Xtterature an& Xife 
 
 rather than hardheaded and utilitarian. So, too, some 
 critics become alarmed at the predominance of women 
 teachers in the public schools; and are equally aroused 
 over the fact that here and there a woman even oc- 
 cupies a college chair. It is a dubious compliment, 
 surely, to the sex to imply that the educational influ- 
 ence it brings to bear upon boys is in some mysterious 
 way such as to be deleterious and namby-pamby. 
 
 Is it a sound valuation of literature and its pursuit 
 which regards it as a kind of educative frill or indul- 
 gence, well enough after the really important branches 
 have been acquired; and especially fitted for women 
 because traditionally they have had more time to pursue 
 them? Is Sarah Battle's attitude the right one, when 
 that estimable lady declared that a book was for re- 
 laxation after the main business of the day, her game 
 of whist, was despatched? Or is it, contrariwise, a 
 sign of that topsy-turvy conception of education in 
 its proper gradations which places as of first importance 
 those divisions of learning less vital in the all-round 
 development of a human being into his highest powers? 
 If culture be a mere frill and lady-like accomplish- 
 ment, like dancing, embroidery, and languages in the 
 eighteenth century ideal, then must we reconstruct the 
 history of thought and reverse the opinion of thinkers 
 from Aristotle to Arnold and Emerson. 
 
 It may at least be suggested that the cry of " femi- 
 nization " over the terrible sight of ninety per cent, of 
 women in all the literary classes of the country where 
 310 
 
Ube "jfeminiaatton" of Culture 
 
 both sexes gather, could be interpreted to mean that the 
 men, misled by false ideals of education, are staying 
 away from an influence which they particularly need, 
 as a corrective of so much that is useful in the practical 
 sense but not educative at all in the higher meaning of 
 the word. And also, it may be added, is it an influence 
 which they value at its true worth and significance 
 whenever and wherever right ideals of life, education, 
 and human nature obtain. 
 
 The cheap and insulting talk about " feminization " 
 is a quite unnecessary slap in the face and, moreover 
 obscures the whole vastly vital question. It directs at- 
 tention to the wrong end of the problem, and darkens 
 counsel generally. The final status of any nation will 
 be won in exact proportion as it trains its citizens in 
 that higher activity whic'h shall result in the free and 
 helpful use of all the faculties : and these are, the brain 
 to comprehend, the hand to perform the brain's behest, 
 and, above and crowning all, the feelings quick to re- 
 spond to the noblest stimuli and the soul capable of ap- 
 preciating beauty and righteousness. To turn this up- 
 side down and make mere utility the apex is to train 
 slaves instead of free and fine human beings. 
 
 If women in latter-day America are keeping alive 
 the cultural in education, all honor to them as con- 
 servators in a time of need. It does not mean in them 
 an instinct for the decorative, as some supinely seem to 
 imagine, but a truer, deeper and finer realization of 
 what education, rightly defined, in reality is and ever 
 
Xtttle Essays in ^Literature anfc xtfe 
 
 will be. Their view of it is enlightened and the con- 
 trary view belongs in Boeotia, not in the land we love. 
 There is ironic humor in the spectacle of men worry- 
 ing about " feminization " and patronizing the other 
 sex which likes " effeminate " studies, when the very 
 studies thus stigmatized are the studies they them- 
 selves need in order to avoid a lopsided development 
 and to use in the training of the nation if we would 
 not have our civilization half-baked. 
 
 Woodrow Wilson, whose literary accomplishments 
 are for the time submerged in his political activities, has 
 paid his compliments to this absurdly crass notion of 
 culture in his penetrating paper entitled " Mere 
 Literature." All who believe that literature offers 
 itself primarily as a kind of plaything for women are 
 recommended to read this for more and much-needed 
 light. 
 
 In view of the rapidly changing position of woman 
 in modern society, it may well happen that within an 
 appreciable time no need will longer exist to slur the 
 sex by the opprobrious use of words such as 
 " effeminate," " feminine," " womanish," where the ac- 
 companying sneer is but half-suppressed. It is prob- 
 able that just as the obnoxious word " female," used so 
 freely less than a century ago to designate the gentler 
 sex, has pretty much disappeared from the vocabulary 
 of good society and is relegated to its application 
 in references to the lower animals, so these others will 
 in turn perish from polite usage, except as they carry 
 312 
 
ttbe "ffemfnfjation" of Culture 
 
 with them a more gracious connotation. It may even 
 be that such a phrase as the " feminization of culture," 
 so far from awakening terror in the timorous bosom 
 of the masculine educator, may become an honorable 
 term of praise, not reproach, and be taken to imply 
 what is a fact now, and will be then: that it has been 
 given to women to see clearer in this great matter of 
 education. They refuse to put the cart before the 
 horse; and when they show marked preferences for 
 the study of letters and music and art as branches of 
 learning, they offer the world an object-lesson in rela- 
 tive values and the proper purpose of civilization. 
 
 The protracted discussion will have served its pur- 
 pose if, after the smoke of battle has cleared away, it 
 can be seen a little plainer than before that the spirit 
 is more than bread; that a specific intellectual attain- 
 ment is only the beginning of an education in the 
 broad, genial and noble sense. The culture that makes 
 character, that is the aim; and contact with the best 
 that has been thought and said in the world, which is 
 Arnold's definition of literature, will not produce 
 weaklings, but rather the citizens which are a nation's 
 proudest asset. 
 
 313 
 
Culture, "Cuicbab" an& 
 Common Sense 
 
 IT is wonderful, the tyranny of a word. Pro- 
 nounce " culture " as if it were spelt " culchah," 
 and the laugh or sneer follows, expressive of the con- 
 temptuous attitude of mind. It may even be doubted 
 if the dignified and noble conception which lies behind 
 Arnold's famous use of this noun does not in the minds 
 of many, or most, carry with it an idea not helpful to 
 its welfare. The facetious spelling, in truth, but 
 registers that fact. What is there of opprobrium in 
 its significance? Why do plain people look a little 
 askance when " culchah " enters? If an injustice is 
 done the word, and what it stands for, we should know 
 it and rectify our mistake. If there be some reason for 
 the view or feeling, culture should be made aware of 
 the criticism and strive to mend her ways. 
 
 The Murray Dictionary, that master scholar work 
 of our time now fast moving towards completion after 
 a generation of devoted labor from thousands of spe- 
 cialists, does us all the service of indicating the first use 
 of any word in the tongue, with the quotation embody- 
 ing it. In the case of " culture," one finds that it 
 came into our speech in 1483, when Caxton, forever 
 3H 
 
Culture, "Culcbab" an& Common Sense 
 
 famed as the man who introduced printing in England, 
 wrote : " When they depart from the culture and 
 honor of their God." In the early seventeenth century 
 we find Hobbes speaking of the Lacedaemonians and 
 " the culture of their bodies." Later, the word is ap- 
 plied to the development of mind and manners, as in 
 education. And out of this comes the modern idea of 
 refinement. 
 
 Plainly, one may see in this evolution of meaning 
 the notions of worship, of training, and of particular 
 emphasis upon the refining elements of education. The 
 narrowing of the idea to the esthetics, the use of the 
 word in such a way as to make it in contrast with the 
 more masculine training which makes character and 
 best fits a man for contact with life, is evidently a sec- 
 ondary development, due to historical reasons and, 
 more than anything else, arising from a misunderstand- 
 ing of culture and its misuse in the hands of various 
 foolish disciples, who, some of them vicious, but more 
 often simply shallow and silly, brought disrepute upon 
 a noble conception and confused the minds of many 
 naturally sympathetic to the ideal of culture. 
 
 The silly caricature of culture is answerable for 
 much of this disestknation of a noble thing. A bril- 
 liant young Oxford man, Oscar Wilde, came to this 
 land to lecture years ago. He carried a flower in his 
 hand, wore his hair long and his silk breeches short; 
 in other words, played the fool for the notoriety there 
 was in it. He posed in the dim light of London draw- 
 315 
 
Xfttle Essays in ^literature a^ Xife 
 
 ing-rooms until his kind of estheticism became a cult 
 and Wilde a seven days' social wonder. 
 
 On the more serious side, Walter Pater was cited as 
 one of the apostles of the movement, to call it such, for 
 the refined paganism of his essay attitude. That 
 clever, though now well-nigh forgotten, skit, " The 
 Green Carnation," anonymous at the time, but now 
 known for the work of Hichens, humorously caught 
 some of the types of this temporary spasm of pseudo- 
 esthetics, and kept alive the rancor of the Philistine, 
 a name coined, by the way, by Matthew Arnold to 
 designate the hard-headed citizen to whom all this 
 side of life was an abomination. Big, splendid Wil- 
 liam Morris, even he was implicated somewhat, since 
 he revolutionized the decorative art of England, mak- 
 ing the industrial beautiful and applied art in Eng- 
 land endurable. As part of the general tendency may 
 be mentioned the pre-Raphaelites of painting and the 
 later impressionism ; " isms " buzzed like flies in the 
 air, and the very titles of novels in the eighties were of 
 esthetic metaphor, drawn from music or painting: 
 " In the Key of Blue," and the like. The esthetic was 
 also applied to the culture of the body, and Delsarte 
 had his vogue, an influence by no means yet dead. 
 
 What was good of all this has remained, what were 
 fashion and folly, pose and pretense have, as a matter 
 of course, died the death. To confuse the two is un- 
 fair, but not unnatural, since mankind in general 
 judges hastily and catches its ideas on the run. But 
 
 316 
 
Culture, "Culcbab" an& Common Sense 
 
 we need to repeat a saying by a Latin author some two 
 thousand years dead : " The abuse of a good thing is 
 nothing against the thing." As well judge Ibsen by 
 the fools who think he advocates misery for misery's 
 sake, as well identify Browning with the devotees 
 who make puzzles out of his poems, as regard the 
 Wilde cult as a true representation of culture. No, 
 it was " culchah " instead, because of the insincerity 
 that crept into a chase of the beautiful. 
 
 Culture in the true sense, then, is manly for men and 
 womanly for women. It means nothing more nor less 
 than such harmonious training of the faculties of a 
 human being, always in relation to the environment, as 
 shall make for a higher type of civilization. Culture 
 in distinction from education (if any real opposition 
 exists) implies more than definite preparation for the 
 lifework; it is a genial rounding out of a person for 
 the purpose, not of wage alone but for the general 
 uses of living. 
 
 We might sum it up in saying that it means an un- 
 derstanding of Beauty and a love for it ; Beauty being 
 that harmony and peace in the nature of things which 
 denote principles of existence, which is in the universe 
 both physical and psychic, in the swing of the cos- 
 mos and the mind of men. To limit so magnificent 
 a thought to the petty confines of effeminate and modish 
 manners is exquisitely absurd. The Beauty that 
 is esthetic, always, in its right uses, merges into the 
 Beauty that is spiritual ; along with those other eternal 
 317 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature anfc %ife 
 
 principles, the Good and the True, a trinity that saves 
 the world. 
 
 And whenever or wherever culture is despised, and 
 the change of spelling or pronunciation occurs as a 
 sign, you may rest assured that the reason is not far 
 to seek: it is a narrow and utilitarian concept of edu- 
 cation. To grab facts, to acquire mental powers and 
 make oneself of use as a small but efficient part of the 
 great machine of modern activity is a good thing, 
 never to be contemned; but it is not culture, nor is it 
 education, for that matter, in any broad sense and 
 proper definition. Culture exists to supplement all 
 such partial and unlovely training. Without it, no 
 nation could hold up her head among her sisters, the 
 civilized peoples of earth. With it, although her 
 borders be not far apart and her standing army small, 
 her head may be held high and honor and respect be 
 hers from the children of men. 
 
 Matthew Arnold wrought valiantly to make this 
 view obtain, to cry up what he called Hellenism, the 
 gospel of sweetness and light. It is one of history's 
 sardonic jests that he has been so often misunderstood, 
 and that culture should be lightly regarded. We must 
 not sting the hand that nourishes us. 
 
 318 
 
Speecb 
 
 ENGLISH speech has constantly to fight the en- 
 croachments of vulgarity. One of the objects 
 of education in language is to furnish standards by 
 which the new locution, which is legitimate, is tried* 
 and the inadmissible applicant of the gutter is rejected. 
 
 By hearing the best English in the right sort of home 
 and listening to it on the lips of those who mingle in 
 society, and, as well, by constant contact with it in 
 the finest writers, past and present, one gradually comes 
 to an instinctive sense of good usage which is far 
 superior to the brain-born rules of grammar, whose 
 value may be conceded within limitations. 
 
 All the while and everywhere, as I said, the assaults 
 of shoddy English are taking place, and what is true of 
 the life spiritual is true of the life linguistic: one must 
 fight for the victory of purity and Tightness, or right- 
 eousness, which is the same thing with a different 
 spelling. Not only are the ignorant always with us 
 to pull down the standard of speech, but the vicious do 
 it, too, in their use of sundry dialects to be understood 
 in the underworld, not of dictionary repute or civilized 
 acceptance. Hordes of foreigners as well, Zangwill's 
 fifty peoples from as many lands, intelligent often and 
 319 
 
Xtttle Essays tn ^literature an& Xife 
 
 earnestly desirous of learning the usages of good Eng- 
 lish, are uncertain of the native idioms of their adop- 
 tive tongue and, while acquiring it, manufacture all 
 sorts of enormities, so that a Myra Kelly, a Montague 
 Glass, or an O. Henry find occasion for much humor 
 in reporting the mistakes and malformations of our im- 
 ported citizens in the school, on the street, in the home 
 or in the innumerable associations of work. Thus, 
 the school and college have an exceptionally difficult 
 task, in a country like the United States, to correct 
 wrong, train the young in the way they should go, and 
 counterbalance the influence of the general destructive 
 forces so potent to nullify what they seek to instil in 
 the way of right usage. 
 
 The problem would be made simpler than it is if 
 there were one kind of English proper for all occa- 
 sions. This is not so at all. The language written 
 and the language spoken differ, for example, in a cer- 
 tain degree. The latter, the life-giving element of 
 speech, is less formal, quicker to change, more vernacu- 
 lar and unconventional; when we write, we naturally 
 and properly adopt a tone more sedate, more formal, 
 less broken and nervous with the vibration of life. 
 Yet, if we go too far and make the written word 
 stilted and so far removed from actuality as to seem un- 
 natural, we defeat the object in view, which is to give, 
 to a form more carefully wrought and fuller of the 
 niceties impossible to the rapid methods of spoken 
 language, an elegance and precision not otherwise to be 
 320 
 
Speecb 
 
 attained. As the virtue of the spoken word is radical 
 and makes for vitality, so that of the written is con- 
 servative and makes for beauty and art. The adjust- 
 ment of the two to the uses of living is no easy thing, 
 and only the past masters of expression come to a com- 
 mand of English resources so that their spoken words 
 have the finish of the printed page and their writing 
 the easy, off-hand grace and charm of the vernacular. 
 
 Then again, English suitable for use for one purpose 
 or for one association is not necessarily advisable for 
 another. To give a familiar illustration, the idiom of 
 business is by no means that of polite society. Human 
 beings modify their speech in social relations from 
 what it is in the office or on 'change, even as they affect 
 another mode of dress. Yet business jargon constantly 
 tries to push its way into circles where it has no right. 
 A man downtown speaks of meeting a " party " on an 
 important matter ; and his wife shudder not, I have 
 heard it declares at the dinner-table the same even- 
 ing that her husband is detained by a " party " in the 
 city. It is the other kind of party she should be in- 
 terested in, let us agree. 
 
 Take the ubiquitous and awful word " proposition." 
 Used at first in business circles and perhaps needed there, 
 it has waxed so arrogant that you hear it on every side, 
 wherever two or three are gathered together. " That 's 
 a different proposition " is sickeningly familiar to the 
 jaded ear, and may be now taken to refer to anything 
 from a comparison of the beauty of women to a state- 
 321 
 
3Little JEssass in ^Literature an& 
 
 ment of a new turn in the Balkan imbroglio. Can 
 you imagine Dr. Holmes or James Russell Lowell say- 
 ing it ? A " Society for the Suppression of * Proposi- 
 tion ' " save in its proper meaning and place 
 should be formed, with a membership made up of all 
 who retain the feeling for sound English usage. 
 
 In the same fashion, each and every sport: baseball, 
 football, racing what you will has its special 
 lingo, and, not content with using it for its own pur- 
 poses, would ask us to enlarge the general vocabulary 
 to include its racy, not to say horse-racy, expressions. 
 It takes a long and enthusiastic devotion to the cause 
 to read with full appreciation the talk of the gentle- 
 men of the press, whose duty it is to keep us posted 
 concerning the national game. For vigor and vitality 
 it is often admirable, and it surely possesses that in- 
 describable but unmistakable sense of humor which is 
 one of our proudest American assets. At the same 
 time, it is not quite the English of sobriety and sweet 
 savor which those who know regard as best worth 
 while. 
 
 So delicate are these distinctions that it may even be 
 asserted that, on the spoken side, there is a speech for 
 men and another for women. A vigorous use of idiom 
 suits the male handler of English which may not be 
 at all well for the other sex. The girls in school and 
 college who ape the masculine in this respect and deem 
 it the last note of modernity to talk " an' they were 
 men " are hard to endure, either as users of speech or 
 322 
 
Spcccb 
 
 as human beings. For them, silence is indeed golden. 
 It is one of the peculiar dangers of co-education that, in 
 addressing classes nominally considered as units, the 
 teacher of language is really talking to two sets of 
 people, whose instinct with regard to speech uses should 
 differ even as does their sex. It would be as absurd to 
 claim that an idiom fit for the one is necessarily as fit 
 for the other, as to expect an Englishman to speak 
 French like a Parisian. 
 
 So the incessant vulgarization goes on, and we should 
 be in a very bad way indeed much worse off than we 
 are were it not happily true that purifying influ- 
 ences are also steadily at work: a vast body of noble 
 literature acting as a tremendous safeguard against 
 corruption ; and the presence of a large number of per- 
 sons small, to be sure, in relation to the whole 
 population, but authoritative out of proportion to their 
 number so trained to speak the tongue that, in pub- 
 lic and in private, they act as the conservators of a 
 language which for some twelve centuries has em- 
 bodied in suitable form the choicest thought and feel- 
 ing of our race. 
 
 323 
 
Current B&ucational H&eals 
 
 ALL through June the word " education " is 
 dinned into one's ears until it is pardonable if 
 impatience at its mere mention is bred in the mind of 
 man. Up and down the land young folk have been 
 or are being graduated, and sundry wise men or 
 women are addressing them on the difference be- 
 tween school and life, the proper relation of the vari- 
 ous aspects of human endeavor, and the meaning and 
 use of mental and moral development. Wisdom has 
 been rife and the very air has buzzed with pedago- 
 gic theories. It is a comfort to reflect that the schools 
 and colleges have ceased from troubling for a season, 
 that vacation is on, and the strain and stress are tem- 
 porarily over. If a superfluity of talk about educa- 
 tion were tantamount to getting it, few would escape 
 knowledge in these recent days of universal exploitation 
 of educational ideals. All the same, few words used 
 by mortals are still of looser significance, more Protean 
 in meaning, less stable in the mouths of men. Educa- 
 tion meant one thing a thousand years ago; quite an- 
 other thing five hundred years afterward ; and at pres- 
 ent differs as much or more from the theory and 
 practice of a century since as did that century from an 
 324 
 
Current Educational 
 
 earlier age. And although it seems hard to believe, it 
 is highly probable that a period later than our own 
 will look back patronizingly upon this day as dark 
 enough in the essentials of consciously directed human 
 evolution. For education is a growth, changing as 
 man himself learns, O how slowly and tortuously, 
 about his needs and capacities in relation to this world 
 which is his environment. 
 
 It is rather unfortunate that education has come to 
 be confined as an idea to certain very prescribed and 
 definite activities connected with school, college, and 
 university. It gives a sort of exclusive and almost 
 aristocratic implication to the term; it suggests that 
 some (the minority) get educated, in distinction to 
 the vast horde who do not go through the mysterious 
 process. It makes the self-educated person an 
 absurd phrase for an absurd notion, since if you your- 
 self do not do it, nobody else will adopt a depreca- 
 tory attitude before the more fortunate individual who 
 has the educational cachet. I have seen human be- 
 ings who never went to college so richly, broadly cul- 
 tured that they made the average college graduate seem 
 like a Bushman, yet at an apparent disadvantage be- 
 cause no sheepskin hung on their walls. 
 
 Properly defined, of course, education is no such 
 cramped and limited thing as this. It is a word broad 
 enough to include all the influences and agencies which 
 serve to develop the potential powers of a human being 
 in such symmetry as to make him of maximum value 
 325 
 
OLittle Essays in Xtterature aito SLffe 
 
 to himself and to his fellow-men. In this sense, edu- 
 cation begins in the cradle and is not over at the grave. 
 
 The particular contribution of our own time to this 
 ever-changing conception seems to be a broadening of 
 the older academic standard in the direction of so-called 
 practical and utilitarian uses. Manual education, the 
 industrial, technological, agricultural, and economic, 
 are all getting full recognition; education that is vo- 
 cational, occupational, wage-earning, has a hearing as 
 never before. Popular sympathy is plainly with the 
 training that looks to early financial results, that is as 
 far away as may be from the old-time consecration to 
 the classics. At the commencement exercises of a large 
 state institution this month, the heartiest applause of 
 the day was for the group of young women who stood 
 on the stage to receive their degree as bachelors of 
 domestic science. There is a general and growing feel- 
 ing that education, once a matter of exclusive privilege 
 and class distinction, has become so practical and 
 democratic that any sort of training which fits a hu- 
 man being for any sort of definite work, and so makes 
 him a better, more useful member of society, is good 
 and must be given to the student. 
 
 The underlying principle of the elective system of 
 studies, introduced a generation ago with Harvard as 
 special sponsor, is a recognition of a phase of the 
 same thing: namely, that the student has special apti- 
 tudes, and that those aptitudes should be discovered 
 and favored by the educational authorities, instead of 
 
 326 
 
Current Efcucatfonal Hfceals 
 
 trying to fit all students alike upon the Procrustean 
 bed of mathematics, literature and philosophy, accord- 
 ing to the sacred trilogy of old. Science, during the 
 modern period, has loomed up a very giant in its de- 
 mands upon the capacity of all who study, and in its 
 many applied uses has triumphantly justified its 
 utilitarian worth. Philosophy has prospered in the 
 popular regard only when, as psychology, it flowers 
 again and demonstrates that there is usefulness in a 
 knowledge which, in a police court, can say a wise 
 word concerning the blood pressure of a criminal or 
 discover the trouble with a defective child in the ju- 
 venile criminal class. Mathematics is still tolerated, 
 since without it science in general could not exist. 
 But poor literature, claiming to be an end in itself, to be 
 for the high pleasure and eternal profit of man, and 
 nothing else, has been put rather on 'the self-defensive 
 in these latter days. How does a knowledge of poetry 
 help wages or advance a man in business? has been a 
 frequent cry. Therefore, down with letters! 
 
 That there is much of good in all this it were idle 
 to deny. The thought that education is not for the 
 few but for the many; that a Chautauqua scheme of 
 study can do much to supply the gap left by missing 
 the regular collegiate drill; and that training for life 
 cannot be arbitrarily limited, as in the past, to a few 
 traditional studies, given undue emphasis because of the 
 conservative instinct in human nature and the undis- 
 covered realms of knowledge, is all so admirable and 
 327 
 
Xittle JB8B&V8 in ^Literature a^ Xite 
 
 beneficial to the world at large that it is an ideal worth 
 fighting for and justifies the dust of conflict which has 
 in our day at times confused the issues and made educa- 
 tion look at certain moments like a travesty of the real 
 thing. 
 
 And yet one may see something of danger in this 
 hopeful modern situation. The tendency to regard the 
 practical, wage-securing training and the cultural train- 
 ing as one, not two, is and always will be wrong. 
 Vocational education aims to prepare the individual for 
 a specific lifework ; culture prepares him for life in the 
 broader sense, so as to put him on a higher plane of 
 living, and to get most out of life in the way of 
 broad, genial, fruitful contact. The professional train- 
 ing takes care of a man downtown during his office 
 hours; the cultural studies take care of and make 
 profitable his hours with his family, at home and in 
 society. Both are legitimate, both valuable, but they 
 must be kept apart in any wise scheme of education. 
 The frequent tendency to regard them as one in the 
 curriculum, or to ignore either for the sake of the 
 other, can only be productive of evil results, and ed- 
 ucators to-day should safeguard both and with lynx- 
 eyed watchfulness conserve the dual interests. 
 
 328 
 
Ebougbt anfc IFta Expression 
 
 KNOW what you have to say," announces the 
 trainer of youth, " and then say it. A clear 
 thought will give clear expression." 
 
 It would all be very simple and nice, if this were 
 only so. But it overlooks the sad fact that to have a 
 thought involves language; that you cannot have a 
 thought unless it come to you in words; and that there 
 is such a curiously chemical relation between thinking 
 and saying, thought and expression, that to separate 
 the two is a scholastic exercise rather than a human 
 possibility. 
 
 Here is one of the many pitfalls of style, your 
 manner of expression which, perchance, gives what 
 you call your thought distinction, personality. The 
 way you put it has a remarkable habit of running away 
 with what you wish to put, until it really seems as if 
 the manner settled the matter. Indeed, it is no exag- 
 geration to declare that not even a Kant or a Spencer, 
 in stating his particular philosophic views, expresses 
 his intellectual attitude quite independent of the lan- 
 guage in which it is couched. Nobody mathema- 
 tician, philosopher, scientist can reach a point where, 
 superbly aloof from words, he can present his concep- 
 329 
 
Xtttle Essays tn ^literature anfc Xife 
 
 tions to the world. The very word " concept " hints 
 of the influence of language. This is true in especial, 
 when the manner of speech takes on those imaginative 
 and emotional qualities which give it value as litera- 
 ture. Language, which is intended to reveal thought, 
 may also decorate it, fortify it, change it and some- 
 times hide it for the purposes of fun or satire or cun- 
 ning virtuosity of display. Language, which is sup- 
 posed to state, suggests instead ; in place of proving, it 
 hints, and by the use of many a deft innuendo and in- 
 direction, wins its sinuous way into our feelings. 
 Strictly, we might say, when words begin persuasion 
 takes the place of proof, and pleasure interferes with 
 the exactitude of pure brain functioning. 
 
 Take an illustration. George Meredith, in " Diana 
 of the Crossways," speaks of " thoughts that are bare, 
 dark outlines, colored by some old passion of the soul, 
 like towers of a distant city seen in the funeral waste 
 of day." This fine sentence certainly means something 
 for the mind, but it does not stop there. On the con- 
 trary, it means far more to the imagination and emo- 
 tion, and it is fair to it to say that its thought value 
 is secondary to such effects. And so is it ever with the 
 masters of speech. They stand where they do be- 
 cause of their power to give these overtones of senti- 
 ment to the activities of thought. 
 
 Probably the better advice to the would-be writer, 
 therefore, is to tell him to dive down into his conscious- 
 ness and find an interest and a conviction, and then to 
 330 
 
Ubougbt an& Uts Expression 
 
 begin to get them into expression. There will be, and 
 should be, blood in it and bias, which make for per- 
 sonality. If only the writer's interest be strong and 
 sincere enough, what he says will rise to the emotional 
 plane and be of all the more worth for that reason. 
 His thought as such may be of little or no value, be- 
 cause of youth and inexperience; but an honest spurt 
 of feeling, a belief that has back of it the rush of con- 
 viction or the arterial tide of passion, is sure to create 
 for itself a fitting garment of words. " Have some- 
 thing to say," might better be written, " Believe some- 
 thing, feel something, and then say it." 
 
 Thus may we modify the time-honored instruction 
 to think clearly, whereupon the clear expression will 
 take care of itself. A fallacy lurks in it, and, all the 
 rhetorics to the contrary notwithstanding, it will not 
 go far to help the student toward the truth. This is not 
 to argue against lucidity and simplicity; far from it. 
 It is only to confess frankly that words shape thought 
 quite as truly as thought shapes language. If it were 
 the fact that a thought could arise in the human mind, 
 and the thinker go out and acquire the suitable cloth- 
 ing for it by selection and adaptation, this idea might 
 be accepted. Language would then be strictly a gar- 
 ment for thought and the two could be studied apart. 
 But if you will take the trouble to watch a single 
 thought from the moment it comes into your self-con- 
 sciousness until the expression of it, spoken or written, 
 you will discover that it is associated with words, not 
 331 
 
Xfttle J6ssa8 In ^Literature ant> Xite 
 
 in the sense of addition and adornment but in a far 
 more vital way: words being blood of its blood and 
 bone of its bone. Philologists divide into schools over 
 the question whether, in human evolution, thought 
 precedes words, or the reverse. But practically, you 
 never will catch them apart; their connection is that 
 of the Siamese Twins. 
 
 It is well to appreciate this, because it sets us right 
 toward style and saves us from the cheap and shallow 
 notion that it is a thing less important than thought 
 and to be artificially separated from it: a kind of de- 
 vice, to be tolerated and at times even applauded, but 
 at the best a sort of poor relation to the noble thinking 
 process. As a matter of fact, that process could not 
 exist at all without the self-expression which gives it 
 point, understanding, attraction, yes, being. " In the 
 beginning was the Word." 
 
 That idea of style which is really the personal way 
 of saying a thing so that it may be understood and 
 give pleasure as if it were a detached trick, some- 
 thing that can be added after the thought has been 
 evolved, is still taught in the schools, more or less, 
 to the injury of all concerned. It justifies the 
 Philistine scorn of it as a parlor accomplishment, a 
 superficial prettification, the business of idlers and de- 
 generate esthetes. If your average citizen could grasp 
 the truth that he, too, has a style in verbal expression, 
 and that it is, as a rule, pretty bad, a fellow-feeling 
 might give him more breadth of mind on this matter. 
 332 
 
an& Ht5 Expression 
 
 Finding himself cursed with style, anyway, he might 
 seek to improve it. Think he must, in his business, 
 his profession; and as he may not think without ex- 
 pression, words, and a manner of words, it behooves 
 him to mend his ways. 
 
 But it is upon the unfortunate school children that 
 the wrong view falls heaviest. Poor dears, they have 
 a hard time of it at the best, and to teach them that 
 their crude, inchoate chunks of thought must be 
 dragged forth by a kind of Caesarian operation and 
 then, while yet unaccustomed to the pitiless light of 
 day, be gaily decked out with " words, words, words," 
 is to add a quite unnecessary extra burden to their 
 sufficient scholastic woes. No, teach them to live, 
 quicken their interest, widen their horizon of knowl- 
 edge, let them react ever more freely to life's stimuli, 
 and you will find that just because they are in- 
 creasingly alive they will develop ideas, and those 
 ideas will inevitably take the form of words in a syn- 
 chronous process. If one has not reacted to life at all, 
 neither thought nor words will come. The condition 
 of worthy thought linked to worthy expression is to 
 have lived. Teach the pupil that the word is an or- 
 ganic exponent of the thought, and that both thought 
 and word are one in the deepest sense, and he will rise 
 up and call you blessed, and incidentally become a 
 better writer, or human being expressing his thought 
 through the inevitable mode of language. 
 
 333 
 
ffacetiae 
 
Concerning tbe 3acha$$ 
 
 COLERIDGE did a unique thing in writing a 
 serious lyric on a young ass tethered near its 
 mother by the roadside. It was a daring literary 
 venture, since the very connotation of the word im- 
 plies comedy or contempt. But Coleridge felt other- 
 wise; his feeling was that of pity and affection: 
 
 Poor little foal of an oppressed race, 
 I love the languid patience of thy face, 
 
 he began, and later apostrophized him thus: 
 
 Innocent foal, thou poor despised forlorn, 
 I hail thee brother, spite of the fool's scorn. 
 
 Here the poet seems either to harbor the thought 
 that the donkey is not the ass he is taken to be, or else 
 that man is his fellow-ass without knowing it. It may 
 be both thoughts were in his mind. 
 
 For, in truth, is this particular variant of the brute 
 kind so deserving of the stigma of the ages as our lan- 
 guage would imply? The mule, with neither pride of 
 pedigree nor hope of posterity, is indeed in piteous case, 
 and may properly stand as a synonym of stupidity. 
 But to impute to the gentle, long-eared ass a similar 
 attribute would seem to be laying the last straw upon 
 an already overburdened back. 
 337 
 
Xittie Essays in literature an& %ite 
 
 For some of the ass's characteristics are anything but 
 asinine in the vulgar sense. We accuse him of slow- 
 ness: yet what quadruped tamed by man is swifter 
 than the hardy little Neapolitan donkey, which darts 
 from street to street as the swallow from cliff to cliff? 
 Slow to anger he is, of a verity, for the cabbies in the 
 city by the wondrous bay are cruelty personified; and 
 of all things surely not slow-footed. 
 
 And again, if our donkey's head be foolish, yet are 
 his feet both slow and sure when those qualities are 
 needed; I mean when you bestride your burro and 
 climb eight or ten thousand feet up a California moun- 
 tain, with one leg most of the time dangling over a 
 canyon fifteen hundred feet below; how wonderful 
 then is this beast, and how one relies upon him in the 
 hour of peril! It may be added that the slowness of 
 the ass refers to the domestic variety, for the wild ass 
 of the Orient (like him of the human family) is noted 
 for being swift. 
 
 But, it is said, the ass is obstinate. There be times 
 when, planting his forefeet squarely in front of him, 
 and with a bray of triumphant rage, he becomes 
 granite-like in immobility, recalling Scott's line: 
 
 This rock shall fly 
 From its firm base as soon as I. 
 
 The question here is, What do you mean by 
 obstinate? The men who held the pass at 
 Thermopylae were obstinate, in the sense that they 
 
 338 
 
Concerning tbe -Jackass 
 
 held their ground, and history has justified, nay, ap- 
 plauded them to the echo. Did they have a sufficient 
 reason for blocking the way? That is the only proper 
 query. So with our friend the ass. Is he stupid, 
 stopping without rhyme or reason; or, on the other 
 hand, is his driver an ass, whose attitude is an epitome 
 of unreasonableness? The trouble between the two 
 has never been rightly adjudicated; we have never 
 heard from the donkey. With dignified reserve he re- 
 frains from speech (he does not even vent one bray 
 under the excusable circumstances), and simply sticks, 
 all belaborings and profane objurgations to the con- 
 trary. 
 
 I would give a shiny silver coin to look into his face 
 and know just why. My misgivings as to his mo- 
 tives are as naught compared with what I feel con- 
 cerning his two-footed boss who tries to compel him 
 with a club. About his idiocy I am sure, whereas Mr. 
 Donkey's is only a matter of tradition. Suppose the 
 driver, in the spirit of Coleridge, had whispered kind- 
 nesses, fed him sugar, or chanted a couplet of good 
 fellowship; will anybody in his senses dare say the 
 issue might not have been happy ? 
 
 Stevenson's Modestine (a darling creature) needed, 
 I grant you, the unhallowed staff; but then Modestine 
 was an arrant little coquette, with all the airs, graces 
 and innuendoes of her type. It were as unfair to 
 judge ass-kind by a Modestine as to judge woman- 
 kind by a Helen of Troy. Moreover, let it be remem- 
 339 
 
Xittle JEssass in ^Literature ant) Xife 
 
 bered that in the end she showed the deeper qualities 
 of her sex: eating cleanly out of her master's hand, a 
 perfect lady in her daintiness, and so loving him that 
 when he had to sell her he shed unashamed tears. 
 Mayhap it is the hybrid mule who is mulishly set in 
 his own opinion, rather than the patient, long-suffer- 
 ing ass, whose name is so unjustly a laughing-stock 
 among men. 
 
 A jackass is defined by the dictionary as " male ass, 
 hence, a stupid or ignorant person." Really, one 
 objects to that " hence." It involves a most illegiti- 
 mate inference. The ass has been maltreated in his- 
 tory and fact, and even the mule maligned. To be 
 sure-footed and steady-headed, patient and silent, de- 
 nied by fate a sweet voice, yet so generous as seldom 
 to punish us with the raucous cry of which he is 
 capable; docile as a pet, yet valiant on the road; to 
 serve, to suffer and to be silent, that is the Saga of 
 the ass, and one he need not be ashamed of. He has 
 been the friend of man, humble, faithful, and unap- 
 preciated, for unreckoned generations in the Occident. 
 In the Orient, in ancient days, it is pleasant to recall, 
 in view of his virtues, that he flaunted it like any 
 aristocrat; to ride into the city upon his back was to 
 enter like a prince. If the donkey ever indulges in 
 retrospect, how sadly must he hark back to early days 
 in his original eastern habitat, gaily caparisoned, high 
 fed, sleek and favored. To pass from this to a life 
 of straitened toil and subjugation is indeed a come- 
 340 
 
Concerning tbe Jacfeass 
 
 down suggesting the irony of fate for biped or 
 quadruped. 
 
 If the ass now seem meek, homely, and subsidiary 
 to the horse, we should try to detach ourselves from 
 tradition and to detect in his look of meek amiability 
 a sort of suppressed wisdom, undeniable traces of a 
 great past. Looks against looks, he is quite the equal 
 of the horse to-day, with more of intelligence and 
 spirituality (if not spirit) in his physiognomy. 
 
 Literature should take account of all this misun- 
 derstanding of equus asinus, an animal both useful and 
 ornamental in his best estate, of high moral qualities, 
 and a pleasant companion withal; it should in poem, 
 essay and fiction so draw this four-footed bearer of 
 burdens that he shall take his rightful place in the ani- 
 mal kingdom. Coleridge gave a hint of what might 
 be done, let others follow example. As the human 
 race evolves, justice will be done the donkey. Al- 
 ready, such is our friendly and affectionate feeling for 
 the dog as a type that the word is not so bitter in the 
 mouth as it was when Shylock hurled it. The ass in 
 time will no longer connote the fool; and the human 
 jackass, member of an association perhaps the largest in 
 the world, will perforce take another name. 
 
 341 
 
Gbe Essence of ibumor 
 
 'TTE is a fine man and she is very nice, but they 
 -* have no sense of humor," how often you 
 hear the remark. Whenever I do, I secretly wonder 
 just what is meant, and how humor is to be defined. 
 Because, not seldom, on meeting the persons referred 
 to, I find them quite capable of smiling on occasion, 
 and apparently responsive to a joke. It becomes evi- 
 dent that " one man's meat is another man's poisson" 
 as Oliver Herford has it, in this matter of fun. 
 
 What, indeed, is the essence of humor? The sub- 
 ject may be light, but the question is a serious one, be- 
 cause very difficult. Perhaps we shall come at it, al- 
 though with no pretense of a complete answer, if we 
 say that to have that precious thing, a sense of humor, 
 is to possess a perception of the harmless incongruity 
 that is in life. And this perception must center in man, 
 for detached from him it does not exist; there is no 
 humor in a landscape, for example, unless in some way 
 man is injected into it. 
 
 The incongruity must be harmless and salutary, note, 
 because a great deal of life's incongruity is tragic: as 
 where a demented person breaks into laughter at a 
 342 
 
Ube JBssence ot Dumot 
 
 funeral, or a corpse is jolted into an absurd posture. 
 The juxtaposition of unlike things, which might be 
 regarded as a paraphrase for incongruity, is of many 
 kinds: external and internal, physical or mental; but 
 always the principle of the unexpected setting together 
 of things not commonly associated will be found be- 
 neath. To see a short man linked by marriage with a 
 tall grenadier of a woman is funny, as an external 
 spectacle, simply for the reason that the convention 
 is the other way: we expect the husband to be the 
 taller. In Mars it may well be that the association of 
 ideas is the reverse ; and we should shriek with merri- 
 ment to see a tall man and his short wife go by. If 
 a decorous and solemn citizen of the town is precipitated 
 on a snowy morning on the sidewalk, and his silk hat 
 goes careening into the gutter, we are likely to snicker 
 in spite of ourselves. Why? Because such gyra- 
 tions are the furthest possible removed from the gen- 
 tleman's usual manner of locomotion. Then, too, hu- 
 manity at large does not plan to have such accidents 
 happen, so that there is a double incongruity in the 
 scene. 
 
 When a man who is the best representative of hypoc- 
 risy in the city harangues his fellow-citizens from a 
 public platform, in all seriousness, against the very sin 
 of which he is the living embodiment, we get an 
 illustration of that subtler, inward incongruity which 
 rises into the region of satiric comedy; the kind of 
 picture an Aristophanes or an Ibsen would delight to 
 343 
 
Xittle JEssass tn ^Literature a^ %tfe 
 
 paint for us. And so on with other incongruities not 
 a few, objective or subjective. 
 
 When the fun is full of kindness and heart, it gives 
 us humor in contrast with that other sort of fun which 
 we call wit; for wit is the humor of the intellect. If 
 our individual brain, for instance, supplies at once the 
 omitted links in a story, so that we see the point as soon 
 as do others, or, better yet, a little before them, we 
 laugh not only at the relationship hitherto unsuspected 
 between two things, but also because our intellect was 
 so very bright as to make the connection without 
 difficulty. The subtler the connection the more we 
 felicitate ourselves. Thus there is an element of in- 
 tellectual pride in this sort of comic appeal, which 
 commonly uses indirection as its method; a method in 
 which American humor, by the way, is especially skil- 
 ful and the subtlety of which is supposed to bother our 
 oversea cousins, the British. 
 
 Humor, to the philosophic mind, is the relief from 
 the tragic nature of life which humanity in self-defense 
 seizes on from time to time. We speak of " comic re- 
 lief " in drama in another sense; but relief it is in a 
 deeper significance. That a nation is humorous, there- 
 fore, seeming to have a genius for fun, does not imply 
 light-mindedness but, on the contrary, depth of na- 
 ture. Humor is one of the cardinal characteristics of 
 our native letters; and to^ me it indicates the seri- 
 ous, strenuous (I insist on not giving up a good word 
 simply because it has been overworked) nature of the 
 344 
 
TEbe Essence of Dumor 
 
 American life and disposition; pushed on by climate, 
 burning the candle at both ends in the fierce com- 
 petitive struggle, if we did not laugh, we should 
 die. The animals do not laugh; they have no sense 
 of humor. Why so? Surely, for the reason that 
 they have no self-conscious perception of this doomful 
 world. 
 
 What is true of the nation is true of the individual ; 
 a great humorist not a mere mountebank whose 
 verbal somersaults in the paper amuse us for the mo- 
 ment is always one who has a big, sympathetic, sensi- 
 tive soul, terribly aware of the tragic possibilities of 
 the ticklish business of living. Aristophanes, Rabelais, 
 Moliere, Heine, Mark Twain, they are brothers 
 under the skin in this respect. And their highest func- 
 tion is found in the way in which they make us smile 
 the sympathetic smile of tolerance, pity, and fellow- 
 feeling, thereby uniting mankind in the fraternity of 
 the heart. Great as is humor's mission in the satiric 
 laughter which drives out sham and folly and pretense, 
 there can be no doubt that the humor of a Dickens at 
 his best has the precious touch which makes the whole 
 world kin, and becomes both an enheartening influence 
 and a reformatory force. Not satire, but love, is its 
 dominating spirit. 
 
 We may be sure that whenever the so-called humor- 
 ist fails to meet this test of an underlying seriousness 
 of intention, a failure to recognize the sort of world 
 we live in, his permanence may be doubted; nay, we 
 345 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature arto %ife 
 
 may refuse him the title, " humorist," in the finer 
 meaning of the word. He is a " funny man," and that 
 is all. 
 
 The deadly thing about fun that is forced is that it 
 is the result of brain-fagged pressure, instead of bub- 
 bling spontaneously up from the heart ; and this applies 
 to punning as well as to the other forms of humor 
 which seem less intellectual. A truly splendid pun, 
 like one of Lamb's, Sidney Smith's or Oscar Wilde's, 
 is an electric flash ; and the ignition occurs at the mo- 
 ment when the brain seizes with lightning-like rapidity 
 upon a thought emanating from the heart. In the 
 case of the poor pun, however, is there anything 
 sadder this side of Charon's boat ? The heartf ul spon- 
 taneity lacks, and the miserable, jaded brain is asked 
 to do its work all alone. 
 
 Blessed be humor, through whose kindly power we 
 shame man out of his many foolishnesses, and set him 
 in sympathetic contact with his kind, while easing his 
 soul from the strain of life. 
 
 346 
 
H Suppresses flnstinct 
 
 MAN to-day has become the undecorated animal, 
 while woman flaunts the gay plumage. Man 
 used to wear it, and now he only pays for it, if he 
 can. If we had no recourse to history, it might 
 appear that this was in the nature of things, but we 
 know better. Go back only so far as the eighteenth 
 century, and we see the male gladly making himself 
 beautiful with ruffles and small-clothes, many-colored 
 waistcoats and full-bottomed wigs. His personal 
 vanity, now for several generations pretty well con- 
 cealed and suppressed, was given the chance in the 
 elder days to flower out in his garb and he walked forth 
 appareled like the sun. 
 
 In the Elizabethan time, the dress of a courtier was 
 such that the head spins to read of it; there was 
 as much difference between a gallant then and now as 
 between a peony and a fountain pen. Even in the 
 early part of the nineteenth century, we are told how 
 the young Disraeli wore lace ruffles at the end of his 
 coat sleeves, so long that he had to turn them back 
 to grasp his fork at table. Bulwer Lytton was another 
 exquisite whose garments were resplendent ; and Dick- 
 ens as a youth rivaled any buck going in the variegated 
 347 
 
Xittle Essays tn ^Literature arto Xife 
 
 splendor of his vesture, and clung to a flamboyant at- 
 tire into later life, so that when he came to America 
 for his second reading tour in 1867, he still dressed 
 in a manner to awaken the ire or amusement of the 
 sober, black-garbed Puritans of this land. There are 
 folk yet living to tell us of his chains and rings, his 
 wondrous waistcoats and spectacular scarves. It was 
 all an innocent retention of the days of the Regency, 
 a clinging in late manhood to the habits of a quarter 
 of a century before. It must have been piquant indeed 
 to live in those days of exuberant apparel and frank 
 devotion to bodily adornment. 
 
 Then, later, came a time of penance, if not of prayer. 
 The colorful picturesqueness gave way to a sad uni- 
 formity of black. Man went among his fellows re- 
 duced to a dark monotony of clothes, and the cut 
 thereof left no room for the decorative ideal. Instead 
 of the jaunty bonnet of yore, with its debonair feather, 
 he donned the unspeakable ugliness of the derby; 
 where once were knee-breeches and handsome silk 
 stockings, shapeless pantaloons hid the contour of his 
 nether extremities, and the legitimate pride in seemly 
 calves was no more. Frilled shirt fronts were re- 
 placed by the uncompromising, icy glare of the modern 
 substitute, and at evening assemblies he who was once 
 the cynosure of all eyes was now hopelessly confused 
 with mere waiters and butlers. All was a dead level 
 of negative commonplace and drab, grave-like nonen- 
 tity. 
 
 348 
 
a Suppresses Unstinct 
 
 Can it be that this transformation has not had its 
 accompanying effect upon character? Does not man 
 suffer from this suppressed instinct of decoration, so 
 natural, so deep-seated, as we are aware whenever 
 we observe the holiday aspect of the male bird, in com- 
 parison with the modestly dressed feminine mate whom 
 he courts; or, from a safe distance, admire the noble 
 markings of the male lion beside his maneless mate? 
 Here is grave matter for the modern philosopher, whose 
 business it is to study the inward effect of outer habits 
 and customs. Is it not possible to touch upon one of 
 many consequences of this mournful modern rehabilita- 
 tion of a creature who of old time was beautiful to 
 look upon? Is it not more than likely that the with- 
 drawal of man from the field of competitive ornament, 
 leaving woman sole possessor therein, has led her into 
 unnatural efforts of extravagant display? A shallow 
 reasoner might here reply that, competition on the part 
 of man being removed, woman has less incentive to 
 decoration. But this is a wretched quibble. For the 
 spirit of emulation is constantly inflamed by fellow- 
 woman; and, moreover, when man was still decora- 
 tively active, he deflected a large part of the available 
 money from the feminine wardrobe, and so limited the 
 possibilities. And, let it be remembered, clothes al- 
 ways have cost cash though so many beaux and belles 
 did not pay their bills and, after all, there is only so 
 much money to spend. Man's retirement as a dressy 
 object has indeed wrought incalculable harm; it has 
 349 
 
Xittle Essays in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 made the world less agreeable as a spectacle, and it has 
 tempted his partner in the parade to excesses of display 
 which make the thoughtful observer shudder. We 
 should have harmony of dress, both sexes participating 
 in a general result of charm that blends to make an 
 artistic whole ; in place of which what we really see is a 
 lopsided emphasis upon only one aspect of the infinite 
 opportunities for personal expression in one's clothes. 
 Half the human race has thus been shut out from the 
 privilege of pleasing the taste by dress. Could unfair 
 repression or unequal rights further go? 
 
 In the light of these melancholy reflections, it is all 
 the pleasanter to observe the feeble yet obvious move- 
 ment toward a brighter and more varied attire in man. 
 To suppress any good instinct is dangerous, and as a 
 rule brings its inevitable reaction. The suppressed de- 
 sire to decorate and delight the eye, so long sternly re- 
 buked by fashion, has of late years given signs of re- 
 bellion; man has dared, albeit timidly, apologetically, 
 to don a color here and there, to break away from the 
 horrid uniformity of black, and to remind the world 
 that he was, in happier days, a lover of decoration in 
 his own person. His waistcoats have become many- 
 hued, if still prevailingly sober. He has worn nattily, 
 upon a head for painful years disfigured by the derby 
 or the silk topper, the soft fedora or the rakish cap. 
 His shirts, white and stiff of yore, have broken out into 
 a very revel of chromatic insubordination, and are made 
 of textures that, unstarched and silky, have ministered 
 350 
 
H Suppresses f nstinct 
 
 to his comfort, while making the eye glad. His ties, 
 too, have run the gamut of hues, his shoes changed from 
 black to tan, his handkerchiefs, like butterflies in the 
 air, flaunted the prismatic tints. He has bought him 
 suits that a generation since would have been looked at 
 askance, if they had not actually injured his social 
 standing. 
 
 In short, he has at last escaped from the grim prison 
 of restraint where for a pensive period he has lan- 
 guished in darkness and neglect, and now again taken 
 his rightful place before society. Not that he is yet 
 the rival of woman in the decorative battle; no, she is 
 still supreme, for price and power. But he is no longer 
 an entirely negligible factor; that is the point. All 
 the indications are that from this time out he will 
 more and more, gaining courage as he ventures, as- 
 sume the glory that was Brummel and the grandeur 
 that was Nash. Thus, in the fullness of time, shall 
 a proper equilibrium be struck, and man and woman, 
 in the great future that we so confidently expect for 
 the two sexes, move side by side, each beautiful to the 
 other, and the wardrobe of both the wonder of a world. 
 Evolution does most plainly promise us this happy day. 
 
 351 
 
f Bareness anO %iQbt 
 
 MARK TWAIN in his last years, as all the 
 world knows, steadily wore his famous white 
 suit, and it was referred to in some quarters as an 
 example of silly, old-age vanity, to be forgiven only 
 in a man of genius. That Mark Twain did it, ex- 
 plained but could not excuse it in the eyes of those 
 who were too blind to understand. 
 
 This was a most shallow reading of the fact. 
 There was much more in it than appears on the 
 surface. Mark Twain was that rare thing, an ab- 
 solutely original human being, who dared to be him- 
 self, while the run of humanity tamely imitates, 
 follows and irons out individuality. The master hu- 
 morist once gave his own reasons for the alleged 
 idiosyncrasy: "When a man reaches the advanced 
 age of seventy-one years, the continual sight of dark 
 clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him. 
 Light-colored clothing is more pleasing to the eye and 
 enlivens the spirit. Now, of course, I cannot compel 
 every one to wear such clothing just for my especial 
 benefit, so I do the next best thing, and do it myself." 
 
 Could anything be saner, truer, more penetrating in 
 its implied criticism of conventions? Mankind bows 
 352 
 
f Bareness an& 3Li0bt 
 
 to the tyranny of the dark from the day when he dreads 
 to go to bed in ft to that when he associates it 
 with the last sad rites or uses it as a metaphor of 
 the passing away from this present life, from " the 
 glorious sun-colored earth." And in nothing is this 
 truer than in its application to clothes. Carlyle has 
 dilated long since on the shams that are masked un- 
 der the garbs and habits of this world; but a special 
 chapter should be written upon the effect of our ex- 
 ternal habiliments, according to the color which they 
 show. 
 
 Reflect on our customs and associations in this mat- 
 ter. With the masculine half of the universe at least, 
 the " customary suits of solemn black " go with occa- 
 sions that are formal, serious, grave or outright sad. 
 It is only of late years that man has dared more or 
 less feebly to break away from the time-honored and 
 purely conventional notion that it is more seemly to 
 adopt funereal dress for almost every function of life 
 save those of business and outdoor pleasure. Women 
 have exercised more freedom than men in this respect: 
 a curious reflection, since the spindle sex is supposed to 
 be more conservative, less subject to change than the 
 spear side of the house. Nowadays, and very rapidly, 
 we have come to realize that it is pleasant and not un- 
 righteous to wear colors of cheerfuller aspect. 
 
 But how we sinned in the past in this respect ! How 
 for many of us Sunday was a lugubrious day because 
 it meant clothing not only stiff and uncomfortable, 
 353 
 
Xtttie Essays in ^literature an& Xffe 
 
 but also clothing gloomily somber, merging with the 
 general gloom of the old penitential Sabbath. The 
 small boy brought up in this fashion could not be 
 blamed if he imbibed the idea that Christians were a 
 sort of people who preferred darkness to light; for 
 whom a day was set apart in which the black clothes 
 worn were a symbol of the sinful state within. The 
 association of black, too, with death and all that 
 thereto belongs is certainly of questionable worth, and 
 not a few signs to-day point to an appreciation of the 
 theory that we have, to put it mildly, overdone the cus- 
 tom : those who have lost dear ones do not now always, 
 for such protracted periods or to such a degree, bury 
 themselves in the mournful signs of woe. The proper 
 respect and devotion to the well-remembered and 
 loved can never pass away. But the formal, conven- 
 tional outer indications thereof may be mitigated to 
 the advantage of all concerned. The test is within, not 
 without, as the great words of Isaiah imply : " I shall 
 go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul." 
 
 Winter is a time of less color than summer, in na- 
 ture the whites and duns and browns predominate; 
 and all unconsciously, perhaps, we dress accordingly, 
 and one of the many joys of the returning spring 
 (this applies in -special force to the male of the race) 
 is to be found in the gayer garments donned by men, 
 reflecting in their very persons the chromatics of Na- 
 ture, the freer, fuller, more natural outdoor life 
 heralded by the change of seasons. 
 354 
 
f Bavfcness 
 
 Nor should it be forgotten that color has its 
 psychology, so that the hue of garments bears a close 
 relation to the mood of the wearer and helps to create 
 that mood. Recent laboratory investigations are mak- 
 ing us understand as never before that when the cheer- 
 ful yellow of sunlight or the restful green of trees, 
 or again the violent reds and purples of some decora- 
 tion are spoken of, the language is not mere rhetoric 
 and metaphor, but the statement of a fact. Other 
 things being equal, a comedy scene on the stage that 
 is set in yellow will play best, and so will an emo- 
 tional scene that is set in red. The human instinct 
 to put on bright, light, joyous clothes is far more than 
 a primitive desire for personal adornment; it is an 
 impulse toward happiness, a craving for life, a repug- 
 nance from all that means deprivation, darkness and 
 death. It is all part of the human aspiration for 
 light, the longing which called forth the memorable 
 death-bed utterance of Goethe : " Mehr Licht ! " It 
 gleams out in that passage in Revelation : " And 
 round about the throne were four and twenty seats; 
 and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sit- 
 ting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their 
 heads crowns of gold." 
 
 One may make a shrewd guess that the wish to wear 
 black was not at one time in the history of the world 
 that of a normal, untutored, unthinking, spontaneous 
 human being; it has always come from some associated 
 idea, some convention, custom or belief. And con- 
 355 
 
SLfttle Essays in ^Literature an& Xife 
 
 trariwise, the Mark Twain feeling for white raiment 
 is the instinct for health and happiness. The human 
 race would have been gladder and further along the 
 long path which begins in a wriggle in the mud and 
 ends in loftiest righteousness, if only it had stuck closer 
 to this will to express externally and in person the 
 good cheer which is so necessary a viaticum for the 
 journey. But in stepped convention, and we dressed 
 a part which we felt called upon to play contrary to 
 all our feelings; soon this was frozen into a habit and 
 seemed almost like a law of nature. It will take cen- 
 turies yet before the world in general sees how sensible 
 was the creator of " Huckleberry Finn " when he 
 dared to be himself, to follow, at the expense of cus- 
 tom, a feeling rooted in a need of his nature, and in 
 the nature of us all. A close study of Samuel 
 Clemens will reveal that other of his so-called vagaries 
 had the same commonsensible origin. He would not 
 have been the great humorist he was, and is, had there 
 not been beneath his fun a fundament of shrewd, sweet, 
 homely wisdom. After all, it takes a very wise man 
 to show us the humor that is to be found in life. 
 
 THE END 
 
 356 
 
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