The Seedy Gentleman by Peter Robertson Cover Design and Frontispiece by Gordon Ross San Francisco A. M. Robertson -> U Copyright, 1901 By A. M. ROBERTSOW Printed by The Stanley-Taylor Company San Francisco CONTENTS CONTENTS TITLE LOVE ...... OURSELVES .... WOMAN S EYES .... LIFE Is A FAKE SOME HUMAN WEAKNESSES OUTLAWS AND OPERA THE USELESSNESS OF THINGS THE MORBID STORY HAPPINESS MORE ABOUT LOVE . Is ART WAS TRUE TO POLL Music ..... THE NEW WOMAN MACBETH SEES HIMSELF THE CLUB LIBRE WEDDINGS .... LIFE Is NEVER THE SAME AGAIN LOVE BALLADS GHOSTS ..... THE HUMAN ORCHESTRA A VISITOR FROM THE SHADES THE MODE .... THE COMIC OPERA OF LIFE . RAG- TIME .... THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER PAGE I 13 23 33 43 S3 63 73 83 93 103 in 119 129 . 139 147 155 v 165 , 175 . 185 J 193 205 v 215 223 231 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN TITLE PAGE CURIOSITY ...... 239 MAN, GET ON TO THYSELF . . . 247 THE OLD LIFE AND THE NEW . . . 257 HEARTSEASE . "-. ! V j ; . . . 267 THE LOVE STORY OF A SCOT . . . 277 THE DEVIL ...... 285 MADAM PRESIDENT .... 295 IN THE BRAVE DAYS WHEN WE WERE TWENTY-ONE ..... 305 POVERTY ...... 315 CHRISTMAS ...... 325 The Seedy Gentleman LOVE ABOUT LOVE It had grown into a custom for the little group Love to gather in the cozy room at the Club, of an evening, after the play, or if they had been be lated down town, and, over a midnight toddy, let the conversation have free way. They had dis cussed the topics of the moment very thoroughly, and there had fallen a lull in the talk, when the Fellow in the Corner said : "I wonder what has become of the Seedy Gen tleman to-night ?" "He ll be here," put in the Candid Man, "for I saw him at the theatre." As he spoke, they heard the familiar voice in the hall, and presently the Seedy Gentleman en tered with a jaunty air, and in a condition of evident exhilaration. His threadbare suit, ele gant in the fashion of a long past period, was particularly neat; his old-fashioned stock was perfectly arranged ; and his patent leather shoes, with just a suspicion of a crack here and there, had been carefully polished. He dropped into his easy chair with a wave of greeting to them, flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve with a handkerchief which sent out a delicate perfume, stroked his white moustache, fixed his monocle in his left eye, took out a cigar and lit it, and then, THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love with a long breath, lay back in an attitude of perfect comfort. "Been in society this evening ?" queried one of the group. "In good society," the Seedy Gentleman re plied in a self-satisfied tone. "In good society. Good women are the very best society." "That depends," said the Candid Man. "Good women can make themselves very disagreeable when they like." "When they don t like, you mean," answered the Old Man. "You are so popular apparently," put in the Cynic with a suggestion of a sneer. "The trouble with you cynical people is that you are always giving yourselves away. Your at titude toward society is cause and effect in one." "We don t pose, anyway," retorted the cynic. "It s just what you do," interjected the Can did Man. There was imminent danger of a row, when the Fellow in the Corner came in with a query that changed the conversation. "What was the play about ?" he asked the Seedy Gentleman. "Oh, love, love, as usual," promptly replied the Old Fellow, evidently pleased to get a chance to introduce his subject. "John ! I will take something. Gentlemen, I see you are served. Yes," he went on with a swing that they knew meant no more opportunity in the conversation THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN for them. "Yes, it was about love. As I said to well as I said, that is where the great mis take lies." "What mistake ?" "About love. The dramatists never do get at the truth. They always make the right man fall in love with the right woman. The fact is, the man always falls in love with the wrong woman in real life, and vice versa. You sit and watch a play. When the actors and actresses come on you know exactly what the couples will be in the last act. They may have lots of trouble before they get there ; but you can tell that harmony of creation which is so noticeably absent from the real thing, and so beneficently produced by the playwright. Now, let us " and the Seedy Gentleman lounged back in his chair and swung his left leg over his right. "Now, let us con sider this question of love. Why should love be constant to one ? How can love for one be eternal ? I met a clever woman once thank you, John here is to her ! I met a clever wom an once. We talked of love." "Ahem !" "I said, gentlemen, we talked of love," and the Seedy Gentleman showed a momentary confus ion. "We talked of love." "Have you ever loved ?" I asked. "Often," she answered quite sadly. "Can one love more than once ?" "Not the same man. I am in a great diffi- 5 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love culty about that," she answered. "I am fond of horses, and I adore a man who loves them and can talk about them. I am interested in electric ity, and I enjoy a moonlight walk with a young man who knows all about it. I like prize-fights, and a third gentleman is welcome, because he goes to all the scrapping matches. I am senti mental, and I have an admirer who reads poetry to me once or twice a week." "And you love them all ?" "At times. I couldn t endure the prize-fight youth on my sentimental night, of course ; and the chap who talks horses is a bore when I feel like discussing electricity. But I couldn t get on without all of them." "Do they all love you ?" "That s just the trouble. They all want to marry me ; but how could I bear to have a hus band eternally reading poetry or talking horses or describing prize-fights ? That is the mistake I find in men. They are not made with a suffi cient variety of tastes. Now, if there was one man who was fond of all those subjects he would be perfect ; but even then I suppose he would feel like talking about horses when I wanted him to be poetic. If I could marry as many as I liked, it would be happiness. Do you think," she asked anxiously, "there will be some liberty for women in heaven ?" "I doubt it," I said sadly. "A woman never 6 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN wants liberty except when she can t have it Love like anything else." "Now, gentlemen, what is love? There have been many definitions, but none have covered the subject. For my own part, I sometimes doubt if that one is not accurate which holds love to be simply an intense desire for something, quenched by possession. Sometimes the object has suffi cient variety or ingenuity of charm to revive the desire. But, be it of the male or female sex, if it has not that power the love never comes back. The lover tells the sweetheart he is always the same ; will always be the same. Clasped in his arms, the girl swears to the man she will never change. Gentlemen, that is where the mistake is made. For myself, I could only love a woman who was always different. Trust me, the woman who holds the husband, holds him as she held the sweetheart, by ever showing some new charm." "You seem to know all about it." "I know something, perhaps. I loved once myself," and the Seedy Gentleman blushed a lit tle. "I met, when I was a young man, a charm ing girl. She was many sided. She had refined and varied tastes. Every day she seemed to show some new light, like the facets of the dia mond. One happy year we were affianced, and then " "She died ?" "No ! She ran away with another man. She 7 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love had variety enough for several husbands. And now, gentlemen, you know the secret of my ad miration for widows. I may have variety enough for a second husband. But to resume. Love, as treated by the dramatists, is badly treated. With a broken heart a woman is a tragedy; with one husband she is a drama ; with two husbands she makes a comedy ; with three husbands she be comes a farce ; and with four husbands she reaches farce-comedy. You can t make a hero ine of a strong play out of a woman who has been married three times. That is all too much of a strenuous life. The ordinary human mind will admit the possibility of a woman loving twice, but she can t do it any more without being laughed at. Yet I doubt if there is a woman liv ing who has not loved half a dozen different men in her lifetime well enough to have mar ried them all. The trouble is that all men and women can love, but very few can entertain one another for a lifetime. The best husband and the best wife are the best company all the time. It is all very well that George is so clever and so bright that Mary is bound to be happy with him. But George, after he gets married, expects Mary to entertain him, too. He might have found out, while they were courting, that she had nothing in her. He was so vain he couldn t see anything but his own ability, which she kept telling him about. Hence, gentlemen, parting and pain. The divorce court was established to THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN relieve exhausted nature and give love a fresh Love start. Love is a fire, but you have to keep put ting fresh chips on it to keep it going. If you don t, somebody else will. Ah, me ! The woman sits by the ashes, growing gray, of a life whose warmth and light have nearly gone, and a new lover comes along with a little bundle of shav ings and starts the whole business again. And just as often as the fire goes down, if the man comes with the shavings it will blaze up afresh. Gentlemen," and the Seedy Gentleman got up and began walking up and down, "it is a great dispensation of Providence that love is eternal but that the object may be varied ad libitum. If we were compelled to love one woman, what a terrible thing life would be. If we could only say I love you once in a lifetime, life would not be worth living. It is ennobling to love ; and if it be ennobling to love one, how much more ennobling to be able to love all ! In fact, gentlemen, when you look into the thing, see how beautiful it is, even in that insignificant de tail of concentrating on one at a time !" "Take a soothing drink, won t you ?" "Thank you ; I had forgotten. But after all everything is a changing ideal. The woman at thirty wonders why at twenty she married the man she did when she sees how the other suitor of the same age has developed. The woman of twenty-five turns away from the man her more youthful fancy chose, and weds the fellow whom 9 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love at twenty-two she thought a fool. The man at thirty-five seeks the woman who hopelessly loved him ten years before, and finds she has changed her ideal, too. And so the world goes round. Ah, dear old Thackeray ! It has not changed since you sat at your old table at forty year, dipping your nose in the Gascon wine. Gentlemen, here s to Gillian, God rest her soul !" The Seedy Gentleman spoke quite reverently. "Still, gentlemen, we look tenderly on those we have loved. The little girl who won our hearts at school is blessed in our memory, if but for that happy remembrance. She jilted us, pos sibly, behaved shamefully ; but the scent of the new-mown hay, the summer sunset when we waited and watched for her, still belong to her. We would have forgotten them but for her. The first love letter, surreptitiously written, surrepti tiously sent, was never obliterated by cruelty or change of later years. The woman we loved in the first blush of manhood gets still a tender glance of respect as she passes by on her hus band s arm. I sometimes think," and the Seedy Gentleman looked earnestly at the ceiling. "I sometimes wonder if it is not true love that keeps many sweethearts from getting married at all. A man may love a woman so dearly that he will not venture to link his uncertain fortune with hers. A man may be so purely in love that he may be afraid the woman should ever find out his weaknesses, unobjectionable if they be. After 10 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN all there is something wildly selfish in the impet- Love uous love that bears its object blushing to the altar ; something that lacks consideration for her. There is so much in a man s hot-hearted prom ise, his ebullient confidence, that is nothing but the elation of conceit. True love is sometimes cowardly, cowardly with that cowardice which is nobler than courage. But God is good indeed to him whose first love lasts through and fills all his life. Good night !" ii OURSELVES OURSELVES The room was dark when they came in. The Ourselves window-blind was drawn up, and the moonlight streamed in upon a figure rocking in a chair. "Ah, gentlemen, you are late," said a voice, as the waiter lit the gas. "Oh, you re here, are you ?" said the first of the little crowd. "Yes. I was afraid you had gone into the coun try and left this little world to me." "We Ve been watching the Convention bulle tins." "Well, let us drink to the best man for the purpose the man who wins." "I am with you, gentlemen; with you now and always. My politics are yours," and the Seedy Gentleman got up and pulled the blind down, and wheeled his chair round. "Let us shut it out," he said. "Shut out what?" "The moonlight. I cannot talk in the moon light. It distracts me. It is so beautiful it makes me dream, and wonder, and I can t think." "Makes you poetical, eh?" "It is poetry. It throws a glamour over the dull streets, the misbuilt houses, the prosaic city, and makes you fancy everything is beautiful. It 15 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN is a great service to us, after all. It does for our commonplace, dingy buildings what the love and sentiment do for human nature sometimes." "Here s to the man they nominate !" "Here s to him ! I have not been to a political meeting since I took Daniel Webster and Henry Clay around last campaign." "What did they say?" asked the Cynic. " Same old arguments, said Henry Clay. " Yes, Henry, said Daniel Webster, the same old speeches, egad. " "Daniel hit it, didn t he?" "Oh, they stood at the back and checked off the quotations. It just occurs to me, gentlemen," said the Seedy Gentleman, sipping his hot Scotch, "that America is the only country where politics form the staple of undignified stage comedy. In fact, I don t see how farce-comedy, extrava ganza or comic opera could get on if politics and poker were serious questions. You often hear critics wonder where foreign nations get their ideas of Americans. From ourselves, gentlemen, from ourselves ! They read our literature, they see our plays, and we can t be astonished if they think Congress a huge farce, vulgarity a national characteristic, honesty a laughing stock, and be lieve that we are proud of our worst qualities." "Oh, I don t know about that," said the Prac tical Man. "We laugh at ourselves too much. It is very amusing, when you are on the inside, and under- 16 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN stand it; but outsiders are apt to misjudge our Ourselves character from our humor. If we did not con stantly make a joke of corruption, of bribery, of dishonesty, of selling honor for money; if our jests about ourselves were not, for the most part, rather vulgar and even insulting, it would not be so bad. We are not supposed to laugh merrily over objectionable, low, sordid vices, unless we are willing to be accused of condoning them in some measure. The types of men we select to illustrate the humorous side of American life are not a whit less offensive than the pictures in Martin Chuzzlewit. Let us forgive Dickens forever !" "There s something in that, Old Man !" re marked the Fellow in the Corner. "If some Frenchman or Englishman had written some of those farces or comedies or novels of ours, would we laugh at them ?" "Perhaps not." "I don t say it is not all fun with us ; although we know there are such things as bribery and corruption. There may be just as much of those in other lands ; but it seems to me that America is the only country where we think they are funny. Really we have to thank the foreign caricaturists ; they have made all kinds of fun over our manners, but they have generously avoided the coarse char acteristics and the conditions which we joke about, and which reflect on our general idea of honor. 17 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Ourselves American humor, above all humor, sacrifices any thing to the laugh." "We don t care what other people think," said the Practical Chap. "Oh, yes, we do, just as much as anybody else. We pretend not to, but we are very touchy. We know that people have gathered their impressions of Romans from Julius Caesar and Virginius, and their English history from Shakespeare, more than they have from being taught in schools. The object lesson is always more impressive. I think that thousands of people now base their opinion of what goes on at Washington by the jokes and gags in the farce-comedy. They know they are an exaggeration, but they judge the fact from the exaggeration, and not the exaggeration from the fact." "What are you going to do about it? 1 asked the Fellow in the Corner. "What s the good of trying to reform people? It doesn t pay. Reformation is an excessively disagreeable subject, and really it doesn t matter much nowadays. Reformation is a luxury for the poor. When we are hard up or in hard luck, we have a vague idea that we need to reform some where, somehow. We don t always know where or how, but we re satisfied something is wrong about us. When we re in funds, there really does not seem to be any necessity for reform. When a man is rich enough to be above the sus picion of stealing, he can do anything, pretty 18 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN much. We don t need ten commandments. We Ourselves don t need any. There is but one that can be formulated, and it does not need to be form ulated." "What is that?" "Do not begin anything you cannot get away with." "Comprehensive." "Yes, gentlemen," said the Seedy Gentleman, leaning gracefully back in his chair, "there would be really no American comedy without politics and poker. A gag on either subject will be caught and laughed at by any audience in this country. That is why English comedy is so stupid. Their political jokes are respectful and dignified. The average gag here would be ground for a libel suit over there ; and they don t play poker. It seems funny there is nothing broadly humorous about whist or piquet or crib- bage, and yet poker seems to be full of jokes for an audience." "It is rather odd when you come to think of it." "Ah, well, everything has its funny side, even a funeral. Life is too short for worry. Sorrow comes and passes, and happiness is sandwiched in between, just like real every-day sandwiches too, very little meat and very thick bread. Per haps we may be more sensible in some ways than our forefathers, to whom life was always serious. I don t think we feel grief any less; we show it 19 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Ourselves less. We take our chances of another life with much more daring than of old ; the wicked are less afraid ; the good have a perfect twentieth century confidence in supreme justice. The fact is, we are getting so familiar with trouble and de ception and villainy, we don t mind them as much as they used to do. We don t break our hearts over the girl who jilts us. There are plenty more. Our friend turns out a traitor ; well, let him go ! There are plenty more, for we don t make friend ships as deep as of old. And we know that human nature is utterly unreliable ; so we are prepared for that. Time was when sympathy soothed grief and dispersed sorrow. We know better. We are sensible, if less humane. We know that sympathy keeps grief alive, and sorrow left alone bores itself to desperation. Ah me, life is so busy we have no time for tears, not much for laughter. No, we are not heartless, we are not unsympa thetic; only time goes so fast, we have so much to do. We have to attend meetings, get our meals, make money, spend money, go to picnics, write letters oh, there is so much to do, all in those three score years and ten, we have to hurry !" "Yes, there is a great deal to attend to," said the Practical Man. "And what is the end of it all?" "Dust!" "Yes, you re right; it is dust first, last, and all the time. From dust we came, we live to hunt dust, and to dust we return. Dust ! When it s 20 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN all over you can t tell rich from poor or wicked Ourselves from good by the bones. It is but a difference of the coffin and trappings ; and more genuine tears have fallen over the plain deal box, than over the gorgeous sarcophagus. The monument is for the few of us, though many may deserve it. And over the best man in the world, perhaps, there may be no headstone, no epitaph. We can t tell. About all we can do is to live as well as we can, and, knowing our own human weaknesses, deal kindly with others." The Seedy Gentleman sighed deeply into his glass, and fell into silence. 21 WOMAN S EYES ABOUT WOMAN S EYES "To woman s eyes a round, boys !" sang the Woman s Seedy Gentleman, waving his glass. "We can t Eyes refuse, we can t refuse." "To woman s eyes, then !" said everybody. "Some eyes there are so holy," went on the Old Man, "they seem but given, they seem but given, as splendid beacons solely, to guide to heaven, to guide to heaven." "That s pleasant !" put in the Sentimental Man. "And some there are, also," he sang, "with gen tle ray, with gentle ray, would lead us, God for give em, the other way, the other way." "You re sentimental," remarked the Fellow in the Corner. "And vocal. All the vocal and sentimental songs of the day, as the vender of ballads on street corners cries now, as he did in ancient Babylon." "Whose song was that ?" "Tom Moore s, I think. Tom Moore has been one of the few men whose poetry goes with hot Scotch, and he was an Irishman." "How about Burns ?" "I don t know. We are na fou ; we re nae that fou , " and the Seedy Gentleman wagged his head backward and forward. Scottish drinking 25 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN songs, so to speak, sound of potations ; Irish are full of sentimental conviviality. You feel as if the Scottish might end in a hiccough ; some how I have a dim idea that the Irish, if carried on all night, might develop into a fight." "I am afraid the poetry is dying out of liquor," said the Candid Man. "True, we don t toast, in flowing bumpers, woman as we used to. It is not that the times change. We change and the times change with us. The fact is that the sex is proposing its own health now, making speeches and singing For she s a jolly good fellow. The sex must be strong headed, if it does not know it is beautiful. If the women don t know that they have brows like snowdrops, necks like swans, bosoms of ivory, eyes like blue skies, violets, stars, seas in sunlight, and other lovely things in nature, and voices like lutes, fiddles, harps every instrument, indeed, except the trombone and the bass drum it isn t our fault. We have told them often enough. Since ever the world was, men have puffed up women, and only in this twentieth cen tury, they are beginning to get stuck up. " "Oh, they ve got vanity enough." "Vanity ? Of course they have. But just think how much poetry has been written about them ! Our trouble is that they are beginning to believe poetry and expect us to live up to our fulsome praise ; and their trouble is that they are finding out that it was and is all pure flattery. Ye gods ! 26 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN how men have lied, do lie, will lie to women !" "Are women always so truthful ?" "No, only more ingenuous. A woman always gives an explanation that no reasonable being can believe." "You are hard on the sex this evening." "No, I am merely crediting them with a certain amount of ingenuity. They know that, when they have hold of a man, he is not a reasonable being. But they are driven to demanding woman s rights. The men of old flattered them and told them pretty things, and they were content. Now the struggle for a husband is becoming hard, and they ve got to do something for themselves. There are too many beautiful eyes about, and pretty faces, and attractions of all the female kind, and success is an uncertain quantity. They are getting tired of poetry and cake. They want prose. The day has nearly gone past, when a man could talk love nonsense to a girl, and get her to believe it. She says now, very politely but very distinctly, You love me ! Well, what are you going to do about it ? " "And there s a coldness, I suppose." "No, not at all. There s always a pleasure in a compliment, even when you know it is a lie. But ever since Venus gave the shepherd that killing glance on Mount Ida, women s eyes have been supposed to play a very prominent part in the world s history. I can t deny that it is moving to gaze into the liquid depths of a pair of beauti- 27 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN W oman s ful eyes, whosever they may be. There s no Eyes particular individuality about eyes. Somebody says that beauty draws us by a single hair. Well, there is a charm about a woman s hair, even when it curls up the back of her neck. Yes, even when it is dyed. No ; nature is not always artis tic. Some brunettes should have been blondes ; some blondes should have been brunettes. Some women would be justified in dyeing their hair. They are the ones who don t do it. Some hair is very pretty when it is dyed if you see it with the sunlight on it, and don t go too close to the roots with your gaze. I suppose women dye their hair because they get tired of their personal ap pearance ; they look so often at themselves in the mirror. After all, the eyes are the power; but no preparation that beauty doctors can discover will put the soul into them the soul that makes a man forget even the eyes themselves." The Seedy Gentleman seemed to be overcome by some of his recollections, for he stopped and sat musing a long time. "Do you know," he went on, "do you know if the woman you love is pretty or not ? Do you care whether she has golden hair or brown or black ? Do you ever stop to analyze her bonnet or her dress ? Yes, sometimes she strikes your eye differently, but, when you have noted that, do you see anything much more attractive than you did before ? If she is not attractively dressed, do you remember that after the first 28 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN glance? Haven t you met a woman whom Woman s somehow you never seemed to see at all, whose Eyes face and figure became vague and undefined as you talked with her, and a kind of spirit seemed to be before you ?" "You re getting too ethereal, Old Man. Have another glass !" and the Fellow in the Corner rang the bell. "No. I m not ethereal. The feeling that is given to beauty is not love ; it is only admira tion. It may induce people to do foolish things, absurd things, that are generally imputed to love. There are many different charms in woman that move men to infatuation. Ah, me ! it is a strange world and full of strange things. Men will do more from infatuation than from love any time. But never mind," said the Seedy Gen tleman, changing his tone. "A woman believes in her eyes. Bless her ! She thinks they re irre sistible. Sometimes she s right, but, oh, how wrong she is sometimes ! Yes, they all believe in magnetism, but they don t quite rely upon it. They are clear and shrewd on the magnetism of a pretty figure, even if the dressmaker is entirely responsible for the outline ; and they know the magnetism of a becoming dress. They have even an idea that there is new magnetism in a new bonnet. That is only for other women, though. And there is all the trouble. They formulate a theory of magnetic attraction, and when they are convinced they are magnetic, a man can go and lie 29 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Woman s to them without the faintest danger of their not Eyes believing him." "Have you tried it ?" asked the Candid Man. "Gentlemen, touch me not so near ! I may have said more than I thought, but, I well, for tunately, I ve never been taken at my word. But I was thinking of the eyes that draw the other way. After all, it seems that all is magnetism ; the soul is the battery, and it works most directly through the eyes. Yes, it is the positive and the negative there, too. The woman is generally pos itive before marriage, and negative after, accord ing to all I hear. Matrimony seems to reverse the poles. I wonder if science will ever fathom the magnetism of men and women. Perhaps ; who knows ? We may be able to analyze the current, and put down with mathematical precis ion its force and its effect." "You re a great theorist, aren t you ?" "Well, theory must begin things, mustn t it? Yes, gentlemen, I can see a new and useful in dustry to come. In all ages people have con sulted soothsayers and oracles and fortune-tellers. In the future they will consult magnetic experts, who will be able, when they feel love springing up in their hearts, to apply a little machine to them, and tell them exactly how many volts of respect, regard, and passion are combined in the current, and, by a mathematical calculation, how long love will last. The enterprise of men may even bring science and the minister together ; and 30 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN when a couple stand up to be married, the min- Woman s ister will start a little machine, connect their Eyes hands, work out a little equation, and say : You two had better not get married, or It s all right, I ll proceed with the ceremony. They may even get a nickel-in-the-slot machine that will tell all about love. I believe some simple process must exist for deciding such an important factor in human life." "Well maybe " "They ll take the chances, all the same. A great many people know perfectly well when they get married that they have no business to. Well, there is very little in life, it seems, that we have any business to do. It s a question, with most of us, of degrees of comfort. It is one trouble, one kind of misery, against another. The hunger of the heart against worse, possibly, than starvation ; the misery of unsatisfied longing against the pos sible unhappiness of a whole lifetime ; present despair against a happiness, that may pass, but that may last. We take the chance in everything, in business, in love and in pleasure. We take the chance of another life, and even the atheist trusts in God to forgive him if he finds he has been wrong." The Seedy Gentleman drank off his toddy, looked at his watch, ejaculated "Great Heavens !" and went hurrying out. LIFE IS A FAKE LIFE IS A "FAKE" "It is," said the Seedy Gentleman, getting up Life and walking about the room, "it is such a howl- ingly absurd world." "What s the matter with the world ?" asked the Practical Man. "Life is a fake ; everything in it is a fake." "You re like the fellow in Dickens who took life to be a farce." "No, life is not a farce. It may be a prologue in which all the characters are introduced and the basis is laid for the comedy, drama or tragedy that is to come. But whatever it is, and I sup pose it s something of a dramatic character, it is a fake. Come now, do you care a straw how those who come after you find the world ? Not a bit of it ! There was a time when a man was ambitious to do something that would keep his name and memory alive with posterity. Why, Heaven only knows ! Now we want the present and nothing else. We do not build for the future." "What s the use ?" "That is the question, the ever-selfish question. And so we fake things. Yes, we fake friend ship, love, business enterprises, everything. We don t last ourselves, and so we don t care 35 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Life whether anything else lasts or not. Not only sufficient for the day is the evil thereof ; sufficient for the day is the good thereof. Well, well, it is a hopeful age, a self-reliant age, an age that fears neither God nor the devil, that goes ahead in its own way, and has a perfect faith in its own claim to reward." "Sit down and take a little hot Scotch !" said the Fellow in the Corner. "Thank you ! There are momentary pleasures that soothe." "Even if they don t do any good to posterity." "You don t know. They may. They may hap pen at a crucial moment, when we might other wise do something that would do a great deal of damage to posterity or ourselves." "This kind of soothing pleasure has done a great deal of damage in all time." "My dear sir, men can t balance good and evil. They are not in the secrets of Providence. But it is curious how close to absurdity real life is. They say great wit to madness surely is allied. And the most serious things in life are only by a hairbreadth removed from absurdity. I question, gentlemen," said the Seedy Gentleman earnestly, "I question if sanity and sense are not sometimes the abnegation of that reasoning power we are so proud of." "What do you mean ?" "Nine-tenths of action, gentlemen, is impulse. When it is all right it is shrewd sense, when it is 36 tHE SEEDY GENTLEMAtf all wrong it is unreasoning foolishness or worse." Life "I suppose that s true to some extent," put in the Candid Man. The Old Man rose again and walked up and down. "You know what embarrasses the novelists and the playwrights, and the philosophers as well? The motive. They have always to give a motive for everything. They endow old maids with for tunes, plain men with intellectual capabilities, girls with beauty, women with fascination to give a motive for love. They prove all their dramatic situations by motive. They can do nothing without giving a motive for it. And yet in real life a million things are done without motive; tragedies hang on inexplicable impulses, and people love without knowing why. The man in the story who does a good action is re warded for it somehow ; women who sin are punished. The fact is that human nature is meaner than most will believe, in some ways ; but men and women are better and more generous, without any stimulus save their own dispositions, than is generally accepted. If we reason on good, we find it is a form of hypocrisy ; if we reason on evil, it is inspired by some practical cause. Well, the ordinary mind exacts that logic be satisfied. And the ordinary mind is, as a rule, quite illogical itself." The Old Man sat down impatiently. "Well, after all, if we analyzed everything we 37 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Life would find nearly everybody more or less de mented. You see, we don t explain things to our selves, or to anybody else, much. The great rea son we have for any special behavior is rarely explainable, so some shrewd human in the earli est days invented the excuse. The truth is, most of the time the real reason is what we don t want to explain. There is always a why, and when we do things, if we are not asked the question, it is because the motive is seen or assumed. It is usually assumed, and consequently, utterly wrong. Ah, such is life ! Isn t it funny what an immense amount of motive centers around money ? When a man has money a poor woman doesn t let anybody know she loves him, even if she does. They say she s after his money." "Doesn t she?" asked the Cynic. "I said when she loves him," answered the Old Man with the accent on the "loves." "We assume it is only a love match when the woman is as wealthy as the man. And really, gentlemen, it is very hard a poor man can t marry a rich woman without injury to his self respect, be cause logic tells everybody on the outside that it is her fortune he s after." "You speak feelingly." "Looking for a motive again ! Ah, we all do that. When somebody does something for us we have no right to expect, we ask, even ourselves, what he does it for. When somebody is very civil to us, we wonder what he wants. It is wrong, so 38 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN very wrong. Human nature is not so bad al- Life ways. There is that sympathy inherent in us, as denizens of a common world, victims of a com mon fate, that makes us wish sometimes to help where we can. I don t think there are many people who do not feel a little glow of pleasure over a fate they have brightened by a kind action. We are mean and hateful sometimes ; we can do bitter deeds of vengeance occasionally, and gloat over an enemy in distress ; but the worst of us have streaks of good in us. Character is so much of momentary mood anyway. The hard est has soft spots ; the worst has gleams of nobility." "What is it Gilbert sings about when the bur glar ain t a burglin ? " queried the Fellow in the Corner. "He loves to lie a baskin in the sun." "True, quite true! It may not reduce the offense, but the principle is philosophy. It s only a question of preponderance. Even the drunk ard s wife, who suffers tortures from his drunk enness, bears beatings and curses, and forgives for some other qualities that compensate for the suffering. Compensation is everything. Ah ! Forgive me is sometimes the sweetest sentence in the language. But, after all, life is a kind of a fake. We pretend to enjoy ourselves most of the time. I don t know that we often do, but perhaps, if we had no troubles, we would not know what to do with ourselves. Life is a con- 39 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Life stant exercise of remembering or trying to for get, sometimes both at once. I think we have invented more new miseries than new joys. Civ ilization is nothing but a restless spirit, a crav ing for change and novelty. We want excite ment. We must have it. The days when men laid aside their business after office hours, and took their ease at home, and sat in their little gardens, and talked and watched the children play, while the west was red with the sunset, and peace was on everything, are gone. It is only in the wilds of the country they do that now. We have so many useless ways of promoting the welfare of the human race now. The business man goes back down town at night. He has men to see, and lodges to go to, and all sorts of socie ties he has to belong to. He has to go to the theatre and drop in at the club, and, really, we are very busy helping the race along." "And politics." "And politics. The world gets worse, in some respects, instead of better. I can imagine an ideal age. If they had known in science what we know now, in the days of ancient Greece, it would have been a perfect age, I suppose. Maybe they knew more after all, even in that. Gentlemen, education is a fake today, if any thing is. Accuracy even mostly erroneous human accuracy is of no account. We are told or read all sorts of valuable information, that is either entirely wrong or quite inaccurately 40 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN stated. I think if it were all boiled down to Life facts, we would know very little more than they did in this country a century ago. The printing- press gives to the world the thoughts of men who have no business to think, as it gives the valuable studies of those who have probed things to the bottom. It gives the wild and idle spec ulation, and the proved and tried facts side by side, and to many people the one is as much an education as the other. In matters of science it confuses ; in matters of art it simply keeps back the true development. Well, the fake is the most entertaining, perhaps. The truth is rarely as in teresting as the theory or the speculation, and few can tell the fake when they see it. Some times they prefer it, anyway. I don t think girls would paint their faces if they did not find it drew more admirers. There are women who will tell you it doesn t; but I will, if you will permit me, bet on the girl who paints, to be nearest the truth. I fancy it depends largely on the face that s painted. Everything depends on some thing, if we only knew what. But, I admit, you can t tell about women. They always have mo tives only they re never based on human rea son." And the Seedy Gentleman put his hat on the side of his head and strolled out. SOME HUMAN WEAKNESSES ABOUT SOME HUMAN WEAKNESSES "Yes, gentlemen," said the Seedy Gentleman, Weaknesses as he pulled a briar-root pipe out of his coat-tail pocket and filled it from a package of tobacco he had brought out with it. "Wait a minute, Old Man ! We ve been wast ing time. John ! Bring us some pipes and a package of smoking tobacco." "Clay pipes, sir ?" "Yes, churchwardens." The waiter disappeared, and presently came back with the pipes. They were filled and lighted. "Egad, old man, this is comfort. Fire ahead ! What were you going to say ?" "I was just going to remark on the weaknesses of human nature." "An expansive subject." "Yes. I was going to say that the most charm ing traits of men and the most delightful attrac tions of women are weaknesses. There s some thing wrong about the man who has no weak nesses ; there is nothing attractive about a woman without foibles." "Well, let us indulge our weakness, John !" "Did you ever notice how the character of a woman comes out in colors ? Yes, the symbol ists have already developed parallels in colors of 45 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Weaknesses all emotions. It is only from the suggestion of everyday human nature after all. Black means grief; it is the color of the grave; but many and many a time a shade of gray has pointed a deeper grief than black or purple. Girls are married in white white, the em blem of innocence and purity and joy. The fashion has not yet decreed an appropriate divorce suit, but I doubt not it will come, and it will probably be modestly expressive of disappointed expectations and high hopes for another hus band. One may even be able to tell the exact ground of the divorce by the, dress. And so it goes. What a genius the first woman was who covered a mosquito bite with a patch of black court plaster and made it a beauty spot ! No, that was not a weakness, it was an inspiration." "Well, here s to her !" "Yes, she deserves the toast, for she has drawn more attention to a pure, white skin, and more attention away from a bad complexion, than anything else ever did. But I was saying, the man without a weakness is not a good man." "And the woman ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "She must always expect consideration in your arguments." "Is unbearable." "Well, scandal is a weakness of both men and women." "In women a touch of original sin, in men the most contemptible of petty vices. No ! 46 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Women s scandal does not amount to so much. Weaknesses Men may talk of each other as they will, but" and the Seedy Gentleman brought his fist down on the table with a bang "a man does not even need to be a gentleman to despise the fellow who tattles scandal about a woman." It took quite a few puffs of the pipe to soothe the old man, who displayed unwonted passion. "I don t mean to say, gentlemen, I think all weaknesses charming. The art of success in life is simply the keen judgment of the weak side of men and women. Tell a rich man he is clever ; tell a clever man he is good looking ; tell every body he is attractive in some way he wants to be, but thinks he isn t, and he is your friend. Yes, it pleases the poet to be praised for his verses, the painter to be praised for his picture, the writer to be complimented on his work, the rich man to be credited with the making of his fortune ; but, you can depend upon it, every one of them has his pet vanity, that is more effectively flattered than that faculty which is most openly recognized. My weakness ?" "Yes ; what is it besides " said the Candid Man pointing to the toddy. "This?" said the Seedy Man, raising his glass of hot Scotch. "Trust me, gentlemen, this is not my weakness ! My weakness is to be listened to. You flatter me, gentlemen." "No, no !" said the Cynical Chap deprecatingly. "That is what flatters me, and in my small 47 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Weaknesses way I please your vanity, for you can look at me and say: Poor devil ! It doesn t hurt us and it tickles him. Ah ! what a luxury it is to be able to pity somebody. It is the basis of much charity, honest enough charity, and charity that does real good. We are all Christians some times. But charity and pity are both very often mere self-congratulation that it is not our mis fortune. Yes ; in thinking of ourselves we have to think of other people. Sympathy is our little acknowledgment that the trouble might happen to ourselves." "And there s no such thing as disinterested love or friendship?" asked the Sentimental Man. "Love, no ! Friendship, yes ! Friendship thinks. Love is a sensation. Love disinterested ! Ye gods ! what is there more selfish than love ? The man would give up everything for the wom an! The woman would give up everything for the man ! Ay ? Is it so ? What does a man give up? He sends her flowers, he buys her presents, he takes her to the theatre and out driv ing, he accompanies her to parties, he goes and talks her blind about his personal qualities. Well, isn t that the greatest possible pleasure to him? He doesn t do any of those things till he finds that they are more enjoyable than his other pleasures. The woman, what does she give up? Having to beg her brother to take her to the theatre and parties, the bore of forever being hampered by chaperones and having to spend THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN most of her life chattering with her own sex, or moping life away. He gets mad if she speaks to another man; she won t stand his whispering to another woman. No, gentlemen ! Both of them get more than they give up, and when the scale begins to turn against one or other, love, being a practical business matter, exacts the last cent of the account, with interest compounded momentarily." "And if the account is not settled?" queried the Candid Man. "The thing goes right through the bankrupt cy court. They get whitewashed and go into the love business again with another partner." "And friendship?" "Friendship is different. True friendship keeps no account. But all this human nature is curi ous. It s all up here," and the Seedy Gentle man tapped his forehead. "Love, friendship, all is here. People fall in love with other people for a million reasons, and the symptoms are much the same. You can go to the gymnasium and be an athlete, and develop your muscles as you like. You can be a sprinter, or a bicycle rider, or a baseball player. You may be shaped like a Greek god. The girls will all crowd to look at you, and you will be a fad, as the saying is ; but some fellow without any muscle at all, without any particular figure, without even your good looks, will come along, and carry off your sweet heart, and you 11 never know what struck you. 49 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Weaknesses It s all up here," and the Old Fellow again tapped his forehead. "How do you account for it?" asked the Fel low in the Corner. "Can you tell me why one man out of a thous and, maybe, will attract you, and you ll want to see him again, and have a chat with him? Why is it some men s grasp is so thoroughly welcome and you drop another s hand like a fish ? I hate to shake hands with men, anyway. I think it should be a sign only of the warmest friendship and then only be indulged in after long part ing." "Once again and the woman?" "That depends. When a woman gives you her hand held out straight, with all the muscles and the bones at a tension, you don t like it. That woman should bow. But when a woman likes to shake hands, it s extraordinary how hard it is to let go. There s your flirt, gentlemen ! If there is one thing she does understand, it is the long-lingering half grasp that does not hold you, but will not let you go. No, you don t shake hands with a man until you have known him very well. You don t know a woman very well until you have shaken hands with her." "A shaking hand is a weakness." He did not hear the joke. He was thinking. "What difference is there in people, anyway? Why is it that out of all you meet, one woman s face will haunt you, one woman s voice will keep SO THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN ringing in your ears, and what she said will be Weaknesses remembered when all else is forgotten ?" The Seedy Gentleman stopped and looked into the fire. They had grown accustomed to his reveries. "There comes back to me out of the past a voice I shall never hear again, unless the angels speak. I hear it as I heard it in the stillness of the moonlit night, low toned, and sweet and soft. The shadows fell around us, of dark yew fol iage, and no breath of breeze was there to move them as they lay. It was a word of hope, of brave encouragement, spoken through tears of parting. The world was fair before me then ; ambition, courage, promise, all were there ! And now I wonder if, under the yew trees shade, with the wild roses growing above her, she dreams alone as we dreamed once together." They stole quietly out and left the old man alone with his memories. OUTLAWS AND OPERA ABOUT OUTLAWS AND OPERA "Give you good even, gentlemen !" came the Outlaws suave voice of the Seedy Gentleman. and Opera "How are you, Old Man?" "The night shall be filled with music, and the cares that infest the day shall fold up their tents like the Arabs and silently steal away." "We ve heard that before somewhere," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Very possibly. Everything has been heard before. But the night has been filled with music." "Been to the opera?" "Yes. I sat among the gods and breathed the perfume of the goddesses below me. The strains of music bore the odors of a million scents and " "Oh, for heaven s sake, take something to drink !" "Gentlemen, you, too, crush the poetry out of life. But well there are compensations. I drink to you." He waved his toddy vaguely around the circle. "Gentlemen, I like outlaws, especially comic opera outlaws. There is a whole-souled geniality about them that condones their horrible occupa tion. True, I never saw outlaws of that kind, ex- 55 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Outlaws cept when they were in a kind of festive mood. and Opera Outlaws apparently all sing well, and have a good time, though how they get on in real life, when they have no composer to write music for them, and no conductor to lead them, and no orchestra to accompany them, I don t know. There is a singular attraction, for people who work for wages, about outlaws. Gentlemen, we d all be outlaws if we weren t afraid of our necks. Only there would be nobody to stand up then." "Stand one another up ! That s about what many of us do, anyway," put in the Candid Man. "Then you would make the outlaw s life unsafe and uncomfortable. Still, it was the early way of living, that he shall take who has the power, and he shall keep who can. As you sail up Loch Lomond, gentlemen, the captain of the steamer will point out to you, on a rocky hillside, a hole. It is the entrance to Rob Roy s cave. The Scotch people like Rob Roy, as the English people like Robin Hood. Why? They were unconvention al, picturesquely unconventional. They are sup posed to have assisted the poor. It has never been much of a sin to rob rich men. You see so many people never grow rich, that a rich man has al ways the suspicion attached to him of having acquired unjustly what does not belong to him." "We are moderately safe, aren t we?" said the Fellow in the Corner. "I am perfectly safe, but I could stand a little 56 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN suspicion, at that cost. But the ordinary human Outlaws is very undramatic. He will not do for opera, and Opera How could you make a man operatic who gets up in the dark, and dresses himself, shiver ing, and steals out of the house to get to his business, and potters about all day to make a few dollars out of somebody else? But just see the outlaw, rising with the dawn breaking over the tree tops, and slinging his bow and arrow, and strutting out to waylay some merchant trav eling along with his ill-gotten gains, killing a deer on the way, and carrying it on his brawny should ers into camp for his breakfast ! How much bet ter this is than the city outlaw who is hired for ten hours a day to sell poor stuff at big prices to simple customers ! Ah, yes, there are many peo ple in the world who work from eight o clock in the morning till six at night to earn enough money to be honest the other few hours of the practical day. No, we don t improve much op- eratically." "Perhaps it s a good thing." "Well, perhaps it is. It seems to me the music is dying out of real life. The village maid of old had music in her; the rural swain seemed to. sing his love; the quaint old-fashioned lan guage had roll and rhythm in it. Everything in social life was more or less rhythmic. Every day we grow less and less musical, until we shall have nothing *hat will fit music at all, and opera 57 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Outlaws will die out. When the world was new, and and Opera peaceful, and beautiful, men heard the music of the spheres and their souls took up the strain " "Hold on have another !" "I suppose I must, but you do crush me this evening. Now, let us look at things ! What is there in life that suits an opera now? Only what is silent in all hearts only the unspoken, the un speakable. Can the chatter of the conversation at a reception now ever fit itself to anything but a kind of gallop accompaniment ? Is there any thing about a marriage that Wagner or Mendels sohn would write a wedding march for? The joy that used to fill the maiden s heart when she pledged her faith at the altar is clouded by dim recollections of the experience of others who have gone before her, all published in the newspapers. Is there anything really solemn about a funeral ? Play the dead march; let the brass bang out, and beat the hollow drum ! The man is dead ; he is better off. And many of the passers by, as they look at the funeral cortege, far from feeling a pity, gaze wistfully at the coffin and say, I wish I were there ! " "What s the matter with you, tonight?" "I don t know, gentlemen. Sometimes when I see something very beautiful, when I look on a charming picture, or when the perfumes of a garden of lovely flowers float around me, I re sent them all, for the contrast of sorrow and 58 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN trouble there is in life. I don t wish I were dead ; Outlaws but somehow I think there must have been an and Opera age when nature, like an orchestra, played a soft accompaniment to life, and even the misery of existence was soothed by some celestial music." They let him go. He looked far into the blaze and wandered on. "Yes ; there is music still. There must be music while there is a soul. It is a music that knows nor note nor scale, nor sharp nor flat nor natural, nor beginning nor end, nor even a pause. It cannot be written down, but it must be heard. It is the inner voice of men and women that sings, to themselves alone, the paean of their tri umph, the wail of their despair, the high march of successful ambition, the dirge of disappointed hopes, the sweet song of love, the recitative of rage, the pathetic strain of the broken heart. Sometimes composers of genius have seized it and given it voice. Did you ever think why that strain of Marguerite s in Faust s embrace that almost closes the garden scene in Gounod s opera, clings so tenaciously to the memory? Do you not hear in it the soul of a woman being carried away by a passion beyond her control a pas sion she seems to feel will end in despair? What need of words ? What language could translate it ? Language was never made for communion with ourselves. Yes ; there is music still, that always was, that always will be." 59 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Outlaws The Seedy Gentleman seemed to be thinking all and Opera to himself, but presently he pulled himself to gether. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen. We were talk ing of the opera. The trouble about music is that it has a tendency to become professional. I think music was originally intended to be a pleasant accessory of life until somebody struck the idea of hiring musicians. Then it became a profession, and now it is a trade. Yes, singers used to sing with people; now they sing to them. How many good voices there are and how few can sing ! And, as for music, when we come to the late tuneless kind of thing that takes odd drops when you don t expect them, and rises when you are not prepared for it, I think we are get ting away into the mechanical. Indeed, most of the music of today sounds as if it were very machine-made. What is it makes us thrill in music, anyway? I have stood beside a pretty woman while she sang the Ave Maria, so full of devotional spirit that I could see an altar and the Madonna and the angels. I m sure she, too, saw all that. That is music. I have heard her sing a little love song so that she could persuade you that she was singing of you, of you, till you felt you must really respond to her love a pleas ant duty. Ah, it is curious what a gift of real emotion some people have ! They can feel the most intense passion for nobody; they can 60 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN love without even an image in their hearts. It Outlaws is poetry ; that is all ! It is perfectly honest, and Opera The young woman who sings Robin Adair with tears in her voice, and looks at you so pleadingly, if you happen to catch her eye, is dangerous. You think she has a soul ; and there is nothing so attractive as a soul. Loves ? Not a bit of it. The moment she falls in love it s all over. She can never sing Robin Adair like that again. That is the secret of the success of a singer very often. How he must love ! the woman says, when the tenor is flooding the stage with silver notes. She is disappointed when she sees him eat supper at the restaurant later. The young man, with his heart yearning for sentiment, falls to madly dreaming of the soprano, whose eyes have gazed love passion into the tenor s high C, and wishes she could love him like that. Very likely she could. She has loved many like that." "Have you been trying a little yourself?" "Urn I used to." "How did you succeed?" "I don t know." "You don t know?" "No. When we met she seemed to have been thinking of me ever since we parted, and when we parted as if she had not thought of me ever since we had met." The old man laughed into his glass, and changed the conversation. 61 THE USELESSNESS OF THINGS THE USELESSNESS OF THINGS "It is moist without, gentlemen," said the Seedy Uselessness Gentleman. "Pardon" and he looked at his of Things shabby suit, a little wet, and his boots, which had suffered. "Pardon this muddy vesture of decay." "Pull up a chair to the fire, Old Man !" "Thank you. John, yes, as usual." The Old Man put his wet feet up to the fire and, after a little, began quite irrelevantly, as he often did. "Ah, well, the longer I live the more it amuses me to think of the absolute uselessness of ev erything." "The uselessness of everything ?" "Perhaps not everything ; but here is a man who has devoted his entire life to manipulating railroads ! He dies, his heirs dispute his will, the lawyers get rich ; and he, where is he ? No body knows. There are no railroads in the other world. What can he do ? Here s a fellow who has spent fifteen hours a day for fifty years in vesting and reinvesting in real estate and keep ing track of his money. They put him in a cof fin and bury him. Of what use is he in the next world? There is no real estate there. Here s a girl who spends all her time playing the pi ano. She passes away. She goes to heaven, 65 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Uselessness and there are no pianos there. What will she of Things do ? She can t play the harp." "The other night you were full of music," re marked the Fellow in the Corner. "Oh, that s different. The piano is not neces sarily music." "Who is the girl who used to sing the Ave Maria to you?" "That, gentlemen, is the music of the future. But can you fancy a civil engineer in a purely spiritual world ? Imagine the loneliness of the pawnbroker with no money to lend and nothing to lend it on ! Fancy the miser in the streets of gold and gold worth nothing at all ! What will the street contractor do? And how wretched the Congressman will be where he hasn t a word to say about legislation ! The society ladies will have the best of it. There can never be a form of existence where the society women can not talk gossip. It isn t like the School for Scandal here, gentlemen. There Sir Peter left his character behind him. That is all we can take away when we go from this life." "Well, that s something, anyway." "Yes; it is the staple of social life and con versation. After several thousands of years ex perience, gentlemen, we are reaching the real value of scandal. It is simply the protest of the con ventional against the unconventional. I think if we might glance at the book of the Recording 66 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Angel, we would find many and many a sin stand- Usclessncss ing on the credit side of the sinner s account, of Things But, gentlemen, we are here to stay till we are called, and I drink to you," said the Seedy Gen tleman, as he raised his glass. "Yes," he went on, "things may be useless, but some of them are pleasant and some of them are intensely interesting. Was it not because the idea of civilization had not entered the mind of man that our progenitors lived so long? True, they had brutal murder in the first of families, and Noah got drunk even before the deluge. They robbed and rioted and rebelled and fought in the first years of creation almost, but they did it all after a simple, open, intelligible fashion. In the modern tragedy, the modern comedy of life, it is cease less, intense struggle. We cannot live the years of our forefathers. Fancy a couple of hundred years of the intense pressure of life today ! No, we couldn t stand it. Ah, me ! Now when the years begin to count over the three score and ten, men and women alike are glad to be taken away. In another century, gentlemen, a man will be old at fifty, if this goes on." "And the women ?" asked the Sentimental Man. "Bless them ! They only grow younger. Yes, care and trouble that harden the hearts of men soften the hearts of women. Ah, me ! The old lady cannot dance and cannot take her part in the 67 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Uselessness gayety of youth, but she will sit up all night wait- of Things ing for her daughter to come home from a ball, only to see the glow of pleasure on the girlish face, Old men never quite get over an envy of the young men. Women live so much more in the happiness of others, anyway." "You are sentimental suddenly." "You touched the chord, my friend. I have often thought, in watching the moving pictures, that the very good woman is never out of draw ing ; the very good man always is. The woman lends herself always to embellishment. You can not put a touch of tenderness, of sympathy, of grace, of charm of any kind on a good woman that she will not carry off with complete natural ness. But you can t polish up a man without spoiling him. You may paint a La France rose on a gunny sack, but it will not be a success. The texture is too rough." "Still, a man can wear a La France rose in his buttonhole," remarked the Fellow in the Corner. "Yes ; invariably the sign of a woman. The man who buys boutonnieres is effeminate. But when a pretty girl puts a flower in your coat she leaves a haloing influence there." "Hello !" "I said haloing/ gentlemen. She does it out of a kind of mischief half the time, of course. It is pretty mischief. She 11 do it out of spite sometimes; do it to annoy another girl, do it 68 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN to annoy another man. But you don t mind. It Uselessness is a compliment. Ah, yes ! They re queer things, of Things girls. No two alike, and no one the same all the time. Oh, I have been young, and they don t change. Flowers grew when I was a boy, and coats had buttonholes, and there never was an age when girls did not decorate their sweethearts. But, to return, life seems to be a kind of unintel ligible muddle, and everything, its tragedy, its comedy, its love, its seriousness, all appear when we have gone through them, to have been useless. It s a funny conglomeration. Roses and lilies of the valley and violets and chrysanthemums make a picture around a plate of soup or a cut of roast beef. Mustard in silver, vinegar in elegant cut glass, and fine Burgundy in a black bottle ! Girls with their young complexions hidden in powder, and old ladies with their careworn wrinkles honest and open to the world ! The fine gentleman is helped into the hack by his friends, and the poor drunk is borne to the police station, and it s the same whisky. There are the dinner at fifteen dollars a plate and the four dishes for a quarter side by side, and it is the toss-up of a penny which of the two men gets the one or the other. One man s money rolls in ; another has to hunt for it every minute of his waking hours ; and when the end comes, nobody cares or can tell which of them was happiest or most useful, or if there was any use in either of them." "Oh, I don t know." 69 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Uselessness "Our curiosity cannot follow other people of Things beyond the grave. It is all beyond our poor finite imagination. Reason stops at the veil that only the dead may draw. We are like those moving photographs we are visible in a feverish kind of action for a few minutes, and suddenly in the middle of a step we disappear. Our curiosity has changed of late years. There was a time when people gazed at the heavens in wonder and awe, and respected nature as a great secret. The ways of Providence were inscrutable. The scientific man locked himself in a dark laboratory, and the simple world believed it was the devil he was hobnobbing with. Even he had a dim dread that some time, during his wicked experiments, the Creator would step in suddenly and annihilate him for his impertinence. We have changed all that. Our curiosity has the self-sufficient charac teristic of the age. The artist looks at his canvas and says to himself : Ah, nature can t produce a landscape as beautiful as that ! The dramatist says : Here is a character superior to any article of mere human nature. The scientific man puts on his spectacles and gazes critically on the mys terious phenomena and says : It is extraordinary, but you can t fool me ! I can explain all that away. I think a great many people believe that the great telescopes are failures because the as tronomers have not yet found some way of plastering advertisements of soap and stuff over the heavenly bodies ; and introducing American 70 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN manufactures there. The spots on the sun would Uselessness be intensely interesting if they could be attributed of Things to the tariff bill." "Yes. We are practical," said the Practical Man, sententiously. "Death is a question for the undertaker; life is a matter for the dry goods stores, the meat markets, the money-makers. A baby represents so much a week to the trades people ; a wedding means so much to be spent in bridal dresses, jewelry, and presents. Everything goes into a money value. And the philosophers, unable to find any earthly reason why we should be here at all, make one, and pretend that God created us as a kind of commission, specially to investigate Him and His works." And the Seedy Gentleman waved his hand to them and went home. THE MORBID STORY ABOUT THE MORBID STORY "I see," said the Seedy Gentleman, looking up The Morbid suddenly, "they are still putting up the morbid Story play and story." "Only to be knocked down," said the Fellow in the Corner. "I wonder if the time can ever come when the seamy side of life will be fashionable wear," went on the Old Man. "What is the use of put ting it on exhibition all the time? What good can it possibly do?" "You are off on the decadence of the world again," said the Cynic. "Pardon me!" answered the Seedy Gentleman. "I leave that entirely to you. I think those who want everything in literature and drama to be dull and heavy and serious, are about as far off on the one side as the neurotic dramatists and novelists are on the other." "They are both to the fore yet. I don t be lieve we ll ever lose either," put in the Fellow in the Corner. The Old Man nodded assent, and continued : "I like to read the ponderous dignified argu ments about the decadence of the stage. I like to read the diatribes of those who deplore the death of Shakespeare and Sheridan, and who are 75 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Morbid always regretting that the public should waste so Story much time on unintellectual plays, laugh at little bits of funny dialogue, and enjoy merry music ; all because those wicked things don t preach sermons." "You do something like that yourself once in a while," commented the Candid Man. "I suppose I do in a way. But, gentlemen, I trust I am willing to obey Shakespeare s injunction and leave his bones where they are; and as for Sheridan, God bless him! he was a charming, erratic Irishman, and never had the least idea of teaching anybody a lesson. Teach lessons ! What lesson does Shakespeare teach by his plays ? None. He pours a wealth of philosophy and poetry out of the mouths of his characters, but what play teaches a lesson? Not one." "Well, what s the good of him?" asked the Practical Man. "To be candid, I don t know. I don t know what s the good of anything in writing, except that it may give you a pleasant occupation by making you think, or enable you to find a greater beauty in life by pointing things out to you." "Well, that s a kind of lesson." "Lessons in good are not of much use ; not any more than lessons on the danger of evil. I wonder if Shakespeare ever did any real good to anybody." "Now you are knocking the foundations of everything," laughed the Fellow in the Corner. 76 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "My dear sir, the genius has not come who can The Morbid knock the foundations of anything. I am inclined Story to believe," said the Seedy Gentleman, senten- tiously, crossing his legs and swinging one foot vigorously, "I am really inclined to believe that Shakespeare s great practical value lies in the convenient quotations he has provided. He was a wonderful man, but he never expected that, be cause Romeo and Juliet came to an untimely end, people were going to make out that an couple who married against their parents wishes were to drift into all this trouble and die. I don t imagine he expected you to understand that every husband who was jealous of his wife would smother her with pillows because Othello did that. He must have known that there could not be many Macbeths ; and I fancy he would laugh if we considered The Merchant of Venice a moral lesson on the wickedness of usury." "What do you suppose he wrote for, then?" asked the Practical Man. "For a living, for money. He hadn t any idea he would be making money for publishers and theatres 300 years after he was dead." "But he must have known human nature?" "What s the good of knowing human nature unless you are in politics? Gentlemen, we are here purely to entertain one another for no other purpose in the world. We are put here together to help one another to get through the three score 77 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Morbid and ten years, and then we 11 see. I remember Story talking with Shakespeare "By the way, you haven t been up there lately?" said the Candid Man. "Oh yes, I have. I brought Shakespeare down to see the clockwork Hamlet and Ophelia in that Gilbert opera." "Yes ? What did he say ?" "He said he had seen the parts worse acted." "What did he think of the show?" "He thought it was a good idea to sing every thing. He said it had not occurred to him in his time, but a world where men and women wore handsome dresses and went through life singing was an ideal world. It was the principle of fairy land, and our idea of heaven. I told him I was afraid it wouldn t do. I said it might be a serious detriment to conversation if everybody sang to gether. He remarked it wouldn t be as bad as everybody talking at one time, and the music would, in fact, regulate that, because it could be arranged to give everybody a solo, which they didn t usually get in the ordinary way. Yes, he seemed much impressed with the application of music to dialogue. It was a new development to him. " William, I said, y u >re jesting ! How would it look or sound for a woman to go into a dry goods store and sing : "I want a yard and a half of ribbon to match this shade exactly." 78 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN " Well, said he, I think it would give a kind The Morbid of rhythm to life, so to speak. The clerk would Story sing : "This shade, I think, madam, is just the th-i-i-i-ng you need." " That s what they call a cadenza. " " I don t know what you call it, but it is very taking. Then the lady would reply : "O-o-o-o-oh, not a bit like it." " Well, I said, William, I shouldn t wonder if you are right. Come to think of it, the waiters sing the orders in restaurants. Yes, gentlemen," said the Seedy Man, "I can see a very agreeable appli cation of music to ordinary conversation. But it was Shakespeare who commented on the gayety of the drama, its brightness, its inspiriting tone, even if some of the comedies were heavy and some of the wit was very thin. I wish it were always true." "I wish it were." "We don t want preaching, gentlemen ; we don t want sadness. Yes, suffering, even on the stage, will always bring a tear, but we are not in a con dition to be harrowed up for nothing. The drama of real life is hard enough for us, and, for my own part, I believe in the gospel of sunshine. We are taught that suffering is our lot. I am thankful that the old mad drama that used to be so common is gone into limbo. I hope that the morbid is disappearing from the stage. I would like to see fancy get a wider range in the world, life made ideal. We know that wit cuts with a laugh, and 79 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Morbid the most effective sermon is preached in a Story smile." "You are not so pessimistic this evening," re marked the Candid Man. "Gentlemen, you wrong me; I am not pessi mistic. I think life has always something beauti ful about it. Clouded over sometimes, yes, often ; but hasn t the cloudy day a beauty of its own, and hasn t the storm a wild excitement? I don t know any more enjoyable feeling than to see the sun bursting through the cloud, the bit of blue sky through the breaking storm. For heaven s sake, let us keep away from the morbid study of eternal wickedness ! We have been scared into a dread of living by morbid literature, by morbid plays, and the cynical sneer of baser and inferior intellects. I believe, gentlemen, this latter-day philosophy, this rank novel, this theatre-libreism, comes from unhealthy brains. What do we want with false representations of abnormal conditions? All is not vice that seems to be, any more than all is virtue that seems to be. Everything is to us what we think ; let us think the best of everything." "That deserves another glass, old man," put in the Fellow in the Corner. "Thank you ! John, a little more this time " "Water, sir?" "No; certainly not! It is very odd. Every hour of the day tons of paper are covered with teachings of all kinds and floated on the public, 80 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN and yet the public remains just the same. We are The Morbid told not to do this, not to do that. We are told Story that this is wrong and that is right. They teach us in prose and poetry, they preach and they im plore ; they put their sentiments in insidious shapes ; and everybody who writes or teaches or sermonizes feels sure he is having a tremendous influence on the world. And the books are borne to the trunkmakers in wagon-loads, the periodicals and pamphlets are turned into pulp, burned in lighting fires, in lighting cigars and cigarettes ; and the great earth moves on and human nature remains the same as it was in the beginning, as it will be in all the aeons to come. The fact is that we know what s right and what s wrong. We are just as liable to do what s right even if somebody tells us it s wrong, as we are to do what s wrong, because somebody tells us it s right. We 11 do what we like, anyway. But nobody was ever hurt by a little honest pleasure thrown into life ; nobody ever was the worse for an honest laugh ; and no time was ever wast ed that put brighter ideas and pictures of the world into our minds." The Seedy Gentleman got up and reached for his coat. "We would all be better if we could. We mean well ; we may be weak. But I have never been able to see why the misfortunes and vices of the world should be the staple of novels and plays. I am weary of the play of scoundrel 81 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Morbid lover and the weak woman ; I am weary of the Story drama of hate and revenge ; I am weary of wait ing through four acts or four hundred pages for the righting of some absurd wrong, the exposure of villainy and the absolution of the innocent ; I am weary of meaningless murder, and unac countable vice ; of the adventures of lunatics and criminals. And so, gentlemen, I would like to hail the fiction of the future, stories of bright men and women of wit and character; life at its gayest, with music and flowers, beauty and man liness, preaching the gospel of the sunshine." He drank down his toddy and meandered into the darkness. 82 HAPPINESS ABOUT HAPPINESS "Yes," said the Seedy Gentleman, musingly, as Happiness he swung to and fro in a rocking chair before tke fire, and watched the smoke from his cigar curl into the fireplace and disappear up the chim ney, "our happiness lies all in ourselves. Friend ship, love, pleasure are nothing except what they are to us. The host can put the feast before us ; the appetite is ours." "A good dinner awakens appetite," said the Practical Man. "Sometimes ; but I doubt if there is much more misery in a good appetite and no dinner, than in a good dinner and no appetite. But I speak not of eating and drinking. Still, the stomach has in all ages been the favorite department of the anatomy, and yet what is the stomach ? The depot of the body. When I think of the stom ach, gentlemen, I am reminded of the postoffice when the mail arrives, and the gastric juices take off their coats and pitch in and sort it and distribute it." "Now, you seem to be practical." "There is nothing so practical as eating and drinking. The mere universality of the custom goes to show that they were never intended to be anything else. Gentlemen, since eating and 85 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Happiness drinking are necessities, let us thank Heaven for making the flavor of meat and vegetables, and dessert, and wine, and whisky, agreeable. The Creator might have made them the reverse if he had wanted to. The most irritating invention of civilization is the acquired taste." "It s all right when you have acquired it," put in the Fellow in the Corner. "It is so confoundedly expensive. But, as I was saying, a large proportion of the misery of life comes from wanting to be like other people, and turning ourselves inside out to fit condi tions intended for somebody else. Rich men want to be clever, and clever men are not sat isfied unless they are handsome, and handsome men have moments of misery because they may not have brains or cash. The handsome man has the best of it. He can look in the glass any time and gratify his vanity ; but the clever man can t talk to himself, and the rich man may have a pocketful of gold without any particular satis faction, when he s all alone." "Which would you rather be ?" "A little of all. I d like to be a moderately good-looking man, moderately clever and moder ately rich. Still, it is all our business, and no body else s. Gentlemen, it is astonishing how many people you can get on without ; how few people make up your real circle in life. Our everyday experience gives proof that the mil lions around us are of no consequence to us, 86 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN and the stories and histories of men and women, Happiness in their inner lives, confirm it. Black Othello, the Moor of Venice ! One woman to make him happy one man who hated him to undo him ! Macbeth, with an ambitious wife and the gabble of a few witches, waded in blood to his grave. What were even the Montagues and the Capu- lets to Romeo and Juliet ? An ardent pair of youthful lovers, a cruel father, and a friar, led to all the trouble. The modern plays and novels have anywhere from six to twenty characters, but all the plot, the love, the hate, the comedy, centres in two or three, and, think for yourselves, gentlemen, amid your hosts of friends, how many are really necessary to your existence ?" "We like our friends " "Of course we do. They are kind, they lend a great charm to living. But if there were to come a time when we should have to choose, how many are there indissolubly bound with our life, our happiness ? It has always seemed to me that very great men or very popular men must be lonely. The loneliest figure in history to me is the great Napoleon. Perhaps the picture of him, grand, gloomy and peculiar, may have something to do with that ; but somehow I al ways think he had no soul beside him in that grand dream of power he partly realized, and his death was unspeakably lonely. Some day, years hence, when Napoleon is as far back as Charle magne, what a majestic drama will be written 87 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Happiness about him when the age of great poets comes again. But that is a digression. Did you ever notice that in a play where everybody on the stage shows a hatred of any certain character the villain, of course the audience always sym pathizes with him, especially if, as is usually the case in real life, he does not look at all like a villain. But if he is a concealed villain, so to speak, they 11 hate him. It s much the same with the good young man in a play. He gen erally pokes his nose into other people s busi ness ; and nobody can poke his nose into other people s business, however great-hearted, kindly, and generous he may be, without its being re sented by everybody. In fact, everybody s friend is nobody s friend, and all men and women alike have the one woman and the one man who make their inner world." "You are limiting things, aren t you?" queried the Fellow in the Corner. "Ah, yes and still they are not happy. For that makes jealousy. There would be no jeal ousy if God had made us capable of loving ot giving our confidence to more than one at a time. But the woman wants to be like half a dozen different other women, because she fears they may draw her sweetheart from her, and the man wants to possess all the attractions he thinks the woman admires. The friend must have no other friend. They say love and friend ship are unselfish. Ah me ! Yet love will share THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN no love, friendship will share no friendship, with Happiness a third person." "John, give him a hot Scotch." "Thank you kindly. That we need not share with anybody, for there s plenty for all. And so, gentlemen, content is impossible. There are so many attractions in others we wish to possess, so many faults in ourselves we are ashamed of. No ; the moment we become content, we lose both love and friendship. For it is still a law of nature that whatever is worth having takes effort to get and effort to keep. Here s to you, gentlemen ! Ah ! that makes philosophy bright er. Yes, we may be content, after all, for a min ute. But all our life moves in that little inner circle, where three alone the sweetheart, the friend and the self may exist And the value of it all is in our appreciation." "I m sorry I can t have any more than two," sighed the Fellow in the Corner. "You can have as many as you like good friends people who like you, who are con stantly doing you kindnesses, people of whom you are very fond, for whom you would do any service in the world, people you would forever deeply regret to part from. But among them all there are always two that are so near to you, you feel they are part of you." "You re very philosophical this evening." "I wish some great man would coin a new word that would strike between friend and ac- 89 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Happiness quaintance." The Seedy Gentleman shook him self and looked up with a queer smile. "The trouble about this triple alliance, gentlemen, is that it is liable to encroachments from the out side, principally owing to man s habit of getting married to one woman. It s all right as long as the male friend does not get married, or as long as your wife s woman friend keeps single. But, you see, when the male friend marries, the chances are ten to one that your wife won t like his, and he will have to stick to his wife, of course, as you will to yours. So the thing gets broken up on that side. Then your wife s chum may get married, and you won t like her husband, and so it gets broken up on that side ; till by and by you are reduced to your two selves, and there s where the trouble may begin; for it may end in neither of you having any friends at all. In fact, come to think of it, a great many stories have been written to prove that to be the inevit able ending to all human love and friendship. I am afraid, gentlemen, there is no kind of ar rangement that will make our lives quite com fortable except the proposition I started out with, that all our happiness is in ourselves, and I fancy the wisest way is to keep it there and not share it with anybody. It s a vile world. After all it is a curious thought that the human race, with all its hate, malice, misery, despair, is born from purest sentiment, the love of man for woman. Good night ! It is a wild night, but 90 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN it is not all unblest, for it may renovate this Happiness faded suit." And the Seedy Gentleman drew a slouch hat down over his eyes and stepped out briskly into the rain. MORE ABOUT LOVE MORE ABOUT LOVE "Good evening to you !" said the Seedy Gen- More tleman. About Love "Good evening ! You don t look well." "I am blue tonight, blue as the sea." "Love ? You say the fishes love perhaps they make the sea blue," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Gentlemen, you jest ! Yes, I believe that flounders flirt in the deeps of the ocean. I saw a shad in a restaurant window the other day that was worn to a shadder, and I had a tomcod for breakfast this morning that looked as if it had died of love. But there s a great difference in love a great difference only the result is al ways the same. You see, we love people for what they ought to be, and they never are ; and we never are what we ought to be, and nothing ever is what it ought to be, and when we think it is, we only find out afterward that it wasn t. It s very confusing." "You are queer tonight, aren t you ? There s your drink," the Candid Man remarked sooth ingly. "Here s to you, gentlemen ! Ah ! I feel bet ter now. By the way, I did not tell you what happened in the Elysian Debating Society, did 95 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN More I ? We discussed that question up there." About Love "They do love one another up there ?" "Certainly. It is materially different, of course. There is no marrying for money. There s no money. It changes things. The other day there was quite a scene. A lady who had pre ceded her husband would not speak to him when he arrived." "You are not my husband/ she said. "I am," he said. "You were Mrs. Jones on earth, were you not ?" "Certainly." "You were twenty years married to me ?" "To you ! I never thought you were this kind of man." "They would not be reconciled. But we took up the question, What is love ? We had, of course, all the old poets to refer to, but they were for the most part voted quite out of date. Wanting the inspiration of eyes and hair, and forms and hands and lips and cheeks, they could not even guess what real love was. The scien tific people had a whack at it. They said that they had always believed it was the action of animal magnetism on the nerves, but, as every body had left his nerves behind him, that could give no explanation. The philosophers had be lieved that it was a phase of the action of mat ter upon the mind, but as there was all mind and no matter there, they were inclined to admit that really mind had something to do with it. 96 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The dramatists came in swooping. Then there was a scene." "What about ?" "Well, the scientists despise the philosophers, they both despise the poets, the three despise the novelists, and they all despise the dramatists. The president rapped on the desk for order." "Gentlemen," he cried, "I command you to be silent. Let us call the novelists." Dickens rose. He spoke of innumerable loves his stories told. He was listened to quietly ; but none of them seemed to quite define the proposi tion. Scott said he "didna ken onything aboot it." Richardson got sneered at, Fielding was roundly abused and a lot of later novelists were frankly sat upon. When Thackeray rose there was a hush. "Gentlemen," he said, "I claim no more than human nature for my children. All I have writ ten about, all the people I have drawn, have had some weakness in them; but, if you ask me what to me is nearest my idea of true love in all my books, I may be wrong, but old Tom Newcome s love for the French master s daughter and hers for him " There was a burst of applause. He had evi dently come very near it. "Now, if you please, let s hear the dramatists. I recognize Bulwer Lytton," said the president Bulwer rose, and with a great deal of affecta tion said : 97 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN More "Gentlemen, as I am the author of the love About Love speech which has had the widest range of pop ularity " "Quote ! quote !" came from all parts. "I quote !" he said. "Nay, dearest, nay ! If thou would st have me paint "The home to which " "Pah ! That s sentimentality ; that s sickly. Sit down ! That is not love. That s spoons." The hubbub drove Bulwer Lytton into his seat. Wycherly and Congreve got up, but the meet ing would not hear them. They declared that nobody who knew anything about love could so debase its name. Even Ben Jonson would not be heard. Richard Brinsley Sheridan offered in evidence Lydia Languish, and tried to prove that "The School for Scandal" was a lesson in love ; but they laughed at him. Sheridan Knowles got up and began to quote a speech of Julia s in "The Hunchback," but they groaned irreverent groans and rather mortified the old man. Henry J. Byron and Tom Robertson claimed something for their comedies, but the meeting simply pooh- poohed them. Boucicault was heard piping. He said that, without reflection on anybody before him, or after him (cries of "Irish"!), he conceited himself that he had written the most beautiful love scenes in any language. Nobody took any other notice of his remark, but he sat down quite satisfied. 98 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "We must have order," called out the presi- More dent. "This is a most inappropriate way to dis- About Love cuss such a tender question as love. I call upon William Shakespeare." The meeting came to order at once, except that for a little the applause was enthusiastic. Poet, philosopher, dramatist, the question was to be solved. "I would rather, Mr. President," said Shakes peare, "hear the voices of this meeting decide upon my merits. What of all my love pictures meets with most of your commendation ?" One got up and spoke of Viola s love for the Duke. Pretty, tender, poetic, everybody agreed, but too sentimental, too romantic. Not the love that would live without the melancholy of the Duke ; the kind of love that would be killed by a three days beard. Orsino s love for Olivia was voted silly, only kept alive by her obstinacy. Romeo and Juliet were hardly discussed ; youth s fevered passion burning in the blood. Rosalind and Orlando were too much of the sigh ing furnace ever to be capable of serious sacri fice. Othello and Desdemona were analyzed to find little but an overweening admiration on Desdemona s part of the physical qualities of Othello, and in Othello a jealousy born as much of wounded vanity as wounded love. Desde mona s fairness was voted as strong a factor in her attraction as her personal fascinations. It might have been a more distinct quality of love 99 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN More if Desdemona had been black. They went all About Love through Shakespeare, and, curiously enough, the general opinion seemed to be that the nearest to the real love, as they held it, was Ophelia s love for Hamlet, the woman in all Shakespeare who loved the most and declared the least." "Well, what conclusion did they come to ?" Then somebody asked Shakespeare if Ophelia ever really loved Hamlet. "I don t know," said Shakespeare. That upset things again. "Well, what do you think yourself about all those people ?" somebody asked Shakespeare. "To tell the truth," said Shakespeare, "I never knew that I meant so much until those comment ators began coming up here. I never was so in terested in anything in my life as in having my own plays explained to me. If I had known how clever a man I was I would have asked more money for my work." "Ah, you should have been born 300 years later," I said. "Why ?" asked Shakespeare. "You were born just three centuries ahead of the great commercial impresarios," I said. "Who are they ? Dramatists or artists ?" "No. They re the men who make money for dramatists and artists." "How do they do it ?" asked several. "Advertise and charge big prices." "Gentlemen, this is a digression," yelled the 100 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN president. "We have still, it appears, to discuss More the question What is love ? " About Love "May I make a suggestion ?" I asked. "Certainly." "You are all behind the times. I will show you what is love. Come down and see Sarah Bern- hardt." They came. We saw La Tosca. "Does that look like love ?" I asked. "Here is a woman perjures herself, is ready to yield her self up to a brute, murders him and kills herself, for love." "Yes, that has all the expression of love," said one, "although it is not quite agreeable. But there are many expressions of love that are not agreeable." They came again. They saw Theodora. "See ! She is the Empress ; risks everything to be with her lover. She dies with him. That looks like love." "Is that the same woman ?" somebody asked. "Certainly." They came again. They saw Camille. "She leaves her life of shame for the love of Armand," I said. "She goes back to it for love of Armand. Does that look like love ?" "I suppose so," said another. "Is that still the same woman ?" "Yes." "And one woman can pretend so realistically to feel for all those men ?" 101 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN More "And anybody else you like to put her in a About Love play with." "Well, what in thunder s the use of asking what love is ?" And they gave it up. IS ART WAS TRUE TO POLL IS ART WAS TRUE TO POLL " Is art was true to Poll," sang the Seedy Is art was Gentleman, as he hung up his hat and switched a true to Poll red bandanna handkerchief from his pocket. "Where have I heard that before ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "Oh, a long time ago, when dainty Rosina Yokes sang it in her dainty comedy. Burnand wrote it, and it will never die, for it is a perfect condensation of the philosophy of love." "We don t get any more of those pretty little plays." "No," said the Seedy Gentleman, with a sigh. "I am so tired of reading about murders, and suicides, and crime and corruption ! If we could only get away from the brutal and re pulsive in the newspapers and books ! We have turned the seamy side of life out so thoroughly that the whole human race, somehow or other, begins to appear savage. It is curious after all. We fill our houses with pretty bric-a-brac, with fine pictures and rich, luxurious drapery. We surround ourselves with charming things of a material kind, and yet the largest proportion of our mental pabulum is of the most disagreeable and painful nature. The novelists delight in harrowing us with stories of abnormal passions, 105 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Is art was of the most distressing situations ; our play- true to Poll wrights delve into the dirt of society for plots, and show beautiful women as abandoned mor ally, and handsome, clever men as unprincipled, licentious and corrupt. Gentlemen, this is not the world. Why should we make it appear to be ?" "It is kind of queer," put in the Candid Man, for the Seedy Gentleman paused for a reply. "The world is bright and gay. Even its immor ality is not as terrible as it is made out to be. There is an all-purifying love, and, gentlemen, no matter what you do, if your heart be only true, and is art was true to Poll. Ah me ! How many people have practiced that philoso phy ? Everybody has at some time of his life, and most people all their lives. It has justified many a mercenary marriage ; it has led to many a divorce ; it has excused profligacy and wick edness, and it has caused many a breach of prom ise suit. You have known men who have had a dozen sweethearts, while their heart was true to Poll, haven t you? There s hardly a week that some poor maiden does not marry some rich man, while her heart is true to some other fellow. No, it s no great hardship. Broken hearts were the conception of poets and novel ists. Great heavens ! what would the story- writers and the poetasters and the dramatists do if they stuck to the reality in such matters ? When mankind was created, the heart, psychol ogically speaking, was made the toughest part of 106 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN the anatomy. I never could understand precisely Is art was why all this love was considered an affair of the true to Poll heart anyway. As a fact, it has nothing to do with it ; it has less to do with the heart than it has with anything else." "You are iconoclastic this evening," said the Sentimental Man. "No, not at all. I am only struck by that lit tle touching ballad Rosina Vokes used to sing. It is so very true to life. It is the philosophy of a great many married women. No, single women are different. They can retaliate. They re not satisfied with a man s heart. They want all the attention he has to bestow on woman. But if, when they are married, they cannot console them selves with the thought that his art is true to Poll, there is no end of trouble." "You don t seem to think much of men after they are married," remarked the Practical Man. "Marriage, gentlemen, is an institution intend ed to keep women out of mischief and get men into trouble. Did it ever strike you that a great many of our comedies are infinitely more serious in motive than our tragedies ; that what is a lively farce on the stage is not laughable or funny in real life ? When the gay husband in the story sneaks off to have a good time with a lively woman of questionable morals, and his wife catches him, we roar with laughter. Was there ever a real situation of the kind that appeared funny, even to an outsider ? Ah, my friend, the 107 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Is art was principal basis of happiness lies right there. No true to Poll matter what you do, if your art be true, and is art was true to Poll. " "Maybe it is so," said the Sentimental Man. "Gentlemen, there is nothing that can make life happy but faith. It is the faith of the de votee that brings heaven down to earth. It is the faith of the lover that makes love an ecstasy. It is the faith of the woman that holds her true and pure. It is the faith of the man in woman that enables him to be false to her. Faith, gen tlemen, faith everywhere, in everything ! Faith in friendship, faith in love, faith in honesty, faith in some overruling power for good in misfor tune ! Hope is faith, and there is no despair till faith has gone." "And still is art was true to Poll," added the Fellow in the Corner. "Just so. John, if you have faith, ask these gentlemen what they will drink. There is noth ing so touches my vanity, nowadays, as to be trusted. Did you ever notice that people always trust the man who can pay cash and doesn t want to ; and never trust the man who can t and wants to? Living is a hard lot, and as I was saying, the problems of life are becoming so complicated that only the dramatists can work them out. And sometimes I like to get into the dramatist s world. It is no use talking, real life is full of disagree able things, disagreeable people, and disagree able situations. The Creator is too far off. He 108 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN should have an agent here, or a telephone. If we Is art was could only go to some fellow and order a career, true to Poll it would be so much better, but we live out our threescore and ten years before we find out what we were best fitted for. We only find out what we can do, by trying everything we can t do. Yes, I like the dainty little world of comedy. The comedy stage that gives us pretty, well-dressed, attractive women, and bright, brilliant, agreeable men, makes them talk wittily, and places them in amusing situations, does the world the service that the sunshine does, that the flowers do. I like that old tar in the play, with his queen, his twenty wives and his Matilda, while is art was true to Poll. There was a breeziness in his moral nature that smacked of the sea. He was a sailor in life, and trimmed his sails to every air that blew, and sailed in any direction the wind would take him ; but guiding himself ever by the pale north star. "No matter wot you do." How many men, in how many plays, after four acts of desertion and cruelty, leaving wives to starve and children to suffer, come back in the fifth act to be forgiven, for their arts were true to Poll. Is it only in plays ? Ah, is it only in plays that those things happen? Are there no real men, women and children who act that drama ?" "I m afraid Scotch whisky isn t good for you tonight, old man !" said the Candid Man. "On the contrary !" answered the Seedy Gen- 109 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Is art was tleman briskly. "Thank you, John ! Scotch true to Poll whisky is a philosophy in itself. But to return to Poll. It is curious that sailors only are sup posed to be of that fickle disposition, which calls for Mr. Burnand s able defense. Soldiers appear to be considered true. I suppose opportunities account for that. I think a man would always be true to his love, if it weren t for opportuni ties. They make all the trouble for us. We cannot be held responsible for opportunities. That is fate. The human heart " and the Old Gentleman betrayed a tendency to tearful ness "the human heart always longs for com pany. It is the loneliest thing in nature, all by itself. It craves something that only a woman can give, and if the woman we love is far away, wouldn t she, if she truly loved, rather like to feel that we were happy, even in another woman s momentary affections, than brokenhearted and miserable all by ourselves? She ought to! But the trouble is that she doesn t. It is selfish ! But human selfishness is all that stands between the world and happiness." The Seedy Gentleman rose, a little unsteadily. "Gentlemen," he said, as he turned to go, "all I contend for is that the breezy tar s philosophy goes farther toward solving the sentimental problem than all the books that ever were writ ten about it. No matter wot you do, if your art be only true to Poll. " no MUSIC ABOUT MUSIC "Ah me !" said the Seedy Gentleman, with a Music sigh, as he pulled his chair up to the fire, "The summer has faded" ; and then he sang, in his ragged tenor voice, "Good-by, summer ; good-by, good-by !" "This is sad not to say painful," said one of the listeners. "Music !" said the old man, dreamily. "For joy or grief or pain or delight there is no other expression. It reaches deeper and soars higher than thought. That is the great potency of grand opera. I have but a vague idea of the details of the opera I have just heard. I did read the printed argument, and I know the story, of course. But, even if the tenor paid but little atten tion to the contralto, and did not seem to betray so much consciousness of her as of the conductor and the audience, you can t tell me he was not in love with her. He might not have known it, but I did. And the baritone was trying to im press the soprano ; not as earnestly as he was trying to impress the audience, but he could not conceal what he was after. The music told all that." John came in with the glasses, and the Old "3 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Music Gentleman paused to sip a little and light a cigar. Then he went on. "I have never ceased to wonder at the curious fact that human sympathy rarely goes out to the baritone, and that the basso is never a popular or successful lover, in grand opera. The so prano and the contralto, as a rule, both love the tenor, and the others are unrequited. I don t see why they can t pair them off as they do in plays. No, even if the soprano s love be hope less for the tenor, rather than marry the bari tone or basso, she ll kill herself. I do mind me of one or two exceptions, but they only prove the rule." "The tenor is always more popular in real life than the baritone," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Yes, that is true. There is something in the tone. It does not seem appropriate, somehow, to hear a fellow say, in a deep bass voice, to a fragile girl, T love you. Still some fragile girls like that sort of thing, I dare say. Anyway, when .emotion gets too deep for words, or passion too strong, or love too tender, music comes in and says it all for us." "Have you ever sung it yourself ?" asked the Candid Man. "For those who have not voices to sing, my friend, nature has provided silence. Ah, it is all sensation after all. It comes through the eye, through the ear, through the touch. It 114 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN comes God only knows how, sometimes but Music we understand." "Poor old chap ! How you must have suf fered !" put in the Cynical Man. "I know your irreverence, gentlemen ; but you ve all got to go through it those of you who have not been through it already." "You are so full of the illusions of the stage " "Pardon ! The stage is the only place where there are no illusions, except for the actors. Il lusions are our life, our happiness " "Until they are dispelled." "Dispelled !" said the Old Man dreamily. "Yes, and still we ought to know that if we reach the star we shall find it has no brilliancy. And if we sail into the crimson cloud of sunset it will wet us through. We must not ask more of beauty than it is born to give us. However fragile, however delicate, it has its practical pur pose as well. Should we quarrel with the rose because we cannot cook and eat it ? And men and women ! The beautiful woman is soulless sometimes, is she ? No ! Only, it may be, to you. Some other man finds she has a soul, and she is a different woman to him. It is the differ ence between the beauty in the animate and in animate. We want response from our own kind. We are satisfied to feel the beauty of nature, and ask no more than that it be beautiful." "I thought so," put in somebody in the pause, THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Music looking out of the window, "the new moon is on." "Don t misunderstand me, gentlemen," said the Old Man. "I would be happy to discuss the Strike question, the condition of business, the lat est case of murder, or the most engrossing of salacious scandals ; but, to tell you the truth well I think there is something more to live for, and I wish to forget for a minute, if I may, the old primeval curse of Adam, the curse of Cain, and that infernal curse of greed of gold that gives no rest even to the dead." The Old Man stopped abruptly. After a lit tle he went on in a changed tone : "I think God has been kindest to those to whom he has given the keen feeling and enjoy ment of beauty, be it of the landscape or the soul of man or woman. It may be that he has joined it to the keenest suffering, too. To find a poem in the restless sea ; to hear a ballad in the bab bling brook ; to catch the sigh of music in the summer breeze ; to feel the symphony of hazy purple hill and pale-blue sky and brown-green vale and shining water ; it is to live and be happy for an hour and to remember it forever. Ah ! it is a pleasure more acute than any other to those who feel it. And it does not end there. It is the impalpable in life that moves us most. And so we come back to music pure sensation. Yes, we recall the merry moments of the jest and song and laughter. We do not forget the 116 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN words that have stirred us, or the interchange Music of conversation we have known with congenial companions. But, after all, perhaps thoughts that were never spoken have told us the sweetest story, and the hours we most enjoyed were spent in sympathetic silence. There are people whom neither land nor sea can divide; who are for ever with one another, even if a hemisphere may lie between them ; and God is kindest of all to them. Illusion ? No. It is He only knows." 117 THE NEW WOMAN ABOUT THE NEW WOMAN The Old Fellow lay back in his chair and The New looked out through the window and saw the Woman moon, full and brilliant, sailing through a cloud less night sky. He suddenly stopped talking. They did not interrupt his reverie for awhile, but at last somebody said : "Well ? Why don t you finish the sentence ?" "What was I talking about ?" "I don t know. Something about a rebellious woman." "She was a woman and rebellious " "Not a very rare thing. Women always are rebellious," said the Candid Man. "What s the matter with you ?" asked the Old Mian, turning and looking at the speaker. "Are you not getting your own way ? There s so much rebellion that simply amounts to that. I don t know why you should say all women are rebel lious. If men are not, it is because they are not in subjection as much. But, my dear friend, the motive power of everything is rebellion." "John, I know that glass is empty." "Thank you, I believe it is. Something of re bellion there. Rebellion ! Yes !" and the Old Man looked out at the moon and went on. "If that silent splendor up there in the heavens were THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The New not in never-ceasing rebellion against the earth, Woman that draws it forever to it, it would fall and be part of it. Somewhere just now on the other side of the world the sun is dragging us into its fires, and we are, in sheer rebellion, swinging for our very lives. Rebellion of earth, air and sky ! Rebellion is life, is action, is everything." "All right ! You needn t go over all the scien tific subjects. What has that to do with the re bellious woman ?" "Maybe nothing maybe everything. I don t know," said the Old Fellow, lighting a fresh cigar. "Of course, we can see the new woman is re bellion," remarked the Cynical Chap. "Oh, dear, no !" said the Old Man, looking up with a smile. "Oh, dear, no !" "What is she ?" "Enthusiasm of imaginary intellect ; exuberance of misunderstanding. Bless your soul ! Women have just made the discovery that the human mind can reason, and they are as proud in show ing it off as the boy is in winding up an alarm clock, and setting it going to hear it ring." "It is a rebellion against men, they say," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Ay, say you so ? Well, let the new woman look out ! Poor thing ! Can t she see she is playing for the wider freedom of men ; the en couragement of our laziness ? The old woman 122 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN was glad to get off with doing the household The New duties " Woman "Men will have to do them now, I suppose," put in the Practical Man. "Not a bit of it. Even the new woman will not endure any male interference in the house affairs. So, she ll still have them. Now, when she votes and gets a voice in the Government and politics, and has a business of her own, what will men have to do except loaf about and enjoy them selves ? Don t stop the new woman ! Let her grow and prosper. It is all the better for us men. We ll have more leisure and comfort. But no ! gentlemen, no ! There is a limit to our hopes. The new woman will never earn our living by the sweat of her brow. It would wash off her complexion." "That s unkind," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Is it ? I don t know. I am afraid the new woman will find that in that proud sphere she seeks to win, that sphere from which she would displace man, selfish man, she ll get more kicks than ha pence. But no the new woman is not a rebellion ; she s a misconception. There can be nothing new, particularly in a rebellious wom an. She has existed always; she will exist al ways. They talk of harmony, of peace, of love, and all that sort of thing being the result of agreement. It s all nonsense." And the Old 123 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The New Man got up and began walking up and down the Woman room. "Harmony is the result of resistance ; peace is the balance of antagonistic forces ; love is an eternal, unsatisfied craving. Everywhere, opposition, resistance, rebellion, and such is life !" He took a few more turns up and down the room and then sat down. "I think, myself," he went on after a little, "I think that women are not as rebellious in their hearts toward men as they are toward their own sex. Is it the men who make the laws for women after all ? The rebellious woman is gen erally rather popular with men barring her hus band ; and I think, if the punishment were to be in the hands of men, she would get off lightly, not to say very comfortably. Only the dramat ists and the novelists are fomenting this dispute, and the novelists are women for the most part. The vast masses of both sexes are not seriously impressed with it. Ah me ! It is like a wom an s reasoning claiming that the men are keep ing them down, when men trust women far more than women do themselves." "I don t know about that." "My friend, how can a woman ever expect to have need of a night-key, when she s frightened to death to go a block by herself after dark ? The trouble about the female cranks who are clamor ing for latchkeys and privileges is, that none of 124 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN them ever tried going out alone, and finding her The Nezv way home by herself, if she missed the last car, Woman and had n t the money for a hack. If she ever had tried it she would have seen the imprac ticability of woman ever being as independent as man. It is not possible." "But she might get an escort," suggested the Sentimental Man. "Well, she can now. I think that if she is escorted by a gentleman, known to be such and even the new woman, I hope, does not desire the acquaintance of any one who is not there is no very adverse comment. You see, those women don t understand that after all the privilege men deny them, which they admit to themselves, is that of being in bad company, and engaging in adventures they never care to tell anybody about." "So you think everything is all right as it is," said the Practical Man. "No," said the Old Man, gravely. "No ! There are women who have a right to be rebellious to be sustained in rebellion but they are the kind that do not rebel. They are women to whom rebellion brings no satisfaction ; patriots of the domestic hearth who suffer sometimes die for the old-fashioned cause of true love." "Don t mind him ! Don t you see he has rose buds in his coat ?" 125 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The New "It was a new woman put them there," said Woman the Old Man proudly, "and you fellows are en vious. I can see it in your eyes. Ah, the new woman puts them in with a daintier grace, maybe with more fearlessness than the old." "She does n t mean it like the old one." "Does she not ? Maybe not ; but it feels just as good. I have," said the Old Gentleman, with an apologetic cough, "I have noticed in my limited experience that it grows more common, this sort of thing, since the new woman came in. I no tice that they seem to like to do this sort of thing. Don t you?" and he turned suddenly on a young man with a large boutonniere. "I I don t know. I bought this one," and he blushed. "He s lying," said his neighbor, sotto voce. "No, gentlemen," said the Old Man, lifting glass. "I am inclined to encourage the new woman. There is a delightful lack of nervous ness about her. She makes herself very agree able openly. She s not a bit afraid you re going to think she is madly in love with you, because she puts a flower in your buttonhole. That is, I am aware, in some sense an objection ; but it gives us unfortunates who are not lady killers, some little chance to think we have attractions. And if she wants you to marry her, she lets you know which is, either as a hint, a warning, or 126 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN a desirable consummation, a tremendous advance The New in the progress of human comfort. You can get Woman out of the way, or stay right along, just as you feel about it. She is a great and delightful in vention the new woman. Here s to her !" The Seedy Gentleman paused a little, and then went on more seriously. "I only know that the new woman is not what you laugh at. She knows more about science than you do. She is feeling that she has a soul as well as a brain, and that soul makes her more than a mother to children, though no less of that, and a being independent of, and superior to, man, even if man be her husband. In days of old the woman s life was in the man and in her children. Nowadays women are, by this club business as much as anything else, developing a life which is independent of husband or family. It is not wicked ; it is not wrong ; it is not the double life a man leads. But, just the same, some day you men, who are content to grub for money, and are too tired after you ve got through work to educate yourselves in anything, except, maybe, poker ; you men to whom art and science and literature and music are mere entertaining fads, contemptible beside the tremendous genius of buying something for a dollar, and selling it for a dollar and ten cents, will find yourselves reduced to mere fathers of families, too ignorant to be invited to your wives receptions." 127 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The New Nobody answered, and the Old Man lay back Woman in his chair and looked at the moon, now high over the housetops. "Knowledge," he went on in his tone of reverie, "what is it worth? All that is in life that is sweet or sad we never know we only feel, God help us!" 128 MACBETH SEES HIMSELF MACBETH SEES HIMSELF "Touching those brain waves," said the Seedy Macbeth Gentleman, standing up with his back to the fire, sees himself with a graceful wobble. "I thought his brain was a little wavy," re marked one of the crowd. "He s brains all over, apparently, then," said another. "When you have quite finished those rude allusions to my nervous system," replied the Old Man, "we will proceed. Touching those brain waves, I may observe that, as usual, science is behind the ordinary intelligence. I have known of those brain waves for a long time." "So have we," said the Candid Man. "Hardly likely. To realize brain waves one must have brains. John, give the gentlemen something to make them intelligent. As I said to Lady Macbeth " "To whom ?" "To Lady Macbeth." "The same old wave." "I had a theatre party this evening." "Oh ! Who was there ?" "There were Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Shakes peare and myself." THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Macbeth "Did you meet them at the ferry ?" asked the sees himself Fellow in the Corner. "Yes. We all came over from the shades to gether. I dined with Shakespeare." "Dined ?" "Yes, of course, dined." "Where does Shakespeare eat?" asked the Practical Man. "Oh, he lives at Mrs. MacStinger s boarding- house in the Elysian fields." "And what do they, eat there ?" "Oh, the souls of chickens and things." "And what do they drink ?" "Only spirits," said the old man blandly. "But as I was saying, I invited them all to come to the theatre. Somehow they heard that Mac beth was being played. I saw at once, gentle men, the danger, and I tried to persuade them to go somewhere else. It was of no avail. They would go." "Well, what happened ?" "Macbeth and Shakespeare don t speak now." "Have a fight ?" asked the Candid Man. "Well, if there had not been ladies present I fancy Shakespeare would have been badly off. You see, Macbeth enjoyed it very much at first. He had never seen anything like it. It did not occur to him for some time that it was all his story. You see, he never knew himself by the name of Macbeth. His name was Macbeathad MacFinlegh. Yes, the witches seemed to impress 132 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN him. He was a superstitious fellow. Of course, Macbeth he didn t recognize his clothes. But he thought sees himself that that man Macbeth was quite a heroic kind of a chap. Well, everything went well till I put my foot in it." " Whit s this maist extror ny rig-a-ma-jig? he asked. " Why, don t you know this story ? I re turned. " I dinna ken a domd thing aboot it. " Or those incidents ? " What fur dac ye suppose I wid be speerin at ye gin I kent it a ? " Somebody broke in here with a query as to what kind of dialect Macbeth should have used. "Gentlemen," said the Old Man, "I supposed you had read Barrie and Ian Maclaren. Any way, I went on : " Why, I said to Macbeth, this is your story. " Is that mysel ? That is yoursel , I said with a bow. You will see your good lady presently. "Hae they got me intul t ?" asked Lady Mac beth, very much pleased. "Certainly, my lady," I said. They both became deeply interested. When Lady Macbeth came on, Macbeth made a long, critical study of her. "I m thinkin that s no a richt," he said, dubi ously. "I doot if ye wid hae leeved throo t, Gruoch Mac Boedhe, gin ye had na had mair 133 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Macbeth bane. An ye were na jist sae pretty." sees himself "Gruoch what ?" interjected an inquirer. "That was Lady Macbeth s name," answered the Old Gentleman. "Nae but ye war a fine wiman in your day, Gruoch. I m nae saein onythin aboot that," went on Macbeth. "I m thinkin mysel ," said Lady Macbeth, "I wis a wee thocht sonsier. But I widna hae kent it wis yoursel , laird. Ye ve sae changed." Shakespeare sat in the back of the box. He kept asking me what they were saying ; he could not understand them. He wasn t happy, and he wanted to get out. But they would not let him go. The trouble came in the murder scenes. "Whit s the matter wi him ?" the visitors asked when Macbeth saw the dagger in the air. Shakespeare started in to explain, for he was getting very nervous. "It was Hollinshed," he said to Macbeth. "It was Hollinshed ! Thou canst not say I did it." "He is now going to kill Duncan and take the crown," I remarked. "You shall see later how "Whit s he gaun to kill him wi ?" asked Mac beth. "The dagger." "Wha-a-t ? That wee bit thing ?" "I assure you," I said, "this is one of the most artistic scenes in any play. This is artistic " "Arteestic ?" yelled Macbeth. We both thought he was going to kill Shakes- 134 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN peare for making him a murderer, and we tried Macbeth to put in a pacifying word. sees himself "Arteestic ! Di ye ca that arteestic ? Wh-a-a-t? A man like me kill anither wi a knife ! Arteestic !" "Well I thought " said Shakespeare, "that s what you would do and I " "Ye made me arteestic, did ye ?" asked Macbeth with a sneer. "Did ye nae ken that I wid hae split his heed open wi a club ?" "You killed him, anyway," I said. "Killed him ? Ma certie ! I killed him but no that way." "In open fight like a man, I suppose ?" "I dinna ken whit ye mean by open fight. It wis aye open fight wi us. We had nae ither amusement." "And you were the ambitious woman who won for your husband the crown ?" I said to Lady Macbeth. "I dinna ken about that. Nane o us wis par ticular, whin we could mak onything by it. The men jist gaed about killin ane anither, and if oor husbands gaed oot, an didna happen tae come back weel we kent they were deed, an we got anither man." "It was a heroic age an age of tragic deeds," I said. "I m no sure that I understan ye ; but it wis a braw life we had then." When Lady Macbeth came out in the sleep- 135 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Macbeth walking scene my fair guest turned to me and sees himself said : "Will ye tell me whit the wiman s daein the noo ?" "She is walking in her sleep," I said. "Hoo can she wauk in her sleep ?" asked Mac beth. "You see, it is her conscience that is troubling her." "Whit is her conscience ?" "The murder of Duncan weighs on her mind. She seems to feel the blood on her hand, and she can t sleep for thinking of the wicked deed," I explained. "Wha-a-t?" said Macbeth. "Makin sich a bother about a naething like that." "A naething ?" I said. "I wis na able to sleep whin I didna kill the man," said Macbeth. Shakespeare had wilted in the back of the box. He had nothing to say. His whole play seemed to collapse before him. When the great fight came at the end Macbeth turned to me. "Whit are they daein ?" "They are fighting," I said. "Fechtin? Weel, weel ! Dae ye ca that fechtin? If the ither fellow focht that way wi me he wid hae been deed afore he began. It s no the least like it." We walked out of the theatre. Macbeth put his hand on Shakespeare s shoulder. 136 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "Wullie," he said, "ye mac be a clever man, Macbeth but ye dinna ken a domd thing aboot the auld sees himself Scots. Wha tellt ye that story wis the biggest leear I iver kent. Wullie, I m fashed wi ye makin sic a puir goloshin o me!" And they got into an argument which ended in Shakespeare s telling Macbeth that he never wanted him to address him again. I left them. 137 THE CLUB LIBRE THE CLUB LIBRE "Good night!" said the Seedy Gentleman, Club Libre taking his hat and coat "Off so early? And you haven t said a word." "No, I am not satisfied, gentlemen, with some of the comments I have heard passed about me. I have started a new club. I am the president." "Yes ? What is it ?" "It is a club for bores and people who do not speak to one another. Everybody talks to him self, and he can say just what he thinks about anything or anybody. It has many advantages. There is no interruption of the conversation ; you are not called down all the time ; and you can say right before anybody, what you would say behind his back, without offense. Good night !" The old man walked down the street until he reached a door on which, engraved on a brass plate, was the legend, THE CLUB LIBRE. He took a key out of his pocket, opened the door and went up stairs into a cozy, well-fur nished room. There were plenty of easy chairs in it, and on the back of each chair was the name of the member to whom it belonged. There were three or four men there, all sitting with their 141 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Club Libre backs to one another, smoking and talking to the pictures, which were all portraits of celebrated bores, or the windows, but never looking at or addressing one another. The only man they all spoke to was the servant, who took the orders. The old man hung up his hat and coat and went to his own chair. Nobody said anything, but they all looked up with a frown on their faces, going on with their soliloquies. Then one fellow was heard to say : "Here s that confounded bore, the president ! I suppose he s been to the theatre, and he ll drivel about the drama." "There is one rule of the club," said the Ora cle, talking apparently to a gas jet, "that peo ple don t need to listen if they don t want to." "Some people," said the bald-headed man with a fringe of reddish hair around the back of his neck, gazing abstractedly at an ash-receiver on the table, "talk so loud you must listen." "If I don t want to hear," said a venerable chap in a black skull cap, looking up at the ceil ing, "I put cotton in my ears." "1 wish," put in a weazened fellow, who was absorbed in contemplation of a fly on the wall, "I wish some fellows would stuff their mouths with it." The Old Gentleman lit a cigar and, leaning back in his chair, continued his contemplation of the gas jet. 142 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN I am sorry," he remarked to it, "I am sorry Club Libre they are gone." "The trouble about some bores," said a voice near him, "is that you don t know what they re talking about. It s bad enough when you do." "But they re gone, just the same," went on the Old Fellow. "The low comedian and the sou- brette are no more. Those were happy days of the drama, when the dramatist gave every house hold a comic man servant and a singing chamber maid. Now they put the servants in their places, and the audience pay no more attention to them than if they really were servants." "Some men," said the bald-headed member, addressing his cigar, "would like to have a song and dance between the courses by the butler and the housemaid." "I don t see any difference in plays," re marked the weazened old man to a pattern of the carpet. "They re the same darned old things over again. Men talking love stuff to women, and women running after men and then run ning away from them. Bah !" "I can see a reason for women running away from some men," said the venerable chap, smil ing at the door. "I liked the plays when they used to pair them all off at the end," went on the Seedy Gentle man, speaking to the fireplace. "It was so pleas ant to go home thinking they were all fixed and comfortable." THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Club Libre "If a man has been married," the bald-headed man said contemptuously to a match, "of course, he knows how fixed and comfortable he is." "We have changed all that," continued the Old Fellow. "We don t pair any of them in the latest plays. The old play ended with a wedding ; the new play will end presently with a divorce. But the comic servant and the pret ty chambermaid are all out of it. They always used to fall in love, quarrel, make up, and pair off like their masters and mistresses when the curtain fell. Nowadays they are not apparently on speaking terms, and if they do any lovemak- ing it is in the kitchen. They used to be part of the family ; but now they are merely hired things who walk on and walk off, bringing let ters and doing messages. Ah, me ! we change. There was an affectionate relation of old between master and servant. That is no more." "If some people s wives could speak," said the weazened old man to the cornice, "they d let a flood of light in on the subject." "What rot some men talk !" remarked the bald-headed man, striking a match viciously. "Doesn t some idiot know the servant is the mas ter now and the maid the mistress ?" "How charming it was," went on the Oracle, "when the white-headed old gentleman patted the soubrette on the head, and told her he would raise her wages." "If some men would keep house," came a sotto 144 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN voce from the corner, "they d find out that the Club Libre maid raises her own wages nowadays." " And when the play was over there was al ways a dowry for the maid, when she married, and the generous master set the comic servant up in a public house." "Does anybody know what it costs to start a saloon ?" the bald-headed man asked of his empty glass. "What simple, honest, cheerful unpretending girls those singing chambermaids were in those days," soliloquized the Seedy Gentleman. "They wore cheap print gowns, and had their hair all frowsy, and their sleeves up to their elbows. Now they are coiffured and capped, and dressed in dainty dresses just from the dressmaker s, and they are so much prettier than some of the mis tresses, that there would be far more excuse for the flirtation with the master than there used to be, when that was the fashion in plays." "I am surprised somebody doesn t tell a cer tain fool member of this club that that kind of maid would not last two weeks in any well- regulated family," said the bald-headed man con fidentially to a picture on the wall. "If some heads of families were well regulat ed," remarked the weazened old man to the toe of his boot, "it might be quite possible." "Ah, me !" sighed the Seedy Gentleman to his hot Scotch. "The luxury and the style and the 145 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Club Libre lavish display of the menage in the drama now adays !" "People have to be millionaires nowadays to be able to have servants at all," growled the bald-headed man to the waiter. "To find poverty and affectionate service, and true love, one has to go to the ten-cent theaters, where the aristocrat is the villain, and virtue is always triumphant still. Ah ! for the old drama ! The cheerful soubrette sticking to her old mistress in poverty, bringing her cold chicken and ice cream and orange marmalade when she was starving, and dancing a breakdown for her while she and her hungry child ate! The true-hearted servant who followed his young master through thick and thin, and saved him from all sorts of dangers, and led up to all giving him the curtain when it fell !" "Why don t some idiots go and be a play ?" asked the bald-headed man, blandly addressing a fly that had fallen into his glass. The Oracle having finished his hot Scotch, got up and wandered out, without the faintest sign of consciousness that there was anybody else in the room. 146 WEDDINGS ABOUT WEDDINGS The Seedy Gentleman was sitting by ths fire. Weddings They paid no attention to him. He began hum ming to himself the wedding march from "Loh engrin." "Premonitory symptom ?" asked somebody. "When I am married, gentlemen, there shall be no Lohengrin march played, I assure you." "Why ? Don t you like it ?" It is the most sadly prophetic music to me. It forebodes parting, unhappiness, divorce. Didn t Wagner write it when he knew the un fortunate ending of the opera ? But we have no omens nowadays. We are too sensible for that. Still, if you don t mind, the Mendelssohn march will do for me if ever there is any opportunity for its introduction. It just occurs to me, gen tlemen," said the old man, thoughtfully, "that one long-felt want has been a wedding march for old men. If the Lohengrin were not so suggestive, perhaps it might do, but when a bald-headed old fellow, who should be hiring a nurse, instead of marrying a young woman, marches up to the altar, I am free to confess I think Mendelssohn s march is altogether too en thusiastic. Fancy a fellow with gout in both feet entering the church or leaving it trying to keep 149 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Weddings time to the strains of Mendelssohn s Wedding March ! It s incongruous." "Don t you think an old man can feel the spirit of love as well as a young man ?" asked the Practical Chap. "I have too much respect for myself to deny it. I don t believe in wedding marches at all after you ve got to an age when a desire for per sonal comfort takes the place of true love." The old man got up and got his pipe, and when he had lit it and settled down he said : "What a strange, sad tone there is to that Lohengrin march, hidden under a strain of victory ! Ah me ! There are some funny things in this world. Strange that a thin old chap, with spectacles on nose, drawing a bow across the strings, can speak the language of the soul, and a fat Dutchman blowing into a hollow reed can make you feel the story of an agonized, hopeless love !" "John, give him something to drink." "It is such a curious, ridiculous mess of incon gruities, is this world, anyway." The old man laughed all to himself. "What are you laughing at ?" asked the Fel low in the Corner. "I was laughing to think how little we do to enjoy ourselves and how much we spend to be entertained. Here we are, a whole lot of human beings dumped down on this earth, paying one another to do things for us, getting paid for do- THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN ing things for others and this is life. A man Weddings wants to get married ; he has to get a license, a minister, an organist, a few hacks, a caterer heaven only knows what all he and his father- in-law, between them ; and they have all to be paid for. It s a funny kind of thing to consider so very, very seriously." "We ve got to take life seriously sometimes," said the Candid Man. "Yes, in everything that s worth living for. That is where we rarely take life seriously. But we were talking of wedding music. We ve got to have a reformation in wedding music. We are away behind the times in it. We are up to date in marriage, but we still cling to Men delssohn, and Lohengrin and marriage bells, and all that sort of thing." "What do you want ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "Well, I don t know ; but it seems to me that we might put in appropriate music. The whole trend of music is toward the descriptive. They make the orchestra now illustrate all phases of feeling, emotion and sentiment. Marriage used to be a serious matter. It was for life. It isn t any more. It is a kind of momentary hysteria, except in old men, and well, I think old men, when they get married, should be taken to some secret place, and the whole ceremony gone through in a whisper. We are not like our fath ers. They looked upon happiness as the chief THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Weddings end of man. They always looked on the bright side of things. We don t do that. We say : No, that confounded cloud has rain in it; never mind the silver lining. Mary, bring my umbrella ! " The old man stopped, thinking. "By the way, gentlemen, did it ever occur to you we don t make any of those old and cheery proverbs any more ? Ah, well, it s part of our pessimistic ideas." "Pessimistic now ?" "No ; bless you, no ! It is only people who write books and plays who are pessimistic. The public are not. But it is the wild-eyed, har- rowed-up souled, deeply concerned people, who are full of sympathy for the misery of other peo ple who are perfectly happy, who lecture you and write warnings for you. They have inspired me with this idea of the inappropriateness of wedding marches and marriage bells." "What would you suggest ?" "Well, I would have the organ play when the wedding party came in, some popular air, such as They all do it and sometimes they rue it. I would have musical interpolations in the ser vice. I d have, for instance, somebody sing Oh, Promise Me ! when it began, and let the pro cession go out to Some Day or It Was a Dream, or something equally appropriate to the prospective outcome. If a widow came up to be married, I d like to have the organ play Slap- bang ! Here We Are Again, when she came in. 152 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN I think some of the circus tunes might come in Weddings very well, too, as suggestive of the near future. Oh, there are lots of appropriate tunes to be got." "What would you like played at your wed ding ?" "Oh, something light and merry, like Here s a howdy-do. But I don t think that weddings are conducted properly, anyway. I think it is the duty of the clergyman to take some interest in the young people. The old questions are out of date. He should ask them, first of all, Do you know what you are doing, you two? Do you think really you can stand one another long ? He should take them aside and talk to them sep arately. He should say to the girl, Now, you don t know, because you re young and enthusi astic, and romantic, and all that sort of thing ; but it is my duty to tell you that nearly every man needs a great deal of putting up with. You think you love this fellow, but you don t, really. You re pretty sure to find that out after you re married, and then there will be trouble. Of course, if you ve made up your mind, I have nothing to say. It s no business of mine, but the common experience is that men give their wives a great deal of real, serious trouble. Then he should take the man aside and say to him, Have you thought this thing very carefully out? Yes, I know you love her, and you can t live without her and all that kind of thing, but we all think that some time or other. If he s a true friend, 153 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Weddings as a minister ought to be, of all his patients, he should say to the young man : I don t like the look of that girl. She looks to me like a flirt. It is my duty, as a judge of human nature, to tell you I think she ll lead you an awful life. Now, if you like to marry her after I have point ed these things out to you, you can go ahead with the ceremony. " "He d have a great time, wouldn t he?" "Then he ought to warn them other ways. When the girl swears to love, honor and obey, he should say to the young man, You must not take that at all literally ; she does not mean it that way, and when the young man swears to everything he s asked, he should point out to the girl that he is probably lying, under the excite ment of the moment." The old man stopped and looked at his watch ; as he got up he said : "Ah, me ! The Church and the divorce court are getting confused with us, anyway. Wedlock is easily opened now with a skeleton key." He moved across the room a trifle unsteady, as he sometimes became in these long talks. Then he came back. "Gentlemen, let us have a nightcap ! Here s to the old fashion, the old, old fashion of love ; the old, old fashion of true wedlock. The only wed ding music that men and women who love and marry, hear, is from their hearts, and those will always sing the old, old tune." 154 LIFE IS NEVER THE SAME AGAIN LIFE IS NEVER THE SAME AGAIN The fire was blazing, for it was cold and damp Life is never outside, and the rain was pelting on the window \h e same again panes. The Seedy Gentleman, rocking to and fro, took his pipe out of his mouth and sighed. "And life is never the same again," he quoted. "Is the doll stuffed with sawdust this evening ?" asked the Sentimental Man. "Ah, me ! the little child s toy is broken, and life is never the same again ; the schoolboy s sweetheart accepts the candy of another, and life is never the same again. The fair-haired blue- eyed maiden s lover is false, the blue eyes fill with tears, and life is never the same again ; the man finds the woman he loved has given her hand to his wealthy rival, and life is never the same again. Yet the child gets a new toy ; the schoolboy gets a new sweetheart ; the young maid gets a new lover ; the man falls in love with an other woman ; and, somehow, life seems very much the same again." "And no grief ever changes life to anybody ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "Rarely, but sometimes ; and it is terrible when it does. No, gentlemen, human nature is re markably recuperative. We get over most 157 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Life is never things. You can see it all the time in the play." the same again "Play ? Pshaw !" "I don t mean the play itself is real. Look at the audience ! When, just as the curtain falls, the recreant husband rushes in, after he has been guilty of every deceit possible, and the wife takes him in her arms and kisses him, the audience is satisfied, pleased. Life is going to be the same again. They know how it is themselves. Yes, Georgia might perhaps have preferred John, but, after all, life is much the same with Alexander. Philip may regret losing Gertrude for certain excellences she possesses, but Beatrice is quite as charming in another way. And some of them have to take whom they can get, yet life is ever the same again." "You d better take a drink. You are getting cynical," said the Sentimental Man. "Well, come, isn t it so? Hasn t it been so with you ? You know you thought " "Don t get personal !" "I see, I am right. It is not disappointment and deceit, gentlemen, that make life never the same again. I fancy the greatest change in the life of ordinary men or women is the moment when love comes to them. Life is never the same again after that. They have found a power superior to all others. They have lost self control, and the sun may shine or the night may fall for a hun dred years, they 11 never get it back. And love is like any other taste once acquired. It has to be 158 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN gratified, and opportunity is apt to develop it into Life is never a habit." the same again "Is this your own experience you re giving us ?" asked the Cynic. "To some extent, gentlemen, only to some ex tent. I hope I have had hours of constancy. Constancy is not altogether so agreeable or ad mirable as it is supposed to be by theorists. Con stancy," said the Seedy Gentleman sententiously, lying back and stretching himself out, "con stancy is a much overrated quality. Constancy is a jewel, so somebody said, and, like jewels, only valuable because of its rarity." "You re talking about consistency, ain t you ?" "Sisters, my dear sir. The same family. But have you ever noticed how popular those plays are that have old loves in them ? How exquis itely sad it seems to be to most people to recall their old sweethearts. I wonder why ? Ah me ! The past is always so much sweeter than the present. We had the toothache ; we had to be whipped ; we had lots of troubles and sorrows when we were young ; but the headache of the present makes them all dear to us. The old love ! It was a momentary infatuation ; it was an absurd, senseless dream ; it would have spoiled all the fun of our after life if we had realized it ; and yet we cry over the faded paper, with its musty odor, its faint handwriting, its ridiculous gush, its silly ending. It is the might have been, gentlemen ! We can still dream of what might 159 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Life is never have been, but the is is practical and with us." the same again "You re fond of dreaming, you say," remarked the Fellow in the Corner. "So I am. It is pleasant, it is inexpensive, it has no responsibilities. As a dream, a thing may be enjoyable that would be decidedly incon venient as a fact. But there are, on this old sweetheart business, an hundred of books and a score of plays. There will be hundreds more ; and, in the years to come, the same sad pleasure will awaken in people over that same sadly en joyable dream of the past. It is curious, gentle men, very curious, but in real life, have you ever noticed that most of those reunited lovers of their youth have both been married between whiles ? Once in a while you find an example where they re both single at fifty or sixty and get married, but not often. You do frequently find the man has remained a bachelor. He s shrewd. He has wanted to see what kind of a wife she would make, and if he s satisfied, he feels he may take the risk. But it is a strong sentiment that keeps a woman single, all be cause a man has drifted away from her. Do you remember that play in which the fellow comes back in about thirty years with gray hair ?" asked the Old Man of the Fellow in the Corner. "Yes." "And they have a dispute over a flower. She finally takes a faded flower from a little case and shows it him." 160 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "Yes. I remember." Life is never "That flower kept a long time, didn t it?" the same again "It does seem rather long." "Oh, it s all right. Poetic license, of course. But the woman had it with her." "That s ridiculous. Carrying it about with her for thirty years !" "Not at all. It is very true to nature. It had become a habit with her, like an old knife or a bunch of keys, or anything you ve kept in your pocket for a while. She would have been un comfortable without it. It looked like an in finitely tender constancy, all the same. You see. you can t tell half the time about those things. You go to call on an old sweetheart. It is years since last you met ; and you find a picture you gave her when you went away, in a frame on her table, or a book in the little rack you made her a present of on her birthday a decade ago. It is inexpressibly thrilling. Such devotion ! and if you only knew how they came to be there, you d find the whole thing a matter of careful arrange ment. Oh, it s the same with you. You ve fished out something from an old bureau you ve hap pened to keep, and you well she knows you have it before you are long there. She s equally pleased." "Well, it shows those things were kept," put in the Sentimental Man. "Yes, that s nothing accident. And when you go away she watches you going down the 161 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Life is never street and says to herself, How old he s getting ! the same again and you say I expected to find her younger look ing. You put all the keepsakes away out of sight ; you don t call any more ; and life is ex actly the same again. But who would care to see a play so true to real life ? It is all foolishness, perhaps, but we do sometimes like to see senti mental happiness come to others, selfish as we are." "We re not so bad, after all." "No. We re not. How pleasant it would be if sentimental happiness could last always ! Ah, sometimes our own misfortunes make us enjoy the happiness of others, we could so much enjoy in ourselves. I think there are few women, un happy in marriage as they may be, who counsel their sisters not to marry. Perhaps it is that they realize what possibilities there are, and have the charity to hope the others will not make their mistake. The old bachelor likes those old plays, although he doesn t want you to know it. He pretends not to. He is a confirmed crank, maybe ; but when the years have crept over him and his head is white, he looks back. It does not matter how many sweethearts he may have had, his life lacks something of complete fulfill ment. And unto him has come no companion to make him forget what might have been. What might have been is all he has to comfort him." The Old Gentleman lay back in his chair and fell into his frequent reverie. 162 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "The might have been !" he murmured. Life is never "Might it have been after all ? We do not know, the same again If we had been able to see all clearly, very likely, possible and probable as it looked, from the be ginning it could never be. We like to delude our selves with these fancies. We believe if we had willed it so, it would have been so. She would have said Yes ! for we know, we are sure, she loved us. And all the while, perhaps, it was the other chap. You never can tell. It is like the election ; when the majority speaks, we see how hopeless the other cause was. The voice of the majority is the voice of God. And the other fellow was the majority !" A gentle snore told the little group the Seedy Gentleman had passed into dreamland. 163 LOVE BALLADS ABOUT LOVE BALLADS "Thank you, John !" said the Seedy Gentleman, Love Ballads as the waiter put a glass before him. "Gentlemen, here s to you !" "To you, old man." "There is a sound as of much bright music in my ears ; there is a flash as of many bright colors in my eye, and, generally, I feel a trifle dazed." "What have you been doing?" "I have been enjoying myself at Gilbert s opera, The Mountebanks. " "Oh ! The usual comic opera does not daze you," said the Cynical Man. "No, it has a tendency to depress you. I was thinking of the change in love songs since I was a boy. I don t think they are any more extravagant. They re perhaps not as extravagant, but they sound less sincere." "Love songs never were sincere." "Oh, I don t know. Take Sir John Suckling, take all of those old simple love poets ! No, they didn t always know who it was they were writing about, but they wrote all the more charmingly for that." "That appears to need explanation." "Does it? Well, it s intelligible enough. You can make a perfect ideal, but you can t make a 167 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love Ballads perfect woman. Clorinda may have a beautiful pair of eyes and a lovely nose and radiant hair; but she may have a bad chin, or a large pair of ears, or her feet may be a trifle out of proportion. You cannot apostrophize her eyes or her nose, without thinking of that chin or those feet, or whatever is defective. You can easily comprehend how those little things must worry a poet. There s your Ethel " "Whose Ethel?" asked the Practical Man, to whom he had turned. "You are always taking those things personally. You are writing a love song to her." "Never wrote a love song in my life." "Well, call it doggerel, if you like ! You make a verse about each of her features and you leave out the, let us say, nose. You send it to her. She does not like it. She understands perfectly well that you left out the nose because it did not lend itself to poetry. But the poet who writes of an ideal does not need to hesitate. He simply im agines every feature as it suits his verse ; and I have sometimes thought, gentlemen, sad and painful as it is, if we were to take the poet s description of an ideal woman and make a sketch of her just as he describes her, we would have a singularly badly fitting assortment of features very often. In fact she would be an absurd kind of a thing. Experts in beauty will tell you certain kinds of noses do not go well with certain kinds of chins, and certain eyebrows will not 168 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN match certain eyes, and all sorts of things like Love Ballads that. Only nature usually contradicts experts in anything, and most of the time the prettiest woman appears from description to be rather plain." "You seem to be running in that vein lately," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Gentlemen, I am apt to digress. But I was talking of love songs and ballads of sentiment. Well, of course, the subject is inexhaustible, and yet impossible now to be original upon. Yes, the old poets had the best of us. The subject was new in poetry in all countries once; but we are late in the day, and it grows hard to write orig inal love songs. The old poet could write, If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be. In these days we take two verses to say that, and we never say it as well. Similes are exhausted and sentiment is getting attenuated. Yet Gilbert has a dainty little bit after all in The Mountebanks. Old ? Yes, old ; but to me very dainty." Whispering breeze Bring me my dear; Windshaken trees Beckon him here ; Rivulet, hie, Prythee, go see ; Birds as ye fly Call him to me ! Tell him the tale of the tears that I shed, Tell him I die for the love that is dead. "Yes, that is rather pretty." "Ah, pretty! That is all we say. We have to 169 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love Ballads sing love nowadays. Love words do not move us now. Well, the words don t mean much in the usual love ballad, anyway, now." "They re rather sensible, sometimes." "The old English opera words had to be con cealed. That s why most operatic singers are never heard, so far as what they are saying is concerned." "It doesn t matter at all," put in the Candid Man. "But I don t like this new style of love ballad very much. It is something between heavenly and earthly, between poetry and prose. I wonder how many of them end in I love thee ! Some interesting statistics might be made out of love songs. For instance, I would like to know the proportion of Fs, and thees, and yous, and thines, and mines, and dears, and loves there is to all the other words of the language in them? Well, it is for the most part nonsense, anyway, and misleading." "Misleading?" queried the Sentimental Man. "Yes, misleading. It has always seemed to me that love poetry has been misunderstood." "How ?" "There s no such feeling possible in practical life as that which is expressed in most love poetry. It s all in the imagination, and it is this effect of reducing the imaginative to the real that makes all the trouble. What is the use of describing a woman s eyes as stars ? They re not a bit like 170 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN stars. Rubies for lips and pearls for teeth? As Love Ballads a fact, gentlemen, lips do not suggest rubies, and teeth are more like mother of pearl, which is too cheap an article of commerce for use in poetry. Love ballads consist principally in comparing something with something else for eight lines and then putting at the end I love thee. For myself, gentlemen, I am satisfied that my love s eyes should not be stars ; her neck should in no respect resemble the swan s, which, indeed, the old song to the contrary notwithstanding, I take to be a very uncomplimentary comparison. I do not think bosoms of snow would be alluring, or hands of ivory at all pleasant to squeeze. In fact, gentlemen," and the Seedy Man took up his glass and waved it gracefully in the air, "I don t believe that there are any comparisons in nature that could express the charm of a dainty woman just as she is." "Then you don t want love ballads at all." "Yes, I do. Yes, I think that there are some feelings words cannot express by themselves. But the charm of sentiment is sense, and music is, at its best, emotional sense." "There doesn t seem to be much sense, as you describe, in that Gilbert verse," said the Practical Man. "You think that the breeze couldn t bring him back, and the trees couldn t beckon to him, and all the rest of it. That is simply a little cry for sympathy and assistance. A longing half happy 171 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love Ballads cry to the infinite to do what the finite cannot. We all crave and need sympathy, and yet " The Seedy Gentleman took on his old tone of reverie. "And yet we do not ask it always, or want it always, from our fellow men. When we are sad I think most of us want to be alone with nature. And some inanimate things are full of sympathy. Yes, you light your fire, and draw your curtains and take your pipe, and sit by the blaze. Some how the fire seems to sympathize with you. It may be the same kind of blaze that goes up the chimney when you are sitting there placid and pleased, but somehow it cheers you, as if it said : "Don t be downcast; see how I leap and glow and all for you." Sometimes it is the breeze that flits past you as you wander through the woods, and whispers as it goes, "Cheer up ; feel how fresh and pure and balmy I am." Sometimes it is the flower that looks up at you and smiles and tries to charm your mood away, and sometimes it is the sky and the sunset that fill the air with a rich warm glow, and seem to draw you from your sadness." There was a pause. They let him think, as they always did when he fell into that mood, and presently he moved, to go away. "I don t think, gentlemen," he said, "that music was ever meant for words. I think it should be, even from voices, only a sound. The violin needs no words ; the cello speaks without them. It is 172 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN our education in speech that makes them neces- Love Ballads sary, when men or women give forth music. We do not hear them most of the time, we only vaguely follow them at best; yet somehow the music tells us just the same, and, after all, it is not what you say, but how you say it. Prose is made poetry by a tone, and poetry made prose by a voice. Ah me ! the same words mean so many different things. A little inflection turns a com pliment into an insult ; the same words can be charged with pleasure or with pain. The whisper may be all you hear, but you do not need to ask the sentence ; love is a song, hate is a hiss, sym pathy is a chord, and joy a trill, and words are nothing, after all. Good night, gentlemen !" 173 GHOSTS ABOUT GHOSTS The Seedy Gentleman came in with a dripping Ghosts umbrella in his hand, swathed in a mackintosh, and his trousers turned up at the bottom. "I see by the evening papers," he said, as he kicked off his rubbers and drew his easy chair up to the fire, "I see by the evening papers that the storm is over." "Looks like it, doesn t it?" "Now, if we lived away back two or three or four thousand years, we should be down on our marrow bones praying lustily to the gods. That was a regular Jovian thunderbolt, wasn t it? "You are the oracle. The ancients used to seek the oracle for explanations. What does the or acle say this portends?" said the Candid Man. "Well, if it had been before the election, I should have said it portended some great politi cal disaster; but I am inclined to think it is plain weather." "That is rather commonplace," put in the Cynic. "My friend, everything is commonplace, today. If anything very extraordinary turns up we are immediately deluged with explanations that make it absolutely uninteresting. I like to see the ghost in Hamlet simply because scientific men can t get up and explain it away. I haven t the 177 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Ghosts least doubt Hamlet saw his father s ghost." "Oh, people see ghosts now." "I doubt it. I have seen some strange things in my time thank you, John ! but well " "You have reformed?" "Slightly, gentlemen, slightly. Here s to you !" The old gentleman took a sip and, leaning back in his chair, lapsed into silence. "Ah," he said, in his dreamy tone, "the ghosts of old came from the dead. The ghosts today come from the living. The grave is more silent than it was ; the tomb more secret. The veil that hides the beyond is more impenetrable; the bourne from which no traveler returns grows more and more mystic and inscrutable. We were better when we dreamed of peace and rest and happiness to come." "You are getting mournful." "Let us talk of Hamlet ! I have always had a profound pity for Hamlet s ghost," said the old gentleman, waking up. "I never see him walk on the stage and speak his little description of his unfortunate condition in the other world, without being sorry for him when he has to leave the nipping and the eager air of Elsinore s battlements, and go back to tormenting flames. It seems to me, gentlemen," said the old man, twirling his monocle, "it seems to me that such a good man as Hamlet s father is represented to be should have been in a more comfortable place. He himself alludes to deeds done in his days of 178 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN nature; but, somehow, if I had been Hamlet, Ghosts I should have worried more over the ghost s present unfortunate state than even over his pe culiar murder." "Hamlet was busy debating how he could re venge him." "Precisely ; but I always think of that poor ghost. If Hamlet could only do something to get him out of there ! If he had only given him some cold victuals to eat. He ought to have in vited him to come every night when he was walking around and get his meals regularly, at least; then he would not have needed to fast, even if he had to spend the day in fires. He might have given him a cake of ice to take back with him." "I do not recall that that phase of the question has been debated before," remarked the Fellow in the Corner. "I suppose it has," answered the old gentleman. "All phases of all questions have been argued before. But the whole ghost theory has been crystallized in Hamlet. " "Do you really believe in ghosts, anyway?" asked the Candid Man. "I think all people have some belief in ghosts," the Old Man said thoughtfully. "Those who do not really believe, have a vague underlying fear that there may be such things, after all. Why not ghosts? Human nature is at bottom so prac tical that it demands ocular demonstration of 179 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Ghosts everything. When we fancy a thing may be in this life, we go hunting for it, and, nine times out of ten, when we go hunting for a thing we find it, even if it isn t there." "Something of a paradox," remarked the Fel low in the Corner. "Everything is a paradox. Life itself is noth ing else to us. Since men were, they have craved the uncanny, the intangible, the supernatural. Ghosts have come from that craving. Nature has a way of supplying, somehow or other, what you think you need. Nature is kind; if it can t give you the real thing, because, very likely, it is im possible, it makes you imagine you have it ; and that is just as good better, sometimes. Ghosts, gentlemen, were sent into the imagination to gratify a long-felt want. Ah, me! We cry for a sign from beyond the grave ; we cry for some evidence that our beloved dead are not eternally lost to us; and it would be a great comfort if they could come back in any shape and talk to us." "I don t know about that," said the Candid Man. "There might be some ghosts we wouldn t enjoy talking with." "Possibly; and I can see a great objection, unless one could select his visitors," went on the Old Fellow. "It is strange that people generally associate ghosts with coming calamity. They are evil omens to most of us. I fancy that is be cause we cannot imagine their coming back to 180 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN this world, unless they are in a worse, and there s Ghosts something wrong. They seem to be a kind of warning from the Fates. Ah, what a strange, potent fear this dread of the unknown is ! We never expect any message of coming happiness from ghosts. The records give very few such cases. Yet, were there really such things, and were our friends beyond the dark able to minister to us in any way, there is no human being so out of the pale, that some departed soul would not return to bring him comfort, if it might. The most convincing argument against ghosts is that, according to all the legends, they have returned to preach to us about our sins and wickedness, and give us good advice. If I might say it without irreverence, gentlemen, it looks as if ghosts were actuated by the same old human weakness of liking to interfere with other peo ple s business, and always wanting to give their friends good advice." "Well," said the Fellow in the Corner, "what I object to, is that they never tell us anything that could help us to prepare really for another world." "You wouldn t believe them if they did," put in the Candid Man. "We only believe what we want to, unless it is banged into us practically," added the Cynic. "I don t know," said the Seedy Gentleman, thoughtfully. "Don t we half believe those omens and warnings? Isn t there something in the in- 181 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Ghosts scrutable that gives us pause, because we feel there may be something terrible behind it? Do what we will, we cannot get away, we can not get entirely rid of the conviction that the unseen power we call Fate, may sometimes speak to us with meaning, and we feel that if it did, it would choose some unfamiliar vehicle. The old oracles of Greece have gone ; but have we not oracles today even in the civilized West? Don t we flip a half-dollar and read fate in head or tail? We call it chance! Ah, how much alike are Fate and Chance ! Joan of Arc has not been the only one led to a great destiny by mysterious voices. Do we not all hear them, sometime or another? Do we not all see visions that change our plans, start us on great enterprises, tempt us into courses that may end in happiness or in wreck? They do not stalk before us as ghosts do; they do not come in weird, supernatural light, or with the white flowing drapery that spirits are supposed to wear in the other world. But visions they are, just the same; and they seem to bear messages that we fear to deny." "I never saw any," said the Practical Man. "Are you sure?" asked the Seedy Gentleman, turning on him. "You practical chaps think everything you do is the inspiration, conception, and execution of your own gigantic brains. You think you could get on without a world at all, if it were necessary. That is a hallucination as bad as any. You never realize the innumerable 182 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN subtle influences that are forever working on Ghosts you. You see visions and hear voices as much as other people; only you believe they originate in yourselves, and are all your own creation." "The trouble with you, Old Man," answered the Practical Man, "is that you have too much imag ination." "I wonder if I have as much as you. Imagi nation can act on a stock deal or a speculation in wheat a great deal more dangerously than on a ghost. For me, imagination only beautifies what has no beauty at all for you." The Seedy Gentleman threw his cigar into the fire. It had gone out while he talked. "Well, Hamlet s ghost is intelligible, after all, on certain accepted fictions. He carries human nature beyond the grave, and cannot rest till he is revenged. It is a way our ghosts have. We expect ghosts to come back and have it out with us. Yes, we do not credit that life beyond with forgetfulness of wrongs, with forgetfulness of love, with forgetfulness of anything we find in this life. Our enemy never really dies ; those we love live forever. Still is there such a thing as a ghost only it does not come to us now from the grave. It is memory, it is conscience, it is loyalty, it is truth. Those are the ghosts and they live with us." "You 11 make us see ghosts tonight." "I like ghosts. Life is full of them life is full of them. They are not all unwelcome." 183 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Ghosts Again the old man fell into his thinking mood, and when he spoke he was under the sentimental spell that sometimes fell on him. "Ghost of every happy hour that has gone ; ghost of the first love, ghost of the last love; ghost of the misery that has passed away; ghost of the ambition that came to naught and ghost of that which was fulfilled; ghost of the van ished dream; ghost of the pleasant fancy; ghost of the dead wish and of the faded hope ; ghost of the friendly kindness ; ghost of the un- forgotten wrong; ghost of every yesterday that was and every day that passes ; every moment of our fives, every wish, hope, thought, dream and act of ours passing into a ghost!" The old gentleman spoke this in a low, slow tone, and, when he ended, he lay back in his chair looking into the fire. So they left him. 184 THE HUMAN ORCHESTRA ABOUT THE HUMAN ORCHESTRA "I don t think," said the Seedy Gentleman, The Human meditatively, "I don t really think any grown Orchestra man ever wants to be a child again." "Who said he did?" asked the Practical Man. "An old song says it," and the old fellow be gan to sing "Make me a child again just for tonight." "For heaven s sake, don t sing it," said the Cynic. "You are harsh, gentlemen. In these somewhat ragged tones do you not recognize something of the fine tenor of my youth?" said the old man, with just the suspicion of a hiccough. "Are you sentimental this evening?" inquired the Fellow in the Corner sympathetically. "I have a soul sometimes. It would sing if it could but ah well the music of our life grows mute when the instrument begins to wear out. Although gentlemen although they have fiddles several hundred years old, and they are infinitely better than the new ones." "Are you a fiddle?" queried the Cynic. "You scoff. Some of us are fiddles, some of us are flutes, some of us are mandolins, some of us are trombones, and some of us are mere xylo phones, and fate plays on us what tunes it will." 187 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Human "Most of us are penny whistles, I fancy," Orchestra said the Candid Man. "Do not jeer at the penny whistle," said the old man solemnly, getting up and sitting down again suddenly. "You d better keep sitting down, Old Man," remarked the Fellow in the Corner. "I think so," he said cheerily. "I really think so. But, about the penny whistle, do you know the penny whistle is an infinitely cheerful and inspiring thing? The penny whistle will not be sad. If you play a dirge on it it will take on a brightness and vivacity, full of hope and prom ise." "What kind of an instrument are you ?" asked the Practical Chap. "I feel like a bassoon." "I should think you were more like an oboe." "Well, perhaps I am. The oboe can never be really cheerful, and when it tries to be it belies itself and appears to be simply putting on an un natural mirth. Yes, a sentimental old man is the oboe of the human orchestra." "And how about the women?" came from the Cynic. "Men, gentlemen," said the Old Fellow, "men are the wind instruments and women are the strings." "Yet women do most talking." "Men do all the blowing. Yes, we are all musical instruments. The orchestra is, perhaps, 188 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN overloaded in the brass department, but the soul The Human of music comes from the strings, even if the Orchestra blatant clang of cymbals and bray of trumpets and trombones do drown it sometimes." "He s off again," said the Candid Man. "I like to speculate on those symbolical things," said the Old Man, vainly trying to light a match. "Do you not hear the harp in the air sometimes when you meet a charming woman with a musical voice and a soulful eye?" "A what?" "I said a soulful eye, gentlemen. You may have no poetry in you, but there is poetry in some peo ple. You don t admit there is a soulful eye, but that girl you were looking at so fondly last night " "Don t give us away !" "I said last night. She had a soulful eye and you thought so, too. But never mind John, bring in another ! I was saying, gentlemen, I was saying that women are the string instruments of the human band, and fate plays upon them for us sonatas and reveries and fantasies and pot pourris. Sometimes it is a violin playing a mer ry jig, and we dance. Ye gods, how we dance ! Sometimes it is a cello, a woman deep of heart and strong of soul, full of passion and of feel ing. Sometimes it is a bass fiddle but let that pass. There are bass fiddles in our orchestra old maids with deep tones, fads for the regener ation of the human race in general and men in THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN particular. How clever was that Lady Jane in Patience !" The old gentleman began to sing "There will be too much of me in the coming by and by." They stopped him again. "But, gentlemen, the world is full of mandolins and bandurrias and guitars young girls whose hearts are full of sentiment and merry spirit, which have no depth but are inexpressibly pleas ing. Still others are mere banjos plunk, plunk, plunkety plunk et preterea nihil." "Say it again !" "Excuse me, friends. If you did not catch it it is of no consequence. Yes," went on the old man, after a little pause, "it is a sign of the times that they are writing solos for the trombone. There are an awful lot of trombones among men. They can go very low, and make a great deal of noise, but music is not in them. I am inclined to think that most men are mere drums ; fate beats them and they make a noise; only ef fective in combination with other instruments, and then as seldom heard as possible. There is a fair proportion of cornets, and any quantity of trum pets, but the wood-wind instruments are not plentiful, and, to tell the truth, you can only hear them occasionally. Once in a while there comes a little strain of flute or oboe when a poet sings. Jewsharps? Yes, jewsharps are very common. Youth is the jewsharp, and some old people nev er get over the vibration of the tongue." 190 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "Ahem !" The Human "Yes, you are quite right, gentlemen. I see Orchestra your point, but will you excuse me if I don t care a fig? Then there are accordions and con certinas. They are both male and female. There are many women concertinas and accordions." "And which instrument do you prefer in the or chestra of men and women?" "Well, I don t know. It depends on my cond I mean mood. You know there are times when you want to fly, and times when you want to take a car. Sometimes I long for the music of the spheres and sometimes I prefer the bagpipes. I don t know. Sometimes I feel like listening to an orchestra and sometimes I want to join in a simple duet. I think the duet is the most en joyable if it is not always the same player that is with you. There are few pleasures in life, gentlemen, that stand an encore." "Except this," said one, raising his glass. "Present company always excepted," said the old man, sweetly. "This is an exception to all rules." "But you have not mentioned the piano." "The piano well, I can t place the piano. It is neither male nor female. If it were not for the piano we wouldn t have as much bad music. It deceives all the people who learn it into be lieving they are musicians. I don t think a human piano would be enjoyable. Nothing that you have to thump is any good. You can t get the soul 191 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Human out of anything by thumping" and he shook his Orchestra head gravely. "No," he went on after a little, "I prefer the other strings. One never gets too old to feel their music. The brass grows tiresome; the wood wind instruments may fit some of our varying moods; but the strings are youth and life and sentiment and passion and love for all our lives. They can be merry or they can be sad ; they can bring up the past, the present or the future. The golden harps that play in the man sions in the skies are more than anything what gives us a charming idea of heaven. And when I think of the music of the spheres, I do not think of braying brass or even of sweet-toned flutes or oboes. I think of pizzicato movements on the strings, and I am happy." The old gentleman betrayed a tendency to fall asleep and they didn t disturb him, but present ly he shook himself together with an effort and got up. "Good night, gentlemen ! This conversation has made me sad," he said in a somewhat uncertain voice. "It makes me feel that my life has been wasted. A wind instrument is of very little sat isfaction by itself. Somehow I wish I had mar ried a violin. Life might have been a perfect duet. Still, you can t tell. I might have fallen from the dignity of a solo instrument into a mere obligate. Good night !" 192 A VISITOR FROM THE SHADES A VISITOR FROM THE SHADES The Seedy Gentleman was heard outside taking A Visitor leave of somebody. "Good night, old man ! A safe trip back," he said, and presently he walked in rather wearily. "Why didn t you bring your friend in?" asked somebody. "Couldn t. He couldn t wait. He was due in the shades at midnight, and had to go." "Who was it?" "Thackeray. A genial soul he is. We Ve been walking around the theatres. The other night you know I am a Mahatma and I frequently step over the river he said he d like to take a look at the old place. I m sorry he came tonight." "Why?" "He went back to the shades in the blues." "What about?" "Said he was glad he was dead and sorry he had lived." "Sorry he had lived?" "Yes, he said the world hadn t turned out as he expected." "What did he expect?" "Like all those old chaps, improvement. They had heard so much about the new world, its mar velous wealth, its tremendous literary and artistic 195 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN A Visitor superiority, its freedom, its protection, its uni versal comfort, its everything high, holy and no ble, that they supposed it must be a kind of Gar den of Eden on a national scale." "Well, their disappointment is natural, I sup pose." "Yes, he thought life was all music and flow ers now." "The theatres will show us the condition of society," he said. I didn t answer. I took him to the theatres. As we went along he talked quite sentimentally. "Ah, the theatre !" he said. "How well I re member it ! The lights and the musty smell of art, the noisy pit, the elegance, the snobbery of the stalls, the wild delight and excitement of the scene on the stage ! Yes, it was bright and gay at the ballet of years ago. How beautiful it must be now ! How bright the comedy must be when education has sharpened the wit of all classes, and comfort and prosperity and freedom have made them happy. Your age must be a joy ous one, my friend, and your stage pictures of it must be far beyond the dreams we primitive peo ple had." I said nothing. I took him to the theatres. We walked into the first one we came to. We passed the little wicket and through the swing ing doors. The curtains were drawn and all was dark. 196 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "I am so sorry," Thackeray said; "there seems A Visitor to be no performance here." "Oh, yes, there is; pass in!" We drew the curtain. The house was hushed as the grave; the lights were out all over the auditorium, and only an electric jet from the wings lit the stage. It shone just upon a ghastly face and a vague, distorted figure that moved shiftingly across the scene. "What is this?" asked Thackeray, with a kind of creepiness in his voice. "That is a play." "Oh, I see the bogey drama, I suppose." "No; it is a play, a character. You shall see anon how he transforms himself into a philan thropist, and yet anon how he becomes again a fiend, a demon." "And whose story is this?" "A gentleman named Stevenson conceived it; a writer much admired and highly respected, whose ideas command high prices in the literary fair." "And this gentleman who acts the part?" "The most original and the cleverest of our modern actors." "It is wonderful," said Thackeray; "it moves me ; it makes me creepy but tell me, have you really such men as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Has modern science plunged so deep into the mys teries of nature that a man can transform him self like this?" "No ; a fancy. We create such ideas." 197 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN A Visitor "Such horrible fancies! Why?" "My dear Mr. Thackeray, we are so unbearably happy nowadays that we need to invent horrors to dampen our spirits." "I could believe it real, but let us go ; let us see the age and body of the time. We used to in vent weird ghost stories to frighten the child ren. You invent them to frighten grown-up peo ple." "No," I said, "to thrill them." "But this this reminds me of my esteemed rival Dickens Gruff and Tackleton, who de lighted in making most hideous toys." We walked round the corner. I took him into an elegant barroom. "What is this?" he asked. "Bless me! An art gallery. Ah ! here is advancement. Here you let the people see the pictures of your great ar tists, and what is this?" "A free lunch." "And free eating for all?" "Yes. Help yourself !" "The world has developed indeed. What a sensible, what a liberal idea !" "Now we will drink," I said. I ordered the drinks. Thackeray drank heart ily. "The age of universal reason has come," he said enthusiastically. "A quarter, please," said the barkeeper. "This," said I, "is different. This is where we THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN pay this is where the universal profit comes in." A Visitor Thackeray seemed kind of disappointed. "It is purely a commercial proposition, I see, and now I come to look at the pictures well, let us go!" We went up to another theatre. "Here, perhaps, we shall find the age and body of the time. Here a pleasant comedy or a pretty love story or " As we went in a rough villain, muttering in a coarse voice, was seizing a young girl, while another man was rushing on to save her from the brute. "How pitiful !" said Thackeray. "No, is life with you so hard as that? Are all your laws, all the results of hundreds of years experience, all the latitude and resources of this great land, worth no more to you, the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of time?" "We have invented this, too." "Oh, another fancy. I thought the theatre was to entertain people, to lighten their hearts. This makes me sad. No, enough ! Show me some other picture !" The next theatre was gay with lights. We strolled in there. A burst of orchestra came in our faces as we opened the door. The stage was full of bright figures. "At last music !" said Thackeray. "Music is always bright and " A woman came on wringing her hands, wild 199 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN A Visitor with agony, and sang Santuzza s scene in "Cav- alleria Rusticana." It was moving, but somber. "She has been betrayed," I said. "She tells the husband of her rival. He kills the betrayer of both." "Still mournful, still sad. Has life no joy at all that even music may deal with? Does the modern generation live in moan and misery? Has the age and body of the time no other form and pressure than this evidently grim despair, this wail of pain and suffering?" "You shall see." When we had seen a little of the opera we wan dered round to still another theatre. "What s the matter with him?" asked Thack eray, pointing to the hero. "He has been accused and condemned by the machinations of villains. He is the victim of vindictive criminals. He is now engaged in hunt ing for the man who has brought all his trouble on him, and " "The old, old story. The wild novel we used to sneer at." "Today the story that brings fame and for tune." "What ! Is it any more real now ? Have you discovered that the rubbish of my time was high art?" "No. The kind of people who gave you fame are not the kind of people who give fame now. We have invented a new kind of fame, which 200 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN grows up, like a mushroom, in a night, and withers almost as quickly. Education has made everybody read, and the majority rules. Ah, yes ! You have more admirers than you had when you lived; a greater fame and growing all the time. But the dime novel, in a more elegant form, sells a hundred to one against you." "And this poor chap. Just out of jail, is he?" "Yes. Virtue has to be persecuted to be rec ognized." "Can I see one thing to smile over before I go?" "There s one last chance." "Let us take it," said Thackeray. We meandered down the street and found an other Thespian temple. There was a crowd of wild border ruffians, an Indian maiden, a couple of horses and sundry other articles of stage na ture on exhibition, and the smoke of revolvers obscured the scene. "And this?" asked Thackeray. "You may recognize it," I said. "Listen care fully!" A smile broke over his face. "Ah," he said. "I see. My burlesque novels were something in this vein. You wag !" and he poked me in the ribs. "You have been fooling me. Those plays we have seen were all carica tures, were they not?" "Hush, for heaven s sake," I said hastily. "The actors don t know it." 201 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN A Visitor "No, they did not laugh, I remember." "Tell me, friend, is this the age and body of your time I have seen tonight?" "No, only the deformities. There is as much beauty in life as ever, only it needs the genius to embellish it, and anybody can distort it. The stage is now a kind of moral dissecting table. The clinics are held before large audiences ; the work is sometimes brutal, sometimes brilliantly skilful, but we are supposed to believe that the publicity of the operations scares the diseases away and rids humanity of them." "Or rather, friend," said Thackeray, "the drama is a kind of vaccination for vice and crime. Inoculation is taken to prevent immor ality from catching. It is sadly wrong. We who went before you called the world miserable and wicked because of poverty, ignorance, oppress ion. We said Wait till the light of freedom in its fullest sense dawns and education and com fort spread like sunshine over the earth. And here, in this great, free republic, where all the ideal conditions are supposed to have been found, life is no happier than it used to be. Mil lennium ! Never, friend, never, if not beginning here and now. Ah, at last I see that education, freedom, light, have little to do with happiness. Human nature will be human nature, as it is now, as it was in the beginning, when, under the very eye of Jehovah, Cain killed his brother Abel. But still, the good will live as the ill. As 202 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN long as our poor human kind may last, suffering A Visitor will beget sympathy, misfortune will find friend ship ; there will be gentle and gracious men, and tender and trusting women, and love will find a lodgment in all hearts, good or evil." 203 THE MODE ABOUT THE MODE As the Seedy Gentleman came into the room The Mode they saw he was dressed in his old blue tailcoat, with strapped trousers and gaiters over his shabby boots. He raised his hat straight off his head, and, after he had hung it on the peg, he put up his eyeglass and surveyed the seat of the chair before he sat down. He then produced a snuff box and elaborately applied the snuff to his nose after the manner of Beau Brummel. "Hullo !" "Gentlemen," he said, "I am pleased to see you." "Thank you! What s this?" "The fashion of gentlemen of a bygone age." "Been to see Mansfield, I suppose ?" "Yes." "You re not so old as his time." "Hardly; but when a man belongs to the past what does it matter what past he belongs to ? Beau Brummel is not so much nearer after all now than any other historical character. It is like the landscape, gentlemen, when distance anni hilates the distance beyond it and brings far sun dered objects all together." "Has it made you sad ?" "No!" 207 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Mode The Seedy Man put up his eyeglass and looked into the tumbler of hot Scotch. "Let us drink to style !" he said. "To anything you like." "We have no style about us nowadays. It is an age without manners, graceless and unbeauti- ful." And the Seedy Man sighed a deep sigh. "What s the matter with our style? Haven t we got dudes now ?" "Dudes ? Yes." "Well, that was all Beau Brummel was." "Oh, no, he was not a dude; he was a mode." "A mode ? What is a mode ?" "The feathers on the Indian; the paint on the savage ; the frescoing on society ; the sugar on the pill. Yes, it was all affectation, this elaborate po liteness. People said a very great deal they didn t mean in those days of grace and gallantry. But the old age had its merits. Money was a means then; it is an object now. People did not live to make money then; they made money to enjoy life. Ah, me ! We re a queer race. We abuse old Adam for bringing down that curse upon us that by the sweat of our brow we must earn our daily bread, and yet we despise the fel low, who having sweated for years and secured enough, beats the curse and enjoys himself with out work." "But that old Beau didn t pay his debts." 208 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "My dear friend, he lived in the wrong place, The Mode in the wrong age. If he had been the beau of to day in America the tailors would have only been too glad to have given him all his clothes and snuffboxes and snuff for nothing and used him as an advertisement. They were shameful, in those old days. They knew his value as an ad vertisement enough to let him run into debt ; and when that value was gone they demanded their money. Ah, well ! We advance all the time. We don t bow and scrape and use ornate, flowery compliment any more. We nod and grin and are free and easy; we lie just the same, only in plain everyday language, with a good deal of slang, and sometimes with vulgar expression. We don t polish up much, not even our oaths. We like to be emphatic. Yes, we take off our hats to ladies ; there is still a lingering chivalry about us that makes us tone our stronger lan guage down before them; but " "Well, pitch in go ahead !" "I like the old way best, even if it was hollow and meaningless and affected the old way that had grace of demeanor, grace of language, grace of sentiment. Ah, gentlemen" and the Seedy Gentleman took a pinch of snuff "the lexicon of the future will be a slang dictionary, and when the student of the language seeks the derivative, he will find it in the variety gagger, the hoodlum, the nigger minstrel and the farce comedian." 209 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "Well, it will be expressive." "Yes, it will be expressive and emphatic. I wonder if things will turn round then, and some fishwoman of the future will make some Douglas Jerrold to come, very angry by calling him an in definite article. But I went up to see Richard Mansfield play Beau Brummel. Strange that a character like that should live so long in history. Yet if he had not said Wales, ring for my car riage, or Who s your fat friend ? I suppose he would have been forgotten. A nothing, a fad, a mode, a man who had no weight in politics, in commerce, in any one of the practical depart ments of the world, and yet he is still a figure in history. All, well, he had the force to head the fashion, to be proud of his vanity, to impress him self on a period, and he outlasts the worthier men who ministered to nobler ends." "He knew the Prince of Wales." "You are right. Human nature is, after all, toady. We all toady to something or somebody. We have all something to get, and we grovel for it. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don t. If we don t get it, we keep groveling till we do, and if we do get it we grovel for something else. And we never admit that we are groveling. There have been many singularly honest men in history, but no man ever yet was honest enough to admit being a toady. It is all right sometimes. There are objects in life worth toadying for. It 210 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN is a necessity often. It is all very well to talk of The Mode being manly and independent and never cringing. We cannot help it. There are mouths to feed, and loved ones to protect, and life is full of re sponsibilities, and most of us have to come down on our marrow-bones some time or other." The Old Man took a long sip and then leaned back in his chair and toyed with his eyeglass. "Yes, gentlemen," he said, "it is curious how with the ancient regime and the beaux behind us we have evolved our fashions from the nigger minstrel and the variety singer." "What do you mean ?" "The song and dance man carried his taste in dress, as in most other things, on to the stage. He it was who broke out in striped shirts and ex aggerated ties and other signs of blossoming art, and now the swell of the period comes out in a broad striped green or blue or red shirt and some times wears linen with spots bigger than those on the sun in various stages of virulent eruption. Ah, if ever we come to the silk stockings and knee breeches it will be with the velvet coats and frilled shirts of the nigger minstrel, and not the dress of the fine old gentlemen of taste, who had an eye for the beautiful. We don t care to be edu cated by stuck-up, superior people, we don t. We want to be superior ourselves, and we try to im prove on inferior individuals, rather than copy the "upper circle." We despise what ought to be 211 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Mode within the capacity of our own intelligence, but isn t. Yes, the rough diamond is well ; but the cut diamond is something better after all. The most honest-hearted of lime-mixers will be uni versally disliked by the carload of well-dressed people he gets in amongst in his honest working suit. The chimney-sweep carries on as honest an occupation as anybody, but he has to wash the soot off before he is pleasant to look upon." "That is a purely practical matter." "My friend, everything is a purely practical matter. Everything means something. Foibles make us happy and other people uncomfortable. Dress and deportment are as much evidences of character today as they were in the olden time. There are fools who affect exaggeration of style in finery, but they are not as much fools, after all, as those who affect slovenliness ; not so much fools anyway, for the dude is much more com fortable to be beside than the sloven. There are people who are finicky; that is only having mild weaknesses of a cleanly kind. Between those three classes the ordinary decent citizen and gen tleman moves along, well dressed and perfectly comfortable. And as for deportment, you can t affect to be a gentleman, you ve got to be one. The gentlemanly instinct is the same in every race, through every fashion, in every age. We all have fads, we all have foibles, we all have ec centricities of mind and taste, as we have eccen- 212 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN tricities of physical development. Only consid- The Mode eration for the feelings of others and respect for ourselves should be common to us all. And somehow the most honest and best-hearted man in the world may be as fit for heaven, but he isn t as fit for earth, without them." 213 THE COMIC OPERA OF LIFE THE COMIC OPERA OF LIFE The Seedy Gentleman sat alone by the fire as Comic Opera they came in. They had all been out at a dance, and the exhilaration had not left them. They gathered around the Old Man s chair and greeted him with a waltz chorus. He looked up at them with a smile in his gentle eyes. "Flowers in your coats," he said ; "light in your eyes ; the movement of the dance lingering in your feet; the perfume of dainty women hovering around you, and gayety in your hearts ! Sit down ! Ye are genial company." They all sat down, chattering. They talked of the ball and the beautiful buds and those things that men talk of under the spell of dazzling lights, of music and of radiant women in their best gowns and their sweetest smiles. "The comic opera of real life," said the Old Man, taking up the conversation. "One of the few things that never seem to pall, on or off the stage." "Comic opera ?" "Yes, comic opera. Not to you who are in it, but to me who sit against the wall and look on. Some day you 11 do the same, and then you 11 comfort yourselves with the enjoyment of the comedy. What is the ballroom, after all, but a 217 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Comic Opera theatre ? Its scene is but the stage ; its gay crowd but the characters in a gay comedy." "I say, Old Man, don t depress us with a lec ture !" "I m not going to lecture. Even dowagers will go to a ball and be patient wallflowers only to be in the atmosphere of youth and pleasure." "Not always patient or particularly happy," put in one of the party. "It depends upon the age," said the Old Man. We all have a period when we rush into life, in a desperate effort to keep our hold upon youth and its enjoyments. The hold grows weaker, and by and by we say to ourselves, It is over ! We are among the aged. Let us rest ! Thus it is in the comic opera of the world that one forgets even if he is old. And we so pray sometimes to forget !" "I should think it would make you sad to feel you cannot join the dance." "Pardon me," said the Old Gentleman, "I still can trip a measure; but do I hurt your feelings ? I think the modern dancer is a figure in comic opera, and the modern dance the very doggerel of motion. But let that pass. The dance suits the dress and I doubt if a man in a dress coat could possibly be pictorial or graceful in a minuet. But I like to study life in a ballroom. It is forever to me a suggestion of comic opera." "There are some serious things happen there," said one of the party who had been very quiet. 218 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "What ! Did she find a more fascinating part- Comic Of era ner this evening ? Did she turn a glassy eye upon you ? That is but comedy. I never knew a fellow in love who was perfectly happy at a ball unless his sweetheart was not there. My friend, human nature will out in the best of women and men ; and the man or woman who can go through an evening under such circumstances without flirting can at any moment secure a large salary from any dime museum in the country. She 11 be all right tomorrow." "I object to this thing being made personal," said the confused youth. "Oh, it suits anybody. You re not the only one who feels like that tonight. Ah, well ! The spell of white shoulders and ivory necks, of flashing gowns of dainty shades, and fluttering fans, which serve so many purposes for woman kind, lasts through all time and with all men until they die. There are so many women and so few men nowadays ! And a wise Providence has provided the fair sex with fascinations that draw men from other women and help to keep the bal ance between the two. Comic opera is nothing to the real comedy of the ballroom. I am free to confess," said the Seedy Gentleman, "that I think if women were not more selfish than men, the courts would be occupied entirely by breach-of- promise cases. But women know their own spell and they are not cruel enough to exact the pen alty from men, when they have yielded to it. 219 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Comic Opera Women are gallant conquerors, generous in con quest. They have no use for the conquered. When men have yielded the fun is over." "They sometimes do a little yielding them selves." "Certainly. Why not ? Was there ever a woman who did not like to see the man swallow her dainty bit of bait and wriggle on the hook ? That is human nature. How easy it is for a woman in her best gown to capture a man ! Go to ! We are all the simplest kind of vain crea tures, we men, and we can all be caught with a spoon. We would not mind being landed but those women they have a way of throwing us back in the water with the marks of the hook on us. That s what we kick about." "How are your gills ?" Healed up. But the plots and counterplots of the ballroom ! The tender tones, the affectionate pressures of the arm, the squeezes of the hand, the expressive glances that the wallflower sees as he sits and studies the moving crowd ! And the same girl goes through it all with a dozen men, and the same man with a dozen girls, and they re all happy, and they don t mean anything, and they do it with so many partners that they all forget all about it in the morning. It is lovely. It is a great dispensation of Providence, this arrange ment. It has all the pleasure of real love, with out the disadvantage of being expected to last forever." 220 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "You re cynical because you can t feel like us Comic Opera tonight." "I shall have the advantage of you in the morn ing, I doubt not. But I don t want to be cynical. In youth or age the merry, light-hearted spirit is God s best gift to man. To look on the bright side of everything, to rise above care and worry and look down on them with a laugh, to find pleasure growing beside pain all along the path of life ; yes, I envy the people who feel like that. Gayety ! Who would wish to kill it ? Merri ment ! God keep us all merry ! And we can only be merry by gathering with our kind. I sometimes think that men have made the serious drama out of a life the Creator meant should be a kind of dainty comic opera. The world went awry somewhere somehow thousands of years ago, and it has gone awry ever since. Inhuman ity brought the first tear; the joy of living was a smile until that came. Even in youth nowadays we seem to feel that life is full of trouble, and turn our faces to the dark too much. The strug gle of life, maybe, does not begin any earlier than it ever did, but we are taught that there is no time to lose ; that to win place and make money are the two great objects of life, and we must beat our fellow man at whatever cost. Our pleas ures, like our occupations, are feverish. We hurry into them and hurry through with them, and tire in a moment of all that should make life calm, full of content, happy. We seem to take THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Comic Opera enjoyment like champagne, which exhilarates us for an hour and gives us a headache in the morn ing." "We should take it like hot Scotch." "An infinitely better thing in moderation. Gentlemen, let us be more serious in our ambi tions and less serious in our pleasures. It is an age of nerves. The world needs a tonic. Life is not shorter than it was before, although it seems to be. Strange, that with all the wondrous in ventions to save time, we have much less of it than our forefathers. But there is so much to en joy in life if we would only take it easily. We are impatient for the day to come; we are impa tient for the evening to fall. We enter into schemes for wealth, projects for worldly success, and we cannot enjoy the time that must pass be fore their fulfillment for eagerness to see them fulfilled. And even our dreams, be they of ambi tion or of love, keep us forever in restless wake- fulness. Good night ! Ah ! I don t need to wish you happy dreams ! Good-night !" 222 RAG-TIME ABOUT RAG-TIME "Yes," said the Seedy Gentleman, "it makes a Rag-Time difference sometimes, I think, all the differ ence." "What ?" "Well, there was a time when the music of life, so to speak, was played in even, rhythmic, sooth ing measure, except for an occasional outburst of trumpets and blare of fortissimo. Even now you can find places not very far away, where it is still the same. But I tell you, gentlemen, today life is played rag-time and keeps us on the jump." "That s better than dull, stupid routine, isn t it ?" said the Fellow in the Corner. "I don t know; I don t know. If all this ex citement made us happier, and if all the restless energy were successfully directed, maybe it would be. But this rag-time business and it s all over life wears on the nerves, and superinduces con ditions in which it is impossible for anybody to enjoy anything." "John, the gentleman is dry." "It s all rag-time; we eat, drink, love, hate, dance, sing, in rag-time. People write, think and read in rag-time; they marry, are given in marriage, and taken away in divorce, all in rag time. It makes life a case of neurosis." 225 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "Oh, you can t keep up with the procession. That s all the matter with you." "Well, I don t want to ; but I can t get a chance to sit down. We have all to live, and the cashier goes along with the procession. I ve got to keep up with him. But, gentlemen," went on the Old Man, straightening himself out in his easy chair, "I doubt very largely this stuff about keeping up with the procession. I doubt if it is necessary to fight and struggle and kick to be successful. Yes, I have heard that ; 1 have seen it apparently proved, too. But sometimes very often, perhaps you see the fellow who has el bowed his way to the front, so exhausted by the labor, that he falls by the wayside, and limps along at the tail ever after." "Is there any other way to get to the front?" asked the Practical Man. "Maybe, maybe ! You see that very often, very often. Some fellow, weary of the push and pull of the crowded highway, sees a cool, quiet, shady wood, and thinks it would be pleasanter to be in there. He wanders away, makes a little path for himself, enjoying the restfulness, the beauty, the charm of living. Aimlessly, happily, seeking nothing but the delight of his surroundings, he lets the days go past. He hears the roar, the shriek, the brass band and the big drums of the horde of rushing men and women, he keeps his untrodden path, and suddenly, when he has no idea of being near it at all, his little trail leads out 226 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN to the highway, and there he finds himself ahead Rag-Time of the procession." "There s something in that, old man," said the Fellow in the Corner, approvingly. "You see, we weren t all meant to be at the head of the procession. It is the procession that keeps us where we are, at the end or the front of it. So many people mistake energy for desert; the ability to try for the ability to succeed rag time for music." "If you want to get on you must "Advertise, I suppose you want to say. If you have anything people want, true, you must let them know it. And if people don t want a thing, such is human nature, you may persuade them they do by crying it persistently. Gentle men, I don t know anything more interesting than a street fakir. I admire the street fakir." "Why ?" "Well, I have a theory that it is not to make money, although he may like to do that, the street fakir follows his calling. The occupation must be fascinating. The clever fakir is all through our life; but I can imagine the keen enjoyment it must be to those fellows who gather crowds on street corners for they have brains to watch the simple, open-mouthed gull pungle up his money, and buy his valueless stuff. I have watched, with the keenest interest, the open and frank delight with which the corn-salve disposer pursues his business of an evening. It is a study, and what 227 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Rag-Time the corn-salve man does on the street corner, in numerable great men do and have done in the higher business of life." "And they keep up with the procession and its rag-time," put in the Candid Man. "They keep at the head of it longer than any other, for faking is not as wearing as the genuine work. But I think that it is so hard nowadays to keep step, in rag-time, that nearly all the suc cessful men, outside of those who have acquired plenty of money, which falls into easy, rhythmic measure when you have made the first fortune, have found deliberately or acci dentally a short cut. They have imitators. Let one man find the head of the procession by a new path, there are hundreds to follow ; but, unfor tunately, most of them discover when they reach the high road, that the procession has gone past. So they fall into the rag-time as well as they can and mix up with the rest." "Most things are imitation," said the Practical Man. "No; it seems to me that, old as everything is supposed to be, everything that makes a name to day is new. It is sufficiently changed to be original. Isn t it odd that, for instance, taking all the different styles of dress that have existed in the world, no two nations have ever dressed abso lutely alike. We revive fashions that have passed away. Yet take a picture of the old and the re- 228 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN vived, and they are still very different. It is the Rag-Time same thing with ideas." "And how does rag-time come into fashions ?" "I think that, in most ages and races, women have always dressed in rag-time. Sometimes in a ballroom or a fashion-plate, you may see the rhythmic beauty, but well not even when a woman is tailor-made, does she seem able to keep away from rag-time. She 11 have a hat or some fluff that doesn t suit. Come to think of it, gentlemen, I never saw a fashion-plate that looked like the woman dressed in the style it illus trated. Well, well, women have made men dance rag-time since the days of the Garden. I should not wonder if they were responsible for most of the eccentric measures in which our lives are played." "Are they responsible for the restless, wasted energy, too ?" asked the Candid Man. "Sometimes," said the Old Fellow, with a smile. "A man might not care to work so hard to make money if he hadn t a sweetheart whom he had to take to the theatre and a little supper afterward. And energy wasted ! Well, what do you think yourself of your own experience ? Gentlemen, a large proportion of the wasted energy of this life is thrown away to win women. If some statisti cian would give us the percentage of waste force in needless jealousy, in fruitless endeavor in love- making; if he would calculate how much money it has cost males of the human race in courting 229 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Rag-Time girls they didn t get, I fancy we would have a most interesting table of figures." The Old Gentleman drank off his toddy and rose to go. "Well, after all, rag-time has its merits. We would grow tired of life, perhaps, if it were eter nally simply rhythmic and merely melodious. We know that in the music of life the discord has its place and value. The misunderstood question in it all, I take it, is the use of the tempo. We all want the world to go at our tempo, and the result of trying to effect that is rag-time. Ah ! the duet of love often goes out of tune because we can t agree upon the tempo. Yes, when we are sweet hearts, we go beautifully together, but when the duet changes to the domestic, and then becomes a trio, a quartet, a septet what you will well then the music of the home is apt to tumble into rag-time." He rose, and as he went out, he turned and said, with a half-sad smile: "Better rag-time in the home than no music at all !" 230 THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER The Seedy Gentleman, who had been apparently The Last Rose dozing in the corner with his hands folded, sud- of Summer denly began to hum. They stopped talking and listened Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead, came plaintively through the smoke, with a trem olo on the scentless. "He s going back to The Last Rose of Sum mer, " said one of the group, in an undertone. "I heard that in Martha tonight," he said. "The last rose of summer will never die. There is no last rose of summer. Thus are all our most affecting sentimental emotions crushed out. It is very strange," he went on, raising himself up, "very strange that there seems to be an absolutely ineradicable bias in favor of violets, and snow drops and roses in human kind. Why doesn t some poet write about the fading chrysanthemum or the falling carnation or the withered aster ? Some have tried, but the public won t accept the verses. No, it s all the violet, early and late, the dying rose, the first snowdrop, and so on. Ah, well ! This poetry is a curiously indefinable thing. Shakespeare said there was nothing in the name of the rose. He was wrong; he was wrong. It s the poetry. Now," said the Seedy 233 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Last Rose Gentleman, laying down the law with pointed of Summer finger, "you can put rose anywhere you like in a verse beginning, end, middle and it is poetic. Violet is a very sweetly sounding word and lends itself to musical inflection, and snowdrop has something attractive in it. But, fancy ending a line with chrysanthemum or pink or convolvul us, or even honeysuckle. Fancy what rhyme you d get for the last truckle buckle no no there s a great deal in a name and it means popu larity or unpopularity very often." The waiter came in answer to the bell. They gave their orders. "Well, old man, whisky s not a pretty name, but it seems popular," said the Practical Man. "Did you ever notice that everything to eat and drink that isn t too expensive for the ordinary pocket has some thoroughly unpoetic name? There s beefsteak and veal, and ham, and eggs, and mutton. That s why poets never have written much poetry about things to eat. There s some indefinable relation, gentlemen, between the price of a meal and the names on the bill of fare, and, incidentally, it seems to me, between the name of a dish and its digestibility. Even in French it s bo2uf and mouton. When you strike a dish with a poetic name it is expensive, and it is generally quite unhealthy." "I say, you were singing The Last Rose of Summer, " put in the Fellow in the Corner. "Yes, yes. But it isn t fair. After all, why 234 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN should we not have poems and songs about the The Last Rose new potato, and the first sweet onion of early of Summer spring, and the coming in of the asparagus ? It s an unjust world in more ways than one." "You shouldn t desecrate the sentiment of the song like that," said the Candid Man. "True, true ! I can t imagine the parting lover giving his sweetheart a head of cauliflower, or an artichoke, or a turnip, and expecting her to treas ure it till he comes back. I admit a girl carrying about a dried-up tomato under her shirt-waist, for love, would not seem to suit. No, no ! There s a fitness of things about it, after all. Yes, it has to be a flower, and it has to be of a convenient size. So we 11 still give her a rose or a violet or something light, fragrant and delicate, that can be worn without inconvenience over the heart. Tis the last rose of summer. " And once again the Old Fellow began to sing. They shut him off this time, and he relieved his feelings with a sip of toddy. "What set you off on this, anyway ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "There are moments, gentlemen," answered the Old Man, dreamily, "when a little song, old it may be the older the more likely will set a surging a whole sea of emotions within a man s breast, that " "Hold on ! We d rather you d sing." "You are difficult to please this evening. Well, what would you ? It s an old song, sung to 235 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Last Rose death, sung badly, sung well, sung all kinds of of Summer ways, and yet it lives. I ve known people to cry over it cry about a simple tune, and a girl pluck ing the petals from a simple rose and throwing them on the stage. What is the last rose of sum mer that we should cry over it ?" The Old Gentleman stopped and fell into the frequent reverie, that seemed to change him alto gether. "What is the last rose of summer to us ? The epitome of the sadness of everything beautiful and pleasant ; we know that it must pass away. The flush ot youth, the joy of young manhood, the strength and the delight of vigorous prime, the sympathy and friendship of middle life, and even the dreams of all that has been dear in all our lives the solace of old age. Everything goes, even life itself, for all we know. Tears, idle tears ! What a great poet was the Creator ! What poetry this is that fills the eyes with tears when the heart s depths are stirred by grief or sadness ! The rain upon the windows of the soul that shuts out from the vision all outward things, as if they would be sacrilege. Or if the eyes may see, makes all things sad. Ah ! What more beautiful thing could be made a symbol of sympathy, than the tear that falls upon the brow of death; the clear and gentle drops that glisten in the eyes of those who love us, when pain or sorrow falls to us ! And when it is joy, they shine like diamonds. I wonder, if one analyzed 236 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN them, if he might not find a difference in the ele- The Last Rose ments between the tear of joy and the tear of sor- of Summer row ?" The Old Man seemed to fall into a kind of dream and was silent for a long time. They waited a little for him to go on. Then they chattered among themselves in a low tone and let him dream. By and by he woke up out of his reverie. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen. I fear I wan dered rudely away from you. We were talking of The Last Rose of Summer, were we not ? Or I was, at least. It is the pain of all things beauti ful that they can never last. It has been said by poets in all the ages ; and yet the roses come again. The last year s flowers have filled their purpose and returned to dust just as we and all things else created. Maybe, if we could take our lesson from the roses, we might find life brighter. But no ! We will not understand. We pluck the flower of love, and wear it gayly on our breasts ; then we let the love tree die and it never flowers again. Is it not often the same with friendship, too? We watch the rose-bush; we trim it; we give it the moisture without which it cannot live; we guard it from the winter cold, and nourish it until the summer comes again, and there, fresh roses, fragrant, dainty as before, come back to us. What if we watched our friends as carefully and tenderly ? Would we not find them like the rose bushes ? If when we have planted the tree of 237 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Last Rose love in some fair soul, where it has found congen- of Summer ial soil, we watered it with sympathy, and glad dened it with smiles, and tended it when it needed care, would we not find it as the flowers, with seasons like the rest, sometimes shedding its withered leaves, withered on us, sometimes green with the freshness of the spring, or full-blown with dainty flowers for us to pluck and wear again ? Is not the heart but a rose-tree, after all? I don t know " The Old Fellow paused, as if he caught a fur tive smile at his sentimentality ; but they did not speak. "Ah, well !" he said, as he rose to go, "it seems to me that we have tried to find in the scheme of creation some law made specially for men and women. And it is not there. Through all nature this same ceaseless development and change ; spring, summer, autumn, winter, for the flowers ; spring, summer, autumn, winter, for all living things. Maybe I say, maybe we 11 find out some day that our feelings are nothing but a cli mate in us ; and I dare say even now a man could, if he cared to go into the matter, predict in the morning when he gets up, his own weather, so to speak, for the day to come." He rose and, humming the old tune, took up his hat and coat, and toddled out into the night. 238 CURIOSITY ABOUT CURIOSITY "That s all there is about it," said the Seedy Curiosity Gentleman, as if he had finally settled some argu ment with himself. "What s all there is about what ?" "There ! That question proves it. Curiosity, curiosity ! The cause of all trouble, the cause of most of our misery. We are eternally worrying about things, in spite of the experiences of aeons that it doesn t do us a bit of good to find out." "Find out what ?" asked somebody. "Anything. If you will examine into the mat ter," said the Old Fellow, leaning back in his chair, "you will find that the happiest man is he who never asks questions or wants to know, you know. We do everything out of curiosity. Curi ous about ourselves, curious about other people, curious about the past, curious about the present, curious about the future." "Well, we know the past," said the Practical Man. "Do we ?" asked the old man, in a far-off tone. "Do we really know our own past? What be comes of the past? Ah! it looms up sud denly in unexpected, unrecognizable shapes. Incidents that it seemed were turning points of our lives appear to have been nothing and things 241 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Curiosity we never thought of prove to have been the most potent instruments of fate. I wonder if the present is not often the past, changed so we do not know it; if the future will not be the past, traveling with us onward till we die. Maybe the good of today is the evil of yesterday, and the evil of the present only the good of the past. Well, well !" "Don t get so mournful. Have a toddy," said the Fellow in the Corner. "The toddy of tonight the headache of the morning. That s so like life, gentlemen, so like life." And the Old Fellow betrayed signs of tear fulness. "Well, there s the toddy tonight, anyway. Let the headache come with the day." "True philosophy, true philosophy. You see, it s funny," he went on, with a queer twist of his face, "it s funny ! I suppose it s all right ; but, if the headache came first " "Maybe we wouldn t take the toddy after." "True; toddy isn t quite the thing in the morn ing. Headache is, perhaps, more appropriate then. Toddy may be the disease and headache the remedy. However, touching this curiosity as I remarked poor Elsa " "That s the first we ve heard of her. Who is Elsa? Did she put that flower in your coat?" "I spoke of Lohengrin s Elsa," said the Old Man, straightening himself up, "of Elsa of Brabant." "What about her?" 242 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "You are ignorant, ignorant. I am surprised Curiosity at your lack of " "Curiosity?" "Well, no ; you can t be curious if you don t know anything to be curious about. There was Elsa of Brabant. Lohengrin told her she mustn t ask who he was, but she had to had to. It was her woman s nature. I have always thought that it wasn t fair. It was too much to ask of a woman any woman to marry a fellow and not ask who he was. We complain of women who do that nowadays. Oh, some of them do, even now, and then they find out; and when they do, it isn t only the husband that goes away. It s the wife, and well the husband disappears, practically about as completely as Lohengrin. Maybe not that, quite. But there are plenty more Lohengrins, that come in buggies not drawn by swans. I think myself," went on the Old Chap confiden tially. "I think if I had any passably good-looking female relative who was sought after by a fellow who came from nowhere, even if he were as resplendent as Lohengrin, and hauled in by a swan, I would counsel her to be cautious. That story " "Oh, you re taking all the poetry out of it," said the Sentimental Man, who rarely spoke. "Am I ? Pardon me ! I wouldn t hurt your sentimental soul for a million. But what curiosity has cost women in this life !" "And men." 243 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Curiosity "And some men. Man is much less given to curiosity than woman. Men generally find out so much they d rather not know that they lose their curiosity. We we you see," he said with just a little cynical smile, "we are so chivalrous, so kindly, so careful of the other weaker sex, that we conceal everything they would like to know from them, just out of tenderness. Maybe I don t know maybe if we d tell them all, they would lose their curiosity, too. Now, I am in clined to think that women marry largely from curiosity. That is, indeed," he said airily, "that is where we have them." "We? Hang it, you re an old bachelor. What do you know about it?" petulantly put in the Cynic. "Well," said the Old Fellow, humbly, "perhaps I shouldn t argue the point. Of course, I admit apparently no woman ever had curiosity enough to marry me. I take it back ! Let me say that is where you have them. Fate is such a strange thing, and women are fatalists even those who don t know it. Elsa dreams of the knight who is to come to her and save her queendom and make her happy. If he had come in a linen duster and fought with a rusty sword; if by some strange freak it had not been Lohen grin at all, but somebody else; if Lohengrin had been late, and missed the tournament, Elsa would have seen her fate in the accidental linen duster, and have married him. Didn t her dream tell of 244 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN his coming? Ah, those dreams! Those visions! Curiosity God help us ! What would anybody or anything be without them !" The Old Gentleman sighed the last words into his glass, and waved his hand for more. "If only she had remained in that dreamland, where one asks no questions, accepts everything, applies no logic, knows no reasoning, she, like all the rest of humanity, perhaps, might have been happy. So would Lot s wife and Bluebeard s family and innumerable other estimable people in history have been, commencing with our little- respected female progenitor, Eve. Still, I think things are different today. We do not punish curiosity any more. We know a trick worth two of that. The penalty of curiosity is the disap pointment of finding out." He took up his new glass and held it gracefully in his outstretched hand while he talked. "I fancy we do an injustice to Bluebeard s wives. I don t believe their untoward fate was due to curiosity so much. Maybe the first one might have fallen a victim to curiosity; but I am inclined to believe that the later young women who married Bluebeard simply did it to show they could get the best of him ; to prove, as so many of us always want to do, that where some body else failed they could succeed. They didn t know how, of course, before they married him; but then a woman always trusts to luck. When she does not, she is lost. I think some of them 245 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Curiosity still rely upon the alleged weakness of their sex and think Providence is too much of a gentleman to be uncivil to a lady. I wonder if it isn t some thing of a compliment to the world as it is that they do think so, for men have taught them that. Ah, well ! Let it be ! Let curiosity thrive ! Maybe when Lohengrin went away Elsa did not lose very much. You can t tell about those heroes. They look well, but you can t always have comfort and beauty in one thing. When the shoe becomes easy to the foot, it loses that graceful shape it has in the shop window. It s the fit you want, after all, and everything has to work into shape, even to the perfect mold. And there are so few of us who keep the curves and lines of the ideal when we become the real. The moment of our lives is when curiosity, satisfied, disappears and we must draw people on intrinsic merit. We are queer things, we men and women. Sometimes we grumble because things are not what we thought they were; sometimes because they are what we thought they were. I often think it is easier to conceive a God who could make a world of perfect beings, than a God who could have made such a world of inexplicable paradoxes as men and women." The last words died away as the Old Man fell into a gentle slumber. 246 MAN, GET ON TO THYSELF "MAN, GET ON TO THYSELF" The Happy Fellow floated into the club trying Man, get on to sing the sextet from "Lucia" all by himself, to thyself Everybody got up to go except the Seedy Gentle man. "Don t go !" said the singer. "I 11 stop." "Let him sing !" said the Old Man, from his easy chair. "It s better to let him sing than talk." "You don t like to have a rival," retorted the newcomer, sitting down. "I am happy and I sing." "Yes," said the Seedy Gentleman, "a happy man is generally a nuisance. He interferes with every body else s happiness. I never could see why a man should be allowed to annoy other people be cause he s happy. It is funny, when a fellow s like that he always makes it known by trying something he can t do. I don t know anything better calculated to make a neighborhood misera ble than a happy being whose exuberance of self- content comes out in whistling or singing or play ing the piano. Happiness is a very noisy thing, and the world would be infinitely more comforta ble if there were not so many happy people in it." "You are not well this evening," remarked the Fellow in the Corner. 249 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Man, get on "Indeed I feel very well. But the airs that to thyself honesty, virtue, and happiness put on in this queer world of ours grow annoying sometimes. They are all a kind of conceit at best. The honest working man, who gets up at six o clock in the morning, when sensible people are enjoying their sweetest slumber, feels so conscious of his own merits, his own superiority, despises so frankly the sluggard who is not in his business, that he wakes the whole neighborhood by singing or whistling, or spouting poetry or something as he dresses himself. Why?" "Isn t there one of those old maxims that says something about being made wise, wealthy and healthy by going to bed early and rising early?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "Those confounded old proverbs!" said the Old Man impatiently. "I m sick of them. They are responsible for more trouble than any other influence in life. They are the authority for more foolishness than wise conduct; more failures than successes ; more discomfort and misery than happiness. The honest man who is always keep ing his honesty in evidence thinks he has privil eges. Virtue that is profoundly aware of itself is not satisfied to be its own reward. I don t think you can be really honest or virtuous, if you are conscious of it." "How are you to know anything then? You might be dishonest, and think you are honest; 250 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN vicious and think you are virtuous," said the Man, get on Candid Man. to thyself "A great many are in that fix," answered the Old Man. "But I don t care about that. If only the honest and virtuous, who are conscious of their perfection, would remain satisfied with them selves, and not bother other people, it would be all right. All good people believe their goodness relieves them of any obligation to consider others. They always grow impatient of anything that interferes with their thorough enjoyment of their own goodness. I don t mind the ploughboy or the milkmaid who sings out in the field in the summer day ; but when it comes to the next room and you want to sleep ; or the same room when you are busy thinking, that s a nuisance, just as bad as the organ-grinder on the street or worse." "They say singing lightens labor, old cur mudgeon !" put in the Happy Fellow. "Some kinds of singing, maybe, but not your kind. Next to the marvel of the few people who sing well," went on the Seedy Gentleman, "the greatest wonder is the enormous number who sing badly. Well, it s the same with everything else. What this generation needs is to understand that it is not a congregation of its. The number of people who are constantly trying to do something they never were made for grows with great rapidity. That old chap was right who said, Man, get on to thyself! This earth is full of just such 251 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Man, get on idiots as our friend, who is clever in everything to thyself except what he thinks he can do. Here is " "The Oracle yourself for instance," said the Cynic. "Just so the Oracle who has been forced into philosophy by the crowd of universal genii. What is a philosopher, anyway? Only a man who wants to be let alone." "But won t let other people alone." "Don t you know that there are millions of folks in this world who don t want to be let alone? He s a great man who can stand being let alone. I tell you the trouble we have with modern civili zation is the inborn desire in human nature to attract attention. That is what is mistaken for patriotism, for unselfishness, for modesty, for benevolence. It is what is supposed to be the divine afflatus, and drives people on the stage to be actors and actresses and sopranos and tenors and baritones ; to write plays and books ; to paint pictures and become politicians ; to play fiddles and trombones and clarinets and oboes." "And talk." "And talk nonsense, if that s all you can talk. I don t believe that in this country there is a man or a boy who does not suppose himself to be a somebody in some kind of society. And we know society is really all the nobodies. We begin it as children. The boy is father to the man, the girl is mother to the woman. The early girl annoys her mother s callers by forcing her new frock on 252 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN their attention. The small boy begins his artless Man, get on vanity by showing his new boots to everybody he to thyself knows. As they grow up they only learn more the art of concealment of motive, and so we all become crazy for attention. In society they get up parties simply to enable everybody to appear to be somebody. In business men try to be smart, just to be noticeable. Why have we so many lawyers? Because men like to bully witnesses, taffy juries and harangue Judges. Why have we so many doctors? Because they inspire so much awe in the community. And as for actors and actresses it just drives girls crazy with envy when they see an actress come out before thou sands of people, dressed in beautiful clothes; and most men would not object to be a matinee idol. Oh, they pretend they would but that s because they have to find other ways of attracting atten tion. Yes, he s but a poor-spirited fellow who can t attract some attention. But there s a defic iency in the scheme of nature at present. Only about one in a hundred thousand is in the business he was intended for." "Can philosophy suggest anything in the way of improvement?" asked the Practical Man. "Oh, certainly. If there were only some ar rangement made so that when we are born our parents could tell what to do with us. Suppose we were all born with a stamp This chap is to be a tailor. This girl is to be a prima donna, or a typewriter, or a flirt. Well, they might 253 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Man, get on put that last legend on any female child that is to thyself ever born to trouble men. This boy is to be a baseball player or an Irish comedian or a suc cessful business man. " "Or a Universal Genius." "He would be stamped, almost, not quite, any thing. What a lot of money would be spared in our education, and what a lot of bother would be saved in families ! What pain humanity would be spared from the disappointment in ambitions !" "There would be a great changing around from the present conditions." "Yes. I don t think there would be more than three or four people now on the stage who would not have been recommended to some other calling. And the whole thing would be turned round. Some good business men would be playing low comedy parts; some store girls would be making fortunes starring; some ministers would be play ing in farce comedy; lawyers would be doing song and dance ; undertakers would be making hits in comic opera ; college professors would be getting a hundred dollars a week as acrobats ; doctors would be sawing fiddles instead of bones ; bankers would be singing topical songs ; the whole face of art would be changed and even woman s rights lecturers would be doing burlesque in short skirts and black silk stockings. But alas ! we cannot change it to suit us. And so we must grope along through life, full of desires 254 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN we cannot accomplish, ambitions that won t Man, get on work, making our living at something that to thyself wearies and bores us, because we can t get any acknowledgment or appreciation for what we want to do, what we know so well we could do, if we could only get other people to believe it and pay us for it. And," said the Seedy Gen tleman, getting up, with a deep sigh, "the worst of this confounded unequal state of existence is that the people who most enjoy working don t need to work, and those who best enjoy doing nothing have to toil for a living. It s disgusting ! Good night!" 255 THE OLD LIFE AND THE NEW ABOUT THE OLD LIFE AND THE NEW "Ah me !" said the Seedy Gentleman, sighing. Old Life "Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories and New of the death of Queens." "Isn t it Kings?" "The same thing. I was thinking of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette. We have had them both on the stage. What a miserable record of crime and brutality the history of this world is, anyway! Back as far as you go, how little it seems to have to say of good ! It is the animal in us, as it has been in all time, that makes the bloody battle, the massacre, the splendid criminal ity, always the most picturesque and fascinating." "I don t know. They cry over Mary Stuart; they cry over Marie Antoinette," said the Senti mental Man. "It is a strange vein of natural hypocrisy we have, that makes us feel the sadness of some things. If that audience were sitting by when Mary Stuart was really being led to the block, I doubt if they d even cry as much. At all events, they d let her go. Gentlemen, upon my word, I cannot see how men at any time could ever feel proud of themselves. In the old days " "They were savages then, more or less, you know," said the Fellow in the Corner. 259 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Old Life "Ay, say you so?" said the Old Fellow, raising and New himself from the chair. "We are the higher de velopment, aren t we? How barbaric all the old wars, the old revolutions, seem to be, don t they? Oh, how much better we are now, aren t we?" "You needn t sneer." "Gentlemen, will you allow me to register my opinion that the old ages were far less reprehen sible than our own." "You don t mean to say that intelligence was higher then?" "No, precisely, there lies the merit of the past. They were honest animals, those old savages. They fought because it was their nature to. They conquered one another, and killed one another, and brutally treated the captured; they were brutes, and honestly brutal. We we have risen in the scale. We have educated ourselves, and go about preaching about sins and crimes, and virtue and goodness and all sorts of elevating things. We go to church; we pray; we know evil from good ; we boast of knowing evil from good. Yet every vice and crime, national or social, that ever existed, is as rank today as it ever was ; and, much as we argue, all the more vicious and crim inal for our higher development." "Oh, there are some redeeming conditions." "There is no redemption. Never a crime, a sin, a mistake, a wrong that does not pay its pen alty, even if we cannot see it." "About good?" 260 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "I believe that no good action has not its re- Old Life ward, somehow or other. We are so worldly, so and New purely commercial, we keep books with our dear est friends, our worst enemies; and we look for something that is payment to balance." "Never mind that; you don t mean to say that we are not better than the old world was?" re marked the Candid Man. "Maybe, maybe ! But I wonder how much of the amelioration of conditions in this age has come from our own efforts. I wonder if, after all, it is really amelioration. It looks so, I know ; but I don t believe the rich are any more lenient to the poor; the poor any better off than they used to be. There is so much that looks like progress that isn t ; so much that looks like improvement that isn t. There was so much that looked like barbarism that wasn t ; so much that looked like brutality that wasn t. Oh, we have improved many things. The old savages beat one another to death with clubs ; they mangled their enemies with spears. We go to war with rifles and kill our foes with bullets that only make little holes. It is a little cleaner, a little less painful to the eye and the imagination. But is it improvement?" "Oh, there s always got to be fighting." "Let us own it. Oh, yes ! We have plausible reasons for killing. Diplomacy covers things up more than it did when the king and the whole nation marched into the neighbor s country, and wiped it out for some maybe trivial, but at least 261 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Old Life just as well defined, offense. But we aren t much and New better. Yes, I know it has to be ; but for heaven s sake, let us speak low about our high-strung civ ilization, while there must be such a thing as war. Ye gods ! what a spectacle this world must be to one who looks from above ! The paean of self-glorification, the boast of sentiments almost divine, the claim of righteousness, the conceit of our superior knowledge, the constant proclama tion of all our virtues and throughout the world such misery as never was, misery of heart, of soul, of body; such crime as, in some points, makes the old world pale; and everywhere the ready bullet to defend what we call honor. What is our amendment on the past? We only do things differently, that s all." "You re pessimistic this evening," said the Fellow in the Corner. "No, no! I know this is a world of men, and, since men were, the arbitrament of the struggle has been life or death. It will be so. But we be gan about Marie Antoinette and Mary Stuart. We cry over them and we think it is our real goodness of heart that offers up the sympathy." "Well, isn t it? You must be good-hearted to cry over anybody s sufferings," said the Practical Man. "Not a bit of it. Sympathy, gentlemen, is an emotion we enjoy giving to others. It will some times tempt us to do something for somebody, but you may have no heart at all and yet be full 262 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN of sympathy of some kind. I ve known a real Old Life estate owner who had just evicted some poor and New devil of a man with his family for a few dol lars rent, grow very sympathetic with some other poor devil evicted for the same reason by an other rich man." "You re worse than pessimistic." "No; don t misunderstand me. There are peo ple of genuine heart in the world. There is sym pathy that comes spontaneously and irresistibly; but it s not all like that. The hardest-hearted wretches cry over a sentimental play. It makes them feel good, and they go away from the the atre thinking that it condones all their hard- heartedness of real life. My friend, like every thing else, sympathy is often a mask." "Oh, we know that." "Of course you know it. Well, well ! If it gives pleasure to give sympathy, so much the more we may credit to our human nature. There are some things in which honesty is cruelty. We must pretend sometimes, and hypocrisy has its uses and its value for good as well as evil. How much happiness has the hypocrite given, after all ! If people were less hypocritical I think there would be fights all the time." "What does that mean?" "It means that if we did not conceal our real opinion of one another, we d hit one another on the nose every few minutes." "Oh, we don t think each other perfect." 263 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Old Life "No; but it s a rare chap who can bear to be and New told of his faults. That elastic code that declares a man must defend his honor compels resent ment of honest opinion. What is honor, any way?" "It s one of those moral elements which God implanted in us to keep us straight." "It s a kind of moral spine very sensitive and easily wounded, but not always easily reached. Ah, we have different ideas of honor, and it de pends whether you re looking from the inside or tHe out. I think true honor is the sense of jus tice. But we are wandering all around the cir cle. Let us come back for a minute to the Queens." "Of course, it s always sadder to see women led to the block." "There s something in that. And yet why should it be sadder in a Queen than anybody else? Is it that she seems to give up so much more than an ordinary woman? The splendor of her throne, the power, the place high up before the world, the rich enjoyments that life has for her? Maybe. Do what we will, rank, station, luxury, draw the envy and the admiration of all mankind. What does the poor man or the poor woman seem to leave when death comes ? A barely furnished house, a struggle for bread, a ceaseless anxiety over children. It does not seem so much. Yet, if we come down to it, the only pain that Marie Antoinette knew was just 264 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN what every woman of the people would know Old Life the pain of leaving her children. So it is as and New things look, not as they are, we weep or laugh. Envy is always wasted, for the man who is envied envies somebody else. And what woman would have been Mary Stuart when her lovers knelt around her, had she known the end? After all is said, we are just the same old men and women, and we shall be until we are turned into something else. My respects to you !" The Seedy Gentleman finished off his toddy, buttoned up his coat and strode out. 265 HEARTSEASE ABOUT HEARTSEASE They found the Seedy Gentleman lying back in Heartsease his easy chair in the dark of the bay window, with closed eyes. He wore a tweed suit and yellow shoes. His face was browned by the sun, and the country air seemed still to hover about him. "Hello, Old Man!" they cried. "Back again?" "Eh !" he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Come ! It isn t bedtime yet. Wake up !" "My dear friend, you forget I m not accus tomed to these late hours. For two weeks I have been leading an eminently reputable life. The rake in town sows the wild oats; the only rake they know in the country they use to gather them up." "Wild oats are sown in the night and reaped by day," said the Cynic. "I shouldn t wonder. Why did you disturb me? I was dreaming. My ears were filled with the stillness of the woods and the mountains ; the moon was rising over the black purple hill, broken into a hundred fantastic brilliancies by the foliage of the trees ; rest was everywhere." "He s poetic tonight. We must take him to Heartsease, " remarked the Fellow in the Corner. 269 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Heartsease "Heartsease ! What do you mean ?" "The play." "Play? Oh, yes; I had forgotten. They have those things on the stage here yet No, I don t know that I care for stage heartsease. Ah !" said the Old Man, very sentimentally, "I have had heartsease. I ve been with Nature, There is heartsease, if it be anywhere," "Dear, dear !" said one, ringing the bell. "Bring him a toddy. Let him take that to his heart and maybe he ll find rest." "I don t want any toddy," said the Old Man. "I don t need any toddy. I know you. You could not sit out in the moonlight without a bot tle ! You re capable of pulling out a flask from your pocket and drinking whisky with the sun setting over the wooded mountain and the bare hills golden all about you." "Well, why not?" "You re not a soul. You re a palate." "Don t stir him up! He s always like that when he comes back from the country." "Heartsease !" the Old Man went on. "It does not grow where men and women are struggling after some vague, elusive idea of happiness. It is only out there," and he pointed vaguely to the horizon. "It is out there, with nature, with the streams and the trees and the hills; the spiders and the bees and the squirrels. It is with nature if it be anywhere. Yes, I suppose nature has its pain and its trouble but it sets us an exam- 270 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN pie. It does not show them. It does not ask Heartsease for sympathy. It simply kind of opens its arms to you, takes you to its heart and gives you rest." "And then comes the hotel bill," put in the Practical Man. "Eternally the groveling spirit of money. Money does not buy anything worth having, un less it be spent in charity." "But you can t go into the country without it, just the same." "The man with a million can buy no more brilliant moonlight, no richer sunset, than I can. The fellow with the gold bags can tickle his pal ate with something that is unhealthy. I only envy the wealthy man because he does not need to labor for money to feed himself, and he has freedom to go and enjoy the beauty of the world. And so few of them do, that I don t envy them anyway. Did you ever notice a millionaire at the springs? He s always there for his health. His money can t buy that; and all else is lost upon him. He has no use for the beauty of nature." "Oh ! They re not all like that," said the Can did Man. "No, no 1 I know it. But there is only one thing a man can never hide from the people that he has money." "Look at the misers !" "My dear friend, meanness is more a sign of 271 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Heartsease wealth than generosity. But let that pass ! We were talking of heartsease. Is there such a thing? I think sometime, somewhere, in the his tory of the world, there really was a life of heartsease. You know you find little traces of past ages that suggest whole histories to people of imagination. And so, when you go into the country, you seem to see proofs that all the troubles of life come from ourselves. It seems so easy to be happy there. If we didn t get so tired of everything; so wretchedly dissatisfied with everything ! There s something wrong with the town; something wrong with everything that man has anything to do with." "What about the man with the hoe? " "Oh, that is merely the fancy of an artist. Who can go through the country, look at the rich yel low hayricks, the vineyards, the fruit-laden trees broken down with the weight of their bearings, the sunshine, the landscape and think that the labor of tilling the soil can crush the hope, life, spirit out of anybody? It is mere fantasy. If the toil in the fields, with the birds singing, the wild flowers growing, the stream murmuring, the bees humming all about you, be an instrument of degeneration, what can we expect from the man in the cellar in the city all day long, hauling dirty boxes and casks, shut out from the light of the sun, and saturated with the smell of mold? What of the man poring hour after hour over long col umns of figures, and wearing his brain with cold 272 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN cruel calculation? No these last are the degen- Heartsease crating toils, not the labor of the man with the hoe." "But the mind they don t cultivate that." "Do you? Does the man with the hod? You read the papers, and a book now and again, and you know so much. I don t know that the man in the country is ignorant altogether. He does not know, perhaps, all the theories and specula tions that entertain you and fill your brain. But well the sum of human happiness is made up principally of what we don t know, only believe, and the rest is to help us to make money for the most part. And, I don t know that on all im portant questions, really affecting human happi ness, the man in the country is not a better authority than you." "Well, they live a life of content, perhaps, there." "No, I don t know that they do. They are not content. It is the town people who are content for a little in the country. Nobody is content anyway for more than a few minutes. But yet we see that people can be restful when they are taken away from the struggle for riches." "Nobody can be satisfied when he has to fight for a living," said the Practical Man. "Yes, he may be satisfied ; but never content. But well I m sleepy," said the Old Man, yawn ing. "I fancy that heartsease has disappeared, somehow, from the world. I don t know how it 273 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Heartsease used to be. I seemed to imagine when I sat watching the stars out there, where you can see them, that nothing had changed on the face of the earth, nor in the heavens above, but men and women. And somehow I fancied that in the country people fitted so much better into the scheme of creation than they did in the town. They were different. They fell into line with all the other animals, all because, face to face with the infinite beauty of nature, reason seemed to be silenced and only acceptation, enjoyment, faith, remained. Looking at the sunset, who can rea son on its composition or its temperature? What does it matter how old, how dead, how cold the moon is, when it swings up from the horizon, and floods the whole earth below it with a dazzling light? And in the country, even city people seem to be different, maybe less, maybe more, really themselves. Mean people become generous ; bad- tempered people become kindly ; stupid people be come entertaining; coarse people become gentle. Human nature is full of good qualities, and the best of us comes out in the country. We are all thoughtful, considerate, sympathetic when we go into the summer woods or down to the summer sea. Steeped in the beauty of nature, we cannot be otherwise; we must love one another." "I thought he d come to that." "Ah, well ! Never mind. If it only lasts for a minute, heartsease comes to us there the only heartsease we can know, for it is God s will that 274 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN the dearer the one to whom we are dear, the Heartsease deeper the pain if trouble comes to either. And trouble comes to all we love. And no one else can give us perfect heartsease. Yearning, longing, sympathizing, loving, suffering, make happiness and unhappiness the two extremes of the move ment of the pendulum which beats the time of life, and only stops when there is no more need for heartsease." The Old Gentleman rose lazily, and waved them an adieu as he walked sleepily out. 275 THE LOVE STORY OF A SCOT THE LOVE STORY OF A SCOT "No," said the Seedy Gentleman, discussing Love Story the Barrie play, The Professor s Love Story/ as of a Scot he stretched himself back in his easy chair, "I don t believe much in this idea of a man going through two-thirds of his life without a love dis turbance." "Oh, I suppose," put in the Fellow in the Cor ner, "we all have it in boyhood, if not later." "I speak of later," said the Old Fellow, emphati cally. "There s a kind of attraction of oddity about the old bachelors who have been supposed to have given up love for lore ; who pass women by unnoticed, even beautiful women, with shapely figures, small feet and dainty ankles. But that kind of chap does not exist." "Aren t you judging others by yourself?" asked the Candid Man. "I suppose to some extent I am. I have myself been set down as a woman-hater, and that may have influenced my judgment of other people. But I wouldn t mind wagering that you can t find a man in the world who has not had some love story and not only late in life. Most men keep their real love stories to themselves. That chap going along the street there so affectionately with that girl !" The Seedy Gentleman pointed 279 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love Story to a couple passing under the electric light out- of a Scot side. "Oh, anybody can see that s a love story," said the Fellow in the Corner. "I wonder if it is ?" mused the Old Man. "I am free to confess," he went on, after a pause, "that there is something a trifle sad, like a wasted life, in an old gray-headed bachelor." "Ahem !" came in a cough from the little group. "I mean any other gray-headed bachelor. We ourselves are always different. He looks lonely; we don t. We know we could, an if we would; but we see the other fellow wandering about look ing longingly, as if for something he has lost. We know it is too late for him. It is never too late for us. But don t tell me he has never had a love story !" "He may have had a romance. He may have loved and lost or something like that, and never got over it," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Between you and me," replied the Old Chap, "I suppose one may love and lose, but I don t think that ever kept a man single or drove him into solitude. I know it is very pretty in novels, and very charming in a romantic imagination; but you 11 find there is some other reason for his single blessedness, and his indifference to other women if he is indifferent. Most of the time he is afraid of something; and his gloomy sadness over the one he has lost has in it an enjoyable 280 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN sense of escape from something that might have Love Story been worse for him." of a Scot "You are knocking the sentiment out of things tonight, aren t you?" remarked the Candid Man. "But then the professor was a Scot, and Scots are different in that kind of thing," went on the Seedy Gentleman, not noticing the interruption. "What s the difference ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "Well," he answered, "there s much more sense in Scottish love affairs. In fact, there s too much sense sometimes. I don t suppose there is any love deeper or truer than the Scottish, but there is a notable lack of impulse in that curious nation. The Scot never likes to repent too late. If there s going to be repentance, he wants it to be before marriage, not after. I mind me of the Scottish lad proposing to the Scottish lass : "Will ye hae me, Jean? " I will that, Jock. "Are ye quite sure, lassie? Nae changin o your mind aboot me after we re married? " If I dae change ma mind, Jock, ye 11 never ken. " "Is that love?" asked the Candid Man. "I think that is real love, true love, love that is likely to last, because it disposes in advance of all possible trouble. Those old men like Barrie s Professor, although he is not old, who live to age in celibacy, are not single because they have had no love affairs. They have carefully canvassed 281 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love Story the situation before, perhaps many times, and de- of a Scot cided that marriage is not sure enough to bring them comfort. They may get tangled up later, but they are pretty well satisfied that the woman is all right before they ask her." "Yet Robert Burns has written the love poetry of the world," said the Candid Man. "My dear friend, he has written love poetry, and the best of it is purely Scottish. Did it ever occur to you that the trouble with us is that we mix up love and poetry? There may be poetry in love; but it just occurs to me that there has been mighty little poetry written about marriage. Be sides, poets write for other people to read and quote. In women s poetry, you always feel it is the same man, but men poets write about all kinds of girls. Some one or two have composed vol umes all inspired by one woman; but the general love poet writes indiscriminately of blondes and brunettes, girls with blue eyes, violet, black, all sorts of color; he writes of all sorts of things he would do for the woman he loves. It just occurs to me that he has not often done them. If he ever has, he has done them for the wrong woman. The Scottish people understand quite clearly that while love may inspire poetry, and poetry may inspire love, love is not all poetry, nor love poetry all love. While Robert Burns, in his more senti mental moments, may do for wooing and for in spiring a tender sentiment, there is a purely practi cal element in the case which he has thoroughly 282 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN expressed, and which no Scottish lad or Scottish Love Story lassie for a moment overlooks." of a Scot "The Scotsman always wants to have an un derstanding, " said the Fellow in the Corner. "A good deal in that," replied the Old Fellow. "And it saves a lot of trouble. An for bonnie Annie Laurie, I d lay me doon an dee, " he quoted. "A beautiful song, a beautiful song ! But I can fancy Annie Laurie listening on Max- welton braes to her lover singing that song to her. And when he had finished I can imagine her lift ing her bonnie head from his shoulder and say ing, Nae, dinna dae that ! Gin ye were deed ye wid be o nae use to me. " "What dreadfully practical persons those Scot tish lasses must be," said the Candid Man. "I wonder if love-talk the love-talk between lovers ever sounds as it reads in books, any way?" continued the Old Man. "Ah, well! Per haps the world would be happier if impulse were less in love and reason more. I think true love does reason ; perhaps that is the distinction be tween the real article and the mere emotional. I fancy love, true love, is not blind ; it is only the spurious love, the passion that carries people away, that does not see." The Seedy Gentleman grew thoughtful, as he rose to go. "The old professors," he went on, "like Barrie s Goodwillie, the pawky Scots of all classes, may seem practical and unsentimental to impulsive peo- 283 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Love Story pie, who rush into love and bear the women they of a Scot marry to the altar with orchestras and hacks and organs and ushers and bridesmaids and flowers and picturesque display of feverish happiness. I daresay in that effulgent honeymoon there may be condensed a delirious joy. It may be that Scottish lovers, in silence, often in plain, practi cal expression of love, may seem almost ridicu lous ; but love is not a mere honeymoon ; all that is best of it has to survive that enthusiasm. And I think the greatest love song of all is John An derson, My Jo. Ah ! we may think of Annie Laurie and the man who would lay him doon an dee for her; we can recall all the gush of poet lovers, and how they love, and what beautiful things they can say about their loves ; when we are young we may feel all that exuberance, and re spond to it, but what a life of true love lies in John Anderson and his guid wife ! We ve clamb the hill thegither; Noo we maun totter doon John, but hand in hand we ll go; An sleep the gither at the foot, John Anderson, my Jo. Some how I think that is a typical Scottish love story." 284 THE DEVIL THE DEVIL IS SHOWN HIS OWN IMAGE "Excuse me !" said the Seedy Gentleman, as he The Devil slipped off the chair and sat down on the floor. "Don t mention it," said one of the party, and he raised the Old Man up and put him back on the rocker. "What s the matter ?" "Weakness from the heat." They smiled a pitying smile. The Old Man touched the bell on the table. "Yes, gentlemen, weakness from the heat. I went down last night to Hades." "You ve started that old racket, have you ?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "Inihm !" said the Old Fellow, waving his hand to the waiter. "The devil and I have been having a high old time." "The devil?" "Yes. You see, I haven t been over the Styx for a while and I took the boat last night." "Old Charon s boat?" queried the Sentimental Chap. "No ; they ve got a regular ferry service now. Bless you ! Charon s superseded long ago. He couldn t handle the traffic. The modern souls are so very heavy anyway; most of them go over as freight," and the Old Fellow smiled a wobbly smile. 287 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Devil "But how did you come to ?" "Oh, I intended to go to Elysium; but I met a man who was going the other way, and I thought I d just go down with him." "And how did you find the devil?" inquired the Fellow in the Corner. "He s getting feeble ; he s tired of it down there. He has reformed, and wants a change. I brought him up with me." "Brought him up with you ?" "Yes. I said to him," said the Old Man, with a wag of his head, and a growing looseness in his speech, "I said to him, Come up with me ! Come and see yourself ! You can have a picture of yourself in the opera of Faust or in the weird extravaganza form." "What?" he asked in surprise. "My dear old boy," I said, "you ve the most picturesque and fascinating figure you could imag ine, and, if Faust and the extravaganza don t suit you, why, Marie Corelli has painted your sor rows in the most modern style." "What is the Faust you speak of? And who has turned me into an extravaganza? And who the devil puts me into a dress coat?" "Come and see yourself in grand opera," I re peated. "Do they make me sing?" "Certainly." "So he put on an ulster and came with me. I took him to the theatre and showed him Mephisto 288 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN and Faust and Marguerite and Martha. We got The Devil in for the Garden scene." "Am I that good-looking fellow in the hand some silk dress making love to the fine-looking woman?" he asked, in a pleased tone. "No. That s you in red looking after the old woman." "What do they take me for?" he blurted out. "Do they suppose I d take up with that old thing, when there s such a fine woman around?" "Oh, you ve made a compact with the young fellow. You Ve given him youth and all that sort of thing, and you re to get his soul and Mar guerite s, don t you know?" I explained. "What do I want with his soul? I never made a compact with anybody. I don t need to. I get them all for nothing, and more than I can handle. But she s a fine-looking woman, and I like her." "But you don t get her." "Don t I? But that fellow in red. What is he?" "He s a basso." "A basso?" "Oh, yes. You re always a basso part. No body would believe it was the devil if he weren t a basso." "What?" broke out Lucifer, in a rage. "With a voice that rumbles all round like that, and with such a Ha, ha, ha ! I wish you d tell him not to do that and not to ruin my self-respect by mak ing love to the old woman. It s not like me. 289 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Devil Why don t they make me a tenor, and handsome, and beautiful? I was as superb an angel as any of them and if you have any influence with the management, please tell them to get that fellow to wash those black eyebrows off, and remove that feather." "Oh, if you want to get a real good view of yourself," said I, "come. across the street! You re much more devilish there." "Stay a minute," he said. "Couldn t I play the tenor part just once with that Marguerite? It seems to me I ve given that fellow a good deal for his soul. Doesn t she really come to me after all?" "No. She goes up," I said. "That s always the way. Let us go across the street !" he said, and, looking back, he sighed ; "She s a mighty fine woman." We went into the other theatre. "Who is that?" he asked, borrowing my opera- glasses to look at a girl in male attire, with very shapely limbs. "That," said I. "That is a being you have created for your fell purposes." "What fell purposes? Why do they always ac cuse me of fell purposes? I am an unfortunate being who made a mistake some years ago, and tried to do more than I could. I was ordered down below, and ever since they ve been sending down to me all the despicable, miserable souls that have inhabited this wretched earth. Isn t it pun- 290 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN ishment enough to have to stand them and keep The Devil them in order? I don t want them." "That s just it. In this piece you re locking after a pure soul," I remarked. "A pure soul ! How could I ever expect to get a pure soul? But you say I created that? Well, the shape is creditable, but I wish I d given her a better voice, like that other. What are they do ing?" "That is your sprite your assistant," I pointed out. "He s attending to your instructions and chasing the pretty soul and her sweetheart, to capture them for the young Count, your creature." "Another pretty girl I can t get! Why doesn t somebody present me as doing my own courting? What is that fellow about?" "He has just carried off the pretty girl and given her to the Count, and now he s enjoying himself by a little acrobatic exercise," I went on. "Do I pay him for that?" asked the Devil. "Oh, those sprites and good angels are not sup posed to get any salary, you know. They re in your power. You can punish them." The Devil laughed. "And where am I?" "You come on later." "What s this now ? Who s that fairy ?" "She s your deadly foe. She saves the pretty girl from you and foils you." "Oh ! So I don t get anybody or anything." "In the end no yes, you get the young Count." 291 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN The Devil Then the ballet came on, and there was sing ing, and dancing, and acrobatic work, and funny conjuring. "They seem to be having a good time, those people. I m the only one who doesn t appear to have any fun out of it," remarked Lucifer, sadly. "There you are !" I said, as the husky-voiced Devil came on and growled, Conquered, beaten, outwitted ! But I will be revenged on him. Take him away and roast him ! And they took the shapely Count off to be roasted." "Is there " asked the Devil, with tears in his voice, "tell me, is there any widespread opin ion in this world of yours that that is anything like me?" "I am afraid there is," I answered. "How unjust! How outrageous! My friend, tell them I am not like that I I couldn t be like that !" "What shall I say you are like?" "Blessed William Shakespeare ! The only man who ever said a good word for me. The Prince of Darkness, he said, is a gentleman. " "And the character who said that pretended to be crazy," said I. "You don t tell me!" said the Devil, very much moved. "I thought he meant it." "Never mind, old man," I remarked, to com fort him. "We have a saying that the devil is never so black as he s painted." "I thought I was red." 292 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "You re all colors except white. Well, yes, the The Devil Indians think you re white." "Take me to the Indians !" he said. "I took him out and gave him a drink of whisky. It burned his throat. He sputtered awhile and then said : "What in thunder do those people who come to me kick about the heat for?" Then we went down to the dark ferry and he caught the last boat across the Styx. "Good-night !" he said. "Let me know when the man that wrote that Extravaganza is coming down." 293 MADAM PRESIDENT! MADAM PRESIDENT The Seedy Gentleman sat all alone in a dim Madam light, looking out at the moon. President "Why in the dark, old man?" asked the Fel low in the Corner, as he took his seat. "I don t like the garish light, that makes all common things look so hideously real. I like the glamour of the deep blue sky and the white moon," replied the Old Fellow. "Well, let us have some of the glamour we all like," said the Candid Man, as he rang the bell. "We never tire of that." "You may tire of it," said the Old Gentleman. "We tire of everything." "Even of living," put in the Fellow in the Corner. "No, we do not tire of living. We say we do. We even think we do; but the most unhappy wants, in his heart, to live, for there is always a hope that he may be happy yet." "Don t get sad, old chap !" said the Candid Man, soothingly. "You see you can get blue, even from the sky." "I ve been wondering," remarked the Fellow in the Corner, "whether or not I really like that girl in the play we saw tonight." "That s the greatest compliment you could pay 297 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Madam to either author or actress. She must be awfully President true to nature. Did you ever know a woman who did not make you, some time or another, pause and wonder whether you liked her or not?" asked the Old Man. "There s something very frank and honest about her, even when she is concealing things." "That is generally when they are most frank and honest. There are two kinds of people we cannot be frank and honest with those we love and those we hate. When we only like people, with a placid indifference, we can tell the truth. But frankness and honesty are to be the twenti eth century virtues in women, I fancy. They are getting so confoundedly honest that you can t believe them. I shouldn t wonder if they have at last, after all those centuries, found out that the best way to fool a man is to tell him the truth judiciously. You are right. That s what is puzzling you about the girl in the play." "Oh, I don t think the twentieth century woman is any different from any other," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Oh yes, she is ! She must be," answered the Old Fellow. "She can t help it. The modern girl is not so much of the hothouse bud her pre decessors were wont to be. She is a wiry, hardy plant, grown in the open air and weather of the world. She knows more of men; she under stands life better; there are fewer surprises and fewer disillusionments for her. It is hard to dis- 298 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN illusionize the modern girl. And if you surprise Madam her, you never know it. Her innocence is most President captivating, for it is innocence with knowledge. She is shrewder, wiser and more foolish than her sisters of old." "More foolish?" queried the Candid Man. "My dear sir, is there anything more foolish in the world than the wise man caught in a folly? A wise man may be foolish; even the wis est of women must. That s nature in her, and she likes it. The modern girl despises constancy. It is obsolete. Yet I imagine she is really more constant than those who went before her. It is one of those curious paradoxes we meet with in life, that the more women there are in propor tion to men, the more the temptation grows upon a girl to capture as many men as she can. It is a kind of game in society, I suppose." "I don t know, but it seems to me women were always like that," said the Candid Man. "There s as much difference in women as there is in their frocks," remarked the Seedy Gentleman. "More, I should say," said the Fellow in the Corner. "The old fashions come up all the time." "Which would mean that women are made by their dressmakers," said the Candid Man. "Very largely," said the Old Man. "No woman is a heroine to her dressmaker. But I love to watch a woman living up to her gown. The mod ern girl s first education, her most highly devel- 209 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Madam oped art, is to live up to her gown. However, President that is a side issue. The greatest change that has come over women in this century, is that they are no longer afraid of men. They have for hun dreds of years been in fear of offending the male sex. They have penetrated our armor and found it buckram, and they don t fear us any more. There is a noticeable decay in the art of wheed ling; it is not practiced, it is not necessary. It is imperialism with woman now. It seems to me that since midnight of 1900-1901 I can see a very remarkable development, and it is assuming the proportions of an avalanche. Madam Presi dent ! What an ominous phrase ! Well, I dare say we men need a lesson. For years the women have been giving it to us in small doses, and we would take no benefit from it. Now we are to be the mere drudges, making the dross, while they lead in all intellectual pursuits. Never mind ! We ll never be short of the old kind of trouble. I do not observe that those federated women have disclosed any intention of letting men alone." "And is that a proof of their honesty?" asked the Candid Man. "Well, not quite, but it is a reason for their honesty. They believe they are our superiors now. They think they can afford to be honest. They have federated ; they get up and debate, and, mark my words ! they will challenge men to meet them in argument before you are much older." "They always did that," said the Candid Man. 300 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "And they have always had the best of it, be- Madam cause never having logic, they could not be President reached by reasoning," added the Fellow in the Corner. "I don t mean that," put in the Old Fellow. "Now they have banquets, make speeches, and they have already come to proposing toasts to the men* or the gentlemen or the boys. Ye gods 1 Fancy the day it is not far off when we men will have to file out from the dinner table, out into the drawing-room, and leave the ladies to dally with their coffee and cigarettes in the dining-room." "Won t they, let us have cigars there?" asked the Candid Man. "Maybe not ! We ve been pretty hard on them, and if a woman can do anything well, when she gets a good chance, it is to retaliate. And, gen tlemen in your ear let me whisper they are beat ing us at our own exclusive games. I am told the best after-dinner speakers in the country are ladies. Well, let it go on ! You remember Ten nyson s Princess Ida, who predicted such great things for women: " But trim our sails and let old bygones be, While down the streams that float us each and all, To the issue goes, like glittering bergs of ice, Throne after throne, and, molten on the waste, Becomes a cloud ; for all things serve their time Toward that great year of equal mights and rights." "Well, we are coming to some of the predic tions. Perhaps we do not see the thrones molten 301 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Madam on the waste, or becoming clouds ; but the Lady President Psyche is with us," and the Old Man quoted : " Thereupon she took A bird s-eye view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon, As emblematic of a nobler age ; Appraised the Lycian custom; spoke of those That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines Of empire and the woman s state in each ; How far from just, till warming with her theme She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique, And little-footed China; touched on Mahomet With much contempt, and came to chivalry, When some respect, however slight, was paid To woman; superstition all awry." "What s that you are spouting?" asked a new comer, who had been listening, "a report of the Women s Convention the other day?" "Heaven preserve me from a woman who knows all that!" said the Candid Man. "Wouldn t she be a charming wife?" went on the Old Gentleman. "No, no! Let us hold the world back from being all scientific, intellectual ! I don t mind the modern woman being an adept at all the delicate arts of true womanhood. I hope she will never lose the fascinating imper fections that make her so adorable. Let her be inconstant, if she will ! Let her love today and forget tomorrow ! Let her be whimsical, capri cious, absurd, unreasonable, inconsistent, foolish, but let her be the woman still ! Nothing could so take the zest out of life as to lose the gentle, irri tating, loving, exasperating, thoughtful, forgetful, 302 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN sympathetic, indifferent, affectionate, cruel, alto- Madam gether maddeningly incomprehensible thing, we President know today as woman." The Old Gentleman fell into a reverie, looking out at the moon for a little while, and then he re sumed, in his far away tone : "How will it end? Great poetry has always something of prophecy in it, and how does Ten nyson s Princess Ida end? "Ask me no more 1 Thy fate and mine are sealed ; I strove against the stream, but all in vain ; Let the great river take me to the main ! No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield 1 Ask me no more." 303 IN THE BRAVE DAYS WHEN WE WERE TWENTY-ONE IN THE BRAVE DAYS WHEN WE WERE TWENTY-ONE "In the brave days when we were twenty-one !" In the Brave quoted the Fellow in the Corner, as he took his Days seat and rang the bell. The Seedy Gentleman, who had been dozing in his easy chair, woke up. "What about the brave days when we were twenty-one?" he asked drowsily. "I ve just come from the play," answered the Fellow in the Corner. "What a catchy kind of a line it is !" "I don t know," said the Old Fellow. "I don t know why we should be so proud of the brave days when we were twenty-one, or why, indeed, we should call them brave." "There spoke the old man," said the Candid Man. "I deny the old. I deny the old. Those old sentimental chaps were perpetually singing sad songs about being forty. Is forty old?" "It may be to a man of forty," said the Fellow in the Corner. "That s just it. It is not to the man of forty; it is to the young that forty is old age," said the Candid Man. "What nonsense ! Nobody, unless he has been 307 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN In the Brave one of those remarkable freaks of genius, has Days ever done anything worth doing till he was forty. Yes, I dare say, at forty, twenty-one seems a long way back, because we have not lost the will to make fools of ourselves, only we have reached the age of sense, which makes us more conscious of our forty than observers are. I don t think when men really get old, they talk of the brave days when they were twenty-one. What is it about all of life s quintessence in an hour? Yes, and it takes us most of the rest of our life to digest it, so to speak. Most of us were young idiots when we were twenty-one." "Speak for yourself, old chap," said the Fel low in the Corner. "I suppose I might, but, to tell the truth, I am willing to admit that we can t only a few special creations excepted be anything else at that age. Did you ever look back and read the letters, the poetry, the silly rubbish you sent and received when you were twenty-one? Ah! It was pleas ant to write, pleasant to receive the trash then; but don t you smile in pity now?" "I never keep letters," said the Fellow in the Corner. "You are wise," nodded the Old Gentleman. "You are very wise ; but you are lucky if other people don t keep yours. I never knew a man so old that he had outgrown the foolishness of writ ing letters. Yes, he may have made it a rule of his life never to commit himself on paper, but 308 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN some time or another some woman is going to in- In the Brave spire him to break the rule, even if she only Days finds out that he has such a rule when he is a hundred years old." "Some woman?" queried the Candid Man. "Always, my dear friend, always. Women have two manias ; one for breaking rules them selves, but another more keenly enjoyed, for mak ing men break them. Never tell a woman you have made a rule about anything ! She ll never rest till she has made you break it for her. Then that is all she wants. You can go then. Never make a rule anyway ! When we are twenty-one we never think of rules. That is why that period looks to us so precious. Life becomes a weariness and a bore, as soon as we begin to make rules for it. The trouble of middle-aged and old persons is that they are always trying to live by a kind of time-table. Don t do it! Live anyhow, nohow, everyhow ! But never set up a regulation ! It is the curious curse of the human mind that it will try to regulate things. In the great human domestic economy Dame Nature is the universal mother-in-law, and sometimes it is very hard to live in the house with her." "Oh, we must have rules of conduct," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Who ever lives up to rules of conduct? No body! You can t. Things never happen as we expect. That is why, for several thousands of years, political economists, philosophers, and 309 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN In the Brave scientists of all descriptions, have been kept busy Days trying to formulate rules for everything, and they never work. Even the moral law doesn t suit everybody. Right and wrong are not by any means decisively settled. But never mind about that ! We were talking of the days when we were twenty-one." "You didn t drink toddy then, did you?" asked the Fellow in the Corner. "No ; toddy comes with the grizzled hair, the quiet evening, and the contemplative frame of mind, which we acquire when the girls do not look at us any more, and we are out of it. Youth is the intoxication, age the headache after. And we feel pretty much sometimes in age, about youth, as we do about the spree the night before, next morning." "Poor old chap !" said the Candid Man. "Pity me not !" replied the Old Gentleman ; "I am not suffering yet." He took up his toddy and looked at it. "Even you," he said, "can give a headache. You are a good, kind creature, but, like the rest of us, you resent abuse. What a strange, curious sadness is the pleasure of memory ! The days that are no more! Were they happier than now? We like to think of them; we like to talk them over. Isn t it a kind dispensation that softens the unpleasant and enhances the pleasant in the past? When we were twenty-one didn t we suf fer at all ? Oh, yes ! We have forgotten the 310 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN hours of anguish anguish is so much more in- In the Brave tense, too, in youth, and it passes away so much Days more quickly we have forgotten when we think of the loves of our young manhood, how bitterly we felt when we were thrown over. We know now it was a blessing in disguise. If Gillian had been true to us ! If Marian had not married ! Yet didn t we want to kill the rival who stole Gillian, and the man who married Marian? It is not that those joys did not last ! It is that they passed into limbo with the brave days when we were twenty-one that we were glad. God bless us ! What troubles we had then ! And maybe, when the years have gone and we sit by our toddy and recall them in their fever and their joyousness, out of the joys come pangs that give our hearts a little twitch. Were we always gen erous, considerate, kind to those who were good to us? Our fathers were stern; our mothers sometimes only sometimes ungentle. Were they? We know now that they were not, and though we may lift our glasses and pledge those brave days when we were twenty-one, we know that we deserved to be kicked that we should have been treated ten times worse by our stern parents ; only we know, too, that from up yonder, or here if they be alive, we have been forgiven long, long ago. You were a sad boy, the mother seems to say, but don t let it spoil your memory of your youth ! Forgiveness ! What would any of our lives be without it?" THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN In the Brave "You are getting sad, old chap," said the Fellow Days in the Corner, gently. "I suppose we all get sad a little when we think of the past. Nobody enjoys sad dreams and revels in hopelessness so much as youth. Didn t we write sad poetry and bad when we were twenty- one? Didn t the sun set and the moon and stars become one great darkness under the cloud of a broken heart once a week when we were twenty- one? Do not young maids, when they are in their teens, invariably rhapsodize in sad verse about the dreary waste life has become? Haven t they always a deep poetic conviction, expressed in rhyme before they are twenty, that they might as well die, for their life is over? After all, were they brave days when we were twenty-one?" "It just occurs to me that women don t sing much about their brave days," remarked the Fel low in the Corner. "Women take life more bravely than men. They talk more of their cowardice than men, and no coward ever talks of cowardice. Yet youth is more to them than it is to men. They always feel they have passed out of it altogether, years before they have gathered the best of life. I think a woman envies a young girl more than a man, at any age, envies a boy. She thinks youth is much more in life than it really is. She watches for gray hairs years before they come." "I seem to recall something like all this from Thackeray somehow," put in the Candid Man. 312 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "I should not wonder," answered the Old Man, In the Brave fervently. "I fancy I learned it all from him and Days 1 daresay it is his, somewhat diluted through this feeble old brain." He rose up and finished his toddy, and, standing with his back to the fire, went on. "I don t know, but somehow I never met a woman who talked of the brave days when she was twenty-one in the same way a man talks of that time of his life. Women always say When I was a girl, or I was seventeen or eighteen. Twenty-one is too old for their brave days. But, I think, somehow, they don t like to talk about it at all, to men. Well, I don t know that men like to talk of their youth to women, especially if they have tender designs. It may be that women are ashamed of the way they have flirted and jilted and all that sort of thing when they were young. Ah, well ! I fancy most women have had a ro mance in their youth. They remember longer, and more tenderly, than we do, and I daresay every woman, when she looks back, sees a little tow-headed chap waiting outside the school gate to carry her books for her and squeeze her hand; or, even when she is gray and has grandchildren, in the quiet evenings, when she sits knitting by the fire, she thinks When I was a girl, and out of the past a handsome young fellow comes to her and whispers, In the brave days when I was twenty- one. " 313 POVERTY ABOUT POVERTY "Yes," said the Seedy Gentleman, sipping a Poverty spoonful of hot Scotch, "that s about the differ ence." "What s the difference?" asked the Practical Man. "Between Shakespeare and the others." "Well, what is it?" "Shakespeare drew on his imagination for his facts, and the others draw on facts for their imagination." "Does that mean that Shakespeare is a liar?" "Well, I suppose it does. All men are liars. I think it was David who remarked that in his haste on one occasion. Yes, we are all liars, but I don t mean that application in this case. A play of Shakespeare is a fact intended to appeal to our imagination; a play by almost anybody else is an imaginative proposition intended to appeal to our sense of fact." "You re deep this evening." "Well, let it pass. We have plays principally because the truth is always plain, not to say homely. There are some beautiful naked truths, but the modern purist objects to nudity even in truth. The French play puts truth in a peignoir; sometimes in pajamas or a bathing suit. In the 317 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Poverty American plays truth is frequently decollete; but generally it is dressed in a kind of tailor-made garment. What a horrible world this would be if we could not lie ! We would despise one another, but not ourselves." "You don t seem to think much of us," remarked the Candid Man. "Present company you know the lie. We haven t time for accuracy nowadays. What a wonder of a witty comedy the School for Scandal is!" "A little overdone," said the Fellow in the Corner. "Not a bit where?" "Oh, the scandal." "Not a bit of it! There s just as absurd talk to be found every day. My friend, a large number of people in this world shouldn t be allowed to think. They don t know how. We all think too much. We are so proud of being able to reason that we resent facts. Well, perhaps we re right. There is nothing so misleading as a fact. That s what makes the modern play so bad." "Why?" "Because the modern playwright as a rule is a man of limited study of facts. He takes things for what they look like, and fixes them unconsciously from his own imagination I should say fictions them. You ve seen this labor play?" "Yes." "It deals with the labor troubles. So the ad- THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN vertisements say. The labor troubles are serious Poverty so serious that they puzzle the cleverest political economists. But they re simple pie to the play wright. The play-writers will tackle anything, and every one of them has an idea in his head that he is a great performer. I suppose this man really thinks he has presented a great moral lesson. Well, perhaps he has. I don t see it. I am not a wealthy employer of labor, and so I can t feel any particular sympathy with the em ployer ; but I don t know it seems to me that this last dramatist s working people are so very poor that 100 per cent added to their wages wouldn t do much good to them. I sometimes think that poverty is growing harder every day ; not because it takes any more to live, but because our tastes have extended to luxuries that are not even healthy, but are now considered necessities." "You should know something about poverty, by your statement," said the Candid Man. "I do. I have known both poverty and wealth, and I was and am happier in poverty than ever I was in wealth." "That s curious, isn t it?" "Theoretically curious practically, no. My friend, the poor are not so unhappy as you think. You, sitting over your French dinner, look across the street at the fellow eating a twenty-five-cent meal. It looks sad. You think, What would I do if I had to eat nothing but that fare? Well, what is the difference? A little sensation on the 319 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Poverty palate; nothing more. The fellow on his twenty- five-cent dinner gets plenty of bread and butter. He has his little bit of meat; good enough meat; maybe not the choice; but good enough. He gets potatoes and a cup of good coffee. And, gentle men, you may wonder, but I don t believe that one out of twenty in that cheap restaurant envies you your fine dinner so much that it gives him a single pang." "Possibly." "It is the theoretical sympathy that makes poverty look so bitter the contrast. You don t think the workingman, trudging home from his work, can be as happy as you, driving in your team to the park. Why? Do you suppose that the pleasure you feel in those luxuries is so far beyond any pleasure life can have for him? Mon ami, when you get beyond the best of the neces saries of life, money does not buy its value. The workman looks up at you. Do you see any pain or envy on his face? Not a bit of it. He is going home to his little house, his little garden, his little home, comfortably furnished. He is going to his family. Oh, yes, he may dream of putting them into a finer house, but he has a good dinner, and he lights his pipe ; and you, with your expensive chambers, your fine cigars and your sideboard, never knew such comfort as he enjoys. And you you don t know his intense satisfaction at having done a day s work." "You make it too poetic a picture, old man." 320 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "N(o. If all the theories of poverty were right, Poverty revolution and chaos would long ago have ruined the world. Confound it all ! I know millionaires who live on $2 a week from choice. If a million aire can live on $2 a week why shouldn t a poor man?" "Egad, that s true. I know one myself." "The political economists and the writers of books on the social conditions have a kind of idea that somehow there will come a time when wages will be so high that nobody will need to work at all. I hope the workingman will get good wages ; but pray God ! that the poor may never be too rich." "I see you re a friend of the capitalist," re marked the Cynic. "No. I am a friend of the poor man. One needs to be poor to be really generous, to be charitable," went on the Seedy Gentleman, looking into his empty glass. "Thank you ! Yes well I have seen poverty that was wretched. I have seen the worst among many classes in many large cities. Terrible ! Yet, is poverty responsible for it all ? No, I don t think so. I think human nature and its weaknesses have more to do with it than any thing else. I believe, gentlemen, if making spir its suddenly became a lost art, you would see such a marvelous change in the face of nations that you would think the millennium was coming." "Ahem !" 321 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Poverty "No it wouldn t suit me. It seems to me that a sober workingman is generally prosperous. Ah ! liquor is an insidious friend. But I don t know there s something in the world amiss, to be unravelled by and by." "Tennyson again?" "Yes ; funny that the poets have so little to write about strikes not since that great strike of Lucifer. Well, it has been so since the beginning. It will be to the end. Long after we are dead and gone into the dust, the fight between poverty and wealth will rage over our graves. Ah, me ! we combine to help people up we combine to pull them down. I have a dim idea " The Seedy Gentleman had been getting very thick of speech and slightly unsteady. "I have a dim idea that God did not mean that curse at all ; that he never intended us to work. It is our cursed pride, our confounded conceit of superiority over the other animals, that has brought us to this. We won t eat grass and leaves and raw barley and vegetables. I knew a poet once who lived in the Sandwich Islands. " Come, he said to me, come to the Sand wich Islands ! There is no work there. "How about bread and butter? I asked him. " You don t need it. Lie down on your back on the grass and look up at the trees, open your mouth, and Heaven will drop a banana into it. " "He was right. Gentlemen," said the Seedy Gentleman, crossing his legs after several futile 322 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN attempts, "we have abused our gifts ; we have Poverty declined the obvious grub nature has provided ; and plunged ourselves into trouble. I believe the first man ate grass and thrived upon it. It was gentle Charles Lamb who described how roast pig was discovered and became very popular. It was some such accident that suggested the widespread infliction of cookery. We re all wrong anyway. We were born fully equipped for life. Around us were all sorts of eatables that didn t need even cultivation. We weren t satisfied. We acquired a contempt for the other gentlemen and ladies who lived about in various forms, such as lions and bears and things, and killed them. Then that strange instinct, which has since developed into a menu in French, induced us to eat them. Then we took to cooking them. And here we are, unable to live without cows and sheep and chick ens, which we have to buy. We were not sat isfied with our skins, beautiful, wonderful things, soft and elastic and hardy. We had to get grasses and leaves and stuff and fix ourselves up, till now we can t do without seventy-five-dollar overcoats and two-hundred-dollar sealskin sacques. It s all our own fault all our own fault. God did not in tend to put us to all the expense living costs to day. I hope, gentlemen," and the Seedy Gentle man got up very wobbly, "I trust the next race will take the benefit of our experience, and be con tent to go about in their own skins and eat grass. Good night, gentlemen!" 323 CHRISTMAS ABOUT CHRISTMAS "Life is only an hour at a railroad junction, Christmas waiting for a train," said the Old Gentleman, stretching himself out in his easy chair. He ab stractedly rang the bell and was silent again. They waited some time; the Old Fellow s mind evidently wandered off to something else. "Did you ring, sir ?" asked John. He gave a sigh and woke up. "Yes," he said. "John, bring me in a beaker ! It is nearly Christmas time another minute of the hour is about gone. Some of us have ten or fifteen minutes over the hour, but well the train comes some time for us and we have no time table." "If we only knew where we were going." "It would make some of us very uncomfortable, I fear. Better not know. Better not seek to know. We are like small boys ticketed through from place to place. We don t know where we are to get off, but the conductor has charge of us and he ll come to us and say, This is your sta tion, and we ll wait there till the next train comes along, spending the hour as we do here, asking idiotic questions about the place and where we are to go after." 327 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "Useful kind of thing this scheme of creation, apparently." "I have no doubt there is some object in it all. But, gentlemen, I hope we still have a minute or two to drink to each other a Merry Christmas." "Heigho ! How the years go by !" murmured the Fellow in the Corner. "I sometimes think that time, like everything material, gathers momentum as it goes, and, when we pass the grand climateric, it hurls us down the hill, as if it said, Go on ! The best of life is over for you. It is kindness to hasten you through the years of age. " "But it isn t," said the Practical Man. "I wonder if it is or not !" said the Old Man, in a low tone. "It may be best, after all, if we only knew the meaning of it all. I fancy most of us learn very little after the hair has turned white. I sometimes doubt if we ever learn anything, anyway ; so much we have believed in seems to pass away in the crucible of experience. But here are the toddies ! Gentlemen, a Merry Christmas to you !" They all rose and clinked their glasses and re peated the Old Fellow s toast. "Let me give you one more !" he said, as he stood, "the toast our old friend used to give, May the Lord love us, and not call for us too soon ! " They drank again and sat down. "Ah, it is Christmas once again." 328 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "We have shared many, Old Man !" said the Christmas Fellow in the Corner, "and we are unchanged." "Are we not changed, even since last Christ mas ? Are not other people changed ? Partly that, and partly that we have developed perception and see new things in others. I don t know why fiction should be widely read. The truth is so much stranger and more interesting. I wonder if the time will ever come when education will have spread so that only the great minds will find readers. So many write books now, that I can fancy a time when everybody will be able to write volumes. In this young age of human spring, the verbum sap is running gaily. But the great students of human nature, the great seers of imagination will still be God-gifted above their fellows. There is nobody who could not be made interesting put into a story. And everybody has a story. Some have a whole series of stories." "The world will be a whole library of fiction." "It is a whole library of truth. And yet what is the truth ? As you see him or as I see him ? Which is the true man ? Or is it as he sees him self ? The greatest gift of God is the insight into others. Ah ! It is so old and trite that we never know one another. But if we tried ! If we, in a broad spirit of charity set out to give the benefit of every doubt to our fellowman, to assume him good would we not find the world full of good people ? If we were all ticketed in the world s 329 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN shop window, how many now figured at a dollar would sell for a cent, and how many marked at next to nothing might be worth their weight in gold ! That is as true today as it was ten thou sand years ago." "The truth never changes," said the Fellow in the Corner. "If we only knew what was the truth. That is the trouble. The truth is most inscrutable of all God s mysteries. There is no truth that is not, there never has been a truth that has not been, denied. But it is Christmas time. Is it only a legend ? Or is it the God-sent truth ? Which ever it be, it matters not. If it were merely be cause the celebration of the Christmas birth, once every year, calls millions of men and women to a halt, and bids them lay down all weapons, sink all quarrels, shake hands with each other, be they enemies or friends, forget all unkindness and love each other, if only for a moment, it is a re ligion beyond all question or dispute. It must be God-given." "And then the old feud begins again, and people hate, and quarrel, just as they did," said the Can did Man. "That may be ; but I, for one, gentlemen, do not believe that little moment of rest, that brief soft ening of the heart, passes away without some last ing effect. We seem to face the truth, the fact that there is a sentiment that is universal in 330 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN human nature, however it may be apparently oblit- Christmas crated for a time by passion, misconception, mis understanding, or what you will ; smothered by a hundred cares or worries ; a sentiment of fellow feeling, of brotherly love." "You are getting very serious," said the Practi cal Man. "Is is not serious ? You see we rarely try to understand one another. We are so sure of our judgments that we decide everything offhand. We take things at their face value, and, when we find we have made a grave mistake, it is too late to go back and begin over again. We are so busy ! We take no time to think; and, too often, if our friend does something we don t like, we think it is deception ; if somebody appears to do us an injury, of course it is intentional. We are not bad at heart; we do not mean to be unjust or cruel or ungrateful, but we have all sorts of things to consider: our own interests, our own judg ments, our own rights, our own troubles, our own claims ; and so, for three hundred and sixty-four days we feel that we mustn t be too much blinded by our brotherly love. Christmas comes ; and somehow it seems to me it brings to all people a clearer view of men and women, of life, the true life, the true interests of themselves and others, and the world is better for it." "Even the dun does not collect a bill on Christ mas day," said the Practical Man. 33i THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN "So hate, and fear, and vengeance, penalty and punishment stop at the Christmas tide, and men come so near to loving each other, that it gives us about the only hope we have for the happiness of humanity." The Old Gentleman took up his glass. "Let us drink to charity ! It is the season when the world stops to recall the charity of Him whose human form, nailed to the cross, the mean est and the greatest now bow before in reverence. And, through nineteen centuries, the gospel of love He taught has spread over the civilized earth, the power behind all civilization." They drank in silence. "Yes, we are being educated," went on the Old Fellow, after a pause. "But I wonder if what we want is not, instead of books, the study direct from human life, of men and women. We shall find faults where we never expected them, and virtues we never dreamed of in the people we know. We shall wonder why we did not recog nize them before, forgetting, perhaps, that we judge the world by preconceived rules, based upon our own character or temperament. If people went about confessing their sins, we would only believe them in so far as our own reason and judgment convinced us. How can we expect any body to be honest about himself, since nobody is perfect ? If the most honest man in the world confessed his whole life, he would lose the respect 332 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN of everybody, even if he had only been guilty of Christmas the most trivial offense. Yes, they say honest confession is good for the soul, but it isn t good for the body. The man who does not confess has still the best of it." "Would it pay to be honest about one s self anyway?" asked the Practical Man. "No; why should I tell you all the faults and sins I have committed ? They were not com mitted against you, and if you knew, it would be as bad as if they had been. You would never give me credit for not being capable of com mitting them again." "I wonder what we would find out ?" The Old Gentleman rose up to go. "Maybe," he said, in a gentle tone, after look ing a long time up at the Crucified One in the pic ture above the mantel, "Maybe we d find how true His teaching was. Maybe we d understand and realize our own injustice in judging others, not by ourselves, but by a standard we know we could not reach. You," he said, addressing the picture, "You, to whose transfixed form and haloed head those women kneel for help, You were the standard, yet You did not condemn. We we are so much more jealous of righteous ness than You were. You forgave we punish ! We cannot wait till our poor fellow creatures may reach the judgment seat and face their Maker. Here, upon this, our earth, and now, let the sen- 333 THE SEEDY GENTLEMAN Christmas tence be declared and executed ! we cry. And when the day of Wrath shall come, will You plead, as You did when You were a man, for those weak souls who have been put to the tor ture here, and say, Father, forgive them, for men have made them suffer much ! " And the Old Man wandered dreamily away. 334 A 000 754 072 7