(/ i tM^/" OTHER BOOKS BY DR. PECK DESERT, PINNACLE, AND MOUNTAIN OLD SINS IN NEW CLOTHES RINGING QUESTIONS MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL SIDE-STEPPING SAINTS FORGOTTEN FACES CROSS-LOTS AND OTHER ESSAYS BY GEORGE CLARKE PECK THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1921, by GEORGE CLARKE PECK Printed in the United States of America First Edition Printed July, 1921 Reprinted February, 1922 rf CONTENTS g I. S 11. w III. PAGE The Cross-Lots Path 7 Taken for Granted 21 Six Cents' Worth of Paradise 34 IV. The White Spire ' 45 V. When the Whistle Blows 57 VI. In a Looking Glass 7j VII. The World in Our Debt 82 VEIL The Back Road 95 yj IX. Penthouses jqo _j X. "Say It — With Flowers" 115 ^ XI. The "Set" ! ^ " * " 127 Xn. The Green Sign 142 XIII. Against the Sun 155 XIV. The Old Covered Bridge 164 XV. When the Scaffolding Comes Down 175 By permiEsioD of author. THE CROSS-LOTS PATH 9 that the cross-lots paths in life may be of divine intent. Very distinctly and gratefully do I recall such a shortening of a tedious walk on a mid- summer day years agone. I recall it more vividly than my memory holds experiences far more momentous. The thermometric read- ing would have satisfied a salamander. My traveling bag was unconscionably heavy. More- over, I am not a pedestrian by choice. Usually, if I am offered a preference between walk- ing and riding, I ride. "The Beloved Vaga- bond" or "The Amateur Gentleman,'* taking to the road as a duck to water, would find in me no kindred spirit. It was so on the day before mentioned. I walked of necessity — the only alternative being to hire a con- veyance equipped with one of those modern joy-killers called a taximeter. Incidentally, I'd rather be gouged by the old-fashioned hack- man (whose charges Mark Twain said were higher than Niagara Falls) than be tormented by the leaping record of a taximeter — ten cents more every time you look, and twenty cents if you drop your stare for a moment. At least you could debate with the extor- tionate cabby of the old school. You could relieve your pent feelings. You could threaten even to litigate the case. But what redress 10 CROSS-LOTS has one against an infernal little mechanism which, in plain figures, fairly shrieks the amount he owes? Verily, some of our modern scien- tific contributions to exactitude have their frank offset. But be that as it may, on the torrid day in question I elected to walk. Nor had I pro- gressed far before confessing that, were the election to be held again, I should vote differ- ently. I perspired without limit and with- out joy. Pavements were blisteringly hot, and the rectangles of city blocks seemed devised for torture. O, for an airplane — or the next thing to it! And the "next thing to it," and at no great remove, was an inviting footpath, cross-lots. Unwitting the hindrances or warn- ing notices that might be encountered, I hailed as veritably heaven-sent that shortened way. It climbed a hill, but I did not mind; nor its tortuousness either. Was it not saving me steps and sweat and temper? And with a greatly softened state of mind from that threatening when I hit the short trail, I pushed the electric button at my destination. But that bypath over the hill is only one of many traversed by me, first and last. And there needed but a chance glimpse, from a car window, of such a footway, to set going the mysterious wheels of memory. Moreover, THE CROSS-LOTS PATH 11 it invited a meditative mood. Hitherto I had merely accepted such paths as I found them. Henceforth I shall try to hold them in new respect; not for their utilitarian aspects, but for their story and meaning. Every such con- venience, as every printing press, every tel- ephone, every community betterment, begs the question of a pioneer. Time was when the field was untracked by other than random feet. Every former pilgrim that way had followed the conventional route — right angles, flagstones, and all that. Then, one day, came the pathfinder: lover, perhaps, in eager quest of his mate, lad hurrying home to mother, messenger charged with utmost expedition to fetch doctor or friend, laborer tired with toil of a day and of his tool-kit — who knows which was the pioneer? But into the soul of him dropped the suggestion of a short-cut across fields. And, whether diflBdent or defiant, he blazed a trail for a multitude of later so- journers. So you have the beginning, as in many a different realm: simple, ingenuous, unpre- meditated probably — always the pioneer, al- ways the pathfinder. The world can no better get on without him than it can count with- out number one, or spell with the first letter of the alphabet omitted. Back of Herschel and 12 CROSS-LOTS Galileo and Copernicus — Ptolemy or some still more ancient friend of the stars. Back of Spencer and Darwin and Bacon — Plato the trail-blazer. Back of Pasteur and Jenner and Harvey — Galen, perhaps. Back of Wesley and Melanchthon and Savonarola — Jesus. Al- ways the pioneer, of course. And part of the charm of such a beginner is his unconscious- ness. Doing an epochal thing, turning a new page in human progress, he seems not to know it. Your self-appraising, theatrical pioneer is no pathfinder at all. His self-importance gives him away. It confesses for him that he stole his fire from an altar of another's kindling. Imagine a Luther setting out portentously and vociferously to reform a church. I do not so read the story. Primarily, he was questing peace for his own racked spirit. The great sequel was the logic of his first move toward self-amendment, but he did not invent the logic of it. Imagine a Corot de- liberately planning to set the style for the Barbizon School. Rather, he was trying to paint the thing as he saw it, let others wield their brushes as they would. Imagine a Lenin announcing himself as the social saviour of a world. Yes, I can readily imagine it. That is his precise role — noisy, reckless, burst- ing with egotism. And so he shall fail, in the THE CROSS-LOTS PATH 13 far-off event, to lead a forlorn hope even. One Man alone could be at once both con- scious of the sweep of his mission and sub- limely modest. When Herod attempted to tease him into an impious declaration of rank, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" the reply itself was enigmatical, "Thou sayest it." From no lesser son of woman can we accept the self-rating which oncoming ages may gladly accord. "No," protested Florence Nightingale, when friends credited her with genius: "I simply worked hard, very hard, and I never refused God anything." And she was pioneer in a ministry which has mitigated the horrors of every great battlefield since. Always the pioneer — and the honor of be- ing that. Once the trail is blazed, you shall find plenty of pilgrims to follow it. Indeed, they will follow it to death, at the heels of an inspiring leader. Most of us, however, are afraid to suffer and die alone. We crave company in our sacrifices — a friendly eye to watch us be brave, a commanding voice to cheer us forward, a sympathetic heart to beat with ours in our agony. Who can doubt that death at the stake was easier for Ridley and Latimer because they could die together, call- ing to each other till the leaping flames choked them? Whereas the real pathfinder must ac- 14 CROSS-LOTS cept loneliness bleak and utter. Such is the great lesson which John Drinkwater teaches in his Abraham Lincoln. From the prologue to the falling of the curtain over the closing scene, the audience feels the chill of the Great Commoner's loneliness. Even in company he seemed to be walking alone — with his mighty dream and his unshakable resolve. In his home, in the Cabinet chamber, at Grant's headquarters — always the chill of isolation. Great, gaunt, tragic figure, with a heart so understanding and tender as to offer hos- pitality to a world, and to stretch out a for- giving hand to his foes, earth has rarely matched him for loneliness since Jesus "trod the wine- press alone." Such, in maximum measure, is the price of being a pioneer. But I have not lost sight of my cross-lots path, nor intended to read into it more than is implicitly there. I do not suppose that the cross-lots pilgrim who blazed the trail I fol- lowed that midsummer day was consciously making a path for his successors. His choice was primarily an individual matter. He was suiting his own convenience or pleasure. He was thinking and deciding in personal terms. Exactly. And why shrink from the logic of that? Until one identifies with his own felicity the needs of others; until their cries ring in his THE CROSS-LOTS PATH 15 own soul and he makes their cause his own, he will rarely leave the beaten path. The world has had plenty of easy-chair reformers whose program was exceedingly beautiful but who evinced no readiness to sweat blood for the sake of its adoption on earth. Always there has been a plethora of academic wisdom — for use by others. Theoretically, Oliver Wen- dell Holmes was as convinced a protagonist of human rights as William Lloyd Garrison was. But the fire never blazed in the "genial autocrat's" soul. He was unwilling to disturb roughly or to be unpleasantly disturbed. When Germany decided to treat as a mere scrap of paper her solemn obligation toward Belgium, multitudes saw our duty as clearly as Theodore Roosevelt did. But they failed to make it their own. As one well expressed the thing for them, they were not personally concerned with the squabbles of Europe. Their hearts did not bleed with stricken France. Not until the fire that was sweeping Europe got into our own bones did we make her cause ours, her anguish our own. I do not think we have understood the Imprecatory Psalms. At least we have failed to realize that there are two ways of viewing them. In one aspect, David was altogether too quick to confuse his personal miseries with 16 CROSS-LOTS the case of his people. He seems to have felt that, because he had been maHgned and mal- treated, an insult which Jehovah was bound to avenge had been offered to his Kingdom. To such lengths we cannot go with him. On the other hand, it is only when such an one as David feels, as personal, the woes and hurts of his people, that he will be apt to stir him- self in their behalf. "I cannot bear to leave the world with so much sin and misery in it," lamented one of England's rarest spirits. He had made common cause with the poor and benighted. What they suffered wrung him. Their shames seemed to attach to him. Be- cause they were dying unshriven he was afraid to die — as if their sin were his. He was pleading for his own soul when he cried out on behalf of theirs. Livingstone's challenge for help to heal the open sore of the world was a great protest in his own name. He had lived so long and so sympathetically with Africa that her malady had, so to speak, been contracted by him. At least he felt her scourge as a personal aflfliction. The chastisement of her peace was upon him, and with his stripes only — and others like his — could she be healed. Much has been made of the recent instance of a young American renouncing, for sociolog- ical reasons, a million-dollar inheritance. He THE CROSS-LOTS PATH 17 has been belabored and praised extravagantly. He has been called both fool and prophet. Whether his act was well calculated to help bring in the new day of industrial democracy may be left to him and his Maker. But this, at least, is clear: only by a personal identifica- tion of industrial maladies with one's own life; only as the real inequities and cruelties of in- dustrial feudalism bite into the souls of such men as Kingsley and Maurice, as Bright and Roosevelt, will the better day be hastened. Granted all the chicaneries and overreaching demagoguery of labor, its defiances and its savageries, the fact remains that, mostly, the shoe has been on the other foot. And the employing class must feel the pinch of that shoe, must elect to feel it vicariously, or, by superior brute strength, they may be forced to wear it. The world waits feverishly for pioneers in that shining path — cross-lots. Likely I may seem to have stressed unduly the advantages of the short-cut in life. True enough, the shortened way is not necessarily the best. Concerning a certain forty-year pilgrimage which might have been made in less than that number of days, the record is that "God led them not through the land of the Philistines, though that was near." And, as supplying the reason, an astute interpreter 18 CROSS-LOTS observes: "It needed only forty days to get Israel out of Egypt, but it took forty years to get Egypt out of Israel." Always there is the education of the pilgrim to be reckoned with. And the long, long trail that develops the man, en route, is better than the short route that delivers him at his destination, raw and undiscipHned. Thus the "longest way round" may be the "shortest way home," not for lovers only but for pilgrims with les- sons to master on the journey. Indeed, the road itself, for many rich ends in life, may be as important as the destination. "Happy the frost which saves the artist by blighting his premature success." Or, as some one sings the truth of it: — "When the rough ways oppose. When the hard means rebel. Fairer the work outgrows. More p)otent far the spell." But, ordinarily, the short-cut is an achieve- ment worthy of genius at its best. One may fairly accurately measure the world's progress by its discovery and use of such cross-lots paths. If to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before constitutes a benefac- tion, why not the shortening of a weary process? Columbus was questing a short route to the East Indies when he stumbled, so to speak. THE CROSS-LOTS PATH 19 upon a new continent of wealth and wonder. Stephenson with his locomotive helped make neighbors of men everywhere, as did Fulton with his Clermont. Morse virtually anni- hilated distance by his invention. And Marconi opened another and still shorter path in the same direction. Printing press, cotton gin, sewing machine, telephone, Diesel engine are merely items from a tediously long and yet brilliant list of familiar short-cuts. Lord Lister abridged the tedium of many a convalescence. In every laboratory are contrivances that ac- complish, in a few hurrying minutes, results that once required hours. Word has been passed around that even a bone may be forced to knit in less than the traditional term. Everywhere the same marvelous phenomenon — distances shortened, processes simplified, life's strain eased. Indeed, folks have become so accustomed to such surprises that even sedate ones were ready to accept Ponzi's absurd pledges of fabulous dividends on their money. I heard a keen young merchant calmly argue all the incredibility out of the performance — so used are we to seeing the impossible achieved. Already we have lived to behold an ancient prophecy fulfilled, of a "nation born in a day." With such a history, who shall dare fix limits to the achievements of the next hundred years? 20 CROSS-LOTS With the wizardry of Burbank as a hint of cross-lots paths in nature, he would be fool- hardy who should even guess the shortening of the world's travail in the realm of spirit. One day, long ago, a Man in whose arms little children nestled happily, and in the shadow of whose understanding heart fevered souls found their pulses quieting, looked out across a Judsean meadow, and said: "Ye say, yet four months and then cometh harvest. But I say unto you, lift up your eyes and behold the fields ah-eady white unto harvest." I do not understand him as denying the law of ordinary harvest, but as declaring the opera- tion also of a still higher law. Science would probably call it "the law of the sudden leap." Religion calls it redemption. The Man I am thinking of shortened the process. Whereas, before, men had expected to groan their way toward it, with flagellations, fastings, and horrors of doubt, he gave them the cross-lots path, fringed with green and spattered with blossoms. That accounts for the gladness of his message. To weary, baffled folks, footsore with a long quest of peace and stung with a hundred futilities, he showed the short path that leads home. Nay, he said, "Foflow me." And his feet were scarred with the path he made for us while he opened the trail. II TAKEN FOR GRANTED It was late — absurdly so perhaps. But one misses a great deal if he always keeps good hours. Eight hours out of the scampering twenty-four seem an unfair ratio to spend in oblivion when there's so much to be seen and done; and ten hours in bed constitute robbery of life. I've always envied Napoleon, who, according to tradition, could get on with four hours' sleep. However, I'm not quarreling with the hygienists; merely expressing a per- sonal whim, and observing that, on the night in question, the hour was late. The last house- light visible to the passer-by had been ex- tinguished. Every window on the block was dark. About the only sound audible was the click of my own heels on the pavement. "Click" is the word. For several reasons I do not like rubber heels. Doubtless, they re- duce the jars of pedestrianism, as the adver- tisers vociferously maintain. But, as one offset to their obvious advantage over good leather and cobbler's nails, they take away the company-feeling one has when he can hear 21 22 CROSS-LOTS his own progress up the street at night. More- over, they suggest footpads whose trade thrives best by silent approach from behind. There's something human, not to say humanizing, about the ring on the pavement of old-fashioned heels. Across the spaces of intervening years I still can hear the gladdening sound of my father's footfalls, as his firm step neared the house and turned in at the gate. And listening oft, when the hours were small and sleep would not be wooed, I've fancied that, by the echoing step of some night-pilgrim, I could guess his mood and his errand. Much that a man is and dreams and suffers is confessed in his gait; and sometimes you may read with your ears when your eyes are withheld. Albeit, and spite of the physiological desirabiHty of heels that make no noise, I enjoy the sound of a sturdy step — my own or another's. But this did not set out to be a homily on foot-gear: my theme is milk-bottles. Just outside the front door of the first house on the block I happened to notice one of these conveniences of the modern milkman; on the next doorstep, two bottles; on a third, four bottles. By that time I was interested, and I watched for the bottles as I passed successive doors. Incidentally, I permitted myseK a little romancing as to the personnel and taste TAKEN FOR GRANTED 23 of particular households, judging by the num- ber of milk-bottles in sight. An unusually large collection suggested children in the home, or boarders, or the visible results of an anti- coffee crusade. One doorstep was bare of bottles. Had the householder forgot her duty just before the front door closed for the night .'^ Or used they condensed milk within.'^ None of my affair of course; but one always ques- tions the exceptional. When the milkman rattled up the street, next morning, he would look and pass on. But what interested me specially was not the number but the fact of milk-bottles on the steps. Time was — and still is, in certain rural communities — when, if there is to be milk in the house, somebody must go after it, with bucket or pitcher. Empty milk-bottles on the steps, waiting to be replaced by full bottles, are plain witness to what we call civilization. They are but single instances of the sometimes counterbalanced advantages of living in a modern age. They typify the facility with which, in many of its aspects, modern life is lived. Whether life is more worthfully lived under the variously and ingeniously softened conditions of our day; whether, for every ease- ment of his journey, the pilgrim is demanding more of himself, in new and Christed ways, is 24 CROSS-LOTS beside my present purpose. For the nonce, and taking cue from the quiet milk-bottles on the steps, I am merely observing how much we take for granted. We fall asleep at night expecting a host of doors to open automatically at our approach next morning. We wake at dawn perhaps — or a little later, by the grace of chores already done for us — to find milk at the door, and the newspaper in the vesti- bule, and, at our elbow, a telephone offering audience with a continent, at will. In olden days there was comparatively little — except sunrise and seasons and the constancy of mother-love — that one could afford to take for granted. Nor need one travel backward a thousand years to feel the bite of a different atmosphere. He need but go back to the farm of fifty years ago, or to certain remote districts of to-day. All the water used on my grandsire's farm had to be pumped, and by hand. Sausage on the breakfast table implied a piggery, and hog- killing time in the autumn, and grandmother's deft fingers converting to savory dish the flanks of a top-heavy porker. For my favorite portion of cottage cheese, cows must be milked, and milk set, and the old churn in the shed put in motion. If mail was to be had, some- body must go to the post office for it. The TAKEN FOR GRANTED 25 delicious butternuts in the garret were not bought in a store; they were gathered on the farm. When the horse needed to be shod, grandfather put on his leather apron, and sometimes let me work the bellows while he fashioned a shoe and fitted it, whistling or humming, the while, in his merry way. In those simpler days one had not as yet the advantage of taking a telephone receiver from its hook and summoning the carpenter or the plumber. If the orchard gate hung awry, granddad fixed it; if the rain-spout leaked, granddad played tinner; if the horse went lame, granddad became veterinarian. When the household rose in the morning 'twas to find little done save that which God had done for them. The difference between that more primitive day and ours is typified by the milk-bottle at the door. And the contrast of spirit is be- tween a conscious self-reliance and a dimly realized dependence. We, of the later day, convenienced and forwarded in almost count- less ways, seldom pause to acknowledge the immensity of our debt to a long line of servitors and partners, mostly anonymous. We take for granted a host of advantages unearned by us. We do our work with tools prepared by hands we never saw: draw dividends of ease and 26 CROSS-LOTS content on the prodigal investments of others. We trade in coin, already minted, to purchase a thousand ready-made and ready-to-wear articles. In short, we begin each day's toil in diversified debt to our forbears and fellows. In this year of tercentenary celebration, multitudes who never before, except casually or geographically, spoke the name of Plymouth, have made pilgrimage thither, in spirit if not by actual journey. Many the delightful hour I have spent on its streets, in its Museum, in its quaint old cemetery on Burial Hill. I have traded in its shops and eaten in its hotel celebrated by Thoreau. And, like most other visitors, I suppose, I took Plymouth for granted, historic scenes, conveniences, and all the rest. Except in a listless and desultory sort of historic appreciation, I forget the folk who made it Plymouth; particularly the clear- eyed, oak-fibered men and women who saw it before it had a name. When ar immortal company of a hundred and one, including children, dropped anchor opposite the now famous Rock, little except the goodness of God, and the strength of their fellowship, and the probability of harvest, was there to take for granted. All that Plymouth became during the next twenty years, they made it. Place of asylum, of even-eyed courts and tireless indus- TAKEN FOR GRANTED 27 try, they made it so. Indeed, who shall ven- ture to appraise the debt of modern Plymouth — and for that matter, of the American com- monwealth — to a little band of adventurers for conscience's sake, prayed over by Robinson, preached to by Brewster, and marshaled by Bradford? They teased up from a soil none too responsive the harvests that kept them alive. They shot the wild fowl which cen- tered their first Thanksgiving dinner. They founded and built the schools for their chil- dren. They spun the garments they wore, and organized the courts in which the justice they came to secure should be administered. They erected the church — making it both citadel and temple — where their souls might keep tryst with God. Whereas we — for the most part — do little better than take for granted crops and schools, judiciary and ecclesiastical establishments, with an occasional fling at our heroic forbears for pietism and narrowness. As a startling eye- opener I recommend a tally, for one day, of the multitudinous forwardings and advantages, upon the uninterrupted continuance of which, as upon the recurrence of sunrise and the swing of the planet, we base our plans and make our appointments. Without owning a dollar's worth of their stock we expect the train at 28 CROSS-LOTS the station on time, and the trolley at the street corner, and the telephone on the desk. Lacking the venture of a personal hazard or stir, we look for coal in the cellar, and the letter carrier, and on our breakfast table the produce of many climes. Never having done anything for the law except to evade it when possible, or to abuse it when our personal whim is balked, we expect it to work automatically and flawlessly for our protection. The old question of Saint James stings with an aug- mented truthfulness of application: "What hast thou that thou didst not receive.'^" Let pause for an hour the vast and intricate system of wheels whose almost incredibly rhythmically timed movement provides for the normal on- going of life, and we should stand appalled at our helplessness as well as staggered by our debt. A modern city suddenly deprived of its thousand conveniences is only less incredible than a planet on which the sun has forgot to shine — and, superficially, much less tolerable, for when the sun fails to do its celestial duty one can turn on the electric lights, but when the trolley stops he must walk to business, and when the water supply is cut off he cannot even wash his face. Pardon me: I am not suggesting that we ought to cease taking things for granted, merely that we should take them thus with a juster ap- TAKEN FOR GRANTED 29 preciation and a heightened sense of personal obligation for the myriad easements and the silent confederates in a day's toil. Life itself, for example. Considering the friabihty of the thread, as known to all of us, it is rather astounding what a weight of hopes and projects we hang to it. Modern physiology lends startling emphasis to the ancient ob- servation that "we are fearfully and wonder- fully made" — quite as "fearfully" as "wonder- fully." The marvel is that an organism of such infinitely delicate and intricate detail functions perfectly for twenty-four hours. When you see the vital spark snuffed out by a single breath — a blow on the head or a clot of blood in an artery or a too hurriedly eaten meal — how ever does it keep glowing despite the wild winds that smite it every hour, year after year? Yet we continue to take it for granted, like the hill against the horizon or the salt of the sea. God forbid that we go to the other extreme of being afraid to fall asleep at night, or of aspersing every swallow of water that is not certified. That way lies mad- ness. But is there not, somewhere between the two extremes, a happy medium of reverent regard, and sensitized appreciation? Would it not augment the dignity of an ordinary day if, at its dawn, we paused to contemplate the 30 CROSS-LOTS miracle of breathing, and the clean felicity of being able to put one foot before the other? No sane man expects a microscope to do the work of a telescope, yet his eye functions as both — and with scant praise from its owner. One of the most interesting if baffling fields of modern therapeutics is metabolism — the hu- man chemistry which transmutes beefsteak and potatoes, cornflakes and grape juice, into blood and brawn, the finger wizardry of an Ysaye or the gentle philosophy of a Matthew Arnold. Needless to observe that the field is, still, largely, a terra incognita. Indigestion, in its many forms, still kills the zest of life in its victims, and breaks the peace of domestic concord, even explains some of the deep rum- blings of spirit in a Carlyle. Yet, in the main, and barring certain violent reactions due to unwise eating, the laboratory within works uncomplaining and unthanked. With scarcely an appraising thought, we take for granted its skill and industry, and go on with our gustatory performances. Frequently it takes a fit of illness to bring us to our senses. Similarly we take our friends — take them for granted, mostly. Asked to give key to his singularly rich and gracious spirit, Charles Kingsley said, "I had a friend." The very phrasing of his reply implies loss. I wonder TAKEN FOR GRANTED 31 if it implies also that the friend had to be lost before he was appreciated? (One may be glad to believe otherwise in the case of Kings- ley: he was "different" in so many fine ways.) Alas that such is the history of many a prop- erty we hold in the Ufe of a friend! — by the pain of loss we must be stung into realization of what was ours without asking or design. It is worse than "Strange we never prize the music 'TUl the sweet-voiced bird has flown." It is tragic. To prize the music only after its cadences have died upon the air is to cheat life in its daily ongoing. To take your friend for granted — the opulence of him, the grace of him, his fitness to your need — is to possess him poorly, and to defraud him in the bargain. That smart old cynicism to the effect that, while God gives us our relatives, we gain our friends in a very different fashion, is stupidly false. If anything is certain, it is the heaven- sent quality in friendship. Friendship is not as truly won as bestowed. I think one may be said to earn gratitude, approbation, con- fidence. I do not think that a friend ever was "earned." As intelligently talk about earning a sunrise or a summer shower or a tonic breeze. Friendship at its best is always a surprise. 32 CROSS-LOTS an act of grace, a spiritual discovery. Like the wind, it "bloweth where it listeth. Thou hear- est the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." So is friend- ship. Its largest gain is an "unearned incre- ment." It defies analysis and definition as light does. It is the cool spring in the meadow of life. It is the secret word of a master-spirit. And to take it for granted is a species of suicide. But my list of shallow assumptions would soon grow too long. "What do you make of God.f^" asked a man of his seatmate in the train. "I do not make anything of him," came the an- noyed reply. "Whatever and wherever he is, sup- posing that he really is, I take him for granted." Spokesman he for a huge and perhaps in- creasing multitude. And, in one aspect, such a taking for granted is the finest compliment within our gift. Had we to ratiocinate God before we could make use of him, and to climb to his shining seat ere he would visit ours, we were in sorry case. One cannot stop to be proving always the basis of his faith in the normal ongoings of life. That God is, and that he is even better than a mere re- warder of those who diligently seek him, is one of the axioms at the beginning of the book of wisdom. You don't wait to prove that a straight line is the shortest distance between TAKEN FOR GRANTED 33 two given points; or that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. You accept these dicta and go on with the problem. Unless you assume God, you do not get anywhere with the problem of pain and love and destiny. Whatever solutions there are for the "riddle of the universe" begin with God as a thesis. But I am not thinking of that wise kind of taking God for granted. I am thinking of the dull, listless assumption that, whatever God is in largess, in patience, in ceaseless adaptiveness to human need, in the far reaches of redemp- tion he will doubtless continue to be without our stir. And so we close against ourselves and in our own faces, the door to the "Ivory Palaces of the King." So, v/e rob life of its deepest zest, its majesties of strength. We go lonesome and homesick for sense of the Great Companion. In this highest sense God is not to be taken for granted at all, but expe- rienced like sunshine and music and love. Said James Russell Lowell, once, "I have learned to take great pleasure in God." And, he added that, on the basis of that knowledge, he had quit trying to play Atlas. Take for granted anything but God, who maketh the mornings and evenings to rejoice together, who gives the breath we breathe, and equips our neighbor to be our friend. m SIX CENTS' WORTH OF PARADISE You might not believe that even an infin- itesimal fraction of paradise could be got for six cents. Nor could it — for some folks. For some folks not even a gleam of the walls or a strain of the trumpets of paradise could be had for six millions of dollars, or for any other price within their power to pay. The fault, however, is not with paradise, nor the pur- chasing power of six cents or six millions, but with the purchaser. He is too dignified, too placid with ennui, too surfeited already with many sweets. He has lost that appetite which honors the homeliest dish. To twist the lan- guage of an old couplet, "iVo prospect pleases and every man is vile." For such there is no paradise either on earth or among the stars. Their breath would spoil the atmosphere if they came thither. Nevertheless, I still maintain that a tiny fraction, at least, of real paradise can be got for six cents. I have seen the transaction completed. I saw it fantastically done on a thoroughfare recently. The celebrant was of 84 SIX CENTS' WORTH OF PARADISE 35 dusky race and perhaps fifteen years. Her antics arrested my eye. At first I thought she was lame, but a moment's observation assured me that she had full use of both feet. She twisted them grotesquely at the ankles, then shuffled them lazily. Later, her evo- lutions combined a sort of cake-walk and pirouette. Suddenly she swung round, re- vealing her face. It was aflame, if a dusky face may be said to flame. She held in one hand an ice-cream cone, costing six cents, probably, which she alternately dabbed at with her lips and held aloft as a horn of plenty. For her the rest of the world was nonexistent. She neither knew nor cared that anybody watched. She was in paradise for a moment, or until the cone was consumed and the memory of it faded. The whole performance was more dramatic than one usually pays to see on the stage. In a little while she would be back on solid earth, in kitchen or shop or hovel. But, for the nonce, she was tasting ambrosia and lifted on wings as eagles — happy, care- free child of a child race — enjoying paradise for the trifling sum of six cents. Of course there are all sorts of countervailing considerations to be taken into account; but that ecstatic colored lass taught me this Jesson, that the man or woman who has lost 36 CROSS-LOTS the genius of momentary excursions into para- dise for a very small admission fee is hope- lessly stale. Time was when a lollipop or paper doll or new balloon set us oblivious to the frets and sorrows of the world — at least until the lollipop was dissolved or the paper doll crumpled or the toy balloon burst. But what's transiency against the outstanding fact of reality? The finest thrills of life are mo- mentary. The holiest visions pass with our glimpses of them. The most heavenly sweet chords are "lost chords," heard but once and remembered hauntingly as a sort of gauge to what the music of Elysium must be. The glory on the grass escapes when the sun is high, and the sublimity of the sunset fades into gray as we reverently watch. Who was it said that "if the rainbow lasted half an hour, nobody would take the trouble to go out doors for sight of it"? Did not Paul himself confess that the seventh heaven into which he was caught up was a passing experience? Some- times I think that one may measure the preciousness of an experience by its fugitive quality. The great hulking objects in life stay put until we tire of staring at them, while its stunning splendors are painted like rainbows on the mist. One day my friend who had just ordered SIX CENTS' WORTH OF PARADISE 37 lunch for us at a modest club, drew up his chair a bit, set his elbows luxuriously on the table, and looked steadily into my eyes, his own blazing the while. "Now we are having a good time," he said. Of course. That was what we went for; not business nor discussion nor condolence— just for a good time. But always there is danger of having and not ad- mitting that one has it. Not many were the later occasions that gave us chance to sit down together. His incandescent life burned itself out all too soon, leaving strange darkness for us who loved him. But as if he foreknew that his journey would be short, he insisted upon wringing the minutes dry of all honorable joy. With his piercing, observant eyes I think he would have gotten more paradise out of a five- or seven-cent trolley fare than most folks extract from a hundred gallons of gasoline burned automobile fashion. Wlien he slipped away, fighting to live, under the warm skies of California, his widow wrote me, as her tribute: "He had the brain of a man, the heart of a woman, and the soul of a little child." And in a way, the last named mark is finest of the three. One must keep the soul of a little child if he is to enjoy paradise. Seriously, I cannot imagine heaven as a long-drawn ecstasy, without beginning or end 38 CROSS-LOTS of days. If harps furnished the only music, and played continuously, even the beatified would yearn for a drum — or a javelin such as Saul once hurled at David. (Perhaps David played too sweetly and too long.) Only the child spirit, the death of which spells disaster in anyone, can deeply enjoy life, taking its thrills at par, answering with smiles and songs its glad voices. The familiar plaint, "Make me a child again, just for to-night," is not more truly a cry for old faces and scenes than for the child's power of enjoyment. Accord- ing to the teaching of Jesus, the kingdom of heaven also is closed against all who offer themselves other than as little children. O, for the genius to recognize and seize every honorable six cents' worth of paradise! I say "honorable," for I should be among the last to intimate that we are entitled to all the thrills we can capture. There are sponsors a-plenty for such sardonic doctrine. A man with whose voice the churches of his denom- ination had once rung, confessed brazenly that all he needed was to be sure that an indulgence was sinfully delightful, and he would run to meet it. Not all Lotharios and Titos, not even all Chesterfields and Bradlaughs are as blatant as that. They keep their Bohemian creed more or less to themselves, practicing it SIX CENTS' WORTH OF PARADISE 39 when the eyes of the world are averted. But evidence is not wanting that the percentage of folks who reckon, in thrills, the value of life, has increased rather alarmingly of late. The fault I would find, however, with a thou- sand indulgences is that they are not paradisai- cal enough to be worth six cents even. I mean that multitudes of people pay too much for their glimpses of paradise. They pay honor and truth and self-respect, assets unre- deemable once they are parted with. No use to deny that Tito gets something in exchange for his soul, that poor Dinah Morris treads the upper airs for a few passionate days, that Macbeth breathes better for a season after the murder. Men and women are not such utter fools as to relinquish something for nothing. And your moralist who professes inability to understand why people throw themselves away misses the point entirely. The point is that they do not get a fair return for the price they pay. 'Tis a gold-brick game. All the good berries are at the top of the basket. The thrill dies away into a shudder. The sweetness leaves a bitter after-taste. Byron's familiar lines of disillusion beg a question we must reckon with always. His grief was at the perishableness of the fruits and flowers he had grasped in hasty fingers. His days had 40 CROSS-LOTS held the green leaf; the fruits and flowers had been sweet. This was his dirge: that the green leaf had turned yellow, and the fruits and flowers had gone. "The worm, the canker and the grief. Are mine alone." The difference between Faust's surrender of his soul and Jesus's, was that Faust soon sickened of his bargain, while Jesus has all the ages to be glad in. The paradise which heroic sacrifice buys is worth all that it costs — and more. But to go back to my street preacher, the colored lass with the ice-cream cone. I am not disposed to argue the case, as to whether she could have gotten more real paradise by investing her six cents in a loaf for some hun- gry neighbor, or by dropping it in the mis- sionary mitebox. Our own hearts also have their rights. It is perfectly good religion as well as valid heathen philosophy to "seize the day." And when we honorably seize it we ought to demand its full paradisaical con- tent. Every time we let go, we ought to require six cents' worth of joy. In our innocent divertisements, for instance, Mr. Beecher expressed the conviction that his parishioners would better go to the theater SIX CENTS' WORTH OF PARADISE 41 than go home whining because they felt they must not attend. And I should say that, if a man pays good money for a theater ticket, or a movie show, or a day's fishing, he ought to insist upon getting what he pays for. You cannot do that by keeping one eye on the clock, or puzzling over business problems be- tween acts or fishbites. If you cannot go in the mood to claim the full happiness of the occasion, stay at home. But having gone, get all the paradise of smiles and relaxation your admission price will pay for. Relax. Unbend. Let yourself go. Forget that you are grown up and bald-headed and rheumatic perhaps. Give yourself up to the clean luxury of having a good time as children do at a picnic. There may be headache and heartache to-morrow; but "sufBcient unto the day is the evil thereof." Drink your nectar full strength. When work and cares can spare you for an hour or a day, insist upon your money's worth, and take it as your due. If work is work, let play be play. I have been told repeatedly that I ought to like golf. By which my counselors evidently meant that I ought to take exercise — a per- fectly self-evident proposition. But as between woodpile and rowing and the golf course, I ought to have the final word. I can con- ceive of an obligation to 'play golf, but I cannot 42 CROSS-LOTS conceive of an obligation to like it; more than to enjoy olives, or Walt Whitman or prayer meeting. I learned to play golf, and beat my teacher at the game, and joined a country club and bought a fine set of golf sticks. But I soon ceased to feel any call to punish myself around the links as a matter of duty. When I take my play, let me choose what is play for me. If I prefer a hike or a bicycle or a carpenter's bench or collecting butterflies, that is my affair, so long as my recreation is clean and not injurious to others. Let your play be such that when you invest money or time or muscle in it, you extract your full six cents' worth of paradise. So with our cameraderies. Life, as Mrs. Barbauld truly tells us, is lived mostly in short measures, and in short measures it must per- fect be, if at all. I know people who are al- ways waiting for an extended time in which to enjoy the heaven of friendship. After the season is over, or the money-grabbing is past, they will give themselves up to the felicity of having friends. And when that coveted day arrives the comrade has moved to Chicago, or is dead, or your own lips have forgot the language of affection for lack of practice. "The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul" for five min- SIX CENTS' WORTH OF PARADISE 43 utes where you cannot spare a day. Keep your eye off the clock for four and a half minutes of the five. Friendship is not so much a matter of eatension as of intension. It does not take long to drop a bucket into the old deep well of the heart. The last meeting be- tween David and Jonathan was brief, appar- ently. But how they let themselves go for the privilege! Forgot was war, forgot danger, forgot rival houses while they remembered that they were together for a little heavenly space. And, oh, the difference in the long afterwhiles! The moments of Jesus with his friends were comparatively few and often hurried. But how he packed them with joy, and made them memorable for aye! If you've but six minutes for your friend, get the full worth of the time. So with religion, both in its devotional and its practical aspects. I hold no brief for the "Holy Rollers," or for the vagaries of re- ligious ecstasies. Too often the chasm between religion and ethics is unbridgeable. But there is this to say; that the enthusiasts I am think- ing of get out of their religion (such as it is) a thrill that the rest of us, with better war- rant for exuberance, commonly miss. We take our religion too lugubriously. Mostly 'tis duty instead of delight. We whip ourselves to the 44 CROSS-LOTS altar and to the house of the poor. We deny ourselves with a wry face. Wa Chesterton wrong in his contention that we ought to have fun in the service of God? "Neither be ye sorry," adjures the prophet. If a redeemed life is "Paradise Regained," then we ought to be ashamed to be so lugubrious about it. We ought to get our sacrifice's worth of para- dise. Seriously, I fancy that God would prefer five dollars hilariously given than twice that amount subscribed with an inward groan. Ordinarily, I would recommend a short prayer in preference to a long one if so we could rise from our knees with a song. No other thrill known to men compares with the reaction in the heart of a beautiful deed graciously per- formed, or a worthy self-denial made in the spirit of Christ. Missing the reaction, we may justly suspect the sincerity or singleness of the deed. But living the victorious life, we may claim every tingle of its fine joy. God is not to blame if we decline to let ourselves go in the rapture of our truest discipleship. IV THE WHITE SPIRE One evening I saw it different. Always be- fore it had been a sort of village commonplace, like the town pump or the blacksmith's shop. Had it suddenly disappeared, I should have missed it doubtless. But so long as it stood where it had always stood, tall, prim, precise, dignified, ever since my initial acquaintance with the village, it was without special sig- nificance or moment to me. I mentally allowed for it as integral part of the tidy little settle- ment near the Cape. I cannot now recall that ever I had looked for it, as sometimes one yearns and strains — and prays — toward a sun- set, or a dear, familiar door, or a face. Parson though I happen to be, that white spire was merely that, no more. None of my friends had passed in, beneath it, questing God and his forgiveness. None of my loved and lost slept in its shadows, in the churchyard. Had I been asked, I might have averred that I knew almost precisely how the building looked inside, as I knew its exterior aspect. Typical New England meetinghouse, it had all the 45 46 CROSS-LOTS family characteristics; nothing individuating, nothing arresting, nothing queer, even — which is one reason, I suppose, for my failure to do more than merely localize it. Thus, indeed, we travel up and down the lanes and thoroughfares of life, ordinarily. Familiarity does not necessarily breed con- tempt; sometimes it genders that which, in its way, is more benumbing than active con- tempt is. I mean, nonchalance, listless in- terest, unexpectancy. "Having eyes we see not" the dear mysteries of things; and "having ears we hear not" the deep overtones of mean- ing in breezes and laughter of children; "and our foolish heart is darkened" in the presence of commonplace joy. Alas and alas! If his hearers had considered the lilies as Jesus did, and watched the sparrows with his sort of eye, they would not have needed his admonition. Genius as Shakespeare was, he never dared, apparently, to build a play about everyday folks, sweaty and shabby and tame. Kings and counts and court ladies, grandees and bril- liant clowns and great scoundrels — these parade across his pages, with here and there a scullion or peasant to help dull the background for gold lace and coronets. It has been said that the famous bard had not discovered the common- place man; all I can affirm is that Shakespeare THE WHITE SPIRE 47 dared not dramatize him — and expect an audi- ence. Burns, Wordsworth, Dickens took their Hterary Hves in their hands when they gave so conspicuous space to field-mice, to primroses, to humble souls. And just here is one explana- tion of the lifted brows out from under which many of his contemporaries looked at our Lord. He came so silently, he worked so unostentatiously, he talked so simply, and died so modestly. If he had "striven and cried in the streets," if he had posed and strutted and declaimed, he might have counted a hundred disciples to every one that actually followed him. And it was the spire of one of the meeting- houses dedicated to him, I had passed and repassed, unheeding. But one day it was altered for me. I saw it from a new angle. Hitherto I had caught sight of it from amid familiar surroundings, as one looks out at the stars from his own window, or meets his friend at the same lunch table where they have broken bread together month after month. But the stars have a strange look, seen from a strange window, or when great sorrow falls; and the old friend is new and more when he comes to you in your special joy or pain. My mother's Bible, on her table, was scarcely an eventful volume to me as a lad. But that same worn book seemed to 48 CROSS-LOTS hallow my table when it rested there — and she had ceased turning its pages. In cold mathe- matics only is it true that "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other." In life the case is startlingly different. The dollar of yesterday may be next to nothing to-day, and big as a thousand to-morrow. The same word may fall upon the same ear as a knell or a psean. Even our Lord may be "stumbling- block" or "the fairest among ten thousand," according to the changed winds that blow through our souls. God is wrath, and God is love — the same God. So my familiar spire was an altered thing to me as I approached it over a strange road. I was tired of the journey, as is every way- farer, soon or late. Winding and unwinding, like a ribbon purposeless, and through an un- familiar district, it seemed to be leading no- whither — just on and forever on. Then the beaconing spire topping the trees, and my heart grew warm again. The commonplace steeple had suddenly become a landmark for me. No lighthouse ever shed a more distinct and heartening ray for confused mariners than did that quiet spire near the village green. Not for such ministry, I am sure, did the villagers dig down into their gunny sacks years agone. They were doing the merely con- THE WHITE SPIRE 49 ventional thing when they crested their build- ing with a steeple. They would as soon have thought of buying boots without straps, or of planting corn in November, as of projecting an unspired meetinghouse. They were dif- ferentiating it from the school or the town hall. Inadvertently, only, were they rearing a landmark for tired or uncertain pilgrims. On a day set for fishing on Great South Bay, my friend, the skipper, made what seemed to me strange maneuvers with his craft before he dropped anchor. He tacked unaccountably, several times, let the sails flap while the boat fell astern, again tightened the sheets and re- versed the wheel, his gaze fixed the while on some object on the distant shore. "Getting the range," he said in reply to my query. "When I can fetch that buoy, yonder, in line with that little house on the shore, we'll be over the fishing ground." A moment later he dropped his eyes contentedly, let the sheet- rope run free, and sent the anchor plunging from the deck. We had arrived. Other things being equal, piscatorial success, that day, de- pended upon the reliability of his landmarks. If anybody had moved the channel-marker, or the little house on the shore had disap- peared, we might have cast our lines in vain. In life itself, so much depends upon the re- 50 CROSS-LOTS liability of the landmark. We can better afford to forfeit a fortune or be robbed of a good name than to lose a landmark from the path we travel. By landmarks we gauge our progress, and change our course, and come at length to the Father's house. Sometimes it is an old moss-grown watering trough at the corners, sometimes a stone by the roadside, sometimes the counsel of a familiar apothegm or the light in the face of a friend, sometimes the qualm of conscience, and again the per- sistent cry of the spirit — and sometimes a church. Yes, sometimes a church. Folks who make no other use of a church let it function as a landmark. Trinity, at the head of Wall Street, frowning or smiling down that world-famous canon of finance, at least notifies the unchurched stranger that he has arrived where fortunes are made and lost in an hour. Trinity, Boston, calls to the tourist at the Hub, that, following the particular spoke of Commonwealth Avenue, he will come at length to the heart of the city. And, by contrast, perhaps, some little white church in the wildwood tells the wayfarer which way lies the shrine of his dreams. But when the landmark goes? One day, up in Vermont, I went back to the scenes of my boyhood. Everything almost was changed, so THE WHITE SPmE 51 altered that I felt like a stranger. But I had a candle to burn in memory of the old pasture, and the brook that wound through it, and the old tunnellike bridge beneath which I had some- times sought sanctuary as a lad. By sight of the old familiar bridge I should know when I had arrived. Alas, the bridge also had gone! And in my heart somewhere, deep, I felt the heat of an old sulphurous word of the Bible: "Cursed be he that removeth a landmark out of the way." We may be pardoned many a sacrilege sooner than that. To destroy or misplace any sort of way-mark, whether a stone or a tree, a building or a moral convention; to render it easier for a brother or sister to miss the path, is cruel when it is not positively criminal. And in these days of rapid flux of population, when churches move with the seething human tide, I may be pardoned a protest of the heart, at least, against the re- moval of a church — considered as landmark only. But my white spire topping the trees was more than landmark. It was a herald of home. W^ith the appearance of the tall white finger, just ahead, one could feel his heart begin to glow. Not far from the spire were warm hearthstones, and welcoming faces and rest — not the rest of mere surcease from labor, 52 CROSS-LOTS but the rest of being at home. Down the road that winds and winds, past houses out of whose windows look strange faces only, past fields whose waving bounty spells affluence for others than the pilgrims of the road, fare so many homeward-yearning and homesick pil- grims. Akin to the pang of homesickness there is no other. The heart always has reckoned with it; nowadays, even the doctors reckon with it, giving it a distinguished foreign name. But the "nostalgia" of the modern soldier in trench or camp is the same old malady that Jacob suffered from, out under the Syrian stars, one desolate night, long ago. And any object or voice that makes the heart jump with happi- ness at the proximity of home is serving eternal purpose. "Needs nourishin'," whispered my waggish friend, as, dragooned into a little white village church, one Sunday morning, he observed the limp, sad coat-tails of the preacher. I shall not recount the practical outworking of the observation. But I like the phrase: "Needs nourishin* " — not stomachs only, but souls. Every fine impulse, every straining ideal, every homeward cry "needs nourishin'." When a lad, dear to me, confessed afterward to sitting alone under a bridge, near the farm, and cry- ing inwardly, if not vocally, for home, I said. THE WHITE SPIRE 53 "Thank God." I would not cure him of the malady, if I could, except by sight and expe- rience of home. After a visit with Carlyle John Burroughs came back to America, to make this significant record concerning the sometimes truculent prophet of the better day : "A kind of homesickness of the soul was upon him, and it deepened with age." I do not know that Carlyle would have named or admitted it. He did not need to; it was in his eye and^ voice — the insistent, often depleting sigh for the end of the journey and the lights in the windows of home. My white spire helped to accent and to meet that plea. It promised that soon the wheels might rest and the engine cool at the home door. It carried the sojourner's spirit past the gravity point of despair. Often the last few miles of a journey are the most weary- ing of all. Many a pilgrimage, laboriously and heroically made, stops tragically just this side of the radii of the home lights, like the miner who drilled, picked, and shoveled, and then gave up his task when but a thin partition of rock separated him from the realization of his dream and the reward of his toil. I believe that the crucial point in the prodigal's return- ing journey is seldom stressed. In a way it is hidden by the outrunning welcome of the 54 CROSS-LOTS father. For, "when he was yet a great way off" (and desperately tu'ed and piteously ashamed) "the father ran" to meet him. Did the father realize what, otherwise, might have happened .f^ That the way of penitence and amendment might have broken off within sight of the smoke of the home chimney? Such is the pathetic ending of many a beautiful pur- pose. It fails for want of an inspiriting word at the very threshold of fulfillment. Lighthouses are not set in midocean. They are not needed there, but near shore where rocks lift their menace. Comparatively few ships founder. Far greater the tale of those that dash themselves to pieces where the sea floor slopes upward toward shore. Lights are lit near the coast; beacons near the close of the voyage. Perhaps that is the chief business of the church in redemption. The purpose of amendment is mysteriously born — like the prodigal's in the far country. No human instrumentality had part in his redemption until the penitent vagabond was nearly home. Sometimes I think that God could dispense with many other phases of our partnership with him in redemption, if he could be sure of our being on hand to speak the bracing, timely word just as the returning wanderer's feet be- gin to falter within sight and sound of the THE WHITE SPIRE 55 Father's house. Of all this my white spire is both symbol and earnest, confessing what life needs at its critical moments, and declaring what, according to the example of its lord, the church constantly aims to do. But the spire itself. There are spireless churches not a few; churches Roman and Romanesque, Byzantine, pure Greek, Norman, and many another. And, occasionally, a church with a stump of a steeple; or, rather, a steeple that never grew, but stands half-apologetic as an unfulfilled dream. Not so among the white meetinghouses I speak of. By all means, at whatever other sacrifice, the spire. Strange paradox! Commercially viewed, a spire is a piece of Simon-pure extravagance, like the band on a hat or the velvet on a rose petal. The cost of the steeple would have put cushions on hard seats, or a rose window over the organ, or an organ in the loft. Yet the prudent Yankee never seems to have considered the economic wisdom of such shift of emphasis. By all means the steeple. Is it a mere survival? Or pure tradition.'^ Or an expression of eternal hope.' I do not know. But I am glad that, with or without high intent, he continued to crest with an upward-pointing finger his place of hymn and prayer. I like the extravagance of it. I am grateful that, notwithstanding 56 CROSS-LOTS many a horizontal parsimony, he broke loose skyward in a more or less deliberate and con- scious assertion of his kinship with the im- mortals, his indefeasible rights as a son of God. Doubtless the "groves were man's first tem- ples." The strange silences of the forest, the varying voices of the trees, the pungent in- cense of fir and oak, said to him things that were impossible even if it were lawful to utter. Looking up at the stars through the swaying treetops, feeling the cool, white moonbeams play on his heated face, watching day grow in his woody fane, he wondered and wished — and worshiped. And from giant conifer, perhaps, he borrowed his idea of a steeple. He me- morialized, in his little white meetinghouse, his first place of tryst with God. Other styles might change, but not the fashion of that. And so, as my road unwound toward the as yet unglimpsed village, the tall white spire called to me, through the evening shadows, of the spirit to which the Almighty giveth understanding, and of the long, long trail which, wearily sometimes, and sometimes sud- denly, opens out into the sun-bathed clearing by the Gate to the Father's house. WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS That is, if it blows at all. Nowadays it does not blow as formerly. Modern life is fretted with crusades. Few old customs are permitted to endure unchallenged. All that is necessary is to launch a protest, get somebody to espouse it "with sound and fury," baptize it with the romantic name of crusade; and, forthright, you shall have devotees start up anywhere — like the followers of Peter the Hermit or Richard the Lion-Heart — all headed for the rescue of a violated shrine. Thus, in recent times, we have seen crusades against vaccination and vivisection, anti-coffee and anti- nicotine crusades; crusades against flies, smoke- nuisance, common drinking-cup— not to men- tion sweat-shops, child-labor and the saloon — and so on down a lengthy if interesting list. He would be bold who should dare prophesy the next crusade. Upon request I could readily name two or three that I should like to see in full cry. In such heavily charged atmosphere the factory whistle had no chance of escape. Campaigns against unnecessary noises never 67 58 CROSS-LOTS would pass by the whistle. I recall, with un- abated disgust, the palsying hand that was laid upon the church bells of an adopted city of mine. 'Twas a short, ardent crusade in which lovers of the call of the bells fought hopelessly against the "Big Berthas" of the other side. Sentiment usually gets short shrift in a battle with more practical interests, espe- cially when the latter draw ammunition from the arsenal of science. Henceforth the bells must hang voiceless in their towers, Granted that not all bells are melodious; that some of them ring absurdly early and others uncon- scionably long, still I always resented that piece of legislative interference with my friends in the belfrys. For multitudes of people a church bell is about the only outward voice of God. And, firm believer as I am in all sorts of hy- gienics, including eight hours' sleep "per diem — for others — I cannot admit that an extra nap after sunrise on Sunday morning is so important as a call to duty or prayer. Possi- bly it was the disturbed conscience of the protestants that tied the tongues of the bells. Ahab always hates sight and sound of Elijah, whether the prophet be man or beast or re- buking bell. A certain famous parricide con- fessed that the innocent birds in the trees seemed forever twitting him for his crime. WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS 59 Charles the Ninth of France saw blood e^'e^y- where after signing the order for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Night. But I set out to write of whistles, ordinary, steam-blown devices such as once quite uni- versally called men to work, announced lunch hour, and told when the day's work was done. For my part, I am the ally of the whistles. Notwithstanding that nearly everybody now- adays carries a watch, and that an alarm clock may be purchased for two dollars or less, still, I champion the rights and worthy service of the whistle. At their best, watches vary as timepieces, and there must be fixed hours to begin and quit work. Ths fact that my watch was slow, on a particular morning, availed not to save me from being marked tardy at school. In a teeming world, packed with mutualities of obligation— life being almost infinitely retic- ulated — no man can be full law to himself. Even conscience needs frequent regulating. Fixed standards there always must be, however inelastic. Where men work together there needs be a set time to take up the tools and to lay them by, a time to eat and sleep, and a time for the "making of the soul." Hence, in lieu of a better call to privilege and duty at the vast loom of life, I am in favor of the whistle — or its equivalent. 60 CROSS-LOTS I like it most in the morning. Asked what he missed most in his fallen estate, Lucifer confessed drearily: "I miss most the sound of the [celestial] trumpets in the morning." To me there's a healthy challenge in the matutinal call to activity. We have reversed what I believe to be the divine sequence. "And the evening and the morning were the first day," says the ancient record. Night was the prep- aration: day was the consummation. Not toil for sake of the rest to follow, but rest in order to be ready for the toil we are thus qualified to resume. The conventional notion of heaven as a place of everlasting and uninterrupted dolce far niente, following the moil and stress of life, is misleading, if not pernicious. Nothing else so palls upon the real man as inaction does. Even vacation, when it spells idleness chiefly, may be depressingly long at a week. "If the stars did not move, they would rot in the sky." Nor fares better the motionless soul of a man. We were built for action. Apart from the need to work, life is perdition. And, ordinarily, the time to rebegin labor is when the whistle blows in the morning. Indeed, the sound of that morning call may serve to accent, for those on holiday, the sense of release from toil, as it sharpens the misery of such as cannot any more respond to the WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS 61 summons. I am quite familiar with the usual arguments for spending one's vacation far from familiar sights and sounds, where the hammer of the woodpecker or the purl of a neighboring brook fills one's waking ears. In many ways such counsels are profitable. Incidentally, they inure to the profit of transportation companies and such as take summer boarders. On the other hand, there's a fund of philosophy in the tactics of that perhaps mythical Hibernian who, being suddenly released from the necessity of early rising in order to earn his day's bread, engaged a luxurious room at a hotel, and ordered himself called at five o'clock next morning for the sheer delight of assuring the clerk that he "didn't have to get up," and of lying abed as long as he chose. To be in position to defy the mandate of the morning whistle, to let it scream and threaten in vain, may best give to a particular hearer the happy sense of being master instead of servant. Hence, for sake of the added felicity it lends to rest, as well as for the stirring call it sounds to labor, I would keep the whistles blowing in the morning. Occasionally you will meet a person en- dowed with what musicians describe as the faculty of "absolute pitch." Ask such an one for middle C, for example, and he can give it 6^ CROSS-LOTS to you. He is as accurate as a tuning fork, and with this added advantage, of being able to give you any tone in the scale. I might, if I were disposed to be captious, inquire if the tone he sounds would be affected by his race and education — there being several recognized "pitches," German being the lowest, as we discovered recently in matters other than musical. But let that pass. Assume, for sake of the argument, that some folks are endowed with a sense of absolute pitch. The ordinary citizen is not so, as you must admit if ever you have attempted to join in a song for which he "raised the tune." Half an octave too high — and the basses climbing painfully into the seats of the tenors; half an octave too low — and everybody except the basses floundering helplessly out of their musical depth. The ordinary citizen needs somebody to start him right in such matters. Probably he does his full duty when he holds the pitch as supplied him Thus most of us need the whistle. Rarely can we, by forced speed, make up for our failure to begin on time. With a hundred fidelities and ministries, as with multitudinous enterprises for individual or community ad- vantage, this is the only fault to allege, that they started so late. Not until a long desolate WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS 63 line of British prisoners had chafed out their lives, and John Howard, their protagonist, had immured himself on a prison-ship, that he might taste the horror of it, did prison-reform begin in England. Not until a land ran blood from Harpers Ferry to Appomattox Courthouse, came emancipation here. Not until it was all but too late to strike at all, did we dehver our great blow in France. Not until the pleasant cup had bitten into myriads of homes, and had stung to death both prince and pauper together, was death sentence passed upon John Barleycorn. Not, perhaps, until class-con- sciousness and class-greed have perfidiously shaken every stone in the temple of human freedom will an adequate herald of the new day be heard. The young Prince Bonaparte lost his life by taking his usual ten minutes' margin. That was his nickname, "Mr. Ten- minutes." He never saw the need of prompti- tude. And when, one fateful day, with the enemy crowding, he allowed himself the wonted grace — this time for breakfast — his life paid forfeit. Thank God, then, for any voice, how- ever strident, that tells us when it is time to begin. So, I like the summons of the whistle in the morning. And I like it when it blows for surcease from labor. Ordinarily, to heed the call away from 64 CROSS-LOTS bench and office is only less important than to be on hand when the whistle blows for toil. Ordinarily, "taps" are as imperious a mandate as is "reveille." After the day's work is done, the worker must rest, play, and sleep, if he would be ready to obey the whistle next morn- ing. In my childhood days there were folks who, according to a laughing characterization, "did not know that the war was over." At the drop of a hat they were ready to fight it through again — at least, verbally. North or South, their spirit was the same. They could not bring themselves to the point of discarding war-togs. The smallest circumstance set them bellicose. They had not heard the whistle blow when Lee surrendered. And you shall find a kindred spirit among some solemn-faced toilers. Like a pet dog of mine, once at grips they do not know when to let go. Having put their hand to the plow they are so far from the peril of turning back they fain would take it to bed with them. Whereas everybody ought to know that you cannot hold a man to maxi- mum tension and keep him a man. In the unregenerate days of my banjo- playing it used to be said that the strings should be loosened at night, that such a string, kept taut, loses strength and tone. I am not sure — about strings. As I recall, I snapped as WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS 65 many tightening them again next morning as went wrong from unrelieved tension. But with respect to folks the case is as plain as a pikestaff. You cannot hold folks at strain, day and night. Something will break — cour- age or ideal or conscience. Always there must be room for the whole man to unbend and breathe. Even a razor is said to regain a cer- tain balance of atoms by being laid aside to "rest" for a few days. The most unfeeling Prussian commander knew better than to hold his shock-troops to their racking task indef- initely. Back from the line they must go, to regather verve and dash. Something vital gives way in a man when working hours are too long protracted. I am not prepared to admit that the "union scale" of hours is valid. It would appear, almost, as if, in the readjustments with which we are threatened, not work but play will get the emphasis as life's real vocation. None the less must we admit the rationale and sanc- tity of "hours off." All work and no play makes Jack worse than a dull boy; it reduces him to the level of a machine, kills the song in him. And one of the ultimate disasters to manhood is the death of the song in the heart. Luther, with his favorite musical instrument for avocation; Ole Bull, hanging out over a 66 CROSS-LOTS cliff that he might catch the overtones of the sea; Gladstone, felling trees in the forest at Hawarden; Tennyson climbing to the eyrie of his summer home that he might cool his spirit in the deeps of the sky; my mother with her open Bible and the faraway, lovely look in her eyes, all knew how to obey the whistle when it sounds toward evening. Out of the mills where things are made to the free spaces where souls are remade! Away from the jar and jangle of the shop, to the sweet solitudes of star and hill, or the ineffable com- munion of friend with friend! And with acclaim! If there's a song for working hours, there's another and different song for quitting time. Have you watched school children pour out of their building when lessons were through for the day? Doors seemed scarcely wide enough to let the out- rushing tide run free. Such a flood of boisterous young life filling sidewalk and street; and shouts, hats flung high, and laughing abandon, when school is out. Pardon the exuberance if you must — and then imitate it as you may, in the more self-conscious, awkward fashion of maturity, when your own day's work is done. Somewhat ails the pupil who, like a coil of spring-steel, released, fails to let go with a rush and a whirr at dismissal time. And a WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS 67 still more serious malady has already befallen the grown-up if his heart does not, with a great leap, answer when the whistle blows toward sunset. Alas, that we take life's vary- ing gifts so sedately! But sometimes one does not hear the whistle. Times are when one ought not to hear it. Asked the secret of his wizardlike achievements, Edison replied: 'T never look at the clock." Doubtful if he notices the whistle when it announces to his employees that they are ex- cused for the remainder of the day. Why not admit that so we touch the nerve of difference between them and him.f^ W^hoso permits any whistle to time his ardors and endeavors will continue to be a servant. From a distant city, and by a hand to me dear, comes this com- ment upon life in a great industrial plant. About two minutes before the whistle blows at noon most of the employees begin to un- wrap their lunches. And by the time that raucous steam voice begins to sound jaws are already in action. Exactly. I know the spirit and feel the peril of it. And my correspondent notes the general disapproval of any employee who so far affronts the majority as to work overtime. Precisely. That is the benumbing, devitalizing logic of unionism. Inevitably per- haps, but not less certainly, the spirit of the 68 CROSS-LOTS guild puts a discount upon initiative. It for- bids a man to do the best he is capable of, lest it injure the chances of the man who is content with delivering less than his max- imum output. Except for double pay it proscribes work beyond whistle time. Whereas, as every ardent toiler knows, and all his leisurely mates ought to learn, best work is love work, done con amore. Love seldom watches the clock except in impatience lest the time be too short for the task. Love hates the rule of the small but inexorable hands on the dial. Love is never satisfied until it has done its utmost. Nor then, even. Love is the most exacting master known, though the cords with which it binds are silk. Fancy Phidias timing the passion that went into his marbles. Or Lord Macaulay reckoning, in hours, the pains he ought to take with his pages. Or Florence Nightingale allowing any chronometer made by hands to say when she had done her full duty for wounded men. Or a great mother lamenting the length of her vigils and the cost of her loving. What's "time" to one in love with his task or his friend.'* Is it because "God is love" that, as the theologians say, our category of hours and minutes is nonexistent for him.?* "Leave time to dogs and apes," counseled WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS 69 Browning, "man has forever." Upon the rugged coast of New England, just where Maine and New Hampshire touch, the doorstep of his cottage lapped by the tide or lashed by the surf, lived and died among his canvases, one of America's foremost artists. One day a friend of mine got past the portal of the recluse's home, and offered to buy one of the pictures. And the painter looked as grieved as if my friend had suggested the purchase of a child. Not a can- vas was yet finished, their creator protested, touching some of them lovingly. When the mood seized him, he wished one could live with- out food and sleep. So speaks the lover in the artist. And his work is love-work. He is excused when he heeds not the whistle. But there are whistle-calls other than morn- ing and evening. Fire in the neighborhood per- haps — and the metal voice screaming for help. Or the advent of New Year — and whistles in all factories and down the bay breaking into dissonant chorus. Or such a moment as that in which the wires flashed word that the armistice was signed, and a piteously hurt world could begin to bind up its wounds. One could wish whistles were sensate, that they might ache with the pain or burn with the gladness of their mes- sage. And we whose ears are besieged by the cries, how about us? Prompt enough to obey the 70 CROSS-LOTS morning challenge, ready to lay down the tools of our trade at a dismissing voice, so enamored of our task that we wish we could work on — and on, what is our response when the whistle blows its emergency blast? "Oh, we're sunk enough, God knows; But not quite so sunk that moments Sure though seldom are denied us. When the Spirit's true endowments Stand out clearly from his false ones." To hear the great call of a special need or a special privilege is the crowning mark of a man. Most of us do fairly well on the dead levels of every day; that is, we keep going. In the commonplace we are found faithful — which is no mean triumph. But there are great moments in which ages culminate, and doors besieged by bleeding hands, through im- patient ages, stand wide at length. God gave Savonarola such a call, and the monk answered with his life. God sounded such a challenge for Lincoln, and his response is the glory of a race. God vouchsafed to Woodrow Wilson a great voice. Is it too soon to say whether he obeyed it or not.^ Signs are not wanting that the whistles are about to sound for obligations and oppor- tunities of staggering moment. To be passive and comfortable and complaisant in these tense days is crime. Listen! There goes the whistle! VI IN A LOOKING GLASS Evidently, he enjoyed what he saw. At the least it interested him intensely. He could scarcely have been more engrossed if he had been watching for his ship to come in, or his woman's face in a doorway. At the moment of his entrance, passing as he did a convenient chair to select a less accessible seat, I had not realized his intent. But it soon became ap- parent that he chose his seat for the view it afforded — and that view was himself. What a delightful time he had, incidentally granting me another, if half sardonic. For, in a way, I saw what he saw and a trifle more. I saw how he looked when he looked at himself in the glass. Likely he was pleased with the reflected image; though I doubt if Phidias would have picked him for a subject, or Rem- brandt. He was smoking when the seance with himself began. And he smoked to the image in the glass. He pursed his lips till the result seemed to please him; poised his cigarette daintily (I suppose) ; admired the way he inhaled the pleasant fumes, and then blew 71 72 CROSS-LOTS a cloud of incense at his mirrored presentment. He tilted his head artistically; wiped his lips with reflective care; touched cheek and brow as if to be sure that the too, too solid flesh had not melted; finally flung away his burned- out cigarette and frankly admired himself — until I wished he would light another cigarette, to divide his attention. And when I had gotten enough, I left him solemnly engaged in a mutual admiration society of one; and came away to ruminate. As follows — more or less. Somewhat timidly I confess to a growing antipathy for mirrors. It is not clear to me that the aesthetic service they render counterbalances the mischief wrought by them. As ornaments, and for the harmless optical deceits they play in salons and corridors, not to speak of their obviously utilitarian uses, the case for them seems clear enough. I suppose that, lacking mirrors, the world might suffer a vast increase of frowsy heads, unshaven cheeks and neck-gear set awry. And I doubt not that tailors and beauty artists generally would fight the aboli- tion of mirrors as bitterly as any of them fought prohibition. But even that is not the point: the point is whether folks get more good or evil from mirrors. Some one tells of a Hindoo potentate who, IN A LOOKING GLASS 73 being shown, through a microscope, a drop of water from his sacred river, wrathf ully smashed the revelatory instrument. Very stupid, of course; but who has escaped a similarly mur- derous mood with respect to looking glasses? In Holyrood Palace, Scotland, I saw the old glass into which Queen Mary is said to have turned her witchingly beautiful face. Before it she prinked, perhaps, the night Rizzio made his last ascent of her stairs. Toward it she turned angry eyes and flushed cheeks at memory of Darnley. Did she hate or love it the more? What part played it in the tragedy of her stormy, petulant life? "The tragedy of the first gray hair," as a modern essayist phrases it, is a mirror- tragedy. Sometimes I think we might live longer, and fight more courageously, the while, if we were not compelled to watch the battle go against us in our own coun- tenances. Among the mixed memories of a month on a hospital cot is the sight I got of a face hag- gard, enswathed, parchment-pale. Any sensible patient ought to have turned his back upon so unprepossessing an apparition. Yet I didn't. Despite our sane resolves and fine philosophies, gruesome aspects exert a strange fascination. Usually it is difficult to hold one's eyes averted from a birthmarked face or a 74 CROSS-LOTS mangled form in the street. By as much as that he "came and looked" at the' wounded traveler on the Jericho road, before passing on, the Levite was more like the rest of us than was the priest in the parable. I do not quite understand how the priest got past without pausing to look, unless his was that unruffled, nonhuman poise which maintains itself by avoiding always the sight which disturbs. So I continued to cast reproachful if furtive glances at the face in the mirror. With a right good will I could have shattered the un- flattering article of furniture. Nay, I raged inwardly at the patient who presented to the glass such a subject. And so I lost part of the courage needed to play the game of getting well. But the man in the train. If ever he reads this, he must needs forgive the liberty taken. One does not find, every day, so vivid an illus- tration of the way all of us are tempted to live our lives — before the glass, I mean. Not a tangible thing of glass and quicksilver, but the mirror of public opinion. Some folks never seem able to shake themselves clear of solicitude concerning the impression they are making as they sip their tea or wipe their eyes or phrase their vocal prayers. Whatever else they forget, they always remember that they IN A LOOKING GLASS 75 have a dignity to support or a reputation to maintain. Correct, fastidious, aesthetic souls are they who never break a rule or shock a propriety. They remind me of the most won- derful automaton I ever saw. The fabrica- tion of it must have taken a lifetime almost. It was the most correct imitation of a human being one could imagine. Every motion obeyed the rules of symmetry. When an arm was raised, it was with perfect curves. Had the automaton been provided with articulate utter- ance, you would have listened in vain for an improper pronoun or a double negative. I suppose it could have cooed in love-terms or raged mechanically — like stage thunder that always begins and leaves off at the proper instant. But who can fancy wishing to be loved by those automatic arms or prayed for by the tinted lips? Mostly, give me the men and women who are not even aware when they happen to mix metaphors, and who can fracture a code of etiquette without apologizing forever. There is about bloodheat somewhat that defies analysis. You can tell what is in cold blood: you cannot name all the elements that mix in a pulsing artery. And it is red, pounding blood that does all the great work in the world, and com- passes all beautiful redemptions. If ever man- 76 CROSS-LOTS kind had caught Jesus posing once, it would have scorned him eventually. Here was the trouble with the Pharisee out in front of the temple, reciting his claims to the homage of gods and men. Doubtless he was all the correct things he said he was. Doubtless he lacked all the patent flaws that even a tyro could pick in the publican. But he was essen- tially manufactured, mechanical, sterilized mor- ally. If ever he had beat his breast in peni- tence, like the publican, the act would have been chiefly an exhibition. And if he had cried for mercy, he would have been concerned with the religious spectacle he made in the performance. Not by the skill of such metic- ulous Churchmen comes in the New Day. Their hands are too cold to ring the chimes of its morning. Their clock stops at duty, nor runs on to joy. All the Great-hearts are warm hearts. As Emerson has it, "Nothing good or great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm." And the last consideration with a passionate friend or servant of mankind is how his coat hangs or what his neighbors will make of his heat. Imagine Theodore Roosevelt rehearsing before a mirror one of his torrential invectives, or Abraham Lincoln preening himself laboriously before he met his Cabinet in the dark days of 1863, or John ^ IN A LOOKING GLASS 77 Bright asking full leave for his defiance of vested rights, or John Knox submitting his eagle pinions to conventional shears, or Saint Paul conferring with flesh and blood as to what sophists and epicures would think of his pro- gram, or Jesus posing the hand with which he broke the loaves, or cadencing beforehand the words that dropped from his lips on the cross. You cannot imagine such things with- out negativing the glory of the redemptions wrought by earth's gallant, venturing souls. I do not mean to imply that we can afford to be indifferent to the impression our conduct makes, or the normal reaction, in contemporary lives, of our prayer or industry. So far as we can compass it, we ought to take every honor- able care that our good be not evil spoken of. Always it is worth while to match dignity of language to dignity of thought, and grace of hand to grace of spirit. The canvas not worth a good frame is not much of a canvas. But to spend our chief concern upon the container instead of the content is woeful. Shakespeare's famous analogue of the world as a stage carries a pernicious implication, that the part we play is for the sake of the audience. To do one's work for the sake of the work is nobler even than to do it for the sake of God — when God is the real audience. I mean that courage 78 CROSS-LOTS and chivalry as an expression of God far transcend courage and chivalry displayed for the approval of God. But my friend of the mirror; I wonder what is the name of his boss. Would he toil just as hard if the boss never passed that way? Is it wages or fame that he craves? One of my juvenile friends went to work in his father's shop. Soon he learned to make a certain kind of trap. And he told me with gusto of the specimen trap he made. It represented his best endeavor. And he said that, every time he saw the foreman approaching, he set the specimen trap in plain view. That was the only trap he made for the foreman's eye: he scamped the others. And he seemed piqued at the foreman's lack of interest in the speci- men trap. Life is not dress parade. Life is a march, a campaign, a battle. And the man who funks on march may soonest and most heroically drench his uniform with his own blood. Evidently, we are still under the blight of an antedUuvian misconception concerning work. Still we watch Adam slouching out of Eden, head down, teeth set, feet reluctant, because henceforth he must work; forgetting that his business in the garden was to work. Said Bishop Greer in burning phrases: "When- ever a man is so circumstanced that he does IN A LOOKING GLASS 79 not need to work for bread, he must all the harder toil for somewhat else than bread. Only so can he escape the curse in Hfe and find the blessing in it." And as with work, so with the play of sym- pathy. Service is a stunted, shriveled thing when it is rendered for the sake of being seen. Jesus once described a class of benefactors with nothing to live for — generous men, so called: men who head subscription lists and feed the hungry, but who sound a trumpet when they give their alms. "Verily," adds Jesus, "they have their reward." They had been lavish for the sake of being "seen"; hence they had got their reward, all of it. I dislike to guess how many philanthropic nerves would be cut if our gifts to the needy were dissociated from the fame of them. Not mine to say how much more refreshing is a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple than for the joy of being caught in the act. I am merely suggesting the peril of being a "mirror-man." Grief too runs all too easily to ostentation. "Stylish Mourning Apparel," announces an enterprising firm — as if any really broken heart cared a fig for being in style as to habiliments of sorrow. The last consideration of deep grief is the effect it is producing upon the bystander. "When I mo'ns, I mo'ns," protested a stricken 80 CROSS-LOTS sister of color: black-bordered kerchief, black garments, black-edged stationery — not a single outward sign of grief must be omitted, lest her neighbors pronounce her sorrow less than consuming. Fancy being able to grade loneli- ness as half-loneliness and so on. The moment I find a widowed heart beginning to be self- conscious of grief, and solicitous as to the suitable appearance of his melancholy, my own heart ceases to ache for him. I love the way that old Israelitish king wore his sackcloth. As he walked up and down the walls of his beleaguered city, none guessed how deeply the iron had pierced his own soul. Not until one day, when, swept by paroxysmal sorrow for his people, he rent his outer garments — "And be- hold he had sackcloth, within, upon his flesh." Mostly, there is the place for om* mourning emblems. Great grief has no more use for a mirror than for the wailing place or the tear- bottle of the ancients. Grief is greatest and noblest in restraint. Then it is a sacred thing, too sacred for advertisement or exploitation. And character.'* If honesty is its own re- ward, it ought not to need so loud applause. And if truth and purity were self-satisfying virtues, if the beauty of holiness were equally beautiful as a flower that blushes unseen, we should live the same sort of life abroad as at IN A LOOKING GLASS 81 home; in the dark as in the day. Whereas, the trouble with most of us is that we require the constant stimulus of pubheity. If you have noticed how the ordinary man straightens his shoulders and steadies his gait when he walks toward a mirror, you have an illustration of the added dignity our piety takes on in company. I cannot imagine Jesus as being a Christian for the sake of Peter and Thomas. For the full unveiling of his soul he sought the solitude. Only by surprise did his friends catch him at his highest reach. O, man of the mirror, thou hast taught me much! vn THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT Estimates vary startlingly — all the way from a good time to a living. Evidently, the estimate varies with the individual. One of my college mates had it figured out that the world owed him a salary of at least three thousand dollars per year. And Helena Richie insisted hotly that she was entitled to her precious fling of reckless happiness. Most people believe that the world owes them three score and ten years, with health thrown in to make good measure. Few normal boys would concede that they are collecting more than their just dues when they replevin against a neighbor's apple trees for all the fruit they can eat. Shylock's claim was his pound of flesh — no more, and certainly no less; Faust's a year of pleasing himself; Becky Sharp's, the privilege of shocking her friends. I suppose the average hobo holds the world chargeable for a life of easy if inelegant leisure, together with such sundry emoluments as he may pick up along the way. And I have heard good women maintain the inherent right of every 82 THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT 83 woman to motherhood. 'Tis an interesting code; and it accounts for most of the anomalies, not to say moral obHquities, in the practices of folks. What the world owes may be col- lected at the convenience of the creditor. But it was left to a street-car advertisement to set the thesis in startling form. "The world owes you a car," read the placard, evenly; and went on to indicate how the debt might be collected on an easy-payment plan. As "ads" go, it was a good one; and as such things go, it kept the average of truth-telling among vendors. Despite high-sounding resolutions adopted by advertising men in convention, the idea of veracity as an asset in hawking wares does not seem to have got into practice. '^Emptor caveat" is almost as wise counsel to the prospective purchaser of to-day as when the Latin first phrased such caution. The burden of proof is usually on the buyer. Mostly he discounts by a fair percentage the value of his purchase. I have rarely secured a bar- gain at bargain prices. Yet the fact is that if one were to judge by the display-type benefits proclaimed in any morning paper, he might conclude that the whole race of merchants had turned philanthropists, and were trying, at their own expense, to enrich the community. So, I say, the particular street-car placard 84 CROSS-LOTS referred to cut as close to the line of truth as such enticements are supposed to. Moreover, the declaration that "The world owes you a car," probably chimed pleasantly with a grow- ing popular conviction. Multitudes seem to be so thoroughly persuaded of the world's debt to them of cars, they have pressed their claims, even at the expense of mortgages on their homes, and of letting the grocer and doctor go unpaid. And as if to accent sardonically the thesis, while this plausible *'ad" was run- ning, automobiles were being appropriated, on the public thoroughfares of a certain city, at the rate of a hundred thousand dollars' worth per month, and a well- organized "fence" was conducting a lucrative business in stealing cars and altering them for market. Even boys seemed to have caught the infection in a milder form, and were working on the assump- tion that the world owed each of them the use of a car for a joy ride occasionally. Mind, I am not blaming the epidemic upon the specious advertiser. He was merely crys- tallizing, for business purposes, a popular be- lief. One might even venture to hope that the man who phrased the "ad" got a fair reward for his cleverness. What I am ques- tioning is the assumption that the world owes us anything besides day and night, and water THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT 85 to wash our faces, and a small patch of ground for our bones to lie in when we are done using them. Syllogistically put, the argument might run like this: we came into the world without personal request to that end. Being in the world, we must have bread; and butter, if you please. Therefore the world owes us the bread and butter, and other things in pro- portion. Precisely. But the trouble with the argument is that it proves too much or too little, according as you take it. As a matter of fact, the world of grocers and butchers, of clothiers and automobile manufacturers, had as little to do with our being in the world as had the angels or the conjectural inhabitants of Mars. Whatever obligation for our liveli- hood rests anywhere must lodge at the door of our parents, who, according to the argument, ought to have "endowed" us, so to say, with more tangible assets than love of music or ease or genius for making out good cases for ourselves. Let the pessimists howl as they will, I hold that life is not a penalty but an opportunity. WTioso would prefer not to have been born is at liberty to cherish his preference. But his preference is not likely to alter the fact, more than taking thought will add a cubit to his stature or change the color of his eyes or make 86 CROSS-LOTS grapes grow from thistles. And the fact is that, most obviously, we are here to use every muscle, every brain cell, every rare gift of our equipment. Maltbie Babcock used to urge his hearers to quit talking about the hving which the world owed them and stress the life they owed the world. In that is the real direc- tion of the argument. Backed by God, our forebears did a great thing for us when they gave us the power and place to dream and love and work; in other words, when they gave us the birthright of manhood or womanhood. Upon us rests the solemn obligation to make the most of our birthright. Merely to be in the world for a few years touched with sor- row; to have opportunity to breathe its October airs and smell its flower beds, to count its stars and hear the music of the spheres, to taste the inexpressible sweetness of love and know Stevenson's "happiness of doing good work," this is privilege beyond words to de- clare. I am not sure but the angels would be glad to exchange places with us. Of course, one must not leave out of reckon- ing the cripples who never could play leap- frog or climb a mountain; and the congenitally blind who never felt the intoxication of a sun- set or a rainbow, and the hearts whose bread has been salted with tears. Of course one THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT 87 must not forget them; but one must not re- member too bitterly what many of them seem divinely able to forget. One need not pity Milton and Beethoven for their afflictions, or Keats and Stevenson for their frail bodies, or Paul for his sore infirmity, or Jesus for his crown of thorns. If Robert Louis Stevenson, in his long losing fight for a chance to live three score and ten, ever felt sorry for himself, he cloaked it in such whimsies as made you feel he was laughing at his own lean face. He did more for Samoa than Samoa did for him. He put it on the map of earth's holy places. *'I've had such a good time," he said, reviewing the battle. Think of him inditing the lines of his Child's Garden of Verse, propped in bed, one arm in a sling, his eyes savagely painful, and his voice so far gone he could scarcely speak without paroxysms of cough- ing. Then hear him again: "I've had such a good time." I do not know what he reckoned the world's debt to him, but it is evident enough what he reckoned he owed the world. And he paid it victoriously — courage, cheer, reverence for all the sweet sanctities of life, and an almost rollicking good humor. John Addington Sy- monds at Harrow School was frail and bit- terly homesick. "I thought my heart would break," he wrote long afterward, "as I scrunched 88 CROSS-LOTS the muddy gravel beneath the boughs of the dripping trees. But I said to myself, *I have to be made a man here!'" So much he owed the world — manhood. That he paid the debt royally may be guessed by the fact that the first to bring flowers to his bier was a Swiss porter who, knowing naught of the litterateur's fame, recognized the serene manliness of him. You shall not find any of earth's rare spirits haggling over their claim against the world, or scolding like a fishwife at the world's de- fault of payments. What you do find is a shining admission of the world's indefeasible claim upon them^ and a splendid readiness to meet, in terms of courage and sacrificial in- dustry, the recurring payments on the debt. Fancy Roosevelt or Lincoln, Garibaldi or Kosciusko, Melanchthon or Justin Martyr putting in a bill of credit against his age. So would they overset the pedestals on which they stand in the esteem of mankind. No, the record is different, and inexpressibly more precious. Take a leaf anywhere from the Book of the Immortals, and it tells the story of life poured out like water in passionate eagerness to meet the world's claim. *T am debtor," cried a converted persecutor. Not a word about the world's obligation to him; just a frank confession of his obligation to the / THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT 89 world. Therein is the most convincing proof of his conversion. Whereas, before, he had been worried lest the world default payment to him, now his concern was that, after having "preached to others," himself might be a "castaway." And the Man from whom Paul learned his lesson spent his strength and bled himself white in an awesome passion of self-devotement. I venture to suggest a few of the payments an average man ought to make on account of his debt to the world. First, he is under bond to work hard, to wreak himself into his day's stint. Earth has scant burial place, never standing-room, for the idler. "Ef you-all can't run," shouted a frightened son of Ham to a couple of impeding rabbits between the corn- rows, one night when ghosts walked, "Ef you-all can't run, fer de Lawd's sake git outen de way and gib me er chance." To be in the way of earth's enterprising sons, in their race against time, is unfair, at the least. We owe the world work, good work at whatever wages, union scale or other. Time was when a journeyman bricklayer could lay fifteen hundred bricks per day. I suppose he could still. But the union won't let him. Nowadays four hundred is the stint. Nowadays the wage is everything. Few are the workers who act as if they were in debt to the world. But the obligation re- 90 CROSS-LOTS mains; and even Russian Bolshevists are shame- facedly admitting that their scheme of things is not functioning noiselessly. It cannot. The whole movement of creation is against them. To fill every working day with clean, con- scientious toil will not overpay our account. "That which each can do best," said Emerson, "only his Maker can teach him." And that which each can do best, he owes to his Maker to do at his utmost. Locke and others, in some exceedingly readable novels, have glorified a sort of vagabondage. But there is no real halo for idle rich or idle poor. Even Solomon in all his glory of gilded leisure advised the sluggard to go to the ant for rebuke and pre- cept. Work is the law — hand work, brain work, work of heart or spirit — work is the inexorable law. Every child of Adam owes work to the world. And a clean life. "Slightly soiled," adver- tises the merchant as explanation of his cut price. He does not expect full price for much behandled fabrics or wares. If you are will- ing to have the bloom worn off your purchases by other hands than your own, you can usually save money. But the average purchaser feels a bit cheapened himself when he accepts soiled goods, however slight the soiling. Pity that we are not equally exacting in ethics. Pity THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT 91 that we are ready to compound so many felonies of the soul by taking damaged lives at full value. Pity that the man who demands an umblemished golf stick or traveling bag apologizes for flaws of character in his friend or his mate. Pity that the woman who buys her linen and ribbons immaculate is less in- sistent in the choice of a spouse. Except with the credential of a clean life, none can offer God good work. Smutty hands leave their stain on picture and poem, on commercial suc- cess and most forthright statesmanship. Aaron Burr was able but not clean. Byron's poetry is stained by his profligacy. Wagner's music shows the marks of an incontinent soul. White robes were as important a mark of identifica- tion as palms and a great song, in the vision John saw of the triumphant. "I will live a white life," shouted Carlyle, "if I go to hell for it," whereas, nowadays, a saddening throng of our brothers and sisters seem to be entirely willing to go to hell for the privilege of living a soiled life. Current literature, plays, dress, speech mournfully confess that we are shifting the emphasis from quality of life. In absence of cleanness of spirit one cannot make the partial payment of good work. There needs come, and soon, a campaign for asepsis of soul. So much we owe to the world. 92 CROSS-LOTS And a ready sympathy. I have grasped hands that chilled me. Perhaps the fault was a poor circulation. Yet I distrust the owner of a hand that hes like a fishtail, dead and clammy, in your palm. Cleverness, symmetry, artistic molding — nothing takes the place of the warmth of a sympathetic hand. One cannot get far, he can scarcely hope to get ahead without arterial currents of considerate feeling. Ours is a vast brotherhood. Consciously or not, we have been put under obligation to a long line of comrades, some in broadcloth and some in overalls. Moreover, the riots that run in our own blood, not to say the cruelties we barely escape practicing, ought to make us wondrous kind to our urdovely fellows. "But for the grace of God there goes John Bunyan," con- fessed the Bedford tinker as a vagabond went by. "Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted," warned the tent-maker from Tarsus. To be a great brother as Lincoln was, as John Bright, as Shaftesbury the Seventh Earl, as Hildebrand, as Jesus par excellence, is to make shining payment on our debt to the world. And to smile. Never yet have we justly appraised the value of smiles among the world's assets. "Only a smile," pleads a hymn of dubious melody. As if smiles were cheap. Sometimes, to smile is sterner test of character THE WORLD IN OUR DEBT 98 than to die. Smiles through tears — was ever rainbow as transfiguring of a cloud? Smiles amid pain, smiles spite of doubts and fears, smiles at the childish vanities and strutting heroics of men; smiles of indulgence, smiles of pity, smiles of welcome for wayward feet — God give us a new rating of smiles. The tradesman who smiles at me over the counter may cheat me a little, and I shall not be too severe. The friend who smiles his love into my eyes helps me through the day. And the little child who looks heaven at me with a radiant, trustful smile may own me. Doubt- less there are debts that can be paid with frowning brows and black displeasure. But there's a world-debt that never begins to be liquidated until we learn the divine craft of smiles. But I have just begun to catalogue the pay- ments we owe on our debt to the world; and my essay grows too long. At the end of the journey, we owe it to ourselves as well as to the world to die unafraid. There comes be- fore me the face of an aged pilgrim who, by terror of dying, had spoiled a thousand days of the journey. Small indispositions threw her into convulsions of fear; and an ordinary cough sounded like the Pale Rider's alarm at the outer door. What's the use of dying a thousand 94 CROSS-LOTS deaths preliminary to the final event? Death is not nearly so fearsome as life: just a gasp, or a few anguishes, and sleep — and morning! Whereas life is battle and pain and problem. Death is as normal as falling asleep at the end of a tiresome day. John Wesley once observed that his people died well. Why not, if they had lived well.^^ From the red-stained battle- fields of France came back a thousand lustrous chronicles of men unafraid, unashamed at the Great Summons. "Our son has received the great promotion," wired an eminent commander when his boy fell in action. But why expect a soldier to die so much better than a civilian? If the former owes it to his country to face death as a man, is the latter's obligation less? "She lived every minute she lived," whispered a friend by my mother's casket. No time squandered in dreading the turn of the road. So to live that "when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan . . . Thou go . . . Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams," is the final payment on our debt to the world. VIII THE BACK ROAD I CANNOT now recall the name of it, if, in- deed, I ever knew. I mean the proper name of it — Myrtle Avenue, or Vine Street, or Cot- tage Lane. Somebody referred to it as the "back road"; invidiously, no doubt; somebody who lived on the front street or aspired so to do; somebody who measures residential values by the number of automobiles passing a cer- tain corner per hour; somebody who thought more of macadam than of McDougall or Mc- Intyre. So I followed directions, and on the back road found what and whom I was seeking — and a deal besides. Any ordinary mortal, from six years upward, can name the obvious advantages of the front road. They rarely need to be proved, merely aflSrmed. The front road has a fame safe and serene. Whereas the back road has first to live down its name, to say nothing more. It takes time (which, for most of us, is too scant at best) and a trip thither (which most of us usually avoid) and a harvesting eye (which is not yet universally esteemed) to dis- cover the advantages of the back road. 06 96 CROSS-LOTS Sometimes I fancy that we could secure more out of life's comings and goings if we were denied the dubious blessings of guide- books and copies of Who's Who, together with all sorts of advice as to what to look for and how to travel and whom to esteem. We should blunder occasionally, of course, but we should also blunder into some haunts of un- assuming beauty, and bypaths where human excellencies grow, unpublished, to heroic size. To find out a few things for oneself, whether in science or letters, in art or life, adds im- mensely to the piquancy of living, to say nothing of the enhanced values of the dis- coveries themselves. Formerly, when I took an extended auto- mobile trip, or even a hundred-mile drive in unfamiliar neighborhoods, I kept one eye on that supposed sine qua non of the gas-driven tourist, the Automobile Blue Book. I thus knew when we were approaching a bridge, and how much longer a stretch of bad road would last, where to cut the corners, and a hundred other more or less important things. There is so much in a Blue Book — and so much left out. And, for the sake of becoming ac- quainted with the left-out features, I am willing to miss part of the wisdom between the covers. Rarely do you pass up or down the THE BACK ROAD 97 back road if you follow the Blue Book. That volume of wisdom stresses the short way or the historic way; the smooth way or the way past the best hotel. Whereas in certain moods of mine, I'd rather miss a section of the Lincoln Highway than to fail to travel the little un- celebrated lane that winds past the spring, under the willows, or by the cottage spattered with climbing roses or honeysuckle. I've nothing against the turnpike; most times I travel that way. But whoso would fare whither life is most normally lived, and altar fires glow brightest and prayers are frequent, must choose the back road now and then. Most folks hve on the back road, so to speak. Barring an occasional town or village whose main street passes the door of nearly every resident, you will find more back roads than broad thoroughfares, more side streets than avenues. The "average man" whose case Kate Field used to plead, and to whom Albert Shaw dedicates a volume, lives on the back road. Say that he cannot afford to live anywhere else, or that he has escaped the itch for having his house pointed out to strangers; explain the fact as you may, the fact is that he is born and raises his family on, and goes to the cemetery from, the back road. I was surprised, recently, having occasion to 98 CROSS-LOTS depart from the highway through a certain township, to find so many houses on the back road. I had never quite credited the alleged population of the township. More than once I had wondered where lived all the folks whom I saw at town meeting or the local clambake. Now I had got my cue — on the back road. From corners and crossroads, away from the cry of the tourist's horn, came most of the votes, and the strength which made the coun- tryside blossom in clover and grain, and a majority of the boys who dared death, in France, for their cause. I do not allege that they are better folks, and braver, who live on the back road. Such aspersions were snarled, in England, a few years ago. But among the first to go over the top toward the Hun — and the morning beyond — were the sons of the titled. All I am saying is that the untitled are in the huge majority, and live on the back road, where life is supposed to be drab, yet love springs as sweet as in mansions — and safer perhaps; and real content has a fairer chance to grow than on the crowded turnpike. Anyhow, there we live, most of us, uncele- brated except as we break out into spectacular human service or sin; inconspicuous in the light of the common day. Such was my first surprise, that afternoon. THE BACK ROAD 99 as I swung, unexpectant, into the back road. It was the surprise of numbers. I should have maintained that I knew the town and country- side, having driven through it scores of times — on the turnpike. In reahty I knew very little about the district until I traveled one of its many back roads. My second surprise was at the size and attractiveness of some of the dwellings. For a moment I wondered — stupidly, of course — why anybody, with means to erect so sub- stantial and modern a home, should pick a site on the back road. Then, with sense of shame at my query, I realized that the owner probably built it, not to be pointed out but to be lived in. To be squalid in public view is a sort of community offense; but to be squalid at all is the real affront. Residence on the main street helps to keep a man up to his best. But the way he lives when the crowd is looking in some other direction, tells the sort of man he really is. And the son of God who builds always a yet more stately mansion for his own soul, that his deepest self may be adequately housed, is the real man. One can- not imagine the "great Mr. Atkins," in one of Joseph Lincoln's quaint tales of the Cape Cod region, as choosing to live in any but a pretentious house, with big iron dogs near 100 CROSS-LOTS the entrance, if possible, and on the main street of the village, of course. That sort of domicile is frequently a confession — an attempt to conceal, beneath ample appearances, the mediocrity and shabbiness of the owner's life. On the back road is not the same temptation. I should say that a roomy, wide- windowed, deep-porched dwelling, built there, is not con- fession but expression; a sort of naive claim to soul-room and dignity of spirit. "You can only weigh what you are," put in a youngster watching a stranger's antics on an automatic weighing machine. "'Tain't no use to swell out your chest and jounce up and down on the thing, you can only weigh what you are." And when one builds a house to live in, personally, it isn't much use to build it bigger than its occupants. Time and events are brutally frank appraisers. It was said, a generation ago, of a famous visiting Celestial, that one of his first questions, upon introduction to a stranger, was "Where do you hve.''" To that question, one may get superficial answer from the list of tele- phone subscribers. The real question, however, is, "How much do you live.'^" Yes, I am quite sure that the back road has its mean rivalries, its raw vanities, its uncouth spirits. Yet I like the air and atmosphere of an ample, well-mannered place on the back road. THE BACK ROAD 101 Moreover, the back road allows time, usually, for neighborliness. Not so much style to be kept up at all costs. Not so many artificial demands upon time and purse. Not so fre- quent social "functions" with heart omitted, and with elaborate menus to help cover the lack. Sometimes, as I come upon the Christ- like solicitude of the poor for their own kind; the unrecking generosity of the poor to the poor in times of distress, I am half tempted to believe that the truest generosity and neighborliness are recorded in "the short and simple annals of the poor." Certainly, the dingy streets, the alleys, the often stifling tenements, with their noisome growths of ignorance and bestiality, grow somewhat else and more — as startlingly fair as lilies pushing up from black ooze. Such pitifulness, such reaches of often clumsy but practical sym- pathy, such actual sharing of the last loaf of bread! It makes the princely donatives of the opulent seem miserly at their best. One who lives on the main street needs, usually, to go off his block or around the corner, or to another neighborhood, to find opportunity to invest his sympathy-fund. On the back road the case is different. There want elbows affluence; and the sight of the undertaker's wagon is a community affair. 102 CROSS-LOTS From his palatial pile on the turnpike. Dives could not quite see the plight of Lazarus. And Sir Launf al went the whole length of the high- way, in sincere quest of the Holy Grail. 'Twas on the back road, where his plenty had dwin- dled to a crust, he fed the beggar whom he had passed indifferently on his feverish out- ward journey; and learned, to his happy be- wilderment, that "The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need; Not what we give, but what we share. For the gift without the giver is bare." Priest and Levite were front-road churchmen. The good Samaritan was a back-road Chris- tian. Somewhere in his soul, if not in the actual flesh, he lived next door to suffering and want and loneliness. And being a back- road pilgrim instead of a front-road celebrity, he had time and heart for a broken brother. His "house by the side of the road" had taught him to be a "friend to man." IX PENTHOUSES Op such was the architectural monstrosity that caught my eye. Very obviously that — after a moment's consideration. But, during the preliminary moment, I permitted myself some speculation and protest: speculation as to the raison d'etre of so absurd-looking a superstructure upon an otherwise comely build- ing; protest against an apparently needless offense to good taste. It was both absurd and offensive. Neither window nor door broke the dull sheer of its walls. A skylight above would have relieved the mental situation for me. Being naturally curious, and a Yankee at that, I "wanted to know," as I always do when meanings are not obvious. And I halted my step. Then knowledge came. A wide, if closed, door immediately beneath the grotesque superstructure, and giving to the street, fur- nished clue. The entire building was dedicated to the automobile trade. And that freakish ex- tension of the sky line contained, doubtless, the hoisting machinery of an elevator. In other words the artistic offense was a penthouse. 103 104 CROSS-LOTS For the nonce I am not concerned with de- fending the absurd shape of the superimposed structure. Perhaps the day will yet dawn for birth of a municipal conviction, with com- mandments, against any and all depravity in building operations. Taste has its rights as sacred as those of the purse. And when taste gets its full day in court, away will go offensive signboards, vulgar advertising, together with all building construction done for revenue only. We are still in the dark ages of commercialism. Still the virtue in most request is a cash divi- dend. Still the initial question, as concerning an investment of dollars, is, "Will it pay" — more dollars .'^ Even philanthropy puts in its appeal against any spikenard gift which does not promise to bake bread or provide warm jackets for the poor. Only this morning I heard a woman complaining because the money represented in a piece of ecclesiastical archi- tecture had not been spent in hospital equip- ment or the like. Still, as of old, the soul has a hard time getting its rights as against the clamant demands of the body. Bread, bread, bread — and again bread, forgetting the ancient confession that "man doth not live by bread alone." "Die when I may," said one of earth's great- est dreamers who also was an earth mover; PENTHOUSES 105 "I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always planted a rose — where I thought that a rose would grow." And, from purely utilitarian angle, a rose is one of the most extravagant things in the world. It takes soil which, otherwise preempted, might yield wheat. It calls for strength which, other- wise employed, might run spindles. It is beauty, not bread. Yet, by productivity of that fine sort, was the Great Commoner pleased to be remembered by those who knew him best. Josiah Wedgwood, he of pottery fame, did not say the thing so rhetorically as Lincoln did, but he did very literally the thing Lincoln was describing. The first contemporary refer- ence to the now famous potter may be found in John Wesley's Journal, and on this wise: 'T have met an interesting man by the name of Josiah Wedgwood. He has planted a little garden around his place [the pottery] and I am sure his heart must be near to God." Beautiful inference, indeed (and, incidentally, an index of the breadth of the man of the cloth) that a successful manufacturer should be immortal not by his famous product but by his quiet ministry to the souls of his em- ployees. Dear to God not so much for com- mercial output or the wages he paid as for a sprinkling around his pottery of those "sweet- 106 CROSS-LOTS est things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into." Those were days when gardens were chiefly the prerogative of the rich. For an ordinary man to poke his nose into a cluster of blossoms in a rich man's garden, was a prison offense. So this stodgy Briton whose heart Wesley was sure must be near to God, "planted a little garden around his place," for the blessing of his workmen. Perhaps they did better work. Maybe their employer knew that they would do better work for the touch of beauty dropped into their lives. At least they had opportunity to be larger men — which is the chief desideratum. So far from being the negation of useful- ness, beauty, at its best and in its highest employ, is the servitor of usefulness. Those who chatter airily about beauty for beauty's sake are not farther from the truth of life than are we who have brought down from ancient philosophy a spleen against most things lovely to behold. Unless God thought more about grace of form and glory of tinting than do a host of his children, this were a hideous old planet. Despite our misplaced emphases and the peril of the pride of the eyes, God con- tinues to paint the heavens with a color- splendor which is the despair of artists, and to clothe the flowers of the field with frank and PENTHOUSES 107 unashamed gorgeousness. If beauty is not bread, at least it feeds the part of a man that the best baker's product leaves hungry. There comes back to me the great window in the breakfast room of a Swiss hotel. Doubtless the cuisine was excellent, or I might have remembered the place disagreeably. But I've forgot all the viands I ate there, and the faces of the waiters — even the size of my bill. AH I can recall is the outlook across Lake Lucerne to the towering mountains beyond. Height piled against height, and the crest of eternal white in the distance, and the sun climbing tirelessly over an eastern summit, and an alpine horn making strange voices in the heart as echo called from peak to peak while I was eating my breakfast. How little the meal counts now, whether the coffee was hot or cold, or the service satisfactory, as against the picture that hangs unfaded on the walls of my memory. To say that the meal tasted better for the view through that huge win- dow is to tell a poor half truth. God was feeding a pilgrim with beauty, as God has been doing ever since man first discovered that earth is lovely as well as productive. But I've not lost sight of the penthouse. I am thinking of it with appreciation as I re- member the purpose it serves and the fine 108 CROSS-LOTS lessons it teaches. Unsightly to the eye, it nevertheless housed a mechanism that defied gravitation for the tenants of the building. Formerly, the hoisting apparatus of an elevator was constructed in the basement, with what waste of power machinists were slow to real- ize. Nowadays, with a philosophic wisdom as profound as the mechanical advantage secured, such hoisting devices are built aloft. Less cable, less waste of power, less wear and hazard — such are among the advantages of the pent- house. 'Tis the direct lift inventors have achieved — the straight pull from overhead. And life at its best always needs that. Life also must consider the question of wasted energy. Life at its flood cannot afford to sacrifice power. As with elevators, or "lifts," as our British cousins call them, so with life — the problem is not to lower but to raise. Gravitation may be trusted to attend to the lowering function; how shall we elevate with least friction and peril .^^ And as with the modern conveniences that substitute for stairs, so with life itself — power works most econom- ically from above. Here is the service of a worthy ambition. Ambition pulls a man up. It puts a wing in place of a fetter. Whereas the grim necessities of life — the need of bread and raiment and PENTHOUSES 109 amusement — may hold a man to his task, grimly, perhaps, if not desperately, ambition sends him to it with a song and a shout. .He does better than to merely accept his day's work : he chooses it, falls in love with it, espouses it with ardor. I do not know just what "sterner stuff" Mark Antony thought Caesar's ambition should have been made of. In Brutus's opinion it evidently was "stern" enough already. All real ambition is stern stuff, albeit shot through with fire, and streaked with crimson. Two varieties of men go downtown every business morning. Two kinds of women make the beds and plan the meals and train the children. Two kinds of children gather in every schoolroom. There are those who plod and those who prance. And those who prance get more out of life than do those who merely plod through the day. One ought to win somewhat besides wages out of his day's fidelity. He ought to win content and a sense of advancement. He ought to see himseM more of a man, and on his way to a goal more worthful than a full stomach and a com- fortable bed. He ought to feel himself grow toward more dignified stature. And the surest way to that happiness is by obedience to the pull of a spiritualizing ambition. Elbert Hubbard was wont to write much 110 CROSS-LOTS of the "cosmic urge," meaning some things that look better unprinted. But if there is a cosmic urge, dark, sinister, unlovely in many of its aspects, there is also a cosmic 'pull, bright, clear and full of healing. Pity not to say more about that. Whereas the cosmic urge allies us with the brute, the cosmic pull declares our kinship with the angels. Potatoes will sprout in a cellar. The cosmic urge im- pels them thus. But you cannot raise a crop of potatoes in a cellar. For that consummation you must have the cosmic pull of a solar majesty. I have seen seeds that tried to grow in the dark. Temperature, moisture, soil — so far the conditions were all that a seed could ask; yet not all that the ordinary seed does ask on its way to bloom and beauty. The un- healthy green of your shadow-grown plant is plaintive call for a south window at least, for the warm, caressing pull of the sun. The glow from overhead does for a plant that which no lower agent can effect. Even the pallid, stunted growth of a tuba, denied sun- light, is a sort of wistful reach to the unseen sun. Thus, in life, functions a worthful ambition. It puts the bloom on a day's duty. It trans- figures a homely task. It touches with adequate significance all prosaic effort — poetizes it, so to PENTHOUSES 111 say. Successive days of otherwise drudging labor become a golden cable lifting the soul of the toiler. To do each stint better than its predecessor; to build a better wall or grow a choicer apple, to be more justly proud at the end of each toilsome day, such is the high service of ambition — the pull from the unseen. Similar is the ministry of a refining ideal. I do not know what sort of structure Moses would have contrived had he been free to select his model on earth. "See that thou make it after the pattern showed thee in the mount," was the admonition. The tabernacle which Moses set up in the plain had no counter- part except on high. "Not right, not right," protested the laddie at the organ as he struck chord after chord, seeking to match in earth- tones the harmony he had caught from the upper air. Beethoven said that, some days, the very atmosphere seemed full of voices calling him to reproduce their ministrelsy. Is this the trouble with much of our music, as with a flood of our books and labors, that their authors are working without inspiration.'* Reahsm copies life at its lowest, allowing not for the inrush and pull of great forces from above. It portrays man as poorly outgrown brute instead of potential angel. Without the 112 CROSS-LOTS persistent cry and puissant lift of life's most exalting ideals, one gets nowhere except to perdition. To "see an angel in the stone,'* as one disappointed sculptor confessed, even if he "cannot get it out," saves the toiler from sordidness and the shame of not aspiring. "Not failure but low aim is crime." 'Tis the upward pull of transforming ideals that re- deems the days. Or the clutch of a pure love. Nothing that has been written can fully portray the demoral- ization of a low-pitched love. And no lan- guage can do more than suggest the refining and greatening influence of an exalted love. "Set your affection on things above," chal- lenged one of the great voices of the ages. I do not understand that to mean angels or golden streets or impersonal goodness. It means to love upward. It means to throne love where the airs are cool, sweet, healing, and the pull is upward. What the good Bishop did for Valjean; and Mary for Bibbs, in Booth Tarkington's delightful story; what Monica did for Augustine, and a golden-haired lassie for Silas Marner, and his Mamie Rose for Owen Kildare, is, by the grace of a God of love, being done every hour of every day in the year, the world over. What cannot be done thus may well be despaired of. Love PENTHOUSES 113 at its best means lift. "Thou hast loved up my soul from the pit," sang a minstrel who knew both the black of the abyss and the sun- bathed summits of redemption. Sometimes a man can be pushed up from squalor of life by the rough hand of remorse. Sometimes he may be taunted upward by derision or scorn. Sometimes, touched by panic to do the appar- ently impossible, he may be frightened up. But most times, if he gain the heights at all, he must be loved up. Thus, in Browning's great poem, was to be compassed the redemp- tion of Saul. Saul had not been unloving or unloved. He had loved honor and the plaudits of the crowd. He had loved battle, and the music of David's harp. He had loved his children almost fiercely. But Saul's love never got far above the ground. Love pushed him and pulled him, never lifted; and again left him melancholy and remorseful. But, according to Browning's great-pinioned fancy, David sang of a day when Saul's love should be throned so high it might fling open the gates of new life to him. "O Saul, it shall be, a man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by for- ever." Always the lift. Such is the genius of Christianity. That Man, the love of whom and love for whom was to conquer the tur- 114 CROSS-LOTS bulent Saul, once put into a startling metaphor his philosophy of redemption: "Except a man be born from above." His scholarly inter- locutor did not understand. Multitudes since have affected not to understand. Even the church has so little understood that it has tied to a figure of speech a fact of colossal pro- portions and age-long reach. Rebirths of feeling, of purpose, of manhood are inadequate unless the birth is from above. Redemptive power must come from overhead. The en- ginery that shall yet "lift earth and bind it as with chains of gold about the feet of God," is aloft — as my penthouse reminded me. X "SAY IT— WITH FLOWERS" Not necessarily, and by limitation, with flowers. In its familiar use the exhortation smells of the shop as unmistakably as of garden or greenhouse. It is distinctly commercial, phrased with a frank eye to business by ven- dors of speaking blooms. Not for sake of the flowers, nor yet for the enrichment of those to whom the flowers may say affectionate or consolatory things, but in the interest of the flower-mongers' exchequer are we recommended to employ such fragrant language. Neverthe- less I like the phrase: "Say it with flowers." Clever "ad," it is also a deep philosophy. With a nosegay or box full of roses — sometimes by a nosegay better than by the larger quan- tity — one can express such various sentiments. That you are sorry or glad with the recipient; that you remember or will try to forget; that you are entering the sacristy of the other's felicity or pain, or, being uninitiate, that you will stand at the door until the other comes forth — all this and a hundredfold more can be said with flowers. 116 116 CROSS-LOTS Not until recently, as I was repeating to myself the appeal to "say it with flowers," did I realize how flexible and comprehensive is their language. With flowers you can say almost everything except that you hate: flowers never will help you to say that. Nor does the enterprising florist attempt to suggest what you shall say. That is your part of the enter- prise. His to supply the vocabulary, so to speak; yours to select the particular words required for your message. Indeed, your floral gift can say things for the expression of which a dictionary leaves you impotent; things of exquisite delicacy and tender meaning that you would not dare to put into words. More- over, like all best books and plays, flower- language leaves somewhat to the imagination. Heart meanings conveyed by flowers become prismatic, so to speak. The white light of an everyday message or confession breaks into a perfect shower of crimson, violet, and gold. But even so spermatic a power as imagina- tion ought not to be overloaded with respon- sibility for adequate interpretation of mean- ings implied. Most things need to be said — ought to be said — in some dialect or other. Whether with flowers or what else, say it. To be dumb in the presence of joy or grief or friendship is a species of selfishness. Taciturnity "SAY IT— WITH FLOWERS" 117 is not merely the antithesis of loquacity: sometimes it falls little short of crime. Of all misers the niggard with words is least ex- cusable. Lavish hand with dollars may cost the giver a pair of shoes for his own feet, or a canvas for his walls, or a trip to Europe. Even in the tender practice of beneficence — be it as perfect as Christ's — one cannot eat his cake and have it too. There comes before me, in memory, the unsoftened face of a multimil- lionaire who frankly declared that, if peti- tioners for his bounty realized his pain in giving, they would spare him the suffering. He loved his hoard undiminished. Broken in upon by any sort of largess, it seemed to him a mutilated thing — like a chipped vase or a flawed gem. And, taking his angle of vision, I could understand even if I could not condone. But miserliness with kind words — who shall palliate that.^ Ordinarily, to speak the gracious word costs little. And, ordinarily, the gift of generous speech is a finer gift than bread or shoes. I have seen statistics showing the percentage of American school children who go supperless to bed every night, and the mil- lions of our full brothers and sisters who rarely experience the animal felicity of a full stomach. But where is the census of half-famished hearts hungering, unwittingly perhaps, for a crust of 118 CROSS-LOTS encouragement or praise? Tolstoy *s beggar who, in the thrill of a sympathetic word spoken by the other, forgot his bodily need, is no fictional instance. "I was so lonesome," sobbed a victim of man's lust, telling the new- old story of her downfall, "and his was the first kind word I had heard in weeks." Pity that she could not differentiate between whole- some and poisoned heart-food. But, granted the same heart-hunger, I am not certain that her contemners would do much better than she. A famished heart is poor analyst of spiritual food-values. All innocent and unsuspecting, it may devour the morsel which destroys. Hun- ger is unreasoning, imperious, half blind. It wants — and takes, not always wisely. Ours, then, to meet with bread from heaven some part of the heart's clamant hunger. "Say it with flowers," with chivalrous conduct, with pen or tongue, but by all means say it. Scholarship, for example, is not an asset; it is a liability until it finds a voice. To know for the sake of knowing is like a hat for its own sake — irrespective of the head it may cover; like wealth for its own sake — apart from its shining uses in the world; like art for art's sake — whatever that may mean. "God hath given me the tongue of the learned," confessed an ancient, "that I might know how "SAY IT— WITH FLOWERS" 119 to speak a word in season to him that is weary." You shall go far to find a profounder apol- ogetic for the time and expense required to train a scholar. Who cares how much we know unless we use it for the enrichment of others .f^ Merely to be wiser than one's con- temporaries — in history, in science, in religion — merely to be able to pass the time of day in the vernacular of any passer-by is as meager compliment as to record that a man has twelve toes. The extra toes may make him a curi- osity: but the question remains whether he can walk better and further than ordinary folks. Saint Paul put the issue bluntly : "though .... I understand all mysteries and all knowl- edge .... and have not love, I am nothing." Solomon may or may not have been the wisest man of his day: all we can credit him with, on account of his reputation, is the record he made asfruler, and the proverbs he passed down to the ages. Solon's fame is safe in the laws that bear his name. One difference between Eras- mus and Martin Luther is that, for safety's sake, the former kept his convictions to him- self, while, for humanity's sake, the latter put his convictions out to service. WTiat boots it to the world that Erasmus was the wiser of the two unless his superior erudition walked the paths of men? It was John Burroughs, as 120 CROSS-LOTS I recall, who characterized Theodore Roosevelt as the most observant naturalist he had ever met. At least that strenuous, myriad-minded man could tell what he saw. And, in the last analysis, that is what counts; it is all that counts. I am not interested in the songs that Tennyson hummed over in his soul and never sang, but I bless him for his "In Memoriam" and "Crossing the Bar." Every real book is the light that filters through the soul of the author : the portion he absorbs does not matter. Now and again it is my good fortune to meet a humble pilgrim whose modest store of knowl- edge means more to a neighborhood than does the mental hoard of a dozen savants. Such a mortal lived in the windmill shop, in Lin- coln's delightful story. Measured in printer's "M's," his sentences were almost grotesquely short. He was a blundering sort of lover. Yet he managed to speak forth a few things greatly. He knew how to "say it." And often I prefer that halting speech which scarcely bears its weight of precious meanings. By all means, if possible, a trained mind and facile tongue — providing these forget not the augmented obligation implied. Every fresh enduement of wisdom puts its possessor under bonds to say, more handsomely, his best word. Not long ago, in a high grade pharmacy, I "SAY IT— WITH FLOWERS" 121 found myself standing before shelves of pro- prietary medicines. I was not interested in the labels: I was pondering their frank viola- tion of a beautiful ethic. Every secret com- pound in that store reads its author out of good standing in the medical profession. No physician dares to hold back from the use of his fraternity any special skill he has acquired in treating disease. By the genius of his vocation he owes to the world of sick folk the benefit of his discovery. He cannot keep it: he must say it. When the issue is drawn between revenue and professional obligation, the or- dinary practitioner does not hesitate. With a magnanimity which the merchant cannot under- stand the doctor gives his secret away. By so much as it was his, it now belongs to mankind. If not for the sake of his fellows, then at least for the sake of his own regularity, he relin- quishes claim to the sole usufruct of his advan- tage. Even our patent laws deny to the inventor a life use of his special device. After seventeen years his invention belongs to the world. Ultimately he must say — or the law of limitation will say for him — the word whose withholding for a term made him rich. Thus, in many ways, human society is be- ginning to admit the obligation of each member of the group to say the best thing he knows. 122 CROSS-LOTS Call it socialism or utopianism or quixotism or what you please, still the ineluctable obliga- tion remains. And some day we shall catch up with that dream. Into every personal advantage there enters always the factor of the unearned increment. Proprietorship is relative rather than absolute. The old defiance of arrogant privilege, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own.'^" is meeting some sharp and startling denials nowadays. And the real basis of such denials is the fact that we are seldom "owners." Some of us are merely "squatters" on the domain we lord it over. Some are accredited tenants. Some have long leaseholds. None possess the prop- erty in fee. Caruso does not own the voice with whose resonance he has earned such fabulous sums. Perhaps, if he realized his restricted right in such talent, he would sing with a different quality. H. G. Wells does not own the books that carry his name on their title pages. The copyright may be his, but, conceivably, the Crown might step in, any ordinary day, to dispute his claim. Wana- maker does not own the great business he has built, and would not even if every dollar repre- sented in it were his. For adequate cause the courts could close his doors to-morrow. So long as a man lives among men he owes them "SAY IT— WITH FLOWERS" 123 part of the benefit of his enterprise, his skill, his talent. As a new resident of a certain American city I was puzzled for a time over the frequent references to "ground rents." The phrase was not novel but the frequency of its use. I learned that whole blocks of modern buildings stand on land owned by others. I heard people talk of buying ground rents as an investment. Then the explanation came out. Big tracts of now improved property were "Crown-lands" originally. Held by the "reigning house" for revenue's sake, or granted to this or that court favorite, they made fixed recognition to the owners. Passed down from one generation to the next, or hawked about in trade, still they held the tradition. Even to the present day of apartment houses and sky-scrapers, they memorialize, in the way of ground rent, a first ownership by the "Crown." But I am not personally interested in such property limitations; what does interest me is that a similar practice runs — or ought to run — through life in its manifold aspects. Seldom are we permitted to be owners in fee. Every special grace or talent is held by grant from the real owner. Every patch of privilege we cultivate is a bit of crown-land. Tissot's skill with a brush, Marconi's epochal invention, 124 CROSS-LOTS Burbank's wizardry with plant life, Bryan's power over an audience, owe tribute. And when God is landlord, the "ground-rents" are payable, not for the filling of celestial coffers but for the enrichment and comfort of God's children on earth. "Finding is keeping," we used to say in childhood. No; finding implies obligation. It binds us in honor to declare ourselves. If we have been "anointed with the oil of gladness, above our fellows," we must say so. And so, preeminently, with the riches of affection. "My son knows that I love him," argued a woman in defense of her cold re- serve. "Why should I be forever telling him of my devotion when he knows it without my telling?" Very likely he does know it, but I think he would like to hear it said. As between a love whose only proof is its honeyed "tellings," and a love which never confesses itself in words, I suppose I should choose the latter. No amount of rhetorical asseveration can substitute for the quickened beat of a heart, nor long deceive the object. But granted that deep, sanctifying commitment of the heart, I am a firm believer in the obligation to tell it with reasonable iteration. Priscilla, with a woman's almost uncanny intuition, knew per- fectly well what fires were glowing in John "SAY IT— WITH FLOWERS" 125 Alden's heart. I suppose she could feel the heat — and was glad. Still she would have been but half a woman — nay, but half human — unless she longed to hear him confess the mo- tive that lay, poorly hid, behind his more obvious errand. And her forthright challenge that he should "speak for himself," is simply a frank assertion of the duty of putting into speech the great cry of the heart. "If you have a friend worth loving, TeU him so" Doubtless he may have every other reason to count himself your friend. Sleeping or waking, he may expect your trust to lodge at his door. By acts of fidelity and thought- fulness you have made him sure. Yet all these witnesses do not release you from the necessity of telling him in words. Somehow — though by no mystery at all — friendship warms with new quality when you look into another's eyes and tell him how much he means to you. Words are sacred when they are freighted with heart. Nothing else takes the place of a great, quivering word. God's su- preme revelation of himself was not sunshine, nor rain, nor symbols, but a Word — the utter and all convincing Incarnate Word. Religion itself needs to be vocal. I do not 126 CROSS-LOTS mean vociferous or declamatory, but vocal. It cannot completely express itself in votives and self-restraints, nor yet in all ministry and active goodness. It needs also to find voice. The old-fashioned "testimony meeting," not- withstanding its sometime crudities and its perils of Pharisaism, served a vital purpose in the soul's economy. God ought not to be ex- pected to read all our gratitude "glowing in our ravished hearts," as the hymn suggests he may need to do. Gratitude, the joy of forgiveness, the passion of a new life ought to declare them- selves expressively and in season. "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." "Say it with flowers" or oblations, with prayers, with gladness, with unwincing heroism or blood- sweat of struggle, but say it. XI THE "SET" I AM not defending the grammar of the word. It is exceedingly difficult to justify, by cold rules of syntax, certain highly expressive terms. Indeed, the special combination of letters at the head of this chapter is sorely misused. Many a literate farmer persists in characterizing as a "setting" hen, the barn- yard fowl thus maternally occupied. Every well-informed person knows perfectly well that the sun does not "set" in the west or anywhere else. The supernal glory at the end of a per- fect day is a sunsit. To be exact in the use of English, your enraptured beholder of God's artistry at sundown "sets" as grammatically as the sun does. Thus, for better or worse, we occasionally take out of the hands of lexicographers a few parts of common speech. Soon or late every dictionary has to admit to its erudite pages words whose sole warrant for such select com- pany is popular usage. Language is by no means chopped out in a mill: it grows, or is worn smooth in the mouths of people. And if, 127 128 CROSS-LOTS in the course of human events and under stress of circumstances, a carpenter's chisel may be pressed into service as a screwdriver, or great Caesar's dust be employed to stuff a knothole, why should not an adjective be allowed to function as a noun, or a transitive verb become intransitive? Purists and prudes are quite as annoying in the realm of lan- guage as anywhere else. Life is so short at the longest, and there is so much to be said, one cannot afford to badger himself and his con- temporaries over trifles of syntactical finesse. The chief desideratum, after all, is to get one- self understood; and if a double negative or an indefensible pronoun seems to advance the process, why grow hectic about it? No less an authority than Professor Lounsbury himself ad- mitted that overfastidiousness in matters of grammar and pronunciation argues a petty mind. But my special word, "set." It does not appear in the dictionary with the signification herewith attached. It belongs to the vernac- ular of the sea. And in such company it has a precise and important meaning. I heard it first on Long Island waters, as I recall. Speak- ing of the tide in its relation to their craft, some of my aquatic friends referred to the "set." It describes the action of the tide THE "SET" 129 against the sides of a vessel. No mariner can steer his craft straight across that mysterious flux that we call the tide. Silent and inev- itable as death, resistless as the pull of the planets, the "set" must always be taken into account. Again and again have I watched the phenomenon; pleased, exasperated or merely interested, according to its effect upon my water journey. Ignoring the "set" of the tide, rocks and shoals offer fresh menace, and harbor lights may gleam in vain. Always the "set" where the tide runs. The wise mariner is forever on guard. Even when he cannot see, still he makes allowance for the "set." Such silent, puissant forces are no respecter of persons or seasons or convenience. Nor is the case different with respect to the voyage we call life. One recalls the familiar allegorical painting, known by small repro- ductions in so many homes: a skiff slipping gracefully down stream, a radiant-faced girl for passenger and a mysterious figure at the stern. How little the enraptured passenger recks time, tempest, or tide. The voyage itself is all-fascinating. To suggest the perils of it seems ungenerous. May it not be kinder to let the pilgrim of the infinite sail on and on, unwitting and unalarmed? One hates to be the bearer of disquieting tidings. Soon — some- 130 CROSS-LOTS times tragically soon — comes threat of storm. Whereat the panic-touched passenger may so shorten sail as to make no voyage at all. "That poor boy, Keats,*' singularly gifted and pathetically sensitive to the wind in his face, felt that all was storm. Long before the fatal voyage which ended in the surf, near Fire Island Light, Margaret Fuller Ossoli "accepted the universe," pain and blight in- cluded, with stoic spirit. John La Farge, whose fame was won too late to salve his soul, felt that life was cruelly hard. To accept night and head winds and hurricanes of pain, and not to cease expecting rosy mornings and shining reaches of blue water, is noble achievement. Nor to forget the "set" of the tide. Some- times I fancy that the pressure of that tide "which moving, seems asleep" plays a larger part than do our fixed determinations in the issues of the voyage. In every life, as in institutions and civilizations, forces of deathly quiet work for good or ill. To measure them is almost impossible: they are felt rather than mensurable. Quite as often they are not even felt. Cromwell's "Ironsides" cannot truthfully be described as an upheaval of well-directed wrath against the Stuarts. Those unwhipped, psalm-chanting troops illustrated and accented a "set" of tidal sentiment in England. In THE "SET" 131 all their unapologetic vehemence there was a sort of inevitable quality. On the other hand, the "set" was against the reigning house and a time-serving Parliament. Heat gathers slowly in the Briton, but, once gathered, it is white. I doubt if the average Englishman sensed the force of the movement deflecting his course. 'Twas not really the race-storm from the north, sweeping down across the Alps, that destroyed the Rome of the Caesars. Nations are seldom if ever blasted by irruption. Silently the effeminacy and venality of Roman life had been at work, undermining, corroding. Rome was far off her course when Goth and Vandal struck. 'Twas the set of the tide that accomplished her ruin. According to historic record, Aaron Burr took the Hfe of his brilliant rival. But, according to a deeper reading of the story, the great Federalist invited death. Keen, convinced, prophetic, Hamilton was con- stantly being defeated by an unseen and unrecognized foe. God never can make max- imum use of an irregular life. The set of the tide was against Hamilton — as against his truculent rival. Not even the purity of his political motive saved him. Say that it saved his reputation as patriot and statesman, not the man himself. Doubtless there is what Thorold Rogers 132 CROSS-LOTS called an "economic interpretation of history." In the world-wide scuffle for bread, in the un- equal distribution of those material advan- tages for possession of which individuals and nations forget everything else, must be sought the key to many of the most epochal changes of government and national boundary. Leaving out of account the infamous "Corn Laws" of England, you cannot write intelligently the history of that century in Britain. But for her interference with our breadbox, and par- ticularly, our tea-caddie, we might have gone on being friends with the mother country indefinitely. Marie Antoinette's famous neck- lace was merely a last straw of affront to a half-starved French populace, concerning whom, being asked what they were to eat, Foulon replied, "Let them eat grass." One cannot read the chronicle of current events in these strange, seething times and fail to see the dinner-pail loom huge. Food in Russia, and in adequate supply, at the moment when Bol- shevism was a-borning, would have turned their blades soft in the hands of Lenin and Trotsky. But if there is an ''economic interpretation of history," there is also a still deeper, a moral interpretation, of which even Gibbon admitted the signs. Man is not all stomach; he is soul THE "SET" 133 also. He cannot live by bread only. He is subject to heart-hungers, mind-hungers, spirit- hungers. He is called by imperious voices, some elfish, some divine. He is played upon by forces malefic or benign, of whose operation and intent he is childishly unaware. As an individual or in the mass he moves blindly, inconsequently as often as of reasoned pur- pose. He feels, even when least conscious of it, the set of the tide. He lands where he did not intend, slips into ports of which he never dreamed. History — which is biography writ large — is full of start and surprise, of de- pressing retroversions and brilliant recoveries which never, except in moral terms, can be explained. Real tragedy is always ethical. That a robin's eggs are left unhatched, or dragons tear each other in their slime is not tragedy. Tragedy is when a man goes wrong, or a nation falls morally insolvent, or a race makes a "god of its belly." To lose one's friend by death is not tragedy: tragedy is to lose him by moral default, by deceit, by perfidy. For crops to fail and pestilence to rage through a land is calamity: but for that same country to forfeit its ideals or be scourged with hypocrisy and falsehood is tragedy. I am not thinking of head winds; I am thinking of the insidious set of the tide. 134 CROSS-LOTS Not long before the war cloud broke over Europe, William James pleaded for "the moral equivalent of war," as a hardener of ethical tissue, a school of the heroic in modern life. Then came the deluge; and through the wrack we glimpsed the heroic spirit clothing itself in a hundred splendid forms of fortitude and sacrifice. And we were proud, spite of the orgy of chicane and profiteering to which the war gave play. Not even the bestial con- comitants of the struggle could wholly blind us to the nobilities brought into shining exer- cise. Then the storm passed by, and we looked for a perpetuation of the heroic spirit in days of peace. Alas ! that which we actually see is so dismally different from that we dreamed and prophesied. Life seems pitched to a lower key than before the war. Philistin- ism, covert or rampant, has an alarming vogue. Menacing the voyage, both of the individual and of the nation, if not of civilization itself, is the persistent well-nigh irresistible set of the tide — the tide of a materialism at once bouffe and banal. On the stage, at the movies, in the street, behind the counter, on the printed page, and in ordinary socialism by whatever name, one can feel when he cannot see the movement of it. Examples are so numerous that the chron- THE "SET" 135 icier scarcely knows where to begin; and, wherever beginning, is pretty sure to be called an old fogy, if not a Pharisee, for his protest- ing voice. Take the stage, whether in its older form or its filmed evolution. No occasion to go to the prude for fulmination against the prevailing tone of the theater. All one need do is to read the dramatic critics. Even where they do not condemn expressly, their comment suffices to frame the indictment. Pruriency hardly takes the trouble to veil itself in the modern drama. Indecency stalks before the footlights, unashamed and unapologetic. Even the so-called "clean play" usually has to be spiced cleverly so as to interest the sensualist while not offending the moralist. One of the great actors of a generation ago is quoted as saying that he would not permit his family to see a new play until he had witnessed it beforehand. I wonder how many playhouses he would need to visit to-day before he found a show that he considered fit for decent eyes. When a refined young woman returned from a popular theater recently, with face aflame and voice indignant, I knew at once that she was not a frequenter of the play, else she must have lost the blazing sign of an outraged womanhood. Say that the stage, like current literature, i^ merely the mirror held up to life; 136 CROSS-LOTS or that playwrights provide the sort of proven- der the public demands, still the confession comes to the same thing — stark materialism. Whether we stress the commercial interest of the manager, or the salacious interest of the unholy-minded, or the pleasure-mongering in- terest of the careless crowd, the finding is one — materialism. Life hysteric where it is not erotic; life appraised under the dollar sign where it is not even more soddenly rated — this is the life that stage and movie-house are purveying to the multitudes, including millions of children. And the theme is the apotheosis of the body. Modern fashion, particularly in the gowning of women, makes the same confession. If old-fashioned modesty is not dead nowadays, it is sorely in need of revivifying. One of my friends, by no means an octogenarian, ob- serves that time was, within easy memory, when he could differentiate, by their street costume and cosmetics, between the scarlet woman and her chaste sisters. Must it be that, with the advent of a new feminism, the old, wholesome, and sanctifying femininity has gone.'' Will the new day come in by leveling down instead of up.^ Were the old reserves and delicacies so outworn and obsolete that they serve no purpose in the new order? Can THE "SET" 1S7 the woman who expects to exact the old reverences of chivalry afiFord to exploit broad- cast the physical charm and shy appeal of her sex? Frankly, there is call to be ashamed jor if not oj the women of the mode. And when defense of the indecencies of modern costuming is offered in the name of economy of material, one scarcely knows whether to rage or to weep. Oh, thrice sly materialism, snatching modest coverings from limb and neck in the name of style! Thrice purblind sisters of ours, to be coaxed out of the citadel of womanly safety by such specious glorification of the body ! I hold that 'twas given to women to keep remind- ing us forever that, while we have bodies, we are souls. And when woman, the natural high priestess of idealism, by seductive indirection helps put emphasis upon the flesh as opposed to spirit, one shudders to name the port at which the set of the tide may land us. Of the modern dance with its short remove from phallic revel; of current advertising with its impudicitous asseveration of the claims of the carcase; of emphasis upon gustatory delights and lust of gain; of literature in the Sunday supplements or periodical form or erotic novel; of pictorial art, or of the musical muse with its syncopated measures and innuendos of passion — of all these instances and more one 138 CROSS-LOTS need hardly speak. Allusion is adequate. But not even education escapes. Beneath the arches of the beautiful temple of learning seeps that insidious tide whose set cries peril. Of course an education is by no means for its own sake any more than a sword is, or a paint- ing of Millet's, or a beehive, or an overcoat. Education is for the sake of the world which the trained mind may more intelligently and adequately serve. But to ask brazenly of education, how much more bread it will bake, how fast it will advance the student on his way to self-aggrandizement, or what added powers it will vest in him for personal ad- vantage, is a species of harlotry — a profanation to which the emphasis laid upon athletic prowess may easily lend itself. Notwithstand- ing the eloquent Rooseveltian defense of col- lege football and the like, one is tempted to stop and ask Browning's great question: "Thy body at its best. How far will it advance thy soul on its lone way?" And then there is socialism in its variant forms, all the way from parlor schemes of race- improvement to Bolshevism in its most violent, and destructive type. Dreams are in it, the dreams of gentle spirits like Kingsley; and prayers, the rarefied prayers of Maurice and THE "SET" 139 his kind; and protests as pure as mothers' against the despoiling of their sons. In a sense, Jesus himself may be claimed as the protago- nist of social reform. But the socialism of Jesus put bread below brain in the scale of values. The kingdom he preached did not imply pianos in every home, and silk raiment for everybody, and soft, white hands. His own were scarred for the sake of his soul and the souls of his brethren. His dream was of spirit eminent, supreme. Whereas, in the final analysis, most programs of modern social betterment end with ampler housing conditions and a larger share of the materialities of earth's garner. In other words, the Eutopia of most modern propagandists of social reform is a Valhalla of the body. But it were unfair to the facts to leave the picture wholly dark. If there is a set of the tide that spells disaster, there is also a set toward safe harbor. "If there be a devil in man" making him easy prey to materialistic forces, "there is an angel too" which breaks the owner's heart when he loses the trail. "God hath not left himself without a witness at any time," in the resistances men feel to their own unworthy drift, and the redemption they dream if they do not accomplish. If there is a tide which carries us beyond our 140 CROSS-LOTS reckoning in evil, there is also a tide which sometimes urges us to refinements of man- hood and renunciation of selfish interest scarcely dreamed of. Herbert Spencer's "Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness" is ceaselessly making for righteousness. Augustine became a better man than he planned or the logic of his early years argued. William Wilber- force fell victim to the moral nausea of his dissolute ways, and in the reaction was healed. Tissot grew weary of using for the body his gifted brush and began to wield it for the soul. Thousands upon thousands of American lads, frank victims of the set of the materialistic tide, found themselves caught by another tide, in trench or bivouac, and died facing the Eternal City. Belgium found that she had a soul to answer heroic voices. France proved that a nation, supposedly decadent, could for a period of agony, at least, reverse herself and become sacrificially resplendent. And we too, before we strike the rocks toward which we are apparently being borne, must feel again, please God, the pressure of that "increasing purpose which through the ages runs." Speak- ing derisively of another public man, a candidate for popular suffrage said complacently of him- self, that he does not "hear voices in the air." If it were true, 'tis a sorry indictment. None THE "SET" 141 who fails to hear "voices in the air" is competent to be a leader of men. 'Tis the "voices in the air" that breathe over the set of the tide toward great service. There are such voices to-day, spite of commercial clamor, and clattering ma- terialism; august voices, persuasive voices, heavenly voices. To heed them and to yield ourselves to the tide they harbinger and con- voy, is to have lived not in vain. xn THE GREEN SIGN I ALMOST trod it down, and with no occasion to feel self-reproached either. Grass makes a wonderful carpet as well as good fodder. Had we more of such carpeting and fewer warnings to keep off, a certain well-advertised rubber heel would find its market narrowed. From the thudded pavements, or even the gravelly path by the road, to the springy turf, what a relief! Children are not alone in their wish to go barefoot when the sod invites. By a sort of subconscious affinity with the soil from whose elements our bodies are compacted, we love the feel of the carpet God weaves and lays for his children. Albeit there has often fallen upon me a sort of diffidence when crossing lawn or meadow; a sense of sacrilege almost; as if it were not fair that my feet should break the stems of clover sprays nor crush the spearing points of timothy. I do not think that ever wittingly I trod down violet or snowflower and got away without wishing there were time to go back and apologize. I can perfectly well 142 THE GREEN SIGN 143 understand Burns's sparing a tiny field mouse, and Tennyson on his knees before a flower in a crannied wall. Life is wonderful — all of it — even when it assumes unlovely forms. To take life away from any lowly thing needs ample warrant. With a very little persuasion I could have become a Buddhist — had I not been a Methodist. Nevertheless, I almost trampled upon a patch of thrusting green in my path recently. I do not yet know how I escaped the profanation. Had my eyes been on "higher things," so to speak, I might have been denied even the privilege of going back to apologize for a heedless step. The day was hot and the sidewalk was hard and I had business. But just ahead of me, pushing bravely skyward from a shallow break in the concrete, was a little spray of green. My botany was too rusty to permit identification of the species, but what matter? It does not appear that Adam was specially advantaged by being able to attach to every living thing an appropriate name. One sometimes ends by being suspicious of too much classification. There is a seductive kind of infidelity, of which some one observes that the moment we discover how God does a thing, we decide that he did not do it. What caught and held me was the startling presence of that wisp 144 CROSS-LOTS of brave green in the public footway. Some vagrant spore — wafted who knows from whence? — had dropped into that crack in the concrete and had seized the opportunity to demonstrate its abihty. One grows weary sometimes of the dirge of the "might have been"; the threnody of those disappointed children of God who are forever listing the miracles they could have wrought and been, given adequate facilities. There are, of course, great days and great occasions on which God seems to call with unmistakable tone. Most folks do fairly well with such golden opportunities. But the real alchemist is the golden man, who makes golden a commonplace chance. Calling the roll of the immortals I am not so sure of their ad- vantage in circumstances as I am of their genius to make the most of any circumstance however meager. When Bob Fitzsimmons was asked the secret of fistic success, he answered, laconically, "Always hit from where your hand is." Not in the long patient afterwhiles will it particularly avail us to describe the thundering blow we might have delivered had our hand been placed just right. Perhaps General George B. McClellan was a wiser military strategist than General Grant. The success of the one does not involve disparage- THE GREEN SIGN 145 ment of the other. But McCIellan seemed always waiting a favorable occasion to deliver his great stroke, while Grant's secret was "hard pounding." No wonder that the President said of this quiet, dogged man, when traducers cried against him: "I can't spare him: he fights." Doubtless "there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." But the tide, thus taken, is not necessarily or even probably a spring or neap tide; it is most likely an ordinary tide, just such as creeps quietly up the beach, twice a day, but "taken at the flood." Medioc- rity waits for a superior equipment with which to show its skill; the clever workman impro- vises a tool and finishes his task while the other dallies. Some one says that a great surgeon can open a skull with hammer and chisel, if he has to. Browning's poetry is less musical than Tennyson's; but if he had not the gift of waiting to find the fitting word, his the greater gift of seizing an available word and making it fit his line. Such is the forthrightness of his work; its essentially mas- culine quality. He hit from where his hand was. To do that always, to put one's best strength into the blow permitted by circum- stances, to row against the stream of tendency if need be, to grow a soul in the thick of things 146 CROSS-LOTS as bravely as in cloistered safety — so much my patch of green taught me. Speaking of the Messina earthquake, as I recall, and of the verdure that appeared on the hills and valleys, next spring after the terrible catastrophe, Lyman Abbott observed that "there is something divine in the way nature clothes with fresh beauty the scene of the old desolations." God is forever doing such things as that. He seems not to wait to show his skill; he shows it anywhere — in a hot-house where heat and chill are tempered, or in a tiny patch of earth where the pavement is broken and passers heed not the vivid wonder there on view. But my interest grew with looking. In that precarious garden patch, perhaps four inches square, snatched at random apparently, both prodigality and economy were blended. One fault with the generous man is that his bent has no saving check of frugality, while his opposite does not know how to be profuse. God is both lavish and careful, as you may learn from every tree and meadow. He wastes nothing that ought to be saved, and withholds naught where bestowment will bless. That hillside picture of a multitude for whom Jesus played host tells the whole story. Loaves multiplied in the hands of our Lord as bios- THE GREEN SIGN 147 soms on a cherry tree or wheat kernels on their stalk. There was enough and to spare. When God has the chance to be host no hunger is left unappeased. With most generous folks that would have been the end of the story — and the fragments might have lain on the ground till birds gathered or mold destroyed. As a matter of fact, nothing would have been lost in either case. But, for the purpose of teaching the correlate laws of profusion and frugality, just as soon as the last guest had been supplied, his Host commanded: "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." God cannot abide waste places. Every opportunity is for him an invitation — whether in garden or heart. He will not per- mit any acre of land to lie bare. If you do not seed it, he will. He leaves no heart untenanted. Let him find a vacant room and he will fill it. His guest-friends are everywhere. Isaiah's ecstatic glimpse of the desert breaking into bloom is prophetic of life as it shall be when mortals shall have gone into full partnership with their Father in heaven. Government Reclamation Service is hint of a still higher and more vital ministry. For every dry and dismal patch of heart-soil, for every undrained swamp of sorrow, for every hidden corner that could bear a flower to blush unseen, there is 148 CROSS-LOTS redemption in the program of God. Nothing wasted and nothing needful denied. I recall a soldierly-looking, stalwart man whom I sometimes thought penurious, he was so exceedingly careful of the dimes. He was an ardent believer in celluloid collars, as saving laundry bills; and he never countenanced throwing a pair of shoe strings away merely because one of them broke. He nettled me. I vowed that if ever I drew a salary as large as his, I would not be so stingy. Perhaps it may be said with truth that I've lived up to my threat. I've not scamped the pennies as he did. Nor have I made the princely gifts that set his face ashine. Being less frugal than he, I had to content myself with giving less lavishly. In the souls that are most god- like the two are conjoined — frugality and largess. God saves raindrops that he may send showers. He gathers up every falling leaf in the interest of next year's harvest. He conserves that he may spend in beauty and power. God denied Beethoven the ordinary blessing of hearing, and then made him one of the hierarchs of harmony. He withheld physi- cal health from Robert Southey, and for recompense gave him a ministry of soul-healing for multitudes. He declined to answer Paul's prayer for the removal of a thorn in the flesh, THE GREEN SIGN 149 and let him lead the hope of a race. He re- fused to spare Jesus the cup of bitterness, and dowered him with a "name that is above every name." But my tiny spray of green in the footway taught me one thing more. It suggested the everlasting rebirth of hope. It was alive; it was growing; crushed by an unwary or cruel heel, it would poke up a fresh blade next morning. Such was its advantage over the noblest monument reared by hands. From the river front of a teeming city I caught sight of the tallest building in the world. Immense yet almost incredibly graceful, set like a hill on vast foundations, and lifting a gold-spattered head above its neighbors, it well memorializes the spirit of the merchant whose name it bears. But it is 3i finished thing. When the last marble slab was set, the last doorknob in place, the building was done. It is memory rather than prophecy. It suggests naught more than eye can see. Conceivably it might be rebuilt: it never could be reborn. Whereas the palest, shyest shoot of living green, thrusting its un- daunted way upward from a thimbleful of stray soil in the pavement, is a promise, a pledge of greater things to be. Thus life is evennore surprising and hearten- ing us with fresh rebirths of hope. Hope will 150 CROSS-LOTS grow in the unlikeliest chinks and crevices of a hard journey. It requires less soil than any other seed dropped out of heaven. It is next to impossible to kill. Taking the cue from a famous Pauline apotheosis, Henry Drummond named love as "The Greatest Thing in the World" — greater than faith, greater than hope. Greater doubtless, but not as resistant of death. Hope smolders in the ashes of love. In the process of dismantling a room in which one has lived, the hardest moment is when the portraits come down. One by one they slip from their places on wall or mantel-place — face of friend, face of lover, face of child, each with its special pang. Always, by the law of numbers, one face must disappear last. And the last to go is the face which, more than all others, glorified the room and made it home. When that face has gone the room is merely an empty, echoing place. So when the face of hope disappears from the house of life. Always hope is the last to fade. And with the passing of hope the house is stripped and ghostly. Nothing remains save for the tenant to move out, as many such an one has done by self-destruction. Every suicide, by his desperate deed, confesses that hope is dead. "We are saved by hope": saved from arctic isolation, saved from corrosive bitterness, saved THE GREEN SIGN 151 from utter despair. Times come when the only salvation left is to drop into some tiny patch of hospitable heart-soil a seed of hope. Indeed, the only salvation worthy the name is rainbowed and effervescent with hope. Not by accident comes it that the most hopeful and hope-begetting Man of the ages became the world's Redeemer. None other could. Through all the music of his ministry to pain and sin sounds the dominant note of hope. The green sign in the hard pavements where feet fall laggard — sometimes it is the hope of success following repeated failures. You must rewrite history if you dare omit from calculation the ministry of hope. Tours was a last ditch for Europe against the victorious Saracen. But Tours was a battle of hope, not of despair. Suppose the spirit of Charles Martel had offered no soil to the seed of hope.?^ Tradition gives credit to a spider for dropping into the heart of Robert Bruce the vital pledge of victory. "Our back against the wall," was Haig's summary of Britain's plight in the black summer days of 1918 — and the civilized world gasped for breath. Morning broke be- cause desperation was streaked red with hope. Hope won. Most of the immortals failed more times than they succeeded. Grant, Gough, Seneca, Stephen, Ericsson, Edison, Calvin, 152 CROSS-LOTS Cranmer, Luther, Lincoln, Justin Martyr, Jesus — call the roll as you will. They tri- umphed because hope was reborn once more than it died in their breasts. Nothing else succeeds as well as a wisely turned failure when hope beacons forward. Somewhere on the hard road of the day's work, in a crevice between the stones, perhaps, God is sure to set a gar- den, however tiny, greening with promise. To miss sight of that spray of green is failure. So for the heart. The heart's hope is love. She was only a kitchen drudge, as most would say; though I recall with delight her hot biscuits and her cookies and her maple-sugar pie. (Never heard of the latter? Then you have missed a dainty fit for the gods.) And I suppose that the hours in the kitchen were pitilessly long and the monotony deadening. That was before the days of domestic Bol- shevism. Yet somewhat saved Clara from being a drudge. She never expected to end her days in a kitchen. Hope saved her at twenty, at forty, at sixty. She never gave up the hope of love and a home of her own. If the letter-carrier tarried a moment beyond the need of the case, and we teased her about him, the dear, kind face went fairly radiant with hope. If the grocer's clerk or the gas- meter man seemed to delay after his errand, THE GREEN SIGN 153 I am sure she heard love knocking at the door. She may have been sixty when, one day, she confessed, with a strange pucker of lips, "Well, I suppose — ." Oh no! she did nothing of the sort. Hope was not so piquant, but it still lived. I do not think she ever gave up hope. And at last she fell asleep — dreaming of love perhaps. 'Tis the hope of love keeps the heart alive; hope of a mighty, transfiguring love. Love of friend, love of little children, love of mate — the hope of love! "The light of the whole hfe dies when love is gone" — or the hope of it. One can subsist for a long time on the dry bread of drudgery, or, in turn, decline the highly spiced menu of ignoble pas- sion, while the heart still holds hope of a sacramental meal. God be thanked, then, for the smallest spear of green in the footway as suggesting the joy of harvest for the heart. So with the paramount business of a man. The real birthright of humankind is goodness. Even though he barter it for a mess of por- ridge, still he remembers that it was his birth- right, and dreams that he has not quite for- feited it. Most of our laborious self -justification for being what we doubtless are begs the question of a different calling. If folks were satisfied with themselves, they would quit explaining. We do not read that the swine 154 CROSS-LOTS of the "far country" protested against husks. Such was their normal provender. But the swineherd had memories. In a sanctifying sense he felt "above his job," and particularly above his fare. Somewhere on the hard path of transgression a seed found space to sprout and grow. And that seed was hope. Hope brought him home, hope of being all he had been at his best, and somewhat more for the bitter lesson he had learned. I do not think he expected to be made a hired servant, once he got home. That was all he planned to ask, but he never asked it. By the time he had a chance to look into his father's face, hope had grown. But I am thinking of the days before hope had grown, when it was merely a spray of green in the footway. Can it be that any man is denied that.? Lives there a man with soul so dead that it offers no hospitahty at all to the kingdom-seed of hope? Is ever the pavement altogether unbroken.? The tragedy is that the traveler cannot or will not believe the harbinger God drops into the path. xm AGAINST THE SUN I WAKENED just in time. Five minutes more sleep would have cost me the divine surprise of my eastern window. Judging by the tenac- ity with which my memory holds the event, I could not afford to miss it. And as I rubbed my eyes I thanked my God that my window opened eastward. Folks are who cannot abide such orientation. They dislike the storm- winds that besiege, and the rattling sash. They cry against the occasional gray where one normally expects crimson and gold. They hate the chill of that side of the house. Any except an east window for them. Whereas, for me, by all means a casement that opens toward morning. God has few other caresses like the one he drops on your face as the sun climbs again. One may sleep through it, of course, if he choose — and can. He may draw a green shade to escape the caress. He may turn away a sleepy face, or blink petulantly. And still, with that celestial persistence, in practice of which God is forever wearing down opposition and making bad people good, he continues to 155 156 CROSS-LOTS perpetrate the sunrise marvel. Every man to his taste, and mine for me. Mine includes a window through which, if I so elect, in tonic ecstasy I may see rosy-fingered morn stand tiptoe. 'Twas sun-up. And it may be said that, first and last, I've witnessed many such a glory. I've seen the winter sun set snow-clad fields ashine with cold splendor, and the spring sun turn to Golconda mines, exploded broad- cast, the most commonplace meadow. I've watched a bright red disc roll up through grim tapestries of cloud, fighting silently for mas- tery. I've glimpsed both havoc and harvest in the clean, fresh light of the morning after. I've experienced sunrises that seemed piteously tardy, and sunrises that were pitilessly prompt. But never another precisely like the one that startled me one recent morning. 'Twas sun- rise — plus. Which constitutes my apology for taking space to describe it. What wakened me in the nick of time I cannot say. Some sub- liminal consciousness, perhaps, of the lesson I should have missed by sleeping through it. 'Twas broad day, if early. His solar majesty had been on the throne again a half hour or such a matter. Yonder he shone, crimson- garmented, full-disced, not too dazzling for AGAINST THE SUN 157 ordinary vision. But what? — and I sat bolt upright. Against the broad orb was a figure as perfectly centered as if stamped on a coin. Often and half sheepishly had I looked for the "man in the moon," never for "the man in the sun.'* Nor was I looking for him then, Germany having failed of the place she de- manded. Yet there he stood, to be seen of me, if not of the rest of mankind. And I rubbed my eyes again. Fortunately I found my wits before the wonder passed. And, in a way, it was no wonder at all. The figure silhouetted against the sun was Washington's, his famous monumental image based with a hundred odd feet of stone. I had seen the brave statue at noonday, by moonlight; dimly through fog and vivid against a blue ground, gazing off toward the quiet eternities rather than downward for the cheap applauses of men. But never before or since had I seen Washington against the sun. One must admit, of course, the transiency of the apparition. Let me change my window, or the sun mount a trifle higher, or fog roll up from the Bay, and my symbol would be gone — was gone in less time than it takes me to tell about it. Even so I had caught a new glimpse of George Washington. For a moment I had seen him framed against the sun — safe 158 CROSS-LOTS and serene. Not in all the histories, or on all the bronzes, or in sculptured effigies, can you find another tribute quite so fine. To stand clear cut, forthright, and unashamed against the sun is fame enough for the ages. On a burning page of an old volume is this strange description of a worthful life; "Worthy to stand before the Son of Man.'* As compared with distinctions of tinsel, glare, and pageant, this seems uninvitingly tame; to be able, at the crest, to "stand before" the least ostenta- tious, most self-forgetting Man of the ages. But I am thinking of manhood — sheer man- hood — not artistic eminence or plutocratic power or pomp of office. After all, there is but one scale of measure for manhood. Stripped of regalia, unpropped by fears and conventions, sized in soul, how much of a man is my friend or my candidate for office.'' Most humans shrink woefully, gauged even as Bobbie Burns rated them. What when the Man of Nazareth is appraiser .'^ His is the ultimate analysis. And to stand before him, as Raphael stood before Angelo; as William Hohenzollem stood before Frederick the Great; as Saint Francis stood before the Man of the Nail Prints, is the crowning test. In terms not dissimilar I thought of the figure against the sun. History gives the story AGAINST THE SUN 159 of his battles. Biographers have stirred the cold ashes of his personal life. Portrait painters have made his features familiar to the world. But to have the morning sun as luminous background; to stand, heroic size, in the proud quiet dignity of manhood, is more than to be vanquisher of Cornwallis, or Chief Citizen of the new republic. To use her own language, all that Germany asked was "a place in the sun." With ingenuity almost incredible and with patience satanic, she arranged the scenario for such a drama of human arrogance as, please God, the world never again may be com- pelled to behold. Had Germany won the place she fought for, we must have set back the shadow on the dial of Jesus two thousand years. But the place in the sun is not grabbed: it is given. None can take it by force, as the Saracen took Constantinople or the Romanoffs took Poland, or as the ordinary coveter takes whatever he lusts for, providing he can get it. We spend so preponderant a part of life strain- ing and sweating for "recognition" as we call it. One might fancy that the chief advantage of a good deed were the fame thereof. Who, in truth, can name in advance his real claim to immortality of grateful remembrance? What some one calls "The Surprises of the Judgment,'* as referring to a future Assize, might with 160 CROSS-LOTS equal pertinence be applied to the world's calm judgment on the lives of men. Seldom, perhaps, is a man remembered for his most conscious sacrifices. Mascagni's now familiar "Intermezzo," then a musical stray that barely escaped the waste-basket, redeemed the entire opera of Cavalleria Rusticana to popularity, and assured its composer's fame. Who but God would have picked the hastily written lines of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to rank among the world's deathless classics? Looking back across the battlefields and diplomatic maneuvers of his dramatic career, Napoleon named, for joy of remembrance, not Austerlitz nor Jena but the Orphans' Home he had founded "somewhere in France." Bernard of Cluny, theologian and controversialist, might be forgotten to-day save for his "Jerusalem the Golden" dropped into the hjTunology of the church. The most Christly gift of Stephen to mankind was not the fiery speech which cost him his life, but the unconscious shining of his face as the stones rained upon him, and his gasp of a prayer, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." If I had to name the divinest marks of our Lord, I should reverently recall those least premeditated sayings and minis- tries which burst upon the world gently as buds into blooming. You cannot use the same AGAINST THE SUN 161 scales for sacks of meal and sapphires. The wise jeweler does not try. The "Fairbanks" that weighs out his corn will miss the weight of his gem. Real greatness — the greatness that sets its possessor against the sun — is never a thing of bulk and longitude. It is an essence: and you may detect it oftenest in swift motions of soul, in silent outflows of sympathy, in white flashes of personalized truth. I cannot imagine the man of Valley Forge and York- town as posing or candidating for a place in the sun. He wist not the glory that oncoming ages would see in his face. He did big deeds and bore his pain and kept his faith; leaving to others the assignment of his right to a seat among the mighty. But the figure silhouetted against the sun, that early morning, suggested other things. I could but notice that the face showed a profile. As if unconscious both of background and spectator, the eyes were averted. I do not recall, if, indeed, I ever heard, why the figure faces south. Doubtless the architect had his reason, as had the builders of Beecher's statue in Brooklyn, fronting the Courthouse in which he stood trial for his good name; as the erectors of Greeley's bronze replica in "Newspaper Row." I make sure that if Hindenburg's famous image had been set against the sun. 162 CROSS-LOTS or some sculptured similitude of the Kaiser, the eyes would have faced eastward, as in challenge to the solar majesty. Such was the spirit which launched and prosecuted the most diabolic enterprise ever devised against the liberties and sanctities of the race. The super- man defies the sun or counts it a mere satellite of his reign. Impudicity everywhere is the same, in fashion, in business, in diplomacy. And, in the issue, the sun glazes the eyes that stare at it. My figure against the sun was different that radiant morning. The gaze was turned stead- fastly southward — toward a certain birthplace on the Potomac, or a shrined spot called Mount Vernon? As if, now that war was past and the burdens of office laid aside, the eyes con- fessed the instinctive motion of his heart — homeward. Pity the Bohemian with his homing impulse gone. Mortal malady has be- fallen the man or woman who, in the great moments of life, as in their aftermath, does not secretly hunger for the homeland. On his return from a visit with Thomas Carlyle, John Burroughs wrote that "a sort of homesickness of the soul was upon him, and it deepened with age." If proof were needed of the fellow- ship with us, in all human things, of the canny Scot, his homesickness furnishes it. "Ah, AGAINST THE SUN 163 mother," he wrote in his diary, to the woman long since missing from his Hfe; "your boy Tom has fallen very weary and forlorn." Had I my way, I would subject every grown-up to an attack of nostalgia now and again — so I should help save to him his dreams and ideals. None are lost to truth and honor, whatever their declensions and low compromises, so long as home tugs at the heart. When the prodigal among the swineherds began to be homesick, amendment had set in. Let the boy away at school or in camp carry in his eyes, some days, the far-away, telltale look. He will be safer thus; and bring home, next time, less whereof to be ashamed. Leave in the souls of men an old-fashioned longing for the father's table and the dear reunions. Is heaven less real than formerly? So much more's the pity. God has been able to use, for countless redemptions, a deep homesickness of the soul. In propor- tion as materialism narrows our citizenship to one world, it renders us less desirable citizens of this world. The sun has long ceased to background for me the famous statue. I have never caught the vision again, but my heart holds the memory: a man framed against the sun, in all modesty as well as honor — and his eyes seek- ing homeward. XIV THE OLD COVERED BRIDGE From the bank of the Susquehanna I noticed it as the train wound its way up the river. With a host of memories reaching almost as far as my memory goes, and tinged with the rose-and-gold of childhood days, I studied it hungrily. I cannot be sure that I had seen it before, yet was it so like many similar struc- tures I recall, with their answering creaks and echoing voices and vistas of light at the end, I hailed it as an old friend. It was longer perhaps, but in every essential it belonged to the family. And as the train drew past, on the bank of the river, I watched eagerly for the glimpse of the other shore through the barnlike structure. Nowadays, they do not build bridges thus. Ours is the "iron age," for bridges as for many other things. And the "iron age" is far from the "golden age" of the heart. Of course, one must sacrifice something to security and perma- nence and all that. Steel spans are doubtless far safer than the old-fashioned hunching arches of wood. And flooring of concrete or 164 THE OLD COVERED BRIDGE 165 brick is, in its way, vast improvement upon the rattling timbers that sometimes cm*led at the ends and always banged joyously. I admit all that, as one should. Yet, for the moment, I am thinking of what the modern bridge has lost that the old bridge had. Some- times one cannot prevent his heart from cry- ing for bygone glories, even while his head is congratulating him upon the more solid advantages of our modem day. Not long after the train ride referred to, our steamer was passing under three famous aerial structures by which Manhattan reaches hands across the East River to Brooklyn. It was early morning, and the traffic tide had begun to move overhead. Such a strident hum and clatter of iron as of a huge foundry in the air. Trolleys in relays, trucks by platoons, scudding automobiles — and foot pas- sengers too, if one had field glasses to pick them out. It was very wonderful of course. I suppose that my grandsire, whose farm ended at an old covered bridge, would have had nightmares of wonder and terror. Yet, by some strange perversity of human nature, my heart went back to the old creaking bridge by his gate. I can shut my eyes and see every timber in it, almost. I can smell the charac- teristic odor of it, and hear again the sound 166 CROSS-LOTS of hoofs, like oncoming regiments, as a farm wagon passed over. And, then, the hours spent in its shadow, dreaming a boy's day- dreams, and fishing fruitlessly but always in hope. And, best of all, the glimpse through the tunnellike shed, at the trees and sky be- yond. First and last, I have seen a good many of the world's famous bridges; Niagara, of course; the Clyde, the Firth of Forth, London, Paris, Quebec. I have paid the toll and the just meed of wonder. Mechanical science does startling things. But draftsmen and me- chanics cannot build a bridge that I love as I loved the old covered bridge across the Onion River, close by grandfather's farm. One day I went back to the village among the hills, questing the dear trysting places, and I did not even know when I arrived. The old creaking bridge had localized everything for me. And the old weather-worn structure was gone. Prosperity and modernity had sacrificed it — with acclaim, I suppose. And in its place stood a solid afifair of steel and concrete, adequate to any load of granite, and minus all echoes. Whereas its predecessor had answered deliciously my footfalls and shouts, this new thing seemed coldly oblivious. And the chill at my heart matched the coolnessof the steel girders. Stupid, of course, and altogether reactionary. THE OLD COVERED BRIDGE 167 for one who enjoys the comforts and equip- ments of modernity, to complain because an outgrown building had been relegated to its inevitable limbo. I do not mean to be un- generous toward the spirit of science. Incal- culable is the debt we owe to the inventor and his collaborators. No sane man wants to go back to the age before telephones and steel coaches, trolleys and elevators, automobiles and wireless. Even if we fail to live longer and more happily for use of a thousand conveniences, we doubtless die with fewer wrinkles. All one need say, all he ought to say, is that our ma- terial gains are partly offset by spiritual losses. It is a little harder to keep dreams alive in the neighborhood of so much modernity. Some very precious possessions have flown out at the window while obvious advantages were coming through the door. I do not believe that the most approved drinking faucet can substitute, to the heart of a man, for the old oaken bucket that hung in the well. And I question if the most luxurious box spring mat- tress ever makes quite so sweet a bed as did the haymow. At any rate, the heart goes lonesome occasionally for the things we lost while we were being enriched and convenienced in so many brilliant ways — the forfeitures of our modernity. 168 CROSS-LOTS Despite its archaisms and general shakiness, the old covered bridge had its unique ad- vantages. For one, it was "homemade." Tradition said that villagers had hewn the wood and driven the spikes. It was not simply a bridge, as to the imported bridge-builders who came to earn their wages and pass on: it was for its artisans the way to the post office or the smithy's or church. Love of home went into it, and village pride and many memories. It was peculiarly their bridge for many who traversed it. Of course you cannot set such items in a ledger — more's the pity. Neither can you Hve richly without them. The truest possession is never bought save in the coin of the heart. Ordinarily, love grows with cost — specially the cost of service and self-denial. No one is expected to love the municipal im- provement he helps pay for with his taxes; but when he puts himself into the betterment love hallows it. I have watched children turn from expensive toys to a plaything of their own construction. Of course. 'Tis the creator's love for his own handiwork. What I build is mine with an indefeasible right. I love it as a piece of self -interpretation. What factory hand loves his place of employment as the village blacksmith loves his own forge, or the artist his studio? Always between the THE OLD COVERED BRIDGE 169 manufacturer and the creator is a great gulf fixed. To say nothing of the profanation of it, consider merely the insanity of the socialist's plan to raise children in creches, wholesale. John Fiske thought he found, in the lengthened period of infancy for the human offspring the deep root of self-sacrifice. Cut that root and what kind of blossoms may be expected? Without the prodigal investment of mother- hood, protracted through weary years, you shall not often have a John Quincy Adams or an Abraham Lincoln, a John Wesley or a Phillips Brooks. All best work is love work. And for its heart-value to the community, I'd rather have the old covered bridge, built by eager, affectionate hands, than the most approved structure that modern mechanicians can plan and farm out to hired hands, for wages merely. That's the way my heart feels about it; and if my head disagrees, so much the worse for my head. In any event, I am likely to do most of my river-crossing on steel bridges. But the old wooden bridge was covered. I do not precisely know why. Nothing in the history of such structures seemed to involve a covering. The shed adds nothing to the strength — nor to the beauty. But to my fancy the tunnel-like form suggests several 170 CROSS-LOTS things. At the least you knew that you were crossing a river. Nowadays, you may drive your automobile across one of these modern concrete-floored, steel bridges, without being conscious that you have left terra firma. Not so with the old wooden bridge. It loomed in your road, shadowy and a trifle awesome. Very sharply it delimited land and water. And the instant you passed its wide portal, you were shut in from the world — and the swirling waters beneath. Sometimes there were windows: most times not. Usually, you had nothing save the gloom, and the arch of daylight ahead. Was the purpose of the cover- ing to accent the sense of peril or to lessen it by withholding your eyes from the torrent below.'' I think it did both. We learn to take too much for granted — sunrises and har- vests, health and friends. Without just recog- nition of the hazards involved, we launch upon uncharted seas. We trust our lives daily, un- heeding and unthanking. And we lose the wonder because deliverance is the usual issue. To say that a man is not afraid of anything is dubious compliment. Fear plays an indis- pensable part in the economy of God. The hen is always afraid of the hawk. The wise mariner is always afraid of rocks and ice- bergs. The saint is always afraid of sin. There THE OLD COVERED BRIDGE 171 would be fewer moral tragedies to record if folks were more keenly sensitive to fear in its protective aspects. Recklessness lands its possessor nowhere except in perdition. In one aspect the Bible is a book of cautionary signals. From cover to cover it sounds a note of warn- ing. Frankly it says that a certain kind of fear is the "beginning of wisdom." And He who counseled so persuasively, "Be not afraid," warned also, "I will tell you of whom ye shall be afraid." But the covering of the bridge helped also to lessen needless terror. K on the one hand, the shielding of one's eyes tends to sharpen the sense of peril, on the other hand it may graciously mitigate fear. When a sight be- comes too painful, instinct prompts us to shut a door against it. More than once, leaning over the parapet of a bridge and watching the rage of water beneath, I have wondered that any structure contrived by mortals could with- stand the rush. It seemed that the bridge must give way, as such spans have done. Mercy would have covered my eyes. And the wooden sheathing did that. It gave sense of protection and safety. It let the passenger continue his journey un weakened by fright. There is a fear that paralyzes its victim — as a bird transfixed by the evil eye of a reptile, 172 CROSS-LOTS as a horse in the presence of jungle beasts. Even the instinct of flight seems killed under such conditions. Fear, at its worst, robs the brain of its cunning and the will of its power. "I was afraid," pleaded the unfaithful steward, in extenuation of his wretched accounting. *'Fear hath torment" — and worse. It cuts all the nerves of honor and truth. In a trice it drives out of human souls all the laborious acquisitions of ages of civilization. And, in its way, whether of set purpose or not, the bridge- covering helped to countervail that peril. At the least it muffled the rush of water beneath, and sheltered from the fury of the tempest. To do that anywhere for timid pilgrims, to make possible a continuation of the journey in courage and cheer, to help allay the panics of the soul is a rich human service. Moreover (I can write in personal terms only), the old covered bridge was a homelike affair. Nowhere else seemed the shadows so kind and cool, and a rendezvous with daydreams so certain. Down by the margin of the river, against the moss-softened abutments, what a tryst for a lad with his better self! Sanctuary hours they. Fishing-pole, water-wheel, toy craft — or just abundance of pebbles handy — I remember them all. I cannot imagine feeling at home by the huge piers of a modern bridge. THE OLD COVERED BRIDGE 173 Some years ago I traveled a good many miles to stand beneath the span of one of England's most famous bridges. Any Britisher ought to be proud of the structure. I was myself. But I lacked the first impulse to be familiar with it, to nestle against its massive stonework. I should as soon have tried to make friends with an obelisk or the dome on Saint Paul's. Leave such forwardness to spirits more venture- some than mine. But with a right good grace and a tender thanksgiving, not to say a mo- mentary forgetfulness of the smarts and puzzles of the intervening years, I could take my old place beneath the weather-worn timbers of the old dear bridge where a modest river leisurely seeks the sea. Alas, that the shrine is gone! One more look, and that through the echoing shed of the old covered bridge. Was ever another vista quite so alluring as that glimpsed through such tunnel of wood? Or other fields quite so green? Or sunlight on hills or road so dazzling? Without the covering one sees too much sky or landscape, and so finds it a commonplace. Ordinarily, in life, the horizon is so wide that our eyes are holden. What the artist catches for his canvas is the particular view we missed. What Wordsworth and Bums put into their poetry was the glory that escaped us on the road. What MacDowell gave us 174 CROSS-LOTS in his music is usually some exquisite, un- ambitious bit of harmony caught out of the music of the spheres. Ordinarily, one needs to narrow his field of vision if he is to see with rapture, as when a single face seems to fill the world for an ardent lover. So the old covered bridge helped both eyes and heart to find focus, framing absorbingly some patch of sky or woods — or a house just beyond the margin of the stream. Particularly that, perhaps. When the house at the further side of the stream is home, and one approaches it through the shade of the old covered bridge, each noisy footfall measur- ing progress for the heart, the last part of the journey is set to music. Sometimes life yields us that. Beneath are waters that we hear rather than see. Overhead is the vast canopy of radiant blue, or storm clouds pelting angrily — and the kindly bridge-shed between. Just beyond the end of the bridge, bathed in sun- shine or half hidden by mists, or with a wel- come light in the window, are comradeship and refreshment and peace — in the house on yonder side of the stream. XV WHEN THE SCAFFOLDING COMES DOWN I SUPPOSE that scaffoldings are a necessary evil. I have watched them grow, and stand, and come down. And I always accepted them as a matter of course. I suppose also that the builder, and certainly the architect, can see the building through and in spite of the clumsy- looking structure that veils the rising walls. And I suppose, still further, that, in a way, and considering the purpose it serves, a scaf- folding may be a thing of beauty if not a joy forever. But for the rest of us such a rough contraption of scantling and timber is a very great expense, a hiding medium, an eyesore. Pity that a church or courthouse or office building can't just "grow" without sound of hammer or litter of liunber — as the palace did when Aladdin rubbed his wonderful lamp. Everybody owns such a lamp — or he is poor indeed. And he rubs it in dreams or waking fancies. The trouble is that, when he rubs his eyes, the building he rubbed into being by aid of his Zamp, vanishes. So the world con- 176 176 CROSS-LOTS tinues to spend an unconscionable amount of money on structures that disappear when the dreams come true. A day or a month or a year the scaffolding stands, more weather-beat and grimy and inartistic. And then, at length, the scaffolding comes down, piece by piece; as if perhaps the hidden beauty might be too great for ordinary eyes to behold. The hidden beauty or the hidden monstrosity! I have known buildings that ought never to have parted with their rough draperies. What the scaffolding veiled was so much more offensive than the veil itself, just as there are canvases that never should have been permitted to pass the sketch-stage, and songs that would have done more credit to their authors by remaining in manuscript, and loves that were nobler undeclared, and vessels that ought to have remained on the ways. When a man builds his house of hay, wood, stubble, he'd better let the scaffolding remain to hide the poverty of his structure. In a way the scaffolding is less offensive than is the building. I mean, that the effort is more admirable than the achievement. Said a frank assessor of values, upon being shown a mar- velously carved peach pit, "Well done, but not worth doing." Industry, artistry, skill — but no result commensurate with the labor. "Aren't THE SCAFFOLDING COMES DOWN 177 you ashamed to sing so well?'* asked the great Philip of his son. Some one observes that the cell in which the honey bee stores his gathered sweetness is as wonderful, both in workman- ship and economy of material, as is the content. But who cares for the tiny creature's industry and skill unless what he stores is honey .^^ To work hard and patiently, and at the end to have noth- ing worthful to show is little short of tragedy. For, some day, the scaffolding comes down, as I watched it fall away from a certain church tower. I had no conception of the granite beauty behind the network of timber. That the finished product was laboriously wrought, and imposing, probably, and costly withal, I was sure. That it would fairly startle me with its lovely proportions, its combination of skyward reach and delicate design, I never dreamed. One ought to be prompted to put up a richer prayer or bring a tenderer adora- tion beneath the wide roof which that stone lacework crowns. Had I guessed the rare beauty of the completed tower, I might have wished the contractor would take down his scaffolding, half way up, to give me a glimpse of a partial glory. So impatient are we of results — like the wee lassie who "just blos- somed the rose,'* as she explained her sorry attempt to hasten full blooming. 178 CROSS-LOTS Some day, the scaffolding around the in- carnation of your dream comes down. No- body else saw your dream. That was yours and God*s; not for any other eyes. All that you were doing as the walls grew, and the workmen of your brain were busy with hods and trowels; all that the bee-like industry meant to you and to the world, nobody else knew. Perhaps they would have criticized less had they seen, on the plans, your com- pleted task; perhaps they would have com- mented still more sarcastically — for the world has not yet grown a soul large enough to admire without envy. Perfection is a target quite as often as it is a cynosure. SuflSce that the by-standers did not see what you were building. Then the scaffolding comes down and your work belongs to the world. A statue, a mechanical device, a piece of prose like Macaulay's, or a page of music like Mozart's, a new pi^ogram of service or a finer conception of the meaning of manhood — or what you will; at length the working structure falls away and the result appears. "Now he belongs to the ages," groaned Stanton as he turned from the dead Lincoln's bed. Before that he seemed to belong to the critics, or the politicians, or to the party of abolition, the scaffolding hid so much. Men did not approve THE SCAFFOLDING COMES DOWN 179 his truculence or his humor or his tenderness or his choice of generals. Then, one night, at a shot, the scaffolding came down; and the world has as yet scarcely caught its breath before the magnitude of the man revealed. Only when the scaffolding comes down can the work of another's life be seen. This is forever the pique of spending one's time and strength on others. Little of the plan can be seen while the work is in progress. So every mother knows, and every friend of man. Count the days in Val jean's redemption. None but the Bishop saw the man within the man. And none, seeing less than the Bishop saw, could rebuild the criminal. A clumsy scaffolding without definitive meaning or prom- ise of moral beauty was all the world saw. And once the walls fell dismally. But the good Bishop wrought on. And the building that stood forth when the rude scaffolding came down, the building not made with hands, was indeed a temple. Thus Monica wrought and prayed and tempered her mortar with tears, as countless mothers have done. And the task was long, and a woman's hands bled at their toil. And none but God justified the extravagance of it all. But one day the scaf- folding came down, and the world saw Au- gustine, the saint. Thus Jesus clung to his 180 CROSS-LOTS dream for Peter. The "Rock" was not even docile stone. I do not think Peter could have told whether he wanted most to be built into market or forum or temple. His intent was as shifting as the wind. But his Friend had a dream of Peter transformed. And the hands that wrought were scarred as with nail prints. But when the scaffolding came down Peter was made. Only when the scaffolding is stripped away can we appreciate the true dimension and rich detail of any great movement. One remem- bers with chagrin the snap judgments we passed while Marshal Foch was organizing for the terrible hammer-blows that broke the German line. There was such apparently fatal delay in striking; and our hearts were so sick with suffering, so faint with apprehension as the ruthless Prussians swept on and always on, we had hard work to be patient. We were angrily impatient. Fortunate, perhaps, that the quiet man set to champion the trem- ulous hope of democracy did not know all we were thinking and saying. Or did he know, and smile as God does at the dismays and desperations of men when his purpose ripens slowly.-* Then came Belleau Wood, and the world caught its breath; Messines Ridge, and we dared to smile; then the Forest of Argonne, THE SCAFFOLDING COMES DOWN 181 quick, startling falling of the timbers hiding the solid splendor of great strategy, and one day we stood agape with joy. And then straightway we forgot the lesson learned in such agony of suspense. Having seen the war won brilliantly, we expected reconstruction to follow as a matter of course. I think we still expect it on that wise — unless we have given over expecting it at all. Staring at the maze of scaffolding within which, some- where, the walls of a new brotherhood shall rise, we are confused, fretful, despairing even. Nothing commensurate in value with a frac- tion of the cost seems eventuating. It looks as if the blood stains on the scaffolding were mockery. The world's exhausting labor-pains seem not to have advanced the birth of the world's real hope. Apparently, we are farther from the morning than when the darkness fell in August, 1914. Who save the Great Architect, whose high purpose all real builders are serving, shall say when the time is ripe for the scaffolding to come down? But to believe that the walls are rising through moil and tedium; that the lights from the finished tower shall beacon the ages to come; and, like Nehemiah of old, to stick to our post in spite of threats and jeers, must be enough for the passing day. When the scaffolding eventually 182 CROSS-LOTS falls away wisdom shall be justified of her children. So of any particular reform movement, as national prohibition. Snap judgments of its ethical value are easily and sharply contra- dictory. On the street and wherever men gather, one may hear any sort of opinion he enjoys. Bitter jibe or snarling protest, outcry in all high names of liberty and justice, cautious praise or enthusiastic prophecy — all these voices are audible. Statistics from police blotters and county houses, results listed in terms of bank deposits and increased industrial output are hotly met with the charge that, for such a mere mess of pottage, we have bartered our American birthright. To judge from the out- cries, the huge scaffolding might hide a mausoleum of the hopes and valors of men. At the very least, 'tis too early to appraise the full advantages of practically abolishing the corner saloon. The boot-legger is abroad in the land. The serpent's bite and the adder's sting have not yet become matters of history. But when, eventually, the scaffolding comes down, and the full symmetry of the new tem- ple is seen, I predict that such a song as has never been heard since the morning stars sang together, will ascend from myriads of hearts. One further illustration — and that the most THE SCAFFOLDING COMES DOWN 183 heavily freighted with human yearnings — may suflfice. In a store window, this afternoon, stood a placard announcing a lecture on im- mortality. I shall not be present to count, but I fancy the hall will be thronged. The tremulous question of the age is vascular still. At a touch it bleeds. Sir Oliver Lodge, Pro- fessor Hyslop, Hall Caine, and all other stout vouchers for the truth of life continuous, eter- nal, may be perjured or misled. Yet, baffled at every turn and derided by cold reason, the normal human heart keeps asking if the scaf- folding of three score and ten years hides any- thing but a blunder or a tenacious dream. All the sweat and pain, the loving and sacrifice, the passionate planning and heroic endeavor — do they count? Are they represented any- where? Is there a "building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal'* somewhere? Looked at in the universal or the particular, is life better than a threat or a jest? When the scaffolding comes down, then what? Every- body has seen it come down. John Quincy Adams, at eighty, said he could feel it come down. Huxley said he shrank with childish terror from the contemplation. Edwin Booth, in one of his exquisite letters, confessed that if he could have a single sound from the build- ing after earth's contributive toil is complete. 184 CROSS-LOTS he never would be troubled again with doubts. Exactly. Who would? All we ask is to be assured of the building when the scaffolding comes down. Not long ago I stood looking into the placid, cold face of my friend. Obviously the scaffold- ing was down. Even the timbers that con- stituted it would soon be lost to sight. He had built elaborately and on large scale. His work, his industry, his spirit of courage and courtesy, his solid manliness had made him conspicuous. His was a name to conjure with. The scaf- folding was a busy, teeming place. Easily would one have said that my friend was building for eternity. Yet none had ever caught more than a furtive glimpse of the real structure. Was it real? And beautiful? And permanent? Was it more startlingly splendid than the stately tower that gave me my theme? Can one say as the clarion-voiced Browning did, "What's time? Leave that to dogs and apes. Man has forever." Here the deep heart of humanity has its say. Here hope lifts its crimson-tipped pinion. Here Jesus Christ speaks. And their chorused word is that only when the scaffolding comes down can one con- ceive of, not to say glimpse, the real temple. 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