THE YOUNG 
 IN HEART 
 
 ARTHUR 
 STAN WOOD 
 PIER 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 Class 
 
^p 9lrtl)ur ^tanlDOoU pier 
 
 THE YOUNG IN HEART. (A Book of Essays.) Nar- 
 row i2mo, $1.25, w^^- Postage extra. 
 
 HARDING OF ST. TIMOTHY'S. (A Story for Boys.) 
 Illustrated. Crown Svo, $1.50. 
 
 THE ANCIENT GRUDGE. (A Novel.; Crown Svo, 
 $1.50. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 
 
 Boston and New York 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
qf 
 
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 THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN 8 COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK MCMVII 
 
 'k 
 
COPYRIGHT 1907 BY ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER 
 ALi RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Fuhlished April rqoj 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE YOUNG IN HEART , 
 
 II. LAWN TENNIS 
 III. WORK AND PLAY 
 
 164122 
 
 IV. THE SMOKING-ROOM 105 
 
 V. CYNICISM 139 
 
 VI. THE QUIET MAN 155 
 
 VII. "IN SWIMMING" 181 
 
 VIII. BRAWN AND CHARACTER 213 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 Of all the myths and legends which have 
 consoled or encouraged mankind, that 
 which persisted longest, reappearing at 
 intervals through many centuries, to be 
 relinquished at last with sad regret, was 
 the belief that somewhere was to be found 
 an elixir of youth. Some of the more 
 socially disposed of the Grecian divinities 
 were thought to confer it upon their 
 earthly favorites ; and frequently the an- 
 cient mind appears to have befogged it- 
 self with dreams about the rejuvenating 
 properties of vaguely situated rivers and 
 fountains. Mediaeval chemists and ex- 
 plorers alike made patient search for this 
 elixir, so longed for by the race, so hope- 
 fully believed in ; the discovery of Amer- 
 ica promoted a lapsing credulity. It seemed 
 that in the New World, at any rate, would 
 come to light the admirable secret which, 
 
 [3] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 in spite of all the poking and prod- 
 ding, had never been yielded up by the 
 Old. 
 
 No doubt, the ill fate of Ponce de Leon 
 dealt the theory its death-blow ; at least, 
 confidence was never again begotten of 
 credulity. That sanguine adventurer, at 
 the age of sixty, secured a charter from 
 his government to discover and settle the 
 island of Bimini, where, it had been re- 
 ported to him, the fountain of perpetual 
 youth cast its waters wastefully upon the 
 earth, — with none but ill-natured savages 
 to bathe in it and profit by it. Possibly, in 
 making his preparations, he did not suf- 
 ficiently consider how formidable might 
 be savages who were fortified with per- 
 petual youth. No sooner had he set foot 
 on the island than these inhospitable and 
 virile natives routed his following, and 
 gave him the wound from which a short 
 time afterwards he died. Thenceforth 
 there was no important attempt to de- 
 monstrate the existence of a fountain of 
 
 [4] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 youth. In another century the belief had 
 faded. 
 
 This enlightenment of the popular mind, 
 and this extinction of a popular yearning, 
 have freed many wailful and bemoaning 
 voices that had otherwise been still, and 
 have permitted many minor cadences to 
 reach the hitherto oblivious ear. So long 
 as a fountain of youth was thought to be 
 discoverable, no Disraeli arose to exclaim, 
 *' Youth is a blunder ; " no Swinburne 
 chanted drearily, — 
 
 " From too much love of living, 
 From hope and fear set free, 
 We thank with brief thanksgiving 
 
 Whatever gods may be, 
 That no life lives forever, 
 That dead men rise up never. 
 That even the weariest river 
 Winds somewhere safe to sea." 
 
 One is bound to suspect that they who 
 now hold the dismal view of youth and 
 life would have been the most eager vol- 
 unteers to join Ponce de Leon's expedi- 
 
 [5] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 tion. It is a not wholly unknown or repre- 
 hensible habit to declare a low estimate 
 on what is out of reach. And it is the 
 common failing of diffident humanity to 
 imagine that the attainable is out of reach. 
 
 Even nowadays, when superstition has 
 hardly a rag left, every man may be, if he 
 will, his own Ponce de Leon — and with 
 a better prospect of success. For there 
 is a fountain of youth ; it will be found 
 in no undiscovered country — unless that 
 country is the man's own heart. There, 
 at some time, it has flowed. 
 
 Seven springs feed this fountain, — van- 
 ity, emulousness, generosity, anticipation, 
 innocence, curiosity, and faith. The first 
 early sentience of the child is the rod that 
 strikes the rock and releases, one after 
 another, these waters. Thenceforth they 
 mingle in a clear, harmonious stream. 
 
 But then, in some seismic convulsion or 
 plague of drought, one of these springs is 
 diminished, or extinguished, or transformed 
 into a moody intermittent little geyser. 
 
 [ M 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 Other shocks follow, and assail youth at its 
 remaining sources. Sometimes the springs 
 burst up, and spout afresh through the crust 
 that has been forming over them ; more 
 often their outpouring is reduced and re- 
 duced, and the fountain of youth gradu- 
 ally perishes away. 
 
 Invariably, the first of the springs to be 
 diminished or exhausted, is faith. The pro- 
 gress from credulous and superstitious child- 
 hood to fearless and open-eyed maturity is 
 marked by the remains of defunct delu- 
 sions. Some of these had been barely 
 warmed to life, and were laid down with- 
 out a pang ; but when others, which had 
 been of slow and tender incubation, were 
 pronounced inanimate, there was a sorrow- 
 ing heart and childish tears. These inev- 
 itable bereavements do not quell the en- 
 thusiastic spirit; but little by little, as they 
 accumulate, they shadow its joyousness and 
 awaken distrust and suspicion. We sacri- 
 fice our delusions without much suffering ; 
 it is otherwise when we are called on to 
 
 [7] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 yield up our illusions. It caused me as a 
 child no great pain to find that a man 
 could not keep himself dry in a shower — 
 as one of my fairy tales had it — by whirl- 
 ing a sword rapidly about his head; I had a 
 wooden sword of my own, and when next 
 the rain fell I made the experiment and 
 was drenched. Probably I had never quite 
 believed the story ; at any rate, I was but 
 mildly disappointed, and experienced no 
 such grief then as befell me somewhat later 
 in the overthrow of my first great illusion. 
 To publish a book, and thus amaze and 
 gratify my family, was my precocious aim. 
 Finding, after various efforts, that I had not 
 wit enough to make a book of my own, 
 and having studied Latin prematurely, I 
 conceived the idea of writing out a trans- 
 lation of Caesar's Commentaries. This 
 laborious task I ultimately accomplished 
 — in secret, as I supposed ; I covered some 
 seven hundred pages with large puerile 
 penmanship, and rendered every ablative 
 absolute with slavish fidelity. When the 
 
 [8] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 last word had been written, and nothing 
 remained but to arrange for the pubhca- 
 tion of the work, I found myself too ig- 
 norant of business methods to proceed, 
 and I took my father into my confidence. 
 His astonishment and his pride in my mass 
 of manuscript, the way in which he took 
 it up and balanced it in his hands and 
 ejaculated reverently over the number of 
 pages, exalted me as if it had been the 
 printed and bound volume he was holding ; 
 and then, as considerately as possible, he 
 explained that, on account of the number 
 who were in the field before me with 
 translations of Cassar, I could hardly hope 
 to find a publisher. I was crushed; but 
 my father called in my mother, and they 
 made me feel that they appreciated my 
 colossal achievement, even if the world was 
 denied the opportunity. That day my 
 father invited me to lunch with him at 
 the club, and afterwards took me to a base- 
 ball game. So when my first illusion 
 broke, I was floated tenderly down to earth. 
 
 [9] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 But for several years afterwards I would 
 occasionally pull out the drawer and look 
 at the massive manuscript, with a com- 
 passionate sense that it deserved a better 
 fate. 
 
 In common humanity it happens that 
 the illusions of children, when the time 
 comes for removing them, are dealt with, 
 as was this first one of mine, not ungently ; 
 the very hands that plucked away the veil 
 are often waiting to slip on another, al- 
 most as enchanting. But the grievous days 
 approach when these loving ministrations 
 must fail us, when the loss of illusion must 
 carry with it bitterness and humiliation, 
 and when, saddest of all, the comforter may 
 no longer be at hand to give us the con- 
 solatory luncheon at the club, to sit with 
 us sympathetic at the ball game. 
 
 When we first cease to believe in what 
 we see, credulity is passing ; when we first 
 cease to believe in what we imagine, faith 
 is taking flight. Experience teaches us 
 that the strawberries in the bottom of the 
 
 [ ^0] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 box are smaller than those on top ; but 
 our benevolent imagination, loath to ac- 
 cuse the berry-man of fraud, reasons the 
 matter out thus : if he put only the " aver- 
 age" berries on top, we would think that 
 they were his largest, and that what were 
 hidden must be quite contemptible ; in try- 
 ing to be candid, he would merely do him- 
 self an injustice. By this charitable argu- 
 ment, although we are emancipated from 
 credulity, we are still linked to faith. But 
 if some cynic informs us that our huckster 
 spreads a few fine big berries thinly over 
 the surface of a mass of wretched little 
 ones, in order to sell the little ones at the 
 price asked for the big — then our faith 
 follows hard after our credulity ; we go to 
 another berry-man, and we go to him with 
 suspicion. Experiences of this character 
 tend to remove us from the ranks of the 
 young in heart, and to enroll us, it may be, 
 among the men of the world. 
 
 With faith depleted, it is pretty hard 
 pumping for innocence. Unless, like The- 
 
 [ II ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 reau, one holds aloof from society, one can 
 hardly preserve innocence undefiled. The 
 simple ethics of one's early years have to 
 give place to a more complicated code, in 
 which self-interest and its corollary doc- 
 trine, that ** charity begins at home," are 
 the chief gospels. ** All the moraUty I 
 have," says one, ''is never to do any- 
 thing which could wound those I love, 
 could they know of it, and always to do 
 everything that might make them happy." 
 That is a tolerably high ideal of conduct 
 to maintain, yet it may not require inno- 
 cence — a state of mind unspotted from 
 the world. Always will innocence have 
 charms, — especially for the predatory, — 
 but it is not a useful virtue, and it is apt 
 to promote disadvantageous associations in 
 business. Most young men make haste to 
 be rid of it, — and it can be eliminated 
 without any serious loss of youth. 
 
 Lest these sentiments appear in tend- 
 ency subversive of accepted morality, let 
 me explain that the term innocence is here 
 
 [ ^2 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 used merely to define that condition which 
 precedes in the individual the development 
 of guile. The quite guileless person is the 
 only innocent person, for he alone does not 
 attempt to make use of others bv veiled 
 and indirect methods. And the innocence 
 which precludes such attempts necessarily 
 ceases to exist after the first hard blows at 
 faith. 
 
 Yet some persons never accustom them- 
 selves comfortably to the conventional de- 
 fensive methods of the world. Their un- 
 skilful subtleties are readily penetrated ; 
 they accept exposure as a humorous Neme- 
 sis, and seem undisturbed when they fail to 
 carry off their small hypocrisies. With so 
 light a regard for excellence in the prac- 
 tice of this art, they exhibit no acuteness 
 in detecting the subtlety of other practi- 
 tioners. Through all the shocks to faith 
 which they endure, they never lose their 
 willingness, their insatiate eagerness, to 
 lend a trusting ear. They throw the door 
 wide open, and mean to look over the 
 
 [ '3 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 guests at leisure. They are thus hospi- 
 table, because with a generous disposition 
 they unite a curiosity which does not re- 
 sort to critical scrutiny, and an open-eyed 
 habit of anticipation which finds in every 
 one and everything some agreeable matter 
 for conjecture or surprise. 
 
 Generosity, curiosity, anticipation — on 
 the persistence of these depends the per- 
 sistence of youth. Vanity and emulous- 
 ness, though essential in some degree to 
 youth, are not exclusively its attributes ; 
 they may thrive in the very oldest hearts. 
 They may dwindle from the torrent to the 
 trickle, even like faith, and it will not so 
 much matter; but when a man ceases to 
 be generous and to be curious, and when 
 he is no longer lured on and on by antici- 
 pation, he ceases to be young. 
 
 He may have made the most of his 
 opportunities, and yet arrive at this condi- 
 tion. He may even arrive at it by delib- 
 erate striving and intention, as others are 
 brought to it by the natural urging of 
 
 [ H] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 temperament. For there are two ideals 
 between which one may choose, — that of 
 being always young in heart, and that 
 of becoming as soon as possible a man — 
 or woman — of the world. 
 
 Many men — and perhaps all women 
 — of the world will resent as untrue and 
 injurious the assertion that they are not 
 young in heart. So much of their effort 
 is given to maintaining the atmosphere 
 of youth, that they may well be irritated 
 by a criticism implying that, with some 
 conspicuous exceptions, they have lost the 
 spirit. No one so much as the man of the 
 world — unless it is the woman — covets 
 certain characteristics of youth, clings to 
 them so tenaciously, — the vivacity, the 
 appearance, the outward expression. But 
 these are not fundamental qualities ; and 
 the very attributes which keep youth glow- 
 ing in the heart as well as shining on the 
 surface, most men and women of the world 
 contemn . Thev are not necessarily worldly 
 men and women, but they are of necessity 
 
 [ IS] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 sophisticated ; and that the young in heart 
 may not be. For here is the paradox of 
 youth : it is the time when one is learn- 
 ing, when one goes on eagerly learning ; 
 but as soon as one begins to take the les- 
 sons to heart, the heart is beginning to grow 
 old. The young do not profit by expe- 
 rience : they seek it ; they are unhappy 
 unless they are in the midst of it ; and 
 emerging from it, they at once go caracol- 
 ing off in search of more. If it has been 
 a pleasant lesson, they say blithely, *' An- 
 other good time salted down and put away 
 where the devil can't get at it ; " if it has 
 been a harsh one, they dash the tears from 
 their eyes, clap spurs to their beaten hope, 
 and ride away singing — and never mind 
 if the voice breaks ; no one will be there 
 to hear. The lure of the freedom and the 
 beauty and the essential goodness of life 
 ever leads them on, and the men and 
 women of the world smile at them kindly 
 and complacently. 
 
 They are bunglers ; they gape open- 
 
 [ '6] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 mouthed when it would be discreet to drop 
 eyelids and pass on ; they repeatedly justify 
 the condescension with which those who 
 have profited by experience regard them : 
 yet in spite of this they are lovable, as no 
 men of the world, as few women of the 
 world, ever are. Their indiscretions, their 
 mistaken enthusiasms, their awkwardnesses 
 that hurt none but themselves, their in- 
 genuous interest in life and in persons, 
 win the affection — and one's whole affec- 
 tion can never be engaged by those at 
 whom one may not sometimes humor- 
 ously smile. The young in years respond 
 to the young in heart, as they do not to the 
 men of the world, — with whom usually 
 they sit stiff, overawed, and constrained. 
 Indeed, it is a weakness that youth never 
 quite outgrows, to be always somewhat 
 overcome in the presence of those who 
 wear the air of large and opulent experi- 
 ence, or of those who are distinguished for 
 noteworthy accomplishment. With all its 
 superficial vanity and exuberant shouting, 
 
 [ 17 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 youth is at bottom humble-minded and 
 ready to have its gaze directed upward. It 
 does not minimize or depreciate; it has 
 a catholic respect for achievement; it is 
 aware of its own limited and imperfect 
 fulfilment of its tasks: and yet, even to 
 the last, it strives with gallant confidence. 
 But, said Audrey, ** I hope it is no dis- 
 honest desire to desire to be a woman of 
 the world." Surely not; in denying to those 
 who are of the world certain engaging 
 traits of the young in heart, one must 
 allow that they have their special merits 
 and virtues. Perhaps they inspire a deeper 
 confidence, if not so warm a love. Equal 
 to the occasion, serene, unmoved by ex- 
 travagant enthusiasm, discreetly refraining 
 from violent expressions of prejudice and 
 hate, they contribute a balance and a cool 
 temper to life, and are worthy of the ad- 
 miration bestowed on them by the young. 
 They are the conservatives ; the young in 
 heart are the radicals. They concern them- 
 selves with securing a more comfortable 
 
 [18] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 adjustment of existing forces; the young 
 in heart are absorbed in creating new ex- 
 plosives. In law, diplomacy, and statecraft, 
 we profit by the labors of the men of the 
 world ; in literature, painting, and explora- 
 tion, we are debtors to the young in heart. 
 Indeed, the pursuits in which men of the 
 world show at their best are those in 
 which the spirit of youth must inevitably 
 droop. It will resist most hardily disap- 
 pointment, failure, and sorrow; but in 
 the blandly successful life it does not 
 thrive. Enveloped in artifice and conven- 
 tion, breathing the atmosphere of tradition, 
 and oppressed by the crowding demands 
 of complicated petty problems, it is slowly 
 stifled ; it has not scope in which it may 
 buoyantly expand. Youth grows strong 
 with privation, and is invalided on a sur- 
 feit. The man of the world has experi- 
 enced a surfeit, and, if he is a successful 
 man of the world, continues to experience 
 it. His anticipations are moderate, his en- 
 thusiasms are restrained. But ardent, crav- 
 
 [ 19] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 ing youth, which, whatever its achieve- 
 ment, rejoices in it only for a moment and 
 then, still panting from the effort, turns 
 away forever and moves toward a future 
 attainment that shall indeed be success — 
 that is the spirit that expires in a w^orld 
 of equable and comfortable adjustment 
 and of nice balancings. Browning's lines, 
 
 " Grow old along with me, 
 The best is yet to be, 
 The last of life for which the first was made," 
 
 translated into our common idiom, must 
 mean, "Keep young along with me," — 
 for only so may the reader share with the 
 poet that always bright and eager anticipa- 
 tion of unquenchable youth. 
 
 It is true that youth is given to ex- 
 cesses ; no matter what a man's years, if 
 he have a young heart, it will always be 
 more urgent and compelling than his 
 elderly head. Always he will lean towards 
 extravagance in admiration, and splendor 
 in indignation. Only the young are lov- 
 
 [ ^o ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 ers ; only the young can hate. Here, taken 
 from Mr. Chesterton's admirable bio- 
 graphy, is an account of Browning's last 
 days — cited because it seems so well to 
 illustrate the survival in age of the spirit 
 of youth. 
 
 ^* During his last Italian period he seems 
 to have fallen back on very ultimate sim- 
 plicities, chiefly a mere staring at nature. 
 The family with whom he lived kept a 
 fox cub, and Browning would spend hours 
 with it, watching its grotesque ways ; when 
 it escaped, he was characteristically enough 
 delighted. The old man could be seen con- 
 tinually in the lanes round Asolo, peering 
 into hedges and whistling for the lizards. 
 
 *' This serene and pastoral decline, surely 
 the mildest of slopes into death, was sud- 
 denly diversified by a flash of something 
 lying far below. Browning's eye fell upon 
 a passage written by the distinguished Ed- 
 ward Fitzgerald, who had been dead for 
 many years, in which Fitzgerald spoke in 
 an uncomplimentary manner of Elizabeth 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 Barrett Browning. Browning immediately 
 wrote the ' Lines to Edward Fitzgerald,' and 
 set the whole literary world in an uproar. 
 The lines w^ere bitter and excessive to have 
 been written against any man, especially 
 bitter and excessive to have been written 
 against a man who was not alive to reply. 
 And yet, when all is said, it is impossible 
 not to feel a certain dark and indescribable 
 pleasure in this last burst of the old barbaric 
 energy. The mountain had been tilled and 
 forested, and laid out in gardens to the sum- 
 mit ; but for one last night it had proved 
 itself once more a volcano, and had lit up 
 all the plains with its forgotten fire. And 
 the blow, savage as it was, was dealt for 
 that great central sanctity, — the story of a 
 man's youth. All that the old man would 
 say in reply to every view of the question 
 was, ' I felt as if she had died yesterday.' " 
 
 After all, the excessive persons are the 
 expressive persons ; emotion is essential to 
 expression, and the habit of expression 
 promotes and intensifies emotion. There- 
 
 [22] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 fore is expression the better part of life ; 
 it is the great generator of human sym- 
 pathy. The old-hearted, outworn persons 
 of the world are those who have the most 
 persistent craving for fresh sensations, fresh 
 impressions, and who, from laziness, selfish- 
 ness, or diffidence, think it not worth while 
 to communicate what is already theirs, and 
 so suffer it to perish within them. 
 
 " I loafe and invite my soul," 
 
 cried Whitman ; if he had done only that, 
 he would never have derived from life the 
 enjoyment which made him a prophet. 
 In the industry wherewith he recorded and 
 interpreted those periods of loafing, rather 
 than in his indolent baskings, did he ex- 
 hibit his essential youthfulness. It is the 
 lazy, diffident selfishness of age that shrinks 
 from revivifying and interpreting experi- 
 ence, so that it shall please and interest an- 
 other ; it is the generosity of youth that is 
 the primal impulse to expression. 
 
 And with this generosity a certain gal- 
 
 [23] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 lantry is required. The faculty of expres- 
 sion demands the best that vitality can give. 
 It calls for energy when one's mood may 
 be relaxed, for sustained vigor and cheer- 
 fulness and an undaunted spirit in adver- 
 sity. We have looked upon Browning as 
 an exemplar in his old age of the exces- 
 siveness of youth ; here let a nameless and 
 far humbler writer serve to illustrate for us 
 the gallantry of the young in heart. To an 
 editor who knew him only through his 
 work he sent a story, and with the story 
 this letter: "Please pardon a personal note. 
 Almost to a certainty, before I can hear 
 from you about the inclosed manuscript, 
 I shall have passed beyond this life. Will 
 you, therefore, in case the story is avail- 
 able, make the check out to my wife } — 
 and that would be all right if I were still 
 here. Thank you for your past kindnesses ; 
 good-by." It was a story of brave adven- 
 ture by ice and sea, written in a brave 
 spirit. It was indomitable youth that faced 
 clear sighted the imminent death, and 
 
 [ 24] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 while awaiting it occupied itself — urged 
 on, no doubt, by unselfish thought of 
 another — with fashioning tales of manly- 
 courage and activity. One imagines the 
 man of the world facing death with equal 
 fortitude, setting his house in order and pre- 
 paring for the end with serenity ; one does 
 not so readily imagine him engaging to the 
 end in such gay and ardent accomplishment. 
 It has been too foreign to him through his 
 life. 
 
 The sorrowful reflection is that the vast 
 multitude of human beings are neither 
 young in heart nor men — or women — of 
 the world. The lives of most people are 
 necessarily so circumscribed that to be men 
 of the world is not their aim, because it 
 hardly comes within their conception ; but 
 there are few w^ho have not at some time 
 experienced youth, however prematurely 
 the spirit of it may have withered. Those 
 who could not be of the world, yet might 
 be young, have made craven surrender of 
 their youth in the struggle with exacting 
 
 [25 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 care or in the preoccupations of responsi- 
 bility. In their annual vacations, respon- 
 sibility or grinding care allows them a 
 brief reunion with the prisoner — whose 
 face now they hardly know ; then back 
 into the cell goes youth, and the key is 
 turned for another year. Can youth never 
 be aided to elude the jailer and escape to 
 freedom ? It is worth a man's while to 
 plot and sacrifice for this ; for if he liber- 
 ates and recovers his youth, he will enter 
 upon the last stage of his journey march- 
 ing as march the veterans when passing in 
 review. That such daring rescues are pos- 
 sible, we know ; we sometimes see men 
 whose old age blossoms gayly, after years 
 of barrenness ; we see men who, after a 
 lifetime of effort, have cleared about them 
 a space where the sunlight may shine. 
 How nowadays shall Ponce de Leon equip 
 himself for his quest r 
 
 When it is said of a man that he has no 
 outside interests, the phrase implies that he 
 is self-centred, self-absorbed. He has put 
 
 [ 26] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 away childish things, and he has put away 
 youth also. In no objective sense has he 
 an interest in life ; he has an interest only 
 in his own life, and the attentiveness and 
 intensity of this interest are painful. No 
 man can be really young who has lost 
 what may be called the sense of external- 
 ity, who cannot at the moment of un- 
 healthy tension turn his mind to playing 
 with some opportune irrelevancy or direct 
 his eye to some incongruous scene, — who 
 cannot, in other words, allow himself a 
 certain humorous indulgence. Humor is 
 the shield of the young in heart, as wit 
 is the weapon of the man of the world. 
 
 This humorous indulgence or preoccupa- 
 tion with the irrelevancy that brings relief 
 is often exasperating in those of immature 
 years, and is then designated irresponsibil- 
 ity. Later in life, when a man has become 
 too subdued to his task or too immersed in 
 his own personal ambitions to be an orna- 
 ment of society, his occasional return to 
 irresponsibility would be welcomed. And 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 it is by relaxing in this manner, by " lim- 
 bering up," by admitting inconsequence 
 to an honorable place beside the haughty 
 and firm figure of absolute conclusiveness, 
 that senile decay of the heart may be ar- 
 rested and youth be restored to lack-lustre 
 eyes. No treason to the essential respon- 
 sibilities is involved, no demoralized con- 
 duct, no neglect even of the most petty 
 minutiae. All that is required is a whim- 
 sical attitude of mind, and the appropria- 
 tion of odd moments to project upon the 
 fancy the irresponsible flight that may 
 never be realized. For example, there is 
 a certain slave of routine, who is in the 
 habit of cheering himself with imaginary 
 excursions. ** I think," he says, ** I will 
 not go to the office to-day. Instead, I 
 will buy a ticket and go South. Then 
 I will telegraph the chief, * Off for six 
 months. Do as you think best.* What 
 do you think he '11 do ? " And thus he 
 whistles himself to his work and cheers his 
 meticulous way. 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 It is unquestionably true that a life which 
 has been devoted to narrow personal in- 
 terests, and which was never much gifted 
 with humor or fancy, cannot be quite re- 
 juvenated. But some spark of youth has 
 been rekindled if the man, though unre- 
 sponsive to all that lies about him, acquires 
 an interest in playing a part as well as in 
 plodding forward to his little goal. A 
 sculptor who was working upon a statue 
 of Lincoln had a suit of clothes made, that 
 should be the counterpart of those worn 
 by the President. When they came from 
 the tailor, freshly folded and creased, the 
 sculptor sought for some one who might 
 wear them and give them the proper sem- 
 blance of use ; and he found this man in 
 an old farmer of the neighborhood. The 
 farmer undertook the task for a considera- 
 tion, and daily paraded about the country- 
 side in the clothes that Lincoln might 
 have worn. And gradually these garments 
 clothed him with a new dignity ; they 
 invested him with an interest in Lincoln's 
 
 [ ^9 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 personality; he studied Lincoln's life and 
 tried to conform his personal appearance 
 more nearly to Lincoln's, — tried gradually 
 to make Lincoln the standard in his speech, 
 his thought, his acts ; and from wear- 
 ing the clothes in fulfilment of a contract, 
 continued to wear them as the manifesta- 
 tion of his heart's desire, fondly imagin- 
 ing himself, not Lincoln indeed, yet in 
 some remote way Lincoln's kindred spirit. 
 There was something so innocent, so naive 
 in this impersonation, something so mod- 
 est, too, that it evoked kindliness rather 
 than ridicule ; and as it certainly made 
 the old man's life more full and interest- 
 ing to himself, so also did it enlarge the 
 human understanding and sympathy of his 
 neighbors. 
 
 To every man who has labored ambi- 
 tiously and long, there must come a time 
 when he accepts the truth of Stevenson's 
 words, ** Whatever else we are intended 
 to do, we are not intended to succeed; 
 failure is the fate allotted." The convic- 
 
 [ 30] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 tion need not affect a man's purpose or 
 paralyze his efforts. But when it is re- 
 luctantly admitted, then is the time for 
 him to discover that whatever disappoint- 
 ments await him at the end of the long 
 road, at the goal towards which he had so 
 steadfastly set his eyes, there are compen- 
 sations lying for him on either hand. If 
 he cannot discover this and is one of those 
 who never had youth in their hearts, he 
 will compress his lips more sternly, more 
 obstinately, and in sullen rebellion con- 
 tinue on his way. Him we may respect, 
 but he does not have our love. On the 
 other hand, if he says to himself, " Well, 
 I can't get what I thought and hoped, but 
 there's something ahead that perhaps I can 
 have, and I mean to keep on, — why, hello ! 
 
 — the road 's a good deal more pleasant 
 than I thought it ; of course I '11 keep on ! " 
 
 — when a man takes his disappointment 
 so, and after the first dejection of weariness 
 looks up from his resting place and smiles 
 to see the buttercups brightening themea- 
 
 [31 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 dows — we respect him and love him also. 
 He is coming into happiness when he thus 
 recovers his youth. 
 
 The young in heart are happy — and 
 what is more important, they contribute 
 unawares to the happiness of others. They 
 may not be so '' interesting" as the tragic 
 figures of life, or even as the morbid and 
 melancholy ; they do not present so many 
 points of view from which to be studied, 
 as they who are of the world ; but they 
 diffuse, w^herever they are, a warmth and 
 light of happiness. Men and women of 
 the world have their mission of dissemi- 
 nating happiness also, and worthily per- 
 form it; yet the happiness within their gift 
 is of a less elemental and pervasive kind. 
 That which youth scatters so freely is 
 of the spirit ; that which emanates from 
 the world requires for its appreciation a 
 certain discriminating intelligence. The 
 communication from youth is electric 
 and instant, from the people of the world 
 gradual and deliberate. 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
THE YOUNG IN HEART 
 
 Yet at the last, one must hesitate to ex- 
 clude the spirit of youth entirely from men 
 and women of the world. It is surely true 
 that they who are and who remain most 
 thoroughly young in heart are untouched 
 by sophistication, and that in those who are 
 most perfectly of the world there is left 
 no illusion of youth. These two extremes 
 represent, the one, the most gifted, the 
 other, the most highly developed of the 
 human race. But there are a few — es- 
 pecially among women — in whom there 
 is even to the end a fine balance between 
 youth and sophistication preserved, a few 
 who to the freshness of enthusiasm and 
 illusion unite the tact and grace that grow 
 with experience and the serenity that has 
 succeeded faith. These gentle and sweet 
 spirits, touched by the knowledge of the 
 world, are yet more infallibly convinced of 
 its goodness, and bear unconsciously within 
 their lives the vision of two ideals. 
 
II 
 
 LAWN TENNIS 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 There will probably be no quarrel with 
 the statement that the value of any out- 
 door game is measured, not so much by the 
 physical exercise it necessitates, as by the 
 satisfaction and outlet it gives to the spirit 
 of combat that troubles us. Those in 
 search of exercise for its own sake, desirous 
 of enlarging their muscles, expanding their 
 chests, and improving their state of health, 
 will be better rewarded by devoting them- 
 selves to calisthenics and gymnastics, to 
 swimming or riding, than by the enthusi- 
 astic pursuit of any game. The symmet- 
 rical development of the body is not the 
 usual result of games, any more than it is 
 their primary object ; and it need not dis- 
 parage their value to make this admission 
 at the outset. It is, however, an admirable 
 quality which they all possess that they 
 call for muscular activity in some form or 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 other, and that they cause it to be exer- 
 cised with zest and enjoyment instead of 
 as an irksome duty that one owes to one's 
 person. And therefore, in estimating the 
 value of a game, we cannot quite leave out 
 of account the possibilities it affords for 
 exercise ; supposing that in other respects 
 there were equality, that game would be 
 the best which called into play the freest 
 use of the body. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there is no equality 
 among games ; they do not all have the 
 same effect on the character, they do not 
 satisfy quite the same emotions or suit 
 equally all temperaments, as is evident 
 when one considers that different games 
 appeal to different men. Yet in them all, 
 modulated to various degrees of youth or 
 age, strength or weakness, it is the element 
 of contest that supplies the interest and 
 performs the greatest service to the players. 
 And that game which on the whole best 
 satisfies the contentious spirit may be said 
 to fulfil most completely its purpose. 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 I start with the proposition that this 
 game is lawn tennis. I am not indifferent 
 to the merits of golf, baseball, football, 
 or any other outdoor game, but which of 
 these demands of its e^cer^i participant the 
 direct, constant, and active opposition of 
 tennis? ** Football," you say at once; 
 well, perhaps. Shall I seem to evade the 
 issue if I submit the point that football in 
 its most important manifestations is now 
 a spectacle rather than a game, that ex- 
 cept among schoolboys it is played not so 
 much for fun as for a certain glory, that 
 it is for us, as the gladiatorial combats were 
 for the Romans, as the bullfight is for the 
 people of Spain and Mexico, an amuse- 
 ment for the spectators rather than a re- 
 creation for the participants ? I have often 
 been struck bv the satisfaction of college 
 players when the season closes, and by their 
 readiness after they leave college to drop 
 football entirely. The game which so 
 many are glad to have done with and 
 which requires sacrifices that men beyond 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 a certain age are unwilling to make, does 
 not serve most completely the purpose of 
 a game. 
 
 In baseball the nine players on each 
 team are not all simultaneously and con- 
 stantly in action. If it is a " pitchers' bat- 
 tle," the three outfielders have a dull time 
 of it, and the team at bat have long idle 
 periods. It is a good game, it is the na- 
 tional game, yet one would hesitate to say 
 that it meets more fully than any other 
 the requirements. 
 
 In golf you can do nothing to harass 
 your antagonist, outmanoeuvre him, check 
 him when he is winning, or lure him into 
 pitfalls ; you can strive to improve your 
 own play, you cannot hamper his. There 
 is no need of quick decision, there is no 
 opportunity for strategy, the element of 
 direct, aggressive opposition is lacking; 
 therefore golf does not best fulfil the pur- 
 pose of a game. 
 
 Hockey deserves wider and more enthu- 
 siastic recognition than it has yet won ; in 
 
 [ 40 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 its swift, unceasing action and its constant 
 conflict, it comes near being an ideal game. 
 But it is hardly universal enough ; on 
 each side there is one player condemned 
 to a post of responsible idleness, which is 
 only now and then enlivened by brief flur- 
 ries. While the others are racing back and 
 forth on the ice, the goal-keeper stands 
 alone, freezing his toes. And because of 
 this melancholy adjunct, because it does 
 not permit to all its players an equal de- 
 gree of activity and opposition, one must 
 regretfully deny to hockey the palm. Yet 
 there need never be any rivalry betw een 
 tennis and hockey ; the conditions that 
 make possible the one forbid the other. 
 
 Now let us examine the case for tennis. 
 That it is entitled to the place of suprem- 
 acy among games seems to me no unrea- 
 sonable claim. 
 
 First of all and most important : w^hen 
 you are playing tennis, w^hether in singles 
 or doubles, it is always you and your op- 
 ponent. You are not looking on, except 
 
 [41 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 for the briefest moment ; you are not get- 
 ting any more rest than you wish, you 
 are more often not having as much as 
 you would like. From the first stroke of 
 the game to the last, you are in constant 
 yet always changing opposition to another 
 player. Even in the doubles on the strokes 
 that are your partner's, you are not a mere 
 spectator ; you are running backward, for- 
 ward, keeping pace with him, seeking the 
 position in which the next ball may be 
 most advantageously received. Your de- 
 cision must be instant ; in the fraction 
 ' of a second you determine whether you 
 shall drive the ball or toss it into the air, 
 place it on the left or on the right, rush 
 to the net or run back ; you must have 
 an instinctive knowledge of what your 
 opponent expects you to do and then, if 
 possible, do something else. Once you 
 have succeeded in outwitting him, the tri- 
 umph is all yours ; you divide the honors 
 with no one. Tennis more than any other 
 game has the qualities that gave the duel its 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 fascination ; it is all eager and alive, two 
 men at close quarters, feinting, parrying, 
 thrusting, both alert for an opening to 
 give the final coup de grace. 
 
 Call to mind some long rally that you 
 have had ; remember how on one occa- 
 sion when your opponent was playing deep 
 in the court, you drew him to the net by 
 a ball chopped skilfully just over it; how 
 he returned the stroke, and how you next 
 shot the ball down the side line, thinking 
 to pass him. But he had anticipated the 
 attempt and volleyed cleverly ; then, in- 
 stead of trying the cross-court shot that he 
 was waiting for, you tossed the ball high 
 over his head, and while he spun round and 
 raced for it you trotted to the net, prepared 
 to "kill" the lob that he should send in 
 return. And just as you had hoped, it was 
 a short lob ; but instead of killing it, you 
 decided it would be more fun to keep him 
 running, and you turned the ball over into 
 the farther corner of his court. He w^ent 
 after it at full speed and lobbed again, — 
 
 [43 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 it was all he could do, poor fellow, — and 
 again the ball fell short, again you had him 
 at your mercy. Nor did you smash the 
 ball this time ; instead, you turned it off 
 slowly into the other corner. He sprinted 
 hard and reached it, only to pop it up 
 easily once more. And now you gathered 
 yourself; you saw out of the tail of your 
 eye that he had turned and had already 
 started back desperately toward the far- 
 ther corner ; and you landed on that ball 
 with all your might, beat it to the earth, 
 and sent it bounding straight at the place he 
 was leaving. He made a miserable, futile 
 effort to right himself and shift his racket ; 
 then you saw him walk slowly after the 
 ball, with his head drooping and his shoul- 
 ders heaving up about his ears, and you 
 chuckled to yourself with huge approval 
 of your own astute play, — *'That got his 
 wind, I guess." 
 
 There is a human amusement in making 
 your antagonist run back and forth thus 
 earnestly and desperately ; but one has a 
 
 [44] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 more exalted satisfaction in placing a shot 
 so sudden, swift, and accurate that the 
 opposing player has not time to move. 
 Teasing your man, you feel your power 
 over a particular individual ; paralyzing 
 him by a stroke, you experience a moment 
 of omnipotence. ''There," you say, ''there 
 I sent a ball that nobody could touch." 
 In your sublimity you may even spare a 
 moment's compassion for the poor wretch 
 who stands rooted in astonishment, dazed 
 by the bolt before which champions had 
 been powerless. You say to him conde- 
 scendingly, " I caught that just right ; " 
 you may even intimate, if you are mag- 
 nanimous, that you do not expect to do 
 the thing every time. But in your heart 
 you are boastfully hopeful, you feel that at 
 last you have found your game, and you 
 believe that you have the man cowed. 
 
 And how is it when instead of driving 
 your opponent before you and exhibiting 
 a cleverness that seems really outside your- 
 self, a supernatural precision of eye and 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 arm, you are going down to defeat r Is 
 there any delight in that ? From a wide 
 range of personal experience I would mod- 
 estly assert that there is. Although you 
 realize that the doom is drawing nearer, 
 although to avert it you put forth your 
 mightiest efforts and only lose in strength 
 and breath while your adversary seems to 
 be renewing his inhuman power, you fight 
 on, hoping even to the last that you may 
 turn the tide and pull out a glorious vic- 
 tory. You make a stroke that spurs you 
 on, you follow it with three that provoke 
 your bitterest self-contempt, and you plant 
 yourself with melodramatic determination 
 in your soul and, doubtless, upon your 
 face. *' The Old Guard dies, but never 
 surrenders ; " was there no joy for them 
 in their supreme, superb annihilation r It 
 makes after all little difference to you emo- 
 tionally whether your fight against odds is 
 a winning or a losing one, so long as it is 
 the best fight that you can put forward. 
 To be in the thick of it, battering away 
 
 [46 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 undaunted, is the fun. Even if your op- 
 ponent so far overmatches you that the 
 outcome is hardly in question, you may 
 have as good a time as if you stood to 
 win ; for you go in resolved to break down 
 his cool assurance, to make him show his 
 best efforts, to unmask and damage his 
 strategy and gain his respect; and while 
 you are striving with all your pigmy fury 
 to achieve this, you now and then must 
 pause to admire the overwhelming strokes 
 of his resourceful master hand. 
 
 It seems fitting here to consider the 
 theory, often advanced and seldom dis- 
 puted, that a sport is the better for an 
 element of danger. If this is true, the ad- 
 vocates of tennis must be dumb. Nothing 
 w^orse than a sprained ankle or a wrenched 
 knee can befall a man on a tennis court ; 
 and these, however painful, are not heroic 
 injuries. I once heard an eloquent and 
 distinguished man in the course of a bril- 
 liant address declare that the occasional 
 deaths occurring in polo, in football, on the 
 
 [47 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 hunting field, are the price the Anglo- 
 Saxon race pays for its position of head- 
 ship and command. It was an impressive 
 and inspiring oration ; and this sentiment 
 was echoed with a great outburst of ap- 
 plause. Yet it does not bear cool scrutiny. 
 The football player will tell you that, once 
 in the game, the possibility of injury does 
 not occur to him ; the polo player will 
 say the same ; after you have taken the 
 first jump, danger in the hunting field 
 does not beset you. Where there is no 
 consciousness of danger, there is no brav- 
 ery. In the heat of battle no man is a 
 poltroon. Yes, but to take the first jump, 
 to go into the game, it is urged — does not 
 that compel and develop a man's courage ? 
 Only if he is physically unfit or danger- 
 ously ignorant; under other circumstances 
 to enter a sport in which there is an ele- 
 ment of peril is as natural for the boy 
 or the man, and as little an indication 
 of character, as to go to bed when one is 
 sleepy or to eat when one is hungry. The 
 
 [48 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 boy who is heavy and strong, and whose 
 friends are playing football, will take up 
 the game; the man who rides well, and 
 whose friends are playing polo, will try 
 his hand at it ; and in neither case is 
 there, on account of the physical risk, any 
 access of courage to the novice. The foot- 
 ball player is no more to the front when 
 there is a runaway horse to be stopped 
 or a woman to be saved from drowning 
 than any other chivalrous and hardy man. 
 It is not the element of danger in a game 
 which trains one to fortitude and courage; 
 it is the element of opposition, purely. 
 He is the courageous man who in the 
 crisis of the contest responds the more 
 daringly and steadfastly the more he is 
 tried ; and that he may be at the moment 
 in some remote peril of life or limb adds 
 nothing to his stature, increases not at all 
 the importance of the test. The injuries 
 and deaths that sometimes take place in 
 our rougher sports should not be viewed 
 as glorifying these forms of contest ; they 
 
 [49 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 are deplorable calamities, with no miti- 
 gation. It seems to me beyond debate 
 that the game which is entirely harmless 
 in its play, which does not imperil the 
 man, and which has none the less qualities 
 that make for manliness, is the best of all 
 games. 
 
 Certainly, of them all tennis is the most 
 universal; small boys, girls, women, men 
 of three generations, play it, and the crack 
 has not very much more enjoyment out 
 of it than the duffer. So long as a player 
 feels within him possibilities of growth, 
 he enjoys the game ; and even when these 
 fail, even when he realizes that he is slip- 
 ping backward, he clings on, light-heart- 
 edly contesting every inch of the decline 
 with some one of his contemporaries. *' If 
 I cannot keep pace with the advancing 
 battalion, I shall not head those who are 
 in retreat," cries your optimist ; and so — 
 because tennis players are generally opti- 
 mists — you will see on any warm sum- 
 mer day veterans urging their old limbs 
 
 [ 50] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 upon the grassy courts, crouching in their 
 play with racket held stiffly, trotting with 
 little, timorous steps, poking at the ball 
 with the gesture of uncertain vision; and 
 you watch them awhile and think per- 
 haps in the pride of your youth, ** There 
 can't be much fun in that." And then, 
 while you are looking on, they begin to 
 wrangle about some point ; they are sus- 
 picious as to whether or not that ball 
 actually did strike the line; and such ver- 
 bal vitality as those four old men will 
 then display, congregating at the net, wag- 
 ging their heads, and finally examining 
 the ball itself for traces of whitewash ! 
 You do not doubt any longer that their 
 tennis is something of extreme moment 
 to them ; and you wonder if with your 
 own occasional slipshod indifference to 
 your rights on doubtful points you do not 
 show an unworthy slight regard for a noble 
 game. 
 
 In fact, I think that a match between 
 old men deeply in earnest is a spectacle 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 more inspiring to one's humanity than a 
 tournament of champions. I do not mean 
 that I would rather watch it ; I do not 
 deny that for a spectator in ordinary mood 
 it is a slumberous proceeding. Yet if 
 one is in an idle, reflective, kindly frame of 
 mind, there is nothing so cheering to one's 
 faith, so soothing to one's soul, so hopeful 
 and sane and healthy, as the sight of these 
 graybeards, — venerable enough when you 
 meet them on the street, and now scam- 
 pering after a ball with the single-minded 
 passion of a dog or a child. Their squab- 
 bles and their laughter are alike pleasant 
 to the ear ; and when they stop between 
 sets to rest and draw their asthmatic breath, 
 you look at them admiringly, and hope 
 that when you grow old you too may be 
 this kind of fine old boy. 
 
 There is charm also, though of a dif- 
 ferent nature, in observing the young duf- 
 fer. I know not why it should be so, but 
 the strong young duffer in tennis is a 
 more ungainly and grotesque creature than 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 any that is furnished forth in other sports. 
 The golfer who swings without hitting the 
 ball is an object of mild derision ; his 
 crestfallen appearance after so tremendous 
 an output of power delights our hard 
 American humor. In the same way the 
 spectacle of an unskilful baseball player 
 awkwardly muffing a "fly" has always a 
 ludicrous aspect for the "bleachers." If we 
 do not sit upon the bleachers, we with- 
 hold the ridiculing outcry, but our amuse- 
 ment is no less keen for being suppressed. 
 The gingerly clumsiness with which a 
 well-grown man will hold up a tennis 
 racket, seeming appalled by the harmless 
 instrument, prepares us to watch for his 
 next entertaining capers. He poses him- 
 self with great care, gives a fine prelimi- 
 nary flourish of his weapon, and then taps 
 the ball with a lady-like movement and 
 laborious intentness of aim. It goes wild, 
 and he screws his body to one side with a 
 frantic instinct to correct the disappointing 
 flight. I would not seem unsympathetic 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 with the duffer ; how should I hope for 
 mercy, showing none ! 
 
 Given, as he usually is, to expletive and 
 malediction, the beginner is never so ram- 
 pant as he who has progressed a stage and is 
 trying strokes. Genus irritabile ! The duffer 
 is determined to master the drive — that 
 long low stroke that skims the net and 
 then drops sharply, the stroke that is inval- 
 uable to one playing in the back of the court. 
 Holding his racket conscientiously in the 
 manner prescribed, he advances upon an 
 easy bound, swings, leaping from the earth 
 with both feet, and sends the ball flying 
 over the club-house. Then what vocifera- 
 tion ! He has not the contained solemnity 
 of the veterans playing near by, or the ab- 
 sorbed anxiety of mien of the utter duffer; 
 his interest in the game itself seems not so 
 profound, and therefore is not so touching 
 as theirs ; he is animated too keenly by an 
 egotistical desire for self-improvement. 
 
 When the duffer has at last attained a 
 ** stroke," it is too often only to become 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 its slave. There is so much physical satis- 
 faction in making a clean, swift, forehand 
 drive across court or down the side line 
 that a player who has a moderate profi- 
 ciency in this will try it under the most 
 rash and ill-favored conditions. Running 
 at full speed and just reaching the ball that 
 he should lob, he will swipe desperately, 
 and the occasional lucky shot that he 
 achieves compensates him for the half 
 dozen that he has sent wild. But in the 
 score his errors are not forgotten ; and at 
 the end of the game he will perhaps won- 
 der why so brilliant a player as himself 
 does not more often win. Generally speak- 
 ing, the player who cultivates a stroke lays 
 himself open to attack at every other point ; 
 his backhand is liable to be weak, his game 
 at the net is neglected, he becomes ob- 
 sessed with the notion that if he can only 
 get that stroke going hard and accurately, 
 it will carry him through unaided. And 
 that is why many a showy player goes 
 down before one whose game is more slow 
 
 [55 ] 
 
 -c " 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 and dull to watch. For any high degree 
 of proficiency, speed is of course an essen- 
 tial ; but extreme speed is more often ex- 
 hibited by players of the second or third 
 class than by the most successful cracks. 
 The supreme skill lies in the ability to 
 hit a ball as well from one position as 
 from another, backhand, forehand, volley, 
 or half-volley, and next to that in adjust- 
 ing the balance between speed and accu- 
 racy ; even by long practice you may never 
 learn to gauge the pace above which or 
 below which you may not go without 
 sacrificing precision or direction. This 
 requires a genius for tennis, a native in- 
 stinct, and an unusual power of coordi- 
 nation. 
 
 I have never seen a match between 
 players of the first rank without having 
 a slightly disappointed sense that their 
 performance seemed less wonderful than 
 it actually was. I fancy that to any one 
 who has played tennis a little, such an ex- 
 hibition falls in just this way short of 
 
 [ 56 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 anticipation. The game is not a sequence 
 of magnificent bursts of speed, sensational 
 smashes, extraordinary ralhes, although at 
 moments these do flash and electrify ; it 
 proceeds with an outward smoothness, 
 ease and rhythm of movement, that by no 
 means intimates the tension of the con- 
 test. The spectator is tempted to the re- 
 mark, '' It seems so simple ; why shouldn't 
 anybody play that way .? " Every swing of 
 ■ the rackets is free, absolutely unstudied, 
 propelled with the least muscular effort ; 
 you feel that if you were to pick up a 
 racket for the first time, that would be 
 exactly the way you would naturally swing 
 it. And the players seem not to be run- 
 ning about so very violently ; on the whole, 
 not so violently as you yourself run when 
 you plav ; you watch them and do not 
 understand how*they manage this. One 
 places the ball, you v^^ould say, definitely ; 
 yet without much apparent exertion the 
 other is there and has returned it. The 
 explanation is that these players by instinct 
 
 [57] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 and long experience know how to cover 
 their court and economize their strength ; 
 anticipating every stroke, they are quick 
 at starting ; every movement counts, and 
 they go through no unnecessary flounder- 
 ing ; immediate perception does for them 
 what sheer strength and speed can never do 
 for the less gifted. In tennis, as in other 
 matters, the highest achievements often 
 seem spontaneous and casual. 
 
 Unquestionably the most distinguished 
 exponents of the game that is both leisurely 
 yet cat-like in quickness are the English 
 gentlemen who took from us the Interna- 
 tional Cup. In contrast to their method 
 of covering the court, even our best 
 American players seemed to rush and 
 scramble. The Englishmen moved with 
 an unassuming stealth, and were not over- 
 anxious to receive the ball at the most 
 favorable point of the bound. Our players 
 obviously took greater pains to get into po- 
 sition. The Englishgame was on the whole 
 the more finished and perfect ; the Ameri- 
 
 [58 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 can game — in singles only — the more ag- 
 gressive and compulsive. The Englishmen, 
 playing at top notch and with all despera- 
 tion, gave the impression of still having 
 something in reserve ; it was always clear 
 w^hen the Americans were straining every 
 resource. In the American game there 
 was more personality ; in the English 
 game there was more form. The quali- 
 ties came out curiously in many ways — 
 even in the matter of dress. In this respect 
 the visitors were as precise as in their play, 
 appearing always in the freshest white 
 clothes, white even to their shoes, wearing 
 their long sleeves flapping modestly about 
 their wrists ; the Americans, with their 
 various drab flannels, their black spiked 
 shoes, and their rolled-up sleeves, pre- 
 sented a more dangerous and less attractive 
 appearance. The dilettante aspect of the 
 English champions made their efficient 
 performance the more astonishing to our 
 eyes. They moved softly upon the grass 
 with their rubber-soled shoes, instead of 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 tearing it with spikes according to our 
 barbarous practice ; they preserved unruf- 
 fled through five hard sets the garden party 
 look with which they first appeared ; they 
 almost made us feel that to perspire when 
 playing tennis, if not actually vulgar, is at 
 least undisciplined. With such refinement 
 of appearance, the most scrupulous courtesy 
 and sportsmanship were to be expected ; and 
 indeed one of the visitors performed the 
 prettiest act of the tournament. When on a 
 mistaken decision the umpire awarded him 
 a point that was not his, he drove the next 
 ball out of court, making amends to his 
 opponent. 
 
 The gracefulness of the act was unu- 
 sual, but the spirit that prompted it pre- 
 vails widely in tennis, and it is this that 
 gives the game so pleasant an atmosphere. 
 Except occasionally for a hurried, excited 
 " How's that? " when the player is un- 
 certain whether a ball is in or out, there 
 is never a word said to the umpire ; and 
 the times when one may see disgust, re- 
 
 [ 60 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 sentment, even a passing surprise expressed 
 on a player's face at a flagrantly mistaken 
 decision, are so rare as to be memorable. 
 I recall at least two matches of an ago- 
 nizing closeness that turned on faulty de- 
 cisions, yet on neither occasion did the 
 sufferer betray by glance at umpire or 
 spectators any sense of injury. In no other 
 game, I think, are self-control and a read- 
 iness to put the best face on misfortune 
 so generally the rule. 
 
 And this is of course a part of not 
 taking one's game too seriously. It is no 
 uncommon thing, according to reports, 
 for the defeated contestants in a decisive 
 rowing race or football match to burst into 
 tears. I have never heard of a deposed 
 tennis champion making such a demon- 
 stration. What is the difference ? Is it that 
 the tension is really so much greater in 
 one form of sport than in another? Partly 
 this, perhaps ; but I am inclined to think 
 the deeper cause lies in the fact that in 
 tennis you go down to defeat alone or 
 
 [ 6i ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 at most with only one other ; while in 
 football and rowing your grief is redupli- 
 cated for all the comrades with whom you 
 have met disaster, — who undertook with 
 you some responsibility that at the time 
 looms disproportionately great. Now it is 
 a line thing to experience sorrow in this 
 way, even though to us on the outside the 
 cause appears trifling ; such suffering pro- 
 motes one's sympathy and opens one's 
 heart ; and when we consider the human- 
 izing influence of a defeat at rowing or 
 football, we do not weigh too heavily the 
 foolishness of the occasional hysterical 
 outburst. And tennis has no such moments 
 of dramatic awakening. Its after effects 
 are comparatively mild. Even in the case 
 of doubles, where you have another to be 
 sorry for, defeat brings out a mutual spirit 
 of good humor and acquiescence ; you 
 reproach yourself and your partner re- 
 proaches himself, but neither of you sits 
 in gloom ; there is a light touch in your 
 mutual apology. And the game that is 
 
 [ 62 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 permeated with so tolerant and gay a spirit 
 seems to me better than the one that 
 probes the deeps in men's souls. We must 
 not suffer too much in our sports ; shall 
 we have no joy in life? 
 
 I am trespassing on my purpose in en- 
 tering again for even a moment the field 
 of controversy ; but before emerging, and 
 because it bears some relation to this sub- 
 ject of not taking one's game too seriously, 
 I would point out that as yet there have 
 been in tennis — in this country, at least 
 — no squabbles about *' eligibility " and 
 '* amateur standing," no noisy coaching 
 from the side lines, and no professional 
 teachers. A game which thrives, yet which 
 offers no inducement to the " professional," 
 is one that is played in a sufficiently light- 
 hearted spirit. 
 
 This does not qualify the importance 
 of the actual contest. Those who cannot 
 throw themselves into it as if for the time 
 being it were the most momentous thing 
 in life, will never appreciate its delighta 
 
 [63 ] 
 
 I 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 The overmastering, avaricious desire to 
 win is always to be deprecated, but to be 
 keen to play one's best and bear one's self 
 steadily and valorously in the crisis should 
 be the essential spirit of the game. To be 
 sure, that is the spirit in which all games 
 should be played ; but tennis least of all 
 permits any shirking of the issue. When 
 the crisis comes, there is no chance for 
 the weak-hearted to thank his stars that 
 some one else than himself is called upon; 
 and if he has the spark of manhood, he will 
 not look too complacently upon defeat. 
 Excitement and exhaustion may wear the 
 player down, but he must set himself 
 only the more resolutely to the task of 
 playing better than he has ever yet done. 
 The time comes when his heart pounds 
 and his lungs are pumping for air ; when 
 he walks drooping and reeking under the 
 blazing sun ; but he must not allow his 
 misery to engage his mind, he must not 
 debate the question how much longer he 
 can endure : he must bend all his intent- 
 
 [64] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 ness of purpose, all the remnant of his 
 strength, upon repelling the final assault 
 of the foe. Of such importance is the ac- 
 tual contest, — and its importance ceases 
 utterly when the last point has been played. 
 I am drawing for illustration upon an 
 extreme case; in our ordinary matches we 
 stop short of the point where suffering 
 begins. We are leisurely, and we do not 
 prolong our game until we are threatened 
 with collapse on the court. But however 
 leisurely our methods, however mild our 
 strokes, tennis makes an exacting demand 
 upon our faculties ; the temper of the game 
 is ardent, not phlegmatic. One of the best 
 players this country has ever produced will 
 come into the club-house between sets of 
 an insignificant match, panting more with 
 nervousness than with fatigue, trembling 
 so that he cannot hold his racket steady, 
 looking harassed, frightened, and desper- 
 ate. He calls on his friends to fan him 
 with towels, he tells them how scared 
 he is, he holds the glass of water brought 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 him, in a shaking hand. Yet after the in- 
 terval he will return to the court, make 
 unerring shots along the lines, and show 
 the most thorough command of nerves 
 and muscles, even though between plays 
 he is twitching with excitement. And 
 after he has won, as is his usual custom, 
 the game is of hardly enough interest to 
 him to serve as the briefest topic of con- 
 versation ; he jumps under the shower, 
 and then while he dresses he discusses with 
 you where he had better dine and how 
 he shall pass the evening ; he may even 
 insist on reading to you from some precious 
 little book of poems that he keeps in his 
 locker ; although it is more likely that he 
 will be throwing towels and accusing some 
 one of having stolen his shoes. 
 
 The manners of tournament players in 
 the presence of spectators are an interest- 
 ing if trivial study. Some of them make 
 it a point never to glance at the audience ; 
 in idle moments they keep their eyes on 
 the ground or perhaps toss them skyward 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 as they walk to their places. Others favor 
 the crowd with an occasional stolid, in- 
 expressive stare. A few have adopted an 
 ingenuous, cheerful, confiding smile which 
 they flash at certain junctures — as when 
 they make a particularly bad shot. When 
 they do something brilliant and there is 
 applause, they look stern, even annoyed. 
 Mannerisms wear off in some degree as 
 the player becomes involved in the excite- 
 ment of the game; but the grand-stand 
 player never quite forgets himself. There 
 will be the mute appeal to the heavens 
 when his shot goes extravagantly wild, or 
 the staggering display of exhaustion when 
 he has crowned a long rally with a bril- 
 liant stroke. 
 
 But these are superficial trifles on which 
 to dwell, and we shall err if we regard 
 them too narrowly. Your grand-stand 
 player is often as worthy a person as the 
 man whom you would more readily de- 
 fine as of ** sterling" character; pass by 
 the weakness of a little vanity, and he is 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 perhaps as alert to opportunities, as keen 
 in the game, as plucky a fighter as his 
 more steady-going opponent. Indeed, we 
 are in danger of trusting our games too im- 
 plicitly as tests of character. With all our 
 enthusiasm for our own particular sports, 
 we shall do well to pause and consider 
 whether on the whole the men of high 
 attainments in these go farther than other 
 men. The great football hero of fifteen 
 years ago is still remembered ; but since 
 running the length of the field for a touch- 
 down, has he done anything that is worthy 
 of note ? We Americans are inclined to 
 set too high a value on athletic prowess 
 of any kind ; our newspapers thrust fame 
 on heads too young to wear it, and there 
 is sometimes a melancholy petty tragedy 
 in the case of the man who is more widely 
 celebrated at the age of twenty-one than 
 he will ever be again. Very likely he is 
 a person of good average abilities and per- 
 severing character, who will fill a worthy 
 quiet corner and look back with pleasure 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 onhis shining and triumphantyouth ; then 
 there is no great harm done. But now 
 and then one sees a man who played a game 
 too conspicuously well and, doing so, ful- 
 filled his destiny. 
 
 Tournaments and match play are by no 
 means the only feature of tennis that should 
 be considered; indeed they are perhaps 
 the least important. There are a hundred 
 people getting enjoyment out of the game 
 for every one who enters a tournament. It 
 does not trouble the boy that his court is 
 not good or that his racket is ill-balanced 
 and poorly strung ; he marks out the lines 
 with his own hands, pulls his own roller, 
 and then plays the game, blithely indiffer- 
 ent to all imperfections. Many a suburb-, 
 anite now has his cramped, sometimes 
 his undersized court, where he engages 
 in conflict with the neighbor on a Satur- 
 day afternoon; cities are finding it neces- 
 sary to provide facilities for tennis in the 
 public playgrounds ; and young people 
 gather there, bringing half-worn balls 
 
 [69 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 and old rackets, and await patiently their 
 turn. 
 
 There is, however, no advantage to be 
 gained from playing under difficulties ; the 
 better the court, the better the fun. As 
 your game improves, it ceases to be a 
 laughable phenomenon if the ball repeat- 
 edly strikes some irregularity of surface 
 and bounds off at right angles to its proper 
 course. After a time you appreciate with 
 exasperation what it means to have only 
 three feet of space behind the base-line ; 
 you are sure that with a fair chance you 
 could return those deep-driven balls, and 
 you long for an opportunity to try. So 
 you abandon your private court to the 
 children and join a club. It is a wise 
 move ; not only are the courts maintained 
 in better condition, but you also have the 
 advantage of testing your game against a 
 variety of opponents, instead of in repeated 
 meetings with the same one or two. Your 
 play improves rapidly — up to the point 
 where improvement ceases. 
 
 [ 70] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 It is no more than reasonable that lawn 
 tennis should be at its best on grass. In 
 this country, however, it is usually played 
 on a surface of dirt or cinders; and cer- 
 tainly for the enthusiast, who is impatient 
 for the end of winter, and does not put 
 away his racket until after the snow flies 
 in the late autumn, the dirt court is a ne- 
 cessity. It prolongs the tennis season by 
 more than two months. When rain and 
 mist and dew dampen the turf and make 
 la'wn tennis impossible, the dirt court is 
 still hard and dry. It is very wearing on 
 shoes and balls and rackets, it soils the 
 clothes, it blisters the feet, it sends jar- 
 ring vibrations through the system ; but 
 it enables us to play in April and October. 
 We slip and slide if we try to turn sharply, 
 we find the aggressive game at the net 
 hardly practicable ; yet with all its infirm- 
 ities the dirt court is a most excellent 
 makeshift. A good dirt court is preferable 
 to a mediocre grass court ; a poor dirt 
 court is better than none at all. He who 
 
 [71 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 has played on championship grounds and 
 therefore dedines a contest on his friend's 
 home-made court is a tennis snob; hap- 
 pily, the type is rare. 
 
 The good grass court is a luxury and a 
 delight. To throw off one's clothes on 
 a hot summer day, put on the coolest and 
 lightest of garments, and run out across the 
 sunny lawn, where the afternoon shadows 
 lay their quiet fingers ; to prance there 
 and rush about and breast the net, from 
 which your adversary tries hotly to dis- 
 lodge you ; to hit out with the exhilarat- 
 ing sweep of arm and body, to feel the 
 racket responsive in your hand, to see the 
 ball fly swiftly where you would have it 
 go ; and through all the stress and sweat 
 to be conscious of the kind sun and the 
 quick turf and the green maples and elms 
 that fringe the field — is not this one of 
 life's priceless pleasures ? He is happy who 
 learns to know it in his youth ; he is happy 
 who finds that it does not fail him in his 
 age. It is true that when we play tennis 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 we may not observe closely the trees or 
 listen for the songs of birds or have leisure 
 to admire the shapes and hues of floating 
 clouds ; no, tennis does not bring us into 
 any definite relation with nature, but that 
 is the inevitable defect of an engrossing 
 game. Nor is it the most social of our 
 sports. Golf is a conversational oppor- 
 tunity ; in baseball, to coach from the 
 side lines must satisfy the most talkative. 
 But tennis is all strife, with no time for 
 comment. In doubles you now and then 
 exchange with your partner a word of 
 advice, approval, or encouragement; in 
 singles you ejaculate to your opponent 
 *'Good shot!" or **Hard luck!" Beyond 
 this, intercourse does not go. It is, even 
 in critical matches, a noiseless battle; the 
 droning iteration of the score from the 
 referee sitting on his high seat by the net, 
 the soft thud of the ball upon the racket, 
 the swift catlike steps of the players, con- 
 vey no adequate intimation of the strug- 
 gle. It is far different in atmosphere from 
 
 [73] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 a rowing race, with the coxswains of the 
 crews yelling madly through their mega- 
 phones ; from a baseball game, with its 
 shrill chatter ; from a football game, with 
 the quarterback shouting raucous signals 
 in the arena and the inclosing myriads 
 roaring out their cheers. Although it is 
 so nervous and active, it is of all games 
 the most silent and self-contained. 
 
 It is not, however, utterly unsocial. 
 There is talk enough afterwards in the 
 club-house; and even on the court players 
 become in an acute and sympathetic though 
 unspeaking way aware of one another. In 
 the end tennis brings its followers into a 
 more intimate relation with human na- 
 ture. It purges them of their cares and 
 their unhealthy thoughts and desires ; it 
 clarifies the mind and makes sane the soul ; 
 it satisfies the restlessness and contentious- 
 ness of the spirit and gives it peace. On 
 the tennis court there are developed stead- 
 fastness of aim and purpose, a better tem- 
 per, and a kinder heart ; here, through 
 
 [ 74] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 striving with your fellow man, you may 
 learn to love him. Foes in sport are friends 
 in spirit ; if the hand of every man seems 
 against us, and our hand against every man, 
 let us spill our antagonism harmlessly upon 
 the tennis court. Many a blue devil has 
 here been crushed under heel, many an 
 animosity has been softened. You cannot 
 think altogether ill of any man against 
 whom you have stood in a hard and fairly 
 fought game ; you may even come to think 
 well of one whom you have hitherto held 
 in slight regard. Likewise, in their hum- 
 ble way, do our international matches have 
 a civilizing influence. The surest guaran- 
 tee of a permanent peace among nations 
 would be to have them striving keenly 
 with one another in their games. 
 
 Some verses read at a tennis club dinner 
 represent an effort to express, not too seri- 
 ously, the best that the game does for its 
 players : — 
 
 One time the most of us, no doubt, 
 Had open hearts for others; 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 We scorned the shield Distrust held out. 
 We met all men as brothers. 
 
 With years cool wisdom on us slips 
 
 The armor once declined ; 
 The laugh grows idle on our lips. 
 
 Or purpose lurks behind. 
 
 Fearful to lose our little place, 
 
 We dare not venture far 
 To welcome others of our race. 
 
 Men of the self-same star. 
 
 Eager to win beyond our ranks, 
 
 We trample others down, 
 And pressing o'er them murmur thanks, 
 
 Our eyes upon the crown. 
 
 And vet we bear no enmity ; 
 
 "It's life," we sadly say; 
 ■We would be genial, open, free 
 To all men as the day. 
 
 'This armor that doth make us safe, 
 This visor to the eye, 
 We feel their weight, we feel them chafe, 
 We fain would put them by." 
 
 [ 76] 
 
LAWN TENNIS 
 
 And when we come to our green field. 
 Far from the strife of town, 
 
 Forthwith in gentleness we vield 
 And lay that armor down. 
 
 The touch of flannels to our skin, 
 
 Of grass beneath our feet, 
 Of sun at throat may help us win 
 
 Safe past the judgment seat. 
 
Ill 
 
 WORK AND PLAY 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 That more people know how to work 
 than how to play seems to be a defect of 
 education. All the punishments of child- 
 hood are for lawlessly following the im- 
 pulse to play ; and nearly all the rewards 
 are for aptitude and industry in work. In 
 some respects there has been a relaxation ; 
 the interest taken by most pedagogues in 
 the sports of their pupils and the semi- 
 official recognition of athletic prowess in 
 schools are signs of a partial reaction. But 
 it is only partial; the spirit of play is of- 
 ten suppressed before it becomes articu- 
 late; the spirit of work is from the first 
 fostered and stimulated. To nearly all is 
 it emphasized that on work their very 
 being depends ; but to only a few is it 
 made clear that on play depends their well- 
 being. 
 
 As a nation, we are, it is true, devoted 
 
 [ 8i ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 to sports and games, and therefore it would 
 appear on the surface quite needless to 
 point out the advantages of play. There 
 is too much play already, in the opinion 
 of many not illiberal persons ; they say that 
 our young men at college play more than 
 they work, and they instance the general 
 and often unhealthy interest in racing and 
 bridge. Certainly it is but natural that 
 the instinct for diversion, so often cowed 
 and stunted by drastic measures in child- 
 hood, or perhaps given an equally unwise 
 license, should be a groping or an un- 
 balanced instinct, prolific of injudicious 
 excesses. The unfortunate persons who 
 commit these bring discredit on the art 
 of play. For it is an art, of which games, 
 even at their best, are only a crude and 
 imperfect expression. They have their 
 value; but play that requires for itself — 
 as games do require — a special machin- 
 ery and knowledge is not of the kind most 
 readily available, is not the most cunning, 
 and in that way most satisfying resource. 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 The man who is dependent on his racket 
 or his bat or his pack of cards for his 
 amusement, is doomed to pass many dull 
 hours. Too few of us have learned how 
 to play when we are alone ; too few of us 
 have learned how to play with people who 
 cannot use a racket or a bat or a pack of 
 cards. The woman tending the plants in 
 her garden is playing more profitably, it 
 may be, than the admired pitcher on the 
 local ball nine, w^ho strikes out three men 
 in an inning. She does not experience his 
 sensational moments, but she is gayly occu- 
 pied in a creative process, and that is play 
 of the most soul-expanding kind. More- 
 over, it is play that is not dependent on 
 youth and activity, but that may continue 
 to serve one in feebleness and age. 
 
 The idea is current that action is the 
 essence of play. Hence the extreme mis- 
 ery of the tennis enthusiast who with 
 racket and court is ready to amuse himself, 
 but has no worthy foeman ; of the auto- 
 mobilist whose machine is laid by for re- 
 
 [83] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 pairs ; of the house party of athletes on a 
 rainy afternoon. The general failure to 
 perceive that there may be a very satisfac- 
 tory return in the exercise of observation, 
 in the practice of imagination, or even in 
 the loosening of one's reluctant speech, is 
 excusable, for it is just the tendency to do 
 these things that was so impressively pun- 
 ished when we were small. What is it that 
 leads children to truancy from school, and 
 totheothermost heinouschildish breaches? 
 In nine cases out of ten it is not any im- 
 perative call to action, but merely a desire 
 to See. A paltry and commonplace hill be- 
 comes a height beckoning with romance; 
 and the child is not contented until he has 
 scaled it and ascertained what the world 
 is beyond. Nearly always this desire to see 
 unites with it a belief in strange happen- 
 ings and adventures, if one could only slip 
 outside of the prescribed and familiar 
 round ; or again, perhaps there is the con- 
 viction that in violating the law, even 
 though it is only to sneak away and hide 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 in a dark cellar, there is glorious heroism 
 or martyrdom. To See and to Imagine 
 
 — these natural faculties of man may be 
 converted into a means of play, even 
 as the child is trying always to convert 
 them. If early experience and tradition 
 had not taught us to associate a penalty 
 with the employment of these faculties, 
 we should not be so often at a loss for 
 resources. 
 
 Mere idleness opens up for any one who 
 has eyes to see and a mind to dream a 
 playground of infinite variety. To sit, for 
 instance, in a garden and watch a bumble- 
 bee despoiling the flowers, blundering 
 tentatively from this to that, at last grap- 
 pling one with fierce ardor, bending it on 
 its stem and showering down the gathered 
 dew, climbing up and into the very heart 
 of it, and then after a brief moment 
 emerging and spurning from him the pet- 
 als that he had embraced so amorouslv, 
 
 — this, to him who observes it with a mind 
 attentive to nothing else, is play. It may 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 be play to stroll along a city pavement, to 
 cling to a strap in a crowded car, to talk 
 to one's neighbor on a stool at a lunch 
 counter. And to watch a man laying 
 bricks, or to lounge upon a fence and 
 observe the plowman driving his horses 
 in the field, or to inspect any sort of man- 
 ual labor, should always entertain one who 
 is at leisure, and in whose personal expe- 
 rience such labor has never been more than 
 a diversion. If a child's eye rests upon a 
 carpenter at work, it is held in fascina- 
 tion. It is unreasonable and wrong that we 
 should outgrow this interest of the child ; 
 the objects or occupations may become 
 more familiar to us, but they should not 
 seem stale ; our interest in them, instead 
 of declining, should only become the more 
 expert. We should be detecting charac- 
 teristics and comparing methods and gain- 
 ing knowledge of a variety of men. 
 
 The disposition toward this sort of play 
 is put down in early childhood with the 
 frequent reminder, " You must learn not 
 
 [86] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 to stare at people," or, *'It isn't polite to 
 point." It is repressed even more at the 
 later period of school, when the boy is left 
 no choice between close attention to books 
 in the schoolroom and devotion to bodily 
 exercise out of doors. The fact that the 
 education of girls is generally so much 
 more lax in both these respects accounts, 
 no doubt, for the feminine ** handiness " 
 and flexibility at play ; ten women for one 
 man know how to amuse themselves with 
 trifles, to find sport in an idea, delight in a 
 conversation, and contentment in solitude. 
 It is probablv true that to attain their ex- 
 cellent frivolity they passed through a less 
 wholesome and healthy period than the 
 corresponding period in the life of the 
 normal boy ; so far as a man can judge, 
 the typical school-girl is a capricious, vain, 
 egotistical, and snobbish creature. Few 
 things are more unsavory or depressing 
 than the literature — fortunately not ex- 
 tensive — of girls' school life ; nine tenths 
 of the stories which undertake to describe 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 it deal with the inhuman treatment of 
 schoolmates who are poorly dressed or ** of 
 inferior social position." A precocious fac- 
 ulty of observation seems usually to be of 
 the detective sort, — quick to fasten upon 
 unattractive and suspicious details. It grows 
 charitable and broad with years, the biting 
 commentsof youth are gradually tempered, 
 and sarcasm, which it had been a joy to 
 wield, is reserved as a weapon to be but 
 rarely used. The woman is equipped for 
 the gentle, genial play of life by the sharp- 
 ness of wits and eyes that she learned as a 
 girl. 
 
 But the boy on emerging from school, 
 where he has been so single-minded in his 
 pursuits, soon finds that he is deficient in 
 the faculty of observation. The acknow- 
 ledgment is tacitly made to him by the 
 advisory elder world that in this one vital 
 respect it was necessary to bring him up 
 wrong ; and he is recommended now to 
 remedy by his own efforts the deficiency 
 that education imposed upon him. There 
 
 [88 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 are not many harder tasks. He has been 
 so bred to think of the main chance, to 
 concentrate his thoughts upon his per- 
 sonal work and business, to be energetic, 
 brisk, and active along one line, that he 
 is unable to waste time to advantage ; and 
 when he is idle, it is with an unhappy and 
 unprofitable restlessness. He cannot grasp 
 the point of view, the whimsical, detached, 
 casual, and inconsequent point of view that 
 makes out of mere observation an amuse- 
 ment and a play. 
 
 Thus, in the matter of training the out- 
 ward eye, education in a puzzled, half- 
 apologetic way submits a tardy acknow- 
 ledgment of failure. But of its failure to 
 provide exercise for the inward eye be- 
 fore which passes the panorama of the 
 unreal, the fanciful, it makes a boast. It 
 deplores as much in man as in boy the ten- 
 dency to dream ; unsympathetic with the 
 inward eye, it declares the day-dreamer to 
 have a mind untrained, if not indeed dis- 
 eased. Coeval with the admonition not 
 
 [89 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 to stare and not to point the finger is the 
 precept not to let the thoughts go wool- 
 gathering. How smartly comes down the 
 pedagogue's rule for inattention in the 
 class ! How despairing is the mother's 
 look when Johnny gapes with open mouth 
 and meat on fork, stricken all forgetful 
 of his food ! There is, I am sure, in the 
 scientific spirit now prevailing among par- 
 ents and nurses less encouragement than 
 there used to be to the pleasant delusions of 
 infancy. Have you not been a child and in- 
 sisted on hollowing out your mashed potato 
 and making a lake of gravy in the crater ? 
 And was not the potato spoiled if the lake 
 prematurely burst its banks ? Also, when 
 you had your oatmeal, could you bear it 
 if it was not a perfect island, — dry on top 
 and entirely surrounded by cream? My 
 most intense antipathy was conceived at 
 the age of seven for a kind lady whom I 
 visited, and who arranged my oatmeal for 
 me, diligently drenching its surface. Now- 
 adays, I observe, children seem unfamiliar 
 
 [90] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 with the simple diversions that I remem- 
 ber so pleasantly. It is partly, perhaps, 
 that thev are exposed to new-fashioned 
 breakfast cereals which soak up cream 
 before imagination can draw breath ; it is 
 partly that they are so repeatedly warned 
 by their nurses and mammas not to play 
 with their food. 
 
 The atmosphere of discouragement that 
 surrounds the play of children is not abated 
 with the years. The enjoyment of dreams, 
 the building of castles in the air, the es- 
 caping from the facts of life, especially 
 from the unpleasant facts, to beguile one's 
 self upon fancy and dalliance are disap- 
 proved and despised ; and I raise up my 
 voice in protest. What a real and blame- 
 less pleasure, I exclaim, it is. for the most 
 of us to imagine ourselves greater, braver, 
 finer than we are or than we shall ever 
 be ! Entering a shop to buy a neck- 
 tie, one may perhaps be interrupting the 
 meditation of the salesman on how he 
 should act if he were President, — how 
 
 [91 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 gracious he would be, and benign and 
 lovable, and withal how inflexibly inde- 
 pendent and in crises stern. This use of 
 his imagination doubtless gives him great 
 pleasure, and it need not at all incapaci- 
 tate him for selling neckties. The factory 
 girl, watching her threads, dreams of be- 
 ing the mill-owner's daughter, driving in 
 her carriage, and living in the big house 
 on the hill. And she guides her threads 
 as unerringly, as steadfastly, as if she felt 
 the eyes of the foreman upon her. Per- 
 haps it would be nearer the usual truth to 
 think of her standing thus and dreaming, 
 not of a bright future in which she is the 
 centre, but of one that holds rest and ease 
 and pleasure for her tired mother and gay- 
 ety and promise for little brothers and sis- 
 ters. And is one to be chidden for dream- 
 ing such dreams ? 
 
 The habit is pernicious, I grant, if it 
 seizes and delays one upon the brink of ac- 
 tion. Yet truly it appears to me that those 
 who are excessively fond of imagining 
 
 [ 92 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 great and improbable prospects for them- 
 selves would achieve just as little were their 
 love of these visions forever set at rest. 
 There are some men by birth and tempera- 
 ment fit only for dreams ; some by like cir- 
 cumstance fit only for action ; and many 
 more normally composed, in whom the ca- 
 pacity for each exercise might, if it were 
 permitted, serve to offset and refresh the 
 other. But it is thought feeble or unmanly 
 to avail one's self of any such means of re- 
 habilitation; we Americans, after our day's 
 work is done, take our rest in further ac- 
 tion, our relaxation in excitement. Yet 
 were the many thousands for whom the 
 theatre furnishes the most frequent even- 
 ing's amusement to stroll or sit out under 
 the stars, entertaining such Thoughts and 
 dreams as come, they would put their souls 
 and minds into better order for the slumber 
 of the night and for the work of the next 
 daye 
 
 Perhaps the utterance seems inconsist- 
 ent in one who contends that we do not 
 
 [ 93 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 play enough. Indeed, the popularity of the 
 theatre at the present time would no doubt 
 be the first fact advanced to refute the crit- 
 icism. The point is made that everybody 
 goes to the theatre nowadays ; the people 
 who in a past generation would have been 
 shocked by the suggestion sit now in the 
 front row. Even the clergy have acquired 
 a habit of recommending plays to their 
 congregations. To be sure, these are gen- 
 erally the poorest possible plays ; never- 
 theless, it is an indication of the yielding 
 on every side to the universal imperative 
 demand for amusement. 
 
 Thousands of flexible dancing girls with 
 shrill voices, thousands of effeminate, ca- 
 pering young men, pass in review each 
 season before a city's audience, and go 
 twirling and grimacing on. The perform- 
 ances of these constitute perhaps the main 
 interest for the great multitude of theatre- 
 goers. Feeble wit, clumsy and shabby 
 humor, meretricious music, are impu- 
 dently combined ; and the audience, con- 
 
 [94] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 vinced by the tinsel of the stage, titters 
 and listens and applauds. 
 
 The audience is amused; we must face 
 that fact. And nothing could more elo- 
 quently demonstrate the helplessness of the 
 ordinary American when withdrawn from 
 his games or his sports and confronted 
 with the problem of amusing himself. His 
 eyes can be diverted only by the abnormal, 
 the bizarre ; the natural processes of life 
 are dull and tedious to his failing imagi- 
 nation. Hence the theatre is the resort, 
 the amusement, of the wholly unimagina- 
 tive, of those who need to have the pic- 
 ture spread before them in all its details, so 
 that they may comprehend it with merely 
 the automatic effort of the senses. Unim- 
 aginative, they have no pleasure in read- 
 ing, unless it is a flat-footed kind of fic- 
 tion, over which they may drowse with no 
 danger of losing the thread. They cannot 
 call up clear visions in their own minds, 
 nor can they grasp them from the pictur- 
 esque and vivid page. A mental sluggish- 
 
 [ 95 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 ness besets them. Removed from the ex- 
 citement of games and sports, they are 
 more often stultified than stimulated by 
 play. 
 
 There is this to be said of Americans, 
 however : because they have been well 
 trained in methods of work, they get per- 
 haps as much enjoyment as any people 
 out of the periods of play that work itself 
 affords. In purely mechanical labor there 
 are no such periods, and that is why all 
 those engaged in it should be permitted 
 and encouraged to occupy their minds 
 with dreams, and their eyes with what is 
 characteristic and interesting in the ordi- 
 nary movement of life. But in any work de- 
 manding mental initiative or action there 
 are sure to be times of pure delight. This 
 comes partly from the consciousness of 
 success in solving the problem on which 
 one has been engaged ; the attitude of 
 genial congratulation and special affection 
 which one assumes then toward one's self 
 holds a histrionic quality akin to play. Yet 
 
 [96] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 this is unimportant compared with the 
 hopefulness and zest of the actual perform- 
 ance, when for very interest one cannot 
 have success or failure too closely in view. 
 The plotting of a large financial scheme 
 and the putting of it into execution; the 
 writing at a man's best power of a dramatic 
 climax; the grasping of the feature that 
 will give a picture its subtle, notable dis- 
 tinction, and the painting it in with a few 
 creative strokes ; the first clear view to the 
 end in an architectural problem, and the 
 instant leaping to achieve out of common- 
 place and mere convenience beauty, — these 
 and the like experiences are for thinking 
 and active men the most incomparable 
 play. Detained from finishing or from be- 
 ginning the work that beckons joyously, 
 one chafes with the impatience of the boy 
 in the schoolroom on the day of his cham- 
 pionship game ; released, one plunges into 
 the toil with the thrill and elation of the 
 boy rushing to the strife. 
 
 Thepatheticandyet the eternally cheer- 
 
 [ 97] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 ful and assuring paradox is this, — that 
 dehght in performance by no means guar- 
 antees excellence of work. One may hum- 
 bly imagine how Shakespeare exulted in 
 Mark Antony's funeral address, striking it 
 off perhaps in a couple of glorious im- 
 mortal hours, now dipping his quill with 
 a leisurely smile at his own cunning, now 
 writing with a concentrated passion. Yet 
 it is our privilege to know that Alberta 
 Smitherson — spoken of as the coming 
 authoress — made similar demonstrations, 
 and felt something of the same emotion, 
 when she composed the story that has just 
 been rejected by the ** Boudoir Magazine." 
 It is certainly a bountiful provision of 
 nature that in the capacity of men for en- 
 joyment and delight there is no such wide 
 disparity as in their power for creation and 
 achievement. 
 
 Unquestionably, the nobler the work, 
 the more refreshing must be its aspects to 
 him whom it engrosses. It strengthens a 
 man to feel that, whether he wins or loses, 
 
 [98 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 his labor is not undertaken simply for his 
 own profit, and that the question is a far 
 greater one than merely that of success 
 or failure. The old English astronomer, 
 Halley, was one of the sublime among the 
 world's workers ; yet exceptional as is his 
 story, it is only typical of the true men 
 of science of every age. He was born in 
 1656 ; the last transit of Venus had taken 
 place in 1639, the next would not occur 
 until 1 76 1 . Yet it was this phenomenon 
 that engaged his attention; he sought to 
 ascertain what astronomers might learn 
 from the celestial happening that he had 
 never seen and could never see. As the 
 result of his study, he left accurate calcu- 
 lations and directions which should enable 
 the skilled observer of a transit of Venus 
 to deduce from that brief event the dis- 
 tance of the earth from the sun, the mag- 
 nitudes of the planetary orbits, indeed, the 
 scale of the whole solar system, — of all 
 w^hich matters the world was then in ig- 
 norance. And when the transit occurred, 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 astronomers who had stationed themselves 
 for it in Otaheite and in Europe followed 
 theinstructionsthat Halleyhad bequeathed 
 them, and hence were able to make a con- 
 tribution to human knowledge impressive 
 enough to rank with the discoveries of 
 Newton and Kepler and Galileo. The 
 man whose fertile mind had prepared the 
 way, and who knew that he would be 
 silent in his grave years before his theory 
 could be put to the test, had busied him- 
 self gayly and happily in the unhnishable 
 task ; no doubt, when he perceived whither 
 his investigations were leading him, he 
 could not have been more excited, more 
 eager, had there been a transit of Venus 
 scheduled for the next morning. And let 
 us make mention, too, of those worthy 
 followers who spent years preparing for the 
 rare happening of a few hours, taking 
 practice observations of a fictitious sun and 
 a fictitious Venus, living and working, it 
 might seem, to see the transit once, and 
 again eight years later, with the overshad- 
 
 [ 100 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 owing dread that cloudy weather might 
 set all at naught and the phenomenon be 
 unseen of mortal eyes for more than an- 
 other century. 
 
 Life is both a usurer and a spendthrift. 
 The weak, the maimed, the toilers under 
 crushing burdens of poverty, disease, and 
 despair, who are held to the most exacting 
 interest on the loan of their few troubled 
 earthly years, often meet the obligation 
 with a more abiding conscience and honor 
 than those dowered at their birth and 
 attended always by a lavish fortune. We 
 may not seek for the equity in an arrange- 
 ment which imposes upon one man work 
 that is all drudgery, and on another, who 
 has the implements of play at command, 
 work that is, much of it, play. There is 
 no cant so unthinking and false as that 
 which urges every man to work for the 
 joy of working, — and which is cant even 
 though it be uttered in stirring verse. In 
 a city building there are seven men em- 
 ployed whose work is this : on Monday 
 
 [ loi ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 morning they begin on the ground floor, 
 swabbing corridors, washing windows, 
 polishing brass and iron; and it takes them 
 precisely till Saturday night to progress in 
 this cleansing manner — literally on their 
 knees — to the top of the building. Then 
 on Monday morning again they begin on 
 the ground floor, each one with a fresh 
 cake of soap and with no variation in the 
 week's task before him. It does not seem 
 to me possible for a man to work thus for 
 the joy of working. 
 
 Yet it is just this kind of dull, necessary 
 obedience to an order or a routine that 
 constitutes the work of nearly all human- 
 ity. Under such conditions, any message 
 to man that urges upon him the pure joy 
 of labor must have a very complacent and 
 superior sound. If ever there lived a boot- 
 black whose chief happiness was in pro- 
 ducing the most lustrous possible shine on 
 the shoe of his patron, what a poor-spirited 
 little prig he must have been ! how un- 
 worthy beside his confreres who rejoiced 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
WORK AND PLAY 
 
 to gamble away their pennies in the al- 
 ley ! It is, of course, not wrong for the 
 bootblack to take pleasure in the lustre of 
 his shine, or for the clerk to have pride in 
 the neatness of his page ; but if life holds 
 for them no other pleasure quite so keen, 
 they have lost the vital spark of manhood. 
 And therefore it should be urged upon all 
 those who perform the somnolent, me- 
 chanical labor of long hours, day after day, 
 listlessly and well, as most of the world's 
 work is performed, to dream dreams and 
 see visions and hearken even in the midst 
 of their tasks for some passing w^hisper 
 from the spirit of play. 
 
IV 
 THE SiMOKING-ROOM 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 The sanctity of masculine institutions is 
 assailed. The male being's exclusive right 
 to cast the ballot and to hold the office is 
 challenged; with characteristic chivalry — 
 in America — he lends to the challenger 
 an indulgent ear ; with characteristic gen- 
 erosity he makes unessential concessions. 
 His privilege of drinking where and when 
 he pleases — a privilege which he had 
 enjoyed since remote antiquity — is cur- 
 tailed; it is even sought to deny him the 
 seclusion appropriate to potation. The 
 Boston barroom, for instance, is deprived 
 of the shutter and the curtain — ordinary 
 decencies of life. The canteen is abol- 
 ished ; there is no Sunday beer. A mighty 
 organization of persons of her own sex, un- 
 mindful of the services she has rendered 
 to literature, seeks to expunge the British 
 barmaid. The W. C. T. U. — defined by 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 some one as the We See To You Society 
 — flourishes the lash. Everywhere woman 
 is awake and vigilant — impressed as never 
 before with the truth that her mission is 
 man. 
 
 Easy-going and good-natured as man 
 is, he has some power of resistance. Even 
 though menaced by so formidable a foe, he 
 feels no alarm for the future. He is secure 
 in his independence so long as his possession 
 of the smoking-room is not disputed. The 
 function of this institution has been to ex- 
 pand and enlarge the man, to encourage 
 expression and self-revelation, to promote 
 in him the sense of latitude and freedom . 
 which his unruly nature craves, and with- 
 out proper nourishment of which he 
 droops mentally and morally. For rugged 
 growth he requires much unhampered in- 
 terchange with persons of his own coarse 
 fibre. Women charge the atmosphere at 
 once with the electricity of criticism, — 
 to which the juvenile is of course most 
 sensitive. A personable young gentleman 
 
 [ io8 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 recognizes instinctively the critical spirit 
 and instinctively seeks to propitiate it by 
 engaging behavior. He may be quite suc- 
 cessful in his effort, but none the less does 
 he require a refuge where he may soothe 
 his agitated nerves, where he may discard 
 self-consciousness in the presence of ex- 
 perience. What the young man needs most 
 is contact with his elders; likewise do the 
 elders need contact with the young. No- 
 where have the opportunities for this been 
 so great as in the smoking-room. I am told 
 that on certain new ocean liners women 
 are privileged to invade this apartment. 
 It is an invasion that can never prosper. 
 The feminine sense of propriety is stronger 
 than the feminine sense of curiosity — for- 
 tunately for the human race ; after an in- 
 spection from the doorway the brethren 
 will be left in undisturbed possession. 
 Otherwise, the brag, the broad humorous 
 narrative, the acute discussion must be 
 conducted in a cautious undertone ; the 
 feminine presence is bound to devitalize 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 the company ; and the flavor which with 
 adventurous interest the woman is eager 
 to taste, she dissipates by her intrusion. 
 No gain in upholstery could ever offset 
 the loss of that privacy, that atmosphere 
 which causes strangers to confide in one 
 another, which induces fellowship and 
 provides for enlargement by observation 
 and experience. Let rawness and formal- 
 ity of furnishing prevail, let the seats be 
 clothed in gaudy coverings and fixed in 
 an unbeguiling intimacy, let the carpets 
 be adorned with numerous nickel-plated, 
 shining utensils — in spite of all its ugliness 
 the smoking-room is not to be superseded 
 by any apartment which makes an appeal 
 to the feminine taste and welcomes the 
 feminine person. 
 
 The total abstainer may best record, 
 with a discriminating pen, the progress of 
 the banquet at which good wine flows 
 freely ; he better than those whose blood 
 and brains are stirred by drink may sep- 
 arate the stages and bear away a clear 
 
 [ no ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 memory of broadening festivity. Those 
 involved in subordinate parts of a great ac- 
 tion make the least illuminating of chroni- 
 clers, except in so far as their own small 
 contribution to the final fact is concerned. 
 The non-smoker who yet frequents the 
 smoking-room has, in the same way, bet- 
 ter opportunities for gathering data for a 
 well-rounded commentary, one that shall 
 embrace all the phases of smoking-room 
 life. The man who smokes is too soon 
 submerged into a phase himself; for the 
 commentator there is required a certain 
 detachment and isolation. Therefore am 
 I emboldened to offer my commentary. 
 
 One who sits in a smoking-room and 
 does not smoke is at a serious disadvantage 
 socially. Many a pleasant acquaintance 
 I have seen made over an interchange of 
 opinions as to the relative merits of certain 
 brands of cigarettes or tobacco ; this open- 
 ing of opportunity has never been mine. 
 One is congenitally a non-smoker, just as 
 one is congenitally, it may be, a drunkard. 
 
 [ "I ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 We are all predisposed to certain habits and 
 vices, and the vice of not smoking is one 
 for which I have inherited a predilection. 
 Sometimes, when I observe the pleasures 
 and advantages which other men derive 
 from the slight embellishment of their 
 breathing processes, I am tempted to rebel 
 against the ancestral impulse. Indeed the 
 non-smoker is in conversation a man with- 
 out resources; he presents a naked and 
 embarrassed front; his every effort is noted 
 and charged against him ; each shade of 
 anxiety or apprehension, each glow of 
 hope is advertised upon his face. He is 
 a frank and emotional exhibit ; whereas a 
 cigar in the mouth can impart shrewdness 
 to a stupid countenance, self-possession to 
 one that should be disturbed, an air of 
 mystery to the blank — in short, he who 
 has the art of smoking has always at hand 
 a mask. Yet if there are disadvantages and 
 humiliations in being a non-smoker, there 
 are also immunities. The non-smoker pre- 
 sents, it seems, the more, forbidding aspect 
 
 [ "2 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 to the bore. If he is of a contemplative 
 habit of mind, he is not hkely to have his 
 musings interrupted by unwelcome de- 
 mands upon his attention. 
 
 This, at least, is a logical conclusion, yet 
 a recent experience compels me to admit 
 that the statement is recklessly complacent. 
 I was occupying a seat in a well-filled 
 smoking-car ; when a man got in at a way 
 station and came down the aisle, I made 
 room for him. Being interested in a news- 
 paper, I gave him no attention until he said 
 loudly and abruptly, — 
 
 " How are you going to vote ? " 
 
 I replied that I was not going to vote 
 for a conspicuously odious candidate. 
 
 "You're not?" he shouted in amaze- 
 ment ; then he added confidentially yet 
 loudly, " Say, I 'm not, either. Why 
 should I vote for him ? Tell me that ; 
 why should I vote for him ? What 's he 
 ever done, I'd like to know.? Answer 
 me that, will you?" 
 
 By that time I had concluded that this 
 
 [ 1^3 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 conversational gentleman was in liquor, 
 and I returned to the perusal of my news- 
 paper. He continued in a voice which 
 drew the attention of all the passengers in 
 the vicinity, — 
 
 *< Why should I vote for him ? He 'j 
 not a married man. He 's got no children. 
 Lives for himself alone. I 'm a married 
 man — wife and six children — and I 
 support 'em and educate 'em too. Why 
 should I vote for a man with no responsi- 
 bilities? Answer me that — if yrju please!'' 
 
 The demand was so emphatic, the sub- 
 sequent pause so intense, that I found it 
 difficult to fix my mind on what I was 
 reading. I was aware that the public in- 
 terest in the situation was becoming more 
 marked. 
 
 " He says he stands for temperance. So 
 do I stand for temperance. Temperance 
 is a mighty good thing — always sup- 
 ported it. But — it can be carried too far. 
 That 's what he forgets ; it 's a good thing, 
 but it can be carried too far." 
 
 [ "4] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 I churlishly refrained from acquiescing 
 in this sentiment. He was silent for a few 
 moments — surveying me, I was aware, 
 with extreme disfavor. 
 
 ** Ain't you interested in what I 'm say- 
 ing ? " he asked with loud defiance. 
 
 There was no doubt of the interest of 
 the others. 
 "No," I said. 
 
 He did not reply ; he turned his large 
 bulk a little more towards me, and I knew 
 that his eyes were coursing impudently up 
 and down my frame. It was extremely 
 difficult to keep my mind on the news- 
 paper article. I glanced up and saw the 
 faces of many men turned towards me, 
 grinning, intent, joyously apprehensive. I 
 resumed my reading. 
 
 " Say, do you know what I think of 
 
 you r 
 
 Now I knew perfectly well that he 
 thought my manners were bad ; but I 
 said, without raising my eyes, ^* No, and 
 I don't care to know." 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 The silence that ensued was ominous. 
 I felt that he was gathering his powers of 
 invective and that my fellow passengers 
 were hanging over the backs of their seats, 
 hungry for his vituperative words. At last 
 speech came. 
 
 " I am going to tell you what I think 
 of you. You may not like it, but I 'm 
 going to tell you just the same." He 
 kept me in suspense for a dramatic mo- 
 ment. And then, in the most measured, 
 honeyed voice, '* I think that I would 
 trust you with my life. I think that you 
 are the finest, the most gtnuine gentleman 
 I ever saw. I think I would like to stand 
 up and say to the people in this car that 
 here is a gentleman I never saw before, 
 but I would trust him with my life. 
 That's what I think about you." 
 
 I thanked him. But he was in that ob- 
 sessed and obstinate condition which de- 
 mands reiterated utterance. He adorned 
 me once more with adulation, and men 
 rose from their seats and gathered round 
 
 [ ii6 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 us in delight. I was presented to them as 
 the charming unknown. When I left the 
 train — which was fortunately soon — my 
 admirer accompanied me to the door and 
 bade me good-by from the platform. 
 
 But this experience was for me excep- 
 tional ; ordinarily I seem to repel rather 
 than to attract the attention of the smoker. 
 I have persuaded myself that there is no 
 unflattering explanation of this, but rather 
 that he who is without interest in tobacco 
 lacks a primary and sympathetic interest 
 for the lover of tobacco, and as an uncon- 
 genial companion is ignored. So he is left 
 free to meditate and to observe and to lis- 
 ten. And although he is himself seldom 
 the direct recipient, he is made aware that 
 confidential and intimate bits of biography 
 are being transmitted in corners and across 
 tables ; it entertains him to note the pro- 
 cesses which lead so rapidly to such a con- 
 summation. Subtleties do not often pre- 
 vail in the smoking-room — and usually 
 it is the simple-minded, not the subtle, 
 
 [ ^^7] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 who seeks a confidant. So abrupt are the 
 introductions to the engrossing theme that 
 sometimes the eavesdropper is astonished 
 at the progress which in five minutes may 
 be made by two well-disposed individuals. 
 I was once reading in the smoking-room 
 of a steamer ; a stout gentleman with a 
 placid, good-humored face relapsed into 
 the seat beside me and lighted a cigar. 
 He became in all respects at once a figure 
 of such comatose contentment that I as- 
 sumed speech would disturb him ; I con- 
 tinued therefore with my reading, and he 
 of course made no advances. Presently a 
 dyspeptic, morose-looking, thin man took 
 the seat on the other" side of him, a most 
 unpromising neighbor. But immediately 
 the stout gentleman gave indications that 
 coma was no longer contentment ; he was 
 stirring with an interest, an active desire. 
 ** Sir,'' he said, intercepting the other, 
 who was reaching for a match, *' before 
 you light that cigar, would you do me the 
 honor to try this of mine ? It 's a spe- 
 
 [ ii8 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 cial importation, and I regard it as the 
 finest cigar I ever tasted." 
 
 The thin man's suspicious glance could 
 detect nothing but benevolence in that 
 beaming face. 
 
 " You 're very good ; " he accepted the 
 engaging cigar. *' It looks very superior ; 
 I '11 be glad to try it." 
 
 The fat gentleman watched the benefi- 
 ciary during the first savoring puffs with 
 infantile eagerness. 
 
 *'Ah," he exclaimed in fine good hu- 
 mor after a moment of anxiety, *' I knew 
 I was n't mistaken ; I knew you were a 
 judge of cigars. I can always tell from a 
 man's look if he knows cigars." 
 
 " Very perceptive," said the thin man. 
 " A most excellent cigar." 
 
 " Nothing quite like a good cigar after 
 dinner in your library, with a wife sitting 
 there that doesn't mind the smoke," ven- 
 tured the fat man. 
 
 The thin man nodded ; he was a reluct- 
 ant talker. 
 
 [ 1^9] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOxM 
 
 ** Ever since my wife's death, smoking 's 
 not been the same to me." The fat man 
 sighed. '* I still enjoy it, but it ain't the 
 same. You're married, I presume?" 
 
 -Yes." 
 
 " Any children.?" 
 
 -Two." 
 
 - I 'm not so fortunate. Been married 
 twice, but no children. I heard it excel- 
 lently well expressed the other day, — a 
 man's wife is the bond, the children are 
 the coupons." 
 
 -That's one way of looking at it, cer- 
 tainly," said the thin man. 
 
 - I always carry a photograph of my 
 wife — my second," observed the fat man 
 presently. - I used to carry it in my watch, 
 but I found it was getting scratched, so I 
 had an envelope made for it ; I keep it in 
 that now. I 'd like to show it to you." 
 
 I expected him to search in his bosom ; 
 he drew the picture, however, from his 
 hip pocket. The thin man took it gin- 
 gerly, and inspected it. 
 
 [ 120 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 "Oh — yes — very nice looking lady," 
 he said at last. 
 
 The proprietor of the photograph was 
 satisfied, and as he returned it to its en- 
 velope and then to its abiding-place, he 
 remarked, — 
 
 " She was the mate for me — if ever a 
 man had one. My second. Died six years 
 ago. I 've never had any desire to find a 
 successor. Oh, I look at the ladies some- 
 times and mention the possibility to my- 
 self, but they none of 'em measure up with 
 her — so I shake my head, no, no." 
 
 " Well," said the thin man simply, '* I ' m 
 satisfied with my first wife. I hope I '11 
 never have to think about a second." 
 
 So he had a human side after all ; his 
 unresponsiveness had been due probably 
 to excess of caution. He and the fat man 
 sat together often in the smoking-room 
 thereafter ; indeed if one entered and did 
 not see the other, a look hesitating and 
 disconsolate would cross his face. Tobacco 
 and domesticity had created a bond. I 
 
 [ '^^ ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 know not what further intimacies were 
 revealed ; generally the fat man was the 
 talker, the thin man the listener ; they did 
 not join in any of the card games, they did 
 not contribute to the ribald narratives that 
 often delighted a corner of the smoking- 
 room ; they drew about themselves a little 
 company of middle-aged, quiet persons, on 
 whom the fat man beamed with the most 
 unfailing good humor. Among them 
 much sound doctrine was uttered, truisms 
 and platitudes were given a solemn hear- 
 ing ; but always there was something naive 
 and quaint in their seriousness. Occasion- 
 ally they engaged in literary discussion. 
 
 " Multum in parvo," said the fat man 
 once. "That's my conception of Shake- 
 speare. Multum in parvo." 
 
 *' Shakespeare or the man that wrote 
 the plays,'' remarked a heathen. 
 
 "There was a fellow out to Detroit 
 published a book saying Shakespeare was 
 all a cipher," commented the fat man. 
 " The masterpiece of English literature, 
 
 [ 1^2 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 according to this Detroit gentleman, was 
 just a blind — turned out to cover up the 
 tracks of the scandals of the time ! Well, 
 I don't believe it. And as for saying Bacon 
 wrote Shakespeare — you might as well 
 compare an elephant and a graceful ga- 
 zelle — or Grover Cleveland's orations and 
 Lincoln's Gettysburg speech." 
 
 " Ah," said the heathen, '' but how do 
 you account — " 
 
 And there the argument began. And 
 where an argument begins, interest for all 
 except the two disputants usually ends. 
 Quite properly argument is not popular 
 in the smoking-room. The person who 
 delights in controversy seldom enlarges his 
 audience. Once his tendency is revealed, 
 people drift away from him to those whose 
 forte is narrative. Or in preference they 
 will even sit about and watch a man play- 
 ing solitaire. 
 
 The story-teller is the magnet of the 
 smoking-room. Strangers making the 
 acquaintance of one another desire to be 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 entertained and to be thought entertaining. 
 Narrative is the resource of most men in 
 this situation; only a few are endowed 
 with the talent for casual, inconsequent, 
 amusing talk, spontaneous, illuminating 
 comment, the tact and restraint for letting 
 pass a tempting but inappropriate oppor- 
 tunity, and the intellectual opulence that 
 can in an exigency provide a flow — that 
 does not merely leak out in occasional 
 sparkling interjections. I think that men 
 who combine these happy qualities are 
 often deficient in the embracing geniality 
 which is essential to leadership in the 
 smoking-room, and that they may sit sub- 
 ordinate and overlooked. They shine per- 
 haps more brightly in other realms. 
 
 As his intimacy with his auditor in- 
 creases, the story-teller tends to introduce 
 personal experience into his narratives ; 
 they become less often the small change 
 of current anecdotes, more and more often 
 the vehicle for self-revelation or advertise- 
 ment. One cannot sit long in the smok- 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 ing-room without hearing raised some- 
 where the bragging voice. There are a 
 vast number of men who never outgrow 
 the boyish wish to impress the stranger, 
 who even predicate upon success in this 
 matter the possibility of maintaining in- 
 tercourse with him ; they must in the 
 beginning assert their importance. Once 
 they have demonstrated that, they may 
 turn out to be modest persons enough, 
 neither self-centred nor disposed to mo- 
 nopolize the talk. There was a man I 
 once knew who could not be an hour in 
 the company of any one without impart- 
 ing the information, shyly and awkwardly, 
 that he had won a medal of honor for 
 bravery in the Civil War. Having liber- 
 ated this fact, he would relapse into his 
 unobtrusive, quiet personality, receive the 
 ideas of others with humility, venture his 
 own in a deprecating way — a submissive 
 soul, conscious always of his limitations. 
 Once in his life it had befallen him to 
 achieve something supreme ; thereafter he 
 
 [ 1^5 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 had served, perhaps, a "faithful failure." 
 It seemed fitting enough that he should 
 proclaim his solitary triumph, if he chose, 
 and so protect himself from what would 
 otherwise inevitably be a slighting estima- 
 tion, perhaps exclusion. The ordinarily 
 successful man is as apt to recommend 
 himself by similar methods ; but as his 
 achievement is of a more conventional 
 sort, allusion to it may be more gracefully 
 brought about. That he enjoys a large 
 manner of life, or that he numbers persons 
 of title or celebrity among his friends, or 
 that he is improving an already prosperous 
 business, he may indicate with a certain 
 indirectness of which the Civil War hero 
 could seldom avail himself. The man 
 who resorts to such methods for the pro- 
 motion of his social interests, in the smok- 
 ing-room or elsewhere, must often be 
 troubled by a dim perception that his 
 capital is small. His actual achievement 
 on which he prides himself, to which he 
 refers for guarantee, may be a constant 
 
 [ 1^6 ] 
 
THE SxMOKING-ROOM 
 
 producer of revenue, yet as an achievement 
 be as momentary, as obsolete as the vet- 
 eran's act of valor. The business man's 
 success is often based on one admirable 
 creative episode, let us say ; thereafter it 
 declines upon inglorious routine. And the 
 early confidence that is shared with the 
 stranger as to income or imposing intima- 
 cies with the great may incidentally pro- 
 claim a rather shrinking, shame-faced con- 
 sciousness of subsequent inadequacy. The 
 feeling that one must put one's best foot 
 forward and if possible get a running start, 
 imparts an aggressive demeanor to some 
 essentially cautious and conservative souls. 
 So if one's impression of the smoking-room 
 is of a place reverberating with the inor- 
 dinate self-glorification of its occupants — 
 as sometimes is the case — let it be charita- 
 bly remembered that though the mouth 
 be bold and blatant, a heart that is anxious 
 of acceptance is often throbbing in the 
 throat. 
 
 Sometimes indeed the brag is so ingen- 
 
 • [ ^^7 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 uous and so conjoined with confession as 
 to be quite disarming. A big man of the 
 type of the prosperous barkeeper — dia- 
 mond rings and shirt-stud, stubbly pompa- 
 dour hair, heavy red jowls, and little eyes 
 — was, on a return trip from Europe, 
 expressing his bewilderment at the Amer- 
 ican eagerness for travel. ** London, Paris, 
 and Vienna — I seen them all, and what 
 is there in one of 'em that little old New 
 York can't beat in a showdown ? I '11 dance 
 a clog for joy when I hit the Broadway 
 pave again. There 's just as good stores 
 along that fine little thoroughfare as there 
 is on Regent Street in London, Rue de la 
 Paix in Paris, and what-you-may-call-it in 
 Vienna. And if you get stung in Amer- 
 ica, you get stung by a self-respecting, in- 
 dependent Christian, not by a grovelling 
 worm that don't throw no more chest 
 than a Chink. Gee, I wanted to trample 
 on some of them fellows sometimes. In 
 England I felt ashamed of my Anglo- 
 Saxon blood, to see how full-grown men 
 
 .[ '^8 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 could act. The hotel porter holds the 
 door open for me when I go out, and he 
 says, * Thank you, sir.' I tell a cabby to 
 drive me to the Carlton, and he says, 
 
 * Thank vou, sir.' The waiter passes me 
 the bread, and when I take it, he says, 
 
 * Thank you, sir/ * Look here,' I says to 
 one of these fellows, ^you've got a bad 
 habit of thanking a person in advance. 
 Wait till vou eet it. Or are vou trvins: to 
 be funnv r ' \\'ell, I always thought the 
 Germans were an upstanding people. But 
 the onlv word I heard all over Germany 
 was ' Bitte.' When I 'd get into the hotel 
 elevator the guy in uniform — a tam- 
 ilv man with sideburns and moustache — 
 would sav, ' Bitte,' and lift his cap to me. 
 Lift it, mind you, clean off his head, not 
 just tip it. And before he 'd let me out of 
 the cage, he 'd always have to say ' Bitte ' 
 and lift his cap again. It was an awful 
 waste of time and manners. I knew there 
 wasn't anvthing sincere about it — just a 
 plav for graft. I like a pirate that comes 
 
 [ 1^9 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 out into the open and puts on a front — 
 the way we do at home ; give me the 
 newsboy that calls me * Charley ' and asks 
 me for a match. And say ; you talk about 
 comforts ! Out to my house I 've got a 
 big room with a great big porcelain tub 
 and nickel fittings and a tiled floor and a 
 needle shower, and when I get back there 
 I 'm going to shut myself in and turn 
 on all the faucets and just splash for about 
 two days. And I'm going to have griddle 
 cakes and waffles for breakfast. And I 'm 
 going to ride up and down all day in a sky- 
 scraper elevator — one that goes with a 
 jump and makes the blood sort of blush up 
 all through you when it starts. I 'm going 
 to have excitement and comfort every 
 moment. I 'm going to carry my own 
 bag and not worry myself sick for fear I 
 have n't enough foolish money in my pock- 
 ets to pass round to every one that wears 
 a uniform or a dress suit. I 'm going to 
 spend my Sundays down to my place on 
 the beach ; the house ain't a French cha- 
 
 [ 130 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 teau, but it 's practical and to my mind it 
 has considerable ornament. Sundays there 
 we can auto in the morning and play bridge 
 in the afternoon, and have cocktails before 
 lunch and dinner. Ever spend a Sunday in 
 England? Oh say ! Spare me ! " 
 
 ** Well, that 's right," agreed another 
 American. ** But you must acknowledge 
 that there are some fine old buildings and 
 ruins, such as we can't show." 
 
 '' Ruins ! Me and my wife drove out 
 from Warwick one day — say, why do 
 they call it * Warrick ' when they spell it 
 with a i£' r — and took in Kensilworth 
 Castle, is it ? It was an awful hot day, and 
 it was certainly the most ruined thing I 
 ever saw. After about eight minutes I says 
 to my wife, * Well, what 's the use ? We '11 
 forget it all any way in a week — so let 's 
 go and have some beer.' So we got into 
 our carriage and had the coachman drive 
 us across the road to a little inn; they 
 sold postcards with views of the ruins 
 there, and I bought a handful and told 
 
 [ ^31 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 my wife to send 'em off to her friends so 
 they'd know what we were seeing; and 
 whil^ she done that, I unbuttoned my vest 
 and put down four bottles of beer." 
 
 Laughter followed and then an interval 
 of silence, upon which emerged from 
 another corner of the room an enthusias- 
 tic, fluting voice, saying, — 
 
 ** My dear fellow, ' Pelleas and Meli- 
 sande,' with Debussy's music, is the most 
 ravishingly beautiful, the most enchanting 
 thing I ever saw or heard." — 
 
 The smoking-room of a steamer is a 
 place of contrasts and of various activities. 
 The dominating element is likely to be 
 a noisy sporting fraternity. The bridge- 
 players and the poker-players establish early 
 a fellowship which is cemented by the op- 
 portunities to gamble on the daily run of 
 the ship. Others of more sober tendencies 
 find relaxation in solitaire, in checkers or 
 backgammon ; there is no game so dull 
 that it will not draw critical spectators. 
 An informality prevails which makes it 
 
 [ 132 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 quite proper to look over the shoulder of 
 a player and derive an opinion as to his 
 mental processes, or to benefit him by a 
 friendly suggestion when he is puzzled in 
 his solitaire. With the same freedom an 
 exuberant victor will issue a challenge to 
 the crowd ; an unconquerable checker- 
 player, who by his astonishing skill and 
 fertility had attracted a group of admirers, 
 was encouraging a fresh opponent : *' Well, 
 well ; it looks to me as if here was some 
 one who knew something about the game 
 — but let's try this. Hello! that's a 
 crafty move, isn't iti I guess he thinks he 
 has me in a hole — but I wonder what 
 will happen now. — W^hat ! going to let 
 me take three of your men for one of 
 mine ; do you think that 's good policy ? 
 But you're right — seems to be no other 
 way out of it for you, is there.?" In two 
 or three more moves he had annihilated — 
 with compassionate comment — his an- 
 tagonist ; and the little audience stood by 
 sniggering. 
 
 [ 133 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 " But I 'd like to see some one lick you," 
 observed a spectator. ** You are so darned 
 cocky about your game." The champion 
 laughed. ** If you feel that way, I 've got 
 to do something to be popular. Steward ! 
 Ask the gentlemen what they'll have." 
 
 It is true that the good humor and 
 geniality of the smoking-room are not 
 universal. Pretty nearly always there are 
 individuals or groups of individuals who 
 take a furious dislike to one another at the 
 start ; and out of these instinctive enmi- 
 ties ill-natured gossip is sometimes born. 
 Particularly is this true of the youthful ; 
 their standards of conduct and of manners 
 are very unyielding, very high ; the faculty 
 in which they excel is that of condemna- 
 tion ; and in the leisure which they have 
 for criticism they endeavor to substantiate 
 their immediate prejudices and antipathies. 
 Nothing is more amusing or irritating, 
 according to one's philosophy, than their 
 positive conclusions with regard to the 
 character of those whom they do not 
 
 [ 134 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 know ; nothing is more agreeable than the 
 enthusiasm with which on a little know- 
 ledge they recant and retract. 
 
 One aspect of the smoking-room is to 
 be touched upon as lightly, as regretfully 
 as is compatible with truth, yet not with 
 entire deprecation, — that aspect which it 
 wears at times when men are grouped to- 
 gether in a corner, heads down, listening 
 intently, while one speaks in a subdued 
 voice. The smiling silence, then the loud 
 guffaw — no doubt it is true that only 
 man is vile. Yet I believe that in a mature 
 audience no serious harm is ever done by 
 the story that arouses honest laughter. 
 The potency of such laughter is for good, 
 no matter what its origin. If the ^'smok- 
 ing-room story," as a certain type of 
 narrative has been labelled, does not pro- 
 voke honest laughter, it has done harm — 
 to the narrator if to no one else. And 
 when, in the expressive vernacular, a story 
 of this sort receives a "frost," the lesson 
 administered is stern ; the humiliation is 
 
 [ 135 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 enough to make others wary of risking a 
 similar rebuff. A somewhat forward per- 
 son never, I thought, during the whole 
 voyage quite regained his normal assertive- 
 ness, which he lost on the second day out 
 — Sunday. He was sitting that morning 
 in the smoking-room ; some one asked him 
 if he was going down to the church service. , 
 ** Oh yes," he answered comfortably and 
 loudly, so that all might hear, and he con- 
 tinued, '* I go to church every Sunday ; I 
 don't mind it at all. I go with my wife ; I 
 like to sing the hymns and see the ladies in 
 their Sunday toggery ; and then afterwards 
 on the way home I leave my wife and 
 stop in at the club ; quite a lot of the boys 
 have the habit of doing that ; and we sit 
 round and swap stories for an hour before 
 lunch. Pick up some mighty good ones 
 now and then." And forthwith he related 
 to the company a specimen. It was re- 
 ceived with gravity; the narrator flushed; 
 it was all very painful and salutary. 
 
 The smoking-room is indeed a school 
 
 [ 136 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 of manners. Its devotees are not fastidious, 
 but neither are they of blunted sensibiH- 
 ties. The vulgar learn from the gentle, 
 and the gentle learn from the vulgar. The 
 art of smoking tends to cultivate a spirit 
 of generosity; there is a brotherhood 
 of feeling which provides tacitly that 
 he whose tobacco pouch is full shall 
 share wath him whose pouch is empty; 
 and this generosity in dealing with ma- 
 terial possessions accompanies a generos- 
 ity in dealing with ideas. No place is 
 more democratic ; nowhere do men more 
 earnestly seek to meet each other upon 
 common ground. The smoking-room in- 
 spires one with contentment in masculine 
 resources. The more one habituates one's 
 self to its atmosphere, the more pleasant 
 and satisfying does it become. The spell 
 of feminine society grows less and less 
 potent to the smoking-room philosopher. 
 His comfort is provided for, a little play 
 goes on before his eyes, indeterminate and 
 fragmentary but amusing, the characters 
 
 [ 137 ] 
 
THE SMOKING-ROOM 
 
 of those who are in reminiscent mood un- 
 consciously unfold, oddities, eccentricities, 
 and absurdities are revealed, enthusiasms 
 that animate the heart of age and griev- 
 ances that vex the heart of youth entertain 
 him with their humor; and if in his pre- 
 occupation with these trivialities, — the sum 
 of which may mean an appreciable wis- 
 dom, — he neglects more and more those 
 finer moods that may never be awakened 
 in the smoking-room or in the compan- 
 ionship of those who frequent it, — well, 
 he is generally a rubicund old bachelor 
 who had his ideal of charm long ago and 
 pursued it till it vanished. 
 
 1^' 
 
V 
 
 CYNICISM 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 One of the seeming waywardnesses of our 
 human nature is the respect for a cynic that 
 lurks in nearly every heart. The respect is 
 not for his character, certainly not for his 
 disposition; but it goes out to him as a 
 man of intellect, and is often dispropor- 
 tionate to his ability. To hear that a man 
 is cynical is to accept him as of superior 
 intelligence. There is a universal deference 
 to what is universally deemed an unlovely 
 and undesirable attitude of mind. The en- 
 trance of the cynic into the drawing-room 
 produces an air of expectant interest ; his 
 rancorous comments are received as admir- 
 able wit. So, at least, according to the 
 contemporary novels of society; so, even, 
 — though in a somewhat less obvious and 
 artificial manner, — according to one's own 
 observation. We all find more interesting 
 the person who discusses his friend's fail- 
 
 [ HI ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 ings than him who dwells upon his friend's 
 virtues. We do not like the cynic better, 
 but we regard him as the more penetrat- 
 ing and the better informed. 
 
 Hence we find him excellent company. 
 For instance: Brown takes pains to make 
 a pleasant impression on those whom he 
 meets, and, in the ordinary relations of life, 
 gets on with his acquaintances and friends 
 very comfortably. When, therefore, the 
 cynical observer shrugs his shoulders and 
 intimates something to Brown's discredit, 
 the idea has for those who know Brown 
 the charm of novelty, and adorns him with 
 a new interest. Having never before held 
 him in discredit, they feel that his detractor 
 has got below the surface. The conviction 
 is strengthened by the cynic's air of men- 
 tal reservation, his unwillingness to utter 
 definitely w^hat he knows, his manner that 
 implies, **Oh yes, all very well, but I could 
 tell things if I would." 
 
 This, however, is not the only cause 
 that contributes to the general deference. 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 If one man declares a person to be charm- 
 ing, fascinating, or delightful, and another 
 pronounces him disgusting, repulsive, or 
 intolerable, who makes the more profound 
 impression? The language of enthusiasm 
 is emasculate compared with that of hatred 
 or contempt. A sufficient reason for the 
 undemonstrative nature of the English- 
 speaking race lies in the effeminate quality 
 of the adjectives that denote admirable 
 traits. Some of them can hardly be uttered 
 without a consciousness of a loss of virility. 
 One has only to contrast with them the 
 hearty gusto of our vocabulary of dislike 
 and depreciation to perceive the tremen- 
 dous advantage that the cynic enjoys. 
 
 His very name supports his pretensions 
 to a superior intelligence. *' Cynic," for 
 all that it meant originally ''doglike," is 
 an aristocratic word. One is not prone to 
 think of coal heavers, sailors, miners, as 
 cynics ; it has probably occurred to but 
 few that their grocers and butchers are 
 cynics. The word is erudite and Greek ; 
 
 [ H3 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 the presumption is that the man designated 
 by a term of such distinguished Hneage is 
 of education and intelUgence. We have 
 a habit of deriving ideas in this illogical 
 way. The cynics in the humbler walks 
 of life are not regarded as cynics, but as 
 men soured and disappointed. And when 
 we hear of one that he is soured and dis- 
 appointed, we do not instinctively pay 
 tribute to his intelligence. 
 
 Is there, then, no wisdom in cynicism, 
 no virtue in disbelief? Does the undoubted 
 suggestion of intelligence which the word 
 implies rest entirely upon such trivial 
 and empty grounds ? Unquestionably the 
 inner respect which persists, notwithstand- 
 ing the superficial condemnation, proceeds 
 from a dim recognition of certain useful 
 services that cynicism does perform. An 
 attempt to discover these and set them 
 forth fairly need not disturb even the most 
 believing. 
 
 A reasonable cynicism affords recreation 
 to the mind. A man may always, with 
 
 [ H4 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 advantage to his mental health, indulge 
 in a cynicism as a hobby ; he may, for 
 instance, be cynical of women, or news- 
 papers, or party politics, or the publishers 
 of novels, and be the better for it. But he 
 is in a serious state if his cynicism includes 
 women and newspapers and party politics 
 and\\\Q publishers of novels. Then, indeed, 
 is his outlook bleak and barren, and in 
 all probability he lives and works only to 
 malign ends. 
 
 Nearly all sane, normal people, how- 
 ever, enjoy one cynicism by way of diver- 
 sion. It is, indeed, essential to character to 
 have some object at which to scoff, swear, 
 or sneer. Cynicism is never a native qual- 
 ity of the mind ; it always has its birth in 
 some unhappy experience. The young 
 man finds that the girl who has gathered 
 up for him all the harmony and melody 
 of earth rings hollow at the test; and he 
 drops his lyrical language and becomes 
 cynical of women. The citizen of Boston 
 has naturally grown cynical of newspapers. 
 
 [ H5 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 The candidate for public office who has 
 been definitely retired to private life by 
 being '* knifed '' at the polls distrusts party 
 politics. A man reads the advertisement of 
 a novel, then reads the novel, and thence- 
 forth is cynical of the publishers of novels. 
 Yet these misfortunes have their salutary 
 aspect. The disappointed lover, general- 
 izing bitterly upon the sex, is not always 
 implacable ; a cooler judgment tempers 
 and restores his passion, gives it another 
 object, and so guides him to a safer, if 
 less gusty and emotional love. The citizen 
 of Boston, the betrayed candidate, the 
 misled and disappointed reader, all have 
 for their condition, even though they know 
 it not, a valuable compensation ; for the 
 very experience that has brought them to 
 this pass of reasonable cynicism has stirred 
 their indignation ; yes, in spite of their 
 seeming inertness, indignation is now 
 smouldering. And this is a great force ; 
 slow though it may be to start the wheels 
 of machinery, it is still an important fuel 
 
 [ 146] 
 
CYNICISxM 
 
 in keeping alive the fires under the boilers 
 of civilization. The faculty of it becomes 
 dulled by disuse, and is the more alert and 
 righteous for a little rasping. Hew impres- 
 sive and commanding a quality in a man is 
 that of a great potential indignation ! It 
 is essential to the chieftain. He may never 
 show more than the flash of an eye, yet 
 that will serve. And such power of in- 
 dignation never came to one who had not 
 penetrated some large bland sham, and 
 learned thereby to hate and disbelieve all 
 its seductive kindred. 
 
 In supplying one with a theme for in- 
 dignation, the turn toward cynicism fur- 
 nishes also an additional amusement and 
 charm. If a man is in the habit, for ex- 
 ample, of expecting nothing but tales of 
 murder, suicide, and scandal on the first 
 page of his newspaper, he becomes actually 
 pleased at the rich daily reward of his ex- 
 pectations. '* Scurrilous sheet ! " he cries, 
 striking it with open palm. To behold, 
 morning after morning, its recurring of- 
 
 [ H7 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 fensiveness and hypocrisy, to feel that there 
 are less discerning persons who approve of 
 the very features that make it despicable, 
 and to exclaim to himself, ** So this is what 
 the public likes! " brings him each time 
 a curious satisfaction. Perhaps it is merely 
 the satisfaction of a small gratified vanity, 
 but it enables him to begin his day in a 
 comfortable frame of mind ; he is pre- 
 pared to snarl only at newspapers. It is 
 desirable that every man should have a 
 small vanity gratified daily ; it keeps him 
 in good temper with himself and the world. 
 And to observe small vanities and foibles 
 in others performs this service, since a man 
 always absolves himself from sharing the 
 weaknesses that he sees. 
 
 Yet cynicism has a more valuable end 
 than merely to amuse. It is a means to- 
 ward sturdiness and independence in a 
 man; it quickens his activities, and pre- 
 vents a too ready acceptance of existing 
 conditions. It is almost necessary to im- 
 portant achievement. The reverential 
 
 [ 148 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 frame of mind is inefficient when con- 
 fronted with the world's work ; too much 
 in the problems of life demands not to be 
 reverenced, but to be cursed. There can 
 be no useful and permanent building up 
 without a clearing of the site ; old foun- 
 dations and debris have to be swept away. 
 The man of reverential mind, who has 
 no touch of cynicism, is unfit for this 
 work. He is unfit, for instance, to serve 
 as district attorney in one of our large 
 cities, — as useful a function as an edu- 
 cated man may perform, yet one in the 
 performance of which the man of entirely 
 reverential spirit would be harmfully em- 
 ployed. The reverential spirit, contem- 
 plative of the established order, crowds 
 out capacity for initiative ; the cynical 
 spirit, scouting the established order, stim- 
 ulates initiative. Of this spirit have been 
 the great reformers, men for whom Swift, 
 in defining his own life, has supplied a 
 motto : '' The chief end of all my labor 
 is to vex the world rather than to divert 
 
 [ H9 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 it." It was characteristic of Cromwell 
 that in dissolving the Long Parliament he 
 should display a wanton cynicism. " My 
 Lord General, lifting the sacred mace 
 itself, said, ' What shall we do with this 
 bauble ? Take it away ! ' " The scorn 
 with which he disposed of the revered 
 symbol of majesty was in itself symbolic ; 
 as the Cavalier had been cynical of the 
 Puritan's piety, so was the Puritan cynical 
 of the pomp and trappings of the Cavalier. 
 The great rulers, like the great reform- 
 ers, have had the cynical sense, and have in 
 the same way derived from it, not paraly- 
 sis, but an effective recklessness. Louis 
 XIV, most brilliant of monarchs, observed 
 in making an appointment to office, *' J'ai 
 fait dix mecontents et un ingrat." And 
 he continued to appoint whom he pleased. 
 Frederick the Great was the pupil of Vol- 
 taire ; and when a Board of Religion came 
 to him with a complaint that certain 
 Roman Catholic schools were used for sec- 
 tarian purposes, he bade them remember 
 
 [ '50] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 that ''in this country every man must get 
 to heaven his own way." The ruthless 
 cynicism of Peter the Great -was supple- 
 mented by the splendid constructive hope- 
 fulness from which issued his saying, '* I 
 built St. Petersburg as a window to let in 
 the light of Europe." 
 
 Yet we need not go to history for illus- 
 tration ; even in one's own experience it 
 is not difficult to note the efficiency which 
 a vein of cynicism, properly combined 
 with other qualities, gives a man. Those 
 who are regarded as successful, or as being 
 on the road to success, are cheerful, hope- 
 ful persons, with just this slightly cynical 
 outlook. Those who have failed, or are 
 failing, are just as surely the utterly cyni- 
 cal, the decayed, querulous, and embittered, 
 or the supremely reverential, who have 
 too much respect for things as they are to 
 undertake any alteration. These are the 
 indolent; they may work hard all their 
 lives, yet are they none the less indolent 
 mentally, and unalert. 
 
 [ ^51 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 There is, indeed, what may be called 
 the cynical sense, not to be confused with 
 the sense of humor, though akin to it. It 
 is this which enables a man to keep out of 
 the stock market, and even more, to look 
 without jealousy on the achievements of 
 those who are in the stock market. It is 
 the antiseptic sense. So far from promot- 
 ing envy, malice, and uncharitableness, it is 
 allied with sympathy. For sympathy means 
 understanding, and there can be no true 
 understanding if one does not detect the 
 weaknesses as well as the virtues ; without 
 this cynical sense, one has not humanity. 
 It gives a man a lively and discriminat- 
 ing interest in life; it guards him against 
 the paralyzing vice of hero-worship, — 
 which is a virtue only in the young and 
 immature, — and against the more sinful 
 fault of arrogance toward the dejected and 
 beaten. For just as it enables him to see 
 how trivial are even the greatest achieve- 
 ments of human ingenuity and labor, with 
 what little loss the work of even the best 
 
 [ 152] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 and wisest might have been omitted in the 
 progress of the world, so, also, it prevents 
 him from being unduly scornful of those 
 who have accomplished — for all that ap- 
 pears on the surface — nothing. Seeing a 
 man who has failed, the cynically minded 
 wonders what accidents of birth and cir- 
 cumstance imposed his fruitlessness upon 
 him ; seeing a man who has succeeded, the 
 cynic wonders if he had done so without 
 the innumerable reinforcements of chance. 
 If this view tends toward fatalism, so does 
 it also toward democracy. 
 
 Yet one's cynicism must always be tem- 
 pered in its sentiment and limited in its 
 scope. A man may profitably be cynical 
 of women, yet his faith and loyalty to at 
 least one woman — his mother, or his 
 sister, or the woman he loves — must be 
 unswerving and unquestioning. A man 
 may not be cynical of children or with 
 children. He cannot be cynical of friends 
 and keep them. He must not grow cyni- 
 cal of himself, for then nothing remains. 
 
 [ 153 ] 
 
CYNICISM 
 
 And the danger of cynicism is that once 
 admitted into a man it may grow, appro- 
 priating one after another of his channels 
 and outlets, narrowing his hopes and en- 
 thusiasms, until finally it rots the man 
 himself. 
 
 Reasonably limited and kept within 
 bounds, it is a source of strength to a man 
 rather than of weakness ; it gives him an 
 independent and self-respecting point of 
 view ; it berates him if he tends toward a 
 weak sentimentality ; it is the companion 
 of a cheerful levity. Take their cynical 
 outlook away from Heine and Goethe and 
 Victor Hugo, from Swift and Johnson and 
 Franklin, — and how flavorless would be 
 what remained ! How insipid would be 
 a literature in which wit and humor had 
 to disport themselves entirely among the 
 pleasants facts of life ! 
 
VI 
 
 THE QUIET MAN 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 At college it was always easy to create 
 a prepossession in favor of a man by re- 
 commending him as a '* nice, quiet sort of 
 fellow." In the case of the athlete who 
 had demonstrated his vitality and manly 
 qualities, the reason for this prepossession 
 was clear ; the declaration of his friends 
 was an assurance that his head had not 
 been turned by his achievements, and that 
 he was modest and unassertive. But it 
 always seemed to me singular that so neg- 
 ative a statement should so generally have 
 guaranteed the worth of one of whom 
 little else was known. Even in the larger 
 world outside of college, the same guar- 
 antee holds good ; let a stranger in a city 
 have but one friend who makes it known 
 that he is a " nice, quiet sort of fellow," 
 and he will not lack for a welcome. 
 Yet many of the primary and obvious 
 
 [ ^57 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 reasons for quietness in a man are not 
 prepossessing. It may be that he is a weak- 
 ling ; bullied because of his lack of strength 
 in the Spartan age of boyhood, he has had 
 fixed upon him the habit of timidity and 
 self-effacement. Or he may be stupid, yet 
 with just enough intelligence to perceive 
 his dulness and so to be dumb. Or he 
 may by nature be one of those passionless, 
 unenthusiastic, indifferent creatures who 
 find sufficient occupation in buttoning on 
 their clothes in the morning and unbut- 
 toning them at night, eating their three 
 meals and going through the daily routine 
 work or routine idleness to which neces- 
 sity or circumstance has accustomed them. 
 The classification is incomplete ; there are 
 quiet men who are not weaklings, who 
 are not stupid, who are enthusiastic, men 
 of firm will and steadfast purpose. But if 
 we pass over these for the present, it will 
 appear that the self-control practised by 
 quiet persons had oftentimes better give 
 place to self-abandon, and that many a 
 
 [ 158 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 man is respected for his restraint when he 
 should be pitied for his diffidence. There 
 is, for instance, the case of one whose quiet 
 ways have resulted from a sense of physi- 
 cal inferiority in boyhood. 
 
 No matter what victories may be at- 
 tained in the development of character, 
 the point of view and the manner that 
 were fixed in the early formative years 
 are never quite discarded. The boy who 
 has less strength than his fellows, less 
 athletic skill, and yet admires and longs 
 for these possessions, invites only too often 
 demonstrations upon himself of the vigor 
 and prowess that he covets. A boy likes 
 above all things to show his power over 
 another boy ; and the most instant method 
 is by putting him down and sitting on 
 him, or by seizing his wrist and twisting 
 it till he howls, or by gripping the back 
 of his neck and forcing him to march 
 whither the tyrant wills. Once the un- 
 lucky weakling is discovered and his sus- 
 ceptibility to teasing exposed, he becomes 
 
 [ 159 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN ' 
 
 the plaything of his stronger mates. The 
 amusement is the greater if he resents it 
 with spirit, the keener if he has a sensi- 
 tiveness which is hurt by the abuse, the 
 more frequently invited if he has the fatal 
 admiration for deeds of strength, and 
 haunts, in spite of its terrors, the society 
 of those who can perform them. His 
 spirit is not crushed, but it learns discre- 
 tion ; his sensitiveness grows into a shy 
 and morbid pride ; he likes to look on 
 at better men, and to know them, but he 
 finds it wise to be inconspicuous, inasmuch 
 as to draw attention to himself usually 
 means to suffer from a display of the very 
 abilities which he admires. 
 
 And out of this what results ? He ac- 
 quires the habit of looking on and being 
 socially inconspicuous. He may have en- 
 ergies that in the end win for him emi- 
 nence, but he will probably be to the end 
 a shy and quiet man. It is not necessary 
 that a boy should be a w^eakling to arrive 
 at this development ; some trifling pecu- 
 
 [ '60] 
 
VERSITY 
 
 THE QUIET MAN 
 
 liarity, a curious quality of voice, or a ner- 
 vous and easily mimicked laugh, or an 
 alien accent may suffice to create in him 
 an undue tendency to hold his tongue. I 
 know one man who attributes his ** cursed 
 quietness " to an ailment of the throat 
 that he had when a boy, and that made 
 his speech husky and often liable to break 
 down. Another thinks he is quiet because 
 he never could sing ; nearly always in any 
 gathering in which he found himself, 
 there was singing, and he, utterlv with- 
 out the musical sense, sat and contributed 
 nothing. This inability in expression ex- 
 tended even to his speech ; he could not 
 manage his voice to tell a story effectively, 
 and though no one has a keener apprecia- 
 tion of the humorous or dramatic, no one 
 is less able than he to realize it in his 
 talk. 
 
 Then there are the humble-minded peo- 
 ple who fancy themselves too dull or too 
 uninformed to be interesting, and who cut 
 themselves off from sharing freely with 
 
 [ i6i ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 others their thoughts and opinions. Often 
 they do themselves scant justice in their 
 modesty, and win all the more on that 
 account the regard of the few who come 
 near enough to know them. But they are 
 always understood of but few, and they 
 are bottled-up people, a nervous, self-con- 
 scious, timorous folk, of pleasant disposi- 
 tion and much sentiment, who seldom cut 
 any large figure in the world. 
 
 The others, who really are dull and 
 without being oppressed by the knowledge 
 preserve a befitting retirement, constitute 
 perhaps a majority of the quiet men. To 
 be dull is certainly not to be disliked; and 
 yet I question if any one of this numerous, 
 agreeable, and necessary company quite 
 fills out the original mental picture sum- 
 moned by the recommendation, — "a nice, 
 quiet sort of fellow." For the phrase sug- 
 gests a man who has reserves of thought 
 or knowledge or moral force. Indeed, we 
 often follow up the designation, as thus: 
 ** A nice, quiet sort of fellow, with a lot 
 
 [ 162 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 to him." On closer acquaintance, we are 
 likely to find that his quietness proceeds 
 from lack of strong convictions rather than 
 from moral force, or from mere empty- 
 headedness rather than from thoughts too 
 deep to share. We come to think him a 
 man with a receptive habit but little as- 
 similative power. He listens but does not 
 learn. It seems to be a sort of mental and 
 moral dyspepsia from which he suffers. 
 
 Let us suppose, however, that it is 
 neither lack of ideas nor ill digestion of 
 ideas which renders him a quiet man, but 
 that he is indeed a person ''with a lot to 
 him." Then, usually, he is the man of one 
 idea. It is rare that he has versatility. He 
 is the small inventor or the mechanician, 
 whose mind on being diverted from the 
 study of wheels and cogs can in no other 
 sense be diverted; it is cold alike to Shake- 
 speare and to baseball. He is the young 
 poet of good impulses and a little talent, 
 toying with his lyric and indifferent to the 
 science of the stars, of the green and grow- 
 
 [ ^63 ] 
 
,THE QUIET MAN 
 
 ing things about him, and to the business 
 and endeavors of his active fellow men. 
 He is the lawyer who makes a career out 
 of ingenuity in splitting hairs; he is the 
 business man who carries his ledgers home 
 with him at night; he is any man who, 
 by his devotion to an abstract principle or 
 problem, or to a material fact, neglects his 
 relations with nature and with men. If 
 the principle is important and appeals to 
 a missionary and reforming conscience, and 
 if the man has power, he is not admitted 
 to fellowship among the quiet, but accord- 
 ing to one's point of view is hailed as a 
 hero or denounced as a crank, a nuisance, 
 or a fool. 
 
 Of the many small people involved in 
 their struggle with one idea, and aban- 
 doned to their solitary interest, Emerson 
 has supplied a phrase that may be appro- 
 priated for definition. They are Mere 
 Thinkers, as contrasted with Man Think- 
 ing. In them the human element is defi- 
 cient. They may have an absorbed interest 
 
 [ 164] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 in their one pursuit, perhaps even a kind 
 of dry and laudable enthusiasm; in their 
 narrow range their souls may have con- 
 flicts with the devil and issue worthily; but 
 they are not the men of rich and generous 
 nature, whose ideas take form in action, 
 and who in action strike out fresh ideas. 
 Man Thinking is man alert, versatile, liv- 
 ing, — which is to say, finding constantly 
 new interest in the things and beings about 
 him, and developing himself more and 
 more by the contact. From the ranks of 
 Man Thinking emerge most of the strong 
 and virile, the men of burly laughter, ob- 
 serving and remembering eye, and care- 
 less, wide-ranging talk; the unhoarded, 
 chance-flung anecdote, the unconsciously 
 graphic phrase, the crisp expression of a 
 truth shrewdly seen drop from the lips of 
 Man Thinking, not from those of Mere 
 Thinker. One Mere Thinker in a million 
 may some time evolve by mathematical 
 and intellectual processes a machine of 
 more than mathematical, even of human 
 
 [ 165 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 value ; yet even then it is Man Thinking 
 who will perfect it, and manufacture it, 
 and advertise it, and sell it, and secure to 
 the world at large — and to Man Think- 
 ing in particular — its benefits. So Man 
 Thinking is never quiet ; he is bustling, 
 urging, cajoling, threatening, flinging 
 his arms about, or battering with heavy, 
 hostile fists ; and in his leisure moments 
 pouring out prodigally, for whoever may 
 pass, his amazed or delighted or pained 
 impressions, — just like an earnest, excited 
 child. 
 
 And meanwhile the quiet man, — 
 Mere Thinker. Hear Emerson : " Meek 
 young men grow up in libraries, believing 
 it their duty to accept the views which 
 Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have 
 given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and 
 Bacon were only young men in libraries 
 when they wrote these books. Hence, 
 instead of Man Thinking, we have the 
 bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, 
 who value books as such. . . . Hence, 
 
 [ i66] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 the restorers of readings, the emendators, 
 the bibliomaniacs of all degrees/' 
 
 The narrowness and inertia of the quiet 
 man are frequently moral as well as men- 
 tal. He is firm on the point of certain 
 things which he will not do, but his virtue 
 is too likely to be of this negative quality ; 
 and while his noisy and active brother 
 is blundering about, learning what life is, 
 perhaps heaping up sins and offences, 
 yet also building himself in his heed- 
 less, casual way monuments of good. Mere 
 Thinker, with eyes upon the ground, 
 treads the barren path of the dull preci- 
 sian. Since he is quiet, he receives credit 
 for virtues if he does not exhibit boldly 
 their antithetic vices. Loyalty and stead- 
 fastness and a good domestic nature are 
 the excellent qualities most often attrib- 
 uted to him. Yet as to the first of these, 
 can any one doubt the truth of Stevenson's 
 words : '* A man may have sat in a room 
 for hours and not opened his teeth, and 
 yet come out of that room a disloyal 
 
 [ 167 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 friend or a vile calumniator" ? The quiet 
 friend may be as faithful as the vociferous, 
 but there should be no presumption in 
 his favor, for his very habit of life is in- 
 sidious, and tends to breed the germs of 
 doubt if not disloyalty. The looker-on is 
 usually the man dissatisfied with idleness 
 and critical of the activity of others. Be- 
 cause it might draw upon him compari- 
 son to his disadvantage, he does not utter 
 freely his carping criticism of the active ; 
 but he bears in mind how much better he 
 himself would do this or that if it were 
 not for some forbidding circumstance. 
 And this habit of comparing himself with 
 others, which is one of the common re- 
 creations of the quiet man, sometimes, no 
 doubt, begets the envy which makes it 
 easy to betray. 
 
 Even his unquestioned domesticity may 
 not be so comprehensive a virtue. To sup- 
 port some one besides himself in decency 
 and honor is not all that a man should 
 strive to do, though it is much. He should 
 
 [ i68 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 also feel the obligation to bring gayety 
 into the lives of those whom he loves. 
 It is possible for some men by sheer earn- 
 ing power to provide their families with 
 opportunities for travel and amusement 
 and adventure. But the earning power of 
 the majority is limited in these matters ; 
 and all the more is it necessary then tor 
 the man to bring variety and a cheerful 
 activity and liveliness into his house. The 
 fact that the routine of the day has been 
 dull does not excuse him for being glum 
 and silent at his evening meal. And too 
 much of the quietness in the world is but 
 the habit of a listless and brooding selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 It would be wanton to make these ex- 
 posures and not offer a remedy. Here is 
 a suggestion for the quiet man : " Learn 
 to make a noise." 
 
 It is not enough that he should celebrate 
 the Fourth of July each year in the cus- 
 tomary manner, — though he may find 
 even that barbarous observance beneficial. 
 
 [ ^69 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 Taking an active part in the romps and 
 play of children is a resource that, if open 
 to him, he should embrace. Probably he 
 has so schooled himself to inexpressiveness 
 that he cannot at once emerge out of the 
 secondary place into which he is relegated 
 at social gatherings ; but three or four 
 times a year he should, at whatever cost 
 of courage, insist upon being heard. The 
 advice to make a noise need not be taken 
 literally, — though such interpretation 
 would lead few quiet men into serious 
 error. It may serve the purpose if the man 
 develops a strong outdoor enthusiasm, or 
 a keen spirit of rivalry in games, for either 
 of these will introduce into his existence 
 that element of life that he most needs. 
 If he can acquire some undignified accom- 
 plishment, — if he can learn to sing a 
 '* coon song," or to play upon the mouth 
 organ, or to dance a clog, or to recite 
 ** Casey at the Bat," — he will have made 
 an advance in the art of living such as 
 none but a constitutionally shy and quiet 
 
 [ 170] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 person can understand. Perhaps, with the 
 best will in the world, he can attain to 
 none of these things ; he may then find a 
 means of grace in the occasional revels 
 and merry-makings that are not denied 
 even the most quiet. Failing all else, 
 and being quite out of conceit with him- 
 self, let him go tramping in search of 
 adventure, — in the city by-streets at 
 night, or through the countryside. But 
 there, again, does the quiet man become 
 aware of his misfortune ; adventure evades 
 him ; and while his assertive, unappre- 
 ciative brother, on going downtown in 
 the morning, may have a romantic en- 
 counter with a runaway automobile occu- 
 pied by a beautiful lady, or with a tiger 
 strayed from a circus, he may roam the 
 world and meet with no runaway automo- 
 bile, no tiger, and, alas and alack ! no 
 beautiful lady. Even so, let him persevere ; 
 preparing himself for adventure, he may 
 almost attain the habit of mind of the ad- 
 venturous. 
 
 [ 17' ] 
 
THE QUIET xMAN 
 
 But never, I fear, will he fully attain it. 
 There will always be the horrid, harassing 
 doubt — never shared by the truly adven- 
 turous — as to whether he would, indeed, 
 bear himself heroically. To illustrate the 
 point, I must make a confession; I am a 
 quiet man. Although I have often pre- 
 pared myself in mind, I have not yet set 
 out upon my quest of adventure. But no 
 longer ago than yesterday, one of my di- 
 rect, unquestioning friends plunged into 
 it ; and ever since I have been miserably 
 torn with inquiry as to whether in his 
 place I should have been so prompt. Rid- 
 ing on his bicycle along a village street, 
 he was aware that a wagon overtook and 
 passed him at unusual speed, but he thought 
 nothing of this. He had dismounted, and 
 was entering a gateway when he heard a 
 great hubbub behind him ; and looking 
 round he saw men running, with cries of 
 "Stop him ! Stop him ! " and in front of 
 them a man speeding along on a bicycle. 
 My friend stepped out into the street and 
 
 [ 1/2 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 opposed a threatening front ; still the flee- 
 ing rider came on. And then, just as he 
 was about to whiz by, my friend hurled 
 his bicycle into the rider's path ; the two 
 machines went down with a crash, and 
 the hero flung himself valiantly upon the 
 groaning wretch, who lay crumpled amid 
 the wreckage. " I 've got him ! " cried the 
 hero to the breathless, gathering throng. 
 "Got him!" they answered, with here 
 and there a sneering accent of profanity. 
 " We yelled at you to stop the fellow in 
 the wagon." " Yes, the fellow I was chas- 
 ing," added the unfortunate captive. And 
 indeed, it appeared that the driver was 
 the miscreant, having knocked down a 
 woman and made off; and the bicyclist 
 had merely been one of a humane and 
 inquisitive mob. 
 
 Now, my agitating question has been, 
 Should I, too, thus boldly, peremptorily, 
 and efficiently have hurled my bicycle? 
 For the life of me I cannot tell. So many 
 reasons why I might have done so occur 
 
 [ 1/3] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 to me, and then again so many considera- 
 tions which might have stayed my hand. 
 A fleeing criminal — one's pubhc duty — 
 and yet on such uncertain grounds — to 
 wreck him so utterly, to damage him per- 
 haps so irreparably ! All I am sure of is 
 that I should have opposed a threatening 
 front. 
 
 And this, I imagine, is the chief afflic- 
 tion, the shame of many a quiet man, — 
 the dread of finding in some important 
 moment that the reflective habit has pro- 
 duced paralysis. Even if he breaks through 
 the net of qualifying considerations and 
 acts efficiently, he has the humiliated feel- 
 ing that he has made a great mental to-do 
 over a matter that some one else would 
 have gone about without debate. More- 
 over, he shrinks from using his faculties 
 in unconventional ways ; again I must 
 serve as corpus vile for purposes of illustra- 
 tion. A man who had been my guest 
 overnight decided the next morning, 
 which happened to be Sunday, that he 
 
 [ 174 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 desired a cab. From the back window of 
 my lodgings, which are on the fourth 
 floor of the house, he descried a livery 
 stable, and opening the window he 
 shouted lustily in the Sabbath stillness the 
 name of the proprietor. Now, although 
 we have in our rear a livery stable, our 
 neighborhood is prim and even fastidious ; 
 the houses in our block are occupied by 
 families with highly conventional notions 
 of propriety. In some dismay I pulled 
 my guest's coat-tails, whispering that I 
 would send out for a cab ; withdrawing his 
 head for a moment, he replied, '* This 
 is quicker," and then again thrusting it 
 forth, continued to bawl. At last a stable 
 boy answered him ; he gave his order, 
 specifying the number of the house with 
 painful distinctness ; after which he turned 
 to me and complimented me on the con- 
 venience of my situation and the need- 
 lessness of a jingling telephone. In my 
 scheme of life, a cab is the last of all ex- 
 travagances; yet even if it were not, or 
 
 [ -75] 
 
THE. QUIET MAN 
 
 if I had found myself in the direst need 
 of one, I am sure it would never have 
 occurred to me to employ this simple, 
 primitive method of securing it. Qiiiet- 
 ness tends to unfit one for the use of rudi- 
 mentary instruments. 
 
 It is time, after these frank confessions, 
 to rehearse some merits of the quiet man, 
 and particularly to dwell upon the ad- 
 mirable qualities of some quiet men. It Is 
 hardly necessary to summon up here the 
 kindly and perhaps not more than three- 
 quarters fallacious banality about the con- 
 stant need of good listeners. We must 
 persuade ourselves of some less negative 
 excuse for our existence. I dismiss from 
 consideration also the splendid quiet hero 
 of romance, the Imperturbable ; when- 
 ever I have discovered an air of the im- 
 perturbable in a man, I have also discovered 
 an offensive self-complacency, and I am 
 unable to do justice to this particular flower 
 of the species. 
 
 Perhaps the most worthy office that the 
 
 [ 176] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 quiet man performs is that of the com- 
 forter, or at least the sympathetic confidant 
 of grief. He who is stricken in spirit, and 
 must utter his sorrow, turns less readily to 
 the exuberant than to the silent friend, 
 whose speech is apter with eyes than with 
 lips. It matters not very much if such a 
 man has the weakness that must so often 
 be imputed ; let him be but a true friend 
 and a quiet one, and the sore in heart will 
 take some comfort in him. If he has not 
 the weaknesses, but is stanch and strong, a 
 walk with him in the open air, whether 
 in the biting winds of March or over the 
 sunlit fields of May, or a talk with him 
 before the winter fire, may put vigor, as 
 well as the first sense of peace, into the 
 soul. 
 
 As such a friend is a resource in time 
 of sadness, so on happier occasions he 
 need never be a kill-joy. No merriment 
 was ever stifled because one of those bid- 
 den to share it could contribute nothing 
 but appreciation. That quality the quiet 
 
 [ 177 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 man must have. It is the noisy or the 
 active one who, even while giving life 
 to happy gatherings, is most dangerous. 
 Some blurted truth, some reckless jest, 
 some too searching inquiry or too down- 
 right, blunt debate may strike dead the gay 
 laughter and transform cheerful, open- 
 hearted contentment into a suffering de- 
 sire to escape. Quiet men may rarely be 
 charged with breaches of tact, careless and 
 inconsiderate speech, the little slights that 
 gall the sensitive, the little failures to be 
 diplomatic where diplomacy were honest 
 as well as kind. Quiet men are not the 
 busybodies ; quiet men were not, I am 
 convinced, the comforters of Job. 
 
 And the best of them are deserving of 
 nearly the best that we can say. Not quite 
 the best; one can hardly believe that the 
 great Elizabethans, for instance, were quiet 
 men. But out of our own acquaintance 
 let us pick the few who, without an im- 
 pressive show of energy and activity, per- 
 form in the most truly workmanlike way 
 
 [ ^78 ] 
 
THE QUIET MAN 
 
 work that they seem willing to let pass 
 unnoticed. They do not spend a great 
 portion of their lives in efforts to attract 
 attention to their achievements, to their 
 skill ; they do not despise popular appre- 
 ciation, but they find the courting of it un- 
 important and unworthy; therefore they 
 move upon the performance of their tasks, 
 unfretful if they are neglected, keeping to 
 themselves the trials and perplexities that 
 they encounter, patiently overcoming and 
 accomplishing. They may not win so 
 many or so varied experiences and gifts 
 from life as the reckless and ranging adven- 
 turer; theirs is not often the genius that 
 builds the greatest and most enduring mon- 
 uments ; yet nearly all that has the charm 
 of fine and perfect workmanship, nearly all 
 that is subtly and beautifully conceived and 
 exquisitely wrought, in manufactures, in 
 machinery, in painting and music and 
 literature, bears testimony to the serene 
 vision, the unremitting toil of the quiet 
 man. 
 
VII 
 «IN SWIMMING 
 
^^N SWIiMMING" 
 
 Late in the afternoon, when the boys 
 grew tired of playing baseball, some one 
 would say, " How about going in now?'' 
 or, more often, give a whistle and hold 
 up two fingers of one hand, the universal 
 sign of natatory purpose and invitation. 
 Then my heart would sink. At that age 
 I never got tired of playing baseball — and 
 I could not swim. Once they were headed 
 for the river, it was useless to protest ; and 
 I followed them, as disconsolate and en- 
 vious a nine-year-old as there was in the 
 
 land. 
 
 We crossed the railroad track at the 
 foot of the meadow, and ran down the 
 path under the arching willows and oaks 
 of the bank to the river beach. There, 
 while the others were undressing, I would 
 stand and scale stones out over the water 
 with an assumed indifference, deaf to their 
 
 [ 183 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 urgings that I should come in with them 
 and try to learn. They treated me with 
 a compassionate kindliness, — not unlike 
 that with which the heath-dwellers in 
 "The Return of the Native" assisted the 
 unfortunate Christian Cantle to acquiesce 
 in his incompetence, — and when they 
 found that I could not be persuaded, they 
 would ask me, one after another, to keep an 
 eve on their clothes. I do not know from 
 what source they feared molestation, and 
 I never was aware that any of them carried 
 valuable property which might tempt a 
 passer-by to crime. Their injunction may 
 have been thoughtfully designed to restore 
 to me some measure of self-respect and 
 make me feel that, even though I could 
 not swim, there was still a place for me 
 in the world. At any rate, I took the 
 responsibiHty with some seriousness, and 
 preserved a sharp watch over all the ar- 
 ticles intrusted to my care, occasionally 
 nailing down a fluttering shirt with a 
 stone, or pursuing a hat that had been 
 
 [ '84 ] 
 
'^N SWIMMING" 
 
 started on a bumping expedition by the 
 breeze. 
 
 When the half-past-five train burst thun- 
 dering out of the cut a hundred yards up 
 the river, all the boys made for deep water, 
 or, if they were too near shore for that, 
 modestly immersed themselves, — all ex- 
 cept one young Indian, whose practice it 
 was to come scrambling ashore and there 
 dance defiantly, waving his arms and yell- 
 ing while the train passed. This perform- 
 ance was always rather shocking to me; 
 even while I admired its daring. One day 
 the Indian's mother was on the train, and 
 recognized him from the window, and 
 for a week thereafter he did not go in 
 swimming, but sat with me, like Fido, 
 by the clothes. 
 
 As often as I had the opportunity, 
 and could be sure there were no other 
 boys to spy upon my infantile efforts, I 
 used to sneak down to the river and give 
 myself swimming lessons. Whether the 
 fault was mainly with the teacher or with 
 
 [ 185] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 the pupil, I do not know; but I had begun 
 to despair of ever learning, when one day 
 I stretched myself out recklessly upon the 
 water and began to swim. I was so amazed 
 to find myself afloat that after a few strokes 
 I felt I had better stop and think about 
 it, so I dropped my feet and groped for 
 bottom ; to my infinite horror it was not 
 there. The current of the river, probably 
 more than my own efforts, had carried me 
 beyond my depth. 
 
 I beat the water desperately with my 
 hands, trying to regain the swimming po- 
 sition, and went under. My fright, after 
 the first terror at not finding bottom, was 
 quite inadequate. When I came up stran- 
 gling and saw the shore slipping by, the 
 rock on which I had laid my clothes 
 more distant than before, I thrust crazily 
 with arms and legs and determined that 
 nobody, and least of all my mother, should 
 ever know of my narrow escape. I ac- 
 cepted escape as a foregone conclusion, 
 even while realizing the peril. Somehow 
 
 [ i86] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 I got ashore, choking and gasping, and 
 made my way back to my clothes. There, 
 while I sat on a rock and recovered my- 
 self, I reflected with some pride that I had 
 achieved a new importance. I had almost 
 been drowned, and I had learned to swim. 
 A disposition to test the reality of my ac- 
 quirement, and ascertain if I might rely 
 on its permanence, impelled me to enter 
 the water again. In the exhilaration of 
 confirming my discovery, it soon became 
 a pleasure to take a risk. I enjoyed the 
 sensation when, a few days later, I inter- 
 rupted the ball game by giving a whistle 
 and holding up two fingers oT one hand. 
 
 The largest percentage of drowning ac- 
 cidents to boys occur, I am told, in rivers. 
 From my own experience I am con- 
 vinced that if a lake or the ocean is acces- 
 sible, a river should not be chosen as the 
 scene of one's elementary swimming les- 
 sons ; but where a river is the only water 
 at hand, a boy had better risk being swept 
 away by the current. No doubt in most 
 
 [ 187 ] 
 
'^N SWIMMING" 
 
 cases he will take that risk, even though 
 his parents concede only as much liberty 
 to swim as the mother in the nonsense 
 rhyme was willing to allow her daughter. 
 One of the pleasures that I find in sum- 
 mer travel is to watch out of the train 
 window, as we skirt the banks of streams, 
 for the boys bathing, standing waist-deep 
 in the water, or, with only wet heads 
 above the surface, stemming the current 
 in momentary rivalry. In these glimpses 
 the pleasure is perhaps not wholly that 
 of personal reminiscence and sympathy ; I 
 think the veriest hoodlum of the village, 
 seen stripped and in a woodland setting, 
 may be the Pan in one's fleeting vision of 
 Arcady. Some persons I have heard cry 
 out against the publicity of such bathing ; 
 to me the sight seems as innocent as the 
 pastime. Cows knee-deep in streams are 
 the painter's favorite subject for a pastoral ; 
 if I were a painter, I think I should 
 choose almost as often boys bathing in a 
 brook. 
 
 [ i88 ] 
 
*aN SWIMMING" 
 
 To be picturesque is not, however, the 
 swimmer's aim, and except for its pictur- 
 esque effect river bathing is not very sat- 
 isfactory. The bigger the river, the more 
 dirty and unpleasant and unsheltered is it 
 likely to be; the smaller the stream, the 
 more certain in the summer months to be- 
 come a mere dribble in which one crawls 
 about hunting for a spot where it may be 
 deep enough to swim. Or if it is not 
 disqualilied in either of these respects, its 
 current will cause annoyance ; one grows 
 weary of always having to quarter against 
 it, of never being able to lie peacefully at 
 rest without being whisked off to a point 
 which is inconveniently conspicuous or 
 from which return is undesirably laborious. 
 
 The utmost luxury for the swimmer 
 would be always to have freedom of choice 
 as to where he would swim — whether 
 in pond or lake or ocean. Then he would 
 be able each day to adapt his swim to his 
 mood. For swimming may be variously 
 operative on a man ; desiring one remedy, 
 
 [ 189 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING'^ 
 
 he may find himself refused it by the 
 perversity of the element — served with 
 the wrong prescription. He would like a 
 swim as relaxing as a Turkish bath, and 
 he is in for a boxing match. For instance, 
 it is a hot, oppressive day; you have been 
 doing concentrated mental labor for some 
 hours, and you wish to turn, not to vigor- 
 ous exercise, but to a soothing employ- 
 ment, a languid, indolent use of the mus- 
 cles which will leave you in a mood for 
 sleep. But your available swimming tank 
 is the Atlantic Ocean, in a latitude where 
 the temperature of the water never rises 
 above fifty-eight degrees ; and the day is 
 windy and overcast ; you put on your bath- 
 ing suit and stand on the beach looking 
 reluctantly at the breaking waves. The 
 wind chills you a little, and although 
 nothing is more distasteful than to nerve 
 yourself for an effort, you doit; you take 
 a breath and run into the icy water — and 
 oh, the torture of that entrance ! The cold 
 waves dash at your ankles and then at your 
 
 [ 190 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 knees, and then, while you are reeling, 
 they grip your waist and wrestle with you 
 for a fall — which you grant them with 
 a shuddering relief. You go under, lips 
 compressed, eyes shut, and shoot up again 
 to the air, crying to yourself, '' Thank 
 Heaven, that 's over ! " Then you kick out 
 and strike out and writhe round in the 
 waves in a furious effort to get w^arm ; 
 you can't do it swimming on your breast, 
 and you turn on one side and draw up 
 your knees and lunge out and gasp ; and 
 then a wave cuifs you in the head and 
 gives you a stinging earful, and you leap 
 up in angry, sputtering remonstrance. You 
 do not grow appreciably warmer, violent 
 as is your endeavor, rough as is your buf- 
 feting; you are bounded up and down, and 
 pitched into the smother of breaking 
 waves, and slapped and doused and inso- 
 lently abused, until you work yourself into 
 a passion and plow through the turbu- 
 lent sea with venomous puffs that might 
 be translated, " You will, will you ! You 
 
 [ 191 ] 
 
''IN SWIMMING" 
 
 will, will you ! Take that now — take that 
 — take that!" Thus you are provoked to 
 an insane contention and excitement, when 
 a few moments before your whole incli- 
 nation had been toward a meditative float- 
 ing upon a warm and tranquil pond. But 
 for all your furious bravado, for all your 
 mighty exercise, your teeth are already 
 chattering with cold, your vigor is stiff- 
 ening in your veins ; and you are glad to 
 turn and be helped ashore by the waves 
 that you had presumed to defy. 
 
 Then, when you rub yourself down and 
 dress, you begin to glow w^ith an ardent 
 energy, with legs a little tremulous, per- 
 haps. You had desired mere relaxation, 
 and you have been violently stimulated. 
 But the spirit to be up and doing soon 
 fades into an impotent restlessness, and 
 from that you pass into the comatose in- 
 dolence which was your primary desire. 
 There is, perhaps, some subtle detriment 
 to the temper when one has to experience 
 such probationary stress and tumult in 
 
 [ 192 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 order to attain the repose into which the 
 dweller by a pond may gently slip. Tho- 
 reau would have been a more irascible 
 person if he had had to do his swimming 
 off the Maine coast instead of in Lake 
 Walden. 
 
 Yet the placid dwellers beside quiet 
 lakes may not claim entire advantage of 
 opportunity over the turbulent sea bathers. 
 They know the soft delight of swimming; 
 they miss its stormy joy. It is agreeable 
 to be one of them when the only demand 
 made by your body is for rest ; but when 
 both your spirits and your vitality are high, 
 the unruffled smoothness of the pond, even 
 though it is overhung by the springiest of 
 springboards, does not quite meet your 
 longings. You can run and leap and dive 
 and rush in sprints through the water, but 
 you are aw^are of a disappointing tameness; 
 you are playing in a dead, unresponsive 
 medium ; you are not sporting with a re- 
 sourceful, lithe, and sinewy adversary; you 
 cannot conjure up the excitement and ar- 
 
 [ 193 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING '^ 
 
 dor of battle which grip your imagination 
 with the first plunge into the swelling 
 ocean. The greater buoyancy of the salt 
 water exalts the swimmer's spirit and 
 quickens his vitality ; the gentler drag of 
 the inland lake wooes him to a luxurious 
 listlessness. As you buffet the ocean waves, 
 you can exultingly feel and exclaim, ** Aha, 
 old man, you 're trying to down me — but 
 I'm still on top; put that in your pipe 
 and smoke it." And so, proud wrestler 
 that you are, you swarm up one billow 
 and down the next, grappling to your 
 heart all the while a personified adversary, 
 and laughing with triumph because in 
 spite of his struggles he cannot get you 
 down and put his knee on your chest. It 
 is something to emerge panting and drip- 
 ping from these contests, and strut upon 
 the sand, and mentally credit yourself with 
 one more victory. 
 
 Quiet inland bathing offers you no such 
 extravagant opportunities to be a poseur. 
 If the water is warm, you loll in it at your 
 
 [ 194 ] 
 
^'IN SWIMMING" 
 
 ease ; your mind is soon stupefied by the 
 sensuousness in which you are enfolded ; 
 the interest of your sleepy eyes does not ex- 
 tend beyond the gentle ripples that widen 
 away from the slow, submerged strokes 
 of your arms. After a while you roll over 
 on your back and drowsily execute at in- 
 tervals a languid ''shoo fly" leg motion, 
 while you look drowsily up into the void. 
 Now and then you will raise your arms 
 and flap them down through the water 
 like a pair of sweeps; it is only a tired sort 
 of effort. And finally, in the supreme 
 abandonment of indolence, you lay your 
 head back, far back, until the water creeps 
 up about vour eyelids ; you stretch out 
 legs and arms motionless, and lie, breath- 
 ing tranquilly, sensible of no other move- 
 ment in the world than the slight flux and 
 slip of the water upon your heaving chest. 
 Then may you realize, perhaps, something 
 of the lark's sensation when, with wings 
 outspread, it hangs suspended between 
 earth and sky. He who has never thus 
 
 [ 195 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING'' 
 
 suspended himself idly in still water, with 
 fathoms below him and infinity above, 
 has missed one of the sensuous delights of 
 existence. Unfortunate man, who goes to 
 his grave believing that there is nothing 
 better than bed for weary limbs and a 
 jaded brain! 
 
 The consequences, of course, are hun- 
 ger and torpidity. The bath in the quiet 
 pond does not make you feel " freshened 
 up" — unless you flout its allurements, 
 dive in, scramble out, and roughly rub 
 yourself down. I cannot be sympathetic 
 with any one whose moral rigidity thus 
 denies him a Sybaritic indulgence. In the 
 cold, loud-sounding sea I may be his com- 
 rade; but let him not insult with such 
 hygienic tentativeness my luxurious inland 
 pool. He must give himself to it trust- 
 ingly, with no reserve, willing to be wooed 
 into idle dalliance, to eat the lotus and 
 smell the poppies and mandragora of life. 
 If he dares no experience that may slacken 
 the tension of his fibres, physical or moral, 
 
 [ ^96 ] 
 
-IN SWIMMING" 
 
 let him avoid the seductive inland pool. 
 For not onlv does a surrender to its em- 
 brace leave one too indolent to work; it 
 even purifies the zealot who sets too high 
 a value upon work, and it insinuates be- 
 fore him an ideal of play. After the first 
 somnolence has worn off, he will be ac- 
 tive for further exercise, for sports and 
 games; he will show a keen interest in 
 being amused ; but for toil he will have 
 aversion. Fresh water swimming is for 
 those who have never had, or who have 
 put aside, scruples against idleness ; for the 
 promotion of the '* strenuous life" we must 
 have the water cold, and we must have it 
 salt. 
 
 It depends partly upon the individual, 
 and again partly upon the place, whether 
 swimming is more to be enjoyed as a soli- 
 tary recreation or as a social diversion. 
 There are some unimaginative persons, 
 incapacitated for solitude under any cir- 
 cumstances, who would never resort to a 
 lonely swim except in the last despair of 
 
 [ ^97 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING'' 
 
 ennui; and I believe there are a few mor- 
 bid persons who shrink from displaying 
 themselves in bathing suits and abhor the 
 more informal freedom that sometimes 
 prevails among swimmers. But disregard- 
 ing such abnormal types, we may broadly 
 lay down the principle that a lonely swim 
 in the ocean is a cheerless undertaking, 
 and that a lonely swim in a small inland 
 lake is a delight. In excluding the ocean 
 as a fit resource for the solitary, I would 
 not deny that he may find satisfaction in 
 an early morning plunge ; but that is hardly 
 ** going in swimming." There are, to be 
 sure, a few moments in the life of a man 
 when in his own exultant bigness he may 
 stalk grandly and alone into the sea and 
 hail it as his intimate playfellow, and breast 
 it with a single valiancy — when he may 
 imagine himself in the likeness of deep 
 calling unto deep, just as, if he happened 
 at that juncture to be mountain climbing, 
 he would leap from crag to crag and per- 
 sonify the live thunder. But these occa- 
 
 [ 198 ]. 
 
"IN SWIMMINC 
 
 sions arise rarely in the lives of ordinary 
 mortals ; and they are to be sei-zed at the 
 instant ; their duration is seldom above 
 half an hour. If the lawyer could strip off 
 his clothes and plunge into the lonely 
 ocean the moment after he had completed 
 the masterly argument that was to disrupt 
 a trust; if the doctor who had struggled 
 day and night sleeplessly to bring back the 
 moribund to life, and had come at last 
 staggering to victory, could in that weary 
 happiness of power launch himself uncom- 
 panioned on the waves; if the speculator 
 who, to general panic and his own large 
 aggrandizement, had turned the market 
 topsy-turvy could souse himself, chuck- 
 ling like a boy at his prank, and find the 
 ocean comrade for his laughter, — that 
 would indeed be the sublimation of climax. 
 But as our Napoleonic moments are few, 
 so also are our Napoleonic moods transitory ; 
 after a brief half hour there come the 
 questions: "Is it so complete?" "What 
 next?" " Has destiny nothing more?" At 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 the psychological moment the ocean was 
 remote or unavailable for solitude ; by the 
 time we can get down to it and the beach 
 is all cleared for our majestic entrance, 
 we begin to look about for the encourage- 
 ment of companions. We do not like to 
 feel insignificant; and nothing makes a 
 man more sensible of insignificance than 
 striking all alone out into the bound- 
 less sea. If there is but one unknown 
 head bobbing in the waves a quarter of a 
 mile distant, it will give him heart for his 
 mimic wrestling; but if there is no one to 
 share the absurdity of the play with him 
 and dare with him the oppressive grim- 
 ness of infinity, he soon comes ashore 
 subdued. 
 
 Indeed, even in its most benign moods, 
 the ocean has for the lonely bather a du- 
 bious geniality ; it does not encourage tri- 
 fling. It is only when the exuberant and 
 boisterous crowds are gathered on the sand 
 and frolic in the waves that there is created 
 an atmosphere of light-hearted forgetful- 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 ness which makes the swimmer's sanguine 
 imagination quite free to play. 
 
 And these exuberant crowds — how 
 they contribute to the interest and gayety 
 of your swim ! As you go lunging through 
 the water, rudely shouldering your huge 
 adversary, you view the other swimmers 
 and the promenaders on the beach with 
 a heartening enjoyment. The man just 
 entering the water, flinging up his arms 
 as he treads warily, the woman out on the 
 raft who is learning to dive and who flops 
 flat under the surface with a splash, the 
 swift swimmer who glides by with a long 
 overhead reach of a brown arm that rises 
 and dips and rises again, rhythmical as 
 a gull's wing, — such little glimpses give a 
 zest to the elemental experience through 
 which you are passing. You find it pleasant 
 to loiter for a time in the midst of such 
 buoyant and vivacious eflfort ; you like the 
 shrill voices and the strident laughter ; your 
 eyes sweep the beach with a moment's in- 
 terest in the gay parasols, in the bunchy 
 
 [ 201 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 bathing suits of the hesitating women, in 
 the gaunt, dripping forms of the emerg- 
 ing men. Then some human porpoise rolls 
 lazily by on his back, with white toes and 
 a comfortable amplitude projecting above 
 the surface, and you feel that you have 
 loitered long enough ; you must not be 
 outstripped by such lumbering freight. So 
 you turn and go about your business, — 
 the conquest of the vast wrestler who has 
 been nudging you all the while. Far out 
 beyond the diving raft, and beyond the 
 other bathers, you meet him and try con- 
 clusions-, you test upon him all your art 
 and skill ; you turn on your side and shoot 
 yourself at him like a projectile ; you grap- 
 ple with him hand over hand; you tread 
 him down with your feet ; you duck un- 
 der and trip the wave that he sends to quell 
 you; and then you swim under water and 
 come up suddenly and take him in the rear. 
 There is never a moment when you are 
 not getting the better of him in spite of 
 all his roughness ; and though at the end 
 
 [ 202 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 you have to call it a drawn battle, you 
 know that morally the victory is yours. 
 And on your way in from that gallantly 
 fought field to rejoin those more timorous 
 bathers whose champion' you may swell- 
 ingly imagine yourself, you stop at the 
 raft and take a final dive, just by way of 
 a farewell fillip to your gnashing adver- 
 sary. 
 
 Occasionally on a hot summer afternoon 
 I resort to a city beach which is inclosed 
 for men alone. It is the most democratic 
 place I know, and one of the most hu- 
 morous. Clergymen, doctors, lawyers, 
 shopkeepers, plumbers, motormen, team- 
 sters, and, I dare say, criminals, enter the 
 bath-house, put off their clothes, and pass 
 out upon the other side, equal not only 
 before the Lord, but also in one another's 
 sight. Each man wears suspended by a 
 cord about his neck a small brass check 
 bearing the number of his dressing-room ; 
 — and he wears nothing else. 
 
 From either end of the bath-house a 
 
 [ 203 ] 
 
"IN SWLMMING" 
 
 high board fence juts far out into the 
 water, and shelters the bathers from ex- 
 posure to the fastidious world. It is a 
 scene for Teufelsdrockh — so many '' forked 
 radishes with heads fantastically carved" 
 performing on land and water so many 
 exercises — ** while I," exclaims the Phi- 
 losopher of Clothes, '' — good Heaven ! — 
 have thatched myself over with the dead 
 fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the 
 entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or 
 seals, the felt of furred beasts ; and walk 
 abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped 
 with shreds and tatters raked from the 
 Charnel-house of Nature, where they 
 would have rotted, to rot on me more 
 slowly ! " And it must have been after being 
 made partaker in some similar scene that 
 he declared in enthusiasm, " There is 
 something great in the moment when a 
 man first strips himself of adventitious 
 wrappages ; and sees indeed that he is 
 naked, and, as Swift has it, ' a forked strad- 
 dling animal with bandy legs ; ' yet also a 
 
 [ 204 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 Spirit and unutterable Mystery of Mys- 
 teries/* 
 
 According to the hour, the warmth of 
 the day, the height of the tide, the bathers 
 vary in number from fifty to five hundred. 
 They are of all ages and of all figures ; 
 among them some, by the baked brown- 
 ness of their skins, may be distinguished 
 as habitues of this beach ; they lie on the 
 sand, sunning themselves by the hour, 
 tanning themselves all over with a scru- 
 pulous uniformity. At one end of the 
 beach three or four play handball against 
 the fence; others are jumping and run- 
 ning; there are usually one or two at- 
 tempting complicated acrobatic feats. One 
 dignified old gentleman I once saw stand 
 unperturbed for some minutes in the mid- 
 dle of the beach, gravely performing with 
 his empty fists a variety of Indian club 
 and dumb-bell evolutions ; and near by a 
 stout person with bushy white side-whis- 
 kers was making repeated efforts to touch 
 his toes. It speaks well, I think, for the 
 
 [ 205 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 manners of our men that the most whim- 
 sical of these performances evoked nothing 
 more than passing glances and consider- 
 ately hidden smiles. I know of no other 
 place where in the interest of health a 
 man may so companionably play the fool. 
 And after he has done that to his heart's 
 content, and sunned himself sufficiently 
 on the sand, the luxury of his swim out 
 into the bay where a fleet of sailboats is at 
 anchor, and distant green islands with 
 gray buildings lift their heads, would be 
 considerably less if he were clogged by a 
 bathing suit. The " return to nature " 
 which has been so much agitated of late, 
 and which is recommended chiefly — to 
 judge by publishers' prospectuses — for its 
 renewal of " red blood " in the system, re- 
 quires from most of its devotees a sacrifice 
 of time and comfort and a forsaking of 
 civilized life. An afternoon at this quaint 
 beach, where human nature stripped to 
 the skin is primitively beguiling itself in 
 sun and air and sea, satisfies my own pre- 
 
 [ 206 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 adamite cravings and spares me the incon- 
 veniences usually suffered by those who 
 respond to the call of the wild. 
 
 It has been a grief to me that the most 
 enthusiastic swimmer whom I know has 
 always contemned this favorite resort, — 
 a prejudice which I set down partly to the 
 fact that he is British and an unbudgeable 
 creature of habit. He fortifies himself, 
 however, with argument. " When you 
 swim in the ocean," he says, " let it be in 
 the ocean, and not in a miserable inclosed 
 bay fringed by a city." So every summer 
 afternoon, rain or shine, he takes a boat 
 down the harbor, and after an hour's sail 
 lands at a well-known beach that has the 
 desirable outlook upon unlimited sea. I 
 accompanied him on one of these excur- 
 sions ; his fingers were fumbling at his 
 buttons before he left the boat. " I '11 be 
 waiting for you on the beach," he said, as 
 he shut me into my compartment at the 
 bath-house ; and though I was expeditious 
 in the hope of denying him that satisfac- 
 
 [ 207 ] 
 
-IX SWIMMING" 
 
 tion, I found him not only waiting as he 
 had predicted, but waiting with an air 
 of intolerable impatience. There was no 
 trembling on the brink for me that day. 
 Into the water I went perforce, with a 
 rush and a splash, close at his heels ; it was 
 cold, and I pressed out at a rapid stroke. 
 He held his lead ; after we had gone some 
 distance and my teeth were chattering, I 
 suggested that it was perhaps time to turn 
 back. '' Turn back ! I have n't started yet," 
 he replied scornfully. As he is not young, 
 but an experienced scientist and philoso- 
 pher with a full gray beard, and I have 
 considerably the advantage of him in years, 
 I was nettled by his answer, and resolved 
 to stay with him in his folly; no doubt 
 he would soon be calling on me to save 
 his life. But at last in those arctic cur- 
 rents I surrendered my pride ; *' I 'm 
 going back," I announced. ** All right," 
 he answered, and continued on into the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 Half an hour later, when I was all 
 
 [ 208 ] 
 
'^N SWIMMING" 
 
 dressed and waiting, he waded ashore and 
 walked up the sand, the brine dripping 
 from his gray beard, his arms pink and 
 ghstening, — not a quiver of his frame. 
 " You do pretty well for a citv swimmer," 
 he said kindly. 
 
 Even with that concession from him I 
 am aware that he should be writing this 
 paper, and not I. My only justification is 
 my feeling that the inexpert dabbler in an 
 art may sometimes bring to the interpret- 
 ing of it a keener zest of longing and a 
 more ardent estimate than the past master 
 who has penetrated all its mysteries. 
 
 It seems somewhat remarkable that 
 swimming should have had such scant ap- 
 preciation in literature. The poets have 
 astonishingly neglected it — astonishingly, 
 I say, for it supplies one of the most sen- 
 suous human experiences. Byron, to 
 whom, of all writers, one would naturally 
 look for a sympathetic treatment of the 
 theme, gives it only a few mediocre verses. 
 Clough has dealt with it mock-seriously ; 
 
 [ 2C9 ] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 Swinburne has experimented with it, — 
 and achieved one memorable line, — 
 
 "The dreaming head and the steering hand." 
 
 For Shakespeare there was an opportunity, 
 
 — in ** Julius Caesar," — but he ignored 
 it. Homer might have been eloquent, 
 but with his hero Ulysses three days in 
 the water and half dead, he could not 
 enlarge on swimming as a pleasure. Shel- 
 ley and Keats, poets of sensuousness, make 
 no poem about swimming. Walt Whit- 
 man, though both rhapsodist and swim- 
 mer, was never inspired to rhapsodize 
 on swimming. The most appreciative 
 and suggestive words on the subject have 
 been written by Meredith in *' Lord Or- 
 mont and his Aminta," in the chapter 
 entitled '*A Marine Duet." ** The swim 
 was a holiday ; all was new — nothing 
 came to her as the same old thing since 
 she took her plunge; she had a sea-mind 
 
 — had left her earth-mind ashore. The 
 swim . . . passed up out of happiness, 
 
 [ 210 ] 
 
^'IN SWIMMING" 
 
 through the spheres of deUrium, into the 
 region where our Hfe is as we would have 
 it be : a home holding the quiet of the 
 heavens, if but midway thither, and a 
 home of delicious animation of the whole 
 frame, equal to wings." Matey was pur- 
 suing her. ** He had doubled the salt sea's 
 rapture, — and he had shackled its gift 
 of freedom. She turned to float, gather- 
 ing her knees for the funny sullen kick." 
 There is a true descriptive phrase ! " Their 
 heads were water-flowers that spoke at 
 ease. . . . They swam silently, high, low, 
 creatures of the smooth green roller. He 
 heard the water-song of her swimming." 
 But it will not do to extract sentences 
 from their setting ; I will make only one 
 more quotation. " The pleasure she still 
 knew" — returning to shore — ''was a 
 recollection of the outward swim, when 
 she had been privileged to cast away sex 
 with the push from earth, as few men 
 will believe that women, beautiful women, 
 ever wish to do." 
 
 [211] 
 
"IN SWIMMING" 
 
 As to the truth of this, let some wo- 
 man who is a swimmer testify ; if it is 
 true, the full, adequate appreciation of 
 swimming can never be written by a 
 man. 
 
VIII 
 BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 When Robert Louis Stevenson was asked 
 what lack in life caused him the keenest 
 pain, he answered, " The feeling that I 'm 
 not strong enough to resent an insult 
 properly, — not strong enough to knock 
 a man down." 
 
 With civilization at a point where the 
 resort to elemental weapons is practically 
 obsolete, it might seem that there was 
 something antiquated and unreal, more 
 imaginary than genuine, in this complaint 
 of the frail-bodied Stevenson; probably 
 in all his life, as in the lives of most gen- 
 tlemen nowadays, he was never confronted 
 with the alternative of knocking a man 
 down or accepting a wound to his pride. 
 If the occasion ever arose and he had to 
 charge to the feebleness of his body his 
 failure to sustain his dignity, the recollec- 
 tion might indeed tinge him with bitter- 
 
 [ 215 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 ness ; but it is difficult to believe that the 
 gentle and lovable Stevenson argued from 
 an actual experience of humiliation. 
 
 Yet it is not alone the painful memo- 
 ries or the logical apprehensions of ill 
 which awaken the most sensitive realiza- 
 tion of defencelessness and fill the soul 
 with the haunting dread of incompetence. 
 From a clouded childhood such a dis- 
 trust is usuallv derived, rather than from 
 the isolated blunders or failures, however 
 monumental, of later years. Stevenson, the 
 petted and fragile child at home, went 
 finally to school ; and it hardly needs a 
 biographer to tell us how the high-spirited, 
 imaginative boy, who liked to shine, met 
 with repression from the stalwart, obsti- 
 nate young Scots. In their rough sports 
 he was never a leader ; that was morti- 
 fication enough to one of his spirit; and 
 it was not the full measure of his mor- 
 tification. With his imperious outbursts, 
 his flashing temper, his physical weakness, 
 he afforded some of them rare sport. 
 
 [ 2^6 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 His school-days were miserable to him, 
 and miserable school-days are likely to 
 affect permanently a man's outlook. Per- 
 haps not any one bullying episode of which 
 he may have been an impotent victim, not 
 any one instance where he stood solitary 
 to one side, while the school acclaimed 
 their champion, remained to give a special 
 vengefulness to that longing of his mature 
 years, " If I were only strong enough to 
 knock a man down! " But the feeling of 
 inferiority lingered in him after he had 
 passed the period when inferiority of that 
 particular kind ceases to be reckoned im- 
 portant ; in this one respect his standard 
 remained that of the immature boy. 
 
 Weaker than his fellows and high-spir- 
 ited, he came to be reckless of such strength 
 as he had ; with bravado and imagination 
 he recompensed himself for the niggard- 
 liness of nature. The weak who are poor- 
 spirited and without bravado do not dis- 
 guise that they are timorous or furtive, 
 subservient or cringing ; and weakness 
 
 [ 217 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 does very often impose poverty of spirit. 
 In its attenuation there may be a sharpen- 
 ing of wits and hence a success in life — 
 of a kind — achieved by craft or dupUcity 
 or deviousness, and guarded by a suspi- 
 cious vigilance ; the man of spirit scorns a 
 success so won and so preserved. If, like 
 Stevenson, he was born a weakling, his 
 path is indeed laborious and must be hewn 
 out of the very rock of adversity. 
 
 But the man of great bodily vigor, who 
 in his boyhood was of conspicuous strength 
 among his fellows, — how does he ever 
 fail of leadership and eminence in what- 
 ever career he chooses ? The early self- 
 confidence that he has developed must be 
 tremendous, — the discovery that in all the 
 affairs of boyhood which are truly ac- 
 counted of moment he is without a peer, 
 — able to overthrow any one in wrestling, 
 to swim longer, to run faster, to bat a 
 ball farther than any of his comrades, — 
 this gradual unfolding of his powers must 
 cause such a youth to tread the earth with 
 
 [ 2^8 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 a conscious greatness. Why should he ever 
 be afraid ? and what is it but fear that 
 withholds any of us from large achieve- 
 ment ? His imagination does not implant 
 in him doubt and distrust, his mediocre 
 rank at school and his dulness at his books 
 cause him no misgivings, for at his time 
 of life excellence in these matters is es- 
 teemed parrotlike, and distinction in them 
 is contemptuously awarded to the weak. 
 It might be expected that the self-confi- 
 dence acquired in early years through a 
 mastery of all one's contemporaries could 
 never quite forsake the most unlucky ; that 
 a man with such a history would rise from 
 each overthrow stronger, like Antaeus, for 
 having touched the earth, — with courage 
 undiminished and some gain in wisdom. 
 Yet for every Antaeus there is perhaps also 
 a Goliath. Whence to these unhappy 
 giants come their Davids ? 
 
 Only part of the truth may be furnished 
 by the most obvious reply, — that a man 
 whose principal regard has been to main- 
 
 [ 219 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 tain physical supremacy over his fellows 
 finds himself less well equipped for the 
 struggle as it becomes less and less man- 
 ual. Accustomed to a rudimentary enforce- 
 ment of his boyish personality, he often has 
 no great readiness in adapting himself to 
 the subtler methods employed by the aging 
 world. The weaker and more studious 
 among his contemporaries are able now to 
 match craft and knowledge against his 
 ignorance, — and he can no longer retal- 
 iate by a triumphant demonstration of his 
 superior weight. 
 
 Such an attempt to account for the 
 clenching of the humble clerical pen in the 
 fist, discouraged at forty, that had been re- 
 doubtable at fifteen, for the languid dulness 
 of the eye that once had overawed a little 
 world, for the sluggish gait and the shabby 
 dress of him who in days past had stepped 
 alert with the champion's zest in life, will 
 perhaps be rejected by the philosopher as 
 inadequate — at least as comprehended in 
 a larger cause. Nowadays lack of prepa- 
 
 [ 220 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 ration does not sufficiently explain failure ; 
 the most ill-equipped business man or pro- 
 fessional man, if he has a genial assertive- 
 ness and a willingness to represent shoddy 
 wares and spurious talents as genuine, need 
 not despair of attaining a meretricious 
 success. Self-confidence is older brother 
 to an easy conscience and a tendency to 
 ''bluff; " and these imply a facility in 
 amassing riches. Yet almost daily I pass on 
 the street a giant of sixteen stone who 
 can still put the shot and throw the ham- 
 mer, who in figure and bearing seems de- 
 signed for one of life's larger destinies, and 
 who would gladly embrace success, how- 
 ever ignoble, instead of posing for a pit- 
 tance as an artist's model. 
 
 Young men and boys of great bodily 
 strength are usually more intent on exer- 
 cising their power than on accomplishing 
 a purpose. In the habit of mind and ac- 
 tion so engendered lies the great impedi- 
 ment which in after life may balk them 
 of the fruits promised by their early vic- 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 torious self-confidence. The easy display 
 of their prowess wins them such admiring 
 regard that achievement seems superfluous 
 and unprofitable; they attain to eminence 
 by methods which do not tax their eflx)rt 
 and which are as ephemeral as play. Mean- 
 while, their more feebly constituted con- 
 temporaries, seeking for distinction, have 
 to occupy themselves with less spectacular 
 action ; the office, the library, and the lab- 
 oratory claim increasingly the interest of 
 those who are ambitious ; and already pur- 
 pose is shaping itself in their minds, — 
 purpose of accomplishment and not mere 
 purpose of competition ; books are germi- 
 nating, steam engines and electric motors 
 are being devised, law and medicine and 
 architecture have begun to awaken some 
 constructive thought. Yet building, how- 
 ever hopefully, for the future, they envy 
 in their cloistered preparation the wanton 
 vigor of the strong. They are learning 
 to husband and concentrate their energy 
 while their large-framed friends are liv- 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
BRAWX AND CHARACTER 
 
 ing from day to day in a sort of opulent 
 diffusion. 
 
 The tendency of the strong is not so 
 much to work definitely towards some 
 purpose as to keep constantly testing their 
 strength in whatever competition offers; 
 variety and excitement are what in their 
 vitality they crave, and so long as they 
 may be active they care little what monu- 
 ment they leave behind them. For a few 
 brilliant exploits there is much waste and 
 much triviality ; they cast about contin- 
 ually to prevail over some new person or 
 some new obstacle without regard for the 
 intrinsic value of the struggle. Consist- 
 ency and conviction are virtues on which 
 they seldom make a stand ; erratic live- 
 liness often speeds them with warring im- 
 pulses along a primrose path. 
 
 A classmate of mine at school excelled 
 in strength nearly all his fellows. His 
 strength indeed possessed him as it were 
 a devil. He was as willing to exhibit it bv 
 hectoring the weak as by tussling with 
 
 [ ^u ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 those who could put up a defence. It is 
 fallacious to assert that the bully is always 
 a coward. This boy was in many respects 
 an egregious bully, but he was without fear. 
 I think that in his roughness with the 
 smaller boys he was also without malice, 
 without any particularly cruel satisfac- 
 tion in causing them humiliation and pain. 
 It was merely, I believe, that he had an ex- 
 cess of animal energy which must always 
 be expressing itself, and the added human 
 desire for seeing some visible response to 
 its expression. 
 
 There came into the school a** new 
 boy," — timorous, girlish, and pious, — 
 one who, with a devoted mother and sis- 
 ters, had probably led a too sequestered 
 life. Young Hercules cut his finger one 
 day and swore; and the new boy, who was 
 close by, turned his back and crossed him- 
 self. Unfortunately Hercules detected him 
 in this ; thenceforth, whenever he saw the 
 new boy he would emit the most unwar- 
 rantable and shocking oaths, and call others 
 
 [ 224 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 to witness the effect. Finally, this diversion 
 became so entertaining to a number that 
 boys who had never adopted profanity 
 resorted to it for the sole purpose of an- 
 noying their new friend ; and a favorite 
 amusement was for half a dozen to sur- 
 round him and then swear busily about 
 the circle in order to see him turn and turn 
 and make without concealment — as in- 
 deed he was courageous enough to do — 
 his devotional, deprecating sign. The per- 
 secution of him did not, I am sorry to say, 
 stop with this ; and there was some abuse 
 of strength on the part of Hercules which, 
 it it was not very brutal, must measurably 
 have saddened the newcomer's life. 
 
 But one night Hercules came up when 
 another fellow — about as strong as him- 
 self — was endeavoring to put the '* new 
 kid " into a snowdrift. And then the rest 
 of us were startled. ''Stop that!" cried 
 Hercules, and rushed to the rescue. " You 
 let that boy alone ! " He seized the jocular 
 bullv bv the collar and swung him round; 
 
 [ 2^5 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 the intended victim wriggled free, and after 
 a brief struggle the two strong boys fell 
 into the snowdrift, with Hercules on top. 
 The other was his friend, but there had 
 been no playfulness in the assault. Neither, 
 I suppose, had there been much chivalry. 
 At least I cannot say that the new boy 
 was thenceforth emancipated from the per- 
 secution of Hercules or could depend upon 
 his championship ; and I imagine it was 
 simply the sudden raging need of exercis- 
 ing his strength against some one that 
 had driven him to intervene. 
 
 Poor Hercules ! He was of the kin of 
 Goliath rather than of Antaeus. He went 
 about challenging the world in his restless 
 energy of the moment ; always he was de- 
 manding some fresh test for what was in 
 him of the elemental man ; always he was 
 rebellious, irresponsible, and roaming. He 
 met his death in an act of futile gallantry. 
 His excess of physical strength and the 
 challenging spirit with which it imbued 
 him were surely his undoing. 
 
 [ "6] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 Sam Parks, the labor leader and felon, 
 is not yet forgotten. He came to America 
 at the age of twenty, an illiterate Irishman, 
 strong, domineering, and prone to use his 
 fists. In the lumber camps of Canada 
 and Minnesota he made a reputation as a 
 '' slugger." When he took up the trade 
 of an ironworker, his methods of assert- 
 ing himself continued as drastic as in the 
 lumber camps. '* He cleaned out champion 
 after champion," says a newspaper bio- 
 graphy of him. '' He was a natural born 
 tyrant. A man who would n't bend to his 
 will got slugged." 
 
 In New York there were eleven differ- 
 ent unions of ironworkers. '* Parks joined 
 as many of them as he could and then 
 proceeded to consolidate them all. . . . 
 With all the unions merged into one, Parks 
 became a dictator. He encountered rival 
 after rival, but thrust all aside. His favor- 
 ite weapons were his fists. He surrounded 
 himself with a gang of indolent ironwork- 
 ers, the thugs of the trade. Opponents of 
 
 [ 227 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 Parks were simply slugged. Ironworkers 
 who refused to strike at his order were 
 waylaid and beaten. ... He extorted 
 money from employers, stopped work 
 when and where he pleased, started it 
 again as he liked, made men of wealth 
 get down on their knees to him. . . . The 
 idea that his power could be broken never 
 occurred to Parks and his friends. Parks 
 was warned, but, drunk with power, he 
 ignored the warning. He knocked one ad- 
 viser flat on his back for presuming to sug- 
 gest that he go slow. He forced his way 
 into the presence of employers, whether 
 they wanted to see him or not, cursed 
 them, laid down the law to them, and 
 enforced his wishes." 
 
 And then, in the height of his power, 
 this bully and *' grafter " was haled away 
 to prison. Brute strength and the over- 
 weening confidence that flowed from it 
 and the lust for power need not have 
 wrecked his career, though they might 
 have made it unenviable. The incessant 
 
 [ 228 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 egotistical desire to prove himself always 
 the better man, without the constraint of 
 a moral issue or a worthy creative purpose, 
 was that which overthrew Sam Parks, and 
 it was a direct consequence of his strength. 
 And there are many educated men who 
 have the moral sense that he lacked, but 
 who perhaps have no more definite object 
 than he — no other aim than always to be 
 powerful, as by reason of their strength in 
 younger days they had been ; and these 
 men may go astray, not so deplorably as 
 he, yet to an end of futility because of 
 their eagerness always to match themselves 
 against others, and their belief that com- 
 petition vindicates itself and implies pro- 
 gress and productive achievement. 
 
 The competitive instinct is the strongest 
 of all the instincts of a healthy boy. He 
 wishes to test himself in relation to the 
 other boys of his acquaintance ; he must 
 be forever pitting his strength and daring 
 and endurance against theirs. This keen- 
 ness to strive and to excel is the starting- 
 
 [ 229 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 point for all useful masculine develop- 
 ment ; but it is a stage in development 
 that must be outgrown. If it continues 
 the ruling passion after manhood, it is to 
 the man's detriment. For when the boy 
 grows into the man, it is time that he 
 should have erected in his mind his own 
 standard, and that henceforth he should 
 measure himself in comparison with that 
 alone, and not with the stature of other 
 men. One need never outgrow the sense 
 of satisfaction in getting the better of a 
 difficulty ; but the mere sighting of a dif- 
 ficulty on the horizon inflames none but 
 the unsettled and drifting with the desire 
 for conquest. 
 
 It is soaring into Utopian realms to 
 assert that one should never have a sense 
 of satisfaction in getting the better of an- 
 other man ; but it is no absurdly lofty or 
 unpractical notion that he w^ho finds in 
 such achievement a sufficient end and 
 cause for labor may strive to no purpose, 
 even though his days are full of contest 
 
 [ 230 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 and victory. At the risk of seeming to 
 hold a narrowly ascetic doctrine, I would 
 assail that common phrase, "the game 
 of life." In its suggestion of emulation, 
 light-hearted or grim according as one's 
 game is tennis or football, it is misleading. 
 All of us have our human adversaries who 
 are to be thwarted ; their defeat, however, 
 is an incident, not our chief concern. Our 
 affair is the discharge of the duties where- 
 with our involuntary entrance into life 
 has burdened us, and the fulfilment of 
 that purpose to which each of us in his 
 imagination is kindled ; and so far as we 
 are animated only by the competitive 
 spirit of the game we miss the point of 
 living. Our legitimate pleasure in over- 
 coming need be none the less because it is 
 subordinated to the pleasure of achieving 
 or creating. Our fiery zeal for conquest 
 need not be extinguished simply because 
 it is held under a more grave constraint. 
 
 The insatiate appetite for competition 
 begets in a man a corroding egotism. In » 
 
 [ 231 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 the prideful desire to display one's self at 
 the expense of others, to win the plaudits 
 and the prize, one grows impatient of all 
 but the showy hours. From the repeated 
 excursions to match one's strength gal- 
 lantly in contest, one returns with reluct- 
 ance to the intervals of obscurity in which 
 most of the genuine and permanently pro- 
 ductive work is done. The further test- 
 ing and demonstration of one's powers 
 before an audience becomes a more im- 
 perative desire ; the impulse to perform 
 patient creative labor languishes. 
 
 They who have come victorious through 
 the competitions of youth will naturally 
 be those most ardent to pursue life as a 
 game, for in the conduct of a game they 
 are accustomed to success. And in them 
 egotism will most dangerously thrive. It 
 will not be morbid and introspective, like 
 that of the invalid ; it will not be so par- 
 alyzing to the energies ; but it will lead 
 to misdirected and scattered effort. It will 
 be egotism of the sort that urges a man to 
 
 [ 232 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 compete with others in excesses, to earn 
 a reputation for his ability to outstay his 
 comrades in a carousal, and be fit and 
 ready for work at the usual hour the next 
 morning. He will become the egotist 
 who squanders himself in unessential seek- 
 ing and arrogant assertion, who seizes 
 the office and ignores the duty, who is the 
 bandit in business and the pillar in the 
 church. 
 
 It would not be fair to predicate of all 
 such egotists an athletic and victorious 
 boyhood, any more than to doom all ath- 
 letes to so degenerate a fate. At the same 
 time the descent of the hero is easy, — 
 especially of the premature and precocious 
 hero. Temptation besets him insidiously, 
 for the egotism of the youth who by rea- 
 son of his physical powers lords it over 
 his fellows is by no means an unattractive 
 quality and subject to rebuke. It is very 
 different from that into which it may lure 
 him in later years. There are indeed few 
 traits more charming than the unsophisti- 
 
 [ 233 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 cated egotism of the athlete; and here 
 there need be no reservations, — the pro- 
 fessional athlete of mature years may be in- 
 cluded as well as the callow amateur boy. 
 By comparison, the egotism of the artist 
 or the poet, which is commonly accepted 
 as the most monstrous, is but a shrinking 
 modesty. The poet or the artist is quite 
 objective in valuing himself; it is indeed 
 himself only as a creator that compels his 
 admiration and reverence. But the sub- 
 jection of the athlete to his own person is 
 absolute; he admires and reverences him- 
 self as a creature ! The care with which 
 he considers his diet, the attentiveness with 
 which he grooms his body, the absorbed in- 
 terest that he gives to all details of breath- 
 ing and sleeping and exercising are, in 
 comparison with his thoughtlessness about 
 all that lies beyond, touchingand ludicrous; 
 the very simplicity of him in his engrossed 
 self-study wins the smiling observer. And 
 if he is a good-hearted boy or man, as 
 one so healthy and so single-minded usu- 
 
 [ 234 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 ally is, and is responsive to the admiration 
 of others as well as of himself, he confers 
 much happiness. No doubt innumerably 
 more persons would choose to grasp the 
 hand of John L. Sullivan than that of 
 George Meredith; and the day of this op- 
 portunity would be to them a memorable 
 one and innocently bright with bliss. 
 
 As an illustration of the pleasing and 
 ample egotism of the athlete, I would 
 quote from a newspaper account of a 
 friendly visit once paid by a famous pugil- 
 ist to the most famous of all pugilists in 
 our generation. Robert Fitzsimmons had 
 been informed that John L. Sullivan was 
 ill ; whereupon he donned '' a neat fitting 
 frock coat and a glittering tall hat," and 
 drove in a carriage to see him. He found 
 him in bed ; " the once mighty gladiator 
 had lost all of his old-time vim and vigor. 
 '' The two great athletes were visibly 
 affected. Sullivan raised himself on his 
 elbow and looked steadily at Fitz for some 
 few seconds. ' How are you, John ? ' said 
 
 [ 235 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 Fitz when the big fellow showed signs 
 of relaxing his vice-like grip." 
 
 John was depressed. ** * It 's Baden 
 Springs, Hot Springs, or some other sul- 
 phur bath for me. I never did believe 
 much in medicine. This world is all a 
 "con" any way. Why, they talk about 
 religion and heaven and hell. What do 
 they know about heaven and hell ? I think 
 when a guy croaks he just dies and that's 
 all there is to him. They bury some of 
 them, but they won't plant me. When I 
 go,' the big fellow faltered, * they '11 burn 
 me. Nothin' left but your ashes, and each 
 of your friends can have some of you to 
 remember you by. Let them burn you 
 up when you 're all in. It 's the proper 
 thing.' " 
 
 Fitzsimmons dissented from this view, 
 and in his warm-hearted, optimistic way 
 set about cheering up his dejected friend. 
 He recalled their exploits and triumphs in 
 the prize ring ; and Sullivan was soon in 
 a happier frame of mind. Oddly enough, 
 
 [ 236 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 in this friendly call upon a sick man, Fitz- 
 simmons was accompanied by a newspaper 
 reporter and a photographer, — one of 
 those chance occurrences which enrich 
 the world. ''Sullivan noticed the camera 
 which the photographer carried, and asked 
 what it was for." Unsuspicious and un- 
 worldly old man ! *' He was told that the 
 newspaper hoped to get a photograph of 
 him and Fitz as they met, but that as he 
 was abed of course such a thing was im- 
 possible. 
 
 *' * Impossible ! No, I guess not, my boy. 
 If there's any people I like to oblige, it 's 
 the newspaper fellows. They will do more 
 good for a man than all the preachers in 
 creation.' " 
 
 Fitzsimmons acquiesced. " And then 
 the great John L. lifted himself to a sitting 
 position and put his legs outside the bed. 
 
 "That was the most pathetic incident 
 of the visit. With fatherly care Bob Fitz- 
 simmons placed his great right arm behind 
 Sullivan's broad back and held him com- 
 
 [ 237 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 fortably while the latter arranged himself. 
 When everything was apparently ready, 
 Fitz glanced down and noticed that a part 
 of Sullivan's legs were uncovered, and the 
 picture-taking operation had to be post- 
 poned until the sympathetic Fitz had 
 wrapped him carefully in the clothes. It 
 was touching." 
 
 Of course it waSc And if the ingenuous 
 description fails to bring appropriate tears 
 to the reader's eyes, it must at least reveal 
 to him the simple charm of an egotism to 
 which a reporter brings a more stimulating 
 message than a preacher, and a venture- 
 some photographer a more healing medi- 
 cine than a physician. But transplant that 
 egotism ; let it inhabit the soul of a cler- 
 gyman, and where would be its simple 
 charm ? 
 
 In **Fistiana," a volume belonging to 
 the last century, there is a chapter entitled 
 '* Patriotic and Humane Character of the 
 Boxing Fraternity." It is, no doubt, a 
 tribute well deserved. ''To the credit of 
 
 [ ^38 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 the professors of boxing they were never 
 * backward in coming forward ' to aid the 
 work of charity, or to answer those ap- 
 peals to pubHc sympathy which the rav- 
 ages of war, the visitations of Providence, 
 the distresses of trade and commerce, or 
 the afflictions of private calamity fre- 
 quently excited." Among the objects of 
 their generous assistance are mentioned 
 '' the starving Irish, the British prisoners in 
 France, the Portuguese unfortunates, the 
 suffering families of the heroes who had 
 fallen and bled on the plains of Waterloo, 
 the famishing weavers. . . . The gener- 
 ous spirit which warmed the heart of a 
 true British boxer shone forth with its 
 sterling brilliancy; all selfishness was set 
 aside ; and no sooner was the standard of 
 charity unfurled than every man who could 
 wield a fist, from the oldest veteran to 
 the youngest practitioner, rushed forward, 
 anxious and ardent to evince the feelings 
 of his soul and to lend his hand in the 
 work of benevolence." 
 
 [ 239 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 The reader of such a panegyric may 
 indulge a brief regret that they who in 
 youth devote themselves with success to 
 athletics ever turn their attention to other 
 matters. Only by continuing in that sim- 
 ple and healthful occupation may they 
 preserve untarnished the special charm 
 which clings to heroes, the special ego- 
 tism which is without offence. The Presi- 
 dent of our country is favorably known 
 under an informal appellation ; but even 
 the most genial employment of that name 
 diffuses no such affectionate intimacy and 
 regard as are embraced in the variety of 
 pet terms for a champion, — whether he 
 is **old John," '' John L.," and ** Sully," 
 or** Bob "and ** Fitz." And had these 
 champions taken into any other pursuit 
 the characteristics which have endeared 
 them to the world, — the same childlike 
 and blatant egotism, the same sterile spirit 
 of competition, — how little human kind- 
 liness and popularity would they have 
 enjoyed! 
 
 [ 240 ] 
 
BRAWN AND CHARACTER 
 
 It gratifies some of us to be pessimistic 
 about brawn. The theory pleases us that 
 to be conspicuously strong in youth is to 
 be exposed to a temptation which lesser 
 boys are spared, — a temptation to go 
 through life competing instead of achiev- 
 ing. It is true that some of this competi- 
 tion will result in achievement ; it is true 
 that achievement never results except from 
 competition ; but it is not debatable that 
 he will go farthest and achieve most whose 
 eye is upon the work alone, who rejoices 
 in the contest only as an incident of work, 
 not as a matter memorable in itself. Only 
 in that spirit does one come through un- 
 dismayed, eager to press on, indifferent to 
 the complacent backward look. Those 
 men of brawn and sinew at whom we 
 gazed spellbound in our earlier years, — 
 perhaps it is harder for them to attain to 
 this spirit than it was for Stevenson. 
 
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