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Copyright 1907 
 
 by 
 ELBERT HUBBARD 
 
If I had but two loaves of bread I 
 would sell one of them and buy 
 White Hyacinths to feed my soul. 
 
 435382 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 COMMON question this, 
 " Would you care to live 
 your life over again ?" &&*> 
 Not only is it a common 
 question, but a foolish one, 
 since we were sent into life 
 without our permission, & 
 are being sent out of it against our will, and 
 the option of a return ticket is not ours &&> 
 But if urged to reply I would say with Ben 
 jamin Franklin, "Yes, provided, of course, 
 that you allow me the author's privilege of 
 correcting the second edition. " If, however, 
 this is denied, I will still say, "Yes," and 
 say it so quickly it will give you vertigo ^. 
 In reading the Journal of John Wesley the 
 other day, I ran across this item written in 
 the author's eighty-fifth year, "In all of my 
 life I have never had a period of depression 
 nor unhappiness that lasted more than half 
 an hour." I can truthfully say the same. 
 One thing even Omnipotence cannot do, 
 and that is to make that which once occurred 
 never to have been. THE PAST IS MINE 
 
 9 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 I HAT does life mean to me? 
 Everything! Because I have 
 everything with which to 
 enjoy life. 
 
 I own a beautiful home, 
 well furnished, and this & 
 home is not decorated with 
 a mortgage. 
 
 I have youth I am only fifty and as in 
 degree the public is willing to lend me its 
 large furry ear, I have prospects. 
 I have a library of five thousand volumes to 
 read; and besides, I have a little case of a 
 hundred books to love, bound in full levant, 
 hand-tooled r*fc 
 
 I have four paid-up Life Insurance Policies 
 in standard companies; a little balance in 
 the Savings Bank; I owe no man, and my 
 income is ample for all my wants. 
 Then besides I have a saddle-horse with 
 a pedigree like unto that of a Daughter 
 of the Revolution; a Howard watch, and 
 a fur-lined overcoat rf^> So there now, 
 
 WHY SHOULD N'T I ENJOY LIFE? 
 10 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 ANTICIPATE your an 
 swer, which is, that a man 
 may have all of these things 
 enumerated and also have 
 indigestion and chronic fif* 
 Bright' s disease, so that the 
 digger in the ditch, than he, 
 is happier far. Your point is well taken, and 
 so I will gently explain that if I have any 
 aches or pains I am not aware of them r&i* 
 I have never used tobacco, nor spirituous 
 liquors, nor have I contracted the chloral, 
 cocaine, bromide or morphine habit, never 
 having invested a dollar in medicine, pa 
 tented, proprietary, nor prescribed. In fact 
 I have never had occasion to consult a phy 
 sician. I have good eyesight, sound teeth, a 
 perfect digestion, and God grants to me His 
 great gift of sleep. C And again you say, very 
 well, but you yourself have said, ' ' Expression 
 is necessary to life/' and that the man who 
 has everything is to be pitied, since he has 
 nothing to work for, and that to have every 
 thing is to lose all, for life lies in the struggle. 
 
 11 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 |LL the points are well made. 
 But I have work to do 
 compelling work that I 
 cannot delegate to others. 
 $$> This prevents incipient 
 smugosity & introspection. 
 For more than twelve years 
 I have written the copy for two monthly 
 magazines iK During that time no issue of 
 either magazine has been skipped. The com 
 bined paid-in-advance circulation of these 
 periodicals is over two hundred thousand 
 copies each issue, giving me an audience, 
 counting at the conservative rate of three 
 readers to a magazine, of over half a million 
 souls ,&& 
 
 Here is a responsibility that may well sober 
 any man, and which would subdue him, 
 actually, if he stopped to contemplate it > 
 The success of Blondin in crossing Niagara 
 Gorge on a wire, with a man on his back, 
 hinged on his not stopping to think it over. 
 CJ When I write I never consider what will 
 
 be done with the matter, how it will be 
 12 
 
WHIT T H S 
 
 liked, and who will read it. I just write for 
 myself V And the most captious, relentless 
 critic I have is myself. When I write well, 
 as I occasionally do, I am filled with a rap 
 turous, intoxicating joy. No pleasure in life 
 compares with the joy of creation catching 
 in the Cadmean mesh a new thought put 
 ting salt on the tail of an idea. And a certain 
 critic has said that I can catch more ideas 
 with less salt than any man in America &> 
 I am not sure whether the man was speak 
 ing ironically or in compliment, but since 
 the remark has been bruited abroad, it has 
 struck me as being fairly good, and so I here 
 repeat it, for I am making no special attempt 
 in this article and elsewhere, to conceal the 
 fact that I am still on earth. 
 One book I wrote has attained a sale of over 
 a hundred thousand copies, although selling 
 at the unpopular price of two dollars a vol 
 ume. And one article I wrote and published 
 in one of the magazines, to which I have 
 just referred, has been translated into eleven 
 languages & been reprinted over twenty-four 
 
 13 
 
WHITE HYACINTH; 
 
 million times, attaining a wider circulation, 
 
 I believe, than any article or book has ever 
 
 attained in the same length of time. 
 
 In saying these things I fully realize that no 
 
 man is ever in such danger of being 
 
 elected an honorary member 
 
 of the Ananias Club as 
 
 he who states the 
 
 simple truth 
 
 14 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 N order to write well you 
 require respite and rest in 
 change. Ideas come to one 
 on the mountains, while 
 tramping the fields, at the 
 wood-pile. When you are 
 in the best condition is the 
 time to do nothing, for at such a time, if 
 ever, the divine current surges through you. 
 If we could only find the cosmic switchboard 
 when we want to think, how delightful it 
 would be to simply turn on the current! 
 But no, all we can do is to walk, ride horse 
 back, dig in the garden, placing ourselves in 
 receptive mood and from the Unknown the 
 ideas come. Then to use them is a matter of 
 the workroom. 
 
 And so to keep my think-apparatus in good 
 working order I dilute the day with much 
 manual work which is only another word 
 for play &&*> 
 
 Big mental work is done in heats. Between 
 these heats are intervals of delightful stu 
 pidity. To cultivate his dull moments is the 
 
 15 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 mark of wisdom for every thought-juggler 
 who aspires to keep three balls in the air at 
 one time. In the course of each year I give 
 about a hundred lectures. 
 ^^ Public speaking, if carried on with a 
 moderation, is a valuable form of mental 
 excitation. Ill health comes from too much 
 excitement, or not enough. Platform work 
 keeps your mental pores open and tends to 
 correct faulty elimination of mental dross. 
 CJ To stand before an audience of a thousand 
 people for two hours with no manuscript, 
 and only your tongue and brain to save you 
 from the ruin that may engulf you any in 
 stant, & which many in your audience hope 
 will engulf you, requires a goodly modicum 
 of concentration. 
 
 I have seen the giving way of a collar button 
 in an impassioned moment, cross-buttock 
 a Baptist preacher. I am always prepared 
 for accidents in oratory, such say, as a 
 harmless necessary cat coming on the stage 
 without her cue. In public speaking one 
 shakes the brush piles of thought and starts 
 
 16 
 

 
 a deal more game than he runs down at the 
 time, and this game which he follows up 
 at his leisure, and the stimulus of success in 
 having stayed the limit, makes for mental 
 growth >^&> 
 
 But besides writing and public speaking, I 
 have something to do with a semi-commu 
 nistic corporation called The Roycrofters, 
 employing upwards of five hundred people. 
 The work of The Roycrofters is divided 
 into departments as follows: a farm, bank, 
 hotel, printing plant, bookbindery, furniture 
 factory and blacksmith shop. 
 The workers in these various departments 
 are mostly people of moderate experience, 
 and therefore more or less superintendence 
 is demanded. Eternal vigilance is not only 
 the price of liberty but of success in business, 
 and knowing this I keep in touch with all 
 departments of the work. So far, we have 
 always been able to meet our pay roll. All 
 of the top-notchers in the Roycroft Shops 
 have been evolved there, so it will be seen 
 that we aim to make something besides 
 
 17 
 
books. In fact we have a brass band, an art 
 
 gallery, a reading room, a library, and we 
 
 have lectures, classes or concerts every night 
 
 in the week. Some of these classes I teach, 
 
 and usually I speak in the Roycroft Chapel 
 
 twice a week on current topics. 
 
 These things are here explained to make 
 
 clear the point that I have no time for ennui 
 
 or brooding over troubles past or those to 
 
 come. Even this article is written on bi- 
 
 product time, on board a railroad train, 
 
 going to meet a lecture engagement, seated 
 
 with a strange fat man who talks to me, 
 
 as I write, about the weather, news 
 
 from nowhere, and his most 
 
 wonderful collection of steins. 
 
W H I T K FT Y A P, T NT T H S 
 
 LL of which, I hear you 
 say, is very interesting, but 
 somewhat irrelevant and 
 inconsequential since one 
 may have all of the things 
 just named, and also hold 
 the just balance between 
 activity and rest, concentration and relaxa 
 tion, which we call health, and yet his life 
 be faulty, incomplete, a failure for lack of 
 one thing LOVE. 
 Your point is well made. 
 When Charles Kingsley was asked to name 
 the secret of his success he replied, " I had 
 a friend." 
 
 If asked the same question I would give 
 the same answer. 
 
 I might also explain that my friend is a 
 woman >^> 
 
 This woman is my wife, legally and other 
 wise x^ 
 
 She is also my comrade, my companion, 
 my chum, my business partner. 
 There has long been a suspicion that when 
 
 x9 
 
God said, "I will make a helpmeet for 
 man, ' ' the remark was a subtle bit of sarcasm. 
 Q However, the woman of whom I am 
 speaking proves what God can do when 
 He concentrates on His work. 
 My wife is my helpmeet, and I am hers. 
 Q I do not support her, rather, she supports 
 me. All I have is hers not only do I trust 
 her with my heart, but with my pocket- 
 book. And what I here write is not a tomb 
 stone testimonial, weighed with a granitic 
 sense of loss, but a simple tribute of truth 
 to a woman who is yet on earth in full 
 possession of her powers, her star still in 
 the ascendant. 
 
 I know the great women of history. I know 
 the qualities that go to make up, not only 
 the superior person but the one sublimely 
 great. Humanity is the raw stock with 
 which I work. 
 
 I know how Sappho loved and sang, and 
 Aspasia inspired Pericles to think and act, 
 and Cleopatra was wooed by two Emperors 
 
 of Rome, and how Theodora suggested the 
 20 
 
Justinian code and had the last word in its 
 compilation. I know Madam De Stael, Sarah 
 Wedgwood, George Eliot, Susanna Wesley, 
 Elizabeth Barrett. I know them all, for I 
 can read, and I have lived, and I have 
 imagination. 
 
 And knowing the great women of the 
 world, and having analyzed their characters 
 and characteristics, I still believe that Alice 
 Hubbard, in way of mental reach, sanity, 
 sympathy and all-round ability, out-classes 
 any woman of history, ancient or modern, 
 mentally, 'morally and spiritually. To make 
 a better woman than Alice Hubbard one 
 would have to take the talents and graces of 
 many great women and omit their faults. If 
 she is a departure in some minor respects 
 from a perfect standard it is probably be 
 cause she lives in a faulty world, with a 
 faulty man, and deals with faulty folks, a few 
 of whom, doubtless, will peruse this article. 
 
 21 
 
r H s 
 
 |I GHT here, of course I hear 
 you say, but love is blind, 
 or at least myopic, and 
 every man who ever loved, 
 says what you are saying 
 now. The nature of love is 
 exaggeration, and to take a 
 woman and clothe her with ideality, this is 
 love. Q And you speak wisely. But let me 
 here explain that while the saltness of time 
 in my ego has not entirely dissolved, I have 
 reached a time of life when feminine society 
 is not an actual necessity. I am at an age 
 when libertines turn saints, and rogues be 
 come religious. However, I have never gone 
 the pace, and so I am neither saint nor 
 ascetic, and the eternally feminine is not 
 now, and never was to me a consuming 
 lure. And while the flush of impetuous 
 youth, with its unreasoning genius of the 
 genus, is not mine, I am not a victim of 
 amor senilis, and never can be, since world 
 problems, not sensations, fill my dreams 
 and flood my hours. 
 
The youth loves his doxie in the mass; I 
 analyze, formulate and reduce character to 
 its constituent parts. 
 
 And yet, I have never fully analyzed the 
 mind of the woman I love, for there is 
 always and forever an undissolved residuum 
 of wit, reason, logic, invention and com 
 parison bubbling forth that makes associa 
 tion with her a continual delight. I have no 
 more sounded the depths of her soul than I 
 have my own. What she will say and what 
 she will do are delightful problems; only 
 this, that what she says and what she does 
 will be regal, right, gracious, kindly tem 
 pered with a lenity that has come from 
 suffering, and charged with a sanity that 
 has enjoyed, and which knows because 
 through it plays unvexed the Divine Intel 
 ligence that rules the world and carries die 
 planets in safety on their 'customed way 
 this I know. <( Perhaps the principal reason 
 my wife and I get along so well together is 
 because we have similar ideas as to what 
 constitutes wit. She laughs at all of my 
 
W H I Y A C I NT H S 
 
 jokes, and I do as much for her. All of our 
 quarrels are papier mache, made, played, 
 and performed for the gallery of our psy 
 chic selves. 
 
 Having such a wife as this, I do not chase 
 the ghosts of dead hopes through the grave 
 yard of my dreams. 
 
 I have succeeded beyond the wildest ambi 
 tions of my youth, but I am glad to find 
 that my desires outstrip my performances, 
 and as fast as I climb one hill I see a summit 
 beyond. So I am not satisfied, nor do I ever 
 declare, "Here will I build three taber 
 nacles," but forever do I hear a voice 
 which says, "Arise and get thee 
 hence, for this is not thy rest." 
 
 24 
 
WHIT-E HYACINTHS 
 
 HO can deny that the 
 mother-heart of a natural 
 and free woman makes the 
 controlling impulse of her 
 life a prayer to bless and 
 benefit, to minister and 
 serve! Such is Alice Hub- 
 bard a free woman who has gained free 
 dom by giving it. But her charity is never 
 maudlin. She has the courage of her lack 
 of convictions, and decision enough to with 
 hold the dollar when the cause is not hers, 
 and when to bestow merely means escape 
 from importunity t& To give people that 
 which they 'do not earn is to make them 
 think less of themselves and you. The only 
 way to help people is to give them a chance 
 to help themselves. 
 
 She is the only woman I ever knew who 
 realizes as a vital truth that the basic ele 
 ments for all human betterments are econo 
 mic, not mental nor spiritual. She knows 
 that the benefits of preaching are problem 
 atic, and that the good the churches do is 
 
 25 
 
conjectural; but that good roads are the 
 first and chiefest factor in civilization. She 
 knows and advocates what no college presi 
 dent in America dare advocate, that the 
 money we expend for churches if invested 
 in scientific forestry and good roads would 
 make this world a paradise enow. She does 
 not trouble herself much about Adam's fall, 
 but she does thoroughly respect Macadam. 
 If she ever sings, "Oh for the wings of a 
 dove/' it is not because she desires them 
 to adorn her hat, nor as a means 
 to fly away and be at rest. 
 
 26 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 |S a school teacher, woman 
 was not deemed capable or 
 acceptable until about 1868. 
 Woman's entrance into the 
 business world is a very 
 modern innovation. It all 
 dates since the Civil War 
 and was really not accepted as a fact until 
 1876, the year the typewriter appeared. 
 Even yet the average man keeps his- wife in 
 total ignorance of his financial affairs, think 
 ing that she has n't the ability to comprehend 
 the intricacies of trade. 
 The world was discovered in 1492 ; but man 
 was not discovered until 1776. Before then 
 man was only a worm of the dust, and the 
 tradition still lingers, fostered by the sects 
 that believe in the ministry of fear. 
 Woman was not discovered until 1876. Her 
 existence before then was not even suspected, 
 and the few men who had their suspicions 
 were considered unsafe erratic, strange 
 and peculiar. In youth, when she was pink 
 and twenty she was a plaything; when she 
 
 27 
 
W H I T K H Y A C I N T H S 
 
 grew old and wrinkled she was a scullion 
 and a drudge. All laws were made by men, 
 and in most states a woman only has yet a 
 secondary claim on her child. If she is a 
 married woman all the money she earns 
 belongs to her husband. Woman's right to 
 have her political preferences recorded is 
 still denied. Orthodox churches will not 
 listen to her speak, and the logic of William 
 Penn that, "The Voice may come to a 
 woman exactly as to a man " is smiled at 
 indulgently by priests and preachers. In 
 English common law she is always a minor. 
 Q It does not require much reasoning to 
 see that as long as a woman is treated as a 
 child the tendency is that she shall be one. 
 Q The success of the Bon Marche at Paris, 
 not to mention Mary Elizabeth, Her Candy, 
 proves what woman can do when her head 
 is not in a compress, and her hands tied. 
 Q Man's boldness and woman's caution 
 make an admirable business combination. 
 And in spite of that malicious generaliza 
 tion, pictured in print and fable, about 
 
 28 
 
woman's enterprise being limited to ex 
 ploiting the trousers of peacefully sleeping 
 man, I believe that women are more honor 
 able in money matters than the male 
 of the genus homo. Women cash 
 iers do not play the races, 
 harken to the seductive 
 ticker, nor cultivate 
 the poker face. 
 
 29 
 
WHITE H Y A C I N.T H S 
 
 ILICE HUBBARD is an 
 economist by nature, and 
 her skill as a financier is 
 founded on absolute hon 
 esty and flawless integrity. 
 She has the savings bank 
 habit, and next to paying 
 her debts, gets a fine tang out of life by wise 
 and safe investments. She knows that a sav 
 ings bank account is an anchor to win ' ard, 
 and that to sail fast and far your craft must 
 be close hauled to weather squalls. 
 In manufacturing she studies cost, knowing 
 better far than most business men that de 
 terioration of property and overhead charges 
 must be carefully considered, if the Referee 
 in Bankruptcy would be kept at a safe dis 
 tance /? She is a methodizer of time and 
 effort, and knows the value of system, real 
 izing the absurdity of a thirty-dollar-a-week 
 man doing the work of a five-dollar-a-week 
 boy. She knows the proportion of truth to 
 artistic jealousy in the melodious discord of 
 the anvil chorus; and the foreman who 
 
 30 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 opposes all reforms which he himself does 
 not conjure forth from his chickadee brain, 
 is to her familiar. The employe who is a 
 knocker by nature, who constantly shows 
 a tendency to get on the greased slide that 
 leads to limbo, has her pity, and she by 
 many gentle and diplomatic ways tries to 
 show him the danger of his position. 
 With John Ruskin she says, " It 's nothing 
 to give pension and cottage to the widow 
 who has lost her son ; it is nothing to give 
 food and medicine to the workman who 
 has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman 
 wasting in sickness. But it is something to 
 use your time and strength to war with 
 the waywardness and thoughtlessness of 
 mankind ; to keep erring workmen in your 
 service till you have made him an un 
 erring one, and to direct your fellow- 
 merchant to the opportunity which his 
 judgment would otherwise have lost." 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 N my wife's mind I see my 
 thoughts enlarged and re 
 flected, just as in a telescope 
 we behold the stars. She is 
 the magic mirror in which 
 I see the divine. Her mind 
 acts on mine, and mine 
 reacts upon hers. Most certainly I am aware 
 that no one else can see the same in her 
 which I behold, because no one else can 
 call forth her qualities, any more than any 
 other woman can call forth mine & Our 
 minds, separate and apart, act together as 
 one, forming a complete binocular, making 
 plain that which to one alone is invisible. 
 Q Now there be those, wise in this world's 
 affairs, who may say, evidently this man is a 
 victim of the gumwillies. Love like all other 
 things has its limit. A month of close con 
 tact usually wears off the new, and captivity 
 reduces the butterfly to a grub. Don't tell 
 us we know ! The very intensity of a pas 
 sion betokens its transient quality. Henry 
 Finck in his great book, "Passionate Love 
 
 32 
 

 
 and Personal Beauty/' recounts the great 
 loves of history, and then says, "The limit 
 of the Grand Passion is two years." 
 Hence I here make the explanation that I 
 have known this woman for twenty years. 
 I have written her over three thousand 
 letters and she has written as many to me. 
 Every worthy theme and sentiment I have 
 expressed to the public has been first ex 
 pressed to her, or more likely, borrowed 
 from her. I have seen her in almost every 
 possible exigency of life : in health, success, 
 and high hope; in poverty, and what the 
 world calls disgrace and defeat. But here I 
 should explain that disgrace is for those who 
 accept disgrace, and defeat consists in ac 
 knowledging it. 
 
 I have seen her face the robustious fury of 
 an attorney weighing three hundred pounds, 
 and reduce him to pork cracklings by her 
 poise, quiet persistence and the righteous 
 ness of her cause. 
 
 She is at home with children, the old, the 
 decrepit, the sick, the lonely, the unfor- 
 
 33 
 

 
 tunate, the vicious, the stupid, the insane. 
 She puts people at their ease; she is one 
 with them, but not necessarily of them. She 
 recognizes the divinity in all of God's crea 
 tures, even the lowliest, and those who wear 
 prison stripes are to her akin, all this with 
 out condoning the offense. She respects the 
 sinner, but not the sin. Wherever she goes 
 her spirit carries with it the message, * Teace, 
 be still!" With the noble, the titled, the 
 famous she is equally at home. 
 I have seen her before an audience of highly 
 critical, intellectual .and aristocratic people, 
 stating her cause with that same gentle, 
 considerate courtesy and clearness that so 
 becomes her. 
 
 The strongest feature of her nature is her 
 humanitarianism, and this springs from her 
 unselfish heart and her wide-reaching im 
 agination. And imagination is only sympathy 
 illumined by love and ballasted with brains. 
 Q She knows and has performed every item 
 of toil in the ceaseless round of woman's 
 drudgery on the farm.; she realizes the stress 
 
 34 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 and strain of overworked and tired mothers ; 
 the responsibility of caring for sick and 
 if peevish children, the cooking, sewing, 
 scrubbing, washing, care of vegetables and 
 milk, the old black dress that does duty on 
 Sunday with the bonnet that carries a faded 
 flower in summer and its frayed ostrich 
 feather in winter; the life of men who 
 breakfast by lamplight and go to work in 
 winter woods ere dawn appears, coming 
 home at dark, with chores yet to do, ere 
 supper and bed are earned; the children 
 who follow frozen country roads to school, 
 and eat at noon their luncheon of corn bread 
 and molasses and salt pork and count it good, 
 being filled with eager joy to slide down hill 
 ere the bell rings for the study of McGuf- 
 fey's Reader; the slim, slender girl, mayhap 
 with stocking down, who herds turkeys on 
 the upland farm in the cool October dew, 
 that she may get money to go to the distant 
 High School or the coveted "Normal," and 
 who finally receives the longed for teacher's 
 certificate and earns money to help satisfy 
 
 35 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 the hungry mortgage on the farm; the 
 young women who work in box factories 
 under the menacing eye of the boss; the 
 tired frayed-out heedless clerks ; the smartly 
 dressed cashiers; the men who drive horses 
 or work with pick, adze, maul and ax; the 
 pilots who creep their crafts through fog 
 along rocky coasts, or in mid-ocean take the 
 temperature of the water, locating icebergs; 
 the woman who flees the world in order to 
 be " good; " the business man mousing over 
 his accounts, fearing to compare assets and 
 liabilities, hoping for a turn in the tide ; the 
 flush of the orator, the joy of the author, 
 the deep, silent pleasure of the scientist who 
 finds a new species; the serene confidence 
 of the railroad president who knows his de 
 partments are all well manned ; the moment 
 of nightmare and doubt when the general 
 manager holds his breath and listens for the 
 rumble of his "Limited," speeding with 
 precious treasure through the all-enfolding 
 night; the fever of unrest that comes to the 
 captain of the man-o-war the night before 
 
 36 
 
WHITE HYACINTI 
 
 the battle; the soldiers in the trenches, bliss 
 fully ignorant, needlessly brutal in their at 
 tempts to be brave as they peer at the enemy's 
 camp fires on the distant hills; the joyless, 
 yellow-eyed children who toil in the mills 
 and forget how to play; boys home from 
 school; girls in cap and gown graduating 
 at Wellesley or Vassar; city children from 
 the slums in the country for the first time, 
 begging permission to pick dandelions and 
 daisies; women discarded by society and 
 relatives for faults or virtues ; wives whose 
 hearts are stamped upon by drunken hus 
 bands; men who are crazed through the 
 vanity of wives who walk the border land of 
 folly; the hesitating, doubting, fearing, sick, 
 through lack of incentive work; to all 
 these is she sister, and still the joy in work 
 well done, the calm of honesty, the sense of 
 power through facing unpleasant tasks, the 
 sweet taste of food earned by honest effort, 
 the absolution that comes through follow 
 ing one's highest ideals, the self-sufficient 
 purpose and firm resolve to do still better 
 
 37 
 
WHITE H Y A C I NT H i 
 
 work tomorrow through having done good 
 work today all these are hers. 
 She is patient under censure, just or unjust; 
 and unresentful toward hypocrisy, pretence, 
 and stupidity. Of course she recognizes that 
 certain people are not hers, and these she 
 neither avoids nor seeks to please or placate. 
 Some there be, who have called to her in 
 sultingly upon the public street, and to sun 
 dry and various of these she has given work 
 and taught them with a love and patience 
 almost past belief. 
 
 She has the sublime ability to forget the 
 wrongs that have been visited upon her, 
 the faults of her friends, and the good deeds 
 she has done. 
 
 She knows history from its glimmering 
 dawn in Egypt down to the present time. 
 The reformers, thinkers, martyrs, who have 
 stood forth and spoken what they thought 
 was truth, and died that we might live, are 
 to her familiar friends. 
 She knows the poets, writers, sculptors, 
 musicians, painters, inventors, architects, 
 
 38 
 
\ C I N T H S 
 
 engineers of all time. And those who can 
 build a bridge or make good roads are to 
 her more worthy of recognition than those 
 who preach. 
 
 She believes in the rights of dumb animals, 
 of children and especially women r&&> She 
 knows that woman can never be free until 
 she owns herself, and is economically free. 
 ^ To this end she believes that a woman 
 should be allowed to do anything which she 
 can do well, and that when she does a man's 
 work she should receive a man's wage. 
 To those who disagree with her she is ever 
 tolerant; in her opinions she is not dog 
 matic, realizing that truth is only a point 
 of view, and even at the last, people should 
 have the right to be wrong, so long as they 
 give this right to others. 
 She does not mix in quarrels, has none of 
 her own, nor is she quick to take sides in 
 argument and wordy warfare. 
 She keeps out of cliques, invites no secrets 
 and has none herself, respects the mood of 
 those she is with, and when she does not 
 
 39 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 know what to say, says nothing, and in 
 times of doubt minds her own business *^> 
 Q Her seeming indifference, however, does 
 not spring from a lack of sympathy, for 
 nothing that is human is alien to her. On a 
 railroad train at night she always thinks of 
 two persons the engineer, with one hand 
 on the throttle and the other on the air 
 brake, looking out down the two glittering 
 streaks of steel that stretch away into the 
 blackness of the night, and the other man 
 she considers is the one a hundred miles or 
 so away, with shade over his eyes, crouch 
 ing over a telegraph key. 
 At the hotels she thinks of those who wash 
 dishes, and scrub and clean windows, and 
 toward all servants she is gentle in her de 
 mands and grateful for services. 
 She wins by abnegation and yet never re 
 nounces anything j She has the faith that 
 gives all, and therefore receives all. 
 She has proved herself an ideal mother, not 
 only in every physical function, but in that 
 all-brooding tenderness and loving service 
 
 40 
 
W H I T E HYACINTHS 
 
 which is contained in the word Motker. 
 She, of all mothers, realizes that the mother 
 is the true teacher: that all good teachers 
 are really spiritual mothers. She knows that 
 not only does the mother teach by precept, 
 but by every action, thought and at 
 tribute of her character. Scolding 
 mothers have impatient babies 
 and educated parents have 
 educated children. 
 
 41 
 
|HAT supreme tragedy of 
 motherhood, that the best 
 mothers are constantly 
 training their children to 
 live without them, is fully 
 appreciated and understood 
 by Alice Hubbard. 
 To be a good teacher requires something 
 besides knowledge. Character counts more 
 than a memory for facts. And as the great 
 physician benefits his patients more through 
 his presence than by his medicines, so does 
 the superior teacher leave her impress upon 
 her pupils more through her moral qualities 
 than her precepts. 
 
 Franz Liszt did not teach at all, he just 
 filled his pupils with a great, welling ambi 
 tion to do, and be, and become. 
 I believe it was Goethe who said that great 
 teachers really do not teach us anything in 
 their presence we become different people. 
 Q Those who are admitted into the close 
 presence of Alice Hubbard are transformed 
 into different people. This is especially true 
 
 42 
 
W H I T K H Y A ( I I N T H S 
 
 of budding youth boys and girls from 
 fourteen to eighteen. For them she has a 
 peculiar and potent charm her vivacity, 
 her animation, her sympathy, her knowl 
 edge of flowers, plants, trees, birds and 
 animals delights them. Then she knows the 
 heroes of history, and all of the literature of 
 story and romance is to her familiar. If her 
 pupils wish to talk, she lets them for to her 
 listening is a fine art. Her mental attitude 
 brings out the best in each, so in her pres 
 ence the boor becomes gentle, and the loud 
 and coarse moderate their voices and are on 
 their good behavior. She carries with her 
 an aura in which vulgarity cannot thrive 
 nor pretense flourish. She has dignity with 
 out prudery, pedantry, or priggishness >&&> 
 She has the happy faculty of putting people 
 at their ease and making them pleased with 
 themselves, so with her they are wise be 
 yond their wont and gracious beyond their 
 'customed habit. 
 
 In a room full of people she is not apt to 
 be seen, nor to speak, but if she chooses, she 
 
 43 
 
w 
 
 i T 
 
 RVAlTTMTHS 
 
 the conversation, dictates the theme, 
 arouses genial animation, and by her pres 
 ence and the gentle, finely modulated quality 
 of her voice, the indifferent and the 
 
 mediocre subside and fade away. 
 
 44 
 
W H I T K HYACINTHS 
 
 LICE HUBBARD has the 
 bodily qualities of grace, 
 lightness, ease and manual 
 skill, and the crown of her 
 head obeys the law of levi- 
 tation & She imparts joy, 
 never heaviness or weari 
 ness ,@^, Her raiment is always neat and 
 becoming, not expressed in fancy nor of a 
 kind or quality to beckon or bid for atten 
 tion & In fact, very few people can ever 
 remember the exact color of her attire ; all 
 that they can recall is that she was sweetly 
 gracious, considerate and dignified in all of 
 her words and manner. 
 She wins without trying to win, and if she 
 pleases, as she always does, it is without 
 apparent effort. 
 
 In moral qualities she has a steadfastness in 
 the right; a sharp distinction as to meum 
 et tuum; a persistence in completing the 
 task begun ; the habit of being on time and 
 keeping her word, even with servants and 
 children and those who cannot enforce their 
 
 45 
 
claims ; an absence of all exaggeration, with 
 no vestige of boasting as to what she has 
 done or intends to do all of which sets her 
 apart as one superior, refined and unselfish 
 beyond the actual as we find it, excepting in 
 the ideals of the masters in imaginative 
 literature. 
 
 In mental qualities she appreciates the work 
 of the great statesmen, creators, inventors, 
 reformers, scientists, and all those who live 
 again in minds made better. 
 Dozens of times I have heard her refer to 
 the unresentful qualities of Charles Darwin, 
 and tell of how he, as a scientist, was 
 ashamed of himself in once jumping to a 
 conclusion by saying, " It must be this, for 
 if it is not, what is it f " 
 Herbert Spencer's monograph on Educa 
 tion is to her a text book. Max Muller's 
 Memories is her favorite love story, and 
 Emerson's Essays are always to her a sweet 
 solace and rest. She admires Browning, but 
 neither dotes nor feeds on any poet life is 
 her theme, and to live rightly and well, 
 
 46 
 
without shame, regrets, compromises, ex 
 planations, apologies or complaints, is to 
 her the finest of the fine arts. 
 So these then are the qualities that mark 
 Alice Hubbard as the teacher with very 
 few peers and no superiors. 
 She holds all ties lightly, never clutching 
 even friendship, growing rich by giving & 
 She is an economist and a financier, making 
 a dollar go farther without squeezing it, 
 than any man or woman I ever saw & She 
 buys what she needs, and has the strength 
 not to buy what she does not need. She 
 never spends money until she gets it, and 
 avoids debt as she would disease. She is a 
 model housekeeper and her ability to man 
 age people and serve the public is shown in 
 the fact that the Roycroft Inn, of which 
 she is sole manager, made a profit the past 
 year of a little over some thousand dollars. 
 To direct and train the "help," (at times 
 a somewhat ironical term), does not even 
 supply her a topic for conversation j* She 
 never complains of the stupidity of others, 
 
 47 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 knowing that such complaint is in itself a 
 form of concrete stupidity. 
 & However, the management of the hotel 
 is to her only incidental, for she is Vice- 
 President of the Roycroft Corporation, and 
 General Superintendent of all the work. She 
 hires all employes and has the exclusive 
 power to discharge, fixing all salaries. 
 She also teaches, gives lectures and writes 
 at least one book a year. 
 Assuming that one hundred is the perfect 
 standard, a judicial rating would place Alice 
 Hubbard somewhere between ninety and 
 ninety-nine in the following: As a mother, 
 housekeeper, economist, methodizer, diplo 
 mat, financier, orator, writer, reformer, in 
 ventor, humanitarian, teacher, philosopher. 
 Q Tammas the Techy said, " We must be 
 patient with the fools." >^> But he never 
 was. She is. And I myself have ever prayed, 
 " For this, Good Lord, make us duly thank 
 ful." She has an abiding faith in Nemesis, 
 and never for an instant considers it her 
 duty to transform herself into a section of 
 
 48 
 

 the day of judgment &&?> She believes that 
 people are punished by their sins not for 
 them x@^> 
 
 In her nature there is a singular absence of 
 jealousy, whim, and prejudice & She can 
 hear her enemies praised without resent 
 ment, and for those in competition with 
 her, if such there be, she has good will at 
 the best and indifference at the worst. These 
 things are only possible in a very self-cen 
 tered character, one tenoned and mortised 
 in granite, with an abiding faith in the 
 justice and righteousness of the Eternal In 
 telligence in which we are bathed. 
 sg^She has the hospitable mind and the 
 receptive heart. She is alert for new truth 
 and new views of life, and is ever ready 
 to throw away a good idea for a better one. 
 She realizes the necessity of moderation in 
 eating, of regular sleep, of fresh air, and 
 regular daily exercise in the open. And not 
 only does she realize their necessity, but 
 she has the will to live her philosophy, not 
 being content to merely think and preach it. 
 
 49 
 
Physically she is strong as a rope of silk; 
 she can outride and outwalk most athletic 
 men, although her form is slender and 
 slight. Those who regard bulk and beauty 
 as synonymous never turn and look at her 
 in the public streets. In countenance she is as 
 plain as was Julius Caesar, and to his busts 
 she bears a striking resemblance in the 
 features of nose, mouth, chin and eyes. 
 In the moral qualities of patience, poise and 
 persistence she is certainly Caesarian, and 
 in these she outranks any woman I have 
 been able to resurrect from the dusty tomes 
 of days gone by. 
 
 This, then, is my one close companion, my 
 confidante, my friend, my wife; and my 
 relation with her will be my sole passport 
 to Paradise, if there is one beyond this life. 
 Q I married a rich woman one rich in 
 love, loyalty, gentleness, insight, gratitude, 
 appreciation. One who caused me, at thirty- 
 three years of age, to be born again. 
 To this woman I owe all I am and to her 
 the world owes its gratitude for any and all, 
 
 50 
 
W H I T H Y A C I N T H S 
 
 be it much or little, that I have given it. 
 My religion is all in my wife's name. And 
 I am not bankrupt, for all she has is mine, 
 if I can use it, and in degree I have. 
 And why I prize life, and desire to live, is 
 that I may give the world more of the treas 
 ures of her heart and mind, realizing with 
 perfect faith, that the supply coming from 
 Infinity, can never be lessened nor decreased. 
 
 51 
 
TIME AND CHANCE ARE OFTEN 
 MASTERS OF OUR FATE 
 
 WILTED HYACINTHS 
 
 FADED flower flung from 
 the grated window of a 
 prison cell, falls at the feet 
 of a passer-by a woman 
 of the town. 
 
 But why should I call her 
 a woman ? She is a creature 
 of the night. She belongs to all and to none, 
 her home is a hovel and she lives in hell a 
 hell of her own preparing. 
 Once she was courted, flattered, petted, 
 pampered. She had her nightmare of glory 
 when gold was showered upon her, silks 
 rustled, perfumes filled the air, bouquets 
 burdened her table, carriages with footmen 
 stopped at her door ^ Mansions, servants, 
 joyous suppers, laughter, diamonds, pearls 
 to do nothing and have everything, this 
 was her ambition.. 
 
 She has drunk to its dregs the cup of noth 
 ingness. She has sought the potion that 
 
 52 
 
W H IT E HYACINTHS 
 
 gives f orgetf ulness ; for desertion, abandon 
 ment, death follows as an unerring sequence 
 on all the gleam, glitter and glamour that 
 have gone before. Q And now she breathes 
 only the sulphur fumes of Gehenna, and the 
 scant silver that comes her way goes for the 
 drug that brings oblivion. 
 With bloodshot eyes, disheveled hair, and 
 burning thirst, she hurries along watched, 
 hunted, hooted & She draws her tattered 
 shawl closer about her benumbed frame as 
 the cutting blasts of winter, rushing down 
 alleys and from around sharp corners, hunt 
 her out. 
 
 The flower drops at her feet. 
 She stops, looks around, no one is watching, 
 she picks it up yes, it is a spray of hyacinth. 
 She looks up to see from whence it came, 
 and high up she thinks she sees a hand 
 thrust out from a grated window. 
 Some one is waving a hand to her to her. 
 & Who can it be some one has thought 
 of her some one has sent her a flower! 
 Cf She brushes her hand across her eyes, as 
 
 53 
 
WHITE H Y A C I N T H'S 
 
 if to clear her misty vision and looks up 
 again &%&> 
 
 This time she sees nothing, only the sullen 
 front of a great prison wall, jutting stone, 
 grated windows, stone piled upon stone. 
 She thrusts the flower into her bosom, and 
 forgetful of where she was going, turns 
 about and hastens to the den she calls home. 
 Some one has thrown a flower not the 
 flowers such as patronizing women of the 
 flower mission bring with tracts and words 
 of advice not that a flower from the hand 
 of a man, a man in trouble, disgraced like 
 herself, in bonds & He has thrown her a 
 flower. Who is this man of whom she 
 thinks ! Alas, she does not know. Years and 
 years, aye, centuries ago, when she wore 
 pinafores and lived with her father, mother, 
 brothers and sisters in the country, she 
 dreamed of this man, this man who would 
 come to her and love her, and give her 
 peace and freedom. 
 
 It is the same dream come back it is he. 
 He will deliver her from the body of this 
 
 54 
 
TIT- TT T *"p p* TT VT A /- T T^" HT 1 TT O 
 
 death. He has flung her a flower. He is in 
 trouble ^ What can she do to help him ! 
 Q She is a woman. She is not old. God 
 sent her into life and she has a right to love, 
 to tenderness, to motherhood and a home. 
 No chill of doubt can put out the eternal 
 fire she loves the ideal! 
 This is her misery, her disgrace and her 
 crown. Illusions will not fade away, she has 
 prayed and watched and longed for this 
 some one loves her & He has flung her a 
 flower /&^ 
 
 When he is released he will come to her 
 and take her away, and they will leave this 
 life of horror, and fly to the country and 
 make themselves a nest as the birds do &&?> 
 Some one has flung her a flower. 
 She belongs to him and him alone. She has 
 loved him all these years. She has waited 
 for him. God knows she has done wrong, 
 but God knows, too, her heart is pure. She 
 appeals to the higher law a power greater 
 than herself has been pulling her down to 
 death but God knows, God knows! For 
 
 55 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 was it not God who allowed her to be 
 tempted beyond her strength ? 
 Some one has flung her a flower. It has 
 awakened in her the ideal she had thought 
 it dead, dead and nailed down with the 
 coffin nails of her crimes. 
 But no, there is light yet. She wishes to do 
 penance, to condone, to succor, to sanctify 
 herself to some one, to be kind, to be useful. 
 The reflexes of the heart are as sure and 
 certain as the march of the planets. The 
 desires of the heart are fixed stars clouds 
 may obscure, but wait and you shall see the 
 light & There is that in souls which never 
 perishes &&> 
 
 Some one has flung this woman a flower 
 and she becomes happy with a horrible 
 happiness. She sees a cottage, warmed and 
 lighted; a kettle singing on the hearth; 
 supper on the table for him who was even 
 now coming to his home, their home, 
 whistling from his work; she sees in the 
 corner a cradle, and she begins crooning a 
 lullaby to a babe that she has never pressed 
 
 56 
 

 to her aching breast. Q Some one has flung 
 her a flower. Cf In the direst gloom, in the 
 chill of abandonment, in the black of darkest 
 pathways, in the dim, gray light of prison 
 cells where the sun never enters, before stern 
 judges, while policemen leer & men restrain 
 not their evil tongues, beneath the maze of 
 pitfalls, in nights of horror & blackest chaos 
 there is a gleam of light ^ It grows into a 
 flame. What think you it can be? 
 It is love it is the ideal. It exists even in 
 hell. God never quite withdraws His Holy 
 Spirit. Some one has flung her a flower. 
 
 57 
 
SOME Do NOT HEAR OPPORTUNITY 
 WHEN SHE KNOCKS BECAUSE THEY 
 ARE KNOCKING AT THE TIME 
 
 o P 
 
 r> 
 
 r u N i T Y 
 
 HERE is a gray-bearded 
 maxim, honored on ac 
 count of its venerable age, 
 which runs thus : " Oppor 
 tunity knocks once at each 
 man's door." >&&> John J. 
 i Ingalls once went a-sonnet- 
 ing around this proverb, and some say he 
 wrote the finest sonnet ever written by an 
 American. I am inclined to think this is so; 
 and if it is, it proves for us that truth is one 
 thing and poetry another. 
 The actual fact is that in this day oppor 
 tunity not only knocks at your door, but is 
 playing an anvil chorus on every man's 
 door, and lays for the owner around the 
 corner with a club. The world is in sore 
 need of men who can do things. Indeed, 
 cases can easily be recalled by every one 
 where opportunity actually smashed in the 
 
 58 
 

 
 door and collared her candidate and dragged 
 him forth to success &&*> These cases are 
 exceptional; usually you have to go out and 
 meet opportunity ^ But the only way you 
 can get away from opportunity is to lie 
 down and die. Opportunity does not trouble 
 dead men, nor dead ones who flatter them 
 selves that they are alive. 
 Let no man repine on account of lack of 
 early advantages. Rare-ripes run away from 
 advantages they can not digest them. " If 
 I had my say I would set all young folks at 
 work and send the old ones to school," 
 said Socrates, 420 B. C. 
 What Socrates meant was that after you 
 have battled a bit with actual life and begun 
 to feel your need for education, you are, for 
 the first time, ready to take advantage of 
 your opportunities and learn. 
 Education is a matter of desire. An educa 
 tion can not be imparted. It has to be won 
 and you win by working. 
 And this fact also holds : The best educated 
 men are those who get their brain develop- 
 
 59 
 
W HIT E ;H Y A 
 
 ment out of their daily work, or at the time 
 they are doing the work. Quitting work in 
 order to get an education was the idea of a 
 monk who fled from the world because he 
 thought it was bad; a fallacy we have par 
 tially outgrown. It takes work to get an 
 education; it takes work to use it, and it 
 takes work to keep it. 
 
 The great blunder of the colleges is that 
 they have lifted men out of life in order to 
 educate them for life. All educated college 
 men know this and acknowledge it. 
 In his last annual report President Eliot of 
 Harvard made a strong appeal to parents to 
 get their children into the practical world 
 of life as soon as possible, and not expect a 
 college degree to insure success. 
 Those who want to grow and evolve should 
 not give too much time to the latest novel 
 and daily paper. Don't spread yourself out 
 thin. Concentrate on a few things the very 
 best educated men do not know everything. 
 C Choose what you will be and then get at 
 it. You'll win. 
 
 60 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 If you quit, it simply shows you did not 
 want an education; you only thought you 
 did you are not willing to pay the price. 
 Q The other day in the Michigan State 
 Penitentiary at Jackson, I saw in a convict's 
 cell three architect's designs tacked on the 
 wall, and on a shelf were several books from 
 a correspondence school. "Is it possible," 
 I asked Dr. Pray, the prison doctor, "that 
 a convict is taking a correspondence course 
 in architecture ? " ' ' Not only that, ' ' was the 
 reply, "but a good many of our men are 
 studying hard to better their mental condi 
 tion. This particular man has gotten beyond 
 the amateur stage ,*? You see he has been 
 working at his course for three years. He 
 draws plans for us and is doing work for 
 parties outside." Then we hunted up the 
 man and found him in the marble shop. 
 if He seemed pleased to know that I had 
 noticed his work. "You see," he said, " I 
 only work six hours a day for the state, and 
 after that my time is my own, and I try to 
 improve it; there are no bowling alleys, pool 
 
 61 
 
WHIT ST T H S 
 
 rooms, nor saloons here no place to go." 
 And he smiled. I tried to, but could not 
 my eyes were filled with tears $f* A convict 
 getting a practical education, and so many 
 of us who think we are free, frittering away 
 our time. 
 
 If, in its anxiety to present itself, opportunity 
 will break into jail, surely those outside can 
 not complain of opportunity's lack of persis 
 tence in hunting out the ready and willing. 
 
 62 
 
No MAN CAN INSTRUCT OTHERS IN 
 ANYTHING >^r WE CAN, HOWEVER, 
 AWAKEN THOUGHT & AROUSE IMPULSES 
 
 
 C H E R S 
 
 T is a great thing to teach. 
 ,? I am never more com- 
 plimented than when 
 some one addresses me as 
 "teacher." To give your 
 self in a way that will in 
 spire others to think, to do, 
 to become what nobler ambition ! To be 
 a good teacher demands a high degree of 
 altruism, for one must be willing to sink 
 self, to die as it were that others may 
 live. There is something in it very much 
 akin to motherhood a brooding quality. 
 Every true mother realizes at times that 
 her children are only loaned to her sent 
 from God and the attributes of her body 
 and mind are being used by some Power 
 for a purpose. The thought tends to refine 
 the heart of its dross, obliterate pride and 
 make her feel the sacredness of her office. 
 
 63 
 
WHITE HYACINTH; 
 
 All good men everywhere recognize the 
 holiness of motherhood this miracle by 
 which the race survives. 
 There is a touch of pathos in the thought 
 that while lovers live to make themselves 
 necessary to each other, the mother is 
 working to make herself unnecessary to her 
 children. And the entire object of teaching 
 is to enable the scholar to do without his 
 teacher ,*? Graduation should take place at 
 the vanishing point of the teacher. 
 Yes, the efficient teacher has in him much 
 of this mother-quality. Thoreau, you re 
 member, said that genius is essentially femi 
 nine; if he had teachers in mind his remark 
 was certainly true ,*? The men of much 
 motive power are not the best teachers 
 the arbitrary and imperative type, that 
 would bend all minds to match its own, 
 may build bridges, tunnel mountains, dis 
 cover continents and capture cities, but it 
 cannot teach. In the presence of such a 
 towering personality freedom dies, spon 
 taneity droops, and thought slinks away into 
 
 64 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 a corner. The brooding quality, the patience 
 that endures, and the yearning of mother 
 hood, are all absent ^&&> The man is a 
 commander, not a teacher; and there yet 
 remains a grave doubt whether the warrior 
 and ruler have not used their influence 
 more to make this world a place of the 
 skull, than the abode of happiness and 
 prosperity. The orders to kill all the first 
 born, and those over ten years of age, were 
 not given by teachers. 
 
 The teacher is one who makes two ideas 
 grow where there was only one before. 
 Q Just here seems a good place to say that 
 we live in a very stupid, old world, round 
 like an orange and slightly flattened at the 
 polls. The proof of this seemingly pessimis 
 tic remark, made by a hopeful and cheerful 
 man, lies in the fact that we place small 
 premium in either honor or money on the 
 business of teaching. As in the olden times, 
 barbers and scullions ranked with musicians, 
 and the Master of the Hounds wore a big 
 ger medal than the Poet-Laureate, so do 
 
 65 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 we pay our teachers the same as coachmen 
 and coal-heavers, giving them a plentiful 
 lack of everything but overwork. 
 I will never be quite willing to admit that 
 this country is enlightened, until we cease 
 the inane and parsimonious policy of trying 
 to drive all the really strong men and 
 women out of the teaching profession by 
 putting them on the pay-roll at one-half the 
 rate, or less than that which the same brains 
 and energy can command elsewhere. In the 
 year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred Six, 
 in a time of peace, we appropriated four 
 hundred million dollars for war and war 
 appliances, and this sum is just double the 
 cost of the entire public school system in 
 America. It is not the necessity of economy 
 that dictates our actions in this matter of 
 education we simply are not enlightened. 
 Q But this thing cannot always last I look 
 for the time when we shall set apart the 
 best and noblest men and women of earth 
 for teachers, and their compensation will 
 be so adequate that they will be free to give 
 
 66 
 
^ 
 
 themselves for the benefit of the race, with 
 out apprehension of a yawning almshouse. 
 A liberal policy will be for our own good, 
 just as a matter of cold expediency; 
 it will be enlightened self-interest. 
 
 67 
 
ONE CAN BEAR GRIEF BUT IT 
 TAKES Two To BE GLAD 
 
 F.RIENDSHI 
 
 HEN Charles Kingsley was 
 asked for the secret of his 
 exquisite sympathy and fine 
 imagination, he paused a 
 space, and then answered, 
 "I had a friend." 
 The desire for friendship 
 is strong in every human heart. We crave 
 the companionship of those who can under 
 stand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh 
 for "home," and long for the presence of 
 one who sympathizes with our aspirations, 
 comprehends our hopes and is able to par 
 take of our joys. A thought is not our own 
 until we impart it to another, and the con 
 fessional seems a crying need of every 
 human soul &&?> The desire for sympathy 
 dwells in every human heart. 
 We reach the divine through some one, 
 and by dividing our joy with this one we 
 double it, and come in touch with the uni- 
 
 68 
 
WHITE T HS 
 
 versal. The sky is never so blue, the birds 
 never sing so blithely, our acquaintances 
 are never so gracious as when we are filled 
 with love for some one. 
 Being in harmony with one we are in har 
 mony with all f& The lover idealizes and 
 clothes the beloved with virtues that only 
 exist in his imagination. The beloved is 
 consciously or unconsciously aware of this, 
 and endeavors to fulfill the high ideal; and 
 in the contemplation of the transcendent 
 qualities that his mind has created, the lover 
 is raised to heights otherwise impossible. 
 Q Should the beloved pass from earth while 
 this condition of exaltation exists, the con 
 ception is indelibly impressed upon the 
 soul, just as the last earthly view is said to 
 be photographed upon the retina of the 
 dead. The highest earthly relationship is in 
 its very essence fleeting, for men are fallible, 
 and living in a world where material wants 
 jostle, and time and change play their cease 
 less parts, gradual obliteration comes and 
 disillusion enters S& But the memory of a 
 
 69 
 
sweet companionship once fully possessed, & 
 snapped by fate at its supremest moment, 
 can never die from out the heart. All other 
 troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the 
 individual is of too stern a fiber to be com 
 pletely crushed into the dust, time will 
 come bearing healing, and the memory of 
 that once ideal condition will chant in the 
 heart a perpetual eucharist. 
 And I hope the w r orld has passed forever 
 from the nightmare of pity for the dead: 
 they have ceased from their labors and are 
 at rest. 
 
 But for the living, when death has entered 
 and removed the best friend, fate has done 
 her worst; the plummet has sounded the 
 depths of grief, and thereafter nothing can 
 inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty 
 annoyances and corroding cares are sunk 
 into nothingness. The memory of a great 
 love lives enshrined in undying amber. It 
 affords a ballast 'gainst all the storms that 
 blow, and although it lends an unutterable 
 sadness, it imparts an unspeakable peace. 
 
 70 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 Where there is this haunting memory of a 
 great love lost, there is always forgiveness, 
 charity and a sympathy that makes the man 
 brother to all who suffer and endure. The 
 individual himself is nothing : he has noth 
 ing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing 
 to win, and this constant memory of the 
 high and exalted friendship that was once 
 his is a nourishing source of strength; it 
 constantly purifies the mind and inspires 
 the heart to nobler living and diviner think 
 ing. The man is in communication with 
 elemental conditions. 
 
 To have known an ideal friendship, and 
 had it fade from your grasp and flee as a 
 shadow before it is touched with the sordid 
 breath of selfishness, or sullied by misunder 
 standing, is the highest good. And the con 
 stant dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on 
 the exalted virtues of the one that has gone, 
 tends to crystallize these very virtues in the 
 heart of him who meditates them /? The 
 beauty with which love adores its object be 
 comes the possession of the one who loves. 
 
 71 
 
IT Is LOVE THAT VITALIZES THE 
 INTELLECT To THE CREATIVE POINT 
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN 
 
 HE work of Frederick 
 Froebel was put back to a 
 degree that no man can 
 compute, through the cold 
 ness, indifference and ac 
 tual opposition of men who 
 should have stood by him 
 and upheld him. Q The kindergarten is a 
 complete reversal of barbaric educational 
 schemes that did not spare the rod ,*? We 
 started in with the assumption that the child 
 was born in sin, and "in iniquity did my 
 mother conceive me/' a slander on the 
 children and a libel on motherhood. 
 But so grounded were we in error that in 
 our teaching of children, the elements of 
 fear, suppression and punishment were ever 
 present. We used the studies as a club and 
 if a child did wrong we doubled his lessons. 
 The plan of fining the delinquent forty 
 lines of Virgil made him love Virgil, did it 
 
 72 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 not? If there were a better way of making 
 books more distasteful than to use them as 
 punishment I do not know it. 
 The ecclesiastic English boarding school 
 barbarity yet has its defenders ,&> At the 
 tender age of six or seven we removed 
 the child from his parents in the name of 
 discipline. We sought to smother parental 
 love and strangle affection, and we nearly 
 succeeded. 
 
 Froebel struck right at the root of error 
 when he referred to the children as the 
 "Little souls fresh from God." Froebel 
 believed in the divinity of the child. Most 
 Christians up to his time acted as if they 
 believed that when Christ said, "Suffer 
 little children to come unto me and forbid 
 them not, for of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven," he had a rattan hidden behind 
 him. The practice of falling upon children 
 with rods, straps, paddles, rulers and hair 
 brushes has been very popular, not so much 
 possibly to benefit the child as to relieve 
 the pressure of pent-up emotion in the 
 
 73 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 parent. Froebel's idea was that the child 
 was a human flower, and the school should 
 be a garden where souls could blossom in 
 the sunshine of love. 
 
 Froebel studied the inclinations of the child 
 and sought to move in line with nature. 
 He utilized the tendency to play; just as we 
 in degree use the tides of the sea and the 
 winds that blow to turn the wheels of trade. 
 Q To use these welling tides of our nature, 
 Froebel said, "will lead us on to the Good, 
 or if you prefer, to God/' 
 So in his teaching the playing of games had 
 an important part. Play, song, and happy, 
 useful effort all working together for a 
 common purpose! Socrates, four hundred 
 and fifty years before Christ, taught that 
 courtesy, kindness and self-possession were 
 of more importance than facts grubbed from 
 books that is to say, it is qualities that 
 make a man great and not knowledge. 
 Aristotle followed up the same idea and in 
 his education of Alexander, the child im 
 pulse to collect specimens was utilized, and 
 
 74 
 

 
 Aristotle and his pupils formed the world's 
 first herbarium and the first zoological gar 
 den. Q Froebel led his little band of pupils 
 out into the woods and fields and they 
 collected flowers, plants, birds, nests, fungi, 
 and became acquainted with the beautiful 
 world of nature just as a matter of curiosity, 
 pleasure and play. 
 
 To arbitrarily punish or embarrass a child 
 Froebel considered a great sin, because to 
 do so might be to implant in the child's 
 mind the seeds of hate and revenge that 
 would poison its entire life. 
 Froebel saw this potent fact, that unless he 
 could impress upon the parents the right 
 eousness of his methods, he could make 
 little head. He said, "The teacher is the 
 foster parent of the child for a few hours 
 each day, and unless the home and school 
 work together and are in harmony, my 
 work will be in vain." 
 So he invited the parents to his school and 
 also had mothers' meetings where he sought 
 to explain the reasonableness of his work. 
 
 75 
 
W H I T 1 ; 1 N 
 
 The theological idea at the time was that 
 he child should be disciplined, his spirit 
 broken, and that the dunce cap of disgrace 
 was a good thing. Froebel sought to make 
 his work affirmative, not negative, but in 
 spite of his gentle diplomatic ways he met 
 with strong opposition and constant ridi 
 cule. The only pupils he could get were 
 those too young to go to the regular schools, 
 and these were turned over to him because 
 he relieved the parents of their care. 
 His intent and expectations were to carry 
 his methods right up through all the grades, 
 even into the university, and on through 
 life. So actually, the kindergarten plan is a 
 system of life, not merely a system of school 
 teaching. 
 
 Froebel knew his methods were right he 
 never faltered in his faith. But the constant 
 unkind criticisms of rival teachers who 
 clung to monastic methods, the stupidity of 
 parents and the opposition of school boards 
 wore him out, and he died in middle life. 
 But with his last dying breath, in broken 
 
 76 
 
WHITE H Y AC I NTH S 
 
 whisper he said to his nurse, "The world 
 will yet accept my words the idea of a 
 child-garden will live ! I am dying but my 
 thought will not perish God cannot afford 
 to allow it to wither." 
 Can a person of intelligence now be found 
 who dares say that Frederich Froebel was 
 not a very great man and does any one 
 believe that Froebel did not care what 
 people thought about him ? 
 Isn't this true, that the greater the man, 
 the more he desires to bless and benefit 
 humanity, the more he actually does 
 care what people think of him? 
 
 77 
 
AN OUNCE OF LOYALTY Is WORTH 
 A POUND OF CLEVERNESS 
 
 HUNDRED-POINTMEN 
 
 |HE other day I wrote to a 
 banker-friend inquiring as 
 to the responsibility of a 
 certain person ,*? The ans 
 wer came back, thus: He 
 is a Hundred-Point man in 
 everything and anything he 
 undertakes. Q I read the telegram and then 
 pinned it up over my desk where I could 
 see it. That night it sort of stuck in my 
 memory. I dreamed of it. 
 The next day I showed the message to a 
 fellow I know pretty well, and said, "I'd 
 rather have that said of me than to be called 
 a great this or that." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes has left on record 
 the statement that you could not throw a 
 stone on Boston Common without carom 
 ing on three poets, two essayists, and a 
 playwright. 
 Hundred-Point men are not so plentiful. 
 
 78 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 Q A Hundred-Point man is one who is true 
 to every trust; who keeps his word; who is 
 loyal to the firm that employs him ; who 
 does not listen for insults nor look for 
 slights; who carries a civil tongue in his 
 head; who is polite to strangers, without 
 being " fresh;" who is considerate towards 
 servants; who is moderate in his eating and 
 drinking; who is willing to learn; who is 
 cautious and yet courageous. 
 Hundred-Point men may vary much in 
 ability, but this is always true they are safe 
 men to deal with, whether drivers of drays, 
 motor men, clerks, cashiers, engineers or 
 presidents of railroads. 
 Paranoiacs are people who are suffering 
 from fatty enlargement of the ego & They 
 want the best seats in the synagogue, they 
 demand bouquets, compliments, obeisance, 
 and in order to see what the papers will say 
 next morning, they sometimes obligingly 
 commit suicide. 
 
 The paranoiac is the antithesis of the Hun 
 dred-Point man. The paranoiac imagines 
 
 79 
 
WHITE HYACI NT H S 
 
 he is being wronged, that some one has it 
 in for him, and that the world is down on 
 him. He is given to that which is strange, 
 peculiar, uncertain, eccentric and erratic. 
 Q The Hundred-Point man may not look 
 just like all other men, or dress like them, 
 or talk like them, but what he does is true 
 to his own nature. He is himself. 
 He is more interested in doing his work 
 than in what people will say about it. He 
 does not consider the gallery. He acts his 
 thought and thinks little of the act. 
 I never knew a Hundred-Point man who 
 was not one brought up from early youth 
 to make himself useful, and to economize 
 in the matter of time and money. 
 Necessity is ballast. 
 
 The paranoiac, almost without exception, is 
 one who has been made exempt from work. 
 He has been petted, waited upon, coddled, 
 cared for, laughed at and chuckled to. 
 The excellence of the old-fashioned big 
 family was that no child got an undue 
 amount of attention. The antique idea that 
 

 
 the child must work for his parents until 
 the day he was twenty-one was a deal better 
 for the youth than to let him get it into his 
 head that his parents must work for him. 
 Q Nature intended that we should all be 
 poor that we should earn our bread every 
 day before we eat it. 
 
 When you find the Hundred-Point man 
 you will find one who lives like a person in 
 moderate circumstances, no matter what 
 his finances are. Every man who thinks he 
 has the world by the tail and is about to 
 snap its demnition head off for the delec 
 tation of mankind, is unsafe, no matter how 
 great his genius in the line of specialties. 
 Q The Hundred-Point man looks after just 
 one individual, and that is the man under 
 his own hat; he is one who does not spend 
 money until he earns it; who pays his way; 
 who knows that nothing is ever given for 
 nothing; who keeps his digits off other 
 people's property. When he does not know 
 what to say, why, he says nothing, and when 
 he does not know what to do, does not do it. 
 
 81 
 
WHITE H Y AC I NT H S 
 
 We should mark on moral qualities not 
 merely mental attainment or proficiency, 
 because in the race of life only moral qual 
 ities count. We should rate on judgment, 
 application and intent ^ Men by habit and 
 nature who are untrue to a trust, are dan 
 gerous just in proportion as they are clever. 
 I would like to see a university devoted to 
 turning out safe men instead of merely 
 clever ones. 
 
 How would it do for a college to give one 
 degree, and one only, to those who are 
 worthy, the degree of H. P. ? 
 Would it not be worth striving for, to 
 have a college president say of you, over his 
 own signature: He is a Hundred-Point man 
 in everything and anything that he undertakes! 
 
 82 
 
IF TRUTH BE MIGHTY AND GOD ALL- 
 POWERFUL, His CHILDREN NEED NOT 
 FEAR DISASTER WILL FOLLOW FREEDOM 
 
 As To SCIENCE 
 
 T was not so very long ago 
 that the profession of teach 
 ing was entirely in the 
 hands of theologians. All 
 things secular and sacred, 
 that were taught to young 
 or old, were taught by 
 priests. Priests decided what books should 
 be printed and what not & The priest de 
 cided as to what should be taught, and how 
 it should be taught, and beyond him there 
 was no appeal. 
 
 Instead of refuting natural science by natural 
 science, theology sought to silence science 
 by citing Scripture. 
 
 Galileo, writing in 1610, complains because 
 the theologians would not so much as look 
 through his telescope, but sat back and de 
 clared him an "infidel" and an "atheist." 
 Q Two popes, Pope Alexander the Seventh 
 
 83 
 
WHITE H > NTHS 
 
 and Pope Urban the Eighth, placed inter 
 dicts upon Galileo and forbade his teaching 
 that the earth revolved, under serious pen 
 alty. The works of Galileo and Copernicus 
 were forbidden to all good Catholics, and 
 were upon the Index for over two hundred 
 and fifty years, or until the year 1836. For 
 teaching the truths of natural science Bruno 
 was burned alive, and his ashes scattered to 
 the four winds. 
 
 The policy of every formal religion has 
 always been to allow the fullest play possible 
 to individuality, and yet not risk the life of 
 the institution. The institution being the 
 important thing the individual, secondary. 
 This is the idea of society in general, as 
 well &&* Individuals, however, threaten at 
 times the life of the institution or system, 
 by an excess of strength, and these power 
 ful individuals it has been thought necessary 
 to subdue and suppress. So, when one reads 
 history he notes the fact that in days gone 
 by nations have killed, banished or dis 
 graced their men of genius. 
 
 84 
 
WHITE HYACINTH: 
 
 This has always been done with the avowed 
 purpose of protecting the state or the pre 
 vailing religious system. Socrates, Pericles, 
 Jesus, Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Savonarola, 
 Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno, Huss, Wycliff, 
 are the types that society has suppressed. 
 Q That those who have done the destroying 
 did not know what they were doing is 
 probably very true. In one way they were 
 surely self-deceived they thought they were 
 working for the good of the state or their 
 religious system, when what they really 
 feared was the curtailment of their own 
 individual power. Men do the things they 
 wish, and absolve their consciences at their 
 convenience. And forever do they deceive 
 themselves as to their motives. 
 Said Archbishop Ireland, "The enemies of 
 the Church have been inside the Church, 
 not outside of it. The supreme blunders of 
 churchmen have been in suppressing strong 
 men in thwarting individuality & All the 
 good law and all the good order which the 
 state or Church enjoys to-day may be traced 
 
 85 
 
W H I T P H S 
 
 back over some route to the words and 
 deeds of men, who rebelled against the kind 
 of law and the kind of order that they found 
 administered by its ' constituted guardians;' 
 by men who dared to appeal from the 
 ' keepers of divine truth' to divine truth 
 itself from the 'trustees of God' to God 
 Himself." 
 
 Those who manage religious systems have 
 small faith in a Supreme Being or Universal 
 Order. Luther, left alone, would have soon 
 settled down into a country parson, and his 
 protestantism would have diffused itself in 
 the form of a healthful attenuation. All ex 
 tremes tend to cure themselves. Well has it 
 been said that Luther retarded civilization 
 a thousand years & It was the absurd and 
 foolish rancor of priests and popes that by 
 opposition lifted Luther into a world-power, 
 and made possible a thousand warring, 
 jarring, quibbling sects and systems, con 
 suming each other, and the time and sub 
 stance of mankind, in their vacuous and 
 inept theological antics. 
 
 86 
 
Luther prolonged the life of theology by 
 presenting it in a palatable capsule, just at a 
 time when the intelligence of the world 
 was making wry faces getting ready to spew 
 it. Q Pope Leo XIII. , the wisest man who 
 ever sat in the papal chair, once wrote, 
 " The real enemies of the Church have been 
 those o'er zealous churchmen who have 
 sought to stamp out error by violence, for 
 getful that man is little and our God is 
 great, and that in His wisdom the Father 
 of all has provided that evil left alone shall 
 soon exhaust itself, and right, of itself, will 
 surely prevail & Impatient defense of our 
 holy religion springs from limitation and 
 lack of faith. Against its avowed enemies 
 the Church stands secure, but against those 
 who are quick to draw the sword and strike 
 off the ear of Malchus, we are often power 
 less. If the servants of the Church had ever 
 taught by example, through love and pa 
 tience, even now the reign of our God 
 would be universal, as the flowers of spring 
 carpet the gentle hillside slopes." 
 
 87 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 These gentle words of Pope Leo lose none 
 of their quality, even when the obvious fact 
 is pointed out that the man who struck off 
 the ear of the high-priest's servant, was the 
 very man who founded the Church. 
 The reason there are now so few professors 
 to teach theology, is on account of the 
 scarcity of scholars who will pay for being 
 taught. The demand always keeps pace with 
 the supply where salaries and honors are 
 involved. If there were a vast number of 
 people who wanted to be taught alchemy, 
 astrology and palmistry, there would not be 
 wanting teachers to teach these things. 
 When augury was in vogue and men fore 
 told the future by the flight of birds, in all 
 first-class colleges there were endowed chairs 
 held down by High-Test, Non-Explosive 
 great men learned in the noble science of 
 augury & & 
 
 If there were now emoluments and honors 
 for teaching alchemy, astrology, palmistry 
 and augury, there would be pedagogic pre 
 paratory schools for all of these things, 
 
 88 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 richly endowed by good men who did not 
 understand them, but assumed that other 
 people did. 
 
 The science of theology is the science of 
 episcopopagy. It starts with an assumption 
 and ends in a fog & Nobody ever under 
 stood it, but vast numbers have pretended 
 to, because they thought others did. Very 
 slowly we have grown honest, and now the 
 wise man and the good man accepts the 
 doctrine of the unknowable. 
 Gradually the consensus of intelligence has 
 pushed theology off into the dust-bin of 
 oblivion, with alchemy and astrology. 
 Theology is not meant to be understood 
 it is to be believed. A theologian is an ink- 
 fish you can never catch. And in stating 
 this fact I fully appreciate that I am laying 
 myself open to the charge of being a theo 
 logian myself. 
 
 When a prominent member of congress, 
 of slightly convivial turn, went to sleep on 
 the floor of the House of Representatives, 
 and suddenly awakening, convulsed the 
 
 89 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 assemblage by loudly demanding, " Where 
 am I at ? " he propounded an inquiry that 
 is classic & With the very first glimmering 
 of intelligence, and as far back as history 
 goes, man has always asked that question 
 and three others : 
 Where am I ? 
 Who am I ? 
 What am I here for ? 
 Where am I going ? 
 
 A question implies an answer, and so, 
 coeval with the questioner, we find a class 
 of volunteers springing into being whose 
 business it has been to answer. 
 And as partial payment for answering these 
 questions, the man who answered has ex 
 acted a living from the man who asked, 
 also titles, gauds, jewels and obsequies. 
 Further than this, the volunteer who ans 
 wered has declared himself exempt from 
 all useful labor. This volunteer is our theo 
 logian ^ Walt Whitman has said : 
 " I think I could turn and live with animals, 
 they are so placid and self-contained. 
 
 90 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 I stand and look at them long and long 
 
 They do not sweat and whine about their 
 
 condition. 
 
 They do not lie awake in the dark and 
 
 weep for their sins. 
 
 They do not make me sick deciding their 
 
 duty to God. 
 
 Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented 
 
 with the mania of owning things. 
 
 Not one kneels to another, or to his kind 
 
 that lived thousands of years ago. 
 
 Not one is respectable or unhappy over the 
 
 whole earth." 
 
 But we should note this : Whitman merely 
 
 wanted to live with animals, he did not 
 
 desire to become one. He was not willing 
 
 to forfeit knowledge; and a part of that 
 
 knowledge was, that man has some things 
 
 yet to learn from the brute. 
 
 Much of man's misery has come from his 
 
 persistent questioning. 
 
 The book of Genesis is certainly right, when 
 
 it tells us that man's troubles come from 
 
 his desire to know. The fruit of the tree of 
 
 91 
 
WHITE HYACINTH; 
 
 knowledge is bitter, and man's digestive 
 apparatus has been ill-conditioned to assim 
 ilate it. But still we are grateful, and good 
 men never forget that it was woman who 
 gave the fruit to man men learn nothing 
 alone. In the Garden of Eden, with every 
 thing supplied, man was an animal, but 
 when he was turned out and had to work, 
 strive, struggle and suffer, he began to grow 
 into something better. 
 The theologians of the Far East have told 
 us that man's deliverance from the evils of 
 life must come through the killing of de 
 sire; we reach Nirvana rest through 
 nothingness & But within a decade it has 
 been borne in upon a vast number of think 
 ing men of the world, that deliverance from 
 discontent and sorrow was to be had, not 
 through ceasing to ask questions, but by 
 asking one more f& The question is this, 
 "What can I do?" 
 
 And having asked the question, we must 
 set to work answering it ourselves. 
 When man went to work, action removed 
 
 92 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 the doubt that theory could not solve. 
 QThe rushing winds purify the air; only 
 running water is pure ; and the holy man, 
 if there be such, is the one who loses him 
 self in persistent, useful effort. The saint is 
 the man who keeps his word and is on time. 
 By working for all, we secure the best re 
 sults for self, and when we truly work for 
 self, we work for all /*? The priestly class 
 evolves naturally into being everywhere as 
 man awakens and asks questions. Only the 
 unknown is terrible, says Victor Hugo. We 
 can cope with the known, and at the worst 
 we can overcome the unknown by accept 
 ing it. Verestchagin, the great painter, who 
 knew the psychology of war as few men 
 have, and went down to his death glori 
 ously, as he should, on a sinking battleship, 
 once said, "In modern warfare, when man 
 does not see his enemy, the poetry of battle 
 is gone, and man is rendered by the un 
 known into a quaking coward." 
 Enveloped in the fog of ignorance every 
 phenomena of nature causes man to quake 
 
 93 
 
W H 1 i A C f H S 
 
 and tremble he wants to know ,*? Fear 
 prompts him to ask, and greed for power, 
 place and pelf, replies. 
 To succeed beyond the average, is to realize 
 a weakness in humanity and then bank on 
 it. The priest who pacifies is as natural as 
 the fear he seeks to assuage as natural as 
 man himself. 
 
 So the first man is in bondage to his fear, and 
 he exchanges this for bondage to a priest. 
 First, he fears the unknown; second, he 
 fears the priest who has power over the 
 unknown. 
 
 Soon the priest becomes a slave to the an 
 swers he has conjured forth. He grows to 
 believe what he at first pretended to know. 
 The punishment of every liar is that he 
 eventually believes his lies & The mind of 
 man becomes tinted and subdued to what 
 he works in, like the dyer's hand. 
 So we have the formula : 
 Man in bondage to fear. 
 Man in bondage to a priest. 
 The priest in bondage to a creed. 
 
 94 
 
W HITE HYACINTHS 
 
 Then the priest and his institution becomes 
 an integral part and parcel of the state, 
 mixed in all of its affairs. The success of 
 the state seems to lie in holding belief intact 
 and stilling all further questions of the 
 people, transferring all doubts to this vol 
 unteer class that answers for a consideration. 
 Q Naturally the man who does not accept 
 the answers is regarded by the priest as the 
 enemy of the state that is, the enemy of 
 mankind. 
 
 To keep this questioner down has been the 
 chief concern of every religion /*? And the 
 problem of progress has been to smuggle 
 the newly discovered truth past Cerberus, 
 the priest, by preparing a sop that was to 
 him palatable ,*? From every branch of 
 science, the priest has been routed, save 
 sociology alone. Here he has stubbornly 
 made his last stand, and is saving himself 
 alive by slowly accepting the situation and 
 transforming himself into the promoter of 
 a social club. 
 The priest is society's walking delegate. 
 
 95 
 
WHIT NT T H S 
 
 He is the self-appointed business agent of 
 Divinity and no contract between God 
 and man, man and man, or man and 
 woman, is valid unless ratified by him. All 
 who do not belong to his union are scabs. 
 Q The evolution of the race is mirrored in 
 the evolution of the individual. Look back 
 on your own career your first dawn of 
 thought began in an inquiry, "Who made 
 all this how did it all happen ? " 
 And theology comes in with a glib expla 
 nation : the fairies, dryads, gnomes and gods 
 made everything, and they can do with it 
 all as they please. Later we concentrate all 
 of these personalities in one god, with a 
 devil in competition, and this for a time 
 satisfies & & 
 
 Later, the thought of an arbitrary being 
 dealing out rewards and punishments, grows 
 dim, for we see the regular workings of 
 cause and effect. We begin to talk of energy, 
 the divine essence, and the reign of law. 
 We speak as Matthew Arnold did of a 
 "Power, not ourselves, that makes for 
 
 96 
 
WHITE HYACINTH; 
 
 righteousness." But Emerson believed in a 
 Power that was in himself, that made for 
 righteousness. 
 
 Metaphysics reaches its highest stage when 
 it affirms, "All is One," "All is Mind," 
 just as theology reaches its highest concep 
 tion when it becomes monotheistic having 
 one God and curtailing the personality of 
 the devil to a mere abstraction. 
 But this does not long satisfy, for we begin 
 to ask, " What is this One ? " or "What is 
 Mind?" 
 
 Then positivity comes in and says that the 
 highest wisdom lies in knowing that we do 
 not know anything, and never can, concern 
 ing a First Cause. All we find is phenom 
 ena, and behind phenomena, phenomena. 
 &&b\ The laws of nature do not account for 
 the origin of the laws of nature. Spencer's 
 famous chapter on the unknowable defines 
 the limits of human knowledge. And it is 
 worth noting that the one thing which gave 
 most offense in Spencer's work was this 
 doctrine of the unknowable. This, indeed, 
 
 97 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 forms but a small part of the work of this 
 great man, and if it were all demolished 
 there would still remain his doctrine of the 
 known. 
 
 The bitterness of theology toward science 
 arises from the fact that as we find things 
 out, we dispense with the arbitrary hand 
 made god, and his business agent, the priest. 
 Q Men begin by explaining everything, and 
 the explanations given are always for other 
 people. Parents answer the child, not tell 
 ing him the actual truth, but giving him 
 that which will satisfy that which he can 
 mentally digest. To say " the fairies brought 
 it" may be all right until the child begins 
 to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be 
 shown one, and then we have to make the 
 somewhat humiliating confession that there 
 are no fairies. 
 
 But now we perceive that this mild fabrica 
 tion in reference to Santa Claus and the 
 fairies, is right and proper mental food for 
 the child. His mind cannot grasp the truth 
 that some things are unknowable; and he 
 
 98 
 
W H I T K HYACINTH! 
 
 is not sufficiently skilled in the things of 
 the world to become interested in them he 
 must have a resting place for his thought, 
 and so the fairy tale comes in as an aid to 
 the growing imagination ,*? Only this we 
 place no penalty in disbelief in fairies, nor 
 do we make offers of reward to all who 
 believe that fairies actually exist. Neither do 
 we tell the child that people who believe in 
 fairies are good, and that those who do not 
 are wicked and perverse. 
 The theological and metaphysical stages are 
 necessary, but the sooner man can be grad 
 uated out of them the better. Hate, fear, 
 revenge and doubt are all theological attri 
 butes, detrimental to man's best efforts &&:> 
 Moral ideas were an afterthought, and 
 really form no part of theology. All beauti 
 ful altruistic impulses thrive better when 
 separated from theology. 
 And the sum of the argument is, that all 
 progress in mind, body and material things 
 has come to man through the study of 
 cause and effect. And just in degree as he 
 
 99 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 abandoned the study of theology as futile 
 and absurd, and centered on helping him 
 self here and now, has he prospered. 
 Man's only enemy is himself, and this is 
 on account of his ignorance of this world, 
 and his superstitious belief in another &&?> 
 Our troubles, like diseases, all come from 
 ignorance and weakness, and through our 
 ignorance are we weak and unable to adjust 
 ourselves to better conditions. The more 
 we know of this world the better we think 
 of it, and the better we are able to use it 
 for our advancement. 
 
 So far as we can judge, the unknown cause 
 that rules the world by unchanging laws is 
 a movement forward toward happiness, 
 growth, justice, peace and right. Therefore, 
 the scientist, who perceives that all is good 
 when rightly received and rightly under 
 stood, is really the priest and holy man 
 the mediator and explainer of the myster 
 ious. As fast as we understand things they 
 cease to be supernatural. The supernatural 
 is the natural not yet understood. The theo- 
 
 100 
 
WHITE HYACINTH! 
 
 logical priest who believes in a God and a 
 Devil is the real modern infidel. 
 The man of faith is the one who discards 
 all thought of "how it first happened," 
 and fixes his mind on the fact that he is 
 here. The more he studies the conditions 
 that surround him, the greater his faith in 
 the truth that all is well. 
 If men had turned their attention to hu 
 manity, discarding theology, using as much 
 talent, time, money and effort in solving 
 social problems, as they have in trying to 
 wring from the skies the secrets of the un 
 knowable, this world would now be a veri 
 table paradise. It is theology that has barred 
 the entrance to Eden, by diverting the at 
 tention of men from this world to another. 
 C All religious denominations now dimly 
 perceive the trend of the times, and are 
 gradually omitting theology from their 
 teachings and taking on ethics and sociology 
 instead. We are evolving theology out and 
 sociology in. Theology has ever been the 
 
 foe of progress and the enemy of knowl- 
 
 101 
 
edge. It has professed to know all, having 
 a revelation direct from the Creator Him 
 self, and has placed a penalty on all investi 
 gation and advancement. 
 The age of enlightenment will not be 
 here until every church has evolved into 
 a schoolhouse, and every preacher 
 is both a teacher and a pupil. 
 
 102 
 
NATURE Is ON THE SIDE OF THOSE 
 WHO PUT THEIR TRUST IN HER 
 
 VACATIONS 
 
 HERE are three good 
 reasons why all employes 
 should have vacations. One 
 is so the employer can see 
 how easily anybody and 
 everybody's place can be 
 filled. The next is so the 
 employe can see, when he returns, how 
 well he can be spared, since things go right 
 along without him. The third is so the 
 employe can show the employer, and the 
 employer can understand that the employe 
 is not manipulating the accounts or engi 
 neering deals for his own benefit. Many a 
 defalcation could have been avoided had 
 the trusted man been sent away for a few 
 weeks every year, and an outsider put in 
 his place. Beyond these, the vacation has 
 little excuse. 
 
 As a matter of recuperation the vacation 
 does not recuperate, since as a rule, no man 
 
 103 
 
WHITE HYACINTHS 
 
 needs a vacation so much as the person who 
 has just had one. 
 
 The man who is so run down that he needs 
 a vacation can never adjust or reform him 
 self in two weeks. What he really needs is 
 to reform his life. 
 
 To work during the year at so rapid a pace 
 that in August one's vitality is exhausted, 
 and a rest demanded is rank folly ^ What 
 we all need is enough vacation every day so 
 that we can face each morning with health 
 sufficient to do our work in gladness. That 
 is to say, we need enough of a play-spell 
 every day to keep us in good physical con 
 dition. The man who is done up and fagged 
 out has not found his work. And the man 
 who lives during the year in anticipation of 
 a vacation does not deserve one, for he has 
 not ascertained that it is work, and not 
 vacations, that makes life endurable. 
 There be good people who travel by the 
 gorge route so incessantly that their livers 
 finally go on a strike, palates finally declare 
 a lock-out, and then they laud Bernarr 
 
 104 
 
W H I T E HYACINTH! 
 
 Mac Fadden, and proclaim fasting a virtue. 
 All this until reasonable health returns, 
 when they again buy commutation tickets 
 via the whirlpool and play hockey with 
 their in'ards. If you hustle so continually 
 that your system demands a vacation, you 
 have gotten where you cannot do good 
 work. 
 
 If you have reached a point where you can 
 not do good work, you can not enjoy your 
 vacation. If you absolutely need a vacation 
 you are not in the mood to enjoy it, because 
 it is thrust upon you by necessity, willy- 
 nilly. Things forced upon us are never 
 pleasant. The only man who can really en 
 joy an outing is the man who does not need 
 it. And the man who keeps his system so 
 strong and well balanced that he does not 
 need a vacation is the one who will event 
 ually marry the proprietor's daughter and 
 have his name on the sign jfi Before you 
 manage a business, you would better learn 
 how to manage your cosmos. 
 I know because I take vacations myself. 
 
 105 
 
NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS 
 
 IN RE SUCCESS 
 
 S a rule, the man who can 
 do all things equally well 
 is a very mediocre individ 
 ual. Those who stand out 
 before a groping world as 
 beacon-lights were men of 
 great faults and unequal 
 performances. It is quite needless to add 
 that they do not live on account of their 
 faults or imperfections, but in spite of them. 
 CJ Henry David Thoreau's place in the 
 common heart of humanity grows firmer 
 and more secure as the seasons pass ; and 
 his life proves for us again the paradoxical 
 fact, that the only men who really succeed 
 are those who fail. 
 
 Thoreau's obscurity, his poverty, his lack 
 of public recognition in life, either as a 
 writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, 
 his failure in business, and his early death, 
 form a combination of calamities that make 
 him as immortal as a martyr & Especially 
 
 106 
 
WHITE N T H S 
 
 does an early death sanctify all and make 
 the record complete, but the death of a 
 naturalist while right at the height of his 
 ability to see and enjoy death from tuber 
 culosis of a man who lived most of the time 
 in open air these things array us on the 
 side of the man 'gainst unkind fate, and 
 cement our sympathy and love. 
 Nature's care forever is for the species, and 
 the individual is sacrificed without ruth that 
 the race may live and progress. This dumb 
 indifference of nature to the individual 
 this apparent contempt for the man seems 
 to prove that the individual is only a phe 
 nomenon. Man is merely a manifestation, 
 a symptom, a symbol, and his quick passing 
 proves that he isn't the thing. Nature does 
 not care for him she produces a million 
 beings in order to get one who has thoughts 
 all are swept into the dustpan of oblivion 
 but the one who thinks; he alone lives, 
 embalmed in the memories of generations 
 unborn. Q The Thoreau race is dead. In 
 Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord there 
 
 107 
 
WHITE H Y A C I N T H S 
 
 is a monument marking a row of mounds 
 where a half-dozen Thoreaus rest ^ The 
 inscriptions are all of one size, but the 
 name of one Thoreau alone lives, and he 
 lives because he had thoughts and expressed 
 them & & 
 
 One of the most insistent errors ever put 
 out was that statement of Rousseau, para 
 phrased in part by Thomas Jefferson, that 
 all men are born free and equal. No man 
 was ever born free, and no two are equal, 
 and would not remain so an hour, even if 
 Jove, through caprice, should make them 
 so. If any of the tribe of Thoreau get into 
 elysium, it will be by tagging close to the 
 only man among them who glorified his 
 Maker by using his reason. Nothing should 
 be claimed as truth that can not be demon 
 strated, but as a hypothesis (borrowed from 
 Henry Thoreau), I give you this: Man is 
 only the tool or vehicle Mind alone is 
 immortal Thought is 
 the thing. 
 
 108 
 
So here then endeth WHITE HYACINTHS, 
 being a Book of the Heart, containing 
 thoughts that have been voiced before, but 
 not so well & Done into print by The 
 Roycrofters at their Shop which is in East 
 Aurora, Erie County, New York, mcmvii 
 
ELBERT 
 HVBBAKD 
 
VVP 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 

 Publisher 
 The Roycrofter* 
 
 M C M.V 1 1.