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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER STORIES ***
WHAT IS MAN?
AND OTHER ESSAYS
By Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
CONTENTS
WHAT IS MAN?
THE DEATH OF JEAN
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY
SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY
AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET
AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY
CONCERNING TOBACCO
THE BEE
TAMING THE BICYCLE
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
WHAT IS MAN?
I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had
asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more.
The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and
furnish his reasons for his position.]
Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
O.M. Where are these found?
Y.M. In the rocks.
O.M. In a pure state?
Y.M. No—in ores.
O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
Y.M. No—it is the patient work of countless ages.
O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
Y.M. No—substantially nothing.
O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?
Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the
Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine
several metals of which brass is made.
O.M. Then?
Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
O.M. You would require much of this one?
Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a
word all the cunning machines of a great factory?
Y.M. It could.
O.M. What could the stone engine do?
Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing more, perhaps.
O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. But not the stone one?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the
stone one?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Personal merits?
Y.M. _Personal_ merits? How do you mean?
O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own
performance?
Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
O.M. Why not?
Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the
law of construction. It is not a _merit_ that it does the things which
it is set to do—it can’t _help_ doing them.
O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does
so little?
Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its
make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing _personal_ about
it; it cannot choose. In this process of “working up to the matter” is
it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are
about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the
performance of either?
O.M. Yes—but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall
we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage
and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the
stuff of which the steel one was built—but along with a lot of sulphur
and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from
the old geologic ages—prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which
nothing within the rock itself had either _power_ to remove or any
_desire_ to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; “Prejudices which nothing within the
rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove.” Go on.
O.M. Prejudices must be removed by _outside influences_ or not at all.
Put that down.
Y.M. Very well; “Must be removed by outside influences or not at all.”
Go on.
O.M. The iron’s prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock.
To make it more exact, the iron’s absolute _indifference_ as to whether
the rock be removed or not. Then comes the _outside influence_ and
grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The _iron_ in the ore
is still captive. An _outside influence_ smelts it free of the clogging
ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further
progress. An _outside influence_ beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace
and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now—its
training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible
process can it be educated into _gold_. Will you set that down?
Y.M. Yes. “Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into
gold.”
O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden men,
and steel men, and so on—and each has the limitations of his nature,
his heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build
engines out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you
must not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones.
In each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its
obstructing prejudicial ones by education—smelting, refining, and so
forth.
Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
O.M. Yes. Man the machine—man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man
is, is due to his _make_, and to the _influences_ brought to bear upon
it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved,
directed, _commanded_, by _exterior_ influences—_solely_. He
_originates_ nothing, not even a thought.
Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are
talking is all foolishness?
O.M. It is a quite natural opinion—indeed an inevitable opinion—but
_you _did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are
odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered
unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from
streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart
and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors.
_Personally_ you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment
of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you
cannot claim even the slender merit of _putting the borrowed materials
together_. That was done _automatically_—by your mental machinery, in
strict accordance with the law of that machinery’s construction. And
you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have _not
even any command over it_.
Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but
that one?
O.M. Spontaneously? No. And _you did not form that one_; your machinery
did it for you—automatically and instantly, without reflection or the
need of it.
Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
O.M. Suppose you try?
Y.M. (_After a quarter of an hour_.) I have reflected.
O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion—as an experiment?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. With success?
Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.
O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command
over itself—it is worked _solely from the outside_. That is the law of
its make; it is the law of all machines.
Y.M. Can’t I _ever_ change one of these automatic opinions?
O.M. No. You can’t yourself, but _exterior influences_ can do it.
Y.M. And exterior ones _only_?
O.M. Yes—exterior ones only.
Y.M. That position is untenable—I may say ludicrously untenable.
O.M. What makes you think so?
Y.M. I don’t merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter
upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate
purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. _That _is not
the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal;
for I originated the project.
O.M. Not a shred of it. _It grew out of this talk with me_. But for
that it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates
anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come _from the outside_.
Y.M. It’s an exasperating subject. The _first_ man had original
thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.
O.M. It is a mistake. Adam’s thoughts came to him from the outside.
_You_ have a fear of death. You did not invent that—you got it from
outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death—none in
the world.
Y.M. Yes, he had.
O.M. When he was created?
Y.M. No.
O.M. When, then?
Y.M. When he was threatened with it.
O.M. Then it came from _outside_. Adam is quite big enough; let us not
try to make a god of him. _None but gods have ever had a thought which
did not come from the outside_. Adam probably had a good head, but it
was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up _from the outside_.
He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had
not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil—he had
to get the idea _from the outside_. Neither he nor Eve was able to
originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came
in with the apple _from the outside_. A man’s brain is so constructed
that _it can originate nothing whatsoever_. It can only use material
obtained _outside_. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically,
not by will-power. _It has no command over itself, its owner has no
command over it_.
Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare’s creations—
O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare’s _imitations_. Shakespeare created
nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly
portrayed people whom _God_ had created; but he created none himself.
Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare
could not create. _He was a machine, and machines do not create_.
Y.M. Where _was_ his excellence, then?
O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a
Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him _from the
outside_; outside influences, suggestions, _experiences_ (reading,
seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the
patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable
machinery, and _it automatically_ turned out that pictured and gorgeous
fabric which still compels the astonishment of the world. If
Shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in
the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no _outside material_ to
work with, and could have invented none; and _no outside influences_,
teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and
could have invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced
nothing. In Turkey he would have produced something—something up to the
highest limit of Turkish influences, associations, and training. In
France he would have produced something better—something up to the
highest limit of the French influences and training. In England he rose
to the highest limit attainable through the _outside helps afforded by
that land’s ideals, influences, and training_. You and I are but
sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor
and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning
out Gobelins.
Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel
proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor
applause and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.
O.M. It isn’t a doctrine, it is merely a fact.
Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in
being a coward?
O.M. _Personal_ merit? No. A brave man does not _create_ his bravery.
He is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to
him. A baby born with a billion dollars—where is the personal merit in
that? A baby born with nothing—where is the personal demerit in that?
The one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is
neglected and despised—where is the sense in it?
Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
cowardice and becoming brave—and succeeds. What do you say to that?
O.M. That it shows the value of _training in right directions over
training in wrong ones_. Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
education, in right directions—_training one’s self-approbation to
elevate its ideals_.
Y.M. But as to merit—the personal merit of the victorious coward’s
project and achievement?
O.M. There isn’t any. In the world’s view he is a worthier man than he
was before, but _he_ didn’t achieve the change—the merit of it is not
his.
Y.M. Whose, then?
O.M. His _make_, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
outside.
Y.M. His make?
O.M. To start with, he was _not_ utterly and completely a coward, or
the influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid
of a cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid
of a man. There was something to build upon. There was a _seed_. No
seed, no plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him?
It was no merit of _his_ that the seed was there.
Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of _cultivating_ it, the resolution to
cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.
O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence _all_ impulses, good or
bad, come—from _outside_. If that timid man had lived all his life in a
community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never
heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express
envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea
of bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any
possibility have occurred to him to _resolve_ to become brave. He
_could not originate the idea_—it had to come to him from the
_outside_. And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice
derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned
up her nose and said, “I am told that you are a coward!” It was not
_he_ that turned over the new leaf—she did it for him. _He_ must not
strut around in the merit of it —it is not his.
Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.
O.M. No. _Outside influences_ reared it. At the command—and
trembling—he marched out into the field—with other soldiers and in the
daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the _influence of example_,
he drew courage from his comrades’ courage; he was afraid, and wanted
to run, but he did not dare; he was _afraid_ to run, with all those
soldiers looking on. He was progressing, you see—the moral fear of
shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of
the campaign experience will have taught him that not _all_ who go into
battle get hurt—an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and
he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and
be huzza’d at with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches
past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating.
After that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army—and
there will not be a shade nor suggestion of _personal merit_ in it
anywhere; it will all have come from the _outside_. The Victoria Cross
breeds more heroes than—
Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get
no credit for it?
O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an
important detail of man’s make which we have not yet touched upon.
Y.M. What detail is that?
O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things—the only impulse
that ever moves a person to do a thing.
Y.M. The _only_ one! Is there but one?
O.M. That is all. There is only one.
Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the
sole impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?
O.M. The impulse to _content his own spirit_—the _necessity_ of
contenting his own spirit and _winning its approval_.
Y.M. Oh, come, that won’t do!
O.M. Why won’t it?
Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his
own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing
solely for another person’s good when it is a positive disadvantage to
himself.
O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do _him_ good, _first_; otherwise he
will not do it. He may _think_ he is doing it solely for the other
person’s sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit
first—the other’s person’s benefit has to always take _second_ place.
Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self—sacrifice? Please
answer me that.
O.M. What is self-sacrifice?
Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
benefit to one’s self can result from it.
II
Man’s Sole Impulse—the Securing of His Own Approval
Old Man. There have been instances of it—you think?
Young Man. _Instances_? Millions of them!
O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined
them—critically?
Y.M. They don’t need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse
back of them.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man
lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight.
He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his
pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home
through the storm. There—it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is
marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some
other way of looking at it?
O.M. Can you put yourself in the man’s place and tell me what he felt
and what he thought?
Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the
three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking
of it.
O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?
Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His
heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.
O.M. He felt well?
Y.M. One cannot doubt it.
O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got
for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the _real_ why of his
making the investment. In the first place _he_ couldn’t bear the pain
which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of _his_
pain—this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor
the old woman _his_ conscience would torture him all the way home.
Thinking of _his_ pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn’t
relieve the old woman _he_ would not get any sleep. He must buy some
sleep—still thinking of _himself_, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought
himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of
the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night’s
sleep—all for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of
itself. On his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang—profit on top
of profit! The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman
was—_first_—to _content his own spirit_; secondly to relieve _her_
sufferings. Is it your opinion that men’s acts proceed from one central
and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?
Y.M. From a variety, of course—some high and fine and noble, others
not. What is your opinion?
O.M. Then there is but _one_ law, one source.
Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that
one source?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Will you put that law into words?
O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. _From his cradle to
his grave a man never does a single thing which has any_ FIRST AND
FOREMOST _object_ _but one_—_to secure peace of mind, spiritual
comfort_, _for_ HIMSELF.
Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else’s comfort, spiritual
or physical?
O.M. No. _except on those distinct terms_—that it shall _first_ secure
_his own_ spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.
O.M. For instance?
Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who
loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping
family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold,
wounds, and death. Is that seeking spiritual comfort?
O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves _more_ than he loves
peace—_the approval of his neighbors and the public_. And perhaps there
is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain—the _disapproval_
of his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go
to the field—not because his spirit will be _entirely_ comfortable
there, but because it will be more comfortable there than it would be
if he remained at home. He will always do the thing which will bring
him the _most_ mental comfort—for that is _the sole law of his life_.
He leaves the weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them
uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his _own_ comfort to
secure theirs.
Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
and peaceful man to—
O.M. Go to war? Yes—public opinion can force some men to do _anything_.
Y.M. _Anything_?
O.M. Yes—anything.
Y.M. I don’t believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do a
wrong thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. He
regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of
religion—but in deference to _public opinion_ he fought a duel. He
deeply loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously
deserted them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to
lifelong sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world.
In the then condition of the public standards of honor he could not
have been comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to
fight. The teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his
kindness of heart, his high principles, all went for nothing when they
stood in the way of his spiritual comfort. A man will do _anything_, no
matter what it is, _to secure his spiritual comfort_; and he can
neither be forced nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for
its object. Hamilton’s act was compelled by the inborn necessity of
contenting his own spirit; in this it was like all the other acts of
his life, and like all the acts of all men’s lives. Do you see where
the kernel of the matter lies? A man cannot be comfortable without _his
own_ approval. He will secure the largest share possible of that, at
all costs, all sacrifices.
Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get _public_
approval.
O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his
family’s approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval
was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together—in
the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the _most_
comfort of mind, the most _self_—approval; so he sacrificed all other
values to get it.
Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
braved the public contempt.
O.M. They acted _according to their make_. They valued their principles
and the approval of their families _above_ the public approval. They
took the thing they valued _most_ and let the rest go. They took what
would give them the _largest_ share of _personal contentment and
approval_—a man _always_ does. Public opinion cannot force that kind of
men to go to the wars. When they go it is for other reasons. Other
spirit-contenting reasons.
Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons?
O.M. There are no others.
Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a
burning building, what do you call that?
O.M. When he does it, it is the law of _his_ make. _He_ can’t bear to
see the child in that peril (a man of a different make _could_), and so
he tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he
was after—_his own approval_.
Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity,
Magnanimity, Forgiveness?
O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
securing one’s self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject
to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the
_same person_ all the time. To change the figure, the _compulsion_ that
moves a man—and there is but the one—is the necessity of securing the
contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead.
Y.M. That is foolishness. Love—
O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising
form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not
_primarily_ for the object’s sake, but for _its own_. When its object
is happy _it_ is happy—and that is what it is unconsciously after.
Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of
mother-love?
O.M. No, _it _is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go
naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food;
suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a
living _pleasure_ in making these sacrifices. _She does it for that
reward_—that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort.
_She would do it for your child_ IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.
Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.
O.M. It isn’t a philosophy, it is a fact.
Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which—
O.M. No. There is _no_ act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs
from any motive but the one—the necessity of appeasing and contenting
one’s own spirit.
Y.M. The world’s philanthropists—
O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them—from habit and training;
and _they_ could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they
did not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes _them_ happy to
see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are
after—_happiness, self-approval_. Why don’t miners do the same thing?
Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by _not_ doing it.
There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make.
Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty’s sake?
O.M. That _it does not exist_. Duties are not performed for duty’s
_sake_, but because their _neglect_ would make the man _uncomfortable_.
A man performs but _one_ duty—the duty of contenting his spirit, the
duty of making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most
satisfyingly perform this sole and only duty by _helping_ his neighbor,
he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by _swindling_
his neighbor, he will do it. But he always looks out for Number
One—_first_; the effects upon others are a _secondary_ matter. Men
pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary
value of the phrase, _does not exist and has not existed_. A man often
honestly _thinks_ he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some
one else, but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a
requirement of his nature and training, and thus acquire peace for his
soul.
Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their
lives to contenting their consciences.
O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience—that
independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man
who is the man’s Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because
there are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin’s conscience in one
way, a philanthropist’s in another, a miser’s in another, a burglar’s
in still another. As a _guide_ or _incentive_ to any authoritatively
prescribed line of morals or conduct (leaving _training_ out of the
account), a man’s conscience is totally valueless. I know a
kind-hearted Kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking—whose
conscience was troubling him, to phrase it with exactness—_because he
had neglected to kill a certain man_—a man whom he had never seen. The
stranger had killed this man’s friend in a fight, this man’s Kentucky
training made it a duty to kill the stranger for it. He neglected his
duty—kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his unrelenting
conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. At last, to get ease
of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted up the stranger and took his
life. It was an immense act of _self-sacrifice_ (as per the usual
definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done
it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at
smaller cost. But we are so made that we will pay _anything_ for that
contentment—even another man’s life.
Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of _trained_ consciences. You mean that we
are not _born_ with consciences competent to guide us aright?
O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and
not have to be taught it.
Y.M. But consciences can be _trained_?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.
O.M. Yes—they do their share; they do what they can.
Y.M. And the rest is done by—
O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences—for good or bad: influences
which work without rest during every waking moment of a man’s life,
from cradle to grave.
Y.M. You have tabulated these?
O.M. Many of them—yes.
Y.M. Will you read me the result?
O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour.
Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?
O.M. It _can’t_ be trained to do a thing for any _other_ reason. The
thing is impossible.
Y.M. There _must_ be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act
recorded in human history somewhere.
O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out.
Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling
in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him—
O.M. Wait. Describe the _man_. Describe the _fellow-being_. State if
there is an _audience_ present; or if they are _alone_.
Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act?
O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are
alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?
Y.M. If you choose.
O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man’s daughter?
Y.M. Well, n-no—make it someone else.
O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?
Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no
audience to observe the act, the man wouldn’t perform it.
O.M. But there is here and there a man who _would_. People, for
instance, like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from
the fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five
cents and walked home in the storm—there are here and there men like
that who would do it. And why? Because they couldn’t _bear_ to see a
fellow-being struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would
give _them_ pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account.
_They wouldn’t do it otherwise_. They strictly obey the law which I
have been insisting upon. You must remember and always distinguish the
people who _can’t bear_ things from people who _can_. It will throw
light upon a number of apparently “self-sacrificing” cases.
Y.M. Oh, dear, it’s all so disgusting.
O.M. Yes. And so true.
Y.M. Come—take the good boy who does things he doesn’t want to do, in
order to gratify his mother.
O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies _him_ to
gratify his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the
good boy would not do the act. He _must_ obey the iron law. None can
escape it.
Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who—
O.M. You needn’t mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter
about the bad boy’s act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn’t do
it.
Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man’s
conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be
taught and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy,
but I don’t think it can go wrong; if you wake it up—
_A Little Story_
O.M. I will tell you a little story:
Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched
by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature—that desire
which is in us all to better other people’s condition by having them
think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last
moments, reproached him and said:
“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and
my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I
have lost_.”
And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:
“_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do
this cruel thing? We have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
reward.”_
The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done,
and he said:
“_It was wrong—I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In
my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.”
Then the mother said:
“_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is
dead,—and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through
centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to
disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?”
Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death!
O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.
Y.M. Ah—you see, _his conscience was awakened_!
O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It _pained_ him to see the mother
suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought _him_ pain. It
did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the
boy, for he was absorbed in providing _pleasure_ for himself, then.
Providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.
Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of _awakened
conscience_. That awakened conscience could never get itself into that
species of trouble again. A cure like that is a _permanent_ cure.
O.M. Pardon—I had not finished the story. We are creatures of _outside
influences_—we originate _nothing_ within. Whenever we take a new line
of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse
is _always_ suggested from the _outside_. Remorse so preyed upon the
Infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy’s religion and
made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the
boy’s sake and the mother’s. Finally he found himself examining it.
From that moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He
became a believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the
dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It
gave him no rest, no peace. He _must_ have rest and peace—it is the law
of nature. There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself
to saving imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan
country ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home
and nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken
hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here
was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the
other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his
foolish faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy
in his last moments reproached him and said:
“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and
my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I
have lost_.”
And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
“_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do
this cruel thing? We had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
reward_.”
The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had
done, and he said:
“_It was wrong—I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In
my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.”
Then the mother said:
“_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is
dead—and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through
centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to
disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?”
The missionary’s anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as
bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the
former case. The story is finished. What is your comment?
Y.M. The man’s conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn’t know
right from wrong.
O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that _one_ man’s
conscience doesn’t know right from wrong, it is an admission that there
are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine
of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one
thing which I ask you to notice.
Y.M. What is that?
O.M. That in both cases the man’s _act_ gave him no spiritual
discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure
out of it. But afterward when it resulted in _pain_ to _him_, he was
sorry. Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, _but for no reason
under the sun except that their pain gave him pain_. Our consciences
take _no_ notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point
where it gives pain to _us_. In _all_ cases without exception we are
absolutely indifferent to another person’s pain until his sufferings
make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have been troubled by
that Christian mother’s distress. Don’t you believe that?
Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the _average_ infidel, I think.
O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty,
would not have been troubled by the pagan mother’s distress—Jesuit
missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
episodes quoted by Parkman.
Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number
of qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate,
Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach
misleading _meanings_ to the names. They are all forms of
self-contentment, self-gratification, but the names so disguise them
that they distract our attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a
word into the dictionary which ought not to be there at
all—Self-Sacrifice. It describes a thing which does not exist. But
worst of all, we ignore and never mention the Sole Impulse which
dictates and compels a man’s every act: the imperious necessity of
securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs. To it
we owe all that we are. It is our breath, our heart, our blood. It is
our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling power; we have no
other. Without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no one would
do anything, there would be no progress, the world would stand still.
We ought to stand reverently uncovered when the name of that stupendous
power is uttered.
Y.M. I am not convinced.
O.M. You will be when you think.
III
Instances in Point
Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self—Approval since we
talked?
Young Man. I have.
O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an _outside
influence_ moved you to it—not one that originated in your head. Will
you try to keep that in mind and not forget it?
Y.M. Yes. Why?
O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress
upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought
in his own head. _The utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand
one_.
Y.M. Oh, now—
O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our
discussion—tomorrow or next day, say. Now, then, have you been
considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a
self-contenting impulse—(primarily). You have sought. What have you
found?
Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and
apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but—
O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice
disappeared? It naturally would.
Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps
who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and
practical laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation—he
is leader of a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the
lumberman, is fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly
prospects and go down and save souls on the East Side. He counts it
happiness to make this sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause
of Christ. He resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and
goes to the East Side and preaches Christ and Him crucified every day
and every night to little groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who
scoff at him. But he rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering
them in the great cause of Christ. You have so filled my mind with
suspicions that I was constantly expecting to find a hidden
questionable impulse back of all this, but I am thankful to say I have
failed. This man saw his duty, and for _duty’s sake_ he sacrificed self
and assumed the burden it imposed.
O.M. Is that as far as you have read?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing
himself—_not_ for the glory of God, _primarily_, as _he_ imagined, but
_first_ to content that exacting and inflexible master within him—_did
he sacrifice anybody else_?
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
place of it. Had he dependents?
Y.M. Well—yes.
O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect
_them_?
Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young
sister with a remarkable voice—he was giving her a musical education,
so that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was
furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic
school and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.
O.M. The old father’s comforts were now curtailed?
Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes.
O.M. The sister’s music-lessens had to stop?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. The young brother’s education—well, an extinguishing blight fell
upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the
old father, or something like that?
Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes.
O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me
that he sacrificed everybody _except_ himself. Haven’t I told you that
no man _ever_ sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon
record anywhere; and that when a man’s Interior Monarch requires a
thing of its slave for either its _momentary_ or its _permanent_
contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command
obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it?
That man _ruined his family_ to please and content his Interior
Monarch—
Y.M. And help Christ’s cause.
O.M. Yes—_secondly_. Not firstly. _He_ thought it was firstly.
Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued
that if he saved a hundred souls in New York—
O.M. The sacrifice of the _family_ would be justified by that great
profit upon the—the—what shall we call it?
Y.M. Investment?
O.M. Hardly. How would _speculation_ do? How would _gamble_ do? Not a
solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible
thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was _gambling_—with his family
for “chips.” However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we can get
on the track of the secret original impulse, the _real_ impulse, that
moved him to so nobly self—sacrifice his family in the Savior’s cause
under the superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will read a
chapter or so.... Here we have it! It was bound to expose itself sooner
or later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went back
to his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps “_hurt to the heart,
his pride humbled_.” Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the
Savior, for Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is _lost
sight of_, is not even referred to, the fact that it started out as a
motive is entirely forgotten! Then what is the trouble? The authoress
quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. The
trouble was this: this man merely _preached_ to the poor; that is not
the University Settlement’s way; it deals in larger and better things
than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army
eloquence. It was courteous to Holme—but cool. It did not pet him, did
not take him to its bosom. “_Perished were all his dreams of
distinction, the praise and grateful approval_—” Of whom? The Savior?
No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of whom, then? Of “his
_fellow-workers_.” Why did he want that? Because the Master inside of
him wanted it, and would not be content without it. That emphasized
sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been seeking, the
original impulse, the _real_ impulse, which moved the obscure and
unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on
that crusade to the East Side—which said original impulse was this, to
wit: without knowing it _he went there to show a neglected world the
large talent that was in him, and rise to distinction_. As I have
warned you before, _no_ act springs from any but the one law, the one
motive. But I pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but
diligently examine for yourself. Whenever you read of a
self-sacrificing act or hear of one, or of a duty done for _duty’s
sake_, take it to pieces and look for the _real_ motive. It is always
there.
Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten
started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
interesting!—in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across
a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine
it, I cannot help myself.
O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
Y.M. No—at least, not yet. But take the case of servant—tipping in
Europe. You pay the _hotel_ for service; you owe the servants
_nothing_, yet you pay them besides. Doesn’t that defeat it?
O.M. In what way?
Y.M. You are not _obliged_ to do it, therefore its source is compassion
for their ill-paid condition, and—
O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
Y.M. Well, yes.
O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Why of course?
Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
to—everybody recognizes it as a _duty_.
O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for _duty’s_ sake?
Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not _all_
compassion, charity, benevolence?
Y.M. Well—perhaps not.
O.M. Is _any_ of it?
Y.M. I—perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt
and effective service from the servants?
Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn’t
get any at all, to speak of.
O.M. Couldn’t _that_ work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?
Y.M. I am not denying it.
O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty’s-sake with a little
self-interest added?
Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax
knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
and _more_ than the right thing, the _generous_ thing. I think it will
be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.
O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
the _hotel_ bill does it annoy you?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?
Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.
O.M. The _expense_, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When
you came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men
and maids had a fixed charge?
Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!
O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade _more_ than you had been in the
habit of paying in the form of tips?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn’t really compassion
nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn’t the _amount_
of the tax that annoys you. Yet _something_ annoys you. What is it?
Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know _what_ to pay, the tax varies
so, all over Europe.
O.M. So you have to guess?
Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught
in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you
are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being
worried and miserable.
O.M. And all about a debt which you don’t owe and don’t have to pay
unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?
Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
of them.
O.M. It has quite a noble look—taking so much pains and using up so
much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to
whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.
Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
it will be hard to find.
O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?
Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a
look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake
there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and
wishing you _had_ done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes
you see, by the signs, that you have it _just right_, and you go away
mightily satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that
you know you have given him a good deal _more_ than was necessary.
O.M. _Necessary_? Necessary for what?
Y.M. To content him.
O.M. How do you feel _then_?
Y.M. Repentant.
O.M. It is my belief that you have _not_ been concerning yourself in
guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would
_content_ him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.
Y.M. What was it?
O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would
get a look which would _shame you before folk_. That would give you
_pain_. _You_—for you are only working for yourself, not _him_. If you
gave him too much you would be _ashamed of yourself_ for it, and that
would give _you_ pain—another case of thinking of _yourself_,
protecting yourself, _saving yourself from discomfort_. You never think
of the servant once—except to guess out how to get _his approval_. If
you get that, you get your _own _approval, and that is the sole and
only thing you are after. The Master inside of you is then satisfied,
contented, comfortable; there was _no other_ thing at stake, as a
matter of _first_ interest, anywhere in the transaction.
_Further Instances_
Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest
thing in man, ruled out! non-existent!
O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?
Y.M. Why, certainly.
O.M. I haven’t said it.
Y.M. What did you say, then?
O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of
that phrase—which is, self-sacrifice for another _alone_. Men make
daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake _first_. The
act must content their own spirit _first_. The other beneficiaries come
second.
Y.M. And the same with duty for duty’s sake?
O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty’s sake; the act must
content his spirit _first_. He must feel better for _doing_ the duty
than he would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.
Y.M. Take the case of the _Berkeley Castle_.
O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and
examine it, if you like.
Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the
boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his
regiment on the deck and said “it is our duty to die, that they may be
saved.” There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the
women and children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his
officers took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and
so, as on dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating,
they went down, a sacrifice to duty for duty’s sake. Can you view it as
other than that?
O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you
have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that
unflinching way?
Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.
O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping
higher and higher around you.
Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have
endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn’t
_do_ it.
O.M. But it would be your _duty_ to do it.
Y.M. Yes, I know—but I couldn’t.
O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some
of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do
that great duty for duty’s _sake_, why not you? Don’t you know that you
could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and
put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty’s sake, and not two
dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end?
Y.M. Yes, I know that.
O.M. But you _train_ them, and put them through a campaign or two; then
they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier’s pride, a soldier’s
self-respect, a soldier’s ideals. They would have to content a
_soldier’s_ spirit then, not a clerk’s, not a mechanic’s. They could
not content that spirit by shirking a soldier’s duty, could they?
Y.M. I suppose not.
O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the _duty’s_ sake, but for
their _own _sake—primarily. The _duty_ was _just the same_, and just as
imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they
wouldn’t perform it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other
ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They _had_
to; it is the law. _Training _is potent. Training toward higher and
higher, and ever higher ideals is worth any man’s thought and labor and
diligence.
Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake
rather than be recreant to it.
O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that
is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely
religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must
content the spirit that is in him—he cannot help it. He could not
perform that duty for duty’s _sake_, for that would not content his
spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to _first_. It
takes precedence of all other duties.
Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
for a thief for public office, on his own party’s ticket, and against
an honest man on the other ticket.
O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no
private ones, where his party’s prosperity is at stake. He will always
be true to his make and training.
IV
Training
Young Man. You keep using that word—training. By it do you particularly
mean—
Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of
it—but not a large part. I mean _all _the outside influences. There are
a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of his
trainers stands _association_. It is his human environment which
influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and
sets him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave[s] that road he
will find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems,
and whose approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his
nature he takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about
him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes,
his morals, his religion. He creates none of these things for himself.
He _thinks _he does, but that is because he has not examined into the
matter. You have seen Presbyterians?
Y.M. Many.
O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not
Congregationalists? And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists,
and the Baptists Roman Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists,
and the Buddhists Quakers, and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the
Episcopalians Millerites and the Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus
Atheists, and the Atheists Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists
Agnostics, and the Agnostics Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians,
and the Confucians Unitarians, and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the
Mohammedans Salvation Warriors, and the Salvation Warriors
Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian Scientists, and the
Christian Scientists Mormons—and so on?
Y.M. You may answer your question yourself.
O.M. That list of sects is not a record of _studies_, searchings,
seekings after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what
_association _can do. If you know a man’s nationality you can come
within a split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion:
English—Protestant; American—ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman,
Italian, South American—Roman Catholic; Russian—Greek Catholic;
Turk—Mohammedan; and so on. And when you know the man’s religious
complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he
wants some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by
accident he get more light than he wants. In America if you know which
party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations are, and how
he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to get
light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of
mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge,
and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn’t attend, except to refute
its doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are
around _seeking after truth_. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen.
I think he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere
people who _thought _they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They
sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly,
with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment—until they believed
that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. _That was the
end of the search. _The man spent the rest of his life hunting up
shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was
seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the
hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was
seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of
the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when he found
the Truth _he sought no further; _but from that day forth, with his
soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered
its leaks and reasoned with objectors. There have been innumerable
Temporary Seekers of Truth—have you ever heard of a permanent one? In
the very nature of man such a person is impossible. However, to drop
back to the text—training: all training is one form or another of
_outside influence, _and _association _is the largest part of it. A man
is never anything but what his outside influences have made him. They
train him downward or they train him upward—but they _train _him; they
are at work upon him all the time.
Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed
there is no help for him, according to your notions—he must train
downward.
O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It
is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has
only to change his habitat—his _associations_. But the impulse to do it
must come from the _outside _—he cannot originate it himself, with that
purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can
furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a
new idea. The chance remark of a sweetheart, “I hear that you are a
coward,” may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and
ended in producing a surprising fruitage—in the fields of war. The
history of man is full of such accidents. The accident of a broken leg
brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and
furnished him a new ideal. From that accident sprang the Order of the
Jesuits, and it has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing
other tremendous work for two hundred years—and will go on. The chance
reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a
new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones
that are _in sympathy with his new ideal_: and the result, for that
man, can be an entire change of his way of life.
Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?
O.M. Not a new one—an old one. Old as mankind.
Y.M. What is it?
O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with
_initiatory impulses toward high ideals. _It is what the
tract-distributor does. It is what the missionary does. It is what
governments ought to do.
Y.M. Don’t they?
O.M. In one way they do, in another they don’t. They separate the
smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime
they put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is
to say, they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This
would be well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn’t, and
so _association _makes the beginners worse than they were when they
went into captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the
comparatively innocent at times. They hang a man—which is a trifling
punishment; this breaks the hearts of his family—which is a heavy one.
They comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent
wife and family to starve.
Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
intuitive perception of good and evil?
O.M. Adam hadn’t it.
Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets _all _his
ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.
Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?
O.M. From the _outside_. I did not invent them. They are gathered from
a thousand unknown sources. Mainly _unconsciously _gathered.
Y.M. Don’t you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?
O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.
Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that “an honest
man’s the noblest work of God.”
O.M. He didn’t record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy, and
sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and
dishonest _possibilities _in him and stops there. The man’s
_associations _develop the possibilities—the one set or the other. The
result is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.
Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to—
O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? _He _is not the
architect of his honesty.
Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?
O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
main thing—to _him_. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
damage to them—and so _they _get an advantage out of his virtues. That
is the main thing to _them_. It can make this life comparatively
comfortable to the parties concerned; the _neglect _of this training
can make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties
concerned.
Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the
man _himself_, for it makes him what he is.
O.M. I said training and _another _thing. Let that other thing pass,
for the moment. What were you going to say?
Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty—two years. Her
service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. We
are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the
infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not
scold her for her remissnesses, but at times I do—I can’t seem to
control myself. Don’t I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to
dress, this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my
temper; I lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang;
and immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be
careful and speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even
chose the very word I would use: “You’ve forgotten the clean clothes,
Jane.” When she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that
phrase—and out of it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was
not expecting and hadn’t time to put under control, came the hot
rebuke, “You’ve forgotten them again!” You say a man always does the
thing which will best please his Interior Master. Whence came the
impulse to make careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of
a rebuke? Did that come from the Master, who is always primarily
concerned about _himself_?
O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse.
_Secondarily _you made preparation to save the girl, but _primarily
_its object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your
temper and not fly out at the girl?
Y.M. Yes. My mother.
O.M. You love her?
Y.M. Oh, more than that!
O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?
Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!
O.M. Why? _You would do it for pay, solely _—for _profit_. What profit
would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?
Y.M. Personally? None. To please _her _is enough.
O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, _wasn’t _to save
the girl a humiliation, but to _please your mother. _It also appears
that to please your mother gives _you _a strong pleasure. Is not that
the profit which you get out of the investment? Isn’t that the _real
_profits and _first _profit?
Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.
O.M. In _all _transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that _you
get the first profit. _Otherwise there is no transaction.
Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent
upon it, why did I throw it away by losing my temper?
O.M. In order to get _another _profit which suddenly superseded it in
value.
Y.M. Where was it?
O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance.
Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and _for the
moment its influence _was more powerful than your mother’s, and
abolished it. In that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke
and enjoy it. You did enjoy it, didn’t you?
Y.M. For—for a quarter of a second. Yes—I did.
O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the
_most _pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or _fraction _of
a moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the
Master’s _latest _whim, whatever it may be.
Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant’s eyes I could have
cut my hand off for what I had done.
O.M. Right. You had humiliated _yourself_, you see, you had given
yourself _pain_. Nothing is of _first _importance to a man except
results which damage _him _or profit him—all the rest is _secondary_.
Your Master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He
required a prompt _repentance_; you obeyed again; you_ had _to—there is
never any escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he
changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to
obey, and you will obey, _always_. If he requires repentance, you
content him, you will always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted,
coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they may.
Y.M. Training! Oh, what’s the use of it? Didn’t I, and didn’t my mother
try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that girl?
O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?
Y.M. Oh, certainly—many times.
O.M. More times this year than last?
Y.M. Yes, a good many more.
O.M. More times last year than the year before?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?
Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.
O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there _is _use in
training. Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.
Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?
O.M. It will. Up to _your _limit.
Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?
O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was _everything_.
I corrected you, and said “training and _another _thing.” That other
thing is _temperament _—that is, the disposition you were born with.
_You can’t eradicate your disposition nor any rag of it _—you can only
put a pressure on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm
temper?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it
down nearly all the time. _Its presence is your limit. _Your reform
will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now
and then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and
can make more. There _is _use in training. Immense use. Presently you
will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be
easier; will proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please _yourself _by pleasing
your _mother_; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will
delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and
satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your _mother
_confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at
_first hand, _not by the roundabout way through your mother. It
simplifies the matter, and it also strengthens the impulse.
Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha’n’t ever reach the point where I will spare
the girl for _her _sake _primarily_, not mine?
O.M. Why—yes. In heaven.
Y.M. (_After a reflective pause) _Temperament. Well, I see one must
allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is
thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her
room; she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I
heard the water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that
Jane had forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I
offered to ring, but she said, “No, don’t do that; it would only
distress her to be confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke;
she doesn’t deserve that—she is not to blame for the tricks her memory
serves her.” I say—has my mother an Interior Master?—and where was he?
O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and
pleasure and contentment. The girl’s distress would have pained _your
mother. _Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all.
I know women who would have gotten a No. 1 _pleasure _out of ringing
Jane up—and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed
the law of their make and training, which are the servants of their
Interior Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother’s
forbearance came from training. The _good _kind of training—whose best
and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a
satisfaction upon its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon
others.
Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
general betterment of the race’s condition, how would you word it?
_Admonition_
O.M. Diligently train your ideals _upward _and _still upward _toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your
neighbor and the community.
Y.M. Is that a new gospel?
O.M. No.
Y.M. It has been taught before?
O.M. For ten thousand years.
Y.M. By whom?
O.M. All the great religions—all the great gospels.
Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it?
O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not
been done before.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. Haven’t I put _you first, _and your neighbor and the community
afterward?
Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the
difference between frankness and shuffling.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. The others offer you a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding
that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first,
and that you will do nothing at _first hand _but for his sake; then
they turn square around and require you to do good for _other’s _sake
_chiefly_; and to do your duty for duty’s _sake_, chiefly; and to do
acts of _self_-_sacrifice_. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the
same ground—recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that
resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then
those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and
inconsistently and illogically change the form of their appeal and
direct its persuasions to man’s _second-place _powers and to powers
which have _no existence _in him, thus advancing them to _first _place;
whereas in my Admonition I stick logically and consistently to the
original position: I place the Interior Master’s requirements _first_,
and keep them there.
Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
other schemes aim at and produce the same result—_right living—_has
yours an advantage over the others?
O.M. One, yes—a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions. When
a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as to
the _real _chief motive which impels him to it—in those other cases he
is.
Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
_impression _that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an
advantage?
O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking
himself a duke, and living a duke’s life and parading in ducal fuss and
feathers, when he wasn’t a duke at all, and could find it out if he
would only examine the herald’s records.
Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke’s part; he puts his hand in
his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
and that benefits the community.
O.M. He could do that without being a duke.
Y.M. But would he?
O.M. Don’t you see where you are arriving?
Y.M. Where?
O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to
let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride’s sake, a
pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
his purse and cease to be good?
Y.M. But isn’t it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he _thinks
_he is doing good for others’ sake?
O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
handsome conduct.
Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man’s doing a good
deed for his _own _sake first-off, instead of first for the _good
deed’s _sake, no man would ever do one.
O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?
Y.M. Yes. This morning.
O.M. Give the particulars.
Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned
last night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money
to build another one.
O.M. You furnished it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. You were glad you had the money?
Y.M. Money? I hadn’t. I sold my horse.
O.M. You were glad you had the horse?
Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn’t had the horse I should have been
incapable, and my _mother _would have captured the chance to set old
Sally up.
O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?
Y.M. Oh, I just was!
O.M. Now, then—
Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask
them; but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did
the charity knowing it was because the act would give _me _a splendid
pleasure, and because old Sally’s moving gratitude and delight would
give _me _another one; and because the reflection that she would be
happy now and out of her trouble would fill _me _full of happiness. I
did the whole thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing
that I was looking out for _my _share of the profits _first_. Now then,
I have confessed. Go on.
O.M. I haven’t anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
Can you have been any _more _strongly moved to help Sally out of her
trouble—could you have done the deed any more eagerly—if you had been
under the delusion that you were doing it for _her _sake and profit
only?
Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I
played the limit!
O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect—and I claim to _know _—that when a
man is a shade _more strongly moved _to do _one _of two things or of
two dozen things than he is to do any one of the _others_, he will
infallibly do that _one _thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be
good, not all the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the
strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort
and contentment he will get out of the act.
Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
men’s hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion
that good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for
the sake of No. 1?
O.M. That is what I fully believe.
Y.M. Doesn’t it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.
Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?
O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
mouth and takes back with the other: Do right _for your own sake, _and
be happy in knowing that your _neighbor _will certainly share in the
benefits resulting.
Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.
O.M. _Diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a
summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your
neighbor and the community._
Y.M. One’s _every _act proceeds from _exterior influences_, you think?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the _originator _of the
idea, but it comes in from the _outside_? I see him handling money—for
instance—and _that _moves me to the crime?
O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the _latest
_outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
back over a period of years. No _single _outside influence can make a
man do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is
to start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of _new
_influences—as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences
can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
character to yield to the _final _influence and do that thing. I will
put the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think.
Here are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of
characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by
years of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down
these strong and well-compacted characters—what influence would you
bring to bear upon the ingots?
Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.
O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
succession of hours. Will there be a result?
Y.M. None that I know of.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.
O.M. Very well. The steam is an _outside influence, _but it is
ineffective because the gold _takes no interest in it. _The ingot
remains as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a
vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The _quicksilver _is an outside influence which gold (by its
peculiar nature—say _temperament, disposition) cannot be indifferent
to. _It stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive
it; but a _single _application of the influence works no damage. Let us
continue the application in a steady stream, and call each minute a
year. By the end of ten or twenty minutes—ten or twenty years—the
little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its
character is degraded. At last it is ready to yield to a temptation
which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We
will apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. You
note the result?
Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
the _single _outside influence that does the work, but only the _last
_one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how
my _single _impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it,
but only the _last _one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate
with a parable.
_A Parable_
O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys—twins. They were
alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal appearance.
They were the models of the Sunday—school. At fifteen George had the
opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed away for the
Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen George was
a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the advanced Bible
class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of
the European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and
out of a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At
twenty-six George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the
village church. Then George came home, and was Henry’s guest. One
evening a man passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with
a pathetic smile, “Without intending me a discomfort, that man is
always keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps
of money about him, and goes by here every evening of his life.” That
_outside influence _—that remark—was enough for George, but _it _was
not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely
represented the eleven years’ accumulation of such influences, and gave
birth to the act for which their long gestation had made preparation.
It had never entered the head of Henry to rob the man—his ingot had
been subjected to clean steam only; but George’s had been subjected to
vaporized quicksilver.
V
More About the Machine
Note.—When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she
has answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that
she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the
millionaire’s privilege of having a standard; since she evidently
requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring
herself to adopt his. The human being always looks down when he is
examining another person’s standard; he never find one that he has to
examine by looking up.
_The Man-Machine Again_
Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
Old Man. I do.
Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control—carries on thought on its own hook?
O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?—you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you
tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it
still for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it
with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man’s help it
would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
Y.M. Maybe it does.
O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, “The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject,” but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough
awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work
upon another subject. Make the experiment and see.
Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You
cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not
you.
_After an Interval of Days_
O.M. Now, dreams—but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any
thinking on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me. Also—as you suggested—at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it
aside in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
Y.M. Don’t mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn’t listen; it played right along. It wore me out and
I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
“I saw Esau kissing Kate,
And she saw I saw Esau;
I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
And she saw—”
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! “In the Swee-eet By and By”; etc. Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one’s head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is
master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that it
can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can’t originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and
get it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can’t dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes—like Mr. Wells’s man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters—inventions of my mind and yet strangers to
me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel
person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a
peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones.
They talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. There
are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there
are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one’s heart,
there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole
thing is exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through—all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you—and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the
mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an
automatic machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I
suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind—if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes—one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn’t. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes
C two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty—five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of—of—I don’t remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper’s
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the
pork and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other
suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else’s skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
memory—moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way
carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat
brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall
down, helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw it
all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
sadder scene—in Terra del Fuego—and with Darwin’s eyes I saw a naked
great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling
fault; saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her
breast and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that
nude black sister of mine? No—it was far away from that scene in an
instant, and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable
dream of mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my
shirt, cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room
throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got
there. And so on and so on, picture after picture, incident after
incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views
manufactured by my mind without any help from me—why, it would take me
two hours to merely name the multitude of things my mind tallied off
and photographed in fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you.
O.M. A man’s mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one
way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
Y.M. What is that way?
O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes
an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
matter—or—take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and
concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It
will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.
Y.M. But don’t I tell it what to say?
O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven’t time. The words
leap out before you know what is coming.
Y.M. For instance?
O.M. Well, take a “flash of wit”—repartee. Flash is the right word. It
is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no
thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.
Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
_The Thinking-Process_
O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
the things perceived. That is all.
Y.M. The steam-engine?
O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
lid of the teapot. He didn’t create the idea, he merely discovered the
fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he
evolved the cylinder—from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod.
To attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
matter—crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine.
One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes,
not their creating powers—for they hadn’t any—and now, after a hundred
years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.
Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He
reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp—dances, and so on,
incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization
produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to
the ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does
a rat.
Y.M. How?
O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The
astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a
_personal _superiority or a personal dignity above the other.
Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what
he does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?
O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows
of necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
(personally created) superiorities over his brother.
Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would
you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
collated facts and instances?
O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Very well?
O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always
convertible by such means.
Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that
your conversion—
O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have _been _a Truth-Seeker.
Y.M. Well?
O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are
none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and
make it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the
Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
laws of his construction.
Y.M. And so—
O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has
but one moving impulse—the contenting of his own spirit—and is merely a
machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is
not humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will
be spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my
priceless possession and in looking the other way when an imploring
argument or a damaging fact approaches.
1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a century
earlier.
VI
Instinct and Thought
Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
while ago—concerning the rat and all that—strip Man bare of all his
dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.
Old Man. He hasn’t any to strip—they are shams, stolen clothes. He
claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.
Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.
O.M. I don’t—morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
well above him, there.
Y.M. Are you joking?
O.M. No, I am not.
Y.M. Then what do you mean?
O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large
question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
up.
Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
rat on a level. What is it? The intellectual?
O.M. In form—not a degree.
Y.M. Explain.
O.M. I think that the rat’s mind and the man’s mind are the same
machine, but of unequal capacities—like yours and Edison’s; like the
African pygmy’s and Homer’s; like the Bushman’s and Bismarck’s.
Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?
O.M. What is instinct?
Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited
habit.
O.M. What originated the habit?
Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.
O.M. How did the first one come to start it?
Y.M. I don’t know; but it didn’t _think _it out.
O.M. How do you know it didn’t?
Y.M. Well—I have a right to suppose it didn’t, anyway.
O.M. I don’t believe you have. What is thought?
Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.
O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term “instinct” is, that
it is merely _petrified thought; _solidified and made inanimate by
habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but is become
unconscious—walks in its sleep, so to speak.
Y.M. Illustrate it.
O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don’t know why they do it. It
is an inherited habit which was originally thought—that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from
that observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox
noticed that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in
time to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his
nose to the wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man’s
thought-machine works just like the other animals’, but it is a better
one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox’s place, would go further,
reason wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect
both front and rear.
Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?
O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a
rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off
origin in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself
to habits which can hardly claim a thought-origin.
Y.M. Give an instance.
O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first—never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.
Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?
O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.
Y.M. The cow illustration is not—
O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal’s mental machine is just the
same as a man’s and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt
for it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to
get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take
the corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth
and went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed—then thought it
out for himself. His process did not differ from Edison’s; he put this
and that together and drew an inference—and the peg, too; but I made
him sweat for it.
Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
not very elaborate. Enlarge.
O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one’s hospitalities. He
comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The
scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family;
kept on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was
away on a journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was
vacant. Its friends had removed to a village three miles distant.
Several months later it saw the head of the family on the street there,
followed him home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and
became a daily guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this
one had memory and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them
Edisonially.
Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn’t be developed into one.
O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?
Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.
O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
thing to do in case he knew the stranger’s address. Here is a case of a
bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a
bird flying around about his dog’s head, down in the grounds, and
uttering cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had
a young bird in his mouth—unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it
on a bush and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother
bird came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its
maneuvers persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the
grounds—flying a little way in front of him and waiting for him to
catch up, and so on; and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of
flying the near way across lots. The distance covered was four hundred
yards. The same dog was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and
once more he had to give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all
out: since the stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would
do it again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand
with confidence. Her mental processes were what Edison’s would have
been. She put this and that together—and that is all that thought _is
_—and out of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. Edison
couldn’t have done it any better himself.
Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?
O.M. Yes—the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom
was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped
with the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn
things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and
put this and that together and draw an inference—the process of
thinking. Could you teach an idiot the manual of arms, and to advance,
retreat, and go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?
Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.
O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn
all sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and
to put things together, and say to themselves, “I get the idea, now:
when I do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do
differently I am punished.” Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a
Congressman can.
Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that
is well up toward man?
O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the
superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
separates man and beast.
O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
there is no such frontier.
O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their
this’s and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew
the same inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery
was just like his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as
inferior to the Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference—there
is no frontier.
Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
elevates the dumb beasts to—to—
O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb
beast.
Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
O.M. On quite simple ones. “Dumb” beast suggests an animal that has no
thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
what is in its mind. We know that a hen _has _speech. We cannot
understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
phrases. We know when she is saying, “I have laid an egg”; we know when
she is saying to the chicks, “Run here, dears, I’ve found a worm”; we
know what she is saying when she voices a warning: “Quick! hurry!
gather yourselves under mamma, there’s a hawk coming!” We understand
the cat when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and
contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, “Come, kitties,
supper’s ready”; we understand her when she goes mourning about and
says, “Where can they be? They are lost. Won’t you help me hunt for
them?” and we understand the disreputable Tom when he challenges at
midnight from his shed, “You come over here, you product of immoral
commerce, and I’ll make your fur fly!” We understand a few of a dog’s
phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of
any bird or other animal that we domesticate and observe. The clearness
and exactness of the few of the hen’s speeches which we understand is
argument that she can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we
cannot comprehend—in a word, that she can converse. And this argument
is also applicable in the case of others of the great army of the
Unrevealed. It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an
animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Now as to the
ant—
Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that—as you seem to
think—sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
man and the Unrevealed.
O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant
is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
strong and enduring house eight feet high—a house which is as large in
proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
world compared to man’s size. No savage race has produced architects
who could approach the ant in genius or culture. No civilized race has
produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with
them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye
for convenience and adaptability.
Y.M. That could be mere instinct.
O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
before we decide. The ant has soldiers—battalions, regiments, armies;
and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
battle.
Y.M. That could be instinct, too.
O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it
is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.
Y.M. Instinct again.
O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
forced labor.
Y.M. Instinct.
O.M. She has cows, and milks them.
Y.M. Instinct, of course.
O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.
Y.M. Instinct, all the same.
O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John
Lubbock took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with
whiskey and laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some
water. Ants from the nest came and examined and discussed these
disgraced creatures, then carried their friends home and threw the
strangers overboard. Sir John repeated the experiment a number of
times. For a time the sober ants did as they had done at first—carried
their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. But finally they
lost patience, seeing that their reformatory efforts went for nothing,
and threw both friends and strangers overboard. Come—is this instinct,
or is it thoughtful and intelligent discussion of a thing
new—absolutely new—to their experience; with a verdict arrived at,
sentence passed, and judgment executed? Is it instinct?—thought
petrified by ages of habit—or isn’t it brand-new thought, inspired by
the new occasion, the new circumstances?
Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the
look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
phrase it. I believe it was thought.
O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of
sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
which shut off access—probably set the table’s legs in pans of water,
or drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don’t remember. At any rate,
he watched to see what they would do. They tried various
schemes—failures, every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they
held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision—and
this time they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession,
cross the floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a
point just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into
it! Was that instinct—thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?
Y.M. No, I don’t believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
scheme to meet a new emergency.
O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.
I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the
superior of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many
experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a
moment, even when the stranger is disguised—with paint. Also he proved
that an ant knows every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand
souls. Also, after a year’s absence one of the five hundred thousand
she will straightway recognize the returned absentee and grace the
recognition with an affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions
made? Not by color, for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for
ants that had been dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech
and not by antennae signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless
ants were recognized and the friend discriminated from the stranger.
The ants were all of the same species, therefore the friends had to be
recognized by form and feature—friends who formed part of a hive of
five hundred thousand! Has any man a memory for form and feature
approaching that?
Y.M. Certainly not.
O.M. Franklin’s ants and Lubbuck’s ants show fine capacities of putting
this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting
smart conclusions from the combinations—a man’s mental process exactly.
With memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings,
reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by
stage, to far results—from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound’s
complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to
palace; from the capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from
nomadic life to stable government and concentrated authority; from
incoherent hordes to massed armies. The ant has observation, the
reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory;
she has duplicated man’s development and the essential features of his
civilization, and you call it all instinct!
Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.
O.M. Well, don’t tell anybody, and don’t do it again.
Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result—as I understand it—I am
required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such
frontier—there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more
capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine
and works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command
the machine—it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works
when it pleases, and when it doesn’t please, it can’t be forced.
Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
machinery, and there isn’t any difference of any stupendous magnitude
between them, except in quality, not in kind.
O.M. That is about the state of it—intellectuality. There are
pronounced limitations on both sides. We can’t learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand
a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On
the other hand, they can’t learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our
fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.
Y.M. Very well, let them have what they’ve got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven’t got the Moral Sense; we
have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Now look here—let’s call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.
O.M. I wasn’t going to hoist man up to that.
Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
things.
O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth—and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his _intellectual _superiority to the other creatures; but
the fact that he can _do _wrong proves his _moral _inferiority to any
creature that _cannot_. It is my belief that this position is not
assailable.
_Free Will_
Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?
Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer. Isn’t it so?
O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
strong appeal, of course—the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.
O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free
Will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice
between good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in
that man’s case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his
training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him
what he was, _compelled _him to rescue the old woman and thus save
_himself _—save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable
wretchedness. He did not make the choice, it was made _for _him by
forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in
_words_, but it stops there, I think—stops short of _fact_. I would not
use those words—Free Will—but others.
Y.M. What others?
O.M. Free Choice.
Y.M. What is the difference?
O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to _act _as you please, the
other implies nothing beyond a mere _mental process: _the critical
ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just.
Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
O.M. The mind can freely _select, choose, point out _the right and just
one—its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It
has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.
Y.M. The man’s?
O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and
the character which has been built around it by training and
environment.
Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington’s
machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
one.
Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man’s mental machinery calmly and
judicially points out which of two things is right and just—
O.M. Yes, and his _moral _machinery will freely act upon the one or the
other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the _mind’s
_feeling concerning the matter—that is, _would _be, if the mind had any
feelings; which it hasn’t. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man _knows _which of two things
is right he is absolutely _bound _to do that thing?
O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the
matter. Wasn’t it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then it would have been equally _right _for any one else to do it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. Then it would have been _right _for a born coward to attempt it?
Y.M. It would—yes.
O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don’t
you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You know that a born coward’s make and temperament would be an
absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing,
don’t you?
Y.M. Yes, I know it.
O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be _right _to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be _right
_to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can _not
_essay it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why
claim that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn’t?
Why contend that because he and David _see _the right alike, both must
_act _alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?
Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
O.M. It is what I think. There is _will_. But it has nothing to do with
_intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, _and is not under their
command. David’s temperament and training had Will, and it was a
compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
coward’s temperament and training possess Will, and _it _is compulsory;
it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But
neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will—will that may do
the right or do the wrong, as their _mental _verdict shall decide.
_Not Two Values, But Only One_
Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can’t tell where you draw
the line between _material _covetousness and _spiritual _covetousness.
O.M. I don’t draw any.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. There is no such thing as _material _covetousness. All
covetousness is spiritual.
O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in _all _cases you shall
content his _spirit _—that alone. He never requires anything else, he
never interests himself in any other matter.
Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody’s money—isn’t that rather
distinctly material and gross?
O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol—it represents in visible and
concrete form a _spiritual desire. _Any so-called material thing that
you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for _itself_, but because
it will content your spirit for the moment.
Y.M. Please particularize.
O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and
your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends
deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are
ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it
again.
Y.M. I think I see. Go on.
O.M. It is the same hat, isn’t it? It is in no way altered. But it
wasn’t the _hat _you wanted, but only what it stood for—a something to
please and content your _spirit_. When it failed of that, the whole of
its value was gone. There are no _material _values; there are only
spiritual ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is
_actual, real—_there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for
even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and
it is at once worthless—like the hat.
Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no _material _value; you think
you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the
spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored
like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a
fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single
week a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him
desolate. His money’s value was gone. He realized that his joy in it
came not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he
got out of his family’s enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it
lavished upon them. Money has no _material _value; if you remove its
spiritual value nothing is left but dross. It is so with all things,
little or big, majestic or trivial—there are no exceptions. Crowns,
scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, world-wide
fame—they are all the same, they have no _material _value: while they
content the _spirit _they are precious, when this fails they are
worthless.
_A Difficult Question_
Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate
personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and
responsibilities of its own, and when he is in that condition I can’t
grasp it. Now when _I_ speak of a man, he is _the whole thing in one,
_and easy to hold and contemplate.
O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of “my
body” who is the “my”?
Y.M. It is the “me.”
O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?
Y.M. The Me is _the whole thing; _it is a common property; an undivided
ownership, vested in the whole entity.
O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,
including the hair, hands, heels, and all?
Y.M. Certainly not. It is my _mind _that admires it.
O.M. So _you _divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must.
What, then, definitely, is the Me?
Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts—the body and the
mind.
O.M. You think so? If you say “I believe the world is round,” who is
the “I” that is speaking?
Y.M. The mind.
O.M. If you say “I grieve for the loss of my father,” who is the “I”?
Y.M. The mind.
O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines
and accepts the evidence that the world is round?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the
loss of your father?
Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of _feeling_.
O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your _moral
_territory?
Y.M. I have to grant it.
O.M. Is your mind a part of your _physical _equipment?
Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual.
O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?
Y.M. Well—no.
O.M. There _is _a physical effect present, then?
Y.M. It looks like it.
O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen
if the mind is spiritual, and _independent _of physical influences?
Y.M. Well—I don’t know.
O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?
Y.M. I feel it.
O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the
brain. Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?
Y.M. I think so.
O.M. But isn’t spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the
outskirts without the help of the _physical _messenger? You perceive
that the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all.
You say “I admire the rainbow,” and “I believe the world is round,” and
in these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the
_mental _part. You say, “I grieve,” and again the Me is not all
speaking, but only the _moral _part. You say the mind is wholly
spiritual; then you say “I have a pain” and find that this time the Me
is mental _and _spiritual combined. We all use the “I” in this
indeterminate fashion, there is no help for it. We imagine a Master and
King over what you call The Whole Thing, and we speak of him as “I,”
but when we try to define him we find we cannot do it. The intellect
and the feelings can act quite _independently _of each other; we
recognize that, and we look around for a Ruler who is master over both,
and can serve as a _definite and indisputable “I,” _and enable us to
know what we mean and who or what we are talking about when we use that
pronoun, but we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find him.
To me, Man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and
mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an
interior Master who is built out of born-temperament and an
accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a
machine whose _one _function is to secure the spiritual contentment of
the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose Will
is absolute and must be obeyed, and always _is _obeyed.
Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?
O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?
Y.M. I don’t know.
O.M. Neither does any one else.
_The Master Passion_
Y.M. What is the Master?—or, in common speech, the Conscience? Explain
it.
O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the
man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion—the
hunger for Self-Approval.
Y.M. Where is its seat?
O.M. In man’s moral constitution.
Y.M. Are its commands for the man’s good?
O.M. It is indifferent to the man’s good; it never concerns itself
about anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be
_trained _to prefer things which will be for the man’s good, but it
will prefer them only because they will content _it _better than other
things would.
Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking
out for its own contentment, and not for the man’s good.
O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man’s good,
and never concerns itself about it.
Y.M. It seems to be an _immoral _force seated in the man’s moral
constitution.
O.M. It is a _colorless _force seated in the man’s moral constitution.
Let us call it an instinct—a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot
and does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares
nothing for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured;
and it will _always _secure that.
Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an
advantage for the man?
O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power,
nor office, nor any other _material _advantage. In _all _cases it seeks
a _spiritual _contentment, let the _means _be what they may. Its
desires are determined by the man’s temperament—and it is lord over
that. Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are,
in fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared
nothing for money?
Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to
take a place in a business house at a large salary.
O.M. He had to satisfy his master—that is to say, his temperament, his
Spiritual Appetite—and it preferred books to money. Are there other
cases?
Y.M. Yes, the hermit.
O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold,
and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things,
and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that
money can buy. Are there others?
Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist.
O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,
either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any
price. You _realize _that the Master Passion—the contentment of the
spirit—concerns itself with many things besides so-called material
advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?
Y.M. I think I must concede it.
O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that
would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public
office as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments
seek the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly
the case with the other set. Neither set seeks anything _but _the
contentment of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and
equally so, since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases.
And in both cases Temperament decides the preference—and Temperament is
_born_, not made.
_Conclusion_
O.M. You have been taking a holiday?
Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?
O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?
Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought
over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this
result: that... that... are you intending to publish your notions about
Man some day?
O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me
has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. Do
I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you
explain so simple a thing without my help?
Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences
moved your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside
influences deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of
these impulses could ever have been born, since a person’s brain is
incapable or originating an idea within itself.
O.M. Correct. Go on.
Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master’s
hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish,
he will give the order, and it will be obeyed.
O.M. That is correct. Well?
Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the
publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?
O.M. Pardon _you_? You have done nothing. You are an instrument—a
speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is
said through them. Outside influences—in the form of lifelong
teachings, trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand
importations—have persuaded the Master within you that the publication
of these doctrines would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural,
and was to be expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of
ease and convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and
tell me what your Master thinks about it.
Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,
enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride
out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal
credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows
him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and
neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole
and piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according
to his make, outside impulses doing the rest.
O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me—what do men admire most in each
other?
Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance,
charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and—and—
O.M. I would not go any further. These are _elementals_. Virtue,
fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals—these, and all
the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are _made of
the elementals, _by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the
elementals, just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and
makes several shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red.
There are several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of
them we manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the
elementals of the human rainbow, and also one _blend _—heroism, which
is made out of courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these
elements does the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it
intellect?
Y.M. No.
O.M. Why?
Y.M. He is born with it.
O.M. Is it courage?
Y.M. No. He is born with it.
O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?
Y.M. No. They are birthrights.
O.M. Take those others—the elemental moral qualities—charity,
benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which
spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold
blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man
manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?
Y.M. Born in him.
O.M. Who manufactures them, then?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Where does the credit of it belong?
Y.M. To God.
O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?
Y.M. To God.
O.M. Then it is _you _who degrade man. You make him claim glory,
praise, flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses—_borrowed
_finery, the whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail
of it produced by his own labor. _You _make man a humbug; have I done
worse by him?
Y.M. You have made a machine of him.
O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man’s hand?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a
piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is
thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?
Y.M. God.
O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which
automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the
body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who
devised the man’s mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests
itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all
night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all
these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine.
I am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to
call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?
Y.M. I think it is wrong to _expose _a fact when harm can come of it.
O.M. Go on.
Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he
is the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages
he has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in
purple and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant,
his life cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of
himself, his joy in what he supposed were his own and unassisted
achievements, and his exultation over the praise and applause which
they evoked—these have exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to
higher and higher flights; in a word, made his life worth the living.
But by your scheme, all this is abolished; he is degraded to a machine,
he is a nobody, his noble prides wither to mere vanities; let him
strive as he may, he can never be any better than his humblest and
stupidest neighbor; he would never be cheerful again, his life would
not be worth the living.
O.M. You really think that?
Y.M. I certainly do.
O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.
Y.M. No.
O.M. Well, _I_ believe these things. Why have they not made me unhappy?
Y.M. Oh, well—temperament, of course! You never let _that _escape from
your scheme.
O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,
nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,
nothing can make him unhappy.
Y.M. What—not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?
O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless. They
strive in vain against inborn temperament.
Y.M. I can’t believe that, and I don’t.
O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not
studiously examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the
happiest? Isn’t it Burgess?
Y.M. Easily.
O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams?
Y.M. Without a question!
O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments
are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike—but
look at the results! Their ages are about the same—about around fifty.
Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been
cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country
journalism—and failed. Burgess didn’t seem to mind it; Adams couldn’t
smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture
himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so
and so—_then _he would have succeeded. They tried the law—and failed.
Burgess remained happy—because he couldn’t help it. Adams was
wretched—because he couldn’t help it. From that day to this, those two
men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy
and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know
that these men’s inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through
all the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how it is
with their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have
been zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has
always found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political
beliefs and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have
been Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics—then
Presbyterians again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found
rest in these excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian
Science, now, with the customary result, the inevitable result. No
political or religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man
happy. I assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are
_acquirements_, temperaments are _born_; beliefs are subject to change,
nothing whatever can change temperament.
Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.
O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But
the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or
two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the
proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally
balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to
learn to accommodate itself to its political and religious
circumstances and like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer
them. Nations do not _think_, they only _feel_. They get their feelings
at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation
can be brought—by force of circumstances, not argument—to reconcile
itself to _any kind of government or religion that can be devised; _in
time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will
prefer them and will fiercely fight for them. As instances, you have
all history: the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the
Russians, the Germans, the French, the English, the Spaniards, the
Americans, the South Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus,
the Turks—a thousand wild and tame religions, every kind of government
that can be thought of, from tiger to house-cat, each nation _knowing
_it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government,
each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it, each
proud of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of
God, each without undoubting confidence summoning Him to take command
in time of war, each surprised when He goes over to the enemy, but by
habit able to excuse it and resume compliments—in a word, the whole
human race content, always content, persistently content,
indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, _no matter what its
religion is, nor whether its master be tiger or house-cat. _Am I
stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race cheerful? You know it
is. Considering what it can stand, and be happy, you do me too much
honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a system of plain
cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it. Nothing can do
that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg you not to be
troubled.
THE DEATH OF JEAN
The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,
1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but
a few hours later I found him writing steadily.
“I am setting it down,” he said, “everything. It is a relief to me to
write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking.” At intervals during
that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then
on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to
rest in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.
“I have finished it,” he said; “read it. I can form no opinion of it
myself. If you think it worthy, some day—at the proper time—it can end
my autobiography. It is the final chapter.”
Four months later—almost to the day—(April 21st) he was with Jean.
Albert Bigelow Paine.
Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.
JEAN IS DEAD!
Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings
connected with a dear one—happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding
the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain
them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the
mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening
every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable
before—but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, how dear,
how unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!
Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from
the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from
the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned,
and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)—until
nine—which is late for us—then went upstairs, Jean’s friendly German
dog following. At my door Jean said, “I can’t kiss you good night,
father: I have a cold, and you could catch it.” I bent and kissed her
hand. She was moved—I saw it in her eyes—and she impulsively kissed my
hand in return. Then with the usual gay “Sleep well, dear!” from both,
we parted.
At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my
door. I said to myself, “Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight
to the station for the mail.” Then Katy[1] entered, stood quaking and
gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
[1] Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family for
twenty-nine years.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes
through his heart.
In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon
the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural,
and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she
had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The
doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones,
failed to bring her back to life.
It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It
is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that
lies there so still.
In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart
with a cablegram which said, “Susy was mercifully released today.” I
had to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the
peremptory addition, “You must not come home.” Clara and her husband
sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it?
Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.
Four days ago I came back from a month’s holiday in Bermuda in
perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive
this. Day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from
friends and strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be
dangerously ill. Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through
the Associated Press. I said it was not important enough; but she was
distressed and said I must think of Clara. Clara would see the report
in the German papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and
night for four months[2] and was worn out and feeble, the shock might
be disastrous. There was reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph
by telephone to the Associated Press denying the “charge” that I was
“dying,” and saying “I would not do such a thing at my time of life.”
[2] Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.
Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter
so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was
nothing serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of
this day’s irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both
appear in this evening’s papers?—the one so blithe, the other so
tragic?
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother—her incomparable
mother!—five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died—one of the best friends I ever had,
and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my
race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan—old,
old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers
under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night—and
it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit
here—writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a
mockery.
Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?
I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as
her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long
ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I
have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
released, but I shall not follow.
Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was
at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
“Mark Twain.” We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
she wouldn’t let me look into the loggia, where she was making
Christmas preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning,
and then her little French friend would arrive from New York—the
surprise would follow; the surprise she had been working over for days.
While she was out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia
floor was clothed with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and
the uncompleted surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree
that was drenched with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a
table was a prodigal profusion of bright things which she was going to
hang upon it today. What desecrating hand will ever banish that
eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not mine, surely. All
these little matters have happened in the last four days. “Little.”
Yes—_then_. But not now. Nothing she said or thought or did is little
now. And all the lavish humor!—what is become of it? It is pathos, now.
Pathos, and the thought of it brings tears.
All these little things happened such a few hours ago—and now she lies
yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
Strange—marvelous—incredible! I have had this experience before; but it
would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed’s
head without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss
me good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering
without formalities.
And so—
I have been to Jean’s parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
floor—everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a
year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now
here is Jean’s parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
presents are not labeled—the hands are forever idle that would have
labeled them today. Jean’s mother always worked herself down with her
Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
months.
Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly in danger
of overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half
past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the
letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and
then mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm
and her poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards
with me after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went
early to bed.
Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising
while absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a
housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr.
Paine’s hands.
No—she wasn’t willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter
ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn’t audit
the bills and let Paine fill out the checks—she would continue to
attend to that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and
let Katy assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of
personal friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it
by that name, though I was not able to see where any formidable change
had been made.
However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was
proud of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to
give up any part of her share in that unlovely work.
In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that
if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was
urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon
that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
tomorrow’s ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to
write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.
For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.
Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the
sky-line of the hills.
I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and
dearer to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these
last nine months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to
us three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums,
many miles from us. How eloquently glad and grateful she was to cross
her father’s threshold again!
Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been
enriched with the most precious of all gifts—that gift which makes all
other gifts mean and poor—death. I have never wanted any released
friend of mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this
way when Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers.
When Clara met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had
died suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of
fortune—fortunate all his long and lovely life—fortunate to his latest
moment! The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes.
True—but they were for _me_, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All
the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this
one.
Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast
emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of
the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of my
family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would
never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have
entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn,
but to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the
spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and
welcome me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry
Robinson, and Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and
how lovable their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could
call the children back and hear them romp again with George—that
peerless black ex-slave and children’s idol who came one day—a flitting
stranger—to wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died.
Clara and Jean would never enter again the New York hotel which their
mother had frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I
shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was
before. Jean’s spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely
and tragic death—but I will not think of that now.
Jean’s mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was
her very own child—she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
names—fifty, he thinks—people to whom she sent presents last night.
Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of
bank-notes, for the servants.
Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. He
has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in
Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders
save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor
at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no
German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean
wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was
ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog
will not be neglected.
There was never a kinder heart than Jean’s. From her childhood up she
always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind and
another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she
spent her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad
and grateful to say.
She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
beasts, and everything—even snakes—an inheritance from me. She knew all
the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of various
humane societies when she was still a little girl—both here and
abroad—and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two
or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.
She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
kindly error.
She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but
an indifferent ear for music, but her tongue took to languages with an
easy facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get
rusty through neglect.
The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just
as they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child’s
mother laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but
they take away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and
parted at my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two
hours the telegraph would be bringing words like these:
“From the bottom of our hearts we send our sympathy, dearest of
friends.”
For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
number of them?
She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her
malady—epilepsy. There are no words to express how grateful I am that
she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving
shelter of her own home.
“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
It is true. Jean is dead.
A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
yet to appear, and now I am writing—this.
CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.—Last night I went to Jean’s room at intervals, and
turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs
so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like
this one—Jean’s mother’s face—and kissed a brow that was just like this
one. And last night I saw again what I had seen then—that strange and
lovely miracle—the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by
the gracious hand of death! When Jean’s mother lay dead, all trace of
care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished
out of the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and
worshiped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.
About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must
be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came
upon Jean’s dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not
spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow
and sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean’s
apartment since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so.
Always when Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when
she was in the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the
day. Her parlor was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the
ground floor he always followed me about, and when I went upstairs he
went too—in a tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after
patting him a little I went to the library—he remained behind; when I
went upstairs he did not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has
wonderful eyes—big, and kind, and eloquent. He can talk with them. He
is a beautiful creature, and is of the breed of the New York
police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no
occasion for it; but I have liked this one from the beginning, because
he belonged to Jean, and because he never barks except when there is
occasion—which is not oftener than twice a week.
In my wanderings I visited Jean’s parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of
my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I
only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will
keep them. Her hand has touched them—it is an accolade—they are noble,
now.
And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me—a thing I have often
wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn’t see it for the tears. She
will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the
mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
kind words she loved so well, “Merry Christmas to Jean!” If she could
only have lived one day longer!
At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to
one of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
spare—and more, most likely.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT.—This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara’s
chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
upon it.
They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,
and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the
trestle, and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him,
then went his way as silently as he had come. _He knows._
At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it—that Jean could not
see it! She so loved the snow.
The snow continued to fall. At six o’clock the hearse drew up to the
door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert’s “Impromptu,” which was
Jean’s favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then
he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
their last hours in this life.
From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and
presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come
back any more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were
babies together—he and her beloved old Katy—were conducting her to her
distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother’s side once
more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.
DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o’clock this morning. He
was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.
The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow
drives across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime—and Jean
not here to see.
2:30 P.M.—It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred
miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is
the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s coffin stands where her
mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s
coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s stood five years
and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.
FIVE O’CLOCK.—It is all over.
When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but
I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said _we_ would be a family. We
said we would be close comrades and happy—just we two. That fair dream
was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in
my mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true—oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
In the grave—if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
I
If I understand the idea, the _Bazar _invites several of us to write
upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which
introduced what must be regarded by me as the most _important
_condition of my career. But it also implies—without intention,
perhaps—that that turning-point _itself _was the creator of the new
condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too
much credit. It is only the _last _link in a very long chain of
turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not
any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors.
Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed
date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have
left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought
about _some other_ result. I know we have a fashion of saying “such and
such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say
it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain
makes it the most _conspicuous _link; in real importance it has no
advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on
the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may
still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for
us but to fight it out in arms.”
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big
and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage
by stage, link by link. This was the _last _link—merely the last one,
and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the
inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of
Neptune.
You, the reader, have a _personal _interest in that link, and so have
I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
his decision.
While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river
with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to
the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the
omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. _The Die Is
Cast_.”
So he crossed—and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar’s life-chain, too; and a
necessary one. We don’t know his name, we never hear of him again; he
was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he
was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying
blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping
down the aisles of history forever.
If the stranger hadn’t been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. With
such results! Such vast events—each a link in the _human race_’s
life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next
one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the
empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon
its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands—and so on; link by
link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of
America being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of
English and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my
ancestors among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in
Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable
results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his
trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he _couldn’t_, for he was an
appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would have
happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know that the
things that did happen would not have happened. They might have been
replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but their nature and
results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that interests me
personally is that I would not be _here _now, but somewhere else; and
probably black—there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he crossed.
And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared anything
about it before.
II
To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
have been professionally literary something more than forty years.
There have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was
the last link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary
guild is the most _conspicuous _link in that chain. _because _it was
the last one. It was not any more important than its predecessors. All
the other links have an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the
Rubicon; but as factors in making me literary they are all of the one
size, the crossing of the Rubicon included.
I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead
up to it and brought it about.
The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a
recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar’s day to find
the first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of
generations and start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve
and a half years old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer
came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child
died almost every day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress,
despair. Children that were not smitten with the disease were
imprisoned in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes
there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing
but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no
noise, no laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a
ghostly hush. I was a prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful
dreariness—and in fear. At some time or other every day and every night
a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and I said to myself, “There,
I’ve got it! and I shall die.” Life on these miserable terms was not
worth living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have
it over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to the
house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the
malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed
with him. I was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity.
But I had the disease; they could not take that from me. I came near to
dying. The whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news
of me every day; and not only once a day, but several times. Everybody
believed I would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the
worse and they were disappointed.
This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got
well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.
She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure
of the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than
hers.
I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the
chain which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road,
but I could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or
even that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.
A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work;
and seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a
CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man’s master—and when Circumstance
commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter—that is his privilege,
just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with
the attraction of gravitation—but it won’t do any good, he must OBEY. I
wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of
Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked
several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was
one about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long
voyage up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira,
through the heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in
tropical wonders, a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and
animals were of the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the
crocodile and the monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the
Zoo. Also, he told an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product
of miraculous powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so
strength-giving that the native of the mountains of the Madeira region
would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and
require no other sustenance.
I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to
open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed
that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that
splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A
person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is
likely to come of it until the magician _circumstance _steps in and
takes the matter off his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help.
It was in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him
lose a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me
find it. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day.
This was another turning-point, another link.
Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to
the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis
and been obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools
there—shoals and shoals of them—but they were not of my kind. I was the
only one of my kind.
Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a
partner. Its partner is man’s _temperament_—his natural disposition.
His temperament is not his invention, it is _born _in him, and he has
no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot
change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it—except
temporarily. But it won’t stay modified. It is permanent, like the
color of the man’s eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray
in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when
that stress is removed.
A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man
of a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in
Caesar’s way, his temperament would not have made him start for the
Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with
the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note—and
WAIT. We can’t tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and
buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to
learn when it came his turn.
Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told
me what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is
the case the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.
Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him,
improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they
will be mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at
bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.
By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them,
and reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting
and without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago.
In all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I
have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things
and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to
me; I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and
reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on those
occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.
I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My
idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I
inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that
there never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman
came and asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on,
and said if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would
run me in.
After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with
another turning-point of my life—a new link. On my way down, I had made
the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he
consented. I became a pilot.
By and by Circumstance came again—introducing the Civil War, this time,
in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary
profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh
link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of
Nevada, and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I
accepted.
In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into
the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea.
The idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For
amusement I scribbled things for the Virginia City _Enterprise_. One
isn’t a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad
literature, and learning—unconsciously at first, consciously later—to
discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and
meantime he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a “style.” One of
my efforts attracted attention, and the _Enterprise _sent for me and
put me on its staff.
And so I became a journalist—another link. By and by Circumstance and
the Sacramento _union _sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six
months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of
extraneous matter that hadn’t anything to do with sugar. But it was
this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I
did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the
world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me
upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the “Quaker
City Excursion.”
When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier—with
the _last _link—the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link:
I was asked to _write a book_, and I did it, and called it _The
Innocents Abroad_. Thus I became at last a member of the literary
guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever
since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can
say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is
because I had the measles when I was twelve years old.
III
Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details
themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it
was rejected—as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and
get it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other
way—some way I had not counted upon.
And so I do not admire the human being—as an intellectual marvel—as
much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not
know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general
did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstance would
have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might
see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or
too quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question
about a matter which had been much debated by the public and the
newspapers; he answered the question without any hesitancy. “General,
who planned the march through Georgia?” “The enemy!” He added that the
enemy usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by
neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you,
and you see your chance and take advantage of it.
Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,
except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man TRIES
to plan things and the watch doesn’t. The watch doesn’t wind itself and
doesn’t regulate itself—these things are done exteriorly. Outside
influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left
to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he
would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,
with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some
men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury.
A Waterbury of that kind, some say.
A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and
Circumstance comes and upsets them—or enlarges them. Some patriots
throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and
turns these modest riots into a revolution.
And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new
route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he
found a new _world_. And _he _gets the credit of it to this day. He
hadn’t anything to do with it.
Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of
yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was
forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me
into the literary guild. Adam’s TEMPERAMENT was the first command the
Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only
command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, “Be weak, be
water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.” The latter command,
to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam
himself, but by his _temperament_—which he did not create and had no
authority over. For the _temperament _is the man; the thing tricked out
with clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law
of the tiger’s temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep’s
temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring
the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to
imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those
commands _can’T_ be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law
of _temperament_, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other
authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That
is, in their temperaments. Not in _them_, poor helpless young
creatures—afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter
was commanded to get into contact with fire and _be melted_. What I
cannot help wishing is, that Adam and EVE had been postponed, and
Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place—that splendid pair
equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By
neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled
_them _to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed, yes.
The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; there
would be no YOU; there would be no _me_. And the old, old creation-dawn
scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have
been defeated.
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words
large enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening,
and that you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult
things to acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep
them in the head. But they are very valuable. They are like the
cattle-pens of a ranch—they shut in the several brands of historical
cattle, each within its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed
together. Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures;
figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don’t take
hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to
help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can
make nearly anything stick—particularly _if you make the pictures
yourself_. Indeed, that is the great point—make the pictures
_yourself_. I know about this from experience. Thirty years ago I was
delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every night I had to
help myself with a page of notes to keep from getting myself mixed. The
notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were eleven in number,
and they ran something like this:
“_In that region the weather_—”
“_at that time it was a custom_—”
“_but in california one never heard_—”
Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and
protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the
page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never
with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I
always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little
while. Once I mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors
of that evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So
I got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order—I, A,
B, and so on—and I went on the platform the next night with these
marked in ink on my ten finger-nails. But it didn’t answer. I kept
track of the fingers for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was
never quite sure which finger I had used last. I couldn’t lick off a
letter after using it, for while they could have made success certain
it would also have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity
enough without that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my
fingernails than I was in my subject; one or two persons asked me
afterward what was the matter with my hands.
It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles
passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they
did the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I
threw the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I
could shut my eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a
century ago; the lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years
ago, but I could rewrite it from the pictures—for they remain. Here are
three of them: (Fig. 1).
The first one is a haystack—below it a rattlesnake—and it told me where
to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told me
where to begin to talk about a strange and violent wind that used to
burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two
o’clock and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily
perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to
begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no
lightning—nor thunder, either—and it never failed me.
I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you
are to follow him don’t jot down notes to speak from, jot down
PICTURES. It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to
notes; and besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and
non-coherent; but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have
made them—they will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order
and sequence in which you scratched them down. And many will admire to
see what a good memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory
is not any better than mine.
Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess
was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of
this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of
the accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled over
England from the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter,
hard contract. It was all dates, they all looked alike, and they
wouldn’t stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and
still the kings held the fort; the children couldn’t conquer any six of
them.
With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some
way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found
which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings.
I found it, and then they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two.
The idea was to make them _see _the reigns with their eyes; that would
be a large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the
grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right
to the high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound
through the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English
monarchs, beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the
porch and clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest
down to Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign—_eight
hundred and seventeen years of_ English history under your eye at once!
English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The
world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen
had passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in
length every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones;
everybody was interested now—it was watching a race. Would she pass the
long Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long
Henry? Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible!
Everybody said it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years
behind.
I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and
at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine
stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it.
Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase
overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers—I can’t think of
their name. The vase was William the Conqueror. We put his name on it
and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off
twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus’s stake; then
thirteen feet and drove the first Henry’s stake; then thirty-five feet
and drove Stephen’s; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the
summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and
seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve
and entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.—a level, straight
stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay
exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There
couldn’t have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand
on the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes
shut. (Fig. 2.)
That isn’t the shape of the road—I have bunched it up like that to save
room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was
such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell
at a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes—with
_locality _to help, of course.
Although I am away off here in a Swedish village[3] and those stakes
did not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as
ever; and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before
me of their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he
takes up on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you
think of Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns
seem about alike to you? It isn’t so to me; I always notice that
there’s a foot’s difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a
great long stretch of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it
joins on to Edward I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green
fruit hanging down. When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady
little group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor;
when I think of George III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of
him occupied by a flight of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an
inch when he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which
went by the summer-house. Victoria’s reign reached almost to my study
door on the first little summit; there’s sixteen feet to be added now;
I believe that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that was
shattered by some lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me.
[3] Summer of 1899.
We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too.
We trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children
calling out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the
stakes, going a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when
we came upon people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and
Plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes,
too—apples. I threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that
first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple.
The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being “over by
the arbor,” or “in the oak parlor,” or “up at the stone steps,” and say
instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in
George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road
mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the
habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and
had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had
often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and
failure; but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the
children.
Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them
alongside the English ones, so that we could always have
contemporaneous French history under our eyes as we went our English
rounds. We pegged them down to the Hundred Years’ War, then threw the
idea aside, I do not now remember why. After that we made the English
pegs fence in European and American history as well as English, and
that answered very well. English and alien poets, statesmen, artists,
heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutions—we shoveled them all
into the English fences according to their dates. Do you understand? We
gave Washington’s birth to George II.’s pegs and his death to George
III.’s; George II. got the Lisbon earthquake and George III. the
Declaration of Independence. Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola,
Joan of Arc, the French Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive,
Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of
the Boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the
steam-engine, the telegraph—anything and everything all over the
world—we dumped it all in among the English pegs according to its date
and regardless of its nationality.
If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the
kings in the children’s heads by means of pictures—that is, I should
have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be
effective _when made by the pupil_; not the master, for it is the work
put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my
children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,
they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they
are like me.
But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able
to use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and
one cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are
a procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat
for exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This
will bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will
represent the length of a king’s reign.
And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will
use the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause
trouble. You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks.
These will leave no mark.
Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two
inches square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror’s
reign. On each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and
term of service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and
William’s begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that
swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in
the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to
draw. By the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written “William
I.—1066-1087—twenty-one years” twenty-one times, those details will be
your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything
but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig. 3).
I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking
for Harold. It may be that a whale hasn’t that fin up there on his
back, but I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best
to err on the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without
it.
Be very careful and _attentive _while you are drawing your first whale
from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you
will not need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the
sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and
can shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures,
then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from
memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and
writing from memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This
will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find
that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can
make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be able to
furnish William’s dates to any ignorant person that inquires after
them.
You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches
square, and do William II. (Fig. 4.)
Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him
small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the
eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and
that would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him
small; he was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere;
there wasn’t room in him for his father’s great spirit. The barb of
that harpoon ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the
whale and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the
barb were removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock
into the whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every
one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business. Remember—draw
from the copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription
from memory.
Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its
inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the
details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you
like, you may make merely the whale’s _head and water-spout_ for the
Conqueror till you end his reign, each time _saying _the inscription in
place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the _harpoon
_alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it
will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the
second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in
length of the two reigns.
Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of _red _paper. (Fig. 5.)
That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable.
When you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are
perfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen’s head the rest of the
thirty-five times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig.
6).
You begin to understand now how this procession is going to look when
it is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror’s twenty-one
whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one
another and making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the
thirteen blue squares of William II. will be joined to that—a blue
stripe two feet, two inches long, followed by Henry’s red stripe five
feet, ten inches long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly
show to the eye the difference in the length of the reigns and impress
the proportions on the memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of
_yellow_ paper. (Fig. 8.)
That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen’s name. I
choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I
am not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for
history. The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out.
Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of _red _paper. These
hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)
This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what
has been happening in Canterbury.
Now we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because
he was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was
leading crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give
him ten squares of _white _paper. (Fig. 10).
That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted
Richard. There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not
quite know what it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones
are the most unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it
would be better if they were rights and lefts.
Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called
Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares
of _yellow _paper. (Fig. 11.)
That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is
only an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It
used to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and
catch fish and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed
breed, which was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old
Silurians were afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has
no representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. First I drew
it sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think
it looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping.
I love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of
John coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been
arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of
him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it.
We now come to Henry III.; _red _squares again, of course—fifty-six of
them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their
long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys
there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes.
The reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been
well to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until
it was too late. (Fig. 12.)
This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the
first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event,
the situation of the House, and was the second great liberty landmark
which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this
was not intentional.
Edward I. comes next; _light-brown_ paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig.
13.)
That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet
on the chair, which is the editor’s way; then he can think better. I do
not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor
suggests the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better
if I had a model, but I made this one from memory. But it is no
particular matter; they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and
troublesome, and don’t pay enough. Edward was the first really English
king that had yet occupied the throne. The editor in the picture
probably looks just as Edward looked when it was first borne in upon
him that this was so. His whole attitude expressed gratification and
pride mixed with stupefaction and astonishment.
Edward II. now; twenty _blue _squares. (Fig. 14.)
Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he
finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that.
That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he
is doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart
thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes,
gloating. They are full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture
will serve to remind you that Edward II. was the first English king who
was _deposed_. Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. He had
found kingship a most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you
can see by the look of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his
blue pencil up for good now. He had struck out many a good thing with
it in his time.
Edward III. next; fifty _red _squares. (Fig. 15.)
This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his
tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for
breakfast. This one’s arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at
first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left
shoulder, and his left arm on the right shoulder, and this shows us the
back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all
around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except
perhaps in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired
but born to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not
suspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain
in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out
something astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident;
you never know when it is coming. I might have tried as much as a year
to think of such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I
could not have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable
thing the more it eludes you; but it can’t elude inspiration; you have
only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at
Botticelli’s “Spring.” Those snaky women were unthinkable, but
inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to
reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will
serve to remind us.
Richard II. next; twenty-two _white _squares. (Fig. 16.)
We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II.,
he was _deposed_. He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they
take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small;
but it never fitted him, anyway.
Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs—the
Lancastrian kings.
Henry IV.; fourteen squares of _yellow _paper. (Fig. 17.)
This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the imposing
magnitude of the event. She is giving notice in the usual way. You
notice I am improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them
too much like other animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this
to encourage you. You will find that the more you practice the more
accurate you will become. I could always draw animals, but before I was
educated I could not tell what kind they were when I got them done, but
now I can. Keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although
you may not think it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was
born.
Henry V.; nine _blue _squares. (Fig. 18)
There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records
the amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. French history says
20,000 Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians
say that the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000.
Henry VI.; thirty-nine _red _squares. (Fig. 19)
This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes
and humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of
Arc and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had
started in business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him
sad and weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless
grasp. It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such
splendor.
Edward IV.; twenty-two _light-brown_ squares. (Fig. 20.)
That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his
legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies
wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out
finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That
flower which he is wearing in his buttonhole is a rose—a white rose, a
York rose—and will serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that
the white one was the winning color when Edward got the throne and
dispossessed the Lancastrian dynasty.
Edward V.; one-third of a _black _square. (Fig. 21.)
His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the
reigns displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily
remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane
Grey’s, which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized as
a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we
should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only
fair and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost
our lives besides.
Richard III.; two _white _squares. (Fig. 22.)
That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You
would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is
only a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there
was not light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only
fleeting sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a
hard heart, and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name
of that flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard’s trade-mark,
for it is said that it grows in only one place in the world—Bosworth
Field—and tradition says it never grew there until Richard’s royal
blood warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow.
Henry VII.; twenty-four _blue _squares. (Fig. 23.)
Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace
and quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He
liked to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as
the nation’s, and hatch them out and count up the result. When he died
he left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for
a king to possess in those days. Columbus’s great achievement gave him
the discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to
search out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot’s ship up
there in the corner. This was the first time that England went far
abroad to enlarge her estate—but not the last.
Henry VIII.; thirty-eight _red _squares. (Fig. 24.)
That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.
Edward VI.; six squares of _yellow _paper. (Fig. 25.)
He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his
head, which is a _last_—shoemaker’s last.
Mary; five squares of _black _paper. (Fig. 26.)
The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke.
The first three letters of Mary’s name and the first three of the word
martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs
were becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is
sometimes called Bloody Mary.
This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a
period of nearly five hundred years of England’s history—492 to be
exact. I think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without
further lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have
the scheme now, and something in the ruler’s name or career will
suggest the pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will
not only help your memory, but will develop originality in art. See
what it has done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough
for all of England’s history, continue it into the dining-room and into
other rooms. This will make the walls interesting and instructive and
really worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the
house together.
THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
Note.—The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September
10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain’s Austrian residence. The news
came to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of
Vienna. To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote:
“That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman,
and I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen’s
Jubilee last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and
now this murder, which will still be talked of and described and
painted a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the
wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the
evening and say, in a voice broken with tears, ‘My God! the Empress is
murdered,’ and fly toward her home before we can utter a question—why,
it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and
personally interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come
flying and say, ‘Caesar is butchered—the head of the world is fallen!’
“Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday,
when the funeral cortege marches.”
He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it.
He prepared the article which here follows, but did not offer it for
publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the
court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There
appears no such reason for withholding its publication now.
A. B. P.
The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and
tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large
event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand
years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine
is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the
murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent.
The murder of an empress is the largest of all large events. One must
go back about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this
one. The oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in
Rome and traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of
it has been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until
now. Many a time during these seventeen centuries members of that
family have been startled with the news of extraordinary events—the
destruction of cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the
wreck of dynasties, the extinction of religions, the birth of new
systems of government; and their descendants have been by to hear of it
and talk about it when all these things were repeated once, twice, or a
dozen times—but to even that family has come news at last which is not
staled by use, has no duplicates in the long reach of its memory.
It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every
individual now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in
the presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience
of any traceable or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries,
and it is not likely to fall within the experience of any descendant of
his for twenty more.
Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of an
empress then—even the assassination of Caesar himself—could not
electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one reason,
there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world,
as to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for
another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial
thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey,
and by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of
it left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far
past; it was not properly news, it was history. But the world is
enormous now, and prodigiously populated—that is one change; and
another is the lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and
bad. “The Empress is murdered!” When those amazing words struck upon my
ear in this Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the
disaster, I knew that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin,
New York, San Francisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay,
Madras, Calcutta, and that the entire globe with a single voice, was
cursing the perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first began to
stretch itself wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly
larger areas of the world have, as time went on, received
simultaneously the shock of a great calamity; but this is the first
time in history that the entire surface of the globe has been swept in
a single instant with the thrill of so gigantic an event.
And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this
spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. He is at the
bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and
value go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without
talents, without education, without morals, without character, without
any born charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts;
without a single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or
prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an
incompetent stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy,
offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking,
human polecat. And it was within the privileges and powers of this
sarcasm upon the human race to reach up—up—up—and strike from its far
summit in the social skies the world’s accepted ideal of Glory and
Might and Splendor and Sacredness! It realizes to us what sorry shows
and shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor
things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are
shams. At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and
teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.
And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often
forget—or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one
way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this
madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane;
but when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can
make him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost
it again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide’s coffin. Love is
a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of
despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like
Rudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life.
All the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions,
passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and
ready to grow, spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are
no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man but accident—the accident
of not having his malady put to the supreme test.
One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the
pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common,
but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every
child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in
their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the
attention of visitors; boys are always “showing off”; apparently all
men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done
a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused
wondering talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a
hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness
for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the
thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy
fineries; it has made kings pick one another’s pockets, scramble for
one another’s crowns and estates, slaughter one another’s subjects; it
has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and village mayors, and little
and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle
champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and
Napoleons. Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or
the township, or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet
shouting, “Look—there he goes—that is the man!” And in five minutes’
time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp
has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in
time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane
newspapers and courts and kings and historians, his is safe to live and
thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall
endure! Oh, if it were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart,
in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without
it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification
of its creation; _would _be, indeed, but that the animal that struck
her down re-establishes the doubt.
In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages
respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and
her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and
brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter
griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest
honors in the world’s gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She
knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English
fisherman’s wife said, “When a body was in trouble she didn’t send her
help, she brought it herself.” Crowns have adorned others, but she
adorned her crowns.
It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by
some curious contrasts. At noon last Saturday there was no one in the
world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth
claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an
acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued
the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was
sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom
grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject of
conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and
governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors
had put aside their other interests to talk about him. And wherever
there was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by
chance had at some time or other come across that creature, he
remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and _mentioned _it—for it was
a distinction, now! It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a
moment the thing is not quite realizable—but it is perfectly true. If
there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw that creature
in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly
casual and indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past week.
For a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the
inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in
being in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events. We are
all privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king
by accident; the reason the rest of us are not kings is merely due to
another accident; we are all made out of the same clay, and it is a
sufficiently poor quality.
Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it as
well as if I were hearing them:
THE COMMANDER: “He was in my army.”
THE GENERAL: “He was in my corps.”
THE COLONEL: “He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well.”
THE CAPTAIN: “He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember
him well.”
THE SERGEANT: “Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every
morning I used to—” etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring
ears.
THE LANDLADY: “Many’s the time he boarded with me. I can show you his
very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on
the wall—he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own
eyes. Didn’t you, Johnny?”
It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the
constables and the jailer treasure up the assassin’s daily remarks and
doings as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of
blissful distinction. The interviewer, too; he tries to let on that he
is not vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others
are allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no
more keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.
Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal
militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor
mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One
may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs
done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any
kind. When he saw his photograph and said, “I shall be celebrated,” he
laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for
notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old
as history—the burning of the temple of Ephesus.
Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
concede high rank to the many which have described it as a “peculiarly
brutal crime” and then added that it was “ordained from above.” I think
this verdict will not be popular “above.” If the deed was ordained from
above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially
responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without
manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its
laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into
preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the
shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the
windows of the Krantz, Vienna’s sumptuous new hotel. We came into town
in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.
Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were
Sunday-like; the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly;
very few people were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen
were in black as a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions,
with footmen and coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked
hats; the shops were closed; in many windows were pictures of the
Empress: as a beautiful young bride of seventeen; as a serene and
majestic lady with added years; and finally in deep black and without
ornaments—the costume she always wore after the tragic death of her son
nine years ago, for her heart broke then, and life lost almost all its
value for her. The people stood grouped before these pictures, and now
and then one saw women and girls turn away wiping the tears from their
eyes.
In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church
where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and
severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with
no ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above
that a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead
of the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon’s son,
the Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first
Habsburg ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.
The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses,
and the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast
plate-glass windows of the upper floors of a house on the corner one
glimpsed terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and
shimmery, like people under water. Under us the square was noiseless,
but it was full of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting
about on errands, and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost
raggedness of poverty, the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a
youth of eighteen or twenty, he was, and through the field-glass one
could see that he was tearing apart and munching riffraff that he had
gathered somewhere. Blazing uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling
contrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags, but he took no notice;
he was not there to grieve for a nation’s disaster; he had his own
cares, and deeper. From two directions two long files of infantry came
plowing through the pack and press in silence; there was a low, crisp
order and the crowd vanished, the square save the sidewalks was empty,
the private mourner was gone. Another order, the soldiers fell apart
and enclosed the square in a double-ranked human fence. It was all so
swift, noiseless, exact—like a beautifully ordered machine.
It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then
carriages began to flow past and deliver the two or three hundred court
personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the
square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers
in showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only
a narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no
civilian among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have
marred the radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its
steps, and on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing
splotch of color—intense red, gold, and white—which dimmed the
brilliancies around them; and opposite them on the other side of the
path was a bunch of cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue
shoulders which made another splotch of splendor emphatic and
conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. It was a sea of flashing color
all about, but these two groups were the high notes. The green plumes
were worn by forty or fifty Austrian generals, the group opposite them
were chiefly Knights of Malta and knights of a German order. The mass
of heads in the square were covered by gilt helmets and by military
caps roofed with a mirror-like glaze, and the movements of the wearers
caused these things to catch the sun-rays, and the effect was fine to
see—the square was like a garden of richly colored flowers with a
multitude of blinding and flashing little suns distributed over it.
Think of it—it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his
imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was
assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the
church from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so
unrealizable.
At three o’clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file.
At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some
bishops; then a number of archdeacons—all in striking colors that add
to the show. At three-ten a procession of priests passes along, with
crucifix. Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at
three-fifty another one—very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered
robes, and much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals,
receding into the distance.
A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At
three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of
gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is
near to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the
sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very
conspicuous where so much warm color is all about.
A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession
comes into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to
widen the path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt
helmets. Next, three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen
in black, with cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid
uniforms, red, gold, and white, exceedingly showy.
Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low
rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk
by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich
feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed.
The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves
by; first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and
picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric
splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array.
Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow,
and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the
three dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in
Austria were capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of
contrasts.
Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854,
when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless
pomp and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags
and decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of
shouting and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last
Wednesday, when she entered the city in her coffin and moved down the
same streets in the dead of the night under swaying black flags,
between packed human walls again; but everywhere was a deep stillness,
now—a stillness emphasized, rather than broken, by the muffled
hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over pavements cushioned with sand, and
the low sobbing of gray-headed women who had witnessed the first entry
forty-four years before, when she and they were young—and unaware!
A character in Baron von Berger’s recent fairy drama “Habsburg” tells
about that first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his
history draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it,
but will try to convey the spirit of the verses:
I saw the stately pageant pass:
In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:
I could not take my eyes away
From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,
That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense
A noble Alp far lighted in the blue,
That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud
And stands a dream of glory to the gaze
Of them that in the Valley toil and plod.
A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY
Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri—a
village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France—a village; time,
the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I
am in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide
apart, yet today I have the strange sense of being thrust back into
that Missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that I
lived there so long ago.
Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic
was taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mob surrounded our
hotel, shouting, howling, singing the “Marseillaise,” and pelting our
windows with sticks and stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the
mob demanded that they be turned out of the house instantly—to be
drubbed, and then driven out of the village. Everybody in the hotel
remained up until far into the night, and experienced the several kinds
of terror which one reads about in books which tell of night attacks by
Italians and by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd;
the arrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal
to rearrange plans—followed by a silence ominous, threatening, and
harder to bear than even the active siege and the noise. The landlord
and the two village policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob
was persuaded to go away and leave our Italians in peace. Today four of
the ringleaders have been sentenced to heavy punishment of a public
sort—and are become local heroes, by consequence.
That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian
village half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated—just
as France is doing in these latter months.
In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in
a humble way our Cesario—I hope I have spelled this name wrong. Fifty
years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been
passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of
periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings.
In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a
man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery
was simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against
the holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right
mind. For a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years
ago, was to proclaim himself a madman—he could not be in his right
mind.
Now the original old first blasphemer against any institution
profoundly venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his
followers and imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself
is sincere—his heart is in his protest.
Robert Hardy was our first _abolitionist_—awful name! He was a
journeyman cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the
great pork-packing establishment which was Marion City’s chief pride
and sole source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And,
being a stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person—for
that has been human nature from Adam down—and of course, also, he was
made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the
other animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given
to reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the
isolation which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side
remarks by his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided
that he was a coward.
All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist—straight out and
publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a
moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a
fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the
Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their
hands. He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for
his words; that no man _could _be sane and utter such words.
So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. He
was found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made
abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear
and laugh. He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have
pity on the poor slaves, and take measures for the restoration of their
stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow—blood, blood, rivers
of blood!
It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A
slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and
was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull
twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him.
Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a
struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive. Hardy crossed
the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. All
this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the
Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly
a mile wide. The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist
preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest
of order; so Hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed
to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get
hold of him. The reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist
minister was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good
headpiece. Williams was his name—Damon Williams; Damon Williams in
public, Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on
that theme and so frequent.
The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who had
ever been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most
imposing in the town’s history. It lifted the humble village into
sudden importance; its name was in everybody’s mouth for twenty miles
around. And so was the name of Robert Hardy—Robert Hardy, the stranger,
the despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in
the region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers,
they found their position curiously changed—they were important people,
or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had
been their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who had
really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves
objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their
shopmates.
The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man
was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He
issued an extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole
paper to matters connected with the great event—there would be a full
and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a
portrait of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait
himself, on the back of a wooden type—and a terror it was to look at.
It made a great commotion, for this was the first time the village
paper had ever contained a picture. The village was very proud. The
output of the paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before,
yet every copy was sold.
When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from
Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could
hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial
was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying
pictures of the accused.
Hardy was convicted, and hanged—a mistake. People came from miles
around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women
and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd
the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly
bought up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the
memorable event.
Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week
afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves
abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert;
everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The
four swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their
faces, and hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were
troubled and afraid, and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they
could not understand it. “Abolitionist” had always been a term of shame
and horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed
to bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men
they were, too—of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed
Smith, the printer’s apprentice, nineteen, had been the head
Sunday-school boy, and had once recited three thousand Bible verses
without making a break. Dick Savage, twenty, the baker’s apprentice;
Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeyman blacksmith; and Henry Taylor,
twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer—were the other three. They were all of a
sentimental cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry,
such as it was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never
before been suspected of having anything bad in them.
They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and
dreadful. They presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by
names from the pulpit—which made an immense stir! This was grandeur,
this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now.
This was natural. Their company grew—grew alarmingly. They took a name.
It was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they
were simply the abolitionists. They had pass-words, grips, and signs;
they had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy
pomps and ceremonies, at midnight.
They always spoke of Hardy as “the Martyr,” and every little while they
moved through the principal street in procession—at midnight,
black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum—on
pilgrimage to the Martyr’s grave, where they went through with some
majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave
previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned
everybody to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and
leave the road empty. These warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull
and crossbones at the top of the poster.
When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite
natural thing happened. A few men of character and grit woke up out of
the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and
began to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community
for enduring this child’s-play; and at the same time they proposed to
end it straightway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into
their dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men
again. This was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and
strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer
with it. Midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and
with a clearly defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. The
best organizer and strongest and bitterest talker on that great
Saturday was the Presbyterian clergyman who had denounced the original
four from his pulpit—Rev. Hiram Fletcher—and he promised to use his
pulpit in the public interest again now. On the morrow he had
revelations to make, he said—secrets of the dreadful society.
But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning
the dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and
the town patrol saw the preacher’s house spring in a wreck of whirling
fragments into the sky. The preacher was killed, together with a negro
woman, his only slave and servant.
The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a
visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who
stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an
invisible one—an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in
the dark and leaves no trace—that is another matter. That is a thing to
make the bravest tremble and hold back.
The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was to
have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common
enemy had but a handful to see him buried. The coroner’s jury had
brought in a verdict of “death by the visitation of God,” for no
witness came forward; if any existed they prudently kept out of the
way. Nobody seemed sorry. Nobody wanted to see the terrible secret
society provoked into the commission of further outrages. Everybody
wanted the tragedy hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible.
And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will
Joyce, the blacksmith’s journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the
assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made
his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a
trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly
formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could
not hope to deal with successfully—_vanity_, thirst for notoriety. If
men were going to kill for notoriety’s sake, and to win the glory of
newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible
invention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort
of panic; it did not know what to do.
However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter—it had no
choice. It brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the
county court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the
principal witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the
assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he
deposited his keg of powder and laid his train—from the house to
such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just
then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart’s cigar and fired the train with
it, shouting, “Down with all slave-tyrants!” and how Hart and Ronalds
made no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward
to testify yet.
But they had to testify now, and they did—and pitiful it was to see how
reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to
Joyce’s fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a
deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding,
with a roaring repetition of his “Death to all slave-tyrants!”—which
came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present
catch his breath and gasp.
The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with
other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond
imagination.
The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast
crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a
dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity.
Joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the
scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and
gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in
the society’s records, of the “Martyr Orator.” He went to his death
breathing slaughter and charging his society to “avenge his murder.” If
he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young
fellows present in that great crowd he was a grand hero—and enviably
situated.
He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the
society which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them
earnest, determined men. They did not court distinction in the same
way, but they celebrated his martyrdom. The crime which had been
obscure and despised had become lofty and glorified.
Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom
was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order,
followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It
was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been
the manner of reform since the beginning of the world.
SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY
Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891.
It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote
time there was only one ladder railway in the country. That state of
things is all changed. There isn’t a mountain in Switzerland now that
hasn’t a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed,
some mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all will be.
In that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a
lantern when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over
railroads that have been built since his last round. And also in that
day, if there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch
hasn’t a railroad through it, it will make him as conspicuous as
William Tell.
However, there are only two best ways to travel through Switzerland.
The first best is afoot. The second best is by open two-horse carriage.
One can come from Lucerne to Interlaken over the Brunig by ladder
railroad in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage
in ten, and have two hours for luncheon at noon—for luncheon, not for
rest. There is no fatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in
spirit and in person in the evening—no fret in his heart, no grime on
his face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. This is the
right condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the
solemn event which closed the day—stepping with metaphorically
uncovered head into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass
that the globe can show—the Jungfrau. The stranger’s first feeling,
when suddenly confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped
in its shroud of snow, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if
heaven’s gates had swung open and exposed the throne.
It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothing going on—at
least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. There are floods and
floods of that. One may properly speak of it as “going on,” for it is
full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy,
with visible enthusiasm. This is a good atmosphere to be in, morally as
well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of the
neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe in air
that has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come
among a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to
be taught in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. For the
struggle here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of
any private family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole
body of the nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of
belief. This fact is colossal. If one would realize how colossal it is,
and of what dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes
and objects of the Crusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses,
and other historic comedies of that sort and size.
Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, and I saw
Rutli and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little patch of a meadow, but I do
not know how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth
crossing oceans and continents to see, since it was there that the
great trinity of Switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore
the oath which set their enslaved and insulted country forever free;
and Altorf is also honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there
that William, surnamed Tell (which interpreted means “The foolish
talker”—that is to say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to
Gessler’s hat. Of late years the prying student of history has been
delighting himself beyond measure over a wonderful find which he has
made—to wit, that Tell did not shoot the apple from his son’s head. To
hear the students jubilate, one would suppose that the question of
whether Tell shot the apple or didn’t was an important matter; whereas
it ranks in importance exactly with the question of whether Washington
chopped down the cherry-tree or didn’t. The deeds of Washington, the
patriot, are the essential thing; the cherry-tree incident is of no
consequence. To prove that Tell did shoot the apple from his son’s head
would merely prove that he had better nerve than most men and was as
skillful with a bow as a million others who preceded and followed him,
but not one whit more so. But Tell was more and better than a mere
marksman, more and better than a mere cool head; he was a type; he
stands for Swiss patriotism; in his person was represented a whole
people; his spirit was their spirit—the spirit which would bow to none
but God, the spirit which said this in words and confirmed it with
deeds. There have always been Tells in Switzerland—people who would not
bow. There was a sufficiency of them at Rutli; there were plenty of
them at Murten; plenty at Grandson; there are plenty today. And the
first of them all—the very first, earliest banner-bearer of human
freedom in this world—was not a man, but a woman—Stauffacher’s wife.
There she looms dim and great, through the haze of the centuries,
delivering into her husband’s ear that gospel of revolt which was to
bear fruit in the conspiracy of Rutli and the birth of the first free
government the world had ever seen.
From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling
width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped
like an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of
the Jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. The
gateway, in the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the
great picture. The somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are
startlingly contrasted. It is this frame which concentrates and
emphasizes the glory of the Jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and
beguiling and fascinating spectacle that exists on the earth. There are
many mountains of snow that are as lofty as the Jungfrau and as nobly
proportioned, but they lack the frame. They stand at large; they are
intruded upon and elbowed by neighboring domes and summits, and their
grandeur is diminished and fails of effect.
It is a good name, Jungfrau—Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing
could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. At six yesterday
evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze
seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so
shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the
shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the
imagination, nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly
varying shades of it, but mainly very dark. The sun was down—as far as
that barrier was concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the
heavens beyond the gateway. She was a roaring conflagration of blinding
white.
It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a
missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. He was an Irishman,
son of an Irish king—there were thirty thousand kings reigning in
County Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so
that they could not make a living, there was so much competition and
wages got cut so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with
wife and little children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last
a particularly severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of
them were reduced to mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in
the bitterest weather, standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their
crowns for alms. Indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or
starve but for a fortunate idea of Prince Fridolin’s, who started a
labor-union, the first one in history, and got the great bulk of them
to join it. He thus won the general gratitude, and they wanted to make
him emperor—emperor over them all—emperor of County Cork, but he said,
No, walking delegate was good enough for him. For behold! he was modest
beyond his years, and keen as a whip. To this day in Germany and
Switzerland, where St. Fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry
speak of him affectionately as the first walking delegate.
The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionarying—for
missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All
you had to do was to cure the head savage’s sick daughter by a
“miracle”—a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for
instance—and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled
to the eyes with a new convert’s enthusiasm. You could sit down and
make yourself easy, now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of
the nation himself. Charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate.
Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were
sure and the rewards great. We have no such missionaries now, and no
such methods.
But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are
interested. I am interested myself because I have seen his relics in
Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle—the
one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries
later. To have seen these things makes me feel very near to him, almost
like a member of the family, in fact. While wandering about the
Continent he arrived at the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by
Sackingen, and proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off.
He appealed to the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the
whole region, people and all. He built a great cloister there for women
and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land. There were two
wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and
Fridolin claimed his estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers.
Fridolin had none to show. He said the bequest had been made to him by
word of mouth. Landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said it
in a way which he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows
that he did not know the walking delegate. Fridolin was not disturbed.
He said:
“Appoint your court. I will bring a witness.”
The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. A day
was appointed for the trial of the case. On that day the judges took
their seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was
ready for business. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed,
and yet no Fridolin appeared. Landulph rose, and was in the act of
claiming judgment by default when a strange clacking sound was heard
coming up the stairs. In another moment Fridolin entered at the door
and came walking in a deep hush down the middle aisle, with a tall
skeleton stalking in his rear.
Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody
suspected that the skeleton was Urso’s. It stopped before the chief
judge and raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the
assembly shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its
ribs. It said:
“Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery
the gift which I gave thee for the honor of God?”
It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was
actually given against Landulph on the testimony of this wandering
rack-heap of unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be
allowed to testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility,
and its word could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one
of them. Most skeletons are not to be believed on oath, and this was
probably one of them. However, the incident is valuable as preserving
to us a curious sample of the quaint laws of evidence of that remote
time--a time so remote, so far back toward the beginning of original
idiocy, that the difference between a bench of judges and a basket of
vegetables was as yet so slight that we may say with all confidence
that it didn’t really exist.
During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe
useful, piece of work—that is to say, I have been trying to make the
mighty Jungfrau earn her living—earn it in a most humble sphere, but on
a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she
couldn’t do anything in a small way with her size and style. I have
been trying to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off
the hours as they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky,
and tell the time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of
her and to the people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there.
Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau’s aspect is that of a spotless
desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by mid-afternoon some
elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose
presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time,
began to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. At
first there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the
other day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice
that shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape
of the human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the
military cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper
lip sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot
straight aggressively forward from the chin.
At four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the
altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge
buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer
very well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet
sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow
his head on the Virgin’s white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities
to her in the sensuous music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and
thunder of the passing avalanche—music very familiar to his ear, for he
has heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came
courting this child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is
far, yes—for he was at this pleasant sport before the Middle Ages
drifted by him in the valley; before the Romans marched past, and
before the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and
wondered who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before
primeval man himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped
out upon this plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries
ago, and cast a glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human
being and consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians
wallowed here, still some eons earlier. Oh yes, a day so far back that
the eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back
that neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary
eternity must come and go before the restless little creature, of whose
face this stupendous Shadow Face was the prophecy, would arrive in the
earth and begin his shabby career and think it a big thing. Oh, indeed
yes; when you talk about your poor Roman and Egyptian
day-before-yesterday antiquities, you should choose a time when the
hoary Shadow Face of the Jungfrau is not by. It antedates all
antiquities known or imaginable; for it was here the world itself
created the theater of future antiquities. And it is the only witness
with a human face that was there to see the marvel, and remains to us a
memorial of it.
By 4:40 P.M. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. It is
black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing
snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface.
Meantime shadow No. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the
face west of it—and at five o’clock has assumed a shape that has rather
a poor and rude semblance of a shoe.
Meantime, also, the great Shadow Face has been gradually changing for
twenty minutes, and now, 5 P.M., it is becoming a quite fair portrait
of Roscoe Conkling. The likeness is there, and is unmistakable. The
goatee is shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn’t any, but
ran off eastward and arrived nowhere.
By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become
what looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe
had turned into what the printers call a “fist” with a finger pointing.
If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward
of this point, and was denied a timepiece, I could get along well
enough from four till six on clear days, for I could keep trace of the
time by the changing shapes of these mighty shadows on the Virgin’s
front, the most stupendous dial I am acquainted with, the oldest clock
in the world by a couple of million years.
I suppose I should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if I
hadn’t the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain
crags—a sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you
don’t find any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. I have searched
through several bushels of photographs of the Jungfrau here, but found
only one with the Face in it, and in this case it was not strictly
recognizable as a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken
before four o’clock in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the
photographers have persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating
features of the Jungfrau show. I say fascinating, because if you once
detect a human face produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you
never get tired of watching it. At first you can’t make another person
see it at all, but after he has made it out once he can’t see anything
else afterward.
The King of Greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off
duty. One day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class
compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm
in when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in
particular, but a good deal like everybody in general. By and by a
hearty and healthy German-American got in and opened up a frank and
interesting and sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a
couple of thousand questions about himself, which the king answered
good-naturedly, but in a more or less indefinite way as to private
particulars.
“Where do you live when you are at home?”
“In Greece.”
“Greece! Well, now, that is just astonishing! Born there?”
“No.”
“Do you speak Greek?”
“Yes.”
“Now, ain’t that strange! I never expected to live to see that. What is
your trade? I mean how do you get your living? What is your line of
business?”
“Well, I hardly know how to answer. I am only a kind of foreman, on a
salary; and the business—well, is a very general kind of business.”
“Yes, I understand—general jobbing—little of everything—anything that
there’s money in.”
“That’s about it, yes.”
“Are you traveling for the house now?”
“Well, partly; but not entirely. Of course I do a stroke of business if
it falls in the way—”
“Good! I like that in you! That’s me every time. Go on.”
“I was only going to say I am off on my vacation now.”
“Well that’s all right. No harm in that. A man works all the better for
a little let-up now and then. Not that I’ve been used to having it
myself; for I haven’t. I reckon this is my first. I was born in
Germany, and when I was a couple of weeks old shipped for America, and
I’ve been there ever since, and that’s sixty-four years by the watch.
I’m an American in principle and a German at heart, and it’s the boss
combination. Well, how do you get along, as a rule—pretty fair?”
“I’ve a rather large family—”
“There, that’s it—big family and trying to raise them on a salary. Now,
what did you go to do that for?”
“Well, I thought—”
“Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you could
branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you see!
But never mind about that. I’m not trying to discourage you. Dear me!
I’ve been just where you are myself! You’ve got good grit; there’s good
stuff in you, I can see that. You got a wrong start, that’s the whole
trouble. But you hold your grip, and we’ll see what can be done. Your
case ain’t half as bad as it might be. You are going to come out all
right—I’m bail for that. Boys and girls?”
“My family? Yes, some of them are boys—”
“And the rest girls. It’s just as I expected. But that’s all right, and
it’s better so, anyway. What are the boys doing—learning a trade?”
“Well, no—I thought—”
“It’s a great mistake. It’s the biggest mistake you ever made. You see
that in your own case. A man ought always to have a trade to fall back
on. Now, I was harness-maker at first. Did that prevent me from
becoming one of the biggest brewers in America? Oh no. I always had the
harness trick to fall back on in rough weather. Now, if you had learned
how to make harness—However, it’s too late now; too late. But it’s no
good plan to cry over spilt milk. But as to the boys, you see—what’s to
become of them if anything happens to you?”
“It has been my idea to let the eldest one succeed me—”
“Oh, come! Suppose the firm don’t want him?”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but—”
“Now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop
dreaming. You are capable of immense things—man. You can make a perfect
success in life. All you want is somebody to steady you and boost you
along on the right road. Do you own anything in the business?”
“No—not exactly; but if I continue to give satisfaction, I suppose I
can keep my—”
“Keep your place—yes. Well, don’t you depend on anything of the kind.
They’ll bounce you the minute you get a little old and worked out;
they’ll do it sure. Can’t you manage somehow to get into the firm?
That’s the great thing, you know.”
“I think it is doubtful; very doubtful.”
“Um—that’s bad—yes, and unfair, too. Do you suppose that if I should go
there and have a talk with your people—Look here—do you think you could
run a brewery?”
“I have never tried, but I think I could do it after I got a little
familiarity with the business.”
The German was silent for some time. He did a good deal of thinking,
and the king waited with curiosity to see what the result was going to
be. Finally the German said:
“My mind’s made up. You leave that crowd—you’ll never amount to
anything there. In these old countries they never give a fellow a show.
Yes, you come over to America—come to my place in Rochester; bring the
family along. You shall have a show in the business and the
foremanship, besides. George—you said your name was George?—I’ll make a
man of you. I give you my word. You’ve never had a chance here, but
that’s all going to change. By gracious! I’ll give you a lift that’ll
make your hair curl!”
AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER
Bayreuth, Aug. 2d, 1891
It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad
strangers that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since
we had seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a
good half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train—and it was the
longest train we have yet seen in Europe. Nuremberg had been witnessing
this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. It
gives one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial
pilgrimage. For a pilgrimage is what it is. The devotees come from the
very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his
own Mecca.
If you are living in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or anywhere
else in America, and you conclude, by the middle of May, that you would
like to attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must
use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats,
and you must cable for lodgings, too. Then if you are lucky you will
get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If
you stop to write you will get nothing. There were plenty of people in
Nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without
first securing seats and lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth;
they had walked Bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to
Nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked
those quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and
empty their guests into the trains, and so make room for these, their
defeated brethren and sisters in the faith. They had endured from
thirty to forty hours’ railroading on the continent of Europe—with all
which that implies of worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment—and
all they had got and all they were to get for it was handiness and
accuracy in kicking themselves, acquired by practice in the back
streets of the two towns when other people were in bed; for back they
must go over that unspeakable journey with their pious mission
unfulfilled. These humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and
apologetic look of wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with
drowsiness, their bodies were adroop from crown to sole, and all
kind-hearted people refrained from asking them if they had been to
Bayreuth and failed to connect, as knowing they would lie.
We reached here (Bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday. We
were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in
advance.
I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about
the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. The little children
of Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader
intelligence than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the
operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. What I write
about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the
public as merely a cat’s view of a king, and not of didactic value.
Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the opera-house—that is to say,
the Wagner temple—a little after the middle of the afternoon. The great
building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground
outside the town. We were warned that if we arrived after four o’clock
we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a half apiece extra by way
of fine. We saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the
only opportunity that Europe offers of saving money. There was a big
crowd in the grounds about the building, and the ladies’ dresses took
the sun with fine effect. I do not mean to intimate that the ladies
were in full dress, for that was not so. The dresses were pretty, but
neither sex was in evening dress.
The interior of the building is simple—severely so; but there is no
occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark.
The auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the
narrow end. There is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of
the house. Each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side
of the house to the other. There are seven entrance doors on each side
of the theater and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit
1,650 persons. The number of the particular door by which you are to
enter the house or leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use
no door but that one. Thus, crowding and confusion are impossible. Not
so many as a hundred people use any one door. This is better than
having the usual (and useless) elaborate fireproof arrangements. It is
the model theater of the world. It can be emptied while the second hand
of a watch makes its circuit. It would be entirely safe, even if it
were built of lucifer matches.
If your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must
work your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to
get to it. Yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until
all the seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few
minutes. Then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen
hundred heads, making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the
house down to the stage.
All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a
deep and solemn gloom. The funereal rustling of dresses and the low
buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the
ghost of a sound was left. This profound and increasingly impressive
stillness endured for some time—the best preparation for music,
spectacle, or speech conceivable. I should think our show people would
have invented or imported that simple and impressive device for
securing and solidifying the attention of an audience long ago; instead
of which they continue to this day to open a performance against a
deadly competition in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered
interest.
Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose
upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave
his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his
enchantments. There was something strangely impressive in the fancy
which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his
grave of what was going on here, and that these divine sounds were the
clothing of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his
brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at
some former time.
The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with
the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway
thereafter, of course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that
nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to
the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. I wish I could see a
Wagner opera done in pantomime once. Then one would have the lovely
orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the
bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb
acting couldn’t mar these pleasures, because there isn’t often anything
in the Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as
acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people,
one of them standing still, the other catching flies. Of course I do
not really mean that he would be catching flies; I only mean that the
usual operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out
into the air and then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if
the operator attended strictly to business and uttered no sound.
This present opera was “Parsifal.” Madame Wagner does not permit its
representation anywhere but in Bayreuth. The first act of the three
occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.
I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most
entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles
invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that
the chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you
please to call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is
a picture with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the
vocal parts of “Parsifal” anything that might with confidence be called
rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a time—and a long
time, too—often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he
only pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long
one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two—and so on and so on;
and when he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed
had not compensated for the disturbance. Not always, but pretty often.
If two of them would but put in a duet occasionally and blend the
voices; but no, they don’t do that. The great master, who knew so well
how to make a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their
souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in
barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was
deep, and only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the
contrast it would make with the music. Singing! It does seem the wrong
name to apply to it. Strictly described, it is a practicing of
difficult and unpleasant intervals, mainly. An ignorant person gets
tired of listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter
how pleasant they may be. In “Parsifal” there is a hermit named
Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the
hour, while first one and then another character of the cast endures
what he can of it and then retires to die.
During the evening there was an intermission of three-quarters of an
hour after the first act and one an hour long after the second. In both
instances the theater was totally emptied. People who had previously
engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their
time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. The opera was
concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. When we reached home
we had been gone more than seven hours. Seven hours at five dollars a
ticket is almost too much for the money.
While browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts I
encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of America,
and those of them who were most familiar with Wagner said that
“Parsifal” seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it
several times it was almost sure to become a favorite. It seemed
impossible, but it was true, for the statement came from people whose
word was not to be doubted.
And I gathered some further information. On the ground I found part of
a German musical magazine, and in it a letter written by Uhlic
thirty-three years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused
Wagner against people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive
absence of what our kind regards as singing. Uhlic says Wagner despised
“_jene plapperude music_,” and therefore “runs, trills, and _Schnorkel
_are discarded by him.” I don’t know what a _Schnorkel _is, but now
that I know it has been left out of these operas I never have missed so
much in my life. And Uhlic further says that Wagner’s song is true:
that it is “simply emphasized intoned speech.” That certainly describes
it—in “Parsifal” and some of the other operas; and if I understand
Uhlic’s elaborate German he apologizes for the beautiful airs in
“Tannhauser.” Very well; now that Wagner and I understand each other,
perhaps we shall get along better, and I shall stop calling Waggner, on
the American plan, and thereafter call him Waggner as per German
custom, for I feel entirely friendly now. The minute we get reconciled
to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless
punctilios and pronounce his name right!
Of course I came home wondering why people should come from all corners
of America to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or
two of them in New York with these same singers in the several parts,
and possibly this same orchestra. I resolved to think that out at all
hazards.
TUESDAY.—Yesterday they played the only operatic favorite I have ever
had—an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant delight
whenever I have heard it—“Tannhauser.” I heard it first when I was a
youth; I heard it last in the last German season in New York. I was
busy yesterday and I did not intend to go, knowing I should have
another “Tannhauser” opportunity in a few days; but after five o’clock
I found myself free and walked out to the opera-house and arrived about
the beginning of the second act. My opera ticket admitted me to the
grounds in front, past the policeman and the chain, and I thought I
would take a rest on a bench for an hour and two and wait for the third
act.
In a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to
crumble apart and melt into the theater. I will explain that this
bugle-call is one of the pretty features here. You see, the theater is
empty, and hundreds of the audience are a good way off in the
feeding-house; the first bugle-call is blown about a quarter of an hour
before time for the curtain to rise. This company of buglers, in
uniform, march out with military step and send out over the landscape a
few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances
with the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and
repeat. Presently they do this over again. Yesterday only about two
hundred people were still left in front of the house when the second
call was blown; in another half-minute they would have been in the
house, but then a thing happened which delayed them—the only solitary
thing in this world which could be relied on with certainty to
accomplish this, I suppose—an imperial princess appeared in the balcony
above them. They stopped dead in their tracks and began to gaze in a
stupor of gratitude and satisfaction. The lady presently saw that she
must disappear or the doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so
she returned to her box. This daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty;
she had a kind face; she was without airs; she is known to be full of
common human sympathies. There are many kinds of princesses, but this
kind is the most harmful of all, for wherever they go they reconcile
people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. The valuable
princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. By their
mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument
that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist.
In his time the husband of this princess was valuable. He led a
degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and
surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried like a god.
In the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of
open gallery, in which princes are displayed. It is sacred to them; it
is the holy of holies. As soon as the filling of the house is about
complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the
princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and
regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt,
unconscious, steeped in worship. There is no spectacle anywhere that is
more pathetic than this. It is worth crossing many oceans to see. It is
somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a Victor Hugo, or
Niagara, or the bones of the mastodon, or the guillotine of the
Revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant Vesuvius smoking in the
sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his genius and achievements,
or thing long celebrated to you by the praises of books and
pictures—no, that gaze is only the gaze of intense curiosity, interest,
wonder, engaged in drinking delicious deep draughts that taste good all
the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a lifetime. Satisfy
it—that is the word. Hugo and the mastodon will still have a degree of
intense interest thereafter when encountered, but never anything
approaching the ecstasy of that first view. The interest of a prince is
different. It may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless it is a mixture
of both—and it does not satisfy its thirst with one view, or even
noticeably diminish it. Perhaps the essence of the thing is the value
which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and not
been earned. A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you
than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at
faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. A prince
picks up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and gratis support by
a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before the
grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of
luck. And then—supremest value of all-his is the only high fortune on
the earth which is secure. The commercial millionaire may become a
beggar; the illustrious statesman can make a vital mistake and be
dropped and forgotten; the illustrious general can lose a decisive
battle and with it the consideration of men; but once a prince always a
prince—that is to say, an imitation god, and neither hard fortune nor
an infamous character nor an addled brain nor the speech of an ass can
undeify him. By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the
most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether
deserved or undeserved. It follows without doubt or question, then,
that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I
think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history
is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have
committed. To usurp a usurpation—that is all it amounts to, isn’t it?
A prince is not to us what he is to a European, of course. We have not
been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good look at him is
likely to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of
no greater interest the next time. We want a fresh one. But it is not
so with the European. I am quite sure of it. The same old one will
answer; he never stales. Eighteen years ago I was in London and I
called at an Englishman’s house on a bleak and foggy and dismal
December afternoon to visit his wife and married daughter by
appointment. I waited half an hour and then they arrived, frozen. They
explained that they had been delayed by an unlooked-for circumstance:
while passing in the neighborhood of Marlborough House they saw a crowd
gathering and were told that the Prince of Wales was about to drive
out, so they stopped to get a sight of him. They had waited half an
hour on the sidewalk, freezing with the crowd, but were disappointed at
last—the Prince had changed his mind. I said, with a good deal of
surprise, “Is it possible that you two have lived in London all your
lives and have never seen the Prince of Wales?”
Apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: “What
an idea! Why, we have seen him hundreds of times.”
They had seen him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour
in the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a jam of patients
from the same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. It was a
stupefying statement, but one is obliged to believe the English, even
when they say a thing like that. I fumbled around for a remark, and got
out this one:
“I can’t understand it at all. If I had never seen General Grant I
doubt if I would do that even to get a sight of him.” With a slight
emphasis on the last word.
Their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in.
Then they said, blankly: “Of course not. He is only a President.”
It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an
interest not subject to deterioration. The general who was never
defeated, the general who never held a council of war, the only general
who ever commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long,
the smith who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and
re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the
monarchies present and to come, was really a person of no serious
consequence to these people. To them, with their training, my General
was only a man, after all, while their Prince was clearly much more
than that—a being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution,
and being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene
eternal lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of
commerce that sputter and die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of
ashes and a stink.
I saw the last act of “Tannhauser.” I sat in the gloom and the deep
stillness, waiting—one minute, two minutes, I do not know exactly how
long—then the soft music of the hidden orchestra began to breathe its
rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by and by the
drop-curtain parted in the middle and was drawn softly aside,
disclosing the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed
girl praying and a man standing near. Presently that noble chorus of
men’s voices was heard approaching, and from that moment until the
closing of the curtain it was music, just music—music to make one drunk
with pleasure, music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way
round the globe to hear it.
To such as are intending to come here in the Wagner season next year I
wish to say, bring your dinner-pail with you. If you do, you will never
cease to be thankful. If you do not, you will find it a hard fight to
save yourself from famishing in Bayreuth. Bayreuth is merely a large
village, and has no very large hotels or eating-houses. The principal
inns are the Golden Anchor and the Sun. At either of these places you
can get an excellent meal—no, I mean you can go there and see other
people get it. There is no charge for this. The town is littered with
restaurants, but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with
custom. You must secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you
arrive you will find somebody occupying it. We have had this
experience. We have had a daily scramble for life; and when I say we, I
include shoals of people. I have the impression that the only people
who do not have to scramble are the veterans—the disciples who have
been here before and know the ropes. I think they arrive about a week
before the first opera, and engage all the tables for the season. My
tribe had tried all kinds of places—some outside of the town, a mile or
two—and have captured only nibblings and odds and ends, never in any
instance a complete and satisfying meal. Digestible? No, the reverse.
These odds and ends are going to serve as souvenirs of Bayreuth, and in
that regard their value is not to be overestimated. Photographs fade,
bric-a-brac gets lost, busts of Wagner get broken, but once you absorb
a Bayreuth-restaurant meal it is your possession and your property
until the time comes to embalm the rest of you. Some of these pilgrims
here become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of souvenirs of Bayreuth. It
is believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead
Bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from. But
I like this ballast. I think a “Hermitage” scrap-up at eight in the
evening, when all the famine-breeders have been there and laid in their
mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can lay on your keelson
except gravel.
THURSDAY.—They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles,
and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the world,
with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is
necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week,
for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night.
Nearly all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and
apparently they are required to furnish all the noise they can for the
money. If they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are
required to open out and let the public know it. Operas are given only
on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with three days of
ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas; but the
ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing. It is said that the
off days are devoted to rehearsing from some time in the morning till
ten at night. Are there two orchestras also? It is quite likely, since
there are one hundred and ten names in the orchestra list.
Yesterday the opera was “Tristan and Isolde.” I have seen all sorts of
audiences—at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons,
funerals—but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth for
fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified
retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning
of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders.
You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that
they are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are
times when they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their
approbation, and times when tears are running down their faces, and it
would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet
you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the
closing strains have slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with
one impulse and shake the building with their applause. Every seat is
full in the first act; there is not a vacant one in the last. If a man
would be conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in
the midst of an act. It would make him celebrated.
This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I
have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the
inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after
centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which
they last knew in life. Here the Wagner audience dress as they please,
and sit in the dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New
York they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum
airs, they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. In
some of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to
divide the attention of the house with the stage. In large measure the
Metropolitan is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained
in Wagnerian music and have no reverence for it, but who like to
promote art and show their clothes.
Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music
produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very
deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated
things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity?
Manifestly, no. Then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious
traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands
explained. These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion.
It is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any
worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see,
there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world,
there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to
his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed
with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of
tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to
lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next
service. This opera of “Tristan and Isolde” last night broke the hearts
of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have
heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I
feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person
in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man
where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the
learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.
But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one
of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I have never seen
anything like this before. I have never seen anything so great and fine
and real as this devotion.
FRIDAY.—Yesterday’s opera was “Parsifal” again. The others went and
they show marked advance in appreciation; but I went hunting for relics
and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina, she of the imperishable
“Memoirs.” I am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire
upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand
touched or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. I am her pilgrim;
the rest of this multitude here are Wagner’s.
TUESDAY.—I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we
cross over into Bohemia this afternoon. I was supposing that my musical
regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed both of
these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was
“Parsifal,” but the experts have disenchanted me. They say:
“Singing! That wasn’t singing; that was the wailing, screeching of
third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy.”
Well, I ought to have recognized the sign—the old, sure sign that has
never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in art it
means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this fact has
saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many
a chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; I
was the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on
those two operas.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Is it true that the sun of a man’s mentality touches noon at forty and
then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is charged with saying
so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn’t; I don’t know which it is. But if
he said it, I can point him to a case which proves his rule. Proves it
by being an exception to it. To this place I nominate Mr. Howells.
I read his _Venetian Days_ about forty years ago. I compare it with his
paper on Machiavelli in a late number of _Harper_, and I cannot find
that his English has suffered any impairment. For forty years his
English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the
sustained exhibition of certain great qualities—clearness, compression,
verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of
phrasing—he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing
world. _sustained_. I entrench myself behind that protecting word.
There are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he
does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with
stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howells’s
moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the nights.
In the matter of verbal exactness Mr. Howells has no superior, I
suppose. He seems to be almost always able to find that elusive and
shifty grain of gold, the _right word._ Others have to put up with
approximations, more or less frequently; he has better luck. To me, the
others are miners working with the gold-pan—of necessity some of the
gold washes over and escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver
raiding down a riffle—no grain of the metal stands much chance of
eluding him. A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader’s
way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and
much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do
not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when _the
_right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those
intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is
physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles
exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart
and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry.
One has no time to examine the word and vote upon its rank and
standing, the automatic recognition of its supremacy is so immediate.
There is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals largely in
approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen through
the rain; the right word would dismiss the rain, then you would see it
better. It doesn’t rain when Howells is at work.
And where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and
its cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities of
construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of
compression, and all that? Born to him, no doubt. All in shining good
order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just as shining,
just as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and
tear and use. He passed his fortieth year long and long ago; but I
think his English of today—his perfect English, I wish to say—can throw
down the glove before his English of that antique time and not be
afraid.
I will go back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to
examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it
in a bird’s-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read
it aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get
out of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading it
mutely:
_Mr. Dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by
Macaulay, that Machiavelli was in earnest, but must not be judged as a
political moralist of our time and race would be judged. He thinks that
Machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he is
the first to imagine him an idealist immersed in realities, who
involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like
the visionary issues of reverie. The Machiavelli whom he depicts does
not cease to be politically a republican and socially a just man
because he holds up an atrocious despot like Caesar Borgia as a mirror
for rulers. What Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic
disorder in which there was oppression without statecraft, and revolt
without patriotism. When a miscreant like Borgia appeared upon the
scene and reduced both tyrants and rebels to an apparent quiescence, he
might very well seem to such a dreamer the savior of society whom a
certain sort of dreamers are always looking for. Machiavelli was no
less honest when he honored the diabolical force of Caesar Borgia than
Carlyle was when at different times he extolled the strong man who
destroys liberty in creating order. But Carlyle has only just ceased to
be mistaken for a reformer, while it is still Machiavelli’s hard fate
to be so trammeled in his material that his name stands for whatever is
most malevolent and perfidious in human nature._
You see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses,
clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple and—so far as you or I can make
out—unstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable, how
unconfused by cross-currents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly
unadorned, yet is all adornment, like the lily-of-the-valley; and how
compressed, how compact, without a complacency-signal hung out anywhere
to call attention to it.
There are twenty-three lines in the quoted passage. After reading it
several times aloud, one perceives that a good deal of matter is
crowded into that small space. I think it is a model of compactness.
When I take its materials apart and work them over and put them
together in my way, I find I cannot crowd the result back into the same
hole, there not being room enough. I find it a case of a woman packing
a man’s trunk: he can get the things out, but he can’t ever get them
back again.
The proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the
article is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. The sample is
just in other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is,
it holds no superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay.
Also, the choice phrasing noticeable in the sample is not lonely; there
is a plenty of its kin distributed through the other paragraphs. This
is claiming much when that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like
the one in the middle sentence: “an idealist immersed in realities who
involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like
the visionary issues of reverie.” With a hundred words to do it with,
the literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and
reduce it to a concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable
and all right, like a cabbage; but the artist does it with twenty, and
the result is a flower.
The quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same
source, has the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of
us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all
the words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so
they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them
that makes their message take hold.
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
It is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it.
The words are all “right” words, and all the same size. We do not
notice it at first. We get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but
we do not know why. It is when the right words are conspicuous that
they thunder:
The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome!
When I go back from Howells old to Howells young I find him arranging
and clustering English words well, but not any better than now. He is
not more felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in
translating, then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that
reproduced their forms and colors:
_In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. It is at once
shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked FACCHINI; and now in
St. Mark’s Place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear;
and I saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in
a struggle for the possession of the Piazza. But the snow continued to
fall, and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil
and encounter looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when the
most determined industry seems only to renew the task. The lofty crest
of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and I could
no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But looked at across
the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark’s Church was perfectly
penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall were
woven into a spell of novel enchantment around the structure that
always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be
anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had compassionated
the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains
and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hand of the
builder—or, better said, just from the brain of the architect. There
was marvelous freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great
arches of the facade, and all that gracious harmony into which the
temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting
the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherealized by the
purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on
the golden globes that tremble like peacocks-crests above the vast
domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in
ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if exulting in its
beauty—beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep
such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole
life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of
it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem._
Through the wavering snowfall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the
granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is,
and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so
gentle and mild he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers
of the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the
sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like
phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque
distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost
palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world.
The spirit of Venice is there: of a city where Age and Decay, fagged
with distributing damage and repulsiveness among the other cities of
the planet in accordance with the policy and business of their
profession, come for rest and play between seasons, and treat
themselves to the luxury and relaxation of sinking the shop and
inventing and squandering charms all about, instead of abolishing such
as they find, as is their habit when not on vacation.
In the working season they do business in Boston sometimes, and a
character in _the undiscovered country_ takes accurate note of pathetic
effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once dignified
and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey
to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent
which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for
humble professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort.
What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! I
don’t think I was ever in a street before where quite so many
professional ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on
their door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately
conscious air of going to the deuce. Every house seems to wince as you
go by, and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it
had no shirt on—so to speak. I don’t know what’s the reason, but these
material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman
isn’t dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that’s once been a home, in
a street like this.
Mr. Howells’s pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs;
they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs
taken in a dream, one might say.
As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I would try,
if I had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place.
I do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so
gracefully and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many
to play with, nor can come so near making them look as if they were
doing the playing themselves and he was not aware that they were at it.
For they are unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted.
His is a humor which flows softly all around about and over and through
the mesh of the page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes
no more show and no more noise than does the circulation of the blood.
There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr.
Howells’s books. That is his “stage directions”—those artifices which
authors employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and
a conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings
in the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to
the bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions,
they elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and
take up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he
looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish
he hadn’t said it at all. Other authors’ directions are brief enough,
but it is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information.
Writers of this school go in rags, in the matter of stage directions;
the majority of them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a
blush, and a bursting into tears. In their poverty they work these
sorry things to the bone. They say:
“... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.” (This explains
nothing; it only wastes space.)
“... responded Richard, with a laugh.” (There was nothing to laugh
about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit—automatically;
he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is
nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly
flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage
direction and making Richard break into “frenzies of uncontrollable
laughter.” This makes the reader sad.)
“... murmured Gladys, blushing.” (This poor old shop-worn blush is a
tiresome thing. We get so we would rather Gladys would fall out of the
book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it, and
usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out
her blush; it is the only thing she’s got. In a little while we hate
her, just as we do Richard.)
“... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.” (This kind keep a book damp
all the time. They can’t say a thing without crying. They cry so much
about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry ABOUT they
have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. We are
only glad.)
They gravel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these
carbon films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any
faintest thread of light. It would be well if they could be relieved
from duty and flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear
along with the discarded and forgotten “steeds” and “halidomes” and
similar stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. But I am
friendly to Mr. Howells’s stage directions; more friendly to them than
to any one else’s, I think. They are done with a competent and
discriminating art, and are faithful to the requirements of a stage
direction’s proper and lawful office, which is to inform. Sometimes
they convey a scene and its conditions so well that I believe I could
see the scene and get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying
dialogue if some one would read merely the stage directions to me and
leave out the talk. For instance, a scene like this, from _The
Undiscovered Country_:
“... and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father’s
shoulder.”
“... she answered, following his gesture with a glance.”
“... she said, laughing nervously.”
“... she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching
glance.”
“... she answered, vaguely.”
“... she reluctantly admitted.”
“... but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his
face with puzzled entreaty.”
Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can
invent fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the repetition over and
over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless
forms that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, I
think. We do not mind one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we
turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of
them and wish they would do other things for a change.
“... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“... responded Richard, with a laugh.”
“... murmured Gladys, blushing.”
“... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.”
“... replied the Earl, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“... responded the undertaker, with a laugh.”
“... murmured the chambermaid, blushing.”
“... repeated the burglar, bursting into tears.”
“... replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
“... responded Arkwright, with a laugh.”
“... murmured the chief of police, blushing.”
“... repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears.”
And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice
stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out of
their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they
become monotonous and I get run over.
Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as
the make of it. I have held him in admiration and affection so many
years that I know by the number of those years that he is old now; but
his heart isn’t, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have
plenty of them; there is profit in them for us.
ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
In the appendix to Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson one finds this anecdote:
_Cato’s Soliloquy_.—One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to
him (Dr. Samuel Johnson) Cato’s Soliloquy, which she went through very
correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child:
“What was to bring Cato to an end?”
She said it was a knife.
“No, my dear, it was not so.”
“My aunt Polly said it was a knife.”
“Why, Aunt Polly’s knife _may do_, but it was a _dagger_, my dear.”
He then asked her the meaning of “bane and antidote,” which she was
unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said:
“You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words.”
He then said:
“My dear, how many pence are there in _sixpence_?”
“I cannot tell, sir,” was the half-terrified reply.
On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrel, he said:
“Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a
child Cato’s Soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in
sixpence?”
In a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society Professor Ravenstein
quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had
been asked in an examination:
Mention all the names of places in the world derived from Julius Caesar
or Augustus Caesar.
Where are the following rivers: Pisuerga, Sakaria, Guadalete, Jalon,
Mulde?
All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos, Crivoscia,
Basecs, Mancikert, Taxhem, Citeaux, Meloria, Zutphen.
The highest peaks of the Karakorum range.
The number of universities in Prussia.
Why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow (sic)?
Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from
the Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of 1783.
That list would oversize nearly anybody’s geographical knowledge. Isn’t
it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the questions in all
studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?—that he is set
to struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present reach,
hopelessly beyond his present strength? This remark in passing, and by
way of text; now I come to what I was going to say.
I have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. It is a
little book, a manuscript compilation, and the compiler sent it to me
with the request that I say whether I think it ought to be published or
not. I said, Yes; but as I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious;
and so, now that the publication is imminent, it has seemed to me that
I should feel more comfortable if I could divide up this responsibility
with the public by adding them to the court. Therefore I will print
some extracts from the book, in the hope that they may make converts to
my judgment that the volume has merit which entitles it to publication.
As to its character. Every one has sampled “English as She is Spoke”
and “English as She is Wrote”; this little volume furnishes us an
instructive array of examples of “English as She is Taught”—in the
public schools of—well, this country. The collection is made by a
teacher in those schools, and all the examples in it are genuine; none
of them have been tampered with, or doctored in any way. From time to
time, during several years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of
anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his
recitations, this teacher and her associates have privately set that
thing down in a memorandum-book; strictly following the original, as to
grammar, construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this
literary curiosity.
The contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys
and girls to questions, said answers being given sometimes verbally,
sometimes in writing. The subjects touched upon are fifteen in number:
I. Etymology; II. Grammar; III. Mathematics; IV. Geography; V.
“Original”; VI. Analysis; VII. History; VIII. “Intellectual”; IX.
Philosophy; X. Physiology; XI. Astronomy; XII. Politics; XIII. Music;
XIV. Oratory; XV. Metaphysics.
You perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good
many kinds of game in the course of the book. Now as to results. Here
are some quaint definitions of words. It will be noticed that in all of
these instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has
misled the child:
ABORIGINES, a system of mountains.
ALIAS, a good man in the Bible.
AMENABLE, anything that is mean.
AMMONIA, the food of the gods.
ASSIDUITY, state of being an acid.
AURIFEROUS, pertaining to an orifice.
CAPILLARY, a little caterpillar.
CORNIFEROUS, rocks in which fossil corn is found.
EMOLUMENT, a headstone to a grave.
EQUESTRIAN, one who asks questions.
EUCHARIST, one who plays euchre.
FRANCHISE, anything belonging to the French.
IDOLATER, a very idle person.
IPECAC, a man who likes a good dinner.
IRRIGATE, to make fun of.
MENDACIOUS, what can be mended.
MERCENARY, one who feels for another.
PARASITE, a kind of umbrella.
PARASITE, the murder of an infant.
PUBLICAN, a man who does his prayers in public.
TENACIOUS, ten acres of land.
Here is one where the phrase “publicans and sinners” has got mixed up
in the child’s mind with politics, and the result is a definition which
takes one in a sudden and unexpected way:
REPUBLICAN, a sinner mentioned in the Bible.
Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where the
mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact:
PLAGIARIST, a writer of plays.
DEMAGOGUE, a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the
following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the
word, nor the look of it in print:
ASPHYXIA, a grumbling, fussy temper.
QUARTERNIONS, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in New
Zealand.
QUARTERNIONS, the name given to a style of art practiced by the
Phoenicians.
QUARTERNIONS, a religious convention held every hundred years.
SIBILANT, the state of being idiotic.
CROSIER, a staff carried by the Deity.
In the following sentences the pupil’s ear has been deceiving him
again:
The marriage was illegible.
He was totally dismasted with the whole performance.
He enjoys riding on a philosopher.
She was very quick at repertoire.
He prayed for the waters to subsidize.
The leopard is watching his sheep.
They had a strawberry vestibule.
Here is one which—well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth
without ever suspecting it:
The men employed by the Gas Company go around and speculate the meter.
Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many’s the time
you will notice it in the gas bill. In the following sentences the
little people have some information to convey, every time; but in my
case they fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone
word:
The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses.
Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side.
He preached to an egregious congregation.
The captain eliminated a bullet through the man’s heart.
You should take caution and be precarious.
The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time
came.
The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it
means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn’t. Here is an odd
(but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a
lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely
illustration:
We should endeavor to avoid extremes—like those of wasps and bees.
And here—with “zoological” and “geological” in his mind, but not ready
to his tongue—the small scholar has innocently gone and let out a
couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any
circumstances:
There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens.
Some of the best fossils are found in theological cabinets.
Under the head of “Grammar” the little scholars furnish the following
information:
Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex.
A verb is something to eat.
Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs.
Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar.
“Caterpillar” is well enough, but capital letter would have been
stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it failed
to liquify:
When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the
poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the introduction
of the prose or poetry.
The chapter on “Mathematics” is full of fruit. From it I take a few
samples—mainly in an unripe state:
A straight line is any distance between two places.
Parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together.
A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.
Things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else.
To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by
the
number of the feet. The product is the result.
Right you are. In the matter of geography this little book is
unspeakably rich. The questions do not appear to have applied the
microscope to the subject, as did those quoted by Professor Ravenstein;
still, they proved plenty difficult enough without that. These pupils
did not hunt with a microscope, they hunted with a shot-gun; this is
shown by the crippled condition of the game they brought in:
America is divided into the Passiffic slope and the Mississippi valey.
North America is separated by Spain.
America consists from north to south about five hundred miles.
The United States is quite a small country compared with some other
countrys, but is about as industrious.
The capital of the United States is Long Island.
The five seaports of the U.S. are Newfunlan and Sanfrancisco.
The principal products of the U.S. is earthquakes and volcanoes.
The Alaginnies are mountains in Philadelphia.
The Rocky Mountains are on the western side of Philadelphia.
Cape Hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing
into the Gulf of Mexico.
Mason and Dixon’s line is the Equator.
One of the leading industries of the United States is mollasses,
book-covers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber, manufacturers,
paper-making, publishers, coal.
In Austria the principal occupation is gathering Austrich feathers.
Gibraltar is an island built on a rock.
Russia is very cold and tyrannical.
Sicily is one of the Sandwich Islands.
Hindoostan flows through the Ganges and empties into the Mediterranean
Sea.
Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and
green.
The width of the different zones Europe lies in depend upon the
surrounding country.
The imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports
are the things that are not.
Climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days.
The two most famous volcanoes of Europe are Sodom and Gomorrah.
The chapter headed “Analysis” shows us that the pupils in our public
schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about
geography, mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state;
no, there’s machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. They
are required to take poems and analyze them, dig out their common
sense, reduce them to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous
prose translation which shall tell you at a glance what the poet was
trying to get at. One sample will do. Here is a stanza from “The Lady
of the Lake,” followed by the pupil’s impressive explanation of it:
Alone, but with unbated zeal, The horseman plied with scourge and
steel; For jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark
with soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag
strained full in view.
The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made
of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from
the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with
weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full of
sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in
sight.
I see, now, that I never understood that poem before. I have had
glimpses of its meaning, in moments when I was not as ignorant with
weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea
of it ever filtered in sight. If I were a public-school pupil I would
put those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it
is the thing to spread your mind.
We come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say.
As one turns the pages he is impressed with the depth to which one date
has been driven into the American child’s head—1492. The date is there,
and it is there to stay. And it is always at hand, always deliverable
at a moment’s notice. But the Fact that belongs with it? That is quite
another matter. Only the date itself is familiar and sure: its vast
Fact has failed of lodgment. It would appear that whenever you ask a
public-school pupil when a thing—anything, no matter what—happened, and
he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. He applies it to
everything, from the landing of the ark to the introduction of the
horse-car. Well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right
enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to
honor it:
George Washington was born in 1492.
Washington wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1492.
St. Bartholemew was massacred in 1492.
The Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius
Caesar.
The earth is 1492 miles in circumference.
To proceed with “History”
Christopher Columbus was called the Father of his Country.
Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so
that Columbus could discover America.
The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.
The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then
scalping them.
Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life
was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.
The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.
The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should
be null and void.
Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken
to the cathedral in Havana.
Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.
John Brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives slaves
into Virginia. He captured all the inhabitants, but was finally
conquered and condemned to his death. The confederasy was formed by the
fugitive slaves.
Alfred the Great reigned 872 years. He was distinguished for letting
some buckwheat cakes burn, and the lady scolded him.
Henry Eight was famous for being a great widower haveing lost several
wives.
Lady Jane Grey studied Greek and Latin and was beheaded after a few
days.
John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.
Lord James Gordon Bennet instigated the Gordon Riots.
The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity.
Luther introduced Christianity into England a good many thousand years
ago. His birthday was November 1883. He was once a Pope. He lived at
the time of the Rebellion of Worms.
Julius Caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch I came I saw I
conquered.
Julius Caesar was really a very great man. He was a very great soldier
and wrote a book for beginners in the Latin.
Cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a
wine cup.
The only form of government in Greece was a limited monkey.
The Persian war lasted about 500 years.
Greece had only 7 wise men.
Socrates... destroyed some statues and had to drink Shamrock.
Here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such
ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey
misinformation every time it is uncarefully read:
By the Salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy the
throne.
To show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and
diligent boosting in the public school, we select the following mosaic:
Abraham Lincoln was born in Wales in 1599.
In the chapter headed “Intellectual” I find a great number of most
interesting statements. A sample or two may be found not amiss:
Bracebridge Hall was written by Henry Irving.
Snow Bound was written by Peter Cooper.
The House of the Seven Gables was written by Lord Bryant.
Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
Cotton Mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote
histories.
Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
Ben Johnson survived Shakspeare in some respects.
In the Canterbury Tale it gives account of King Alfred on his way to
the shrine of Thomas Bucket.
Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
Chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century.
Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow an American Writer. His
writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years elapsed.
Shakspere translated the Scriptures and it was called St. James because
he did it.
In the middle of the chapter I find many pages of information
concerning Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s works, and those of Bacon,
Addison, Samuel Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, De
Foe, Locke, Pope, Swift, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, Gibbon,
Byron, Coleridge, Hood, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Dickens, Bulwer,
Thackeray, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Disraeli—a fact which
shows that into the restricted stomach of the public-school pupil is
shoveled every year the blood, bone, and viscera of a gigantic
literature, and the same is there digested and disposed of in a most
successful and characteristic and gratifying public-school way. I have
space for but a trifling few of the results:
Lord Byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man.
Wm. Wordsworth wrote the Barefoot Boy and Imitations on Immortality.
Gibbon wrote a history of his travels in Italy. This was original.
George Eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his
genius.
George Eliot Miss Mary Evans Mrs. Cross Mrs. Lewis was the greatest
female poet unless George Sands is made an exception of.
Bulwell is considered a good writer.
Sir Walter Scott Charles Bronte Alfred the Great and Johnson were the
first great novelists.
Thomas Babington Makorlay graduated at Harvard and then studied law, he
was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776.
Here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if
taken in moderation:
Homer’s writings are Homer’s Essays Virgil the Aenid and Paradise lost
some people say that these poems were not written by Homer but by
another man of the same name.
A sort of sadness kind of shone in Bryant’s poems.
Holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer.
When the public-school pupil wrestles with the political features of
the Great Republic, they throw him sometimes:
A bill becomes a law when the President vetoes it.
The three departments of the government is the President rules the
world, the governor rules the State, the mayor rules the city.
The first conscientious Congress met in Philadelphia.
The Constitution of the United States was established to ensure
domestic hostility.
Truth crushed to earth will rise again. As follows:
The Constitution of the United States is that part of the book at the
end which nobody reads.
And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to
public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young
find out everything:
Congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage.
Here are some results of study in music and oratory:
An interval in music is the distance on the keyboard from one piano to
the next.
A rest means you are not to sing it.
Emphasis is putting more distress on one word than another.
The chapter on “Physiology” contains much that ought not to be lost to
science:
Physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry.
Occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is
impure blood.
We have an upper and lower skin. The lower skin moves all the time and
the upper skin moves when we do.
The body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious
tissue.
The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body.
The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking.
The Chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart
where it meets the oxygen and is purified.
The salivary glands are used to salivate the body.
In the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar
cane.
The olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed
into the special sense of hearing.
The growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to
the stomach.
If we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would
deafen our ears so that we couldn’t see to get off the track.
If, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the
Johnsonian anecdote at the head of this article, let us make another
attempt:
The theory that intuitive truths are discovered by the light of nature
originated from St. John’s interpretation of a passage in the Gospel of
Plato.
The weight of the earth is found by comparing a mass of known lead with
that of a mass of unknown lead.
To find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a
meridian and multiply by 62 1/2 pounds.
The spheres are to each other as the squares of their homologous sides.
A body will go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus
the force of gravity and that’s equal to twice what the body will go.
Specific gravity is the weight to be compared weight of an equal volume
of or that is the weight of a body compared with the weight of an equal
volume.
The law of fluid pressure divide the different forms of organized
bodies by the form of attraction and the number increased will be the
form.
Inertia is that property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change
its own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative
quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient
latescence.
If a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the
unintelligent teacher—or rather the unintelligent Boards, Committees,
and Trustees—are the proper target for it. All through this little book
one detects the signs of a certain probable fact—that a large part of
the pupil’s “instruction” consists in cramming him with obscure and
wordy “rules” which he does not understand and has no time to
understand. It would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they
would at least stay. In a town in the interior of New York, a few years
ago, a gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give
a prize to every public-school pupil who should furnish the correct
solution of it. Twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools
entered the contest. The problem was not a very difficult one for
pupils of their mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed—by
a hair—through one trifling mistake or another. Some searching
questions were asked, when it turned out that these lads were as glib
as parrots with the “rules,” but could not reason out a single rule or
explain the principle underlying it. Their memories had been stocked,
but not their understandings. It was a case of brickbat culture, pure
and simple.
There are several curious “compositions” in the little book, and we
must make room for one. It is full of naïveté, brutal truth, and
unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy’s
composition I think I have ever seen:
ON GIRLS
Girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your.
They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and
rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of
guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They
are al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy’s hands
and they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor
things. They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont
beleave they ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and
say oh ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that
is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys.
From Mr. Edward Channing’s recent article in _Science_:
The marked difference between the books now being produced by French,
English, and American travelers, on the one hand, and German explorers,
on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due
entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is
taught, in the first place to see, and in the second place to
understand what he does see.
A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET
(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last
writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.)
I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling
toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three
years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to
merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of
patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and
porcelain paste; what was really wanted was a new set of teeth. That is
to say, a new _alphabet_.
The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn’t know
how to spell, and can’t be taught. In this it is like all other
alphabets except one—the phonographic. That is the only competent
alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in
our language.
That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired
alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student can
learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with
considerable ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in
Nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that
it has remained in my memory ever since.
I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed)
character. I mean _simply _the alphabet; simply the consonants and the
vowels—I don’t mean any _reductions _or abbreviations of them, such as
the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I
would _spell every word out._
I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz’s Phonic
Shorthand. (Figure 1) It is arranged__ on the basis of Isaac Pitman’s
_Phonography_. Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific
phonography. It is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable
invention. He made it public seventy-three years ago. The firm of Isaac
Pitman & Sons, New York, still exists, and they continue the master’s
work.
What should we gain?
First of all, we could spell _definitely_—and correctly—any word you
please, just by the _sound _of it. We can’t do that with our present
alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word _phthisis_. If we
tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be
laughed at by every educated person.
Secondly, we should gain in _reduction of labor_ in writing.
Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several
hundred words, but the new spelling must be _learned_. You can’t spell
them by the sound; you must get them out of the book.
But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language,
the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller
“hands down” in the important matter of economy of labor. I will
illustrate:
PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland.
SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland.
PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: (Figure 2)
To write the word “through,” the pen has to make twenty-one strokes.
To write the word “thru,” the pen has to make twelve strokes—a good
saving.
To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
make only _three _strokes.
To write the word “laugh,” the pen has to make _fourteen _strokes.
To write “laff,” the pen has to make the _same number_ of strokes—no
labor is saved to the penman.
To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
make only _three _strokes.
To write the word “highland,” the pen has to make twenty-two strokes.
To write “hyland,” the pen has to make eighteen strokes.
To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make
only FIVE strokes. (Figure 3)
To write the words “phonographic alphabet,” the pen has to make
fifty-three strokes.
To write “fonografic alfabet,” the pen has to make fifty strokes. To
the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant.
To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the
pen has to make only _seventeen _strokes.
Without the vowels, only _thirteen _strokes. (Figure 4) The vowels are
hardly necessary, this time.
We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: (Figure 5) a stroke
down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final
stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m
with a single stroke—a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home
drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody
that goes along will see him and say, Alas!
When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located,
it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another
pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never
mind about the connecting strokes—let them go. Without counting them,
the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty
pen-strokes for their construction—about three pen-strokes per letter.
It is _three times the number_ required by the phonographic alphabet.
It requires but _one _stroke for each letter.
My writing-gait is—well, I don’t know what it is, but I will time
myself and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don’t
mean composing; I mean _copying_. There isn’t any definite
composing-gait.
Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour—say 1,500. If I
could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500
in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours’ copying in three hours; I
could do three years’ copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting
machine with the phonographic alphabet on it—oh, the miracles I could
do!
I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a
lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can
accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a
good and clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could
discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its place—using
it in books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen.
(Figure 6)—_Man Dog Horse_. I think it is graceful and would look
comely in print. And consider—once more, I beg—what a labor-saver it
is! Ten pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words
above, and thirty-three by the other! (Figure 7) I mean, in SOME ways,
not in all. I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be
within the facts, but never mind; let it go at _some_. One of the ways
in which it exercises this birthright is—as I think—continuing to use
our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a
rational one at hand, to be had for the taking.
It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer’s rotten
spelling—if I may be allowed to use so frank a term as that—and it will
take five hundred more to get our exasperating new Simplified
Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha’n’t be any better
off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the
privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: _anybody _can change the
spelling that wants to.
_But you can’t change the phonographic spelling; there isn’t any way._
It will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling,
you have to change the sound first.
Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild
that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old
alphabet by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they
get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will
be only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift
him. There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to
take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman’s
wholesome and undiseased alphabet.
One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a
simplified word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a
whole squadron of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly
unendurable.
The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled
to the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but—if I may be
allowed the expression—is it worth the wasted time? (Figure 8)
To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed
offends the eye, and also takes the _expression _out of the words.
La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!
It doesn’t thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked
the thrill all out of it.
But a written character with which we are _not acquainted_ does not
offend us—Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others—they have an
interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of
hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about
the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery
hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can’t come across a
printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we
could read it.
Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adoption is not
shorthand, but longhand, written with the _Shorthand Alphabet
Unreduced_. You can write three times as many words in a minute with it
as you can write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it _is _properly
a shorthand. It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting
look. I will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way:
(Figure 9)
Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified
Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and
twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it
costs only twenty-nine.
(Figure 9) is probably (Figure 10).
Let us hope so, anyway.
AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY
I
This line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the
scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: (Figure
1)
After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:
Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the
temples, this upon pain of death.
That was the twenty-fourth translation that had been furnished by
scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began
to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors.
Three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among
them, this, by Grunfeldt, was received with considerable favor:
The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this
upon pain of death.
But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned
world with yet greater favor:
The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people,
and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death.
Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying
renderings were scored—none of them quite convincing. But now, at last,
came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation
which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct
version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that
even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the
achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental
political event of that same year—the flight from Elba—was able to
smother it to silence. Rawlinson’s version reads as follows:
Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and
follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple’s peace, and soften
for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.
Here is another difficult text: (Figure 2)
It is demotic—a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language
which had perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred
years before the Christian era.
Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon
our crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking
students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures;
yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures
grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeded in
interpreting to their satisfaction. These: (Figure 3)
The suggested solutions of this riddle are practically innumerable;
they would fill a book.
Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only
when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties
disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom
of the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds,
and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century,
although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single
recorded instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern
child can read coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of
interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange
and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration.
Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. If the
Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but
entrails had no embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out,
now—entrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as hiding-places
for the divine intentions they were inadequate.
A part of the wall of Valletri having in former times been struck with
thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that
town would some time or other arrive at supreme power. —_Bohn’s
Suetonius_, p. 138.
“Some time or other.” It looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened,
all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch,
then he would find out that the thunder-stroke had Caesar Augustus in
mind, and had come to give notice.
There were other advance-advertisements. One of them appeared just
before Caesar Augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and
romantic in its feelings and aspects. It was a dream. It was dreamed by
Caesar Augustus’s mother, and interpreted at the usual rates:
Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the
stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and
earth.—_Suetonius_, p. 139.
That was in the augur’s line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it
would have taken Rawlinson and Champollion fourteen years to make sure
of what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. It
would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service
would have been barred by the statute of limitation.
In those old Roman days a gentleman’s education was not complete until
he had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to
translate entrails. Caesar Augustus’s education received this final
polish. All through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he
saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the Deity’s plans by
exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury.
In his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve
vultures presented themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he
offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in
the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who
had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of
great and wonderful fortune.—_Suetonius_, p. 141.
“Indubitable” is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the
livers were really turned that way. In those days chicken livers were
strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far
off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and
squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest
in that approaching great event and in breakfast.
II
We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings
us down to enlightened Christian times and the troubled days of King
Stephen of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago
forgotten; the priest had fallen heir to his trade.
King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes
flying over from Normandy to steal the throne from Henry’s daughter. He
accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high
degree, mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury
consecrated Stephen: “wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with
the same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah
the great priest: he died within a year.”
Stephen’s was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so the
Archbishop, apparently.
The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine
spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe
rose in every quarter.
That was the result of Stephen’s crime. These unspeakable conditions
continued during nineteen years. Then Stephen died as comfortably as
any man ever did, and was honorably buried. It makes one pity the poor
Archbishop, and wish that he, too, could have been let off as
leniently. How did Henry of Huntington know that the Archbishop was
sent to his grave by judgment of God for consecrating Stephen? He does
not explain. Neither does he explain why Stephen was awarded a
pleasanter death than he was entitled to, while the aged King Henry,
his predecessor, who had ruled England thirty-five years to the
people’s strongly worded satisfaction, was condemned to close his life
in circumstances most distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and
disagreeable. His was probably the most uninspiring funeral that is set
down in history. There is not a detail about it that is attractive. It
seems to have been just the funeral for Stephen, and even at this
far-distant day it is matter of just regret that by an indiscretion the
wrong man got it.
Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why it was done,
and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man
has earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. He is
evidently puzzled, but he does not say anything. I think it is often
apparent that he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries
his best not to show it. When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of
a silence so marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for
suppressed criticism. However, he has plenty of opportunities to feel
contented with the way things go—his book is full of them.
King David of Scotland... under color of religion caused his followers
to deal most barbarously with the English. They ripped open women,
tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the
altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes,
placed them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on
the crucifixes the heads of their victims. Wherever the Scots came,
there was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old
men lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the
living.
But the English got the victory.
Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all
his followers were put to flight. For the Almighty was offended at them
and their strength was rent like a cobweb.
Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful butcheries? No,
for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to
criticism. Then was it for doing the butcheries “under cover of
religion”? No, that was not it; religious feeling was often expressed
in that fervent way all through those old centuries. The truth is, He
was not offended at “them” at all; He was only offended at their king,
who had been false to an oath. Then why did not He put the punishment
upon the king instead of upon “them”? It is a difficult question. One
can see by the Chronicle that the “judgments” fell rather customarily
upon the wrong person, but Henry of Huntington does not explain why.
Here is one that went true; the chronicler’s satisfaction in it is not
hidden:
In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in a
remarkable manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries
into fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met
with a similar punishment. Robert Marmion was one, Godfrey de
Mandeville the other. Robert Marmion, issuing forth against the enemy,
was slain under the walls of the monastery, being the only one who
fell, though he was surrounded by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he
became subject to death everlasting. In like manner Earl Godfrey was
singled out among his followers, and shot with an arrow by a common
foot-soldier. He made light of the wound, but he died of it in a few
days, under excommunication. See here the like judgment of God,
memorable through all ages!
This exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for
they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire
and flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not known more than three
men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, whom I would rejoice to see
writhing in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. I believe I
would relent before the year was up, and get them out if I could. I
think that in the long run, if a man’s wife and babies, who had not
harmed me, should come crying and pleading, I couldn’t stand it; I know
I should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a
monastery. Henry of Huntington has been watching Godfrey and Marmion
for nearly seven hundred and fifty years, now, but I couldn’t do it, I
know I couldn’t. I am soft and gentle in my nature, and I should have
forgiven them seventy-and-seven times, long ago. And I think God has;
but this is only an opinion, and not authoritative, like Henry of
Huntington’s interpretations. I could learn to interpret, but I have
never tried; I get so little time.
All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions
of God, and with the reasons for his intentions. Sometimes—very often,
in fact—the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of
time that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to
one intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when
there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a
man offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years
later; meantime he has committed a million other crimes: no matter,
Henry can pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally
used in those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This
has gone out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. It always
indicated a case of “wrath.” For instance:
.. the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand’s perfidy, a worm grew
in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his intestines
fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating
sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting
punishment brought to his end.—(P. 400.)
It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a
particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think
it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.
However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due
years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once; he had
committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted—under
disapproval—but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten
nor forgiven, and the worm came at last.
Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to be
gained by it? Did Henry of Huntington really know his facts, or was he
only guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser,
and not a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of the better
quality than he makes it out to be.
Five hundred years before Henry’s time some forecasts of the Lord’s
purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly
trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for the information of His
familiars, that the end of the world was
.. about to come. But as this end of the world draws near many things
are at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air,
terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the
seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all
which will not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to
pass.
Still, the end was so near that these signs were “sent before that we
may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the
impending judgment.”
That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement on
the work of the Roman augurs.
CONCERNING TOBACCO
(Written about 1893; not before published)
As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is
this—that there is a _standard _governing the matter, whereas there is
nothing of the kind. Each man’s own preference is the only standard for
him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command
him. A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect
a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much
influence us.
The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He
hasn’t. He thinks he has, but he hasn’t. He thinks he can tell what he
regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one—but he can’t.
He goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm
off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke
it contentedly and never suspect.
Children of twenty-five, who have seven years of experience, try to
tell me what is a good cigar and what isn’t. Me, who never learned to
smoke, but always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a
light.
No one can tell me what is a good cigar—for me. I am the only judge.
People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the
world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house. They
betray an unmanly terror when I offer them a cigar; they tell lies and
hurry away to meet engagements which they have not made when they are
threatened with the hospitalities of my box. Now then, observe what
superstition, assisted by a man’s reputation, can do. I was to have
twelve personal friends to supper one night. One of them was as
notorious for costly and elegant cigars as I was for cheap and devilish
ones. I called at his house and when no one was looking borrowed a
double handful of his very choicest; cigars which cost him forty cents
apiece and bore red-and-gold labels in sign of their nobility. I
removed the labels and put the cigars into a box with my favorite brand
on it—a brand which those people all knew, and which cowed them as men
are cowed by an epidemic. They took these cigars when offered at the
end of the supper, and lit them and sternly struggled with them—in
dreary silence, for hilarity died when the fell brand came into view
and started around—but their fortitude held for a short time only; then
they made excuses and filed out, treading on one another’s heels with
indecent eagerness; and in the morning when I went out to observe
results the cigars lay all between the front door and the gate. All
except one—that one lay in the plate of the man from whom I had
cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all he could stand. He told me
afterward that some day I would get shot for giving people that kind of
cigars to smoke.
Am I certain of my own standard? Perfectly; yes, absolutely—unless
somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for
no doubt I am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of
by the flavor. However, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a
good deal of territory. To me, almost any cigar is good that nobody
else will smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people
consider good. Nearly any cigar will do me, except a Havana. People
think they hurt my feelings when they come to my house with their life
preservers on—I mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. It is an
error; I take care of myself in a similar way. When I go into
danger—that is, into rich people’s houses, where, in the nature of
things, they will have high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and
nested in a rosewood box along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop
a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot
to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on
smelling more and more infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire
tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in
the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling
you how much the deadly thing cost—yes, when I go into that sort of
peril I carry my own defense along; I carry my own brand—twenty-seven
cents a barrel—and I live to see my family again. I may seem to light
his red-gartered cigar, but that is only for courtesy’s sake; I smuggle
it into my pocket for the poor, of whom I know many, and light one of
my own; and while he praises it I join in, but when he says it cost
forty-five cents I say nothing, for I know better.
However, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that I have never seen
any cigars that I really could not smoke, except those that cost a
dollar apiece. I have examined those and know that they are made of
dog-hair, and not good dog-hair at that.
I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all over the
Continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in
New York would smoke. I brought cigars with me, the last time; I will
not do that any more. In Italy, as in France, the Government is the
only cigar-peddler. Italy has three or four domestic brands: the
Minghetti, the Trabuco, the Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a
modification of the Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and
cost three dollars and sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in
seven days and enjoy every one of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I
don’t remember the price. But one has to learn to like the Virginia,
nobody is born friendly to it. It looks like a rat-tail file, but
smokes better, some think. It has a straw through it; you pull this
out, and it leaves a flue, otherwise there would be no draught, not
even as much as there is to a nail. Some prefer a nail at first.
However, I like all the French, Swiss, German, and Italian domestic
cigars, and have never cared to inquire what they are made of; and
nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps. There is even a brand of European
smoking-tobacco that I like. It is a brand used by the Italian
peasants. It is loose and dry and black, and looks like tea-grounds.
When the fire is applied it expands, and climbs up and towers above the
pipe, and presently tumbles off inside of one’s vest. The tobacco
itself is cheap, but it raises the insurance. It is as I remarked in
the beginning—the taste for tobacco is a matter of superstition. There
are no standards—no real standards. Each man’s preference is the only
standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which
can command him.
THE BEE
It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the
psychical and in the poetical way. I had had a business introduction
earlier. It was when I was a boy. It is strange that I should remember
a formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years.
Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. It is because all the
important bees are of that sex. In the hive there is one married bee,
called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one
hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. Some of the daughters are
young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so.
Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of
her sons and marries him. The honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then
the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two
million eggs. This will be enough to last the year, but not more than
enough, because hundreds of bees get drowned every day, and other
hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen’s business to keep the
population up to standard—say, fifty thousand. She must always have
that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which
is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. She lays
from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the
demand; and she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are
needed in a slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a
prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a
queen that has more sense.
There are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her
place—ready and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own
mother. These girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and
tended from birth. No other bees get such fine food as they get, or
live such a high and luxurious life. By consequence they are larger and
longer and sleeker than their working sisters. And they have a curved
sting, shaped like a scimitar, while the others have a straight one.
A common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings
royalties only. A common bee will sting and kill another common bee,
for cause, but when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are
employed. When a queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs
enough one of her royal daughters is allowed to come to attack her, the
rest of the bees looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. It is a
duel with the curved stings. If one of the fighters gets hard pressed
and gives it up and runs, she is brought back and must try again—once,
maybe twice; then, if she runs yet once more for her life, judicial
death is her portion; her children pack themselves into a ball around
her person and hold her in that compact grip two or three days, until
she starves to death or is suffocated. Meantime the victor bee is
receiving royal honors and performing the one royal function—laying
eggs.
As regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that
is a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper
place.
During substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years
the queen lives in the Egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the
royal apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give
her empty lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers
for; who spy upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report
and exaggerate her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her
and flatter her to her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel
before her in the day of her power and forsake her in her age and
weakness. There she sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long
night of her life, cut off from the consoling sympathies and sweet
companionship and loving endearments which she craves, by the gilded
barriers of her awful rank; a forlorn exile in her own house and home,
weary object of formal ceremonies and machine-made worship, winged
child of the sun, native to the free air and the blue skies and the
flowery fields, doomed by the splendid accident of her birth to trade
this priceless heritage for a black captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a
loveless life, with shame and insult at the end and a cruel death—and
condemned by the human instinct in her to hold the bargain valuable!
Huber, Lubbock, Maeterlinck—in fact, all the great authorities—are
agreed in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. I do
not know why they have done this, but I think it is from dishonest
motives. Why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own
painstaking and exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master
fool in the world, it is the bee. That seems to settle it.
But that is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in
building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a
certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule
he overlooks the main chief fact of all—that his accumulation proves an
entirely different thing. When you point out this miscarriage to him he
does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the
servant prevaricates and you do not get in. Scientists have odious
manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow
money of them.
To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will
answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue—you cannot
pin them down. When I discovered that the bee was human I wrote about
it to all those scientists whom I have just mentioned. For evasions, I
have seen nothing to equal the answers I got.
After the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the
virgin. The virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in
number, and they are the workers, the laborers. No work is done, in the
hive or out of it, save by them. The males do not work, the queen does
no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me.
There are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months to
finish the contract in. The distribution of work in a hive is as
cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast American
machine-shop or factory. A bee that has been trained to one of the many
and various industries of the concern doesn’t know how to exercise any
other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything
outside of her profession. She is as human as a cook; and if you should
ask the cook to wait on the table, you know what would happen. Cooks
will play the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. In my
time I have asked a cook to chop wood, and I know about these things.
Even the hired girl has her frontiers; true, they are vague, they are
ill-defined, even flexible, but they are there. This is not conjecture;
it is founded on the absolute. And then the butler. You ask the butler
to wash the dog. It is just as I say; there is much to be learned in
these ways, without going to books. Books are very well, but books do
not cover the whole domain of esthetic human culture. Pride of
profession is one of the boniest bones in existence, if not the
boniest. Without doubt it is so in the hive.
TAMING THE BICYCLE
(Written about 1893; not before published)
In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old
high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his
experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle
he rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry
is a quality which does not grow old.
A. B. P. I
I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down
and bought a barrel of Pond’s Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came
home with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of
privacy, and went to work.
Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt—a fifty-inch, with
the pedals shortened up to forty-eight—and skittish, like any other
colt. The Expert explained the thing’s points briefly, then he got on
its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He
said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and
so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He
found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to
get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off,
myself. Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best
time on record. He was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all
came down with a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on
top.
We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was
hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact,
the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably
these things are constructed. We applied some Pond’s Extract, and
resumed. The Expert got on the _other _side to shove up this time, but
I dismounted on that side; so the result was as before.
The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves up again, and resumed.
This time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow
or other we landed on him again.
He was full of surprised admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all
right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it
was wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came
to know these steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but
dynamite could cripple them. Then he limped out to position, and we
resumed once more. This time the Expert took up the position of
short-stop, and got a man to shove up behind. We got up a handsome
speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of
the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor’s back, and saw the
machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun. It was well it
came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured.
Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and
found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite
sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on
something soft. Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is
better.
The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a
good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed
into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side
of me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the
dismount.
The bicycle had what is called the “wabbles,” and had them very badly.
In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me,
and in every instance the thing required was against nature. Against
nature, but not against the laws of nature. That is to say, that
whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding
moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected
law of physics required that it be done in just the other way. I
perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the
life-long education of my body and members. They were steeped in
ignorance; they knew nothing—nothing which it could profit them to
know. For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I put the
tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so
violated a law, and kept on going down. The law required the opposite
thing—the big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are
falling. It is hard to believe this, when you are told it. And not
merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your
notions. And it is just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe
it. Believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is
true, does not help it: you can’t any more DO it than you could before;
you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do it at first. The
intellect has to come to the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to
discard their old education and adopt the new.
The steps of one’s progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each
lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that
something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like
studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for
thirty years; and at last, just as you think you’ve got it, they spring
the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No—and I see now, plainly
enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you
can’t fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature
to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have
learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German
is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy
of it at a time, and learn it—not ease up and shirk to the next,
leaving that one half learned.
When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the
machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your
next task—how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind
it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and
grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg,
stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a
general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the
saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but
you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then
several times.
By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer
without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it
IS a tiller; “handle-bar” is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer
along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a
steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the
saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then
that, and down you go again.
But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are
getting to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty.
Six more attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the
saddle comfortably, next time, and stay there—that is, if you can be
content to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while;
but if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon
learn to wait a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the
pedals; then the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little
practice will make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought
to keep off a rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have
nothing against them.
And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind
first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary
dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently
undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly
straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a
horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn’t. I don’t
know why it isn’t but it isn’t. Try as you may, you don’t get down as
you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire.
You make a spectacle of yourself every time.
II
During the eight days I took a daily lesson of an hour and a half. At
the end of this twelve working-hours’ apprenticeship I was graduated—in
the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without
outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It
takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the
rough.
Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it
would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The
self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know
a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;
and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless
people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who
imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life’s “experiences”—are in
some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of
them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch
you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth
anything as an education, it wouldn’t seem likely that you could trip
Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more
than likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take
hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot.
Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask
somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would
not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by
experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he would find,
for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire;
and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in
quite a complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again,
some day, and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was
in it.
But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much
time and Pond’s Extract.
Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my
physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn’t any. He
said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty
difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon
remove it. The contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked.
He wanted to test mine, so I offered my biceps—which was my best. It
almost made him smile. He said, “It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding,
and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in
the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag.” Perhaps this
made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: “Oh, that’s all right, you
needn’t worry about that; in a little while you can’t tell it from a
petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice; you’re all
right.”
Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don’t
really have to seek them—that is nothing but a phrase—they come to you.
I chose a reposeful Sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about
thirty yards wide between the curbstones. I knew it was not wide
enough; still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no
space unnecessarily I could crowd through.
Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own
responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no
sympathetic instructor to say, “Good! now you’re doing well—good
again—don’t hurry—there, now, you’re all right—brace up, go ahead.” In
place of this I had some other support. This was a boy, who was perched
on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar.
He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went
down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that’s
what he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and
learn to ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he
didn’t believe I could stay on a horse-car. But the next time I
succeeded, and got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering,
uncertain fashion, and occupying pretty much all of the street. My slow
and lumbering gait filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung
out, “My, but don’t he rip along!” Then he got down from his post and
loafed along the sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting.
Presently he dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little
girl passed by, balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and
seemed about to make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, “Let him
alone, he’s going to a funeral.”
I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always
supposed it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now
informed me, to my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is
as alert and acute as a spirit-level in the detecting of delicate and
vanishing shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise
where your untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices
any decline which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise,
but was not aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and
still, labor as I might, the machine came almost to a standstill every
little while. At such times the boy would say: “That’s it! take a
rest—there ain’t no hurry. They can’t hold the funeral without YOU.”
Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when
I went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small,
if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn’t help trying to
do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us
all, for some inscrutable reason.
I was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to
round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the
first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to
succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless
apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you
start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all
full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a
jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes
the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all
prayers and all your powers to change its mind—your heart stands still,
your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go,
and there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And
now is the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of
course all your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your
wheel AWAY from the curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling
on that granite-bound inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my
experience. I dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle
and sat down on the curb to examine.
I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer’s wagon
poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything
to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The
farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving
barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. I couldn’t
shout at him—a beginner can’t shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone;
he must keep all his attention on his business. But in this grisly
emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be
grateful to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying
impulses and inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man
accordingly:
“To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass ’ll run over you!” The
man started to do it. “No, to the right, to the right! Hold on! THAT
won’t do!—to the left!—to the right!—to the LEFT—right! left—ri—Stay
where you ARE, or you’re a goner!”
And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in
a pile. I said, “Hang it! Couldn’t you SEE I was coming?”
“Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn’t tell which WAY you was
coming. Nobody could—now, _could _they? You couldn’t yourself—now,
_could_ you? So what could _I_ do?”
There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I
said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was.
Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy
couldn’t keep up with me. He had to go back to his gate-post, and
content himself with watching me fall at long range.
There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a
measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I
was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the
worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from
dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over
a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that
that may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn’t run over the
dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog.
But I ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal
of difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to
calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to
calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was
always so in my experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could
hit a dog that came to see me practice. They all liked to see me
practice, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our
neighborhood to entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog,
but I achieved even that.
I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy out
one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn’t reform.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
(from _My Autobiography_)
I
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript
which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine,
certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with
“Claimants”—claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the
Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis
XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant;
Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant—and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants,
successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb
Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants,
despised Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through
the mists of history and legend and tradition—and, oh, all the darling
tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with
deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous
resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has
always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant that
couldn’t get a hearing, nor one that couldn’t accumulate a rapturous
following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim
might be. Arthur Orton’s claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet
come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy’s that she wrote _Science
And Health_ from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England
nearly forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced
after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a
perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy’s following is not only immense, but is
daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and
educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like among
hers from the beginning. Her Church is as well equipped in those
particulars as is any other Church. Claimants can always count upon a
following, it doesn’t matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor
whether they come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out
of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen,
you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck
and Lambert Simnel.
A friend has sent me a new book, from England—_The Shakespeare Problem
Restated_—well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years’
interest in that matter—asleep for the last three years—is excited once
more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon’s book—away back
in that ancient day—1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my
pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the
_Pennsylvania_, and placed me under the orders and instructions of
George Ealer—dead now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good
many months—as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a
daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and
correction of the master. He was a prime chess-player and an idolater
of Shakespeare. He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it
cost his official dignity something to do that. Also—quite uninvited—he
would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when
it was his watch and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably
for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That
broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up—to that degree, in
fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an
ignorant person couldn’t have told, sometimes, which observations were
Shakespeare’s and which were Ealer’s. For instance:
What man dare, _I_ dare!
Approach thou _what_ are you laying in the leads for? what a hell
of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off!
rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the _there_ she goes!
meet her, meet her! didn’t you _know_ she’d smell the reef if you
crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my
firm nerves she’ll be in the _woods_ the first you know! stop the
starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the
starboard!... _now_ then, you’re all right; come ahead on the
starboard; straighten up and go ’long, never tremble: or be alive
again, and dare me to the desert _damnation_ can’t you keep away
from that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her
baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the
leads!—no, only with the starboard one, leave the other alone,
protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight
bells—that watchman’s asleep again, I reckon, go down and call
Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence!
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and
tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able
to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his
explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their
irrelevant, “What in hell are you up to _now_! pull her down! more!
_More!_—there now, steady as you go,” and the other disorganizing
interruptions that were always leaping from his mouth. When I read
Shakespeare now I can hear them as plainly as I did in that
long-departed time—fifty-one years ago. I never regarded Ealer’s
readings as educational. Indeed, they were a detriment to me.
His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that
detail he was a good reader; I can say that much for him. He did not
use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as
Euclid ever knew his multiplication table.
Did he have something to say—this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi
pilot—anent Delia Bacon’s book?
Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months—in the morning
watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably kept it going in
his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it
appeared, and we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of
river four times traversed in every thirty-five days—the time required
by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and
discussed, and discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at
any rate, _he_ did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a
cog and there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy,
with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and moderation of a
subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that is
perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to
Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the pretensions
of the Baconians. So was I—at first. And at first he was glad that that
was my attitude. There were even indications that he admired it;
indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the
lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me;
perceptible, and translatable into a compliment—compliment coming down
from above the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not
likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot’s self-conceit;
still a detectable complement, and precious.
Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare—if
possible—than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon—if
possible—than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on
the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for
a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the
atmosphere began to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I
did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical purposes. You
see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but
a little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with
everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative
to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold,
hard, rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing _reasoning_. That was
his name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many
as several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare
side.
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me
when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to
each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went
over to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer
the requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this attitude—to
wit, I only _believed_ Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I _knew_
Shakespeare didn’t. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke
loose. Study, practice, experience in handling my end of the matter
presently enabled me to take my new position almost seriously; a little
bit later, utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly,
gratefully, devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly.
After that I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die
for it, and I looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn upon
everybody else’s faith that didn’t tally with mine. That faith, imposed
upon me by self-interest in that ancient day, remains my faith today,
and in it I find comfort, solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see
how curiously theological it is. The “rice Christian” of the Orient
goes through the very same steps, when he is after rice and the
missionary is after _him_; he goes for rice, and remains to worship.
Ealer did a lot of our “reasoning”—not to say substantially all of it.
The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large
name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and
reductions by any name at all. They show for themselves what they are,
and we can with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them
with a title of its own choosing.
Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my
induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself:
always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even
quarter-less-twain—as _I_ believed; but always “no bottom,” as _he_
said.
I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a
passage from Shakespeare—it may have been the very one I quoted awhile
ago, I don’t remember—and riddled it with his wild steamboatful
interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer
day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known
as Hell’s Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the
_Pennsylvania_ triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and
the _A. T. Lacey_ had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was
feeling good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it
off—_read_ it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only _he_ could read
dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read
it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never
be read again; for _he_ knew how to put the right music into those
thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make
them sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare’s own soul, each
one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage
to the massed and magnificent whole.
I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until
he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet
argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far
above all others in my ammunition-wagon—to wit, that Shakespeare
couldn’t have written Shakespeare’s works, for the reason that the man
who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the
law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways—and
if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that
constituted this vast wealth, _how_ did he get it, and _where_ and
_when_?
“From books.”
From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the
champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to answer:
that a man can’t handle glibly and easily and comfortably and
successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally
served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the
trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs,
by even a shade, from a common trade-form, the reader who has served
that trade will know the writer _hasn’t_. Ealer would not be convinced;
he said a man could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and
mysteries and free-masonries of _any_ trade by careful reading and
studying. But when I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare
with the interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn’t
teach a student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly
and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or
conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately
discover. It was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew
what was happening—he was losing his temper. And I knew he would
presently close the session with the same old argument that was always
his stay and his support in time of need; the same old argument, the
one I couldn’t answer, because I dasn’t—the argument that I was an ass,
and better shut up. He delivered it, and I obeyed.
O dear, how long ago it was—how pathetically long ago! And here am I,
old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out
of somebody again.
When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that
he keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always had several
high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and
over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He
played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So
did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you
took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not
on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the
breastboard. When the _Pennsylvania_ blew up and became a drifting
rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother
Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably
asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and
his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer
sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the
boiler-deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck,
on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of
scald and deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head—long
familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all
emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep
out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found the
joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and
was successful. I was not on board. I had been put ashore in New
Orleans by Captain Klinefelter. The reason—however, I have told all
about it in the book called _Old Times On The Mississippi_, and it
isn’t important, anyway, it is so long ago.
II
When I was a Sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years
ago, I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I could
about him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay,
the stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I
was anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects
when there wasn’t another boy in the village who could be hired to do
such a thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the
serpent, and thought Eve’s calmness was perfectly noble. I asked Mr.
Barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by
a serpent, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber.
He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into
matters above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that
he was willing to tell me the facts of Satan’s history, but he stopped
there: he wouldn’t allow any discussion of them.
In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or
six of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was
disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to
find that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears
running down. Mr. Barclay’s sympathy and compassion were aroused, for
he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the
head and cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of
materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words
shot through me.
Then he began to bail out that ocean’s riches for my encouragement and
joy. Like this: it was “conjectured”—though not established—that Satan
was originally an angel in Heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and
brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition.
Also, “we have reason to believe” that later he did so and so; that “we
are warranted in supposing” that at a subsequent time he traveled
extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries
afterward, “as tradition instructs us,” he took up the cruel trade of
tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by
and by, “as the probabilities seem to indicate,” he may have done
certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have
done still other things.
And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves on
a piece of paper, and numbered it “page 1”; then on fifteen hundred
other pieces of paper we set down the “conjectures,” and
“suppositions,” and “maybes,” and “perhapses,” and “doubtlesses,” and
“rumors,” and “guesses,” and “probabilities,” and “likelihoods,” and
“we are permitted to thinks,” and “we are warranted in believings,” and
“might have beens,” and “could have beens,” and “must have beens,” and
“unquestionablys,” and “without a shadow of doubts”—and behold!
_Materials?_ Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!
Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history
of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions—suspicions that
my attitude in that matter was not reverent, and that a person must be
reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who
spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world
and also be brought to account.
I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly
misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, and
that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of
any member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by
his words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him,
laugh at him, scoff at him; whereas in truth I had never thought of
such a thing, but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others
and laugh at _them_. “What others?” “Why, the Supposers, the
Perhapsers, the Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the
Must-Have-Beeners, the Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the
We-Are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn
architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable
and unimportant facts and built upon it a Conjectural Satan thirty
miles high.”
What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He
was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said the
Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were _themselves_
sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock
them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any
respectable house, even by the back door.
How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been
for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of
age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the
biography, and have never been in a respectable house since.
III
How curious and interesting is the parallel—as far as poverty of
biographical details is concerned—between Satan and Shakespeare. It is
wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing
resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing
approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and
how over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme—the two Great Unknowns,
the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best-known unknown
persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.
For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those
details of Shakespeare’s history which are _facts_—verified facts,
established facts, undisputed facts.
FACTS
He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.
Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could
not sign their names.
At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and
unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged
with the government of the town, thirteen had to “make their mark” in
attesting important documents, because they could not write their
names.
Of the first eighteen years of his life _nothing_ is known. They are a
blank.
On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license
to marry Anne Whateley.
Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway.
She was eight years his senior.
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a
reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the
banns.
Within six months the first child was born.
About two (blank) years followed, during which period _nothing at all
happened to Shakespeare_, so far as anybody knows.
Then came twins—1585. February.
Two blank years follow.
Then—1587—he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family
behind.
Five blank years follow. During this period _nothing happened to him_,
as far as anybody actually knows.
Then—1592—there is mention of him as an actor.
Next year—1593—his name appears in the official list of players.
Next year—1594—he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence:
other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And
remained obscure.
Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then
In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated
money, and also reputation as actor and manager.
Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated
with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the
same.
Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no
protest.
Then—1610-11—he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and
all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in
land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by
his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for
shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers;
and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of
its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed.
He lived five or six years—till 1616—in the joy of these elevated
pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with
his name.
A thoroughgoing business man’s will. It named in minute detail every
item of property he owned in the world—houses, lands, sword,
silver-gilt bowl, and so on—all the way down to his “second-best bed”
and its furniture.
It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members
of his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even his wife: the
wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a
special dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left
husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one
shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect
of the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still
lacking. No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare’s will.
He left her that “second-best bed.”
And _not another thing_; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood
with.
It was eminently and conspicuously a business man’s will, not a poet’s.
It mentioned _not a single book_.
Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and
second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one
he gave it a high place in his will.
The will mentioned _not a play, not a poem, not an unfinished literary
work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind_.
Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has
died _this_ poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a
book. Maybe two.
If Shakespeare had owned a dog—but we need not go into that: we know he
would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have
got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in
it. I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he
would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business
way.
He signed the will in three places.
In earlier years he signed two other official documents.
These five signatures still exist.
There are _no other specimens of his penmanship in existence_. Not a
line.
Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved,
was eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left
no provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature
womanhood she couldn’t write and couldn’t tell her husband’s manuscript
from anybody else’s—she thought it was Shakespeare’s.
When Shakespeare died in Stratford, _it was not an event_. It made no
more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten
theater-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were
no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears—there was merely
silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when
Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other
distinguished literary folk of Shakespeare’s time passed from life! No
praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson
waited seven years before he lifted his.
_So far as anybody actually knows and can prove_, Shakespeare of
Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
_So far as anybody knows and can prove_, he never wrote a letter to
anybody in his life.
_So far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life_.
So far as any one _knows and can prove_, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote
only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that
one—a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote
the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art
be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this
day. This is it:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
In the list as above set down will be found _every positively known_
fact of Shakespeare’s life, lean and meager as the invoice is. Beyond
these details we know _not a thing_ about him. All the rest of his vast
history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon
course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures—an Eiffel Tower
of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin
foundation of inconsequential facts.
IV
CONJECTURES
The historians “suppose” that Shakespeare attended the Free School in
Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen.
There is no _evidence_ in existence that he ever went to school at all.
The historians “infer” that he got his Latin in that school—the school
which they “suppose” he attended.
They “suppose” his father’s declining fortunes made it necessary for
him to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and
help support his parents and their ten children. But there is no
evidence that he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose
he attended.
They “suppose” he assisted his father in the butchering business; and
that, being only a boy, he didn’t have to do full-grown butchering, but
only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a
high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of
a man who wasn’t there at the time; a man who got it from a man who
could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and
neither of them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and
decades, and two more decades after Shakespeare’s death (until old age
and mental decay had refreshed and vivified their memories). They
hadn’t two facts in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen,
but only just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory
while he was at it. Curious. They had only one fact, yet the
distinguished citizen had spent twenty-six years in that little
town—just half his lifetime. However, rightly viewed, it was the most
important fact, indeed almost the only important fact, of Shakespeare’s
life in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For experience is an author’s most
valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the
breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. Rightly viewed,
calf-butchering accounts for “Titus Andronicus,” the only play—ain’t
it?—that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only
one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the Baconians included.
The historians find themselves “justified in believing” that the young
Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy’s deer preserves and got haled
before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy
evidence that anything of the kind happened.
The historians, having argued the thing that _might_ have happened into
the thing that _did_ happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas
Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the
world—on surmise and without trustworthy evidence—that Shallow _is_ Sir
Thomas.
The next addition to the young Shakespeare’s Stratford history comes
easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and
the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised
vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the
young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh, _such_ a wild young
scamp, and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is
the very way Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton
brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high in
the Natural History Museum, the awe and admiration of all the world,
the stateliest skeleton that exists on the planet. We had nine bones,
and we built the rest of him out of plaster of Paris. We ran short of
plaster of Paris, or we’d have built a brontosaur that could sit down
beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none but an expert could tell
which was biggest or contained the most plaster.
Shakespeare pronounced “Venus and Adonis” “the first heir of his
invention,” apparently implying that it was his first effort at
literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an
embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. They have to
make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful
poem before he escaped from Stratford and his family—1586 or ’87—age,
twenty-two, or along there; because within the next five years he wrote
five great plays, and could not have found time to write another line.
It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach
deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely
moment—say at thirteen, when he was supposably wrenched from that
school where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary
use—he had his youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must
have had to put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn’t be
understood in London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed;
incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor was to be the
smooth and rounded and flexible and letter-perfect English of the
“Venus and Adonis” in the space of ten years; and at the same time
learn great and fine and unsurpassable literary _form_.
However, it is “conjectured” that he accomplished all this and more,
much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure
of the law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the
manners and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society;
and likewise accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the
learned then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by
the lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate
knowledge of the world’s great literatures, ancient and modern, than
was possessed by any other man of his time—for he was going to make
brilliant and easy and admiration-compelling use of these splendid
treasures the moment he got to London. And according to the surmisers,
that is what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able
to teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig
them out of. His father could not read, and even the surmisers surmise
that he did not keep a library.
It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his
vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance
with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for
a time the _clerk of a Stratford court_; just as a bright lad like me,
reared in a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become
perfect in knowledge of the Bering Strait whale-fishery and the
shop-talk of the veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade
through catching catfish with a “trot-line” Sundays. But the surmise is
damaged by the fact that there is no evidence—and not even
tradition—that the young Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court.
It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his
law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through
“amusing himself” by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up
lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts
and listening. But it is only surmise; there is no _evidence_ that he
ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of
plaster of Paris.
There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in
front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did. If
he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his
recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great
plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend
ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian’s
difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare’s erudition—an
erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk,
every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day’s catch into
next day’s imperishable drama.
He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge
of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a
knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily
emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his
dramas. How did he acquire these rich assets?
In the usual way: by surmise. It is _surmised_ that he traveled in
Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic
and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French,
Italian, and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester’s
expedition to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for
several months or years—or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in
his business—and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways
and soldier-talk and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and
seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk.
Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the
horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret; and
who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the
call-boying and the play-acting.
For he became a call-boy; and as early as ’93 he became a
“vagabond”—the law’s ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in ’94 a
“regular” and properly and officially listed member of that (in those
days) lightly valued and not much respected profession.
Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and
manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business
man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in
a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem—his only
poem, his darling—and laid him down and died:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture.
We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence.
Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant
Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged
Dictionary to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred
barrels of plaster of Paris.
V
“WE MAY ASSUME”
In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are
transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the
Shakespearites and the Baconians, and I am the other one—the
Brontosaurian.
The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s Works; the
Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn’t
really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and
contentedly sure that Shakespeare _didn’t_, and strongly suspects that
Bacon _did_. We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly
certain that in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers
have come out ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same
materials, but the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and
rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the
Shakespearites. The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite
principle, an unchanging and immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and
14, added together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter,
you cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials
upon any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place
before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will
never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out
of ten he will get just the proper 31.
Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way
calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and
unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed,
uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that’s scarred
from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience,
and is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may
say of him “all cat-knowledge is his province”; also, take a mouse.
Lock the three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait
half an hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a
Baconian, and let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the
question to be decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts
beforehand. One verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the
other will as certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat.
The Shakespearite will Reason like this—(that is not my word, it is
his). He will say the kitten _may have been_ attending school when
nobody was noticing; therefore _we are warranted in assuming_ that it
did so; also, it _could have been_ training in a court-clerk’s office
when no one was noticing; since that could have happened, _we are
justified in assuming_ that it did happen; it _could have studied
catology in a garret_ when no one was noticing—therefore it _did_; it
_could have_ attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for
recreation, when no one was noticing, and have harvested a knowledge of
cat court-forms and cat lawyer-talk in that way: it _could_ have done
it, therefore without a doubt it _did_; it _could have_ gone soldiering
with a war-tribe when no one was noticing, and learned soldier-wiles
and soldier-ways, and what to do with a mouse when opportunity offers;
the plain inference, therefore, is that that is what it _did_. Since
all these manifold things _could_ have occurred, we have _every right
to believe_ they did occur. These patiently and painstakingly
accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one thing
more—opportunity—to convert themselves into triumphant action. The
opportunity came, we have the result; _beyond shadow of question_ the
mouse is in the kitten.
It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a “_we
think we may assume_,” we expect it, under careful watering and
fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and
weather-defying “_there isn’t a shadow of a doubt_” at last—and it
usually happens.
We know what the Baconian’s verdict would be: “_There is not a rag of
evidence that the kitten has had any training, any education, any
experience qualifying it for the present occasion, or is indeed
equipped for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as comes
its way; but there is abundant evidence—unassailable proof, in
fact—that the other animal is equipped, to the last detail, with every
qualification necessary for the event. without shadow of doubt the
tom-cat contains the mouse_.”
VI
When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed
to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for
twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it
attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries
did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst.
Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did
not regard him as the author of his Works. “We are justified in
assuming” this.
His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does
this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of _any_
kind?
“We are privileged to assume”—no, we are indeed _obliged_ to
assume—that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or
twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and
was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and
the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his
life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had
money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there
in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight
and hearsay. But not as a _celebrity?_ Apparently not. For everybody
soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected
with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him
or known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in
the same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident
connected with that period of his life they didn’t tell about it. Would
they if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is
pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren’t they? It is a very
plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.
For seven years after Shakespeare’s death nobody seems to have been
interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke
out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in
the front of the book. Then silence fell _again_.
For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare’s Stratford life began
to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known
Shakespeare or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen
people who had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No.
Apparently the inquires were only made of Stratfordians who were not
Stratfordians of Shakespeare’s day, but later comers; and what they had
learned had come to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and
what they had learned was not claimed as _fact_, but only as legend—dim
and fading and indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank,
and not worth remembering either as history or fiction.
Has it ever happened before—or since—that a celebrated person who had
spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was
born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that
village voiceless and gossipless behind him—utterly voiceless., utterly
gossipless? And permanently so? I don’t believe it has happened in any
case except Shakespeare’s. And couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened in
his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his
death.
When I examine my own case—but let us do that, and see if it will not
be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to
result, most likely to result, indeed substantially _sure_ to result in
the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. Like
me.
My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the
banks of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I
entered school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to
another in the village during nine and a half years. Then my father
died, leaving his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances;
wherefore my book-education came to a standstill forever, and I became
a printer’s apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes
failed I got a hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear,
probably. I lived in Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether,
then ran away, according to the custom of persons who are intending to
become celebrated. I never lived there afterward. Four years later I
became a “cub” on a Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New
Orleans trade, and after a year and a half of hard study and hard work
the U.S. inspectors rigorously examined me through a couple of long
sittings and decided that I knew every inch of the Mississippi—thirteen
hundred miles—in the dark and in the day—as well as a baby knows the
way to its mother’s paps day or night. So they licensed me as a
pilot—knighted me, so to speak—and I rose up clothed with authority, a
responsible servant of the United States Government.
Now then. Shakespeare died young—he was only fifty-two. He had lived in
his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He died celebrated
(if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when he died
nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years
afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about his
life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one
fact—no, _legend_—and got that one at second hand, from a person who
had only heard it as a rumor and didn’t claim copyright in it as a
production of his own. He couldn’t, very well, for its date antedated
his own birth-date. But necessarily a number of persons were still
alive in Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen
Shakespeare nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and
they would have been able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things
about him if he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a
person of interest to the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them
up and interview them? Wasn’t it worth while? Wasn’t the matter of
sufficient consequence? Had the inquirer an engagement to see a
dog-fight and couldn’t spare the time?
It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or
elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager.
Now then, I am away along in life—my seventy-third year being already
well behind me—yet _sixteen_ of my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive
today, and can tell—and do tell—inquirers dozens and dozens of
incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened
to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good
days, the dear days, “the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago.”
Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when
she was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she
visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred
miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young
vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when
she was nine years old and I the same, is still alive—in London—and
hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving
steamboats—those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets
that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career—which is
exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of
Shakespeare numbers—there are still findable two or three river-pilots
who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several
white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several
deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still
night the “Six—feet—_scant!_” that made me shudder, and the
“M-a-r-k—_twain!_” that took the shudder away, and presently the
darling “By the d-e-e-p—_four!_” that lifted me to heaven for joy.[4]
They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to
New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco.
And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been celebrated, like
me, Stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience
goes for anything, they’d have done it.
[4] Four fathoms—twenty-four feet.
VII
If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide
whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place
before the debaters only the one question, _was shakespeare ever a
practicing lawyer_? and leave everything else out.
It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely
myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some
thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and
about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men
busy themselves in, but that he could _talk_ about the men and their
grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but
have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the
exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing—which is
not evidence, and not proof—or upon details, particulars, statistics,
illustrations, demonstrations?
Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to
only one of Shakespeare’s multifarious craft-equipments, so far as my
recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me—his
law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever
examined Shakespeare’s battles and sieges and strategies, and then
decided and established for good and all that they were militarily
flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever
examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate
familiarity with that art; I don’t remember that any king or prince or
duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his
handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of
aristocracies; I don’t remember that any illustrious Latinist or
Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a
past-master in those languages; I don’t remember—well, I don’t remember
that there is _testimony_—great testimony—imposing
testimony—unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of
Shakespeare’s hundred specialties, except one—the law.
Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with
certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and
technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two
and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those
early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and
documented all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade,
that complex and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has
competent ways of knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not;
and whether his law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his
legal shop-talk is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a
machine-made counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional
loiterings in Westminster.
Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every
experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our
day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the
ease and confidence of a person who has _lived_ what he is talking
about, not gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him:
Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail
fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole
canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible
everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and
cat-headed, and the ship under headway.
Again:
The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails set,
and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were
aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the
studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her,
until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white
cloud resting upon a black speck.
Once more. A race in the Pacific:
Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the
breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we
would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging
of the _California_; then they were all furled at once, but with orders
to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them
again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while
standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From
where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails,
while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the
wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics
raised upon them. The _California_ was to windward of us, and had every
advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as
it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given
to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt
dropped. “Sheet home the fore-royal!”—“Weather sheet’s home!”—“Lee
sheet’s home!”—“Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from aloft. “Overhaul your
clew-lines!” shouts the mate. “Aye-aye, sir, all clear!”—“Taut leech!
belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!” and the royals are
set.
What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that?
He would say, “The man that wrote that didn’t learn his trade out of a
book, he has _been_ there!” But would this same captain be competent to
sit in judgment upon Shakespeare’s seamanship—considering the changes
in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded,
unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It
is my conviction that Shakespeare’s sailor-talk would be Choctaw to
him. For instance—from “_The Tempest_”:
_Master_. Boatswain!
_Boatswain_. Here, master; what cheer?
_Master_. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to ’t, yarely, or we
run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (_Enter Mariners_.)
_Boatswain_. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare,
yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle.... Down
with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi’ the main
course.... Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea
again; lay her off.
That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change.
If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say,
“Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the
imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket
and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it,” I should recognize
a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was
only a printer theoretically, not practically.
I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions—a pretty hard life; I
know all the palaver of that business: I know all about discovery
claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges,
outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels,
tunnels, air-shafts, “horses,” clay casings, granite casings; quartz
mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with
quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how
to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the
bullion into pigs; and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also
how to hunt for something less robust to do, and find it. I know the
argot of the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so
whenever Bret Harte introduces that industry into a story, the first
time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing
that Harte got the phrasing by listening—like Shakespeare—I mean the
Stratford one—not by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect
correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse.
I have been a surface miner—gold—and I know all its mysteries, and the
dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that
industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that
neither he nor they have ever served that trade.
I have been a “pocket” miner—a sort of gold mining not findable in any
but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with
horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step
and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact
little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the
ground. I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that
fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries
to use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the
labor of his hands.
I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and
whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them
without having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he
gets far on his road.
And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a
Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a
single question—the only one, so far as the previous controversies have
informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable
competency have testified: _Was The Author Of Shakespeare’s Works A
Lawyer?_—a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would put
aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapses, and might-have-beens,
and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and,
we-are-justified-in-presumings,and the rest of those vague specters and
shadows and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the
verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict
was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare,
the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so
destitute of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no
fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything
about him, did not write the Works.
Chapter XIII of _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_ bears the heading
“Shakespeare as a Lawyer,” and comprises some fifty pages of expert
testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, as
being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the
question which I have conceived to be the master-key to the
Shakespeare-Bacon puzzle.
VIII
SHAKESPEARE AS A LAWYER[5]
[5] From Chapter XIII of _The Shakespeare Problem Restated_. By George
G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane Company, publishers.
The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their
author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but
that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of
the Inns of Court and with legal life generally.
“While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to
the laws of marriage, of wills, and inheritance, to Shakespeare’s law,
lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of
exceptions, nor writ of error.” Such was the testimony borne by one of
the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was raised
to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently
became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated
by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is
for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid
displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to
discuss legal doctrines. “There is nothing so dangerous,” wrote Lord
Campbell, “as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.”
A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a
lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an
example of this. He writes (p. 164): “On February 15, 1609,
Shakespeare... obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the
payment of No. 6, and No. 1, 5s. 0d. costs.” Now a lawyer would never
have spoken of obtaining “judgment from a jury,” for it is the function
of a jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the
court), but to find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a
venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once
enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or “one of the
craft.”
But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is
naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. “Let a
non-professional man, however acute,” writes Lord Campbell again,
“presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in
discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable
absurdity.”
And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had “a
deep technical knowledge of the law,” and an easy familiarity with
“some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence.” And
again: “Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down
good law.” Of “Henry IV.,” Part 2, he says: “If Lord Eldon could be
supposed to have written the play, I do not see how he could be
chargeable with having forgotten any of his law while writing it.”
Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke speak of “the marvelous intimacy which
he displays with legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in
illustration, and his curiously technical knowledge of their form and
force.” Malone, himself a lawyer, wrote: “His knowledge of legal terms
is not merely such as might be acquired by the casual observation of
even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical
skill.” Another lawyer and well- known Shakespearean, Richard Grant
White, says: “No dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was the
younger son of a judge of the Common Pleas, and who after studying in
the Inns of Court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with
Shakespeare’s readiness and exactness. And the significance of this
fact is heightened by another, that it is only to the language of the
law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases peculiar to other
occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of description,
comparison, or illustration, generally when something in the scene
suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his
vocabulary and parcel of his thought. Take the word ‘purchase’ for
instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but
applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by
inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar sense the word occurs five
times in Shakespeare’s thirty-four plays, and only in one single
instance in the fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been
suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts in London that he
picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to
account for Shakespeare’s peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of
that phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning
those terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as
he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at _Nisi Prius_, but such
as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, ‘fine and
recovery,’ ‘statutes merchant,’ ‘purchase,’ ‘indenture,’ ‘tenure,’
‘double voucher,’ ‘fee simple,’ ‘fee farm,’ ‘remainder,’ ‘reversion,’
‘forfeiture,’ etc. This conveyancer’s jargon could not have been picked
up by hanging round the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty
years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were
comparatively rare. And besides, Shakespeare uses his law just as
freely in his first plays, written in his first London years, as in
those produced at a later period. Just as exactly, too; for the
correctness and propriety with which these terms are introduced have
compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice and a Lord Chancellor.”
Senator Davis wrote: “We seem to have something more than a sciolist’s
temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal
solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are
impressed into a disciplined service. Over and over again, where such
knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare
appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its
rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries,
their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the
method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules
of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in the
principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the
distinction between the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of
attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the
presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative,
in the inalienable character of the Crown, this mastership appears with
surprising authority.”
To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited)
may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, _viz_.: Sir
James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855, created a Baron of the Exchequer in
1860, promoted to the post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge of the Courts of
Probate and Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as Lord
Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all
lawyers know, and as the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was
one of the first legal authorities of his day, famous for his
“remarkable grasp of legal principles,” and “endowed by nature with a
remarkable facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of
his views.”
Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare’s “perfect familiarity with not
only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of
English law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never
incorrect and never at fault.... The mode in which this knowledge was
pressed into service on all occasions to express his meaning and
illustrate his thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a
special pleasure in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its
branches. As manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning
had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different
footing from the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited
in page after page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the
author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever
turned _first_ to the law. He seems almost to have _thought_ in legal
phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his
pen in description or illustration. That he should have descanted in
lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as
Shylock’s bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in
‘Shakespeare’ was exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded
itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled
itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic
subjects.” Again: “To acquire a perfect familiarity with legal
principles, and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and
phrases not only of the conveyancer’s office, but of the pleader’s
chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of employment in
some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general
legal work would be requisite. But a continuous employment involves the
element of time, and time was just what the manager of two theaters had
not at his disposal. In what portion of Shakespeare’s (i.e.,
Shakspere’s) career would it be possible to point out that time could
be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or
offices of practicing lawyers?”
Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible
explanation of Shakespeare’s extraordinary knowledge of law, have made
the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk
in an attorney’s office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to
Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being
true. His answer was as follows: “You require us to believe implicitly
a fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his
own handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having
been actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local
court at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would
present his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it
might reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills
witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none
such can be discovered.”
Upon this Lord Penzance comments: “It cannot be doubted that Lord
Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work in an
attorney’s office without being called upon continually to act as a
witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name.”
There is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of
Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of
a clerkship. And after much argument and surmise which has been
indulged in on this subject, we may, I think, safely put the notion on
one side, for no less an authority than Mr. Grant White says finally
that the idea of his having been clerk to an attorney has been “blown
to pieces.”
It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he,
nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. “That Shakespeare was in early
life employed as a clerk in an attorney’s office may be correct. At
Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every
fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it,
and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young
Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. There is, it is
true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about
Shakespeare’s occupation between the time of leaving school and going
to London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in
them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an
attorney’s office than that he was a butcher killing calves ‘in a high
style,’ and making speeches over them.”
This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as we
have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare was a butcher’s
apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour in Warwickshire in 1693,
testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over the
church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol. I, p. 11, and Vol. II, pp. 71, 72.) Mr.
Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by
Aubrey, who must have written his account some time before 1680, when
his manuscript was completed. Of the attorney’s clerk hypothesis, on
the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. It
has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed
Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic’s
marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. But Mr.
Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the
tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its
stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred
of positive evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance
point out, is really put out of court by the negative evidence, since
“no young man could have been at work in an attorney’s office without
being called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other
ways leaving traces of his work and name.” And as Mr. Edwards further
points out, since the day when Lord Campbell’s book was published
(between forty and fifty years ago), “every old deed or will, to say
nothing of other legal papers, dated during the period of William
Shakespeare’s youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and
not one signature of the young man has been found.”
Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney’s office it
is clear that he must have so served for a considerable period in order
to have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so
gained) his remarkable knowledge of the law. Can we then for a moment
believe that, if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely
silent on the matter? That Dowdall’s old clerk, over eighty years of
age, should have never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the
butcher’s apprentice) and that all the other ancient witnesses should
be in similar ignorance!
But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. Tradition is to
be scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable
truth when it suits the case. Shakespeare of Stratford was the author
of the Plays and Poems, but the author of the Plays and Poems could not
have been a butcher’s apprentice. Away, therefore, with tradition. But
the author of the Plays and Poems _must_ have had a very large and a
very accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford
must have been an attorney’s clerk! The method is simplicity itself. By
similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a
soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things besides,
according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. It
would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin
as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney’s office at the same time.
However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has fully
recognized, what is indeed tolerably obvious, that Shakespeare must
have had a sound legal training. “It may, of course, be urged,” he
writes, “that Shakespeare’s knowledge of medicine, and particularly
that branch of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally
remarkable, and that no one has ever contended that he was a physician.
(Here Mr. Collins is wrong; that contention also has been put forward.)
It may be urged that his acquaintance with the technicalities of other
crafts and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also
extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a
soldier. (Wrong again. Why, even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse “suspect”
that he was a soldier!) This may be conceded, but the concession hardly
furnishes an analogy. To these and all other subjects he recurs
occasionally, and in season, but with reminiscences of the law his
memory, as is abundantly clear, was simply saturated. In season and out
of season now in manifest, now in recondite application, he presses it
into the service of expression and illustration. At least a third of
his myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult
to find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a
single scene, the diction and imagery of which are not colored by it.
Much of his law may have been acquired from three books easily
accessible to him—namely, Tottell’s _Precedents_ (1572), Pulton’s
_Statutes_ (1578), and Fraunce’s _Lawier’s Logike_ (1588), works with
which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it could
only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with legal
proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that Shakespeare’s legal
knowledge is not what could have been picked up in an attorney’s
office, but could only have been learned by an actual attendance at the
Courts, at a Pleader’s Chambers, and on circuit, or by associating
intimately with members of the Bench and Bar.”
This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins’s explanation? “Perhaps the
simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in
early life he was in an attorney’s office (!), that he there contracted
a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London
he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in
leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers.
On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which
the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy
in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and
ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in
keeping himself from tripping.”
A lame conclusion. “No other supposition” indeed! Yes, there is
another, and a very obvious supposition—namely, that Shakespeare was
himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of
the courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the
Inns of Court.
One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the fact
that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but I may be
forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his
pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of Malone,
Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. Grant
White, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the
matter of Shakespeare’s legal acquirements....
Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord
Penzance’s book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow or
other managed “to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles,
and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not
only of the conveyancer’s office, but of the pleader’s chambers and the
Courts at Westminster.” This, as Lord Penzance points out, “would
require nothing short of employment in some career involving _constant
contact_ with legal questions and general legal work.” But “in what
portion of Shakespeare’s career would it be possible to point out that
time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the
chambers or offices of practicing lawyers?... It is beyond doubt that
at an early period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at
school and assist his father, and was soon after, at the age of
sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade. While under the obligation of
this bond he could not have pursued any other employment. Then he
leaves Stratford and comes to London. He has to provide himself with
the means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the
theater. No one doubts that. The holding of horses is scouted by many,
and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and certainly unproved; but
whatever the nature of his employment was at the theater, there is
hardly room for the belief that it could have been other than
continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. Ere long he had been
taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a
‘Johannes Factotum.’ His rapid accumulation of wealth speaks volumes
for the constancy and activity of his services. One fails to see when
there could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it,
giving room or opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment.
‘In 1589,’ says Knight, ‘we have undeniable evidence that he had not
only a casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many
players were, but was a shareholder in the company of the Queen’s
players with other shareholders below him on the list.’ This (1589)
would be within two years after his arrival in London, which is placed
by White and Halliwell- Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty
in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he
is supposed to have come to London, he was induced to enter upon a
course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost
insuperable. Still it was physically possible, provided always that he
could have had access to the needful books. But this legal training
seems to me to stand on a different footing. It is not only
unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known
facts of his career.” Lord Penzance then refers to the fact that “by
1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant White) several of the
plays had been written. ‘The Comedy of Errors’ in 1589, ‘Love’s
Labour’s Lost’ in 1589, ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in 1589 or 1590,” and
so forth, and then asks, “with this catalogue of dramatic work on
hand... was it possible that he could have taken a leading part in the
management and conduct of two theaters, and if Mr. Phillipps is to be
relied upon, taken his share in the performances of the provincial
tours of his company—and at the same time devoted himself to the study
of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself
complete master of its principles and practice, and saturate his mind
with all its most technical terms?”
I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance’s book, because it lay
before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of
Shakespeare’s legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set
forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the
idea that Shakespeare might have found time in some unknown period of
early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of
classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few
other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: “Did you ever
meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country
gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments,
which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of
practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do
not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an
instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all its
branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal
profession.”
This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so
uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so’s, and
might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the
rest of that ton of plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have
built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor’s name,
that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare’s Works
knew all about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been
the Stratford Shakespeare—and _wasn’t_.
Who did write these Works, then?
I wish I knew.
IX
Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare’s Works? Nobody knows.
We cannot say we _know_ a thing when that thing has not been proved.
_Know_ is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and
absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those
slaves.... No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not
courteous. The upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call
_us_ the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all
the time; very well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do
it, but I will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call
them harsh names; the most I can do is to indicate them by terms
reflecting my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom.
To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their
entire superstition upon _inferences_, not upon known and established
facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say
our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to.
But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that
sort.... Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn’t have written the
Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some
more inferring.
Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a
tidal wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration,
delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the
authorship. Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is,
because there are a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that
poem. Do you remember “Beautiful Snow”? Do you remember “Rock Me to
Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to Sleep”? Do you remember “Backward, turn,
backward, O Time, in thy flight! Make me a child again just for
tonight”? I remember them very well. Their authorship was claimed by
most of the grown-up people who were alive at the time, and every
claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at least—to wit, he
could have done the authoring; he was competent.
Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven’t. There was good
reason. The world knows there was but one man on the planet at the time
who was competent—not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the
dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of
prodigious footprints stretching across the plain—footprints that were
three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong
deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any
doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were there a dozen claimants?
Where there two? No—the people knew who it was that had been along
there: there was only one Hercules.
There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn’t be two; certainly
there couldn’t be two at the same time. It takes ages to bring forth a
Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched
before his time; nor during his time; and hasn’t been matched since.
The prospect of matching him in our time is not bright.
The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified to
write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. They claim that Bacon
possessed the stupendous equipment—both natural and acquired—for the
miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like;
or, indeed, anything closely approaching it.
Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and
horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has synopsized
Bacon’s history—a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford
Shakespeare, for he hasn’t any history to synopsize. Bacon’s history is
open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old age—a history
consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous
detail; _facts_, not guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens.
Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a
Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was “distinguished
both as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with
Bishop Jewell, and translated his _Apologia_ from the Latin so
correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single
alteration.” It is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how
our inclinations and aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere furnished
by the parents to the son in this present case was an atmosphere
saturated with learning; with thinkings and ponderings upon deep
subjects; and with polite culture. It had its natural effect.
Shakespeare of Stratford was reared in a house which had no use for
books, since its owners, his parents, were without education. This may
have had an effect upon the son, but we do not know, because we have no
history of him of an informing sort. There were but few books anywhere,
in that day, and only the well-to-do and highly educated possessed
them, they being almost confined to the dead languages. “All the
valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe
would hardly have filled a single shelf”—imagine it! The few existing
books were in the Latin tongue mainly. “A person who was ignorant of it
was shut out from all acquaintance—not merely with Cicero and Virgil,
but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of
his own time”—a literature necessary to the Stratford lad, for his
fictitious reputation’s sake, since the writer of his Works would begin
to use it wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was
hardly more than out of his teens and into his twenties.
At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years
there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English Ambassador,
and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and
the aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. A total of six
years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of
men. The three spent at the university were coeval with the second and
last three spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school
supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference—with nothing
to infer from. The second three of the Baconian six were “presumably”
spent by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the
thugs presume it—on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when
they want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for business
purposes, all the same to them. They know the difference, but they also
know how to blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a
fact is better than a presumption, it doesn’t take a presumption long
to bloom into a fact when _they_ have the handling of it. They know by
old experience that when they get hold of a presumption-tadpole he is
not going to _stay_ tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to
develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of _fact_, and make him
sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and
insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure
authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody
because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty
persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn’t be a thug, not
even if—but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the
argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a
thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His. Then to Him be the praise. That
is the right spirit.
They “presume” the lad severed his “presumed” connection with the
Stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. They also “presume”
that the butcher was his father. They don’t know. There is no written
record of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it would have helped
their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to
fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers—all by their patented
method “presumption.” If it will help their case they will do it yet;
and if it will further help it, they will “presume” that all those
butchers were his father. And the week after, they will _say_ it. Why,
it is just like being the past tense of the compound reflexive
adverbial incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of
Multitude; which is father to the expression which the grammarians call
Verb. It is like a whole ancestry, with only one posterity.
To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered
that abstruse science. From that day to the end of his life he was
daily in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual
onlooker in intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but
as a practicing lawyer—a great and successful one, a renowned one, a
Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood
of the legal Table Round; he lived in the law’s atmosphere thenceforth,
all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult
steeps to its supremest summit, the Lord-Chancellorship, leaving behind
him no fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that
majestic place.
When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other
illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses,
brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in
the Plays, and try to fit them to the historyless Stratford
stage-manager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but
when we put them in the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they
seem in their natural and rightful place, they seem at home there.
Please turn back and read them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of
Stratford they are meaningless, they are inebriate
extravagancies—intemperate admirations of the dark side of the moon, so
to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are admirations of the golden
glories of the moon’s front side, the moon at the full—and not
intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. “At
every turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile,
or illustration, his mind ever turned _first_ to the law; he seems
almost to have _thought_ in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases,
the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at the end of his pen.”
That could happen to no one but a person whose _trade_ was the law; it
could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill their
conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the
ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere _passenger_ ever does it,
be he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything
resembling accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. Please read again
what Lord Campbell and the other great authorities have said about
Bacon when they thought they were saying it about Shakespeare of
Stratford.
X
THE REST OF THE EQUIPMENT
The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his
time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind,
grace, and majesty of expression. Every one has said it, no one doubts
it. Also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to
break out. We have no evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of
Stratford possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements.
The only lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially
barren of them—barren of all of them.
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator:
His language, _where he could spare and pass by a jest_, was nobly
censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more
weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he
uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his (its) own
graces.... The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make
an end.
From Macaulay:
He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by his
exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the King’s heart
was set—the union of England and Scotland. It was not difficult for
such an intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of
such a scheme. He conducted the great case of the _Post Nati_ in the
Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the judges—a decision the
legality of which may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which
must be acknowledged—was in a great measure attributed to his dexterous
management.
Again:
While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of
law, he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble
treatise on the _Advancement Of Learning_, which at a later period was
expanded into the _De Augmentis_, appeared in 1605.
The _Wisdom Of The Ancients_, a work which, if it had proceeded from
any other writer, would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit
and learning, was printed in 1609.
In the mean time the _Novum Organum_ was slowly proceeding. Several
distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of
that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of
his genius.
Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the _Cogitata Et Visa_, one of
the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great
oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that “in all
proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master
workman”; and that “it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over
did abound with choice conceits of the present state of learning, and
with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it.”
In 1612 a new edition of the _Essays_ appeared, with additions
surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality.
Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon’s attention from a work the most
arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty
powers could have achieved, “the reducing and recompiling,” to use his
own phrase, “of the laws of England.”
To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney-General and
Solicitor-General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man
for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just
described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker.
The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of
his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the
regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to
use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, “on such study as was not worthy
such a student.”
He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England
under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National History, a
Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to his
Essays. He published the inestimable _Treatise De Augmentis
Scientiarum_.
Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and
quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:
The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor
bore the mark of his mind. _The Best Jest-Book In The World_ is that
which he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day
on which illness had rendered him incapable of serious study.
Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon
Bacon, and seem to indicate—and maybe demonstrate—that he was competent
to write the Plays and Poems:
With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of
comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human
being.
The _Essays_ contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character,
no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque,
could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the
whole world of knowledge.
His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to
Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady;
spread it, and the armies of the powerful Sultans might repose beneath
its shade.
The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the
mutual relations of all departments of knowledge.
In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, Lord
Burleigh, he said, “I have taken all knowledge to be my province.”
Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he
adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric.
The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, so
powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to
tyrannize over the whole man.
There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old
dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a
pathetic instance of it. “We may assume” that it is Bacon’s fault, but
the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.
No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated.
It stopped at the first check from good sense.
In truth, much of Bacon’s life was passed in a visionary world—amid
things as strange as any that are described in the _Arabian Tales_...
amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains
more wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more
rapid than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the
lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of
Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing
wild—nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.
Bacon’s greatest performance is the first book of the _Novum
Organum_.... Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is
employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so
great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may
prejudices, introduced so many new opinions.
But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which,
without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science—all the
past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years,
all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of
the coming age.
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it
portable.
His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in
literature.
It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and
each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed
in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any
other man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without
a mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet
could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could
have written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have
written this:
The cloud-cap’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap’d towers, he
ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake
forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor
prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never
notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a
layer of it in a pie.
XI
Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write
Shakespeare’s Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so
soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly
seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think
so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No,
no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been
trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never
be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely,
dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance
which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that
superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second
hand our notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low
tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace
and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and
approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning
the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless
wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of
religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the
Shakespeares and the Author Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all
at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way
we are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can’t help it, we
can’t change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have
been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain
from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong,
that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion.
In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment
and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to
wash. Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly
stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and
irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our
sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not reluctantly, but rather
gladly, for we are privately afraid we should find, upon examination
that the jewels are of the sort that are manufactured at North Adams,
Mass.
I haven’t any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal
this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly,
disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known
to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several
thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid
intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken
several thousand years to convince the same fine race—including every
splendid intellect in it—that there is no such person as Satan; it has
taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant
Church’s program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary
long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant
damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if
their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting
fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch.
We are The Reasoning Race. We can’t prove it by the above examples, and
we can’t prove it by the miraculous “histories” built by those
Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but
there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think
of them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of
chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we
know by our reasoning bowers that Hercules has been along there. I feel
that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The bust, too—there in
the Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm
bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache,
and the putty face, unseamed of care—that face which has looked
passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years
and will still look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with
the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.
XII
IRREVERENCE
One of the most trying defects which I find in these—these—what shall I
call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way
they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature
and my dignity. The farthest I can go in that direction is to call them
by names of limited reverence—names merely descriptive, never unkind,
never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If _they_ would do
like this, they would feel better in their hearts. Very well, then—to
proceed. One of the most trying defects which I find in these
Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores,
these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these
buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is
detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us.
I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing
is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I
cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been
irreverent, except towards the things which were sacred to other
people. Am I in the right? I think so. But I ask no one to take my
unsupported word; no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary
decide. Here is the definition:
_Irreverence_. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God and
sacred things.
What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence is
lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other
gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things
within them. He endorses the definition, you see; and there are
300,000,000 Hindus or their equivalents back of him.
The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could
restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for _our_ Deity and our
sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for
by the simple process of spelling _his_ deities with capitals the Hindu
confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus
making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere _his_ gods and _his_
sacred things, and nobody’s else. We can’t say a word, for he has our
own dictionary at his back, and its decision is final.
This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred
to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2.
whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody
else; 3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably,
whatever is sacred to _me_ must be held in reverence by everybody else.
Now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites
and bandoleers and buccaneers are _also_ trying to crowd in and share
the benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their
Shakespeare and hold him sacred. We can’t have that: there’s enough of
us already. If you go on widening and spreading and inflating the
privilege, it will presently come to be conceded that each man’s sacred
things are the _only_ ones, and the rest of the human race will have to
be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can surely
happen, and when it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as
the most meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent,
and impudent, and dictatorial word in the language. And people will
say, “Whose business is it what gods I worship and what things hold
sacred? Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he
get that right?”
We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the
word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that is
to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its
present limits—that is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu
sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is watered enough,
just as it is.
It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think
so because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently,
kindly, charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality
of self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things
about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant
Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which
Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon
Thomas Paine and charge _him_ with irreverence. This is all
unfortunate, because it makes it difficult for students equipped with
only a low grade of mentality to find out what Irreverence really _is_.
It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating
the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn
from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarreling, no
more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings.
There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare
controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole
matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer,
because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me
with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an
Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled-
Prophet -of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods found
effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of
holy memory, I shall know how to quiet them.
XIII
Isn’t it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the
celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear
back to the first Tudors—a list containing five hundred names, shall we
say?—and you can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and
learn the particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of
them except one—the most famous, the most renowned—by far the most
illustrious of them all—Shakespeare! You can get the details of the
lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the
celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges,
lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians, biographers, editors,
inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers,
prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys,
bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and
sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, naturalists, claimants,
impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college
presidents and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors,
politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, demagogues,
clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, highwaymen, journalists,
physicians, surgeons—you can get the life-histories of all of them but
_one_. Just _one_—the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of
them all—Shakespeare!
You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by
the rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find
out the life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have
listed fifteen hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic
life-histories of the whole of them. Save one—far and away the most
colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation—Shakespeare! About him you
can find out _nothing_. Nothing of even the slightest importance.
Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that
even remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a
distinctly commonplace person—a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a
small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of
any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly
cold in his grave. We can go to the records and find out the
life-history of every renowned _race-horse_ of modern times—but not
Shakespeare’s! There are many reasons why, and they have been furnished
in cart-loads (of guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there
is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is
abundantly sufficient all by itself—_he hadn’t any history to record_.
There is no way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has
yet been discovered of getting around its formidable significance.
Its quite plain significance—to any but those thugs (I do not use the
term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived,
and none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays
enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a
pity the world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he
was the author, and not merely a _nom de plume_ for another man to hide
behind. If he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones,
and more solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his
good name, and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They
will moulder away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure
until the last sun goes down.
MARK TWAIN.
_P.S. March 25_. About two months ago I was illuminating this
Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the
Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, and I then took occasion to air the
opinion that the Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public
consequence or celebrity during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure
and unimportant. And not only in great London, but also in the little
village where he was born, where he lived a quarter of a century, and
where he died and was buried. I argued that if he had been a person of
any note at all, aged villagers would have had much to tell about him
many and many a year after his death, instead of being unable to
furnish inquirers a single fact connected with him. I believed, and I
still believe, that if he had been famous, his notoriety would have
lasted as long as mine has lasted in my native village out in Missouri.
It is a good argument, a prodigiously strong one, and most formidable
one for even the most gifted and ingenious and plausible
Stratfordolator to get around or explain away. Today a Hannibal
_Courier-Post_ of recent date has reached me, with an article in it
which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated person cannot
be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty years. I will
make an extract from it:
Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude
is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced,
and as the years go by her greatest son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens
as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard
of the residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him
famous. His name is associated with every old building that is torn
down to make way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly
growing city, and with every hill or cave over or through which he
might by any possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest
which he wove into his stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson’s Island,
or Mark Twain Cave, are now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad
of any opportunity to do him honor as he had honored her.
So it has happened that the “old timers” who went to school with Mark
or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored with
large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and
condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came
to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now
seen to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Becky and
Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated when he
lived here and that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for
doing were not all bad, after all. So they have been in no hesitancy
about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the good in their
efforts to get a “Mark Twain” story, all incidents being viewed in the
light of his present fame, until the volume of “Twainiana” is already
considerable and growing in proportion as the “old timers” drop away
and the stories are retold second and third hand by their descendants.
With some seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a
house, he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or
patent himself as he will, there are some of his “works” that will go
swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as graybeards gather about the
fires and begin with, “I’ve heard father tell,” or possibly, “Once when
I.” The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother—_was_ my mother.
And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper, of date twenty days
ago:
Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock
Street, at 2.30 o’clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The
deceased was a sister of “Huckleberry Finn,” one of the famous
characters in Mark Twain’s _Tom Sawyer_. She had been a member of the
Dickason family—the housekeeper— for nearly forty-five years, and was a
highly respected lady. For the past eight years she had been an
invalid, but was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if
she had been a near relative. She was a member of the Park Methodist
Church and a Christian woman.
I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was
graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was
at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where
she stood, and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her
bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was
crying. What it was about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the
tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good
child, I can say that for her. She knew me nearly seventy years ago.
Did she forget me, in the course of time? I think not. If she had lived
in Stratford in Shakespeare’s time, would she have forgotten him? Yes.
For he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in
Stratford, and there wouldn’t be any occasion to remember him after he
had been dead a week.
“Injun Joe,” “Jimmy Finn,” and “General Gaines” were prominent and very
intemperate ne’er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of
grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them.
Isn’t it curious that two “town drunkards” and one half-breed loafer
should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a
hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in
the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the
village where he had lived the half of his lifetime?
MARK TWAIN.
THE END
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