GOAT-FEATHERS BY _Ellis Parker Butler_ BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY_The Riverside Press Cambridge_ COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCETHIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM G_oat_-F_eathers_ GOAT-FEATHERS No human being ever tells the whole truth about himself. We seem tobe born liars in that particular, all of us, and I am no different. I'm starting out now to tell the bitter, agonizing truth aboutmyself, but before I am through I shall probably be lying at therate of a mile a minute and cracking myself up something awful! Aman can tell only so much truth; then he begins to wabble. The truth is, I ought to be making as much money as Robert W. Chambers, and winning prizes of honor like Ernest Poole, and I'mnot. I ought to be better known as a humorist than George Ade andMark Twain rolled into one, and I'm not. The trouble with me isthat I am always too ready and eager to break away and go gatheringgoat-feathers. If it had not been for that I might be a millionaireor the President of the United States or the leading AmericanAuthor, bound in Red Russia leather. I might have been a Set ofBooks, like Sir Walter Scott or Dickens or Balzac, and when peoplepassed my house the natives would say, "No, that isn't the cityhall or the court-house; that's where Butler lives. " Of course somestrangers would say, "Butler, the grocer?" but that would be theignorant few. The real people would whisper, "Butler, the Author!"in a sort of subdued awe and remove their hats. Some of them wouldpick a blade of grass from my lawn and take it home to hand down totheir children's children as the most treasured family possession. As it is, I have gathered so many goat-feathers that half thepeople introduce me as Ellis Butler Parker and the other half asButler Parker Ellis, and if there is a ton of hay growing on mylawn nobody bothers to pick a pint. My father has to cut it andrake it away. Goat-feathers, you understand, are the feathers a man picks andsticks all over his hide to make himself look like the villagegoat. It often takes six days, three hours and eighteen minutes togather one goat-feather, and when a man has it and takes it home itis about as useful and valuable to him as a stone-bruise on theback of his neck. I have recently spent several days over a monthgathering one goat-feather, and as a reward I was grabbed andchased after another that ate up two weeks and three days of mytime. Goat-feathers are the distractions, side lines anddeflections that take a man's attention from his own business andkeep him from getting ahead. They are the Greatest Thing in theWorld--to make a man look like a goat. I think I can claim, without fear of dispute, to have gathered moregoat-feathers in a fifty-year career, and to look more like a goat, than any other man living, and not excepting Pooh Bah, who addedsuch a pleasing, goat-like character to Gilbert-and-Sullivan's"Mikado. " Pooh Bah, poor amateur! could boast only that he wasFirst Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buck Hounds, Groom of the BackStairs, Archbishop of Titipu, Lord Mayor, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse, PrivateSecretary, Lord High Auditor, First Commissioner of Police, Paymaster General, Judge Ordinary, Master of the Rolls, Secretaryof State for the Home Department, Groom of the Second Floor Front, and Registrar. I can beat that all to pieces. When I wake in the morning as President of the Authors' League FundI can give some attention to my work as Publicity Manager of theLiberty Loan Committee while preparing to devote an hour or two tothe Secretaryship of the Armenian Relief and the Treasurership ofthe Volunteer Committee for the Fatherless Children of France, before I consider my duties as Vice-President of the FlushingSavings and Loan and as Vice-President, Director and Member of theDiscount Committee of the Flushing National Bank. As a Councillorand Member of the Executive Committee of the Authors' League, andone of the Membership Committee of the City Club, Governor of theTuscarora Club and Publicity Manager for the Flushing Red Cross, Flushing Red Cross Drive and Queensboro Red Cross Drive I can putin a few hours of goat-feather gathering. Night may come without myhaving to do any real work, but if not I can avoid it andaccumulate a few more goat-feathers as Member of the Book Committeeand Executive Committee of the Queensboro Public Library, Member ofthe Queensboro Committee on Training Camp Activities, ExecutiveCommitteeman of the Vigilantes, Authors' Committeeman of theAmerican Defense Society, and so on for hours and hours and hours. I am a member of everything but the Mothers' Club of Public School20, and everything takes time from my legitimate work. I estimatethat in the last twenty years I have gathered twenty thousandpounds of goat-feathers at a cost of about five dollars a pound, and the whole lot is worth about twenty cents. What I marvel at is that I make a living at all. My telephone ringsseven thousand eight hundred and six times a day, and only once inthe last eight years has it been rung by any one who wanted to buya story from me. The other eighty-two million times it was rung bypeople who wanted me to gather a new crop of goat-feathers. At one time I moved out to the barn to get away from the telephone. The result was that I had to come down out of the second story ofthe barn, walk across my property, enter the house, and go upstairsevery time the telephone rang. I did this eighty-two times a day, and then moved back to the house and had an extension telephone putin my workroom so close to my desk that every time I flexed amuscle I knocked the 'phone off its table. This made it muchhandier for the goat-feather distributers, so they called me upoftener. They call me before I am out of bed, when I am in thebathtub, and after I go to bed. Usually they call me to the 'phoneand then tell me to wait a minute until Mr. Jonesky comes. Thefavorite times for calling me are when I am in the bathtub, when Iam at meals, and when I am trying to concentrate on my writing. I am not blaming any one for this. I did not have to rent atelephone. I could have let people come to the house. A great manydo come to the house. On the average, it takes the person who comesto the house just one hour to state a proposition that could be putin a six-word telegram or 'phoned in one minute. The visitor alwaysbegins with a few neat remarks about "Pigs and Pigs, " which is notthe name of the story, tells how his grandmother laughed over ituntil she swallowed her false teeth, explains that his grandmotherwas one of the Tootlecoms of Worcester, but married into theBlahblah family. About half an hour later the visitor remarks, "Iknow you are very busy and I hate to ask you, but----" Then he asksme to do some little trifle like raising $80, 000, 000 in Flushingfor the War Fund of the One-Legged Gardeners' League, which has aplan for planting sweet peas in the trenches in Mesopotamia. "Weknow you can do it, " he says pleasantly. I know I can do it, too. Ifeel the great urge of ability rise within me. I don't care a hangfor Mesopotamia, or for sweet peas in the trenches there; but it issomething I can do, and I go ahead and do it. I gather two quartsof red, white, and blue goat-feathers, give eighteen magazineeditors a chance to forget I am alive, and find at the end of themonth that I am three hundred and forty dollars deeper in debt thanI was before. It has come about that people are actually offended if I don't jumpinto every mad goat-feather quest that is proposed. I am firmlyconvinced that there is now extant an Association to Prevent ButlerDoing a Full Day's Work. I don't want to seem egotistical, but I amnow of the opinion that the Kaiser started the war in order to makeit seem necessary for me to make Four-Minute speeches on FoodConservation, Give Your Binoculars, and Buy a Thrift Stamp. Of course, all our patriotic, Liberty Loan, Red Cross, Thrift Stampside-lining isn't goat-feathering. The genuine variety iseagle-feather gathering, and I am as proud of my eagle-feathers asI am sour on my goat-feathers. Now it is a fine thing to be treasurer of the Flushing Hospital, and it is a fine thing to be president of the Flushing CountryClub, but the goat-feathers pall when you know that the reason youwere given those glories was because nobody else would take them. It's a "grand and glorious feelin'" to know you can take someaffair and make it a success, or a near-success; but it is notbusiness. A man may make a success of a Flushing Public Playgroundand not be making a success of himself. He may be making a goat ofhimself. The chances are ten to one that he is making a goat ofhimself. I'll never get the Pulitzer prize for the best novel or for thebest play, but if there was a Pulitzer prize for the greatest humangoat nobody else would be in the running. I have not gotgoat-feathers by the dozen or by the pound--I have them by thebale. I estimate that if all my goat-feathers were placed end toend they would reach from the bread line to the poor-house. It is just possible that by this time you may gather that I have agrouch on myself. If so, you are right. To-day I am forty-nineyears and six months old, and as a bright and shining literarylight I am exactly where I was twelve years ago. I am twelve yearsolder and have that much less time in which to complete the joy ofmaking good as one of the great American authors. Presently theinfirmities of age will begin to gnaw at me, the moths will ruin myflossy collection of goat-feathers, all those who now pat me on theback because they can make use of me free of charge will forgetthat I am alive, and my executors will shake their heads and say, "Ain't it too bad he left so little!" Distraction isn't really good for a man if he wants to reach agoal. No salesman ever got very far by carrying too many sidelines. The poorest sort of monopoly for any man to undertake is amonopoly of goat-feathers. No man in the world had a better chance to make himself the GreatAmerican Humorist than I had when I wrote "Pigs is Pigs. " I had agood, solid foundation of fairly good humorous work under it andthe little story had a wonderful success. The thing for me to havedone then was to stick to humor, regardless of anything. I havewritten dainty stories, sympathetic stories, serious stories, allkinds of stories, but not many humorous stories. It is surprisinghow often editors have had to announce "A story that shows thisfamous humorist in an entirely new vein. " Taking literature as a business, I can say that a humorist shouldhave no "new vein. " Neither does a plumber succeed as a plumber byspending a large share of his working hours making violins. No oneever succeeds by allowing himself to be deflected from the mostimportant business of life, which is making the most of the bestthat is in him. Even a cow does better if she sticks close to thebusiness of eating grass and chewing the cud. When she starts in tolearn to whistle like a catbird and to flit from field to fieldlike a butterfly it is safe to say she is no longer a success inlife. When a cow strays from plain milk-producing methods andbegins climbing trees and turning somersaults, she may be morepicturesque, but she is gathering nothing but goat-feathers. Sevenfarmers, a school-teacher and a tin peddler may line up along thefence and applaud her all afternoon until she is swelled withpride, but when she gets back to the barn at sundown she will notgive much milk. She will not be known as a milch cow long; she willbe a low grade of corned beef, a couple of flank steaks and a fewpairs of three-dollar shoes. I can sit down to write a story about a man who fell off a bridgeand landed in a kettle of tar on a canal boat and, before I havecompleted a full paragraph, I can have stopped to clean the smallo, small e, and small a of my typewriter with a toothpick, stoppedto think about the pearl buttons on a vest I owned in 1894, theSpanish-American War, what the French word for "illumination" is, and whether I paid my last Liberty Loan installment. Before I havefinished that first paragraph I may have stopped to fill myfountain pen, gone downtown to attend a meeting of the Red CrossCommittee, started to recatalogue my published stories, and taken atrip to Chicago. Before I have got to the first period in the firstsentence I may have decided that I would not have a man fall offthe bridge but have a woman fall off it, that I would not have herfall off a bridge but off the Woolworth Building, that I would nothave her fall into a kettle of tar but into a wagonload of featherbeds, that I would not have her fall at all, that I would not writea humorous story at all, that I would not write at all, and that Iwould, instead, get an empty cigar box and make a toy circus wagonfor my young son. I once made an entire doll's house, two stories, four rooms, kitchen and bath, with hand-carved stairways and electric lightingthroughout, the walls entirely weatherboarded, put in the carpets, papered the walls, hung lace curtains at the windows and paintedthe exterior, and all between two paragraphs of a story. I spentthree months on that little trip after goat-feathers, and in themeantime Arnold Bennett probably wrote three novels of severalhundred thousand words each, gained an international reputation, and passed me on the road to fame like an airplane passing a snail. George Ade kept pegging away at his "Fables" with the regularity ofa day laborer, and Peter Finley Dunne ground out his "MisterDooley" like an unwearied sausage-grinder. On my wall, alongside my desk, I have a calendar, and the sheetthat faces me is that for the first week in March, 1916. It says"Concentration. Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work inhand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. Alexander G. Bell. " That is the whole matter in a nutshell, but theonly use the motto has been to me has been to permit me to look atit and think about it when I ought to be thinking of the story Iwas trying to write. So far as I am concerned, the most important person in the world ismyself. The most important success in the world is my success. Themost important money in the world is my money. A whole lot of themost important debts in the world are my debts. The same is true ofyou and your success and your money and your debts. I hope you are not near fifty years old. I hope you are nearertwenty, but whatever your age I can tell you that chasing aftergoat-feathers is mighty poor business. The time to investigateinteresting by-paths is when you are on a vacation, but the NewYork-Chicago Express gets there by staying on the track. The minuteit starts climbing some interesting country lane after daisies andbuttercups the coroners begin to gather and the claim agents flocktogether, and some slow but sure old freight train, plugging alongon the next track but sticking to it, toots a couple of times andpasses by. If I am ever the boss of a school board I shall insist that no childgraduate until he can foot correctly a pile of numbers four deep andforty high, and do it the first time. I have been a bookkeeper in myday, and I have footed a column of figures twenty times and got tendifferent results. I can go up a column of figures, starting like arace horse--"Seven and six are thirteen, and five are eighteen, andtwo are twenty, and--and I wonder if I put a stamp on the letter Imailed this morning--I wonder if Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays--Iwonder if a bomb from an airplane would go through from the roof ofmy house to the cellar--cellar--cellar--well, I'm glad I've got eighttons of coal in, but I'll have to get more in as soon as I can--andsix----" Then I have to begin at the beginning again with "Seven andsix are thirteen, and five are eighteen----" The reason children don't get their examples right in school isbecause they don't concentrate on the matter in hand, and thereason men don't get their lives right is because they don'tconcentrate on the matter of making good at what they know is thebusiness of their lives--success. If you stop a moment and think ofthe men you know who are not successes, but who might be successes, you will find they are goat-feather gatherers. Anything that leadsa man aside from the straight path to his goal is a goat-feather. Every useless side line is a goat-feather. Every unnecessarydistraction is a goat-feather. Nine tenths of the things I do aregoat-feathers. I don't mind telling you that I consider myself a very, verywonderful man. Nobody but a most remarkable man could spend so muchtime in the goat-feather groves gathering goat-feathers and stillkeep his family from starvation. I actually gasp when I think whata great man I should have been if I had stuck to business insteadof being drawn aside by every sweet odor and pleasant sound. Then Iactually swear when I think how many hours and days and weeks Ihave given to making myself look like a cross between a llama and astuffed owl, when I might have been writing things the editorsnever have enough of, and buy as soon as they read the firstparagraph. It is all right! I'm not jealous! I'll sit in the front row everytime Ade or Tarkington or Chambers pulls a success, and I'llapplaud as whole-heartedly as any one, but I reserve the right tokick myself when I get outside. This article is one of the kicks, and I hope it will have a good effect on me. I hope it will teachme a lesson. I doubt it; I'm too old; I'm too accustomed to chasinggoat-feathers to give it up now. So there you have the story of what is the matter with me. You knownow why, when you think of me, you think of a story I wrote twelveyears ago. I had a main goal, but I liked too well to investigateall the cross-roads instead of keeping straight on. That's bad;that's gathering goat-feathers. It has been bad for me, and bad formy success as an author, and bad for my success in the only life Ihave to live, but it is apt to be much worse for you to gathergoat-feathers than for me to gather them, because I can, occasionally, weave some of them into a story, while you can't doanything at all with those you acquire. The time we waste in excursions off the main line of our road toour goal is the difference between success and half-success; oftenit is the difference between success and failure.