HUMANLY SPEAKING

BY SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

MDCCCCXII

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published November 1912_

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 By Samuel M. Crothers

 HUMANLY SPEAKING. AMONG FRIENDS. BY THE CHRISTMAS FIRE. THE PARDONER'S WALLET. THE ENDLESS LIFE. THE GENTLE READER. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS FELLOW BOARDERS. With Portrait. MISS MUFFET'S CHRISTMAS PARTY. Illustrated. 

 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

 BOSTON AND NEW YORK

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CONTENTS

HUMANLY SPEAKING

IN THE HANDS OF A RECEIVER

THE CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS OF ROME

THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT

THE UNACCUSTOMED EARS OF EUROPE

THE TORYISM OF TRAVELERS

THE OBVIOUSNESS OF DICKENS

THE SPOILED CHILDREN OF CIVILIZATION

ON REALISM AS AN INVESTMENT

TO A CITIZEN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

The author wishes to express his thanks to the Editors of the _AtlanticMonthly_ and the _Century Magazine_ for their courtesy in permitting thepublication in this volume of certain essays which have appeared intheir magazines. 

HUMANLY SPEAKING

"Humanly speaking, it is impossible. " So the old theologian would saywhen denying any escape from his own argument. His logical machine wasgoing at full speed, and the grim engineer had no notion of putting onthe brakes. His was a non-stop train and there was to be no slowing-downtill he reached the terminus. 

But in the middle of the track was an indubitable fact. By all the rulesof argumentation it had no business to be there, trespassing on theright of way. But there it was! We trembled to think of the impendingcollision. 

But the collision between the argument and the fact never happened. The"humanly speaking" was the switch that turned the argument safely on aparallel track, where it went whizzing by the fact without the leastinjury to either. Many things which are humanly speaking impossible areof the most common occurrence and the theologian knew it. 

It is only by the use of this saving clause that one may safely moralizeor generalize or indulge in the mildest form of prediction. Strictlyspeaking, no one has a right to express any opinion about such complexand incomprehensible aggregations of humanity as the United States ofAmerica or the British Empire. Humanly speaking, they both areimpossible. Antecedently to experience the Constitution of Utopia asexpounded by Sir Thomas More would be much more probable. It has acertain rational coherence. If it existed at all it would hang together, being made out of whole cloth. But how does the British Empire holdtogether? It seems to be made of shreds and patches. It is full ofanomalies and temporary makeshifts. Why millions of people, who do notknow each other, should be willing to die rather than to be separatedfrom each other, is something not easily explained. Nevertheless theBritish Empire exists, and, through all the changes which threaten it, grows in strength. 

The perils that threaten the United States of America are so obviousthat anybody can see them. So far as one can see, the Republic ought tohave been destroyed long ago by political corruption, race prejudice, unrestricted immigration and the growth of monopolies. The only way toaccount for its present existence is that there is something about itthat is not so easily seen. Disease is often more easily diagnosed thanhealth. But we should remember that the Republic is not out of danger. It is a very salutary thing to bring its perils to the attention of thetoo easy-going citizens. It is well to have a Jeremiah, now and then, tospeak unwelcome truths. 

But even Jeremiah, when he was denouncing the evils that would befallhis country, had a saving clause in his gloomy predictions. All mannerof evils would befall them unless they repented, and humanly speaking hewas of the opinion that they couldn't repent. Said he: "Can theEthiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? then may ye also dogood that are accustomed to do evil. " Nevertheless this did not preventhim from continually exhorting them to do good, and blaming them whenthey didn't do it. Like all great moral teachers he acted on theassumption that there is more freedom of will than seemed theoreticallypossible. It was the same way with his views of national affairs. Jeremiah's reputation is that of a pessimist. Still, when the countrywas in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and he was in prison for predictingit, he bought a piece of real estate which was in the hands of theenemy. He considered it a good investment. "I subscribed the deed andsealed it, and called witnesses and weighed him the money in thebalances. " Then he put the deeds in an earthen vessel, "that they maycontinue many days. " For in spite of the panic that his own words hadcaused, he believed that the market would come up again. "Houses andvineyards shall yet be bought in this land. " If I were an archæologistwith a free hand, I should like to dig in that field in Anathoth in thehope of finding the earthen jar with the deed which Hanameel gave to hiscousin Jeremiah, for a plot of ground that nobody else would buy. 

It is the moralists and the reformers who have after all the mostcheerful message for us. They are all the time threatening us, yet forour own good. They see us plunging heedlessly to destruction. They cry, "Look out!" They often do not themselves see the way out, but they havea well-founded hope that we will discover a way when our attention iscalled to an imminent danger. The fact that the race has survived thusfar is an evidence that its instinct for self-preservation is a strongone. It has a wonderful gift for recovering after the doctors have givenit up. 

The saving clause is a great help to those idealists who are inclined tolook unwelcome facts in the face. It enables them to retain faith intheir ideals, and at the same time to hold on to their intellectualself-respect. 

There are idealists of another sort who know nothing of their strugglesand self-contradictions. Having formed their ideal of what ought to be, they identify it with what is. For them belief in the existence of goodis equivalent to the obliteration of evil. Their world is equally goodin all its parts, and is to be viewed in all its aspects with serenecomplacency. 

Now this is very pleasant for a time, especially if one is tired andneeds a complete rest. But after a while it becomes irksome, and onelongs for a change, even if it should be for the worse. We are floatingon a sea of beneficence, in which it is impossible for us to sink. Butthough one could not easily drown in the Dead Sea, one might starve. Andwhen goodness is of too great specific gravity it is impossible to geton in it or out of it. This is disconcerting to one of an activedisposition. It is comforting to be told that everything is completelygood, till you reflect that that is only another way of saying thatnothing can be made any better, and that there is no use for you to try. 

Now the idealist of the sterner sort insists on criticizing the existingworld. He refuses to call good evil or evil good. The two things are, inhis judgment, quite different. He recognizes the existence of good, buthe also recognizes the fact that there is not enough of it. This helooks upon as a great evil which ought to be remedied. And he is gladthat he is alive at this particular juncture, in a world in which thereis yet room for improvement. 

 * * * * *

Besides the ordinary Christian virtues I would recommend to any one, whowould fit himself to live happily as well as efficiently, thecultivation of that auxiliary virtue or grace which Horace Walpolecalled "Serendipity. " Walpole defined it in a letter to Sir Horace Mann:"It is a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tellyou, I shall endeavor to explain to you; you will understand it betterby the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy talecalled 'The Three Princes of Serendip. ' As their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, ofthings which they were not in quest of.... Now do you understand_Serendipity_?" In case the reader does not understand, Walpole goes onto define "Serendipity" as "accidental sagacity (for you must know thatno discovery you _are_ looking for comes under this description). "

I am inclined to think that in such a world as this, where our hold onall good is precarious, a man should be on the lookout for dangers. Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for all that is worth having. Butwhen, prepared for the worst, he goes forward, his journey will be morepleasant if he has also a "serendipitaceous" mind. He will then, by asort of accidental sagacity, discover that what he encounters is muchless formidable than what he feared. Half of his enemies turn out to befriends in disguise, and half of the other half retire at his approach. After a while such words as "impracticable" and "impossible" lose theirabsoluteness and become only synonyms for the relatively difficult. Hehas so often found a way out, where humanly speaking there was none, that he no longer looks upon a logical dilemma as a final negation ofeffort. 

 * * * * *

The following essays were written partly at home and partly abroad. Theytherefore betray the influence of some of the mass movements of the day. Anyone with even a little leisure from his own personal affairs mustrealize that we are living in one of the most stirring times in humanhistory. Everywhere the old order is changing. Everywhere there areconfused currents both of thought and feeling. 

That the old order is passing is obvious enough. That a new order isarising, and that it is on the whole beneficent, is not merely a pioushope. It is more than this: it is a matter of observation to any onewith a moderate degree of "Serendipity. "

IN THE HANDS OF A RECEIVER

It sometimes happens that a business man who is in reality solventbecomes temporarily embarrassed. His assets are greater than hisliabilities, but they are not quick enough to meet the situation. Theliabilities have become mutinous and bear down upon him in a threateningmob. If he had time to deal with them one by one, all would be well; buthe cannot on the instant mobilize his forces. 

Under such circumstances the law allows him to surrender, not to themob, but to a friendly power which shall protect the interests of allconcerned. He goes into the hands of a receiver, who will straighten outhis affairs for him. I can imagine the relief which would come to onewho could thus get rid, for a while, of his harassing responsibilities, and let some one else do the worrying. 

In these days some of the best people I know are in this predicament inregard to their moral and social affairs. These friends of mine havethis peculiarity, that they are anxious to do their duty. Now, in allgenerations, there have been persons who did their duty, according totheir lights. But in these days it happens that a new set of lights hasbeen turned on suddenly, and we all see more duties than we hadbargained for. In the glare we see an army of creditors, each with anoverdue bill in hand. Each demands immediate payment, and shakes hishead when we suggest that he call again next week. We realize that ourmoral cash in hand is not sufficient for the crisis. If all ourobligations must be met at once, there will be a panic in which most ofour securities will be sacrificed. 

We are accustomed to grumble over the increase in the cost of living. But the enhancement of price in the necessities of physical life isnothing compared to the increase in the cost of the higher life. 

There are those now living who can remember when almost any one couldhave the satisfaction of being considered a good citizen and neighbor. All one had to do was to attend to one's own affairs and keep within thelaw. He would then be respected by all, and would deserve the mosteulogistic epitaph when he came to die. By working for private profit hecould have the satisfaction of knowing that all sorts of public benefitscame as by-products of his activity. 

But now all such satisfactions are denied. To be a good citizen you mustput your mind on the job, and it is no easy one. You must be up anddoing. And when you are doing one good thing there will be keen-eyedcritics who will ask why you have not been doing other things which aremuch more important; and they will sternly demand of you, "What do youmean by such criminal negligence?"

What we call the awakening of the social conscience marks an importantstep in progress, But, like all progress, it involves hardship toindividuals. For the higher moral classes, the saints and the reformers, it is the occasion of wholehearted rejoicing. It is just what they have, all the while, been trying to bring about. But I confess to a sympathyfor the middle class, morally considered, the plain people, who feel thepinch. They have invested their little all in the old-fashionedsecurities, and when these are depreciated they feel that there isnothing to keep the wolf from the door. After reading a few searchingarticles in the magazines they feel that, so far from being excellentcitizens, they are little better than enemies of society. I am notpleading for the predatory rich, but only for the well-meaning personsin moderately comfortable circumstances, whose predatoriness has beensuddenly revealed to them. 

Many of the most conscientious persons go about with an habituallyapologetic manner. They are rapidly acquiring the evasive air of theconscious criminal. It is only a very hardened philanthropist, or anunsophisticated beginner in good works, who can look a sociologist inthe eye. Most persons, when they do one thing, begin to apologize fornot doing something else. They are like a one-track railroad that hasbeen congested with traffic. They are not sure which train has the rightof way, and which should go on the siding. Progress is a series ofrear-end collisions. 

There is little opportunity for self-satisfaction. The old-fashionedprivate virtues which used to be exhibited with such innocent pride asfamily heirlooms are now scrutinized with suspicion. They are subjectedto rigid tests to determine their value as public utilities. 

Perhaps I may best illustrate the need of some receivership by drawingattention to the case of my friend the Reverend Augustus Bagster. 

Bagster is not by nature a spiritual genius; he is only a modern man whois sincerely desirous of doing what is expected of him. I do not thinkthat he is capable of inventing a duty, but he is morallyimpressionable, and recognizes one when it is pointed out to him. Ageneration ago such a man would have lived a useful and untroubled lifein a round of parish duties. He would have been placidly contented withhimself and his achievements. But when he came to a city pulpit he heardthe Call of the Modern. The multitudinous life around him must betranslated into immediate action. His conscience was not merelyawakened: it soon reached a state of persistent insomnia. 

When he told me that he had preached a sermon on the text, "Let him thatstole steal no more, " I was interested. But shortly after, he told methat he could not let go of that text. It was a live wire. He hadexpanded the sermon into a course on the different kinds of stealing. Hefound few things that did not come under the category of Theft. Spiritual goods as well as material might be stolen. If a personpossessed a cheerful disposition, you should ask, "How did he get it?"

"It seems to me, " I said, "that a cheerful disposition is one of thethings where possession is nine tenths of the law. I don't like to thinkof such spiritual wealth as ill-gotten. "

"I am sorry, " said Bagster, "to see that your sympathies are with theprivileged classes. "

Several weeks ago I received a letter which revealed his state ofmind:--

"I believe that you are acquainted with the Editor of the 'AtlanticMonthly. ' I suppose he means well, but persons in his situation arelikely to cater to mere literature. I hope that I am not uncharitable, but I have a suspicion that our poets yield sometimes to the desire toplease. They are perhaps unconscious of the subtle temptation. They arenot sufficiently direct and specific in their charges. I have beenreading Walt Whitman's 'Song of Joys. ' The subject does not attract me, but I like the way in which it is treated. There is no beating aroundthe bush. The poet is perfectly fearless, and will not let any guiltyman escape. 

 "'O the farmer's joys! Ohioans, Illinoisans, Wisconsonese, Kanadians, Iowans, Kansans, Oregonese joys. '

"That is the way one should write if he expectsto get results. He should point to each individualand say, 'Thou art the man. '

"I am no poet, --though I am painfully consciousthat I ought to be one, --but I have writtenwhat I call, 'The Song of Obligations. ' Ithink it may arouse the public. In such matterswe ought to unite as good citizens. You mightperhaps drop a postal card, just to show whereyou stand. "

 THE SONG OF OBLIGATIONS

 "O the citizen's obligations. The obligation of every American citizen to see that every other American citizen does his duty, and to be quick about it. The janitor's duties, the Board of Health's duties, the milkman's duties, resting upon each one of us individually with the accumulated weight of every cubic foot of vitiated air, and multiplied by the number of bacteria in every cubic centimeter of milk. The motorman's duties, and the duty of every spry citizen not to allow himself to be run over by the motorman. The obligation of teachers in the public schools to supply their pupils with all the aptitudes and graces formerly supposed to be the result of heredity and environment. The duty of each teacher to consult daily a card catalogue of duties, beginning with Apperception and Adenoids and going on to Vaccination, Ventilation, and the various vivacious variations on the three R's. The obligation resting upon the well-to-do citizen not to leave for his country place, but to remain in the city in order to give the force of his example, in his own ward, to a safe and sane Fourth of July. The obligation resting upon every citizen to write to his Congressman. The obligation to speak to one's neighbor who may think he is living a moral life, and who yet has never written to his Congressman. The obligation to attend hearings at the State House. The obligation to protest against the habit of employees at the State House of professing ignorance of the location of the committee-room where the hearings are to be held; also to protest against the habit of postponing the hearings after one has at great personal inconvenience come to the State House in order to protest. The duty of doing your Christmas shopping early enough in July to allow the shop-girls to enjoy their summer vacation. The duty of knowing what you are talking about, and of talking about all the things you ought to know about. The obligation of feeling that it is a joy and a privilege to live in a country where eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and where even if you have the price you don't get all the liberty you pay for. "

I was a little troubled over this effusion, as it seemed to indicatethat Bagster had reached the limit of elasticity. A few days later Ireceived a letter asking me to call upon him. I found him in a state ofuncertainty over his own condition. 

"I want you, " he said, "to listen to the report my stenographer hashanded me, of an address which I gave day before yesterday. I have beendoing some of my most faithful work recently, going from one meeting toanother and helping in every good cause. But at this meeting I had arare sensation of freedom of utterance. I had the sense of liberationfrom the trammels of time and space. It was a realization of moralubiquity. All the audiences I had been addressing seemed to flowtogether into one audience, and all the good causes into one good cause. Incidentally I seemed to have solved the Social Question. But now that Ihave the stenographic report I am not so certain. "

"Read it, " I said. 

He began to read, but the confidence of his pulpit tone, which was oneof the secrets of his power, would now and then desert him, and he wouldlook up to me as if waiting for an encouraging "Amen. "

"Your secretary, when she called me up by telephone, explained to me theobject of your meeting. It is an object with which I deeply sympathize. It is Rest. You stand for the idea of poise and tranquillity of spirit. You would have a place for tranquil meditation. The thought I wouldbring to you this afternoon is this: We are here not to be doing, but tobe. 

"But of course the thought at once occurs to us, How can we _be_considering the high cost of the necessaries of life? It will be seen atonce that the question is at bottom an economic one. You must have aliving wage, and how can there be a living wage unless we admit theprinciple of collective bargaining. It is because I believe in theprinciple of collective bargaining that I have come here to-night to sayto you working-men that I believe this strike is justifiable. 

"I must leave to other speakers many interesting aspects of thissubject, and confine myself to the aspect which the committee asked meto consider more in detail, namely, Juvenile Delinquency in its relationto Foreign Immigration. The relation is a real one. Statistics provethat among immigrants the proportion of the juvenile element is greaterthan among the native-born. This increase in juvenility givesopportunity for juvenile delinquency from which many of our Americancommunities might otherwise be free. But is the remedy to be found inthe restriction of immigration? My opinion is that the remedy is to befound only in education. 

"It is our interest in education that has brought us together on thisbright June morning. Your teacher tells me that this is the largestclass that has ever graduated from this High School, You may well beproud. Make your education practical. Learn to concentrate, that is thesecret of success. There are those who will tell you to concentrate on asingle point. I would go even further. Concentrate on every point. 

"I admit, as the gentleman who has preceded me has pointed out, thatconcentration in cities is a great evil. It is an evil that should becounteracted. As I was saying last evening to the ColonialDames, --Washington, if he had done nothing else, would be rememberedto-day as the founder of the Order of the Cincinnati. The figure ofCincinnatus at the plough appeals powerfully to American manhood. Many atime in after years Cincinnatus wished that he had never left thatplough. Often amid the din of battle he heard the voice saying to him, 'Back to the Land!'

"It was the same voice I seemed to hear when I received the letter ofyour secretary asking me to address this grange. As I left the smoke ofthe city behind me and looked up at your granite hills, I said, 'Here iswhere they make men!' As I have been partaking of the bountiful repastprepared by the ladies of the grange, your chairman has been telling mesomething about this community. It is a grand community to live in. Hereare no swollen fortunes; here industry, frugality, and temperance reign. These are the qualities which have given New England its great place inthe councils of the nation. I know there are those who say that it isthe tariff that has given it that place; but they do not know NewEngland. There are those at this table who can remember the time wheneighty-two ruddy-cheeked boys and girls trooped merrily to the littlered schoolhouse under the hill. In the light of such facts as these, whocan be a pessimist?

"But I must not dwell upon the past; the Boy Scouts of America preparefor the future. I am reminded that I am not at this moment addressingthe Boy Scouts of America, --they come to-morrow at the same hour, --butthe principle is the same. Even as the Boy Scouts of America look onlyat the future, so do you. We must not linger fondly on the days whencows grazed on Boston Common. The purpose of this society is to saveBoston Common. That the Common has been saved many times before is true;but is that any reason why we should falter now? 'New occasions teachnew duties. ' Let us not be satisfied with a supetficial view. Whilefresh loam is being scattered on the surface, commercial interests andthe suburban greed to get home quick are striking at the vitals of theCommon. Citizens of Boston, awake!

"Your pastor had expected to be with you this evening, but he has at thelast moment discovered that he has two other engagements, each of themof long standing. He has therefore asked me to take his place in thisinteresting course of lectures on Church History. The subject of thelecture for the evening is--and if I am mistaken some one will pleasecorrect me--Ulphilas, or Christianity among the Goths. I cannot treatthis subject from that wealth of historical information possessed byyour pastor; but I can at least speak from the heart. I feel that it iswell for us to turn aside from the questions of the day, for the quietconsideration of such a character as Ulphilas. 

"Ulphilas seems to me to be one of those characters we ought all to knowmore about. I shall not weary you by discussing the theology of Ulphilasor the details of his career. It would seem more fitting that thesethings should be left for another occasion. I shall proceed at once tothe main lesson of his life. As briefly as possible let me state thehistorical situation that confronted him. It is immaterial for us toinquire where the Goths were at that time, or what they were doing. Itis sufficient for us to know that the Goths at that time were pagans, mere heathen. Under those circumstances what did Ulphilas do? He went tothe Goths. That one act reveals his character. If in the remainingmoments of this lecture I can enforce the lesson for us of that one act, I shall feel that my coming here has not been in vain. 

"But some one who has followed my argument thus far may say, 'All thatyou have said is true, lamentably true; but what has it to do with theAdvancement of Woman?' I answer, it _is_ the Advancement of Woman. "

"How do you make that out?" I asked. 

Bagster looked vaguely troubled. "There is no such thing as an isolatedmoral phenomenon, " he said, as if he were repeating something from aformer sermon; "when you attempt to remedy one evil you find it relatedto a whole moral series. But perhaps I did not make the connectionplain. My address doesn't seem to be as closely reasoned as it did whenI was delivering it. Does it seem to you to be cogent?"

"Cogent is not precisely the word I would use. But it seems earnest. "

"Thank you, " said Bagster. "I always try to be earnest. It's hard to beearnest about so many things. I am always afraid that I may not give toall an equal emphasis. "

"And now that you have stopped for a moment, " I suggested, "perhaps youwould be willing to skip to the last page. When I read a story I amalways anxious to get to the end. I should like to know how your addresscomes out, --if it does come out. "

Bagster turned over a dozen pages and read in a more animated manner. 

"Your chairman has the reputation of making the meetings over which hepresides brisk and crisp. He has given me just a minute and a half inwhich to tell what the country expects of this Federation of YoungPeople. I shall not take all the time. I ask you to remember twoletters--E and N. _What_ does the country expect this Federation to do?E--everything. _When_ does the country expect you to do it? N--now. Remember these two letters--E and N. Young people, I thank you for yourattention. 

"The hour is late. You, my young brother, have listened to a charge inwhich your urgent duties have been fearlessly declared to you. When youhave performed these duties, others will be presented to you. And now, in token of our confidence in you, I give you the right hand offellowship. 

"And do you know, " said Bagster, "that when I reached to give him theright hand of fellowship, he wasn't there. "

We sat in silence for some time. At last he asked, hesitatingly, "Whatdo you think of it? In your judgment is it organic or functional?"

"I do not think it is organic. I am afraid that your conscience has beenover-functioning of late, and needs a rest. I know a nook in the woodsof New Hampshire, under the shadow of Mount Chocorua, where you might gofor six months while your affairs are in the hands of a receiver. Ican't say that you would find everything satisfactory, even there. Themountain is not what it used to be. It is decadent, geologicallyspeaking, and it suffered a good deal during the last glacial period. But you can't do much about it in six months. You might take it just asit is, --some things have to be taken that way. 

"You will start to-morrow morning and begin your life of temporaryirresponsibility. You will have to give up your problems for six months, but you may rest assured that they will keep. You will go by Portsmouth, where you will have ten minutes for lunch. Take that occasion for aleisurely meal. A card will be handed to you assuring you that 'The bellwill ring one minute before the departure of the train. You can't getleft. ' Hold that thought: you can't get left; the railroad authoritiessay so. "

"Did you ever try it, " asked Bagster. 

"Once, " I answered. 

"And did you get left?"

"Portsmouth, " I said, "is a beautiful old town. I had always wanted tosee it. You can see a good deal of Portsmouth in an afternoon. "

 * * * * *

The predicament in which my friend Bagster finds himself is a verycommon one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they becomeprematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth makeneurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and byshutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase forourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we like the idea of neurasthenia. 

My notion is that the twentieth-century man is morally solvent, thoughhe is temporarily embarrassed. He will find himself if he is givensufficient time. In the mean time it is well for him to consider thenature of his embarrassment. He has discovered that the world is "sofull of a number of things, " and he is disappointed that he is not as"happy as kings"--that is, as kings in the fairy books. Perhaps "sureenough" kings are not as happy as the fairy-book royalties, and perhapsthe modern man is only experiencing the anxieties that belong to his newsovereignty over the world. 

There are tribes which become confused when they try to keep in mindmore than three or four numbers. It is the same kind of confusion whichcomes when we try to look out for more than Number One. We mean well, but we have not the facilities for doing it easily. In fact, we are notso civilized as we sometimes think. 

For example, we have never carried out to its full extent the mostimportant invention that mankind has ever made--money. Money is a devicefor simplifying life by providing a means of measuring our desires, andgratifying a number of them without confusion. 

Money is a measure, not of commodities, but of states of mind. The manin the street expresses a profound philosophy when he says, "I feel likethirty cents. " That is all that "thirty cents" means. It is a certainamount of feeling. 

You see an article marked "$1. 50. " You pass by unmoved. The next day yousee it on the bargain counter marked "98 cents, " and you say, "Come tomy arms, " and carry it home. You did not feel like a dollar and a halftoward it, but you did feel exactly like ninety-eight cents. 

It is because of this wonderful measure of value that we are able todeal with a multitude of diverse articles without mental confusion. 

I am asked to stop at the department store and discover in that vastaggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and havingfound it bring it safely home. Now, I am not fitted for such anadventure. Left to my own devices I should be helpless. 

But the way is made easy for me. The floorwalker meets me graciously, and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directsme to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire. I find myselfin a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles tomolest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is simplified tofit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn lamb for thetempered wind. 

At the silken shrine stands a Minerva who imparts her wisdom and guidesmy choice. The silk thread she tells me is equivalent to five cents. Now, I have not five cents, but only a five-dollar bill. She does notact on the principle of taking all that the traffic will bear. She sendsthe five-dollar bill through space, and in a minute or two she gives methe skein and four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I go out of thestore a free man. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did notbuy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because Idid not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the greatinvention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five centsrepresented one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices whichI might reserve for other occasions. 

But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In allthese things of the higher life we have no recognized medium ofexchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bringall our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endlessdickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are atonce reproached by all the traffickers in similar articles for nottaking over bodily their whole stock in trade. 

For example, you have a desire for culture. You haven't the means toindulge in very much, but you would like a little. You are immediatelybeset by all the eager Matthew Arnolds who have heard of your desire, and they insist that you should at once devote yourself to the knowledgeof the best that has been known and said in the world. All this is veryfine, but you don't see how you can afford it. Isn't there a little of acheaper quality that they could show you? Perhaps the second best wouldserve your purpose. At once you are covered with reproaches for yourphilistinism. 

You had been living a rather prosaic life and would like to brighten itup with a little poetry. What you would really like would be a modestJames Whitcomb Riley's worth of poetry. But the moment you express thedesire the University Extension lecturer insists that what you shouldtake is a course of lectures on Dante. No wonder that you conclude thata person in your circumstances will have to go without any poetry atall. 

It is the same way with efforts at social righteousness. You find itdifficult to engage in one transaction without being involved in othersthat you are not ready for. You are interested in a social reform thatinvolves collective action. At once you are told that it is socialistic. You do not feel that it is any worse for that, and you are quite willingto go on. But at once your socialistic friends present you with thewhole programme of their party. It is all or nothing. When it ispresented in that way you are likely to become discouraged and fall backon nothing. 

Now, if we had a circulating medium you would express the exact state ofyour desires somewhat in this way: "Here is my moral dollar. I think Iwill take a quarter's worth of Socialism, and twelve and a half cents'worth of old-time Republicanism, and twelve and a half cents of genuineJeffersonian democracy, if there is any left, and a quarter's worth ofmiscellaneous insurgency. Let me see, I have a quarter left. Perhaps Imay drop in to-morrow and see if you have anything more that I want. "

The sad state of my good friend Bagster arises from the fact that hecan't do one good thing without being confused by a dozen other thingswhich are equally good. He feels that he is a miserable sinner becausehis moral dollar is not enough to pay the national debt. 

But though we have not yet been able adequately to extend the notion ofmoney to the affairs of the higher life, there have been those who haveworked on the problem. 

That was what Socrates had in mind. The Sophists talked eloquently aboutthe Good, the True, and the Beautiful; but they dealt in these things inthe bulk. They had no way of dividing them into sizable pieces foreveryday use. Socrates set up in Athens as a broker in ideas. He dealton the curb. He measured one thing in terms of another, and tried tosupply a sufficient amount of change for those who were not ashamed toengage in retail trade. 

Socrates draws the attention of Phædrus to the fact that when we talk ofiron and silver the same objects are present to our minds, "but when anyone speaks of justice and goodness, there is every sort of disagreement, and we are at odds with one another and with ourselves. "

What we need to do he says is to have an idea that is big enough toinclude all the particular actions or facts. Then, in order to dobusiness, we must be able to divide this so that it may serve ourconvenience. This is what Socrates called Philosophy. 

"I am a great lover, " he said, "of the processes of division andgeneralization; they help me to speak and think. And if I find any manwho is able to see unity and plurality in nature, him I follow, and walkin his steps as if he were a god. "

Even in the Forest of Arden life was not so simple as at first itseemed. The shepherd's life which "in respect of itself was a good life"was in other respects quite otherwise. Its unity seemed to break up intoa confusing plurality. Honest Touchstone, in trying to reconcile thedifferent points of view, blurted out the test question, "Hast anyphilosophy in thee, Shepherd?" After Bagster has communed with Chocoruafor six months, I shall put that question to him. 

THE CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS OF ROME

I

"You here, Bagster?" I exclaimed, as in the Sistine Chapel I saw ananxious face gazing down into a mirror in which were reflected thedimmed glories of the ceiling. There was an anxiety as of one who wasseeking the Truth of Art at the bottom of the well. 

One who is in the habit of giving unsolicited advice is likely to takefor granted that his advice has been acted upon, even though experienceshould teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseledBagster to go to the New Hampshire woods, in order to recuperate afterhis multifarious labors. I was therefore surprised to find him playingtruant in Rome. 

My salutation did not at first cause him to look up. He only made amysterious sign with his hand. It was evidently a gesture which he hadrecently learned, and was practiced as a sort of exorcism. 

"I am not going to sell you cameos or post cards, " I explained. 

When he recognized a familiar face, Bagster forgot all about the LastJudgment, and we were soon out-of-doors and he was telling me abouthimself. 

"I meant to go to Chocorua as you suggested, but the congregationadvised otherwise, so I came over here. It seemed the better thing todo. Up in New Hampshire you can't do much but rest, but here you canimprove your taste and collect a good deal of homiletic material. SoI've settled down in Rome. I want to have time to take it all in. "

"Do you begin to feel rested?" I asked. 

"Not yet. It's harder work than I thought it would be. There's so muchto take in, and it's all so different. I don't know how to arrange mymaterial. What I want to do, in the first place, is to have a realizingsense of being in Rome. What's the use of being here unless you are herein the spirit?

"What I mean is that I should like to feel as I did when I went to MountVernon. It was one of those dreamy autumn days when the leaves were justturning. There was the broad Potomac, and the hospitable Virginiamansion. I had the satisfying sense that I was in the home ofWashington. Everything seemed to speak of Washington. He filled thewhole scene. It was a great experience. Why can't I feel that way aboutthe great events that happened down there?"

We were by this time on the height of the Janiculum near the statue ofGaribaldi. Bagster made a vague gesture toward the city that lay beneathus. There seemed to be something in the scene that worried him. "I can'tmake it seem real, " he said. "I have continually to say to myself, 'Thatis Rome, Italy, and not Rome, New York. ' I can't make the connectionbetween the place and the historical personages I have read about. Ican't realize that the Epistle to the Romans was written to the peoplewho lived down there. Just back of that new building is the very spotwhere Romulus would have lived if he had ever existed. On those verystreets Scipio Africanus walked, and Cæsar and Cicero and Paul andMarcus Aurelius, and Epictetus and Belisarius, and Hildebrand andMichelangelo, and at one time or another about every one you ever heardof. And how many people came to get emotions they couldn't get anywhereelse! There was Goethe. How he felt! He took it all in. And there wasShelley writing poetry in the Baths of Caracalla. And there was Gibbon. "

"But we can't all expect to be Shelleys or even Gibbons, " I suggested. 

"I know it, " said Bagster, ruefully. "But if one has only a littlevessel, he ought to fill it. But somehow the historical associationscrowd each other out. When I left home I bought Hare's 'Walks in Rome. 'I thought I would take a walk a day as long as they lasted. It seemed apleasant way of combining physical and intellectual exercise. But do youknow, I could not keep up those walks. They were too concentrated for myconstitution. I wasn't equal to them. Out in California they used tomake wagers with the stranger that he couldn't eat a broiled quail everyday for ten days. I don't see why he couldn't, but it seemed that thethought of to-morrow's quail, and the feeling that it was compulsory, turned him against what otherwise might have been a pleasure. It's sowith the 'Walks. ' It's appalling to think that every morning you have tostart out for a constitutional, and be confronted with the events of thelast twenty-five centuries. The events are piled up one on another. There they are, and here you are, and what are you going to do aboutthem?"

"I suppose that there isn't much that you can do about them, " Iremarked. 

"But we ought to do what we can, " said Bagster. "When I do have anemotion, something immediately turns up to contradict it. It's likewandering through a big hotel, looking for your room, when you are onthe wrong floor. Here you are as likely as not to find yourself in thewrong century. In Rome everything turns out, on inquiry, to be somethingelse. There's something impressive about a relic if it's the relic ofone thing. But if it's the relic of a dozen different kinds of thingsit's hard to pick out the appropriate emotion. I find it hard to adjustmy mind to these composite associations. "

"Now just look at this, " he said, opening his well-thumbed Baedeker:"'Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (Pl. D. 4), erected on the ruins ofDomitian's temple of Minerva, the only mediæval Gothic church in Rome. Begun A. D. , 1280; was restored and repainted in 1848-55. It containsseveral admirable works of art, in particular Michelangelo's Christ. '"

"It's that sort of thing that gets on my nerves. The Virgin and Minervaand Domitian and Michelangelo are all mixed together, and theneverything is restored and repainted in 1848. And just round the cornerfrom Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is the Pantheon. The inscription on theporch says that it was built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus. Itry to take that in. But when I have partially done that, I learn thatthe building was struck by lightning and entirely rebuilt by the EmperorHadrian. 

"That information comes like the call of the conductor to change cars, just as one has comfortably settled down on the train. We must forgetall about Agrippa and Augustus, and remember that this building wasbuilt by Hadrian. But it turns out that in 609 Boniface turned it into aChristian church. Which Boniface? The Pantheon was adorned with bronzecolumns. If you wish to see them you must go to St. Peter's, where theyare a part of the high altar. So Baedeker says, but I'm told that isn'tcorrect either. When you go inside you see that you must let by-gones beby-gones. You are confronted with the tomb of Victor Emmanuel and set tothinking on the recent glories of the House of Savoy. Really toappreciate the Pantheon you must be well-posted in nineteenth-centuryhistory. You keep up this train of thought till you happen to stumble onthe tomb of Raphael. That, of course, is what you ought to have come tosee in the first place. 

"When you look at the column of Trajan you naturally think of Trajan, you follow the spiral which celebrates his victories, till you come tothe top of the column; and there stands St. Peter as if it were _his_monument. You meditate on the column of Marcus Aurelius, and look up andsee St. Paul in the place of honor. 

"I must confess that I have had difficulty about the ruins. Brick, particularly in this climate, doesn't show its age. I find it hard todistinguish between a ruin and a building in the course of construction. When I got out of the station I saw a huge brick building across thestreet, which had been left unfinished as if the workmen had gone onstrike. I learned that it was the remains of the Baths of Diocletian. Opening a door I found myself in a huge church, which had a long historyI ought to have known something about, but didn't. 

"Now read this, and try to take it in: 'Returning to the Cancelleria, weproceed to the Piazza Campo de' Fiori, where the vegetable market isheld in the morning, and where criminals were formerly executed. Thebronze statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned here asa heretic in 1600, was erected in 1889. To the east once lay the Theatreof Pompey. Behind it lay the Porticus of Pompey where Cæsar wasmurdered, B. C. 44. '

"It economizes space to have the vegetable market and the martyrdom ofGiordano Bruno and the assassination of Julius Cæsar all close together. But they are too close. The imagination hasn't room to turn round. Especially as the market-women are very much alive and cannot conceivethat any one would come into the Piazza unless he intended to buyvegetables. Somehow the great events you have read about don't seem tohave impressed themselves on the neighborhood. At any rate, you areconscious that you are the only person in the Piazza Campo de' Fiori whois thinking about Giordano Bruno or Julius Cæsar; while the price ofvegetables is as intensely interesting as it was in the year 1600 A. D. Or in 44 B. C. 

"How am I to get things in their right perspective? When I left home Ihad a pretty clear and connected idea of history. There was a logicalsequence. One period followed another. But in these walks in Rome thesequence is destroyed. History seems more like geology than like logic, and the strata have all been broken up by innumerable convulsions ofnature. The Middle Ages were not eight or ten centuries ago; they areround the next block. A walk from the Quirinal to the Vatican takes youfrom the twentieth century to the twelfth. And one seems as much aliveas the other. You may go from schools where you have the last word inmodern education, to the Holy Stairs at the Lateran, where you will seethe pilgrims mounting on their knees as if Luther and his protest hadnever happened. Or you can, in five minutes, walk from the Renaissanceperiod to 400 B. C. 

"When I was in the theological seminary I had a very clear idea of thedifference between Pagan Rome and Christian Rome. When Constantine came, Christianity was established. It was a wonderful change and madeeverything different. But when you stroll across from the Arch of Titusto the Arch of Constantine you wonder what the difference was. The twothings look so much alike. And in the Vatican that huge painting of thetriumph of Constantine over Maxentius doesn't throw much light on thesubject. Suppose the pagan Maxentius had triumphed over Constantine, what difference would it have made in the picture?

"They say that seeing is believing, but here you see so many things thatare different from what you have always believed. The Past doesn't seemto be in the past, but in the present. There is an air ofcontemporaneousness about everything. Do you remember that story ofJules Verne about a voyage to the moon? When the voyagers got a certaindistance from the earth they couldn't any longer drop things out of theballoon. The articles they threw out didn't fall down. There wasn't anydown; everything was round about. Everything they had cast out followedthem. That's the way Rome makes you feel about history. That whichhappened a thousand years ago is going on still. You can't get rid ofit. The Roman Republic is a live issue, and so is the Roman Empire, andso is the Papacy. 

"The other day they found a ruined Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli, and began to restore it. New Italy is delighted at this confirmation ofits claims to sovereignty in North Africa. The newspapers treat MarcusAurelius as only a forerunner of Giolitti. By the way, I never heard ofGiolitti till I came over here. But it seems that he is a very greatman. But when ancient and modern history are mixed up it's hard to doany clear thinking. And when you do get a clear thought you find outthat it isn't true. You know Dr. Johnson said something to the effectthat that man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gainforce upon the plain of Marathon, or whose feelings would not growwarmer among the ruins of Rome. Marathon is a simple proposition. Butwhen one is asked to warm his enthusiasm by means of the Romanmonuments, he naturally asks, 'Enthusiasm over what?' Of course, I don'tmean to give up. I'm faint though pursuing. But I'm afraid that Rome isnot a good place to rest in. "

"I'm afraid not, " I said, "if you insist on keeping on thinking. It isnot a good place in which to rest your mind. "

II

I think Bagster is not the first person who has found intellectualdifficulty here. Rome exists for the confusion of the sentimentaltraveler. Other cities deal tenderly with our preconceived ideas ofthem. There is one simple impression made upon the mind. Once out of therailway station and in a gondola, and we can dream our dream of Veniceundisturbed. There is no doge at present, but if there were one weshould know where to place him. The city still furnishes the propersetting for his magnificence. And London with all its vastness has, atfirst sight, a familiar seeming. The broad and simple outlines ofEnglish history make it easy to reconceive the past. 

But Rome is disconcerting. The actual refuses to make terms with theideal. It is a vast storehouse of historical material, but theimagination is baffled in the attempt to put the material together. 

When Scott was in Rome his friend "advised him to wait to see theprocession of Corpus Domini, and hear the Pope

 Saying the high, high mass All on St. Peter's day. 

He smiled and said that these things were more poetical in thedescription than in reality, and that it was all the better for himnot to have seen it before he wrote about it. "

Sir Walter's instinct was a true one. Rome is not favorable tohistorical romance. Its atmosphere is eminently realistic. Thehistorical romancer is flying through time as the air-men fly throughspace. But the air-men complain that they sometimes come upon whatthey call "air holes. " The atmosphere seems suddenly to give way underthem. In Rome the element of Time on which the imagination has beenflying seems to lose its usual density. We drop through a Time-hole, and find ourselves in an inglorious anachronism. 

I am not sure that Bagster has had a more difficult time than hispredecessors, who have attempted to assort their historical material. For in the days before historical criticism was invented, the historyof Rome was very luxuriant. "Seeing Rome" was a strenuous undertaking, if one tried to be intelligent. 

There was an admirable little guide-book published in the twelfthcentury called "Mirabilia Urbis Romæ. " One can imagine the old-timetourist with this mediæval Baedeker in hand, issuing forth, resolvedto see Rome in three days. At the end of the first day his couragewould ooze away as he realized the extent of his ignorance. With ahurried look at the guide-book and a glance at the varied assortmentof ruins, he would try to get his bearings. All the worthies of sacredand profane history would be passing by in swift procession. 

"After the sons of Noah built the tower of confusion, Noah with allhis sons came to Italy. And not far from the place where Rome now isthey founded a city in his name, where he brought his travail and lifeto an end. " To come to the city of Noah was worth a long journey. Justthink of actually standing on the spot where Shem, Ham, and Japhetsoothed the declining years of their father! It was hard to realizeit all. And it appears that Japhet, always an enterprising person, built a city of his own on the Palatine Hill. There is the Palatine, somewhat cluttered up with modern buildings of the Cæsars, butessentially, in its outlines, as Japhet saw it. 

But there were other pioneers to be remembered. "Saturn, beingshamefully entreated by his son Jupiter, " founded a city on theCapitoline Hill. One wonders what Shem, Ham, and Japhet thought ofthis, and whether their sympathies were with Jupiter who was seekingto get a place in the sun. 

It is hard to understand the complicated politics of the day. At anyrate, a short time after, Hercules came with a band of Argives andestablished a rival civic centre. In the meantime, Janus had becomemixed up with Roman history and was working manfully for the NewItaly. On very much the same spot "Tibris, King of the Aborigines"built a city, which must be carefully distinguished from those beforementioned. 

All this happened before Romulus appeared upon the scene. One with aclear and comprehensive understanding of this early history mightenjoy his first morning's walk in Rome. But to the middle-aged pilgrimfrom the West Riding of Yorkshire, who had come to Rome merely to seethe tomb of St. Peter, it was exhausting. 

But perhaps mediæval tradition did not form a more confusingatmosphere than the sentimental admiration of a later day. In theearly part of the nineteenth century a writer begins a book on Rome inthis fashion: "I have ventured to hope that this work may be a guideto those who visit this wonderful city, which boasts at once thenoblest remains of antiquity, and the most faultless works of art;which possesses more claims to interest than any other city; which hasin every age stood foremost in the world; which has been the light ofthe earth in ages past, the guiding star through the long night ofignorance, the fountain of civilization to the whole Western world, and which every nation reverences as the common nurse, preceptor, andparent. "

This notion of Rome as the venerable parent of civilization, to beapproached with tenderly reverential feelings, was easier to hold ahundred years ago than it is to-day. There was nothing to contradictit. One might muse on "the grandeur that was Rome, " among picturesqueruins covered with flowering weeds. But now a Rome that is obtrusivelymodern claims attention. And it is not merely that the modern world ishere, but that our view of antiquity is modernized. We see it, notthrough the mists of time, but as a contemporary might. 

When Ferrero published his history we were startled by his realistictreatment. It was as if we were reading a newspaper and following thecourse of current events. Cæsar and Pompey and Cicero were treated asif they were New York politicians. Where we had expected to seestately figures in togas we were made to see hustling real-estatespeculators, and millionaires, and labor leaders, and wardpoliticians, who were working for the prosperity of the city and, incidentally, for themselves. It was all very different from ournotions of classic times which we had imbibed from our Latin lessonsin school. But it is the impression which Rome itself makes upon themind. 

One afternoon, among the vast ruins of Hadrian's Villa, I tried topicture the villa as it was when its first owner walked among thebuildings which his whim had created. The moment Hadrian himselfappeared upon the scene, antiquity seemed an illusion. Howultra-modern he was, this man whom his contemporaries called "asearcher out of strange things"! These ruins could not by the mereprocess of time become venerable, for they were in their very naturenovelties. They were the playthings of a very rich man. There they lieupon the ground like so many broken toys. They are just such things asan enormously rich man would make to-day if he had originality enoughto think of them. Why should not Hadrian have a Vale of Tempe and aGreek theatre and a Valley of Canopus, and ever so many other thingswhich he had seen in his travels, reproduced on his estate nearTivoli?

An historian of the Empire says: "The character of Hadrian was in thehighest degree complex, and this presents to the student a series ofapparently unreconciled contrasts which have proved so hard for manymodern historians to resolve. A thorough soldier and yet theinaugurator of a peace policy, a 'Greekling' as his Roman subjectscalled him, and saturated with Hellenic ideas, and yet a lover ofRoman antiquity; a poet and an artist, but with a passion forbusiness and finance; a voluptuary determined to drain the cup ofhuman experience and, at the same time, a ruler who laboredstrenuously for the well-being of his subjects; such were a few of thediverse parts which Hadrian played. "

It is evident that the difficulty with the historians who find theseunreconciled contrasts is that they try to treat Hadrian as an"ancient" rather than as a modern. The enormously rich men who are atpresent most in the public eye present the same contradictions. Hadrian was a thorough man of the world. There was nothing venerableabout him, though much that was interesting and admirable. 

Now what a man of the world is to a simple character like a saint or ahero, that Rome has been to cities of the simpler sort. It has been acity of the world. It has been cosmopolitan. "Urbs et orbis" suggeststhe historic fact. The fortunes of the city have become inextricablyinvolved in the fortunes of the world. 

A part of the confusion of the traveler comes from the fact that theRoman city and the Roman world are not clearly distinguished one fromthe other. The New Testament writer distinguishes between Jerusalem asa geographical fact and Jerusalem as a spiritual ideal. There hasbeen, he says, a Jerusalem that belongs to the Jews, but there is alsoJerusalem which belongs to humanity, which is free, which is "themother of us all. "

So there has been a local Rome with its local history. And there hasbeen the greater Rome that has impressed itself on the imagination ofthe world. Since the destruction of Carthage the meaning of the word"Roman" has been largely allegorical. It has stood for the successiveideas of earthly power and spiritual authority. 

Rome absorbed the glory of deeds done elsewhere. Battles were foughtin far-off Asia and Africa. But the battlefield did not become thehistoric spot. The victor must bring his captives to Rome for histriumph. Here the pomp of war could be seen, on a carefully arrangedstage, and before admiring thousands. It was the triumph rather thanthe battle that was remembered. All the interest culminated at thisdramatic moment. Rome thus became, not the place where history wasmade, but the place where it was celebrated. Here the trumpets offame perpetually sounded. 

This process continued after the Empire of the Cæsars passed away. Thecontinuity of Roman history has been psychological. Humanity has "helda thought. " Rome became a fixed idea. It exerted an hypnotic influenceover the barbarians who had overcome all else. The Holy Roman Empirewas a creation of the Germanic imagination, and yet it was a realpower. Many a hard-headed Teutonic monarch crossed the Alps at thehead of his army to demand a higher sanction for his own rule offorce. When he got himself crowned in the turbulent city on the Tiberhe felt that something very important had happened. Just how importantit was he did not fully realize till he was back among his own peopleand saw how much impressed they were by his new dignities. 

Hans Christian Andersen begins one of his stories with the assertion, "You must know that the Emperor of China is a Chinaman and that allwhom he has about him are Chinamen also. " The assertion is so logicalin form that we are inclined to accept it without question. Then weremember that in Hans Christian Andersen's day, and for a long timebefore, the Emperor of China was not a Chinaman and the greatgrievance was that Chinamen were the very people he would not haveabout him. 

When we speak of the Roman Catholic Church, we jump at the conclusionthat it is the church of the Romans and that the people of Rome havehad the most to do with its extension. This theory has nothing torecommend it but its extreme verbal simplicity. As a matter of fact, Rome has never been noted for its pious zeal. Such warmth as it hashad has been imparted to it by the faithful who have been drawn fromother lands; as, according to some theorists, the sun's heat is keptup by a continuous shower of meteors falling into it. 

To-day, the Roman Church is more conscious of its strength inMassachusetts than it is near the Vatican. At the period when thePapacy was at its height, and kings and emperors trembled before it inEngland and in Germany, the Popes had a precarious hold on their owncity. Rome was a religious capital rather than a religious centre. Itdid not originate new movements. Missionaries of the faith have notgone forth from it, as they went from Ireland. It is not in Rome thatwe find the places where the saints received their spiritualilluminations, and fought the good fight, and gathered theirdisciples. Rome was the place to which they came for judgment, as Pauldid when he appealed to Cæsar. Here heretics were condemned, and heresaints, long dead, were canonized. Neither the doctrines nor theinstitutions of the Catholic Church originated here. Rome was themint, not the mine. That which received the Roman stamp passed currentthroughout the world. 

In the political struggle for the New Italy, Rome had the samesymbolic character. Mazzini was never so eloquent as when portrayingthe glories of the free Rome that was to be recognized, indeed, as themother of us all. The Eternal City, he believed, was to be theregenerating influence, not only for Europe but for all the world. Allthe romantic enthusiasm of Garibaldi flamed forth at the sight ofRome. All other triumphs signified nothing till Rome was theacknowledged capital of Italy. Silently and steadily Cavour workedtoward the same end. And at last Rome gathered to herself the gloryof the heroes who were not her own children. 

If we recognize the symbolic and representative character of Romanhistory, we can begin to understand the reason for the bewildermentwhich comes to the traveler who attempts to realize it in imagination. Roman history is not, like the tariff, a local issue. The mostimportant events in that history did not occur here at all, thoughthey were here commemorated. So it happens that every nation findshere its own, and reinforces its traditions. In the Middle Ages, theJewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, found much to interest him. InRome were to be found two brazen pillars of Solomon's Temple, andthere was a crypt where Titus hid the holy vessels taken fromJerusalem. There was also a statue of Samson and another of Absalom. 

The worthy Benjamin doubtless felt the same thrill that I did whenlooking up at the ceiling of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. I wastold that it was gilded with the first gold brought from America. Thestatement, that the church was founded on this spot because of avision that came to Pope Liberius in the year 305 A. D. , left meunmoved. It was of course a long time ago; but then, I had no mentalassociations with Pope Liberius, and there was no encyclopædia at handin which I might look him up. Besides, "the church was reërected bySixtus III in the year 432, and was much altered in the twelfthcentury. " But the gold on the ceiling was a different matter. That wasromantically historical. It came from America in the heroic age. Ithought of the Spanish galleons that brought it over, and of Columbusand Cortés and Alvarado. After that, to go into the Church of SantaMaria Maggiore was like taking a trip to Mexico. 

In the course of my daily walks, I passed the Church of SantaPudenziana, said to be the oldest in Rome, and recently modernized. Itis on the spot where Pudens, the host of St. Peter, is said to havelived with his daughters Praxedis and Pudentiana. This is interesting, but the English-speaking traveler is likely to pass by Pudaentiana'schurch, and seek out the church of her sister St. Praxed. And this notfor the sake of St. Praxed or her father Pudens or even of his guestSt. Peter, but for the sake of a certain English poet who had visitedthe church once. 

Close to the Porta San Paolo is the great tomb of the Roman magnate, Gaius Cestius, which was built before the birth of Christ. One canhardly miss seeing it, because it is near one of the most sacredpilgrimage places of Rome, the grave of John Keats. 

Each traveler makes his own Rome; and the memories which he takes awayare the memories which he brought with him. 

III

As for my friend Bagster, now that he has come to Rome, I hope he maystay long enough to allow it to produce a more tranquilizing effectupon him. When he gives up the attempt to take it all in by anintellectual and moral effort, he may, as the saying is, "relax. "

There is no other place in which one may so readily learn the meaningof that misused word "urbanity. " Urbanity is the state of mind adaptedto a city, as rusticity is adapted to the country. In each case theperfection of the adaptation is evidenced by a certain ease of mannerin the presence of the environment. There is an absence of fret andworry over what is involved in the situation. A countryman does notfret over dust or mud; he knows that they are forms of the good earthout of which he makes his living. He may grumble at the weather, buthe is not surprised at it, and he is ready to make the best of it. 

This adaptation to nature is easy for us, for we are rustics byinheritance. Our ancestors lived in the open, and kept their flocksand were mighty hunters long before towns were ever thought of. Sowhen we go into the woods in the spring, our self-consciousness leavesus and we speedily make ourselves at home. We take things for granted, and are not careful about trifles. A great many things are going on, but the multiplicity does not distract us. We do not need tounderstand. 

For we have primal sympathies which are very good substitutes forintelligence. We do not worry because nature does not get on fasterwith her work. When we go out on the hills on a spring morning, as ourforbears did ten thousand years ago, it does not fret us to considerthat things are going on very much as they did then. The sap ismounting in the trees; the wild flowers are pushing out of the sod;the free citizens of the woods are pursuing their vocations withoutregard to our moralities. A great deal is going on, but nothing hascome to a dramatic culmination. 

Our innate rusticity makes us accept all this in the spirit in whichit is offered to us. It is nature's way and we like it, because we areused to it. We take what is set before us and ask no questions. It isspring. We do not stop to inquire as to whether this spring is animprovement on last spring or on the spring of the year 400 B. C. Thereis a timelessness about our enjoyment. We are not thinking of eventsset in a chronological order, but of a process which loses nothing byreason of repetition. 

Our attitude toward a city is usually quite different. We are not atour ease. We are querulous and anxious, and our interest takes afeverish turn. For the cities of our Western world are new-fangledcontrivances which we are not used to, and we are worried as we try tofind out whether they will work. These aggregations of humanity havenot existed long enough to seem to belong to the nature of things. Itis exciting to be invited to "see Seattle grow, " but the exhibitiondoes not yield a "harvest of a quiet eye. " If Seattle should cease togrow while we are looking at it, what should we do then?

But with Rome it is different. Here is a city which has been so longin existence that we look upon it as a part of nature. It is notaccidental or artificial. Nothing can happen to it but what hashappened already. It has been burned with fire, it has been ravaged bythe sword, it has been ruined by luxury, it has been pillaged bybarbarians and left for dead. And here it is to-day the scene of eagerlife. Pagans, Christians, reformers, priests, artists, soldiers, honest workmen, idlers, philosophers, saints, were here centuries ago. They are here to-day. They have continuously opposed each other, andyet no species has been exterminated. Their combined activities makethe city. 

When one comes to feel the stirring of primal sympathies for themanifold life of the city, as he does for the manifold life of thewoods, Rome ceases to be distracting. The old city is like themountain which has withstood the hurts of time, and remains for us, "the grand affirmer of the present tense. "

THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT

I

Stopping at some selected spot on the mountain road, the stage-driverwill direct the stranger's attention to a projecting mass of rockwhich bears some resemblance to a human countenance. There is the "OldMan of the Mountains, " or the "Old Woman, " as the case may be. 

If the stranger be of a docile disposition he will see what he is toldto see. But he will be content with the vague suggestion and will notpush the analogy too far. The similitude is strictly confined to thelocality. It is enough if from a single point the mountain seemsalmost human. From any other point it will seem to be merelymountainous. 

A similar caution is necessary in regard to the resemblances between anation and an individual. When we talk of a national character ortemperament, we are using an interesting and bold figure of speech. We speak of millions of people as if they were one. Of course, anation is not one kind of person; it is composed of many kinds ofpersons. These persons are diverse in character. All Scotchmen are notcanny, nor all Irishmen happy-go-lucky. Those who know a great manyChinamen are acquainted with those who are idealists with little tastefor plodding industry. It is only the outsider who is greatlyimpressed by the family resemblance. To the more analytic mind of theparent each child is, in a most remarkable degree, different from theothers. 

When we take such typical characters as John Bull and Brother Jonathanas representing actual Englishmen or Americans, we put ourselves inthe way of contradiction. They are not good likenesses. An Englishwriter says: "As the English, a particularly quick-witted race, tingedwith the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in theirreputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity thefigure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does notresemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that theyare dying of nervous energy. "

There is much truth in this. One may stand at Charing Cross and watchthe hurrying crowds and only now and then catch sight of any one whosuggests the burly John Bull of tradition. The type is not a commonone, at least among city dwellers. 

But when we attribute a temperament to a nation, we do not necessarilymean that all the people are alike. We only mean that there arecertain ways of thinking and feeling that are common to those who havehad the same general experience. The national temperament ismanifested not so much in what the people are as in what they admireand instinctively appreciate. 

Let us accept the statement that the English are a quick-witted andromantic people who have accepted with pleasant equanimity thereputation for being quite otherwise. Why should they do this? Whyshould they take pride in their reputed stolidity rather than in theiractual cleverness. Here is a temperamental peculiarity that is worthlooking into. 

John Bull may be a myth, but Englishmen have been the mythmakers. Theyhave for generations delighted in picturing him. He represents acombination of qualities which they admire. Dogged, unimaginative, well-meaning, honest, full of whimsical prejudices, and full of commonsense, he is loved and honored by those who are much more brilliantthan he. 

John Bull is not a composite photograph of the inhabitants of theBritish Isles. He is not an average man. He is a totem. When an Indiantribe chooses a fox or a bear as a totem, they must not be taken tooliterally. But the symbol has a real meaning. It indicates that thereare some qualities in these animals that they admire. They have provedvaluable in the tribal struggle for existence. 

Those who belong to the cult of John Bull take him as the symbol ofthat which has been most vital and successful in the island story. England has had more than its share of men of genius. It has had itsartists, its wits, its men of quick imagination. But these have notbeen the builders of the Empire, or those who have sustained it in thehours of greatest need. Men of a slower temper, more solid thanbrilliant, have been the nation's main dependence. "It's dogged asdoes it. " On many a hard-fought field men of the bull-dog breed havewith unflinching tenacity held their own. In times of revolution theyhave maintained order, and never yielded to a threat. Had they beenmore sensitive they would have failed. Their foibles have been easilyforgiven and their virtues have been gratefully recognized. 

When we try to form an idea of that which is most distinctive in theAmerican temperament, we need not inquire what Americans actually are. The answer to that question would be a generalization as wide ashumanity. They are of all kinds. Among the ninety-odd millions ofhuman beings inhabiting the territory of the United States arerepresentatives of all the nations of the Old World, and they bringwith them their ancestral traits. 

But we may ask, When these diverse peoples come together on commonground, what sort of man do they choose as their symbol? There is atypical character understood and appreciated by all. In everycaricature of Uncle Sam or Brother Jonathan we can detect thelineaments of the American frontiersman. 

James Russell Lowell, gentleman and scholar that he was, describes atype of man unknown to the Old World:--

 "This brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved Cid, This backwoods Charlemagne of Empires new. Who meeting Cæsar's self would slap his back, Call him 'Old Horse' and challenge to a drink. "

Mr. Lowell bore no resemblance to this brown-fisted rough. He wouldnot have slapped Cæsar on the back, and he would have resented beinghimself greeted in such an unconventional fashion. Nevertheless he wasan American and was able to understand that a man might be capable ofsuch improprieties and at the same time be a pillar of the State. Ittickled his fancy to think of a fellow citizen meeting the imperialRoman on terms of hearty equality. 

 "My lungs draw braver air, my breast dilates With ampler manhood, and I face both worlds. "

Dickens, with all his boisterous humor and democratic sympathies, couldnot interpret Jefferson Brick and Lafayette Kettle and the otherexpansive patriots whom he met on his travels. Their virtues were as asealed book to him. Their boastful familiarity was simply odious. 

To understand Lowell's exhilaration one must enter into the spirit ofAmerican history. It has been the history of what has been done bystrong men who owed nothing to the refinements of civilization. Theinteresting events have taken place not at the centre, but on thecircumference of the country. The centrifugal force has always been thestrongest. There has been no capital to which ambitious youths went upto seek their fortune. In each generation they have gone to the frontierwhere opportunities awaited them. There they encountered, on the roughedges of society, rough-and-ready men in whom they recognized theirnatural superiors. These men, rude of speech and of manner, wereresourceful, bold, far-seeing. They were conscious of their power. Theywere laying the foundations of cities and of states and they knew it. They were as boastful as Homeric heroes, and for the same reason. Therewas in them a rude virility that found expression in word as well as indeed. 

Davy Crockett, coon-hunter, Indian fighter, and Congressman, was a greatman in his day. It does not detract from his worth that he was wellaware of the fact. There was no false modesty about this backwoodsCharlemagne. He wrote of himself, "If General Jackson, Black Hawk, andme were to travel through the United States we would bring out, nomatter what kind of weather, more people to see us than any other threepeople now living among the fifteen millions now inhabiting the UnitedStates. And what would it be for? As I am one of the persons mentioned Iwould not press the question further. What I am driving at is this. Whena man rises from a low degree to a place he ain't used to, such a manstarts the curiosity of the world to know how he got along. "

Davy Crockett understood the temper of his fellow citizens. A man whorises by his own exertions from a low position to "a place he ain't usedto" is not only an object of curiosity, but he elicits enthusiasticadmiration. Any awkwardness which he exhibits in the position which hehas achieved is overlooked. We are anxious to know how he got along. 

Every country has its self-made men, but usually they are made to feelvery uncomfortable. They are accounted intruders in circles reserved forthe choicer few. But in America they are assured of a sympatheticaudience when they tell of the way they have risen in the world. Thereis no need for them to apologize for any lack of early advantages, forthey are living in a self-made country. We are in the habit of givingthe place of honor to the beginner rather than to the continuer. For thefinisher the time is not ripe. 

II

The most vivid impressions of Americans have always been anticipatory. They have felt themselves borne along by a resistless current, and thatcurrent has, on the whole, been flowing in the right direction. Theyhave never been confronted with ruins that tell that the land theyinhabit has seen better days. Yesterday is vague; To-day may beuncertain; To-morrow is alluring; and the Day after to-morrow isaltogether glorious. George Herbert pictured religion as standing ontiptoe waiting to pass to the American strand. Not only religion butevery other good thing has assumed that attitude of expectant curiosity. 

Even Cotton Mather could not avoid a tone of pious boastfulness when henarrated the doings of New England. Everything was remarkable. NewEngland had the most remarkable providences, the most remarkable painfulpreachers, the most remarkable heresies, the most remarkable witches. Even the local devils were in his judgment more enterprising than thoseof the old country. They had to be in order to be a match for the NewEngland saints. 

The staid Judge Sewall, after a study of the prophecies, was of theopinion that America was the only country in which they could beadequately fulfilled. Here was a field large enough for those futurebattles between good and evil which enthralled the Puritan imagination. To be sure, it would be said, there isn't much just now to attract thehistorian whose mind dwells exclusively on the past. But to one who dipsinto the future it is thrilling. Here is the battlefield of Armageddon. Some day we shall see "the spirits of devils working miracles, which goforth unto the kings of the earth, and of the whole world, to gatherthem to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. " Just _when_ thatmight take place might be uncertain but _where_ it would take place wasto them more obvious. 

In the days of small things the settlers in the wilderness had largethoughts. They felt themselves to be historical characters, as indeedthey were. They were impressed by the magnitude of the country and bythe importance of their relation to it. Their language took on a cosmicbreadth. 

Ethan Allen could not have assumed a more masterful tone if he had hadan Empire at his back instead of undisciplined bands of Green MountainBoys. Writing to the Continental Congress, he declares that unless thedemands of Vermont are complied with "we will retire into the fastnessesof our Green Mountains and will wage eternal warfare against Hell, theDevil, and Human Nature in general. " And Ethan Allen meant it. 

The love of the superlative is deeply seated in the American mind. It isbased on no very careful survey of the existing world. It is aconclusion to which it is easy to jump. I remember one week, travelingthrough the Mississippi Valley, stopping every night in some town thathad something which was advertised as the biggest in the world. OnFriday I reached a sleepy little village which seemed the picture ofcontented mediocrity. Here, thought I, I shall find no bigness to molestme or make me afraid. But when I sat down to write a letter on the hotelstationery I was confronted with the statement, "This is the biggestlittle hotel in the State. "

When one starts a tune it is safer to start it rather low, so as not tocome to grief on the upper notes. In discussing the American temperamentit is better to start modestly. Instead of asking what excellentqualities we find in ourselves, we should ask what do other nations mostdislike in us. We can then have room to rise to better things. There isa family resemblance between the worst and the best of any nationalgroup. Kipling, in his lines "To an American, " may set the tune for us. It is not too high. His American is boastful, careless, and irrationallyoptimistic. 

 "Enslaved, illogical, elate, He greets the embarrassed gods, nor fears To shake the iron hand of Fate Or match with Destiny for beers. "

A person who would offer to shake hands with Fate is certainly lackingin a fine sense of propriety. His belief in equality makes himindifferent to the note of distinction. "He dubs his dreary brethrenkings. " Of course they are not kings, but that makes no difference. Itmakes little difference whether anything corresponds to the name hechooses to give to it. For there is

 "A cynic devil in his blood That bids him mock his hurrying soul. "

This impression of a mingling of optimism, cynicism, and hurry is onewhich is often made upon those who are suddenly plunged into Americansociety. In any company of Americans who are discussing public affairsthe stranger is struck by what seems the lack of logical connectionbetween the statements of facts and the judgments passed upon them. Thefacts may be most distressing and yet nobody seems much distressed, still less is any one depressed. The city government is in the hands ofgrafters, the police force is corrupt, the prices of the necessaries oflife are extortionate, the laws on the statute book are not enforced, and new laws are about to be enacted that are foolish in the extreme. Vast numbers of undesirable aliens are coming into the country andbringing with them ideas that are opposed to the fundamental principlesof the republic. All this is told with an air of illogical elation. Theconversation is interspersed with anecdotes of the exploits ofgood-natured rascals. These are received with smiles or tolerantlaughter. Everyone seems to have perfect confidence that the country isa grand and glorious place to live in, and that all will come out wellin the end. 

Is this an evidence of a cynic humor in the blood, or is it amanifestation of childish optimism? Let us frankly answer that it may beone or the other or both. There are cynics and sentimentalists who arethe despair of all who are seriously working for better citizenship. Butthe chances are that the men to whom our stranger was listening wereneither cynics nor sentimentalists, but idealists who had the Americantemperament. 

Among those who laughed good-naturedly over the temporary success of theclever rascal may have been those who had been giving their energies tothe work of prevention of just such misdeeds. They are reformers with ashrewd twinkle in their eyes. They take a keen intellectual pleasure intheir work, and are ready to give credit to any natural talent in theirantagonist. If they are inclined to take a cheerful view of the wholesituation it is because they are in the habit of looking at thesituation as a whole. The predominance of force is actually on theirside and they see no reason to doubt the final result. They have learnedthe meaning of the text, "Fret not thyself because of evildoers. " Infact the evildoer may not have done so much harm as one might think. Noris he really such a hopeless character. There is good stuff in him, andhe yet may be used for many good purposes. They laugh best who laughlast, and their good-natured laughter was anticipatory. There are forcesworking for righteousness which they have experienced. On the wholethings are moving in the right direction and they can afford to becheerful. 

This is the kind of experience which comes to those who are habituallydealing with crude materials rather than with finished products. Theycannot afford to be fastidious; they learn to take things as they comeand make the best of them. The doctrine that things are not as they seemis a cheerful one, to a person who is accustomed to dealing with thingswhich turn out to be better than at first they seemed. The unknown takeson a friendly guise and awakens a pleasant curiosity. That is theexperience of generations of pioneers and prospectors. They have founda continent full of resources awaking men of courage and industry. Theopportunities were there; all that was needed was the ability torecognize them when they appeared in disguise. 

III

And the human problem has been the same as the material one. Europe hassent to America not the finished products of her schools and her courts, but millions of people for whom she had no room. They were in the rough;they had to be made over into a new kind of citizen. This material hasoften been of the most unpromising appearance. It has often seemed tosuperficial observers that little could be made of it. But the attempthas been made. And those who have worked with it, putting skill andpatience into their work, have been agreeably surprised. They have cometo see the highest possibilities in the commonest lumps of clay. 

The satisfaction that is taken in the common man is not in what heis at the present moment, but in what he has shown himself capable ofbecoming. Give him a chance and all the graces may be his. The Americanidealist admits that many of his fellow citizens may be rather drearybrethren, but so were many of the kings of whom nothing is rememberedbut their names and dates. Only now and then is one seen who is everyinch a king. But such a person is a proof of what may be accomplished. It may take a long time for the rank and file to catch up with theirleaders. But where the few are to-day the many will be to-morrow; forthey are all travelling the same road. 

The visitor in the United States, especially if he has spent his time inthe great cities of the East, may go away with the idea that democracyis a spent force. He will see great inequalities in wealth and position. He will be struck by the fact that autocratic powers are wielded whichwould not be tolerated in many countries of Europe. He will notice thatit is very difficult to give direct expression to the will of thepeople. 

But he will make a mistake if he attributes these things to the growthof an aristocratic sentiment. They are a part of an evolution that isthoroughly democratic. The distinctive thing in an aristocracy is notthe fact that certain people enjoy privileges. It lies in the fact thatthese privileged people form a class that is looked upon as superior. Anaristocratic class must not only take itself seriously; it must be takenseriously by others. 

In America there are groups of persons more successful than the average. They are objects of curiosity, and, if they are well-behaved, ofrespect. Their comings and goings are chronicled in the newspapers, andtheir names are familiar. But it does not occur to the average man thatthey are anything more than fortunate persons who emerged from thecrowd, and who by and by may be lost in the crowd again. What they havedone, others may do when their time comes. The inequalities areinequalities of circumstance and not of nature. 

The commonplace American follows unworthy leaders and has admiration forcheap success. But he cherishes no illusions in regard to the objects ofhis admiration. They have done what he would like to do, and what hehopes to be able to do sometime. He thinks of the successful men asbeing of the same kind with himself. They are more fortunate, that isall. 

IV

The same temperamental quality is seen in the American idealist. His attitude toward his spiritual leaders is seldom that of meekdiscipleship. It is rather that of frank, outspoken comradeship. Nomysterious barrier separates the great man from the common man. One hasmore, the other has less, that is all. 

The men who have cherished the finest ideals have insisted that theseshould be shared by the multitude. In a newspaper of sixty years agothere is this contemporary character sketch: "Ralph Waldo Emerson isthe most erratic and capricious man in America. He is emphatically ademocrat of the world, and believes that what Plato thought, another manmay think. What Shakespeare sang, another man may know as well. As foremperors, kings, queens, princes, or presidents, he looks upon them aschildren in masquerade. He has no patience with the chicken-hearted whorefer to mouldy records or old almanacs to ascertain if they may saythat their souls are their own. Mr. Emerson is a strange compound ofcontradictions. Always right in practice, and sometimes in theory. He isa sociable, accessible, republican sort of man, and a great admirer ofnature. "

Could any better description be given of the kind of man whom Americansdelight to honor? This "sociable, accessible, republican sort of man"happened to be endowed with gifts denied in such full measure to hiscountrymen. But they were gifts which they understood and appreciated. He was one of them, and expressed and interpreted their habitualthought. Luther used to declare that no one who had never had trials andtemptations could understand the Holy Scriptures. And one might say thatno one who had never taken part in a town meeting, or listened to thetalk of neighbors at the country store, or traveled in an "accommodationtrain" in the Middle West, can fully understand Emerson. 

Critics have often written of the optimism of Emerson as if he were oneof those who did not perceive the darker side of things. Nothing couldbe more untrue to his temper of mind. Emerson was cheerful, but he neverpretended that the world was an altogether cheerful place to live in. Indeed, it distinctly needed cheering up, and that, according to him, iswhat we are here for. 

It might be possible to make out a list of matters of fact treated byEmerson and his friend Carlyle. They would be essentially the same. Whenit came to hard facts, one was as unflinching in his recognition as theother. There was nothing smug in Emerson's philosophy. He never took anapologetic attitude nor attempted to minimize difficulties. There was noattempt to justify the ways of God to man. But while agreeing in regardto the facts the friends differed as to their conclusions. In readingCarlyle one seems to stand at the end of a world struggle that hasproved unavailing. Everything has been tried, and everything has failed. Alas! Alas!

Emerson sees the same facts, but he seems to be standing at thebeginning. The moral world is still without form and void, but thecreative spirit is brooding upon it. "Sweet is the genesis of things. "Emerson is pleased with the world, not because he thinks its presentcondition is very good, but because he sees so much room for it tobecome better. It is a most promising experiment. It furnishes anabundance of the raw materials of righteousness. 

Nor does he flatter himself that the task of betterment is an easy one, or that the end is in sight. It is not a world where wishes, even goodwishes, are fulfilled without effort. There are inexorable laws not ofour making. The whims of good people are not respected. 

 "For Destiny never swerves Nor yields to man the helm. "

The struggle is stem and unrelenting. It taxes all our energies. Andyet it is exhilarating. There is a moral quick-wittedness which seesthe smile behind the threatening mask of Fate. Destiny is after all agood comrade for the brave and the self-reliant. 

 "He forbids to despair, His cheeks mantle with mirth, And the unimagined good of man Is yeaning at the birth. "

The riddle of existence is seen not from the Old World point of view, but from that of the new. It is of the nature of a surprise. The Sphinxof Emerson is not carved in stone. It is not silent and motionless, waiting for answers that do not come. 

It is the American Sphinx leading in a game of hide-and-seek. Themystery of existence baffles us, not because there is no answer, butbecause there are so many. They are infinite in number, and all of themare true. They wait for the mind large enough to harbor them in alltheir variety, and serene enough not to be annoyed because theircontradictions are not at once reconciled. 

The catalogue of ills may be never so long, but it fails to depress onewho sees everything in the making. 

 "I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, 'Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. '

 * * * * *

 "Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud. She silvered in the moon. "

This conception of the merry Sphinx may seem strange to the dyspepticphilosopher pondering on the inscrutableness of the universe. But theprospectors in the mining camps of the Far West, and the builders of newcities understand what Emerson meant. Their experience of the ups anddowns of fortune has taught them how to find pleasure in uncertainty. You never can tell how anything will turn out till you try. That's thefun of it. They are quite ready to believe that the same thing holdsgood in the higher life. 

Or take the lines on "Worship. " How can Worship be personified?Emerson's picture is not that of a patriarch on bended knee; it is thatof a vigorous youth picking himself up after he has been knocked down byhis antagonist. 

 "This is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows. "

Religion is a kind of spiritual resilience. It is that which makes a mancome back with new vigor to his work after his first failure. It is theability to make a new beginning. 

In Emerson the American hurry is transformed into something of spiritualsignificance. A new commandment is given to the good man--Be quick! Keepmoving!

 "Trenchant Time behoves to hurry, * * * * *

 O wise man, hearest thou the least part, Seest them the rushing metamorphosis, Dissolving all that fixture is, Melts things that be to things that seem. "

Morality and religion must be speeded up if they are to do any usefulwork in this swift world. 

If the ideals of the saints and reformers were criticized, so were thoseof the scholars. Matthew Arnold's definition of culture was that of aman of books. It was the knowledge of the best that had been said andknown in the past. Emerson's lines entitled "Culture" begin with acharacteristic question and end with an equally characteristicaffirmation. The question is--

 "Can rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await?"

The affirmation is that the man of culture is one who

 "to his native centre fast, Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast. "

According to this definition Abraham Lincoln, with his slight knowledgeof the best things of the past, but with the power to fuse suchknowledge as he had and to recast it in his own mould, was a man ofculture. And all true Americans would agree with him. 

Emerson, like the "sociable, accessible, republican sort of man" that hewas, was the foe of special privilege. The best things were, in hisjudgment, the property of all. He would take religion from the custodyof the priests, and culture from the hands of schoolmasters, and restorethem to their proper place, among the inalienable rights of man. Theywere simply forms of the pursuit of happiness of which the Declarationof Independence speaks. It is a right of which no potentates can justlydeprive the citizen. 

Above all, he would protest against everything which tends to depriveanyone of the happiness of the forward look. There was a cheerfulconfidence that the great forces are on our side. Now and then theclouds gather and obscure the vision, but:

 "There are open hours When God's will sallies free And the dull idiot may see The flowing fortunes of a thousand years. "

This is the American doctrine of "Manifest Destiny" spirituallydiscerned. 

V

But one need not go so far back as Emerson to see the higher reaches ofthe American temperament. Perhaps in no one have they been revealed withmore distinctness than in William James. There are those who consider itdispraise of a philosopher to suggest that his work has local color. However that may be, William James thought as an American as certainlyas Plato thought as a Greek. His way of philosophizing was one thatbelonged to the land of his birth. 

He was as distinctly American as was Daniel Boone. Daniel Boone was norenegade taking to the woods that he might relapse into savagery. He wasa civilized man who preferred to be the maker of civilization ratherthan to be its victim. He preferred to blaze his own way through theforest. When he saw the smoke of a neighbor's chimney it was time forhim to move on. So William James was led by instinct from the crowdedhighways to the dim border-lands of human experience. He preferred todwell in the debatable lands. With a quizzical smile he listened to thedignitaries of philosophy. He found their completed systems too stuffy. He loved the wildernesses of thought where shy wild things hide--halfhopes, half realities. They are not quite true now, --but they may be byand by. 

As other men are interested in the actual, so he was interested in thepossible. The possibilities are not so highly finished as the facts thathave been proved, but there are a great many more of them, and they aremuch more important. There are more things in the unexplored forest thanin the clearing at its edge. Truth to him was not a field with metesand bounds. It was a continent awaiting settlement. First the boldpathfinders must adventure into it. Its vast spaces were infinitelyinviting, its undeveloped resources were alluring. And not only didthe path-finder interest him but the path-loser as well. But for hisheedless audacity the work of exploration would languish. Was ever aphilosopher so humorously tender to the intellectual vagabonds, thewaifs and strays of the spiritual world!

Their reports of vague meanderings in the border-land were listenedto without scorn. They might be ever so absent-minded and yet havestumbled upon something which wiser men had missed. No one was morekeen to criticize the hard-and-fast dogmas of the wise and prudent ormore willing to learn what might, by chance, have been revealed untobabes. The one thing he demanded was space. His universe must not befinished or inclosed. After a rational system had been formulated anddeclared to be the Whole, his first instinct was to get away from it. He was sure that there must be more outside than there was inside. "The 'through-and-through' universe seems to suffocate me with itsinfallible, impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity with nopossibilities, its relations with no subjects, make me feel as ifI had entered into a contract with no reserved rights. "

Formal philosophy seemed to him to be "too buttoned-up andwhite-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast, slow-breathing, unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and itsunknown tides. The freedom we want is not the freedom, with a stringtied to its leg and warranted not to fly away, of that philosophy. Letit fly away, we say, from _us_. What then?"

To this American there must be a true democracy among the faculties ofthe mind. The logical understanding must not be allowed to put onpriggish airs. The feelings have their rights also. "They may be asprophetic and as anticipatory of truth as anything else we have. " Theremust be give and take; "what hope is there of squaring and settlingopinions unless Absolutism will hold parley on this common ground andadmit that all philosophies are hypotheses, to which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical, help us, and the truest of which will inthe final integration of things be found in possession of the men whosefaculties on the whole had the best divining power?"

Do not those words give us a glimpse of the American mind in its naturalworking. Its genius is anticipatory. It is searching for a common groundon which all may meet. It puts its trust not in the thinker who can puthis thoughts in the most neat form, but the man whose faculties have _onthe whole the best divining power_. 

To listen to William James was to experience an illogical elation--andto feel justified in it. He was an unsparing critic of things as theyare, but his criticism left us in no mood of depression. Our interest iswith things as they are going to be. The universe is growing. Let usgrow with it. 

THE UNACCUSTOMED EARS OF EUROPE

I

When, as a child, I learned the Westminster Catechism by heart I foundthe Ten Commandments easy to remember. There was somethingstraightforward in these prohibitions. Once started in the rightdirection one could hardly stray from the path. But I stumbled over thequestion, in regard to certain Commandments, "What are the reasonsannexed?"

That a commandment should be committed to memory seemed just. I wasprepared to submit to the severest tests of verbal accuracy. But thatthere should be "reasons annexed, " and that these also should beremembered, seemed to my youthful understanding a grievance. It made thepath of the obedient hard. To this day there is a haziness about the"reasons" that contrasts with the sharp outlines of the commandments. 

I fancy that news-gatherers have the same experience. They are diligentin collecting items of news and reporting them to the world, but it is areal hardship to them to have to give any rational account of these bitsof fact. They tell what is done in different parts of the world, butthey forget to mention "the moving why they did it. " The consequence isthat, in this age of instantaneous communication, we know what is goingon in other countries, but it seems very irrational. The rationalelements have been lost in the process of transmission. 

There has, for example, been no lack of news cabled across the Atlanticin regard to the nominations for President of the United States. TheEuropean reader is made aware that a great deal of strong feeling hasbeen evoked, and strong language used. When a picturesque term ofreproach has been hurled by one candidate at another it is promptlyreported to a waiting world. But the "reasons annexed" are calmlyignored. The consequence is that the reader is confirmed in hisexaggerated idea of the nervous irritability of the American people. There seems to be a periodicity in their seizures. At intervals of fouryears they indulge in an orgy of mutual recrimination, and then suddenlyreturn to their normal state of money-getting. It is all veryunaccountable. Doubtless the most charitable explanation is the climate. 

It was after giving prominence to an unusually vivid bit of politicalvituperation that a conservative London newspaper remarked, "All this ischaracteristically American, but it shocks the unaccustomed ears ofEurope. "

As I read the rebuke I felt positively ashamed of my country and itsuntutored ways. I pictured Europe as a dignified lady of mature yearslistening to the screams issuing from her neighbor's nursery. She hadnot been used to hearing naughty words called out in such a loud tone ofvoice. Instead of discussing their grievances calmly, they were actuallycalling one another names. 

It was therefore with a feeling of chastened humility that I turned tothe columns devoted to the more decorous doings of Europe. Here I shouldfind examples worthy of consideration. They are drawn from the homes ofancient civility. Would that our rude politicians might be brought underthese refining influences and learn how to behave!

But alas! When we drop in upon our neighbors, unannounced, things aresometimes not so tidy as they are on the days "at home. " The hostess isflustered and evidently has troubles of her own. So, as ill-luck wouldhave it, it is with Dame Europe's household. The visitor from across theAtlantic is surprised at the obstreperousness of the more vigorousmembers of the family. Evidently a great many interesting things aregoing on, but the standard of deportment is not high. 

While the unaccustomed ears of Europe were shocked at the shrill criesfrom the rival conventions at Chicago and Baltimore, there was equalturbulence in the Italian Parliament at Rome. There were shouts andcatcalls and every sign of uncontrollable violence. What are the"reasons annexed" to all this uproar? I do not know. In Budapest suchunparliamentary expressions as "swine, " "liar, " "thief, " and "assassin"were freely used in debate. An honorable member who had been expelledfor the use of too strong language, returned to "shoot up" the House. The chairman, after dodging three shots, declared that he mustpositively insist on better order. 

In the German Reichstag a member threatens the Kaiser with the fate ofCharles the First, if he does not speedily mend his ways. He suggests asa fit Imperial residence the castle where the Mad King of Bavaria wasallowed to exercise his erratic energies without injury to thecommonweal. At the mention of Charles the First the chamber was in anuproar, and amid a tumult of angry voices the session was brought to aclose. 

In Russia, unseemly clamor is kept from the carefully guarded ears ofthe Czar. There art conspires with nature to produce peace. We read ofthe Czar's recent visit to his ancient capital: "The police during theprevious night made three thousand arrests. The Czar and Czarina drovethrough the city amid the ringing of bells, and with banners flying. "

On reading this item the American reader plucks up heart. If, during theChicago convention, the police had made three thousand arrests thesessions might have been as quiet as those of the Duma. 

Even the proceedings of the British House of Commons are disappointingto the pilgrim in search of decorum. The Mother of Parliaments hastrouble with her unruly brood. 

We enter the sacred precincts as a Member rises to a point of order. 

"I desire to ask your ruling, Mr. Speaker, as to whether the honorablegentleman is entitled to allude to Members of the House as miscreants. "

The Speaker: "I do not think the term 'miscreant' is a properParliamentary expression. "

This is very elementary teaching, but it appears that Mr. Speaker is notinfrequently compelled to repeat his lesson. It is "line upon line andprecept upon precept. "

The records of the doings of the House contain episodes which would beconsidered exciting in Arizona. We read: "For five minutes the HonorableGeorge Lansbury defied the Speaker, insulted the Prime Minister, andscorned the House of Commons. He raved in an ecstasy of passion;challenging, taunting, and defying. " The trouble began with a statementof Mr. Asquith's. "Then up jumped Mr. Lansbury, his face contorted withpassion, and his powerful rasping voice dominating the whole House. Shouting and waving his arms, he approached the Government Front Benchwith a curious crouching gait, like a boxer leaving his corner in thering. One or two Liberals on the bench behind Mr. Asquith half rose, butthe Prime Minister sat stolidly gazing above the heads of theopposition, his arms folded, and his lips pursed. Mr. Lansbury hadworked himself up into a state of frenzy and, facing the Prime Minister, he shouted, 'You are beneath my contempt! Call yourself a gentleman! Youought to be driven from public life. '"

I cannot remember any scene like this in Disraeli's novels. The House ofCommons used to be called the best club in Europe. But that, says theConservative critic, was before the members were paid. 

II

But certain changes, like the increased cost of living, are going oneverywhere. The fact seems to be that all over the civilized world thereis a noticeable falling-off in good manners in public discussion. It isuseless for one country to point the finger of scorn at another, or toassume an air of injured politeness. It is more conducive to goodunderstanding to join in a general confession of sin. We are allmiserable offenders, and there is little to choose between us. Theconventionalities which bind society together are like the patent gluewe see advertised on the streets. A plate has been broken and thenjoined together. The strength of the adhesive substance is shown by theway it holds up a stone of considerable weight attached to it. The platethus mended holds together admirably till it is put in hot water. 

I have no doubt but that a conservative Chinese gentleman would tell youthat since the Republic came in there has been a sad falling-off in theobservance of the rules of propriety as laid down by Confucius. TheConservative newspapers of England bewail the fact that there has been alamentable change since the present Government came in. The archoffender is "that political Mahdi, Lloyd George, whose false prophecieshave made deluded dervishes of hosts of British workmen, and who hascorrupted the manners of Parliament itself. "

This wicked Mahdi, by his appeals to the passions of the populace, hasdestroyed the old English reverence for Law. 

I do not know what may be the cause, but the American visitor doesnotice that the English attitude towards the laws of the realm is not sodevout as he had been led to expect. We have from our earliest youthbeen taught to believe that the law-abidingness of the Englishman wasinnate and impeccable. It was not that, like the good man of whom thePsalmist speaks, he meditated on the law day and night. He didn't needto. Decent respect for the law was in his blood. He simply could nothelp conforming to it. 

And this impression is confirmed by the things which the tourist goes tosee. The stately mansions embowered in green and guarded by immemorialoaks are accepted as symbolic of an ordered life. The multitudinousrooks suggest security which comes from triumphant legality. Noirresponsible person shoots them. When one enters a cathedral close hefeels that he is in a land that frowns on the crudity of change. Hereeverything is a "thousand years the same. " And how decent is thedemeanor of a verger!

When the pilgrim from Kansas arrives at an ancient English inn he feelsthat he must be on his good behavior. Boots in his green apron is alesson to him. He is not like a Western hotel bell-boy on the way tobecoming something else. He knows his place. Everybody, he imagines, inthis country knows his place, and there is no unseemly crowding andpushing. And what stronger proof can there be that this is a land wherelaw is reverenced than the demeanor of a London policeman. There is notruculence about him, no show of physical force. He is so mild-eyed andsoft of speech that one feels that he has been shielded from rudecontact with the world. He represents the Law in a land where law issacred. He is instinctively obeyed. He has but to wave his hand andtraffic stops. 

When the traveler is told that in the vicinity of the House of Commonstraffic is stopped to allow a Member to cross the street, his admirationincreases. Fancy a Congressman being treated with such respect! But theargument which, on the whole, makes the deepest impression is thedeferential manners of the tradesmen with their habit of saying, "Thankyou, " apropos of nothing at all. It seems an indication of perpetualgratitude over the fact that things are as they are. 

But when one comes to listen to the talk of the day one is surprised tofind a surprising lack of docility. I doubt whether the Englishman hasthe veneration for the abstract idea of Law which is common amongAmericans. Indeed, he is accustomed to treat most abstractions withscant courtesy. There is nothing quite corresponding to the averageAmerican's feeling about a decision of the Supreme Court. The Law hasspoken, let all the land keep silent. It seems like treason to criticizeit, like anarchy to defy it. 

Tennyson's words about "reverence for the laws ourselves have made"needs to be interpreted by English history. It is a peculiar kind ofreverence and has many limitations. A good deal depends on what is meantby "ourselves. " An act of Parliament does not at once become an objectof reverence by the members of the opposition party. It was not, theyfeel, made by _them_, it was made by a Government which was violentlyopposed to them and which was bent on ruining the country. 

It is only after a sufficient time has elapsed to allow for the partisanorigin to be forgotten, and for it to become assimilated to the habitsof thought and manner of life of the people that it is deeply respected. The English reverence is not for statute law, but for the common lawwhich is the slow accretion of ages. A new enactment is treated like thenew boy at school. He must submit to a period of severe hazing before heis given a place of any honor. 

To the American when an act of Congress has been declaredconstitutional, a decent respect for the opinion of mankind seems tosuggest that verbal criticism should cease. The council of perfection isthat the law should be obeyed till such time as it can be repealed orexplained away. If it should become a dead letter, propriety woulddemand that no evil should be spoken of it. Since the days of AndrewJackson the word "nullification" has had an ugly and dangerous sound. 

But to the Englishman this attitude seems somewhat superstitious. Theperiod of opposition to a measure is not ended when it has passedParliament and received the royal assent. The question is whether itwill receive the assent of the people. Can it get itself obeyed? If itcan, then its future is assured for many generations. But it must passthrough an exciting period of probation. 

If it is a matter that arouses much feeling the British way is for someone to disobey and take the consequences. Passive resistance--with suchactive measures as may make the life of the enforcers of the law aburden to them--is a recognized method of political and religiouspropagandism. 

In periods when the national life has run most swiftly this kind ofresistance to what has been considered the tyranny of lawmakers hasalways been notable. Emerson's "the chambers of the great are jails" wasliterally true of the England of the seventeenth century. Every one whomade any pretension to moral leadership was intent on going to jail inbehalf of some principle or another. 

John Bunyan goes to jail rather than attend the parish church, GeorgeFox goes to jail rather than take off his hat in the presence of themagistrate. Why should he do so when there was no Scripture for it? Whenit was said that the Scripture had nothing to say about hats, he wasready with his triumphant reference to Daniel III, 21, where it is saidthat the three Hebrew children wore "their coats, their hosen, theirhats and their other garments" in the fiery furnace. If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego wore their hats before Nebuchadnezzar and keptthem on even in the fiery furnace, why should a free-born Englishmantake his hat off in the presence of a petty Justice of the Peace?Fervent Fifth Monarchy men were willing to die rather than acknowledgeany king but King Jesus who was about to come to reign. Non-juringbishops were willing to go to jail rather than submit to the judgment ofParliament as to who should be king in England. Puritans and Covenantersof the more logical sort refused to accept toleration unless it wereoffered on their own terms. They had been a "persecuted remnant" andthey proposed to remain such or know the reason why. 

Beneath his crust of conformity the Briton has an admiration for theserecalcitrant individuals who will neither bow the knee to Baal nor tohis betters. He likes a man who is a law unto himself. Though he haslittle enthusiasm for the abstract "rights of man, " he is a greatbeliever in "the liberty of prophesying. " The prophet is not withouthonor, even while he is being stoned. 

Just at this time things are moving almost as rapidly as they did in theseventeenth century. There is the same clash of opinion and violence ofparty spirit. All sorts of non-conformities struggle for a hearing. Oneis reminded of that most stirring period, which is so delightful to readabout, and which must have been so trying for quiet people to livethrough. 

A host of earnest and wide-awake persons are engaged in the task ofdoing what they are told not to do. Their enthusiasm takes the form ofresistance to some statute made or proposed. 

The conscientious women who throw stones through shop windows, and layviolent hands on cabinet ministers, do so, avowedly, to bring certainlaws into disrepute. They go on hunger-strikes, not in order to bereleased from prison, but in order to be treated as political prisoners. They insist that their methods should be recognized as acts oflegitimate warfare. They may be extreme in their actions, but they arenot alone in their theory. 

The Insurance Law, by which all workers whose wages are below a certainsum are compulsorily insured against sickness and the losses that followit, is just going into effect. Its provisions are necessarilycomplicated, and its administration must at first be difficult. TheInsurance-Law Resisters are organized to nullify the act. Its enormitiesare held up before all eyes, and it is flouted in every possible way. According to this law, a lady is compelled to pay three-pence a weektoward the insurance fund for each servant in her employ. Will she paythat three-pence? No! Though twenty acts of Parliament should declarethat it must be done, she will resist. As for keeping accounts, andputting stamps in a book, she will do nothing of the kind. What is itabout a stamp act that arouses such fierceness of resistance?

High-born ladies declare that they would rather go to jail than obeysuch a law. At a meeting at Albert Hall the Resisters were addressed bya duchess who was "supported by a man-servant. " What can a mere Act ofParliament do when confronted by such a combination as that? Passiveresistance takes on heroic proportions when a duchess and a man-servantconfront the Law with haughty immobility. 

In the mean time, Mr. Tom Mann goes to jail, amid the applause oforganized labor, for advising the British soldier not to obey orderswhen he is commanded to fire on British working-men. 

Mr. Tom Mann is a labor agitator, while Mr. Bonar Law is the leader ofthe Conservative party; but when it comes to legislation which he doesnot like, Mr. Bonar Law's language is fully as incendiary. He is notcontent with opposing the Irish Home Rule Bill: he gives notice thatwhen it has become a law the opposition will be continued in a moreserious form. The passage of the bill, he declares, will be the signalfor civil war. Ulster will fight. Parliament may pass the Home RuleBill, but when it does so its troubles will have just begun. Where willit find the troops to coerce the province?

One of the most distinguished Unionist Members of Parliament, addressinga great meeting at Belfast says, "You are sometimes asked whether youpropose to resist the English army? I reply that even if this Governmenthad the wickedness (which, on the whole, I believe), it is whollylacking in the nerve required to give an order which in my deliberatejudgment would shatter for years the civilization of these islands. " Ifthe Government does not have the nerve to employ its troops, "It will befor the moon-lighters and the cattle-maimers to conquer Ulsterthemselves, and it will be for you to show whether you are worse men, oryour enemies better men, than the forefathers of you both. But I notewith satisfaction that you are preparing yourselves by the practice ofexercises, and by the submission to discipline, for the struggle whichis not unlikely to test your determination. The Nationalists aredetermined to rule you. You are determined not to be ruled. A collisionof wills so sharp may well defy the resources of a peaceful solution.... On this we are agreed, that the crisis has called into existence one ofthose supreme issues of conscience amid which the ordinary landmarks ofpermissible resistance to technical law are submerged. "

When one goes to the Church to escape from these sharp antagonisms, heis confronted with huge placards giving notice of meetings to protestagainst "The Robbery of God. " The robber in this case is the Government, which proposes to disendow, as well as disestablish, the Church inWales. Noble lords denounce the outrage. Mr. Lloyd George replies byreminding their lordships that their landed estates were, before thedissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, Church property. Ifthey wish to make restitution of the spoil which their ancestors took, well and good. But let them not talk about the robbery of God, whiletheir hands are "dripping with the fat of sacrilege. "

The retort is effective, but it does not make Mr. Lloyd George belovedby the people to whom it is addressed. Twitting on facts has always beenconsidered unmannerly. 

III

When we hear the acrimonious discussions and the threats of violence, itis well to consider the reason for it all. I think the reason is onethat is not discreditable to those concerned. These are not ordinarytimes, and they are not to be judged by ordinary standards. England isat the present time passing through a revolution, the issues of whichare still in doubt. Revolutionary passions have been liberated by therapid course of events. "Every battle of the warrior is with confusednoise. " The confused noise may be disagreeable to persons of sensitivenerves, but it is a part of the situation. 

When we consider the nature of the changes that have been made in thelast few years, and the magnitude of those which are proposed, we do notwonder at the tone of exasperation which is common to all parties. 

It is seldom that a constitutional change, like that which deprived theHouse of Lords of powers exercised for a thousand years, has been madewithout an appeal to arms. But there was no civil war. Perhaps the oldfashion of sturdy blows would have been less trying to the temper. 

A revolution is at the best an unmannerly proceeding. It cannot becarried on politely, because it involves not so much a change of ideasand methods as a change of masters. A change of ideas may be discussedin an amiable and orderly way. The honorable gentlemen who have theresponsibility for the decision are respectfully asked to revise theiropinions in the light of new evidence which, by their leave, will bepresented. 

But a change of masters cannot be managed so inoffensively. Thehonorable gentlemen are not asked to revise their opinions. They aretold that their opinions are no longer important. The matter is severelypersonal. The statement is not, "We do not believe in your ideas"; itis, "We do not believe in _you_. "

When political discussion takes this turn, then there is an end to theamenities suited to a more quiet time. It is no longer a question as towhich is the better cause, but as to which is the better man. 

Mr. Asquith, who has retained in this revolutionary period the mannersof the old school, recently said in his reply to a delegation of hisopponents, "When people are on opposite sides of a chasm they may becourteous to one another, and regret the impossibility of their shakinghands, or doing more than wave a courteous gesture across so wide aspace. "

These are the words of a gentleman in politics, and express a beautifulideal. But they hardly describe the present situation. As to waving acourteous salutation to the people on the other side, --that depends onwho the people are. If you know them and have been long familiar withtheir good qualities, the courteous salutation is natural. They are, asyou know, much better than their opinions. 

But it is different when they are people whom you do not know, and withwhom you have nothing in common. You suspect their motives, and feel acontempt for their abilities. They are not of your set. The word"gentleman" is derived from the word _gens_. People of the same _gens_learn to treat each other in a considerate way. Even when they differthey remember what is due to gentle blood and gentle training. 

It is quite evident that the challenge of the new democracy to the oldruling classes has everywhere produced exasperation. It is no longereasy to wave courteous salutations across the chasms which divideparties. Political discussion takes a rude turn. It is no longerpossible to preserve the proprieties. We may expect the minor moralitiesto suffer while the major moralities are being determined by hardknocks. 

Good manners depend on the tacit understanding of all parties as totheir relations to one another. Nothing can be more brutal than for oneto claim superiority, or more rude than for another to dispute theclaim. Such differences of station should, if they exist, be taken forgranted. 

Relations which were established by force may, after a time, be made sobeautiful that their origin is forgotten. There must be no display ofunnecessary force. The battle having been decided, victor and vanquishedchange parts. It pleases the conqueror to sign himself, "Your obedientservant, " and to inquire whether certain terms would be agreeable. Ofcourse they would be agreeable. So says the disarmed man looking upwardto his late foe, now become his protector. 

And the conqueror with grave good will takes up the burden whichProvidence has imposed upon him. Is not the motto of the true knight, _Ich dien_? Such service as he can render shall be given ungrudgingly. 

Now, this is not hypocrisy. It may be Christianity and Chivalry and allsorts of fine things. It is making the best of an accepted situation. When relations which were established by force have been sanctioned bycustom, and embodied in law, and sanctified by religion, they form asoil in which many pleasant things may grow. In the vicinity of Vesuviusthey will tell you that the best soils are of volcanic origin. 

Hodge and Sir Lionel meet in the garden which one owns, and in which theother digs with the sweat of his brow. There is kindly interest on theone hand, and decent respect on the other. But all this sense of orderedrighteousness is dependent on one condition. Neither must eat of thefruit of the tree of knowledge that grows in the midst of the garden. Alittle knowledge is dangerous, a good deal of knowledge may be even moredangerous, to the relations which custom has established. 

What right has Sir Lionel to lay down the law for Hodge? Why should notHodge have a right to have his point of view considered? When Hodgebegins seriously to ponder this question his manners suffer. And whenSir Lionel begins to assert his superiority, instead of taking it forgranted, his behavior lacks its easy charm. It is very hard to explainsuch things in a gentlemanly way. 

Now, the exasperation in the tone of political discussion in GreatBritain, as elsewhere in the world, is largely explained by the factthat all sorts of superiorities have been challenged at the same time. Everywhere the issue is sharply made. "Who shall rule?"

Shall Ireland any longer submit to be ruled by the English? The IrishNationalists swear by all the saints that, rather than submit, they willoverthrow the present Government and return to their former methods ofagitation. 

If the Home Rule Bill be enacted into law, will Ulster submit to beruled by a Catholic majority? The men of Ulster call upon the spirits oftheir heroic sires, who triumphed at the Boyne, to bear witness thatthey will never yield. 

Will the masses of the people submit any longer to the existinginequalities in political representation? No! They demand immediaterecognition of the principle, "One man, one vote. " The many will notallow the few to make laws for them. 

Will the women of England kindly wait a little till their demands can beconsidered in a dignified way? No! They will not take their place in thewaiting-line. Others get what they want by pushing; so will they. 

Will the Labor party be a little less noisy and insistent in itsdemands? All will come in time, but one Reform must say to another, "After you. " Hoarse voices cry, "We care nothing for etiquette, we musthave what we demand, and have it at once. We cannot stand still. If weare pushing, we are also pushed from behind. If you do not give us whatwe ask for, the Socialists and the Syndicalists will be upon you. " Thereis always the threat of a General Strike. Laborers have hitherto beenstarved into submission. But two can play at that game. 

IV

This is not the England of Sir Roger de Coverley with its cheerfulcontentment with the actual, and its deference for all sorts ofdignitaries. It is not, in its present temper, a model of propriety. But, in my judgment, it is all the more interesting, and full of hope. To say that England is in the midst of a revolution is not to say thatsome dreadful disaster is impending. It only means that this is a timewhen events move very rapidly, and when precedents count for little. Butit is a time when common sense and courage and energy count for a greatdeal; and there is no evidence that these qualities are lacking. Isuspect that the alarmists are not so alarmed as their language wouldlead us to suppose. They know their countrymen, and that they have thegood sense to avoid most of the collisions that they declare to beinevitable. 

I take comfort in the philosophy which I glean from the top of a Londonmotor-bus. From my point of vantage I look down upon pedestrian humanityas a Superman might look down upon it. It seems to consist of a vastmultitude of ignorant folk who are predestined to immediateannihilation. As the ungainly machine on which I am seated rushes downthe street, it seems admirably adapted for its mission of destruction. The barricade in front of me, devoted to the praise of BOVRIL, is justhigh enough to prevent my seeing what actually happens, but it gives abloodcurdling view of catastrophes that are imminent. I have animpression of a procession of innocent victims rushing heedlessly upondestruction. Three yards in front of the onrushing wheels is an oldgentleman crossing the street. He suddenly stops. There is, humanlyspeaking, no hope for him. Two nursemaids appear in the field of danger. A butcher's boy on a bicycle steers directly for the bus. He may begiven up for lost. I am not able to see what becomes of them, but I amprepared for the worst. Still the expected crunch does not come, and thebus goes on. 

Between Notting Hill Gate and Charing Cross I have seen eighteen personsdisappear in this mysterious fashion. I could swear that when I last sawthem it seemed too late for them to escape their doom. 

But on sober reflection I come to the conclusion that I should havetaken a more hopeful view if I had not been so high up; if, for example, I had been sitting with the driver where I could have seen what happenedat the last moment. 

There was much comfort in the old couplet:--

 "Betwixt the saddle and the ground, He mercy sought and mercy found. "

And betwixt the pedestrian and the motor-bus, there are many chances ofsafety that I could not foresee. The old gentleman was perhaps more sprythan he looked. The nursemaids and the butcher's boy must assuredly haveperished unless they happened to have their wits about them. But in allprobability they did have their wits about them, and so did the driverof the motor-bus. 

THE TORYISM OF TRAVELERS

I

When we think of a thorough-going conservative we are likely to picturehim as a stay-at-home person, a barnacle fastened to one spot. We takefor granted that aversion to locomotion and aversion to change are thesame thing. But in thinking thus we leave out of account the inherentinstability of human nature. Everybody likes a little change now andthen. If a person cannot get it in one way, he gets it in another. Thestay-at-home gratifies his wandering fancy by making little alterationsin his too-familiar surroundings. Even the Vicar of Wakefield in thedays of his placid prosperity would occasionally migrate from the bluebed to the brown. A life that had such vicissitudes could not be calleduneventful. 

When you read the weekly newspaper published in the quietest hill-townin Vermont, you become aware that a great deal is going on. Deacon Prattshingled his barn last week. Miss Maria Jones had new shutters put onher house, and it is a great improvement. These revolutions inGoshenville are matters of keen interest to those concerned. Theyfurnish inexhaustible material for conversation. 

The true enemy to innovation is the traveler who sets out to seehistoric lands. His natural love of change is satiated by rapid changeof locality. But his natural conservatism asserts itself in hisinsistence that the places which he visits shall be true to their ownreputations. Having journeyed, at considerable expense, to a celebratedspot, he wants to see the thing it was celebrated for, and he willaccept no substitute. From his point of view the present inhabitants aremerely caretakers who should not be allowed to disturb the remainsintrusted to their custody. Everything must be kept as it used to be. 

The moment any one packs his trunk and puts money in his purse to visitlands old in story he becomes a hopeless reactionary. He is sallyingforth to see things not as they are, but as they were "once upon atime. " He is attracted to certain localities by something which happenedlong ago. A great many things may have happened since, but these must beput out of the way. One period of time must be preserved to satisfy hisromantic imagination. He loves the good old ways, and he has a curiosityto see the bad old ways that may still be preserved. It is only themodern that offends him. 

The American who, in his own country, is in feverish haste to improveconditions, when he sets foot in Europe becomes the fanatical foe toprogress. The Old World, in his judgment, ought to look old. He longs tohear the clatter of wooden shoes. If he had his way he would have lawsenacted forbidding peasant folk to change their ancient costumes. Hewould preserve every relic of feudalism. He bitterly laments thedivision of great estates. A nobleman's park with its beautiful idleacres, its deer, its pheasants, and its scurrying rabbits, is so muchmore pleasant to look at than a succession of market-gardens. Poachers, game-keepers, and squires are alike interesting, if only they woulddress so that he could know them apart. He is enchanted with thatchedcottages which look damp and picturesque. He detests the model dwellingswhich are built with a too obvious regard for sanitation. He seeksnarrow and ill-smelling streets where the houses nod at each other, asif in the last stages of senility, muttering mysterious reminiscences ofold tragedies. He frequents scenes of ancient murders, and places wherebandits once did congregate. He leaves the railway carriage, to cross aheath where romantic highwaymen used to ask the traveler to stand anddeliver. He is indignant to find electric lights and policemen. A heathought to be lonely, and fens ought to be preserved from drainage. 

He seeks dungeons and instruments of torture. The dungeons must beunderground, and only a single ray of light must penetrate. He is muchtroubled to find that the dungeon in the Castle of Chillon is much morecheerful than he had supposed it was. The Bridge of Sighs in Venicedisappoints him in the same way. Indeed, there are few places mentionedby Lord Byron that are as gloomy as they are in the poeticaldescription. 

The traveler is very insistent in his plea for the preservation ofbattlefields. Now, Europe is very rich in battlefields, many of the mostfertile sections having been fought over many times. But the ravages ofagriculture are everywhere seen. There is no such leveler as theploughman. Often when one has come to refresh his mind with the eventsof one terrible day, he finds that there is nothing whatever to remindhim of what happened. For centuries there has been ploughing andharvesting. Nature takes so kindly to these peaceful pursuits that oneis tempted to think of the battle as merely an episode. 

Commerce is almost as destructive. Cities that have been noted for theirsieges often turn out to be surprisingly prosperous. The old walls aretorn down to give way to parks and boulevards. Massacres which in theirday were noted leave no trace behind. One can get more of an idea of theMassacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve by reading a book by one's firesidethan by going to Paris. For all one can see there, there might have beenno such accident. 

Moral considerations have little place in the traveler's mind. Theprogressive ameliorations that have taken place tend to obscure oursense of the old conflicts. A reform once accomplished becomes a part ofour ordinary consciousness. We take it for granted, and find it hard tounderstand what the reformer was so excited about. 

As a consequence, the chief object of an historical pilgrimage is todiscover some place where the old conditions have not been improvedaway. The religious pilgrim does not expect to find the old prophets, but he has a pious hope of finding the abuses which the prophetsdenounced. 

I have in mind a clergyman who, in his own home, is progressive to afault. He is impatient of any delay. He is all the time seeking out thevery latest inventions in social and economic reforms. But several yearsago he made a journey to the Holy Land, and when he came back hedelivered a lecture on his experiences. A more reactionary attitudecould not be imagined. Not a word did he say about the progress ofeducation or civil-service reform in Palestine. There was not asympathetic reference to sanitation or good roads. The rights of womenwere not mentioned. Representative government seemed to be anabomination to him. All his enthusiasm was for the other side. He wasfor Oriental conservatism in all its forms. He was for preserving everysurvival of ancient custom. He told of the delight with which he watchedthe laborious efforts of the peasants ploughing with a forked stick. Hebelieved that there had not been a single improvement in agriculturesince the days of Abraham. 

The economic condition of the people had not changed for the bettersince patriarchal times, and one could still have a good idea of afamine such as sent the brothers of Joseph down into Egypt. Turkishmisgovernment furnished him with a much clearer idea of the publicans, and the hatred they aroused in the minds of the people, than he had everhoped to obtain. In fact, one could hardly appreciate the term"publicans and sinners" without seeing the Oriental tax-gatherers. Hewas very fortunate in being able to visit several villages which hadbeen impoverished by their exactions. The rate of wages throws muchlight on the Sunday-School lessons. A penny a day does not seem such aninsufficient minimum wage to a traveler, as it does to a stay-at-homeperson. On going down from Jerusalem to Jericho he fell among thieves, or at least among a group of thievish-looking Bedouins who gave him anew appreciation of the parable of the Samaritan. It was a wonderfulexperience. And he found that the animosity between the Jews and theSamaritans had not abated. To be sure, there are very few Samaritansleft, and those few are thoroughly despised. 

The good-roads movement has not yet invaded Palestine, and we can stillexperience all the discomforts of the earlier times. Many a time when hetook his life in his hands and wandered across the Judæan hills, myfriend repeated to himself the text, "In the days of Shamgar the son ofAnath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the peoplewalked through by-ways. "

To most people Shamgar is a mere name. But after you have walked forhours over those rocky by-ways, never knowing at what moment you may beattacked by a treacherous robber, you know how Shamgar felt. He becomesa real person. You are carried back into the days when "there was noking in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. "

The railway between Joppa and Jerusalem is to be regretted, butfortunately it is a small affair. There are rumors of commercialenterprises which, if successful, would change the appearance of many ofthe towns. Fortunately they are not likely to be successful, at least inour day. The brooding spirit of the East can be trusted to defend itselfagainst the innovating West. For the present, at least, Palestine is afascinating country to travel in. 

A traveler in Ceylon and India writes to a religious paper of hisjourney. He says, "Colombo has little to interest the tourist, yet it isa fine city. " One who reads between the lines understands that the factthat it is a fine city is the cause of its uninterestingness. Hisimpression of Madura was more satisfactory. There one can see theJuggernaut car drawn through the streets by a thousand men, though it isreluctantly admitted that the self-immolation of fanatics under thewheels is no longer allowed. "The Shiva temple at Madura is the moreinteresting as its towers are ornamented with six thousand idols. "

The writer who rejoiced at the sight of six thousand idols in Madura, would have been shocked at the exhibition of a single crucifix in hismeeting-house at home. 

I confess that I have not been able to overcome the Tory prejudice infavor of vested interests in historical places. If one has traveledto see "the old paths which wicked men have trodden, " it is adisappointment to find that they are not there. I had such an experiencein Capri. We had wandered through the vineyards and up the steep, rockyway to the Villa of Tiberius. On the top of the cliff are the ruins ofthe pleasure-house which the Emperor in his wicked old age built forhimself. Was there ever a greater contrast between an earthly paradiseand abounding sinfulness? Here, indeed, was "spiritual wickedness inhigh places. " The marvelously blue sea and all the glories of the Bay ofNaples ought to have made Tiberius a better man; but apparently theydidn't. We were prepared for the thrilling moment when we were led tothe edge of the cliff, and told to look down. Here was the very placewhere Tiberius amused himself by throwing his slaves into the sea tofeed the fishes. Cruel old monster! But it was a long time ago. Timehad marvelously softened the atrocity of the act, and heightened itspicturesque character. If Tiberius must exhibit his colossal inhumanity, could he have anywhere in all the world chosen a better spot? Just thinkof his coming to this island and, on this high cliff above the azuresea, building this palace! And then to think of him on a night when themoon was full, and the nightingales were singing, coming out and hurlinga shuddering slave into the abyss!

When we returned to the hotel, our friend the Professor, who had made astudy of the subject, informed us that it was all a mistake. The storiesof the wicked doings of Tiberius in Capri were malicious slanders. TheEmperor was an elderly invalid living in dignified retirement. As forthe slaves, we might set our minds at rest in regard to them. If any ofthem fell over the cliff it was pure accident. We must give up the ideathat the invalid Emperor pushed them off. 

All this was reassuring to my better nature, and yet I cherished agrudge against the Professor. For it was a stiff climb to the Villa ofTiberius, and I wanted something to show for it. It was difficult toadjust one's mind to the fact that nothing had happened there whichmight not have happened in any well-conducted country house. 

I like to contrast this with our experience in Algiers. We knewbeforehand what Algiers was like in the days of its prime. It had beenthe nest of as desperate pirates as ever infested the seas. Forgenerations innocent Christians had been carried hither to pine indoleful captivity. But the French, we understood, had built a miniatureParis in the vicinity and were practicing liberty, fraternity, andequality on the spot dedicated to gloomily romantic memories. We fearedthe effect of this civilization. We had our misgivings. Perhaps Algiersmight be no longer worth visiting. 

Luckily our steamer was delayed till sunset. We were carefullyshepherded, so that we hardly noticed the French city. We were hurriedthrough the darkness into old Algiers. Everything was full of sinistersuggestion. The streets were as narrow and perilous as any which HarounAl Raschid explored on his more perilous nights. Here one could believethe worst of his fellow men. Suspicion and revenge were in the air. Wewere not taking a stroll, we were escaping from something. Mysteriousmuffled figures glided by and disappeared through slits in the walls. There were dark corners so suggestive of homicide that one could hardlythink that any one with an Oriental disposition could resist thetemptation. In crypt-like recesses we could see assassins sharpeningtheir daggers or, perhaps, executioners putting the finishing touches ontheir scimitars. There were cavernous rooms where conspirators werecrouched round a tiny charcoal fire. Groups of truculent young Arabsfollowed us shouting objurgations, and accepting small coins as ransom. We had glimpses of a mosque, the outside of a prison, and the inside ofwhat once was a harem. On returning to the steamer one gentleman felloverboard and, swimming to the shore, was rescued by a swarthy ruffianwho robbed him of his watch and disappeared in the darkness. When thevictim of Algerian piracy stood on the deck, dripping and indignant, andtold his tale of woe, we were delighted. Algiers would always besomething to remember. It was one of the places that had not beenspoiled. 

I am afraid that the sunlight might have brought disillusion. Some ofthe stealthy figures which gave rise to such thrilling suspicions mayhave turned out to be excellent fathers and husbands returning frombusiness. As it is, thanks to the darkness, Algiers remains a city ofvague atrocities. It does not belong to the commonplace world; it is ofsuch stuff as dreams, including nightmares, are made of. 

It is not without some compunction of conscience that I recall twohistorical pilgrimages, one to Assisi, the other to Geneva. Assisi Ifound altogether rewarding, while in Geneva I was disappointed. In eachcase my object was purely selfish, and had nothing in common with thewelfare of the present inhabitants. I wanted to see the city of St. Francis and the city of John Calvin. 

In Assisi one may read again the Franciscan legends in their propersettings. I should like to think that my pleasure in Assisi arose fromthe fact that I saw some one there who reminded me of St. Francis. ButI was not so fortunate. If one is anxious to come in contact with thespirit of St. Francis, freed from its mediæval limitations, a visit toHull House, Chicago, would be more rewarding. 

But it was not the spirit of St. Francis, but his limitations, that wewere after. Assisi has preserved them all. We see the gray old town onthe hillside, the narrow streets, the old walls. We are beset by swarmsof beggars. They are not like the half-starved creatures one may see inthe slums of northern cities. They are very likable. They are naturalworshipers of my Lady Poverty. They have not been spoiled by commonplaceindustrialism or scientific philanthropy. One is taken back into thedays when there was a natural affinity between saints and beggars. Thesaints would joyously give away all that they had, and the beggars wouldas joyously accept it. After the beggars had used up all the saints hadgiven them, the saints would go out and beg for more. The community, yousay, would be none the better. Perhaps not. But the moment you begin totalk about the community you introduce ideas that are modern anddisturbing. One thing is certain, and that is that if Assisi were morethrifty, it would be less illuminating historically. 

St. Francis might come back to Assisi and take up his work as he leftit. But I sought in vain for John Calvin in Geneva. The city was tooprosperous and gay. The cheerful houses, the streets with theircosmopolitan crowds, the parks, the schools, the university, the littleboats skimming over the lake, all bore witness to the well-being ofto-day. But what of yesterday? The citizens were celebrating theanniversary of Jean Jacques Rousseau. I realized that it was notyesterday but the day before yesterday that I was seeking. Where was thestern little city which Calvin taught and ruled? The place that knew himknows him no more. 

Disappointed in my search for Calvin, I sought compensation in Servetus. I found the stone placed by modern Calvinists to mark the spot where theSpanish heretic was burned. On it they had carved an inscriptionexpressing their regret for the act of intolerance on the part of thereformer, and attributing the blame to the age in which he lived. Buteven this did not satisfy modern Geneva. The inscription had beenchipped away in order to give place I was told, to something morehistorically accurate. 

But whether Calvin was to blame, or the sixteenth century, did not seemto matter. The spot was so beautiful that it seemed impossible thatanything tragical could ever have happened here. A youth and maiden weresitting by the stone, engaged in a most absorbing conversation. Of onething I was certain, that the theological differences between Calvin andServetus were nothing to them. They had something more important tothink about--at least for them. 

II

After a time one comes to have a certain modesty of expectation. Timeand Space are different elements, and each has its own laws. At theprice of a steamship ticket one may be transported to another country, but safe passage to another age is not guaranteed. It is enough if someslight suggestion is given to the imagination. A walk through a pleasantneighborhood is all the pleasanter if one knows that something memorablehas happened there. If one is wise he will not attempt to realize it tothe exclusion of the present scene. It is enough to have a slight flavorof historicity. 

It was this pleasure which I enjoyed in a ramble with a friend throughthe New Forest. The day was fine, and it would have been a joy to beunder the greenwood trees if no one had been before us. But the NewForest had a human interest; for on such a day as this, William Rufusrode into it to hunt the red deer, and was found with an arrow throughhis body. And to this day no man knows who killed William Rufus, or why. Though, of course, some people have their suspicions. 

Many other things may have happened in the New Forest in the centuriesthat have passed, but they have never been brought vividly to myattention. So far as I was concerned there were no confusing incidents. The Muse of History told one tragic tale and then was silent. 

On the other side of the Forest was the Rufus stone marking the spotwhere the Red King's body was found. At Brockenhurst we inquired theway, which we carefully avoided. The road itself was an innovation, andwas infested with motor-cars, machines unknown to the Normans. The RedKing had plunged into the Forest and quickly lost himself; so would we. There were great oaks and wide-spreading beeches and green glades suchas one finds only in England. It was pleasant to feel that it allbelonged to the Crown. I could not imagine a county council allowingthis great stretch of country to remain in its unspoiled beauty throughthese centuries. 

We took our frugal lunch under a tree that had looked down on manygenerations. Then we wandered on through a green wilderness. We saw noone but some women gathering fagots. I was glad to see that they wereexercising their ancestral rights in the royal domain. They lookedcontented, though I should have preferred to have their dress moreantique. 

All day we followed William Rufus through the Forest. I began to feelthat I had a real acquaintance with him, having passed through much thesame experience. The forest glades have been little changed since theday when he hunted the red deer. Nature is the true conservative, andrepeats herself incessantly. 

Toward evening my friend pointed out the hill at the foot of which wasthe Rufus stone. It was still some two miles away. Should we push on toit?

What should we see when we got there? The stone was not much. There wasa railing round it as a protection against relic-hunters. And there wasan inscription which, of course, was comparatively modern. That settledit. We would not go to the stone with its modern inscription. Theancient trees brought us much nearer to William Rufus. Besides, therewas just time, if we walked briskly, to catch the train at Brockenhurst. 

III

A week which stands out in my memory as one of perfect communion withthe past was spent with another English friend in Llanthony Abbey, inthe Vale of Ewyas, in the Black Mountains of Wales. We had gone preparedfor camping with a tent of ethereal lightness, which was to protect usfrom the weather. 

For the first night we were to tarry amid the ruins of thetwelfth-century abbey, some parts of which had been roofed over and usedas an inn. When we arrived, the rain was falling in torrents. Soon aftersupper we took our candles and climbed the winding stone stairs to ourrooms in the tower. The stones were uneven and worn by generations ofpious feet. Outside we could see the ruined nave of the church, with allthe surrounding buildings. We were in another age. 

Had the sun shined next morning we should have gone on our gypsyjourney, and Llanthony Abbey would have been only an incident. But forfive days and five nights the rain descended. We could make valiantsallies, but were driven back for shelter. Shut in by "the tumultuousprivacy of storm, " one felt a sense of ownership. Only one book could beobtained, the "Life and Letters" of Walter Savage Landor. I had alwayswanted to know more of Landor and here was the opportunity. 

A little over a hundred years ago he came to the vale of Ewyas andbought this estate, and hither he brought his young bride. They occupiedour rooms, it appeared. In 1809, Landor writes to Southey, "I am aboutto do what no man hath ever done in England, plant a wood of cedars ofLebanon. These trees will look magnificent on the mountains ofLlanthony. " He planted a million of them, so he said. How eloquently hegrowled over those trees! He prophesied that none of them would live. 

After reading, I donned my raincoat and started out through the drivingstorm to see how Landor's trees were getting on. It seemed that it wasonly yesterday that they were planted. It was worth going out to seewhat had become of them. They were all gone. I felt that secretsatisfaction which all right-minded persons feel on being witnesses tothe fulfilment of prophecy. 

And then there was the house which Landor started to build when he andhis wife were living in our tower. "I hope, " he writes, "before theclose not of the next but of the succeeding summer, to have one room tosit in with two or three bedrooms. " Then he begins to growl about theweather and the carpenters. After a while he writes again of the house:"It's not half finished and has cost me two thousand pounds. I thinkseriously of filling it with straw and setting fire to it. Never wasanything half so ugly. "

I inquired about the house and was told that it was not far away on thehillside, and was yet unfinished. I was pleased with this, and meant togo up and see it when the spell of bad weather of which Landorcomplained had passed by. 

Beside Landor there was only one other historic association which onecould enjoy without getting drenched--that was St. David. In wadingacross the barnyard, I encountered "Boots, " an intelligent young manthough unduly respectful. He informed me that the old building justacross from the stable was the cell of St. David. 

I was not prepared for this. All I knew was that St. David was thepatron saint of Wales and had a cathedral and a number of other churchesdedicated to him. Without too grossly admitting my ignorance, I tried todraw out from my mentor some further biographical facts that myimagination might work on during my stay. He thought that St. David wassome relation to King Arthur, but just what the relation was, andwhether he was only a relative by marriage, he didn't know. It wasn'tvery much information, but I was profoundly grateful to him. 

I have since read a long article on St. David in the "CambrianPlutarch. " The author goes into the question of the family relationsbetween King Arthur and St. David with great thoroughness, but whatconclusion he comes to is not quite evident. He thinks that the peopleare wrong who say that St. David was a nephew, because he was fiftyyears older than Arthur. That would make him more likely his uncle. But as he admits that King Arthur may possibly be another name for theconstellation Ursa Major, it is difficult to fix the dates exactly. At any rate, the "Cambrian Plutarch" is sure that King Arthur was aWelshman and a credit to the country--and so was St. David. The authorwas as accurate in regard to the dates as the nature of his subjectwould allow. He adds apologetically, "It will appear that the life ofSt. David is rather misplaced with respect to chronological order. Butas he was contemporary with all those whose lives have already beengiven, the anachronism, if such it may be called, can be of no greatimportance. "

That is just the way I feel about it. After living for a whole weekin such close contact with the residence of St. David, I feel a realinterest in him. Just who he was and when he lived, if at all, is amatter of no great importance. 

 * * * * *

Yet there are limits to the historical imagination. It must havesomething to work on, even though that something may be very vague. Wemust draw the line somewhere in our pursuit of antiquity. A relic may betoo old to be effective. Instead of gently stimulating the imaginationit may paralyze it. What we desire is not merely the ancient but thefamiliar. The relic must bring with it the sense of auld lang-syne. TheTory squire likes to preserve what has been a long time in his family. The traveler has the same feeling for the possessions of the family ofhumanity. 

The family-feeling does not go back of a certain point. I draw the lineat the legendary period when the heroes have names, and more or lesscoherent stories are told of their exploits, People who had a localhabitation, but not a name, seem to belong to Geology only. For alltheir flint arrow-heads, or bronze instruments, I cannot think of themas fellow men. 

It was with this feeling that I visited one of the most ancient placesof worship in Ireland, the tumulus at Newgrange. It was on a day filledwith historic sight-seeing. We started from Drogheda, the greatstronghold of the Pale in the Middle Ages, and the scene of Cromwell'sterrible vengeance in 1649. Three miles up the river is the site of theBattle of the Boyne. It was one of the great indecisive battles of theworld, it being necessary to fight it over again every year. The Boynehad overflowed its banks, and in the fields forlorn hay-cocks stood likeso many little islands. We stopped at the battle monument and read itsWhiggish inscription, which was scorned by our honest driver. We couldform some idea of how the field appeared on the eventful day when KingWilliam and King James confronted each other across the narrow stream. Then the scene changed and we found ourselves in Mellefont Abbey, thefirst Cistercian monastery in Ireland, founded by St. Malachy, thefriend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. King William and King James were atonce relegated to their proper places among the moderns, while we wentback to the ages of faith. 

Four miles farther we came to Monasterboice, where stood two greatCeltic crosses. There are two ruined churches and a round tower. Herewas an early religious establishment which existed before the times ofSt. Columba. 

This would be enough for one day's reminiscence, but my heart leaped upat the sight of a long green ridge. "There is the hill of Tara!"

Having traversed the period from King William to the dwellers in theHalls of Tara, what more natural than to take a further plunge into thepast?

We drive into an open field and alight near a rock-strewn hill. Candlesare given us and we grope our way through narrow passages till we cometo the centre of the hill. Here is a chamber some twenty feet in height. On the great stones which support the roof are mystic emblems. On thefloor is a large stone hollowed out in the shape of a bowl. It suggestshuman sacrifices. My guide did not encourage this suggestion. There was, he thought, no historical evidence for it. But it seemed to me that ifthese people ever practised such sacrifices this was the place for them. A gloomier chamber for weird rites could not be imagined. 

Who were the worshipers? Druids or pre-Druids? The archæologists tell usthat they belonged to the Early Bronze period. Now Early Bronze is agood enough term for articles in a museum, but it does not suggest ahuman being. We cannot get on terms of spiritual intimacy with the EarlyBronze people. We may know what they did, but there is no intimation of"the moving why they did it. " What spurred them on to their feats ofprodigious industry? Was it fear or love? First they built their chapelof great stones and then piled a huge hill on top of it. Were they stillunder the influence of the glacial period and attempting to imitate thewild doings of Nature? The passage of the ages does not make these menseem venerable, because their deeds are no longer intelligible. Mellefont Abbey is in ruins, but we can easily restore it inimagination. We can picture the great buildings as they were before theiconoclasts destroyed them. The prehistoric place of worship in themiddle of the hill is practically unchanged. But the clue to its meaningis lost. 

I could not make the ancient builders and worshipers seem real. It wasa relief to come up into the sunshine where people of our own kind hadwalked, the Kings of Tara and their harpers, and St. Patrick and St. Malachy and Oliver Cromwell and William III. After the unintelligiblesymbols on the rocks, how familiar and homelike seemed the sculptures onthe Celtic crosses. They were mostly about people, and people whom wehad known from earliest childhood. There were Adam and Eve, and Cainslaying Abel, and the Magi. They were members of our family. 

But between us and the builders of the under-ground chapel there was agreat gulf. There was no means of spiritual communication across theabyss. A scrap of writing, a bit of poetry, a name handed down bytradition, would have been worth all the relics discovered byarchæologists. 

There is justification for the traveler's preference for the things hehas read about, for these are the things which resist the changes oftime. Only he must remember that they are better preserved in the bookthan in the places where they happened. The impression which anygeneration makes on the surface of the earth is very slight. It cannotgive the true story of the brief occupancy. That requires some moredirect interpretation. 

The magic carpet which carries us into any age not our own is woven bythe poets and historians. Without their aid we may travel through Space, but not through Time. 

THE OBVIOUSNESS OF DICKENS

In the college world it is a point of honor for the successive classesto treat each other with contumely. The feud between freshman andsophomore goes on automatically. Only when one has become a senior mayhe, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a sophomore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticismis tolerated because it is evidently the result of the mellowinginfluence of time. 

The same tendency is seen in literary and artistic judgments. It isnever good taste to admit the good taste of the generation thatimmediately precedes us. Its innocent admirations are flouted and itsstandards are condemned as provincial. For we are always emerging fromthe dark ages and contrasting their obscurity with our marvelous light. The sixteenth century scorned the fifteenth century for its manifoldsuperstitions. Thomas Fuller tells us that his enlightened contemporiesin the seventeenth century treated the enthusiasms of the sixteenthcentury with scant respect. The price of martyrs' ashes rises and fallsin Smithfield market. At a later period Pope writes, --

 "We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow: Our wiser sons, perhaps, will think us so. "

He need not have put in the "perhaps. "

The nineteenth century had its fling at the artificiality of theeighteenth century, and treated it with contempt as the age ofdoctrinaires. And now that the twentieth century is coming to the age ofdiscretion, we hear a new term of reproach, Mid-Victorian. It expressesthe sum of all villainies in taste. For some fifty years in thenineteenth century the English-speaking race, as it now appears, wasunder the sway of Mrs. Grundy. It was living in a state of mostreprehensible respectability, and Art was tied to the apron-strings ofMorality. Everybody admired what ought not to be admired. We are onlynow beginning to pass judgment on the manifold mediocrity of this era. 

All this must, for the time, count against Dickens; for of all theVictorians he was the midmost. He flourished in that most absurd periodof time--the time just before most of us were born. And how he didflourish! Grave lord chancellors confessed to weeping over Little Nell. A Mid-Victorian bishop relates that after administering consolation toa man in his last illness he heard him saying, "At any rate, a new'Pickwick Paper' will be out in ten days. "

Everywhere there was a wave of hysterical appreciation. Describing hisreading in Glasgow, Dickens writes: "Such pouring of hundreds into aplace already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, suchrending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humor, Inever saw the slightest approach to.... Fifty frantic men got up in allparts of the hall and addressed me all at once. Other frantic men madespeeches to the wall. The whole B family were borne on the top of a waveand landed with their faces against the front of the platform. I readwith the platform crammed with people. I got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau, or gigantic picnic, --one prettygirl lying on her side all night, holding on to the legs of my table. "

In New York eager seekers after fiction would "lie down on the pavementthe whole of the night before the tickets were sold, generally taking uptheir position about ten. " There would be free fights, and the policewould be called to quell the riot. 

Such astonishing actions on the part of people who were unfortunateenough to live in the middle of the nineteenth century put us on ourguard. It could not have been a serious interest in English literaturethat evoked the mob spirit. Dickens must have been writing the kind ofbooks which these people liked to hear read. We remember with somemisgivings that in the days of our youth we wept over Little Nell, justas the lord chancellor did. The question which disturbs us is, Ought weto have done so?

Let us by a soft answer turn away the wrath of the critic. Doubtless weought not to have done so. Our excuse is that, at the time, we could nothelp it. We may make the further plea, common to all soft-heartedsinners, that if we hadn't wept, other people would, so that no greatharm was done, after all. 

But letting bygones be bygones, and not seeking to justify theenthusiasms of the nineteenth century, one may return to Dickens as tothe home of one's childhood. How do the old scenes affect us? Does thecharm remain? When thus we return to Dickens, we are compelled toconfess the justice of the latter-day criticism. In all his writings hedeals with characters and situations which are wholly obvious; at leastthey are obvious after he deals with them. Not only is he without theart which conceals art, but, unlike some novelists of more recent fame, he is without the art that conceals the lack of art He produces animpression by the crude method of "rubbing it in. " There are nosubtleties to pique our curiosity, no problems left us for discussion, no room for difference of opinion. There is no more opportunity forspeculation than in a one-price clothing store where every article ismarked in plain figures. To have heartily disliked Mr. Pecksniff and tohave loved the Cheeryble Brothers indicates no sagacity on our part. Theauthor has distinctly and repeatedly told us that the one is an odioushypocrite and that the others are benevolent to an unusual degree. Ourappreciation of Sam Weller does not prove that we have any sense ofhumor save that which is common to man. For Mr. Weller's humor is ablessing that is not in disguise. It is a pump which needs no priming. There is no denying that the humor, the pathos, and the sentiment ofDickens are obvious. 

All this, according to certain critics, goes to prove that Dickens lacksdistinction, and that the writing of his novels was a commonplaceachievement. This judgment seems to me to arise from a confusion ofthought. The _perception_ of the obvious is a commonplace achievement;the _creation_ of the obvious, and making it interesting, is the work ofgenius. There is no intellectual distinction in the enjoyment of "ThePickwick Papers"; to write "The Pickwick Papers" would be anothermatter. 

It is only in the last quarter of a century that English literature hasbeen accepted not as a recreation, but as a subject of serious study. Now, the first necessity for a study is that it should be "hard. " Someof the best brains in the educational world have been enlisted in thework of giving a disciplinary value to what was originally an innocentpleasure. It is evident that one cannot give marks for the number ofsmiles or tears evoked by a tale of true love. The novel or the playthat is to hold its own in the curriculum in competition withtrigonometry must have some knotty problem which causes the harassedreader to knit his brows in anxious thought. 

In answer to this demand, the literary craftsman has arisen who takeshis art with a seriousness which makes the "painful preacher" of thePuritan time seem a mere pleasure-seeker. Equipped with instruments ofprecision drawn from the psychological laboratory, he is prepared tosatisfy our craving for the difficult By the method of suggestion hetries to make us believe that we have never seen his characters before, and sometimes he succeeds. He deals in descriptions which leave us withthe impression of an indescribable something which we should recognizeif we were as clever as he is. As we are not nearly so clever, we areleft with a chastened sense of our inferiority, which is doubtless goodfor us. And all this groping for the un-obvious is connected with anequally insistent demand for realism. The novel must not only be as realas life, but it must be more so. For life, as it appears in our ordinaryconsciousness, is full of illusions. When these are stripped off and theresiduum is compressed into a book, we have that which is at onceintensely real and painfully unfamiliar. 

Now, there is a certain justification for this. A psychologist may showus aspects of character which we could not see by ourselves, as theX-rays will reveal what is not visible to the naked eye. But if theinsides of things are real, so also are the outsides. Surfaces and formsare not without their importance. 

It may be said in extenuation of Dickens that the blemish of obviousnessis one which he shared with the world he lived in. It would be too muchto say that all realities are obvious. There is a great deal that we donot see at the first glance; but there is a great deal that we do see. To reproduce the freshness and wonder of the first view of the obviousworld is one of the greatest achievements of the imagination. 

The reason why the literary artist shuns the obvious is that there istoo much of it. It is too big for the limited resources of his art. Inthe actual world, realities come in big chunks. Nature continuallyrepeats herself. She hammers her facts into our heads with a persistencywhich is often more than a match for our stupidity. If we do notrecognize a fact to-day, it will hit us in the same place to-morrow. 

We are so used to this educational method of reiteration that we make ita test of reality. An impression made upon us must be repeated before ithas validity to our reason. If a thing really happened, we argue that itwill happen again under the same conditions. That is what we mean bysaying that we are under the reign of law. There is a great familyresemblance between happenings. 

We make acquaintance with people by the same method. The recognition ofidentity depends upon the ability which most persons have of appearingto be remarkably like themselves. The reason why we think that theperson whom we met to-day is the same person we met yesterday is that he_seems_ the same. There are obvious resemblances that strike us at once. He looks the same, he acts the same, he has the same mannerisms, thesame kind of voice, and he answers to the same name. If Proteus, withthe best intention in the world, but with an unlimited variety ofself-manifestations, were to call every day, we should greet him alwaysas a stranger. We should never feel at home with so versatile a person. A character must have a certain degree of monotony about it before wecan trust it. Unexpectedness is an agreeable element in wit, but not infriendship. Our friend must be one who can say with honest Joe Gargery, "It were understood, and it are understood, and it ever will be similar, according. "

But in the use of this effective method of reiteration there is adifference between nature and a book. Nature does not care whether shebores us or not: she has us by the buttonhole, and we cannot get away. Not so with a book. When we are bored, we lay it down, and that bringsthe interview to an end. It is from the fear of our impatience that mostwriters abstain from the natural method of producing an impression. 

And they are quite right. It is only now and then that an audience willgrant an extension of time to a speaker in order that he may make hispoint more clear. They would rather miss the point. And it is still morerare for the reader to grant a similar extension in order that theauthor may tell again what he has told before. It is much easier to shutup a book than to shut up a speaker. 

The criticism of Dickens that his characters repeat themselves quitemisses the mark. As well object to an actor that he frequently respondsto an encore. If indicted for the offense, he could at least insist thatthe audience be indicted with him as accessory before the fact. 

Dickens tells us that when he read at Harrogate, "There was a remarkablygood fellow of thirty or so who found something so very ludicrous inToots that he could not compose himself at all, but laughed until he satwiping his eyes with his handkerchief, and whenever he felt Toots comingagain he began to laugh and wipe his eyes afresh. "

"Whenever he felt Toots coming again"--there you have the wholephilosophy of the matter. The young fellow found Toots amusing when hefirst laid eyes on him. He wanted to see him again, and it must alwaysbe the same Toots. 

It is useless to cavil at an author because of the means by which heproduces his effects. The important thing is that he does produce aneffect. That the end justifies the means may be a dangerous doctrine inethics, but much may be said for it in literature. The situation is likethat of a middle-aged gentleman beset by a small boy on a morning justright for snowballing. "Give me leave, mister?" cries the youthfulsharpshooter. The good-natured citizen gives leave by pulling up hiscoat-collar and quickening his pace. If the small boy can hit him, he isforgiven, if he cannot hit him, he is scorned. The fact is that Dickenswith a method as broad and repetitious as that of Nature herself doessucceed in hitting our fancy. That is, he succeeds nine times out often. 

It is the minor characters of Dickens that are remembered. And weremember them for the same reason that we remember certain faces whichwe have seen in a crowd. There is some salient feature or trick ofmanner which first attracts and then holds our attention. A person musthave some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles. There are persons whoare like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten. Thememory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings tomere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the8. 40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; butyou never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. In the scale ofbeing, the necktie may be the least important parcel of this good man'slife, but it is the only thing about him which attracts your attention. When you see it day after day at the same hour you feel that you have areal, though perhaps not a deep, acquaintance with the man behind it. Itis thus we habitually perceive the human world. We see things, and inferpersons to correspond. One peculiarity attracts us. It is not the wholeman, but it is all of him that is for us. In all this we are veryDickensy. 

We may read an acute character study and straightway forget the personwho was so admirably analyzed; but the lady in the yellow curl-papers isunforgettable. We really see very little of her, but she is real, andshe would not be so real without her yellow curl-papers. Ayellow-curl-paper-less lady in the Great White Horse Inn would be asunthinkable to us as a white-plume-less Henry of Navarre at Ivry. 

In ecclesiastical art the saints are recognized by their emblems. Whyshould not the sinners have the same means of identification? Dickenshas the courage to furnish us these necessary aids to recollection. Micawber, Mrs. Gummidge, Barkis, Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep, Betsy Trotwood, Dick Swiveiler, Mr. Mantalini, Harold Skimpole, Sairey Gamp, alwaysappear with their appropriate insignia. We should remember that it isfor our sakes. 

According to the canons of literary art, a fact should be stated clearlyonce and for all. It would be quite proper to mention the fact thatSilas Wegg had a wooden leg; but this fact having been made plain, whyshould it be referred to again? There is a sufficient reason based onsound psychology. If the statement were not repeated, we should forgetthat Mr. Wegg had a wooden leg, and by and by we should forget SilasWegg himself. He would fade away among the host of literary gentlemenwho are able to read "The Decline and Fall, " but who are not able tokeep themselves out of the pit of oblivion. But when we repeatedly seeMr. Wegg as Mr. Boffin saw him, "the literary gentleman _with_ a woodenleg, " we feel that we really have the pleasure of his acquaintance. There is not only perception of him, but what the pedagogical peoplecall apperception. Our idea of Mr. Wegg is inseparably connected withour antecedent ideas of general woodenness. 

Again, we are introduced to "a large, hard-breathing, middle-aged man, with a mouth like a fish, dull, staring eyes, and sandy hair standingupright on his head, so that he looked as if he had been choked and hadat that moment come to. " This is Mr. Pumblechook. He does not emergeslowly like a ship from below the horizon. We see him all at once, eyes, mouth, hair, and character to match. It is a case of falling intoacquaintance at first sight. We are now ready to hear what Mr. Pumblechook says and see what he does. We have a reasonable assurancethat whatever he says and does it will be just like Mr. Pumblechook. 

We enter a respectable house in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square. We go out to dinner in solemn procession. We admire the preternaturalsolidity of the furniture and the plate. The hostess is a fine woman, "with neck and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features and majesticheaddress. " Her husband, large and pompous, with little light-coloredwings "more like hairbrushes than hair" on the sides of his otherwisebald head, begins to discourse on the British Constitution. We now knowas much of Mr. Podsnap as we shall know at the end of the book. But itis a real knowledge conveyed by the method that gives dinner-partiestheir educational value. We forgive Dickens his superfluous discourse onPodsnappery in general. For his remarks are precisely of the kind whichwe make when the party is over, and we sit by the fire generalizing andallegorizing the people we have met. 

That Mr. Thomas Gradgrind was unduly addicted to hard facts might havebeen delicately insinuated in the course of two hundred pages. We mighthave felt a mild pleasure in the discovery which we had made, and thenhave gone our way forgetting what manner of man he was. What isGradgrind to us or we to Gradgrind? Dickens introduces him to us in allhis uncompromising squareness--"square coat, square legs, squareshoulders, nay, his very neckcloth is trained to take him by the throatwith an unaccommodating grasp. " We are made at once to see "the squarewall of a forehead which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyesfound commodious cellarage in the two dark caves overshadowed by thewall. " Having taken all this in at a glance, there is nothing more to bedone in the development of the character of Mr. Gradgrind. He takes hisplace among the obvious facts of existence. But in so much as we werebound to find him out sometime, shall we quarrel with Dickens because wewere enabled to do so in the first chapter?

Nor do the obvious exaggerations of Dickens arising from the exuberanceof his fancy interfere with the sense of reality. A truth is not lesstrue because it is in large print. We recognize creatures who areprodigiously like ourselves, and we laugh at the difference in scale. Did not all Lilliput laugh over the discovery of Gulliver? How theyrambled over the vast expanse of countenance, recognizing eachfeature--lips, cheek, nose, chin, brow. "How very odd, " they would sayto themselves, "and how very like!"

It is to the wholesome obviousness of Dickens that we owe the atmosphereof good cheer that surrounds his characters. No writer has pictured morescenes of squalid misery, and yet we are not depressed. There is badweather enough, but we are not "under the weather. " There are characterscreated to be hated. It is a pleasure to hate them. As to the others, whenever their trials and tribulations abate for an instant, theyrelapse into a state of unabashed contentment. 

This is unusual in literature, for most literary men are saddest whenthey write. The fact is that happiness is much more easy to experiencethan to describe, as any one may learn in trying to describe a good timehe has had. One good time is very much like another good time. Moreover, we are shy, and dislike to express our enthusiasm. We wouldn't for theworld have any one know what simple creatures we are and how little ittakes to make us happy. So we talk critically about a great many thingswe do not care very much about, and complain of the absence of manythings which we do not really miss. We feel badly about not beinginvited to a party which we don't want to go to. 

We are like a horse that has been trained to be a "high-stepper. " Byprancing over imaginary difficulties and shying at imaginary dangers hegives an impression of mettlesomeness which is foreign to his nativedisposition. 

The story-teller is on the lookout for these eager attitudes. He cannotafford to let his characters be too happy. There is a literary value inmisery that he cannot afford to lose. 

That "the course of true love never did run smooth" is an assertion ofstory-tellers rather than of ordinary lovers. The fact is that nothingis so easy as falling in love and staying there. It is a very commonexperience, so common that it attracts little attention. The course oftrue love usually runs so smoothly that there is nothing that causesremark. It is not an occasion of gossip. Two good-tempered and healthypersons are obviously made for each other. They know it, and everybodyelse knows it, and they keep on knowing it, and act, as Joe Gargerywould say, "similar, according. "

The trouble is that the literary man finds that this does not affordexciting material for a best seller. So he must invent hazards to makethe game interesting to the spectators. In a story the course of truelove must not run smooth or no one would read it. The old-time romancerbrought his young people through all sorts of misadventures. When allthe troubles he could think of were over, he left them abruptly at thechurch door, murmuring feebly to the gentle reader, "they were happyever after. "

The present-day novelist is offended at this ending. "How absurd!" hesays. "They are still in the early twenties. The world is all beforethem, and they have time to fall into all sorts of troubles which theromanticist has not thought of. Middle age is just as dangerous a periodas youth, and matrimony has its pitfalls. Let me take up the story andtell you how they didn't live happily ever afterwards, but, on thecontrary, had a cat-and-dog life of it. "

Now I would pardon the novelist if he were perfectly honest and were tosay, "Ladies and gentlemen, I am trying to interest you. I have not theskill to make a story of placid happiness interesting. So I will do thenext best thing. I will tell you a story of a different kind. It is thepicture of a kind of life that is easier to make readable. "

In making such a confession he would be in good company. EvenShakespeare, with all his dramatic genius, confessed that he could notavoid monotony in his praise of true love. Its ways were ways ofpleasantness, but did not afford much incentive to originality. 

 "Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. 'Fair, kind, and true' is all my argument, 'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent. "

But the novelist, when he takes himself too seriously as the man who isto show us "life as it is, " is not content to acknowledge hislimitations. When he pictures a situation in which there is nothing buta succession of problems and misunderstandings, he asks us to admire hisaustere faithfulness. Faithful he may be to his Art, as he understandsit, but he is not faithful to reality, unless he is able to make us seeordinary people in the act of enjoying themselves. 

The most obvious thing in life is that people are seldom as unhappy astheir circumstances would lead us to expect. Nobody is happy all thetime, and if he were, nobody is enough of a genius to make hisundeviating felicity interesting. But a great many people are happy mostof the time, and almost everybody has been happy at some time or other. It may have been only a momentary experience, but it was very real, andhe likes to think about it. He is excessively grateful to any one whorecalls the feeling. The point is that the aggregate of these good timesmakes a considerable amount of cheerfulness. 

Dickens does not attempt the impossible literary feat of showing us oneperson who is happy all the time, but he does what is more obvious, hemakes us see a great many people who have snatches of good cheer in themidst of their humdrum lives. He lets us see another obvious fact, thathappiness is more a matter of temperament than of circumstance. It isnot given as a reward of merit or as a mark of distinguishedconsideration. There is one perennial fountain of pleasure. Any one canhave a good time who can _enjoy himself_. Dickens was not abovecelebrating the kind of happiness which comes to the natural man and thenatural boy through what we call the "creature comforts. " He couldsympathize with the unadulterated self-satisfaction of little JackHorner when

 "He put in his thumb And pulled out a plum, And said, 'What a great boy am I!'"

The finding of the plum was not a matter of world-wide importance, butit was a great pleasure for Jack Horner, and he did not care who knewit. 

What joy Mr. Micawber gets out of his own eloquence! We cannot begrudgehim this unearned increment. We sympathize, as, "much affected, butstill intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up his letter andhanded it with a bow to my aunt as something she might like to keep. "

And R. Wilfer, despite his meagre salary, and despite Mrs. Wilfer, enjoys himself whenever he gets a chance. When he goes to Greenwich withBella he finds everything as it should be. "Everything was delightful. The Park was delightful; the punch was delightful, the dishes of fishwere delightful; the wine was delightful. " If that was not happiness, what was it?

Said R. Wilfer: "Supposing a man to go through life, we won't say with acompanion, but we will say with a tune. Very good. Supposing the tuneallotted to him was the 'Dead March' in 'Saul. ' Well. It would be a verysuitable tune for particular occasions--none more so--but it would bedifficult to keep time with it in the ordinary run of domestictransactions. "

It is a matter of common observation that those who have allotted tothem the most solemn music do not always keep time with it. In the"ordinary run of domestic transactions" they find many littlealleviations. In the aggregate these amount to a considerable blessing. The world may be rough, and many of its ways may be cruel, but for allthat it is a joyful sensation to be alive, and the more alive we are, the better we like it. All of which is very obvious, and it is what wewant somebody to point out for us again and again. 

THE SPOILED CHILDREN OF CIVILIZATION

To spoil a child is no easy task, for Nature is all the time working inbehalf of the childish virtues and veracities, and is gently correctingthe abnormalities of education. Still it can be done. The secret of itis never to let the child alone, and to insist on doing for him all thathe would otherwise do for himself--and more. 

In that "more" lies the spoiling power. The child must be early madeacquainted with the feeling of satiety. There must be too much ofeverything. If he were left to himself to any extent, this would be anunknown experience. For he is a hungry little creature, with a growingappetite, and naturally is busy ministering to his own needs. He isalways doing something for himself, and enjoys the exercise. The littleegoist, even when he has "no language but a cry, " uses that language tomake known to the world that he wants something and wants it very much. As his wants increase, his exertions increase also. Arms and legs, fingers and toes, muscles and nerves and busy brain are all at work toget something which he desires. He is a mechanic fashioning his littleworld to his own uses. He is a despot who insists on his divine right torule the subservient creatures around him. He is an inventor devisingways and means to secure all the ends which he has the wit to see. Thatthese great works on which he has set his heart end in self is obviousenough, but we forgive him. Altruism will come in its own time. 

In natural play a boy will be a horse or a driver. Either occupationgives him plenty to do. But the role of an elderly passenger, given asoftly cushioned seat and deposited respectfully at the journey's end, he rejects with violent expressions of scorn. It is ignominious. He willbe a policeman or robber or judge or executioner, just as the exigenciesof the game demand. These are honorable positions worthy of one whobelongs to the party of action. But do not impose upon him by asking himto act the part of the respectable citizen who is robbed and who doesnothing but telephone for the police. He is not fastidious and will takeup almost anything that is suggested, if it gives him the opportunity ofexerting himself. The demand for exertion is the irreducible minimum. 

Now to spoil all this fine enthusiasm you must arrange everything insuch a manner that the eager little worker shall find everything donebefore he has time to put his hand to it. There must be no alluringpossibilities in his tiny universe. The days of creation, when "the sonsof God shouted for joy, " must be passed before he is ushered in. He mustbe presented only with accomplished facts. There must be nothing leftfor him to make or discover. He must be told everything. All his designsmust be anticipated, by nurses and parents and teachers. They must givehim whatever good things they can think of before he has time to desirethem. From the time when elaborate mechanical toys are put into hisreluctant hands, it is understood that he is to be amused, and need notamuse himself His education is arranged for him. His companions arechosen for him. There is nothing for him to do, and if there were, thereis no incentive for him to do it. In the game of life he is neverallowed to be the horse. It is his fate to be the passenger. 

A child is spoiled when he accepts the position into which fond, foolishparents thrust him. Being a passenger on what was presumably intended tobe a pleasure excursion, he begins to find fault as soon as the journeybecomes a little wearisome. He must find fault, because that is the onlything left for him to find. Having no opportunity to exercise hiscreative faculties, he becomes a petulant critic of a world he canneither enjoy nor understand. Taking for granted that everything shouldbe done for him, he is angry because it is not done better. Hisready-made world does not please him--why should it? It never occurs tohim that if he does not like it he should try and make it better. 

Unfortunately, the characteristics of the spoiled child do not vanishwith childhood or even with adolescence. A university training does notnecessarily transform petulance into ripe wisdom. Literary ability mayonly give fluent expression to a peevish spirit. 

Among the innumerable children of an advanced civilization there arethose who have been spoiled by the petting to which they have beensubjected. Life has been made so easy for them that when they come uponhard places which demand sturdy endurance they break forth into angrycomplaints. They have been given the results of the complicatedactivities of mankind, without having done their share in the commontasks. They have not through personal endeavor learned how mucheverything costs. They are not able, therefore, to pay cheerfully forany future good. If it is not given to them at once they feel that theyhave a grievance. For friendly coöperation they are not prepared. Theymust have their own way or they will not play the game. Their fretfulcomplaints are like those of the children in the old-time market-places:"We have piped unto you and you have not danced, we have mourned untoyou and you have not lamented. "

There is a fashionable attitude of mind among many who pride themselveson their acute intellectualism. It manifests itself in a superciliouscompassion for the efforts and ambitions of the man of action. He, poorfellow, is well-meaning, but unilluminated. He is eager and energeticbecause he imagines that he is accomplishing something. If he were aserious thinker he would see that all effort is futile. We are here inan unintelligible world, a world of mighty forces, moving we know notwhither. We are subject to passions and impulses which we cannot resist. We are never so helpless as when we are in the midst of human affairs. We have great words which we utter proudly. We talk of Civilization, Christianity, Democracy, and the like. What miserable failures they allare. Civilization has failed to produce contentment. It has failed tosecure perfect justice between man and man, or to satisfy the hungrywith bread. Christianity after all these centuries of preaching leavesmankind as we see it to-day--an armed camp, nation fighting nation, class warring against class. The democratic movement about which we hearso much is equally unsuccessful. After its brilliant promises it leavesus helpless against the passion and stupidity of the mob. Populareducation adds to the tribulations of society. It rapidly increases thenumber of the discontented. The half-educated are led astray by quacksand demagogues who flourish mightily. The higher technical educationincreases that intellectual proletariat which Bismarck saw to be aperil. Science, which once was hailed as a deliverer, is now perceivedto bring only the disillusioning knowledge of our limitations. Thebankruptcy of Science follows closely upon the bankruptcy of Faith. Mechanical inventions, instead of decreasing the friction of life, enormously increase it. We are destined to be dragged along by our ownmachines which are to go faster and faster. Philanthropy increases thenumber of the unfit. The advances of medicine are only apparent, whilestatistics show that tuberculosis, a disease of early life, decreases, cancer and diseases of later life increase. 

As for the general interest in social amelioration, that is the worstsign of all. "Coming events cast their shadows before, " and we may seethe shadow of the coming Revolution. Is there any symptom of decadencemore sure than when the moral temperature suddenly rises above normal?Watch the clinical charts of Empire. In the period of national vigor theblood is cool. But the time arrives when the period of growth haspassed. Then a boding sense comes on. The huge frame of the patient isfeverish. The social conscience is sensitive. All sorts of soft-heartedproposals for helping the masses are proposed. The world rulers becometoo tenderhearted for their business. Then comes the end. 

Read again the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Howadmirable were the efforts of the "good emperors, " and how futile!Consider again the oft-repeated story of the way the humanitarianism ofRousseau ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. 

With such gloomy forebodings do the over-civilized thinkers and writerstry to discourage the half-civilized and half-educated workers, who aretrying to make things better. How shall we answer the prophets of ill?

Not by denying the existence of the evils they see, or the possibilityof the calamities which they fear. What we object to is the mentalattitude toward the facts that are discovered. The spoiled child, whenit discovers something not to its liking, exaggerates the evil, andindulges its ill-temper. 

The well-trained man faces the evil, studies it, measures it, and thensets to work. He is well aware that nothing human is perfect, and thatto accomplish one thing is only to reveal another thing which needs tobe done. There must be perpetual readjustment, and reconsideration. Whatwas done yesterday must be done over again to-day in a somewhatdifferent way. But all this does not prove the futility of effort. Itonly proves that the effort must be unceasing, and that it must be moreand more wisely directed. 

He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity asan actual achievement. He places in parallel columns the maxims ofJesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state ofChristian churches. The discrepancy is obvious enough. But it does notprove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work isunfinished. 

A political party may adopt a platform filled with excellent proposalswhich if thoroughly carried out would bring in the millennium. But it istoo much to expect that it would all be accomplished in four years. Atthe end of that period we should not be surprised if the reformersshould ask for a further extension of time. 

The spoiled children of civilization eliminate from their problem theone element which is constant and significant--human effort. They forgetthat from the beginning human life has been a tremendous struggleagainst great odds. Nothing has come without labor, no advance has beenwithout daring leadership. New fortunes have always had their hazards. 

Forgetting all this, and accepting whatever comforts may have come tothem as their right, they are depressed and discouraged by their visionof the future with its dangers and its difficulties. They habituallytalk of the civilized world as on the brink of some great catastrophewhich it is impossible to avoid. This gloomy foreboding is looked uponas an indication of wisdom. 

It should be dismissed, I think, as an indication of childish unreason, unworthy of any one who faces realities. It is still true that "themorrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto theday is the evil thereof. "

The notion that coming events cast shadows before is a superstition. Howcan they? A shadow must be the shadow of something. The only events thatcan cast a shadow are those which have already taken place. Behind themis the light of experience, shining upon actualities which intercept itsrays. 

The shadows which affright us are of our own making. They areprojections into the future of our own experiences. They are sharplydenned silhouettes, rather than vague omens. When we look at themclosely we can recognize familiar features. We are dealing with causeand effect. What is done foreshadows what remains to be done. Every actimplies some further acts as its results. When a principle is recognizedits practical applications must follow. When men begin to reason fromnew premises they are bound to come to new conclusions. 

It is evident that in the last half-century enough discoveries have beenmade to keep us busy for a long time. Every scientific advance upsetssome custom and interferes with some vested interest. You cannotdiscover the truth about tuberculosis without causing a great deal oftrouble to the owners of unsanitary dwellings. Some of them are widowswhose little all is invested in this kind of property. The healthinspectors make life more difficult for them. 

Scholarly research among ancient manuscripts is the cause of destructivecriticism. The scholar with the most peaceable intentions in the worlddisturbs some one's faith. His discovery perhaps involves thereconstruction of a whole system of philosophy. 

A law is passed. The people are pleased with it, and then forget allabout it. But by and by a conscientious executive comes into office whothinks it his duty to enforce the law. Such accidents are liable tohappen in the most good-humored democracy. When he tries to enforce itthere is a burst of angry surprise. He is treated as a revolutionist whois attacking the established order. And yet to the moderatelyphilosophic observer the making of the law and its enforcement belong tothe same process. The difficulty is that though united logically theyare often widely separated chronologically. 

The adjustment to a new theory involves changes in practice. But thepractical man who has usually little interest in new theories issurprised and angry when the changes come. He looks upon them asarbitrary interferences with his rights. 

Even when it is admitted that when considered in a large way the changeis for the better, the question arises, Who is to pay for it? Thediscussion on this point is bound to be acrimonious, as we are notsaints and nobody wants to pay more than his share of the costs ofprogress. Even the price of liberty is something which we grumble over. 

You have noticed how it is when a new boulevard is laid in any part ofthe city. There is always a dispute between the municipality and theabutters. Should the abutters be assessed for betterments or should theysue for damages? Usually both actions are instituted. The cost of suchlitigation should be included in the price which the community pays forthe improvement. 

If people always knew what was good for them and acted accordingly, thiswould be a very different world, though not nearly so interesting. Butwe do not know what is good for us till we try; and human life is spentin a series of experiments. The experiments are costly, but there is noother way of getting results. All that we can say to a person whorefuses to interest himself in these experiments, or who looks upon allexperiments as futile which do not turn out as he wished, is that hisattitude is childish. The great commandment to the worker or thinkeris, --Thou shalt not sulk. 

 * * * * *

Sulking is no more admirable in those of great reputation than it is inthe nursery. Thackeray declared that, in his opinion, "love is a higherintellectual exercise than hate. " And looked at as an exercise of mentalpower courage must always be greater than the most highlyintellectualized form of fear or despair. 

I cannot take with perfect seriousness Matthew Arnold's oft-quotedlines:--

 "Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb. Silent they are, though not content, And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more. "

If that is ever the attitude of the best minds, it is only a momentaryone of which they are quickly ashamed. Achilles sulked in his tent whenhe was pondering not a big problem, but a small grievance. The kings ofmodern thought who are described seem like kings out of a job. We areinclined to turn from them to the intellectual monarchs _de facto_. Theyare the ones who take up the hard job which the representatives of theold régime give up as hopeless. For when the king has abdicated andcontends no more--Long live the King!

The real thinkers of any age do not remain long in a blue funk. Theyalways find something important to think about. They always point outsomething worth doing. They cannot passively wait to see the futurecome. They are too busy making it. 

Matthew Arnold struck a truer note in Rugby Chapel. The true leaders ofmankind can never be mere intellectualists. There must be a union ofintellectual and moral energy like that which he recognized in hisfather. To the fainting, dispirited race, --

 "Ye like angels appear, Radiant with ardour divine, Beacons of hope, ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow; Ye alight in our van: at your voice Panic, despair, flee away. "

When those whom we have looked upon as our intellectual leaders growdisheartened, we must remember that a lost leader does not necessarilymean a lost cause. When those whom we had called the kings of modernthought are dumb, we can find new leadership. "Change kings with us, "replied an Irish officer after the panic of the Boyne; "change kingswith us, and we will fight you again. "

ON REALISM AS AN INVESTMENT

_From a Real-Estate Dealer to a Realistic Novelist_

Dear Sir:--

I have been for some time interested in your projects for theimprovement of literature. When I saw your name in the newspapers, Ilooked you up in "Who's Who, " and found that your rating is excellentWhat pleased me was the bold way you attacked the old firms which havebeen living on their reputations. The way you showed up Dickens, Thackeray & Co. Showed that you know a thing or two. As for W. Scott andthe other speculators who have been preying on the credulity of thepublic, you gave them something to think about. You showed conclusivelythat instead of dealing in hard facts, they have been handing outfiction under the guise of novels. 

Our minds run in the same channel: you deal in reality and I deal inrealty, but the principle is the same. I inclose some of the literaturewhich I am sending out. You see, I warn people against investing instocks and bonds. These are mere paper securities, which take tothemselves wings and fly away. But if you can get hold of a few acres ofdirt, there you are. When a panic comes along, and Wall Street goes tosmash, you can sit on your front porch in South Canaan without a care. You have your little all in something real. 

You followed the same line of argumentation. You showed that there wasnothing imaginative about your work. You could give a warranty deed forevery fact which you put on the market. I was so pleased with yourmethod that I bought a job lot of your books, so that I could see formyself how you conducted your business. Will you allow me, as one in thesame line, to indulge in a little criticism? I am afraid that you aremaking the same mistake I made when I first went into real estate. I wasso possessed with the idea of the value of land that I became "landpoor. " It strikes me that a novelist may become reality poor in the sameway; that is, by investing in a great many realities that are not worthwhat he pays for them. 

You see, there is a fact which we do not mention in our circulars. Thereis a great deal of land lying out of doors. _Some_ land is in greatdemand, and the real trick is to find out what that land is. You can'tgo out on the plains of Wyoming and give an acre of land the same valuewhich an acre has in the Wall Street district. I speak from experience, having tried to convince the public that if the acres are real, thevalues I suggested must be real also. People wouldn't believe me, and Ilost money. 

And the same thing is true about improvements. They must be related tothe market value of the land on which they are placed. A forty-storybuilding at Goshenville Corners would be a mistake. There is no call forit. 

This is the mistake which I fear you have been making. Your novel is acarefully prepared structure, and must have cost a great deal, but it isbuilt on ground which is not worth enough to justify the investment. Ithas not what we call "site value. " You yourself declare that you have noparticular interest in the characters you describe at such length. Allthat you have to say for them is that they are real. It is as if I wereto put up an expensive apartment-house on a vacant lot I have at NorthOvid. North Ovid is real, and so would be the apartment-house; but whatof it?

There are ninety millions of people in this country, all with characterswhich might be carefully studied, if we had time. But we haven't thetime. So we have to choose our intimates. We prefer to know those whoseem to us most worth knowing. You should remember that the novelist hasno monopoly on realism. The newspapers are full of all sorts ofrealities. The historian is a keen competitor. 

Do you know that when I went to the bookstore to get your works I fellin with a book on Garibaldi by a man named Trevelyan. When I got home Isat down with it and couldn't let it go. Garibaldi was all the timedoing things, which you never allow your characters to do because youthink they would not be real. He was acting in the most romantic andheroic manner possible. And his Thousand trooped after him as gayly asif they were in a melodrama. And yet I understand that Garibaldi was areal person, and that his exploits can be authenticated. 

The competition in your line of business is fierce. You try to hold thereader's attention to the states of mind of a few futile persons whonever did anything in particular that would make people want to knowthem exhaustively. And then along comes the historian who tells allabout some one who does things they are interested in. 

You can't wonder at the result. People who ought to be interested infiction are carried away by biography, and the chances are that some ofthem will never come back. When they once get a taste for highly spicedintellectual victuals, you can't get them to relish the breakfast foodyou set before them. It seems to them insipid. 

I know what you will say about Garibaldi. He was not your kind. Youwouldn't touch such a character if it was offered to you at a bargain. After looking over that expedition to Sicily you would say that therewas nothing in it for you. The motives weren't complicated enough. Itwas just plain heroics. You don't care so much for passions as forproblems. You want something to analyze. 

Well, what do you say to Cavour? When I was deep in Garibaldi I found Icouldn't understand what he was driving at without knowing somethingabout Cavour who was always mixed up with what was going on in thatsection of the world. 

So I took up a Life of Cavour by a man named Thayer. It's the way Ihave; one thing suggests another. Once I went up to Duluth and investedin some corner lots on Superior Street. That suggested Superior City, just across the river. The two towns were running each other down at agreat rate just then, so I stopped at West Superior to see what it hadto say for itself. The upshot of the matter was that I sized up thesituation about like this. A big city has _got_ to grow up at the headof Lake Superior. If Duluth grows as much as it thinks it will, it'sbound to take in Superior. And if Superior grows as much as it thinks itwill, it can't help taking in Duluth. So I concluded that the best thingfor me was to take a flier in both. 

When I saw what a big proposition the Unification of Italy was, I knewthat there was room for the development of some mighty interestingcharacters before they got through with the business. So I plunged intothe Life of Cavour, and I've never regretted it. 

Talk about problems! That hero of yours in your last book--I know youdon't believe in heroes, --at any rate, the leading man--was an innocentchild walking with his nurse along Easy Street, when compared withCavour. Cavour had fifty problems at the same time, and all of them wereinsoluble to every one except himself. 

His project, as I have just told you, was the unification of Italy. Buthe hadn't any regulated monopoly in the business. A whole bunch ofunifiers were ahead of him; each one of them was trying to unify Italyin his own way. They were all working at cross-purposes. 

Now Cavour didn't try, as you might have expected, to reconcile thesepeople. He saw that it couldn't be done. He didn't mind their hating oneanother; when they got too peaceable he would make an occasion for themto hate him. He kept them all irreconcilably at work, till, in spite ofthemselves, they got to working together. And when they began to dothat, Cavour would encourage them in it. As long as they were allworking for Italy he didn't care what they thought of each other or ofhim. He had his eye on the main chance--for Italy. 

I notice that in your novel, when your man got into trouble he threw upthe sponge. That rather turned me against him and I wished I hadn'twasted so much time on his affairs. That wasn't the way with Thayer'shero. One of the largest deals Cavour ever made was with Napoleon III, who at that time had the reputation of being the biggest promoter offree institutions in Europe. He was a regular wizard in diplomacy. Whatever he said went. You see they hadn't realized then that he wasdoing business on borrowed capital. 

Well, Napoleon agreed to underwrite, for Cavour, the whole project ofItalian Unity. Everybody thought it was going through all right, whensuddenly Napoleon, from a place called Villafranca, wired that the dealwas off. 

That floored Cavour. He was down and out. He couldn't realize ten centson the dollar on his securities. If he had been like your man, Thayerwould have had to bring his book to an end with that chapter. He wouldhave left the reader plunged in gloom. 

Cavour was mad for awhile and went up to Switzerland to cool off. Thayerdescribes the way he went up to a friend's house, near Lake Geneva, withhis coat on his arm. "Unannounced, he strode into the drawing-room, threw himself into an easy-chair, and asked for a glass of iced water. "

Then he poured out his wrath over the Villafranca incident, but hedidn't waste much time over that. In a few moments he wasenthusiastically telling of the new projects he had formed. "We must notlook back, but forward, " he told his friends. "We have followed oneroad. It is blocked. Very well, we will follow another. "

That's the kind of man Cavour was. You forgot that he was a Europeanstatesman. When you saw him with his coat off, drinking ice-water andtalking about the future, you felt toward him just as you would toward afirst-rate American who was of Presidential size. 

Now, I'm not saying that there's any more realism to the square inch ina Life of Cavour than in a Life of Napoleon III. It would take as muchlabor on the part of a biographer to tell what Napoleon III really wasas to tell what Cavour really was--perhaps more. But you come up againstthe law of supply and demand. You can't get around that. There isn'tmuch inquiry for Napoleon, now that his boom is over. 

The way Thayer figured it was, I suppose, something like this. It wouldtake eight or ten years to assemble the materials for a first-ratebiography such as he wished to make. If he chose Napoleon there would besteady deterioration in the property, and when the improvements were puton there would be no demand. If he put the same work on Cavour, he wouldget the unearned increment. I think he showed his sense. 

Of course the biographer has the advantage of you in one importantparticular. He knows how his story is coming out In a way, he's bettingon a certainty. Now you, as I judge, don't know how your story is comingout, and if it doesn't come out, all you have to do is to say that isthe way you meant it to be. You cut off so many square feet of reality, and let it go at that. Now that is very convenient for you, but from thereader's point of view, it's unsatisfactory. It mixes him up, and hefeels a grudge against you whenever he thinks how much better he mighthave spent his time than in following a plot that came to nothing. Yousee you are running up against that same law of supply and demand. Thereare so many failures in the world that the market is overstocked withthem. There is a demand for successes. 

When I was in an old house which I took on the foreclosure of a mortgagethe other day, I came upon a little old novel, of a hundred years ago. It was the sentimental kind that you despise. It was called "Alonzo andMelissa, " which was enough to condemn it in your eyes. But the prefaceseemed to me to have some sense. 

The author says: "It is believed that this story contains no indecorousstimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptibleto the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved anddoubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences. In this the writer believes that he has generally copied Nature. "

I have a feeling that those inexplicated incidents in your novel mighthave been elucidated by their consequences if you had chosen a personwhose actions were of the kind to have some important consequences. Intying up to an inconsequential person you lost that chance. 

I don't mean to discourage you, because I believe you have it in you tomake a novel that would be as interesting as half the biographies thatare written. But you must learn a trick from the successful biographers, and not invest in second-rate realities. The best is none too good. Youhave to exercise judgment in your initial investment. 

Now, if I were going to build a realistic novel, and had as much skillin detail as you have, and as much intellectual capital to invest, Iwould go right down to the business centre, so to speak, and invest in areally valuable piece of reality; and then I would develop it. The firstinvestment might seem pretty steep, but it would pay in the end. If youcould get a big man, enthusiastic over a big cause, in conflict with bigforces, and bring in a lot of worth-while people to back him up, andthen bring the whole thing to some big conclusion, you would have anovel that would be as real as the biographies I have been reading, andas interesting. I think it would be worth trying. 

Respectfully yours, R. S. LANDMANN. 

P. S. If you don't feel that you can afford to make such a heavyinvestment as I have suggested, why don't you put your material into ashort story?

TO A CITIZEN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

Our talk last night set me to thinking. It was the first time during allthe years of our acquaintance that I had ever heard you speak in adiscouraged tone. You have always been healthy to a fault, and yourgood-humor has been contagious. Especially has it been pleasant to hearyou talk about the country and its Manifest Destiny. 

I remember, some years ago, how merrily you used to laugh about the"calamity-howler, " whose habitat at that time was Kansas. The farmers ofKansas were not then as prosperous as they are now. When several badyears came together they didn't like it, and began to make complaints. Their raucous cries you found very amusing. 

The calamity-howler, being ignorant of the laws of political economy andof the conditions of progress, did not take his calamities in the spiritin which they were offered to him by the rest of the country. He did notfind satisfaction in the thought that other people were prosperousthough he was not. Instead of acting reasonably and voting the straightticket from motives of party loyalty, he raised all sorts of irrelevantissues. He treated Prosperity as if it were a local issue, instead of aplank in the National Platform. 

Now, all this was opposed to your good-natured philosophy of progress. You were eminently practical, and it was a part of your creed never to"go behind the returns. " As to Prosperity, it was "first come, firstserved. " In this land of opportunity the person who first sees anopportunity should take it, asking no questions as to why he came by it. It is his by right of discovery. 

You were always a great believer in the good old American doctrine ofManifest Destiny. This was a big country and destined to grow bigger. Toyou bigness was its own excuse for being. Optimism was as natural asbreathing. It was manifest destiny that cities and corporations andlocomotives and armies and navies and national debts and dailynewspapers, with their Sunday supplements, and bank clearances andtariffs and insurance companies and the price of living should go up. Itwas all according to a beautiful natural law, "as fire ascending seeksthe sun. " Besides these things, it was manifest destiny that otherthings not so good should grow bigger also, --graft and slums and foolishluxury. They were all involved in the increasing bigness of things. 

Sometimes you would grumble about them, but in a good-natured way, asone who recognized their inevitability. Just as you said, boys will beboys, so you said, politicians will be politicians, and business isbusiness. If one is living in a growing country he must not begrudge thecost of the incidentals. 

In your talk there was a cheerful cynicism which amazed theslower-witted foreigner. You talked of the pickings and stealings ofyour elected officers as you would of the pranks of a precociousyoungster. It was all a part of the day's growth. Yet you were reallypublic-spirited. You would have sprung to arms in a moment if you hadthought that your country was in danger or that its institutions werebeing undermined. 

Your good-natured tolerance was a part of your philosophy of life. Itwas bound up in your triumphant Americanism. You were a hero-worshipper, and you delighted in "big men. " The big men who gained the prizes wereefficient and unscrupulous and unassuming; that is, they never assumedto be better than their neighbors. They looked ahead, they saw howthings were going, and went with them. And on the whole, things, youbelieved, were going well. Though they were not scrupulously just, thesebig men were generous, and were willing to give away what they hadacquired. Though grasping, they were not avaricious. They grasped thingswith the strong prehensile grasp of the infant, rather than with theclutch of the miser. They took them because they were there, and notbecause they had any well-defined idea as to whether they belonged tothem or not. 

These big men were very likable. They were engrossed in big projects, and they were doing necessary work in the development of the country. They naturally took the easiest and most direct methods to get atresults. They would not go out of the way to corrupt a legislature anymore than they would go out of the way to find a range of mountains. Butif the mountain stood in the way of the railroad, they would go throughit regardless of expense. If the legislature was in their way, theywould deal with it as best they could. They were willing to pay what itcost to accomplish a purpose which they believed was good. 

Their attitude toward the Public was one which you did not criticize, for it seemed to you to be reasonable. The Public was an abstraction, like Nature. We are all under the laws of Nature. But Nature doesn'tmind whether we consciously obey or not. She goes her way, and we goours. We get all she will let us have. So with the Public. The Publicwas not regarded as a person or as an aggregate of persons, it was thepotentiality of wealth. They never thought of the Public as beingstarved or stunted, or even as being seriously inconvenienced because ofwhat they took from it, any more than they thought of Nature being thepoorer because of the electricity which they induced to run along theirwires. A public franchise was a plum growing on a convenient tree. Awise man would wait till it was ripe and then, when no one was looking, would pick it for himself The whole transaction was a trial of witsbetween rival pickers. A special privilege, according to this view, involved no special obligations; it was a reward for special abilities. Once given, it was property to be enjoyed in perpetuity. 

This was the code of ethics which you, in common with multitudes ofAmerican citizens, accepted. You have yourself prospered. Indeed, thingshad gone so well with you in this best of all countries that anyfundamental change seemed unthinkable. 

But that a change has come seems evident from your conversation lastnight. All that fine optimism which your friends have admired seemed tohave deserted you. There was a querulous note which was strangely out ofkeeping with your usual disposition. It was what you have beenaccustomed to stigmatize as un-American. When you discussed the presentstate of the country, you talked--you will pardon me for saying it--forall the world like a calamity-howler. 

The country, you said, is in a bad way, and it must be awakened from itslethargy. After a period of unexampled prosperity and marvelousdevelopment, something has happened. Just what it is you don't reallyknow, but it's very alarming. Instead of working together forProsperity, the people are listening to demagogues, and trying all sortsof experiments, half of which you are sure are unconstitutional. Thecaptains of industry who have made this the biggest country in the worldare thwarted in their plans for further expansion. 

There are people who are criticizing the courts, and there are courtswhich are criticizing business enterprises that they don't understand. There are so-called experts--mere college professors--who are tinkeringthe tariff. There are over-zealous executives who are currying favorwith the crowd by enforcing laws which are well enough on the statutebooks, but which were never meant to go further. As if matters were notbad enough already, there are demagogues who are stirring up classfeeling by proposing new laws. Party loyalty is being undermined, andthe new generation doesn't half understand the great issues which havebeen settled for all time. It is rashly interested in new issues. Forthe life of you, you say, you can't understand what these issues are. 

New and divisive questions which lead only to faction are propounded sothat the voters are confused. The great principle of RepresentativeGovernment, on which the Republic was founded, is being attacked. Instead of choosing experienced men to direct public policy, there is anappeal to the passions of the mob. The result of all this agitation isan unsettlement that paralyzes business. The United States is in dangerof losing the race for commercial supremacy. Germany will forge ahead ofus. Japan will catch us. Socialism and the Yellow Peril will be upon us. The Man on Horseback will appear, and what shall we do then?

I did not understand whether you looked for these perils to cometogether, or whether they were to appear in orderly succession. But Icame to the conclusion that either the country is in a bad way, or youare. You will pardon me if I choose the latter alternative, for I too aman optimistic American, and I like to choose the lesser of two evils. Ifthere is an attack of "hysteria, " I should like to think of it assomewhat localized, rather than having suddenly attacked the wholecountry. 

Now, my opinion is that the American people were never minding their ownbusiness more good-humoredly and imperturbably than at the presentmoment. They have been slowly and silently making up their minds, andnow they are beginning to express a deliberate judgment. What you taketo be the noise of demagogues, I consider to be the sober sense of agreat people which is just finding adequate expression. 

You seem to be afraid of an impending revolution, and picture it as asort of French Revolution, a destructive overturn of all existinginstitutions. But may not the revolution which we are passing through besomething different, --a great American revolution, which is beingcarried through in the characteristic American fashion?

Walt Whitman expresses the great characteristic of American history:"Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars. "

It is this mass movement, slow at first, but swift and irresistible whenthe mass has come to consciousness of its own tendency, which has alwaysconfounded astute persons who have been interested only in particulars. It is a movement like that of the Mississippi at flood-time. The greatriver flows within its banks as long as it can. But the time comes whenthe barriers are too frail to hold back the mighty waters. Then theriver makes, very quickly, a channel for itself. You cannot understandwhat has happened till you take into account the magnitude of the riveritself. 

Now, the successful man of affairs, who has been intent on the incidentsof the passing day, is often strangely oblivious of the mass movements. You, for example, are disturbed by the unrest which is manifest, and youlook for some one whom you can blame for the disturbance. But perhaps noone is to blame. 

I think that what is happening may be traced to a sufficient cause. Weare approaching the end of one great era in American history and we arepreparing, as best we may, for a new era. The consciousness of themagnitude of the change has come to us rather suddenly. One big jobwhich has absorbed the energies and stimulated the ambition of Americansfor three hundred years is practically finished. Some work still remainsto be done on it, but it no longer demands the highest ability. The endis in sight. 

This work has been the settlement of a vast territory, lying between theAtlantic and Pacific, with a population of white men. It was a task sobig in itself that it fired the imagination and developed that peculiartype of character which we call American. In its outlines the task wasso broad and simple that it could be comprehended by the most ordinaryintelligence. It was so inevitable that it impressed upon all thoseengaged in it the belief in Manifest Destiny. 

What has been treated by incompetent critics as mere boastfulness hasin reality been practical sagacity and foresight. Sam Slick was onlyexpressing a truth when he said, "The Yankees see further than mostfolks. " This was not because of any innate cleverness but because oftheir advantage in position. Americans have had a more unobstructed viewof the future than had the people of the overcrowded Old World. Thesettlers on the shores of the Atlantic had behind them a region whichbelonged to them and their children. They soon became aware of theriches of this hinterland and of its meaning for the future. This vastregion must be settled. Roads must be built over the mountains, theforests must be felled, mines must be opened up, farms must be broughtunder the plow, great cities must be built by the rivers and lakes, there must be schools and churches and markets established where now thetribes of Indians roam. The surplus millions of Europe must betransported to this wilderness. 

It was a big task and yet a simple one. The movement was as obvious asthat of Niagara--Niagara is wonderful but inevitable. A great deal ofwater flowing over a great deal of rock, that is all there is of it. Thedestiny of America was equally obvious from the beginning. Here was agreat deal of land which was destined to be inhabited by a great manypeople. It didn't matter very much what kind of people they were so thatthey were healthy and industrious. The greatness of the country wasassured if only there were enough of them. 

From the very first the future greatness of the land was seen byopen-eyed explorers. They all were able to appreciate it. Captain JohnSmith does not compare Virginia with Great Britain; he compares it tothe whole of Europe. After mentioning the natural resources of eachcountry, he declares that the new land had all these and more, andneeded only men to develop them. And Captain John Smith's forecast hasproved to be correct. 

In the first half of the last century, a party of twenty young men fromCambridge, Massachusetts, started on what at that time was a greatadventure, the overland journey to Oregon. The preface to Wyeth's"Oregon Expedition" throws light on the ideas of those who were notstatesmen or captains of industry, but only plain American citizenssharing the vision which was common. 

"The spot where our adventurer was born and grew up had many peculiarand desirable advantages over most others in the County of Middlesex. Besides rich pasturage, numerous dairies, and profitable orchards, itpossessed the luxuries of well-cultivated gardens of all sorts ofculinary vegetables, and all within three miles of Boston Market House, and two miles of the largest live-cattle market in New England. " Besidesthese blessings there is enumerated "a body of water commonly calledFresh Pond. "

"But Mr. Wyeth said, 'All this availeth me nothing, so long as I readbooks in which I find that by going only about four thousand milesoverland, from the shore of our Atlantic to the shore of the Pacific, after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers and otters, weshall be able, after building vessels for the purpose, to carry our mostvaluable peltry to China and Cochin China, our sealskins to Japan, andour superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to theSpanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworkingand underselling the people of Hindustan; and, to crown all, to extendfar and wide the traffic in oil, by killing tame whales on the spot, instead of sailing around the stormy region of Cape Horn. '

"All these advantages and more were suggested to divers discontented andimpatient young men. Talk to them of the great labor, toil, risk, andthey would turn a deaf ear to you; argue with them and you might as wellreason with a snowstorm. "

If you would understand the driving power of America, you mustunderstand "the divers discontented and impatient young men" who in eachgeneration have found in the American wilderness an outlet for theirenergies. In the rough contacts with untamed Nature they learned to beresourceful. Emerson declared that the country went on mostsatisfactorily, not when it was in the hands of the respectable Whigs, but when in the hands of "these rough riders--legislators inshirt-sleeves--Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger--or whatever hard-headArkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half-orator, half-assassin, torepresent its wrath and cupidity at Washington. "

The men who made America had an "excess of virility. " "Men of thissurcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies;cannot read novels and play whist; cannot satisfy all their wants at theThursday Lecture and the Boston Athenæum. They pine for adventure andmust go to Pike's Peak; had rather die by the hatchet of the Pawnee thansit all day and every day at the counting-room desk. They are made forwar, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing, and the joy ofeventful living. "

In Emerson's day there was ample scope for all these varied energies onthe frontier. "There are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring Expeditionsenough appertaining to America to find them in files to gnaw andcrocodiles to eat. "

But it must have occurred to some one to ask, "What will happen when theOregons and Californias are filled up?" Well, the answer is, "See whatis happening now. " Instead of settling down to herb-tea and elegies, Young America, having finished one big job, is looking for another. Thenoises which disturb you are not the cries of an angry proletariat, butare the shouts of eager young fellows who are finding new opportunities. They have the same desire to do big things, the same joy in eventfulliving, that you had thirty years ago. Only the tasks that challengethem have taken a different form. 

When you hear the words "Conservation, " "Social Service, " "SocialJustice, " and the like, you are apt to dismiss them as mere fads. Youthink of the catchwords of ineffective reformers whom you have knownfrom your youth. But the fact is that they represent to-day theenthusiasms of a new generation. They are big things, with big menbehind them. They represent the Oregons and Californias toward whichsturdy pioneers are moving, undeterred by obstacles. 

The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moraldevelopment of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of thepeople depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. Is thisstill to be a land of opportunity? Ninety millions of people are alreadyhere. What shall be done with the next ninety millions? That wealth isto increase goes without saying. But how is it to be distributed? Are wetending to a Plutocracy, or can a real Democracy hold its own? Powerfulmachinery has been invented. How can this machinery be controlled andused for truly human ends? We have learned the economies that resultfrom organization. Who is to get the benefit of these economies?

So long as such questions were merely academic, practical persons likeyourself paid little attention to them. Now they are being asked bypersons as practical as yourself who are intent on 'getting results. 'And what is more, they employ the instruments of precision furnished bymodern science. 

You have been pleased over the millions of dollars which have beenlavished on education. The fruits of this are now being seen. Hosts ofable young men have been studying Government and Sociology and Economicsand History. These have been the most popular courses in all ourcolleges. And they have been studied in a new way. The old formulas andthe old methods have been fearlessly criticized. New standards ofefficiency have been presented. The scientific method has been extendedto the sphere of moral relations. It has been demonstrated to theseyoung men that the resources of the country may be indefinitelyincreased by the continuous application of trained intelligence todefinite ends. The old Malthusian doctrine has given way before appliedscience. The population may be doubled and the standard of livingincreased at the same time, if we plan intelligently. The expert canserve the public as efficiently as he has served private interests, ifonly the public can be educated to appreciate him, and persuaded toemploy him. 

This is what the "social unrest" means in America. It is not the unrestof the weak and the unsuccessful. It is the unrest of the strong andambitious. You cannot still it by talking about prosperity: of course weare prosperous, after a fashion, but it is a fashion that no longerpleases us. We want something better and we propose to get it. Whatdisturbs you is the appearance in force of a generation that has turnedits attention to a new set of problems, and is attempting to solve themby scientific methods. It is believed that there is a Science ofGovernment as well as an Art of Politics. The new generation has arespect, born of experience, for the expert. It seeks the man who knowsrather than the clever manager. It demands of public servants not simplythat they be honest, but that they be efficient. 

Its attitude to the political boss is decidedly less respectful thanthat to which you were accustomed. You looked upon him as a remarkablyastute character, and you attributed to him an uncanny ability toforecast the future. These young men have discovered that his ability isonly a vulgar error. Remove the conditions created by publicindifference and ignorance, and he vanishes. In restoring power to thepeople, they find that a hundred useful things can be done which thepolitical wiseacres declared to be impossible. 

When I consider the new and vigorous forces in American life I cannotagree with your apprehensions; but there is one thing which you saidwith which I heartily agree. You said that you wished we might settledown to sound and constructive work, and get rid of the "muck-raker. "

I agree with you that the muck-raker stands in the way of large plansfor betterment. But it might be well to refresh our minds in regard towhat is really meant by the man with the muck-rake. He is not the manwho draws our attention to abuses which can be abolished by determinedeffort. He is the man who apologizes for abuses that are profitable tohimself. He prefers his petty interests to any ideal good. His characterwas most admirably drawn by Bunyan:--

"The Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a roomwhere was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rakein his hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crownin His hand, and proffered him that crown for his muck-rake, but the mandid neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, thesmall sticks, and the dust of the floor. 

"'Then, ' said Christiana, 'I persuade myself that I know somewhat themeaning of this; for this is the figure of a man of this world, is itnot, good sir?'

"'Thou hast said right, ' said he.... 

"'Then, ' said Christiana, 'O deliver me from this muck-rake. '

"'That prayer, ' said the Interpreter, 'has lain by till it is almostrusty. "Give me not riches, " is scarce the prayer of one in tenthousand. '"

The man with the muck-rake, then, is one who can look no way butdownward, and is so intent on collecting riches for himself that he doesnot see or regard any higher interests. I agree with you that if we areto have any constructive work in American society the first thing is toget rid of the man with the muck-rake, and to put in his place the Manwith a Vision. 

THE END

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