Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Old Mrs. Grumpet has just called. She has told the missus for the n^th time about her troubles. She has all the diseases she ever heard of. As soon as she hears of a new one she goes and has it. She has more symptoms than a patent-medicine almanac. And it’s all along of that blue mass she took just before Austey was born. She’s a dreadful, vast, steamy creature.

She has left an aroma of added wretchedness in the house. We opened the window to admit some fresh air, and the flies came in. I loathe flies.

I chased them with a fly-swatter and broke an expensive vase. All vases must some day be shattered, as all men must die.

All women must die, too, and all children, also all dogs, cats, horses, cows, and grizzly bears. A hundred years from now everybody and everything will be dead. There will be a new crop. After awhile they, too, will die. What’s the use?

The gas-stove is out of fix this morning. So am I. So is the universe.

There is no news in the paper. Newspapers are all poor. Why read? Aren’t you miserable enough as you are?

I am trying to have a vacation and enjoy myself. This morning I played a game of tennis and was beaten by a poor boob that played worse than I. Then I played two games of solitaire. Lost both.

I went to the cupboard to see——. Nothing there but grape-juice.

The weather is thickening. It is going to rain. It is hours and hours till bedtime.

THE LITTLE GOD OF HAPPY ENDINGS

Some woman who knows how to tell a story sends me the following:

This is a fairy-story, but it is not about a princess; princesses are always wonderfully beautiful and wise and good, and the little girl in this story was a rather silly little girl.

She lived in a little house, on a great highway, and watched and waited for the coming of the prince for whom all girls, big and small, great princesses and poor silly little spinners, watch and wait.

Many people passed the little house by the roadside, as they travelled along the great highway. Once or twice the girl who watched thought she saw the prince in the distance, but always as he approached the likeness faded. Then came one traveller, who tarried for a while at the little house. He came quietly, unostentatiously, and the prince was to come riding on a white charger, clothed in the splendor of purple and gold. So she hid herself under a cloak until the traveller again set out on the great highway, alone.

But after he had gone she saw that he had left a shadow behind him, and for some contrary, woman-reason, she hid it, and guarded it carefully, in case he should return and claim it.

The days became weeks—the weeks months—the months years, and the prince did not appear. Gradually she gave up the hope of him ever appearing, and no longer watched for him, but occupied her days instead with wholesome labor. And now she was no longer a silly little girl, but a lonely woman.

One evening she stood in the doorway, watching the sunset. The highway was quite deserted, save for one lone traveller, off in the distance, who seemed vaguely familiar. As he approached, she recognized in him the one who had tarried at her dwelling almost five years before.

She went back into the house, to get the shadow from its secret hiding-place, to return it to him. But when she had opened the door of the little room where she kept it she suddenly realized that she did not want to give it up. She had kept it so long, and had grown so used to considering it hers, that she never realized how precious it had become until she had to part with it. She went to the door once more and looked out upon the highway. He was quite near now, and as she stared at him she saw with wonder what she had been blind to before—he was her prince!

She wanted to run out to meet him, with a great joy in her heart and a glad cry on her lips, but she was bound by convention. And she was filled with a great fear, lest he should pass by, merely thinking of her as a silly little girl who had hidden herself when he came the first time and let him go on alone. And she decided that, as she was not allowed to reveal herself to him, neither would she attempt to stop him and return the shadow which was rightly his, but would at least keep that, to help make the coming years less lonely.

And that is the end of this fairy-story. And after all, I am not sure that it is a REAL fairy-story, because most fairy-stories end—“And they lived happy ever after.”

Perhaps you, who are so much wiser than the silly little woman, can think of a better ending for it.

I thank you, dear unknown sender of this tale, for your pretty compliment. If in any way I might claim to be wiser than you, or than any one who feels destiny has cheated him, it is because I have ceased to seek the shrine of the Little Cheating God of Happy Endings, and visit rather the Great God of Day by Day.

THE ART OF HAPPY MEMORY

The most significant step a mind takes is that wherein it realizes that it can control its own operation; when it learns that it can command those things in itself commonly considered automatic.

And in nothing does this appear with such striking results to happiness as in the discovery of one’s power to manage his memory.

Most people think they remember what they remember, and that is all there is to it. But it is possible to make memory a servant, and restrain its mastery.

In Italy a rare motto was found by Hazlitt upon a sun-dial: _Horas non numero nisi serenas_—“I mark only the shining hours.”

The man whose increase of contentment is most assured, as he grows older, is the one who has discovered how to enjoy his past.

To many of us the past is always sad. We turn from it with impatience. “Man never is, but always to be, blest.” Naturally this habit of mind sees in the ever-shortening future nothing but tragedy. Accept, then, these hints on how to handle your past.

First, whatever it is, has been; it has brought you here. Your condition may not be all your impudent claims on the universe demand, but it might be worse. Better men than you are in jail, are stricken with unceasing pain. Better men than you have been hanged.

Out of the worst experiences you have had you may reap satisfaction. The dangers, sicknesses, accidents, and losses, one who understands the art of living finds in the recalling of even these a certain thankfulness. Is there not pleasure in recounting your narrow escape?

You have had your pangs and pains; but the wise man knows that out of these have come his richest crops of understanding. Life has its stripes; but they are its healing.

The past is largely made by the present. If you are now soured and disappointed you are quite hopeless, for your diseased memory will go over your past and pick out from it only miserable things. But if you have adjusted yourself, if with a courageous heart you are trying to make the best of conditions as they are, your memory will aid you, and bring you stores of happy incidents.

Your past is the strongest asset of your present judgment. It is your best teacher. Only from it do you learn whatever shrewdness you have in dealing with events.

Learn to forgive yourself, not in folly, but in a sane charity. The things you did wrong, the failures and mistakes, consider them as part of that tutelage of destiny that goes toward your present equipment.

What has happened to you has happened to all men. The question is, will you cull from it flowers or thorns?

“Everything considered,” says Renan, “there are few situations in the vast field of existence where the balance of debt and credit does not leave a little surplus of happiness.”

We have crossed the years. We are here. We have escaped what perils! We have landed with what residue of wisdom and of hope!

SUBCONSCIOUS FEARS

A young man writes me that he is afraid of thunderstorms, and asks if there is no way for him to overcome this weakness. “I am normal in every other respect,” he adds, “but notwithstanding my endeavors to fight off this nervousness I find it to be of no avail; it appears to be a sort of subconscious fear.”

This is not a matter of ridicule, but a sample of very real and acute suffering to which many persons are subject by fear-panics due to various causes.

Many women scream with terror at the sight of a mouse. There is no use telling them that mice will not hurt them. So doing, you are addressing their reason, while the trouble lies not in their intelligence—it is a nervous disease. They scare just as a horse shies at a newspaper flapping in the wind.

Cæsar Augustus was almost convulsed at the sound of thunder.

Tycho Brahe changed color and his legs shook under him on meeting a rabbit.

Dr. Samuel Johnson would never enter a room left foot first.

Talleyrand trembled at the mention of the word—death.

Marshal Saxe was mortally afraid of a cat.

Peter the Great could never be persuaded to cross a bridge, and, though he tried to master his terror, was unable to do so.

I myself have never been able to rid myself of a fear of horses, and the tamest old nag gives me the creeps.

And I know a senior in Wellesley College, a young lady of strong intelligence, who could be sent almost into convulsions by showing her a spider or a caterpillar.

To determine the cause of these fear-obsessions is a business for the psychologist. They seem to have nothing to do with the mind or the will, but to be, as my correspondent suggests, rooted somewhere in the subconsciousness.

That these weaknesses can be entirely eradicated in a grown person is doubtful. It is about as difficult to uproot an ingrained fear as to get rid of a distaste for mutton. Certain strong natures can perhaps cure themselves, but the average man has to accommodate himself to his weakness and resist it the best he can.

But the cruel part of this whole matter is that almost all of these fears are TAUGHT US WHEN WE ARE CHILDREN. Many a child’s mind is deliberately poisoned by fear-suggestions that are to plague him his life long.

Whoever threatens a child, or frightens a child by the fear of thunder or lightning or the dark or ghosts or the bad man or death or hell or a vindictive Deity, should be flogged.

Many a delicate child has been more horribly tormented by suggested fears than he could ever have been hurt by corporal punishment.

The most deeply moral lesson any mother can instil into her child is that he be UNAFRAID—of anything in life or death. And whoso teaches a child a fear has made an incurable wound in his soul.

LAYING UP

The thrifty man lays up money for his old age. The farmer lays up fodder for his winter feeding. The medical student lays up information for use in his future practise. The intelligent, by due exercise and diet, lay up health, and the wastrel lays up trouble and disease by his excesses.

All of us lay up something, willy-nilly.

It is a good idea to ask one’s self, in considering any act we are about to perform, not only what will be the immediate pleasure in it, but what sort of product we are laying up for ourselves by it.

We are always coming into our inheritance from our past deeds.

Maeterlinck says, “There is one thing that can never turn into suffering, and that is the good we have done.”

This day you may have to decide between doing a thing that will gain you a thousand dollars and a thing that will cost you ten. In making up your mind it is well to take into consideration what happiness dividend the transaction is going to bring you ten years from now.

The world you live in is formed on the laying-up principle. Nature gains her ends as a child learns to walk and talk, by infinite repetitions. She does the same thing over and over. She is eternally learning how.

Think how many centuries she practised in fish-flappers, bird-wings, and animal fore-legs until she could make a human arm.

Let the scientist tell you of the infinite trials that preceded the formation of an eye, an ear, a human brain.

The efficiency of every age depends upon what was laid up for it by the ages gone before. This age of coal and petroleum rests upon the long cycles of the carboniferous era, when summer after summer giant trees grew and fell, and in the crucible of earth were changed to coal and oil!

Nature never forgets. She never drops a stitch. What she does now is a part of what she has in mind for ten thousand years from now. The plan of the oak is in the acorn.

“The books were opened,” says the Apocalypse, describing the Day of Judgment, “and the dead were judged out of the things that were written in the books.” This parable is but a picture of the scientist’s declaration that our EVERY ACT LEAVES ITS RUT IN THE BRAIN, making us prone to repeat; what we feel today we more readily feel tomorrow; every functioning of body or mind, in fact, having memory-making as a by-product. The whole process looks toward a future man.

Creation is cumulative. That is the meaning of evolution.

The human race is cumulative. That we learn from reading history.

The individual life is cumulative. Every day is for future days. Every sensation and every act of will, everything I do, has a bearing upon the me that shall be ten years from this time—a thousand, a million years hence—who knows?

Hence, if any one chooses to believe that, after this long getting-ready, Nature is going to throw me, body and soul, back into the scrap-heap, let him believe it.

Nature ought to have as much sense as I have. And I certainly would not go to all the pains Nature takes in preparing a human spirit only to fling my product at last into the ditch.

HUMAN FLIES

Oh for a human fly-swatter! That is, for some sort of a swatter that would obliterate the human fly.

The most prominent trait of a fly is his ability and disposition to bother. He is essential, concentrated botheraciousness.

He is the arch intruder. He is the type of the unwelcome. His business is to make you quit what you are doing and attend to him.

He makes the busy cook cease her bread-making to shoo him away. He disturbs the sleeper to brush him off. He is president and chairman of the executive committee of the amalgamated association of all pesterers, irritators, and nuisances.

The human fly is the male or female of the genus homo who is like the housefly.

Some children are flies. They are so ill bred and undisciplined that they perpetually annoy their mother until her nerves are frazzled, and make life miserable for any guests that may be in the house. It may be well to be kind and thoughtful toward the little darlings, but the first lesson a child should be taught is to govern himself as not to be a bother.

There are respectful, considerate, and unobtrusive children alas—too few!

There are fly wives. Realizing their own pettiness they gain their revenge by systematically irritating the husband. They make a weapon of their weakness. They soon acquire the art of pestering, nipping, and buzzing, keep the man in a perpetual temper, and blame him for it. You can’t talk to them. Nothing can cure them but an eleven-foot swatter. And these are not for sale.

Some men are just as bad. Married to a superior woman such a man is inwardly galled by his own conscious inferiority. So he bedevils her in ways indirect. He enjoys seeing her in a state of suppressed indignation. He keeps her on edge. His persecution is all the more unbearable because it is the unconscious expression of his fly nature. Also for him there is no cure but to wait till he lights some time and swat him with some giant, Gargantuan swatter. And they’re all out of these, too, at the store.

There are office flies, likewise, who get into your room, occupy your extra chair, and buzz you for an hour upon some subject that you don’t care a whoop in Halifax about. Your inherent politeness prevents you from kicking them out, humanity will not let you poison them, and there is a law against shooting them. There ought to be an open season for office flies.

Where the human flies are proudest in their function of pestiferousness, however, is in a meeting. Wherever you have a conference, a committee meeting, or a convention, there they buzz, tickle, and deblatterate. They keep the majority waiting while they air their incoherence. They suggest, amend, and raise objections. They never do anything; it is their business to annoy people who do things.

I do not wish to seem unkind to my fellow-creatures, but it does seem as if to all legislatures, conventions, and other gatherings there should be an anteroom where the human flies could be gently but efficaciously swatted.

There are Senate flies, as well as House flies, politicians whose notion of their duty appears to be that they should vex, tantalize, and heckle the opposing party at every point.

There are fly newspapers, whose only policy seems to be petty, vicious annoyance.

There are fly preachers, with a cheap efficiency in diatribe and sarcasm, and no wholesome, constructive message.

There are fly school-teachers, who hector and scold; fly pupils, who find and fasten upon the teacher’s sensitive spot; fly beggars, who will not be put aside; fly reformers, who can only make trouble; fly neighbors, who cannot mind their own business; fly shopkeepers, who will not let you buy what you want.

And the name of the devil himself is Beelzebub; which being interpreted means “Lord of Flies.”

KEEP FIT

Ford, the automobile man, stated in his testimony before the Industrial Commission that he gets more and better work out of men at eight hours a day than at ten.

It is a law that holds good everywhere. The first duty of a worker is to keep himself fit. And an hour’s labor when he is up to the mark, bright, keen, and enthusiastic, is worth three hours’ effort when he is fagged.

“Keeping everlastingly at it brings success” is a lying motto; it rather brings poor results, slipshod products, and paresis.

Rest and recreation are the best parts of labor. They are the height to which the hammer is lifted; and the force of the blow depends on that height. To go ahead without let-up is to deliver only a succession of feeble, ineffective blows.

Get all the sleep you can. Stay abed all day occasionally. Learn to be lazy, to dawdle, to enjoy an empty mind; then, when you are called to effort, you can hit with ten times the power.

The higher the quality of your work, the more necessary it is that you approach it only when you are at your best.

This is especially true of intellectual effort. You can tell, when you read a story or an article, whether it is tainted with exhaustion; it is dull, lifeless putty.

Those who court the quality of brightness, but do not keep their bodies in trim, often resort to artificial stimulants. Stephen Crane said that the best literature could be divided into two classes: whisky and opium.

Intelligent people ought not need to be told that this is suicide. The best form of enthusiasm is the natural reaction of one’s system after a period of relaxation.

The pestiferous “work-while-you-rest” apostles are ever after us to “improve our spare time,” study French during lunch, geometry while going to sleep, and history during recess. But spare time ought to be wasted, not improved.

An hour or so at the ball-game, a contest at tennis, a long and aimless walk, a party at cards, a chess match, or a time spent in jolly talk with friends are not waste; they mean restored strength, upbuilt mental acumen, the doubling of efficiency when work is to do.

Learn to let go. Learn to relax utterly when you sit down. Learn to let every faculty lie down when you lie down, and rest whether you sleep or not.

The more thoroughly you do nothing when there is nothing to do, the better you can do something when there is something to do.

The very cream of life comes from rest. The blush, the aroma, the shine of your best work lie in the hours of idleness massed behind it. The secret of brilliant work is in throwing every atom of your reserve force into it. Perpetual exertion begets mediocrity.

“Keep fit.”

That is a better rule than “Keep at it.”

THE SPIRITUAL STEAM-ROLLER

The secret of prophecy is to find what is right, and prophesy that.

It is very simple. What is wrong will go down.

The cosmic spiritual laws are just as accurate, just as sure-footed, as the laws of gravitation and chemical reaction.

Any institution that is founded on non-facts, any government that is maintained in violation of plain human rights, any system, any propaganda, that depends upon cheating, lying, or injustice, is certain at length to fail.

The certainty of the defeat of Prussian militarism is not based on its inferiority in numbers, wealth, and resources, but upon the moral rottenness of its ideas. It will come to grief, not because of its lack of force—it would make no difference if it were a hundred times stronger—but because it is based on principles which to humanity are intolerable.

If the Hohenzollern crowd had met no resistance in Belgium, if they had conquered Paris as they hoped, if they had crushed England, if they had realized to the full their dream of dominance over Europe and the whole world, their structure would have crumbled just the same, because it would have been reared upon violence, inhumanity, faithlessness, and fraud.

In the little affairs of a day it seems sometimes as if the wicked prosper. The gambler is flush, the lecher flourishes, the swindler gets away with his swag, and the pirate, the assassin, and the robber feast on their booty. But when this sort of thing is stretched out over any considerable space of time or territory, so that the cosmic laws, which move slowly, have a chance, it is sure to break down.

What we call righteousness and justice is just as much a part of nature as the physical laws. It is just as true and certain that lying brings disgrace, robbery cannot be made a permanent basis of business, uncleanness ends in shame, tyranny brings revolution, and cruelty eventuates in counter-cruelty and insecurity, as that water runs down hill and flame mounts upward.

It is the glory of the Hebrew that he first saw and made clear to the world these spiritual verities. His Bible is a book of spiritual chemistry and physics.

When he said that “the ungodly shall not stand,” “the covenant with hell shall be disannulled,” “though hand join in hand the wicked shall not go unpunished,” and “be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” he was not indulging in sentiment, but he had a real vision of cosmic law.

It was the supreme genius of Jesus that He saw the majestic certainty and fatefulness of this law, and recommended to His followers that they let it alone, and trust in it.

“Vengeance is mine, I will avenge, saith the Lord.” Time, evolution, destiny, nature, God—all these flow onward as irresistible tides, and even the inventive ferocity of an efficient nation gone mad cannot stop nor delay them.

The Prussian military steam-roller could only get so far, then it had to stop. The steam-roller of spiritual law carries on.

HEAVEN

I have discovered where heaven is.

Wherever you are, it is somewhere else.

It is the land of the unattainable, the island that has never been discovered, the shore no ship has ever reached.

Who has found that moment, spoken of by Goethe, where one can say, “Let this moment last forever”?

We were sitting on the top of the mountain, on the platform in front of the little inn, Anushka and I, looking far out over the successive ranges of the Sierras that extended wave-like everywhere. The sun was brilliant. The air was warm. Around us was spread a panorama as beautiful as mortal eyes had ever seen. I was about to ask Anushka if she was happy, when she pointed to a spot over the farthest peaks where the clouds touched the mountain-tops and a gleam of sunshine blessed them, and said:

“There! My soul is yonder. Do you see that spot? It is the dwelling-place of light ineffable. All is peace and joy there. I think that must be heaven.”

“You are right,” I answered. “That is heaven—from here. But when you get there you will find it only mist. From here those clouds are white and gold, and angels fly among them. If you could reach them you would find it bleak and cold, with only rocks and snow-drifts and desolation about you.

“Then perhaps you might see, farther on in the distance, another point full of glory. If you flew to that you would find your glory-point just as far away as ever.

“So heaven flies before us. To us heaven is on Venus, or Saturn, or Arcturus; to the inhabitants of those spheres, who knows? Maybe heaven is on Tellus.”

“That,” she said, “seems a bitter view.”

“Not at all,” I returned. “It is the only view that makes happiness eternal. The one everlasting faculty of mankind is anticipation. The one inexhaustible fountain of joy is hope. Those whose happiness is located in the land of hope will always be happy.

“Heaven is in the future, because the future is infinite. Besides, the future is the only time when we can be happy without alloy. The past, even as to the pleasantest moments of it, is always a little sad. So no one’s heaven is in the past. The present is fleeting, sinking every minute into the darkness of the past. So no man’s heaven is in the present. In the future alone is pure, ideal, untainted joy.

“We are born pilgrims and strangers. The birds of the air have nests, and the foxes have holes, but man has not where to lay his head. He is the gypsy of the universe. He is the bird of passage of the world.”

“But I have been happy,” protested Anushka.

“Possibly,” I said. “But what keys you up to live, what stimulates and inspires you, is not the happiness you have had, but the happiness you expect to have.

“The surest, stablest thing in life is heaven. It rests upon the enduring stones of hope. Its pillars are all of the alabaster of anticipation. It is a city of eternity, not of time. Therefore it is that its gates are never shut, night nor day.”

THE BEST OF LIFE

You say, my dear Anushka, that you have nothing but your dreams; you are full of dreams; drunk every day with ideals. And you speak of this as if it were a weakness, something to be ashamed of.

You are young. All your years slant upward. Before you life stretches out as a vast untried adventure. Love is yet to come, and success, and a career. Let me, who am over the hillcrest and on the westering slope, talk to you a bit.

And looking back on all that I have had and felt and lived, let me say to you that the best of all was the dream. Not what I got but what I longed for, not what I attained unto but what I aimed at, these are my harvest, my treasures.

I fished in the sea, but the biggest fish got away. I hunted in the wood, but the brightest birds, the fleetest deer, were those I glimpsed and saw as they vanished.

The things I have seen, gazed at with full vision, were cheap and tawdry compared to those that flashed by and were caught only by the tail of my eye.

What I have done is a poor compromise. What I dreamed of doing was wonderful. I have composed music such as the angels might covet to sing. I have painted pictures, carved statues, built palaces, such as no hands of flesh could accomplish.

I have said words that broke hearts with their infinite tragedy, and healed them again with their divine accent of consolation. I have written books that swayed the world’s heart as the summer wind bends the wheat-field.

But it was all in the realm of might-have-been, beyond the mountains of the possible.

This real self I am afraid for you to know. It is so commonplace. I am just a man, and the worse for wear. I am not a bit splendid nor dazzling, but by way of being shop-worn.

It is only my beautiful secret that comforts me to take of what I dreamed; it is only this that encourages me to take my journey hopefully among the stars when my release comes; perhaps there, in some cozy planet among the Pleiades, or dwelling as a pure flame among the fire-spirits that play about the petals of Dante’s Rose of Heaven, perhaps there I shall find a pot of gold at the end of my rainbow.

But as far as this earthly career is concerned, Anushka, the rainbow has been more worth than the gold. Yet I am not sad nor disillusioned, for, listen, I still have my dreams, my skies of may-be still overarch with infinitude my earth that is.

What I have is pitiful enough. Ah, but what I thought I was getting! I am as one who gathers shells and sea-beauties and takes them home, and finds them withered, yet remembers the day on the shore. You recall what the poet said?

“I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea—born treasures home,
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.”

So hold your dreams, Anushka, and never let them go, for when you are old they will be the best residue of life.

USE AND BEAUTY

The Sabbath, said the Teacher, was made for Man, and not man for the Sabbath.

The bearin’s of which, as Dickens would say, is in its application.

Any Institution was made for Man, and not Man for the Institution.

The college, for instance. No, friend Procrustes, whilst we appreciate your zeal to make a record for yourself as President, yet we would remind you that we are sending our boy to your University for the good He can get out of it, and not for the benefit He can be to it. He is not there for you to find out how far He falls short of your standards, nor what glory He can add to his Alma Mater; He is there for You to find out what’s in Him, and to develop that. We don’t care a hang about your grand old traditions and things, except as they help you in being the making of our particular pup.

The Church was made for Man, and not Man for the Church. And if your meeting-house is just occupied in keeping itself up, parson, why, close it up and start a hennery, and help Hoover. We don’t care about how much money you raise, nor how beautiful are your vestments, nor how high your theology, nor how numerous your membership, nor how gay your stained glass. Are you helping friend Man? Are you making him sober, industrious, clean, and honest? Are you developing in him a civic conscience? Or are you simply being good—so good you’re good for nothing? Come, produce! Or quit!

The House was made for Man, Ma, and not Man for the House. Let the boys play marbles in the dining-room, and the girls have their beaux in the parlor, and grandpa smoke his pipe in the kitchen, and everybody raid the ice-box at 11 p. m. if they want to; what better use can carpets be put to than that children’s knees should wear them out a-gleemaking, and what are sofas for if not for spooning, and kitchen-warmth and cheer if not for old folk homing? Use the old home up, and get a better product—of love and laughter and undying memories.

Books were made for Man, and not Man for Books. Use ’em. Thumb ’em. Mark ’em. Go to bed with ’em. Carry ’em on trains. And don’t own books that cannot be carried down through the Valley of Every-day as the soul’s lunch-basket.

The most perfect Ornament is that which is of the most perfect Service to Man. No cane is so beautiful as the one grandfather wore smooth on a thousand walks; no chair so lovely as that one mother consecrated by many a night of rocking the baby; no table so priceless as that one where father used to write; no pipe so pretty as the one he smoked; no dress so charming as that one that still has the wrinkles in it worn there by the little girl gone—gone forever into heaven, or womanhood.

It’s the human touch that beautifies. Nothing can be warmly beautiful that is not, or was not, useful.

And Democracy is beautiful because it exists for the welfare of the People that compose it, and not for the glory of the Dynasty that rules it.

The State was made for Man, and not Man for the State.

THE ETHICS OF CONTROVERSY

Everything is disputable. I am willing to entertain arguments in support of any proposition whatsoever.

If you want to defend theft, mayhem, adultery, or murder, state your case, bring on your reasons; for in endeavoring to prove an indefensible thing you discover for yourself how foolish is your thesis.

But it is essential to any controversy, if it is to be of any use, first, that the issue be clearly understood by both sides.

Most contentions amount merely to a difference of definition. Agree, therefore, exactly upon what it is you are discussing. If possible, set down your statements in writing.

Most argument is a wandering from the subject, a confusion of the question, an increasing divergence from the point. Stick to the matter in hand.

When your adversary brings in subjects not relevant, do not attempt to answer them. Ignore them, lest you both go astray and drift into empty vituperation.

For instance, President Wilson, in the “Lusitania” incident, called Germany’s attention to the fact that her submarines had destroyed a merchant ship upon the high seas, the whole point being that this had been done without challenge or search and without giving non-combatant citizens of a neutral country a chance for their lives. Germany’s reply discussed points that had no bearing upon this issue, such as various acts of England. Mr. Wilson, in his reply, wisely refused to discuss these irrelevant things, an example of intelligent controversy.

Keep cool. The worse your case, the louder your voice.

Be courteous. Avoid epithets. Do not use language calculated to anger or offend your opponent. Such terms weaken the strength of your position.

A controversy is a conflict of reasons, not of passions. The more heat the less sense.

Keep down your ego. Do not boast. Do not emphasize what you think, what you believe, and what you feel; but try to put forth such statements as will induce your opponent to think, believe, and feel rationally.

Wait. Give your adversary all the time he wants to vent his views. Let him talk himself out. Wait your turn, and begin only when he is through.

Agree with him as far as you can. Give due weight, and a little more, to his opinions. It was the art of Socrates, the greatest of controversialists, to let a man run the length of his rope, that is, to talk until he had himself seen the absurdity of his contention.

Most men argue simply to air their convictions. Give them room. Often when they have fully exhausted their notions they will come gently back to where you want them. They are best convinced when they convince themselves.

Avoid tricks, catches, and the like. Do not take advantage of your opponent’s slip of the tongue. Let him have the impression that you are treating him fairly.

Do not get into any discussion unless you can make it a sincere effort to discover the truth, and not to overcome, out-talk, or humiliate your opponent.

Do not discuss at all with one who has his mind made up beforehand. It is usually profitless to argue upon religion, because as a rule men’s opinions here are reached not by reason but by feeling or by custom. Nothing is more interesting and profitable, however, than to discuss religion with an open-minded person, yet such a one is a very rare bird.

If you meet a man full of egotism or prejudices, do not argue with him. Let him have his say, agree with him as you can, and for the rest—smile.

Controversy may be made a most friendly and helpful exercise, if it be undertaken by two well-tempered and courteous minds.

Vain contention, on the contrary, is of no use except to deepen enmity.

Controversy is a game for strong minds; contention is a game for the weak and undisciplined.

LETTING THINGS ALONE

There are times, said Eb Hopkins, when you want to Let Things Alone, and then again there are times when you want to Meddle.

I lean mostly to lettin’ ’em alone, myself.

As I git older I notice that most things sorta cure ’emselves, if you leave ’em lay.

I used to butt in frequent when young, but since I passed the draft age I kinda lost my taste for fixin’ things.

I suppose they’s some would call me a coward, and a sidestepper, and an opportunist, and a trimmer, and all that—I dunno—maybe I am—but I’ve had my eye on old Mr. Time for lo, these many years, and I’ve observed that, as a mender of bones, hearts, political differences, and religious quarrels, he is like A. Ward’s kangaroo, “seldom ekaled and never surpassed.”

The way to teach a boy how to swim is to throw him into the water and go away. Then he has to learn, right off.

There was old man Eustis and his wife, over Sanford way, that had no end o’ trouble over their boy. They was always workin’ with him and lecturin’ him and rasslin’ in prayer over him, and he was just carousin’ and actin’ up like all the time; till the old folks up and died, and then they was nobody cared a whoop for the boy, whether he hung hisself or not, and he had the first good spell o’ lettin’ alone he’d ever had in his life, and he just turned right around and straightened up and now he owns a bank, and is deacon in the church, and everything.

Of course, you can’t always let things alone, but in case of doubt it’s trumps.

As I read history, it seems to me that Lettin’ Folks Alone has been the secret of the success of the English-speakin’ peoples. Gov’ment Control of everything from wheat-cakes to railroads may be comin’, and it may be best, but I’m personally a leetle skittish of it.

The English race’s idea of Law and Gov’ment is to have as leetle of ’em as possible. The German idea is to have everything and everybody regulated, down to drawin’ their breath. And they’re tryin’ it out now, to see which idea will whip.

The Almighty does a heap o’ Lettin’ Folks Alone. Anybody can go to the dogs that wants to. The gates of the Bad Place are open day and night. It looks to me very much as if what saves a man must come from the inside of him, and if he ain’t got nothin’ inside that will rouse up and save him, he ain’t worth savin’, and Nature is anxious to shovel him out in the discard just as soon as possible.

So I says, Let ’em Alone. The good ones’ll come to the top, and the bad ones will drown, and they’ll make fertilizer, and p’raps that’s what they’re intended for.

Thus spake Eb Hopkins.

THE PLEASURES OF OUTLAWRY

The hand of civilization has lain hard upon those professions wherein the outlaw spirit once found expression. The riproaring pirates have been swept from the seven seas. Bandits have been chased from the mountains. Robbers no longer infest the woods, and smugglers have deserted the caves. About all that is left for the poor wicked man is the gypsy bands in the country and the criminal class in the city.

Too little attention has been given to that primeval and persistent trait of human nature, the love of outlawry. That it is in the blood of all of us is shown by the fact that it breaks out in every boy. No boy wants to be a banker or a grocer when he grows up; they all want to become pirates, bandits, or circus clowns.

They are supposed to get over this as they mature, but a lot of it still lingers under the vests of the most respectable members of society.

It is doubtful whether any human being wants to sin. What he wants is to escape from respectability.

Few men drink liquor for the love of it. A vast deal of alcohol is consumed just because it seems devilish. When the host tips his guest the wink and stealthily leads the way to the back-closet under the stairs and produces a black bottle, how the flavor of the liquor is improved by the vicious delight in evading the watchfulness of the members of the Women’s Temperance Society gathered in the parlor!

Few boys would learn to smoke if it were not impressed upon them that smoking perverts their morals and brings them to an early grave. For just the wild waywardness of doing something desperate they will sneak behind the barn and make themselves sick with father’s pipe.

How many a marriage has gone wrong because of the irrepressible desire of human beings to make moral excursions might be an interesting subject for speculation. There is a cantankerous rebellion in the average human being toward anything that is legalized, even ecstatic bliss.

The criminal class is supposed to be confined to a few low-browed persons well known to the police. But all criminality does not lie within this corral. There are propensities in all of us that differ but little from those in the professional law-breaker.

JUSTICE

There are many earnest souls occupied in trying to do people good.

There are nine million societies, more or less, organized to improve and to ameliorate.

There are preachers, missionaries, evangelists, reformers, exhorters, viewers-with-pride, and pointers-with-alarm without number wrestling with sinners.

All forms of industry are booming these days in the U. S. A., but the uplift business is still several laps ahead.

It seems ungracious to say a word to any enthusiastic person who is engaged in so laudable an enterprise as that of rescuing the perishing, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick.

And yet, when you take time to think right through to the bottom of things, you must come to the conclusion that there is but one real, radical and effective way to help your fellow-men, and that is the way called justice.

If I want to redeem the world I can come nearer my object, and do less harm, by being just toward myself and just toward everybody else, than by “doing good” to people.

The only untainted charity is justice.

Often our ostensible charities serve but to obscure and palliate great evils.

Conventional charity drops pennies in the beggar’s cup, carries bread to the starving, distributes clothing to the naked. Real charity, which is justice, sets about removing the conditions that make beggary, starvation, and nakedness.

Conventional charity plays Lady Bountiful; justice tries to establish such laws as shall give employment to all, so that they need no bounty.

Charity makes the Old Man of the Sea feed sugar-plums to the poor devil he is riding and choking; justice would make him get off his victim’s back.

Conventional charity piously accepts things as they are, and helps the unfortunate; justice goes to the legislature and changes things.

Charity swats the fly; justice takes away the dung-heaps that breed flies.

Charity gives quinine in the malarial tropics; justice drains the swamps.

Charity sends surgeons and ambulances and trained nurses to the war; justice struggles to secure that internationalism that will prevent war.

Charity works among slum wrecks; justice dreams and plans that there be no more slums.

Charity scrapes the soil’s surface; justice subsoils.

Charity is affected by symptoms; justice by causes.

Charity assumes evil institutions and customs to be a part of “Divine Providence,” and tearfully works away at taking care of the wreckage; justice regards injustice everywhere, custom-buttressed and respectable or not, as the work of the devil, and vigorously attacks it.

Charity is timid and is always passing the collection-box; justice is unafraid and asks no alms, no patrons, no benevolent support.

“It is presumed,” says Henry Seton Merriman, “that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to interfere with his neighbor’s affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.”

The best part of the human race does not want help, nor favor, nor charity; it wants a fair chance and a square deal.

Charity is man’s kindness.

Justice is God’s.

INDEX

Compiled for Wm. H. Wise by John T. Hoyle, Professor of Practical English, Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Note.—In this index, all notations refer first to the volume, and then to the page of the volume. Thus, Will Power, I, 12, means that the reference to Will Power will be found on page 12 of Volume I. The titles of the Essays are in every instance printed in italic capitals and lower case; thus, _Great Man, The_, I, 28, means that the essay appearing under that title is to be found in Volume I, on page 28.

A
Ability, II, 9
_Abraham Lincoln, The Common Man_, IX, 32
Accomplishment, I, 24
Achievement, I, 50, 80, 121; VI, 72, 98; X, 76
Action, I, 23
_Actor’s Prayer, The_, VII, 146
_Advantage of Being Forgot, The_, V, 143
Adventure, IX, 41
Advertising, III, 62; V. 76; VI, 34; VII, 88
Age, II, 111; IX, 24
_Agreeableness_, I, 16
_All Noise Is Waste_, I, 39
Ambition, VII, 121
Americanism, V, 107; II, 16; VIII, 85; IX, 7, 37
_American View of the British, An_, II, 150
_America’s Coming of Age_, I, 142
Anarchist, The, II, 30
_Andorra_, VIII, 128
_Anger_, IX, 86
_Anger Poison_, VII, 138
Anticipation, VIII, 134
Appetite, V, 134
Aristocracy, I, 7, 99; II, 98; III, 44, 90; VII, 104; IX, 47
_Around the Corner_, II, 26
Art, I, 108, 148, 157; III, 27; V, 74, VI, 35; VII, 36, 120; X, 51
_Art and Democracy_, VII, 130
_Art of Happy Memory, The_, X, 88
_Art of Living, The_, VIII, 38
Autocracy, III, 77; VII, 81
Automobiles, I, 19; IV, 107, 111

B
_Babies in Prison_, III, 114
Backsliding, II, 12
_Bananas_, VI, 46
_Be a Bird Landlord!_, VII, 142
Beauty, I, 79; II, 127; IV, 9, 157; V, 149; VII, 99, 119, 132; IX,
117; X, 122
Bernhardt, Sarah, VII, 34
_Be Still_, IX, 128
_Best of Life, The_, X, 118
_Better Conquest, The_, II, 66
Bible, The, III, 107; IV, 42
Birds, VI, 116; VII, 142
_Bloody Knife, The_, III, 153
_Bob White_, VI, 116
_Body and the Automobile, The_, IV, 107
Books, I, III, 8; III, 49; IV, 36; V, 30; VI, 75; VII, 29; IX, 82;
X, 124
Bores, X, 101
_Bound_, III, 89
_Boy and the Gang, The_, V, 100
_Boy or Girl Who Quits School, The_, VIII, 141
Boys, V, 119
Boys and Girls, VIII, 52
_Brain_, IX, 69
Bravery, I, 155; III, 72
Brotherhood, VI, 156
Brotherhood, Universal, I, 125
Business, II, 48; III, 7, 74; IV, 68; V, 34, 61, 74; VI, 32; VII,
42, 70, 86, 88; VIII, 5; IX, 87; X, 44