Chapter III (1)

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

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

Had the sun shined next morning we should have gone on our gypsy journey, and Llanthony Abbey would have been only an incident. But for five days and five nights the rain descended. We could make valiant sallies, but were driven back for shelter. Shut in by "the tumultuous privacy of storm," one felt a sense of ownership. Only one book could be obtained, the "Life and Letters" of Walter Savage Landor. I had always wanted to know more of Landor and here was the opportunity.

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

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

And then there was the house which Landor started to build when he and his wife were living in our tower. "I hope," he writes, "before the close not of the next but of the succeeding summer, to have one room to sit in with two or three bedrooms." Then he begins to growl about the weather 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 think seriously of filling it with straw and setting fire to it. Never was anything half so ugly."

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Yet there are limits to the historical imagination. It must have something to work on, even though that something may be very vague. We must draw the line somewhere in our pursuit of antiquity. A relic may be too old to be effective. Instead of gently stimulating the imagination it may paralyze it. What we desire is not merely the ancient but the familiar. The relic must bring with it the sense of auld lang-syne. The Tory 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 of humanity.

The family-feeling does not go back of a certain point. I draw the line at the legendary period when the heroes have names, and more or less coherent stories are told of their exploits, People who had a local habitation, but not a name, seem to belong to Geology only. For all their flint arrow-heads, or bronze instruments, I cannot think of them as fellow men.

It was with this feeling that I visited one of the most ancient places of worship in Ireland, the tumulus at Newgrange. It was on a day filled with historic sight-seeing. We started from Drogheda, the great stronghold of the Pale in the Middle Ages, and the scene of Cromwell's terrible vengeance in 1649. Three miles up the river is the site of the Battle of the Boyne. It was one of the great indecisive battles of the world, it being necessary to fight it over again every year. The Boyne had overflowed its banks, and in the fields forlorn hay-cocks stood like so many little islands. We stopped at the battle monument and read its Whiggish inscription, which was scorned by our honest driver. We could form some idea of how the field appeared on the eventful day when King William and King James confronted each other across the narrow stream. Then the scene changed and we found ourselves in Mellefont Abbey, the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland, founded by St. Malachy, the friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. King William and King James were at once relegated to their proper places among the moderns, while we went back to the ages of faith.

Four miles farther we came to Monasterboice, where stood two great Celtic crosses. There are two ruined churches and a round tower. Here was an early religious establishment which existed before the times of St. Columba.

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

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

We drive into an open field and alight near a rock-strewn hill. Candles are given us and we grope our way through narrow passages till we come to 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 the floor is a large stone hollowed out in the shape of a bowl. It suggests human sacrifices. My guide did not encourage this suggestion. There was, he thought, no historical evidence for it. But it seemed to me that if these 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 us that they belonged to the Early Bronze period. Now Early Bronze is a good enough term for articles in a museum, but it does not suggest a human being. We cannot get on terms of spiritual intimacy with the Early Bronze 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 of prodigious industry? Was it fear or love? First they built their chapel of great stones and then piled a huge hill on top of it. Were they still under the influence of the glacial period and attempting to imitate the wild doings of Nature? The passage of the ages does not make these men seem venerable, because their deeds are no longer intelligible. Mellefont Abbey is in ruins, but we can easily restore it in imagination. We can picture the great buildings as they were before the iconoclasts destroyed them. The prehistoric place of worship in the middle of the hill is practically unchanged. But the clue to its meaning is lost.

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

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

There is justification for the traveler's preference for the things he has read about, for these are the things which resist the changes of time. Only he must remember that they are better preserved in the book than in the places where they happened. The impression which any generation makes on the surface of the earth is very slight. It cannot give the true story of the brief occupancy. That requires some more direct interpretation.

The magic carpet which carries us into any age not our own is woven by the 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 classes to treat each other with contumely. The feud between freshman and sophomore goes on automatically. Only when one has become a senior may he, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a sophomore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticism is tolerated because it is evidently the result of the mellowing influence of time.

The same tendency is seen in literary and artistic judgments. It is never good taste to admit the good taste of the generation that immediately precedes us. Its innocent admirations are flouted and its standards are condemned as provincial. For we are always emerging from the dark ages and contrasting their obscurity with our marvelous light. The sixteenth century scorned the fifteenth century for its manifold superstitions. Thomas Fuller tells us that his enlightened contempories in the seventeenth century treated the enthusiasms of the sixteenth century with scant respect. The price of martyrs' ashes rises and falls in 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 the eighteenth century, and treated it with contempt as the age of doctrinaires. And now that the twentieth century is coming to the age of discretion, we hear a new term of reproach, Mid-Victorian. It expresses the sum of all villainies in taste. For some fifty years in the nineteenth century the English-speaking race, as it now appears, was under the sway of Mrs. Grundy. It was living in a state of most reprehensible respectability, and Art was tied to the apron-strings of Morality. Everybody admired what ought not to be admired. We are only now beginning to pass judgment on the manifold mediocrity of this era.

All this must, for the time, count against Dickens; for of all the Victorians he was the midmost. He flourished in that most absurd period of time--the time just before most of us were born. And how he did flourish! Grave lord chancellors confessed to weeping over Little Nell. A Mid-Victorian bishop relates that after administering consolation to a 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 his reading in Glasgow, Dickens writes: "Such pouring of hundreds into a place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humor, I never saw the slightest approach to.... Fifty frantic men got up in all parts of the hall and addressed me all at once. Other frantic men made speeches to the wall. The whole B family were borne on the top of a wave and landed with their faces against the front of the platform. I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau, or gigantic picnic,--one pretty girl 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 pavement the whole of the night before the tickets were sold, generally taking up their position about ten." There would be free fights, and the police would be called to quell the riot.

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

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

But letting bygones be bygones, and not seeking to justify the enthusiasms of the nineteenth century, one may return to Dickens as to the home of one's childhood. How do the old scenes affect us? Does the charm remain? When thus we return to Dickens, we are compelled to confess the justice of the latter-day criticism. In all his writings he deals with characters and situations which are wholly obvious; at least they are obvious after he deals with them. Not only is he without the art which conceals art, but, unlike some novelists of more recent fame, he is without the art that conceals the lack of art He produces an impression by the crude method of "rubbing it in." There are no subtleties to pique our curiosity, no problems left us for discussion, no room for difference of opinion. There is no more opportunity for speculation than in a one-price clothing store where every article is marked in plain figures. To have heartily disliked Mr. Pecksniff and to have loved the Cheeryble Brothers indicates no sagacity on our part. The author has distinctly and repeatedly told us that the one is an odious hypocrite and that the others are benevolent to an unusual degree. Our appreciation of Sam Weller does not prove that we have any sense of humor save that which is common to man. For Mr. Weller's humor is a blessing 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 of Dickens are obvious.

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

It is only in the last quarter of a century that English literature has been 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." Some of the best brains in the educational world have been enlisted in the work of giving a disciplinary value to what was originally an innocent pleasure. It is evident that one cannot give marks for the number of smiles or tears evoked by a tale of true love. The novel or the play that is to hold its own in the curriculum in competition with trigonometry must have some knotty problem which causes the harassed reader to knit his brows in anxious thought.

In answer to this demand, the literary craftsman has arisen who takes his art with a seriousness which makes the "painful preacher" of the Puritan time seem a mere pleasure-seeker. Equipped with instruments of precision drawn from the psychological laboratory, he is prepared to satisfy our craving for the difficult By the method of suggestion he tries to make us believe that we have never seen his characters before, and sometimes he succeeds. He deals in descriptions which leave us with the impression of an indescribable something which we should recognize if we were as clever as he is. As we are not nearly so clever, we are left with a chastened sense of our inferiority, which is doubtless good for us. And all this groping for the un-obvious is connected with an equally insistent demand for realism. The novel must not only be as real as life, but it must be more so. For life, as it appears in our ordinary consciousness, is full of illusions. When these are stripped off and the residuum is compressed into a book, we have that which is at once intensely real and painfully unfamiliar.

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

It may be said in extenuation of Dickens that the blemish of obviousness is one which he shared with the world he lived in. It would be too much to say that all realities are obvious. There is a great deal that we do not 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 obvious world is one of the greatest achievements of the imagination.

The reason why the literary artist shuns the obvious is that there is too much of it. It is too big for the limited resources of his art. In the actual world, realities come in big chunks. Nature continually repeats herself. She hammers her facts into our heads with a persistency which is often more than a match for our stupidity. If we do not recognize 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 it a test of reality. An impression made upon us must be repeated before it has validity to our reason. If a thing really happened, we argue that it will happen again under the same conditions. That is what we mean by saying that we are under the reign of law. There is a great family resemblance between happenings.

We make acquaintance with people by the same method. The recognition of identity depends upon the ability which most persons have of appearing to be remarkably like themselves. The reason why we think that the person 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, the same kind of voice, and he answers to the same name. If Proteus, with the best intention in the world, but with an unlimited variety of self-manifestations, were to call every day, we should greet him always as 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 we can trust it. Unexpectedness is an agreeable element in wit, but not in friendship. 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 a difference between nature and a book. Nature does not care whether she bores 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 brings the interview to an end. It is from the fear of our impatience that most writers abstain from the natural method of producing an impression.

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

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

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

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

It is useless to cavil at an author because of the means by which he produces his effects. The important thing is that he does produce an effect. That the end justifies the means may be a dangerous doctrine in ethics, but much may be said for it in literature. The situation is like that of a middle-aged gentleman beset by a small boy on a morning just right for snowballing. "Give me leave, mister?" cries the youthful sharpshooter. The good-natured citizen gives leave by pulling up his coat-collar and quickening his pace. If the small boy can hit him, he is forgiven, if he cannot hit him, he is scorned. The fact is that Dickens with a method as broad and repetitious as that of Nature herself does succeed in hitting our fancy. That is, he succeeds nine times out of ten.

It is the minor characters of Dickens that are remembered. And we remember them for the same reason that we remember certain faces which we have seen in a crowd. There is some salient feature or trick of manner which first attracts and then holds our attention. A person must have 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 who are like umbrellas, very useful, but always liable to be forgotten. The memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings to mere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the 8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. In the scale of being, the necktie may be the least important parcel of this good man's life, 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 a real, though perhaps not a deep, acquaintance with the man behind it. It is thus we habitually perceive the human world. We see things, and infer persons to correspond. One peculiarity attracts us. It is not the whole man, but it is all of him that is for us. In all this we are very Dickensy.

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

In ecclesiastical art the saints are recognized by their emblems. Why should not the sinners have the same means of identification? Dickens has 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, always appear with their appropriate insignia. We should remember that it is for our sakes.

According to the canons of literary art, a fact should be stated clearly once and for all. It would be quite proper to mention the fact that Silas Wegg had a wooden leg; but this fact having been made plain, why should it be referred to again? There is a sufficient reason based on sound psychology. If the statement were not repeated, we should forget that Mr. Wegg had a wooden leg, and by and by we should forget Silas Wegg himself. He would fade away among the host of literary gentlemen who are able to read "The Decline and Fall," but who are not able to keep themselves out of the pit of oblivion. But when we repeatedly see Mr. Wegg as Mr. Boffin saw him, "the literary gentleman _with_ a wooden leg," we feel that we really have the pleasure of his acquaintance. There is not only perception of him, but what the pedagogical people call apperception. Our idea of Mr. Wegg is inseparably connected with our 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 standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had been choked and had at that moment come to." This is Mr. Pumblechook. He does not emerge slowly 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 into acquaintance at first sight. We are now ready to hear what Mr. Pumblechook says and see what he does. We have a reasonable assurance that 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 preternatural solidity of the furniture and the plate. The hostess is a fine woman, "with neck and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features and majestic headdress." Her husband, large and pompous, with little light-colored wings "more like hairbrushes than hair" on the sides of his otherwise bald head, begins to discourse on the British Constitution. We now know as much of Mr. Podsnap as we shall know at the end of the book. But it is a real knowledge conveyed by the method that gives dinner-parties their educational value. We forgive Dickens his superfluous discourse on Podsnappery in general. For his remarks are precisely of the kind which we make when the party is over, and we sit by the fire generalizing and allegorizing the people we have met.

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

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

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

This is unusual in literature, for most literary men are saddest when they write. The fact is that happiness is much more easy to experience than to describe, as any one may learn in trying to describe a good time he 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 the world have any one know what simple creatures we are and how little it takes to make us happy. So we talk critically about a great many things we do not care very much about, and complain of the absence of many things which we do not really miss. We feel badly about not being invited 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." By prancing over imaginary difficulties and shying at imaginary dangers he gives an impression of mettlesomeness which is foreign to his native disposition.

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

That "the course of true love never did run smooth" is an assertion of story-tellers rather than of ordinary lovers. The fact is that nothing is so easy as falling in love and staying there. It is a very common experience, so common that it attracts little attention. The course of true love usually runs so smoothly that there is nothing that causes remark. It is not an occasion of gossip. Two good-tempered and healthy persons are obviously made for each other. They know it, and everybody else knows it, and they keep on knowing it, and act, as Joe Gargery would say, "similar, according."

The trouble is that the literary man finds that this does not afford exciting material for a best seller. So he must invent hazards to make the game interesting to the spectators. In a story the course of true love must not run smooth or no one would read it. The old-time romancer brought his young people through all sorts of misadventures. When all the troubles he could think of were over, he left them abruptly at the church door, murmuring feebly to the gentle reader, "they were happy ever after."

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

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

In making such a confession he would be in good company. Even Shakespeare, with all his dramatic genius, confessed that he could not avoid monotony in his praise of true love. Its ways were ways of pleasantness, 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 is to show us "life as it is," is not content to acknowledge his limitations. When he pictures a situation in which there is nothing but a succession of problems and misunderstandings, he asks us to admire his austere faithfulness. Faithful he may be to his Art, as he understands it, but he is not faithful to reality, unless he is able to make us see ordinary people in the act of enjoying themselves.

The most obvious thing in life is that people are seldom as unhappy as their circumstances would lead us to expect. Nobody is happy all the time, and if he were, nobody is enough of a genius to make his undeviating felicity interesting. But a great many people are happy most of 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, and he likes to think about it. He is excessively grateful to any one who recalls the feeling. The point is that the aggregate of these good times makes a considerable amount of cheerfulness.

Dickens does not attempt the impossible literary feat of showing us one person who is happy all the time, but he does what is more obvious, he makes us see a great many people who have snatches of good cheer in the midst of their humdrum lives. He lets us see another obvious fact, that happiness is more a matter of temperament than of circumstance. It is not given as a reward of merit or as a mark of distinguished consideration. There is one perennial fountain of pleasure. Any one can have a good time who can _enjoy himself_. Dickens was not above celebrating the kind of happiness which comes to the natural man and the natural boy through what we call the "creature comforts." He could sympathize with the unadulterated self-satisfaction of little Jack Horner 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, but it was a great pleasure for Jack Horner, and he did not care who knew it.

What joy Mr. Micawber gets out of his own eloquence! We cannot begrudge him this unearned increment. We sympathize, as, "much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up his letter and handed 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 with Bella he finds everything as it should be. "Everything was delightful. The Park was delightful; the punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were 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 a companion, but we will say with a tune. Very good. Supposing the tune allotted to him was the 'Dead March' in 'Saul.' Well. It would be a very suitable tune for particular occasions--none more so--but it would be difficult to keep time with it in the ordinary run of domestic transactions."

It is a matter of common observation that those who have allotted to them the most solemn music do not always keep time with it. In the "ordinary run of domestic transactions" they find many little alleviations. In the aggregate these amount to a considerable blessing. The world may be rough, and many of its ways may be cruel, but for all that 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 we want 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 in behalf of the childish virtues and veracities, and is gently correcting the abnormalities of education. Still it can be done. The secret of it is never to let the child alone, and to insist on doing for him all that he would otherwise do for himself--and more.

In that "more" lies the spoiling power. The child must be early made acquainted with the feeling of satiety. There must be too much of everything. If he were left to himself to any extent, this would be an unknown experience. For he is a hungry little creature, with a growing appetite, and naturally is busy ministering to his own needs. He is always doing something for himself, and enjoys the exercise. The little egoist, even when he has "no language but a cry," uses that language to make 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 to get something which he desires. He is a mechanic fashioning his little world to his own uses. He is a despot who insists on his divine right to rule the subservient creatures around him. He is an inventor devising ways and means to secure all the ends which he has the wit to see. That these great works on which he has set his heart end in self is obvious enough, but we forgive him. Altruism will come in its own time.

In natural play a boy will be a horse or a driver. Either occupation gives him plenty to do. But the role of an elderly passenger, given a softly cushioned seat and deposited respectfully at the journey's end, he rejects with violent expressions of scorn. It is ignominious. He will be a policeman or robber or judge or executioner, just as the exigencies of the game demand. These are honorable positions worthy of one who belongs to the party of action. But do not impose upon him by asking him to act the part of the respectable citizen who is robbed and who does nothing but telephone for the police. He is not fastidious and will take up almost anything that is suggested, if it gives him the opportunity of exerting himself. The demand for exertion is the irreducible minimum.

Now to spoil all this fine enthusiasm you must arrange everything in such a manner that the eager little worker shall find everything done before he has time to put his hand to it. There must be no alluring possibilities in his tiny universe. The days of creation, when "the sons of God shouted for joy," must be passed before he is ushered in. He must be presented only with accomplished facts. There must be nothing left for him to make or discover. He must be told everything. All his designs must be anticipated, by nurses and parents and teachers. They must give him whatever good things they can think of before he has time to desire them. From the time when elaborate mechanical toys are put into his reluctant hands, it is understood that he is to be amused, and need not amuse himself His education is arranged for him. His companions are chosen for him. There is nothing for him to do, and if there were, there is no incentive for him to do it. In the game of life he is never allowed to be the horse. It is his fate to be the passenger.

A child is spoiled when he accepts the position into which fond, foolish parents thrust him. Being a passenger on what was presumably intended to be a pleasure excursion, he begins to find fault as soon as the journey becomes a little wearisome. He must find fault, because that is the only thing left for him to find. Having no opportunity to exercise his creative faculties, he becomes a petulant critic of a world he can neither enjoy nor understand. Taking for granted that everything should be done for him, he is angry because it is not done better. His ready-made world does not please him--why should it? It never occurs to him that if he does not like it he should try and make it better.

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

Among the innumerable children of an advanced civilization there are those who have been spoiled by the petting to which they have been subjected. Life has been made so easy for them that when they come upon hard places which demand sturdy endurance they break forth into angry complaints. They have been given the results of the complicated activities of mankind, without having done their share in the common tasks. They have not through personal endeavor learned how much everything costs. They are not able, therefore, to pay cheerfully for any future good. If it is not given to them at once they feel that they have a grievance. For friendly coöperation they are not prepared. They must have their own way or they will not play the game. Their fretful complaints 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 unto you and you have not lamented."

There is a fashionable attitude of mind among many who pride themselves on their acute intellectualism. It manifests itself in a supercilious compassion for the efforts and ambitions of the man of action. He, poor fellow, is well-meaning, but unilluminated. He is eager and energetic because he imagines that he is accomplishing something. If he were a serious thinker he would see that all effort is futile. We are here in an unintelligible world, a world of mighty forces, moving we know not whither. 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 all are. Civilization has failed to produce contentment. It has failed to secure perfect justice between man and man, or to satisfy the hungry with bread. Christianity after all these centuries of preaching leaves mankind as we see it to-day--an armed camp, nation fighting nation, class warring against class. The democratic movement about which we hear so much is equally unsuccessful. After its brilliant promises it leaves us helpless against the passion and stupidity of the mob. Popular education adds to the tribulations of society. It rapidly increases the number of the discontented. The half-educated are led astray by quacks and demagogues who flourish mightily. The higher technical education increases that intellectual proletariat which Bismarck saw to be a peril. Science, which once was hailed as a deliverer, is now perceived to bring only the disillusioning knowledge of our limitations. The bankruptcy 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 own machines which are to go faster and faster. Philanthropy increases the number of the unfit. The advances of medicine are only apparent, while statistics 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 worst sign of all. "Coming events cast their shadows before," and we may see the shadow of the coming Revolution. Is there any symptom of decadence more sure than when the moral temperature suddenly rises above normal? Watch the clinical charts of Empire. In the period of national vigor the blood is cool. But the time arrives when the period of growth has passed. Then a boding sense comes on. The huge frame of the patient is feverish. The social conscience is sensitive. All sorts of soft-hearted proposals for helping the masses are proposed. The world rulers become too tenderhearted for their business. Then comes the end.

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

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

Not by denying the existence of the evils they see, or the possibility of the calamities which they fear. What we object to is the mental attitude toward the facts that are discovered. The spoiled child, when it discovers something not to its liking, exaggerates the evil, and indulges its ill-temper.

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

He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity as an actual achievement. He places in parallel columns the maxims of Jesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state of Christian churches. The discrepancy is obvious enough. But it does not prove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work is unfinished.

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

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

Forgetting all this, and accepting whatever comforts may have come to them as their right, they are depressed and discouraged by their vision of the future with its dangers and its difficulties. They habitually talk of the civilized world as on the brink of some great catastrophe which it is impossible to avoid. This gloomy foreboding is looked upon as 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 "the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

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

The shadows which affright us are of our own making. They are projections into the future of our own experiences. They are sharply denned silhouettes, rather than vague omens. When we look at them closely we can recognize familiar features. We are dealing with cause and effect. What is done foreshadows what remains to be done. Every act implies some further acts as its results. When a principle is recognized its practical applications must follow. When men begin to reason from new premises they are bound to come to new conclusions.

It is evident that in the last half-century enough discoveries have been made to keep us busy for a long time. Every scientific advance upsets some custom and interferes with some vested interest. You cannot discover the truth about tuberculosis without causing a great deal of trouble to the owners of unsanitary dwellings. Some of them are widows whose little all is invested in this kind of property. The health inspectors make life more difficult for them.

Scholarly research among ancient manuscripts is the cause of destructive criticism. The scholar with the most peaceable intentions in the world disturbs some one's faith. His discovery perhaps involves the reconstruction of a whole system of philosophy.