Chapter XIV: Part II: The Pillar of Fire by Night (5)

In the lightning passage of that second field, he tried to figure where he was coming out and what obstacles he might encounter, but the effort was fruitless. He knew that the high-road, bordered by a third stone wall, ran along the foot of the hill, with the school grounds on the other side. But the speed at which he was traveling made consecutive thought almost impossible.

Again, with that same appalling swiftness, the final barrier loomed ahead. He leaped, and, at the very take-off, a gasp of horror was jolted from his lips by the sight of a two-horse sledge moving along the road directly in his path!

It was all over in a flash. Helpless to avoid the collision, Seabury nevertheless twisted his body instinctively to the left. He was vaguely conscious of a monstrous looming bulk; of a startled snort which sent a wave of hot breath against his face, and the equally startled yell of a human voice. The next instant he landed badly, his feet shot out from under him, and he fell backward with a stunning crash.

His first conscious observation was of two strange faces bending over him and of hands lifting him from where he lay half buried in the snow. For a moment he was too dazed to speak or even to remember. Then, with a surging rush of immense relief, he realized what had happened, and gaining speech, he poured out a hurried but fairly coherent account of the situation.

His rescuers proved to be woodsmen, perfectly familiar with the Hogan Hill trail and the old log-cabin. Seabury's skees were taken off and he was helped into the sledge and driven to the near-by school. Stiff and sore, but otherwise unhurt, he wanted to go with them, but his request was firmly refused; and pausing only long enough to get some rugs and a heavy coat, the pair set off. Little more than two hours later they returned with the injured Hedges, who was carried at once to the infirmary to be treated for exposure and a badly sprained ankle.

His rugged constitution responded readily to the former, but the ankle proved more stubborn, and he was ordered by the doctor not to attempt even to hobble around on it for at least a week. As a result, Christmas dinner had to be eaten in bed. But somehow Hedges did not mind that

(_page 264_)

very much, for Paul Seabury shared it, sitting on the other side of a folding table drawn up beside the couch.

Having consumed everything in sight and reached that state of repletion without which no Christmas dinner may be considered really perfect, the two boys relapsed for a space into a comfortable, friendly sort of silence.

“Not _much_ on skees, are you?” commented Hedges, presently, glancing quizzically at his companion.

Seabury flushed a little. “I wish you wouldn't,” he protested. “If you had any idea how scared I was, and--and--Why, the whole thing was just pure luck.”

Hedges snorted. “Bosh! You go tell that to your grandmother. There's one thing,” he added; “as soon as I'm around again, you've got to come out and give me some points. I thought I was fairly decent on skees, but I guess after all I'm pretty punk.”

“I'll show you anything I can, of course,” agreed Seabury, readily. He paused an instant and then went on hesitatingly: “I--I'm going to do a lot more of that sort of thing from now on. It--it was simply disgusting the way I got winded so soon and all tired out.”

“Sure,” nodded Hedges, promptly. “That's what I've always said. You ought to take more exercise and not mope around by yourself so much. But we'll fix that up all right from now on.” He paused. “Aren't you going to read some more in 'Treasure Island'?” he asked expectantly. “That's some book, believe me! What with you and that and everything, I'm not going to mind being laid up at all.”

Seabury made no comment, but as he reached for the book and found their place, the corners of his mouth curved with the beginnings of a contented, happy smile.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What is the character of Bill Hedges?

2. What is the character of “Plug” Seabury?

3. Why are both boys at the school in vacation time?

4. What had been the past life of each boy?

5. What had been their feeling for each other?

6. What change does the story make in their feeling for each other?

7. How does the author make the story seem probable?

8. Show how the author leads to the climax of the story.

9. Divide the story into its most important incidents.

10. Show that the author is consistent in character presentation.

11. How does the author make the climax powerful in effect?

12. What makes the conclusion effective?

13. What use does the author make of conversation?

14. What is the proportion of description and explanation in the
story?

15. What are the good characteristics of the story?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. A Summer Adventure 11. The Fire in School
2. At Easter Time 12. An Unexpected Hero
3. The Swimming Match 13. Tony's Brother
4. A Cross Country Adventure 14. Skating on the River
5. The Lost Books 15. The Bicycle Meet
6. The School Bully 16. At the Sea Shore
7. The Hiding Place 17. The Trip to the Woods
8. An Excursion 18. The Surprise of the Day
9. The Little Freshman 19. The Best Batter
10. Our Election Day 20. How We Found a Captain

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Write a story that will be closely connected with school life. Use the ordinary characters that are to be found in your school, but use typical characters that will sum up well-recognized characteristics. Base your story upon any sharp contrast in characters. Begin your story by telling of everyday events, but make those events lead quickly to events that are out of the ordinary. In like manner begin with familiar surroundings and then lead your readers into surroundings that will be less familiar and that will be an appropriate setting for unusual action. Make the climax of your story powerful by using suspense. Indicate that your hero is likely to be overcome. Make his final success depend upon his resolution or good spirit,--upon his character. Use much conversation. Omit everything that will not contribute to the effect of the climax.

THE CRITICAL ESSAY

CODDLING IN EDUCATION
By HENRY SEIDEL CANBY

_(1878). Editor of The Literary Review; Assistant Editor of The
Yale Review, and Assistant Professor of English in the Sheffield
Scientific School. He is author and co-author of many books on
English, among which are:_ The Short Story; Facts, Thought and
Imagination; _and_ Good English.

=The critical essay comments on a fault,--but it does no more: it
makes no searching analysis and it points to no specific remedy.=

=_Coddling in Education_ is a critical essay. It points at what its
author believes is a serious fault in American education. Like all
critical essays it aims at reform, but it merely suggests the means
of reform.=

=Many of the editorial articles in newspapers are examples of the
critical essay.=

American minds have been coddled in school and college for at least a generation. There are two kinds of mental coddling. The first belongs to the public schools, and is one of the defects of our educational system that we abuse privately and largely keep out of print. It is democratic coddling. I mean, of course, the failure to hold up standards, the willingness to let youth wobble upward, knowing little and that inaccurately, passing nothing well, graduating with an education that hits and misses like an old type-writer with a torn ribbon. America is full of “sloppy thinking,” of inaccuracy, of half-baked misinformation, of sentimentalism, especially sentimentalism, as a result of coddling by schools that cater to an easy-going democracy. Only fifty-six per cent. of a group of girls, graduates of the public schools, whose records I once examined, could do simple addition, only twenty-nine per cent. simple multiplication correctly; a deplorable percentage had a very inaccurate knowledge of elementary American geography.

A dozen causes are responsible for this condition, and among them, I suspect, one, which if not major, at least deserves careful pondering. The teacher and the taught have somehow drifted apart. His function in the large has been to teach an ideal, a tradition. He is content, he has to be content, with partial results. It is not for life as it is, it is for what life ought to be, that he is preparing even in arithmetic; he has allowed the faint unreality of a priestcraft to numb him. In the mind of the student a dim conception has entered, that this education--all education--is a garment merely, to be doffed for the struggle with realities. The will is dulled. Interest slackens.

But it is in aristocratic coddling that the effects of our educational attitude gleam out to the least observant understanding. This is the coddling of the preparatory schools and the colleges, and it is more serious for it is a defect that cannot be explained away by the hundred difficulties that beset good teaching in a public-school system, nation-wide, and conducted for the young of every race in the American menagerie. The teaching in the best American preparatory schools and colleges is as careful and as conscientious as any in the world. That one gladly asserts. Indeed, an American boy in a good boarding-school is handled like a rare microbe in a research laboratory. He is ticketed; every instant of his time is planned and scrutinized; he is dieted with brain food, predigested, and weighed before application. I sometimes wonder if a moron could not be made into an Abraham Lincoln by such a system--if the system were sound.

It is not sound. The boys and girls, especially the boys, are coddled for entrance examinations, coddled through freshman year, coddled oftentimes for graduation. And they too frequently go out into the world fireproof against anything but intellectual coddling. Such men and women can read only writing especially prepared for brains that will take only selected ideas, simply put. They can think only on simple lines, not too far extended. They can live happily only in a life where ideas never exceed the college sixty per cent. of complexity, and where no intellectual or esthetic experience lies too far outside the range of their curriculum. A world where one reads the news and skips the editorials; goes to musical comedies, but omits the plays; looks at illustrated magazines, but seldom at books; talks business, sports, and politics, but never economics, social welfare, and statesmanship--that is the world for which we coddle the best of our youth. Many indeed escape the evil effects by their own innate originality; more bear the marks to the grave.

The process is simple, and one can see it in the English public school (where it is being attacked vivaciously) quite as commonly as here. You take your boy out of his family and his world. You isolate him except for companionship with other nursery transplantings and teachers themselves isolated. And then you feed him, nay, you cram him, with good traditional education, filling up the odd hours with the excellent, but negative, passion of sport. Then you subject him to a special cramming and send him to college, where sometimes he breaks through the net of convention woven about him, and sees the real world as it should appear to the student before he becomes part of it; but more frequently wraps himself deep and more deeply in conventional opinion, conventional practice, until, the limbs of his intellectual being bound tightly, he stumbles into the outer world.

And there, in the swirl and the vivid practicalities of American life, is the net loosened? I think not. I think rather that the youth learns to swim clumsily despite his encumbrances of lethargic thinking and tangled idealism. But if they are cut? If he goes on the sharp rocks of experience, finds that hardness, shrewdness, selfish individualism pay best in American life, what has he in his spirit to meet this disillusion? Of what use has been his education in the liberal, idealistic traditions of America? Of some use, undoubtedly, for habit, even a dull habit, is strong; but whether useful enough, whether powerful enough, to save America, to keep us “white” in the newer and more colloquial sense, the future will test and test quickly.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Explain what the writer means by “coddling.”
2. Define “democratic coddling.”
3. Define aristocratic “coddling.”
4. What are the results of “coddling”?
5. What are the causes of “coddling”?
6. What is the writer's ideal of education?
7. What criticism of American life does the essay present?
8. Point out effective phrasing.

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. The Best Kind of Teacher 11. Thinking for One's Self
2. The Most Helpful Subjects 12. 60% or 100%
3. The Value of Marks 13. Serious Reading
4. Study and Play 14. Pleasure Seeking
5. What Promotion Means 15. Character Training
6. Mistaken Kindness 16. The Value of Hard Work
7. The Passing Mark 17. Discipline
8. Scholarship in My School 18. Faithfulness in Work
9. The Purposes of Study 19. Real Success in Life
10. The School Course 20. “Cramming.”

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Plan to emphasize some original phrasing like “Coddling in School and College.” Use familiar words that every one will understand but use them in some new relation.

Make your essay point at a really serious fault that will be worthy of attack. Do not go into details, but make your writing represent your honest opinion.

Use expressions that will represent you, and that will make your essay personal in nature. Notice how Mr. Canby makes use of such words as “wobble,” “sloppy,” “half-baked,” “coddle,” “cram” and “white.” Notice, too, how many conversational short sentences Mr. Canby uses. His essay is like a vigorous talk. Make your own essay equally personal and equally vigorous.

A SUCCESSFUL FAILURE
By GLENN FRANK

_(1887-). Editor of_ The Century Magazine. _He is a member of
many important associations, and was one of ex-President Taft's
associates in suggesting a covenant for the League of Nations. His
magazine articles are notable for constructive thought._

=Any subject is appropriate material for the essayist, and any
method of treatment is satisfactory so long as the writer gives us
his personal reaction on some province of human thought.=

=The following critical essay begins with the writer's account of a
series of papers that he once read. To this he adds his own serious
comment, and he concludes his work by suggesting an ideal. In doing
all this he makes free use of the pronoun “I,” and writes in an
informal style.=

=The work is therefore not hard and fast logic, but mature and
serious comment on life.=

Several years ago there appeared a series of papers that purported to be the confessions of a successful man who was under no delusion as to the essential quality of his attainments. The papers are not before me as I write, and I must trust to memory and a few penciled notes made at the time of their appearance, but it will be interesting to recall his confessions regarding his education. I think they paint a fairly faithful picture of the mind of the average college graduate.

He stated that he came from a family that prided itself on its culture and intellectuality and that had always been a family of professional folk. His grandfather was a clergyman; among his uncles were a lawyer, a physician, and a professor; his sisters married professional men. He received a fairly good primary and secondary education, and was graduated from his university with honors. He was, he stated, of a distinctly literary turn of mind, and during his four years at college imbibed some slight information concerning the English classics as well as modern history and metaphysics, so that he could talk quite glibly about Chaucer,[136] Beaumont, and Fletcher,[137] Thomas Love Peacock,[138] and Ann Radcliffe,[139] and speak with apparent familiarity about Kant[140] and Schopenhauer.[141]

But, in turning to self-analysis, he stated that he later saw that his smattering of culture was neither broad nor deep; that he acquired no definite knowledge of the underlying principles of general history, of economics, of languages, of mathematics, of physics, or of chemistry; that to biology and its allies he paid scarcely any attention at all, except to take a few snap courses; that he really secured only a surface acquaintance with polite English literature, mostly very modern, the main part of his time having been spent in reading Stevenson[142] and Kipling.[143] He did well in English composition, he said, and pronounced his words neatly and in a refined manner. He concluded the description of his college days by saying that at the end of his course, twenty-three years of age, he was handed an imitation parchment degree and proclaimed by the president of the college as belonging to the brotherhood of educated men. On this he commented:

I did not. I was an imitation educated man; but though spurious,
I was a sufficiently good counterfeit to pass current for what
I was declared to be. Apart from a little Latin, considerable
training in writing the English language, and a great deal of
miscellaneous reading of an extremely light variety, I really
had no culture at all. I could not speak an idiomatic sentence
in French or German. I had only the vaguest ideas about applied
science or mechanics and no thorough knowledge about anything; but
I was supposed to be an educated man, and on this stock in trade I
have done business ever since, with the added capital of a degree
of LL.B. Now, since graduation, twenty-seven years ago, I have
given no time to the systematic study of any subject except law. I
have read no serious works dealing with either history, sociology,
economics, art, or philosophy. I have rarely read over again any of
the masterpieces of English literature with which I had at least
a bowing acquaintance when at college. Even this last sentence I
must qualify to the extent of admitting that now I see that this
acquaintance was largely vicarious, and that I frequently read more
criticism than literature.

I was taught about Shakespeare, but not Shakespeare. I was
instructed in the history of literature, but not in literature
itself. I knew the names of the works of numerous English authors
and knew what Taine[144] and others thought about them, but I knew
comparatively little of what was between the covers of the books
themselves. I was, I find, a student of letters by proxy. As time
went on I gradually forgot that I had not in fact actually perused
these volumes, and to-day I am accustomed to refer familiarly to
works I have never read at all.

I frankly confess that my own ignorance is abysmal. In the last
twenty-seven years what information I have acquired has been picked
up principally from newspapers and magazines; yet my library table
is littered with books on modern art and philosophy and with essays
on literary and historical subjects. I do not read them. They are
my intellectual window-dressings. I talk about them with others
who, I suspect, have not read them either, and we confine ourselves
to generalities, with careful qualifications of all expressed
opinions, no matter how vague or elusive.

This quotation is made from slightly abbreviated notes and may be guilty of some verbal variation from the text, but it is entirely accurate as to content. As I remember the paper, the writer went on to catalogue his educational shortcomings in the various fields of interest, confessing fundamental ignorance, save for superficial smatterings of information, of art, history, biography, music, poetry, politics, science, and economics. He painted an amusing picture of the hollow pretense of culture with which the average man of his type covers his intellectual poverty. Men of his type speak casually, he said, of Henry of Navarre,[145] Beatrice d'Este,[146] or Charles the Fifth,[147] without knowing within two hundred years when any of them lived or what was their rôle. His lack of knowledge goes deeper than mere names and dates; it goes, he said, to the significance of events themselves. For an illustration at random, he knew nothing about what happened on the Italian peninsula until Garibaldi,[148] and really never knew just who Garibaldi was until he read Trevelyan's[149] three books on the Risorgimento, the only serious books he had read in years, and he read them because he had taken a motor trip through Italy the summer before. He knew virtually nothing of Spain, Russia, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, or Belgium. He described his type going to the Metropolitan Opera House, hearing the best music at big prices, content to murmur vague ecstasies over Caruso, in ignorance of who wrote the opera or what it is all about, lacking enough virile intellectual curiosity even to spend an hour reading about the opera in one of the many available hand-books.

Coming to the vital matters of public affairs, he confessed that, although holding a prominent place on the citizens' committee at election-time, he knew nothing definite about the city's departments or its fiscal administration. He could not direct a poor man to the place where he might obtain relief. He knew the city hall by sight, but had never been in it. He had never visited the Tombs[150] or the criminal courts, never entered a police station, a fire-house, or prison of the city. He did not know whether police magistrates were appointed or elected, nor in what congressional district he resided. He did not know the name of his alderman, assemblyman, state senator, or representative in Congress. He did not know who was head of the street-cleaning, health, fire, park, or water departments of his city. He could name only five of the members of the Supreme Court, three of the secretaries in the President's cabinet, and only one of the congressmen from his State. He had never studied save in the most superficial manner the single tax, minimum wage, free trade, protection, income tax, inheritance tax, the referendum, the recall, and other vital questions.

Of the authorship of these anonymous confessions I know nothing. They may have been fiction instead of biography, for all I know. But their content would still be true were their form fiction. I have recalled these confessions at length because in my judgment they present an uncomfortably true analysis of the average American college graduate's mind, his range of interests, and his grasp of those fundamentals which underlie a citizen's worth in a democracy. It is from the college graduates of this country that we must look for our leaders in the complex and baffling years ahead, and it is a matter of the gravest concern to the country if we are raising up a generation of men, into whose hands leadership will pass, whose minds have been atrophied by superficial study, whose imagination is unlit, who have an apathetic indifference toward the supreme issues of our political, social, and industrial life, who lack capacity and background for the analysis of broad questions and for creative thinking. If these confessions of “The Goldfish” papers tell a true story, if we are failing to produce a leader class adequate to meet the needs of the present time, as it seems to me there is sound evidence to prove, then it behooves us to reëxamine, reconceive, and reorganize our colleges.

If we are to raise up adequate leadership for the future, our colleges must contrive to give to students a genuinely liberal education that will make them intelligent citizens of the world; an education that will make the student at home in the modern world, able to work in harmony with the dominant forces of his age, not at cross-purposes to them; an education that will acquaint him with the physical, social, economic, and political aspects, laws, and forces of his world; an education that will furnish to the student that adequate background and primary information needed for the interpretation of current life; an education that will help the student to plot out the larger world beyond the campus; an education that will give the student an interest in those events and issues in which people generally are concerned; an education that will enable the student to give intelligent and informed consideration to the significant political and economic problems of American life; an education that will provide the student with a sort of Baedeker's[151] guide to civilization; in short, an education that will make for that spacious-minded type of citizen which alone can bring adequate leadership to a democracy.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Apply the writer's criticism to work done in school.

2. What should be the purpose of public school education?

3. What advantage does the writer gain by quoting from the
“successful failure”?

4. Why does the writer give only a résumé of some of the words of
the “successful failure”?

5. What is real culture?

6. What is the difference between “passing” and “learning”?

7. What is an “imitation parchment degree”?

8. How long should a person pursue systematic study?

9. What principles should guide a person in reading books?

10. What is the difference between being “taught about Shakespeare”
and being “taught Shakespeare”?

11. What is the proper attitude toward newspaper reading?

12. What is “intellectual window-dressing”?

13. What should one know of history?

14. What should one know concerning various lands?

15. On what should real appreciation of music depend?

16. How should education contribute to political life?

17. What is the importance of education in the United States?

18. What is the basis of real leadership?

19. Make a list of the “vital matters of public affair” on which the
writer believes people should be informed.

20. On how many of these subjects are you informed?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. My Own Scholarship 11. Learning a Foreign Language
2. My School Career 12. The Value of Science
3. Public School Scholarship 13. Reading Shakespeare
4. Real Study 14. Studying Music
5. The Passing Mark 15. Newspaper Reading
6. The Best Teachers 16. The Use of a Library
7. The Study of History 17. A Real Student
8. Good Reading 18. An Educated Citizen
9. The Study of Governments 19. A Good School
10. The Purpose of Education 20. Systematic Study

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

If you cannot quote from the words of written articles you can at least quote from what people have said in conversation. You can also make full use of your own experience. Begin your essay, as Mr. Frank begins his, by making some statement of actual experience. When you have done this add original comments that will lead, in the end, to a wise suggestion for the future. Both by the use of the pronoun “I,” and by a certain informality of style, make your work personal.

FOOTNOTES:

[136] Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). Author of _The Canterbury Tales_, a series of realistic narratives in verse.

[137] Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). Two of the most celebrated of Shakespeare's contemporaries. They wrote in collaboration, and produced at least 52 plays.

[138] Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866). Author of a number of highly original and witty novels.

[139] Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823). An English novelist who wrote chiefly of the mysterious and terrible, as in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, her most famous book.

[140] Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). A great German philosopher, one of the most profound thinkers who ever lived.

[141] Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). A German philosopher noted for his pessimistic beliefs.

[142] Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). Novelist, essayist, poet and traveler, noted for his personal appeal and the charm of his style.

[143] Rudyard Kipling (1865--). A popular present-day novelist, short story writer and poet.

[144] Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893). A French critic, especially noted for his _History of English Literature_.

[145] Henry of Navarre (1553-1610). King of Navarre and later King of France, author of the celebrated _Edict of Nantes_.

[146] Beatrice d'Este (1475-1497). A beautiful and highly cultured Duchess of Milan who, in spite of her early death, deeply influenced the intellectual leaders of her time.

[147] Charles the Fifth (1500-1558). A masterful and virile Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

[148] Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). A great Italian patriot who aided in bringing about the unification of Italy. He was at one time a citizen of the United States, and was employed in a candle factory on Staten Island, New York.

[149] George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876). An English historian, author of important works on Garibaldi.

[150] The Tombs. A New York City prison.

[151] Karl Baedeker (1801-1859). The originator of Baedeker's _Guide Books_ to various lands.

THE DROLLERIES OF CLOTHES
By AGNES REPPLIER

_(1858-). One of the most noted American essayists. Among her books
are:_ Essays in Miniature; Essays in Idleness; In the Dozy Hours; A
Happy Half Century; Americans and Others.

=Miss Agnes Repplier for many years has kept her high place as one
of the most popular American essayists. She has written upon a
great variety of subjects, and always with charm and substantial
thought. The essay on _The Drolleries of Clothes_ shows with how
much good spirit one may write even a critical essay.=

In that engaging volume, “The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday,” Lord Frederic Hamilton,[152] commenting on the beauty and grace of the Austrian women, observes thoughtfully: “In the far-off seventies ladies did not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments of material. They dressed, and their clothes fitted them. A woman upon whom nature has bestowed a good figure was able to display her gifts to the world.”

That a woman to whom nature had been less kind was compelled to display her deficiencies is a circumstance ignored by Hamilton, who, being a man of the world and a man of fashion, regarded clothes as the insignia of caste. The costly costumes, the rich and sweeping draperies in which he delighted, were not easy of imitation. The French ladies who followed the difficult lead of the Empress Eugenia[153] supported the transparent whiteness of their billowy skirts with at least a dozen fine, sheer petticoats. Now it is obvious that no woman of the working classes (except a blanchisseuse de fin[154] who might presumably wear her customers' laundry) could afford a dozen white petticoats. But when it comes to stripping off a solitary petticoat, no one is too poor or too plain to be in the fashion. When it comes to clipping a dress at the knee, the factory girl is as fashionable as the banker's daughter, and far more at her ease. Her “abbreviated oddments” are a convenience in the limited spaces of the mill, and she is hardier to endure exposure. She thanks the kindly gods who have fitted the fashions to her following, and she takes a few more inches off her solitary garment to make sure of being in the style.

Not that women of any class regard heat or cold, comfort or discomfort, as a controlling factor in dress. In this regard they are less highly differentiated from the savage than are men, who, with advancing civilization, have modified their attire into something like conformity to climate and to season. The savage, even the savage who, like the Tierra del Fuegian,[155] lives in a cold country, considers clothes less as a covering than as an adornment. So also do women, who take a simple primitive delight in garments devoid of utilitarianism. For the past half-dozen years American women have worn furs during the sweltering heat of American summers. Perhaps by the sea, or in the mountains, a chill day may now and then warrant this costume; but on the burning city streets the fur-clad females, red and panting, have been pitiful objects to behold. They suffered, as does the Polar bear in August in the zoo; but they suffered irrationally, and because they lacked the wit to escape from self-inflicted torment.

For the past two winters women have worn fur coats or capes which swathed the upper part of their bodies in voluminous folds, and stopped short at the knee. From that point down, the thinnest of silk stockings have been all the covering permitted. The theory that, if one part of the body be protected, another part may safely and judiciously be exposed, has ever been dear to the female heart. It may be her back, her bosom, or her legs which the woman selects to exhibit. In any case she affirms that the uncovered portions of her anatomy never feel the cold. If they do, she endures the discomfort with the stoicism of the savage who keeps his ornamental scars open with irritants, and she is nerved to endurance by the same impelling motive.

This motive is not personal vanity. Vanity has had little to do with savage, barbarous, and civilized customs. The ancient Peruvians who deformed their heads, pressing them out of shape; the Chinese who deform their feet, bandaging them into balls; the Africans who deform their mouths, stretching them with wooden discs; the Borneans who deform their ears, dragging the lobes below their shoulder blades; the European and American women who deformed their bodies, tightening their stays to produce the celebrated “hour-glass” waist, have all been victims of something more powerful than vanity, the inexorable decrees of fashion.

As a matter of fact the female mind is singularly devoid of illusions. Women do not think their layers of fat or their protruding collar bones beautiful and seductive. They display them because fashion makes no allowance for personal defects, and they have not yet reached that stage of civilization which achieves artistic sensibility, which ordains and preserves the eternal law of fitness. They know, for example, that nuns, waitresses, and girls in semi-military uniforms look handsomer than they are, because of straight lines and adroit concealment; but they fail to derive from this knowledge any practical guidance.

I can remember when “pull-back” skirts and bustles were in style. They were uncomfortable, unsanitary, and unsightly. Their wearers looked grotesquely deformed, and knew it. They submitted to fate, and prayed for a speedy deliverance. The fluctuations of fashion are alternately a

(_page 280_)

grievance and a solace. John Evelyn,[156] commenting on the dress worn by Englishmen in the time of Charles the First,[157] says that it was “a comely and manly habit, too good to hold.” It did not hold because the Puritans, who saw no reason why manliness should be comely, swept it aside. The bustle was much too bad to hold. It grew beautifully less every year, and then suddenly disappeared. Many dry eyes witnessed its departure.

If abhorrence of a fashion cannot keep women from slavishly following it, they naturally remain unmoved by outside counsel and criticism. For years the doctors exhausted themselves proclaiming the disastrous consequences of tight-lacing, which must certainly be held responsible for the obsolete custom of fainting. For years satirists and moralists united in attacking the crinoline. In _Watson's Annals_, 1856, a virtuous Philadelphian published a solemn protest against Christian ladies wearing enormous hoops to church, thereby scandalizing and, what was worse, inconveniencing the male congregation. When the Great War started a wave of fatuous extravagance, it was solemnly reported that Mrs. Lloyd George was endeavoring to dissuade the wives of workingmen from buying silk stockings and fur coats. When the Great Peace let loose upon us the most fantastic absurdities known for half a century, the papers bristled with such hopeful headlines as these: “Club Women Approve Sensible Styles of Dress,” “Social Leaders Condemn Indecorous Fashions,” “Crusade in Churches Against Prevailing Scantiness of Attire,” and so on, and so on indefinitely.

And to what purpose? The unrest of a rapidly changing world broke down the old supremacies, smashed all appreciable standards, and left us only a vague clutter of impressions. When a woman's dress no longer indicates her fortune, station, age, or honesty, we have reached the twilight of taste; but such dim, confused periods are recurrent in the history of sociology. The girl who works hard and decently for daily bread, but who walks the streets with her little nose whitened like concrete, and her little cheeks reddened like brick-dust, and her little under-nourished body painfully evidenced to the crowd, is tremulously imitating the woman of the town; but the most inexperienced eye catalogues her at a glance. Let us be grateful for her sake if she bobs her hair, for that is a cleanly custom, whereas the great knobs which she formerly wore over her ears harbored nests of vermin. It is one of the comedies of fashion that short hair, which half a century ago indicated strongmindedness, now represents the utmost levity; just as the bloomers of 1852 stood for stern reform, and the attempted trousers of 1918 stood for lawlessness. Both were rejected by women who have never been unaware that the skirt carries with it an infinite variety of possibilities.

A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,

wrote Evelyn's contemporary, Herrick,[158] who was more concerned with the comeliness of Julia's clothes than with his own.

There is still self-revelation in dress, but not personal self-revelation. We may still apply the test of costume to people and to periods, but not safely to individuals, who suffer from coercion. Women's ready-made clothes are becoming more and more like liveries. A dozen shop windows, a dozen establishments, display the same model over and over again, the materials and prices varying, the gown always the same. The lines may lack distinction, and the colors may lack serenity; but then distinction and serenity are not the great underlying qualities of our fretted age. The “abbreviated oddments,” with their strange admixture of the bizarre and the commonplace, strike a purely modern note. They are democratic. They are as appropriate, or, I might say, as inappropriate, to one class of women as to another. They are helping, more than we can know, to level the barriers of caste.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Summarize what the essay says in criticism of modern fashions.

2. What does the essay say concerning fashions in the past?

3. Summarize Miss Repplier's suggestions for ideal costumes.

4. Explain why the writer refers to the fashions of savages.

5. By what means does the writer give interest to her work?

6. How does the essay differ from an ordinary informational
article?

7. What advantage does the writer gain by referring to various
works of literature?

8. How does the writer avoid harshness of criticism?

9. What is the general plan of the essay?

10. What does the article show concerning Miss Repplier?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Fashions for Men 11. Children's Clothes
2. Jewelry 12. Style in Shoes
3. Good Manners 13. Social Customs
4. Table Etiquette 14. Street Behavior
5. Neckties 15. Ribbons
6. Dancing 16. School Yells
7. Spoken English 17. Slang
8. Stockings 18. Hair Dressing
9. Buttons 19. The Use of Mirrors
10. Exercise 20. Walking

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Your object is to write, in a critical vein, about some modern custom, and to write without bitterness. Embody your criticism in mild humor. Find something good even in the midst of what is bad. Above all, draw definite examples from literature and history, in order to make your thought have weight.

FOOTNOTES:

[152] Lord Frederic Hamilton (1856--). An English diplomat and editor. He has travelled in many lands. Among his works are: _The Holiday Adventures of Mr. P. J. Davenant_; _Lady Eleanor_; _The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday_.

[153] Empress Eugenia (1826-1920). A Spanish Countess who in 1853 became the wife of Napoleon III of France and the natural leader of French society.

[154] Blanchisseuse de fin. A laundress.

[155] Tierra del Fuegian. An inhabitant of the archipelago at the extreme southern end of South America.

[156] John Evelyn (1620-1706). The author of a diary kept from 1624-1706 in which he gives a wealth of information concerning life in his period.

[157] Charles I (1600-1649). King of England from 1625 to 1649. He was overthrown and beheaded by the adherents of the parliamentary, or Puritan, forces.

[158] Robert Herrick (1591-1674). An English poet, author of many charming poems, one of which is _Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May_.

POETIC PROSE

CHILDREN
By YUKIO OZAKI

_Madame Ozaki is the wife of a former mayor of Tokyo and former
Minister of Justice in the Okuma Cabinet. She writes for many
magazines. Among her books are:_ Warriors of Old Japan; The
Japanese Fairy Book; Romances of Old Japan.

=The essay is so natural an expression of the writer's personality
that it has much in common with lyric poetry. Both the essay and
the lyric, at their best, are ardent expressions of self. When
the emotion in either is deep and genuine the language takes on
richness of rhythm, and the effect becomes entirely poetic. Many of
the best essays contain passages that in all except meter and rime
are poems,--prose poems.=

=_Children_ is an example of highly poetic prose.=

Let us love our children serenely, devotedly, even passionately. Surely in their innocence and angelic simplicity they play on the threshold of heaven. Let us hush our noisy activities and stale anxieties, and under the trees and in the open that they love listen to the words of refreshing wisdom dropping like jewels from their naïve lips.

Let us be willing to sit at their dainty little feet, so unused to the dusty roads of this world, and learn from them divinest lessons. Let us with uplifted hearts realize our responsibility when with unconscious humility they accept us as their guides in the sweet, fresh morning of their lives.

O sister-mothers in the world, let us awaken to a deeper sense of this sublime trust, our high charge in the care of these immortal treasures, only for a little while, such a little while, given into our keeping! Let us make our hearts, our minds, our consciences worthy of these transcendent marvels of life!

Oh, joy of joys! Oh, purest wonder! How often my children lift the invisible veils that hide undreamed-of casements opening out on luminous vistas of the mystical world in which they wander, roaming fancy-free with keen and wondering delight!

Take me with you, oh, take me with you, children mine, when with bright eyes and with kindled imagination, all spirit, fire and dew, you sally forth on these highroads of discovery, to the elysiums of your day-dreams, peopled by the souls of birds, animals, flowers and pictures in happy communion!

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Point out examples of rhythmical sentences.

2. Point out figures of speech.

3. Point out words that have been chosen because of their charm, or
their suggestive power.

4. Show how the selection rises in emotion.

5. How do children “play on the threshold of heaven”?

6. What “refreshing wisdom” do children express?

7. What “divinest lessons” may we learn from children?

8. What “undreamed of casements” do children open?

9. Explain the last paragraph.

10. Point out all the respects in which this selection is like a
poem.

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. The Baby 11. Dreams
2. The Helpless 12. Beautiful Views
3. The Old 13. The Sunshine
4. Father and Mother 14. Summer
5. Grandmother 15. Favorite Flowers
6. Home 16. Birds
7. Playmates 17. My Dog
8. Memories 18. The Garden
9. Holidays 19. Snow
10. Ambitions 20. Sunrise

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

In order to write poetic prose you must write from genuine emotion. Write about something that you really love. Choose your words so that they will most clearly reveal your feelings. Think of the deeper meanings and of the greater values of your subject. Make your essay increase steadily in power until the very end. Make it, like a good lyric poem, reveal the writer's best self in one of his noblest moments.

SHIPS THAT LIFT TALL SPIRES OF CANVAS[159]
By RALPH D. PAINE

_(1871--). An American author and journalist, especially noted
for excellent work as a war correspondent. Among his many books
concerning the sea are the following:_ The Praying Skipper, and
Other Stories; The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem; The Judgments of
the Sea; The Adventures of Captain O'Shea; The Fighting Fleets; The
Fight for a Free Sea. He is a frequent contributor to magazines.

=_Ships That Lift Tall Spires of Canvas_ is practically a poem,
although it is written in prose. It is an emotional expression
of admiration for the sailing vessels of the past, and for the
gallant sailors who manned them. It is evident that the author is
familiar with many stories of romantic voyages and grim adventure
on the deep, and that his emotion springs from his knowledge. That
genuineness of feeling did much to lead him to choose suggestive
words and to write in balanced and rhythmical sentences. All good
style comes in large part from earnestness of thought or depth of
emotion, and in smaller degree from knowledge of the rhetorical
means of conveying thought or emotion.=

=Oh, night and day the ships come in,
The ships both great and small,
But never one among them brings
A word of him at all.
From Port o' Spain and Trinidad,
From Rio or Funchal,
And along the coast of Barbary.=

Steam has not banished from the deep sea the ships that lift tall spires of canvas to win their way from port to port. The gleam of their topsails recalls the centuries in which men wrought with stubborn courage to fashion fabrics of wood and cordage that would survive the enmity of the implacable ocean and make the winds obedient. Their genius was unsung, their hard toil forgotten, but with each generation the sailing ship became nobler and more enduring, until it was a perfect thing. Its great days live in memory with a peculiar atmosphere of romance. Its humming shrouds were vibrant with the eternal call of the sea, and in a phantom fleet pass the towering East Indiaman, the hard-driven Atlantic packet, and the gracious clipper that fled before the Southern trades.

A hundred years ago every bay and inlet of the New England coast were building ships that fared bravely forth to the West Indies, to the roadsteads of Europe, to the mysterious havens of the Far East. They sailed in peril of pirate and privateer, and fought these rascals as sturdily as they battled with wicked weather. Coasts were unlighted, the seas uncharted, and navigation was mostly guesswork, but these seamen were the flower of an American merchant marine whose deeds are heroic in the nation's story. Great hearts in little ships, they dared and suffered with simple, uncomplaining fortitude. Shipwreck was an incident, and to be adrift in lonely seas or cast upon a barbarous shore was sadly commonplace. They lived the stuff that made fiction after they were gone.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Make a list of the most effective adjectives in the selection.

2. Make a list of the words that do most to suggest the sea.

3. Read aloud the most effective sentences.

4. Point out examples of balanced construction.

5. Show that the author has indicated the entire field of the
subject.

6. In what ways is the selection poetic?

7. What famous books tell stories of sailing vessels?

8. What books of the sea did Fenimore Cooper write?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Old Gardens 11. My Grandmother
2. Farm Houses 12. Old Letters
3. My Childhood Home 13. A Happy Day
4. Mothers 14. The Old Soldier
5. Flowers 15. A Relic
6. Memories 16. A Familiar Street
7. Old School-books 17. Changes
8. Old Friends 18. Souvenirs
9. Childhood Games 19. Skating
10. Favorite Stories 20. Summer Days

(_page 287_)

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

The subject that you select must be one concerning which you know a great deal. It must be one that exists not only in your brain but also in your heart.

When you have selected your subject make a list of the points that appeal to you most, and that will represent every side of the subject.

When you write, let your emotion guide your pen. At the same time make every effort to select words that will be full of suggestive power. Write easily and rhythmically, and let your work end, as Mr. Paine's does, in an especially effective sentence.

FOOTNOTES:

[159] From “Lost Ships and Lonely Seas,” by Ralph D. Paine. Copyright by the Century Co.

PERSONALITY IN CORRESPONDENCE

By THEODORE ROOSEVELT and AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

_(1858-1919). Twenty-sixth President of the United States. One of
the most vigorous, courageous and picturesque figures in the public
life of his day. Soon after his graduation from Harvard, and from
Columbia Law School he entered public life, and gave invaluable
service in many positions, becoming President in 1901, and again
in 1904. His work as an organizer of the “Rough Riders,” his skill
in horsemanship, his courage as an explorer and hunter, and his
staunch patriotism and high ideals all made him both interesting
and beloved. His work as an author is alone sufficient to make
him great. Among his many books are_ The Winning of the West; The
Strenuous Life; African Game Trails; True Americanism.

_(1848-1907). One of the greatest American sculptors. His statues
of Admiral Farragut, Abraham Lincoln, The Puritan, Peter Cooper,
and General Sherman are noble examples of his art. Many other works
of sculpture, including the beautiful “Diana” on Madison Square
Garden Tower, New York, attest his rare skill. He excelled in what
is called “relief.” His influence on American art was remarkably
great. His portrait-plaque of Robert Louis Stevenson is especially
interesting to lovers of literature._

=The essay and the friendly letter are closely related. It is
natural for one who writes a friendly letter to express himself
freely and intimately, to make wise or humorous comments on life,
to write meditatively of all the things that interest him,--in
fact, to reveal himself in full. To do all that, even within the
limited form of the letter, is to write an approach to an essay.
Almost any one of the essays in this book might have been written
as part of a friendly letter.=

=The spirit of the essay, that of personality, should enter into all
letters except those that are purely formal in nature. In fact, the
amount of personality expressed in a letter is, often, a measure of
the success of the letter.=

=The following letters written by Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus
Saint-Gaudens are, in a sense, business letters. In 1905 Mr.
Roosevelt was president of the United States. He believed that
the coins of the United States, like the coins of the ancient
Greeks, should be beautiful. That he had the highest respect for
the great sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is shown by a letter
that he wrote in 1903 concerning the impressively beautiful
statue of General Sherman, that now stands at the 59th Street
entrance to Central Park, New York City. In 1905 Mr. Roosevelt met
Mr. Saint-Gaudens at a dinner in Washington and talked with him
concerning the coinage of the United States and the possibility
of improving it. The letters given in this book are part of the
correspondence that followed this conversation.=

=Both men had serious purpose in writing and both were intensely
practical; yet each man wrote in a manner that is exceedingly
personal. The letters have something of the spirit of the essay.=

THE STATUE OF GENERAL SHERMAN

WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

OYSTER BAY, N. Y.
August 3, 1903.

Personal

_My dear Mr. Saint-Gaudens_:

Your letter was a great relief and pleasure to me. I had been told that it was you personally who had opposed ----. I have no claim to be listened to about these matters, save such claim as a man of ordinary cultivation has. But I do think that ----, like Proctor, has done excellent work in his wild-beast figures.

By the way, I was very glad that the Grant decision in Washington went the way it did. The rejected figure, it seemed to me, fell between two schools. It suggested allegory; and yet it did not show that high quality of imagination which must be had when allegory is suggested. The figure that was taken is the figure of the great general, the great leader of men. It is not the greatest type of statue for the very reason that there is nothing of the allegorical, nothing of the highest type of the imaginative in it. But it is a good statue. Now to my mind your Sherman is the greatest statue of a commander in existence. But I can say with all sincerity that I know of no man--of course of no one living--who could have done it. To take grim, homely, old Sherman, the type and ideal of a democratic general, and put with him an allegorical figure such as you did, could result in but one of two ways--a ludicrous failure or striking the very highest note of the sculptor's art. Thrice over for the good fortune of our countrymen, it was given to you to strike this highest note.

Always faithfully yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Mr. Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
Aspet, Windsor, Vermont.

The Roosevelt-Saint-Gaudens Correspondence Concerning Coinage

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

Nov. 6, 1905.

_My dear Saint-Gaudens_: