Chapter IV: Part 4

I put this question to my wife by way of obtaining an answer. She reflected a moment, then she said, “If one of my boys really felt called to be a clergyman, I should be a very happy woman; but I wouldn’t on any account have one of them enter the ministry unless he did.” This reply seems to me to express not merely the attitude of the American mother, but also the point of view from which the American young man of to-day is apt to look at the question. He no longer regards the ministry as a profession which he is free to prefer, merely because he needs to earn his daily bread; and he understands, when he becomes a clergyman, that lukewarm or merely conventional service will be utterly worthless in a community which is thirsty for inspirational suggestion, but which is soul-sick of cant and the perfervid reiteration of outworn delusions. The consciousness that he has no closer insight into the mysteries of the universe than his fellow-men, and the fear that he may be able to solace their doubts only by skilful concealment of his own, is tending, here and all over the civilized world, to deter many a young man from embracing that profession, which once seemed to offer a safe and legitimate niche for any pious youth who was uncertain what he wished to do for a living. Happy he who feels so closely in touch with the infinite that he is certain of his mission to his brother-man! But is any one more out of place than the priest who seems to know no more than we do of what we desire to know most? We demand that a poet should be heaven-born; why should we not require equivalent evidence of fitness from our spiritual advisers?

And yet, on the other hand, when the conviction of fitness or mission exists, what calling is there which offers to-day more opportunities for usefulness than the ministry? The growing tendency of the Church is toward wider issues and a broader scope. Clergymen are now encouraged and expected to aid in the solution of problems of living no less than those of dying, and to lead in the discussion of matters regarding which they could not have ventured to express opinions fifty years ago without exposing themselves to the charge of being meddlesome or unclerical. The whole field of practical charity, economics, hygiene, and the relations of human beings to each other on this earth, are fast becoming the legitimate domain of the Church, and the general interest in this new phase of usefulness is serving to convince many of the clergy themselves that the existence of so many creeds, differing but slightly and unimportantly from one another, is a waste of vital force and machinery. In this age of trusts, a trust of all religious denominations for the common good of humanity would be a monopoly which could pay large dividends without fear of hostile legislation.

In this matter of the choice of a vocation, the case of the ambitious, promising young man is the one which commends itself most to our sympathies; and next to it stands that of the general utility man--the youth who has no definite tastes or talents, and who selects his life occupation from considerations other than a consciousness of fitness or of natural inclination. There are here, as elsewhere, born merchants, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, architects, engineers, inventors, and poets, who promptly follow their natural bents without suggestion and in the teeth of difficulties. But the promising young man in search of a brilliant career, and the general utility man, are perhaps the best exponents of a nation’s temper and inclination.

In every civilization many promising youths and the general run of utility men are apt to turn to business, for trade seems to offer the largest return in the way of money with the least amount of special knowledge. In this new country of ours the number of young men who have selected a business career during the last fifty years, from personal inclination, has been very much greater than elsewhere, and the tone and temper of the community has swept the general utility man into mere money making almost as a matter of course. The reasons for this up to this time have been obvious: The resources and industries of a vast and comparatively sparsely settled continent have been developed in the last fifty years, and the great prizes in the shape of large fortunes resulting from the process have naturally captivated the imagination of ambitious youth. We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced.

The resources of the country are by no means exhausted; there are doubtless more mines to open which will make their owners superbly rich; new discoveries in the mechanical or electrical field will afford fresh opportunities to discerning men of means; and individual or combined capital will continue to reap the reward of both legitimate and over-reaching commercial acumen. But it would seem as though the day of enormous fortunes, for men of average brains and luck, in this country were nearly over, and that the great pecuniary prizes of the business world would henceforth be gleaned only by extraordinary or exceptional individuals. The country is no longer sparsely settled; fierce competition speedily cuts the abnormal profit out of new enterprises which are not protected by a patent; and in order to be conspicuously successful in any branch of trade, one will have more and more need of unusual ability and untiring application.

In other words, though ours is still a new country, it will not be very long before the opportunities and conditions of a business life resemble closely those which confront young men elsewhere. As in every civilized country, trade in some form will necessarily engage the attention of a large portion of the population. From physical causes, a vast majority of the citizens of the United States must continue to derive their support from agriculture and the callings which large crops of cereals, cotton, and sugar make occasion for. Consequently business will always furnish occupation for a vast army of young men in every generation, and few successes will seem more enviable than those of the powerful and scrupulous banker, or the broad-minded and capable railroad president. But, on the other hand, will the well-to-do American father and mother, eager to see their promising sons make the most of themselves, continue to advise them to go into business in preference to other callings? And will the general utility man still be encouraged to regard some form of trade as the most promising outlook, for one who does not know what he wishes to do, to adopt? He who hopes to become a great banker or illustrious railway man, must remember that the streets of all our large cities teem with young men whose breasts harbor similar ambitions.

Doubtless, it was the expectation of our forefathers that our American civilization would add new occupations to the callings inherited from the old world, which would be alluring both to the promising young man and the youth without predilections, and no less valuable to society and elevating to the individual than the best of those by which men have earned their daily bread since civilization first was. As a matter of fact, we Americans have added just one, that of the modern stock-broker. To be sure, I am not including the ranchman. It did seem at one time as though we were going to add another in him--a sort of gentleman shepherd. But be it that the cattle have become too scarce or too numerous, be it that the demon of competition has planted his hoofs on the farthest prairie, one by one the brave youths who went West in search of fortune, have returned East for the last time, and abandoned the field to the cowboys and the native settler. The pioneers in this form of occupation made snug fortunes, but after them came a deluge of promising or unpromising youths who branded every animal within a radius of hundreds of miles with a letter of the alphabet. Their only living monument is the polo pony.

Our single and signal contribution to the callings of the world has been the apotheosis of the stock-broker. For the last twenty-five years, the well-to-do father and mother and their sons, in our large cities, have been under the spell of a craze for the brokerage business. The consciousness that the refinements of modern living cannot adequately be supplied in a large city to a family whose income does not approximate ten thousand dollars a year, is a cogent argument in favor of trying to grow rich rapidly, and both the promising young man and the general utility man welcomed the new calling with open arms. Impelled by the notion that here was a vocation which required no special knowledge or attainments, and very little capital, which was pleasant, gentlemanly, and not unduly confining, and which promised large returns almost in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds and thousands of young men became brokers--chiefly stock-brokers, but also cotton-brokers, note-brokers, real-estate-brokers, insurance-brokers, and brokers in nearly everything. The field was undoubtedly a rich one for those who first entered it. There was a need for the broker, and he was speedily recognized as a valuable addition to the machinery of trade. Many huge fortunes were made, and we have learned to associate the word broker with the possession of large means, an imposing house on a fashionable street, and diverse docked and stylish horses.

Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man, just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages, with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations, settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did not know what he wished to do.

It is scarcely an extreme statement that the so-called aristocracy of our principal cities to-day is largely made up of men who are, or once were, stock-brokers, or who have made their millions by some of the forms of gambling which our easy-going euphemism styles modern commercial aggressiveness. Certainly, a very considerable number of our most splendid private residences have been built out of the proceeds of successful ventures in the stock market, or the wheat pit, or by some other purely speculative operations. Many stars have shone brilliantly for a season, and then plunged precipitately from the zenith to the horizon; and much has been wisely said as to the dangers of speculation; but the fact remains that a great many vast fortunes owe their existence to the broker’s office; fortunes which have been salted down, as the phrase is, and now furnish support and titillation for a leisurely, green old age, or enable the sons and daughters of the original maker to live in luxury.

Whatever the American mother may feel as to her son becoming a clergyman, there is no doubt that many a mother to-day would say “God grant that no son of mine become a stock-broker.” I know stock-brokers--many indeed--who are whole-souled, noble-natured men, free from undue worldliness, and with refined instincts. But the stock-broker, as he exists in the every-day life of our community, typifies signally the gambler’s yearning to gain wealth by short cuts, and the monomania which regards as pitiable those who do not possess and display the gewgaws of feverish, fashionable materialism. There are stock-brokers in all the great capitals of the world, but nowhere has the vocation swallowed up the sons of the best people to the extent that it has done here during the last thirty years. And yet, apart from the opportunity it affords to grow rich rapidly, what one good reason is there why a promising young man should decide to buy and sell stocks for a living? Indeed, not merely decide, but select, that occupation as the most desirable calling open to him? Does it tend either to ennoble the nature or enrich the mental faculties? It is one of the formal occupations made necessary by the exigencies of the business world, and as such is legitimate and may be highly respectable; but surely it does not, from the nature of the services required, deserve to rank high; and really there would seem to be almost as much occasion for conferring the accolade of social distinction on a dealer in excellent fish as on a successful stock-broker.

However, alas! it is easy enough to assign the reason why the business has been so popular. It appears that, even under the flag of our aspiring nationality, human nature is still so weak that the opportunity to grow rich quickly, when presented, is apt to over-ride all noble considerations. Foreign censors have ventured not infrequently to declare that there was never yet a race so hungry for money as we free-born Americans; and not even the pious ejaculation of one of our United States Senators, “What have we to do with abroad?” is conclusive proof that the accusation is not well founded. In fact: there seems to be ample proof that we, who sneered so austerely at the Faubourg St. Germain and the aristocracies of the Old World, and made Fourth of July protestations of poverty and chastity, have fallen down and worshipped the golden calf merely because it was made of gold. Because it seemed to be easier to make money as stock-brokers than in any other way, men have hastened to become stock-brokers. To be sure it may be answered that this is only human nature and the way of the world. True, perhaps; except that we started on the assumption that we were going to improve on the rest of the world, and that its human nature was not to be our human nature. Would not the Faubourg St. Germain be preferable to an aristocracy of stock-brokers?

At all events, the law of supply and demand is beginning to redeem the situation, and, if not to restore our moral credit, at least to save the rising generation from falling into the same slough. The stock-broker industry has been overstocked, and the late young capitalists in fur overcoats, with benedictory manners, wear anxious countenances under the stress of that Old World demon, excessive competition. Youth can no longer wake up in the morning and find itself the proprietor of a rattling business justifying a steam-yacht and a four-in-hand. The good old days have gone forever, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth where of late there was joy and much accumulation. There is not business enough for all the promising young men who are stock-brokers already, and the youth of promise must turn elsewhere.

_Occupation._

II.

But though the occupation of broker has become less tempting, the promising youth has not ceased to look askance at any calling which does not seem to foreshadow a fortune in a short time. He is only just beginning to appreciate that we are getting down to hard pan, so to speak, and are nearly on a level, as regards the hardships of individual progress, with our old friends the effete civilizations. He finds it difficult to rid himself of the “Arabian Nights’” notion that he has merely to clap his hands to change ten dollars into a thousand in a single year, and to transform his bachelor apartments into a palace beautiful, with a wife, yacht, and horses, before he is thirty-five. He shrinks from the idea of being obliged to take seriously into account anything less than a hundred-dollar bill, and of earning a livelihood by slow yet persistent acceptance of tens and fives. His present ruling ambition is to be a promoter; that is, to be an organizer of schemes, and to let others do the real work and attend to the disgusting details. There are a great many gentry of this kind in the field just at present. Among them is, or rather was, Lewis Pell, as I will call him for the occasion. I don’t know exactly what he is doing now. But he was, until lately, a promoter.

A handsome fellow was Lewis Pell. Tall, gentlemanly, and athletic-looking, with a gracious, imposing presence and manner, which made his rather commonplace conversation seem almost wisdom. He went into a broker’s office after leaving college, like many other promising young men of his time, but he was clever enough either to realize that he was a little late, or that the promoter business offered a more promising scope for his genius, for he soon disappeared from the purlieus of the Stock Exchange, and the next thing we heard of him was as the tenant of an exceedingly elaborate set of offices on the third floor of a most expensive modern monster building. Shortly after I read in the financial columns of the daily press that Mr. Lewis Pell had sold to a syndicate of bankers the first mortgage and the debenture bonds of the Light and Power Traction Company, an electrical corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey. Thirty days later I saw again that he had sailed for Europe in order to interest London capital in a large enterprise, the nature of which was still withheld from the public.

During the next two or three years I ran across Pell on several occasions. He seemed always to be living at the highest pressure, but the brilliancy of his career had not impaired his good manners or attractiveness. I refer to his career as brilliant at this time because both his operations and the consequent style of living which he pursued, as described by him on two different evenings when I dined with him, seemed to me in my capacity of ordinary citizen to savor of the marvellous, if not the supernatural. He frankly gave me to understand that it seemed to him a waste of time for an ambitious man to pay attention to details, and that his business was to originate vast undertakings, made possible only by large combinations of corporate or private capital. The word combination, which was frequently on his lips, seemed to be the corner-stone of his system. I gathered that the part which he sought to play in the battle of life was to breathe the breath, or the apparent breath, of existence into huge schemes, and after having given them a quick but comprehensive squeeze or two for his own pecuniary benefit, to hand them over to syndicates, or other aggregations of capitalists, for the benefit of whom they might concern. He confided to me that he employed eleven typewriters; that he had visited London seven, and Paris three times, in the last three years, on flying trips to accomplish brilliant deals; that though his headquarters were in New York, scarcely a week passed in which he was not obliged to run over to Chicago, Boston, Washington, Denver, Duluth, or Cincinnati, as the case might be. Without being boastful as to his profits, he did not hesitate to acknowledge to me that if he should do as well in the next three years as in the last, he would be able to retire from business with a million or so.

Apart from this confession, his personal extravagance left no room for doubt that he must be very rich. Champagne flowed for him as Croton or Cochituate for most of us, and it was evident from his language that the hiring of special trains from time to time was a rather less serious matter than it would be for the ordinary citizen to take a cab. The account that he gave of three separate entertainments he had tendered to syndicates--of ten, twelve, and seventeen covers respectively, at twenty dollars a cover--fairly made my mouth water and my eyes stick out, so that I felt constrained to murmur, “Your profits must certainly be very large, if you can afford that sort of thing.”

Pell smiled complacently and a little condescendingly. “I could tell you of things which I have done which would make that seem a bagatelle,” he answered, with engaging mystery. Then after a moment’s pause he said, “Do you know, my dear fellow, that when I was graduated I came very near going into the office of a pious old uncle of mine who has been a commission merchant all his life, and is as poor as Job’s turkey in spite of it all--that is, poor as men are rated nowadays. He offered to take me as a clerk at one thousand dollars a year, with the promise of a partnership before I was bald-headed in case I did well. Supposing I had accepted his offer, where should I be to-day? Grubbing at an office-desk and earning barely enough for board and lodging. I remember my dear mother took it terribly to heart because I went into a broker’s office instead. By the way, between ourselves, I’m building a steam-yacht--nothing very wonderful, but a neat, comfortable craft--and I’m looking forward next summer to inviting my pious old uncle to cruise on her just to see him open his eyes.”

That was three years ago, and to-day I have every reason to believe that Lewis Pell is without a dollar in the world, or rather, that every dollar which he has belongs to his creditors. I had heard before his failure was announced that he was short of money, for the reason that several enterprises with which his name was connected had been left on his hands--neither the syndicates nor the public would touch them--so his suspension was scarcely a surprise. He at present, poor fellow, is only one of an army of young men wandering dejectedly through the streets of New York or Chicago in these days of financial depression, vainly seeking for something to promote.

When the promising youth and the general utility man do get rid of the “Arabian Nights’” notion, and recognize that signal success here, in any form, is likely to become more and more difficult to attain, and will be the legitimate reward only of men of real might, of unusual abilities, originality, or dauntless industry, some of the callings which have fallen, as it were, into disrepute through their lack of gambling facilities, are likely to loom up again socially. It may be, however, that modern business methods and devices have had the effect of killing for all time that highly respectable pillar of society of fifty years ago, the old-fashioned merchant, who bought and sold on his own behalf, or on commission, real cargoes of merchandise, and real consignments of cotton, wheat, and corn. The telegraph and the warehouse certificate have worked such havoc that almost everything now is bought and sold over and over again before it is grown or manufactured, and by the time it is on the market there is not a shred of profit in it for anybody but the retail dealer. It remains to be seen whether, as the speculative spirit subsides, the merchant is going to reinstate himself and regain his former prestige. It may already be said that the promising youth does not regard him with quite so much contempt as he did.

We have always professed in this country great theoretical respect for the schoolmaster, but we have been careful, as the nation waxed in material prosperity, to keep his pay down and to shove him into the social background more and more. The promising youth could not afford to spend his manhood in this wise, and we have all really been too busy making money to think very much about those who are doing the teaching. Have we not always heard it stated that our schools and colleges are second to none in the world? And if our schools, of course our schoolmasters. Therefore why bother our heads about them? It is indeed wonderful, considering the little popular interest in the subject until lately, that our schoolmasters and our college professors are so competent as they are, and that the profession has flourished on the whole in spite of indifference and superiority. How can men of the highest class be expected to devote their lives to a profession which yields little more than a pittance when one is thoroughly successful? And yet the education of our children ought to be one of our dearest concerns, and it is difficult to see why the State is satisfied to pay the average instructor or instructress of youth about as much as the city laborer or a horse-car conductor receives.

There are signs that those in charge of our large educational institutions all over the country are beginning to recognize that ripe scholarship and rare abilities as a teacher are entitled to be well recompensed pecuniarily, and that the breed of such men is likely to increase somewhat in proportion to the size and number of the prizes offered. Our college presidents and professors, those at the head of our large schools and seminaries, should receive such salaries as will enable them to live adequately. By this policy not only would our promising young men be encouraged to pursue learning, but those in the highest places would not be forced by poverty to live in comparative retirement, but could become active social figures and leaders. In any profession or calling under present social conditions only those in the foremost rank can hope to earn more than a living, varying in quality according to the degree of success and the rank of the occupation; but it is to be hoped--and there seems some reason to believe--that the great rewards which come to those more able and industrious than their fellows will henceforth, in the process of our national evolution, be more evenly distributed, and not confined so conspicuously to gambling, speculative, or commercial successes. The leaders in the great professions of law and medicine have for some time past declined to serve the free-born community without liberal compensation, and the same community, which for half a century secretly believed that only a business man has the right to grow rich, has begun to recognize that there are even other things besides litigation and health which ought to come high. For instance, although the trained architect still meets serious and depressing competition from those ready-made experimenters in design who pronounce the first _c_ in the word architect as though it were an _s_, the public is rapidly discovering that a man cannot build an attractive house without special knowledge.

In the same class with the law, medicine, and architecture, and seemingly offering at present a greater scope for an ambitious young man, is engineering in all its branches. The furnaces, mines, manufactories, and the hydraulic, electrical, or other plants connected with the numerous vast mechanical business enterprises of the country are furnishing immediate occupation for hundreds of graduates of the scientific or polytechnic schools at highly respectable salaries. This field of usefulness is certain for a long time to come to offer employment and a fair livelihood to many, and large returns to those who outstrip their contemporaries. More and more is the business man, the manufacturer, and the capitalist likely to be dependent for the economical or successful development and management of undertakings on the judgment of scientific experts in his own employment or called in to advise, and it is only meet that the counsel given should be paid for handsomely.

Those who pursue literature or art in their various branches in this country, and have talents in some degree commensurate with their ambition, are now generally able to make a comfortable livelihood. Indeed the men and women in the very front rank are beginning to receive incomes which would be highly satisfactory to a leading lawyer or physician. Of course original work in literature or art demands special ability and fitness, but the general utility man is beginning to have many opportunities presented to him in connection with what may be called the clerical work of these professions. The great magazines and publishing houses have an increasing need for trained, scholarly men, for capable critics, and discerning advisers in the field both of letter-press and illustration. Another calling which seems to promise great possibilities both of usefulness and income to those who devote themselves to it earnestly is the comparatively new profession of journalism. The reporter, with all his present horrors, is in the process of evolution; but the journalist is sure to remain the high-priest of democracy. His influence is almost certain to increase materially, but it will not increase unless he seeks to lead public thought instead of bowing to it. The newspaper, in order to flourish, must be a moulder of opinion, and to accomplish this those who control its columns must more and more be men of education, force, and high ideals. Competition will winnow here as elsewhere, but those who by ability and industry win the chief places will stand high in the community and command large pay for their services.

An aristocracy of brains--that is to say, an aristocracy composed of individuals successful and prominent in their several callings--seems to be the logical sequence of our institutions under present social and industrial conditions. The only aristocracy which can exist in a democracy is one of honorable success evidenced by wealth or a handsome income, but the character of such an aristocracy will depend on the ambitions and tastes of the nation. The inevitable economic law of supply and demand governs here as elsewhere, and will govern until such a time as society may be reconstructed on an entirely new basis. Only the leaders in any vocation can hope to grow rich, but in proportion as the demands of the nation for what is best increase will the type and characteristics of these leaders improve. The doing away with inherited orders of nobility and deliberate, patented class distinctions, gives the entire field to wealth. We boast proudly that no artificial barriers confine individual social promotion; but we must remember at the same time that those old barriers meant more than the perpetuation of perfumed ladies and idle gentlemen from century to century. We are too apt to forget that the aristocracies of the old world signified in the first place a process of selection. The kings and the nobles, the lords and the barons, the knights who fought and the ladies for whom they died, were the master-spirits of their days and generations, the strong arms and the strong brains of civilized communities. They stood for force, the force of the individual who was more intelligent, more capable, and mightier in soul and body than his neighbors, and who claimed the prerogatives of superiority on that account. These master-spirits, it is true, used these prerogatives in such a manner as to crystallize society into the classes and the masses, so hopelessly for the latter that the gulf between them still is wide as an ocean, notwithstanding that present nobilities have been shorn of their power so that they may be said to exist chiefly by sufferance. And yet the world is still the same in that there are men more intelligent, more capable, and mightier in soul and body than their fellows. The leaders of the past won their spurs by prowess with the battle-axe and spear, by wise counsel in affairs of state, by the sheer force of their superior manhood. The gentleman and lady stood for the best blood of the world, though they so often belied it by their actions.

We, who are accustomed to applaud our civilization as the hope of the world, may well look across the water and take suggestions from the institutions of Great Britain, not with the idea of imitation, but with a view to consider the forces at work there. For nearly a century now the government, though in form a monarchy, has been substantially a constitutional republic, imbued with inherited traditions and somewhat galvanized by class distinctions, but nevertheless a constitutional republic. The nobility still exists as a sort of French roof or Eastern pagoda to give a pleasing appearance to the social edifice. The hereditary meaning of titles has been so largely negatived by the introduction of new blood--the blood of the strongest men of the period--that they have become, what they originally were, badges to distinguish the men most valuable to the State. Their abolition is merely a question of time, and many of the leaders to whom they are proffered reject them as they would a cockade or a yellow satin waistcoat. On the other hand, and here is the point of argument, the real aristocracy of England for the last hundred years has been an aristocracy of the foremost, ablest, and worthiest men of the nation, and with few exceptions the social and pecuniary rewards have been bestowed both by the State and by public appreciation on the master-spirits of the time in the best sense. Brilliant statesmanship, wisdom on the bench, the surgeon’s skill, the banker’s sound discernment, genius in literature and art, when signally contributed by the individual, have won him fame and fortune.

It may be said, perhaps, that the pecuniary rewards of science and literature have been less conspicuous than those accorded to other successes, but that has been due to the inherent practical temperament and artistic limitations of the Englishman, and can scarcely be an argument against the contention that English society in the nineteenth century, with all its social idiosyncrasies, has really been graded on the order of merit.

The tide of democracy has set in across the water and is running strongly, and there can be no doubt that the next century is likely to work great and strange changes in the conditions of society in England as well as here. The same questions practically are presented to each nation, except that there a carefully constructed and in many respects admirable system of society is to be disintegrated. We are a new country, and we have a right to be hopeful that we are sooner or later to outstrip all civilizations. Nor is it a blemish that the astonishing development of our material resources has absorbed the energies of our best blood. But it now remains to be seen whether the standards of pure democracy, without traditions or barriers to point the way, are to justify the experiment and improve the race. The character of our aristocracy will depend on the virtues and tastes of the people, and the struggle is to be between aspiration and contentment with low ambitions. Our original undertaking has been made far more difficult by the infusion of the worst blood in Christendom, the lees of foreign nations; but the result of the experiment will be much more convincing because of this change in conditions.

Who are to be the men of might and heroes of democracy? That will depend on the demands and aspirations of the enfranchised people. With all its imperfections, the civilization of the past has fostered the noble arts and stirred genius to immortalize itself in bronze and marble, in cathedral spires, in masterpieces of painting and literature, in untiring scholarship, in fervent labors in law, medicine, and science. Democracy must care for these things, and encourage the individual to choose worthy occupations, or society will suffer. We hope and believe that, in the long run, the standards of humanity will be raised rather than lowered by the lifting of the flood-gates which divide the privileged classes from the mass; but it behooves us all to remember that while demand and supply must be the leading arbiters in the choice of a vocation, the responsibility of selection is left to each individual. Only by the example of individuals will society be saved from accepting the low, vulgar aims and ambitions of the mass as a desirable weal, and this is the strongest argument against the doctrines of those who would repress individuality for the alleged benefit of mankind as a whole. The past has given us many examples of the legislator who cannot be bribed, of the statesman faithful to principle, of the student who disdains to be superficial, of the gentleman who is noble in thought, and speech and action, and they stand on the roll of the world’s great men. Democracy cannot afford not to continue to add to this list, and either she must steel her countenance against the cheap man and his works, or sooner or later be confounded. Was Marie Antoinette a more dangerous enemy of the people than the newspaper proprietor who acquires fortune by catering to the lowest tastes and prejudices of the public, or the self-made capitalist who argues that every man has his price, and seeks to accomplish legislation by bribery?

The _Use of Time_.

I.

I brought Rogers home with me again the other day. I do not mean Rogers in the flesh; but the example of Rogers as a bogy with which to confound my better half and myself. You may recall that Rogers is the book-keeper for Patterson the banker, and that he has brought up and educated a family on a salary of twenty-two hundred dollars a year.

“Barbara,” said I, “we were reflecting yesterday that we never have time to do the things we really wish to do. Have you ever considered how Rogers spends his time?”

My wife admitted that she had not, and she dutifully waited for me to proceed, though I could tell from the expression of her mouth that she did not expect to derive much assistance from the example of Mr. Rogers. Therefore I made an interesting pathological deduction to begin with.

“Rogers does not live on his nerves from one year’s end to the other, as we do.”

“I congratulate him,” said Barbara, with a sigh.

“And yet,” I continued, “he leads a highly respectable and fairly interesting life. He gets up at precisely the same hour every morning, has his breakfast, reads the paper, and is at his desk punctually on time. He dines frugally, returns to his desk until half-past four or five, and after performing any errands which Mrs. Rogers has asked him to attend to, goes home to the bosom of his family. There he exchanges his coat and boots for a dressing-gown, or aged smoking-jacket, and slippers, and remains by his fireside absorbed in the evening paper until tea-time. Conversation with the members of his family beguiles him for half an hour after the completion of the meal; then he settles down to the family weekly magazine, or plays checkers or backgammon with his wife or daughters. After a while, if he is interested in ferns or grasses, he looks to see how his specimens are growing under the glass case in the corner. He pats the cat and makes sure that the canary is supplied with seed. Now and then he brings home a puzzle, like ‘Pigs in Clover,’ which keeps him up half an hour later than usual, but ordinarily his head is nodding before the stroke of ten warns him that his bed-hour has come. And just at the time that the wife of his employer, Patterson, may be setting out for a ball, he is tucking himself up in bed by the side of Mrs. Rogers.”

“Poor man!” interjected Barbara.

“He has his diversions,” said I. “Now and again neighbors drop in for a chat, and the evening is wound up with a pitcher of lemonade and angel-cake. He and his wife drop in, in their turn, or he goes to a political caucus. Once a fortnight comes the church sociable, and every now and then a wedding. From time to time he and Mrs. Rogers attend lectures. His young people entertain their friends, as the occasion offers, in a simple way, and on Sunday he goes to church in the morning and falls to sleep after a heavy dinner in the afternoon. He leads a quiet, peaceful, conservative existence, unharassed by social functions and perpetual excitement.”

“And he prides himself, I dare say,” said Barbara, “on the score of its virtuousness. He saves his nerves and he congratulates himself that he is not a society person, as he calls it. Your Mr. Rogers may be a very estimable individual, dear, in his own sphere, and I do think he manages wonderfully on his twenty-two hundred dollars a year; but I should prefer to see you lose your nerves and become a gibbering victim of nervous prostration rather than that you should imitate him.”

“I’m not proposing to imitate him, Barbara,” I answered, gravely. “I admit that his life seems rather dull and not altogether inspiring, but I do think that a little of his repose would be beneficial to many of us whose interests are more varied. We might borrow it to advantage for a few months in the year, don’t you think so? I believe, Barbara, that if you and I were each of us to lie flat on our backs for one hour every day and think of nothing--and not even clinch our hands--we should succeed in doing more things than we really wish to do.”

“I suppose it’s the climate--they say it’s the climate,” said Barbara, pensively. “Foreigners don’t seem to be affected in that way. They’re not always in a hurry as we are, and yet they seem to accomplish very nearly as much. We all know what it is to be conscious of that dreadful, nervous, hurried feeling, even when we have plenty of time to do the things we have to do. I catch myself walking fast--racing, in fact--when there is not the least need of it. I don’t clinch my hands nearly so much as I used, and I’ve ceased to hold on to the pillow in bed as though it were a life-preserver, out of deference to Delsarte, but when it comes to lying down flat on my back for an hour a day--every day--really it isn’t feasible. It’s an ideal plan, I dare say, but the days are not long enough. Just take to-day, for instance, and tell me, please, when I had time to lie down.”

“You are clinching your hands now,” I remarked.

“Because you have irritated me with your everlasting Mr. Rogers,” retorted Barbara. She examined, nevertheless, somewhat dejectedly, the marks of her nails in her palms. “In the morning, for instance, when I came down to breakfast there was the mail. Two dinner invitations and an afternoon tea; two sets of wedding-cards, and a notice of a lecture by Miss Clara Hatheway on the relative condition of primary schools here and abroad; requests for subscriptions to the new Cancer Hospital and the Children’s Fresh Air and Vacation Fund; an advertisement of an after-holiday sale of boys’ and girls’ clothes at Halliday’s; a note from Mrs. James Green asking particulars regarding our last cook, and a letter from the President of my Woman’s Club notifying me that I was expected to talk to them at the next meeting on the arguments in favor of and against the ownership by cities and towns of gas and water-works. All these had to be answered, noted, or considered. Then I had to interview the cook and the butcher and the grocer about the dinner, give orders that a button should be sewn on one pair of your trousers and a stain removed from another, and give directions to the chore-man to oil the lock of the front-door, and tell him to go post-haste for the plumber to extract the blotting-paper which the children yesterday stuffed down the drain-pipe in the bath-tub, so that the water could not escape. Then I had to sit down and read the newspaper. Not because I had time, or wished to, but to make sure that there was nothing in it which you could accuse me of not having read. After this I dressed to go out. I stopped at the florist’s to order some roses for Mrs. Julius Cæsar, whose mother is dead; at Hapgood & Wales’s and at Jones’s for cotton-batting, hooks and eyes, and three yards of ribbon; at Belcher’s for an umbrella to replace mine, which you left in the cable-cars, and at the library to select something to read. I arrived home breathless for the children’s dinner, and immediately afterward I dressed and went to the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Club, stopping on the way to inquire if Mrs. Wilson’s little boy were better. We started by discussing a proposed change in our Constitution regarding the number of black-balls necessary to exclude a candidate, and drifted off on to ‘Trilby.’ It was nearly five when I got away, and as I felt it on my conscience to go both to Mrs. Southwick’s and Mrs. Williams’s teas, I made my appearance at each for a few minutes, but managed to slip away so as to be at home at six. When you came in I had just been reading to the children and showing them about their lessons. Now I have only just time to dress for dinner, for we dine at the Gregory Browns, at half-past seven. We ought to go later to the reception at Mrs. Hollis’s--it is her last of three and we haven’t been yet--but I suppose you will say you are too tired. There! will you tell me when I could have found time to lie down for an hour to-day?”

I was constrained to laugh at my wife’s recital, and I was not able at the moment to point out to her exactly what she might have omitted from her category so as to make room for the hour of repose. Nor, indeed, as I review the events of my own daily life and of the daily lives of my friends and acquaintances, am I able to define precisely where it could be brought in. And yet are we not--many of us who are in the thick of modern life--conscious that our days are, as it were, congested? We feel sure that so far as our physical comfort is concerned we ought to be doing less, and we shrewdly suspect that, if we had more time in which to think, our spiritual natures would be the gainers. The difficulty is to stop, or rather to reduce the speed of modern living to the point at which these high-pressure nervous symptoms disappear, and the days cease to seem too short for what we wish to accomplish. Perhaps those who take an intense interest in living will never be able to regain that delightful condition of equipoise, if it ever existed, which our ancestors both here and across the water are said to have experienced. Perhaps, too, our ancestors were more in a hurry when they were alive than they seem to have been now that they are dead; but, whether this be true or otherwise, we are confidently told by those who ought to know that we Americans of this day and generation are the most restless, nervous people under the sun, and live at a higher pressure than our contemporaries of the effete civilizations. It used to be charged that we were in such haste to grow rich that there was no health in us; and now that we are, or soon will be, the wealthiest nation in the world, they tell us that we continue to maintain the same feverish pace in all that we undertake or do.

I am not sure that this charge could not be brought against the Englishman, Frenchman, or German of to-day with almost equal justice, or, in other words, that it is a characteristic of the age rather than of our nation; but that conviction would merely solace our pride and could not assuage “that tired feeling” of which so many are conscious. At all events, if we do not work harder than our kinsmen across the sea, we seem to bear the strain less well. It may be the climate, as my wife has said, which causes our nervous systems to rebel; but then, again, we cannot change the climate, and consequently must adapt ourselves to its idiosyncrasies.

Ever since we first began to declare that we were superior to all other civilizations we have been noted for our energy. The way in which we did everything, from sawing wood to electing a President, was conspicuous by virtue of the bustling, hustling qualities displayed. But it is no longer high treason to state that our national life, in spite of its bustle, was, until comparatively recently, lacking in color and variety. The citizen who went to bed on the stroke of ten every night and did practically the same thing each day from one year’s end to the other was the ideal citizen of the Republic, and was popularly described as a conservative and a strong man. His life was led within very repressed limits, and anything more artistic than a chromo or religious motto was apt to irritate him and shock his principles. To be sure, we had then our cultivated class--more narrowly but possibly more deeply cultivated than its flourishing successor of to-day--but the average American, despite his civic virtues and consciousness of rectitude, led a humdrum existence, however hustling or bustling. There is a large percentage of our population that continues to live in much the same manner, notwithstanding the wave of enlightenment which has swept over the country and keyed us all up to concert pitch by multiplying the number of our interests. I feel a little guilty in having included Rogers among this number, for I really know of my own knowledge nothing about his individual home life. It may be that I have been doing him a rank injustice, and that his home is in reality a seething caldron of progress. I referred to him as a type rather than as an individual, knowing as I do that there are still too many homes in this country where music, art, literature, social tastes, and intelligent interest in human affairs in the abstract, when developed beyond mere rudimentary lines, are unappreciated and regarded as vanities or inanities.

On the other hand, there is nothing more interesting in our present national evolution than the eager recognition by the intelligent and aspiring portion of the people that we have been and are ignorant, and that the true zest of life lies in its many-sidedness and its possibilities of development along æsthetic, social, and intellectual as well as moral lines. The United States to-day is fairly bristling with eager, ambitious students, and with people of both sexes, young and middle-aged, who are anxiously seeking how to make the most of life. This eagerness of soul is not confined to any social class, and is noticeable in every section of the country in greater or less degree. It is quite as likely to be found among people of very humble means as among those whose earliest associations have brought them into contact with the well-to-do and carefully educated. Therefore I beg the pardon of Rogers in case I have put him individually in the wrong category. A divine yet cheery activity has largely taken the place of sodden self-righteousness on the one hand, and analytical self-consciousness on the other. The class is not as yet very large as compared with the entire population of the country, but it is growing rapidly, and its members are the most interesting men and women of the Republic--those who are in the van of our development as a people.

Overcrowded and congested lives signify at least earnestness and absorption. Human nature is more likely to aspire and advance when society is nervously active, than when it is bovine and self-congratulatory. But nerves can endure only a certain amount of strain without reminding human beings that strong and healthy bodies are essential to true national progress. Only recently in this country have we learned to consider the welfare of the body, and though we have begun to be deadly in earnest about athletics, the present generation of workers was, for the most part, brought up on the theory that flesh and blood was a limitation rather than a prerequisite. We are doing bravely in this matter so far as the education of our children is concerned, but it is too late to do much for our own nerves. Though stagnation is a more deplorable state, it behooves us, nevertheless, if possible, to rid ourselves of congestion for our ultimate safety.