Chapter I: THINK he should. Moreover, I think I should set Smith an example by (2)

Is it possible that tired men really wield a considerable power and influence in these American States so lately wrested from savagery? Confirmation of this reaches us through many channels. In politics we are assured that the tired business man is a serious obstructionist in the path of his less prosperous and less weary brethren engaged upon the pursuit of happiness and capable of enjoying it in successes that would seem contemptibly meagre to Smith. Thousands of Smiths who have not yet ripened for the German specialists are nevertheless tired enough to add to the difficulty of securing so simple a thing as reputable municipal government. It is because of Smith’s weariness and apathy that we are obliged to confess that no decent man will accept the office of mayor in our American cities.

In my early acquaintance with Smith--in those simple days when he had time to loaf in my office and talk politics--an ardent patriotism burned in him. He was proud of his ancestors who had not withheld their hand all the way from Lexington to Yorktown, and he used to speak with emotion of that dark winter at Valley Forge. He would look out of the window upon Washington Street and declare, with a fine sweep of the hand, that “We’ve got to keep all this; we’ve got to keep it for these people and for our children.” He had not been above sitting as delegate in city and state conventions, and he had once narrowly escaped a nomination for the legislature. The industry he owned and managed was a small affair and he knew all the employees by name. His lucky purchase of a patent that had been kicked all over the United States before the desperate inventor offered it to him had sent his fortunes spinning into millions within ten years. Our cautious banker who had vouchsafed Smith a reasonable guarded credit in the old days had watched, with the mild cynical smile peculiar to conservative bank presidents, the rapid enrollment of Smith’s name in the lists of directors of some of the solidest corporations known to Wall Street. It is a long way from Washington Street to Wall Street, and men who began life with more capital than Smith never cease marveling at the ease with which he effected the transition. Some who continue where he left them in the hot furrows stare gloomily after him and exclaim upon the good luck that some men have. Smith’s abrupt taking-off would cause at least a momentary chill in a thousand safety-vault boxes. Smith’s patriotism, which in the old days, when he liked to speak of America as the republic of the poor, and when he knew most of the “Commemoration Ode” and all of the “Gettysburg Address” by heart, is far more concrete than it used to be. When Smith visits Washington during the sessions of Congress the country is informed of it. It is he who scrutinizes new senators and passes upon their trustworthiness. And it was Smith who, after one of these inspections, said of a member of our upper chamber that, “He’s all right; he speaks our language,” meaning not the language of the “Commemoration Ode” or the “Gettysburg Address,” but a recondite dialect understood only at the inner gate of the money-changers.

IV

No place was ever pleasanter in the old days than the sitting-room of Smith’s house. It was the coziest of rooms and gave the lie to those who have maintained that civilization is impossible around a register. A happy, contented family life existed around that square of perforated iron in the floor of the Smiths’ sitting-room. In the midst of arguments on life, letters, the arts, politics, and what-not, Smith would, as the air grew chill toward midnight, and when Mrs. Smith went to forage for refreshments in the pantry, descend to the cellar to renew the flagging fires of the furnace with his own hands. The purchase of a new engraving, the capture of a rare print, was an event to be celebrated by the neighbors. We went to the theatre sometimes, and kept track of the affairs of the stage; and lectures and concerts were not beneath us. Mrs. Smith played Chopin charmingly on a piano Smith had given her for a Christmas present when Fanny was three. They were not above belonging to our neighborhood book and magazine club, and when they bought a book it was a good one. I remember our discussions of George Meredith and Hardy and Howells, and how we saved Stockton’s stories to enjoy reading them in company around the register. A trip to New York was an event for the Smiths in those days as well as for the rest of us, to be delayed until just the right moment for seeing the best plays, and an opera, with an afternoon carefully set apart for the Metropolitan Museum. We were glad the Smiths could go, even if the rest of us couldn’t; for they told us all so generously of their adventures when they came back! They kept a “horse and buggy,” and Mrs. Smith used to drive to the factory with Fanny perched beside her to bring Smith home at the end of his day’s work.

In those days the Smiths presented a picture before which one might be pardoned for lingering in admiration. I shall resent any suggestions that I am unconsciously writing them down as American _bourgeois_ with the contemptuous insinuations that are conveyed by that term. Nor were they Philistines, but sound, wholesome, cheerful Americans, who bought their eggs direct from “the butterman” and kept a jug of buttermilk in the ice-box. I assert that Smiths of their type were and are, wherever they still exist, an encouragement and a hope to all who love their America. They are the Americans to whom Lincoln became as one of Plutarch’s men, and for whom Longfellow wrote “The Children’s Hour,” and on whom Howells smiles quizzically and with complete understanding. Thousands of us knew thousands of these Smiths only a few years ago, all the way from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. I linger upon them affectionately as I have known and loved them in the Ohio Valley, but I have enjoyed glimpses of them in Kansas City and Omaha, Minneapolis and Detroit, and know perfectly well that I should find them realizing to the full life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in many other regions,--for example, with only slight differences of background, in Richmond, Virginia, and Burlington, Vermont. And in all these places some particular Smith is always moving to Chicago or Boston or New York on his way to a sanatorium or Bad Neuheim and a German specialist! Innumerable Smiths, not yet so prosperous as the old friend I encountered in Berlin, are abandoning their flower-gardens and the cozy verandas (sacred to neighborhood confidences on the long summer evenings) and their gusty registers for compact and steam-heated apartments with only the roof-garden overhead as a breathing-place.

There seems to be no field in which the weary Smith is not exercising a baneful influence. We have fallen into the habit of laying many of our national sins at his door, and usually with reason. His hand is hardly concealed as he thrusts it nervously through the curtains of legislative chambers, state and national. He invades city halls and corrupts municipal councils. Even the fine arts are degraded for his pleasure. Smith, it seems, is too weary from his day’s work to care for dramas

“That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe.”

He is one of the loyalest patrons of that type of beguilement known as the “musical comedy,” which in its most engaging form is a naughty situation sprinkled with cologne water and set to waltz time. Still, if he dines at the proper hour at a Fifth Avenue restaurant and eats more and drinks more than he should (to further the hardening of his arteries for the German specialist), he may arrive late and still hear the tune every one on Broadway is whistling. The girl behind the book-counter knows Smith a mile off, and hands him at once a novel that has a lot of “go” to it, or one wherein “smart” people assembled in house-parties for week-ends, amuse themselves by pinning pink ribbons on the Seventh Commandment. If the illustrations are tinted and the first page opens upon machine-gun dialogue, the sale is effected all the more readily. Or, reluctant to tackle a book of any sort, he may gather up a few of those magazines whose fiction jubilantly emphasizes the least noble passions of man. And yet my Smith delighted, in those old days around the register, in Howells’s clean, firm stroke; and we were always quoting dear Stockton--“black stockings for sharks”--“put your board money in the ginger jar.” What a lot of silly, happy, comfortable geese we were!

It seems only yesterday that the first trayful of cocktails jingled into a parlor in my town as a prelude to dinner; and I recall the scandalous reports of that innovation which passed up and down the maple-arched thoroughfares that give so sober and cloistral an air to our residential area. When that first tray appeared at our elbows, just before that difficult moment when we gentlemen of the provinces, rather conscious at all times of our dress-coats, are wondering whether it is the right or left arm we should offer the lady we are about to take in, we were startled, as though the Devil had invaded the domestic sanctuary and perched himself on the upright piano. Nothing is more depressing than the thought that all these Smiths, many of whose fathers slept in the rain and munched hard-tack for a principle in the sixties, are unable to muster an honest appetite, but must pucker their stomachs with a tonic before they can swallow their daily bread. Perhaps our era’s great historian will be a stomach specialist whose pages, bristling with statistics and the philosophy thereof, will illustrate the undermining and honeycombing of our institutions by gin and bitters.

V

The most appalling thing about us Americans is our complete sophistication. The English are children. An Englishman is at no moment so delightful as when he lifts his brows and says “Really!” The Frenchman at his sidewalk table watches the world go by with unwearied delight. At any moment Napoleon may appear; or he may hear great news of a new drama, or the latest lion of the salon may stroll by. Awe and wonder are still possible in the German, bred as he is upon sentiment and fairy-lore: the Italian is beautifully credulous. On my first visit to Paris, having arrived at midnight and been established in a hotel room that hung above a courtyard which I felt confident had witnessed the quick thrusts of Porthos, Athos, and Aramis, I wakened at an early hour to the voice of a child singing in the area below. It has always seemed to me that that artless song flung out upon the bright charmed morning came from the very heart of France! France, after hundreds of years of achievement, prodigious labor, and staggering defeat, is still a child among the nations.

Only the other day I attended a prize-fight in Paris. It was a gay affair held in a huge amphitheatre and before a great throng of spectators of whom a third were women. The match was for twenty rounds between a Frenchman and an Australian negro. After ten rounds it was pretty clear that the negro was the better man; and my lay opinion was supported by the judgment of two American journalists, sounder critics than I profess to be of the merits of such contests. The decision was, of course, in favor of the Frenchman and the cheering was vociferous and prolonged. And it struck me as a fine thing that that crowd could cheer so lustily the wrong decision! It was that same spirit that led France forth jauntily against Bismarck’s bayonets. I respect the emotion with which a Frenchman assures me that one day French soldiers will plant the tri-color on the Brandenburg Gate. He dreams of it as a child dreams of to-morrow’s games.

But we are at once the youngest and the oldest of the nations. We are drawn to none but the “biggest” shows, and hardly cease yawning long enough to be thrilled by the consummating leap of death across the four rings where folly has already disproved all natural laws. The old prayer, “Make me a child again just for to-night,” has vanished with the belief in Santa Claus. No American really wants to be a child again. It was with a distinct shock that I heard recently a child of five telephoning for an automobile in a town that had been threatened by hostile Indians not more than thirty years ago. Our children avail themselves with the coolest condescension of all the apparatus of our complex modern life: they are a thousand years old the day they are born.

The farmer who once welcomed the lightning-rod salesman as a friend of mankind is moving to town now and languidly supervising the tilling of his acres from an automobile. One of these vicarious husbandmen, established in an Indiana county seat, found it difficult to employ his newly acquired leisure. The automobile had not proved itself a toy of unalloyed delight, and the feet that had followed unwearied the hay rake and plow faltered upon the treads of the mechanical piano. He began to alternate motor flights with more deliberate drives behind a handsome team of blacks. The eyes of the town undertaker fell in mortal envy upon that team and he sought to buy it. The tired husbandman felt that here, indeed, was an opportunity to find light gentlemanly occupation, while at the same time enjoying the felicities of urban life, so he consented to the use of his horses, but with the distinct understanding that he should be permitted to drive the hearse!

VI

If we are not, after all, a happy people, in the full enjoyment of life and liberty, what is this sickness that troubleth our Israel? Why huddle so many captains within the walls of the city, impotently whining beside their spears? Why seek so many for rest while this our Israel is young among the nations? “Thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy; they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.” Weariness fell upon Judah, and despite the warnings of noble and eloquent prophets she perished. It is now a good many years since Mr. Arnold cited Isaiah and Plato for our benefit to illustrate his belief that with us, as with Judah and Athens, the majority are unsound. And yet from his essay on Numbers--an essay for which Lowell’s “Democracy” is an excellent antidote--we may turn with a feeling of confidence and security to that untired and unwearying majority which Arnold believed to be unsound. Many instances of the soundness of our majority have been afforded since Mr. Arnold’s death, and it is a reasonable expectation that, in spite of the apparent ease with which the majority may be stampeded, it nevertheless pauses with a safe margin between it and the precipice. Illustrations of failure abound in history, but the very rise and development of our nation has discredited History as a prophet. In the multiplication of big and little Smiths lies our only serious danger. The disposition of the sick Smiths to deplore as unhealthy and unsound such a radical movement as began in 1896, and still sweeps merrily on in 1912, never seriously arrests the onward march of those who sincerely believe that we were meant to be a great refuge for mankind. If I must choose, I prefer to take my chances with the earnest, healthy, patriotic millions rather than with an oligarchy of tired Smiths. Our impatience of the bounds of law set by men who died before the Republic was born does not justify the whimpering of those Smiths who wrap themselves in the grave-clothes of old precedents, and who love the Constitution only when they fly to it for shelter. Tired business men, weary professional men, bored farmers, timorous statesmen are not of the vigorous stuff of those

“Who founded us and spread from sea to sea
A thousand leagues the zone of liberty,
And gave to man this refuge from his past,
Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.”

Our country’s only enemies are the sick men, the tired men, who have exhausted themselves in the vain pursuit of vain things; who forget that democracy like Christianity is essentially social, and who constitute a sick remnant from whom it is devoutly to be hoped the benign powers may forever protect us.

VII

It was a year ago that I met my old friend Smith, irritable, depressed, anxious, in the German capital. This morning we tramped five miles, here among the Vermont hills where he has established himself. Sound in wind and limb is my old neighbor, and his outlook on life is sane and reasonable. I have even heard him referring, with something of his old emotion, to that dark winter at Valley Forge, but with a new hopefulness, a wider vision. He does not think the American Republic will perish, even as Nineveh and Tyre, any more than I do. He has come to a realization of his own errors and he is interested in the contemplation of his own responsibilities. And it is not the German specialist he has to thank for curing his weariness half so much as Fanny.

Fanny! Fanny is the wisest, the most capable, the healthiest-minded girl in the world. Fanny is adorable! As we trudged along the road, Smith suddenly paused and lifted his eyes to a rough pasture slightly above and beyond us. I knew from the sudden light in his face that Fanny was in the landscape. She leaped upon a wall and waved to us. A cool breeze rose from the valley and swept round her. As she poised for a moment before running down to join us in the road, there was about her something of the grace and vigor of the Winged Victory as it challenges the eye at the head of the staircase in the Louvre. She lifted her hand to brush back her hair,--that golden crown so loved by light! And as she ran we knew she would neither stumble nor fall on that rock-strewn pasture. When she reached the brook she took it at a bound, and burst upon us radiant.

It had been Fanny’s idea to come here, and poor, tired, broken, disconsolate Smith, driven desperate by the restrictions imposed upon him by the German doctors, and only harassed by his wife’s fears, had yielded to Fanny’s importunities. I had been so drawn into their affairs that I knew all the steps by which Fanny had effected his redemption. She had broken through the lines of the Philistines and brought him a cup of water from that unquenchable well by the gate for which David pined and for which we all long when the evil days come. The youth of a world that never grows old is in Fanny’s heart. She is to Smith as a Goddess of Liberty in short skirt and sweater, come down from her pedestal to lead the way to green pastures beside waters of comfort. She has become to him not merely the spirit of youth but of life, and his dependence upon her is complete. It was she who saved him from himself when to his tired eyes it seemed that

“All one’s work is vain,
And life goes stretching on, a waste gray plain,
With even the short mirage of morning gone,
No cool breath anywhere, no shadow nigh
Where a weary man might lay him down and die.”

Later, as we sat on Smith’s veranda watching the silver trumpet of the young moon beyond the pine-crowned crest, with the herd a dark blur in the intervening meadows, and sweet clean airs blowing out of the valley, it somehow occurred to me that Fanny of the adorable head, Fanny gentle of heart, quick of wit, and ready of hand, is the fine essence of all that is worthiest and noblest in this America of ours. In such as she there is both inspiration to do and the wisdom of peace and rest. As she sits brooding with calm brows, a quiet hand against her tanned cheek, I see in her the likeness of a goddess sprung of loftier lineage than Olympus knew, for in her abides the spirit of that old and new America that labors in the sun and whose faith is in the stars.

The Spirit of Mischief:
A Dialogue

The Spirit of Mischief: A Dialogue

If I could find a higher tree
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships.

To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairyland,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.

R. L. S.

JESSAMINE and I had been out sailing. We came back to find the house deserted, and after foraging in the pantry, we made ourselves at home in the long unceiled living-room, which is one of the pleasantest lounging-places in the world. A few pine-knots were smouldering in the fireplace, and, as I have reached an age when it is pleasant to watch the flames, I poked a little life into the embers and sat down to contemplate them from the easiest chair the camp afforded. Jessamine wearily cast herself upon the couch near by without taking off her coat.

Jessamine is five and does as she likes, and does it perversely, arbitrarily, and gracefully, in the way of maids of five. In the pantry she had found her way to marmalade with an ease and certainty that amazed me; and she had, with malice aforethought, made me _particeps criminis_ by teaching me how to coax reluctant, tight-fitting olives from an impossible bottle with an oyster-fork.

Jessamine is difficult. I thought of it now with a pang, as her brown curls lay soft against a red cushion and she crunched a biscuit, heavily stuccoed with marmalade, with her little popcorn teeth. I have wooed her with bonbons; I have bribed her with pennies; but indifference and disdain are still my portion. To-day was my opportunity. The rest of the household had gone to explore the village bazaars, and we were left alone. It was not that she loved me more, but the new nurse less; and, as sailing had usually been denied her, she derived from our few hours in my catboat the joy of a clandestine adventure. We had never been so much together before. I wondered how long the spell of our sail would last. Probably, I reflected, until the wanderers came back from town to afford a new diversion; or until her nurse came to carry her away to tea. For the moment, however, I felt secure. The fire snapped; the clock ticked insistently; my face burned from its recent contact with a sharp west wind, which had brought white caps to the surface of the lake and a pleasant splash to the beach at our front door. Jessamine folded her arms, rested her head upon them, and regarded me lazily. She was slim and lean of limb, and the lines she made on the couch were long. I tried to remember whether I had ever seen her still before.

“You may read, if you like,” she said.

“Thank you; but I’d rather have you tell me things,” I answered.

I wished to be conciliatory. At any moment, I knew she might rise and vanish. My tricks of detention had proved futile a thousand times; I was always losing her. She was a master opportunist. She had, I calculated, a mood a minute, and the mood of inaction was not often one of them.

“There are many, many things I’d like to have you tell me, Mischief,” I said. “What do you think of when you’re all alone; what do you think of me?”

“Oh! I never think of you when I’m all alone.”

“Thank you, Mischief. But I wonder whether you are quite frank. You must think of me sometimes. For example,--where were you when you thought of knotting my neckties all together, no longer ago than yesterday?”

“Oh!” (It is thus she begins many sentences. Her “Ohs” are delightfully equivocal.)

“Perhaps you’d rather not tell. Of course, I don’t mind about the ties.”

“It was nice of you--not to mind.”

Suddenly her blue eyes ceased to be. They are little pools of blue, like mountain lakes. I was aware that the dark lashes had stolen down upon her brown cheek. She opened her eyes again instantly.

“I wish I hadn’t found your ties. Finding them made a lot of trouble for me. I was looking for your funny little scissors to open the door of my doll-house that was stuck, and I saw the ties. Then I remembered that I needed a rope to tie Adolphus--that’s the woolly dog you bought for my birthday--to my bed at night; and neckties make very good ropes.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Mischief.”

“There’s a prayer they say in church about mischief--” she began sleepily.

“‘From all evil and mischief; from sin; from the crafts and assaults of the Devil?’” I quoted.

“That is it! and there’s something in it, too, about everlasting damnation, that always sends shivers down my back.”

She frowned in a puzzled way. I remembered that once, when Jessamine and I went to church together, she had, during the reading of the litany, so moved a silk hat on the next seat that its owner crushed it hideously when he rose from his knees.

The black lashes hid the blue eyes once more, and she settled her head snugly into her folded arms.

“Why,” she murmured, “do you call me Mischief? I’m not Mischief; I’m Jessamine.”

“You are the Spirit of Mischief,” I answered; and she made no reply.

The water of the lake beat the shore stormily.

“The Spirit of Mischief.”

Jessamine repeated the words sleepily. I had never thought of them seriously before, and had applied them to her thoughtlessly. Is there, I asked myself, a whimsical spirit that possesses the heart of a child,--something that is too swift for the slow pace of adult minds; and if there be such, where is its abiding-place?

“I’m the Spirit of Mischief!”

There, with her back to the fire, stood Jessamine, but with a difference. Her fists were thrust deep down into the pockets of her coat. There was a smile on her face that I did not remember to have seen before. The wind had blown her hair into a sorry tangle, and it was my fault--I should have made her wear her tam-o’-shanter in the catboat! An uncle may mean well, but, after all, he is no fit substitute for a parent.

“So you admit it, do you? It is unlike you to make concessions.”

“You use long words. Uncles _always_ use long words. It is one of the most foolish things they do.”

“I’m sorry. I wish very much not to be foolish or naughty.”

“I have wished that many times,” she returned gravely. “But naughtiness and mischief are not the same thing.”

“I believe that is so,” I answered. “But if you are really the Spirit of Mischief,--and far be it from me to doubt your word,--where is your abiding-place? Spirits must have abiding-places.”

“There are many of them, and they are a long way off. One is where the four winds meet.”

“But that--that isn’t telling. Nobody knows where that is.”

“Everybody doesn’t,” said the Spirit of Mischief gently, as one who would deal forbearingly with dullness.

“Tell me something easier,” I begged.

“Well, I’ll try again,” she said. “Sometimes when I’m not where four winds meet, I’m at the end of all the rainbows. Do you know that place?”

“I never heard of it. Is it very far away?”

“It’s farther than anything--farther even than the place where the winds meet.”

“And what do you do there? You must have bags and bags of gold, O Spirit.”

“Yes. Of course. I practice hiding things with them. That is why no one ever found a bag of gold at the end of a rainbow. I have put countless ones in the cave of lost treasure. There are a great many things there besides the bags of gold,--things that parents, and uncles, and aunts lose,--and never find any more.”

“I wish I could visit the place,” I said with a sigh. “It would be pleasant to see a storehouse like that. It would have, I may say, a strong personal interest. Only yesterday I contributed a valued scarf-pin through the agency of a certain mischievous niece; and I shall be long in recovering from the loss of that miraculous putter that made me a terror on the links. My golf can never be the same again.”

“But you never can see the place,” she declared. “A time comes when you can’t find it any more, the cave of lost treasure--or the place where four winds meet--or the end of all the rainbows.”

“I suppose I have lost my chance,” I said.

“Oh, long ago!” exclaimed the Spirit disdainfully. “It never lasts beyond six!”

“That has a wise sound. Pray tell me more! Tell me, I beg, how you have endured this harsh world so long.”

This, I thought, was a poser; but she answered readily enough.

“I suppose, because I am kindred of so many, many things that live on forever. There are the colors on water when the sun strikes it through clouds. It can be green and gold and blue and silver all at once; and then there is the foam of the white caps. It is foam for a moment and then it is just water again. And there is the moonlight on rippling water, that goes away and never comes any more--not just the same. The mirth in the heart of a child is like all these things; and the heart of a child is the place I love best.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure it is better than the place where all the winds meet, or that other rainbow-place that you told me about.”

“And then,” she began again, “you know that children say things sometimes just in fun, but no one ever seems to understand that.”

“To be sure,” I said feelingly, remembering how Jessamine loved to tease and plague me.

“But there isn’t any harm in it--any more than--”

“Yes?” a little impatiently.

“Than in the things the pines say when the wind runs over the top of them. They are not--not important, exactly,--but they are always different. That is the best thing about being a child--the being different part. You have a grown-up word that means always just the same.”

“Consistent?” I asked.

“That is it. A child that is consistent is wrong some way. But I don’t remember having seen any of that kind.”

A smile that was not the smile of Jessamine stole into the Spirit’s face. It disconcerted me. I could not, for the life of me, decide how much of the figure before me was Jessamine and how much was really the Spirit of Mischief, or whether they were both the same.

“Being ignorant, you don’t know what the mirth in a child is--you” (scornfully) “who pretend to measure all people by their sense of humor. It’s akin to the bubbling music of the fountain of youth, and you do the child and the world a wrong when you stifle it. A child’s glee is as natural as sunshine, and carries no burden of knowledge; and that is the precious thing about it.”

“I’m sure that is true,” I said; but the Spirit did not heed me. She went on, in a voice that suggested Jessamine, but was not hers.

“Many people talk solemnly about the imagination of children, as though it were a thing that could be taught from books or prepared in laboratories. But children’s mischief, that is so often complained of, is the imaginations’ finest flower.”

“The idea pleases me. I shall make a note of it.”

“The very day,” continued the Spirit, “that you sat at table and talked learnedly about the minds of children and how to promote in them a love of the beautiful, your Jessamine had known a moment of joy. She had lain in the meadow and watched the thistledown take flight,--a myriad of those flimsy argosies. And she had fashioned a story about them, that they rise skyward to become the stuff that white clouds are made of. And the same day she asked you to tell her what it is the robins are so sorry about when they sing in the evening after the other birds have gone. Now the same small head that thought of those things contrived also the happy idea of cooking a doll’s dinner in the chafing dish,--an experiment that resulted, as you may remember, in a visit from both the doctor and the fire-insurance adjuster.”

My heart was wrung as I recalled the bandages on Jessamine’s slender brown arms.

“Yes, O Spirit!” I said. “I’m learning much. Pray tell me more!”

“We like very much for science to let us alone--”

“But hygiene--and all those life-saving things--”

“Oh, yes,” she said patronizingly; “they’re all very well in their way. It’s better for science to kill bugs than for the bugs to kill children. But I mean other kinds of sciences that are not nearly so useful--pedagogical and the like, that are trying to kill the microbe of play. Leave us, oh, leave us that!”

“That is a new way of putting it. We oldsters soon forget how to play, alackaday!”

She went on calmly. “Work that you really love isn’t work any more--it’s play.”

“That’s a little deep for me--”

“It’s true, though, so you’d better try to understand. If you paint a picture and work at it,--slave over it and are not happy doing it,--then your picture is only so many pennies’ worth of paint. The cruelest thing people can say of a book or a picture is, ‘Well, he worked hard at it!’ The spirit of mischief is only the spirit of play; and the spirit of play is really the spirit of the work we love.

“It’s too bad that you are not always patient with us,” the Spirit continued. (I noted the plural. Clearly Jessamine and the Spirit were one!)

“I’m sorry, too,” I answered contritely.

“The laws of the foolish world do not apply to childhood at all. Children are born into a condition of ideality. They view everything with wonder and awe, and you and all the rest of the grown-up world are busy spoiling their illusions. How happy you would be if you could have gone on blowing bubbles all your days!”

“True, alas, too true!”

The face of the Spirit grew suddenly very old.

“Life,” she said, “consists largely in having to accept the fact that we cannot do the things we want to do. But in the blessed days of mischief we blow bubbles in forbidden soap and water with contraband pipes--and do not know that they are bubbles!”

“That is the fine thing about it, O Spirit--the sweet ignorance of it! I hope I understand that.”

“I see that you are really wiser than you have always seemed,” she said, with her baffling smile. “Mischief, as you are prone to call so many things that children do, is as wholesome and sweet as a field of clover. I, the Spirit of Mischief, have a serious business in the world, which I’ll tell you about, as you are old and know so little. I’m here to combat and confuse the evil spirits that seek to stifle the good cheer of childhood. These little children that always go to bed without a fuss and say good night very sweetly in French, and never know bread and butter and jam by their real names--you really do not like them half as well as you like natural children. You remember that you laughed when Jessamine’s French governess came, and left the second day because the black cat got into her trunk. There was really no harm in that!”

The Spirit of Mischief laughed. She grew very small, and I watched her curiously, wondering whether she was really a creature of this work-a-day world. Then suddenly she grew to life-size again, and laughed gleefully, standing with her hands thrust deep into her coat pockets.

“Jessamine!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was, a little bit; but you--you snored awfully,” she said, “and waked me up.”

She still watched me, laughing; and looking down I saw that she had been busy while I slept. A barricade of books had been built around me,--a carefully wrought bit of masonry, as high as my knees.

“You’re the wicked giant,” declared Jessamine, quite in her own manner, and with no hint of the half-real, elfish spirit of my dream. “And I’m the good little Princess that has caught you at last. And I’ll never let you out of the tower--Oh they’re coming! They’re coming!”

She flashed to the door and out upon the veranda where steps had sounded, leaving me to deliver myself from the tower of the Spirit of Mischief with the ignorant hands of Age.

Confessions of a “Best-Seller”

Confessions of a “Best-Seller”

THAT my name has adorned best-selling lists is more of a joke than my harshest critics can imagine. I had dallied awhile at the law; I had given ten full years to journalism; I had written criticism, and not a little verse; two or three short stories of the slightest had been my only adventure in fiction; and I had spent a year writing an essay in history, which, from the publisher’s reports, no one but my neighbor and my neighbor’s wife ever read. My frugal output of poems had pleased no one half so much as myself; and having reached years of discretion I carefully analyzed samples of the ore that remained in my bins, decided that I had exhausted my poetical vein, and thereupon turned rather soberly to the field of fiction.

In order to qualify myself to speak to my text, I will say that in a period of six years, that closed in January, 1909, my titles were included fifteen times in the “Bookman” list of best-selling books. Two of my titles appeared five times each; one of them headed the list three months successively. I do not presume to speak for others with whom I have crossed swords in the best-selling lists, but I beg to express my strong conviction that the compilation of such statistics is quite as injurious as it is helpful to authors. When the “six best-selling” phrase was new the monthly statement of winners may have carried some weight; but for several years it has really had little significance. Critical purchasers are likely to be wary of books so listed. It is my impression, based on talks with retail dealers in many parts of the country, that they often report as “best-sellers” books of which they may have made large advance purchases, but which are selling slowly. Their aim is, of course, to force the book into the list, and thereby create a false impression of its popularity.

I think that most publishers, and many authors who, like myself, have profited by the making of these lists, would gladly see them discontinued. The fact remains, however, that the best novels by the best English and American writers have generally been included in these lists. Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Ward, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Wister, “Kate Douglas Wiggin,” Miss Johnston, and Mr. William de Morgan have, for example, shared with inferior writers the ignominy of popular success. I do not believe that my American fellow citizens prefer trash to sound literature. There are not enough novels of the first order, not enough books of the style and solidity of “The House of Mirth” and “Joseph Vance,” to satisfy the popular demand for fiction; and while the people wait, they take inferior books, like several bearing my own name, which have no aim but to amuse. I know of nothing more encouraging to those who wish to see the American novel go high and far than the immediate acceptance among us of the writings of Mr. William de Morgan, who makes no concession, not even of brevity, to the ever-increasing demand for fiction.

I spent the greater part of two years on my first novel, which dealt with aspects of life in an urban community which interested me; and the gravest fault of the book, if I am entitled to an opinion, is its self-consciousness,--I was too anxious, too painstaking, with the result that those pages seem frightfully stiff to me now. The book was launched auspiciously; my publisher advertised it generously, and it landed safely among the “six best-sellers.” The critical reception of the book was cordial and friendly, not only in the newspaper press, but in the more cautious weekly journals. My severest critic dealt far more amiably with my book than I should have done myself, if I had sat in judgment upon it. I have been surprised to find the book still remembered, and its quality has been flung in my face by critics who have deplored my later performances.

I now wrote another novel, to which I gave even greater care, and into it I put, I think, the best characterizations I have ever done; but the _soupçon_ of melodrama with which I flavored the first novel was lacking in the second, and it went dead a little short of fifteen thousand--the poorest sale any of my books has had.

A number of my friends were, at this time, rather annoyingly directing my attention to the great popular successes of several other American writers, whose tales were, I felt, the most contemptible _pastiche_, without the slightest pretense to originality, and having neither form nor style. It was in some bitterness of spirit that I resolved to try my hand at a story that should be a story and nothing else. Nor should I storm the capitals of imaginary kingdoms, but set the scene on my own soil. Most, it was clear, could grow the flowers of Zenda when once the seed had been scattered by Mr. Hawkins. Whether Mr. Hawkins got his inspiration from the flora of Prince Otto’s gardens, and whether the Prince was indebted in his turn to Harry Richmond, is not my affair. I am, no doubt, indebted to all three of these creations; but I set my scene in an American commonwealth, a spot that derived nothing from historical association, and sent my hero on his adventures armed with nothing more deadly than a suit-case and an umbrella. The idea is not original with me that you can make anything interesting if you know how. It was Stevenson, I believe, who said that a kitchen table is a fair enough subject for any writer who knows his trade. I do not cite myself as a person capable of proving this; but I am satisfied that the chief fun of story-telling lies in trying, by all the means in a writer’s power, to make plausible the seemingly impossible. And here, of course, I am referring to the story for the story’s sake,--not to the novel of life and manners.

My two earliest books were clearly too deliberate. They were deficient in incident, and I was prone to wander into blind alleys, and not always ingenious enough to emerge again upon the main thoroughfare. I felt that, while I might fail in my attempt to produce a romantic yarn, the experience might help me to a better understanding of the mechanics of the novel,--that I might gain directness, movement, and ease.

For my third venture I hit upon a device that took strong hold upon my imagination. The idea of laying a trap for the reader tickled me; and when once I had written the first chapter and outlined the last, I yielded myself to the story and bade it run its own course. I was never more honestly astonished in my life than to find my half-dozen characters taking matters into their own hands, and leaving me the merest spectator and reporter. I had made notes for the story, but in looking them over to-day, I find that I made practically no use of them. I never expect to experience again the delight of the winter I spent over that tale. The sight of white paper had no terrors for me. The hero, constantly cornered, had always in his pocket the key to his successive dilemmas; the heroine, misunderstood and misjudged, was struck at proper intervals by the spot-light that revealed her charm and reëstablished faith in her honorable motives. No other girl in my little gallery of heroines exerts upon me the spell of that young lady, who, on the day I began the story, as I waited for the ink to thaw in my workshop, passed under my window, by one of those kindly orderings of Providence that keep alive the superstition of inspiration in the hearts of all fiction-writers. She never came my way again--but she need not! She was the bright particular star of my stage--its _dea ex machina_. She is of the sisterhood of radiant goddesses who are visible from any window, even though its prospect be only a commonplace city street. Always, and everywhere, the essential woman for any tale is passing by with grave mien, if the tale be sober; with upturned chin and a saucy twinkle in the eye, if such be the seeker’s need!

I think I must have begun every morning’s work with a grin on my face, for it was all fun, and I entered with zest into all the changes and chances of the story. I was embarrassed, not by any paucity of incident, but by my own fecundity and dexterity. The audacity of my project used sometimes to give me pause; it was almost too bold a thing to carry through; but my curiosity as to just how the ultimate goal would be reached kept my interest keyed high. At times, feeling that I was going too fast, I used to halt and write a purple patch or two for my own satisfaction,--a harmless diversion to which I am prone, and which no one could be cruel enough to deny me. There are pages in that book over which I dallied for a week, and in looking at them now I find that I still think them--as Mr. James would say--“rather nice.” And once, while thus amusing myself, a phrase slipped from the pen which I saw at once had been, from all time, ordained to be the title of my book.

When I had completed the first draft, I began retouching. I liked my tale so much that I was reluctant to part with it; I enjoyed playing with it, and I think I rewrote the most of it three times. Contumelious critics have spoken of me as one of the typewriter school of fictionists, picturing me as lightly flinging off a few chapters before breakfast, and spending the rest of the day on the golf-links; but I have never in my life written in a first draft more than a thousand words a day, and I have frequently thrown away a day’s work when I came to look it over. I have refused enough offers for short stories, serials, and book rights, to have kept half a dozen typewriters busy, and my output has not been large, considering that writing has been, for nearly ten years, my only occupation. I can say, with my hand on my heart, that I have written for my own pleasure first and last, and that those of my books that have enjoyed the greatest popularity were written really in a spirit of play, without any illusions as to their importance or their quick and final passing into the void.

When I had finished my story, I still had a few incidents and scenes in my ink-pot; but I could not for the life of me get the curtain up, once it was down. My little drama had put itself together as tight as wax, and even when I had written an additional incident that pleased me particularly, I could find no place to thrust it in. I was interested chiefly in amusing myself, and I never troubled myself in the least as to whether anyone else would care for the story. I was astonished by its sale, which exceeded a quarter of a million copies in this country; it has been translated into French, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. I have heard of it all the way from Tokyo to Teheran. It was dramatized, and an actor of distinction appeared in the stage version; and stock companies have lately presented the play in Boston and San Francisco. It was subsequently serialized by newspapers, and later appeared in “patent” supplements. The title was paraphrased by advertisers, several of whom continue to pay me this flattering tribute.

I have speculated a good deal as to the success of this book. The title had, no doubt, much to do with it; clever advertising helped it further; the cover was a lure to the eye. The name of a popular illustrator may have helped, but it is certain that his pictures did not! I think I am safe in saying that the book received no helpful reviews in any newspapers of the first class, and I may add that I am skeptical as to the value of favorable notices in stimulating the sale of such books. Serious novels are undoubtedly helped by favorable reviews; stories of the kind I describe depend primarily upon persistent and ingenious advertising, in which a single striking line from the “Gem City Evening Gazette” is just as valuable as the opinion of the most scholarly review. Nor am I unmindful of the publisher’s labors and risks,--the courage, confidence, and genius essential to a successful campaign with a book from a new hand, with no prestige of established reputation to command instant recognition. The self-selling book may become a “best-seller”; it may appear mysteriously, a “dark horse” in the eternal battle of the books; but miracles are as rare in the book trade as in other lines of commerce. The man behind the counter is another important factor. The retail dealer, when he finds the publisher supporting him with advertising, can do much to prolong a sale. A publisher of long experience in promoting large sales has told me that advertising is valuable chiefly for its moral effect on the retailer, who, feeling that the publisher is strongly backing a book, bends his own energies toward keeping it alive.

It would be absurd for me to pretend that the leap from a mild _succès d’estime_ with sales of forty and fourteen thousand, to a delirious gallop into six figures is not without its effect on an author, unless he be much less human than I am. Those gentle friends who had intimated that I could not do it once, were equally sanguine that I could not do it again. The temptation to try a second throw of the dice after a success is strong, but I debated long whether I should try my hand at a second romance. I resolved finally to do a better book in the same kind, and with even more labor I produced a yarn whose title--and the gods have several times favored me in the matter of titles--adorned the best-selling lists for an even longer period, though the total sales aggregated less.

The second romance was, I think, better than the first, and its dramatic situations were more picturesque. The reviews averaged better in better places, and may have aroused the prejudices of those who shun books that are countenanced or praised by the literary “high brows.” It sold largely; it enjoyed the glory and the shame of a “best-seller”; but here, I pondered, was the time to quit. Not to shock my “audience,” to use the term of the trade, I resolved to try for more solid ground by paying more attention to characterizations, and cutting down the allowance of blood and thunder. I expected to lose heavily with the public, and I was not disappointed. I crept into the best-selling list, but my sojourn there was brief. It is manifest that people who like shots in the dark will not tamely acquiesce in the mild placing of the villain’s hand upon his hip pocket on the moon-washed terrace. The difference between the actual shot and the mere menace, I could, from personal knowledge, compute in the coin of the Republic.