The Project Gutenberg eBook of New Brooms, by Robert J. (Robert James) Shores

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NEW BROOMS

By
ROBERT J. SHORES

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

A PHILOSOPHICAL COOK

Dear Sir: Though I am not one of your subscribers I am, I believe, one of your most faithful readers. I do not take your magazine, it is true, but I am at present employed in a family some member of which is evidently a subscriber, as the maid brings it out in the waste-paper basket regularly, once a month, when, according to her custom, she permits me to select from the month’s periodicals such journals as seem to me to be worthy of my attention in my leisure hours. I shall not conceal from you the fact that my fancy was first attracted to your publication by the fact that I always found it fresh and clean, with the leaves still uncut, and not soiled, bedraggled and often coverless as are some of the others which2 suffer more usage before reaching me. But having once cut the leaves with a convenient bread-knife and looked through one of your numbers, I perceived at once that you are, in your way, something of a philosopher, and I have ever been partial to everything that smacked of philosophy. Could you step into my pantry at the present moment you would find upon my shelves Plato and Aristotle as well as the immortal Mrs. Rorer, for I am, in my humble fashion, a philosopher as well as a cook. I do not at all agree with that learned and talented French gentleman who declared that to study philosophy was to learn to die; on the contrary, I hold that to study philosophy is to learn to live, and I see no reason why the study of philosophy is not as fitting an occupation for a cook as for a collegian. Therefore I cook or philosophize according to my inclination, and if it seem to you that I philosophize like a cook, my employer, I am proud to say, will tell you that I cook like a philosopher.

In youth I had the advantage of a grammar school education, and that education I have3 supplemented with reading and observation. If, as Pope has said,

then I have entered the right school for the completion of my education; for the kitchen is, it seems to me, a natural observatory for the study of human nature. Working away at my chosen profession in the seclusion of my kitchen, I can, without ever having laid eyes upon him, give you a complete character of the head of the household. I can not with certainty say whether he is a large or small man, because the appetite is sometimes deceptive in this respect, and I have known a small man to eat as much as would suffice for two stevedores, and I have known an athlete to peck at a meal that would leave a child hungry. It is not, then, by his physical character that I judge him, but by his mental and psychological symptoms. I do not gage him by how much he eats, but by what he eats. I can not tell you whether he is large or small, but I can tell you whether he is voluptuous or esthetic,4 good-natured or crabbed, rich or poor, wise or foolish.

It is really remarkable the knowledge I come to have of this person whom I have never seen, or it would be if the method by which I reach my conclusions were not so simple. If he keeps fast days and eats only fish upon Fridays, I know, of course, that he is a churchman. If he persistently eats food which is bad for any man’s digestion, I know that he is both irritable and obstinate, for no man can continue to eat what does not agree with him without becoming irritable, and no man will continue such a course in the face of his better judgment unless he is obstinate. If he eats only of rich food and shows a constant preference for taste over nutrition, I know that he is a voluptuary; it is seldom that a man indulges himself in a passion for over-eating who does not indulge himself in other passions as well, and even though his one indulgence be eating, he is none the less a voluptuary by nature. If he eats little and that in an abstracted manner, sometimes overlooking a favorite dish or allowing5 his soup to grow cold so that it is returned half-eaten, I know that he is absent-minded and eats merely because he has to, not because he loves eating for its own sake. If he insists upon having his toast an exact shade of brown and his coffee at a given degree of temperature, I know that he is exacting and particular as to details; that he thinks well of himself and thinks of himself often.

So, as you see, there are hundreds of these moral symptoms which are as familiar to me as physical symptoms are to a physician. Thus I supplement my theoretical knowledge of philosophy by my observation of life.

When I was casting about me for an occupation I had, being an orphan, a perfectly free choice. Had I followed my first impulse, I think I should have gone to live in a tub like Diogenes, and have resolved to spend my life, like Schopenhauer, in thinking about it. But a little observation soon convinced me that the man who lives in the fashion of Diogenes is not held in high favor in these days and that philosophy, as a profession, would be6 likely to prove unremunerative. Now I am not one who desires riches or who can not be happy without wealth, but I soon decided that I must be possessed of a certain amount of money in order to indulge my taste for personal cleanliness. I soon gave over the tub of Diogenes, but I was loath to forego all intercourse with the ordinary domestic tub.

Having determined, therefore, to enter upon some profession in which I could make a reasonable amount of money without requiring a great preliminary outlay, I looked about me for a vocation which might supply my physical needs, and at the same time, afford me some mental and spiritual satisfaction. I dismissed the study of the law or medicine as beyond my means, and I did not find myself sufficiently religious to permit me to enter the ministry with a clear conscience. For trade I had your true philosopher’s distaste, and I confess no sort of manual labor, except as cooking may be so described, held any attraction for me. I shuddered at the thought of becoming a barber, chiropodist or hair-dresser, and my pride7 would not permit me to suffer the rebuffs which fall to the lot of a pedler, book agent or commercial traveler.

It was then that I was struck with my happy inspiration. I would become a member of an old and honorable profession—I would become a cook. If I could not be a philosopher and nourish men’s minds, I would be a cook and nourish their bodies. I would make dishes so delicious and enticing that men upon the brink of suicide would turn back to life with new hope in their hearts. I would impart energy to the weary, peace to the troubled in mind and happiness to the discontented. I would become such a cook as might have won the praise of Lucullus; I would become an artist worthy to take the hand of Epicurus. Such were the extravagant hopes I hugged to my breast when I matriculated at the best cooking-school of my native state. It is true that my achievements have fallen far short of my ambitions, but I have never swerved from my allegiance to my ideal of the Perfect Dinner.

Upon finishing my course at cooking-school,8 I utilized my savings in indulging myself in a post-graduate course abroad. I went to Paris, and there I made the acquaintance of the immortal Frederick of the Tour d’Argent, he of the famous pressed ducks, and of other masters of the culinary art.

This, then, was my preparation for a life of cooking. Possibly you will think that I took my profession too seriously; possibly you do not hold the same high opinion of the art of cooking that I have always held—there are many so minded. It is a never-failing source of wonder to me that men are so quick to recognize the services of those who feed their minds and so slow to acknowledge the debt they owe to those who feed their bodies. I have never regarded cooking in the light of mere manual labor. Labor, it seems to me, is work that is distasteful and only performed from necessity; a “labor of love” seems to me to be a paradox. Work, on the contrary, may be as keen a source of pleasure as recreation. Work may be the striving of an artist to attain his ideal. The very word “labor” suggests pain and exhaustion.9 We speak of an author’s “works,” but who would think of referring to them as his “labors”?

I do not believe, as many seem to believe, that any man or woman who can juggle a skillet or wield an egg-beater is a cook. Merely to follow a formula in a cookery book does not make one a cook any more than the compounding of a prescription makes one a physician. Cooking is an art as well as a science. The violinist can not express his personality in the strains of his instrument more fully than can the cook in his cooking. The favorite dishes of a race are characteristic of that race. The Spaniard, like his chili con carne and his tamale, is hot, peppery and economical. The Frenchman, like his many concoctions, is full of spice, imagination and extravagance. The Italian is indolent and averse to exertion, as is evidenced by his macaroni and spaghetti. The Englishman is red and hearty like his roast beef. The German is fat and fair like his sausages. The Russian is odd and interesting like his caviar. The American, like his10 diet, is cosmopolitan. And as the cooking of a nation or race is characteristic of that nation or race, so the cooking of an individual is characteristic of that individual. Coarse people do not prepare dainty dishes. A cook may strike a discord as surely as a musician.

To be a good cook, a cook worthy of one’s calling, one must have the soul of an artist. One must be clean, self-respecting, industrious, ambitious, earnest, quick to learn and trained to remember. Do other professions require more?

The cook wields a tremendous influence for good or for evil. Over a good dinner the most cynical or the most brutal man must relax into something like human kindness. It is indeed true that

If there be even the feeblest spark of charity11 in a man’s breast, a good dinner will fan it into flame. A bad dinner, on the other hand, will bring to the surface all that is mean and ignoble in his nature. Indigestion, I surmise, has been the cause of most of the cruelty of men. Viewing history in this light, it is easier to understand the apparently wanton slaughter among barbarians. Fed upon ill-conditioned food, the barbarian is attacked in his most sensitive part—his stomach. He is upset, distrait; his nerves are set upon edge and he knows not what ails him. He grows irritable and quick to anger, and he wrecks his unreasoning and unreasonable spleen upon the first convenient victim. It is to be observed that the science of cookery and the progress of civilization advance together. Well-fed men are slow to wrath and easily appeased. At the height of the Roman civilization the Romans became epicures and ceased to be warriors. War has no charms for the man who is at peace with his own stomach.

It may be urged by some that cooking, in rendering a man unwarlike, does him12 an ill service because it makes him effeminate. But the same may be said of all the cardinal virtues except, perhaps, bravery. Forbearance, loving kindness, gentleness, faith—all these and many others are essentially feminine virtues. Nay, civilization itself is a feminizing influence. Under our modern civilization, which as far as we know is the highest the world has ever experienced, men are reduced to the condition of dependents. Men no longer rely upon their personal prowess and valor for redress for their injuries or the defense of their natural rights. The law has become the protector of men, just as men were once the protectors of women. And this feminizing influence of civilization is, I take it, a wise provision of Providence for the benefit of cookery. The less men are concerned with battle, murder and sudden death, the more they are concerned with their dinners; and the more solicitous they become for their dinners, the more they desire the safety of the home, the peace of nations and the prosperity of mankind—all things, in short, which help to make possible the Perfect13 Dinner, perfectly chosen, perfectly cooked and perfectly eaten.

I say “perfectly eaten” because it seems to me that there is an art of eating as well as an art of cooking. It is said that a musician does his best when playing before an appreciative audience; and so the cook is at his best when cooking for an appreciative diner. It is a discouraging thing for an actor to peep out from behind the drop-curtain and see the pit all but empty of spectators; but it is a heart-breaking experience for a cook to peep through the swinging doors of his sanctum sanctorum and to behold the diners distant and indifferent, this one idly chattering and that one buried in a late edition of a newspaper, while his delicious soups, his super-excellent omelets, his heart-warming coffee, his inspiring steaks and his magnificent pâtés grow cold and unpalatable upon the unregarded plates! To see one’s chef-d’œuvres treated as hors-d’œuvres—that is a tragedy of the soul!

To attain the Perfect Dinner we must attain the Perfect Civilization. The diner must be14 as free to enjoy his dinner as the cook is to prepare it; and, in like manner, the Perfect Dinner is the concomitant of the Perfect Civilization. Man is civilized when he is well-fed and uncivilized when he is ill-fed. This is a truth which you need not accept upon my unsupported authority; any housewife will tell you as much. If the earth were to be visited by a plague which attacked only those who could cook and carried them off all at one time, I believe that the world would relapse into anarchy in the space of thirty days.

It seems to me that the profession of cooking is not at all incompatible with the study of philosophy. As I apply my philosophy to my cooking, so I apply my cooking to my philosophy. Some of my philosophers I take raw, some I boil down to the very juice and some I season; for philosophy, I believe, is often more digestible when taken cum grano salis.

I may be wrong, and it may seem egotistical in me to say it, but really, Mr. Idler, I believe that if more people were of my mind to mix their philosophy and their cooking, there would15 be many more intelligent cooks and not a few more palatable philosophers.

A BACHELOR ON WOMEN

Dear Sir: I have lately been the subject of many animadversions upon the part of literary critics because of a novel of mine, recently published, which these critics have been pleased to term “a study in feminine psychology.” My story has been criticized severely and my observations upon the female character mercilessly condemned, and in every one of these adverse criticisms which has been brought to my attention, the reviewer has taken occasion to say, in substance, “This book was evidently written by a bachelor.”

Now, the fact of my bachelorhood I have no wish to deny, nor could I if I would, for it is well known to my many friends and acquaintances that I am a single man. But is the fact that I am a bachelor conclusive, or even prima17 facie, evidence of my incompetency to discourse upon feminine psychology? I do not see why it should be so considered. It is plain that a great many people are of the opinion that the man who has married a woman must know more of women in general than the man who has not. But, after all is said, Mr. Idler, why should the married man know more of women than the bachelor knows? He is married only to one woman—not to all womankind.

No man becomes an expert entomologist through the study of one insect. There is no one insect which can furnish him with a general knowledge of entomology. Nor is there any one woman who can furnish us with a general knowledge of women. There is no one woman so typical of her sex that all other women may be judged by her. Yet the only advantage which the married man enjoys over the unmarried man is his intimate knowledge of one particular woman. The married man has not the same liberty of observing women which is the perquisite of the bachelor. The only time18 when a married man has an opportunity to observe women other than his wife is when his wife is not with him, and then, for a short time, he possesses the same degree of liberty which the bachelor enjoys all of the time. The bachelor observes, not one woman, but many. It is true that his knowledge of women differs from that of the married man in one particular: if he has any intimate knowledge of woman at her worst it is likely to be a knowledge of Judy O’Grady, rather than of the colonel’s lady. The bachelor sees good women at their best and bad women at their worst. The married man sees one good woman at her best and at her worst.

The question, then, is, which sort of knowledge is more likely to enable a man to form a just estimate of the female character? Personally, I think the bachelor has all the best of it. And, Sir, if none of these arguments has weight with you, there remains one supreme argument which proves that the bachelor knows more of women than the married man, and19 that, Sir, is the simple fact that he is a bachelor, as

N. B. The editor disclaims all responsibility for the sentiments expressed in the above communication.

ON PENSIONING WRITERS

Dear Sir: I observe by the daily press that the English government has just issued a list in full of such authors as have been selected for the receipt of a pension. In this list I find the names of a number of widows and orphans of authors as well as the names of living authors, and this is no doubt as it should be. I have heard certain hypercritical persons object to the late project of the “Dickens stamp” upon the ground that no man is entitled to anything which he has not earned and that literary heirs are entitled to no more consideration than monetary heirs. Now, personally, I can not understand what is so objectionable about the inheritance of money. It seems to me that a man’s heirs are quite as much entitled to receive the benefits of his fortune or the fruits of his industry after his death as they are during his21 life; and no one has yet gone so far as to say that a man may not, with perfect propriety, bestow upon his heirs and relatives such pecuniary gifts and benefits as he may see fit during his lifetime. It seems to me that the heirs of an author inherit as great an interest in his work as the heirs of a banker or broker. But, however this may be, there is one feature about this pensioning of authors which convinces me that the British government has gone about the matter in a very wrong fashion.

I find in looking over the list that pensions have been granted because of writings upon ornithology, Elizabethan literature, poetry, socialism, philosophy and so on. While I must confess that I am unfamiliar with the majority of the names which appear upon the list, I assume from the manner in which they have been selected that the British government considers their work to have been of really great value, although not popular. The British government, in fact, appears to be offering encouragement, in the shape of pensions, to such writers as can not hope to please the general22 public with their work. The government is supplying a pension in lieu of popular appreciation.

Now, this is all very well if the government is merely going into the business of being philanthropic and is willing to extend its system of pensions to include worthy shoemakers who have been unable to secure a sufficient custom to keep them in food and clothing because of the inroads made upon the cobbler’s trade by the manufacturers of machine-made shoes; lawyers who are learned in the law, but who have been unable to secure the business of the great corporations; doctors who are efficient, but who chance to live in unusually healthy neighborhoods; ministers of the Gospel who are unfortunately assigned to meager or irreligious parishes; music teachers who are excellent instructors, but who find formidable foes to business in the automatic piano and the phonograph. If the British government is bent upon making up for public indifference to such authors as are willing to benefit mankind, but who can not make mankind take note of their23 efforts in that direction, then, I say, the British government shows a kindly and courteous disposition, but it should not stop with authors; it should carry on the good work in every walk of life.

But if, as I suspect to be the case, the British government is establishing this system of pensions in the hope that the system will result in more and better books, then I must say I think the system is more likely to fail than to succeed.

One has but to glance back at the history of literature to be convinced that poverty has never been an effective check upon literary genius. Poets have starved and philosophers have gone about clad in shabby raiment rather than forsake their chosen work. Herbert Spencer did not go clad in rags, to be sure, but where mediocre writers were reaping fortunes from their literary labors, he was expending fortunes in the effort to bring his philosophy to the attention of the world. Doctor Johnson never wrote so prolifically or so well as when he was starving in a Grub Street garret.

An empty stomach does not mean an empty24 head where authors are concerned. The fact of the matter is, it is easier for men to write great poetry and to think deeply when they are poor than when they are well-to-do. A wealthy and famous man has to suffer innumerable distractions from the work he has in hand; his time and attention are not his own to command. At every turn he is harassed by the responsibilities of his position. In obscurity and poverty, on the other hand, a man is not only brought more closely in touch with life, but he is absolute master of his own time and effort. Providing he be not married, and so responsible for others, the obscure and poor author is absolutely his own master. Whether he drop his greater work for the sake of earning a meal is a matter which is entirely optional. He does not have to eat if he does not care to do so. The rich and successful author, on the contrary, is expected to observe certain social duties and to return courtesy for praise and patronage. If he treats his public cavalierly and refuses to admit himself bound by the amenities of ordinary life, he25 is in grave danger of losing both his popularity and his eminence.

“O Poverty,” wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau, “thou art a severe teacher. But at thy noble school I have received more precious lessons, I have learned more great truths than I shall ever find in the spheres of wealth.”

Had Louis the Little actually taken up François Villon from his squalor and wretchedness, his stews and taverns, his thieves and slatterns, and made him the Grand Marshal of France, as he is made to do in Justin Huntley McCarthy’s romance, If I Were King, he would have spoiled a good poet to make a poor courtier. When poor and writing for posterity, the author is at his best; when rich and writing for more money, he is usually so anxious to make hay while the sun shines that his work suffers in proportion to his output. No, poverty has never spoiled a good poet—even the youthful Chatterton might have lost his magic with the disillusionment which follows on the heels of affluence.

And since the really great authors can not be kept from writing in any case, it would seem to me that a much better scheme would be to pension those who were better idle. Let the British government pension, not the good authors, but the bad. Let the penny-a-liner be retired in comfort where he will never need to write another poem, novel, play or philosophic treatise. Since the inspiration which moves him to labor is the desire for money, when he has the money he will no longer have any temptation to write. But for the great authors, who will write whether or no, let them be kept on their mettle, stung to action by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” inspired by their faith in their work and close to the hearts of humanity, so that they may continue to pour out the riches of literature, philosophy and science, unimpeded by the obligations and worries attendant upon the possession of a bank account!

A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA

Dear Sir: You will often hear it asserted by those who assume to speak with authority, that there is no longer any such thing as Bohemia in New York; that the Bohemians are scattered hither and thither and that their haunts are given over to seekers after sensation, sight-seers and the like. The seeming sophistication of those who speak thus is, more often than not, entirely sham, and is assumed by pert reporters for the daily press who wish, by appearing worldly, to divert attention from their patent callowness and youth.

There is, Sir, such a thing as Bohemia, and there are such people as Bohemians, and this I know to my sorrow, and the way in which I discovered this I shall presently relate. Bohemia, as I have found it, is not a place, but a state of mind and a manner of life. The Bohemians28 have a fixed abode no more than the Arabs of the desert or the wild tribes of Tartary. If one of their citadels is wrested from them by the invasion of the Philistines, they fall back upon another, and being, for the most part, unencumbered with Lares and Penates, they have no difficulty in finding another retreat in which they are soon as happy and content as in the one which they formerly occupied. They may be said to be a people without attachments (if we except the writs so called by those of the legal profession), and if they pay devotion to any god, I know not whom it may be, unless, indeed, Bacchus, who was always a roving deity, as like to be found in one spot as another, whose chief attributes are liberty and license, and whose rites, therefore, may be celebrated wherever his devotees are given the liberty of a place that has a license.

But do not let me, by the use of these terms, lead you to fall into the vulgar error that these Bohemians are people without conventions and who observe no rules of conduct, but act solely according to the whim of the moment, for indeed29 the contrary is the case. The Bohemians, Sir, are as jealous of their customs and conventions as any class of people, and they even have certain ideas of caste to which they adhere as rigidly as the most fanatical of the Hindus. To lose caste in Bohemia is like losing one’s “face” among the Chinese and results in ostracism quite as surely.

The customs and conventions of the Bohemians, as I shall presently show, are, in truth, very different from the customs and the conventions of what is known as “good society”; so that it is not surprising that those who have only, so to speak, touched upon the frontiers of this country of the imagination, should declare it to be a land of absolute freedom and of individualistic philosophy. Myself, when I first came among them, was as astonished and confused as Gulliver among the Houyhnhnms, for here I found everything turned about from the manner in which I was used to seeing it. That which I had been accustomed to consider worthy, I found here to be unworthy, and that which I had been taught to hold a fault I30 found here to be a virtue. I had been taught to admire thrift, but here I found it held to be the meanest of qualities. The Beau Ideal of a Bohemian I discovered to be the young man who is free with his purse and careless of his obligations. I found it a humorous thing to defraud one’s creditors but a shameful thing to deny one’s purse to a fellow Bohemian. I had been taught to be circumspect in my conversation with the ladies, but here I found them conversing upon all subjects with utter freedom and an entire lack of embarrassment. I had been used to admire innocence, but here I found that innocence was considered as ignorance and a subject for mirth or censure. Religion, patriotism, respect for established customs, reverence for those in power—all those things, in short, which had been so carefully impressed upon me at home, I found to be nowhere admired among these people.

To acquaint you briefly with the manner of my coming among these citizens: I fell among them by design and not, as you may have supposed,31 by accident. Possessed of some talent in a musical way and having something of a turn for original composition, I had secured a position in an orchestra in one of the local theaters. Though I had been brought up in the most orthodox manner by my father, who was a professor in a small New England college, I chafed under the restrictions of social life in my native village, where intellectual attainments were held in such high repute as to overshadow completely all natural talent and genius, and where a man was more respected for knowing Boethius than for knowing beans. I had neither taste nor inclination for pedagogy, but yearned with all my heart for the artistic life. I had, in short, a somewhat exaggerated attack of what is known as the artistic temperament, and finding that my own people considered music as a parlor accomplishment rather than a serious art, I was more than ever impatient of their narrow-minded Puritanism and more than ever determined to leave the little college town and all that it32 stood for, and to go out into the world to seek companionship with those who shared my own ideals and ambitions.

The final rupture with my people came when I announced to my father my intention of becoming a professional violinist, and he replied that if I were determined to disappoint his hopes of my future I might at least have hit upon something respectable, and not brought upon him the reproach of having a fiddler in the family. “I can only hope,” said he, “that you will be a total and abject failure in your misguided efforts, for if you were to succeed and I were to come upon your name flaunted in shameless fashion from the boards of some play-house, I should certainly die of mortification.” With these good wishes ringing in my ears, I packed my meager belongings, tucked my violin case under my arm and turned my back upon my native village and respectability, as I thought, forever.

A few weeks of playing in the orchestra at a theater convinced me that I had yet to seek the intellectual sympathy for which I left33 home. My fellow players, with one exception, were all phlegmatic Germans who played well enough, to be sure, but who appeared to be as devoid of spiritual aspirations and artistic appreciation as so many day-laborers. They worked at their music as a barber works at his trade, and when the evening’s task was done, they retired to a corner saloon where they drank beer, ate Limburger and talked politics like so many grocers. There was, as I have said, one exception; a young man like myself, who seemed to scorn the middle-class ideas and ideals of our companions and who never joined in the beer-drinking or the political discussions at the corner. This young man, said I to myself, has been here for some time, and he, if any one, should be able to direct me to the haunts of the true friends of art; he, of all these, is the only one fitted to act as my guide, philosopher and friend.

Timidly I approached him upon the subject nearest to my heart, and heartily he replied that not only could he introduce me into the free-masonry of art, but that he would do so the34 very next night. Accordingly, when the curtain fell the following evening, we set off at once and arrived shortly at a restaurant and café, upon the East Side, which was situated in a basement. A large wooden sign proclaimed it to be “Weinstein’s Rathskeller,” but my companion assured me that it was known to the elect as the “Café of the Innocents,” because those who came there were yet young and comparatively unknown in the world of art and letters.

To describe my sensations upon that evening, Sir, would require the pen of a Verlaine. My own poor efforts can never do them justice. I can make shift to express emotion upon the strings of my instrument, but when I exchange my bow for a pen my fingers become as thumbs and my emotions defy expression, so that I am as helpless as a six weeks’ infant plagued by a pin, and can no more make clear my meaning than a sign-painter could imitate Rubens.

Suffice it to say that I was overcome, charmed, enchanted! In stepping through the portals of that dingy East Side resort, I35 seemed to have stepped over the border-line that divides the world of the dull and the practical from the world of romance and desire. I had entered the land of dreams, the country of magnificent distances! I was as astonished as William Guppy would have been had he stumbled unwittingly into the rose garden of Hafiz. Here were men and women after my own heart; men and women who saw the world as a whole, unbounded by the petty lines of counties, states and nations. Here the names of the masters of art and literature were bandied about as familiarly as the names of our local professors were at home. Here were lights, here music, and here the good glad laughter of youth! Here were women—not the slim spinsters and prim matrons that I had known, but hearty healthy women who seemed to be alive. Ah, that was it—they were all, all of them, so much alive! Between their fingers they held, not knitting-needles, but dainty cigarettes! Here was wine, wit and winsomeness—a dangerous, a deadly combination for such as I!

Well, Sir, to be brief, I was enthralled. I grew so greedy of that atmosphere that I began to begrudge my work the hours that it called me away from such good company. Finally I exchanged my place at the theater for a position in the orchestra at the café. And so I came to live among the Bohemians and become one of them.

From the first I was enamored of the conversation of these stepchildren of Genius, and I soon began descending from the platform and mingling with the habitués of the place; for at Weinstein’s the only snobbery is of the Bohemian variety, and those who would blush to be seen dining with a prosperous bourgeois, were not at all averse to drinking with an humble member of the orchestra—for was not I, too, an artist? It was not long before I began to care more for talking of my art than for practising it, and all the time that I was playing I was impatient to be down among the tables enjoying the praise which my performance, or, as I am now inclined to suspect, the subsequent order for drinks, never failed to37 secure. Thus I ceased to practise and played no more except when I was at work.

It was some months before I woke from the daze into which I fell at the first. It came to me gradually as I began to make unpleasant discoveries. It was disconcerting to find that I had fled my own world to escape conventions only to come upon others, or rather upon the same lot, turned topsy-turvy. It annoyed me to find that to be accounted a true Bohemian one must hold only certain views, and those always opposed to the views of acknowledged authorities; that one must not dress too well, eat too well or drink too well. Which was not at all the same thing as saying too much. But this was by no means the most shocking of my disillusions. I soon learned that while the Bohemians are forever talking and thinking of success and wishing success for their friends, the moment one of them really succeeds he is no longer a member of the company; and for this reason it is said, with some truth, that there38 are no successful Bohemians. When one of them who has made a marked success intrudes himself into the old gathering place, he is given such a cold shoulder that he never ventures there again. A small triumph furnishes the occasion for a feast of congratulation, but a real “arrival” excites the whole company to sneers and innuendoes, so that such felicitations as are offered are bitter with envy. They have a sort of optimism of their own, but it is all a personal optimism. Each one hopes and believes that he will succeed, but each one believes and secretly hopes that the others will not. A cynical smile and a shrugging of shoulders is the tribute to the absent artist.

Well, Mr. Idler, the longer I remained among these people, the more I came to be of the mind of Alice in Wonderland, that though some may be marked off from the pack and may look like kings and queens, they are nothing but playing-cards after all.

But there was one young woman who held my waning interest and who bound me by sentimental ties to the life of which I now began39 to be somewhat weary. If I had not made her acquaintance I believe that I should long ago have left Bohemia and shaken the sawdust of Weinstein’s from my feet. She was a demure young person, a newcomer from the West, who was studying art. She seemed so different from the others, so fresh, so ingenuous, that I could not but believe her to be genuine. She smoked her cigarette and drank of the table d’hôte wine, it is true (she could do no less in the face of Bohemian convention), but she did it all with such a pretty air of youth and innocence as touched me greatly. For I was by now as strongly attracted by a quiet woman as I had formerly been by a lively one.

To spare you a tedious recital of my passion, I determined to ask her to marry me, thinking that she might arouse in me the old ambition to become a great musician—the ambition which my long sojourn in the Lotus land of Bohemia had all but killed. And so one night I put the question gently over our cups of black coffee, asking her, “Would you—could you—share with me my career?” Then, Sir, that happened40 which you will scarce believe. Yes, she said, she would be glad to share my career with me, but I must be under no misapprehension; she could not marry me; she already had a husband in the West; but inasmuch as she had not seen him in three years and had never found him very congenial in any case, he need not in any way interfere with our plans.

As you may imagine, I was thunderstruck. I concealed my confusion as best I might by pretending to choke upon a bit of cheese, and at the first opportunity I made my escape and sought the seclusion of my chamber where I faced my problem. I had striven to become a Bohemian, but I had been born a Puritan and there was a limit to my acquired unconventionality. I could not confess my prudery to the lady; could not ignore the incident. Therefore I have determined to accept the one course left open to me. I shall fly. I am now going out to pawn my fiddle and with the money I get I shall buy me a ticket to that little New England town where I first saw the light of day.

Others may seek for inspiration at the Café of the Innocents, but as for me, I am going where a modest young man may live in the protection of the old-fashioned conventions. I am going where I can be moral without being queer. I am going home. And so, Sir,

AN ARRAIGNMENT OF ORIGINALITY

Dear Sir: I am, I doubt not, one of your most devoted readers, and the reason of my devotion, if I may say so, is because you so seldom say anything original. Nay, Sir, this is not said in jest, but in very earnest, for in truth I am vastly wearied of originality in all its forms. We are so beset upon all sides by “originals” of one sort or another, that it is a positive relief to open a book or pick up a magazine which is decently dull and warranted harmless. To sit down for a quiet evening with one of our sensational monthlies is like lighting one’s self to bed with a giant cracker—there is no peace or quiet to be had with ’em.

From my earliest youth it has been my ambition to keep myself well informed of the affairs of the day, and to this end I have made it a practise to glance at least through the43 monthly numbers of our popular magazines. I regret to say that I have been compelled to break off this lifelong habit, as my physician has strongly advised me against continuing it. The startling and alarming articles which make up the bulk of the month’s offerings in these periodicals have a very bad effect upon my heart and my imagination. More than once in the last two or three years I have been troubled with evil dreams and nightmares brought on by reading these publications shortly before going to bed. More than this, I am by nature somewhat irritable and short of temper, and I have been thrown into a very fury of indignation upon reading the recital of my wrongs in these magazines; so much so, indeed, that I have narrowly escaped apoplexy, a disease to which, my doctor says, I am peculiarly liable. And since I had rather be swindled upon every hand, as long as it is in happy ignorance, than to die of indignation, I have left off reading them altogether.

I can say without dissimulation that I do not miss them greatly. To say the truth, I have44 small fondness for the originality which is everywhere urged upon us in these days. I have small patience with the spirit which drives us on from one extravagance to another until there is no telling to what base uses the human intellect may eventually fall. Sir, I have taken it upon myself to raise my voice in protest against the prevalent craze for originality and to say a word, which needs to be said, in defense of imitation. If in so doing I am unintentionally original, I can only crave your indulgence.

If I read the signs of the times aright, we are in imminent danger of falling into the ways of the Greeks, “ever seeking some new thing”; considering in our art, music and literature not the qualities of beauty, sense and melody, but only the quality of newness, which is to say, novelty. We do not ask of a musician, is his work harmonious? But only, is it different? We do not ask of a painter, is he artistic? But only, is he clever? We do not ask of an author, is he sound? But only, is he witty? Is it not a sad commentary upon our insane desire45 for change, Mr. Idler, that our artists, musicians and authors should urge only these claims upon our consideration, that they are different, clever and witty? Sir, the music of an Ojibway Indian is different; a sign-painter may well be clever; and the most ignorant street urchins are often witty. Are these, then, the only qualities we should seek in those who presume to instruct and elevate the human mind and soul? Are we to pass by sound sense for the sake of empty wit? Are we to forsake harmony for the novelty of a mad jumble of absurd sounds? Are we to value cartoons above masterpieces?

For a convenient example of the depths to which we have sunk, let me cite you, Sir, the case of dancing. Dancing was, I believe, originally a religious exercise. Like music, it was employed to express the nobler emotions of the soul. I confess that it may have been sensuous, even at a very early date, but the most sensuous dance of the ancients, the bacchante, was, nevertheless, performed in honor of a god. In the minuet of our grandfathers there was both46 dignity and grace. There, Sir, was such a dance as might enhance the noble bearing, the beauty and the gentility of those who danced it. There was a dance fit for ladies and gentlemen, a dance which had in it nothing incompatible with innocent womanliness or manly dignity. Who, let me ask you, can say as much for the unspeakable modern original dances, the kangaroo, the grizzly bear, and the bunny hug? Sir, can you bring yourself for one moment to think upon the spectacle of George Washington dancing the kangaroo? Can you conceive of such an unthinkable thing as Henry Clay performing the grizzly bear? Can you, by any force of imagination, picture Abraham Lincoln lost in the mazes of the bunny hug? God forbid!

As it is with dancing, so it is with art. The poster insanity has hardly passed away and we are already overwhelmed with a horde of symbolists of one sort or another, who appear to agree upon one point only—that pictures should not in any way resemble nature. These47 ambitious daubers, Sir—I can not bring myself to call them artists—have the impertinence to assume that they can express life more fully and clearly upon their hideous canvases than the Author of the Universe has expressed it in nature. As to the absurdity of their pretensions, I need say nothing; it is apparent to all who can lay claim to even the most ordinary degree of intelligence. But as to the effect this nonsense has upon the weak, the easily impressed, I could never say enough. This insanity has spread like a plague from painting to poetry, and from poetry to all the arts that are known. Originality, like charity, is made to cover a multitude of sins. The creative artist who has not the strength or the patience to win distinction along recognized lines produces something that is grotesque and defies us to criticize his work, saying, “There is no standard by which you can measure this, for it is absolutely new. Nobody ever did anything just like this before.” The obvious retort to this would be that nobody ever wanted to do anything48 like it before, but this would be lost upon the artist, for the “original” of to-day is as impervious to ridicule as he is to criticism.

That music is better for being original, I do not believe. Such an assumption is without warrant in nature. There is no purer sweeter melody than that of the birds. What says the poet?

Year after year, century after century, these natural musicians continue to ravish and delight all mankind with those same songs they warbled on creation morn. It is no care of theirs to mingle melody with horrid sounds; to weld their notes into a dagger of discord wherewith to stab men through the ear. They do not strive to produce those damnable gratings, shriekings and rumblings which so often49 pass for music in these days. Where, Sir, is the originality of the nightingale, or of the mocking-bird? Sir, all music may be noise, but that all noise is music I do deny with all my heart. That a noise is new does not recommend it to my ear.

Sir, I lay it down as a proposition not to be refuted, that a good imitation is better than a poor original, and while many men may create passable imitations, very few can produce anything which is both original and good. I do not hold it against an author that he is not wholly original. On the contrary, if he imitate good models, I regard his imitation as an evidence of sound sense. And, what is more, Sir, I believe that most people are no more enamored of originality than I am.

Here is a secret, Mr. Idler, known to only a few: We never grow tired of the things we really like, but only of the things which have appealed to us momentarily because of their novelty. When we really like an author, we like another author who is like him. When we really like a melody, we like another melody50 which is like it. When we really like a place, we have no desire to leave it. Early in life we form attachments for certain things—our homes, our parents, Mother Goose and the like. This fondness we never entirely outgrow. We like the books we used to like, the pictures, the songs and the places. I am speaking now, Sir, of normal human beings. There are some, ever seeking new things, who never learn to like anything. To them, old books are wearisome, old pictures are uninteresting, old tunes insipid. To them, all places are places to go from or go to, but never to stay in. For them, the past is closed and history is out of date.

“Beware of imitations!” say the advertisements. “Beware of originality!” say I. If we were all original, there would be no living with us. The original genius is well enough when we wish to be entertained, but it is the old-fashioned reliable imitator who makes this world the pleasant place it is. And let us not forget, Sir, that the most original thing in the world is sin.

A FLATTERING TRIBUTE

Dear Sir: Some months ago I read in your magazine an article in which you advocated the keeping of a journal or diary, saying that by this means one might always keep one’s self well informed as to what progress one might be making spiritually, morally and mentally upon the journey through life. This suggestion struck me very forcibly; so much so, indeed, that I straightway determined to act upon your advice and to begin forthwith such a record of my intimate life as would enable me, at any time when the spirit moved me, to inform myself in this respect. Up to the time when I read the article of which I speak, I had always considered the writing of a diary as rather a senseless occupation, since I could not see why one need put down that which was already well known to one’s self; but when I had read your advice upon the subject, I soon came to see that52 there is much which will inevitably escape, not only the memory, but the attention as well, unless committed to paper.

Convinced, then, of the usefulness of such an intimate record, I set myself to writing down with great particularity all that I saw, heard, said, did or read; so that I may now look back at the end of the year and review each day in all its details. As you may suppose, I was much surprised to find myself given to habits of which I had formerly been quite unaware. I discovered that much of my reading, for instance, was of a decidedly frivolous and unprofitable sort. After considering this for some time, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for me to mend my ways and to abandon my habit of indiscriminate and idle reading, and I therefore request that you will cancel my subscription to The Idler.

Thanking you for the article on diaries, which will, I am sure, prove a most valuable suggestion to me, I am, Sir,

THE RIDDLE OF A DREAM

Dear Sir: I have had a curious dream and I am at a loss to account for it. I have consulted an old dream book, which I have in my possession, and which was formerly the property of my old nurse, Aunt Betty S., but for all my diligent searching therein, I have failed utterly to find anything which might serve as an interpretation of my vision. I called at the public library of our village and asked for the latest and most up-to-date work of this character, but the librarian only laughed at my request and assured me that she possessed no such work and that as far as she knew there had never been any such work upon her shelves. To my protest that no library could be complete54 without at least a few volumes of this character, she retorted that only fools and old fogies any longer had any faith in the meaning of dreams, and that if I was troubled with nightmare the best thing I could do would be to stop lying on my back or be more careful of what I ate before going to bed.

It would seem that I am a bit old-fashioned in my faith in the meaning of dreams, though I do not see how any one who pretends to a belief in the Christian faith can scoff at the interpretation and significance of them in the face of the many notable instances cited in the Bible, as, for example, the vision of Jacob and the dream which caused Joseph to flee into Egypt. I suppose, however, that I should not be surprised at the light and irreverent fashion in which the young people of to-day treat this subject, when I reflect that a Christian clergyman has recently suggested a revision of the Ten Commandments. Notwithstanding the apparently widespread heresy concerning the futility and emptiness of dreams, I trust that I am not the only Christian gentleman now55 living who clings to the faith of his fathers and who has sufficient faith in the inspiration of the Gospels to believe that a dream is something more than a result of injudicious eating. It is in the hope that some such person may be a reader of your journal and that the result may be a correct interpretation of my own dream, that I am writing this to you. I observe that your journal is somewhat behind the times in many respects and therefore I assume that some of your readers are likely to be as old-fashioned and as “superstitious” as myself.

The dream which I am about to relate came to me in the following circumstances. I had been out rather late the night before and had partaken of a number of fancy dishes such as I am not in the habit of eating at my own table, but which my daughter, who is just back from a young ladies’ finishing school, assures me are much more pleasing if not more nourishing than the ham and eggs which I was upon the point of ordering for our supper after the theater. It was in the morning of the next day and we were out in our new automobile which56 had only come from the factory the day before. The automobile, or “car” as my daughter calls it, is of rather expensive make and luxurious to a degree. Being somewhat fagged by my unaccustomed dissipation of the night before, I leaned back upon the cushions and presently I fell asleep.

It appeared to me that I was no longer in the automobile, but trudging along the road as I was in the habit of doing in my younger years. As I came to a turn in the road I was confronted with a troop of horsemen, who were by all odds the strangest company it has ever been my lot to behold. All of them were splendidly mounted on magnificent horses which were caparisoned like the mounts of the knights in some rich and gorgeous medieval tapestry. Their bridles were of chased leather with bits and buckles of solid gold; their stirrups were of platinum and silver, and their saddles were of silver and gold, upholstered in plush and velvet. Silk and satin ribbons floated from the bridles of the horses and flaunted in the wind in gay and beautiful streamers. But57 with the horses and their trappings the magnificence came to a sudden end. The riders themselves were the most incongruous riders for such noble animals that one could imagine. They were, without exception, tattered and bedraggled to the last degree of unkempt frowsiness. Their faces were gaunt and drawn as with hunger and their hair hung unbrushed and uncombed upon their frayed collars. In more than one instance a foot was thrust through a silver stirrup while the toes of the rider came peeping through the broken ends of his boot. A more wretched company mounted upon more beautiful chargers it would be difficult to imagine.

At sight of me the whole company came to a sudden halt, checking their mounts as at the command of a leader, though no word was spoken. The leader of the cavalcade, who bestrode a handsome gelding, rode out a little in advance of his fellows, and removing his crownless hat, swept me a bow, leaning low over the pommel of his saddle. And when I had returned his salutation, he addressed me in58 these words: “I give you good morrow, gentle sir, and I beg you in the name of Christ and this our company that you spare us a few coins of silver or of gold that we may partake of food and drink, for the way is long and weary and we can not travel without meat and wine to sustain us on our journey.”

Now this speech greatly astonished me, as I had never seen so large a company of beggars journeying together, and I was the more astounded that men mounted in such splendid fashion should be asking alms.

“What!” I cried in amazement, “are you begging then, while you ride upon such fine horses, and your bridles and saddles are worth a king’s ransom?”

“Even so,” replied the leader, “and much as I loathe discourtesy, I must remind you that our time is short, so pray give us what funds you can spare and let us be on our way, for we hope to reach our destination by nightfall.”

“But if you need money,” I protested, “why do you not sell your horses and trappings?”

At this the whole company cried out in protest, and the leader answered: “Sell our mounts? Never! Look at them. Are they not beautiful?”

And truly they were. And as I looked at them I was seized with a great desire to feel a horse of like magnificence between my knees, and I cried, “I wish that I, too, had a horse like that!”

“Give me all the money that you have,” said the leader, “and you shall have one.”

So I gave him the money. Presently I found myself riding with them and my clothes were as tattered and torn as the clothes of the others. And we set off at a furious pace, faster and faster, until the horses panted with exertion, and after a time one stumbled and fell, sending his rider over his head to the hard road. But nobody stopped, and looking back, I saw the unfortunate fellow sprawling in the roadway with his neck broken. On, on we went, one horse after another giving a final60 gasp and falling down in the road, and as each one fell we who were left urged our mounts to greater exertions, plying whip and spur without ceasing, until finally only the leader and I were riding on. Then his horse stumbled to its knees and rolled over on its side, and I rode on alone. Lashing my horse I strained onward till the poor beast came crashing down with a jar that threw me headlong upon the highway, where I fell so heavily that I woke.

I have pondered over this dream ever since, but I confess I can make nothing of it. I must draw this letter to a close now, for my daughter informs me that the automobile is waiting, and I have not mortgaged my house to secure the thing for the purpose of letting it stand idle.

I hope, Sir, that if you or any of your readers can read me the riddle of this dream they will be good enough to forward the solution to

BEDS FOR THE BAD

Dear Sir: It was Sancho Panza, if my memory serves me right, who invoked a blessing upon the head of the man who first invented sleep; I think he had done better to bestow his blessings upon the man who first invented beds. I think it extremely doubtful if sleep can be classed as an invention of man; it is, rather, a function, like breathing, and I doubt not that Adam fell a-nodding before ever he knew the meaning of sleep at all. The bed, upon the contrary, is without question of human origin, for no other living thing has constructed anything resembling it except the bird, who makes his nest serve him as both bed and house, and certainly no deity could have occasion to use such an article, seeing that eternal wakefulness is a necessary attribute of godhood.

The bed, in my opinion, is the greatest of all human inventions, without which sleep were robbed of half its pleasure. Nowhere do we enjoy such delicious refreshing repose as when snugly ensconced in a proper bed, and for my part, there is no other luxury which I could not spare better than my bed. Napkins, tablecloths, knives, forks, spoons—even the table, I could forego without great loss of appetite, but I can rest nowhere else than in a bed, and I can rest well in no bed but my own. So strong is my regard for this article of household furniture, that, were I a poet, I should ask no greater glory than to be the author of those beautiful lines of Thomas Hood—

A man may be without land or money and still be happy; he may endure the loss of friends and fortune, and he may preserve his courage even in the face of shame and disgrace; but, Sir, a man who has not a good bed is no more than half a man. Without this refuge from the trials and troubles of the world, a man is robbed of the one consolation which it should be the right of every man to enjoy. Without a bed, his vitality is sapped, his courage is broken down and his moral sense is impaired. I maintain, Sir, that no man can go bedless without becoming a menace to the community, and this brings me to the subject I had in mind when I sat down to write this letter.

I have observed, Mr. Idler, that though a great many people of excellent intentions devote themselves to the task of reforming and reclaiming members of the criminal class, the result of their labors is very far from being satisfactory. In spite of the great number of reformatories, prisons and houses of refuge erected in all parts of the world; in spite of64 numberless soup kitchens, missions, free sanatoriums and the like, men continue to break the laws and all our efforts to eradicate crime appear to go for little or nothing. Now I am convinced that there is a very good reason why this is true, and it is my conviction that our failure to abolish crime is directly due to our stupidity and block-headedness in attacking the problem from the wrong angle. Instead of trying to reform our criminals by the fear of punishment, we should prevent crime by diverting their minds from evil-doing and direct them into proper paths by the simple expedient which I am about to lay before you.

There is nothing in the world which is more likely to put a man into a good humor with himself, with other men and with existing conditions, than a good night’s rest. As I have said before, every man who lacks a bed is a potential criminal and there are a number of reasons why this is so. To lack repose naturally wears upon the nerves and reduces a man to a condition bordering upon insanity. It is conducive to cynicism, self-pity, a feeling of resentment65 against all other men and a strong sense of injustice. No matter what the cause of his bedless condition may be, no man can preserve an even temper when he wants to go to bed and has no bed to which he may go. Again, being out of bed and out of temper, he is ripe for various sorts of evil deeds from which he would turn in loathing after a good night’s rest. He is driven for shelter and divertisement into the haunts of vice and the dens of iniquity. He beguiles his sleepless hours in the company of vicious and dissolute persons. He regards the world from an entirely different point of view from the man who has just passed seven or eight pleasant hours in restful slumber. Sleeplessness and crime are as closely related as insomnia and insanity. Crime leads to sleeplessness and sleeplessness leads to crime.

Now, Sir, what I propose is just this: let us put the criminals to bed. Instead of offering the outcast a cold plate of soup or an inane tract, let us offer him a warm comfortable bed where he may lie down and pass at least eight66 hours of the twenty-four in dreaming that he is John D. Rockefeller or some other such harmless illusion. Let us offer him an opportunity to recover his strength, his courage and his moral balance in innocent sleep. I do not believe that the perfect social state can ever be brought about until such time as every person in the world shall own his own bed; until such time as beds shall be assigned by law to all those who can not purchase them upon their own account; until such time as a man’s bed shall be sacred to his own use, exempt from taxation or seizure by writ or other legal process and as inviolate as the clothes upon his back. I do not believe a perfect social state will ever be attained until it shall be a crime for a chambermaid to make a bed improperly or for a merchant to sell an imperfect spring or a lumpy mattress. I do not believe a perfect social state can ever be reached until every man in the world, and every woman and child, is guaranteed a good night’s rest every night in the year.

But as we have not yet advanced to a state67 of civilization where it would be practicable to provide every human being with a personal bed of his own, let us do what we can. Do you believe, Sir, that any but the most callow of youthful roisterers prefer the disgusting atmosphere of the all-night saloon or the bleak cheerlessness of a park bench to the heavenly comforts of a good bed? If you do, Sir, you are vastly mistaken. Throw open to these men an absolutely free lodging-house filled with clean comfortable beds, where all may come and go unquestioned as long as they enter at a certain hour and remain a stipulated time, and I warrant you that lodging-house will be filled to its capacity every night in the year. Let every community erect as many of these lodging-houses as its financial condition will permit. Let the vast sums that are now being wasted upon futile missions and piffling soup-kitchens be diverted to this legitimate end. Once we have our criminals and our outcasts in bed, we shall have them out of the streets, out of the parks, out of the gambling hells, out of the brothels and out of mischief!

The state plays the father in chastising disobedient citizens; let the state also play the mother in tucking them into bed. Go look upon them when every face is wiped clean of frown and leer; go look upon them when every face is smooth and quiet as the resting soul within

and I warrant you, you shall find them, not outcasts and outlaws, but poor tired children whom you can not forbear to wish, as I now wish you,

IS CHESTERTON A MAN ALIVE?

Dear Sir: If I were a writer of biographical sketches, I should begin these remarks with the statement that Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in the year 1874; but I am not a writer of biographical sketches. On the contrary, Sir, I am one who aims to tell the truth as often as it is possible to tell the truth without appearing eccentric. I do not begin these remarks in the fashion I have suggested because I am restrained by scruples which would never trouble a writer of biographies. The fact of the matter is, I do not know that Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in 1874. I do not know that he was ever born at all—at most I only suspect it. I suspect it because I never knew a man who had never been born to attract so much attention. His books may be urged as evidence of his birth, but they are by no means70 conclusive evidence. So far as my personal information goes, he may be nothing more than a name, like Bertha M. Clay. Perhaps he is only a creature of the imagination, like Innocent Smith, created by some author who chooses to write under the name, “Gilbert Chesterton.” I do not suggest these things as probabilities, but only as possibilities. And yet, what could be more improbable than Chesterton himself? Is it not, after all, more probable that he has been evolved from pen and ink, than from the clay of Adam?

We come now to the question which I borrow from the title of this paper: Is Gilbert Keith Chesterton a man alive? Is he not, rather, a very amusing conception of what a man might be? Let us consider the matter.

Of course the fact that you and I have no positive proof of his having been born does not argue that he is not a living man. Every day we meet men who are unquestionably as real as ourselves (providing we do not lean to the theory of Bishop Berkeley, that we can be sure of no existence but our own), yet we know71 little or nothing of the origin of these men. They may have been born, or they may not. If you were to ask them, they would probably insist that they were born at one time or another. They believe this because they can not account for their existence upon any other hypothesis. But they believe it on hearsay evidence. Not one of them really remembers anything at all about it. People sometimes grow up to learn that they are changelings; that they are not at all the people they had thought they were. Is it not possible, then, that here and there may live a man who was never born at all? I should not be so bold as to deny the possibility. There have always been legends of men who can not die—men who live on in spite of age and accident. I see no reason why one man should not escape birth if another may escape death. I do not, therefore, insist that Mr. Chesterton prove himself to have been born. It is only that I find it hard to believe that he really exists in the flesh.

Now, Mr. Chesterton, in all his works, dwells upon the subject of madness or insanity. Does72 this prove that Mr. Chesterton is mad? By no means. As he himself has said, the man who is really mad seldom suspects that he is unbalanced; it is the man who fears madness who finds madness a fascinating subject. Sir, Mr. Chesterton is not mad, but I think he fears madness. It is almost impossible to find one of his essays in which there is no mention of madness. I think it fair to assume that he writes of madness because he has a fear—not necessarily a terror, you understand, but still a fear—that some day he may be afflicted with this malady. Mr. Chesterton also writes a whole book upon the subject of being alive. Are we to assume, because of this, that he is alive? By no means. It is quite possible that he only fears he may some day come alive; that he may some day cease to be the whimsical creation of some author’s fancy and become a real man of flesh and blood.

Do you see no reason why he should fear such a metamorphosis? Surely you must. From time immemorial, men have shuddered at the thought of becoming a spirit, an infinite73 being composed chiefly of memory; a purely intellectual organism having nothing material in its make-up. Now if men are disturbed, as they are, at the prospect of becoming ideas, why should not ideas be disturbed at the prospect of becoming men? Is it likely that an idea, immune from all the evils of mortal existence, superior to the weaknesses of the flesh and possessing, at least, a potential immortality, would be pleased with the prospect of becoming mere man? Would an idea willingly abandon the clear atmosphere of a purely intellectual plane for the muggy mists and murky fogs of London? Assuredly not.

Lucretius, ridiculing the theory of reincarnation in his work, De Rerum Natura, drew a ludicrous picture of disembodied spirits eagerly awaiting their turn to enter a vacant human tenement. Lucretius was thoroughly appreciative of the absurdity of his picture. He knew that no disembodied spirit would be so foolish as to desire imprisonment in a mortal frame. And as it is with spirits, so we may suppose it to be with ideas. It is one thing to74 be put into a book; it is quite another to be put into a body. No matter how often an idea may be put into a book, it can not be confined therein. It is still free to travel where it lists. It can leap from London to Overroads in the twinkling of an eye—or it can be in both places at one and the same time. It may appear to a dozen different men in a dozen different aspects. It possesses the Protean faculty of being all things to all men. But confine that idea in a human body; transform that idea into a human being—and what is the result? Why, the result is an immediate loss of liberty. The man, who was formerly an idea, can no longer flit about with lightning-like rapidity. If he wishes to travel from Overroads to London, he must go by train or motor-car. He can by no ingenuity contrive to be in both places at the same time. He must wear the same face wherever or in whatever company he may be. Whether the body which he inhabits is known to its neighbors as Smith or Chesterton, the result is the same—he has lost his liberty. And what has he gained? He has gained the ability75 to prove his mortal existence—the right to say that he has been born.

It is easy enough to see why an idea should fear to become a man. And when we consider such an idea as Chesterton, the matter is even clearer. Whimsicalities and contradictions which may have been useful and even ornamental in the fictitious Chesterton—in Chesterton the idea—might, Sir, prove most embarrassing to Chesterton the British Subject. You can not prosecute an idea for treason, nor sue it for damages. You can not even confine an idea in a mad-house for being crazy. Most ideas are crazy; none more so perhaps than the one which I am presenting to you now. It is true that a few ideas have been confined in a mad-house, but of those few which have been shut up with the persons claiming them, the great majority have been quite sane. Just as many sane men are devoted to crazy ideas, so many sane ideas are devoted to crazy men; so devoted to them that they will follow them anywhere—even to a mad-house.

If my idea that Mr. Chesterton is an idea is76 correct, I am sure I do not know whose idea he may be; but he is just such a crazy idea as might belong to a sane man and should therefore be safe in sticking to his originator. If Mr. Chesterton is an idea and is thinking of becoming a man, I should strongly advise him against adopting any such course. I like him much better as an idea. He is so much more plausible that way.

FROM A HUNCHBACK

Dear Sir: I had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, to be born a hunchback. This, in itself, Sir, is an affliction sufficient to render my life a hard one and to embitter such happiness as I may snatch from the hands of fate; but it is an affliction for which, as far as I know, nobody is to blame, and one, therefore, which I must bear with such patience and fortitude as I can command. But I bear in common with other cripples a far greater burden than mere physical disability, and that is the contempt and pity of my fellow men.

I find that some men regard me with contempt alone, some with contempt and pity intermingled, and some with simple pity—and of the three I think the last is, perhaps, the hardest to endure with equanimity, since it is the most sincere feeling of superiority which78 prompts it. I do not ask the pity of my fellows; I consider myself in much better case than many men who have straight backs and smooth shoulders; and certainly I can not see why I should deserve the contempt of any one merely because I happen to have been born with a body unlike that of the majority of men. Yet I find the hump upon my back a hindrance in every venture that I undertake.

A few years ago when I was younger and more sanguine than I am now, when I still had faith in the innate fairness of human nature and in the spirituality of the love of women, I fell in love. Fortunately, as I thought then, I had not come into the world naked if I had come crooked, for I possessed a comfortable balance at the bank; a sum of money in point of fact which was far in excess of the financial resources of any of the other young men of my acquaintance. Counting upon the good times which my supply of ready money seemed likely to afford them, a number of the more prominent young men of my native town had taken the trouble to cultivate my society during their79 college days when they were often short of money and found it convenient to have a friend who could always be relied on to help out in a pinch and who was not at all inclined to play the dun if payments were somewhat slow. Having, as I say, availed themselves of my generosity and cultivated my company in those lean years of study, these young men, upon entering into the world of business and society, could not, with a good grace, begin to ignore me altogether, and they therefore made it a point to look me up now and then and to invite me about with them to such functions and entertainments as I might enjoy, and at the same time, enter into unhandicapped by my physical deformity.

I could not, of course, play tennis, golf or any game of that sort. I was, in truth, deterred from entering into any such sport more by my natural horror of appearing ridiculous than by reason of an actual lack of the strength necessary to swing a racket or handle a club. The fact is, I am not especially weak physically, having always taken great care of80 my health and having practised with some success such physical exercises as might be practised in the privacy of my own chambers or such as would not be likely to excite comment. But no matter how muscular a man may be, he can not but appear absurd when he goes about carrying a golf club nearly as tall as himself or rushing about a tennis net like a lame camel.

But though, as I say, I was not in demand for such games as these, I did play an excellent hand at whist, could thrum the guitar a bit, play accompaniments upon the piano, sing a little in a fairly good baritone voice and carry on a conversation light or heavy as the occasion seemed to require. Of course, I did not dance, but I often sat at the piano and furnished music for the others, thus making myself useful and at the same time diplomatically avoiding drawing notice to the fact that I was disqualified as a dancer. Although I always had a secret longing for theatricals and knew myself to be possessed of histrionic ability in no mean degree, I never joined our local amateur dramatic club. I think perhaps I81 might have done so had not some tactless member of the club once sent me an invitation to take part in a performance of Richard the Third, which so incensed me that I never again so much as attended a play given by that organization.

It was during this time, when I was almost enjoying life like an ordinary man, owing to the careful manner in which my acquaintances concealed their dislike and contempt for my crooked back, that I met and fell in love with a girl who seemed to me, at the time, a charming and sweet-souled young woman. I saw a great deal of her, owing to the fact that we were both of musical tastes and often played and sang together, and it was not long before I came to the conclusion that if I were ever to marry I might as well be about it then as any time, and especially since I had the necessary mate at hand, so to speak. To think was to act with me in those days, and I put the matter to her bluntly the very first time I saw her after forming my resolution in this respect. You may not believe me, but I swear to you that I82 am telling the truth when I say that I had grown so accustomed to having my friends ignore my infirmity that I had quite forgotten to take it into account in the case of the young woman. In fact, I would have considered it an unjust aspersion of her character to think her capable of holding such a thing against me, our relations having been always of the most spiritual.

You can imagine, then, the shock it gave me when I saw the horror growing in her eyes which I had so often surprised in the eyes of strangers! You can fancy, perhaps, the physical and mental anguish I suffered in that moment when I realized that even to her I was not as other men—that she had played with me as one might play with a child, and that she would no sooner think of becoming my wife than she would think of wedding with an educated baboon. And yet, Sir, within the space of two years I saw that same young woman stand at the altar with a senile and decrepit old roué who had never possessed the tenth part of my own intellectuality and who had absolutely83 nothing to recommend him but a fortune, somewhat smaller than my own, and a straight back. I am told that she is not happy with him, and small wonder, since he is never at home save when he is too drunk to be elsewhere; but even so, I doubt if she has ever regretted her answer to me, so strong is the prejudice of the normal person against all forms of physical deformity. The fact that her husband is more crooked in his morals than I am in my back would, I dare say, have no weight whatever with her.

I have heard people say that women are often attracted by men of odd and unusual personal appearance and that many women find an almost irresistible fascination in cripples and the like, but I have never encountered anything in my personal experience to incline me to this view. It is an idea upon which Victor Hugo dilates in his romance, The Man Who Laughs, where the duchess becomes enamored of a monster. But I am of the opinion that Hugo treated this matter more truthfully and realistically in The Bell Ringer of Notre84 Dame, where the white soul and brave heart of Quasimodo count for nothing with Esmerelda when weighed against the physical attractions of the philandering captain, who is a thoroughly bad lot. I have heard it asserted that Lord Byron owed much of his popularity with the ladies to his club foot, but this I take to be the sheerest nonsense. The fascination which Lord Byron exercised upon the women was not, I am convinced, due to his physical deformity, but to what we may call his mental and moral deformity. And this, Sir, brings us to the milk in the cocoanut and the point of this letter. I wish to ask you, and to ask your readers, what I have so often asked myself: Why is it that men and women find physical deformity so hateful while they so often find mental and moral deformity attractive?

Shakespeare, learned in the ways of human nature, laid particular stress upon the physical shortcomings of Richard the Third, well knowing that no amount of mere wickedness would serve to turn the audience against him so strongly as a hump upon his back. The villain85 of the play, if he be handsome and brave, will often oust the hero from his rightful place in the esteem of the audience, so that presently the pit, the galleries and the boxes are united as one man in wishing him success in his villainy, or at least in wishing him immunity from his well-deserved punishment. Instead of hissing him, the spectators are moved to applaud him. And for this reason the playwrights and the novelists have, until late years when the worship of virtue is no longer considered an essential part of art, caused the villain to appear a coward or burdened him with some physical deformity. And the devil of it all is, Sir, that most of the villains in real life are like the villains of the stage who oust the hero. Charles Lamb once said that it is a mistake to assume that all bullies are cowards; and in my opinion it is an even greater mistake to assume that a villain can not be attractive. If villains had no charm, villainy would soon cease through want of success.

In the case of Byron, since I seem to have chosen him for an example, the women were86 attracted on the one hand by his reputation as a genius and upon the other hand by his reputation as a rake. Byron, though a cripple, was an unusually handsome man of the poetic type, and I think we may safely assume that the aversion which may have been created by his club foot was more than offset by the fact that he was otherwise of pleasing appearance and was known to be an athlete. Now, of course, it would be impossible to say whether more women were fascinated by his genius or by his rakishness, but on a venture I would be willing to wager that nine out of ten of the women who knew him would rather have read his love letters than his poetry. Genius is a thing apart from love, and, say what they will, I believe that the mistress of such a man is more like to be jealous of her lover’s genius than proud of it, and especially so where she can not flatter herself that it has been inspired by love of her. She is interested in a poem in which she can find herself, not because it is poetry, but because she is in it. Therefore I incline to the belief that Byron’s conquests were due to his87 reputation as a rake, rather than to his reputation as a poet. But given the combination of a poet, a rake, a handsome man and a lord, it would be unnatural if women did not love him.

But Byron’s case is not the only one I have in mind. It is a common thing for murderers in jail to receive flowers and sentimental letters from women. Women, too, who have never so much as set eyes upon them and who know them only by the stories of their crimes in the newspapers. The maddest of religious fanatics can always count upon a goodly number of women as converts. The taint of insanity itself seems to be less repulsive to women than physical deformity. And the men are little better than the women. A man will often knowingly wed with a fool because she has a pretty face, or vote a rogue into office because he thinks him clever. The juries of men which try women murderers are ready to grow maudlin over them if the women happen to be good-looking.

It is a problem, Sir, which I can not solve, turn and twist it as I may. Sometimes I think that we who are deformed in body are granted88 the only straight minds to be found among men, by way of compensation. And at such times, Sir, I am inclined to thank God that He has seen fit to put the hump upon the back and not upon the mind or soul of

FROM A HOTEL SPONGE

Dear Sir: I feel it my duty to publicly express my disapproval of the recent ruling of certain hotel proprietors of this city, and to publicly protest against their hasty and ill-advised agreement that hereafter they will discourage, in every way possible, the visits of outsiders who make use of their lobbies and halls.

I am myself one of the best-known non-resident patrons of the hotels in this city, or, in the vulgar language of the innkeepers themselves—a hotel sponge. That is to say, I do not register at these hotels as a guest, but I do make it a point to drop into one or two of them every afternoon and evening, and I think I may say, without undue egotism, that you will seldom see a more debonair and smart-looking man than I appear upon these occasions.90 I am, I believe, as my tailor says, “an ornament to any assembly,” and my presence in a hotel lobby or corridor is sufficient to stamp that hotel as a proper place in the minds of all those who are sufficiently acquainted with the hall-marks of the haut ton to recognize a gentleman when they see one.

I have been a familiar figure about a certain hotel on Thirty-fourth Street for the last ten years, and though the tide of fashion which once flowed through those corridors is now somewhat diminished, having set in a northerly direction, yet that hotel continues to hold its own with the visitors from out of town. And do you know why this is so, Mr. Idler? Do you know why it is that this hostelry is still enabled to present an appearance of smartness and exclusiveness? I presume that you do not, and so I shall tell you. It is simply that I have chosen to continue to appear there. Though the social leaders whose names are known across the continent desert the place for the newer and no less pretentious hotels farther up-town, this place, by reason of my loyalty, has suffered no91 loss of standing. I, Sir, am to the hotels of New York what John Drew is to the American stage. I am that rosy-faced, perfectly groomed, elegant gentleman of leisure who saunters through the halls and corridors at tea time and at dinner time, and who confirms the out-of-town guest in his opinion that he has selected as a place to stop the one hotel which is the resort of fashion.

If it were not for me and for the other members of my class, how long do you suppose these hotels could go on charging the enormous prices they now charge for food and lodging? How long do you suppose they could induce the thrifty countryman to part with such sums of his hard-earned money if he were not provided with the inspiring spectacle which I present when arrayed in my full regalia? Not one month, Sir. In less than a fortnight the word would go forth to all parts of the United States that these hotels had lost caste and were becoming back numbers.

It is to me, and to others like me, that the great modern hotels of this city owe their92 prosperity; indeed, I might say, their very existence. It is we who set the pace in luxury and style. The hotels merely live up to our standards. The manager of a shabby hotel can not see me walk into his lobby without feeling instantly ashamed of the poor accommodations he has to offer me. The hotel managers were so irked at being put out of countenance by the obvious superiority of the casual hotel visitor that they set out to provide for him a proper setting. Do you suppose, Sir, that the expensive furniture, the music, the luxurious reading and smoking-rooms, the glittering bars and the comfortable armchairs of the modern, up-to-date New York hotel were necessary to obtain the custom and patronage of the provincial visitors, or even necessary to hold that patronage? No, Sir! But I am necessary to hold the business of these people, and the luxuries are necessary to hold me. All this is so plain, so perfectly apparent to any observing person, that it seems almost incredible that these managers should dare to risk our indignation. Drive us out, indeed! They will be very lucky93 if we do not withdraw altogether of our own accord, after such a gratuitous insult. A strike of waiters, Sir, would not prove one-half so demoralizing as a strike of the atmosphere creators, or, to use the insulting term of the hotel men, the “hotel sponges.”

Can you imagine, Sir, trying to paint a forest scene without a tree in sight? That task would be as easy as trying to conduct an aristocratic hotel without an aristocrat in sight. “But,” you say, “you fellows are not really aristocrats—you are only imitation aristocrats.” In so saying, Sir, you fall into the same error into which these hotel men have fallen. We are aristocrats. We are the ideal aristocrats, and let me tell you, Sir, we are much more convincing than those whom you would doubtless call the real aristocrats. I have not lived as a man-about-town for the last ten years without coming to know these dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats of yours very well indeed. I assure you that you would be much surprised and disappointed should you see them, as I have seen them, at our leading94 hotels. They would no more correspond to the countryman’s idea of an aristocrat than an Indian Chief would fulfil the romantic maiden’s ideal of a ruler of men. Sir, where I am urbane, they are ill at ease. Where I am clad in the very pink of fashion, they are often dowdy, not to say shabby. Where I appear indifferent and slightly bored, they are often irritable, easily upset and worried-looking. Oscar Wilde once said that he was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean, and I can imagine that his disappointment was not deeper than that of the rural visitor who happens to stumble upon a member of what is known as our best society.

Doubtless you fancy that I and the others of my kind concern ourselves with aping the dress and manners of these society people. If so, you were never more mistaken in your life. It is they who copy and imitate us. They go where we go, they wear what we wear, they eat what we eat and they drink what we drink. Only, as is always the case with imitators, they fall far short of their models. How is it possible95 that any man can appear the perfect gentleman of leisure unless, indeed, his life is actually a life of ease and pleasure? We have no cares and no responsibilities. They have a thousand. We have no social duties to distract our attention. They are constantly consulting their watches. And, lastly, Sir, we have art, and they have none.

I can not imagine what has led these misguided innkeepers to think that they can do without us. But I can tell you, they will soon regret their recent action, whatever motives may have moved them to take it, for they will find very shortly that their hotels are not nearly so necessary to us as we are to their hotels. I am, Sir,

FROM SARAH SHELFWORN

Dear Sir: I have to complain of an abuse which is daily growing greater and which, if not checked, will soon assume the proportions of a national menace. It is my purpose, Sir, to call to your attention and to the attention of all earnest thinking people, a pernicious influence exercised by a certain portion of our daily press—by those vulgar flaunting publications known as “yellow journals”. Now do not misunderstand me, Mr. Idler; this letter is no ill-considered general attack upon the press; no incoherent or fanatical outcry against the publication of disagreeable facts. It is, on the contrary, a protest against a certain idealism which pervades the pages of these newspapers and which unduly excites the imagination of our young men. I do not refer to stories of crime, extravagance or anything of that sort—but97 to the publication of pictures of beautiful women.

You may ask, what possible harm can come of the publication of these pleasing portraits? Well, Sir, I will tell you; but in order that you may understand my point of view, I must first tell you something of myself and explain somewhat, my own experience.

I, Sir, am a school-teacher—an instructor in English literature—and since the school where I am employed is a public high school, it is hardly necessary to add, I am a woman. Or perhaps it would be more truthful to say I was a woman once upon a time. When I was young and fairly pretty, there was no more womanly woman than I in all this section of the country, but let me tell you, Sir, ten years of teaching school is an experience calculated to unsex any person, man or woman. We veteran school-teachers constitute what a magazine writer recently referred to as “an indeterminate sex.” We have left in us nothing of the masculine or feminine nature. We think, feel, argue and reason like one another and like nobody else in98 the world—we are neuter throughout. It is, perhaps, for this reason that I can now look back upon my wasted life with only a passing regret, and that I can, without any feeling of outraged modesty or womanly reserve, lay bare to you the dreams of my girlhood and the thoughts of my maturity.

To begin, then, I have always lived in the little town where I am now teaching, though to be sure, since I became a teacher, I have traveled more or less during my vacations. I have visited many places in Europe and America at one time or another. I have made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon six times in as many years, and it is perhaps for this reason that I have never found time to read any of Shakespeare’s works beyond the four or five plays which we read in class. Be that as it may, when I was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, I was a bright, merry-hearted young creature who had not a care in the world, nor a thought for anything but pleasure. Not that I was without sentiment, for truth to tell, I was as sentimental as any, and let me tell you, Sir,99 one girl of eighteen has more sentiment in her composition than all of the old men in the world. I say “old men,” because I have observed that whereas sentiment comes to a woman early in life, so that she is soon done with it, men seldom become sentimental until they have passed middle age. And that is why, Sir, you will observe in the restaurants and cafés of your city, young men with old women and old men with young women. Like is naturally attracted to like. The old man loves the young woman for her romanticism which is akin to his own, and the young woman loves the old man because he is not ashamed to admit his infatuation and glories in his subjection to her charms. The young man, upon the other hand, is attracted to the older woman by her knowledge of the world, her masculine view-point, her independence of mind, her air of good-fellowship, and her frank acceptance of a temporary affection. The old woman finds in the young man the only sensible, sober and sane being that wears trousers.

As I say, Sir, I was as sentimental as any;100 I had my girlish dreams of home and fireside, of husband and little ones, but I was not obsessed with this pleasant dreaming. I took all that for granted as my natural birthright, and a career which was guaranteed to me by virtue of my very womanhood. I was cheerful, a capable housekeeper, possessed of a clear complexion, good eyes, sound teeth, a fair figure—in short, I was passably good-looking. Why should not I be married in due time, as my mother was before me, and as the girls of my native village had always been? I was not hump-backed, bow-legged, nor squint-eyed. I was neither a shrew nor a prude. I could manage a house and (I had no doubt) I could manage a husband; how could I fail to get him?

Alas! Sir, my youthful optimism was my undoing. I delayed my choice and I lost my opportunity. I refused one or two offers of marriage that came to me in the first flush of my womanhood—and I have never since received another! The young men of our town had always married our home girls. With the exception of a few prodigals who left home101 to see the world and who never returned, some going to jail and some to congress, none of our young men sought their wives among strangers. They were well content with what they found at home. How, then, could I anticipate a sudden exodus of eligible young men? An exodus, I say! For an exodus it was, and an exodus it has continued, year by year, ever since that fatal day when Willie Titheridge Talbott went over to Ithaca and married Minna Meyerbeer who won the Tompkins County beauty contest!

No sooner do our young men arrive at that age when they can don a fuzzy hat and coax a mustache without exciting the ridicule of their little brothers, than they shake the dust of this town from their feet and set out to find a wife among those vampire beauties whose portraits decorate the pages of our Sunday papers. As for our girls, they are left as I was, to choose between frank spinsterhood at home, or to follow the young men out into the world, there to become chorus girls, manicures, stenographers—or to engage in some102 other similar profession which exerts such a glamour and fascination over the men as to make up for their lack of classical beauty.

And who, Sir, is to blame for this lamentable state of affairs? The beauties? No, not altogether, for if they were not so exploited by the newspapers, our young men would never suspect that they existed. For, Sir, even if he were to meet her face to face, the ordinary young man is so lacking in sentiment, so matter-of-fact, that he would never suspect one of those beauties of being anything extraordinary if her beauty were not vouched for by some newspaper. The young man who has not been corrupted in this way, and who has not had fostered in him by these newspapers the silly notion that he is a knight errant searching the world for beauty in distress, is a docile creature, easily captured and easily managed. He treats matrimony as he treats his meals, he takes what is set before him and afterward grumbles as a matter of course, but deep down in his heart he is very well satisfied. It is the editors, Sir, who have caused all of the trouble;103 the editors with their silly beauty contests and their simpering half-tone, half-world women of the stage flaunting their coquettish graces and flirting with our young men from the pages of the Sunday papers.

Now, Sir, I hope that you will not dismiss this letter as a matter of no consequence and the peevish complaint of a disappointed spinster, for I assure you the roots of this evil go deeper than appears at first glance. Our magazines are asking, “Why do young men leave the farm?” Our sociologists are asking why are our villages becoming depopulated? Superficial observers often reply that the young men go to the city for the sake of money-making. But I, Sir, know better. The young men are leaving the farms and the villages to hunt for wives because the newspapers, with their photographs, have made them dissatisfied with what they find at home. And now that you know the cause of it, Mr. Idler, is there no hope that you may devise some way to put a stop to it?

Dear Sir: Doubtless you are familiar with some of the newer schools of poetry, as for instance, that one which has abandoned rhyme for assonance, which has led an ignorant and prejudiced critic to say of it that its poetry may be rich in assonance, but that he finds in it more of asininity. Such is the treatment accorded all independent artists by the hidebound adherents of outworn ideals!

Now, Mr. Idler, nobody is more convinced than I am that we need new forms of poetry. I have been writing poems for a number of years and I feel that I speak with authority when I say that the old classical forms are entirely inadequate for modern poetic expression. I have tried them all and I have found them all wanting, for though I have written poems in the form of sonnets, lyrics, triolets, quatrains,105 couplets, rondels—and even in blank verse—I was never able to produce a decent poem in any of them. I therefore conclude that what every modern poet needs is to shake off the shackles of poetic convention and follow a form suited to his nature. I have been greatly encouraged by the introduction of the vers libre in France and I am heartily in accord with the aims of those pioneers of the new poetry who are laboring to educate the public taste to modern ideals, but I fear that in one or two instances they have overshot the mark.

Much as I admire the courage of Monsieur Alexandre Mercereau, who has, with splendid audacity, forsaken verse altogether and determined to write all of his poetry in prose, I do not believe it advisable to attempt to accomplish the poetic revolution at one step. I am more in sympathy with those who have abandoned rhyme, but retained rhythm.

For my own part, I have invented a form which I think better than either. I believe that this form is as superior to the sonnet106 as the sonnet is to the limerick. I call this form the duocapet because it is, in a sense, double-headed, having two rhyming words in every line—one at each end. I have discarded rhythm but retained rhyme. I had good reasons for adopting this course. I regard meter as a useless encumbrance. It is meter, not rhyme, which hampers the true poet. The poet should be free—free as the air—free as the birds. It is a crime against art to bind him with silly meaningless meters and rhythms which distract his attention from his theme and serve only to furnish critics with an excuse for picking flaws. I hope that the happy day will soon arrive when laymen will leave to the poets the settling of all questions of form, but in the present state of public ignorance and prejudice I think it advisable to concede them something in order that they may realize that we are writing poetry. Later, when the public is sufficiently educated to recognize poetry without any of its ancient ear-marks, I may discard rhyme also.

For the present I think the duocapet is the107 most logical and artistic of existing forms. Writing in the duocapet, the poet has only one rule to observe—that the first word of every line shall rhyme with the last. I have, in fact, reduced the couplet to a single line, making the two rhyming words come one at each end of that line, where they logically belong, one opening and one closing the line, instead of placing them one under the other in the manner of Pope. Standing in this position they may be likened to two sentries that guard the thought of the poet. It is as if the rhyme at the first end of the line called out, “Who goes there?” and the other responds, “A friend!” In the duocapet the poet may make his lines short or long as best pleases him without regard for the length of lines that go before or that follow.

This poetry is produced as all true poetry should be produced, a line at a time. No whole can be perfect which is defective in any part. In the duocapet every line is a perfect poem, complete in itself, every line contains a distinct thought, and though the sentence may sometimes108 extend from one line to another, this is never necessary and rests with the discretion of the poet. Should he choose, he might write a whole poem consisting of nothing but complete sentences, a sentence a line, with a period at the end of each. The poem can be made ten lines in length or ten thousand, and asterisks and italics can be introduced at will. With the exception of the rhyme, the poet is as free in this form as in any form of vers libre. I append an example of duocapet which should give you a good idea of the possibilities of this form:

I hope that you will publish this poem and letter in the interest of Poetic Art, and in order that the world may know that we poets of America are almost, if not quite, as progressive as those of France.

110

FROM SETH SHIRTLESS

Dear Sir: I am the victim of a most peculiar affliction. I am suffering from what appears to be a sort of disease and which can not be classified. As I am not able to find the true explanation of this matter myself and as physicians seem to be equally at a loss in regard to it, I have decided to appeal to the public at large in the hope that some one who reads my communication will be able to suggest a cure or at least some method of alleviation.

There is an old saying, Mr. Idler, borrowed from some author, if I mistake not, that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” This I consider a true saying aptly put; but I believe, Sir, that apparel sometimes does more than proclaim the man—that it sometimes actually makes the man. It is well known that men are often affected by the clothes they wear. Good111 clothing has a tendency to inspire confidence in the breast of the wearer, while poor clothing robs a man of his assurance, if not of his self-respect. That all men are more or less subject to the influence of their garments, there can be no doubt, but I, Sir, am peculiarly susceptible to it. It has been so all my life. Even in childhood I became supercilious and insolent with pride when clad in my best, and most envious and depressed the moment I had changed to my every-day wear.

Since I have come to manhood, I have felt this weakness growing upon me despite my most earnest efforts to resist it, until now, Mr. Idler, my character and my wardrobe are so inextricably mixed together that I may be said to change my nature with my clothing. When I am richly dressed I feel rich, and my thoughts and sentiments are those of a wealthy person. At such times I am a firm believer in all measures for the protection of property and vested rights. I am a hearty adherent of the established order and I am distinctly suspicious of all so-called reforms and innovations in governmental112 machinery. When, on the other hand, I am dressed shabbily, my views and my feelings undergo a complete change. I am no longer a believer in the sacredness of property rights. Indeed, I look upon all rich men as so many robbers who have seized upon the land and the natural resources which should, of right, be the common property of all mankind. I feel that I have been defrauded of everything they have which I have not. Their insolence vexes me and their display drives me into a very fury of rage which is partly inspired by just indignation and partly by simple envy. At these times I am fiercely radical in politics. No measure of reform can be too revolutionary for my taste. My dearest wish is that the whole social fabric may be rent to shreds and rewoven in a pattern after my democratic heart.

To such extremes of sentiment do my clothes carry me. When I am fashionably clad a Socialistic pamphlet irritates me as a red rag enrages a bull. But when I am poorly dressed and shod, I write such pamphlets. Write them,113 and, Sir, incredible as it may seem, leave them lying about my quarters for the very purpose of irritating myself, and well knowing that when my eyes light on them while in my conservative frame of mind I shall fall upon them and tear them to tatters. I, Sir, am as a house divided against itself—I am a man at war with his own soul!

You have heard, I doubt not, of the celebrated case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and of other instances of double personality, where men, by reason of contending spirits within them, have been forced to lead double lives. I do not hesitate to say that such are blessed when their lot is compared to my own unhappy state, for I lead, not a double, but a treble existence. In addition to these two personalities, which I term for want of a better nomenclature my Aristocratic and my Proletarian selves, I am also possessed of a Normal self which is in evidence only when I am completely disrobed.

Can you fancy, Sir, what this means to me? Can you imagine in what straits a man must be114 who can think clearly and logically only when he is naked, and who, before he can decide upon any matter of importance, must hurry home and throw off his clothes lest he be led astray by rabid prejudice or blind enthusiasm? That, Sir, is precisely my situation. When I awake in the morning I am compelled to make a choice between my two antagonistic personalities. My wardrobe stares me in the face as if asking the eternal question, “Which is it to be to-day—Aristocrat or Proletariat?” Always, upon falling asleep at night, I am haunted by the specter of the ordeal which awaits me in the morning.

In addition to this, my Aristocratic and my Proletarian selves have recently conceived a violent dislike for each other and they have begun to vent their spite in many petty ways, much to the disgust of my Normal self who has small use for either of them. For example, about a fortnight ago, my Proletarian self indulged himself freely in gin, a drink which is loathsome to my Aristocratic self. He stayed115 in this condition for a matter of four days and upon his return to my—perhaps I should say our chambers, he wantonly destroyed a new top hat which my Aristocratic self had carelessly left lying upon the hall table. By way of retaliation, my Aristocratic self seized some overalls belonging to my Proletarian self and flung them into the ash-barrel. Altogether, they behave, Sir, in a fashion to make me thoroughly ashamed of them both.

Possibly you are wondering how it comes that I am in the habit of changing my clothing so frequently and varying the quality of my dress in this way. I may as well tell you that for many years I was a professional politician, much in demand as an orator, and that I was called to speak before audiences of widely different character, so that I sometimes found it expedient to dress in evening clothes and at other times it was necessary for me to appear a workingman. My constantly changing political convictions made it impossible for me to continue in this work, but by the time I gave it116 up I had come to know these two personalities so well that I was unwilling to trust myself for long in the hands of either of them. I have thought of purchasing a decent outfit of ready-to-wear clothing, but I realize that the result of such a step would be to render me hopelessly middle-class, a condition I have hitherto escaped. I have no desire to add a fourth personality to those I already possess.

I have consulted my tailor without good result, and the best that my physician has been able to do for me was to suggest a period of rest in the country. I am now very comfortably lodged in a quiet house in the suburbs, where I came upon the advice of my doctor and two of his colleagues with whom I discussed my trouble.

I am very well content here for a man who is virtually a prisoner. Not that I am confined by force, Sir, but I have determined never to put on another suit of clothes until I have solved the problem which confronts me, and I can not leave my room without dressing; the landlord of this place objects to my doing so. Here,117 then, I expect to remain until I hit upon some solution of my difficulty or until some other person is good enough to suggest a way out of my dilemma. I am, Sir,

118

SARTOR-PSYCHOLOGY

Dear Sir: I am a social worker, and it is in this capacity that I address you upon a subject which appears to me to be of vital importance to all classes of society. I have, Sir, hit upon a plan which will, if generally adopted, work the greatest reform that has ever been effected, and which will, I am convinced, completely do away with the necessity for long-term sentences to imprisonment. In simple honesty I must admit that this idea is not entirely my own. It was suggested to me by the extraordinary and very interesting communication from Mr. Seth Shirtless which appeared in your January issue.

The influence of clothing upon character has long been recognized, but I do not remember ever to have heard of another case so well illustrating that influence as the case of Mr. Shirtless.119 His story of his experiences was profoundly interesting from a psychological point of view, and while reading it I conceived the plan of which I spoke just now. It occurred to me that the influence of dress might be of great use in reforming men of evil habit and temperament. It is well known to all social workers that many criminals cherish a spirit of bitter animosity toward society at large, and that not a few habitual criminals have embarked upon a career of crime urged on by the mistaken belief that the hand of every man was against them. Having once plunged into evil ways, these misguided creatures come to be more and more of the opinion that they are not as other men; that they have lost for all time to come any hope of being treated with respect and that they must live and die outside the pale of respectability.

It must be confessed that the treatment now accorded them, both in jail and after their release, lends some color of truth to this conviction. To win these men back to a useful way of life it is only necessary to show120 them that they are wrong; that a temporary fall from grace does not involve an eternal and perpetual atonement. They must be made to feel that they are still members of the Brotherhood of Man and that they may again become members in good standing. Once they are convinced of this, they will certainly mend their ways and gladly conform to right standards of living. Society is coming to realize, as it never did before, that the true purpose of imprisonment is to reform, and not to punish; that our criminals and law-breakers are susceptible to the same methods as our children, and that our proceedings against them should be corrective, rather than retaliatory. These men are sick, sick in mind if not in body, and it is the duty of the state to reclaim them.

In consequence of this awakening to the real purpose of imprisonment, many of our prisons have given up the hideous practise of dressing convicts in the degrading and brutalizing uniforms which were formerly so common as to be almost universal in penal institutions. Men have pretty generally come to see121 that the use of the striped zebra-like suit for prisoners was a mistake; an added infamy which served no good purpose, but only deepened the convict’s sense of shame and resentment. But though the old garb for prisoners is rapidly becoming obsolete, all reform of this character has, so far, been negative in its nature. The method which I propose is positive. Why should we be content with relieving the convicts of their shameful uniforms? Why not go a step further and institute a constructive reform in their dress? Why not array them in such a fashion that their self-respect must be reawakened and their sense of responsibility quickened into life? Why not bring to bear upon their characters the influence of clean linen and a respectable wardrobe?

What I propose, Mr. Idler, is just this: Let every convict and prisoner be clad in clothing suitable for a substantial citizen and a respected member of the community. Let every inmate of our prisons and penitentiaries be supplied each week with a liberal allowance of clean linen and underwear. Let every man of them122 be furnished with a decent wardrobe; say, two or three business suits of good quality and correct cut, a walking-coat or frock for afternoon wear, evening dress, a silk hat and a dinner coat. We already provide for them good books to elevate their minds; let us now give them such attire as will increase their respect for their persons.

Now, there is no denying that a well-dressed man makes a better impression upon strangers than a sloven; and if this is true of strangers, what shall we say of the effect upon the man himself? While few of us are so strongly affected as Mr. Shirtless, yet we are all of us, I think, affected in some degree. A pleasing image in a mirror increases our self-respect, but when we see ourselves unkempt and ill-clad we are ashamed. When we have made our prisoners presentable, I believe we should give them the satisfaction of seeing how much they are improved, and I therefore suggest that a mirror be placed in each cell where the inmate can see himself at full length. Thus, if in spite of his new outfit he occasionally feels a disposition123 to backslide, he has only to glance into the glass to be restored to respectability. In this way he can be led to see the possibilities within him. Let a man look into a looking-glass and see there a reflection which might well be that of a statesman, and his subconsciousness will at once inquire why not? The inspiring sight will reawaken his ambition.

Though it will be a great step forward to dress these convicts like decent citizens, yet this is hardly enough. There must be a corresponding reform in their occupations and employments. There is certainly something incongruous in the thought of a man clad in a frock coat and silk hat breaking stones with a hammer. Such a thing must appear bizarre even to the dullest of these unfortunates. To keep them at such labor would seem as if we were making sport of them. It will therefore be advisable to devise for each inmate of our prisons some employment which will be in keeping with his clothes and, at the same time, congenial and respectable. Here is a man, let us say, who has been convicted of larceny. We will make124 a promoter of him. Here is another who has been sentenced for gambling. He would make a good broker. A third, who has been an anarchist, will make a good magazine editor. A fourth, confined for highway robbery, can be transformed into a hotel proprietor. And so on down the list.

Of course it will be necessary to release some of them upon parole when the time comes for them to begin the practise of their professions, but by the time they have mastered the details of their new callings this will probably be safe enough. If a carpenter has been sent to prison for burglary, it is not reasonable to keep him employed at the same trade while in confinement, for then he is released knowing no more—and no better off—than he was when incarcerated. Perhaps it was carpentry which drove him to crime. No, Mr. Idler, we should elevate him.

As for those who are merely dissolute and idle, we will make gentlemen of them. We will dress them in the latest fashion and establish for them a club where they may follow their125 natural bent and continue in their usual habits, only now with the sanction of society.

If the system I have outlined should be adopted in all of our prisons, Sir, I see no reason why our convicts should not soon be a credit to the community.

126

MR. BODY PROTESTS

Dear Sir: It is with a feeling of dismay—nay, I may even say terror—that I read in my morning paper the statement that during last year there were made and sold in the United States no less than 8,644,537,090 cigarettes! Nearly nine billion of these devil’s torches, or almost one hundred of them for every man, woman and child throughout the country. And not only that, but an increase of 150,000,000 cigars and 15,000,000 pounds of manufactured tobacco over the production of the preceding year.

To what, Sir, is this country coming, when such things are possible? Can it be that the whole nation is bent upon suicide? I have read that a single drop of the pure essense of nicotine dropped upon the back of a healthy and robust flea will cause the unfortunate beast to127 fall into convulsions, frequently terminating in a partial paralysis or total dissolution. Now, it is well known to all who make the slightest pretense to any knowledge of entomology that the flea, or Pulex irritans, is one of the most hardy insects known to man and is extremely hard to kill. Indeed, it is a matter of record that the fleas of Mexico encountered the army of Bonaparte and Maximilian and gave such a good account of themselves that the French soldiers were more in awe of the fleas than of the natives. If nicotine, then, has such a disastrous effect upon such a hearty and well-protected beast as the flea, what must be the effect of its poison upon man, who is, perhaps, the most easily killed of all living creatures? It is too horrible to contemplate! I have, by most careful calculations, proved to my entire satisfaction that the American people have already been totally exterminated through their persistence in this evil habit of using tobacco; and if, as may be said, the facts do not seem to fit in with my figures, I can only say that I am convinced that their survival is in128 nowise due either to their hardiness or to the innocuous character of the herb, but solely to the kindly interposition of Providence, who, unwilling to see so young and so promising a nation perish by reason of this folly, has deliberately set at naught the wiles of the Devil and robbed him of his prey by fortifying and strengthening the constitutions of this people to withstand the dread effects of this evil practise. But how long can people given over to this wicked practise look to Providence for patience and protection?

I have but now spoken of the American people as a promising nation, but I am not sure but that I should amend this to “a once promising nation.” I believe that this nation can never become truly great until it has become a nation of non-smokers. Did the Greeks smoke? No. Did the Romans smoke? No, again. Not in the history of any of the great nations of antiquity do I find a single reference to tobacco smoking. The Boers are reputed to be great smokers, and it is to this that I attribute their defeat at the hands of the129 English. I have heard that the Boers even went into battle with their pipes alight, and I have no doubt that it was due to their distraction and lack of attention caused by their habit of scratching matches to keep their pipes burning, that they lost many important engagements. Do you imagine, Sir, that Troy could have withstood the assault of the Greeks for ten long years, had Hector and his fellow warriors lolled upon the battlements puffing on cigarettes? Can you fancy, Sir, the grave and dignified Cicero pausing in the midst of one of his philippics to expectorate tobacco juice? Yet I am told upon good authority that this may be witnessed among the learned justices of our own Supreme Court.

The almost total destruction of the American Indian, I attribute chiefly to the debilitating effects of this narcotic. Of all of the American Indians, the Peruvians attained the highest state of civilization. And why? Because, Sir, they alone used tobacco only as a medicine and in the form of snuff. Had they forborne the use of snuff, it might well have130 been that the Incas had conquered the Spanish and colonized the coast of Europe. Snuff, I consider the least harmful of all forms of tobacco; but only because it is the least frequently used. There is a lady of my acquaintance, in all other respects a most estimable woman, who so far forgets her duty as a mother as to permit her offspring to utilize as a plaything a handsome silver snuff-box which she inherited from her grandfather. I, Sir, should as soon think of giving my children a whisky-flask for a toy. I am well aware that many who have been termed “gentlemen” have been addicted to the use of snuff; nay, that it was even at one time a fashion among men and women of the mode to partake of it. But I think none the better of it for that. As much might be said for rum.

Lord Chesterfield said that he was enabled to get through the last five or six books of Virgil by having frequent recourse to his snuff-box; but I say, if the taking of snuff is necessary to the enjoyment of Virgil, why then, it were better never to read that poet. I had131 rather fall asleep over Virgil than to inhale culture tainted with snuff. I had rather, indeed, snore over the classics, than sneeze at them. Trahit sua quemque voluptas—I suspect that his Lordship did not so much find snuff an aid to Virgil as Virgil an excuse for snuff.

Tobacco, Sir, won its way into Europe by a ruse—a pretense. It wormed its way into the confidence of the European peoples masquerading as a medicine—a panacea. Introduced by Francesco Fernandez, himself a renowned physician, and endorsed by many other men supposed to be learned in materia medica, it was taken on faith and retained through weakness. At the very outset some of the wiser heads saw the danger of it. Burton sounded a note of warning in his Anatomy of Melancholy: “Tobacco, divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, is a sovereign remedy in all disease. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medically132 used; but, as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purge of goods, lands, health,—hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.”

King James, of blessed memory, was not deceived by the fictitious virtues of this plant, and he condemned it in his noble work, The Counterblaste. Would that more had been so blessed with wisdom!

The absurdity of the extravagant claims made for the curative powers of this herb is well illustrated in the words of Master Nicholas Culpepper, author of The English Physitian, published so late as 1671:

“It is a Martial plant (governed by Mars). It is found by good experience to be available to expectorate tough Flegm from the Stomach, Chest and Lungs.... The seed hereof is very effectual to expel the toothach, & the ashes of the burnt herb, to cleanse the Gums and make the Teeth white. The herb bruised and133 applied to the place grieved by the Kings-Evil, helpeth it in nine or ten days effectually. Manardus, faith, it is a Counter-Poyson against the biting of any Venomous Creatures; the Herb also being outwardly applyd to the hurt place. The Distilled Water is often given with some Sugar before the fit of Ague to lessen it, and take it away in three or four times using.”

Such vaporings were, indeed, as little worthy of credence as the empty chatter of Ben Jonson’s Bobadil: “Signor, believe me (upon my relation) for what I tell you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the Indies (where this herb grows), where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but tobacco only. Therefore it can not be but ’tis most divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kind, so, it makes an antidote, that had you taken the most deadly poisonous simple in all Florence134 it should expel it, and clarify you with as much ease as I speak.... I do hold it, and will affirm it (before any Prince in Europe) to be the most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.”

Such were the absurd claims of those who held tobacco to be a medicine. But I contend, Sir, that tobacco has never been proven of any real medical value whatever; that it is a poison and not a blessing. I have been told, indeed, that it sometimes destroys the toothache; but for my own part I had rather taste the toothache than tobacco; and as for deadening the pain, so, for that matter, will opium or prussic acid.

I contend, Sir, that tobacco will eventually bring to grief every nation which makes use of it. Who can contemplate the present distressing state of Portugal without recalling that it was from Jean Nicot, a Portuguese, that the poison, nicotine, received its name?

Tobacco destroys all that is noble in man. There is no more noble sentiment than chivalry;135 and tobacco has destroyed the chivalry of man. How else could we applaud that English poet who sang,

Tobacco is offensive to all high-minded people of delicate sensibilities; it is offensive to me. Nay, the smoker himself sometimes involuntarily recoils from his slavery and feels disgust for the vile weed, as is shown by the cry of the modern poet, whose name for the moment escapes me, in that line—

Oh, Sir, it is now high time for all men of sound judgment and unselfish nature to unite in stamping out this nefarious traffic! Let every state pass laws forbidding the manufacture, sale and use of tobacco in any form. Let the government suppress with stringent law and heavy penalty that wicked and seductive136 book of J. M. Barrie’s called My Lady Nicotine; that work which has, without doubt, led many young men to contract this evil habit and confirmed many older men in it against their own better judgment. Let all books in praise of tobacco be destroyed publicly, as is befitting a public menace.

For my own part, having suffered all my life from a quinsy which I contracted early in youth, and which my family physician assured me would be greatly aggravated by the use of tobacco, I have been saved from the vile effects of even the slightest contact with that noxious plant. But, Sir, being a man of tender sensibilities and imbued with an almost paternal love of humanity, it has grieved me to the heart to see my fellow men falling ever deeper and deeper into the clutches of this sinful practise. Owing to the distress I suffer from the fumes of tobacco, I have often been compelled practically to abstain from the company of men, otherwise estimable citizens, who have contracted this habit. Everywhere I go I see young and old blowing out their brains with137 every puff of smoke, until I am sometimes tempted to blow out my own in sheer despair of ever making them see the evil of their ways. And they smoke, Sir, with such an air of innocent enjoyment as is enough to fair madden one whose counsel they scorn and at whose warnings they scoff.

I have been told, Sir, that you are, yourself, a victim of this evil habit of tobacco using, and I have been warned that you will refuse, with the infatuation of a confirmed smoker, to grant me space in your publication for these honest and unprejudiced expressions of opinion upon this subject. I have refused, however, to credit these scandalous reflections upon your character, and I hope that you will refute them and cause the utter confusion of your calumniators, as well as help enlighten an ignorant and misguided people, by printing this communication in full.

138

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FASHION WRITERS

Dear Sir: Some writers have an unhappy faculty of adopting a superior tone which is very offensive to most readers. Even in a writer of acknowledged excellence this dictatorial style is a blemish, and, moreover, it is an impertinence. Not only does the writer assume to be superior to the majority of his readers, but, by implication, to all the world, since his book is addressed to mankind at large. And if this air of condescension is hard to bear from men of parts, how much more galling it is when we suffer it at the hands of insolent nobodies—writers who seek to hide their obscurity behind the shield of an imposing pseudonym. I have in mind, Sir, that pestiferous crew who mar the pages of our theater programs with their uninvited discourses upon men’s fashions.

It may be that I am confessing to an unmanly weakness when I confess that I invariably peruse that column in my program which is signed Beau Nash, Beau Brummel, or something equally ridiculous; but if it is a weakness, I am convinced that it is one which is shared by nine out of ten men in the audience. I say I am convinced, because, suspecting that I might be alone in it, I took the trouble to observe the men about me upon several occasions, and I always caught them at it at some time during the intermissions. They read it furtively, to be sure, but they read it none the less. Of course, I can not be sure what effect these essays upon sartorial matters have upon others, but I fancy they are affected much as I am, and for my part they distress me exceedingly.

In the first place, I am not overly pleased that some unknown hack writer has assumed to instruct me in such a personal matter as the clothes which I put upon my back, and in the second place, I strongly resent the implication that I am interested in such foppish literature.140 But, what is worse than all else, these anonymous arbiters of dress are continually putting me out of countenance by criticizing explicitly and in detail the very clothes that I have on! It seems to me that these fellows have a devilish faculty of knowing beforehand just what I shall be wearing every season.

Now, Mr. Idler, you must not suppose that I am one of those silly fellows who aspire to lead the fashion or to play the dandy, for, indeed, I am nothing of the sort. I do not believe there is a man living who more heartily despises those empty-headed creatures who are variously known as fops, dudes and dandies. It has never been my ambition to be the introducer of a new style of neckwear or footgear; indeed, I fear my very indifference to such matters lays me open to the vexation caused by these miserable scribblers who prey upon my peace of mind. Were I in the habit of consulting long and earnestly with my tailor and haberdasher, no doubt I should be fortified with a sound and sure confidence in the appropriateness of my apparel. But the fact is, I leave141 these things largely to the men who make a business of them, and content myself with choosing what seems to me to be sufficiently modish and yet in good taste.

And yet, Sir, though I am no macaroni, I am not utterly indifferent to my personal appearance. If I am not a fop, neither am I a sloven. I am one of those who have faith in the old saying, In medio tutissimus ibis. I would not be

Like most practical men, I have a positive horror of appearing queer. I shun eccentricity in dress as assiduously as I shun eccentricity in manners. I sometimes envy poets and artists, not for their poetry or their art, but for that sublime egotism which enables them to take pleasure in making themselves ridiculous. This seems to me a vanity which is almost beautiful, a self-confidence which is a greater blessing than personal bravery. Many a man, otherwise142 not extraordinary, may prove himself a hero of physical courage when the occasion offers, but few there are who can deliberately challenge attention by their freakish appearance and go out among their fellow men with an air which seems to say, “I know I look like the devil and I am proud of it.”

Now I, Sir—I should not be proud of it. I should be miserably ashamed. And so I am ashamed when I read in my program that which brands me as a man of no taste or discrimination. I am horribly humiliated when I discover in the column of Beau Nash that I have brazenly shattered every commandment in the sartorial decalogue. I give you my word, Sir, I break into a cold perspiration whenever I recall the harrowing experience I had last Saturday-week. It so happened that when I prepared to go to the play, I found no fresh white waistcoats. This did not greatly trouble me at the time, for I am a resourceful man, and I at once recalled that I possessed a black waistcoat which my tailor had made for me at the same time he had made my dress suit. This143 I donned in blissful ignorance of my impending ordeal. I arrived at the theater rather late and had no opportunity of reading the program before the curtain rose. That first act is the one bright memory I have of that awful evening. I enjoyed the first act. But, Sir, I did not long remain in ignorance of my disgrace. In the first intermission my eyes were drawn by an irresistible fascination to the column headed, “What Men Wear,” and in letters which seemed fairly to jump out of the page I read, “The black waistcoat worn with evening dress is the height of vulgarity and is not tolerated.”

Sir, you can imagine with what a sudden shock my care-free contentment dropped from me. There I sat in the full glare of the electric light, conscious that I was surrounded by hundreds of men who had read that damning paragraph which stamped me as an ignorant underbred boor, who had attempted evening dress without knowing the very rudiments of the art. I cast a hasty glance about the theater, and the fleeting hope which had sprung up died within144 my breast. There was not another black waistcoat in sight.

How I lived through the rest of that intermission I can not say. I only know that I could feel the contemptuous eyes of the audience upon that dreadful black waistcoat, like so many hot augurs boring holes in the pit of my stomach. Hastily hiding my face behind my program, I slumped down in my seat in the vain hope of hiding my disgrace, while drops of anguish trickled down my brow and fell splashing upon the cruel words which had rendered me an object for pity and contempt. When the curtain rose upon the second act, I crept out of the auditorium under cover of the kindly darkness and slunk away home to hide my shame.

I do not think I shall ever attend the theater in this city again. In vain I argue and seek to persuade myself that what I read in the program was only the opinion of one man, and a man at that who, in all probability, never owned a dress suit in his life. Whoever he may be, whatever his knowledge or ignorance of145 dress may be, he writes with such a saucy assumption of omniscient authority that my reason stands abashed before his insolence. As aloof and austere as the Olympian gods, he crushes my spirit and fills my soul with humility. No, Mr. Idler, I do not believe I shall ever attend the theater here again. The mental suffering these fashion writers inflict upon me is too great a price to pay for the pleasure I extract from the drama.

146

OF LOOKING BACKWARD

Dear Sir: It is a constant source of surprise to me that men continue, at all ages but the earliest, to look back upon the past with a wistful eye, recalling, with many expressions of regret, the days that are no more. Thus, while still in the twenties, the youth begins to feel the burden of worldly cares already pressing heavily upon his shoulders and sighs when he thinks of the irresponsible school-days of his teens. At thirty, he is convinced that he has missed the best part of his youth and would fain be a youngster of twenty once more, his greatest care the sprouting down upon his upper lip. Come to forty, he is sure that he should have been most happy when thirty, over the first rawness of youth, but not yet sensible of any physical deterioration and quite unmarked by the passage of time. At fifty, he envies the147 lustihood of forty, and at sixty he longs for the activity and the muscular ease which he enjoyed at fifty. And so it goes on, so that we can readily imagine a patriarch of ancient days exclaiming, “Oh, if I were but two-hundred-and-twenty once more! How I should enjoy life!”

Now, to me, Mr. Idler, things do not appear in this light at all. I can not conceive that had I been Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, I should have longed to be an obscure youth in Corsica. It is easier, of course, to understand why he might, at St. Helena, regret the departed glories of St. Cloud; but for myself, I do not believe I should ever, whatever my former station might have been, wish to lay down the present for the past. I have, it is true, some hope for the future (I am now but fifty), but even if this were denied me, and I were assured that my condition ten years hence would be no more enviable than it is at present, yet I think I should not care to reassume my youthful aspect, or to take up my life where I left it long ago.

There is, in truth, no period of my past life upon which I can look back with complete complacency. I was, at all times, very well satisfied with myself, barring occasional and inevitable spasms of self-reproach. I am, to say the truth, well enough satisfied with myself as I am to-day. But experience has taught me that the time will come when I shall look back upon to-day and will not be pleased with my present self at all. At thirty I remembered the Me of twenty as a callow and conceited boy. At forty I beheld in the Me of ten years gone a lazy careless idler. At fifty I recollected the man of forty as a pompous and affected ass. Now, while the most careful scrutiny of my person and character fails to reveal to me, at this time, any serious flaw or defect, yet I doubt not that the future Me, the Me of Sixty, will have grave fault to find with the individual who is inhabiting my skin at the present moment.

“We live and learn,” says the proverb, and since we do, it is unnatural if we do not feel a sort of shame in the ignorance of our former149 selves. I feel no shame for my present ignorance because I do not know wherein that ignorance consists, but be assured I shall, as soon as I have found myself out.

It is, I like to think, one of the wisest provisions of a merciful God that no man is ever permitted to see what a consummate simpleton he is, but only what a simpleton he has been. A complete and certain revelation of a man’s folly to himself would, without a doubt, result in an immediate and lasting loss of self-respect. And to lose one’s self-respect is to lose one’s identity and become a stranger to one’s self. The inmost mind, however the outward actions of the body may seem to contradict it, still clings to the noblest principles, so that no man can be truly said to be unprincipled. He may be debauched and depraved, but he is not without principle so long as his subconscious personality has the power to arise and accuse his conscious person. Where there is no such accusation there can be no loss of self-respect, for surely a man must possess a thing before he can lose it. As some say of another, “He is his150 own worst enemy,” so it may be said that every man should be his own best friend. None other is empowered so to befriend him. His life and his character must be, to a very great extent, of his own making, for every man truly lives to himself. He is the central character of the drama in which he is both actor and spectator. Others may come and go, but he alone remains throughout the play.

For all our intimacy with ourselves, we never come to know ourselves completely. We discover, day by day, ideas and opinions which we never suspected ourselves of possessing. We are wrung by emotions which take us completely by surprise. We are angered by slights which our reason tells us are beneath our notice. We are moved to compassion when we are most determined to remain firm and unmoved. We take a liking for this person whom we have decided to dislike, and we develop an inexplicable aversion for another whom we have deliberately chosen for a friend. Whence come these impulses, these orders which we can not disobey? These commands which override our151 conscious desires and break down our natural wills? Where, indeed, but from that Inner Man, that Unknown Self whose power we feel but can not comprehend? Where else but from that second and stronger, if submerged, personality—the human soul? Is it not, indeed, this unanswerable argument, this inexplicable conviction of another and better Self within, joined with and yet distinct from, the ordinary self, which persuades men that mankind is immortal, no matter how ably the Brain may play the Infidel, nor how aptly the Tongue may second him?

For our outward selves, our “every-day selves,” as we might say, we know whence they are derived. We know that we are born of woman and fathered of man. We can trace to the one or the other this feature or that, this trait or the other, but there are yet to be accounted for those strange whims and fancies, those impulses and ideals which come neither from the father nor the mother, and which, in very truth, make us ourselves, make us to be different from our sisters and our brothers,152 and without which all the offspring of the same parents would be as like as so many peas in a pod. And it is these things which convince us that we have within us another Ego, another Self which comes to us from some unknown place, to guard and to guide us upon the perilous path of life. We may sometimes close our ears to his counsel, but he never suffers us to go wrong unadvised. Is it to be wondered at, then, that we grow to feel for ourselves an affection which is not wholly selfish, and to take in ourselves a pride which is not wholly egotistic? I do not feel under any obligation to the man who wears my face and bears my name; he has made me ridiculous too often for that. But I do feel a duty to that other Me, the Me that is not wholly of my own choosing. And so, I am convinced, do most men.

As I was saying, or about to say, the keenest shame we ever feel is the shame we feel for ourselves. Shame for others may be tempered with forgiveness, but it is very difficult to forgive one’s self. There is no question there of giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.153 There is no doubt. I feel a certain shame for the young man that I once was because I naturally feel a tenderness for him. I can forgive him much more readily than I could forgive myself as I am to-day. Yet I would not, if I could, change places with him. My taste in Selves, as in other things, has changed as I have grown older. I blush for the weak-mindedness of that youth who was the Me of twenty years ago; yet I feel, in a way, relieved from the sense of direct responsibility, for am I not, in fact, another and a different person from the man I was?

As the delightful Holmes once expressed it, that youthful self is like a son to me. A bit of a cub, but on the whole, not at all a bad fellow. He is related to me, but he is not me. And he never was the man that I now am. He wore my body for a time, that was all. We were never the same, for I was not born until he had ceased to be. I am no more that young man of twenty years ago than I am that other young man who interrupts me now—(No, I haven’t. Can’t you see I’m busy?)—to borrow a match to set his154 ugly bulldog pipe alight. A vile habit—pipe-smoking! Unsanitary and beastly annoying to those who have better sense. That young man we were speaking of—not the one who asked for the match, you know, but the one who had the impudence to pass himself off for me twenty years ago—he used to smoke a bulldog pipe. I stopped it some time ago myself. Bad for the heart, the doctor said, and—well, I’m getting on and I can see for myself the folly of it. Decidedly, I should not like to exchange my own calm judgment for his youthful carelessness and addiction to tobacco. Unless—well, say, unless for twenty minutes after dinner!

155

THE LITERARY LIFE

Dear Sir: I have read a great many references, at one time or another, to something which is known as “the literary life”. I have read of it in novels, in essays, in criticisms and in the reports of the daily newspapers. Everybody seems to know of it, and everybody speaks of it as of something to be taken for granted; but though I have made an earnest effort to discover just what it is and where and by whom it is lived, I have been quite unable to do so. I had been a newspaper writer for several years when I first began to take an interest in this curiously illusive sort of existence. It was in a novel, I think, that I had read it upon the occasion when my curiosity aroused me to action. “There it is again,” I said to myself. “What is this literary life, anyway? Who lives it and in what does the living of it consist?156 How does one go about finding out the secret of it?”

So I set out on my quest. As all good reporters should do, I first took stock of my possible sources of information, and having done so, I did what reporters usually do when they wish to find out anything—I asked the city editor.

“How the devil do I know?” said he in his unliterary way. “You’re a reporter, ain’t you? Get busy and find out. If you get anything worth writing, make a story of it.” That is the way with city editors; they have no thought for anything but “stories”, no thirst for knowledge that is not in the way of business, no soul for the higher things in life.

With this source of information closed to me, I turned to the staff. I knew I could learn nothing from the books where I had found the term used. The books merely referred to “literary life” just as we say “prison life” or “army life” and expect every one to understand what we mean. The first man I asked about it simply laughed and said, “That’s a good one!”157 The second man told me to go away and stop bothering him. He was writing an interesting article about the price of onions. The third man asked me if I thought I was funny. That nearly discouraged me. I tried one or two others without success, and then I determined to try a more subtle method of investigation.

I had failed to gather my desired information as a reporter; I would try my hand as a detective. I took to following the members of the staff home from the office. It was an afternoon newspaper and that was easy to do. The result of my shadowing was that I learned much of the habits of these men, but little of what I wanted to know. The police reporter went from the office direct to the butcher shop. There he made a purchase which he tucked under his arm and went home. He stayed at home every night that I watched him. The court reporter spent his evenings in a little saloon on a side street playing poker with a particular friend of his who was a boilermaker. The hotel reporter covered the same ground every evening that he had covered during the day. He158 went from one hotel to another, playing pool or billiards and shaking dice with traveling men. After about a fortnight of investigation I gave up trying to learn anything about the literary life from newspaper men. I looked up a few magazine writers and the result was the same: No two of these men lived the same life at all!

I was astonished. I asked myself how it came about that these men had overlooked their obvious duty of living the literary life. If literary men knew nothing of the literary life, then who would? I resolved that I would solve that problem if it took me a year. From the magazine writers I went on to the novelists who seemed to have even less in common than the two former classes had. The publishers were so widely scattered in so many different suburbs that I had not the courage to seek them out.

After a conscientious search which covered a period of six months or more, I began to think that the literary life might be one of those traditions handed down from another age; one159 of those things which continue to be spoken of in books long after they cease to have any real existence. Perhaps the authors of other days had lived the literary life, even if the authors of my own time did not. I would see. I began to read biography. In Johnson’s Lives of the Poets I found that:

Abraham Cowley was the son of a grocer. He showed early signs of genius; he was expelled from Cambridge. He was, for a time, private secretary to Lord Falkland. Afterward he spent some time in jail as a political prisoner. Upon emerging from prison he became a doctor, and thinking a knowledge of botany necessary to one of his profession, he retired into the country to study that science. For some reason, he abandoned botany for poetry and from that time on he wrote poetry. He died peacefully of rheumatism.

Edmund Waller was the son of a country gentleman. He attended Cambridge and was sent to Parliament before he was twenty. Rich by birth, he added to his wealth by marrying an heiress who died young and left him free160 to marry again, which he did. He lived among people of fashion and wealth, and though he was sent into exile for a short time because of a treasonable conspiracy in which he engaged, he was soon restored to general favor. He died in good circumstances of old age.

Thomas Otway was the son of a rector. He left college without a degree. He went into gay society and mingled his literary labor with dissipation. He was, for a short time, an officer in the army. He fell upon evil days, and when threatened with starvation, borrowed a guinea from a total stranger. With this he bought himself a roll, but he was so ravenous that he attempted to bolt it at one mouthful and so choked himself to death.

You need not be surprised to find in your paper some morning an advertisement to this effect: “Wanted—Some definite information concerning the character and habitat of the Literary Life.” But if you know anything about it, don’t wait for the advertisement, but161 send on your information at once. I think maybe I would be willing to try it myself. Certainly somebody ought to live it.

162

THE POETIC LICENSE

Dear Sir: Your recent strictures upon a certain poem by John Masefield, and the general tenor of several other volumes of verse recently published, have moved me to address you upon a subject which holds considerable interest for me; and that, Sir, is the scope and legitimacy of what is commonly called “the poetic license”. To what does this license extend and by whom is it granted? Is there no way in which it may be regulated by law?

This matter of the poetic license is a source of continual annoyance to me. I find it invoked upon all occasions. I find that it is considered a sufficient answer to any criticisms or charges that may be brought against a poet. I am curious to know if there is any real authority for it; if it is not, in fact, a mere figment of the imagination,163 a polite fiction of letters invented by men of letters for the purpose of confounding the layman and depriving him of his natural right to pass an opinion upon all that he reads?

I confess I am no poet. This being so, I may be lacking in sympathy for the art, as some of my poetic acquaintances have averred. But I protest that a man need not be a poet to be a judge of poetry, any more than he need be a vintner to be a judge of wines, or a cook to be a judge of preserves. I may lack the finer ear of the poet when it comes to a question of complicated rhythms, but I am not lacking in an elementary knowledge of grammar, as some of our poets appear to be. I never could see any reason why a poet’s grammatical or orthographical errors should be condoned merely because he chooses to write in verse. We do not condone such defects in a prose writer, why then in a poet? It may be urged that the poet has a harder task than the prose writer; that it is more difficult to express one’s self in verse than in prose. No doubt it is, but is that any reason why incompetent writers should be excused164 their errors? Or their laxness? Or their laziness? Why write poetry at all if they can not write it properly? Why not choose prose for a medium? There are men, no doubt, who find prose as difficult as most men find poetry, but do we therefore overlook their mistakes or their vagaries?

Sir, it appears to me that the leniency shown to verse writers in this respect has worked a great injury to the art of poetry. It has encouraged men to write verses, who were in no way fitted to write verses. It has led tyros to choose poetry rather than prose because in the former they feel more secure from the well-merited censure of their readers. It has degraded really good poetry to the level of very poor poetry by allowing virtue where there was none and by holding verses full of defects to be equal in merit with verses marred by no such violations of the common rules of grammar and orthography.

All this, Sir, was bad enough, but I was prepared to pass over it since it is a practise inaugurated165 and upheld by professional critics who will allow us laymen no word at all in the matter. But, Sir, when these poets attempt to extend their poetic license to clothing, to manners and to morals, I think they go too far.

Not long since, I ventured some remarks, not altogether complimentary, upon the personal appearance of a certain poet, or poetaster, as I prefer to call him, in the presence of a literary woman. “Oh, yes,” she replied. “There’s no denying it—he is a sloven. But really one of his spirituality could hardly be expected to be finicky about his clothing and that sort of thing.” Upon another occasion, I spoke harshly with regard to the manners of a well-known versifier, and I was rebuked for my hasty judgment with the assurance that the oddity of his conduct ought not to be ascribed to boorishness or rudeness, but to his poetic temperament. And, Sir, only yesterday, when I condemned the unbridled license and immorality of a recent book of poetry, I was informed that a poet could not be expected to166 view a moral question from the same angle as an ordinary uninspired mortal.

Sir, if these scribblers of verse are to be allowed any license, why should they not qualify for it as do pedlers, saloon-keepers and the like? Why not require them to prove their fitness for the business of writing poetry? Let them secure their license from the civil authorities, and let those licenses be revoked at the first indication of abuse of privilege.

As affairs now stand, any one who chances to possess a pen, a windsor tie and a wide-awake hat can pass himself off for a poet and can claim indulgence for his bad verse, bad manners and bad morals upon the plea of poetic temperament. Therefore, to insure the public against such imposture, I suggest that every poet be compelled, like every chauffeur, to wear his license in a conspicuous place, and that if he fail to comply with this requirement, he be immediately impounded.

This arrangement, I think, would operate as an effective check upon the too exuberant poetic temperament, and would also be an excellent167 thing for the public, for, Sir, if every poet were required, like every dog, to wear his license attached to a collar, the pound would soon be full of poets.

168

THE NECESSITY FOR BEGGARS

Dear Sir: It is with alarm that I observe the increasing activity of our charitable organizations and the consequent disappearance of beggars from our city streets. I, who was formerly constantly importuned for alms whenever I stirred abroad, have not now been approached by one of those needy tatterdemalions for a period of six months or more. This fact has, for me, a deep significance. It means nothing less than that the ancient fraternity of street beggars is rapidly dying out. Surely you must have noticed that yourself. Where are the old blue-spectacled men one used to see standing upon the corners, bearing the once-familiar placard, “I am Blind”? Where are the legless men who used to wring discords from little squatty hand-organs? Where are the street-singers, the match venders,169 the orphans, the lost children, the paralytics? Where, even, is the Italian organ-grinder with his begging monkey? These charitable organizations, Sir, have spirited them away, and now instead of being approached by the beggars themselves, we are visited by the agents of the societies.

Now, Sir, my regret at the passing of the beggar is not altogether sentimental, like Charles Lamb’s complaint in The Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis. There may be a certain amount of sentiment in it, for certainly in the loss of beggars we not only lose a picturesque class of people, but we also suffer a spiritual loss. The spiritual glow which came of personal giving is entirely, or almost entirely, absent in making checks for these beggars by proxy. But, Sir, I am a practical man and I can plainly see that the beggar, so far from being a mere nuisance and eyesore, as charity-workers would have you believe, is a very useful and necessary member of the social order.

Beggars, Mr. Idler, are the natural scavengers170 of the human race. They live upon the scraps we throw from our tables; they dress in our cast-off garments. In short, Sir, they make to serve a useful purpose, that which would otherwise be sheer waste. These humble people are the economists of humanity. They save what we squander. Every time one of them goes without a meal, there is that much more food left in the world for the rest of us. James Howell wrote of the Spaniard in 1623, “He hath another commendable quality, that when he giveth alms he pulls off his hat and puts it in the beggar’s hand with a great deal of humility.” Let us say, rather, with a great deal of respect and gratitude. Truly the Spanish grandee had reason to be grateful and respectful to the beggar who made possible his own magnificence.

Now, Sir, what are these charitable organizations trying to do? I will tell you—they are trying to teach the beggar that he wants the comforts of life. They are trying to teach him to desire good clothes and good food. They are trying to awaken in him that selfish desire171 to appear better than his fellows, which we call “self-respect”. They are even trying to teach him to work! What folly!

“But,” you say, “it would be an excellent thing if all of these vagabonds could be induced to work, for heretofore they have been mere idlers and parasites.” To which I answer, “You are wrong, it would not be a good thing.” Is it not perfectly clear that, once these beggars become workers, they will immediately demand the means to enable them to maintain a higher standard of living? Which do you think costs you the more, the beggar who begs perhaps a dollar a week, which he has not earned, or the bricklayer who charges you six dollars a day, of which he has earned only a part? It has been some years now since the notorious Coxey led his army of unemployed to Washington, and since that time the number of unemployed workers has been steadily increasing. Do you think, then, that we need more laborers? Have we so much wealth that we must force it on those who were content to be without it?

Why, Sir, I tell you this corruption of beggars should be put down with a firm hand. These charitable organizations should be legislated out of existence before they do an irreparable mischief.

173

THE ABUSES OF ADVERSITY

Dear Sir: In the course of a long and not uneventful life, I have, upon more than one occasion, looked upon adversity in its various forms, and I have, therefore, given the subject some attention, both in the light of my own experience and in the light of the opinions of others. I have heard a great deal of the “uses of adversity”; that adversity is like a great training-school for character which brings out whatever strength and resolution there may be in a man, and much talk of a like character. But I must confess that I have not often seen adversity, nor its lessons, put to any good use whatever, while I have often seen it abused most shamefully.

So far from learning useful lessons from ill-fortune, it seems to me that most men are inclined to turn misfortune to the basest of174 uses, making it serve as an excuse for shirking, for moral lapses, for dishonesty and for an utter lack of charity toward others. I find that many people boast of their misfortunes as if they were actually entitled to some credit because they have befallen them, wearing woe like a feather in the cap and holding themselves somewhat better than their fellows because they appear to have excited the wrath of the Goddess of Fortune. It is as if they said: “See, we are the Unfortunate Ones who are of sufficient importance to be singled out from among men to receive Sorrows which you are unfit to bear. Look upon our afflictions and reflect upon the happiness of your own lot, and do not forget to do us honor for the fortitude with which we bear our miseries.”

I count among my friends and acquaintances a number of these habitual boasters of misfortune, who are always ready, day or night, to relate their trials and tribulations with a conscious air of distinction and superiority.

There is an old fellow of my acquaintance who suffers, or so he declares, the torments of175 the damned, by reason of his gout, a disease which has held him in its grip for the last twenty years. There is no manner of doubt that he has himself to blame for this painful malady, which is, without question, the result of his injudicious and riotous manner of life in his youth. Yet this old man is as proud of his infirmity as many another man is of physical soundness, and he relates his pangs and twinges with the greatest relish in the world. Nor does the fact that he has suffered from the disease for nearly a quarter of a century have any effect upon the eagerness with which he always turns the conversation upon his favorite topic. Despite the fact that he has told and retold his pains and symptoms ten thousand times, the subject never seems to lose its novelty for him, and to-day he discusses his infirmity with as much gusto as he did when I first met him ten years or more ago. It makes no difference what may be the subject of the company’s discourse, this man can not bear to go twenty minutes without intruding the matter of his lame foot.

Politics, business, history, music, literature, art or the drama—all these are but verbal stepping-stones to his one supreme subject. Does some one speak of Napoleon at the foot of the great Pyramids, the mere mention of the word “foot” is enough to set him discoursing of the inflammation in his great toe. Does some one call attention to the flaming crimson of the sunset, he swears that it is not so red as his own instep. He never enters a conversation, in short, but to put his foot in it, and so persistently does he dwell upon this malformed pedal extremity as to render him fit company for none but chiropodists. He has no interest in life but his gout, and he is forever talking of the pain it causes him, though I dare say it has never caused him a tenth part of the misery that it has caused his friends and acquaintances.

Another person whom I have the misfortune to know is a widow lady of some nine years’ standing, who has never put off her weeds and who never tires of bewailing the loss of the dear departed. The bare mention of death is a sufficient warrant for a flood of tears, and the177 sight of a hearse sends her into hysterics which abate only at the prospect of a sympathetic audience for the old story of her bereavement. She goes about the neighborhood casting the shadow of death upon all our innocent pleasures and brings with her into our happy homes the gloom of the mortuary chamber. Her long-continued mourning and complaint are the less deserving of patience and sympathy when we reflect that her husband was already past the age of seventy-five when he died, so that nobody but the most infatuated mourner could speak, as she does, of his having been “cut off in his prime.” One would think, to hear her speak of him, that other men were in the habit of living to the age of Methuselah and that no other woman in the world had cause to mourn her spouse. For my part, I think the old man had small reason to complain of premature demise, and I know that were I her husband I would ask nothing better. To cast the slightest suspicion upon the genuineness of her grief or the sufficiency of the cause thereof would be to lay one’s self open to a tongue178 which can be most bitter when it chooses; so I fear we shall have to bear her complaints and her mourning until she dissolves in tears like Niobe, or until Death gives ear to her publicly expressed desire to join her mate beyond the grave.

My cousin, Robert Wasrich, is forever telling of the wealth and luxury which were his in his younger days and complaining of the lowly estate into which he is fallen in his middle age. The quarters in which he now resides are of the humblest, but he speaks of them most ostentatiously to all who have not visited them, referring to them as “chambers” and adding that, while they are far above the average, they are not at all what he has been used to in other years. When we have him for our guest, which we do out of pity at Christmas and such seasons when it seems shameful to neglect one’s own kin, he upsets our whole household with his constant complaints and exactions.

So, far from trying to make himself as little a nuisance as possible, he must needs take his breakfast in bed because179 that was his custom in the days of his prosperity, and he must be supplied with all sorts of dainties and extra dishes because his stomach, so he says, craves them, having become accustomed to them when he was wealthy. He finds fault with the cooking, saying that it probably seems well enough to us, who have never been used to anything better, but that it is death to the palate of one who has been in the habit of eating and drinking of the best. He picks flaws in our pictures and decries our taste in furnishings, and so sends my wife off to her chamber in a fit of indignant weeping. And not content with all this, he is forever borrowing of me small sums of money which he declares he stands in need of to pay off certain obligations to friends whom he has known in his better days and who have seen fit to ask him to dinner or to the play. To allow such obligations to go unpaid would be most offensive to his acute sense of honor and would cast discredit upon his honored name. In fact, Mr. Idler, he is twice as arrogant and proud in his poverty as he was when he was well-off. And180 more than once I have wished with all my heart that he might be rich again, and so take himself off and leave us in peace.

To come nearer home, my wife is the victim of a nervous disorder which totally incapacitates her from doing our housework, though we can ill afford a servant, but which, oddly enough, does not interfere with her attendance at matinées or card-parties given by her women friends. This is doubtless due, as she says, to the fact that exertion which is in the nature of a diversion takes her mind from her trouble and so mends her condition for the time being. Though this disorder is not in the least dangerous, it is most obstinate and causes her, so she assures me, the most acute mental anguish and the most terrible physical suffering. It is of such a peculiar nature that any mention of the amount of the month’s bills sets it instantly in motion, and disappointment in the matter of getting a new hat is enough to cause her to take to her bed for a week. But though, as you can readily see, this indisposition puts her to a great deal of trouble and annoyance, she will181 not consent to enter a sanatorium where she might be cured of it, nor will she follow the advice of the doctor whom she calls in from one to three times a month; so that I am forced to conclude that she is actually proud of being an invalid. And I am the more of this opinion, since when I complain of feeling ill or indisposed, she always assures me that I do not know what suffering is and that I never can know because I was not born a woman.

These and other cases which have come under my observation have convinced me that people are more proud of their afflictions than of their blessings, and that the most common use of adversity is to make life miserable for others.

182

THE SCIENCE OF MAKING ENEMIES

Dear Sir: As I am about to open a school of an unusual nature, I have determined not only to secure for the same as much publicity as possible, but also to explain to the public the nature of the instruction which will be furnished in my new academy. My course of study is, I think, unique; and I fear that without explanation it would probably prove quite incomprehensible to the public at large and to those who may chance to hear of the school through friends or to read my advertisements in the press.

In this connection, it seems to me not out of place to acquaint you, in some sort, with the reasons which led me to settle upon the plan of my proposed course of instruction, and this I shall accordingly do to the best of my ability.

I entered at an early age upon my present183 profession, which is, as you may have surmised, that of an educator. I became, in turn, an instructor, a tutor and a professor of sociology. I have ever been of an independent character of mind, and in the course of my work I have been prone to draw my own conclusions without, I confess, much consideration of, or regard for, the opinions of others who assume, or have assumed, to be authorities upon the subject. Society, I believe, is a subject which must be studied at first hand. Text-books and treatises may be well enough as stimulants to study, but the real essential is a knowledge of people. I, therefore, devoted myself to the study of mankind, and I studied the students of my classes with more enthusiasm and with more application, I dare say, than my students studied their text-books. But I did not stop with the study of others, I also studied myself. I studied myself as an isolated individual, and I studied myself in relation to others, and it was as a result of this study that I finally made a most disconcerting discovery—a discovery which was not made until I had184 entered upon my professorship, and which shocked me inexpressibly and bade fair, for a time, to put an end to my career as a teacher.

Though at first it was only a suspicion, it soon became a conviction. I discovered that I was unpopular. Not unpopular with a few only, for all of us are that, but generally and hopelessly unpopular; a man without any friends and with a great many enemies. I do not now recall what first called my attention to this matter, but I do remember that I gave it a great deal of thought and attention and I studied the case in the same impartial manner that I would study any other case of social phenomena. I took careful note of the demeanor and behavior of my students and my fellow members of the faculty, and I soon settled beyond any reasonable doubt all question as to my popularity. I had never established myself upon a footing of familiarity or friendship with my students and I now came to see the reason why this was so. My students did not like me and they would have nothing more to do with me than was absolutely necessary.185 It was the same with the members of the faculty. I was retained in my position because I was an able instructor and an indefatigable worker. There was no sort of favoritism in my case and I knew that my colleagues as well as my students would have been glad to see me guilty of some blunder which would justify my removal.

As you may suppose, this was not only a hard blow to my vanity, but a very painful thing to think upon. Like most men, I had always assumed that people were glad to know me and to have me about, and it distressed me exceedingly to learn that this assumption was without foundation or justification. It is one of the enigmas of human nature—this conviction of personal popularity. No man can conceive of himself as a pariah, nor even as a very unpopular person, until he actually finds himself in that situation. Even the greatest bores seldom realize that they are bores. But most bores are not sociologists.

Now, when I had become fully convinced that my unpopularity was a fact and not a figment186 of my imagination, I began to turn the matter over in my mind and to direct my attention to the study of popularity and unpopularity both as to cause and effect. My study led me to several discoveries. The first was this: that some people are born with the attribute of popularity and possess the faculty of making friends without any conscious effort on their part, while others have a trick of making enemies without actually being guilty of any offense. This is not what is called positive and negative “magnetism,” but it is something like that. When a man possesses this faculty for making friends he will make them whether or no, even though he be lacking in all the qualities which men find admirable. He may be selfish, cold, over-ambitious and ruthless of the rights of others, and yet exercise a fascination upon other men. Such a man was Napoleon Bonaparte, who called forth the greatest personal devotion and enthusiasm in the men whom he destroyed for his own ends. Contrariwise, a man may be noble, generous, affable187 and everything that a popular man should be, and yet be practically without friends.

But I made another and greater discovery which reconciled me to my unpopularity and which, indeed, completely revolutionized my views upon the subject—I discovered that the greatest men in the world have been the ones who had the most enemies!

And it was upon making this discovery, Sir—the most important, in my opinion, that has been made by any sociologist of our time—that I determined to set up my school for the exposition of the science of making enemies. All men, said I to myself, are naturally ambitious; they desire fame, honor and riches. They have but to be shown the way and they will enter eagerly upon it.

Elated as I was at my great discovery, I could not but wonder that men had not discovered this secret long ago. How could such men as Spencer, Lecky, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the others have overlooked a thing so simple and so obviously true?

Here, I rejoiced, I have a discovery—not a theory, not an hypothesis—but a fact! A fact which may be tested and proven in any field of human activity—in government, in commerce, in religion, in literature, in art—in everything! No religion can live without first enduring persecution; no government can survive without the patriotism bred of the fear of enemies and the hatred of foes; no general can become great without war; no author becomes a classic without criticism; no prophet can conquer without opposition. Nothing great can be done without enemies.

For generations, for ages, men have been proceeding upon an entirely erroneous theory that friends are more necessary to success than enemies. Such stupidity! Such utter disregard of the evidence to the contrary which confronts us upon every hand! Our park benches are lined with men who had too many friends, our charitable institutions are overflowing with them. Think of the most popular man you know and then of the most successful! Are they the same? Of course not. Once you stop189 to think of it, the truth of my discovery is self-evident. No matter where you go you will find that the greatest man is the one who has the most enemies.

Friends are not only not necessary to a man’s success, but they are often a positive detriment. A man surrounded by friends is like a man blindfolded—he can not see where he is going. How do you improve? By correcting your faults. And who points out your faults, your friends or your enemies? An enemy is a spur. An enemy is an inspiration. Your friends sympathize with you, commiserate with you, agree with you and flatter you; but your enemies advertise you.

Whistler once wrote a book called The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and I suspect that Whistler had caught an inkling of the truth of my great discovery, but his title was a misnomer. The making of enemies is not an art, but a science. Some people have a special gift for it, as I have, but almost any one can learn how. By observing a few simple rules in this connection, any man should be able to acquire190 all the enemies he may desire. But any man may save himself a great deal of time and trouble by taking my course of instruction. When he receives his diploma from the Sourface Training School he will be so well versed in this science that he will thereafter follow the principles of the school without any thought whatever, but purely from force of habit.

Judging from the number of people I see about me who are trying in an amateurish way to acquire enemies, the academy should have a large attendance from the start, and since I have never met a more unpopular man than myself, I know of no one more eminently qualified to conduct such a school. I can not afford to make public my method of instruction because such an action would open the field to a host of imitators, but I can assure you that the course is most effective.

There is only one doubt in my mind about the success of the school, and that is this: I fear that when the public realizes the tremendous import of my discovery and appreciates the great work which I am doing for humanity,191 I shall become so popular that I will be in great danger of losing the success which I have labored so hard to attain and which I so richly deserve.

192

THE FATE OF FALSTAFF

Dear Sir: I am an actor; a follower of Thespis, an interpreter of men and emotions. To become such was the dream of my boyhood’s ambition. At an early age (I shall not state when, since you would probably be incredulous) I used, Sir, to act plays for my own amusement and afterward for the amusement of my elders. Where other children were content to play in careless fashion, without attempting anything like an exact reproduction or imitation of Nature, I was most particular in this respect. If I played Julius Cæsar, I had, to satisfy my artistic instinct, to carry a short sword and not a long one; I must needs wrap myself in a sheet and swear by the heathen gods. Nothing short of this satisfied me. I could not, as so many children do, thrust193 a feather duster down the neck of my jacket and play at being an Indian chief; on the contrary, I must have the feathers in my hair and my complexion darkened until I bore some actual resemblance to the aborigine. Without these aids to illusion I could not enjoy myself or get any manner of amusement from the sport. I was so close a student of details, even at that age, that in playing Indian I acquired a habit of toeing-in which caused my mother much distress and which clung to me for many months.

Nor was I less particular in the matter of my speech. I was forever mouthing sentiments and speeches culled from my father’s library, some of them, I dare say, weird and bizarre enough upon my youthful and innocent lips. However this may be, I had an abiding horror of all sorts of anachronisms, and I preferred Ben Jonson to Shakespeare for the reason that he was less frequently guilty of offending my artistic sense in this respect.

It was not long before my parents were impressed with my natural bent in this direction194 and encouraged me in my favorite diversion by taking the part of an audience, while my younger brother was pressed into service with his harmonica and rendered the overtures and the interludes to the best of his somewhat limited ability; for I could no more act without an orchestra than I could act without a make-up. Incidentally I came to practise the art of elocution, and it was said in our neighborhood that I could interpret Horatio at the Bridge in a most telling fashion, and that not Riley himself could improve upon my rendition of The Raggedy Man.

With such a wealth of youthful experience, it was not surprising that I found myself at the age of twenty-one a supernumerary in a theater, nor that soon afterward I was given a speaking part and rose, before long, to the dignity of “leads” in a stock company of the first class. It was at this time that I was given my first opportunity really to distinguish myself. A prominent manager, who shall be nameless, sent for me and told me that he had chosen me to play Falstaff in a production of195 Henry the Fourth which he intended putting on the following winter.

Elated as I was at this splendid opportunity for a display of my genius for acting, I could not forbear voicing certain conscientious scruples as to my ability to do the part justice.

“I can undoubtedly interpret the character to your most complete satisfaction,” said I to the manager, “but there is an obstacle, which, while by no means unsurmountable, must, nevertheless, be overcome at once or not at all.”

“What odds?” he answered; “while there are pads and pillows, this should be no matter for despair. You have only to stuff your doublet and pad your hose until you are as swollen as you like.”

“That,” I protested, “may do very well for your merely commercial actors who have no concern in their acting beyond the matter of drawing a salary; but I, Sir, am an actor, not a mere buffoon, not a vulgar clown to waddle about a stage wagging a hypocritical belly and196 passing off feathers for fat. If I am to play Falstaff, I will be Falstaff, in the flesh as well as in the spirit. My corporosity shall be sincere, my puffing and grunting shall be genuine; I will eat real food and drink real liquor upon your stage, and when I waddle I shall waddle as Nature intended fat men to waddle—because I can not help it. My calves shall be as natural as Sir John’s own, so that if I am pricked with the point of a rapier, I shall give utterance to a howl which is not mere mockery, but as real as a howl may well be, and which will delight the audience as no feigned howl ever could do.

“No, no! I shall not play Falstaff like a clown in a pantomime, but like that very knight himself. My performance shall be as real as the performance of Nature. I will be Sir John redivivus. Falstaff shall live again in me. He shall be I and I will be he, and there is an end of it.”

Well, Sir, to be brief, the manager was so struck with my unusual and, I may say, unaffected, sincerity, that he voluntarily advanced197 me a portion of my salary and agreed to my proposal that, instead of wasting valuable time in rehearsing a part in which I was already practically letter-perfect, my part in the rehearsals should be taken by a substitute, while I retired to the country and devoted myself to my labor of love—to the task of putting on so much flesh as would be necessary to act with fidelity the pursy knight errant. And this I did to so good purpose that from my normal weight of about one hundred and ninety pounds, I soon came to weigh upward of two hundred and eighty, and was as fat as any one could wish when we opened in Henry the Fourth in the Autumn.

To say, Sir, that my performance was a success is to do scant justice to the literary ability of William Shakespeare and to my own histrionic powers. It was not merely a success—it was a triumph! Ah, Sir, if I could but whisper in your ear the name by which I was known in those days of superlative glory, you would recall in the flash of an eye the days when the whole of the English-speaking world was convulsed198 with merriment at my performance and when press and public were vying with each other to do me honor! Never was such a performance of Falstaff given before, and never, I fear, will such a performance be given again. I was Falstaff to the very life! Falstaff in person and not to be mistaken for any one else. You could have sworn that I had stepped bodily out of the pages of the folio edition and thrust my way into the theater of my own volition, usurping the place of the actor.

Four whole seasons we played to crowded houses—New York, Chicago, San Francisco and London—and everywhere the critics all agreed that never had such a perfect Falstaff been seen before. This we followed with The Merry Wives of Windsor, repeating our success for two seasons, so that for six years I was known to every actor and patron of the theater as the greatest Falstaff that ever was.

But Fate, alas! however prodigal she may appear for a time, is not constant in her favors. All things come to an end sooner or later, and our production of The Merry Wives ran its199 course in time. How well do I remember that last night of all—the glitter of the electrics overhead, the glare of the footlights, the music of the orchestra, and, oh, above all else, the thunderous applause that greeted me when I appeared before the curtain, clad in trunks and doublet, to make my farewell speech! There ended our production, and there ended my greatness and my life. My grossness I have still, but my greatness has fled forever! Disconsolate I wander through the haunts of stageland, a fat pale ghost of my former self; a Falstaff out of place and out of time; a Falstaff without jollity or joy. I, Sir, have become that thing which I hate above all other things in the world, I have become an Anachronism!

Conceive, if you can, my consternation when I discovered my dilemma. Having no further need for my excessive flesh, I sought to reduce my weight only to find that I could not lose it! Six years of playing Falstaff had made me Falstaff for good or ill. No fighter of the prize-ring, no beauty of the court, ever labored200 as I labored to struggle back to slimness. No Hamlet ever cried more earnestly than I,

Like Sisyphus, I toiled for months with my burden, rolling off flesh only to have it roll on again, until at last I gave up in despair.

No manager would employ me to play for him—I was too fat. Too fat to act, too fat to play at any part but one. Once only since that time have I tried to obtain an engagement and that was when I saw an advertisement of a revival of my own great play, Henry the Fourth. But would you believe it, Sir, the manager had the impudence to laugh in my face, to deny the truth of my story and scoff at my insistence upon my identity. He called me, Sir, a fat slob! In desperation I tried a Dime Museum, only to be told that no “fat freaks” were employed who weighed less than three hundred and fifty pounds. At last I fell into my present disgraceful situation; I was employed by a restaurant-keeper as a decoy. In the window of one of the cheapest and vilest201 cafés in this city I sit for eight hours daily drawing a crowd about the place while I toy with a knife and fork and pretend to eat of a meal that I would not feed my most bitter enemy. I do not eat it. I can not eat it. And so, Sir, here I sit each day, a mere husk of my former self, a hulk, a wrecked Leviathan! A fraud and a freak; a delusion and a snare. This have I suffered in consequence of my devotion to an ideal—I who was for six years the greatest Falstaff the world has ever known!

202

THE REWARD OF MERIT

Dear Sir: I am an ashman, or, as they call me nowadays, a scavenger. It may appear to you, Sir, a queer thing that a man in my station in life should address a letter to an editor and upon such a subject, but when I have made you acquainted with the facts of my case, I think it will not seem so strange.

It is true that I am now employed as a scavenger, but I was formerly the occupant of a very different station in life; I was formerly a physician. I wish to lay before you what I consider the causes of my descent in the social scale. When a man who has once been a member of an honored profession is reduced to manual labor of a peculiarly disagreeable sort, the common opinion is like to be that he is in some way responsible for his own downfall; that he has fallen a victim to drink or drugs,203 to a passion for gambling, or to some other injurious habit. In my own case, I will not deny that the change in my circumstances is probably due to my own conduct, though I do assure you that it was not caused by my indulgence in the habits which I have mentioned above. To be brief, Sir, I am of the opinion that my present poverty and obscurity is nothing more nor less than the reward of merit.

It has been my observation that most of the favorite theories of the human race are erroneous. They come into being as mere suggestions, they grow into convictions, they thrive as platitudes, and they die as superstitions. There have been millions of them since the world began, and I have no doubt there will be millions of others before the last man has vanished from the face of the earth. Some of these theories live on long after they have been clearly demonstrated to be without foundation in fact, and sometimes they work great harm to the innocent persons who accept and act upon them in good faith. Such has been my sad experience, and the theory which was responsible204 for my present unpleasant situation was the theory that merit is always rewarded.

As a boy I was of a confiding and trusting nature. I believed all that was told me, and I put especial faith in the admonitions and advice of those who were set to instruct me in manners and morals. One of the first lessons I learned was that merit is always rewarded; and another, that industry is the certain road to success and advancement. These things I firmly believed to be true. Sundays, when other boys of my acquaintance stole away to go fishing or swimming, I went to Sunday-school, firm in the conviction that my virtue and self-denial would be amply rewarded, though I was a bit hazy as to the manner in which this would come about. It was often a severe temptation to hear the truants boasting of the pleasures they had enjoyed at the swimming-pool or at the fork of the creek where they went to angle. At the end of my first summer of Sunday-school, I was given a crude picture card showing two cows of peculiar construction who appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely205 in the very river I had shunned so religiously. Upon this card there was printed a conspicuous legend: “The Reward of Merit.”

While this result of my season of piety was not what I had expected, I continued to hope on until I had acquired quite a collection of similar cards, some of them varied a little as to subject, but all of the same order of art, and all bearing the familiar legend. Being of a naturally optimistic and sanguine disposition, I soon convinced myself that my mistake lay in looking for material rewards in return for spiritual industry.

When I entered the profession of medicine, I still clung to my theory of the reward of merit, and no sooner did I get a patient than I set to work to cure him as quickly as possible. If a patient really had nothing the matter with him, I sent him about his business. I was not a nerve specialist and I did not care to be bothered with hypochondriacs. Though I started with an unusually good practise for a young physician, the result of this course of conduct was that I found myself in two years’ time206 sitting idle in my office with my waiting-room absolutely empty. I had cured all my patients who were really ill and I had offended all who only thought they were ill. It seems that one can not offend a man more than by telling him he is well when he prefers to think that he is unwell. My patients who had been cured had no further need of me, and those whom I had refused to treat had no further use for me, so that the tongue of malice completed the work which my own energy had begun. And thus, for the second time, my theory of the reward of merit had failed to work out. Having made one failure as a doctor, I could never again establish myself in the practise of medicine. Wherever I went, the story of my failure had preceded me, so that presently I found myself dropping down and down in the social scale until finally I awoke one morning to find myself a scavenger.

“Now,” said I to myself, “I have touched bottom and I must presently go up again like a man who sinks in the water.” But my hopes were not realized. I remained a collector and207 remover of garbage. My study of hygiene had taught me the evils of filth and I could not, therefore, neglect my work as a less intelligent scavenger might have done. I knew that my clients were depending upon me, in a great degree, to protect them from typhoid and kindred evils, and even though I realized that this dependence was more or less unconscious upon their part, I could no more have shirked my responsibility than I could have gone into their houses and killed them in cold blood. So I went to work earnestly and I flatter myself that there is no more thoroughgoing workman in the whole body of scavengers than myself.

Since I have been engaged in this work I have made another discovery. I have discovered that industry is by no means a sure road to advancement. When my work is well done I am paid, but I am not complimented. The thoroughness of my methods does not attract the attention of my clients. Nobody seeks me out with a proffer of more congenial employment. Everybody appears to take it for granted that I like to collect garbage. I do not.208 I have never been a collector of anything from choice. I used to think that any man who collected stamps must be lacking in intelligence, but I see now that one may be engaged in collecting worse things than stamps. Nobody says anything at all about my work unless something goes wrong. And this, I believe, is usually the case.

I recently read a copy of the Memoirs of Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz, which I retrieved from the ash-can of one of my clients who is of a literary turn, and it was through his receptacle for discarded matter, by the way, that I first made the acquaintance of your excellent publication.

In these Memoirs, which are unusually interesting in many respects, I came upon an anecdote which seems to have a direct bearing upon the question which we are now considering. It appears that Colonel von Pulitz was discussing with a number of other officers the chances and mischances of a military career. Several of the officers had volunteered the causes to which they attributed their success. Colonel von Pulitz209 then related this anecdote, the truth of which he indorses elsewhere, and in this he is borne out by the editor of the autobiography, Professor Rudolph Ubermann, of Berlin University.

“When a young man,” writes Colonel von Pulitz, “I fell into disgrace with my family because of a certain youthful escapade—no matter what—and so forfeited my opportunity for entering the Prussian Army as an officer. I therefore determined to gain by my wits what I had lost by my folly. I was, as you who know me can testify, an unusually tall and fine-looking young man. Now it occurred to me that if I could once attract the attention of the king (he is here referring to Frederick the Great) he would undoubtedly desire me as a recruit for his ‘tall’ regiment, and if I had an opportunity to explain to him my situation, I might, after all, secure my coveted commission. I therefore secured a situation as a servant in the king’s own household, under a fictitious name, of course; and I was highly delighted when I found that I had been delegated210 as one of the waiters at table, for, thought I, now is my great opportunity certainly at hand. But alas for my hopes! The king bestowed upon me no notice whatever, and for all the attention my height secured from his majesty, I might have been a dwarf.

“So it went on for weeks, and I had nearly despaired of my commission when I hit upon the audacious scheme which solved the problem. I determined to attract the king’s notice at any cost, and when next I waited upon him, I deliberately pretended to stumble, and with an air of awkwardness I emptied down the neck of his majesty a plate of exceedingly hot soup. In a moment there was an uproar. The king was in a fury of temper and the majordomo was in a fair way to die of fright and chagrin, but my purpose was accomplished. The king had looked at me. He observed my height and my aristocratic bearing. He questioned me, and I told him my whole story frankly, omitting nothing but the ruse whereby I had brought myself to his notice. I secured my commission in his regiment, and211 from that time on I advanced steadily. The king never forgot me, but kept a friendly eye upon me. He once said in my presence: ‘Gentlemen, I never see a plate of hot soup that I do not think of my good friend the Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.’”

Now, Mr. Idler, I have no opportunity for spilling hot soup down the necks of my clients and my conscience will not permit me to attract their notice by gross neglect of duty. My effective work has failed to bring upon me their favorable regard. Finding myself so situated, and being, even yet, hopeful of some opportunity for bettering myself, I have written you this letter. I have done so in the hope that it may meet the eye of some one of my clients, perhaps that of the literary gentleman through whose barrel I first made your acquaintance and the acquaintance of the ingenious Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.

212

THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND

Dear Sir: Those who are blessed, as the saying is, with two eyes and the gift of sight, are much given to expressing sympathy with, and sorrow for, the blind. It would be churlish to quarrel with so unselfish a sentiment, for it is, indeed, very good-natured of those who are busily engaged in seeing the sights of the world to spare the time and the thought which they give to the sightless. Yet I often wonder if the blind do not sometimes question, as I do, if a great deal of this sympathy is not wasted?

I, Sir, am blind. Totally and irretrievably blind. I have been blind all my life, having been, as the Irish say, “dark” from my birth. Born blind, in fact. My “affliction,” as it is called, being natural, I was born with no blemish to betray my infirmity, and it has so happened upon several occasions that, being213 thrown into the company of those who had not previously been warned of my condition, I have been compelled to make them acquainted with it myself. This information has invariably been the signal for apology and sympathetic pity. From which I infer that men generally feel that the blind are to be pitied and consoled. Also I have read a great deal of the hardship of being blind, though I have never, I confess, been quite able to see wherein that hardship lay. You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me say that I have “read” of this, but I assure you there is no reason to be surprised. If you are at all acquainted with the progress of science, as I suppose you are, you must have heard of raised type. Oh, yes, I read quite as naturally as you, yourself, though I accomplish with my fingers what you do with your eyes.

The result of my reading has been that I have come seriously to question the theory that sight is necessary to human happiness and efficiency. It has been borne in upon me that men possessed of two good eyes are often apparently214 unable to make use of them. I read that men often fall in love with women who seem, to all others, extremely ugly; and that women as often do the same by men. And not only that, but that they are quite frequently completely deceived in the characters of the persons whom they marry, women discovering their husbands to be bullies, and men finding their wives to be viragoes and shrews; and all this when the nuptial knot is tied hard and fast and the damage is beyond repair.

If eyes are really of as much use as those who see seem to think them, how is it possible that people should make such mistakes? Blind as I am, such a thing could never happen to me, nor do I think it could befall any sightless person; certainly not one who has been, as I have, blind from birth. I know the voice of a shrew the moment she opens her mouth, no matter how pleasantly she may speak at the moment. I can point out to you the drunkard, the hypocrite and the boor the moment I have heard them speak. In the tone of his voice every man carries his true certificate of character, be it good215 or bad. An ill-tempered man may conceal his vice from you, who look only at his face and judge his speech by his words, but he can not deceive me, for I know him by his voice. I have been engaged in business for the last thirty years and I have never once been taken in by a swindler. I have never yet been mistaken in the character of a man with whom I dealt. How many seeing men can say as much?

Excepting the human being, we know of no such active or intelligent creature as the ant—the ant who lives in total darkness. Yet does he not build his cities and fight his battles as wisely as we do our own? I sometimes wonder if the possession of the power of sight is not a hindrance, rather than a help, in labor? The ant, who can not see at all, goes straight to his object. He is never distracted by the sight of things along the way. The fly, on the contrary, is possessed of a great many eyes; his head, in fact, is practically all eyes. Yet what is the fly but a parasite, a nuisance, a very vagabond of insects? Attracted hither and thither by everything that meets his gaze, he lights first upon216 one object and then upon another, without rhyme or reason save his overweening curiosity, until he finally falls into a trap and dies an ignoble death in a spider’s web, or caught fast upon a sticky paper. The fly has no social organization, no family life, no mating in any proper sense of the word. He pollutes all that he touches. His entire life is a life of destruction, as opposed to the ant’s, which is a life of construction.

According to the Grecian mythology, the largest race of men the world has ever known, the Cyclops, had but a single eye, and that in the middle of the forehead. The stupidest of all characters of the Grecian myths was Argus, who, though he had more eyes than all the gods and heroes together, yet allowed Hermes to pipe him to sleep and so cut off his head. In the tail of Hera’s peacock, his eyes were of as much use to him as in his own head. Eros, the god of love, was blind; yet he was of all the gods the most joyful. And in this, our own day, is not Justice blind?

Is there, in all this, no significance? Is there217 no hint of an understanding of the secret that, as he who would save his soul must first lose it, so he who would see must first be blind?

Men see, as we say, with the mind as well as with the eye. Men also see with the spirit. Saul never could see the truth and beauty of Christianity until he was stricken blind upon the road to Damascus. But while he was blind, he saw, and so became Paul. Would Homer have been the giant of poets had he had his sight? I doubt it. Would Milton have attained his heights of inspiration, had he retained his vision? I can not believe it. For the man who has physical sight looks upon the earth and the works of men; but he who has only the spiritual sight, lifts up his eyes to God and His angels.

The shepherd lad who has never traveled beyond his native valley dreams a beautiful dream of the world that lies beyond the hills that hem him in. But the tourist lives a life of constant disillusion, for he finds in distant lands, where he had thought to find the abiding-place of Romance, the same humdrum life218 of the commonplace that he left at home.

We who are blind, Mr. Idler, are the shepherd boys of this life. Enclosed in our valley of darkness by the everlasting shadow of our endless night, we dream of the world that lies beyond as a place of beauty and happiness. For us there is no sad disillusion. For us there is no rude awakening from the delights of fancy. For us the sky is always fair and the earth is always sweet. For us the woods are thronged with nymphs and the grasses with the little people of fairyland. We do not know the gloom of age or the horror of decay. We do not know the sight of death.

Do not imagine, Sir, that because we can not see, we can not create images. We can, we do. We dream of the earth as fair as other men may dream of heaven. Because we have never seen beauty, to us all things are beautiful. When I walk in the garden, the scent of the rose rises to my nostrils with a sweetness which is but intensified because I can not see the blossom whence it springs. I finger its fragile petals, and I rejoice in its beauty of form, for you219 must know that one can feel beauty as well as see it. I lean my head against the friendly and sturdy oak and I hear the beating of his heart. For to me all these things live. What does it signify that they can not see, or hear, or speak? I can not see; am I the less a man for that? I learn that nowadays it is possible to communicate with people who are born not only blind, but deaf and dumb as well. That it is possible to teach them to read and to speak, even as I was taught to read and speak. Is it not possible, then, that some day, if we will only try, we may be able to break through the long silence that has separated us from our brothers and sisters of the woods and fields? Already, we who are blind can almost understand the whispered syllables of the rustling leaves and the waving grass. May not some other, one perhaps more closely shut in with God than we, reach downward as well as upward, and bring about the universal understanding? I hope it may be so.

My wife, who had the sweetest voice of any girl I ever knew, is as fair to me to-day as220 upon the day when I first fell in love. Her voice, if anything, has grown more pleasant as she has grown older. She, too, is blind, and together we enjoy a state of happiness which comes as near to being perpetual youth as it is possible for mortals to attain. How infinitely better this seems to me, than to be compelled, day after day, to watch the fading of that flower of my early love! To observe anxiously the lines of care creeping into that dearly beloved countenance; to see the snow of many winters slowly whiten her soft smooth hair! What a kindness of the good God is this, that she remains forever young to me, as I do to her, and that our passion knows nothing of the insidious poison of departing comeliness!

Curiously enough, our only child, the dearly beloved son who was the fruit of our attachment, has a perfect vision. And this, Mr. Idler, odd as it may seem to you who are accustomed to look upon this matter from a different point of view, is the one worry of my life. Many a night have I lain awake, listening to the gentle221 breathing of my wife at my side, and turned over and over in my mind the dangers which he must face because of his condition. Often have I prayed God that He might watch over him and turn aside his eyes from the ugliness, the sin and the temptation, which his mother and I have mercifully been spared! It is hard, in any case, to have the child grow up and go out into the world. But it is infinitely more hard to know that he is almost as though he were of another race of beings, and that he must endure the sight of pain, of misery, of squalor, of poverty and of age! That he must be subject to temptations for which I can not prepare him, having never met with them myself.

I once read a story of a man who became mysteriously possessed of the power to read the thoughts of all those with whom he came in contact. At first he was transported into the seventh heaven of delight, reveling in the sense of his new-found power. But soon he came to realize what a curse had fallen upon222 him. Turn where he would, he found the minds of men filled with envy, malice and evil. The fairest faces served to hide from others, but not from him, the most ignoble minds. Beneath the frankest and most friendly manner he often read the secret hatred and jealousy. Confronted upon all sides with the evidence of the wickedness and baseness of his fellows, he was at last driven to despair, and by one desperate act destroyed both his power and his life.

Mr. Idler, were I suddenly to be granted the gift of sight, I think that I should feel like that. It is hard enough to read of some things. I should not care to look upon them.

There have been those who, hearing me speak so of sight, have answered, “That is because you have never been able to see. You do not know what a blessing sight is, because you have never enjoyed it!” Sometimes I comfort myself with the thought that it is like that with our son. He can see, but he was born that way and he will never know the difference. Gradually he will grow used to looking upon things which I could not endure to behold. God has223 chosen to give him the harder part; may He grant him the strength to bear it!

224

A TALE OF A MAD POET’S WIFE

Dear Sir: I have long been an interested reader of your interesting periodical, though I have not hitherto presumed to address you, either personally or in your character as editor. I have ever had an aversion for that type of person who is constantly rushing into print to air personal troubles and casting upon the shoulders of the public the burdens which should rightly be borne upon his own. I have observed, however, that a great many of your readers do not scruple to address you in this respect and are quite in the habit of writing you for advice upon their personal affairs, and, since you do not appear to find this burdensome, I have determined to make known to you my own pitiable plight, in the hope that you, or some of your readers, may be able to suggest some method of relief; for, indeed, I am225 deep in trouble, from which I seem utterly unable to extricate myself by my own devices. Lest I weary you, I shall tell my sad story in the fewest possible words.

While yet a very young woman I fell in love with a poet. In this there was nothing especially noteworthy, since, I suppose, all women go through this experience at some time of life. The unfortunate feature of my own affair was that it ended quite as I wished it to end—in my marriage. I soon learned that the qualities which make the poet so satisfactory a suitor do not always appear in so favorable a light when he has become a husband. I found it very sweet and charming during our courtship that my lover should be concerned with my spiritual welfare and that his thoughts should never descend to the common affairs of life. It would have seemed almost like sacrilege to ask him to consider with me the sordid problems which are commonly inflicted upon young men of grosser clay when they have proposed marriage to a young woman. So certain was I that any mention of such trivialities would mortally offend226 my fiancé that I would permit neither my father nor my brothers to question him upon the subject of his financial condition. For this sentimental whim I very nearly paid with my happiness, for I found soon after we had been wed that these questions must inevitably be considered sooner or later, and whereas it had formerly been only a question of the expediency of my marriage, it was now become a matter of vital importance.

Fortunately, I have always been of an excellent wheedling disposition, so much so that my father used to say I could coax a Scotchman into extravagance or a politician into honesty by merely smiling upon him. I turned this natural gift to account in the case of my husband by inducing him to constitute me his business agent. I then went about among the editors selling his verse, and in this I was so successful that he was soon supplying no less than a third of the current verse which was printed in the six or seven leading monthly magazines published in this city. No doubt you have often heard poets express227 surprise at the amount of rather mediocre poetry which finds its way into the columns of standard publications. You may understand this more readily when I tell you that several other writers of magazine poetry, learning of our own arrangement, immediately set about acquiring handsome and attractive wives, to whom they turned over their output, never appearing at the offices of the editors in person but always sending their wives as their representatives.

In this way we managed very well for several years, though latterly I have encountered one or two editors who were apparently either very near-sighted or peculiarly unsusceptible. We were doing very well, however, and my husband had acquired a wide reputation, so that he was often invited to lecture before associations of one sort or another and to give readings at entertainments in private dwellings. This added to our income, but both of us by now being under the necessity of always appearing dressed in the very neatest and most attractive fashion, we soon found that228 whatever sum we had left over from current living expenses went for keeping up appearances; so that we were able to live very well but were by no means enabled to lay by a competence for the future.

It was at this stage of our career, which is to say some three years gone, when we were doing better than we ever had before, that the sad blow fell upon us which has cast a shadow over our household, and which has left me, at the age of forty, a widow in all but name and a pauper in anticipation, if not already one in fact. My husband had been invited to speak before a certain literary club or society, and as was always his custom, had accepted without hesitation. Little did he realize, when he carelessly mentioned this appointment to me, that it would be his last public appearance for a long time to come—perhaps forever! Little did I know when he left our apartment that evening, looking so debonair and engaging in his faultless evening attire, that I should next behold him a pitiful wreck—a driveling idiot!229 Yet, Mr. Idler, this was, alas! what befell your wretched correspondent. He came back to me from that reading a man without understanding, a mental incompetent, a man who, despite his stalwart frame and glowing health of body, exhibited all the symptoms of senile decay! A man who could scarcely scrawl his own name in legible fashion, to say nothing of inditing sonnets, quatrains and ballads.

And what, Mr. Idler, do you suppose those heartless wretches who composed that literary society had done to my innocent and harmless husband? Not content with having him read his verses, they had insisted that he explain them! And he, poor weak man that he was, yielded to the unhappy vanity which is the birthright of all poets, and had attempted to comply with their request. The result you already know. His mind was completely overturned. He has spent the time since that dreadful evening in dictating to an imaginary stenographer a critical appreciation of each rhyme in Mother Goose. Only once has he attempted230 anything in the way of original poetry, which I hastened to jot down in shorthand, and which was so puerile, so empty of all meaning, that I could not forbear to weep heartbrokenly as I transcribed my notes.

Now, Mr. Idler, what redress have I against those inhuman creatures, those compassionless brutes, who brought my husband to this pass? Can I sue them in a court of law? Or must I bear without compensation the dreadful sorrow which has befallen me? I beg of you, advise me at once, as I do not know which way to turn.

P. S.—All is come right after all, Mr. Idler. After writing you the above, yesterday morning, I determined to make one more desperate trial. I took around to an editor the one original poem, of which I spoke, which my husband had dictated in his madness. That editor has just called me on the telephone to say that the poem will be printed in the next number of his231 magazine, and that he finds it by far the best that my husband has ever submitted. And so, please God, it may turn out that his misfortune will prove to be a blessing in disguise.

Dear Sir: Thackeray once said: “Every one knows what harm the bad may do, but who knows the mischief done by the good?” It appears to me that there is a valuable suggestion in this query which merits the consideration of all men who live under a civilized government, and especially the attention of young men who are about to enter upon the serious business of life. Young people, being by nature somewhat lacking in logic, are prone to consider everything that is good per se as a thing which must necessarily be good in its effect, and similarly to class all thing which are bad in themselves as bad in their effects. Nothing could be more erroneous than this assumption. There is no man who will maintain that a beating is a thing which is good in itself; yet I am old-fashioned enough to believe that many a beating233 has been very salutary in its effect. Early in life, I fell into this common error of confusing the inherent quality of an act with the quality of its effect, and it is in the hope that I may save some worthy young man the miseries resulting from such an error that I am writing this letter.

As Mr. James Coolidge Carter points out in his book, Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function, and as Blackstone and others pointed out before him, all law originates in custom. As a custom becomes general—so general as to be termed the common custom among a given people—it is usually enacted as law. And even where such legislative sanction is wanting, a general custom takes on the force of law and operates as law, as is the case with the great body of the common law of England. Thus, a custom, which in the beginning all are free to adopt or to reject as they may see fit, eventually acquires the force of a rule to which all are obliged to conform, whether from strict legal necessity or merely by force of public opinion.

The law, theoretically at least and actually in most cases, is merely the expression of a public sentiment. It is the constant tendency of all uniform and generally prevalent customs and opinions to take on the form of law. The general disapproval of profanity, for instance, results in laws providing penalties for the use of profane language in public places. Practically all ordinances may be traced to the same source of public sentiment. Not all laws, however, represent the will of the majority. Certain of our laws are representative of the general opinion of all mankind, others of the sentiments of a majority of mankind, and still others of the ideas and prejudices of an active minority. To the extent that such habits, ideas, customs, opinions and prejudices become crystallized into law, the members of a community become enslaved to those habits, ideas, customs, opinions and prejudices; since a departure from them is followed by penalties and punishments. And there are some customs which, while not actually laws, exert quite as strong an influence upon the average citizen as the duly enacted235 statutes. The fear of social ostracism is often quite as effective a check upon the inclinations of an individual as the fear of legal punishment.

Now, as every man is the slave of general laws and customs, so, in a lesser sense, is he the slave of his own personal habits. And oddly enough this is more often true of good habits than of bad ones. Should the town drunkard make a sudden resolution to reform, the town may laugh, but nobody will condemn his resolution to mend his ways; nobody will be scandalized at his change of habits. But should the leader of the local prohibitionists suddenly resolve to test the joys of inebriety, what a protest would go up on all sides! Even the town drunkard would sneer and despise him as a man who had fallen from his high estate. Much as the inebriate may dislike the sincere teetotaler, he dislikes the ex-teetotaler even more. No, every man is a slave to his good habits and he can not hope to change them without exciting the animosity of all who know him.

I recall reading not long ago a story of an eastern governor who was caught in the act of smoking a cigarette. Now, there was nothing especially horrifying about the fact that he smoked cigarettes except for the fact that he was the vice-president of an anti-cigarette society. Under the circumstances this governor, who is in all probability a capable and fairly honest executive, has endangered, if he has not destroyed, his political future—and all for the matter of a cigarette! While it may seem an injustice to him that he be made to suffer a political eclipse for so slight a lapse, there is hardly a smoker who will not heartily agree with the idly busy people who make up the anti-cigarette league, that the governor deserves all the punishment his outraged associates may choose to inflict upon him. He has been a double renegade; for he has betrayed his fellow smokers by publicly indorsing the aims of the society, and he has betrayed his fellow members of the society by privately indulging in the very habit which the society condemns.

And the general public may very justly condemn him not because he smokes cigarettes—but because he has played the hypocrite. This statesman is evidently one of those foolish men who believe that it pays to appear better than one really is, and that an undeserved reputation for abstinence and virtue is better than none. And of all the possible attitudes that he might have assumed in this connection, the one which he did assume was the worst, for it was the most hypocritical and insincere. And what monumental folly! For the sake of a cigarette he has jeopardized his career—by such a slender thread is the Damoclean sword of public opprobrium suspended!

But I am digressing. I did not intend to write you a dissertation upon the follies of politicians, but to set forth, in some sort, the results of my own stupidity in failing to discover early in life the tyranny of custom and habit.

I am, as you may possibly have conjectured, a member of the legal profession; which profession I have followed with some degree of238 success for the last thirty years. I think I may say without boasting that I have attained an enviable reputation among my colleagues of the bar as an able advocate and a man possessed of a logical mind and a rather extensive knowledge of the “delightful fictions of the law.” I have no complaint to make upon the score of my professional career. If it has not led me to eminence, it has at least preserved me from want. My practise, while general and not so profitable as that of some legal specialists of my acquaintance, is yet sufficiently lucrative to enable me to maintain a comfortable establishment at home and to pay without pinching the expenses of my son’s collegiate and my daughter’s “finishing school” education. I have a comfortable home, a healthy and happy family, a prosperous business, a large number of congenial friends and a hale and hearty constitution. Doubtless you will say that I am blessed beyond the majority of mankind. Doubtless I am, and doubtless, too, beyond my deserts. But for all these blessings, which are obviously much to be desired, there is, so to239 speak, a fly in the ointment of my contentment. And that is just this—I have too good a reputation! In me, Sir, you may behold a man who has become an abject slave to good Reputation. Totally unknown to the great majority of my millions of fellow countrymen, and having but a modest degree of celebrity among the members of my own profession, I am yet compelled to be as careful of my speech and as circumspect in my actions as if I were the Czar of all the Russias! I am bound hand, foot and tongue by the ties of a lifetime; I am manacled at the cart-tail of Respectability; I am pilloried in the pillory of Dignified Demeanor! If you will bear with me a bit longer, I shall endeavor to explain my present situation.

I was born and reared in the little Missouri town where I now reside. I am personally acquainted with practically every man, woman and child in the place, which, while not exactly a village, is hardly large enough to be called a city outside of the columns of our local newspapers. The present county attorney is a young240 man of thirty whom I trotted on my knee and for whom I made kites many years ago. The county judge and I fell out many years ago because he insisted that we had been playing marbles for “keeps”, while I maintained that we had been playing merely for fun. We are now the best of friends, however, and there is no judge in the state who passes heavier sentences on convicted gamblers than he. The pastor of the church which I attend is a lad who in former years was a member of the Sunday-school class I taught and which used to embarrass me with all sorts of questions concerning the wives of Cain and Abel and the origin of the inhabitants of the Land of Nod. And so it is; I know them all and they all know me.

“Jimmy” Vance is our family physician; he is the family physician for at least a third of our population. He has been helping the people of our town to be born and to die for more than thirty years—but he is still “Jimmy”. Jimmy and I were born in the same year. It was once a joke with us to call ourselves “twins” on this account. But Jimmy and I are241 “twins” no longer. Jimmy is still a smooth-faced boy at fifty-five, while I am a gray-bearded oldster. You may gather something of my life when I tell you that though my Christian names are Jeremiah Samuel (I do not give my surname for reasons you will understand), I have never, since my twenty-first year, been addressed either as “Jerry” or “Sam”. My wife calls me “Jeremiah”, as do my other relatives, while my business associates and friends never grow more familiar than “Jeremiah S.”

When I determined to enter upon the study and practise of the law, my maternal uncle, who was himself a practising attorney, became a sort of supplementary preceptor to me by virtue of his avuncular relationship. He assisted me in my studies and when the time came for me to be admitted to the bar, he gave me a deal of what he no doubt considered sound advice as to my future conduct. “Jeremiah,” said he, “there is no profession on earth which is a more serious business than the law. Men do not go to law for fun. Nobody brings a242 lawsuit for mere amusement. When clients come to you they will come because they have serious business on hand and they want a sober competent man to attend to it for them. It is no joke to them and they don’t want you to joke about it. Now, my advice to you—which you may take or leave as you see fit—is always to keep a straight face. No matter how funny a case may seem to you, don’t laugh. Your dignity will be more than half your capital; see that you don’t forget your dignity.”

Such was the advice of my maternal uncle. And such was the character I assumed upon entering the practise of the law. From the day I drew my first real brief I became the very essence of dignity. I even wooed and won my wife in the character of a dignified young man of serious mind and purpose. She has never in all these years suspected my innate frivolity. Should I yield to my natural impulse and indulge in the nonsense and fun which has ever been so dear to my heart, I am convinced that she would at once lose all respect for me, if, indeed, she did not think me suddenly insane. I243 am grave. Under all conditions and circumstances I am as grave as an undertaker. I do smile now and then, but it is generally the indulgent superior smile which I labored so hard to acquire when young and which I can not now shake off. I have been dignified so long that my dignity has become a part of me—not really a part of my inward personality—but a part of my outward appearance; I should feel naked and ashamed without it; it would seem like going about half-dressed. I am so grave that nobody ever tells me a funny story excepting the kind that one tells a minister. They are afraid to be natural when in my presence. As Midas turned everything he touched to gold, so I turn all my friends to bores. No sooner do I come into my house than the whole family stops talking and waits to hear what I have to say. Nobody dares to interrupt me; nobody presumes to contradict me, unless it be old Brownly, who is our oldest inhabitant and so considers himself somewhere near my own age. Every one is grave when with me. That is, every one but Jimmy.244 Jimmy has always seen through my pose and Jimmy takes a malicious pleasure in pretending he is young when with me.

From the day I entered upon the practise of the law, I modeled my conduct upon that of my maternal uncle who was, as my boy Tom says, “as cheerful as a crutch.” I abandoned the bright colored scarfs which have always delighted my eye, and I donned the sober black bow tie which I wear to this day. Striped and checked clothing gave way to the non-committal pepper-and-salt suit of indefinite hue which has been my unvarying garb from that day to this. And I grew that Vandyke beard, to which, I am convinced, I owed my early reputation for learning and even now owe a good part of the respect which I command. My beard is as fixed an institution as our local literary club. Fashion has at least relieved me of the necessity of wearing a top hat, or “plug” as we call it here; but fashion will never relieve me of my beard, for beards may come and beards may go, but mine grows on forever. Should I shave that beard it would electrify245 the community. My wife would regard me with suspicion, my children with pity, my friends with mirth and my clients with horror. I verily believe that old Brown the banker, who is my best client, would be less shocked should I tell him that I had forgotten how to frame a complaint or draw a mortgage, than if he should walk into my office and find me clean-shaven.

And as it is with dress, so it is with other things. Jimmy Vance, although a doctor, never affected that dignity which has come to be my strongest personal characteristic. Jimmy never imitated anybody’s dignity. And as a consequence Jimmy is as free as the wind. If he wants to smoke, he does it. If he wants to drink, he takes a drink. If he wants to go roller-skating, he goes. And nobody ever thinks of objecting to anything he does. Jimmy has never led any one to expect any particular sort of conduct from him. He is full of surprises and nobody likes him the less for it. I can drink at my club—occasionally—or at a banquet, or at home; but I can not go246 into a bar like Jimmy and shake dice with a traveling man. I can smoke, but I could not chew tobacco. I can read, but I can not read light novels—that is, not unless I hide away to do it. If I were to go into our public library and ask for The Siege of the Seven Suitors I honestly think that old Miss Peters, our librarian, would faint dead away. Now it isn’t that I want to do these things which irks me, so much as the fact that I want to be able to do them if I feel like it. I thank God I have escaped the gravest danger which lies in the acquisition of too good habits—I have never become what so many men of super-excellent reputations do become—a hypocrite. I have been a poser, a pretender, a rebel—ah, I have fairly seethed with rebellion against the tyranny of this fictitious self at times!—but I have never broken my habits on the sly. I have lived up to the straw man I so foolishly put in my place; I have gone around and around in my lock-step of respectability when I felt that I might gladly have died for a single year of247 absolute personal freedom; I have made my bed and like Damiens I have lain chained to it with iron chains for years; and never before now have I cried aloud!

And Jimmy! What a life is Jimmy’s! Jimmy is as prosperous as I; as respected as I; far happier than I; and ah, how much more is Jimmy loved than I!

When the girls go away to boarding-school, Jimmy kisses them good-by; when they come home again, Jimmy kisses them hello. Jimmy never misses an opportunity to kiss them, coming or going. But who cares? Nobody. “It’s only old Jimmy,” the girls say. “It’s only old Jimmy,” echo their sweethearts. “It’s only Jimmy’s way!” giggle their mothers—for Jimmy kisses them, too; Jimmy is no fool. But suppose I should try it? Who would say, “It’s only old Jeremiah?”

Since there is small danger that your magazine will ever be read by any one who will recognize me in this letter, I don’t mind confessing that I did try it once; it is the only sin248 of the sort that I have on my conscience after twenty-five years of dignity, domestic and foreign. It was last year that it happened. The girl had been visiting one of my daughter’s chums for the Christmas vacation and she was one of the guests at the Christmas party we had at our house. I came into the front hall and found her standing all alone, directly under the mistletoe. I looked at her standing there so sweet and pretty and so unconscious of the mistletoe, and I wondered how it would feel to kiss some one on the lips. I have been kissed on the forehead for years. Even my children kiss me on the forehead. They learned to do that early, when they explained that my beard was “cratchy”. I looked at the girl again. I was tempted and I fell. That is, I tried to fall, but she wouldn’t let me.

That’s it! That’s always been it, and that always will be it—I’m not that kind of an old man!

250

THE FRUIT OF FAME

Dear Sir: I have told many strange and distressing stories in my time; tales of struggle, of suffering, of sorrow and of bitter disappointment; for I, Sir, am an author, and the telling of tales has long been my vocation. But of all the tales which I have spun from the thread of my inner consciousness, there is none, I believe, more strange or more filled with disillusionment than the true story which I am about to tell you now.

I began writing at an early age. Indeed, I was writing short stories while yet in the high school and selling them before I had done with college. The history of my younger years does not differ greatly from that of most young authors; it is the history of an existence which would have been inexpressibly sordid had it not been glorified by youthful hope and251 ambition. I married young and was forced to write constantly in order to make both ends meet. The years went slipping by almost unnoticed until suddenly one day I awoke to find myself upon the verge of middle age and realized that for years I had been postponing the writing of my first real book, meanwhile falling unconsciously into the habit of giving all of my attention to the market value of what I wrote and growing more and more indifferent to the question of its literary merit. I had, in fact, become a confirmed hack-writer.

The discovery shocked me into action. I determined then and there that I would write a novel worthy of my powers if I had to give to that task the time which should be employed in rest and sleep. I had never taken many holidays; now I took none at all. Every odd moment was employed on the great task which should lift me out of the rut and transform me from a mere fiction machine into a creative artist. I shall not bore you with the details of that work; how I toiled far into the night and arose before daybreak to finish a252 chapter or retouch a paragraph; how I struggled with my style which had become corrupted and florid from the writing of sensational stories of adventure; how I tossed in my bed when I should have been sleeping, made wakeful by the excitement under which I labored. Suffice it to say, through infinite pains and toil I finally wrote the last line of The Pin-headed Girl, and sent it off to Messrs. Buckram and Sons with a high heart. It was accepted.

The publishers, according to their usual custom, offered me a royalty of ten per cent.; for you must know, Sir, that it is only the established and successful author who can make his own terms. We poor devils who are appearing in cloth for the first time must be content with what is offered, for no publisher considers a meritorious manuscript a recommendation in any way equal to a well-known name. The book of a famous author, like a notorious brand of soap, is supposed to sell itself, whereas, in the case of an unknown scribbler, a demand for the work must be created by advertising. Now253 it is an axiom with publishers that a modern novel, unless it happen to be a story of extraordinary vitality, is dead in six months. With the birth of the autumn list, the spring list dies, which is to say, when the books which appear in the autumn are thrown upon the market, the demand for those which appeared in the spring is immediately checked and often dies out altogether. In six months novels are old; good only for bargain sales, second-hand stores and circulating libraries. It is therefore necessary that a book achieve a good sale in the first six months if it is to enjoy such a sale at all.

Realizing this and taking into consideration the fact that The Pin-headed Girl was the work of a literary nobody, my publishers set industriously to work to create a reputation for me. I will say for them that they spared no expense in making my name familiar to the public. It was flaunted on every side, so that no man could ride in the subway, pick up a magazine or open a theater program without being made acquainted with the fact that254 Hackett A. Long was the author of The Pin-headed Girl. No man could read a literary supplement or a monthly review without learning that I took coffee with my breakfast; had a fondness for Russian boar-hounds (never having owned one); preferred reading opera scores to hearing the singers; did most of my work between the hours of three and five in the afternoon; disliked Bohemian restaurants; bought my cigarettes by the hundred; wore a wing collar; and many other things, some of which were true and some not. If you glanced at any of the illustrated papers at that time, you must have seen me riding in my six-cylinder roadster (loaned for the occasion by the obliging publisher), sitting upon the stoop of my cottage by the sea, or seated, pen in hand, at my desk in the very act of producing literature. I assure you, Sir, your correspondent was no inconsiderable figure in the public eye at that time.

This activity upon the part of my publishers was not without results. The first person to show the effect of my sudden leap into notoriety255 was my wife. She assured me that as a well-known author I must pay some heed to appearances. I must no longer lodge in a third-class apartment-house without hall-boys or elevators. When my fellow celebrities sought me out to offer me congratulations upon my masterpiece, they must find me in a suitable environment. We must have an apartment fitting for an author already notable and soon to take a well-deserved place among the foremost writers of the day; an apartment which should be expensive without being pretentious, furnished in such a fashion that any one could discern at a glance the touch of the man of taste and refinement, the natural aristocrat, the man of temperament; in a word, the artist. Having settled the question of the apartment, she next turned her attention to my wardrobe, which was, I confess, sadly in need of attention. I must no longer go about in ready-made clothing. I must patronize a fashionable tailor, I must dress for dinner, I must buy me a soft hat with a bow at the back. I must cease my writing of lurid short stories256 and hair-raising serials; to do pot-boilers for cheap monthlies and weeklies was beneath the dignity of an author of recognized standing. You may well believe that this unaccustomed notoriety was not without its effect upon me, but I was not so carried away by it as was my optimistic mate. I hung back a little; I protested.

“It is all very well, my dear,” said I, “to talk so glibly of giving up my short stories and my serials, but we must consider that they have been, and still are, my chief if not my only source of revenue. They are nothing to be proud of, I admit. They are cheap, shoddy, stupid and entirely unworthy of the pen that wrote The Pin-headed Girl. But, my dear, they pay.”

“That,” said my wife, “is a consideration which had some weight before the publication of your novel, but an author so well known as you now are can certainly have no need to depend upon such puerile compositions for his income.”

I thereupon called her attention to the fact257 that my contract with the publishers called for a semi-annual accounting and settlement, and that under this agreement, no matter how much money might be due me, I could not hope to collect any of it until six months after the date of publication. To which she replied, truthfully enough, that it would be easy for me to obtain anything we might want on credit. The upshot of it was, Sir, that I yielded to her persuasion and began to live in a manner which was little short of princely as compared with our previous hand-to-mouth existence. I stopped writing pot-boilers and set to work upon my second novel which I named, very aptly as I then thought, Out of the Woods. Where my first novel had been three years in the making, my second was finished in five months, for I now had plenty of time at my disposal, and I sent it off confidently enough to Buckram and Sons, and with it, a letter in which I made it clear that I would expect a larger share of the profits upon my second story than I had been content to accept in the case of The Pin-headed Girl. For, as258 I pointed out to them, whereas the author of The Pin-headed Girl had been an unknown scribbler, the author of Out of the Woods was a well-known novelist who possessed the name which had been wanting in the first instance.

You can, perhaps, fancy my surprise and consternation when I received a letter from Buckram and Sons enclosing their statement of the sales of The Pin-headed Girl and a check for seventy-two dollars and fifty cents in full payment of all royalties to date. In spite of the money expended in advertising, the sale of the book had not exceeded five hundred copies. The letter further stated that Messrs. Buckram and Sons regretted to inform me that they were returning the manuscript of Out of the Woods, as they could not consider publishing another of my books upon the heels of such a failure as The Pin-headed Girl.

This sudden collapse of my castles in Spain left me completely demoralized, but it had no such effect upon my wife. She was astonished at the failure of the book, but she held firmly259 to her position that whatever the fate of the book might be, the fact remained that I was now a celebrated man. I could not be blamed, she argued, because the book had proved a failure. It was my part of the business to write the book, it was the publisher’s part to sell it. I had performed my part, but Buckram and Sons had most lamentably failed to perform theirs. If they could not sell a book which had been so well advertised as The Pin-headed Girl, that simply went to show that they had a very poor selling organization, and the very fact that they had spent so much money in advertising a book which afterward proved a failure, was in itself a proof that they were no business men. In short, the only thing for me to do was to find a new publisher for Out of the Woods; preferably some energetic young man who would not only make a success of the second book, but who would realize something from the advertising expended upon the first.

This unanswerable argument encouraged me a little and I submitted the second book to260 Franklin Format who, although a young man and a new man to the business, already had several “best sellers” to his credit. A few days later he sent for me and when I was seated in his office, he told me that he had read my manuscript with interest and had found it most entertaining, but before making me any offer, he would like to know if the book had been submitted to my regular publishers. His was a young house, he said, and he could not afford to antagonize so influential a firm as Buckram and Sons by stealing away one of its authors. I replied that the book had been offered to them but that they had refused to publish it. He raised his eyebrows at this and asked the reason for their refusal. In my innocence I answered truthfully that Buckram and Sons did not want my second book because they had been unable to sell my first. On hearing this he remarked sympathetically that it had been a very bad season for novels and that several on his own list had fallen quite flat. Indeed, his own losses had been so great that he had been looking about for some author with a261 “selling name” to help him out of his difficulties. Under the circumstances, however, it would be rank folly, not only upon his part, but upon mine, to issue another novel bearing my name at a time when the memory of my first ill-starred book was still fresh in the minds of the booksellers; for while the public might know nothing of the failure, the booksellers would most certainly recall it upon seeing my name on a wrapper, and without orders from the booksellers one might as well burn a book in manuscript as to let it die more expensively in covers. The best thing for me to do would be to wait a year or two until the memory of The Pin-headed Girl had completely faded from their minds. In two years’ time it would certainly be as completely forgotten as if it had never been written, and I then might venture, with some hope of success, upon another novel.

And there, Sir, the matter rests. In some mysterious way the word has been passed around among the publishers that The Pin-headed Girl was a disastrous investment and262 not one of them will touch Out of the Woods. My wife threatens to leave me if I abandon novel-writing and go back to my pot-boilers; she says she could not bear the disgrace of acknowledged failure and that I must maintain my present position as a celebrated author at all hazards. I have applied to several editors of my acquaintance for editorial positions and they have all replied that they had nothing to offer me which would be worth my consideration or worthy of my talents. My first novel has left me with a reputation, a two-years lease of an expensive apartment, a load of debts, an angry wife, a scrap-book filled with favorable reviews, an unsalable manuscript and a prospect of bankruptcy.

This, Sir, is the true story of a writer who achieved his ambition of becoming a well-known novelist. If any reader of your journal, now engaged in hack-writing and enjoying comfortable obscurity, cherishes an ambition like mine, let him be warned by my example, lest through the blighting touch of the publicity agent he be forced, as I am, to choose263 between beginning life anew under an assumed name or slowly starving to death in the midst of luxury.

Transcriber’s Note

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unpaired.

Page 1: Transcriber removed redundant book title.

Page 27: The chapter title was printed as “A PURITIAN IN BOHEMIA,” but was changed here to “A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA,” as that matches the spelling in the Table of Contents and in other uses of the word elsewhere in the book.

Page 173: The chapter title was printed as “THE ABUSES OF ADVERSISY,” but was changed here to “THE ABUSES OF ADVERSITY,” as that matches the spelling in the Table of Contents and in other uses of the word elsewhere in the book.

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		PAGE
I	A Philosophical Cook	1
II	A Bachelor on Women	16
III	On Pensioning Writers	20
IV	A Puritan in Bohemia	27
V	An Arraignment of Originality	42
VI	A Flattering Tribute	51
VII	The Riddle of a Dream	53
VIII	Beds for the Bad	61
IX	Is Chesterton a Man Alive?	69
X	From a Hunchback	77
XI	From a Hotel Sponge	89
XII	From Sarah Shelfworn	96
XIII	From Anna Pest	104
XIV	From Seth Shirtless	110
XV	Sartor-Psychology	118
XVI	Mr. Body Protests	126
XVII	On a Certain Condescension in Fashion Writers	138
XVIII	Of Looking Backward	146
XIX	The Literary Life	155
XX	The Poetic License	162
XXI	The Necessity for Beggars	168
XXII	The Abuses of Adversity	173
XXIII	The Science of Making Enemies	182
XXIV	The Fate of Falstaff	192
XXV	The Reward of Merit	202
XXVI	The Blessings of the Blind	212
XXVII	A Tale of a Mad Poet’s Wife	224
XXVIII	The Lock-Step	232
XXIX	The Fruit of Fame	250

The Project Gutenberg eBook, New Brooms, by Robert J. (Robert James) Shores

E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)

NEW BROOMS

CONTENTS

NEW BROOMS

A PHILOSOPHICAL COOK

A BACHELOR ON WOMEN

ON PENSIONING WRITERS

A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA

AN ARRAIGNMENT OF ORIGINALITY

A FLATTERING TRIBUTE

THE RIDDLE OF A DREAM

BEDS FOR THE BAD

IS CHESTERTON A MAN ALIVE?

FROM A HUNCHBACK

FROM A HOTEL SPONGE

FROM SARAH SHELFWORN

FROM ANNA PEST

FROM SETH SHIRTLESS

SARTOR-PSYCHOLOGY

MR. BODY PROTESTS

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FASHION WRITERS

OF LOOKING BACKWARD

THE LITERARY LIFE

THE POETIC LICENSE

THE NECESSITY FOR BEGGARS

THE ABUSES OF ADVERSITY

THE SCIENCE OF MAKING ENEMIES

THE FATE OF FALSTAFF

THE REWARD OF MERIT

THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND

A TALE OF A MAD POET’S WIFE

THE LOCK-STEP

THE FRUIT OF FAME

Transcriber’s Note

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E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard,
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Internet Archive
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START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
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