The Pardoner's Wallet

by Samuel McChord Crothers

THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEACEMAKERS

TO one who aspires to “sit and shake in Rabelais’ easy-chair,” the greeting “Peace on Earth” is a godsend. Was ever such a provocative to satire? Did ever human nature appear in a disguise more ridiculously transparent than when assuming the part of Peacemaker in the midwinter pantomimes, and impudently laying claim to the very choicest beatitude? The bold masquerader has not even the grace to hide his big stick, but waves it as a wand. We are asked to believe that the vigorous flourishes of this same big stick prepare for the age of peace “by prophets long foretold.”

“Have you ever been to a Peace Convention?” asks the amateur cynic. “It is good fun if you are fortunate enough to be able to watch the proceedings from the seat of the scornful. First come the advocates of Peace pure and simple, enthusiasts for non-resistance. As you listen to the reports of the delegates you feel that the time has already come when ‘the lion shall eat straw like the ox.’ Your sympathies go out to the poor beast in his sudden change of diet,—for we of the Carnivora have no great appetite for straw. After a time the lions are led out to speak for themselves. Representatives of the different nations give greetings. It appears from their remarks that the cause is one that has always been nearest to their valiant hearts. No need to take measures to convert them,—they have always been on the right side. What were teeth and claws invented for, if not to enforce peace on earth?

“Each nation points with pride to its achievements. Has not Great Britain made peace in South Africa, and the United States of America established it in the Philippines; and was not Russia a while ago endeavoring to establish it in Manchuria? Even the little powers are at work for the same end. Is not disinterested Belgium making peace on the banks of the Congo, with rubber and ivory as a by-product? Has not Holland for these many years been industriously weeding out the malcontents in Java? The Christian message of good will has now reached the most remote recesses of the earth. Even the monks in Thibet have heard the good news. They must pay a good round sum for it, to be sure; but what else could they expect when the message must be carried to them away up on the roof of the world, quite beyond the limits of the free delivery? It’s their own fault that they never got into full connection with Christendom before. These unsocial creatures have for generations been enjoying a selfish peacefulness of their own. They have been like a householder who has a telephone, but will not allow his number to go on the book. He likes to bother other people, but will not allow them to bother him. It has long been known that the Mahatmas in Llassa were in the habit of projecting thought vibrations to the ends of the earth, and muddling the brains of the initiated; but the general public could not reciprocate. The British expedition has changed all that. Now when Christendom rings them up they’ve got to answer.”

That word “Christendom” has a singular effect upon the cynic. It draws out all his acrid humor; for it seems to him the quintessence of hypocrisy.

“Christian nations! Christian civilization! A fine partnership this, between the brutal and the spiritual! In the pre-Christian era war was a very simple thing. Read the record of an Israelitish expedition in the Book of Chronicles. ‘And they went to the entrance of Gedor, even unto the east side of the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks. And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide and quiet and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old. And these written by name came in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and smote their tents and the habitations that were found there, and destroyed them utterly unto this day, and dwelt in their rooms; because there was pasture there for their flocks.’

“What an unsophisticated account of an ordinary transaction! Even the sons of Ham could understand the motive. There was no profession of benevolent intent, not even an eloquent reference to manifest destiny; the fat pastures were a sufficient reason. In these days the unwilling beneficiaries of civilization have a harder time of it. No sooner are they dispossessed of their lands than they are called together to rejoice over the good work that has been done for them. This is A. D. and not B. C. The new era began with an angel chorus; let us all join in the refrain. First of all, decorum requires that the bare facts be decently arrayed in spiritual garments. With the skill that is the result of long practice the ugliest fact is fitted. It is a triumph of dressmaking. The materials may be a trifle threadbare, but with a little fullness here and a breadth taken out there, each garment is made as good as new. Not a blood-stain shows.”

******

This is a free country, and the cynic must be allowed his fling. But if he has license to speak his mind in regard to the simple-hearted people who believe in Peace, we must be privileged to say what we think of him. The truth is that we think him to be a rather shallow-pated fellow who has been educated above his deserts. For all his knowing ways he has had but little knowledge of the world. He has seen the things which are obvious, the things that are shown to every outsider. He prides himself on his familiarity with accomplished facts, not realizing that these belong to the world that is passing away. The interesting things to see are those which belong to the world that is in process of becoming. These are not visible from the seat of the scornful.

The sweeping accusation of hypocrisy against men or nations whenever an incongruity is perceived between a professed purpose and an actual achievement is an indication of too great simplicity of mind. It is the simplicity that is characteristic of one without experience in the work of creation.

The cynic, perceiving the shortcomings of those who “profess and call themselves Christians,” greets their professions with a bitter laugh. He cannot tolerate their pretensions, and he urges them to return to a frank profession of the paganism which their deeds proclaim. Now it is eminently desirable that all who profess and call themselves Christians should be Christians,—but that takes time. The profession is the first step; that puts a whip into the hand of conscience. Not only do a man’s friends, but particularly his enemies, insist that he shall live up to his name. It is a wholesome discipline. In a new country two or three houses set down in a howling wilderness are denominated a city. It is a mere name at first, but if all goes well other metropolitan features are added in due time. I remember a most interesting visit which I once made to a university in a new commonwealth. The university consisted of a board of regents, an unfenced bit of prairie for a “campus,” a president (who was also professor of the Arts and Sciences), a janitor, and two unfinished buildings. A number of the village children took courses which, if persisted in for a number of years, might lead to what is usually termed the Higher Education. One student from out of town dwelt in solitary state in the dormitory. The president met me with great cordiality, and after showing me “the plant” introduced me to the student. It was evident that they were on terms of great intimacy, and that discipline in the university was an easy matter, owing to the fact that the student body was homogeneous.

Now it would be easy for one under such circumstances to laugh at what seemed mere pretentiousness. “It was nothing more than a small school; why not call it that and be done with it?” The reason for not doing so was that it aimed at being a university. Its name was a declaration of purpose. “Despise not the day of small things.” The small things may be very real things; and then they have a trick of growing big before you know it.

In the world of creative activity the thought precedes the deed, the profession comes before the achievement. The child makes believe that he is a man, and his play is prophetic. Let us grant that multitudes who profess and call themselves Christians are only playing at Christianity; they have not yet begun to take the beatitudes seriously. It is a good thing to play at, and the play is all the time deepening into earnest work.

When it becomes earnest, it is still far from perfect; but imperfection of workmanship is no evidence of insincerity. He would be a poor critic who at the spring exhibition should accuse the artist of attempt to deceive because of his failure to achieve his professed purpose.

“Do you call that a picture of the Madonna? False-hearted hypocrite! Are you wicked enough to attempt to poison our minds and prejudice us against one who has been an object of worship? You are foisting upon us an image of absolute imbecility.”

And yet the poor artist is no hypocrite,—he is only a poor artist, that is all. He has striven to express what he has actually felt, and he has had bad luck. He has been thrilled by an image of perfect womanhood, and he sought to reproduce it for the joy of others. He wrought with sad sincerity, and this is what came of it!

In the work of creating a condition of peace and good will among men the Christian nations have not gone very far. But why twit on facts? Let us be reasonable. Why should we take it as a grievance that our birth has not been delayed till the Millennium, but that we have been placed among those who are responsible for bringing it in? There is a satisfaction in being allowed a part in the preliminary work. And what if many well-meant endeavors have come to nought? Let us not spend our time crying over the spilt milk of human kindness. It is natural that the first attempts at peacemaking should be awkward. It takes time to get the knack of it. It is foolish to reserve all our praise for perfection. That gives an unpleasant impression, such as that which we receive from a person who, when there is a call for small change, produces a bank bill of a large denomination, which he knows no one can break for him.

“Peace on earth” is not a statement of accomplished fact, but a prophecy. Now it is nothing against a prophecy that it has not yet been fulfilled. The farther off it is, the more credit to the eyes that see and to the stout hearts that patiently wait and work for it. The practical question is not “Has it come?” but “Is it on the way?” We are considering a bit of the unfinished business of the world.

First we must listen to the report of the progress already made. It is such a modest report that we must prepare our minds in order to appreciate it. The simple-minded cynic must be instructed in regard to the extreme difficulty and complexity of the work that has been undertaken. It is nothing less than the transformation of a carnivorous, not to say cannibalistic, species into an orderly society in which each member shall joyously and effectively work for the welfare of all. The first thing, of course, is to catch your cannibals. This of itself is no easy task, and has taken many centuries. It has involved a vast amount of wood-chopping and road-making, and draining of swamps and exploring of caves and dens. It is a task that is still far from accomplished. Savagery is a condition which cannot be abolished till there is a conquest of the earth itself. When the cannibals have been caught and tamed there comes the problem of keeping them alive. They must eat something—a point which many of the missionaries of civilization have not sufficiently considered. Ethical progress is delayed by all sorts of economic complications. When the natural man is confronted with the necessity of getting a living, robbery is the first method which suggests itself to him. When this is prohibited he turns upon his moral adviser with, “What more feasible way do you propose?” The moral adviser has then to turn from the plain path of pure ethics, and cudgel his poor wits trying to “invent a little something ingenious” to keep his pupil from starving. The clever railer at human kind who has always had a bank account to fall back upon has no idea how much time and thought have been taken up in such contrivances.

Then it should be remembered that the missionaries of civilization have not themselves been above reproach. The “multitudes of the heavenly hosts” might be heard for a moment singing of good will among men, but they did not remain to do the work. The men of good will who were to work out the plan were very human indeed. Milton, in the Hymn “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” warns us of the long interval between the Christmas prophecy and its historical fulfillment.

For, if such holy song

Enwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back and fetch the age of gold;

And speckled vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;

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Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering:

And Heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But all the imagery of the gala day of peace fades away before the immediate reality.

But wisest Fate says no,

This must not yet be so.

This veto of “wisest Fate” is not absolute. It only calls a halt upon our imagination until the rest of our nature catches up with it. Mankind is not to have peace till it has suffered for it and worked for it. The workmen must do their work over and over again till they have learned the right way.

That the “Christian nations” are not hypocrites, but novices who have been making some progress toward the Christian ideal, becomes evident when we look back over their history. They are not the descendants of the simple shepherds of the plains of Bethlehem. Far from it! When they first began to “profess and call themselves Christians,” they were not thinking of the beatitudes. They had not got that far.

Turn to the Heimskringla and read how King Olaf converted the pagan bonders.

“So King Olaf went into the God-house and a certain few of his men with him, and a certain few of the bonders. But when the king came whereas the gods were, there sat Thor the most honored of all the gods, adorned with gold and silver. Then King Olaf hove up the gold-wrought rod that he had in his hand and smote Thor that he fell down from the stall; and therewith ran forth all the king’s men and tumbled down all the gods from their stalls. But whiles the king was in the God-house was Iron-Skeggi slain without, even at the very door, and that deed did the king’s men. So when the king was come back to his folk he bade the bonders take one of two things, either all be christened, or else abide the brunt of battle with him. But after the death of Skeggi there was no leader among the folk of the bonders to raise up a banner against King Olaf. So the choice was taken of them to go to the king and obey his bidding. Then King Olaf christened all folk that were there and took hostages of the bonders that they would hold to their christening. Thereafter King Olaf caused men of his wend over all parts of Thrandheim; and now spoke no man against the faith of Christ. And so were all folk christened in the country-side.”

That is the way the nations of the north were first christianized. What is the difference between Thor and the Christ? the simple-hearted people would ask. “The difference,” said King Olaf, “is very fundamental, and it requires little theological training to see it. It is this: the Christ is stronger. If you don’t believe it, I’ll”—but they did believe it.

It is evident that there were some points in Christianity that King Olaf did not appreciate. To cultivate these fruits of the spirit required men of a different temper. Their work is not all done yet. It is progressing.

******

There is one complication in the work of peacemaking which has not been sufficiently considered. It is the recurrence of Youth. I have listened to the arguments against war at a great Peace Congress. The reasoning was strong, the statement of facts conclusive. War was shown to be cruel and foolish, and incredibly expensive. The audience, consisting of right-minded and very intelligent people, was convinced of the justice of the cause of Peace. Why, then, does not the cause triumph?

In such cases I am in the habit of looking about with the intent to fix the responsibility where it belongs, on those who were not at the meeting. Mature life was well represented, but there was a suspicious absence of young men in the twenties. Ah! I said, there is the difficulty. We can’t be sure of lasting peace until we make it more interesting to these young absentees. They’ll all be peace men by and by, but meanwhile there is no knowing what trouble they may get us into.

John Fiske traced the influence which the prolongation of infancy has had on the progress of civilization. I am inclined to think that equally great results would flow from any discovery by which the period of middle age could be prolonged beyond its present term. War would be abolished without any more ado. A uniformly middle-aged community would be immune from any attack of militant fever.

It happens, however, that every once in a while the hot passions of youth carry all before them. The account of what happened at the beginning of the civil wars in Israel is typical. King Rehoboam called a meeting of the elder statesmen of his kingdom. They outlined a policy that was eminently conciliatory. But we are told, “He forsook the counsel of the old men which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him and which stood by him.”

That’s the difficulty! The hardest thing about a good policy is to get it accepted by the people who have the power. What avails the wisdom of the old men when all the young men are “spoiling for a fight?” Something more is needed than statesman-like plans for strengthening the framework of civilization. You may have a fireproof structure, but you are not safe so long as it is crammed with highly inflammable material.

There is a periodicity in the passion for war. It marks the coming into power of a new generation. A quarter of a century from now “the good gray poet” Rudyard Kipling may be singing sweet lyrics of peace. All things come in time. The Kipling we know simply utters the sentiments of “the young men brought up with him.” What he has been to his contemporaries Tennyson was to the generation before. Kipling never wrote a more scornful arraignment of peace or a more passionate glorification of war than Tennyson’s “Maud.”

We are listening to the invective of a youth whose aspirations have been crushed and ideals shattered by a civilization that seems to him to be soulless. He has seen something which to him is infinitely more cruel than the battle between contending hosts

Why do they prate of the blessings of peace? we have made them a curse,

Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;

And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse

Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?

We are made to see the inglorious peace in which men seek only their own ease.

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,

When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex, like swine,

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie.

From the evils of a soulless commercialism, and from the inanities of fashion, what is the way of escape? From the evils of peace he turns to the heroism of war.

I wish I could hear again

The chivalrous battle song.

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Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand,

Like some of the simple great ones gone

For ever and ever by,

One still strong man in a blatant land.

At last, breaking in upon the deadly stupidity and selfishness of the common life, is the noise of battle:—

it lightened my despair

When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,

That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,

The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,

Nor Britain’s one sole God be the millionaire.

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Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims

Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,

And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,

Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;

And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d!

That was an appeal to Young England, the England that was too young to remember the Napoleonic wars and was thirsting for an experience of its own.

We may see in such an outburst of the militant spirit only the recrudescence of savagery. It is better to treat it seriously, for it is something which each generation must reckon with. Tennyson sums up the matter from the standpoint of ardent youth:—

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,

We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,

And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind.

It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;

I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,

I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign’d.

It is easy enough to dismiss all this as mere vaporing. But it is a protest which must be heeded, for it expresses a real experience. There are things worse than war. A sordid slothfulness is worse. A cowardly acquiescence in injustice is worse. It is a real revelation when to the heart of youth comes a sudden sense of the meaning of life. It is not a treasure to be preserved with miserly carefulness. It is to be nobly hazarded. It is better to fight for the good than to rail, however eloquently, against the ill. To feel for one’s native land, to unite in generous comradeship with one’s kind, to endure hardness for a noble cause,—these things are of the essence of manhood.

In times of national peril such awakening has come. Many a man has then for the first time discovered that he has a soul. He has cried out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Now just here we peace men may see our most inspiring bit of unfinished business. War has been idealized; it is left to us to idealize peace. It cannot be done till we bring out all its heroic possibilities. If it means dull stagnation, selfish ease, the prosperity that can be measured in dollars and cents, there is sure to come a revulsion against it. The gospel of the full dinner-pail and the plethoric pocket-book does not satisfy. If the choice is between commercialism and militarism we need not wonder if many an idealist chooses the latter as the less perilous course. It seems less threatening toward the things for which he cares.

The call is for a new chivalry. Our duty is not only to keep the peace, but to make a peace that is worth keeping. This is no easy task. It means the humanizing of all our activities. Everywhere a human ideal must be placed above every other kind of success. Religion must be lifted above ecclesiasticism; and business honor above the vulgar standards of commercialism. The machinery of civilization must be made subservient to man. More careers must be opened for men of the soldierly spirit whose ambition is for service. The new generation must be shown what opportunities the world’s business and politics offer to great-hearted gentlemen who are willing to risk something for a cause. The kind of peace which the world needs cannot be had for the asking. It comes high,—but it is worth the price.

THE LAND OF THE LARGE AND
CHARITABLE AIR

Are you not constrayned (my fellow Academicks) to subscribe to this my opinion that the knowledge of no nation is so necessary as the searching out of a man’s own Country and the manners thereof and the right understanding of that Commonweale whereof each one of us is a part and member. The Lamiæ that are a certaine kind of monsters are laughed at in the Poeticall Fables in that they were so blinde at home that they could not see their own affaires, could foresee nothing; but when they were once gone from home they were accounted the most sharpe-sighted and curious searchers of all others.... [Are not they] very ridiculous when as by taking long voyages unto farre remote people, after they have curiously sought out all matters amongst them are ignorant of the principall things at home and know not what is contayned within the precincts of their country, and are reckoned altogether strangers on their native soile?—Coryat’s Crudities.

THE remark that Boston is not so much a place as a state of mind is one of the highest compliments ever paid to that city. Places are common enough, the maps are dotted with them, but a state of mind is a mark of distinction. The Bostonian enjoys his state of mind none the less because he is aware that outsiders are not always able to enter into it.

Only those places which have become symbolic of mental or moral traits are remembered. Sodom and Gomorrah were once towns of some commercial importance. We think of them, however, not as trade centres, but as sins. Babylon, according to a doctrine of spiritual correspondences long since established, is another name for proud and cruel worldliness. It is likely so to remain, in spite of the discovery of clay tablets which show that many of its people were estimable citizens who practiced domestic economy and collected their debts by due process of law. All we have to say is that those who acted in this commonplace way were not typical,—in fact, they were quite un-Babylonian. In like manner, Zion represents no longer a hill whose altitude may be prosaically estimated according to the metric system. It is a highly exalted frame of pious joy.

It is strange that, with all the ingenuity that has been shown in inventing new text-books for the use of schools, no one has compiled a Psychological Geography. The materials are ample. It only needs some one with a scientific imagination, or, rather, with a capacity for writing imaginative science, to make it a success. Eliminating those communities whose states of mind are so mixed as to be unclassifiable, the way would be clear for a very pretty series of generalizations. There would be maps with isothermal lines uniting places of equal degrees of warmth of temperament or frigidity of manner. Weather charts would show the direction of the various winds of doctrine and the storm centres, religious and political. The theory of moral cyclones and anti-cyclones would be adequately explained. There would be maps in colors indicating the communities situated on the plateaus of conscious ethical and intellectual superiority. These often rise into the arid, or at least semi-arid, belt. In sharp contrast with these are the luxuriant bottom lands, where less favored peoples dwell in happy ignorance of their low estate. The “principal products” would be graphically illustrated. One section, being without natural resources, is given over to the manufacture of novelties, while another is rich in fossils. The distribution of fads may be shown to advantage. Some localities are almost barren, while others are naturally faddy.

When he comes to the Points of the Compass the most matter-of-fact psychological geographer will forget the cold mannerisms of his science and become poetical. North, South, East, West, these are vast symbols of psychic forces. He would not think of putting at the head of the chapter the picture, from the old Geography, of the disconsolate urchin with his face to the north and his arms extended in rigid but reluctant testimony to the fact that “East is East and West is West.” What does this featureless boy know of those tremendous forces whose age-long contests have made the history of the world? What does he know of the hardiness and the prowess that make the true North? If he were forcibly turned around, his face would be as expressionless as ever. Such a mannikin never felt a sudden longing for “a beaker full of the warm South.”

Art must be called to the aid of science. Each point of the compass has an expression of its own. One should be able by looking at the face of the man in the picture to know the direction. There is no mistaking the qualities which grow only where there is a northerly exposure. The Orient and the Occident are not to be confounded.

Were some affluent citizen to endow a chair of psycho-geographical science in one of our leading universities, especial attention should be paid to the teaching of Systematic Americanism. It is a branch now much neglected. The professor should take pains to instruct his “fellow Academicks” in the manners and customs of their own country, so that they should no longer be reckoned strangers on their native soil. They should be taught to avoid entangling analogies drawn from the experience of other lands, and to look directly at the subject-matter. When they see something going wrong, they should not jump at the conclusion that it is a repetition of the classic tragedy of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,—for it may be something quite different. When there is a popular movement on the prairies, they should not begin to talk of the French Revolution and of the excesses of the proletariat. Before they talk in European fashion of the “classes and the masses,” they should make certain that we have such things, and if we have, that there is a sure way of telling which is which. The Old-World generalizations about the upper and lower and middle classes should be well shaken before using.

Those who elect the course in Americanism should be taught to overcome the nervous fright to which bookish people are subject at the appearance of any man in public life who shows signs of unusual virility. It is a weakness of those who are more familiar with the careers of Cæsar and Napoleon than with the temper of their fellow-citizens. In the early seventies there were academic minds thoroughly convinced that they were watching the Republic in its death struggle with Cæsarism. Curiously enough, they fixed upon plain Ulysses Grant to act the part of Cæsar. It would have been hard to find one less fitted for the rôle. When we look back and contrast what really happened with what the well-read spectators thought was happening, we are reminded of the remark of the British matron to her husband as they left the theatre where they had been seeing the play of “Antony and Cleopatra,” “How unlike the home life of our dear Queen!”

The great thing, as President Roosevelt has often reminded us, is to “think nationally.” This is no small achievement. A nation is a psycho-geographical fact which it requires a very great effort of the imagination to conceive. The same word represents a land and the people who inhabit it. The physical features of the landscape have their spiritual counterparts. It may be that the landscape impresses itself on the imagination of the race, or, as may be maintained with equal plausibility, the imagination of a gifted race may interpret the landscape and impress itself upon it forever. In either case there is a recognizable harmony between the two elements. In reading the great literature of Israel we never forget that the nation was desert-born. “He found him in a desert place, he led him about, he instructed him.” In psalm and prophecy we are conscious of barren mountain ranges, of rocks in a weary land, of narrow valleys which laugh for very joy over the incongruity between themselves and the surrounding desolations. There is the passion of the desert, born of solitude and the stars. In the prophet of righteousness there is the same urgent note that Bayard Taylor catches in his “Bedouin Song:”—

From the Desert I come to thee

On a stallion shod with fire;

And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire.

The impatient human cry is followed by the refrain natural to those whose lives are surrounded by the eternal calm of the desert,—

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.

When we think of the Greeks we think at the same time of

the sprinkled isles

Lily on lily that o’erlace the sea,

And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps “Greece.”

England and her Englishmen are forever inseparable. “This happy breed of men” belong to “this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea, this blessed plot, this England.” That Great Britain is an island is more than a fact of physical geography. It is the outward and visible sign of an insularity of sentiment which gives its peculiar quality to British patriotism. There is something snug and homelike about it, as of a family that enjoys “the tumultuous privacy of storm.”

We become conscious of Spain and her Spaniards as we read Longfellow’s lines:—

A something sombre and severe

O’er the enchanted landscape reigned,

As if King Philip listened near

And Torquemada, the austere,

His ghostly sway maintained.

When we come to the United States of America there is a peculiar difficulty in thinking and feeling nationally, because the imagination does not at once find the physical facts to serve as symbols. It is not easy to conceive the land as a whole. When we sing “My Country, ’tis of thee,” the country that is visualized is very small. The author of the hymn was a New England clergyman, and naturally enough described New England and called it America. It is a land of rocks and rills and woods, and the hills are templed, in Puritan fashion, by white meeting-houses; for the early New Englander, like erring Israel of old, loved to worship on “the high places.” Over it all is one great tradition: it is the “land of the Pilgrims’ pride.”

The farmer in North Dakota loves his country, too; but the idea that it is a land of rocks and rills and templed hills seems to him rather farfetched. His heart does not thrill with rapture when he thinks of these things. He can plow all day in the Red River valley without striking a stone, and he is glad to have it so.

The Texan cultivates an exuberant Americanism, but he does not think of his country as the “land of the Pilgrims’ pride.” Texas is not proud of the Pilgrims, and perhaps the Pilgrims would not have appreciated Texas.

When the American has come to feel, not provincially, but nationally, the words “my country” bring to his mind not merely some familiar scenes of his childhood, but a series of vast pictures. They are broad and simple in outline. “My country” is no tight little island shut out from “the envy of less happier lands.” It is continental in its sweep. It lies open and free to all. It is large and easy of access. There is a vision of busy cities serving as its gateways. Behind them is a pleasant home-like land with “a sweet interchange of hill and valley.” Beyond the mountains another scene opens. We see the sources of the strength of America and feel the promise of its future. To see the Mississippi valley is to believe in “manifest destiny,” and to take a cheerful view of it. To the ancient world the valley of the Nile was the symbol of fertility. It is a narrow ribbon of green in the midst of the desert. Here Plenty and Famine were in plain sight of one another. There was always the suggestion of Pharaoh’s ugly dream of the lean kine devouring the fat and well-favored. But in the valley of the Mississippi the fear of the lean kine is dispelled. One may travel at railroad speed day after day, and still the fields of wheat and corn smile upon him. Here the ample land gives happy confidence to men’s prayer for daily bread. And beyond the fertile prairies “my country” stretches in high plains and lofty mountain ranges. Here are new treasures waiting bold spirits who claim them. The land has a challenge and an invitation.

What a weary dearth

Of the homes of men! What a wild delight

Of space, of room! What a sense of seas

Where seas are not! What salt-like breeze!

What dust and taste of quick alkali!

And beyond the mountains lies the American Avilion, where never—

wind blows loudly; but it lies

Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns

And bowery hollows: crown’d with summer seas.

And this great land is one; though it is “a nation of nations” it has achieved a national consciousness. There is an atmosphere about it all which we recognize. To breathe it is an exhilaration. One loves to think of it as the land of “the large and charitable air.”

******

The conception of the continental proportions of America did not at once dawn upon its new inhabitants. They thought and spoke as transplanted Englishmen. Each of the thirteen States was a tight little republic insisting on its own rights. Each plucky Diogenes sat in its own tub, saying to its neighbors, “Get out of my sunshine!”

It was only as they turned westward that Americans discovered America,—a discovery which in some instances has been long delayed. “The West” is not merely a geographical expression, it is a state of mind which is most distinctive of the national consciousness. It is a feeling, an irresistible impulse. It is the sense of undeveloped resources and limitless opportunities. It is associated with the verb “to go.” To the American the West is the natural place to go to, as the East is the place to come from. It is synonymous with freedom from restraint. It is always “out West.”

Just where the geographical West begins it is not necessary to indicate. On the coast of Maine you may be shown a summer cottage and told that it belongs to a rich Westerner from Massachusetts. Massachusetts is not thought of as exactly the Far West, but it is far enough.

The psychological West begins at the point where the centre of interest suddenly shifts from the day before yesterday to the day after to-morrow. Great expectations are treated with the respect that elsewhere had been reserved for accomplished facts. There is a stir in the air as if Humanity were a new family just setting up housekeeping. What a fine house it is, and how much room there is on the ground floor! What a great show it will make when all the furniture is in! There is no time now for the finishing touches, but all will come in due order. There is need for unskilled labor and plenty of it. Let every able-bodied man lend a hand.

One does not know his America until he has been touched by the Western fever. He must be possessed by a desire to take up a claim and build himself a shack and invest in a corner lot in a Future Great City. He must be capable of a disinterested joy in watching the improvements which other people are making. Let the man of the East cling to the old ways and seek out the old landmarks. The symbol of the West is the plank sidewalk leading out from a brand-new prairie town and pointing to a thriving suburb which as yet exists only in the mind of its projector. There is something prophetic in that sidewalk on which the foot of man has never trod.

One who has once had this fever never completely recovers. Though he may change his environment he is always subject to intermittent attacks.

I remember on my first evening in Oxford sitting blissfully on the top of a leisurely tram car that trundled along High Street. The dons in academic garb were on their way to dinner in the college halls, and they looked just as my imagination had pictured them. I was introduced to one of them. When he learned that I was an American, there was a sudden thaw in his manner.

“Have you ever been in Dodge City, Kansas?” he inquired eagerly.

I modestly replied that I had only passed through on the railway, but I was familiar with other Kansas towns, and, reasoning from analogy, I could tell what manner of place it was. This was enough. I had experienced the West. I was one of the initiated. I could enter into that state of mind represented by the term Dodge City. It appeared that in the golden age, when he and Dodge City were both young, he had sought his fortune for some months in Kansas. He had experienced the joys of civic newness, a newness such as had not been in England since the Heptarchy. He discoursed of the mighty men of those days when every man did what was right in his own eyes, and good-humoredly allowed his neighbor to do likewise. As we parted, he said, with mournful acquiescence in his present estate, “Oxford does very well, you know, but it isn’t Dodge City.” If poetry is emotion remembered in tranquillity, what could be more poetical than Dodge City remembered in the tranquillity of Oxford quadrangles?

In this case the poetical view was a sound one. The traveler across the newly developed States of the West has the traveler’s license to contrast unfavorably that which he sees with that which he left behind him in his home country. He may say a dozen uncomplimentary things, and each one of them may be true. He may exhaust all his stock adjectives, as “crude” and “raw” and the like. But when he remarks, as did a certain critic, that because the country lacks “distinction” it is uninteresting, he betrays his own limitations.

It is just that lack of distinction that makes America interesting. Here, no longer distracted by what is exceptional, one may take the welfare of the masses of men seriously.

Here the doings of men correspond to the broad doings of the day and the night,

Here is what moves in magnificent masses, careless of particulars.

When Shelley was an undergraduate he was attracted to a lecture on mineralogy. It seemed to him a subject full of poetical suggestiveness. His expectations were disappointed, and he unceremoniously bolted and returned to his room. “What do you think the man talked about? Stones!—stones!—stones! I tell you stones are not interesting—in themselves.”

Shelley was right. Stones are not interesting in themselves; neither are railroads, nor stockyards, nor new unpainted buildings, nor endless cornfields. But for that matter, neither are crumbling columns, nor old manuscripts, nor the remains of feudal castles interesting—in themselves. Things become interesting only when seen in relation to the people whose thoughts they have stimulated and whose imaginations they have stirred.

America is a fresh field for human endeavor. Here are men busily making roads, bridging rivers, building new cities. They have been given the task of subduing a continent. But in such conflicts with Nature the conquered influences the conquerors. What impress does the continent make upon the minds of the hardy men who are mastering it? What visions of the future do they see which transform their drudgery into an heroic adventure?

In the case of the older nations such questions about the beginnings and the ideals of the beginners cannot be answered. The formative period, with all its significant aspirations, is buried in oblivion. “Who thinks any more as they thought?” we ask in regard to the pioneer of Britain. Poetry has license to picture him as a knight in armor and to tell how in romantic fashion he pitched

His tents beside the forest. And he drave

The heathen, and he slew the beast, and felled

The forest, and let in the sun.

It was all a long time ago, and the men who did these things are not clearly revealed. Not being able to get at their ideals, we attribute to them those which we think appropriate.

The historians are troubled by their lack of authentic material. They are like the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans of the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that he knew was very important, but before he could get it interpreted by his wise men he forgot what it was. They were good at interpretations, and could have made one to fit if only the king had brought the dream with him so that they could try it on. But that was the very thing he could not do.

The founders of London and Paris had doubtless their dreams of the future; but alas! they have long since been forgotten. But Chicago has not had time to forget. Everything is still vivid. Men walk the streets of the great city who remember it when it was no bigger than the Londinium of the time of the Cæsars. They have with their own eyes watched every step in the civic development and they have been a part of all that they have seen. The Londoner has seen only a passing phase of his London; the greater part of its history is received on hearsay evidence. The Chicagoan sees his Chicago steadily and sees it whole. No wonder that there is a self-consciousness about the new metropolis that is not to be found in the old. Its greatness has been thrust upon it suddenly, and there is a full realization of its value.

The genuine American who is the maker of the new fortunes of the world, and who is in love with his work, has not been adequately portrayed in literature. It requires an ample imagination to do justice to his character. There must be a mingling of realism and romance. The realism must not be the minute, painstaking portraiture of a Miss Austen, but the hearty, out-of-door reality of a Fielding. The American Fielding has not yet appeared, but what a good time he will have when he comes! What a host of characters after his own heart he will find! The American Scott, too, is called for to give us a story of American life which will read as well on the edge of a clearing in the forest as “The Lady of the Lake” did in the trenches of Torres Vedras, when the soldiers forgot the enemy’s shells as they gave a glorious shout over the poet’s lines, which their captain was reading to them. I like that story, in spite of the fact that a recent critic declares that to like it shows an uncultivated taste. “This is not,” he says, “a test of poetry. An audience less likely to be critical, a situation less likely to induce criticism, can hardly be imagined.” Nevertheless, Scott would much rather have written lines that rang true to soldiers in the hour of battle, than to have been given a high mark by the most competent corrector of daily themes.

The imagination of Hawthorne, brooding over the past, repeopled the House of the Seven Gables with the successive generations. But there is another kind of romance, in which the imagination is projected into the future. Looking at the new house not yet enclosed against the storm, it dreams dreams and sees visions. There is a story there, also, and the best of it is that it is to be continued.

******

A shrewd old New England farmer recounted to me the warlike exploits of his family. He himself had been in Gettysburg, and each generation since the time of the French and Indian wars had had its soldier. His son had been shot at Santiago. “The bullet went clean through his body,” he said, indicating a course which seemed to me necessarily fatal. I expressed sympathy. “Oh, it didn’t hurt him much,” he said, “it seemed to go through a vacant spot.”

That there are vacant spots in the character of the typical man of the Western world no one would be more ready to admit than he. His shortcomings are obvious. Yet most of those which have been harshly commented upon by the world are of the kind that might be commended to the consideration of the kindly Pardoner. Some of his weaknesses touch upon nobleness. Those who best know his environment and the work he has done are most ready to grant him a reasonable degree of indulgence.

The most serious charges against him are that he is a boastful materialist enamored of crude bulk, and that he has trampled upon the old sanctities and is a worshiper of the almighty dollar. There is some color for these charges in his manners, but those who make them have certainly not understood his spirit. “The Western Goth,” Lowell called him. The Goths had a bad reputation once as wanton destroyers of ancient art. But after they had had their fling and had settled down, the Teutonic barbarians showed that they could make a thing or two themselves. Gothic has long since ceased to be a term of reproach. Even in the destruction of the ancient, archæologists now admit that the Goths did not do as much harm as was at first feared. The real destroyers of ancient Rome have been the Romans.

From the fact that western America is a place where people are actively engaged in making money, and that they find their work so interesting that they like to talk about it, the superficial observer jumps at the conclusion that this is the seat of the cult of wealth-worship. But there is a vast difference between making a thing and worshiping it. It is reported that one of the varied industries of Great Britain is the manufacture of molten images. It is undoubtedly a sin, but the British manufacturer comforts himself with the reflection that he only breaks half the commandment; he makes the idol, but he does not bow down before it.

Worship is not talkative or boastful. It is reserved and self-abasing. The worshiper accepts the superiority of the object of his devotion as a fact not to be questioned. For such serious-minded worship of wealth go to the English moral tales so popular a generation or two ago, before the wave of democracy came in. Then the affluent Squire and his lady were lifted into the place of superior beings. They dispensed bounty after the manner of Providence to their poorer neighbors, and there was no thought of questioning their ways. They were rich, as had been their fathers and mothers before them, and all other virtues were attributed to them by fond superstition.

The men of the Western mining camps, where millionaires are made in a day, have no conception of such a reverential attitude toward the possessor of wealth. When you see them in the eager pursuit of dollars, you are watching not their religion, but their sport. They care for money as the fox-hunter cares for the fox. They admire the man who wins the prize, in proportion to the skill and pluck which he has exhibited. But there are no illusions of a personal superiority imparted by the possession of property. That is impossible in a community where everybody is acquainted with the short and simple annals of the rich.

The man who is conspicuously successful in the national sport is undoubtedly an object of interest, but it is interest of the superficial sort. He is not the man whom the people delight to honor, and he usually has the good sense to know it. In a Western newspaper my attention was attracted by the headlines: “Noah a Millionaire.” It seems that some one had calculated that, even after making allowance for the low price of labor and materials in his day, the Ark must have cost over half a million dollars, and that Noah must have had at least a million in order prudently to undertake the work. It put the patriarch in a fresh light, and I read the article diligently, as did most of my fellow passengers on the train. But that was the end of it; our opinions about diluvian and antediluvian matters remained unchanged. I suppose that the publicity given to the doings of our conspicuously rich contemporaries has no greater significance.

The millionaire who cares for the admiration of his fellow-citizens must do more than accumulate. When he has made his fortune the next question is, “What will he do with it?” He must do something or sink into the rank of nobodies. Even the most selfish and parsimonious feels that something is required of him. A great part of the stream of new wealth may be wasted, so far as the higher interests of society are concerned, but a certain part of it is pretty certain to be directed toward those same higher interests. The process is like that which goes on with an hydraulic ram. Where there is a good stream of water, one can afford to lose most of it. The waste water, before it escapes down the hill, pumps a slender but sufficient stream into the second story.

Indeed, it is the interest of our millionaires in art, science, and religion which has created a puzzling ethical problem. They are not content to be mere money-getters. They aspire to be benefactors on a large scale. But what if the wealth so freely offered has not been honestly come by? What if the best institutions should hesitate to receive it? The poor rich man cannot contemplate such a refusal with equanimity. It would interfere with the fulfillment of his most cherished plans. To have unlimited opportunities to make money, and to be hindered in giving it away, seems to him like building a trunk line of railroad and then being denied terminal facilities. Of course he could change his plans and keep it all himself, but to a man who had been accustomed to “doing things” that would be a humiliating anti-climax.

******

The fact that the American is greatly absorbed in his work with material things is no sufficient basis of the charge of materialism that is lightly brought against him. The crucial question is, “What do the things stand for in his mind? Are they finalities, or are they means to an end?” The most appalling picture of a purely materialistic civilization is that given in the book of the Revelation. It is an inventory of the wealth of the Babylon which was Imperial Rome. The inventory is an indictment. “The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.”

The heart grows sick when the list of commodities ends with the “souls of men.” What were they worth, measured against all that goes before?

A very different impression comes as we read Joaquin Miller’s exultant cry over the West:—

O heart of the world’s heart, West! my West!

Look up! Look out! There are fields of kine,

There are clover fields that are red as wine,

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

There are emerald seas of corn and cane,

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

There are isles of oak and a harvest plain

Where brown men bend to the bending grain,

There are temples of God and towns new born.

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

And the hearts of oak and the hands of horn

Have fashioned them all, and a world beside.

This frank delight in the riches of the earth is not materialistic. The souls of men are not in the market. They form the supreme standard of value. Materialism is not a disease to which nations are subject in their lusty youth. It comes with senile decay.

Sometimes when we are wearied with the intense activity of modern life we quote the saying, “Things are in the saddle.” Perhaps our sympathy is misplaced. If the poor Things could speak, they would tell us that, so far from being in the saddle, they are under the lash of furious young idealists who give them no rest. It is the nature of a Thing to “stay put,” but these headstrong youths despise this conservative bias. They are no respecters of Things, being wholly absorbed in Purposes.

To see Things in undisputed possession, go into “the best room” of a respectable old farmhouse. Here the Thing has the place of honor, and the Person is a base intruder, having no rights of his own. The priestess hovers occasionally around her sacred Things, waving her feather duster as a mystic wand, and then leaves them in respectful gloom. Nothing short of a death in the family would induce her to disturb them. Go into a busy workshop, and you may see how the Thing may be taught to know its place. It is always at the mercy of the innovating Intelligence. When a new Idea comes, the old Thing which had heretofore had a useful function is thrown aside. It is still as good as it ever was, but it is not good enough. It must go to the scrap pile.

******

The man of the West is likely to offend against the standards of propriety in speech. When he begins to explain the character of his country, he is accused of inaccuracy. His prospectus is not always confirmed by the Table of Contents. He has acquired the habit of “talking large.” This prejudices many people against him. They accuse him of willful exaggeration, and if he be the promoter of some commercial enterprise, they impute to him a mercenary motive.

But he is in reality quite sincere. If he talks large, it is only because he feels large. His is a language natural to those who are engaged in creative work, and who foresee great things. It is like “the large utterance of the early gods.” He does not feel called upon to limit his statements to the facts that are already apparent; he expects the facts to grow up to his statements. He is not shooting at a fixed target, but at a flying mark; if he is to hit it, he must aim a little ahead.

Another reason for this large utterance is that in a new country the ordinary man identifies himself with his community in a way impossible to any but very great magnates in an old civilization. He feels very much as did the kings and earls he has read about. How proudly on the Shakespearean stage a great noble will speak of himself as Norfolk or Northumberland! It is as if his personality had been multiplied by so many square miles. He is no longer a mere individual,—he is a whole county.

An American may have much the same sense of territorial aggrandizement by identifying himself with a promising community in its first stage of growth. He is not a unit lost in a multitude. His town has a fine name and a glorious future. Some day these glories may be divided among thousands, now they are his own. He is proud of the town, and the pride is more satisfying because he is it.

I once camped for a whole month in the city of Naples on the shores of the Pacific. I knew it was a city, for a huge sign announced the fact to every one who passed by the beautiful, secluded spot. Unlike some of the boom towns of that period, Naples had an inhabitant, whom I had occasion frequently to meet. When I addressed him, it was hard for me to use his surname, as I would with a common man. For to me he was Naples. It would have seemed appropriate for him to speak in blank verse.

******

There are those who look upon the Western delight in the idea of bigness as an evidence of vulgarity of sentiment and of the lack of idealism. They have a scorn of those who habitually think of quantity rather than of quality. But the man of fastidious taste should not be allowed to have it all his own way. One poet may be inspired by “the murmur of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June.” But another may prefer to stand on the shore of the ocean and feel its immensity. He is tremendously impressed by its size. It is a big thing. But the ocean is as poetical as the brook, though in its own huge way.

There are some things wherein quality is the first consideration. They are the luxuries of life. But when we come to the prime necessities, the first question is in regard to the adequacy of the supply. When a sentimental young lady was seated at dinner next to a great poet, she waited, awestruck, for him to give utterance to a fine thought. The only gem he vouchsafed was, “How do you like your mutton? I like mine in hunks.” The poet was a man of sound sense. There is one law for poetry and another for mutton. Poetry is precious, and a little goes a long way; we can get on without any but the best. But mutton should be served more generously.

It is the glory of the West that it treats what elsewhere are the luxuries of the few as the necessities of the many. It dispenses even “the higher education” not in dainty morsels, but in hunks.

Old Mrs. Means, in “The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” formulated the wisdom of the pioneer. “You see, this ’ere bottom land was all Congress land in them there days and sold for a dollar and a quarter, and I says to my old man, ‘Jack,’ says I, ‘do you git a plenty while you’re gittin’. Git a plenty while you’re gittin’,’ says I, ‘for ’twont be no cheaper than ’tis now;’ and it haint, and I knowed ’twouldn’t.”

Translate Mrs. Means’s shrewd maxim into the terms of idealism, and you have the characteristic contribution of the West. The old prudential maxims, which were true enough in a finished civilization, may well be disregarded by those who face a great new opportunity. They can well afford to preëmpt more territory than they can at present cultivate. When one’s aims are selfish, the desire to get a plenty is mere greed, but in the altruist it rises into “the enthusiasm for humanity.” It is the ambition to supply the wants of men no longer in niggardly fashion, but in full measure.

In two directions the expectation of moral amplitude in things American is fulfilled,—in Education and in Charity. Here we feel that the people have been aroused to the need of making plentiful provision, not only for immediate necessities, but for future growth. Along these lines we think and plan nationally.

But there are some questions which give pause to the most boastful patriot. Where is the distinctive American Art which interprets in a broad, fresh way the genius of the land, and where is the public that would recognize it and delight in it if it should appear? Where is the great American Church able splendidly to organize the forces of spiritual freedom as Rome organized the principles of ecclesiastical authority? How is the vision of her prophets fulfilled?

And thou, America,

For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality,

For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.

Thou, too, surroundest all,

Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new,

To the ideal tendest.

The measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past

Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,

Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all.

Where are these “deific faiths and amplitudes” that are worthy of the land embodied?

America presents new problems for statesmanship; where are the large-hearted, clear-eyed men who give themselves to the task? Here and there we see them. In the crisis of the nation’s life nature came to the rescue.

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

That is the kind of manhood America needs. Is the supply equal to the demand? The growth of wealth in the Republic has been marvelous. Has there been evolved a wisdom equal to the task of justly distributing what enterprise has created? We hear of American “Captains of Industry.” How far have they realized Carlyle’s idea when he gave the title to those whose success lies not in personal gain but in ability to be real leaders of men? How far has America produced great captains, able to bring into commerce and manufacture the soldierly virtues of courage, loyalty, and willing obedience?

When he considers these things the just critic must say to the Republic, “Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.” But let him not hastily assume that he is reading the mystic handwriting on the wall, the Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, that foretells the fall of nations. Let him rather talk as to a young athlete who has not come up to the mark, “You have done much, but you have not yet done your best! You are yet wanting in some essential elements. You must try again.”

The American idealist recognizes the present failures, but it does not quench his high spirits. They come to him as challenges. He takes his falls as Adam and Eve took theirs. After the first shock was over there was a healthy reaction.

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;

The world was all before them where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

The most hopeful sign of the times is the number of young Americans who have become conscious of the grave evils that beset their country, but who neither whine nor scold nor prophesy ill. The pioneer spirit is strong within them. They attack the abuses of democracy with a cheery iconoclasm. They are impelled to their work not merely by a sense of duty; they find their fun in it. It is with a sense of exhilaration that we watch these pioneers. Their world is all before them. We are anxious to see what they will make of it.