That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

I need not say that the days passed quickly, and the time was coming for me to return to school. I scarcely allowed myself to think of leaving Mr. Percy and his pleasant home. When I did so, a choking lump would come into my throat and a pain into my heart that brought tears to my eyes. What boy has not felt this? I hardly dared hint at my feeling, but one day when Mr. Percy suggested some preparation for going, I said I was sorry to leave. “Yes, Charles, so am I sorry to have you go. But I wish you to make a man of yourself, and this can be done only by discipline of the mind and the acquisition of knowledge, and the best place for this is in school. Manly strength comes from exercise of the body, mental strength from using the mind, and both should go together. If you neglect the culture of both, except to ornament the body with clothes, you become a fop or swell. If you improve the body only, you are simply a muscular animal or strong brute. Neglect the body and only cultivate the mind, and you may become a mental phenomenon, a dyspeptic growler. A trained mind in a trained body, is the way to put it; otherwise there is incongruity, as much as to speak of cleanly people living in a filthy house or filthy people living in a clean house. I said discipline of mind. This comes by thinking for yourself, reasoning with intense thought, and retaining what you learn. A man mentally strong is not the one who simply knows the most, but the one who has power to think, to reason, grasp facts, compare them and make conclusions. The most of the educated natives have acquired knowledge by memory, to the neglect of their reasoning faculties, and are like trained parrots. One with disciplined reasoning faculties has always the advantage over the one who is only a memorizer. The former is able to use the material he may find in his way, while the other has the materials but is unable to use them. Therefore get discipline, reasoning power first of all, and the other will naturally follow. You must labor with your mind as with the body. You may come across the story of the man who began by lifting the calf, and continued it daily, so that when the calf became an ox he could lift it as well. Strength of mind is acquired by constant study, mental lifting. The boy who at first lifts the light weight of the multiplication table and goes on lifting something heavier each day, will find at length no difficulty in grappling with Newton’s Principia. The training of either mind or body should not be by spurts or sudden starts. You cannot violate the laws of growth, either mental or physical, and be a really well developed man, any more than you can violate God’s natural or moral laws six days of the week and expect to make up for it on the seventh day. I do not want you to be a seventh-day sort of a man, but to be real and true every day and every hour you live.”

With such remarks as these he grew more and more in earnest. “And now,” said he, “I wish to talk to you from my inner soul, and I want to make an impression that may never leave you as long as you live.”

I will not try to give his words. I thought so much of what he meant that I did not remember the phrases he used. He talked to me of uncleanness of thought in which is the root of all evil, of uncleanliness of speech, of uncleanliness in deed. He told me of things that made cold chills rush through me and gave me such a fright of impurity that I think this talk was the greatest blessing of my life. He warned me against improper associates. “If you cannot get good company, it were better to be alone. If a boy makes any improper suggestion or indulges in improper talk, check him at once, show him the evil of it, persuade him, do him good in every way, but if he will not desist, run from him as if from a leper or from fire, and keep away from him as you would from a foul or poisonous thing. Better to throw yourself into the filth of the gutter than to allow yourself or any one to throw filth on your mind. You can wash your body or your clothes, but never wash your mind. The stains that are made upon it can never be erased. They are more indelibly engraved on the memory than any engraving on the hardest substance known. Memory is God’s judgment-day book, or rather men’s, for each one keeps his own daily and eternal record, and this he will take with him when he departs this life, and he will possess it, for it is a part of his soul, and carry it with him for ever; and this record will be a constant and perpetual witness for or against himself and make his heaven or his hell. This record is as indestructible as the soul itself; nothing of it can be lost, for nothing in the memory can ever be forgotten. Man is the architect of his own fortune, not only in this life, but for the life to come. Now Charles, I have told you all this as a sacred duty, and I beg of you in the fear of God, and for the love and regard you have for me, remember and obey these things.”

How well do I remember this. We had come into the garden and taken our seats on one of the benches. He took one of my hands in each of his and looking me in the eyes he talked with such warmth and tenderness as if his soul was in every word. And I am sure it was. Had I been his own son, and he upon his death-bed looking into eternity and giving me his last parting words, he could not have expressed himself with more solicitude and loving tenderness. How often in my life have I thanked God for such a wise friend and those words that have kept me from falling into many a snare and from getting many a stain and wound.

There are many thousands—bishops, priests, parsons et id omne genus, who are wasting their lives in trying to reconstruct the old hardened sinners. If they were to spend four-fifths of their time in warning the children and youth against vices and in showing them the horrid nature of the pitfalls of sin, in a few generations there would be no old sinners to worry about. They leave the young trees to grow all gnarled and twisted and then sputter about trying to convert them into straight trees. I have heard many a sermon, but all of them put together never had such a good effect upon my life as that half-hour’s earnest talk in the garden.

But as I am not well up in church therapeutics, my suggestions may be scorned by the last downy-cheeked fledgling of a priest who has just donned his church coat. Yet I cannot help thinking my own honest thoughts.

Did we have any such instructions in school? None whatever. The course of study was prepared by Government. It was so full and rigid that very few of the boys could spare time to read a book or paper. We were much like the poor geese of Strasburg. Each goose is nailed up in a box so that it cannot stand up or move, with its head and neck out at one end of the box. A number of times during the day and night, men go through the lines each with a syringe filled with chopped feed which is injected down the throats of the geese, willy nilly, and thus, enlarged livers are produced for the celebrated pâté de foie gras.

We human geese were stuffed and crammed by our teachers. It was “one demnition grind,” quoting Mr. Mantalini. There was no physiology or hygienic morals in the course and no time to give attention to such subjects.

It is true, we had our religious exercises. We memorized the creeds and catechism; but as they were compulsory and often given us to learn or repeat as a punishment, we got to rattling them off as we did the multiplication table or rules of grammar. We certainly neither understood them or fell in love with them. We had our daily religious service, as a matter of course, just as we had our morning wash, by rule and order, and as the water was often icy cold, so was the other. In fact all the religious ceremonies were as formal, exact and regular as if the motive power was a steam engine.

After the plain talk given me by Mr. Percy, I thought what a blessing it would be if all the boys could have heard him, or if our burly principal or some of the teachers could have given us some instruction about keeping our minds and bodies morally pure and clean, rather than cram us continually with mathematics, grammar, creeds and psalms. As for the good these latter did us, they might as well have been written on a roll of paper and placed in a Tibetan prayer-wheel, and each boy to give it a turn as he passed. However, I may be an old fool, as these are the thoughts of my later years.