CHAPTER XXV.—HOW THE FILIBUSTERER SAILED.
It will come to you as strange, my friends, to hear objection—as though against an ill trait—to that open-handed generosity which is held by many to be among the marks of supreme virtue. Generosity, whether it be evidenced by gifts of money, of sympathy, of effort or of time, is only another word for weakness. If one were to go into careful consideration of the life-failure of any man, it would be found most often that his fortunes were slain by his generosity; and while, without consideration, he gave to others his countenance, his friendship, his money, his toil or whatever he conferred, he in truth but parted with his own future—with those raw materials wherewith he would otherwise have fashioned a victorious career. Generosity, in a commonest expression, is giving more than one receives; it is to give two hundred and get one hundred; he is blind, therefore, who does not see that any ardor of generosity would destroy a Rothschild.
From birth, and as an attribute inborn, I have been ever too quick to give. For a first part of my life at least, and until I shackled my impulse of liberality, I was the constant victim of that natural readiness. And I was cheated and swindled with every rising sun. I gave friendship and took pretense; I parted with money for words; ever I rendered the real and received the false, and sold the substance for the shadow to any and all who came pleasantly to smile across my counter. I was not over-old, however, when these dour truths broke on me, and I began to teach myself the solvent beauty of saying “No.”
During those months of exile—for exile it was—which I spent in Washington Square, I cultivated misanthropy—a hardness of spirit; almost, I might say, I fostered a hatred of my fellow man. And more or less I had success. I became owner of much stiffness of sentiment and a proneness to be practical; and kept ever before me like a star that, no matter how unimportant I might be to others, to myself at least I was most important of mankind. Doubtless, I lost in grace by such studies; but in its stead I succeeded to safety, and when we are at a final word, we live by what we keep and die by what we quit, and of all loyalties there’s no loyalty like loyalty to one’s self.
While I can record a conquest of my generosity and its subjugation to lines of careful tit-for-tat, there were other emotions against which I was unable to toughen my soul. I became never so redoubtable that I could beat off the assaults of shame; never so puissant of sentiment but I was prey to regrets. For which weaknesses, I could not think on the affairs of The Emperor’s Cigars and The German Girl’s Diamonds, nor on the sordid money I pouched as their fruits, without the blush mounting; nor was I strong enough to consider the latter adventure and escape a stab of sore remorse. Later could I have found the girl I would have made her restitution. Even now I hear again that scream which reached me on the forward deck of the “Wolfgang” that September afternoon.
But concerning the Cuban filibusterer, his outsailing against Spain; and the gold I got for his going—for these I say, I never have experienced either confusion or sorrow. My orders were to keep him in; I opened the port’s gate and let him out; I pocketed my yellow profits. And under equal conditions I would do as much again. It was an act of war against Spain; yet why should one shrink from one’s interest for a reason like that? Where was the moral wrong? Nations make war; and what is right for a country, is right for a man. That is rock-embedded verity, if one will but look, and that which is dishonest for an individual cannot be honest for a flag. You may—if you so choose—make war on Spain, and with as much of justice as any proudest people that ever put to sea. The question of difference is but a question of strength; and so you be strong enough you’ll be right enough, I warrant! For what says the poet?
“Right follows might
Like tail follows kite.”