“Who is that pompous one over there? Let him step forward. He looks the part of self-made success. He comes nigh to the World’s Conception of Complete Rapture, only he speaks fairly bad grammar. He is the practical ideal of the present-day American, industrious, self-reliant, not embarrassed by his past, confident in his contempt for others—we almost hear the conquering music as he advances. But do we know him? Let him come closer. You struggled all your youth and manhood and middle life, did you not? He nods. You slaved for your children and for your children’s children, to perpetuate your name above want and in respectability. Ah yes, I think I know you. Your children? They are not what you willed them to be. He hung his head. And sadder than that, you imagined that you outgrew the wife of your struggles. You may take your stand under the Banner of Success for Others; it is just ahead of the Banner of Success. The band plays a little sweetly for you, but it does not thrill you. The zest is gone.”
Charity, charity, I pray God for charity toward the Other’s Self and toward myself. Charity!
For, sirs, I, too, have had Macbeth’s vaulting ambition which o’erlept itself. I, too, have horsed the clouds with Kaiser Peer Gynt, and ridden under the stars. Ozymandias, king of kings, never looked upon grander works than those on my demense. And I have dropped from poetry into fact. I have sailed the sea and cried, “Fear not. You carry Caesar!”
Macbeth became a murderer; Peer Gynt something worse. Ozymandias has been forgotten; and we know not where Julius Caesar lies.
On such a night as this, the heavens seem aglow with brilliants. Stars, moons, planets, suns, worlds—how many of you are inhabited as ours is? Or do you reckon at all of such atoms as men and women? You have shone upon a mighty host of leaders and their followers. You shine indifferently upon our passing shows and remain to shine when we are gone, mocking our longest efforts. Ah, how does that Eternity of the Past outdo the little Eternity of the Future of which poor man has dreamed!
Tell us, Moon, did the mastodons shed their heavy hair when the ice receded? And did the Aztecs have a written alphabet?
Was Helen of Troy sweet to look upon? Or was she bold and brazen?
Was Shakespeare a drunkard? And did he consider Marlowe a failure?
In that company of Greeks who came to Philip with the request: “Sir, we would see Jesus;”—did they think that Christ had Grecian blood in his veins, as his thought indicated?
When I die, will I get my sleep at last in the wide bed which holds us all? Failures and successes cut much the same figure under the great green sheet of that bed, don’t they?