Their Yesterdays

by Harold Bell Wright

Even in matters of personal habits and taste, the man found that he was not free. In his dress; in the things he ate and drank; in his pleasures; in the books he read, the plays he attended, the pictures he saw, the music he heard, he found that he was expected to obey the mandates of the world—he found that he was expected to conform to Tradition—to the established customs and habits of others. In religion, in politics, in society, in literature, in art—as in his work—the world said: "Don't go outside the yard."

I do not know what work it was that the man was trying to do. It does not matter what his work was. But this I know: in every work that man, since the beginning, has tried to do, man has been hindered as this man was hindered—man has been denied as this man was denied, freedom. Tradition has always blocked the wheels of progress. The world has moved ahead always in spite of the world. Just as the world has always crucified its saviors, so, always, it has hindered and held back its leaders.

And this, too, I know: after the savior is crucified, those who nail him to the cross accept his teaching. While the world hinders and holds back its leaders, it always follows them.

But the man did not think of this that day when he left the scene of his labor in such anger. He thought only of that which he was trying to do. When he went back to his work, the next day, he was still angry and with his anger, now, came discontent, doubt, and fear, to cloud his vision, to clog his brain and weaken his heart.

A friend, at lunch, said: "You look fagged, knocked out, done up, old man. You've been pegging away too long and too steadily. Why don't you let up for awhile? Lay off for a week or two. Take a vacation."

Again and again, that hot, weary, afternoon, the words of the man's friend came back to him until, by evening, he was considering the suggestion seriously. "Why not?" he asked himself. He was accomplishing little or nothing in his present mood. Why not accept the friendly advice? Perhaps—when he came back—perhaps, he could again laugh at the world that denied him freedom.

So he came to considering places and plans. And, as he considered, there was before him, growing always clearer as he looked, the scenes of his boyhood—the old home of his childhood—the place of his Yesterdays. There were many places of interest and pleasure to which the man might go, but, among them all, there was no place so attractive as the place of his Yesterdays. There was nothing he so wished to do as this: to go back to the old home and there to be, for a little while, as nearly as a man could be, a boy again.

If the man had thought about it, he would have seen in this desire to spend his vacation at the old home something of the same force that so angered him by hindering his work. But the man did not think about it. He wrote a letter to see if he might spend two weeks with the people who were living in the house where he was born and, when the answer came assuring him a welcome, quickly made his arrangements to go.

With boyish eagerness, he was at the depot a full half hour before the time for his train. While he waited, he watched the crowd, feeling an interest in the people who came and went in the never ending profession that he had not felt since that day when he had first come to the city to work out his dreams among men. In the human tide that ebbed and flowed through this world gateway, he saw men of wealth and men of poverty—people of culture and position who had come or were going in Pullman or private cars and illiterate, stupid, animal looking, emigrants who were crowded, much like cattle, in the lowest class. There were business men of large affairs; countrymen with wondering faces; shallow, pleasure seekers; artists and scholars; idle fools; vicious sharks watching for victims; mothers with flocks of children clinging to their skirts; working girls and business women; chattering, laughing, schoolgirls; and wretched creatures of the outcast life—all these and many more.

And, as he watched, perhaps because he was on his vacation, perhaps because of something in his heart awakened by the fact that he was going to his boyhood home, the man felt, as he had never felt before, his kinship with them all. With wealth and poverty, with culture and illiteracy, with pleasure and crime, with sadness and joy, as evidenced in the lives of those who passed in the crowd, the man felt a sympathy and understanding that was strangely new. And, more than this, he saw that each was kin to the other. He saw that, in spite of the wide gulf that separated the individuals in the throng, there was a something that held them all together—there was a force that influenced all alike—there was a something common to all. In spite of the warring elements of society; in spite of the clashing forces of business; in spite of the conflicting claims of industry represented in the throng; the man recognized a brotherhood, a oneness, a kinship, that held all together. And he felt this with a strange feeling that he had always known that it was there but had never recognized it before.