A Thoughtless Yes

by Helen H. Gardener

I use the word hospitality advisedly, for his effort always seemed to be to treat me as a guest whom he must entertain, and distract from observing his ailments, rather than as a physician whose business it was to discover and remedy them.

He had declined to be moved; said he was a stranger; had no preferences as to hotels; felt sure this one was as comfortable as any; thanked me over and over for having taken him there, and changed the subject. He would talk as long as I would allow him on any subject, airily, brightly, readily. On any subject, that is, except himself; yet from his conversation I had gathered that he had travelled a great deal; was a man of wealth and culture, whether French, Italian or Russian, I could not decide. He spoke all of these languages, and words from each fitted easily into place when for a better English one, he hesitated or was at a loss.

Indeed, he seemed to have seen much of every country and to have observed impartially—without national prejudice. He knew men well, too well to praise recklessly; and he sometimes gave me the impression, I can hardly say how, that blame was a word whose meaning he did not know.

He spoke of having seen deeds of the most appalling nature in Russia, and talked of their perpetrators sometimes, as good and brave men. He never appeared to measure men by their exceptional acts.

Occasionally I contested these points with him, and I am not sure but that it may have been the interest I took in his conversation that held me as his physician; for as I said, I was well aware that he did not improve as he should have done after the first few days.

But I liked to hear him talk. He was a revelation to me. I greatly enjoyed his breath and charity—if I may so express the mental attitude which recognized neither the possession of, nor the need for, either quality in his judgments of his fellow-men.

He had evidently not been able to pass through life under the impression that character, like cloth, is cut to fit a certain outline, and that after the basting-threads are once in, no farther variation need be looked for. Indeed, I question if he would have been able to comprehend the mental condition of those grown-up "educated" children who are never able to outgrow the comfortable belief that words and acts have a definite, inflexible, par-value—that an unabridged dictionary, so to speak, is an infallible appeal; who, in short, expect their villains to be consistently and invariably villainous, in the regulation orthodox fashion.

Individual shades of meaning, whether of language or of character, do not enter into their simple philosophy. Mankind suffers, in their pennyweight scales, a shrinkage that is none the less real because they never suspect that the dwarfage may be due to themselves—to their system of weights and measures. All variations from their standard indicate an unvarying tendency to mendacity. He whom they once detect in a quibble, or in an attempt to acquire the large end of a bargain, never recovers (what is perhaps only his rightful heritage, in spite of an occasional lapse) the respect and confidence of these primer students who are inflexible judges of all mental and moral manifestations.

I repeat that this comfortable and regular philosophy was foreign to my patient's mental habits, and I began to consider, the more I talked with him, that it did not agree with my own personal observations. I reflected that I was not very greatly surprised, nor did I lose faith in a man necessarily, when I discovered him in a single mean or questionable action.

Why, then, should I be surprised to find those of whom I had known only ill-engaged in deeds of the most unselfish nature? Deeds of heroism and generosity such as he often recounted as a part of the life of some of these same terrible Russian officials. There seems, however, to be that in us which finds it far easier to reconcile a single mean or immoral action with an otherwise upright life, than to believe it likely, or even possible, for a depraved nature to perform, upon occasion, deeds of exalted or unusual purity. Yet so common is the latter, that its failure of recognition by humanity in general can be due it seems to me, only to a wrong teaching or to a stupidity beyond even normal bounds.