Observations of a Retired Veteran

by Henry C. Tinsley

* * * * * Of course, as we move on through this alternately delightful and disagreeable world, we must be brought face to face with bores of many varieties. Setting aside that pest, the egotist, for whom there can be no excuse, I should like to mention the man or woman who conceives that the way to talk about books is to deal with the acts and characters instead of what they say. It seems to me that it is just one of the modes, if I may call it that, of talking literature that is little better than no mode at all. It is a rare thing to meet with even the most modern work—I am speaking of fiction—by a fairly successful writer, that does not contain some utterance to arouse thought and challenge us to mental debate. The acts must of necessity be commonplace from familiarity, for man has behaved himself for a million of years from the same motives and only varied his manner with the advancing material circumstances which surrounded him. But his thoughts are not obliged to be commonplace. The thoughts of men are marching in ever moving procession towards the Light, and as each one emerges from the darkness it catches on its forehead a ray which transforms it. It is these that are to be discussed when we talk about books, and not the mere acts of the actors therein. What, as a matter of conversation, is the suicide of Dido, compared with the fine lines in which she so touchingly summarizes what her life would have been had the false AEneas never seen her? I lately heard two exceptionally intelligent young people discussing the novel—Put Yourself in His Place—which though a very second rate work was written with a very first rate purpose. Their criticism and discussion was confined wholly to the action of the characters and they seemed to have thought the purpose of no account compared with the plot and love-making. And it is not young people alone who are given to this skimming process. I have known people who really deserved the title of readers, to find their chief if not their only criticism in the decision of how well this or that character was drawn, and what surprises the plot contained; while as to the thoughts, good or bad, old or novel, the critics seemed to be oblivious. If we expect really to improve ourselves by books—still I am speaking of fiction—we should try to remember and afterwards discuss the thoughts they contained and which we found in the mouths of the characters or in the comments of the author. There has never been in my recollection a time when the fiction of the day was more completely abreast of the advancing thought of the world, or in which it teemed with more new and practical views logically connected with passing events and new situations. It is when, closing the book, we take away with us those seeds and subject them to the attrition of discussion, which wears off the pollen, that we arrive at, possibly, a new and valuable thought which may deserve the name of knowledge.

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"It seems to me your observations are nothing but opinions," said Mrs. Boyzy to me the other evening. She called it o-pin-ions. Women have an art of expressing contempt by syllabic emphasis that men never acquire. It is their failure to accomplish this that induces men to substitute profanity. Nevertheless, as that excellent woman remarked, the things I say in these papers are for the most part opinions. But what of that; what moves the world but opinions—what has moved it up to where it is now, but opinions? Where would the world be if it were not for new opinions; where would men be? Suppose every public man clung to precedents in public affairs; every politician pinned his faith on his party policy, and every preacher planted himself on orthodoxy—all with a determination to go no further. The world would come to a standstill. There would be no progress. Opinions are the lever that works the world. Precedents become mouldy, politicians change with the times, and creeds advance with the public thought. What do we care what a man thought two hundred years ago, when we have what a man thinks to-day? What is to us the policy of a political party when the moss has commenced to grow over it. Who would attempt to enforce in this day the medieval creeds and religious practices and church government? What are we put here for, if it is not to learn, every year, every day, every hour if we can. And of what use is all this learning if we are not to advance by means of it? And how could we move a step if we did not tell our neighbor what we think we have learned—that is, tell him our opinions. I say to you, Madam (and I say it the more freely that she is out of hearing), that opinions rule the world, and while it may be possible that mine do not rule my own household, it impairs their value no more than imprisonment and persecution did those of other philosophers in the past. An opinion is a valuable thing—in its information if it is true, in the mental exercise it gives in combating it, if it is error, and in any event as a feather that indicates which way the wind is blowing—in what direction the blind mole of man's finite judgment is groping around its prison in search of an outlet to the infinite. And that is true, Madam, whether you call them opinions, or o-pin-ions!

OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN II

You have been to the Conference? So have I, but it was twelve years ago. Still I shall never forget a scene I witnessed there. It was in the same Methodist church that this one is being held in. For days I had been interested in a plain, homely-faced minister, considerably past his half century, who came in evidently with great pain on crutches. The town bell striking the hour was not more punctual than the sound of his crutches. His hands were distorted by rheumatism, his limbs twisted, and his face had a patient look as of one who had suffered for a hundred years. His face was rough, but somewhere about its expression there was a graciousness that attracted my attention. One other expression in it struck me; it was the air of a man who had finished his work. Not that he hadn't frequent consultations with the ministers who approached him, or showed any lack of interest in what was going on, but just a look as if he was doing anything for the last time. Once he got up and made an official report of some kind to the Bishop. As he closed it, his eyes burned with an intense anxiety and he opened his lips as if to say something. But it was left unsaid, and as he painfully resumed his seat the old look returned. As the close of the Conference approached, I saw him several times with his head bent over the back of the pew. It was on an evening very near the close. The rays of the westering March sun shone through the windows with a cold, cheerless light. His name was called. He raised his head. His face was flushed. He struggled to his feet and with his crutches hobbled around the aisle to the front of the pulpit, where he stood, balancing himself on his crutches. And then the story came out. It was told to those in the seats rather than to the Bishop. He had entered the ministry young and had hoped to give his whole life to God. But of late years disease had overtaken him. He had struggled against it and tried to do his duty through great suffering, but lately he had found that he could be of no further use and he asked—here he paused and turned from the pews to the Bishop. It seemed that he was about to say something that he had striven for years not to say. His eyes filled and in a thick voice he said: "I ask to be put on the superannuated list." And then he sat down on the nearest seat and wept like a child. What it would have broken the heart of other men to have staid in, it broke his heart to leave. I viewed him with intense curiosity. Five or six of his brother ministers came up one by one, and silently took hold of his twisted hands. I don't think they said a word; I am sure he did not. He did not look at them, for his head was buried on one of his cheap, home-made crutches, and from his pocket he had taken a worn and faded handkerchief, with which he was checking his tears. After he had gotten back to his pew, some ministers here and there over the audience got up and testified to what the man had been and what work he had done. Some of them had seen him, crippled as he was and suffering the agony of rheumatism, driving miles through the falling snow to fill an appointment to preach. Somehow it seemed to me a eulogy of the dead—and it was. When I saw him the next morning he had the air of a man who had met a great loss, instead of a man who had just parted with a life of labor and physical anguish, but there was still the last time look about him. And it was the last time. In six months from that time he was dead. What shall we say when such a life of self-sacrifice passes on to the stars? What can we say, except to speculate on the boundless possibilities that eternity must contain for such a life. What must such a little minute-hand life as sixty years, develop into on the dial plate of eternity, when it is begun as this man's was. Such a man as this, it seems to me, must at some time or other have touched the very hem of the Master's garment.

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I saw in your paper this week an expression which continues to run through my head. It is an advertisement of a poultryman for poultry, in which he says with rough frankness, "Old roosters not wanted." Whether it is good policy in him, while attempting to secure tender and succulent birds for the clerical stomach, to affront that venerable class of fowls upon which we sinners are to live long after the clergy have left, I will not say. I do not believe, however, that it will go unresented or unpunished. I believe that many an old rooster will so beplume himself and take on such an extra strut, that he will at last succeed in forcing himself as a young bird between the teeth of our clerical visitors. This will be a sweet revenge. But with this I have nothing to do; what I have now to do with, is the fact that over every department of life I see the same announcement. In society where the sweet amenities of life are monopolized by the young, the aged beau is met by the flaming inscription, "Old roosters not wanted." In politics we hear the cry that the favorite candidate is a representative of the "Young Democracy" or "Young Republicans," as the case may be, and that, except at the ballot-box, "Old roosters are not wanted." If a congregation loses its pastor and commences looking around for a successor, the first thing it does is to print in large letters across the pulpit, "Old roosters not wanted." Across the door of every new enterprise is the same inscription. What, I desire to know, is to become of us old roosters? Not fit for broiling, too tough for roasting, too old for congressmen, for preachers—what are you going to do with us? Ah, the very question shows where we stand. It used to be a few years ago, what we were going to do with you, but the tables have been turned and now it seems to me that the cemetery gate is the only place not decorated with the legend, "Old roosters not wanted." There they are more than welcome; indeed, if it were not for their patronage that institution would do an amount of business very unsatisfactory to its stockholders. Having then this refuge, brethren, let us take courage! Let us take consolation in the thought that we have gotten over so much of the rough road over which those following us have yet to travel, and that having once passed that portal we shall have reached perfect peace. Let us find a spiteful satisfaction in the fact that long after we have entered the silent gates, the young roosters will still have to rise early and crow hungrily for corn, still will have to skirmish with other roosters for bread, and the highest pole in the roost, and that as they show up in the race of life, they will have to read, in their turn, the fatal sign-board along the track—"Old roosters not wanted."

OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN III

I have often heard people lament ill-health because, they say, sickness loses to a man friends. On the contrary, I hold that it brings him many new and unexpected ones. Let me see—December 15,—July; seven months; that was long enough to make the experiment, wasn't it? Well, let me look over some of the new friends I have made lying all this time in bed. The first new friend that I made, and one who had evidently seen better days, was a Tomato Can, that ever present denizen of the back-yard. On his head he jauntily flew a cocked hat bearing a damaged new picture of himself evidently taken in youth, and across his red waistcoat, in blue letters, was the word "Trophy." There he stood, day after day, leaning jauntily against the doubtful company of a whiskey barrel hoop, telling me the time of day, as if that was his only business in life. If the sun's light lay across his red stomach it was 9 o'clock, if it glistened on his cocked hat it was noon, and if it soberly lighted up the cherry red tomato on his side, it was 6 o'clock. "Sir," he seemed to say, "I have not been always as you see me. I have seen the day when I roosted on the highest shelf in the family grocery, and when I was dusted daily by well dressed clerks—if the employer was around. I was for many years the tenant of a French plate glass window and I have been carried by the soft hand of Beauty, sir, and laid gently in the market-basket. I do not boast, but Beauty itself has carried me through the streets in its arm. I have seen great larks, sir. I have travelled that Main Street at the rate of a mile a minute at the tail of valuable dogs, and at the midnight hour I have bounced into the midst of cat caucuses with great sport. I have been the friend of Man, sir, but what has Man done for me. He has left me here in this miserable back-yard, company of barrel-hoops and brick-bats and bottles. He has—" But here the next door neighbor's servant threw a bucket of slop-water on my friend and cut off his complaint. His red vest peeled down a little further, his cocked hat depressed further over his face, and a potato skin stopped his mouth. How true it is that no person can be in such disreputable circumstances that he has not the remembrance of better days to soothe him, and like the Tomato Can, ever find true comfort in the top-shelf on which he long ago may have roosted.

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