“The newspaper that told the story added, as American journals are apt to do, a line or two of its own, to the effect that the Arkansas conductor’s reply was almost as uncomplimentary as that of an Eastern conductor, who, upon being discharged, said, ‘Well, I was intending to quit anyway, for there is nothing left of your old road but two streaks of iron rust and a right of way.’”
IV.
During one of the very long delays in question Irving and I talked of many things.
“You were speaking of the waste of food at hotels and restaurants one day,” Irving remarked. “I am told that at some of the best houses in Chicago the clean scraps that are left on dishes after each meal are collected and given to poor families every day. Children with large baskets call for them. Another class of scraps go to charitable institutions, more particularly Roman Catholic establishments. These are the leavings of the carver’s tables in the kitchens. One is glad to know this, for I, too, have often been struck with the abundance that is taken away untouched from tables where I have dined; though I have seen nothing of the public breakfast and dining rooms. It is quite a system in England, I believe, the collection of food for the humbler ‘homes’ and charities; but one does not see in America any poor of the abject, poverty-stricken class that is familiar at home. Life to many must, nevertheless, be a bitter struggle.
“There are many who are well off; thousands who would be happier even in the most wretched districts of Ireland. An Irish friend of mine, in New York, said to me only the other day, ‘The worst hut in Connemara is a palace to some of the tenement-house dens where my countrymen herd together in New York.’”
“They don’t go West, I am told, as the Germans and Swedes and Norwegians do. It is a little odd that they do not take full advantage of the unrestricted freedom of the West, and the gift of land which can be obtained from the American government. Sixty acres, is it not?”
“Yes, that is the endowment America offers to settlers in some of her finest territory; and it is true that, as a rule, the Irish do not become farmers on this side of the Atlantic. They prefer city life, even with its disabilities. When I was in America one hot summer, two years ago, children of the poor, who live in the common tenement-houses down-town in New York, were dying of the heat at the rate of hundreds a day. In her most crowded alleys London has nothing to compare with the lodging-houses in the poorer districts of New York for squalor and misery. But human nature is alike all the world over; more than one rich man collects heavy rents from these death-traps.”
“Just as a few of our fellow-countrymen in London supplement their rents by the contributions of infamous tenants. I dare say some of these hypocrites make speeches against the stage, and go ostentatiously to church; otherwise they would be found out by their associates. Religion is, indeed, a useful cloak for these gentry. It is gratifying to find that in some American cities, that are noted for their church discipline, the preachers are not afraid to tell their flocks that, properly used, the stage, as a moral teacher, is not unworthy of alliance with the pulpit.
“Did Mr. Beecher talk about the morality of the stage, or its relations to the public?”
“No, but one of the writers for a Brooklyn journal asked me some questions on the subject. I told him that the world has found out that they live just like other people, and that, as a rule, they are observant of all that makes for the sweet sanctities of life, and they are as readily recognized and welcomed in the social circle as the members of any other profession. The stage has literally lived down the rebuke and reproach under which it formerly cowered, and actors and actresses receive in society, as do the members of other professions, exactly the treatment which is earned by their personal conduct. He asked me about the morality of attending the theatre, and I said I should think the worst performances seen on any of our stages cannot be so bad as drinking for a corresponding time in what you call here a bar-room, and what we term a gin-palace. The drinking is usually done in bad company, and is often accompanied by obscenity. Where drink and low people come together these things must be. The worst that can come of stage pandering to the corrupt tastes of its basest patrons cannot be anything like this, and, as a rule, the stage holds out long against the invitation to pander; and such invitations, from the publicity and decorum that attend the whole matter, are neither frequent nor eager. He informed me that the clergy, as a rule,—he used the term dissenting clergy, I suppose, as an explanation to me to denote the class who are not Episcopalians, that I might the better compare them with the ministers at home,—he told me that they are opposed to theatres. He asked me what I felt about this. I told him I thought that both here and in England the clerical profession are becoming more liberal in their views. Some people think they can live and bring up their children in such a way as to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and be saved nine-tenths of the responsibility of self-control. But that seems to me to be a foolish notion. You must be in the world, though you need not be of it. The best way for the clergy to make the theatre better is not to stay away from it, and shun the people who play in it, but to bring public opinion to bear upon it,—to denounce what is bad and to encourage what is good. When I was a boy I never went to the theatre except to see a Shakespearian play, and I endeavored to make my theatrical experiences not only a source of amusement, but of instruction.’”