Adventures in indigence, and other essays

by Laura Spencer Portor

And if you tell me that none but a sentimentalist would call poverty an enrichment, then I can only assume that you have never been poor; and if you tell me that the high behavior of Horatio is at the best but endurance, even then, could I grant you so much, the argument still would hold. Even so, Horatio endured life with a noble grace, and helped others to do so; even so, he was able still to find pleasure in a fate from which the wealthy would shrink in horror, and lovable traits in one they would have called his bitterest enemy. He had blessed the life which had cursed him, and had loved it though it had despitefully used him.

So he triumphed—yet without pride; nor did one hear in his spirit's victory any hint of animosity, or talk of reprisals, or bitterness, or demand for indemnities, or hidden hate. Rather, he was to be found each day undefeated in his impregnable gentleness, that still unfallen province in which he dwelt. His were some incalculable riches of the spirit which Poverty had heaped up and amassed for him through those years when his fingers handled without complaint the miserable pennies; his was some towering strength under the disguise of the weak and broken body; like that Olympian glory fabled inevitably to appear some time, under the mortal humility of gods in exile. There was about him, for all his slenderness, something grand, something epic, and allegorical. He might have stood as a symbol of a downtrodden people, such nations as the world (be it said to our shame) sees still, and that not in small numbers—crushed, oppressed by the arrogant, the strong, yet still surviving and giving to the other nations their gifts of gay song or heroic endurance, and out of an incredible bounty still bestowing love and kindness and beauty on the world which has behaved toward them without mercy.

Look, if you will, at the beggar nations of the world, and search the heart of the poor among peoples, and I am convinced that you will find in these also corroborative evidence of truths I have tried here to touch upon but lightly. Let be their follies and their mistakes and all their incredible assumptions: who shall declare that poverty has not enriched them likewise? And among them, shall you not find high and royal and single spirits, who, like Horatio, have both known and loved the world and triumphed over it without animosity? To have known and yet to have loved the world! Is not this the real heart of the matter? Is not this the true test after all, and the indisputable mark of a king's son? And shall you not find it oftener among the poor than elsewhere? For he cannot be said to know the world who has never been at its mercy; even as only he can be said to have triumphed over it, who, having suffered all things at its hands, yet loves it with unconquerable fidelity.

GUESTS

I
RELATIONS OF THE SPIRIT

In his essay on "Character" Emerson points to the mutation and change of religions and theological teachings, and then thunders characteristically, "The moral sentiment alone is omnipotent." Now, Emerson never takes away anything traditional and cherished, but he puts something nobler into your hands in place of it. Hear him: "The lines of religious sects are very shifting, their platforms unstable; the whole science of theology of great uncertainty. No man can tell what religious revolutions await us in the next years." Then with thundering assurance he gives us the coveted reassurance. "But the science of ethics has no mutation. The pulpit may shake, but this platform will not. All the victories of religion belong to the moral sentiment."

I wish it were given me to speak with some such force and truth of what we are wont to call education. Theories are very shifting; the whole science of instruction is of great uncertainty. No man can tell what pedagogic revolutions await us. But the educational value of life has no uncertainty. Schools may come and go; this, the school of life, remains—the greatest of them all. The highest attainments of mankind are due to its teachings.

In still another essay, Emerson, depicting, we suppose, the ideal not the academic scholar, declares with the same tonic forcefulness that "his use of books is occasional and infinitely subordinate; that he should read a little proudly, as one who knows the original and cannot therefore very highly value the copy." Always, life is to Emerson the greater art, and learning, literature, and all other arts whatsoever, but lesser things. "You send your child to the schoolmaster," he flings out, "but it is the schoolboys who educate him."

Precisely. When shall we have taken wholly to heart the so obvious truth? It cannot be but the author of the "Greatest Show on Earth" was right. The world likes to be humbugged; else why all this elaboration of educational systems and theories, educational forms and creeds, this multiplication of modern methods and "didactic material"? These are, indeed, but things that change and fluctuate, and already are on the way to being superseded. Meanwhile the older and larger schoolroom of Life never closes its doors, makes no bid for patronage, retains its old teachers, changes its methods not at all, and still turns out the best pupils.

My own education is generally thought to be above the average. It is my belief that it would be far less considerable but for those various circumstances which in my childhood denied me much schooling, and accorded me a good deal of staying at home.