A Gentleman

by Maurice Francis Egan

It is a settled fact that young people must be amused. It is a settled fact, or rather an accepted fact, that they must be amused much more than their predecessors were amused. It is useless to ask why. Life in the United States has become more complicated, more artificial, more civilized, if you will; and that Jeffersonian simplicity which De Tocqueville and De Bacourt noted has almost entirely disappeared. The theatre has assumed more license than ever; it amuses—it does not attempt to instruct; and spectacles are tolerated by decent people which would have been frowned upon some years ago. There is no question that the drama is purer than it ever was before; but the spectacle, the idiotic farce, and the light opera are more silly and more indecent than within the memory of man. The toleration of these things all shows that, in the craving for amusement, high principle and reasonable rules of conduct are forgotten.

A serious question of social importance is: How can the rage for amusement be kept within proper bounds? How can it be regulated? How can it be prevented from making the heart and the head empty and even corrupt? In many ways our country and our time are serious enough. We need, perhaps, a touch of that cheerful lightness which makes the life of the Viennese and of the Parisian agreeable and bright—which enables him to get color and interest into the most commonplace things. But our lightness and cheerfulness are likely to be spasmodic and extravagant. We are not pleased with little things; it takes a great deal to give us delight; our children are men and women too early; we do not understand simplicity—unless it is sold at a high price with an English label on it. Luxuries have become necessities, and even the children demand refinements of enjoyment of which their parents did not dream in the days gone by.

And yet the essence of American social life ought to be simplicity. We have no traditions to support; a merely rich man without a great family name owes nothing to society, except to help those poorer than himself; he has not inherited those great establishments which your English or Spanish high lord must keep up or tarnish the family name. We have no great families in America whose traditions are not those of simplicity and honesty, and these are the only traditions they are bound to cherish. In this way our aristocracy—if we have such a thing—ought to be the purest in the world and the most simple. There is no reason why we should pick up all the baubles that the effete folk of the Old World are throwing away.

Whether we are to achieve simplicity, and consequently cheerfulness, in every-day life depends entirely on the women. It is remarkable how many Catholic women bred in good schools enter society and run a mad race in search of frivolities. In St. Francis de Sales’s “Letters to People in the World” there is a record of a lady “who had long remained in such subjection to the humors of her husband, that in the very height of her devotions and ardors she was obliged to wear a low dress, and was all loaded with vanity outside; and, except at Easter, could never communicate unless secretly and unknown to every one—and yet she rose high in sanctity.”

But St. Francis de Sales had other words for those women of the world who rushed into all the complications of luxury, and yet who defended their frivolity by the phrase “duty to society.” The woman who serves her children best serves society. And she best serves her children by cultivating her heart and mind to the utmost; and by teaching them that one of the best things in life is simplicity, and that it is much easier to be a Christian when one is content with a little than when one is constantly discontented with a great deal. If the old New England love for simplicity in the ordinary way of life could be revived among Catholics, and sanctified by the amiable spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, the world would be a better place.

Father Faber tells us what even greater men have told us before—that each human being has his vocation in life. And we nearly all accept it as true, but the great difficulty is to realize it. Ruskin says that work is not a curse; but that a man must like his work, feel that he can do it well, and not have too much of it to do. The sum of all this means that he shall be contented in his work, and find his chief satisfaction in doing it well. It is not what we do, but how we do it, that makes success.

The greatest enemy to a full understanding of the word vocation among Americans is the belief that it means solely the acquirement of money. And the reason for this lies not in the character of the American—who is no more mercenary than other people—but in the idea that wealth is within the grasp of any man who works for it. The money standard, therefore, is the standard of success. But success to the eyes of the world is not always success to the man himself. The accumulation of wealth often leaves him worn-out, dissatisfied, with a feeling that he has somehow missed the best of life. That man has probably missed his vocation and done the wrong thing, in spite of the opinion outside of himself that he has succeeded.

The frequent missing of vocations in life is due to false ideas about education. The parent tries to throw all the responsibility of education on the teacher, and the teacher has no time for individual moulding. A boy grows up learning to read and to write, like other boys. He may be apt with his head or his hands, but how few parents see the aptitude in the right light! It ought to be considered and seriously cultivated. The tastes of youth may not always be indications of the future: they often change with circumstances and surroundings. But they are just as often unerring indications of the direction in which the child’s truest success in the world will lie. If a boy play at swinging a censer when he is little, or enjoy the sight of burning candles on a toy altar, it is not an infallible sign that he will be a priest. And yet the rosary that young Newman drew on his slate, when he was a boy, doubtless meant something.

“The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” Longfellow sings. He who comprehends them gets near to the heart of youth. But who tries to do it? The boy is as great an enigma to his father, as a rule, as the old sphinx in the Egyptian desert is to passing travellers. And who but his father ought to have the key to the boy’s mind, and find his way into its recesses so gently and carefully that the question of his child’s vocation would be an easy one for him to answer?

If the religious vocations in this country are not equal in number to what they ought to be, we may attribute it to these two causes: the general desire to make money, and the placid indifference of parents. A boy is sent to “school”—school implying a sort of factory from which human creatures are turned out polished and finished, but not ready for any special work in a world which demands specialists. And what is specialism but the industrious working out of a vocation?