The man in the street: Papers on American topics

by Meredith Nicholson

VI

The cheery optimism, tolerance, and mercy that are the burden of his verse summed up his religion. He told me once that he was a Methodist; at least, he had become a member of that body in his youth, and he was not aware, as he put it, that they had ever “fired” him. For a time he was deeply interested in Spiritualism and attended séances; but I imagine that he derived no consolation from these sources, as he never mentioned the subject in later years. Though he never probed far into such matters, speculations as to immortality always appealed to him, and he often reiterated his confidence that we shall meet and recognize, somewhere in the beyond, those who are dear to us on earth. His sympathy for bereaved friends was marked by the tenderest feeling. “It’s all right,” he would say bravely, and he did believe, sincerely, in a benign Providence that makes things “right.”

Here was a life singularly blessed in all its circumstances and in the abundant realization of its hopes and aims. Few poets of any period have received so generous an expression of public regard and affection as fell to Riley’s lot. The very simplicity of his message and the melodious forms in which it was delivered won him the wide hearing that he enjoyed and that seems likely to be his continuing reward far into the future. Yale wrote him upon her rolls as a Master of Arts, the University of Pennsylvania made him a Doctor of Letters. The American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed upon him its gold medal in the department of poetry; his last birthdays were observed in many parts of the country. Honor, love, obedience, troops of friends were his happy portion, and he left the world richer for the faith and hope and honest mirth that he brought to it.

THE CHEERFUL BREAKFAST TABLE

“A good, honest, wholesome, hungry breakfast.”

—The Compleat Angler.

“ONE fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament.” This has always seemed to me the noblest possible opening for a tale. The zest of a fine morning in London, the deliberation of a gentleman taking his ease in his club and fortifying himself against the day’s events with a satisfying breakfast, are communicated to the reader in a manner that at once inspires confidence and arouses the liveliest expectations. I shall not go the length of saying that all novels should begin with breakfast, but where the disclosures are to be of moment, and we are to be urged upon adventures calculated to tax our emotions or our staying powers, a breakfast table serves admirably as a point of departure. We thus begin the imaginary day where the natural day begins, and we form the acquaintance of the characters at an hour when human nature is most satisfactorily and profitably studied.

It is only a superstition that night alone affords the proper atmosphere for romance, and that the curtain must fall upon the first scene with the dead face of the king’s messenger upturned to the moon and the landlord bawling from an upper window to know what it’s all about. Morning is the beginning of all things. Its hours breathe life and hope. “Pistols and coffee!” The phrase whets the appetite both for the encounter and the cheering cup. The duel, to be sure, is no longer in favor, and it is not for me to lament its passing; but I mention it as an affair of dewy mornings, indelibly associated with hours when the hand is steady and courage runs high.

It may be said with all assurance that breakfast has fallen into sad neglect, due to the haste and rush of modern life—the commuter’s anxiety touching the 8.27, the city man’s fear that he may not be able to absorb the day’s news before his car is at the door. Breakfast has become a negligible item of the day’s schedule. An increasing number of American citizens are unfit to be seen at the breakfast hour; and a man, woman, or child who cannot present a cheery countenance at breakfast is living an unhealthy life upon the brink of disaster. A hasty visit to the table, the gulping of coffee, the vicious snapping of teeth upon food scarcely looked at, and a wild rush to keep the first appointment noted on the calendar, is the poorest possible preparation for a day of honest work. The man who follows this practice is a terror to his business associates. Reports that “the boss isn’t feeling well this morning” pass about the office, with a disturbance of the morale that does not make for the efficiency of the establishment. The wife who reaches the table dishevelled and fretful, under compulsion of her conscience, with the idea that the lord of the house should not be permitted to fare forth without her benediction, would do better to keep her bed. If the eggs are overdone or the coffee is cold and flavorless, her panicky entrance at the last moment will not save the situation. A growl from behind the screening newspaper is a poor return for her wifely self-denial, but she deserves it. There is guilt upon her soul; if she had not insisted on taking the Smiths to supper after the theatre the night before, he would have got the amount of sleep essential to his well-being and the curtaining paper would not be camouflaging a face to which the good-by kiss at the front door is an affront, not a caress.

“Have the children come down yet?” the lone breakfaster growlingly demands. The maid replies indifferently that the children have severally and separately partaken of their porridge and departed. Her manner of imparting this information signifies rebellion against a system which makes necessary the repeated offering of breakfast to persons who accept only that they may complain of it. No happier is the matutinal meal in humbler establishments where the wife prepares and serves the food, and buttons up Susie’s clothes or sews a button on Johnny’s jacket while the kettle boils. If the husband met a bootlegger in the alley the previous night it is the wife’s disagreeable duty to rouse him from his protracted slumbers; and if, when she has produced him at the table, he is displeased with the menu, his resentment, unchecked by those restraints presupposed of a higher culture, is manifested in the playful distribution of the tableware in the general direction of wife and offspring. The family cluster fearfully at the door as the head of the house, with surly resignation, departs for the scene of his daily servitude with the smoke of his pipe trailing behind him, animated by no love for the human race but only by a firm resolution not to lift his hand until the last echoes of the whistle have died away.