But how, in the picturing of itself to itself, is the spirit of the universe revealed to us? Here are forces which at bottom might be supposed to be anything—grim, deadly, terrible—but on the surface how fair is their face. The trees are beautiful—you would not suppose there was anything deadly at work to create them. The water is mellifluent, sweet—you could hardly assume that it was grim in purpose or design. Every aspect of the scene reveals something pleasing which could scarcely have been the result of a cruel tendency, and yet we know that cruelty exists, or if not cruelty at least a tendency to contention—one thing striving with another and wearing it away, feeding upon it, destroying it which is productive of pain. And this element of contention represents all the cruelty there is. And this is not what is generally revealed in any scene.
Before such a picture of combined beauty and contentiousness—however graceful—life living upon life, in order to produce at least a part of this beauty—the mind pauses, wondering. It is so useless to quarrel with an order which is compulsory and produces all that we know of either joy or pain. This scene, as we look at it, is one of the joys, one of the compensations, of our existence which we must take whether we will or no, and which satisfies us whether or not we are aware of the contentiousness beneath. Even the contentiousness cannot be wholly sneered at or regretted, for at worst it produces the change which produces the other scenes and variations of which our world is full, and at worst it gives our life the edge of drama and tragedy, to say nothing of those phases of our moods which make our world seem beautiful.
Pity the mind for whom the immediate scene, involved as it is with change and decay and contentiousness, has no direct appeal, for whom the clouds hanging in the heavens, the wind stirring in the trees, the genial face of the earth, spread before the eye, has no meaning. Here are the birds daily circling in the air; here are the waters running in a thousand varied forms; here are the houses, the churches, the factories, and all their curious array of lines, angles, circles, cones, or towers, shafts and pinnacles which form ever new and pleasing combinations to which the mind, confused by other phases of life, can still turn for both solace and delight. For one not so mentally equipped a world of imagery is closed, with all that that implies: poetry, art, literature—one might almost say religion, for upon so much that is beautiful in nature does religion depend. To be dull to the finer beauties of line and curve that are forever beating upon the heart and mind—in earth, in air, in water, in sky or space—how deadly! The dark places of the world are full of that. Its slums and depths reek with the misery that knows no response to the physical beauty of nature, the wonder of its forms. To perceive these, to see the physical face of life as beautiful, to respond in feeling to the magnificent panoramas from which the eye cannot escape, is to be at once strong and wise mentally and physically, to have in the very blood and brain the beauty, glory and power of all that ever was or will be here on this earth.
A WAYPLACE OF THE FALLEN
In the center of what was once a fashionable section of New York, but is now a badly deteriorated tenement region, stands a hotel which to me is one of the curiosities of New York. It is really not a hotel at all, in one sense, and yet in another it is, a hybrid or cross between a hotel and a charity, one of those odd philanthropies of the early years following nineteen hundred, which were supposed to bridge with some form of relief the immense gap that existed between the rich and the poor; a gap that was not supposed to exist in a republic devoted to human brotherhood and the equality of man.
Let that be as it will. Exteriorly at least it is really a handsome affair, nine stories in height, with walls of cream-colored brick and gray stone trimmings, and a large, overhanging roof of dark-red curved tiles which suggests Florence and the South. Set apart in an open space it would be admirable. It is not, however, as its appearance would indicate, a hotel of any distinction of clientele, for it was built for an entirely different purpose. And, despite the aim and the dreams of those who sought to reach those who might be only temporarily embarrassed, rather than whose who were permanently so, and who might use this as a wayplace on their progress upward rather than on their way downward, still it is more the latter who frequent it most. It is really a rendezvous for those who are “down and out.”
About the time that it was built, or a little after, I myself was in a bad way. It was not exactly that I was financially helpless or that I could not have come by relief in one and another form, if my pride would have let me, as that my pride and a certain psyche which, like a fever or a passion, must take its course, would not permit me to do successfully any of the things that normally I could and would have done. I was nervous, really very sick mentally, and very depressed. Life to me wore a somber and at most times a forbidding air, as though, indeed, there were furies between me and the way I would go. Yet, return I would not. And courage not lacking, a certain grim stubbornness that would not permit me to retreat nor yet to ask for help, at last for a brief period I took refuge here, as might one beset by a raging gale at sea take refuge in some seemingly quiet harbor, any port indeed, in order to forfend against utter annihilation.
A Wayplace of the Fallen