I have often fancied, in penitential moments, a day of judgment for us who write, when we shall stand in flushed array before the Ultimate Critic and answer the awful question, 'What have you done with your language?' There shall be searchings of soul that morning, and searchings of forgotten pages of magazines and 'best sellers' and books of every sort, for the cadence that may bring salvation. But many shall seek and few shall find, and the goats shall be sorted out in droves, condemned to an eternity of torture, none other than the everlasting task of listening to their own prose read aloud.
'What have you done with your language?' It is a solemn question for all of us, for you who speak as well as for us who write. Our language is a priceless heritage. It has been the ladder of life up which we climbed; with it we have bridged the sundering flood that forever rolls between man and man; through its aid have come to us the treasures of the past, the world's store of experience; by means of it our poets have wrought their measures, our philosophers their dreams. Bit by bit, precious mosaic after precious mosaic, the great body of English literature has been built up, in verse and prose, the crown of that division of language we call our own. Consciously finding itself three centuries ago, our English prose blossomed at once into the solemn splendors of the King James Bible and then into the long-drawn, ornate magnificence of Sir Thomas Browne, never again till our day to lose consciousness of its power, to forget its high and holy task, the task of maintaining our language at full tide and ministering to style and beauty. There were fluxes in the fashions, naturally; little of Browne's music being found in the almost conversational fluency (but not laxness) of Addison, even as the suave Mr. Addison himself has vanished in the tempestuous torrents of Carlyle. But there always was an Addison, a Carlyle, a Newman, a Walter Pater, whose work loomed large in popular regard, whose influence was mighty in shaping a taste for prose style. Who now, we may ask, looking around us in America, looms large in popular regard as a writer of ample vision, amply and beautifully clothed in speech, and whose influence is mighty in shaping a taste for prose style? It is not enough to have the worthies of the past upon our shelves. Each age must have its own inspiration. Again we hear the solemn question, 'What have you done with your language?' Only Ireland may answer, 'We have our George Moore, and we had our Synge not long ago—but we stoned his plays.'
We have stifled our language, we have debased it, we have been afraid of it. But some day it will reassert itself, for it is stronger than we, alike our overlord and avatar. Deep in the soul of man dwells the lyric impulse, and when his song cannot be the song of the poet it will shape itself in rhythmic prose, that it may still be cadenced and modulated to change with the changing thought and sound an obligato to the moods of the author's spirit. How wonderful has been our prose,—grave and chastely rich when Hooker wrote it, striding triumphant over the pages of Gibbon on tireless feet, ringing like a trumpet from Emerson's white house in Concord, modulated like soft organ-music heard afar in Newman's lyric moods, clanging and clamorous in Carlyle, in Walter Pater but as the soft fall of water in a marble fountain while exquisite odors flood the Roman twilight and late bees are murmurous, a little of all, perhaps, in Stevenson! We, too, we little fellows of to-day, could write as they wrote, consciously, rhythmically, if we only cared, if we only dared. We ask for the opportunity, the encouragement. Alas! that also means a more liberal choice of graver subjects, and a more extensive employment of the essay form. Milton could hardly have been Miltonic on a lesser theme than the Fall of the Angels, and Walter Pater wrote of the Mona Lisa, not Lizzie Smith of Davenport, Iowa. It is doubtless of interest to learn about Lizzie, but she hardly inspires us to rhythmic prose.
In the Chair
By Ralph Bergengren
ABOUT once in so often a man must go to the barber for what, with contemptuous brevity, is called a haircut. He must sit in a big chair, a voluminous bib (prettily decorated with polka dots) tucked in round his neck, and let another human being cut his hair for him. His head, with all its internal mystery and wealth of thought, becomes for the time being a mere poll, worth two dollars a year to the tax-assessor: an irregularly shaped object, between a summer squash and a canteloupe, with too much hair on it, as very likely several friends and acquaintances have advised him. His identity vanishes.
As a rule the less he now says or thinks about his head, the better: he has given it to the barber, and the barber will do as he pleases with it. It is only when the man is little and is brought in by his mother, that the job will be done according to instructions; and this is because the man's mother is in a position to see the back of his head. Also because the weakest woman under such circumstances has strong convictions. When the man is older the barber will sometimes allow him to see the haircut, cleverly reflected in two mirrors; but not one man in a thousand—nay, in ten thousand—would dare express himself as dissatisfied. After all, what does he know of haircuts, he who is no barber? Women feel differently; and I know of one man, returning home with a new haircut, who was compelled to turn round again and take what his wife called his 'poor' head to another barber by whom the haircut was more happily finished. But that was exceptional. And it happened to that man but once.
The very word 'haircut' is objectionable. It snips like the scissors. Yet it describes the operation more honestly than the substitute 'trim,' a euphemism indicating a jaunty habit of dropping in frequently at the barber's, and so keeping the hair perpetually at just the length that is most becoming. For most men, although the knowledge must be gathered by keen, patient observation and never by honest confession, there is a period, lasting about a week, when the length of their hair is admirable. But it comes between haircuts. The haircut itself is never satisfactory. If his hair was too long before (and on this point he has the evidence of unprejudiced witnesses), it is too short now. It must grow steadily—count on it for that!—until for a brief period it is 'just right,' æsthetically suited to the contour of his face and the cut of his features, and beginning already imperceptibly to grow too long again.
Soon this growth becomes visible, and the man begins to worry. 'I must go to the barber,' he says in a harassed way. 'I must get a haircut.' But the days pass. It is always to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. When he goes, he goes suddenly.
There is something within us, probably our immortal soul, that postpones a haircut; and yet in the end our immortal souls have little to do with the actual process. It is impossible to conceive of one immortal soul cutting another immortal soul's hair. My own soul, I am sure, has never entered a barber's shop. It stops and waits for me at the portal. Probably it converses on subjects remote from our bodily consciousness with the immortal souls of barbers, patiently waiting until the barbers finish their morning's work and come out to lunch.