Child and Country: A Book of the Younger Generation

by Will Levington Comfort

A man's own are those who are awaiting the same call that he has already answered. Browning stood amazed before a man who had met Shelley and was not different afterward—a man who could idly announce that he had met the poet Shelley and not accept it as the big event of a period. Browning described his dismay at the other in the story of finding the eagle feather. He did not know the name of the moor; perhaps men had made much of it; perhaps significant matters of history had been enacted on that moor, but they were nothing to the mystic. One square of earth there, the size of a human hand, was sacred to him, because it was just on that spot that he found an eagle's feather.

I stood waist-high to Conan Doyle years ago—was speechless and outraged that groups of people who had listened to him speak, could gather about afterward, talk and laugh familiarly, beg his autograph.... Had he spoken a word or a sentence to me, it would not have been writ in water.... There is no hate nor any love like that which the men who are called to the same task have for each other. The masters of the crafts know each other; the mystics of the arts know each other.

The preparation for the tasks of the world is potential in the breasts of the children behind us. For each there is a magic key; and that man holds it who has covered the journey, or part of it, which the soul of a child perceives it must set out upon soon. The presence of a good workman will awaken the potential proclivity of the child's nature, as no other presence can do. Every autobiography tells the same story—of a certain wonder-moment of youth, when the ideal appeared, and all energies were turned thereafter to something concrete which that ideal signified. Mostly the "great man" did not know what he had done for the boy.... I would have the great man know. I would have him seek to perform this miracle every day.

There's always a hush in the room when some one comes to me saying, "There is a young man who dreams of writing. He is very strange. He does not speak about it. He is afraid to show what he has done. I wanted to bring him to you—but he would not come. I think he did not dare."

Formerly I would say, "Bring him over some time," but that seldom brought the thing about. A man should say, "Lead me to him now!..." Those who want to write for money and for the movies come. They put stamps upon letters they write. God knows they are not ashamed to come and ask for help, and explain their symptoms of yearning and show their structure of desire.... The one who dares not come; who dares not mail the letter he has written to you, who is speechless if you seek him out, full of terror and torture before you—take him to your breast for he is your own. Children you have fathered may not be so truly yours as he.... Do you want a slave, a worshipper—seek out your own. You want nothing of the sort, but you alone can free the slave, you alone can liberate his worship to the task. He can learn from you in a week what it would take years of misery in the world to teach him. You have done in a way the thing he wants to do—that's the whole magic. You have fitted somehow to action the dream that already tortures his heart. There is nothing so pure as work in the world. There is something sacred about a man's work that is not elsewhere in matter. Teaching is a mutual service.... It is not that you want his reverence, but because he has reverence, he is potentially great.

The ignition of one youth, the finding of his work for one youth, is a worthy life task. The same possibility of service holds true for all kinds of workmen; these things are not alone for the artists and the craftsmen and the professions. There is one boy to linger about the forge of an artisan, after the others have gone. I would have the artisan forget the thing he is doing, to look into the eyes of that boy—and the chemist, the electrician, the florist.

It is true that the expression called for here is mainly through written words, but that is only our particularity. It need not be so.... The work here would not do for all.... A young woman came and sat with us for several days. She was so still that I did not know what was happening in her mind. My experience with the others had prevailed to make me go slowly, and not to judge. We all liked her, all learned to be glad that she had come. I asked no expression from her for several days. When I finally suggested something of the kind, I felt the sudden terror in the room. Her expression came in a very brief form, and it showed me the bewilderment with which she had encountered the new points of view in the Chapel. I learned afresh that one must not hurry; that my first work was to put to rest her fears of being called upon. I impressed upon the class the next day that we have all the time there is; that we want nothing; that our work is to establish in due time the natural expressions of our faculties. To the young woman in particular, I said that when she felt like it she could write again.

Presently there was a day's absence and another. I sent the little girl to see if she were ill. The little girl was gone the full afternoon. All I ever got from that afternoon was this sentence:

" ... She is going to be a nurse."

I have wondered many times if she would have become a nurse had I allowed her to sit unexpressed for a month instead of a week; permitting her surely to find her ease and understanding of us.... Still we must have nurses.