If one still believes that the highest happiness and satisfaction come from the attainment of any selfish ambition, no matter how worthy in itself, it is well to remember the significance of the fact that Goethe, acknowledged to be one of the wisest of men, made Faust happy only when he was unselfishly interested in the welfare of others; and to remember that Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the shrewdest of all shrewd Americans, found the greatest pleasure of his long life in two things—public service and individual acts of kindness.
XX
BIRDS AND STATESMEN
When, in the Spring of 1910, Theodore Roosevelt was on his way to England from his African explorations, he wrote a strange letter to the British Foreign Office in London. I call it a strange letter, because it is the kind of epistle one would not expect to be sent by an ex-executive of one country to the Foreign Office of another. He wrote that during his stay in England he would like to make an excursion into the woods, hear the English songbirds and learn their names; in order that he might do this satisfactorily and intelligently, would the Foreign Office please select some naturalist who knew the note of every bird in England and request him to accompany Mr. Roosevelt on this expedition?
Well, the head of the British Foreign Office was Sir Edward Grey and he himself knew the note of every singing bird in England—a remarkable accomplishment for one of the busiest statesmen in the world. He therefore appointed himself as bird-guide for the ex-President of the United States.
The two distinguished men stood on a railway platform one day in May and were surrounded by reporters, who supposed that a new world-problem of the first magnitude was on the carpet. But the two men told the reporters that they were going away into the country for two days, did not wish to be disturbed, and asked the journalists to leave them alone. Accordingly, it was generally believed that Roosevelt and Grey were absorbed in the discussion of international affairs, and as the great war broke out a few years later, some went so far as to believe then that it had its origin in this sinister interview.
Now, as a matter of fact, the two men did not mention either war or politics; they went a-walking in the New Forest and every time they heard the voice of a bird, Grey told Roosevelt the singer’s name. They both agreed (and so do I) that the English blackbird is the best soloist in Great Britain.
It is a curious fact that the four most famous birds in English literature are none of them native in America. The Big Four are the Nightingale, the Skylark, the Blackbird and the Cuckoo. From Chaucer to Kipling the British poets have chanted the praise of the Nightingale. And of all the verses in his honour, it is perhaps the tribute by Keats that is most worthy of the theme.
Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard