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ESSAYS ON THINGS

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

• Essays on Modern Novelists
• Essays on Russian Novelists
• Essays on Books
• Essays on Modern Dramatists
• Essays on Things
• Howells, James, Bryant and Other Essays
• Reading the Bible
• Teaching in School and College
• Some Makers of American Literature
• The Advance of the English Novel
• The Advance of English Poetry
• The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement
• Human Nature in the Bible
• Human Nature and the Gospel
• Adventures and Confessions
• As I Like It, First, Second, Third Series
• Archibald Marshall
• Happiness
• Love
• Memory
• Music
• A Dash at the Pole
• Browning—How to Know Him

ESSAYS ON THINGS

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1930

Copyright, 1930,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

All rights reserved—no part of this
book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from
the publisher.

Set up and printed. Published September, 1930.

· PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ·

CONTENTS

ESSAYS ON THINGS

I
SUNRISE

At an uncertain hour before dawn in February 1912, as I lay asleep in my room on the top floor of a hotel in the town of Mentone, in Southern France, I was suddenly awakened by the morning star. It was shining with inquisitive splendour directly into my left eye. At that quiet moment, in the last stages of the dying night, this star seemed enormous. It hung out of the velvet sky so far that I thought it was going to fall, and I went out on the balcony of my room to see it drop. The air was windless and mild, and, instead of going back to bed, I decided to stay on the balcony and watch the unfolding drama of the dawn. For every clear dawn in this spectacular universe is a magnificent drama, rising to a superb climax.

The morning stars sang together and I heard the sons of God shouting for joy. The chief morning star, the one that had roused me from slumber, recited a splendid prologue. Then, as the night paled and the lesser stars withdrew, some of the minor characters in the play began to appear and take their respective parts. The grey background turned red, then gold. Long shafts of preliminary light shot up from the eastern horizon, and then, when the stage was all set, and the minor characters had completed their assigned rôles, the curtains suddenly parted and the sun—the Daystar—the star of the play, entered with all the panoply of majesty. And as I stood there and beheld this incomparable spectacle, and gazed over the mountains, the meadows and the sea, the words of Shakespeare came into my mind:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen,

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye.

Kissing with golden face the meadows green.

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

It is a pity that more people do not see the sunrise. Many do not get up early enough, many do not stay up late enough. Out of the millions and millions of men, women and children on this globe only a comparatively few see the sunrise, and I dare say there are many respectable persons who have never seen it at all. One really should not go through life without seeing the sun rise at least once, because, even if one is fortunate enough to be received at last into heaven, there is one sight wherein this vale of tears surpasses the eternal home of the saints. “There is no night there,” hence there can be no dawn, no sunrise; it is therefore better to make the most of it while we can.

As a man feels refreshed after a night’s sleep and his morning bath, so the sun seems to rise out of the water like a giant renewed. Milton gave us an excellent description:

So sinks the daystar in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

Browning, in his poem, Pippa Passes, compares the sunrise to a glass of champagne, a sparkling wine overflowing the world:

DAY!

Faster and more fast,

O’er night’s brim, day boils at last:

Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim,

Where spurting and suppressed it lay,

For not a froth-flake touched the rim

Of yonder gap in the solid gray

Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;

But forth one wavelet, then another, curled.

Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

The sunset has a tranquil beauty but to me there is in it always a tinge of sadness, of the sadness of farewell, of the approach of darkness. This mood is expressed in the old hymn which in my childhood I used to hear so often in church:

Fading, still fading, the last beam is shining,

Father in heaven! the day is declining.

Safety and innocence fly with the light,

Temptation and danger walk forth with the night.

Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning, saith the Holy Book. The sunrise has not only inexpressible majesty and splendour, but it has the rapture of promise, the excitement of beginning again. Yesterday has gone forever, the night is over and we may start anew. To how many eyes, weary with wakefulness in the long watches of the night, or flushed with fever, is the first glimmer of the dawn welcome. The night makes every fear and worry worse than the reality, it magnifies every trivial distress. Mark Twain said the night brought madness—none of us is quite sane in the darkness. That particular regret for yesterday or apprehension for tomorrow that strikes you like a whiplash in the face at 2:45 A.M. dwindles into an absurdity in the healthy dawn.

Mark Twain, who had expressed the difference between the night and the morning tragically, also expressed it humorously. He said that when he was lying awake in the middle of the night he felt like an awful sinner, he hated himself with a horrible depression and made innumerable good resolutions; but when at 7:30 he was shaving himself he felt just as cheerful, healthy and unregenerate as ever.

I am a child of the morning. I love the dawn and the sunrise. When I was a child I saw the sunrise from the top of Whiteface and it seemed to me that I not only saw beauty but heard celestial music. Ever since reading in George Moore’s Evelyn Innes the nun’s description of her feelings while listening to Wagner’s Prologue to Lohengrin I myself never hear that lovely music rising to a tremendous climax without seeing in imagination what was revealed to the Sister of Mercy. I am on a mountain top before dawn; the darkness gives way; the greyness strengthens, and finally my whole mind and soul are filled with the increasing light.

II
MOLASSES

Before both the word molasses and the thing it signifies disappear forever from the earth, I wish to recall its flavour and its importance to the men and women of my generation. By any other name it would taste as sweet; it is by no means yet extinct; but for many years maple syrup and other commodities have taken its place on the breakfast table. Yet I was brought up on molasses. Do you remember, in that marvellous book, Helen’s Babies, when Toddie was asked what he had in his pantspocket, his devastating reply to that tragic question? He calmly answered, “Bread and molasses.”

Well, I was brought up on bread and molasses. Very often that was all we had for supper. I well remember, in the sticky days of childhood, being invited out to supper by my neighbour Arthur Greene. My table manners were primitive and my shyness in formal company overwhelming. When I was ushered into the Greene dining room not only as the guest of honour but as the only guest, I felt like Fra Lippo Lippi in the most august presence in the universe, only I lacked his impudence to help me out.

The conditions of life in those days may be estimated from the fact that the entire formal supper, even with “company,” consisted wholly and only of bread, butter and molasses. Around the festive board sat Mr. Greene, a terrifying adult who looked as if he had never been young; Mrs. Greene, tight-lipped and serious; Arthur Greene, his sister Alice, and his younger brother, Freddy. As I was company I was helped first and given a fairly liberal supply of bread, which I unthinkingly (as though I were used to such luxuries) spread with butter and then covered with a thick layer of molasses. Ah, I was about to learn something.

Mr. Greene turned to his eldest son, and enquired grimly, “Arthur, which will you have, bread and butter or bread and molasses?”

The wretched Arthur, looking at my plate, and believing that his father, in deference to the “company,” would not quite dare to enforce what was evidently the regular evening choice, said, with what I recognised as a pitiful attempt at careless assurance, “I’ll take both.”

“No, you don’t!” countered his father, with a tone as final as that of a judge in court. His father was not to be bluffed by the presence of company; he evidently regarded discipline as more important than manners. The result was I felt like a voluptuary, being the only person at the table who had the luxury of both butter and molasses. They stuck in my throat; I feel them choking me still, after an interval of more than fifty years.

* * * * *

The jug of molasses was on our table at home at every breakfast and at every supper. The only variety lay in the fact (do you remember?) that there were two distinct kinds of molasses—sometimes we had one, sometimes the other. There was Porto Rico molasses and there was New Orleans molasses—brunette and blonde. The Porto Rico molasses was so dark it was almost black, and New Orleans molasses was golden brown.

The worst meal of the three was invariably supper, and I imagine this was fairly common among our neighbours. Breakfast was a hearty repast, starting usually with oatmeal, immediately followed by beefsteak and potatoes or mutton chops, sometimes ham and eggs; but usually beef or chops. It had a glorious coda with griddle cakes or waffles; and thus stuffed, we rose from the table like condors from their prey, and began the day’s work. Dinner at one was a hearty meal, with soup, roast, vegetables and pie.

Supper consisted of “remainders.” There was no relish in it, and I remember that very often my mother, who never complained vocally, looking at the unattractive spread with lack-lustre eye, would either speak to our one servant or would disappear for a moment and return with a cold potato, which it was clear she distinctly preferred to the sickening sweetish “preserves” and cookies or to the bread and molasses which I myself ate copiously.

However remiss and indifferent and selfish I may have been in my conduct toward my mother—and what man does not suffer as he thinks of this particular feature of the irrecoverable past?—it does me good to remember that, after I came to man’s estate, I gave my mother what it is clear she always and in vain longed for in earlier years, a good substantial dinner at night.

At breakfast we never put cream and sugar on our porridge; we always put molasses. Then, if griddle cakes followed the meat, we once more had recourse to molasses. And as bread and molasses was the backbone of the evening meal, you will see what I mean when I say I swam to manhood through this viscous sea. In those days youth was sweet.

The transfer of emphasis from breakfast to supper is the chief distinguishing change in the procession of meals as it was and as it became. It now seems incredible that I once ate large slabs of steak or big chops at breakfast, but I certainly did. And supper, which approached the vanishing point, turned into dinner in later years.

Many, many years ago we banished the molasses jug and even the lighter and more patrician maple syrup ceased to flow at the breakfast table. I am quite aware that innumerable persons still eat griddle cakes or waffles and syrup at the first meal of the day. It is supposed that the poet-artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti ruined his health by eating huge portions of ham and eggs, followed by griddle cakes and molasses, for breakfast. To me there has always been something incongruous between syrup and coffee; they are mutually destructive; one spoils the taste of the other.

Yet waffles and syrup are a delectable dish; and I am quite certain that nectar and ambrosia made no better meal. What to do, then? The answer is simple. Eat no griddle cakes, no waffles and no syrup at breakfast; but use these commodities for dessert at lunch. Then comes the full flavour.

Many taverns now have hit upon the excellent idea of serving only two dishes for lunch or dinner—chicken and waffles. This obviates the expense of waste, the worry of choice, the time lost in plans. And what combination could possibly be better?

One of the happiest recollections of my childhood is the marvelous hot, crisp waffle lying on my plate, and my increasing delight as I watched the molasses filling each square cavity in turn. As the English poet remarked, “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.”

III
RESOLUTIONS WHEN I COME TO BE OLD

At the age of thirty-two, Jonathan Swift wrote the following:

Resolutions When I Come to Be Old

(1) Not to marry a young woman.

(2) Not to keep young company, unless they desire it.

(3) Not to be peevish, or morose, or suspicious.

(4) Not to scorn present ways, or wits, or fashions, or men, or war, etc.

(5) Not to be fond of children.

(6) Not to tell the same story over and over to the same people.

(7) Not to be covetous.

(8) Not to neglect decency or cleanliness, for fear of falling into nastiness.

(9) Not to be over severe with young people, but give allowances for their youthful follies and weaknesses.

(10) Not to be influenced by, or give ear to, knavish tattling servants, or others.

(11) Not to be too free of advice, or trouble any but those who desire it.

(12) To desire some good friend to inform me which of these resolutions I break or neglect, and wherein, and reform accordingly.

(13) Not to talk too much, nor of myself.

(14) Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favour with ladies, etc.

(15) Not to hearken to flatteries, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman.

(16) Not to be positive or opinionative.

(17) Not too set for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none.

Swift died at the age of seventy-eight; so far as I can find out, he lived up to these resolutions with commendable consistency, except one: his friend, Dr. Sheridan, was sufficiently indiscreet to remind him that he was becoming too parsimonious. Swift resented this criticism, and it spoiled their friendship.

* * * * *

Although Swift was a pessimist, a cynic and a misanthrope, these resolutions contain much wisdom; so much, in fact, that a faithful adherence to them would save most old men much suffering and humiliation. I read them first when I was a boy and they produced a profound impression; now that I am in a position where they fit my case, I believe them to be good medicine, bitter but wholesome. Swift must have been bored horribly by many old men, or he must have observed many old people behaving in a silly fashion to have written down these rules with such emphasis.

(1, 2) “Crabbed age and youth cannot live together,” said Shakespeare; the few exceptions do no more than prove the rule. Many old people suffer because they fear that young people do not desire their company. The solution is for old people not to allow their happiness to be dependent on young folks but to have either company of their own age or intellectual resources which will make them mentally independent. I have taught young people for forty years, and although I am very fond of them, I prefer the society of people of my own age. If I were about to take a trip around the world and could choose either a young or old companion, I would take the latter.

(3) Good advice for any age, but old persons, owing to bodily infirmities, are more apt to show these unlovely characteristics.

(4) This advice was never more needed than now.

(5) I would change this, so it would read “Not to fondle children.” A man with a bushy beard can terrify babes.

(6) “I suppose you have all heard this before, but——” then why tell it?

(7) Especially of the health, vigour, and activity of younger men.

(8) Swift was himself almost fanatically clean. It is a disgusting sight to behold old men who are careless of their clothes and appearance, as though old age gave one the privilege to appear in public with the remains of the last meal on the coat, waistcoat and shirt.

(9) Observe the ways of the dog, and learn wisdom. The dog allows children to pull his tail, and bother him in many ways; not because he likes it, but because he knows children have no sense. It is useless to expect that children and young people will think and act like middle-aged men and women; why be fretful when they are simply running true to form?

(10) One must remember that slander is of value only as a self-revelation, never as an accurate description. The recoil of that particular gun is greater than the discharge.

(11) Every person loves to give advice and no one loves to take it. The mother says to the child, “Now, Freddy, don’t forget to put your rubbers on!” to which Freddy replies “Huh!” Then when Freddy is seventy-six years old, his granddaughter says, “Now, Grandpa, don’t forget to put your rubbers on!” to which the grandparent replies “Huh!” It is a good thing not to force one’s opinion on others unless they ask for it; one’s professions and creed will be judged by one’s life, anyhow.

(12) Ah, that requires the very grace of God. This kind comes only by prayer and fasting.

(13, 14) Many an old man likes to have others think that he was in his prime a devil of a fellow. This particular vanity is hard to eradicate. Even in the moment of Lear’s heartbreaking and shattering grief over the death of his daughter Cordelia he found time to boast of his former prowess.

(15) I say it not cynically, but in all seriousness: There is no one who cannot be successfully flattered, provided the flattery be applied with some skill. We have at the core such invincible egotism that we not only listen greedily to flattery, but, what is far worse, we believe it!

(16) An overbearing, domineering, dogmatic manner in conversation is abominable in persons of any age; when old people behave in this fashion, and it is not resented by the young, it should really all the more humiliate the old. For such acquiescence means that the old man hasn’t any sense, anyhow.

(17) Know thyself. Ulysses showed his wisdom in not trusting himself. A Yale undergraduate left on his door a placard for the janitor on which was written, “Call me at 7 o’clock; it is absolutely necessary that I get up at seven. Make no mistake. Keep knocking until I answer.” Under this he had written. “Try again at ten.”

IV
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HUMOUR

Some one has said that American humour consists in over-statement and English humour in understatement. This judgment does not include everything, but so far as it goes it is not only accurate, but helps both to explain English humour and the frequently heard remark that the English are without it. I suppose one reason many ill-informed Americans say that Englishmen have no sense of humour is because the English do not indulge so commonly as we in boisterous jocularity, exaggeration, surprise and burlesque. The average Englishman does not see why a stranger should accost him with jocosity—many Englishmen do not see why a stranger should accost them at all. It is an excellent plan while travelling in England or anywhere in Europe never to speak first to an Englishman; let him open the conversation.

One of the chief differences between the average Englishman and American is in amiability, responsiveness, amenity. Americans are probably the most amiable people in the world, the most happy to respond to an exploratory remark, the most willing. I dare say it is partly a matter of climate. Our chronic sunshine makes us expansive and ebullient.

In any American city on a terrifically hot day, two hitherto unacquainted men will speak to each other as they pass on the street, one saying, “Don’t you wish you had brought your overcoat!” which harmless jest is returned by the other with equal affability. If you said that to an Englishman, he might stare at you blankly, and perhaps hazard the query, “You mean, of course, your light overcoat?”

After introduction to a resident Englishman in Vancouver, British Columbia, at a small dining-table in a hotel, I remarked gently, “Even though you are behind the times here in Vancouver, I do not see why you should advertise the fact.” “What on earth do you mean?” he enquired. Then I called his attention to the dinner-card, on which was printed Vancouver, B. C. He exclaimed, “But it doesn’t mean that, you know!” I do not believe he was deficient in a sense of humour. I had just met him, and he did not see why a stranger should be sufficiently intimate to be taken otherwise than seriously.

Punch is the best of comic papers; it expresses the genuine original humour of a humorous folk. I remember seeing there a picture of the village orchestra, and as the director rapped for attention, the first violin leaned forward and asked, “What is the next piece?” and being informed, replied, “Why I just played that one.”

Woodrow Wilson once told me a story which illustrates how dangerous it is for anyone to assume that the English have no sense of humour.

Three Americans were telling anecdotes to illustrate the English dearth of humour, when they saw approaching a representative of that nation. It was agreed that he should then and there be put to the test. So one of them stopped him and narrated a side-splitting yarn. The Englishman received the climax with an impassive face. The American, delighted, cried, “Cheer up, old man, you’ll laugh at that next summer.” “No,” said the Briton, gravely, “I think not.” “Why not?” “Because I laughed at that last summer.”

The humour of English political campaign speeches at its best, is unsurpassed. When the late John Morley had finished an oration by requesting his hearers to vote for him, one man jumped up and shouted angrily, “I’d rather vote for the devil.” “Quite so,” returned the unruffled statesman; “but in case your friend declines to run, may I not then count upon your support?”

A perfect retort was made to the great and genial Thackeray, on the one occasion when he ran for Parliament. He met his opponent, Edward Cardwell, during the course of the campaign, and after a pleasant exchange of civilities, Thackeray remarked, “Well, I hope it will be a good fight, and may the best man win.” “Oh, I hope not,” said Cardwell.

The English are the only people who seem to be amused by attacks on their country; does this show a sense of superiority that increases the rage of the critic? Or is it that their sense of humour extends even to that most sacred of all modern religions, the religion of nationalism?

The Irish are supposed to excel the English in humour; but it is a fact that English audiences in the theatre are diverted by sarcastic attacks on the English, whereas it is physically dangerous to try a similar method on an Irish audience. The Irish patriot, Katharine Tynan, said that if she could only once succeed in enraging the English, she would feel that something might be accomplished. “But,” said she, “I tell them at dinner parties the most outrageous things that are said against their country, and they all roar with laughter.” Undue sensitiveness to attack betrays a feeling of insecurity.

Typical American humour is not subtle and ironical; it is made up largely of exaggeration and surprise—Mark Twain was a master of ending a sentence with something unexpected. “I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.”

Anthony Hope, in his recent book Memories and Notes, says that when Mark made his first dinner speech in London before a distinguished audience, there was intense curiosity as to what he would say. He began with an unusually slow drawl. “Homer is dead, Shakespeare is dead—and I am far from well.”

Another true story (which I took pains to verify) happened during the early days of his married life, which synchronised with the beginnings of the telephone. Incredible as it may seem, Mrs. Clemens had not heard Mark swear, for during the engagement he had managed by superhuman efforts to refrain from what he called that noble art, and she did not dream of his oral efficiency. But one day, thinking he was alone, he started to use the telephone. (The Paris Figaro says that to get your telephone connexion is not an achievement; it is a career.) Mark, having difficulties, poured out a torrent of river profanity. He looked around and there was his wife, frozen with horror.

But she had heard that the way to cure a husband of profanity was for the wife to swear in his presence. So, in a cold, artificial voice, she said, “Blankety-Blank-Blank.” Mark cried, “Darling, you know the words, but you don’t know the tune!”

Mark had a way of combining philosophy and humour. This is the gospel according to Mark Twain. “Live so that when you die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

V
A PAIR OF SOCKS

One fine afternoon I was walking along Fifth Avenue, when I remembered that it was necessary to buy a pair of socks. Why I wished to buy only one pair is unimportant. I turned into the first sock shop that caught my eye, and a boy clerk who could not have been more than seventeen years old came forward. “What can I do for you, sir?” “I wish to buy a pair of socks.” His eyes glowed. There was a note of passion in his voice. “Did you know that you had come into the finest place in the world to buy socks?” I had not been aware of that, as my entrance had been accidental. “Come with me,” said the boy, ecstatically. I followed him to the rear of the shop, and he began to haul down from the shelves box after box, displaying their contents for my delectation.

“Hold on, lad, I am going to buy only one pair!” “I know that,” said he, “but I want you to see how marvellously beautiful these are. Aren’t they wonderful!” There was on his face an expression of solemn and holy rapture, as if he were revealing to me the mysteries of his religion. I became far more interested in him than in the socks. I looked at him in amazement. “My friend,” said I, “if you can keep this up, if this is not merely the enthusiasm that comes from novelty, from having a new job, if you can keep up this zeal and excitement day after day, in ten years you will own every sock in the United States.”

* * * * *

My amazement at his pride and joy in salesmanship will be easily understood by all who read this article. In many shops the customer has to wait for some one to wait upon him. And when finally some clerk does deign to notice you, you are made to feel as if you were interrupting him. Either he is absorbed in profound thought in which he hates to be disturbed or he is skylarking with a girl clerk and you feel like apologising for thrusting yourself into such intimacy.

He displays no interest either in you or in the goods he is paid to sell. Yet possibly that very clerk who is now so apathetic began his career with hope and enthusiasm. The daily grind was too much for him; the novelty wore off; his only pleasures were found outside of working hours. He became a mechanical, not an inspired, salesman. After being mechanical, he became incompetent; then he saw younger clerks who had more zest in their work, promoted over him. He became sour and nourished a grievance. That was the last stage. His usefulness was over.

I have observed this melancholy decline in the lives of so many men in so many occupations that I have come to the conclusion that the surest road to failure is to do things mechanically. There is, for example, no greater literature in the world than the Bible and no more exciting subject than religion. Yet I have heard many ministers of the gospel read the Bible in their churches with no interest and no emphasis, whereas they ought to read it as if they had just received it by wireless from Almighty God. I have heard hundreds of sermons preached mechanically, with no more appeal than if the speaker were a parrot. There are many teachers in schools and colleges who seem duller than the dullest of their pupils; they go through the motions of teaching, but they are as impersonal as a telephone.

* * * * *

In reading that remarkable book, The Americanization of Edward Bok, I was impressed by what he said of competition in business. Beginning as a very young man in a certain occupation, he had expected to encounter the severest competition. As a matter of fact, he met no competition at all, and found that success was the easiest thing in the world, if one provided the conditions necessary for it.

He worked along with a number of other young men in the business. He was the only one who ever got to the place ahead of time. At the noon hour at lunch the other youngsters never on a single occasion mentioned the business in which they were engaged. They talked of their girls, or of athletic sports, or of various dissipations. He was the only man who ever remained after business hours, and he was convinced that he was the only one who ever occupied his mind with the business during his evenings.

He rose above the others with consummate ease, and for two obvious reasons: First, he made himself indispensable; second, he found his chief pleasure in his work, not in the dissipations outside of it.

It is simple enough for any one to be attracted by the novelty of a new job. The real difficulty is to keep up that initial enthusiasm every day of one’s life, to go to work every morning with zest and excitement. I believe that a man should live every day as if that day were his first and his last day on earth.

Every person needs some relaxation, some recreation; but a man’s chief happiness should not lie outside his daily work, but in it. The chief difference between the happiness of childhood and the happiness of maturity is that the child’s happiness is dependent on something different from the daily routine—a picnic, an excursion, a break of some kind. But to the right sort of men and women happiness is found in the routine itself, not in departures from it. Instead of hoping for a change, one hopes there will be no change, that one will have sufficient health to continue in one’s chosen occupation. The child has pleasures; the man has happiness. But unfortunately some men remain children all their lives.

VI
AN INSPIRING CEMETERY

Americans should not leave Florence without spending some reflective hours in the so-called Protestant cemetery. The grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is adorned with a beautiful marble tomb designed by the famous artist Leighton, and the only inscription thereupon is “E. B. B. Ob. 1861.”

Not far away lies the famous poet, Walter Savage Landor, who died in 1864 at the age of eighty-nine. His grave is covered with a flat stone. Here is a poem he wrote about it:

Twenty years hence, though it may hap

That I be called to take a nap

In a cool cell where thunder clap

Was never heard,

There breathe but o’er my arch of grass,

A not too sadly sigh’d “Alas!”

And I shall catch ere you can pass,

That wingéd word.

The last time I was in Florence I bent over his grave and with deliberate emphasis I whispered “Alas!” I do not know whether he heard me or not.

Robert and Elizabeth Browning made the poet’s later years as happy as was possible for one of his temperament; they secured a villa for him, furnished it, hired servants and did what they could. He was wildly irascible, and if he did not like a meal that was served, he grabbed the table-cloth, and twitched all the food and dishes on to the floor. All his life he was a fighting man, which makes the beautiful Farewell he wrote somewhat incongruous.

THE LAST FRUIT OF AN OLD TREE

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life.

It sinks and I am ready to depart.

In order to fit my own feelings, I should have to make some slight changes in his poem, so that the amended version would read as follows:

I strove with none. I always hated strife.

Nature I loved, and God and Man and Art.

I warmed both hands before the fire of life;

It sinks—yet I’m not ready to depart.

Landor was sometimes in a more jovial mood, as in his invitation to Tennyson:

I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson,

Come and share my haunch of venison.

I have too a bin of claret,

Good, but better when you share it.

Tho’ ’tis only a small bin,

There’s a stock of it within.

And as sure as I’m a rhymer,

Half a butt of Rudesheimer.

Come; among the sons of men is one

Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson?

Along the path leading to Mrs. Browning’s tomb is the grave of the English poet, Arthur Hugh Clough (pronounced Cluff), who crossed the ocean with Thackeray and James Russell Lowell and whose most famous poem is Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth. He died in 1861 the same year as Mrs. Browning, at the early age of 42. He was a distinguished scholar of Balliol college, Oxford. He expressed in his poems the doubts and struggles that have afflicted so many honest and candid minds.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face,

Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;

Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below

The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild northwesters rave,

How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!

The dripping sailor on the reeling mast,

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away.

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

In addition to the three great English poets who are buried in this cemetery, two famous Americans lie there, Richard Hildreth and Theodore Parker. When I was an undergraduate, I asked Prof. W. G. Sumner what was the best History of the United States that had ever been written; he answered gruffly and without a word of qualification, “Hildreth’s!” Accordingly, I read every word of the six volumes. Many years later I had the unique pleasure of telling Sumner something he had not known; I told him I had done homage at Hildreth’s grave in Florence, and he was surprised to learn that the historian was buried there. If any one believes that the contemporary custom of “debunking” historical characters is new, he should read Hildreth’s Preface to his History.

“Of centennial sermons and Fourth of July orations, whether professedly such or in the guise of history, there are more than enough. It is due to our fathers and ourselves, it is due to truth and philosophy, to present for once, on the historic stage, the founders of our American nation unbedaubed with patriotic rouge, wrapped up in no fine-spun cloaks of excuses and apology, without stilts, buskins, tinsel, or bedizenment, in their own proper persons.”

VII
ANCIENT FOOTBALL

Attacks on the American game of football are often more sensational than the game itself. Some volley out statistics of injuries, in which we see the names of persons “crippled for life” whom we know to be unlike their biographers in that they are both well and cheerful; others descant wildly on the evils of betting and the drunkenness attendant upon a great match; others deplore the time and attention robbed from study; some believe the rivalry of two strong teams causes prolonged bitterness and hatred; some regard the intense earnestness of training as both silly and harmful; some assert that the players on the field behave like ruffians, and some, like the old Puritans, hate the game not because they really think it wicked but because they secretly hate to see eighty thousand people out for a holiday.

There is no doubt that football, like every other sport and recreation, is open to many serious objections. Certain players are every year killed and wounded, though the mortality is nothing like so great as that resulting from automobile accidents and week-end celebrations. It is certainly true that betting and dissipation accompany the game; it is true that many young men sit on the benches, cheering and singing, when they might be studying in the seclusion of their rooms.

It is true that the American spirit—always ambitious of success—makes every member of a university team train with an earnestness that seems tragi-comic to the nonathletic observer. But the immense advantages of this most robust of all sports outweigh all its attendant evils. For football is much more than a contest of animal vigour; in the language of Professor Stagg, who was a moralist before he was an athlete, “Football surpasses every other game in its demand for a high combination of physical, mental and moral qualities.”

This article, however, is not written for the purpose of defending modern football but rather to show that the game thus far has not only flourished in spite of attacks but that there has been a tremendous rise in its respectability since the days of Queen Elizabeth. I cannot just now remember anything on which the Puritans and the playwrights were then agreed, except their opinion of football. What Shakespeare thought of it may be seen in the epithet which Kent applies to one of the most odious characters in King Lear. Tripping up Oswald, he calls him “you base football player.”

Modern legislators must rejoice at finding that they have plenty of precedents for legal prohibition of the game. In 1424 we find “The King forbiddes that na man play fut ball under payne of iiiid.” Sir Thomas Elyot remarked, in 1531, “Foote balle, wherin is nothing but beastly furie and exstreme violence.”

If in Elizabethan days the dramatists, who were not noted for their piety, attacked football, what shall we expect from the Puritans? The most circumstantial indictment of the game came from a Puritan of Puritans, Philip Stubbs. In his Anatomie of Abuses (1583) he thus denounces the sport:

For as concerning football playing, I protest vnto you it may rather be called a frieendly kinde of fight, then a play of recreation; A bloody and murthering practise, then a felowly sporte or pastime. For dooth not euery one lye in waight for his Aduersarie, seeking to ouerthrowe him & to picke him on his nose, though it be vppon hard stones? In ditch or dale, in valley or hil, or what place soeuer it be, hee careth not, so he haue him down. And he that can serue the most of this fashion, he is counted the only felow, and who but he? so that by this meanes, sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometime their legs, sometime their armes; sometime one part thrust out of ioynt, sometime another. Sometime the noses gush out with blood, sometime their eyes start out; and sometimes hurt in one place, sometimes in another. But whosoeuer scapeth away the best, goeth not scotfree, but is either sore wounded, craised, and bruiseed so as he dyeth of it, or else scapeth very hardly, and no meruaile, for they haue the sleights to meet one betwixt two, to dash him against the hart with their elbowes, to hit him vnder the short ribbes with their griped fists, and with their knees to catch him vpon the hip, and to pick him on his neck, with a hundred such murdering deuices; and hereof groweth enuie, malice, rancour, cholor, hatred, displeasure, enemities, and what not els; and sometimes fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murther, homicide, and great effusion of blood, as experience dayely teacheth.

In the attack just quoted the most interesting thing to the modern reader is that precisely the same objections were made to the game as we hear today.

In the robust days of Queen Bess football was regarded as low and vulgar; it received the denunciation of the Church and the more potent frown of fashionable society. Today at a great university match prominent clergymen are seen even on the sidelines; the bleachers bloom with lovely women, and in a conspicuous place stands the President of the United States.

VIII
RIVERS

On the first of several agreeable visits to Carbondale in southern Illinois, whither I went to address the best of all audiences—public school teachers—I enquired of the superintendent, Mr. Black, as to the precise distance that separated us from the Mississippi river. I told him I loved all rivers, and this one particularly. I had seen it at St. Paul, at St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. I wished to see it far from the noise, smoke and artificiality of cities. I wished to see it naked. He informed me that he was the proud owner of an open Ford car, that the Father of Waters was only eighteen miles away, and that he would lead me to it that very afternoon.

It was a charming day in early spring. I stood on the bank of the mighty Mississippi. There was no town, settlement, not even a house in sight. The glorious old river at this point was one mile wide, fifty feet deep, and running seven miles an hour. Away up stream on the Missouri side the trees were in the living green of April; and the flood came rolling along in silent majesty.

I thought of the old seventeenth century poet, Denham, and what he said of another river.

Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.

Every river has a fascination for me, because it is alive. In a green landscape, or in a rocky gorge, or in the midst of a forest, or dividing a city, it gives to every scene the element of life. Living waters flowing through meadows, over sands, between mountains are always moving, progressing, going somewhere. If one climbs a hill, and looks off on a vast expanse of fresh woods and pastures new, and suddenly sees a river, the heart leaps up with recognition.

Looking at a map—the expressive face of the world—I have often wished to follow the course of various rivers. I should like to go down the Amazon, the Yukon, and the Yangtze. Each river has a personality. Most rivers that empty into the ocean are tidal; their current is pushed backward by the incoming sea. But the Amazon is so mighty that it overcomes the force of the tide and transforms the ocean into fresh water. Unless voyagers and novelists are abandoned liars, one can be off the coast of South America, out of sight of land and dip up fresh water, so tremendous and far-reaching is the shove of the Amazon. Its mouth is so wide that one could place in it crosswise, the whole Hudson river from New York to Albany, without touching either shore.

The personality of the Mississippi is striking. In the greatest of all Mark Twain’s contributions to literature, the first volume of Life on the Mississippi, he gives us marvellous impressions of the character and behaviour of the stream. And in one of the foremost novels of our time, Charles Stewart’s Partners of Providence, the peculiar habits and whims of the Mississippi are set forth. It quite rightly regards itself as socially superior to the Missouri; so much so, in fact, that for some time after the entrance of the Missouri into its waters, the Mississippi positively refuses to have anything to do with the interloper.

In the old days “before the war” (our war), luxurious passenger steamers plied from St. Louis to New Orleans; and I understand that, after the lapse of many years, we are to have similar vessels. This is as it should be; an immense amount of American literature and history, from De Soto to Edna Ferber, is associated with this river, and the opportunity of travelling on it should be given to all Americans. I have not yet abandoned my youthful dream of travelling on the Mississippi from St. Paul to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to New Orleans.

I never miss a good chance for a river voyage. One has the element of adventure as one rounds the next bend. I have been on the rivers of southern Florida, I have been on the Savannah river in Georgia, and the last time I was at Vanderbilt university, in Nashville, friends gave me a memorable excursion on the Cumberland. One of the most interesting of all inland voyages in the United States is to take the steamer from Norfolk to Richmond on the James. From seven in the morning to eight at night it is a panorama of American history.

The word river occurs many times in the Bible, and think of the part played in the story of mankind by the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Jordan! The Bible begins and ends with a river. In the second chapter of Genesis, we read “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden,” a lovely spectacle, for Paradise would never have been complete without a river. In the last chapter of Revelation, we read, “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

It is curious when the Bible speaks of the River of Life—“on either side of the river there was the tree of life”—that the idea should persist of the River of Death. This is a heathen and pagan idea and has no place in Jewish or Christian thought. Many people speak solemnly of crossing the river—they get the notion either from Greek mythology or from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or metaphorically, from the Promised Land lying on the other side of the Jordan.

In reality the Bible tells us that both the earthly and the heavenly Paradise had a river to refresh and gladden the people.

Without sermonising too grossly, we may say that a river is like a human life. The source is often obscure and humble, then a tiny stream, then growing bigger and more important (the widening of influence), then flowing tranquilly (prosperous, happy days), then getting into sand flats, hardly moving (serious illness), then roaring tempestuously in rapids (times of excitement and adventure), yet going on, somehow and somewhere.

Furthermore, they always arrive ultimately at the same destination—the mysterious open sea, leaving narrow circumstances for a deeper and greater existence.

And even those streams that seem to perish without fulfilling their destiny, are in their subsequent influence like the lives of obscurely good men. Some travellers in a desert came to a bit of green meadow where a river once had been.

IX
ONE DAY AT A TIME

On a certain morning in the year 1900 I called on President Eliot at his office in Harvard University. He was in a gracious mood and we talked of many things. As I rose to leave I said I hoped I might always have the privilege of calling on him whenever I came to Cambridge. He remarked gravely (in every sense of that word): “The next time you come I may not be here.”

“What’s the matter? Are you going to resign?” “Resign? Certainly not. But, remember, I am sixty-six years old.” The only answer to that was a laugh, which I provided spontaneously.

Now if the distinguished president of Harvard had known then that twenty-five years after this interview, he would be in the full possession of his physical and mental faculties, even though he had ceased to possess the Harvard one, he would have wasted not a single moment on the thought of his approaching death. And if gold rusts, what shall iron do?

In the eighteenth century, the poet Young was an intimate friend of the novelist Richardson and their correspondence has a certain mortuary interest. For Young’s letters are as gloomy as his verses; they are largely taken up with predicting his own speedy death, which, however, Richardson awaited in vain, as the aged poet survived him. In his own last moments Richardson may have felt something akin to resentment at having wasted his sympathy on one who would attend his funeral.

We look backward too much and we look forward too much. Thus we miss the passing moment. In our regrets and apprehensions, we miss the only eternity of which man can be absolutely sure, the eternal Present. For it is always NOW.

As Browning’s clever Bishop Blougram remarked:

Do you know, I have often had a dream

(Work it up in your next month’s article)

Of man’s poor spirit in its progress, still

Losing true life forever and a day

Through ever trying to be and ever being—

In the evolution of successive spheres—

Before its actual sphere and place of life,

Halfway into the next, which having reached

It shoots with corresponding foolery

Halfway into the next still, on and off!

As when a traveller, bound from North to South,

Scouts fur in Russia; what’s its use in France?

If France spurns flannel; what’s its need in Spain?

If Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!

Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,

A superfluity in Timbuctoo.

When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?

When Thoreau was questioned as to his beliefs in a life beyond the grave, he answered impatiently, “Oh, one world at a time.”

I was deeply impressed in reading Dr. Cushing’s admirable biography of Sir William Osler, to see that the physician and philosopher laid the greatest stress on living one day at a time. That was his summary of the art of living, for all those who wished to accomplish as much as possible, and retain their peace of mind: Live one day at a time.

I remember, when I was twenty years old, I wasted many good hours in speculating on what I should do after graduation from college, which event was two years ahead. An old man told me not to give it a moment’s thought: “You cannot decide what to do till the emergency comes.” Meanwhile there was the daily work. The best way to prepare for the future was to do that well, rather than waste one’s energies on idle worry.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

There are always gloomy prophets who cannot enjoy the present moment, because they are so sure trouble is coming. The winter of 1917–1918 was the coldest in my recollection; and many said, “Well, the climate is changing and we must not expect any mild winters.” Then came the winter of 1918–1919, which was the mildest in my recollection. And how distinctly I recall conversations like the following. Along about Christmastide, I would say, “What a beautiful winter!” and in every instance, without a single exception, I got the reply, “Just wait. We’ll catch it later.” Then when the weather continued sweet all through January, I made the same remark to different individuals, and always got a warning for my pains. But the evil came not at all. My friends had determined to be miserable. They could not enjoy a lovely mild season, for in its loveliness they shook with the chill of apprehension.

The fear of life is the favourite disease of the twentieth century. Too many people are afraid of tomorrow—their happiness is poisoned by a phantom. Many are afraid of old age, forgetting that even if they should lose their bodily vigour, weakness itself may minister to the development of the mind and spirit. In the words of the aged poet Waller,

The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Let the scientists worry about our origin—slime, monkeys, what not; let the prophets worry about our future—“the decline of western civilisations,” and what not. Some people are alarmed because in nine thousand billion years the sun’s fuel may give out. Instead of chagrin over our past, and alarm over our future, suppose we consider our opportunity.

Listen to Emerson: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has earned anything rightly until he knows that every day is doomsday. Today is a king in disguise. Today always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of a uniform experience that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank todays. Let us not be deceived, let us unmask the king as he passes.”

Our Lord, in his daily conversations, was always drawing the attention of his listeners away from vague speculations, to the present moment and the present opportunity. To such absurd enquiries as, “Whose wife shall she be in heaven?” he said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” To the man who said that he must postpone action until he had attended a funeral, the Master replied crisply, “Let the dead bury the dead and come and follow me.” And after an enumeration of the various worries about the future with which men and women torment their minds, he said, “Take no thought for the morrow.” Do not worry about the future. He added, significantly, that if we are determined to look for trouble, we can find it today without waiting for tomorrow.

X
CITY AND COUNTRY

It is generally assumed that the country is more romantic, more poetical than the city; but it would not be so easy to prove this, if one were put to the test. “God made the country and man made the town,” said William Cowper, which meant simply that he preferred rural life. It is rather amusing to consider that in our age, which is so often called the age of machines, and when many people are afraid that simplicity and individuality will be lost, country places, mountain scenery, and the wilderness are more popular than ever before.

Now there are fashions in outdoor nature just as there are fashions in clothes. Today everyone must profess a love for mountains whether one really likes them or not; for mountains are very fashionable. Switzerland is the playground of the world; and the inhabitants make a larger income off their barren rocks than most communities make off fertile and productive plains.

But it is only within two hundred years that mountains have been generally admired. Before that time they were usually regarded as ugly excrescences, both disagreeable and dangerous; and at the best they were no more to be regarded as objects of beauty than pimples. English gentlemen who made the Grand Tour in the seventeenth century thought the Alps were disgusting; they were a monstrous and abominable barrier that must be crossed before the traveller could reach the smiling landscape of Italy.

When Addison wrote home from his travels in 1701, he said that he had had “a very troublesome journey over the Alps. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices; and you can’t imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain!” Such a remark would injure the reputation of a modern pilgrim; but Addison made it in perfect good faith, and with no apology.

Perhaps some of our contemporary love of wild scenery is owing to the comfortable circumstances in which we behold it; transportation, tunnels, fine hotels, luxuries of every description enable us to view mountains in security and serenity; but if we had to pass over them in acute discomfort and in constant danger, our attitude might be more like Addison’s. This by no means explains why the once “horrid” has become fashionable; but it helps to explain the modern love of wild scenery.

Had Addison been told that two centuries later people would build hotels on the edge of Alpine precipices, he would have dismissed the idea as a silly dream; no one would put a roadhouse there. “But, Mr. Addison, I am not talking of roadhouses. These hotels are not on the way to something else; they are not a means, they are an end. People will travel three thousand miles from California to New York, sail three thousand miles from New York to Europe just to spend the summer in a mountain hotel, where it costs twenty dollars a day—” he would have regarded the coming generation as idiotic.

It was Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy, who was one of the first English travellers to see the beauty of the Alps, and it was he therefore who is originally responsible for making them fashionable. He and Horace Walpole drove over the mountains in a chaise, and Gray wrote to his friend West, “Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief.” This was a new note in literature.

It is my belief that mountains and wild scenery are more appreciated today by citified folk who love them for the change and novelty than they are by those who are forced to live among them all the time. When I was young, I walked with three of my college mates from New Haven to the White Mountains; it was a fine expedition, and took us some three weeks. I remember toward twilight on a certain day we entered a gorge and passed through into a place surrounded by austere mountains.

A farmer addressed us: “Where do you boys come from?”

“Connecticut.”

He slowly and solemnly repeated the word CONN-ECT-ICUT—as though he were saying MESOPOTAMIA, and added, “My, I’d like to see Connecticut.”

We told him it was not so very remarkable.

“We have no such mountains as these in Connecticut.”

He replied, “Oh, damn these mountains! I’m sick of the sight of them.” And it appeared that he had never been out of that valley.

I spend a quarter of my life in the country, and love it, but if I had to choose between living all my life in the country or in a large city, I should choose the city immediately. And I believe this is true of most people.

A crowd of unemployed some years ago stood in line at the Detroit city hall. A man came up and offered every one in turn good wages, good food, a good place to sleep, and plenty of fresh air, if he would take for the summer a job on a farm. Every one of the men laughed at him. Some of us more fortunate folks are irritated by this, for in America everybody thinks that everybody else ought to be a farmer. But the truth is that man does not live by bread alone. People do not live in order to live—merely for healthy surroundings and good food. They want excitement, they want something interesting. Who can blame them? Don’t you feel that way yourself?

We should all contribute to the Fresh Air Funds, because little children of the slums ought to have a chance to see unimpaired nature. But very few of the children would be willing to stay there, and in some cases after a few days they are homesick for their native filth. The city is one continuous theatre, admission free; the street is the best playground in this world. There is a fire, a street fight, the appearance of policemen, an arrest, an automobile accident—all the day and all the night, “something doing.”

Thus it is not at all strange that the majority prefer the crowded conditions of the slums to the fresh air of the country; for other things being equal, isn’t that about the way we all feel?

XI
AGE BEFORE BEAUTY

This frequently-heard statement is a left-handed compliment; like many conventional tributes, it carries a smirk rather than a smile. Underneath the formal and hollow homage paid to the ancient the preference is of course elsewhere. It is somewhat like the so-called complimentary vote given to the “favourite son” at a political convention, which no one takes seriously, not even the son. Nothing would perhaps more shockingly disconcert the ballot-casters than to have their candidate receive other than local support.

In the expression Age Before Beauty, it is implied that the two are incompatible; you cannot have both. Yet upon a little reflexion it will appear that the vast majority of objects that receive human attention become more and more beautiful with the accumulation of years. I can think of only two classes of things that are more beautiful in their early than in their later existence.

I refer first to all varieties of animal life, including man; second to all objects whose main purpose is practical usefulness.

It ought to be obvious that kittens, puppies, baby lions, boys and girls are fairer to look upon than aged cats, rheumatic hounds, toothless lions, decrepit men, and time-worn harridans—such as guide you to your seat in the Paris theatres. It is true that the ecclesiastical poet, Dr. Donne, made a couplet comforting to some whose youth is only a memory.

Nor Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such grace

As I have seen in one autumnal face.

But you will observe he said “one” not many; and he had in mind not a number of charming old ladies, but just one. No doubt there are a sufficient number of exceptions to give added stability to the rule.

Browning said the reason why youth is so fair is that it would be intolerable without it; beauty is youth’s only asset. Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense. As soon as they are able to pull their weight in the work of the world and in the intellectual clearing-house of society, then grace and beauty depart. Thus mature people who have no brains and no sense are the last word in futility. They are as ridiculous as old apple-blossoms which for some reason never went into fruition.

The second class of objects which are beautiful only in youth are those which are built mainly for use. The purpose of an automobile is to go. A motor car one year old is better than when ten years old; it is also more attractive to the eye. I suppose Americans are the only people in the world who often buy new cars. If an Englishman has a car that carries him satisfactorily, he keeps it; the American “turns it in.” There is no more striking evidence of the “prosperity” of the American people than the twofold fact of the abundance of new cars, and also—amazing, when you think about it—that the tremendously efficient T-model Ford was not sufficiently lovely to pay for its continued manufacture.

When I was a boy, the number of my acquaintances whose fathers owned a horse and carriage could be counted on the fingers of one hand, like those who now own a steam yacht; the fact that the old Ford car is not “good enough” indicates how times have changed. For the proper epitaph for the T-model we should have to adapt the words of Shakespeare, which he put into a funeral oration:

But yesterday the Ford T-model might

Have stood against the world; now lies it there,

And none so poor to do it reverence.

Beauty and newness are inseparable in the case of bicycles, grocery-wagons, machinery, steamboats, factory buildings, flannel shirts, shoes, typewriters, trousers, socks; with all of these articles age means ugliness. In mechanical objects there is no charm in the accumulation of years.

But cathedrals, trees, mountains, castles, manor-houses, college lawns, violins, with the increase of age take on not only dignity but beauty. A thirteenth-century cathedral is more lovely than a glossy new church; an old tree is more beautiful than any sapling; the ancient turf in the quads of Oxford is fairer to behold than the graded front yard of a new house in Dakota.

Why do hundreds of thousands of Americans travel gladly in Europe every summer? Mainly for one thing. It is that their Yankee eyes may have the sensation of seeing objects which the wear of centuries has made beautiful. Many of us Americans have had the natural habit of associating beauty with newness; the new hat, the new clothes, the new motor car, the new stadium. It is worth while to discover that there are innumerable objects where age, instead of being a humiliation and a “depreciation,” is not only an asset, but a thing of beauty whose loveliness increases.

Boys and girls brought up in the slums naturally regard newness as essential to beauty and worth; the Fresh Air Fund should, if possible, take them not only to fresh woods and fields, but illuminate their minds with the sight of buildings whose age, instead of tarnishing, has made them surpassingly attractive. Henry James, in one of his novels, has a boy from the London slums entertained overnight in an English country house. This is what he saw as he looked out of his window in the early morning.

“He had never in his life been in the country—the real country, as he called it, the country which was not the mere ravelled fringe of London—and there entered through his open casement the breath of a world enchantingly new and after his feverish hours unspeakably refreshing; a sense of sweet sunny air and mingled odours, all strangely pure and agreeable, and of a musical silence that consisted for the greater part of the voices of many birds. There were tall quiet trees near by and afar off and everywhere.... There was something in the way the grey walls rose from the green lawn that brought tears to his eyes; the spectacle of long duration unassociated with some sordid infirmity or poverty was new to him; he had lived with people among whom old age meant for the most part a grudged and degraded survival. In the favored resistance of Medley was a serenity of success, an accumulation of dignity and honour.”

XII
CHURCH UNITY

I have in mind a tiny country village containing one large Catholic church and four small Protestant churches—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal. The Catholic church holds services every Sunday, every holy day and on many other occasions; these services are well attended. Although the four Protestant churches are very small they are not small enough; some of them have long periods when they are not opened at all, and the others are never crowded.

It is not surprising that there should be many sects and denominations among Protestants, for the central principle of Protestantism is individual judgment, which makes uniformity neither possible nor desirable; and, indeed, in large cities it is a good thing that we have so many and such a variety of sectarian church services.

For the variety is not in religious faith; they are all following the same religion. The variety is in the form of worship, what I call religious etiquette.

There are many people who on account of their parentage and early associations love an elaborate ritual, with the clergy in uniform, the vested choir, etc. There are other persons, equally devout, who are repelled by ritualism; they like to see the minister in mufti and to have a service as informal and simple as possible. There are those who would be shocked by the language used by certain soap-box exhorters, but if they cannot endure these things they might remember that God has to listen to them, and take them as a compliment. Perhaps that is what is meant by the Divine Patience. These people feel religiously at home only in a dignified and elaborate service. But there are others who in a “high” church feel as if they were at an opera; their senses may be touched, but their hearts are cold. They are spectators, not worshippers.

How fortunate it is then that in every city of reasonable size every Protestant has the power of choice. If one church service or preacher “gets on his nerves” he can go elsewhere, where his precious nerves will be soothed rather than ruffled, and he can worship God with an etiquette to which he is accustomed.

When a young man and woman become engaged to be married it is extremely probable that during the courtship they will at one time or another discuss religion; the girl will probably ask the man for his views on the subject.