III

As its inch of way were the wide sea's profound,

he steered the ship in the narrow channel. It is well, however, for one who undertakes such feats to make sure that he really has an inch of way; it is none too much.

In these days it is so easy for one to get a supply of ready-made knowledge that it is hard to keep from applying it indiscriminately. We make incursions into our neighbor's affairs and straighten them out with a ruthless righteousness which is very disconcerting to him, especially when he has never had the pleasure of our acquaintance till we came to set him right. There is a certain modesty of conscience which would perhaps be more becoming. It comes only with the realization of practical difficulties. I like the remark of Sir Fulke Greville in his account of his friend, Sir Philip Sydney. Speaking of his literary labors he says: "Since my declining age it is true I had for some years more leisure to discover theirimperfections than care and industry to mend them, finding in myself what all men complain of: that it is more easy to find fault, excuse, or tolerate, than to examine or reform."

The idea that we know what a person ought to do, and especially what he ought not to do, before we know the person or how he is situated, is one dear to the mind of the Doctrinaire. If his mind did not naturally work that way he would not be a Doctrinaire. He is always inclined to put duty before the pleasure of finding out what it is all about. In this way he becomes overstocked with a lot of unrelated duties, for which there is no home consumption, and which he endeavors to dump on the foreign market. This makes him unpopular.

I am not one of those who insist that everybody should mind his own business; that is too harsh a doctrine. One of the rights and privileges of a good neighbor is to give neighborly advice. But there is a corresponding right on the part of the advisee, and that is to take no more of the advice than he thinks is good for him. There is one thing that a man knows about his own business better than any outsider, and that is how hard it is for him to do it. The adviser is always telling him how to do it in the finest possible way, while he, poor fellow, knows that the paramount issue is whether he can do it at all. It requires some grace on the part of a person who is doing the best he can under extremely difficultcircumstances to accept cheerfully the remarks of the intelligent critic.

Persons who write about the wild animals they have known are likely to be contradicted by persons who have been acquainted with other wild animals, or with the same wild animals under other circumstances. How much more difficult is it to give an exhaustive and correct account of that wonderfully complex creature, man.

One whose business requires him to meet large numbers of persons who are all in the same predicament, is in danger of generalizing from a too narrow experience. The teacher, the charity-worker, the preacher, the physician, the man of business, each has his method of professional classification. Each is tempted to forget thathe is not in a position from which he can survey human nature in its entirety. He only sees one phase endlessly repeated. The dentist, for example, has special advantages for character study, but he should remember that the least heroic of his patients has moments when he is more blithe and debonair than he has ever seen him.

It takes an unusually philosophical mind to make the necessary allowances for its own limitations. If you were to earn your daily bread at the Brooklyn Bridge, and your sole duty was to exhort your fellow men to "step lively," you would doubtless soon come to divide mankind into three classes, namely: those who step lively, those who do not step lively, and those whostep too lively. If Aristotle himself were to cross the bridge, you would see nothing in the Peripatetic Philosopher but a reprehensible lack of agility.

At the railway terminus there is an office which bears the inscription, "Lost Articles." In the midst of the busy traffic it stands as a perpetual denial of the utilitarian theory that all men are governed by enlightened self-interest. A very considerable proportion of the traveling public can be trusted regularly to forget its portable property.

The gentleman who presides over the lost articles has had long experience as an alienist. He is skeptical as to the reality of what is called mind. So far as his clients are concerned, it is notable for its absence. To beconfronted day after day by the absent-minded, and to listen to their monotonous tale of woe, is disenchanting. It is difficult to observe all the amenities of life when one is dealing with the defective and delinquent classes.

When first I inquired at the Lost Article window, I was received as a man and brother. There was even an attempt to show the respect due to one who may have seen better days. I had the feeling that both myself and my lost article were receiving individual attention. I left without any sense of humiliation. But the third time I appeared I was conscious of a change in the atmosphere. A single glance at the Restorer of Lost Articles showed me that I was no longer in his eyes a citizen who was in temporarymisfortune. I was classified. He recognized me as a rounder. "There he is again," he said to himself. "Last time it was at Rockingham Junction, this time it is probably on the Saugus Branch; but it is the same old story, and the same old umbrella."

What hurt my feelings was that nothing I could say would do any good. It would not help matters to explain that losing articles was not my steady occupation, and that I had other interests in life. He would only wearily note the fact as another indication of my condition. "That's the way they all talk. These defectives can never be made to see their conduct in its true light. They always explain their misfortunes by pretending that their thoughts were on higher things."

The Doctrinaire when he gets hold of a good thing never lets up on it. His favorite idea is produced on all occasions. It may be excellent in its way, but he sings its praises till we turn against it as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an excellence that insulted us.

The King in "Hamlet" remarked,

"There lives within the very flame of loveA kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it;And nothing is at a like goodness still;For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,Dies in his own too-much."

"There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it;

And nothing is at a like goodness still;

For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,

Dies in his own too-much."

The Doctrinaire can never realize the fatal nature of the "too-much."If a little does good, he is sure that more will do better. He will not allow of any abatements or alleviations; we must, if we are to keep on good terms with him, be doing the whole duty of man all the time. He will take our own most cherished principles and turn them against us in such an offensive manner that we forget that they are ours. He argues on the right side with such uncompromising energy that we have to take the wrong side to maintain our self-respect.

If there is one thing I believe in, it is fresh air. I like to keep my window open at night, or better still to sleep under the stars. And I was glad to learn from the doctors that this is good for us. But the other day I started on a railway journey withpremonitory signs of catching cold. An icy blast blew upon me. I closed the car window. A lady instantly opened it. I looked to see what manner of person she was. Was she one who could be touched by an illogical appeal? or was she wholly devoted to a cause?

It needed but a glance to assure me that she was a Doctrinaire, and capable only of seeing the large public side of the question. What would it avail for me to say, "Madam, I am catching cold, may I close the window?"

"Apostate man!" she would reply, "did I not hear you on the platform of the Anti-Tuberculosis Association plead for free and unlimited ventilation without waiting for theconsent of other nations? Did you not appear as one who stood four-square 'gainst every wind that blows, and asked for more? And now, just because you are personally inconvenienced, you prove recreant to the Cause. Do you know how many cubic feet of fresh air are necessary to this car?"

I could only answer feebly, "When it comes to cubic feet I am perfectly sound. I wish there were more of them. What troubles me is only a trifling matter of two linear inches on the back of my neck. Your general principle, Madam, is admirable. I merely plead for a slight relaxation of the rule. I ask only for a mere pittance of warmed-over air."

Perhaps the most discouraging thingabout the Doctrinaire is that while he insists upon a high ideal, he is intolerant of the somewhat tedious ways and means by which the ideal is to be reached. With his eye fixed on the Perfect, he makes no allowance for the imperfectness of those who are struggling toward it. There is a pleasant passage in Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" in which I find great comfort: "That which the Gospel of Christ requireth is the perpetuity of virtuous duties, not the perpetuity of exercise or action, but disposition perpetual, and practise as often as times and opportunities require. Just, valiant, liberal, temperate, and holy men, are they whichcanwhensoever they will, and will whensoever theyought, execute whatever their severalperfections impart. If virtues did always cease when they cease to work, there would be nothing more pernicious to virtue than sleep."

The judicious Hooker was never more judicious than in making this observation. It is a great relief to be assured that in this world, where there are such incessant calls upon the moral nature, it is possible to be a just, valiant, liberal, temperate, and holy man, and yet get a good night's sleep.

But your Doctrinaire will not have it so. His hero retains his position only during good behavior, which means behaving all the time in an obviously heroic manner. It is not enough that he should be to "true occasion true," he must make occasions to show himself off.

Now it happens that in the actual world it is not possible for the best of men to satisfy all the demands of their fidgety followers. In the picture of the battle between St. George and the dragon, the attitude of St. George is all that could be desired. There is an easy grace in the way in which he deals with the dragon that is greatly to his credit. There is a mingling of knightly pride and Christian resignation over his own inevitable victory, that is charming.

St. George was fortunate in the moment when he had his picture taken. He had the dragon just where he wanted him. But it is to be feared that if some one had followed him with a kodak, some of the snap-shots might have been less satisfactory.Let us suppose a moment when the dragon

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

It is a way that dragons have when they are excited. And what if that moment St. George dodged. Would you criticise him harshly for such an action? Would it not be better to take into consideration the fact that under such circumstances his first duty might not be to be statuesque?

When in the stern conflict we have found a champion, I think we owe him some little encouragement. When he is doing the best he can in a very difficult situation, we ought not to blame him because he does not act as he would if there were no difficulties at all. "Life," said Marcus Aurelius, "is more like wrestling thandancing." When we get that point of view we may see that some attitudes that are not graceful may be quite effective. It is a fine thing to say,—

"Dare to be a Daniel,Dare to stand alone,Dare to have a purpose trueAnd dare to make it known."

"Dare to be a Daniel,

Dare to stand alone,

Dare to have a purpose true

And dare to make it known."

But if I had been a Daniel and as the result of my independent action had been cast into the den of lions, I should feel as if I had done enough in the way of heroism for one day, and I should let other people take their turn. If I found the lions inclined to be amiable, I should encourage them in it. I should say, "I beg your pardon. I do not mean to intrude. If it's the time for your afternoon nap, don't pay any attention to me. Afterthe excitement that I've had where I came from, I should like nothing better than to sit down by myself in the shade and have a nice quiet day of it."

And if the lions were agreeable, I should be glad. I should hate to have at this moment a bland Doctrinaire look down and say, "That was a great thing you did up there, Daniel. People are wondering whether you can keep it up. Your friends are getting a mite impatient. They expected to hear by this time that there was something doing down there. Stir 'em up, Daniel! Stir 'em up!"

Perhaps at this point some fair-minded reader may say, "Is there not something to be said in favor ofthe Doctrinaire? Is he not, after all, a very useful character? How could any great reform be pushed through without his assistance?"

Yes, dear reader, a great deal may be said in his favor. He is often very useful. So is a snow-plough, in midwinter, though I prefer a more flexible implement when it comes to cultivating my early peas.

There is something worse than to be a Doctrinaire who pursues an ideal without regard to practical consideration; it is worse to be a Philistine so immersed in practical considerations that he doesn't know an ideal when he sees it. If the choice were between these two I should say, "Keep on being a Doctrinaire. You have chosen the better part." Butfortunately there is a still more excellent way. It is possible to be a practical idealist pursuing the ideal with full regard for practical considerations. There is something better than the conscience that moves with undeviating rectitude through a moral vacuum. It is the conscience that is related to realities. It is a moral force operating continuously on the infinitely diversified materials of human life. It feels its way onward. It takes advantage of every incident, with a noble opportunism. It is the conscience that belongs to the patient, keen-witted, open-minded, cheery "men of good will," who are doing the hard work of the world.

Christmas and the Literature of Disillusion

"What makes the book so cross?" asked the youngest listener, who had for a few minutes, for lack of anything better to do, been paying some slight attention to the reading that was intended for her elders.

It was a question which we had not been bright enough to ask. We had been plodding on with the vague idea that it was a delightful book.Certainly the subject was agreeable. The writer was taking us on a ramble through the less frequented parts of Italy. He had a fine descriptive power, and made us see the quiet hill towns, the old walls, the simple peasants, the white Umbrian cattle in the fields. It was just the sort of thing that should have brought peace to the soul; but it didn't.

The author had the trick of rubbing his subject the wrong way. Everything he saw seemed to suggest something just the opposite. When every prospect pleased, he took offense at something that wasn't there. He was himself a favored man of leisure, and could go where he pleased and stay as long as he liked. Instead of being content with a short Pharisaicprayer of thanksgiving that he was not as other men, he turned to berate the other men, who in New York were, at that very moment, rushing up and down the crowded streets in the frantic haste to be rich. He treated their fault as his misfortune. Indeed, it was unfortunate that the thought of their haste should spoil the serenity of his contemplation. His fine sense for the precious in art led him to seek the untrodden ways. He indulged in bitter gibes at the poor taste of the crowd. In some far-away church, just as he was getting ready to enjoy a beautifully faded picture on the wall, he caught sight of a tourist. He was only a mild-mannered man with an apologetic air, as one who would say, "Let me look, too. I mean no harm."

It was a meek effort at appreciation, but to the gentleman who wrote the book it was an offense. Here was a spy from "the crowd," an emissary of "the modern." By and by the whole pack would be in full cry and the lovely solitude would be no more. Then the author wandered off through the olives, where under the unclouded Italian sky he could see the long line of the Apennines, and there he meditated on the insufferable smoke of Sheffield and Pittsburg.

The young critic was right, the author was undoubtedly "cross." In early childhood this sort of thing is well understood, and called by its right name. When a small person starts the day in a contradictory moodand insists on taking everything by the wrong handle,—he is not allowed to flatter himself that he is a superior person with a "temperament," or a fine thinker with a gift for righteous indignation. He is simply set down as cross. It is presumed that he got up the wrong way, and he is advised to try again and see if he cannot do better. If he is fortunate enough to be thrown into the society of his contemporaries, he is subjected to a course of salutary discipline. No mercy is shown to "cross-patch." He cannot present his personal grievances to the judgment of his peers, for his peers refuse to listen. After a while he becomes conscious that his wrath defeats itself, as he hears the derisive couplet:—

"Johnny's mad.And I am glad."

"Johnny's mad.

And I am glad."

What's the use of being unpleasant any longer if it only produces such unnatural gayety in others. At last, as a matter of self-defense, he puts on the armor of good humor, which alone is able to protect him from the assaults of his adversaries.

But when a person has grown up and is able to express himself in literary language, he is freed from these wholesome restraints. He may indulge in peevishness to his heart's content, and it will be received as a sort of esoteric wisdom. For we are simple-minded creatures, and prone to superstition. It is only a few thousand years since the alphabet was invented, and the printing-press is stillmore recent. There is still a certain Delphic mystery about the printed page which imposes upon the imagination. When we sit down with a book, it is hard to realize that we are only conversing with a fellow being who may know little more about the subject in hand than we do, and who is attempting to convey to us not only his life-philosophy, but also his aches and pains, his likes and dislikes, and the limitations of his own experience. When doleful sounds come from the oracle, we take it for granted that something is the matter with the universe, when all that has happened is that one estimable gentleman, on a particular morning, was out of sorts when he took pen in hand.

At Christmas time, when wenaturally want to be on good terms with our fellow men, and when our pursuit of happiness takes the unexpectedly genial form of plotting for their happiness, the disposition of our favorite writers becomes a matter of great importance to us. A surly, sour-tempered person, taking advantage of our confidence, can turn us against our best friends. If he has an acrid wit he may make us ashamed of our highest enthusiasms. He may so picture human life as to make the message "Peace on earth, good will to men" seem a mere mockery.

I have a friend who has in him the making of a popular scientist, having an easy flow of extemporaneous theory, so that he is never closely confined to his facts. Oneof his theories is that pessimism is purely a literary disease, and that it can only be conveyed through the printed page. In having a single means of infection it follows the analogy of malaria, which in many respects it resembles. No mosquito, no malaria; so no book, no pessimism. Of course you must have a particular kind of mosquito, and he must have got the infection somewhere; but that is his concern, not yours. The important thing for you is that he is the middleman on whom you depend for the disease. In like manner, so my friend asserts, the writer is the middleman through whom the public gets its supply of pessimism.

I am not prepared to give anunqualified assent to this theory, for I have known some people who were quite illiterate who held very gloomy views. At the same time it seems to me there is something in it.

When an unbookish individual is in the dumps, he is conscious of his own misery, but he does not attribute it to all the world. The evil is narrowly localized. He sees the dark side of things because he is so unluckily placed that that alone is visible, but he is quite ready to believe that there is a bright side somewhere.

I remember several pleasant half-hours spent in front of a cabin on the top of a far western mountain. The proprietor of the cabin, who was known as "Pat," had dwelt there in solitary happiness until an intrudercame and settled near by. There was incompatibility of temper, and a feud began. Henceforth Pat had a grievance, and when a sympathetic traveler passed by, he would pour out the story of his woes; for like the wretched man of old he meditated evil on his bed against his enemy. And yet, as I have said, the half-hours spent in listening to these tirades were not cheerless, and no bad effects followed. Pat never impressed me as being inclined to misanthropy; in fact, I think he might have been set down as one who loved his fellow men, always excepting the unlucky individual who lived next to him. He never imputed the sins of this particular person to Humanity. There was always a sunny margin of good humoraround the black object of his hate. In this respect Pat was angry and sinned not. After listening to his vituperative eloquence I would ride on in a hopeful frame of mind. I had seen the worst and was prepared for something better. It was too bad that Pat and his neighbor did not get on better together. But this was an incident which did not shut out the fact that it was a fine day, and that some uncommonly nice people might live on the other side of the range.

But if Pat had possessed a high degree of literary talent, and had written a book, I am sure the impression would have been quite different. Two loveless souls, living on top of a lonely mountain, with the pitiless stars shining down on their futile hate! Whattheme could be more dreary. After reading the first chapter I should be miserable.

"This," I should murmur, "is Life. There are two symbolic figures,—Pat and the Other. The artist, with relentless sincerity, refuses to allow our attention to be distracted by the introduction of any characters unconnected with the sordid tragedy. Here is human nature stripped of all its pleasant illusions. What a poor creature is man!"

Pat and his neighbor, having become characters in a book, are taken as symbols of humanity, just as the scholastic theologians argued in many learned volumes, that Adam and Eve, being all that there were at the time, should be treated as "allmankind," at least for purposes of reprobation.

The author who is saddest when he writes takes us at a disadvantage. He may assert that he is only telling us the truth. If it is ugly, that is not his fault. He pictures to us the thing he sees, and declares that if we could free ourselves from our sentimental preference for what is pleasing we should praise him for his fidelity.

In all this the author is well within his rights. But if he prefers unmitigated gloom in his representations of life, we on our part have the right of not taking him too seriously. Speaking of disillusion, two can play at that game. We must get over our too romantic attitude toward literature. We must not exaggerate the significance ofwhat is presented to us, and treat that which is of necessity partial as if it were universal. When we are presented with a poor and shabby world, peopled only with sordid self-seekers, we need not be unduly depressed. We take the thing for what it is, a fragment. We are not looking directly at the world, but only at so much of it as has been mirrored in one particular mind. The mirror is not very large, and there is an obvious flaw in it which more or less distorts the image. Still let us be thankful for what is set before us, and make allowance for the natural human limitations. In this way one can read almost any sincere book, not only with profit, but with a certain degree of pleasure.

Let us remember that only a verysmall amount of good literature falls within Shelley's definition of poetry as "the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." For these rare outpourings of joyous, healthy life we are duly thankful. They are to be received as gifts of the gods, but we must not expect too many of them. Even the best minds often leave no record of their happiest moments, while they become garrulous over what displeases them. The cave of Adullam has always been the most prolific literary centre. Every man who has a grievance is fiercely impelled to self-expression. He is not content till his grievance is published to the unheeding world. And it is well that it is so. We should be in a bad way if it werenot for these inspired Adullamites who prevent us from resting in slothful indifference to evil.

Most writers of decided individuality are incited by a more or less iconoclastic impulse. There is an idol they want to smash, a conventional lie which they want to expose. It is the same impulse which moves almost every right-minded citizen, once or twice in his life, to write a letter of protest to the newspaper. Things are going wrong in his neighborhood, and he is impatient to set them right.

There are enough real grievances, and the full expression of them is a public service. But the trouble is that any one who develops a decided gift in that direction is in danger of becoming the victim of his own talent.Eloquent fault-finding becomes a mannerism. The original grievance loses its sharp outlines; it, as it were, passes from the solid to the gaseous state. It becomes vast, pervasive, atmospheric. It is like the London fog, enveloping all objects, and causing the eyes of those who peer through it to smart.

This happened, in the last generation, to Carlyle and Ruskin, and in a certain degree to Matthew Arnold. Each had his group of enthusiastic disciples who responded eagerly to their master's call. They renounced shams or machine-made articles or middle-class Philistinism as the case might be. They went in for sincerity, or Turner, or "sweetness and light," with all the ardor of youthfulneophytes. And it was good for them. But after a while they became, if not exactly weary in well-doing, at least a little weary of the unintermittent tirades against ill-doing. They were in the plight of the good Christian who goes to church every Sunday only to hear the parson rebuke the sins of the people who are not there. The man who dated his moral awakening from "Sartor Resartus" began to find the "Latter Day Pamphlets" wear on his nerves. It is good to be awakened; but one does not care to have the rising bell rung in his ears all day long. One must have a little ease, even in Zion.

Ruskin had a real grievance, and so had Matthew Arnold. It is too bad that so much modern work is poorlydone; and it is too bad that the middle-class Englishman has a number of limitations that are quite obvious to his candid friends,—and that his American cousin is no better.

But when all this has been granted, why should one talk as if everything were going to the dogs? Why not put a cheerful courage on as we work for better things? Even the Philistine has his good points, and perhaps may be led where he cannot be driven. At any rate, he is not likely to be improved by scolding.

I am beginning to feel the same way even about Ibsen. Time was when he had an uncanny power over my imagination. He had the wand of a disenchanter. Here, I said, is one who has the gift of showing us thething as it is. There is not a single one of these characters whom we have not met. Their poor shifts at self-deceit are painfully familiar to us. In the company of this keen-eyed detective we can follow human selfishness and cowardice through all their disguises. The emptiness of conventional respectabilities and pieties and the futility of the spasmodic attempts at heroism are obvious enough.

It was an eclipse of my faith in human nature. The eclipse was never total because the shadow of the book could not quite hide the thought of various men and women whom I had actually known.

After a while I began to recover my spirits. Why should I be so depressed? This is a big world, and there is roomin it for many embodiments of good and evil. There are all sorts of people, and the existence of the bad is no argument against the existence of quite another sort.

Let us take realism in literature for what it is and no more. It is, at best, only a description of an infinitesimal bit of reality. The more minutely accurate it is, the more limited it must be in its field. You must not expect to get a comprehensive view through a high-powered microscope. The author is severely limited, not only by his choice of a subject, but by his temperament and by his opportunities for observation. He is doing us a favor when he focuses our attention upon one special object and makes us see it clearly.

It is when the realistic writer turns philosopher and begins to generalize that we must be on our guard against him. He is likely to use his characters as symbols, and the symbolism becomes oppressive. There are some businesses which ought not to be united. They hinder healthful competition and produce a hateful monopoly. Thus in some states the railroads that carried coal also went into the business of coal-mining. This has been prohibited by law. It is held that the railroad, being a common carrier, must not be put into a position in which it will be tempted to discriminate in favor of its own products. For a similar reason it may be argued that it is dangerous to allow the dramatist or novelist to furnishus with a "philosophy of life." The chances are that, instead of impartially fulfilling the duties of a common carrier, he will foist upon us his own goods, and force us to draw conclusions from the samples of human nature he has in stock. I should not be willing to accept a philosophy of life even from so accomplished a person as Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not because I doubt his cleverness in presenting what he sees, but because I have a suspicion that there are some very important things which he does not see, or which do not interest him.

It is really much more satisfactory for each one to gather his life philosophy from his own experience rather than from what he reads out of a book, or from what he sees on the stage."The harvest of a quiet eye" is, after all, more satisfying than the occasional discoveries of the unquiet eye that seeks only the brilliantly novel.

The inevitable discrepancy between the literary representations of life and life itself has been the cause of the ancient feud between teachers of morals and writers of fiction. Because of this Plato would banish poets from his Republic and the Puritans would exclude novelists and play-actors from their conventicles. But it is curious to observe how the character of the complaints varies with the change in literary fashions. The argument of serious persons against works of fiction used to be that they put too many romantic ideas into the reader's head.

This was the charge made by Mrs. Tabitha Tenney, one of the first of the long line of American novelists. She wrote a novel entitled "Female Quixotism; exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon." The work was addressed "to all Columbian Young Ladies who read Novels and Romances." To these young ladies the solemn advice of Mrs. Tabitha Tenney was, "Don't."

Miss Dorcasina was certainly a distressing example. "At the age of three years this child had the misfortune to lose an excellent mother, whose advice would have pointed out to her the plain, rational path of life, and prevented her imagination from being filled with the airy delusionsand visionary dreams of love and raptures, darts, fire and flames, with which the indiscreet writers of that fascinating kind of books denominated Novels fill the heads of artless young girls to their great injury, and sometimes to their utter ruin." Her father allowed her to indulge her fancy, "never considering their dangerous tendency to a young, inexperienced female mind." The various calamities into which Miss Dorcasina Sheldon fell may be imagined by those who have not the patience to search for them upon the printed pages. Her parting words to those who had the guardianship of female minds had great solemnity. "Withhold from their eyes the pernicious volumes, which while they conveyfalse ideas of life, and inspire illusory expectations, will tend to keep them ignorant of everything worth knowing; and which if they do not eventually render them miserable may at least prevent them from becoming respectable. Suffer not their imaginations to be filled with ideas of happiness, particularly in the connubial state, which can never be realized."

If Mrs. Tabitha Tenney were to come to life in our day I think she would hardly feel like warning the Columbian young ladies against the effect of works of fiction in exaggerating the happiness of life in general or of the connubial state in particular. The young ladies are much more in danger of having their spirits depressed by the painstakingrepresentation of miseries they are never likely to experience. The gloomy views of average human nature which once were conscientiously expounded by "painful preachers" are now taken up by painful play-wrights and story-tellers. Under the spell of powerful imaginations it is quite possible to see this world as nothing but a vale of tears.

Happily there is always a way of escape for those who are quick-witted enough to think of it in time. When fiction offers us only arid actualities, we can flee from it into the romance of real life.

I sympathize with a young philosopher of my acquaintance. He took great joy in a Jack-o-lantern. The ruddy countenance of the pumpkinwas the very picture of geniality. Good-will gleamed from the round eyes, and the mouth was one luminous smile. No wonder that he asked the privilege of taking it to bed with him. He shouted gleefully when it was left on the table.

But when he was alone Mr. Jack-o-lantern assumed a more grimly realistic aspect. There was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and uncanny in the way his rubicund nose gleamed. On entering the room a little while after I found it in darkness.

"What has become of your Jack-o-lantern?"

"He was making faces at me. I looked at him till I 'most got scared, so I just got up and blew him out."

I commended my philosopher for his good sense. It is the way to do with Jack-o-lanterns when they become unmannerly.

And I believe that it is the best way to treat distressing works of the imagination, though I know that their authors, who take themselves solemnly, will resent this advice.

We can't blow out a reality, just because it happens to make us miserable. We must face it. It is a part of the discipline of life. But a book or a play has no such right to domineer over us. Our own imagination has the first rights in its own home. If some other person's imagination intrudes and "makes faces," it is our privilege to blow it out.

The Ignominy of Being Grown-up

As I have already intimated, my greatest intellectual privilege is my acquaintance with a philosopher. He is not one of those unsocial philosophers who put their best thoughts into books to be kept in cold storage for posterity. My Philosopher is eminently social, and is conversational in his method. He belongs to the ancientschool of the Peripatetics, and the more rapidly he is moving the more satisfactory is the flow of his ideas.

He is a great believer in the Socratic method. He feels that a question is its own excuse for being. The proper answer to a question is not a stupid affirmation that would close the conversation, but another question. The questions follow one another with extreme rapidity. He acts upon my mind like an air pump. His questions speedily exhaust my small stock of acquired information. Into the mental vacuum thus produced rush all sorts of irrelevant ideas, which we proceed to share. In this way there comes a sense of intellectual comradeship which one does not have with most philosophers.

For four years my Philosopher has been interrogating Nature, and he has not begun to exhaust the subject. Though he has accumulated a good deal of experience, he is still in his intellectual prime. He has not yet reached the "school age," which in most persons marks the beginning of the senile decay of the poetic imagination.

In my walks and talks with my Philosopher I have often been amazed at my own limitations. Things which are so easy for him are so difficult for me. Particularly is this the case in regard to the more fundamental principles of philosophy. All philosophy, as we know, is the search for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These words represent only the primary colors of the moral spectrum.Each one is broken up into any number of secondary colors. Thus the Good ranges all the way from the good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful ascends from the most trifling prettiness to the height of the spiritually sublime; while the True takes in all manner of verities, great and small. In comparing notes with my Philosopher I am chagrined at my own color-blindness. He recognizes so many superlative excellences to which I am stupidly oblivious.

In one of our walks we stop at the grocer's, I having been asked to fill the office of domestic purveyor. It is a case where the office has sought the man, and not the man the office. Lestwe forget, everything has been written down so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,—baking-powder and coffee and a dozen eggs, and last and least, and under no circumstances to be forgotten, a cake of condensed yeast. These things weigh upon my spirits. The thought of that little yeastcake shuts out any disinterested view of the store. It is nothing to me but a prosaic collection of the necessaries of life. I am uncheered by any sense of romantic adventure.

Not so with my Philosopher. He is in the rosy dawn of expectation. The doors are opened, and he enters into an enchanted country. His eyes grow large as he looks about him. He sees visions of the Good, the True, and theBeautiful in all their bewildering, concrete variety. They are in barrels and boxes and paper bundles. They rise toward the sky in shelves that reach at last the height of the gloriously unattainable. He walks through the vales of Arcady, among pickles and cheeses. He lifts up his eyes wonderingly to snowy Olympus crowned with Pillsbury's Best. He discovers a magic fountain, not spurting up as if it were but for a moment, but issuing forth with the mysterious slowness that befits the liquefactions of the earlier world. "What is that?" he asks, and I can hardly frame the prosaic word "Molasses."

"Molasses!" he cries, gurgling with content; "what a pretty word!" I hadn't thought about it, but it is apretty word, and it has come straight down from the Greek word for honey.

He discovers works of art. Surprising pictures, glowing in color, are on the walls. These are cherubs rioting in health, smiling old men, benignant matrons, radiant maidens, all feasting on nectar and ambrosia. Here and there is a pale ascetic, with a look of agony on his emaciated face.

"What makes that man feel so bad?" asks my Philosopher, anxious to extract a story from the picture. It seems like an inadequate explanation to say that he is only a martyr to his own folly in not getting the right kind of breakfast food.

For one thing, my Philosopher has a great physical advantage over me when it comes to seeing things. Hiseyes are only two feet ten inches from the ground, while mine are some five feet ten. Three feet do not count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in the horizon line, and the realm of mystery begins much nearer. There is no disenchanting bird's-eye view of the counter with all things thereon. There are alluring glimpses of piled-up wealth.

There particularly is the land of the heart's desire in a square glass-covered case. There are many beautiful things in the store to be admired from below; but one supremely beautiful and delectable object is the crowning glory of the place.

The artist who spends his life in attempting to minister to dull adult sensibilities never created a masterpiece that gave such pure delight as the candy dog which my Philosopher spies.

"See the dog!" It is, indeed, a miracle of impressionist art. It is not like the dogs that bite. It offers itself alluringly to the biter,—or rather to one who would leisurely absorb it. Even now there is a vagueness of outline that suggests the still vaguer outlines it will have when it comes into the possession of a person of taste.

This treasure can be procured for one copper cent. My Philosopher feels that it is a wise investment, and I thoroughly agree with him. However much the necessaries of life may haveadvanced in price, the prime luxuries are still within the reach of all. We still have much to be thankful for when with one cent we can purchase a perfect bliss.

It is all so interesting and satisfactory that we feel that the visit to the grocer's has been a great success. It is only when we are halfway home that we remember the yeastcake.

Sometimes my Philosopher insists upon my telling him a story. Then I am conscious of my awkwardness. It is as if my imagination were an old work-horse suddenly released from its accustomed tip-cart and handed over to a gay young knight who is setting forth in quest of dragons. It is blind of both eyes, and cannot see a dragonany more, and only shies, now and then, when it comes to a place where it saw one long ago. There is an element of insincerity in these occasional frights which does not escape the clear-eyed critic. It gets scared at the wrong times, and forgets to prance when prancing is absolutely demanded by the situation.

When my Philosopher tells a story, it is all that a story ought to be. There is no labored introduction, no tiresome analysis. It is pure story, "of imagination all compact." Things happen with no long waits between the scenes. Everything is instantly moulded to the heart's desire.

"Once upon a time there was a little boy. And he wanted to be a cock-a-doodle-doo. So he was acock-a-doodle-doo. And he wanted to fly up into the sky. So he did fly up into the sky. And he wanted to get wings and a tail. So he did get some wings and a tail."

Physiologists tell us that the trouble with advancing years is that the material which in youth went directly to building up the vital organs is diverted to the connective tissue, so that after a time there gets to be too much connective tissue and too little to connect. When the imagination is in its first freshness, a story is almost without connective tissue. There seems hardly enough to hold it together. There is nothing to take our minds off the successive happenings. If it is deemed desirable that a little boy should be a cock-a-doodle-doo,then he is a cock-a-doodle-doo. All else is labor and sorrow.

As a listener my Philosopher is no less successful than as an improviser. He is not one of those fickle hearers whose demands for some new thing are the ruination of literary art. When he finds something beautiful it is a joy to him forever, and its loveliness increases with each repetition. In a classic tale he is quick to resent the slightest change in phraseology. There is a just severity in his rebuke when, in order to give a touch of novelty, I mix up the actions appropriate to the big bear, the little bear, and the middle-sized bear. This clumsy attempt at originality by means of a willful perversion of the truth offends him. If a person can'tbe original without making a mess of it, why try to be original at all?

With what keen expectancy he awaits each inevitable word, and how pleased he is to find that everything comes out as he expected! He reserves his full emotion for the true dramatic climax. If a great tragedian could be assured of having such an appreciative audience, how pleasant would be the pathway of art! The tragedy of Cock Robin reaches its hundredth night with no apparent falling off in interest. It is followed as only the finest critic will listen to the greatest actor of an immortal drama. He is perfectly familiar with the text, and knows where the thrills come in. When the fatal arrow pierces Cock Robin's breast, it never fails tobring an appreciative exclamation, "He's killed Cock Robin!"

Of the niceties of science my Philosopher takes little account, yet he loves to frequent the Museum of Natural History, and is on terms of intimacy with many of the stuffed animals. He walks as a small Adam in this Paradise, giving to each creature its name. His taste is catholic, and while he delights in the humming birds, he does not therefore scorn the less brilliant hippopotamus. He has no repugnance to an ugliness that is only skin deep. He reserves his disapprobation for an ugliness that seems to be a visible sign of inner ungraciousness. The small monkeys he finds amusing; but he grows grave as he passes on to the larger apes, andbegins to detect in them a caricature of their betters. When we reach the orang-outang he says, "Now let's go home." Once outside the building, he remarks, "I don't like mans when they're not made nice." I agree with him; for I myself am something of a misanthropoidist.

There is nothing unusual about my Philosopher. He is not a prodigy or a genius. He is what a normal human being is at the age of four, when he is still in possession of all his faculties. Having eyes he sees with them, and having ears he hears with them. Having a little mind of his own, he uses it on whatever comes to hand, trying its edge on everything, just as he would try a jackknife if I would let him. Hewants to cut into things and see what they are made of. He wants to try experiments. He doesn't care how they come out; he knows they will come out some way or other. Having an imagination, he imagines things, and his imagination being healthy, the things he imagines are very pleasant. In this way he comes to have a very good time with his own mind. Moreover, he is a very little person in a very big world, and he is wise enough to know it. So instead of confining himself to the things he understands, which would not be enough to nourish his life, he manages to get a good deal of pleasure out of the things he does not understand, and so he has "an endless fountain of immortal drink."

What becomes of theseimaginative, inquisitive, myth-making, light-hearted, tender-hearted, and altogether charming young adventurers who start out so gayly to explore the wonder-world?

The solemn answer comes, "They after a while are grown-up." Did you ever meditate on that catastrophe which we speak of as being "grown-up"? Habit has dulled our perception of the absurd anti-climax involved in it. You have only to compare the two estates to see that something has been lost.

You linger for a moment when the primary school has been dismissed. For a little while the stream of youthful humanity flows sluggishly as between the banks of a canal, but once beyond the school limits it returnsto nature. It is a bright, foaming torrent. Not a moment is wasted. The little girls are at once exchanging confidences, and the little boys are in Valhalla, where the heroes make friends with one another by indulging in everlasting assault and battery, and continually arise "refreshed with blows." There is no question about their being all alive and actively interested in one another. All the natural reactions are exhibited in the most interesting manner.

Then you get into a street car, invented by an ingenious misanthropist to give you the most unfavorable view possible of your kind. On entering you choose a side, unless you are condemned to be suspended in the middle. Then you look at your antagonists onthe opposite side. What a long, unrelenting row of humanity! These are the grown-ups. You look for some play of emotion, some evidence of curiosity, pleasure, exhilaration, such as you might naturally expect from those who are taking a little journey in the world.

Not a sign of any such emotion do you discern. They are not adventuring into a wonder-world. They are only getting over the ground. One feels like putting up a notice: "Lost, somewhere on the road between infancy and middle age, several valuable faculties. The finder will find something to his advantage."

I have no quarrel with Old Age. It should be looked upon as a reward of merit to be cheerfully striven for.

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