Thatis, I used to hope that they were returning. My neighbor's small son, Tony, aged six, needed them. He needed them to learn to read with. This was before I had any first-hand evidence about modern school methods. I saw school only through Tony.
Tony was able to read, “over to school,” such excerpts as the following: “The gingerbreadboy went clickety-clack down the road.” “Sail far, sail far, o'er the fabulous main!” “Consider, goat, consider!” “You have made a mistake, Mr. Alligator.” Just why, I reflected, should “Mr. Alligator”and “fabulous” be introduced to a pleasant child like Tony, who had not as yet been allowed to meet “cat,” “dog,” “hen,” “red,” “boy,” “bad,” and a great many other creatures really necessary to a little boy's existence?
His mother knew that Tony was not learning to read very fast. She argued with me a little on principle. She said that James Whitcomb Riley wrote “fabulous.” I reminded her in a neighborly way that Mr. Milton wrote the “Areopagitica,” thought by some to be a good sort, but that, until Tony knew his letters, the “Areopagitica” would be almost wasted on him. I would have stepped in at this point myself and ponied him a bit, for pure love, had it not been for the fact that I hated to have him get a sensible A, B, or Cmixed up with such corrupting associates as a considering goat or a mistaken alligator. And he would certainly have mixed them up. He would never have been able in this world to decide in his little mind what relation “consider” had to A,B,C. And he would have been quite excusable.
I began to think that his mother was too optimistic. She was trying to console herself by the fact that, if she should die, Tony could at least order gingerbread off a menu card. But could he? The sad fact that my neighbor overlooked was that he didn't know “gingerbread” when he saw it, but just “gingerbreadboy”! Perhaps even at that, Tony might not have starved, for even gingerbreadboysare edible, if Tony really could have recognizedthat. But he couldn't. Not outside the confines of his “reading-book”—Heaven save the mark! A modern word-fiend tried to explain to me here, that, after having learned “gingerbreadboy,” a child comes naturally by three words (and even four if they allowed “gin” in the school curriculum)—namely, “ginger,” “bread,” and “boy.” But Tony didn't. I tried him. He looked upon “ginger” as an entire stranger, interesting in form, perhaps, but still foreign. Something, I was convinced, was wrong. And I attributed this state to the fact that Tony didn't know A, B, and C.
Just as I reached the high noon of this conviction, I was drawn by the most curious of circumstances into the business of teaching little children toread. I held the novel position of being besought to bring all my heresies and all my notions, and join the influenza-thinned ranks of the teaching profession. The Board of Education said that it was desperate. It must have been.
I suppose that no other power on earth could have converted me so quickly to the decried method, as my being forced, out of loyalty to my employers, to support it. I was plunged on the first day—not into “clickety-clack,” but “slippety-slip.” It was my first object lesson to hear the laughter of many little children, as the small gray cat swallowed slippety-slip in rapid succession the white goose, the cinnamon bear, the great, big pig, and others which have “slippety-slipped” my mindjust now. It was easy to teach them which fantastic word said “slippety-slip.” It was very hard to teach them which plain-faced word said “and.” I was happy to find many fine old words ranging themselves in the same category as “slippety-slip.” “Goose” is intrinsically easier to learn than “duck”; “red” is a bagatelle beside “blue.” But the easiest word of all is “slippety-slip.”
I took notes of phenomena like these, for use later in dealing with critics who theorized as I had theorized on the day previous. I was not quite ready with any solution on this first day when a visiting mother assured me that she, when a girl, was wont to read much better when her book was open before her. Her son, on the contrary, read better,she told me, and with more interpretation and fine feeling, without his book. “People think,” said my visitor, “that when a child has his book open and says aloud the words printed on that page, that he is reading. He may be,” she added mildly, “and then again, of course, he mayn't.”
I determined that, when this logical lady should come again, her son should be reading. So I taught him to read. I taught him via the method I had disparaged; via “Mrs. Teapot,” “Goosey-Poosey-Loosey,” and the goat that would not go home, without once mentioning the names of A, B, or C. This boy is in the third grade now, skimming the “Literary Digest” for material for his oral language.
The second step in my conversionoccurred when one of the overworked teachers showed me hastily how to teach Phonics. She drew a flight of stairs on the blackboard, and on each step she placed a letter of the alphabet. I did not find “A” among them, but I discerned both B and C. To my surprise, the little children knew these, but they called them (as nearly as the printed page can convey the sound)buhandkuh. They called “R”err, and “H” they calledhuh.
When I reached home, I looked up a few letters in the Dictionary, and received new light. Of what use is it, after all, to know that “W” is called “Double-you,” unless you know first the sound for which it stands? The Dictionary, in fact, explains that the proper sound of this letter is really a“half u” instead of a “double u.” Certainly “W” is a more helpful tool to a child when he has been taught to pucker up his lips like the howling wind when he sees this letter coming, than when he has been taught to get set for a “d” sound which is not there. Why confuse a child's mind at first with what a letter is arbitrarily called by some one else? Surely it is more sensible to show him what noise to make when he sees it.
But I found that some of the children did not connect the delightful game of the blackboard stairs with their reading at all. Tony was among this number. Right here I was electrified to find out the real trouble with Tony. I found that it had not occurred to him that the letter “g,” atthe beginning of the word “good,” for instance, could have any part in distinguishing this word from the Little Red Hen. I found also that many of the children were recognizing “good-day to you” wholly by the quaint little dash in the middle of “good-day.” They shouted heartily “good-day to you” whenever I showed them any word containing a hyphen.
To remedy this difficulty, I abstracted Phonics bodily from my afternoon session, and inserted it directly before the reading period in the morning. In fact, I allowed a few Phonics to spill over into Reading, and commenced to read a little before the children were quite finished with the staircase. I can say that the greatest triumphal moment of my life was when anentire class saw, independently and suddenly and of themselves, that “ice-cream” could not possibly be “good-day to you.” And the fact that the children now knew these apart by a phonetic tool did not prevent them from saying “good-day to you” just as cordially and just as fast as before. Moreover, they had not compelled the school system to wait for them to spell out the words letter by letter.
This is the only stage in a modern phrase-and-sentence method which contains a pitfall. If this is solidly bridged, most children will learn to read more understandingly than we used to. They will read twice as well, and three times as fast.
At the end of the school year, after Tony had read nineteen books, I didthrow in the alphabet itself as a classic. We even sang it to the good old-fashioned tune.
Tony will use A, B, and C, in the Second Grade to spell with, and in the Fourth Grade to look up words in the Dictionary with; but he did not need them, after all, in the First Grade, to learn to read with.
Thehealthy in all centuries have misunderstood the sick. In the days when sickness was supposed to be the result of possession by devils, the healthy gathered around the invalid, beating upon drums. When all disease was supposed to be the chastening of the Lord, they gathered at the bedside again, teaching repentance of sins. And in our own generation, they come again around the sufferer telling him to take his mind off himself.
I myself, being healthy, have never been the victim of that form of ministration. I have simply observed the effectof it on others. And since there is no hope of converting the healthy from this habit, the next best thing is to explain the obscure workings of the healthy mind.
Of course, no two healthy people are quite alike, and general statements about any great composite type are dangerous. But no matter how divergent their styles, all up-to-date, unspoiled, healthy persons can be trusted to make certain stock remarks to or about the sick. The context may vary, but sooner or later the following phrases will crop up: “pulling yourself together”; “bracing up”; “standing a little real hardship”; “forgetting all about your aches and pains”; “people who never havetimeto be sick”; “people who are worse off than you are”; and, “taking your mind off yourself.”
At any one of these cheery phrases, the spirited sick man feels his gorge begin to rise. He knows that if his gorge rises, so will his temperature. With a mighty effort he swallows his temper, and his temperature goes up anyway at the exertion. All this time he knows that his visitor meant well, and he despises himself for his irritation. He has no way of defending himself, for, if he should describe how ill he really is, would not that convict him of having his mind on himself, of craving sympathy, of “enjoying poor health”? Over and over the words of his visitor go ringing in his ears—words intended tactfully to stimulate recuperation. “It's fine to see you looking so well. All you need to do now is to get something to take up your mind. I know how hard it will be, for I havebeen there myself, but circumstances were such thatIjusthadto brace up. It would be the best thing in the world for you if you only had to rough it a little.”
Any one of these remarks is guaranteed to leave the person who is really suffering in a very storm-beaten state of mind, unless by the luckiest chance he understands two basic facts about the healthy: first, our healthy imagination; second, our healthy ignorance.
The healthy imagination, in the first place, cannot bear to move in circles. Any novelist knows that a story must progress. If the action is dramatic, the final downfall or the final victory must follow swiftly upon the heels of conflict. The attention wanders if the story goes monotonously along in the style of “Anothergrasshopper came and brought another grain of corn. And then another grasshopper came and brought another grain of corn.”
On the same principle, the general public gives intelligent understanding to the great dangerous diseases where there is a grand struggle of life and death, where the sufferer grows rapidly worse, reaches the crisis, hangs for a moment between time and eternity, and then either dies or gets well. Here is the stuff of contest, the essence of Greek drama: pity and fear, unity of action, and dignity of conflict. The imagination rises to it as to whirlwinds and the noise of waterspouts. But when it comes to the good friend who neither dies nor gets well, who begins to recover and succumbs again, travelling the monotonousround of one ill after another, none of them fatal,—then the healthy imagination stops following the circles.
It is time by every calculation that our friend recovered. We hope that he will soon be well and strong. He hopes so, too, we admit broad-mindedly. But most of us fall into generalities at this point. We are not impatientwithour friend; we are impatient for him. A delayed convalescence, we have heard, is usually the result of mismanagement somewhere; the wrong doctor, perhaps, a family inclined to spoil by kindness, or mind over matter imperfectly understood. Suppose our sick friend could get away from his anxious relatives, and be suddenly cast upon a desert island; would he not have to brace up and rattle down his own cocoanuts with a will?We have known such cases—paralytics who got thrown overboard and nimbly swam ashore, rescuing women and children on their way. Our friend is not an extreme case like that, but, if he actually had to get to work, would he not forget all about his troubles, and suddenly find himself cured?
Once having put him into the class of needless suffering, we roll along merrily to the moment when we decide that it is time for us to speak. Let us speak tactfully, by all means. Let us auto-suggest as it were! Let those of us who are amateurs do what we can in a quiet way.
At this point, the healthy do three things. We diagnose, we prescribe, and we tell you to take your mind off yourself.
This is where the healthy ignorance comes in. When we are well, we think of the mind as a convenient tool; in Huxley's words, “a cool, clear, logic engine.” We know that minor ailments of our own have vanished when we have vigorously taken our mind off our symptoms and gone to the movies. We are at our best, we know, when we have given our whole attention to something absorbing, quite outside ourselves; business, friendship, good works. We feel that our acquaintance will be the better for this valuable thought. We do not know that every other healthy person in town has also decided that it is time to pass on the same idea. Neither do we realize that the ability to do as we suggest is the sick person's idea of heaven.
Thinking thus masterfully of the mind, we speak glibly of doing things with it. We do not know how slippery and complex a thing the mind is when assailed by suffering. “Take off your mind.” Take off your hat. We do not know what long hours every invalid spends driving his mind along on every pleasant topic under the sun, only to feel it skidding, skidding, from side to side, just as you feel yourself steering for the nearest tree when you begin to drive a car. And after all this effort, what has he been doing but putting his mind on his mind? Less exhausting to put it on the pain and be done with it. When we urge our friend not to steer for the tree, we feel that we are presenting him with a new idea.
Healthy ignorance, in the secondplace, assumes that the mind of a sick person is more than normally susceptible to suggestion. We have heard that, if you say to a patient, “How thin you are,” he will instantly feel thinner and thinner, will droop and wilt and brood morbidly upon his state. Very well, then. We go to visit our friend resolved to make no such unfortunate remark. We conceal our shock at the changed appearance of our friend, but we cannot help thinking about it. Every healthy person is a trifle taken aback when he sees anybody else laid low. The neat white corners of the counterpane lend an awe-inspiring geometrical effect; if the patient is a man, he looks subtly changed without his high collar; if the patient is a lady, she is transformed with her hair in braids. We know thatwe must not cry, “How changed you are, Grandmother,” lest we send the patient into a relapse. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways. If a comment on frail appearance would thus depress our friend, surely the contrary assurance ought to chirk him up in proportion. We therefore say blithely, “Well, you certainly do look fine!” Then later we perhaps repeat it, to make sure that auto-suggestion has a chance to set in.
Now, personally, if somebody told me that I looked well, I feel that I could manage to bear up. But in the sick-room, the remark seldom makes a hit. Nine chances out of ten the patient does not understand the healthy. He feels that we suspect him of rusticating in bed under false pretences. He does notwant to be ill, nor to look ill; but since heisill, he would be sorry to have us think that he might as well be up and about. He does not know that we adopt the cheery note to avoid the fatal opposite, and to encourage him. He does not know how helpless we are, nor how sure of the susceptibility of the stricken mind.
All these traits of the healthy imagination and the healthy ignorance are magnified tenfold if the invalid's disorder is nervous. To the untutored layman, a nervous disorder means an imaginary disorder. What nervous wreck has not prayed to exchange his baffling torments for something showy and spectacular, like broken bones or Spotted Fever? The healthiest imagination can grasp a broken leg. Thehealthiest ignorance can see that it should lie for a while in splints, and that we cannot help our friend by urging him, however tactfully, to forget all about his fracture and join us on a hike. But disordered nerves are different. Everybody admits that. We feel instantly competent to prescribe. We have read up on psychotherapy, in the magazines.
Having diagnosed the case, having prescribed remedies, we feel a trace of impatience if our friend seems not quite cured.
In addition to our eager way of giving advice, we who are healthy have also a way of confusing cause and effect. When our patient finally does succeed in building up his vitality to the point where he can resume his work, whenwe see him going busily about the world again taking his share of hard knocks without flinching, then we say, “There! Didn't we say he'd be better the minute he had something to do?” We know nothing about the times when he hoped that he had recovered, attempted to take up work again, and succumbed. We see only the triumphant emerging of his renewed vitality. To us the cause is obvious, just what we had been prescribing all along. When he was idle, he was ill. Now that he is busy, he is well. Could anything be more logical? Therefore, when we find him working hard at his old profession, we smile indulgently upon him and we say, “That's right! It will do you good!Nowyou have something to take your mind off your—”
But I will not repeat it. Never in all my life shall I say that beautiful and grammatical phrase again. There is probably a good deal in it—how much, I, for one, have not the least idea. Probably there are invalids in the world who would be completely cured if they could be worried into hard work at all costs, “roughing it” with a vengeance. We stray perilously near the fields contested by experts when we come to that. The point is that the subject will always be a field for experts, and that never in the long history of suffering was very much accomplished by the well-meant exhortations of friends. As far back as Old Testament days, friends came to see a patient man, and reasoned at length with him. And he cried unto the Lord.
Nearly every invalid loves his friends. He cannot bear to have them misunderstand him. And yet, if he only understandsthem—if he understands the healthy as a class, with our healthy imaginations, our healthy ignorance, our superstitions, and all our simple ways, the most desolate Job in a friend-strewn world can afford to brandish his potsherd and take cheer. He will know the explanation of our kindly words, and their proper discount at the bank. And perhaps he may be able finally, with a prodigious effort of his will, to take them off his mind.
Carvingat table is one of the most virile things that a man can do, and yet it usually has to be done according to feminine standards. It is a primitive art overlaid with a complex technique, a pioneer act in a dainty environment. For so masterful a deed with an edged tool, a man should be allowed the space and freedom of the Maine woods. Environed by the modern tablecloth, he must be not only masterful but cautious; not so much fearless as adroit.
The process tests not only the man himself, but also his relations with his wife. When a married couple feelequally responsible for an act at which only one of them can officiate, they are tempted to exchange remarks. The most tactful wife yields now and then to the impulse to do a little coaching from the side-lines, and many husbands have been known to reply with a few well-chosen words about the knife. They sometimes carry on quite a little responsive service. This happens occasionally even when the husband is an artist at his work. The ideals of two artists will occasionally conflict. And even the model wife, who ignores the carving and engages the guests in conversation until the worst is over, will at times find herself clutching the tablecloth or holding her breath at the critical points—when the drum-stick is being detached from the secondjoint, for instance, or when the knife hovers over the guest's portion of the steak. These two crises are the great moments for the man who carves.
In fact, you have not taken the complete measure of a man until you have seen him carve both steak and fowl. These two make totally different demands upon the worker. The chicken calls for a sense of structure, a versatile skill in manœuvring for position, and the delicate wrist of the violinist. But your true porterhouse calls for shrewd judgment and clear-cut decisions, with no halfway measures or reconsiderations at all. With the chicken, you can modify, slice, combine, arrange to best advantage on the plate. With the steak, you work in the flat and in one color; every stroke must count. There aremen who would rather parcel out the Balkans than map a steak.
Great artists in carving are of several classes: those who stand up to their work and those who remain seated; those who talk and those who do not. I recall one noble old aristocrat, with the eye of a connoisseur and the suavity of an Italian grandee, who stood above the great turkey that he had to carve and discoursed with us as follows, pronouncing every word with the dramatic vigor that I try to indicate by the spelling, and illustrating each remark with one deft motion of his knife; this was his monologue: “Now, we cut off his Legg.... Now, we take his Winng!... And now,—weSlicehim.”
To my mind, this conversation is about the only sort in which the successfulcarver can afford to indulge. The nervous amateur thinks it necessary to keep up a run of wise comment on the topics of the day to show that he is at ease; or perhaps he does it as the magician talks when he puts the rabbits into his hat, to distract the spectators' attention from his minor tactics. But he might as well learn that he cannot distract us. The matter is too close to our hearts. It is natural to watch the carving intently, not necessarily with an eye to our own interests, but because for the moment the platter is the dramatic centre of the group. Action, especially in an affair demanding skill, irresistibly holds the eye. The well-bred guest chats along of one thing and another, but his eye strays absently toward the roast.
This is very hard upon the newly married husband. Spectators add immensely to his difficulties. Some years ago, one such bridegroom, now an experienced host and patriarch, was about to carve a chicken for his bride and her one guest. I was the guest, and at that time I held theories about the married state. While we were setting the table, I had mentioned a few of these, among them my belief that all little boys should be taught the rudiments of carving, so that when married they would know how to preside correctly at their own tables. My friend the bride agreed with me, and supported my views by anecdotes from real life. The anecdotes were about boys who had not been so trained. Meanwhile the bridegroom listened intently from his post on thekitchen table. Young women are likely to forget that young men have feelings, especially if they have been trained by brothers who displayed none. We therefore went on at great length. Carving, we said, was not an instinct, but a craft.
As we sat at soup, the young husband became more and more uneasy, and when the chicken made its appearance he leaned back with beads of perspiration on his brow. “After all this,” said he, “I hope nobody expects me to carve that chicken. I'll just pass it around, and you girls chip off what you like.”
The central difficulty in carving, however, is found not so much in the actual chipping as in the tactful distribution of choice parts. This matteris complicated by the fact that unselfish people will lie about their preferences, polite people will refuse to disclose them, and critical people expect you to remember them. Even the expert carver, therefore, looks with favor on those convenient meats that come naturally in individual units—croquettes, cutlets, chops, sausages; here the only difficulty is the choice between brown and not so brown, large and small. There is only the mathematical matter of making the food go around, and the man with the vaguest sense of proportion can count chops and divide by the number of guests.
But when the company is large, and the platter of steak just adequate, there really is cause for anxiety. Some carvers, under such circumstances, begin cautiously,serving small helpings at first until they are sure they are safe, and then becoming gradually more lavish. Others begin recklessly, and have to retrench. A group of college students once made a study of this matter with data and statistics that would have adorned a doctor's degree. The object was to locate the seat at any table of fourteen where one could count on the most even diet, the golden mean between feast and famine, no matter which member of the faculty chanced to carve. There were many variables to be considered: some members of the faculty habitually carved with giant portions at first, and then dwindled suddenly; others varied from day to day, profiting at one meal by what they learned at the last. A few were expertdividers by fourteen. The conclusion was reached after weeks of minute toil. Like all great investigators, these students were prepared to warrant their findings for all time. The best seat at a table of fourteen—the one where you can count on the least fluctuation and the largest security—in short, Whitman's Divine Average—is the fifth seat from the professor, left. Things in that position run, barring accidents, quite well. If caution was the slogan at the outset, the plentiful supply on the platter has by that time begun to tell upon the mind of the carver, and things are looking up. If the first helpings were extravagant, there has still not been quite time to feel the real pinch of want. Fifth seat from the professor, left.
Of course, fourteen is too large a number to divide by. When it comes to long division, brain-fag is bound to set in. Since those days, I am told, food in that college is sent in ready apportioned in advance.
We should miss something in our homes, however, if the art of carving should decline. There is a certain symbolic grace in the fatherly act of hewing away at a large roast, even if a man does not do it so very well. It is true that a great many pleasant gentlemen do not feel quite at home when dealing with a meat; they do not feel quite at their best. They carve tentatively, parcelling it out at random. Until they come to their own serving, they are vague. At that point, however, the most helpless amateur takes on cheer.Watch him as he settles himself more comfortably, draws up the platter at a better angle, and selects the fragments of his choice. It is here that he does his best carving, not consciously, not at all selfishly, but because he now feels sure. He has something to go by. He knows what he wants.
After all, the task of carving at table is not an infallible test of man. Some of the most uncertain carvers in the world are great and good men, standing high in their professions and revered by a family who must nevertheless shiver for the fate of the table-linen when the sirloin steak comes on. But the fact remains that the man who can carve equitably, neatly, and with discrimination has nearly always a balanced brain and a reliable self-command.In an army test he would stand high. He is your genuine “officer material.” And he is very scarce.
Thefeeling of irritation in its earliest form once overtook a little girl whose mother had enforced a wholesome bit of discipline. In a great state of wrath the little girl went to her room, got out a large sheet of paper, and ruled it heavily down the middle. Then she headed one column “People I Like,” and crowded that half of the sheet with the names of all her acquaintances. The other half of the page she headed “People I Don't Like,” and in that column listed one word only—“Mama.” This done, she locked the grim document in her safe-deposit box, and hid the key.
That glowering deed was the very ritual of irritation. The feeling of irritation is not merely one of heat; it is a tall wave of violent dislike that goes mounting up our blood. When we have it, it feels permanent. Our friend is not what we thought he was—our family is not what it should be—our job is a failure—we have placed our affections in the wrong quarter. When young politicians have this feeling, they bolt the ticket; when young employees have it, they resign. The first time when young married people have it, they think that love is dead. If they have too much wealth and leisure, they fly apart and eventually get a decree. But in households where the budget does not cover alimony, they commonly stay together and see forthemselves how the wave of wrath goes down. The material inconveniences of resignations, abscondings, law-suits, and the like have been a great safeguard in many a career. Nothing in Barrie's plays is more subtle than the perfect moment when the young couple decide to postpone separation until the laundry comes home.
It is not necessary to be a “temperamental” person or a fire-eater of any sort in order to know how it feels to be irritated—and irritating. The gentlest folk are capable of both sensations. Any one who has seen a lovely lady deliberately stir up strife in the bosom of a genial story-teller, by correcting his facts for him and exposing his fictions, will remember the tones of restrained choler with which the merry tale progressed.Who has not remarked to a kind relative, “Well, if you know so much about it, why don't you tell it yourself?”
There is no ratio or proportion at all between the cause of irritation and the ensuing state of mind. In our moments of ferment we lose the faculty of discrimination. We hardly ever refer our exasperation to the trivial detail that brought it on. We feel that the detail is simply an indication of the great flaws in the whole situation. We have a crow to pluck, not only with our friend, but—to use the words of Quiller-Couch—with everything that appertains to that potentate.
For example, suppose that we are at loggerheads with a fellow-member of a public-welfare committee. He opposesa measure that we endorse. He will not see reason. We therefore refer him to his class: he is a typical politician, a single-track mind, a combination of Mugwump and Boss Tweed. We ourselves, meanwhile, are a blend of Martin Luther, John Huss, and the prophet Isaiah, with tongs from the altar.
Or perhaps we are irritated with a colleague on a teaching-staff after the events of a varied day. Irrelevant matters have happened all the morning in amazing succession: an itinerant janitor filling inkwells; an inkwell turning turtle—blotters rushed to flood-sufferers; an electrician with tall step-ladder and scaling-irons to repair the electric clock; a fire-drill in examination period; one too many revolutions of the pencil-sharpener; one too many patriotic“drives” involving the care of public moneys kept in a candy-box. And now our zealous academic friend calls an unexpected committee meeting to tabulate the results of intelligence-tests.
We are in no mood for intelligence-tests. We object. He persists. We take umbrage. He still calls the meeting. Then, up rears the wave of dislike and irritation, not at the details that have brought us to our crusty state—not dislike of ink and electricity and patriotism and intelligence—but dislike of our friend and of the Art of Teaching that he represents. The trouble with our friend, we decide, is his academic environment. He is over-educated—attenuated; a Brahmin. Nobody in touch with Real Life could be so thoroughly a mule and an opinionist.Better get out of this ultra-civilized atmosphere before our own beautiful catholicity of thought is cramped, crippled, like his. At these moments we do not stop to remember that people are opinionated also on the island of Yap.
Most frequently of all, we apply our dudgeon to the kind of community in which we live. We are nettled at a bit of criticism that has reached our ears. Instantly we say cutting things about the narrow ways of a small community, with page-references to “Main Street” and the Five Towns. We forget that our friends in great cities might be quite as chatty. Margot Asquith lives and thrives in crowds.
We refer our irritation, also, to types. Any skirmish in a women's organizationis referred to women and their catty ways. Any Church or Red Cross breeze is an example of the captious temper of the godly. All friction between soldiers of different nations is a sign of Race Antagonism; the French are not what we had inferred from Lafayette.
In short, the whole history and literature of dissension shows that people have always tried to make their irritations prove something about certain types, or situations, or nations, or communities. Whereas the one thing that has been eternally proved is the fact that human beings are irritable.
If we accept that fact as a normal thing, we find ourselves ready for one more great truth. Violent irritation produced on small means is a deeply human thing, a delicately unbalancedthing, something to reckon with, and something from which we eventually recover on certain ancient and well-recognized lines. When our feeling is at its height, we are ready to throw away anything, smash anything, burn all bridges. Nothing is too valuable to cast into the tall flame of our everlasting bonfire. This sounds exaggerated. Emotion remembered in tranquillity is a pallid thing, indeed. But it is hot enough at the time. The whole range of sensation and emotion may be travelled in an hour, at a pace incredible—a sort of round-trip survey of the soul.
The father of a large family sat in church at one end of a long pew. His wife sat at the other end of the pew, with a row of sons, daughters, andguests ranged in the space between. Near the close of the sermon one morning, the father glanced down the line, gazed for a horrified moment at his eldest daughter, Kate, got out his pencil, wrote a few words on a scrap of paper, put the paper into his hat, and passed the hat down the line. As the hat went from hand to hand, each member of the family peered in, read the message, glanced at Kate, and began to shake as inconspicuously as is ever possible in an open pew. Kate, absorbed in the sermon, was startled by a nudge from her brother, who offered her the hat, with note enclosed. She looked in and read, “Tell Kate that her mouth is partly open.”
Kate remembered that it must have been. The whole pew was quiveringwith seven concentrated efforts at self-control.
Now, one would think that a moment like this would be jolly even for the cause of laughter in others. But it was not. Kate knew that they had been laughing before the note reached her, and she was hurt. If they loved her as she loved them, they would not want to laugh. She set her jaw like iron, and looked straight ahead. This started them all off again. With the instinct of a well-trained elder sister, she knew that if she wanted any peace she ought to turn and smile and nod cordially all down the row, as at a reception. But it was too late for that. She had taken the proud line, and she would follow it.
As her expression grew more austere, the boys grew more convulsed. Aloofnow, cut off from her kin entirely, she sat seething. Floods of scarlet anger drowned the sermon's end. The closing hymn was given out, but she declined the offered half of her brother's hymnal. “Tell Kate she can open it now,” telegraphed one of the boys as the congregation began to sing. Here was Kate's chance to unbend and join the group and nod and smile again, but she was too far gone. She received the message with lifted eyebrows, and stood with cold pure profile averted until after the benediction. Then she turned away from her reeling family, and walked off in a white heat. Her anger was not at her father whose note caused the stir. She had no resentment toward him at all. If one's mouth is open, one would wish to be advised of the fact. Her feelingwas the mighty wrath of the person who has been laughed at before being told the joke. Unwilling to face her family, she went up to take dinner at her grandmother's house, that refuge for all broken hearts.
After dinner, Kate looked out of the window and saw her family coming up the drive. They filed into the house and gathered in a group. “I think,” said one of the boys, “that in the cause of friendship we owe Kate an apology.”
The grand manner of formal apology from one's relatives is the most disarming thing in the world. Friendly conversation flowed back into the normal at once. But it was years before it was quite safe for Kate to rest her chin on her hand in church.
Very often our most genuine irritations appear unreasonable to our friends. For instance, why should people object to being called by each other's names? Two brilliant young lawyers once developed animosity against each other because their names Stacey and Stanton were constantly interchanged. Children suffer from this sort of thing continually; grown people tend to confuse brothers and to call them by one another's names promiscuously. We may love our brother tenderly, and yet not like to be confounded with him. Even parents sometimes make slips. The smallest boy in a lively family had a mother who used to call the roll of all her children's names, absent-mindedly, before she hit upon the right one. Consequently, the smallestboy learned to respond to the names George, Alice, Christine, and Amos. But the thing had happened to him once too often. One morning he came down to breakfast with a large square of cardboard pinned to his bosom; and on the placard in large letters was printed the word “Henry.” Rather go through life with a tag around his neck than be called Alice any more.
All these capricious facts about irritability rather explode the old adage that it takes two to make a quarrel. If we are really on the rampage, the other person may be a perfect pacifist and still call down our ire. We can make the hot-foot excursion to the heights of madness, for instance, when a friend with whom we are arguing whistlessoftly away to himself while we talk. Even worse is the person who sings a gay little aria after we are through. In the presence of such people, we feel like the college girl who became annoyed with her room-mate, and, reflecting prudently upon the inconveniences of open war, rushed out of the room and down the stairs to relieve her feelings by slamming the front door. She tore open the great door with violent hands, braced it wide, and flung it together with all her might. But there was no crash. It was the kind of door that shuts with an air-valve, and it closed gradually, tranquilly, like velvet; a perfect lady of a door. People who sing and hum and whistle softly to themselves while we rage, are like that door.
Knowing that human beings are occasionallyirritable, that they can recover from their irritation, and that we can also recover from ours, why is it that we ever hold resentment long? Some people, like soap-stones, hold their heat longer than others; but the mildest of us, even after we have quite cooled off, sometimes find ourselves warming up intermittently at the mere memory of the fray. We are like the old lady who said that she could forgive and forget, but she couldn't help thinking about it. We love our friend as much as ever, but one or two of the things he said to us do stay in mind. The dumb animals have an immense advantage over us in this regard. They may be able to communicate, but their language has presumably fewer descriptive adjectives than ours. Wordsspoken in the height of irritation are easily memorized. They have an epigrammatic swing, and a racy Anglo-Saxon flavor all their own. Unless we are ready to discount them entirely, they come into our minds in our pleasantest moods, checking our impulses of affection, and stiffening our cordial ways.
On this account, the very proud and the very young sometimes let a passing rancor estrange a friend. When we are young, and fresh from much novel-reading, we are likely to think of love as a frail and perishable treasure—something like a rare vase, delicate, and perfect as it stands. One crash destroys it forever. But love that involves the years is not a frail and finished crystal. It is a growing thing. It is not even asimple growing thing, like a tree. A really durable friendship is a varied homelike country full of growing things. We cannot destroy it and throw it away. We can even have a crackling bonfire there without burning up the world. Fire is dangerous, but not final.
Of course, it is in our power to let a single conflagration spoil all our love, if we burn the field all over and sow it with salt, and refuse to go there ever again. But after the fires have gone down on the waste tract, the stars wheel over and the quiet moon comes out—and forever afterwards we have to skirt hastily around that territory in our thought. It is still there, the place that once was home.
Perhaps it is trifling and perverse to be harking back to nature and to childhoodfor parables. But sometimes there is reassurance in the simplest things. The real war-god in our own family was Geoffrey, and Barbara was his prophet. Many a doughty battle they waged when they both happened to be in the mood. Whenever Barbara wanted a little peace, she used to take her dolls to the attic, saying to our mother as she went, “K. G.” This meant, “Keep Geoffrey.” But one time Barbara was very ill. Geoffrey was afraid that she was going to die, and showered her with attentions assiduously. He even gathered flowers for her every day. The trained nurse was much impressed. One afternoon, when the crisis was passed, the nurse told Geoffrey that she thought that he was very sweet, indeed, to his little sick sister. Geoffrey wassquatting on the arm of the sofa, watching Barbara with speculative eye. He considered this new light on his character for a moment, and then remarked, “Well, you just wait until she gets her strength.”
We live in cantankerous days. Anybody who has enough energy to do anything particular in the world has more or less difficulty in getting on with people. Unless he chooses to take his dolls to the attic, he is in for occasional criticisms, laughter, interruptions, and the experience of being called by names that are not his own. The world sends flowers to the dying, but not to people when they get their strength. It is the very rare person, indeed, who goes through life with nothing to ruffle him at all.
In moments of irritation at all this, we unconsciously divide the world into two columns: people who agree with us and people who do not; “People I Like,” and “People I Don't Like.” Instinctively we make the lists, and file them away. If we could lay hands on the ghostly files of twenty years and scan them through, we should find that the black-lists were not a catalogue of permanent and bitter hatreds, but a sort of Friendship Calendar. Many of our collisions, after all, were with the people to whom we came most near.
Almost every one wants to be easy to get along with. Some of us find it hard. In those discouraging moments when we have proved obnoxious to our friends, we are inclined to feel that a policy of isolation would be the mostattractive thing in the world. But there are practical drawbacks even to isolation.
A blizzard had once drifted all the streets of our town. Our mother, with the true pioneering spirit, decided that she was going out. Our father was urging her to wait until the streets were cleared.
“Now, Endicott,” said our mother reasonably, “the snow-plough has been down, and there's a path.”
“But,” persisted Father, “the wind has drifted it all in again.” He paused while she put on her hat, and then he added earnestly, “You don't know how windy and drifted it really is. I just saw Mrs. Muldoon coming down the street, and she was going along single file, and making hard work of it too.”
The family was immensely taken with the picture of Mrs. Muldoon's ample figure going downtown in single-file formation; but, in spite of the jeers of his audience, our father still insisted that Mrs. Muldoonwasgoing single file, and that shewasmaking hard work of it at that.
Now and then there is an extreme individualist who yearns to go through life absolutely unmolested, single file. He is impatient of collisions, and collisions certainly do occur through one's proximity to one's kind. But even the most arrant individualist can hardly go single file all by himself—not without making hard work of it, at least. And even if such a thing were possible it would not be a natural or kindly way of life. Our hardy race has alwaysvalued the strength that comes from contacts of every sort and kind. We therefore keep up the hearty old custom of going through life in groups of families and associates and friends—even though, inadvertently, we sometimes do collide.
THE END
The Riverside PressCAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTSU. S. A.