THE LOCK-STEP
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: Thackeray once said: “Every one knows what harm the bad may do, but who knows the mischief done by the good?” It appears to me that there is a valuable suggestion in this query which merits the consideration of all men who live under a civilized government, and especially the attention of young men who are about to enter upon the serious business of life. Young people, being by nature somewhat lacking in logic, are prone to consider everything that is goodper seas a thing which must necessarily be good in its effect, and similarly to class all thing which are bad in themselves as bad in their effects. Nothing could be more erroneous than this assumption. There is no man who will maintain that a beating is a thing which is good in itself; yet I am old-fashioned enough to believe that many a beatinghas been very salutary in its effect. Early in life, I fell into this common error of confusing the inherent quality of an act with the quality of its effect, and it is in the hope that I may save some worthy young man the miseries resulting from such an error that I am writing this letter.
As Mr. James Coolidge Carter points out in his book,Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function, and as Blackstone and others pointed out before him, all law originates in custom. As a custom becomes general—so general as to be termed the common custom among a given people—it is usually enacted as law. And even where such legislative sanction is wanting, a general custom takes on the force of law and operates as law, as is the case with the great body of the common law of England. Thus, a custom, which in the beginning all are free to adopt or to reject as they may see fit, eventually acquires the force of a rule to which all are obliged to conform, whether from strict legal necessity or merely by force of public opinion.
The law, theoretically at least and actually in most cases, is merely the expression of a public sentiment. It is the constant tendency of all uniform and generally prevalent customs and opinions to take on the form of law. The general disapproval of profanity, for instance, results in laws providing penalties for the use of profane language in public places. Practically all ordinances may be traced to the same source of public sentiment. Not all laws, however, represent the will of the majority. Certain of our laws are representative of the general opinion of all mankind, others of the sentiments of a majority of mankind, and still others of the ideas and prejudices of an active minority. To the extent that such habits, ideas, customs, opinions and prejudices become crystallized into law, the members of a community become enslaved to those habits, ideas, customs, opinions and prejudices; since a departure from them is followed by penalties and punishments. And there are some customs which, while not actually laws, exert quite as strong an influence upon the average citizen as the duly enactedstatutes. The fear of social ostracism is often quite as effective a check upon the inclinations of an individual as the fear of legal punishment.
Now, as every man is the slave of general laws and customs, so, in a lesser sense, is he the slave of his own personal habits. And oddly enough this is more often true of good habits than of bad ones. Should the town drunkard make a sudden resolution to reform, the town may laugh, but nobody will condemn his resolution to mend his ways; nobody will be scandalized at his change of habits. But should the leader of the local prohibitionists suddenly resolve to test the joys of inebriety, what a protest would go up on all sides! Even the town drunkard would sneer and despise him as a man who had fallen from his high estate. Much as the inebriate may dislike the sincere teetotaler, he dislikes the ex-teetotaler even more. No, every man is a slave to his good habits and he can not hope to change them without exciting the animosity of all who know him.
I recall reading not long ago a story of an eastern governor who was caught in the act of smoking a cigarette. Now, there was nothing especially horrifying about the fact that he smoked cigarettes except for the fact that he was the vice-president of an anti-cigarette society. Under the circumstances this governor, who is in all probability a capable and fairly honest executive, has endangered, if he has not destroyed, his political future—and all for the matter of a cigarette! While it may seem an injustice to him that he be made to suffer a political eclipse for so slight a lapse, there is hardly a smoker who will not heartily agree with the idly busy people who make up the anti-cigarette league, that the governor deserves all the punishment his outraged associates may choose to inflict upon him. He has been a double renegade; for he has betrayed his fellow smokers by publicly indorsing the aims of the society, and he has betrayed his fellow members of the society by privately indulging in the very habit which the society condemns.
And the general public may very justly condemn him not because he smokes cigarettes—but because he has played the hypocrite. This statesman is evidently one of those foolish men who believe that it pays to appear better than one really is, and that an undeserved reputation for abstinence and virtue is better than none. And of all the possible attitudes that he might have assumed in this connection, the one which he did assume was the worst, for it was the most hypocritical and insincere. And what monumental folly! For the sake of a cigarette he has jeopardized his career—by such a slender thread is the Damoclean sword of public opprobrium suspended!
But I am digressing. I did not intend to write you a dissertation upon the follies of politicians, but to set forth, in some sort, the results of my own stupidity in failing to discover early in life the tyranny of custom and habit.
I am, as you may possibly have conjectured, a member of the legal profession; which profession I have followed with some degree ofsuccess for the last thirty years. I think I may say without boasting that I have attained an enviable reputation among my colleagues of the bar as an able advocate and a man possessed of a logical mind and a rather extensive knowledge of the “delightful fictions of the law.” I have no complaint to make upon the score of my professional career. If it has not led me to eminence, it has at least preserved me from want. My practise, while general and not so profitable as that of some legal specialists of my acquaintance, is yet sufficiently lucrative to enable me to maintain a comfortable establishment at home and to pay without pinching the expenses of my son’s collegiate and my daughter’s “finishing school” education. I have a comfortable home, a healthy and happy family, a prosperous business, a large number of congenial friends and a hale and hearty constitution. Doubtless you will say that I am blessed beyond the majority of mankind. Doubtless I am, and doubtless, too, beyond my deserts. But for all these blessings, which are obviously much to be desired, there is, so tospeak, a fly in the ointment of my contentment. And that is just this—I have too good a reputation! In me, Sir, you may behold a man who has become an abject slave to good Reputation. Totally unknown to the great majority of my millions of fellow countrymen, and having but a modest degree of celebrity among the members of my own profession, I am yet compelled to be as careful of my speech and as circumspect in my actions as if I were the Czar of all the Russias! I am bound hand, foot and tongue by the ties of a lifetime; I am manacled at the cart-tail of Respectability; I am pilloried in the pillory of Dignified Demeanor! If you will bear with me a bit longer, I shall endeavor to explain my present situation.
I was born and reared in the little Missouri town where I now reside. I am personally acquainted with practically every man, woman and child in the place, which, while not exactly a village, is hardly large enough to be called a city outside of the columns of our local newspapers. The present county attorney is a youngman of thirty whom I trotted on my knee and for whom I made kites many years ago. The county judge and I fell out many years ago because he insisted that we had been playing marbles for “keeps”, while I maintained that we had been playing merely for fun. We are now the best of friends, however, and there is no judge in the state who passes heavier sentences on convicted gamblers than he. The pastor of the church which I attend is a lad who in former years was a member of the Sunday-school class I taught and which used to embarrass me with all sorts of questions concerning the wives of Cain and Abel and the origin of the inhabitants of the Land of Nod. And so it is; I know them all and they all know me.
“Jimmy” Vance is our family physician; he is the family physician for at least a third of our population. He has been helping the people of our town to be born and to die for more than thirty years—but he is still “Jimmy”. Jimmy and I were born in the same year. It was once a joke with us to call ourselves “twins” on this account. But Jimmy and I are“twins” no longer. Jimmy is still a smooth-faced boy at fifty-five, while I am a gray-bearded oldster. You may gather something of my life when I tell you that though my Christian names are Jeremiah Samuel (I do not give my surname for reasons you will understand), I have never, since my twenty-first year, been addressed either as “Jerry” or “Sam”. My wife calls me “Jeremiah”, as do my other relatives, while my business associates and friends never grow more familiar than “Jeremiah S.”
When I determined to enter upon the study and practise of the law, my maternal uncle, who was himself a practising attorney, became a sort of supplementary preceptor to me by virtue of his avuncular relationship. He assisted me in my studies and when the time came for me to be admitted to the bar, he gave me a deal of what he no doubt considered sound advice as to my future conduct. “Jeremiah,” said he, “there is no profession on earth which is a more serious business than the law. Men do not go to law for fun. Nobody brings alawsuit for mere amusement. When clients come to you they will come because they have serious business on hand and they want a sober competent man to attend to it for them. It is no joke to them and they don’t want you to joke about it. Now, my advice to you—which you may take or leave as you see fit—is always to keep a straight face. No matter how funny a case may seem to you, don’t laugh. Your dignity will be more than half your capital; see that you don’t forget your dignity.”
Such was the advice of my maternal uncle. And such was the character I assumed upon entering the practise of the law. From the day I drew my first real brief I became the very essence of dignity. I even wooed and won my wife in the character of a dignified young man of serious mind and purpose. She has never in all these years suspected my innate frivolity. Should I yield to my natural impulse and indulge in the nonsense and fun which has ever been so dear to my heart, I am convinced that she would at once lose all respect for me, if, indeed, she did not think me suddenly insane. Iam grave. Under all conditions and circumstances I am as grave as an undertaker. I do smile now and then, but it is generally the indulgent superior smile which I labored so hard to acquire when young and which I can not now shake off. I have been dignified so long that my dignity has become a part of me—not really a part of my inward personality—but a part of my outward appearance; I should feel naked and ashamed without it; it would seem like going about half-dressed. I am so grave that nobody ever tells me a funny story excepting the kind that one tells a minister. They are afraid to be natural when in my presence. As Midas turned everything he touched to gold, so I turn all my friends to bores. No sooner do I come into my house than the whole family stops talking and waits to hear what I have to say. Nobody dares to interrupt me; nobody presumes to contradict me, unless it be old Brownly, who is our oldest inhabitant and so considers himself somewhere near my own age. Every one is grave when with me. That is, every one but Jimmy.Jimmy has always seen through my pose and Jimmy takes a malicious pleasure in pretending he is young when with me.
From the day I entered upon the practise of the law, I modeled my conduct upon that of my maternal uncle who was, as my boy Tom says, “as cheerful as a crutch.” I abandoned the bright colored scarfs which have always delighted my eye, and I donned the sober black bow tie which I wear to this day. Striped and checked clothing gave way to the non-committal pepper-and-salt suit of indefinite hue which has been my unvarying garb from that day to this. And I grew that Vandyke beard, to which, I am convinced, I owed my early reputation for learning and even now owe a good part of the respect which I command. My beard is as fixed an institution as our local literary club. Fashion has at least relieved me of the necessity of wearing a top hat, or “plug” as we call it here; but fashion will never relieve me of my beard, for beards may come and beards may go, but mine grows on forever. Should I shave that beard it would electrifythe community. My wife would regard me with suspicion, my children with pity, my friends with mirth and my clients with horror. I verily believe that old Brown the banker, who is my best client, would be less shocked should I tell him that I had forgotten how to frame a complaint or draw a mortgage, than if he should walk into my office and find me clean-shaven.
And as it is with dress, so it is with other things. Jimmy Vance, although a doctor, never affected that dignity which has come to be my strongest personal characteristic. Jimmy never imitated anybody’s dignity. And as a consequence Jimmy is as free as the wind. If he wants to smoke, he does it. If he wants to drink, he takes a drink. If he wants to go roller-skating, he goes. And nobody ever thinks of objecting to anything he does. Jimmy has never led any one to expect any particular sort of conduct from him. He is full of surprises and nobody likes him the less for it. I can drink at my club—occasionally—or at a banquet, or at home; but I can not gointo a bar like Jimmy and shake dice with a traveling man. I can smoke, but I could not chew tobacco. I can read, but I can not read light novels—that is, not unless I hide away to do it. If I were to go into our public library and ask forThe Siege of the Seven SuitorsI honestly think that old Miss Peters, our librarian, would faint dead away. Now it isn’t that I want todothese things which irks me, so much as the fact that I want to be able to do them if I feel like it. I thank God I have escaped the gravest danger which lies in the acquisition of too good habits—I have never become what so many men of super-excellent reputations do become—a hypocrite. I have been a poser, a pretender, a rebel—ah, I have fairly seethed with rebellion against the tyranny of this fictitious self at times!—but I have never broken my habits on the sly. I have lived up to the straw man I so foolishly put in my place; I have gone around and around in my lock-step of respectability when I felt that I might gladly have died for a single year ofabsolute personal freedom; I have made my bed and like Damiens I have lain chained to it with iron chains for years; and never before now have I cried aloud!
And Jimmy! What a life is Jimmy’s! Jimmy is as prosperous as I; as respected as I; far happier than I; and ah, how much more is Jimmy loved than I!
When the girls go away to boarding-school, Jimmy kisses them good-by; when they come home again, Jimmy kisses them hello. Jimmy never misses an opportunity to kiss them, coming or going. But who cares? Nobody. “It’s only old Jimmy,” the girls say. “It’s only old Jimmy,” echo their sweethearts. “It’s only Jimmy’s way!” giggle their mothers—for Jimmy kisses them, too; Jimmy is no fool. But suppose I should try it? Who would say, “It’s only old Jeremiah?”
Since there is small danger that your magazine will ever be read by any one who will recognize me in this letter, I don’t mind confessing that I did try it once; it is the only sinof the sort that I have on my conscience after twenty-five years of dignity, domestic and foreign. It was last year that it happened. The girl had been visiting one of my daughter’s chums for the Christmas vacation and she was one of the guests at the Christmas party we had at our house. I came into the front hall and found her standing all alone, directly under the mistletoe. I looked at her standing there so sweet and pretty and so unconscious of the mistletoe, and I wondered how it would feel to kiss some one on the lips. I have been kissed on the forehead for years. Even my children kiss me on the forehead. They learned to do that early, when they explained that my beard was “cratchy”. I looked at the girl again. I was tempted and I fell. That is, I tried to fall, but she wouldn’t let me.
“Why not?” I asked her. “You let my boy Tom do it.”
“Oh, buthe’sonly a boy!” she said.
“Well,” I insisted, “you let Jimmy do it!”
“Oh, but he’s anoldman!” she exclaimed.
“Yes!” said I, “and so am I an old man!”
“Oh, but,” she protested, “you’re notthat kindof an old man!”
That’s it! That’s always been it, and that always will be it—I’m notthat kindof an old man!
J. S.