'What do you say to a day or two together at the Nuggets?' asked John Broadbanks one summer's evening. I was just returning from a long round of visitation among the outlying farms, and, driving into Mosgiel in the dusk, met him on his way home to Silverstream. We reined up for a moment to exchange greetings, and he made the suggestion I have just recorded. The prospect was certainly very alluring. We had neither of us been away for some time. There is no wilder or more romantic bit of scenery on the New Zealand coast; and a visit to the stately old lighthouse, perched on its rugged and precipitous cliffs, was always a delightful and bracing experience.
'We will drive down,' he continued, seeing by my hesitation that any resistance on my part would be extremely feeble. 'Sidwell of Balclutha has often urged us to spend a night at his manse. We will break our journey there. We can slip our guns into the spring-cart, and the driving and the shooting will be half the fun of the frolic. And we may have time to explore the coast a bit. I should like to see the reef on which theQueen of the Amazonswas wrecked last week, and, if we are lucky enough to strike a low tide, we may be able to scramble on board. Are you on?'
He found me very pliable, as, on such occasions, he usually did; and we spent a memorable week together. On the Sunday, there being no service at the Nuggets, we walked along the wet sands to Port Molyneux, and joined a little group of settlers who met for worship in the schoolhouse. We rested on the beach during the afternoon, and, in the evening, set out to walk to the lighthouse. It was a glorious moonlight night; we could see the rabbits scurrying across the road half a mile ahead. When we reached the crest of that bold promontory on the extremity of which the lighthouse stands, we found ourselves surveying a new stretch of coast. The cliffs at our feet were almost perpendicular, and, far below us, the wild waves breaking madly over her, lay all that was left of theQueen of the Amazons. We spread out a coat on the edge of the cliff, and sat for some time in silent contemplation of this weird and romantic spectacle.
'Well,' I said at last, 'and how did you enjoy the service this morning?'
The moon was shining full upon his face, and I could see at a glance that he was reluctant to reply.
'I was afraid you would ask me that,' he said at length. 'Well, frankly, I was disappointed. It may have been because I was in a holiday mood, or perhaps our long walk on such a lovely morninghad unfitted me for thinking on the sadder side of things; but, however that may be, I found the service depressing. It checked the gaiety of my spirit and deadened the exhilaration which I took to it. I went in singing; I came out sighing. I felt somehow, that the preaching wasmostly piecrust. Obviously, the fellow was not well, and he allowed his dyspepsia to darken his doctrine. Indigestion was never intended to be an infectious disease; but he made it so by sending us all away suffering from the after-effects of his unwholesome breakfast. I usually jot down a preacher's heads or divisions, but I didn't trouble to make a note of his. It was, firstly,piecrust; and, secondly,piecrust; and, thirdly,piecrust; andpiecrustall the way through!'
John was not usually a caustic critic. He saw the best in most of us and magnified it. His outburst that night on the cliff was therefore the more startling and the more memorable. I have quite forgotten what the preacher said at Port Molyneux in the morning; but, as long as I live, I shall remember what John said as we sat in the silvery moonlight that summer's evening, looking down at the great ship being torn to pieces by the waves on the cruel reef just below.
'Why, bless me,' I heard a man exclaim yesterday in the course of an animated discussion at the street corner, 'if things go on like this, I shan'thave a soul to call my own!' As though any man had! No man living has a soul to call his own, or a stomach to call his own. The preacher at Port Molyneux assumed, as he sat at breakfast, that his digestive organs were his own property, and poor John Broadbanks and I, as well as all the other members of the school-house congregation, were penalized in consequence. Carlyle used to argue, more or less seriously, that the whole course of human history has been repeatedly deflected by blunders of this kind. The world has never known a more decisive battle than the battle of Waterloo; but why did the Duke of Wellington win it? All authorities agree that Napoleon was the greater general. Lord Roberts declares that the schemes of Napoleon were more comprehensive, his genius more dazzling, and his imagination more vivid than Wellington's. Yet on that fateful day that decided the destinies of Europe, Napoleon descended to absolute mediocrity while Wellington rose to surpassing brilliance. The Emperor was never so agitated; the Duke was never so calm. Napoleon, with all the chances in his favor, perpetrated blunder after blunder; the Duke seemed omniscient and infallible. Why? Carlyle used to say that Napoleon threw his brain out of action by eating a hearty breakfast of fried potatoes. In one respect, at any rate, Carlyle knew what he was talking about. 'As a student,' he says, 'I discovered that I was the owner of a diabolical arrangement called a stomach;and I have never been free from the knowledge from that hour to this; and I suppose I never shall until I am laid away in my grave.' Warned, however, by the melancholy fate which he believed Napoleon to have suffered, he guarded against any overflow of his distress. His readers rarely suffer from the after-effects of his indiscreet breakfasts. We readSartor Resartus,Heroes and Hero-worship, andPast and Present, and never once think of piecrust or of fried potatoes.
It is true, I dare say, that all the people in the school-house were not affected as John Broadbanks was. Indeed, I heard next day of one lady who thought the sermon very affecting. It nearly made her cry, she said; and she felt sure that the preacher was not long for this world. I would not on any consideration deprive this excellent creature of her lachrymal felicity; but if her well-meant encomiums reached the preacher's ears, I hope he did not take them too seriously. Lots of people are fond of piecrust, but it does not follow that it is good for them. The sort of sermon that would have stimulated the faith of John Broadbanks might not have brought tears to the eyes of the lady who was moved to such a compassionate ecstasy, but it might have been better for her in the long run. John Broadbanks found the piecrust sermon depressing; yet, to a certain type of mind, few things are more attractive than sadness. We all remember Macaulay's observations on the inordinate popularityof Byron. 'It is,' he says, 'without a parallel in history. To people who are unacquainted with real calamity, nothing is so dainty and sweet as lovely melancholy.' And he goes on to apply this to the pessimism of Byron. 'People bought pictures of him; they treasured up the smallest relics of him; they learned his poems by heart; they did their best to write like him and to look like him. Many of them practised in the glass in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip and the scowl of the brow which appear in his portraits. The number of hopeful undergraduates and medical students who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation.' Clearly, this is the lady with the tears—indefinitely multiplied.
Now, by way of contrast, turn for a moment from Byron to Browning. Professor Phelps of Yale says that Browning was too healthy to be popular. He was robust and vigorous, and therefore optimistic. But he is slowly winning his way. His star waxes as Byron's wanes. People find sooner or later that they cannot live for ever on piecrust. Mr. Chesterton says that the bravest thing about Robert Louis Stevenson is that he never allowed his manuscripts to smell of his medicines. The tortures that racked his frame never passed down his pen to the paper spread out before him. You read his sprightly and stirring romances; you live for thetime being among pirates and smugglers and corsairs; you catch the breath of the hills and the tang of the sea; and it never occurs to you that you are the guest of a man who is terribly ill. You hear him laugh; you never hear him cough. You do not see his sunken eyes, his hectic cheek, his spectral form supported by a pile of pillows. You reflect with astonishment when you lay aside the book that the story was written by a creature so pitifully frail that, on all the earth's broad surface, he could only find one outlandish spot—a lonely hilltop in the Pacific—in which he could contrive to breathe. By this time we may hope that our preacher at Port Molyneux has read theLife of Stevenson. And, as he did so, he must have resolved that, however excruciating his dyspepsia, his congregation, at least, shall never be infected by it.
I regret now that I did not ask the preacher's name. If only I knew his address, I should find pleasure in posting him a copy ofThe Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. For the autocrat knew something about piecrust. The pie at the boarding-house looked one day particularly attractive, and things happened in consequence. 'I took more of it than was good for me,' says the Autocrat, 'and had an indigestion in consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay which took a very melancholy view of creation. When I got better, I labelled them allPiecrust, and laid them by as scarecrowsand solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my shelves that I should like to label with some such title; but, as they have great names on their title-pages—Doctors of Divinity, some of them—it wouldn't do!' I should have been tempted to mark this passage before posting the book to Port Molyneux.
But the really extraordinary thing about piecrust is that the quality with which it is most frequently taunted is its one redeeming feature, the feature that makes it sublime. Promises, they say, are like piecrust,made to be broken. Why, the most beautiful and sacred things in life are made to be broken! Upon all ordinary things, breakage comes as the climax of disaster; upon a select few, breakage comes as the climax of destiny. The fountain-pen that I hold in my hand—the pen with which, without so much as a change of nib, all my books have been written—will lie broken before me one of these days. It was made; it will be broken; but it was not made to be broken. The enjoyment ends with the breakage. But with those other things, the things of the pie-crust class, the enjoyment begins with the breakage. When I was a small boy, I indulged in bird-nesting. And I never looked upon a cluster of delicately-tinted, prettily-speckled eggs without feeling that each egg was the most consummate piece of workmanship that I had ever seen.Its shape, its color and its pattern were alike perfect. Indeed, I silenced my conscience as I bore the nest home by amplifying this very argument. 'If I leave the nest in the tree,' I said to myself, 'these pretty things will all be broken! When the birds are hatched, the eggs will be smashed! They are far too pretty for that! I will take them home and keep them. I am really saving them by stealing them!' I know now that I was wrong. My argument was made up of casuistry and special pleading. In reality I destroyed the eggs by preserving them. They were made to be broken, and I cheated destiny by preventing the breakage. I have travelled a good many miles since then; but, every step of the way, I have learned, in some new form, the same great lesson. And when, with reverent footsteps, I have climbed the loftiest summits of all, the truth that I first discovered in the English hedgerows has become most radiantly clear. The two greatest events in the history of this planet are the Incarnation and the Crucifixion.
It isChristmas-time; and we think with wonder and awe of the mystery of that holy body's making!
It isEaster-time; and we think with wonder and awe of the mystery of that holy body's breaking!
It isCommunion-time! 'This is My body which is broken for you,' He said.
And in the making of that body and the breaking of that body—the body that was made to be broken—a lost world has found salvation.
It was a cruel winter's night; an icy wind was howling across the Plain; a glorious fire was blazing in the dining-room grate; and, happily, I had no engagements. To add to our felicity, the San Francisco mail had arrived that morning, bringing our monthly budget of news from home. The letters had, of course, been devoured upon delivery, but the papers and magazines had been laid aside for evening consumption. We had just opened the packages and arranged the journals in order of publication when there came a ring at the front-door bell. We glanced at each other meaningly and at the papers regretfully. All kinds of visions presented themselves; visions of a garrulous visitor who, with business over, would not go; visions of a long drive across the Plain in the biting wind; visions of everything but an evening with each other, a roaring fire and the English mail. As though to rebuke our inhospitable and ungracious thoughts, however, it was only Elsie Hammond. Elsie often dropped in of an evening; she usually brought her fancy-work; and, in her presence, we were perfectly at our ease. Every manse has one or two such visitors. We read, worked, or chatted when Elsiecame just as we should have done if she had not dropped in.
'Why, Elsie,' I exclaimed, as soon as, divested of her hat and cloak, she entered the dining-room and took her usual chair, 'whatever brings you out on a wild night like this?'
'Well,' she replied, 'I wanted to see you about the Young People's Missionary Union. You remember that they made me Secretary last month, and we are arranging for the annual meeting. We have invited Mr. Harriford Johnson, of the North Africa Evangelization Society, to give an address; and I received his reply this morning. He will be coming out from town by the five-twenty train; and I wondered if you could let him come to the manse to tea, and, if needs be, stay the night.'
I put Elsie at her ease by telling her that she might leave the matter of Mr. Johnson's reception and entertainment entirely in my hands; and then, resuming the pile of papers, we had a royal evening with the English news.
The day of the missionary meeting arrived; and, as the clock struck five, I set out for the station. Quite a number of people were moving in the same direction, among them the Rev. J. M. McKerrow, my Presbyterian neighbor. We walked towards the station together. On the platform, however, he recognized a lady friend from a distance; he moved away to speak to her; and, in the bustle of the train's arrival, we saw each other no more.
I had never met Mr. Johnson, nor had any description of his personal appearance been given me. For some reason, I had pictured to myself a tall, cadaverous man in a severe garb, bearing upon him the signs of the ravages wrought by a variety of tropical diseases; and, contrary to one's usual experience, a gentleman roughly according with this prognostication stepped from the train and began to look aimlessly about him.
'Mr. Johnson?' I inquired, approaching him.
'Ah!' he replied, 'and you're from the manse!'
I admitted the impeachment, and we set off together for home. On the way we chatted about the weather, the place, the crops, the people, the church, the services, and things in general. He was a vivacious conversationalist, and exhibited a remarkably alert and hungry mind. He wanted to know all about everything; and when we discussed my own work, its difficulties, and its encouragements, he showed a genuine interest and a delightful sympathy. We had invited several of the leading missionary spirits of the congregation to meet him at tea. In order that the conversation at table might be generally enjoyable, I had stored my mind with a fine assortment of questions concerning conditions in Northern Africa which, like a quiver-full of arrows, I intended firing at our guest as opportunity offered. But opportunity did not offer. Mr. Johnson was so interested in the work of the various organizations represented round the table that hemade it impossible for us to inquire about his own. Moreover, our visitor chanced to discover that one of our guests had in his home a little boy who was afflicted with blindness. On eliciting this information, Mr. Johnson lapsed into sudden silence, and looked, I thought, as though he had been hurt. But, after tea, he drew the father of the blind boy aside and explained to him that he himself had but one child, a little girl of ten, and she was similarly afflicted. As he spoke of her, his vivacity vanished, and a great depth of tenderness revealed itself. I wondered, but did not care to ask, if the blindness of his child was part of the price that he had been compelled to pay for residence in tropical Africa. After telling us of his little daughter, and of the comfort that she was to him, Mr. Johnson looked at his watch.
'We have nearly an hour,' he said, 'before meeting time; may I peep into your sanctum? I love to glance over a man's books.'
Rarely have I spent an hour in the study so delightfully. All his enthusiasm awoke again at sight of the shelves. He took down volume after volume, handling each with affectionate reverence, and making each the text of a running comment of a most fascinating character. Amusing anecdotes about the author; an outline of the singular circumstances under which certain of the books were written; illuminating criticisms by eminent authorities; sparkling quotations of out-of-the-way passages—thereseemed to be no end to his fund of lively and original observations.
'But I say,' he suddenly ejaculated, 'that conversation at table was most interesting and valuable. I had no idea that so much excellent work was being done. I have often wondered——'
But at that moment the mistress of the manse intervened.
'Excuse me,' she said, as she opened the study door, 'but Mr. McKerrow and another gentleman wish to see you at once in the drawing-room.'
To the drawing-room I accordingly repaired; and there I found my companion of the afternoon, accompanied by a short, ruddy, thick-set man, who was laughing very heartily.
'This is an extraordinary situation,' my friend began. 'You will have discovered by this time that we jumped to conclusions too hurriedly this afternoon.Thisis Mr. Harriford Johnson, of the North Africa Evangelization Society, who is, I believe, to lecture for you to-night, and I think you must have walked off with Mr. Douglas E. Johnson, M.A., who is to address our teachers this evening on the kindergarten method as applied to Sunday-school work. Mrs. McKerrow and I had invited the superintendent of our Sunday-school and the teachers of the primary classes to meet Mr. Johnson at tea at the manse, and we got into a beautiful tangle. It was like playing a game of cross questions and crooked answers. The young people were askingMr. Johnson's advice on technical matters connected with their classes; and Mr. Johnson was modestly disclaiming all knowledge of the subject, and was telling us of his experiences in Central Africa. We were all beginning to feel that the world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy, when Mr. Johnson suddenly asked how long ago the Young People's Missionary Union was established, and seemed surprised that a Miss Elsie Hammond was not present. Then the truth broke upon us, and we have all been laughing ever since.'
I cordially welcomed Mr. Johnson, and then we all three went through to the dining-room, in which, by this time, the whole of our party was assembled. Mr. Johnson was holding the company spell-bound. I briefly introduced our two visitors, and explained the position. The announcement was received with bursts of merriment, although our tea-table guest was covered with confusion and full of apologies. However, he quickly entered into the humor of the situation, and, after promising to return to lunch with the African Mr. Johnson next day, he went off with Mr. McKerrow laughing heartily.
Both meetings were a great success. The comedy of errors may have had something to do with it. In comparing notes next morning, both speakers declared that they felt very much at home with their audiences. The joke had quickly spread, and created an atmosphere of sympathy and familiarity. Henry Drummond used to say that he could neverget on with people until he had laughed with them. Both meetings opened that evening with a bond already established between speaker and audience; and that stands for a good deal.
We had a very happy time, too, at lunch next morning. Our visitors were both pleased that the mistake had been made.
'It's very nice,' said Mr. Harriford Johnson, 'to have got into touch with two ministers and two congregations instead of one. I am thankful to have been able to say a word for Africa to the young people with whom I had tea at Mr. McKerrow's.'
'And for my part,' added Mr. Douglas Johnson, 'I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. The conversation at the tea-table last evening was a perfect revelation to me. I have often heard about foreign missions, and I suppose I ought to have interested myself in them. But one has his own line of things, and is apt to get into grooves. I had no idea until yesterday that the movement was so orderly and systematic nor that the operations were so extensive. It was like being taken into the confidence of a military commander, and shown his strategy. I go back feeling that my mind has been fitted with a new set of windows, and I am able to look out upon the world in a way that was impossible before. I am delighted, too, to have met my namesake, Mr. Harriford Johnson. He has given me'—taking a pamphlet from his pocket—'a copy of the last annual report of the North Africa Evangelization Society,and I shall always think more kindly of Africa because of this singular experience at Mosgiel.'
It was years before I heard of either of our visitors again. Mr. Harriford Johnson, it is true, posted me each year a copy of the report of his work. In 1899, however, he enclosed the pamphlet in a note saying that he had found some of the hints that he had picked up in his conversation with Mr. McKerrow's kindergarten teachers very useful to his native school. 'There is something in the idea,' he wrote, 'that appeals to the African mind; and I am sending to London for some literature on the subject with a view to applying the system more extensively. The mistakes that we all made that evening at the Mosgiel railway station have proved, to me, very profitable ones.'
I never heard directly from Mr. Douglas Johnson. But, about five years afterwards, I noticed in an Auckland paper the announcement of the death of his little blind girl; and, a year or two later, I saw in the annual report of Mr. Harriford Johnson's Mission the acknowledgement of a handsome donation from D.E.J., 'in loving memory of one who, though spending all her days in darkness, now sees, and desires that Africa shall have the Light of Life.'
Of all the things that are made in a world like this, mistakes are by no means the worst.
OTHER BOOKS BY MR. BOREHAM
A BUNCH OF EVERLASTINGSA HANDFUL OF STARSA REEL OF RAINBOWFACES IN THE FIREMOUNTAINS IN THE MISTMUSHROOMS ON THE MOORTHE GOLDEN MILESTONETHE HOME OF THE ECHOESTHE LUGGAGE OF LIFETHE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLTHE SILVER SHADOWTHE UTTERMOST STARSHADOWS ON THE WALL
A BUNCH OF EVERLASTINGSA HANDFUL OF STARSA REEL OF RAINBOWFACES IN THE FIREMOUNTAINS IN THE MISTMUSHROOMS ON THE MOORTHE GOLDEN MILESTONETHE HOME OF THE ECHOESTHE LUGGAGE OF LIFETHE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLTHE SILVER SHADOWTHE UTTERMOST STARSHADOWS ON THE WALL
A BUNCH OF EVERLASTINGS
A HANDFUL OF STARS
A REEL OF RAINBOW
FACES IN THE FIRE
MOUNTAINS IN THE MIST
MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR
THE GOLDEN MILESTONE
THE HOME OF THE ECHOES
THE LUGGAGE OF LIFE
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL
THE SILVER SHADOW
THE UTTERMOST STAR
SHADOWS ON THE WALL