The Truth
Burt Harris
Thetruth, my friend? There is no truth. It is impossible for the human mind to attain the truth. You can tell the truth with reservations, with omissions. Perhaps you can speak the truth that is only part truth. Yes, that is often done by virtuous people and by clever people. But to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, to place your soul naked before either God or man,—that, my friend, is impossible. I have listened to women lie. Sometimes it is only necessary to watch. And it is the same with a man.
What? A man will tell the truth before God? You are quite wrong. A man will lie to himself and he will lie to his God. I know. I listened to a man lie to God. I will tell you the story.
The man’s name was Henry Spencer. You perhaps remember it. He was a murderer. One of his victims was a tango teacher named Mrs. Allison Rexroat. When the body of Mrs. Rexroat was found behind a clump of bushes in a lonely spot the police somehow blundered upon a clew. In four days they traced the murder of the woman to Henry Spencer. They wove a net of evidence about him. Oh they are clever, sometimes, my friend. On the fifth day Henry Spencer sat in the police captain’s office and they sweated him. After five hours he confessed. Ordinarily this means nothing. I have seen criminals confess to crimes of which they were innocent. Sweating is an unintelligent process, but then criminals are unintelligent persons and for a stupid mind the whole affair becomes quite an ordeal. The police captain says, “You did.” The criminal replies, “I didn’t.” It is very simple, my friend, but very wearing; particularly when there are five policemen to say “You did,” and none but yourself to say “I didn’t.” But it happened this time that the policemen blundered upon a real confession. After five hours Henry Spencer jumped to his feet and shouted, “Yes, I did. I killed her.” He was led away. Two days later he repeated his confession and elaborated on it. He sketched the murder, described the events leading up to it.
The policemen, highly elated, rushed out and verified all he had said. They found the hammer he told them he had used where he said he had thrown it. They found the effects of the murdered woman where he said he had hidden them. Henry Spencer went to trial. A number of attorneys defending him pleaded insanity. Spencer upset their efforts by rising in the court room and informing the jury he was quite sane and that he had committed a number of murders in his life. Given permission by the court he informed them that his life had been an extremely illegal one. Henamed five women he had killed. The police, highly elated, rushed out and verified his statements. In concluding, the defendant again sought to impress them with the fact that he was quite sane and willing to pay the penalty for his crimes. In fact several times he cried out from his seat, “Hurry up and hang me.”
You will argue, my friend, that there was an instance where in the very depravity of his nature a man attained the naked truth. You are quite wrong. Henry Spencer killed the women he said he killed, but he failed of the truth. For three months he had sat in his cell figuring the thing out. He came to the conclusion that by telling truthfully of his crimes and pleading truthfully of his sanity he would create the impression that he was indeed a maniac. You see, it is quite simple. Lies are always simple. It is only the truth which is impossible to understand. Henry Spencer’s logic proved accurate. He convinced the jury that he was a maniac. But he had placed too much faith on the technical interpretation of the law. The jury sentenced him to hang, anyway. So did the judge.
The date was set and Henry Spencer waited in the jail of a little town in Illinois. It is the duty of a large number of people in the world to save souls from Hell. Do not think I speak sarcastically, my friend. There is nothing wrong in this, except, of course, its utter futility. For two months the Rev. Mr. Williams, his wife, and his son visited Henry Spencer daily in his cell. They taught him religion. The doomed man was an illiterate. He had been brought up in the streets. He spoke English vulgarly and he understood nothing. His mind was unformed and his ideas of any particular life to be were as vague as his ideas of the life that was.
So he became religious. This is quite a story in itself, his acquiring “faith.” They played hymns in his cell on an old melodeon. Each night the Williams family knelt with him and prayed. He found in the Scriptures and their promise something that stilled the cold terror of death. His nerves became quiet. In fact he became buoyant. You will say it is impossible for a man to acquire genuine faith under such circumstances. You are quite wrong, my friend. I will prove it to you soon.
On the day preceding his execution Henry Spencer exhibited the only bit of nervousness during his watch for death. He objected to the big clock that hung in the corridor outside his cell. He didn’t like the way it ticked. You know why. So they removed the clock. How kind people are to those whom they are about to destroy. They quite resemble the Gods in the matter.
I am coming now to the point of the story, so be patient, my friend. It was a sunny morning in early July. Inside a stockade they had erected a scaffold. During the night Henry Spencer sang hymns. The sheriff sat on the doorstep of his home adjoining the jail listening and looking at the moon and greasing a hempen rope with cold cream which he borrowed from his daughter. He was a religious man and the hymns made him sad.
At ten o’clock the death march started from Spencer’s cell. Now there were thirty-eight steps leading to the top of the scaffold which rose high above the stockade top. I know this because a young man named Smith and I walked up the steps the midnight before and counted them. After counting them I made a wager with the young man that Spencer would never reach the top unsupported. So I was exceedingly interested when the death march entered the stockade. A number of persons were privileged to march in the line, and the first to appear was Spencer. He was dressed as if he were hurrying to a tennis game—white trousers, white shoes, a soft white collar, and a white shirt. On the pocket of his shirt he had pinned a red carnation. He walked with a light, springy step. Behind him trailed the Rev. Mr. Williams and the others.
Henry Spencer wore a good-natured smile on his face. When he reached the bottom step of the scaffold I held my breath. I watched him skip nimbly up the stairs, never missing a step, never tripping or hesitating. Under more virtuous circumstances the thing would have passed for heroism. At any rate I lost the wager.
Spencer stood on the scaffold, the noose hanging over his shoulder. The smile had not left his face. Several hundred necks were craned towards him. I would have felt chilled to see so many necks at such a time had I been he. The sheriff and his assistant began dressing him in a white robe that covered him from the neck down.
He commenced talking at once.
“My friends,” he said, extending his arm. They strapped it to his side as he did so but he continued unflustered. “I am glad of the opportunity this gives me of telling you that for the first time in my life I am happy. I have found a mother and a God and a friend while I have been in jail waiting for death. Although it is going to cost me my life I am glad I am here to tell you this. I have repented for my sins. I have made my peace with my God and my fellow men. And I am happy, my friends, happy. I have found a mother who has shown me the way to peace and salvation. I am grateful to Him for the gladness he has put in my heart. Oh, my friends—”
He raised his head to the sky. Standing against the sun in his white robe, his face transfigured with a wonderful smile, he looked like some Crusader giving himself into the arms of the Virgin. Above him stretched the green leafy branch of a tree that rustled faintly in the breeze. A little bird sat on a twig and chirped. And still above stretched the pure blue sky with its white fleece clouds. Henry Spencer looked at it all—life, the little bird, the sky, the green leaves—and smiled; smiled as I have never seen a man smile before.
They strapped his ankles and then the sheriff adjusted the rope around his neck with great care. His political future was dependent on his task. Spencer resumed talking.
He recited two long psalms with never a wrong word, and I who had listened to him five months ago sat astounded. His voice, his accent, everything about him had changed. A theologian could have rendered the psalms no more accurately. Then he looked at the sky again. I felt that before his eyes the clouds rolled away and God revealed himself, a gigantic figure seated on a golden throne. I felt that he saw the cherubs and the angels he had read of in the scriptures, perceived the jewelled streets and the harpists and Christ waiting with outstretched arms and forgiveness.
“Yes, my friends,” he went on, “I am not afraid, for I have given myself to Christ, pure in spirit, strong in faith.” He quoted from the Bible. “See, I smile at it all, for believe me, O Lord, I am happy.” The sheriff had lifted the white hood to the man’s head and was beginning to adjust it. The smile never left his face, the light that blazed from his eyes never dimmed. “I am going to heaven,” he said as they settled the hood on his head, “and I want to say only one more thing before I go. My friends, as I stand here, I tell you I am innocent of the murder of Mrs. Allison Rexroat.”
And they hanged him.
The truth? The human ego is too weak for truth. What do you say, my friend?
We carry faithfully what we are given, on hard shoulders, over rough mountains! And when perspiring, we are told: “Yea, life is hard to bear!” But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason is that he carrieth too many strange things on his shoulders. Like the camel he kneeleth down and alloweth the heavy load to be put on his back.—Nietzsche.
We carry faithfully what we are given, on hard shoulders, over rough mountains! And when perspiring, we are told: “Yea, life is hard to bear!” But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason is that he carrieth too many strange things on his shoulders. Like the camel he kneeleth down and alloweth the heavy load to be put on his back.—Nietzsche.