“The time of the singing of birds is come,And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
“The time of the singing of birds is come,And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
“The time of the singing of birds is come,And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
“The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
Where is my mate? I am ready for her, and she for me. And yet we are denied each other. By what right? By whose authority? There is evil thought in forbidding the pure, the naturally pure, to embrace.
In front of me, built up from the shifting beach, is a huge, stolid sea-wall, composed of a multitude of boulders, stuck together with crude, coarse cement. I have examined these boulders somewhat carefully with my eyes. They have each and every one of them been rolled and washed and moulded by the sea. And yet no two are alike. Some are beautifully shaped with radiant crystalsin their make-up. Some are jagged, rough-edged pyramids, uncut, with moss upon them. Many are flat rocks, worn by the beatings of countless aeons of waves until they are quite colorless. And then there is another kind which resembles these last and yet seem different. I refer to the plain, ordinary, flat, stupid stone, looking for all the world as if it had been created merely to be trodden upon. But the boulders that interest and amuse me most are those which are sheer bulks of matter or rather hulks of space, having their own way, always getting the place they want, boulders which are proud and satisfied with being exactly the sort of boulders that they are. I think that they like being big boulders chiefly because they catch the eye.
Can that coarse, man-made cement hold these elemental things together? Yes, for a while, but not forever. This sea-wall will have to be torn down and rebuilt again by coming nations; for that cement, Sandy, is civilization trying to weld men together; and that sea beating with the waves of beautiful, noble, animal passion, keeps ceaselessly, ceaselessly saying:
“Down! Come down, I say, you can not curb me, for I am life, and the Giver of Life, personified in motion, crucified in your sinful cement, come down; you have not yet builded rightly!”
Then empires and republics fall; then cities sink upon sunken cities; and the ant-hills lie waste upon an even desert. And man, poor, lonely, bewildered, impotent man begins again to mix cement.
Troy was destroyed because of a prostitute. And why? Because there should be no such person as a prostitute.
Sodom, Babylon and the Rome of the Caesars followed in the fated cycle of Troy—in the perversion of love. Paris, London, Berlin and New York will follow them, too. Nemesis takes time, plenty of time, too much time, yet follows as surely as the stars shine out of the sky. But the turtle doves of Solomon, without our vain intelligence, waste their little lives in love, or rather because of love, natural, untrammelled love, not one of them was wasted. Turtle doves do not sell their daughters in marriage for convenience, nor in harlotry for necessity. Marriage does not make love sacred. Love makes true marriage sacred. But what of marriage without love, or where love is killed?
Turtle doves do not mate after they cease to love. And so their love dies only with death, for they have no dogmas which call love a vice, no laws which call love illegitimate. Turtle doves have no prudery, for they are not foul-minded. Donot accept the fallacy that they are silly, effeminate, cooing lovers. Quite the contrary, they are the most shapely, virile and dignified of all creatures, happy in the fulfillment of their being.
They have not the poor always with them, and so their males do not force the young females by starving them until they yield for money. Neither do they know of such base acts as rape, seduction and broken vows amongst them. Jesus Christ knew all this when he told us to have the heart right. Aye, but how can we have the heart right when superstition makes us believe that we do wrong. Here, then, is the key, and that old sinner, William Shakespeare, found it when he said that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. We think love a sin, when it is as natural as breathing and as beautiful as the warm birth of sunrise.
Are these statements true or not true? I appeal not to the advocates of the so-called “free love.” They are debauchees, too low for notice. I appeal not to religious ascetics, or bloodless beings. I appeal to normal, healthy, passionate men and women. Is it so, or is it not so?
Ah, you scientists, you theologians, cease seeking for what is hidden from us. Give up what is beyond us. Turn instead and tell us what of theGeology of Passion? What of the Dogmas of the female’s right to the male?
Come, Sandy, bring my tin spade and empty the little bucket upon the beach. I am going to try a new cement.
Once again I am in the company of my royal host, His Excelsior. The Great Axilla is showing me another section of his collection of men. We are in a vast inclosure which resembles a city park. Crossing it are shaded walks with benches at intervals, and at the intersection of these various paths, that is at the centre of the park, is a fountain. Upon the benches are seated men of different ages, some with chins almost beardless, others in the evening of life, with the harsh furrows of experience upon their features, and many who are worn into greyness.
“Look at these men,” said His Excelsior, “examine them with care and tell me what you see.”
I gazed about me with intentness, but remained silent.
“Can not you tell me what you see, slow one?” demanded the Excelsior, impatiently taking me by the elbow and turning me about face, “look at this specimen here—one with the down of youth still upon him.”
“How hollow-eyed he looks!” I whispered.
“Aye, and his belly pinched.”
“He looks up through the leafless branches asthough he were dreaming and yet awake;” I added.
“Aye,” quoth the Great Axilla, “and his dreams never have and never shall come true.”
“What is he?” I asked.
“He is a misfit;” was the reply.
Then we strolled slowly on until we reached the centre where the fountain was flowing drearily. As we came to a stop, the Excelsior squeezed my arm gently to attract my attention to a man of middle age who sat upon a bench immediately beside us. I turned to study him for a passing moment. His trousers were frayed at the bottom and soiled. His beard was muddy with a growth of several days. He was leaning on the arm at the end of the bench, holding in his fingers a twig with which he was drawing strange devices upon the gravel walk, while the shadows and the light of the sun played around him. There could be no mistake in his actions. He was trying to get time behind him, and above all to occupy his mind. He was striving to distract his thoughts from himself, a ceaseless endeavor. No, there could be no doubt about the meaning of that wayward, woe-begone look.
“Tell me, what is he?” I asked in a low voice.
“He is one of the unfits;” rejoined my host, meditatively.
I had to ponder a little, too.
By this time we were near enough to the fountain to hear the water falling, falling, with its never-ending splash; and from this point we could look up and down the different avenues that stretched away from us like the spokes of a gigantic wheel, of which we were the hub.
“And who are those up that avenue? And these here, who are they?”
“Those and these, all of them,” quoth the Axilla, “the misfits and the unfits, they are the people who have nothing to do.”
“I notice that most of them stop as they pass and drink at this fountain.”
“Aye, verily,” answered the Axilla, “for these are the waters of the Fountain of Endurance.”
Before leaving this spot I did not fail to observe one among them who, by his countenance, clothing and deportment, seemed out of place. I noted that apparently he was doing exactly what I was doing, looking about and observing his fellow beings with scrutiny.
“What have you got him in here for?” I asked.
“Don’t be so petulant, little visitor,” answered the Great Axilla, “I have him here for the reason that he belongs here. He is one of the so-called dilettanti. He imagines that he is different fromthe horde, because he sits by and watches them, calling himself a student of human nature. But mark me, he has the streak in common with the rest of them—he is tired of it all, for he, too, has nothing to do. Follow his gaze now, and you may again query whether that spectacle is germane to this exhibit.”
I looked in the direction in which the dilettante was looking, toward the border of the park, and I saw a wide, white boulevard. Many people were driving and riding thereon, carrying whips with ribbons, or beautifully painted sun-shades. The vehicles themselves were splendid equipages, some were swung high, and some were swung low, according to the fancy and ease of the owners; and the coachmen and the footmen in their uniforms of sombre and brilliant hues made a showy spectacle to behold.
“I confess I can not see why they should be exhibited with these misfits and unfits.”
“That is because your physical eye is not near enough to see them clearly, puny one,” replied His Excelsior, “take you this strong field-glass,” continued he, offering me the instrument, “and examine the faces of those you see upon horse-back and in the various vehicles.”
I looked first at the face of a woman, protected by a gaudy parasol. She was driving in an openlandau. Hers was the face of a woman far beyond maidenhood. There was something make-believe about her expression, as though in reality she was not free from care, as though her landau were neither carrying her to nor taking her from the realms of realized anticipations. Then I cast the glasses hastily upon a man on horse-back. He had the frame of one who was trying to recover a wasted constitution; but he had begun too late. A cigarette drooped languidly from his lips. He looked overfed with foods and wines that could no longer nourish him. Bah! I dropped the glasses from my eyes.
“Aha!” smiled the Excelsior, “now you perceive that they, too, have the same awful streak in their aspect.”
“But, Great Axilla,” cried I, “you surely allow them to drink also at the Fountain of Endurance?”
“Not so!” he exclaimed, “see their exclusive bowers which line the boulevard and into which they pass now and again? In those massive places they quench their thirst by sucking the juice from the acrid grapes of Ennui.”
I pondered once more, but said nothing. The path we were treading led toward the edge of the park. We walked on, fist on fist, which is a sign of cordiality in the Excelsior’s country. I had never known my host to be so familiar.Presently we came to a curve in our path, and there, hidden by a row of privet bushes was a long bench with arms at each seat for comfort. All of the occupants of this settee were women.
“I did not think that you had them in here, too;” I said sadly.
“Oh yes” said the Axilla, “that bench is reserved exclusively for them.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it looks more comfortable than the others, but in reality it is hard and poses them in unnatural postures. How they paint and powder, and their cologne fairly makes me ill. I guess that you recognize them,” concluded the Excelsior, eyeing me slyly, “they are the sort whom you meet seldom by day, and who abound late at night.”
“Yes, I imagined as much; but, sire, I am again at a loss to account for their being exhibited here.”
“You are not very bright, or else you sham stupidity,” quoth the Great Axilla, “surely you know that a strumpet is both an unfit and a misfit—isn’t she? She is a product of your civilization just as much as those poor men whom you saw sitting on the other side of this transformed, grass-growing ash heap.”
I did not have a word to reply, and I hung my head in silence.
“But,” said the Excelsior, “they enjoy a severeprivilege. They drink not only at the Fountain of Endurance, but are also allowed to suck the acrid grapes of Ennui.”
As we passed out of the inclosure, my royal host turned to me and said:
“What think you is the motto that I have had placed over this exhibit of individuals who have nothing to do? Read—there it is.”
He pointed to a sign, bearing these immense letters of gold:
IDLERS ARE NOT TO BE ENVIED.
“Now, my little visitor,” quoth he, “you have wearied me sufficiently for the present. Perhaps you yourself may also enjoy a little sleep.”
I am seated in my room at a hotel in the city of New York. The proprietor told me that there is a large closet between my room and Sandy’s which was reserved and locked by the former occupant of these rooms. I dislike privacy within my own privacy.
Sandy went out early in the evening to get the necessary ingredients for the making of his sangaree, as I told him that I should like to have a fresh quantity on hand. He returned about two hours since and made me about a gallon of the mixture. After I drank a glass, I told him that I felt better, and that he might go out to see the sights of this great city. Sandy is always reluctant to leave me alone. I am sorry now that I allowed him to go out, for I have a prescience that an unusual coma is about to fall upon me. But why worry about the unknown? Where death is, said a philosopher, we are not. And where we are, death is not.
I arose and thought that I ought to lie down in an attempt to sleep, when I thought that I heard a knock upon a door. Oddly enough, it was not upon my outer chamber door, but upon the closet door within. Surely I was mistaken.
I removed my dressing gown and stretched myself upon the bed. To convince myself, I arose and went to the inner closet door, but as I took hold of the handle, I stopped.
“What a superstitious wretch you are,” I uttered unconsciously aloud to myself, “get to bed. For how could a human being be knocking at an inner closet door?”
With this I was consoled, yet I shuddered, and drank another glass of sangaree.
My God, the noise was repeated again!
I was in this awful predicament when a clearer knock at my outer door brought me to my senses. Although relieved at hearing a human sound, I was much embarrassed at my condition, as I had on an oriental costume which I wear for comfort when shut within my chambers. While I hesitated, another sharp knock came at the outer door, and in another second, I heard a scratch in the key-hole. Unfortunately I had not shot the bolt on the inside, so rather than have the intruder open the door for himself, I sprang forward and swung open the door. There stood a man. He was flurried and out of breath, but apparently a gentleman of culture. He carried a valise.
I was angry and beside myself with nervousness, and determined to be abrupt with him.
“Be good enough to pardon me for disturbing you,” he said, “for I know how angry I would be if a similar interruption should occur to me. I shall only bother you for a moment. I was the last occupant of these rooms, and the proprietor of this hotel allowed me to reserve the large closet until such a time as I might be able to carry away its contents.”
“Yes, so he told me,” I answered, sharply, “but you come at a late hour to remove your effects and will arouse the other guests who may retire earlier than I am accustomed to do.”
“To say the whole truth,” he replied, “I did not come to remove my effects. I came to look upon your face. Now I am at my ease. I will leave without bothering you, and I shall remain away until you give up these apartments.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, bluntly, as I thought the man insinuated that I would have pried into his effects if he had not seen me.
“I mean that I take you for a gentleman,” he said, “a gentleman without the curiosity of Bluebeard’s wives.”
His frankness at once unarmed me and amused me.
“You are quite out of breath;” I remarked.
“Yes,” he said, “I have walked up the seven flights of stairs.”
“What, are not the elevators running?” I asked, worrying about Sandy’s return.
“Oh, yes, but they make me dizzy. I—I—I rarely use them.”
The man’s hesitation shot a fiendish idea into my brain. There are two classes of men who interest me particularly, one type is composed of those who are taciturn about their mysterious selves, and the other kind who conceal mystery under a glib and suave exterior. My visitor being of the latter class, this fiendish intention came into my brain: suppose you dose him with your sangaree until he reveals his mystery, and you can read his naked soul. Besides this, the man had a fascinating face and figure. He was about fifty years of age, his hair streaked with grey, his eyes outwardly plausible but inwardly leering, his mouth told of an exceedingly sensuous nature. His features and his body stood out like a mask, covering an actual self within, totally different from his considerate, gentlemanly exterior. I want to scratch that thin veneer of civilization, and get a look at this urbane creature.
“I fear that you mistook my abruptness for rudeness,” I said, “sit down, won’t you? Rest a few minutes until you recover your breath. I fear you have no conception of how hard stair-climbing is on the heart.”
“I have been used to it for years,” he replied, about to depart, “for eighteen years I climbed the pyramids of Egypt.”
“What a coincidence,” I answered, “I myself am a student of the East. I even adopt their dress within doors, as you see. Did you ever work about the vicinity of Memphis? Come in and sit a moment, for you are in no condition to strain yourself any more for a while. My servant is out, or I would offer you refreshment.”
I opened the door wide. He hesitated, but after brushing off a cloud of suspicion arising from my change of manner, he entered, set down his valise, and looked at me as I closed the door.
“When you spoke of Memphis,” said he, “well, I can only say that I was taken aback! Memphis was the site of most of my work.”
“You were surprised no more than I when you spoke of the pyramids,” I replied, “pardon me, but will you excuse me if I take a glass of a mild beverage which I keep on hand? I would gladly offer you some, but I fear you would not care for it, and I am sorry that I have nothing else to give you, and that my servant is out.”
“What is your beverage? I have tasted every liquor from vodka to white whiskey.”
“Oh, mine is a very mild concoction. It is only sangaree.”
“Sangaree? Why, I was raised on sangaree.”
“I am glad that I can now be hospitable. Excuse me while I fill the caraffe.”
I went into Sandy’s room, drew a pitcher of his strong stock solution, and returned to find my visitor reading one of the books on my table.
“A most exhaustive work upon marriage,” he said, running over its pages, “I finished it myself last spring. The Germans are the only thorough scholars we have, and this book by Westermark will remain a standard work.”
These matter-of-course remarks of his did not interest me, so I made no reply, and merely filled two goblets with the sangaree, offering him one. He raised the glass to his lips like one accustomed to heavy draughts, emptied half of it, looked at the liquor, looked at me, looked at the liquor again, set it down, and said nothing. I refilled it before taking my seat. Thinking that I was not observing him, he scrutinized me again, once more looked at the liquor, saw me empty my glass, rubbed his nose, and then emptied his again. For a time, we sat in silence.
“Do you want to know what Westermark taught me, though he contradicts it himself?”
I nodded, looking him full in the eyes.
“I came to the conclusion that the Almightyhad married a monogamous woman to a polygamous man.”
As he set down his glass, I knew that the liquor was beginning to work. I felt like another Ethan Brand.
“There’s rum in your sangaree;” he said, compressing his lips.
“Yes, to give it flavor with the cherry bounce—don’t you like it?”
“Very much indeed. It’s difficult to procure real Medford rum these days.”
“Let me fill your glass.”
“Really, I have had sufficient; thank you.”
I filled his glass again.
“Plenty, plenty, thank you!” he insisted, as the liquor reached the brim of the glass.
“But the trouble with Westermark and the other scientific observers,” I began, “is that they give you second-hand knowledge of men and women, theirs is mostly book knowledge. I always feel that I am reading works upon heated blood written by cold, dried-up, bloodless professors, who lack the first-hand experience of one’s own life.”
“I am a professor myself;” said he.
“I beg your pardon, but I mean—”
“Tush—tush!” said he, “you are entirely right. I had to resign my professorshipbecause of a woman. I say, this is a mighty good drink.”
He took the pitcher and refilled his own glass.
“My dear sir,” said he, unbending and stretching his legs, “I like you, for sometimes we can say things to a stranger which we would not dare breathe to a life-long friend. Fourteen years ago I was a professor at a Theological Seminary; I was a lover of beauty, a devout searcher for truth, as natural and free as I am with you now. (Here he lighted one of my cigars.) One twilight in April, the Chairman of the Faculty came to my room, told me that I was the subject of gossip, that my words shocked the New Englanders, and that I must be more circumspect in my conduct. His words wounded my frank nature. I went to Boston and got intoxicated, and sent the Faculty this telegram, saying, “Good-bye, my colleagues. Your world is not my world. Yours is a world of sham learning, hypocritical inconsistency between your reason and your emotions. Good-bye.” Naturally, it was an indiscreet thing to do; but you can wager that they never published that telegram.”
“I should think not;” I said, smiling.
He knocked the ashes off his cigar and continued:
“Seriously, my friend, it is this theological tinkering that has caused most of the trouble in this world. Long ago when the world was young, men wanted to do certain things; so they invented gods and told their people that it was the gods, not themselves, who wanted these things done. Then began the tinkering with what was beyond man’s sphere. Then man began to tinker with elements over which he had no control, with elements which he was never meant to comprehend. He segregated men and women apart, and made the distance between them contrary to natural laws. Instead of allowing Nature to run her beautiful course, he set up laws out of his own little brain. In order to protect himself as a selfish egoist, in order to gain power over his fellow men, in order to be able to own any woman whom he might desire under the guise of divine right, he had the assurance to say that these laws were God-given, and that therefore his wilful possession of a woman was a sacrament! That is what I mean by his tinkering, mental juggling with elemental truths which he did not understand and had no right to touch. It was his conceit. His sophistry for physical perversion. Do you know what ‘God-given’ means? I don’t. And I have been trying to find out for twenty years. And woman, like the silly she has always been, said itwas grand, and acquiesced; while all other animals have, without man’s arrogance, remained true to their elemental nature, and so are spared our trials and shortcomings. I am right, I am right, I know I am right! That is why civilization is a failure, caused by man’s tinkering with the fundamental, basic operations of the ordinary course of the perpetuation of the species.”
When the strange professor finished speaking, I confess that I was at a loss for words, and asked:
“Do you really believe that civilization is a failure?”
“My dear sir, look about you. Side by side with material progress, with perfected inventions and conquest of disease, how much have our morals improved? How much have our vanities diminished? Do men and women grow more and more faithful to that sacrament? Do our cities grow more and more pure, and free from the taint of perversion? With our much-vaunted inheritance of art and culture, what has become of the freedom of the will, which was said to be the supreme good in that inheritance?”
“Well,” I said, “you are not saying anything new; we all know that! What are you going to do about it? You Ibsens are wonderful diagnosticians, but what we want is a cure!”
“That is only a quibble, if indeed it is notnonsense,” answered the strange professor, “for then you admit that we have not freedom of the will, that there is no such thing; well, my friend, I heartily agree with you. It is not a question of free will with us, it is a question of strength of will and weakness of will, which is purely a matter of fate.”
“Surely you are not a fatalist!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, every inch a fatalist. You doubt my faith in my convictions, I see? Would you like me to prove them to you by supernatural means?”
Here the man leered at me with defiance, and I grew uneasy and longed for Sandy’s return.
“Proceed if you wish;” I said, folding my arms.
“My dear sir,” he began, rising and holding out his hand for me to clasp, “can I trust you? If you do not wish to believe me, may I prove my position to you by a discovery for which I searched a lifetime, an invention on which I lavished the slavery of years, an invention whose workings may warp your credulity until you doubt my sanity and your own. Can I trust you with my secret? I have the instrument in that valise. That is why I have walked up the seven flights of stairs, because the elevator’s motion would upset its delicate mechanism. Can I trust you?”
“Proceed if you wish;” I said, without taking his hand, for there was something uncanny about the man in his present state.
“Listen to me. I may be a trifle long, but if you knew how I am enjoying myself, yes, how I am relieving my brain by detaining you! I say relieving my brain, for it is about pent-up brains that I am about to speak. Have you ever thought that when each one of us dies, how many facts, memories, griefs, joys, are enclosed in the folds of our brain? How our skull is literally the storehouse of all we knew, felt and experienced. That in there, it was; and that in there, it must be? I have spent hours roaming through museums in which mummies were exposed; I have spent still more hours passing through cemeteries where the countless dead, known and unknown, lie. What if their skulls could be tapped? I asked myself, would we not find a few ideas, perhaps, which had filtered to the bone and survived alone of all the mind that was?
“My dear sir, you know what we have done with electricity? Thirty years ago, the first time I heard over the telephone, it sounded like a voice from the other world, and many believed that it was, until we got so we could recognize the individual voice. On that line of the vibratory properties of matter, I have worked. If we canvibrate with the dead, they will reply. I followed the example of that famous musician who said he would fiddle down a bridge. And he did. I, in turn, sought to fiddle down that invisible bridge over which we must all walk with astral steps. And, sir, my efforts have been rewarded.”
That instant he ceased speaking, and there came the same gentle knock at my inner closet door.
“There he is now!” uttered the strange professor.
“Who?” I asked, breathlessly.
“My mummy! My mummy! You shall hear him orate. Has he tapped before I came this evening?”
I was paralyzed with fear, believing that I was in the presence of a spiritualistic maniac. But I maintained my composure as the surest means of safeguard, and held my tongue.
The strange professor took from his pocket a bunch of keys, unlocked his valise, produced an instrument not unlike the phonograph, attached a long rubber tube to it, the tube having two metal balls at the other end; these balls he carried to the closet door, unlocked it and drew out the case of an Egyptian mummy! The professor turned off the lights. What he did, I know not. I heard him start his machine. I heard him rummage inthe closet and say, “Here is your suit of modern clothes!”
After long trying moments for me, he turned on the lights, and a man with a yellow complexion sat between us; and the mummy case was empty. I swear it upon my oath.
“Tell the gentleman who you are,” demanded the strange professor, “make for him your oration, as you did for me. Are you able to stand alone now?”
The man arose and said:
“I belong to the Undying Ones. I am the Thracian, named Zalmoxis, of whom Herodotus tells. I could not endure the civilization of my time, and had a subterranean hall built in which to reside. The people of my day believed that I never died. But I did die, though I contracted with an Egyptian priest to embalm and mummify me. And here is my secret. I took with me the power to return at the end of certain cycles of years to the land of the living. How I came by that power, I reveal to no man, neither do I reveal the term of my cycles, lest the living plot against me. Besides this, I learned the art wherewith to speak the language of whatever land or age in which I may arise. The last I spoke was Arabic. At another time I was a contemporary of Cartaphilus, the Usher of the Divan in Jerusalem.He was Pilate’s door-keeper at the time of Christ’s trial. I myself saw him strike Jesus on the neck when the young men were leading Him from the hall of judgment. I hear that this Jew who smote Jesus has also lived since.
“Ah, if you could believe that with these eyes of mine, I have seen the ancient caliphs of Babylon; that with these legs I have traveled the empire of the Saracens; that with these arms, I fought throughout the wars in the Holy Land. I was a compatriot of the bravest man who ever walked the earth, Godfrey de Bouillon.”
“Tell us,” said the strange professor, cutting him short, “in your various revisits to this land of the living, what impresses you the most?”
“I look back with surprise and wonder at the intricate systems of the theology of the ancient Greek and Roman, and can scarcely credit the credulity which could receive them as truths and cherish them with reverence from age to age. I marvel at my own faith in them. Yet the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Resurrection, no whit less dark and intricate, and requiring nothing less of credulity, I see you receive with religious reverence, and respect as revelations of Deity.
“Indeed, when I consider the faith which is requisite for your own religion, and without which you are destitute of any religion, it should teachyou to look with respect at least upon the passionate but noble gods of Rome, at the artful but polished deities of Greece.
“Even the gods are not immortal! And these are a great and forgotten race. The calm, majestic Neptune, who soothed the mighty ocean with his trident, has sunk beneath its waves to rise no more forever. The roar of cannon has frightened Mars from out the world. Alas for sighing youth, that laughter-loving, blushing Venus lives only in the skies. A dark shade hangs over Pluto; and the entrance to the realms of Tartarus has been withdrawn from mortal ken. High in heaven, another deity now sits upon the seat of dethroned Jove; and the book of fate, new-bound and new-entitled ‘Providence’ is yet preserved, though the three sisters no longer guard its sacred records.
“Thus with curiosity unmixed with reverence, I recall the names of the departed gods whom I once worshipped, and sometimes with a confidence mingled with a doubt, I wonder lest such should be the fate of your own religion.”
At this point, the man’s knees trembled, and the strange professor motioned him to be seated, as he seemed about to collapse. The whole spectacle was too much for me; and I sprang out of my chair.
“Come, we must go out in the open air,” I suggested, “the heat of this room is oppressive.”
“Nothing would suit us better,” said the strange professor, “it will do my friend good, and afford him an opportunity to see our great metropolis.” Upon this, I began at once to change my costume.
“To what nationality does he claim to belong?” I asked.
“I am an Egyptian,” spoke up the man, “I was born a Thracian, but I moved to Egypt. I lived at Memphis, a superb city which has long since passed into complete oblivion. I often think that not one of us as we used to walk its streets could ever have believed such utter desolation possible. Away in the distance only the pyramids of our Pharaohs stand. When I saw them last, I could hardly recognize them.”
“Why did you go to Memphis when you were alive?” asked the strange professor.
“On account of a common concubine. I had to be a foolish young man.”
By this time, we had reached the elevators, and the professor said that he would have to walk down, as he took with him the valise which contained the mechanism too sensitive to be taken upon an elevator. Whereupon, I insisted upon the three of us walking down, for I did not wish to be left alone with the Egyptian.
When at last we reached the street, I offered to take them to the opera, though I confessed that it would be nearly over. I hoped that even a few strains of music might soothe my troubled brain. I purchased three tickets, and we mingled with the magnificent assemblage in the foyer. After looking about him, the Egyptian suddenly stood aghast.
“Is that the best your women can do?” asked the Egyptian, turning first to me and then to the professor.
“What is the matter with them?” we asked together.
“After all these centuries, is the best they can do, the wearing of trinkets on their ears, bangles on their arms, and their fingers stiff with rings? Why, the barbaric brain of the early Egyptian perfected every known design of jewelry. Is woman at heart still a savage? And these absurd head-dresses! And that dirty powder on their faces! Have you not gotten beyond even that common sort of vanity?”
“I am afraid that your friend will not enjoy it here,” I said, fearing a scene, “let us leave.”
As it was now late in the evening, I took them to a famous French café. We had hardly seated ourselves at a table, when the place filled with people who came from the closing of the theatres.Soon the corks popped from the bottles, soon the men became noisy and drowned the music, and soon the painted women became vulgar.
“Is this the best your men can do?” asked the Egyptian, looking about him, as though a pall of ennui had fallen upon him, “after all these generations since I was foolish, is man’s chief diversion that of getting drunk with low women? I used to do this with the strumpets of Babylon; and those chartered courtesans were at least naturally beautiful.”
“You had better go back to your mummy case,” said the professor, “we have nothing more to offer you. Here is your sleeping powder.”
The Egyptian took the powder and willingly made his escape. The professor looked at me, and I looked at the professor. I fear that I was rather sheep-faced and ashamed of the only civilization we had to offer. The professor saw my chagrin, and that he had scored in favor of his doctrines.
“I have just one more experiment to prove to you the scope of my invention,” said he, “and then I shall bid you good-night.”
He took me by the arm, and with the other hand he carried his valise. He led me into the downtown districts, along the great thoroughfare which is so crowded by day and so deserted by night.We came to the gates of an old cemetery, and after looking up and down the street to make sure that the police did not observe us, the strange professor ushered me into the cemetery, and we sat down upon a cold marble slab, and once more in the hush and chill of quiet moonlight, the man became uncanny.
“I know what you think,” said he, “you think that I have this power over only that one man. You even suspect me. You fear lest I have you in a state of hypnosis or morbid sleep, and that even the Egyptian himself was an illusion. I know you. You tried to get me intoxicated with your sangaree. I admit that you have a power of extracting confidences. You thought that perhaps you had found in me some interesting phantast who would amuse you. But let me tell you the most profound paradox in the world: if you possess a power, and abuse your power, that power will be taken away from you. Take care!
“Now for my last experiment. Answer me, if you can not believe your eyes, can you trust your ears? Listen to the sentiments which have outlasted the brains of a few of the dead. Often these ideas crystallize their whole experience.”
He undid his valise, placed two hard rubber tubes in my ears, and then slowly inserted the two metal balls into the head of a grave. I saw hisspider-like fingers reach out and touch the valise, and the machine started.
“Hold the tubes tightly in your ears.”
Presently a gurgling vibration ceased and these words came distinctly:
“I should like to see the sun shining, and my sheep nibbling the green, tender grass. I was happy.”
Then the vibration stopped. The professor seemed to know it, probably from the relaxed intentness of my expression. He said not a word, but motioned me to follow him. We moved to another grave where he repeated the operations. Then came these words to my ears:
“Too late, too late; everything came for me too late. They even tried to cure me too late. Alas, poor Dorothy!”
The next grave gave forth these words:
“I believed in God and said my prayers. That was my only solace.”
We moved again to a mound covered with fresh earth and new flowers. The professor whispered that the lately dead often had confused ideas. This was the message:
“Last night was my first night in the grave. I trusted my lover. His faithlessness turned me into a bad woman. I weighed only ninety-two pounds when I died. I wish that I could drinkand dance with him once more. I wish I could see his eyes beam on me. I do love him.”
The words ceased to come and the vibration stopped.
The professor whispered that he would go to three more graves and then depart.
The first gave out only one sentence:
“I married a man whom I did not love, yet I kept him from knowing the truth.”
And the second:
“My eight children which I bore my husband gave me much joy and some sorrow. I was so proud of my son, Charlie.”
And the last:
“I was known as the rich spinster of the place where I lived. Ah, they little knew that money does not, can not, make one happy. Why had I to be sterile?”
To my dying day, I shall hear that plaintive, unselfish question. And when they tap my skull, the answer will be graven there.
The strange professor put the metal balls and the tubes back in their place, and closed the valise. We issued forth again upon the sidewalk.
“Why was it that only women spoke?” I asked.
“Because most women die keeping the true secrets of their existence; whereas few men can maintain a life-long self within a self. Men aremore vain, but they have less pride than women. Goodnight! Good-bye!”
Without another word the strange professor took a passing street car and left me stark alone. And I walked for hours before I cared, or rather dared, to go to my hotel. Daylight was coming through the windows when at last I reached my rooms. The mummy case was gone! The closet door was open, and the closet empty! I went into Sandy’s room, and there he sat awaiting me.
“Lor’, maarstar, you done do me wrong. I jest come home, after tryin’ to spy on you. I sees you once with two gen’lemen.”
“What? Were there three of us, Sandy?”
“Yes, maarstar, you know one of them was yaller. He never did look like he come from this country.”
“Do you swear it, Sandy?” I asked, placing my hand on his shoulder.
“I sirtainly do, maarstar;” said he, looking up at me as if I were bereft of my reason.
“Thank heaven!” I uttered aloud, “I almost thought that I might be going mad. We must leave this city, Sandy, for while I am here, I keep thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking of the days I spent here once as a boy. Oh, Sandy, that morning in May when I awoke to find that itwas true! Too true! You remember, the following February Miss Susanne died?—Let us pack the trunks.”
When I was a child of four, long, long ago, as it seems to me, some friend gave my father a setter dog. And my father named him “Tim,” for the giver’s name was Timothy.
Tim and our old gardener, Sandy’s father, whose name was Uncle Robert, were about the only friends of my early childhood. I remember how in the fall of every year, when the chestnut burrs used to get big and the pippins began to ripen, Uncle Robert used to dig up all the potatoes and make them into a huge mound at the end of our garden. Then he would rake together in heaps the dead and falling leaves, and use them for a warm covering for the potato mound in order to protect the potatoes from the snow and frost, for he kept them there all winter, and only brought them up to the kitchen as the cook needed them. Uncle Robert’s mountain of potatoes always impressed me as being perfectly wonderful. Indeed most everything that Uncle Robert did, came pretty near to the marvelous. Upon the first fall of snow, I used to get a staff, and scale that mountain, and pose on the summit “like stout Cortez—silent,upon a peak in Darien.” I have crossed the Rockies and the Alps since, but not one of them has seemed quite so high or inspiring. Sometimes I think that when a child loses that appreciative sense of the marvelous, the joy of life dies. Mounds become mere mounds, and mountains only mountains.
But the real fun at potato time, was after Uncle Robert had used up as many leaves as he could, and set the rest on fire. No one could ever light a fire quite as well as Uncle Robert. No matter how the wind blew, no matter how much the leaves jumped up in his old face, Uncle Robert caught them and turned them into shoots of flame. That was toward the end of the chilly days when the clouds used to grow black even before the chickens went to roost. And now came the real treat. Uncle Robert would give me two potatoes from within the mound. Then he would poke a hole in the hot, red ashes; I would drop them in; and he would smoulder them with fresh leaves. Hereupon, Uncle Robert would leave to feed the turkeys.
Meanwhile Tim, my setter, sat upon his haunches, watching us, his tongue hanging out, for the fire made him hot. I used to make an extra fuss about all this potato roasting in order that Tim might enjoy it the more. And as soon as I haddropped the potatoes in the ashes, I would go and lie lengthwise on Tim’s back, and fling my arms about his neck and hug him tight. I could go and see the turkeys driven to roost any evening, but this evening was peculiarly Tim’s and mine. I knew that Tim loved me, but not half so much as I loved Tim. I bumped his head, which was my most intimate term of affection with him. We two alone would sit there until the potatoes were cooked, watching the flames change into smoke, and the grey smoke rise and join the greyness of the winter sky. I was happy, so happy, dreaming with my arms about Tim, both of us gazing into the burning leaves, and, oh, their delicious odor, we both relished it, and I, full of affection and boyish glory, thinking strange, innocent thoughts. What would I not give to be that little brown-headed boy again, unfettered with the knowledge of evil?
When the potatoes were cooked to a mealy white, Uncle Robert came back from the turkey-house and pulled them out with his dextrous rake; and we three proceeded to the kitchen, where we found Aunt Maria, Sandy’s mother, sitting by the old brick oven. She gave us salt, and we ate the potatoes. Tim had some. No fairies ever dined like that, I was sure. Then my mother came out on the back veranda, and called:
“My son, my son, come into the house!”
“Doan’t you heah Mistus callin’?” demanded Uncle Robert.
“Yes,” I said, “but I didn’t want to go.”
I went. And I never came back.
That night tragedy was to begin in my life. When we were asleep, my father, mother and I, the son of our overseer trespassed across our lawn. Tim was on watch. No one ever knew exactly what happened; but Tim went at him, tore his pantaloons and bit him in the thigh. It was my certain belief that the boy had stoned Tim, for I found stones in the yard the next morning. And Uncle Robert intimated that Tim had guarded the turkey-house. But excuses were of no avail. Early in the day, the overseer brought the boy and his pantaloons and exhibited them to my father and was loud in his complaints. The brazen, whining boy was really proud of his wound. I do not know what my father said to them, for he took them into his office down by the grape-arbor; but that afternoon Tim was tied with a long trace to the big poplar tree. And I heard my father say that Tim must surely die. Die? What did that mean? Tim die? Dead! My father, a man, have the right to take my Tim’s life? No, no, that could not be. God would not stand for that. My mother had taughtme to pray every night, and now in a quick impulse I rushed alone to the garret, secreted myself in a cuddy, knelt by an old black trunk, and prayed and wept; and I felt that God heard me and that my Tim was safe. Oh, what a relief! Then I went to the poplar tree. Tim looked into my eyes. He knew something was wrong. He gave me his paw. And I bumped his head. I whispered that he was safe; that I had prayed for him. I thought and still think that Tim’s eyes watered. We sat there under the poplar tree and watched the yellow leaves fall.
Presently I saw my father appear on the front porch. He had his shotgun under his arm, and came toward us. Child that I was, I thought he was going hunting and had come to get Tim. But when I saw him untie the trace and start to lead Tim, I understood. I screamed, I caught his trouser leg, I wept; he shook me off and had me taken into the house, screaming and kicking and yelling. Oh, I think those were the keenest pangs which I have ever endured. They put me on my play-counter, and offered me toys! I hoodwinked them. I behaved; and in a few minutes they let me go.
I stole up to my cuddy in the garret.
I knelt again by the old black trunk. They had gone back on Tim and therefore on me.But God would not go back on us. I wept and said every prayer that my mother had taught me. And I said this one of my own:
“Lord, save Tim. Don’t let pop make him die.”
Boom! the report of a gun rang across the woods. I shuddered. Had God, too, gone back on me? If so, why?
I went to the attic window and waited breathlessly. I stretched myself flat on the dusty floor, so that I could see and not be seen. After a little while I saw my father climb over the zig-zag fence, carrying the trace over his shoulders.
In the evening they found me stained with dusty tears, asleep on the attic floor. My mother kissed me and petted me and told me that I was her king. It did no good, for she had taught me futile prayers. She put me to bed, but I would not pray. I sobbed while she said the hollow words for me. Then I heard her tell my father that she feared that I was going to be ill.
“Pooh!” said my father, “a child’s sorrows are like a child’s joys, they soon pass away.”
He had a way of checking off the events of life with some false axiom. And soon they thought I was asleep; and I heard him tell my mother how he had taken the trace off the dog after they reached the woods, how Tim had followed him to the great boulder down in the hollow, howTim had wagged his tail when he told him to look for squirrels in the trees, and then when Tim looked up for the game, he shot him behind the ear, and the dog rolled over in the cave under the boulder.
That was the first night of my life when I did not close my eyes.
Our old house had a large spare room for guests, but what I remember about it is, that my mother used to take me in there every morning when the windows caught the sun. She would draw me up in her lap and read poetry to me. Naturally, I did not understand much of it, but that made no difference, I loved it just the same; for it made my mother, who was not a pretty woman, very beautiful to me. She was an impulsive woman, hugging me one moment, and boxing my ears the next. But those hours in the sunshine when she used to read aloud to me in the spare room, they were sacred. There was nothing then except deep affection.
When she was a girl, I have heard my father say in after years, my mother was as care-free as a meadow-lark. He used to tell me how at house-parties where they did their courting, she would keep all the company in gay spirits and laughter.They married; and a baby girl was born to them. She was my little sister, Louise. She grew to be four years old and was a remarkable child, a bundle of natural mirth and strong individuality. Then she took black diphtheria, and died.
My mother withdrew into herself, she became sad and more sad as time went on; and during this sorrow, she conceived and bore me. Is it any wonder that I, a man, should at times weep like a girl?
Now I am back to where I left off about Tim’s death. It was after he was gone that my mother used to take me daily into the spare room and console me with poetry. Then one day the blinds were drawn close in my mother’s room. She had another of her terrible heart attacks. O God, how I have seen her suffer! She seemed to get much better, indeed quite well, and I grew happy again, and I can see myself climb out of my crib and scramble into bed between her and my father. And she said jokingly to my father:
“If I should die, who will be your wife?”
“I’ll be pop’s schwife!” I exclaimed, as a matter of course, and I can hear their hearty laughter to this day; and my mother drew me over on her and covered me with kisses; and I remember that my father remarked something about my being “a precocious curiosity.” He had a bad habit ofspeaking about me before my face, never crediting that I would cherish his mysterious remarks until I understood them. Mark me, all children do this.
Autumn went by; and winter came. We had an unusually heavy fall of snow for Virginia. Only a redbird and some occasional sparrows could be seen in the leafless poplar. I remember it was the week before Christmas, because I received my sled in advance so that I would go down to the duck pond and not disturb my mother, who was very sick again. That night I was kept down in the kitchen with Uncle Robert and Aunt Maria. Sandy has told me that he was there too. We were all huddled about the brick oven; and my childish intuition perceived a hush over the old servants. Of a sudden, we heard way off down the plantation road the jingle, jingle of bells, coming nearer and nearer.
“It am the sleigh comin’ with those town doctors;” said Uncle Robert, and he went out to meet it with his lantern. Even Aunt Maria, who was usually the bulwark of our household, was uneasy and troubled.
“I doan’t lak to see them touch my young Mistus!” she said, defiantly, as she held my hand.
Jingle! jingle! the sleigh was at the door! I broke away from her and rushed out in the snowto see the doctors who had come from Richmond. I remember how my childish imagination was roused by the sight of three men in soft hats and storm coats, carrying small valises, as they hastened up the porch steps to where my father stood, holding a lamp aloft to light their way. Aunt Maria came and caught me and whisked me off to bed. That was all that I knew until the next morning when I was awakened by a strange white nurse, who had been with us a few days. She said that my father had sent for me “to come and kiss my mamma good-bye.”
I went with her without realizing what I was doing. I heard one of the doctors say that he had seen my mother’s father die of the same kind of heart failure. Die? There was that word again. My mother die? No, no, that could not be. I ran out of the room without their knowing that my child’s faith in God, which she had tried to restore in me, was now actually restored. I climbed again to the garret and knelt by the black trunk and held up my little hands in prayer. This time I did not cry. I made up my mind that I must be brave on my father’s account, for when I left the sick-room, I saw that his hands covered his face; and he spoke not a word; and I went and took down his hands, and when he looked at me, I saw his eyes film with tears.
Oh, dear, I do not want to tell the rest. I have heard others say that the sight of my father, holding my hand, as we stood beside my mother’s snow-bordered grave, was as bleak a scene as they ever cared to witness, that we both looked so utterly forlorn, and that I looked as though I tried to take my mother’s place.
I know that I wanted to do so. I know that where he went, I went; where he slept, I slept. We went North for a while. We came back in the spring when the fields were being plowed.
My little sister, Louise, was four years old when she died, before I was born. I was four years old when my mother died. How often have I envied little Louise, for at that age I reached the culmination of my happiness. In all this world there is one truth: a motherless son is a friendless child.
As I grew up, my father and I became more and more companionable, though we were totally different. Up to a certain point, my father was one of the most lovable of men, generous, unpretentious, true to the memory of my mother. He had a unique faith in mankind. He assumed that because he liked a man, that man was honest in all respects. Naturally, he was imposed upon, because he could not separate his affections from his observation; and therefore lackeddiscrimination. In like manner, he assumed that if his son had good in him, that good would come out; and if he thought that a child were bad, his favorite axiom was that no man could save his brother’s soul, or be his brother’s keeper. In fine, my father lived his whole existence upon assumption, and he never discovered whether his assumptions were sound or false. He brought me up on the theory of an ideal conception of human nature, very beautiful in its faith, but unfortunately not practical. He had faith in my developing only the bright and best side of myself; and here is the point: he assumed that I did so! He was proud of me and put me upon a pedestal and gave me sympathy at a distance, with the result that I could not leap into his arms and tell him that it was not so, that my little life was not bright! And so throughout my entire childhood I was hungry for the little details of affection which a man does not know how to give. The fact is, I never had any young boyhood. Fate also robbed me forever of the grand schemes and the unconscious fun which a few playmates give a child. My father and his club friends who came up from Richmond were my playmates. They used to sit at table, and sip their claret after dinner; and I would sit with them, too, “always looking and listening,” as I overheard one of them describe me. Thenthey would walk out over the plantation; and I would walk with them, too, and hear the stories at which they laughed, many of which I used to ponder over in order to find out what was so funny in them. One especially I used to remember, that my father would tell whenever we walked through the old red gate in the woods. It was told of my name-sake, the famous Mr. William Wirt. He told how Mr. Wirt used to visit in the neighborhood, and how one day at the time when my grandfather had just had that gate hung, Mr. Wirt passed by and said:
“Ah, sir, anybody can hang a gate, but only men can propagate!”
Then they would laugh. I puzzled for years over that story.
My father had a tutor for me whom they called “Doctor.” The truth is, he was a pensioner on us with whom my father liked to converse. He did not teach me one iota of the usual textbook knowledge. He did not believe in machine-made learning. But it was a general education for me to go about in his company and browse here and there in our library. Actually, I have not read thirty books in my life all told; but that good man taught me that if a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading slowly.
“What conceit!” he used to say, “for one to try to digest in a few hours what has taken another years to think out!”
He told me that it took him a year to read “The Newcomes.”
I have to thank him for one inestimable heritage, which laid the foundation of my religion. He taught me concerning the Omnipotence of Truth. In this lies all my faith. He taught me ‘to dare to stand alone, to dare to have an opinion of my own and to dare to make it known.’
“Beware though,” said he, “it is the part or mark of youthful vigor to discover that things are not altogether right in this unintelligible world; and youth sets about to mould things over to his own satisfaction, only to find that he has himself been cast in a mould.”
I think that he and my father, who dearly loved to moralize, used to sit and talk and smoke on our back porch for fourteen hours out of many a day, calling out occasional suggestions to the negroes as they worked in the garden. So I used often to leave them and go fishing in the canal. I used to catch chub with a pin hook. Oh, to watch again those old canal boats as they glided under me, as I sat upon the bridge; oh, to dream again that they were moving fairy lands, going up anddown to realms, marvelous and weird, to which I might some day travel and enjoy their unlimited pleasures. That was my chief source of delight.
The day when I was to take one of them came sooner than I had hoped. My father took me on a visit down in Goochland, and I met little Susanne, she was twelve and I was thirteen. A flood of warm light seemed to fall upon me and to thaw out my boyish spirit. But I am not going to write about her any more. I can not stand it. She had my mother’s eyes, “wistful and mild.” My father was as pleased as Punch over our fondness for each other. Poor man! I thank God that he was spared the end of that long attachment. He died even before I lost Susanne. He rode off one day on a new stallion. I climbed on the zig-zag fence and watched him disappear down the plantation road. When he reached the creek, the stallion threw him against the rocks and broke his neck. Uncle Robert and Sandy and I brought him home.
Don’t pity me. Call me a mad dog, say that I am a peculiar idiot, say that I have been a fool and wasted my life; but don’t pity me! And if there is one thing more abhorrent to me than self-praise, it is self-pity. I am disgusted with myself, who might have amounted to some one. Then I would not have been lonely, physically lonely.And there is mental loneliness, more galling, more gnawing, than murky solitude.
The following blames no one except myself:
“I felt myself pressed onward by an internal force, which I could not resist.—Let us look into this a little, and see whether the direction you gave to your life has not had for its object to make this force irresistible.”
That may be. But I prefer to know what I actually am, than to be proud and contented in acul-de-sac. Tumble-bugs roll from rut to rut, clinging to their eggs, never knowing that they are tumble-bugs. I would rather be unhappy than be the man with illusions, snug in his own pettiness. If contentment comes only from rolling in a rut, then I choose discontent.
“Come, review your days and your years, call them to account! Tell us how much time you have allowed to be stolen from you by a creditor, by a mistress, by a patron, by a client.” Which of us can read those lines without blushing?
This night is my birth night. Nine and twenty years ago, at eleven o’clock, when the July sun had sunk out of the valley of the James, when the cattle were at rest, and the whippoorwills uttered forth their conscience-stricken notes, “Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill!” the moon had arisen and shone upon the purple bloom of the fox-grapes,hidden above the brook, then a deep joy came over my mother and she was delivered of me. It must have been the blessed, unspeakable, sacred joy of labour, which men never know. My father told me once that she wept in the midst of her joy—that is how I know.